"As there are no more except for card-playing, and as she has recently been the only hostess at an evening party the town has boasted for two years, your virtuous wrath bids fair to blow past her unheeded. Mrs. Plews, will you address us?"
Mrs. Plews was the wife of the pastor of the aristocratic Episcopalian church, a pretty fluffy young woman, who visited the sick and made excellent ice-cream for the church festivals. "Oh, I don't know!" she exclaimed, deprecatingly. "It is all too dreadful! I no longer regret that Miss Otis does not come to church. I had thought of remonstrating with her once more—but when I recalled the last time! Now, it is indeed well that she has not been associating with our young folks. I am sorry this was not known before her party; I must really talk to Mr. Plews before I can say anything further."
"Mrs. Toffitt, I am sure that you have something to say—and an opinion of your own."
Mrs. Toffitt, a buxom highly colored woman of forty, who, since her husband's death, the year before, had continued his business—a general feed store—with striking success, and who was one of the most popular women in Rosewater, with her abounding good-nature, her high spirits, and her utter independence of speech, sprang to her feet.
"I have this to say," she cried. "For a lot of puritanical, prying, spying, detestable old hens, we take the cake. Isabel Otis minds her own business. Why, in heaven's name, can't we mind ours? Does she owe anybody anything? Has she taken anybody's beau away? Anybody's husband? Does she walk the streets doing nothing but show herself, or go buggy riding with one fellow after another? Does she ever refuse money for charity, or for our improvements when it's asked of her? Was she a credit to the town with her record at the High School, or wasn't she? Are we proud of her travels in Europe, her high-toned connections, her business sense, the way she acted to that old reprobate of a father, or ain't we? That's what I want to know. And she's got real intellect instead of just the average American brightness; that's the secret of the whole trouble. What if she does sit up all night talking to a man who's got something besides chickens and dollars in his head? I'd do the same if I had the chance. Just make a note of that. If Mr. Gwynne likes to transfer his attentions to me I'll sit up all night right on Minerva Haight's doorstep, and talk about any old thing he wants. If I was as young and handsome as Isabel Otis I'd keep the best man going to myself, bet your life on it! And I repeat, it's nobody's business." She whirled upon the pallid Minerva with a flaming face. "Nice business you're in—sitting at your window all night watching for other people's slips. You'd make one fast enough if the Lord would let you, and that's what's the matter with you. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it."
She sat down amid much laughter and applause. Mrs. Leslie rapped vigorously for order, although her mouth was twitching.
"Now, ladies," she said, suavely, "if you have all relieved your minds I will say a few words. First of all, I wish to state that I shall refuse to put the matter to a vote. It is a question that does not come within the jurisdiction of the Club, which was not organized to supervise morals as well as streets and sewers. You can all act towards Isabel and Mr. Gwynne exactly as your consciences dictate, but for my own part, I have this to say: I am astonished to find that the Club life, a life which women the world over have prided themselves upon as the greatest factor in broadening and elevating that their sex has ever known, seems to have done, in our case at least, so little to eradicate certain Oriental instincts and traditions. The cities are full of young women living alone, and self-supporting. Why should not a girl have the same privilege in the country? Because she is handsome and distinguished? I fancy that a good many girls in analogous circumstances are passing unnoticed. I have not the least doubt that a very respectable percentage of very respectable young women, living alone in their city flats, sit up late and talk to men that are interesting enough to keep them awake. I am quite sure that were I young in these emancipated times I should take full advantage of them. And emancipated is what we pretend to be—although the word itself is somewhat outmoded; a healthy sign, proving that we are no longer labelled. And if that does not mean personal liberty, freedom from the old ridiculous restrictions that were an insult to womanhood itself, what does it mean? It is a part of our mission to make woman as free and independent and happy as men, and without the slightest danger to the old high moral standards; for no woman that has had it in her to go wrong ever waited for the permission of her own sex. We are, in fact, we Club Women, the great sieve that separates the wheat from the chaff; the chaff has no more use for us than we have for it, and we are too wise in our own sex to waste any time on it. The women that were born to be the playthings of men are in a class apart—to be dealt with, to be sure, by Societies organized for and experienced in that purpose; and we have not even considered them in the stupendous effort we have made to secure the freedom of the higher order of women from the old miserable social thralldoms. And what we have accomplished is historic.
"I have seen extraordinary changes in my time. When I was young a woman was an old maid at twenty-five. There was no appeal. To-day there are no old maids. Twenty years ago, in that old exclusive set of San Francisco led by Mrs. Yorba, Mrs. Montgomery, and for a little while by poor Mary Belmont, it was almost unheard of for a girl of the better class to walk alone on the street. If a man joined her the city fermented. Now, what with the influx of all these new people, the social laws have been modified to such an extent that my old friends must turn in their graves; although, of course, and very properly, a certain amount of chaperonage for young society girls is still demanded. But it is a mere harness of flowers, worn as a sort of a joke for most of the people in society to-day have flown upward on happy golden wings from strata where as much was known of chaperons as the American newspapers know about handling British titles. But, for my part, I find the whole change a vast improvement. Nothing could be duller than a girl's life in my time. And if society—the world of mere fashion—has broadened, how much more should be expected of us, who are the vanguard of our sex? who have set out to free women from every sort of senseless bondage they had endured for centuries, and no more from the tyranny of the physically stronger sex than through their own silliness and cowardice.
"We are struggling to enfranchise our sex. We would like to try our hand at regulating the affairs of the nation. Here, in these smaller towns, all over the country, we have proved a far greater power for improvements of all sorts than men. Rosewater owes to us, and to us alone, its beautifully paved and shaded streets—we have no difficulty in remembering what a barren mud-hole it was—the trees that shade the poor horses at the hitching-rails; the beautiful squares, the tropical plants and trees, the improved sewerage system, the cleanliness of the marsh border, everything in fact that has transformed Rosewater from a mere set of roofs and walls into a delightfully habitable town. Moreover, we have raised both the moral and the intellectual tone, for although I at least have always discouraged too much interest in people's private affairs, the higher interests, and the increased intimacy among women, have done much to keep them out of mischief. Until this card fever descended upon the town, it was generally regarded as occupying a high place among communities of its size. Cards, however, I regard as a passing madness; it merely means that even yet we have not enough to do.
"And—so it seems!—in spite of all that we have accomplished, in spite of our long and ofttimes disheartening struggle to lift ourselves above the average female woman, we are as ready to tear reputations to pieces as ever, to judge by mere appearances, to discount general character and behavior, to forget our ideals and give unlicensed rein to the mean and detestable qualities we still cherish in common with the mass of unenlightened women. I do not assert that I have never heard gossip from men; but it has always been from the men that spend their lives in Club windows, never from men that had some better way of filling their time. From my husband I have never heard a scurrilous word of any one, and he has a temper of his own, too. Now, so far as I can make out, we have not only been trying to usurp the time-honored prerogatives of men, but to attain their highest standards. While I deprecate violence of statement, I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Toffitt that a woman belonging to this Club, a Club which stands high in the Club life of the State, should have something better to do than to spend the night at her window spying on her neighbors. If she cannot sleep she can improve her mind or sew for the poor. If a man engaged in such nefarious night work and brazenly admitted it, I will venture to say that his Club, or his Lodge, at all events, would ask for his resignation. It would be quite in order with our avowed principles that we reprimanded Mrs. Haight instead of Miss Otis, but we will let the matter pass this time with a mere hint. One point is, by-the-way, that the latter not being a member of the Club it would be the height of impertinence to take her to task. But in any case I personally refuse even to consider the question of anything being otherwise with her than it should be. There is, no doubt, some wholly commonplace explanation of Mr. Gwynne's passing through Rosewater on her horse this morning. As for their constant companionship, what more natural? They are closely related, and she has been a very necessary sister to him. Nevertheless, I shall make it my unpleasant business to tell her that we are still the same old females, still incapable of conceiving of aught but one relationship between unmarried members of opposite sexes, that our imaginations and our positive knowledge of life are alike undeveloped. Then she can take a chaperon or not as she pleases. She will always be welcome in my house; and as for my daughter, she will only laugh at this tempest of her elders in a tea-pot. That is all I have to say."