One of the oddest things about these neo-Suffragists was the simplicity
with which they accepted aid--the absence in the responsible ones of
conventional gratitude. This became matter for both surprise and
instruction to the outsider. It no doubt had the effect of chilling and
alienating the 'philanthropist on the make.' Even to the less
ungenerous, not bargainers for approbation or for influence, even in
their case the deep-rooted suspicion we have been taught to cultivate
for one another, makes the gift of good faith so difficult that it can
be given freely only to people like these, people who plainly and daily
suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us
strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the
world's good word. That they took help, and even sacrifice, as a matter
of course, seemed in them mere modesty and sound good sense; tantamount
to saying, 'I am not so silly or self-centred as to suppose you do this
for _me_. You do it, of course, for the Cause. The Cause is yours--is
all Women's. You serve humanity. Who am I that I should thank you?'
This attitude extended even to acts that were in truth prompted less by
concern for the larger issue than by sheer personal interest.
Vida Levering's first experience of this 'new attitude' came one late
afternoon while on her way to leave cards on some people in Grosvenor
Road. Driving through Pimlico about half-past six, she lifted up her
eyes at the sound of many voices and beheld a mob of men and boys in the
act of pursuing a little group of women, who were fleeing up a side
street away from the river. The natural shrinking and disgust of 'the
sheltered woman' showed in the face of the occupant of the brougham as
she leaned forward and said to the coachman--
'Not this way! Don't you see there's some disturbance? Turn back.'
The man obeyed. The little crowd had halted. It looked as if the thief,
or drunken woman, or what not, had been surrounded and overwhelmed. The
end of the street abutted on Pimlico Pier. Two or three knots of people
were still standing about, talking and looking up the street at the
little crowd of shouting, gesticulating rowdies. A woman with a
perambulator, making up her mind at just the wrong moment to cross the
road, found herself almost under the feet of the Fox-Moore horses. The
coachman pulled up sharply, and before he had driven on, the lady's eyes
had fallen on an inscription in white chalk on the flagstone--
'VOTES FOR WOMEN.
'Meeting here to-night at a quarter to six.'
The occupant of the carriage turned her head sharply in the direction of
the 'disturbance,' and then--
'After all, I must go up that street. Drive fast till you get near those
people. Quick!'
'Up _there_, miss?'
'Yes, yes. Make haste!' For the crowd was moving on, and still no sign
of a policeman.
By the time the brougham caught up with them, the little huddle of folk
had nearly reached the top of the street. In the middle of the _melee_ a
familiar face. Ernestine Blunt!
'Oh, Henderson!'--Miss Levering put her head out of the window--'that
girl! the young one! She's being mobbed.'
'Yes, miss.'
'But something must be done! Hail a policeman.'
'Yes, miss.'
'Do you _see_ a policeman?'
'No, miss.'
'Well, stop a moment,' for even at this slowest gait the brougham had
passed the storm centre.
The lady hanging out of the window looked back and saw that Ernestine's
face, very pink as to cheeks, very bright as to eyes, was turned quite
unruffled on the rabble.
'Can't you see the meeting's over?' she called out. 'You boys go home
now and think about what we've told you.'
The reply to that was a laugh and a concerted 'rush' that all but
carried the girl and her companions off their feet. To Henderson's
petrifaction, the door of the brougham was hastily opened and then
slammed to, leaving Miss Levering in the road, saying to him over her
shoulder--
'Wait just round the corner, unless I call.'
With which she hurried across the street, her eyes on the little face
that, in spite of its fresh colouring, looked so pathetically tired.
Making her way round the outer fringe of the crowd, Vida saw on the
other side--near where Ernestine and her sore-beset companions stood
with their backs to the wall--an opening in the dingy ranks. Fleet of
foot, she gained it, thrust an arm between the huddled women, and,
taking the foolhardy girl by the sleeve, said, _sotto voce_--
'Come! Come with me!'
Ernestine raised her eyes, fixed them for one calm instant on Vida
Levering's face, and then, turning round, said--
'Where's Mrs. Brown?'
'Never mind Mrs. Brown!' whispered the strange lady, drawing off as the
rowdy young men came surging round that side.
There was another rush and a yell, and Vida fled. When next she turned
to look, it was to see two women making a sudden dash for liberty. They
had escaped through the rowdy ranks, and they tore across the street,
running for their lives and calling for help as they ran.
Vida, a shade or two paler, stood transfixed. What was going to happen?
But there was the imperturbable Ernestine holding the forsaken position,
still the centre of the pushing, shouting little mob who had jeered
frantically as the other women fled.
It was too much. Not Ernestine's isolation alone, the something childish
in the brilliant face would have enlisted a less sympathetic observer. A
single moment's wavering and the lady made for the place where the
besiegers massed less thick. She was near enough now to call out over
the rowdies' heads--
'Come. Why do you stay there?'
Faces turned to look at her; while Ernestine shouted back the cryptic
sentence--
'It wasn't my bus!'
_Bus?_ Had danger robbed her of her reason? The boys were cheering now
and looking past Miss Levering: she turned, bewildered, to see 'Mrs.
Brown' and a sister reformer mounting the top of a sober London Road
car. They had been running for that, then--and not for life! Miss
Levering raised her hand and her voice as she looked back at Ernestine--
'I've got a trap. Come!'
'Where?'
Ernestine stepped out from the vociferating, jostling crowd and followed
the new face as simply as though she had been waiting for just that
summons. The awful moment was when, with a shout, the tail of rowdies
followed after. Miss Levering had not bargained for that. Her agitated
glance left the unsavoury horde at her heels and went nervously up and
down the street. It was plainly not only, nor even chiefly, the
hooligans she feared, but the amazed eye of some acquaintance. Bad
enough to meet Henderson's!
'Jump in!' she said hastily to the girl, and then, 'Go on!' she called
out desperately, flying in after Ernestine and slamming the door. 'Drive
_fast_!' She thrust her head through the window to add, '_Anywhere!_'
And she sank back. 'How dreadful that was!'
'What was?' said the rescued one, glancing out of the carriage with an
air of suddenly renewed interest.
'Why, the attack of those hooligans on a handful of defenceless women.'
'Oh, they weren't attacking us.'
'What were they doing?'
'Oh, just running after us and screaming a little.'
'But I _saw_ them--pushing and jostling and----'
'Oh, it was all quite good-natured.'
'You mean you weren't frightened?'
'There's nothing to be frightened at.' She was actually saying it in a
soothing, 'motherly' sort of way, calculated to steady the lady's
nerves--reassuring the rescuer.
Vida's eye fell on the festoon of braid falling from the dark cloth
skirt.
'Well, the polite attentions of your friends seem to have rather damaged
your gown.'
Over a big leather portfolio that she held clasped in her arms,
Ernestine, too, looked down at the torn frock.
'That foolish trimming--it's always getting stepped on.'
Miss Levering's search had produced a pin.
'No; I'll just pull it off.'
Ernestine did so, and proceeded to drop a yard of it out of the window.
Miss Levering began to laugh.
'Which way are we going?' says Miss Blunt, looking out. 'I have to be at
Battersea at----'
'What were you doing at Pimlico Pier?'
'Holding a meeting for the Government employees--the people who work for
the Army and Navy Clothing Department.'
'Oh. And you live at Battersea?'
'No; but I have a meeting there to-night. We had a very good one at the
Docks, too.' Her eyes sparkled.
'A Suffrage meeting?'
'Yes; one of the best we've had----'
'When was that?'
'During the dinner hour. The men stood with their pails and ate while
they listened. They were quite nice and understanding, those men.'
'What day was that?'
'This morning.'
'And the Battersea meeting?'
'That's not for another hour; but I have to be there first--to arrange.'
'When do you dine?'
'Oh, I'll get something either before the meeting or after--whenever
there's time.'
'Isn't it a pity not to get your food regularly? Won't you last longer
if you do?'
'Oh, I shall last.' She sat contentedly, hugging her big portfolio.
The lady glanced at the carriage clock. 'In the house where I live,
dinner is a sort of sacred rite. If you are two seconds late you are
disgraced, so I'm afraid I can't----'
'There's the bus I was waiting for!' Ernestine thrust her head out.
'Stop, will you!' she commanded the astonished Henderson. 'Good-bye.'
She nodded, jumped out, shut the door, steadied her hat, and was gone.
It was so an acquaintance began that was destined to make a difference
to more than one life. Those days of the summer that Miss Claxton spent
indoctrinating the women of Wales, and that Mrs. Chisholm utilized in
'organizing Scotland,' were dedicated by Ernestine and her friends to
stirring up London and the various dim and populous worlds of the
suburbs.
Much oftener than even Mrs. Fox-Moore knew, her sister, instead of being
in the houses where she was supposed to be, and doing the things she was
expected to be doing, might have been seen in highly unexpected haunts
prosecuting her acquaintance with cockney crowds, never learning
Ernestine's fearlessness of them, and yet in some way fascinated almost
as much as she was repelled. At first she would sit in a hansom at safe
distance from the turmoil that was usually created by the expounders of
what to the populace was a 'rum new doctrine' invented by Ernestine.
Miss Levering would lean over the apron of the cab hearing only scraps,
till the final, 'Now, all who are in favour of Justice, hold up their
hands.' As the crowd broke and dissolved, the lady in the hansom would
throw open the doors, and standing up in front of the dashboard, she
would hail and carry off the arch-agitator, while the crowd surged
round. Several times this programme had been carried out, when one
afternoon, after seeing the girl and her big leather portfolio safe in
the cab, and the cab safe out of the crowd, Vida heaved a sigh of
relief.
'_There!_ Now tell me, what did you do yesterday?'--meaning, How in the
world did you manage without me to take care of you?
'Yesterday? We had a meeting down at the Woolwich Arsenal. And we
distributed handbills for two hours. And we had a debate in the evening
at the New Reform Club.'
'Oh, you didn't hold a meeting here in the afternoon?'
'Yes we did. I forgot that.' She seemed also to have forgotten that her
new friend had been prevented from appearing to carry her off.
Miss Levering smiled down at her. 'What a funny little person you are.
Do you know who I am?'
'No.'
'It hasn't ever occurred to you to ask?'
The face turned to her with a half roguish smile. 'Oh, I thought you
looked all right.'
'I'm the person who had the interview with your friend, Miss Claxton.'
As no recollection showed in the face, 'At Queen Anne's Gate,' she
added.
'I don't think I knew about that,' said Ernestine, absently. Then alert,
disdainful, 'Fancy the member for Wrotton saying---- Yes, we went to see
him this morning.'
'Oh, that is very exciting! What was he like?'
'Quite a feeble sort of person, I thought.'
'Really!' laughed Miss Levering.
'He talked such nonsense to us about that old Plural Voting Bill. His
idea seemed to be to get us to promise to behave nicely while the
overworked House of Commons considered the iniquity of some men having
more than one vote--they hadn't a minute this session to consider the
much greater iniquity of no women having any vote at all! Of course he
said he _had_ been a great friend to Woman Suffrage, until he got
shocked with our tactics.' She smiled broadly. 'We asked him what he'd
ever done to show his friendship.'
'Well?'
'He didn't seem to know the answer to that. What strikes me most about
men is their being so illogical.'
* * * * *
Lady John Ulland had been openly surprised, even enthusiastically
grateful, at discovering before this that Vida Levering was ready to
help her with some of the unornamental duties that fall to the lot of
the 'great ladies' of England.
'I don't know what that discontented creature, her sister, means by
saying Vida is so unsympathetic about charity work.'
Neither could Lady John's neighbour, the Bishop, understand Mrs.
Fox-Moore's reproach. Had not his young kinswoman's charity concerts
helped to rebuild the chantry?
'Such a _nice creature_!' was Lord John's contribution. Then, showing
the profundity of his friendly interest, 'Why doesn't she find some nice
fella to marry her?'
'People don't marry so early nowadays,' his wife reassured him.
Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some
understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When
he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered
touching testimony to his affection for her by trying to understand. It
was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found
it no easier than others of his class rightly to interpret the modern
scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediaeval tower
which was his mind.
When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace,
he did so against his will, shaking his long Van Dyke head, and saying--
'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite
unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'
'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with "The People,"
as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go
slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I,
perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'
'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let
the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't
need a woman like you.'
'They not only need--what's more, they are getting, all kinds! It's
that, more than anything else, that shows their strength. The miracle it
is, to see the way they all work together! Women, the poorest and most
ignorant (except of hardship), working shoulder to shoulder with women
of substance and position. Oh, yes, they are winning over that sort,
teachers and university graduates--a whole group who would be called
Intellectuals if they were men--all doing what men have said women could
never do--pulling together. And, oh! that reminds me,' she said
suddenly, smiling as one who has thought of a capital joke at her
companion's expense: 'it's my duty to warn you. I went with your
daughter to lunch at her Country Club, and they were all discussing the
Suffrage! A good dozen! And Sophia--well, Sophia came out in a new
light. I want you, please, to believe _I've_ never talked to her.'
'Oh,' said Borrodaile, with an unconscious arrogance, 'Sophia doesn't
wait to be talked to. She takes her own line. Politics are a tradition
with our women. I found her reading the parliamentary debates when she
was fourteen.'
'And your boys, are they equally----?'
He sighed. 'The world has got very topsy-turvy. All my girls are
boys--and all my boys are girls.'
'Well, Sophia can take care of the Country Club! I remember how we
scoffed when she organized it.'
'It's had precisely the effect I expected. Takes her away from her own
home, where she ought to be----'
'Who wants her at home?'
Unblushingly he answered, '_I_ do.'
'Why, you're never there yourself.' He blinked. 'When you aren't in your
garden you're----'
'Here?' he laughed.
'I don't myself,' she went on, '_I_ don't belong to any clubs----'
'I should hope not, indeed! Where should I go for tea and for news of
the workings of the Zeitgeist?' he mocked.
'But I begin to see what women's clubs are for.'
'They're for the dowdy, unattached females to meet and gossip in, to
hold feeble little debates in, to listen to pettifogging little
lectures, and imagine they're _dans le mouvement_.'
'They are to accustom women to thinking and acting together. While you
and I have been laughing at them, they've been building up a huge
machinery of organization, ready to the hand of the chief engineer who
is to come.'
'Horrible thought!'
'Well, horrible or not, I don't despise clubs any more. They're largely
responsible for the new corporate spirit among women.'
He pulled himself out of the cavernous comfort of his chair, and stood
glooming in front of the screen that hid the fireless grate.
'Clubs, societies, leagues, they're all devices for robbing people of
their freedom. It's no use to talk to me. I'm one of the few
individualists left in the world. I never wanted in my life to belong to
any body.' Her pealing laughter made him explain, smiling, 'To any
corporation, was what I meant.'
'No, no. You got it right the first time! The reason that, in spite of
my late perversities, you don't cast me off is because I'm one of the
few women who don't make claims.'
'It is the claim of the community that I resent. I want to keep clear of
all complication. I want to be really free. I could never have pledged
myself to any Church or any party.'
'Perhaps'--she smiled at him--'perhaps that's why you are a beautiful
and ineffectual angel.'
'The reason I never did is because I care about liberty--the thing
itself. You are in danger, I see, of being enamoured of the name. In
thought women are always half a century or so behind. What patriot's
voice is heard in Europe or America to-day? Where is the modern Kossuth,
Garibaldi? What poet goes out in these times to die at Missolonghi? Just
as men are finding out the vanity of the old dreams, the women seem to
be seizing on them. The mass of intelligent men have no longing for
political power. If a sort of public prominence is thrust on men'--he
shrugged as if his shoulders chafed under some burden--'_in their
hearts_ they curse their lot. I suppose it's all so new to the woman she
is amused. She even--I'm _told_'--his lifted hand, with the closed
fingers suddenly flung open, advertised the difficulty a sane person
found in crediting the uncanny rumour--'I'm _told_ that women even like
public dinners.'
'Well, you do.'
'I?'
'You go--to all the most interesting ones.'
'Part of my burden! Unlike your new friends, there's nothing I hate so
much, unless it is having to make a speech.'
'Well, now, shall I stop "playing at ma'ams" and just say that when I
hear a man like you explaining in that superior way how immensely he
_doesn't care_, I seem to see that that is precisely the worst
indictment against your class. If special privilege breeds that----'
It merely amused him to see that she was forgetting herself. He sat down
again. He stretched out his long legs and interlaced his fingers across
his bulging shirt front. His air of delicate mockery supplied the whip.
'If,' Vida went on with shining eyes, 'if to be able to care and to work
and to sacrifice, if to get those impulses out of life, you must carry
your share of the world's burden, then no intelligent creature can be
sorry the day is coming when all men will have to----' She took breath,
a little frightened to see where she was going.
'Have to----?' he encouraged her, lazily smiling.
'Have to work, or else not eat.'
'Even under your hard rule I wouldn't have to work much. My appetite is
mercifully small.'
'It would grow if you sweated for your bread.'
'Help! help!' he said, not above his usual tone, but slowly he turned
his fine head as the door opened. He fixed the amused grey-green eyes on
old Mr. Fox-Moore: 'A small and inoffensive pillar of the Upper House is
in the act of being abolished.'
'What, is she talking politics? She never favours me with her views,'
said Fox-Moore, with his chimpanzee smile.
When Borrodaile had said good-bye, Vida followed him to the top of the
stairs.
'It's rather on my mind that I--I've not been very nice to you.'
'"I would not hear thine enemy say so."'
'Yes, I've been rather horrid. I went and Trafalgar-Squared you, when I
ought to have amused you.'
'But you have amused me!' His eyes shone mischievously.
'Oh, very well.' She took the gibe in good part, offering her hand
again.
'Good-bye, my dear,' he said gently. 'It's great fun having you in the
world!' He spoke as though he had personally arranged this provision
against dulness for his latter end.
* * * * *
The next evening he came up to her at a party to ask why she had
absented herself from a dinner the night before where he expected to
find her.
'Oh, I telephoned in the morning they weren't to expect me.'
'What were you doing, I should like to know?'
'No, you wouldn't like to know. But you couldn't have helped laughing if
you'd seen me.'
'Where?'
'Wandering about the purlieus of Battersea.'
'Bless me! Who with?'
'Why, with that notorious Suffragette, Miss Ernestine Blunt. Oh, you'd
have stared even harder if you'd seen us, I promise you! She with a
leather portfolio under one arm--a most business-like apparatus, and a
dinner-bell in one hand.'
'A _dinner_ bell!' He put his hand to his brow as one who feels reason
reeling.
'Yes, holding fast to the clapper so that we shouldn't affright the isle
out of season. I, if you please, carrying an armful of propagandist
literature.'
'Good Lord! _Where_ do you say these orgies take place?'
'Near the Fire Station on the far side of Battersea Park.'
'I think you are in great need of somebody to look after you,' he
laughed, but no one who knew him could mistake his seriousness. 'Come
over here.' He found a sofa a little apart from the crush. 'Who goes
with you on these raids?'
'Why, Ernestine--or rather, I go with her.'
'But who takes care of you?'
'Ernestine.'
'Who knows you're doing this kind of thing?'
'Ernestine--and you. It's a secret.'
'Well, if I'm the only sane person who knows--it's something of a
responsibility.'
'I won't tell you about it if it oppresses you.'
'On the contrary, I insist on your telling me.'
Vida smiled reflectively. 'The mode of procedure strikes one as highly
original. It is simple beyond anything in the world. They select an open
space at the convergence of several thoroughfares--if possible, near an
omnibus centre. For these smaller meetings they don't go to the length
of hiring a lorry. Do you know what a lorry is?'
'I regret to say my education in that direction leaves something to be
desired.'
'Last week I was equally ignorant. To-day I can tell you all about it. A
lorry is a cart or a big van with the top off. But such elegancies are
for the parks. In Battersea, you go into some modest little restaurant,
and you say, "Will you lend me a chair?" This is a surprise for the
Battersea restaurateur.'
'Naturally--poor man!'
'Exactly. He refuses. But he also asks questions. He is amazed. He is
against the franchise for women. "You'll _never_ get the vote!" "Well,
we must have something," says Ernestine. "I'm sure it isn't against your
principles to lend a woman a chair." She lays hands on one. "I never
said you could have one of my----" "But you meant to, didn't you? Isn't
a chair one of the things men have always been ready to offer us? Thank
you. I'll take good care of it and bring it back quite safe." Out
marches Ernestine with the enemy's property. She carries the chair into
the road and plants it in front of the Fire Station. Usually there are
two or three "helpers." Sometimes Ernestine, if you please, carries the
meeting entirely on her own shoulders--those same shoulders being about
so wide. Yes, she's quite a little thing. If there are helpers she sends
them up and down the street sowing a fresh crop of handbills. When
Ernestine is ready to begin she stands up on that chair, in the open
street and, as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world,
she begins ringing that dinner bell. Naturally people stop and stare and
draw nearer. Ernestine tells me that Battersea has got so used now to
the ding-dong and to associating it with "our meeting," that as far off
as they hear it the inhabitants say, "It's the Suffragettes! Come
along!" and from one street and another the people emerge laughing and
running. Of course as soon as there is a little crowd that attracts
more, and so the snowball grows. Sometimes the traffic is impeded. Oh,
it's a much odder world than I had suspected!' For a moment laughter
interrupted the narrative. '"The Salvation Army doesn't _quite_ approve
of us," Ernestine says, "and the Socialists don't love us either! We
always take their audiences away from them--poor things," says
Ernestine, with a sympathetic air. "_You_ do!" I say, because'--Vida
nodded at Lord Borrodaile--'you must know Ernestine is a beguiler.'
'Oh, a beguiler. I didn't suppose----'
'No, it's against the tradition, I know, but it's true. She herself,
however, doesn't seem to realize her beguilingness. "It isn't any one in
particular they come to hear," she says, "it's just that a woman making
a speech is so much more interesting than a man making a speech." It
surprises you? So it did me.'
'Nothing surprises me!' said Borrodaile, with a wave of his long hands.
'Last night she was wonderful, our Ernestine! Even I, who am used to
her, I was stirred. I was even thrilled. She had that crowd in the
hollow of her hand! When she wound up, "The motion is carried. The
meeting is over!" and climbed down off her perch, the mob cheered and
pressed round her so close that I had to give up trying to join her. I
extricated myself and crossed the street. She is so little that, unless
she's on a chair, she is swallowed up. For a long time I couldn't see
her. I didn't know whether she was taking the names and addresses of the
people who want to join the Union, or whether she had slipped away and
gone home, till I saw practically the whole crowd moving off after her
up the street. I followed for some distance on the off-side. She went
calmly on her way, a tiny figure in a long grey coat between two
helpers, the Lancashire cotton-spinner and the Cockney working woman,
with that immense tail of boys and men (and a few women) all following
after--quite quiet and well-behaved--just following, because it didn't
occur to them to do anything else. In a way she was still exercising her
hold over her meeting. I saw, presently, there was one person in front
of her--a great big fellow--he looked like a carter--he was carrying
home the chair!'
They both laughed.
'Well, she's found a thick-and-thin advocate in you apparently,' said
Borrodaile.
'Ah! if only you could _see_ her! trudging along, apparently quite
oblivious of her quaint following, dinner bell in one hand, leather case
piled high with "tracts" on the other arm, some of the leaflets sliding
off, tumbling on to the pavement.' Vida laughed as she recalled the
scene. 'Then dozens of hands darting out to help her to recover her
precious property! After the chair had been returned the crowd thinned,
and I crossed over to her.'
'You in that _melee_!' Borrodaile ejaculated. 'Well, Ernestine hadn't
the quaintness all to herself.'
'No. Oh, no,' Vida agreed. 'I thought of you, and how you'd look if you
had come on us suddenly. After the crowd had melted and the helpers had
vanished into the night, we went on together--all the way, from the
Battersea Fire Station to Sloane Square, did Ernestine and I walk,
talking reform last night. You laugh? So do I; but not at Ernestine.
She's a most wonderful person. I sometimes ask myself if the world will
ever know half how wonderful. You, for instance, you haven't, after all
I've said, you haven't _an idea_!'
'Oh, I don't doubt--I don't think I ever doubted that women have a
facility in speech--no, no, I'm not gibing! I don't even doubt they can,
as you say, sway and control crowds. But I maintain it is very bad for
the women.'
'How is it bad?'
'How can it fail to be! All that horrible publicity. All that
concentrating of crude popular interest on themselves! Believe me,
nobody who watches a public career carefully but sees the demoralizing
effect the limelight has even on men's characters. And I suppose you'll
admit that men are less delicately organized than women.'
'I can only say I've seen the sort of thing you mean in our world, where
a good many women have only themselves to think about. I've looked in
vain for those evil effects among the Suffrage women. It almost seems,
on the contrary, as if there were something ennobling in working for a
public cause.'
'Personally, I can't say I've observed it--not among the political women
of my acquaintance!'
'But you only know the old kind. Yes, the kind whose idea of influence
is to make men fall in love with them, whose idea of working is to put
on a smart gown and smile their prettiest. No, I agree that _isn't_
necessarily ennobling!'
'I see, it's the new taste in manners and the new arts of persuasion
that make the ideal women and'--with an ironic little bow--'the
impassioned convert.'
'I'm bound to admit,' she said stoutly, 'that I think the Suffrage
movement in England has the advantage of being engineered by a very
remarkable set of women. Not in ability alone, but in dignity of
character. People will never know, I sometimes think, how much the
movement has owed to being taken in hand by just these particular women.
I don't pretend they're the average. They're very far above the average.
And what the world will owe to them I very much doubt if even the future
will know. But I seem to be the only one who minds.' She laughed. 'I
could take my oath _they_ never give the matter a thought. One
thing----' She leaned forward and then checked herself. 'No, I've talked
about them enough!'
She opened her fan and looked about the crowded room.
'Say what you were going to. I'm reconciled. I see what's coming.'
'What's coming?'
'Yes. Go on.'
She looked at him a little perplexed over the top of her fan.
'I was only going to say that what struck me particularly in that girl,
for instance, is her inaccessibility to flattery. I've watched her with
men.'
'Of course! She knew you were watching her. She no doubt thinks the eyes
of the world are upon her.'
'On the contrary, it's her unselfconsciousness that's the most
surprising thing about her. Or, no! It's something more interesting
even than that. She is conscious, in a way, of the hold she has
on the public. But it hasn't any of the deteriorating effect you
were deprecating. I've been moved once or twice to congratulate her.
She takes it as unmoved as a child. It's just as if you said to a
little thing of three, "What a clever baby you are!" or, "You've got the
most beautiful eyes in the world." The child would realize that you
meant well, that you were being pleasant, but it wouldn't think about
either its cleverness or its eyes. It's like that with Ernestine. When I
said to her, "You made an astoundingly good speech to-night. The best
I've heard even you make," she looked at me with a sort of
half-absent-minded, half-wondering expression, without a glimmer of
personal vanity. When I was so ill-advised as not to drop the subject,
when I ventured to say something more about that great gift of hers, she
interrupted me with a little laugh, "It's a sign of grace in you not to
get tired of our speeches," she said. "I suppose we repeat ourselves a
good deal. You see that's just what we've got to do. We've got to
_hammer it in_." But the fact is that she doesn't repeat herself, that
she's always fresh and stimulating, because--I suppose it's because
she's always thinking of the Great Impersonal Object, and talking about
it out of her own eager heart. Ernestine? She's as unhackneyed as a
spring morning!'
'Oh, very well. I'll go.'
'Go? Where?' for he still sat there.
'Why, to hear your paragon. I've seen that was what you were leading up
to.'
'N--no. I don't think I want you to go.'
'Oh, yes, you do. I knew you'd make me sooner or later.'
'No, don't be afraid.' She stood up.
'I'm not afraid. I'm eager,' he laughed.
She shook her head. 'No, I'll never take you.'
'Why not?'
'Because--it isn't all Ernestine and skittles. And because you'd make me
keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't
matter--things that have lost some of their power to trouble me, but
that I should feel for you.'
'What sort of----'
'Oh, oddities, uglinesses--things that abound, I'm told, at all men's
meetings, and that yet, somehow, we'd like to eliminate from women's
quite on the old angel theory. No, I won't take you!'