incredible to her as she did to him. It always surprises me to see a
person looking exactly like themselves after absence.
When the gardener first saw the suffragette, he swallowed a spoonful of
soup which was very much too hot, and rose. Courtesy was in the middle
of a remark, and looked surprised to see him go.
“I knew I should hear or see something of you soon,” said the gardener,
shaking the suffragette’s hand as usual an excessive number of times.
“And yet I’m awfully surprised too,” admitted the suffragette.
“Just an Easter holiday?” suggested the gardener carelessly. “But what
luck you chose the Red Place.”
“It wasn’t exactly luck. I knew you were here.”
Tears had been trembling in the gardener’s eyes since the swallowing of
the soup, he very nearly shed them now.
“Waiter,” he called, “move that lady’s place to our table.”
The suffragette was excited and flushed. She looked almost pretty.
“I can’t imagine why I came,” she said when the change was effected and
greetings had been exchanged. “I think I must have come in delirium. The
woman I used to be never comes into the country except on business, and,
in the case of friends, makes a principle of ‘out of sight, out of
mind.’”
“I hope you left that woman behind—permanently,” said the gardener.
“No. That’s the worst of it. They’re both here. Each acts as conscience
while the other one’s in power. Why wasn’t one brought into the world by
oneself?”
“Why, weren’t you?” asked Courtesy; “were you twins?”
“I still am. One of me is quite a good sort, really, almost an ‘Oh, my
dear’ girl. She is the one who was described in the paper as ‘Boadicea
Smith, a young woman of prepossessing appearance.’ The reporter went on
to say that the name was probably assumed—(which it was)—and that he
knew who I really was—(which he didn’t). He hinted that I was a deluded
patrician incog. Do you know, I treasure that paragraph as if it were a
love-letter. It’s the only compliment I ever had.”
“I should like to shake the hand of that reporter,” said the gardener.
“But after that he referred to me all through as ‘Smith,’ without
prefix, which is the sign of a criminal.”
“The puppy!” exclaimed the gardener.
“What were you doing to get into the paper?” asked Courtesy sternly. “I
never get into the paper.”
“It’s inconceivable that you should get into the paper, Courtesy dear,”
said the gardener, “except when you get born or married or dead.”
“It’d be like a sultana in a seed-cake,” said the suffragette, “or like
a sunrise at tea-time. Or as if a Forty-nine ’bus went to the Bank.”
I really think she was a little delirious, and perhaps she felt it
herself, for she added apologetically, “I always think Forty-nine is
such an innocent ’bus, it never knows the City.”
Next morning it was raining in the persistently militant sort of way
reserved by the weather for public holidays.
“A pity,” said the gardener at breakfast. “I meant to take you over to
the village to introduce you to Mr. Rust. And there are no ’buses or
taxis here.”
“Let’s dispense with the ’buses and taxis,” suggested the suffragette.
“Let’s forget London and get country-wet.”
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” said the gardener delightedly, and
presently they started.
“I don’t really want to be introduced to your friend,” said the
suffragette. “Only I wanted a chance to speak to you alone. Do you know,
beneath a militant exterior I am horribly shy?”
“It’s obvious,” retorted the gardener.
“Is it?” asked the suffragette, annoyed, and relapsed into silence for a
moment.
“I wanted to tell you ...” she began again presently, “that I beg your
pardon for coming here. It’s unforgivable of me. You know, as regards
men, I’m not a woman at all; I haven’t the unselfish instincts that
other women have. I came because I had—reached the limit—and I wanted a
friend....”
“Well, you didn’t come far wrong,” said the gardener. “I love you.”
“I didn’t think of your feelings at all, which is only another proof
that it is no good your loving me.”
“May I take the risk?”
The suffragette stopped, and stood leaning against the rain-whipped
wind. Rain was trapped in the mesh of her soft hair. She clenched her
fists upon her breast.
“Won’t you believe me ...” she said, “when I tell you it would be best
to break up that poor little dream of yours—as I have broken mine. I
told you once that I had somehow been born the wrong side of the ropes
in the race. One can’t love across a barrier.”
“Love is not a dream,” said the gardener. “It’s your barrier that’s a
dream. Why don’t you try breaking that?”
“You are a man, little gardener, and I am a thing. Not a bad thing,
really, but certainly not a woman. And even a thing can reach the point
which I have reached, the point at which there seems nothing to do but
grope and cry....”
They walked a little way in silence.
“I seem to have come to the edge of the world by myself,” she went on.
“And I can’t go on—by myself. Oh, gardener, couldn’t we be friends
without being lovers?”
“That has been suggested before,” said the gardener slowly. “And it has
never succeeded. But—we—might—try....”
All the rest of the way to the village I suppose they were practising
being friends and not lovers. For neither spoke a word.
“So this is the militant suffragette,” said Samuel Rust, who was sitting
in the hospital sitting-room. “I am most interested to meet you. I have
long wished to meet a suffragette to ask her why she wanted the vote.”
“Why do men want it?”
“Personally I don’t.”
“Personally I do,” said the suffragette. “And mine is as good an answer
as yours.”
“Both answers are very poor,” admitted Samuel. “You want the vote so
badly that you think it worth while to become hysterical over it.”
“There is not much hysteria in the movement, only hysteria is the thing
that strikes a hysterical press as most worthy of note. What hysteria
there is, is a result—not a cause. Women never invented hysteria. How
should we be anything but irresponsible, since you have taken
responsibility from us? If we are bitter, you must remember that
somebody mixed the dose. If the womanliness you admire is dead, bear in
mind that nothing can be dead without being killed.”
“But who is your enemy? Who are your murderers? I have never noticed
that the majority of men are fiends incarnate. You may not believe me,
but I do assure you that at frequent intervals in my life I have met
honest, just, and moral men. Have you met none?”
“In the Brown Borough I meet excellent men. Older and wiser men, who sit
on committees and behave like one conglomerate uncle to the poor; young
lovers too hopelessly out of work to marry, and yet always gay and
good-hearted; large tired fathers who come in after a day’s work and sit
under dripping washing and never slap the children.... But that such
just men are not in a majority is proved by the fact that women continue
to suffer.”
“Yes, but perhaps they suffer at the hands—not of men—but of
circumstances.”
“Circumstances always favour people with a public voice.”
“And do militant suffragettes really think that by smashing windows they
will attain to a public voice?”
“In what we do, we’re a poor argument for the Franchise. In what we are,
we’re the very best. It’s not possible for the community to be hit
without deserving it. It must look round and find out why it is hit—not
how. Punishment is no good to a smasher of windows. Any woman can see if
she’s wrong without punishment. If she thinks she’s right, punishment
can never alter her opinion.”
“Smashers must be punished. It would be impossible to allow even the
righteous to take the law into their own hands.”
“In whose hands should we leave it? In the hands of those who declare
themselves to be our enemies? A fair question from a woman never gets a
fair answer. Windows are smashed—not as an argument, but as a protest.”
“A protest strikes me as a futile thing. No one ever does anything that
looks unfair or tyrannical without being perfectly sure that was the
thing they meant to do. If a protest is successful it creates discord
without altering what is done. If it’s unsuccessful, it leaves you with
a high temperature and bruised hands, and what is gained by that?”
“Protest isn’t a thing you argue about,” said the suffragette. “It’s a
thing you do when you see red. You seem to think that men have the
monopoly of the last straw.”
“It is hard to believe that you have reached the last straw,” said
Samuel. “It is very hard for men to picture women as an oppressed race.
We are miles and miles away from each other. I can still think of a lot
of things to say, but I can’t say them without a moral megaphone. Shall
we call a draw?”
“Let’s,” said the suffragette, relaxing her militant expression. “Only
let me have the last word—a rather long one. Of one thing I am
certain—when we have the vote, men will see what a small gift it was,
and future generations will ask why it was grudged so bitterly. Only to
us who have fought for it and suffered for it, it will always seem high
and splendid—like a flag captured in battle....”
“The country is looking pretty just now, isn’t it?” said Mr. Samuel
Rust.
The gardener was standing at the window, watching the clipped yew bird
outside curtseying to the wind. He had been pathetically silent, like a
snubbed child, ever since he had consented to be a friend and not a
lover. His white keen face was a striking illustration of enthusiasm
damped. His jaw looked as if he were clenching his teeth on something
bitter. I think he was regretting the days when gold hair with a ripple
in it as laboured as the ripples in an old Master’s seascape, wide blue
eyes alight with matrimonial instinct, and the very red lips of a very
small mouth, were all that his heart needed.
And I wonder what the suffragette saw in his face that made her say in a
very non-militant voice, “Come, gardener.”
They both shook hands in rather an absent-minded way with Mr. Samuel
Rust. They started from the door with the wind behind them. It was with
her hair blowing forward along her cheeks that the gardener always
remembered the suffragette most vividly. It brought a brave idea to his
mind, connected vaguely with a picture of Grace Darling with which he
had been in love fifteen years ago.
“Gardener,” said the suffragette hurriedly. “Can you imagine me sitting
by the fire bathing a baby?”
“Easily,” he replied. “I can imagine how the firelight would dance upon
your hair.”
“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” she said, with a catch in her
voice. “Can you imagine me, looking sleepy and cross, giving you early
breakfast before you went to work?”
“I can imagine you with the sun behind you, saying good-morning, so that
the word seemed like a blessing through the day.”
“It’s a lie—you poet,” she said. “Why don’t you open your eyes and see
me as I am?”
“I’ve had my eyes open all along. It’s you who are blind.”
“Then—suppose we become both lovers and friends.... Suppose we get
married on Tuesday....”
To-morrow I will don my cloak
Of opal-grey, and I will stand
Where the palm shadows stride like smoke
Across the dazzle of the sand.
To-morrow I will throw this blind
Blind whiteness from my soul away,
And pluck this blackness from my mind,
And only leave the medium—grey.
To-morrow I will cry for gains
Upon the blue and brazen sky:
The precious venom in my veins
To-morrow will be parched and dry.
To-morrow it shall be my goal
To throw myself away from me,
To lose the outline of my soul
Against the greyness of the sea.
CHAPTER II
The suffragette went up to London on Monday—Bank Holiday—to contemplate
finally the ruin of her work. For it was dead. I suppose if she had not
felt so old and tired she might have thought of a fresh beginning, but
she was always more passionate than persistent.
I don’t think the Brown Borough ever made her suffer so much as it did
the day she came back to it and found no place for her. You must
remember she had always put work before pleasure, and a new joy born had
no place in her mind with the pain of work killed. The gardener of
yesterday retreated from the foreground of her mind, and for a while she
never thought at all of the gardener of to-morrow.
Henceforward we part company with that suffragette whom I have loved
perhaps a good deal, and of whom you have wearied. Her heart seemed to
take on a different colour as she returned for the last time to the
Brown Borough. What she had preached for years conquered her beyond hope
at last, the world she had fought became suddenly victor.
She went to Jenny Wigsky, and found her gone.
She went to see ’Tilda, who was out. But ’Tilda’s mother spoke out
’Tilda’s mind.
She went to see the priest’s sister, and she was away for Easter. But
the priest was at home.
“I had no wish ever to see you again,” said the priest. “But it is as
well that we should meet, for I should like to make my position and that
of my sister perfectly clear to you, yerce, yerce.”
“It is perfectly clear,” said the suffragette, who felt curiously numb.
“Excuse me, but I do not wish that you should go away under the delusion
that you are in the right though persecuted, and in your self-absorption
proceed to make havoc of another field of work. Setting aside the fact
that you have been guilty of bad faith towards us, you have approached
the work from a wilfully wrong standpoint. You have mixed your
despicable little political jealousies with Christian work, to the
serious danger of young and innocent souls.”
“I worked for the honour of women, and you—possibly—for the honour of
your God. Certainly your work sounds better—to men.”
“If there is a thing that women excel in, it is the art of evading the
point,” said the priest bitterly. “The affair, bluntly put, is this:
Jane Wigsky, an idle, vicious, and immoral girl, had the impudence to go
to my very good friend, Mr. Smith, of Smith, Bird and Co., and,
presuming on her showy appearance, to apply for a responsible post, a
post which is in every way suited to be the reward of virtue, rather
than something for the covetous to grasp at. Mr. Smith is, as I say, a
friend of mine, and a most generous friend to the Church, having only
last week presented a beautiful carved chancel screen. Naturally it was
my duty to tell him all I knew about the girl.”
“And what did you know?”
“I am not obliged to answer to you for my statements, but, as a matter
of fact, I told him that the girl was not a ‘stayer’—in colloquial
language—and that she was of immoral tendency.”
“That was only what you fancied. What did you know?”
There was a swallowing sound in the priest’s throat, a sound as of one
keeping his temper.
“May I ask if you are aware that the girl has now disappeared, with her
lover?”
“But that was since you wrote.”
“I have not worked for twenty-two years among the poor without reaching
a certain insight into character; I am not blind to such things,
whatever you may be, yerce, yerce. But that is beside the point. I
reminded Smith that he might be able to give her less important
employment—I was willing to help the girl up to a certain point. I
suggested a protégé of my own for the better post, to whom the generous
opportunity offered would be far more suitable, a very deserving young
man, who is debarred from ordinary employment by the loss of a leg. Mr.
Smith accepted my suggestion, and offered Jane Wigsky a post as packer,
at seven-and-six a week, a much larger wage than she has been getting
lately. She refused, and put the responsibility of her refusal on you.
She also mentioned that other girls in the Church Club were under your
influence on the question of wages. I made enquiries and found that my
sister’s club was in a fair way to turn into a female Trade Union, an
abominable anomaly. I took the only course possible. I dismissed all the
misguided girls from the Club. There is nothing more to be said.”
“Nothing,” said the suffragette, who had become very white, “except—what
must your God be like to have a servant like you?”
“If you are going to blaspheme,” said the priest, “kindly leave my house
at once.”
“If God is like that ...” she said, “I pray the Devil may win.”
She ran out of the house childishly, and slammed the door.
The gardener, on Tuesday morning, was parting his hair for the third
time, when he received a telegram:
“Don’t come.—Suffragette.”
It startled him, but not very much. He looked at the third attempt at a
parting in the glass, and saw that it was an excellent parting for a man
on his wedding-day. He reflected that a militant suffragette would
naturally tend to become ultra-militant on this final day. And if the
worst came to the worst, it could do no harm to go up and find out how
bad the worst was. So he went up to London by the eleven train.
He was to meet her at the little bun-shop that clings for protection to
the Brown Borough Town Hall. There the suffragette had a fourpenny meal
daily, and there they had arranged to have an eightpenny meal together,
before assuming the married pose. There was a “wedding-shop” round the
corner. I don’t suppose any couple ever made less impressive plans.
And the gardener pursued the plan. He entirely ignored the telegram.
I don’t know whether the suffragette was confident that he would obey
it, or that he would ignore it. I am entirely doubtful about her state
of mind on that day. But I know that when the gardener arrived at the
bun-shop she was there, facing the door, already half-way through her
fourpenny lunch. Which appears to show that—if her telegram was
genuine—she put implicit faith in his obedience. In this case she was
presumably displeased to see him. Her face, however, looked too tired to
change its expression in any way.
“Didn’t you get my wire?” she said.
“What is a wire to me?” asked the gardener, sitting down.
There was a long pause, during which he ordered a Welsh Rarebit from a
waitress who, six months ago, would have furnished him with an ideal of
womanhood.
“Why did you wire?” he asked presently.
“I have to go on a journey,” said the suffragette, waving at the
mustard-coloured portmanteau, which was seated on a chair beside her.
“In that case, so have I,” said the gardener. “We’ll get married first,
and then go on the journey together.”
No reply. Their talk was like broken fragments thrown upon a sea of ice.
It hurried, faltered, stopped, and then froze into a background of
silence.
The gardener noticed that the suffragette was trembling violently, and
with a great effort he made no comment on this discovery.
Finally she rose, leaving quite twopence-halfpenny worth of her meal
hiding beneath her knife and fork.
“You’ll have to show me where this registry office is,” said the
gardener, “and also what to do. I don’t know how one gets married.”
“Neither do I,” said the suffragette.
“I’ll carry your bag.”
“I like carrying things. I hate being helped. You must always remember
that I am a militant suffragette.”
“I am never allowed to forget it,” sighed the gardener, his ardour
rather damped. “Are we getting near the place?”
“Very near.”
They stopped at the steps of a church.
“We might have thought it our duty to be married in a church,” she said.
“What a merciful escape!”
He was silent.
“I hate God,” she added.
“Don’t,” said the gardener. “You’re too excited. Don’t tremble like
that. Don’t hate God. After all, He made the world—a green sane
world—with you and me in it....”
“He made it with you in it. But I got in by mistake.”
“What a happy mistake!” said the gardener. “Come into the church, my
dear, and rest for a moment. Don’t try to look too deep into the reasons
of things, you’ll only get giddy.”
He took her hand, and they went up the steps together.
“It’s a fine church,” he said. “That screen’s a fine bit of carving.” He
felt as if he had taken charge of his suffragette’s nerves, and he
busied his brain in the composition of cool and commonplace remarks.
“That chancel screen is dirty. It’s the gift of foul hands, bought with
foul money. Do you think me mad?”
“You are, rather, you know. Pull yourself together. Surely you’re not
frightened of getting married to me?”
The suffragette laughed. “You wonderfully faithful friend,” she said.
The gardener was not a religious young man. He was not quite rare enough
in texture for that, and he was a little too clever for the religion of
his fathers. The Christian pose had never appealed to him, it was not
unique enough. All his life he had seen prayer used as a method of
commercial telegraphy. You wanted a thing, and from a kneeling position
you informed Heaven of your order. If it was complied with, you knew
that you must be appreciated in high quarters; if it was ignored, you
supposed that your message had miscarried, and despatched another. At
any rate it cost nothing.
But the gardener had a vague reverence inborn in him. During his
everyday life he posed as an unbeliever. When in his own unposing
company he passively believed in something he had never defined. But
under stained-glass windows or the benediction of music, under arched
forests and a sinless sky, under the passionate sane spell of the sea,
under the charm of love, he knew that he worshipped. For he was a poet
without the means of proving it, and to such God is a secret mouthpiece,
and a salvation.
So, at the back of the church, beside the suffragette, he pressed his
face into his hands, and his elbows on to his knees, and found to his
surprise that his heart was beating violently. Between his fingers he
could see the east window. Its blood-like splashes of red, its banners
of unearthly blue, its blur of golden haloes glorified the sunlight. It
seemed to have a colour for each of his days; he found his childhood in
it, and his little ambitions, his pale Tra-la-la days, and the babyhood
of his heart, red hair he found, and the ardour of the sea, and love....
And presently he looked round and found his companion had gone from his
side.
He could see her, with her chin up, looking defiantly at the altar. The
sunlight dramatically touched her distant face, and it was like a
pin-prick in the twilight of the church. It was but seldom that nature
provided a good setting for my suffragette.
It was only when he saw her with the mustard-coloured portmanteau raised
shoulder high that he realised what she was doing. The knowledge tore a
gash across his dreams, and severed him from himself. He did not move.
He watched her throw the portmanteau at the foot of the chancel screen.
He saw her wrap her arms about her face and swing round on her heel. He
hardly heard the explosion, but directly afterwards he realised how loud
it had been.
Smoke danced across the altar, smoke blotted out the window, smoke
threaded the lace of the shattered screen. Smoke.... Silver in the
sunlight ... blue round the altar ... and grey—dead grey—over the little
crumpled body of the criminal. Smoke stood over her, a transitory
monument—like a tree—like a curse.
Yes, I pose of course. But the question is—how deep may a pose extend?
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