The day was of early October, and Dr. Evans, who was driving his swift,
steady cob, harnessed to the light dogcart, along the flat road towards
Norton, had leisure to observe the beauty of the flaming season. He had
but a couple of visits to make, and neither of the cases caused him any
professional anxiety. But it was with conscious effort that he commanded
his obedient mind to cease worrying, and drink in the beneficent
influence of this genial morning that followed on a night that had given
them the first frost of the year. The road, after leaving Riseborough,
ran through a couple of level miles of delectable woodland; ditches
filled and choked with the full-grown grass and herbage of the summer
bordered it on each side. On the left, the sun had turned the frozen
night-dews into a liquid heraldry, on the right where the roadside
foliage was still in shadow, the faceted jewels of the frost that hinted
of the coming winter still stiffened the herbage, and was white on the
grey beards of the sprawling clematis in the hedges. But high above
these low-growing tangles of vegetation, an ample glory flamed, and the
great beech forest was all ablaze with orange and red flame tremulous in
the breeze. Here and there a yew-tree, tawny-trunked and green-velveted
with undeciduous leaf, seemed like a black spot of unconsumed fuel in
the fire of the autumn; here a company of sturdy oaks seemed like a
group of square-shouldered young men amid the maidens of the woodland.
It had its fairies too, the sylph-like birches, whose little leaves
seemed shed about their white shapeliness like a shower of confetti.
Then, in the more open glades, short and rabbit-cropped turf sparkled
emerald-like amid the sober greys and browns of the withering heather
and the russet antlers of the bracken. Now and then a rabbit with white
scutt, giving a dot-and-dash signal of danger to his family, would
scamper into shelter at the rattle of the approaching dogcart. Now and
then a pheasant, whose plumage seemed to reproduce in metal the tints of
the golden autumn, strode with lowered head and tail away from the
dangerous vicinity of man. Below the beeches the ground was uncarpeted
by any vegetation, but already the “fallen glories” of the leaf were
beginning to lie there, and occasionally a squirrel ran rustling across
them, and having gained the security of his lofty ways among the trees,
scolded Puck-like at the interruption that had made him leave his
breakfast of the burst beech-nuts. To the right, below the high-swung
level road, the ground declined sharply, and gave glimpses of the
distant sun-burnished sea; above, small companies of feathery clouds,
assembled together as if migrating for the winter, fluttered against the
summer azure of the sky.
Dr. Evans’ alert and merry eye dwelt on those delectable things, and in
obedience to his brain, noted and appreciated the manifold festivity of
the morning, but it did so not as ordinarily, by instinct and eager
impulses, but because he consciously bade it. It needed the spur; its
alertness and its merriness were pressed on it, and by degrees the spur
failed to stimulate it, and he fell to regarding the well-groomed
quarters of his long-stepping cob, which usually afforded him so
pleasant a contemplation of strong and harmonious muscularity. But this
morning even they failed to delight him, and the rhythm of its firm trot
made no music in his mind. There came a crease which deepened into a
decided frown between his eyes, and he communed with the trouble in his
mind.
There were various lesser worries, not of sufficient importance to
disturb seriously the equanimity of a busy and well-balanced man, and
though each was trivial enough in itself, and distinctly had a humorous
side to a mind otherwise content, the cumulative effect of them was not
amusing. In the first place, there was the affair of Harry Ames, who, in
a manner sufficiently ludicrous and calfish, had been making love to his
wife. As any other sensible man would have done, Wilfred Evans had seen
almost immediately on his return to Riseborough that Harry was disposed
to make himself ridiculous, and had given a word of kindly warning to
his wife.
“Snub him a bit, little woman,” he had said. “We’re having a little too
much of him. It’s fairer on the boy, too. You’re too kind to him. A
woman like you so easily turns a boy’s head. And you’ve often said he is
rather a dreadful sort of youth.”
But for some reason she took the words in ill part, becoming rather
precise.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Will you explain, please?”
“Easy enough, my dear. He’s here too much; he’s dangling after you.
Laugh at him a little, or yawn a little.”
“You mean that he’s in love with me?”
“Well, that’s too big a word, little woman, though I’m sure you see what
I mean.”
“I think I do. I think your suggestion is rather coarse, Wilfred, and
quite ill-founded. Is every one who is polite and attentive supposed to
be in love with me? I only ask for information.”
“I think your own good sense will supply you with all necessary
information,” he said.
But her good sense apparently had done nothing of the kind, and
eventually Dr. Evans had spoken to Harry’s father on the subject. The
visits had ceased with amazing abruptness after that, and Dr. Evans had
found himself treated to a stare of blank unrecognition when he passed
Harry in the street, and a curl of the lip which he felt must have been
practised in private. But the Omar Khayyam Club would be the gainers,
for they owed to it those stricken and embittered stanzas called
“Parted.”
Here comedy verged on farce, but the farce did not amuse him. He knew
that his own interpretation of Harry’s assiduous presence was correct,
so why should his wife have so precisely denied that those absurd
attentions meant nothing? There was nothing to resent in the sensible
warning that a man was greatly attracted by her. Nor was there warrant
for Colonel Ames’ horror and dismay at the suggestion, when the doctor
spoke to him about it. “Infamous young libertine” was surely a
hyperbolical expression.
Dr. Evans unconsciously flicked the cob rather sharply with his
whip-lash, to that excellent animal’s surprise, for he was covering his
miles in five minutes apiece, and the doctor conveyed his apologies for
his unintentional hint with a soothing remark. Then his thoughts
drifted back again. That was not all the trouble with the Ames’ family,
for his wife had had a quarrel with Mrs. Ames. This kindly man hated to
quarrel with anybody, and, for his part, successfully refused to do so,
and that his wife should find herself in such a predicament was equally
distressing to him. No doubt it was all a storm in a tea-cup, but if you
happen to be living in the tea-cup too, a storm there is just as
upsetting as a gale on the high seas. It is worse, indeed, for on the
high seas a ship can run into fairer weather, but there is no escape
from these tea-cup disturbances. The entire tea-cup was involved: all
Riseborough, which a year ago had seemed to him so suitable a place in
which to pursue an unexacting practice, to conduct mild original work,
in the peace and quiet of a small society and domestic comfort, was
become a tempest of conflicting winds. “And all arising from such a pack
of nonsense,” as the doctor thought impatiently to himself, only just
checking the whip-lash from falling again on the industrious cob.
The interest of Mrs. Ames in the Suffragette movement had given rise to
all this. She had announced a drawing-room meeting to be held in her
house, now a fortnight ago, and the drawing-room meeting had exploded in
mid-career, like a squib, scattering sparks and combustible material
over all Riseborough. It appeared that Mrs. Ames, finding that the
comprehension of Suffragette aims extended to the middle-class circles
in Riseborough, had asked the wives and daughters of tradesmen to take
part in it. It wanted but little after that to make Mrs. Altham remark
quite audibly that she had not known that she was to have the privilege
of meeting so many ladies with whom she was not previously acquainted,
and the sarcastic intention of her words was not lost upon her new
friends. Tea seemed but to increase the initial inflammation, and the
interest Mrs. Ames had intended to awake on the subject of votes for
women was changed into an interest in ascertaining who could be most
offensively polite, a very pretty game. It is not to be wondered at
that, before twenty-four hours had passed, Mrs. Altham had started an
anti-Suffragette league, and Millie, still strong in the conviction that
under no circumstances could she go to prison, had allowed herself to be
drawn into it. Next night at dinner she softly made a terrible
announcement.
“I passed Cousin Amy in the street just now,” she said; “she did not
seem to see me.”
“Perhaps she didn’t see you, little woman,” said her husband.
“So I did not seem to see her,” added Millie, who had not finished her
sentence. “But if she cares to come to see me and explain, I shall
behave quite as usual to her.”
“Come, come, little woman!” said Dr. Evans in a conciliating spirit.
“And I do not see what is the good of saying ‘Come, come,’” she said,
with considerable precision.
All this was sufficient to cause very sensible disquiet to a man who
attached so proper an importance to peaceful and harmonious conditions
of life, yet it was but a small thing compared to a far deeper anxiety
that brooded over him. Till now he had not let himself directly
contemplate it, but to-day, as he returned from his two visits, he made
himself face this last secret trouble. He felt it was necessary for him
to ascertain, for the sake of others no less than himself, what part,
if any, of his disquiet was grounded on certainty, what part, if any,
might be the figment of an over-anxious imagination. But he knew he was
not anxious by temperament, nor given to imagine troubles. If anything,
he was more prone, in his desire for a pleasant and studious life, to
shut his eyes to the apparent approach of storm, trusting that it would
blow by. He was anxious about Millie, not without cause; a hundred
symptoms justified his anxiety. She who for so long had been of such
imperturbable serenity of temper that a man who did not feel her charm
might have called her jelly-fish was the prey of fifty moods a day. She
had strange little fits of tenderness to him, with squalls of
peevishness quite as strange. She was restless and filled with an energy
that flamed and flickered and vanished, leaving her indolent and inert.
She would settle herself for a morning of letter writing, and after
tearing up a couple of notes, put on her gardening gloves and get as far
as the herbaceous bed. Then she would find an imperative reason for
going into the town, and so sit down at her piano to practise. Her
appetite, usually of the steady reliable order, failed her, and she
passed broken and tossing nights. Had she been a girl, he would have
said those symptoms all pointed one way; and it would probably not have
been difficult to guess who was the young man in question. Yet he could
scarcely face the conclusion applied to his wife. It was a hideous thing
that a husband should harbour such a suspicion, more hideous that the
husband should be himself. And perhaps more hideous of all, that he
should guess--again without difficulty--who was the man in question.
He had no conception what to do, or whether to do nothing; it seemed
that action and inaction might alike end in disaster. And, again, the
whole of his explanation of Millie’s symptoms might be erroneous. There
might be other explanations--indeed, there were others possible. As to
that, time would show; at present the best course, perhaps the only
right course, was to be watchful, yet not suspicious, observant, not
prying. Rather than pry or be suspicious he would go to Millie herself,
and without reservation tell her all that had been in his mind. He was
well aware what the heroic attitude, the attitude of the virile,
impetuous Englishman, dear to melodrama, would have been. It was quite
easy for him to “tax” Major Ames with baseness, to grind his teeth at
his wife, and then burst into manly tears, each sob of which seemed to
rend him. But to his quiet, sensible nature, it seemed difficult to see
what was supposed to happen next. In melodrama the curtain went down,
and you started ten years later in Queensland with regenerated natures
distributed broadcast. But in actual life it was impossible to start
again ten years later, or ten minutes later. You had to go on all the
time. Willingly would he, on this divine October morning, have started
again, indefinitely later. The difficulty was how to go on now.
* * * * *
His cases had not long detained him, and it was still not long after
noon when the cob, still pleased and alert with motion, but with smoking
flanks, drew up at his door. The clear chill of the morning had
altogether passed, and the air in the basin or tea-cup of a town was
still and sultry. There was a familiar hat on the table in the hall, a
bunch of long-stemmed tawny chrysanthemums lay by it. And at that sight
some distant echo of barbaric and simple man, deplorable to the
smoothness of civilization and altogether obsolete, was resonant in him.
He pitched the chrysanthemums into the street, where they flew like a
shooting star close by the head of General Fortescue, who was tottering
down to the club, and slammed the door. It was melodramatic and foolish
enough, but the desire that prompted it was quite sincere and
irresistible, and if at the moment Major Ames had been in that cool
oak-panelled hall, there is little doubt that Dr. Evans would have done
his best to pitch him out after his flowers.
The doctor gave himself a moment to recover from his superficial
violence, and then went out into the garden. They were sitting together
on the bench under the mulberry-tree, and Major Ames got up with his
usual briskness as he approached. Somehow Dr. Evans felt as if he was
being welcomed and made to feel at home.
“Good morning,” said Major Ames. “Glorious day, isn’t it? I just stepped
over with a handful of flowers, and we’ve been having a bit of a chat, a
bit of a chat.”
“Cousin Lyndhurst has very kindly come to talk over all these little
disturbances,” said Millie.
She looked at him.
“Shall I explain?” she asked.
Dr. Evans took the seat that Major Ames had vacated, leaving him free to
sit down in a garden chair opposite, or to stand, just as he pleased.
“It is like this, Wilfred,” she said. “Cousin Amy did not like my
joining the anti-Suffragette league which Mrs. Altham started, and I
have told Lyndhurst that I did not care a straw one way or the other,
except that I could not go to prison to please Cousin Amy or any one
else. But it looked like taking sides, she thought. So Lyndhurst thought
it would make everything easy if I didn’t join any league at all. I
think it very clever and tactful of him to think of that, and I will
certainly tell Mrs. Altham I find I am too busy. Of course, there is no
quarrel between Cousin Amy and me, and Lyndhurst wants to assure us that
he isn’t mixed up in it, though there isn’t any--and, of course, if
Cousin Amy didn’t see me the other day when I thought she pretended not
to, it makes a difference.”
Millie delivered herself of these lucid statements with her usual
deferential air.
“I think it is very kind of Cousin Lyndhurst to take so much trouble,”
she added. “He is stopping to lunch.”
Major Ames made a noble little gesture that disclaimed any credit.
“It’s nothing, a mere nothing,” he said, quite truly. “But I’m sure you
hate little domestic jars as much as I do. As Amy once said, my
profession was to be a man of war, but my instinct was to be a man of
peace. Ha! Ha! I’m only delighted my little olive branch has--has met
with success,” he added rather feebly, being unable to think of any
botanical metaphor.
The doctor got up. It is to be feared that, in his present state of
mind, he felt not the smallest admiration or gratitude for the work of
Lyndhurst the Peacemaker, but only saw in it a purely personal desire to
secure an uninterrupted _va et vient_ between the two houses.
“I’m sure I haven’t the slightest intention of quarrelling with
anybody,” he said. “It seems to me the most deplorable waste of time and
energy, besides being very uncomfortable. Let us go in to lunch, Millie;
I have to go out again at two o’clock.”
* * * * *
Millie wrote an amiable and insincere little note to Mrs. Altham, which
Major Ames undertook to deliver on his way home, explaining how, since
Elsie had gone to Dresden to perfect herself in the German language, she
herself had become so busy that she did not know which way to turn,
besides missing Elsie very much. She felt, therefore, that since she
would not be able to give as much time as she wished to this very
interesting anti-Suffragette movement, it would be better not to give to
it any time at all. This she wrote directly after her husband had gone
out again, and brought to Major Ames, who was waiting for it. He, too,
had said he would have to be off at once. She gave him the note.
“There it is,” she said; “and so many thanks for leaving it. But you are
not hurrying away at once, are you?”
“Am I not keeping you in?” he asked.
She pulled down the lace blinds over the window that looked into the
street; the October sun, it is true, beat rather hotly into the room,
but the instinct that dictated her action was rather a desire for
privacy.
“As if I would not sooner sit and talk to you,” she said, “than go out.
I have no one to go out with. I am rather lonely since Elsie has gone,
and I daresay I shall not see Wilfred again till dinner-time. It is
rather amusing that I have just written to Mrs. Altham to say how busy I
am.”
He came and sat a little closer to her.
“Upon my word,” he said, “I am in the same boat as you. I haven’t set
eyes on Amy all morning, and this afternoon I know she has a couple of
meetings. It’s extraordinary how this idea of votes for women has taken
hold of her. Not a bad thing, though, as long as she doesn’t go making a
fool of herself in public, and as long as she doesn’t have any more
quarrels with you.”
“What would you have done if she had really wished to quarrel with me
over Mrs. Altham’s league?” she asked.
“Just what I told her. I said I would be no partner to it, and as long
as you would receive me here _en garçon_ I should always come.”
“That was dear of you,” she said softly.
She paused a moment.
“Sometimes I think we made a mistake in coming to settle here,” she
said; “but you know how obstinate Wilfred is, and how little influence I
have with him. But then, again, I think of our friendship. I have not
had many friends. I think, perhaps, I am too shy and timid with people.
When I like them very much I find it difficult to express myself. It is
rather sad not to be able to show what you feel quite frankly. It
prevents your being understood by the people whom you most want to
understand you.”
But beneath this profession of incompetence, it seemed to Major Ames
that there lurked a very efficient strength. He felt himself being
gradually overpowered by a superior force, a force that did not strike
and disable and overbear, but cramped and paralysed the power of its
adversary, enfolding him, clinging to him. There was still something in
him, some part of his will which was hostile and opposed to her: it was
just that which she assailed. And in alliance with that paralysing force
was her attraction and charm--soft, yielding, feminine; the two advanced
side by side, terrible twins.
He did not answer for a moment, and it flashed across his mind that this
cool room, shaded from the street glare by the lace curtains, and
suffused with the greenish glow of the sunlight reflected from the lawn
outside, was like a trap.... She gave a little laugh.
“See how badly I express myself,” she said. “You are puzzling, frowning.
Don’t frown, you look best when you are laughing. I get so tired of
frowning faces. Wilfred so often frowns all dinner-time when he is
thinking over something connected with microbes. And he frowns over his
chess, when he cannot make up his mind whether to exchange bishops. We
play chess every evening.”
Instinctively she had drawn back a little, when she saw he did not
advance to meet her, and spoke as if chess and the pathos of her
dumbness to express friendship were things of equal moment. There was no
calculation about it: it was the expression of one type, the eternal
feminine attracted and wishing to attract. Her descent to these
commonplaces restored his confidence; the room was a trap no longer, but
the pleasant drawing-room he knew so well, with its charming mistress
seated by him. It was almost inevitable that he should contrast the hot
plushes and saddle-bag cushions of his own, its angular chairs and
Axminster carpets with the cool chintzes here, the lace-shrouded
windows, the Persian rugs. More marked was the contrast between the
mistresses of the two houses. Amy had been writing at her davenport a
good deal lately, and her short, stiff back had been the current
picture of her. Here was a woman, dim in the half light, wanting to talk
to him, to make timid confidences, to make him realize how much his
friendship meant to her. His confidence returned with disarming
completeness.
“Well, I’m sure I should find it dismal enough at home,” he said, “if I
hadn’t somewhere to go to, knowing I should find a welcome. Mind you, I
don’t blame Amy. For years now, when we’ve been alone in the evening,
she has done her work, and I have read the paper, and I daresay we
haven’t said a dozen words till Parker brought in the bedroom candles,
or sometimes we play picquet--for love. But now evenings spent like that
seem to me very prosy and dismal. Perhaps it’s Harrogate that has made
me a bit more supple and youthful, though I’m sure it’s ridiculous
enough that a tough old campaigner like me should feel such things----”
Mrs. Evans put forward her chin, raising her face towards him.
“But why ridiculous?” she asked. “You must be so much younger than dear
Cousin Amy. I wonder--I wonder if she feels that too?”
There was there a very devilish suggestion, the more so because, in
proportion to the suggestion, so very little was stated. It succeeded
admirably.
“Poor dear Amy!” said he.
He had said that once before, when Cleopatra-Amy was contrasted with
Cleopatra-Millie. But there was a significance in the repetition of it.
Once the assumed identity of character had suggested the comment, now
there was no assumed character. It concerned Millie and Amy themselves.
Mrs. Evans put back her chin.
“I am sure Cousin Amy ought to be very happy,” she said softly. “You are
so devoted to her, and all. I almost think you spoil her, Lyndhurst. It
is all so romantic. Fancy being a woman, and as old as Cousin Amy, and
yet having a young man so devoted. Harry, too!”
Again a billow of confidence tinged with self-appreciation surged over
Major Ames. After all, his wife was much older than him, for he was
still a young man, and his youth was being expanded on sweet-peas and
the garden roller. And he was stirred into a high flight of
philosophical conjecture.
“My God, what a puzzle life is!” he observed.
She rose to this high-water mark.
“And it might be so simple,” she said. “It should be so easy to be
happy.”
Then Major Ames knew where he was. In one sense he was worthy of the
occasion, in another he did not feel up to all that it implied. He rose
hastily.
“I had better go,” he said rather hoarsely.
But he had smoked five cigarettes since lunch. The hoarseness might
easily have been the result of this indulgence.
She did not attempt to keep him, nor did she make it incumbent on him to
give her a kiss, however cousinly. She did not even rise, but only
looked up at him from her low chair as she gave him her hand, smiling a
little secretly, as Monna Lisa smiles. But she felt quite satisfied with
their talk; he would think over it, and find fresh signals and private
beckonings in it.
“Come and see me again,” she said. There was a touch of imperativeness
in her tone.
She looked through the lace curtain and saw him go out into the street.
There was something in the gutter of the roadway which he inquired into
with the end of his stick. It looked like a withered bunch of dusty
chrysanthemums.
* * * * *
Mrs. Ames, meantime, had lunched at home, and gone off immediately
afterwards, as her husband had conjectured, to a meeting. In the last
month the membership of her league had largely increased, and it was no
longer possible to convene its meetings in her own drawing-room, for it
numbered some fifty persons, including a dozen men of enlightened
principles. Even at first, as has been seen, she had welcomed (thereby
incurring Mrs. Altham’s disapproval) several ladies with whom she did
not usually associate, and now the gathering was entirely independent of
all class distinctions. The wife of the station-master, for instance,
was one of the most active members and walked up and down the platform
with a large rosette of Suffragette colours selling current copies of
the _Clarion_. And no less remarkable than this growth of the league was
the growth of Mrs. Ames. She was neither pompous nor condescending to
those persons whom, a couple of months ago, she would have looked upon
as being barely existent, except if they were all in church, when she
would very probably have shared a hymn-book with any of them, the “Idea”
for which they had assembled galvanizing them, though strictly
temporarily, into the class of existent people. Now, the idea which
brought them together in the commodious warehouse, kindly lent and
sufficiently furnished by Mr. Turner, had given them a permanent
existence, and they were not automatically blotted out of her book of
life the moment these meetings were over, as they would have been so
short a time ago in church, when the last “Amen” was said. The bonds of
her barren and barbaric conventionality were bursting; indeed, it was
not so much that others, not even those of “her class,” were becoming
women to her, as that she was becoming a woman herself. She had scarcely
been one hitherto; she had been a piece of perfect propriety. And how
far she had travelled from her original conception of the Suffragette
movement as suitable to supply a novelty for the autumn that would
eclipse the memory of the Shakespearean ball, may be gathered from the
fact that she no longer took the chair at these meetings, but was an
ordinary member. Mr. Turner had far more experience in the duties of a
chairman: she had herself proposed him and would have seconded him as
well, had such a step been in order.
To-day the meeting was assembled to discuss the part which the league
should take in the forthcoming elections. The Tory Government was at
present in power, and likely to remain in office, while Riseborough
itself was a fairly safe seat for the Tory member, who was Sir James
Westbourne. Before polemical or obstructive measures could be decided
on, it had clearly been necessary to ascertain Sir James’ views on the
subject of votes for women, and to-day his answer had been received and
was read to the meeting. It was as unsatisfactory as it was brief, and
their “obedient servant” had no sympathy with, and so declined to
promise any support to, their cause. Mr. Turner read this out, and laid
it down on his desk.
“Will ladies or gentlemen give us their views on the course we are to
adopt?” he said.
A dozen simultaneously rose, and simultaneously sat down again. The
chairman asked Mrs. Brooks to address the meeting. Another and another
succeeded her, and there was complete unanimity of purpose in their
suggestions. Sir James’ meetings and his speeches to his constituents
must not be allowed to proceed without interruption. If he had no
sympathy with the cause, the cause would show a marked lack of sympathy
with him. Thereafter the league resolved itself into a committee of ways
and means. The President of the Board of Trade was coming to support Sir
James’ candidature at a meeting the date of which was already fixed for
a fortnight hence, and it was decided to make a demonstration in force.
And as the discussion went on, and real practical plans were made, that
strange fascination and excitement at the thought of shouting and
interrupting at a public meeting, of becoming for the first time of some
consequence, began to seethe and ferment. Most of the members were
women, whose lives had been passed in continuous self-repression, who
had been frozen over by the narcotic ice of a completely conventional
and humdrum existence. Many of them were unmarried and already of
middle-age; their natural human instincts had never known the blossoming
and honey which the fulfilment of their natures would have brought. To
the eagerness and sincerity with which they welcomed a work that
demanded justice for their sex, there was added this excitement of doing
something at last. There was an opportunity of expansion, of stepping
out, under the stimulus of an idea, into an experience that was real. In
kind, this was akin to martyrs who rejoiced and sang when the prospects
of prosecution came near; as martyrs for the sake of their faith
thought almost with glee of the rack and the burning, so, minutely, the
very prospect of discomfort and rough handling seemed attractive, if, by
such means, the cause was infinitesimally advanced. To this, a sincere
and wholly laudable desire, was added the more personal stimulus. They
would be doing something, instead of suffering the tedium of passivity,
acting instead of being acted on. For it is only through centuries of
custom that the woman, physically weak and liable to be knocked down,
has become the servant of the other sex. She is fiercer at heart, more
courageous, more scornful of consequences than he; it is only muscular
inferiority of strength that has subdued her into the place that she
occupies, that, and the periods when, for the continuance of the race,
she must submit to months of tender and strong inaction. There she finds
fruition of her nature, and there awakes in her a sweet indulgence for
the strange, childish lust of being master, of parading, in making of
laws and conventions, his adventitious power, of the semblance of
sovereignty that has been claimed by man. At heart she knows that he has
but put a tinsel crown on his head, and robed himself in spangles that
but parody real gold. She lays a woman’s hand on his child-head, and to
please him says, “How wise you are, how strong, how clever.” And the
child is pleased, and loves her for it. And there is her weakness, for
the most dominant thing in her nature is the need of being loved. From
the beginning it must have been so. When Adam’s rib was taken from him
in sleep, he lost more than was left him, and woke to find all his finer
self gone from him. He was left a blundering bumble-bee: to the rib that
was taken from him clung the courage of the lioness, the wisdom of the
serpent, the gentleness of the dove, the cunning of the spider, and the
mysterious charm of the firefly that dances in the dusk. But to that rib
also clung the desire to be loved. Otherwise, in the human race, the
male would be slain yearly like the drone of the hive. But the strange
thing that grew from the rib, like flowers from buried carrion, desired
love. There was its strength and its weakness.
It desired love, and in its desire it suffered all degradation to obtain
it. And no leanness of soul entered into the gratification of its
desire. Only when its desire was pinched and rationed, or when, by the
operation of civilized law, all fruit of desire was denied it, so that
the blossom of sex was made into one unfruitful bud, did revolt come.
Long generations produced the germ, long generations made it active. At
length it swam up to sight, from subaqueous dimnesses, feeble and
violent, conscious of the justice of its cause and demanding justice.
But what helped to make the desire for justice so attractive was the
violence, the escape from self-repression that the demand gave
opportunity for, to many who, all their lives, had been corked or wired
down in comfort, which no woman cares about, or sealed up in
spinsterhood and decorous emptiness of days. There was justice in the
demand, and hysterical excitement in demanding.
* * * * *
To others, and in this little league of Riseborough there were many
such, the prospect of making those demands was primarily appalling, and
to none more than to poor Mrs. Ames, when the plan of campaign was
discussed, decided on, and entrusted to the members of the league. It
required almost more courage than the idea was capable of inspiring to
face, even in anticipation, the thought of shouting “Votes for Women”
when good-humoured Cousin James rose and said “Ladies and gentlemen!”
Very possibly, as had often happened in Cousin James’ previous
candidatures, Lyndhurst would wish his wife to ask him and the President
of the Board of Trade to dinner before the meeting, an occasion which
would warrant the materialization of the most sumptuous of all the
dinners tabulated on the printed menu-cards, while sherry would be given
with soup, hock with fish, and a constant flow of champagne be kept up
afterwards, until port time. In that case Cousin James would certainly
ask them to sit on the platform, and they would roll richly to the town
hall in his motor, all blazing with Conservative colours, while she, in
a small bag, would be surreptitiously conveying there her great
Suffragette rosette, and a small steel chain with a padlock. She would
be sitting probably next the Mayor, who would introduce the speakers,
and no doubt refer to “the presence of the fair sex” who graced the
platform. During this she would have to pin her colours on her dress,
chain herself up like Andromeda, snap the patent spring-lock of the
padlock, and when Sir James rose ... her imagination could not grapple
with the picture: it turned sickly away, refusing to contemplate. And
this to a cousin and a guest, who had just eaten the best salt, so to
speak, of her table, from one who all her life had been so perfect a
piece of propriety! She felt far too old a bottle for such new wine.
Sitting surrounded by fellow-crusaders, and infected by the proximity of
their undiluted enthusiasm, it would be difficult enough, but that she
should chain herself, perhaps, to the very leg of the table which Cousin
James would soon thump in the fervour of his oratory, as he announced
all those Tory platitudes in which she so firmly believed, and which she
must so shrilly interrupt, while sitting solitary in the desert of his
sleek and staid supporters, was not only an impossible but an
unthinkable achievement. Whatever horrors fate, that gruesome weaver of
nightmares, might have in store for her, she felt that here was
something that transcended imagination. She could not sit on the
platform with Lyndhurst and Cousin James and the Mayor and Lady
Westbourne, and do what was required of her, for the sake of any
crusade. Curfew, so to speak, would have to ring that night.
She and Lyndhurst were dining alone the evening after this meeting of
“ways and means,” he in that state of mind which she not inaptly
described as “worried” when she felt kind, and “cross” when she felt
otherwise. He had come home hot from his walk, and, having sat in his
room where there was no fire, when evening fell chilly, had had a smart
touch of lumbago. Thus there were clearly two causes for complaint
against Amy, and a third disturbing topic, for there was no shadow of
doubt that it was his bouquet of chrysanthemums that he had found in the
road outside Dr. Evans’ house, and even before the lumbago had produced
its characteristic pessimism, he had been unable to find any encouraging
explanation of this floral castaway.
“I’m sure I don’t know what was the good of my spending all August,” he
said, “in that filthy hole of a Harrogate, at no end of expense, too, if
I’m to be crippled all winter. But you urged me to so strongly: should
never have thought of going there otherwise.”
“My dear, you have only been crippled for half-an-hour at present,” she
observed. “It is a great bore, but if only you will take a good hot bath
to-night, and have a very light dinner, I expect you will be much better
in the morning. Parker, tell them to see that there is plenty of hot
water in the kitchen boiler.”
“It’ll be the only warm thing in the house, if there is,” said he. “My
room was like an ice-house when I came in. Positively like an ice-house.
Enough to give a man pneumonia, let alone lumbago. Soup cold, too.”
“My dear, you should take more care of yourself,” said Mrs. Ames
placidly. “Why did you not light the fire instead of being cold? I’m
sure it was laid.”
“And have it just burning up at dinner-time,” said he, “when I no longer
wanted it.”
It was still early in the course of dinner.
“Light the fire in the drawing-room, Parker,” said Mrs. Ames. “Let there
be a good fire when we come out of dinner.”
“Get roasted alive,” said Major Ames, half to himself, but intending to
be heard.
But Mrs. Ames’ mind had been feasting for weeks past on things which had
a solider existence than her husband’s unreasonable strictures. Since
this new diet had been hers, his snaps and growls had produced no
effect: they often annoyed her into repartee, and as likely as not, a
few months ago, she would have said that his claret seemed a very poor
kind of beverage. But to-night she felt not the smallest desire to
retort. She was very sorry for his lumbago, but felt no inclination to
carry the war into his territories, or to tell him that if people,
perspiring freely, and of gouty habit, choose to sit down without
changing, and get chilly, they must expect reprisal for their
imprudence.
“Then we will open the window, dear,” she said, “if we find we are
frizzling. But I don’t think it will be too hot. Evenings are chilly in
October. Did you have a pleasant lunch, Lyndhurst? Indeed, I don’t know
where you lunched. I ordered curry for you. I sat down at a quarter to
two as you did not come in.”
It was all so infinitesimal ... yet it was the mental diet which had
supported her for years. Perhaps after dinner they would play picquet.
The garden, the kitchen, for years, except for gossip infinitely less
real, these had been the topics. There had been no joy for him in the
beauty of the garden, only a pleased sense of proprietorship, if a rare
plant flowered, or if there were more roses than usual. For her, she had
been vaguely pleased if Lyndhurst had taken two helpings of a dish, and
both of them had been vaguely disquieted if Harry quoted Swinburne.
“I lunched with the Evans’,” he said. “By the way, I met your cousin
James Westbourne this afternoon, when I was on my walk. Extraordinarily
cordial he gets when there’s business ahead that brings him into
Riseborough, and he wants to cadge a dinner or two. It’s little notice
he takes of us the rest of the year, and I’m sure it’s a couple of years
since he so much as sent us a brace of pheasants, and more than that
since he asked me to shoot there. But as I say, when he wants to pick up
a dinner or two in Riseborough, he’s all heartiness, and saying he
doesn’t see half enough of us. He doesn’t seem to strain himself in
trying to see more, and there’s seldom a week-end when he and that
great guy of a wife of his don’t have the house packed with people. I
suppose we’re not smart enough for them, except when it’s convenient to
dine in Riseborough. Then he’s not above drinking a bottle of my
champagne.”
Mrs. Ames was eager in support of her husband.
“I’m sure there’s no call for you to open any more bottles for him, my
dear,” she said. “If Cousin James wants to see us, he can take his turn
in asking us. And Harriet is a great guy, as you say, with her big
fiddle-head.”
Major Ames shrugged his shoulders rather magnificently.
“I’m sure I don’t grudge him his dinner,” he said, “and, in point of
fact, I told him he could come and dine with us before his first
meeting. He’s got some Cabinet Minister with him, and I said he could
bring him too. You might get up a little party, that’s to say if I’m not
in bed with this infernal lumbago. And Cousin James will return our
hospitality by giving us seats on the platform to hear him stamp and
stammer and rant. An infernal bad speaker. Never heard a worse. Wretched
delivery, nothing to say, and says it all fifty times over. Enough to
make a man turn Radical. However, he’ll have made himself at home with
my Mumm, and perhaps he’ll go to sleep himself before he sends us off.”
This, of course, represented the lumbago-view. Major Ames had been
fulsomely cordial to Cousin James, and had himself urged the dinner that
he represented now as being forced on him.
“Have you actually asked him, Lyndhurst?” said Mrs. Ames rather faintly.
“Did he say he would come?”
“Did you ever know your Cousin James refuse a decent dinner?” asked
Lyndhurst. “And he was kind enough to say he would like it at a quarter
past seven. Cool, upon my word! I wish I had asked him if he’d have
thick soup or clear, and if he preferred a wing to a leg. That’s the
sort of thing one never thinks of till afterwards.”
Mrs. Ames was not attending closely: there was that below the surface
which claimed all her mind. Consequently she missed the pungency of this
irony, hearing only the words.
“Cousin James never takes soup at all,” she said. “He told me it always
disagreed.”
Major Ames sighed; his lumbago felt less acute, his ill-temper had found
relief in words, and he had long ago discovered that women had no sense
of humour. On the whole, it was gratifying to find the truth of this so
amply endorsed. For the moment it put him into quite a good temper.
“I’m afraid I’ve been grumbling all dinner,” he said. “Shall we go into
the other room? There’s little sense in my looking at the decanters, if
I mayn’t take my glass of port. Eh! That was a twinge!”