'At all events,' said Vida to Lord Borrodaile, as she stood up, and he drew her chair out of her way, 'even if we don't know much about these women, we've spent a happy hour denouncing them.'
'Who's going to have a short round before sundown?' said Lady Sophia, getting up briskly. 'You, of course, Mr. Filey. Or are you too "busy"?'
'Say too thirsty. May I?' He carried his cup round to Lady John, not seeming to see Hermione's hospitable hand held out for it.
In the general shuffle Farnborough found himself carried off by Sophia and Lord John.
'Who is our fourth?' said Lady Sophia, suddenly.
'Oh, Borrodaile!' Lord John stopped halfway across the lawn and called back, 'aren't you coming?'
'It's not a bit of use,' said Sophia. 'You'll see. He's safe to sit there and talk to Miss Levering till the dressing-bell rings.'
'Isn't she anicecreature!' said Lord John. 'I can't think how a woman like that hasn't got some nice fella to marry her!'
'Would you like to see my yellow garden, Vida?' Lady John asked. 'It's rather glorious at this moment.'
Obvious from the quick lifting of the eyes that the guest was on the point of welcoming the proposal, had Filey not swallowed his belated cup of tea with surprising quickness after saying, 'What's a yellow garden?' in the unmistakable tone of one bent upon enlarging his experience. Lady John, with all her antennæ out, lost no time in saying to Vida—
'Perhaps you're a little tired. Hermione, you show Mr. Filey the garden. And maybe, Lord Borrodaile would like to see it, too.'
Although the last-named failed to share the enthusiasm expected in a gardener, he pulled his long, slackly-put-together figure out of the chair and joined the young people.
When they were out of earshot, 'What's the matter?' asked Lady John.
'Matter?'
'Yes, what did poor Paul say to make you fall upon him like that?'
'I didn't "fall upon" him, did I?'
'Well, yes, I rather thought you did.'
'Oh, I suppose I—perhaps it did jar on me, just a little, to hear a cocksure boy——'
'He's not a boy. Paul is over thirty.'
'I was thinking of Dick Farnborough, too—talking about women like that, before women.'
'Oh, all they meant was——'
'Yes, I know. Of course weallknow they aren't accustomed to treating our sex in general with overmuch respect when there are only men present—but—do you think it's quite decent that they should be so free with their contempt of women before us?'
'But, my dear Vida!Thatsort of woman! Haven't they deserved it?'
'That's just what nobody seems to know. I've sat and listened to conversations like the one at tea for a week now, and I've said as much against those women as anybody. Only to-day, somehow, when I heard that boy—yes, I was conscious I didn't like it.'
'You're behaving exactly as Dr. Johnson did about Garrick. You won't allow any one to abuse those women but yourself.'
Lady John cleared the whole trivial business away with a laugh.
'Now, be nice to Paul. He's dying to talk to you about his book. Let us go and join them in the garden. See if you can stand before my yellow blaze and not feel melted.'
The elder woman and the younger went down the terrace through a little copse to her ladyship's own area of experimentation. A gate of old Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and jonquil.
The others were walking round the enclosing grass paths that served as broad green border, and Filey, who had been in all sorts of queer places, said the yellow garden made him think of a Mexican serapé—'one of those silk scarves, you know—native weaving made out of the pineapple fibre.'
But Vida only said, 'Yes. It's a good scheme of colour.'
She sat on the rustic seat while Lady John explained to Lord Borrodaile, whose gardens were renowned, how she and Simonson treated this and that plant to get so fine a result. Filey had lost no time in finding a place for himself by Miss Levering, while Hermione trailed dutifully round the garden with the others. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder at the two on the seat by the sunken wall—Vida leaning back in the corner motionless, absolutely inexpressive; Filey's eager face bent forward. He was moving his hands in a way he had learned abroad.
'You were rather annoyed with me,' he was saying. 'I saw that.'
The lady did not deny the imputation.
'But you oughtn't to be. Because you see it's only because my ideal of woman is'—again that motion of the hands—'whatit is, that when I see her stepping down from her pedestal I——' the hands indicated consternation, followed hard by cataclysmic ruin. 'Of course, lots of men don't care. Ido. I care enormously, and so you must forgive me. Won't you?' He bent nearer.
'Oh,I'venothing to forgive.'
'I know without your telling me, I feel instinctively,youmore than most people—you'd simply loathe the sort of thing we were talking about at tea—women yelling and fighting men——'
'Yes—yes, don't go all over that.'
'No, of course I won't,' he said soothingly. 'I can feel it to my very spine, how you shrink from such horrors.'
Miss Levering, raising her eyes suddenly, caught the look Hermione cast backward as Lady John halted her party a moment near the pansy-strip in the gorgeous yellow carpet spread out before them.
'Don't you want to sit down?' Vida called out to the girl, drawing aside her gown.
'What?' said Hermione, though she had heard quite well. Slowly she retraced her steps down the grass path as if to have the words repeated.
But if Miss Levering's idea had been to change the conversation, she was disappointed. There was nothing Paul Filey liked better than an audience, and he had already the impression that Miss Heriot was what he would have scorned to call anything but 'simpatica.'
'I'm sure you've shown the new garden to dozens already,' Miss Levering said to the niece of the house. 'Sit down and confess you've had enough of it!'
'Oh, I don't think,' began Hermione, suavely, 'that one ever gets too much of a thing like that!'
'There! I'm glad to hear you say so. How can we have too much beauty!' exclaimed Filey, receiving the new occupant of the seat as a soul worthy of high fellowship. Then he leaned across Miss Heriot and said to the lady in the corner, 'I'm making that the theme of my book.'
'Oh, I heard you were writing something.'
'Yes, a sort of plea for the æsthetic basis of society! It's the only cure for the horrors of modern civilization—for the verything we were talking about at tea! What is it but a loss of the sense of beauty that's to blame?' Elbows on knees, he leaned so far forward that he could see both faces, and yet his own betrayed the eye turned inward—the face of the one who quotes. The ladies knew that he was obliging them with a memorized extract from 'A Plea for the Æsthetic Basis.' 'Nothing worse can happen to the world than loss of its sense of Beauty. Men, high and low alike, cling to it still as incarnated in women.' (Hermione crossed her pointed toes and lowered her long eyelashes.) 'We have made Woman the object of our deepest adoration! We have set her high on a throne of gold. We have searched through the world for jewels to crown her. We have built millions of temples to our ideal of womanhood and called them homes. We have fought and wrought and sung for her—and all we ask in return is that she should tend the sacred fire, so that the light of Beauty might not die out of the world.' He was not ill-pleased with his period. 'But women'—he leaned back, and illustrated with the pliant white hands that were ornamented with outlandish rings—'women are not content with their high and holy office.'
'Somewomen,' amended Hermione, softly.
'There are more and more every day who are not content,' he said sternly; then, for an instant unbending and craning a little forward, 'Of course I don't mean you—youare exceptions—but of women in the mass! Look at them! They force their way into men's work, they crowd into the universities—yes, yes' (in vain Hermione tried to reassure him by 'exceptions')—'Beauty is nothing to them! They fling aside their delicate, provocative draperies, they cast off their scented sandals. They pull on brown boots and bicycling skirts! They put man's yoke of hard linen round their ivory throats, and they scramble off their jewelled thrones to mount the rostrum and the omnibus!'
'Why?Whydo they?' Vida demanded, laughing. 'Nobody ever tells me why. I can't believe they're as unselfish asyoumake out.'
'I!'
'You ought to admire them if they voluntarily give up all those beautiful things—knowing beforehand they'll only win men's scorn. For you've always warned them!'
He didn't even hear. 'Ah, Ladies, Ladies!' half laughing, butreally very much in earnest, he apostrophized the peccant sex, 'I should like to ask, are we men to look upon our homes as dusty din-filled camps on the field of battle, or as holy temples of Peace? Ah!' He leaned back in his corner, stretched out his long legs, and thrust his restless hands in his pockets. 'If they knew!'
'Women?' asked Hermione, with the air of one painstakingly brushing up crumbs of wisdom.
Paul Filey nodded.
'Knew——?'
'They would see that in the ugly scramble they had let fall their crowns! If they only knew,' he repeated, 'they would go back to their thrones, and, with the sceptre of beauty in one hand and the orb of purity in the other, they would teach men to worship them again.'
'And then?' said Miss Levering.
'Then? Why, men will fall on their knees before them.' As Miss Levering made no rejoinder, 'What greater victory do women want?' he demanded.
For the first time Miss Levering bent her head forward slightly as though to see how far he was conscious of the fatuity of his climax. But his flushed face showed a childlike good faith.
'Eh? Will any one tell me what theywant?'
'Since you need to ask,' said the gently smiling woman in the corner, 'perhaps there's more need to show than I'd quite realized.'
'I don't think you quite followed,' he began, with an air of forbearance. 'What I mean is——'
Miss Levering jumped up. 'Lord Borrodaile!' He was standing at the little iron gate waiting for his hostess, who had stopped to speak to one of the gardeners. 'Wait a moment!' Vida called, and went swiftly down the grass path. He had turned and was advancing to meet her. 'No, come away,' she said under her breath, 'come away quickly'—(safe on the other side of the gate)—'and talk to me! Tell me about old, half-forgotten pictures or about young rose trees.'
'Is something the matter?'
'I'm ruffled.'
'Who has ruffled you?' His tone was as serene as it was sympathetic.
'Several people.'
'Why, I thought you were never ruffled.'
'I'm not, often.'
They turned down into a little green aisle between two dense thickets of rhododendrons.
'It's lucky you are here,' she said irrelevantly.
He glanced at her face.
'It's not luck. It's foresight.'
'Oh, you arranged it? Well, I'm glad.'
'So am I,' he answered quietly. 'We get on rather well together,' he added, after a moment.
She nodded half absently. 'I feel as if I'd known you for years instead of for months,' she said.
'Yes, I have rather that feeling, too. Except that I'm always a little nervous when I meet you again after an interval.'
'Nervous,' she frowned. 'Why nervous?'
'I'm always afraid you'll have some news for me.'
'What news?'
'Oh, the usual thing. That a pleasant friendship is going to be interrupted if not broken by some one's carrying you off. It would be a pity, you know.'
'Then you don't agree with Lord John.'
'Oh, I suppose yououghtto marry,' he said, with smiling impatience, 'and I'm very sure you will! But I shan't like it'—he wound up with an odd little laugh—'and neither will you.'
'It's an experiment I shall never try.'
He smiled, but as he glanced at her he grew grave. 'I've heard more than one young woman say that, but you look as if it might really be so.'
'It is so.'
He waited, and then, switching at the wild hyacinths with his stick—
'Of course,' he said, 'I have no right to suppose you are going to give me your reasons.'
'No. That's why I shall never even consider marrying—so that I shall not have to set out my reasons.'
He had never seen that look in her face before. He made an effort to put aside the trouble of it, saying almost lightly—
'I often wonder why people can't be happy as they are!'
'They think of the future, I suppose.'
'There's no such thing as the future.'
'You can't say there's no such thing as growth. If it's only a garden, it's natural to like to see life unfolding—that's the future.'
'Yes, in spite of resolutions, you'll be trying the great experiment.' He said it wearily.
'Why should you mind so?' she asked curiously; 'you are not in love with me.'
'How do you know?'
'Because you give me such a sense of rest.'
'Thank you.' He caught himself up. 'Or perhaps I should thank my grey hair.'
'Grey hair doesn't bring the thing I mean. I've sometimes wished it did. But our friendship is an uncommonly peaceful one, don't you think?'
'Yes; I think it is,' he said. 'All the same, you know there's a touch of magic in it.' But, as though to condone the confession, 'You haven't told me why you were ruffled.'
'It's nothing. I dare say I was a little tired.'
They had come out into the park. 'I hurried so to catch the train. My sister's new coachman is stupid about finding short cuts in London, and we got blocked by a procession—a horrible sort of demonstration, you know.'
'Oh, the unemployed.'
'Yes. And I got so tired of leaning out of the window and shouting directions that I left the maid and the luggage to come later. I got out of the brougham and ran through a slum, or I'd have lost my train. I nearly lost it anyway, because I saw a queer picture that made me stop.' She stopped again at the mere memory of it.
'In a second-hand shop?'
He turned his pointed face to her, and the grey-green eyes wore a gleam of interest that few things could arouse in their cool depths.
'No, not in a shop.' She stopped and leaned against a tree. 'In the street. It was a middle-aged workman. When I caught sight of his back and saw his worn clothes—the coat went up in the middle, and had that despairing sag on both sides—it crossed my mind, here's another of those miserable, unemployed wastrels obstructing my way! Then he looked round and I saw—solid content in his face!' She stopped a moment.
'So hewasn'tone of the——'
'Well, I wondered. I couldn't see at first what it was he had looked round at. Then I noticed he had a rope in his hand, and was dragging something. As the people who had been between us hurried on I saw—I saw a child, two or three years old, in a flapping, pink sun-bonnet. He was sitting astride a toy horse. The horse was clumsily made, and had lost its tail. But it had its head still, and the board it was mounted on had fat, wooden rollers. The horse was only about that long, and so near the ground that, for all his advantage in the matter of rollers, still the little rider's feet touched the pavement. They even trailed and lurched, as the horse went on, in that funny, spasmodic gait. The child had to half walk, or, rather, make the motions—you know, without actually bearing any of even his own weight. The slack-shouldered man did it all. I crossed to the other side of the street, and stood and watched them till, as I say, I nearly lost my train. The dingy workman, smoking imperturbably, dragging the grotesque, almost hidden, horse—the delighted child in the flapping sun-bonnet—the crisis when they came to the crossing! The man turned and called out something. The child declined to budge. I wondered what would happen. So did the man. He waited a moment, and puffed smoke and considered. The baby dug his heels in the pavement and shouted. Then I saw the man carefully tilt the toy horse up by the rope. I stood and watched the successful surmounting of the obstacle, and the triumphant progress as before—sun-bonnet flapping, smoke curling. Of course the man was content! He had lost the battle. You saw that in his lined face. What did it matter?He held the future by a string.'
Lord Borrodaile lifted his eyes and looked at her. Without a word the two walked on.
The first to speak after the silence was the man. He pointed out a curious effect of the light, and reminded her who had painted it best—
'Corot could do these things!'—and he flung a stone in passing at the New Impressionists.
At the Lodge Gate they found Lady John with Filey and Hermione.
'We thought if we walked this way we might meet Jean and her bodyguard. But I mustn't go any further.' Lady John consultedher watch. 'The rest of you can take your time, but I have to go and receive my other guest.'
Filey and Hermione were still at the gate. The girl had caught sight of Farnborough being driven by the park road to the station.
'Oh, I do believe it's the new mare they're trying in the dogcart,' said Hermione. 'Let's wait and see her go by.'
Borrodaile and his companion kept at Lady John's side.
'I'm glad,' said Vida, 'that I shall at last make acquaintance with your Jean.'
'Yes; it's odd your never having met, especially as she knows your cousins at Bishopsmead so well.'
'I've been so little in England——'
'Yes, I know. A great business it is,' Lady John explained to Lord Borrodaile, 'each time to get that crusty old Covenanter, Jean's grandfather, to allow her to stay at Bishopsmead. So it's the sadder for them to have her visit cut short.'
'Why is it cut short?' he asked.
'Because the hostess took to her bed yesterday with a chill, and her temperature was a hundred and one this afternoon.'
'Really?' said Miss Levering. 'I hadn't heard——'
'She is rather bad, I'm afraid. We are taking over another of her guests. Of course you know him—Geoffrey Stonor.'
'Taking him over?' Miss Levering repeated.
'Yes; he was originally going to Bishopsmead this week-end, but as he's been promising for ages to come here, it's been arranged that we should take him off their hands. Of course we're delighted.'
Miss Levering walked on, between her two companions, looking straight in front of her. As Lady John, with a glance at her watch, quickened the pace—
'I'm rather unhappy at what you tell me about my cousin,' said Vida. 'She's a delicate creature.' Then, as though acting on a sudden impulse, Vida paused. 'You mustn't mind, Lady John, but I shall have to go to her. Can I have a trap of some sort to take me over?'
She put aside the objections with a gentle but unmistakable decision that made Lady John say—
'I'm sure I've alarmed you more than there was the least need for. But the carriage shall wait and bring you back just as soon as you've satisfied yourself.'
'I can't tell, of course, till I've seen Mary. But may my maid be told not to unpack——'
'Not unpack!'
'In case I have to send for my things.'
'Mydear!' Lady John stopped short for very vexation. 'Don'tdesert us! I've been so congratulating myself on having you, since I knew Geoffrey Stonor was coming.' Again she glanced nervously at her watch. 'He is due in ten minutes! John won't like it if I'm not there.'
As she was about to hurry on, the other slackened pace. She seemed to be revolving some further plan.
'Why shouldn't'—she turned suddenly—'why shouldn't the dogcart take me on after dropping Mr. Farnborough at the station? Yes, that will be simplest. Mr. Farnborough!' she waved to him as the cart came in sight, 'Wait! Good-bye! Forgive my rushing off, won't you?' she called back over her shoulder, and then with that swift, light step of hers, she covered by a short cut the little distance that lay between her and the lodge gate.
'I wish I'd held my tongue,' said Lady John almost angrily as she hastened in the opposite direction. Already some sense seemed to reach her of the hopelessness of expecting Vida's return.
'I didn'tdreamshe cared so much for that dull cousin of hers!'
'Do you think she really does?' said Borrodaile, dryly.
About Vida's little enterprise on a certain Sunday a few weeks later was an air of elaborate mystery. Yet the expedition was no further than to Trafalgar Square. It was there that those women, the so-called 'Suffragettes,' in the intervals of making worse public disturbances, were rumoured to be holding open-air meetings—a circumstance distinctly fortunate for any one who wanted to 'see what they were like,' and who was yet unwilling to commit herself by doing anything so eccentric as publicly to seek admission under any roof known to show hospitality to 'such goings on.' In those days, only a year ago, and yet already such ancient history that the earlier pages are forgotten and scarce credible if recalled, it took courage to walk past the knots of facetious loafers, and the unblushing Suffragette poster, into the hall where the meetings were held. Deliberately to sit down among odd, misguided persons in rows, to listen to, and by so much to lend public countenance to 'women of that sort'—the sort that not only wanted to vote (quaint creatures!), but were not content with merely wanting to—for the average conventional woman to venture upon a step so compromising, to risk seeming for a moment to take these crazy brawlers seriously, was to lay herself open to 'the comic laugh'—most dreaded of all the weapons in the social armoury. But it was something wholly different to set out for a Sunday Afternoon Concert, or upon some normal and recognized philanthropic errand, and on the way find one's self arrested for a few minutes by seeing a crowd gathered in a public square. Yet it had not been easy to screw Mrs. Fox-Moore up to thinking even this non-committal measure a possible one to pursue. 'What would anybody think,' she had asked Vida, 'to see them lending even the casual support of a presence (however ironic) to so reprehensible a spectacle!' Had it not been for very faith in the eccentricity of the proceeding—one wildly unlikely to be adopted, Mrs. Fox-Moore felt, by any one else of 'their kind'—she would never have consented to be drawn into Vida's absurd project.
Of course it was absolutely essential to disguise the object of the outing from Mr. Fox-Moore. Not merely because with the full weight of his authority he would most assuredly have forbidden it, but because of a nervous prefiguring on his wife's part of the particular things he would say, and the particular way he would look in setting his extinguisher on the enterprise.
Vida, from the first, had never explained or excused herself to him, so that when he asked at luncheon what she was going to do with this fine Sunday afternoon, she had simply smiled, and said, 'Oh, I have a tryst to keep.'
It was her sister who added anxiously, 'Is Wood leading now at the Queen's Hall Concerts?' And so, without actually committing herself to a lie, gave the impression that music was to be their quest.
An hour later, while the old man was nursing his gout by the library window, he saw the ladies getting into a hansom. In spite of the inconvenience to his afflicted member he got up and opened the window.
'Don't tell me you're doing anything so rational—you two—as going to a concert.'
'Why do you say that? You know I never like to take the horses out on Sunday——'
'Rubbish! You think a dashing, irresponsible hansom is more in keeping with the Factory Girls' Club or some giddy Whitechapel frivolity!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore gave her sister a look of miserable apprehension; but the younger woman laughed and waved a hand. She knew that, even more than the hansom, their 'get up' had given them away. It must be confessed she had felt quite as strongly as her sister that it wouldn't do to be recognized at a Suffragette meeting. Even as a nameless 'fine lady' standing out from a mob of the dowdy and the dirty, to be stared at by eyes however undiscerning, under circumstances so questionable, would be distinctly distasteful.
So, reversing the order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a 'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque, the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an old paste buckle and some violets, leavingit 'not fit to be seen.' In spite of having herself taken these precautions, Vida had broken into uncontrollable smiles at the apparition of Mrs. Fox-Moore, asking with pride—
'Will I do? I look quite like a Woman of the People, don't I?'
The unconscious humour of the manifestation filled Miss Levering with an uneasy merriment every time she turned her eyes that way.
Little as Mr. Fox-Moore thought of his wife's taste, either in clothes or in amusements, he would have been more mystified than ever he had been in his life had he seen her hansom, ten minutes later, stop on the north side of Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Gallery.
'Look out and see,' she said, retiring guiltily into the corner of the conveyance. 'Are they there?' And it was plain that nothing could more have relieved Mrs. Fox-Moore at that moment than to hear 'they' were not.
But Vida, glancing discreetly out of the side window, had said—
'There? I should think they are—and a crowd round them already. Look at their banners!' and she laughed as she leaned out and read the legend, 'We demand VOTES FOR WOMEN' inscribed in black letters on the white ground of two pieces of sheeting stretched each between a pair of upright poles, standing one on either side of the plinth of Nelson's column. In the very middle, and similarly supported, was a banner of blood red. Upon this one, in great white letters, appeared the legend—
'EFFINGHAM, THE ENEMYofWOMEN AND THE WORKERS.'
As Vida read it out—
'What!' ejaculated her sister. 'They haven't really got that on a banner!' And so intrigued was she that, like some shy creature dwelling in a shell, cautiously she protruded her head out of the shiny, black sheath of the hansom.
But as she did so she met the innocent eye of a passer-by, tired of craning his neck to look back at the meeting. With precipitation Mrs. Fox-Moore withdrew into the innermost recesses of the black shell.
'Come, Janet,' said Vida, who had meanwhile jumped out and settled the fare.
'Did that man know us?' asked the other, lifting up the flap from the back window of the hansom and peering out.
'No, I don't think so.'
'He stared, Vida. He certainly stared very hard.'
Still she hesitated, clinging to the friendly shelter of the hansom.
'Oh, come on! He only stared because—— He took you for a Suffragette!' But the indiscretion lit so angry a light in the lady's eye, that Vida was fain to add, 'No, no, do come—and I'll tell you what he was really looking at.'
'What?' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, putting out her head again.
'He was struck,' said Vida, biting her lip to repress smiles, 'by the hat of the Woman of the People.'
But the lady was too entirely satisfied with her hat to mind Vida's poking fun at it.
'"Effingham, the Enemy!"' Mrs. Fox-Moore read for herself as they approached the flaunting red banner. 'How perfectly outrageous!'
'How perfectlysilly!' amended the other, 'when one thinks of that kind and charming Pillar of Excellence!'
'I told you they were mad as well as bad.'
'I know; and now we're going to watch them prove it. Come on.'
'Why, they've stopped the fountains!' Mrs. Fox-Moore spoke as though detecting an additional proof of turpitude. 'Those two policemen,' she went on, in a whisper, 'why are they looking atuslike that?'
Vida glanced at the men. Their eyes were certainly fixed on the two ladies in a curious, direct fashion, not exactly impudent, but still in a way no policeman had ever looked at either of them before. A coolly watchful, slightly contemptuous stare, interrupted by one man turning to say something to the other, at which both grinned. Vida was conscious of wishing that she had come in her usual clothes—above all, that Janet had not raked out that 'jumble sale' object she had perched on her head.
The wearer of the incriminatory hat, acting upon some quite unanalyzed instinct to range herself unmistakably on the side of law and order, paused as they were passing the two policemen and addressed them with dignity.
'Is it safe to stop and listen for a few minutes to these people?'
The men looked at Mrs. Fox-Moore with obvious suspicion.
'I cawn't say,' said the one nearest.
'Do you expect any trouble?' she demanded.
There was a silence, and then the other policeman said with a decidedly snubby air—
'It ain't our business to golookin'fur trouble;' and he turned his eyes away.
'Of course not,' said Vida, pleasantly, coming to her sister's rescue. 'All this lady wants to be assured of is that there are enough of you present to make it safe——'
'If ladies wants to be safe,' said number one, 'they'd better stop in their 'omes.'
'That's the first rude policeman I ever——' began Mrs. Fox-Moore, as they went on.
'Well, you know he's only echoing what we all say.'
Vida was looking over the crowd to where on the plinth of the historic column the little group of women and a solitary man stood out against the background of the banners. Here they were—these new Furies that pursued the agreeable men one sat by at dinner—men who, it was well known, devoted their lives—when they weren't dining—to the welfare of England. But were these frail, rather depressed-looking women—were they indeed the ones, outrageously daring, who broke up meetings and bashed in policemen's helmets? Nothing very daring in their aspect to-day—a little weary and preoccupied they looked, as they stood up there in twos and threes, talking to one another in that exposed position of theirs, while from time to time about their ears like spent bullets flew the spasmodic laughter and rude comment of the crowd—strangely unconscious, those 'blatant sensation-mongers,' of the thousand eyes and the sea of upturned faces!
'Notquitewhat I expected!' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, with an unmistakable accent of disappointment. It was plainly her meaning that to a general reprehensibleness, dulness was now superadded.
'Perhaps these are not the ones,' said Vida, catching at hope.
Mrs. Fox-Moore took heart. 'Suppose we find out,' she suggested.
They had penetrated the fringe of a gathering composed largelyof weedy youths and wastrel old men. A few there were who looked like decent artizans, but more who bore the unmistakable aspect of the beery out-of-work. Among the strangely few women, were two or three girls of the domestic servant or Strand Restaurant cashier class—wearers of the cheap lace blouse and the wax bead necklace.
Mrs. Fox-Moore, forgetting some of her reluctance now that she was on the spot, valiantly followed Vida as the younger woman threaded her way among the constantly increasing crowd. Just in front of where the two came to a final standstill was a quiet-looking old man with a lot of unsold Sunday papers under one arm and wearing like an apron the bill of theSunday Times. Many of the boys and young men were smoking cigarettes. Some of the older men had pipes. Mrs. Fox-Moore commented on the inferior taste in tobacco as shown by the lower orders. But she, too, kept her eyes glued to the figures up there on the plinth.
'They've had to get men to hold up their banners for them,' laughed Vida, as though she saw a symbolism in the fact, further convicting these women of folly.
'But there's a well-dressed man—that one who isn't holding up anything that I can see—what on earth ishedoing there?'
'Perhaps he'll be upholding something later.'
'Going to speak, you mean?'
'It may be a debate. Perhaps he's going to present the other side.'
'Well, if he does, I hope he'll tell them plainly what he thinks of them.'
She said it quite distinctly for the benefit of the people round her. Both ladies were still obviously self-conscious, occupied with the need to look completely detached, to advertise: 'I'mnot one of them! Never think it!' But it was gradually being borne in upon them that they need take no further trouble in this connection. Nobody in the crowd noticed any one except 'those ordinary looking persons,' as Mrs. Fox-Moore complainingly called them, up there on the plinth—'quite like what one sees on the tops of omnibuses!' Certainly it was an exercise in incongruity to compare these quiet, rather depressed looking people with the vision conjured up by Lord John's 'raving lunatics,' 'worthy of the straight jacket,' or Paul Filey's 'sexless monstrosities.'
'It's rather like a jest that promised very well at the beginning, only the teller has forgotten the point. Or else,' Vida added, looking at the face of one of the women up there—'or else the mistake was in thinking it a jest at all!' She turned away impatiently and devoted her attention to such scraps of comment as she could overhear in the crowd—or such, rather, as she could understand.
'That one—that's just come—yes, in the blue tam-o'-shanter, that's the one I was tellin' you about,' said a red-haired man, with a cheerful and rubicund face.
'Lookslike she'd be 'andy with her fists, don't she?' contributed a friend alongside. The boys in front and behind laughed appreciatively.
But the ruddy man said, 'Fists? No.She'sthe one wot carries the dog-whip;' and they all craned forward with redoubled interest. It is sad to be obliged to admit that the two ladies did precisely the same.
While the boys were, in addition, cat-calling and inquiring about the dog-whip—
'That must be the woman the papers have been full of,' Mrs. Fox-Moore whispered, staring at the new-comer with horrified eyes.
'Yes, no doubt.' Vida, too, scrutinized her more narrowly.
The wearer of the 'Tam' was certainly more robust-looking than the others, but even she had the pallor of the worker in the town. She carried her fine head and shoulders badly, like one who has stooped over tasks at an age when she should have been running about the fields. She drew her thick brows together every now and then with an effect of determination that gave her well-chiselled features so dark and forbidding an aspect it was a surprise to see the grace that swept into her face when, at something one of her comrades said, she broke into a smile. Two shabby men on Vida's left were working themselves into a fine state of moral indignation over the laxity of the police in allowing these women to air their vanity in public.
'Comin' here with tam-o'-shanters to tell us 'ow to do our business.'
'It's part o' wot I mean w'en I s'y old England's on the down gryde.'
'W'ich is the one in black—this end?' his companion asked,indicating a refined-looking woman of forty or so. 'Is that Miss——?'
'Miss,' chipped in a young man of respectable appearance just behind. 'Miss?Why, that's the mother o' the Gracchi,' and there was a little ripple of laughter.
'Hasn't she got any of her jewels along with her to-day?' said another voice.
'What do they mean?' demanded Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Vida shook her head. She herself was looking about for some one to ask.
'Isn't it queer that you and I have lived all this time in the world and have never yet been in a mixed crowd before in all our lives?—neveras a part of it.'
'I think myself it's less strange we haven't done it before than that we're doing it now. There's the woman selling things. Let us ask her——'
They had noticed before a faded-looking personage who had been going about on the fringe of the crowd with a file of propagandist literature on her arm. Vida beckoned to her. She made her way with some difficulty through the chaffing, jostling horde, saying steadily and with a kind of cheerful doggedness—
'Leaflets! Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott! Labour Record! Prison Experiences of Miss——'
'How much?' asked Miss Levering.
'What you like,' she answered.
Miss Levering took her change out in information. 'Can you tell me who the speakers are?'
'Oh, yes.' The haggard face brightened before the task. 'That one is the famous Miss Claxton.'
'With her face screwed up?'
'That's because the sun is in her eyes.'
'She isn't so bad-looking,' admitted Mrs. Fox-Moore.
'No; but just wait till she speaks!' The faded countenance of the woman with the heavy pile of printed propaganda on her arm was so lit with enthusiasm, that it, too, was almost good-looking, in the same way as the younger, more regular face up there, frowning at the people, or the sun, or the memory of wrongs.
'Is Miss Claxton some relation of yours?' asked Mrs. Fox-Moore.
'No, oh, no, I don't even know her. She hasn't been out of prison long. The man in grey—he's Mr. Henry.'
'Out of prison! And Henry's the chairman, I suppose.'
'No; the chairman is the lady in black.' The pamphlet-seller turned away to make change for a new customer.
'Do you mean the mother of the Gracchi?' said Vida, at a venture, and saw how if she herself hadn't understood the joke the lady with the literature did. She laughed good-humouredly.
'Yes; that's Mrs. Chisholm.'
'What!' said a decent-looking but dismal sort of shopman just behind, 'is that the mother of those dreadful young women?'
Neither of the two ladies were sufficiently posted in the nefarious goings on of the 'dreadful' progeny quite to appreciate the bystander's surprise, but they gazed with renewed interest at the delicate face.
'What can the man mean! She doesn'tlook——' Mrs. Fox-Moore hesitated.
'No,' Vida helped her out with a laughing whisper; 'I agree she doesn'tlookbig enough or bad enough or old enough or bold enough to be the mother of young women renowned for their dreadfulness. But as soon as she opens her mouth no doubt we'll smell the brimstone. I wish she'd begin her raging. Why are they waiting?'
'It's only five minutes past,' said the lady with the literature. 'I think they're waiting for Mr. Lothian Scott. He's ill. But he'll come!' As though the example of his fidelity to the cause nerved her to more earnest prosecution of her own modest duty, she called out, 'Leaflets! Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott!'
'Wot do they give ye,' inquired a half-tipsy tramp, 'fur 'awkin' that rot about?'
She turned away quite unruffled. 'Citizenship of Women, one penny.'
'I hope youdoget paid for so disagreeable a job—forgive my saying so,' said Vida.
'Paid? Oh, no!' she said cheerfully. 'I'm too hard at work all week to help much. And I can't speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship——'
'Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,'—Mrs. Fox-Moore detained the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eagerlittle figure sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at the crowd—'is that one of them?'
'Oh, yes. I thought everybody knewher. That's Miss Mary O'Brian.'
She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that Vida asked—
'And who is Miss Mary O'Brian?' But the pamphlet-seller had descried a possible customer, and was gone.
'Mary O'Brian,' said a blear-eyed old man, 'is the one that's just come out o' quod.'
'Oh, thank you.' Then to her sister Vida whispered, 'What is quod?'
But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only shake her head. Even when they heard the words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to accompany sound.
'Oh, isthatMary?' A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the extreme back of his head, began to sing, 'Molly Darling.'
'’Ow'd yer like the skilly?' another shouted up at the girl.
'Skilly?' whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn't in the dictionary of any language she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was—
'Miss O'Brian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how she liked it.'
'Oh, she's going to tell us all about it. 'Ownice!' But they let the thin little slip of a girl alone after that.
It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe of the crowd—
'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they smiled at the suggested image.
After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people for a few minutes. It wasn't often that life presented such an opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay, since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves—women had been capable of that before—but these didn't even mind ridicule. Which was new.
Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to open the meeting.
'Friends!' she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with. But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other matters, they were met there to pass a censure on the Government——
'Haw! haw!'
'’Ear, 'ear!' said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his ear.
'And to express our sympathy with the brave women——'
The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor's '’Ear, 'ear!'
'’E can't 'ear without 'e shouts about it.'
'Try and keepyerselfquiet,' said he, with dignity. 'We ain't 'ere to 'earyou.'
'——sympathy with the brave women,' the steady voice went on, 'who are still in prison.'
'Serve 'em jolly well right!'
'Give the speaker a chaunce, caun't ye?' said the newsvendor, with a withering look.
It was plain this old gentleman was an unblushing adherent to the cause (undismayed by being apparently the only one in that vicinity), ready to cheer the chairman at every juncture, and equally ready to administer caustic reproof to her opponents.
'Our friends who are in prison, are there simply for trying to bring before a member of the Government——'
'Good old Effingham. Three cheers for Effingham!'
'Oh, yes,' said the newsvendor, 'go on! 'E needs a little cheerin', awfter the mess 'e's made o' things!'
'For trying to put before a member of the Government a statement of the injustice——'
'Thatain't why they're in gaol. It's fur ringin' wot's-'is-name's door-bell.'
'Kickin' up rows in the street——'
'Oh, you shut up,' says the old champion, out of patience. 'You've 'ad 'arf a pint too much.'
Everybody in the vicinity was obliged to turn and look at the youth to see what proportion of the charge was humour and how much was fact. The youth resented so deeply the turn the conversation had taken that he fell back for a moment on bitter silence.
'When you go to call on some one,' the chairman was continuing, with the patient air of one instructing a class in a kindergarten, 'it is the custom to ring the bell. What do you suppose a door-bell is for? Do you think our deputation should have tried to get in without ringing at the door?'
'They 'adn't no business goin' to 'is private 'ouse.'
'Oh, look 'ere, just take that extry 'arf pint outside the meetin' and cool off, will yer?'
It was the last time that particular opponent aired his views. The old man's judicious harping on the '’arf pint' induced the ardent youth to moderate his political transports. They were not rightly valued, it appeared. After a few more mutterings he took his 'extry 'alf pint' into some more congenial society. But there were several others in the crowd who had come similarly fortified, and they were everywhere the most audible opponents. But above argument, denial, abuse, steadily in that upper air the clear voice kept on—
'Do you think theywantedto go to his house? Haven't you heard that they didn't do that until they had exhausted every other means to get a hearing?'
To the shower of denial and objurgation that greeted this, she said with uplifted hand—
'Stop! Let me tell you about it.'
The action had in it so much of authority that (as it seemed, to their own surprise) the interrupters, with mouths still open, suspended operations for a moment.
'Why, this is a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that doing in thisgalère?' Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able to enlighten her. 'Can't she see—even if there were anything in the "Cause," as she calls it—what an imbecile waste of time it is talking to these louts?'
'There's a good many voters here,' said a tall, gloomy-lookingindividual, wearing a muffler in lieu of a collar. 'She's politician enough to know that.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore looked through the man. 'The only reassuring thing I see in the situation,' she said to her sister, 'is that they don't find many women to come and listen to their nonsense.'
'Well, they've got you and me! Awful thought! Suppose they converted us!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore didn't even trouble to reply to such levity. What was interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and harassed by the crowd—even more surprising she bore with the most recalcitrant members of it—tried to win them over, and yet when they were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight—this well-bred woman standing there in front of the soaring column, talking with grave passion to those loafers about the 'Great Woman Question,' and they treating it as a Sunday afternoon street entertainment.
The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw nothing but 'low cockney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own language—they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-aged man in a soft hat.
'That's 'im!'
'Yes. Lothian Scott!'
Small need for the chairwoman to introduce the grey man with the northern burr in his speech, and the northern turn for the uncompromising in opinion. Every soul there save the two 'educated' ladies knew this was the man who had done more to make the Labour Party a political force to be reckoned with than any other creature in the three kingdoms. Whether he was consciousof having friends in a gathering largely Tory (as lower-class crowds still are), certainly he did not spare his enemies.
During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs. Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running comment—
'Oh, ofcourse! He says that to curry favour with the mob—a rank demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning sharply to her companion, 'He wants votes!' she said, as though detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh, no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness,Icall it, stirring up class against class! I begin to wonder what the police are thinking about.' She looked round uneasily.
The excitement had certainly increased as the little grey politician denounced the witlessness of the working-class, and when they howled at him, went on to expound a trenchant doctrine of universal Responsibility, which preceded the universal Suffrage that was to come. Much of what he said was drowned in uproar. It had become clear that his opinions revolted the majority of his hearers even more than they did the two ladies. So outraged were the sensibilities of the hooligan and the half-drunk that they drowned as much of the speech as they were able in cat-calls and jeers. But enough still penetrated to ears polite not only to horrify, but to astonish them—such force has the spoken word above even its exaggeration in cold print.
The ladies had read—sparingly, it is true—that these things were said, but tohearthem!
'He doesn't, after all, seem to be saying what the mob wants to hear,' said the younger woman.
'No; mercifully the heart of the country is still sound!'
But for one of these two out of the orderlier world, the opposition that the 'rank demagogue' roused in the mob was to light a lamp whereby she read wondering the signs of an unsuspected bond between Janet Fox-Moore and the reeking throng.
When, contrary to the old-established custom of the demagogue, the little politician in homespun had confided to the men in front of him what he thought of them, he told them that the Woman's Movement which they held themselves so clever for ridiculing, wasin much the same position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor any of the men in front of him would have the right to vote to-day.
'You ridicule and denounce these women for trying peacefully—yes, I saypeacefully—to get their rights as citizens. Do you know what our fathers did to get ours? They broke down Hyde Park railings, they burnt the Bristol Municipal Buildings, they led riots, and they shed blood. These women have hurt nobody.'
'What about the policeman?'
He went on steadily, comparing the moderation of the women with the red-hot violence of their Chartist forbears—till one half-drunken listener, having lost the thread, hiccuped out—
'Can't do nothin'—them women. Even after we've showed 'em'ow!'
'Has he got his history right?' Vida asked through her smiling at the last sally. 'Not that it applies, of course,' she was in haste to add.
'Oh, what does it matter?' Her sister waved it aside. 'An unscrupulous politician hasn't come here to bother about little things like facts.'
'I don't think I altogether agree with youthere. That man may be a fanatic, but he's honest, I should say. Those Scotch peasants, you know——'
'Oh, because he's rude, and talks with a burr, you think he's a sort of political Thomas Carlyle?'
Though Vida smiled at the charge, something in her alert air as she followed the brief recapitulation of the Chartist story showed how an appeal to justice, or even to pity, may fail, where the rousing of some dim sense of historical significance (which is more than two-thirds fear), may arrest and even stir to unsuspected deeps. The grave Scotsman's striking that chord even in a mind as innocent as Vida's, of accurate or ordered knowledge of the past, even here the chord could vibrate to a strange new sense of possible significance in this scene '——after all.' It would be queer, it would be horrible, it was fortunately incredible, but what if, 'after all,' she were ignorantly assisting at a scene that was to play its part in the greatest revolution the world had seen? Some suchmental playing with possibilities seemed to lurk behind the intent reflective face.
'There are far too many voters already,' her sister had flung out.
'Yes—yes, a much uglier world they want to make!'
But in the power to make history—if these people indeed had that, then indeed might they be worth watching—even if it were only after one good look to hide the eyes in dismay. That possibility of historic significance had suddenly lifted the sordid exhibition to a different plane.
As the man, amid howls, ended his almost indistinguishable peroration, the unmoved chairman stepped forward again to try to win back for the next speaker that modicum of quiet attention which he, at all events, had the art of gaining and of keeping. As she came forward this time one of her auditors looked at the Woman Leader in the Crusade with new eyes—not with sympathy, rather with a vague alarm. Vida Levering's air of almost strained attention was an unconscious public confession: 'I haven't understood these strange women; I haven't understood the spirit of the mob that hoots the man we know vaguely for their champion; I haven't understood the allusions nor the argot that they talk; I can't check the history that peasant has appealed to. In the midst of so much that is obscure, it is meet to reserve judgment.' Something of that might have been read in the look lifted once or twice as though in wonderment, above the haggard group up there between the guardian lions, beyond even the last reach of the tall monument, to the cloudless sky of June. Was the great shaft itself playing a part in the impression? Was it there not at all for memory of some battle long ago, but just to mark on the fair bright page of afternoon a huge surprise? What lesser accent than just this Titanic exclamation point could fitly punctuate the record of so strange a portent!—women confronting the populace of the mightiest city in the world—pleading in her most public place their right to a voice in her affairs.
In the face of this unexpected mood of receptivity, however unwilling, came a sharp corrective in the person of the next speaker.
'Oh, it's not going to be one that's been to prison!'
'Oh, dear! It's the one with the wild black hair and the awful "picture hat"!' But they stared for a few moments as if, in despite of themselves, fascinated by this lady be-feathered, be-crimped, andbe-ringed, wearing her huge hat cocked over one ear with a defiant coquetry above a would-be conquering smile. The unerring wits in the crowd had already picked her out for special attention, but her active 'public form' was even more torturing to the fastidious feminine sense than her 'stylish' appearance. For her language, flowery and grandiloquent, was excruciatingly genteel, one moment conveyed by minced words through a pursed mouth, and the next carried away on a turgid tide of rhetoric—the swimmer in this sea of sentiment flinging out braceleted arms, and bawling appeals to the 'Wim—men—nof—Vinglund!' The crowd howled with derisive joy.
All the same, when they saw she had staying power, and a kind of Transpontine sense of drama in her, the populace mocked less and applauded more. Why not? She was very much like an overblown Adelphi heroine, and they could see her act for nothing. But every time she apostrophized the 'Wim—men—nof—Vinglund!' two of those same gave way to overcharged feelings.
'Oh, my dear, I can't stand this! I'm going home!'
'Yes, yes. Let's get away from this terrible female. I suppose they keep back the best speakers for the last.'
The two ladies turned, and began to edge their way out of the tightly packed mass of humanity.
'It's rather a pity, too,' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, looking back, 'for this is the only chance we'll ever have. I did want to hear what the skilly was.'
'Yes, and about the dog-whip.'
'Skilly! Sounds as if it might be what she hit the policeman with.' Mrs. Fox-Moore was again pausing to look back. 'That gyrating female is more what I expected themallto be.'
'Yes; but just listen to that.'
'To what?'
'Why, the way they're applauding her.'
'Yes, they positively revel in the creature!'
It was a long, tiresome business this worming their way out. They paused again and again two or three times, looking back at the scene with a recurrent curiosity, and each time repelled by the platform graces of the lady who was so obviously enjoying herself to the top of her bent. Yet even after the fleeing twain arrived on the fringe of the greatly augmented crowd, something even thenprevented their instantly making the most of their escape. They stood criticizing and denouncing.
Again Mrs. Fox-Moore said it was a pity, since they were there, that they should have to go without hearing one of those who had been in prison, 'For we'll never have another chance.'
'Perhaps,' said her sister, looking back at the gesticulating figure—'perhaps we're being a little unreasonable. We were annoyed at first because they weren't what we expected, and when we get what we came to see, we run away.'
While still they lingered, with a final fling of arms and toss of plumes, the champion of the women of England sat down in the midst of applause.
'You hear? It's all very well. Most of them simply loved it.'
And now the chairman, in a strikingly different style, was preparing the way for the next speaker, at mention of whom the crowd seemed to feel they'd been neglecting their prerogative of hissing.
'What name did she say? Why do they make that noise?'
The two ladies began to worm their way back; but this was a different matter from coming out.
'Wot yer doin'?' some one inquired sternly of Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Another turned sharply, 'Look out! Oo yer pushin', old girl?'
The horrid low creatures seemed to have no sense of deference. And the stuff they smoked!
'Pah!' observed Mrs. Fox-Moore, getting the full benefit of a noxious puff. 'Pah!'
'Wot!' said the smoker, turning angrily. 'Pah to you, miss!' He eyed Mrs. Fox-Moore from head to foot with a withering scorn. 'Comin' 'ere awskin' us fur votes' (Vida nearly fainted), 'and ain't able to stand a little tobacco.'
'Stand in front, Janet,' said Miss Levering, hastily recovering herself. 'Idon't mind smoke,' she said mendaciously, trying to appease the defiler of the air with a little smile. Indeed, the idea of Mrs. Fox-Moore having come to 'awsk' this person for a vote was sufficiently quaint.
'This is the sort of thing they mean, I suppose,' said that lady, 'when they talk about cockney humour. It doesn't appeal to me.'
Vida bit her lip. Her own taste was less pure. 'We needn't try to get any nearer,' she said hastily. 'This chairman-person can make herself heard without screeching.'
But having lost the key during the passage over the pipe, they could only make out that she was justifying some one to the mob, some one who apparently was coming in for too much sharp criticism for the chairman to fling her to the wolves without first diverting them a little. The battle of words that ensued was almost entirely unintelligible to the two ladies, but they gathered, through means more expressive than speech, that the chairman was dealing with some sort of crisis in the temper of the meeting, brought about by the mention of a name.
The only thing clear was that she was neither going to give in, nor going to turn over the meeting in a state of ferment to some less practised hand.
'Yes, she did! She had a perfect right,' the chairman maintained against a storm of noes—'more than a right,a duty, to perform in going with that deputation on public business to the house of a public servant, since, unlike the late Prime Minister, he had refused to women all opportunity to treat with him through the usual channels always open to citizens having a political grievance.'
'Citizens? Suffragettes!'
'Very well.' She set her mouth. 'Suffragettes if you like. To get an abuse listened to is the first thing; to get it understood is the next. Rather than not have our cause stand out clear and unmistakable before a preoccupied, careless world, we accept the clumsy label; we wear it proudly. And it won't be the first time in history that a name given in derision has become a badge of honour!'
Why, the woman's eyes were suffused!—a flush had mounted up to her hair!
How she cared!
'Yer ain't told us the reason yewantthe vote.'
'Reason? Why, she's a woman!'
'Haw! haw!'
The speaker had never paused an instant, but—it began to be clear that she heard any interruption it suited her to hear.
'Some one asking, at this time of day, why women want the vote? Why, for exactly the same reason that you men do. Because, not having any voice in public affairs, our interests are neglected; and since woman's interests are man's, all humanitysuffers. We want the vote, because taxation without representation is tyranny; because the laws as they stand bear hardly on women; and because those unfair, man-made laws will never be altered till women have a share in electing the men who control legislation.'
'Yer ought ter leave politics to us——'
'We can't leave politics to the men, because politics have come into the home, and if the higher interests of the home are to be served, women must come into politics.'
'That's a bad argument!'
'Wot I always say is——'
'Can't change nature. Nature says——'
'Let 'er st'y at 'ome and mind 'er business!'
The interjections seemed to come all at once. The woman bent over the crowd. Nothing misty in her eyes now—rather a keener light than before.
'Don't you see,' she appealed to them as equals—'don't you see that in your improvement of the world you men have taken women's business out of her home? In the old days there was work and responsibility enough for woman without going outside her own gate. The women were the bakers and brewers, the soap and candle-makers, the loom-workers of the world. You men,' she said, delicately flattering them, 'youhave changed all that. You have built great factories and warehouses and mills. But how do you keep them going? By calling women to come in their thousands and help you. But women love their homes. You couldn't have got these women out of their homes without the goad of poverty. You men can't always earn enough to keep the poor little home going, so the women work in the shops, they swarm at the mill gates, and the factories are full.'