Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER XI
”Miss Kent, it is quite evident that you do not approve of us.”
”Will you be so kind as to explain to whom 'us' refers?”
”Our great social world, including government, congressional and diplomatic circles, club life, and all that 'progress' stands for.
Instead of moving abreast with the 'advance' current, you have drifted aside into an eddy as contracted, as pitiably narrow as--pardon me, we emanc.i.p.ated new women dare now to speak the brazen truth--as narrow as the hands and feet you Southerners boast as sign of aristocratic blood.”
Eglah lifted her grey-gloved hand, examined its outlines critically, and placed it within a few inches of the broad, thick palm which Ethelberta Higginbottom had laid on her own lap as she sat in the gallery of the Senate chamber.
”Thank you very much, Miss Higginbottom. It is traditional in my family to admire slender fingers, but we are not so intolerant as to deny others the privilege of occupying as much s.p.a.ce as their digits can cover, and we never brand people as absolutely disreputable because they wear number six shoes and number seven-and-a-half gloves. If degrees of lat.i.tude determine the height of insteps, what manifest injustice has been meted out to longitudinal lines that you Westerners so proudly claim? Probably you have forgotten that my father is from New England, and he owns a silver caddy--two hundred years old--that was empty at one time because 'fish drank tea in Boston harbor.'”
”Oh, but your mother was Southern and you represent not heredity, but sheredity, a sociological factor of immense potency, which must be reckoned with, let me tell you, in the near future, when women fully emanc.i.p.ated come to enjoyment of all the rights so long withheld from them. Then mothers, and not fathers will wield the destiny of this great country; and already female colleges are fast spreading the blessed gospel of free and equal rights. Last week some one a.s.serted that you were a graduate of ---- College, but I contradicted it flatly, as impossible and absurd.”
”I am sorry I do my dear _Alma Mater_ such lamentable discredit; but, unfortunately, we were not taught to wear our diplomas on our hats as advertis.e.m.e.nts of scholars.h.i.+p.”
”You certainly amaze me!”
”Perhaps you will excuse my frankness in a.s.suring you that sensation at least is mutual.”
”With your educational advantages, to lock up your mind in a stockade of provincialism! Desectionalize yourself!”
”May I ask whether you spell your last verb with an x or a ct? I should prefer first to ascertain which process is demanded of me.”
”Your Southern bigotry is a mill-stone around your neck. The very word 'emanc.i.p.ation' is a red rag to old slaveholders and their progeny. You never can forgive us for breaking the shackles of groaning millions held in bondage.”
Eglah laughed.
”Pardon me, but it certainly is ludicrous that one possessing your 'broad culture and desectionalized' horizon of thought should really believe in that old worn-out 'raw-head and b.l.o.o.d.y-bones' figure of speech which has done duty so long. It surely is ent.i.tled to decent interment where all dilapidated scarecrows cease from troubling. We Southern people no more want our negroes back as slaves than you desire the return of hordes of Indians whom you so completely dispossessed of their native lands in your 'wild and rapacious West,' and whom a 'white, fatherly' government is rapidly reducing to extinction by its beneficent agencies. The white South is 'emanc.i.p.ated' from the moral responsibility of elevating the black race now so happy in 'national' tutelage, where their guardians taught them the system of bookkeeping and all the subtle processes of the 'Freedmen's Bureau.'”
”How lonely you must feel in Was.h.i.+ngton. You have no more regard for the rights of your own s.e.x than for--” She stammered and coughed.
”Indeed, I have the most affectionate and jealous regard for every right that inheres in my dower of American womanhood. I claim and enjoy the right to be as cultured, as learned, as useful, and--if you please--as ornamental in society and at home as my individual limitations will permit. I have no wrongs, no grievances, no crying need to usurp lines of work that will break down the barriers G.o.d set between men and women.
I am not in rebellion against legal statutes, nor the canons of well-established decency and refinement in feminine usage, and, finally, I am so inordinately proud of being a well-born Southern woman, with a full complement of honorable great-grandfathers and blue-blooded, stainless great-grand-mothers, that I have neither pretext nor inclination to revolt against mankind.”
”Miss Kent, you have rather pretty eyes, but you are so steeped in Southern--what do you call it--_dolce far niente_, or _laissez faire_, or semi-stagnation of soul that you are too lazy to open them wide enough to see the thrilling vista of woman's triumph that illumines----”
”Thank you; my much flattered eyes are sufficiently open at this moment to perceive the behavior of that nondescript creature in feminine garments who is flirting so undisguisedly with Senator Smallweed yonder, on your right; one of the early emanc.i.p.ated--an advanced lobbyist.”
”You mean that piquant, charming little Mrs. Morrison? Dear soul! She is a pathetically tragic object lesson. Had to get a divorce from a brutal husband and become a bread-winner. Why should not women lobby? They are so nimble witted, nature fitted them admirably for such work.”
”And gave them the adroitly nimble fingers to fit the pockets they pick.”
”That is some cowardly man's cruel slander. My creed is always to defend my own s.e.x; it is only Christian charity and genuine feminine justice.”
”Provided it be not merely lax morality. Sometimes the distinction is not clear to very 'advanced,' zealous people.”
”At least your father does not share your narrow harshness. He and Mrs.
Morrison are quite 'chummy,' and I happen to know he sees her often.”