CHAPTER XII

VIVIE RETURNS

Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people

are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce,

blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband)

prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for

her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back

street; one of those houses--I doubt not, now tenanted by

millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over

their heads--that remain over from the early nineteenth century,

when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom.

The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing

but these detached or semi-detached little _cottages ornés_,

one-storeyed villas with a studio behind, or two-storeyed components

of "terraces," for about a quarter of a mile; and just before the

War, building speculators were wont to pace its pavements with a

hungry gaze directed to left and right buying up in imagination all

this wasted space, pulling down these pretty stucco nests, and

building in their place castles of flats, high into the air. I don't

suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its

graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent

village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge,

handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote

their lives--till they commit suicide--to illicit love and the

Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909--would that we were

all back in 1909!--it was as nice a part of London as a busy,

energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home

retirement and lilac-scented privacy--could desire to inhabit, at

the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low

rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting

Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance of a charwoman of

advanced views.

There Vivie took up her abode in November of the year indicated.

Honoria lived not far away, next door but one to the Parrys in

Kensington Square. She--Vivie--was aware that Colonel Armstrong did

not altogether like her, couldn't "place" her, felt she wasn't "one

of us," and therefore despite Honoria's many invitations to run in

and out and not to mind dear old "Army" who was _always_ like that

at first, just as their Chow was--she exercised considerable

discretion about her frequentation of the Armstrong household,

though she generally attended Honoria's Suffrage meetings, held

whenever the Colonel was called away to Aldershot or Hythe.

Honoria by this time--the close of 1909--was the mother of four

lovely, healthy, happy children. She would give birth to a fifth the

following June (1910), and then perhaps she would stop. She often

said about this time--touching wood as she did so--"could any woman

be happier?" She was so happy that she believed in God, went

sometimes to St. Mary Abbott's or St. Paul's, Knightsbridge--the

music was so jolly--and gave largely to cheerful charities as well

as to the Suffrage Cause. She would in the approach to Christmas,

1909, look round and survey her happiness: could any one have a more

satisfactory husband? Of course he was a man and had silly mannish

prejudices, but then without them he would not be so lovable. Her

children--two boys and two girls--could you find greater darlings if

you spent a week among the well-bred childern playing round the

Round Pond? Such _natural_ children with really original remarks

and untrained ideas; not artificial Peter Pans who wistfully didn't

want to grow up; not slavish little mimics of the Children's stories

in vogue, pretending to play at Red Indians--when every one knew

that Red Indians nowadays dressed like all the other citizens of the

United States and Canada and sat in Congress and cultivated

political "pulls" or sold patent medicines; or who said "Good

hunting" and other Mowgli shibboleths to mystified relations from

the mid-nineteenth century country towns; nor children who teased

the cat or interfered with the cook or stole jam or did anything

else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan's music in favour of

Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century _tiraliras_; or wore

spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just

clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously

natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their

parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called on them.

Then there were Honoria's friends. I gave a sort of list of them in

Chapter II--which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by

what was put _in_ but to those who were left out. But they needn't

mind: if the protesters were nice people according to my standard,

you may be sure Honoria knew them. But of all her friends none was

dearer and closer--save her husband--than Vivie Warren--pal of pals,

brave comrade of the unflinching eyes. And somehow Vivie (since she

fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she

had been before: she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye,

a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children

as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the

four children in Kensington Square as "Aunt Vivie" (They also--the

two elder ones--had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had

brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and

Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the

long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with

Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano

(with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive

man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square

Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one

talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views.

Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of

her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did

she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the

opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a

motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the

inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not

General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great débacle of the

world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus

of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square--or at Petworth

Manor--was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs

like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature

into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a

humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman

mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the

newest, suburbanest little employé of _Fraser and Claridge's_ huge

establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward

life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after

a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different

course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the

social activities for good of one who might have been her twin

sister--Suzanne Feenix--only that Suzanne was twenty years older and

perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a

kiss to your astral cheek--which in reality I should never have

dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's

muscles--as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of

your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny,

eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the

Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny

mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? _Such_ a lark! We've got Mrs.

Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of

'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows _perfectly well_ what I'm

doing. He's _quite_ given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and

Lady Johnston to the front seats..."

(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter,

but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.)

You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound

that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned

decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than

Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome

life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a

Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian

Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight

and the Sunderer of societies."

Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in

older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people

evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to

take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband,

and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not

throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued

out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause. Rather

regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window

or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with

less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of

will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine

charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and

imperturbability of the Police.

The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910. Vivie

held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike

publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she

endangered her life and liberty. Nevertheless she became a resource

of rising importance to the Suffrage cause. She was known to have

had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to

himself had of late kept in the background--ill-health, said some;

an unfortunate love affair, said another. But his pamphlet on the

White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at

work. Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the

law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar. Case

after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not

solve it, she might submit it to her cousin's judgment. In this way,

excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office

officials from one quandary to another.

But Vivie in the spring of 1910, looking back on nearly twelve

months of womanly life (save for David's summer of continental

travel) decided that she didn't like being a woman, so far as Woman

was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously.

As "David" this had been more or less her costume: an undershirt

(two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the

ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet. A shirt,

sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at

worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it. Braces

that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a

waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)--two

waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside

the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest.

Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket. On the head a hat which fitted

the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David's shock of hair).

Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves

with one button; spats--if David wanted to be very dressy--with

three buttons. On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat or

a mackintosh. If you were really dressing to kill (as a man) it

might take half an hour; if merely to go about your business and not

be specially remarked for foppishness, twenty minutes. To divest

yourself of all this and get into paijamas and so to bed: ten

minutes. But when Vivie returned to herself and went about the world

of 1909-1910, and merely wished to pass as an inconspicuous, modest

woman she had to spend _hours_ in dressing and undressing, and this

is what she had to wear and waste so much of her time in adjusting

and removing:--

Next the skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a

contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front

and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an

infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted

sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the

button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing

the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white

ribbons which preferred getting into a knot (no wonder the average

woman has a temper!). When the "combies" went to the wash, all these

ribbonlets had to be taken out, specially washed, specially ironed,

and ingeniously threaded back into position.

Next to the combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a

most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of

torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and

whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their

graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had

specially created toothless whales of the Family _Balænidæ_ solely

for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient

for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the

Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to

procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But

these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though

sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a

Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and

run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the

thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus

express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aïe, Aïe."

Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the

back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of

arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to

the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and

threaded again.

From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet

awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or

stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the

piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the

suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of

nickel and rubber which no _man_ would have tolerated for its

inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman

and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public

meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold,

and the latter roll about the ankles of the embarrassed pleader for

Woman's Rights ("Who would be free, themselves must strike the

blow," and first of all throttle the modiste, thought Vivie).

Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be

"pinned" in with safety pins. The knickerbockers might not seek the

aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band. Over

the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about

its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by

safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the

limbs as much as possible.

Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons--and, mind you,

not _sham_, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every

button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole. Or the

boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over

them. All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put

a severe strain on her arched instep in order that she might bring

on by degrees "flat foot" for surgical treatment.

Who shall describe the hats of 1910?--and before and since--in all

but the very poorest women? They were enormous; and so were the

hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running

hatpins through wisps of hair.

I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a

kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and

eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette

maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's

cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's receptions.

As to night gear: of course Vivie being a free agent slept in

David's paijamas. She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her

be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment.

But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of

a decent woman's costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn

from a paper on _Woman's dress_ delivered by David on one of the

last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the

Inner Temple--and checked by my jury of matrons)--can you wonder

that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man's life in the clothes

of David Williams? How she vowed to herself--fruitlessly, because

now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet

way)--that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as

in their citizenship? This will never be done until the modistes of

Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on

the Place de la Concorde.

At the 1910 (January) Election, Michael Rossiter had been returned

as M.P. for one of the Midland Universities. His Science had

certainly suffered from his suppressed love for Vivie, a passion

which secretly tortured him, yet for which he dared ask no respite.

He thought it was about time that _real_ men of Science entered

Parliament to check the utter mismanagement of public affairs which

had been going on since 1900. He proposed to himself to make a

succession of brilliant speeches (he really was an admirable and

fluent lecturer) on Anthropology, Chemistry--Chemistry ought

to appeal, even to City men because it made such a lot of

money--Ethnology, Hygiene, Geography, Economic Botany, Regional

Zoology, Germ Diseases, Agriculture, etc., etc.; _and_ the absolute

necessity of giving Woman the same electoral privileges as Man. He

was always well inclined that way, but after he realized that David

was Vivie he became almost an embittered Suffragist.

The Speaker took care that he had little scope for his Anthropology,

Economic Botany, Chemistry, Hygiene, etc., on Votes of Supply: but

he got in some nasty blows in the Woman's cause, and in fact was so

strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged

that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill;

that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to

stave off the Suffrage dilemma.

Rossiter and Vivie seldom met except at public receptions. Every now

and again he came to Suffrage meetings when she was going to speak;

and how well she spoke then! How real it all seemed to her! How

handsome she looked (even at 36) and how near she was to tears and a

breakdown; while his eyes burned; and when he got home poor little

Linda was in despair over her poor distraught Michael, who could

find no happiness or contentment in Ten Thousand a year, great fame

as the chief inventor of the Ductless Glands, and the man who had

issued a taxonomic classification of the _Bovidae_ which even

satisfied _me_.

What a cruel force is Love! Or is the cruelty in human disciplinary

laws? Here were two persons eminently suited to be mates, calculated

while still in the prime of life to procreate offspring that would

be a credit to the nation, who asked for nothing more in life than

to lie in each other's arms--after which no doubt they would have

arisen and performed the most wonderful feats in inductive science

or in embroidery or mathematics. And they were inwardly raging,

losing their appetites, sleeping very badly yet eschewing drugs,

pursuing will-of-the-wisps in politics, wasting the best years of

their lives ... from a sense of duty, that sense of duty which has

made the Nordic White man the dominant race on the earth. "We suffer

individually but we gain collectively," Rossiter said to himself.

In May, 1910, King Edward died, and all these gladiators, male and

female, willingly declared a Truce in the Suffrage battle, to obtain

a much needed rest in the weary conflict. As soon as political

activities were resumed, the Conciliation Bill by the energies of

the Liberal Whips was talked out (wasn't it?). At any rate it came

to nothing for that Session. Vivie took this as a decision. She

openly declared that the Vote never would be given by the House of

Commons or House of Lords until it was wrung from the Legislature by

a complete dislocation of public affairs, the nearest approach to a

revolution women could bring about without rifles and cannon.

Meantime she refused to be duped by Ministers or by amiable

go-betweens. She resolved instead, perhaps for the last time, to

resume the clothes and status of David Williams, go down to Wales,

and stay with her father who was dying by slow degrees.

The letters which the curate had written from time to time to D.V.

Williams, Esq., care of Michael Rossiter, Esq., F.R.S., and usually

forwarded on by Bertie Adams, had told David how much the Revd.

Howel Williams had failed since the cold spring of 1909, and how in

the colder spring of 1910 he had once or twice narrowly survived

influenza. In July, 1910, he was dying of heart failure.

Nevertheless the return of David, his well-beloved, brought to him a

flicker of renewed life, a little pink in the cheeks, and some

garrulity.

He could hardly bear his darling son out of his sight, except for

the narrowest margin of necessary sleep; and often David slept

sitting up in an arm-chair in the Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel

said nothing more about grandchildren; often--with a finer

sense--spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved

daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's

hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried

in his imposture as in one of the best deeds of his chequered life.

* * * * *

The will, of course, had not been changed, and David inherited all

his "father's" property. Out of it he settled £500 on the

miner's--or rather Jenny's--son who probably _was_ the offspring of

the real David Williams's boyish amour. He provided a handsome

annuity for poor, shaken, old Nannie; and the rest of the money

after paying all expenses he laid out on the endowment of a Village

Hall for games and study, social meetings and political discussions,

together with provision for an annual stipend of a hundred pounds

for the Vicar or curate of the parish who should run this Hall:

which was to be a lasting memorial to the Reverend Howel Vaughan

Williams, so learned in the lore of Wales.

Having settled all these matters to his satisfaction, and certainly

to that of the Revd. Cadwalladr Jones (who succeeded as Vicar of

Pontystrad by a wise nudging and monetary pressure on the part of

the late Vicar's son), David returned to London at the close of

1910, took off his clothes and shed his personality. It was bruited

that he had gone abroad to nurse a health that was seriously

impaired through his incredible exertions over the Shillito case. He

left his cousin Vivie free to espouse the Suffrage cause, even unto

the extremest militancy.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

The Conciliation Bill which was intended to give the Parliamentary

Vote to a little over one million women had passed its Second

reading on July 12, 1910, by a majority of 110 votes; in spite of

the bitter opposition of the Premier, the Chancellor of the

Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade,

and the Secretary for the Colonies. The Premier's arguments against

it were, firstly, that "Women were Women"--this of course was a

deplorable fact--and that "the balance of power might fall into

their hands without the physical force necessary to impose their

decisions, etc., etc."; and finally "that in Force lay the ultimate

appeal" (rather a dangerous incitement to the sincere militants).

The Chancellor of the Exchequer took up a more subtle attitude than

the undisguised, grumpy hostility of his leader.

His arguments at the time reminded me of an episode in East Africa

thirty years ago. A certain independent Chief tolerated the presence

on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not

care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the

missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the

erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse

made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof

against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The

missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed

shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All

right," said the potentate, who kept a fretful realm in awe, "_But_

you have no proof it _is_ my people who break in and steal. You just

catch one in the act, and _then_ you'll see what I'll do."

So the Oxford and Cambridge athletic missionaries sat up night after

night under some camouflage and at last their patience was rewarded

by the capture of a naked, oily-skinned negro who emerged from a

tunnel he had dug under the store-foundations. Then they bore him

off to the Yao chieftain.

"_Now_ we know where we are," said the Chief. "You've proved your

complaint. We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market

place. I presume you've brought a lunch-basket?"

"Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a

penalty as _that_..."

"Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!"

"Crucify him?"--"No! No!"--"Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest?"

"No! No!"

"Then, if you don't want _any_ rational punishment, he shall go

free." And free he went.

In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so

hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was

democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure

his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation

Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at

all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine

enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in

that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to

woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had

to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother

Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu

Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even--maybe--been

spanked by one.

The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the

Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that

there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's

Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not

be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male

interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the

second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with

their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by

some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not

disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed

its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee

of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that

seeks to become law.

So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations,

hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal

statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely--as

Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into

trouble--"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they

couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange,

champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets,

public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion."

My! But she was bitter in her Hyde Park speeches and at her Albert

Hall meetings against this band of mock-liberals who had seized the

impulse of the country towards reform which had grown up under the

Chamberlain era to instal themselves in power with the financial

backing of great Americo-German-Jewish internationalists, who in

those early years of the Twentieth century were ready to stake their

dollars on the Free Trade British Empire if they might guide its

policy.

[Very likely if they had obtained the complete guidance they sought

for they might have staved off this ruinous war by telling Germany

bluntly she must keep her hands off France and Belgium; they might

also have seen to it that the War Office _was_ reformed and the

British army ready to fulfil Lord Haldane's promises; for there is

no doubt they had ability even if they despised the instruments they

worked with.]

But as I say, Vivie was a bitter and most effective speaker. She

inflamed to action many a warm-hearted person like myself, like

Rossiter (who got into trouble--though it was hushed up--in

1910-1911 for slapping the face of a Secretary of State who spoke

slightingly of the women Suffragists and their motives). Yet I seem

to be stranded now, with a few others, in my pre-war enthusiasm over

the woman's cause, or, later, my horror at the German treatment of

Belgium.

Where are the snows of yester-year; where is the animosity which in

the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the

spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who

wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so

doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of

representative government? The other day I glanced at a newspaper

and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the

Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the

great Police Surgeon, knighted for his skill and discretion in

forcible feeding, and the George Bounderbys (G.B. was the venomous

Private Secretary of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and put

him up to most of his anti-suffrage dodges); and meeting Vivien

Rossiter soon afterwards I said, "How _could_ you?" "How could I

what?" "Dine with the people you once hated." "Oh I don't know, it's

all past and done with; we've got the Vote and somehow after those

years in Brussels I seem to have no hates and few loves

left"--However this is anticipating. I only insert this protest

because I may seem to be expressing a bitterness the protagonists

have ceased to feel, a triumph at the victory of their cause which

produces in them merely a yawn.

Where is Mrs. Pankhurst? Somehow one thought she would never rest

till she was in the Cabinet. And Christabel? And Annie Kenney?

Married perchance to some permanent under Secretary of State and

viewing "direct action" with growing disapproval.

And the Pethick Lawrences? Some one told me the other day that

they'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be forcibly fed.

But in November, 1910, we all--we that were whole-hearted reformers,

true Liberals, not wolves in sheep's clothing, took very much to

heart what happened on the 18th of that month, when the Prime

Minister of the time announced that the Conference between the House

of Lords and the House of Commons on the Veto question having broken

down he had advised His Majesty to dissolve Parliament. This meant

that the Conciliation Bill was _finally_ done for; while the

declaration of the Prime Minister as to the future Programme of the

Liberal Party, if it was returned to power, excluded any mention of

a Woman's enfranchisement Bill.

On Black Friday, November 18th, Vivie was present at the meeting in

Caxton Hall when Mrs. Pankhurst explained the position to the

Suffragist women assembled there. Her blood was fired by the recital

of their wrongs and she was prominent among the four hundred and

fifty volunteers who came forward to accompany Mrs. Pankhurst, Dr.

Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes (the two last, infirm old

ladies) when they proposed to march to the Houses of Parliament to

exercise their right of presenting a petition.

The women proceeded to Parliament Square in small groups so as to

keep within the letter of the law. Some like Vivie carried banners

with pitiful devices--"Where there's a Bill there's a Way," "Women's

Will Beats Asquith's Skill," and so on.... She wished she had given

more direct attention to these mottoes, but much of this procedure

had been got up on impulse and little preparation made. It was near

to four o'clock on a fine November afternoon when the four hundred

and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square. A

red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty

buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow

lights of the newly-lit lamps. The avenues converging on the Houses

of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be

diverted from the streets. The men in the watching crowd covered the

pavements and island "refuges," leaving the roadways to the little

groups of struggling women, and the large force--a thousand or

more--of opposing police.

It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by

their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked

this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with

which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be

awkward if they made many arrests of women--perchance Liberal

women--on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a

deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the

Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that "frightfulness"

which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian

armoury. Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd

which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of

rough men and boys--costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the

barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys,

soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag

and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing--looked to

this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police

(uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women

clamouring for the Vote "what for"; teach them a lesson as to what

the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic

license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but

the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs.

Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility

of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as

the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor.

But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took

quite a different line. The day had gone by when men and boys were

wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette: "Go home and mind yer

biby." Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters

now understood that women of a courage rarely matched in man were

fighting for the cause of all ill-governed, mal-administered,

swindled, exploited people of either sex. The mass of men, _in_ the

mass, is chivalrous. It admires pluck, patience, and persistency. So

the crowd instead of aiding the police to knock sense into the women

began to take sides with the buffeted, brutalized and bleeding

Suffragettes.

Fortunately before the real fighting began, and no doubt as a stroke

of policy on the part of some Police Inspector, Mrs. Pankhurst

convoying the two frail old ladies--Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan

Knipper-Totes--champions of the Vote when Woman Suffrage was outside

practical politics--had reached the steps of the Strangers' entrance

to the House of Commons. From this point of 'vantage a few of the

older leaders of the deputation were able to witness the four or

five hours' struggle in and around Parliament Square, the Abbey,

Parliament Street, Great George Street which made Black Friday one

of the note-worthy days in British history--though, _more nostro_,

it will be long before it is inserted in school books.

Here, while something like panic signalized the Legislative Chamber

and Cabinet ministers scurried in and out like flurried rabbits and

finally took refuge in their private rooms--here was fought out the

decisive battle between physical and moral force over the suffrage

question. The women were so _exaltées_ that they were ready to face

death for their cause. The police were so exasperated that they saw

red and some went mad with sex mania. It was a horrible spectacle in

detail. Men with foam on their moustaches were gripping women by the

breasts, tearing open their clothing, and proceeding to rabid

indecencies. Or, if not sex-mad, they twisted their arms, turned

back their thumbs to dislocation, rained blows with fists on pale

faces, covering them with blood. They tore out golden hair or thin

grey locks with equal disregard. Mounted police were summoned to

overawe the crowd, which by this time whether suffragist and female,

or neutral, non-committal and male, was giving the police on foot a

very nasty time. The four hundred and fifty women of the original

impulse had increased to several thousand. Dusk had long since

deepened into a night lit up with arc lamps and the golden radiance

of great gas-lamp clusters. Flares were lighted to enable the police

to see better what they were doing and who were their assailants.

But the women showed complete indifference to the horses; and the

horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to

the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet

and outspread hands.

Here and there humanity asserted itself. One policeman--helmetless,

his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding--had in berserkr rage

felled a young woman in the semi-darkness. He bore his senseless

victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her

his bull's eye lantern. She was a beautiful creature, in private

life a waitress at a tea shop. Her hat was gone and her hair

streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders. The policeman

overcome with remorse exclaimed--mentioning the Home Secretary's

name "---- be damned; this ain't the job for a decent man." The

Suffragette revived under his care. He escorted her home, resigned

from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily

ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War.

Vivie had struggled for about two hours to reach the precincts of

the House, with or without her banner. Probably without, because she

had freely used its staff as a weapon of defence, and her former

skill in fencing stood her in good stead. But at last she was

gripped by two constables, one of them an oldish man and the other a

plain-clothes policeman, whom several spectators had singled out for

his pleasure in needless brutalities.

These men proceeded to give her "punishment," and involuntarily she

shrieked with mingled agony of pain and outraged sex-revolt. A man

who had paused irresolutely on the kerb of a street refuge came to

her aid. He dealt the grey-haired constable a blow that sent him

reeling and then seized the plain-clothes man by his coat collar. A

struggle ensued which ended in the intervener being flung with such

violence on the kerb stone that he was temporarily stunned.

Presently he found himself being dragged along with his heels

dangling, while Vivie, described in language which my jury of

matrons will not allow me to repeat, was being propelled alongside

him, her clothes nearly torn off her, to some police station where

they were placed under arrest. As soon as they had recovered breath

and complete consciousness, had wiped the blood from cut heads,

noses, and lips, they looked hard at each other. "Thank you _so_

much," said Vivie, "it _was_ good of you." "That's enough," said

her defender, "it wanted the voice to make me sure; but somehow I

thought all along it _was_ Vivie. Don't you know me? Frank Gardner!"

While waiting for the formalities to be concluded and their

transference to cells in which they were to pass the night, Frank

told Vivie briefly that he had returned from Rhodesia a prosperous

man on a brief holiday leaving his wife and children to await his

return. Hearing there was likely to be an unusual row that evening

over the Suffrage question he had sauntered down from the Strand to

see what was going on and had been haunted by the conviction that he

would meet Vivie in the middle of the conflict. But when he rushed

to her defence his action was instinctive, the impulse of any

red-blooded man to defend a woman that was being brutally

maltreated.

The next morning they were haled before the magistrate. Michael

Rossiter was in court as a spectator, feverishly anxious to pay

Vivie's fine or to find bail, or in all and every way to come to her

relief. He seemed rather mystified at the sight of Frank Gardner

arraigned with her. But presently the prosecuting counsel for the

Chief Commissioner of Police arrived and told the astonished

magistrate it was the wish of the Home Secretary that the prisoners

in the dock should all be discharged, Vivie and Frank Gardner among

them. At any rate no evidence would be tendered by the prosecution.

So they were released, as also was each fresh batch of prisoners

brought in after them. Vivie went in a cab to her house in the

Victoria Road; Frank back to his hotel. Both had promised to

foregather at Rossiter's house in Portland Place at lunch.

Hitherto Vivie had refrained from entering No. 1 Park Crescent. She

had not seen it or Mrs. Rossiter since David's attack of faintness

and hysteria in February, 1909, nearly two years ago. Why she went

now she scarcely knew, logically. It was unwise to renew relations

too closely with Rossiter, who showed his solicitude for her far too

plainly in his face. The introduction to Linda Rossiter in her

female form would be embarrassing and would doubtless set that good

lady questioning and speculating.

Yet she felt she must see Rossiter--writing was always dangerous and

inadequate--and reason with him; beg him not to spoil his own

chances in life for her, not lose his head in politics and personal

animosities on her behalf, as he seemed likely to do. Already people

were speaking of him as a parallel to ----, and ----, and ---- (you

can fill the blanks for yourself with the names of great men of

science who have become ineffective, quarrelsome, isolated members

of Parliament); saying it was a great loss to Science and no gain to

the legislature.

As to Frank Gardner, she was equally eager for a long explanatory

talk with him. Except that her life had inured her to surprises and

unexpected meetings, it was sufficiently amazing that Frank and she,

who had not seen each other or touched hands for thirteen years,

should meet thus in a dangerous scuffle in a dense struggling crowd

outside the Houses of Parliament. She must so arrange matters after

lunch that Frank should not prevent her hour's talk with Rossiter,

yet should have the long explanation he himself deserved. An idea.

She would telephone to Praddy and invite herself and Frank to tea at

his studio after she had left the Rossiters.

Mrs. Rossiter was used to unexpected guests at lunch. People on

terms of familiarity dropped in, or the Professor detained some

colleague or pupil and made him sit down to the meal which was

always prepared and seated for four. Therefore she was not

particularly taken aback when her husband appeared at five minutes

to one in the little drawing-room and after requesting that the

macaw and the cockatoo might be removed for the nonce to a back

room--as they made sustained conversation impossible, announced that

he expected momently--ah! there was the bell--two persons whose

acquaintance he was sure Linda would like to make. One was Captain

Frank Gardner, who owned a big ranch in Rhodesia, and--er--the

other--oh no! no relation--was Miss Warren....

"What, one of the Warrens of Huddersfield? Well, I never! And where

did you pick her up? Strange she shouldn't have written to me she

was coming up to town! I could--"

"No, this is a Miss Vivien Warren--"

"Vivien? How curious, why that is the name of the Adams's little

girl--"

"A Miss Vivien Warren," went on Rossiter patiently--"a well-known

Suffragist who--"

"Oh Michael! _Not_ a Suffragette!" wailed Mrs. Rossiter, imagining

vitriol was about to be thrown over the surviving pug and damage

done generally to the furniture--But at this moment the butler

announced: "Captain Frank Gardner and Miss Warren."

Gardner was well enough, a lean soldierly-looking man, brown with

the African sun, with pleasant twinkling blue eyes, a thick

moustache and curly hair, just a little thin on the top. His face

was rather scarred with African adventure and did not show much

special trace of his last night's tussle with the police. There was

a cut at the back of his head where he had fallen on the kerb stone

but that was neatly plastered, and you do not turn your back much on

a hostess, at any rate on first introduction.

But Vivie had obviously been in the wars. She had--frankly--a black

eye, a cut and swollen lip, and her ordinarily well-shaped nose was

a trifle swollen and reddened. But her eyes likewise were twinkling,

though the bruised one was bloodshot.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rossiter, to be introduced to you like this. I

don't know _what_ you will think of me. It's the first time I've

been in a really bad row.... We were trying to get to the House of

Commons, but the police interfered and gave us the full privileges

of a man as regards their fists. Captain Gardner here--who is an old

friend of mine--intervened, or I'm afraid I shouldn't have got off

as cheaply as I did. And your husband kindly came to the police

court to testify to our good character, and then invited us to

lunch."

_Mrs. Rossiter_: "Why how your voice reminds me of some one who used

to come here a good deal at one time--a Mr. David Williams. I

suppose he isn't any relation?"

_Vivie_ (while Frank Gardner looks a little astonished): "Oh--my

cousin. I knew you knew him. He has often talked to me about you.

I'll tell you about David by and bye, Frank."

At this interchange of Christian names Mrs. Rossiter thinks she

understands the situation: they are engaged, have been since last

night's rescue. But what _extraordinary_ people the dear Professor

_does_ pick up! Have _they_ got ductless glands, she wonders?

Rossiter who has been fidgeting through this dialogue considers that

lunch is ready, so they proceed to the small dining-room, "the

breakfast-room." Mrs. Rossiter was always very proud of having a

_small_ drawing-room (otherwise, "me boudwor") and a _small_

dining-room. It prepared the way for greater magnificence at big

parties and also enabled one to be cosier with a few friends.

At luncheon:

_Mrs. Rossiter_ to _Frank Gardner_, archly: "I suppose you've come

home to be married?"

_Frank_: "Oh no! I'm not a bigamist, I've got a wife already and

four children, and jolly glad I shall be to get back to 'em. I can't

stand much of the English climate, after getting so used to South

African sunshine. No. I came on a business trip to England, leaving

my old dear out at the farm near Salisbury, with the kids--we've got

a nice English governess who helps her to look after 'em. A year or

two hence I hope to bring 'em over to see the old country and we may

have to put the eldest to school: children run wild so in South

Africa. As to Miss Warren, she's an old friend of mine and a very

dear one. I hadn't seen her for--for--thirteen years, when the sound

of her voice--She's got one of those voices you never forget--the

sound of her voice came up out of that beastly crowd of gladiators

yesterday, and I found her being hammered by two policemen. I pretty

well laid one out, though I hadn't used my fists for a matter of ten

years. Then I got knocked over myself, I passed a night in a police

cell feeling pretty sick and positively maddened at not being able

to ask any questions. Then at last morning came, I had a wash and

brush up--the police after all aren't bad chaps, and most of 'em

seemed jolly well ashamed of last night's doin's--Then I met Vivie

in Court and your husband too. He took me on trust and I'm awfully

grateful to him. I've got a dear old mater down in Kent--Margate,

don't you know--my dad's still alive, Vivie!--and she'd have been

awfully cut up at hearing her son had been spending the night in a

police cell and was goin' to be fined for rioting, only fortunately

the Home Secretary said we weren't to be punished.... But Professor

Rossiter's coming on the scene was a grand thing. Besides being an

M.P., I needn't tell _you_, Mrs. Rossiter, he has a world-wide

reputation. Oh, we read your books, sir, out in South Africa, _I_

can tell you--Well--er--and here we are--and I'm monopolizing the

conversation."

Vivie sat opposite her old lover, and near to the man who loved her

now with such ill-concealed passion that his hand trembled for her

very proximity. She felt strangely elated, strangely gay, at times

inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy

face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that

notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated

rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still

felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice.

Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant. She

trifled with her food but she felt young and full of gay adventure.

Mrs. Rossiter a little overwhelmed with all the information Gardner

had poured out, a little irritated also at the dancing light in

Vivie's eyes, turned her questionings on her.

_Mrs. Rossiter_: "I suppose you are the Miss Warren who speaks so

much. I often see your name in the papers, especially in _Votes for

Women_ that the Professor takes in. Isn't it funny that a man should

care so much about women getting the vote? I'm sure _I_ don't want

it. I'm _quite_ content to exercise _my_ influence through _him_,

especially now he's in Parliament. But then I have my home to look

after, and I'm _much_ too busy to go out and about and mix myself up

in politics. I'm quite content to leave all that to the menfolk."

_Vivie_: "Quite so. In your position no doubt I should do the same;

but you see I haven't any menfolk. There is my mother, but she

prefers to live abroad, and as she is comfortably off she can employ

servants to look after her." (This hint of wealth a little reassured

Mrs. Rossiter, who believed most Suffragettes to be adventuresses.)

"So, as I have no ties I prefer to give myself up to the service of

women in general. When they have the vote and other privileges of

men, then of course I can attend to my private interests and

pursuits--mathematical calculations, insurance risks--"

_Mrs. Rossiter_: "It is _extraordinary_ how like your voice is to

your cousin's. If I shut my eyes I could think he was back again.

Not," (she added hastily) "that he has not, no doubt, _plenty_ to do

abroad. Do you ever see him now? Why does he not marry and settle

down? One never hears of him now as a barrister. But then he used to

_feel_ his cases too much. The last time he was here he fainted and

had to stay here all night.

"And yet he had won his case and got his--what do you say? client?

off--I dare say you remember it? She was my husband's cousin though

we hardly liked to say so at the time: it is so unpleasant having a

murder in the family. Fortunately she was let off; I mean, the jury

said 'not guilty,' though personally I--However that is neither here

nor there, and since then she's married Colonel Kesteven--Won't you

have some pheasant? No? I remember your cousin used to have a very

poor appetite, especially when one of his cases was on. _How_ he

used--excuse my saying so--how he used to tire poor Michael--Mr.

Rossiter! Talk, talk, talk! in the evenings, and I knew the

Professor had his lectures to prepare, but hints were thrown away on

Mr. David."

Rossiter broke in:

"Now what would you like to do in the afternoon, Miss Warren? And

Gardner? You, by the bye, have the first claim on our hospitality.

You have just arrived from Africa and the only thing we have done

for you, so far, is to drag you into a disgraceful row."

_Frank_: "Well, _I_ should like a glimpse of the Zoo. I'm quite

willing to pay my shilling and give no more trouble, but if Vivie is

going there too we could all walk up together. After that I'm going

to revisit an old acquaintance of mine and Vivie's, Praed the

architect--lives somewhere in Chelsea if I remember right--"

_Vivie_: "In Hans Place. I don't particularly want to go to the Zoo.

I look so odd I might over-excite the monkeys. I think I should like

to try a restful visit to the Royal Botanic. I'm so fond of their

collection of weird succulent plants--things that look like stones

and suddenly produce superb flowers."

_Mrs. Rossiter_: "We belong to the Botanic as well as to the Zoo.

_I_ could take you there after lunch."

_Rossiter_: "You forget, dearie, you've got to open that Bazaar in

Marylebone Town Hall--"

_Linda_: "Oh, have I? To be sure. But it's Lady Goring that does the

opening, I'm _much_ too nervous. Still I promised to come. Would

Miss Warren care to come with me?"

_Vivie_: "I should have liked to awfully: I love bazaars; but just

at this moment I'm thinking more of those succulent plants ... and

my battered face."

_Rossiter_: "I'll make up your minds for you. We'll _all_ drive to

the Zoo in Linda's motor. Gardner shall look at the animals and then

find his way to Hans Place. I'll escort Miss Warren to the Botanic,

and then come on and pick you up, Linda, at the Town Hall."

That statement seemed to satisfy every one, so after coffee and a

glance round the laboratory and the last experiments, they proceeded

to the Zoo, with at least an hour's daylight at their disposal.

Rossiter and Vivie were at last alone within the charmed circle of

the Botanic Gardens. They made their way slowly to the great Palm

House and thence up twisty iron steps to a nook like a tree refuge

in New Guinea, among palm boles and extravagant aroid growths.

"Now Michael," said Vivie--despite her bruised face she looked very

elegant in her grey costume, grey hat, and grey suède gloves, and he

had to exercise great self-restraint, remember that he was known by

sight to most of the gardeners and to the ubiquitous secretary, in

order to refrain from crushing her to his side: "Now Michael: I want

a serious talk to you, a talk which will last for another eighteen

months--which is about the time that has elapsed since we had our

last--You're _not_ keeping the pact we made."

"What was that?"

"Why you promised me that your--your--love--No! I won't misuse that

word--Your friendship for me should not spoil your life, your

career, or make Linda unhappy. Yet it is doing all three. You've

lived in a continual agitation since you got into Parliament, and

now you'll be involved in more electioneering in order to be

returned once more. Meantime your science has come to a dead stop.

And it's so far more important for us than getting the Vote. All

this franchise agitation is on a much lower plane. It amuses and

interests me. It keeps me from thinking too much about you.

Besides, I am naturally rather combative; I secretly enjoy these

rough-and-tumbles with constituted authority. I also really _do_

think it is a _beastly_ shame, this preference shown for man, in

most of the careers and in the franchise. But don't you worry

_yourself_ unduly about it. If I really thought that you cared so

much about me that it was turning you away from _our_ religion,

scientific research, I'd go over to Brussels to my mother and stay

there. I really would; and I really will if you don't stop following

me about from meeting to meeting and going mad over the Suffrage

question in the House. Is it true that you struck a Cabinet minister

the other day? Mr. ----?"

_Rossiter_: "Yes, it's true, and he asked for it. If I am

unreasonable what are _they_? ----, ----, _and_ ----? Why have they

such a bitter feeling against your sex? Have they had no mothers, no

sweethearts, no sisters, no wives? If I'd never met you I should

still have been a Suffragist. I think I _was_ one, as a boy,

watching what my mother suffered from my father, and how he collared

all her money--I suppose it was before the Married Woman's Property

Act--and grudged her any for her dress, her little comforts, her

books, or even for proper medical advice. And to hear these Liberal

Cabinet Ministers--_Liberal_, mind you--talk about women, often with

the filthy phrases of the street--Well: he got a smack on the jaw

and decided to treat the incident as a trifling one ... his private

secretary patched it up somehow, but I expressed no regret....

"Well, darling, I'll try to do as you wish. I'll try to shut you out

of my thoughts and return to my experiments, when I'm not on

platforms or in the House. I think I shall get in again--it's a mere

matter of money, and thanks to Linda that isn't wanting. I'm not

going to withdraw from politics, you bet, however disenchanted I may

be. It's because the decent, honest, educated men withdraw that

legislation and administration are left to the case-hardened rogues

... and the uneducated ... and the cranks. But don't make things

_too_ hard for me. Keep out of prison ... keep off hunger

strikes--If you're going to be man-handled by the police--Ah! _why_

wasn't _I_ there, instead of in the House? Gardner had all the

luck.... I was glad to hear he was married."

_Vivie_: "Oh you needn't be jealous of poor Frank. And he'll soon be

back in South Africa. You needn't be jealous of _any_ one. I'm all

yours--in spirit--for all time. Now we must be going: it's getting

dusk and we should be irretrievably ruined if we were locked up in

this dilapidated old palm house. Besides, I'm to meet Frank at

Praddy's studio in order to tell him the history of the last

thirteen years."

As they walked away: "You know, Michael, I'm still hoping we may be

friends without being lovers. I wonder whether Linda would get to

like me?"

At Praed's studio. Lewis Maitland Praed is looking older. He must be

now--November, 1910--about fifty-eight or fifty-nine. But he has

still a certain elegance, the look of a lesser Leighton about him.

Frank has been there already for half an hour, and the tea-table

has been, so to speak, deflowered. Vivie accepts a cup, a muffin,

and a marron glacé. Then says, "Now, dear Praddy, summon your

mistress, _dons l'honnête sens du mot_, and have this tea-table

cleared so that we can have a hugely long and uninterrupted talk. I

have got to give Frank a summary of all that I've done in the past

thirteen years. Meanwhile Frank, as your record, I feel convinced,

is so blameless and normal that it could be told before any

parlour-maid, you start off whilst she is taking away the tea,

fiddling with the stove, and prolonging to the uttermost her

services to a master who has become her slave."

The parlour-maid enters, and casts more than one searching glance at

Vivie's bruised features, but performs her duties in a workmanlike

manner.

_Frank_: "My story? Oh well, it's a happy one on the whole--very

happy. Soon as the war was over, I got busy in Rhodesia and pitched

on a perfect site for a stock and fruit farm. The B.S.A. Co. was

good to me because I'd known Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jim; and by

nineteen four I was going well, they'd made me a magistrate, and

some of my mining shares had turned out trumps. Then Westlock came

out as Governor General, and Lady Enid had brought out with her a

jolly nice girl as governess to her children. She was the daughter

of a parson in Hertfordshire near the Brinsley estates. Well, I

won't say--bein' the soul of truth--that I fell in love with

her--straight away--because I don't think I ever fell deep in

love--straight away--with any girl but you, Vivie. But I did feel,

as it was hopeless askin' you to marry me, here was the wife I

wanted. She was good enough to accept me and the Westlocks were

awfully kind and made everything easy. Lady Enid's a perfect

brick--and, by the bye, she's a great Suffragist too. Well: we were

married at Pretoria in 1904, and now we've got four children; a

sturdy young Frank, a golupshous Vivie--oh, I told Muriel

everything, she's the sort of woman you can--And the other two are

called Bertha after my mother and Charlotte after Mrs. Bernard

Shaw. I sent you, Vivie--a newspaper with the announcement of my

marriage--Dj'ever get it?"

_Vivie_: "Never. But I was undergoing a sea-change of my own, just

then, which I will tell you all about presently."

_Frank_: "Well then. I came back to England on a hurried visit. You

remember, Praddy? But you were away in Italy and I couldn't find

Vivie anywhere. I called round at where your office was--Fraser and

Warren--where we parted in 1897--and there was no more Fraser and

Warren. Nobody knew anything about what had become of you. P'raps I

might have found out, but I got a bit huffy, thought you might have

written me a line about my marriage. I did write to Miss Fraser, but

the letter was returned from the Dead Letter office," (_Vivie_: "She

married Colonel Armstrong.") "Well, there it is! By some devilish

lucky chance I had no sooner got to London from Southhampton, day

before yesterday, than some one told me all about the expected row

between the Suffragettes and the police. Thought I'd go and see for

myself what this meant. No idea before how far the thing had gone,

or what brutes the police could be. Had a sort of notion, don't know

why, that dear old Viv would be in it, up to the neck. Got mixed up

in the crowd and helped a woman or two out of it. Lady Feenix--they

said it was--picked up some and took 'em into her motor. And then I

heard a cry which could only be in Vivie's voice--dear old

Viv--(leans forward with shining eyes to press her hand) and ...

there we are. How're the bruises?"

_Vivie_: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such _joy_ to have such

friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind

_what_ I go through..."

_Frank_: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully

gone on you...?"

_Vivie_ (flushing in the firelight): "Does he? It's only friendship.

I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a

critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's

definitely left us, I will tell you _my_ story."

So she does, between five and half-past six, almost without

interruption from the spell-bound Frank--who says it licks any novel

he ever read, and she ought to turn it into a novel--with a happy

ending--or from Praed who is at times a little somnolent. Then at

half-past six, the practical Frank says:

"Look here, you chaps, I could go on listening till midnight, but

what's the matter with a bit of dinner? I dare say Praddy's

parlour-maid might turn sour if we asked her at a moment's notice to

find dinner for three. Why not come out and dine with me at the Hans

Crescent Hotel? Close by. I'll get a quiet table and we can finish

our talk there. To-morrow I must go down to Margate to see the dear

old mater, and it may be a week before I'm up again."

They adjourn to the hostelry mentioned.

Over coffee and cigarettes, Vivie makes this appeal to Frank: "Now

Frank, you know all my story. Tell me first, what really became of

the real David Williams, the young man you met in the hospital and

wrote to me about?"

_Frank_: "'Pon my life I don't know. I never heard one word about

him after I got clear of the hospital myself. You know it fell into

Boer hands during that rising in Cape Colony. I expect the 'real'

David Williams, as you call him, died from neglected wounds or

typhoid--or recovered and took to drink, or went up country and got

knocked on the head by the natives for interfering with their

women--Good riddance of bad rubbish, I expect. What do you want me

to do? I'll swear to anything in reason."

_Vivie_: "I want you to do this. Run down one day before you go back

to Africa, to South Wales, to Pontystrad--It's not far from

Swansea--And call at the Vicarage on the pretext that you've come to

enquire about David Vavasour Williams whom you once knew in South

Africa. It'll give verisimilitude to my stories. They'll probably

say they haven't seen him for ever so long, but that you can hear of

him through Professor Rossiter. I dare say it's a silly idea of

mine, but what I fear sometimes--is that if the fact comes out that

_I_ was David Williams, some Vaughan or Price or other Williams may

call the old man's will in question and get it put into Chancery,

get the money taken away from poor old Bridget Evanwy and the

village hall which I've endowed. That's all. If it wasn't that I've

disposed of my supposed father's money in the way I think he would

have liked best, I shouldn't care a hang if they found out the trick

I'd played on the Benchers. D'you see?"

_Frank_: "I see."

The next day Vivie wisely spent in bed, healing her wounds and

resting her limbs which after the mental excitement was over ached

horribly. Honoria came round and listened, applauded, pitied,

laughed and concurred.

But she was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday

to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear

one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of

the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness

of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going

round to Downing Street to ask for a more definite wording. Vivie

and many others followed this dauntless lady. Their visit was

unexpected, the police force was small and the Suffragettes had two

of the Cabinet Ministers at their mercy. They contented themselves

by shaking, hustling, frightening but not otherwise injuring their

victims before the latter were rescued and put into taxi-cabs.

CHAPTER XIV

MILITANCY

The Lilacs,

Victoria Road, S.W.

_December_ 31, 1910.

DEAR MICHAEL,--

I'm so glad you got returned all right by your University. I

feared very much your championship of the Woman's Cause

might have told against you. But these newer Universities

are more liberal-minded.

I am keeping my promise to tell you of any important move I

am making. So this is to inform you, _in very strict

confidence_, of my latest dodge. For the effective

organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U.

activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too

small, and besides I shrink from having my little home

raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned

the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the

top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland

Insurance Co. that occupied nearly all the building has

cleared out and the block is to be given over to a multitude

of small undertakings. Well: I secured our old rooms! Simply

splendid, with the two safes that Honoria, untold ages ago,

fitted into the walls, and hid so cleverly that if there is

no treachery it would be hard for the police to find them

and raid them. The Midland Insurance Co. did not behave well

to Fraser and Warren, so Beryl Storrington, when she was

clearing out said nothing about the safes, which were not

noticed by the Company. Honoria kept the keys and now hands

them over to me.

The W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other offices

on the same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We find

we can, by using the fire escape, pass over the intervening

roofs and reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at

the 88-90 building. I shall once again make use of the

little room next the partners' office as a bedroom or

rather, "tiring" room, where I can if necessary effect

changes of costume. I have taken the new offices in the name

of Mr. Michaelis[1] for a special reason; and with some

modifications of David's costume I have appeared in person

to assume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94

dressed as Vivie Warren. All this may sound very silly to

you, like playing at conspiracy. But these precautions seem

to be necessary. The Government is beginning to take

Suffragism seriously, and a whole department at New Scotland

Yard has been organized to cope with our activities.

[Footnote 1: Michaelis, I believe, was a Greek merchant

dealing with sponges, emery powder, coral, and other

products of the Mediterranean shores whose acquaintance

Vivie had originally made when interested in the shares of

that Levantine house, Charles Davis and Co. Of Ionian birth

he had become a naturalized British subject, but having

grown wealthy had decided to transfer himself to Athens and

enter political life. He had consented amusedly to Vivie's

adoption of his name for her new tenancy and had given her

an old passport, which you could do in the days that knew

not Dora--she resembling him somewhat in appearance. He was

aware of her Suffragist activities and guessed she might

want it occasionally for eluding the police on trips

abroad.--H.H.J.]

One reason I have in writing this letter--a letter I hope

you will burn after you have read and noted its contents--is

to ask you to lend me for a while the services of Bertie

Adams as clerk. Of course I shall insist on paying his

salary whilst I employ him, and indemnifying him for

anything he may suffer in my service--that of the W.S.P.U. I

am fairly well off for money now. Besides the funds the

W.S.P.U. places at my disposal, I have the interest on

mother's Ten Thousand pounds, and she would give me more if

I asked for it. She has quite taken to the idea of spending

her ill-gotten gains on the Enfranchisement of Women! (I am

going over to see her for a week or so, when it is not quite

so cold.)

What business am I going specially to undertake in Mr.

Michaelis's office on the top storey of 88-90? I will tell

you. Scotland Yard is getting busy about us, the

Suffragists, trying to find out all it can that is

detrimental to our personal characters, our upbringing, our

progeniture, our businesses and our relations; whether we

had a forger in the family, whether I am the daughter of the

"notorious" Mrs. Warren, whether Mrs. Canon Burstall is

really my aunt and whether she couldn't be brought to use

her private influence on me to keep me quiet, in case it

came out that Kate Warren was her sister, and that she led

Kate into that way of life wherein she earned her shameful

livelihood. I have had one or two covert hints from Aunt Liz

promising to open up relations _if_ only I'll behave myself!

Scotland Yard has already had the sorry triumph of causing

one or two of our most prominent workers to retire from the

ranks because they were not properly married or had been

married after the eldest child was born; or had once "been

in trouble," over some peccadillo, or had had a son or a

sister who though now upright and prosperous had once been

in the clutches of the law.

Now my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am

impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David

Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only

retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise

you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the

revelation--if it came about--that you were deceived by me

and by my "father"--would do you no harm. For a number of

reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make

themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful

entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact,

through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I

do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will

be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother _s'est bien

rangée_. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they

challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant

scandals of the last thirty years.

My own careful study of criminology and the assiduous

searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my

mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen,

police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges,

press-editors--many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality

abroad--have given me numerous hints in what direction to

pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr.

Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of

the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and

that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with

clean hands, _que Messieurs les Assassins commencent_! If

Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a

weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury.

How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these

extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of

several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I

should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing

sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I

won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if

they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will

leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone.

Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night

at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and

wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this

vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on

a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large

cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that

we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the

Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home

Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall

soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before

you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered

life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place!

On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is

to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the

Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not

too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home

Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become

interested in my correspondence, and because this is really

a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am

calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your

butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its

contents--if you go to that length.

Yours,

VIVIE.

Rossiter read this letter an hour or so after it had been delivered,

frowned a good deal, made notes in one of his memorandum books; then

tore the sheets of typewriting into four and placed them on the

fire. Having satisfied himself that the flames had caught them, he

went up with a sullen face to dress for dinner: Linda was giving a

New Year's Eve dinner to friends and relations and he had to play

the part of host with assumed heartiness.

In the perversity of fate, one piece of the typewritten letter

escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the

chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off

the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early

for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of

Michael's dressing-room, and had come with some vague intention into

his study, to see perhaps if the fire was burning brightly: because

to avoid unnecessary journies upstairs they would receive their

guests to-night in the study and thence pass to the dining-room.

But the fire had gone sulky, as fires do sometimes even with

well-behaved chimneys and first-class coal. She noted the charred

portion of paper lying untidily on the hearth, with typewriting on

its upper surface. Picking it up she read inside the scorched

margin:

ria kept the keys and now them over to me.

W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other of

same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We

using the fire-escape, pass over the intervening r

reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the

ding. I shall once again make use of the little room

tners' office as a bedroom or rather "tiring" room, w

if necessary effect changes of costume. I have tak

ces in the name of Mr. Michaelis for a special reas

ome modifications of David's costume I have appeared in p

ssume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed a

Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like pla

"Warren!" That name stood out clear. Did it mean the suffragette,

Vivien Warren, who had sometimes been here, and in whose adventures

her husband seemed so unbecomingly interested? One of the great

ladies who were Anti-Suffragists and had already decoyed Mrs.

Rossiter within their drawing-rooms had referred with great

disapproval to Miss Warren as the daughter of a most notorious woman

whom their husbands wouldn't hear mentioned because of her shocking

past. And David, David of course must be that tiresome David

Williams, supposed to be a cousin of Vivien Warren, but really

seeming in these allusions to be a disguise in which this bold

female deceived people. And "Mr. Michaelis?" Could that be her own

Michael? The shameless baggage! She choked at the thought. Was it a

conspiracy into which they were luring her husband, already rather

compromised as a man of science by his enthusiasm for the Suffrage

cause? People used to speak of Michael almost with awe, he was so

clever, he made such wonderful discoveries. Now, since he had become

a politician he had many enemies, and several ladies of high title

referred to him contemptuously even in her hearing and cut _her_

without compunction, though she had Ten thousand a year. She felt

all the same a profound conviction that Michael was the most

honourable of men. Yet why all this mystery? The W.S.P.U.? Those

letters stood for some more than usually malignant Suffrage Society.

She had seen the letters often in "Votes for Women."...

Her musings here were stayed by the sound of her husband's steps in

the passage. Hastily she thrust the half sheet of charred paper into

her corsage and brushed off the fragments of the burnt edges from

her laces; then turned and affected to be tidying the writing table

as Michael came in.

_Rossiter_: "Linda! Surely not putting my papers in order--or rather

disorder? I thought you were far too intimate with my likes and

dislikes to do that!... Why, what's the matter?"

_Linda_: "Oh nothing. I was only seeing if they had made up your

fire. I--I--haven't touched anything."

(Rossiter looked anxiously at the grate, but was relieved to see

nothing but burnt, shrivelled squares of paper. He poked the fire

fiercely and at any rate demolished the remains of Vivie's letter.)

_Rossiter_: "Yes: it isn't very cheerful. They must brighten it

while we are at dinner; though as we shall go to the drawing-room

afterwards we shan't need a huge fire here. There! It looks better

after that poke. I threw some papers on it to start a flame just

before I went up to dress.... Why dearie! What cold hands and what

flushed cheeks!"...

_Linda_: "Oh Michael! You'll always love me, won't you? I--I know

I'm not clever, not half clever enough for you. But I _do_ try to

help you all I can. I--I--" (Sobs.)

_Rossiter_ (really distressed): "_Of course_ I love you! What silly

notion have you got into your head?" (He asks himself anxiously

"Surely all that letter was burnt before she came in?") "Come! Pull

yourself together. Be worthy of that dress. It is such a beauty."

_Linda_: "I thought you'd like it. I remembered your saying that

blue always became me." (Dabs at her eyes with a small lace

handkerchief.)

Loud double knocks begin to sound. Dinner guests are soon announced.

Linda and Michael receive them heartily. Rossiter--as many a public

man does and has to do--shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety,

weary longing for the unattainable--somewhere to the back of his

brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at

three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty

men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed

science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her

bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school

friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the

New Year in amid the gaieties of London.

But before she rings for her maid and undresses that night, she

locks the burnt fragment in a secret drawer of her desk.

The Ministry which was returned to power in December, 1910, had to

plan during the first half of 1911 to keep the Suffragists becalmed

with promises and prevent their making any public protest which

might mar the Coronation festivities. So various Conciliation Bills

were allowed to be read to the House of Commons and to reach Second

readings at which they were passed with huge majorities. Then they

came to nothingness by being referred to a Committee of the whole

House. Still a hope of some solution was dangled before the

oft-deluded women, who could hardly believe that British Ministers

of State would be such breakers of promises and tellers of

falsehoods. In November, 1911, there being no reason for further

dissembling, the Government made the announcement that it was

contemplating a Manhood Suffrage Bill, which would override

altogether the petty question as to whether a proportion of women

should or should not enjoy the franchise. This new electoral measure

was to be designed for men only, but--the Government opined--it

might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise.

[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that,

acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the

Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional. At any

rate, this is what he did in 1913.]

The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate

resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned. Led by Mrs.

Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and

some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes,

as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to

escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed

with hammers and stones. They broke all the windows they could in

the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of

Ministers of State. Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by

Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd,

indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home. "This

_is_ my business," he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and

she gave way. Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or

stone and as one of the principal organizers of the militant

movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to

keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering

on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest. To

the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly

worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and

twenty-three arch offenders with glass-breaking weapons in their

hands. So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet

with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her

breast.

She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in

the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of

it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of

the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting,

swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping

Suffragists. Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the

disguised Vivie entirely unobserved--indeed Bertie had half thought

he caught the words above the din: "That's David Williams, that is,"

he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple. By

the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of

Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon

to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie's arm, limp slowly through

the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by

Sergeant's Inn. Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made

their way to 94, Chancery Lane.

Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for

any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night. To

her--fortunately it was a woman--Bertie handed over his stricken

chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone

and a questioning and not too satisfied wife. The Suffragette in

charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first

aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy. Vivie's--or Mr.

Michaelis's--lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor

crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water. The collar was

taken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise on

the sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her--better

however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on

either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As it

was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood.

A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she was

ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: an

excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the

parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and

Warren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room opened

to her manipulations--it had been carefully left unbolted before

her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by

her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself--or Mr.

Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in

her male form.

Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and

the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance

came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to

act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr.

Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hither

also came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changes

of clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young man

with a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat or

office of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the winding

way between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladders

till he too reached the parapet, entered through the opened

casement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumed

like Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman only

waiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man--shop

steward--and begin a large family of children. From this leader,

Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no more

disabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches and

the risk of going to prison or of attracting too much police

attention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre at

present. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police have

been at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the really

precious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is:

walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't come

yet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and _you_ won't

flinch, _I'm_ quite sure..."

As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness,

her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, her

wide education, her command of French (improved by the frequent

trips to Brussels--where indeed she deposited securely in her

mother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documents

of the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies were

not to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value.

There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in

court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting

Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and

drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw

discredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course if

the true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphant

from such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of mud and some of

it will stick.... And what _was_ her full, true story? Even in the

pure passion of the fight for liberty among these young and

middle-aged women, the tongue of scandal occasionally wagged in

moments of lassitude, discouragement, undeception. At such times

some weaker sister with a vulgar mind, or a mind with vulgar streaks

in it, might hint at the great interest taken in Vivie by a

distinguished man of science who had become an M.P. and a raging

suffragist. Or indecorum would be hinted in the relations between

this enigmatic woman, so prone seemingly to don male costume, and

the burly clerk who attended her so faithfully and had brought her

home on the night of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's spirited raid.

So much so, that Vivie with a sigh, as soon as she attained

convalescence was fain to send for Bertie and tell him with

unanswerable decision that he must return to his work with Rossiter

and thither she would send from time to time special instructions if

he could help her business in any way.

This was done in January, 1912. Vivie's feet were now healed and the

woman surgeon was satisfied that she could walk on them without

displacing the reset bones. The slight fracture in the breastbone

had repaired itself by one of Nature's magic processes. So one day

our battered heroine doffed the invalid garments of Michaelis and

donned those of any well-dressed woman of 1912, including a thick

veil. Thus attired she passed from the parapet to the fire-escape

(recalling the agony these gymnastics had caused her the previous

November), and from the fire-escape to the roof of No. 92

(continuous with the roof of 94), and past the chimney stacks, into

the top storey of 94, and so on down to the street, where a taxi was

waiting to convey her to the Lilacs.

(The W.S.P.U., by the bye, to bluff Scotland Yard had added to the

name of "Algernon Mainwaring, 5th Floor," the qualification of

"Hygienic Corset-maker," as an explanation--possibly--of why so many

women found their way to the top storey of No. 94.)

Arrived at the Lilacs, Vivie took up for a brief spell the life of

an ordinary young woman of the well-to-do middle class, seriously

interested in the suffrage question but non-militant. She attended

several of Honoria's or Mrs. Fawcett's suffrage parties or public

meetings and occasionally spoke and spoke well. She also went over

to Brussels twice in 1912 to keep in touch with her mother. Mrs.

Warren had had one or two slight warnings that a life of pleasure

saps the strongest constitution.[1] She lived now mainly at her

farm, the Villa Beau-séjour, and only occasionally occupied her

_appartement_ in the Rue Royale. She must have been about fifty-nine

in the spring of 1912, and was beginning to "soigner son salut,"

that is to say to take stock of her past life, apologize for it to

herself and see how she could atone reasonably for what she had done

wrong. A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion,

inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religion

expounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She would

have confessed her past, slightly or very considerably _gazée_, to

some indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented a

handsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety. But she

had survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immense

respect for her clever daughter. Vivie should be her spiritual

director; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliation

three years previously had seemed the most practical way of making

amends to Woman for having made money in the past out of the

economic and physiological weakness of women. She had fined herself

Ten Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fifty

or Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to her

daughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as further

reparation. Still, she found the frequentation of churches soothing

and gave much and often to the mildly beseeching Little Sisters of

the Poor when they made their rounds in town or suburbs.

[Footnote 1: Or so the observers say who haven't had a life of

pleasure.]

"What do you think about Religion, Viv old girl?" she said one day

in the Eastertide of 1912, when Vivie was spending a delicious

fortnight at Villa Beau-séjour.

"Personally," said Vivie, "I hate all religions, so far as I have

had time to study them. They bind up with undisputed ethics more or

less preposterous theories concerning life and death, the properties

of matter, man, God, the universe, the laws of nature, the food we

should eat, the relations of the sexes, the quality of the weekly

day of rest. Gradually they push indisputable ethics on one side and

are ready to apply torture, death, or social ostracism to the

support of these preposterous theories and explanations of God and

Man. Such theories"--went on Vivie, though her mother's attention

had wandered to some escaped poultry that were scratching

disastrously in seed beds--"Such theories and explanations, mark

you--_do_ listen, mother, since you asked the question..."

"I'm listenin', dearie, but you talk like a book and I don't know

what some of your words mean--What's ethics?"

"Well 'ethics' means er--er--'morality'; it comes from a Greek word

meaning 'character.'..."

_Mrs. Warren_: "You talk like a book--"

_Vivie_: "I do sometimes, when I remember something I've read. But

now I've lost my thread.... What I meant to finish up with was

something like this 'Such theories and explanations were formulated

several hundred, or more than two thousand years ago, in times when

Man's knowledge of himself, of his surroundings, of the earth and

the universe was almost non-existent, yet they are preserved to our

times as sacred revelations, though they are not superior to the

fancies and fetish rites of a savage.' There! All that answer is

quoted from Professor Rossiter's little book (_Home University

Library_, "The Growth of the Human Mind")."

_Mrs. Warren_: "Rossiter! Is that the man you're sweet on?"

_Vivie_: "Don't put it so coarsely. There is a great friendship

between us. We belong to a later generation than you. A man and a

woman can be friends now without becoming lovers."

_Mrs. Warren_: "Go _on_! Don't humbug me. Men and women's the same

as when I was young. I'm sorry, all the same, dear girl. There are

you, growin' middle-aged and not married to some good-'earted chap

as 'd give you three-four children I could pet in me old age.

Wodjer want to go fallin' in love with some chap as 'as got a wife

already? _I_ know your principles. There's iron in yer blood, same

as there is in that proud priest, your father. I know you'd break

your 'eart sooner 'n have a good time with the professor. My! It

seems to me Love's as bad as Religion for bringin' about sorrer!"

_Vivie_: "If you mean that it is answerable for the same intense

happiness and even more intense _un_happiness, I suppose you're

right. I'm _miserable_, mother, and it's some relief to me to say

so. If I could become honourably the wife of Michael Rossiter I'm

afraid I should let Suffrage have the go-by. But as I can't, why

this struggle for the vote is the only thing that keeps me going. I

shall fight for it for another ten years, and by that time certain

physiological changes may have taken place in me, and my feelings

towards Rossiter will have calmed down."

(Here Mrs. Warren proceeded to call out rather disharmoniously in

Flemish to the poultry woman, and asked why the something-or-other

she let the Houdans spoil the seed beds.)

_Mrs. Warren_ resuming: "Well it's clear you're your father's

daughter. 'E'd 'ave gone on--_did_ go on--in just such a way. 'Im

and me were jolly well suited to one another. I'd got to reg'lar

love 'im. I'd 'a bin a true wife to him, and 'ave worked my fingers

to the bone for 'im, and you bet I'd 'ave made a livin' somehow. And

he'd have written some jolly good books and 'ave made lots of money.

But no! This beastly Religion comes in with its scare of Hell fire

and back 'e goes to the priests and 'is prayers and 'is penances.

The last ten years or so 'e's bin filled up with pride. 'Is passions

'ave died down and 'e thinks 'imself an awful swell as the head of

his Order. And they do say as 'e's got 'is fingers in several pies

and is a reg'lar old conspirator, working up the Irish to do

something against England. Yer know since I've made my peace with

you.... _Ain't_ it a rum go, by the bye? Ten or twenty years ago

it'd 'a bin 'my peace with God.' I dunno nothin' about God--can't

see 'im at the end of a telescope, anyways. But I _can_ see you,

Vivie, and there's no one livin' I respect more" (speaks with real

feeling).... "Well, as I was sayin', since I'd set myself right with

you and wound up the business of the hotels I ain't so easy cowed by

'is looks as I used to be. So every now and then it amuses me to run

over in my auto to Louvain and stroll about there and watch 'im as

'e comes out for 'is promenade, pretendin' to be readin' a breviary

or some holy book. I know it riles 'im....

"Well, but for high principles, 'e and I might 'a bin as 'appy as

'appy and 'ad a large family. And there was nothin' to stop 'im

a-marryin' me, if that was all he wanted to feel comfortable about

it. But jus' see. He's had a life that seems to me downright

sterile, and I--well, I ain't been _really_ happy till we made it up

three years ago" (leans over, and kisses Vivie a little

timorously).

"Now there's you, burning yourself out 'cos your high principles

won't let you go for once in a way on the spree with this

Rossiter--s'posin' 'e's game, of course.... You've too much pride to

throw yourself at his head. But if he loves you as bad as you loves

'im, why don't you ask him" (instinctively the old ministress of

love speaks here) "ask 'im to take you over to Paris for a trip?

I'll lay 'e 'as to go over now'n again to the Sorbonne or one of

them scientific institutes. _She'd_ never come to 'ear of it. An'

after one or two such honeymoons you'd soon get tired of 'im,

specially now you're gettin' on a bit in years, and may be you'd

settle down quietly after that. Or if you ain't reg'lar set on

_'im_, why not giv' up this suffrage business and live a bit with me

here? There's plenty of upstanding, decent, Belgian men in good

positions as'd like to have an English wife. _They_ wouldn't look

too shy at my money..."