The Co-Citizens Part 15

Agatha was already in bed. She lay with her hands crossed above the coverlid, her eyes closed, her face resting upon the pillow as serene as the epitaph of a good woman on a large white tombstone.

He undressed stealthily. He would no more have disturbed her than he would have thrust a thorn in his side. He turned out the light and lay down beside her, scarcely allowing himself the relief of a sigh.

Instantly Agatha's eyes flew open. She lay very still watching him.

She could make out his nose in the dark. It was a powerfully built, upstanding nose which even the shadows of the night did not entirely conceal. Slowly she divined his features one by one. A man, even the ablest, looks very helpless in his sleep. She saw his chin drop, his mouth open. Then the silence was parted by a certain sound, exactly the same sound she had heard every night since she had married--"Ha-a-w-s-ah! Ah-ha-a-w-sah." It was a cross between the bray of an a.s.s and the excruciating grief of a cat.

Most men come down to this the moment they sink into the unconsciousness of slumber. It is a kind of reversion to type which they suffer without knowing it.

Agatha had often lain awake resenting the blasts which Coleman sent through his nose. But to-night the sound touched some cord of tenderness. It reminded her of the years and years they had lived together as they could never live again. She laid her hand gently upon his breast. He gave a terrific snort, then groaned. Even in his sleep he was troubled. She, his wife, had failed him in some dear intimacy of the soul. She wondered how she would be able to hold out against him. It was no use to pretend that she was not against him. She knew that she was, that nothing but an incredible change in the order of things could unite them again as they had been; that even then they would be different. They would spend the remainder of their lives adjusting themselves to strange conditions. She began to weep softly. She was glad that at least nothing could change Stark's snore!

One reason why more men do not join the oldest order in the world--the Brotherhood of Man--is because its const.i.tution and by-laws are neither secret nor cryptic. Everybody knows what they are, and everybody knows what they mean. "Love thy neighbour as thyself," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again."

There is a whole Book filled with these regulations for the governing of this ancient order. But it has the largest circulation of any book in the civilized world, and any one is eligible to members.h.i.+p by some profession of faith. So you cannot choose your brethren. This is directly opposed to one of our strongest instincts as social animals: the instinct of election and selection in this present world. The Brotherhood does what it can, of course, to segregate the different cla.s.ses and caste of men into creeds and missions and saints and sinners. But it is not successful, and the failure has resulted, especially among men, in the founding of innumerable secret orders--to say nothing of adolescent college fraternities, where youths are trained in sn.o.bbishness, and to all the traditions and mysteries which mask these orders. There is no more virtue in being a Mason, or a Knight of Pythias, or an Elk, or an Odd Fellow than there is in being a Christian gentleman, but there is more distinction among men. So they are complimented to be chosen and elected to one of these goat-riding organizations.

Women have never been accepted as members of these orders, though they are sometimes annexed under a separate "star," for example, or as mere useful "Rebecca" appendages. Enough "Eastern Stars," or "Rebeccas" in a town will do all the drudgery, bake all the cakes, and get ready generally for the annual celebration of the real order to which they have been annexed, you understand. But they never share the inner shrine privileges with their lords. They do not wear the royal purple, nor the red-and-gold-lace uniforms of the Knights, nor carry banners. If you see them at all they will be tacked on to the end of the parade, with cotton-ribbon badges pinned to their bosoms just to show that they sustain a meek cup-bearing culinary relation to the Sons of Heaven prancing in front.

Still, if they could, women would indulge in the same vanity of secret orders. The trouble is that they are so situated in life that they cannot hold together, unless they are in a s.h.i.+rtwaist factory and join a labour union. The great majority are confined, one in a house, or in the innocuous desuetude of society, where there is no bond of common interest, but violent feminine compet.i.tion. They have no issue which unites them; they do not hold together. They do well to hold the men.

This keeps them anxious, tearful, deceitful, and busy, besides being dear and sweet for the same purpose.

But of all creatures they do crave mysteries. And they do love secrets--something to whisper.

Selah Adams, by virtue of the fact that during her college years she had belonged to a sorority with Greek letter coverings and many gruesome rites within, was the one person engaged in the suffrage campaign who recognized the advantage to be derived from secrecy in organizing the women for the struggle. She perceived the appeal that this would make to their pride and ambition. It was at her suggestion that all the work of committees in Jordantown should be conducted as quietly as possible. The women were pledged not to betray plans to any one but women belonging to the League. So when women of all cla.s.ses discovered that they would be received most cordially in an organization fostered by the leading ladies of the place, they hastened to join. For the first time social lines in Jordantown disappeared. The banker's wife walked down the steps of the Woman's Building arm in arm with the grocer's wife. In their first stages of growth all political movements are divinely democratic.

It is not until the thing has been reduced to a working formula that some boss seizes the formula and the tyrannies of monarchical methods begin.

Selah adopted the same plan of secrecy in organizing women's Co-Citizens' Leagues in the country neighbourhoods. This was her part of the work. She was not only beautiful in a grave and dignified fas.h.i.+on, she had the adorable gift of youth when it came to relating herself to elder women.

She was one of the sensations, blessing the eyes and stimulating the imagination of all travellers along country roads as she pa.s.sed in her car from one neighbourhood to another. She was invariably accompanied upon these expeditions by some farmer's wife who was already an officer in some other League. She wore white linen tailored clothes and a three-cornered white turban, with a pair of white wings spread and lifted high at the back of her head, which is the one proper place for wings on a mortal. The brain of a man or woman is the only soaring part of them. Sublimated spiritual bodies may look naturally supernatural with wings attached to the breastbone or between the shoulders behind, but the fairest, most spiritual, woman would appear a trifle ludicrous with them anywhere else unless she should be dancing a ballet with no skirts on worth mentioning. Selah achieved a sort of glorified presence very grateful to the eyes of the farmers' wives and daughters, who did not understand how much of it was due to the wings on her hat.

Her method was simple after she had made the first round of the county, visiting the women in their homes and explaining the purpose of the Co-Citizens' Leagues. Each week the _Signal_ published her itinerary.

She would meet the women of Possum Trot on such and such a day. She would address the Co-Citizens' League of Sugar Valley on Tuesday afternoon. She would meet with the Co-Citizens of Dry Pond on Friday afternoon--always at the schoolhouse.

In addition to this the _Signal_ invariably gave glowing accounts of the progress of the suffrage sentiment everywhere. There was no means of proving that the _Signal_ was lying. It was the only paper published in the county, and it was sent free of charge to every woman in the county.

But never was there a single line reporting what transpired at any of the meetings. The Odd Fellows, who were exceedingly plentiful all over the county, were almost open books compared to the secrecy and mystery attending these meetings of their women.

It is not generally known, but nearly all farmers' wives are in favour of suffrage for women. It is not known, because almost without exception they deny that they are if there is a man within earshot of their protestations. The patriarchal hold upon them is stronger in the country places, because the economic necessities of the situation uphold the patriarch and not his wife. She obeys, not only her husband, but the laws of the seasons with the labour of her hands.

There were at first many timid souls whom Selah Adams could not draw into her conspiracy. But these were strengthened from week to week with the amazing a.s.surances they read in the _Signal_, to the effect that Jordan County was coming out of the dark ages: "Men as well as women are impatient to see their wives and mothers and daughters exercise the inalienable right of every freeborn American Citizen!" And so on and so forth.

"Who are the men?" asked every man.

Echo answered:

"Who?"

No one believed there were any such cowardly males among them, but they could not prove it. The men were growing more and more silent, partly through anxiety and partly with grim confidence that no way could be found to force this issue of suffrage on the voters of the county. The women remained maliciously silent on this point. If they had any plan, not the most ingratiating persuasions from their nearest mankind could induce them to reveal it.

The lives of most women on remote farms are tragic beyond belief. They appear natural and commonplace only because the victims are trained in endurance, not in the vocabulary of expression. There are thousands of farmers' wives in every rural community who endure hards.h.i.+ps undreamed of in the sweatshops of commerce. There are no laws to protect them from long hours, nor any to protect their children. They average sixteen hours a day, while the hardest working man takes at least two hours at noon in which to rest. They may complain of backache, of rheumatism, of any number of st.i.tches in their sides, but they never complain of the long, long day's work. On the contrary, if the worst comes to worst, especially during the harvest season, they think they will get up an hour earlier the next morning and maybe "get through" what they have to do.

When one of them dies of the strain, she just dies. The obituary notice of her as the wife of so-and-so never tells how she just "gave out,"

having borne eight children and having done the cooking, was.h.i.+ng, ironing, and sewing for the family, besides "helping in the fields."

It was to these women that Selah came with her definite plans for better conditions for them and their children. She brought them the refreshment of social intercourse, and united them in a secret common cause. It was difficult to accomplish against the order and very nature of their lives. Sometimes she failed.

One day she called at a little farmhouse hidden away from the public road in one of the mountain coves. There were no children about, no noisy cackling of c.o.c.ks and hens, no flowers in the yard, not a sound to break the awful silence of the accompanying hills. It was as if life died there long ago and left behind only the rickety skeleton of a house as a mournful epitaph.

But inside, an old woman sat mending bags. She wore a gray calico slip, tied in around the waist with her ap.r.o.n strings; both were ragged, abominably soiled. Her hair was white; strands of it hung around her neck from a little knot twisted tight on the back of her head. Her face was ghastly white, wrinkled, toothless, but the pale blue eyes, rolling wildly, senselessly, in the cavernous sockets, gave her an expression so terrible that Selah started back involuntarily as she lifted her head, stared at her, and went on with her mending on the ill-smelling meal sack. This was the wife of Jake Terry.

The Terrys had had nine children. They all worked in the field. None of them had ever gone to school. They were poor with a desperation of poverty undreamed of even in the slums.

But Terry had a sawmill. At last when his sons were old enough to work, he began to make money. The wife and daughters did the farming. Then, quite inconveniently, Mrs. Terry took leave of her senses. She was violent in her efforts to throw herself in the mill pond. She was sent to the asylum and remained there three years--until she was no longer violent. Then she was brought home, still witless, but able in a mechanical way from long habit to do the things she had always done.

Terry thought that this was better than hiring some one. His children had married or "run off" and left him. So the old wife went back into the treadmill. She was obsessed with the idea of work. She would not sleep. Sometimes she would spring out of the bed in the dead hours of the night, kindle a fire in the slatternly stove, and "start breakfast."

She was always hurrying from one task to another.

"How do you do, Mrs. Terry?" Selah ventured, still standing in the doorway.

"My hens is all dead!" cried the old woman.

"I've come to see you about something," Selah said, advancing.

"No, you ain't; n.o.body ever comes here. My children are all dead, too!"

she wailed.

"They are not dead, they are married," Selah said soothingly.

"My hens is all dead, and my children is all dead, and I'm dead, too.

Women don't live, you know, they jest work." This last in a low, confidential tone as she stretched the wrinkles of her face into a ghastly grin. "I've heard of you," she went on. "You think you are going to make the women live same as men. You can't do it. We ain't for ourselves, we are jest made for them. I wouldn't mind it so much if my hens hadn't all died!"

Selah fled from the house, climbed into the car, and commanded the chauffeur to drive on.

"I knew it wasn't any use for you to go in there," said Mrs. Deal, staring at the girl's stricken face. "Did she tell you all her hens were dead?"

"Yes, but it wasn't that, nor her forlorn condition; it was something else. She said she was dead, too: 'Women don't live you know, they just work!' Ah, it was awful!"

"We've had four women from this settlement sent to the asylum just like that," Mrs. Deal added after a pause as they moved swiftly along the fragrant June road.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon; they were on their way to a meeting of the Co-Citizens' League at Possum Trot. Mr. Deal, a prosperous farmer, was also the justice of the peace in the tiny mountain village; and this also happened to be the day when he retailed justice in small sentences in the usual neighbourhood squabbles.

Court had adjourned as they entered the village. Men stood in groups before the one store, talking in undertones as women pa.s.sed--all going in the direction of the schoolhouse, which stood exactly opposite. Deal was "dressed up"--that is to say, he wore his coat, collar, and tie. He stood combing his whiskers and looking over his steel-rimmed spectacles at Mrs. Deal, who descended from the automobile and followed Selah into the house.

Presently another man flirted his head to one side, spat on the ground, and looked at Deal, whose face above his whiskers was puffed out in a fat smile.

"Helend.a.m.nation, Squire! what does all this female gaddin' and gittin'

together and whisperin' mean?" he snickered.

"Nothin'!" answered Deal.