The Co-Citizens Part 9

He did go on. He called attention to certain laws governing county elections.

"With all your knowledge of the needs of women, and your bitter sense of injustice, you women never thought of this simple means by which you may win. And it was the thing Sarah Mosely grasped. She was the first woman in America, so far as I know, to grasp the significance of this easy and effective method of obtaining suffrage for women. And instead of leaving her money to a hospital, or to endow a chair or two in some university, she has left it for this purpose. It's amazing--her vision, and the directness with which she reasoned to the right conclusion!"

"Still I don't see how we can _force_ this issue here," Mrs. Walton insisted.

"Do you know, Susan, why men have the ballot and why women have not got it?"

"I have my suspicions, John. It's because they've got everything else, including us. Because they've got pockets in their breeches, for one thing."

"Exactly! now you've got pockets in your skirts, with something like twenty thousand dollars to spend for a certain purpose. And that is not all you have. This Board of Trust owns the majority of stock in the National Bank, and has loaned money to nearly all the business houses in town. You hold mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county. You practically own the _Signal_. There is not a politician anywhere who would not know he held this county in the hollow of his hand if he had that much influence to back him. Influence, Susan, is not mere influence ever. It's power! You've got that!"

"When did you become such an ardent suffragist, John?" Susan suddenly demanded.

The Judge laughed.

"I've been a kind of mugwump of the cause for years. If I were younger, I doubt if I should be ardently in favour of it now. I admit that I prefer the dear woman to the abler ballot-bearing woman--every man must--but before your s.e.x can become entirely like my s.e.x except in gender, Susan, I shall be where Sarah Mosely is now. It will not matter to me. I admit, however, that I was converted to active partisanship by Mrs. Mosely. I have been more impressed by that dim little old woman than by all the arguments you, for example, ever made for suffrage. She was herself an unanswerable plea for the rights of women to _live_, for she had never really lived at all. She looked as if every mortgage held by her estate had been foreclosed at her expense."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Walton with a sigh. "She was pathetic in her submission. Most women submit, but still have enough to fuss about from time to time to keep them alive."

"She was really the least submissive of you all. She put on her thimble, threaded the needle of her robin-headed brain, and worked all your fuss and agitations and futile parades down to a formula by which you can actually obtain the ballot," he put in.

"Well, coming down to this formula, what shall we do with Briggs?" she asked shrewdly. "He looks like a dangerous factor in it to me."

"Briggs will be of use. All he needs is an expert accountant to overhaul his books occasionally. And we shall need him as we need a pair of tongs to handle live coals. Besides, we cannot afford to dismiss him now and incur his enmity. We are not working up antagonism. We have one man against us already who counts for all we can overcome."

"Who is that?"

"Mike Prim. He owns nothing visible. So we have no mortgage to hold over his head. But he practically controls this town, politically speaking."

"How?"

"Don't ask me! He is not a merchant, nor a lawyer, nor a real estate agent, nor a banker, nor a broker, nor anything else that has a name, but more men--prominent citizens, farmers, labourers, tramps, beggars, anybody and everybody--go and come from his office than to and from any other office in this town. He is the power of darkness in this county to be overcome before you can win suffrage, I can tell you that."

"Well, at least Prim is tangible. He is in my line. I shall know what to do with him," answered Susan grimly.

The Judge threw back his head and laughed.

"Now you are coming, Susan! I want to see you dragging your wings before Prim!"

"I do my best work in private, John, but I'm beginning to see light.

This thing really is possible. Now let us get down to business. I have an appointment with Selah Adams. She couldn't come up here this morning. I feel anxious. Her voice sounded like that of a child being kept in after school. Shouldn't wonder if that old family sword of a father were making trouble."

"We need Selah; her beauty and enthusiasm are real a.s.sets to this movement," said the Judge.

"Oh, we shall keep her on the board if I have to fight a duel with Marshall Adams," she replied with a cackling laugh.

The conference which followed was of a nature so private that they instinctively adopted the tones of conspirators as they turned the pages of ledgers which Briggs had been required to submit for inspection.

At two o'clock Selah Adams slipped softly out of the house, crossed the street, and entered Mrs. Walton's front door.

"She says come right up to her room, Miss Selah; she's busy and can't come down," said the negro maid, rolling her eyes and stifling either a sn.i.g.g.e.r or a sob by slapping her hand over her mouth.

The next moment Selah stood in the door of Mrs. Walton's bedroom, staring with horrified eyes.

Susan Walton, clad in only her essential underwear, lay flat upon her back on the floor. She was slowly lifting first one stockinged leg, then the other, to a right angle with her body, at the same time thrusting up one arm and then the other. She was staring at the ceiling and muttering a certain formula under her breath.

"Oh! Oh! What is the matter, Mrs. Walton? Is it a fit?" cried Selah, staggering back.

"No! Exercise. Just had my lunch! One--two--three! Never allow yourself to get fat, Selah!" Up shot the other foot and arm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'_You may be mayor of this town before you are thirty. A fat mayoress would never do_'"]

"If I'd known what was before me twenty years ago, I'd have been more careful. One--two--three! Can't do what's before me unless I reduce.

Avoid oatmeal and cream, that's what does it! You may be mayor of this town before you are thirty. A fat mayoress would never do. It would suggest beer! And look at me. I'm already so fat I have to lie down to take my exercise! But Regis and I have planned enough work to keep you lean this summer," she added, sitting up apparently satisfied with her state of exhaustion.

"That's what I came to see you about," said the girl, seating herself and looking down sorrowfully. "Father is dreadfully upset. He has forbidden me to mention woman suffrage in the house."

"Well, don't, then; don't speak of it at all to him."

"But he will never consent to my holding this trusteeship."

"Aren't you twenty-one?"

"I'm twenty-four, as to that, but----"

"If you were your father's son, do you think he would forbid your having your own convictions and living up to them?" the older woman interrupted.

"No, but I'm only his daughter!" Selah said.

"Can't you see that is provided for? If he forbade you the house, you still have twelve hundred dollars a year, which is certainly more than he could afford to give you."

"That isn't it: he can't do without me, he needs me."

"Listen to me, Selah! Men have been our little children for so long that we do not know how to wean them. Here you are, ready to resign the greatest opportunity any young woman has ever had in this state in order to stay at home and break your father's breakfast eggs and putter over him and keep him soothed by agreeing with everything he says. That's why men can vote and we can't. That's why they get everything, and we get nothing but our board and clothes. We've humoured and pampered them until they have no sense of us and our needs," she concluded, twisting her hair angrily into a tight knot on the back of her head.

"Oh, I wish I knew what was right!" cried the girl, clasping her hands.

"We've tried the old sacrificial righteousness long enough, Selah, to know that it is not contagious so far as we are concerned. Now you just take my advice, and we'll have the new righteousness for women proved in Jordan County before the end of this year!"

"As soon as that?" cried the girl, enthused in spite of herself.

"Yes, if we can win at all we can do it in a few months. Regis and I planned the whole campaign this morning. Give me that kimono. Now let me have your hand. It's not so easy to get to one's feet at sixty, Selah!"

She was sublimely unconscious of the figure she made moving across the room with the ends of her kimono trailing back like the gray wings of an old duck-legged hen. She gathered up some loose sheets from her desk.

"Here's the whole thing--all divided into three parts. Yours will be in some ways the most difficult. You'll have the organizing to do among the women in the country districts. But we've decided to get a good motor.

You'll need to cover distances rapidly. That will be one agreeable feature at least. You and Bob Sasnett may find it convenient to do your canva.s.sing together!" she laughed, while Selah blushed.