Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1913 — GEORGIE’S REVENGE [ARTICLE]

GEORGIE’S REVENGE

lit Was Carried Out at the Big International Suffrage Mass Meeting.

By MARIE LA ROQUE.

Georgiana Flaxworthy was really two individuals. First there was Captain Flaxworthy the ward leader of •the suffragists, militant and otherwise, whose picture appeared at frequent intervals in the evening papers on the occasion of any suffrage demonstration, whether Captain Georgiana had on had not been Involved. This was the individual who rode like a duchess in smiling complacency at the head of the suffrage parades, who feared neither the law nor the polite—nor the jibes of her friends — when doing picket duty for her striking “working girl sisters,” and who

spoke with the conviction of a veteran at suffrage mass meetings- and made her listeners wonder as they sat under the spell of her voice whether, after all, “woman's sphere was not outside the home,” “whether there was not in store for women a broader, shore comprehensive destiny than that bounded by the selfishness of husbands, the rearing of children and domestic drudgery.” Captain Georgiana Flaxworthy was the suffrage beauty. That is why—though you wouldn’t have dared to tell her —her picture appeared with such persistency in the evening papers, why she was appointed to ride at the head of the suffrage parades, ■why the police and the law allowed her to picket unmolested and why her audiences listened willingly to her long-drawn-out speeches. Then there was the other individual known as Georgle Flaxworthy. Her knees used to tremble and lips go dry with stage fright just the minute before the' illustrious Georgiana was about to make a speech, and used to rebel against Georgiana’s predilections for picket duty. On one occasion especially, when Georgie had been looking forward for a week to spending a Saturday afternoon on the golfltoks ■with Roderick Clayton, Georgiana had interfered at the last minute. Between Georgie and Roderick there was the understanding of an engagement, but Georgiana was convinced of Roderick’s inability to comprehend the “independent aspects of her nature.” z Georgiana had interfered for the sake pf a suffrage mass meeting to be held for the edification of the “Amalgamated Pin Makers’ Union,” where Georgiana had been asked to make a speech. She had her way but Georgie planned revenge. There was to be a big, recordsmashing, headline, international suf-, frage convention in the early autumn at a seaside resort near the city where Jfliss Flaxworthy and Roderick Clayton abode, and for a few weeks Georgiana had been carrying out her share of the preparations, chartering a hotel, using her influence to secure a parole for a famous window-smashing suffragette from London who was coming to America for the sake of a thir-ty-minute speech, and using her tact and wits to allay friction in the various suffrage camps. All this time Georgie had been in the background. But Georgie asserted herself the might before Miss Flaxworthy left home for the grand convention. It was late and she was just about to pack the requisites of apparel into her email trunk —a trunk much belabeled ■with "Votes for Women” pasters. Sud•denly Georgie had an inspiration. She had not seen Roderick for a week, his letters had been glanced at hastily and tucked away Qtaanswered. Georgiana, mot Georgie, had been Indifferent, but mow Georgie took the letters and read them over slowly. It was late —midnight—but still there was time. She hurried to her bedside telephone and called up Roderick’s club where, until he could persuade Georgie to marry him, he made his home. He had gone to bed, said the club attendant. Roderick, not being so aware of his own importance to the community as Georgiana was of hers had no bedside telephone, but Georgie insisted that he be called from his room and after five minutes Georgie was speaking to him, sleepy and not quite sure that he wasn’t dreaming. “Can’t you come down to the seashore for the week end? The convention can’t take ail of my time. I couldn’t stand it all the time. I want you to be there to play with —to break the monotony of so many, many women. You can stay at the hotel at the other end of the beach—” this in answer to Roderick’s protestation against being a mere man in such a feminine atmosphere—“and then when I have times you can take me motoring. Please.” Roderick, even in his sleepy mood, needed no long-sustained persuasion. He would go anywhere, even to a suffrage convention, to be with Georgie and that was all any man could do. Georgie was having her inning. She passed the mirror as she went toward her trunk and cast at herself a glance iof animated defiance, defiance that dared in spite of Georgiana. Then Georgie deliberately went to the trunk and took out almost all the things that Georgiana had put In —the 'Slouch mannish hat, with its votes-for-women band, the masculine tallterimades, the severely simple dinner gowns and in their place she tucked Tussles and furbelows —a foolish pink Inlng dress, three seasons out of (fashion, just because Roderick had illlwd it. She got out a parasol—Georgia, not Georgiana, could always make £ood use of a parasol—and then,

afraid that her good work might be undone Georgie locked the trunk and Btrapped.it. f “Now, even if I have changed my mind by morning, I won’t have time to unpack,” said Georgie and went to sleep that night to dream, unmolested, of Roderick.

It was Georgiana who woke bright and early the next morning to the call of the bedside ’phone. It was from suffrage headquarters, and so absorbed was Georgiana with the business of the day that she did not recall the events of the night before. For the day Georgiana was in her element. With the delegates she went down to the seashore, a brilliant sash worn around her mannish coat proclaiming her a ward captain of the suffragists, and it was not till the close of a busy day of speech making and •meeting the international delegates and she had hurried to her room to dress for dinner that the sight of her trunk reminded her of Roderick. She dressed, because there was nothing else to do, in one of th§ silly frou-frou dresses Roderick liked so well. Georgiana had never worn it before and it proved disconcerting. As she passed from her room to the hall she surveyed her image in the mirror with stern disapproval. She had expected to be the personification of independent womanhood, in severely fashionable raiment but there actually was, her reflection told her, nothing at all suggestive of independence about her. * That w’as the beginning of the trouble, Georgiana was sure, The reason why she didn’t carry through her part as toast mistress with her usual flying c lors was because she didn't look the part, and not looking the part she couldn’t act it. Besides the militant jvindow-smasher from England had not appeared. She had been detained at the cablegram said, and was going back to Hallowell. This was a disappointment to the militant wing of the convention. They blamed Miss Flaxworthy for the failure and accused her of being antimilitant. After the introduction of the last speaker a hotel page placed a note in her hand and with the eyes of half the delegates fixed upon her she read: “I am waiting in the lobby for you, Roderick.” Georgie, it was Georgie then, merely bowed by way of excusing herself from the table and went out, her face pink with excitement and her eyes soft and lovely from weariness. Roderick Stood there and, making no explanation, crushed the pink froufrous into one of his own big coats and led her out of the hotel into his motor car.

Georgie listened to him tell her as they rode through the dark roads of his ambitions and aspirations in a way that made no allowances for the “independent aspects of her nature,” but called in the fullness of giving for her whole being. Georgie expected that he was going to chide her for her recent neglect. She felt that she owed him an apology. “I don’t know how I could have been so negligent,” he said. The convention and the delegates seemed very far away from Georgie then. “I love you more than anything else in the world, Roderick.” Georgie said this more for her Georgiana self to hear than for Roderick. “Roderick I do,” she persisted. “Make me swear to give up all the rest for you.” And in that oath sworn in the still wooded road of the seashore Georgiana withdrew forever. (Copyright, 1913, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)