Part 13 (2/2)

”They do,” she affirmed. ”How funny. They do.” There was a pause.

”Well,” she said at last (Will was still reading out loud and I could barely catch her answer). ”Well, I suppose they're only pasteboard, just as the book was only paper and print. I can give them up.”

”I don't want you to--not for me. No, don't. Go right ahead. Please,”

urged Bob. But it was too late.

”Of course not,” replied Ruth, and I heard the cards going back into the box. ”If I offend--and I see I do--of course not.” And she rose and came over and sat on the sofa beside me.

From that time on I noticed a change in Robert and Ruth--nothing very perceptible. Robert came as often, stayed as late--later. That was what disturbed me. Ruth rose in the morning, after some of those protracted sessions, suspiciously quiet and subdued. In place of the radiance that so lately had shone upon her face, often I perceived a puzzled and troubled expression. In place of her almost hilarious joy, a wistfulness stole into her bearing toward Bob.

”Of course,” she said to me one day, ”I have been living a sort of--well, broad life you might call it for a daughter of father's, I suppose. He was so straightlaced. But all the modes and codes I've been adopting for the last several years I adopted only to be polite, to do as other people did, simply not to offend--as Bob said the other day. I thought if I ever wanted to go back to the strict laws of my childhood again, I could easily enough. In fact I intended to, after I had had my little fling. But I've outgrown them. They don't seem reasonable to me now. I can't go back to them. Convictions stand in my way.”

”Women ought not to have convictions,” I said shortly.

”Don't you think so?” queried Ruth.

”Men,” I replied, ”have so much more knowledge and experience of the world. Convictions have foundations with men.”

”How unfair somehow,” said Ruth, looking away into s.p.a.ce.

”Just you take my advice, Ruth,” I went on, ”and don't you let any convictions you may think you have get in the way of your happiness.

Just you let them lie for a while. When you and Bob are hanging up curtains in your new apartment, and pictures and things, you won't care a straw about your convictions, then.”

”I don't suppose so,” replied Ruth, still meditative. ”No, I suppose you're right. I'll let Bob have the convictions for both of us. I'm younger. I can re-adjust easier than he, I guess.”

A few days later Ruth went to a suffrage meeting in town; not because she was especially interested, but because a friend she had made in a course she was taking at s.h.i.+rley College invited her to go.

It was the winter that everybody was discussing suffrage at teas and dinner parties; fairs and b.a.l.l.s and parades were being given in various cities in its interest; and anti-organizations being formed to fight it and lend it zest. It was the winter that the term Feminism first reached the United States, and books on the greater freedom of women and their liberalization burst into print and popularity.

On the suffrage question Ruth had always been prettily ”on the fence,”

and ”Oh, dear, do let's talk of something else,” she would laugh, while her eyes invited. Her dinner partners were always willing.

”On the fence, Kidlet,” Edith had once remonstrated to Ruth, ”that's stupid!” Edith herself was strongly anti. ”Of course I'm anti,” she maintained proudly. ”Anybody who _is_ anybody in Hilton is anti. The suffragists--dear me! Perfect freaks--most of them. People you never heard of! I peeked in at a suffrage tea the other day and mercy, such sights! I wouldn't be one of them for money. We're to give an anti-ball here in Hilton. I'm a patroness. Name to be printed alongside Mrs.

ex-Governor Vaile's. How's that? 'On the fence,' Ruth! Why, good heavens, there's simply no two sides to the question. You come along to this anti-ball and you'll see, Kiddie!”

Well, as I said, Ruth went one day to a suffrage meeting in town. She had never heard the question discussed from a platform. When she came into the house about six o'clock, she was so full of enthusiasm that she didn't stop to go upstairs. She came right into the room where Will and I were reading by the cretonne-shaded lamp.

”I've just been to the most wonderful lecture!” she burst out, ”on suffrage! I never cared a thing about the vote one way or the other, but I do now. I'm _for_ it. Heart and soul, I'm for it! Oh, the most wonderful woman spoke. Every word she said applied straight to me. I didn't know I had such ideas until that woman got up and put them into words for me. They've been growing and ripening in me all these years, and I didn't know it--not until today. That woman said that sacrifices are made again and again to send boys to college and prepare them to earn a living, but that girls are brought up simply to be pretty and attractive, so as to capture a man who will provide them with food and clothes. Why, Lucy, don't you see that that's just what happened in _our_ family? We slaved to send Oliver and Malcolm through college--but for _you_ and for _me_--what slaving was there done to prepare us to earn a living? Just think what I might be had _I_ been prepared for life like Malcolm or Oliver, instead of wasting all my years frivoling. Why, don't you see I could have convictions with a foundation then? I feel so helpless and ignorant with a really educated person now. Oh, dear, I wish this movement had been begun when I was a baby, so I could have profited by it! That woman said that when laws are equal for men and women, _then_ advantages will be, and that every step we can make toward equalization is a step in the direction toward a fairer deal for women.

Suffrage? Well, I should say I was for it! I think it's wonderful. I went straight up to that woman and said I wanted to join the League; and I did. It cost me a dollar.”

”Good heavens, Ruth,” exclaimed Will sleepily, from behind his paper.

”Don't you go and get rabid on suffrage----Ease up, old girl. Steady.”

”I don't see how any one can help but get rabid, Will, as you say, any more than a person could keep calm if he was a slave, when he first heard what Abraham Lincoln was trying to do.”

”Steady there, old girl,” jibed Will. ”Is Bob such a terrific master as all that?”

”That's not the point, Will. Convention is the master--that's what the woman said. It isn't free of men we're trying to be.”

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