About Vida's little enterprise on a certain Sunday a few weeks later was
an air of elaborate mystery. Yet the expedition was no further than to
Trafalgar Square. It was there that those women, the so-called
'Suffragettes,' in the intervals of making worse public disturbances,
were rumoured to be holding open-air meetings--a circumstance distinctly
fortunate for any one who wanted to 'see what they were like,' and who
was yet unwilling to commit herself by doing anything so eccentric as
publicly to seek admission under any roof known to show hospitality to
'such goings on.' In those days, only a year ago, and yet already such
ancient history that the earlier pages are forgotten and scarce credible
if recalled, it took courage to walk past the knots of facetious
loafers, and the unblushing Suffragette poster, into the hall where the
meetings were held. Deliberately to sit down among odd, misguided
persons in rows, to listen to, and by so much to lend public countenance
to 'women of that sort'--the sort that not only wanted to vote (quaint
creatures!), but were not content with merely wanting to--for the
average conventional woman to venture upon a step so compromising, to
risk seeming for a moment to take these crazy brawlers seriously, was to
lay herself open to 'the comic laugh'--most dreaded of all the weapons
in the social armoury. But it was something wholly different to set out
for a Sunday Afternoon Concert, or upon some normal and recognized
philanthropic errand, and on the way find one's self arrested for a few
minutes by seeing a crowd gathered in a public square. Yet it had not
been easy to screw Mrs. Fox-Moore up to thinking even this non-committal
measure a possible one to pursue. 'What would anybody think,' she had
asked Vida, 'to see them lending even the casual support of a presence
(however ironic) to so reprehensible a spectacle!' Had it not been for
very faith in the eccentricity of the proceeding--one wildly unlikely to
be adopted, Mrs. Fox-Moore felt, by any one else of 'their kind'--she
would never have consented to be drawn into Vida's absurd project.
Of course it was absolutely essential to disguise the object of the
outing from Mr. Fox-Moore. Not merely because with the full weight of
his authority he would most assuredly have forbidden it, but because of
a nervous prefiguring on his wife's part of the particular things he
would say, and the particular way he would look in setting his
extinguisher on the enterprise.
Vida, from the first, had never explained or excused herself to him, so
that when he asked at luncheon what she was going to do with this fine
Sunday afternoon, she had simply smiled, and said, 'Oh, I have a tryst
to keep.'
It was her sister who added anxiously, 'Is Wood leading now at the
Queen's Hall Concerts?' And so, without actually committing herself to a
lie, gave the impression that music was to be their quest.
An hour later, while the old man was nursing his gout by the library
window, he saw the ladies getting into a hansom. In spite of the
inconvenience to his afflicted member he got up and opened the window.
'Don't tell me you're doing anything so rational--you two--as going to a
concert.'
'Why do you say that? You know I never like to take the horses out on
Sunday----'
'Rubbish! You think a dashing, irresponsible hansom is more in keeping
with the Factory Girls' Club or some giddy Whitechapel frivolity!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore gave her sister a look of miserable apprehension; but the
younger woman laughed and waved a hand. She knew that, even more than
the hansom, their 'get up' had given them away. It must be confessed she
had felt quite as strongly as her sister that it wouldn't do to be
recognized at a Suffragette meeting. Even as a nameless 'fine lady'
standing out from a mob of the dowdy and the dirty, to be stared at by
eyes however undiscerning, under circumstances so questionable, would be
distinctly distasteful.
So, reversing the order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a
'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her
discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque,
the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an
old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' In
spite of having herself taken these precautions, Vida had broken into
uncontrollable smiles at the apparition of Mrs. Fox-Moore, asking with
pride--
'Will I do? I look quite like a Woman of the People, don't I?'
The unconscious humour of the manifestation filled Miss Levering with an
uneasy merriment every time she turned her eyes that way.
Little as Mr. Fox-Moore thought of his wife's taste, either in clothes
or in amusements, he would have been more mystified than ever he had
been in his life had he seen her hansom, ten minutes later, stop on the
north side of Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Gallery.
'Look out and see,' she said, retiring guiltily into the corner of the
conveyance. 'Are they there?' And it was plain that nothing could more
have relieved Mrs. Fox-Moore at that moment than to hear 'they' were
not.
But Vida, glancing discreetly out of the side window, had said--
'There? I should think they are--and a crowd round them already. Look at
their banners!' and she laughed as she leaned out and read the legend,
'We demand VOTES FOR WOMEN' inscribed in black letters on the white
ground of two pieces of sheeting stretched each between a pair of
upright poles, standing one on either side of the plinth of Nelson's
column. In the very middle, and similarly supported, was a banner of
blood red. Upon this one, in great white letters, appeared the legend--
'EFFINGHAM, THE ENEMY
OF
WOMEN AND THE WORKERS.'
As Vida read it out--
'_What!_' ejaculated her sister. 'They haven't really got that on a
banner!' And so intrigued was she that, like some shy creature dwelling
in a shell, cautiously she protruded her head out of the shiny, black
sheath of the hansom.
But as she did so she met the innocent eye of a passer-by, tired of
craning his neck to look back at the meeting. With precipitation Mrs.
Fox-Moore withdrew into the innermost recesses of the black shell.
'Come, Janet,' said Vida, who had meanwhile jumped out and settled the
fare.
'Did that man know us?' asked the other, lifting up the flap from the
back window of the hansom and peering out.
'No, I don't think so.'
'He stared, Vida. He certainly stared very hard.'
Still she hesitated, clinging to the friendly shelter of the hansom.
'Oh, come on! He only stared because---- He took you for a Suffragette!'
But the indiscretion lit so angry a light in the lady's eye, that Vida
was fain to add, 'No, no, do come--and I'll tell you what he was really
looking at.'
'What?' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, putting out her head again.
'He was struck,' said Vida, biting her lip to repress smiles, 'by the
hat of the Woman of the People.'
But the lady was too entirely satisfied with her hat to mind Vida's
poking fun at it.
'"Effingham, the Enemy!"' Mrs. Fox-Moore read for herself as they
approached the flaunting red banner. 'How perfectly outrageous!'
'How perfectly _silly_!' amended the other, 'when one thinks of that
kind and charming Pillar of Excellence!'
'I told you they were mad as well as bad.'
'I know; and now we're going to watch them prove it. Come on.'
'Why, they've stopped the fountains!' Mrs. Fox-Moore spoke as though
detecting an additional proof of turpitude. 'Those two policemen,' she
went on, in a whisper, 'why are they looking at _us_ like that?'
Vida glanced at the men. Their eyes were certainly fixed on the two
ladies in a curious, direct fashion, not exactly impudent, but still in
a way no policeman had ever looked at either of them before. A coolly
watchful, slightly contemptuous stare, interrupted by one man turning to
say something to the other, at which both grinned. Vida was conscious of
wishing that she had come in her usual clothes--above all, that Janet
had not raked out that 'jumble sale' object she had perched on her head.
The wearer of the incriminatory hat, acting upon some quite unanalyzed
instinct to range herself unmistakably on the side of law and order,
paused as they were passing the two policemen and addressed them with
dignity.
'Is it safe to stop and listen for a few minutes to these people?'
The men looked at Mrs. Fox-Moore with obvious suspicion.
'I cawn't say,' said the one nearest.
'Do you expect any trouble?' she demanded.
There was a silence, and then the other policeman said with a decidedly
snubby air--
'It ain't our business to go _lookin'_ fur trouble;' and he turned his
eyes away.
'Of course not,' said Vida, pleasantly, coming to her sister's rescue.
'All this lady wants to be assured of is that there are enough of you
present to make it safe----'
'If ladies wants to be safe,' said number one, 'they'd better stop in
their 'omes.'
'That's the first rude policeman I ever----' began Mrs. Fox-Moore, as
they went on.
'Well, you know he's only echoing what we all say.'
Vida was looking over the crowd to where on the plinth of the historic
column the little group of women and a solitary man stood out against
the background of the banners. Here they were--these new Furies that
pursued the agreeable men one sat by at dinner--men who, it was well
known, devoted their lives--when they weren't dining--to the welfare of
England. But were these frail, rather depressed-looking women--were they
indeed the ones, outrageously daring, who broke up meetings and bashed
in policemen's helmets? Nothing very daring in their aspect to-day--a
little weary and preoccupied they looked, as they stood up there in twos
and threes, talking to one another in that exposed position of theirs,
while from time to time about their ears like spent bullets flew the
spasmodic laughter and rude comment of the crowd--strangely unconscious,
those 'blatant sensation-mongers,' of the thousand eyes and the sea of
upturned faces!
'Not _quite_ what I expected!' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, with an unmistakable
accent of disappointment. It was plainly her meaning that to a general
reprehensibleness, dulness was now superadded.
'Perhaps these are not the ones,' said Vida, catching at hope.
Mrs. Fox-Moore took heart. 'Suppose we find out,' she suggested.
They had penetrated the fringe of a gathering composed largely of weedy
youths and wastrel old men. A few there were who looked like decent
artizans, but more who bore the unmistakable aspect of the beery
out-of-work. Among the strangely few women, were two or three girls of
the domestic servant or Strand Restaurant cashier class--wearers of the
cheap lace blouse and the wax bead necklace.
Mrs. Fox-Moore, forgetting some of her reluctance now that she was on
the spot, valiantly followed Vida as the younger woman threaded her way
among the constantly increasing crowd. Just in front of where the two
came to a final standstill was a quiet-looking old man with a lot of
unsold Sunday papers under one arm and wearing like an apron the bill of
the _Sunday Times_. Many of the boys and young men were smoking
cigarettes. Some of the older men had pipes. Mrs. Fox-Moore commented on
the inferior taste in tobacco as shown by the lower orders. But she,
too, kept her eyes glued to the figures up there on the plinth.
'They've had to get men to hold up their banners for them,' laughed
Vida, as though she saw a symbolism in the fact, further convicting
these women of folly.
'But there's a well-dressed man--that one who isn't holding up anything
that I can see--what on earth is _he_ doing there?'
'Perhaps he'll be upholding something later.'
'Going to speak, you mean?'
'It may be a debate. Perhaps he's going to present the other side.'
'Well, if he does, I hope he'll tell them plainly what he thinks of
them.'
She said it quite distinctly for the benefit of the people round her.
Both ladies were still obviously self-conscious, occupied with the need
to look completely detached, to advertise: '_I'm_ not one of them! Never
think it!' But it was gradually being borne in upon them that they need
take no further trouble in this connection. Nobody in the crowd noticed
any one except 'those ordinary looking persons,' as Mrs. Fox-Moore
complainingly called them, up there on the plinth--'quite like what one
sees on the tops of omnibuses!' Certainly it was an exercise in
incongruity to compare these quiet, rather depressed looking people with
the vision conjured up by Lord John's 'raving lunatics,' 'worthy of the
straight jacket,' or Paul Filey's 'sexless monstrosities.'
'It's rather like a jest that promised very well at the beginning, only
the teller has forgotten the point. Or else,' Vida added, looking at the
face of one of the women up there--'or else the mistake was in thinking
it a jest at all!' She turned away impatiently and devoted her attention
to such scraps of comment as she could overhear in the crowd--or such,
rather, as she could understand.
'That one--that's just come--yes, in the blue tam-o'-shanter, that's the
one I was tellin' you about,' said a red-haired man, with a cheerful and
rubicund face.
'_Looks_ like she'd be 'andy with her fists, don't she?' contributed a
friend alongside. The boys in front and behind laughed appreciatively.
But the ruddy man said, 'Fists? No. _She's_ the one wot carries the
dog-whip;' and they all craned forward with redoubled interest. It is
sad to be obliged to admit that the two ladies did precisely the same.
While the boys were, in addition, cat-calling and inquiring about the
dog-whip--
'That must be the woman the papers have been full of,' Mrs. Fox-Moore
whispered, staring at the new-comer with horrified eyes.
'Yes, no doubt.' Vida, too, scrutinized her more narrowly.
The wearer of the 'Tam' was certainly more robust-looking than the
others, but even she had the pallor of the worker in the town. She
carried her fine head and shoulders badly, like one who has stooped over
tasks at an age when she should have been running about the fields. She
drew her thick brows together every now and then with an effect of
determination that gave her well-chiselled features so dark and
forbidding an aspect it was a surprise to see the grace that swept into
her face when, at something one of her comrades said, she broke into a
smile. Two shabby men on Vida's left were working themselves into a fine
state of moral indignation over the laxity of the police in allowing
these women to air their vanity in public.
'Comin' here with tam-o'-shanters to tell us 'ow to do our business.'
'It's part o' wot I mean w'en I s'y old England's on the down gryde.'
'W'ich is the one in black--this end?' his companion asked, indicating
a refined-looking woman of forty or so. 'Is that Miss----?'
'Miss,' chipped in a young man of respectable appearance just behind.
'_Miss?_ Why, that's the mother o' the Gracchi,' and there was a little
ripple of laughter.
'Hasn't she got any of her jewels along with her to-day?' said another
voice.
'What do they mean?' demanded Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Vida shook her head. She herself was looking about for some one to ask.
'Isn't it queer that you and I have lived all this time in the world and
have never yet been in a mixed crowd before in all our lives?--never _as
a part of it_.'
'I think myself it's less strange we haven't done it before than that
we're doing it now. There's the woman selling things. Let us ask
her----'
They had noticed before a faded-looking personage who had been going
about on the fringe of the crowd with a file of propagandist literature
on her arm. Vida beckoned to her. She made her way with some difficulty
through the chaffing, jostling horde, saying steadily and with a kind of
cheerful doggedness--
'Leaflets! Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott! Labour Record! Prison
Experiences of Miss----'
'How much?' asked Miss Levering.
'What you like,' she answered.
Miss Levering took her change out in information. 'Can you tell me who
the speakers are?'
'Oh, yes.' The haggard face brightened before the task. 'That one is the
famous Miss Claxton.'
'With her face screwed up?'
'That's because the sun is in her eyes.'
'She isn't so bad-looking,' admitted Mrs. Fox-Moore.
'No; but just wait till she speaks!' The faded countenance of the woman
with the heavy pile of printed propaganda on her arm was so lit with
enthusiasm, that it, too, was almost good-looking, in the same way as
the younger, more regular face up there, frowning at the people, or the
sun, or the memory of wrongs.
'Is Miss Claxton some relation of yours?' asked Mrs. Fox-Moore.
'No, oh, no, I don't even know her. She hasn't been out of prison long.
The man in grey--he's Mr. Henry.'
'Out of prison! And Henry's the chairman, I suppose.'
'No; the chairman is the lady in black.' The pamphlet-seller turned away
to make change for a new customer.
'Do you mean the mother of the Gracchi?' said Vida, at a venture, and
saw how if she herself hadn't understood the joke the lady with the
literature did. She laughed good-humouredly.
'Yes; that's Mrs. Chisholm.'
'What!' said a decent-looking but dismal sort of shopman just behind,
'is that the mother of those dreadful young women?'
Neither of the two ladies were sufficiently posted in the nefarious
goings on of the 'dreadful' progeny quite to appreciate the bystander's
surprise, but they gazed with renewed interest at the delicate face.
'What can the man mean! She doesn't _look_----' Mrs. Fox-Moore
hesitated.
'No,' Vida helped her out with a laughing whisper; 'I agree she doesn't
_look_ big enough or bad enough or old enough or bold enough to be the
mother of young women renowned for their dreadfulness. But as soon as
she opens her mouth no doubt we'll smell the brimstone. I wish she'd
begin her raging. Why are they waiting?'
'It's only five minutes past,' said the lady with the literature. 'I
think they're waiting for Mr. Lothian Scott. He's ill. But he'll come!'
As though the example of his fidelity to the cause nerved her to more
earnest prosecution of her own modest duty, she called out, 'Leaflets!
Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott!'
'Wot do they give ye,' inquired a half-tipsy tramp, 'fur 'awkin' that
rot about?'
She turned away quite unruffled. 'Citizenship of Women, one penny.'
'I hope you _do_ get paid for so disagreeable a job--forgive my saying
so,' said Vida.
'Paid? Oh, no!' she said cheerfully. 'I'm too hard at work all week to
help much. And I can't speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship----'
'Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,'--Mrs. Fox-Moore detained
the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eager little figure
sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at
the crowd--'is that one of them?'
'Oh, yes. I thought everybody knew _her_. That's Miss Mary O'Brian.'
She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that
Vida asked--
'And who is Miss Mary O'Brian?' But the pamphlet-seller had descried a
possible customer, and was gone.
'Mary O'Brian,' said a blear-eyed old man, 'is the one that's just come
out o' quod.'
'Oh, thank you.' Then to her sister Vida whispered, 'What is quod?'
But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only shake her head. Even when they heard the
words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to
accompany sound.
'Oh, is _that_ Mary?' A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the
extreme back of his head, began to sing, 'Molly Darling.'
''Ow'd yer like the skilly?' another shouted up at the girl.
'Skilly?' whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn't in the dictionary of any language
she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the
chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly
and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but
what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was--
'Miss O'Brian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how
she liked it.'
'Oh, she's going to tell us all about it. 'Ow _nice_!' But they let the
thin little slip of a girl alone after that.
It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe
of the crowd--
'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the
tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they
smiled at the suggested image.
After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people
for a few minutes. It wasn't often that life presented such an
opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the
plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay,
since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves--women
had been capable of that before--but these didn't even mind ridicule.
Which was new.
Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to
open the meeting.
'Friends!' she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with.
But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she
had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd
several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other
matters, they were met there to pass a censure on the Government----
'Haw! haw!'
''Ear, 'ear!' said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his
ear.
'And to express our sympathy with the brave women----'
The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general
hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor's ''Ear, 'ear!'
''E can't 'ear without 'e shouts about it.'
'Try and keep _yerself_ quiet,' said he, with dignity. 'We ain't 'ere to
'ear _you_.'
'----sympathy with the brave women,' the steady voice went on, 'who are
still in prison.'
'Serve 'em jolly well right!'
'Give the speaker a chaunce, caun't ye?' said the newsvendor, with a
withering look.
It was plain this old gentleman was an unblushing adherent to the cause
(undismayed by being apparently the only one in that vicinity), ready to
cheer the chairman at every juncture, and equally ready to administer
caustic reproof to her opponents.
'Our friends who are in prison, are there simply for trying to bring
before a member of the Government----'
'Good old Effingham. Three cheers for Effingham!'
'Oh, yes,' said the newsvendor, 'go on! 'E needs a little cheerin',
awfter the mess 'e's made o' things!'
'For trying to put before a member of the Government a statement of the
injustice----'
'_That_ ain't why they're in gaol. It's fur ringin' wot's-'is-name's
door-bell.'
'Kickin' up rows in the street----'
'Oh, you shut up,' says the old champion, out of patience. 'You've 'ad
'arf a pint too much.'
Everybody in the vicinity was obliged to turn and look at the youth to
see what proportion of the charge was humour and how much was fact. The
youth resented so deeply the turn the conversation had taken that he
fell back for a moment on bitter silence.
'When you go to call on some one,' the chairman was continuing, with the
patient air of one instructing a class in a kindergarten, 'it is the
custom to ring the bell. What do you suppose a door-bell is for? Do you
think our deputation should have tried to get in without ringing at the
door?'
'They 'adn't no business goin' to 'is private 'ouse.'
'Oh, look 'ere, just take that extry 'arf pint outside the meetin' and
cool off, will yer?'
It was the last time that particular opponent aired his views. The old
man's judicious harping on the ''arf pint' induced the ardent youth to
moderate his political transports. They were not rightly valued, it
appeared. After a few more mutterings he took his 'extry 'alf pint' into
some more congenial society. But there were several others in the crowd
who had come similarly fortified, and they were everywhere the most
audible opponents. But above argument, denial, abuse, steadily in that
upper air the clear voice kept on--
'Do you think they _wanted_ to go to his house? Haven't you heard that
they didn't do that until they had exhausted every other means to get a
hearing?'
To the shower of denial and objurgation that greeted this, she said with
uplifted hand--
'Stop! Let me tell you about it.'
The action had in it so much of authority that (as it seemed, to their
own surprise) the interrupters, with mouths still open, suspended
operations for a moment.
'Why, this is a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that
doing in this _galere_?' Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able
to enlighten her. 'Can't she see--even if there were anything in the
"Cause," as she calls it--what an imbecile waste of time it is talking
to these louts?'
'There's a good many voters here,' said a tall, gloomy-looking
individual, wearing a muffler in lieu of a collar. 'She's politician
enough to know that.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore looked through the man. 'The only reassuring thing I see
in the situation,' she said to her sister, 'is that they don't find many
women to come and listen to their nonsense.'
'Well, they've got you and me! Awful thought! Suppose they converted
us!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore didn't even trouble to reply to such levity. What was
interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience
so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and
harassed by the crowd--even more surprising she bore with the most
recalcitrant members of it--tried to win them over, and yet when they
were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them
with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men
felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight--this well-bred woman
standing there in front of the soaring column, talking with grave
passion to those loafers about the 'Great Woman Question,' and they
treating it as a Sunday afternoon street entertainment.
The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose
appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended
by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly
commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back
her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored
the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw
nothing but 'low cockney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had
a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own
language--they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with
applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the
plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-aged man in a soft hat.
'That's 'im!'
'Yes. Lothian Scott!'
Small need for the chairwoman to introduce the grey man with the
northern burr in his speech, and the northern turn for the
uncompromising in opinion. Every soul there save the two 'educated'
ladies knew this was the man who had done more to make the Labour Party
a political force to be reckoned with than any other creature in the
three kingdoms. Whether he was conscious of having friends in a
gathering largely Tory (as lower-class crowds still are), certainly he
did not spare his enemies.
During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs.
Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running
comment--
'Oh, of _course_! He says that to curry favour with the mob--a rank
demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning
sharply to her companion, '_He wants votes!_' she said, as though
detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh,
no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the
people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness, _I_ call
it, stirring up class against class! I begin to wonder what the police
are thinking about.' She looked round uneasily.
The excitement had certainly increased as the little grey politician
denounced the witlessness of the working-class, and when they howled at
him, went on to expound a trenchant doctrine of universal
Responsibility, which preceded the universal Suffrage that was to come.
Much of what he said was drowned in uproar. It had become clear that his
opinions revolted the majority of his hearers even more than they did
the two ladies. So outraged were the sensibilities of the hooligan and
the half-drunk that they drowned as much of the speech as they were able
in cat-calls and jeers. But enough still penetrated to ears polite not
only to horrify, but to astonish them--such force has the spoken word
above even its exaggeration in cold print.
The ladies had read--sparingly, it is true--that these things were said,
but to _hear_ them!
'He doesn't, after all, seem to be saying what the mob wants to hear,'
said the younger woman.
'No; mercifully the heart of the country is still sound!'
But for one of these two out of the orderlier world, the opposition that
the 'rank demagogue' roused in the mob was to light a lamp whereby she
read wondering the signs of an unsuspected bond between Janet Fox-Moore
and the reeking throng.
When, contrary to the old-established custom of the demagogue, the
little politician in homespun had confided to the men in front of him
what he thought of them, he told them that the Woman's Movement which
they held themselves so clever for ridiculing, was in much the same
position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it
not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the
women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor
any of the men in front of him would have the right to vote to-day.
'You ridicule and denounce these women for trying peacefully--yes, I say
_peacefully_--to get their rights as citizens. Do you know what our
fathers did to get ours? They broke down Hyde Park railings, they burnt
the Bristol Municipal Buildings, they led riots, and they shed blood.
These women have hurt nobody.'
'What about the policeman?'
He went on steadily, comparing the moderation of the women with the
red-hot violence of their Chartist forbears--till one half-drunken
listener, having lost the thread, hiccuped out--
'Can't do nothin'--them women. Even after we've showed 'em _'ow_!'
'Has he got his history right?' Vida asked through her smiling at the
last sally. 'Not that it applies, of course,' she was in haste to add.
'Oh, what does it matter?' Her sister waved it aside. 'An unscrupulous
politician hasn't come here to bother about little things like facts.'
'I don't think I altogether agree with you _there_. That man may be a
fanatic, but he's honest, I should say. Those Scotch peasants, you
know----'
'Oh, because he's rude, and talks with a burr, you think he's a sort of
political Thomas Carlyle?'
Though Vida smiled at the charge, something in her alert air as she
followed the brief recapitulation of the Chartist story showed how an
appeal to justice, or even to pity, may fail, where the rousing of some
dim sense of historical significance (which is more than two-thirds
fear), may arrest and even stir to unsuspected deeps. The grave
Scotsman's striking that chord even in a mind as innocent as Vida's, of
accurate or ordered knowledge of the past, even here the chord could
vibrate to a strange new sense of possible significance in this scene
'----after all.' It would be queer, it would be horrible, it was
fortunately incredible, but what if, 'after all,' she were ignorantly
assisting at a scene that was to play its part in the greatest
revolution the world had seen? Some such mental playing with
possibilities seemed to lurk behind the intent reflective face.
'There are far too many voters already,' her sister had flung out.
'Yes--yes, a much uglier world they want to make!'
But in the power to make history--if these people indeed had that, then
indeed might they be worth watching--even if it were only after one good
look to hide the eyes in dismay. That possibility of historic
significance had suddenly lifted the sordid exhibition to a different
plane.
As the man, amid howls, ended his almost indistinguishable peroration,
the unmoved chairman stepped forward again to try to win back for the
next speaker that modicum of quiet attention which he, at all events,
had the art of gaining and of keeping. As she came forward this time one
of her auditors looked at the Woman Leader in the Crusade with new
eyes--not with sympathy, rather with a vague alarm. Vida Levering's air
of almost strained attention was an unconscious public confession: 'I
haven't understood these strange women; I haven't understood the spirit
of the mob that hoots the man we know vaguely for their champion; I
haven't understood the allusions nor the argot that they talk; I can't
check the history that peasant has appealed to. In the midst of so much
that is obscure, it is meet to reserve judgment.' Something of that
might have been read in the look lifted once or twice as though in
wonderment, above the haggard group up there between the guardian lions,
beyond even the last reach of the tall monument, to the cloudless sky of
June. Was the great shaft itself playing a part in the impression? Was
it there not at all for memory of some battle long ago, but just to mark
on the fair bright page of afternoon a huge surprise? What lesser accent
than just this Titanic exclamation point could fitly punctuate the
record of so strange a portent!--women confronting the populace of the
mightiest city in the world--pleading in her most public place their
right to a voice in her affairs.
In the face of this unexpected mood of receptivity, however unwilling,
came a sharp corrective in the person of the next speaker.
'Oh, it's not going to be one that's been to prison!'
'Oh, dear! It's the one with the wild black hair and the awful "picture
hat"!' But they stared for a few moments as if, in despite of
themselves, fascinated by this lady be-feathered, be-crimped, and
be-ringed, wearing her huge hat cocked over one ear with a defiant
coquetry above a would-be conquering smile. The unerring wits in the
crowd had already picked her out for special attention, but her active
'public form' was even more torturing to the fastidious feminine sense
than her 'stylish' appearance. For her language, flowery and
grandiloquent, was excruciatingly genteel, one moment conveyed by minced
words through a pursed mouth, and the next carried away on a turgid tide
of rhetoric--the swimmer in this sea of sentiment flinging out
braceleted arms, and bawling appeals to the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_'
The crowd howled with derisive joy.
All the same, when they saw she had staying power, and a kind of
Transpontine sense of drama in her, the populace mocked less and
applauded more. Why not? She was very much like an overblown Adelphi
heroine, and they could see her act for nothing. But every time she
apostrophized the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_' two of those same gave
way to overcharged feelings.
'Oh, my dear, I can't stand this! I'm going home!'
'Yes, yes. Let's get away from this terrible female. I suppose they keep
back the best speakers for the last.'
The two ladies turned, and began to edge their way out of the tightly
packed mass of humanity.
'It's rather a pity, too,' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, looking back, 'for this
is the only chance we'll ever have. I did want to hear what the skilly
was.'
'Yes, and about the dog-whip.'
'Skilly! Sounds as if it might be what she hit the policeman with.' Mrs.
Fox-Moore was again pausing to look back. 'That gyrating female is more
what I expected them _all_ to be.'
'Yes; but just listen to that.'
'To what?'
'Why, the way they're applauding her.'
'Yes, they positively revel in the creature!'
It was a long, tiresome business this worming their way out. They paused
again and again two or three times, looking back at the scene with a
recurrent curiosity, and each time repelled by the platform graces of
the lady who was so obviously enjoying herself to the top of her bent.
Yet even after the fleeing twain arrived on the fringe of the greatly
augmented crowd, something even then prevented their instantly making
the most of their escape. They stood criticizing and denouncing.
Again Mrs. Fox-Moore said it was a pity, since they were there, that
they should have to go without hearing one of those who had been in
prison, 'For we'll never have another chance.'
'Perhaps,' said her sister, looking back at the gesticulating
figure--'perhaps we're being a little unreasonable. We were annoyed at
first because they weren't what we expected, and when we get what we
came to see, we run away.'
While still they lingered, with a final fling of arms and toss of
plumes, the champion of the women of England sat down in the midst of
applause.
'You hear? It's all very well. Most of them simply loved it.'
And now the chairman, in a strikingly different style, was preparing the
way for the next speaker, at mention of whom the crowd seemed to feel
they'd been neglecting their prerogative of hissing.
'What name did she say? Why do they make that noise?'
The two ladies began to worm their way back; but this was a different
matter from coming out.
'Wot yer doin'?' some one inquired sternly of Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Another turned sharply, 'Look out! Oo yer pushin', old girl?'
The horrid low creatures seemed to have no sense of deference. And the
stuff they smoked!
'Pah!' observed Mrs. Fox-Moore, getting the full benefit of a noxious
puff. '_Pah!_'
'_Wot!_' said the smoker, turning angrily. 'Pah to you, miss!' He eyed
Mrs. Fox-Moore from head to foot with a withering scorn. 'Comin' 'ere
awskin' us fur votes' (Vida nearly fainted), 'and ain't able to stand a
little tobacco.'
'Stand in front, Janet,' said Miss Levering, hastily recovering herself.
'_I_ don't mind smoke,' she said mendaciously, trying to appease the
defiler of the air with a little smile. Indeed, the idea of Mrs.
Fox-Moore having come to 'awsk' this person for a vote was sufficiently
quaint.
'This is the sort of thing they mean, I suppose,' said that lady, 'when
they talk about cockney humour. It doesn't appeal to me.'
Vida bit her lip. Her own taste was less pure. 'We needn't try to get
any nearer,' she said hastily. 'This chairman-person can make herself
heard without screeching.'
But having lost the key during the passage over the pipe, they could
only make out that she was justifying some one to the mob, some one who
apparently was coming in for too much sharp criticism for the chairman
to fling her to the wolves without first diverting them a little. The
battle of words that ensued was almost entirely unintelligible to the
two ladies, but they gathered, through means more expressive than
speech, that the chairman was dealing with some sort of crisis in the
temper of the meeting, brought about by the mention of a name.
The only thing clear was that she was neither going to give in, nor
going to turn over the meeting in a state of ferment to some less
practised hand.
'Yes, she did! She had a perfect right,' the chairman maintained against
a storm of noes--'more than a right, _a duty_, to perform in going with
that deputation on public business to the house of a public servant,
since, unlike the late Prime Minister, he had refused to women all
opportunity to treat with him through the usual channels always open to
citizens having a political grievance.'
'Citizens? Suffragettes!'
'Very well.' She set her mouth. 'Suffragettes if you like. To get an
abuse listened to is the first thing; to get it understood is the next.
Rather than not have our cause stand out clear and unmistakable before a
preoccupied, careless world, we accept the clumsy label; we wear it
proudly. And it won't be the first time in history that a name given in
derision has become a badge of honour!'
Why, the woman's eyes were suffused!--a flush had mounted up to her
hair!
How she cared!
'Yer ain't told us the reason ye _want_ the vote.'
'Reason? Why, she's a woman!'
'Haw! haw!'
The speaker had never paused an instant, but--it began to be clear that
she heard any interruption it suited her to hear.
'Some one asking, at this time of day, why women want the vote? Why, for
exactly the same reason that you men do. Because, not having any voice
in public affairs, our interests are neglected; and since woman's
interests are man's, all humanity suffers. We want the vote, because
taxation without representation is tyranny; because the laws as they
stand bear hardly on women; and because those unfair, man-made laws will
never be altered till women have a share in electing the men who control
legislation.'
'Yer ought ter leave politics to us----'
'We can't leave politics to the men, because politics have come into the
home, and if the higher interests of the home are to be served, women
must come into politics.'
'That's a bad argument!'
'Wot I always say is----'
'Can't change nature. Nature says----'
'Let 'er st'y at 'ome and mind 'er business!'
The interjections seemed to come all at once. The woman bent over the
crowd. Nothing misty in her eyes now--rather a keener light than before.
'Don't you see,' she appealed to them as equals--'don't you see that in
your improvement of the world you men have taken women's business out of
her home? In the old days there was work and responsibility enough for
woman without going outside her own gate. The women were the bakers and
brewers, the soap and candle-makers, the loom-workers of the world. You
men,' she said, delicately flattering them, '_you_ have changed all
that. You have built great factories and warehouses and mills. But how
do you keep them going? By calling women to come in their thousands and
help you. But women love their homes. You couldn't have got these women
out of their homes without the goad of poverty. You men can't always
earn enough to keep the poor little home going, so the women work in the
shops, they swarm at the mill gates, and the factories are full.'
'True! True, every blessed word!' said the old newsvendor.
'Hush!' she said. 'Don't interrupt. In taking women's business out of
the home you haven't freed her from the need to see after the business.
The need is greater than ever it was. Why, eighty-two per cent of the
women of this country are wage-earning women! Yet, you go on foolishly
echoing: Woman's place is at home.'
'True! True!' said the aged champion, unabashed.
'Then there are those men, philanthropists, statesmen, who believe they
are safeguarding the interests of women by making laws restricting their
work, and so restricting their resources without ever consulting these
women. If they consulted these women, they would hear truths that would
open their blind eyes. But no, the woman isn't worthy of being
consulted. She is worthy to do the highest work given to humanity, to
bear and to bring up children; she is worthy to teach and to train them;
she is worthy to pay the taxes that she has no voice in levying. If she
breaks the law that she has no share in making, she is worth hanging,
but she is not worth consulting about her own affairs--affairs of
supremest importance to her very existence--affairs that no man, however
great and good, can understand so well as she. She will never get
justice until she gets the vote. Even the well-to-do middle-class
woman----'
'Wot are _you_?'
'And even the woman of what are called the upper classes--even she must
wince at the times when men throw off the mask and let her see how in
their hearts they despise her. A few weeks ago Mr. Lothian Scott----'
'Boo! Boo!'
'Hooray!'
''ray for Lothian Scott!'
In the midst of isolated cheers and a volume of booing, she went on--
'When he brought a resolution before the House of Commons to remove the
sex disqualification, what happened?'
'Y' kicked up a row!'
'Lot o' yer got jugged!'
'The same thing happened that has been happening for half a century
every time the question comes up in that English Parliament that
Englishmen are supposed to think of with such respect as a place of
dignity. What _happened_?' She leaned forward and her eyes shone. 'What
happened in that sacred place, that Ark where they safeguard the honour
of England? What happened to _our_ honour, that these men dare tell us
is so safe in their hands? Our cause was dragged through filth. The very
name "woman" was used as a signal for jests and ribald laughter, and for
such an exhibition of sex rancour and mistrust that it passed
imagination to think what the mothers and wives of the members must
think of the public confession of the deep disrespect their menfolk feel
for them. Some one here spoke of "a row."' She threw back her head, and
faced the issue as though she knew that by bringing it forward herself,
she could turn the taunt against the next speaker into a title of
respect. 'You blame us for making a scene in that holy place! You would
have us imitate those other women--the well-behaved--the women who think
more of manners than of morals. There they were--for an example to
us--that night of the debate, that night of the "row"--there they sat as
they have always done, like meek mute slaves up there in their little
gilded pen, ready to listen to any insult, ready to smile on the men
afterward. In only one way, but it was an important exception, in just
one way that debate on Woman Suffrage differed from any other that had
ever taken place in the House of Commons.'
A voice in the crowd was raised, but before the jeer was out Mrs.
Chisholm had flung down her last ringing sentences.
'There were _others_ up there in the little pen that night!--women,
too--but women with enough decency to be revolted, and with enough
character to resent such treatment as the members down there on the
floor of the House were giving to our measure. Though the women who
ought to have felt it most sat there cowed and silent, I am proud to
think there were other women who cried out, "_Shame!_" Yes, yes,' she
interrupted the interrupters, 'those women were dragged away to prison,
and all the world was aghast. But I tell you that cry was the beginning
of a new chapter in human history. It began with "Shame!" but it will
end with "Honour."'
The old newsvendor led the applause.
'Janet! That woman never spat in a policeman's face.'
'Pull down your veil,' was the lady's sharp response. 'Quick----'
'My----'
'Yes, pull it down, and don't turn round.'
A little dazed by the red-hot torrent the woman on the plinth was still
pouring down on the people, Vida's mind at the word 'veil,' so
peremptorily uttered, reverted by some trick of association to the
Oriental significance of that mark in dress distinctively the woman's.
'Why should I pull down my veil?' she answered abstractedly.
'They're looking this way. Don't turn round. Come, come.'
With a surprising alacrity and skill Mrs. Fox-Moore made her way out of
the throng. Vida, following, yet looking back, heard--
'Now, I want you men to give a fair hearing to a woman who----'
'Vida, _don't_ look! Mercifully, they're too much amused to notice us.'
Disobeying the mandate, the younger woman's eyes fell at last upon the
figures of two young men hovering on the outer circle. The sun caught
their tall, glossy hats, played upon the single flower in the frock
coat, struck on the eyeglass, and gleamed mockingly on the white teeth
of the one who smiled the broadest as they both stood, craning their
necks, whispering and laughing, on the fringe of the crowd.
'Why, it's Dick Farnborough--and that friend of his from the Austrian
Embassy.'
Vida pulled down her veil.