V
In the interest of common decency it was necessary for the women of
the local to take action on this matter. At least, a couple of them
thought so, and quite independently and without pre-arrangement they
called on Lizzie next day and told her that she should come more
frequently to meetings, and keep herself acquainted with the new
ideas of advanced feminism. And so when Jimmie came home that night,
he found his wife dissolved in tears and there was a most harrowing
scene.
For poor Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser, had had no
chance whatever to familiarize herself with the new ideas of
advanced feminism. Her notions of "free unions" had been derived
from a quite different world, whose ideas were not new, but on the
contrary very, very old, and were "advanced" only on the road to
perdition. She judged Jimmie's behaviour according to thoroughly old
standards, and she was broken-hearted, overwhelmed with grief and
shame. He was like all the rest of men--and when she had fondly
thought he was different! He despised her and spit upon her--a woman
he had picked up in a brothel.
Poor Jimmie was stunned. He was conscious of no disrespect for
Lizzie, it had not occurred to him to think that she might take the
matter that way. But so she had taken it, beyond doubt, and with
intensity that frightened him. He would not have believed that so
many tears could stream from one woman's eyes--nor that his good,
broad-faced, honest wife could be so abject in her misery. "Oh, I
knowed it, I knowed it all along--it would be that way! I hadn't
never ought to married you--you know I told you so?"
"But, Lizzie!" pleaded the husband. "You're mistaken. That hadn't
nothin' to do with it."
She turned upon him wildly, her fingers stuck out as if she would
claw him. "You mean to tell me if you hadn't 'a married a woman off
the street, you'd 'a gone chasin' a fluffy-haired girl? If you'd 'a
had a decent wife, that you knowed had some rights--"
"Lizzie!" he protested in consternation. "Listen here--"
But she was not to be stopped. "Everybody said I was a fool; but I
went an' done it, 'cause you swore you'd never hold it up to me! An'
I went an' had them children"--Lizzie swept her arm at the
children, as if to wipe them off the earth, to which they had come
by a cruel mistake.
Jimmie Junior, who was old enough to know that something serious was
happening, and whose instinct was all against being wiped off the
earth, began to howl wildly; and that set off the little ones--soon
they were all three of them going at the top of their lungs.
"Boo-hoo-hoo!"
It was truly a terrible climax to a romance. Jimmie, almost
distracted, seized the hand of his injured spouse. "It's all
nonsense!" he cried. "What they been tellin' you! I ain't done a
thing, Lizzie! I only walked home with her one night."
But Lizzie answered that one night was plenty enough--she knew that
from intimate and hateful experience. "And I know them fluffy-headed
kind that frizzes their hair. What does she want to walk home at
night with married men fer? And talkin' about the things she does--"
"She don't mean no harm, Lizzie--she's tryin' to help workin' women.
It's what's called birth control--she wants to teach women--"
"If she wants to TEACH women, why don't she TALK to the women!
What's she all the time talkin' to MEN fer? You think you can tell
me tales like that--me, that's been what I have?" And Lizzie went
off into another fit, worse than ever.
