instinctive calculation she managed to arrive at Little South Lane next
day punctually at the moment when help began to be needed. She collected
some of the native enthusiasts who were adding fuel to their ardour on
the door-steps of neighbouring public-houses. She quelled the political
antagonism of a bevy of little boys who were vocally competing with a
Great Woman’s preliminary address. She soothed the objections of the
paid banner-bearers, who had not been led to expect the additional
opposition of a high wind. She eliminated from the procession as far as
possible all suffragists below the age of four. She lent a moment’s
friendly attention to the reasons why Woman’s Sphere is the Home,
expounded by a hoarse spinster from an upper window. She courageously
approached an enormous dock-hand, who had snatched a banner from its
rightful bearer, and was waving it with many oaths.
“Might I trouble you for that banner?” said the suffragette.
The gentleman’s reply was simple but obscene.
“Might I trouble you at once to move out of my way, and let the
procession join up?” said the suffragette in a red voice.
“Gaw-love yer, me gal, I’m comin’ along,” said the gentleman. “Wot price
me for a ... suffragette? You’ll need a few fists, if you git as fur as
the Delta way.”
How very rare it is to mistake the staff for the broken reed. The
suffragette recovered herself quickly.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought to have known from your face
that you were a sensible man. How good of you to carry a banner!”
The procession, like a snake, reared its head and moved. In the van a
marching song was begun, in the rear—a ragtime. The police, looking
dignified, but feeling silly, marched in single file on either flank,
and kept an eye on the interests of the traffic. The one mounted
policeman obviously regretted the prominence of his position, his horse
was an anti, and showed a man-like tendency to argue with its hoofs.
The suffragette walked between a little woman in a plush coat with a
baby and a person who might have been a poetess, or a philosopher, or a
Low Church missionary, but was certainly very earnest. The long brown
streets swung by. The flares on the coster’s barrows anchored to the
kerb, danced in the yellow air. A hum of barbaric voices, and the large
firm pulse of many feet marching, made a background to the few clear
curses and the fewer clearer blessings from the pavement.
“I wish to Gawd my kiddie ’ed been a gel,” said the little mother beside
the suffragette. “Bein’ a woman—mikes yer proud-like....”
The suffragette put her chin up and laughed. “As a man, your kiddie’ll
make you proud. There’s sure to be something splendid about a man whose
mother was proud to be a woman.”
“Men ...” said the little mother, with more alliteration than
refinement, “are ... brute beasts.”
“’Ere, draw it mild,” said the dock-hand, who was just in front.
“There’s men, wytin’ for us, somewhere down the Delta wy now. Wytin’ to
mike us yell an’ run, wytin’ to ’urt us—jus’ becos we was proud to be
women.”
“Waiting for us?” gasped the poetess. “Why—how dreadful.... I wasn’t
told there would be any fighting.”
“You might have known there would be,” said the suffragette. “You can’t
assert facts without fighting for them.”
The poetess, obviously wishing she had left such dangerous weapons as
facts to themselves, gave a hoarse giggle, and said, “I declare, I’m
quite frightened....”
“It is frightening,” agreed the suffragette. “Not the bruises, but the
stone-wallness of men. I’m always frightened by opposition that I can’t
see through at all. I am frightened of Delta Street hooligans. I am also
frightened in exactly the same way by a polite enemy. You go into the
law courts, for instance, and watch those men wearing their wigs like
haloes and their robes like saints’ armour——”
“You do talk nice, miss,” said the little mother. “I wish you’d come
down to the Brown Borough, an’ jaw my young man.”
The suffragette, though a trifle damped, continued, “It isn’t that their
arguments are strong, nobody minds that, but it’s that they don’t bother
to have any arguments. Just like the hooligans, only in different words.
It’s no more an argument than it is one between God and Satan. One side
is established, the other doesn’t exist. It makes you see that to-morrow
is never strong enough to fight to-day. It would take an angel to admit
to-morrow as a fact at all, and unfortunately it’s men we’re up
against.”
“Then what’s the good of all this?” asked the poetess, who was naturally
becoming more and more depressed.
“Oh, a losing battle’s fine,” said the suffragette. “I’d rather wear a
black eye than a wig, or a crown, any day.”
“’Ear, ’ear,” said the dock-hand.
“Wiv Parliament, for instance,” said the little mother, who was
evidently accustomed to fill her sphere with her voice. “They sits an’
argoos about Welsh Establishment, an’ all the while I ’ed my little gel
die of underfeeding, becos I wuz carryin’ this one, and couldn’t get
work.”
“Thet’s all very well,” said the dock-hand; “but wot do you expec’? You
carn’t expec’ the lawyers to frow up their wig an’ say the Law’s a Liar.
(Not but wot it ain’t.) You carn’t expec’ the Prime Minister to tell
’isself ‘There’s Mrs. Smiff’s biby dyin’, I mus’ go dahn an’ see abaht
it.’ (Not but wot it ain’t ’ard.”)
“There are lots of things you can’t kill,” said the suffragette. “But
you can always try. Men don’t try, because impossibility is one of the
things they believe in.”
“You carn’t kill Votes fer Women,” shouted the little mother, with a
burst of enthusiasm. She waved her baby instead of a banner.
At that moment a yelling horror dropped like a bomb upon the level
street. The suffragette saw the mounted policeman, complete with his
horse, fall sideways, like a toy. She saw a chequered crowd of
perspiring faces come upon her like a breaking wave. She saw the banners
ahead stagger like flowers before a wind. She saw the poetess fall, and
some one stamp on her shoulder. She saw a man with a fierce-coloured
handkerchief knotted round his throat seize the little mother’s chin and
wrench it up and down, as he cursed in her face. The suffragette, who
never could be angry in a dignified way, gave a hoarse croak and
snatched his arm. Possibly she felt like the child Hercules during his
interview with the serpents, but she did not look like that at all. The
man jerked his arm up, the suffragette’s seven stone went up too. She
was waved like a flag. The tears were shaken out of her eyes. Her feet
kicked the air. And then she alighted against a wall. She saw a chinless
and unshaven face heave into her upper vision, and a great hand, like
black lightning, cleft the fog. The knuckles of the hand cut like a
blunt knife. In North London we always repeat our arguments, when we
consider them good ones. The suffragette, who was a person of no
muscular ability at all, gave up hoping for the chance of a retort in
kind, after the third repetition. So the argument went on undisputed,
until the dock-hand perceived it, when it was successfully overborne.
The suffragette picked up her hat. She hated it because it looked so
dirty. She hated her heart because it felt so sick. She picked up the
poetess and hated her because she was crying. She was crying herself,
but she thought she looked courageously wrathful.
“What do we do now?” sobbed the poetess.
“We walk on,” said the suffragette, and took her, not very gently, by
the arm.
“But I can’t, I can’t. It may happen again,” wailed the poetess.
“Policeman, can’t I go home?”
“Yes, miss,” said the policeman, wiping his brow.
“But there are no taxis.”
“No, miss,” said the policeman.
You never can tell what strange thing you may do at a crisis. The
poetess slipped a confiding hand into that of the policeman, and walked
meekly by his side.
“Murderers ...” exclaimed the little mother. “They might ’ev done biby
in. Your ’ead’s bleedin’, miss. So’s my gum, but I kin swaller that.”
The suffragette felt as if she had been divided in two. Her militant
spirit, clothed in its hair shirt, seemed to be moving at a height,
undaunted, monopolised as usual by the splendour of its cause. And
below, very near the dust, a terribly tired woman, a unit among several
hundreds of other terribly tired women, put one foot before the other
along an endless road.
You must stride over a gap here, as the procession did mentally. For a
very long time I don’t think anybody thought anything except—“How long,
O Lord, how long?”
When I am very tired and see the high and friendly smile of St. Paul’s
curved across the sky, I feel as if I am near home. I always think St.
Paul’s is like a mother to all London, while Westminster Abbey is like a
nun, the bride of heaven, with an infinite scorn of you and me. St.
Paul’s stands at the top of the hill of difficulty, and after that your
feet walk by themselves down Ludgate Hill.
There was a burst of song from all parts of the procession as it passed
that friendly doomed milestone. The burst was simultaneous, but the song
was too various to be really effective.
“Votes for Women,” shouted the little mother. “I sy, miss, when are you
comin’ dahn to the Brown Borough to ’elp wiv votes for women? We ain’t
got nobody there as kin talk like you.”
“Am I coming down?” asked the suffragette, who had a vague idea that she
had said many things, now forgotten. “I never speak at meetings now. My
brain is always wanting to say the next thing but one, and my tongue is
always saying the thing before last. There’s too much to be said about
Votes for Women.”
“Meetin’s...” said the little mother in a voice of scorn. “Tain’t
meetin’s we want. It’s somebody jus’ to talk ornery, as if they was a
friend-like. Somebody to live up the street—if you unnerstan’ me—an’
drop in, an’ be interested. When my little gel died, lars’ October, an’
’ole lot of lidies made enquiries, an’ got me a few ’alfpence a week to
git on wiv till I could get back to the box-miking. I useter ’ave to go
to an orfice an’ answer questions, an’ the lidy useter sy she was sorry
to seem ’quisitive, but she ses—If some on yer cheat, you mus’ all on
yer suffer.... Bless you, I didn’ mind answering questions, but I was
very low then, an’ I useter tike it ’ard that none o’ them lidies never
seemed interested. Nobody never as’t wot was the nime o’ my little gel
that died, nor ’ow old she was, nor nothink about ’er pretty wys that
she useter ’ave.... ’Tisn’t that they ain’t kind, but it’s being treated
in a crowd-like as comes ’ard, an’ there’s many feels the sime....”
“What do you expect?” asked the poetess, who was now detached from the
policeman. “I am myself a C.O.S. secretary, so I know something about
it. None of us have time to do more than is really necessary. And when
there’s public money in question—well, it’s all very well, but one can’t
be too careful.”
“When there’s money in question you may be right, miss,” said the little
mother. “But it ain’t allus a question of money, an’ it seems to me as
’ow, wiv votes fer women, if some on them suffragettes ’ud stop talking
about women’s wiges at meetin’s, an’ come an’ look at wiges at ’ome,
they’d ’it a lot of women wot thinks now as ’ow votes for women is only
a public thing an’ don’t matter outside Trafalgar Square. It seems to
’it you ’arder if a person’s friendly than if they’re heloquent....”
“Something is happening in front,” said the poetess, looking wildly
round for her policeman.
“The police have turned on us,” said the suffragette. “They always do in
the Strand. Downing Street gets nervous when we get as near as this.”
It was too true. The police, relieved to be at last freed from the
burden of their false position, were characteristic of their profession.
“But I was told I was to walk to the Houses of Parliament,” said the
poetess, finding her quondam protector’s hand on her shoulder.
“You may walk to Jericho, miss,” replied the policeman with a wit as
heavy as his hand. “Only not more than three in a group, _if_ you
please.”
A great crowd of little groups trickled on to the Embankment and
followed the tide of the river towards Westminster. There was a moon. I
think the moon is really the heroine of this unheroic book. Half the
blessing of London belongs to the river, and half the blessing of the
river belongs to the moon. Do you know how beautifully a full moon bends
out of her sky to trail her fingers in the river? Do you know how
faerily she shoots shavings of her silver under the bridges, and how she
makes tender the blackness of the barges and the shadows of the little
wharves? I always think the moon has in her quiver of charms a special
shaft for the river of London. She never smiles like that elsewhere.
It was no surprise to Westminster to see the deputation and procession
arrive, albeit in a less neat form than that in which it started. The
police force has moments of wonderful insight into the psychology of
law-breakers, and in this case it seemed aware that a procession of
women disbanded and told to go home in the Strand is nevertheless likely
to appear sooner or later in Parliament Square. The great space
resounded to the tramp of the feet of the law. A detachment of mounted
police strove to look unconcerned in the Whitehall direction. I always
think it is unjust to drag dumb animals into these political questions.
I wonder the S.P.C.A. doesn’t step in. Imagine the feelings of a grey
mare, for instance, on being called upon to charge into the ranks of a
female deputation to Downing Street.
Neither the suffragette nor I are familiar with the great ways of
deputations. We are of the humble ranks which suffer physical buffetings
in the shadow of St. Stephen’s, while our superiors suffer moral
buffetings in the shadow of the English Constitution. There is very
little sport in being a shuttlecock anyway, but while the head gets the
straight hit, the feathers feel most the stress of adverse winds.
The object of the police in a crowd is to keep it moving. The direction
in which it is to move is never explained to it. Whether you move to the
right or the left you are sure to be wrong in the eyes of the law. If
you weigh seven stone, your tendency is to move either upwards or
downwards. Correctly speaking, the suffragette never set foot in
Parliament Square for some time after she arrived there. She was caught
in a gust of crowd, and borne in an unexpected direction. She did not
mind which way she went, but she was human enough to mind whether her
ribs got broken. Even in a good cause, matters like these touch you
personally. The shoulders of partisans and martyrs, packed closely
against your ribs, feel just as hard as the shoulders of the less
enlightened. The suffragette began to feel a cold whiteness creeping up
from her boots to her heart. She began to take a series of last looks at
the moon and the spires of the Abbey. She reached the earth just when
she had decided that she had reached the door-step of Heaven, and found
herself cast by an eddy into a tiny peace. There, in an alcove, was the
Chief M.S., protected by a stout husband. The Chief M.S., whose hair was
too short to have been dragged down, and whose eyeglass was trembling on
her breast with pleasurable excitement, was looking cool and peaceful.
“You do look a wreck,” she said brightly to the suffragette. “I have
been wanting to talk to you about something I want you to do for me.”
This was such a frequent remark on the lips of the Chief M.S. that, as a
rule, it made no impression on her followers and acquaintances. But the
suffragette was incredibly tired, and the power of kicking against
pricks was taken from her. She had no spirit in her except the ghost of
her hair shirt theory, that fiend which croaks—“Go on, go on....” She
made a great effort. She pulled her hat down on her head, she put her
chin up, she wrapped her cloak of endurance more closely round her.
“Talk on,” she said.
“Oh, not now, child,” said the Chief M.S. “Come and see me next
Wednesday. I shall be away for a long week-end after this.”
It seemed like making an appointment for a hundred years hence. The
suffragette agreed, because it seemed impossible that she could live so
long as next Wednesday.
At that moment the mounted police charged. The careful husband of the
Chief M.S. whisked her away. The forelegs of a horse entered the
suffragette’s alcove. The safest place in a police charge is under the
noses of the horses. These animals, usually anxious to preserve
neutrality, have mastered the art of playing upon the fleeing backs of
agitators as gently as the pianist plays upon the keys. I have had a
horse’s hoofs fanning my shoulder-blades for minutes on end, and yet
only suffered from the elbows of my fellow-fugitives.
The suffragette, alone on the strip of pavement between the rearing
horses and the recoiling crowd, conceived the sensational idea of
charging the chargers. This is the sort of idea that comes to one after
a five-hour march and a series of street fights. I have never been drunk
with liquor, but I know what it is to be drunk all the same. The
suffragette determined that those horses should never see her coattails.
She heard a voice shouting, “Women ... women ... women ...” and on
finding it was her own, added, “Don’t run back—run forward.” And she
flung herself on the breast of the nearest horse.
A foot-policeman caught her on the rebound. She was not in the least
hurt, but he picked her up and carried her across his shoulder. She hit
her fists against his helmet; it sounded like a drum. It seems hard to
believe, but I assure you that even on that high though humble perch,
she was revelling in the thought that it concerned nobody but herself
that she was going to prison.
My poor heroine, I am afraid, has stepped beyond the limits of your
toleration, but if you look, you will find I never asked you to admire
her.
The policeman lowered her, and stood her like a doll on the steps of the
Metropolitan Railway. That excellent institution, shocked at the doings
outside, had drawn its grill modestly across its entrance, and its
employés, like good lions at the Zoo watching the rampant behaviour of
the public, were gazing through the bars.
“You’re not the right size for this job, young woman,” said the
policeman.
The suffragette’s reply was a further struggle. The policeman held both
her arms.
“You go ’ome,” he said. “The deputation’s goin’ ’ome now, like a good
gel. What’s your station?”
A terrible exhaustion drooped like a weight released upon the
suffragette. The only retort that came to her mind was, “Leicester
Square, please.”
“Change at the Embankment,” said a railway official, and opened eighteen
inches of the gate. The policeman pushed her in. She took her ticket,
and went home as meekly as any Anti.
You may be surprised to hear that the suffragette spent the next day in
bed. A day in bed is not, of course, part of the Hair Shirt Theory, but
this was a Sunday, and Sunday is a day of weakness, though it seems
politer to the Old Testament to call it a day of relaxation. The
suffragette always spent Sunday as she liked, with the hair shirt doffed
and neatly folded on a chair beside her. She smoked as many cigarettes
as she pleased, instead of the strict two of ordinary life, she
occasionally ate as many as three large meals, she had been known to
invest in nougat. Sundays were the oases in her desert, and if the
gardener had chanced on one for the scene of one of his luckless spasms,
this story might have been much prettier. It is very tiring to be
yourself with such ardour as the suffragette employed, and to be
somebody else for twenty-four hours once a week becomes almost a
necessity.
Besides, she had court plaster on her forehead, and the publicly
court-plastered pose was one that the suffragette loathed.
If the Chief M.S. had had the luck to catch a painless black eye in the
Cause of the Vote, she would have flaunted it like a flag up and down
Piccadilly. But the husband had been almost too effective. She had not
even broken her eyeglass.
One of the most striking differences between the suffragette and the
gardener was that the gardener told himself: “When I die, they will be
sorry, and they will perhaps understand.” But the suffragette thought:
“When I die, nobody except the charwoman will know.”
The suffragette went to see the Chief M.S. on Wednesday.
“How curious you should come this afternoon,” said the Chief M.S. “Some
one was here asking for you only this morning.”
The suffragette hardly ever explained herself. She did not remind the
Chief M.S. that she was there by appointment. Nor did she ask who had
been inquiring for her. Perhaps she knew.
“He asked for your address,” said the Chief M.S. “But as he was a man, I
didn’t give it to him. He didn’t leave his name, but he asked me to tell
you that your dog was now in the hands of the quarantine officials. I
attacked him on the suffrage question, as I always do strange men.”
“What did he say?”
“He had nothing to say. I pointed out to him how ludicrous was the
argument that just because a person wore two tubes on his legs instead
of one, he was competent to rule.”
“I have never heard that argument used,” said the suffragette soberly.
“I didn’t know that even men——”
“Why, you’re as dense as he was,” snapped the Chief M.S. “Of course they
don’t put it like that. He asked me which M.P. was responsible for the
tubular argument. I saw it was no use going on. He left his address for
me to give you.”
“What was it you wanted to see me about?” asked the suffragette.
“Did I want—Oh, yes.... Well, I have been thinking you have done nothing
for the Cause lately, have you?”
The suffragette fingered a sore dint under the shadow of her hat.
“Hardly anything,” she admitted.
“I think the slum districts want working up,” said the Chief M.S.
“Somebody who walked behind you in the procession said you hobnobbed
wonderfully with the North London women. How would it be if you were to
undertake a series of informal meetings——”
“It isn’t meetings they want, they told me so themselves,” said the
suffragette.
“It’s meetings everybody wants,” retorted the Chief M.S. “I thought also
that you might start a soup kitchen or a turkey club, or one of those
things that one does start in the slums. You can’t educate the poor
without feeding them, I’m sure.”
“Nonsense!” said the suffragette, who was certainly no more
accommodating as a follower than as a woman. “I don’t believe the
anatomy of the poor is one bit different from the anatomy of the rich.
And I don’t believe the way to anybody’s soul lies through their
stomach. Only if one is hungry, one naturally pretends that blind alley
is a thoroughfare.”
“How do you suggest that the slums should be worked up, then, may I
ask?” said the Chief M.S. coldly. There is no point in being a born
leader, if the rank and file refuses to behave suitably.
The suffragette loathed the wording of this remark, but kindly refrained
from further criticism. “If you like ...” she said, “I’ll try an
experiment on the Brown Borough. I’ll give no meetings and I’ll give no
membership cards, but if you leave me time I’ll bring as many women to
the Cause as ever did a dozen meetings in Trafalgar Square.”
To hear of other people busy always cheered the Chief M.S.
“You will have done a good work,” she said warmly.
The suffragette went out with those words singing in her head. A thing
that very seldom happened to other people’s words in the ears of this
self-absorbed young woman.
“To have done a good work ...” she said, on the top of a west-bound
’bus.
“To have done a good work.... But if it were a good work it could never
be done. The way of good work goes on for ever. And that’s why I swear
I’ll do this work till I die....”
It was fine to feel busy again. The suffragette had always liked to have
the measure of her day pressed down and running over, but she had never
yet known the luxury of having enough of what she liked. In the
home—which is Woman’s Sphere—there is always time to think how little
time there is. Even the career of an incendiary, though hectic, often
fails to give the illusion of persistent industry. The suffragette was
so lost in enthusiasm over the discovery of a good long road under her
feet at last, that she presently found herself at Kew.
If you must drift, there are few places better to drift to than Kew
Gardens. Only if you go there just when the months have reached the
bleak curve of the hill that runs down into spring, you must know where
to find the best and most secret snowdrops. The suffragette knew. She
was very familiar with the art of being alone in London.
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that never once in her life
had her leisure meant some one else’s pleasure. There had never been any
one who would have been in the least interested to know that the
suffragette had a few hours unbooked. She never regretted this fact,
because she never noticed it. With the exception of Excursion Agents, I
should think no one ever knew the holiday resorts around London better
than she did. She could enjoy herself very much indeed sitting seriously
on grass, watching a world dotted with sentimental cockneyism. It gave
her no pang to be one among many twos.