Devoutly thankful at having escaped from her compromising position
unrecognized, Mrs. Fox-Moore firmly declined to go 'awskin' fur the
vote' again! When Vida gave up her laughing remonstrance, Mrs. Fox-Moore
thought her sister had also given up the idea. But as Vida afterwards
confessed, she told herself that she would go 'just once more.' It could
not be but what she was under some illusion about that queer spectacle.
From one impression each admitted it was difficult to shake herself
free. Whatever those women were or were not, they weren't fools. What
did the leaders (in prison and out), what did they think they were
accomplishing, besides making themselves hideously uncomfortable? The
English Parliament, having flung them out, had gone on with its routine,
precisely as though nothing had happened. _Had_ anything happened? That
was the question. The papers couldn't answer. They were given over to
lies. The bare idea of women pretending to concern themselves with
public affairs--from the point of view of the Press, it was enough to
make the soberest sides shake with Homeric laughter.
So, then, one last time to see for one's self. And on this occasion no
pettiness of disguise, Miss Levering's aspect seemed to say--no
recurrence of any undignified flight. She had been frightened away from
her first meeting, but she would not be frightened from the second,
which was also to be the last.
An instinct unanalyzed, but significant of what was to follow, kept her
from seeking companionship outside. Had Wark not gone over to the
market-gardener, her former mistress would have had no misgiving about
taking the woman into her confidence. But Wark, with lightning rapidity,
had become Mrs. Anderson Slynes, and was beyond recall. So the new maid
was told the following Sunday, that she might walk with her mistress
across Hyde Park (where the papers said the meetings in future were to
be), carrying some music which had to be returned to the Tunbridges.
Pursuing this programme, what more natural than that those two chance
pedestrians should be arrested by an apparition on their way, of a
flaming banner bearing, along with a demand for the vote, an outrageous
charge against a distinguished public servant--'a pity the misguided
creatures didn't know him, just a little!'
Yes. There it was! a rectangle of red screaming across the vivid green
of the park not a hundred yards from the Marble Arch, the denunciatory
banner stretched above the side of an uncovered van. A little crowd of
perhaps a hundred collected on one side of the cart--the loafers on the
outermost fringe, lying on the grass. Never a sign of a Suffragette, and
nearly three o'clock! Impossible for any passer-by to carry out the
programme of pausing to ask idly, 'What are those women screeching
about?'
Seeming to search in vain for some excuse to linger, Miss Levering's
wandering eye fell upon a young mother wheeling a perambulator. She had
glanced with mild curiosity at the flaunting ensign, and then turned
from it to lean forward and straighten her baby's cap.
'I wonder what _she_ thinks of the Woman Question,' Miss Levering
observed, in a careless aside to her maid.
Before Gorringe could reply: 'Doddy's a bootiful angel, isn't Doddy?'
said the young mother, with subdued rapture.
'Ah, she's found the solution,' said the lady, looking back.
Other pedestrians glanced at the little crowd about the cart, read
demand and denunciation on the banner, laughed, and they, too, for the
most part, went on.
An Eton boy, who looked as if he might be her grandson, came by with a
white-haired lady of distinguished aspect, who held up her voluminous
silken skirts and stared silently at the legend.
'Do you see what it says?' the Eton boy laughed as he looked back. '"_We
demand the vote._" Fancy! They "demand" it. What awful cheek!' and he
laughed again at the fatuity of the female creature.
Vida glanced at the dignified old dame as though with an uneasy new
sense of the incongruity in the attitude of those two quite commonplace,
everyday members of a world that was her world, and that yet could for a
moment look quite strange.
She turned and glanced back at the ridiculous cart as if summoning the
invisible presence of Mrs. Chisholm to moderate the insolence of the
budding male. Still there was no sign either of Mrs. Chisholm or any of
her fellow-conspirators against the old order of the world. Miss
Levering stood a moment hesitating.
'I believe I'm a little tired,' she said to the discreet maid. 'We'll
rest here a moment,' and she sat down with her back to the crowd.
A woman, apparently of the small shopkeeping class, was already
established at one end of the only bench anywhere near the cart. Her
child who was playing about, was neatly dressed, and to Vida's surprise
wore sandals on her stockingless feet. This fashion for children, which
had been growing for years among the upper classes, had found little
imitation among tradesmen or working people. They presumably were still
too near the difficulty of keeping their children in shoes and
stockings, to be able to see anything but a confession of failure in
going without. In the same way, the 'Simple Life,' when led by the rich,
wears to the poverty-struck an aspect of masked meanness--a matter far
less tolerable in the eyes of the pauper than the traditional splendour
of extravagance in the upper class, an extravagance that feeds more than
the famished stomach with the crumbs that it lets fall.
As Miss Levering sat watching the child, and wondering a little at the
sandals, the woman caught her eye.
'Could you please tell me the time?' she asked.
Miss Levering took out her watch, and then spoke of the wisdom of that
plan of sandals.
The woman answered with such self-possession and good sense, that the
lady sent a half-amused glance over her shoulder as if relishing in
advance the sturdy disapproval of this highly respectable young mother
when she should come to realize how near she and the precious daughter
were to the rostrum of the Shrieking Sisterhood. It might be worth
prolonging the discussion upon health and education for the amusement
there would be in seeing what form condemnation of the Suffragettes took
among people of this kind. By turning her head to one side, out of the
tail of her eye the lady could see that an excitement of some sort was
agitating the crowd. The voices rose more shrill. People craned and
pushed. A derisive cheer went up as a woman appeared on the cart. The
wearer of the tam-o'-shanter! Three others followed--all women. Miss
Levering saw without seeming to look, still listening while the
practical-minded mother talked on about her child, and what 'was good
for it.' All life had resolved itself into pursuit of that.
An air of semi-abstraction came over the lady. It was as if in the
presence of this excellent bourgeoise she felt an absurd constraint in
showing an interest in the proceedings of these unsexed creatures behind
them.
To her obvious astonishment the mother of the child was the first to
jump up.
'Now they're going to begin!' she said briskly.
'Who?' asked Miss Levering.
'Why, the Suffrage people.'
'Oh! Are _you_ going to listen to them?'
'Yes; that's what I've come all this way for.' And she and her
bare-legged offspring melted into the growing crowd.
Vida turned to the maid and met her superior smile. 'That woman says she
has come a long way to hear these people advocating Woman's Suffrage,'
and slowly with an air of complete detachment she approached the edge of
the crowd, followed by the supercilious maid. They were quickly hemmed
in by people who seemed to spring up out of the ground. It was curious
to look back over the vivid green expanse and see the dotted humanity
running like ants from all directions to listen to this handful of dowdy
women in a cart!
In finding her way through the crowd it would appear that the lady was
not much sustained by the presence of a servant, however well-meaning.
Much out of place in such a gathering as Mrs. Fox-Moore or any
ultra-oldfashioned woman was, still more incongruous showed there the
relation of mistress and maid. The punctilious Gorringe was plainly
horrified at the proximity to her mistress of these canaille, and the
mistress was not so absorbed it would seem but what she felt the affront
to seemliness in a servant's seeing her pushed and shoved aside--treated
with slight regard or none. Necessary either to leave the scene with
lofty disapproval, or else make light of the discomfort.
'It doesn't matter!' she assured the girl, who was trying to protect her
mistress's dainty wrap from contact with a grimy tramp. And, again, when
half a dozen boys forced their way past, 'It's all right!' she nodded to
the maid, 'it's no worse than the crowd at Charing Cross coming over
from Paris.'
But it was much worse, and Gorringe knew it. 'The old man is standing on
your gown, miss.'
'Oh, would you mind----' Miss Levering politely suggested another place
for his feet.
But the old man had no mind left for a mere bystander--it was all
absorbed in Suffragettes.
''is feet are filthy muddy, 'm,' whispered Gorringe.
It may have been in part the maid's genteel horror of such proximities
that steeled Miss Levering to endure them. Under circumstances like
these the observant are reminded that no section of the modern community
is so scornfully aristocratic as our servants. Their horror of the
meanly-apparelled and the humble is beyond the scorn of kings. The fine
lady shares her shrinking with those inveterate enemies of democracy,
the lackey who shuts the door in the shabby stranger's face, and the dog
who barks a beggar from the gate.
And so while the maid drew her own skirts aside and held her nose high
in the air, the gentlewoman stood faintly smiling at the queer scene.
Alas! no Mrs. Chisholm. It looked as if they must have been hard up for
speakers to-day, for two of them were younger even than Miss Claxton of
the tam-o'-shanter. One of them couldn't be more than nineteen.
'How dreadful to put such very young girls up there to be stared at by
all these louts!'
'Oh, yes, 'm, quite 'orrid,' agreed the maid, but with the air of 'What
can you expect of persons so low?'
'However, the young girls seem to have as much self-possession as the
older ones!' pursued Miss Levering, as she looked in vain for any sign
of flinching from the sallies of cockney impudence directed at the
occupants of the cart.
They exhibited, too, what was perhaps even stranger--an utter absence of
any flaunting of courage or the smallest show of defiance. What was this
armour that looked like mere indifference? It couldn't be that those
quiet-looking young girls _were_ indifferent to the ordeal of standing
up there before a crowd of jeering rowdies whose less objectionable
utterances were: 'Where did you get that 'at?' 'The one in green is my
girl!' 'Got yer dog-whip, miss?' and such-like utterances.
The person thus pointedly alluded to left her companions ranged along
the side of the cart against the background of banner, while she, the
famous Miss Claxton, took the meeting in charge. She wasted no time,
this lady. Her opening remarks, which, in the face of a fire of
interruption, took the form of an attack upon the Government, showed her
an alert, competent, cut-and-thrust, imperturbably self-possessed
politician, who knew every aspect of the history of the movement, as
able to answer any intelligent question off-hand as to snub an impudent
irrelevance, able to take up a point and drive it well in--to shrug and
smile or frown and point her finger, all with most telling effect, and
keep the majority of her audience with her every minute of the time.
As a mere exhibition of nerve it was a thing to make you open your eyes.
Only a moment was she arrested by either booing or applause. When a knot
of young men, who had pushed their way near the front, kept on shouting
argument and abuse, she interrupted her harangue an instant. Pointing
out the ring-leader--
'Now you be quiet, if you please,' she said. 'These people are here to
listen to _me_.'
'No, they ain't. They come to see wot you look like.'
'That can't be so,' she said calmly, 'because after they've seen us they
stay.' Then, as the interrupter began again, 'No, it's no use, my
man'--she shook her head gently as if almost sorry for him--'you can't
talk _me_ down!'
'Now, ain't that just _like_ a woman!' he complained to the crowd.
Just in front of where Miss Levering and her satellite first came to a
standstill, was a cheerful, big, sandy man with long flowing
moustachios, a polo cap, and a very dirty collar. At intervals he
inquired of the men around him, in a great jovial voice, 'Are we
down-'earted?' as though the meeting had been called, not for the
purpose of rousing interest in the question of woman's share in the work
of the world, but as though its object were to humiliate and
disfranchise the men. But his exclamation, repeated at intervals, came
in as a sort of refrain to the rest of the proceedings.
'The Conservatives,' said the speaker, 'had never pretended they
favoured broadening the basis of the franchise. But here were these
Liberals, for thirty years they'd been saying that the demand on the
part of women for political recognition commanded their respect, and
would have their support, and yet there were four hundred and odd
members who had got into the House of Commons very largely through the
efforts of women--oh, yes, we know all about that! We've been helping
the men at elections for years.'
'What party?'
Adroitly she replied, 'We have members of every party in our ranks.'
'Are you a Conservative?'
'No, I myself am not a Conservative----'
'You work for the Labour men--I know!'
'It's child's play belonging to any party till we get the vote,' she
dismissed it. 'In future we are neither for Liberal nor Conservative nor
Labour. We are for Women. When we get the sex bar removed, it will be
time for us to sort ourselves into parties. At present we are united
against any Government that continues to ignore its duty to the women of
the country. In the past we were so confiding that when a candidate said
he was in favour of Woman's Suffrage (he was usually a Liberal), we
worked like slaves to get that man elected, so that a voice might be
raised for women's interests in the next Parliament. Again and again the
man we worked for got in. But the voice that was to speak for us--that
voice was mute. We had served his purpose in helping him to win his
seat, and we found ourselves invariably forgotten or ignored. The
Conservatives have never shown the abysmal hypocrisy of the Liberals. We
can get on with our open enemies; it's these _cowards_' ('Boo!' and
groans)--'these cowards, I say--who, in order to sneak into a place in
the House, pretend to sympathize with this reform--who use us, and then
betray us; it's these who are women's enemies!'
'Why are you always worrying the Liberals? Why don't you ask the
Conservatives to give you the vote?'
'You don't go to a person for something he hasn't got unless you're a
fool. The Liberals are in power; the Liberals were readiest with fair
promises; and so we go to the Liberals. And we shall continue to go to
them. We shall never leave off' (boos and groans) 'till they leave
office. Then we'll begin on the Conservatives.' She ended in a chorus of
laughter and cheers, 'I will now call upon Miss Cynthia Chisholm to
propose the resolution.'
Wherewith the chairman gave way to the younger of the two girls. This
one of the Gracchi--a gentle-seeming creature, carelessly dressed, grave
and simple--faced the mob with evident trepidation, a few notes, to
which she never referred, in her shaking hand. What brought a girl like
that here?--was the question on the few thoughtful faces in the crowd
confronting her. She answered the query by introducing the resolution in
an earnest little speech which, if it didn't show that much of the
failure and suffering that darken the face of the world is due to
women's false position, showed, at all events, that this young creature
held a burning conviction that the subjection of her sex was the world's
Root-Evil. With no apparent apprehension of the colossal audacity of her
position, the girl moved gravely that 'this meeting demands of the
Government the insertion of an enfranchisement clause in the Plural
Voting Bill, and demands that it shall become law during the present
session.' Her ignorance of Parliamentary procedure was freely pointed
out to her.
'No,' she said, 'it is you who are ignorant--of how pressing the need
is. You say it is "out of order." If treating the women of the country
fairly is out of order, it is only because men have made a poor sort of
order. It is the _order_ that should be changed.'
Of course that dictum received its due amount of hooting.
'The vote is the reward for defending the country,' said a voice.
'No,' said the girl promptly, 'for soldiers and sailors don't vote.'
'It implies fitness for military service,' somebody amended.
'It _shouldn't_,' said Nineteen, calmly; 'it ought to imply merely _a
stake_ in the country. No one denies we have that.'
The crowd kept on about soldiering, till the speaker was goaded into
saying--
'I don't say women like fighting, but women _can_ fight! In these days
warfare isn't any more a matter of great physical strength, and a woman
can pull a trigger as well as a man. The Boer women found that out--and
so has the Russian. I don't like thinking about it myself--for I seem to
realize too clearly what horrors those women endured before they could
carry bombs or shoulder rifles.'
'Rifles? Why a woman can't never hit _nothing_.'
'It is quite true we can't most of us even throw a stone straight--the
great mass of women never in all their lives wanted to hit anybody or
anything. And that'--she came nearer, and leaned over the side of the
cart with scared face--'it's that that makes it so dreadful to realize
how at last when women's eyes are opened--when they see their homes and
the holiest things in life threatened and despised, how quickly after
all _they can learn the art of war_.'
'With hatpins!' some one called out.
'Yes, scratching and spitting,' another added.
That sort of interruption did not so much embarrass her, but once or
twice she was nearly thrown off her beam-ends by men and boys shouting,
'Wot's the matter with yer anyway? Can't yer get a husband?' and
such-like brilliant relevancies. Although she flushed at some of these
sallies, she stuck to her guns with a pluck that won her friends. In one
of the pauses a choleric old man gesticulated with his umbrella.
'If what the world needed was Woman's Suffrage, it wouldn't have been
left for a minx like you to discover it.' At which volleys of approval.
'That gentleman seems to think it's a new madness that we've recently
invented.' The child seemed in her loneliness to reach out for
companioning. She spoke of 'our friend John Stuart Mill.'
'Oo's Mill?'
'That great Liberal wrote in 1867----' But Mill and she were drowned
together. She waited a moment for the flood of derision to subside.
''E wouldn't 'ad nothin' to do with yer if 'e'd thought you'd go on like
you done.'
'Benjamin Disraeli was on our side. Mazzini--Charles Kingsley. As long
ago as 1870, a Woman's Suffrage Bill that was drafted by Dr. Pankhurst
and Mr. Jacob Bright passed a second reading.'
'The best sort of women _never_ wanted it.'
'The kind of women in the past who cared to be associated with this
reform--they were women like Florence Nightingale, and Harriet
Martineau, and Josephine Butler, and the two thousand other women of
influence who memorialized Mr. Gladstone.'
Something was called out that Vida could not hear, but that brought the
painful scarlet into the young face.
'Shame! shame!' Some of the men were denouncing the interjection.
After a little pause the girl found her voice. 'You make it difficult
for me to tell you what I think you ought to know. I don't believe I
could go on if I didn't see over there the Reformer's Tree. It makes me
think of how much had to be borne before other changes could be brought
about.' She reminded the people of what had been said and suffered on
that very spot in the past, before the men standing before her had got
the liberties they enjoyed to-day.
'They were _men_!'
'Yes, and so perhaps it wasn't so hard for them. I don't know, and I'm
sure it was hard enough. When we women remember what _they
suffered_--though you think meanly of us because we can't be soldiers,
you may as well know we are ready to do whatever has to be done--we are
ready to bear whatever has to be borne. There seem to be things harder
to face than bullets, but it doesn't matter, they'll be faced.'
The lady standing with her maid in the incongruous crowd, looked round
once or twice with eyes that seemed to say, 'How much stranger life is
than we are half the time aware, and how much stranger it bids fair to
be!' The rude platform with the scarlet backing flaming in the face of
the glorious summer afternoon, near the very spot upon which the great
battles for Reform had been fought out in the past, and in place of
England's sturdy freeman making his historic appeal for justice, and
admission to the Commons--a girl pouring out this stream of vigorous
English, upholding the cause her family had stood for. Her voice failed
her a little towards the close, or rather it did not so much fail as
betray to any sensitive listener the degree of strain she put upon it to
make it carry above laughter and interjection. As she raised the note
she bent over the crowd, leaning forward, with her neck outstretched,
the cords in it swelling, and the heat of the sun bringing a flush and a
moisture to her face, steadying her voice as the thought of the struggle
to come, shook and clouded it, and calling on the people to judge of
this matter without prejudice. It was a thing to live in the memory--the
vision of that earnest child trying to fire the London louts with the
great names of the past, and failing to see her bite her lip to keep
back tears, and, bending over the rabble, find a choked voice to say--
'If your forefathers and foremothers who suffered for the freedom you
young men enjoy--if they could come out of their graves to-day and see
how their descendants use the great privileges they won--I believe they
would go back into their graves and pull the shrouds over their eyes to
hide them from your shame!'
'Hear! Hear!' 'Right you are.'
But she was done. She turned away, and found friendly hands stretched
out to draw her to a seat.
The next speaker was an alert little woman with a provincial accent and
the briskness of a cock-sparrow, whose prettiness, combined with
pertness, rather demoralized the mob.
'Men and women,' she began, pitching her rather thin voice several notes
too high.
'Men and women!' some one piped in mimicry; and the crowd dissolved in
laughter.
It was curious to note again how that occasional exaggerated shrillness
of the feminine voice when raised in the open air--how it amused the
mob. They imitated the falsetto with squeals of delight. Each time she
began afresh she was met by the shrill echo of her own voice. The
contest went on for several minutes. The spectacle of the agitated
little figure, bobbing and gesticulating and nothing heard but shrill
squeaks, raised a very pandemonium of merriment. It didn't mend matters
for her to say when she did get a hearing--
'I've come all the way from----' (place indistinguishable in the
confusion) 'to talk to you this afternoon----'
''ow kind!'
'Do you reely think they could spare you?'
'And I'm going to convert every man within reach of my voice.'
Groans, and 'Hear! Hear!'
'Let's see you try!'
She talked on quite inaudibly for the most part. A phrase here and there
came out, and the rest lost. So much hilarity in the crowd attracted to
it a bibulous gentleman, who kept calling out, 'Oh, the pretty dear!' to
the rapture of the bystanders. He became so elevated that the police
were obliged to remove him. When the excitement attending this passage
had calmed down, the reformer was perceived to be still piping away.
''ow long are you goin' on like this?'
'Ain't you _never_ goin' to stop?'
'Oh, not for a long time,' she shrilled cheerfully. 'I've got the
accumulations of _centuries_ on me, and I'm only just beginning to
unload! Although we haven't got the vote--_not yet_--never mind, we've
got our tongues!'
'Lord, don't we know it!' said a sad-faced gentleman, in a rusty topper.
'This one's too intolerable,' said a man to his companion.
'Yes; she ought to be smacked.'
They melted out of the crowd.
'We've got our tongues, and I've been going round among all the women I
know getting them to promise to _use_ their tongues----'
'You stand up there and tell us they needed _urgin'_?'
'To use their tongues to such purpose that it won't be women, but _men_,
who get up the next monster petition to Parliament asking for Woman's
Suffrage.'
She went down under a flood of jeers, and rose to the surface again to
say--
'A man's petition, praying Parliament for goodness' sake give those
women the vote! Yes, you'd better be seeing about that petition, my
friends, for I tell you there isn't going to be any peace till we get
the franchise.'
'Aw now, they'd give _you_ anything!'
When the jeering had died a little, and she came to the top once more,
she was discovered to be shouting--
'You men 'ad just better keep an eye on us----'
'Can't take our eyes off yer!'
'We Suffragettes _never_ have a Day of Rest! Every day in the week,
while you men are at work or sitting in the public-house, we are
visiting the women in their homes, explaining and stirring them up to a
sense of their wrongs.'
'This I should call an example of what _not_ to say!' remarked a
shrewd-looking man with a grin.
The crowd were ragging the speaker again, while she shouted--
'We are going to effect such a revolution as the world has never seen!'
'I'd like to bash her head for her!'
'We let them know that so long as women have no citizenship they are
outside the pale of the law. If we are outside the law, we can't _break_
the law. It is not our fault that we're outlaws. It is you men's fault.'
'Don't say that,' said a voice in mock agony. 'I love you so.'
'I know you can't help it,' she retorted.
'If we gave you the vote, what would you do with it? Put it in a pie?'
'Well, I wouldn't make the _hash_ of it you men do!' and she turned the
laugh. 'Look at you! _Look_ at you!' she said, when quiet was restored.
The young revellers gave a rather blank snigger, as though they had all
along supposed looking at them to be an exhilarating occupation for any
young woman.
'What do you do with your power? You throw it away. You submit to being
taxed and to _our_ being taxed to the tune of a hundred and twenty-seven
millions, that a war may be carried on in South Africa--a war that most
of you know nothing about and care nothing about--a war that some of us
knew only too much about, and wanted only to see abandoned. We see
constantly how you men either misuse the power you have or you don't use
it at all. Don't appreciate it. Don't know what to do with it. Haven't a
notion you ought to be turning it into good for the world. Hundreds of
men don't care anything about political influence, except that women
shouldn't have it.'
She was getting on better till some one called out, 'You ought to get
married.'
'I'm going to. If you don't be good you won't be asked to the wedding.'
Before the temptation of a retort she had dropped her argument and
encouraged personalities. In vain she tried to recover that thread of
attention which, not her interrupter, but herself had snapped. She
retired in the midst of uproar.
The chairman came forward and berated the crowd for its un-English
behaviour in not giving a speaker a fair hearing.
A man held up a walking-stick. 'Will you just tell me one thing,
miss----'
'Not now. When the last speaker has finished there will be ten minutes
for questions. And I may say that it is a great and rare pleasure to
have any that are intelligent. Don't waste anything so precious. Just
save it up till you're asked for it. I want you now to give a fair
hearing to Mrs. Bewley.'
This was a wizened creature of about fifty, in rusty black, widow of a
stonemason and mother of four children--'four _livin'_,' she said with
some significance. She added her mite of testimony to that of the 96,000
organized women of the mills, that the workers in her way of life
realized how their condition and that of the children would be improved
'if the women 'ad some say in things.'
'It's quite certain,' she assured the people, 'there ought to be women
relief-officers and matrons in the prisons. And it's very 'ard on women
that there isn't the same cheap lodgin'-'ouse accommodation fur single
women as there is fur single men. It's very 'ard on poor girls. It's
worse than 'ard. But men won't never change that. We women 'as got to do
it.'
'Go 'ome and get your 'usban's tea!' said a new-comer, squeezing her way
into the tight-packed throng, a queer little woman about the same age as
the speaker, but dressed in purple silk and velvet, and wearing a
wonderful purple plush hat on a wig of sandy curls. She might have been
a prosperous milliner from the Commercial Road, and she had a meek man
along who wore the husband's air of depressed responsibility. She was
spared the humiliating knowledge, but she was taken at first for a
sympathizer with the Cause. In manners she was precisely like what the
Suffragette was at that time expected to be, pushing her way through the
crowd, and vociferating 'Shyme!' to all and sundry. The men who had been
pleasantly occupied in boo-ing the speaker turned and glared at her. The
hang-dog husband had an air of not observing. Some of the boys pushed
and harried her, but, to their obvious surprise, they heard her advising
the rusty widow: 'Go 'ome and get your 'usban's tea!' She varied that
advice by repeating her favourite 'Shyme!' varied by 'Wot
beayviour!--old enough to know better. Every good wife oughter stay at
'ome and darn 'er 'usban's socks and make 'im comftubble.'
After delivering which womanly sentiment she would nod her purple
plumes and smile at the men. It was the sorriest travesty of similar
scenes in a politer world. To the credit of the loafers about her, they
did not greatly encourage her. She was perhaps overmature for her
_role_. But they ceased to jostle her. They even allowed her to get in
front of them. The tall, rusty woman in the cart was meanwhile telling a
story of personal experience of the operation of some law which shut out
from any share in the benefits of the new Act which regulates the
feeding of school children, the very people most in need of it. For it
appeared that orphans and the children of widows were excluded. The Bill
provided only for children living under their father's roof. If the roof
was kept over them by the shackled hands of the mother, according to the
speaker, they might go hungry.
'No, no,' Miss Levering shook her head, explaining to her maid. 'I don't
doubt the poor soul has had some difficulty, some hard experience, but
she can't be quoting the law correctly.'
Nevertheless, in the halting words of the woman who had suffered, if
only from misapprehension upon so grave a point, there was a rude
eloquence that overbore the lady's incredulity. The crowd hissed such
gross unfairness.
'If women 'ad 'ave made the laws, do you think we'd 'ave 'ad one like
that disgracin' the statue-book? No! And in all sorts o' ways it looks
like the law seems to think a child's got only one parent. I'd like to
tell them gentlemen that makes the laws that (it may be different in
their world, I only speak for my little corner of it)--but in 'Ackney it
looks like when a child's got only one parent, that one is the mother.'
'Sy, let up, old gal! there's some o' them young ones ain't 'ad a show
yet.'
'About time you had a rest, mother!'
'If the mother dies,' she was saying, 'wot 'appens?'
'Let's 'ope she goes to heaven.'
'Wot 'appens to the pore little 'ome w'en the mother dies? Why, the pore
little home is sold up, and the children's scattered among relations, or
sent out so young to work it makes yer 'art ache. But if a man dies--you
see it on every side, _in 'Ackney_--the widow takes in sewin', or goes
out charin', or does other people's washin' as well as 'er own, or she
mykes boxes--_something_ er ruther, any'ow, that makes it possible fur
'er to keep 'er 'ome together. You don't see the mother scatterin' the
little family w'en the only parent the law seems to reconize is dead and
gone. I say----'
'You've a been sayin' it for a good while. You must be needin' a cup o'
tea yerself.'
'In India I'm told they burn the widows. In England they do worse than
that. They keep them _half_ alive.'
The crowd rose to that, with the pinched proof before their eyes.
'Just enough alive to suffer through their children. And so the workin'
women round about where I live--that's 'Ackney--they say if we ain't
'eathins in this country let's give up 'eathin ways. Let the mothers o'
this country 'ave their 'ands untied. We're willin' to work for our
children, but it breaks our 'earts to work without tools. The tool we're
needin' is the tool that mends the laws. I 'ave pleasure in secondin'
the resolution.'
With nervously twitching lips the woman sat down. They cheered her
lustily--a little out of sympathy, a good deal from relief that she had
finished, and a very different sort of person was being introduced by
the chairman.