Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 32 No. 01 January 1878 by Various

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Ebook has 568 lines and 28442 words, and 12 pages

The relative's hand irresistibly rose to his mustache.

However, the ringing motto seemed a little too good to live up to. Hardly had the front door shut on Charles when Judge Blenso--he rather insisted on the official title, now that he was secretary--hooded his old typewriter for the night, turned down the light in the green-domed lamp on the table, and descended to visit his landlady. That he had small reverence for his half-uncle's New Thinking now became clear. The Judge left the Studio , chuckling silently to himself, and on the steps began to chant aloud a sort of gay recitative of his own composition. The chant went a beat to every step, thus: "Cracking--piffle--walnuts--piffle--in a--sort of--piffle--sadness!"

The Redmantle Club was more advanced than Charles, and he knew it. And when he told his relative that he was going to it for stimulus, he must have been secretly well aware that it was but a treacherous stimulus he was likely to get.

The Club had been founded by Mrs. Frederick B. Seaman, who had once had a novel published, long ago, at a nominal expense of two hundred and fifty dollars. The name Redmantle had some significance which eludes memory, but there seems to be no doubt that the founder's original idea had been merely to gather together a few congenial persons to abuse the publishers to. The times, however, chanced to be ripe for a broader forum, one where the most advanced women of both sexes could meet and freely speak out the New Mind. The Redmantle had seemed to fill the long-felt want, from the start. Now its meetings began with a Programme, and you may be sure nobody bothered with such small fry as a publisher. The Redmantle speakers won salvos only by completely exterminating the Family and the Home, or proving beyond successful contradiction that Love Is Going Out.

He took up a position just inside, and looked through the parlor smoke. The smoke emanated principally from the ladies, who were, however, as five to one. Miss Hodger towered by a baby-grand piano, one hand upon an album, and clamored for her Rights. She demanded these Rights of hers, whatever they were, with such iteration and passion that a kindly, simple person, had there been any such present, must needs have cried out, "Give that lady her Rights there!--and quick about it!"

Miss Hodger's was a tall figure, bony but commanding; she had a flat chest, a tangled mane of sorrel hair and a face somewhat like a horse's. Of her argument, little need be said; you may find it in detail in the very books where Miss Hodger found it. It was, in sum, an unanswerable demonstration of woman's sacred duty of Developing her Ego. The expos? of the Home proved particularly searching; it brought loud cheers. Much Miss Hodger said, too, of the Higher Law and the Richness of Personality, of Contributions to the Race and Enhancement of the Life Stream. In Charles Garrott's ears one sentence seemed to ring and stick above the rest: "Fiercely and relentlessly shall Modern Woman hack away all that impedes her in her Self-Development--all, I care not what it is!"

She ended with a kind of yell, thumped the album twice, and strode away from the baby-grand. There were bursts of clapping, a chorus of approval, and then general buzzing and commotion. The Programme was over. Everybody was standing: all talking, nobody left to listen. Servants entered bearing trays of light refreshments; light, indeed, they looked. It was the Redmantle's social hour, the hour of good, free, courageous talk.

Charles Garrott moved into the noisy room. All his sides, of course, were not known to his fellow members, and yet he had a standing here. He was recognized as one of the pioneer Rightsers; his last year's speech before the Club, on "Work for Women," had been generally adjudged a first-rate piece of Modern Thinking. And all the Redmantlers seemed to like to talk to him, too; they would get round him and back him up into corners in a way he scarcely liked. Mrs. Frederick B. Seaman looked as if she meant to kiss him. "And now," she said, beaming, "for a good long talk about my new book." He cleverly evaded her, but in so doing fell right into the net of the hearthside anarchist, Professor Pollock, who drew him in with a hand as large and soft as a beefsteak. Pollock was a thin, bald young man, with the conventional flowing necktie, and the New disappearing chin, and secretly Garrott had always thought him a most terrific jackass.

"How are we going to relieve this White Slave situation, Garrott? How? How?"

"It is one of the grave problems of the day," said Charles. "At the moment I can only answer, as President Taft answered the workman at Cooper--"

"What, you admit that you have no remedy to lay down? None whatever?"

"At the moment, none. It is one of the grave--"

The younger and even freer Miss Hodger, who had been hovering near, exploded a mouthful of cigarette smoke, and exclaimed excitedly:--

"Oh sister, only think! Mr. Garrott has no remedy for the White Slave situation!"

They thought it most reprehensible of him to have no remedy, and closed in on him, bursting with theirs. "Have you not considered the necessities of the living wage!" demanded the elder Miss Hodger's joyless voice, suddenly at his elbow. "Living wage--bah!" said Professor Pollock, hotly. "A mere sop--a mere feeble temporizing--" "You must get into their homes!" cried the youngest Miss Hodger, who admitted homes only as places to get into. "You must take them very, very young...."

It was really an extraordinary experience.

The development came by way of his good friend, Mary Wing, whom Charles reached at last with a certain sense of making port. Miss Wing, it must be known, was the assistant principal of the great City High School, where no woman had ever been before her, where she herself had arrived only after eight years' incessant battling upward. She was also, this long time, president of the State Branch of the National League for Education Reform, with the prospect of presently mounting far higher, to nothing less, if you please, than the General Secretaryship of that rich and powerful body. Considering her history and her exploits, it seemed that she should have been six feet tall, with a gaze like a Gorgon and a jaw like Miss Hodger's. But Mary Wing was actually a slight and almost fragile-looking creature, with quite girlish blue eyes in a colorless face that wore an air of deceptive delicacy.

She was two months older than her friend, Mr. Garrott, which made her thirty in December. And she was undoubtedly the most distinguished person in that strident room, not excepting Mr. Garrott himself.

The assistant principal was discovered leaning against a bookcase, eating sandwiches in large bites, two bites to a sandwich, and paying no attention to the earnest talk of the group she seemed to belong to. "It must be the effect of speaking," she said to Garrott. "I'm ravenous. But goodness, there's no nourishment in these little paper things." And almost at once she demanded, firm as a Redmantler, if he had ever been to call on Dr. Flower; some cousin or other of hers, this was, who had lately taken an appointment as lecturer at the Medical School. Charles had agreed to call on this worthy, it seemed, but naturally he hadn't done so.

She chided him for his remissness. It was a mild enough reproof, in all conscience; yet it was at that moment that he, with his diagnostic tendency, caught himself eyeing Mary Wing critically, as if she were any other Redmantler. And then he seemed to become aware that, without knowing it exactly, he must have been eyeing Mary Wing critically for some time past now.

"He'll need some patients, too, to eke out. I must look into that," said she, popping the second half of a sandwich into her mouth. "I suppose you don't know anybody who intends to be sick soon, in a costly way?"

He shook his head. He himself, he intimated, had no idea of getting sick merely to oblige her rural cousins.

"What does that girl do?" he added, almost irritably. "Didn't you tell me there was a girl, twenty-five years old? Why doesn't she work, and eke out?"

"She does work. She runs the house."

"Apparently you didn't see Mrs. Waldo's statement that quarter of an hour a day was quite enough for that so-called work."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it's false. Still there are ninety-six quarters of an hour in a day, people estimate. What sort of girl is she? Little nitwit, I suppose?"

"She's my cousin."

"Lots of people have little nitwits for cousins. Why doesn't she pitch in and earn her keep, like a free personality--as our friend Miss Hodger would say?"

Miss Wing was observing him with a strange air, resembling amusement. "You must really ask her that yourself some time, Mr. Garrott."

"I'll do it with pleasure, the first time ever I clap eyes on her."

And thereupon, within ten seconds, the managing young woman had whisked him around a knot of Redmantlers, whisked him around the bookcase, and was saying in merry, efficient tones:--

"Angela, this is the famous Mr. Garrott you've heard so much about--my cousin, Miss Flower! Mr. Garrott's very anxious to--"

She paused wickedly, but after all finished without malice, "To make your acquaintance." And so Mr. Garrott did not have to ask the country cousin on the spot what she was thinking about not to earn her keep.

The girl had been standing against the other corner of the bookcase all the time, it seemed. She was talking, in a polite sort of way, to another guest--Mr. Tilletts, the wealthy and seeking widower--and fanning away tobacco smoke with a hand too small for the heavy odds. Mr. Tilletts was removed at once by the thoroughly competent Miss Wing.

Charles Garrott, recovered from the sudden little surprise, looked at the cousin with interest, and was at no loss for easy conversation. While he knew of Miss Flower very well, he pointed out, he had had no idea that she was here this evening. In fact, he hadn't gathered that Miss Flower went in for--well, for this sort of thing, exactly.

"Why--I really don't, I'm afraid," said she in her soft voice. "I don't suppose I understand it all very well. I just came--because Cousin Mary invited me!"

She hesitated, then laughed, and finally said: "And you see, it's the first party I've been invited to since I came here to live!"

"And you like parties?"

"Yes, so much. Don't you?"

The remark, at, and as to, the Redmantle, seemed delightful.

"I did, when I was young and gay. Now, I never seem to have time to enjoy myself any more. You've been meeting a good many people, I suppose?"

"Well, no,--not many yet. Really hardly any." The girl laughed, and again showed a charming na?vet?: "You're the very first man I've met since we came here--except Mr. Tilletts!"

"But that's a tremendous exception, Miss Flower. You appreciate that he's one of our leading swains?"

Charles Garrott regarded the cousin pleasurably, with no thought of cross-examination. He, the authority, it need scarcely be said, had recognized this girl at sight. Manifestly, she was none other than the Nice Girl, the Womanly Woman, whom he and all moderns were forever holding up to scorn. Doubtless it was merely the increased conservative reaction: but Charles, for the moment, seemed conscious of no scorn in him toward Miss Angela Flower.

The cousin was pretty; not beautiful, no throne-shaker; but pretty, and attractive-looking. Wholly normal she looked, quite engagingly so, with her fine clear skin, smooth dark hair, and large limpid eyes. In her manner there was something soft, simple, and sweet, an ingenuous desire to please and be pleased; Miss Flower was feminine, in short,--it could not be denied. In a company, where the women acted like men, and the men acted like the Third Sex, this girl seemed content to remind you, like her mothers, that she was a woman.

Her conversation, intrinsically speaking, was not remarkable. But--the insidious contrast again--in a Midst where everybody else was conversing remarkably, plain conversation itself became an episode, and a charming one. She spoke of bridge, saying that she and Cousin Mary were hoping to "get up a table" one night very soon; of Mitchellton, where she had lived seven years till September; of the maxixe and the smallness of the house Mary Wing had taken for them; a dozen such un-New simplicities. And then, as she happened to be saying something about the strangeness of the city, "just at first," Charles Garrott exclaimed suddenly, rather pleased:--

"There's a friend of yours, at any rate, Miss Flower--Donald Manford! The last one in the world you'd expect to meet here."

The engineer must have just come in; over bobbing heads, through waving arms, his fine figure and bronzed face had been suddenly glimpsed at the doorway. This young man was another cousin of Mary Wing's; she, indeed, had raised him by hand; and he looked hardly less alien at the Redmantle Club than Miss Angela Flower herself.

To Garrott's astonishment, Miss Flower did not know Donald from Adam.

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