Chapter II · (continued 2)

There was to be a mass meeting in Jordantown the first Saturday in July. Selah informed the Leagues of this as she made this tour from one community to another. The purpose of the great mass meeting was fully explained, and plans were laid for getting as many people to attend as possible.

At last, as the shades of evening fell, the women filed out of the schoolhouse, strange, exasperatingly potential figures to the Odd Fellow husbands who had waited impatiently outside for them. Molly Deal climbed silently into the red-and-green spring wagon beside her equally silent husband. Selah waved her hand prettily from the car as she passed up the road in the direction of Jordantown. She was fairly contented with the progress made in the County Leagues. She had worked indefatigably for nearly three months, organizing, teaching, and inspiring the proper spirit of life and hope, as she called it, in the women.

But the test was yet to come. All depended upon the success of the mass meeting, its effects upon the men. Would they understand the gravity of refusing to coöperate with the women? She refused to contemplate the disasters, the bitter suspense and disappointment if they did hold out. It seemed strange that not a single man had guessed the method the suffragists would adopt to win. She was excited, elated, hopeful, and at the same time she was sad. She thought of her father, so bereaved by her conduct. Her eyes filled with tears at the vision of him mournfully silent in the evenings, too much cast down to even reproach her with her perfidy. Then she began to laugh as a certain thought came to her. He had ceased to show his diminished head on the streets of Jordantown. He had been sober for two months, spending all of his time attending to his farm. He was like a good soldier, who in the face of a decisive battle indulges in no weakness, keeps his wits about him. She was sure he was camping in the spirit beneath her walls, waiting for the citadel to fall. They practised the fine honour of noble enemies. He never asked her any question about what was going forward in the suffrage ranks. He even broke his own eggs at breakfast with the proud air of a man who neither asks nor gives quarter.

"Father," she would say at the breakfast table, "let me break your eggs!"

"No, Selah, I'm an old man, I've come upon evil days in my own house, but I am still able to attend to my simple wants. Pray don't let me detain you"—seeing that she wore her hat, and that the abominable car would be purring at the curb.

"Very well, then, I'll be off, but expect me back before night," she would say, kissing him on the forehead.

"No, I do not expect you home before night. I never do. It would not surprise me if you didn't get in before midnight. I'm prepared for anything now!" he would answer without looking up.

Nevertheless, she made it a rule always to get back from her engagements before he came in.

"Is that you, father?" she would call down the staircase.

"Yes, just came in, but I didn't expect to find you here," he would answer accusingly.

It could not be said that they kept the peace. Rather they kept a truce, smiling on the part of Selah, coldly dignified on the part of the Colonel.

One evening she came down unexpectedly, and surprised him sneaking in with one enormous bunch of June roses which he had brought in from the farm.

"How lovely, and how sweet of you to think of me!" she exclaimed.

"I did not think of you, and these are not for you. If I'd been gathering flowers for you, Selah, I should have brought bachelor buttons!" he answered as he passed out into the darkened avenue, still carrying his posy ludicrously upside down.

It was another month before she or any one else knew what he did with them.

She had tried to put Bob Sasnett out of her thoughts, but not very successfully. Love is the finest logic nature ever achieves. Nothing, no argument however reasonable and expedient, can withstand it. She thought continually of him as an enemy she must face sooner or later. She loved him—at least she feared that she did. But she was still so young that she longed for sacrifice. She wished to give the whole of her life to women. She could not do that and give the whole of her heart to Bob. She did not reflect that this is the law of women's hearts with which no privilege of citizenship can interfere, and that all the other women for whom she sacrificed herself would be doing just this thing if there should be enough men about to receive their hearts. One thing was certain: she had "grown." She was no longer the girl she had been, shrinking, timid, yet filled with longings to live her own life, to do things. Three months ago she had but one outlook, that of marrying Bob Sasnett and spending the remainder of her days as Mrs. Sasnett's daughter-in-law—that is to say, in total eclipse. Now, she reflected, as the car rolled silently toward the distant courthouse dome, showing gray above the trees of Jordantown, now some day she might become a lawyer and plead a case beneath that very dome!

"Good evening, sweet Goddess of Liberty! Deign to bend your far-seeing eyes upon your humble slave!"

"Mr. Sasnett!" exclaimed Selah, as he advanced from the deep shade of an elm tree beside the road, where he appeared to have been standing.

"No, not 'Mr. Sasnett!' I left him an hour since, vainly contending with Susan Walton, in the effort to gain her consent for the bank to extend the loan to the Acres Mercantile Company another six months, and——"

Selah laughed.

"Don't interrupt, Minerva! I say that I left this fellow Sasnett imploring her, paying her undue compliments with this charitable end in view, while Acres waited outside the door of the directors' room. This poor adventurer whom you behold bound at present to your chariot wheel, is none other than 'Bob,'" he concluded, smiling up at her with whimsical audacity.

"But what are you doing out here at this hour? It's almost tea time," she exclaimed with well-simulated innocence.

"Waiting for you," he replied, accusing her innocence with a stare so bold that she blushed.

"That was kind of you. Get in!" she said, thrusting the door of the car open and making room for him on the seat.

"It is not my idea to return to the er—goddess-ridden metropolis of Jordantown as the obvious captive of Minerva," he replied, backing off. "I ventured to hope that you would descend and walk back with me," he explained.

"I can't," she objected, "I always try to be home when father comes, and it's already late."

"Old boy won't be in for another hour. He's having his wheat thrashed; met one of the men taking more sacks out just now. He says it will be nine o'clock before they finish."

Still she hesitated, looking down at him.

"Come!" he insisted, "I've something very important to tell you."

"Are you sure it's important?" she asked waveringly.

"Absolutely! Whole future of your movement, as you call it, may depend upon it!" he assured her with suspicious gravity.

"Very well, then, I'll come," she agreed, allowing him to assist her down into the road.

"Drive on, Charles!" Sasnett commanded, surreptitiously placing a dollar in the negro's hand to insure a quick departure.

The car sprang forward, disregarding all speed limits, leaving the two lovers veiled in yellow dust, which lifted presently, wind blown, rolling out over the fields beyond like dried sunlight. The road lay before them, a golden band between widespreading trees, fading into the shadows of evening.

They walked in silence, Selah waiting for what he should tell her, wondering vaguely if at last the men had divined their plans, and if this was the news he brought. She feared it might be something disagreeable, since he was in no hurry to begin. She looked at him surreptitiously, and flushed to find that he was also regarding her in the same sidewise, secret manner.

"Well, what is it?" she demanded quickly to cover her embarrassment.

"What is what?" he asked innocently.

"The important something that you have to tell me."

"That I love you," he answered shamelessly.

"Oh!" exclaimed Selah, looking unutterable reproach.

"Isn't that important? Do you think the ballot will satisfy your whole heart and nature, make life one glad song? Will women cease to love men when they can vote? Not on your life, dear! Look at your Co-Citizens now. Didn't Susan Walton have a husband who honoured and obeyed her till the day of his death? Doesn't the fact that they have husbands add to the interest Mabel Acres and Agatha Coleman have in the suffrage question? Do you think poor Miss Mary Heath would refuse a proposal of marriage, even if she controlled every man's vote in the town? Believe me, those little adolescent Citizenesses-to-be, the seminary girls, do not primp and pile their curls bewitchingly over their ears because they want the ballot. It's the daily petition they make of themselves for lovers!"

"That is your egregious masculine conceit, Bob, imagining every woman is thinking of winning lovers and husbands. We love ourselves. We do our best to look well because we have a satisfaction in our own appearance!" Selah exclaimed with indignant heat.

"Of course, and I must say you bear charming witness to your own sweet perfection, dear," he laughed, "but you don't see my point."

"I will not! It is not a point anyway, it's—it's—a joke you make at our expense!" she accused.

"No, beloved, it really is well taken, my position. But your mind is so obsessed, all of your thoughts are so focussed upon one of the mere incidents of life, that you are missing the real issue of happiness. Let me explain."

"You can't do it, but you may try," she conceded.

"Love, Selah, is the one thing that must always come to pass in the hearts of men and women. It doesn't matter under what conditions they live, they must love or die unfulfilled in the very purpose for which they were created. It is a season in the life of us, dear, a season, you understand—the time when nature blooms in us, when the fragrance of our very spirits ascends in tender emotions, in the perfume of language, in looks such as the gaze with which I now behold you, and which makes your cheek one anthology of roses!" he concluded, as the warm colour rose like a red wreath beneath her ivory skin. "But listen, dear, the season passes. The rose fades. The strength of man changes, passes into the strength of achievement or into the dead leaves of failure. Then where will we be, Selah, you and I?"

"Well be doing our share of the world's work, sanely and well, I hope," she answered quickly.

"Granted, though it's an awful gamble. But suppose you succeed. Suppose you win everything and more than you are now contending for. Suppose at forty you are nominated for Congress from this district, do you think I'd ask you then to be my wife? Not if I had failed as much as you had succeeded! I would not, because I could not love you as I love you now. Don't cry! But I swear I will not marry you then!" he ended, laughing.

"And do you think I'd want to marry you then?" she asked, amazed.

"Yes, I know you will; if not me, some other man. You will have discovered that doing the world's work even well is a thankless job, and that fame and success are the husks that swine do eat compared with even the tears and griefs of love. But you will not be lovable then, Selah; you will only be horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, the way you are tending now. You will have gray hair, thin, too. You will draw it back like a conviction, and wind it in a knot at the back of your head as tight as a narrow-minded conclusion. You will have lost the damask flush of youth. I think your cheek bones will stick up, too prominent, you know, as if your character had knobbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles upon your forehead. Your eyes—— Oh, my God! I cannot bear the vision I see of you, with your eyes showing like gray stones casting eddies of wrinkles! And you'll be lank, the skeleton left by the passing of a great and successful movement undertaken for the emancipation of woman!"

"And if I married you, how should I look at forty?" asked Selah with shrewish shrewdness.

"Oh, my beloved, I don't know. I should not know even then. You would be my wife, the mother of my children—as sacred as that—the memory of my youth distilled, the citadel of my mature years, the alabaster box of my hopes and faith in the life to come! I couldn't see you at all, Selah, for you would have become everything to me, and a man can't see or foretell that much."

She looked at him, her eyes shining behind her tears like distant windows of light through the rain on a dark night. How could she keep faith with the Cause of Woman while the Cause of Man stood before her so gallantly portrayed!

"Bob," she whispered, "I—you are so dear. You cannot know how dear you are to me. I've just found out myself, but——"

"But what?" he cried impatiently.

"You must wait. I can't, I just can't give you my whole heart now. It seems to have gone from me, some fierce energy of life. I've got to do this thing that we've set out to do before I can promise, before I'll know myself."

"Well, for God's sake, hurry then and do it," he answered, not pleased.

"You'll help, won't you?" she asked softly.

"There are times when I fear I'd help you commit murder if the victim stood between us, Selah, but really I don't know how I can help you win this fight for suffrage in Jordan County. The whole thing seems so far fetched. I can't see what you are driving at. You have effectually tied up things for the men, but what good will that do? I don't want to discourage you, but I can only think harm will come of it without your having accomplished your purpose."

She was singularly serene under this discouragement. She even changed the subject.

"When do you begin your campaign as candidate for representative?" she asked as they entered the avenue.

"Two bodies cannot revolve in the same orbit. I'm waiting until you quit revolving in the county. I hear you make the Co-Citizens write their names in their own blood when they sign the vow not to reveal the secrets of the League. Is that so?" he laughed.

"Not quite so bad as that. But they do keep the vow, don't they? Not one of you will know our plans until we reveal them ourselves at the mass meeting. But you are going to run for the legislature?" she insisted, returning to that.

"I'm not sure; I'm waiting to see what Prim's going to do. I——"

"We will take care of Prim," she put in.

"Oh, you will? And which one of you has been chosen to murder him, you or Susan? Nothing short of death, I think, will rid this town of him."

"We shall not resort to capital punishment unless it is absolutely necessary," she laughed, "but I think I can assure you of one thing: Prim will not be a candidate."

"Thanks!" he said, but without conviction. "Does Prim know he is not to run?" almost sarcastically.

"Not yet," she laughed.

"Good night, Minerva!" he murmured, kissing her hand.

"Good night, Bob, and remember you can go ahead. Prim will not be in your way."

"I'll wait, thank you; I'm young; I can afford to take my time gathering county laurels for my brow. And no decent man could oppose Prim without getting smeared with political slime. Sticks, too!"