Читать книгу Other People's Business: The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale - Harriet Lummis Smith - Страница 6

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Persis Dale was under no misapprehension, regarding her standing in the community. She fully appreciated the fact that she was a pillar of Clematis society and would have accepted as her due the complimentary implication of Mrs. Warren’s post-card, even if its duplicates had not offered a similar tribute to at least thirty of her acquaintances. The invitations were all written in Mrs. Warren’s near-Spencerian hand, the t’s expanding blottily at the tips, the curves of the capitals suggesting in their sudden murky expansion, the Mississippi River after its union with the muddy Missouri.

“As one of the representative women of Clematis, you are invited to attend a meeting at the home of Mrs. Sophia Warren, Saturday the 12th inst. at 2 P. M. Object of meeting, the organization of a Woman’s Club for the purpose of expanding the horizon of the individual members and uplifting the community as a whole. Please be prompt.”

The arrival of the postman while Persis was busy with a fitting, gave Joel time to examine the mail and frame a withering denunciation of Mrs. Warren’s plan. He sprung the same upon his sister with pyrotechnic effect a little later.

“A woman’s club! Clematis is getting on. Pretty soon the women’ll be smoking cigarettes and wanting to run for mayor and letting their own rightful sphere go to the everlasting bow-wows. Expand their horizons! What’s the good of a horizon to a woman who’s got a house to look after, and a man around to do her thinking for her? If women folks nowadays worked as hard as their grandmothers did, we wouldn’t hear any of this nonsense about clubs. As good old Doctor Watts says:

“ ‘For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.’ ”

Persis, arranging a cascade of lace, over the voluptuous bosom of her adjustable bust-form, stood back to get the effect. “Maybe you’re right, Joel,” she acknowledged placidly, “but I’m going to that meeting at Sophia Warren’s Saturday if I have to sew all Friday night to get my week’s work out of the way.”

In the face of masculine scoffs, which sometimes, as in Joel’s case, became denunciatory rather than humorous, about twenty of the representative thirty Mrs. Warren had called from her list of acquaintances, accepted the invitation and were on hand at the hour designated. The opposition of sundry husbands and fathers, as well as of those unattached males who disapproved of women’s clubs on general principles, had lent to the project the seductive flavor of forbidden fruit. The women who donned their Sunday best that Saturday afternoon had an exhilarating sense of adventure. Even Annabel Sinclair, invariably bored by the society of her own sex, made her appearance with the others and from her post of observation in the corner, noted the effect of lavender on Gladys Wells’ complexion, and wondered why Thad West’s mother didn’t try anti-fat.

As the clock struck two, Mrs. Warren rose with a Jack-in-the-box effect from behind the table where she had ensconced herself after welcoming the last arrival. Mrs. Warren had taught school before her marriage and under the stimulus of her present responsibility, her voice and manner reverted to their earlier pedagogical precision. As she rapped the assembly to order, she had every appearance of a teacher calling on the A-class to recite.

“Ladies, I am glad to see so many of you punctual. Miss Persis Dale has sent word that she will be detained for a little by the pressure of Saturday’s work, but that she will join us later, and undoubtedly other tardy arrivals will have excuses equally good. And now, ladies, the first business of the afternoon will be the election of a chairman.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be chairman,” observed Mrs. West conversationally from the largest armchair. “None of the rest of us know enough.” Corroborative nods and murmurs approved the suggestion, and Mrs. Warren acknowledged the compliment by a prim little bow.

“Do I understand you to make this in the form of a motion, Mrs. West?”

“Why, ye-es, I s’pose so,” returned Mrs. West, visibly startled by the suggestion that she had performed that feat without a realizing sense of its momentous character.

“Is there a second to this motion?”

The chilling silence, which the first hint of parliamentary procedure imposes on the most voluble gathering, unaccustomed to its technicalities, was broken at length, by the voice of Susan Fitzgerald, who said faintly, “I do,” and blushed to the roots of her hair.

“You have heard the motion, ladies. All in favor signify it, by saying aye.”

Twenty voices in unison gave an effect at once businesslike and harmonious; and the representative women of Clematis looked vaguely pleased to find their end so easily attained.

“Contrary-minded, the same sign.” A breathless pause while the assembly waited for the daring opposition to manifest itself. “The motion appears to be carried, carried unanimously, ladies. I thank you for your confidence. We shall now proceed to consider the best method of organizing ourselves so as to expand the horizon of the individual members”—Mrs. Warren was quoting, unabashed, from her own post-card—“in addition to uplifting the community as a whole.”

The chairman went into temporary eclipse by taking her seat, and the gathering no longer frozen into speechlessness by the realization that there was a motion before the house, rippled out in brook-like fluency.

“I think a card club would be just too grand for anything,” gushed Gladys Wells with an effect of girlishness, quite misleading. “My cousin in Springfield belongs to a card club, and they have just the grandest times. Everybody pays ten cents each meeting, and that goes for the prize. My cousin won a perfectly grand cut-glass butter dish.”

“I don’t see how parlor gambling would help uplift the community,” commented Mrs. Richards coldly from the opposite side of the room.

The seemingly inevitable clash was averted by Susan Fitzgerald, who rose and addressed the chair, a feat of such reckless daring as to reduce the assembly to instant dumbness.

“Mrs. President, I think a suffrage club is what we need in Clematis ’most of anything. We women have submitted to being downtrodden long enough, and the only way for us to force men to give us our rights is to organize and stand shoulder to shoulder. It’s time for us to arise—to arise in our might and defy the oppressor.”

Susan subsided, mopping her moist forehead as if her oratorical effort had occupied an hour, rather than a trifle over thirty seconds. Gradually the meeting recovered from its temporary paralysis.

“If it’s going to be that sort of a club, I’m sure Robert wouldn’t approve of my having anything to do with it,” Mrs. Hornblower remarked with great distinctness, though apparently addressing her remarks to her right-hand neighbor. “Robert isn’t what you’d call a tyrant, but he believes that a man ought to be master in his own house. If he thought there was any danger of my getting interested in such subjects, he’d put his foot right down and that would be the end of it.”

The ghost of a titter swept over the gathering. Mrs. Hornblower, though fond of flaunting her wifely subjection in the faces of her acquaintances, never failed to get her own way in any domestic crisis where she had taken the trouble to form a preference. And on the other hand, poor Susan Fitzgerald, for all her blustering defiance of the tyrant sex, could in reality be overawed and browbeaten by any male not yet out of kilts. Before the phantom-like laughter had quite died away, Mrs. Hornblower added majestically: “But I don’t want my opinions to count too much either way as I may be leaving Clematis before long.”

The expansion of the horizon of the representative women of Clematis, with the incidental uplift of the community, was immediately relegated to the background of interest. “Leaving Clematis!” exclaimed a dozen voices, the accent of shocked protest easily perceptible above mere surprise and curiosity.

Mrs. Hornblower, in her evident enjoyment of the sensation of which she was the center, was in no hurry to explain.

“We’re thinking of selling the farm and investing in an apple orchard,” she announced at length. “Robert’s worked hard all his life, and we think it’s about time he began to take things easy. The comp’ny undertakes to do all the work of taking care of the orchard and marketing the fruit for a quarter of our net profits, and that’ll leave me and Robert free to travel ’round and enjoy ourselves. We’re looking over plans now for our villa.”

Even Annabel Sinclair straightened herself suddenly, galvanized into closer attention by that magic word.

“I’ve heard tell that there was lots of money in apples,” exclaimed Mrs. West. “But I didn’t s’pose there was enough so that folks wouldn’t need to do any work to get it out.”

“You see, people in general don’t appreciate what science and system can do,” patronizingly explained Mrs. Hornblower. “If you’d read some of the literature the Apple of Eden Investment Comp’ny sends us, it would be an eye-opener.”

“Ladies, ladies!” expostulated the chairman, “we are forgetting the object of our meeting.” Then temporarily setting aside her official duties in favor of her responsibility as hostess, she hurried forward to greet a new arrival. “So glad to see you, Mrs. Leveridge. But I’m sorry you couldn’t persuade young Mrs. Thompson to accompany you.”

“She’d agreed to come,” replied Mrs. Leveridge, loosening her bonnet-strings and sighing. “But at the last minute she found it wasn’t possible.”

The room rustled expectantly. There is always a chance that the reason for a bride’s regrets may be of interest.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” said Mrs. West insinuatingly.

Mrs. Leveridge’s sigh was provocative of further questions.

“Well, no, and then again, yes. It isn’t anything like a death in the family. But you don’t have to live long to find out that death ain’t the worst thing.”

“My goodness, Minerva,” exclaimed Susan Fitzgerald, aghast. “What’s happened?”

Mrs. Leveridge’s deliberative gaze swept the silently expectant company.

“Of course, I wouldn’t repeat it everywhere. But I’m sure anything I say won’t go a step further.”

Twenty voices replied, “Of course not,” with a unanimity which gave it the effect of a congregational response in the litany.

Mrs. Leveridge, having made terms with her conscience, from all appearances rather enjoyed the responsibility of enlightening her audience, “It’s her husband.”

“Her husband!” cried Susan Fitzgerald protestingly; “why, she hasn’t been married six months.”

Mrs. Leveridge’s smile showed more than a tinge of patronage.

“If you’d ever been married yourself, Susan, you’d know that six months was enough, quite enough. If he’s that kind of a man, six weeks is about as long as he can keep on his good behavior.”

“He hasn’t been beating her, has he?” asked Mrs. Hornblower, her voice dropping to a thrilled whisper.

“No, I’d call it worse than that, myself. You see when I stopped for Mis’ Thompson, on my way here, I found her crying and taking on something terrible. She had a letter in her hand, and of course I s’posed it had brought some bad news that was working her up, and I begged her to tell me about it so’s to ease her mind, you understand.

“Well, she kept on moaning and crying, and at last it all came out. It seems that when she went to the closet to get down her jacket, a coat of her husband’s fell off the hanger. The pockets was stuffed with letters, the shiftless way men-folks have, and they went sprawling all over the floor. She picked up this among the rest. It was addressed to W. Thompson, at some hotel in Cleveland, and it had been forwarded to the city office of his firm. And seeing it was a dashing sort of writing that stretched clear across the envelope, and didn’t look a mite like business, she was curious to know what it was about.”

“Now, don’t tell me there was anything bad in that letter,” implored Mrs. West. “I always thought young Mr. Thompson had such a nice face.”

“Well, if handsome is that handsome does, he hasn’t any more looks to boast of than a striped snake. It was a letter from a girl, a regular love-letter from start to finish. It opened up with ‘Tommy Darling.’ ”

“But young Mr. Thompson’s name is Wilbur,” somebody objected.

“I guess the Tommy was pet for Thompson. The envelope was directed to W. Thompson and you can’t squeeze a Tommy out of a W. no matter how hard you try. The girl, whoever she is, has gone into it with her eyes open. Two or three times she dropped little hints about his wife. Didn’t say wife right out, you know. It was kind of veiled, but you couldn’t help understanding.”

“Was there any name signed?” asked Annabel Sinclair, opening her lips for the first time that afternoon. She herself had long before realized the unadvisability of signing one’s name to one’s epistolary efforts.

“ ’Twas just signed ‘Enid.’ There was a monogram on the paper, but I couldn’t make it out. Seems as if you could find ’most any letter in a monogram. The paper was nice and heavy and all scented up. Poor Mis’ Thompson!”

“She ought to leave him,” exploded Susan Fitzgerald. “And I shouldn’t blame her a mite if she poisoned his coffee first. If women could vote, they’d send a man like that to the gallows.”

Mrs. West championed the absent sex. “In a case of that sort, Susan, you can’t put all the blame off on to the man. There’s a woman in it, too, every time, and the one’s as deep in the mud as the other is in the mire. And like as not,” continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension in her voice, “he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I’m not crazy about voting, but if I had the ballot, I’d vote for locking up those kind of women and keeping every last one of ’em at hard labor for the term of their natural lives.”

The moment was electric, and Mrs. Warren hastily proffered her services as a lightning-rod. “Is she going to leave him, do you think?”

“Well, I guess she’s got a crazy notion in her head that maybe he can explain. I tried to talk her out of that idea. As I said to her, a man capable of anything of that sort won’t stop at lying out of it. And I should judge,” concluded Mrs. Leveridge, “that that young Mr. Thompson would be capable of a real convincing lie. He don’t look wicked, but he does look smart.”

The outer door opened and closed with an impetus just short of a slam, irresistibly suggestive in some obscure fashion, of the entrance of ardent youth. “I didn’t think ’twas worth while to ring,” explained Persis Dale, nodding to the right and left as she advanced to greet her hostess. “Sorry to be so late. I guess you’ve got everything pretty nearly settled by now.” She bowed rather stiffly to Annabel Sinclair, sitting silent in her corner, and acknowledged with reluctant admiration that the woman certainly was a credit to her dressmaker.

A guilty constraint settled upon the gathering so fluent a moment before, and psychologically considered, there was food for reflection in the sudden embarrassed silence. These good women were far from being vulgar gossips with one or two possible exceptions. They were shocked at this unanticipated revelation of human perfidy. The young wife, humiliated and heart-broken before the morning glow of romance had faded from her marriage, had their profoundest sympathy. Yet when the curtain rises on a human drama, however tragic its development, the little thrill that runs over the audience is not altogether unpleasant. Regrettable as it is that Othello should smother his wife, there seems a certain gratification in making ourselves familiar with the details of the operation. It was the consciousness of this unacknowledged satisfaction which rendered Mrs. Warren’s guests abashed at Persis’ advent, like children discovered in some forbidden pastime. They avoided one another’s eyes, assuming an expression of grave absorption, whose obvious implication was that the uplifting of the community was the matter most in their thought.

With all her interest in other people’s affairs, the personality of Persis Dale was as a killing frost to many a flourishing scandal. She had a readiness to believe the best, a reluctance to condemn her fellow men on anything short of convincing proof, fatal to calumny. Although perhaps justified in thinking the worst of young Mr. Thompson, no one present felt disposed to enlighten Persis as to the character of the discussion which had engrossed a gathering convened for the high moral purposes outlined on Mrs. Warren’s post-card.

“I—we—well, we have not reached any conclusion as yet,” explained the chairman of the meeting, with a notable accession of color. “Several suggestions have been made, however, and we hope you will have something to add.”

Persis would not have been Persis had she failed to have something to suggest. Whether her businesslike methods aided in bringing matters to a focus, or whether the change was due to a conscience-stricken reaction on the part of the representative women of Clematis, it is certain that the deliberations of the body were not again side-tracked by the intrusion of personal matters. The business of the afternoon was transacted with a rapidity putting to shame some more pretentious conventions, the women wisely refusing to be hampered or restricted by the tangles of parliamentary law, in which, as every one knows, much really important legislation is strangled.

When the meeting adjourned at quarter of six, an hour which sent prudent housewives scurrying homeward, Mrs. Sophia Warren was the duly elected president of the Clematis Woman’s Club, while Susan Fitzgerald had accepted the duties of secretary of the organization. The members had voted to meet weekly, taking up the study of English literature, and current events, the two subjects to divide the program equally. The club was to hold itself in readiness to grapple with questions of civic improvement, and already a committee had been appointed to arrange for a Harvest Home Festival at the county almshouse for the edification of the inmates. It really began to look as if the horizon of a number of people would be enlarged and the community as a whole uplifted, with or without its consent.