John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“And that, gentlemen,” interrupts the editor, “may well be the salvation of our fair city.”

The men laugh again and Milsap wishes he had just let it slide.

“I thank you for your concern for our — our ve ra city, Drew, but we have a public duty to fulfill. We mustn’t let mere facts stand in the way of larger truths.”

“Yes sir.”

“And I’ve decided to move the article describing Mrs. Felton’s little soirée tonight to the first page, bottom right.”

“I’d just ignore the old crow,” says Walker Taylor.

“You may do just that,” smiles the editor. “But she has the more soft-headed of our local ladies in a dither, and that makes her appearance in our city news . And I have heard tell that her advocacy has been drifting in a more — a more per tinent direction of late.”

“I’ll make it fit, sir,” offers Milsap.

Mr. Clawson looks away from him then, finished, and glances at his hand. “I am going to raise you gentlemen ten cents.”

Milsap turns and immediately passes Mr. J. Allen Taylor, the colonel’s younger brother, looking impatient as he always does when he visits. Half the big wheels in town in the office, something big cooking no doubt, and he has to go pester Mr. Clawson with trifles.

“Fresh meat!” the editor calls from inside his office. “Sit down, young man, and we’ll deal you in.”

There are more men in the hall this evening than Miss Loretta has ever seen at a Suffrage lecture. One will note a half-dozen scattered, sympathetic clergymen, a few scoffers who come to sit with folded arms and tight smiles or stand at the side of the aisle for the entire program making the ushers uneasy, now and then a reporter for one of the newspapers scribbling unkind observations and chuckling to themselves. But tonight they are nearly a third of the audience, including some hard-looking types who might not be expected to be able to afford the “donation” at the door. The fellow beside her, a solid little man in a brown checked suit, needs to be reminded to remove his bowler by the woman behind.

As for the women, Miss Loretta is surprised at some of the faces she recognizes, representatives from many of Wilmington’s finest families among them. The controversial nature of Mrs. Felton’s views has no doubt kept the meek, the uncommitted, from attending so public a gathering, and she is heartened by the turnout. If the cause is to succeed it will need the support, the strength of Southern women.

“It has been said that we are whiners .”

The Suffragist is in excellent form. Miss Loretta has always admired her aptitude for speaking forcefully and intelligently without surrendering any of her feminine grace. She is credited, not always unkindly, with being the mastermind of her husband’s political campaigns, and somehow his popularity with an all-male electorate has not been damaged by his wife’s outspoken advocacy of a widely derided position.

“It has been said that we are the most privileged class the world has ever known.”

The Suffragist’s voice is strong, almost musical. She stands on the stage behind a lectern draped with the American flag, wearing a slate-gray ensemble and a hat enlivened by a corona of violets.

“It has been said that we are so elevated in the regard of our menfolk, so cosseted, that to desire more is a display of not only folly, but greed.”

Miss Loretta has seen Mrs. Felton unravel the plans of an inebriated disrupter with nothing more than her Southern woman’s irony, drawing him sweetly into a logical argument, seeming to agree with him, leading him deeper and deeper before delivering her fatal thrust. She has perfected the tactic of presenting men’s intransigence about Suffrage not as brutal and hard-hearted, but as weak and unworthy of their manhood.

“I will admit it for myself,” she says with a coy smile. “Yes, I am greedy.”

Polite laughter from the ladies, some of whom have heard this gambit before and know where it is leading. Miss Loretta realizes that the man beside her is making a noise, a perhaps unconscious growling sound, barely perceptible during the speaker’s dramatic pauses.

“And yes, I would venture, many of you fine women sitting before me share that greed. Yes , women desire to be educated. Yes , women desire to escape the drudgery and debasement of rural servitude. And yes ,” here she looks to every corner of the hall, seeking out the eyes of the men, “women desire Suffrage. Without the vote we are mere spectators, fated to serve as handmaidens to the powerful but never to share in the administration of that power. Slaves, if you will, to the whims and stubbornness of the so-called ‘stronger sex.’ ”

The man in the brown suit sits coiled and tight beside Miss Loretta, growling, if that is how one would describe the noise, even more loudly now. She leans out into the aisle and casts a glance backward to see where there might be someone to intercede if he proves dangerous.

“But with power,” the Suffragist continues, “comes responsi bil ity. A responsibility that is sadly lacking in our present administration in regards to their unholy alliance with a—” and here she looks around the hall again, as if searching for the parties she is about to malign, and though finding none, lowers her voice with the delicacy appropriate to public criticism, “—a less morally de vel oped segment of our citizenry.”

It can’t be.

Miss Loretta feels her cheeks begin to burn. This is wrong, this is not where it is supposed to lead. She had not believed Daddy when he told her, had refused to read the article in the newspaper, replying that as she had never heard him refer to its editors as anything but liars and scoundrels, why would she believe a slander they printed about Mrs. Felton, whose views they so airily disparage whenever given the opportunity?

“See for yourself,” he grumbled, “but don’t blame me for being the messenger.”

Daddy is a man with no idols. Even Mr. Lincoln, whose words and deeds he admired on the whole, was “still a politician” and therefore the object of some contempt. Even Socrates, endlessly quoted during her childhood and ever since, is not beyond reproach. “A Greek,” Daddy will say cryptically, leaving the nature of that particular shortcoming to her imagination.

“For the want of political gain,” the great lady goes on, indignation creeping into her voice, “these white men have initiated the ne gro into the mysteries of the ballot box, confounding him with tall stories and outright bribery in exchange for his vote!”

The Suffragist says vote with disgust, a dirty thing in her mouth. The man in the brown suit has begun to rock slightly to and fro in his seat, the movement somewhat indecent, his burning eyes fixed on the speaker. There have been reports, a new one practically every day, that indicate a rash, no, an epidemic of black men inflicting the “nameless crime” upon innocent white women. Six of them — or is it nine, or fourteen? Some of the stories end with the tree and the rope, others with only the howl of outraged Southern Manhood. Daddy, of course, with his contempt for the Fourth Estate, especially as it is manifested in North Carolina, remains unconvinced.

“Can it then surprise us that once allowed to break our election laws with impunity, these creatures assume they may engage in theft, rapine, and murder without fear of retribution?”

Grumbles among the audience members, male voices for the most part. The Suffragist begins to increase her volume, laying a foundation for her crescendo , lowering her register, now that she knows she has the men with her, from a soft coloratura to a hearty tenore spinto .