A Spoil of Office Part 16

The speaker had appealed to his imagination before, and now again he sat absolutely motionless while great new thoughts and impersonal emotions sprang up in his brain. He saw women in a new light, and the aloofness of the speaker grew upon him again. He felt that she was holding her place as his teacher. Around him he heard the rustle of approval upon the gown she wore, upon her voice, and some few favorable comments upon her ideas. He saw some of the people crowd forward to shake her hand, while others went out talking excitedly.

He lingered as long as he dared, longing to go forward to greet her, but he went slowly out at last, home to his boarding place and sat down in his habitual att.i.tude when in deep thought, his elbow on his knee, his chin in his palm. He wanted to see her, he must see her and tell her how much she had done for him.

How to do it was the question which absorbed him now. He got away from the noisy merriment of the house, out into the street again. The stars were more congenial company to him now; under their pa.s.sionless serenity he could think better. He felt that he must come to an understanding with himself soon, but he put it off and turned his attention to his future, and more immediately to the plans which must be carried out, of seeing her.

When he came in he was desperately resolved. He would go to see her on the next day in her hotel. He justified himself by saying that she was a lecturer, a person before the public, and that she would not think it strange; anyhow, he was going to do it.

In the broad daylight, however, it was not so easy as it seemed under the magic of the moon. The conventions of the world always count for less in the company of the moon and the stars. He heard during the morning that she was going away in the afternoon, and he was made desperate. He started out to go straight to the hotel, and he did, but he walked by it, once, twice, a half dozen times, each time feeling weaker and more desperate in his resolution.

At length he deliberately entered and astonished himself by walking up to the clerk and asking for Miss Wilbur.

The clerk turned briskly and looked at the pigeon-holes for the keys.

"I think she is. Send up a card?"

True, he hadn't thought of that. He had no cards. He received one from the clerk that looked as if it had done duty before, and scrawled his name upon it, and gave it to the insolent little darky who served as "Front."

"Tell her I'd like to see her just a few minutes."

On the stairs he tried to prepare what he should say to her. His mouth already felt dry, and his brain was a mere swirl of gray and white matter. Almost without knowing how, he found himself seated in the ladies' parlor, to which the boy had conducted him. It was a barren little place, in spite of its excessively florid gilt and crimson paper, and its ostentatious harsh red-plush furniture.

His heart sent the blood into his throat till it ached with the tension. His lips quivered and turned pale as he heard the slow sweep of a woman's dress, and there she stood before him, with smiling face and extended hand. "Are you Mr. Talcott? Did you want to see me?"

She had the frank gesture and ready smile a kindly man would have used.

Instantly his brain cleared, his heart ceased to pound, and the numbness left his limbs. He forgot himself utterly. He only saw and heard her. He found himself saying:

"I wanted to come in and tell you how much I liked your speech last night, and how much I liked a speech you made up at Rock River, at the grange picinic."

"Oh, did you hear me up there? That was one of my old speeches. I've quite outgrown that now. You'll be shocked to know I don't believe in a whole lot of things that I used to believe in." As she talked, she looked at him precisely as one man looks at another, without the slightest false modesty or coquettishness. She evidently considered him a fellow-student on social affairs. "I'm glad you liked my talk on the woman question. It was dreadfully radical to the most of my audience."

"It was right," Bradley said, and their minds seemed to come together at that point as if by an electrical shock. "I never thought of it before. Women have been kept down. We do claim to know better what she ought to do than she knows herself. The trouble is we men don't think about it at all. We need to have you tell us these things."

"Yes, that's true. As soon as I made that discovery I began talking the woman question. One radicalism opened the way to the other. Being a radical is like opening the door to the witches. Are you one?" she asked, with a sudden smile, "I mean a radical, not a witch."

"I don't know," he replied simply, "I'm a student. I know I can't agree with some people on these things."

"_Some_ people! Sometimes I feel it would be good to meet with a single person--a single one--I could agree with! But tell me of yourself--are you in the grange movement?"

"Well, not exactly, but I've helped all I could."

"What is the condition of the grange in your county?"

"It seems to be going down."

She was silent for some time. Her face saddened with deep thought.

"Yes, I'm afraid it is. The farmers can't seem to hold together.

Strange, aint it? Other trades and occupations have their organizations and stand by each other, but the farmer can't seem to feel his kins.h.i.+p.

Well, I suppose he must suffer greater hards.h.i.+ps before he learns his lesson. But G.o.d help the poor wives while he learns! But he _must_ learn," she ended firmly. "He must come some day to see that to stand by his fellow-man is to stand by himself. That's what civilization means, to stand by each other."

Bradley did not reply. He was looking upon her, with eyes filled with adoration. He had never heard such words from the lips of anyone. He had never seen a woman sit lost in philosophic thought like this. Her bent head seemed incredibly beautiful to him, and her simple flowing dress, royal purple. Her presence destroyed his power of thought. He simply waited for her to go on.

"The farmer lacks comparative ideas," she went on. "He don't know how poor he is. If he once finds it out, let the politicians and their masters, the money-changers, beware! But while he's finding it out, his children will grow up in ignorance, and his wife die of overwork. Oh, sometimes I lose heart." Her voice betrayed how strongly she perceived the almost hopeless immensity of the task. "The farmer must learn that to help himself, he must help others. That is the great lesson of modern society. Don't you think so?"

"I don't know. I'm losing my hold on things that I used to believe in.

I've come to believe the system of protection is wrong." He said this in a tone absurdly solemn as if he had somehow questioned the law of gravity.

"Of course it is wrong," she said. "The moment I got East, I found free-trade in the air, and my uncle, who is a manufacturer, admitted it was all right in theory, but it wouldn't do as a practical measure.

That finished me. I'm a woman, you know, and when a thing appears right in theory, I believe it'll be right in practice. Expediency don't count with me, you see. But tell me, do you still live in Rock River?"

"Yes, I'm only studying law down here."

"Oh, I see. I suppose you know many of the people at Rock River." She asked about Milton, whom she remembered, and about Mr. Deering. Then she returned again to the subject of the grange. "Yes, it has been already a great force, but I begin to suspect that the time is coming when it must include more or fail. I don't know just what--I aint quite clear upon it--but as it stands now, it seems inadequate."

She ended very slowly, her chin in her palm, her eyes on the floor. She made a grand picture of thought, something more active than meditation.

Her dress trailed in long, sweeping lines, and against its rich dark purple folds her strong, white hands lay in vivid contrast. The most wonderful charm of her personality was her complete absorption in thought, or the speech of her visitor. She was interested in this keen-eyed, strong-limbed young fellow as a possible convert and reformer. She wanted to state herself clearly and fully to him. He was a fine listener.

"I'm afraid I see a tendency that is directly away from my ideal of a farming community. There is a force operating to destroy the grange and all other such movements."

"You mean politics?"

"No, I mean land monopoly. I believe in thickly settled farming communities, communities where every man has a small, highly cultivated farm. That's what I've been advocating and prophesying, but I now begin to see that our system of owners.h.i.+p in land is directly against this security, and directly against thickly-settled farming communities. The big land owners are swallowing up the small farmers, and turning them into renters or laborers. Don't you think so?"

"I hadn't though of it before, but I guess that's so--up in our county, at least."

"It's so everywhere I've been. I don't understand it yet, but I'm going to. In the meantime I am preaching union and education. I don't see the end of it, but I know"--Here she threw off her doubt--"I know that the human mind cannot be chained. I know the love of truth and justice cannot be destroyed, and marches on from age to age, and that's why I am full of confidence. The farmer is beginning to compare his mortgaged farm with the banker's mansion and his safe, and no one can see the end of his thinking. The great thing is his thinking."

She arose and gave him her hand. "I'm glad you came in. Give my regards to Mr. Deering and other friends, won't you? Tell them not to think I'm not working because I'm no longer their lecturer. You ought to be in the field. Will you read something which I'll send?" she asked, the zeal of the reformer getting the upper hand again.

"Certainly. I should be very glad to."

"I'll send you some pamphlets I've been reading." Her voice seemed to say the interview was ended, but Bradley did not go. He was struggling to speak. After a significant pause, he said in a low voice:

"I'd--I'd like to write to you--if you don't--mind."

Her eyes widened just a line, but they did not waver. "I should like to hear from you," she said cordially. "I'd like to know what you think of those pamphlets, which I'll surely send."

He had the courage to look once more into her brown eyes, with their red-gold deeps, as he shook hands. The clasp of her hand was firm and frank.

"Good-by! I hope I shall see you again. My address is always Des Moines, though I'm on the road a great deal."

Out into the open air again he pa.s.sed like a man sanctified. It seemed impossible that he had not only seen her, but had retained his self-possession, and had actually dared to ask permission to write to her!

The red-gold sunlight was flaming across the snow, and the shadows stood out upon the s.h.i.+ning expanse vivid as stains in ink. The sky, aflame with orange and gold clouds, was thrown into loftier relief by the serrate blue rim of trees that formed the western horizon. As he walked, he had a reckoning with himself. It could not longer be delayed.

He had been a boy to this day, but that hour made him a man, and he knew he was a lover. Not that he used that word, for like the farm-born man that he was, he did not say, "I love her," but he lifted his face to the sky in an unuttered resolution to be worthy her.

He had come under the spell of her womanly presence. He had seen her in her house-dress, and his admiration for her intellect and beauty had added to itself a subtle quality, which rose from the potential husbands.h.i.+p and fatherhood within him.