Chapter XXVI

Concerning Women who won't remember their Place, and a
Speech to Two Hundred of them, by Mr. V.V., no less; also
revealing why Hen Cooney never found V.V. in the Crowd around
the Platform.

It was an interesting time to be alive, as Hen Cooney remarked again next day. Absorbing matters were afoot in the old town, provided that you had an eye in your head to see them. One thing led to another with startling rapidity. Only the other day, it seemed, some one had risen and flung against the ideals of generations the discordant cry of Votes for Women. Rebukes for the unseemliness were copious and stern enough. Many spoke acidly of the lengths to which childless females would go for lack of occupation. Droll fellows of a pretty wit giggled and asked who would mind the baby while the madam went out to vote. Serious-minded persons of both sexes disposed of the whole foolishness forever by saying (and wondering why nobody had ever thought of it before) that woman's place was the home. But few there were who perceived a symptom here; not even when the League grew with unintelligible rapidity, and croaking diagnosticians here or there professed to see other manifestations not unrelated.

Cassandras remarked that women wearied of thinking "through their husbands." The census revealed to the close student that some women even had no husbands. It was a fact that year before last women had appeared at legislative "hearings" for the first time in the history of the State. These women, plague on them, failed to fortify the wags by powdering their noses in front of pocket mirrors while they talked, or making sweet-eyes at the chairmen of committees. They appeared, to tell the honest truth, with late reference-books under their arms, and in their heads the faculty for asking the most annoying sort of questions. More than one honest Solon was seen to stammer and turn red under their interrogations, so often stiffened by a date and a little figure or so.

And these troublesome "thinking women" had not retired when the legislature did. Editors nowadays were often surprised in their sanctums by committees of three from some pestiferous unwomanly club or other, and they had not come, alackaday, to have their handkerchiefs picked up with courtly speeches, graced with an apt quotation from "Maud." The Civic Improvement League, with a woman president, was taking a continuous interest in matters of playgrounds and parks, clean streets and city planning. The Society for Social Progress, almost exclusively feminine, was continuously astir about pure milk and factory laws, birth-rates and infant mortality, sociology and eugenics. And now here was the conservative Woman's Club, which had been purely literary and social for a quarter of a century, holding a largely attended symposium on How Shall We Help the Poor?

This latter meeting, attended by Carlisle Heth and her cousin Henrietta the day after Canning left, was no doubt a trivial and obscure occurrence. Not an earthly thing could be said for it, except that it was a bubble on the surface of an unrest which would one day change the face of human society....

The two cousins, having come a little tardy, were content with seats in the next to the last row. The Woman's Club inhabited an old family mansion on Washington Street,--bought in the legendary age when land was not computed by the square foot,--and its assembly-rooms were the one-time parlors, with the dining-room thrown in by an architectural dexterity. Perhaps two hundred women could be seated here, and all seemed to be present to-day. Cally regarded serried rows of feminine backs, some of which she recognized. The little platform at the farther end of the rooms remained empty, and the place was abuzz with murmured talk. Not a back was silent, not even Henrietta's. Hen was saying enthusiastically that nothing like this could have been seen ten years ago....

Cally caught widening glimpses of the Cooney meanings. She had been like a rider thrown from a gay fixed steed in a merry-go-round, who, having picked himself up and mended his wounds, looks about, and gets his first view of the carousel as part of a larger moving scene. Cally, for the first time in her life, had been glancing over the fair-grounds. Not even the knowledge of Hugo's love could now wholly turn her gaze backward.

Pending the beginning of the oratory, clubbers and guests talked to the contentment of their hearts. Cally said suddenly:

"Hen, why is it that men are so opposed to this sort of thing?"

"It's human," said Hen, "if you have the upper hand, not to want to give it up."

"You mean that men have the upper hand now?"

"Haven't they?"

A tiny little woman in the row ahead of them turned round and smiled faintly at Henrietta. She had a face like a small doll's, a button of a nose and the palest little china-blue eyes imaginable. Nevertheless, this woman was Mrs. Slicer, president of the Federation of Women's Clubs, and those weak eyes had once stared a Governor of a State out of countenance.

"Hen, they have," said she, in a fairy voice; and so turned back to her own affairs, dropping from these pages.

Henrietta presently said: "But why should they oppose it, really, Cally? If you were a man, would you insist on the privilege of marrying a helpless dependent, your mental and moral inferior? Seems to me I'd rather have an intelligent comrade, my superior for choice--"

But Hen discovered that her voice all at once sounded very loud. There was a sudden lull in the conversational hum, and then a burst of hand-clapping. The lady president of the Woman's Club had entered at the head of the rooms, followed by the orators. They ascended the platform; and when Cally saw but the Mayor of the city and Mr. Pond of the Settlement, she said at once to Henrietta:

"Why, where's your friend V.V.?"

"Somewhere up at the front,--I _hope_!... He wasn't one of the regular speakers, you know...."

Hen added in a faint whisper: "I doubt if he knows he's going to be called on--"

Being duly presented to the expectant women, his Honor the Mayor spoke first. He was a middle-aged, mustachioed Mayor, who had achieved a considerable success by being all things to a few men, but those the right ones. His reputation as an orator was well deserved, but his ability to make one speech serve many occasions had been commented upon by carpers here and there. See the files of the "Post," _passim_. To-day his thesis was organized charity, lauded by him, between paragraphs of the set piece, as philanthropy's great rebuke to Socialism. And thrice his Honor spoke of the glorious capital of this grand old commonwealth; twice his arm swept from the stormy Atlantic to the sun-kissed Pacific; five times did he exalt, with the tremolo stop, the fair women of the Southland....

"The dinner-bell of the house!" said Hen, _sotto voce_, as the orator sat down, smiling tiredly amid familiar applause. "Don't be discouraged yet, Cally."

Director Pond, having been most flatteringly introduced, received an ovation, half for the man and his work, half from the wish of a kindly people to bid the stranger welcome. He spoke half as long as the Mayor, and said four times as much: so much space did he save by saying nothing whatever about the fair women of the Southland, and by absolutely avoiding all metaphors, tropes, synecdoches, or anacolutha. Mr. Pond assaulted the Mayor's apotheosis of charity, particularly as applied to his own institution. He described the Settlement, not as a dispensary for old clothes, but as a cultivated personality, an enlightened elder brother gone to live with the poor. It aspired to enrich life through living, said he, to bring light to the disinherited and the gift of a wider horizon....

Mr. Pond followed his thought with more imagination than one might have thought him to possess, and with a glow on his dark face such as had not been observed there the other day. Cally, from the next to the last row, listened attentively enough; she recalled that she would see Mr. Pond this evening, perhaps sit next to him, at mamma's Settlement dinner. However, she reserved her chief interest for Hen's friend V.V., who was so merciless in his attitude toward those who were not poor. Mr. Pond spoke straightforwardly, not to say bluntly. But she pictured Vivian as shaking the rafters with his shameless homicides and God-pity-yous....

"Once the bread and meat question's settled, money is of secondary importance," said the Director's deep voice. "Let's get that well into our heads. What the poor ask is that they shall not be born under disadvantages which the labor of their lifetimes can never remove...."

Only these two speakers had been announced. When Pond sat down the formal exercises were over. But as his applause died away, the president of the club rose again, sure enough,--while Henrietta excitedly nudged Carlisle,--and announced an added speaker, a guest of the club to-day, whom she described as the young father of the Settlement. The president--a tall, placid-faced woman, with a finely cut chin and a magnificent crown of silver hair--had something to say about the spirit of pure idealism; and was sure that the members would be glad to hear remarks on the subject of the day from young Dr. Vivian, the missionary doctor of the Dabney House....

The few kind words elicited somewhat perfunctory plaudits, despite Hen Cooney's single-handed attempt to stampede them into a triumph. The Clubbers, truth to tell, were by now disposed to leave oratory and the uplift for small-talk and tea.

"_There he is_!" said Hen, clapping splendidly.

V. Vivian stood on the platform, beside a tall oak-stand and a water-pitcher, gazing out over phalanxes of women. His youthfulness was a matter of general notice. By contrast with the Mayor's seamy rotundity and Pond's powerful darkness, he looked, indeed, singularly boyish and fair. He was undoubtedly pale, and his face wore an odd look, a little confused and slightly pained. This, combined with his continuing silence, gave rise to a general suspicion that the young man had fallen a victim to stage-fright. However, the odd struggle going on in him at his unexpected opportunity was not against fear....

Carlisle regarded Vivian intently, over and through scores of women's hats. She was inwardly braced for epithets. Somewhere in the air she heard the word "anarchist"; but a woman sitting near her said, quite audibly,--"_Looks_ more like a _poet_," ... meaning, let us hope, like a poet as we like to think that poets look; and not as they so often actually look, by their pictures in the magazines....

"I suppose the beginning of helping the poor," suddenly spoke up the young man on the stand, in a voice so natural and simple as to come as a small shock, "is to stop thinking of them as the poor. There are useful people in the world, and useless people; good people and bad people. But when we speak of poor people and rich people, we only make divisions where our Maker never saw any, and raise barriers on the common which must some day all come down."

The speaker pushed back his blond hair with a gesture which Cally Heth had seen before. However, all else about him, from the first sight, had seemed to come to her in the nature of a surprise....

"The things in which we are all alike," said the tall youth, with none of the Mayor's oratorial thunder, "are so much bigger than the things in which we are different. What's rich and poor, to a common beginning and a common end, common sufferings, common dreams? We look at these big freeholds, and money in bank is a little thing. On Washington Street, and down behind the Dabney House--don't we each alike seek the same thing? We want life, and more life. We want to be happy, and we want to be free. Well--we know it's hard to win these prizes when we're poor, but is it so easy when we're rich? To live shut off on a little island, calling the rest common and unclean--is that being happy and free, is it having life abundantly? I look around, and don't find it so. And that's sad, isn't it?--double frustration, the poor disinherited by their poverty, the rich in their riches.... Don't you think we shall find a common meeting-place some day, where these two will cancel out?... when reality will touch hands with the poet's ideal--

"And the stranger hath seen in the stranger his brother at last,
And his sister in eyes that were strange..."

The slum doctor paused. The confused appearance was gone from his face; he looked now introspective, quite without consciousness of himself; rather like a man listening with somewhat dreamy approbation to the words of another. And Cally, having felt her antagonism mysteriously slipping away from the moment her eyes rested upon his face, now knew, quite suddenly and definitely, that she wasn't going to speak to him about the articles.

The knowledge, the whole matter, was curiously disturbing to her. Where was the hostile hardness of the religious fellow, justifying distrust and dislike? Why should her father's attacker make her think now, of all times, of that night in Hen's parlor, the morning on Mr. Beirne's doorstep, that rainy May-day in his Dabney House when he had overwhelmed her with the knowledge of his superiority?...

"And--and--I think women should be especially interested in all that makes for a new common freedom," observed the youthful speaker, "for they have suffered somewhat in that way--haven't they?... [Applause, led by Miss Cooney.] You know the processes of history--how men, first of all by superior muscle, have made it a man's world.... Till to-day, large groups of women find themselves cribbed and cabined to a single pursuit, marriage: surely the noblest of all callings, but--perhaps you will agree with me--the meanest of all professions. I, for one, am glad to see women revolting from this condition, asking something truer, something commoner, than chivalry. For that, I say, steps the march to the great goal, a boundless commonwealth, a universal republic of the human spirit. It seems to me we need to socialize, not industry, but the heart of Man to his brother. Rich and poor, men and women--God, I am sure of it, meant us all to be citizens of the world...."

A certain self-consciousness seemed here to descend upon the tall orator. He ceased abruptly, and disappeared from the platform, having neglected to make his bow to the chairman.

Then the moment's dead silence was suddenly exploded with a burst of clapping, quite as hearty as Mr. Pond had received, and really something like the "storm" we read about. And in the din, Henrietta Cooney was heard crying, with a passion of pride:

"Well, it's about _time_!... It's the first thing V.V.'s ever got--the first _tribute_.... A boy like that--"

Hen, curiously, was winking a little as the two girls rose. And she added in a moved voice, as if seeking to explain herself:

"Well, think of the hard life he has down there, Cally,--no pleasure, no fun, no companionship.... And this is the first notice of _any kind_ ..."

The meeting was over. The crowded parlors were in a hubbub. Colored servants entered, taking away the camp-chairs. A general drift toward the platform was in evidence. And Cally, standing with the others and ready to go, seemed to see no clear course at all among the disturbing cross-currents which she suddenly felt within her, impelling her now this way, now that. If she could not think of V. Vivian as hard now, exactly, a new "attitude" was obviously needed, consistent with her duty to papa. It must be that the strange young man was obsessed by beautiful but impossible ideas about the equality of the poor and so on. Carried away by excessive sympathies, he took wild extreme views....

"Are you going to stay for tea, Hen?" she asked, amid the stir and vocal noises of two hundred women.

But Hen said no; getting tea for the Cooney invalids was her portion.

"We'll just stop a minute and speak to V.V.," she added, as if that went without saying.

But this time Cally said no, somewhat hastily. And then she explained that she must go home to dress, as mamma was having some people to dinner to-night. Hen looked disappointed.

"Well, there's no chance of getting near him now, anyway. Look at that jam around the platform.... Stay just a minute or two, Cally."

The two cousins, the rich and the poor, and looking it, strolled among the Clubbers, Henrietta speaking to nearly everybody, and invariably asking how they had liked Dr. Vivian's speech, Pond and the Mayor ignored. She also introduced her cousin right and left, and enjoyed herself immensely.

Cally, having matters to think about, again remarked that she must go. She saw Hen glance hungrily over the dense lively crowd, densest around the platform, and promptly added: "But of course you mustn't think of coming with me."

Henrietta hesitated. "You wouldn't mind if I stayed on a minute? I _would_ like just to say a word to V.V."

Cally assured her. "And thank you for bringing me, Hen. I--had no idea it would be so interesting."

The two girls parted. Hen plunged into the Clubbers to speak to Mr. V.V. Cally went out of the great doors, deep in thought. And having passed through these doors, the very first person she saw was Mr. V.V....

It was incredible, but it was true. How he had escaped the handshakers was a mystery for a detective. But there the man indubitably stood at the head of the Club steps, alone in the gathering twilight, bowing, speaking her name....

Had he been waiting for her, then? A certain air of prepared surprise in his greeting rather suggested the thought.

"Is your car waiting?" inquired the orator, courteously. "May I call it for you?"

Cally's heart had jumped a little at the sight of his tall figure, but she answered easily enough, as she moved toward the steps, that she was walking.

"Then won't you allow me to see you home?... It's getting rather dark. And I--the fact is, I wanted to speak to you."

And Cally said, far from what she had planned to say in thinking of this meeting:

"If you like.... Only you must promise not to scold me about the Works."

He gave her a look full of surprise, and touched with a curious sort of gratification; curious to her, that is, since she could not know how a well-known Labor Commissioner had taxed this man with "easiness."

"I promise," said he.

As they took the bottom step, he added, in a controlled sort of voice:

"Please tell me frankly--is it objectionable to you to--to have me walk with you?"

"Oh, no," said Cally.

Down forty feet of bricked walkway, through the swinging iron gates, out upon the public sidewalk, Carlisle walked silently beside the attacker of her father, the religious fellow whom Hugo Canning so disliked. About them in the pale dusk tall street-lights began to twinkle. Over them hung the impenetrable silence. It was but three blocks from the Woman's Club to the House of Heth. They had traversed half of one of them before Vivian gave voice:

"I merely wanted to say this."

And on that they walked ten steps without more speech.

"This," resumed Mr. V.V., and his voice was not easy. "You must have thought it strange the other day, when I told you the--the work I had taken up.... My articles, I mean.... I should know, if anybody does, that you--your family--have had much trouble to bear of late.... It seems that I should be the last person to do what will bring you more trouble--annoyance certainly, pain perhaps.... I felt that I wanted you to know, at least, that it took a--a strong necessity to make me go into the matter--at this time.... I wanted to tell you that--personally--I've been very sorry about it...."

She hesitated a moment, and then said:

"I don't doubt that.... I haven't doubted it since I stopped to think."

And if this was disloyalty to papa, Cally felt that she could not help it.... What, after all, did she know about it? Surely it was all a men's matter, a mere question of "reform," in which some thought one way and some another, and each side said hard things without meaning them exactly. Probably papa would be the last person to wish her to interfere....

"Thank you," he replied, it seemed with feeling in his voice. And walking on, looking straight before him, he added:

"There was one thing more ... Ah--pardon me."

The young doctor carried a cane, but used it principally for swinging and lunging. In view of his infirmity, Cally had begun by walking more slowly than was her custom. It had soon developed, however, that he was a rapid walker, and of absent-minded habit as well, particularly when talking. So, throughout the brief walk, her difficulty was to keep apace with him.

"What you said just now--my scolding you about the Works.... I realize that it must have seemed peculiar to you, and--and--weak--unmanly--my pursuing you so about a--a--purely business matter. Of course you must have felt that if I had criticisms to make, I should have taken them to your father--instead of inflicting them on you, all the time."

He paused; but the girl said nothing. She had, in fact, speculated considerably on this very point: how could she possibly have any responsibility for the way papa ran his business? It occurred to her to ask the man plainly whether he considered that she had; but she did not do so, perhaps fearing that he might reply in the affirmative....

"I once tried to explain it, in a way," he went on, hurriedly. "I said that I didn't know your father.... You naturally considered that merely a--a foolish sort of--claim--explaining nothing. I suppose you've forgotten all this, but--"

"No, I remember."

"Then let me say that--the other day, when I saw you--I had no idea of mentioning the Works to you, other than to explain my position--not an _idea_.... And then, when we talked--well, I did," he said with a kind of naked ingenuousness, as if no one could have been more surprised about it all than he.... "I can't explain it, so that it won't still seem peculiar to you.... It's only that I do feel somehow that--that knowing people makes a great difference--in certain respects...."

"I--think I can understand that."

"It's generous of you to be willing to try."

"No," said Cally, pulling her veil down at the chin, and quickening her steps as he strode on, "I'm only trying to be--reasonable about it."

They were passing people now and then in the twilight street, most of whom Cally spoke to; and once she thought how surprised Hugo would be, could he look over from Washington and see her walking amiably in this company. But then Hugo might have thought of these matters last year, when he said she wasn't the girl he had asked to marry him.

"Besides," said she, suddenly, "you don't mean to say anything--_terribly_ bad about the Works in the articles--do you?"

"Yes, terribly," replied Mr. V.V., leaving her completely taken aback.

He added, formally, after a step or two: "I--ah--shouldn't feel honest if I left you in the slightest doubt--on that point."

But she could not believe now that his articles would be so terrible, no matter what he said, and her strange reply was:

"Then--suppose we don't talk about it."

He said: "I feel it's better so." And then they walked on rapidly in silence.

And somewhere in this silence, it came over Cally that the reason she could not distrust this man was because, in a very special way, she had learned to trust him; could not dislike him because the truth was that in her heart she liked him very much. And people must act as they felt. And then her thought suddenly advanced much further, as if mounting the last step in a watch-tower: and Cally saw that the question between herself and V. Vivian had always been, not what she might think of him, but what he thought of her....

The fruitful pause ran rather long. She considered complimenting Mr. V.V. upon his speech, expressing her surprise at his unlooked-for gentleness on the subject of the poor. How could one who spoke so kindly write terrible articles in the newspapers, attacking one's own father? Cally wondered, missing the perfectly obvious point of it all, namely: that when a man is a guest at a woman's club, his particular task is to look sharp to his tongue, ruling with a strong hand what besetting weakness he may have for grim speech, and abhorring ...

But the whole subject was difficult to the girl, and it was he who broke the silence, speaking his pedestrian's apology again. And this time, so swift and straight had they come, Cally replied, with quite a natural laugh:

"Never mind.... Here I am."

She halted before the white-stone steps of home, and glanced involuntarily toward the windows. Independent though she felt since day before yesterday, she would not have cared to have mamma glance out just then....

"I _hadn't_ realized that we were here already!"

"Oh, it isn't far, as you see.... But it was good of you to bring me."

It was a parting speech; but Cally said it with no inflection of finality. So, at least, it seemed to be considered. V. Vivian stood drawing O's with his stick on the flagging belonging to Mr. Heth, of the Works. He took some pains to make them exactly round.

"I hope," said he, "that your--your annoyance over this matter won't interfere with your interest in the Settlement. I hope you still think of--of helping in the work."

"Oh!... I don't know," replied Cally, having thought but little about this since Hugo's reentrance into her life. "Mr. Pond, you see, convinced me pretty well of my uselessness--"

"It's only his manner!--he's always so mortally afraid that people aren't in earnest. I'm certain he could find--ah--suitable and congenial work, if you--you cared to give him another chance. And I'm certain you'd like him, when you knew him a little better."

"You like him?"

"I put him above any man I know, except only Mr. Dayne."

The tall electric light four doors below, which so irritated the Heths when they sat on their flowered balcony on summer nights, shone now full upon the old family enemy. It was observed that he wore, with his new blue suit, a quaint sprigged waistcoat which looked as if it also might have come down from his Uncle Armistead, along with the money he had given away. The old-fashioned vestment seemed to go well with the young man's face....

Cally stood upon the bottom step of the House, and drew her hand along the rail. It had occurred to her to tell him that she would probably go away to live; but now she only said, half-absently:

"I might think about it, and let you know later."

And then, as he accepted her tone as dismissal, and his hand started toward his hat, she spoke impulsively and hurriedly:

"Tell me, is it your feeling that this matter--the Works--makes it necessary for us to--to go on quarreling?"

The two stood looking at each other. And in each, in this moment, though in differing degree, the desire for harmoniousness was meeting the more intangible feeling that harmony between them seemed to involve surrender in another direction.

"How could it be?" said the man. "It's what I've been trying to say. But I naturally supposed that you--"

"I supposed so, too. It seems that I don't."

She looked down at her hand upon the rail, and said: "Don't misunderstand me. Of course I think that papa is doing what is right. Of course I am on his side. I think your sympathy with the poor makes you extreme. But ... you asked me the other day to try to see your point of view. Well, I think I do see it now. People," said Cally, with a young dignity that became her well, "sometimes agree to disagree. I feel--now when we've quarreled so much--that I'd like to be friends."

The tall young man looked hurriedly away, down the dusky street. In his mind were his articles, shooting about: his terrible articles, where surely nobody would find any gentleness to surprise them. They were the best thing he would ever do; precisely the thing he had always wanted to do. And yet--well he knew now that he had no joy in them....

"It's tremendously generous of you," he said, mechanically.

Cally's eyes wavered from his face, and she answered: "No, I'm not generous."

Her struggle was to keep life fixed and constant, and all about her she found life fluent and changing. Or perhaps life was constant, and the fluency was in her. Or perhaps the difficulty was all in this man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly oust her from it. Considering her resolution only last night, she too had thought, when she began, that she was carrying generosity to the point of downright disloyalty to papa. By what strangeness of his expression did he make her feel that even this was not generous enough, that more was required of the daughter of the Works than merely withdrawing from all responsibility?...

V. Vivian regarded the lovely Hun. As a prophet you might glory, but as a man you must face the music....

"But I must tell you," he began, with visible effort, "that you--you will feel very differently, when you've seen--"

However, she interrupted him, raising her eyes with a little smile, sweet and somewhat sad.

"I'll look after my part of it," said she; and there was her pledge of amity held out, gloved in white. "Do you think you can be my friend?"

The light showed another change in the young man's face. He took the hand, and said with sudden strange feeling:

"Let my life prove it."

So Cally turned away thinking that she had found that rarest thing among men, a friend of women.

And Mr. V.V. walked off blindly up the lamplit street, his heart a singing and a pain.