IV
The Twentieth Century Club had made the occasion a guest night and the hall was well filled when Miss Reynolds’s party arrived. Places had been reserved for them near the platform but Grace slipped into a seat by the door with Atwood and Grayling.
“Thank you for this!” exclaimed Atwood. “I always sleep at lectures and I won’t be so conspicuous back here.”
Mrs. Trenton, introduced by the president as one of the foremost women of her time, laid a sheaf of notes on the reading desk and began her address. Her subject was “Woman’s New Freedom,” and she summarized the long struggle for suffrage before indicating the questions to which women should now devote themselves to complete their victory. She recited the familiar arguments against child labor and thought existing laws should be extended and strengthened; and she pleaded for equal pay for equal work for women. She advocated uniform marriage and divorce laws on a basis of the widest freedom. There was no slavery so hideous as that of marriages where the tie becomes irksome. She favored birth control on the ground that a woman is entitled to be the judge of her fitness and ability to bear and raise children. She advocated state maternity hospitals with provision for the care of all children by the state where parents lack the means or the intelligence to rear them. She was not a socialist, she protested, though there were many socialistic ideas which she believed could profitably be adopted under the present form of government. Her “Clues to a New Social Order,” she explained, contemplated the fullest recognition of the rights of the individual. She expressed her impatience of the multiplication of laws to make mankind better; the widest liberty was essential to all progress.
Grace had listened with the strictest attention. Once or twice Grayling whispered some comment and Atwood, deeply bored, inquired midway of the address whether the first inning wasn’t nearly over. At the conclusion the president, following the club’s custom, said that Mrs. Trenton would be glad to answer any questions, but the only person who took advantage of the invitation was an elderly gentleman who asked Mrs. Trenton whether she didn’t think the Eighteenth Amendment marked a great moral advance for the nation.
“On the contrary, a decided retreat,” Mrs. Trenton replied, so incisively that the meeting closed amid general laughter.
“Was it the event of a life-time?” Atwood asked Grayling.
“Old stuff! Miss Durland could have taken the lady’s material and made a better story of it.”
“A doubtful compliment!” said Grace. “Come along; we must say good-night to Miss Reynolds.”
They went forward to where the other guests stood waiting while the club president introduced to Mrs. Trenton such of the members as wished to meet her.
“Don’t forget that I’m taking you home,” said Atwood. “That’s my reward for coming.”
Grace had hoped to avoid speaking to Mrs. Trenton again but as Miss Reynolds’s other guests were bidding her good-night she couldn’t very well escape it.
“Ah, you stayed to the bitter end!” Mrs. Trenton exclaimed with a forced brightening of her face. The hand she gave Grace was cold, and the look of weariness in her eyes was intensified. “I wish we might have you as a convert. No hope, I suppose?”
She turned away with a smile to greet the next in line.
“It wasn’t so shocking after all,” remarked Miss Reynolds, as Grace bade her good-night. “I’ll always remember this, Grace. You helped a lot—you’d have helped a lot even if you hadn’t said a word! I was so proud of you, dear.”
When she reached home Grace found her mother and Ethel waiting up for her and she sat down in the living room to recount the events of the evening. Mrs. Trenton, she said, was not so terrible; she dismissed her lightly and concentrated upon the other guests at the dinner. She was at pains to give the impression that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself, particularly her meeting with Professor Grayling. The fact, carelessly mentioned, that Jimmie Atwood had brought her home immediately obscured everything else. Mrs. Durland wished to be sure that Jimmie was the son of the George Rogers Atwood who had made a fortune in the stove business; Ethel thought he was only a nephew and that Jimmie’s father operated coal mines somewhere near Terre Haute. Grace, unable to assist in determining this momentous matter, left them and sought the seclusion of her room.
As she closed the door she was oppressed by an overmastering fatigue; she felt that innumerable, mocking, menacing hands were plucking at her. The jealousy that had assailed her fitfully all evening now tore at her heart. A vast loneliness, as of some bleak unhorizoned waste, settled upon her. She locked her door and spread out on her dressing table the sheets of Trenton’s last letter, which had reached her that morning, and read them over as she brushed her hair.
... and there is no hour in which I do not think of you. The thought of you is like a prayer in my heart. You have touched the best in me. I rebel against the fate that keeps me from you. Sometimes it becomes intolerable—I want you so much, now—just to see your face, to look into your eyes, to touch your hand. You are the flower of all the world, I think, and quick upon that comes a sense that you have greatness in you; that you are stronger than I am—possess a truer and broader sense of the meaning of life....
Her deep sigh as she finished became a sob and she laid her head upon her arms and the tears came. It was possible that he had written just such letters to the woman who was still his wife; that once he had found in her this same exaltation.
But these thoughts she fought and conquered. As she moved slowly about her room with its dingy old-fashioned furniture, its odds and ends of memorabilia—her high school diploma, framed; a University pennant hung over the mahogany bed,—she slipped back into her youth and her heart went out to Trenton with a child-like faith and confidence. The remembrance of him as he had held her and kissed her; his tenderness, the wistfulness with which he regarded her at times, his fine considerateness, the utter lack of anything common or coarse in him—these memories wrought peace in her heart.
Ready for bed, she huddled inside the window draperies before opening her window, gazing up at the stars. The same bright orbs shone over him, wherever he was. Perhaps at that very moment, he, in the manner of lovers from time immemorial, was invoking their council as he thought of her.
“I love you! I love you, dear!” she whispered and repeated the words, finding in them strength and solace.
She unlocked the door and got into bed just as her mother entered.
“Are you all right, Grace?” Mrs. Durland asked. She stooped and picked up Grace’s party slippers from the middle of the floor and put them away in the closet.
“Yes, I’m fine, mother,” Grace answered. “Please don’t bother about my things. I’ll straighten up in the morning.”
“All right, dear,” said Mrs. Durland. “I’ll put your dress on a hanger in the sewing room and press the skirt out tomorrow. It’s mussed a little, I noticed.”
With the gown over her arm she walked to the bed.
“Are you happy, dear?” she asked, laying her hand for a moment on the girl’s forehead.
“Yes, mother. Thank you so much for coming in!”
With an access of emotion she sat up and flung her arms about her mother’s neck and kissed her.
“You are happy, Grace?” Mrs. Durland repeated solicitously.
“Yes, mother; very happy.”