It was Friday, and Mrs. Fox-Moore was setting out to alleviate the lot of the poor in Whitechapel.
'Even if it were not Friday,' Vida said slyly as her sister was preparing to leave the house, 'you'd invent some errand to take you out of the contaminated air of Queen Anne's Gate this afternoon.'
'Well, as I told you,' said the other woman, nervously, 'you ask that person here on your own responsibility.'
Vida smiled. 'I'm obliged to ask people here if I want to see them quietly. You make such a fuss when I suggest having a house of my own!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore ignored the alternative. 'You'll see you're only making trouble for yourself. You'll have to pay handsomely for your curiosity.'
'Well, I've been rather economical of late. Maybe I'll be able "to pay."'
'Don't imagine you'll be able to settle an account of that kind with a single cheque. Give people like that an inch, and they'll expect a weekly ell.'
'Are you afraid she'll abstract the spoons?'
'I'm not only afraid, Iknowshe won't be satisfied with one contribution, or one visit. She'll regard it as the thin end of the wedge—getting her nose into a house of this kind.' Irresistibly the words conjured up a vision of some sharp-visaged female marauder insinuating the tip of a very pointed nose between the great front door and the lintel. 'I only hope,' the elder woman went on, 'that I won't be here the first time Donald encounters your new friend on the doorstep.That'sall!'
Wherewith she departed to succour women and children at long range in the good old way. Little Doris was ill in bed. Mr. Fox-Moore was understood to have joined his brother's coaching party. The time had been discreetly chosen—the coast was indubitably clear. But would it remain so?
To insure that it should, Miss Levering had a private conference with the butler.
'Some one is coming to see me on business.'
'Yes, miss.'
'At half-past five.'
'Yes, miss.'
'I specially don't want to be interrupted.'
'No, miss.'
'Not byanybody, no matter whom.'
'Very well, miss.' A slight pause. 'Shall I show the gentleman into the drawing-room, miss?'
'It's not a gentleman, and I'll see her upstairs in my sitting-room.'
'Yes, miss. Very well, miss.'
'And don't forget—toanyone else I'm not at home.'
'No, miss. What name, miss?'
Vida hesitated. The servants nowadays read everything. 'Oh, you can't make a mistake. She—— It will be a stranger—some one who has never been here before. Wait! I'll look out of the morning-room window. If it is the person I'm expecting, I'll ring the bell. You understand. If the morning-room bell has rung just as this person comes, it will be the one I'm expecting.'
'Yes, miss.' With a splendid impassivity in the face of precautions so unprecedented, the servant withdrew.
Vida smiled to herself as she leaned back among the cushions of her capacious sofa, cutting the pages of a book. A pleasant place this room of hers, wide and cool, where the creamy background of wall and chintz-cover was lattice-laced with roses. The open windows looked out upon one of those glimpses of greenery made vivid to the London eye, not alone by gratitude, but by contrast of the leafage against the ebonized bark of smoke-ingrained bole and twig.
The summer wind was making great, gentle fans of the plane branches; it was swaying the curtains that hung down in long, straight folds from the high cornices. No other sound in the room but the hard grate of the ivory paper-knife sawing its way through a book whose outside alone (a muddy-brown, pimpled cloth) proclaimed it utilitarian. Among the fair-covered Italianvolumes, the vellum-bound poets, and those friends-for-a-lifetime wearing linen or morocco to suit a special taste; above all, among that greater company 'quite impudently French' that stood close ranked on shelves or lay about on tables—the brown book on its dusty modern theme wore the air of a frieze-coated yeoman sitting amongst broadcloth and silk. The reader glanced from time to time at the clock. When the small glittering hand on the porcelain face pointed to twenty minutes past five, the lady took her book and her paper-knife into a front room on the floor below. She sat down behind the lowered persienne, and every now and then lifted her eyes from the page and peered out between the tiny slits. As the time went on she looked out oftener. More than once she half rose and seemed about to abandon all hope of the mysterious visitor when a hansom dashed up to the door. One swift glance: 'They go in cabs!'—and Miss Levering ran to the bell.
A few moments after, she was again established in her sofa corner, and the door of her sitting-room opened. 'The lady, miss.' Into the wide, harmonious space was ushered a hot and harassed-looking woman, in a lank alpaca gown and a tam-o'-shanter. Miss Claxton's clothes, like herself, had borne the heat and burden of the day. She frowned as she gave her hand.
'I am late, but it was very difficult to get away at all.'
Miss Levering pushed towards her one of the welcoming great easy-chairs that stood holding out cool arms and a lap of roses. The tired visitor, with her dusty clothes and brusque manner, sat down without relaxing to the luxurious invitation. Her stiffly maintained attitude and direct look said as plain as print, Now what excuse have you to offer for asking me to come here? It may have been recollection of Mrs. Fox-Moore's fear of 'the thin end of the wedge' that made Miss Levering smile as she said—
'Yes, I've been expecting you for the last half hour, but it's very good of you to come at all.'
Miss Claxton looked as if she quite agreed.
'You'll have some tea?' Miss Levering was moving towards the bell.
'No, I've had my tea.'
The queer sound of 'my' tea connoting so much else! The hostess subsided on to the sofa.
'I heard you speak the other day as I told you in my note. But all the same I came away with several unanswered questions—questions that I wanted to put to you quietly. As I wrote you, I am not whatyouwould call a convert. I've only got as far as the inquiry stage.'
Miss Claxton waited.
'Still, if I take up your time, I ought not to let you be out of pocket by it.'
The hostess glanced towards the little spindle-legged writing-table, where, on top of a heap of notes, lay the blue oblong of a cheque-book.
'We consider it part of every day's business to answer questions,' said Miss Claxton.
'I suppose I can make some little contribution without—without its committing me to anything?'
'Committing you——'
'Yes; it wouldn't get into the papers,' she said, a little shamefaced, 'or—or anything like that.'
'It wouldn't get into the papers unless you put it in.'
The lady blinked. There was a little pause. She was not easy to talk to—this young woman. Nor was she the ideal collector of contributions.
'That was a remarkable meeting you had in Hyde Park last Sunday.'
'Remarkable? Oh, no, they're all pretty much alike.'
'Do they all end like that?'
'Oh, yes; people come to scoff, and by degrees we get hold of them—even the Hyde Park loafers.'
'I mean, do they often crowd up and try to hustle the speakers?'
'Oh, they are usually quite good-natured.'
'You handled them wonderfully.'
'We're used to dealing with crowds.'
Her look went round the room, as if to say, 'It's this kind of thing I'm not used to, and I don't take to it over-kindly.'
'In the crush at the end,' said Miss Levering, 'I overheard a scrap of conversation between two men. They were talking about you. "Very good for a woman," one said.'
Miss Claxton smiled a scornful little smile.
'And the other one said, "It would have been very good fora man. And personally," he said, "I don't know many men who could have kept that crowd in hand for two hours." That's what two men thought of it.'
She made no answer.
'It doesn't seem to me possible that your speakers average as good as those I heard on Sunday.'
'We have a good many who speak well, but we look upon Ernestine Blunt as our genius.'
'Yes, she seems rather a wonderful little person, but I wrote to you because—partly because you are older. And you gave me the impression of being extremely level-headed.'
'Ernestine Blunt is level-headed too,' said Miss Claxton, warily.
She was looking into the lady's face, frowning a little in that way of hers, intent, even somewhat suspicious.
'Oh, I dare say, but she's such a child!'
'We sometimes think Ernestine Blunt has the oldest head among us.'
'Really,' said Miss Levering. 'When a person is as young as that, you don't know how much is her own and how much borrowed.'
'She doesn't need to borrow.'
'Butyou. I said to myself, "That woman, who makes other things so clear, she can clear up one or two things for me."'
'Well, I don't know.' More wary than ever, she suspended judgment.
'I noticed none of you paid any attention when the crowd called out—things about——'
Miss Claxton's frown deepened. It was plain she heard the echo of that insistent, never-answered query of the crowd, 'Got your dog-whip, miss?' She waited.
It looked as though Miss Levering lacked courage to repeat it in all its violent bareness.
'——when they called out things—about the encounters with the police. It's those stories, as I suppose you know, that have set so many against the movement.'
No word out of Miss Claxton. She sat there, not leaning back, nor any longer stiffly upright, but hunched together like a creature ready to spring.
'I believed those stories too; but when I had watched you, and listened to you on Sunday,' Miss Levering hastened to add, a little shamefaced at the necessity, 'I said to myself, not' (suddenly she stopped and smiled with disarming frankness)—'I didn't say, "That woman's too well-behaved, or too amiable;" I said, "She's too intelligent. That woman never spat at a policeman.'"
'Spit? No,' she said grimly.
'"Nor bit, nor scratched, nor any of those things. And since the papers have lied about that," I said to myself, "I'll go to headquarters for information."'
'What papers do you read?'
'Oh, practically all. This house is like a club for papers and magazines. My brother-in-law has everything.'
'TheClarion?'
'No, I never saw theClarion.'
'TheLabour Leader?'
'No.'
'TheLabour Record?'
'No.'
'It is the organ of our party.'
'I—I'm afraid I never heard of any of them.'
Miss Claxton smiled.
'I'll take them in myself in future,' said the lady on the sofa. 'Was it reading those papers that set you to thinking?'
'Reading papers? Oh, no. It was——' She hesitated, and puckered up her brows again as she stared round the room.
'Yes, go on. That's one of the things I wanted to know, if you don't mind—how you came to be identified with the movement.'
A little wearily, without the smallest spark of enthusiasm at the prospect of imparting her biography, Miss Claxton told slowly, even dully, and wholly without passion, the story of a hard life met single-handed from even the tender childhood days—one of those recitals that change the relation between the one who tells and the one who listens—makes the last a sharer in the life to the extent that the two can never be strangers any more. Though they may not meet, nor write, nor have any tangible communication, there is understanding between them.
At the close Miss Levering stood up and gave the other her hand. Neither said anything. They looked at each other.
After the lady had resumed her seat, Miss Claxton, as under some compulsion born of the other's act of sympathy, went on—
'It is a newspaper lie—as you haven't needed to be told—about the spitting and scratching and biting—but the day I was arrested; the day of the deputation to Effingham, I saw a policeman knocking some of our poorer women about very roughly' (it had its significance, the tone in which she said 'our poorer women'). 'I called out that he was not to do that again. He had one of our women like this, and he was banging her against the railings. I called out if he didn't stop I would make him. He kept on'—a cold glitter came into the eyes—'and I struck him. I struck the coward in the face.'
The air of the mild luxurious room grew hot and quivered. The lady on the sofa lowered her eyes.
'They must be taught,' the other said sternly, 'the police must be taught, they are not to treat our women like that. On the whole the police behave well. But their power is immense and almost entirely unchecked. It's a marvel they are as decent as they are. How shouldtheybe expected to know how to treat women? What example do they have? Don't they hear constantly in the courts how little it costs a man to be convicted of beating his own wife?' She fired the questions at the innocent person on the sofa, as if she held her directly responsible for the need to ask them. 'Stealing is far more dangerous; yes, even if a man's starving. That's because bread is often dear and women are always cheap.'
She waited a moment, waited for the other to contradict or at least resent the dictum. The motionless figure among the sofa cushions, whose very look and air seemed to proclaim 'some of us are expensive enough,' hardly opened her lips to say, as if to herself—
'Yes, women are cheap.'
Perhaps Miss Claxton thought the agreement lacked conviction, for she went on with a harsh hostility that seemed almost personal—
'We'd rather any day be handled by the police than by the self-constituted stewards of political meetings.'
Partly the words, even more the look in the darkening face, made Miss Levering say—
'That brings me to something else I wanted to be enlightened about. One reason I wrote to ask for a little talk withyouspecially, was because I couldn't imagine your doing anything so futile as to pit your physical strength—considerable as it may be—but to pit your muscle against men's is merely absurd. And I, when I saw how intelligent you were, I saw that you know all that quite as well as I. Why, then, carry a whip?'
The lowered eyelids of the face opposite quivered faintly.
'You couldn't think it would save you from arrest.'
'No, not from arrest.' The woman's mouth hardened.
'I know'—Miss Levering bridged the embarrassment of the pause—'I know there must be some rational explanation.'
But if there were it was not forthcoming.
'So you see your most indefensible and even futile-appearing action gave the cue for my greatest interest,' said Vida, with a mixture of anxiety and bluntness. 'For just the woman you were, to do so brainless a thing—what was behind? That was what I kept asking myself.'
'It—isn't—only—roughtreatment one or two of us have met'—she pulled out the words slowly—'it's sometimes worse.' They both waited in a curious chill embarrassment. 'Not the police, but the stewards at political meetings, and the men who volunteer to "keep the women in order," they'—she raised her fierce eyes and the colour rose in her cheeks—'as they're turning us out they punish us in ways the public don't know.' She saw the shrinking wonder in the woman opposite, and she did not spare her. 'They punish us by underhand maltreatment—of the kind most intolerable to a decent woman.'
'Oh, no, no!' The other face was a flame to match.
'Yes!' She flung it out like a poisoned arrow.
'Howdarethey!' said Vida in a whisper.
'They know we dare not complain.'
'Why not?'
A duller red overspread the face as the woman muttered, 'Nobody, no woman, wants to talk about it. And if we did they'd only say, "See! you're killing chivalry."Chivalry!' She laughed. It was not good to hear a laugh like that.
The figure on the sofa winced. 'I assure you people don't know,' said Vida.
'It's known well enough to those who've had to suffer it, and it's known to the brutes of men who——'
'Ah, but youmustrealize'—Miss Levering jumped to her feet—'you must admit that the great mass of men would be indignant if they knew.'
'You think so?' The question was insulting in its air of forbearance with a fairy-tale view of life.
'Think so? Iknowit. I should be sorry for my own powers of judgment if I believed the majority of men were like the worst specimens—like those you——'
'Oh, well, we don't dwell on that side. It's enough to remember that women without our incentive have to bear worse. It's part of a whole system.'
'I shall never believe that!' exclaimed Vida, thinking what was meant was an organized conspiracy against the Suffragettes.
'Yes, it's all part of the system we are in the world to overturn. Why should we suppose we'd gain anything by complaining? Don't hundreds, thousands of meek creatures who have never defied anybody, don't they have to bear worse ignominies? Every man knows that's true. Who troubles himself? What is the use, we say, of crying about individual pains and penalties? No. The thing is to work day and night to root out the system that makes such things possible.'
'I still don't understand—why you thought it would be a protection to carry——'
'A man's fear of ridicule will restrain him when nothing else will. If one of them is publicly whipped,and by a woman, it isn't likely to be forgotten. Even the fear of it—protects us from some things. After an experience some of the women had, the moment our committee decided on another demonstration, little Mary O'Brian went out, without consulting anybody, and bought me the whip. "If you will go," she said, "you shan't go unarmed. If we have that sort of cur to deal with, the only thing is to carry a dog-whip."'
Miss Claxton clenched her hands in their grey cotton gloves. There was silence in the room for several seconds.
'What we do in asking questions publicly—it's only whatmen do constantly. The greatest statesman in the land stops to answer a man, even if he's a fool naturally, or half drunk. They treat those interrupters with respect, they answer their questions civilly. They are men. They have votes. But women: "Where's the chucker out?"'
'Are you never afraid that all you're going through may be in vain?'
'No. We are quite certain to succeed. We have found the right way at last.'
'You mean what are called your tactics?'
'I mean the spirit of the women. I mean: not to mind the price. When you've got people to feel like that, success is sure.'
'But it comes very hard on those few who pay with the person, as the French say, pay with prison—and with——'
'Prison isn't the worst!'
A kind of shyness came over the woman on the sofa; she dropped her eyes from the other's face.
'Of course,' the ex-prisoner went on, 'if more women did a little it wouldn't be necessary for the few to do so much.'
'I suppose you are in need of funds to carry on the propaganda.'
'Money isn't what is most needed. One of our workers—a little mill girl—came up from the country with only two pounds in her pocket to rouse London. And she did it!' her comrade exulted. 'But there's a class we don't reach. If only'—she hesitated and glanced reflectively at the woman before her.
'Yes?' Miss Levering's eye flew to the cheque-book.
'If only we could get women of influence to understand what's at stake,' said Miss Claxton, a little wistfully.
'They don't?'
'Oh, some. A few. As much as can be expected.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Well, the upper-class women, I don't say all' (she spoke as one exercising an extreme moderation); 'but many of them are such sexless creatures.'
Miss Levering opened wide eyes—a glint of something like amazed laughter crossed her face, as she repeated—
'Theyare sexless, you think?'
'We find them so,' said the other, firmly.
'Why'—Miss Levering smiled outright—'that's what they say of you.'
'Well, it's nonsense, like the rest of what they say.'
The accusation of sexlessness brought against the curled darlings of society by these hard-working, hard-hitting sisters of theirs was not the least ironic thing in the situation.
'Why do you call them——?'
'Because we see they have no sex-pride. If they had, they couldn't do the things they do.'
'What sort of things?'
'Oh, I can't go into that.' She stood up and tugged at her wrinkled cotton gloves. 'But it's easy for us to see they're sexless.' She seemed to resent the unbelief in the opposite face. 'Lady Caterham sent for me the other day. You may have heard of Lady Caterham.'
Miss Levering suppressed the fact of how much, by a vague-sounding—
'Y—yes.'
'Well, she sent for me to—— Oh, I suppose she was curious!'
'Like me,' said the other, smiling.
'She'sa very great person in her county, and shesaidshe sympathized with the movement—only she didn't approve of our tactics, she said. We are pretty well used by now to people who don't approve of our tactics, so I just sat and waited for the "dog-whip."'
It was obvious that the lady without influence in her county winced at that, almost as though she felt the whip on her own shoulders. She was indeed a hard-hitter, this woman.
'I don't go about talking of why I carry a whip. Ihatetalking about it,' she flung the words out resentfully. 'But I'd been sent to try to get that woman to help, and so I explained. I told her when she asked why it seemed necessary'—again the face flushed—'I told her!—more than I've told you. And will you believe it, she never turned a hair. Just sat there with a look of cool curiosity on her face. Oh, they have no sex-pride, those upper-class women!'
'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand.'
'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. Shedidn't feel the indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her,shewouldn't have suffered,' said the critic, with a grim contempt.
'There may be another explanation,' said Miss Levering, a little curtly, but wisely she forbore to present it.
If the rough and ready reformer had chilled her new sympathizer by this bitterness against 'the parasite class,' she wiped out the memory of it by the enthusiasm with which she spoke of those other women, her fellow-workers.
'Our women are wonderful!' she lifted her tired head. 'I knew they'd never had a chance to show what they were, but there are some things—— No! I didn't think women had it in them.'
She had got up and was standing now by the door, her limp gown clinging round her, her weather-beaten Tam on one side. But in the confident look with which she spoke of 'our women,' the brow had cleared. You saw that it was beautiful. Miss Levering stood at the door with an anxious eye on the stair, as if fearful of the home-coming of 'her fellow-coward,' or, direr catastrophe—old Mr. Fox-Moore's discovering the damning fact of this outlaw's presence under his roof! Yet, even so, torn thus between dread and desire to pluck out the heart of the new mystery, 'the militant woman,' Miss Levering did not speed the parting guest. As though recognizing fully now that the prophesied use was not going to be made of the 'thin end of the wedge,' she detained her with—
'I wonder when I shall see you again.'
'I don't know,' said the other, absently.
'When is the next meeting?'
'Next Sunday. Every Sunday.'
'I shall be glad to hear you speak again; but—you'll come and see me—here.'
'I can't. I'm going away.'
'Oh! To rest, I hope.'
'Rest?' She laughed at an idea so comic. 'Oh, no. I'm going to work among the women in Wales. We have great hopes of those West-country women. They're splendid! They're learning the secret of co-operation, too. Oh, it's good stuff to work on—the relief of it after London!'
Miss Levering smiled. 'Then I won't be seeing you very soon.'
'No.' She seemed to be thinking. 'It's true what I say of the Welsh women, and yet we oughtn't to be ungrateful to our London women either.' She seemed to have some sense of injustice on her soul. 'We've been seeing just recently what they're made of, too!' She paused on the threshold and began to tell in a low voice of women 'new to the work,' who had been wavering, uncertain if they could risk imprisonment—poor women with husbands and children. 'When they heardwhat it might mean—this battle we're fighting—they were ashamed not to help us!'
'You mean——' Vida began, shrinking.
'Yes!' said the other, fiercely. 'The older women saw they ought to save the younger ones from having to face that sort of thing. That was how we got some of the wives and mothers.'
She went on with a stern emotion that was oddly contagious, telling about a certain scene at the Headquarters of the Union. Against the grey and squalid background of a Poor Women's movement, stood out in those next seconds a picture that the true historian who is to come will not neglect. A call for recruits with this result—a huddled group, all new, unproved, ignorant of the ignorant. The two or three leaders, conscience-driven, feeling it necessary to explain to the untried women that if they shared in the agitation, they were not only facing imprisonment, but unholy handling.
'It was only fair to let them know the worst,' said the woman at the door, 'before they were allowed to join us.'
As the abrupt sentences fell, the grim little scene was reconstituted; the shrinking of the women who had offered their services ignorant of this aspect of the battle—their horror and their shame. At the memory of that hour the strongly-controlled voice shook.
'They cried, those women,' she said.
'But they came?' asked the other, trembling, as though for her, too, it was vital that these poor women should not quail.
'Yes,' answered their leader a little hoarsely, 'they came!'
One of the oddest things about these neo-Suffragists was the simplicity with which they accepted aid—the absence in the responsible ones of conventional gratitude. This became matter for both surprise and instruction to the outsider. It no doubt had the effect of chilling and alienating the 'philanthropist on the make.' Even to the less ungenerous, not bargainers for approbation or for influence, even in their case the deep-rooted suspicion we have been taught to cultivate for one another, makes the gift of good faith so difficult that it can be given freely only to people like these, people who plainly and daily suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the world's good word. That they took help, and even sacrifice, as a matter of course, seemed in them mere modesty and sound good sense; tantamount to saying, 'I am not so silly or self-centred as to suppose you do this forme. You do it, of course, for the Cause. The Cause is yours—is all Women's. You serve humanity. Who am I that I should thank you?'
This attitude extended even to acts that were in truth prompted less by concern for the larger issue than by sheer personal interest.
Vida Levering's first experience of this 'new attitude' came one late afternoon while on her way to leave cards on some people in Grosvenor Road. Driving through Pimlico about half-past six, she lifted up her eyes at the sound of many voices and beheld a mob of men and boys in the act of pursuing a little group of women, who were fleeing up a side street away from the river. The natural shrinking and disgust of 'the sheltered woman' showed in the face of the occupant of the brougham as she leaned forward and said to the coachman—
'Not this way! Don't you see there's some disturbance? Turn back.'
The man obeyed. The little crowd had halted. It looked asif the thief, or drunken woman, or what not, had been surrounded and overwhelmed. The end of the street abutted on Pimlico Pier. Two or three knots of people were still standing about, talking and looking up the street at the little crowd of shouting, gesticulating rowdies. A woman with a perambulator, making up her mind at just the wrong moment to cross the road, found herself almost under the feet of the Fox-Moore horses. The coachman pulled up sharply, and before he had driven on, the lady's eyes had fallen on an inscription in white chalk on the flagstone—
'VOTES FOR WOMEN.'Meeting here to-night at a quarter to six.'
The occupant of the carriage turned her head sharply in the direction of the 'disturbance,' and then—
'After all, I must go up that street. Drive fast till you get near those people. Quick!'
'Upthere, miss?'
'Yes, yes. Make haste!' For the crowd was moving on, and still no sign of a policeman.
By the time the brougham caught up with them, the little huddle of folk had nearly reached the top of the street. In the middle of themêléea familiar face. Ernestine Blunt!
'Oh, Henderson!'—Miss Levering put her head out of the window—'that girl! the young one! She's being mobbed.'
'Yes, miss.'
'But something must be done! Hail a policeman.'
'Yes, miss.'
'Do youseea policeman?'
'No, miss.'
'Well, stop a moment,' for even at this slowest gait the brougham had passed the storm centre.
The lady hanging out of the window looked back and saw that Ernestine's face, very pink as to cheeks, very bright as to eyes, was turned quite unruffled on the rabble.
'Can't you see the meeting's over?' she called out. 'You boys go home now and think about what we've told you.'
The reply to that was a laugh and a concerted 'rush' that allbut carried the girl and her companions off their feet. To Henderson's petrifaction, the door of the brougham was hastily opened and then slammed to, leaving Miss Levering in the road, saying to him over her shoulder—
'Wait just round the corner, unless I call.'
With which she hurried across the street, her eyes on the little face that, in spite of its fresh colouring, looked so pathetically tired. Making her way round the outer fringe of the crowd, Vida saw on the other side—near where Ernestine and her sore-beset companions stood with their backs to the wall—an opening in the dingy ranks. Fleet of foot, she gained it, thrust an arm between the huddled women, and, taking the foolhardy girl by the sleeve, said,sotto voce—
'Come! Come with me!'
Ernestine raised her eyes, fixed them for one calm instant on Vida Levering's face, and then, turning round, said—
'Where's Mrs. Brown?'
'Never mind Mrs. Brown!' whispered the strange lady, drawing off as the rowdy young men came surging round that side.
There was another rush and a yell, and Vida fled. When next she turned to look, it was to see two women making a sudden dash for liberty. They had escaped through the rowdy ranks, and they tore across the street, running for their lives and calling for help as they ran.
Vida, a shade or two paler, stood transfixed. What was going to happen? But there was the imperturbable Ernestine holding the forsaken position, still the centre of the pushing, shouting little mob who had jeered frantically as the other women fled.
It was too much. Not Ernestine's isolation alone, the something childish in the brilliant face would have enlisted a less sympathetic observer. A single moment's wavering and the lady made for the place where the besiegers massed less thick. She was near enough now to call out over the rowdies' heads—
'Come. Why do you stay there?'
Faces turned to look at her; while Ernestine shouted back the cryptic sentence—
'It wasn't my bus!'
Bus?Had danger robbed her of her reason? The boys were cheering now and looking past Miss Levering: she turned, bewildered, to see 'Mrs. Brown' and a sister reformer mounting the top of a sober London Road car. They had been running for that, then—and not for life! Miss Levering raised her hand and her voice as she looked back at Ernestine—
'I've got a trap. Come!'
'Where?'
Ernestine stepped out from the vociferating, jostling crowd and followed the new face as simply as though she had been waiting for just that summons. The awful moment was when, with a shout, the tail of rowdies followed after. Miss Levering had not bargained for that. Her agitated glance left the unsavoury horde at her heels and went nervously up and down the street. It was plainly not only, nor even chiefly, the hooligans she feared, but the amazéd eye of some acquaintance. Bad enough to meet Henderson's!
'Jump in!' she said hastily to the girl, and then, 'Go on!' she called out desperately, flying in after Ernestine and slamming the door. 'Drivefast!' She thrust her head through the window to add, 'Anywhere!' And she sank back. 'How dreadful that was!'
'What was?' said the rescued one, glancing out of the carriage with an air of suddenly renewed interest.
'Why, the attack of those hooligans on a handful of defenceless women.'
'Oh, they weren't attacking us.'
'What were they doing?'
'Oh, just running after us and screaming a little.'
'But Isawthem—pushing and jostling and——'
'Oh, it was all quite good-natured.'
'You mean you weren't frightened?'
'There's nothing to be frightened at.' She was actually saying it in a soothing, 'motherly' sort of way, calculated to steady the lady's nerves—reassuring the rescuer.
Vida's eye fell on the festoon of braid falling from the dark cloth skirt.
'Well, the polite attentions of your friends seem to have rather damaged your gown.'
Over a big leather portfolio that she held clasped in her arms, Ernestine, too, looked down at the torn frock.
'That foolish trimming—it's always getting stepped on.'
Miss Levering's search had produced a pin.
'No; I'll just pull it off.'
Ernestine did so, and proceeded to drop a yard of it out of the window. Miss Levering began to laugh.
'Which way are we going?' says Miss Blunt, looking out. 'I have to be at Battersea at——'
'What were you doing at Pimlico Pier?'
'Holding a meeting for the Government employees—the people who work for the Army and Navy Clothing Department.'
'Oh. And you live at Battersea?'
'No; but I have a meeting there to-night. We had a very good one at the Docks, too.' Her eyes sparkled.
'A Suffrage meeting?'
'Yes; one of the best we've had——'
'When was that?'
'During the dinner hour. The men stood with their pails and ate while they listened. They were quite nice and understanding, those men.'
'What day was that?'
'This morning.'
'And the Battersea meeting?'
'That's not for another hour; but I have to be there first—to arrange.'
'When do you dine?'
'Oh, I'll get something either before the meeting or after—whenever there's time.'
'Isn't it a pity not to get your food regularly? Won't you last longer if you do?'
'Oh, I shall last.' She sat contentedly, hugging her big portfolio.
The lady glanced at the carriage clock. 'In the house where I live, dinner is a sort of sacred rite. If you are two seconds late you are disgraced, so I'm afraid I can't——'
'There's the bus I was waiting for!' Ernestine thrust her head out. 'Stop, will you!' she commanded the astonished Henderson. 'Good-bye.' She nodded, jumped out, shut the door, steadied her hat, and was gone.
It was so an acquaintance began that was destined to make adifference to more than one life. Those days of the summer that Miss Claxton spent indoctrinating the women of Wales, and that Mrs. Chisholm utilized in 'organizing Scotland,' were dedicated by Ernestine and her friends to stirring up London and the various dim and populous worlds of the suburbs.
Much oftener than even Mrs. Fox-Moore knew, her sister, instead of being in the houses where she was supposed to be, and doing the things she was expected to be doing, might have been seen in highly unexpected haunts prosecuting her acquaintance with cockney crowds, never learning Ernestine's fearlessness of them, and yet in some way fascinated almost as much as she was repelled. At first she would sit in a hansom at safe distance from the turmoil that was usually created by the expounders of what to the populace was a 'rum new doctrine' invented by Ernestine. Miss Levering would lean over the apron of the cab hearing only scraps, till the final, 'Now, all who are in favour of Justice, hold up their hands.' As the crowd broke and dissolved, the lady in the hansom would throw open the doors, and standing up in front of the dashboard, she would hail and carry off the arch-agitator, while the crowd surged round. Several times this programme had been carried out, when one afternoon, after seeing the girl and her big leather portfolio safe in the cab, and the cab safe out of the crowd, Vida heaved a sigh of relief.
'There!Now tell me, what did you do yesterday?'—meaning, How in the world did you manage without me to take care of you?
'Yesterday? We had a meeting down at the Woolwich Arsenal. And we distributed handbills for two hours. And we had a debate in the evening at the New Reform Club.'
'Oh, you didn't hold a meeting here in the afternoon?'
'Yes we did. I forgot that.' She seemed also to have forgotten that her new friend had been prevented from appearing to carry her off.
Miss Levering smiled down at her. 'What a funny little person you are. Do you know who I am?'
'No.'
'It hasn't ever occurred to you to ask?'
The face turned to her with a half roguish smile. 'Oh, I thought you looked all right.'
'I'm the person who had the interview with your friend, MissClaxton.' As no recollection showed in the face, 'At Queen Anne's Gate,' she added.
'I don't think I knew about that,' said Ernestine, absently. Then alert, disdainful, 'Fancy the member for Wrotton saying—— Yes, we went to see him this morning.'
'Oh, that is very exciting! What was he like?'
'Quite a feeble sort of person, I thought.'
'Really!' laughed Miss Levering.
'He talked such nonsense to us about that old Plural Voting Bill. His idea seemed to be to get us to promise to behave nicely while the overworked House of Commons considered the iniquity of some men having more than one vote—they hadn't a minute this session to consider the much greater iniquity of no women having any vote at all! Of course he said hehadbeen a great friend to Woman Suffrage, until he got shocked with our tactics.' She smiled broadly. 'We asked him what he'd ever done to show his friendship.'
'Well?'
'He didn't seem to know the answer to that. What strikes me most about men is their being so illogical.'
Lady John Ulland had been openly surprised, even enthusiastically grateful, at discovering before this that Vida Levering was ready to help her with some of the unornamental duties that fall to the lot of the 'great ladies' of England.
'I don't know what that discontented creature, her sister, means by saying Vida is so unsympathetic about charity work.'
Neither could Lady John's neighbour, the Bishop, understand Mrs. Fox-Moore's reproach. Had not his young kinswoman's charity concerts helped to rebuild the chantry?
'Such anice creature!' was Lord John's contribution. Then, showing the profundity of his friendly interest, 'Why doesn't she find some nice fella to marry her?'
'People don't marry so early nowadays,' his wife reassured him.
Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered touching testimony to his affection forher by trying to understand. It was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found it no easier than others of his class rightly to interpret the modern scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediæval tower which was his mind.
When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace, he did so against his will, shaking his long Van Dyke head, and saying—
'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'
'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with "The People," as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I, perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'
'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't need a woman like you.'
'They not only need—what's more, they are getting, all kinds! It's that, more than anything else, that shows their strength. The miracle it is, to see the way they all work together! Women, the poorest and most ignorant (except of hardship), working shoulder to shoulder with women of substance and position. Oh, yes, they are winning over that sort, teachers and university graduates—a whole group who would be called Intellectuals if they were men—all doing what men have said women could never do—pulling together. And, oh! that reminds me,' she said suddenly, smiling as one who has thought of a capital joke at her companion's expense: 'it's my duty to warn you. I went with your daughter to lunch at her Country Club, and they were all discussing the Suffrage! A good dozen! And Sophia—well, Sophia came out in a new light. I want you, please, to believeI'venever talked to her.'
'Oh,' said Borrodaile, with an unconscious arrogance, 'Sophia doesn't wait to be talked to. She takes her own line. Politics are a tradition with our women. I found her reading the parliamentary debates when she was fourteen.'
'And your boys, are they equally——?'
He sighed. 'The world has got very topsy-turvy. All my girls are boys—and all my boys are girls.'
'Well, Sophia can take care of the Country Club! I remember how we scoffed when she organized it.'
'It's had precisely the effect I expected. Takes her away from her own home, where she ought to be——'
'Who wants her at home?'
Unblushingly he answered, 'Ido.'
'Why, you're never there yourself.' He blinked. 'When you aren't in your garden you're——'
'Here?' he laughed.
'I don't myself,' she went on, 'Idon't belong to any clubs——'
'I should hope not, indeed! Where should I go for tea and for news of the workings of the Zeitgeist?' he mocked.
'But I begin to see what women's clubs are for.'
'They're for the dowdy, unattached females to meet and gossip in, to hold feeble little debates in, to listen to pettifogging little lectures, and imagine they'redans le mouvement.'
'They are to accustom women to thinking and acting together. While you and I have been laughing at them, they've been building up a huge machinery of organization, ready to the hand of the chief engineer who is to come.'
'Horrible thought!'
'Well, horrible or not, I don't despise clubs any more. They're largely responsible for the new corporate spirit among women.'
He pulled himself out of the cavernous comfort of his chair, and stood glooming in front of the screen that hid the fireless grate.
'Clubs, societies, leagues, they're all devices for robbing people of their freedom. It's no use to talk to me. I'm one of the few individualists left in the world. I never wanted in my life to belong to any body.' Her pealing laughter made him explain, smiling, 'To any corporation, was what I meant.'
'No, no. You got it right the first time! The reason that, in spite of my late perversities, you don't cast me off is because I'm one of the few women who don't make claims.'
'It is the claim of the community that I resent. I want to keep clear of all complication. I want to be really free. I could never have pledged myself to any Church or any party.'
'Perhaps'—she smiled at him—'perhaps that's why you are a beautiful and ineffectual angel.'
'The reason I never did is because I care about liberty—thething itself. You are in danger, I see, of being enamoured of the name. In thought women are always half a century or so behind. What patriot's voice is heard in Europe or America to-day? Where is the modern Kossuth, Garibaldi? What poet goes out in these times to die at Missolonghi? Just as men are finding out the vanity of the old dreams, the women seem to be seizing on them. The mass of intelligent men have no longing for political power. If a sort of public prominence is thrust on men'—he shrugged as if his shoulders chafed under some burden—'in their heartsthey curse their lot. I suppose it's all so new to the woman she is amused. She even—I'mtold'—his lifted hand, with the closed fingers suddenly flung open, advertised the difficulty a sane person found in crediting the uncanny rumour—'I'mtoldthat women even like public dinners.'
'Well, you do.'
'I?'
'You go—to all the most interesting ones.'
'Part of my burden! Unlike your new friends, there's nothing I hate so much, unless it is having to make a speech.'
'Well, now, shall I stop "playing at ma'ams" and just say that when I hear a man like you explaining in that superior way how immensely hedoesn't care, I seem to see that that is precisely the worst indictment against your class. If special privilege breeds that——'
It merely amused him to see that she was forgetting herself. He sat down again. He stretched out his long legs and interlaced his fingers across his bulging shirt front. His air of delicate mockery supplied the whip.
'If,' Vida went on with shining eyes, 'if to be able to care and to work and to sacrifice, if to get those impulses out of life, you must carry your share of the world's burden, then no intelligent creature can be sorry the day is coming when all men will have to——' She took breath, a little frightened to see where she was going.
'Have to——?' he encouraged her, lazily smiling.
'Have to work, or else not eat.'
'Even under your hard rule I wouldn't have to work much. My appetite is mercifully small.'
'It would grow if you sweated for your bread.'
'Help! help!' he said, not above his usual tone, but slowlyhe turned his fine head as the door opened. He fixed the amused grey-green eyes on old Mr. Fox-Moore: 'A small and inoffensive pillar of the Upper House is in the act of being abolished.'
'What, is she talking politics? She never favours me with her views,' said Fox-Moore, with his chimpanzee smile.
When Borrodaile had said good-bye, Vida followed him to the top of the stairs.
'It's rather on my mind that I—I've not been very nice to you.'
'"I would not hear thine enemy say so."'
'Yes, I've been rather horrid. I went and Trafalgar-Squared you, when I ought to have amused you.'
'But you have amused me!' His eyes shone mischievously.
'Oh, very well.' She took the gibe in good part, offering her hand again.
'Good-bye, my dear,' he said gently. 'It's great fun having you in the world!' He spoke as though he had personally arranged this provision against dulness for his latter end.
The next evening he came up to her at a party to ask why she had absented herself from a dinner the night before where he expected to find her.
'Oh, I telephoned in the morning they weren't to expect me.'
'What were you doing, I should like to know?'
'No, you wouldn't like to know. But you couldn't have helped laughing if you'd seen me.'
'Where?'
'Wandering about the purlieus of Battersea.'
'Bless me! Who with?'
'Why, with that notorious Suffragette, Miss Ernestine Blunt. Oh, you'd have stared even harder if you'd seen us, I promise you! She with a leather portfolio under one arm—a most business-like apparatus, and a dinner-bell in one hand.'
'Adinnerbell!' He put his hand to his brow as one who feels reason reeling.
'Yes, holding fast to the clapper so that we shouldn't affright the isle out of season. I, if you please, carrying an armful of propagandist literature.'
'Good Lord!Wheredo you say these orgies take place?'
'Near the Fire Station on the far side of Battersea Park.'
'I think you are in great need of somebody to look after you,' he laughed, but no one who knew him could mistake his seriousness. 'Come over here.' He found a sofa a little apart from the crush. 'Who goes with you on these raids?'
'Why, Ernestine—or rather, I go with her.'
'But who takes care of you?'
'Ernestine.'
'Who knows you're doing this kind of thing?'
'Ernestine—and you. It's a secret.'
'Well, if I'm the only sane person who knows—it's something of a responsibility.'
'I won't tell you about it if it oppresses you.'
'On the contrary, I insist on your telling me.'
Vida smiled reflectively. 'The mode of procedure strikes one as highly original. It is simple beyond anything in the world. They select an open space at the convergence of several thoroughfares—if possible, near an omnibus centre. For these smaller meetings they don't go to the length of hiring a lorry. Do you know what a lorry is?'
'I regret to say my education in that direction leaves something to be desired.'
'Last week I was equally ignorant. To-day I can tell you all about it. A lorry is a cart or a big van with the top off. But such elegancies are for the parks. In Battersea, you go into some modest little restaurant, and you say, "Will you lend me a chair?" This is a surprise for the Battersea restaurateur.'
'Naturally—poor man!'
'Exactly. He refuses. But he also asks questions. He is amazed. He is against the franchise for women. "You'llneverget the vote!" "Well, we must have something," says Ernestine. "I'm sure it isn't against your principles to lend a woman a chair." She lays hands on one. "I never said you could have one of my——" "But you meant to, didn't you? Isn't a chair one of the things men have always been ready to offer us? Thank you. I'll take good care of it and bring it back quite safe." Out marches Ernestine with the enemy's property. She carries the chair into the road and plants it in front of the Fire Station. Usually there are two or three "helpers." Sometimes Ernestine, if you please, carries the meeting entirely on her own shoulders—thosesame shoulders being about so wide. Yes, she's quite a little thing. If there are helpers she sends them up and down the street sowing a fresh crop of handbills. When Ernestine is ready to begin she stands up on that chair, in the open street and, as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world, she begins ringing that dinner bell. Naturally people stop and stare and draw nearer. Ernestine tells me that Battersea has got so used now to the ding-dong and to associating it with "our meeting," that as far off as they hear it the inhabitants say, "It's the Suffragettes! Come along!" and from one street and another the people emerge laughing and running. Of course as soon as there is a little crowd that attracts more, and so the snowball grows. Sometimes the traffic is impeded. Oh, it's a much odder world than I had suspected!' For a moment laughter interrupted the narrative. '"The Salvation Army doesn'tquiteapprove of us," Ernestine says, "and the Socialists don't love us either! We always take their audiences away from them—poor things," says Ernestine, with a sympathetic air. "Youdo!" I say, because'—Vida nodded at Lord Borrodaile—'you must know Ernestine is a beguiler.'
'Oh, a beguiler. I didn't suppose——'
'No, it's against the tradition, I know, but it's true. She herself, however, doesn't seem to realize her beguilingness. "It isn't any one in particular they come to hear," she says, "it's just that a woman making a speech is so much more interesting than a man making a speech." It surprises you? So it did me.'
'Nothing surprises me!' said Borrodaile, with a wave of his long hands.
'Last night she was wonderful, our Ernestine! Even I, who am used to her, I was stirred. I was even thrilled. She had that crowd in the hollow of her hand! When she wound up, "The motion is carried. The meeting is over!" and climbed down off her perch, the mob cheered and pressed round her so close that I had to give up trying to join her. I extricated myself and crossed the street. She is so little that, unless she's on a chair, she is swallowed up. For a long time I couldn't see her. I didn't know whether she was taking the names and addresses of the people who want to join the Union, or whether she had slipped away and gone home, till I saw practically the whole crowd moving off after her up the street. I followed for some distance on the off-side. She went calmly on her way, a tiny figure in a long grey coat between two helpers, the Lancashire cotton-spinner and the Cockney working woman, with that immense tail of boys and men (and a few women) all following after—quite quiet and well-behaved—just following, because it didn't occur to them to do anything else. In a way she was still exercising her hold over her meeting. I saw, presently, there was one person in front of her—a great big fellow—he looked like a carter—he was carrying home the chair!'
They both laughed.
'Well, she's found a thick-and-thin advocate in you apparently,' said Borrodaile.
'Ah! if only you couldseeher! trudging along, apparently quite oblivious of her quaint following, dinner bell in one hand, leather case piled high with "tracts" on the other arm, some of the leaflets sliding off, tumbling on to the pavement.' Vida laughed as she recalled the scene. 'Then dozens of hands darting out to help her to recover her precious property! After the chair had been returned the crowd thinned, and I crossed over to her.'
'You in thatmêlée!' Borrodaile ejaculated. 'Well, Ernestine hadn't the quaintness all to herself.'
'No. Oh, no,' Vida agreed. 'I thought of you, and how you'd look if you had come on us suddenly. After the crowd had melted and the helpers had vanished into the night, we went on together—all the way, from the Battersea Fire Station to Sloane Square, did Ernestine and I walk, talking reform last night. You laugh? So do I; but not at Ernestine. She's a most wonderful person. I sometimes ask myself if the world will ever know half how wonderful. You, for instance, you haven't, after all I've said, you haven'tan idea!'
'Oh, I don't doubt—I don't think I ever doubted that women have a facility in speech—no, no, I'm not gibing! I don't even doubt they can, as you say, sway and control crowds. But I maintain it is very bad for the women.'
'How is it bad?'
'How can it fail to be! All that horrible publicity. All that concentrating of crude popular interest on themselves! Believe me, nobody who watches a public career carefully but sees the demoralizing effect the limelight has even on men's characters.And I suppose you'll admit that men are less delicately organized than women.'
'I can only say I've seen the sort of thing you mean in our world, where a good many women have only themselves to think about. I've looked in vain for those evil effects among the Suffrage women. It almost seems, on the contrary, as if there were something ennobling in working for a public cause.'
'Personally, I can't say I've observed it—not among the political women of my acquaintance!'
'But you only know the old kind. Yes, the kind whose idea of influence is to make men fall in love with them, whose idea of working is to put on a smart gown and smile their prettiest. No, I agree thatisn'tnecessarily ennobling!'
'I see, it's the new taste in manners and the new arts of persuasion that make the ideal women and'—with an ironic little bow—'the impassioned convert.'
'I'm bound to admit,' she said stoutly, 'that I think the Suffrage movement in England has the advantage of being engineered by a very remarkable set of women. Not in ability alone, but in dignity of character. People will never know, I sometimes think, how much the movement has owed to being taken in hand by just these particular women. I don't pretend they're the average. They're very far above the average. And what the world will owe to them I very much doubt if even the future will know. But I seem to be the only one who minds.' She laughed. 'I could take my oaththeynever give the matter a thought. One thing——' She leaned forward and then checked herself. 'No, I've talked about them enough!'
She opened her fan and looked about the crowded room.
'Say what you were going to. I'm reconciled. I see what's coming.'
'What's coming?'
'Yes. Go on.'
She looked at him a little perplexed over the top of her fan.
'I was only going to say that what struck me particularly in that girl, for instance, is her inaccessibility to flattery. I've watched her with men.'
'Of course! She knew you were watching her. She no doubt thinks the eyes of the world are upon her.'
'On the contrary, it's her unselfconsciousness that's the most surprising thing about her. Or, no! It's something more interesting even than that. She is conscious, in a way, of the hold she has on the public. But it hasn't any of the deteriorating effect you were deprecating. I've been moved once or twice to congratulate her. She takes it as unmoved as a child. It's just as if you said to a little thing of three, "What a clever baby you are!" or, "You've got the most beautiful eyes in the world." The child would realize that you meant well, that you were being pleasant, but it wouldn't think about either its cleverness or its eyes. It's like that with Ernestine. When I said to her, "You made an astoundingly good speech to-night. The best I've heard even you make," she looked at me with a sort of half-absent-minded, half-wondering expression, without a glimmer of personal vanity. When I was so ill-advised as not to drop the subject, when I ventured to say something more about that great gift of hers, she interrupted me with a little laugh, "It's a sign of grace in you not to get tired of our speeches," she said. "I suppose we repeat ourselves a good deal. You see that's just what we've got to do. We've got tohammer it in." But the fact is that she doesn't repeat herself, that she's always fresh and stimulating, because—I suppose it's because she's always thinking of the Great Impersonal Object, and talking about it out of her own eager heart. Ernestine? She's as unhackneyed as a spring morning!'
'Oh, very well. I'll go.'
'Go? Where?' for he still sat there.
'Why, to hear your paragon. I've seen that was what you were leading up to.'
'N—no. I don't think I want you to go.'
'Oh, yes, you do. I knew you'd make me sooner or later.'
'No, don't be afraid.' She stood up.
'I'm not afraid. I'm eager,' he laughed.
She shook her head. 'No, I'll never take you.'
'Why not?'
'Because—it isn't all Ernestine and skittles. And because you'd make me keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't matter—things that have lost some of their power to trouble me, but that I should feel for you.'
'What sort of——'
'Oh, oddities, uglinesses—things that abound, I'm told, at all men's meetings, and that yet, somehow, we'd like to eliminate from women's quite on the old angel theory. No, I won't take you!'