It was Friday, and Mrs. Fox-Moore was setting out to alleviate the lot
of the poor in Whitechapel.
'Even if it were not Friday,' Vida said slyly as her sister was
preparing to leave the house, 'you'd invent some errand to take you out
of the contaminated air of Queen Anne's Gate this afternoon.'
'Well, as I told you,' said the other woman, nervously, 'you ask that
person here on your own responsibility.'
Vida smiled. 'I'm obliged to ask people here if I want to see them
quietly. You make such a fuss when I suggest having a house of my own!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore ignored the alternative. 'You'll see you're only making
trouble for yourself. You'll have to pay handsomely for your curiosity.'
'Well, I've been rather economical of late. Maybe I'll be able "to
pay."'
'Don't imagine you'll be able to settle an account of that kind with a
single cheque. Give people like that an inch, and they'll expect a
weekly ell.'
'Are you afraid she'll abstract the spoons?'
'I'm not only afraid, I _know_ she won't be satisfied with one
contribution, or one visit. She'll regard it as the thin end of the
wedge--getting her nose into a house of this kind.' Irresistibly the
words conjured up a vision of some sharp-visaged female marauder
insinuating the tip of a very pointed nose between the great front door
and the lintel. 'I only hope,' the elder woman went on, 'that I won't be
here the first time Donald encounters your new friend on the doorstep.
_That's_ all!'
Wherewith she departed to succour women and children at long range in
the good old way. Little Doris was ill in bed. Mr. Fox-Moore was
understood to have joined his brother's coaching party. The time had
been discreetly chosen--the coast was indubitably clear. But would it
remain so?
To insure that it should, Miss Levering had a private conference with
the butler.
'Some one is coming to see me on business.'
'Yes, miss.'
'At half-past five.'
'Yes, miss.'
'I specially don't want to be interrupted.'
'No, miss.'
'Not by _any_body, no matter whom.'
'Very well, miss.' A slight pause. 'Shall I show the gentleman into the
drawing-room, miss?'
'It's not a gentleman, and I'll see her upstairs in my sitting-room.'
'Yes, miss. Very well, miss.'
'And don't forget--to _any_ one else I'm not at home.'
'No, miss. What name, miss?'
Vida hesitated. The servants nowadays read everything. 'Oh, you can't
make a mistake. She---- It will be a stranger--some one who has never
been here before. Wait! I'll look out of the morning-room window. If it
is the person I'm expecting, I'll ring the bell. You understand. If the
morning-room bell has rung just as this person comes, it will be the one
I'm expecting.'
'Yes, miss.' With a splendid impassivity in the face of precautions so
unprecedented, the servant withdrew.
Vida smiled to herself as she leaned back among the cushions of her
capacious sofa, cutting the pages of a book. A pleasant place this room
of hers, wide and cool, where the creamy background of wall and
chintz-cover was lattice-laced with roses. The open windows looked out
upon one of those glimpses of greenery made vivid to the London eye, not
alone by gratitude, but by contrast of the leafage against the ebonized
bark of smoke-ingrained bole and twig.
The summer wind was making great, gentle fans of the plane branches; it
was swaying the curtains that hung down in long, straight folds from the
high cornices. No other sound in the room but the hard grate of the
ivory paper-knife sawing its way through a book whose outside alone (a
muddy-brown, pimpled cloth) proclaimed it utilitarian. Among the
fair-covered Italian volumes, the vellum-bound poets, and those
friends-for-a-lifetime wearing linen or morocco to suit a special taste;
above all, among that greater company 'quite impudently French' that
stood close ranked on shelves or lay about on tables--the brown book on
its dusty modern theme wore the air of a frieze-coated yeoman sitting
amongst broadcloth and silk. The reader glanced from time to time at the
clock. When the small glittering hand on the porcelain face pointed to
twenty minutes past five, the lady took her book and her paper-knife
into a front room on the floor below. She sat down behind the lowered
persienne, and every now and then lifted her eyes from the page and
peered out between the tiny slits. As the time went on she looked out
oftener. More than once she half rose and seemed about to abandon all
hope of the mysterious visitor when a hansom dashed up to the door. One
swift glance: 'They go in cabs!'--and Miss Levering ran to the bell.
A few moments after, she was again established in her sofa corner, and
the door of her sitting-room opened. 'The lady, miss.' Into the wide,
harmonious space was ushered a hot and harassed-looking woman, in a lank
alpaca gown and a tam-o'-shanter. Miss Claxton's clothes, like herself,
had borne the heat and burden of the day. She frowned as she gave her
hand.
'I am late, but it was very difficult to get away at all.'
Miss Levering pushed towards her one of the welcoming great easy-chairs
that stood holding out cool arms and a lap of roses. The tired visitor,
with her dusty clothes and brusque manner, sat down without relaxing to
the luxurious invitation. Her stiffly maintained attitude and direct
look said as plain as print, Now what excuse have you to offer for
asking me to come here? It may have been recollection of Mrs.
Fox-Moore's fear of 'the thin end of the wedge' that made Miss Levering
smile as she said--
'Yes, I've been expecting you for the last half hour, but it's very good
of you to come at all.'
Miss Claxton looked as if she quite agreed.
'You'll have some tea?' Miss Levering was moving towards the bell.
'No, I've had my tea.'
The queer sound of 'my' tea connoting so much else! The hostess subsided
on to the sofa.
'I heard you speak the other day as I told you in my note. But all the
same I came away with several unanswered questions--questions that I
wanted to put to you quietly. As I wrote you, I am not what _you_ would
call a convert. I've only got as far as the inquiry stage.'
Miss Claxton waited.
'Still, if I take up your time, I ought not to let you be out of pocket
by it.'
The hostess glanced towards the little spindle-legged writing-table,
where, on top of a heap of notes, lay the blue oblong of a cheque-book.
'We consider it part of every day's business to answer questions,' said
Miss Claxton.
'I suppose I can make some little contribution without--without its
committing me to anything?'
'Committing you----'
'Yes; it wouldn't get into the papers,' she said, a little shamefaced,
'or--or anything like that.'
'It wouldn't get into the papers unless you put it in.'
The lady blinked. There was a little pause. She was not easy to talk
to--this young woman. Nor was she the ideal collector of contributions.
'That was a remarkable meeting you had in Hyde Park last Sunday.'
'Remarkable? Oh, no, they're all pretty much alike.'
'Do they all end like that?'
'Oh, yes; people come to scoff, and by degrees we get hold of them--even
the Hyde Park loafers.'
'I mean, do they often crowd up and try to hustle the speakers?'
'Oh, they are usually quite good-natured.'
'You handled them wonderfully.'
'We're used to dealing with crowds.'
Her look went round the room, as if to say, 'It's this kind of thing I'm
not used to, and I don't take to it over-kindly.'
'In the crush at the end,' said Miss Levering, 'I overheard a scrap of
conversation between two men. They were talking about you. "Very good
for a woman," one said.'
Miss Claxton smiled a scornful little smile.
'And the other one said, "It would have been very good for a man. And
personally," he said, "I don't know many men who could have kept that
crowd in hand for two hours." That's what two men thought of it.'
She made no answer.
'It doesn't seem to me possible that your speakers average as good as
those I heard on Sunday.'
'We have a good many who speak well, but we look upon Ernestine Blunt as
our genius.'
'Yes, she seems rather a wonderful little person, but I wrote to you
because--partly because you are older. And you gave me the impression of
being extremely level-headed.'
'Ernestine Blunt is level-headed too,' said Miss Claxton, warily.
She was looking into the lady's face, frowning a little in that way of
hers, intent, even somewhat suspicious.
'Oh, I dare say, but she's such a child!'
'We sometimes think Ernestine Blunt has the oldest head among us.'
'Really,' said Miss Levering. 'When a person is as young as that, you
don't know how much is her own and how much borrowed.'
'She doesn't need to borrow.'
'But _you_. I said to myself, "That woman, who makes other things so
clear, she can clear up one or two things for me."'
'Well, I don't know.' More wary than ever, she suspended judgment.
'I noticed none of you paid any attention when the crowd called
out--things about----'
Miss Claxton's frown deepened. It was plain she heard the echo of that
insistent, never-answered query of the crowd, 'Got your dog-whip, miss?'
She waited.
It looked as though Miss Levering lacked courage to repeat it in all its
violent bareness.
'----when they called out things--about the encounters with the police.
It's those stories, as I suppose you know, that have set so many against
the movement.'
No word out of Miss Claxton. She sat there, not leaning back, nor any
longer stiffly upright, but hunched together like a creature ready to
spring.
'I believed those stories too; but when I had watched you, and listened
to you on Sunday,' Miss Levering hastened to add, a little shamefaced at
the necessity, 'I said to myself, not' (suddenly she stopped and smiled
with disarming frankness)--'I didn't say, "That woman's too
well-behaved, or too amiable;" I said, "She's too intelligent. That
woman never spat at a policeman.'"
'Spit? No,' she said grimly.
'"Nor bit, nor scratched, nor any of those things. And since the papers
have lied about that," I said to myself, "I'll go to headquarters for
information."'
'What papers do you read?'
'Oh, practically all. This house is like a club for papers and
magazines. My brother-in-law has everything.'
'The _Clarion_?'
'No, I never saw the _Clarion_.'
'The _Labour Leader_?'
'No.'
'The _Labour Record_?'
'No.'
'It is the organ of our party.'
'I--I'm afraid I never heard of any of them.'
Miss Claxton smiled.
'I'll take them in myself in future,' said the lady on the sofa. 'Was it
reading those papers that set you to thinking?'
'Reading papers? Oh, no. It was----' She hesitated, and puckered up her
brows again as she stared round the room.
'Yes, go on. That's one of the things I wanted to know, if you don't
mind--how you came to be identified with the movement.'
A little wearily, without the smallest spark of enthusiasm at the
prospect of imparting her biography, Miss Claxton told slowly, even
dully, and wholly without passion, the story of a hard life met
single-handed from even the tender childhood days--one of those recitals
that change the relation between the one who tells and the one who
listens--makes the last a sharer in the life to the extent that the two
can never be strangers any more. Though they may not meet, nor write,
nor have any tangible communication, there is understanding between
them.
At the close Miss Levering stood up and gave the other her hand. Neither
said anything. They looked at each other.
After the lady had resumed her seat, Miss Claxton, as under some
compulsion born of the other's act of sympathy, went on--
'It is a newspaper lie--as you haven't needed to be told--about the
spitting and scratching and biting--but the day I was arrested; the day
of the deputation to Effingham, I saw a policeman knocking some of our
poorer women about very roughly' (it had its significance, the tone in
which she said 'our poorer women'). 'I called out that he was not to do
that again. He had one of our women like this, and he was banging her
against the railings. I called out if he didn't stop I would make him.
He kept on'--a cold glitter came into the eyes--'and I struck him. I
struck the coward in the face.'
The air of the mild luxurious room grew hot and quivered. The lady on
the sofa lowered her eyes.
'They must be taught,' the other said sternly, 'the police must be
taught, they are not to treat our women like that. On the whole the
police behave well. But their power is immense and almost entirely
unchecked. It's a marvel they are as decent as they are. How should
_they_ be expected to know how to treat women? What example do they
have? Don't they hear constantly in the courts how little it costs a man
to be convicted of beating his own wife?' She fired the questions at the
innocent person on the sofa, as if she held her directly responsible for
the need to ask them. 'Stealing is far more dangerous; yes, even if a
man's starving. That's because bread is often dear and women are always
cheap.'
She waited a moment, waited for the other to contradict or at least
resent the dictum. The motionless figure among the sofa cushions, whose
very look and air seemed to proclaim 'some of us are expensive enough,'
hardly opened her lips to say, as if to herself--
'Yes, women are cheap.'
Perhaps Miss Claxton thought the agreement lacked conviction, for she
went on with a harsh hostility that seemed almost personal--
'We'd rather any day be handled by the police than by the
self-constituted stewards of political meetings.'
Partly the words, even more the look in the darkening face, made Miss
Levering say--
'That brings me to something else I wanted to be enlightened about. One
reason I wrote to ask for a little talk with _you_ specially, was
because I couldn't imagine your doing anything so futile as to pit your
physical strength--considerable as it may be--but to pit your muscle
against men's is merely absurd. And I, when I saw how intelligent you
were, I saw that you know all that quite as well as I. Why, then, carry
a whip?'
The lowered eyelids of the face opposite quivered faintly.
'You couldn't think it would save you from arrest.'
'No, not from arrest.' The woman's mouth hardened.
'I know'--Miss Levering bridged the embarrassment of the pause--'I know
there must be some rational explanation.'
But if there were it was not forthcoming.
'So you see your most indefensible and even futile-appearing action gave
the cue for my greatest interest,' said Vida, with a mixture of anxiety
and bluntness. 'For just the woman you were, to do so brainless a
thing--what was behind? That was what I kept asking myself.'
'It--isn't--only--_rough_ treatment one or two of us have met'--she
pulled out the words slowly--'it's sometimes worse.' They both waited in
a curious chill embarrassment. 'Not the police, but the stewards at
political meetings, and the men who volunteer to "keep the women in
order," they'--she raised her fierce eyes and the colour rose in her
cheeks--'as they're turning us out they punish us in ways the public
don't know.' She saw the shrinking wonder in the woman opposite, and she
did not spare her. 'They punish us by underhand maltreatment--of the
kind most intolerable to a decent woman.'
'Oh, no, no!' The other face was a flame to match.
'Yes!' She flung it out like a poisoned arrow.
'How _dare_ they!' said Vida in a whisper.
'They know we dare not complain.'
'Why not?'
A duller red overspread the face as the woman muttered, 'Nobody, no
woman, wants to talk about it. And if we did they'd only say, "See!
you're killing chivalry." _Chivalry!_' She laughed. It was not good to
hear a laugh like that.
The figure on the sofa winced. 'I assure you people don't know,' said
Vida.
'It's known well enough to those who've had to suffer it, and it's known
to the brutes of men who----'
'Ah, but you _must_ realize'--Miss Levering jumped to her feet--'you
must admit that the great mass of men would be indignant if they knew.'
'You think so?' The question was insulting in its air of forbearance
with a fairy-tale view of life.
'Think so? I _know_ it. I should be sorry for my own powers of judgment
if I believed the majority of men were like the worst specimens--like
those you----'
'Oh, well, we don't dwell on that side. It's enough to remember that
women without our incentive have to bear worse. It's part of a whole
system.'
'I shall never believe that!' exclaimed Vida, thinking what was meant
was an organized conspiracy against the Suffragettes.
'Yes, it's all part of the system we are in the world to overturn. Why
should we suppose we'd gain anything by complaining? Don't hundreds,
thousands of meek creatures who have never defied anybody, don't they
have to bear worse ignominies? Every man knows that's true. Who troubles
himself? What is the use, we say, of crying about individual pains and
penalties? No. The thing is to work day and night to root out the system
that makes such things possible.'
'I still don't understand--why you thought it would be a protection to
carry----'
'A man's fear of ridicule will restrain him when nothing else will. If
one of them is publicly whipped, _and by a woman_, it isn't likely to be
forgotten. Even the fear of it--protects us from some things. After an
experience some of the women had, the moment our committee decided on
another demonstration, little Mary O'Brian went out, without consulting
anybody, and bought me the whip. "If you will go," she said, "you shan't
go unarmed. If we have that sort of cur to deal with, the only thing is
to carry a dog-whip."'
Miss Claxton clenched her hands in their grey cotton gloves. There was
silence in the room for several seconds.
'What we do in asking questions publicly--it's only what men do
constantly. The greatest statesman in the land stops to answer a man,
even if he's a fool naturally, or half drunk. They treat those
interrupters with respect, they answer their questions civilly. They are
men. They have votes. But women: "Where's the chucker out?"'
'Are you never afraid that all you're going through may be in vain?'
'No. We are quite certain to succeed. We have found the right way at
last.'
'You mean what are called your tactics?'
'I mean the spirit of the women. I mean: not to mind the price. When
you've got people to feel like that, success is sure.'
'But it comes very hard on those few who pay with the person, as the
French say, pay with prison--and with----'
'Prison isn't the worst!'
A kind of shyness came over the woman on the sofa; she dropped her eyes
from the other's face.
'Of course,' the ex-prisoner went on, 'if more women did a little it
wouldn't be necessary for the few to do so much.'
'I suppose you are in need of funds to carry on the propaganda.'
'Money isn't what is most needed. One of our workers--a little mill
girl--came up from the country with only two pounds in her pocket to
rouse London. And she did it!' her comrade exulted. 'But there's a class
we don't reach. If only'--she hesitated and glanced reflectively at the
woman before her.
'Yes?' Miss Levering's eye flew to the cheque-book.
'If only we could get women of influence to understand what's at stake,'
said Miss Claxton, a little wistfully.
'They don't?'
'Oh, some. A few. As much as can be expected.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Well, the upper-class women, I don't say all' (she spoke as one
exercising an extreme moderation); 'but many of them are such sexless
creatures.'
Miss Levering opened wide eyes--a glint of something like amazed
laughter crossed her face, as she repeated--
'_They_ are sexless, you think?'
'We find them so,' said the other, firmly.
'Why'--Miss Levering smiled outright--'that's what they say of you.'
'Well, it's nonsense, like the rest of what they say.'
The accusation of sexlessness brought against the curled darlings of
society by these hard-working, hard-hitting sisters of theirs was not
the least ironic thing in the situation.
'Why do you call them----?'
'Because we see they have no sex-pride. If they had, they couldn't do
the things they do.'
'What sort of things?'
'Oh, I can't go into that.' She stood up and tugged at her wrinkled
cotton gloves. 'But it's easy for us to see they're sexless.' She seemed
to resent the unbelief in the opposite face. 'Lady Caterham sent for me
the other day. You may have heard of Lady Caterham.'
Miss Levering suppressed the fact of how much, by a vague-sounding--
'Y--yes.'
'Well, she sent for me to---- Oh, I suppose she was curious!'
'Like me,' said the other, smiling.
'_She's_ a very great person in her county, and she _said_ she
sympathized with the movement--only she didn't approve of our tactics,
she said. We are pretty well used by now to people who don't approve of
our tactics, so I just sat and waited for the "dog-whip."'
It was obvious that the lady without influence in her county winced at
that, almost as though she felt the whip on her own shoulders. She was
indeed a hard-hitter, this woman.
'I don't go about talking of why I carry a whip. I _hate_ talking about
it,' she flung the words out resentfully. 'But I'd been sent to try to
get that woman to help, and so I explained. I told her when she asked
why it seemed necessary'--again the face flushed--'I told her!--more
than I've told you. And will you believe it, she never turned a hair.
Just sat there with a look of cool curiosity on her face. Oh, they have
no sex-pride, those upper-class women!'
'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand.'
'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her
that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. She didn't feel the
indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her, _she_ wouldn't have
suffered,' said the critic, with a grim contempt.
'There may be another explanation,' said Miss Levering, a little curtly,
but wisely she forbore to present it.
If the rough and ready reformer had chilled her new sympathizer by this
bitterness against 'the parasite class,' she wiped out the memory of it
by the enthusiasm with which she spoke of those other women, her
fellow-workers.
'Our women are wonderful!' she lifted her tired head. 'I knew they'd
never had a chance to show what they were, but there are some things----
No! I didn't think women had it in them.'
She had got up and was standing now by the door, her limp gown clinging
round her, her weather-beaten Tam on one side. But in the confident look
with which she spoke of 'our women,' the brow had cleared. You saw that
it was beautiful. Miss Levering stood at the door with an anxious eye on
the stair, as if fearful of the home-coming of 'her fellow-coward,' or,
direr catastrophe--old Mr. Fox-Moore's discovering the damning fact of
this outlaw's presence under his roof! Yet, even so, torn thus between
dread and desire to pluck out the heart of the new mystery, 'the
militant woman,' Miss Levering did not speed the parting guest. As
though recognizing fully now that the prophesied use was not going to be
made of the 'thin end of the wedge,' she detained her with--
'I wonder when I shall see you again.'
'I don't know,' said the other, absently.
'When is the next meeting?'
'Next Sunday. Every Sunday.'
'I shall be glad to hear you speak again; but--you'll come and see
me--here.'
'I can't. I'm going away.'
'Oh! To rest, I hope.'
'Rest?' She laughed at an idea so comic. 'Oh, no. I'm going to work
among the women in Wales. We have great hopes of those West-country
women. They're splendid! They're learning the secret of co-operation,
too. Oh, it's good stuff to work on--the relief of it after London!'
Miss Levering smiled. 'Then I won't be seeing you very soon.'
'No.' She seemed to be thinking. 'It's true what I say of the Welsh
women, and yet we oughtn't to be ungrateful to our London women either.'
She seemed to have some sense of injustice on her soul. 'We've been
seeing just recently what they're made of, too!' She paused on the
threshold and began to tell in a low voice of women 'new to the work,'
who had been wavering, uncertain if they could risk imprisonment--poor
women with husbands and children. 'When they heard _what it might
mean_--this battle we're fighting--they were ashamed not to help us!'
'You mean----' Vida began, shrinking.
'Yes!' said the other, fiercely. 'The older women saw they ought to save
the younger ones from having to face that sort of thing. That was how we
got some of the wives and mothers.'
She went on with a stern emotion that was oddly contagious, telling
about a certain scene at the Headquarters of the Union. Against the grey
and squalid background of a Poor Women's movement, stood out in those
next seconds a picture that the true historian who is to come will not
neglect. A call for recruits with this result--a huddled group, all new,
unproved, ignorant of the ignorant. The two or three leaders,
conscience-driven, feeling it necessary to explain to the untried women
that if they shared in the agitation, they were not only facing
imprisonment, but unholy handling.
'It was only fair to let them know the worst,' said the woman at the
door, 'before they were allowed to join us.'
As the abrupt sentences fell, the grim little scene was reconstituted;
the shrinking of the women who had offered their services ignorant of
this aspect of the battle--their horror and their shame. At the memory
of that hour the strongly-controlled voice shook.
'They cried, those women,' she said.
'But they came?' asked the other, trembling, as though for her, too, it
was vital that these poor women should not quail.
'Yes,' answered their leader a little hoarsely, 'they came!'