Making People Happy. Buchanan Thompson
Making People Happy
CHAPTER I
The bride hammered the table desperately with her gavel. In vain! The room was in pandemonium.
The lithe and curving form of the girl – for she was only twenty, although already a wife – was tense now as she stood there in her own drawing-room, stoutly battling to bring order out of chaos. Usually the creamy pallor of her cheeks was only most daintily touched with rose: at this moment the crimson of excitement burned fiercely. Usually her eyes of amber were soft and tender: now they were glowing with an indignation that was half-wrath.
Still the bride beat a tattoo of outraged authority with the gavel, wholly without avail. The confusion that reigned in the charming drawing-room of Cicily Hamilton did but grow momently the more confounded. The Civitas Club was in full operation, and would brook no restraint. Each of the twelve women, who were ranged in chairs facing the presiding officer, was talking loudly and swiftly and incessantly. None paid the slightest heed to the frantic appeal of the gavel… Then, at last, the harassed bride reached the limit of endurance. She threw the gavel from her angrily, and cried out shrilly above the massed clamor of the other voices:
"If you don't stop," she declared vehemently, "I'll never speak to one of you again!"
That wail of protest was not without its effect. There came a chorus of ejaculations; but the monologues had been efficiently interrupted, and the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in a tone of exceeding bitterness:
"And we came together in love!"
At that, Cicily Hamilton forgot her petulance over the tumult, and smiled with the sweetness that was characteristic of her.
"Really, you know," she confessed, almost contritely, "I don't like to lecture you in my own house; but we came together for a serious purpose, and you are just as rude as if you'd merely come to tea."
One of the women in the front row of chairs uttered a crisp cry of approval. This was Mrs. Flynn, a visiting militant suffragette from England. Her aggressive manner and the eager expression of her narrow face with the gleaming black eyes declared that this woman of forty was by nature a fighter who delighted in the fray.
"Yes; Mrs. Hamilton is right," was her caustic comment. "We are forgetting our great work – the emancipation of woman!"
Cicily beamed approval on the speaker; but she inverted the other's phrase:
"Yes," she agreed, "our great work – the subjugation of man!"
The statement was not, however, allowed to go unchallenged. Helen Johnson, who was well along in the twenties at least, and still a spinster, prided herself on her powers of conquest, despite the fact that she had no husband to show for it. So, now, she spoke with an air of languid superiority:
"Oh, we've already accomplished the subjugation of man," she drawled, and smiled complacently.
"Some of us have," Cicily retorted; and the accent on the first word pointed the allusion.
"Oh, hush, dear!" The chiding whisper came from Mrs. Delancy, a gray-haired woman of sixty-five, somewhat inclined to stoutness and having a handsome, kindly face. She was the aunt of Cicily, and had reared the motherless girl in her New York home. Now, on a visit to her niece, the bride of a year, she found herself inevitably involved in the somewhat turbulent session of the Civitas Club, with which as yet she enjoyed no great amount of sympathy. Her position in the chair nearest the presiding officer gave her opportunity to voice the rebuke without being overheard by anyone save the militant Mrs. Flynn, who smiled covertly.
Cicily bent forward, and spoke softly to her aunt's ear:
"I just had to say it, auntie," she avowed happily. "You know, she tried her hardest to catch Charles."
Mrs. Morton, a middle-aged society woman, who displayed sporadic interest in the cause of woman during the dull season, now rose from the chair immediately behind Mrs. Flynn, and spoke with a tone of great decisiveness:
"Yes, ladies of the Civitas Club, Mrs. Flynn is perfectly right." She indicated the identity of the militant suffragette, who was a stranger to most of those in the company, by a sweeping gesture. "It is our duty to follow firmly on the path which our sister has indicated toward the emancipation of woman. We should get the club started at once, and the work done immediately. Lent will be over soon, and then there will be no time for it."
"Yes, indeed," Cicily agreed enthusiastically, as Mrs. Morton again subsided into her chair; "let's get the club going right away." The presiding officer hesitated for a moment, fumbling among the papers on the table. "What's the name – ? Oh, here it is!" she concluded, lifting a sheet from the litter before her. "Listen! It's the Civitas Society for the Uplift of Woman and for Encouraging the Spread of Social Equality among the Masses."
As this gratifyingly sonorous designation was enunciated by Cicily in her most impressive voice, the members of the club straightened in their places with obvious pride, and there was a burst of hand-clapping. Ruth Howard's great eyes rolled delightedly.
"Oh," she gushed, "isn't it a darling duck of a name! Let's see – the Vivitas Society for – for – what is it for, anyhow?"
Cicily came to the rescue of the forgetful zealot.
"It's for the purpose of bringing men and women closer together," she explained with dignity.
Miss Johnson gushed approval with her usual air of coquettish superiority.
"Oh, read it again, Cicily," she urged. "It's so inspiring!"
"Yes, do read it again," a number of enthusiasts cried in chorus.
The presiding officer was on the point of complying with the demand for a repetition of the sonorous nomenclature:
"The Civitas Society for – " she began, with stately emphasis. But she broke off abruptly, under the impulse of a change in mood. "Oh, what's the use?" she questioned flippantly. "You'll all get copies of it in full in your mail to-morrow morning." Mightily pleased with this labor-saving expedient, Cicily beamed on her fellow club-members. "What next?" she inquired, amiably.
Mrs. Carrington rose to her feet, and addressed the assembly with that dignity befitting one deeply experienced in parliamentary exercises.
"Having voted on the name," she remarked ponderously, evidently undisturbed by the exceedingly informal nature of the voting, if such it could be called, "I think it is now time for us to start the society." She stared condescendingly through her lorgnette at the duly impressed company, and sank back into her chair.
There were many exclamations of assent to Mrs. Carrington's timely proposal, and much nodding of heads. Plainly, the ladies were minded to start the society forthwith. Unhappily, however, there remained an obstacle to the accomplishment of that desirable end – a somewhat general ignorance as to the proper method of procedure. Ruth Howard turned the gaze of her large brown eyes wistfully on Mrs. Carrington, and voiced the dilemma by a question:
"How do we start?" she asked, in a tone of gentle wonder.
Before Mrs. Carrington could formulate a reply to this pertinent interrogation, the militant suffragette from England began an oration.
"The start of a great movement such as is this," Mrs. Flynn declaimed, "is like unto the start of a great race, or the start of a noble sport; it is like – "
Cicily was so enthusiastic over this explanation that she interrupted the speaker in order to demonstrate the fact that she understood the matter perfectly.
"You mean," she exclaimed joyously, "that you blow a whistle, or shoot a pistol!"
This appalling ignorance of parliamentary tactics induced some of the more learned to ill-concealed titters; Miss Johnson permitted herself to laugh in a gurgling note that she affected. But it was Mrs. Carrington who took it on herself to utter a veiled rebuke.
"I fear Mrs. Hamilton has not been a member of many clubs," she remarked, icily.
At Miss Johnson's open flouting, Cicily had flushed