The Co-Citizens Part 17

"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 a.s.sured her with suspicious gravity.

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

"Drive on, Charles!" Sasnett commanded, surrept.i.tiously 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 surrept.i.tiously, 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 embarra.s.sment.

"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 pet.i.tion 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses. The rose fades. The strength of man changes, pa.s.ses 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 k.n.o.bbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles upon your forehead. Your eyes---- Oh, my G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sing of a great and successful movement undertaken for the emanc.i.p.ation 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.d'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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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!"

CHAPTER III