_ CHAPTER XIII
The following afternoon, at half-past five, the carelessly dressed, rather slouching figure of Lord Borrodaile might have been seen walking along the Thames Embankment in the neighbourhood of Pimlico Pier. He passed without seeing the only other person visible at that quiet hour--one of the 'unemployed,' like himself, but save in that respect sufficiently unlike the Earl of Borrodaile was the grimy, unshaven tramp collapsed in one corner of the double-seated municipal bench. Lord Borrodaile's fellow-citizen leaned heavily on one of the stout scrolls of ironwork which, repeated at regular intervals on each side, divided the seat into six compartments. No call for any one to notice such a man--there are so many of them in these piping times of peace and prosperity. Then, too, they go crawling about our world protected from notice, as the creatures are who take their colouring from bark or leaf or arctic snows. So these other forms of life, weather-beaten, smoke-begrimed, subdued to the hues of the dusty roads they travel, and the unswept spaces where they sleep--over these the eye glides unseeing.
As little interested in the gentleman as the gentleman was in him, the wastrel contemplated the river with grimly speculative eye. But when suddenly Borrodaile's sauntering figure came to a standstill near the lower end of the bench, the tramp turned his head and watched dully the gloveless hands cross one over the other on the knob of the planted umbrella; the bent head; one hand raised now, groping about the waistcoat, lighting upon what it sought and raising a pince-nez, through which he read the legend scrawled in chalk upon the pavement. With a faint saturnine smile Lord Borrodaile dropped the glass, and took his bearings. He consulted his watch, and walked on.
Upon his return a quarter of an hour later, he viewed the same little-alluring prospect from the opposite side of the street. The tramp still stared at the river, but on his side of the bench, at the other end, sat a lady reading a book. Between the two motionless figures and the parapet, a group of dirty children were wrangling. Lord Borrodaile crossed the wide street and paused a moment just behind the lady. He leaned forward as if to speak to her across the middle division of the bench. But he reconsidered, and turning his back to her, sat down and drew an evening paper out of his pocket. He was so little like that glittering figment, the peer of popular imagination, that the careless sobriety of dress and air in the person of this third occupant of the capacious double bench struck an even less arresting note than the frank wretchedness of the other man.
Presently one of the children burst out crying, and continued to howl lustily till the lady looked up from her page and inquired what was the matter. The unwashed infant stared open-mouthed at this intruder upon her grief. Instead of answering, she regarded the lady with a bored astonishment, as who should say: What are you interrupting me for, just in the middle of a good yell? She then took up the strain as nearly as possible where she had left off. She was getting on very well with this second attempt at a demonstration until Miss Levering made some mention of a penny, whereupon the infant again suspended her more violent manifestations, though the tears kept rolling down.
After various attempts on the lady's part, the little girl was induced to come and occupy the middle place on the river side of the bench, between Vida and the tramp. While the lady held the penny in her hand, and cross-examined the still weeping child, Borrodaile sat quietly listening behind his paper. When the child couldn't answer those questions that were of a general nature, the tramp did, and the three were presently quite a pleasant family party. The only person 'out of it' was the petrified gentleman on the other side.
A few minutes before the arrival of the Suffragettes, two nondescript young men, in a larky mood, appeared with the announcement that they'd seen 'one of them' at the top of Ranelagh Street.
'That'll be the little 'un,' said the tramp to nobody. 'You don't ketch 'er bein' late!'
'Blunt! No--cheeky little devil,' remarked one of the young men, offering a new light upon the royal virtue of punctuality; but from the enthusiasm with which they availed themselves of the rest of Lord Borrodaile's side of the bench, it was obvious they had hurried to the spot with the intention of securing front seats at the show.
'Of course it ain't goin' to be as much fun as the 'Yde Park Sunday aufternoons. Jim Wrightson goes to them. Keeps things lively--'e does.'
'Kicks up a reg'lar shindy, don't 'e?'
'Yes. We can't do nothin' 'ere--ain't enough'--whether of space or of spirited young men he did not specify.
As they lit their cigarettes the company received further additions--one obviously otherwise employed than with politics. Her progress--was it symbolic?--was necessarily slow, for a small child clung to her skirt, and she trundled a sickly boy in a go-cart. The still sniffling person in possession of the middle seat on the other side (her anxious and watery eye fixed on the penny) was told by Miss Levering to make room for the new-comers. The child's way of doing so was to crowd closer to the neighbourhood of the fascinating coin. But that mandate to 'make room' had proved a conversational opening through which poured--or trickled rather--the mother's sorry little history. Her husband was employed in the clothing department of the Army and Navy Stores--yes, nine years now. He was considered very lucky to keep his place when the staff was reduced. But the costliness of raising the children! It was well that three were dead. If she had it all to do over again--no! no!
The seeming heartlessness with which she envisaged the non-existence of her babies contrasted strangely with her patient tenderness to the querulous boy in the go-cart.
Meanwhile Miss Levering had not forgotten her earlier acquaintance. As the wan mother watched the end of the transaction which left the sniffler now quite consoled, in possession of the modest coin, she said naively--
'When anybody gives one of my children a penny, I always save half of it for them the next day.'
Vida Levering turned her head away, and in so doing met Lord Borrodaile's eyes over the back of the bench. She gave a faint start of surprise, and then--
'She saves half of it!' was all she said.
Borrodaile, glancing shrewdly over the further augmented gathering, asked the invariable question--
'How do you account for the fact that so few women are here to show their interest in a matter that's supposed to concern them so much?' Vida craned her head. 'Beside you, only one!' Borrodaile's mocking voice went on. 'Isn't this an instance of your sex's indifference to the whole thing? Isn't it equally an instance of man's keenness about public questions?' He couldn't forbear adding in a whisper, 'Even such a question, and such men?'
Vida still craned, searching in vain for refutation in female form. But she did not take her failure lying down.
'The men who are here,' she said, 'the great majority of men at all open-air meetings seem to be loafers. Woman--whatever else she may or may not be--isn't a loafer!' Through Borrodaile's laugh she persisted. 'A woman always seems to have something to do, even if it's of the silliest description. Yes, and if she's a decent person at all, she's not hanging about at street corners waiting for some diversion!'
'Not bad; not bad! I see you are catching the truly martial spirit.'
'That's them, ain't it?' One of the young men jumped up.
Vida turned her head in time to see the meeting between two girls and a woman arriving from opposite directions.
'Yes,' she whispered; 'that's Ernestine with the pile of handbills on her arm.'
The lady sent out smiles and signals of welcome with a lifted hand. The busy propagandist took no notice. She was talking to her two companions, one of whom, the younger with head on one side, kept shooting out glances half provocative, half appealing, towards Lord Borrodaile and the young men. She seemed as keenly alive to the fact of these male presences as the two other women seemed oblivious.
'Which is the one,' asked Lord Borrodaile, 'that you were telling me about?'
'Why, Ernestine Blunt--the pink-cheeked one in the long alpaca coat.'
'She doesn't look so very devilish,' he laughed. After an impatient moment's hope that devilishness might develop, he said, 'She hasn't seen you yet.'
'Oh, yes, she has.'
'Then she isn't as overjoyed as she ought to be.'
'She'd be surprised to know she was expected to be overjoyed.'
'Why? Aren't you very good to her?'
'No. She's been rather good to me, though she doesn't take very much stock in me.'
'Why doesn't she?'
'Oh, there are only two kinds of people that interest Ernestine. Those who'll be active in carrying on the propaganda, and those who have yet to be converted.'
'Well, I'm disappointed,' he teased, perceiving how keen his friend was that he should not be. 'The other one would be more likely to convert
me.'
'Oh, you only say that because the other one's tall, and makes eyes!' Vida denounced him, to his evident diversion.
Whatever his reasons were, the young men seemed to share his preference. They were watching the languishing young woman, who in turn kept glancing at them. Ernestine, having finished what she was saying, made her way to where Miss Levering sat, not, it would appear, for any purpose so frivolous as saying good evening, but to deposit what were left of the handbills and the precious portfolio in the care of one well known by now to have a motherly oversight of such properties.
Lord Borrodaile's eyes narrowed with amusement as he watched the hurried pantomime.
Instead of 'Thank you,' as Vida meekly accepted the incongruous and by no means light burden: 'We are short of speakers,' said Ernestine. 'You'll help us out, won't you?' As though it were the simplest thing in the world.
Lord Borrodaile half rose in protest.
'No,' said Vida. 'I won't speak till I have something to say.'
'I should have thought there was plenty to
say!' said the girl.
'Yes, for you. You know such a lot,' smiled her new friend. 'I must get some first-hand knowledge, too, before I try to stand up and speechify.'
'It's now we need help. By-and-by there'll be plenty. But I'm not going to worry you,' she caught herself up. Then, confidentially, 'We've got one new helper that we've great hopes of. She joined to-day.'
'Some one who can speak?'
'Oh, she'll speak, I dare say, by and by.'
'What does she do in the meantime--to----' (to account for your enthusiasm, was implied) 'to show she's a helper? Subscribes?'
'I expect she'll subscribe, too. She takes such an interest. Plenty of courage, too.'
'How do you know?'
'Well'--the voice dropped--'she's
all right, but she belongs to rather stodgy people. Bothers about respectability, and that sort of thing. But she came along with me this afternoon distributing handbills all over the City for two hours! Not many women of her kind are ready to do
that the first thing.'
'No, I dare say not,' said Vida, humbly.
'And one thing I thought a very good sign'--Ernestine bent lower in her enthusiasm--'when we got to Finsbury Circus she said'--Ernestine paused as if struck afresh by the merits of the new recruit--'she said, "
Give me a piece of chalk!"'
'Chalk! What did she want with----?'
Borrodaile, too, leaned nearer.
'She saw me beginning to write meeting notices on the stones. Of course, the people stopped and stared and laughed. But she, instead of getting shy, and pretending she hadn't anything to do with me, she took the chalk and wrote, "Votes for Women!" all over the pavement of Finsbury Circus.' Ernestine paused a moment that Miss Levering might applaud the new 'helper.' 'I thought that a very good sign in such a respectable person.'
'Oh, yes; a most encouraging sign. Is it the one in mauve who did that?'
'No, that's--I forget her name--oh, Mrs. Thomas. She's new, too. I'll have to let her speak if you won't,' she said, a trifle anxiously.
'Mrs. Thomas, by all means,' murmured Borrodaile, as Ernestine, seeing her plea was hopeless, turned away.
Vida caught her by the coat. 'Where are the others? The rest of your
good speakers?'
'Scattered up and down. Getting ready for the General Election. That's why we have to break in new people. Oh, she sent me some notes, that girl did. I must give them back to her.'
Ernestine stooped and opened the portfolio on Miss Levering's lap. She rummaged through the bulging pockets.
'I thought,' said Miss Levering, with obvious misgiving, 'I thought I hadn't seen that affected-looking creature before.'
'Oh, she'll get over all that,' Ernestine whispered. 'You haven't much opinion of our crowds, but they can teach people a lot.'
'Teach them not to hold their heads like a broken lily?'
'Yes, knock all sorts of nonsense out and stiffen them up wonderfully.'
She found the scrap of paper, and shut the portfolio with a snap.
'Now!'
She stood up, took in the fact of the audience having increased and a policeman in the offing. She summoned her allies.
'It's nearly time for those Army and Navy workers to come out. The men will come first,' she said, 'and five minutes after, they let the women out. I'll begin, and then I think you'd better speak next,' she said, handing the die-away young woman her notes. 'These seem all right.'
'Oh, but, Miss Blunt,' she whispered, 'I'm so nervous. How am I ever to face all those men?'
'You'll find it quite easy when once you are started,' said Ernestine, in a quiet undertone.
'But I'm so afraid that, just out of pure nervousness, I'll say the wrong thing.'
'If you do, I'll be there,' returned the chairman, a little grimly.
'But it's the very first time in my life----'
'Now, look here----'
Ernestine reached out past this person who was luxuriating in her own emotions, and drew the ample mauve matron into the official group close to where Miss Levering sat nursing the handbills.
'It's easy enough talking to these little meetings. They're quite good and quiet--not a bit like Hyde Park.' (One of the young men poked the other. They exchanged looks.) 'But there are three things we all agree it's just as well to keep in mind: Not to talk about ourselves'--she measured off the tit-bits of wisdom with a slim forefinger--'not to say anything against the press, and, if possible, remember to praise the police.'
'Praise the police!' ejaculated the mauve matron.
'Sh!' said Ernestine, softly. But not so easily was the tide of indignation stemmed.
'I saw with my own eyes----' began the woman.
'Yes, yes, but----' she lowered her voice, Borrodaile had to strain to catch what she said, 'you see it's no use beating our heads against a stone wall. A movement that means to be popular must have the police on its side. After all, they do very well--considering.'
'Considering they're men?' demanded the matron.
'Anyhow,' Ernestine went on, 'even if they behaved ten times worse, it's not a bit of good to antagonize the police or the press. If they aren't our friends, we've got to make them our friends. They're both
much better than they were. They must be encouraged!' said the wise young Daniel, with a little nod. Then as she saw or felt that the big matron might elude her vigilance and break out into indiscretion, 'Why, we had a reporter in from the
Morning Magnifier only to-day. He said, "The public seems to have got tired of reading that you spit and scratch and prod policemen with your hatpins. Now, do you mind saying what is it you really do?" I told him to come here this afternoon. Now, when I've opened the meeting,
you'll tell him!'
'Oh,
dear!' the young woman patted her fringe, 'do you suppose we'll be in the
Magnifier to-morrow? How dreadful!'
During this little interchange a procession of men streaming homeward in their hundreds came walking down the Embankment in twos and threes or singly, shambling past the loosely gathered assemblage about the bench.
The child on the riverward side still clutching its penny was unceremoniously ousted. As soon as Ernestine had mounted the seat the slackly held gathering showed signs of cohesion. The waiting units drew closer. The dingy procession slowed--the workmen, looking up at the young face with the fluttering sycamore shadows printed on its pink and white, grinned or frowned, but many halted and listened. Through the early part of the speech Miss Levering kept looking out of the corner of her eye to see what effect it had on Borrodaile. But Borrodaile gave no sign. Ernestine was trying to make it clear what a gain it would be, especially to this class, if women had the vote. An uphill task to catch and hold the attention of those tired workmen. They hadn't stopped there to be made to think--if they weren't going to be amused, they'd go home. A certain number did go home, after pausing to ask the young Reformer, more or less good-humouredly, why she didn't get married. Lord Borrodaile had privately asked for enlightenment on the same score. Vida had only smiled. One man varied the monotony by demanding why, if it would be a good thing for the working class to have women voting, why didn't the Labour Party take up the question.
'Some of the Labour Party have,' Ernestine told them, 'but the others are afraid. They've been told that women are such slaves to convention--such timid creatures! They know their own women aren't, but they're doubtful about the rest. The Labour Party, you know'--she spoke with a condescending forbearance--'the Labour Party is young yet, and knows what it's like to feel timid. Some of the Labour men have the wild notion that women would all vote Conservative.'
'So they would!'
But Ernestine shook her head. 'While we are trying to show the people who say that, that even if they were right, it would be no excuse whatever for denying our claim to vote whichever way we thought best. While we are going to the root of the principle of the thing, another lot of logical gentlemen are sure to say, "Oh, it would never do to have women voting. They'd be going in for all sorts of new-fangled reforms, and the whole place would be turned upside down!" So between the men who think we'd all turn Tory and the men who are sure we'd all be Socialists, we don't seem likely to get very far, unless we do something to show them we mean to have it for no better reason than just that we're human beings!'
'Isn't she delightfully--direct!' whispered Miss Levering, eager to cull some modest flower of praise.
'Oh, direct enough!' His tone so little satisfied the half-maternal pride of the other woman that she was almost prepared for the slighting accent in which he presently asked, 'Is this the sort of thing that's supposed to convert people to a great constitutional change?'
'It isn't our women would get the vote,' a workman called out. 'It's the rich women.'
'Is it only the rich men who have the vote?' demanded Ernestine. 'You know it isn't. We are fighting to get the franchise on precisely the same terms as men.'
For several moments the wrangle went on.
'Would wives have a vote?'
She showed how that could be made a matter of adjustment. She quoted the lodger franchise and the latch-key decision.
Vida kept glancing at Borrodaile. As still he made no sign, 'Of course,' the lady whispered across the back of the bench, 'of course, you think she's an abomination, but----?' she paused for a handsome disavowal. Borrodaile looked at the eager face--Vida's, for Miss Blunt's was calm as a May morning. As he did not instantly speak, 'But you can't deny she's got extremely good wits.'
He seemed to relent before such persuasiveness. 'She's got a delicious little face,' he admitted, thinking to say the most.
'Oh, her
face! That's scarcely the point.'
'It's always the point.'
'It's the principle that's at stake,' Ernestine was saying. 'The most out-and-out Socialist among us would welcome the enfranchisement of six duchesses or all the women born with red hair; we don't care on what plea the entering wedge gets in. But let me tell you there aren't any people on earth so blind to their own interests as just you working men when you oppose or when you are indifferent to women's having votes. All women suffer--but it's the women of your class who suffer most.
Isn't it? Don't you men know--why, it's notorious!--that the women of the working class are worse sweated even than the men?'
'So they are!'
'If you don't believe me,
ask them. Here they come.'
It was well contrived--that point! It struck full in the face of the homeward-streaming women who had just been let out.
'We know, and you men know----' the speaker nailed her advantage, 'that even the Government that's being forced to become a model employer where men are concerned, the very
Government is responsible for sweating thousands of women in State employments! We know and you know that in those work-rooms over yonder these very women have been sitting weighed down by the rumour of a reduction in their wages already so much below the men's. They've sat there wondering whether they can risk a strike. Women--it's notorious,' she flung it out on a wave of passion, 'women everywhere suffer most from the evils of our social system. Why not? They've had no hand in it! Our social system is the work of men! Yet we must work to uphold it! this system that crushes us. We must swell the budget, we must help to pay the bill! What
fools we've all been! What fools we are if we don't do something!'
'Gettin' up rows and goin' to 'Olloway's no good.'
While she justified the course that led to Holloway--
'Rot! Piffle!' they interjected. One man called out: 'I'd have some respect for you if you'd carried a bomb into the House of Commons, but a miserable little scuffle with the police!'
'Here's a gentleman who is inciting us to carry bombs. Now, that shocks me.'
The crowd recovered its spirits at the notion of the champion-shocker shocked.
'We've been dreadfully browbeaten about our tactics, but that gentleman with his bad advice makes our tactics sound as innocent and reasonable as they actually are. When you talk in that wild way about bombs--you--I may be a hooligan'--she held up the delicate pink-and-white face with excellent effect--'but you do shock me.'
It wore well this exquisitely humorous jest about shocking a Suffragette. The whole crowd was one grin.
'I'm specially shocked when I hear a
man advocating such a thing! You men have other and more civilized ways of getting the Government to pay attention to abuses. Now listen to what I'm saying: for it's the justification of everything we are going to do in the future,
unless we get what we're asking for! It's this. Our justification is that men, even poor men, have that powerful leverage of the vote. You men have no right to resort to violence; you have a better way. We have
no way but agitation. A
Liberal Government that refuses----'
'Three cheers for the Liberals! Hip, hip----'
'My friend, I see you are young,' says Ernestine.
'Lord, wot are you?' the young man hurled back.
'Before I got my political education, when
I was young and innocent, like this gentleman, who still pins his faith to the Liberals, I, too, hoped great things from them. My friends, it's a frame of mind we outlive!'--and her friends shrieked with delight.
'Well, it's one way for a girl to amuse herself till she gets married,' said Borrodaile.
'Why, that's just what the hooligans all say!' laughed Vida. 'And, like you, they think that if a woman wants justice for other women she must have a grievance of her own. I've heard them ask Ernestine in Battersea--she has valiant friends there--"Oo's 'urt
your feelin's?" they say. "Tell me, and I'll punch 'is 'ead." But you aren't here to listen to
me!' Vida caught herself up. 'This is about the deputation of women that waited on the Prime Minister.'
'Didn't get nothin' out of him!' somebody shouted.
'Oh, yes, we did! We got the best speech in favour of Woman's Suffrage that any of us ever heard.'
'Haw! Haw! Clever ol' fox!'
''E just buttered 'em up! But 'e don't do nothin'.'
'Oh, yes, he did something!'
'What?'
'He gave us advice!' They all laughed together at that in the most friendly spirit in the world. 'Two nice pieces,' Ernestine held up each hand very much like a school child rejoicing over slices of cake. 'One we are taking'--she drew in a hand--'the other we aren't'--she let it fall. 'He said we must win people to our way of thinking. We're doing it; at a rate that must astonish, if it doesn't even embarrass him. The other piece of distinguished advice he gave us was of a more doubtful character.' Her small hands took it up gingerly. Again she seemed to weigh it there in the face of the multitude. 'The Prime Minister said we "must have patience." She threw the worthless counsel into the air and tossed contempt after it. 'It is man's oldest advice to woman!'
'All our trouble fur nothin'!' groaned an impish boy.
'We see now that patience has been our bane. If it hadn't been for this same numbing slavish patience we wouldn't be standing before the world to-day, political outcasts--catalogued with felons and lunatics----'
'And peers!' called a voice.
'We are
done with patience!' said Ernestine, hotly; 'and for that reason there is at last some hope for the women's cause. Now Miss Scammell will speak to you.'
A strange thing happened when Miss Scammell got up. She seemed to leave her attractiveness, such as it was, behind when she climbed up on the bench. Standing mute, on a level with the rest, her head deprecatingly on one side, she had pleased. Up there on the bench, presuming to teach, she woke a latent cruelty in the mob. They saw she couldn't take care of herself, and so they 'went for her'--the very same young men who had got up and given her a choice of the seats they had been at the pains to come early to secure. To be sure, when, with a smile, she had sat down only a quarter of an hour before, in the vacated place of one of them, the other boy promptly withdrew with his pal. It would have been too compromising to remain alongside the charmer. But when Miss Scammell stood up on that same bench, she was assumed to have left the realm of smiles and meaning looks where she was mistress and at home. She had ventured out into the open, not only without the sword of pointed speech--that falls to few--but this young lady had not even the armour of absolute earnestness. When she found that smiling piteously wouldn't do, she proceeded, looking more and more like a scared white rabbit, to tell about the horrible cases of lead-poisoning among the girls in certain china and earthenware works. All that she had to say was true and significant enough. But it was no use. They jeered and howled her down for pure pleasure in her misery. She trembled and lost her thread. She very nearly cried. Vida wondered that the little chairwoman didn't fly to the rescue. But Ernestine sat quite unmoved looking in her lap.
'Lamentable exhibition!' said Borrodaile, moving about uneasily.
The odd thing was that Miss Scammell kept on with her prickly task.
'Why don't you make her sit down?' Vida whispered to Miss Blunt.
'Because I've got to see what she's made of.'
'But surely you see! She's awful!'
'Not half so bad as lots of men when they first try. If she weathers this, she'll be a speaker some day.'
At last, having told her story through the interruptions--told it badly, brokenly, but to the end--having given proofs that lead-poisoning among women was on the increase and read out from her poor crumpled, shaking notes, the statistics of infant and still-birth mortality, the unhappy new helper sat down.
Miss Blunt leaned over, and whispered, 'That's all right! I was wrong. This is nearly as bad as Hyde Park,' and with that jumped up to give the crowd a piece of her mind.
They sniggered, but they quieted down, all but one.
'Yes, you are the gentleman, you there with the polo cap, who doesn't believe in giving a fair hearing. I would like to ask that man who thinks himself so superior,
that one in the grey cap, whether he is capable of standing up here on this bench and addressing the crowd.'
'Hear, hear.'
'Yes! Get on the bench. Up with him.'
A slight scrimmage, and an agitated man was observed to be seeking refuge on the outskirts.
'Bad as Miss Scammell was, she made me rather ashamed of myself,' Vida confided to Borrodaile.
'Yes,' he said sympathetically, 'it always makes one rather ashamed--even if it's a man making public failure.'
'Oh, that wasn't what I meant.
She at least tried. But I--I feel I'm a type of all the idle women the world over. Leaving it to the poor and the ill-equipped to----'
'To keep the world from slipping into chaos?' he inquired genially.
She hadn't heard. Her eyes were fastened on the chairwoman.
'After all, they've got Ernestine,' Vida exulted under her breath.
Borrodaile fell to studying this aspect of the face whose every change he had thought he knew so well. What was the new thing in it? Not admiration merely, not affection alone--something almost fierce behind the half-protecting tenderness with which she watched the chairman's duel with the mob. Borrodaile lifted a hand--people were far too engrossed, he knew, to notice--and he laid it on Vida's, which had tightened on the back of the bench.
'My dear!' he said wondering and low as one would to wake a sleepwalker.
She answered without looking at him, 'What is it?'
He seemed not to know quite how to frame his protest.
'She can carry
you along at least!' he grumbled. 'You forget everybody else!'
Vida smiled. It was so plain whom he meant by 'everybody.' Lord Borrodaile gave a faint laugh. He probably knew that would 'bring her round.' It did. It brought her quick eyes to his face; it brought low words.
'
Please! Don't let her see you--laughing, I mean.'
'You can explain to her afterwards that it was you I was laughing at.' As that failed of specific effect, 'You really are a little ridiculous,' he said again, with the edge in his voice, 'hanging on the lips of that Backfisch as if she were Demosthenes.'
'We don't think she's a Demosthenes. We know she is something much more significant--for
us.'
'What?'
'She's Ernestine Blunt.'
Clean out of patience, he turned his back.
'Am I alone?' she whispered over his shoulder, as if in apology. 'Look at all the other women. Some of them are very intelligent. Our interest in our fellow-woman seems queer and unnatural to you because you don't realize Mrs. Brown has always been interested in Mrs. Jones.'
'Oh, has she?'
'Yes. She hasn't said much to Mr. Brown about it,' Vida admitted, smiling, because a man's interest in woman is so limited.'
Borrodaile laughed. 'I didn't know that was his failing!'
'I mean his interest is of one sort. It's confined to the woman he finds interesting in
that way at
that minute. Other women bore him. But other women have always been mightily interesting to us! Now, sh! let's listen.'
'I can understand those callow youths,' unwarily he persisted; 'she's pink and pert and all the rest, but
you----'
'Oh, will you
never understand? Don't you know women are more civilized than men?'
'Woman! she'll be the last animal domesticated.' It seemed as if he preferred to have her angry rather than oblivious of him.
But not for nothing did she belong to a world which dares to say whatever it wants to say.
'We are civilized enough, at all events'--there was an ominous sparkle in her eye--'to listen to men speakers clever or dull--we listen quietly enough. But men!--a person must be of your own sex for you to be able to regard him without distraction. If the woman is beautiful enough, you are intoxicated. If she's plain enough, you are impatient. All you see in any woman is her sex. You can't
listen.'
'Whew!' remarked Borrodaile.
'But
I must listen--I haven't got over being ashamed to find how much this girl can teach me.'
'I'm sorry for you that any of Miss Scammell's interesting speech was lost,' the chairman was saying. 'She was telling you just the kind of thing that you men ought to know, the kind of thing you get little chance of knowing about from men. Yet those wretched girls who die young of lead-poisoning, or live long enough to bring sickly babies into the world, those poor working women look to you working men for help. Are they wrong to look to you, or are they right? You working men represent the majority of the electorate.
You can change things if you will. If you don't, don't think the woman will suffer alone. We shall all suffer together. More and more the masters are saying, "We'll get rid of these men--they're too many for us with their unions and their political pull. We'll get women. We'll get them for two-thirds of what we pay the men. Good business!" say the masters. But it's bad business----'
'For all but the masters,' muttered the tramp.
'Bad for the masters, too,' said the girl, 'only they can't see it, or else they don't care what sort of world they leave to their children. If you men weren't so blind, you'd see the women will be in politics what they are in the home--your best friends.'
'Haw! haw! Listen at 'er!'
'
With the women you would be strong. Without them you are--what you are!'
The ringing contempt in her tone was more than one gentleman could put up with.
'How do you think the world got on before you came to show it
how?'
'It got on very badly. Not only in England--all over the world men have insisted on governing alone. What's the result? Misery and degradation to the masses, and to the few--the rich and high-placed--for them corruption and decline.'
'That's it, always 'ammering away at the men--pore devils!'
'Some people are so foolish as to think we are working against the men.'
'So you are!'
'It's just what the old-school politicians would like you to think. But it's nonsense. Nobody knows better than we that the best interests of men and women are identical--they
can't be separated. It's trying to separate them that's made the whole trouble.'
'Oh, you know it all!'
'Well, you see'--she put on her most friendly and reasonable air--'men have never been obliged to study women's point of view. But we've been obliged to study the men's point of view. It's natural we should understand you a great deal better than you understand us. And though you sometimes disappoint us, we don't lose hope of you.'
'Thanks awfully.'
'We think that if we can only make you understand the meaning of this agitation, then you'll help us to get what we want. We believe the day will come when the old ideal of men standing by the women--when that ideal will be realized. For don't believe it ever
has been realized. It never has! Now our last speaker for to-day will say a few words to you. Mrs. Thomas.'
'Haven't you had about enough?' said Borrodaile, impatiently.
'Don't wait for me,' was all her answer.
'Shall you stay, then, till the bitter end?'
'It will only be a few moments now. I may as well see it out.'
He glanced at his watch, detached it, and held it across the back of the seat.
She nodded, and repeated, 'Don't wait.'
His answer to that was to turn not only a bored but a slightly injured face towards the woman who had, not without difficulty, balanced her rotund form on the bench at the far end. She might have been the comfortable wife of a rural grocer. She spoke the good English you may not infrequently hear among that class, but it became clear, as she went on, that she was a person of a wider cultivation.
'You'd better go. She'll be stodgy and dull.' Vida spoke with a real sympathy for her friend's sufferings. 'Oh, portentous dull.'
'And no waist!' sighed Borrodaile, but he sank back in his corner.
Presently his wandering eye discovered something in his companion's aspect that told him subtly she was not listening to the mauve matron. Neither were some of the others. A number had moved away, and the little lane their going left was not yet closed, for the whole general attention was obviously slackened. This woman wasn't interesting enough even to boo at. The people who didn't go home began to talk to one another. But in Vida's face--what had brought to it that still intensity? Borrodaile moved so that he could follow the fixed look. One of the infrequently passing hansoms had stopped. Was she looking at that? Two laughing people leaning out, straining to catch what the mauve orator was saying. Suddenly Borrodaile pulled his slack figure together.
'Sophia!' he ejaculated softly, 'and Stonor!--by the beard of the prophet!' He half rose, whether more annoyed or amazed it would be hard to tell. 'We're discovered!' he said, in a laughing whisper. As he turned to add 'The murder's out,' he saw that Vida had quietly averted her face. She was leaning her head on her hand, so that it masked her features. Even if the woman who was speaking had not been the object of such interest as the people in the hansom had to bestow, even had either of them looked towards Vida's corner, only a hat and a gauze ruffle would have been seen.
Borrodaile took the hint. His waning sense of the humour of the situation revived.
'Perhaps, after all, if we lay low,' he said, smiling more broadly. 'It would be nuts for Stonor to catch us sitting at the feet of Mrs. Thomas.' He positively chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. He had slipped back into his corner, but he couldn't help craning his neck to watch those two leaning over the door of the hansom, while they discussed some point with animation. Several times the man raised his hand as if to give an order through the trap door. Each time Sophia laughingly arrested him. 'He wants to go on,' reported Borrodaile, sympathetically. 'She wants him to wait a minute. Now he's jumped out. What's he--looking for another hansom? No--now
she's out. Bless me, she's shaking hands with him. He's back in the hansom!--driving away. Sophia's actually---- 'Pon my soul, I don't know what's come over the women! I'm rather relieved on the whole.' He turned round and spoke into Vida's ear. 'I've been a little sorry for Sophia. She's never had the smallest interest in any man but that cousin of hers--and, of course, it's quite hopeless.'
Vida sat perfectly motionless, back to the speaker, back to the disappearing hansom, staring at the parapet.
'You can turn round now--quite safe. Sophia's out of range. Poor Sophia!' After a little pause, 'Of course you know Stonor?'
'Why, of course.'
'Oh, well, my distinguished cousin used not to be so hard to get hold of--not in the old days when we were seeing so much of your father.'
'That must have been when I was in the schoolroom--wasn't it?'
He turned suddenly and looked at her. 'I'd forgotten. You know Geoffrey, and you don't like him. I saw that once before.'
'Once before?' she echoed.
He reminded her of the time she hurried away from Ulland House to Bishopsmead.
'
I wasn't deceived,' he said, with his look of smiling malice. 'You didn't care two pins about your Cousin Mary and her influenza.'
Vida moved her expressionless face a little to the right. 'I can see Sophia. But she's listening to the speech;' and Vida herself, with something of an effort, seemed now to be following the sordid experiences of a girl that the speaker had befriended some years before. It was through this girl, the mauve matron said, that she herself had come into touch with the abject poor. She took a big barrack of a house in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood, and it became known that there she received and helped both men and women. 'I sympathized with the men, but it was the things the women told me that appalled me. They were too bad to be entirely believed, but I wrote them down. They haunted me. I investigated. I found I had no excuse for doubting those stories.'
'This woman's a find,' Vida whispered to the chairman.
Ernestine shook her head.
'Why, she's making a first-rate speech!' said Vida, astonished.
'There's nobody here who will care about it.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Oh, all she's saying is a commonplace to these people. Lead-poisoning was new, to
them--something they could take hold of.'
'Well, I stick to it, you've got a good ally in this woman. Let her stand up in Somerset Hall, and tell the people----'
'It wouldn't do,' said the young Daniel, firmly.
'You don't believe her story?'
'Oh, I don't say the things aren't true. But'--she moved uneasily--'the subject's too prickly.'
'Too prickly for you!'
The girl nodded with an anxious eye on the speaker. 'We sometimes make a passing reference--just to set men thinking, and there leave it. But it always makes them furious, of course. It does no good. Either people know and just accept it, or else they won't believe, and it only gets them on the raw. I'll have to stop her if----' She leaned forward.
'It's odd your taking it like this. I suppose it's because you're so young,' said Vida, wondering. 'It must be because for you it isn't real.'
'No, it's because I see no decent woman can think much about it and keep sane. That's why I say this one won't be any good to us. She'll never be able to see anything clearly but that one thing. She'll always be forgetting the main issue.'
'What do you call the main issue?'
'Why, political power, of course.'
'Oh, wise young Daniel!' she murmured, as Miss Blunt touched the speaker's sleeve and interjected a word into the middle of a piece of depressing narrative.
Mrs. Thomas stopped, faltered, and pulled herself up with, 'Well, as I say, with my own verifications these experiences form a body of testimony that should stir the conscience of the community. I
myself felt'--she glanced at Ernestine--'I felt it was too ghastly to publish, but it ought to be used. Those who doubted the evidence should examine it. I went to a lady who is well known to be concerned about public questions; her husband is a member of Parliament, and a person of influence. You don't know, perhaps, but she did, that there's a Parliamentary Commission going to sit here in London in a few weeks for the purpose of inquiring into certain police regulations which greatly concern women. Who do you think are invited to serve on that Commission? Men. All men. Not a woman in England is being consulted. The husband of the lady I went to see--he was one of the Commissioners. I said to her, "
You ought to be serving on that board." She said, "Oh, no," but that women like her could influence the men who sat on the Commission.'
'This is better!' whispered the ever-watchful Ernestine, with a smile.
'So I told her about my ten years' work. I showed her some of my records--not the worst, the average, sifted and verified. She could hardly be persuaded to glance at what I had been at so much pains to collect. You see'--she spoke as though in apology for the lady--'you see I had no official or recognized position.'
'Hear, hear,' said Ernestine.
'I was simply a woman whose standing in the community was all right, but I had nothing to recommend me to serious attention. I had nothing but the courage to look wrong in the face, and the conscience to report it honestly. When I told her certain things--things that are so stinging a disgrace that no decent person can hear them unmoved--when I told her of the degrading discomforts, the cruelties, that are practised against homeless women even in some of the rate-supported casual wards and the mixed lodging-houses, that lady said--sitting there in her pleasant drawing-room--she said it could not be true! My reports were exaggerated--women were sentimental--the authorities managed these places with great wisdom. They are so horrible, I said, they drive women to the streets. She assured me I was mistaken. I asked her if she had ever been inside a mixed lodging-house. She never had. But the casual wards she knew about. They were so well managed she herself wouldn't mind at all spending a night in one of these municipal provisions for the homeless. Then I said, "You are the woman I am looking for! Come with me one night and try it. What night shall it be?" She said she was engaged in writing a book. She could not interrupt her work. But I said, if those rate-supported places are so comfortable, it won't interfere with your work. She
turned the conversation. She talked about the Commission. The Commission was going to make a thorough scientific investigation. Nothing amateur about the Commission. The lady was sincere'--Mrs. Thomas vouched for it--'she had a comfortable faith in the Commission. But, I say'--the woman leaned forward in her earnestness--'I say that Commission will waste its time! I don't deny it will investigate and discuss the position of the outcast women of this country. Their plight, which is the work of men, will once more be inquired into by men. I say there should be women on that Commission. If the middle and upper class women have the dignity and influence men pretend they have, why aren't they represented there? Nobody pretends the matter doesn't concern the mothers of the nation. It concerns them horribly. Nobody can think so ill of them as to suppose they don't care. It's monstrous that men should sit upon that committee alone. Women have had to think about these things. We believe this evil can be met--if men will let us try. It may be that only women comprehend it, since men through the ages have been helpless before it. Why, then, once again, this Commission of
men? The mockery of it! Setting men to make their report upon this matter to men! I am not a public speaker, but I am a wife and a mother. Do you wonder that hearing about that Commission gave me courage to take the first opportunity to join these brave sisters of mine who are fighting for political liberty?'
She seemed for the first time to notice that a little group of sniggerers were becoming more obstreperous.
'We knew, of course, that whatever we say some of you will laugh and jeer; but, speaking for myself, no mockery that you are able to fling at us, can sting
me like the thought of the hypocrisy of that Commission! Do you wonder that when we think of it--you men who have power and don't use it!--do you wonder that women come out of their homes--young, and old, and middle-aged--that we stand up here in the public places and give you scorn for scorn?'
As the unheroic figure trembling stepped off the bench, she found Vida Levering's hand held out to steady her.
'Take my seat,' said the younger woman.
She stood beside her, for once oblivious of Ernestine, who was calling for new members, and giving out notices.
Vida bent over the shapeless mauve bundle. 'You asked that woman to go with you. I wish you'd take me.'
'Ah, my dear,
I don't need to go again. I thought to have that lady see it would do good. Her husband has influence, you see.'
'But you've just said the men are useless in this matter.'
She had no answer.
'But, I believe,' Vida went on, 'if more women were like you--if they looked into the thing----'
'Very few could stand it.'
'But don't hundreds of poor women "stand" much worse?'
'No; they drink and they die. I was ill for three months after my first experience even of the tramp ward.'
'Was that the first thing you tried?'
'No. The first thing I tried was putting on a Salvation Army bonnet, and following the people I wanted to help into the public-houses, selling the
War Cry.'
'May one wear the uniform who isn't a member of the Army?'
'It isn't usual,' she said slowly. And then, as though to give the
coup de grace to the fine lady's curiosity, 'But that was child's play. Before I sampled the tramp ward, I covered myself with Keating's powder from head to foot. It wasn't a bit of good.'
'When may I come and talk to you?'
'Hello, Mrs. Thomas!' Vida turned and found the Lady Sophia at her side. 'Why, father!--Oh, I see, Miss Levering. Well'--she turned to the woman in the corner--'how's the House of Help?'
'Do you know about Mrs. Thomas's work?' Vida asked.
'Well, rather! I collect rents in her district.'
'Oh, do you? You never told me.'
'Why should I tell you?'
Ernestine was dismissing the meeting.
'You are very tired,' said Lord Borrodaile, looking at Vida Levering's face.
'Yes,' she said. 'I'll go now. Come, Sophia!'
'We shall be here on Thursday,' Ernestine was saying, 'at the same hour, and we hope a great many of you will want to join us.'
'In a trip to 'Olloway? No, thank you!'
Upon that something indistinguishable to the three who were withdrawing was said in the group that had sniggered through Mrs. Thomas's speech. Another one of that choice circle gave a great guffaw. There were still more who were amused, but less indiscreetly. Three men, looking like gentlemen, paused in the act of strolling by. They, too, were smiling.
'You laugh!' Ernestine's voice rang out.
'Wait a moment,' said Vida to her companions.
She looked back. It was plain, from Ernestine's face, she was not going to let the meeting break up on that note.
'Don't you think it a little strange, considering the well-known chivalry among men--don't you think it strange that against no reform the world has ever seen----?'
'Reform! Wot rot!'
'If you don't admit it's reform, call it revolt!' She threw the red-hot word out among the people as if its fire scorched her. 'Against no revolt has there ever been such a torrent of ridicule let loose as against the Women's Movement. It almost seems as if--in spite of men's well-known protecting tenderness towards woman--it almost seems as if there's nothing in this world so funny to a man as a woman!'
'Haw! Haw! Got it right that time!'
Borrodaile was smiling, too.
'Do you know,' Vida asked, 'who those men are who have just stopped?'
'No.'
'I believe Ernestine does.'
'Oh, perhaps they're bold bad members of Parliament.'
'Some of us,' she was saying, 'have read a little history. We have read how every struggle towards freedom has met with opposition and abuse. We expected to have our share of those things. But we find that no movement before ours has ever had so much laughter to face.' Through the renewed merriment she went on: 'Yes, you wonder I admit that. We don't deny anything that's true. And I'll tell you another thing! We aren't made any prouder of our men-folk by the discovery that behind their old theory of woman as "half angel, half idiot," is a sneaking feeling that "woman is a huge joke."'
'Or just a little one for a penny like you!'
'Men have imagined--they imagine still, that we have never noticed how ridiculous
they can be. You see'--she leaned over and spoke confidentially--'we've never dared break it to them.'
'Haw! Haw!'
'We know they
couldn't bear it.'
'Oh-h!'
'So we've done all our laughing in our sleeves. Yes--and some years our sleeves had to be made--like balloons!' She pulled out the loose alpaca of her own while the workmen chuckled with appreciation.
'I bet on Ernestine any'ow', said a young man, with an air of admitting himself a bold original fellow.
'Well, open laughter is less dangerous laughter. It's even a guide; it helps us to find out things some of us wouldn't know otherwise. Lots of women used to be taken in by that talk about feminine influence and about men's immense respect for them! But any number of women have come to see that underneath that old mask of chivalry was a broad grin.--We are reminded of that every time the House of Commons talks about us.' She flung it at the three supercilious strangers. 'The dullest gentleman there can raise a laugh if he speaks of the "fair sex." Such jokes!--even when they are clean such poor little feeble efforts that even a member of Parliament couldn't laugh at them unless he had grown up with the idea that woman was somehow essentially funny--and that
he, oh, no! there was nothing whatever to laugh at in man. Those members of Parliament don't have the enlightenment that you men have--of hearing what women
really think when we hear men laugh as you did just now about our going to prison. They don't know that we find it just a little strange'--she bent over the scattering rabble and gathered it into a sudden fellowship--'doesn't it strike you, too, as strange that when a strong man goes to prison for his convictions it is thought to be something rather fine (I don't say it is myself--though it's the general impression). But when a weak woman goes for
her convictions, men find it very humorous indeed. Our prisoners have to bear not only the hardships of Holloway Gaol, but they have to bear the worse pains and penalties inflicted by the general public. You, too, you laugh! and yet I say'--she lifted her arms and spread them out above the people--'I say it was not until women were found ready to go to prison--not till then was the success of the cause assured.' Her bright eyes were shining brighter still with tears.
'If prison's so good fur the cause, why didn't
you go?'
'Here's a gentleman who asks why I didn't go to prison. The answer to that is, I did go.'
She tossed the information down among the cheers and groans as lightly as though it had no more personal significance for her than a dropped leaflet setting forth some minor fact.
'That delicate little girl!' breathed Vida.
'You never told
me that item in her history,' said Borrodaile.
'She never told me--never once spoke of it! They put her in prison!' It was as if she couldn't grasp it.
'Of course one person's going isn't of much consequence,' Ernestine was winding up with equal spirit and
sang-froid. 'But the fact that dozens and scores--all sorts and conditions--are ready to go--
that matters! And that's the place our reprehensible tactics have brought the movement to. The meeting is closed.'
* * * * *
They dropped Sophia at her own door, but Lord Borrodaile said he would take Vida home. They drove along in silence.
When they stopped before the tall house in Queen Anne's Gate, Vida held out her hand.
'It's late. I won't ask you in.'
'You are over-tired. Go to bed.'
'I wish I could. I'm dining out.'
He looked at her out of kind eyes. 'It begins to be dreadfully stuffy in town. I'm glad, after all, we're going on that absurd yachting trip.'
'I'm not going,' she said.
'Oh, nonsense! Sophia and I would break our hearts.'
'I'm sure about Sophia.'
'It will do you good to come and have a look at the Land of the Midnight Sun,' he said.
'I'm going to have a look at the Land of Midnight where there's no sun. And everybody but you and Sophia and my sister will think I'm in Norway.'
When she explained, he broke out:
'It's the very wildest nonsense that ever---- It would kill you.' The intensity of his opposition made him incoherent. 'You, of all women in the world! A creature who can't even stand people who say "serviette" instead of "table-napkin"!'
'Fancy the little Blunt having been in prison!'
'Oh, let the little Blunt go to----' He checked himself. 'Be reasonable, child.' He turned and looked at her with an earnestness she had never seen in his eyes before. 'Why in heaven should
you----'
'Why? You heard what that woman said.'
'I heard
nothing to account for----'
'That's partly,' she interrupted, 'why I must make this experiment. When a man like you--as good a man as you'--she repeated with slow wonder--'when you and all the other good men that the world is full of--when you all know everything that that woman knows--and more! and yet see nothing in it to account for what she feels, and what I--I too, am beginning to feel----!' she broke off. 'Good-bye! If I go far on this new road, it's you I shall have to thank.'
'I?'
He shrugged drearily at the absurd charge, making no motion to take the offered hand, but sat there in the corner of the hansom looking rather old and shrunken.
'You and one other,' she said.
That roused him. 'Ah, he has come, then.'
'Who?'
'The other. The man who is going to count.'
Her eyelids drooped. 'The man who was to count most for me came a long while ago. And a long while ago--he went.'
Borrodaile looked at her. 'But this---- Who is the gentleman who shares with me the doubtful, I may without undue modesty say the undeserved, honour of urging you to disappear into the slums? Who is it?'
'The man who wrote this.'
It was the book he had seen in her hands before the meeting. He read on the green cover, 'In the Days of the Comet.'
'Oh, that fellow! Well, he's not my novelist, but it's the keenest intelligence we have applied to fiction.'
'He
is my novelist. So I've a right to be sorry he knows nothing about women. See here! Even in his most rationalized vision of the New Time, he can't help betraying his old-fashioned prejudice in favour of the "dolly" view of women. His hero says, "I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind----"' Vida's finger skipped, lifting to fall on the heroine's name. '"Nettie... She never came into the temple of that worshipping with me."' Swiftly she turned the pages back. 'Where's that other place? Here! The man says to the heroine--to his ideal woman he says, "Behind you and above you rises the coming City of the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only happiness!" That's the whole view of man in a nutshell. Even the highest type of woman such an imagination as this can conjure up----' She shook her head. '"You are only happiness, dear"--a minister of pleasure, negligible in all the nobler moods, all the times of wider vision or exalted effort! Tell me'--she bent her head and looked into her companion's face with a new passion dawning in her eyes--'in the building of that City of the Future, in the making of it beautiful, shall women really have no share?'
'My dear, I only know that I shall have no share myself.'
'Ah, we don't speak of ourselves.' She opened the hansom doors and her companion got out. 'But this Comet man,' she said as she followed, '
he might have a share if only he knew why all the great visions have never yet been more than dreams. That this man should think foundations can be well and truly laid when the best of one half the race are "only happiness, dear!"' She turned on the threshold. '
Whose happiness?' _