Chapter 2

Silence is the luxury of wise men and the necessity of fools--which indicates how few men are wise. It is usually the man who does not know what to say, or who has nothing worth saying to impart, that does the talking. It is a form of verbal hysteria, a kind of babbling dust which he stirs by way of concealing his incapacities. And the discourse is more characteristic of women than of the opposite sex, because the lives they live tend to the innocuous, if they do not tend to neuralgia and despair. Silence in a woman is always supernatural. But there are emergencies in life so dumbfounding and sinister in their aspect that they bind the tongue and inform even the foolish with the momentary wisdom of silence and prudence.

Magnis Carter as editor of the _Signal_ was naturally loquacious, especially in print. He published the news with all the fluency which liquefied language permits. It was only in this manner that he was able to fill the few inside columns of the _Signal_. The outside pages were "patented," of course, and contained matter taken from other papers and magazines. News was so scarce in Jordantown that if a stray dog trotted across the square, it was almost a sensation. Not to know whose dog a dog was afforded an opportunity for speculation and for a change in the topic of conversation.

The singular brevity therefore with which Carter published the most important information ever needed and yearned for in Jordantown, was significant. Even the weekly local column was exceedingly reserved, as if some prescience of the future had rendered every man and woman cautious of performing a single act worthy of interest. Nothing was said of the last meeting of the Ladies' Civic League and Cemetery Association. There was no flamboyant boasting concerning the various enterprises.

But at the top of the first column on the editorial page, between two wide black lines, appeared this notice:

"_Death of an Estimable Christian Woman._"

The obituary of Sarah Hayden Mosely followed below. This was so brief that it might have been placed in capital letters on her tombstone without crowding the margins. It appeared to have been written with the circumspection of a person who desired his readers to understand that he was in no way responsible for the deceased nor for her deeds. The title was stereotyped. Every woman who died in Jordantown appeared in the _Signal_ obituary tribute as "An Estimable Christian Woman."

It was at the next column that every man stared with amazement mixed with fear and indignation. This contained "The Last Will and Testament of Sarah Hayden Mosely," the title written in smaller, paler type. The text of the will followed:

In the name of God, Amen.

I, Sarah Hayden Mosely, being weak in body but of sound and perfect mind, do make this my last will and testament:

I give and dispose of my entire estate, real and personal, to a self-perpetuating Board of Trust, the members of which are hereinafter named.

The said estate shall no longer be known as the William J. Mosely Estate, but it shall be called the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund of Jordan County.

This fund shall not be subject to liquidation, but the income from it, or such part of it as is necessary, shall be spent each year in the effort to obtain equal suffrage for the women of Jordan County.

No part of the said income shall be spent for any other purpose until the said women shall have the right to vote in all elections held in the said county.

But after they have obtained the ballot, the said Board of Trust shall found and maintain at the expense of this fund a department of Common Law in the Jordantown Female Seminary. And all possible efforts shall be made to establish here a school of law for the women of this state where they may receive that legal training which alone insures to women the proper knowledge and mental discipline necessary for the preservation of their property and their rights as citizens of this commonwealth.

This self-perpetuating Board of Trust shall consist of three members, one man and two women.

Each shall receive a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year for services rendered.

I appoint John Regis, Susan Walton, and Selah Adams members of this self-perpetuating Board of Trust and executors of my will. And they shall not give bond nor be held accountable to the court for the manner in which they exercise these functions.

If any member or members of the said board appointed in this will shall refuse to serve, the remaining members or member shall choose and elect a suitable person or persons to fill each vacancy.

No monument or stone shall mark my grave until the conditions of this will have been fulfilled.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this the 3d day of April, 1914.

[Seal] SARAH HAYDEN MOSELY.

Signed and sealed by the above named Sarah Hayden Mosely as her last will and testament, and by us in her presence and at her request subscribed as witnesses.

ENOS CANN. MARY CANN.

In a brief paragraph beneath this extraordinary document the editor added that in an interview Judge John Regis admitted that all the trustees had accepted, that they were confident of carrying out the terms of the will, but that the board was not ready now to give information concerning its plans.

No woman had ever been "interviewed" in Jordantown by a newspaper reporter. This may have accounted for the fact that Carter did not call upon either Mrs. Walton or Selah Adams before going to press. Besides, the sixteen-hundred-dollar mortgage on the _Signal_ was now owned by the Co-Citizens' Foundation. He could not trust himself even in the presence of these powerful women. The very form of his question, his manner, might betray his secret feelings and do incredible damage.

In fact all domestic conversation in Jordantown was now censored as carefully both by the men and the women as if they belonged to opposing armies. Every man regarded his wife with suspicion, and he was at the same time conscious of a strange cheerful indifference on the part of his wife that was unnatural and offensive. Half the clinging-vine love with which women entwine their husbands is not love at all, but a nameless anxiety due to their sense of helplessness. Transpose the conditions of each and the same beseeching look so often seen in women's faces will be ludicrously mixed with the whiskers on the faces of their lords. The only ineradicable difference between men and women is gender. They are singularly alike in every other particular. Give a woman liberty, and she will go a man one better in license. Take a man's liberty from him, and he surpasses any woman in timidity. If men have more strength, women have more endurance. If the one is more active, the other is the more persistent. And it depends entirely upon the emergency which will show the most courage. Place them side by side under the same conditions to accomplish the same thing, and while each will go about the business in a different manner, the same proportion of both sexes will succeed at the job.

The difficulty is that men and women neither live nor work under the same conditions. The former have the overwhelming advantage, owing to the fact that they create their own public opinion and hold the balance of power, prestige, and influence.

This was precisely the balance which had been destroyed in Jordantown. The women now had all the advantage. It was monstrous and called for the exercise of all the furnace language of which men are naturally capable.

The one hope expressed everywhere was that, being the timid things that they were, the women would not know how to keep the grip they had upon the situation.

"Hang it! They are our wives and daughters. We ought to be able to do what we always have done, direct them and control them through their affections," said Acres, turning up the ends of his moustache with a kind of bantam bravado.

"If a woman has nothing but her affections it is easy enough to manage her, but nobody knows what use she may make of her heels if she has everything else besides," growled Coleman, who had just come from a breakfast table where his wife, Agatha, had pointedly refused to give him certain information about the Co-Citizens' Foundation which he knew she had.

"It's all a huge joke, that's what this damphule will is," said Briggs gloomily.

"Of course the suffrage part of it is a joke. The state constitution is plain on that question. Only males can vote," Acres agreed.

"But, hang it! They've got this vast estate, which affects every business interest in this town, and the devil only knows what they will do with it!" exclaimed Coleman.

"Ask your wife," Sasnett suggested.

"I did ask Mabel," Acres admitted.

"What'd she say?"

"Said they'd collect the rents and interest first thing."

Sasnett laughed, and Briggs seized his hat and left the room with the air of an injured man.

While these desultory conferences were being held all over the town Monday morning, where two or three were gathered together on the streets, Susan Walton was sitting opposite Judge Regis in his office. Her knees were wide apart, her hands folded above her fat stomach. She had untied her bonnet strings, which was a bad-weather indication.

The Judge was listening with his eye fixed keenly upon her, the hair above his temples sticking out like owl's ears.

"I've bluffed it so far, John Regis. I've reorganized the Civic League and Cemetery Association into the Co-Citizens' League, which was no small undertaking, I can tell you. Half the women would not have joined if they'd known what they were doing. I got them by not explaining how immediate the business of getting suffrage is, and by offering scandalous committee appropriations. But I'm shaking in my shoes. I don't know how we are to carry out the conditions of this trust. The more I think of it, the more I suspect Sarah Mosely of being plain crazy!"

"She's the first woman in this country to meet the issue of suffrage for women with the sanity of practical common sense," he answered.

"But she's limited her bequest to use in this county. Suffrage is a state issue. I should know. I have given years of thought to it."

"Yes, you've spent your energies like the rest of them, Susan, in mere agitation, in parades with transparencies bearing the legend, 'Votes for Women!' The last one of you might as well be blowing your breath against the order of things. Nothing could be more futile."

"We are beginning to create a sentiment for suffrage," she protested.

"Yes, in women. But can women give it to you? What's the good of undertaking the impossible? The income from this Foundation will not exceed twenty thousand dollars a year. That would not be a drop in the bucket in a state campaign, where you would be compelled to fight the most powerful political machines, and the graft and vice elements of the cities, all of which are naturally opposed to suffrage for women."

"Still, I don't see what we can do here in this county alone with the whole state against us," she objected.

"That is the question Mrs. Mosely answered. This little old woman fading into a mere shadow behind the doors of her house saw the solution which the rest of you missed with all your breadth of vision--too much breadth of vision, Susan, is as bad as not having any at all. No focus to it, not enough rays to burn through."

"I think you know I have had some experience in political affairs, more than most women, and I must say I don't see yet where Sarah Mosely focussed her rays," snapped Susan.

"I had several conferences with her. It appeared that she had thought of nothing else for years but this Foundation. She got the idea, she told me, from living with her husband. He was a man whose wife was his rib, not a separate human being. He was kind to her, but she had no more liberty than a child. She never knew anything of his affairs. She told me that she was and had always been absolutely incapable of attending to any business. She had been obliged to trust an agent. In any case she would have been forced to trust some one. She thought most women were in this condition of helplessness, and that they would remain so, always the prey of circumstances of the forces about them. And she wished to change that."

"Go on," the old lady commanded as the Judge paused.

He did go on. He called attention to certain laws governing county elections.

"With all your knowledge of the needs of women, and your bitter sense of injustice, you women never thought of this simple means by which you may win. And it was the thing Sarah Mosely grasped. She was the first woman in America, so far as I know, to grasp the significance of this easy and effective method of obtaining suffrage for women. And instead of leaving her money to a hospital, or to endow a chair or two in some university, she has left it for this purpose. It's amazing--her vision, and the directness with which she reasoned to the right conclusion!"

"Still I don't see how we can _force_ this issue here," Mrs. Walton insisted.

"Do you know, Susan, why men have the ballot and why women have not got it?"

"I have my suspicions, John. It's because they've got everything else, including us. Because they've got pockets in their breeches, for one thing."

"Exactly! now you've got pockets in your skirts, with something like twenty thousand dollars to spend for a certain purpose. And that is not all you have. This Board of Trust owns the majority of stock in the National Bank, and has loaned money to nearly all the business houses in town. You hold mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county. You practically own the _Signal_. There is not a politician anywhere who would not know he held this county in the hollow of his hand if he had that much influence to back him. Influence, Susan, is not mere influence ever. It's power! You've got that!"

"When did you become such an ardent suffragist, John?" Susan suddenly demanded.

The Judge laughed.

"I've been a kind of mugwump of the cause for years. If I were younger, I doubt if I should be ardently in favour of it now. I admit that I prefer the dear woman to the abler ballot-bearing woman--every man must--but before your sex can become entirely like my sex except in gender, Susan, I shall be where Sarah Mosely is now. It will not matter to me. I admit, however, that I was converted to active partisanship by Mrs. Mosely. I have been more impressed by that dim little old woman than by all the arguments you, for example, ever made for suffrage. She was herself an unanswerable plea for the rights of women to _live_, for she had never really lived at all. She looked as if every mortgage held by her estate had been foreclosed at her expense."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Walton with a sigh. "She was pathetic in her submission. Most women submit, but still have enough to fuss about from time to time to keep them alive."

"She was really the least submissive of you all. She put on her thimble, threaded the needle of her robin-headed brain, and worked all your fuss and agitations and futile parades down to a formula by which you can actually obtain the ballot," he put in.

"Well, coming down to this formula, what shall we do with Briggs?" she asked shrewdly. "He looks like a dangerous factor in it to me."

"Briggs will be of use. All he needs is an expert accountant to overhaul his books occasionally. And we shall need him as we need a pair of tongs to handle live coals. Besides, we cannot afford to dismiss him now and incur his enmity. We are not working up antagonism. We have one man against us already who counts for all we can overcome."

"Who is that?"

"Mike Prim. He owns nothing visible. So we have no mortgage to hold over his head. But he practically controls this town, politically speaking."

"How?"

"Don't ask me! He is not a merchant, nor a lawyer, nor a real estate agent, nor a banker, nor a broker, nor anything else that has a name, but more men--prominent citizens, farmers, labourers, tramps, beggars, anybody and everybody--go and come from his office than to and from any other office in this town. He is the power of darkness in this county to be overcome before you can win suffrage, I can tell you that."

"Well, at least Prim is tangible. He is in my line. I shall know what to do with him," answered Susan grimly.

The Judge threw back his head and laughed.

"Now you are coming, Susan! I want to see you dragging your wings before Prim!"

"I do my best work in private, John, but I'm beginning to see light. This thing really is possible. Now let us get down to business. I have an appointment with Selah Adams. She couldn't come up here this morning. I feel anxious. Her voice sounded like that of a child being kept in after school. Shouldn't wonder if that old family sword of a father were making trouble."

"We need Selah; her beauty and enthusiasm are real assets to this movement," said the Judge.

"Oh, we shall keep her on the board if I have to fight a duel with Marshall Adams," she replied with a cackling laugh.

The conference which followed was of a nature so private that they instinctively adopted the tones of conspirators as they turned the pages of ledgers which Briggs had been required to submit for inspection.

* * * * *

At two o'clock Selah Adams slipped softly out of the house, crossed the street, and entered Mrs. Walton's front door.

"She says come right up to her room, Miss Selah; she's busy and can't come down," said the negro maid, rolling her eyes and stifling either a snigger or a sob by slapping her hand over her mouth.

The next moment Selah stood in the door of Mrs. Walton's bedroom, staring with horrified eyes.

Susan Walton, clad in only her essential underwear, lay flat upon her back on the floor. She was slowly lifting first one stockinged leg, then the other, to a right angle with her body, at the same time thrusting up one arm and then the other. She was staring at the ceiling and muttering a certain formula under her breath.

"Oh! Oh! What is the matter, Mrs. Walton? Is it a fit?" cried Selah, staggering back.

"No! Exercise. Just had my lunch! One--two--three! Never allow yourself to get fat, Selah!" Up shot the other foot and arm.

"If I'd known what was before me twenty years ago, I'd have been more careful. One--two--three! Can't do what's before me unless I reduce. Avoid oatmeal and cream, that's what does it! You may be mayor of this town before you are thirty. A fat mayoress would never do. It would suggest beer! And look at me. I'm already so fat I have to lie down to take my exercise! But Regis and I have planned enough work to keep you lean this summer," she added, sitting up apparently satisfied with her state of exhaustion.

"That's what I came to see you about," said the girl, seating herself and looking down sorrowfully. "Father is dreadfully upset. He has forbidden me to mention woman suffrage in the house."

"Well, don't, then; don't speak of it at all to him."

"But he will never consent to my holding this trusteeship."

"Aren't you twenty-one?"

"I'm twenty-four, as to that, but----"

"If you were your father's son, do you think he would forbid your having your own convictions and living up to them?" the older woman interrupted.

"No, but I'm only his daughter!" Selah said.

"Can't you see that is provided for? If he forbade you the house, you still have twelve hundred dollars a year, which is certainly more than he could afford to give you."

"That isn't it: he can't do without me, he needs me."

"Listen to me, Selah! Men have been our little children for so long that we do not know how to wean them. Here you are, ready to resign the greatest opportunity any young woman has ever had in this state in order to stay at home and break your father's breakfast eggs and putter over him and keep him soothed by agreeing with everything he says. That's why men can vote and we can't. That's why they get everything, and we get nothing but our board and clothes. We've humoured and pampered them until they have no sense of us and our needs," she concluded, twisting her hair angrily into a tight knot on the back of her head.

"Oh, I wish I knew what was right!" cried the girl, clasping her hands.

"We've tried the old sacrificial righteousness long enough, Selah, to know that it is not contagious so far as we are concerned. Now you just take my advice, and we'll have the new righteousness for women proved in Jordan County before the end of this year!"

"As soon as that?" cried the girl, enthused in spite of herself.

"Yes, if we can win at all we can do it in a few months. Regis and I planned the whole campaign this morning. Give me that kimono. Now let me have your hand. It's not so easy to get to one's feet at sixty, Selah!"

She was sublimely unconscious of the figure she made moving across the room with the ends of her kimono trailing back like the gray wings of an old duck-legged hen. She gathered up some loose sheets from her desk.

"Here's the whole thing--all divided into three parts. Yours will be in some ways the most difficult. You'll have the organizing to do among the women in the country districts. But we've decided to get a good motor. You'll need to cover distances rapidly. That will be one agreeable feature at least. You and Bob Sasnett may find it convenient to do your canvassing together!" she laughed, while Selah blushed.

* * * * *

If by some miracle a modern man should awaken some morning to find himself thrust back a hundred years in time, although in the same place where he had always lived, he could not believe in the reality of a single thing he saw. Every man and every woman would be merely characters in an historical romance. Every sentence he would hear would sound like fiction. All manners and customs would seem exaggerated, sentimental, and he himself would give the impression of being a monster without breeding or a single attribute becoming to proper manhood.

If, on the other hand, he should by some incantation be projected forward only fifty years in time, still in the place of his birth, the effect of unreality would be even more startling, especially if those things should have happened which prophets predict and toward which all progress tends. Conditions would be unendurable, manners offensive. No man would seem quite a man. No woman would seem modest. Clothes, customs, beliefs, ambitions, and ideals would all have changed. And he himself would seem to them a pitiable reversion to type, ludicrously unequal to meeting the emergencies of advanced civilization. In short, there are no lasting standards of living. Education, morals, economics, finance, and politics are only the cards we play every generation in the progressive euchre of evolution. The honesty with which we play the game determines the worth of society.

At the end of a month Jordantown had not undergone so great a metamorphosis as fifty years would make, but it was in the throes of a frightful evolution. The changes already wrought were so amazing that the author may be excused if this record fails to convince the reader of their reality. At least half the citizens themselves did not and could not believe that they were not walking in a hideous nightmare from which they hoped to awaken and find their womankind properly subdued and returned to the less conspicuous sphere of womanhood.

The first bomb exploded when Samuel Briggs resigned as director of the National Bank. Mr. Briggs had been elected to represent the stock owned by the Mosely Estate. He had not only resigned, but he had ventured to propose the name of Mrs. Susan Walton as a suitable person to represent the same stock which was now owned and controlled by the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund. He did not add that he had been able to retain his position as agent only by signing a contract with the Board of Trust to obey every instruction given him with all the energy and influence he possessed in the town. This demand, that he should resign as director in favour of Mrs. Walton, was the first test made of his obedience.

Having offered his suggestions Briggs leaned back in his chair, smoked, and stared at the ceiling, while the eleven other directors stared at him with the horror of honest men contemplating an armed traitor.

"If this is going to be a hencoop instead of a bank, I'll draw every dollar I have in it out, and sell my stock to the lowest bidder!" exclaimed a frowsy old man, clawing his whiskers. This was Thaddeus Bailey. He owned three grocery stores in Jordantown, and had a monopoly on that trade.

"I don't know how much money you have on deposit, Thad, but it will take more stock than you own to satisfy that mortgage you owe to this new-fangled female suffrage fund," answered his neighbour.

"What'll we do with her if we elect her?" asked Acres.

"Better ask what she'll do with the bank?" some one replied.

"She'll run it, that's what! Didn't she run her husband for Congress till his tongue hung out? Ain't she running the whole female population of this county at the present time?"

"Hang it! I'd rather close the doors of this bank than elect that woman a director!" exclaimed Coleman.

"Come to the same thing if you didn't," replied Briggs. "Take it from me, the trustees will withdraw the last dollar they have invested in it. You couldn't pay. And then they'd declare you insolvent, appoint Susan Walton receiver, and take the whole thing over!"

"I move we let her in, gentlemen, and appropriate fifty dollars to add a ladies' dressing-room. Susan's looking up. She'll need it. She's beginning to powder her nose, and she's bought a new bonnet, thank God!" said Bob Sasnett with his usual laugh.

When the directors were leaving the bank after indignantly electing Mrs. Walton to the board, Coleman looked at Sasnett suspiciously.

"Where do you stand in this damn business, anyhow, Bob?" he demanded.

"Oh, I'm not standing at present, Stark, I'm crawling on my umbilicus same as the rest of you; the only difference is that I retain the charm and radiance of my countenance."

"When do you purpose to announce your candidacy for representative?"

Sasnett looked at him so quickly that even his smile scarcely veiled the shrewdness of his glance.

"Waiting for the women to settle Mike Prim," he answered. "If they don't, you fellows may elect him. Mike's so deep rooted in your affairs a man couldn't dig him up without soiling his hands."

"Think the women can?"

"Not a doubt of it if they get wise to him, and they are so naïvely unscrupulous, bless their hearts, that they'll do some things to accomplish their purpose a man can't afford to do."

"And if they settle Mike, you'll run on the crinoline ticket, I suppose?" Coleman answered.

"Can't say yet, Stark; don't want to give myself away, but I'm buying my collars at the Co-Citizens' Coöperative League Emporium!" he said, winking his eye and drawing up the corner of his mouth in a most offensive manner.

This reference to the women's coöperative store was far from being a joke.

The first floor of the old Mosely residence had been divided in half with a partition. The walls between the rooms on each side had been fitted up in a modern and expensive manner with shelves and counters, middle-aisle showcase, and so forth. The right-hand division was a drygoods and millinery department, with such a display of hats and finery as never had been seen before in Jordantown. The left division contained everything necessary to thrifty existence, from horse collars to hams, sugar and molasses, flour and corn meal.

The upper rooms of the house were used as offices for the female trustees of the Fund, and for the various committees, of which there were an amazing number in order that as many women as possible should have prominent and executive relations to the Co-Citizens' movement.

The whole front of the place was ablaze every night with electric signs. "_The Co-Citizens' League Headquarters_," winked across the front of the upper story. Beneath that "_The Women's Coöperative Department Stores_" winked in blue, red, and white light splendour.

This was not the worst of it: Susan Walton, aided and abetted by John Regis, had secured the services of foreign female talent, expert saleswomen, bookkeepers, and a general manager, also a female. With the assistance of these experienced persons they had purchased such a stock and assortment of goods as no merchant in Jordantown could afford. They paid cash, and counted the discount as part of the profit. They figured to a cent the cost of the stock and the expense of running the store, and they sold without reference to making any profit at all. What they lost or failed to collect was charged up as "campaign expense" against the Foundation Fund!

"This store is a kind of suffragist flypaper put out to catch as many as we can by offering bargains and credit to possible voters," said Susan to Judge Regis.

"But, my dear woman, bribing voters is a penal offence," exclaimed the Judge, laughing.

"This is not bribery, John. This is a premium we are offering to get men to vote on this measure at all. That is going to be the great difficulty. Even if we get enough of them to sign the petition to hold the election, they may outwit us by remaining away from the polls. When men have employed every other argument to get their way with women, they cease to argue, back their ears, plant their fore feet, and balk. We shall cause it to be known that credit can be had at this store only by persons who furnish sufficient assurance that they will vote in the election!" she explained.

"But in case they vote against suffrage?" he asked, smiling grimly.

"Before time for the election we shall have convinced the men of this county of so many financial disasters to follow upon such perfidy, that the majority will not dare cast their ballots against us," she retorted.

"Intimidation is also a penal offence at the polls, Susan!"

"Do you think men will ever admit that they have been intimidated politically by women? Never! It was you yourself who said influence is not influence, it's power! We've got that. Before the spring season is over, we shall have forced all the merchants in this town into bankruptcy, or we shall have proper assurance of their support. When Acres and the rest have kicked against the pricks long enough to realize the situation, we will let them know upon what conditions only this store will charge regulation prices for goods. We may offer to sell out to them. The mercantile life does not appeal to me. This store is not a financial venture. It is a political guide to the polls of the county!"

"Well, you must hurry the issue, Susan. Twenty thousand dollars will not last six months the way you are spending it. That suffragist motor car we bought last week cost twenty-two hundred dollars!" he warned.

"If we win at all we shall do it in less than six months," answered the valiant old termagant.

Meanwhile all was confusion in the stores on the avenue. Drays piled high with boxes and barrels were drawn up before the doors of the League store. A perfect thunder of industry went on within, while the ladies of the town crowded the street from one end of the block to the other. They talked, they inspected, they matched samples as fast as the laces and dress goods were placed upon the shelves and counters. They compared prices; they were excited, elated beyond measure. On the square trade was not exactly languishing yet, but it stood with hands raised in dumb astonishment. Business men had not been informed of the projected store. They did not conceive of such outrageous competition until the thing was actually ready to open its doors. Even then they were not prepared for the cut in prices. Acres continued to sell fifteen pounds of sugar for a dollar a week after the Coöperative Store began to sell twenty pounds for the same price. Percale that could be bought for ten cents a yard on the avenue, sold on the square for fifteen cents.

"They can't keep it up!" Acres predicted. "Just shows how unfit women are for business."

"But a damphule ought to know that ham can't be sold for twelve and a half cents per pound!" cried Thad Bailey furiously.

They had both failed to get the usual spring loan from the National Bank, due entirely to the fact that at the first directors' meeting, the new director had demanded to know exactly how much they owed already, and she refused to sanction the advance of another dollar to any merchant in Jordantown.

"Gentlemen, I have reason to know that these men will not be able to pay the interest upon the loans this bank has already made to them. We cannot afford to risk another advance," she explained.

Fortunately, the two victims had absented themselves from this meeting. But no argument or appeal from the others could move her.

Every one suspected the worst, but no one really knew what was on foot, for up to this time not a word was heard of suffrage for women.

Only one man besides Judge Regis seemed to know what was going forward. This was Magnis Carter, and he refused to tell what he knew. He merely explained that he was preparing certain announcements for the _Signal_, which would of course include an advertisement of the new store. If anybody wanted to know what was going on, let them read the _Signal_. It always contained the news. He was tremendously puffed up. He was inclined to snub the curious. Lord save us! did anybody think he was going to give away his own scoop?

He was also silent about a certain transaction between him and Susan Walton.

Three days before the formal opening of the Coöperative Store, she surprised him at his editorial desk. This was a deal table in a corner of the printing office. It was littered with proof, scratch paper, scissors, mucilage, pencils, inkwells, and a case of "pie." He was engaged in sorting this. His collar and cravat hung upon a nail on the wall above the table. He was in his shirt sleeves. His hair was rumpled, his fingers inky.

But the first thing he thought of when he saw the old lady picking her way between bales of paper near the door of the office, was his socks. The day was very warm, and he thought he remembered pulling them down to cool his legs. It was impossible to make sure. You cannot pull up your socks in the presence of a woman, even an old woman. Besides, she had her mouth primped severely and her eyes fixed with a soap-and-water expression upon him.

He leaped from his chair, showing a purple rim around each ankle and the bare skin above. He cast a despairing glance at his collar, and made a dive for his coat.

"Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Walton! Excuse me," he exclaimed, thrusting his arms in the sleeves. "I was not expecting this honour, as you see!"

She advanced and deliberately seated herself in the chair he had vacated.

"Don't trouble to put on your coat, Mr. Carter. It's very warm in here," fanning herself. "I think we shall have to move the _Signal_ to the Woman's Building on the avenue. There is still the kitchen and pantry we could use--very large pantry--make an excellent private editorial office."

"I beg pardon, Madam, what did you say?"

He had forgotten his socks. His eyes protruded. She laughed--it was the triumph of mind over matter--that laugh, an old woman's cackle, he being the matter. He did not like it. He stood waiting for an explanation, seeing that she occupied the only chair. He felt that it would take a good deal to explain how and why she thought she could induce him to move the office of the _Signal_ into the kitchen of that female rat trap on the avenue.

She came immediately to the point, a thing you never do in business unless you are sure you have the drop on the other fellow.

"The Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund holds a mortgage on the _Signal_, Mr. Carter?" She put this affirmative in the form of a question.

"Er--I believe there was a small mortgage held by the Mosely Estate," he admitted.

"And with the four years' interest due, I believe it covers the value of the property now, doesn't it?" She had taken out another pair of spectacles and adjusted them upon her upturned nose.

"About," he added, dazed.

"We shall be glad to retain your services. That is what I am here for this afternoon, to make arrangements with you, if possible."

Carter raised his hand, scratched his chin through his beard, squinted one eye, and took sight along the barrel of his personal interest at Susan.

"We are prepared to bear all the expense of publication and offer you a salary of one hundred dollars a month to conduct the paper; but of course we should expect to control the policy of it absolutely. We purpose to make it the organ of the Woman's Suffrage Movement here. I should myself dictate most of the editorials."

"You should, Madam?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"And where would I come in?"

"Oh, we should want you to do the work, get up advertisements, write special articles along such educational lines for the movement as we should suggest. You would 'come in' a great deal, Mr. Carter. You would be the busiest man in Jordantown."

"But, good Lord--beg pardon! You want me to become a woman suffragist, Madam--and I'm a man!"

"We should certainly require you to work for it. Suffrage for women is not a matter of sex. It's a question of common justice."

"At what salary did you say?" he asked after a thoughtful pause.

"One hundred dollars a month, and we pay the expense of publication," she answered.

Carter had never cleared a dollar as editor of the _Signal_. He could not even have supported himself if he had paid the interest on his mortgage. Still he hesitated. He was not sure that this offer did not mean the sale of his manhood, on the installment plan, at so much a month. He wondered what the men would think of this arrangement. His wit in the paper had long consisted in humorous comments upon the modern woman, and the Suffrage Movement in particular.

"Give me time to think it over," he said.

"Until to-morrow morning," she said, rising. "In case you accept the position we shall expect you at nine o'clock. There is some advertising stuff for the next issue, and I shall want to dictate an editorial."

"And if I do not accept?" he put in as she advanced toward the door.

"In that case we shall take charge of the _Signal_ as soon as we can foreclose the mortgage," she answered without looking back.

"Er--good afternoon, Mrs. Walton!" he suddenly called after her.

"Good afternoon. Remember, promptly at nine o'clock!" she returned, still without looking back.

Carter sat for an hour after her departure scratching his chin. He crossed his legs, shook his elevated foot, showed every sign of profound concentration. He was making up his mind to become a decimal point in the Woman Suffrage Movement. It was like making up his mind to be born again, and not so well born at that!

But "promptly at nine o'clock" the following morning he appeared at Susan's office in the Woman's Building, accepted the nominal editorship of the _Signal_, and submitted to the indignity of taking down the editorial which she dictated.

On Saturday the _Signal_ appeared. It was a wonder. The entire front page was taken up with an advertisement of the Women's Coöperative Store. The quality of everything was the best. The prices quoted were far below what they had ever been before in Jordantown.

But that which paralyzed the whole male population in the square was this announcement at the top of the editorial page:

_Owned and Controlled_ _By the Co-Citizens' Foundation._ _Susan Walton,_ _Managing Editor._ _Magnis Carter,_ _Assistant Editor._ _Price $1.00 a year._ _Advertising rates reduced one half to all women and to friends of the Suffrage Movement in Jordan County._

This was bad enough, but the crowning affront was the leading editorial.

"The _Signal_ has become the property of the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, bequeathed by the late Sarah Hayden Mosely for the purpose of obtaining suffrage for women in Jordan County," was the opening sentence. "Henceforth the paper will be published in the interest of the Suffrage Movement and in any other interests which do not conflict directly or indirectly with this movement. No matter containing adverse criticism of suffrage for women will be published. And no advertisements from any source not known to be friendly to the movement will be accepted. For this reason all those which have not been paid for in advance have been excluded. Business men who desire the use of our columns for advertising should call at the office of the _Signal_ at their earliest convenience, to give assurance of their support of the policy of this paper in order that they may still use its columns as an advertising medium."

The paragraph which followed stated brazenly that the majority of the citizens of Jordan County were heartily in favour of suffrage for women, and that they were determined no longer to endure "taxation without representation," and so forth and so on. There was no hysterical railing about the partialities of men for men in the administering of law and the interpretation of the rights of citizenship.

The astonished readers understood for the first time, however, that Jordantown and Jordan County were in the grip of something stronger than feminine sentimentality or even the Democratic party.

The office of the _Signal_ had actually been moved to the Woman's Building. The transit took place some time during the night. No one knew when. Carter came and went through a side entrance formerly used by delivery wagons when they brought Sarah Mosely her meagre household supplies. He remained in seclusion there, as modest as a girl, and only Susan Walton knew with what diligence he laboured. No man dared to seek him in the seclusion of that place. And when Mike Prim called him over the 'phone, after the first issue of the _Signal_ under the new management, demanding that he should come to his office at once, Carter declined to obey the summons. This was incredible. For years he had been the henchman of Prim. He had received from time to time modest sums for publishing copy prepared under Prim's supervision and designed to influence public opinion in proper Prim channels.

However, late one night when Carter slipped into the quiet side street with a roll of proof under his arm, he walked not exactly into the arms of Mike Prim, who was standing in the shadows just outside, but it would be more exact to say that he slipped directly in vocative range of Mike's rage.

"Look here, Carter, what the ---- do you mean by selling the _Signal_ to these blankety-blank-blank women?" he exclaimed as the editor started back astonished and for the moment disconcerted.

"Didn't. The Mosely Estate owned a mortgage covering the paper; you know that!" he answered quickly.

"And _you_ know the _Signal_ was the official organ of our party. And you've betrayed like----"

"Stop!" hissed Carter, lifting his roll of proof over Prim's head as if it had been a policeman's billy. "Don't you insult me, Mike! I don't have to take any more of your damn impudence and I won't!"

"Well, what did you sell out for?" growled Prim.

"I tell you I didn't. They owned the paper. They'll own this town inside of six months. They've got the last one of you like 'possums with their tails in a split stick! And you'll find it out. Don't talk to me about selling the _Signal_! The people who own a paper always control its policies."

"And what's become of your political convictions, Magnis, with your apron-string editorials?" the other sneered.

"A really intelligent, progressive editor, Mike, moulds public opinion. He don't get it from a village boss. I'm becoming intelligent. I'm following the trend of our times."

"The hell you are! You're sitting on that old she-cat's footstool taking dictation!" he snorted, turning upon his heels and slumping off down the street.

If there is anything more exasperating than a Republican to an old Adam Democrat of the South, it must be the little political Eve-rib in his side turned into a maverick female suffragist with no traditions and no fears of consequences to keep her inside established party lines.

The scene which Jordantown presented by the 1st of June is as difficult to describe--the mere physical changes--as it is to interpret these changes. The square was practically deserted; the Acres Mercantile Company was not even able to hold its country trade. Every farmer made straight for the Women's Coöperative Store. The avenue was filled from morning till night with wagons and buggies and a slow-moving procession of men in hickory shirts, and their wives and daughters. They were drawn by curiosity and cupidity. Both were gratified. They received more in barter for their country produce; and, besides that, there was always a "committee of ladies" on hand to show them through and to enlighten them upon many things besides the price of commodities.

There is a theory to the effect that women follow men. It is based upon one-sided experience for the most part. The reason they do is because so far they have never had the opportunity to lead. The present situation in Jordantown afforded this opportunity. Women were rarely seen now upon the square, but the avenue literally teemed with men. They crowded the aisles of the stores; they blocked the sidewalks. Only the victims held aloof. Acres, Thad Bailey, and the other merchants remained bitterly faithful to the square. The usual groups of loafers occupied the courthouse veranda. Colonel Marshall Adams had apparently retired from public life. He spent his days on his farm, which lay upon the outskirts of the town. He could be seen returning late in the evening, seated upon an old pacing horse like a wounded warrior barely able to keep in his saddle.

There was a report in Jordantown to the effect that real estate had fallen in value, that the workingmen were leaving, that bankruptcy and starvation stared every man in the face. But if this was so, there was no way to warn the people. The _Signal_ published every week glowing accounts of the prosperity of the town. The most amazing information appeared from week to week concerning the growth of sentiment in favour of suffrage for women. The locals were filled with complimentary notices of the comings and goings of country matrons and country belles who had never seen their names in print before. And there was an occasional interview from some woman prominent in the suffragist movement.

Martin Acres reached the infuriated end of his patience when he saw the following quotation from Mabel, who had permitted herself to be interviewed.

"Do you think women know better how to buy and sell than men?" Mrs. Acres was asked.

"Of course they do. Isn't it women who have to cook, or see to it? Then why shouldn't they know better than men what is proper food for their families? And isn't it women that make the clothes and who wear most of them? So we naturally know better what stuffs we need for clothes. If you could see the ugly dimities and ginghams and calicoes we have worn in this town all our lives, chosen by colour-blind merchants who do not know what is becoming to us! Things are different here this spring, our groceries are of a better quality, and our frocks are infinitely more becoming."

There was more in the same tenor. But Acres was too angry to read further. He rushed into his wife's room with the _Signal_ in his hand.

"Did you say that, Mabel?" he shouted, thrusting the offensive page beneath her nose.

"What, Martin?" she exclaimed, lifting her hand to thrust it aside as she stared up at her husband.

"Did you give out this scandalous interview criticising me and my business?" he insisted.

"Why, Martin, how could you think such a thing! I never uttered a critical word of my husband in my life!"

"Then you didn't say it?"

"Let me see what you are talking about," she said, craning her neck to see the print. "Oh _that_! Yes, Mrs. Walton asked me to say something to show how natural it is, and how right, you know, for women to keep a store, do the sedentary things while men do the hard things--till the ground, and all that. Did you read----"

"No, by Gad! I didn't read far enough to see that you wanted me to become a day labourer!"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of you, dear, I was just promulgating one of the theories of our movement. I was so flattered when Mrs. Walton asked me----"

"Your movement be damned, Mabel! Enough of a thing is enough. You will resign to-morrow from this plagued movement which is carrying us all to the devil!"

"But, Martin, I can't; I'm chairman of the Finance Committee. Mrs. Walton----"

"Don't let me hear that old viper's name again in this house. She's the serpent in this town tempting the last one of you to----"

"I can't have you speak disrespectfully of our chief, dear," said Mabel with frigid dignity.

"And what's your husband, I'd like to know!"

"Why, you, you are just my husband, Martin, as I used to be just your wife!"

"Good Lord, Mabel, you are crazy! Don't you know you are helping that gang to drive me into bankruptcy!"

Mrs. Acres was the living feminine likeness of Pin Money. She was very small, very fair, with faded blue eyes. Her clothes were always too tight, and she wore narrow ruffles like the hope, the mere hope, of feathers and wings to come.

She looked up now into her husband's face with a curious little white smile.

"I know that I am all that stands between you and ruin, Martin. I've been waiting to talk to you, to give you a hint, but our affairs are not entirely in shape. We are not ready to show our hand."

"To show her hand! And this from my own wife!" groaned Acres, beginning to stride up and down the room.

"Listen, dear," said Mabel, rising and following him. "I ought not to do it, but I will give you just one little hint."

"All right, _hint_!" he sneered.

"Call on Judge Regis to-morrow, and tell him you are very much interested in suffrage for women in this county. Say that you'd like to take your part in bringing it about. Just that, no more. And you'll see what happens." She turned her head to one side and looked at him with treacherous sweetness.

"I'll be hanged if I do!"

"Be reasonable, Martin!"

"Don't talk to me about being reasonable. I'm one of the few reasonable beings left in this town."

"Well, that kind of reason is out of fashion now. You've got to share our reasons, Martin. Women have a rationality you men do not recognize; now you've got to."

"I will not! But suppose I do?"

"You'll get immediate relief from your present financial pressure, for one thing."

"Tell that to the marines!"

"Very well. I'll stand between you and--and ruin as long as I can, but if you don't give in I can't save you!" she whimpered.

"And what about Thad Bailey and Baldwin and Saddler and all the other merchants?" he asked curiously, with his nose pointed like a terrier who smells a rat.

"The sooner you or somebody persuades them to go to Judge Regis and make the same agreement, the sooner you'll get what you want," she replied.

"And what we don't want! Do you think for a moment the men in this county would give women the vote even if they could, Mabel?"

"I don't think about it, Martin, I know you are going to be forced to do it, and I want you to give in before it is too late to save your credit; you'll be a day labourer before you know it if you don't listen to reason," she concluded tearfully.

"Reason! Reason! A set of crazy women dictating to men. What is reason?" shouted the furious little merchant as he rushed from the room.

The domestic atmosphere of Jordantown from one end to the other was charged with thunderstorm possibilities. The wives of all the citizens were attending hurriedly to their household affairs, and then attending to other affairs which were not household. Every day some council or committee met in the Woman's Building. They even met in the evenings. Putting on their hats and taking the latchkey, they went out as nonchalantly as ever their husbands had gone. They weathered the rage of these husbands with singular calm, very much as mothers cheerfully witness the tantrums of their growing children. The fact that they went out in the evenings was not remarkable. The women of Jordantown were pious. They attended prayer meetings regularly: they made up the congregation on Wednesday evenings. But now they neglected this service and gathered in the upper chambers of the Woman's Building. The community was going to the dogs. Every man said so to every other man he met on the square, but no man confided to the other that his wife had been out until half-past ten o'clock the night before.

One evening Stark Coleman was in the library reading the _Signal_. His wife came in, seated herself, and overflowed the low rocking-chair on the other side of the table with her voluminous skirts. She was tall and very large. Her face was as placid as that of a clock which has just marked the last hour of the day and has nothing to do but tick-tock until bed-time.

This was the one hour of the day when they were alone together after the children had been put to bed. They usually spent it in silence. Probably no two people in the world have as little to say to one another as a husband and wife after they have been married a dozen years. Each knows all the other thinks. They become fearful mind readers of one another's most secret thoughts. Long ago they settled all their differences in the struggles of their first ardent loving years. Henceforth one commands while the other obeys. Everything is finished between them but their lives. These go on like weary vegetation from which their children gather the fruit.

Coleman had enjoyed several years of this kind of peace. It never occurred to him to wonder if his wife did. She had the children. He liked the quiet evenings after the noise and bustle in the bank, with his wife for a mere presence. And without being aware of the fact, he liked the diffidence with which she always awaited his pleasure, never breaking in rudely upon his rest with her feminine affairs unless he signified his willingness to listen.

During the past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality in Mrs. Coleman's silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk, answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens' agitation was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not help knowing that she was interested, to what extent he did not know, owing to this growing reserve. Still he did his best to defend her in his thoughts. She had spent the whole of her married life bearing children very much as a tree puts out leaves every spring. This year it seemed to have occurred to her that she would not have a baby. At least she did not. Instead of that she had taken a verdant new lease on life herself, apparent in the figured muslins which she got from the Coöperative Store. Coleman attributed her activities, which he called "social," to the fact that she could "go out."

She looked now in the soft lamplight like an enormous azalea in full bloom. She sat with folded hands humming a tune, not any known air, but one of those nasal harmonies women sometimes accomplish through their noses as a cat purrs to signify content.

The humming annoyed Coleman. Everything annoyed him these days. He fidgeted, slapped one knee violently over the other, and jerked the _Signal_ open as if he would rend it sheet from sheet.

"Hu-u-m, hu-e-e-u-m hum!" droned Mrs. Coleman, her eyes fixed upon a large chromo of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus hanging upon the opposite wall.

Perspiration broke out in beads upon her husband's brow. He uncrossed his legs and brought his foot down with a bang on the floor. Surely she would understand that he was disturbed. She did not. She went on.

"H-u-m, hu-e-e-um, hum----"

He leaped from his chair, strutted into the hall and out upon the veranda.

"Hu-u-e-e hum!"

It followed him through the windows of the library, which were open.

He rushed back, his hands clenched behind his back, his whole body inflated with rage.

"Agatha!" he exclaimed, planting himself squarely in front of her. "Will you stop making a trombone of your nose?"

"You must be nervous," she said, looking up at him serenely.

"I _am_ nervous, I'm nearly crazy. This town is going to hell!"

"Your language, Stark! If----"

"Don't talk to me about my language, Agatha! The native speech of hell is blasphemy, and I've been in it for two months. I should think you would have noticed the condition I'm in."

"I have."

"Then why do you make that infernal noise through your nose?"

"I suppose it's because I am happy." She said that!

"Happy! Look here, I must prepare you for what's coming. The bank's going to fail."

"Oh, no!"

"Yes, it is. We haven't made a loan in six weeks. We've been obliged to turn down nearly fifty thousand dollars' worth of investments since that woman became director. She represents a majority of the stocks and she refuses to lend a dollar or to risk a single cent on anything in this town. The bank might as well be a miser's box. Business is at a standstill."

"Not on the avenue. We are doing splendidly in the Coöperative Store."

"We? Are you in that thing, too?"

"Nearly every woman here is, except Mrs. Sasnett, even the poorest. You have no idea how interested they are. I never dreamed so many women of all classes wanted the ballot."

"Agatha, I must insist upon your withdrawing from that bedlam in the Woman's Building. I did not suspect that you were really interested. It is unwomanly."

"I can't, Stark. I'm chairman of the Income Committee, and----"

"Who's chairman of the Dead Cat Committee?" he sneered.

"Mike Prim, we think," she laughed.

He gasped. It was a kind of pollution for a woman even to know of Prim's existence.

"And I'm enjoying the work so much," Agatha went on.

"You are enjoying ruining your husband! That's what you mean, even if you do not know it," he accused.

"On the contrary, I'm saving you, Stark. If it was not for the prominent