of sodden rag, no tins of sticky brass paste, or that unpleasant saucer
that sprinkles pink dust over everything within reach. We have banished
all that in favour of--ah, Penelope, my dear, run and ask Sarah for one
of my new cleaning-cloths, will you?"
In the doorway stood Penelope, mockery shining from her eyes.
"And you dare to tell me that tact is more useful in the home than a
sense of humour!" she cried, in a voice that thrilled with scorn.
"At all events," I retorted, "you must admit that Napoleon----"
Penelope went hastily to fetch her mother's new cleaning-cloth.
XIII
The Game that wasn't Cricket
Down the alley where I happen to live, playtime draws a sharp line
between the sexes. It is not so noticeable during working hours, when
girls and boys, banded together by the common grievance of compulsory
education, trot off to school almost as allies, even hand-in-hand in
those cases where protection is sought from the little girl by the
little boy who raced her into the world and lost--or won--by half a
length. But when school is over sex antagonism, largely fostered by the
parent, immediately sets in. Knowing the size of the average back yard
in my neighbourhood, I have plenty of sympathy for the mother who wishes
to keep it clear of children. But I always want to know why, in order to
secure this privacy, she gives the boy a piece of bread-and-dripping and
a ball, while the girl is given a piece of bread-and-dripping and a
baby. And I have not yet decided which of the two toys is the more
destructive of my peace.
Every evening during the summer, cricket is played just below my window
in the hour preceding sunset. Cricket, as played in my alley, is less
noisy than football, in which anything that comes handy as a substitute
for the ball may be used, preferably an old, jagged salmon-tin. But
cricket lasts longer, the nerves of the parents whose windows overlook
the cricket ground being able to stand it better. As the best working
hour of my day is destroyed equally by both, I have no feeling either
way, except that the cricket, as showing a more masterly evasion of
difficulties, appeals to me rather more. It is comparatively easy to
achieve some resemblance to a game of football even in a narrow strip of
pavement bordered by houses, where you can place one goal in the porch
of the model dwellings at the blind end of the alley, and the other goal
among the motor traffic at the street end. But first-class cricket is
more difficult of attainment when the field is so crowded as to make it
hard to decide which player out of three or four has caught you out,
while your only chance of not being run out first ball is to take the
wicket with you--always a possibility when the wicket is somebody's coat
that has a way of getting mixed up with the batsman's feet.
In spite of obstacles, however, the cricket goes on every evening before
sunset; and all the while, the little girl who tripped to school on such
a gay basis of equality with her brother only a few hours back, sits on
the doorstep minding the baby. I do not say that she actively objects to
this; I only know with acute certainty that the baby objects to it, and
for a long time I felt that it would be at least interesting to see
what would happen if the little girl were to stand up at the wicket for
a change while her brother dealt with the baby.
And the other evening this did happen. A mother, making one of those
sorties from the domestic stronghold, that in my alley always have the
effect of bringing a look of guilt into the faces of the innocent,
shouted something I did not hear, picked up the wicket, cuffed
somebody's head with it and made him put it on, gave the baby to a
brother, and sent his sister off to the oil-shop with a jar in one hand
and a penny tightly clasped in the other. The interruption over, the
scattered field re-formed automatically, somebody else's jacket was made
into a mound, and cricket was resumed with the loss of one player, who,
by the way, showed an astonishing talent for minding the baby.
Then the little girl came back from the oil-shop. I know not what spirit
of revolt entered suddenly her small, subdued soul; perhaps the sight of
a boy minding the baby suggested an upheaval of the universe that
demanded her instant co-operation; perhaps she had no distinct idea in
her mind beyond a wish to rebel. Whatever her reasons, there she stood,
bat in hand, waiting for the ball, while the baby crowed delightedly in
the unusual embrace of a boy who, by all the laws of custom, was
unsexing himself.
Another instant, and the air was rent with sound and fury. In front of
the wicket stood the Spirit of Revolt, with tumbled hair and defiant
eyes, breathless with much running, intoxicated with success; around
her, an outraged cricket team, strong in the conventions of a lifetime,
was protesting fiercely.
What had happened was quite simple. Grasping in an instant of time the
only possible way of eluding the crowd of fielders in the narrow space,
the little impromptu batswoman had done the obvious thing and struck the
ball against the wall high over their heads, whence it bounded into the
open street and got lost in the traffic. Then she ran till she could run
no more. Why wasn't it fair? she wanted to know.
"'Cause it ain't--there!" was one illuminating reply.
"'Cause we don't never play that way," was another upon which she was
quick to pounce.
"You never thought of it, that's why!" she retorted shrewdly.
She was desperately outnumbered. It was magnificent, but it wasn't
cricket; moreover, her place was the doorstep, as she was speedily
reminded when the door reopened and avenging motherhood once more
swooped down upon the scene. A shake here, a push there--and the boy was
back again at the wicket, while a weeping baby lay unheeded on the lap
of a weeping Spirit of Revolt.
And the queer thing is that the innovation made by the small batswoman
in her one instant of wild rebellion has now been adopted by the team
that plays cricket down my alley, every evening before sunset.
XIV
Dissension in the Home
"I should be delighted to get up a meeting for you in my house," said
the enthusiastic new recruit. "I always have said that women who paid
rates and taxes--I beg your pardon? Oh, speakers--of course, speakers!
Well, they must be the very best you have; people get so easily bored,
don't they? And that's so bad for the cause." She reflected an instant,
then fired off the names of three famous Suffragettes and was astonished
to hear that the well-known leaders rarely had time to address
drawing-room meetings.
"Isn't that rather a mistake?" she suggested, with the splendid
effrontery of the new recruit. "It is so important to attract the
leisured woman who won't go to public meetings for fear of being stuck
with a hatpin. I'm really afraid my crowd won't come unless they see a
name they know on the cards." Finding that this made no appeal to one
who had heard it often before, she asked in a resigned tone if a window
breaker would be available. "If I could put on the invitation card--'Why
I broke a Prime Minister's window, by One who has done it,' they'd come
in flocks. No, it wouldn't matter _much_ if she had broken somebody
else's window. As long as she had broken something--do _you_ speak, by
the way? Your voice is hardly strong enough, perhaps?"
The suffrage organiser, hoarse with having held two open-air meetings a
day for the past week, admitted that she did speak sometimes. "I've been
to prison too, if that is any good," she added cynically.
The cynicism was unperceived. "Have you? But that will be perfectly
delightful! Can I promise them that you will speak about picking oakum
and doing the treadmill? Oh, don't they? I thought all the Suffragettes
picked oakum in Holloway, and that was why they--never mind! You've
really eaten skilly, and that ought to fetch them, if anything will. The
Chair? Oh, I really don't think I _could_;--I should die of terror, I
know I should. What should I have to do? Yes, I suppose I could tell
them why I want a vote. I always have said that women who paid rates and
taxes--yes, Wednesday at nine o'clock. You'll come and dine first, won't
you? It's so good for the unconverted to meet you at dinner, just to see
that you do know how to hold a knife and fork. My husband is so very
much opposed; I like to do all I can in a _quiet_ way to show him that
the Suffragettes are _not_ all--can't you really? Well, come as early as
you can; I shall be simply dead with nervousness if I'm left
unsupported. By the way, you'll wear your most feminine frock, won't
you? I hope you don't mind my mentioning it, but it is so important to
impress the leisured woman--to say nothing of my husband! I am so
anxious to avoid causing dissension in the home; I think that would be
_wrong_, don't you? Of course, I shall let them all think that you may
turn up in goloshes and spectacles; it will make the contrast all the
greater, and that is so good for the cause!"
"Mrs. Fontenella wants to give a drawing-room meeting," said the
organiser, when she returned to the office. "She seems to have a curious
set of friends who look upon suffrage as a sort of music hall
entertainment; so she wants me to speak because I have picked oakum in
Holloway, and you, because you have broken something. I think she must
be an Anti by birth."
"Oh, no," answered the woman who had broken something. "She is really a
Suffragette by birth, and only an Anti by marriage. I am glad we have
won her back again."
"Then why does she talk as if we were all mountebanks?" asked the other,
unconvinced.
The breaker of Government plate glass shook her head slowly. "I don't
know," she said. "I think, perhaps, it may be because she has lived
eleven years with somebody from whom she is obliged to conceal what she
really feels about things."
"She isn't obliged to conceal anything; nobody is!" cried the organiser,
hotly. "If these people had the courage to show fight--"
"They have--when the fight is worth it," struck in the older woman.
"Those are just the people whose courage is inexhaustible, when real
courage is required. I don't know why it is so, unless it is that they
haven't wasted it over things that don't matter, and so they have a
reserve fund to draw upon for a great occasion. That's the best of a
cause like ours--it furnishes them with the great occasion."
"Mrs. Fontenella's reserve fund must be colossal," said the organiser,
still unconvinced.
The audience that was lured to Mrs. Fontenella's house on Wednesday
evening by a prospect of meeting two eccentric females who had been to
gaol--doubtless because they richly deserved it--was composed of the
elements that usually go to make up such audiences. It was very rich,
very idle, very limited; it was polite by education and rather insolent
by nature; and, with the exception of one or two of the men, who nursed
an academic belief in the woman's vote because they hoped that under
masculine influence it might be used to strengthen the right political
party, it was not interested in politics. The men were there because
they thought it was a sporting idea of the most popular hostess in their
set to pretend to be a Suffragette; and the women were there to show
their disapproval of a shrieking minority, who, for the sake of
notoriety, were rapidly destroying the ideal of womanhood that had been
implanted in every Englishman's breast by his mother;--at least, those
were the reasons they gave one another for being there, as they sat in
rows on gilded upright chairs, waiting for the fun to begin. When it did
begin, they experienced a distinct sensation of having been cheated of
their entertainment.
It was not that they found it difficult to recognise the most popular
hostess they knew in the apologetic lady who stood up, glittering with
gems, against an expensive background of hothouse plants, and read out
platitudes from a type-written paper in a high-pitched, jerky voice;
though everything was wrong in that opening speech from the Chair. It
was flippant without being funny; it threw up defences where it should
have attacked; it jarred where it should have conciliated. One at least
of the two women who shared the platform with her, chafing under the
huge mistake of her speech, felt inclined to agree with the audience
that the speaker was only pretending to be a Suffragette. It was not
this that disappointed the audience, however. It had expected nothing
else from one of its own set, who was obviously unfitted both by nature
and upbringing to sustain a part that she had only assumed because it
was something new--just as she might have hired a pianola or a
gramophone when these two were novelties. But it was not fair to invite
people to meet two hooligans who had fought with policemen, and then to
confront them with two normal looking, normally dressed women, of whom
it was impossible to believe anything that was not consistent with
breeding and good form. Disappointment grew when the faltering little
speech of the Chairman came to an end, and the younger of the two
Suffragettes, with a fleeting glance at her notes, rose to her feet. A
woman who had picked oakum and defied wardresses--their hostess had
omitted no detail likely to attract her "crowd"--had no right to a
soft, humorous voice, or to an educated accent. Entertainment there was
of a sort; for the most obdurate Anti-suffragist could scarcely have
remained proof against the wit and good temper of the girl who stood
there, undaunted by the atmosphere of opposition that filled the room,
turning the laugh against her opponents with every point that she made.
Still, it was not the kind of entertainment they had been led to expect,
and a certain amount of discomfiture mingled with the laughter and the
applause that she won by the time she sat down.
Then the older woman, the one who had broken windows, took her place.
There was nothing conciliatory, nothing amusing in what she said. She
did not raise a laugh once; she uttered no sort of appeal; she never so
much as hinted at an apology for what she and other women like her had
felt impelled to do. She made some of her listeners angry; some of them
she moved deeply; others she greatly perplexed; but she left none of
them precisely where they had been when she began to speak, and when she
sat down there was hardly any applause. Nearly every man in the room was
staring at his boots; the women played with their lace and their rings,
avoiding one another's eyes. A few were horribly ashamed of having tears
in theirs.
The Chairman did not rise for a moment or two. She was scribbling
something rapidly on a piece of paper, which she twisted up and sent
down the length of the brilliantly lighted room to a man who stood
lounging carelessly in the doorway. He untwisted it with extreme
deliberation, crushed it up in his hand when he had read it, and looked
his wife straight in the eyes, across the backs of the waiting people in
the chairs. She met his look for just two seconds before she stood up
and cleared her throat.
The rows of people in the chairs stirred with a sensation of relief.
Eloquence and wit, they knew, were not in the repertory of Mrs.
Fontenella when she was posing as a Suffragette; but at least she could
be counted upon not to make them feel uncomfortable. When she stood
there silent, gripping the table with both hands and looking straight
down the room, along the road that her twisted scrap of paper had taken
to the man in the doorway, they began to think something was a little
wrong.
Did she, realising that the last speaker had overstepped the limits of
good taste, feel incapable of dealing with the situation? It was
certainly a little awkward for her to continue to occupy the Chair,
under the circumstances.
"Ask for questions," prompted the organiser who sat on her left; and she
pushed the agenda paper towards her, thinking she was nervous and could
think of nothing to say.
Mrs. Fontenella was not nervous. She glanced round at her prompter with
a reassuring smile and brushed aside the agenda paper. Then she faced
the crowd she had brought there under false pretences, and gave them the
second shock they had received that evening.
"Friends," she said, in a voice that no longer faltered or apologised,
a voice that was pitched exactly right and held her listeners strangely,
"the last speaker has told us that another deputation of women will try
to reach the presence of the Prime Minister, next week. You know what
that means--almost certain imprisonment for the women who go on that
deputation, but also a certain chance for every one of us to do
something towards winning a great reform. I am going on that deputation.
Which of you will come with me?"
Those who managed furtively to look round at the man in the doorway,
were extremely puzzled by the interested smile he wore.
* * * * *
"You were right about that woman, and I was utterly wrong," confessed
the organiser, as she walked away from the house with the other speaker.
"I do hope she won't have a bad time with that Anti husband of hers!"
"You never know," said her companion, who had seen the interested smile
of the man in the doorway. "That's the blessed thing about
marriage;--you never know."
"What!" exclaimed the younger woman. "Do you mean to say he is a
Suffragette by birth, too?"
"No," was the reply. "I should say he was an Anti by birth; but I think
he may be a Suffragette by marriage, though I doubt if he or his wife
had found it out until to-night."
In a long and brilliantly lighted drawing-room, desolate with its rows
of empty chairs, the popular hostess who was also a Suffragette stood
alone with the man whose smile had puzzled every one who saw it,
half-an-hour ago, except the woman who had broken windows.
"It's simply magnificent of you," said his wife.
He took a walk round and moved some of the expensive hothouse plants. "I
hate these things," he said. "Why do we have them? Let's open some more
windows and get rid of the smell."
She laughed, and watched him go across to manipulate blinds and bolts.
"You are always the same man I married, even when you are quite
different, as you were this evening," she remarked, with equal
inconsequence.
"You're not the same woman as the one I married!" he shot back at her.
"But I am!" she cried. "I am, I am! And that's the whole point!"
He looked round at her, the smile back in his face. "Perhaps it is," he
said. "Perhaps it is. Pity we've both missed it for eleven years, isn't
it?"
THE END
THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN
BY
WINWOOD READE
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* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
'oe' ligatures have been changed to read simply 'oe'.
Italics in the text have been replaced by _underscores_.
Table of Contents: Error in original lists 'Chapter XIII.'
as starting on page 119; changed to 118 to match actual
starting page in book.
Page 7: Word 'due' added to text (impossibility due to)
Page 120: Phrase 'hat in hand' changed to 'bat in hand'