“THE AMERICAN MAN”
A ripple from the surging wave of culture which, for some years, had been sweeping over the women’s clubs of the Middle West, began to agitate the extremely stationary waters of Endbury social life. The Women’s Literary Club felt that, as the long-established intellectual authority of the town, it should somehow join in the new movement. The organization of this club dated back to a period now comparatively remote. Mrs. Emery, who had been a charter member, had never been more genuinely puzzled by Dr. Melton’s eccentricities than when he had received with a yell of laughter her announcement that she had just helped to form a “literary club,” which would be the “most exclusive social organization” in Endbury. It had lived up to this expectation. To belong to it meant much, and both Paul and Flora Burgess had been gratified when, on her mother’s resignation, Lydia had been elected to the vacant place.
This close corporation, composed of ladies in the very inner circle, felt keenly the stimulating consciousness of its importance in the higher life of the town, and had too much civic pride to allow Endbury to lag behind the other towns in Ohio. Columbus women, owing to the large German population of the city, were getting a reputation for being musical; Cincinnati had always been artistic; Toledo had literary aspirations; Cleveland went in for civic improvement. The leading spirits of the Woman’s Literary Club of Endbury cast about for some other sphere of interest to annex as their very own property.
They were hesitating whether to undertake a campaign of municipal house-cleaning, or to devote themselves to the study of the sonnet form in English verse, when an unusual opportunity for distinction opened before them. The daughter of the club’s president was married to a professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits home she suggested that her mother’s club invite to address it the Alliance Française lecturer of that year. He had to come out to Ann Arbor, anyhow—Ann Arbor was not very far from Endbury—not far, that is, as compared with the journey the lecturer would have made from Columbia and Harvard to “Michigan State.” One of the club husbands was a railroad man and, maybe, could give them transportation. Frenchmen were always anxious to make all the money they could—she was sure that M. Buisine could be induced to come for a not extravagant honorarium. Why should not Endbury go in for cosmopolitanism? That certainly would be something new in Ohio.
And so it was arranged for an afternoon for the first week in December, a very grand “house-darkened-and-candle-lighted performance,” as Madeleine Lowder labeled this last degree of Endbury ceremonious elaboration. It was held at the house of Paul’s aunt, so that, naturally, Lydia could by no means absent herself. Madeleine came for her, and together they took Ariadne to Marietta’s house and left her there for safe-keeping. Lydia was intensely conscious, under her sister’s forbearing silence, that Marietta had never been asked to join the Woman’s Literary Club. Even the jaunty Madeleine was aware of a tension in the brief conversation over the child’s head, and remarked as she and Lydia walked away from the house: “Well, really now, was that the most tactful thing in the world?”
“What else could I do?” asked Lydia, at her wit’s end. “I don’t dare leave Ariadne with those awful things from the employment agencies, and ’Stashie’s not coming back till next week.”
“Oh, she’s coming again, is she?” commented her companion. “Well, that’ll mean lots of fun watching Paul squirm. But don’t mind him, Lydia.” Madeleine was one of the women who prided herself on her loyal sense of solidarity among her sex. “If he says a word, you poke him one in the eye. Keep her till after your confinement, anyhow. A woman ought to be allowed to run her house without any man butting in. We let them alone; they ought to let us.”
There never was a person in the world, Lydia thought, in whom marriage had made less difference than in Paul’s sister. She was exactly the same as in her girlhood. Lydia wondered at her with an ever-growing amazement. The enormous significance of the marriage service, the mysteries of the dual existence, her new responsibilities,—they all seemed non-existent. Paul said approvingly that Madeleine knew how to get along with less fuss than any woman he ever saw. Her breezy high spirits were much admired in Endbury, and her good humor and prodigious satisfaction with life were considered very cheerfully infectious.
The two women had reached Madame Hollister’s house while Madeleine was expounding her theory of matrimony, and now took their places in the throng of extremely well-dressed women sitting on camp chairs, the rows of which filled the two parlors. The lecturer with the president of the club, occupied a dais at the other end of the room. He was a tall, ugly man, with prominent blue eyes, gray hair upstanding in close-cropped military stiffness, and a two-pronged grizzled beard. He was looking over his audience with a leisurely smiling scrutiny that roused in Lydia a secret resentment.
“He’s very distinguished looking, isn’t he?” whispered Madeleine. “So different! And cool! I’d like to see Pete Lowder sit up there to be stared at by all this gang of women.”