The domestic atmosphere of Jordantown from one end to the other was charged with thunderstorm possibilities. The wives of all the citizens were attending hurriedly to their household affairs, and then attending to other affairs which were not household. Every day some council or committee met in the Woman"s Building. They even met in the evenings.
Putting on their hats and taking the latchkey, they went out as nonchalantly as ever their husbands had gone. They weathered the rage of these husbands with singular calm, very much as mothers cheerfully witness the tantrums of their growing children. The fact that they went out in the evenings was not remarkable. The women of Jordantown were pious. They attended prayer meetings regularly: they made up the congregation on Wednesday evenings. But now they neglected this service and gathered in the upper chambers of the Woman"s Building. The community was going to the dogs. Every man said so to every other man he met on the square, but no man confided to the other that his wife had been out until half-past ten o"clock the night before.
One evening Stark Coleman was in the library reading the _Signal_. His wife came in, seated herself, and overflowed the low rocking-chair on the other side of the table with her voluminous skirts. She was tall and very large. Her face was as placid as that of a clock which has just marked the last hour of the day and has nothing to do but tick-tock until bed-time.
This was the one hour of the day when they were alone together after the children had been put to bed. They usually spent it in silence. Probably no two people in the world have as little to say to one another as a husband and wife after they have been married a dozen years. Each knows all the other thinks. They become fearful mind readers of one another"s most secret thoughts. Long ago they settled all their differences in the struggles of their first ardent loving years. Henceforth one commands while the other obeys. Everything is finished between them but their lives. These go on like weary vegetation from which their children gather the fruit.
Coleman had enjoyed several years of this kind of peace. It never occurred to him to wonder if his wife did. She had the children. He liked the quiet evenings after the noise and bustle in the bank, with his wife for a mere presence. And without being aware of the fact, he liked the diffidence with which she always awaited his pleasure, never breaking in rudely upon his rest with her feminine affairs unless he signified his willingness to listen.
During the past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality in Mrs. Coleman"s silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk, answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens" agitation was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not help knowing that she was interested, to what extent he did not know, owing to this growing reserve. Still he did his best to defend her in his thoughts. She had spent the whole of her married life bearing children very much as a tree puts out leaves every spring. This year it seemed to have occurred to her that she would not have a baby. At least she did not. Instead of that she had taken a verdant new lease on life herself, apparent in the figured muslins which she got from the Cooperative Store. Coleman attributed her activities, which he called "social," to the fact that she could "go out."
She looked now in the soft lamplight like an enormous azalea in full bloom. She sat with folded hands humming a tune, not any known air, but one of those nasal harmonies women sometimes accomplish through their noses as a cat purrs to signify content.
The humming annoyed Coleman. Everything annoyed him these days. He fidgeted, slapped one knee violently over the other, and jerked the _Signal_ open as if he would rend it sheet from sheet.
"Hu-u-m, hu-e-e-u-m hum!" droned Mrs. Coleman, her eyes fixed upon a large chromo of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus hanging upon the opposite wall.
Perspiration broke out in beads upon her husband"s brow. He uncrossed his legs and brought his foot down with a bang on the floor. Surely she would understand that he was disturbed. She did not. She went on.
"H-u-m, hu-e-e-um, hum----"
He leaped from his chair, strutted into the hall and out upon the veranda.
"Hu-u-e-e hum!"
It followed him through the windows of the library, which were open.
He rushed back, his hands clenched behind his back, his whole body inflated with rage.
"Agatha!" he exclaimed, planting himself squarely in front of her. "Will you stop making a trombone of your nose?"
"You must be nervous," she said, looking up at him serenely.
"I _am_ nervous, I"m nearly crazy. This town is going to h.e.l.l!"
"Your language, Stark! If----"
"Don"t talk to me about my language, Agatha! The native speech of h.e.l.l is blasphemy, and I"ve been in it for two months. I should think you would have noticed the condition I"m in."
"I have."
"Then why do you make that infernal noise through your nose?"
"I suppose it"s because I am happy." She said that!
"Happy! Look here, I must prepare you for what"s coming. The bank"s going to fail."
"Oh, no!"
"Yes, it is. We haven"t made a loan in six weeks. We"ve been obliged to turn down nearly fifty thousand dollars" worth of investments since that woman became director. She represents a majority of the stocks and she refuses to lend a dollar or to risk a single cent on anything in this town. The bank might as well be a miser"s box. Business is at a standstill."
"Not on the avenue. We are doing splendidly in the Cooperative Store."
"We? Are you in that thing, too?"
"Nearly every woman here is, except Mrs. Sasnett, even the poorest. You have no idea how interested they are. I never dreamed so many women of all cla.s.ses wanted the ballot."
"Agatha, I must insist upon your withdrawing from that bedlam in the Woman"s Building. I did not suspect that you were really interested. It is unwomanly."
"I can"t, Stark. I"m chairman of the Income Committee, and----"
"Who"s chairman of the Dead Cat Committee?" he sneered.
"Mike Prim, we think," she laughed.
He gasped. It was a kind of pollution for a woman even to know of Prim"s existence.
"And I"m enjoying the work so much," Agatha went on.
"You are enjoying ruining your husband! That"s what you mean, even if you do not know it," he accused.
"On the contrary, I"m saving you, Stark. If it was not for the prominent part I"ve taken in this movement, and the influence I"m expected to exert over you, you would not now be president of the bank."
"Upon my word!"
"I"ve been waiting to talk to you, dear, to explain. I"ve only waited until you should realize the situation. I knew you wouldn"t listen before," she went on kindly.
"Very well, the first thing I want you to explain is what good you think this d.a.m.nation Foundation will accomplish by destroying the business and credit of this town?" he said, drawing up a chair and seating himself belligerently in front of her.
"We shall induce you to favour the cause of suffrage----"
"Even supposing it is possible according to the const.i.tution of this state for us to give women the ballot, don"t you know that you are only exciting antagonism, making an enemy of every voter in the county?" he interrupted.
"Until you understand, yes, possibly. But when you do realize that we hold the situation in our hands, your common sense will compel you to surrender in order to escape the pressure. It"s so simple," she smiled.
"It is! It"s d.a.m.n simple! Only a set of foolish women could have devised such a plan! Think I"m going to knuckle to that old Walton cat! She"s taking all of the cash out of the bank as fast as it comes in to run her schemes, and----"
"She is only taking the rent and interest on the property of the Foundation as it is deposited. I suppose you were in the habit of lending it."
"Of course, what do you think a bank is for?"
"You"ll never have the use of another dollar until you give in."
"It"s all nonsense this ballot for women, Agatha; we can"t give it to you, and G.o.d knows I don"t want to!"
"Why?"
"It"s against nature. Women lack the wisdom, the experience, the er--the shrewdness to conduct the affairs of government. You have no idea how many wheels within wheels there are."
"Yes, we have, Stark, we know all about Mike Prim! If you are wise you will not drive us to deal with Prim!" she said, looking at him queerly.