of the Union, whose ramifications extend over the civilized globe, as
the small, slim, light-haired young person in the inevitable shawl,
print gown, and clogs climbed over the brass platform-rail, and, folding
cotton-blouse-clad arms upon a flat, girlish bosom, stood motionless,
composed, even cheerful, in the full glare of the electric chandelier,
and under the full play of a battery of some two thousand feminine eyes.
“Do let the little darling speak,” begged the Honorary Secretary of the
Chairwoman, who, as a native of Smutchester, had her doubts. But Sal o’
Peg’s had not the faintest intention of waiting for permission.
“Ah’m not bit o’ good at long words, gells,” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Mappen
ah’ll be better ondersteawd wi’oot ’em.”
The thunder of clogs in the body of the hall said “Yes!” She went on:
“Wimmin sheawd ha’ th’ Vote. ’Tis theear roight.” (Tremendous clogging,
mingled with shrieks of “Weel seayd, lass! Gie us th’ Vote!”) She
hitched her shawl about her with the factory-girl’s movement of the
shoulders, and went on. “Yo’ll noan fleg me wi’ yo’re din. Ah’m boh a
lil’ un, boh af ha’ got spunk. If you doubt thot——” A hundred strident
voices from the body of the hall sent back the refrain, “Ask a
pleeceman!” A roar of laughter shook the roof.
“Ought we to interfere?” whispered the Honorary Secretary.
“My dear, why should we?” said a London delegate, leaning forward to
answer. “The girl has got them in the hollow of her hand. A born leader
of women—a born leader. She voices in her untaught speech the heart-cry
of thousands of her dumb and helpless sisters. She——”
The born leader of women continued:
“Ah dunno whoy ah niver thout o’ it before, but ’tis a beawrfeaced
robbery neawt to gie us th’ Vote. Oor feythers has it, an’ sells it fur
braass.” (Screams, shrieks, and clogging.) “Oor heawsbands has it, an’
sells it fur braass.” (Tempestuous applause.) “Oor lads, theay has it,
an’ sells it fur braass. Whoy shouldna’ we ha’ it, an’ sell it for
braass tew?”
The enthusiasm with which this brilliant peroration was received nearly
wrecked the Cotton Hall. No more speeches were heard that night, though
several were delivered in dumb show, and Sal o’ Peg’s awakened upon the
morrow to find her utterances reported in the newspapers. To the sarcasm
of the leader-writer Sal o’ Peg’s was impervious. She “mun goo t’ Lunnon
neixt,” she said, “an’ leawt them tykes at the Hoose o’ Commeawns knaw a
bit” of her mind. She wasn’t afraid of Prime Ministers—not she. She
called at the branch office of the Union twice a day, imperatively
requesting to be forwarded as a delegate to the Metropolis. When her
services were declined with thanks, she harangued the populace from the
doorstep. When politely requested to move on, she broke a window with
one clog, and patted the office-boy violently upon the head with the
other. Then she burst into tears and retired, supported by a dozen or so
of sympathizing comrades of the factory.
“’Tis a beeawrnin’ sheame!” they said, as they fastened up their chosen
representative’s loosened flaxen coils with hairpins of the patent
explosive kind, contributed from their own solid braids. “But donnot
thee fret, Sal o’ Peg’s, us’ll ha’ nah dollygeat but thee, sitha lass!”
And they sent the hat round among themselves with right goodwill. They
were not quite sure what a “dollygeat” was, but thought it was something
that could walk into the House of Commons, defy a Minister to his nose,
dance a clog-dance in the gangway of the Upper House, and receive in
chests and bagsful all the good money that women had been defrauded of
since the masculine voter first plumped for a consideration; of that
they were “as sure as deeawth.”
So Sal o’ Peg’s gave notice at the factory that, being thenceforth
called to figure upon the arena of political life, she could not tend
frames any longer. She bought a black sailor straw hat with a portion of
the subscribed fund, and tied up the most cherished articles of her
wardrobe in a blue-spotted handkerchief bundle. She traveled express to
London, choosing a “smoking third,” as affording atmospherical and
social conditions less remote from her lifelong experience.... The
journey was purely uneventful: a young man of unrestrained amorous
proclivities receiving a black eye, and a young woman who sneered too
openly at the blue-spotted handkerchief bundle suffering the wreck of a
bandbox and sustaining a few scratches. The guard—alas! for the frailty
of man—being all upon the side of the blue eyes and flaxen coils of
hair....
I suppose the reader knows Pelham’s Inn, W. C., where are the
headquarters of the National Union for the Emancipation of Working
Women? There is no padding to the armchairs, cocoanut matting of a
severe and rasping character covers the Committee-room boards; the
Committee inkstand is of the zinc office description (the Committee are
not there to be comfortable—just the reverse). They are busy women of
small spare time and narrow spare means; but when they found Sal o’
Peg’s sitting on the doorstep, they found leisure to be kind. They
looked at the clogs with pity, unaware of the _pas seul_ they had
performed upon the countenance of a policeman still in bandages, and the
great blue eyes yearning out of the small pale face, and the ropes of
fair hair tumbling over the shabby shawl that enfolded the childish
figure of the little factory-girl who had traveled up to London for the
sake of the Cause, won them to practical expression of the sympathy they
felt.
“So different a type to the brawling, violent creature,” they said, “who
nearly caused a riot at the Smutchester Conference. Her one dream is to
see the House of Commons and speak a word in public for her toiling
sisters of the factories.” And those of them who wore glasses found them
dimmed with the dews of sympathetic emotion. It was such a touching
story, they said, of faith and enthusiasm and courage.
It is upon the Records of the Nation that the events I have to relate
took place in the Central Hall of the sacred fane of Westminster between
four and five o’clock in the afternoon, when twenty or thirty ladies,
well-known adherents of the Cause, appeared upon the scene and asked for
Suffrage. It was an act of presumption, almost of treason, bordering on
blasphemy. Still, the arguments that were not drowned were sound. They
were all householders, taxpayers, earners, and owners of independent
incomes one daring female said, and as the drunken husband of her
charwoman possessed a vote, she thought she had a right to have one
also. The Sergeant-at-Arms instantly directed a constable to quell her.
Another audacious creature asked for the Vote Qualified. She demanded
that the Suffrage should indeed be given to women, but only to those
women who should, by passing a viva voce examination on the duties of
citizenship, prove themselves fit to discharge them.... She was listened
to with some attention until she suggested that male voters should be
subjected to a similar weeding-out process; upon which a portly
inspector bore down upon her, clasped her in a blue embrace, and carried
her, protesting loudly, down the hall, amidst demonstrations of intense
excitement. Members cried, “Shame!” Members cried, “Serve her right!”
Passing peers put up eyeglasses and stayed to see the fun. Hustled women
shrieked, “Cowards!” Pushed women cried, “Let us alone!” Punched women
only said, “Owch!” ... It was freely translated “Wretch!” for the
occasion. The middle-aged and advanced in years met the same treatment
as the younger and more excitable.... All were unceremoniously expelled
by the stalwart beings in blue from the sacred precincts where such
inviolable order is habitually maintained, and where all the Proprieties
find their permanent home. Crushed headgear, scattered handbags, and
strange derelict fragments of feminine attire bestrewed the scene of the
one-sided fray; the crowds of sympathizers outside cried, “Boo!” and
waved white flags in defiance as a dozen arrests were made in a dozen
seconds.... And a young woman in a brown plaid shawl and brass-bound
clogs danced with shoutings upon the pavements of St. Stephen’s Porch,
and while her long, light coils of hair came down and her hairpins were
scattered to the winds of Westminster, she asked, in the Lancashire
dialect, for admittance to the Bar of the House; for justice for the
oppression and downtrodden; for the blood of Ministers, Peers, and
Members; and for the viscera of the officials who were their tools. She
told the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come out and bring the Treasury
with him; and when he did not come, she knocked off one policeman’s
helmet and smote another with one of her clogs—_toujours_ those
clogs!—upon the nose. Also she relieved a third of half a whisker, bit
another in the hand, kicked them all in the shins, and generally made
history as six police-constables bore her, shrieking at the full pitch
of excellent lungs, to Blunderbuss Row Police Station.
There were newspaper headlines next day—“Bedlam Let Loose!” “The
Shrieking Sisterhood!” “The Termagant Spirit!” “No Choice but to Use
Force!” The arrested demonstrators were paraded at the police-court; the
damaged policemen made an imposing show. Tears choked the utterance of
Mr. Vincent Squeers, presiding magistrate, as he asked: “Were thee,
indeed, women who had abraded the features, discolored the eyes, bruised
the shins, and plucked the whiskers from the gallant constables who
stood before him? Nay, but Mænads, Bacchantes, priestesses of savage
rites, unsexed Amazons—in two words, emancipated females!” He found a
melancholy relief in imposing a fine that had no precedent in cases of
brawling, or fourteen days’ imprisonment. He should not be surprised to
hear that these hunters after vulgar notoriety preferred to go to
Holloway, to luxuriate on prison fare, enjoy calm, undeserved repose on
straw beds, and clothe their unregenerate limbs with the drab garments
generously provided by the nation.
“But there is one among you,” cried Mr. Vincent Squeers, “who has been
innocently led away by your pernicious example, but whom the spirit of
Justice, that dwells in the bosom of every Englishman, that hovers,
genius-like, above this Bench to-day”—the chief clerk hastily produced a
white handkerchief, and the reporters shook freedom into the flow of
their Geyser pens—“will stretch forth a hand to protect and to aid. I
speak of this simple, artless child....” A police-constable felt his
nose, and another groped for his missing whisker as Sal o’ Peg’s stood
up in the dock. “Lured from her humble home, from her laborious
employment, from her upright-minded, honest associates, by these
immodest and unwomanly women, cast a stranger upon the streets of
London, this simple country blossom, wilting in the atmosphere tainted
by habitual vice and common crime, appeals to the chivalry of every
honest man who ever had a mother”—the chief clerk was carried from the
court in hysterics—“ay, to the pity of every woman who is not bereft of
that heavenly attribute.”
“Sheawt opp, thee donowt owd hosebird!” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Dosta think
ah niver weur in a teawzle in th’ streeawts or a skirmidge wi’ th’
police afeore? Dustha see th’ pickle theam girt big cheawps is in? If
theay saay theay got theawee scratts an’ sogers fra’ eany wench but Sal
o’ Peg’s, they be leears aw! Sitha? An’ as to yon weumen an’ lasses, yo
ca’ baad neams, I ha’ nowt o’ truck wi’ they. I coom to Lunnon as a
dollygeat fra myseln. Sitha?”
“The child speaks only the roughest dialect of her native Lancashire,”
continued Mr. Vincent Squeers, “which, I own, I am unable to comprehend.
How could the hapless young creature understand the poisonous shibboleth
poured into her ears by the abandoned sisterhood whose leading evil
spirits are now before me? They have denied all knowledge of or
connection with her”—(as indeed they had)—“her who stands here—oh, shame
and utter disgrace!—in the dock of a police court as a result of their
vile and treacherous usage in dragging her from her home. She is
sufficiently punished by this outrage upon that innate modesty which is
as the bloom upon the peach, the—er, ah!—dew upon the daisy. Fined
three-and-sixpence, and I will order that the same be discharged out of
the Court poor-box. The Missionary will now take charge of the poor
young creature, who will, I trust—ah!—be returned to her sorrowing
family in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Good-day, my dear
child—good-day!”
A clog whizzed from the dock and hit the paneling behind the Bench. The
Magistrate looked another way, the constables coughed behind their large
white gloves as Sal o’ Peg’s, weeping bitterly, was led away by the
Court Missionary, a bearded person in rusty black, with a felt
pudding-basin hat and a soiled white necktie. Robbed of the glory of
battle, denied her meed of acknowledgment for doughty deeds achieved,
bereft of her Amazonian reputation, Sal o’ Peg’s felt that life was
“scarcelin’s weath livin’.” And the afternoon newspapers administered
the final blow. Every leader-writer shed tears of pure ink over the
child lured from home, the “daisy with the dew upon it” sprouted in a
dozen paragraphs. Only in Smutchester there was Homeric jest and
uproarious laughter. The girls of the cotton-mills, the policemen of the
Lower Town—these knew their Sal o’ Peg’s, and were loud in their
appreciation of the satiric humor of the London newspapers. The
Missionary did not see his precious charge into the train for
Smutchester; a clergyman’s daughter, who had come into accidentally
compromising relations with an American gentleman’s diamond evening
solitaire and “wad” of bank-notes, urgently required his ministrations.
So a burly police-constable, with one whisker and a sore place on the
denuded cheek, performed the charitable office. In the four-wheeler,
turning into the Euston Road, Sal o’ Peg’s said suddenly:
“Thoo wastna’ sheaved this mearnin’, lad?”
“I ’adn’t no time, for one thing,” said the police-constable sulkily;
“an’ for another, I ’ad to keep this whisker on as evidence that you’d
pulled out the other. And a lot o’ good evidence does when Old
Foxey”—this was the nickname bestowed upon Mr. Vincent Squeers by the
staff of the Court—“’as made up ‘is mind not to listen to it.” He rubbed
the remaining whisker thoughtfully.
“Eh, laad, laad!” cried Sal o’ Peg’s, bursting into tears and falling
upon the neck of the astonished police-constable, “but theaw knows ah
did it. Theaw said sa just neaw. Eh, laad, laad!”
“Are you a-crying?” asked the police-constable, over whose blue tunic
meandered the heavy twists of fair hair which invariably tumbled down
under stress of Sal o’ Peg’s emotion. “Are you a-crying because you’re
sorry you pulled out my whisker, or glad as that you did it? Which?”
Sal o’ Peg’s lifted radiant, tearful blue eyes to the burly
police-constable’s, which were little and piggish, but twinkling with
something more than mere reproof.
“Ah be gleawd,” said Sal o’ Peg’s simply.
“Very well,” said the police-constable, who was not only a man after
all, but a bachelor. He put a large blue arm round the slim little
figure of the war-goddess. “You’ve ’ad my whisker; _I’ll_ ’ave a kiss.”
“Teawk it, laad,” said Sal o’ Peg’s.
Hitherto, in her short but vivid experience of life, policemen had
occupied a different plane, moved in another sphere. They were beings to
dodge, defy, jeer at, and punch when you could get them down. Flowerpots
were kept on window-sills of upper floors expressly for dropping on
their helmets. She had danced upon the upturned face of one, given
another a swollen nose, distributed bites and shin-kicks impartially
among others. This Lunnon one had kissed her for pulling out his
whisker. She looked at him with melting eyes. The hitherto impregnable
bastion of her heart was taken—and by a member of the Force.
“When tha dost sheave, laad, send tha whisker to Ah by peawst. Th’
address be Sal o’ Peg’s, Briven’s Buildin’s, Clog Ceawrt, East Side,
Smutchester!”
“I won’t _send_ it, you pretty little bit o’ frock,” said the enamored
police-constable. “I’ll wait till my next leave an’——”
“Breng it _then_, laad,” sighed Sal o’ Peg’s.
A PITCHED BATTLE
The great Maestro sat at the piano, a small, square instrument. Upon it
were piles of music, a bottle of Rhine wine, half emptied, a cup of
black coffee, a plate of sliced garlic sausage, and a roll of black
bread, peppered outside with aniseed. A bottle of ink was balanced on
the music-desk, a blotted scroll of paper obscured the yellowed
keyboard. As the great composer worked at the score of his new opera, he
breakfasted, taking draughts from the bottle, bites of sausage and
bread, and sips of coffee at discretion. He was a quaint, ungainly
figure, with vivacious eyes, and his ill-fitting auburn wig had served
him, like the right lapel of his plaid dressing-gown, for a pen-wiper
for uncounted years.
The Maestro was not alone in the dusty studio to which so many people,
both of the great and little worlds, sought entrance in vain. An
olive-skinned youth, shabbily dressed in a gray paletot over a worn suit
of black—a young fellow of sixteen, with a square, shaggy black head and
a determined chin, the cleft in which was rapidly being hidden by an
arriving beard—leaned against a music-stand crammed with portly volumes,
his dark eyes anxiously fixed upon the old gentleman at the piano, who
dipped in the ink and wrote, and wrote, and dipped in the ink,
occasionally laying down the pen to strike a chord or two, in seeming
forgetfulness of his visitor.
Suddenly the Maestro’s face beamed with a cheerful smile.
“There, mon cher Gladiali!” He handed the newly-written sheet of music
to the boy, and spread his wrinkled fingers above the keys. “This is the
great aria-solo I spoke of. Sing that at sight—your training should make
such a task an easy one—and let us see what stuff you are made of.
_Allons!_” And he struck the opening chord.
Carlo Gladiali turned pale and then red. He crossed himself hastily,
grasped the sheet of paper, cast his eyes over it anxiously, and,
meeting with a smiling glance the glittering old eyes of the Maestro, he
inflated his deep chest and sang. A wonderful tenor voice poured from
his boyish throat; heart and soul shone in his eyes and thrilled in his
accents. Tears of delight dropped upon the piano-keys and upon the hands
of the composer, and when the last pure note soared on high and swelled
and sank, and the song ceased, the old musician cried: “Thou art a
treasure! Come, let me embrace thee!” and clasped the young singer to
his breast. “Once more, _mon fils_—once more!”
And as he seated himself at the piano, sweeping the plate of sausage
into the wastepaper-basket with a flourish of the large, snuff-stained
yellow silk handkerchief with which he wiped his eyes, the door, which
had been left ajar, was flung open, and a little dark-eyed, fair-haired
girl, who carried a Pierrot-doll, ran quickly into the room.
“Marraine brought me; she is panting up the stairs because she is so fat
and they are so steep. Oldest Papa——” she began; but the Maestro held up
his hand for silence as the song recommenced. More assurance was in
Carlo’s phrasing; the flexibility and brilliancy of his voice were no
longer marred by nervousness. As the solo reached its triumphant close,
the Maestro said, slapping the boy on the back and taking a gigantic
pinch of snuff:
“The Archangel Gabriel might have done better. Aha!” He turned,
chuckling, to the little girl, who stood on one leg in the middle of the
narrow room, pouting and dangling her Pierrot. “_La petite_ there is
jealous. Is it not so?”
“Oldest Papa, you make a very big mistake!” returned the little maiden,
pouting still more. “I am not jealous of anybody in the world—least of
all, a boy like that!” Her dark eyes rested contemptuously on the big,
shy, square-headed fellow in the gray paletot.
“A boy, she calls him!” chuckled the Maestro. “_Ma mignonne_, he is
sixteen—six years older than thyself! Hasten to grow up, become a great
_prima donna_, and he shall sing Romeo to thy Juliette—I predict it!”
“I had rather sing with my cat!” observed the little lady rudely.
Carlo flushed crimson; the Maestro chuckled; and a stout lady who had
followed her, panting, into the room, murmured, “_Oh! la méchante!_”
adding, as the Maestro rose to greet her: “But she grows more
incorrigible every day. This morning she pulled the feathers out of
Coco’s tail because he whistled out of tune.”
The elfin face of the small sinner dimpled into mischievous smiles.
“But that was not being as wicked as the Maestro, who got angry at
rehearsal, and hit the flute-player on the head with his _bâton_, so
that it raised a hump. You told me that yourself, and how the Maestro——”
“Quite true, _petite_; I did fetch him a rap, I promise you, and
afterwards I put bank-notes for a hundred francs on the lump for a
plaster. But come, now, sing to me, and we will give Signor Carlo here
something worth hearing. _Écoutez, mon cher!_”
“Very well, I will sing; but, first, Pierrot must be comfortably seated.
That little armchair is just what he likes!” And, as quick as thought,
the willful little lady tilted a pile of music out of the little
armchair upon the floor. Then she placed Pierrot very carefully in his
throne, and, bidding him be very good and listen, because his _bonne
petite Maman_ was going to sing him something pretty, she tripped to the
piano, and demurely requested the aged musician to accompany her in the
Rondo of “Sonnambula.”
Ah! what a miraculous voice proceeded from that small, willful throat!
Stirred to the depths by the extraordinary power and beauty of the
child’s delivery, Carlo Gladiali listened enthralled; and when the last
notes rippled from the pretty red lips of the now demure little
creature, the big boy, forgetting her rudeness and his own shyness,
started forward, and, sinking on one knee and seizing the small hand of
the child-singer, he kissed it impulsively, crying: “Ah, Signorina, you
were right, a thousand times! Compared with you, I sing like a cat!”
“Oh, no! I did not mean to say that!” the tiny lady was beginning
graciously, when the Maestro broke in:
“You both sing like cherubs and say civil things to one another. One day
you will sing like angels—and quarrel like devils! Please Heaven, you
will both make your _début_ under my _bâton_, and then, if I crack a
flute-player’s head, it will be for joy.”
* * * * *
Ten years had elapsed. Carlo Gladiali had risen to pre-eminence as a
public singer, had attained the prime of his powers and the apogee of
his fame. Courted, fêted, and adored, the celebrated tenor, sated with
success, laden with gifts, _blasé_ with admiration, retained a few
characteristics that might remind those who had known and loved him in
boyhood of the ingenuous, honest, simple Carlo of ten years ago.
Certainly Carlo’s jealousy of the _prima donna_ who should dare to usurp
a greater share of the public plaudits than he himself received was
childish in its unreasonableness, and Othello-like in its tragic
intensity.
At first, he would join in the compliments, and smile patronizingly as
he helped the successful _débutante_ to gather up the bouquets. Then his
admiration would cool; he would tolerate, endure, then sneer, and
finally grind his teeth. He would convey to the audience over one
shoulder that they were idiots to applaud, and wither the triumphant
_cantatrice_ with a look of infinite contempt over the other. He had
been known to feign sleep in the middle of a great soprano aria which,
against his wish, had been encored. He had—or it was malevolently
reputed so—bribed the hotel waiter to place a huge dish of macaroni,
dressed exquisitely and smoking hot, in the way of a voracious contralto
who within two hours was to essay for the first time the arduous rôle of
Brynhild. The macaroni had vanished, the contralto had failed to appear.
Numerous were the instances similar to these recorded of the tenor
Gladiali, and repeated in every corner of the opera-loving world.
But it was in London, where the great singer was “starring” during the
Covent Garden Season of 19—, that the haughty and intolerant Carlo was
to meet his match.