“Yes?” she replied carelessly. “I think I’ve heard Mr. Trenton speak of an Indianapolis client of that name. He visits your city I know, on professional employments. Indeed his business keeps him in motion most of the time; but I can’t complain; I’m a good deal of a gad-about myself! I wired for Mr. Trenton’s address to his New York office the other day, hoping I might be able to see him somewhere. It’s possible he may turn up here. There’s a case for you, Dr. Ridgely! The reason my marriage is so successful is because of the broad freedom Mr. Trenton and I allow each other. We haven’t met since—Heaven knows when!”
A slight hint of bravado in her tone suggested an anxiety to establish herself in the minds of the company as the possessor of a wider freedom and a nobler tolerance than other wives. The other wives at the table were obviously embarrassed if not displeased by her declaration. It seemed to Grace that the air of the room chilled perceptibly.
She found herself resenting Mrs. Trenton’s manner of speaking of her husband. Trenton, she remembered, had always spoken of his wife in kind terms. On the evening of their first meeting at The Shack he had chivalrously taken upon himself the responsibility for the failure of his marriage. He had spoken of Mrs. Trenton as a charming woman, but Grace thought her singularly charmless. She was at no pains to make herself agreeable to the company Miss Reynolds had assembled in her honor. One thing was clear and Grace derived a deep satisfaction from the reflection,—Mrs. Trenton not only didn’t love her husband, but she was incapable of loving any one but herself. Grace, having accepted the invitation to meet Mrs. Trenton with a sense that there was something a little brazen in her going when Miss Reynolds believed her to be a clean-hearted, high-minded girl, in bitterness of spirit yielded to a mood of defiance. This woman had no right to be a burden and a hindrance to the man she had married. It was her fault if he found in another the love and the companionship she had denied or was incapable of giving him.
IV
The Twentieth Century Club had made the occasion a guest night and the hall was well filled when Miss Reynolds’s party arrived. Places had been reserved for them near the platform but Grace slipped into a seat by the door with Atwood and Grayling.
“Thank you for this!” exclaimed Atwood. “I always sleep at lectures and I won’t be so conspicuous back here.”
Mrs. Trenton, introduced by the president as one of the foremost women of her time, laid a sheaf of notes on the reading desk and began her address. Her subject was “Woman’s New Freedom,” and she summarized the long struggle for suffrage before indicating the questions to which women should now devote themselves to complete their victory. She recited the familiar arguments against child labor and thought existing laws should be extended and strengthened; and she pleaded for equal pay for equal work for women. She advocated uniform marriage and divorce laws on a basis of the widest freedom. There was no slavery so hideous as that of marriages where the tie becomes irksome. She favored birth control on the ground that a woman is entitled to be the judge of her fitness and ability to bear and raise children. She advocated state maternity hospitals with provision for the care of all children by the state where parents lack the means or the intelligence to rear them. She was not a socialist, she protested, though there were many socialistic ideas which she believed could profitably be adopted under the present form of government. Her “Clues to a New Social Order,” she explained, contemplated the fullest recognition of the rights of the individual. She expressed her impatience of the multiplication of laws to make mankind better; the widest liberty was essential to all progress.
Grace had listened with the strictest attention. Once or twice Grayling whispered some comment and Atwood, deeply bored, inquired midway of the address whether the first inning wasn’t nearly over. At the conclusion the president, following the club’s custom, said that Mrs. Trenton would be glad to answer any questions, but the only person who took advantage of the invitation was an elderly gentleman who asked Mrs. Trenton whether she didn’t think the Eighteenth Amendment marked a great moral advance for the nation.
“On the contrary, a decided retreat,” Mrs. Trenton replied, so incisively that the meeting closed amid general laughter.
“Was it the event of a life-time?” Atwood asked Grayling.