Watchfires (28 page)

"Don't be too sure!"

It was a mark of how far they had come together that they could both laugh.

"I'm better off that way than you are, I suppose," Rosalie continued more pensively. "Dexter and the boys don't really need me now. But why should Papa be any more your burden than mine or Lily's or Annie's? That's another thing we must establish. That a woman shouldn't have to marry to be taken seriously!"

"I suppose you wives save the race from extinction."

"And it's a great question if it's worth it. Sometimes I wonder, Jo, if I don't go in for causes just to give myself something to do. That I may care more for the fight than the victory. That I'm basically no different from the old abolitionists who used the slave to smite the master."

But Jo had no patience with this recurrent mood of her sister's. "You're discontented because you've never been given a proper chance to exercise your talents, and you've never been given that chance because you're a woman! Maybe that's too simple. Maybe I'm too simple. But I continue to see it that way."

Sitting, an hour later, beside Jo on a little gilt chair in the meeting at Silas Cranberry's marble hall while their host discoursed on the continued wrongs of the black man, it occurred to Rosalie that he would have been perfectly cast as Simon Legree in the stage version of Mrs. Stowe's novel. He had small red eyes, a bald head and a round belly under a scarlet vest that he constantly stroked. The statues of ancient Romans with which he had filled the chamber seemed to represent his rather desperate effort to reduce their ordered world to a frozen catacomb under the dominion of the storekeeper.

"The articles of impeachment have now been drawn," the nasal voice droned on. "We may shortly expect to see the machinery of our government go into action. Let Andrew Johnson be a lesson to posterity of what happens to the politician who stands between the black man and the voting privilege that three hundred thousand of our boys in blue perished to give him!"

Rosalie found herself speculating on the origin of the anti-Southern fury in this small unlovely man. Had the stately wife of some great Southern planter, sweeping through his store on a Manhattan visit in ante-bellum days, treated the proprietor as a mere salesclerk? Or had he found himself, on some trip to Atlanta or Richmond to establish a branch store, treated as a Yankee drummer? On such incidents did history depend? She noticed now that the six portrait busts on the shelf to her right were not, like the larger statues, modern Roman pieces romantically inspired, but genuine products of what she took to be the Augustan era. And it struck her that the heavy, jowly look, common to all six, the suspicious eyes, the disapproving frown, were traits of the American business male.

"Who would have dreamed," the voice continued, "when a small, select assemblage of Southern aristocrats built the institution of slavery into the scaffolding of an apparent democracy, that in less than a century the day of equal opportunity would dawn?"

Rosalie saw her husband slip into the room by a side door and take the nearest empty chair. Was he, too, a Roman? She recalled how irked he had been, some years before, when she had observed there were no gentlemen in New York society. The men were all burghers, as the Romans had been burghers: their features proved it. And that might have been the reason that women had played as small a role in American as in Roman history. There were no Nell Gwyns, no Madame de Pompadours; the men cared only for money. Well, women, too, could enter the money market!

"There are those who say the war is over, so why should we not have peace? But, ladies and gentlemen, the war is
not
over. We are merely in a state of truce, a cessation of hostilities, that began on the fatal day at Appomattox when our otherwise glorious General Grant, in the exuberance of his dearly earned victory, granted such fatally lenient terms to the foe. The war is not over, and will not be over, until every black male in the former rebel states is free to cast his vote without fear of intimidation!"

Rosalie jumped to her feet amid the applause that followed.

"May I make a motion, Mr. Chairman?"

"What is your motion, Mrs. Fairchild?"

"I move that this committee pledge itself to promote the right to vote of the American female, whether black or white, or of any other color, with the same vigor as it does the right of the American negro male!"

The room was silent for a moment. Then the women, who constituted a third of the assembly, began to applaud, at first lightly. Finally a minority of them began to call out their approval. Cranberry raised his arm for silence.

"I agree that the right of women to vote should receive our serious attention. But the motion is premature. Neither this committee, nor the national association, has yet decided that women should vote at all. Even if we anticipate an affirmative answer on that issue, we are not yet in a position to promote it. Why should implementing the vote of the negro male, which now has the approval of the entire association, be delayed? Let us not divide our forces. Let us stay together and strike our blows in order!"

"But what assurance do women have," Rosalie protested in a louder tone, "that their rights will ever be considered? We have known too many delays before."

"It is not unreasonable to ask you women to delay the issue for a bit. You have not suffered as the negroes have. You have not endured the ultimate indignity of slavery."

"Have black women not suffered it? And have not all women, of every color, been denied their elementary rights from the very dawn of what you men call civilization? Before slavery ever existed?"

Cranberry began to show his ire. "We fought the war to abolish slavery! Not to give women the vote!"

"I had hoped we had fought the war to abolish the exploitation of one human being by another. Why do you wish to give the vote to some black man who cannot sign his name, who very possibily cannot distinguish between New York and China, and deny it to me?"

"Because he doesn't talk me to death!"

There were cries of "Shame," and Rosalie saw Dexter leap to his feet.

"I say, Cranberry, that won't do!"

"All right, all right, I apologize. But really and truly, are we to have the fruits of our victory snatched from our hands by women who invent new aims that the war was fought for? Suppose Mrs. Fairchild were now to suggest that the war had been fought for unwed mothers, could those unfortunates muscle in on the black man's struggle for the ballot?"

"Mr. Cranberry has no concern with how the black man votes," Rosalie exclaimed, addressing herself now to the room. "He knows that those votes will be cast in states where he does no business. But he cares a great deal how
women
may vote, should they be enfranchised. Because he knows that his hundreds of peons, his half-starved female clerks, would soon be voting for a minimum wage!"

At this there was an uproar. Half the audience jumped to their feet, mostly declaiming against Rosalie, but several women began shouting in her favor.

"There is a motion on the floor!" a woman cried at last over the din.

"But not seconded," retorted Cranberry.

"I second it!" The voice was Jo's.

"All those in favor raise their right hand."

Barely a quarter of those attending complied, and the motion was lost. Rosalie noted with bitterness that Dexter sat grimly in his seat, both hands in his pockets.

"I resign from this association!" she announced, rising again to her feet. "And I hope that every woman in this room will follow me out!"

Going to the doorway she turned to face the chamber. Jo was already at her side. Dexter was with them, but she noted that he was concerned only with retrieving his coat from the butler. Of the thirty women present, some dozen moved to join the sisters. Rosalie solemnly embraced each one of them.

***

Dexter took Rosalie home in his coupé, Jo having taken her father's carriage. He did not say a word all the way up Broadway. As they passed Grace Church, she broke the silence at last.

"Oh, go ahead and say it, Dexter! That you're horrified."

He looked with pained surprise at Rosalie's angry profile. Had she lost
all
sense of a husband's prerogative? Because he had leaned so far backwards to go along with her activities, was he now "estopped," as one might say in law, from making any protest at the prospect of his home being turned into a permanent club for noisy women? He had been disgusted by the scene he had just witnessed, appalled by the clamoring females and half-sympathetic even with the loathsome Cranberry, who, in his opinion, had been unreasonably hounded into losing his temper.

"You planned this whole thing in advance," he protested. "Don't you think you might have warned me what I was going to face today?"

"What would have been the use? I knew you'd be opposed to it. And, I'd already made up my mind."

"Let me get it straight, Rosalie. Is it your position that I should accept the almost certain loss of one of my biggest clients and the conversion of my domestic peace into a hideous uproar, without a murmur?"

"It's my position that in the biggest decision of my life you might have supported me!"

"I didn't vote against you." He was too appalled at her identification of the "biggest" decision to comment on the lesser one that it uncovered.

"You abstained. It amounted to the same thing."

"But, Rosalie, you know I back you in everything you do! That doesn't mean I have to
agree
with you, does it? I haven't yet made up my own mind how I stand on votes for women. Am I to be stampeded into it?"

"I suppose I'm showing the weakness of my sex," she replied bitterly. "But, yes, I
did
want you to vote with me. Regardless of your convictions. I wanted you to stand with me in my moment of crisis. I gave up my hospital ship for you! Oh, I know you never asked me to, but I did. And I forgave you your affair with Annie. I suppose it's unworthy of me to mention that, but I did. And I've entertained your clients and raised your children. I've been a good brownstone wife. And now that at fifty I begin to see at last how to work for a cause in which I passionately believe, now that I want this
one
thing for Rosalie Fairchild, all you can talk about is your domestic peace!"

"You know I love you."

"But what will you
do
for me?" she demanded passionately. "I guess I'm sentimental enough to have wanted you to make
one
gesture for me! Regardless of your prejudices!"

Dexter looked out the window at the dripping iron portals of a store front in the gas light of a street lamp. It was raining. He felt the old urge to surrender to her, the old need to comfort and console her, to protect her from the pain that seemed to throb in every pore of her large sensitive body. But now the image of those shouting women intervened. Was a man to be left with nothing—stripped, castrated, flung out in the dark wet street? He closed his eyes and almost groaned with the difficulty of
not
giving in.

"I'm sorry, dear," he murmured. "I do not see how I could have behaved differently. You ask too much."

"Well, I shall ask for nothing more," she retorted, turning to show him eyes filled with tears. "And I warn you, Dexter, nothing is going to stop me now! I'm going to speak out for women's votes at every street corner of this town. I'm going to campaign throughout the state. Who knows? Maybe throughout the nation. I may be hissed and booed. I may be tarred and feathered. I may even be jailed! But I know now what I am and what I shall be!"

"Rosalie," he begged her, "even if you don't care what you do to me, can't you think of the boys?"

"Fred won't give a hoot. He's completely obsessed with his sordid Erie battle. And Selby approves of me!"

Silence fell between them, and he found it in him, even now, to wonder if it wouldn't be more fun to be on her and Selby's side. But staring down, fascinated, into the black, eddying gulf of his self-pity, he knew that he was not going to resist the impulse to plunge.

S
ELBY
F
AIRCHILD
, on a clear, cold Sunday afternoon, paused in Madison Square to contemplate the house at which he proposed to call. It was spandy new, midway between a standard brownstone and a mansion, an oblong standing clear of other edifices, yet designed so as to fit as neatly as a brick into a box, should the owner be required one day to sell its yard to a builder. Yankee foresight, Selby reflected. The front that faced the square was of brownstone with four tiers of windows, three to a floor, and a grilled doorway, but the long side that presented itself to his view was painted pleasantly red with the same number of windows and several bricked-up frames. Seth Bristow had bought the house only six months before from the man who had built it but lost his fortune before moving in. Such was the history of Manhattan real estate.

The front door opened at his approach, and he passed, after surrendering his coat and top hat to a footman, down a dark corridor to the darker parlor in back. The curtains had been drawn for Mrs. Bristow's reception, though it was only three o'clock, and the gas lights and candelabra were aglow as for an evening party. Behind his host and hostess was a huge canvas on which the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome were seen turning thumbs down in response to a red-faced, hirsute gladiator's call for their verdict as to the victim sprawling in the arena sand under his heel. The curtains of the Bristows' great chamber, the rugs, the coverings of the chairs and ottomans, were all of the same dark, murky red. Mahogany, wherever it peeked out, was black and twisted. There was a glint of gold and silver on the sideboards and tables.

Mrs. Bristow, pale-faced and nervous, with black, darting eyes and hands that moved like snakes' heads, greeted him with effusion.

"We were so hoping for a visit from your grandfather this afternoon. But dear Miss Handy sent me a sweet note to say that the old gentleman has a cold. I trust it's nothing serious. Oh, it's not? Good! One must be so careful at his age. I hardly like the idea that my uncle said he might drop in today. The dear man should look out for himself, particularly with this terrible Erie battle going on! And how are your distinguished parents? I should love to see them one day. Do you think they'd come? And what about dear Mr. and Mrs. Van Rensselaer?"