'I will now call upon the last speaker. Yes, I will answer any general
questions _after_ Miss Ernestine Blunt has spoken.'
'Oh, I sy!'
''Ere's Miss Blunt.'
'Not that little one?'
'Yes. This is the one I was tellin' you about.'
People pushed and craned their necks, the crowd swayed as the other one
of the two youngest 'Suffragettes' came forward. She had been sitting
very quietly in her corner of the cart, looking the least concerned
person in Hyde Park. Almost dull the round rather pouting face with the
vivid scarlet lips; almost sleepy the heavy-lidded eyes. But when she
had taken the speaker's post above the crowd, the onlooker wondered why
he had not noticed her before.
It seemed probable that all save those quite new to the scene had been
keeping an eye on this person, who, despite her childish look, was
plainly no new recruit. Her self-possession demonstrated that as
abundantly as the reception she got--the vigorous hoots and hoorays in
the midst of clapping and cries--
'Does your mother know you're out?'
'Go 'ome and darn your stockens.'
'Hurrah!'
'You're a disgryce!'
'I bet on little Blunt!'
'Boo!'
Even in that portion of the crowd that did not relieve its feelings by
either talking or shouting, there was observable the indefinable
something that says, 'Now the real fun's going to begin.' You see the
same sort of manifestation in the playhouse when the favourite comedian
makes his entrance. He may have come on quite soberly only to say, 'Tea
is ready,' but the grin on the face of the public is as ready as the
tea. The people sit forward on the edge of their seats, and the whole
atmosphere of the theatre undergoes some subtle change. So it was here.
And yet in this young woman was the most complete lack of any dependence
upon 'wiles' that platform ever saw. Her little off-hand manner seemed
to say, 'Don't expect me to encourage you in any nonsense, and, above
all, don't dare to presume upon my youth.'
She began by calling on the Government to save the need of further
demonstration by giving the women of the country some speedy measure of
justice. 'They'll have to give it to us in the end. They might just as
well do it gracefully and at once as do it grudgingly and after more
"scenes."' Whereupon loud booing testified to the audience's horror of
anything approaching unruly behaviour. 'Oh, yes, you are scandalized at
the trouble we make. But--I'll tell you a secret'--she paused and
collected every eye and ear--'_we've only just begun_! You'd be simply
_staggered_ if you knew what the Government still has to expect from us,
if they don't give us what we're asking for.'
'Oh, ain't she just _awful_!' sniggered a girl with dyed hair and
gorgeous jewelry.
The men laughed and shook their heads. She just was! They crowded
nearer.
'You'd better take care! There's a policeman with 'is eye on you.'
'It's on you, my friends, he's got his eye. You saw a little while ago
how they had to take away somebody for disturbing our meeting. It wasn't
a woman.'
'Hear, hear!'
'The police are our friends, when the Government allows them to be. The
other day when there was that scene in the House, one of the policemen
who was sent up to clear the gallery said he wished the members would
come and do their own dirty work. They hate molesting us. We don't blame
the police. We put the blame where it belongs--on the Liberal
Government.'
'Pore old Gov'mint--gettin' it 'ot.'
'Hooray fur the Gov'mint!'
'We see at last--it's taken us a long time, but we see at last--women
get nothing even from their professed political friends, they've
nothing whatever to expect by waiting and being what's called
"ladylike."'
'Shame!'
'We don't want to depreciate the work of preparation the older, the
"ladylike," Suffrage women did, but we came at last to see that all that
was possible to accomplish that way had been done. The Cause hadn't
moved an inch for years. It was even doing the other thing. Yes, it was
going backward. Even the miserable little pettifogging share women had
had in Urban and Borough Councils--even that they were deprived of. And
they were tamely submitting! Women who had been splendid workers ten
years ago, women with the best capacities for public service, had fallen
into a kind of apathy. They were utterly disheartened. Many had given up
the struggle. That was the state of affairs with regard to Woman's
Suffrage only a few short months ago. We looked at the Suffragists who
had grown grey in petitioning Parliament and being constitutional and
"ladylike," and we said, "_That's no good._"'
Through roars of laughter and indistinguishable denunciation certain
fragments rose clear--
'So you tried being a public nuisance!'
'A laughing-stock!'
'When we got to the place where we were a public laughing-stock we knew
we were getting on.' The audience screamed. '_We began to feel
encouraged!_' A very hurricane swept the crowd. Perhaps it was chiefly
at the gleam of eye and funny little wag of the head with the big
floppity hat that made the people roar with delight. 'Yes; when things
got to that point even the worst old fogey in the Cabinet----'
'Name! Name!'
'No, we are merciful. We withhold the name!' She smiled significantly,
while the crowd yelled. 'Even the very fogeyest of them all you'd think
might have rubbed his eyes and said, "Everybody's laughing at them--why,
there must be something serious at the bottom of this!" But no; the
members of the present Government _never_ rub their eyes.'
'If you mean the Prime Minister----'
'Hooray for the----'
Through the cheering you heard Ernestine saying, 'No, I _didn't_ mean
the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, between you and me, is as good a
Suffragist as any of us. Only he----well, he likes his comfort, does the
Prime Minister!'
When Ernestine looked like that the crowd roared with laughter. Yet it
was impossible not to feel that when she herself smiled it was because
she couldn't help it, and not, singularly enough, because of any
dependence she placed upon the value of dimples as an asset of
persuasion. What she seemed to be after was to stir these people up. It
could not be denied that she knew how to do it, any more than it could
be doubted that she was ignorant of how large a part in her success was
played by a peculiarly amusing and provocative personality. Always she
was the first to be grave again.
'Now if you noisy young men can manage to keep quiet for a minute, I'll
tell you a little about our tactics,' she said obligingly.
'We know! Breakin' up meetings!'
'_Rotten_ tactics!'
'That only shows you don't understand them yet. Now I'll explain to
you.'
A little wind had sprung up and ruffled her hair. It blew open her long
plain coat. It even threatened to carry away her foolish flapping hat.
She held it on at critical moments, and tilted her delicate little
Greuze-like face at a bewitching angle, and all the while that she was
looking so fetching, she was briskly trouncing by turns the Liberal
party and the delighted crowd. The man of the long moustachios, who had
been swept to the other side of the monument, returned to his old
inquiry with mounting cheer--
'Are we down'earted? _Oh_, no!'
'Pore man! 'Ave a little pity on us, miss!'
There were others who edged nearer, narrowing their eyes and squaring
their shoulders as much as to say, 'Now we'll just trip her up at the
first opportunity.'
'That's a very black cloud, miss,' Gorringe had whispered several
minutes before a big raindrop had fallen on the lady's upturned face.
As Gorringe seemed to be the only one who had observed the overclouding
of the sky, so she seemed to be the only one to think it mattered much.
But one by one, like some species of enormous black 'four-o-clocks,'
umbrellas blossomed above the undergrowth at the foot of the monument.
The lady of the purple plumes had long vanished. A few others moved off,
head turned over shoulder, as if doubtful of the policy of leaving while
Ernestine was explaining things. The great majority turned up their coat
collars and stood their ground. The maid hurriedly produced an umbrella
and held it over the lady.
''Igher up, please, miss! Caun't see,' said a youth behind.
Nothing cloudy about Ernestine's policy: Independence of all parties,
and organized opposition to whatever Government was in power, until
something was done to prove it that friend to women it pretended to be.
'We are tired of being lied to and cheated. There isn't a man in the
world whose promise at election time I would trust!'
It struck some common chord in the gathering. They roared with
appreciation, partly to hear that baby saying it.
'No, not one!' she repeated stoutly, taking the raindrops in her face,
while the risen wind tugged at her wide hat. 'They'll promise us heaven,
and earth, and the moon, and the stars, just to get our help. Oh, we are
old hands at it now, and we can see through the game!'
'Old 'and _she_ is! Ha! ha! Old 'and!'
'Do they let you sit up for supper?'
'We are going to every contested election from this on.'
'Lord, yes! Rain or shine _they_ don't mind!'
'They'll find they'll always have us to reckon with. And we aren't _the
least bit_ impressed any more, when a candidate tells us he's in favour
of Woman's Suffrage. We say, "Oh, we've got four hundred and twenty of
your kind already!"'
'Oh! oh!'
'Haw! haw!'
'Oo did you say that to?'
By name she held up to scorn the candidates who had given every reason
for the general belief that they were indifferent, if not opposed, to
Woman's Suffrage till the moment came for contesting a seat.
'Then when they find us there (we hear it keeps them awake at night,
thinking we always _will_ be there in future!)--when they find us there,
they hold up their little white flags. Yes. And they say, "Oh, but I'm
in favour of Votes for Women!" We just smile.'
The damp gathering in front of her hallooed.
'Yes. And when they protest what splendid friends of the Suffrage they
are, we say, "You don't care twopence about it. You are like the humbugs
who are there in the House of Commons already."'
'Humbugs!'
'Calls 'em 'umbugs to their fyces! Haw! haw!'
Roars and booing filled the air.
'We know, for many of us helped to put them there. But that was before
we knew any better. _Never again!_'
Once more that wise little wag of the head, while the people shrieked
with laughter. It was highly refreshing to think those Government blokes
couldn't take in Ernestine.
'It's only the very young or the very foolish who will ever be caught
that way again,' she assured them.
''Ow old are you?'
'Much too old to----'
'Just the right age to think about gettin' married,' shouted a
pasty-faced youth.
'Haw! haw!'
Then a very penetrating voice screamed, 'Will you be mine?' and that
started off several others. Though the interruptions did not anger nor
in the least discompose this surprising young person in the cart--so far
at least as could be seen--the audience looked in vain for her to give
the notice to these that she had to other interruptions. It began to be
plain that, ready as she was to take 'a straight ball' from anybody in
the crowd, she discouraged impertinence by dint of an invincible
deafness. If you wanted to get a rise out of Ernestine you had to talk
about her 'bloomin' policy.' No hint in her of the cheap smartness that
had wrecked the other speaker. In that highly original place for such
manifestation, Ernestine offered all unconsciously a new lesson of the
moral value that may lie in good-breeding. She won the loutish crowd to
listen to her on her own terms.
'Both parties,' she was saying, 'have been glad enough to use women's
help to get candidates elected. We've been quite intelligent enough to
canvass for them; we were intelligent enough to explain to the ignorant
men----' She acknowledged the groans by saying, 'Of course there are
none of that sort here, but elsewhere there are such things as ignorant
men, and women by dozens and by scores are sent about to explain to them
why they should vote this way or that. But as the chairman told you, any
woman who does that kind of thing in the future is a very poor creature.
She deserves no sympathy when her candidate forgets his pledge and
sneers at Womanhood in the House. If we put ourselves under men's feet
we must _expect_ to be trodden on. We've come to think it's time women
should give up the door-mat attitude. That's why we've determined on a
policy of independence. We see how well independence has worked for the
Irish party--we see what a power in the House even the little Labour
party is, with only thirty members. Some say those thirty Labour members
lead the great Liberal majority by the nose----'
'Hear! hear!'
'Rot!'
They began to cheer Lothian Scott. Some one tossed Mr. Chamberlain's
name into the air. Like a paper balloon it was kept afloat by vigorous
puffings of the human breath. ''Ray fur Joe!' 'Three cheers for
Joe!'--and it looked as if Ernestine had lost them.
'Listen!' She held out her hands for silence, but the tumult only grew.
'Just a moment. I want to tell you men--here's a friend of yours--he's a
new-comer, but he looks just your kind! Give him a hearing.' She
strained her voice to overtop the din. 'He's a _Liberal_.'
'Hooray!'
'Yes, I thought you'd listen to a Liberal. He's asking that old
question, Why did we wait till the Liberals came in? Why didn't we worry
the Conservatives when they were in power? The answer to that is that
the Woman's Suffrage cause was then still in the stage of mild
constitutional propaganda. Women were still occupied in being ladylike
and trying to get justice by deserving it. Now wait a moment.' She
stemmed another torrent. 'Be quiet, while I tell you something. You men
have taught us that women can get a great deal by coaxing, often far
more than we deserve! But justice isn't one of the things that's ever
got that way. Justice has to be fought for. Justice has to be won.'
Howls and uproar.
'You men----' (it began to be apparent that whenever the roaring got so
loud that it threatened to drown her, she said, 'You men--' very loud,
and then gave her voice a rest while the din died down that they might
hear what else the irrepressible Ernestine had to say upon that
absorbing topic). 'You men discovered years ago that you weren't going
to get justice just by deserving it, or even by being men, so when you
got tired of asking politely for the franchise, you took to smashing
windows and burning down Custom Houses, and overturning Bishops'
carriages; while _we_, why, we haven't so much as upset a curate off a
bicycle!'
Others might laugh, not Ernestine.
'You men,' she went on, 'got up riots in the streets--_real_ riots where
people lost their lives. It may have to come to that with us. But the
Government may as well know that if women's political freedom has to be
bought with blood, we can pay that price, too.'
Above a volley of boos and groans she went on, 'But we are opposed to
violence, and it will be our last resort. We are leaving none of the
more civilized ways untried. We publish a great amount of literature--I
hope you are all buying some of it--you can't understand our movement
unless you do! We organize branch unions and we hire halls--we've got
the Somerset Hall to-night, and we hope you'll all come and bring your
friends. We have very interesting debates, and _we_ answer questions,
politely!' she made her point to laughter. 'We don't leave any stone
unturned. Because there are people who don't buy our literature, and who
don't realize how interesting the Somerset Hall debates are, we go into
the public places where the idle and the foolish, _like that man just
over there!_--where they may point and laugh and make their poor little
jokes. But let me tell you we never hold a meeting where we don't win
friends to our cause. A lot of you who are jeering and interrupting now
are going to be among our best friends. _All_ the intelligent ones are
going to be on our side.'
Above the laughter, a rich groggy voice was heard, 'Them that's against
yer are all drunk, miss' (hiccup). 'D--don't mind 'em!'
Ernestine just gave them time to appreciate that, and then went on--
'Men and women were never meant to fight except side by side. You've
been told by one of the other speakers how the men suffer by the women
more and more underselling them in the Labour market----'
'Don't need no tellin'.'
'Bloody black-legs!'
'Do you know how that has come about? I'll tell you. It's come about
through your keeping the women out of your Unions. You never would have
done that if they'd had votes. You saw the important people ignored
them. You thought it was safe for you to do the same. But I tell you it
_isn't ever_ safe to ignore the women!'
High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got
to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won,
you've got to bring the women into line.'
'What's to become of chivalry?'
'What _has_ become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have
an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to
puzzle out a conundrum.
'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are
working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same
employers to live on six shillings a week? Perhaps I'm wrong in saying
the men expect the women to live on that. It may be they _know_ that no
girl can--it may be the men know how that struggle ends. But do they
care? Do _they_ bother about chivalry? Yet they and all of you are
dreadfully exercised for fear having a vote would unsex women. We are
too delicate--women are such fragile flowers.' The little face was
ablaze with scorn. 'I saw some of those fragile flowers last week--and
I'll tell you where. Not a very good place for gardening. It was a back
street in Liverpool. The "flowers"' (oh, the contempt with which she
loaded the innocent word!)--'the flowers looked pretty dusty--but they
weren't quite dead. I stood and looked at them! hundreds of worn women
coming down steep stairs and pouring out into the street. What had they
all been doing there in that--garden, I was going to say!--that big
grimy building? They had been making cigars!--spending the best years of
their lives, spending all their youth in that grim dirty street making
cigars for men. Whose chivalry prevents that? Why were they coming out
at that hour of the day? Because their poor little wages were going to
be lowered, and with the courage of despair they were going on strike.
No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible
wage--(I want you to notice the low wage is the main consideration in
all this)--men get these women, that they say are so tender and
delicate, to undertake the almost intolerable toil of the rope-walk.
They get women to make bricks. Girls are driven--when they are not
driven to worse--they are driven to being lodging-house slaveys or
over-worked scullions. _That's_ all right! Women are graciously
permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they should be
caring for their own babies. In Birmingham'--she raised the clear voice
and bent her flushed face over the crowd--'in Birmingham those same
"fragile flowers" make bicycles to keep alive! At Cradley Heath we make
chains. At the pit brows we sort coal. But a vote would soil our hands!
You may wear out women's lives in factories, you may sweat them in the
slums, you may drive them to the streets. You _do_. But a vote would
unsex them.'
Her full throat choked. She pressed her clenched fist against her chest
and seemed to admonish herself that emotion wasn't her line.
'If you are intelligent you know as well as I do that women are
exploited the length and the breadth of the land. And yet you come
talking about chivalry! Now, I'll just tell you men something for your
future guidance.' She leaned far out over the crowd and won a watchful
silence. '_That talk about chivalry makes women sick._' In the midst of
the roar, she cried, 'Yes, they mayn't always show it, for women have
had to learn to conceal their deepest feelings, but depend on it that's
how they feel.'
Then, apparently thinking she'd been serious enough, 'There might be
some sense in talking to us about chivalry if you paid our taxes for
us,' she said; while the people recovered their spirits in roaring with
delight at the coolness of that suggestion.
'If you forgave us our crimes because we are women! If you gave
annuities to the eighty-two women out of every hundred in this country
who are slaving to earn their bread--many of them having to provide for
their children; some of them having to feed sick husbands or old
parents. But chivalry doesn't carry you men as far as that! No! No
further than the door! You'll hold that open for a lady and then expect
her to grovel before such an exhibition of _chivalry_! We don't need it,
thank you! We can open doors for ourselves.'
She had quite recovered her self-possession, and it looked, as she faced
the wind and the raindrops, as if she were going to wind up in
first-class fighting form. The umbrellas went down before a gleam of
returning sun. An aged woman in rusty black, who late in the proceedings
had timidly adventured a little way into the crowd, stood there lost and
wondering. She had peered about during the last part of Miss Blunt's
speech with faded incredulous eyes, listened to a sentence or two, and
then, turning with a pathetic little nervous laugh of apology, consulted
the faces of the Lords of Creation. When the speaker was warned that a
policeman had his eye on her, the little old woman's instant solicitude
showed that the dauntless Suffragist had both touched and frightened
her. She craned forward with a fluttering anxiety till she could see for
herself. Yes! A stern-looking policeman coming slow and majestic through
the crowd. Was he going to hale the girl off to Holloway? No; he came to
a standstill near some rowdy boys, and he stared straight before
him--herculean, impassive, the very image of conscious authority.
Whenever Ernestine said anything particularly dreadful, the old lady
craned her neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine
fell to drubbing the Government, the old lady, in her agitation greatly
daring, squeezed up a little nearer as if half of a mind to try to
placate that august image of the Power that was being flouted. But it
ended only in trembling and furtive watching, till Ernestine's reckless
scorn at the idea of chivalry moved the ancient dame faintly to admonish
the girl, as a nurse might speak to a wilful child. 'Dear! _Dear!_'--and
then furtively trying to soothe the great policeman she twittered at his
elbow, 'No! No! she don't mean it!'
When Ernestine declared that women could open doors for themselves, some
one called out--
'When do you expect to be a K.C.?'
'Oh, quite soon,' she answered cheerfully, with her wind-blown hat
rakishly over one ear, while the boys jeered.
'Well,' said the policeman, 'she's pawsed 'er law examination!' As some
of the rowdiest boys, naturally surprised at this interjection, looked
round, he rubbed it in. 'Did better than the men,' he assured them.
Was it possible that this dread myrmidon of the law was vaunting the
prowess of the small rebel?
Miss Levering moved nearer. 'Is that so? Did I understand you----'
With a surly face he glanced round at her. Not for this lady's benefit
had the admission been made.
'So they say!' he observed, with an assumption of indifference, quite
other than the tone in which he had betrayed where his sympathies, in
spite of himself, really were. Well, well, there were all kinds, even of
people who looked so much alike as policemen.
Now the crowd, with him and Miss Levering as sole exceptions, were
dissolved again in laughter. What had that girl been saying?
'Yes, we're spectres at the Liberal feast; and we're becoming
inconveniently numerous. We've got friends everywhere. Up and down the
country we go organizing----'
''Ow do you go--in a pram?' At which the crowd rocked with delight.
The only person who hadn't heard the sally, you would say, was the
orator. On she went--
'Organizing branches and carrying forward the work of propaganda. You
people in London stroll about with your hands in your pockets and your
hats on the back of your heads, and with never a _notion_ of what's
going on in the world that thinks and works. That's the world that's
making the future. Some of you understand it so little you think all
that we tell you is a joke--just as the governing class used to laugh at
the idea of a Labour Party in conservative England. While those people
were laughing, the Labour men were at work. They talked and wrote; they
lectured, and printed, and distributed, and organized, and one fine day
there was a General Election! To everybody's astonishment, thirty Labour
men were returned to Parliament! Just that same sort of thing is going
on now among women. We have our people at work everywhere. And let me
tell you, the most wonderful part of it all is to discover how little
teaching we have to do. How _ready_ the women are, all over the three
kingdoms.'
'Rot!'
'The women are against it.'
'Read the letters in the papers.'
'Why don't more women come to hear you if they're so in favour?'
'The converted don't need to come. It's you who need to come!' Above
roars of derision: 'You felt that or, of course, you wouldn't be here.
Men are so reasonable! As to the women who write letters to the papers
to say they're against the Suffrage, they are very ignorant, those
ladies, or else it may be they write their foolish letters to please
their menfolk. Some of them, I know, think the end and aim of woman is
to please. I don't blame them; it's the penalty of belonging to the
parasite class. But those women are a poor little handful. They write
letters to prove that they "don't count," and they _prove it_.' She
waved them away with one slim hand. 'That's one reason we don't bother
much with holding drawing-room meetings. The older Suffragists have been
holding drawing-room meetings _for forty years_!' She brought it out to
shouts. 'But we go to the mill gates! That's where we hold our meetings!
We hold them at the pit-brow; we hold them everywhere that men and women
are working and suffering and hoping for a better time.'
With that Miss Ernestine sat down. They applauded her lustily; they
revelled in laughing praise, yielding to a glow that they imagined to be
pure magnanimity.
'Are there any questions?' Miss Claxton, with her eyes still screwed up
to meet the returning sun and the volley of interrogatory, appeared at
the side of the cart. 'Now, one at a time, please. What? I can't hear
when you all talk together. Write it down and hand it to me. Now, you
people who are nearer--what? Very well! Here's a man who wants to know
whether if women had the vote wouldn't it make dissension in the house,
when husband and wife held different views?' She had smiled and nodded,
as though in this question she welcomed an old friend, but instead of
answering it she turned to the opposite side and looked out over the
clamourers on the left. They were engaged for the most part in inquiring
about her matrimonial prospects, and why she had carried that dog-whip.
Something in her face made them fall silent, for it was both
good-humoured and expectant, even intent. 'I'm waiting,' she said, after
a little pause. 'At every meeting we hold there's usually another
question put at the same time as that first one about the quarrels that
will come of husbands and wives holding different opinions. As though
the quarrelsome ones had been waiting for women's suffrage before they
fell out! When the man on my right asks, "Wouldn't they quarrel?"
there's almost always another man on my left who says, "If women were
enfranchised we wouldn't be an inch forrader, because the wife would
vote as her husband told her to. The man's vote would simply be
duplicated, and things would be exactly as they were." Neither objector
seems to see that the one scruple cancels the other. But to the question
put this afternoon, I'll just say this.' She bent forward, and she held
up her hand. 'To the end of time there'll be people who won't rest till
they've found something to quarrel about. And to the end of time
there'll be wives who follow blindly where their husbands lead. And to
the end of time there'll be husbands who are influenced by their wives.
What's more, all this has gone on ever since there were husbands, and it
will go on as long as there are any left, and it's got no more to do
with women's voting than it has with their making cream tarts. No, not
half as much!' she laughed. 'Now, where's that question that you were
going to write?'
Some one handed up a wisp of white paper. Miss Claxton opened it, and
upon the subject presented she embarked with the promising beginning,
'Your economics are pretty wobbly, my friend,' and proceeded to clear
the matter up and incidentally to flatten out the man. One wondered that
under such auspices 'Question Time' was as popular as it obviously was.
There is no doubt a fearful joy in adventuring yourself in certain
danger before the public eye. Besides the excitement of taking a
personal share in the game, there is always the hope that it may have
been reserved to you to stump the speaker and to shine before the
multitude.
A gentleman who had vainly been trying to get her to hear him, again
asked something in a hesitating way, stumbling and going back to recast
the form of his question.
He was evidently quite in earnest, but either unaccustomed to the sound
of his own voice or unnerved to find himself bandying words in Hyde Park
with a Suffragette. So when he stuck fast in the act of fashioning his
phrases, Miss Claxton bent in the direction whence the voice issued, and
said, briskly obliging--
'You needn't go on. I know the rest. What this gentleman is trying to
ask is----'
And although no denial on his part reached the public ear, it was not
hard to imagine him seething with indignation, down there helpless in
his crowded corner, while the facile speaker propounded as well as
demolished his objection to her and all her works.
'Yes; one last question. Let us have it.'
'How can you pretend that women want the vote? Why, there are hardly any
here.'
'More women would join us openly but for fear of their fellow-cowards.
Thousands upon thousands of women feel a sympathy with this movement
they dare not show.'
'Lots of women don't want the vote.'
'What women don't want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think
because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought
to like subservience, too? The very existence of a movement like this is
a thorn in their sleek sides. We are a reproach and a menace to such
women. But this isn't a movement to compel anybody to vote. It is to
give the right to those who _do_ want it--to those signatories of the
second largest petition ever laid on the table of the House of
Commons--to the 96,000 textile workers--to the women who went last month
in deputation to the Prime Minister, and who represented over half a
million belonging to Trades Unions and organized societies. To--perhaps
more than all, to the unorganized women, those whose voices are never
heard in public. _They_, as Mrs. Bewley told you--they are beginning to
want it. The women who are made to work over hours--_they_ want the
vote. To compel them to work over hours is illegal. But who troubles to
see that laws are fairly interpreted for the unrepresented? I know a
factory where a notice went up yesterday to say that the women employed
there will be required to work twelve hours a day for the next few
weeks. Instead of starting at eight, they must begin at six, and work
till seven. The hours in this particular case are illegal--as the
employer will find out!' she threw in with a flash, and one saw by that
illumination the avenue through which his enlightenment would come. 'But
in many shops where women work, twelve hours a day is legal. Much of
women's employment is absolutely unrestricted, except that they may not
be worked on Sunday. And while all that is going on, comfortable
gentlemen sit in armchairs and write alarmist articles about the falling
birth-rate and the horrible amount of infant mortality. A Government
calling itself Liberal goes pettifogging on about side issues, while
women are debased and babies die. Here and there we find a man who
realizes that the main concern of the State should be its children, and
that you can't get worthy citizens where the mothers are sickly and
enslaved. The question of statecraft, rightly considered, always reaches
back to the mother. That State is most prosperous that most considers
her. No State that forgets her can survive. The future is rooted in the
well-being of women. If you rob the women, your children and your
children's children pay. Men haven't realized it--your boasted logic has
never yet reached so far. Of all the community, the women who give the
next generation birth, and who form its character during the most
impressionable years of its life--of all the community, these mothers
now or mothers to be ought to be set free from the monstrous burden that
lies on the shoulders of millions of women. Those of you who want to see
women free, hold up your hands.'
A strange, orchid-like growth sprang up in the air. Hands gloved and
ungloved, hands of many shades and sizes, hands grimy and hands ringed.
Something curious to the unaccustomed eye, these curling, clutching,
digitated members raised above their usual range and common avocations,
suddenly endowed with speech, and holding forth there in the silent
upper air for the whole human economy.
'Now, down.' The pallid growth vanished. 'Those against the freedom of
women.' Again hands, hands. Far too many to suit the promoters of the
meeting. But Miss Claxton announced, 'The ayes are in the majority. The
meeting is with us.'
'She can't even count!' The air was full of the taunting phrase--'Can't
count!'
'Yes,' said Miss Claxton, wheeling round again upon the people, as some
of her companions began to get down out of the cart. 'Yes, she can
count, and she can see when men don't play fair. Each one in that group
held up _two_ hands when the last vote was taken.' She made a great deal
of this incident, and elevated it into a principle. 'It is entirely
characteristic of the means men will stoop to use in opposing the
Women's Cause.'
To hoots and groans and laughter the tam-o'-shanter disappeared.
'Rank Socialists every one of 'em!' was one of the verdicts that flew
about.
'They ought _all_ to be locked up.'
'A danger to the public peace.'
A man circulating about on the edge of the crowd was calling out,
''Andsome souvenir. Scented paper 'andkerchief! With full programme of
Great Suffragette Meeting in 'Yde Park!'
As the crowd thinned, some of the roughs pressing forward were trying to
'rush' the speakers. The police hastened to the rescue. It looked as if
there would be trouble. Vida and her maid escaped towards the Marble
Arch.
''Andsome scented 'andkerchief! Suffragette Programme!' The raucous
voice followed them, and not the voice alone. Through the air was wafted
the cheap and stifling scent of patchouli.