Tildy Mears nodded. Her eyes, dull and tired now, looked trustfully back at the other woman.
"I feel like we are," she agreed. And she added, "You kin say anything you"ve a mind to."
"Then I want to say this."
I had never seen Dr. Harland more interested, more impressive. Into what she was saying to the forlorn little creature before her she threw all she had of persuasiveness, of magnetism, and of power.
"If you don"t have a change," she continued, "and a very radical change, you will surely have a bad nervous breakdown. That is what I want to save you from. I cannot imagine anything that would do it more effectively than to campaign with us for a time, and have the whole current of your thoughts turned in a new direction. Why, don"t you understand"--her deep voice was full of feeling; for the moment at least she was more interested in one human soul than in hundreds of human votes--"it isn"t that you have ceased to care for your home and your family. It"s only that your tortured nerves are crying out against the horrible monotony of your life. Give them the change they are demanding and everything else will come right. Go back and put them through the old strain, and--well, I"m afraid everything will go wrong."
As if something in the other"s words had galvanized her into sudden action Mrs. Mears sprang to her feet. Like a wild thing she circled the room, beating her hands together.
"I can"t go back!" she cried. "I can"t go back! Whut"ll I do? Oh, whut"ll I do?"
"Do what I am advising you to do."
Dr. Harland"s quiet voice steadied the hysterical woman. Under its calming influence I could see her pull herself together.
"Write Mr. Mears that you are coming with us, and give him our advance route, so that he will know exactly where you are all the time. If your daughter can manage your home for five days she can manage it for two weeks. And your little jaunt need not cost your husband one penny."
"I brought twenty dollars with me," quavered Tildy Mears.
"Keep it," advised the temporarily reckless leader of the woman"s cause. "When we reach Bismarck you can buy yourself a new dress and get some little presents to take home to the children."
Tildy Mears stopped her reckless pacing of the room and stood for a moment very still, her eyes fixed on a worn spot in the rug at her feet.
"I reckon I will," she then said, slowly. "Sence you ask me, I jest reckon I"ll stay."
The next evening, during her remarks to the gathering she was then addressing, Dr. Harland abruptly checked herself.
"But there is some one here who knows more about that than I do," she said, casually, referring to a point she was covering. "Mrs. Mears, who is on the platform with me to-night, is one of you. She knows from twenty years of actual experience what I am learning from study and observation. She can tell you better than I can how many buckets of water a plainsman"s wife carries into an unpiped ranch during the day.
Will you tell us, Mrs. Mears?"
She asked a few questions, and hesitatingly, stammeringly at first, the panic-stricken plainswoman answered her. Then a woman in the audience spoke up timidly to compare notes, and in five minutes more Dr. Harland was sitting quietly in the background while Tildy Mears, her brown eyes blazing with interest and excitement, talked to her fellow plainswomen about the problems she and they were meeting together.
Seeing the success of Dr. Harland"s experiment, I felt an increased respect for that remarkable woman. She had known that this would happen; she had realized, as I had not, that Tildy Mears could talk to others as simply and as pregnantly as to us, and that her human appeal to her sister workers would be far greater than any even Anna Harland herself could make. One night she described a stampede in words that made a slow chill run the length of my spine. Half an hour later she was discussing "hired hands," with a shrewd philosophy and a quaint humor that drew good-natured guffaws from "hired hands" themselves as well as from their employers in the audience.
Within the next few days Tildy Mears became a strong feature of our campaign. Evening after evening, in primitive Dakota towns, her self-consciousness now wholly gone, she supplemented Dr. Harland"s lectures by a talk to her sister women, so simple, so homely, so crudely eloquent that its message reached every heart. During the days she studied the suffrage question, reading and rereading the books we had brought with us, and asking as many questions as an eager and precocious child. Openly and unabashedly Dr. Harland gloried in her.
"Why, she"s a born orator," she told me one day, almost breathlessly.
"She"s a feminine Lincoln. There"s no limit to her possibilities. I"d like to take her East. I"d like to educate her--train her. Then she could come back here and go through the West like a whirlwind."
The iridescent bubble was floating so beautifully that it seemed a pity to p.r.i.c.k it; but I did, with a callous reminder.
"How about her home?" I suggested--"and her children? and her husband?"
Dr. Harland frowned and bit her lip.
"Humph!" she muttered, her voice taking on the flat notes of disappointment and chagrin. "Humph! I"d forgotten them."
For a moment she stood reflecting, readjusting her plans to a scale which embraced the husband, the home, and the children of her protegee. Then her brow cleared, her irresistible twinkle broke over her face; she smiled like a mischievous child.
"I had forgotten them," she repeated. "Maybe"--this with irrepressible hopefulness--"maybe Tildy will, too!"
That Tildy did nothing of the kind was proved to us all too soon. Six days had pa.s.sed, and the growing fame of Mrs. Mears as a suffrage speaker was attracting the attention of editors in the towns we visited. It reached its climax at a ma.s.s-meeting in Sedalia, where for an hour the little woman talked to an audience of several hundred, making all Dr. Harland"s favorite points in her own simpler, homelier words, while the famous leader of the cause beamed on her proudly from the side of the stage. After the doctor"s speech the two women held an informal reception, which the Mayor graced, and to which the Board of Aldermen also lent the light of their presence. These high dignitaries gave most of their attention to our leader; she could answer any question they wished to ask, as well as many others they were extremely careful not to bring up. But the women in the audience, the babies, the growing boys and girls--all these turned to Tildy Mears.
From the closing words of her speech until she disappeared within the hotel she was followed by an admiring throng. As I caught the final flash of her brown eyes before her bedroom engulfed her it seemed to me that she looked pale and tired. She had explained that she wanted no supper, but before I went to bed, hearing her still moving around her room, I rapped at her door.
"Wouldn"t you like a sandwich?" I asked, when she had opened it. "And a gla.s.s of lemonade?"
She hesitated. Then, seeing that I had brought these modest refreshments on a tray, she stepped back and allowed me to pa.s.s in.
There was an unusual self-consciousness in her manner, an unusual bareness in the effect of the room. The nails on the wall had been stripped of her garments. On the floor lay an open suit-case closely packed.
"Why!" I gasped. "Why are you packing? We"re going to stay here over to-morrow, you know."
For an instant she stood silent before me, looking like a child caught in some act of disobedience by a relentless parent. Then her head went up.
"Yes," she said, quietly. "I"m packed. I"m goin" home!"
"Going home!" I repeated, stupidly. It seemed to me that all I could do was to echo her words. "When?" I finally brought out.
"To-morrer mornin"." She spoke almost defiantly. "I wanted to go to-night," she added, "but there wasn"t no train. I got to go back an"
start from d.i.c.kinson, where I left my horse."
"But why?" I persisted. "_Why?_ I thought you were going to be with us another week at least?"
"Well"--she drew out the word consideringly. Then, on a sudden resolve, she gave her explanation. "They was a man in the fourth row to-night that looked like Jim."
"Yes?" I said, and waited. "Was he Mr. Mears?" I asked, at last.
"No."
She knelt, and closed and locked the suit-case.
"He looked like Jim," she repeated, as if that ended the discussion.
For an instant the situation was too complicated for me. Then, in a flash of understanding, I remembered that only the week before I had been made suddenly homesick for New York by one fleeting glimpse of a man whose profile was like that of G.o.dfrey Morris. Without another word I sought Dr. Harland and broke the news to her in two pregnant sentences.
"Mrs. Mears is going home to-morrow morning. She saw a man at the meeting to-night who looked like her husband."
Dr. Harland, who was preparing for bed, laid down the hair-brush she was using, slipped a wrapper over her nightgown, and started for Mrs.
Mears"s room. I followed. Characteristically, our leader disdained preliminaries.
"But, my dear woman," she exclaimed, "you can"t leave us in the lurch like this. You"re announced to speak in Sweetbriar and Mendan and Bismarck within the coming week."
"He looked jest like Jim," murmured Tildy Mears, in simple but full reb.u.t.tal. She was standing with her back to the door, and she did not turn as we entered. Her eyes were set toward the north, where her home was, and her children and Jim. Her manner dismissed Sweetbriar, Mendan, and Bismarck as if they were the flowers of last year.
Suddenly she wheeled, crossed the room, and caught Dr. Harland by the shoulders.
"Woman," she cried, "I"m homesick. Can"t ye understand that, even ef you ain"t got a home an" a husband ye been neglectin" fer days, like I have? I"m homesick." Patiently she brought out her refrain again. "The man looked jest like Jim," she ended.
She turned away, and with feverish haste put her case on a chair, and her jacket and hat on the case, topping the collection with an old pair of driving-gloves. The completeness of this preparation seemed to give her some satisfaction. She continued with more animation.