BOOK IV

HADJI SADRÄ

I

UPON Julia’s return to England in April of 1906 she was greeted with the

news of the destruction of San Francisco by earthquake and fire. Nigel,

to whom it had occurred to her to send a telegram from Flushing, met her

at Queenboro’, and, his imagination fired by the great physical drama,

it was the first piece of news he imparted. Julia, although she was

looking straight into a pair of ardent handsome eyes (Nigel had

recovered his looks, and the subtle marks of Time enhanced them), sent

her mind on a flight of seven thousand miles to centre about the young

American friend that she had so nearly forgotten.

“He must be—let me see—five- or six-and-twenty,” she announced.

“Who?” Nigel’s eyes flashed.

“A Californian I met when he was a boy—Mrs. Bode’s brother. You can’t

mean that everybody was killed.”

“Let us hope not. First reports are always exaggerated. But the

Californians in London are frantic—can’t get a penny on their letters

of credit, either. Indeed, nothing outside of our own bailiwick has

excited us as much as this in many a long day.”

“I felt some big earthquakes in India—”

“Oh, nothing like this,” said Nigel, who would brook no cheapening of

the magnificent panorama in his mind. “With the possible exception of

the eruption of Mont Pelée, this is the most dramatic thing that Nature

has done in our time. Think of it! Not a second’s warning. The most

important city on the Pacific Coast and its half million people wiped

out. The earth rocking miles of blazing buildings for hours. Precipices

along the coast plunging into the sea! The hills rolling like grain.

Jupiter! What a sight from an airship! Would that I had been there to

see.”

“I don’t fancy you would have seen much from an airship, if there was

any smoke with the fire. Have you reconstructed all that from bald

cablegrams?”

“The bald facts are enough—”

“To have made your imagination happy. I have always said that you would

satisfy it yet with a work of pure romance. But I don’t mean to joke. It

is too awful. I heard only a confused rumor on the train yesterday. Poor

Dan! But I feel sure that he could take care of himself, and of a good

many others—if there was any chance at all.”

“Possibly. But enough of horrors. I want to look at you.” (They had a

compartment to themselves.) “You must have enjoyed yourself quite as

well as you meant to do. I never saw any one so—well—improved,

although that sounds banal. It never occurred to me that you could be

prettier than when you first came to London, but you are. Your

eyes—what is it?”

“Oh, my eyes have seen things. I have done a good deal more than enjoy

myself.”

“Have you come back to be the high priestess of some cult?”

“Not I. I have sat at the feet of wise men in Benares and in Persia, and

learned—a little. We Occidentals are never initiated into the deeper

mysteries. They despise—or fear—us too much for that. But even a

little of the wisdom of the East must widen our vision and prove an

everlasting antidote to the modern spirit of unrest—about nothing.”

“And enable you to forget your friends for four years? We have each had

three letters from you and three or four times as many post cards.”

“One secret of enjoying the East is to forget the West. And for at least

a year I was intoxicated—drunk is more expressive—with its

enchantments. The spell broke in Calcutta, where I spent a winter in

society. Then I went to Benares to study.”

“You could have told me as much in a cablegram. What took you to Acca?”

“I went to see Abdul Baha Abbas, and investigate the new religion. My

master told me of it in India, and I found that in Persia, after losing

some twenty-five thousand by massacre, it had got the best of its

enemies by converting the government. Even the women are receiving the

higher education. So I went on to headquarters. Not that any religion

could make a personal appeal to me, but I had an idea about this one.

The idea proved to be reasonable, and, accordingly, I have brought you

the Bahai religion as a present.”

“Brought me? What should I do with it?”

“Make use of it to your own glory and the benefit of the race. We have

always agreed that Socialism would never prevail until it acquired a

soul. That admirably constructed but unappealing machine needs the Bahai

religion to give it light and fire; and the Bahai religion, sane and

practical as it is, needs a good working medium. Combined, they will

sweep the world. With your skill and enthusiasm, you will find the task

congenial and not too difficult. Like Socialism, the new and practical

sort, Bahaism must begin at the top and filter down, for it makes its

appeal to the brain, to the advanced thinker, to those that feel the

need of a religion, but have long since outgrown all the silly old

dogmas, with their bathos and sentimentalities, primarily intended only

for the ignorant. Unity in rights. Freedom of the political as well as

the spiritual conscience. In other words, the elimination of all that

provokes war; which means universal peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. That is

the keynote of the Bahai religion, as love was intended to be of

Christianity. All the best principles of the five prevailing religions

are incorporated in this, all the barriers between them razed, and all

the nonsense and narrow-mindedness left out. And the keynote of all

this? Knowledge. True knowledge, intellectual as well as spiritual. The

universal spread of science and the development of the arts, to war in

men’s minds—the real battleground—against the greed of money which

makes man so stunted, uninteresting, and miserable to-day. One language,

one people, one faith. No hierarchy. Good morals and charitable deeds as

a matter of course. The worship of one God, and the universal peace, to

be founded in the centre of the civilized world. Unity and Peace! Then

we are promised that the earthly world shall become heavenly. Not in our

time. But it will be interesting to help start the ball rolling, and to

watch it roll. Every man is supposed to have a latent desire for

perfection. There is your cue. There lies the brain of this religion.

What a subtle appeal to vanity, man’s primal and deathless weakness!

Even greed only ministers to it. If I wrote fiction I should take this

cue myself, but as it is I have brought it to you. Go to Acca, get it

all at first hand, and write your immortal book.”

“So you did think of me that far?” Nigel stared at her, fascinated, but

with his man’s ardor checked. In spite of her frank delight in greeting

him, the spontaneous friendliness of her manner, she seemed to him

incredibly remote. The eyes that looked straight into his had new and

unfathomable depths, and he wondered if she had not learned more of

Eastern lore than she had any intention of admitting.

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “And I have speculated a great deal

about you. All I know is that you won the Nöbel Peace Prize—a wonderful

book! I read it—and your last—in the colonial edition. But I know

nothing else about you. Have you fallen in love with any one else?”

“No, I have not,” said Nigel, crossly, “and I am not so sure that I am

still in love with you. I only know that you haunt my imagination and

make all other women seem flat.”

“Ah! We could be the ideal friends. But hasn’t anything happened to you

besides merely writing books and becoming a peer of the realm?”

“Oh, yes, I have been discovered by the United States of America.”

“They were long enough about it. But they always get hold of the little

men first.”

“Well, I might be one of the little ones, judging by the fuss they are

making over me. Reams of stuff in magazines and the Sunday

newspapers—all about my ‘great’ works; in which I find myself credited

with an assortment of philosophies no two men could carry; at least a

hundred attitudes toward Life; and incredible designs upon the peace of

the world—although still others maintain that I am merely a dilettante

aristocrat playing with picturesque material. I am so bewildered that I

hardly know what I am myself. Some of the adverse criticisms are so good

that I forget the writer doesn’t in the least know what he is writing

about. The only thing clear to me is that my income is trebled, and that

I am offered unheard-of sums (from the modest European point of view) to

write for their magazines and newspapers. I have even been invited to go

over and lecture, and am promised a unique advertisement: ‘The Peer

among Authors.’ Fancy trying to be original after that! I believe I have

also a cult—and am making hay while the sun shines; for I am given to

understand that crazes don’t last long over there. Each of us, as

discovered,—sometimes a few of us at once,—is the ‘greatest of modern

English authors.’ I should think their own authors would combine,

capture the press, and train their guns on us, and their eloquence on

their public: it would appear that the American public, in art matters,

believes everything it is told long enough and loud enough. Far be it

from me, however, to complain. It has enabled me to put a new roof on my

old castle—as good as an American wife, without the bother—and buy a

villa on the Riviera—which I am hoping you will consent to occupy with

me.”

“Not I. You go to Acca, and I to my work here. If it hadn’t haunted me,

assisted by indignant letters from Bridgit, I doubt if I ever should

have left the East. But if the East is in my blood, some magnet in the

West directed at my brain cells dragged me home. Besides, what have I

developed myself for? Now is the time to find out.”

Nigel sighed. “The old order changeth. You women are not far off from

getting all you want, no doubt about that, but you will lose more than

you gain.”

“From your point of view. It is not what _you_ want. We shall get what

_we_ want, which is more to the point.”

“Well, I can’t blame you,” said Nigel, honestly. “Man was bound to have

his day of reckoning. For my part I hardly care, being a lover of

change, and wanting to see all of this world’s progress it shall be

possible to crowd into my own little span. And although you are far from

all the old ideals, it would be the more interesting to live with you. I

have always had a sneaking preference for polygamy—one wife for

children and solid comfort, and one for companionship—to keep a man

from roving abroad.”

To his surprise Julia colored and a look of distress and apprehension

routed the bright composure of her face.

“I should like children!” she exclaimed. “They would not interfere with

my work, either. Why should they?” Then she darted off the track of

self. “Tell me of Ishbel. She is happy, I feel sure, and she has two

dear little babies. I am the godmother of the first.”

“Yes, but she haunts that shop. It was running to seed without her, and

she had no sooner taken hold again than the work microbe woke up. Dark

doesn’t fancy it, but says there’s nothing for a sensible man to do

these days but take woman as he finds her and chew his little cud in

silence. He doesn’t forget how both Ishbel and Bridgit calmly shuffled

off their husbands when they had no further use for them.”

“Work. I fancy that was the real magnet that brought me back. I

revelled—revelled—but the reaction set in like a rising tide, and at

last was quite as irresistible. I should have come back before this, but

I wanted to remain in Acca until I was convinced that the Bahai religion

was all it attempted to be. Go there at once. Abdul Baha has promised

that you shall live in his house. Moreover, they want a big author to

exploit it in the West before it has been misrepresented and cheapened

by the swarm of little writers, always in search of what they call

‘copy.’”

“I should feel like a bally hypocrite. I’ve no more religion in me than

you have. If God is in man, and self is God, then that atom we call self

is what is given us to lean on without asking for more. To demand help

outside of ourselves is a confession of failure.”

“Of course. But how many have penetrated the secrets that far? The

majority must have a religion to talk about and lean on. When they get

the right one, the world will be a far more comfortable place to live

in. That, to my mind, is the whole point. You and I have useful brains,

and it is our business to help the world along. In my inmost soul, I

don’t care any more for the cause of woman or the rights of the

working-class—save in so far as it gives me the horrors to think of any

one being cold and hungry—than you care about religion; but I shall

work just as hard for both as if I never had had a thought for anything

else. Now tell me about Bridgit.”

II

NIGEL left her at the door of her hotel and did not see her again for

two days. Little did he guess the reason. He carried away to his club

(both resentfully and sadly) the picture of a new Julia, all intellect,

poise, and mystery; a Julia from whom the impulsiveness, ingenuousness,

and young enthusiasm had gone forever, left in that unfathomable East

which gives knowledge and takes personality; a cold brilliant creature,

with developed genius, no doubt, but with nothing left to beg unto a

man’s heart and senses. And this, indeed, was one side of Julia, and the

only one she purposed the world should see; because in time it was to be

her whole self, and she a happy mortal.

When she shut the door of her sitting-room in the gloomy exclusive hotel

in one of the quiet streets near Piccadilly, to which she had

telegraphed for rooms, she subsided into the easiest chair and cried for

half an hour; nor did she ascend from the slough of her despondency for

the rest of the day. For the past four years she had lived virtually out

of doors. As her angry frightened eyes looked back they recalled nothing

but floods of golden light, an endless procession of Orientals, gleaming

bronze or copper, turbanned, hooded, dressed in flowing robes of white

or every primal hue; streets, crooked, latticed, balconied, sun-baked;

gorgeous bazaars; life, color, beauty, romance (to Western eyes)

everywhere. She was come to a London wrapped in its old familiar

drizzle; huddled over the small grate, its cold penetrated her marrow;

in the narrow street, dull, grimy, flat, there was rarely a sound. As

she had entered the ugly entrance hall below she had been met by two

solemn footmen, one of whom had conducted her slowly up three flights of

stairs (there was no lift in this exclusive hostelry); another followed

an hour later with her luncheon of good food cooked abominably. The

butler stood in front of her like a statue and pretended not to observe

her swollen eyes.

If she had been wise, she would have gone to the Carlton or the Ritz,

where at least she could have descended at intervals into a very good

similitude of luxury and magnificence, been able to fancy herself in the

midst of “life”; she would have dined with brilliantly dressed and

animated people, and, incidentally, been cheered by French cooking. But,

like many others, she favored the small hotel where one was almost

obliged to bring a letter of introduction, where one was supposed to be

“at home” with personal servants; and where, indeed, one was as deeply

immersed in privacy and silence as if quite at home in North Hampstead.

Julia, who had been consoled for the loss of the dainty dishes of the

East by the kaleidoscopic pleasures of the continent, choked over her

shoulder of mutton, large-leaved greens, and hard round peas unseasoned,

boiled potatoes, and pudding, wept once more after the remains and the

butler had vanished, cursed women, and half determined to take the night

train for Egypt and Syria.

She had not wanted to “be met,” shrinking from too prompt a reminder of

the past. Now she wished that everybody she had ever known had crowded

the platform at Victoria, and “rushed her about,” until she felt at home

once more in this huge and dismal and overpowering mass of London. And

as ill-luck would have it even her two best friends would be denied her

for days, possibly for weeks. Ishbel was in Paris. Bridgit was in Cannes

recovering from severe physical injuries incurred in the cause of woman.

At one of the great Liberal meetings in the north, during the General

Election, she had risen and demanded that the new Government declare its

intentions regarding the enfranchisement of women. She had been pulled

down, one man had held his hat before her face, and when she struggled

to her feet again, protesting that she had the same right to interrupt

the speaker with questions as any of the men that had gone unreproved,

she had been dragged out by six stewards and plain-clothes detectives,

with as much vigor as if she had been the six men and they the one

dauntless female. They had mauled her, twisted her, pummelled her, and

finally flung her with violence to the pavement. She had gathered

herself up, although suffering from a broken rib, attempted to address

the crowd in the streets, been arrested and swept off to the town hall.

She had given a false name that she might be shown no favor, and the

next morning, refusing to pay her fine, was sent to gaol for seven days.

She had lain in a cold cell for nearly twenty-four hours unattended, in

solitary confinement, and on a small allowance of food which she could

not have eaten if well. At the gaol she asked to be sent to the

hospital, but before her request was granted, a member of the new

Government ascertained her name, and, horrified at the possible

consequences to himself, paid her fine summarily, and sent her to a

nursing home. Here she had lain until her broken rib had mended, and was

now in the south of France assuaging a severe attack of intercostal

neuralgia.

This story, told by Nigel, had filled Julia with an intense wrath, and

struck the first real spark of enthusiasm in her for the cause of woman,

but it burned low in these dull hours of loneliness and nostalgia, and

she wished that her magnificent friend had remained as in the early days

of their acquaintance, whole in bone and skin, and untroubled of mind.

But if Julia was acting much as the average woman acts during her first

hours alone in an immense and inhospitable city, which the sun refuses

to shine upon, a city that knows not of her existence and cares less,

she was furious with herself, even before she recovered. Where was the

poise, the serenity, the grand impersonal attitude, she had learned from

her subtle masters in the East? Where the full calm determination with

which she had returned to take up her self-elected duties, to gratify a

long latent but now full-grown ambition to build a unique pedestal for

herself in the world; in other words, to achieve fame and power? Out

there it had been both easy and natural to plan, to dream, to vision

herself at the head of womankind, burning with the enthusiasm of the

artist, even if the cause itself left her cold. She had believed herself

made over to that extent, at least; and now she dared not see Nigel

Herbert lest she marry him off-hand, and insure herself a life companion

and the common happiness of woman.

She denied him admittance, even refusing to go down to the telephone

(such were the primitive arrangements of this exclusive hostelry), and

vowed that once more, peradventure for the last time, she would wrestle

with her peculiar problem and inspect her new armor at every joint.

For Julia, even during her first year in India, had learned lessons

untaught by Eastern philosophers. She had no difficulty in recalling the

moment when that green shoot had wriggled its head out of what she

called the morass in the depths of her nature. She had been floating one

moonlight night in a boat propelled by a turbanned silhouette, on a

small lake surrounded by a park as dense as a jungle. From the head of

the lake rose a marble palace of many towers and balconies, whose white

steps were in the green waters. Just overhead was poised the full

moon,—a crystal lantern lit with a white flame. A nightingale was

pouring forth its love song. Warm, delicious odors were wafted across

the lake from the gardens about the palace.

Julia, whose soul had been steeped in all this beauty, her senses

swimming with pleasure, suddenly, with no apparent volition, sat upright

and gasped with resentment. Why was she alone on such a night? Why, in

heaven’s name, was not a man with her,—the most charming man the world

held, of course (there never was anything moderate in Julia’s demands

upon Life)? why was not this perfect mate, his own soul steeped, his

senses swimming, even as were her own, sitting beside her, looking at

her with eyes that proclaimed them as one and divinely happy? It was the

night and the place for the very fullness of love, and she was alone.

How incongruous! How inartistic! What a waste! Women have been known to

feel like this in Venice. How much more so Julia, in the untravelled

undesecrated depths of India, at night, with the moon and the

nightingale and the heavy warm scents of Oriental trees, and shrubs, and

flowers!

When Julia realized where her unleashed imagination had soared, she

frowned, deliberately laughed, and opened her inner ear that she might

enjoy the crash to earth. But she sat up all that night. From her room

in the guest bungalow (her friends had provided her with many letters),

she could look upon the white palace, gleaming like sculptured ivory

against the black Eastern night, hear the waters lapping the marble

steps. Strange sounds came out of the quarters devoted to the

superfluous wives and their female offspring: passionate melancholy

singing, sharp infuriated cries, monotonous string music, infinitely

hopeless.

And she was free, free as the nightingale, free to love; young,

beautiful, with the world at her feet. What a fool she was!

Although she had now been in India for nearly a year, this was the first

time the sex within her had stirred, and she had been one with scenes

lovelier than this, revelled from first to last in all the beauty and

variety and mystery and color which she had craved so long in England.

In spite of dirt and stench, of entomological bedfellows, bullock carts,

and lack of every luxury in which the British soul delights, she was too

young and too philosophical to have permitted the worst of these to

interfere with her complete satisfaction. And it had, this wondrous

East, absorbed and satisfied her until to-night. She had asked for

nothing more. And now she wanted a lover.

Looking back upon her life with France, she discovered that she had

practically forgiven him the moment she had been assured of his

insanity. No doubt he had been irresponsible from the first. This

admission had subconsciously wiped out his offences, and with them the

memory of that whole odious experience. She still blamed her mother, but

she had pitied France when she thought of him at all. The heavy noxious

growth in her soul had withered and disappeared, the dark waters turned

clear and sparkling. She was ready for love, for the rights and the

glory of youth.

Kneeling there, gazing out at the enchanted palace, watching the moon

sail over the misty tree-tops to disappear into the dark embrace of the

Himalayas, her annoyance passed, she exulted in this new development,

these vast and turbulent demands. She would find love and find it soon.

With Julia to think was to do. The next day she set out on her quest. To

love any of these Indian princes was out of the question, even though

she might live in marble palaces for the rest of her life. There was

nothing for it but to go to Calcutta and present her letters to the

viceroy and notable British residents. She found Calcutta the most

ill-smelling city on earth, but its society was brilliant and

industrious, and she met more charming men than in all her years in

England. For some obscure reason Englishmen always are more charming,

natural, and even original in the colonies and dependencies than on

their own misty isle. Perhaps they are more adaptable than they think,

more susceptible to “atmosphere” than would seem possible, bred as they

are into formalities and mannerisms of a thousand years of tradition,

too hide-bound for mere human nature to combat unassisted.

Moreover, in India they wear helmets, which are vastly becoming, and

white linen or khaki, which wars with stolidity. Julia met them by the

dozen and liked them all. She danced six nights out of seven, flirted in

marble palaces whose steps were in the Ganges, on marble terraces vocal

and scented. She had never been so beautiful before, she was quite

happy, she was indisputably the belle of the winter, she had several

proposals under the most romantic conditions (carefully arranged by

herself), and she was wholly unable to fall in love.

At the end of the season she understood, and was aghast. She demanded

the wholly impossible in man, a man that never will emerge from woman’s

imagination and come to life; a man without common weaknesses, who was

never absurd, who was a miracle of tenderness, passion, strength, humor,

justice, high-mindedness, magnetism, intellect, cleverness, wit,

sincerity, mystery, fidelity, provocation, responsiveness, reserve; who

was gay, serious, sympathetic, vital, stimulating, always able to

thrill, and never to bore; a being of light with no clay about him, who

wooed like a god, and never looked funny when his feelings overcame him,

and never perspired, even in India.

In short, Julia packed her trunks and went to Benares to study Hindu

philosophy.

But although she was not long finding her balance (in which humor played

as distinguished a part as her learned masters), she never wholly ceased

to be haunted by the vision of the perfect lover and the complete

happiness he must bestow upon a woman as yet not all intellect. There

were times when she sat up in bed at night exclaiming aloud in tones of

indignation and surprise, “_Where_ is my husband? Mine? He _must_ exist

on this immense earth. Where is he?”

She knew that other women of humor and intellect, Ishbel, for instance,

had ended by accepting the best that life purposed to offer them, and

been quite happy, or happy enough. But she dared make no such experiment

with herself. Genius of some sort she had, and she guessed that geniuses

had best be content with dreams and make no experiments with mere mortal

men. She knew that if she exiled herself to America, or the continent of

Europe, with the most satisfactory man she had met in Calcutta, or even

with Nigel Herbert, she ran the risk of hating him and herself before

the honeymoon was out. Nevertheless, the woman in her laughed at

intellect and went on demanding and dreaming.

But all this did not affect her will nor hinder her mental progress.

While automatically hoping, she was hopeless, and bent all her energies

toward accomplishing that ideal of perfection she had vaguely outlined

the night at White Lodge when once more settling the fate of Nigel. Here

in Benares, sitting at the feet of men that appeared to live in their

marvellous intellects, and to be quite purged of earthly dross, it

seemed simple enough to her strong will and brain. Of mysteries she was

permitted more than one glimpse. She felt herself drawing from unseen,

unfathomable sources a vital fluid which she chose to believe would in

time restore in her that perfect balance of sex qualities, that unity in

the ego, which had been the birthright of the man-woman who rose first

out of the chaos of the universe, who was happy until clove in half and

sent forth to wage the eternal war of sex, even while striving blindly

for completion. She learned that in former solar systems, whose record

is open only to those so profoundly versed in occult lore that their

disembodied selves read at will the invisible tablets, that chosen women

had attained this state of perfection, of absolute knowledge, of

original sex, and with it immortality. Immortal women. Wonderful and

haunting phrase! At certain periods of even earth’s history, they had

reappeared in human form to accomplish their great and individual work.

But their number so far had been few, and they were easily called to

mind, these great women that stood out in history; indispensable,

mysteriously powerful; disappearing when their work was done, and

leaving none of their kind behind them.

Julia’s favorite teacher, an old Sufi Mohammedan named Hadji Sadrä, told

her that the world, the Western world particularly, was ripe for them

again, that now their numbers would be many, for modern conditions made

their general supremacy possible for the first time in Earth’s history.

There was no movement in the East or West that this old philosopher was

not cognizant of, no tendency, no deep persistent stifled mutter; and

although he had all the contempt of the ancient Oriental brain for the

crude attempts of the Occident to think for itself, he had a growing

respect for Western women, and told Julia that all conditions, both in

the heavens and on the earth pointed to the coming reign of woman; led

in the first place by those reincarnated immortal souls of whom he was

convinced she was one, possibly the greatest. So he interpreted her

horoscope, laughing at the narrow wisdom of the Western mind which could

see naught but a ridiculous position in the peerage of Europe; the

starry hieroglyphics plainly indicated that she was to rule her sex and

lead it to victory.

All this was highly gratifying to Julia (to whom would it not be?), and

feeling herself destined to greatness, found its spiritual part simpler

of achievement than if the suggesting had been lacking. In this ideal of

perfection there was no question of eliminating human nature, with its

minor entrancing elements, its sympathy, tenderness, its power to love;

merely the complete control of a highly trained mind over the baser

desires, the contemptible faults, the foolish ambitions and temptations,

which keep the average mind in a state of bondage, restless, vaguely

aspiring, always dipping, and never happy. Nevertheless, love could be

but an incident. The highest ideal was to stand alone. The greatest

attributes of the masculine and female mind united in one mortal brain,

the ability to obliterate the world at will and live in the

contemplation of knowledge, the irresistible power which comes of

absolute mastery of self and of living in self alone,—unity in the ego,

independence of mortal conditions—here was the perfect ideal which

Julia was bidden to attain, which few but Orientals have even

formulated.

On this high flight had Julia been sustained during the following years.

But, sitting in her gloomy, chill and tasteless London sitting-room, she

looked back upon it as a fool’s paradise, and felt merely a dismal

traveller in a strange city; but recalling a threat of Hadji Sadrä,

dared not send for the man she still liked best in the world.

III

NIGHT came, and the night had no terrors for Julia. Her Hindu master had

taught her the science of relaxation, and given her certain powerful

suggestions, one being that she should fall asleep within half an hour

of going to bed and not awaken for eight hours.

The morning, therefore, found her refreshed; and although she was still

annoyed at the discovery that she had not made herself over once for

all, she had no intention of rocking her feminine ego in her arms again

for some time to come. Another lesson she had learned was to switch

thought off and on; she relegated her femaleness to the depths, and

turned her attention to the work that had drawn her to England. The

monthly bulletins with which Mrs. Herbert had remorselessly pursued her,

alone would have kept her informed on every phase of the Woman’s War,

and she had heard somewhat of it elsewhere. She was satisfied that in

this new and menacing demand for the ballot, women were prompted neither

by vanity nor mere superfluous energy, but by an experience with poverty

which had taught them that this great problem was their peculiar

province. They were prepared to devote their lives to its solution, to

court sacrifices such as man had never contemplated; and they had the

time, the instinct, the practical knowledge, which would enable them, if

armed with political power, to solve this hideous and disgraceful

problem once for all.

Julia had driven through a famine district in India and felt her brain

wither, her veins freeze, as she stared at mile after mile of starving

skeletons, lying or huddled by the roadside, feebly begging with eyes

that seemed to accuse the Almighty for multiplying the superfluous of

earth. What to do for these wretches, dying by the million, she had no

more idea than Great Britain herself; but if it was beyond human power

to grapple with the question of starving millions in a season of drought

in India, so much the more reason to attack the less desperate but no

less abominable question in a land where the poor were the result of the

callousness of man. In dealing with this complicated problem many

lessons would be learned that might later be applied to poverty on the

grand scale.

The ballot, therefore, was but a means to an end, and to assist in

winning it she had returned; meaning to devote to it all her time, her

energies, and her talents. But must she join this new “militant

movement”? She frowned with distaste. As to many at that date, it seemed

both foolish and vulgar. Moreover, like all fastidious women that wish

for fame, she shrank from notoriety, from figuring in any sort of public

mess. However! She should soon be given her rôle, and whatever it might

be, she was resolved to play it to a finish, and without protest.

Meanwhile she was eating her breakfast, the one appetizing meal in

England, and when she was further refreshed, she opened the newspaper on

the tray, remembering the disaster in San Francisco. The news was more

encouraging. The city was still burning, but the loss of life had been

comparatively small, and the inhabitants were either escaping in droves

to the towns across the bay or camping on the hills behind San

Francisco. Once more Julia’s thoughts flew to Daniel Tay, and she

conceived the idea of writing to him. Surely an old friend could do no

less, and now if ever he would be grateful for remembrance.

Therefore, as soon as she was dressed, she went to the desk in the

drawing-room and committed the most momentous act of her life. She wrote

to Tay a long and lively letter, full of feminine sympathy, of concern

for his welfare and for that of his city. There were many allusions to

their brief but unforgotten friendship (she had almost forgotten it!),

references to his boyish sympathy, and assurances that she was now well,

happy, free, and full of interest in life. “Do write to me,” she

concluded. “That is, if you ever receive this; and tell me all about

your life in the past ten years. Did you go on your ten-thousand-dollar

spree? Have you made your great fortune? Are you ruling the destinies of

your city? I have always felt sure you would never stop at being merely

a rich man. And Mrs. Bode? And Ella?” (alas!) “I do hope they have not

suffered too much in this terrible disaster. If you like, if you have

not wholly forgotten me all these years, I’ll write you of my life in

the East these past four, and much else. I remember how freely I used to

talk to you, dear little boy that you were, and I don’t think I have

ever talked so freely to any one else. It would be rather exciting to

correspond with you. But if you have quite lost interest in me, at least

remember that I have not in you,—no! not for one moment—and long to

hear how you have weathered this frightful calamity.”

Now, why do women lie like that? Julia was as truthful as any mortal who

is a component part of that complicated organism known as society may

be, but she wrote these lines without flinching, quite persuaded for the

moment, indeed, that she meant every word of them. Perhaps here lies the

explanation, in so much as all memories are alive in the

subconsciousness, and leap to the mind the instant their slumbers are

disturbed by the essential vibration; there to assume full and dazzling

control. Let it go at that.

Julia, as a matter of fact, looked somewhat dubiously at the last

paragraph of her letter. It was not in the least Oriental. She was also

astonished at the length of the letter itself. She had long since

discovered, however, that there are some people to whom one can write,

and many more to whom one cannot. Oddly enough Nigel Herbert was of the

last. He wrote a colorless letter himself, never striking that spark

which fires the epistolary ardor; but Julia reflected that she could

write for hours on end to Daniel Tay; she felt as if embarked on some

vital current which leaped direct from London to San Francisco, no less

than seven thousand miles. She sealed the letter.

Then she discovered that the sun was out and remembered that she had an

aunt. Her feelings for her only relative in England were not of unmixed

cordiality, but it would be something at least to bask for a little in

the presence of one so entirely satisfied with herself. Moreover, she

wanted news of her mother; and this duty was inevitable in any case.

She determined to walk the short distance to Tilney Street as she wished

to post the letter herself. Still exhilarated at the writing of it, she

ignored the mud of the streets, sniffed the old familiar grimy air, with

some abatement of nostalgia for the East, and even found amusement in

the windows of Bond Street.

When she came to the first pillar box and applied her letter to its

yawning mouth, she paused suddenly, assailed by one of those subtle

feminine presentiments which her long residence in the Orient had not

taught her to despise. She withdrew the letter and walked on, smiling,

but disturbed. She even passed two more boxes, but at the fourth shot

the letter in. Her planets had long since made a fatalist of her, more

or less. And she had adventurous blood.

She found Mrs. Winstone risen, groomed, coifed, with even her smile on,

and seated before her desk in the front ell of the drawing-room,

answering notes and cards of invitation.

“Ah, Julia!” she said casually, as she rose and offered her cheek. “Home

again? How nice. But that coat and skirt, my dear! Quite old style.”

“Rather!” said Julia, making herself comfortable. “I took them out with

me. Who’s your tailor now?”

“Oh, a new man. A duck. I’ll take you to him this afternoon. Just left

one of the big houses, so his prices are quite possible—at present.

Glad you’ve kept your complexion. How is it you don’t sunburn?”

“I don’t fancy people born in the tropics ever do. Glad you haven’t

grown fat.”

“I’d put on a bit if it weren’t the fashion to look like a plank back

and front. I’ve got to the age where I’d look better filled out. ’Fraid

I’m really gettin’ on. Beaux are younger every year.”

“You look quite unchanged to me,” said Julia, politely. “How’s the

duke?”

“Quite fit, I believe. They’re still at Bosquith. Margaret broke her leg

huntin’.”

“Have you heard from my mother lately? I have not, for several months. I

had hoped to find a letter here.”

“I got her usual quarterly page the other day. She seems well enough.

I’ve been to Nevis since you left. Nerves got rackety, and the doctor

told me to go where I’d really be quiet. I was! But I shouldn’t wonder

if I went again some day. Never looked so well in my life as when I came

back. Simply vegetated.”

“And how does my mother look? I cannot imagine her changed—but—it is a

good many years!”

“She looks exactly the same. Ain’t you ever goin’ back?”

“Not until she sends for me. I can’t help feeling that she doesn’t want

me,—prefers not to be actively reminded of the last and most tragic

disappointment of her life. I sometimes wonder that she writes to me.

Her letters are even briefer than those to you.”

“Perhaps you are right. She hasn’t forgiven you—or herself. I tried to

tell her some of your charmin’ experiences with Harold,—there was so

little to talk about, I thought it might be interestin’ to see how she

took it,—but she wouldn’t listen!”

“Poor mother! What a life! I wonder if she would let me have Fanny?”

“Fanny?”

“Yes, I am quite alone, you know. I could do for her nicely, and it

would almost be like having a child of my own.”

“I detest Fanny,” said Mrs. Winstone, with some show of human emotion.

“She’s a minx. Jane will have her hands full three or four years from

now.”

“She was such a dear little thing.”

“Well, she’s a little devil now. I don’t say she mightn’t be halfway

decent if she’d led a life like other children, but she’s never played

with a white child, and rules those pic’nies like a she-dragon—she’s

not too unlike Jane in some things. Her only companion is a washed-out

middle-aged governess, who might as well try to manage a hurricane. Jane

vows she shall never marry. Her mistake in France seems to have fixed

her hatred of man once for all, and although Fanny bores her, she’s of

no two minds as to her duty toward the brat. She is never to meet a

young man of her own class, if you please, and as soon as she is old

enough is to be trained in all the duties relating to the estate. Nice

time Jane’ll have preventin’ Fanny meetin’ men if only one sets foot on

the island; and there’s talk of rebuildin’ Bath House. She’s overcharged

with vitality, that child, she’s a will of iron, and she’s already an

adept at deceivin’ her grandmother—no mean accomplishment! And she’ll

get worse instead of better in that ghastly life. I wouldn’t trust her

across the street three years from now.”

“Oh, the poor little thing! She must be rescued. Surely if my mother

doesn’t care for her she’ll be the more willing to give her up. But she

must, a little. She was strict with me, but always kind and even

affectionate.”

“She’s not to Fanny. She looks upon her as a plague; and with good

reason, for a noisier or more messy child I never saw. But she’ll do her

duty as she sees it.”

“I believe Fanny is really adorable. I shall write at once and beg for

her.”

“You won’t get her, and you needn’t regret it. I’m no fool where my sex

is concerned: Fanny’s the sort that’s put into the world to make

trouble. What are your plans? Shall you take a flat in town?”

“It will depend.” Julia paused a moment and then hurled her bomb. “I’ve

come back to enroll in the Woman’s War.”

“What?” Mrs. Winstone looked about to faint; then her expression became

stony. “Why, women are disgracin’ their sex, makin’ perfect fools of

themselves! Bridgit Herbert must have gone mad. All her friends will cut

her. A woman of her class fightin’ men and sleepin’ in prison! She

deserved all she got, and so will you if you’ve anything to do with

these tatterdermalion females shriekin’ for notoriety. That’s all

they’re after. Forcin’ their way into the House of Commons! No wonder

the men are disgusted. It’s a middle-class movement, anyhow. You! That’s

the reason, I suppose, you don’t mind wearin’ a coat and skirt four

years old.”

“Oh, but I do mind! I hope you’ll take me to your tailor this very day.”

“There! I knew you were jokin’. I should simply retire if I had a

suffragette in the family. Come down to luncheon and then we’ll go out

and shop.”

IV

DURING the early weeks of this same year, Christabel Pankhurst had

established in London a branch of the Woman’s Social and Political Union

founded in Manchester in 1903 by Mrs. Pankhurst. The rooms were in Park

Walk, Chelsea, and here were the headquarters of that “Militant

Movement” so execrated by the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage

Societies, and by Society in general. Their numbers were few, their

funds were almost nil, their years, with one or two exceptions, absurdly

young, they were thrown entirely upon one another for sympathy and

approval, a goodly proportion had already been severely pummelled by men

twice their size, and in the proportion of three or more to one, and

several were still in hospital, injured, perhaps for life. But they had

made all England talk about them, and a few, a very few, farsighted men

had apprehended them as a definite and permanent factor in the politics

of the twentieth century.

Of these was Nigel Herbert, and it was from him that Julia learned all

that she did not know already of their history. Bridgit had sent her

clippings from newspapers containing references to the opening of the

campaign by Miss Pankhurst and Annie Kenny, at the first great Liberal

meeting of the General Election in October, which resulted in their

arrest and imprisonment. At Acca she had heard the movement discussed by

English pilgrims; and in English newspapers, read in continental

reading-rooms, she had come across many comments—indignant, sarcastic,

infuriate—upon the performances of these outrageous females. But from

Bridgit she had not heard since a few days before that lady’s own battle

royal, and it was to Nigel that she turned for unimpassioned

information. He had told her something in the train, and he gave a

concise history of the new movement as soon as he was permitted once

more to sun himself in her presence.

“They’re here to stay,” he said. “I know six or eight of them

personally; been making a study of them, although they don’t know it.

They’re like no other women under the sun—nor any sun that has ever

shone. They’ve a new group of brain cells, and something new and big is

coming out of it. The only historical analogy I know of is those old

martyrs that died in the cause of some new departure in religion; those

that make such excellent subjects for stained-glass windows. They’ve got

the same look those old leader-martyrs had when chained up to the stake

and waiting for the faggot. The same grim patient mouths, the same

clairvoyant eyes, as if looking straight at the unborn millions

liberated by the martyrdom of the few. Their enthusiasm is cold—and

eternal. They are as deliberate as death. There are no better brains in

the world. Precious few as good. They never take a step that isn’t

calculated beforehand, and they never take a step backward.

Discouragement and fear are sensations they have never experienced. When

they are hurt they don’t know it. They fear injury or death no more than

they fear the brutes that maul them. In short, they’re a new force let

loose into the world; and the geese outside put them down as hysterical

females. But if this silly old world had always been quick to see and

wise to act we’d have no history. So there you are.”

And the next day Julia accepted this estimate without reserve. Having

introduced herself at headquarters, registered, and paid her dues, she

sat for a time listening to a quick incisive debate upon all steps to be

taken in the House of Commons, on the night of the 25th, in case the

Woman’s Suffrage Resolution, for which Mr. Kier Hardie had secured a

place, should be talked out by its enemies.

After a time Julia forgot to listen, being quite convinced that they

would act as they purposed to act, and make no misstep. Their looks

interested her far more than their words. With possibly two exceptions,

whose flesh gave them a superficially conventional appearance, they did

not look like women at all. They looked pure brain, sexless, selfless,

ruthless. Most of them had as little flesh as it is possible to carry

and live, as if Nature herself had sent them into the world trained and

hardened for fight and for no other purpose whatever. Julia saw not the

slightest evidence of personal ambition in those grim set faces, with

eyes that were preternaturally keen in debate, and, to use Nigel’s word,

clairvoyant in repose; merely that stern inflexible purpose which has

been the equipment of martyrs since Society emerged out of chaos; but

directed by a mental power, a modern balance, that saved them from the

stupidities of fanaticism. That they were ready to go to the stake, or

the hangman, she did not doubt, and it was possible that some of them

would, unless the enemy came to its senses in time; but that they would

fail in their purpose ultimately was as unthinkable as that they would

ever lay down their arms. Truly a new force unleashed. Were these the

immortal women?

Julia felt thrilled, exalted. All the iron in her nature, a gift of

inheritance which had saved her from degradation and melancholy and the

common foolishness of women; which, in a word, had made her stronger

than life, rose from its long sleep and exulted. Here was a career, and

here were associates worth while. The cause of woman in the abstract had

left her cold, but when she realized the immense brain power, the

unqualified courage, the unhuman endurance, imperative to put the right

sort of new life into a great but long moribund cause, and sweep it to a

triumphant finish, she felt on fire with enthusiasm; the abilities she

had so long played with crystallized suddenly and leapt at their

opportunity. Some day she should command these women, or their

successors, and to do that would be as great a feat as to lead them to

victory. She was more than willing to consecrate her personal ambition

to the future of her sex, but that she never could lose sight of it

would but give her an additional power. She could become as grim, as

relentless, as indomitable as they, but she doubted she could ever be as

selfless, or if she wished to be. For a moment she envied as much as she

admired them, but the personality she once had believed murdered by her

husband had long since revived with a double vitality, and the time was

not yet when it could dissolve in the crucible of a cause.

When the meeting broke up she asked to be given active work to do, being

well aware that one must serve before fit to command. They had been

taught to expect her by Mrs. Herbert, and her offer of service as well

as her donation was thankfully accepted. One of their number was told

off to instruct her, and she was ordered to hold herself in readiness to

go to the Midlands and take part in a by-election, working to defeat the

liberal candidate if he persisted in his attitude of hostility to

woman’s demand for the vote. She and her present instructor, Mrs. Lime,

should heckle him when he spoke, canvass, distribute suffrage

literature, and speak against him in the market-place, or at any corner

where they could gather a crowd.

The latter part of the program was by no means to Julia’s taste, but she

had made up her mind to obey orders, and she took them in the same

matter-of-fact fashion in which they were delivered. Mentally, she

shrugged her shoulders. If these women could stand it, she could. There

was not a coarse, a vulgar, a hard face among them. And should she not

exult in the prospect of a stirring career, the constant outlet for her

energies, the lethe for her womanhood? The more adventurous the details,

the better!

“She looks like Lady Macbeth,” said one of the girls as Julia departed

with an armful of literature, and accompanied by Mrs. Lime. “Cool,

calculating, ambitious, intellectual, unscrupulous in the grand manner.”

“H’m,” said another, dubiously. “Lady Macbeth had her weaknesses, and

lost her mind,—something Mrs. France must retain if she is to be as

useful to this cause as Mrs. Herbert and Lady Dark would have us

believe.”

“Lady Macbeth up to date, then. The original was shut up in a castle

with too few interests and opportunities; nothing to distract her mind.

And remember she accomplished her purpose first.”

V

IF one will dig deeply enough into the psychology of those great

enthusiasms which have altered the course of history, one will generally

discover some personal, overlaid, self-forgotten motive which bred the

martyrs and kindled the leaders necessary to arrest the attention of the

world, and make the vast number of converts essential to give any cause

dignity and insure to it victory. It may be an acute disappointment in

human nature, some assault upon highest instincts or treasured

convictions, or even disappointed ambition; but above all is it likely

to have its seed in that burning hatred of injustice which animates all

minds with a natural bias for reform. The Prophets may have been

inspired and preordained, but leaders and martyrs hardly, although they

are entitled to the first rank in the history of the Great Causes.

With Bridgit Herbert it had been not only the profound reaction of a

fine mind from the empty life of society, but the bitter recognition

that she had lavished the wealth of her nature on a handsome fool, who

laughed and kissed her when her ego struggled out of its embryo and

looked for wings on his. Then had come the amazing discovery that the

men she most liked, of whose friendly devotion she had felt assured, had

no possible use for her when they found that she purposed to console

herself with her intellect instead of with themselves; that so slight

was the impression the greatness in her nature had made on them, they

would be the first to balk her on every issue she held most dear. Her

vanity soon healed, but she had been cut to the quick; and all the

obstinacy, scorn, and strength in her arose, and counselled her to pay

back to man something of what woman had suffered at his hand throughout

the ages.

It is possible that if Christabel Pankhurst, bred on suffrage as she

was, had not been refused admission to the Bar when she applied to the

Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she might not have conceived the

Militant Movement at the psychological moment. Julia needed no further

inducement to enter the career she once for all elected to follow that

afternoon in Chelsea, but she, too, needed the sharp personal jolt to

banish the abstract, and substitute the concrete enthusiasm; and she got

it long before her impersonal ardor had time to cool.

Ten days after she had received her first instructions, she arrived with

Mrs. Lime in the Midland town where the by-election campaign was to

open. Mrs. Lime was an experienced heckler, and was already acquainted

with the inside of prison and gaol, but unknown in the Midlands. Julia

had found much inspiration in Mrs. Lime, a typical product of that

awakening which began in 1901. Her small body looked as if it might have

an unbreakable skeleton of steel, and her gaunt, dark, rapt face was

deeply lined, although she was but twenty-four. Like Annie Kenny, she

had been a half-timer at the loom at the age of ten, and had worked in

the cotton mill until she married a plumber eight years later. Her

husband died when she was twenty-two, and she was using his savings in

the cause which she knew to be the one hope for thousands of girls,

overworked and underfed, as she had been. In her early youth she had

managed, against desperate odds, to acquire an education of sorts, and

her speeches were remarkably effective; terse, logical, and informing.

Once she would have worshipped the luminous beauty of this new recruit,

but now she merely regarded it as a practical asset.

“Don’t let yourself run down,” she said to Julia as they sat in their

hotel the night before the opening of the campaign, discussing their

own. “Keep that hair bright, and wear your good clothes, as long as

you’ve got them. Our ladies think too little about clothes, and its

natural, being at this business all their lives, as you might say. But

with you it’s different. You’ve got the born style, and you’d have hard

work looking dingy. Don’t try. You’ve got just the air and the beauty to

attract the crowd at the street corner, although you’ll soon be too

familiar a figure to the police to get past the door. But ugly little

things like me can do the heckling.”

The Liberal candidate made his first speech on the following night, but

neither Julia nor Mrs. Lime found it possible to enter the hall. Men

were learning wisdom. All women without cards or escorts were barred.

Both the girls were roughly handled as they attempted again and again to

obtain entrance; and as there was no crowd outside to address, they went

back to the hotel to await the candidate’s return. They sat in the

passage, and when he came in, shortly after eleven o’clock, Mrs. Lime

immediately confronted him.

“You will tell us, if you please,” she said, “what you mean to do about

giving the ballot to women.”

The candidate, who had congratulated himself upon accomplishing the

exclusion of suffragettes from the hall, and had even taken the

precaution to leave by the back door, colored with annoyance; and his

eyes flashed contempt upon the plain little figure planted in his path.

“I state my intentions on the platform,” he said haughtily, and

attempted to brush past her. But Mrs. Lime changed her own position and

once more impeded his progress.

“Your intentions regarding votes for women,” she said in her even

emotionless voice. “You are said to oppose it. I warn you that unless

you assert that this is not true, and that you will do all in your power

to assist us in winning the ballot, we shall do all we can to defeat you

in this election.”

“We?” He laughed outright. “How many more of them are there like you?”

Julia rose and came forward. “Two,” she said. “And two against one is a

proportion never to be despised.”

The man stared at her and his overbearing manner underwent a change.

“Oh, you!” he said. “Well _you_ might get something out of a man if you

tried hard enough.”

France had more than once burst out that his wife had the north pole in

her eyes, that it was a waste of time to look for it anywhere else; and

the frozen stare which this candidate received dashed his mounting

ardor. He frowned heavily. “I say!” he said. “Get out of this. It’s no

business for you.”

“Since when have politics ceased to be the business of English women?

You will declare for us publicly and unmistakably, or I shall make it my

business to defeat you.”

He stared at her again, this time in some dismay. He had yet to learn

the power of women in general, when possessed of the brain and courage

and holy fervor that are no mean substitutes for beauty and family, but

he well knew the power that women of the class to which this antagonist

belonged had wielded in the political history of England. For a moment

he hesitated. What was a promise to a woman? And it would be safe to get

rid of this woman as quickly as possible. The other, of course, didn’t

matter. But he was an honest man in politics, whatever his other

failings, and he would as soon have given the vote to the devil as to

women. He turned on his heel.

“Do your worst,” he said. “That’s all you’ll get out of me.”

The next day Julia hired a motor car, and they pursued the candidate

from town to town and village to village. He was contesting a large

borough, whose member, returned at the general election, had died

suddenly. It contained several towns and many villages. In the latter,

Julia and Mrs. Lime visited every cottage, petted the children,

distributed their literature, promised all they conscientiously could if

the ballot were given to women, and implored help in defeating a man who

was an avowed enemy. They converted most of the women, and made no

little impression on the men, most of them colliers, who gathered about

their car in the evenings. The car impressed the men almost as much as

the eloquence of the speakers. Their thick heads, generally thicker at

eight in the evening, were as impervious to female suffrage as the heads

at Westminster, but Julia and Mrs. Lime had borrowed all the arguments

of the Conservative candidate and used them with no less eloquence, and

the more penetrating ingenuity of their sex.

At every hall they were refused admittance. Julia soon grew accustomed

to being pulled about; her arms were black and blue; and she had twice

been obliged to invest in new hats both for herself and Mrs. Lime. Her

diffidence had vanished, and, her fighting blood up, and now completely

interested, she spoke whenever the opportunity offered.

One dark night, when they had had the usual experience at the hall

entrance, they were prowling about hoping to find an unguarded door,

when they espied a scaffolding under one of the high windows. It was

elevated on a rough trestle. The same idea animated them simultaneously.

Without a word they climbed the precarious foothold, tearing their

skirts, and splintering their hands, and felt their way along the

scaffolding until they were close to the window. Then they unrolled

their white banners inscribed “Votes for Women,” and waited. The

candidate, who possessed the inestimable advantage of belonging to the

party just come into power, was lauding its virtues, promising all

things in its name, and reiterating the abominations, now somewhat

stale, of the party that was responsible for the colossal war taxes, and

the industrial depression. There were pertinent questions asked, which

he answered good-naturedly; for although he would fain have gone through

his carefully rehearsed speech uninterrupted, he was far too keen a

politician to insult a voter.

“Now!” whispered Mrs. Lime, and simultaneously two heads appeared at the

window, two banners were waved, and Julia, having the more carrying

voice, cried out:—

“And how about Votes for Women?”

If a flaming sword had appeared, there could not have been more

excitement. The candidate turned purple. The chairman jumped to his

feet, crying “outrageous,” and the audience took up the word and shouted

it, some shaking their fists. Several men ran down the aisle.

“The stewards!” whispered Mrs. Lime, “and they’ll be joined by the door

police.”

It was darker than ever without, after the glare of the hall, but once

more they felt their way along the scaffolding, reached the uprights,

and clambered down just as a dark mass turned the corner of the

building.

There was no time to cross the street. Mrs. Lime seized Julia’s hand and

darted under the trestle. “Lie down with your face to the wall, and

close,” she commanded.

Their clothes were dark and they were unobserved by the men, who stood

for a moment looking up.

“I’ll go up this side,” said one of the policemen, after straining the

back of his neck in vain, “and you go up the other. The rest look in

that shed behind. That’s where they likely are.”

The men mounted gingerly, the others disappeared. Mrs. Lime gave Julia a

tug, they wriggled out, and ran round to the front entrance. Before

those on the rear benches knew what was happening, the two girls were

halfway down the middle aisle. Then another roar arose.

“Put them out! Put them out!”

Julia and Mrs. Lime attempted to mount a bench, but were pulled down.

About them was a sea of astonished indignant faces, such as, no doubt,

confronted the British working-man years before when he so far forgot

himself as to demand equal political rights with the gentry and the

employer. Julia laughed outright as she saw those scandalized faces, but

it would have fared ill with them when the police and stewards came

running back, had not several gentlemen, who, unwilling to see violence

done to women, however they might disapprove of their tactics, formed a

bodyguard, and escorted them to the door. Quite satisfied with their

night’s work they went to their inn and slept soundly.

VI

SO far they had not spoken in any of the larger towns, for in this

manufacturing and colliery district it was difficult to collect a crowd

in the market-place except on Saturday nights, and heretofore heavy

rains had kept the men indoors with their pipe and beer. But they

distributed their literature on the streets, and in shops and hotel

dining-rooms, visited every house to which they could obtain entrance,

and scored one signal triumph. The Conservative candidate, watching

their progress, and having no fixed scruples to violate, came out

sonorously for Woman. He even called on them personally and promised his

active help in Parliament if they would canvass for him. They did not

place too much faith in his word, but they were out to defeat an enemy,

one who was also a member of that party responsible for all the

indignities visited upon their cause. By this time that momentous night

had come and gone when Mrs. Pankhurst and her band were forcibly ejected

from the latticed gallery above the House of Commons, after hearing

their bill talked out; and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, after receiving

the deputation of representative women with amiability and

encouragement, had astounded them with the warning that they were to

expect nothing from his Cabinet. So war had been declared on the

Government, and this was merely the first of the by-elections which was

to give the women an opportunity to exhibit their power.

“We’ve a chance!” said Mrs. Lime, as the Conservative candidate smiled

himself out of their presence. Her dark eyes were full of light, her sad

mouth smiling. “Oh, but a chance! If we could only win! There’d be some

head-shaking up there at Westminster.”

“Well!” said Julia, also triumphant, “at least we’ve made the Liberal

candidate look persecuted. I know that every time he catches sight of us

he longs to call the police.”

The following day was Saturday and they arrived at one of the most

important towns in the district. The sun was out and it was immediately

decided to take the corner hustings. By this time, Julia had quite

forgotten her old objection to street corners; it seemed to her that she

had forgotten everything she had known on any subject than the one in

possession; and she was further inspired by the discovery that her

tongue possessed both persuasiveness and power. Even bad speakers like

to hear themselves talk as soon as they have mastered fright, and never

was there a good one that would not rather be on the stump than off it.

Julia was enjoying this hard fighting as she had never enjoyed anything

in her life.

The town was surrounded by cigarette factories, and on this Saturday

afternoon it seemed to Julia that every girl they employed must be

promenading the streets with her hooligan swain. They were bold-looking

creatures, cheaply and loudly attired, and universally hilarious. By

this time Julia had concluded that the common people of this section of

the Midlands were more common, more rude, more offensive than any she

had encountered in England, with the possible exception of the

barbarians in the London slaughter houses. Even Mrs. Lime remarked sadly

that comparative prosperity did not seem to improve her class. But Julia

had yet to learn that these young people had a brutal license in their

natures, a ribald savagery, that was a part of their general

indifference to morals or any sense of decency.

She and Mrs. Lime immediately divided the town into districts, and

seeing a group on a corner near to which there was a convenient box,

Julia mounted her platform and began to address the eight or ten young

men and women. At first they merely gave a rough laugh; then one cried

out:—

“W’y, it’s a bloomin’ suffragette! Oh, I say, wot a lark! W’y ain’t ’er

golden ’air ’anging down ’er back?”

Julia had heard remarks of this sort before, although her speaking

experience had lain almost altogether in the villages, where the human

animal, less sophisticated, is also less aggressive. In a few moments

the group had become a crowd that blocked the street, and she quite

believed that no speaker had ever looked into so many hard and hostile

eyes. The face of every man wore an insulting grin. She went on

unperturbed, however, welcoming them at any price, for this was her

first opportunity to address a town crowd. The more hostile, the better.

She was confident of getting their ear in time.

But it was soon evident that they had no intention of giving her their

ear. They roared with laughter, they gave unearthly cat-calls. Finally

one hurled a vile epithet at her. This was a signal which unloosed their

proudest accomplishment. When they had exhausted their vocabulary, and

it was a large one when it came to obscenity, they began again; but

finding that she looked down at them undisturbed, merely waiting for a

pause, they began to grow angry, and pushed forward. Julia’s box was

already against the wall, there was no possible means of retreat, and

there was not a friendly face in that ugly crowd. But she was not

conscious of any fear. Not only was she fearless by nature, but she had

been trained during these last four years to impassivity in any crisis.

What she really felt was the profound disdain of the aristocrat for the

brainless mob, and although she did not realize this at the moment, it

did flash through her mind that here was one section of the poor that

might go to the devil for all the help and sympathy it would ever get

from her. But of these and other uncomplimentary sentiments she betrayed

no more than she did of fear, although she was not sufficiently hardened

to suppress an inward quiver at the foul language with which she had now

been assailed for some ten minutes.

“Oh, I say!” cried one of the girls, when her companions finally paused

to draw breath. “Is she a bloomin’ stature? Let’s put some life in ’er.”

And another shrieked, “Wot’s golden ’air for if it ain’t ’anging down

’er back? Let’s put it w’ere it belongs.”

“That’s right.”

The crowd surged forward. Julia, looking into those primitive faces, the

faces of good old barbarians, full of the lust to hurt, wondered if her

time had come. She made no doubt that they would tear the clothes off

her back, perhaps trample her underfoot, for they had lashed their

passions far beyond their limited powers of restraint. She squared her

shoulders. For the moment the world looked to her full of eyes and

fists. Then she hastily glanced to right and left. Down the street two

blue-clad figures were advancing, accompanied by the Liberal candidate

and another man. She drew a long breath of relief. She had grown to look

upon the British policeman as her natural enemy, but now she hailed him

as her only friend on earth.

She raised her arm and indicated the approach of the law. One of the men

followed her gesture, and shouted, “The bobbies.” The clinched hands

dropped and the crowd fell back. As the two policemen strode up Julia

expected to see official fists fly, and as many arrests made as two men

of law could handle. To her amazement the policemen pushed their way

through the mob and jerked her off the box.

“Nice doings, this,” cried one, indignantly. “Obstructing traffic and

collecting crowds. Ain’t you suffragettes ever going to learn sense?”

“I!” cried Julia, with still deeper indignation. “You had better arrest

your townspeople. Couldn’t you hear them using language that alone ought

to send them to jail? And couldn’t you see that they would have torn me

to pieces in another moment? Why don’t you arrest them?”

“It’s you we’re going to arrest. It’s you that’s obstructing traffic and

collecting crowds, not them. They’re out for their ’arf ’oliday.”

“But I tell you they threatened me with violence.”

“Serves you right. You come along, and if you make any fuss you’ll get

hurt, sure enough.”

And Julia, filled with a wrath of which she had never dreamed herself

capable, was dragged off between the two policemen, while the crowd

jeered and howled, and the Liberal candidate stood on the other side of

the street laughing softly.

Once her fury so far overcame her that she struggled and attempted to

break away, but one of the men gave her arm such a wrench that she

walked quietly to the Town Hall, thankful that anger had burned up her

tears.

At the Town Hall she was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing

traffic, and promptly committed to a cell, to await trial on Monday

morning.

So Julia spent twenty-four hours in prison. She could have summoned

sleep at night had she been disposed, but nothing was farther from her

thought. She was too infuriated to sleep and forget for a moment the

gross injustice to which she had been subjected by the laws of a country

supposed to be the most enlightened on the globe. She had mounted a box

to make a peaceable—not an incendiary—speech, something men did

whenever they listed, and with no fear of punishment. Her denouncement

of the Liberal candidate and her plea for Suffrage would have contained

no offence against law and order; but she had been treated as if she had

incited a riot, while the vile creatures that had insulted and

threatened her were not even reprimanded.

In a mind naturally fair and just, nothing will cause rebellion so

profound as an act of gross injustice. Had Julia, from a safe vantage

point, seen Mrs. Lime or any other woman treated as she had been, her

soul would have boiled with righteous wrath; but it takes the personal

indignity to sink deep and bear results. Julia in that long night and

the day that followed, cold, half-fed, alone, in a vermin-ridden cell,

forgot her ambitions, her artistic pleasure in playing a part well, and

became as rampant a suffragette as any of the little band in Park Walk.

She would war against these stupid brutes in power as long as they left

breath in her, fight to give women the opportunity to do better.

Something was rotten when justice worked automatically without logic;

and if men were too indifferent to effect a cure, it was time another

sex took hold. No wonder these chosen women were indifferent to

femininity, and gowns, and all that had given woman her superficial

power in the past. What mortal happiness they missed mattered nothing.

They were equipped for one purpose only, to avenge and protect the

millions ignored by nature and fortune, and the victims of man-made

laws; and if they were mauled, and torn, and despised, and killed, it

was but the common fate of the advance guard, the martyrs in all great

reforms; they were quite consistent in being as indifferent to sympathy

as to the denunciations of the fools that saw in them but a new variety

of the unwomanly woman.

And so Julia received her baptism of fire.

VII

ON Sunday afternoon, her wrath had burned itself out, but not its

consequences. As she had no intention of making herself ill she was

about to lie down and sleep, when her door was opened and she was told

that she was free.

This was by no means welcome, for she wished to express herself in

court, refuse to pay her fine, and go to gaol, that being the program of

the suffragettes. But she was told to depart, and no explanation was

given her. Wondering if the duke had been telegraphed to, and brought

swift influence to bear, she left the prison with some uneasiness; her

old-fashioned relative was her one source of apprehension. If

disapproval overcame his sense of justice and he cut down her income,

she should have that much less to devote to the Suffrage cause.

At the inn she found that Mrs. Lime, who had escaped arrest, was out,

and ordered the maid to bring her bath. When she had finished, the maid

returned with her tea, and stood by sympathetically.

“So you’ve been to prison?” she asked.

“I have,” said Julia.

“That’s no place for you, mum. Wot’s the perlice thinking of, giving you

wot for like that?”

“Do you belong to this town?”

“I do, mum.”

“Then, let me tell you, it is a disgrace to a civilized country.”

“Oh, I say!”

Julia, who wanted to talk to somebody, gave an account of her adventure

with the mob, and while omitting their language, let it be understood in

her descriptions of their appearance and performance.

The woman nodded emphatically. “Right you are. It’s them factory girls.

They’re no good. Trollops, all of ’em. W’y, d’you know, I worked in one

of them factories for seven years, and I was the only girl in the lot

that kep’ me virtue.” (She looked like a black-and-tan terrier and was

not much larger.) “That I did, though!” And she nodded her head as if

keeping time to a hymn.

Julia, who had finished her tea, stood up and began to unpin her hair as

a hint that she would like to be alone. But the woman set down the tray

and exclaimed in a voice of rapture:—

“Oh, my eye, wot _hair_! Oh, but I’ve always admired golden ’air, me

own’s that black.”

“It’s very disreputable hair at present,” said Julia, amiably. “It

hasn’t been down since yesterday morning. Naturally I couldn’t use the

prison comb—if there was one!”

“Oh—would you—would you let me brush it, now?” cried the woman,

eagerly. “I’ve never ’ad me ’ands in ’air like that. I’d enjoy it, that

I would.”

“Why—if you like.” Julia, who was tired, felt that it would not be

unpleasant to have the services of a maid once more.

She sat down and the woman began to unbraid the long plaits.

“Are you sure you have the time?” asked Julia, perfunctorily.

“Oh, yes. Me ’usband’s ’ead waiter, and the master would give up the

’otel before ’im; and he—Jim—-don’t dare say nothing to me, for fear

I’d caterwaul. I can do that awful. Oh, my eye, but this is ’air!”

She shook out the long strands and held one up to the light. “Oh, Gawd!”

she cried, with mounting fervor. “No wonder them trollops wanted to mar

you. They were jealous, that’s wot. They’d ’ave cut it off if the

perlice ’adn’t come along, and pinned it on their own ’eads. And

beauties they’d ’ave been!”

“Do you suppose they were drunk?”

“’Alf and ’alf. It wasn’t time to be full up, but you oughter see them

in the market-place at ten o’clock!”

“What makes them so brutal, then? I’ve never seen anything like them in

England.”

“Oh, I fawncy they’re about the worst England’s got. Maybe it’s the

cigarette factories does it, I cawn’t say. But they’re a rotten lot, and

all me sisters was the same. I ’ad a blond sister, but her hair was more

whitish, not gold like yours. She was pretty and more gentle-like, but

she went to the bad fast enough. I swore I’d keep me virtue an’ I did. I

never spoke to a man I wasn’t introduced to proper until the night I met

Jim in the merry-go-round—in the same seat, he was, and he made up to

me—fell that in love he couldn’t see straight, and when he tried ’is

nonsense, he got wot for and then he respected me from that day

forth—I’ve read me penny dreadfuls, you see. Well, we got married

proper, and now we ’ave two good positions, and may own a public some

day. It pays to be virtuous, it do. He isn’t the only sweetheart I ever

’ad, either,” she rambled on; and Julia, seeing that nothing would

quench her, resigned herself, for the woman’s touch was deft and light.

“I ’ad a fine ’andsome sweetheart once—Jim ain’t nothing to look at,

and would drink if I didn’t caterwaul so—’andsome and upstanding he

was, and all the girls was after him; and he was steady, too, had one

job and kep’ it. He was in a big Manchester draper’s shop. He used to

come ’ere, and I used to visit me aunt—he was me cousin and ’is name

was Harry Muggs. He was in love with me that desperate he’d swear he’d

kill himself if I didn’t ’ave ’im. He knew I’d kep’ me virtue, and he

thought me grand. Once he was down ’ere after me ’ard, and we took a

walk and come to a pond, and when I told ’im once more I wouldn’t ’ave

’im, and started to go ’ome, I was that tired saying no, he caught me

round me waist and ’eld me over the pond and swore he’d drop me in if I

didn’t ’ave ’im. I was that frightened I thought I’d die, and I screamed

like I was stuck. But I wouldn’t give in, and then he threw me on the

bank and run off and I’ve never seen ’im since.”

“Why didn’t you marry him, if he was such a paragon?” asked Julia,

languidly.

“Oh, I couldn’t, mum. He was a chance child. Me aunt ’ad ’im by a butler

where she lived. I ’adn’t kep’ me virtue for _that_—wot’s the matter—”

Julia was doubled up.

“Oh—nothing—really—I think I must be a bit hysterical after my

experience. Would you mind telling me what the weather looks like? It

was rather threatening when I came in.”