mizzles like,” she said dubiously. “But I don’t fawncy it’ll rain ’ard.
’Ere comes your friend. She was ready to drop last night. My, but she’s
that stringy to look at.”
“Would you mind telling her that I am here? She must be anxious.”
The woman departed unwillingly, her eyes fixed to the last on the hair
Julia was braiding. A moment later Mrs. Lime came in. She looked thinner
and gaunter than ever, but her eyes burned with sombre enthusiasm.
“Oh, you poor dear!” she exclaimed. “But you mustn’t mind, for the more
unfair treatment we receive, the sooner will the right-thinking people
of the country be roused, and the more recruits we shall get. That’s
where the law shows its stupidity.”
“I didn’t mind in the least,” said Julia, dryly. But she made no
confidences. That violent upheaval and readjustment were sacred to
herself.
“There’s another thing,” said Mrs. Lime. “A reporter was with the
Liberal candidate and the policemen at the time of your arrest. He’s
also the correspondent of a London paper. He hunted me up at once to get
some particulars about your family, etc.—”
“Oh!” exclaimed Julia. “Did you tell him?”
“Why, of course. We cannot have too much publicity, and you will be a
great help to us. The story will be in the London newspaper to-morrow
morning as well as here. No doubt there will be a London reporter down
to interview you—”
“Ah!” Julia’s color had been steadily rising. “I can’t have that.”
“There’s only one thing to think of,” said Mrs. Lime, severely, “and
that is the cause. People complain that we’re sensational, trying to
attract public attention. Why, of course we are. Rather. How otherwise
can we make ourselves known, much less felt, become a political issue,
if we don’t take the obvious method? No newspaper would notice our
existence if we didn’t make ourselves ‘news’ and force their hand.
Peaceful demonstrations, like shrinking personalities, belong to the
dark ages of Suffrage, when nothing was accomplished. Now, if that
reporter comes down from London, you must talk. Jump at every chance to
further the cause that’s given you. It isn’t so often we’re
interviewed.”
“Very well,” said Julia, and half wished she had changed her name and
dyed her skin and hair.
As Mrs Lime had anticipated, a reporter of one of the less conservative
London newspapers arrived on the following morning. He was accompanied
by the correspondent of a chain of American newspapers, commonly
referred to as “Yellow.” Mrs. Lime saw them first and gave a full
account of the campaign. Then Julia descended, and having made up her
mind to talk, she talked to some purpose. When she finished, there was
no confusion in either of the young men’s minds as to her opinion of the
Government, the police, and the prison system of England. Her
description of the mob was so graphic that the American correspondent
nodded with approval.
“Say!” he exclaimed. “You ought to have six months of this experience,
and then go over to the U. S. and lecture. You’d make money for your
cause all right, all right. Better think it over.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Mrs. Lime, with enthusiasm. “We will think
it over.”
During the afternoon the girls once more started off on the heels of the
candidate. But their work was almost done. The polling took place on the
following Thursday. Almost as much to their own amazement as to that of
every one else, the Liberal candidate was defeated by a small majority.
But if it was the first demonstration of the power of the Militants in
by-elections, it was by no means the last.
There was no question in the London press of ignoring this issue and its
cause. With one accord it expressed astonishment, indignation, and
righteous wrath, at the unpatriotic selfishness of a set of women that
were a disgrace to their country and their sex.
VIII
MRS. LIME was recalled to London, and Julia, being now full fledged, was
ordered to make a tour of certain districts of the north and west, speak
in all circumstances, and make converts not only to the cause of
Suffrage, but to the Woman’s Social and Political Union.
Julia for the next four months spoke nearly every day, sometimes twice a
day. She had encounters with the police, although she tactfully avoided
street corners, and they hardly could eject her from a hall she herself
had hired. There were towns, however, where the feeling among men was so
strong against the new manifestation of Suffrage, that owners refused to
rent her their halls, and then she spoke either in a friendly
drawing-room, at a working-girls’ club, on the common, or, on Sunday, in
an open field. On the whole, however, she had far less trouble with the
authorities than she expected and fewer unfriendly demonstrations.
Occasionally, the rear benches were occupied by hooligans employed to
howl her down, and to these infringements the police were deaf; but in
the audience there was usually a sprinkling of respectable men who had
come to hear what she had to say; and when they were tired of the
interruptions, they arose as one man and disposed of the intruders.
She found herself addressing great and greater crowds, for the north was
awakening in earnest; the laboring women had been ready for years, and
now the middle class, long torpid, was furnishing recruits every hour.
Annie Kenny’s second and long imprisonment caused wide-spread interest
as well as indignation, and her release was celebrated by great meetings
of welcome both in London and the provinces. After addressing crowds in
Lancashire, and receiving an ovation, she went to Wales to speak, and
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Bridgit Herbert, once more whole and
belligerent, held a series of meetings in Yorkshire.
Like a heather fire the new gospel of Suffrage swept over the north, and
where a few months since the W. S. P. U. had struggled along with a few
hundred members, it now reckoned its thousands.
Julia, like many another aspirant for fame, found that she must submit
to have notoriety thrust upon her first. She was regarded as “news” both
by the British and the American press. Reporters followed her about, she
had been ordered by headquarters to have her photograph taken, and it
frequently embellished the sumptuous weekly newspapers. There was no
question of her popularity as a speaker, aside from the growing
popularity of her subject. She not only spoke with a full command of the
principles and intentions of the new movement, often brilliantly, and
always well, never with sentimentality, and often with power, but she
was a charming figure to look at. She had sent for her trunks and her
maid.
She rarely felt tired, for the artificial method of relaxation which she
had been taught, and practised daily, gave both brain and body a more
complete rest than sleep itself. Therefore, was she always in form, and
never looked worn. As her fame grew, more and more of the county people
attended her meetings, and many distinguished names upon which the
Government relied for opposition were added to the list of converts.
She was also complimented by covert offers from the pillars of the
anti-suffrage party, and one supporter of the Government went so far as
to make love to her; then, finding himself inoculated with his own
virus, retired in discomfort after a dry reference by Julia to Parnell
and Mrs. O’Shea.
“How do you like being famous?” asked Mrs. Herbert one day. They had
planned to meet for Sunday.
“Famous? Is that what you call it?”
“Rather. We live in the twentieth century. The advertising poster is the
modern work of art. I’m told your picture has appeared in every
illustrated paper in the United States. It’s not only your beauty and
brains and Kingsborough connection. Some people have a magnetism for the
public, and you are one of them. You strike the spark.”
“The oddest thing about it all is that there doesn’t seem to be the
least jealousy among the women in London. They might easily resent that
a newcomer with no more ability than themselves should suddenly shoot up
into what you call fame. It’s almost uncanny.”
“Jealous? Not they. What they’re after is freedom and power for women,
and they don’t care tuppence whose sun shines the brightest in the
process. They’re depersonalized, those women.”
“All the same it’s uncanny. It makes them the more formidable. As Nigel
says, they’re a new race. I believe I’m growing just like them. I’d go
to the stake myself, or blow up Westminster. The only thing that worries
me is the attitude of the duke. Of course he is furious, looks upon me
as a disgrace to the family, particularly since I can’t keep out of the
newspapers. I’ve had two letters from him, threatening to withdraw my
income if I don’t retire into private life. He’s not the man to take
back what he has given, without qualms, but I fancy he will, and that
will leave me with exactly two hundred pounds a year,—all that I am
allowed from Harold’s estate. That would merely keep me, and so far I’ve
never called upon the Union’s exchequer. I wish I might always be able
not only to pay my own expenses, but contribute largely to the fund.”
“The duke running the W. S. P. U. is sufficiently humorous. However,
you’ve nothing to worry about. The American public would pay much gold
to hear you speak, and you can always write.”
IX
EARLY in September Julia spoke in Bradford and Keighley, and on the
following Sunday she slipped away and went to Haworth, not only to rest
and read a number of letters forwarded by her solicitors, but to worship
at the shrine of the Brontës.
She took a fly at the station in the valley, but halfway up the steep
road which leads to the village she descended precipitately; the fly and
the horse had executed a right angle. She walked the rest of the
distance, the rough stones giving a foothold, and soon reached the long
crooked street which begins with the Black Bull Inn and finishes at the
moor. Short streets ending nowhere radiated from this central
thoroughfare at irregular intervals. There was no business to speak of
in Haworth. The men worked in Keighley or Bradford, the young women in
the worsted mills of the valley. Julia, driving the day before, had
watched the long procession of girls, shawls pinned about their heads,
file out of the factories, and, two by two, cross the valley either to
the road that led up to Haworth, or to another village higher above the
moor. It was the proud boast of Haworth that every inhabitant had a bank
book, and Julia felt it would be a relief to visit one village where
there was no poverty. It looked trim and prosperous, picturesque though
it was, and such men and women as were to be seen had none of that
pinched hopeless look which had put fire into so many of her speeches.
After she had duly admired Branwell Brontë’s chair, which the landlady
of the inn assumed she had come to see, and had made it understood that
she really intended to stay overnight, she was shown to a large room
upstairs, overlooking the churchyard. The inn, in fact, formed one of
its walls, and there were flat stones directly beneath her window. It
was a gloomy crowded churchyard, with toppling box-tombs and heavy dusty
trees, its farther boundary the low stone parsonage that had sheltered
the Brontës. They, too, could read the inscriptions on the stones from
their windows. Small wonder they died of consumption.
From the street came the sound of children’s voices and wooden clogs.
Her room, with its old four-post bed, was almost sumptuous. Julia would
have liked to stay a month. But time pressed. She established herself
comfortably and slit the large envelope containing her letters.
At sight of one she sat upright and changed color, but put it aside to
read last.
The first she opened was from the duke. He wrote tersely and to the
point. This was his final warning. The next time she should receive his
communication through his solicitors. Another was from Hadji Sadrä
containing much advice and some approval. Her mother, to whom Mrs.
Winstone had sent numerous printed accounts of her “performances,” wrote
as briefly as the duke and even more to the point. Julia was a public
woman and a disgrace to her blood. (It would never have occurred to Mrs.
Edis to add that she was a disgrace to her sex.) The request for Fanny
had some time since been curtly refused.
Then she looked at the envelope of Tay’s letter, and finally opened it.
To her surprise it was dated May second. It began characteristically.
“Do I remember you? Gee! Well! Rather, oh, princess of the eyes
and hair. Things have happened since last we met, not forgetting
April sixteenth of the current year, but I can see you as
plainly as I saw the chimney fall on my bed on the date just
mentioned. Yes, I’ve grown some, and you may imagine me, at the
present moment, if you please, dressed in khaki and top-boots,
with a beard of three weeks’ growth (I’m as smooth as a
play-actor generally) and almost as much dirt; for water, like
everything else in this now historic town, is mighty scarce. At
the present moment I am stifling in the linen closet, that being
the only room in my wrecked home without a window; if I lit a
candle where it could be seen I’d be liable to a bullet in my
devoted head, such being the stern ardors of those new to
authority. I’ve not had a minute to answer your letter in the
daytime. What between standing in the bread-line for hours on
end (often with a Chinaman in front and a nigger behind) that my
poor old parents may not starve—every servant deserted on the
16th—and cooking two meals a day in the street (lucky I’ve
always been a good camper), and hustling round Oakland the rest
of the time, trying to patch up the house of Tay, besides
inditing many pages of foolscap to assure the eastern and
Central American firms we do business with that we are still at
the same old stand (so they won’t sell us out to somebody
else),—well, my golden princess of the tower, you can figure
out that I’m pretty busy.
“I wish you could have seen the old town, for there’ll never be
a new one like it, conglomeration of weird and separate eras as
it was; but on the whole I’d rather you saw it now. It makes the
Roman Forum look like thirty cents. Imagine miles of broken
walls, columns, and arches, of all shades of red and brown and
smoky gray, yawning cellars full of twisted débris, one heap of
ruins with a dome like an immense bird-cage, still supporting
something they called a statue, but never much to look at until
its present chance to appear suspended in air. If it wasn’t the
wreck of _my_ town, I’d have some artistic spasms, but as it is,
I’m only thinking out ways and means to get rid of these
artistic ruins as quickly as possible.
“It’s rather fine, do you know, the enthusiasm of these
homeless, meatless, pretty-well-cleaned-out inhabitants, for the
great new city that is to be. We all feel like pioneers—and
look like them!—but with this difference: we _know_ that we are
in at the making of a great new city, and the old boys never
knew what was coming to them, or how soon they’d move on. Here
we stick, and sixty earthquakes couldn’t shake us off, or take
the courage out of us. It is almost worth while.
“And, oh, Lord, how we do love one another. (Or did.) No
‘Society.’ All Socialists (accidental and temporary but real).
It’s a good object-lesson of what the world would be if there
was no money in it. But alas! over in Oakland—where there is a
little business doing—the phrase ‘earthquake love’ is now
heard, and carries its own subtle meaning. I don’t fancy the
original man in us has altered much. He just got a jolt out of
the saddle, but the saddle is still there and so is the man.
“It seemed odd to get your letter, fairly reeking with the Old
World, in the midst of all this chaos, and for at least half an
hour I was transported, hypnotized. You’re some writer, dear
lady, and in those all too brief paragraphs I saw considerably
more of England than I have recalled during the past ten
years—to say nothing of what you call the East. What an
experience of life you have had, you dainty princess that should
be kept in a glass case. But thank God you’ve shut _him_ up. By
Jove, I believe if this hadn’t happened I’d have taken the first
train east (our east), and the first boat over to renew my
former distinguished offer. I’ve never been hit so hard, and
I’ve known some corking girls, too. I don’t say I haven’t been
hit, but not all the way through; at all events you have the
honor of having received my one proposal. Perhaps I’ve worked
too hard to think seriously of getting married, and I’ve gone
little into society—sometimes one party a winter. Yes, I was
well on the road to making my everlasting pile when the old city
went to pot, but this fire (the earthquake wouldn’t have stopped
business twenty-four hours, bad as it was) has set us all back
ten years. But I’ll get there all the same, and I rather like
the prospect of the fight.
“So! You’re in sympathy with the suffragettes? I can’t see you
in any such rôle, and hope you’ll have a new fad by the time you
get this—heaven knows when that will be, for our post-office is
stuck in the mud, and those across the bay are so congested with
mail that it will take another earthquake to turn them inside
out. I got your letter by a miracle.
“To go back to your suffragettes, I haven’t heard a word about
them since April 16th; or any other outside news, for the matter
of that. The newspapers set up at once in Oakland, but nobody is
interested in any news outside of this afflicted district, and
the newspapers don’t print any. All Europe might be at war and
we wouldn’t be any the wiser. Nor would we care a five-cent
piece if we were.
“But I hope they’ve been suppressed, and that when I get
over—as I will the moment I dare leave—they will be as dead as
William Jennings Bryan. At all events I hope you will be well
out of it. I don’t like the idea one little bit. Why don’t you
come here? To a traveller like you that would be but a nice
little jaunt. The railroads are going to advertise our poor old
city as the greatest ruin in the world, and we hope the tourist
will swallow the bait and drop a few thousands in our lonesome
pockets. This house will be patched up as soon as the great
American Working-man can be induced to work, but at present he
is camping on the hills and eating out of the hand of the
Government. Until that paternal hand is withdrawn not a stroke
will he do. But we could put you up somehow, and maybe you’d
enjoy it.
“Poor Cherry lost her house on Nob Hill, and all that was in
it—except her jewels. She put those in a pillow-case and hiked
for the Presidio—her machines were commandeered at once to
carry hospital patients to safety, to say nothing of dynamite.
Now, she’s camping with us and does the house work, and pares
potatoes, while I fry them—on a stove we’ve rigged up just off
the sidewalk, and surrounded with inside window-blinds. She’s
game, like all the women, doesn’t kick about anything, and only
screams when we have one of our numerous little imitations of
the grand shake. Emily, luckily for her, had married and gone to
New York to live, but her personal income will be nil for some
time to come. Her name is Morison, if you ever happen to run
across her.
“Well, dear little princess, my candle is guttering, and I can’t
buy another to-night. No stores in S. F., and it’s a toss-up if
I remember to get another to-morrow in Oakland. The moment two
men are gathered together—well, you have imagination—we talked
nothing but earthquake and fire for a week after April 16th, and
now we talk nothing but insurance. What’s more, I’ve had
architects at work for the last three weeks drawing plans for
our new business house, and when I can induce the great American
Working-man to clean out the débris, I’ll get to work and do
something besides talk. But what a letter from a pioneer and
busted capitalist! Yes, please write to me and tell me the story
of your life—perhaps I should explain that that is slang. But
you couldn’t write enough to satisfy me, and the minute I’m free
(as free as an American man ever is) I’ll make tracks for little
old London—unless you come here. Why not? Do. You shall have
your daily tub if I have to haul water from the bay. And I _can_
cook. If I’ve got any imagination, you’ve a lien on it all
right. Perhaps you think this is what you call chaff. Just you
wait. I’m not what you call reckless, either, but—Oh, hang it!
I’m in no position to write a love letter.
“Yes, I’m twenty-six, but I can tell you there are times I feel
forty. I’ve worked like a dog these last five years, and not
only at business. We—a few of us have been trying to clean up
the politics of this abandoned town. Well, it’s all to do.
“Really, no more; I’m writing in the dark.
“But always your devoted
“DANIEL TAY.”
X
JULIA smiled all through this letter, and wondered if the original boy
in some men ever grew up, and if even in the United States there were
another Daniel Tay. Then she read it over again, and then she answered
it. The moment she took up her pen she came to herself with a shock. She
had been travelling between San Francisco and Bosquith, and now she
realized that she had nothing to write him about but her work in the
cause upon which she was embarked. She had, these last months, bestowed
barely a thought on all that had gone before, and she did not feel the
least desire to write of anything else. Would it bore as well as
disillusionize him? Well, what if it did? To write to him again was
irresistible, but she must write out her present self; if he didn’t
answer—well—perhaps, so much the better.
But, beyond the subject, she was at no pains to bore him. She took pride
in writing him a far better letter than her first and gave the liveliest
possible account of her numerous adventures. She even told him all she
had felt during those twenty-four hours in prison, something she had
never intended to confide to any one; but although she would not have
admitted it, she had a secret hankering for his complete sympathy and
understanding.
“And you’ve no idea,” she concluded, “what a wonderful thing it is to
have a vital interest in life, to live wholly outside of yourself, to
strive for a sort of perfection, while at the same time your vanity is
titillated with the thought that you are helping to make history. I
really do not know whether I have any personal ambition left or not.
When I started out I was consumed with it. This great cause was merely
but a means to an end. But now—I don’t know whether it is because I
have never a moment to think of myself, I am so busy, or whether the
cause is so much greater than any individual can be—I don’t know. I
don’t know. The balance may be struck later. The only thing I strive to
hold on to is my sense of humor.”
When this letter was sealed, she had a sudden access of conscience and
indited another to Nigel, whom she had quite neglected since her
departure from London. She reminded him that he had published nothing
for a year, and asked him to consider her suggestion that he go to Acca
and write the Bahai-Socialism novel. “I shall worry until you do,” she
concluded this epistle, “for it would be a thousand pities if the
subject were cheapened by the horde of third-raters, always nosing for
new ‘copy.’ The Bahais want a big man. And how you would enjoy writing
on Mount Carmel. Do write me that you will go at once.”
The landlady knocked and announced that her dinner was ready. She
snatched up Tay’s letter and made an instinctive movement to put it in
her bosom, but was reminded that her blouse buttoned in the back. Nor
had she a pocket. So she put the letter into her hand-bag, and wondered
if fashion would be the death of romance.
After dinner, she started for the moor. She wanted a spray of white
heather, and to walk in the paths of the Brontës. The long crooked
street of the village was deserted, the good people lingering over their
Sunday meal. But Julia felt little interest in them. As she reached the
end of the street and looked out over the great purple expanse
undulating away until it melted into the low pale sky brushed with
white, she was wondering which of these narrow paths had been
Charlotte’s and trying to conjure up the tragic figure of Emily, one of
her literary loves. She walked for several miles and managed to find the
nook in the glen which she had been told by the landlady of the Black
Bull was the spot where Charlotte had sat so often to dream the books
that must have transformed her bleak life into wonderland. No object she
for all the sympathy that had been wasted on her. Immortality! Julia,
whose ego was enjoying a brief recrudescence, felt that it was a small
thing to be half starved and lonely, afflicted by a drunken brother, and
sisters dying of consumption, when consoled with an imagination that not
only swamped life for this poor sickly little mortal, but must have
whispered to her of undying fame. And she had contributed her share to
the cause of which this devotee at her shrine was a symbol, vastly
different from all that is modern as she had been; for had she not been
of the few to make the world recognize the genius of woman? She had, in
truth, been one of the flaming torches.
Julia climbed out of the glen and started to return. After she had
traversed several of the knolls, she saw that the moor down by the
village was alive with people. The landlady had told her that all
Haworth took its Sunday afternoon walk on the moor, but she still felt
no interest in them, and renewed her search for white heather.
She passed the first group and nodded, as she had a habit of doing, for
she had come to feel as if the toilers of England were her especial
charge. They smiled in return, and one stared and whispered to the
others. Julia guessed that she had been at the meeting in Keighley the
night before. The crowd became thicker and she was soon in the midst of
it. She would have been stared at in any case, for strangers were rare
in Haworth. Tourists came for an hour to visit the Brontë Museum, and
hastened off to catch their train. And Julia was fair to look upon and
exceeding well dressed. The girls turned to look after her with
approval, and when she made her way out of what would seem to be a large
family party gossiping pleasantly, and, wandering off, stooped once
more, a girl followed and asked her shyly if she were looking for white
heather.
“Oh,” said Julia, “would you help me? I should like a spray for luck,
and as a memento of your village.”
“It’s hard to find, miss, but we can look. I’ve found many a bit.”
They strayed off together, Julia good-naturedly answering the eager
questions. Suddenly the girl turned.
“Why!” she exclaimed. “They’re all coming this way, and that excited!”
Julia looked and saw that the whole company was streaming toward her.
They paused, held a hurried conference, and then one of the younger
women came directly up to the stranger.
“We are thinking,” she said diffidently, “that you may be Mrs. France,
who spoke last night at Keighley, and has been speaking all over the
north.”
“Yes, I am Mrs. France,” said Julia, wondering what was coming.
“And you really are a suffragette?”
“That is what they call us.”
“We’ve never seen one, only one or two of us who were at the meeting
last night. The rest of us didn’t go, we was that tired, and we’re
wondering if you wouldn’t give us a speech here.”
“Oh—really—I rarely speak on Sunday, and even suffragettes must rest,
you know.”
The woman’s face fell, but she said politely, “Of course. We know what
work is. But we may never have another chance—and we’re that curious.
We’d like to know what it’s all about.”
Julia hesitated. What right had she to refuse this simple request? It
was her business to advance the cause of Suffrage and make converts
wherever she could. Nor was she tired. She was merely in a dreaming
mood, and wanted to think of the Brontës; to anticipate, as she realized
in a flash of annoyance, the rereading of Tay’s letter. She had
deliberately been trying to forget it.
“I will speak with pleasure,” she said. “Have you something I could
stand on? I’m not very tall, you know.”
“One of the men went for a table. We made sure you would be so kind.”
The man was even now stalking up the moor with a kitchen table balanced
on his head. As Julia walked toward the smiling company she felt once
more the ardent propagandist.
“If I may, ma’am,” said a tall young man. He lifted her lightly and
stood her on the table.
“Now,” said Julia, smiling down into several hundred faces, a few set in
disdain, but for the most part friendly, “what is it you wish me to tell
you? How much do you know of this great movement?”
“Well,” said one of the older women, “we read a lot about militants, and
suffragettes, and fighting the police, and going to prison, and big
meetings all over England, and we’d like to know what it’s all about.
That’s all.”
“You might begin,” said one of the men, with a faint accent of sarcasm,
“by telling us what good the vote’ll do you when you get it.”
Julia began by reminding them of the interest that so many of the
factory women of the north had taken in the enfranchisement of their sex
for several years before the militant movement began, and of the many
Annie Kennys whose eyes were opened to the injustice of the absence of a
minimum wage for women. One of the men interrupted her.
“Yes, ma’am, and if you raise women’s wages so that they can no longer
undercut men, the lot of ’em’ll be kicked out.”
“Not all. The best will be retained, for the best are as efficient as
the men. The inferior ones will find other employment, or be taken care
of by men, who will then be able to support their families. They can
return to their place in the home, that woman’s sphere of which we hear
so much.”
This was received with cheers, but the man growled:—
“It’ll take time. It’ll take time. Better let well enough alone.”
“As it is the women that suffer, it is for them to say whether it is
well enough. Of course it will take time. We do not promise Utopia in a
day—nor ever, for that matter. But, if you will take the trouble to
observe, it is the women of this country that are waging war on poverty,
not the men. Without the ballot they are forced to advance at a snail’s
pace. On all the boards to which they are admitted they do the work, and
the men, who outnumber them, defeat every project for the betterment of
the poor that would force the ratepayers to disgorge a few more
shillings. Doctors, and all thinking and humane men, for that matter,
would be thankful if these boards were composed entirely of women, for
they alone understand the needs of other women and of children. Man
lacks the instinct, to begin with, and has long since grown callous to
the sources of his income. Higher wages mean smaller dividends, and he
chooses to close his eyes to the fact that his dividends are largely due
to the toil of wornout women and stunted children; of women that have
all the duties of their households to discharge after they come home
from the mills, children whose minds must remain as undeveloped as their
ill-nourished bodies.”
“You want to go to Parliament, and right all that, I suppose?”
“We have not even thought of it. What we want is the power to send men
to Parliament, who will be forced to keep their election promises if
they would be returned a second time. Doubtless an ultimate result of
the ballot would be a Woman’s Parliament which would deal exclusively
with the Poor Laws. Then the men who oppose us now will be profoundly
relieved that they no longer are obliged to waste valuable hours
solemnly sitting upon such questions as the proper sort of nursing
bottles to be adopted for pauper children, what shall be done with milk,
or whether cabbage is a normal breakfast for school children. Do you
know that if the House sat day and night for 365 days of the year, they
could not begin to dispose of all the bills brought before it, and that
many of these bills are of a pressing domestic nature? However well
disposed, they cannot deal adequately with the Poor Laws, and that they
do not welcome the assistance of women is but one more evidence of that
conservatism in men’s minds which is a logical result of having had
their own way, uncriticised, too long. Their fear of us is childish.
They would not be thrown out of business. Every day they are confronted
by questions of the gravest nature—questions of national and
international policy which require their best faculties and all of their
time. Women have more time than man ever thinks he has, in any case; and
we have the maternal instincts and the nagging conscience which would
force us to discharge our duties to the poor.
“Let me add that the women of this new militant movement have eliminated
from their compositions all the old sentimentality and bathos which
weakened the Suffrage cause for so many years. Sentimentality is
sympathy run amôk. It roused that distrust of men we are fighting
to-day, and made many of their public utterances asinine. You will hear
no frantic protests to-day that women want the vote because they have as
much right to it as men. That is a good argument in itself, but the
women of to-day have progressed far beyond that or even of the old war
cry, ‘Taxation without representation.’ They are animated, in their
greater experience, by one purpose only, the desire to eliminate poverty
and all the evils, moral and physical, that are always its partners; to
reduce the hours of work and increase wages, to give every child good
food, a decent education, and a comfortable home. The millions must
work, but we are determined that they shall work for their own comfort
as well as for that of their employers, that they shall have a
reasonable amount of leisure and of the pleasures of life, cease to be
machines whose only object in living is to contribute to the comfort and
idleness of the thousands above them. We appreciate the wastage among
the poor of England. Given strong bodies and a fair education, many
would rise in the world and have respectable if not distinguished
careers. What we further desire is to give these exceptional boys and
girls a chance, the same chance they would have if born in the middle
class. Beyond that we promise nothing. The point now is, not only that
the misery in this country is appalling, but that these boys and girls
have no chance of rising out of the rut unless possessed of positive
genius. Hundreds have latent talent, thousands a certain amount of
ability which would raise them above the station in which they were
born—”
“Are you a Socialist?” demanded an abrupt voice.
“Yes, and England is already half socialistic in her institutions, only
the pill has been gilded with less offensive names, so that she need not
recognize it. But that old-time Socialism, which was only a weak
step-sister of anarchy, no longer exists save in the minds of the old
and tired theorists. The younger men and women who are giving their
brains and time to the question would do nothing so futile as to divide
the wealth of the world into small and equal shares. The modern
Socialists would have as little mercy on the idle and vicious and lazy
as Society has. All must work, and if the confiscation of much land
forces the aristocrat to work, so much the better for him. All will be
given the chance to work, to rise. More than that no mortal laws can
accomplish, or should attempt, in justice to the human race. Socialism
perfected is neither more nor less than the primal law of Nature
reëstablished, rescued from the vagaries of a blundering civilization
and crystallized into brain. Man will work, do his share, or go out into
the by-ways, lie down and die.
“A word as to our much-abused Militant Tactics. Although we are women we
are by no means too proud to learn from men. If you will glance back to
that time when the laboring men of England were demanding the
franchise,—in the ’30’s,—you may recall that they did not confine
themselves to heckling, holding indignation meetings, forcing their way
into halls where great men were speaking, and demanding their rights.
They arose and smashed things. They burned the Mansion House in Bristol,
the Custom House, the Bishop’s Palace, the Excise Office, three prisons,
four toll houses, and forty-two private dwellings, and they set several
towns on fire. So far we have borrowed only the mildest of their
tactics. We have hurt no one physically, and we have been moderate in
all our demonstrations; but because we are women we are as severely
criticised as if we had blown up the entire Cabinet and set fire to
London. Such is the hopeless conservatism of the human mind. But because
we _are_ women and enlightened, we hope we never shall have to resort to
measures so extreme. We hope to educate the average mind out of its
conservatism. If we fail, then of course we shall have to forget that we
are women and emulate the great sex which now thinks it despises us, but
is proving every day how much it fears us. As yet, it does not fear us
enough. That is the whole trouble at present.”
Although she had too much tact and experience to talk down to any
audience, however humble, she knew when to drop the abstract and divert
with anecdote and illustration. Her address had been listened to
respectfully, and interrupted with many a “Hear! Hear!” and when she
paused, flung out her hands, smiled, and said, “Now let me tell you the
true story of several of our adventures with the police,” they clapped
and cheered. She talked for ten minutes longer, and her anecdotes, while
making them laugh delightedly, inspired as much indignation as if they
had been delivered with solemn passion; no doubt more so. When she
finally leaped down, they escorted her in a body to the inn, where those
that were not too bashful shook hands with her heartily; and many vowed
they would “turn it over” and “pass the word on” to those that had not
had the good fortune to hear her.
XI
JULIA, excited, and well content, ran up to her room. As she opened the
door she was astonished to see Bridgit Herbert standing at the window,
scowling at the tombstones.
“You! How jolly!” she cried, as Mrs. Herbert turned. “How did you trace
me? I purposely left no word—”
“You forget your maid—”
“What is the matter? You look— Sit down.”
“I’ve come north to see you. The devil is to pay.”
“The Militants haven’t disbanded—”
“Good lord, no. They’re all right. It’s I that have gone clean to the
devil.”
“You?” Julia stared at her. Mrs. Herbert certainly looked worn, even
haggard. The fresh color was no longer in her dark face, her black eyes
were heavy as if with much wakefulness. Even her spirited nostrils hung
limp.
“Do come out with it!” gasped Julia.
“I’m in love,” said Mrs. Herbert. And she sat down.
“Oh!” exclaimed Julia. And then she added thoughtfully, “What a bore.”
“Isn’t it? And I thought I was immune, having had the disease so hard
the first time. But the young thirties! Oh, lord!”
“Can’t you get over it?”
“Can’t you imagine how I’ve tried? That’s the reason I look like this.
It’s a wonder he doesn’t run when he sees me. But it’s no use. I’m done
for.”
“What sort of a man can he be to bowl you over? Do I know him?”
“Possibly. He’s a cousin of Geoff’s, although I never met him till
lately, as it happened. They weren’t friends, and he was away nearly all
the time I was coruscating in society. His name’s Robert Maundrell; he’s
also a cousin of Lord Barnstaple, who married that beautiful
Californian. It was at their place, Maundrell Abbey, where I went for
the Twelfth, that the mischief was done. I met him at Cannes, but he was
clever enough to amuse me without rousing my suspicions; to interest me,
and then make me miss him a bit. At just the right moment he
reappeared—at Maundrell Abbey! Heaven! but it’s bad. After all I’ve
gone through for the cause, after standing on my own two feet for years,
not giving a hang if all the men on earth were exterminated—rather
wishing they were! I feel like a slave. It’s hideous to feel that you no
longer belong to yourself.”
“But you won’t chuck the cause?”
“Rather not. But the trouble is that I thought I was made on the same
pattern as those women up in London, desexed, all brain and nerve and
religious devotion to an ideal. And now I’m—Oh, lord! And to make
matters worse I’m marrying a man who cares about as much for the cause
as he does for Mohammedanism. Oh, damn! And I thought myself possessed
of the true martyr’s fire. I wonder if you are?”
“Bridgit!” said Julia, with equal abruptness. “Be quite honest. Did you
never think of this, never dream of falling in love once more—of the
real thing?”
Mrs. Herbert stood up and thrust her hands into the pockets of her
covert coat. For a moment she glared at Julia, then shrugged her
shoulders. “Well—I don’t fancy I admitted it at the time—but I also
fancy it was in the back of my head more or less. Oh—here goes—I used
to wake up in the night and wonder in a sort of fury where _he_
was—what are you laughing at?”
“Oh, I fancy we idiots are all alike.”
“So you’ve been through it, too? Good. But you’ll probably win out.
You’ve got the ruthless will, like those others. Oh! I worship the very
air they breathe. They are the true women of destiny, equipped at every
point, a new sex. And I—the worst of it is, when I did give my fancy
rein it was to imagine a man who would be a great intellectual force in
the world, a great editor or statesman to whom men deferred, who would
fight single-handed, if necessary, to give the vote to women. I
shouldn’t have cared a bit if he had sprung from the people. Should have
rather liked it, as I’d have felt the more consistent. But—well, we
make ideals out of imported cloth, and then we marry our own sort. I
fancy Nature takes a hand in manipulating our instincts. Oh, lord!” And
she began pacing up and down the room.
“You haven’t told me anything about Mr. Maundrell. He can’t be a fool—”
“Rather not!”
“What attracted you to him? I don’t fancy I ever met him—”
“You’d remember him if you had. He’s beastly good-looking, and he’s
travelled and explored, and is as well-read as any man I ever met. He
went out as a volunteer in the South African war and got three medals,
one with clasps. Now he’s standing for Parliament—at a by-election next
week. Oh, he’s all right, as the Americans say, only he doesn’t care a
hang for Suffrage—”
“He’ll make you desert us—”
“No, he won’t. I may be an ass, as the man said in ‘The Liars,’ but I’m
not a silly ass. If he were as bad as that, I’d have been strong enough
to resist him. No, he’s big in all his ideas. He only exacts the promise
that I shall take part in no more raids, run no further risk of gaol,
and not make engagements that would separate us. Otherwise, I can speak
in public, and give up every moment of my time to Suffrage when he is
not at home. He will also vote for our bill when it comes up.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Oh, it could be worse. But I wish I’d met him when I was eighteen, or
had proved my strength by rooting this out, or had never met him at all.
I’d have preferred the second, for I gloried in my strength. I’m not one
of the chosen, like those women up there. That’s what rankles. I wonder
if you are!”
She sat down abruptly and leaned forward. “I wonder? You’ve beauty.
There’s the rub. They won’t let us alone. They give us the chance.”
“Tell me,” said Julia, hastily, “how did he ever make you consent? He
must have had a difficult wooing.”
“He almost shook his fist in my face, if you will know; swore he’d have
me if he had to beat me into submission—oh, worse! He didn’t frighten
me, but he fascinated me. If the primal woman is born in you, there she
is for good and all. I had the haunting sense that this man was my mate,
the other half of me, and when a woman gets that idea into her head
she’s done for. It’s more than passion, more than any longing for
companionship. All sorts of subtle chords vibrate, inheritances from all
the women, complex and simple, that have contributed to her brain cells.
When those chords begin to hum you’re done for. I’m not one of the
chosen, that’s all there is to it. I’ve got to marry and be happy.”
And then they both laughed.
In a moment Julia said grimly, “The only thing to do is to set your
ideal of man so high that no mortal can fill it.”
“Rot. When the man comes along that can set those chords humming, ideals
fly off in company with good resolutions. Now tell me your experience.
You’ve had one of some sort. It’s only fair you should tell me. I’ve
admired you more than any living woman, and I’d feel better if I could
admire you less. You look ruthless, and you’ve had a good training to
make you so—I used to rejoice at it—but, well, you are young and
beautiful and you’ve red hair. Out with it.”
Julia, who under all her careless frankness, was intensely reserved,
colored and hesitated; but this exasperated baring of her haughty
friend’s inner self merited response, and she told the tale of her
sudden awakening in India, of her deliberate search for a lover. Mrs.
Herbert nodded triumphantly.
“But you see,” added Julia, “I couldn’t find him, because I wanted too
much. They all made me laugh sooner or later, and a finer set of men I
never met. They are all picked men out there, so to speak. They must be
almost perfect physically, or they couldn’t stand the climate; they are
absolutely without fear; they have every manly qualification, in fact,
and quite enough brains. Many were charming. But they all seemed to melt
into one composite man and made no deeper impression on me than if they
were a statue erected to the glorification of British manhood. One can’t
marry that.”
“All the men in the world are not in India. How about Nigel?”
“I like him better than anyone, but I can’t fall in love with him. I
don’t fancy I’d have the chance again even if I wanted it. He’s now the
head of his house and the last of it, and he takes his duties as a Whig
peer with Socialist tendencies very seriously. To marry me would put an
end to his public usefulness, for he would have to live out of England.
When a man of Nigel’s sort reaches his age he faces his
responsibilities, and when he balances them against a love-marriage that
would cut him off from a good half of them he keeps out of temptation. I
like him all the better for it, and if I had not become almost
depersonalized in this cause, the woman in me might—”
“I don’t think it’s Nigel, but I do believe that one day you’ll have a
battle to fight—”
“Not now. For a few days after I came back from India, perhaps. But I
doubt if I ever have time again even to think of it. When I’m not
talking, or speaking, or writing, I deliberately relax, as my master
taught me, and that banishes thought. Every morning—during my walk—I
recall some bit of the knowledge I was taught by Hadji Sadrä, and I
could do this if my mind were excited, threatened with a deluge. Oh, I
have had discipline of all sorts!”
“It sounds formidable enough. Perhaps you are one of the chosen. But—”
“I even wrote a long letter this morning to a man I might say I don’t
know,” continued Julia, now in the full tide of self-revelation. “And it
interested me mightily for the moment—”
“Ha!”
“Not at all. He was a boy of fifteen when I met him at Bosquith. I had
forgotten his existence, but when I heard of the frightful disaster in
San Francisco, his home, I thought it only decent to write to him. Of
course he answered, and as his letter was lost for months—I only got it
yesterday—and as he really has been through a tragic experience—he
lost his fortune, and just missed losing his life—it was the least I
could do to write again.”
“H’m. There’s nothing more fascinating than a correspondence with a man
you don’t know. I’ve had one or two. The saving grace is, that you are
always disappointed when you meet them. They are commonplace, if only by
contrast with the arbitrary figure in your imagination. But it’s a bad
sign—or a healthy one—that you can be interested even to that extent
while conducting a Suffrage campaign with the fury of the martyr in your
soul—I can’t imagine any of those women up there—”
“It means nothing to me!” said Julia, angrily. “And if I hadn’t posted
my letter, I’d tear it up. I don’t care in the least whether I ever see
him again or not. And I probably won’t, for I wrote of nothing but the
cause. I couldn’t think of anything else. He’ll hate that. Besides, he
can’t leave California for years yet. You know what those American
business men are. He’s keen on making his millions. That’s all he thinks
of.”
“Good. See that you don’t go to California when they send you over to
lecture. Let me see his letter?”
Julia made an instinctive, almost tigerish, and wholly traditional
movement toward her bosom. Then she remembered that the letter was in
the hand-bag, laughed, and produced it.
“Why not?”
Mrs. Herbert’s black eyes flashed through it.
“H’m!” she commented. “He seems to be a jolly sort. He’s a man. And
there’s a sort of fresh Western breeze in his letter. I can smell and
hear the Pacific—and see those wonderful ruins. I love that
expression—‘makes the Roman Forum look like thirty cents.’ That’s
fifteen pence—one and three. It’s not effective at all translated. But
I’ve always liked American slang. There’s something big and free and
young about it. And so is this man, I should say—”
“Oh, nonsense! Don’t romance about him, please. He’s the antithesis of
the man I’d made up in my imagination when I bolted from Calcutta—”
“That makes just about as much difference as if I had made up my mind
that Robert Maundrell should fall in love with somebody else. Mr. Tay
may give your ideal one in the eye that will make it look like—thirty
cents. Describe him to me. Is he good-looking?”
“I don’t know,” said Julia, crossly. “I’ve forgotten. He was a dark wiry
boy with a lean face and a square jaw. He suggests the North American
Indian, but is a new type altogether—Western American, no doubt. But
I’d rather talk about you. You’ve disappointed me, but I don’t see why
you should be quite so cut up about it. Ishbel is married and in love
and has two babies, but she has come out as an ardent suffragette; so
much so that her business has suffered—”
“Yes, but she marches in no parades, and takes part in no raids. Dark
will stand for a good deal, but he’s threatened to go to India if she
goes too far; and she won’t. Trust her. She’s just like any other woman
in love. And Dark’s a good fellow, not the sort a woman would care to
sacrifice. So is Robert. There you are.”
“I love Ishbel as much as ever,” said Julia, thoughtfully. “But somehow
I don’t find her as interesting—”
“A happy woman has no psychology in her. Her mind may go on developing,
but her ego is at a standstill. That’s where I’m aiming! And I wanted to
stand alone! I’m not the myself I thought. That’s what cuts. After those
six men mauled me and broke my rib, and I lay in that wretched prison
all night, I thought I was seasoned for life. And I wasn’t!”
Julia sprang to her feet. “What’s the use of worrying about what can’t
be helped?” she cried angrily. “Let’s go down to supper.”
XII
A FORTNIGHT later Julia was recalled to London. She took a small flat in
Clement’s Inn, Strand, where the W. S. P. U. was about to establish
itself. She learned immediately that on the first day of the autumn
session of Parliament a deputation of women intended to go to the Lobby
of the House and send word to the Prime Minister that they expected some
assurance from him regarding the prospects of franchise for their sex.
Hundreds would await the news without.
By this time there was no danger of any definite move by the women being
overlooked by the press, and they were treated as news no matter with
what lack of sympathy. As to be spectacular whenever the opportunity
offered was a part of their policy, they overlooked no means to that
end; quite aware that Julia was as valuable an asset as they were likely
to have, she was drafted to make one of the deputation to the House of
Commons on October third. By this time other women of the aristocracy
had flocked to their standard, and several prominent in the arts, but
Julia had a very special personality, and a value for the press which
insured her a separate “story” whether or not she were the chief figure
in any of the carefully rehearsed scenes executed by the Militants.
Therefore, having received her instructions for the third, she called on
the duke the night of the second. She had not heard from him since the
letter received at Keighley, nor had she heard from his solicitors.
The duke was in the library and rose ceremoniously as she was shown in,
but did not offer his hand. Julia took the same chair from which she had
defied him in a period of her life that now seemed identical with a lost
personality.
“I should have called long ago,” she said, “but you were at Bosquith
when I returned from Syria, and I have been out of London ever since.”
“I am quite aware of your movements during the past five months.” The
duke spoke with all his innate formality, and infused his tone with icy
sarcasm, but Julia had detected in a glance that he looked far more of a
human being than of old. Bridgit had told her a strange tale of riding
over to see her “Aunt Peg” when that dame was suffering from a broken
leg, and catching a glimpse of the duke in an adjoining room, flat on
the floor, with his boy and two little girls racing up and down his
small but sacred person. Julia had accused Mrs. Herbert of trying to
impose on her credulity, but as she inspected that meagre countenance
she found it decidedly less gray and tight than formerly, the eyes
brighter, the prim lines of the mouth relaxed. Yes; he was, conceivably,
the uxorious parent.
“Of course I know you must hate what I am doing. If you and thousands
like you didn’t hate it, we shouldn’t be doing it, if you don’t mind a
bull. But that is the point, you see. We intend to fight to the last
ditch, and then win. You don’t guess this and so you prolong the fight.
I haven’t come to convert you, but because I know exactly how you feel.
You have behaved splendidly toward me, for I know you have longed, for
months, to recall your generous allowance. You can’t make up your mind
to violate your word, so I have come to renounce it myself.”
“Ah!” The duke rose and began pacing up and down the room. “Yes—you
would suspect—you are clever enough. Ah! If you would only divert your
cleverness into a respectable channel. How could you go off your head
about this atrocious nonsense?”
“Nonsense? Come down to Clement’s Inn and talk to the women for a few
minutes. You might not approve of us any more than you do now, but you
would no longer use the word nonsense. You might hate, but you would be
forced to respect—”
“Respect? Respect women that have parted with the last shred of female
decency, that are distracting this poor country with their puerile
demands, when she is faced by such grave problems within and without
that we need every ounce of our energy, every moment of our time—”
“Quite so. That is one of our staple arguments. We are only asking to
help you. Turn the Poor Laws over to us, with the ballot, and you will
have that much more time and energy to devote to the survival of the
House of Lords, and to the survival of Great Britain among nations.”
“And have a new and worse problem on our hands to distract us! It is bad
enough now with half female England gone mad and making this great
Empire ridiculous in the eyes of the world—do you fancy _we_ are mad
enough even to argue the question of giving you _power_? Never. You can
raid the House of Commons and force your way into the house of the Prime
Minister, and fight with the police and go to gaol, and shriek and
parade, until the day of doom, and you’ll be no nearer your object than
you are to-day. That is what has made me lose all patience with _you_. I
trained your mind, I watched you grow under my roof into as intellectual
a woman as is possible with the limitations of the female brain; I
guided you in your study of politics, and, save when you took the wrong
side out of sheer perversity, I was quite satisfied with you. And now!
It has saddened and angered me beyond description to see you making a
public spectacle of yourself, suffering bodily injury, disgracing
yourself, your sex, and your country, in a ridiculous and hopeless
cause.”
“Well, you see, we don’t believe it to be hopeless, and that sustains
us.”
“What difference does it make what you believe?”
“Not so much now, except as a means to an end. You said a moment ago
that we had lost every shred of female decency, in other words,
forgotten that we were mere women. Does not that strike you as
portentous?”
“It strikes me as hideous.”
“I mean that when women have been battered and mauled and hurt, as we
have been, without a second’s loss of courage or resource; when we have
not once failed to score every point we have preconceived, from the
heckling of candidates half out of their senses, to arresting the gaze
of the civilized world,—doesn’t it strike you that we may be something
more than mere women?”
“Yes, fools, and shameless ones.”
“Well, I share Nigel Herbert’s theory, that we are a new sex and a new
race. A new force let loose into the world, is how he expressed it. When
I went north five months ago the Union in London numbered only a few
hundreds. Now it’s as well known as the Liberal party. And all of the
new active members have the same set grim intent look, although many are
still in their teens. I believe they were born that way and only waited
for the call. Not one of them looks as if she had ever given a thought
to a lover—”
“And you extol them for that?”
“No, I merely mention it. You see, all revolutions demand and breed
their martyrs; people who were born, so to speak, to fight and die in
that cause and for no other purpose whatever. Hundreds of thousands will
join us as converts, but only a limited number will join the fighting
army. That sort of thing is in a woman or it isn’t. Many will help us
with money and name and sympathy, vote when their time comes, and
cheerfully accept such political duties as may be thrust upon them, but
they are too soft, what you call too womanly, to fight. We make no
complaint. The race must go on and these women may be depended upon to
take care of it. But all these girls that are flocking to our standard,
that speak to jeering crowds on street corners, that are hustled and
twisted and pinched by policemen—when they interrupt meetings, or sell
literature on the street—they are made of different elements, they are
the ones chosen to win a cause, not to enjoy its victory. What matters
it to them whether they are maimed for life, whether their youth goes
before they have known any of its rights? Nothing. It is not of the
least consequence. We sacrifice them as ruthlessly as they sacrifice
themselves, as we would sacrifice ourselves. It is only the principle
that matters. Let them die in a good cause, and be grateful for the
opportunity. So they would, if they gave even that much thought to self.
That is what you cannot understand. If you did, you would know what I
mean by the word portentous—”
“How do you like the prospect of looking like those women—gray and
dingy as the bark of an old tree?”
“Oh, they don’t all look gray and dingy. We have handsome women in the
W. S. P. U.—several that are older than I. Many women are born dingy.
Others have merely that freshness of youth which is as likely to vanish
after one year of domestic life, as after the same time spent in
fighting for a cause that will improve the lot of women in general.
Don’t worry about me. What looks I have are indestructible. I learned
secrets in the East. I know how to rest—a lesson many of these young
enthusiasts wouldn’t learn if I could teach them. They are screwed up to
be martyrs and won’t have anything else. But the heads of any movement
must be all that and more, so I have no intention of going to pieces.”
“I am told that if—I—a—withdraw the seven hundred and fifty I have
allowed you, you may be persuaded to go to work on a newspaper or make
money in some other way—I understand you give the greater part of your
income to this abominable cause—”
“Yes. I know how you must feel about that. I made sure you would
withdraw it before this—”
“I have tried to! I have been on the point of writing to my solicitors
twenty times. But it would be the first time in my life that I had ever
broken my word, taken back what I had given, and I have not been able to
make up my mind to do it.”
“I know, so I shall do it for you. I’ll write to your solicitors
to-morrow. I shall still have two hundred a year, and I am sure now that
I can make money—”
“Make money! It is sickening. Women of our class don’t talk about making
money.”
“No, but a good many of them would make it if they could, and more than
you know turn an honest penny—”
“Oh, let me keep my illusions!” The duke flung himself into a chair and
grasped the arms. “Can you imagine what it is to me to see my great
country going to the dogs? Socialism, democracy, the daily increasing
power of a class that in my youth knew its place and kept it? And now
women degrading their sex and proselytizing thousands that would have
remained content with their duties to home and society if let alone!
Why, you hear nothing but this infernal Suffrage—” The duke was never
so impressive as when mildly profane. “Margaret, of course, is
unaffected, but the women that gather at my board! They babble about
nothing else, whether for or against. To my mind the very subject among
all decent people should be tabû. I sometimes feel as if I could hear
the greatest nation the world has ever seen rattling about my ears. My
poor country! And I would have her impeccable always in the eyes of
Europe—” (It was characteristic that he omitted the rest of the world.)
“I would have her lower and middle classes respect her unquestioningly,
without presuming to rule. The present Government is an abomination, and
the number of labor representatives in Parliament is a disgrace in the
history of England. And now the women! They should have pity on our
troubles and give us their assistance, instead of adding to our problems
and making us ridiculous. A fine reputation we are getting abroad—that
we can no longer manage our women, that we are obliged to resort to
physical violence, as if we were returned to the dark ages! Oh, that we
could shut them up in harems! Let the Turks take warning.”
“Well, you can’t shut us up, and you can’t manage us, and that is the
whole point. English women have grown up on politics; they have learned
as much at the table as in the schoolroom; the bright ones have grown
more and more like their fathers, and now you behold the result. As for
the Mohammedan women—Ferrero calls attention to the fact that the
British in India have noted that in public administration certain women
keep the spirit of economy with which they manage a home; and that is
why, especially in despotic states, they rule better than men. So, give
us, who have had a vastly wider experience, the vote, and be grateful
that we are willing to help you.”
“Never. You will never obtain the franchise. Put that idea out of your
head. Why not go and live on the continent for a while? The society in
Vienna is delightful—”
Julia rose. “I’ve said all I came to say, and more. I am very grateful
for your generosity in the past, and I only wished to disabuse your mind
of any fear you might have of subjecting me to privations. I shall
manage splendidly. I pay very little for my flat in Clement’s Inn—”
The duke writhed. “I can’t do it!” he cried. “I can’t! I gave you my
word, and that is the end of it. Besides, you lived with me so long that
you are, in a sense, of my house. Keep the money, but for heaven’s sake,
come to your senses. I only ask one favor now. Take no part in these
disgraceful raids and street scenes.”
Julia hesitated, but she was betraying no secret, for the women never
struck without warning. “I’d like to thank you, go, and say no more, but
I think I should tell you that a number of us are going to attend the
opening of Parliament to-morrow and demand a hearing. Of course, there
may be trouble with the police—”
“Do you mean that those termagants will begin to worry us on the very
first day of Parliament?”
“We lose no time. We’ll get in if we can, and if we can’t—well, we’ll
make ourselves felt, one way or another.”
“I—I’d be grateful if you would give me your promise to stay at home.”
“You see I have given my promise to go to the House.”
“The police will certainly interfere. I fancy they will take the first
opportunity— That is only a hint.”
“Oh, we are quite convinced that the police have their orders from the
Government. But we mind nothing. Nothing! At the same time let me tell
you that we are not going to-morrow with the intention of creating a
disturbance. We are not in love with rows, and although we are willing
to be hurt, we are not in love with that, either. How we behave depends
entirely upon how they behave.”
The duke regarded her for a minute. Then he looked down and tapped a
penholder on the table. “Very well,” he said. “Go with the others, I
only trust and pray—I intercede for you every morning at prayers—that
you won’t be accidentally hurt in these forays, and that you will come
to your senses before long. As soon as you do we should be happy to have
you come and live with us. I—I have always missed you.”
He rose. Julia ran over and threw her arms about his neck. “You are a
dear!” she cried. “And you always were nice to me in your funny way.”
The duke laughed, and disentangled himself.
“There, there!” he said. “You look now about as old as you did when you
came to us. You are not quite remade. I shall hope.”
XIII
“Corker. Please write often. Hearing from you too good to be
true. Letters like what rain would have been on April 16.
Suffrage and get over it. No game for you. Don’t get hurt again.
Writing.
“TAY.”
Julia found this cablegram on her table when she returned on the
following evening from the House of Commons. Its extravagance relaxed
the angry tension of her mind, and she could imagine no future moment in
which she would be in a more fitting mood to answer it. She removed her
battered hat, washed the dirt and blood from her hands and face, and her
pen was soon flying over large sheets of the W. S. P. U.
“Long before you get this you will have read in the newspapers
the more sensational details of to-day’s encounter between the
Militants and the police, and of its abominable sequel; but
there are details the newspapers never print, and when I relate
a few of them perhaps you will understand why I am not likely to
lose sympathy with this cause. Besides, to-day, I have a
grievance of my own which has put me in such a state of fury
that if I couldn’t relieve my mind in a letter to you, I should
probably go out and get into more trouble.
“You will have read that twenty of our number, including Mrs.
Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, and Mrs. Cobden Sanderson,
succeeded in obtaining entrance to the Lobby of the House of
Commons, sent for the Chief Liberal Whip, and persuaded him to
go to the Prime Minister and ask if he intended to do anything
during this session toward the enfranchisement of women. The
Prime Minister sent word back that the Government had no
intention of giving the vote to women during their term of
office.
“How many times have they gone to that Lobby full of hope,
inspired by the justice of their cause—however,
sentimentalizing is not in our line. This was the most direct
rebuff they had received, and they made up their minds to hold a
meeting of protest then and there. One of the women sprang upon
a settee and began to address the others. The police had been
watching for a signal. In five minutes they had dragged and
driven the women out of the Lobby, knocking Mrs. Pankhurst down,
and mauling Mrs. Lawrence and the rest in their usual fashion.
When the women waiting outside saw how their comrades were being
handled, they rushed forward, and soon were engaged in a
hand-to-hand encounter with the police. Even those that merely
spoke to the women of the deputation were struck or arrested.
Seven were dragged off to the police station, and a few moments
later, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, knowing that Mrs. Lawrence was
ill, and not willing that the girls should go to gaol without an
older woman, managed to get herself arrested.
“Of course, you want to know what I was doing all this time.
That is what I am writing to tell you, for therein lies my
grievance. And let me tell you that I have a red-haired temper,
quite out of tune with princesses on towers. You might as well
know me as I am and not romance about me any more.
“I went with the deputation to the House, being one of those
drafted, and marching at the head of a large body of members of
the Union that accompanied us, but had no hope of gaining
admittance. At the Strangers’ Entrance we were met by the usual
number of watchful police, and the Inspector asked at once which
was Mrs. France; the others craned their necks and took in all
my points when I was indicated. I was then informed that I could
not enter, that the orders were positive. There was no time to
waste in protest over minor matters, another was chosen in my
place, and I was left outside with the rank and file. I was
annoyed, and had no difficulty in guessing the cause of my
exclusion. The duke may despise the present Government, but he
had not scrupled to bring his personal influence to bear on it
in order to save me from possible hurt—or notoriety.
“However, it is one of our principles to waste no time over
spilt milk, but immediately to place ourselves in readiness for
the next opportunity. I stood quietly with the others as close
to the entrance as the police outside would permit, and waited.
At the end of what seemed interminable hours, during which a
large crowd gathered, many friendly, for the public is beginning
to respect our pluck and persistence, some jeering and making
abominable jokes, our women standing as erect and patient as
soldiers, with eager set faces, ready to fight if need be, but
quite as ready to disperse peaceably if their deputation were
treated with respect—well, suddenly the doors were flung open
and out tumbled a medley of women and police. Mrs. Pankhurst,
with closed eyes and rigid limbs, as if defying the worst,
pushed along on her heels, and finally flung to the ground; Mrs.
Pethick Lawrence, struggling indignantly, torn and mauled; the
rest treated as if they were circus beasts of the forest that
had got loose in the arena,—out they came in a wild disgraceful
scrimmage. What a cartoon for posterity to gape at!
“Of course we made a rush for our friends and leaders, inspired
with precisely the same instinct to go to their assistance as if
they and we had been Men. One of our rigid principles is never
to attack the police, to assume that they are merely obeying
orders; and even when they treat us with their customary
brutality, to struggle, but not to strike; it being our desire
to show, if possible, that a great battle can be won in these
days by brains instead of force.
“Therefore, although we attempted to reach our leaders, it was
merely to rescue them if we could; at all events to show our
sympathy and indignation. But we did not reach them. The police
outside were waiting for their signal; they immediately closed
in and began striking and pushing us about, at first not
ungently: they merely bashed hats, knocked a few shoulders, and
twisted a few arms. But as fast as they dispersed one group, or
turned to attack another, we made a new rush; some in the
direction of Mrs. Pankhurst, others toward those being led off
to the police station, others, myself among them, intending to
force our way into the House, and make another demonstration in
the Lobby. Mrs. Lime had managed to keep by my side, for she
intended to enter with me. But suddenly she caught sight of a
girl being abominably mauled by a policeman, and made a brave
attempt to rescue her. The policeman dropped the girl, seized
Mrs. Lime, whirled her about, gripped her by the shoulders, and,
rushing her against the palings of Palace Yard, struck her
breasts against the iron again and again. That sight sent me off
my head. I forgot instructions, forgot the lofty impassivity I
had been taught in the East—an admirable recipe for occasions
like this, but, as yet, beyond me—I leaped on the man and
struck him on the back of the head with all my might. He dropped
Mrs. Lime and whirled about on me as furiously as if my fist had
been as hard as his own, but when he saw me, he merely dropped
his arm, scowled, and said:—
“‘Go home! Go home! You’ll get hurt,’ and ran over to pull two
women apart who had locked arms. Then I realized what I had
dimly been conscious of, that my only injuries were to my
clothes, and that these were but the result of the general
scuffle; every policeman had avoided me or brushed me off. They
had received orders to do me no harm. Among all those hundreds
of indomitable women I alone was to go scot free. The idea so
enraged me that I flew at another policeman and struck him,
determined to go to prison with the others. But he, too, brushed
me off, although he was already panting and angry, and no doubt
would have liked to strike me and then drag me to the police
station. I attacked another, and he turned his back on me with
an oath, seized a girl who was merely pushing her way quietly
through the struggling mass, her face set and gray, her eyes
with that strange intent look worn by nearly every face
belonging to our women—seized her, threw her down, and kicked
her in the side.
“Well—I managed to drag her and Mrs. Lime out of the crowd, put
them into a four-wheeler, and take them to Westminster Hospital.
They will die, no doubt; if not now, then later, devoured by the
most horrible of all diseases. But if we have lost them, we
shall have gained forty in their place, for this insensate
policy of the Government has its logical
consequence—illustrates the old truth, ‘The blood of martyrs is
the seed of reform.’ Have they never read history?
“And yet, sometimes I despair. We shall win in the end, of
course, for it is as impossible to exterminate this new force as
to chain the Atlantic. But when? And shall we be here to see? We
are only mortal, after all, and our bodies, strong to endure as
they are, can be broken by men. And the great mass of women are
so slow in awakening. In spite of the tremendous increase in our
numbers during the past year, and the interest we have aroused,
our recruits are a mere handful when compared with the female
population of Great Britain, in general. Not until all, or at
least three-fourths, of those women have awakened and rallied to
our side can we win. Of that I am convinced. One thing I strove
to do in the north was to convert the political women, those
that always assist the men so potently at every general
election. If we can persuade these women to desert the men and
fight for women alone, we shall have made a great stride. This
autumn I am to renew my acquaintance with my old associates and
visit country houses during the autumn and winter, making
converts of women who would be of inestimable benefit to us. But
that is a sort of inactive service under which I chafe. Would
that we could rouse all the women at once, form a rebel army,
take to the field and fight like men. Perhaps we shall be driven
to that in the end. It is all very well to plan to win by brains
alone, and it would be to our immortal glory if we did, but it
is to be considered that we are opposing men either without
brains themselves, or who have been bred on the idea of physical
force and really respect nothing else. Well, whatever happens, I
only ask that I may be here to see. I am willing to give my
brain and body and soul and every penny I can command to this
cause, but I want to give the last of myself at the last minute,
all the same.
“Now, write and tell me honestly if you would have me desert
these women, when I can be of signal assistance to them in not
one but many ways; and if you think I would be anything but what
this cause has made of me if I would.
“JULIA FRANCE.”