CHAPTER X
“A Trick of the Subconscious”
Mahala had been born at a period in the wedded lives of her parents when both of them were at the high tide of joy in their union, of pride in their hearts, of happiness without a cloud. She had made her advent fortified with a happy heart. The slight pang that shot through her as she looked at Edith was of short duration. As swiftly as it had come, it was gone. When she caught Edith’s eye, the smile she sent her was charming; a widening of her eyes, a little pucker of her lips, was meant to convey to Edith that Mahala was saying: “How wonderful! You look perfectly stunning.” This added one more degree to the joy that at that minute was welling and singing in the heart of Edith Williams.
Out in the audience a satisfied flutter was rolling in waves through the building. In her secret heart, each mother was thinking, that in some way, her child had slightly the best of the other children. There was almost a bewildered look on the face of Elizabeth Spellman. She was constrained to admit, if only to herself, that she never before had seen Edith Williams look like that, and she never had supposed it was possible that she could look like that. It dawned upon her that a few pounds of flesh, a few waves of happiness, judicious assistance in dressing that would come to Edith when she travelled, were going to make of her an extremely attractive young woman.
When she lifted the programme in her hands and glanced over it, her eyes fastened upon two lines thereon and her slight sense of humour came to the surface to such a degree that she nudged Mahlon and ran her finger under them. What Mahlon saw, when he looked where the finger indicated, read: “Sowing Seeds of Kindness” and beneath it, “Edith Williams.” It was a poor place to catch Mahlon unprepared and unaware. The gurgle that arose to his lips made him look, for an instant, as human as Jimmy Price. Nothing could have mortified Mahlon more deeply.
The organ was rolling again. The imported soprano was warbling among high notes about the “tide coming up from Lynn,” and a few seconds later John Reynolds was delivering the salutatory and then sailing into the bay he had left and prognosticating what was going to happen upon the ocean that lay before him.
While her aunt and uncle clutched cold hands and dared not look each other in the face, Edith Williams stood up and sowed her “seeds of kindness” without a falter and without a break. She went straight through as if she could not have lost a word if she had tried, and sat down in such a spasm of self-congratulation that she could scarcely keep from applauding her own performance. Never in all her life had she been quite so surprised: never had she been one half so deeply pleased.
Immediately after her, looking as handsome as it was possible for him to look, beautifully clothed, cool and utterly self-possessed, taking his time, a jesting light in his eyes, half a laugh on his lips, for a few minutes Martin Moreland Junior held forth on the Constitution of these United States. He gave the impression that the Constitution should feel much better since it had his approval.
Then, in a dress half way of Mahala’s making, the goods of her giving, flushed and attractive, Susanna Bowers told the audience her conception of the full duty of woman. It was difficult for any one in the audience to imagine where Susanna had gotten her ideas as to what the full duty of a woman might be. The audience would persist in thinking about the place from which Susanna naturally would have been supposed to gain her conclusions, but Susanna had been forced to go by contraries. She had gotten her material where none of the other girls had secured theirs. Her conception was one half the fruit of a vivid imagination, and the other half Mahala Spellman. All Susanna needed to do in writing her paper was to look at Mahala, then shut her eyes and concentrate on the kind of a woman that she believed Mahala would be ten years hence. It made an attractive paper; Susanna delivered it well.
Then Frederick Hilton repeated very creditably an oration of Patrick Henry’s, and Samantha Price read what she had copied from encyclopædias concerning Grace Darling. The women in the audience developed expressions of uncertainty and from them there emanated a wave of veiled protest when Amanda Nelson sailed into the subject of the peril of Susan B. Anthony. There were a few women in that audience who did not regard Susan B. as a peril. They looked upon her rather as an anchor, or a light. They were not particularly obliged to Amanda for her version of what Susan B. was attempting. Even those high-minded dames, who had neither the desire nor the intention of soiling themselves in the handling of a ballot at such a questionable place as the polls, felt in their secret hearts that they should have the right to do this if they chose. There were even those among them who resented the arrest of Mary Walker, for appearing on the streets of New York in trousers. Of course, they could neither be bribed nor forced so to appear themselves, but if Mary desired to wear trousers, they rather felt that she was within her rights. The wave of disapproval washed up to very nearly a murmur of protest when the speaker made her best bow and sat down amid the deafening applause of the men. No other speaker up to that time had had such an ovation. The nearer the doctor, the lawyer, the judge, the sheriff, the postmaster, the county chairman, the state senator, the banker, and the dry-goods merchant, came to blistering their palms, the more the women of the audience felt, that if they could have done exactly as they pleased in seclusion, they would have soundly boxed Amanda Nelson’s ears.