CHAPTER VI
SOME STRENUOUS ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS
Several of the New York papers carried lurid headlines and more or less sensational accounts of the accident to the child and the treatment administered by Dr. Earl, as well as a tribute to the heroism of the volunteer nurse. All of them contained a report of some character of these occurrences.
When Dr. Earl called at the home of his fiancée, according to appointment, to take her and her mother to luncheon the next day, he found Leonora in a sullen mood, and it did not take him long to discover that he was not in high favor at this particular hour.
He greeted her with a kiss, but hers in return was perfunctory. He was not compelled to wait long for an explanation, for she poured out her feelings without any questioning.
"Oh, Jack, dear, how could you mix up with that suffrage crowd! Don't you know that mamma is vice-president of the Anti-Woman Suffrage League? She is so annoyed! And that horrid Silvia Holland—why, Jack, she is a downright socialist. Don't you know she was arrested in England for trying to break into parliament with a lot of other suffragettes, and she was arrested here only last month for defying the police and taking sides with a lot of girls who refused to work in the factories where they were employed! Even when in school she was horrid. When they wouldn't let her make a suffrage speech on the school grounds one night she took the girls to a neighboring graveyard and spoke from a flat monument! And to think the papers have you mixed up with her, and our wedding soon to be announced! Oh, it's terrible!" and she buried her face in the sofa pillows.
Had this scene occurred with any one else, Jack felt certain he could not have restrained his laughter, for he could see Miss Holland delivering an exhortation to the schoolgirls from a tombstone in a cemetery by night. But he understood the prejudices of a certain element of New York society, and while the past twenty-four hours had led him, somewhat, to believe that this progressive democratic wave sweeping over the world had engulfed all New Yorkers, he now realized how sadly mistaken he had been.
With infinite tact he told her that his sister had taken their party to the ball—pointed out his own duty when the injured child had been brought in from the street, and how he had not even suggested that Miss Holland should assist him. He saw that the present was no time for a discussion of the merits of the case or a pronouncement of his own views, but he distinctly realized, with something of a jolt, it is true, that a wide gulf separated the Bourbon element of America's supposed democracy from the advancing column of her real and inspired democracy, and he wondered whether it were at all possible to tunnel under or bridge over this gulf. He lightly changed the subject.
"I have just discovered that I can get my old offices on East 53rd Street, as the year's lease expires the first of next month, and the agents heeded my letter asking them to wait for me. So I shall feel quite at home in the old quarters," he said.