The Co-Citizens Part 2

Susan did not herself press the point of being a celebrity in her own appearance. She did not look the part. She did not even try. She was sixty years old, wore black frocks which touched the pavements behind as she walked and were raised some eight inches above it in front, owing to that perfect frankness with which age is always willing to confess its stomach. She had worn the same bonnet for five years, tied under her protruding chin. Sometimes she changed the ribbons, but she never changed the "shape."

She nodded to the three men seated near the open window in the bank.

Then she paused at the bottom of the steps which led to the second floor and sighed.

"This staircase was built for men to climb," she grumbled as she began the ascent. She stood on the step below and put her right foot on the one above, but she did not alternate with the left. The gears in her left knee were not strong enough to bear the necessary lift. Her feet made a flat all-heel-and-toe sound as she went up, very emphatic. When she reached the top her face was red, and she was "out of breath." But she went on panting down the hall, looking at the lettering on the doors of the various offices. Printed on a large ground-gla.s.s door she saw "Mike Prim." She wrinkled her nose, adjusted her spectacles, poked out her neck and stared at it.

"Humph! Mike Prim! Nothing else! What does he do? How does he make a living? Every man in this town knows, and not a single woman!" she said to herself.

She came to the door at the end of the hall upon which was printed, "John Regis, Attorney-at-law."

She opened it without knocking and stood upon the threshold.

"Well, John Regis, you must think you are still a young man, keeping your office at the top of this ladder staircase," she complained, raising her handkerchief and dabbing her face.

"Come in, Susan, and take this chair by the window," said the Judge.

Rising from his desk and coming forward, he conducted her elegantly to the chair.

"It's forty years since I was here," she said, looking about her, "and you've not changed a thing. You are scarcely changed yourself, John."

"The man is changed, Susan. Forty years make more difference in a man than they do in things," he answered gently.

"The same books, all so thick and awful looking. I remember that day I thought you must be the wisest man in the world--to know all that was in them."

"I didn't know, and I don't know yet," he put in, smiling.

"The same chairs, the same brown prints on the wall. And that little vase, isn't it the one you had on your desk that day?" she asked, bending forward to look at it more closely.

"The very same. You put a rose into it that day, do you remember?"

"No, but I do remember that I was in love with you, John. A woman of sixty may admit that now!" she laughed.

"I wish you had admitted it then. I tried hard enough to win you, Susan.

We should have been a team!"

"No, we should not. We are both headstrong. We should have obstructed each other. I married the right man."

"I suppose so. Certainly you never could have henpecked me into Congress the way you did Jim Walton! Why did you do it?" he asked, showing the ends of a sword smile as he regarded her.

"Well, you see I couldn't go myself," she laughed.

"So you sent your husband, next best thing."

"It wasn't so bad. I helped him, you know."

"Wrote all his speeches, kicked up all of his dust for him, didn't you?"

"Not all, but I helped."

"With your sc.r.a.pbooks, for example?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"If you had been a man, Susan, you'd not have survived some of the things you've said and done."

"If I'd had the rights you men keep from us I'd never have done them!"

she retorted quickly.

"I don't know," he replied, wagging his head and smiling. "Having rights, including the ballot, would not change the nature of a woman!

Tell me, Susan, have I escaped the sc.r.a.pbooks? I've wondered many times if you were keeping record of me, too."

"You never did--anything I could put in. And if you had----" she hesitated.

"Would you have pasted it down against me?" he finished.

"I don't know. I'm glad I wasn't tempted. How have you kept yourself so aloof all these years, John--so far above the furious issues of our times?"

"Not above, not above, my dear," he objected; "I've been busy. The law is a legal profession, not an illegal one, like politics."

They looked at each other and laughed, then the Judge added:

"And it may be I was afraid of your famous sc.r.a.pbooks!"

"You were never afraid of anything," she returned.

"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of something now," he answered, flipping the pages of some papers which lay upon his desk. "I'm an old man holding in my hands a fuse which I must light presently, and I dread the consequences."

"What are you talking about?" she exclaimed, leaning forward and staring at him in faint alarm as if she did indeed smell something burning.

"I cannot tell you yet. I'm waiting for the other party," he answered.

"The other party? Whom do you expect? What does all this mean, anyway?

Why was I summoned here? Have we not had enough excitement for one day, with the funeral this morning, and with every man in this town holding his breath for fear of what will happen to him when the William J.

Mosely Estate is wound up? I've heard nothing else for two days. Not a word about the poor woman, who might as well have been a shadow on the wall of her house for all she meant to anybody until she died," she said, fanning herself and looking at him irritably.

"She was a great woman," he said simply.

"Well, I'm just a tired woman. I spent the whole morning tacking white pinks on an anchor design for the funeral. Then I went to the cemetery with the procession. And all the time I heard nothing but speculation about what she had or had not done with her money. I was just composing myself for a little rest before going to the Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation at four o'clock when your messenger appeared at the door.

Now I want to know what it's all about."

"Are you very much interested in the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation, Susan?" asked the Judge, by way of avoiding an answer.

"Certainly not! It's a nuisance. But the women of this town must do something. They have caught the public-spirit infection, and they show it like little meddlesome girls, childishly. Have you seen the nasturtium beds they've planted around the railroad station? That's feminine civic enterprise! Last week they had a committee appointed to see the mayor about keeping the cuspidors clean in the courthouse! And the cemetery! It's the livest-looking place in Jordantown, more things living and growing there than anywhere else. Even more women. They are there every day, gardening above the dust of the dead!"

"Why do you belong to it?" he asked.

"In self-defence, of course! There is to be a report from a committee about things they want changed at the cemetery this afternoon, and I'm not on the committee because one object of it is to condemn the arbor-vitae trees in my lot there. They want to cut them down. Now I will not have it! And I must be there at four o'clock to tell them so!" She began to fan herself vigorously.

"Listen to me, Susan; let the non-essential go. Don't be the occasion of a split in your ranks for the sake of a couple of shrubs. That's what destroys the strength of parties. If the whole Democratic party voted for any one man or issue, we should always have a democratic government.