“You couldn’t get absorbed in his enthusiasm because you’ve got one of your own, haven’t you?”
“I have yours.”
Mrs. Thompson patted her affectionately on the arm. Her contacts were all warm and intimate. With men and women alike, she seemed to get inside their minds and look out on the world as they saw it.
“You’re a dear girl,” she told her, “but you must remember that humanity is a bigger thing even than feminism, Margaret. Be a little more tender towards the poor men. After all, they can’t all be transported.”
All afternoon the crowds swelled. In the evening the great hotel dining-rooms were filled with people who represented almost everything—power, wealth, notoriety, ambition. Headquarters were established. Newspaper men idled to and fro, joking, prophesying, gossiping. Underneath the fatuousness of much of the pretense that this was a great popular meeting, most of the people knew that the rules were already laid down and things would take their course—must take their course. And yet there was a certain amount of fair speculation as to whether in some way the great leaders might not be outwitted after all—whether some new element might not show sudden strength, whether the unorganized, half formulated hopes and ideals of millions of ordinary people might this time put themselves across and lead instead of follow. The Convention, like the world, was attuned to surprises, revolts, inexplicable overturnings.
Helen was more than excited. A little less than two days ago she had felt that she could not go on with this—that the personal agony had to be fought out first. To her amazement she found that Margaret had been right. Helen had always agreed with her that women were really not dependent on emotion but that had been because Margaret’s contention seemed reasonable and to take the other side hardly worthy. An inner feeling had persisted that after all Margaret was unmarried and didn’t—couldn’t know the strength of the emotional pull. But now she found herself breaking through personal emotional wreckage to impersonal interest—or if not impersonal interest at least interest in which sex played no part. She had at first kept up the signs of control because she must. Now she no longer needed the signs. She thought of Gage almost dispassionately. Now and then the tragedy of the ruined feeling between them shook her violently. But she could see their situation spread out before her. She could see it in relation to the children, to other work. She could see where things must be stopped in that they did not improve. And most of the time she hardly thought of Gage at all. She was responding to all the excitement and interest and admiration around her. She felt part of a great organization about to act in ways which would affect the world. The great sensibility of her woman’s imagination, undulled by much experience in the direction of things beyond her contact, was played upon by a vision of great power which she might help direct.
For the first time she understood what Margaret meant by the freedom of women and why she was not content with the formal letting down of the gates. She understood what some of the others meant when they talked of the easy contemporary victories as obscuring the real things which women needed.
The best of them did not talk the lingo of the “new day.” They knew that any day was not new long enough to get used to its title. They talked of adjustment of contemporary circumstances to an evolution as old as that of civilization, as old as that of man—merged with male development and yet distinct from it again. They avoided catch words and the flattery which was sprinkled so thickly, avoided it not pedantically but with humorous knowledge of its purpose.
They dined with Mrs. Thompson and three other women and held a kind of informal court afterwards in one of the parlors of the hotel. Every notable man who came into the hotel seemed to want a word with Mrs. Thompson. She had a way with them that they all liked, a kind of keen camaraderie, especially effective in a woman who, like Mrs. Thompson, could never be accused of trying out any arts of sex attraction. They liked her company and her brisk tongue and there was added interest in finding such company in a woman. Helen met the Senators—the men whose names the party conjured with and handled them as she handled most people—skillfully.
It was a little after nine when Helen saw Gage at the end of the room. She had been talking with a gray haired, affable Senator who was telling her what a beneficent influence the women were to have on the Convention and she was excited, amused and sparkling. She was wearing a dinner dress of black lace that Gage had always liked and as she caught his eyes on her that was the first thought which flashed through her mind. It was followed by a quick appraisal of Gage himself. He was looking a little untidy and showing clearly the signs of recent strain and worry.