The London cabman's occupation consists in dodging thoroughfares under
repair.
Numbers of dingy streets have been flung about to help him. There is
one of these in Bloomsbury, which was originally discovered by a
student while looking for the British Museum. It runs a hundred yards
in a straight line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his way,
and hurries by another route out of the neighbourhood.
The houses are dull, except one, just where it doubles, which is gloomy.
This house is divided into sets of chambers and has a new frontage, but
it no longer lets well. A few years ago there were two funerals from
it within a fortnight, and soon afterward another of the tenants was
found at the foot of the stair with his neck broken. These fatalities
gave the house a bad name, as such things do in London.
It was here that Andrew's patron, the president, lived.
To the outcast from work to get an object in life is to be born again.
Andrew bustled to the president's chambers on the Saturday night
following the events already described, with his chest well set.
His springy step echoed of wages in the hearts of the unemployed.
Envious eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a
few days before he had been as the thirteenth person at a dinner-party.
Such a change does society bring about when it empties a chair for the
superfluous man.
It may be wondered that he felt so sure of himself, for the night had
still to decide his claims.
Andrew, however, had thought it all out in his solitary lodgings, and
had put fear from him. He felt his failings and allowed for every one
of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials were in his
pocket. Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good
of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make him quite forget self.
It may not be possible to serve both God and mammon, but since Adam the
world has been at it. We ought to know by this time.
The Society for Doing Without was as immoral as it certainly was
illegal. The president's motives were not more disinterested than his
actions were defensible. He even deserved punishment.
All these things may be. The great social question is not to be solved
in a day. It never will be solved if those who take it by the beard
are not given an unbiassed hearing.
Those were the young Scotchman's views when the president opened the
door to him, and what he saw and heard that night strengthened them.
It was characteristic of Andrew's host that at such a time he could put
himself in the young man's place.
He took his hand and looked him in the face more like a physician than
a mere acquaintance. Then he drew him aside into an empty room.
"Let me be the first to congratulate you," he said; "you are admitted."
Andrew took a long breath, and the president considerately turned away
his head until the young probationer had regained his composure. Then
he proceeded:
"The society only asks from its probationers the faith which it has in
them. They take no oath. We speak in deeds. The Brotherhood do not
recognise the possibility of treachery; but they are prepared to cope
with it if it comes. Better far, Andrew Riach, to be in your grave,
dead and rotten and forgotten, than a traitor to the cause."
The president's voice trembled with solemnity.
He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and
rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the
young man's neck.
Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a
father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
"You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his
ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage from one of the
noblest women in the land. It will be your part to listen. To-night
you will both hear and see strange things. Say nothing. Evince no
surprise. Some members are irritable. Come!"
Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the
meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck.
There seemed to be something about it that he liked.
It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards
at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.
Without the president's presence they had no character.
The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the
face.
The tenant might have been a medical student who knew that it was not
worth while to unpack his boxes.
The only ornament on the walls was an elaborate sketch by a member,
showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the
Young Men's Christian Association.
There were a dozen men in the room, including the president of the
Birmingham branch association and two members who had just returned
from a visit to Edinburgh. These latter had already submitted their
report.
The president introduced Andrew to the committee, but not the committee
to him. Several of them he recognized from the portraits in the shop
windows.
They stood or sat in groups looking over a probationer's thesis. It
consisted of diagrams of machinery.
Andrew did not see the sketches, though they were handed round
separately for inspection, but he listened eagerly to the president's
explanations.
"The first," said the president, "is a beautiful little instrument
worked by steam. Having placed his head on the velvet cushion D, the
subject can confidently await results.
"No. 2 is the same model on a larger scale.
"As yet 3 can be of little use to us. It includes a room 13 feet by
11. X is the windows and other apertures; and these being closed up
and the subjects admitted, all that remains to be done is to lock the
door from the outside and turn on the gas. E, F, and K are couches,
and L is a square inch of glass through which results may be noted.
"The speciality of 4, which is called the 'water cure,' is that it is
only workable on water. It is generally admitted that release by
drowning is the pleasantest of all deaths; and, indeed, 4, speaking
roughly, is a boat with a hole in the bottom. It is so simple that a
child could work it. C is the plug.
"No. 5 is an intricate instrument. The advantage claimed for it is
that it enables a large number of persons to leave together."
While the thesis was under discussion, the attendance was increased by
a few members specially interested in the question of female suffrage.
Andrew observed that several of these wrote something on a piece of
paper which lay on the table with a pencil beside it, before taking
their seats.
He stretched himself in the direction of this paper, but subsided as he
caught the eyes of two of the company riveted on his neck.
From that time until he left the rooms one member or other was staring
at his neck. Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece
but could see nothing wrong.
The paper on the table merely contained such jottings as these:--
"Robert Buchanan has written another play."
"Schnadhörst is in town."
"Ashmead Bartlett walks in Temple Gardens 3 to 4."
"Clement Scott (?)"
"Query: Is there a dark passage near Hyndman's (Socialist's) house?"
"Talmage. Address, Midland Hotel."
"Andrew Lang (?)"
Andrew was a good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate
on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke
for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor who
had to keep the door until the meeting closed.
Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender a
familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time
struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his
ninepins.
To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word
wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an
argument was another matter.
It was with no ordinary mingling of respect with curiosity that he
stood up with the others to greet Mrs. Fawcett as the president led her
into the room. The young man's face, as he looked upon her for the
first time, was the best book this remarkable woman ever wrote.
The proceedings were necessarily quiet, and the president had
introduced their guest to the meeting without Andrew's hearing a word.
He was far away in a snow-swept University quadrangle on a windy night,
when Mrs. Fawcett rose to her feet.
Some one flung open the window, for the place was close, and
immediately the skirl of a bagpiper broke the silence.
It might have been the devil that rushed into the room.
Still Andrew dreamed on.
The guest paused.
The members looked at each other, and the president nodded to one of
them.
He left the room, and about two minutes afterwards the music suddenly
ceased.
Andrew woke with a start in time to see him return, write two words in
the members' book, and resume his seat. Mrs. Fawcett then began.
"I have before me," she said, turning over the leaves of a bulky
manuscript, "a great deal of matter bearing on the question of woman's
rights, which at such a meeting as this may be considered read. It is
mainly historical, and while I am prepared to meet with hostile
criticism from the society, I assume that the progress our agitation
has made, with its disappointments, its trials, and its triumphs, has
been followed more or less carefully by you all.
"Nor shall I, after the manner of speakers on such an occasion, pay you
the doubtful compliment of fulsomely extolling your aims before your
face.
"I come at once to the question of woman's rights in so far as the
society can affect them, and I ask of you a consideration of my case
with as little prejudice as men can be expected to approach it.
"In the constitution of the society, as it has been explained to me, I
notice chiefly two things which would have filled me with indignation
twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of
our ambition now.
"The first is a sin of omission, the second one of commission, and the
latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes
open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of
course.
"I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is
exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on
female candidature.
"As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders that such a veto in
black and white was necessary. When they drew up the rules of
membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper;
it was forgotten. We owe our eligibility to many other offices
(generally disputed at law) to the same accident. In short, the
unwritten law of the _argumentum ad crinolinam_ puts us to the side."
Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much
it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh,
Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged physical
limitations.
She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily
refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her
over beaten ground.
So far the members had given her the courteous non-attention which
thoughtful introductory remarks can always claim. It was when she
reached her second head that they fastened upon her words.
Then Andrew had seen no sharper audience since he was one of a Scotch
congregation on the scent of a heretic.
"At a full meeting of committee," said Mrs. Fawcett, with a ring of
bitterness in her voice, "you passed a law that women should not enjoy
the advantages of the association. Be they ever so eminent, their sex
deprives them of your care. You take up the case of a petty maker of
books because his tea-leaf solutions weary you, and you put a stop to
him with an enthusiasm worthy of a nobler object.
"But the woman is left to decay.
"This society at its noblest was instituted for taking strong means to
prevent men's slipping down the ladder it has been such a toil to them
to mount, but the women who have climbed as high as they can fall from
rung to rung.
"There are female nuisances as well as male; I presume no one here will
gainsay me that. But you do not know them officially. The politicians
who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about
mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you
ignore their complements in the softer sex.
"Yet you call yourselves a society for suppressing excrescences! Your
president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the
man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters
from 'A British Matron' are of no account.
"I do not need to be told how Dr. Smith, the fashionable physician, was
precipitated down that area the other day; but what I do ask is, why
should he be taken and all the lady doctors left?
"Their degrees are as good as his. You are too 'manly,' you say, to
arrest their course. Is injustice manliness? We have another name for
it. We say you want the pluck.
"I suppose every one of you has been reading a very able address
recently delivered at the meeting of the Social Science Congress. I
refer to my friend Mrs. Kendal's paper on the moral aspect of the drama
in this country.
"It is a powerful indictment of the rank and file other professional
brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more
unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor
into social snobbishness and professional clap-trap.
"I do not know how the paper affected you. But since reading it I have
asked in despair, how can this gifted lady continue to pick her way
between the snares with which the stage is beset?
"Is it possible that the time may come when she will advertise by
photographs and beg from reporters the 'pars' she now so scathingly
criticises? Nay, when I look upon the drop scene at the St. James's
Theatre, I ask myself if the deterioration has not already set in.
"Gentlemen, is this a matter of indifference to you? But why do I ask?
Has not Mrs. Lynn Linton another article in the new 'Nineteenth
Century' that makes her worthy your attention? They are women, and the
sex is outside your sphere."
It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mrs. Fawcett finished her address,
and the society had adopted the good old rule of getting to bed
betimes. Thus it was afterwards that Andrew learned how long and
carefully the society had already considered the advisability of giving
women equal rights with men.
As he was leaving the chambers the president slipped something into his
hand. He held it there until he reached his room.
On the way a man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then
shuffled off. He was muffled up, but Andrew wondered if he had not
seen him at the meeting.
The young Scotchman had an uneasy feeling that his footsteps were
dodged.
As soon as he reached home he unfolded the scrap of paper that had been
pushed into his hand. It merely contained these words--
"Cover up your neck."