Part 14 (1/2)
George summoned Betty by means of the buzzer, and asked her, with icy indignation, what she thought of that. But, as he was visibly bursting with impatience to say what _he_ thought of it, she gave him the opportunity.
”I thought you advanced women,” he said, ”were supposed to stand by each other--stand by all women--try to make things better for them. One for all--all for one. That sort of thing. But it really works the other way.
It's just because a woman owns those cottages that Miss Eliot won't have anything to do with them. She knows that women are unreasonable and hard to get on with in business matters, so she pa.s.ses the buck! Back to a man, if you please, who hasn't any more real responsibility for it than she has.”
There was, of course, an obvious retort to this; namely, that business was business, and that a business woman had the same privilege a business man had, of declining a job that looked as if it would entail more bother than it was worth. But Betty couldn't quite bring herself to take this line. Women, if they could ever get the chance (through the vote and in other ways), were going to make the world a better place--run it on a better lot of ideals. It wouldn't do to begin justifying women on the ground that they were only doing what men did.
As well abandon the whole crusade right at the beginning.
George saw her looking rather thoughtful, and pressed his advantage.
Suppose Betty went and saw Miss Eliot personally, sometime today, and urged her to reconsider. The business didn't amount to much, it was true, and it no doubt involved the adjustment of some troublesome details. But unless Miss Eliot would undertake it, he wouldn't know just where to turn. Alys had quarreled with Allen, and Sampson was a skate.
And perhaps a little plain talk to Alys about the condition of the cottages--”from one of her own s.e.x,” George said this darkly and looked away out of the window at the time--might be productive of good.
”All right,” Betty agreed, ”I'll see what I can do. It's kind of hard to go to a woman you barely know by sight, and talk to her about her duty, but I guess I'm game. If you can spare me, I'll go now and get it over with.”
There were no frills about Edith Eliot's real estate office, though the air of it was comfortably busy and prosperous.
The place had once been a store. An architect's presentation of an apartment building, now rather dusty, occupied the show-window. There was desk accommodation for two or three of those bright young men who make a selection of keys and take people about to look at houses; there was a stenographer's desk with a stenographer sitting at it; and back of a table in the corner, in the att.i.tude of one making herself as comfortable as the heat of the day would permit, while she scowled over a voluminous typewritten doc.u.ment, was E. Eliot herself. It was almost superfluous to mention that her name was Edith. She never signed it, and there was no one, in Whitewater anyway, who called her by it.
She was a big-boned young woman (that is, if you call the middle thirties young), with an intelligent, homely face, which probably got the attraction some people surprisingly found in it from the fact that she thought nothing about its looks one way or the other. It was rather red when Betty came in, and she was making it rapidly redder with the vigorous ministrations of a man's-size handkerchief.
She greeted Betty with a cordial ”how-de-doo,” motioned her to the other chair at the table (Betty had a fleeting wish that she might have dusted it before she sat down), and asked what she could do for her.
”I'm from Mr. Remington's office,” Betty said, ”Remington and Evans.
He wrote you a note this morning about some cottages that belong to a cousin of his, Mrs. Brewster-Smith.”
”I answered that note by his own messenger,” said E. Eliot. ”He should have got the reply before this.” ”Oh, he got it,” said Betty, ”and was rather upset about it. What I've come for, is to urge you to reconsider.”
E. Eliot smiled rather grimly at her blotting-pad, looked up at Betty, and allowed her smile to change its quality. What she said was not what she had meant to say before she looked up. E. Eliot was always upbraiding herself for being sentimental about youth and beauty in her own s.e.x. She'd never been beautiful, and she'd never been young--not young like Betty. But the upbraidings never did any good.
She said: ”I thought I had considered sufficiently when I answered Mr.
Remington's note. But it's possible I hadn't. What is it you think I may have overlooked?”
”Why,” said Betty, ”George thought the reason you wouldn't take the cottages was because a woman owned them. He used it as a sort of example of how women wouldn't stick together. He said that you probably knew that women were unreasonable and hard to deal with and didn't want the bother.”
It disconcerted Betty a little that E. Eliot interposed no denial at this point, though she'd paused to give her the opportunity.
”You see,” she went on a little breathlessly, ”I'm for women suffrage and economic independence and all that. I think it's perfectly wonderful that you should be doing what you are--showing that women can be just as successful in business as men can. Of course I know that you've got a perfect _right_ to do just what a man would do--refuse to take a piece of business that wasn't worth while. But--but what we hope is, and what we want to show men is, that when women get into politics and business they'll be better and less selfish.”
”Which do you mean will be better?” E. Eliot inquired. ”The politics and the business, or the women?”
”I mean the politics and the business,” Betty told her rather frostily.
Was the woman merely making fun of her?
E. Eliot caught the note. ”I meant my question seriously,” she said. ”It has a certain importance. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead.”
”Well,” Betty said, ”that's about all. George--Mr. Remington--that is--is running for district attorney, and he has come out against suffrage as you know. I thought perhaps this was a chance to convert him a little. It would be a great favor to him, anyway, if you took the cottages; because he doesn't know whom to turn to, if you won't. I didn't come to try to tell you what your duty is, but I thought perhaps you hadn't just looked at it that way.”
”All right,” said E. Eliot. ”Now I'll tell you how I do look at it. In the first place, about doing business for women. It all depends on the woman you're doing business with. If she's had the business training of a man, she's as easy to deal with as a man. If she's never had any business training at all, if business doesn't mean anything to her except some vague hocus-pocus that produces her income, then she's seven kinds of a Tartar.
”She has no more notion about what she has a right to expect from other people, or what they've a right to expect from her, than a white Angora cat. Of course, the majority of women who have property to attend to have had it dumped on their hands in middle life, or after, by the wills of loving husbands. Those women, I'll say frankly, are the devil and all to deal with. But it's their husbands' and fathers' fault, and not their own. Anyhow, that isn't the reason I wouldn't take those cottages.