Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “What do you expect to do when the people who live here return?”

  She shrugged her pretty shoulders, and presently cast an involuntary and uneasy glance around the room.

  It was not a place to reassure any girl; gilt stars were pasted all over walls and ceilings, where also a tinsel sun and moon appeared. The constellations were interspersed with bats.

  The remaining decorations consisted of a cozy corner, some pasteboard trophies, red cotton velvet hangings, several plaster casts of human hands, and a frieze of half-burnt cigarettes along the mantel-edge.

  “Are you going to give me those papers?” he repeated, secretly amused.

  “No.”

  “What do you expect to do with them?”

  “Deliver them to Professor Elizabeth Challis, President of the National Federation of Independent Women of America.”

  “Is this a private enterprise of yours,” he asked curiously, “or just a — a playful impulse, or the militant fruition of a vast and feminine conspiracy?”

  She smiled slightly.

  “I suppose you mean to be impertinent, but I shall not evade answering you, Captain Jones. I am acting under orders.”

  “Betty’s?” he inquired, flippantly.

  “The orders of Professor Elizabeth Challis,” she said, with heightened colour.

  “Exactly. It is a conspiracy, then, complicated by riot, assault, disorderly conduct, and highway robbery — isn’t it?”

  “You may call it what you choose.”

  “Oh, I’ll leave that to the courts.”

  She said disdainfully: “We recognize no laws in the making of which we have had no part.”

  “There’s no use in discussing that,” said the Governor blandly; “but I’d like to know what you suffragettes find so distasteful in that proposed bill which the Mayor and — and the Governor of New York have had drafted.”

  “It is reactionary — a miserable subterfuge — a treacherous attempt to return to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslave American womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive her back into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery — back into the dark ages of dependence and acquiescence and non-resistance — back into the degraded epochs of sentimental relations with the tyrant man!”

  She leaned forward in her excitement and her sable boa slid back as she made a gesture with her expensive muff.

  “Once,” she said, “woman was so ignorant that she married for love! Now the national revolt has come. Neither sentiment nor impulse nor emotion shall ever again play any part in our relations with man!”

  He said, trying to speak ironically: “That’s a gay outlook, isn’t it?”

  “The outlook, Captain Jones, is straight into a glorious millennium. Marriage, in the future, is to mean the regeneration of the human race through cold-blooded selection in mating. Only the physically and mentally perfect will hereafter be selected as specimens for scientific propagation. All others must remain unmated — pro bono publico — and so ultimately human imperfection shall utterly disappear from this world!”

  Her pretty enthusiasm, her earnestness, the delicious colour in her cheeks, began to fascinate him. Then uneasiness returned.

  “Do you know,” he said cautiously, “that the Governor of New York has received anonymous letters informing him that Professor Elizabeth Challis considers him a proper specimen for the — the t-t-terrible purposes of s-s-scientific p-p-propagation?”

  “Some traitor in our camp,” she said, “wrote those letters.”

  “It — it isn’t true, then, is it?”

  “What isn’t true?”

  “That the Governor of the great State of New York is in any danger of being seized for any such purpose?”

  She looked at him with a curious veiled expression in her pretty eyes, as though she were near-sighted.

  “I think,” she said, “Professor Challis means to seize him.”

  The Governor gazed at her, horrified for a moment, then his political craft came to his aid, and he laughed.

  “What does she look like?” he inquired. “Is she rather a tough old lady?”

  “No; she’s young and — athletic.”

  “Barrel-shaped?”

  “Oh, she’s as tall as the Governor is — about six feet, I believe.”

  “Nonsense!” he exclaimed, paling.

  “Six feet,” she repeated carelessly; “rowed stroke at Vassar; carried off the standing long jump, pole vault, and ten-mile swimming — —”

  “This — this is terrible,” murmured the young man, passing one gloved hand over his dampening brow. Then, with a desperate attempt at a smile, he leaned forward and said confidentially:

  “As a matter of fact, just between you and me, the Governor is an invalid.”

  “Impossible!” she retorted, her clear blue eyes on his.

  “Alas! It is only too true. He’s got a very, very rare disease,” said the young man sadly. “Promise you won’t tell?”

  “Y-yes,” said the girl. Her face had lost some of its colour.

  “Then I will confide in you,” said the young man impressively. “The Governor is threatened with a serious cardiac affection, known as Lamour’s disease.”

  She looked down, remained silent for a moment, then lifted her pure gaze to him.

  “Is that true — Captain Jones?”

  “As true as that I am his Military Secretary.”

  Her features remained expressionless, but the colour came back as though the worst of the shock were over.

  “I see,” she said seriously. “Professor Challis ought to know of this sad condition of affairs. I have heard of Lamour’s disease.”

  “Indeed, she ought to be told at once,” he said, delighted. “You’ll inform her, won’t you?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” he said fervently. “You are certainly the most charmingly reasonable of your delightful sex. The Governor will be tremendously obliged to you — —”

  “Is the Governor — are his — his affections — to use an obsolete expression — fixed upon any particular — —”

  “Oh, no!” he said, smiling; “the Governor isn’t in love — except — er — generally. He’s a gay bird. The Governor never, in all his career, saw a single specimen of your sex which — well, which interested him as much — well, for example,” he added in a burst of confidence, “as much even as you interest me!”

  “Which, of course, is not at all,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh, no — no, not at all — —” he hesitated, biting his moustache and looking at her.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said; “if the Governor ever did get entirely well — er — recovered — you know what I mean?”

  “Cured of his cardiac trouble? — this disease known as Lamour’s disease?”

  “Exactly. If he ever did recover, he — I’m quite sure he would be — —” and here he hesitated, gazing at her in silence. As for her, she had turned her head and was gazing out of the window.

  “I wonder what your name is?” he said, so naïvely that the colour tinted even the tip of the small ear turned toward him.

  “My name,” she said, “is Mary Smith. Like you, I am Militant Secretary to Professor Elizabeth Challis, President of the Federation of American Women.”

  “I hope we will remain on pleasant terms,” he ventured.

  “I hope so, Captain Jones.”

  “Non-combatants?”

  “I trust so.”

  “Even f-friends?”

  She bent her distractingly pretty head in acquiescence.

  “Then you’ll give me back the papers?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for taking them?”

  “No, sorry for keeping them.”

  “You don’t mean to say that you are going to keep them, Miss Smith?”

  “I’m afraid I must. My duty forces me to deliver them to Professor Challis.”

&n
bsp; “But why does this terrible and strapping young lady desire to swipe the draft of this bill?”

  “Because it contains the evidence of a wicked conspiracy between the Governor of New York, the Mayor of this city, and an abandoned legislature. The women of America ought to know what threatens them before this bill is perfected and introduced. And before they will permit it to be debated and passed they are determined to march on Albany, half a million strong, as did the heroines of Versailles!”

  She stretched out her white gloved hand with an excited but graceful gesture; he eyed her moodily, swinging the chenille cat by its fluffy tail.

  “What do they suspect is in that bill?” he said at last.

  “We are not yet perfectly sure. We believe it is an insidious attempt to sow dissension in the ranks of our sex — a bill cunningly devised to create jealousy and unworthy distrust among us — an ingenious and inhuman conspiracy to disorganize the National Federation of Free and Independent Women.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “The bill, when perfected, is designed to give you what you want.”

  “What!”

  “Certainly; votes for women.”

  “On what terms?” she asked, incredulously.

  “Terms? Oh, no particular terms. I wouldn’t call them ‘terms,’” he said craftily; “that sounds like masculine dictation.”

  “It certainly does.”

  “Of course. There are no terms in it. It’s a — a sort of a civil service idea — a kind of a qualification for the franchise — —”

  “Oh!”

  “Yes,” he continued pleasantly, “it a — er — suggests that a vote be accorded to any woman who, in competition with others of that election district, passes the examinations — —”

  “What examinations?”

  He twirled the cat carelessly.

  “Oh, the examination papers are on various subjects. One is chemistry.”

  “Chemistry?”

  “Yes — that part of organic chemistry which includes the scientific preparation of — er — food.”

  Her eyes flashed; he twirled the cat absently.

  “Yes,” he said, “chemistry is one of the subjects. Physics is another — physical phenomena.”

  “What kind?”

  “Oh, the — the proposition that nature abhors a vacuum. You’re to prove it — you’re given a certain area — say a bed-room full of dust. Then you apply to it — —”

  “I see,” she said; “you mean we apply to it a vacuum cleaner, don’t you?”

  “Or,” he admitted courteously, “you may solve it through the science of dynamics — —”

  “Of course — using a broom.” Her eyes were beautiful but frosty.

  “Do you know,” he said, as pleasantly as he dared, “that you, for instance, would be sure to pass.”

  “Because I’m intelligent enough to comprehend the subtleties of this — bill?”

  “Exactly.” He swung the cat in a circle.

  “Thank you. And what else do these examination papers contain?”

  “Physics mostly — the properties of solid bodies. For example, you choose a button — any ordinary button,” he explained frankly, as though taking her into his confidence; “say, for instance, the plain bone button of commerce — —”

  “And sew it onto some masculine shirt,” she nodded as he sank back apparently overcome with admiration at her intelligence. “And that,” she added, “no doubt is intended to illustrate the phenomenon of adhesion.”

  “You are perfectly correct,” he said with enthusiasm.

  “What else is there?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing — nothing very much. A few experiments in bacteriology — —”

  “Sterilizing nursing bottles?”

  “How on earth did you ever guess?” he cried, overwhelmed, but perfectly alert to the kindling anger in her blue eyes. “Why, of course that is it. It is included in the science of embryotics—”

  “What science?”

  “Embryotics. For instance, you take an embryo of any kind — say a — a baby. Then you show exactly how to dress, undress, wash, feed, and finally bring that baby to triumphant maturity. It’s interesting, isn’t it, Miss Smith?”

  She said nothing. He twirled the cat furiously until its tail gave way and it flew into a corner.

  “Captain Jones,” she said, “as I understand it, this bill is a codified conspiracy to turn every woman of this State into a — a washer of clothes, a cleaner of floors, a bearer of children — and a Haus-frau!”

  “I — I would not put it that way,” he protested.

  “And her reward,” she went on, not noticing his interruption, “is permission to vote — to use the inalienable liberty with which already Heaven has endowed her.”

  Tears flashed in her eyes; she held her small head proudly and not one fell.

  “Captain Jones,” she said, “do you realize what centuries of suppression are doing to my sex? Do you understand that woman is degenerating into an immobility — an inertia — a molluskular condition of receptive passivity which is rendering us, year by year, more unfitted to either think or act for ourselves? Even in the matter of marriage we are not permitted by custom to assume the initiative. We may only shake our heads until the man we are inclined toward asks us, when he is entirely ready to ask. Then, like a row of Chinese dolls, we nod our heads. I tell you,” she said, tremulously, “we are becoming like that horrid, degenerate, wingless moth which is born, mates, and dies in one spot — a living mechanical incubator — a poor, deformed, senseless thing that has through generations lost not only the use, but even the rudiments of the wings which she once possessed. But the male moth flies more strongly and frivolously than ever. There is nothing the matter with the development of his wings, Captain Jones.”

  XVI

  It was now growing rather dark in the room.

  “I’m terribly sorry you feel this way,” he said.

  She had averted her eyes and was now seated, chin in hand, looking out of the window.

  “Do you know,” he said, “this is a rotten condition of affairs.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “This attitude of women.”

  “Is it more odious than the attitude of men?”

  “After all,” he said, “man is born with the biceps. He was made to do the fighting.”

  “Not all of the intellectual fighting.”

  “No, of course not. But — you don’t want him to rock the cradle, do you?”

  “Cradles are no longer rocked, Captain Jones. I don’t think you would be qualified to pass this examination with which you menace us.”

  He began to be interested. She turned from the window, saw he was interested, hesitated, then:

  “I wish I could talk to you — to such a man as you seem to be — sensibly, without rancour, without personal enmity or prejudice — —”

  “Can’t you?”

  “Why, yes. I can. But — I am not sure what your attitude — —”

  “It is friendly,” he said, looking at her. “I am perfectly hap — I mean willing to listen to you. Only, sooner or later, you must return to me those papers.”

  “Why?”

  “The Governor entrusted them to me officially — —”

  She said smiling: “But you — your Governor I mean — can frame another similar bill.”

  “I’m a soldier in uniform,” he said dramatically. “My duty is to guard those papers with my life!”

  “I am a soldier, too,” she said proudly, “in the Army of Human Progress.”

  “Very well,” he said, “if you regard it that way.”

  “I do. Only brute violence can deprive me of these papers.”

  “That,” he said, “is out of the question.”

  “It is no more shameful than the mental violence to which you have subjected us through centuries. Anyway, you’re not strong enough to get them from me.”

  “Do you expect me to seize you and
twist your arm until you drop those papers?”

  “You can never have them otherwise. Try it!”

  He sat silent for a while, alternately twisting his moustache and the cat’s tail. Presently he flung the latter away, rose, inspected the stars on the wall, and then began to pace to and fro, his gloved hands behind his back, spurs and sword clanking.

  “It’s getting late,” he said as he passed her. Continuing his promenade he added as he passed her again. “I’ve had no luncheon. Have you?”

  He poked around the room, examining the fantastic furnishings in all their magnificence of cotton velvet and red cheesecloth.

  “If this is Dill’s room it’s a horrible place,” he thought to himself, sitting down by a table and shuffling a pack of cards.

  “Shall I cast your horoscope?” he asked amiably. “Here’s a chart.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Presently he said: “It’s getting beastly cold in this room.”

  “Really!” she murmured.

  He came back and sat down in the gilded chair. It was now so dusky in the room that he couldn’t see her very plainly.

  So he folded his arms and abandoned himself to gloomy patience until the room became very dark. Then he got up, struck a match, and lighted the gas.

  “By Jupiter!” he muttered, “I’m hungry.”

  For nearly five minutes she let the remark go apparently unnoticed. But the complaint he had made is the one general and comprehensive appeal that no woman ever born can altogether ignore. In the depths of her something always responds, however faintly. And in the soul of this young girl it was answering now — the subtle, occult response of woman to the eternal and endless need of man — hunger of one kind or another.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, so sincerely that the sweetness in her voice startled him.

  “Why — why, do you know I believe you really are!” he said in grateful surprise.

  “I am a great many things that you have no idea I am,” she said, smiling.

  “What is one of them?”

  “I’m afraid I’m a — a fool.”

  She came forward and stood looking at him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that I can do you no kinder service than to destroy those papers and let you go home.”

  For a moment he thought she was joking, then something in her expression changed his opinion and he took a step forward, eyes fixed on her face.