The Elected Mother: A Story of Woman's Equal Rights | ||
"Yes, and one of the very nicest parts about getting home is to find the astonishing faithfulness of Pa," said Mrs. Pettibone as her eyes roamed over the garden, the yard, down the long arbor and across the meadow bars to return to the wistaria {sic} on the side porch, which was riotous with the bumble of bees and blooms.
"Why, you didn't expect to find anything else, did you?" demanded Mrs. Ezra Spain, who sat on the porch steps with a pan of snap beans in her lap which she was industriously and expectantly snapping.
"Oh, no, I don't suppose I
"Where in the world do you expect to be going and coming from any more, soon?" asked Mrs. Ez with astonishment in her wide eyes. "We can't spare you again. You've visited the boys this spring
"Well, I don't know as I'll ask him when I get a travel-notion again," responded Mrs. Pettibone placidly as she began to take the husks off a bowl of extra large nasturtium seeds, to make ready for a sundown planting.
"What?" demanded Mrs. Ezra in an awe-struck voice as she looked at Mrs. Pettibone's tranquil face.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Pettibone in a matter-of-fact tone, "Yes, I'm thinking of beginning all over with Pa. I've been married to him forty-three years next November, and I'm afraid it will go kinder hard with him, but he will have to be led easy and blind-like to the fact that woman's day has dawned.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ez contentedly, "but I never took any interest in such doings and I didn't know you — "
"I never did before," answered Mrs. Pettibone as she shooed an inquisitive bee away with a gentle but determined hand. "I've been so busy that I hadn't got 'round to it. You see, the raising of five boys into being good God-fearing men and proper husbands for five
"But what has happened? You've got no wrongs, Mis' Pettibone. The boys and Mr. Pettibone fairly — "
"Oh, they haven't done anything to me! Pais a none-such husband and every boy I've got is a God's blessing and married to a good woman, as managing most of them as I would ask for my sons' welfare; but I have waked up to the fact that I'm injured, or could be if anybody wanted to injure me, which they don't. I'm glad you came over this morning, for I want to tell you of the astonishing things I have experienced out to Wahoo City on this visit to Tom and Elviry. I can't tell Pa, for I'm keeping him blind until I can get time to commence on his reformation and my emancipation." As she spoke Mrs. Pettibone's eyes twinkled and her rosy cheeks drew up into a series of crinkled dimples which tickled Mrs. Spain's risibles to the extent of making her emit a
"Lawsy me," she laughed, "you scared me! I thought you were serious. I was just beginning to get sorry for Mr. Pettibone and — "
"I am serious, child; that is, I've come from a place where such things are so serious that there is no time to do or think about anything else. They've got a club in Wahoo City that's just for women to go to and discuss wrongs and wants and it's a revelation to hear 'em do it. I went with Elviry the very second day after I got there and I came away as mad and cross as a wet hen, and I had got over about half that missing of Pa that
"'Elviry,' I said, 'I don't see how you can listen so calm and peaceful when you bear that in all but ten of these United States a woman's children don't belong to her at all, but to some good-for-nothing man who can do just as he pleases with them and her too. How can you stand it, and you a mother with — '
"'Why, Mother Pet,' she said kinder astonished-like at me, 'my children are Tom's children. I want him to do just as he sees fit with all of us. If he does it I will know it is for the best and — '
"'Fiddlesticks,' I said real cross, for the way Elviry does spoil Tom is sinful. She's so in love with him that it would be pitiful if he wasn't worse than she is
"With that Elviry laughed and we got on the street-car. I was still so upset that I glared at a nice young man, who stood to give me a seat as polite as you please. Elviry introduced him to me and I must say his pleasantness soothed me down some and when I got off the car I said I would be glad to have him call round to see me, as he was such a particular friend of Tom's. He said he would come right away and bring his wife. He looked kinder proud and sheepish when he mentioned her and I wondered if she was that young a bride. But Elviry told me about it as we walked home. She was the
"But Elviry said that the women in the town were all up and doing and that a lot of the men were for her and determined to see her have a fair show. She said she was a splendid woman and a fine speaker and was something or other titled
"At the table I read Tom one good long lecture on the rights of woman, and I didn't allow him to answer back, either. He said he hadn't had such a fine time since the Sunday evenings I uster spend with all my boys in the front parlor teaching them who made them and for what purpose. He laughed and laughed and hugged first Elviry and then me, and then made us come up with him and look at
"But my! I tell you that next night was glorious! We sat in good front seats and could see and hear without any strain. When I saw her come down the aisle between the committees on both sides of the platform and take her stand behind the long heavy table like is in the court-house, my heart just kinder stopped beating with excitement. She was a tall, upstanding,
"She stood still for a second and let her eyes rove around hunting for something and then there was a little flash of a smile over to a place behind us where something told me without looking who was there. That smile killed the last bit of that pity feeling I'd been hatching up in my mind for him.
"What did she say? Well, I just can't remember one word of it, but I know it was grand and noble. It was about the duty of being citizens in a town and it wasn't any raving about anybody's wrongs. Everybody sat still and listened to the very end and then they just tore up the house with their hollering and cheering. The women waved their handkerchiefs and the men clapped and clapped. She waited and smiled down at everybody, and, honey, the blush on that woman's face, who had just stood up and took what is called a man's part, was as sweet as coulder been the one Eve mustered when Adam introduced her to the animal friends in the garden. As I said, it was all just glorious.
"Oh, yes, I got acquainted with her. Tom and Elviry and I waited
"And between her and me it was one of those cases of love at first sight that the dear Lord sometimes sends to settle like a lovely pink cloud of warm feelings between two women, which never floats away from them, but rests a benediction and a protection. She was like a beautiful ruby woman out of the Proverbs, last chapter, tenth verse, and you could see that the heart of her husband was 'safely trusting.'
"While Elviry was cooking some
"'Never mind, Mrs. Pettibone, I'm coming in to-morrow to have a talk with you and then at dinner you can straighten Tom's conviction out with no trouble at all.'
"Then we all ate and laughed and parted good friends, though going up-stairs Tom cut his weather eye at me as if he was still afraid of a peach-tree switch hid in my skirts. I just ignored him completely, but took Elviry into my room with me for a minute. There I put the question that was troubling me to her fairly.
"'Yes, Mother Pet,' she answered in a kind of blush herself, 'but it's six weeks off and all this excitement will be over then. She had pledged herself to accept the nomination and started the campaign before she knew of her condition. She has felt it her duty to
"'Fiddlesticks!' I answered, all that caucus-meeting feeling rushing over me at once, 'it don't unfit them for cooking, washing and ironing, tending the toddlers, mending and sewing, working the garden, milking the cow, churning the butter, and any number of extras thrown in, so why should it unfit them for being mayors and presidents and such? Most candidates from governors to sheriff take a week off any time in a campaign to get on a spree, and why shouldn't a woman quietly and in
"'Oh, Mother Pet, if you'll just say that to her in exactly that tone of voice and manner to-morrow I believe you will save the day,' said Elviry, divided between laughing and crying. 'She hasn't any mother and neither have I, and she gets scared sometimes and I try to comfort her, but I'm not like you — '
"'I'll attend to this comforting business from now on, daughter,' I said to Elviry as I lent her my best pocket-handkerchief to wipe her eyes.
"'Has she all her baby fixings ready ?'
"'No,' said Elviry, smiling through her tears. 'She's been so busy; I've done a lot for her, but — '
"'Now,' said I positively, 'that sort of thing won't do. She must attend to all that right away and not neglect it, mayor or no mayor, and I'll start her first thing in the morning.'
"And I did, and never in my life have I seen a sweeter sight than that lovely grand woman seated by my side hemming a flannel band, the telephone ringing at her elbow constant with some politics question or other to settle right off the minute. She'd give her commands and decide what to do in short quick words, then go on printing her stitches in a little night-gown about as big as a minute slow and careful. And for a week those infant first-aid caucuses went on every morning and it looked like to me I was being born all over into a new and most
"So it was, she sitting at my feet learning the way of women who had been, and I at hers learning the way of the women who were to be, until the Monday of the election came. And that morning was just the same as the others, only we had about finished up most of the needful jobs and were packing them in a little blue and white hamper. Elviry had gone to be one of the counters at one of the polls and the children were both across the street at the kindergarten. The house was quiet
"'Mother Pet,' she said as she looked up with stars in her eyes from a box of little silk shirts I had had her sew tapes on, 'tell me true, am I going to be any less her mother because I have given so much of my time and my strength to this work — that — the world still says is a man's? Would
"'No, child,' I answered, looking her full in the face. 'It is not every woman who could do what you have done and it won't be that most of them can ever run their woman-jobs and take up these cares of state, as they are rightly called, but neither could most men or can they ever. We'll just go on having homes which are man guarded and woman tended and the great few among both sexes can meet and settle what is best for all concerned. Run a piece of
"'And, Mother Pet,' this time the rose color spread all over her cheeks in a flame even up into her dark hair, 'my husband — you don't think, do you, the doing what I have done, in any way brings upon him the charge of incompetency? He thinks as I do — he knows that the time has come for women to be legislated for and not against and that the men have failed them. The real sacrifice was made by him. That is what has hurt me — have I taken anything from him that wrongs him? Do I bring anything back from my public life into his home that injures the sacredness of it? Am I a lesser wife for a good man because I seek to better the condition of the wife of the bad? Am I — '
"'Honey,' I said to kinder interrupt her, for the tears were swimming deep over the violets in her eyes and I didn't want her to get upset. 'That husband of yours is no more disqualified by your being a good mayor of this town than I am by Tom's being president of that bank, country boy that he is and always surprising me and Pa by his gumption. Your man looks as happy to me all the time as a man who's got his ticket to Salvation bought with a stopover at every pleasant place along the way. Don't worry about him; he's got a "ruby" wife and he knows it. Now you must go home and rest, for I want you to be ready to enjoy the rally after the vote is all counted.'
"And just then the telephone rang and she was the cool mayor-
"And after lunch at Elviry's I went into my room to lie down and get forty winks against another all-night frolic, for it does seem to me that city people get less real sleep than is scarcely believable, with their junketings and doings which Tom is always just thick into.
"I must have slept some into hours when I heard the telephone ring, which I'm not much used to answering, but will when pushed to, and I took it up kinder ginger.
"'Mrs. Pettibone, can you come down here quick — she — she needs you,' and that was all; but I knew that boy's voice and what the trouble was, so I put on my bonnet and got the camphire bottle and left in short order.
"Yes, Mrs. Ezra, it's the God's blessed truth I'm telling you. While all the women, and what proved to be the majority of the men in Wahoo City, were down town a-voting for that sweet child to be the mayor of the town, she and him and me was up at her house a-having her baby.
"'Well,' I said first thing cheerful-like, 'daughter wants to get here in time to cast her vote before the polls close.'
"And in the due course of time it all came right in the most natural and peaceable way possible. Along about the time the counts from the different wards began to come in and we could hear the cheering from the flash-light reports down the street at the drugstore corner, I had got the little blossom all tucked out in flannel
"Then I made a resolve — I sent the nurse to tell him to come to me. He came in looking more sheepish than I almost ever saw on such an occasion. But there was a pride there, too, and a power of awe.
"'Yes,' I said firmly, 'it's true and you have got to tell her. Now, be careful and lay the child in her arms before you break it to her.'
"'Come with me,' he said pitiful-like, and I followed him.
"And if I thought she looked grand and noble as she stood before the audience a-championing her weak sisters for all the world to hear, in my heart I knelt down before her as she took the little thing into her lovely strong arms and laid it against her deep breast.
"'Dear,' said the man gently and quietly, with both sorrow and courage in his voice, 'she's your — son.'
"'Oh,' she said as a glory that was like the sun-dawn spread over her face and neck and white breast, 'oh — a man — I'm glad! Glad!' And about that time I saw that I could come away.
"Oh, yes, I stayed to see her take her oath of office — that's
"No, Mrs. Spain, I don't think so! Somehow I have a feeling that when all this ruckus gets men's strongness and faithfulness mixed with women's courage and chastity in the future folks, His Kingdom is a-going to come in about two generations from then. And may I be there to see!"
The Elected Mother: A Story of Woman's Equal Rights | ||