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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Convert, by Elizabeth Robins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Convert
+
+
+Author: Elizabeth Robins
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 24, 2008  [eBook #26420]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONVERT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE CONVERT
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   Lists of Macmillan titles from this spot have been moved to
+   the end of the text. Following the moved section, the reader
+   will find a list of corrections made to the text.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE CONVERT
+
+by
+
+ELIZABETH ROBINS
+
+Author of "A Dark Lantern," "The Magnetic North," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+The MacMillan Company
+1913
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Copyright, 1907, by the MacMillan Company.
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907. Reprinted
+March, 1910; March, 1912; August, 1913.
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONVERT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The tall young lady who arrived fifteen minutes before the Freddy
+Tunbridges' dinner-hour, was not taken into the great empty
+drawing-room, but, as though she were not to be of the party expected
+that night, straight upstairs she went behind the footman, and then up
+more stairs behind a maid. The smart, white-capped domestic paused, and
+her floating muslin streamers cut short their aerial gyrations subsiding
+against her straight black back as she knocked at the night-nursery
+door. It was opened by a middle-aged head nurse of impressive demeanour.
+She stood there an instant eyeing the intruder with the kind of
+overbearing hauteur that in these days does duty as the peculiar
+hall-mark of the upper servant, being seldom encountered in England
+among even the older generation of the so-called governing class.
+
+'It's too late to see the baby, miss. He's asleep.'
+
+'Yes, I know; but the others are expecting me, aren't they?'
+
+Question hardly necessary, perhaps, with the air full of cries from
+beyond the screen: 'Yes, yes.' 'We're waiting!' 'Mummy promised'--cut
+short by the nurse saying sharply, 'Not so much noise, Miss Sara.' But
+the presiding genius of the Tunbridge nursery opened the door a little
+wider and stood aside. Handsome compensation for her studied coldness
+was offered in the shrill shrieks of joy with which a little girl and a
+very small boy celebrated the lady's entrance. She, for her part, joined
+the austere nurse in saying, 'Sh! sh!' and in simulating consternation
+at the spectacle behind the screen, Miss Sara jumping up and down in the
+middle of her bed with wild brown hair swirling madly about a laughing
+but mutinous face. The visitor, hurrying forward, received the impetuous
+little girl in her arms, while the nurse described her own sentiments
+of horror and detestation of such performances, and hinted vaguely at
+Retribution that might with safety be looked for no later than the
+morrow. Nobody listened. Miss Levering nodded smiling across Sara's
+nightgowned figure to the little boy hanging over the side of the
+neighbouring cot. But he kept remonstrating, 'You always go to her
+first.'
+
+The lady drew a flat, shiny wooden box out of the inside pocket of her
+cloak. The little girl seized it rapturously.
+
+'Oh, did you only bring Sara's bock?' wailed the smaller Tunbridge. 'I
+told you expecially we wanted _two_ bocks.'
+
+'I've got two pockets and I've got two bocks. Let me give him his, Sara
+darling.'
+
+But 'Sara darling' dropped her own 'bock' the better to cling round the
+neck of the giver.
+
+Naturally Master Cecil sounded the horn of indignation.
+
+'Hush!' commanded his sister. 'Don't you know his little lordship never
+did that?' And to emphasize this satirical appeal to a higher standard
+of manners, Sara loosened her tight-locked arms an instant; but still
+holding to the visitor with one hand, she picked up the pillow and
+deftly hurled it at the neighbouring cot, extinguishing the little boy.
+Through the general recriminations that ensued, the culprit cried with
+shrill rapture, 'Lady Gladys never pillow-fought! Lady Gladys was a
+little lady and never did _any_thing!' The merry eyes shamelessly
+invited Miss Levering to mock at Dampney's former charges. But the
+visitor detached herself from Miss Sara, and wishing apparently to
+ingratiate herself with the offended majesty of the nurse, Miss Levering
+said gravely over her shoulder, 'Now, lie down, Sara, and be a good
+girl.' Sara's reply to that was to (what she called) 'diddle up and
+down' on her knees and emit shrill squeals of some pleasurable emotion
+not defined. This, too, in spite of the fact that Dampney had picked up
+the pillow and was advancing upon Miss Sara with an expression
+calculated to shake the stoutest heart. It obviously shook the
+visitor's. 'Listen, Sara! If you don't be quiet and let nurse cover you
+up, she won't want me to stay.' Miss Levering actually got up off the
+little boy's bed, and stood as though ready to carry the obnoxious
+suggestion into instant effect.
+
+Sara darted under the bedclothes like a rabbit into its burrow. The
+rigid woman, without words, restored the tousled pillow to the head of
+the bed, extracted Miss Sara from her hiding-place with one hand,
+smoothed out the rebellious legs with the other, covered the child
+firmly over, and tucked the bedclothes in.
+
+'What's the use of all that? Mother always does it over again.'
+
+'You know very well she's been and done it once already.'
+
+'She's coming again if father doesn't need her.'
+
+'There's a whole big dinner-party needing her, so you needn't think she
+can come twice to say good-night to a Jumping-Jack like you.'
+
+'You ought to say a Jumping-Jill,' amended Sara.
+
+During this interchange Master Cecil was complaining to the visitor--
+
+'I can't see you with that thing all round your head.'
+
+'Yes, take it off!' his sister agreed; and when the lady had unwound her
+lace scarf--'Now the coat! And you have to sit on my bed this time. It's
+my turn.'
+
+As the visitor divested herself of the long ermine-lined garment, 'Oh,
+you _are_ pretty to-night!' observed the gallant young gentleman over
+the way, seeming not to have heard that these effects don't appeal to
+little boys.
+
+Sara silently craned her neck. Even the high and mighty Mrs. Dampney, in
+the surreptitious way of the superior servant, without seeming to look,
+was covertly taking in the vision that the cloak had hitherto obscured.
+The little girl followed with critical eyes the movement of the tall
+figure, the graceful fall of the clinging black lace gown embroidered in
+yellow irises, the easy bend of the small waist in its jewelled belt of
+yellow. The growing approval in the little face culminated in an
+ecstatic 'Oh-h-h! let me see what's on your neck! That's new, isn't it?'
+
+'No--very old.'
+
+'I didn't know there were yellow diamonds,' said Sara.
+
+'There are; but these are sapphires.'
+
+'And the little stones round?'
+
+'Yes, they're diamonds.'
+
+'The hanging-down thing is _such_ a pretty shape!'
+
+'Yes, the fleur-de-lys is a pretty shape. It's the flower of France, you
+know--just as the thistle is the----'
+
+'There, now!' A penetrating whisper came from the other bed. 'She's
+_gone_.'
+
+'It's you who've been keeping her here, you know.' Miss Levering bent
+her neat, dark head over the little girl, and the gleaming jewels swung
+forward.
+
+'Yes,' said Cecil, in a tone of grandfatherly disgust; 'yelling like a
+wild Indian.'
+
+'Well, you _cried_,' said his sister--'just because a feather pillow hit
+you.' Her eye never once left the glittering gaud.
+
+'You see, Cecil is younger than you,' Miss Levering reminded her.
+
+'Yes,' said Sara, with conscious superiority--'a whole year and eight
+months. But even when I was young _I_ had sense.'
+
+Miss Levering laughed. 'You're a horrid little Pharisee--and as wild as
+a young colt.' Contrary to received canons, the visitor seemed to find
+something reassuring in the latter reflection, for she kissed the small,
+self-righteous face.
+
+'You just ought to have seen Sara this morning!' Cecil chuckled, with a
+generous admiration in family achievements. 'We waked up early, and Sara
+said, "Let's go mountaineering." So we did. All over the rocks and
+presserpittses.' He waved his hand comprehensively at the rugged scenery
+of the night-nursery.
+
+'Of course we had to pile up the chairs and things,' his sister
+explained.
+
+'And the coal scuttle.'
+
+'And we made snow mountains out of the pillows. When the chairs wobbled,
+the coal and the pillows kept falling about; it was quite a real
+avalanche,' Sara said conversationally.
+
+'I should think so,' agreed the guest.
+
+'Yes; and it was glorious when Sara excaped to the top of the wardrobe.'
+
+'To the w----' Miss Levering gasped.
+
+'Yes. We were having the most perfectly fascinating time----' Sara took
+up the tale.
+
+But Cecil suddenly sat bolt upright, his little face quite pink with
+excitement at recollection of these Alpine exploits.
+
+'Yes, Sara had come down off the wardrobe--she'd been sitting on the
+carved piece--she says that's the Schreckhorn!--but she'd come down off
+it, and we was just jumping about all those mountains like two
+shamrocks----'
+
+'Like what?'
+
+'--when _she_ came in.'
+
+'Yes,' agreed Sara. 'Just when we're happiest _she_ always comes
+interfiddling.'
+
+'Oh, Sara mine, I rather like you!' said Miss Levering, laying her
+laughing face against the tousled hair.
+
+'Now! Now!' cried Cecil, suddenly beating with his two fists on the
+counterpane as though he'd seen as much valuable time wasted as he felt
+it incumbent upon him to tolerate. 'Go on where you left off.'
+
+'No, it's _my_ visit this time.' Sara held fast to her friend. 'It's for
+me to say what we're going to talk about.'
+
+'It's got to be alligators!' said Cecil, waving his arms.
+
+'It _shan't_ be alligators! I want to know more about Doris.'
+
+'Doris!' Cecil's tone implied that the human intelligence could no lower
+sink.
+
+'Yes. I expect you like her better than you do us.'
+
+'Don't you think I ought to like my niece best?'
+
+'No'--from Cecil.
+
+'You said we belonged to you, too,' observed Miss Sara.
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'And all aunts,' she pursued, 'don't like their nieces so _dreadfully_.'
+
+'Don't they?' inquired Miss Levering, with an elaborate air of
+innocence.
+
+'You didn't say how-do-you-do to me,' said Cecil, with the air of one
+who makes a useful discovery.
+
+'_What?_'
+
+'Why, she went to you the minute I threw the pillow.'
+
+'That was just to save me from being dead. It isn't a proper
+how-do-you-do when she doesn't hug you.'
+
+'I'll hug you when I go.'
+
+But a better plan than that occurred to Cecil. He flung down the covers
+with the decision of one called to set about some urgent business.
+
+'Cecil! I simply won't have you catching cold!'
+
+Before the words were out of Miss Levering's mouth he had tumbled out of
+bed and leapt into her lap. He clasped his arms round her neck with an
+air of rapturous devotion, but what he said was--
+
+'Go on 'bout the alligator.'
+
+'No, no. Go 'way!' protested Sara, pushing him with hands and feet.
+
+'Sh! You really will have nurse back!'
+
+That horrid thought coerced the prudent Sara to endurance of the
+interloping brother. And now of his own accord Cecil had taken his arms
+from round his friend's neck.
+
+'That's horrid!' he said. 'I don't like that hard thing. Take it off.'
+
+'Let me.' Sara sat up with alacrity. 'Let me.'
+
+But Miss Levering undid the sapphire necklace herself. 'If you'll be
+very careful, Sara, I'll let you hold it.' It was as if she well knew
+the deft little hands she had delivered the ornament to, and knew
+equally well that in her present mood, absorption in the beauty of it
+would keep the woman-child still.
+
+'There, that's better!' Cecil replaced his arms firmly where the
+necklace had been.
+
+Miss Levering pulled up her long cloak from the bottom of the bed and
+wrapped the little boy in the warm lining. The comfort of the
+arrangement was so great, and it implied so little necessity for
+'hanging on,' that Cecil loosed his arms and lay curled up against his
+friend.
+
+She held him close, adapting her lithe slimness to the easy supporting
+and enfolding of the childish figure. The little girl was absorbed in
+the necklace after her strenuous hour; the boy, content for a moment,
+having gained his point, just to lie at his ease; the woman rested her
+cheek on his ruffled hair and looked straight before her.
+
+As she sat there holding him, something came into her face, guiltless
+though it was of any traceable change, without the verifiable movement
+of a muscle, something none the less that would have minded the beholder
+uneasily to search the eyes for tears, and, finding no tears there, to
+feel no greater sense of reassurance.
+
+So motionless she sat that presently the child turned up his rosy face,
+and seeing the brooding look, it was plain he had the sense of being
+somehow left behind. He put up his hand to her cheek, and rubbed it
+softly with his own.
+
+'I don't like you like that. Tell me about----'
+
+'Like what?' said the lady.
+
+'Like--I don't know.' Then, with a sudden inspiration, 'Uncle Ronald
+says you're like the Sphinx. Who are they?'
+
+'Who are who?'
+
+'Why, the Sfinks. Have they got a boy? Is the little Sfink as old as me?
+Oh, you only laugh, just like Uncle Ronald. He asked us why we liked
+you, and we told him.'
+
+'You've never told me.'
+
+'Oh, didn't we? Well, it's because you aren't beady.'
+
+'Beady?'
+
+'Yes. We hate all beady ladies, don't we, Sara?'
+
+'Yes; but it's my turn.' However, she said it half-heartedly as she
+stopped drawing the shining jewels lightly through her slim fingers, and
+began gently to swing the fleur-de-lys back and forth like a pendulum
+that glanced bewitchingly in the light.
+
+Miss Levering knew that the next phase would be to try it on, but for
+the moment Sara had still half an ear for general conversation.
+
+'We hate them to have hard things on their shoulders!' Cecil explained.
+
+'On their shoulders?' Miss Levering asked.
+
+'Here, just in the way of our heads.'
+
+'Yes, bead-trimming on their dresses,' explained the little girl.
+
+'Hard stuff that scratches when they hold you tight.' Cecil cuddled his
+impudent round face luxuriously on the soft lace-covered shoulder of the
+visitor, and laughed up in her face.
+
+'Aunts are very beady,' said Sara, absent-mindedly, as she tried the
+effect of the glitter against her night-gown.
+
+'Grandmothers are worse,' amended Cecil. 'They're beady and bu-gly,
+too.'
+
+'What's bewgly?'
+
+'Well, it's what my grandmother called them when I pulled some of them
+off. Not proper bugles, you know, what you "too! too! too!" make music
+with when you're fighting the enemy. My grandmother thinks bugles are
+little shiny black things only about that long'--he measured less than
+an inch on his minute forefinger--'with long holes through so they can
+sew them on their clothes.'
+
+'On their caps, too,' said Sara; 'only they're usurally white when
+they're on caps.'
+
+'Here's your mother coming! Now, what will she say to you, Cecil?'
+
+They turned their eyes to the door, strangely unwelcoming for Laura
+Tunbridge's children, and their young faces betrayed no surprise when
+the very different figure of Nurse Dampney emerged from behind the tall
+chintz screen that protected the cots from any draught through the
+opening door. Cecil, with an action of settled despair, turned from the
+spectacle, and buried his face for one last moment of comfort in Vida
+Levering's shoulder; while Sara, with a baleful glance, muttered--
+
+'I knew it was that old interfiddler.'
+
+'Now, Master Cecil----'
+
+'Yes, nurse.' Miss Levering carried him back to his cot.
+
+'Mrs. Tunbridge has sent up, miss, to know if you've come. They're
+waiting dinner.'
+
+'Not really! Is it a quarter past already?'
+
+'More like twenty minutes, miss.'
+
+The lady caught up her necklace, cut short her good-byes, and fled
+downstairs, clasping the shining thing round her neck as she went--a
+swaying figure in soft flying draperies and gleaming, upraised arms.
+
+She entered the drawing-room with a quiet deliberation greater even than
+common. It was the effect that haste and contrition frequently wrought
+in her--one of the things that made folk call her 'too self-contained,'
+even 'a trifle supercilious.'
+
+But when other young women, recognizing some not easily definable charm
+in this new-comer into London life, tried to copy the effect alluded to,
+it was found to be less imitable than it looked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+There were already a dozen or so persons in the gold-and-white
+drawing-room, yet the moment Vida Levering entered, she knew from the
+questing glance Mrs. Freddy sent past her children's visitor, that even
+now the party was not complete.
+
+Other eyes turned that way as the servant announced 'Miss Levering.' It
+is seldom that in this particular stratum of London life anything so
+uncontrolled and uncontrollable as a 'sensation' is permitted to chequer
+the even distribution of subdued good humour that reigns so modestly in
+the drawing-rooms of the Tunbridge world. If any one is so ill-advised
+as to bring to these gatherings anything resembling a sensation, even if
+it is of the less challengeable sort of striking personal beauty, the
+general aim of the company is to pretend either that they see nothing
+unusual in the conjunction, or that they, for their part, are impervious
+to such impacts. Vida Levering's beauty was not strictly of the
+_eclatant_ type. If it did--as could not be denied--arrest the eye, its
+refusal to let attention go was mitigated by something in the quietness,
+the disarming softness, with which the hold was maintained. Men making
+her acquaintance frequently went through four distinct phases in their
+feeling about her. The first was the common natural one, the instant
+stirring of the pulses that beauty of any sort produces in persons
+having the eye that sees. The second stage was a rousing of the instinct
+to be 'on guard,' which feminine beauty not infrequently breeds in the
+breasts of men. Not on guard so much against the thing itself, or even
+against ready submission to it, but against allowing onlookers to be
+witness of such submission. Even the very young man knows either by
+experience or hearsay, that women have concentrated upon their faculty
+for turning this particular weapon to account, all the skill they would
+have divided among other resources had there been others. Yet the charm
+is something too delicious even to desire to escape from--the impulse
+centres in a determination to _seem_ untouched, immune.
+
+The third stage in this declension from pleasure through caution to
+reassurance is induced by something so gentle, so unemphatic in the Vida
+Levering aspect, so much what the man thinks 'feminine,' that even the
+wariest male is reassured. He comes to be almost as easy before this
+particular type of allurement as he would be with the frankly plain
+'good sort'; only there is all about him the exquisite aroma of a subtle
+charm which he may almost persuade himself that he alone perceives,
+since this softly gracious creature seems so little to insist upon
+it--seems, indeed, to be herself unaware of its presence. Whereupon the
+man conceives a new idea of his own perspicacity in detecting a thing at
+once so agreeable and so little advertised. He may, with a woman of this
+kind, go long upon the third 'tack'--may, indeed, never know it was she
+who gently 'shunted' him, still unenlightened, and left him
+side-tracked, but cherishing to the end of time the soothing conviction
+that he 'might an' if he would.' To the more robust order of man will
+come a day of awakening, when he rubs his eyes and retreats hurriedly
+with a sense of good faith injured--nay, of hopes positively betrayed.
+If she were '_that_ sort,' why not hang out some signal? It wasn't
+playing fair.
+
+And so without anything so crude as a sensation, but with a retinue of
+covert looks following in her train, she made her way to the young
+hostess, and was there joined by two men and a middle-aged woman, who
+plainly had been a beauty, and though 'gone to fat,' as the vulgar say,
+had yet kept her complexion. With an air of genial authority, the
+pink-cheeked Lady John Ulland proceeded to appropriate the new-comer in
+the midst of a general hum of conversation, whose key to the sensitive
+ear had become a little heightened since the last arrival. The women
+grew more insistently vivacious in proportion as the men's minds seemed
+to wander from matters they had discussed contentedly enough before.
+
+Mrs. Freddy Tunbridge was a very popular person. It was agreed that
+nobody willingly missed one of her parties. There were those who said
+this was not so much because of her and Mr. Freddy, though they were
+eminently likeable people; not merely because you met 'everybody' there,
+and not even because of the excellence of their dinners. Notoriously
+this last fact fails to appeal very powerfully to the majority of women,
+and it is they, not men, who make the social reputation of the hostess.
+There was in this particular case a theory, held even by those who did
+not care especially about Mrs. Freddy, that hers was an 'amusing,' above
+all, perhaps, a 'becoming,' house. People had a pleasant consciousness
+of looking uncommon well in her pretty drawing-room. Others said it
+wasn't the room, it was the lighting, which certainly was most
+discerningly done--not dim, and yet so far from glaring that quite plain
+people enjoyed there a brief unwonted hour of good looks. Only a limited
+amount of electricity was used, and that little was carefully masked and
+modulated, while the two great chandeliers each of them held aloft a
+very forest of wax candles. It was known, too, that the spell was in no
+danger of being rudely broken. The same tender but festive radiance
+would bathe the hospitable board of the great oak dining-room below.
+
+And why were they not processing thither?
+
+'Is it my sister who is late?' Miss Levering asked, turning her slim
+neck in that deliberate way of hers to look about the room.
+
+'No; your sister is over there, talking to---- Oh--a----' Mrs. Freddy,
+having looked round to refresh her memory, was fain to slur over the
+fact that Mrs. Fox-Moore was in the corner by the pierced screen, not
+talking to any one, but, on the contrary, staring dark-visaged, gloomy,
+sibylline, at a leaflet advertising a charity concert, a document
+conspicuously left by Mrs. Freddy on a little table. On her way to
+rescue Mrs. Fox-Moore from her desert island of utter loneliness, Mrs.
+Freddy saw Sir William Haycroft, the newly-made Cabinet Minister, rather
+pointedly making his escape from a tall, keen-looking, handsome woman
+wearing eye-glasses and iron-grey hair dressed commandingly.
+
+Without a qualm Mrs. Freddy abandoned Mrs. Fox-Moore to prolonged exile,
+in order to soothe the ruffled minister.
+
+'I think,' she said, pausing in front of the great man and delicately
+offering him an opportunity to make any predilection known--'I think you
+know every one here.'
+
+Haycroft muttered in his beard--but his eyes had lit upon the new face.
+
+'Who's that?' he said; but his tone added, 'Not that it matters.'
+
+'You don't know her? Well, that's a proof of how you've neglected your
+friends since the new Government came in. But you really mean it--that
+nobody has introduced you to Miss Levering yet? What _is_ Freddy
+thinking about!'
+
+'Dinner!' replied a voice at her elbow with characteristic laconism, and
+Freddy Tunbridge pulled out his watch.
+
+'Oh, give them five minutes more,' said his wife, indulgently.
+
+'That's not a daughter of old Sir Hervey?' pursued the other man, his
+eyes still on the young woman talking to Lady John and the foreign
+ambassador.
+
+'Yes; go on,' said Mrs. Freddy, with as cloudless a brow as though she
+had no need to manufacture conversation while the dinner was being kept
+waiting. 'Go on! They _all_ do it.'
+
+'Do what?' demanded the great man, suspiciously.
+
+'"Why haven't they seen her before" comes next. Then the next time you
+and I meet in the country or find ourselves alone in a crush, you'll be
+saying, "What's her story? Why hasn't a woman like that married?" They
+all do! You don't believe me? Just wait! Freddy shall take you over,
+and----' Was Mrs. Freddy beaming at the prospective success of her new
+friend, or was her vanity flattered by reflecting upon her own
+perspicacity? Unavoidable as it was in a way that Mrs. Graham Townley
+should be taken down to dinner by the new minister--nevertheless the
+antidote had been cleverly provided for. 'Freddy dear--why, I thought he
+was---- Oh, there he is!' Seeing her hungry husband safely anchored in
+front of the iris gown, instantly she abandoned the idea of disturbing
+him. 'After all,' she said, turning again to Haycroft, who had stood the
+image of stolid unimpressionableness--'after all, Freddy's right. Since
+she's going to sit beside you at dinner, it's a good reason for not
+making you known to each other before. Or perhaps you never experience
+that awful feeling of being talked out by the time you go down, and not
+having a single thing left----' She saw that the great man was not going
+to vouchsafe any contribution to her small attempt to keep the ball
+rolling; so without giving him the chance to mark her failure by a
+silence, however brief, she chattered on. 'Though with Vida you're not
+likely to find yourself in that predicament. Is he, Ronald?' With the
+instinct of the well-trained female to draw into her circle any odd man
+hovering about on the periphery, Mrs. Freddy appealed to her
+brother-in-law. Lord Borrodaile turned in her direction his long sallow
+face--a face that would have been saturnine but for its touch of
+whimsicality and a singularly charming smile. 'My brother-in-law will
+bear me out,' Mrs. Freddy went on, quite as though breaking off a
+heated argument.
+
+Lord Borrodaile sauntered up and offered a long thin hand to Haycroft
+('the fella who's bringing the country to the dogs,' as Mrs. Freddy knew
+right well was his conviction).
+
+Steering wide of politics, 'I gather,' he said, with his air of amiable
+boredom, 'that you were discussing what used in the days of my youth to
+be called a lady's "conversational powers."'
+
+'I forbid you to apply such deadly phrases to my friend,' Mrs. Freddy
+denounced him. '_Your_ friend, too!'
+
+'I'll prove my title to the distinction by proclaiming that she has the
+subtlest art a woman can possess.'
+
+'Ah, _that's_ more like it!' said Mrs. Freddy, gaily. 'What is the
+subtlest art?'
+
+'The art of being silent without being dull.'
+
+If there was any sting in this for the lady nearest him, she gave no
+sign of making the personal application.
+
+'Now I expressly forbid your encouraging Vida in silence! Most men like
+to be amused. You know perfectly well _you_ do!'
+
+'Ah, yes,' he said languidly, catching Haycroft's eye and almost making
+terms with him upon a common ground of masculine understanding. 'Yes,
+yes. It is well known what children we are. Pleased with a rattle!'
+Then, as if fearing he might be going too far, he smiled that disarming
+smile of his, and said good-humouredly, 'I know now why you are called a
+good hostess.'
+
+'Why?' asked the lady a little anxiously, for his compliments were not
+always soothing.
+
+A motion towards the watch-pocket. 'No one, to look at you, would
+suppose that your spirit was racked between the clock and the door.'
+
+'Oh,' she said, relieved, 'if they come in five minutes or so, you'll
+see! The dinner won't be a penny the worse. Jules is such a wizard. All
+I mind is seeing Freddy fussed.' She turned with an engaging smile to
+her minister again. 'Freddy has the most angelic temper except when he's
+hungry--bless him! Now that he's talking to Vida Levering, Freddy'll
+forget whether it's before dinner or after.'
+
+'What! what!' said a brisk old gentleman, with a face like a peculiarly
+wicked monkey. He abandoned Mrs. Townley with enthusiasm in order to
+say to his hostess, 'Show me the witch who can work that spell!'
+
+'Oh, dear, I'm afraid,' said Mrs. Freddy, prettily, 'I'm dreadfully
+afraid that means you're starving! Does it make you morose as it does
+Freddy?' she asked, with an air of comic terror. 'Then we won't wait.'
+She tossed out one arm with a funny little movement that sent her thin
+draperies floating as though towards the bell.
+
+'My dear lady!' the old gentleman arrested her. 'I hunger, it is true,
+but only for knowledge.' In a silent but rather horrible laugh he
+wrinkled up his aged nose, which was quite enough wrinkled and
+sufficiently 'up' already. 'Who _is_ the witch?'
+
+'Why, we were talking about a member of your family.' She turned again
+to the new minister. 'Mr. Fox-Moore--Sir--oh! how absurd! I was going to
+introduce two pillars of the State to one another. I _must_ be anxious
+about those late people, after all.'
+
+'As a matter of fact you and I never have met,' said Haycroft, cordially
+taking old Mr. Fox-Moore's hand. 'Beside you permanent officials we
+ephemerae, the sport of parties----'
+
+'Ah, _that's_ all right!' Mrs. Freddy's head, poised an instant on one
+side, seemed to say.
+
+'Who is it? Who is late?' demanded Mrs. Graham Townley, whose entrance
+into the conversation produced the effect of the sudden opening of
+window and door on a windy day. People shrink a little in the draught,
+and all light, frivolous things are blown out of the way. English people
+stand this sort of thing very much as they stand the actual draughts in
+their cold houses. They feel it to be good for them on the whole. Mrs.
+Graham Townley was acknowledged to be a person of much character. Though
+her interest in public affairs was bounded only by the limits of the
+Empire, she had found time to reform the administration of a great
+London hospital. Also she was related to a great many people. In the
+ultra smart set she of course had no _raison d'etre_, but in the older
+society it was held meet that these things be. So that when she put her
+question, not only was she not ignored, but each one felt it a serious
+thing for anybody to be so late that Mrs. Graham Townley instead of
+button-holing some one with, 'What, now, should you say is the extent of
+the Pan-Islamic influence in Egypt?' should be reduced to asking, 'Who
+are we waiting for?'
+
+'It's certain to be a man,' said Lady John Ulland, as calmly convinced
+as one who states a natural law.
+
+'Why?' asked her niece, the charming girl in rose colour.
+
+'No woman would dare to come in so late as this. She'd have turned back
+and telephoned that the horses had run away with her or something of the
+sort.'
+
+'Dick Farnborough won't turn back.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Farnborough's the culprit!' said a smartly dressed woman, with
+a nervous, rather angry air, though the ropes of fine pearls she wore
+might, some would think, have soothed the most savage breast.
+
+'Yes, Dick and Captain Beeching!' said Mrs. Freddy; 'and I shall give
+them just two minutes more!'
+
+'Aunt Ellen _said_ it couldn't be a woman,' remarked the girl in pink,
+as one struck with such perspicacity.
+
+'Well, I wouldn't ask them again to _my_ house,' said the discontented
+person with the pearls.
+
+'Yes, she would,' Lady John said aside to Borrodaile. 'She has a
+daughter, and so have most of the London hostesses, and the young
+villains know it.'
+
+'Oh, yes; sometimes they never turn up at all,' said the pink niece.
+
+'After accepting!' ejaculated Lady Whyteleafe of the pearls.
+
+'Oh, yes; sometimes they don't even answer.'
+
+'I never heard of such impudence.'
+
+'I have, twice this year,' said Mrs. Graham Townley, with that effect of
+breaking by main force into a conversation instead of being drawn into
+it. 'Twice in this last year I've sat with an empty place on one side of
+me at a dinner-party. On each occasion it was a young member of
+parliament who never turned up and never sent an apology.'
+
+'The same man both times?' asked Lord Borrodaile.
+
+'Yes; different houses, but the same man.'
+
+'He _knew_!' whispered Borrodaile in Lady John's ear.
+
+'Dick Farnborough has been complaining that since he smashed his motor
+all existence has become disorganized. I always feel'--the hostess
+addressed herself to the minister and the pearls--'don't you, that one
+ought to stretch a point for people who have to go about in cabs?'
+
+As Haycroft began a disquisition on the changes in social life initiated
+by the use of the motor-car, Mrs. Freddy floated away.
+
+Borrodaile, looking after her, remarked, 'It's humane of my
+sister-in-law to think of making allowances. Most of us gratify the
+dormant cruelty in human nature by keeping an eagle eye on the wretched
+late ones when at last they _do_ slink in. Don't you know'--he turned to
+Lady John--'that look of half-resentful interest?'
+
+'Perfectly. Every one wants to see whether these particular culprits
+wear their rue with a difference.'
+
+'Or whether,' Borrodaile went on, 'whether, like the majority, they
+merely look abject and flustered, and whisper agitated lies. Personally
+I have known it to be the most interesting moment of the evening.'
+
+What brought Mrs. Fox-Moore's plight forcibly home to Mrs. Freddy was
+seeing Vida leave her own animated group to join her sister. Mrs. Freddy
+made her way across the room, stopping a moment to say to Freddy as she
+passed--
+
+'_Do_ go and make conversation to Lady Whyteleafe.'
+
+'Which is Lady Whyteleafe?' drawled Freddy.
+
+'Oh, you _always_ forget her! What _am_ I to do with you? She's the
+woman with the pearls.'
+
+'Not that cross-looking----'
+
+'Sh! Yes, darling, that's the one. She's only looking like that because
+you aren't talking to her;' and Mrs. Freddy overtook Vida just as she
+reached the Desert Island where Mrs. Fox-Moore stood, looking seaward
+for a sail.
+
+A few moments later, after ringing for dinner, Mrs. Freddy paused an
+instant, taking in the fact that Lady Whyteleafe hadn't been made as
+happy by Mr. Tunbridge's attentions as his wife had prophesied. No, the
+angry woman with the pearls, so far from being intent upon Freddy's
+remarks, was levelling at Mrs. Freddy the critical eye that says, 'Now I
+shall see if I can determine just how miserably conscious you are that
+dinner's unpardonably late, everybody starving, and since you've only
+just rung, that you have at least eight minutes still to fill up before
+you'll hear that you are "served."' Lady Whyteleafe leaned against the
+back of the little periwinkle damask sofa, and waited to see Mrs.
+Freddy carry off these last minutes of suspense by an affectation of
+great good spirits.
+
+But the lady under the social microscope knew a trick worth two of that.
+She could turn more than one mishap to account.
+
+'Oh, Freddy! Oh, Lady Whyteleafe! I've just gone and said the most
+awful, dreadful, appalling thing! Oh, I should like to creep under the
+sofa and die!'
+
+'What's up?' demanded Mr. Freddy, with an air of relief at being
+reinforced.
+
+'I've been talking to Vida Levering and that funereal sister of hers.'
+
+'Oh, Mrs. Fox-Moore!' said Lady Whyteleafe, obviously disappointed.
+'She's a step-sister, isn't she?'
+
+'Yes, yes. Oh, I wish she'd never stepped over my threshold!'
+
+'Why?' said Mr. Freddy, sticking in his eyeglass.
+
+'Don't, Freddy. Don't look at her. Oh, I wish I were dead!'
+
+'What _have_ you been doing? She looks as if she wished _she_ were
+dead.'
+
+'That's nothing. She always looks like that,' Lady Whyteleafe assured
+the pair.
+
+'Yes, and she makes it a great favour to come. "I seldom go into
+society," she writes in her stiff little notes; and you're reminded that
+way, without her actually setting it down, that she devotes herself to
+good works.'
+
+'Perhaps she doesn't know what else to do with all that money,' said the
+lady of the pearls.
+
+'_She_ hasn't got a penny piece.'
+
+'Oh, is it all his? I thought the Leverings were rather well off.'
+
+'Yes, but the money came through the second wife, Vida's mother. Oh, I
+hate that Fox-Moore woman!' Mrs. Freddy laughed ruefully. 'And I'm sure
+her husband is a great deal too good for her. But how _could_ I have
+done it!'
+
+'You haven't told us yet.'
+
+'They asked me who was late, and I said Dick Farnborough, and that I
+hoped he hadn't forgotten, for I had Hermione Heriot here on purpose to
+meet him. And I told Vida about the Heriots trying to marry Hermione to
+that old Colonel Redding.'
+
+'Oh, can't they bring it off?' said Lady Whyteleafe.
+
+'I've been afraid they would. "It's so dreadful," I said, "to see a
+fresh young girl tied to a worn-out old man."'
+
+'_Oh!_' remarked Lady Whyteleafe, genuinely shocked. 'And you said that
+to----'
+
+Mrs. Freddy nodded with melancholy significance. 'Even when Vida said,
+"It seems to do well enough sometimes," _still_ I never never remembered
+the Fox-Moore story! And I went on about it being a miracle when it
+turned out even tolerably--and, oh, Heaven forgive me! I grew eloquent!'
+
+'It's your passion for making speeches,' said Mr. Freddy.
+
+At which, accountably to Lady Whyteleafe, Mrs. Freddy blushed and
+stumbled in this particular 'speech.'
+
+'I know, I know,' she said, carrying it off with an air of comic
+contrition. 'I even said, "There's a modesty in nature that it isn't
+wise to overstep" (I'd forgotten some people think speech-making comes
+under that head). "It's been realized," I said--yes, rushing on my
+doom!--"it's been realized up to now only in the usual one-sided
+way--discouraging boys from marrying women old enough to be their
+mothers. But dear, blundering, fatuous man"'--she smiled into her
+husband's pleasantly mocking face--'"_he_ thinks," I said, "at _any_ age
+he's a fit mate for a fresh young creature in her teens. If they only
+knew--the dreadful old ogres!" Yes, I said that. I piled it on--oh, I
+stuck at nothing! "The men think an ugly old woman monopolizes all the
+opportunities humanity offers for repulsiveness. But there's nothing on
+the face of the earth as hideous," I said, "as an ugly old man. Doesn't
+it stand to reason? He's bound to go greater lengths than any woman can
+aspire to. There's more of him to _be_ ugly, isn't there? I appealed to
+them--everything about him is bigger, coarser--he's much less human,"
+says I, "and _much_ more like a dreadful old monkey." I raised my
+wretched eyes, and there, not three feet away, was the aged husband of
+the Fox-Moore woman ogling Hermione Heriot! Oh, let me die!' Mrs. Freddy
+leaned against the blue-grey sofa for a moment and half closed her
+pretty eyes. The next instant she was running gaily across the room to
+welcome Richard Farnborough and Captain Beeching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'I always know,' said Lord Borrodaile, glancing over the banisters as he
+and Vida went down--'I always know the kind of party it's going to be
+when I see--certain people. Don't you?'
+
+'I know who you mean,' Vida whispered back, her eyes on Mrs. Graham
+Townley's aggressively high-piled hair towering over the bald pate of
+the minister, as, side by side, they disappeared through the dining-room
+door. 'Why _does_ Laura have her?'
+
+'Well, she's immensely intelligent, they _say_,' he sighed.
+
+'That's why I wonder,' laughed Vida. '_We_ are rather frivolous, I'm
+afraid.'
+
+'To tell the truth, I wondered, too. I even sounded my sister-in-law.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'She said it was her Day of Reckoning. "I never ask the woman," she
+said, "except to a scratch party like this."'
+
+'"Scratch party"--with you and me here!'
+
+'Ah, we are the leaven. We make the compound possible.'
+
+'Still, I don't think she ought to call it "scratch" when she's got an
+Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister----'
+
+'Just the party to ask a scratch Cabinet Minister to,' he insisted,
+stopping between the two cards inscribed respectively with their names.
+'As for the Ambassador, he's an old friend of ours--knows his London
+well--knows we are the most tolerant society on the face of the earth.'
+
+In spite of her companion's affectation of a smiling quarrelsomeness,
+Vida unfolded her table-napkin with the air of one looking forward to
+her _tete-a-tete_ with the man who had brought her down. But Lord
+Borrodaile was a person most women liked talking to, and hardly had she
+begun to relish that combination in the man of careless pleasantry and
+pungent criticism, when Vida caught an agonized glance from her hostess,
+which said plainly, 'Rescue the man on your right,'--and lo! Miss
+Levering became aware that already, before the poor jaded politician had
+swallowed his soup, Mrs. Townley had fallen to catechising him about the
+new Bill--a theme talked threadbare by newspaperdom and all political
+England. But Mrs. Townley, albeit not exactly old, was one of those
+old-fashioned women who take what used to be called 'an intelligent
+interest in politics.' You may pick her out in any drawing-room from the
+fact that politicians shun her like the plague. Rich, childless, lonely,
+with more wits than occupation, practically shelved at a time when her
+intellectual life is most alert--the Mrs. Townleys of the world do, it
+must be admitted, labour under the delusion that men fighting the battle
+of public life, go out to dine for the express purpose of telling the
+intelligent female 'all about it.' She is a staunch believer not so much
+in women's influence as in woman's. And there is no doubt in her mind
+which woman's. If among her smart relations who ask her to their houses
+and go to hers (from that sentiment of the solidarity of the family so
+powerful in English life), if amongst these she succeeds from time to
+time in inducing two or three public officials, or even private members,
+to prove how good a cook she keeps, she thinks she is exercising an
+influence on the politics of her time. Her form of conversation consists
+in plying her victim with questions. Not here one there one, to keep the
+ball rolling, but a steady and pitiless fire of 'Do you think?' and
+'_Why_ do you?'
+
+Obedient to her hostess's wireless telegram, Miss Levering bent her
+head, and said to Mrs. Townley's neighbour--
+
+'I know I ought not to talk to you till after the _entree_.'
+
+'Pray do!' said Sir William, with a sudden glint in his little eyes; and
+then with a burnt-child air of caution, 'Unless----' he began.
+
+'Oh, you make conditions!' said Miss Levering, laughing.
+
+'Only one. Promise not'--he lowered his voice--'promise not to say
+"Bill."'
+
+'I won't even go so far as to say "William."'
+
+He laughed as obligingly as though the jest had been a good one. A
+little ashamed, its maker hastened to leave it behind.
+
+'There's nothing I should quite so much hate talking about as
+politics--saving your presence.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+'I was thinking of something _much_ more important.'
+
+Even her rallying tone did not wholly reassure the poor man.
+
+'More important?' he repeated.
+
+'Yes; I long to know (and I long to be forgiven for asking), what Order
+that is you are wearing, and what you did to get it.'
+
+Haycroft breathed freely. He talked for the next ten minutes about the
+bauble, making a humorous translation of its Latin 'posy,' and
+describing in the same vein the service to a foreign state that had won
+him the recognition. He wouldn't have worn the thing to-night except out
+of compliment to the ambassador from the Power in question. They were
+going on together to the reception at the Foreign Office. As to the
+Order, Haycroft seemed to feel he owed it to himself to smile at all
+such toys, but he did not disdain to amuse the pretty lady with the one
+in question, any more than being humane (and even genial sitting before
+Mrs. Freddy's menu), he would have refused to show the whirring wheels
+of his watch to a nice child. The two got on so well that the anxious
+look quite faded out of Mrs. Freddy's face, and she devoted herself
+gaily to the distinguished foreigner at her side. But Haycroft at a
+party was, like so many Englishmen, as the lilies of the field. They
+toil not, neither do they spin. The man Vida had rescued from Mrs.
+Graham Townley was, when in the society of women, so accustomed to
+seeing them take on themselves the onus of entertainment, was himself so
+unused to being at the smallest trouble, that when the 'Order' was
+exhausted, had Vida not invented another topic, there would have been an
+absolute cessation of all converse till Mrs. Graham Townley had again
+caught him up like a big reluctant fish on the hook of interrogation. At
+a reproachful aside from Lord Borrodaile, Miss Levering broke off in the
+middle of her second subject to substitute, 'But I am monopolizing you
+disgracefully,' and she half turned away from the eminent politician
+into whose slightly flushed face and humid eyes had come something like
+animation.
+
+'Not at all. Not at all. Go on.'
+
+'No, I've gone far enough. Do you realize that we left "Orders" and
+"Honours" half an hour ago, and ever since we've been talking scandal?'
+
+'Criticizing life,' he amended--'a pursuit worthy of two philosophers.'
+
+'I did it--' said the lady, with an air of half-amused discontent with
+herself; 'you know why I did it.'
+
+He met her eye, and the faint motion that indicated the woman on his
+other side. 'Terrible person,' he whispered. 'She goes out to dine as a
+soldier goes into action.'
+
+For the next few minutes they made common cause in heaping ridicule on
+'the political woman.'
+
+'But, after all'--Vida pulled herself up--'it may be only a case of
+sour grapes on my part. I'm afraid _my_ conversation is inclined to be
+frivolous.'
+
+He turned and gave her her reward--the feeling smile that says, '_Thank
+God!_' But, strangely, it did not reflect itself in the woman's face.
+Something quite different there, lurking under the soft gaiety. Was
+it consciousness of this being the second time during the evening
+that she had employed the too common vaunt of the woman of that particular
+world? Did some ironic echo reach her of that same boast (often as
+mirthless and as pitiful as the painted smile on the cruder face), the
+'I'm afraid I'm rather frivolous' of the well-to-do woman, whose
+frivolity--invaluable asset!--is beginning to show wear?
+
+'Well, to return to our mutton,' he said; and, as his companion seemed
+suddenly to be overtaken by some unaccountable qualm, 'What a desert
+life would be,' he added encouragingly, 'if we couldn't talk to the
+discreet about the indiscreet.'
+
+'I wonder if there wouldn't be still more oases in the desert,' she said
+idly, 'if there were a new law made----'
+
+He glanced at her with veiled apprehension in the pause.
+
+'You being so Liberal,' she went on with faint mockery, 'you're the very
+one to introduce the measure' (he shrank visibly, and seemed about to
+remind her of her pledge). 'It shall ordain,' she went on, 'that those
+who have found satisfactory husbands or wives are to rest content with
+their good fortune, and not be so greedy as to insist on having the
+children, too.'
+
+'Oh!' His gravity relaxed.
+
+'But, on the other hand, all the lonely women, the widows and spinsters,
+who haven't got anything else, _they_ shall have the children.'
+
+'I won't go so far as that,' he laughed, boundlessly relieved that the
+conversation was not taking the strenuous turn he for a moment feared.
+'But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll support a measure that shall make
+an allowance of _one_ child to every single woman the proper and
+accepted arrangement. No questions asked, and no disgrace.'
+
+'Disgrace!' she echoed, smiling. 'On the contrary, it should be the
+woman's title to honour! She should be given a beautiful Order like
+yours for service to the State.'
+
+'Ah, yes! But, what then would we talk about?'
+
+She had turned away definitely this time.
+
+'Well,' said Borrodaile, a little mocking, 'what is it?'
+
+'I don't know,' she answered. 'I don't know _what_ it is that seizes
+hold of me after I've been chattering like this for an hour or more.'
+
+Borrodaile bent his head, and glanced past Vida to the abandoned
+minister.
+
+'Console me by saying a slight weariness.'
+
+'More like loathing.'
+
+'Not of _both_ your neighbours, I hope.'
+
+He lost the low 'Of myself.' 'But there's one person,' she said, with
+something like enthusiasm--'one person that I respect and admire.'
+
+'Oh!' He glanced about the board with an air of lazy interest. 'Which
+one?'
+
+'I don't know her name. I mean the woman who dares to sit quite silent
+and eat her dinner without looking like a lost soul.'
+
+'I've been saying you could do that.'
+
+She shook her head. 'No, I've been engaged for the last hour in proving
+I haven't the courage. It's just come over me,' she said, her eyes in
+their turn making a tour of the table, and coming back to Borrodaile
+with the look of having caught up a bran-new topic on the way--'it's
+just come over me, what we're all doing.'
+
+'Are we all doing the same thing?'
+
+'All the men are doing one thing. And all the women another.'
+
+His idly curious look travelled up and down, and returned to her
+unenlightened.
+
+'All the women,' she said, 'are trying with might and main to amuse the
+men, and all the men are more or less permitting the women to succeed.'
+
+'I'm sorry,' he said, laughing, 'to hear of your being so over-worked.'
+
+'Oh, _you_ make it easy. And yet'--she caught the gratitude away from
+her voice--'I suppose I should have said something like that, even if
+I'd been talking to my other neighbour.'
+
+Borrodaile's look went again from one couple to another, for, as usual
+in England, the talk was all _tete-a-tete_. The result of his inspection
+seemed not to lend itself to her mood.
+
+'I can't speak for others, but for myself, I'm always conscious of
+wanting to be agreeable when I'm with you. I'm sorry'--he was speaking
+in the usual half-genial, half-jeering tone--'very sorry, if I succeed
+so ill.'
+
+'I've already admitted that with _me_ you succeed to admiration. But you
+only try because it's easy.'
+
+'Oh!' he laughed.
+
+'You rather like talking to me, you know. Now, can you lay your hand on
+your heart----'
+
+'And deny it? Never!'
+
+'Can you lay your hand on your heart, and say you've tried as hard to
+entertain your other neighbour as I have to keep mine going?'
+
+'Ah, well, we men aren't as good at it. After all, it's rather the
+woman's "part," isn't it?'
+
+'The art of pleasing? I suppose it is--but it's rather a Geisha view of
+life, don't you think?'
+
+'Not at all; rightly viewed, it's a woman's privilege--her natural
+function.'
+
+'Then the brutes are nobler than we.'
+
+Wondering, he glanced at her. The face was wholly reassuring, but he
+said, with a faint uneasiness--
+
+'If it weren't you, I'd say that sounds a little bitter.'
+
+'Oh, no,' she laughed. 'I was only thinking about the lion's mane and
+the male bird's crest, and what the natural history bores say they're
+for.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The darkness and the quiet of Vida Levering's bedroom were rudely
+dispelled at a punctual eight each morning by the entrance of a gaunt
+middle-aged female.
+
+It was this person's unvarying custom to fling back the heavy curtains,
+as though it gratified some strong recurrent need in her, to hear brass
+rings run squealing along a bar; as if she counted that day lost which
+was not well begun--by shooting the blinds up with a clatter and a bang!
+
+The harsh ceremonial served as a sort of setting of the pace, or a
+metaphorical shaking of a bony fist in the face of the day, as much as
+to say, 'If I admit you here you'll have to toe the mark!'
+
+It might be taken as proof of sound nerves that the lady in the bed
+offered no remonstrance at being jarred awake in this ungentle fashion.
+
+Fourteen years before, when Vida Levering was only eighteen, she had
+tried to make something like a conventional maid out of the faithful
+Northumbrian. Rachel Wark had entered Lady Levering's service just
+before Vida's birth, and had helped to nurse her mistress through a
+mortal illness ten years later. After Sir Hervey Levering lost his wife,
+Wark became in time housekeeper and general factotum to the family. This
+arrangement held without a break until, as before hinted, Miss Vida,
+full of the hopeful idealism of early youth, had tried and ignominiously
+failed in her attempt to teach the woman gentler manners.
+
+For Wark's characteristic retort had been to pack her box and go to
+spend sixteen months among her kinsfolk, where energy was accounted a
+virtue, and smooth ways held in suspicion. At the end of that time,
+seeming to judge the lesson she wished to impart had been sufficiently
+digested, Wark wrote to Miss Vida proposing to come back. For some
+months she waited for the answer. It came at last from Biarritz, where
+it appeared the young lady was spending the winter with her father.
+After an exchange of letters Wark joined them there. In the twelve
+years since her return to the family, she had by degrees adapted herself
+to the task of looking after her young lady. The adaptation was not all
+on one side. Many of Vida's friends wondered that she could put up with
+a lady's maid who could do so few of the things commonly expected of
+that accomplished class.
+
+'I don't want dressmaking going on in the house,' contentedly Vida told
+off her maid's negative qualifications, 'and I hate having anybody do my
+hair for me. Wark packs quite beautifully, and then I _do_ like some one
+about me--that I like.'
+
+In the early days what she had 'liked' most about the woman was that
+Wark had known and been attached to Lady Levering. There was no one else
+with whom Vida could talk about her mother.
+
+By the time death overtook Sir Hervey two winters ago in Rome, Wark had
+become so essential a part of Vida's little entourage, that one of the
+excuses offered by that lady for not going to live with her half-sister
+in London had been--'Wark doesn't always get on with other servants.'
+For several years Miss Levering's friends had been speaking of her as
+one fallen a victim to that passion for Italy that makes it an abiding
+place dearer than home to so many English-born. But the half-sister,
+Mrs. Fox-Moore, had not been misled either by that theory or by the
+difficulty as to pleasing Wark with the Queen Anne's Gate servants.
+'It's not that Vida loves Italy so much as that, for some reason, she
+doesn't love England at all.' Nevertheless, Mrs. Fox-Moore after some
+months had persuaded her to 'bring Wark and try us.'
+
+The experiment, now over a year old, seemed to have turned out well. If
+Vida really did not love her native land, she seemed to enjoy well
+enough what she called smiling 'the St. Martin's Summer' of her success
+in London society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She turned over in her bed on this particular May morning, stretching
+out her long figure, and then letting it sink luxuriously back into
+relaxed quiescence with a conscious joy in prolonging those last ten
+minutes when sleep is slowly, softly, one after another, withdrawing her
+thousand veils.
+
+Vaguely, as she lay there with face half buried in her pillow, vaguely
+she was aware that Wark was making even more noise than common.
+
+When the woman had bustled in and bustled out several times, and
+deposited the shoes with a 'dump,' she reappeared with the delicate
+porcelain tray that bore the early tea. On the little table close to
+where the dark head lay half hidden, Wark set the fragile burden
+down--did it with an emphasis that made cup and saucer shiver and run
+for support towards the round-bellied pot.
+
+Vida opened her heavy-lidded eyes. 'Really, Wark, you know, nobody on
+earth would let you wake them in the morning except me.' She sat up and
+pulled the pillow higher. 'Give me the tray here,' she said sleepily.
+
+Wark obeyed. She had said nothing to Vida's reproof. She stood now by
+the bedside without a trace of either contrition or resentment in the
+wooden face that seemed, in recompense for never having been young, to
+be able successfully to defy the 'antique pencil.' Time had made but one
+or two faint ineffectual scratches there, as one who tries, and then
+abandons, an unpromising surface. The lack of record in the face lent it
+something almost cryptic. If there were no laughter-wrought lines about
+the eyes, neither was there mark of grief or self-repression near the
+mouth. She would, you felt, defy Time as successfully as she defied
+lesser foes. Even the lank, straw-coloured hair hardly showed the
+streaks of yellow-white that offered their unemphatic clue to Wark's
+age.
+
+The sensitive face of the woman in the bed--even now with something of
+the peace of sleep still shadowing its brilliancy--gave by contrast an
+impression of vividness and eager sympathies. The mistress, too, looked
+younger than her years. She did not seem to wonder at the dull presence
+that seemed to be held there, prisoner-like, behind the brass bars at
+the foot of the bed. Wark sometimes gave herself this five minutes'
+_tete-a-tete_ with her mistress before the business of the day began and
+all their intercourse was swamped in clothes.
+
+'I meant to pin a paper on the door to say I wasn't to be called till
+ten,' said the lady, as though keeping up the little pretence of not
+being pleased.
+
+'Didn't you sleep well, 'm?' The maid managed wholly to denude the
+question of its usual grace of solicitude.
+
+'Yes; but it was so late when I began. We didn't get back till nearly
+three.'
+
+'I didn't get much sleep, either.' It was an unheard-of admission from
+Wark.
+
+'Oh!' said Vida, lazily sipping her tea. 'Bad conscience?'
+
+'No,' she said slowly, 'no.'
+
+As the woman raised her light eyes, Miss Levering saw, to her
+astonishment, that the lids were red. Wark, too, seemed uncomfortably
+aware of something unusual in her face, for she turned it away, and
+busied herself in smoothing down the near corner of the bath blanket.
+
+'What kept _you_ awake?' Miss Levering asked.
+
+'Well, I suppose I'd better tell you while the other people aren't
+round. I want a day or two to go into the country.'
+
+'Into the country?' No such request had been heard for a round dozen of
+years.
+
+'I've got some business to see to.'
+
+'At home? In Northumberland?'
+
+'No.'
+
+The tone seemed so little to promise anything in the nature of a
+confidence that Miss Levering merely said--
+
+'Oh, very well. When do you want to go?'
+
+'I could go to-morrow if----' She stopped, and looked down at the hem of
+her long white apron.
+
+Something unwonted in the wooden face prompted Miss Levering to say--
+
+'What do you want to do in the country?'
+
+'To see about a place that's been offered me.'
+
+'A _place_, Wark!'
+
+'Yes; post of housekeeper. That's what I really am, you know.'
+
+Miss Levering looked at her, and set down the half-finished cup without
+opening her lips. If the speech had come from any other than Wark, it
+would have been easy to believe it merely the prelude to complaint of a
+fellow-servant or plea for a rise in wages. But if Wark objected to a
+fellow-servant, her own view of the matter had always been that the
+other one should go. Her mistress knew quite well that in the mouth of
+the woman standing there with red eyes at the foot of the bed, such an
+announcement as had just been made, meant more. And the consciousness
+seemed to bring with it a sense of acute discomfort not unmixed with
+anger. For there was a threat of something worse than an infliction of
+mere inconvenience. It was a species of desertion. It was almost
+treachery. They had lived together all the younger woman's life, except
+for those two years that followed on the girl's attempt to make a
+conventional servant out of a creature who couldn't be that, but who had
+it in her to be more.
+
+They had been too long together for Wark not to divine
+something--through all the lady's self-possession--of her sense of being
+abandoned.
+
+'It's having to tell you that that kept me awake.'
+
+The wave of dull colour that mounted up to the bushy, straw-coloured
+eyebrows seemed on the way to have overflowed into her eyes. They grew
+redder than before, and slowly they filled.
+
+'You don't like living here in this house.' Vida caught at the old
+complication.
+
+'I've got used to it,' the woman said baldly. Then, after a little
+pause, during which she made a barely audible rasping to clear her
+throat, 'I don't like leaving you, miss. I always remember how, that
+time before--the only time I was ever away from you since you was a
+baby--how different I found you when I came back.'
+
+'Different, Wark?'
+
+'Yes, miss. It seemed like you'd turned into somebody else.'
+
+'Most people change--develope--in those years just before twenty.'
+
+'Not like you did, miss. You gave me a deal of trouble when you was
+little, but it nearly broke my heart to come back and find you so
+quieted down and wise-like.'
+
+A flash of tears glimmered in the mistress's eyes, though her lips were
+smiling.
+
+'Of course,' the maid went on, 'though you never told me about it, I
+know you had things to bear while I was away, or else you wouldn't have
+gone away from your home that time--a mere child--and tried to teach for
+a living.'
+
+'It _was_ absurd of me! But whosever fault it was, it wasn't yours.'
+
+'Yes, miss, in a way it was. I owed it to your mother not to have left
+you. I've never told you how I blamed myself when I heard--and I didn't
+wonder at you. It _was_ hard when your mother was hardly cold to see
+your father----'
+
+'Yes; now that's enough, Wark. You know we never speak of that.'
+
+'No, we've never spoken about it. And, of course, you won't need me any
+more like you did then. But it's looking back and remembering--it's that
+that's making it so hard to leave you now. But----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'My friends have been talking to me.'
+
+'About----'
+
+'Yes, this post.' Then, almost angrily, 'I didn't try for it. It's come
+after me. My cousin knows the man.'
+
+'The man who wants you to go to him as housekeeper?' Vida wrinkled her
+brows. Wark hadn't said 'gentleman,' who alone in her employer's
+experience had any need of a housekeeper. 'You mean you don't know him
+yourself?'
+
+'Not yet, 'm. I know he's a market gardener, and he wants his house
+looked after.'
+
+'What if he does? A market gardener won't be able to pay the wages
+I----'
+
+'The wages aren't much to begin with--but he's getting along--except for
+the housekeeping. That's in a bad way.'
+
+'What if it is? I never heard such nonsense. You don't want to leave me,
+Wark, for a market gardener you've never so much as seen;' and Miss
+Levering covered her discomfort by a little smiling.
+
+'My cousin's seen him many a time. She likes him.'
+
+'Let your cousin go, then, and keep his house for him.'
+
+'My cousin has her own house to keep, and she's got a young baby.'
+
+'Oh, the woman who brought her child here once?'
+
+'Yes, 'm, the child you gave the coral beads to. My cousin has written
+and talked about it ever since.'
+
+'About the beads?'
+
+'About the market gardener. And the way his house is--Ever since we came
+back to England she's been going on at me about it. I told her all along
+I couldn't leave you, but she's always said (since that day you walked
+about with the baby and gave him the beads to play with, and wouldn't
+let her make him cry by taking them away)--ever since then my cousin
+has said you'd understand.'
+
+'What would I understand?'
+
+Wark laid her hand on the nearest of the shining bars of brass, and
+slowly she polished it with her open palm. She obviously found it
+difficult to go on with her defence.
+
+'I wanted my cousin to come and explain to you.'
+
+Here was Wark in a new light indeed! If she really wanted any creature
+on the earth to speak for her. As she stood there in stolid
+embarrassment polishing the shiny bar, Miss Levering clutched the tray
+to steady it, and with the other hand she pulled the pillow higher. One
+had to sit bolt upright, it seemed, and give this matter one's entire
+attention.
+
+'I don't want to talk to your cousin about your affairs. We are old
+friends, Wark. Tell me yourself.'
+
+She forced her eyes to meet her mistress's. 'He told my cousin: "Just
+you find me a good housekeeper," he said, "and if I like her," he said,
+"she won't be my housekeeper long."'
+
+'Wark! _You!_ You aren't thinking of marrying?'
+
+'If he's what my cousin says----'
+
+'A man you've never seen? Oh, my _dear_ Wark! Well, I shall hope and
+pray he won't think your housekeeping good enough.'
+
+'He will! From what my cousin says, he's had a run of worthless huzzies.
+I don't expect he'll find much fault with _my_ housekeeping after what
+he's been through.'
+
+Vida looked wondering at the triumphant face of the woman.
+
+'And so you're ready to leave me after all these years?'
+
+'No, miss, I'm not to say "ready," but I think I'll have to go.'
+
+'My poor old Wark'--the lady leaned over the tray--'I could almost think
+you are in love with this man you've only heard about!'
+
+'No, miss, I'm not to say in love.'
+
+'I believe you are! For what other reason would you have for leaving
+me?'
+
+The woman looked as if she could show cause had she a mind. But she said
+nothing.
+
+'You know,' Vida pursued--'you know quite well you don't need to marry
+for a home.'
+
+'No, 'm; I'm quite comfortable, of course, with you. But time goes on. I
+don't get younger.'
+
+'None of us do that, Wark.'
+
+'That's just the trouble, miss. It ain't only _me_.'
+
+Vida looked at her, more perplexed than ever by the curious regard in
+the hard-featured countenance. For there was something very like dumb
+reproach in Wark's face.
+
+'Still,' said Miss Levering, 'you know, even if none of us do get
+younger, we are not any of us (to judge by appearances) on the brink of
+the grave. Even if I should be smashed up in a motor accident--I know
+you're always expecting that--even if I were killed to-morrow, still
+you'd find I hadn't forgotten you, Wark.'
+
+'It isn't that, miss. It isn't death I'm afraid of.'
+
+There was a pause--the longest that yet had come.
+
+'What _are_ you afraid of?' Miss Levering asked.
+
+'It's--you see, I've been looking these twelve years to see you
+married.'
+
+'Me? What's that got to do with----'
+
+'Yes, miss. You see, I've counted a good while on looking after children
+again some day. But if you won't get married----'
+
+Vida flung her hair back with a burst of not very merry laughter.
+
+'If I won't, you must! But _why_ in the world? I'd no idea you were so
+romantic. Why must there be a wedding in the family, Wark?'
+
+'So there can be children, miss,' said the woman, stolidly.
+
+'Well, there is a child. There's Doris.'
+
+'Poor Miss Doris!' The woman shook her head. 'But she's got a good
+nurse. I say it, though she calls advice interfering. And Miss Doris has
+got a mother' (plain that Wark was again in the market garden). 'Yes,
+_she's_ got a mother! and a sort of a father, and she's got a governess,
+and a servant to carry her about. I sometimes think what Miss Doris
+needs most is a little letting alone. Leastways, she don't need _me_.
+No, nor _you_, miss.'
+
+'And you've given me up?' the mistress probed.
+
+Wark raised her red eyes. 'Of course, miss, if I'm wrong----' Her
+knuckly hand slid down from the brass bar, and she came round to the
+side of the bed with an unmistakable eagerness in her face. 'If you're
+going to get married, I don't see as I _could_ leave ye.'
+
+The lady's lips twitched with an instant's silent laughter, but there
+was something else than laughter in her eyes.
+
+'Oh, I _can_ buy you off, can I? If I give you my word--if to save you
+from need to try the great experiment, I'll sacrifice _my_self----'
+
+'I wouldn't like to see you make a sacrifice, miss,' Wark said, with
+perfect gravity. 'But'--as though reconsidering--'you wouldn't feel it
+so much, I dare say, after the child was there.'
+
+They looked at one another.
+
+'If it's children you yearn for, my poor Wark, you've waited too long,
+I'm afraid.'
+
+'Oh, no, miss.' She spoke with a fatuous confidence.
+
+'Why, you must be fifty.'
+
+'Fifty-three, miss. But'--she met her mistress's eye
+unflinching--'Bunting--he's the market gardener--he's been married
+before. He's got three girls and two boys.'
+
+'Heavens!' Vida fell back against the pillow. 'What a handful!'
+
+'Oh, no, 'm. My cousin says they're nice children.' It would have been
+funny if it hadn't somehow been pathetic to see how instantly she was on
+the defensive. '"Healthy and hearty," my cousin says, all but the little
+one. She hardly thinks they'll raise _him_.'
+
+'Well, I wish your market gardener had confined himself to raising
+onions and cabbages. If he hadn't those children I don't believe you'd
+dream of----'
+
+'Well, of course not, miss. But it seems like those children need some
+one to look after them more than--more than----'
+
+'Than I do? That ought to be true.'
+
+'One of 'em is little more than a baby.' The wooden woman offered it as
+an apology.
+
+'Take the tray,' said Vida.
+
+From the look on her face you would say she knew she had lost the
+faithfullest of servants, and that five little children somewhere in a
+market garden had won, if not a mother, at least a doughty champion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+No matter how late either Vida Levering or her half-sister had gone to
+bed the night before, they breakfasted, as they did so many other
+things, at the hour held to be most advantageous for Doris.
+
+Mr. Fox-Moore was sometimes there and often not. On those mornings when
+his health or his exertions the night previous did not prevent his
+appearance, there was little conversation at the Fox-Moore breakfast
+table, except such as was initiated by the only child of the marriage, a
+fragile girl of ten. Little Doris, owing to some obscure threat of
+hip-disease, made much of her progress about the house in a footman's
+arms. But hardly, so borne, would she reach the threshold of the
+breakfast room before her thin little voice might be heard calling out,
+'_Fa_-ther! _Fa_-ther!'
+
+Those who held they had every ground for disliking the old man would
+have been surprised to watch him during the half hour that ensued,
+ministering to the rather querulous little creature, adapting his tone
+and view to her comprehension, with an art that plainly took its
+inspiration from affection. If Doris were not well enough to come down,
+Mr. Fox-Moore read his letters and glanced at 'the' paper, directing his
+few remarks to his sister-in-law, whom he sometimes treated in such a
+way as would have given a stranger the impression, in spite of the
+lady's lack of response, that there was some secret understanding
+between the two.
+
+A great many years before, Donald Fox-Moore had tumbled into a
+Government office, the affairs of which he had ultimately got into such
+excellent running order, that, with a few hours' supervision from the
+chief each week, his clerks were easily able to maintain the high
+reputation of that particular department of the public service. What Mr.
+Fox-Moore did with the rest of his time was little known. A good deal of
+it was spent with a much younger bachelor brother near Brighton. At
+least, this was the family legend. In spite of his undoubted affection
+for his child, little of his leisure was wasted at home. When people
+looked at the sallow, smileless face of his wife they didn't blame him.
+
+Sometimes, when a general sense of tension and anxiety betrayed his
+presence somewhere in the great dreary house, and the master yet forbore
+to descend for the early meal, he would rejoice the heart of his little
+daughter by having her brought to his room to make tea and share his
+breakfast.
+
+On these occasions a sense of such unexpected surcease from care
+prevailed in the dining-room as called for some celebration of the
+holiday spirit. It found expression in the inclination of the two women
+to linger over their coffee, embracing the only sure opportunity the day
+offered for confidential exchange.
+
+One of these occasions was the morning of Wark's warning, which,
+however, Vida determined to say nothing about till she was obliged. She
+had just handed up her cup for replenishing when the door opened, and,
+to the surprise of the ladies, the master of the house appeared on the
+threshold.
+
+'Is--is anything the matter?' faltered his wife, half rising.
+
+'Matter? Must something be the matter that I venture into my own
+breakfast-room of a morning?'
+
+'No, no. Only I thought, as Doris didn't come, you were breakfasting
+upstairs, too.' No notice being taken of this, she at once set about
+heating water, for no one expected Mr. Fox-Moore to drink tea made in
+the kitchen.
+
+'I thought,' said he, twitching an open newspaper off the table and
+folding it up--'I thought I asked to be allowed the privilege of opening
+my paper for myself.'
+
+'Your _Times_ hasn't been touched,' said his wife, anxiously occupied
+with the spirit-lamp.
+
+He stopped in the act of thrusting the paper in his pocket and shook it.
+
+'What do you call this?'
+
+'That is my _Times_,' she said.
+
+'_Your_ _Times_?'
+
+'I ordered an extra copy, because you dislike so to have yours looked at
+till you've finished with it.'
+
+'Dreadful hardship _that_ is!' he said, glancing round, and seeing his
+own particular paper neatly folded and lying still on the side table.
+
+'It was no great hardship when you read it before night. When you don't,
+it's rather long to wait.'
+
+'To wait for what?'
+
+'For the news of the day.'
+
+'Don't you get the news of the day in the _Morning Post_?'
+
+'I don't get such full Parliamentary reports nor the foreign
+correspondence.'
+
+'Good Lord! what next?'
+
+'I think you must blame me,' said Vida, speaking for the first time.
+'I'm afraid you'll find it's only since I've been here that Janet has
+broken loose and taken in an extra copy.'
+
+'Oh, it's on your account, is it?' he grumbled, but the edge had gone
+out of his ill-humour. 'I suppose you _have_ to keep up with politics or
+you couldn't keep the ball rolling as you did last night?'
+
+'Yes,' said Vida, with an innocent air. 'It is well known what
+superhuman efforts we have to make before we can qualify ourselves to
+talk to men.'
+
+'Hm!' grumbled Fox-Moore. 'I never saw _you_ at a loss.'
+
+'You did last night.'
+
+'No, I didn't. I saw you getting on like a house afire with Haycroft and
+the beguiling Borrodaile. It's a pity all the decent men are married.'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore allowed her own coffee to get cold while she hovered over
+the sacred rite of scientific tea-making. Mr. Fox-Moore, talking to Vida
+about the Foreign Office reception, to which they had all gone on after
+the Tunbridges' dinner, kept watching with a kind of half-absent-minded
+scorn his wife's fussily punctilious pains to prepare the brew 'his
+way.' When all was ready and the tea steaming on its way to him in the
+hands of its harassed maker, he curtly declined it, got up, and left the
+room. A moment after, the shutting of the front door announced the
+beginning of yet another of the master's absences.
+
+'How can you stand it?' said Vida, under her breath.
+
+'Oh, I don't mind his going away,' said the other, dully.
+
+'No; but his coming back!'
+
+'One of the things I'm grateful to Donald for'--she spoke as if there
+were plenty more--'he is very good to you, Vida.' And in her tone there
+was criticism of the beneficiary.
+
+'You mean, he's not as rude to me as he is to you?'
+
+'He is even forbearing. And you--you rather frighten me sometimes.'
+
+'I see that.'
+
+'It would be very terrible for _me_ if he took it into his head not to
+like you.'
+
+'If he took it into his head to forbid your having me here, you mean.'
+
+'But even when you aren't polite he just laughs. Still, he's not a
+patient man.'
+
+'Do you think you have to tell me that?'
+
+'No, dear, only to remind you not to try him too far. For my sake, Vida,
+don't ever do that.'
+
+She put out her yellow, parchment-like hand, and her sister closed hers
+over it an instant.
+
+'Here's the hot milk,' said Vida. 'Now we'll have some more coffee.'
+
+'Are you coming with me to-day?' Mrs. Fox-Moore asked quite cheerfully
+for her as the servant shut the door.
+
+'Oh, is this Friday? N--no.' The younger woman looked at the chill grey
+world through the window, and followed up the hesitating negative with a
+quite definite, 'I couldn't stand slums to-day.' The two exchanged the
+look that means, 'Here we are again up against this recurring
+difference.' But there was no ill-humour in either face as their eyes
+met.
+
+Between these two daughters of one father existed that sort of haunting
+family resemblance often seen between two closely related persons,
+despite one being attractive and the other in some way repellent. The
+observer traces the same lines in each face, the same intensification of
+'the family look' in the smile, and yet knows that the slight disparity
+in age fails to account for a difference wide as the poles.
+
+And not alone difference of taste, of environment and experience, not
+these alone make up the sum of their unlikeness. You had only to look
+from the fresh simplicity of white muslin blouse and olive-coloured
+cloth in the one case, to the ungainly expensiveness of the black silk
+gown of the married woman, in order to get from the first a sense of
+dainty morning freshness, and from Mrs. Fox-Moore not alone a lugubrious
+_memento mori_ sort of impression, but that more disquieting reminder of
+the ugly and over-elaborate thing life is to many an estimable soul.
+Janet Fox-Moore had the art of rubbing this dark fact in till, so to
+speak, the black came off. She seemed to achieve it partly by dint of
+wearing (instead of any relief of lace or even of linen at her throat) a
+hard band of that passementerie secretly so despised of the little
+Tunbridges. This device did not so much 'finish off' the neck of Mrs.
+Fox-Moore's gowns, as allow the funereal dulness of them to overflow on
+to her brown neck. It even cast an added shadow on her sallow cheek. The
+figure of the older woman, gaunt and thin enough, announced the further
+constriction of the corset. By way of revenge the sharp shoulder-blades
+poked the corset out till it defined a ridge in the black silk back. In
+front, too, the slab-like figure declined co-operation with the corset,
+and withdrew, leaving a hiatus that the silk bodice clothed though it
+did not conceal. You could not have told whether the other woman wore
+that ancient invention for a figure insufficient or over-exuberant. As
+you followed her movements, easy with the ease of a child, while she
+walked or stooped or caught up the fragile Doris, or raised her arm to
+take a book from the shelf, you got an impression of a physique in
+perfect because unconscious harmony with its environment. If, on the
+contrary, you watched but so much as the nervous, uncertain hand of the
+other woman, you would know here was one who had spent her years in
+alternately grasping the nettle and letting it go--reaping only stings
+in life's fair fields. Easy for any one seeing her in these days (though
+she wasn't thirty-six) to share Mrs. Freddy's incredulous astonishment
+at hearing from Haycroft the night before that Janet Levering had been
+'the beauty of her family.' Mrs. Freddy's answer had been, 'Oh, don't
+make fun of her!' and Haycroft had had to assure her of his seriousness,
+while the little hostess still stared uncertain.
+
+'The _lines_ of her face are rather good,' she admitted. 'Oh, but those
+yellow and pink eyes, and her general muddiness!'
+
+'Yes, yes,' Sir William had agreed. 'She's changed so that I would never
+have known her, but her colouring used to be her strong point. I assure
+you she was magnificent--oh, much more striking than the younger
+sister!'
+
+The bloodless-looking woman who sat uneasily at her own board clutching
+at a thin fragment of cold dry toast that hung cheerlessly awry in the
+silver rack, like the last brown leaf to a frosty tree, while she
+crunched the toast, spoke dryly of the poor; of how 'interesting many of
+them are;' how when you take the trouble to understand them, you no
+longer lump them all together in a featureless misery, you realize how
+significant and varied are their lives.
+
+'Not half as significant and varied as their smells,' said her
+unchastened sister.
+
+'Oh, you sometimes talk as if you had no heart!'
+
+'The trouble is, I have no stomach. When you've lured me into one of
+those dingy alleys and that all-pervading greasy smell of poverty comes
+flooding into my face--well, simply all my most uncharitable feelings
+rise up in revolt. I want to hold my nose and hide my eyes, and call for
+the motor-car. Running away isn't fast enough,' she said, with energy
+and a sudden spark in her golden-brown eye.
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore poised the fat silver jug over her own belated cup, and
+waited for the thick cream to come out in a slow and grudging gobbet
+with a heavy plump into the coffee. As she waited, she gently rebuked
+that fastidiousness in her companion that shrank from contact with the
+unsavoury and the unfortunate.
+
+'It isn't only my fastidiousness, as you call it, that is offended,'
+Vida retorted. 'I am penetrated by the hopelessness of what we're doing.
+It salves my conscience, or _yours_----' Hurriedly she added,
+'----that's not what you mean to do it for, I _know_, dear--and you're
+an angel and I'm a mere cumberer of the earth. But when I'm only just
+"cumbering," I feel less a fraud than when I'm pretending to do good.'
+
+'You needn't pretend.'
+
+'I can't do anything else. To go among your poor makes me feel in my
+heart that I'm simply flaunting my better fortune.'
+
+'I never saw you flaunting it.'
+
+'Well, I assure you it's when you've got me to go with you on one of
+your Whitechapel raids that I feel most strongly how outrageous it is
+that, in addition to all my other advantages, I should buy self-approval
+by doing some tuppenny-ha'penny service to a toiling, starving
+fellow-creature.'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore set down her coffee-cup. 'You mustn't suppose----' she
+began.
+
+'No, no,' Vida cut her short. 'I don't doubt _your_ motives. I know too
+well how ready you are to sacrifice yourself. But it does fill me with a
+kind of rage to see some of those smug Settlement workers, the people
+that plume themselves on leaving luxurious homes. They don't say how
+hideously bored they were in them. They are perfectly enchanted at the
+excitement and importance they get out of going to live among the poor,
+who don't want them----'
+
+'Oh, my dear Vida!'
+
+'Not a little bit! Well, the _wily_ paupers do, perhaps, for what they
+can get out of our sort.'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore cast down her eyes as though convicted by the
+recollection of some concrete example.
+
+'We're only scratching at the surface,' Vida, said--'such an ugly
+surface, too! And the more we scratch, the uglier things come to light.'
+
+'You make too much of that disappointment at Christmas.'
+
+'I wasn't even thinking of the hundredth time you've been
+disillusioned.' Vida threw down her table napkin, and stood up. 'I was
+thinking of people like our young parson cousin.'
+
+'George----'
+
+Vida made a shrug of half-impatient, half-humorous assent. 'Leaves the
+Bishop's Palace and comes to London. He, too, wants "to live for the
+poor." Never for an instant one of them. Always the patron--the person
+something may be got out of--or, at all events, hoped from.'
+
+She seemed to be about to leave the room, but as her sister answered
+with some feeling, 'No, no, they love and respect him!' Vida paused, and
+brought up by the fire that the sudden cold made comforting.
+
+'George is a different man since he's found his vocation,' Mrs.
+Fox-Moore insisted. 'You read it in his face.'
+
+'Oh, if all you mean is that _he's_ happier, why not? He's able to look
+on himself as a benefactor. He's tasting the intoxication of the King
+among Beggars.'
+
+'You are grossly unfair, Vida.'
+
+'So he thinks when I challenge him: "What good, what earthly good, is
+all this unless an anodyne--for you--is good?"'
+
+'It seems to me a very real good that George Nuneaton and his kind
+should go into the dark places and brighten hopeless lives with a little
+Christian kindness--sometimes with a little timely counsel.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said the voice by the fire; 'and a little good music--don't
+forget the good music.'
+
+'An object-lesson in practical religion, isn't that something?'
+
+'Practical! Good Heaven! A handful of complacent, expensively educated
+young people playing at reform. The poor wanting work, wanting decent
+housing--wanting _bread_--and offered a little cultivated
+companionship.'
+
+'Vida, what have you been reading?'
+
+'Reading? I've been visiting George at his Settlement. I've been
+intruding myself on the privacy of the poor once a week with you--and
+I'm done with it! Personally I don't get enough out of it to reconcile
+me to their getting so little.'
+
+'You're burning,' observed the toneless voice from the head of the
+table.
+
+'Yes, I believe I was a little hot,' Vida laughed as she drew her
+smoking skirt away from the fire. But she still stood close to the
+cheerful blaze, one foot on the fender, the green cloth skirt drawn up,
+leaving the more delicate fabric of her silk petticoat to meet the fiery
+ordeal. 'If it annoys you to hear me say that's my view of charity, why,
+don't make me talk about it;' but the face she turned for an instant
+over her shoulder was far gentler than her words. 'And don't in
+future'--she was again looking down into the fire, and she spoke slowly
+as one who delivers a reluctant ultimatum--'don't ask me to help, except
+with money. _That_ doesn't cost so much.'
+
+'I am disappointed.' Nothing further, but the sound of a chair moved
+back, eloquent somehow of a discouragement deeper than words conveyed.
+
+Vida turned swiftly, and, coming back to her sister, laid an arm about
+her shoulder.
+
+'I'm a perfect monster! But you know, my dear, you rather goaded me into
+saying all this by looking such a martyr when I've tried to get out of
+going----'
+
+'Very well, I won't ask you again.' But the toneless rejoinder was
+innocent of rancour. Janet Fox-Moore gave the impression of being too
+chilled, too drained of the generous life-forces, even for anger.
+
+'Besides,' said Vida, hurriedly, 'I'd nearly forgotten; there's the
+final practising at eleven.'
+
+'_I'd_ forgotten your charity concert was so near!' As Mrs. Fox-Moore
+gathered up her letters, she gave way for the first time to a wintry
+little smile.
+
+'The concert's mine, I admit, but the charity's the bishop's. What
+absurd things we women fill up the holes in our lives with!' Vida said,
+as she followed her sister into the hall. 'Do you know the real reason
+I'm getting up this foolish concert?'
+
+'Because you like singing, and do it so well that--yes, without your
+looks and the indescribable "rest," you'd be a success. I told you that,
+when I begged you to come and try London.'
+
+'The reason I'm slaving over the concert--it isn't all musical
+enthusiasm. It amuses me to organize it. All the ticklish, difficult,
+"bothering" part of getting up a monster thing of this sort, reconciling
+malcontents, enlisting the great operatic stars and not losing the great
+social lights--it all interests me like a game. I'm afraid the truth is
+I like managing things.'
+
+'Perhaps Mrs. Freddy's not so far wrong.'
+
+'Does Mrs. Freddy accuse me of being a "managing woman," horrid
+thought?'
+
+'She was talking about you in her enthusiastic way when she was here the
+other day. "Vida could administer a state," she said. Yes, _I_ laughed,
+too, but Mrs. Freddy shook her head quite seriously, and said, "To think
+of a being like Vida--not even a citizen."'
+
+'I'm not a citizen?' exclaimed the lady, laughing down at her sister
+over the banisters. 'Does she think because I've lived abroad I've
+forfeited my rights of----'
+
+'No, all she means is---- Oh, you know the bee she's got in her bonnet.
+She means, as she'll tell you, that "you have no more voice in the
+affairs of England than if you were a Hottentot."'
+
+'I can't say I've ever minded that. But it has an odd sound, hasn't
+it--to hear one isn't a citizen.'
+
+'Mrs. Freddy forgets----'
+
+'I know! I know what you're going to say,' said the other,
+light-heartedly. 'Mrs. Freddy forgets our unique ennobling influence;'
+and the tall young woman laughed as she ran up the last half of the long
+flight of stairs. At the top she halted a moment, and called down to
+Mrs. Fox-Moore, who was examining the cards left the day before,
+'Speaking of our powerful influence over our men-folk--Mr. Freddy
+wasn't present, was he, when she aired her views?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I thought not. Her influence over Mr. Freddy is maintained by the
+strictest silence on matters he isn't keen about.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Seeing Ulland House for the first time on a fine afternoon in early May
+against the jubilant green of its woodland hillside, the beholder, a
+little dazzled in that first instant by the warmth of colour burning in
+the ancient brick, might adapt the old dean's line and call the
+coral-tinted structure rambling down the hillside, 'A rose-red dwelling
+half as old as Time.'
+
+Its original architecture had been modified by the generations as they
+passed. One lord of Ulland had expressed his fancy on the eastern facade
+in gable and sculptured gargoyle; another his fear or his defiance in
+the squat and sturdy tower with its cautious slits in lieu of windows.
+Yet another Ulland had brought home from eighteenth-century Italy a love
+of colonnades and terraced gardens; and one still later had cut down to
+the level of the sward the high ground-floor windows, so that where
+before had been two doors or three, were now a dozen giving egress to
+the gardens.
+
+The legend so often encountered in the history of old English houses was
+not neglected here--that it had been a Crusader of this family who had
+himself brought home from the Holy Land the Lebanon cedar that spread
+wide its level branches on the west, cutting the sunset into even bars.
+Tradition also said it was a counsellor of Elizabeth who had set the
+dial on the lawn. Even the latest lord had found a way to leave his
+impress upon the time. He introduced 'Clock golf' at Ulland. From the
+upper windows on the south and west the roving eye was caught by the
+great staring face of this new timepiece on the turf--its Roman numerals
+showing keen and white upon the vivid green. On the other side of the
+cedar, that incorrigible Hedonist, the crumbling dial, told you in Latin
+that he only marked the shining hours. But the brand new clock on the
+lawn bore neither watchword nor device--seemed even to have dropped its
+hands as though in modesty withheld from pointing to hours so little
+worthy of record.
+
+Two or three men, on this fine Saturday, had come down from London for
+the week-end to disport themselves on the Ulland links, half a mile
+beyond the park. After a couple of raw days, the afternoon had turned
+out quite unseasonably warm, and though the golfers had come back
+earlier than usual, not because of the heat but because one of their
+number had a train to catch, they agreed it was distinctly reviving to
+find tea served out of doors.
+
+Already Lady John was in her place on the pillared colonnade, behind the
+urn. Already, too, one of her pair of pretty nieces was at hand to play
+the skilful lieutenant. Hermione Heriot, tactful, charming, twenty-five,
+was equally ready to hand bread and butter, or, sitting quietly, to
+perform the greater service--that of presenting the fresh-coloured,
+discreetly-smiling vision called 'the typical English girl.' Miss Heriot
+fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly
+reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine
+charm--a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and
+counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on
+her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her
+private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an
+uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as
+carefully hidden as a conspirator would a bomb under his cloak. It had
+grown to be as necessary to her to agree with the views and fashions of
+the majority as it was disquieting to her to see these contravened, or
+even for a single hour ignored. From the crown of her carefully dressed
+head to the tips of her pointed toes she was engaged in testifying her
+assent to the prevailing note. Despite all this to recommend her, she
+was not Lady John's favourite niece. No doubt about Jean Dunbarton
+holding that honour; and, to Hermione's credit, her own love for her
+cousin enabled her to accept the situation with a creditable equability.
+Jean Dunbarton was due now at any moment, she having already sent over
+her luggage with her maid the short two miles from the Bishop's Palace,
+where the girl had dined and slept the night before.
+
+The rest of the Ulland House party were arriving by the next train. As
+Miss Levering was understood to be one of those expected it will be seen
+that a justified faith in the excellence of the Ulland links had not
+made Lady John unmindful of the wisdom of including among 'the
+week-enders' a nice assortment of pretty women for the amusement of her
+golfers in the off hours.
+
+Of this other young lady swinging her golf club as she came across the
+lawn with the men--sole petticoat among them--it could not be pretended
+that any hostess, let alone one so worldly-wise as Lady John Ulland,
+would look to have the above-hinted high and delicate office performed
+by so upright and downright--not to say so bony--a young woman, with
+face so like a horse, and the stride of a grenadier. Under her short
+leather-bound skirt the great brown-booted feet seemed shamelessly to
+court attention--as it were out of malice to catch your eye, while
+deliberately they trampled on the tenderest traditions clinging still
+about the Weaker Sex.
+
+Lady John held in her hand the top of the jade and silver tea-caddy.
+Hermione, as well as her aunt, knew that this top held four teaspoonsful
+of tea. Lady John filled it once, filled it twice, and turned the
+contents out each time into the gaping pot. Then, absent-mindedly, she
+paused, eyeing the approaching party,--that genial silver-haired despot,
+her husband, walking with Lord Borrodaile, the gawky girl between them,
+except when she paused to practise a drive. The fourth person, a short,
+compactly knit man, was lounging along several paces behind, but every
+now and then energetically shouting out his share in the conversation.
+The ground of Lady John's interest in the group seemed to consist in a
+half-mechanical counting of noses. Her eyes came back to the tea-table
+and she made a third addition to the jade and silver measure.
+
+'We shall be only six for the first brew,' prompted the girl at her
+side.
+
+'Paul Filey is mooning somewhere about the garden.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Why do you say it like that?'
+
+Hermione's eyes rested a moment on the golfer who was bringing up the
+rear. He was younger than his rather set figure had at a distance
+proclaimed him.
+
+'I was only thinking Dick Farnborough can't abide Paul,' said the girl.
+
+'A typical product of the public school is hardly likely to appreciate
+an undisciplined creature with a streak of genius in him like Paul
+Filey.'
+
+'Oh, I rather love him myself,' said the girl, lightly, 'only as Sophia
+says he does talk rather rot at times.'
+
+With her hand on the tea-urn, releasing a stream of boiling water into
+the pot, Lady John glanced over the small thickset angel that poised
+himself on one podgy foot upon the lid of the urn.
+
+'Sophia's too free with her tongue. It's a mistake. It frightens people
+off.'
+
+'Men, you mean?'
+
+'Especially men.'
+
+'I often think,' said the young woman, 'that men--all except Paul--would
+be more shocked at Sophia--if--she wasn't who she is.'
+
+'No doubt,' agreed her aunt. 'Still I sympathize with her parents. I
+don't see how they'll ever marry her. She might just as well be Miss
+Jones--that girl--for all she makes of herself.'
+
+'Yes; I've often thought so, too,' agreed Hermione, apparently conscious
+that the very most was made of _her_.
+
+'She hasn't even been taught to walk.' Lady John was still watching the
+girl's approach.
+
+'Yet she looks best out of doors,' said Hermione, firmly.
+
+'Oh, yes! She comes into the drawing-room as if she were crossing a
+ploughed field!'
+
+'All the same,' said Hermione, under her breath, 'when she _is_ indoors
+I'd rather see her walking than sitting.'
+
+'You mean the way she crosses her legs?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'But that, too--it seems like so many other things, a question only of
+degree. Nobody objects to seeing a pair of neat ankles crossed--it looks
+rather nice and early Victorian. Nowadays lots of girls cross their
+knees--and nobody says anything. But Sophia crosses her--well, her
+_thighs_.'
+
+And the two women laughed understandingly.
+
+A stranger might imagine that the reason for Lady Sophia's presence in
+the party was that she, by common consent, played a capital game of
+golf--'for a woman.' That fact, however, was rather against her. For
+people who can play the beguiling game, _want_ to play it--and want to
+play it not merely now and then out of public spirit to make up a
+foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if
+she likes, take it as a compliment to her sex that this proclivity--held
+to be wholly natural in a man--is called 'rather unfeminine' in a
+woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for
+her father's sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most
+delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description.
+One reason for his daughter's being there was that it glossed the fact
+that Lady Borrodaile was not--was, indeed, seldom present, and one may
+say never missed, in the houses frequented by her husband.
+
+But as he and his friends not only did not belong to, but looked down
+upon, the ultra smart set, where the larger freedoms are practised in
+lieu of the lesser decencies, Lord Borrodaile lived his life as far
+removed from any touch of scandal and irregularity as the most puritanic
+of the bourgeoisie. Part and parcel of his fastidiousness, some
+said--others, that from his Eton days he had always been a lazy beggar.
+As though to show that he did not shrink from reasonable responsibility
+towards his female impedimenta, any inquiry as to the absence of Lady
+Borrodaile was met by reference to Sophia. In short, where other
+attractive husbands brought a boring wife, Lord Borrodaile brought an
+undecorative daughter. While to the onlooker nearly every aspect of this
+particular young woman would seem destined to offend a beauty-loving,
+critical taste like that of Borrodaile, he was probably served, as other
+mortals are, by that philosophy of the senses which brings in time a
+deafness and a blindness to the unloveliness that we needs must live
+beside. Lord Borrodaile was far too intelligent not to see, too, that
+when people had got over Lady Sophia's uncompromising exterior, they
+found things in her to admire as well as to stand a little in awe of.
+Unlike one another as the Borrodailes were, in one respect they
+presented to the world an undivided front. From their point of view,
+just as laws existed to keep other people in order, so was 'fashion' an
+affair for the middle classes. The Borrodailes might dress as dowdily as
+they pleased, might speak as uncompromisingly as they felt inclined.
+Were they not Borrodailes of Borrodaile? Though open expression of this
+spirit grows less common, they would not have denied that it is still
+the prevailing temper of the older aristocracy. And so it has hitherto
+been true that among its women you find that sort of freedom which is
+the prerogative of those called the highest and of those called the
+lowest. It is the women of all the grades between these two extremes who
+have dared not to be themselves, who ape the manners, echo the
+catchwords, and garb themselves in the elaborate ugliness, devised for
+the blind meek millions.
+
+As the Lady Sophia, now a little in advance of her companions, came
+stalking towards the steps, out from a little path that wound among the
+thick-growing laurels issued Paul Filey. He raised his eyes, and
+hurriedly thrust a small book into his pocket. The young lady paused,
+but only apparently to pat, or rather to administer an approving cuff
+to, the Bedlington terrier lying near the lower step.
+
+'Well,' she said over her shoulder to Filey, 'our side gave a good
+account of itself that last round.'
+
+'I was sure it would as soon as my malign influence was removed.'
+
+'Yes; from the moment I took on Dick Farnborough, the situation assumed
+a new aspect. You'll _never_ play a good game, you know, if you go
+quoting Baudelaire on the links.'
+
+'Poor Paul!' his hostess murmured to her niece, 'I always tremble when I
+see him exposed to Sophia's ruthless handling.'
+
+'Yes,' whispered Hermione. 'She says she's sure he thinks of himself as
+a prose Shelley; and for some reason that infuriates Sophia.'
+
+With a somewhat forced air of amusement, Mr. Filey was following his
+critic up the steps, she still mocking at his 'drives' and the way he
+negotiated his bunkers.
+
+Arrived at the top of the little terrace, whose close-shorn turf was
+level with the flagged floor of the colonnade, Mr. Filey sought refuge
+near Hermione, as the storm-tossed barque, fleeing before the wind, hies
+swift to the nearest haven.
+
+Bending over the Bedlington, the Amazon remained on the top step, her
+long, rather good figure garbed in stuff which Filey had said was fit
+only for horse-blankets, but which was Harris tweed slackly belted by a
+broad canvas girdle drawn through a buckle of steel.
+
+'_Will_ you tell me,' he moaned in Hermione's ear, 'why the daughter of
+a hundred earls has the manners of a groom, and dresses herself in odds
+and ends of the harness room?'
+
+'Sh! Somebody told her once you'd said something of that sort.'
+
+'No!' he said. 'Who?'
+
+'It wasn't I.'
+
+'Of course not. But did she mind? What did she say, eh?'
+
+'She only said, "He got that out of a novel of Miss Broughton's."'
+
+Filey looked a little dashed. 'No! Has Miss Broughton said it, too? Then
+there are more of them!' He glanced again at the Amazon. 'Horrible
+thought!'
+
+'Don't be so unreasonable. She couldn't play golf in a long skirt and
+high heels!'
+
+'Who _wants_ a woman to play golf?'
+
+Hermione gave him his tea with a smile. She knew with an absolute
+precision just how perfectly at that moment she herself was presenting
+the average man's picture of the ideal type of reposeful womanhood.
+
+As Lord John and the two other men, his companions, came up the steps in
+the midst of a discussion--
+
+'If you stop to argue, Mr. Farnborough,' said Lady John, holding out a
+cup, 'you won't have time for tea before you catch that train.'
+
+'Oh, thank you!' He hastened to relieve her, while Hermione murmured
+regrets that he wasn't staying. 'Lady John didn't ask me,' he confided.
+As he saw in Hermione's face a project to intercede for him, he added,
+'And now I've promised my mother--we've got a lot of people coming, and
+two men short!'
+
+'Two men short! how horrible for her!' She said it half laughing, but
+her view of the reality of the dilemma was apparent in her letting the
+subject drop.
+
+Farnborough, standing there tea-cup in hand, joined again in the
+discussion that was going on about some unnamed politician of the day,
+with whose character and destiny the future of England might quite
+conceivably be involved.
+
+Before a great while this unnamed person would be succeeding his ailing
+and childless brother. There were lamentations in prospect of his too
+early translation to the Upper House.
+
+The older men had been speaking of his family, in which the tradition of
+public service, generations old, had been revived in the person of this
+younger son.
+
+'I have never understood,' Lord John was saying, 'how a man with such
+opportunities hasn't done more.'
+
+'A man as able, too,' said Borrodaile, lazily. 'Think of the tribute he
+wrung out of Gladstone at the very beginning of his career. Whatever we
+may think of the old fox, Gladstone had an eye for men.'
+
+'Be _quiet_, will you!' Lady Sophia administered a little whack to the
+Bedlington. 'Sh! Joey! don't you hear they're talking about our cousin?'
+
+'Who?' said Filey, bending over the lady with a peace-offering of cake.
+
+'Why, Geoffrey Stonor,' answered Sophia.
+
+'_Is_ it Stonor they mean?'
+
+'Well, of course.'
+
+'How do you know?' demanded Filey, in the pause.
+
+'Oh, wherever there are two or three gathered together talking politics
+and "the coming man"--who has such a frightful lot in him that very
+little ever comes out--it's sure to be Geoffrey Stonor they mean, isn't
+it, Joey?'
+
+'Perhaps,' said her father, dryly, 'you'll just mention that to him at
+dinner to-night.'
+
+'_What!_' said Farnborough, with a keen look in his eyes. 'You don't
+mean he's coming here!'
+
+Sophia, too, had looked round at her host with frank interest.
+
+'Comin' to play golf?'
+
+'Well, he mayn't get here in time for a round to-night, but we're rather
+expecting him by this four-thirty.'
+
+'What fun!' Lady Sophia's long face had brightened.
+
+'May I stay over till the next train?' Farnborough was whispering to
+Lady John as he went round to her on the pretext of more cream. 'Thank
+you--then I won't go till the six forty-two.'
+
+'I didn't know,' Lady Sophia was observing in her somewhat crude way,
+'that you knew Geoffrey as well as all that.'
+
+'We don't,' said Lord John. 'He's been saying for years he wanted to
+come down and try our links, but it's by a fluke that he's coming, after
+all.'
+
+'He never comes to see _us_. He's far too busy, ain't he, Joey, even if
+we can't see that he accomplishes much?'
+
+'Give him time and you'll see!' said Farnborough, with a wag of his
+head.
+
+'Yes,' said Lord John, 'he's still a young man. Barely forty.'
+
+'Barely forty! _They_ believe in prolonging their youth, don't they?'
+said Lady Sophia to no one in particular, and with her mouth rather more
+full of cake than custom prescribes. 'Good thing it isn't us, ain't it,
+Joey?'
+
+'For a politician forty _is_ young,' said Farnborough.
+
+'Oh, don't I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph
+Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial
+admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in
+life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how
+much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up
+when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was
+then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It
+wasn't meant sarcastic.'
+
+'Unless you're leader of the Opposition, I suppose it's not very easy to
+do much while your party's out of power,' hazarded Lady John, 'is it?'
+
+'One of the most interesting things about our coming back will be to
+watch Stonor,' said Farnborough.
+
+'After all, they said he did very well with his Under Secretaryship
+under the last Government, didn't they?' Again Lady John appealed to the
+two elder men.
+
+'Oh, yes,' said Borrodaile. 'Oh, yes.'
+
+'And the way'--Farnborough made up for any lack of enthusiasm--'the way
+he handled that Balkan question!'
+
+'All that was pure routine,' Lord John waved it aside. 'But if Stonor
+had ever looked upon politics as more than a game, he'd have been a
+power long before this.'
+
+'Ah,' said Borrodaile, slowly, 'you go as far as that? I doubt myself if
+he has enough of the demagogue in him.'
+
+'But that's just why. The English people are not like the Americans or
+the French. The English have a natural distrust of the demagogue. I tell
+you if Stonor once believed in anything with might and main, he'd be a
+leader of men.'
+
+'Here he is now.'
+
+Farnborough was the first to distinguish the sound of carriage wheels
+behind the shrubberies. The others looked up and listened. Yes, the
+crunch of gravel. The wall of laurel was too thick to give any glimpse
+from this side of the drive that wound round to the main entrance. But
+some animating vision nevertheless seemed miraculously to have
+penetrated the dense green wall, to the obvious enlivenment of the
+company.
+
+'It's rather exciting seeing him at close quarters,' Hermione said to
+Filey.
+
+'Yes! He's the only politician I can get up any real enthusiasm for.
+He's so many-sided. I saw him yesterday at a Bond Street show looking at
+caricatures of himself and all his dearest friends.'
+
+'Really. How did he take the sacrilege?'
+
+'Oh, he was immensely amused at the fellow's impudence. You see, Stonor
+could understand the art of the thing as well as the fun--the fierce
+economy of line----'
+
+Nobody listened. There were other attempts at conversation, mere decent
+pretence at not being absorbed in watching for the appearance of
+Geoffrey Stonor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+There was the faint sound of a distant door's opening, and there was a
+glimpse of the old butler. But before he could reach the French window
+with his announcement, his own colourless presence was masked, wiped
+out--not as the company had expected by the apparition of a man, but by
+a tall, lightly-moving young woman with golden-brown eyes, and wearing a
+golden-brown gown that had touches of wallflower red and gold on the
+short jacket. There were only wallflowers in the small leaf-green toque,
+and except for the sable boa in her hand (which so suddenly it was too
+warm to wear) no single thing about her could at all adequately account
+for the air of what, for lack of a better term, may be called accessory
+elegance that pervaded the golden-brown vision, taking the low sunlight
+on her face and smiling as she stepped through the window.
+
+It was no small tribute to the lady had she but known it, that her
+coming was not received nor even felt as an anti-climax.
+
+As she came forward, all about her rose a significant Babel: 'Here's
+Miss Levering!' 'It's Vida!' 'Oh, how do you _do_!'--the frou-frou of
+swishing skirts, the scrape of chairs pushed back over stone flags, and
+the greeting of the host and hostess, cordial to the point of
+affection--the various handshakings, the discreet winding through the
+groups of a footman with a fresh teapot, the Bedlington's first attack
+of barking merged in tail-wagging upon pleased recognition of a friend;
+and a final settling down again about the tea-table with the air full of
+scraps of talk and unfinished questions.
+
+'You didn't see anything of my brother and his wife?' asked Lord
+Borrodaile.
+
+'Oh, yes,' his host suddenly remembered. 'I thought the Freddys were
+coming by that four-thirty as well as----'
+
+'No--nobody but me.' She threw her many-tailed boa on the back of the
+chair that Paul Filey had drawn up for her between the hostess and the
+place where Borrodaile had been sitting.
+
+'There are two more good trains before dinner----' began Lord John.
+
+'Oh, didn't I tell you,' said his wife, as she gave the cup just filled
+for the new-comer into the nearest of the outstretched hands--'didn't I
+tell you I had a note from Mrs. Freddy by the afternoon post? They
+aren't coming.'
+
+Out of a little chorus of regret, came Borrodaile's slightly mocking,
+'Anything wrong with the precious children?'
+
+'She didn't mention the children--nor much of anything else--just a
+hurried line.'
+
+'The children were as merry as grigs yesterday,' said Vida, looking at
+their uncle across the table. 'I went on to the Freddys' after the Royal
+Academy. No!' she put her cup down suddenly. 'Nobody is to ask me how I
+like my own picture! The Tunbridge children----'
+
+'That thing Hoyle has done of you,' said Lord Borrodaile, deliberately,
+'is a very brilliant and a very misleading performance.'
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+Filey and Lord John, in spite of her interdiction, were pursuing the
+subject of the much-discussed portrait.
+
+'It certainly is one aspect of you----'
+
+'Don't you think his Velasquez-like use of black and white----'
+
+'The tiny Tunbridges, as I was saying,' she went on imperturbably, 'were
+having a teafight when I got there. I say "fight" advisedly.'
+
+'Then I'll warrant,' said their uncle, 'that Sara was the aggressor.'
+
+'She was.'
+
+'You saw Mrs. Freddy?' asked Lady John, with an interest half amused,
+half cynical, in her eyes.
+
+'For a moment.'
+
+'She doesn't confess it, I suppose,' the hostess went on, 'but I imagine
+she is rather perturbed;' and Lady John glanced at Borrodaile with her
+good-humoured, worldly-wise smile.
+
+'Poor Mrs. Freddy!' said Vida. 'You see, she's taken it all quite
+seriously--this Suffrage nonsense.'
+
+'Yes;' Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law had met Lady John's look with the
+same significant smile as that lady's own--'Yes, she's naturally feeling
+rather crestfallen--perhaps she'll _see_ now!'
+
+'Mrs. Freddy crestfallen, what about?' said Farnborough. But he was much
+preoccupied at that moment in supplying Lady Sophia with bits of toast
+the exact size for balancing on the Bedlington's nose. For the benefit
+of his end of the table Paul Filey had begun to describe the new one-man
+show of caricatures of famous people just opened in Bond Street. The
+'mordant genius,' as he called it, of this new man--an American
+Jew--offered an irresistible opportunity for phrase-making. And still on
+the other side of the tea urn the Ullands were discussing with
+Borrodaile and Miss Levering the absent lady whose 'case' was obviously
+a matter of concern to her friends.
+
+'Well, let us hope,' Lord John was saying as sternly as his urbanity
+permitted--'let us hope this exhibition in the House will be a lesson to
+her.'
+
+'_She_ wasn't concerned in it!' Vida quickly defended her.
+
+'Nevertheless we are all hoping,' said Lady John, 'that it has come just
+in time to prevent her from going over the edge.'
+
+'Over the edge!' Farnborough pricked up his ears at last in good
+earnest, feeling that the conversation on the other side had grown too
+interesting for him to be out of it any longer. 'Over what edge?'
+
+'The edge of the Woman Suffrage precipice,' said Lady John.
+
+'You call it a precipice?' Vida Levering raised her dark brows in a
+little smile.
+
+'Don't you?' demanded her hostess.
+
+'I should say mud-puddle.'
+
+'From the point of view of the artist'--Paul Filey had begun laying down
+some new law, but turning an abrupt corner, he followed the wandering
+attention of his audience--'from the point of view of the artist,' he
+repeated, 'it would be interesting to know what the phenomenon is, that
+Lady John took for a precipice and that Miss Levering says is a
+mud-puddle.'
+
+'Oh,' said Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs.
+Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public
+demonstration of the unfitness of women for public affairs.'
+
+'Give me some more toast dice!' Sophia said to Farnborough. 'You haven't
+seen Joey's new accomplishment. They're only discussing that idiotic
+scene the women made the other night.'
+
+'Oh, in the gallery of the House of Commons?'
+
+'Yes, wasn't it disgustin'?' said Paul Filey, facing about suddenly with
+an air of cheerful surprise at having at last hit on something that he
+and Lady Sophia could heartily agree about.
+
+'Perfectly revolting!' said Hermione Heriot, not to be out of it. For it
+is well known that, next to a great enthusiasm shared, nothing so draws
+human creatures together as a good bout of cursing in common. So with
+emphasis Miss Heriot repeated, 'Perfectly revolting!'
+
+Her reward was to see Paul turn away from Sophia and say, in a tone
+whose fervour might be called marked--
+
+'I'm glad to hear you say so!'
+
+She consolidated her position by asking sweetly, 'Does it need saying?'
+
+'Not by people like you. But it _does_ need saying when it comes to
+people we know----'
+
+'Like Mrs. Freddy. Yes.'
+
+That unfortunate little lady seemed to be 'getting it' on all sides.
+Even her brother-in-law, who was known to be in reality a great ally of
+hers--even Lord Borrodaile was chuckling as though at some reflection
+distinctly diverting.
+
+'Poor Laura! She was being unmercifully chaffed about it last night.'
+
+'I don't myself consider it any longer a subject for chaff,' said Lord
+John.
+
+'No,' agreed his wife; '_I_ felt that before this last outbreak. At the
+time of the first disturbance--where was it?--in some town in the North
+several weeks ago----'
+
+'Yes,' said Vida Levering; 'I almost think that was even worse!'
+
+'Conceive the sublime impertinence,' said Lady John, 'of an ignorant
+little factory girl presuming to stand up in public and interrupt a
+speech by a minister of the Crown!'
+
+'I don't know what we're coming to, I'm sure!' said Borrodaile, with a
+detached air.
+
+'Oh, _that_ girl--beyond a doubt,' said his host, with conviction--'that
+girl was touched.'
+
+'Oh, beyond a doubt!' echoed Mr. Farnborough.
+
+'There's something about this particular form of feminine folly----'
+began Lord John.
+
+But he wasn't listened to--for several people were talking at once.
+
+After receiving a few preliminary kicks, the subject had fallen, as a
+football might, plump into the very midst of a group of school-boys. Its
+sudden presence there stirred even the sluggish to unwonted feats. Every
+one must have his kick at this Suffrage Ball, and manners were for the
+nonce in abeyance.
+
+In the midst of an obscuring dust of discussion, floated fragments of
+condemnation: 'Sexless creatures!' 'The Shrieking Sisterhood!' etc., in
+which the kindest phrase was Lord John's repeated, 'Touched, you know,'
+as he tapped his forehead--'not really responsible, poor wretches.
+Touched.'
+
+'Still, everybody doesn't know that. It must give men a quite horrid
+idea of women,' said Hermione, delicately.
+
+'No'--Lord Borrodaile spoke with a wise forbearance--'we don't confound
+a handful of half-insane females with the whole sex.'
+
+Dick Farnborough was in the middle of a spirited account of that earlier
+outbreak in the North--
+
+'She was yelling like a Red Indian, and the policeman carried her out
+scratching and spitting----'
+
+'Ugh!' Hermione exchanged looks of horror with Paul Filey.
+
+'Oh, yes,' said Lady John, with disgust, 'we saw all that in the
+papers.'
+
+Miss Levering, too, had turned her face away--not as Hermione did, to
+summon a witness to her detestation, but rather as one avoiding the eyes
+of the men.
+
+'You see,' said Farnborough, with gusto, 'there's something about women's
+clothes--_especially_ their hats, you know--they--well, they ain't built
+for battle.'
+
+'They ought to wear deer-stalkers,' was Lady Sophia's contribution to
+the New Movement.
+
+'It is quite true,' Lady John agreed, 'that a woman in a scrimmage can
+never be a heroic figure.'
+
+'No, that's just it,' said Farnborough. 'She's just funny, don't you
+know!'
+
+'I don't agree with you about the fun,' Borrodaile objected. 'That's why
+I'm glad they've had their lesson. I should say there was almost nothing
+more degrading than this public spectacle of----' Borrodaile lifted his
+high shoulders higher still, with an effect of intense discomfort. 'It
+never but once came my way that I remember, but I'm free to own,' he
+said, 'there's nothing that shakes my nerves like seeing a woman
+struggling and kicking in a policeman's arms.'
+
+But Farnborough was not to be dissuaded from seeing humour in the
+situation.
+
+'They say they swept up a peck of hairpins after the battle!'
+
+As though she had had as much of the subject as she could very well
+stand, Miss Levering leaned sideways, put an arm behind her, and took
+possession of her boa.
+
+'They're just ending the first act of _Siegfried_. How glad I am to be
+in your garden instead of Covent Garden!'
+
+Ordinarily there would have been a movement to take the appreciative
+guest for a stroll.
+
+Perhaps it was only chance, or the enervating heat, that kept the
+company in their chairs listening to Farnborough--
+
+'The cattiest one of the two, there she stood like this, her clothes
+half torn off, her hair down her back, her face the colour of a lobster
+and the crowd jeering at her----'
+
+'I don't see how you could stand and look on at such a hideous scene,'
+said Miss Levering.
+
+'Oh--I--I didn't! I'm only telling you how Wilkinson described it. He
+said----'
+
+'How did Major Wilkinson happen to be there?' asked Lady John.
+
+'He'd motored over from Headquarters to move a vote of thanks to the
+chairman. He said he'd seen some revolting things in his time, but the
+scrimmage of the stewards and the police with those women----!'
+Farnborough ended with an expressive gesture.
+
+'If it was as horrible as that for Major Wilkinson to look on at--what
+must it have been for those girls?' It was Miss Levering speaking. She
+seemed to have abandoned the hope of being taken for a stroll, and was
+leaning forward, chin in hand, looking at the fringe of the teacloth.
+
+Richard Farnborough glanced at her as if he resented the note of
+wondering pity in the low tone.
+
+'It's never so bad for the lunatic,' he said, 'as for the sane people
+looking on.'
+
+'Oh, I don't suppose _they_ mind,' said Hermione--'women like _that_.'
+
+'It's flattery to call them women. They're sexless monstrosities,' said
+Paul Filey.
+
+'You know some of them?' Vida raised her head.
+
+'_I?_' Filey's face was nothing less than aghast at the mere suggestion.
+
+'But you've seen them----?'
+
+'Heaven forbid!'
+
+'But I suppose you've gone and listened to them haranguing the crowds.'
+
+'Now _do_ I look like a person who----'
+
+'Well, you see we're all so certain they're such abominations,' said
+Vida, 'I thought maybe some of us knew something about them.'
+
+Dick Farnborough was heard saying to Lord John in a tone of cheerful
+vigour--
+
+'Locking up is too good for 'em. I'd give 'em a good thrashin'.'
+
+'Spirited fellow!' said Miss Levering, promptly, with an accent that
+brought down a laugh on the young gentleman's head.
+
+He joined in it, but with a _naif_ uneasiness. What's the matter with
+the woman?--his vaguely bewildered face seemed to inquire. After all,
+I'm only agreeing with her.
+
+'Few of us have time, I imagine,' said Filey, 'to go and listen to their
+ravings.'
+
+As Filey was quite the idlest of men, without the preoccupation of being
+a tolerable sportsman or even a player of games, Miss Levering's little
+laugh was echoed by others beside Lady Sophia.
+
+'At all events,' said Vida to Lord Borrodaile, as she stood up, and he
+drew her chair out of her way, 'even if we don't know much about these
+women, we've spent a happy hour denouncing them.'
+
+'Who's going to have a short round before sundown?' said Lady Sophia,
+getting up briskly. '_You_, of course, Mr. Filey. Or are you too
+"busy"?'
+
+'Say too thirsty. May I?' He carried his cup round to Lady John, not
+seeming to see Hermione's hospitable hand held out for it.
+
+In the general shuffle Farnborough found himself carried off by Sophia
+and Lord John.
+
+'Who is our fourth?' said Lady Sophia, suddenly.
+
+'Oh, Borrodaile!' Lord John stopped halfway across the lawn and called
+back, 'aren't you coming?'
+
+'It's not a bit of use,' said Sophia. 'You'll see. He's safe to sit
+there and talk to Miss Levering till the dressing-bell rings.'
+
+'Isn't she a _nice_ creature!' said Lord John. 'I can't think how a
+woman like that hasn't got some nice fella to marry her!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Would you like to see my yellow garden, Vida?' Lady John asked. 'It's
+rather glorious at this moment.'
+
+Obvious from the quick lifting of the eyes that the guest was on the
+point of welcoming the proposal, had Filey not swallowed his belated cup
+of tea with surprising quickness after saying, 'What's a yellow garden?'
+in the unmistakable tone of one bent upon enlarging his experience. Lady
+John, with all her antennae out, lost no time in saying to Vida--
+
+'Perhaps you're a little tired. Hermione, you show Mr. Filey the garden.
+And maybe, Lord Borrodaile would like to see it, too.'
+
+Although the last-named failed to share the enthusiasm expected in a
+gardener, he pulled his long, slackly-put-together figure out of the
+chair and joined the young people.
+
+When they were out of earshot, 'What's the matter?' asked Lady John.
+
+'Matter?'
+
+'Yes, what did poor Paul say to make you fall upon him like that?'
+
+'I didn't "fall upon" him, did I?'
+
+'Well, yes, I rather thought you did.'
+
+'Oh, I suppose I--perhaps it did jar on me, just a little, to hear a
+cocksure boy----'
+
+'He's not a boy. Paul is over thirty.'
+
+'I was thinking of Dick Farnborough, too--talking about women like that,
+before women.'
+
+'Oh, all they meant was----'
+
+'Yes, I know. Of course we _all_ know they aren't accustomed to treating
+our sex in general with overmuch respect when there are only men
+present--but--do you think it's quite decent that they should be so free
+with their contempt of women before us?'
+
+'But, my dear Vida! _That_ sort of woman! Haven't they deserved it?'
+
+'That's just what nobody seems to know. I've sat and listened to
+conversations like the one at tea for a week now, and I've said as much
+against those women as anybody. Only to-day, somehow, when I heard that
+boy--yes, I was conscious I didn't like it.'
+
+'You're behaving exactly as Dr. Johnson did about Garrick. You won't
+allow any one to abuse those women but yourself.'
+
+Lady John cleared the whole trivial business away with a laugh.
+
+'Now, be nice to Paul. He's dying to talk to you about his book. Let us
+go and join them in the garden. See if you can stand before my yellow
+blaze and not feel melted.'
+
+The elder woman and the younger went down the terrace through a little
+copse to her ladyship's own area of experimentation. A gate of old
+Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all
+the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded
+saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and
+jonquil.
+
+The others were walking round the enclosing grass paths that served as
+broad green border, and Filey, who had been in all sorts of queer
+places, said the yellow garden made him think of a Mexican serape--'one
+of those silk scarves, you know--native weaving made out of the
+pineapple fibre.'
+
+But Vida only said, 'Yes. It's a good scheme of colour.'
+
+She sat on the rustic seat while Lady John explained to Lord Borrodaile,
+whose gardens were renowned, how she and Simonson treated this and that
+plant to get so fine a result. Filey had lost no time in finding a place
+for himself by Miss Levering, while Hermione trailed dutifully round the
+garden with the others. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder at the
+two on the seat by the sunken wall--Vida leaning back in the corner
+motionless, absolutely inexpressive; Filey's eager face bent forward. He
+was moving his hands in a way he had learned abroad.
+
+'You were rather annoyed with me,' he was saying. 'I saw that.'
+
+The lady did not deny the imputation.
+
+'But you oughtn't to be. Because you see it's only because my ideal of
+woman is'--again that motion of the hands--'_what_ it is, that when I
+see her stepping down from her pedestal I----' the hands indicated
+consternation, followed hard by cataclysmic ruin. 'Of course, lots of
+men don't care. I _do_. I care enormously, and so you must forgive me.
+Won't you?' He bent nearer.
+
+'Oh, _I've_ nothing to forgive.'
+
+'I know without your telling me, I feel instinctively, _you_ more than
+most people--you'd simply loathe the sort of thing we were talking about
+at tea--women yelling and fighting men----'
+
+'Yes--yes, don't go all over that.'
+
+'No, of course I won't,' he said soothingly. 'I can feel it to my very
+spine, how you shrink from such horrors.'
+
+Miss Levering, raising her eyes suddenly, caught the look Hermione cast
+backward as Lady John halted her party a moment near the pansy-strip in
+the gorgeous yellow carpet spread out before them.
+
+'Don't you want to sit down?' Vida called out to the girl, drawing aside
+her gown.
+
+'What?' said Hermione, though she had heard quite well. Slowly she
+retraced her steps down the grass path as if to have the words repeated.
+
+But if Miss Levering's idea had been to change the conversation, she was
+disappointed. There was nothing Paul Filey liked better than an
+audience, and he had already the impression that Miss Heriot was what he
+would have scorned to call anything but 'simpatica.'
+
+'I'm sure you've shown the new garden to dozens already,' Miss Levering
+said to the niece of the house. 'Sit down and confess you've had enough
+of it!'
+
+'Oh, I don't think,' began Hermione, suavely, 'that one ever gets too
+much of a thing like that!'
+
+'There! I'm glad to hear you say so. How can we have too much beauty!'
+exclaimed Filey, receiving the new occupant of the seat as a soul worthy
+of high fellowship. Then he leaned across Miss Heriot and said to the
+lady in the corner, 'I'm making that the theme of my book.'
+
+'Oh, I heard you were writing something.'
+
+'Yes, a sort of plea for the aesthetic basis of society! It's the only
+cure for the horrors of modern civilization--for the very thing we were
+talking about at tea! What is it but a loss of the sense of beauty
+that's to blame?' Elbows on knees, he leaned so far forward that he
+could see both faces, and yet his own betrayed the eye turned
+inward--the face of the one who quotes. The ladies knew that he was
+obliging them with a memorized extract from 'A Plea for the AEsthetic
+Basis.' 'Nothing worse can happen to the world than loss of its sense of
+Beauty. Men, high and low alike, cling to it still as incarnated in
+women.' (Hermione crossed her pointed toes and lowered her long
+eyelashes.) 'We have made Woman the object of our deepest adoration! We
+have set her high on a throne of gold. We have searched through the
+world for jewels to crown her. We have built millions of temples to our
+ideal of womanhood and called them homes. We have fought and wrought and
+sung for her--and all we ask in return is that she should tend the
+sacred fire, so that the light of Beauty might not die out of the
+world.' He was not ill-pleased with his period. 'But women'--he leaned
+back, and illustrated with the pliant white hands that were ornamented
+with outlandish rings--'women are not content with their high and holy
+office.'
+
+'_Some_ women,' amended Hermione, softly.
+
+'There are more and more every day who are not content,' he said
+sternly; then, for an instant unbending and craning a little forward,
+'Of course I don't mean you--_you_ are exceptions--but of women in the
+mass! Look at them! They force their way into men's work, they crowd
+into the universities--yes, yes' (in vain Hermione tried to reassure him
+by 'exceptions')--'Beauty is nothing to them! They fling aside their
+delicate, provocative draperies, they cast off their scented sandals.
+They pull on brown boots and bicycling skirts! They put man's yoke of
+hard linen round their ivory throats, and they scramble off their
+jewelled thrones to mount the rostrum and the omnibus!'
+
+'Why? _Why_ do they?' Vida demanded, laughing. 'Nobody ever tells me
+why. I can't believe they're as unselfish as _you_ make out.'
+
+'I!'
+
+'You ought to admire them if they voluntarily give up all those
+beautiful things--knowing beforehand they'll only win men's scorn. For
+you've always warned them!'
+
+He didn't even hear. 'Ah, Ladies, Ladies!' half laughing, but really
+very much in earnest, he apostrophized the peccant sex, 'I should like
+to ask, are we men to look upon our homes as dusty din-filled camps on
+the field of battle, or as holy temples of Peace? Ah!' He leaned back in
+his corner, stretched out his long legs, and thrust his restless hands
+in his pockets. 'If they knew!'
+
+'Women?' asked Hermione, with the air of one painstakingly brushing up
+crumbs of wisdom.
+
+Paul Filey nodded.
+
+'Knew----?'
+
+'They would see that in the ugly scramble they had let fall their
+crowns! If they only knew,' he repeated, 'they would go back to their
+thrones, and, with the sceptre of beauty in one hand and the orb of
+purity in the other, they would teach men to worship them again.'
+
+'And then?' said Miss Levering.
+
+'Then? Why, men will fall on their knees before them.' As Miss Levering
+made no rejoinder, 'What greater victory do women want?' he demanded.
+
+For the first time Miss Levering bent her head forward slightly as
+though to see how far he was conscious of the fatuity of his climax. But
+his flushed face showed a childlike good faith.
+
+'Eh? Will any one tell me what they _want_?'
+
+'Since you need to ask,' said the gently smiling woman in the corner,
+'perhaps there's more need to show than I'd quite realized.'
+
+'I don't think you quite followed,' he began, with an air of
+forbearance. 'What I mean is----'
+
+Miss Levering jumped up. 'Lord Borrodaile!' He was standing at the
+little iron gate waiting for his hostess, who had stopped to speak to
+one of the gardeners. 'Wait a moment!' Vida called, and went swiftly
+down the grass path. He had turned and was advancing to meet her. 'No,
+come away,' she said under her breath, 'come away quickly'--(safe on the
+other side of the gate)--'and talk to me! Tell me about old,
+half-forgotten pictures or about young rose trees.'
+
+'Is something the matter?'
+
+'I'm ruffled.'
+
+'Who has ruffled you?' His tone was as serene as it was sympathetic.
+
+'Several people.'
+
+'Why, I thought you were never ruffled.'
+
+'I'm not, often.'
+
+They turned down into a little green aisle between two dense thickets of
+rhododendrons.
+
+'It's lucky you are here,' she said irrelevantly.
+
+He glanced at her face.
+
+'It's not luck. It's foresight.'
+
+'Oh, you arranged it? Well, I'm glad.'
+
+'So am I,' he answered quietly. 'We get on rather well together,' he
+added, after a moment.
+
+She nodded half absently. 'I feel as if I'd known you for years instead
+of for months,' she said.
+
+'Yes, I have rather that feeling, too. Except that I'm always a little
+nervous when I meet you again after an interval.'
+
+'Nervous,' she frowned. 'Why nervous?'
+
+'I'm always afraid you'll have some news for me.'
+
+'What news?'
+
+'Oh, the usual thing. That a pleasant friendship is going to be
+interrupted if not broken by some one's carrying you off. It would be a
+pity, you know.'
+
+'Then you don't agree with Lord John.'
+
+'Oh, I suppose you _ought_ to marry,' he said, with smiling impatience,
+'and I'm very sure you will! But I shan't like it'--he wound up with an
+odd little laugh--'and neither will you.'
+
+'It's an experiment I shall never try.'
+
+He smiled, but as he glanced at her he grew grave. 'I've heard more than
+one young woman say that, but you look as if it might really be so.'
+
+'It is so.'
+
+He waited, and then, switching at the wild hyacinths with his stick--
+
+'Of course,' he said, 'I have no right to suppose you are going to give
+me your reasons.'
+
+'No. That's why I shall never even consider marrying--so that I shall
+not have to set out my reasons.'
+
+He had never seen that look in her face before. He made an effort to put
+aside the trouble of it, saying almost lightly--
+
+'I often wonder why people can't be happy as they are!'
+
+'They think of the future, I suppose.'
+
+'There's no such thing as the future.'
+
+'You can't say there's no such thing as growth. If it's only a garden,
+it's natural to like to see life unfolding--that's the future.'
+
+'Yes, in spite of resolutions, you'll be trying the great experiment.'
+He said it wearily.
+
+'Why should you mind so?' she asked curiously; 'you are not in love with
+me.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'Because you give me such a sense of rest.'
+
+'Thank you.' He caught himself up. 'Or perhaps I should thank my grey
+hair.'
+
+'Grey hair doesn't bring the thing I mean. I've sometimes wished it did.
+But our friendship is an uncommonly peaceful one, don't you think?'
+
+'Yes; I think it is,' he said. 'All the same, you know there's a touch
+of magic in it.' But, as though to condone the confession, 'You haven't
+told me why you were ruffled.'
+
+'It's nothing. I dare say I was a little tired.'
+
+They had come out into the park. 'I hurried so to catch the train. My
+sister's new coachman is stupid about finding short cuts in London, and
+we got blocked by a procession--a horrible sort of demonstration, you
+know.'
+
+'Oh, the unemployed.'
+
+'Yes. And I got so tired of leaning out of the window and shouting
+directions that I left the maid and the luggage to come later. I got out
+of the brougham and ran through a slum, or I'd have lost my train. I
+nearly lost it anyway, because I saw a queer picture that made me stop.'
+She stopped again at the mere memory of it.
+
+'In a second-hand shop?'
+
+He turned his pointed face to her, and the grey-green eyes wore a gleam
+of interest that few things could arouse in their cool depths.
+
+'No, not in a shop.' She stopped and leaned against a tree. 'In the
+street. It was a middle-aged workman. When I caught sight of his back
+and saw his worn clothes--the coat went up in the middle, and had that
+despairing sag on both sides--it crossed my mind, here's another of
+those miserable, unemployed wastrels obstructing my way! Then he looked
+round and I saw--solid content in his face!' She stopped a moment.
+
+'So he _wasn't_ one of the----'
+
+'Well, I wondered. I couldn't see at first what it was he had looked
+round at. Then I noticed he had a rope in his hand, and was dragging
+something. As the people who had been between us hurried on I saw--I saw
+a child, two or three years old, in a flapping, pink sun-bonnet. He was
+sitting astride a toy horse. The horse was clumsily made, and had lost
+its tail. But it had its head still, and the board it was mounted on had
+fat, wooden rollers. The horse was only about that long, and so near the
+ground that, for all his advantage in the matter of rollers, still the
+little rider's feet touched the pavement. They even trailed and lurched,
+as the horse went on, in that funny, spasmodic gait. The child had to
+half walk, or, rather, make the motions--you know, without actually
+bearing any of even his own weight. The slack-shouldered man did it all.
+I crossed to the other side of the street, and stood and watched them
+till, as I say, I nearly lost my train. The dingy workman, smoking
+imperturbably, dragging the grotesque, almost hidden, horse--the
+delighted child in the flapping sun-bonnet--the crisis when they came to
+the crossing! The man turned and called out something. The child
+declined to budge. I wondered what would happen. So did the man. He
+waited a moment, and puffed smoke and considered. The baby dug his heels
+in the pavement and shouted. Then I saw the man carefully tilt the toy
+horse up by the rope. I stood and watched the successful surmounting of
+the obstacle, and the triumphant progress as before--sun-bonnet
+flapping, smoke curling. Of course the man was content! He had lost the
+battle. You saw that in his lined face. What did it matter? _He held the
+future by a string._'
+
+Lord Borrodaile lifted his eyes and looked at her. Without a word the
+two walked on.
+
+The first to speak after the silence was the man. He pointed out a
+curious effect of the light, and reminded her who had painted it best--
+
+'Corot could do these things!'--and he flung a stone in passing at the
+New Impressionists.
+
+At the Lodge Gate they found Lady John with Filey and Hermione.
+
+'We thought if we walked this way we might meet Jean and her bodyguard.
+But I mustn't go any further.' Lady John consulted her watch. 'The rest
+of you can take your time, but I have to go and receive my other guest.'
+
+Filey and Hermione were still at the gate. The girl had caught sight of
+Farnborough being driven by the park road to the station.
+
+'Oh, I do believe it's the new mare they're trying in the dogcart,' said
+Hermione. 'Let's wait and see her go by.'
+
+Borrodaile and his companion kept at Lady John's side.
+
+'I'm glad,' said Vida, 'that I shall at last make acquaintance with your
+Jean.'
+
+'Yes; it's odd your never having met, especially as she knows your
+cousins at Bishopsmead so well.'
+
+'I've been so little in England----'
+
+'Yes, I know. A great business it is,' Lady John explained to Lord
+Borrodaile, 'each time to get that crusty old Covenanter, Jean's
+grandfather, to allow her to stay at Bishopsmead. So it's the sadder for
+them to have her visit cut short.'
+
+'Why is it cut short?' he asked.
+
+'Because the hostess took to her bed yesterday with a chill, and her
+temperature was a hundred and one this afternoon.'
+
+'Really?' said Miss Levering. 'I hadn't heard----'
+
+'She is rather bad, I'm afraid. We are taking over another of her
+guests. Of course you know him--Geoffrey Stonor.'
+
+'Taking him over?' Miss Levering repeated.
+
+'Yes; he was originally going to Bishopsmead this week-end, but as he's
+been promising for ages to come here, it's been arranged that we should
+take him off their hands. Of course we're delighted.'
+
+Miss Levering walked on, between her two companions, looking straight in
+front of her. As Lady John, with a glance at her watch, quickened the
+pace--
+
+'I'm rather unhappy at what you tell me about my cousin,' said Vida.
+'She's a delicate creature.' Then, as though acting on a sudden impulse,
+Vida paused. 'You mustn't mind, Lady John, but I shall have to go to
+her. Can I have a trap of some sort to take me over?'
+
+She put aside the objections with a gentle but unmistakable decision
+that made Lady John say--
+
+'I'm sure I've alarmed you more than there was the least need for. But
+the carriage shall wait and bring you back just as soon as you've
+satisfied yourself.'
+
+'I can't tell, of course, till I've seen Mary. But may my maid be told
+not to unpack----'
+
+'Not unpack!'
+
+'In case I have to send for my things.'
+
+'My _dear_!' Lady John stopped short for very vexation. '_Don't_ desert
+us! I've been so congratulating myself on having you, since I knew
+Geoffrey Stonor was coming.' Again she glanced nervously at her watch.
+'He is due in ten minutes! John won't like it if I'm not there.'
+
+As she was about to hurry on, the other slackened pace. She seemed to be
+revolving some further plan.
+
+'Why shouldn't'--she turned suddenly--'why shouldn't the dogcart take me
+on after dropping Mr. Farnborough at the station? Yes, that will be
+simplest. Mr. Farnborough!' she waved to him as the cart came in sight,
+'Wait! Good-bye! Forgive my rushing off, won't you?' she called back
+over her shoulder, and then with that swift, light step of hers, she
+covered by a short cut the little distance that lay between her and the
+lodge gate.
+
+'I wish I'd held my tongue,' said Lady John almost angrily as she
+hastened in the opposite direction. Already some sense seemed to reach
+her of the hopelessness of expecting Vida's return.
+
+'I didn't _dream_ she cared so much for that dull cousin of hers!'
+
+'Do you think she really does?' said Borrodaile, dryly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+About Vida's little enterprise on a certain Sunday a few weeks later was
+an air of elaborate mystery. Yet the expedition was no further than to
+Trafalgar Square. It was there that those women, the so-called
+'Suffragettes,' in the intervals of making worse public disturbances,
+were rumoured to be holding open-air meetings--a circumstance distinctly
+fortunate for any one who wanted to 'see what they were like,' and who
+was yet unwilling to commit herself by doing anything so eccentric as
+publicly to seek admission under any roof known to show hospitality to
+'such goings on.' In those days, only a year ago, and yet already such
+ancient history that the earlier pages are forgotten and scarce credible
+if recalled, it took courage to walk past the knots of facetious
+loafers, and the unblushing Suffragette poster, into the hall where the
+meetings were held. Deliberately to sit down among odd, misguided
+persons in rows, to listen to, and by so much to lend public countenance
+to 'women of that sort'--the sort that not only wanted to vote (quaint
+creatures!), but were not content with merely wanting to--for the
+average conventional woman to venture upon a step so compromising, to
+risk seeming for a moment to take these crazy brawlers seriously, was to
+lay herself open to 'the comic laugh'--most dreaded of all the weapons
+in the social armoury. But it was something wholly different to set out
+for a Sunday Afternoon Concert, or upon some normal and recognized
+philanthropic errand, and on the way find one's self arrested for a few
+minutes by seeing a crowd gathered in a public square. Yet it had not
+been easy to screw Mrs. Fox-Moore up to thinking even this non-committal
+measure a possible one to pursue. 'What would anybody think,' she had
+asked Vida, 'to see them lending even the casual support of a presence
+(however ironic) to so reprehensible a spectacle!' Had it not been for
+very faith in the eccentricity of the proceeding--one wildly unlikely to
+be adopted, Mrs. Fox-Moore felt, by any one else of 'their kind'--she
+would never have consented to be drawn into Vida's absurd project.
+
+Of course it was absolutely essential to disguise the object of the
+outing from Mr. Fox-Moore. Not merely because with the full weight of
+his authority he would most assuredly have forbidden it, but because of
+a nervous prefiguring on his wife's part of the particular things he
+would say, and the particular way he would look in setting his
+extinguisher on the enterprise.
+
+Vida, from the first, had never explained or excused herself to him, so
+that when he asked at luncheon what she was going to do with this fine
+Sunday afternoon, she had simply smiled, and said, 'Oh, I have a tryst
+to keep.'
+
+It was her sister who added anxiously, 'Is Wood leading now at the
+Queen's Hall Concerts?' And so, without actually committing herself to a
+lie, gave the impression that music was to be their quest.
+
+An hour later, while the old man was nursing his gout by the library
+window, he saw the ladies getting into a hansom. In spite of the
+inconvenience to his afflicted member he got up and opened the window.
+
+'Don't tell me you're doing anything so rational--you two--as going to a
+concert.'
+
+'Why do you say that? You know I never like to take the horses out on
+Sunday----'
+
+'Rubbish! You think a dashing, irresponsible hansom is more in keeping
+with the Factory Girls' Club or some giddy Whitechapel frivolity!'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore gave her sister a look of miserable apprehension; but the
+younger woman laughed and waved a hand. She knew that, even more than
+the hansom, their 'get up' had given them away. It must be confessed she
+had felt quite as strongly as her sister that it wouldn't do to be
+recognized at a Suffragette meeting. Even as a nameless 'fine lady'
+standing out from a mob of the dowdy and the dirty, to be stared at by
+eyes however undiscerning, under circumstances so questionable, would be
+distinctly distasteful.
+
+So, reversing the order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a
+'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her
+discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque,
+the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an
+old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' In
+spite of having herself taken these precautions, Vida had broken into
+uncontrollable smiles at the apparition of Mrs. Fox-Moore, asking with
+pride--
+
+'Will I do? I look quite like a Woman of the People, don't I?'
+
+The unconscious humour of the manifestation filled Miss Levering with an
+uneasy merriment every time she turned her eyes that way.
+
+Little as Mr. Fox-Moore thought of his wife's taste, either in clothes
+or in amusements, he would have been more mystified than ever he had
+been in his life had he seen her hansom, ten minutes later, stop on the
+north side of Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Gallery.
+
+'Look out and see,' she said, retiring guiltily into the corner of the
+conveyance. 'Are they there?' And it was plain that nothing could more
+have relieved Mrs. Fox-Moore at that moment than to hear 'they' were
+not.
+
+But Vida, glancing discreetly out of the side window, had said--
+
+'There? I should think they are--and a crowd round them already. Look at
+their banners!' and she laughed as she leaned out and read the legend,
+'We demand VOTES FOR WOMEN' inscribed in black letters on the white
+ground of two pieces of sheeting stretched each between a pair of
+upright poles, standing one on either side of the plinth of Nelson's
+column. In the very middle, and similarly supported, was a banner of
+blood red. Upon this one, in great white letters, appeared the legend--
+
+    'EFFINGHAM, THE ENEMY
+             OF
+    WOMEN AND THE WORKERS.'
+
+As Vida read it out--
+
+'_What!_' ejaculated her sister. 'They haven't really got that on a
+banner!' And so intrigued was she that, like some shy creature dwelling
+in a shell, cautiously she protruded her head out of the shiny, black
+sheath of the hansom.
+
+But as she did so she met the innocent eye of a passer-by, tired of
+craning his neck to look back at the meeting. With precipitation Mrs.
+Fox-Moore withdrew into the innermost recesses of the black shell.
+
+'Come, Janet,' said Vida, who had meanwhile jumped out and settled the
+fare.
+
+'Did that man know us?' asked the other, lifting up the flap from the
+back window of the hansom and peering out.
+
+'No, I don't think so.'
+
+'He stared, Vida. He certainly stared very hard.'
+
+Still she hesitated, clinging to the friendly shelter of the hansom.
+
+'Oh, come on! He only stared because---- He took you for a Suffragette!'
+But the indiscretion lit so angry a light in the lady's eye, that Vida
+was fain to add, 'No, no, do come--and I'll tell you what he was really
+looking at.'
+
+'What?' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, putting out her head again.
+
+'He was struck,' said Vida, biting her lip to repress smiles, 'by the
+hat of the Woman of the People.'
+
+But the lady was too entirely satisfied with her hat to mind Vida's
+poking fun at it.
+
+'"Effingham, the Enemy!"' Mrs. Fox-Moore read for herself as they
+approached the flaunting red banner. 'How perfectly outrageous!'
+
+'How perfectly _silly_!' amended the other, 'when one thinks of that
+kind and charming Pillar of Excellence!'
+
+'I told you they were mad as well as bad.'
+
+'I know; and now we're going to watch them prove it. Come on.'
+
+'Why, they've stopped the fountains!' Mrs. Fox-Moore spoke as though
+detecting an additional proof of turpitude. 'Those two policemen,' she
+went on, in a whisper, 'why are they looking at _us_ like that?'
+
+Vida glanced at the men. Their eyes were certainly fixed on the two
+ladies in a curious, direct fashion, not exactly impudent, but still in
+a way no policeman had ever looked at either of them before. A coolly
+watchful, slightly contemptuous stare, interrupted by one man turning to
+say something to the other, at which both grinned. Vida was conscious of
+wishing that she had come in her usual clothes--above all, that Janet
+had not raked out that 'jumble sale' object she had perched on her head.
+
+The wearer of the incriminatory hat, acting upon some quite unanalyzed
+instinct to range herself unmistakably on the side of law and order,
+paused as they were passing the two policemen and addressed them with
+dignity.
+
+'Is it safe to stop and listen for a few minutes to these people?'
+
+The men looked at Mrs. Fox-Moore with obvious suspicion.
+
+'I cawn't say,' said the one nearest.
+
+'Do you expect any trouble?' she demanded.
+
+There was a silence, and then the other policeman said with a decidedly
+snubby air--
+
+'It ain't our business to go _lookin'_ fur trouble;' and he turned his
+eyes away.
+
+'Of course not,' said Vida, pleasantly, coming to her sister's rescue.
+'All this lady wants to be assured of is that there are enough of you
+present to make it safe----'
+
+'If ladies wants to be safe,' said number one, 'they'd better stop in
+their 'omes.'
+
+'That's the first rude policeman I ever----' began Mrs. Fox-Moore, as
+they went on.
+
+'Well, you know he's only echoing what we all say.'
+
+Vida was looking over the crowd to where on the plinth of the historic
+column the little group of women and a solitary man stood out against
+the background of the banners. Here they were--these new Furies that
+pursued the agreeable men one sat by at dinner--men who, it was well
+known, devoted their lives--when they weren't dining--to the welfare of
+England. But were these frail, rather depressed-looking women--were they
+indeed the ones, outrageously daring, who broke up meetings and bashed
+in policemen's helmets? Nothing very daring in their aspect to-day--a
+little weary and preoccupied they looked, as they stood up there in twos
+and threes, talking to one another in that exposed position of theirs,
+while from time to time about their ears like spent bullets flew the
+spasmodic laughter and rude comment of the crowd--strangely unconscious,
+those 'blatant sensation-mongers,' of the thousand eyes and the sea of
+upturned faces!
+
+'Not _quite_ what I expected!' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, with an unmistakable
+accent of disappointment. It was plainly her meaning that to a general
+reprehensibleness, dulness was now superadded.
+
+'Perhaps these are not the ones,' said Vida, catching at hope.
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore took heart. 'Suppose we find out,' she suggested.
+
+They had penetrated the fringe of a gathering composed largely of weedy
+youths and wastrel old men. A few there were who looked like decent
+artizans, but more who bore the unmistakable aspect of the beery
+out-of-work. Among the strangely few women, were two or three girls of
+the domestic servant or Strand Restaurant cashier class--wearers of the
+cheap lace blouse and the wax bead necklace.
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore, forgetting some of her reluctance now that she was on
+the spot, valiantly followed Vida as the younger woman threaded her way
+among the constantly increasing crowd. Just in front of where the two
+came to a final standstill was a quiet-looking old man with a lot of
+unsold Sunday papers under one arm and wearing like an apron the bill of
+the _Sunday Times_. Many of the boys and young men were smoking
+cigarettes. Some of the older men had pipes. Mrs. Fox-Moore commented on
+the inferior taste in tobacco as shown by the lower orders. But she,
+too, kept her eyes glued to the figures up there on the plinth.
+
+'They've had to get men to hold up their banners for them,' laughed
+Vida, as though she saw a symbolism in the fact, further convicting
+these women of folly.
+
+'But there's a well-dressed man--that one who isn't holding up anything
+that I can see--what on earth is _he_ doing there?'
+
+'Perhaps he'll be upholding something later.'
+
+'Going to speak, you mean?'
+
+'It may be a debate. Perhaps he's going to present the other side.'
+
+'Well, if he does, I hope he'll tell them plainly what he thinks of
+them.'
+
+She said it quite distinctly for the benefit of the people round her.
+Both ladies were still obviously self-conscious, occupied with the need
+to look completely detached, to advertise: '_I'm_ not one of them! Never
+think it!' But it was gradually being borne in upon them that they need
+take no further trouble in this connection. Nobody in the crowd noticed
+any one except 'those ordinary looking persons,' as Mrs. Fox-Moore
+complainingly called them, up there on the plinth--'quite like what one
+sees on the tops of omnibuses!' Certainly it was an exercise in
+incongruity to compare these quiet, rather depressed looking people with
+the vision conjured up by Lord John's 'raving lunatics,' 'worthy of the
+straight jacket,' or Paul Filey's 'sexless monstrosities.'
+
+'It's rather like a jest that promised very well at the beginning, only
+the teller has forgotten the point. Or else,' Vida added, looking at the
+face of one of the women up there--'or else the mistake was in thinking
+it a jest at all!' She turned away impatiently and devoted her attention
+to such scraps of comment as she could overhear in the crowd--or such,
+rather, as she could understand.
+
+'That one--that's just come--yes, in the blue tam-o'-shanter, that's the
+one I was tellin' you about,' said a red-haired man, with a cheerful and
+rubicund face.
+
+'_Looks_ like she'd be 'andy with her fists, don't she?' contributed a
+friend alongside. The boys in front and behind laughed appreciatively.
+
+But the ruddy man said, 'Fists? No. _She's_ the one wot carries the
+dog-whip;' and they all craned forward with redoubled interest. It is
+sad to be obliged to admit that the two ladies did precisely the same.
+
+While the boys were, in addition, cat-calling and inquiring about the
+dog-whip--
+
+'That must be the woman the papers have been full of,' Mrs. Fox-Moore
+whispered, staring at the new-comer with horrified eyes.
+
+'Yes, no doubt.' Vida, too, scrutinized her more narrowly.
+
+The wearer of the 'Tam' was certainly more robust-looking than the
+others, but even she had the pallor of the worker in the town. She
+carried her fine head and shoulders badly, like one who has stooped over
+tasks at an age when she should have been running about the fields. She
+drew her thick brows together every now and then with an effect of
+determination that gave her well-chiselled features so dark and
+forbidding an aspect it was a surprise to see the grace that swept into
+her face when, at something one of her comrades said, she broke into a
+smile. Two shabby men on Vida's left were working themselves into a fine
+state of moral indignation over the laxity of the police in allowing
+these women to air their vanity in public.
+
+'Comin' here with tam-o'-shanters to tell us 'ow to do our business.'
+
+'It's part o' wot I mean w'en I s'y old England's on the down gryde.'
+
+'W'ich is the one in black--this end?' his companion asked, indicating
+a refined-looking woman of forty or so. 'Is that Miss----?'
+
+'Miss,' chipped in a young man of respectable appearance just behind.
+'_Miss?_ Why, that's the mother o' the Gracchi,' and there was a little
+ripple of laughter.
+
+'Hasn't she got any of her jewels along with her to-day?' said another
+voice.
+
+'What do they mean?' demanded Mrs. Fox-Moore.
+
+Vida shook her head. She herself was looking about for some one to ask.
+
+'Isn't it queer that you and I have lived all this time in the world and
+have never yet been in a mixed crowd before in all our lives?--never _as
+a part of it_.'
+
+'I think myself it's less strange we haven't done it before than that
+we're doing it now. There's the woman selling things. Let us ask
+her----'
+
+They had noticed before a faded-looking personage who had been going
+about on the fringe of the crowd with a file of propagandist literature
+on her arm. Vida beckoned to her. She made her way with some difficulty
+through the chaffing, jostling horde, saying steadily and with a kind of
+cheerful doggedness--
+
+'Leaflets! Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott! Labour Record! Prison
+Experiences of Miss----'
+
+'How much?' asked Miss Levering.
+
+'What you like,' she answered.
+
+Miss Levering took her change out in information. 'Can you tell me who
+the speakers are?'
+
+'Oh, yes.' The haggard face brightened before the task. 'That one is the
+famous Miss Claxton.'
+
+'With her face screwed up?'
+
+'That's because the sun is in her eyes.'
+
+'She isn't so bad-looking,' admitted Mrs. Fox-Moore.
+
+'No; but just wait till she speaks!' The faded countenance of the woman
+with the heavy pile of printed propaganda on her arm was so lit with
+enthusiasm, that it, too, was almost good-looking, in the same way as
+the younger, more regular face up there, frowning at the people, or the
+sun, or the memory of wrongs.
+
+'Is Miss Claxton some relation of yours?' asked Mrs. Fox-Moore.
+
+'No, oh, no, I don't even know her. She hasn't been out of prison long.
+The man in grey--he's Mr. Henry.'
+
+'Out of prison! And Henry's the chairman, I suppose.'
+
+'No; the chairman is the lady in black.' The pamphlet-seller turned away
+to make change for a new customer.
+
+'Do you mean the mother of the Gracchi?' said Vida, at a venture, and
+saw how if she herself hadn't understood the joke the lady with the
+literature did. She laughed good-humouredly.
+
+'Yes; that's Mrs. Chisholm.'
+
+'What!' said a decent-looking but dismal sort of shopman just behind,
+'is that the mother of those dreadful young women?'
+
+Neither of the two ladies were sufficiently posted in the nefarious
+goings on of the 'dreadful' progeny quite to appreciate the bystander's
+surprise, but they gazed with renewed interest at the delicate face.
+
+'What can the man mean! She doesn't _look_----' Mrs. Fox-Moore
+hesitated.
+
+'No,' Vida helped her out with a laughing whisper; 'I agree she doesn't
+_look_ big enough or bad enough or old enough or bold enough to be the
+mother of young women renowned for their dreadfulness. But as soon as
+she opens her mouth no doubt we'll smell the brimstone. I wish she'd
+begin her raging. Why are they waiting?'
+
+'It's only five minutes past,' said the lady with the literature. 'I
+think they're waiting for Mr. Lothian Scott. He's ill. But he'll come!'
+As though the example of his fidelity to the cause nerved her to more
+earnest prosecution of her own modest duty, she called out, 'Leaflets!
+Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott!'
+
+'Wot do they give ye,' inquired a half-tipsy tramp, 'fur 'awkin' that
+rot about?'
+
+She turned away quite unruffled. 'Citizenship of Women, one penny.'
+
+'I hope you _do_ get paid for so disagreeable a job--forgive my saying
+so,' said Vida.
+
+'Paid? Oh, no!' she said cheerfully. 'I'm too hard at work all week to
+help much. And I can't speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship----'
+
+'Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,'--Mrs. Fox-Moore detained
+the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eager little figure
+sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at
+the crowd--'is that one of them?'
+
+'Oh, yes. I thought everybody knew _her_. That's Miss Mary O'Brian.'
+
+She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that
+Vida asked--
+
+'And who is Miss Mary O'Brian?' But the pamphlet-seller had descried a
+possible customer, and was gone.
+
+'Mary O'Brian,' said a blear-eyed old man, 'is the one that's just come
+out o' quod.'
+
+'Oh, thank you.' Then to her sister Vida whispered, 'What is quod?'
+
+But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only shake her head. Even when they heard the
+words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to
+accompany sound.
+
+'Oh, is _that_ Mary?' A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the
+extreme back of his head, began to sing, 'Molly Darling.'
+
+''Ow'd yer like the skilly?' another shouted up at the girl.
+
+'Skilly?' whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore.
+
+Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn't in the dictionary of any language
+she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the
+chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly
+and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but
+what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was--
+
+'Miss O'Brian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how
+she liked it.'
+
+'Oh, she's going to tell us all about it. 'Ow _nice_!' But they let the
+thin little slip of a girl alone after that.
+
+It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe
+of the crowd--
+
+'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the
+tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they
+smiled at the suggested image.
+
+After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people
+for a few minutes. It wasn't often that life presented such an
+opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the
+plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay,
+since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves--women
+had been capable of that before--but these didn't even mind ridicule.
+Which was new.
+
+Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to
+open the meeting.
+
+'Friends!' she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with.
+But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she
+had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd
+several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other
+matters, they were met there to pass a censure on the Government----
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+''Ear, 'ear!' said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his
+ear.
+
+'And to express our sympathy with the brave women----'
+
+The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general
+hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor's ''Ear, 'ear!'
+
+''E can't 'ear without 'e shouts about it.'
+
+'Try and keep _yerself_ quiet,' said he, with dignity. 'We ain't 'ere to
+'ear _you_.'
+
+'----sympathy with the brave women,' the steady voice went on, 'who are
+still in prison.'
+
+'Serve 'em jolly well right!'
+
+'Give the speaker a chaunce, caun't ye?' said the newsvendor, with a
+withering look.
+
+It was plain this old gentleman was an unblushing adherent to the cause
+(undismayed by being apparently the only one in that vicinity), ready to
+cheer the chairman at every juncture, and equally ready to administer
+caustic reproof to her opponents.
+
+'Our friends who are in prison, are there simply for trying to bring
+before a member of the Government----'
+
+'Good old Effingham. Three cheers for Effingham!'
+
+'Oh, yes,' said the newsvendor, 'go on! 'E needs a little cheerin',
+awfter the mess 'e's made o' things!'
+
+'For trying to put before a member of the Government a statement of the
+injustice----'
+
+'_That_ ain't why they're in gaol. It's fur ringin' wot's-'is-name's
+door-bell.'
+
+'Kickin' up rows in the street----'
+
+'Oh, you shut up,' says the old champion, out of patience. 'You've 'ad
+'arf a pint too much.'
+
+Everybody in the vicinity was obliged to turn and look at the youth to
+see what proportion of the charge was humour and how much was fact. The
+youth resented so deeply the turn the conversation had taken that he
+fell back for a moment on bitter silence.
+
+'When you go to call on some one,' the chairman was continuing, with the
+patient air of one instructing a class in a kindergarten, 'it is the
+custom to ring the bell. What do you suppose a door-bell is for? Do you
+think our deputation should have tried to get in without ringing at the
+door?'
+
+'They 'adn't no business goin' to 'is private 'ouse.'
+
+'Oh, look 'ere, just take that extry 'arf pint outside the meetin' and
+cool off, will yer?'
+
+It was the last time that particular opponent aired his views. The old
+man's judicious harping on the ''arf pint' induced the ardent youth to
+moderate his political transports. They were not rightly valued, it
+appeared. After a few more mutterings he took his 'extry 'alf pint' into
+some more congenial society. But there were several others in the crowd
+who had come similarly fortified, and they were everywhere the most
+audible opponents. But above argument, denial, abuse, steadily in that
+upper air the clear voice kept on--
+
+'Do you think they _wanted_ to go to his house? Haven't you heard that
+they didn't do that until they had exhausted every other means to get a
+hearing?'
+
+To the shower of denial and objurgation that greeted this, she said with
+uplifted hand--
+
+'Stop! Let me tell you about it.'
+
+The action had in it so much of authority that (as it seemed, to their
+own surprise) the interrupters, with mouths still open, suspended
+operations for a moment.
+
+'Why, this is a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that
+doing in this _galere_?' Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able
+to enlighten her. 'Can't she see--even if there were anything in the
+"Cause," as she calls it--what an imbecile waste of time it is talking
+to these louts?'
+
+'There's a good many voters here,' said a tall, gloomy-looking
+individual, wearing a muffler in lieu of a collar. 'She's politician
+enough to know that.'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore looked through the man. 'The only reassuring thing I see
+in the situation,' she said to her sister, 'is that they don't find many
+women to come and listen to their nonsense.'
+
+'Well, they've got you and me! Awful thought! Suppose they converted
+us!'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore didn't even trouble to reply to such levity. What was
+interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience
+so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and
+harassed by the crowd--even more surprising she bore with the most
+recalcitrant members of it--tried to win them over, and yet when they
+were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them
+with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men
+felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight--this well-bred woman
+standing there in front of the soaring column, talking with grave
+passion to those loafers about the 'Great Woman Question,' and they
+treating it as a Sunday afternoon street entertainment.
+
+The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose
+appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended
+by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly
+commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back
+her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored
+the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw
+nothing but 'low cockney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had
+a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own
+language--they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with
+applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the
+plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-aged man in a soft hat.
+
+'That's 'im!'
+
+'Yes. Lothian Scott!'
+
+Small need for the chairwoman to introduce the grey man with the
+northern burr in his speech, and the northern turn for the
+uncompromising in opinion. Every soul there save the two 'educated'
+ladies knew this was the man who had done more to make the Labour Party
+a political force to be reckoned with than any other creature in the
+three kingdoms. Whether he was conscious of having friends in a
+gathering largely Tory (as lower-class crowds still are), certainly he
+did not spare his enemies.
+
+During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs.
+Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running
+comment--
+
+'Oh, of _course_! He says that to curry favour with the mob--a rank
+demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning
+sharply to her companion, '_He wants votes!_' she said, as though
+detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh,
+no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the
+people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness, _I_ call
+it, stirring up class against class! I begin to wonder what the police
+are thinking about.' She looked round uneasily.
+
+The excitement had certainly increased as the little grey politician
+denounced the witlessness of the working-class, and when they howled at
+him, went on to expound a trenchant doctrine of universal
+Responsibility, which preceded the universal Suffrage that was to come.
+Much of what he said was drowned in uproar. It had become clear that his
+opinions revolted the majority of his hearers even more than they did
+the two ladies. So outraged were the sensibilities of the hooligan and
+the half-drunk that they drowned as much of the speech as they were able
+in cat-calls and jeers. But enough still penetrated to ears polite not
+only to horrify, but to astonish them--such force has the spoken word
+above even its exaggeration in cold print.
+
+The ladies had read--sparingly, it is true--that these things were said,
+but to _hear_ them!
+
+'He doesn't, after all, seem to be saying what the mob wants to hear,'
+said the younger woman.
+
+'No; mercifully the heart of the country is still sound!'
+
+But for one of these two out of the orderlier world, the opposition that
+the 'rank demagogue' roused in the mob was to light a lamp whereby she
+read wondering the signs of an unsuspected bond between Janet Fox-Moore
+and the reeking throng.
+
+When, contrary to the old-established custom of the demagogue, the
+little politician in homespun had confided to the men in front of him
+what he thought of them, he told them that the Woman's Movement which
+they held themselves so clever for ridiculing, was in much the same
+position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it
+not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the
+women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor
+any of the men in front of him would have the right to vote to-day.
+
+'You ridicule and denounce these women for trying peacefully--yes, I say
+_peacefully_--to get their rights as citizens. Do you know what our
+fathers did to get ours? They broke down Hyde Park railings, they burnt
+the Bristol Municipal Buildings, they led riots, and they shed blood.
+These women have hurt nobody.'
+
+'What about the policeman?'
+
+He went on steadily, comparing the moderation of the women with the
+red-hot violence of their Chartist forbears--till one half-drunken
+listener, having lost the thread, hiccuped out--
+
+'Can't do nothin'--them women. Even after we've showed 'em _'ow_!'
+
+'Has he got his history right?' Vida asked through her smiling at the
+last sally. 'Not that it applies, of course,' she was in haste to add.
+
+'Oh, what does it matter?' Her sister waved it aside. 'An unscrupulous
+politician hasn't come here to bother about little things like facts.'
+
+'I don't think I altogether agree with you _there_. That man may be a
+fanatic, but he's honest, I should say. Those Scotch peasants, you
+know----'
+
+'Oh, because he's rude, and talks with a burr, you think he's a sort of
+political Thomas Carlyle?'
+
+Though Vida smiled at the charge, something in her alert air as she
+followed the brief recapitulation of the Chartist story showed how an
+appeal to justice, or even to pity, may fail, where the rousing of some
+dim sense of historical significance (which is more than two-thirds
+fear), may arrest and even stir to unsuspected deeps. The grave
+Scotsman's striking that chord even in a mind as innocent as Vida's, of
+accurate or ordered knowledge of the past, even here the chord could
+vibrate to a strange new sense of possible significance in this scene
+'----after all.' It would be queer, it would be horrible, it was
+fortunately incredible, but what if, 'after all,' she were ignorantly
+assisting at a scene that was to play its part in the greatest
+revolution the world had seen? Some such mental playing with
+possibilities seemed to lurk behind the intent reflective face.
+
+'There are far too many voters already,' her sister had flung out.
+
+'Yes--yes, a much uglier world they want to make!'
+
+But in the power to make history--if these people indeed had that, then
+indeed might they be worth watching--even if it were only after one good
+look to hide the eyes in dismay. That possibility of historic
+significance had suddenly lifted the sordid exhibition to a different
+plane.
+
+As the man, amid howls, ended his almost indistinguishable peroration,
+the unmoved chairman stepped forward again to try to win back for the
+next speaker that modicum of quiet attention which he, at all events,
+had the art of gaining and of keeping. As she came forward this time one
+of her auditors looked at the Woman Leader in the Crusade with new
+eyes--not with sympathy, rather with a vague alarm. Vida Levering's air
+of almost strained attention was an unconscious public confession: 'I
+haven't understood these strange women; I haven't understood the spirit
+of the mob that hoots the man we know vaguely for their champion; I
+haven't understood the allusions nor the argot that they talk; I can't
+check the history that peasant has appealed to. In the midst of so much
+that is obscure, it is meet to reserve judgment.' Something of that
+might have been read in the look lifted once or twice as though in
+wonderment, above the haggard group up there between the guardian lions,
+beyond even the last reach of the tall monument, to the cloudless sky of
+June. Was the great shaft itself playing a part in the impression? Was
+it there not at all for memory of some battle long ago, but just to mark
+on the fair bright page of afternoon a huge surprise? What lesser accent
+than just this Titanic exclamation point could fitly punctuate the
+record of so strange a portent!--women confronting the populace of the
+mightiest city in the world--pleading in her most public place their
+right to a voice in her affairs.
+
+In the face of this unexpected mood of receptivity, however unwilling,
+came a sharp corrective in the person of the next speaker.
+
+'Oh, it's not going to be one that's been to prison!'
+
+'Oh, dear! It's the one with the wild black hair and the awful "picture
+hat"!' But they stared for a few moments as if, in despite of
+themselves, fascinated by this lady be-feathered, be-crimped, and
+be-ringed, wearing her huge hat cocked over one ear with a defiant
+coquetry above a would-be conquering smile. The unerring wits in the
+crowd had already picked her out for special attention, but her active
+'public form' was even more torturing to the fastidious feminine sense
+than her 'stylish' appearance. For her language, flowery and
+grandiloquent, was excruciatingly genteel, one moment conveyed by minced
+words through a pursed mouth, and the next carried away on a turgid tide
+of rhetoric--the swimmer in this sea of sentiment flinging out
+braceleted arms, and bawling appeals to the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_'
+The crowd howled with derisive joy.
+
+All the same, when they saw she had staying power, and a kind of
+Transpontine sense of drama in her, the populace mocked less and
+applauded more. Why not? She was very much like an overblown Adelphi
+heroine, and they could see her act for nothing. But every time she
+apostrophized the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_' two of those same gave
+way to overcharged feelings.
+
+'Oh, my dear, I can't stand this! I'm going home!'
+
+'Yes, yes. Let's get away from this terrible female. I suppose they keep
+back the best speakers for the last.'
+
+The two ladies turned, and began to edge their way out of the tightly
+packed mass of humanity.
+
+'It's rather a pity, too,' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, looking back, 'for this
+is the only chance we'll ever have. I did want to hear what the skilly
+was.'
+
+'Yes, and about the dog-whip.'
+
+'Skilly! Sounds as if it might be what she hit the policeman with.' Mrs.
+Fox-Moore was again pausing to look back. 'That gyrating female is more
+what I expected them _all_ to be.'
+
+'Yes; but just listen to that.'
+
+'To what?'
+
+'Why, the way they're applauding her.'
+
+'Yes, they positively revel in the creature!'
+
+It was a long, tiresome business this worming their way out. They paused
+again and again two or three times, looking back at the scene with a
+recurrent curiosity, and each time repelled by the platform graces of
+the lady who was so obviously enjoying herself to the top of her bent.
+Yet even after the fleeing twain arrived on the fringe of the greatly
+augmented crowd, something even then prevented their instantly making
+the most of their escape. They stood criticizing and denouncing.
+
+Again Mrs. Fox-Moore said it was a pity, since they were there, that
+they should have to go without hearing one of those who had been in
+prison, 'For we'll never have another chance.'
+
+'Perhaps,' said her sister, looking back at the gesticulating
+figure--'perhaps we're being a little unreasonable. We were annoyed at
+first because they weren't what we expected, and when we get what we
+came to see, we run away.'
+
+While still they lingered, with a final fling of arms and toss of
+plumes, the champion of the women of England sat down in the midst of
+applause.
+
+'You hear? It's all very well. Most of them simply loved it.'
+
+And now the chairman, in a strikingly different style, was preparing the
+way for the next speaker, at mention of whom the crowd seemed to feel
+they'd been neglecting their prerogative of hissing.
+
+'What name did she say? Why do they make that noise?'
+
+The two ladies began to worm their way back; but this was a different
+matter from coming out.
+
+'Wot yer doin'?' some one inquired sternly of Mrs. Fox-Moore.
+
+Another turned sharply, 'Look out! Oo yer pushin', old girl?'
+
+The horrid low creatures seemed to have no sense of deference. And the
+stuff they smoked!
+
+'Pah!' observed Mrs. Fox-Moore, getting the full benefit of a noxious
+puff. '_Pah!_'
+
+'_Wot!_' said the smoker, turning angrily. 'Pah to you, miss!' He eyed
+Mrs. Fox-Moore from head to foot with a withering scorn. 'Comin' 'ere
+awskin' us fur votes' (Vida nearly fainted), 'and ain't able to stand a
+little tobacco.'
+
+'Stand in front, Janet,' said Miss Levering, hastily recovering herself.
+'_I_ don't mind smoke,' she said mendaciously, trying to appease the
+defiler of the air with a little smile. Indeed, the idea of Mrs.
+Fox-Moore having come to 'awsk' this person for a vote was sufficiently
+quaint.
+
+'This is the sort of thing they mean, I suppose,' said that lady, 'when
+they talk about cockney humour. It doesn't appeal to me.'
+
+Vida bit her lip. Her own taste was less pure. 'We needn't try to get
+any nearer,' she said hastily. 'This chairman-person can make herself
+heard without screeching.'
+
+But having lost the key during the passage over the pipe, they could
+only make out that she was justifying some one to the mob, some one who
+apparently was coming in for too much sharp criticism for the chairman
+to fling her to the wolves without first diverting them a little. The
+battle of words that ensued was almost entirely unintelligible to the
+two ladies, but they gathered, through means more expressive than
+speech, that the chairman was dealing with some sort of crisis in the
+temper of the meeting, brought about by the mention of a name.
+
+The only thing clear was that she was neither going to give in, nor
+going to turn over the meeting in a state of ferment to some less
+practised hand.
+
+'Yes, she did! She had a perfect right,' the chairman maintained against
+a storm of noes--'more than a right, _a duty_, to perform in going with
+that deputation on public business to the house of a public servant,
+since, unlike the late Prime Minister, he had refused to women all
+opportunity to treat with him through the usual channels always open to
+citizens having a political grievance.'
+
+'Citizens? Suffragettes!'
+
+'Very well.' She set her mouth. 'Suffragettes if you like. To get an
+abuse listened to is the first thing; to get it understood is the next.
+Rather than not have our cause stand out clear and unmistakable before a
+preoccupied, careless world, we accept the clumsy label; we wear it
+proudly. And it won't be the first time in history that a name given in
+derision has become a badge of honour!'
+
+Why, the woman's eyes were suffused!--a flush had mounted up to her
+hair!
+
+How she cared!
+
+'Yer ain't told us the reason ye _want_ the vote.'
+
+'Reason? Why, she's a woman!'
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+The speaker had never paused an instant, but--it began to be clear that
+she heard any interruption it suited her to hear.
+
+'Some one asking, at this time of day, why women want the vote? Why, for
+exactly the same reason that you men do. Because, not having any voice
+in public affairs, our interests are neglected; and since woman's
+interests are man's, all humanity suffers. We want the vote, because
+taxation without representation is tyranny; because the laws as they
+stand bear hardly on women; and because those unfair, man-made laws will
+never be altered till women have a share in electing the men who control
+legislation.'
+
+'Yer ought ter leave politics to us----'
+
+'We can't leave politics to the men, because politics have come into the
+home, and if the higher interests of the home are to be served, women
+must come into politics.'
+
+'That's a bad argument!'
+
+'Wot I always say is----'
+
+'Can't change nature. Nature says----'
+
+'Let 'er st'y at 'ome and mind 'er business!'
+
+The interjections seemed to come all at once. The woman bent over the
+crowd. Nothing misty in her eyes now--rather a keener light than before.
+
+'Don't you see,' she appealed to them as equals--'don't you see that in
+your improvement of the world you men have taken women's business out of
+her home? In the old days there was work and responsibility enough for
+woman without going outside her own gate. The women were the bakers and
+brewers, the soap and candle-makers, the loom-workers of the world. You
+men,' she said, delicately flattering them, '_you_ have changed all
+that. You have built great factories and warehouses and mills. But how
+do you keep them going? By calling women to come in their thousands and
+help you. But women love their homes. You couldn't have got these women
+out of their homes without the goad of poverty. You men can't always
+earn enough to keep the poor little home going, so the women work in the
+shops, they swarm at the mill gates, and the factories are full.'
+
+'True! True, every blessed word!' said the old newsvendor.
+
+'Hush!' she said. 'Don't interrupt. In taking women's business out of
+the home you haven't freed her from the need to see after the business.
+The need is greater than ever it was. Why, eighty-two per cent of the
+women of this country are wage-earning women! Yet, you go on foolishly
+echoing: Woman's place is at home.'
+
+'True! True!' said the aged champion, unabashed.
+
+'Then there are those men, philanthropists, statesmen, who believe they
+are safeguarding the interests of women by making laws restricting their
+work, and so restricting their resources without ever consulting these
+women. If they consulted these women, they would hear truths that would
+open their blind eyes. But no, the woman isn't worthy of being
+consulted. She is worthy to do the highest work given to humanity, to
+bear and to bring up children; she is worthy to teach and to train them;
+she is worthy to pay the taxes that she has no voice in levying. If she
+breaks the law that she has no share in making, she is worth hanging,
+but she is not worth consulting about her own affairs--affairs of
+supremest importance to her very existence--affairs that no man, however
+great and good, can understand so well as she. She will never get
+justice until she gets the vote. Even the well-to-do middle-class
+woman----'
+
+'Wot are _you_?'
+
+'And even the woman of what are called the upper classes--even she must
+wince at the times when men throw off the mask and let her see how in
+their hearts they despise her. A few weeks ago Mr. Lothian Scott----'
+
+'Boo! Boo!'
+
+'Hooray!'
+
+''ray for Lothian Scott!'
+
+In the midst of isolated cheers and a volume of booing, she went on--
+
+'When he brought a resolution before the House of Commons to remove the
+sex disqualification, what happened?'
+
+'Y' kicked up a row!'
+
+'Lot o' yer got jugged!'
+
+'The same thing happened that has been happening for half a century
+every time the question comes up in that English Parliament that
+Englishmen are supposed to think of with such respect as a place of
+dignity. What _happened_?' She leaned forward and her eyes shone. 'What
+happened in that sacred place, that Ark where they safeguard the honour
+of England? What happened to _our_ honour, that these men dare tell us
+is so safe in their hands? Our cause was dragged through filth. The very
+name "woman" was used as a signal for jests and ribald laughter, and for
+such an exhibition of sex rancour and mistrust that it passed
+imagination to think what the mothers and wives of the members must
+think of the public confession of the deep disrespect their menfolk feel
+for them. Some one here spoke of "a row."' She threw back her head, and
+faced the issue as though she knew that by bringing it forward herself,
+she could turn the taunt against the next speaker into a title of
+respect. 'You blame us for making a scene in that holy place! You would
+have us imitate those other women--the well-behaved--the women who think
+more of manners than of morals. There they were--for an example to
+us--that night of the debate, that night of the "row"--there they sat as
+they have always done, like meek mute slaves up there in their little
+gilded pen, ready to listen to any insult, ready to smile on the men
+afterward. In only one way, but it was an important exception, in just
+one way that debate on Woman Suffrage differed from any other that had
+ever taken place in the House of Commons.'
+
+A voice in the crowd was raised, but before the jeer was out Mrs.
+Chisholm had flung down her last ringing sentences.
+
+'There were _others_ up there in the little pen that night!--women,
+too--but women with enough decency to be revolted, and with enough
+character to resent such treatment as the members down there on the
+floor of the House were giving to our measure. Though the women who
+ought to have felt it most sat there cowed and silent, I am proud to
+think there were other women who cried out, "_Shame!_" Yes, yes,' she
+interrupted the interrupters, 'those women were dragged away to prison,
+and all the world was aghast. But I tell you that cry was the beginning
+of a new chapter in human history. It began with "Shame!" but it will
+end with "Honour."'
+
+The old newsvendor led the applause.
+
+'Janet! That woman never spat in a policeman's face.'
+
+'Pull down your veil,' was the lady's sharp response. 'Quick----'
+
+'My----'
+
+'Yes, pull it down, and don't turn round.'
+
+A little dazed by the red-hot torrent the woman on the plinth was still
+pouring down on the people, Vida's mind at the word 'veil,' so
+peremptorily uttered, reverted by some trick of association to the
+Oriental significance of that mark in dress distinctively the woman's.
+
+'Why should I pull down my veil?' she answered abstractedly.
+
+'They're looking this way. Don't turn round. Come, come.'
+
+With a surprising alacrity and skill Mrs. Fox-Moore made her way out of
+the throng. Vida, following, yet looking back, heard--
+
+'Now, I want you men to give a fair hearing to a woman who----'
+
+'Vida, _don't_ look! Mercifully, they're too much amused to notice us.'
+
+Disobeying the mandate, the younger woman's eyes fell at last upon the
+figures of two young men hovering on the outer circle. The sun caught
+their tall, glossy hats, played upon the single flower in the frock
+coat, struck on the eyeglass, and gleamed mockingly on the white teeth
+of the one who smiled the broadest as they both stood, craning their
+necks, whispering and laughing, on the fringe of the crowd.
+
+'Why, it's Dick Farnborough--and that friend of his from the Austrian
+Embassy.'
+
+Vida pulled down her veil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Devoutly thankful at having escaped from her compromising position
+unrecognized, Mrs. Fox-Moore firmly declined to go 'awskin' fur the
+vote' again! When Vida gave up her laughing remonstrance, Mrs. Fox-Moore
+thought her sister had also given up the idea. But as Vida afterwards
+confessed, she told herself that she would go 'just once more.' It could
+not be but what she was under some illusion about that queer spectacle.
+From one impression each admitted it was difficult to shake herself
+free. Whatever those women were or were not, they weren't fools. What
+did the leaders (in prison and out), what did they think they were
+accomplishing, besides making themselves hideously uncomfortable? The
+English Parliament, having flung them out, had gone on with its routine,
+precisely as though nothing had happened. _Had_ anything happened? That
+was the question. The papers couldn't answer. They were given over to
+lies. The bare idea of women pretending to concern themselves with
+public affairs--from the point of view of the Press, it was enough to
+make the soberest sides shake with Homeric laughter.
+
+So, then, one last time to see for one's self. And on this occasion no
+pettiness of disguise, Miss Levering's aspect seemed to say--no
+recurrence of any undignified flight. She had been frightened away from
+her first meeting, but she would not be frightened from the second,
+which was also to be the last.
+
+An instinct unanalyzed, but significant of what was to follow, kept her
+from seeking companionship outside. Had Wark not gone over to the
+market-gardener, her former mistress would have had no misgiving about
+taking the woman into her confidence. But Wark, with lightning rapidity,
+had become Mrs. Anderson Slynes, and was beyond recall. So the new maid
+was told the following Sunday, that she might walk with her mistress
+across Hyde Park (where the papers said the meetings in future were to
+be), carrying some music which had to be returned to the Tunbridges.
+
+Pursuing this programme, what more natural than that those two chance
+pedestrians should be arrested by an apparition on their way, of a
+flaming banner bearing, along with a demand for the vote, an outrageous
+charge against a distinguished public servant--'a pity the misguided
+creatures didn't know him, just a little!'
+
+Yes. There it was! a rectangle of red screaming across the vivid green
+of the park not a hundred yards from the Marble Arch, the denunciatory
+banner stretched above the side of an uncovered van. A little crowd of
+perhaps a hundred collected on one side of the cart--the loafers on the
+outermost fringe, lying on the grass. Never a sign of a Suffragette, and
+nearly three o'clock! Impossible for any passer-by to carry out the
+programme of pausing to ask idly, 'What are those women screeching
+about?'
+
+Seeming to search in vain for some excuse to linger, Miss Levering's
+wandering eye fell upon a young mother wheeling a perambulator. She had
+glanced with mild curiosity at the flaunting ensign, and then turned
+from it to lean forward and straighten her baby's cap.
+
+'I wonder what _she_ thinks of the Woman Question,' Miss Levering
+observed, in a careless aside to her maid.
+
+Before Gorringe could reply: 'Doddy's a bootiful angel, isn't Doddy?'
+said the young mother, with subdued rapture.
+
+'Ah, she's found the solution,' said the lady, looking back.
+
+Other pedestrians glanced at the little crowd about the cart, read
+demand and denunciation on the banner, laughed, and they, too, for the
+most part, went on.
+
+An Eton boy, who looked as if he might be her grandson, came by with a
+white-haired lady of distinguished aspect, who held up her voluminous
+silken skirts and stared silently at the legend.
+
+'Do you see what it says?' the Eton boy laughed as he looked back. '"_We
+demand the vote._" Fancy! They "demand" it. What awful cheek!' and he
+laughed again at the fatuity of the female creature.
+
+Vida glanced at the dignified old dame as though with an uneasy new
+sense of the incongruity in the attitude of those two quite commonplace,
+everyday members of a world that was her world, and that yet could for a
+moment look quite strange.
+
+She turned and glanced back at the ridiculous cart as if summoning the
+invisible presence of Mrs. Chisholm to moderate the insolence of the
+budding male. Still there was no sign either of Mrs. Chisholm or any of
+her fellow-conspirators against the old order of the world. Miss
+Levering stood a moment hesitating.
+
+'I believe I'm a little tired,' she said to the discreet maid. 'We'll
+rest here a moment,' and she sat down with her back to the crowd.
+
+A woman, apparently of the small shopkeeping class, was already
+established at one end of the only bench anywhere near the cart. Her
+child who was playing about, was neatly dressed, and to Vida's surprise
+wore sandals on her stockingless feet. This fashion for children, which
+had been growing for years among the upper classes, had found little
+imitation among tradesmen or working people. They presumably were still
+too near the difficulty of keeping their children in shoes and
+stockings, to be able to see anything but a confession of failure in
+going without. In the same way, the 'Simple Life,' when led by the rich,
+wears to the poverty-struck an aspect of masked meanness--a matter far
+less tolerable in the eyes of the pauper than the traditional splendour
+of extravagance in the upper class, an extravagance that feeds more than
+the famished stomach with the crumbs that it lets fall.
+
+As Miss Levering sat watching the child, and wondering a little at the
+sandals, the woman caught her eye.
+
+'Could you please tell me the time?' she asked.
+
+Miss Levering took out her watch, and then spoke of the wisdom of that
+plan of sandals.
+
+The woman answered with such self-possession and good sense, that the
+lady sent a half-amused glance over her shoulder as if relishing in
+advance the sturdy disapproval of this highly respectable young mother
+when she should come to realize how near she and the precious daughter
+were to the rostrum of the Shrieking Sisterhood. It might be worth
+prolonging the discussion upon health and education for the amusement
+there would be in seeing what form condemnation of the Suffragettes took
+among people of this kind. By turning her head to one side, out of the
+tail of her eye the lady could see that an excitement of some sort was
+agitating the crowd. The voices rose more shrill. People craned and
+pushed. A derisive cheer went up as a woman appeared on the cart. The
+wearer of the tam-o'-shanter! Three others followed--all women. Miss
+Levering saw without seeming to look, still listening while the
+practical-minded mother talked on about her child, and what 'was good
+for it.' All life had resolved itself into pursuit of that.
+
+An air of semi-abstraction came over the lady. It was as if in the
+presence of this excellent bourgeoise she felt an absurd constraint in
+showing an interest in the proceedings of these unsexed creatures behind
+them.
+
+To her obvious astonishment the mother of the child was the first to
+jump up.
+
+'Now they're going to begin!' she said briskly.
+
+'Who?' asked Miss Levering.
+
+'Why, the Suffrage people.'
+
+'Oh! Are _you_ going to listen to them?'
+
+'Yes; that's what I've come all this way for.' And she and her
+bare-legged offspring melted into the growing crowd.
+
+Vida turned to the maid and met her superior smile. 'That woman says she
+has come a long way to hear these people advocating Woman's Suffrage,'
+and slowly with an air of complete detachment she approached the edge of
+the crowd, followed by the supercilious maid. They were quickly hemmed
+in by people who seemed to spring up out of the ground. It was curious
+to look back over the vivid green expanse and see the dotted humanity
+running like ants from all directions to listen to this handful of dowdy
+women in a cart!
+
+In finding her way through the crowd it would appear that the lady was
+not much sustained by the presence of a servant, however well-meaning.
+Much out of place in such a gathering as Mrs. Fox-Moore or any
+ultra-oldfashioned woman was, still more incongruous showed there the
+relation of mistress and maid. The punctilious Gorringe was plainly
+horrified at the proximity to her mistress of these canaille, and the
+mistress was not so absorbed it would seem but what she felt the affront
+to seemliness in a servant's seeing her pushed and shoved aside--treated
+with slight regard or none. Necessary either to leave the scene with
+lofty disapproval, or else make light of the discomfort.
+
+'It doesn't matter!' she assured the girl, who was trying to protect her
+mistress's dainty wrap from contact with a grimy tramp. And, again, when
+half a dozen boys forced their way past, 'It's all right!' she nodded to
+the maid, 'it's no worse than the crowd at Charing Cross coming over
+from Paris.'
+
+But it was much worse, and Gorringe knew it. 'The old man is standing on
+your gown, miss.'
+
+'Oh, would you mind----' Miss Levering politely suggested another place
+for his feet.
+
+But the old man had no mind left for a mere bystander--it was all
+absorbed in Suffragettes.
+
+''is feet are filthy muddy, 'm,' whispered Gorringe.
+
+It may have been in part the maid's genteel horror of such proximities
+that steeled Miss Levering to endure them. Under circumstances like
+these the observant are reminded that no section of the modern community
+is so scornfully aristocratic as our servants. Their horror of the
+meanly-apparelled and the humble is beyond the scorn of kings. The fine
+lady shares her shrinking with those inveterate enemies of democracy,
+the lackey who shuts the door in the shabby stranger's face, and the dog
+who barks a beggar from the gate.
+
+And so while the maid drew her own skirts aside and held her nose high
+in the air, the gentlewoman stood faintly smiling at the queer scene.
+
+Alas! no Mrs. Chisholm. It looked as if they must have been hard up for
+speakers to-day, for two of them were younger even than Miss Claxton of
+the tam-o'-shanter. One of them couldn't be more than nineteen.
+
+'How dreadful to put such very young girls up there to be stared at by
+all these louts!'
+
+'Oh, yes, 'm, quite 'orrid,' agreed the maid, but with the air of 'What
+can you expect of persons so low?'
+
+'However, the young girls seem to have as much self-possession as the
+older ones!' pursued Miss Levering, as she looked in vain for any sign
+of flinching from the sallies of cockney impudence directed at the
+occupants of the cart.
+
+They exhibited, too, what was perhaps even stranger--an utter absence of
+any flaunting of courage or the smallest show of defiance. What was this
+armour that looked like mere indifference? It couldn't be that those
+quiet-looking young girls _were_ indifferent to the ordeal of standing
+up there before a crowd of jeering rowdies whose less objectionable
+utterances were: 'Where did you get that 'at?' 'The one in green is my
+girl!' 'Got yer dog-whip, miss?' and such-like utterances.
+
+The person thus pointedly alluded to left her companions ranged along
+the side of the cart against the background of banner, while she, the
+famous Miss Claxton, took the meeting in charge. She wasted no time,
+this lady. Her opening remarks, which, in the face of a fire of
+interruption, took the form of an attack upon the Government, showed her
+an alert, competent, cut-and-thrust, imperturbably self-possessed
+politician, who knew every aspect of the history of the movement, as
+able to answer any intelligent question off-hand as to snub an impudent
+irrelevance, able to take up a point and drive it well in--to shrug and
+smile or frown and point her finger, all with most telling effect, and
+keep the majority of her audience with her every minute of the time.
+
+As a mere exhibition of nerve it was a thing to make you open your eyes.
+Only a moment was she arrested by either booing or applause. When a knot
+of young men, who had pushed their way near the front, kept on shouting
+argument and abuse, she interrupted her harangue an instant. Pointing
+out the ring-leader--
+
+'Now you be quiet, if you please,' she said. 'These people are here to
+listen to _me_.'
+
+'No, they ain't. They come to see wot you look like.'
+
+'That can't be so,' she said calmly, 'because after they've seen us they
+stay.' Then, as the interrupter began again, 'No, it's no use, my
+man'--she shook her head gently as if almost sorry for him--'you can't
+talk _me_ down!'
+
+'Now, ain't that just _like_ a woman!' he complained to the crowd.
+
+Just in front of where Miss Levering and her satellite first came to a
+standstill, was a cheerful, big, sandy man with long flowing
+moustachios, a polo cap, and a very dirty collar. At intervals he
+inquired of the men around him, in a great jovial voice, 'Are we
+down-'earted?' as though the meeting had been called, not for the
+purpose of rousing interest in the question of woman's share in the work
+of the world, but as though its object were to humiliate and
+disfranchise the men. But his exclamation, repeated at intervals, came
+in as a sort of refrain to the rest of the proceedings.
+
+'The Conservatives,' said the speaker, 'had never pretended they
+favoured broadening the basis of the franchise. But here were these
+Liberals, for thirty years they'd been saying that the demand on the
+part of women for political recognition commanded their respect, and
+would have their support, and yet there were four hundred and odd
+members who had got into the House of Commons very largely through the
+efforts of women--oh, yes, we know all about that! We've been helping
+the men at elections for years.'
+
+'What party?'
+
+Adroitly she replied, 'We have members of every party in our ranks.'
+
+'Are you a Conservative?'
+
+'No, I myself am not a Conservative----'
+
+'You work for the Labour men--I know!'
+
+'It's child's play belonging to any party till we get the vote,' she
+dismissed it. 'In future we are neither for Liberal nor Conservative nor
+Labour. We are for Women. When we get the sex bar removed, it will be
+time for us to sort ourselves into parties. At present we are united
+against any Government that continues to ignore its duty to the women of
+the country. In the past we were so confiding that when a candidate said
+he was in favour of Woman's Suffrage (he was usually a Liberal), we
+worked like slaves to get that man elected, so that a voice might be
+raised for women's interests in the next Parliament. Again and again the
+man we worked for got in. But the voice that was to speak for us--that
+voice was mute. We had served his purpose in helping him to win his
+seat, and we found ourselves invariably forgotten or ignored. The
+Conservatives have never shown the abysmal hypocrisy of the Liberals. We
+can get on with our open enemies; it's these _cowards_' ('Boo!' and
+groans)--'these cowards, I say--who, in order to sneak into a place in
+the House, pretend to sympathize with this reform--who use us, and then
+betray us; it's these who are women's enemies!'
+
+'Why are you always worrying the Liberals? Why don't you ask the
+Conservatives to give you the vote?'
+
+'You don't go to a person for something he hasn't got unless you're a
+fool. The Liberals are in power; the Liberals were readiest with fair
+promises; and so we go to the Liberals. And we shall continue to go to
+them. We shall never leave off' (boos and groans) 'till they leave
+office. Then we'll begin on the Conservatives.' She ended in a chorus of
+laughter and cheers, 'I will now call upon Miss Cynthia Chisholm to
+propose the resolution.'
+
+Wherewith the chairman gave way to the younger of the two girls. This
+one of the Gracchi--a gentle-seeming creature, carelessly dressed, grave
+and simple--faced the mob with evident trepidation, a few notes, to
+which she never referred, in her shaking hand. What brought a girl like
+that here?--was the question on the few thoughtful faces in the crowd
+confronting her. She answered the query by introducing the resolution in
+an earnest little speech which, if it didn't show that much of the
+failure and suffering that darken the face of the world is due to
+women's false position, showed, at all events, that this young creature
+held a burning conviction that the subjection of her sex was the world's
+Root-Evil. With no apparent apprehension of the colossal audacity of her
+position, the girl moved gravely that 'this meeting demands of the
+Government the insertion of an enfranchisement clause in the Plural
+Voting Bill, and demands that it shall become law during the present
+session.' Her ignorance of Parliamentary procedure was freely pointed
+out to her.
+
+'No,' she said, 'it is you who are ignorant--of how pressing the need
+is. You say it is "out of order." If treating the women of the country
+fairly is out of order, it is only because men have made a poor sort of
+order. It is the _order_ that should be changed.'
+
+Of course that dictum received its due amount of hooting.
+
+'The vote is the reward for defending the country,' said a voice.
+
+'No,' said the girl promptly, 'for soldiers and sailors don't vote.'
+
+'It implies fitness for military service,' somebody amended.
+
+'It _shouldn't_,' said Nineteen, calmly; 'it ought to imply merely _a
+stake_ in the country. No one denies we have that.'
+
+The crowd kept on about soldiering, till the speaker was goaded into
+saying--
+
+'I don't say women like fighting, but women _can_ fight! In these days
+warfare isn't any more a matter of great physical strength, and a woman
+can pull a trigger as well as a man. The Boer women found that out--and
+so has the Russian. I don't like thinking about it myself--for I seem to
+realize too clearly what horrors those women endured before they could
+carry bombs or shoulder rifles.'
+
+'Rifles? Why a woman can't never hit _nothing_.'
+
+'It is quite true we can't most of us even throw a stone straight--the
+great mass of women never in all their lives wanted to hit anybody or
+anything. And that'--she came nearer, and leaned over the side of the
+cart with scared face--'it's that that makes it so dreadful to realize
+how at last when women's eyes are opened--when they see their homes and
+the holiest things in life threatened and despised, how quickly after
+all _they can learn the art of war_.'
+
+'With hatpins!' some one called out.
+
+'Yes, scratching and spitting,' another added.
+
+That sort of interruption did not so much embarrass her, but once or
+twice she was nearly thrown off her beam-ends by men and boys shouting,
+'Wot's the matter with yer anyway? Can't yer get a husband?' and
+such-like brilliant relevancies. Although she flushed at some of these
+sallies, she stuck to her guns with a pluck that won her friends. In one
+of the pauses a choleric old man gesticulated with his umbrella.
+
+'If what the world needed was Woman's Suffrage, it wouldn't have been
+left for a minx like you to discover it.' At which volleys of approval.
+
+'That gentleman seems to think it's a new madness that we've recently
+invented.' The child seemed in her loneliness to reach out for
+companioning. She spoke of 'our friend John Stuart Mill.'
+
+'Oo's Mill?'
+
+'That great Liberal wrote in 1867----' But Mill and she were drowned
+together. She waited a moment for the flood of derision to subside.
+
+''E wouldn't 'ad nothin' to do with yer if 'e'd thought you'd go on like
+you done.'
+
+'Benjamin Disraeli was on our side. Mazzini--Charles Kingsley. As long
+ago as 1870, a Woman's Suffrage Bill that was drafted by Dr. Pankhurst
+and Mr. Jacob Bright passed a second reading.'
+
+'The best sort of women _never_ wanted it.'
+
+'The kind of women in the past who cared to be associated with this
+reform--they were women like Florence Nightingale, and Harriet
+Martineau, and Josephine Butler, and the two thousand other women of
+influence who memorialized Mr. Gladstone.'
+
+Something was called out that Vida could not hear, but that brought the
+painful scarlet into the young face.
+
+'Shame! shame!' Some of the men were denouncing the interjection.
+
+After a little pause the girl found her voice. 'You make it difficult
+for me to tell you what I think you ought to know. I don't believe I
+could go on if I didn't see over there the Reformer's Tree. It makes me
+think of how much had to be borne before other changes could be brought
+about.' She reminded the people of what had been said and suffered on
+that very spot in the past, before the men standing before her had got
+the liberties they enjoyed to-day.
+
+'They were _men_!'
+
+'Yes, and so perhaps it wasn't so hard for them. I don't know, and I'm
+sure it was hard enough. When we women remember what _they
+suffered_--though you think meanly of us because we can't be soldiers,
+you may as well know we are ready to do whatever has to be done--we are
+ready to bear whatever has to be borne. There seem to be things harder
+to face than bullets, but it doesn't matter, they'll be faced.'
+
+The lady standing with her maid in the incongruous crowd, looked round
+once or twice with eyes that seemed to say, 'How much stranger life is
+than we are half the time aware, and how much stranger it bids fair to
+be!' The rude platform with the scarlet backing flaming in the face of
+the glorious summer afternoon, near the very spot upon which the great
+battles for Reform had been fought out in the past, and in place of
+England's sturdy freeman making his historic appeal for justice, and
+admission to the Commons--a girl pouring out this stream of vigorous
+English, upholding the cause her family had stood for. Her voice failed
+her a little towards the close, or rather it did not so much fail as
+betray to any sensitive listener the degree of strain she put upon it to
+make it carry above laughter and interjection. As she raised the note
+she bent over the crowd, leaning forward, with her neck outstretched,
+the cords in it swelling, and the heat of the sun bringing a flush and a
+moisture to her face, steadying her voice as the thought of the struggle
+to come, shook and clouded it, and calling on the people to judge of
+this matter without prejudice. It was a thing to live in the memory--the
+vision of that earnest child trying to fire the London louts with the
+great names of the past, and failing to see her bite her lip to keep
+back tears, and, bending over the rabble, find a choked voice to say--
+
+'If your forefathers and foremothers who suffered for the freedom you
+young men enjoy--if they could come out of their graves to-day and see
+how their descendants use the great privileges they won--I believe they
+would go back into their graves and pull the shrouds over their eyes to
+hide them from your shame!'
+
+'Hear! Hear!' 'Right you are.'
+
+But she was done. She turned away, and found friendly hands stretched
+out to draw her to a seat.
+
+The next speaker was an alert little woman with a provincial accent and
+the briskness of a cock-sparrow, whose prettiness, combined with
+pertness, rather demoralized the mob.
+
+'Men and women,' she began, pitching her rather thin voice several notes
+too high.
+
+'Men and women!' some one piped in mimicry; and the crowd dissolved in
+laughter.
+
+It was curious to note again how that occasional exaggerated shrillness
+of the feminine voice when raised in the open air--how it amused the
+mob. They imitated the falsetto with squeals of delight. Each time she
+began afresh she was met by the shrill echo of her own voice. The
+contest went on for several minutes. The spectacle of the agitated
+little figure, bobbing and gesticulating and nothing heard but shrill
+squeaks, raised a very pandemonium of merriment. It didn't mend matters
+for her to say when she did get a hearing--
+
+'I've come all the way from----' (place indistinguishable in the
+confusion) 'to talk to you this afternoon----'
+
+''ow kind!'
+
+'Do you reely think they could spare you?'
+
+'And I'm going to convert every man within reach of my voice.'
+
+Groans, and 'Hear! Hear!'
+
+'Let's see you try!'
+
+She talked on quite inaudibly for the most part. A phrase here and there
+came out, and the rest lost. So much hilarity in the crowd attracted to
+it a bibulous gentleman, who kept calling out, 'Oh, the pretty dear!' to
+the rapture of the bystanders. He became so elevated that the police
+were obliged to remove him. When the excitement attending this passage
+had calmed down, the reformer was perceived to be still piping away.
+
+''ow long are you goin' on like this?'
+
+'Ain't you _never_ goin' to stop?'
+
+'Oh, not for a long time,' she shrilled cheerfully. 'I've got the
+accumulations of _centuries_ on me, and I'm only just beginning to
+unload! Although we haven't got the vote--_not yet_--never mind, we've
+got our tongues!'
+
+'Lord, don't we know it!' said a sad-faced gentleman, in a rusty topper.
+
+'This one's too intolerable,' said a man to his companion.
+
+'Yes; she ought to be smacked.'
+
+They melted out of the crowd.
+
+'We've got our tongues, and I've been going round among all the women I
+know getting them to promise to _use_ their tongues----'
+
+'You stand up there and tell us they needed _urgin'_?'
+
+'To use their tongues to such purpose that it won't be women, but _men_,
+who get up the next monster petition to Parliament asking for Woman's
+Suffrage.'
+
+She went down under a flood of jeers, and rose to the surface again to
+say--
+
+'A man's petition, praying Parliament for goodness' sake give those
+women the vote! Yes, you'd better be seeing about that petition, my
+friends, for I tell you there isn't going to be any peace till we get
+the franchise.'
+
+'Aw now, they'd give _you_ anything!'
+
+When the jeering had died a little, and she came to the top once more,
+she was discovered to be shouting--
+
+'You men 'ad just better keep an eye on us----'
+
+'Can't take our eyes off yer!'
+
+'We Suffragettes _never_ have a Day of Rest! Every day in the week,
+while you men are at work or sitting in the public-house, we are
+visiting the women in their homes, explaining and stirring them up to a
+sense of their wrongs.'
+
+'This I should call an example of what _not_ to say!' remarked a
+shrewd-looking man with a grin.
+
+The crowd were ragging the speaker again, while she shouted--
+
+'We are going to effect such a revolution as the world has never seen!'
+
+'I'd like to bash her head for her!'
+
+'We let them know that so long as women have no citizenship they are
+outside the pale of the law. If we are outside the law, we can't _break_
+the law. It is not our fault that we're outlaws. It is you men's fault.'
+
+'Don't say that,' said a voice in mock agony. 'I love you so.'
+
+'I know you can't help it,' she retorted.
+
+'If we gave you the vote, what would you do with it? Put it in a pie?'
+
+'Well, I wouldn't make the _hash_ of it you men do!' and she turned the
+laugh. 'Look at you! _Look_ at you!' she said, when quiet was restored.
+
+The young revellers gave a rather blank snigger, as though they had all
+along supposed looking at them to be an exhilarating occupation for any
+young woman.
+
+'What do you do with your power? You throw it away. You submit to being
+taxed and to _our_ being taxed to the tune of a hundred and twenty-seven
+millions, that a war may be carried on in South Africa--a war that most
+of you know nothing about and care nothing about--a war that some of us
+knew only too much about, and wanted only to see abandoned. We see
+constantly how you men either misuse the power you have or you don't use
+it at all. Don't appreciate it. Don't know what to do with it. Haven't a
+notion you ought to be turning it into good for the world. Hundreds of
+men don't care anything about political influence, except that women
+shouldn't have it.'
+
+She was getting on better till some one called out, 'You ought to get
+married.'
+
+'I'm going to. If you don't be good you won't be asked to the wedding.'
+
+Before the temptation of a retort she had dropped her argument and
+encouraged personalities. In vain she tried to recover that thread of
+attention which, not her interrupter, but herself had snapped. She
+retired in the midst of uproar.
+
+The chairman came forward and berated the crowd for its un-English
+behaviour in not giving a speaker a fair hearing.
+
+A man held up a walking-stick. 'Will you just tell me one thing,
+miss----'
+
+'Not now. When the last speaker has finished there will be ten minutes
+for questions. And I may say that it is a great and rare pleasure to
+have any that are intelligent. Don't waste anything so precious. Just
+save it up till you're asked for it. I want you now to give a fair
+hearing to Mrs. Bewley.'
+
+This was a wizened creature of about fifty, in rusty black, widow of a
+stonemason and mother of four children--'four _livin'_,' she said with
+some significance. She added her mite of testimony to that of the 96,000
+organized women of the mills, that the workers in her way of life
+realized how their condition and that of the children would be improved
+'if the women 'ad some say in things.'
+
+'It's quite certain,' she assured the people, 'there ought to be women
+relief-officers and matrons in the prisons. And it's very 'ard on women
+that there isn't the same cheap lodgin'-'ouse accommodation fur single
+women as there is fur single men. It's very 'ard on poor girls. It's
+worse than 'ard. But men won't never change that. We women 'as got to do
+it.'
+
+'Go 'ome and get your 'usban's tea!' said a new-comer, squeezing her way
+into the tight-packed throng, a queer little woman about the same age as
+the speaker, but dressed in purple silk and velvet, and wearing a
+wonderful purple plush hat on a wig of sandy curls. She might have been
+a prosperous milliner from the Commercial Road, and she had a meek man
+along who wore the husband's air of depressed responsibility. She was
+spared the humiliating knowledge, but she was taken at first for a
+sympathizer with the Cause. In manners she was precisely like what the
+Suffragette was at that time expected to be, pushing her way through the
+crowd, and vociferating 'Shyme!' to all and sundry. The men who had been
+pleasantly occupied in boo-ing the speaker turned and glared at her. The
+hang-dog husband had an air of not observing. Some of the boys pushed
+and harried her, but, to their obvious surprise, they heard her advising
+the rusty widow: 'Go 'ome and get your 'usban's tea!' She varied that
+advice by repeating her favourite 'Shyme!' varied by 'Wot
+beayviour!--old enough to know better. Every good wife oughter stay at
+'ome and darn 'er 'usban's socks and make 'im comftubble.'
+
+After delivering which womanly sentiment she would nod her purple
+plumes and smile at the men. It was the sorriest travesty of similar
+scenes in a politer world. To the credit of the loafers about her, they
+did not greatly encourage her. She was perhaps overmature for her
+_role_. But they ceased to jostle her. They even allowed her to get in
+front of them. The tall, rusty woman in the cart was meanwhile telling a
+story of personal experience of the operation of some law which shut out
+from any share in the benefits of the new Act which regulates the
+feeding of school children, the very people most in need of it. For it
+appeared that orphans and the children of widows were excluded. The Bill
+provided only for children living under their father's roof. If the roof
+was kept over them by the shackled hands of the mother, according to the
+speaker, they might go hungry.
+
+'No, no,' Miss Levering shook her head, explaining to her maid. 'I don't
+doubt the poor soul has had some difficulty, some hard experience, but
+she can't be quoting the law correctly.'
+
+Nevertheless, in the halting words of the woman who had suffered, if
+only from misapprehension upon so grave a point, there was a rude
+eloquence that overbore the lady's incredulity. The crowd hissed such
+gross unfairness.
+
+'If women 'ad 'ave made the laws, do you think we'd 'ave 'ad one like
+that disgracin' the statue-book? No! And in all sorts o' ways it looks
+like the law seems to think a child's got only one parent. I'd like to
+tell them gentlemen that makes the laws that (it may be different in
+their world, I only speak for my little corner of it)--but in 'Ackney it
+looks like when a child's got only one parent, that one is the mother.'
+
+'Sy, let up, old gal! there's some o' them young ones ain't 'ad a show
+yet.'
+
+'About time you had a rest, mother!'
+
+'If the mother dies,' she was saying, 'wot 'appens?'
+
+'Let's 'ope she goes to heaven.'
+
+'Wot 'appens to the pore little 'ome w'en the mother dies? Why, the pore
+little home is sold up, and the children's scattered among relations, or
+sent out so young to work it makes yer 'art ache. But if a man dies--you
+see it on every side, _in 'Ackney_--the widow takes in sewin', or goes
+out charin', or does other people's washin' as well as 'er own, or she
+mykes boxes--_something_ er ruther, any'ow, that makes it possible fur
+'er to keep 'er 'ome together. You don't see the mother scatterin' the
+little family w'en the only parent the law seems to reconize is dead and
+gone. I say----'
+
+'You've a been sayin' it for a good while. You must be needin' a cup o'
+tea yerself.'
+
+'In India I'm told they burn the widows. In England they do worse than
+that. They keep them _half_ alive.'
+
+The crowd rose to that, with the pinched proof before their eyes.
+
+'Just enough alive to suffer through their children. And so the workin'
+women round about where I live--that's 'Ackney--they say if we ain't
+'eathins in this country let's give up 'eathin ways. Let the mothers o'
+this country 'ave their 'ands untied. We're willin' to work for our
+children, but it breaks our 'earts to work without tools. The tool we're
+needin' is the tool that mends the laws. I 'ave pleasure in secondin'
+the resolution.'
+
+With nervously twitching lips the woman sat down. They cheered her
+lustily--a little out of sympathy, a good deal from relief that she had
+finished, and a very different sort of person was being introduced by
+the chairman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+'I will now call upon the last speaker. Yes, I will answer any general
+questions _after_ Miss Ernestine Blunt has spoken.'
+
+'Oh, I sy!'
+
+''Ere's Miss Blunt.'
+
+'Not that little one?'
+
+'Yes. This is the one I was tellin' you about.'
+
+People pushed and craned their necks, the crowd swayed as the other one
+of the two youngest 'Suffragettes' came forward. She had been sitting
+very quietly in her corner of the cart, looking the least concerned
+person in Hyde Park. Almost dull the round rather pouting face with the
+vivid scarlet lips; almost sleepy the heavy-lidded eyes. But when she
+had taken the speaker's post above the crowd, the onlooker wondered why
+he had not noticed her before.
+
+It seemed probable that all save those quite new to the scene had been
+keeping an eye on this person, who, despite her childish look, was
+plainly no new recruit. Her self-possession demonstrated that as
+abundantly as the reception she got--the vigorous hoots and hoorays in
+the midst of clapping and cries--
+
+'Does your mother know you're out?'
+
+'Go 'ome and darn your stockens.'
+
+'Hurrah!'
+
+'You're a disgryce!'
+
+'I bet on little Blunt!'
+
+'Boo!'
+
+Even in that portion of the crowd that did not relieve its feelings by
+either talking or shouting, there was observable the indefinable
+something that says, 'Now the real fun's going to begin.' You see the
+same sort of manifestation in the playhouse when the favourite comedian
+makes his entrance. He may have come on quite soberly only to say, 'Tea
+is ready,' but the grin on the face of the public is as ready as the
+tea. The people sit forward on the edge of their seats, and the whole
+atmosphere of the theatre undergoes some subtle change. So it was here.
+
+And yet in this young woman was the most complete lack of any dependence
+upon 'wiles' that platform ever saw. Her little off-hand manner seemed
+to say, 'Don't expect me to encourage you in any nonsense, and, above
+all, don't dare to presume upon my youth.'
+
+She began by calling on the Government to save the need of further
+demonstration by giving the women of the country some speedy measure of
+justice. 'They'll have to give it to us in the end. They might just as
+well do it gracefully and at once as do it grudgingly and after more
+"scenes."' Whereupon loud booing testified to the audience's horror of
+anything approaching unruly behaviour. 'Oh, yes, you are scandalized at
+the trouble we make. But--I'll tell you a secret'--she paused and
+collected every eye and ear--'_we've only just begun_! You'd be simply
+_staggered_ if you knew what the Government still has to expect from us,
+if they don't give us what we're asking for.'
+
+'Oh, ain't she just _awful_!' sniggered a girl with dyed hair and
+gorgeous jewelry.
+
+The men laughed and shook their heads. She just was! They crowded
+nearer.
+
+'You'd better take care! There's a policeman with 'is eye on you.'
+
+'It's on you, my friends, he's got his eye. You saw a little while ago
+how they had to take away somebody for disturbing our meeting. It wasn't
+a woman.'
+
+'Hear, hear!'
+
+'The police are our friends, when the Government allows them to be. The
+other day when there was that scene in the House, one of the policemen
+who was sent up to clear the gallery said he wished the members would
+come and do their own dirty work. They hate molesting us. We don't blame
+the police. We put the blame where it belongs--on the Liberal
+Government.'
+
+'Pore old Gov'mint--gettin' it 'ot.'
+
+'Hooray fur the Gov'mint!'
+
+'We see at last--it's taken us a long time, but we see at last--women
+get nothing even from their professed political friends, they've
+nothing whatever to expect by waiting and being what's called
+"ladylike."'
+
+'Shame!'
+
+'We don't want to depreciate the work of preparation the older, the
+"ladylike," Suffrage women did, but we came at last to see that all that
+was possible to accomplish that way had been done. The Cause hadn't
+moved an inch for years. It was even doing the other thing. Yes, it was
+going backward. Even the miserable little pettifogging share women had
+had in Urban and Borough Councils--even that they were deprived of. And
+they were tamely submitting! Women who had been splendid workers ten
+years ago, women with the best capacities for public service, had fallen
+into a kind of apathy. They were utterly disheartened. Many had given up
+the struggle. That was the state of affairs with regard to Woman's
+Suffrage only a few short months ago. We looked at the Suffragists who
+had grown grey in petitioning Parliament and being constitutional and
+"ladylike," and we said, "_That's no good._"'
+
+Through roars of laughter and indistinguishable denunciation certain
+fragments rose clear--
+
+'So you tried being a public nuisance!'
+
+'A laughing-stock!'
+
+'When we got to the place where we were a public laughing-stock we knew
+we were getting on.' The audience screamed. '_We began to feel
+encouraged!_' A very hurricane swept the crowd. Perhaps it was chiefly
+at the gleam of eye and funny little wag of the head with the big
+floppity hat that made the people roar with delight. 'Yes; when things
+got to that point even the worst old fogey in the Cabinet----'
+
+'Name! Name!'
+
+'No, we are merciful. We withhold the name!' She smiled significantly,
+while the crowd yelled. 'Even the very fogeyest of them all you'd think
+might have rubbed his eyes and said, "Everybody's laughing at them--why,
+there must be something serious at the bottom of this!" But no; the
+members of the present Government _never_ rub their eyes.'
+
+'If you mean the Prime Minister----'
+
+'Hooray for the----'
+
+Through the cheering you heard Ernestine saying, 'No, I _didn't_ mean
+the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, between you and me, is as good a
+Suffragist as any of us. Only he----well, he likes his comfort, does the
+Prime Minister!'
+
+When Ernestine looked like that the crowd roared with laughter. Yet it
+was impossible not to feel that when she herself smiled it was because
+she couldn't help it, and not, singularly enough, because of any
+dependence she placed upon the value of dimples as an asset of
+persuasion. What she seemed to be after was to stir these people up. It
+could not be denied that she knew how to do it, any more than it could
+be doubted that she was ignorant of how large a part in her success was
+played by a peculiarly amusing and provocative personality. Always she
+was the first to be grave again.
+
+'Now if you noisy young men can manage to keep quiet for a minute, I'll
+tell you a little about our tactics,' she said obligingly.
+
+'We know! Breakin' up meetings!'
+
+'_Rotten_ tactics!'
+
+'That only shows you don't understand them yet. Now I'll explain to
+you.'
+
+A little wind had sprung up and ruffled her hair. It blew open her long
+plain coat. It even threatened to carry away her foolish flapping hat.
+She held it on at critical moments, and tilted her delicate little
+Greuze-like face at a bewitching angle, and all the while that she was
+looking so fetching, she was briskly trouncing by turns the Liberal
+party and the delighted crowd. The man of the long moustachios, who had
+been swept to the other side of the monument, returned to his old
+inquiry with mounting cheer--
+
+'Are we down'earted? _Oh_, no!'
+
+'Pore man! 'Ave a little pity on us, miss!'
+
+There were others who edged nearer, narrowing their eyes and squaring
+their shoulders as much as to say, 'Now we'll just trip her up at the
+first opportunity.'
+
+'That's a very black cloud, miss,' Gorringe had whispered several
+minutes before a big raindrop had fallen on the lady's upturned face.
+
+As Gorringe seemed to be the only one who had observed the overclouding
+of the sky, so she seemed to be the only one to think it mattered much.
+But one by one, like some species of enormous black 'four-o-clocks,'
+umbrellas blossomed above the undergrowth at the foot of the monument.
+The lady of the purple plumes had long vanished. A few others moved off,
+head turned over shoulder, as if doubtful of the policy of leaving while
+Ernestine was explaining things. The great majority turned up their coat
+collars and stood their ground. The maid hurriedly produced an umbrella
+and held it over the lady.
+
+''Igher up, please, miss! Caun't see,' said a youth behind.
+
+Nothing cloudy about Ernestine's policy: Independence of all parties,
+and organized opposition to whatever Government was in power, until
+something was done to prove it that friend to women it pretended to be.
+
+'We are tired of being lied to and cheated. There isn't a man in the
+world whose promise at election time I would trust!'
+
+It struck some common chord in the gathering. They roared with
+appreciation, partly to hear that baby saying it.
+
+'No, not one!' she repeated stoutly, taking the raindrops in her face,
+while the risen wind tugged at her wide hat. 'They'll promise us heaven,
+and earth, and the moon, and the stars, just to get our help. Oh, we are
+old hands at it now, and we can see through the game!'
+
+'Old 'and _she_ is! Ha! ha! Old 'and!'
+
+'Do they let you sit up for supper?'
+
+'We are going to every contested election from this on.'
+
+'Lord, yes! Rain or shine _they_ don't mind!'
+
+'They'll find they'll always have us to reckon with. And we aren't _the
+least bit_ impressed any more, when a candidate tells us he's in favour
+of Woman's Suffrage. We say, "Oh, we've got four hundred and twenty of
+your kind already!"'
+
+'Oh! oh!'
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+'Oo did you say that to?'
+
+By name she held up to scorn the candidates who had given every reason
+for the general belief that they were indifferent, if not opposed, to
+Woman's Suffrage till the moment came for contesting a seat.
+
+'Then when they find us there (we hear it keeps them awake at night,
+thinking we always _will_ be there in future!)--when they find us there,
+they hold up their little white flags. Yes. And they say, "Oh, but I'm
+in favour of Votes for Women!" We just smile.'
+
+The damp gathering in front of her hallooed.
+
+'Yes. And when they protest what splendid friends of the Suffrage they
+are, we say, "You don't care twopence about it. You are like the humbugs
+who are there in the House of Commons already."'
+
+'Humbugs!'
+
+'Calls 'em 'umbugs to their fyces! Haw! haw!'
+
+Roars and booing filled the air.
+
+'We know, for many of us helped to put them there. But that was before
+we knew any better. _Never again!_'
+
+Once more that wise little wag of the head, while the people shrieked
+with laughter. It was highly refreshing to think those Government blokes
+couldn't take in Ernestine.
+
+'It's only the very young or the very foolish who will ever be caught
+that way again,' she assured them.
+
+''Ow old are you?'
+
+'Much too old to----'
+
+'Just the right age to think about gettin' married,' shouted a
+pasty-faced youth.
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+Then a very penetrating voice screamed, 'Will you be mine?' and that
+started off several others. Though the interruptions did not anger nor
+in the least discompose this surprising young person in the cart--so far
+at least as could be seen--the audience looked in vain for her to give
+the notice to these that she had to other interruptions. It began to be
+plain that, ready as she was to take 'a straight ball' from anybody in
+the crowd, she discouraged impertinence by dint of an invincible
+deafness. If you wanted to get a rise out of Ernestine you had to talk
+about her 'bloomin' policy.' No hint in her of the cheap smartness that
+had wrecked the other speaker. In that highly original place for such
+manifestation, Ernestine offered all unconsciously a new lesson of the
+moral value that may lie in good-breeding. She won the loutish crowd to
+listen to her on her own terms.
+
+'Both parties,' she was saying, 'have been glad enough to use women's
+help to get candidates elected. We've been quite intelligent enough to
+canvass for them; we were intelligent enough to explain to the ignorant
+men----' She acknowledged the groans by saying, 'Of course there are
+none of that sort here, but elsewhere there are such things as ignorant
+men, and women by dozens and by scores are sent about to explain to them
+why they should vote this way or that. But as the chairman told you, any
+woman who does that kind of thing in the future is a very poor creature.
+She deserves no sympathy when her candidate forgets his pledge and
+sneers at Womanhood in the House. If we put ourselves under men's feet
+we must _expect_ to be trodden on. We've come to think it's time women
+should give up the door-mat attitude. That's why we've determined on a
+policy of independence. We see how well independence has worked for the
+Irish party--we see what a power in the House even the little Labour
+party is, with only thirty members. Some say those thirty Labour members
+lead the great Liberal majority by the nose----'
+
+'Hear! hear!'
+
+'Rot!'
+
+They began to cheer Lothian Scott. Some one tossed Mr. Chamberlain's
+name into the air. Like a paper balloon it was kept afloat by vigorous
+puffings of the human breath. ''Ray fur Joe!' 'Three cheers for
+Joe!'--and it looked as if Ernestine had lost them.
+
+'Listen!' She held out her hands for silence, but the tumult only grew.
+'Just a moment. I want to tell you men--here's a friend of yours--he's a
+new-comer, but he looks just your kind! Give him a hearing.' She
+strained her voice to overtop the din. 'He's a _Liberal_.'
+
+'Hooray!'
+
+'Yes, I thought you'd listen to a Liberal. He's asking that old
+question, Why did we wait till the Liberals came in? Why didn't we worry
+the Conservatives when they were in power? The answer to that is that
+the Woman's Suffrage cause was then still in the stage of mild
+constitutional propaganda. Women were still occupied in being ladylike
+and trying to get justice by deserving it. Now wait a moment.' She
+stemmed another torrent. 'Be quiet, while I tell you something. You men
+have taught us that women can get a great deal by coaxing, often far
+more than we deserve! But justice isn't one of the things that's ever
+got that way. Justice has to be fought for. Justice has to be won.'
+
+Howls and uproar.
+
+'You men----' (it began to be apparent that whenever the roaring got so
+loud that it threatened to drown her, she said, 'You men--' very loud,
+and then gave her voice a rest while the din died down that they might
+hear what else the irrepressible Ernestine had to say upon that
+absorbing topic). 'You men discovered years ago that you weren't going
+to get justice just by deserving it, or even by being men, so when you
+got tired of asking politely for the franchise, you took to smashing
+windows and burning down Custom Houses, and overturning Bishops'
+carriages; while _we_, why, we haven't so much as upset a curate off a
+bicycle!'
+
+Others might laugh, not Ernestine.
+
+'You men,' she went on, 'got up riots in the streets--_real_ riots where
+people lost their lives. It may have to come to that with us. But the
+Government may as well know that if women's political freedom has to be
+bought with blood, we can pay that price, too.'
+
+Above a volley of boos and groans she went on, 'But we are opposed to
+violence, and it will be our last resort. We are leaving none of the
+more civilized ways untried. We publish a great amount of literature--I
+hope you are all buying some of it--you can't understand our movement
+unless you do! We organize branch unions and we hire halls--we've got
+the Somerset Hall to-night, and we hope you'll all come and bring your
+friends. We have very interesting debates, and _we_ answer questions,
+politely!' she made her point to laughter. 'We don't leave any stone
+unturned. Because there are people who don't buy our literature, and who
+don't realize how interesting the Somerset Hall debates are, we go into
+the public places where the idle and the foolish, _like that man just
+over there!_--where they may point and laugh and make their poor little
+jokes. But let me tell you we never hold a meeting where we don't win
+friends to our cause. A lot of you who are jeering and interrupting now
+are going to be among our best friends. _All_ the intelligent ones are
+going to be on our side.'
+
+Above the laughter, a rich groggy voice was heard, 'Them that's against
+yer are all drunk, miss' (hiccup). 'D--don't mind 'em!'
+
+Ernestine just gave them time to appreciate that, and then went on--
+
+'Men and women were never meant to fight except side by side. You've
+been told by one of the other speakers how the men suffer by the women
+more and more underselling them in the Labour market----'
+
+'Don't need no tellin'.'
+
+'Bloody black-legs!'
+
+'Do you know how that has come about? I'll tell you. It's come about
+through your keeping the women out of your Unions. You never would have
+done that if they'd had votes. You saw the important people ignored
+them. You thought it was safe for you to do the same. But I tell you it
+_isn't ever_ safe to ignore the women!'
+
+High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got
+to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won,
+you've got to bring the women into line.'
+
+'What's to become of chivalry?'
+
+'What _has_ become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have
+an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to
+puzzle out a conundrum.
+
+'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are
+working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same
+employers to live on six shillings a week? Perhaps I'm wrong in saying
+the men expect the women to live on that. It may be they _know_ that no
+girl can--it may be the men know how that struggle ends. But do they
+care? Do _they_ bother about chivalry? Yet they and all of you are
+dreadfully exercised for fear having a vote would unsex women. We are
+too delicate--women are such fragile flowers.' The little face was
+ablaze with scorn. 'I saw some of those fragile flowers last week--and
+I'll tell you where. Not a very good place for gardening. It was a back
+street in Liverpool. The "flowers"' (oh, the contempt with which she
+loaded the innocent word!)--'the flowers looked pretty dusty--but they
+weren't quite dead. I stood and looked at them! hundreds of worn women
+coming down steep stairs and pouring out into the street. What had they
+all been doing there in that--garden, I was going to say!--that big
+grimy building? They had been making cigars!--spending the best years of
+their lives, spending all their youth in that grim dirty street making
+cigars for men. Whose chivalry prevents that? Why were they coming out
+at that hour of the day? Because their poor little wages were going to
+be lowered, and with the courage of despair they were going on strike.
+No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible
+wage--(I want you to notice the low wage is the main consideration in
+all this)--men get these women, that they say are so tender and
+delicate, to undertake the almost intolerable toil of the rope-walk.
+They get women to make bricks. Girls are driven--when they are not
+driven to worse--they are driven to being lodging-house slaveys or
+over-worked scullions. _That's_ all right! Women are graciously
+permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they should be
+caring for their own babies. In Birmingham'--she raised the clear voice
+and bent her flushed face over the crowd--'in Birmingham those same
+"fragile flowers" make bicycles to keep alive! At Cradley Heath we make
+chains. At the pit brows we sort coal. But a vote would soil our hands!
+You may wear out women's lives in factories, you may sweat them in the
+slums, you may drive them to the streets. You _do_. But a vote would
+unsex them.'
+
+Her full throat choked. She pressed her clenched fist against her chest
+and seemed to admonish herself that emotion wasn't her line.
+
+'If you are intelligent you know as well as I do that women are
+exploited the length and the breadth of the land. And yet you come
+talking about chivalry! Now, I'll just tell you men something for your
+future guidance.' She leaned far out over the crowd and won a watchful
+silence. '_That talk about chivalry makes women sick._' In the midst of
+the roar, she cried, 'Yes, they mayn't always show it, for women have
+had to learn to conceal their deepest feelings, but depend on it that's
+how they feel.'
+
+Then, apparently thinking she'd been serious enough, 'There might be
+some sense in talking to us about chivalry if you paid our taxes for
+us,' she said; while the people recovered their spirits in roaring with
+delight at the coolness of that suggestion.
+
+'If you forgave us our crimes because we are women! If you gave
+annuities to the eighty-two women out of every hundred in this country
+who are slaving to earn their bread--many of them having to provide for
+their children; some of them having to feed sick husbands or old
+parents. But chivalry doesn't carry you men as far as that! No! No
+further than the door! You'll hold that open for a lady and then expect
+her to grovel before such an exhibition of _chivalry_! We don't need it,
+thank you! We can open doors for ourselves.'
+
+She had quite recovered her self-possession, and it looked, as she faced
+the wind and the raindrops, as if she were going to wind up in
+first-class fighting form. The umbrellas went down before a gleam of
+returning sun. An aged woman in rusty black, who late in the proceedings
+had timidly adventured a little way into the crowd, stood there lost and
+wondering. She had peered about during the last part of Miss Blunt's
+speech with faded incredulous eyes, listened to a sentence or two, and
+then, turning with a pathetic little nervous laugh of apology, consulted
+the faces of the Lords of Creation. When the speaker was warned that a
+policeman had his eye on her, the little old woman's instant solicitude
+showed that the dauntless Suffragist had both touched and frightened
+her. She craned forward with a fluttering anxiety till she could see for
+herself. Yes! A stern-looking policeman coming slow and majestic through
+the crowd. Was he going to hale the girl off to Holloway? No; he came to
+a standstill near some rowdy boys, and he stared straight before
+him--herculean, impassive, the very image of conscious authority.
+Whenever Ernestine said anything particularly dreadful, the old lady
+craned her neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine
+fell to drubbing the Government, the old lady, in her agitation greatly
+daring, squeezed up a little nearer as if half of a mind to try to
+placate that august image of the Power that was being flouted. But it
+ended only in trembling and furtive watching, till Ernestine's reckless
+scorn at the idea of chivalry moved the ancient dame faintly to admonish
+the girl, as a nurse might speak to a wilful child. 'Dear! _Dear!_'--and
+then furtively trying to soothe the great policeman she twittered at his
+elbow, 'No! No! she don't mean it!'
+
+When Ernestine declared that women could open doors for themselves, some
+one called out--
+
+'When do you expect to be a K.C.?'
+
+'Oh, quite soon,' she answered cheerfully, with her wind-blown hat
+rakishly over one ear, while the boys jeered.
+
+'Well,' said the policeman, 'she's pawsed 'er law examination!' As some
+of the rowdiest boys, naturally surprised at this interjection, looked
+round, he rubbed it in. 'Did better than the men,' he assured them.
+
+Was it possible that this dread myrmidon of the law was vaunting the
+prowess of the small rebel?
+
+Miss Levering moved nearer. 'Is that so? Did I understand you----'
+
+With a surly face he glanced round at her. Not for this lady's benefit
+had the admission been made.
+
+'So they say!' he observed, with an assumption of indifference, quite
+other than the tone in which he had betrayed where his sympathies, in
+spite of himself, really were. Well, well, there were all kinds, even of
+people who looked so much alike as policemen.
+
+Now the crowd, with him and Miss Levering as sole exceptions, were
+dissolved again in laughter. What had that girl been saying?
+
+'Yes, we're spectres at the Liberal feast; and we're becoming
+inconveniently numerous. We've got friends everywhere. Up and down the
+country we go organizing----'
+
+''Ow do you go--in a pram?' At which the crowd rocked with delight.
+
+The only person who hadn't heard the sally, you would say, was the
+orator. On she went--
+
+'Organizing branches and carrying forward the work of propaganda. You
+people in London stroll about with your hands in your pockets and your
+hats on the back of your heads, and with never a _notion_ of what's
+going on in the world that thinks and works. That's the world that's
+making the future. Some of you understand it so little you think all
+that we tell you is a joke--just as the governing class used to laugh at
+the idea of a Labour Party in conservative England. While those people
+were laughing, the Labour men were at work. They talked and wrote; they
+lectured, and printed, and distributed, and organized, and one fine day
+there was a General Election! To everybody's astonishment, thirty Labour
+men were returned to Parliament! Just that same sort of thing is going
+on now among women. We have our people at work everywhere. And let me
+tell you, the most wonderful part of it all is to discover how little
+teaching we have to do. How _ready_ the women are, all over the three
+kingdoms.'
+
+'Rot!'
+
+'The women are against it.'
+
+'Read the letters in the papers.'
+
+'Why don't more women come to hear you if they're so in favour?'
+
+'The converted don't need to come. It's you who need to come!' Above
+roars of derision: 'You felt that or, of course, you wouldn't be here.
+Men are so reasonable! As to the women who write letters to the papers
+to say they're against the Suffrage, they are very ignorant, those
+ladies, or else it may be they write their foolish letters to please
+their menfolk. Some of them, I know, think the end and aim of woman is
+to please. I don't blame them; it's the penalty of belonging to the
+parasite class. But those women are a poor little handful. They write
+letters to prove that they "don't count," and they _prove it_.' She
+waved them away with one slim hand. 'That's one reason we don't bother
+much with holding drawing-room meetings. The older Suffragists have been
+holding drawing-room meetings _for forty years_!' She brought it out to
+shouts. 'But we go to the mill gates! That's where we hold our meetings!
+We hold them at the pit-brow; we hold them everywhere that men and women
+are working and suffering and hoping for a better time.'
+
+With that Miss Ernestine sat down. They applauded her lustily; they
+revelled in laughing praise, yielding to a glow that they imagined to be
+pure magnanimity.
+
+'Are there any questions?' Miss Claxton, with her eyes still screwed up
+to meet the returning sun and the volley of interrogatory, appeared at
+the side of the cart. 'Now, one at a time, please. What? I can't hear
+when you all talk together. Write it down and hand it to me. Now, you
+people who are nearer--what? Very well! Here's a man who wants to know
+whether if women had the vote wouldn't it make dissension in the house,
+when husband and wife held different views?' She had smiled and nodded,
+as though in this question she welcomed an old friend, but instead of
+answering it she turned to the opposite side and looked out over the
+clamourers on the left. They were engaged for the most part in inquiring
+about her matrimonial prospects, and why she had carried that dog-whip.
+Something in her face made them fall silent, for it was both
+good-humoured and expectant, even intent. 'I'm waiting,' she said, after
+a little pause. 'At every meeting we hold there's usually another
+question put at the same time as that first one about the quarrels that
+will come of husbands and wives holding different opinions. As though
+the quarrelsome ones had been waiting for women's suffrage before they
+fell out! When the man on my right asks, "Wouldn't they quarrel?"
+there's almost always another man on my left who says, "If women were
+enfranchised we wouldn't be an inch forrader, because the wife would
+vote as her husband told her to. The man's vote would simply be
+duplicated, and things would be exactly as they were." Neither objector
+seems to see that the one scruple cancels the other. But to the question
+put this afternoon, I'll just say this.' She bent forward, and she held
+up her hand. 'To the end of time there'll be people who won't rest till
+they've found something to quarrel about. And to the end of time
+there'll be wives who follow blindly where their husbands lead. And to
+the end of time there'll be husbands who are influenced by their wives.
+What's more, all this has gone on ever since there were husbands, and it
+will go on as long as there are any left, and it's got no more to do
+with women's voting than it has with their making cream tarts. No, not
+half as much!' she laughed. 'Now, where's that question that you were
+going to write?'
+
+Some one handed up a wisp of white paper. Miss Claxton opened it, and
+upon the subject presented she embarked with the promising beginning,
+'Your economics are pretty wobbly, my friend,' and proceeded to clear
+the matter up and incidentally to flatten out the man. One wondered that
+under such auspices 'Question Time' was as popular as it obviously was.
+There is no doubt a fearful joy in adventuring yourself in certain
+danger before the public eye. Besides the excitement of taking a
+personal share in the game, there is always the hope that it may have
+been reserved to you to stump the speaker and to shine before the
+multitude.
+
+A gentleman who had vainly been trying to get her to hear him, again
+asked something in a hesitating way, stumbling and going back to recast
+the form of his question.
+
+He was evidently quite in earnest, but either unaccustomed to the sound
+of his own voice or unnerved to find himself bandying words in Hyde Park
+with a Suffragette. So when he stuck fast in the act of fashioning his
+phrases, Miss Claxton bent in the direction whence the voice issued, and
+said, briskly obliging--
+
+'You needn't go on. I know the rest. What this gentleman is trying to
+ask is----'
+
+And although no denial on his part reached the public ear, it was not
+hard to imagine him seething with indignation, down there helpless in
+his crowded corner, while the facile speaker propounded as well as
+demolished his objection to her and all her works.
+
+'Yes; one last question. Let us have it.'
+
+'How can you pretend that women want the vote? Why, there are hardly any
+here.'
+
+'More women would join us openly but for fear of their fellow-cowards.
+Thousands upon thousands of women feel a sympathy with this movement
+they dare not show.'
+
+'Lots of women don't want the vote.'
+
+'What women don't want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think
+because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought
+to like subservience, too? The very existence of a movement like this is
+a thorn in their sleek sides. We are a reproach and a menace to such
+women. But this isn't a movement to compel anybody to vote. It is to
+give the right to those who _do_ want it--to those signatories of the
+second largest petition ever laid on the table of the House of
+Commons--to the 96,000 textile workers--to the women who went last month
+in deputation to the Prime Minister, and who represented over half a
+million belonging to Trades Unions and organized societies. To--perhaps
+more than all, to the unorganized women, those whose voices are never
+heard in public. _They_, as Mrs. Bewley told you--they are beginning to
+want it. The women who are made to work over hours--_they_ want the
+vote. To compel them to work over hours is illegal. But who troubles to
+see that laws are fairly interpreted for the unrepresented? I know a
+factory where a notice went up yesterday to say that the women employed
+there will be required to work twelve hours a day for the next few
+weeks. Instead of starting at eight, they must begin at six, and work
+till seven. The hours in this particular case are illegal--as the
+employer will find out!' she threw in with a flash, and one saw by that
+illumination the avenue through which his enlightenment would come. 'But
+in many shops where women work, twelve hours a day is legal. Much of
+women's employment is absolutely unrestricted, except that they may not
+be worked on Sunday. And while all that is going on, comfortable
+gentlemen sit in armchairs and write alarmist articles about the falling
+birth-rate and the horrible amount of infant mortality. A Government
+calling itself Liberal goes pettifogging on about side issues, while
+women are debased and babies die. Here and there we find a man who
+realizes that the main concern of the State should be its children, and
+that you can't get worthy citizens where the mothers are sickly and
+enslaved. The question of statecraft, rightly considered, always reaches
+back to the mother. That State is most prosperous that most considers
+her. No State that forgets her can survive. The future is rooted in the
+well-being of women. If you rob the women, your children and your
+children's children pay. Men haven't realized it--your boasted logic has
+never yet reached so far. Of all the community, the women who give the
+next generation birth, and who form its character during the most
+impressionable years of its life--of all the community, these mothers
+now or mothers to be ought to be set free from the monstrous burden that
+lies on the shoulders of millions of women. Those of you who want to see
+women free, hold up your hands.'
+
+A strange, orchid-like growth sprang up in the air. Hands gloved and
+ungloved, hands of many shades and sizes, hands grimy and hands ringed.
+
+Something curious to the unaccustomed eye, these curling, clutching,
+digitated members raised above their usual range and common avocations,
+suddenly endowed with speech, and holding forth there in the silent
+upper air for the whole human economy.
+
+'Now, down.' The pallid growth vanished. 'Those against the freedom of
+women.' Again hands, hands. Far too many to suit the promoters of the
+meeting. But Miss Claxton announced, 'The ayes are in the majority. The
+meeting is with us.'
+
+'She can't even count!' The air was full of the taunting phrase--'Can't
+count!'
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Claxton, wheeling round again upon the people, as some
+of her companions began to get down out of the cart. 'Yes, she can
+count, and she can see when men don't play fair. Each one in that group
+held up _two_ hands when the last vote was taken.' She made a great deal
+of this incident, and elevated it into a principle. 'It is entirely
+characteristic of the means men will stoop to use in opposing the
+Women's Cause.'
+
+To hoots and groans and laughter the tam-o'-shanter disappeared.
+
+'Rank Socialists every one of 'em!' was one of the verdicts that flew
+about.
+
+'They ought _all_ to be locked up.'
+
+'A danger to the public peace.'
+
+A man circulating about on the edge of the crowd was calling out,
+''Andsome souvenir. Scented paper 'andkerchief! With full programme of
+Great Suffragette Meeting in 'Yde Park!'
+
+As the crowd thinned, some of the roughs pressing forward were trying to
+'rush' the speakers. The police hastened to the rescue. It looked as if
+there would be trouble. Vida and her maid escaped towards the Marble
+Arch.
+
+''Andsome scented 'andkerchief! Suffragette Programme!' The raucous
+voice followed them, and not the voice alone. Through the air was wafted
+the cheap and stifling scent of patchouli.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Jean Dunbarton received Mr. Geoffrey Stonor upon his entrance into Mrs.
+Freddy's drawing-room with a charming little air of fluttered
+responsibility.
+
+'Mrs. Freddy and I have been lunching with the Whyteleafes. She had to
+go afterwards to say good-bye to some people who are leaving for abroad.
+So Mrs. Freddy asked me to turn over my Girls' Club to your cousin
+Sophia----'
+
+'Are you given to good works, too?' he interrupted. 'What a terribly
+philanthropic age it is!'
+
+Jean smiled as she went on with her explanation. 'Although it wasn't her
+Sunday, Sophia, like an angel, has gone to the club. And I'm here to
+explain. Mrs. Freddy said if she wasn't back on the stroke----'
+
+'Oh, I dare say I'm a trifle early.'
+
+It was a theory that presented fewer difficulties than that he should be
+kept waiting.
+
+'I was to beg you to give her a few minutes' grace in any case.'
+
+Instead of finding a seat, he stood looking down at the charming face.
+His indifference to Mrs Freddy's precise programme lent his eyes a
+misleading look of absent-mindedness, which dashed the girl's obvious
+excitement over the encounter.
+
+'I see,' he had said slowly. What he saw was a graceful creature of
+medium height, with a clear colour and grey-blue eyes fixed on him with
+an interest as eager as it was frank. What the grey-blue eyes saw was
+probably some glorified version of Stonor's straight, firm features, a
+little blunt, which lacked that semblance of animation given by colour,
+and seemed to scorn to make up for it by any mobility of expression. The
+grey eyes, set somewhat too prominently, were heavy when not interested,
+and the claim to good looks which nobody had dreamed of denying seemed
+to rest mainly upon the lower part of his face. The lips, over-full,
+perhaps, were firmly moulded, but the best lines were those curves from
+the ear to the quite beautiful chin. The gloss on the straight
+light-brown hair may have stood to the barber's credit, but only health
+could keep so much grace still in the carriage of a figure heavier than
+should be in a man of forty--one who, without a struggle, had declined
+from polo unto golf. There was no denying that the old expression of
+incipient sullenness, fleeting or suppressed, was deepening into the
+main characteristic of his face, though it was held that he, as little
+as any man, had cause to present that aspect to a world content to be
+his oyster. Yet, as no doubt he had long ago learned, it was that very
+expression which was the cause of much of the general concern people
+seemed to feel to placate, to amuse, to dispel the menace of that cloud.
+The girl saw it, and her heart failed her.
+
+'Mrs. Freddy said if I told you the children were in the garden
+expecting you, you wouldn't have the heart to go away directly.'
+
+'She is right. I _haven't_ the heart.' And in that lifting of his cloud,
+the girl's own face shone an instant.
+
+'I should have felt it a terrible responsibility if you were to go.' She
+spoke as if the gladness that was not to be repressed called for some
+explanation. 'Mrs. Freddy says that she and Mr. Freddy see so little of
+you nowadays. That was why she made such a point of my coming and trying
+to--to----'
+
+'You needed a great deal of urging then?' He betrayed the half-amused,
+half-ironic surprise of the man accustomed to find people ready enough,
+as a rule, to clutch at excuse for a _tete-a-tete_. Although she had
+flushed with mingled embarrassment and excitement, he proceeded to
+increase her perturbation by suggesting, 'Mrs. Freddy had to overcome
+your dislike for the mission.'
+
+'Dislike? Oh, no!'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'My--well----' She lifted her eyes, and dared to look him full in the
+face as she said, 'I suppose you know you are rather alarming.'
+
+'Am I?' he smiled.
+
+People less interested in him than Jean were grateful to Geoffrey Stonor
+when he smiled. They felt relieved from some intangible responsibility
+for the order of the universe.
+
+The girl brightened wonderfully. 'Oh, yes, very alarming indeed,' she
+assured him cheerfully.
+
+'How do you make that out?'
+
+'I don't need to "make it out." It's so very plain.' Then a little
+hastily, as if afraid of having said something that sounded like impious
+fault-finding, 'Anybody's alarming who is so--so much talked about, and
+so--well, like you, you understand.'
+
+'I don't understand,' he objected mendaciously--'not a little bit.'
+
+'I think you must,' she said, with her candid air. 'Though I had made up
+my mind that I wouldn't be afraid of you any more since our week-end at
+Ulland.'
+
+'Ah, that's better!'
+
+There was nothing in the words, but in the gentleness with which he
+brought them out, so much that the girl turned her eyes away and played
+with the handle of her parasol.
+
+'Have you been reading any more poetry?' he said.
+
+'No.'
+
+'No? Why not?'
+
+She shook her head. 'It doesn't sound the same.'
+
+'What! I spoilt it for you?'
+
+She laughed, and again she shook her head, but with something shy,
+half-frightened in her look. Nervously she dashed at a diversion.
+
+'I'm afraid I was a little misleading about the children. They aren't in
+the garden yet. Shall we go up and see them having tea?'
+
+'Oh, no, it would be bad for their little digestions to hurry them.'
+
+He sat down. Her face gave him as much credit as though he had done some
+fine self-abnegating deed.
+
+They spoke of that Sunday walk in the valley below the Ulland links, and
+the crossing of a swollen little stream on a rotting and rickety log.
+
+'I _had_ to go,' she explained apologetically. 'Hermione had gone on and
+forgotten the puppy hadn't learnt to follow. I was afraid he'd lose
+himself.'
+
+'It _was_ a dangerous place to go across,' he said, as if to justify
+some past opinion.
+
+Her eyes were a little mischievous. 'I never thought _you'd_ come.'
+
+'Why?' he demanded.
+
+'Oh, because I thought you'd be too----' His slow look quickened as if
+to surprise in her some reflection upon his too solid flesh--or might it
+even be upon the weight of years? But the uncritical admiration in her
+face must have reassured him before the words, 'I thought you'd be too
+grand. It was delightful to find you weren't.'
+
+He kept his eyes on her. 'Are you always so happy?'
+
+'Oh, I hope not. That would be rather too inhuman, wouldn't it?'
+
+'Too celestial, perhaps!' He laughed--but he was looking into the blue
+of her eyes as if through them he too had caught a glimpse of Paradise.
+'I remember thinking at Ulland,' he said more slowly again, 'I had never
+seen any one quite so happy.'
+
+'I was happy at Ulland. But I'm not happy now.'
+
+'Then your looks belie you.'
+
+'No, I am very sad. I have to go away from this delightful London to
+Scotland. I shall be away for weeks. It's too dismal.'
+
+'Why do you go?'
+
+'My grandfather makes me. He hates London. And his dreary old house on a
+horrible windy hill--he simply loves that!'
+
+'And you don't love it _at all_. I see.' He seemed to be thinking out
+something.
+
+Compunction visited the face before him. 'I didn't mean to say I didn't
+love it _at all_. It's like those people you care to be with for a
+little while, but if you must go being with them for ever you come to
+hate them--almost.'
+
+They sat silent for a moment, then with slow reflectiveness, like one
+who thinks aloud, he said--
+
+'I have to go to Scotland next week.'
+
+'Do you! What part?'
+
+'I go to Inverness-shire.'
+
+'Why, that's where we are! Near----'
+
+'Why shouldn't I drop down upon you some day?'
+
+'Oh, _will_ you? That would be----' She seemed to save herself from some
+gulf of betrayal. 'There are walks about my grandfather's more beautiful
+than anything you ever saw--or perhaps I ought to say more beautiful
+than anything _I_ ever saw.'
+
+'Nicer walks than at Ulland?'
+
+'Oh, no comparison! One is a bridle-path all along a wonderful brown
+trout stream that goes racing down our hill. There's a moor on one side,
+and a wood on the other, and a peat bog at the bottom.'
+
+'We might perhaps stop short of the bog.'
+
+'Yes, we'd stop at old McTaggart's. He's the head-keeper and a real
+friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn't much else, so perhaps
+you'd prefer his wife.'
+
+'Why should I prefer his wife?'
+
+Jean's face was full of laughter. Stonor's plan of going to Scotland had
+singularly altered the character of that country. Its very inhabitants
+were now perceived to be enlivening even to talk about; to _know_--the
+gamekeeper's wife alone--would repay the journey thither.
+
+'I assure you Mrs. McTaggart is a travelled, experienced person.'
+
+He shook his head while he humoured her. 'I'm not sure travel or
+experience is what we chiefly prize--in ladies.'
+
+'Oh, isn't it? I didn't know, you see. I didn't know how dreadfully you
+might miss the terribly clever people you're accustomed to in London.'
+
+'It's because of the terribly clever people we are glad to go away.'
+
+He waxed so eloquent in his admiration of the womanly woman (who seemed
+by implication to have steered clear of Mrs. McTaggart's pitfalls), that
+Jean asked with dancing eyes--
+
+'Are you consoling me for not being clever?'
+
+'Are you sure you aren't?'
+
+'Oh, dear, yes. No possible shadow of doubt about it.'
+
+'Then,' he laughed, 'I'm coming to Inverness-shire! I'll even go so far
+as to call on the McTaggarts if you'll undertake that she won't instruct
+me about foreign lands.'
+
+'No such irrelevance! She'd tell you about London. She was here for six
+whole months. And she got something out of it I don't believe even you
+have. A Certificate of Merit.'
+
+'No. London certainly never gave me one.'
+
+'You see! Mrs. McTaggart lived the life of the Metropolis with such
+success that she passed an examination before she left. The subject was:
+"Incidents in the Life of Abraham." It says so on the certificate. She
+has it framed and hung in the parlour.'
+
+He smiled. 'I admit few can point to such fruits of Metropolitan
+Ausbildung. But I think I shall prefer the burnside--or even the bog.'
+
+'No; the moors. They're best of all.' She sat looking straight before
+her, with her heart's deep well overflowing at her eyes. As if she felt
+vaguely that some sober reason must be found for seeing those same moors
+in this glorified light all of a sudden, she went on, 'I'll show you a
+special place where white heather grows, and the rabbits tumble about as
+tame as kittens. It's miles away from the sea, but the gulls come
+sunning themselves and walking about like pigeons. I used to hide up
+there when I was little and naughty. Nobody ever found the place out
+except an old gaberlunzie, and I gave him tuppence not to tell.'
+
+'Yes, show me that place.' His face was wonderfully attractive so!
+
+'And we'll take The Earthly--William Morris--along, won't we?'
+
+'I thought you'd given up reading poetry.'
+
+'Yes--to myself. I used to think I knew about poetry, yes, better than
+anybody but the poets. There are people as arrogant as that.'
+
+'Why, it's worse than Mrs. McTaggart!'
+
+The girl was grave, even tremulous. 'But, no! I never had a notion of
+what poetry really was till down at Ulland you took my book away from
+me, and read aloud----'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Freddy let himself and Lord Borrodaile in at the front door so
+closely on the heels of Mrs. Freddy that the servant who had closed the
+door behind her had not yet vanished into the lower regions. At a word
+from that functionary, Mr. Freddy left his brother depositing hat and
+stick with the usual deliberation, and himself ran upstairs two steps at
+a time. He caught up with his wife just outside the drawing-room door,
+as she paused to take off her veil in front of that mirror which Mrs.
+Freddy said should be placed between the front door and the drawing-room
+in every house in the land for the reassurance of the timid feminine
+creature. She was known to add privately that it was not ignored by
+men--and that those who came often, contracted a habit of hurrying
+upstairs close at the servant's heels, in order to have two seconds to
+spare for furtive consultation, while he went on to open the
+drawing-room door. She had observed this pantomime more than once,
+leaning over the banisters, herself on the way downstairs.
+
+'They tell me Stonor's been here half an hour,' said Mr. Freddy,
+breathlessly. 'You're dreadfully late!'
+
+'No, darling----'
+
+He held out his watch to confound her. 'You tell me you aren't late?'
+
+'Sh--no. I do so sympathize with a girl who has no mother,' with which
+enigmatic rejoinder she pushed open the door, and went briskly through
+the double drawing-room to where Mr. Geoffrey Stonor and Jean Dunbarton
+were sitting by a window that overlooked the square.
+
+Stonor waved away Mrs. Freddy's shower of excuses, saying--
+
+'You've come just in time to save us from falling out. I've been telling
+Miss Dunbarton that in another age she would have been a sort of Dinah
+Morris, or more likely another St. Ursula with a train of seven thousand
+virgins.'
+
+'And all because I've told him about my Girls' Club! and----'
+
+'Yes,' he said, '"and"----' He turned away and shook hands with his two
+kinsmen. He sat talking to them with his back to the girl.
+
+It was a study in those delicate weights and measures that go to
+estimating the least tangible things in personality, to note how his
+action seemed not only to dim her vividness but actually to efface the
+girl. In the first moments she herself accepted it at that. Her looks
+said: He is not aware of me any more--ergo, I don't exist.
+
+During the slight distraction incident to the bringing in of tea, and
+Mr. Freddy's pushing up some of the big chairs, Mr. Stonor had a
+moment's remembrance of her. He spoke of his Scottish plans and fell to
+considering dates. Then all of a sudden she saw that again and yet more
+woundingly his attention had wandered. The moment came while Lord
+Borrodaile was busy Russianizing a cup of tea, and Mr. Freddy, balancing
+himself on very wide-apart legs in front of his wife's tea-table, had
+interrogated her--
+
+'What do you think, shall I ring and say we aren't at home?'
+
+'Perhaps it would be----' Mrs. Freddy's eye flying back from Stonor
+caught her brother-in-law's. 'Freddy'--she arrested her husband as he
+was making for the bell--'say, "except to Miss Levering."'
+
+'All right. Except to Miss Levering.' And it was at that point that Jean
+saw she wasn't being listened to.
+
+Even Mrs. Freddy, looking up, was conscious of something in Stonor's
+face that made her say--
+
+'Old Sir Hervey's youngest daughter. You knew _him_, I suppose, even if
+you haven't met her. Jean, you aren't giving Mr. Stonor anything to
+eat.'
+
+'No, no, thanks. I don't know why I took this.' He set down his tea-cup.
+'I never have tea.'
+
+'You're like everybody else,' said the girl, in a half-petulant aside.
+
+'Does nobody have tea?'
+
+She lowered her voice while the others discussed who had already been
+sent away, and who might still be expected to invade.
+
+'Nobody remembers anybody else when that Miss Levering of theirs is to
+the fore. You began to say when--to talk about Scotland.'
+
+He had taken out his watch. 'I was wondering if the children were down
+yet. Shall we go and see?'
+
+Jean jumped up with alacrity.
+
+'Sh!' Mrs. Freddy held up a finger and silenced her little circle. 'They
+must have thought I was ringing for toast--somebody's being let in!'
+
+'Let's hope it's Miss Levering,' said Mr. Freddy.
+
+'I must see those young barbarians of yours before I go,' said Stonor,
+rising with decision.
+
+The sound of voices on the stair was quite distinct now. By the time the
+servant had opened the door and announced: 'Mrs. Heriot, Miss Heriot,
+Captain Beeching,' Mr. Freddy, the usually gracious host, was leading
+the way through the back drawing-room, unblushingly abetting Mr.
+Stonor's escape under the very eyes of persons who would have gone miles
+on the chance of meeting him.
+
+Small wonder that Jean was consoled for knowing herself too shy to
+follow, if she remembered that he had actually asked her to do so! She
+showed no surprise at the tacit assumption on the part of his relations
+that Geoffrey Stonor could never be expected to sit there as common
+mortals might, making himself more or less agreeable to whoever might
+chance to drop in. Unless they were 'very special' of course he couldn't
+be expected to put up with them.
+
+But what on earth was happening! No wonder Mrs. Freddy looked aghast.
+For Mrs. Heriot had had the temerity to execute a short cut and waylay
+the escaping lion. 'Oh, how do you do?'--she thrust out a hand. And he
+went out as if she had been thin air! It was the kind of insolence that
+used to be more common, because safer, than it is likely to be in
+future--a form of condoned brutality that used to inspire more awe than
+disgust. People were guilty even of a slavish admiration of those who
+had the nerve to administer this wholly disproportionate reproof to the
+merely maladroit. It could be done only by one whom all the world had
+conspired to befog and befool about his importance in the scheme of
+things.
+
+Small wonder the girl, too, was bewildered. For no one seemed to dream
+of resenting what had occurred. The lesson conveyed appeared to be that
+the proper attitude to certain of your fellow-creatures was very much
+the traditional one towards royalty. You were not to speak unless you
+were spoken to. And yet this man who with impunity snubbed persons of
+consideration, was the same one who was coming to call on Sally
+McTaggart--he was going to walk the bridle-path along the burnside to
+the white heather haven.
+
+With the dazed look in her eyes, and cheeks scarlet with sympathy and
+confusion, the girl had run forward to greet her aunt, and to do her
+little share toward dissipating the awkward chill that had fallen on the
+company.
+
+After producing a stammered, 'Oh--a--I thought it was----' the immediate
+effect on Mrs. Heriot was to make her both furious and cowed. Though a
+nervous stream of talk trickled on, Mrs. Freddy's face did not lose its
+flustered look nor did the company regain its ease, until a further
+diversion was created by the appearance of Miss Levering with an alert,
+humorous-looking man of middle-age in her train.
+
+'Mr. Greatorex was passing just in time to help me out of my hansom,'
+was her greeting to Mrs. Freddy.
+
+'And I,' said the gentleman, 'insisted on being further rewarded by
+being brought in.'
+
+'_That_ is Miss Levering?' whispered Jean, partly to distract her aunt.
+
+'Yes; why not?' said Lord Borrodaile, overhearing.
+
+'Oh, I somehow imagined her different.'
+
+'She _is_ different,' said Aunt Lydia, with bitter gloom. 'You would
+never know in the least what she was like from the look of her.'
+
+Lord Borrodaile's eyes twinkled. 'Is that so?' he said, indulgent to a
+mood which hardly perhaps made for dispassionate appraisement.
+
+'You don't believe it!' said Mrs. Heriot. 'Of course not!'
+
+'I was only thinking what a fillip it gave acquaintance to be in doubt
+whether a person was a sinner or a saint.'
+
+'It wouldn't for me,' said Jean.
+
+'Oh, you see, you're so Scotch.'
+
+He was incorrigible!
+
+'I didn't hear, who is the man?' Jean asked, as those not knowing
+usually did.
+
+Although far from distinguished in appearance, Mr. Greatorex would have
+stood in no danger of being overlooked, even if he had not those
+twinkling jewel-like eyes, and two strands of coal-black hair trained
+across his large bumpy cranium, from the left ear to the right, and
+securely pasted there.
+
+'It's that wretched radical, St. John Greatorex.' Mrs. Heriot turned
+from her niece to Lord Borrodaile. 'What foundation is there,' she
+demanded, 'for the rumour that he tells such good stories at dinner? _I_
+never heard any.'
+
+'Ah, I believe he keeps them till the ladies have left the room.'
+
+'You don't like him, either,' said Mrs. Heriot, reaching out for the
+balm of alliance with Lord Borrodaile.
+
+But he held aloof. 'Oh, they say he has his points--a good judge of
+wine, and knows more about Parliamentary procedure than most of us.'
+
+'How you men stand up for one another! You know perfectly well you can't
+endure him.' Mrs. Heriot jerked her head away and faced the group round
+the tea-table. 'What is she saying? That she's been to a Suffrage
+meeting in Hyde Park!'
+
+'How could she! Nothing would induce me to go and listen to such
+people!' said Miss Dunbarton.
+
+Her eyes, as well as Mrs. Heriot's, were riveted on the tall figure,
+tea-cup in hand, moving away from the table now to make room for some
+new arrivals, and drawing after her a portion of the company, including
+Lady Whyteleafe and Richard Farnborough, who one after another had come
+in a few moments before. It was to the young man that Greatorex was
+saying, with a twinkle, 'I am sure Mr. Farnborough agrees with me.'
+
+Slightly self-conscious, he replied, 'About Miss Levering being
+too--a----'
+
+'For that sort of thing altogether "too."'
+
+'How do you know?' said the lady herself, with a teasing smile.
+
+Greatorex started out of the chair in which he had just deposited
+himself at her side. 'God bless my soul!' he said.
+
+'She's only saying that to get a rise out of you.' Farnborough seemed
+unable to bear the momentary shadow obscuring the lady's brightness.
+
+'Ah, yes'--Greatorex leaned back again--'your frocks aren't serious
+enough.'
+
+'Haven't I been telling you it's an exploded notion that the Suffrage
+people are all dowdy and dull?'
+
+'Pooh!' said Mr. Greatorex.
+
+'You talk about some of them being pretty,' Farnborough said. '_I_
+didn't see a good-looking one among 'em.'
+
+'Ah, you men are so unsophisticated; you missed the fine feathers.'
+
+'Plenty o' feathers on the one I heard.'
+
+'Yes, but not _fine_ feathers. A man judges of the general effect. We
+can, at a pinch, see past unbecoming clothes, can't we, Lady Whyteleafe?
+We see what women could make of themselves if they took the trouble.'
+
+'All the same,' said the lady appealed to, 'it's odd they don't see how
+much better policy it would be if they _did_ take a little trouble about
+their looks. Now, if we got our maids to do those women's hair for
+them--if we lent them our French hats--ah, _then_'--Lady Whyteleafe
+nodded till the pear-shaped pearls in her ears swung out like milk-white
+bells ringing an alarum--'they'd convert you creatures fast enough
+then.'
+
+'Perhaps "convert" is hardly the word,' said Vida, with ironic mouth. As
+though on an impulse, she bent forward to say, with her lips near Lady
+Whyteleafe's pearl drop: 'What if it's the aim of the movement to get
+away from the need of just these little dodges?'
+
+'Dodges?'
+
+But without the exclamation, Miss Levering must have seen that she had
+been speaking in an unknown tongue. A world where beauty exists for
+beauty's sake--which is love's sake--and not for tricking money or power
+out of men, even the possibility of such a world is beyond the imagining
+of many.
+
+Something was said about a deputation of women who had waited on Mr.
+Greatorex.
+
+'Hm, yes, yes.' He fiddled with his watch chain.
+
+As though she had just recalled the circumstances, 'Oh, yes,' Vida said,
+'I remember I thought at the time, in my modest way, it was nothing
+short of heroic of them to go asking audience of their arch opponent.'
+
+'It didn't come off!' He wagged his strange head.
+
+'Oh,' she said innocently, 'I thought they insisted on bearding the lion
+in his den.'
+
+'Of course I wasn't going to be bothered with a lot of----'
+
+'You don't mean you refused to go out and face them!'
+
+He put on a comic look of terror. 'I wouldn't have done it for worlds!
+But a friend of mine went and had a look at 'em.'
+
+'Well,' she laughed,'did he get back alive?'
+
+'Yes, but he advised me not to go. "You're quite right," he said. "Don't
+you think of bothering," he said. "I've looked over the lot," he said,
+"and there isn't a week-ender among 'em."'
+
+Upon the general laugh that drew Hermione and Captain Beeching into the
+group, Jean precipitated herself gaily into the conversation. 'Have they
+told you about Mrs. Freddy's friend who came to tea here in the winter?'
+she asked Hermione. 'He was a member of Parliament, too--quite a little
+young one--he said women would never be respected till they had the
+vote!'
+
+Mr. Greatorex snorted, the other men smiled, and all the women, except
+Aunt Lydia, did the same.
+
+'I remember telling him,' Mrs. Heriot said, with marked severity, 'that
+he was too young to know what he was talking about.'
+
+'Yes, I'm afraid you all sat on the poor gentleman,' said Lord
+Borrodaile.
+
+'It was such fun. He was flat as a pancake when we'd done with him. Aunt
+Ellen was here. She told him with her most distinguished air she didn't
+want to be respected.'
+
+'Dear Lady John!' murmured Miss Levering. 'I can hear her!'
+
+'Quite right,' said Captain Beeching. 'Awful idea to think you're
+_respected_.'
+
+'Simply revolting,' agreed Miss Heriot.
+
+'Poor little man!' laughed Jean, 'and he thought he was being _so_
+agreeable!'
+
+'Instead of which it was you.'
+
+Miss Levering said the curious words quite pleasantly, but so low that
+only Jean heard them.
+
+The girl looked up. 'Me?'
+
+'You had the satisfaction of knowing you had made yourself immensely
+popular with all other men.'
+
+The girl flushed. 'I hope you don't think I did it for that reason.'
+
+The little passage was unnoticed by the rest of the company, who were
+listening to Lord Borrodaile's contented pronouncement: 'I'm afraid the
+new-fangled seed falls on barren ground in our old-fashioned
+gardens--_pace_ my charming sister-in-law.'
+
+Greatorex turned sharply. 'Mrs. Tunbridge! God bless my soul, you don't
+mean----'
+
+'There is one thing I will say for her'--Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law
+lazily defended the honour of the house--'she doesn't, as a rule,
+obtrude her opinions. There are people who have known her for years, and
+haven't a notion she's a light among the misguided.'
+
+But Greatorex was not to be reassured. 'Mrs. Tunbridge! Lord, the perils
+that beset the feet of man!' He got up with a half-comic ill humour.
+
+'You're not going!' The hostess flitted over to remonstrate. 'I haven't
+had a word with you.'
+
+'Yes, yes; I'm going.'
+
+Mrs. Freddy looked bewildered at the general laugh.
+
+'He's heard aspersions cast upon your character,' said Lord Borrodaile.
+'His moral sense is shocked.'
+
+'Honestly, Mrs. Tunbridge'--Farnborough was for giving her a chance to
+clear herself--'what do you think of your friends' recent exploits?'
+
+'My friends?'
+
+'Yes; the disorderly women.'
+
+'They are not my friends,' said Mrs. Freddy, with dignity, 'but I don't
+think you must call them----'
+
+'Why not?' said Lord Borrodaile. '_I_ can forgive them for worrying the
+Liberals'--he threw a laughing glance at Greatorex--'but they _are_
+disorderly.'
+
+'Isn't the phrase consecrated to a different class?' said Miss Levering,
+quietly.
+
+'You're perfectly right.' Greatorex, for once, was at one with Lord
+Borrodaile. 'They've become nothing less than a public nuisance. Going
+about with dog-whips and spitting in policemen's faces.'
+
+'I wonder,' said Mrs. Freddy, with a harassed air--'I wonder if they did
+spit!'
+
+'Of course they did!' Greatorex exulted.
+
+'You're no authority on what they do,' said Mrs. Freddy. 'You run away.'
+
+'Run away?' He turned the laugh by precipitately backing away from her
+in a couple of agitated steps. 'Yes, and if ever I muster up courage to
+come back, it will be to vote for better manners in public life, not
+worse than we have already.'
+
+'So should I,' observed Mrs. Freddy, meekly. 'Don't think I defended the
+Suffragettes.'
+
+'But still,' said Miss Levering, with a faint accent of impatience, 'you
+_are_ an advocate for the Suffrage, aren't you?'
+
+'I don't beat the air.'
+
+'Only policemen,' Greatorex mocked.
+
+'If you cared to know the attitude of the real workers in the Reform,'
+Mrs. Freddy said plaintively, 'you might have seen in any paper that we
+lost no time in dissociating ourselves from the two or three
+hysterical----' She caught her brother-in-law's critical eye, and
+instantly checked her flow of words.
+
+There was a general movement as Greatorex made his good-byes. Mrs.
+Heriot signalled her daughter.
+
+In the absence of the master, Lord Borrodaile made ready to do the
+honours of the house to a lady who had had so little profit of her
+visit. Beeching carried off the reluctant Farnborough. Mrs. Freddy kept
+up her spirits until after the exodus; then, with a sigh, she sat down
+beside Vida. 'It's true what that old cynic says,' she admitted
+sorrowfully. 'The scene has put back the Reform a generation.'
+
+'It must have been awfully exciting. I wish I'd been there,' said Jean.
+
+'I _was_ there.'
+
+'Oh, was it as bad as the papers said?'
+
+'Worse. I've never been so moved in public--no tragedy, no great opera
+ever gripped an audience as the situation in the House did that night.
+There we all sat breathless--with everything more favourable to us than
+it had been within the memory of woman. Another five minutes and the
+resolution would have passed. Then--all in a moment'--Mrs. Freddy
+clasped her hands excitedly--'all in a moment a horrible, dingy little
+flag was poked through the grille of the Woman's Gallery--cries--insults--
+scuffling--the police--the ignominious turning out of the women--_us_ as
+well as the---- Oh, I can't _think_ of it without----' She jumped up and
+walked to and fro. 'Then the next morning!' She paused. 'The people
+gloating. Our friends antagonized--people who were wavering--nearly won
+over--all thrown back! Heart-breaking! Even my husband! Freddy's been an
+angel about letting me take my share when I felt I must--but, of course,
+I've always known he doesn't like it. It makes him shy. I'm sure it
+gives him a horrid twist inside when he sees even the discreetest little
+paragraph to say that I am "one of the speakers." But he's always been
+an angel about it before this. After the disgraceful scene, he said, "It
+just shows how unfit women are for any sort of coherent thinking or
+concerted action."'
+
+'To think,' said Jean, more sympathetically, 'that it should be women
+who've given their own scheme the worst blow it ever had!'
+
+'The work of forty years destroyed in five minutes!'
+
+'They must have felt pretty sick,' said the girl, 'when they waked up
+the next morning--those Suffragettes.'
+
+'I don't waste any sympathy on _them_. I'm thinking of the penalty _all_
+women have to pay because two or three hysterical----'
+
+'Still, I think I'm sorry for them,' the girl persisted. 'It must be
+dreadful to find you've done such a lot of harm to the thing you care
+most about in the world.'
+
+'Do you picture the Suffragettes sitting in sack-cloth?' said Vida,
+speaking at last.
+
+'Well, they can't help realizing _now_ what they've done.'
+
+'Isn't it just possible they realize they've waked up interest in the
+Woman Question so that it's advertised in every paper, and discussed
+under every roof, from Land's End to John-o'-Groats? Don't you think
+_they_ know there's been more said and written about it in these days
+since the scene than in the ten years before it!'
+
+'You aren't saying you think it was a good way to get what they wanted!'
+exclaimed Mrs. Freddy.
+
+'I'm only pointing out that it seems not such a bad way to get it known
+they _do_ want something, and--"want it bad,"' Vida added, smiling.
+
+Jean drew her low chair almost in front of the lady who had so wounded
+her sensibilities a little while before with that charge of
+popularity-hunting.
+
+'Mrs. Tunbridge says before that horrid scene everything was favourable
+at last,' the girl hazarded.
+
+'Yes,' said Mrs. Freddy, 'we never had so many friends in the House
+before----'
+
+'"Friends,"' echoed the other woman, with a faint smile.
+
+'Why do you say it like that?'
+
+'Because I was thinking of a funny story--(he _said_ it was funny)--a
+Liberal Whip told me the other day. A Radical member went out of the
+House after his speech in favour of the Women's Bill, and as he came
+back half an hour later he heard some members talking in the lobby about
+the astonishing number who were going to vote for the measure. And the
+Friend of Woman dropped his jaw and clutched the man next him. "My God!"
+he said, "you don't mean they're going to _give_ it to them!"'
+
+'Sh! Here is Ronald.' Mrs. Freddy's tact brought her smiling to her feet
+as the figure of her brother-in-law appeared in the doorway. But she
+turned her back on him and affected absorption in the tableau presented
+by Jean leaning forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand, gazing steadily in
+Vida Levering's face.
+
+'I don't want to interrupt you two,' said the hostess, 'but I think you
+must look at the pictures.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I brought them specially'--Lord Borrodaile deflected his
+course in order to take up from the table two squares of cardboard tied
+face to face with tape.
+
+'Bless the man!' Mrs. Freddy contemplated him with smiling affectation
+of scorn. 'I mean the new photographs of the children. He's thinking of
+some reproductions Herbert Tunbridge got while he was abroad--pictures
+of things somebody's unearthed in Sicily or Cyprus.'
+
+'Crete, my dear.' He turned his back on the fond mother and Jean who was
+already oh-ing with appreciation at the first of a pile of little Saras
+and Cecils. When he came back to his corner of the sofa he made no
+motion to undo his packet, but 'Now then!' he said, as he often did on
+sitting down beside Vida Levering--as though they had been interrupted
+on the verge of coming to an agreement about something.
+
+She, with an instinct of returning the ball, usually tossed at him some
+scrap of news or a jest, or some small social judgment. This time when
+he uttered his 'Now then,' with that anticipatory air, she answered
+instantly--'Yes; something rather odd has been happening. I've been
+seeing beyond my usual range.'
+
+'Really!' He smiled at her with a mixture of patronage and affection.
+'And did you find there was "something new under the sun" after all?'
+
+'Well, perhaps not so new, though it seemed new to me. But something
+differently looked at. Why do we pretend that all conversion is to some
+religious dogma--why not to a view of life?'
+
+'Bless my soul! I begin to feel nervous.'
+
+'Do you remember once telling me that I had a thing that was rare in my
+sex--a sense of humour?'
+
+'I remember often thinking it,' he said handsomely.
+
+'It wasn't the first time I'd heard that. And it was one of the
+compliments I liked best.'
+
+'We all do. It means we have a sense of proportion--the mental
+suppleness that is capable of the ironic view; an eye that can look
+right as well as left.'
+
+She nodded. 'When you wrote to me once, "My dear Ironist," I--yes--I
+felt rather superior. I'm conscious now that it's been a piece of
+hidden, intellectual pride with me that I could smile at most things.'
+
+'Well, do you mean to forswear pride? For you can't live without
+smiling.'
+
+'I've seen something to-day that I don't feel I want to smile at. And
+yet to you it's the most ludicrous spectacle in London.'
+
+'This is all very mysterious.' He turned his long, whimsical face on one
+side as he settled himself more comfortably against the cushion.
+
+'You heard why I was late?' she said.
+
+'I took the liberty of doubting the reason you gave!'
+
+'You mustn't. It wasn't even my first offence.'
+
+'You must find time hang very heavy on your hands.'
+
+'On the contrary. I've never known the time to go so fast. Oh, heaps of
+people would do what I have, if they only knew how queer and interesting
+it is, and how already the outer aspect of the thing is changing. At the
+first meetings very few women of any class. Now there are
+dozens--scores. Soon there'll be hundreds. There were three thousand
+people in the park this afternoon, so a policeman told me, but hardly
+any of the class that what Dick Farnborough calls "runs England."'
+
+'I suppose not.'
+
+'You don't even know yet you'll have to deal with all that passionate
+feeling, all that fixed determination to bring about a vast,
+far-reaching change!--a change so great----'
+
+'That it would knock civilized society into a cocked hat.'
+
+'I wonder.'
+
+'You _wonder_?'
+
+'I wonder if you oughtn't to be reassured by the--bigness of the thing.
+It isn't only these women in Hyde Park. They have a Feministe Movement
+in France. They say there's a Frauenbewegung in Germany. From Finland to
+Italy----'
+
+'Oh, yes, strikes and uprisings. It's an uneasy Age.'
+
+'People in India wanting a greater share in the government----'
+
+'Mad as the Persians----' he smiled--'fancy _Persians_ clamouring for a
+representative chamber! It's a sort of epidemic.'
+
+'The Egyptians, too, restless under "benefits." And now everywhere, as
+if by some great concerted movement--the Women!'
+
+'Yes, yes; there's plenty of regrettable restlessness up and down the
+world, a sort of wave of revolt against the constituted authorities. If
+it goes too far--nothing for us but a military despotism!'
+
+She shook her head with a look of such serene conviction that he
+persisted, 'I'd be sorry if we came to it--but if this spirit grows,
+this rebellion against all forms of control----'
+
+'No, no, against other people's control. Suppose it ends in people
+learning self-control.'
+
+'That's the last thing the masses can do. There are few, even of the
+_elite_, who have ever done it, and they belong to the Moral
+Aristocracy--the smallest and most rigid in the world. This thing that
+you're just opening your eyes to, is the rage against restraint that
+goes with decadence. But the phlegmatic Englishman won't lead in that
+degringolade.'
+
+'You mean we won't be among the first of the great nations to give women
+the Suffrage?'
+
+'_England?_' The slow head-shake and the smile airily relegated the
+Woman's Movement to the limbo of the infinitely distant.
+
+'Just because the men won't have it?' and for the second time she said,
+'I wonder. For myself, I rather think the women are going to win.'
+
+'Not in my time. Not even in yours.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Oh, the men will never let it come to the point.'
+
+'It's interesting to hear you say that. You justify the militant women,
+you know.'
+
+'That is perhaps _not_ to hit the bull's eye!' he said, a little grimly.
+Then dropping his unaccustomed air of chill disapproval, he appealed to
+his friend's better taste. A confession of sheer physical loathing crept
+into his face as he let fall two or three little sentences about these
+women's offence against public decorum. 'Why, it is as hideous as war!'
+he wound up, dismissing it.
+
+'Perhaps it _is_ war.' Her phrase drew the cloud of menace down again;
+it closed about them. It seemed to trouble her that he would not meet
+her gaze. 'Don't think----' she prayed, and stumbling against the new
+hardness in his face, broke off, withdrew her eyes and changed the form
+of what she had meant to say. 'I think I like good manners, too, but I
+see it would be a mistake to put them first. What if we have to earn the
+right to be gentle and gracious without shame?'
+
+'You seriously defend these people!'
+
+'I'm not sure they haven't taken the only way.' She looked at her
+friend with a fresh appeal in her eyes. But his were wearing their new
+cold look. She seemed to nerve herself to meet some numbing danger of
+cowardice. 'The old rule used to be patience--with no matter what wrong.
+The new feeling is: shame on any one who weakly suffers wrong! Isn't it
+too cheap an idea of morals that women should take credit for the
+enduring that keeps the wrong alive? You won't say women have no stake
+in morals. Have we any right to let the world go wrong while we get
+compliments for our forbearance and for pretty manners?'
+
+'You began,' said Borrodaile, 'by explaining other women's notions. You
+have ended by seeming to adopt them as your own. But you are a person of
+some intelligence. You will open your eyes before you go too far. You
+belong to the people who are responsible for handing on the world's
+treasure. As we've agreed, there never was a time when it was attacked
+from so many sides. Can't you see what's at stake?'
+
+'I see that many of the pleasantest things may be in eclipse for a
+time.'
+
+'My dear, they would die off the face of the earth.'
+
+'No, they are too necessary.'
+
+'To you and me. Not to the brawlers in Hyde Park. The life of civilized
+beings is a very complex thing. It isn't filled by good intentions nor
+even by the cardinal virtues. The function of the older societies is to
+hand on the best things the world has won, so that those who come after,
+instead of having to go back to barbarism, may start from where the best
+of their day left off. We do for manners and the arts in general what
+the Moors did for learning when the wild hordes came down. There were
+capital chaps among the barbarians,' he smiled, 'I haven't a doubt! But
+it was the men who held fast to civilization's clue, they were the
+people who mattered. _We_ matter. We hold the clue.' He was recovering
+his spirits. 'Your friends want to open the gates still wider to the
+Huns. You want even the Moors overwhelmed.'
+
+'Many women are as jealous to guard the old gains as the men are. Wait!'
+She leaned forward. 'I begin to see! They are more keen about it than
+the mass of men. The women! They are civilization's only ally against
+your brother, the Goth.'
+
+He laughed. 'When you are as absurd as that, my dear, I don't mind. No,
+not a little bit. And I really believe I'm too fond of you to quarrel on
+any ground.'
+
+'You don't care enough about anything to quarrel about it,' she said,
+smiling, too. 'But it's just as well'--she rose and began to draw on her
+glove--'just as well that each of us should know where to find the
+other. So tell me, what if it should be a question of going forward in
+the suffrage direction or going back?'
+
+'You mean----'
+
+'----on from latchkeys and University degrees to Parliament, or back.'
+
+'Oh, back,' he said hastily. 'Back. Yes, back to the harem.'
+
+When the words were out, Lord Borrodaile had laughed a little
+uneasily--like one who has surprised even himself by some
+too-illuminating avowal. 'See here,' he put out a hand. 'I'm not going
+to let you go for a minute or two. I've brought something to show you.
+This foolish discussion put it out of my head.' But the revealing word
+he had flung out--it seemed to have struck wide some window that had
+been shuttered close before. The woman stood there in the glare. She did
+not refuse to be drawn back to her place on the sofa, but she looked
+round first to see if the others had heard and how they took it. A
+glimpse of Mrs. Freddy's gown showed her out of earshot on the balcony.
+
+'I've got something here really rather wonderful,' Lord Borrodaile went
+on, with that infrequent kindling of enthusiasm. He had taken one of the
+unmounted photographs from between its two bits of cardboard and was
+holding it up before his eyeglass. 'Yes, he's an extraordinary
+beggar!'--which remark in the ears of those who knew his lordship,
+advertized his admiration of either some man of genius or 'Uebermensch'
+of sorts. Before he shared the picture with his companion he told her of
+what was not then so widely known--details of that most thrilling moment
+perhaps in all the romance of archaeology--where the excavators of
+Knossos came upon the first authentic picture of a man belonging to that
+mysterious and forgotten race that had raised up a civilization in some
+things rivalling the Greek--a race that had watched Minoan power wane
+and die, and all but the dimmest legend of it vanish, before the
+builders of Argos and Mycenae began laying their foundation stones.
+Borrodaile, with an accent that for him was almost emotion, emphasized
+the strangeness to the scholar of having to abandon the old idea of the
+Greek being the sole flower of Mediterranean civilization. For here was
+this wonderful island folk--a people standing between and bridging East
+and West--these Cretan men and women who, though they show us their
+faces, their delicate art and their stupendous palaces, have held no
+parley with the sons of men, some say for three and thirty centuries.
+'But wait! They'll tell us tales before those fellows have done! I
+wouldn't mind hearing what this beggar has to say for himself!' At last
+he shared the picture. They agreed that he was a beggar to be reckoned
+with--this proud athlete coming back to the world of men after his long
+sleep, not blinded by the new day, not primitive, apologetic, but
+meeting us with a high imperial mien, daring and beautiful.
+
+'What do you suppose he is carrying in that vase?' Vida asked; 'or is
+that some trophy?'
+
+'No, no, it's the long drinking cup--to the expert eye that is added
+evidence of his high degree of civilization. But _think_, you know, a
+man like that walking the earth so long before the Greeks! And here.
+This courtly train looking on at the games. What do you say to the
+women!'
+
+'Why, they had got as far as flouncing their gowns and puffing their
+sleeves! Their hair!'--'Dear me, they must have had a M. Raoul to ondule
+and dress it.' 'Amazing!--was there ever anything so modern dug out of
+the earth before?' 'No, nothing like it!' he said, holding the pictures
+up again between the glass and his kindling eye. 'Ce sont vraiment des
+Parisiennes!'
+
+Over his shoulder the modern woman looked long at that strange company.
+'It is nothing less than uncanny,' she said at last. 'It makes one
+vaguely wretched.'
+
+'What does?'
+
+'To realize that so long ago the world had got so far. Why couldn't
+people like these go further still? Why didn't their sons hold fast what
+so great a race had won?'
+
+'These things go in cycles.'
+
+'Isn't that a phrase?'--the woman mused--'to cover our ignorance of how
+things go--and why? Why should we be so content to go the old way to
+destruction? If I were "the English" of this splendid specimen of a
+Cretan, I would at least find a new way to perdition.'
+
+'Perhaps we shall!'
+
+They sat trying from the accounts of Lord Borrodaile's archaeological
+friends to reconstruct something of that vanished world. It was a game
+they had played at before, with Etruscan vases and ivories from
+Ephesus--the man bringing to it his learning and his wit, the woman her
+supple imagination and a passion of interest in the great romance of the
+Pilgrimage of Man.
+
+But to-day she bore a less light-hearted part--'It all came to an end!'
+she repeated.
+
+'Well, so shall we.'
+
+'But--we--_you_ will leave your like behind to "hold fast to the clue,"
+as you said a little while ago.'
+
+'Till the turn of the wheel carries the English down. Then somewhere
+else on our uneasy earth men will begin again----'
+
+'----the fruitless round! But it's horrible--the waste of effort in the
+world! It's worse than horrible. It's insane.' She looked up suddenly
+into his face. 'You are wise. Tell me what you think the story of the
+world means, with its successive clutches at civilization--all those
+histories of slow and painful building--by Ganges and by Nile and in the
+Isles of Greece.'
+
+'It's a part of the universal rhythm that all things move to--Nature's
+way,' he answered.
+
+'Or was it because of some offence against one of her high laws that she
+wiped the old experiments out? What if the meaning of history is that an
+Empire maintained by brute force shall perish by brute force!'
+
+'Ah,' he fixed her with those eyes of his. 'I see where you are going.'
+
+'You can't either of you go anywhere,' said Mrs. Freddy, appearing
+through the balcony window, 'till you've seen the children's pictures.'
+Vida's eye had once more fallen on the reproduction of one of the Cretan
+frescoes with a sudden intensification of interest.
+
+'What is it?' Borrodaile asked, looking over her shoulder.
+
+Woman-like she offered the man the outermost fringe of her thought.
+'Even Lady Whyteleafe,' she said, 'would be satisfied with the attention
+they paid to their hair.'
+
+'Come, you two.' Mrs. Freddy was at last impatient. 'Jean's got the
+_really_ beautiful pictures, showing them to Geoffrey. Let us all go
+down to help him to decide which is the best.'
+
+'Geoffrey?'
+
+'Geoffrey Stonor--you know him, of course. But nobody knows the very
+nicest side of Geoffrey, do they?' she appealed to Borrodaile,--'nobody
+who hasn't seen him with children?'
+
+'I never saw him with children,' said Vida, buttoning the last button of
+her glove.
+
+'Well, come down and watch him with Sara and Cecil. They perfectly adore
+him.'
+
+'No, it's too late.'
+
+But the fond mother drew her friend to the window. 'You can see them
+from here.'
+
+Vida was not so hurried, apparently, but what she could stand there
+taking in the picture of Sara and Cecil climbing about their big, kind
+cousin, with Jean and Mr. Freddy looking on.
+
+'Children!' Their mother waved a handkerchief. 'Here's another friend!
+Chil---- They're too absorbed to notice,' she said apologetically,
+turning to find Vida had left the window, and was saying good-bye to
+Borrodaile.
+
+'Oh, yes,' he agreed, 'they won't care about anybody else while Geoffrey
+is there.' Lord Borrodaile stooped and picked up a piece of folded paper
+off the sofa. 'Did I drop that?' He opened it. '_Votes for_----' He read
+the two words out in an accent that seemed to brand them with
+foolishness, even with vulgarity. 'No, decidedly I did not drop it.'
+
+He was conveying the sheet to the wastepaper basket as one who piously
+removes some unsavoury litter out of the way of those who walk
+delicately. Miss Levering arrested him with outstretched hand.
+
+'Do you want it?' His look adjured her to say, 'No.'
+
+'Yes, I want it.'
+
+'What for?' he persisted.
+
+'I want it for an address there is on it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was Friday, and Mrs. Fox-Moore was setting out to alleviate the lot
+of the poor in Whitechapel.
+
+'Even if it were not Friday,' Vida said slyly as her sister was
+preparing to leave the house, 'you'd invent some errand to take you out
+of the contaminated air of Queen Anne's Gate this afternoon.'
+
+'Well, as I told you,' said the other woman, nervously, 'you ask that
+person here on your own responsibility.'
+
+Vida smiled. 'I'm obliged to ask people here if I want to see them
+quietly. You make such a fuss when I suggest having a house of my own!'
+
+Mrs. Fox-Moore ignored the alternative. 'You'll see you're only making
+trouble for yourself. You'll have to pay handsomely for your curiosity.'
+
+'Well, I've been rather economical of late. Maybe I'll be able "to
+pay."'
+
+'Don't imagine you'll be able to settle an account of that kind with a
+single cheque. Give people like that an inch, and they'll expect a
+weekly ell.'
+
+'Are you afraid she'll abstract the spoons?'
+
+'I'm not only afraid, I _know_ she won't be satisfied with one
+contribution, or one visit. She'll regard it as the thin end of the
+wedge--getting her nose into a house of this kind.' Irresistibly the
+words conjured up a vision of some sharp-visaged female marauder
+insinuating the tip of a very pointed nose between the great front door
+and the lintel. 'I only hope,' the elder woman went on, 'that I won't be
+here the first time Donald encounters your new friend on the doorstep.
+_That's_ all!'
+
+Wherewith she departed to succour women and children at long range in
+the good old way. Little Doris was ill in bed. Mr. Fox-Moore was
+understood to have joined his brother's coaching party. The time had
+been discreetly chosen--the coast was indubitably clear. But would it
+remain so?
+
+To insure that it should, Miss Levering had a private conference with
+the butler.
+
+'Some one is coming to see me on business.'
+
+'Yes, miss.'
+
+'At half-past five.'
+
+'Yes, miss.'
+
+'I specially don't want to be interrupted.'
+
+'No, miss.'
+
+'Not by _any_body, no matter whom.'
+
+'Very well, miss.' A slight pause. 'Shall I show the gentleman into the
+drawing-room, miss?'
+
+'It's not a gentleman, and I'll see her upstairs in my sitting-room.'
+
+'Yes, miss. Very well, miss.'
+
+'And don't forget--to _any_ one else I'm not at home.'
+
+'No, miss. What name, miss?'
+
+Vida hesitated. The servants nowadays read everything. 'Oh, you can't
+make a mistake. She---- It will be a stranger--some one who has never
+been here before. Wait! I'll look out of the morning-room window. If it
+is the person I'm expecting, I'll ring the bell. You understand. If the
+morning-room bell has rung just as this person comes, it will be the one
+I'm expecting.'
+
+'Yes, miss.' With a splendid impassivity in the face of precautions so
+unprecedented, the servant withdrew.
+
+Vida smiled to herself as she leaned back among the cushions of her
+capacious sofa, cutting the pages of a book. A pleasant place this room
+of hers, wide and cool, where the creamy background of wall and
+chintz-cover was lattice-laced with roses. The open windows looked out
+upon one of those glimpses of greenery made vivid to the London eye, not
+alone by gratitude, but by contrast of the leafage against the ebonized
+bark of smoke-ingrained bole and twig.
+
+The summer wind was making great, gentle fans of the plane branches; it
+was swaying the curtains that hung down in long, straight folds from the
+high cornices. No other sound in the room but the hard grate of the
+ivory paper-knife sawing its way through a book whose outside alone (a
+muddy-brown, pimpled cloth) proclaimed it utilitarian. Among the
+fair-covered Italian volumes, the vellum-bound poets, and those
+friends-for-a-lifetime wearing linen or morocco to suit a special taste;
+above all, among that greater company 'quite impudently French' that
+stood close ranked on shelves or lay about on tables--the brown book on
+its dusty modern theme wore the air of a frieze-coated yeoman sitting
+amongst broadcloth and silk. The reader glanced from time to time at the
+clock. When the small glittering hand on the porcelain face pointed to
+twenty minutes past five, the lady took her book and her paper-knife
+into a front room on the floor below. She sat down behind the lowered
+persienne, and every now and then lifted her eyes from the page and
+peered out between the tiny slits. As the time went on she looked out
+oftener. More than once she half rose and seemed about to abandon all
+hope of the mysterious visitor when a hansom dashed up to the door. One
+swift glance: 'They go in cabs!'--and Miss Levering ran to the bell.
+
+A few moments after, she was again established in her sofa corner, and
+the door of her sitting-room opened. 'The lady, miss.' Into the wide,
+harmonious space was ushered a hot and harassed-looking woman, in a lank
+alpaca gown and a tam-o'-shanter. Miss Claxton's clothes, like herself,
+had borne the heat and burden of the day. She frowned as she gave her
+hand.
+
+'I am late, but it was very difficult to get away at all.'
+
+Miss Levering pushed towards her one of the welcoming great easy-chairs
+that stood holding out cool arms and a lap of roses. The tired visitor,
+with her dusty clothes and brusque manner, sat down without relaxing to
+the luxurious invitation. Her stiffly maintained attitude and direct
+look said as plain as print, Now what excuse have you to offer for
+asking me to come here? It may have been recollection of Mrs.
+Fox-Moore's fear of 'the thin end of the wedge' that made Miss Levering
+smile as she said--
+
+'Yes, I've been expecting you for the last half hour, but it's very good
+of you to come at all.'
+
+Miss Claxton looked as if she quite agreed.
+
+'You'll have some tea?' Miss Levering was moving towards the bell.
+
+'No, I've had my tea.'
+
+The queer sound of 'my' tea connoting so much else! The hostess subsided
+on to the sofa.
+
+'I heard you speak the other day as I told you in my note. But all the
+same I came away with several unanswered questions--questions that I
+wanted to put to you quietly. As I wrote you, I am not what _you_ would
+call a convert. I've only got as far as the inquiry stage.'
+
+Miss Claxton waited.
+
+'Still, if I take up your time, I ought not to let you be out of pocket
+by it.'
+
+The hostess glanced towards the little spindle-legged writing-table,
+where, on top of a heap of notes, lay the blue oblong of a cheque-book.
+
+'We consider it part of every day's business to answer questions,' said
+Miss Claxton.
+
+'I suppose I can make some little contribution without--without its
+committing me to anything?'
+
+'Committing you----'
+
+'Yes; it wouldn't get into the papers,' she said, a little shamefaced,
+'or--or anything like that.'
+
+'It wouldn't get into the papers unless you put it in.'
+
+The lady blinked. There was a little pause. She was not easy to talk
+to--this young woman. Nor was she the ideal collector of contributions.
+
+'That was a remarkable meeting you had in Hyde Park last Sunday.'
+
+'Remarkable? Oh, no, they're all pretty much alike.'
+
+'Do they all end like that?'
+
+'Oh, yes; people come to scoff, and by degrees we get hold of them--even
+the Hyde Park loafers.'
+
+'I mean, do they often crowd up and try to hustle the speakers?'
+
+'Oh, they are usually quite good-natured.'
+
+'You handled them wonderfully.'
+
+'We're used to dealing with crowds.'
+
+Her look went round the room, as if to say, 'It's this kind of thing I'm
+not used to, and I don't take to it over-kindly.'
+
+'In the crush at the end,' said Miss Levering, 'I overheard a scrap of
+conversation between two men. They were talking about you. "Very good
+for a woman," one said.'
+
+Miss Claxton smiled a scornful little smile.
+
+'And the other one said, "It would have been very good for a man. And
+personally," he said, "I don't know many men who could have kept that
+crowd in hand for two hours." That's what two men thought of it.'
+
+She made no answer.
+
+'It doesn't seem to me possible that your speakers average as good as
+those I heard on Sunday.'
+
+'We have a good many who speak well, but we look upon Ernestine Blunt as
+our genius.'
+
+'Yes, she seems rather a wonderful little person, but I wrote to you
+because--partly because you are older. And you gave me the impression of
+being extremely level-headed.'
+
+'Ernestine Blunt is level-headed too,' said Miss Claxton, warily.
+
+She was looking into the lady's face, frowning a little in that way of
+hers, intent, even somewhat suspicious.
+
+'Oh, I dare say, but she's such a child!'
+
+'We sometimes think Ernestine Blunt has the oldest head among us.'
+
+'Really,' said Miss Levering. 'When a person is as young as that, you
+don't know how much is her own and how much borrowed.'
+
+'She doesn't need to borrow.'
+
+'But _you_. I said to myself, "That woman, who makes other things so
+clear, she can clear up one or two things for me."'
+
+'Well, I don't know.' More wary than ever, she suspended judgment.
+
+'I noticed none of you paid any attention when the crowd called
+out--things about----'
+
+Miss Claxton's frown deepened. It was plain she heard the echo of that
+insistent, never-answered query of the crowd, 'Got your dog-whip, miss?'
+She waited.
+
+It looked as though Miss Levering lacked courage to repeat it in all its
+violent bareness.
+
+'----when they called out things--about the encounters with the police.
+It's those stories, as I suppose you know, that have set so many against
+the movement.'
+
+No word out of Miss Claxton. She sat there, not leaning back, nor any
+longer stiffly upright, but hunched together like a creature ready to
+spring.
+
+'I believed those stories too; but when I had watched you, and listened
+to you on Sunday,' Miss Levering hastened to add, a little shamefaced at
+the necessity, 'I said to myself, not' (suddenly she stopped and smiled
+with disarming frankness)--'I didn't say, "That woman's too
+well-behaved, or too amiable;" I said, "She's too intelligent. That
+woman never spat at a policeman.'"
+
+'Spit? No,' she said grimly.
+
+'"Nor bit, nor scratched, nor any of those things. And since the papers
+have lied about that," I said to myself, "I'll go to headquarters for
+information."'
+
+'What papers do you read?'
+
+'Oh, practically all. This house is like a club for papers and
+magazines. My brother-in-law has everything.'
+
+'The _Clarion_?'
+
+'No, I never saw the _Clarion_.'
+
+'The _Labour Leader_?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'The _Labour Record_?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'It is the organ of our party.'
+
+'I--I'm afraid I never heard of any of them.'
+
+Miss Claxton smiled.
+
+'I'll take them in myself in future,' said the lady on the sofa. 'Was it
+reading those papers that set you to thinking?'
+
+'Reading papers? Oh, no. It was----' She hesitated, and puckered up her
+brows again as she stared round the room.
+
+'Yes, go on. That's one of the things I wanted to know, if you don't
+mind--how you came to be identified with the movement.'
+
+A little wearily, without the smallest spark of enthusiasm at the
+prospect of imparting her biography, Miss Claxton told slowly, even
+dully, and wholly without passion, the story of a hard life met
+single-handed from even the tender childhood days--one of those recitals
+that change the relation between the one who tells and the one who
+listens--makes the last a sharer in the life to the extent that the two
+can never be strangers any more. Though they may not meet, nor write,
+nor have any tangible communication, there is understanding between
+them.
+
+At the close Miss Levering stood up and gave the other her hand. Neither
+said anything. They looked at each other.
+
+After the lady had resumed her seat, Miss Claxton, as under some
+compulsion born of the other's act of sympathy, went on--
+
+'It is a newspaper lie--as you haven't needed to be told--about the
+spitting and scratching and biting--but the day I was arrested; the day
+of the deputation to Effingham, I saw a policeman knocking some of our
+poorer women about very roughly' (it had its significance, the tone in
+which she said 'our poorer women'). 'I called out that he was not to do
+that again. He had one of our women like this, and he was banging her
+against the railings. I called out if he didn't stop I would make him.
+He kept on'--a cold glitter came into the eyes--'and I struck him. I
+struck the coward in the face.'
+
+The air of the mild luxurious room grew hot and quivered. The lady on
+the sofa lowered her eyes.
+
+'They must be taught,' the other said sternly, 'the police must be
+taught, they are not to treat our women like that. On the whole the
+police behave well. But their power is immense and almost entirely
+unchecked. It's a marvel they are as decent as they are. How should
+_they_ be expected to know how to treat women? What example do they
+have? Don't they hear constantly in the courts how little it costs a man
+to be convicted of beating his own wife?' She fired the questions at the
+innocent person on the sofa, as if she held her directly responsible for
+the need to ask them. 'Stealing is far more dangerous; yes, even if a
+man's starving. That's because bread is often dear and women are always
+cheap.'
+
+She waited a moment, waited for the other to contradict or at least
+resent the dictum. The motionless figure among the sofa cushions, whose
+very look and air seemed to proclaim 'some of us are expensive enough,'
+hardly opened her lips to say, as if to herself--
+
+'Yes, women are cheap.'
+
+Perhaps Miss Claxton thought the agreement lacked conviction, for she
+went on with a harsh hostility that seemed almost personal--
+
+'We'd rather any day be handled by the police than by the
+self-constituted stewards of political meetings.'
+
+Partly the words, even more the look in the darkening face, made Miss
+Levering say--
+
+'That brings me to something else I wanted to be enlightened about. One
+reason I wrote to ask for a little talk with _you_ specially, was
+because I couldn't imagine your doing anything so futile as to pit your
+physical strength--considerable as it may be--but to pit your muscle
+against men's is merely absurd. And I, when I saw how intelligent you
+were, I saw that you know all that quite as well as I. Why, then, carry
+a whip?'
+
+The lowered eyelids of the face opposite quivered faintly.
+
+'You couldn't think it would save you from arrest.'
+
+'No, not from arrest.' The woman's mouth hardened.
+
+'I know'--Miss Levering bridged the embarrassment of the pause--'I know
+there must be some rational explanation.'
+
+But if there were it was not forthcoming.
+
+'So you see your most indefensible and even futile-appearing action gave
+the cue for my greatest interest,' said Vida, with a mixture of anxiety
+and bluntness. 'For just the woman you were, to do so brainless a
+thing--what was behind? That was what I kept asking myself.'
+
+'It--isn't--only--_rough_ treatment one or two of us have met'--she
+pulled out the words slowly--'it's sometimes worse.' They both waited in
+a curious chill embarrassment. 'Not the police, but the stewards at
+political meetings, and the men who volunteer to "keep the women in
+order," they'--she raised her fierce eyes and the colour rose in her
+cheeks--'as they're turning us out they punish us in ways the public
+don't know.' She saw the shrinking wonder in the woman opposite, and she
+did not spare her. 'They punish us by underhand maltreatment--of the
+kind most intolerable to a decent woman.'
+
+'Oh, no, no!' The other face was a flame to match.
+
+'Yes!' She flung it out like a poisoned arrow.
+
+'How _dare_ they!' said Vida in a whisper.
+
+'They know we dare not complain.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+A duller red overspread the face as the woman muttered, 'Nobody, no
+woman, wants to talk about it. And if we did they'd only say, "See!
+you're killing chivalry." _Chivalry!_' She laughed. It was not good to
+hear a laugh like that.
+
+The figure on the sofa winced. 'I assure you people don't know,' said
+Vida.
+
+'It's known well enough to those who've had to suffer it, and it's known
+to the brutes of men who----'
+
+'Ah, but you _must_ realize'--Miss Levering jumped to her feet--'you
+must admit that the great mass of men would be indignant if they knew.'
+
+'You think so?' The question was insulting in its air of forbearance
+with a fairy-tale view of life.
+
+'Think so? I _know_ it. I should be sorry for my own powers of judgment
+if I believed the majority of men were like the worst specimens--like
+those you----'
+
+'Oh, well, we don't dwell on that side. It's enough to remember that
+women without our incentive have to bear worse. It's part of a whole
+system.'
+
+'I shall never believe that!' exclaimed Vida, thinking what was meant
+was an organized conspiracy against the Suffragettes.
+
+'Yes, it's all part of the system we are in the world to overturn. Why
+should we suppose we'd gain anything by complaining? Don't hundreds,
+thousands of meek creatures who have never defied anybody, don't they
+have to bear worse ignominies? Every man knows that's true. Who troubles
+himself? What is the use, we say, of crying about individual pains and
+penalties? No. The thing is to work day and night to root out the system
+that makes such things possible.'
+
+'I still don't understand--why you thought it would be a protection to
+carry----'
+
+'A man's fear of ridicule will restrain him when nothing else will. If
+one of them is publicly whipped, _and by a woman_, it isn't likely to be
+forgotten. Even the fear of it--protects us from some things. After an
+experience some of the women had, the moment our committee decided on
+another demonstration, little Mary O'Brian went out, without consulting
+anybody, and bought me the whip. "If you will go," she said, "you shan't
+go unarmed. If we have that sort of cur to deal with, the only thing is
+to carry a dog-whip."'
+
+Miss Claxton clenched her hands in their grey cotton gloves. There was
+silence in the room for several seconds.
+
+'What we do in asking questions publicly--it's only what men do
+constantly. The greatest statesman in the land stops to answer a man,
+even if he's a fool naturally, or half drunk. They treat those
+interrupters with respect, they answer their questions civilly. They are
+men. They have votes. But women: "Where's the chucker out?"'
+
+'Are you never afraid that all you're going through may be in vain?'
+
+'No. We are quite certain to succeed. We have found the right way at
+last.'
+
+'You mean what are called your tactics?'
+
+'I mean the spirit of the women. I mean: not to mind the price. When
+you've got people to feel like that, success is sure.'
+
+'But it comes very hard on those few who pay with the person, as the
+French say, pay with prison--and with----'
+
+'Prison isn't the worst!'
+
+A kind of shyness came over the woman on the sofa; she dropped her eyes
+from the other's face.
+
+'Of course,' the ex-prisoner went on, 'if more women did a little it
+wouldn't be necessary for the few to do so much.'
+
+'I suppose you are in need of funds to carry on the propaganda.'
+
+'Money isn't what is most needed. One of our workers--a little mill
+girl--came up from the country with only two pounds in her pocket to
+rouse London. And she did it!' her comrade exulted. 'But there's a class
+we don't reach. If only'--she hesitated and glanced reflectively at the
+woman before her.
+
+'Yes?' Miss Levering's eye flew to the cheque-book.
+
+'If only we could get women of influence to understand what's at stake,'
+said Miss Claxton, a little wistfully.
+
+'They don't?'
+
+'Oh, some. A few. As much as can be expected.'
+
+'Why do you say that?'
+
+'Well, the upper-class women, I don't say all' (she spoke as one
+exercising an extreme moderation); 'but many of them are such sexless
+creatures.'
+
+Miss Levering opened wide eyes--a glint of something like amazed
+laughter crossed her face, as she repeated--
+
+'_They_ are sexless, you think?'
+
+'We find them so,' said the other, firmly.
+
+'Why'--Miss Levering smiled outright--'that's what they say of you.'
+
+'Well, it's nonsense, like the rest of what they say.'
+
+The accusation of sexlessness brought against the curled darlings of
+society by these hard-working, hard-hitting sisters of theirs was not
+the least ironic thing in the situation.
+
+'Why do you call them----?'
+
+'Because we see they have no sex-pride. If they had, they couldn't do
+the things they do.'
+
+'What sort of things?'
+
+'Oh, I can't go into that.' She stood up and tugged at her wrinkled
+cotton gloves. 'But it's easy for us to see they're sexless.' She seemed
+to resent the unbelief in the opposite face. 'Lady Caterham sent for me
+the other day. You may have heard of Lady Caterham.'
+
+Miss Levering suppressed the fact of how much, by a vague-sounding--
+
+'Y--yes.'
+
+'Well, she sent for me to---- Oh, I suppose she was curious!'
+
+'Like me,' said the other, smiling.
+
+'_She's_ a very great person in her county, and she _said_ she
+sympathized with the movement--only she didn't approve of our tactics,
+she said. We are pretty well used by now to people who don't approve of
+our tactics, so I just sat and waited for the "dog-whip."'
+
+It was obvious that the lady without influence in her county winced at
+that, almost as though she felt the whip on her own shoulders. She was
+indeed a hard-hitter, this woman.
+
+'I don't go about talking of why I carry a whip. I _hate_ talking about
+it,' she flung the words out resentfully. 'But I'd been sent to try to
+get that woman to help, and so I explained. I told her when she asked
+why it seemed necessary'--again the face flushed--'I told her!--more
+than I've told you. And will you believe it, she never turned a hair.
+Just sat there with a look of cool curiosity on her face. Oh, they have
+no sex-pride, those upper-class women!'
+
+'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand.'
+
+'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her
+that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. She didn't feel the
+indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her, _she_ wouldn't have
+suffered,' said the critic, with a grim contempt.
+
+'There may be another explanation,' said Miss Levering, a little curtly,
+but wisely she forbore to present it.
+
+If the rough and ready reformer had chilled her new sympathizer by this
+bitterness against 'the parasite class,' she wiped out the memory of it
+by the enthusiasm with which she spoke of those other women, her
+fellow-workers.
+
+'Our women are wonderful!' she lifted her tired head. 'I knew they'd
+never had a chance to show what they were, but there are some things----
+No! I didn't think women had it in them.'
+
+She had got up and was standing now by the door, her limp gown clinging
+round her, her weather-beaten Tam on one side. But in the confident look
+with which she spoke of 'our women,' the brow had cleared. You saw that
+it was beautiful. Miss Levering stood at the door with an anxious eye on
+the stair, as if fearful of the home-coming of 'her fellow-coward,' or,
+direr catastrophe--old Mr. Fox-Moore's discovering the damning fact of
+this outlaw's presence under his roof! Yet, even so, torn thus between
+dread and desire to pluck out the heart of the new mystery, 'the
+militant woman,' Miss Levering did not speed the parting guest. As
+though recognizing fully now that the prophesied use was not going to be
+made of the 'thin end of the wedge,' she detained her with--
+
+'I wonder when I shall see you again.'
+
+'I don't know,' said the other, absently.
+
+'When is the next meeting?'
+
+'Next Sunday. Every Sunday.'
+
+'I shall be glad to hear you speak again; but--you'll come and see
+me--here.'
+
+'I can't. I'm going away.'
+
+'Oh! To rest, I hope.'
+
+'Rest?' She laughed at an idea so comic. 'Oh, no. I'm going to work
+among the women in Wales. We have great hopes of those West-country
+women. They're splendid! They're learning the secret of co-operation,
+too. Oh, it's good stuff to work on--the relief of it after London!'
+
+Miss Levering smiled. 'Then I won't be seeing you very soon.'
+
+'No.' She seemed to be thinking. 'It's true what I say of the Welsh
+women, and yet we oughtn't to be ungrateful to our London women either.'
+She seemed to have some sense of injustice on her soul. 'We've been
+seeing just recently what they're made of, too!' She paused on the
+threshold and began to tell in a low voice of women 'new to the work,'
+who had been wavering, uncertain if they could risk imprisonment--poor
+women with husbands and children. 'When they heard _what it might
+mean_--this battle we're fighting--they were ashamed not to help us!'
+
+'You mean----' Vida began, shrinking.
+
+'Yes!' said the other, fiercely. 'The older women saw they ought to save
+the younger ones from having to face that sort of thing. That was how we
+got some of the wives and mothers.'
+
+She went on with a stern emotion that was oddly contagious, telling
+about a certain scene at the Headquarters of the Union. Against the grey
+and squalid background of a Poor Women's movement, stood out in those
+next seconds a picture that the true historian who is to come will not
+neglect. A call for recruits with this result--a huddled group, all new,
+unproved, ignorant of the ignorant. The two or three leaders,
+conscience-driven, feeling it necessary to explain to the untried women
+that if they shared in the agitation, they were not only facing
+imprisonment, but unholy handling.
+
+'It was only fair to let them know the worst,' said the woman at the
+door, 'before they were allowed to join us.'
+
+As the abrupt sentences fell, the grim little scene was reconstituted;
+the shrinking of the women who had offered their services ignorant of
+this aspect of the battle--their horror and their shame. At the memory
+of that hour the strongly-controlled voice shook.
+
+'They cried, those women,' she said.
+
+'But they came?' asked the other, trembling, as though for her, too, it
+was vital that these poor women should not quail.
+
+'Yes,' answered their leader a little hoarsely, 'they came!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+One of the oddest things about these neo-Suffragists was the simplicity
+with which they accepted aid--the absence in the responsible ones of
+conventional gratitude. This became matter for both surprise and
+instruction to the outsider. It no doubt had the effect of chilling and
+alienating the 'philanthropist on the make.' Even to the less
+ungenerous, not bargainers for approbation or for influence, even in
+their case the deep-rooted suspicion we have been taught to cultivate
+for one another, makes the gift of good faith so difficult that it can
+be given freely only to people like these, people who plainly and daily
+suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us
+strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the
+world's good word. That they took help, and even sacrifice, as a matter
+of course, seemed in them mere modesty and sound good sense; tantamount
+to saying, 'I am not so silly or self-centred as to suppose you do this
+for _me_. You do it, of course, for the Cause. The Cause is yours--is
+all Women's. You serve humanity. Who am I that I should thank you?'
+
+This attitude extended even to acts that were in truth prompted less by
+concern for the larger issue than by sheer personal interest.
+
+Vida Levering's first experience of this 'new attitude' came one late
+afternoon while on her way to leave cards on some people in Grosvenor
+Road. Driving through Pimlico about half-past six, she lifted up her
+eyes at the sound of many voices and beheld a mob of men and boys in the
+act of pursuing a little group of women, who were fleeing up a side
+street away from the river. The natural shrinking and disgust of 'the
+sheltered woman' showed in the face of the occupant of the brougham as
+she leaned forward and said to the coachman--
+
+'Not this way! Don't you see there's some disturbance? Turn back.'
+
+The man obeyed. The little crowd had halted. It looked as if the thief,
+or drunken woman, or what not, had been surrounded and overwhelmed. The
+end of the street abutted on Pimlico Pier. Two or three knots of people
+were still standing about, talking and looking up the street at the
+little crowd of shouting, gesticulating rowdies. A woman with a
+perambulator, making up her mind at just the wrong moment to cross the
+road, found herself almost under the feet of the Fox-Moore horses. The
+coachman pulled up sharply, and before he had driven on, the lady's eyes
+had fallen on an inscription in white chalk on the flagstone--
+
+              'VOTES FOR WOMEN.
+
+  'Meeting here to-night at a quarter to six.'
+
+The occupant of the carriage turned her head sharply in the direction of
+the 'disturbance,' and then--
+
+'After all, I must go up that street. Drive fast till you get near those
+people. Quick!'
+
+'Up _there_, miss?'
+
+'Yes, yes. Make haste!' For the crowd was moving on, and still no sign
+of a policeman.
+
+By the time the brougham caught up with them, the little huddle of folk
+had nearly reached the top of the street. In the middle of the _melee_ a
+familiar face. Ernestine Blunt!
+
+'Oh, Henderson!'--Miss Levering put her head out of the window--'that
+girl! the young one! She's being mobbed.'
+
+'Yes, miss.'
+
+'But something must be done! Hail a policeman.'
+
+'Yes, miss.'
+
+'Do you _see_ a policeman?'
+
+'No, miss.'
+
+'Well, stop a moment,' for even at this slowest gait the brougham had
+passed the storm centre.
+
+The lady hanging out of the window looked back and saw that Ernestine's
+face, very pink as to cheeks, very bright as to eyes, was turned quite
+unruffled on the rabble.
+
+'Can't you see the meeting's over?' she called out. 'You boys go home
+now and think about what we've told you.'
+
+The reply to that was a laugh and a concerted 'rush' that all but
+carried the girl and her companions off their feet. To Henderson's
+petrifaction, the door of the brougham was hastily opened and then
+slammed to, leaving Miss Levering in the road, saying to him over her
+shoulder--
+
+'Wait just round the corner, unless I call.'
+
+With which she hurried across the street, her eyes on the little face
+that, in spite of its fresh colouring, looked so pathetically tired.
+Making her way round the outer fringe of the crowd, Vida saw on the
+other side--near where Ernestine and her sore-beset companions stood
+with their backs to the wall--an opening in the dingy ranks. Fleet of
+foot, she gained it, thrust an arm between the huddled women, and,
+taking the foolhardy girl by the sleeve, said, _sotto voce_--
+
+'Come! Come with me!'
+
+Ernestine raised her eyes, fixed them for one calm instant on Vida
+Levering's face, and then, turning round, said--
+
+'Where's Mrs. Brown?'
+
+'Never mind Mrs. Brown!' whispered the strange lady, drawing off as the
+rowdy young men came surging round that side.
+
+There was another rush and a yell, and Vida fled. When next she turned
+to look, it was to see two women making a sudden dash for liberty. They
+had escaped through the rowdy ranks, and they tore across the street,
+running for their lives and calling for help as they ran.
+
+Vida, a shade or two paler, stood transfixed. What was going to happen?
+But there was the imperturbable Ernestine holding the forsaken position,
+still the centre of the pushing, shouting little mob who had jeered
+frantically as the other women fled.
+
+It was too much. Not Ernestine's isolation alone, the something childish
+in the brilliant face would have enlisted a less sympathetic observer. A
+single moment's wavering and the lady made for the place where the
+besiegers massed less thick. She was near enough now to call out over
+the rowdies' heads--
+
+'Come. Why do you stay there?'
+
+Faces turned to look at her; while Ernestine shouted back the cryptic
+sentence--
+
+'It wasn't my bus!'
+
+_Bus?_ Had danger robbed her of her reason? The boys were cheering now
+and looking past Miss Levering: she turned, bewildered, to see 'Mrs.
+Brown' and a sister reformer mounting the top of a sober London Road
+car. They had been running for that, then--and not for life! Miss
+Levering raised her hand and her voice as she looked back at Ernestine--
+
+'I've got a trap. Come!'
+
+'Where?'
+
+Ernestine stepped out from the vociferating, jostling crowd and followed
+the new face as simply as though she had been waiting for just that
+summons. The awful moment was when, with a shout, the tail of rowdies
+followed after. Miss Levering had not bargained for that. Her agitated
+glance left the unsavoury horde at her heels and went nervously up and
+down the street. It was plainly not only, nor even chiefly, the
+hooligans she feared, but the amazed eye of some acquaintance. Bad
+enough to meet Henderson's!
+
+'Jump in!' she said hastily to the girl, and then, 'Go on!' she called
+out desperately, flying in after Ernestine and slamming the door. 'Drive
+_fast_!' She thrust her head through the window to add, '_Anywhere!_'
+And she sank back. 'How dreadful that was!'
+
+'What was?' said the rescued one, glancing out of the carriage with an
+air of suddenly renewed interest.
+
+'Why, the attack of those hooligans on a handful of defenceless women.'
+
+'Oh, they weren't attacking us.'
+
+'What were they doing?'
+
+'Oh, just running after us and screaming a little.'
+
+'But I _saw_ them--pushing and jostling and----'
+
+'Oh, it was all quite good-natured.'
+
+'You mean you weren't frightened?'
+
+'There's nothing to be frightened at.' She was actually saying it in a
+soothing, 'motherly' sort of way, calculated to steady the lady's
+nerves--reassuring the rescuer.
+
+Vida's eye fell on the festoon of braid falling from the dark cloth
+skirt.
+
+'Well, the polite attentions of your friends seem to have rather damaged
+your gown.'
+
+Over a big leather portfolio that she held clasped in her arms,
+Ernestine, too, looked down at the torn frock.
+
+'That foolish trimming--it's always getting stepped on.'
+
+Miss Levering's search had produced a pin.
+
+'No; I'll just pull it off.'
+
+Ernestine did so, and proceeded to drop a yard of it out of the window.
+Miss Levering began to laugh.
+
+'Which way are we going?' says Miss Blunt, looking out. 'I have to be at
+Battersea at----'
+
+'What were you doing at Pimlico Pier?'
+
+'Holding a meeting for the Government employees--the people who work for
+the Army and Navy Clothing Department.'
+
+'Oh. And you live at Battersea?'
+
+'No; but I have a meeting there to-night. We had a very good one at the
+Docks, too.' Her eyes sparkled.
+
+'A Suffrage meeting?'
+
+'Yes; one of the best we've had----'
+
+'When was that?'
+
+'During the dinner hour. The men stood with their pails and ate while
+they listened. They were quite nice and understanding, those men.'
+
+'What day was that?'
+
+'This morning.'
+
+'And the Battersea meeting?'
+
+'That's not for another hour; but I have to be there first--to arrange.'
+
+'When do you dine?'
+
+'Oh, I'll get something either before the meeting or after--whenever
+there's time.'
+
+'Isn't it a pity not to get your food regularly? Won't you last longer
+if you do?'
+
+'Oh, I shall last.' She sat contentedly, hugging her big portfolio.
+
+The lady glanced at the carriage clock. 'In the house where I live,
+dinner is a sort of sacred rite. If you are two seconds late you are
+disgraced, so I'm afraid I can't----'
+
+'There's the bus I was waiting for!' Ernestine thrust her head out.
+'Stop, will you!' she commanded the astonished Henderson. 'Good-bye.'
+She nodded, jumped out, shut the door, steadied her hat, and was gone.
+
+It was so an acquaintance began that was destined to make a difference
+to more than one life. Those days of the summer that Miss Claxton spent
+indoctrinating the women of Wales, and that Mrs. Chisholm utilized in
+'organizing Scotland,' were dedicated by Ernestine and her friends to
+stirring up London and the various dim and populous worlds of the
+suburbs.
+
+Much oftener than even Mrs. Fox-Moore knew, her sister, instead of being
+in the houses where she was supposed to be, and doing the things she was
+expected to be doing, might have been seen in highly unexpected haunts
+prosecuting her acquaintance with cockney crowds, never learning
+Ernestine's fearlessness of them, and yet in some way fascinated almost
+as much as she was repelled. At first she would sit in a hansom at safe
+distance from the turmoil that was usually created by the expounders of
+what to the populace was a 'rum new doctrine' invented by Ernestine.
+Miss Levering would lean over the apron of the cab hearing only scraps,
+till the final, 'Now, all who are in favour of Justice, hold up their
+hands.' As the crowd broke and dissolved, the lady in the hansom would
+throw open the doors, and standing up in front of the dashboard, she
+would hail and carry off the arch-agitator, while the crowd surged
+round. Several times this programme had been carried out, when one
+afternoon, after seeing the girl and her big leather portfolio safe in
+the cab, and the cab safe out of the crowd, Vida heaved a sigh of
+relief.
+
+'_There!_ Now tell me, what did you do yesterday?'--meaning, How in the
+world did you manage without me to take care of you?
+
+'Yesterday? We had a meeting down at the Woolwich Arsenal. And we
+distributed handbills for two hours. And we had a debate in the evening
+at the New Reform Club.'
+
+'Oh, you didn't hold a meeting here in the afternoon?'
+
+'Yes we did. I forgot that.' She seemed also to have forgotten that her
+new friend had been prevented from appearing to carry her off.
+
+Miss Levering smiled down at her. 'What a funny little person you are.
+Do you know who I am?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'It hasn't ever occurred to you to ask?'
+
+The face turned to her with a half roguish smile. 'Oh, I thought you
+looked all right.'
+
+'I'm the person who had the interview with your friend, Miss Claxton.'
+As no recollection showed in the face, 'At Queen Anne's Gate,' she
+added.
+
+'I don't think I knew about that,' said Ernestine, absently. Then alert,
+disdainful, 'Fancy the member for Wrotton saying---- Yes, we went to see
+him this morning.'
+
+'Oh, that is very exciting! What was he like?'
+
+'Quite a feeble sort of person, I thought.'
+
+'Really!' laughed Miss Levering.
+
+'He talked such nonsense to us about that old Plural Voting Bill. His
+idea seemed to be to get us to promise to behave nicely while the
+overworked House of Commons considered the iniquity of some men having
+more than one vote--they hadn't a minute this session to consider the
+much greater iniquity of no women having any vote at all! Of course he
+said he _had_ been a great friend to Woman Suffrage, until he got
+shocked with our tactics.' She smiled broadly. 'We asked him what he'd
+ever done to show his friendship.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'He didn't seem to know the answer to that. What strikes me most about
+men is their being so illogical.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady John Ulland had been openly surprised, even enthusiastically
+grateful, at discovering before this that Vida Levering was ready to
+help her with some of the unornamental duties that fall to the lot of
+the 'great ladies' of England.
+
+'I don't know what that discontented creature, her sister, means by
+saying Vida is so unsympathetic about charity work.'
+
+Neither could Lady John's neighbour, the Bishop, understand Mrs.
+Fox-Moore's reproach. Had not his young kinswoman's charity concerts
+helped to rebuild the chantry?
+
+'Such a _nice creature_!' was Lord John's contribution. Then, showing
+the profundity of his friendly interest, 'Why doesn't she find some nice
+fella to marry her?'
+
+'People don't marry so early nowadays,' his wife reassured him.
+
+Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some
+understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When
+he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered
+touching testimony to his affection for her by trying to understand. It
+was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found
+it no easier than others of his class rightly to interpret the modern
+scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediaeval tower
+which was his mind.
+
+When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace,
+he did so against his will, shaking his long Van Dyke head, and saying--
+
+'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite
+unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'
+
+'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with "The People,"
+as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go
+slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I,
+perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'
+
+'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let
+the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't
+need a woman like you.'
+
+'They not only need--what's more, they are getting, all kinds! It's
+that, more than anything else, that shows their strength. The miracle it
+is, to see the way they all work together! Women, the poorest and most
+ignorant (except of hardship), working shoulder to shoulder with women
+of substance and position. Oh, yes, they are winning over that sort,
+teachers and university graduates--a whole group who would be called
+Intellectuals if they were men--all doing what men have said women could
+never do--pulling together. And, oh! that reminds me,' she said
+suddenly, smiling as one who has thought of a capital joke at her
+companion's expense: 'it's my duty to warn you. I went with your
+daughter to lunch at her Country Club, and they were all discussing the
+Suffrage! A good dozen! And Sophia--well, Sophia came out in a new
+light. I want you, please, to believe _I've_ never talked to her.'
+
+'Oh,' said Borrodaile, with an unconscious arrogance, 'Sophia doesn't
+wait to be talked to. She takes her own line. Politics are a tradition
+with our women. I found her reading the parliamentary debates when she
+was fourteen.'
+
+'And your boys, are they equally----?'
+
+He sighed. 'The world has got very topsy-turvy. All my girls are
+boys--and all my boys are girls.'
+
+'Well, Sophia can take care of the Country Club! I remember how we
+scoffed when she organized it.'
+
+'It's had precisely the effect I expected. Takes her away from her own
+home, where she ought to be----'
+
+'Who wants her at home?'
+
+Unblushingly he answered, '_I_ do.'
+
+'Why, you're never there yourself.' He blinked. 'When you aren't in your
+garden you're----'
+
+'Here?' he laughed.
+
+'I don't myself,' she went on, '_I_ don't belong to any clubs----'
+
+'I should hope not, indeed! Where should I go for tea and for news of
+the workings of the Zeitgeist?' he mocked.
+
+'But I begin to see what women's clubs are for.'
+
+'They're for the dowdy, unattached females to meet and gossip in, to
+hold feeble little debates in, to listen to pettifogging little
+lectures, and imagine they're _dans le mouvement_.'
+
+'They are to accustom women to thinking and acting together. While you
+and I have been laughing at them, they've been building up a huge
+machinery of organization, ready to the hand of the chief engineer who
+is to come.'
+
+'Horrible thought!'
+
+'Well, horrible or not, I don't despise clubs any more. They're largely
+responsible for the new corporate spirit among women.'
+
+He pulled himself out of the cavernous comfort of his chair, and stood
+glooming in front of the screen that hid the fireless grate.
+
+'Clubs, societies, leagues, they're all devices for robbing people of
+their freedom. It's no use to talk to me. I'm one of the few
+individualists left in the world. I never wanted in my life to belong to
+any body.' Her pealing laughter made him explain, smiling, 'To any
+corporation, was what I meant.'
+
+'No, no. You got it right the first time! The reason that, in spite of
+my late perversities, you don't cast me off is because I'm one of the
+few women who don't make claims.'
+
+'It is the claim of the community that I resent. I want to keep clear of
+all complication. I want to be really free. I could never have pledged
+myself to any Church or any party.'
+
+'Perhaps'--she smiled at him--'perhaps that's why you are a beautiful
+and ineffectual angel.'
+
+'The reason I never did is because I care about liberty--the thing
+itself. You are in danger, I see, of being enamoured of the name. In
+thought women are always half a century or so behind. What patriot's
+voice is heard in Europe or America to-day? Where is the modern Kossuth,
+Garibaldi? What poet goes out in these times to die at Missolonghi? Just
+as men are finding out the vanity of the old dreams, the women seem to
+be seizing on them. The mass of intelligent men have no longing for
+political power. If a sort of public prominence is thrust on men'--he
+shrugged as if his shoulders chafed under some burden--'_in their
+hearts_ they curse their lot. I suppose it's all so new to the woman she
+is amused. She even--I'm _told_'--his lifted hand, with the closed
+fingers suddenly flung open, advertised the difficulty a sane person
+found in crediting the uncanny rumour--'I'm _told_ that women even like
+public dinners.'
+
+'Well, you do.'
+
+'I?'
+
+'You go--to all the most interesting ones.'
+
+'Part of my burden! Unlike your new friends, there's nothing I hate so
+much, unless it is having to make a speech.'
+
+'Well, now, shall I stop "playing at ma'ams" and just say that when I
+hear a man like you explaining in that superior way how immensely he
+_doesn't care_, I seem to see that that is precisely the worst
+indictment against your class. If special privilege breeds that----'
+
+It merely amused him to see that she was forgetting herself. He sat down
+again. He stretched out his long legs and interlaced his fingers across
+his bulging shirt front. His air of delicate mockery supplied the whip.
+
+'If,' Vida went on with shining eyes, 'if to be able to care and to work
+and to sacrifice, if to get those impulses out of life, you must carry
+your share of the world's burden, then no intelligent creature can be
+sorry the day is coming when all men will have to----' She took breath,
+a little frightened to see where she was going.
+
+'Have to----?' he encouraged her, lazily smiling.
+
+'Have to work, or else not eat.'
+
+'Even under your hard rule I wouldn't have to work much. My appetite is
+mercifully small.'
+
+'It would grow if you sweated for your bread.'
+
+'Help! help!' he said, not above his usual tone, but slowly he turned
+his fine head as the door opened. He fixed the amused grey-green eyes on
+old Mr. Fox-Moore: 'A small and inoffensive pillar of the Upper House is
+in the act of being abolished.'
+
+'What, is she talking politics? She never favours me with her views,'
+said Fox-Moore, with his chimpanzee smile.
+
+When Borrodaile had said good-bye, Vida followed him to the top of the
+stairs.
+
+'It's rather on my mind that I--I've not been very nice to you.'
+
+'"I would not hear thine enemy say so."'
+
+'Yes, I've been rather horrid. I went and Trafalgar-Squared you, when I
+ought to have amused you.'
+
+'But you have amused me!' His eyes shone mischievously.
+
+'Oh, very well.' She took the gibe in good part, offering her hand
+again.
+
+'Good-bye, my dear,' he said gently. 'It's great fun having you in the
+world!' He spoke as though he had personally arranged this provision
+against dulness for his latter end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening he came up to her at a party to ask why she had
+absented herself from a dinner the night before where he expected to
+find her.
+
+'Oh, I telephoned in the morning they weren't to expect me.'
+
+'What were you doing, I should like to know?'
+
+'No, you wouldn't like to know. But you couldn't have helped laughing if
+you'd seen me.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+'Wandering about the purlieus of Battersea.'
+
+'Bless me! Who with?'
+
+'Why, with that notorious Suffragette, Miss Ernestine Blunt. Oh, you'd
+have stared even harder if you'd seen us, I promise you! She with a
+leather portfolio under one arm--a most business-like apparatus, and a
+dinner-bell in one hand.'
+
+'A _dinner_ bell!' He put his hand to his brow as one who feels reason
+reeling.
+
+'Yes, holding fast to the clapper so that we shouldn't affright the isle
+out of season. I, if you please, carrying an armful of propagandist
+literature.'
+
+'Good Lord! _Where_ do you say these orgies take place?'
+
+'Near the Fire Station on the far side of Battersea Park.'
+
+'I think you are in great need of somebody to look after you,' he
+laughed, but no one who knew him could mistake his seriousness. 'Come
+over here.' He found a sofa a little apart from the crush. 'Who goes
+with you on these raids?'
+
+'Why, Ernestine--or rather, I go with her.'
+
+'But who takes care of you?'
+
+'Ernestine.'
+
+'Who knows you're doing this kind of thing?'
+
+'Ernestine--and you. It's a secret.'
+
+'Well, if I'm the only sane person who knows--it's something of a
+responsibility.'
+
+'I won't tell you about it if it oppresses you.'
+
+'On the contrary, I insist on your telling me.'
+
+Vida smiled reflectively. 'The mode of procedure strikes one as highly
+original. It is simple beyond anything in the world. They select an open
+space at the convergence of several thoroughfares--if possible, near an
+omnibus centre. For these smaller meetings they don't go to the length
+of hiring a lorry. Do you know what a lorry is?'
+
+'I regret to say my education in that direction leaves something to be
+desired.'
+
+'Last week I was equally ignorant. To-day I can tell you all about it. A
+lorry is a cart or a big van with the top off. But such elegancies are
+for the parks. In Battersea, you go into some modest little restaurant,
+and you say, "Will you lend me a chair?" This is a surprise for the
+Battersea restaurateur.'
+
+'Naturally--poor man!'
+
+'Exactly. He refuses. But he also asks questions. He is amazed. He is
+against the franchise for women. "You'll _never_ get the vote!" "Well,
+we must have something," says Ernestine. "I'm sure it isn't against your
+principles to lend a woman a chair." She lays hands on one. "I never
+said you could have one of my----" "But you meant to, didn't you? Isn't
+a chair one of the things men have always been ready to offer us? Thank
+you. I'll take good care of it and bring it back quite safe." Out
+marches Ernestine with the enemy's property. She carries the chair into
+the road and plants it in front of the Fire Station. Usually there are
+two or three "helpers." Sometimes Ernestine, if you please, carries the
+meeting entirely on her own shoulders--those same shoulders being about
+so wide. Yes, she's quite a little thing. If there are helpers she sends
+them up and down the street sowing a fresh crop of handbills. When
+Ernestine is ready to begin she stands up on that chair, in the open
+street and, as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world,
+she begins ringing that dinner bell. Naturally people stop and stare and
+draw nearer. Ernestine tells me that Battersea has got so used now to
+the ding-dong and to associating it with "our meeting," that as far off
+as they hear it the inhabitants say, "It's the Suffragettes! Come
+along!" and from one street and another the people emerge laughing and
+running. Of course as soon as there is a little crowd that attracts
+more, and so the snowball grows. Sometimes the traffic is impeded. Oh,
+it's a much odder world than I had suspected!' For a moment laughter
+interrupted the narrative. '"The Salvation Army doesn't _quite_ approve
+of us," Ernestine says, "and the Socialists don't love us either! We
+always take their audiences away from them--poor things," says
+Ernestine, with a sympathetic air. "_You_ do!" I say, because'--Vida
+nodded at Lord Borrodaile--'you must know Ernestine is a beguiler.'
+
+'Oh, a beguiler. I didn't suppose----'
+
+'No, it's against the tradition, I know, but it's true. She herself,
+however, doesn't seem to realize her beguilingness. "It isn't any one in
+particular they come to hear," she says, "it's just that a woman making
+a speech is so much more interesting than a man making a speech." It
+surprises you? So it did me.'
+
+'Nothing surprises me!' said Borrodaile, with a wave of his long hands.
+
+'Last night she was wonderful, our Ernestine! Even I, who am used to
+her, I was stirred. I was even thrilled. She had that crowd in the
+hollow of her hand! When she wound up, "The motion is carried. The
+meeting is over!" and climbed down off her perch, the mob cheered and
+pressed round her so close that I had to give up trying to join her. I
+extricated myself and crossed the street. She is so little that, unless
+she's on a chair, she is swallowed up. For a long time I couldn't see
+her. I didn't know whether she was taking the names and addresses of the
+people who want to join the Union, or whether she had slipped away and
+gone home, till I saw practically the whole crowd moving off after her
+up the street. I followed for some distance on the off-side. She went
+calmly on her way, a tiny figure in a long grey coat between two
+helpers, the Lancashire cotton-spinner and the Cockney working woman,
+with that immense tail of boys and men (and a few women) all following
+after--quite quiet and well-behaved--just following, because it didn't
+occur to them to do anything else. In a way she was still exercising her
+hold over her meeting. I saw, presently, there was one person in front
+of her--a great big fellow--he looked like a carter--he was carrying
+home the chair!'
+
+They both laughed.
+
+'Well, she's found a thick-and-thin advocate in you apparently,' said
+Borrodaile.
+
+'Ah! if only you could _see_ her! trudging along, apparently quite
+oblivious of her quaint following, dinner bell in one hand, leather case
+piled high with "tracts" on the other arm, some of the leaflets sliding
+off, tumbling on to the pavement.' Vida laughed as she recalled the
+scene. 'Then dozens of hands darting out to help her to recover her
+precious property! After the chair had been returned the crowd thinned,
+and I crossed over to her.'
+
+'You in that _melee_!' Borrodaile ejaculated. 'Well, Ernestine hadn't
+the quaintness all to herself.'
+
+'No. Oh, no,' Vida agreed. 'I thought of you, and how you'd look if you
+had come on us suddenly. After the crowd had melted and the helpers had
+vanished into the night, we went on together--all the way, from the
+Battersea Fire Station to Sloane Square, did Ernestine and I walk,
+talking reform last night. You laugh? So do I; but not at Ernestine.
+She's a most wonderful person. I sometimes ask myself if the world will
+ever know half how wonderful. You, for instance, you haven't, after all
+I've said, you haven't _an idea_!'
+
+'Oh, I don't doubt--I don't think I ever doubted that women have a
+facility in speech--no, no, I'm not gibing! I don't even doubt they can,
+as you say, sway and control crowds. But I maintain it is very bad for
+the women.'
+
+'How is it bad?'
+
+'How can it fail to be! All that horrible publicity. All that
+concentrating of crude popular interest on themselves! Believe me,
+nobody who watches a public career carefully but sees the demoralizing
+effect the limelight has even on men's characters. And I suppose you'll
+admit that men are less delicately organized than women.'
+
+'I can only say I've seen the sort of thing you mean in our world, where
+a good many women have only themselves to think about. I've looked in
+vain for those evil effects among the Suffrage women. It almost seems,
+on the contrary, as if there were something ennobling in working for a
+public cause.'
+
+'Personally, I can't say I've observed it--not among the political women
+of my acquaintance!'
+
+'But you only know the old kind. Yes, the kind whose idea of influence
+is to make men fall in love with them, whose idea of working is to put
+on a smart gown and smile their prettiest. No, I agree that _isn't_
+necessarily ennobling!'
+
+'I see, it's the new taste in manners and the new arts of persuasion
+that make the ideal women and'--with an ironic little bow--'the
+impassioned convert.'
+
+'I'm bound to admit,' she said stoutly, 'that I think the Suffrage
+movement in England has the advantage of being engineered by a very
+remarkable set of women. Not in ability alone, but in dignity of
+character. People will never know, I sometimes think, how much the
+movement has owed to being taken in hand by just these particular women.
+I don't pretend they're the average. They're very far above the average.
+And what the world will owe to them I very much doubt if even the future
+will know. But I seem to be the only one who minds.' She laughed. 'I
+could take my oath _they_ never give the matter a thought. One
+thing----' She leaned forward and then checked herself. 'No, I've talked
+about them enough!'
+
+She opened her fan and looked about the crowded room.
+
+'Say what you were going to. I'm reconciled. I see what's coming.'
+
+'What's coming?'
+
+'Yes. Go on.'
+
+She looked at him a little perplexed over the top of her fan.
+
+'I was only going to say that what struck me particularly in that girl,
+for instance, is her inaccessibility to flattery. I've watched her with
+men.'
+
+'Of course! She knew you were watching her. She no doubt thinks the eyes
+of the world are upon her.'
+
+'On the contrary, it's her unselfconsciousness that's the most
+surprising thing about her. Or, no! It's something more interesting
+even than that. She is conscious, in a way, of the hold she has
+on the public. But it hasn't any of the deteriorating effect you
+were deprecating. I've been moved once or twice to congratulate her.
+She takes it as unmoved as a child. It's just as if you said to a
+little thing of three, "What a clever baby you are!" or, "You've got the
+most beautiful eyes in the world." The child would realize that you
+meant well, that you were being pleasant, but it wouldn't think about
+either its cleverness or its eyes. It's like that with Ernestine. When I
+said to her, "You made an astoundingly good speech to-night. The best
+I've heard even you make," she looked at me with a sort of
+half-absent-minded, half-wondering expression, without a glimmer of
+personal vanity. When I was so ill-advised as not to drop the subject,
+when I ventured to say something more about that great gift of hers, she
+interrupted me with a little laugh, "It's a sign of grace in you not to
+get tired of our speeches," she said. "I suppose we repeat ourselves a
+good deal. You see that's just what we've got to do. We've got to
+_hammer it in_." But the fact is that she doesn't repeat herself, that
+she's always fresh and stimulating, because--I suppose it's because
+she's always thinking of the Great Impersonal Object, and talking about
+it out of her own eager heart. Ernestine? She's as unhackneyed as a
+spring morning!'
+
+'Oh, very well. I'll go.'
+
+'Go? Where?' for he still sat there.
+
+'Why, to hear your paragon. I've seen that was what you were leading up
+to.'
+
+'N--no. I don't think I want you to go.'
+
+'Oh, yes, you do. I knew you'd make me sooner or later.'
+
+'No, don't be afraid.' She stood up.
+
+'I'm not afraid. I'm eager,' he laughed.
+
+She shook her head. 'No, I'll never take you.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'Because--it isn't all Ernestine and skittles. And because you'd make me
+keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't
+matter--things that have lost some of their power to trouble me, but
+that I should feel for you.'
+
+'What sort of----'
+
+'Oh, oddities, uglinesses--things that abound, I'm told, at all men's
+meetings, and that yet, somehow, we'd like to eliminate from women's
+quite on the old angel theory. No, I won't take you!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The following afternoon, at half-past five, the carelessly dressed,
+rather slouching figure of Lord Borrodaile might have been seen walking
+along the Thames Embankment in the neighbourhood of Pimlico Pier. He
+passed without seeing the only other person visible at that quiet
+hour--one of the 'unemployed,' like himself, but save in that respect
+sufficiently unlike the Earl of Borrodaile was the grimy, unshaven tramp
+collapsed in one corner of the double-seated municipal bench. Lord
+Borrodaile's fellow-citizen leaned heavily on one of the stout scrolls
+of ironwork which, repeated at regular intervals on each side, divided
+the seat into six compartments. No call for any one to notice such a
+man--there are so many of them in these piping times of peace and
+prosperity. Then, too, they go crawling about our world protected from
+notice, as the creatures are who take their colouring from bark or leaf
+or arctic snows. So these other forms of life, weather-beaten,
+smoke-begrimed, subdued to the hues of the dusty roads they travel, and
+the unswept spaces where they sleep--over these the eye glides unseeing.
+
+As little interested in the gentleman as the gentleman was in him, the
+wastrel contemplated the river with grimly speculative eye. But when
+suddenly Borrodaile's sauntering figure came to a standstill near the
+lower end of the bench, the tramp turned his head and watched dully the
+gloveless hands cross one over the other on the knob of the planted
+umbrella; the bent head; one hand raised now, groping about the
+waistcoat, lighting upon what it sought and raising a pince-nez, through
+which he read the legend scrawled in chalk upon the pavement. With a
+faint saturnine smile Lord Borrodaile dropped the glass, and took his
+bearings. He consulted his watch, and walked on.
+
+Upon his return a quarter of an hour later, he viewed the same
+little-alluring prospect from the opposite side of the street. The tramp
+still stared at the river, but on his side of the bench, at the other
+end, sat a lady reading a book. Between the two motionless figures and
+the parapet, a group of dirty children were wrangling. Lord Borrodaile
+crossed the wide street and paused a moment just behind the lady. He
+leaned forward as if to speak to her across the middle division of the
+bench. But he reconsidered, and turning his back to her, sat down and
+drew an evening paper out of his pocket. He was so little like that
+glittering figment, the peer of popular imagination, that the careless
+sobriety of dress and air in the person of this third occupant of the
+capacious double bench struck an even less arresting note than the frank
+wretchedness of the other man.
+
+Presently one of the children burst out crying, and continued to howl
+lustily till the lady looked up from her page and inquired what was the
+matter. The unwashed infant stared open-mouthed at this intruder upon
+her grief. Instead of answering, she regarded the lady with a bored
+astonishment, as who should say: What are you interrupting me for, just
+in the middle of a good yell? She then took up the strain as nearly as
+possible where she had left off. She was getting on very well with this
+second attempt at a demonstration until Miss Levering made some mention
+of a penny, whereupon the infant again suspended her more violent
+manifestations, though the tears kept rolling down.
+
+After various attempts on the lady's part, the little girl was induced
+to come and occupy the middle place on the river side of the bench,
+between Vida and the tramp. While the lady held the penny in her hand,
+and cross-examined the still weeping child, Borrodaile sat quietly
+listening behind his paper. When the child couldn't answer those
+questions that were of a general nature, the tramp did, and the three
+were presently quite a pleasant family party. The only person 'out of
+it' was the petrified gentleman on the other side.
+
+A few minutes before the arrival of the Suffragettes, two nondescript
+young men, in a larky mood, appeared with the announcement that they'd
+seen 'one of them' at the top of Ranelagh Street.
+
+'That'll be the little 'un,' said the tramp to nobody. 'You don't ketch
+'er bein' late!'
+
+'Blunt! No--cheeky little devil,' remarked one of the young men,
+offering a new light upon the royal virtue of punctuality; but from the
+enthusiasm with which they availed themselves of the rest of Lord
+Borrodaile's side of the bench, it was obvious they had hurried to the
+spot with the intention of securing front seats at the show.
+
+'Of course it ain't goin' to be as much fun as the 'Yde Park Sunday
+aufternoons. Jim Wrightson goes to them. Keeps things lively--'e does.'
+
+'Kicks up a reg'lar shindy, don't 'e?'
+
+'Yes. We can't do nothin' 'ere--ain't enough'--whether of space or of
+spirited young men he did not specify.
+
+As they lit their cigarettes the company received further additions--one
+obviously otherwise employed than with politics. Her progress--was it
+symbolic?--was necessarily slow, for a small child clung to her skirt,
+and she trundled a sickly boy in a go-cart. The still sniffling person
+in possession of the middle seat on the other side (her anxious and
+watery eye fixed on the penny) was told by Miss Levering to make room
+for the new-comers. The child's way of doing so was to crowd closer to
+the neighbourhood of the fascinating coin. But that mandate to 'make
+room' had proved a conversational opening through which poured--or
+trickled rather--the mother's sorry little history. Her husband was
+employed in the clothing department of the Army and Navy Stores--yes,
+nine years now. He was considered very lucky to keep his place when the
+staff was reduced. But the costliness of raising the children! It was
+well that three were dead. If she had it all to do over again--no! no!
+
+The seeming heartlessness with which she envisaged the non-existence of
+her babies contrasted strangely with her patient tenderness to the
+querulous boy in the go-cart.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Levering had not forgotten her earlier acquaintance. As
+the wan mother watched the end of the transaction which left the
+sniffler now quite consoled, in possession of the modest coin, she said
+naively--
+
+'When anybody gives one of my children a penny, I always save half of it
+for them the next day.'
+
+Vida Levering turned her head away, and in so doing met Lord
+Borrodaile's eyes over the back of the bench. She gave a faint start of
+surprise, and then--
+
+'She saves half of it!' was all she said.
+
+Borrodaile, glancing shrewdly over the further augmented gathering,
+asked the invariable question--
+
+'How do you account for the fact that so few women are here to show
+their interest in a matter that's supposed to concern them so much?'
+Vida craned her head. 'Beside you, only one!' Borrodaile's mocking voice
+went on. 'Isn't this an instance of your sex's indifference to the whole
+thing? Isn't it equally an instance of man's keenness about public
+questions?' He couldn't forbear adding in a whisper, 'Even such a
+question, and such men?'
+
+Vida still craned, searching in vain for refutation in female form. But
+she did not take her failure lying down.
+
+'The men who are here,' she said, 'the great majority of men at all
+open-air meetings seem to be loafers. Woman--whatever else she may or
+may not be--isn't a loafer!' Through Borrodaile's laugh she persisted.
+'A woman always seems to have something to do, even if it's of the
+silliest description. Yes, and if she's a decent person at all, she's
+not hanging about at street corners waiting for some diversion!'
+
+'Not bad; not bad! I see you are catching the truly martial spirit.'
+
+'That's them, ain't it?' One of the young men jumped up.
+
+Vida turned her head in time to see the meeting between two girls and a
+woman arriving from opposite directions.
+
+'Yes,' she whispered; 'that's Ernestine with the pile of handbills on
+her arm.'
+
+The lady sent out smiles and signals of welcome with a lifted hand. The
+busy propagandist took no notice. She was talking to her two companions,
+one of whom, the younger with head on one side, kept shooting out
+glances half provocative, half appealing, towards Lord Borrodaile and
+the young men. She seemed as keenly alive to the fact of these male
+presences as the two other women seemed oblivious.
+
+'Which is the one,' asked Lord Borrodaile, 'that you were telling me
+about?'
+
+'Why, Ernestine Blunt--the pink-cheeked one in the long alpaca coat.'
+
+'She doesn't look so very devilish,' he laughed. After an impatient
+moment's hope that devilishness might develop, he said, 'She hasn't seen
+you yet.'
+
+'Oh, yes, she has.'
+
+'Then she isn't as overjoyed as she ought to be.'
+
+'She'd be surprised to know she was expected to be overjoyed.'
+
+'Why? Aren't you very good to her?'
+
+'No. She's been rather good to me, though she doesn't take very much
+stock in me.'
+
+'Why doesn't she?'
+
+'Oh, there are only two kinds of people that interest Ernestine. Those
+who'll be active in carrying on the propaganda, and those who have yet
+to be converted.'
+
+'Well, I'm disappointed,' he teased, perceiving how keen his friend was
+that he should not be. 'The other one would be more likely to convert
+_me_.'
+
+'Oh, you only say that because the other one's tall, and makes eyes!'
+Vida denounced him, to his evident diversion.
+
+Whatever his reasons were, the young men seemed to share his preference.
+They were watching the languishing young woman, who in turn kept
+glancing at them. Ernestine, having finished what she was saying, made
+her way to where Miss Levering sat, not, it would appear, for any
+purpose so frivolous as saying good evening, but to deposit what were
+left of the handbills and the precious portfolio in the care of one well
+known by now to have a motherly oversight of such properties.
+
+Lord Borrodaile's eyes narrowed with amusement as he watched the hurried
+pantomime.
+
+Instead of 'Thank you,' as Vida meekly accepted the incongruous and by
+no means light burden: 'We are short of speakers,' said Ernestine.
+'You'll help us out, won't you?' As though it were the simplest thing in
+the world.
+
+Lord Borrodaile half rose in protest.
+
+'No,' said Vida. 'I won't speak till I have something to say.'
+
+'I should have thought there was plenty to _say_!' said the girl.
+
+'Yes, for you. You know such a lot,' smiled her new friend. 'I must get
+some first-hand knowledge, too, before I try to stand up and speechify.'
+
+'It's now we need help. By-and-by there'll be plenty. But I'm not going
+to worry you,' she caught herself up. Then, confidentially, 'We've got
+one new helper that we've great hopes of. She joined to-day.'
+
+'Some one who can speak?'
+
+'Oh, she'll speak, I dare say, by and by.'
+
+'What does she do in the meantime--to----' (to account for your
+enthusiasm, was implied) 'to show she's a helper? Subscribes?'
+
+'I expect she'll subscribe, too. She takes such an interest. Plenty of
+courage, too.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'Well'--the voice dropped--'she's _all right_, but she belongs to rather
+stodgy people. Bothers about respectability, and that sort of thing. But
+she came along with me this afternoon distributing handbills all over
+the City for two hours! Not many women of her kind are ready to do
+_that_ the first thing.'
+
+'No, I dare say not,' said Vida, humbly.
+
+'And one thing I thought a very good sign'--Ernestine bent lower in her
+enthusiasm--'when we got to Finsbury Circus she said'--Ernestine paused
+as if struck afresh by the merits of the new recruit--'she said, "_Give
+me a piece of chalk!_"'
+
+'Chalk! What did she want with----?'
+
+Borrodaile, too, leaned nearer.
+
+'She saw me beginning to write meeting notices on the stones. Of course,
+the people stopped and stared and laughed. But she, instead of getting
+shy, and pretending she hadn't anything to do with me, she took the
+chalk and wrote, "Votes for Women!" all over the pavement of Finsbury
+Circus.' Ernestine paused a moment that Miss Levering might applaud the
+new 'helper.' 'I thought that a very good sign in such a respectable
+person.'
+
+'Oh, yes; a most encouraging sign. Is it the one in mauve who did that?'
+
+'No, that's--I forget her name--oh, Mrs. Thomas. She's new, too. I'll
+have to let her speak if you won't,' she said, a trifle anxiously.
+
+'Mrs. Thomas, by all means,' murmured Borrodaile, as Ernestine, seeing
+her plea was hopeless, turned away.
+
+Vida caught her by the coat. 'Where are the others? The rest of your
+_good_ speakers?'
+
+'Scattered up and down. Getting ready for the General Election. That's
+why we have to break in new people. Oh, she sent me some notes, that
+girl did. I must give them back to her.'
+
+Ernestine stooped and opened the portfolio on Miss Levering's lap. She
+rummaged through the bulging pockets.
+
+'I thought,' said Miss Levering, with obvious misgiving, 'I thought I
+hadn't seen that affected-looking creature before.'
+
+'Oh, she'll get over all that,' Ernestine whispered. 'You haven't much
+opinion of our crowds, but they can teach people a lot.'
+
+'Teach them not to hold their heads like a broken lily?'
+
+'Yes, knock all sorts of nonsense out and stiffen them up wonderfully.'
+
+She found the scrap of paper, and shut the portfolio with a snap.
+
+'Now!'
+
+She stood up, took in the fact of the audience having increased and a
+policeman in the offing. She summoned her allies.
+
+'It's nearly time for those Army and Navy workers to come out. The men
+will come first,' she said, 'and five minutes after, they let the women
+out. I'll begin, and then I think you'd better speak next,' she said,
+handing the die-away young woman her notes. 'These seem all right.'
+
+'Oh, but, Miss Blunt,' she whispered, 'I'm so nervous. How am I ever to
+face all those men?'
+
+'You'll find it quite easy when once you are started,' said Ernestine,
+in a quiet undertone.
+
+'But I'm so afraid that, just out of pure nervousness, I'll say the
+wrong thing.'
+
+'If you do, I'll be there,' returned the chairman, a little grimly.
+
+'But it's the very first time in my life----'
+
+'Now, look here----'
+
+Ernestine reached out past this person who was luxuriating in her own
+emotions, and drew the ample mauve matron into the official group close
+to where Miss Levering sat nursing the handbills.
+
+'It's easy enough talking to these little meetings. They're quite good
+and quiet--not a bit like Hyde Park.' (One of the young men poked the
+other. They exchanged looks.) 'But there are three things we all agree
+it's just as well to keep in mind: Not to talk about ourselves'--she
+measured off the tit-bits of wisdom with a slim forefinger--'not to say
+anything against the press, and, if possible, remember to praise the
+police.'
+
+'Praise the police!' ejaculated the mauve matron.
+
+'Sh!' said Ernestine, softly. But not so easily was the tide of
+indignation stemmed.
+
+'I saw with my own eyes----' began the woman.
+
+'Yes, yes, but----' she lowered her voice, Borrodaile had to strain to
+catch what she said, 'you see it's no use beating our heads against a
+stone wall. A movement that means to be popular must have the police on
+its side. After all, they do very well--considering.'
+
+'Considering they're men?' demanded the matron.
+
+'Anyhow,' Ernestine went on, 'even if they behaved ten times worse, it's
+not a bit of good to antagonize the police or the press. If they aren't
+our friends, we've got to make them our friends. They're both _much_
+better than they were. They must be encouraged!' said the wise young
+Daniel, with a little nod. Then as she saw or felt that the big matron
+might elude her vigilance and break out into indiscretion, 'Why, we had
+a reporter in from the _Morning Magnifier_ only to-day. He said, "The
+public seems to have got tired of reading that you spit and scratch and
+prod policemen with your hatpins. Now, do you mind saying what is it you
+really do?" I told him to come here this afternoon. Now, when I've
+opened the meeting, _you'll_ tell him!'
+
+'Oh, _dear_!' the young woman patted her fringe, 'do you suppose we'll
+be in the _Magnifier_ to-morrow? How dreadful!'
+
+During this little interchange a procession of men streaming homeward in
+their hundreds came walking down the Embankment in twos and threes or
+singly, shambling past the loosely gathered assemblage about the bench.
+
+The child on the riverward side still clutching its penny was
+unceremoniously ousted. As soon as Ernestine had mounted the seat the
+slackly held gathering showed signs of cohesion. The waiting units drew
+closer. The dingy procession slowed--the workmen, looking up at the
+young face with the fluttering sycamore shadows printed on its pink and
+white, grinned or frowned, but many halted and listened. Through the
+early part of the speech Miss Levering kept looking out of the corner of
+her eye to see what effect it had on Borrodaile. But Borrodaile gave no
+sign. Ernestine was trying to make it clear what a gain it would be,
+especially to this class, if women had the vote. An uphill task to catch
+and hold the attention of those tired workmen. They hadn't stopped there
+to be made to think--if they weren't going to be amused, they'd go home.
+A certain number did go home, after pausing to ask the young Reformer,
+more or less good-humouredly, why she didn't get married. Lord
+Borrodaile had privately asked for enlightenment on the same score. Vida
+had only smiled. One man varied the monotony by demanding why, if it
+would be a good thing for the working class to have women voting, why
+didn't the Labour Party take up the question.
+
+'Some of the Labour Party have,' Ernestine told them, 'but the others
+are afraid. They've been told that women are such slaves to
+convention--such timid creatures! They know their own women aren't, but
+they're doubtful about the rest. The Labour Party, you know'--she spoke
+with a condescending forbearance--'the Labour Party is young yet, and
+knows what it's like to feel timid. Some of the Labour men have the wild
+notion that women would all vote Conservative.'
+
+'So they would!'
+
+But Ernestine shook her head. 'While we are trying to show the people
+who say that, that even if they were right, it would be no excuse
+whatever for denying our claim to vote whichever way we thought best.
+While we are going to the root of the principle of the thing, another
+lot of logical gentlemen are sure to say, "Oh, it would never do to have
+women voting. They'd be going in for all sorts of new-fangled reforms,
+and the whole place would be turned upside down!" So between the men who
+think we'd all turn Tory and the men who are sure we'd all be
+Socialists, we don't seem likely to get very far, unless we do something
+to show them we mean to have it for no better reason than just that
+we're human beings!'
+
+'Isn't she delightfully--direct!' whispered Miss Levering, eager to cull
+some modest flower of praise.
+
+'Oh, direct enough!' His tone so little satisfied the half-maternal
+pride of the other woman that she was almost prepared for the slighting
+accent in which he presently asked, 'Is this the sort of thing that's
+supposed to convert people to a great constitutional change?'
+
+'It isn't our women would get the vote,' a workman called out. 'It's the
+rich women.'
+
+'Is it only the rich men who have the vote?' demanded Ernestine. 'You
+know it isn't. We are fighting to get the franchise on precisely the
+same terms as men.'
+
+For several moments the wrangle went on.
+
+'Would wives have a vote?'
+
+She showed how that could be made a matter of adjustment. She quoted the
+lodger franchise and the latch-key decision.
+
+Vida kept glancing at Borrodaile. As still he made no sign, 'Of course,'
+the lady whispered across the back of the bench, 'of course, you think
+she's an abomination, but----?' she paused for a handsome disavowal.
+Borrodaile looked at the eager face--Vida's, for Miss Blunt's was calm
+as a May morning. As he did not instantly speak, 'But you can't deny
+she's got extremely good wits.'
+
+He seemed to relent before such persuasiveness. 'She's got a delicious
+little face,' he admitted, thinking to say the most.
+
+'Oh, her _face_! That's scarcely the point.'
+
+'It's always the point.'
+
+'It's the principle that's at stake,' Ernestine was saying. 'The most
+out-and-out Socialist among us would welcome the enfranchisement of six
+duchesses or all the women born with red hair; we don't care on what
+plea the entering wedge gets in. But let me tell you there aren't any
+people on earth so blind to their own interests as just you working men
+when you oppose or when you are indifferent to women's having votes. All
+women suffer--but it's the women of your class who suffer most. _Isn't_
+it? Don't you men know--why, it's notorious!--that the women of the
+working class are worse sweated even than the men?'
+
+'So they are!'
+
+'If you don't believe me, _ask_ them. Here they come.'
+
+It was well contrived--that point! It struck full in the face of the
+homeward-streaming women who had just been let out.
+
+'We know, and you men know----' the speaker nailed her advantage, 'that
+even the Government that's being forced to become a model employer where
+men are concerned, the very _Government_ is responsible for sweating
+thousands of women in State employments! We know and you know that in
+those work-rooms over yonder these very women have been sitting weighed
+down by the rumour of a reduction in their wages already so much below
+the men's. They've sat there wondering whether they can risk a strike.
+Women--it's notorious,' she flung it out on a wave of passion, 'women
+everywhere suffer most from the evils of our social system. Why not?
+They've had no hand in it! Our social system is the work of men! Yet we
+must work to uphold it! this system that crushes us. We must swell the
+budget, we must help to pay the bill! What _fools_ we've all been! What
+fools we are if we don't do something!'
+
+'Gettin' up rows and goin' to 'Olloway's no good.'
+
+While she justified the course that led to Holloway--
+
+'Rot! Piffle!' they interjected. One man called out: 'I'd have some
+respect for you if you'd carried a bomb into the House of Commons, but a
+miserable little scuffle with the police!'
+
+'Here's a gentleman who is inciting us to carry bombs. Now, that shocks
+me.'
+
+The crowd recovered its spirits at the notion of the champion-shocker
+shocked.
+
+'We've been dreadfully browbeaten about our tactics, but that gentleman
+with his bad advice makes our tactics sound as innocent and reasonable
+as they actually are. When you talk in that wild way about bombs--you--I
+may be a hooligan'--she held up the delicate pink-and-white face with
+excellent effect--'but you do shock me.'
+
+It wore well this exquisitely humorous jest about shocking a
+Suffragette. The whole crowd was one grin.
+
+'I'm specially shocked when I hear a _man_ advocating such a thing! You
+men have other and more civilized ways of getting the Government to pay
+attention to abuses. Now listen to what I'm saying: for it's the
+justification of everything we are going to do in the future, _unless_
+we get what we're asking for! It's this. Our justification is that men,
+even poor men, have that powerful leverage of the vote. You men have no
+right to resort to violence; you have a better way. We have _no_ way but
+agitation. A _Liberal_ Government that refuses----'
+
+'Three cheers for the Liberals! Hip, hip----'
+
+'My friend, I see you are young,' says Ernestine.
+
+'Lord, wot are you?' the young man hurled back.
+
+'Before I got my political education, when _I_ was young and innocent,
+like this gentleman, who still pins his faith to the Liberals, I, too,
+hoped great things from them. My friends, it's a frame of mind we
+outlive!'--and her friends shrieked with delight.
+
+'Well, it's one way for a girl to amuse herself till she gets married,'
+said Borrodaile.
+
+'Why, that's just what the hooligans all say!' laughed Vida. 'And, like
+you, they think that if a woman wants justice for other women she must
+have a grievance of her own. I've heard them ask Ernestine in
+Battersea--she has valiant friends there--"Oo's 'urt _your_ feelin's?"
+they say. "Tell me, and I'll punch 'is 'ead." But you aren't here to
+listen to _me_!' Vida caught herself up. 'This is about the deputation
+of women that waited on the Prime Minister.'
+
+'Didn't get nothin' out of him!' somebody shouted.
+
+'Oh, yes, we did! We got the best speech in favour of Woman's Suffrage
+that any of us ever heard.'
+
+'Haw! Haw! Clever ol' fox!'
+
+''E just buttered 'em up! But 'e don't do nothin'.'
+
+'Oh, yes, he did something!'
+
+'What?'
+
+'He gave us advice!' They all laughed together at that in the most
+friendly spirit in the world. 'Two nice pieces,' Ernestine held up each
+hand very much like a school child rejoicing over slices of cake. 'One
+we are taking'--she drew in a hand--'the other we aren't'--she let it
+fall. 'He said we must win people to our way of thinking. We're doing
+it; at a rate that must astonish, if it doesn't even embarrass him. The
+other piece of distinguished advice he gave us was of a more doubtful
+character.' Her small hands took it up gingerly. Again she seemed to
+weigh it there in the face of the multitude. 'The Prime Minister said we
+"must have patience." She threw the worthless counsel into the air and
+tossed contempt after it. 'It is man's oldest advice to woman!'
+
+'All our trouble fur nothin'!' groaned an impish boy.
+
+'We see now that patience has been our bane. If it hadn't been for this
+same numbing slavish patience we wouldn't be standing before the world
+to-day, political outcasts--catalogued with felons and lunatics----'
+
+'And peers!' called a voice.
+
+'We are _done_ with patience!' said Ernestine, hotly; 'and for that
+reason there is at last some hope for the women's cause. Now Miss
+Scammell will speak to you.'
+
+A strange thing happened when Miss Scammell got up. She seemed to leave
+her attractiveness, such as it was, behind when she climbed up on the
+bench. Standing mute, on a level with the rest, her head deprecatingly
+on one side, she had pleased. Up there on the bench, presuming to teach,
+she woke a latent cruelty in the mob. They saw she couldn't take care of
+herself, and so they 'went for her'--the very same young men who had got
+up and given her a choice of the seats they had been at the pains to
+come early to secure. To be sure, when, with a smile, she had sat down
+only a quarter of an hour before, in the vacated place of one of them,
+the other boy promptly withdrew with his pal. It would have been too
+compromising to remain alongside the charmer. But when Miss Scammell
+stood up on that same bench, she was assumed to have left the realm of
+smiles and meaning looks where she was mistress and at home. She had
+ventured out into the open, not only without the sword of pointed
+speech--that falls to few--but this young lady had not even the armour
+of absolute earnestness. When she found that smiling piteously wouldn't
+do, she proceeded, looking more and more like a scared white rabbit, to
+tell about the horrible cases of lead-poisoning among the girls in
+certain china and earthenware works. All that she had to say was true
+and significant enough. But it was no use. They jeered and howled her
+down for pure pleasure in her misery. She trembled and lost her thread.
+She very nearly cried. Vida wondered that the little chairwoman didn't
+fly to the rescue. But Ernestine sat quite unmoved looking in her lap.
+
+'Lamentable exhibition!' said Borrodaile, moving about uneasily.
+
+The odd thing was that Miss Scammell kept on with her prickly task.
+
+'Why don't you make her sit down?' Vida whispered to Miss Blunt.
+
+'Because I've got to see what she's made of.'
+
+'But surely you see! She's awful!'
+
+'Not half so bad as lots of men when they first try. If she weathers
+this, she'll be a speaker some day.'
+
+At last, having told her story through the interruptions--told it badly,
+brokenly, but to the end--having given proofs that lead-poisoning among
+women was on the increase and read out from her poor crumpled, shaking
+notes, the statistics of infant and still-birth mortality, the unhappy
+new helper sat down.
+
+Miss Blunt leaned over, and whispered, 'That's all right! I was wrong.
+This is nearly as bad as Hyde Park,' and with that jumped up to give the
+crowd a piece of her mind.
+
+They sniggered, but they quieted down, all but one.
+
+'Yes, you are the gentleman, you there with the polo cap, who doesn't
+believe in giving a fair hearing. I would like to ask that man who
+thinks himself so superior, _that_ one in the grey cap, whether he is
+capable of standing up here on this bench and addressing the crowd.'
+
+'Hear, hear.'
+
+'Yes! Get on the bench. Up with him.'
+
+A slight scrimmage, and an agitated man was observed to be seeking
+refuge on the outskirts.
+
+'Bad as Miss Scammell was, she made me rather ashamed of myself,' Vida
+confided to Borrodaile.
+
+'Yes,' he said sympathetically, 'it always makes one rather
+ashamed--even if it's a man making public failure.'
+
+'Oh, that wasn't what I meant. _She_ at least tried. But I--I feel I'm a
+type of all the idle women the world over. Leaving it to the poor and
+the ill-equipped to----'
+
+'To keep the world from slipping into chaos?' he inquired genially.
+
+She hadn't heard. Her eyes were fastened on the chairwoman.
+
+'After all, they've got Ernestine,' Vida exulted under her breath.
+
+Borrodaile fell to studying this aspect of the face whose every change
+he had thought he knew so well. What was the new thing in it? Not
+admiration merely, not affection alone--something almost fierce behind
+the half-protecting tenderness with which she watched the chairman's
+duel with the mob. Borrodaile lifted a hand--people were far too
+engrossed, he knew, to notice--and he laid it on Vida's, which had
+tightened on the back of the bench.
+
+'My dear!' he said wondering and low as one would to wake a sleepwalker.
+
+She answered without looking at him, 'What is it?'
+
+He seemed not to know quite how to frame his protest.
+
+'She can carry _you_ along at least!' he grumbled. 'You forget everybody
+else!'
+
+Vida smiled. It was so plain whom he meant by 'everybody.' Lord
+Borrodaile gave a faint laugh. He probably knew that would 'bring her
+round.' It did. It brought her quick eyes to his face; it brought low
+words.
+
+'_Please!_ Don't let her see you--laughing, I mean.'
+
+'You can explain to her afterwards that it was you I was laughing at.'
+As that failed of specific effect, 'You really are a little ridiculous,'
+he said again, with the edge in his voice, 'hanging on the lips of that
+Backfisch as if she were Demosthenes.'
+
+'We don't think she's a Demosthenes. We know she is something much more
+significant--for _us_.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'She's Ernestine Blunt.'
+
+Clean out of patience, he turned his back.
+
+'Am I alone?' she whispered over his shoulder, as if in apology. 'Look
+at all the other women. Some of them are very intelligent. Our interest
+in our fellow-woman seems queer and unnatural to you because you don't
+realize Mrs. Brown has always been interested in Mrs. Jones.'
+
+'Oh, has she?'
+
+'Yes. She hasn't said much to Mr. Brown about it,' Vida admitted,
+smiling, because a man's interest in woman is so limited.'
+
+Borrodaile laughed. 'I didn't know that was his failing!'
+
+'I mean his interest is of one sort. It's confined to the woman he finds
+interesting in _that_ way at _that_ minute. Other women bore him. But
+other women have always been mightily interesting to us! Now, sh! let's
+listen.'
+
+'I can understand those callow youths,' unwarily he persisted; 'she's
+pink and pert and all the rest, but _you_----'
+
+'Oh, will you _never_ understand? Don't you know women are more
+civilized than men?'
+
+'Woman! she'll be the last animal domesticated.' It seemed as if he
+preferred to have her angry rather than oblivious of him.
+
+But not for nothing did she belong to a world which dares to say
+whatever it wants to say.
+
+'We are civilized enough, at all events'--there was an ominous sparkle
+in her eye--'to listen to men speakers clever or dull--we listen quietly
+enough. But men!--a person must be of your own sex for you to be able
+to regard him without distraction. If the woman is beautiful enough, you
+are intoxicated. If she's plain enough, you are impatient. All you see
+in any woman is her sex. You can't _listen_.'
+
+'Whew!' remarked Borrodaile.
+
+'But _I_ must listen--I haven't got over being ashamed to find how much
+this girl can teach me.'
+
+'I'm sorry for you that any of Miss Scammell's interesting speech was
+lost,' the chairman was saying. 'She was telling you just the kind of
+thing that you men ought to know, the kind of thing you get little
+chance of knowing about from men. Yet those wretched girls who die young
+of lead-poisoning, or live long enough to bring sickly babies into the
+world, those poor working women look to you working men for help. Are
+they wrong to look to you, or are they right? You working men represent
+the majority of the electorate. _You_ can change things if you will. If
+you don't, don't think the woman will suffer alone. We shall all suffer
+together. More and more the masters are saying, "We'll get rid of these
+men--they're too many for us with their unions and their political pull.
+We'll get women. We'll get them for two-thirds of what we pay the men.
+Good business!" say the masters. But it's bad business----'
+
+'For all but the masters,' muttered the tramp.
+
+'Bad for the masters, too,' said the girl, 'only they can't see it, or
+else they don't care what sort of world they leave to their children. If
+you men weren't so blind, you'd see the women will be in politics what
+they are in the home--your best friends.'
+
+'Haw! haw! Listen at 'er!'
+
+'_With_ the women you would be strong. Without them you are--what you
+are!'
+
+The ringing contempt in her tone was more than one gentleman could put
+up with.
+
+'How do you think the world got on before you came to show it _how_?'
+
+'It got on very badly. Not only in England--all over the world men have
+insisted on governing alone. What's the result? Misery and degradation
+to the masses, and to the few--the rich and high-placed--for them
+corruption and decline.'
+
+'That's it, always 'ammering away at the men--pore devils!'
+
+'Some people are so foolish as to think we are working against the men.'
+
+'So you are!'
+
+'It's just what the old-school politicians would like you to think. But
+it's nonsense. Nobody knows better than we that the best interests of
+men and women are identical--they _can't be separated_. It's trying to
+separate them that's made the whole trouble.'
+
+'Oh, you know it all!'
+
+'Well, you see'--she put on her most friendly and reasonable air--'men
+have never been obliged to study women's point of view. But we've been
+obliged to study the men's point of view. It's natural we should
+understand you a great deal better than you understand us. And though
+you sometimes disappoint us, we don't lose hope of you.'
+
+'Thanks awfully.'
+
+'We think that if we can only make you understand the meaning of this
+agitation, then you'll help us to get what we want. We believe the day
+will come when the old ideal of men standing by the women--when that
+ideal will be realized. For don't believe it ever _has_ been realized.
+It never has! Now our last speaker for to-day will say a few words to
+you. Mrs. Thomas.'
+
+'Haven't you had about enough?' said Borrodaile, impatiently.
+
+'Don't wait for me,' was all her answer.
+
+'Shall you stay, then, till the bitter end?'
+
+'It will only be a few moments now. I may as well see it out.'
+
+He glanced at his watch, detached it, and held it across the back of the
+seat.
+
+She nodded, and repeated, 'Don't wait.'
+
+His answer to that was to turn not only a bored but a slightly injured
+face towards the woman who had, not without difficulty, balanced her
+rotund form on the bench at the far end. She might have been the
+comfortable wife of a rural grocer. She spoke the good English you may
+not infrequently hear among that class, but it became clear, as she went
+on, that she was a person of a wider cultivation.
+
+'You'd better go. She'll be stodgy and dull.' Vida spoke with a real
+sympathy for her friend's sufferings. 'Oh, portentous dull.'
+
+'And no waist!' sighed Borrodaile, but he sank back in his corner.
+
+Presently his wandering eye discovered something in his companion's
+aspect that told him subtly she was not listening to the mauve matron.
+Neither were some of the others. A number had moved away, and the little
+lane their going left was not yet closed, for the whole general
+attention was obviously slackened. This woman wasn't interesting enough
+even to boo at. The people who didn't go home began to talk to one
+another. But in Vida's face--what had brought to it that still
+intensity? Borrodaile moved so that he could follow the fixed look. One
+of the infrequently passing hansoms had stopped. Was she looking at
+that? Two laughing people leaning out, straining to catch what the mauve
+orator was saying. Suddenly Borrodaile pulled his slack figure together.
+
+'Sophia!' he ejaculated softly, 'and Stonor!--by the beard of the
+prophet!' He half rose, whether more annoyed or amazed it would be hard
+to tell. 'We're discovered!' he said, in a laughing whisper. As he
+turned to add 'The murder's out,' he saw that Vida had quietly averted
+her face. She was leaning her head on her hand, so that it masked her
+features. Even if the woman who was speaking had not been the object of
+such interest as the people in the hansom had to bestow, even had either
+of them looked towards Vida's corner, only a hat and a gauze ruffle
+would have been seen.
+
+Borrodaile took the hint. His waning sense of the humour of the
+situation revived.
+
+'Perhaps, after all, if we lay low,' he said, smiling more broadly. 'It
+would be nuts for Stonor to catch us sitting at the feet of Mrs.
+Thomas.' He positively chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. He
+had slipped back into his corner, but he couldn't help craning his neck
+to watch those two leaning over the door of the hansom, while they
+discussed some point with animation. Several times the man raised his
+hand as if to give an order through the trap door. Each time Sophia
+laughingly arrested him. 'He wants to go on,' reported Borrodaile,
+sympathetically. 'She wants him to wait a minute. Now he's jumped out.
+What's he--looking for another hansom? No--now _she's_ out. Bless me,
+she's shaking hands with him. He's back in the hansom!--driving away.
+Sophia's actually---- 'Pon my soul, I don't know what's come over the
+women! I'm rather relieved on the whole.' He turned round and spoke
+into Vida's ear. 'I've been a little sorry for Sophia. She's never had
+the smallest interest in any man but that cousin of hers--and, of
+course, it's quite hopeless.'
+
+Vida sat perfectly motionless, back to the speaker, back to the
+disappearing hansom, staring at the parapet.
+
+'You can turn round now--quite safe. Sophia's out of range. Poor
+Sophia!' After a little pause, 'Of course you know Stonor?'
+
+'Why, of course.'
+
+'Oh, well, my distinguished cousin used not to be so hard to get hold
+of--not in the old days when we were seeing so much of your father.'
+
+'That must have been when I was in the schoolroom--wasn't it?'
+
+He turned suddenly and looked at her. 'I'd forgotten. You know Geoffrey,
+and you don't like him. I saw that once before.'
+
+'Once before?' she echoed.
+
+He reminded her of the time she hurried away from Ulland House to
+Bishopsmead.
+
+'_I_ wasn't deceived,' he said, with his look of smiling malice. 'You
+didn't care two pins about your Cousin Mary and her influenza.'
+
+Vida moved her expressionless face a little to the right. 'I can see
+Sophia. But she's listening to the speech;' and Vida herself, with
+something of an effort, seemed now to be following the sordid
+experiences of a girl that the speaker had befriended some years before.
+It was through this girl, the mauve matron said, that she herself had
+come into touch with the abject poor. She took a big barrack of a house
+in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood, and it became known that there she
+received and helped both men and women. 'I sympathized with the men, but
+it was the things the women told me that appalled me. They were too bad
+to be entirely believed, but I wrote them down. They haunted me. I
+investigated. I found I had no excuse for doubting those stories.'
+
+'This woman's a find,' Vida whispered to the chairman.
+
+Ernestine shook her head.
+
+'Why, she's making a first-rate speech!' said Vida, astonished.
+
+'There's nobody here who will care about it.'
+
+'Why do you say that?'
+
+'Oh, all she's saying is a commonplace to these people. Lead-poisoning
+was new, to _them_--something they could take hold of.'
+
+'Well, I stick to it, you've got a good ally in this woman. Let her
+stand up in Somerset Hall, and tell the people----'
+
+'It wouldn't do,' said the young Daniel, firmly.
+
+'You don't believe her story?'
+
+'Oh, I don't say the things aren't true. But'--she moved uneasily--'the
+subject's too prickly.'
+
+'Too prickly for you!'
+
+The girl nodded with an anxious eye on the speaker. 'We sometimes make a
+passing reference--just to set men thinking, and there leave it. But it
+always makes them furious, of course. It does no good. Either people
+know and just accept it, or else they won't believe, and it only gets
+them on the raw. I'll have to stop her if----' She leaned forward.
+
+'It's odd your taking it like this. I suppose it's because you're so
+young,' said Vida, wondering. 'It must be because for you it isn't
+real.'
+
+'No, it's because I see no decent woman can think much about it and keep
+sane. That's why I say this one won't be any good to us. She'll never be
+able to see anything clearly but that one thing. She'll always be
+forgetting the main issue.'
+
+'What do you call the main issue?'
+
+'Why, political power, of course.'
+
+'Oh, wise young Daniel!' she murmured, as Miss Blunt touched the
+speaker's sleeve and interjected a word into the middle of a piece of
+depressing narrative.
+
+Mrs. Thomas stopped, faltered, and pulled herself up with, 'Well, as I
+say, with my own verifications these experiences form a body of
+testimony that should stir the conscience of the community. I _myself_
+felt'--she glanced at Ernestine--'I felt it was too ghastly to publish,
+but it ought to be used. Those who doubted the evidence should examine
+it. I went to a lady who is well known to be concerned about public
+questions; her husband is a member of Parliament, and a person of
+influence. You don't know, perhaps, but she did, that there's a
+Parliamentary Commission going to sit here in London in a few weeks for
+the purpose of inquiring into certain police regulations which greatly
+concern women. Who do you think are invited to serve on that
+Commission? Men. All men. Not a woman in England is being consulted. The
+husband of the lady I went to see--he was one of the Commissioners. I
+said to her, "_You_ ought to be serving on that board." She said, "Oh,
+no," but that women like her could influence the men who sat on the
+Commission.'
+
+'This is better!' whispered the ever-watchful Ernestine, with a smile.
+
+'So I told her about my ten years' work. I showed her some of my
+records--not the worst, the average, sifted and verified. She could
+hardly be persuaded to glance at what I had been at so much pains to
+collect. You see'--she spoke as though in apology for the lady--'you see
+I had no official or recognized position.'
+
+'Hear, hear,' said Ernestine.
+
+'I was simply a woman whose standing in the community was all right, but
+I had nothing to recommend me to serious attention. I had nothing but
+the courage to look wrong in the face, and the conscience to report it
+honestly. When I told her certain things--things that are so stinging a
+disgrace that no decent person can hear them unmoved--when I told her of
+the degrading discomforts, the cruelties, that are practised against
+homeless women even in some of the rate-supported casual wards and the
+mixed lodging-houses, that lady said--sitting there in her pleasant
+drawing-room--she said it could not be true! My reports were
+exaggerated--women were sentimental--the authorities managed these
+places with great wisdom. They are so horrible, I said, they drive women
+to the streets. She assured me I was mistaken. I asked her if she had
+ever been inside a mixed lodging-house. She never had. But the casual
+wards she knew about. They were so well managed she herself wouldn't
+mind at all spending a night in one of these municipal provisions for
+the homeless. Then I said, "You are the woman I am looking for! Come
+with me one night and try it. What night shall it be?" She said she was
+engaged in writing a book. She could not interrupt her work. But I said,
+if those rate-supported places are so comfortable, it won't interfere
+with your work. She _turned the conversation_. She talked about the
+Commission. The Commission was going to make a thorough scientific
+investigation. Nothing amateur about the Commission. The lady was
+sincere'--Mrs. Thomas vouched for it--'she had a comfortable faith in
+the Commission. But, I say'--the woman leaned forward in her
+earnestness--'I say that Commission will waste its time! I don't deny it
+will investigate and discuss the position of the outcast women of this
+country. Their plight, which is the work of men, will once more be
+inquired into by men. I say there should be women on that Commission. If
+the middle and upper class women have the dignity and influence men
+pretend they have, why aren't they represented there? Nobody pretends
+the matter doesn't concern the mothers of the nation. It concerns them
+horribly. Nobody can think so ill of them as to suppose they don't care.
+It's monstrous that men should sit upon that committee alone. Women have
+had to think about these things. We believe this evil can be met--if men
+will let us try. It may be that only women comprehend it, since men
+through the ages have been helpless before it. Why, then, once again,
+this Commission of _men_? The mockery of it! Setting men to make their
+report upon this matter to men! I am not a public speaker, but I am a
+wife and a mother. Do you wonder that hearing about that Commission gave
+me courage to take the first opportunity to join these brave sisters of
+mine who are fighting for political liberty?'
+
+She seemed for the first time to notice that a little group of
+sniggerers were becoming more obstreperous.
+
+'We knew, of course, that whatever we say some of you will laugh and
+jeer; but, speaking for myself, no mockery that you are able to fling at
+us, can sting _me_ like the thought of the hypocrisy of that Commission!
+Do you wonder that when we think of it--you men who have power and don't
+use it!--do you wonder that women come out of their homes--young, and
+old, and middle-aged--that we stand up here in the public places and
+give you scorn for scorn?'
+
+As the unheroic figure trembling stepped off the bench, she found Vida
+Levering's hand held out to steady her.
+
+'Take my seat,' said the younger woman.
+
+She stood beside her, for once oblivious of Ernestine, who was calling
+for new members, and giving out notices.
+
+Vida bent over the shapeless mauve bundle. 'You asked that woman to go
+with you. I wish you'd take me.'
+
+'Ah, my dear, _I_ don't need to go again. I thought to have that lady
+see it would do good. Her husband has influence, you see.'
+
+'But you've just said the men are useless in this matter.'
+
+She had no answer.
+
+'But, I believe,' Vida went on, 'if more women were like you--if they
+looked into the thing----'
+
+'Very few could stand it.'
+
+'But don't hundreds of poor women "stand" much worse?'
+
+'No; they drink and they die. I was ill for three months after my first
+experience even of the tramp ward.'
+
+'Was that the first thing you tried?'
+
+'No. The first thing I tried was putting on a Salvation Army bonnet, and
+following the people I wanted to help into the public-houses, selling
+the _War Cry_.'
+
+'May one wear the uniform who isn't a member of the Army?'
+
+'It isn't usual,' she said slowly. And then, as though to give the _coup
+de grace_ to the fine lady's curiosity, 'But that was child's play.
+Before I sampled the tramp ward, I covered myself with Keating's powder
+from head to foot. It wasn't a bit of good.'
+
+'When may I come and talk to you?'
+
+'Hello, Mrs. Thomas!' Vida turned and found the Lady Sophia at her side.
+'Why, father!--Oh, I see, Miss Levering. Well'--she turned to the woman
+in the corner--'how's the House of Help?'
+
+'Do you know about Mrs. Thomas's work?' Vida asked.
+
+'Well, rather! I collect rents in her district.'
+
+'Oh, do you? You never told me.'
+
+'Why should I tell you?'
+
+Ernestine was dismissing the meeting.
+
+'You are very tired,' said Lord Borrodaile, looking at Vida Levering's
+face.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'I'll go now. Come, Sophia!'
+
+'We shall be here on Thursday,' Ernestine was saying, 'at the same hour,
+and we hope a great many of you will want to join us.'
+
+'In a trip to 'Olloway? No, thank you!'
+
+Upon that something indistinguishable to the three who were withdrawing
+was said in the group that had sniggered through Mrs. Thomas's speech.
+Another one of that choice circle gave a great guffaw. There were still
+more who were amused, but less indiscreetly. Three men, looking like
+gentlemen, paused in the act of strolling by. They, too, were smiling.
+
+'You laugh!' Ernestine's voice rang out.
+
+'Wait a moment,' said Vida to her companions.
+
+She looked back. It was plain, from Ernestine's face, she was not going
+to let the meeting break up on that note.
+
+'Don't you think it a little strange, considering the well-known
+chivalry among men--don't you think it strange that against no reform
+the world has ever seen----?'
+
+'Reform! Wot rot!'
+
+'If you don't admit it's reform, call it revolt!' She threw the red-hot
+word out among the people as if its fire scorched her. 'Against no
+revolt has there ever been such a torrent of ridicule let loose as
+against the Women's Movement. It almost seems as if--in spite of men's
+well-known protecting tenderness towards woman--it almost seems as if
+there's nothing in this world so funny to a man as a woman!'
+
+'Haw! Haw! Got it right that time!'
+
+Borrodaile was smiling, too.
+
+'Do you know,' Vida asked, 'who those men are who have just stopped?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I believe Ernestine does.'
+
+'Oh, perhaps they're bold bad members of Parliament.'
+
+'Some of us,' she was saying, 'have read a little history. We have read
+how every struggle towards freedom has met with opposition and abuse. We
+expected to have our share of those things. But we find that no movement
+before ours has ever had so much laughter to face.' Through the renewed
+merriment she went on: 'Yes, you wonder I admit that. We don't deny
+anything that's true. And I'll tell you another thing! We aren't made
+any prouder of our men-folk by the discovery that behind their old
+theory of woman as "half angel, half idiot," is a sneaking feeling that
+"woman is a huge joke."'
+
+'Or just a little one for a penny like you!'
+
+'Men have imagined--they imagine still, that we have never noticed how
+ridiculous _they_ can be. You see'--she leaned over and spoke
+confidentially--'we've never dared break it to them.'
+
+'Haw! Haw!'
+
+'We know they _couldn't bear it_.'
+
+'Oh-h!'
+
+'So we've done all our laughing in our sleeves. Yes--and some years our
+sleeves had to be made--like balloons!' She pulled out the loose alpaca
+of her own while the workmen chuckled with appreciation.
+
+'I bet on Ernestine any'ow', said a young man, with an air of admitting
+himself a bold original fellow.
+
+'Well, open laughter is less dangerous laughter. It's even a guide; it
+helps us to find out things some of us wouldn't know otherwise. Lots of
+women used to be taken in by that talk about feminine influence and
+about men's immense respect for them! But any number of women have come
+to see that underneath that old mask of chivalry was a broad grin.--We
+are reminded of that every time the House of Commons talks about us.'
+She flung it at the three supercilious strangers. 'The dullest gentleman
+there can raise a laugh if he speaks of the "fair sex." Such
+jokes!--even when they are clean such poor little feeble efforts that
+even a member of Parliament couldn't laugh at them unless he had grown
+up with the idea that woman was somehow essentially funny--and that
+_he_, oh, no! there was nothing whatever to laugh at in man. Those
+members of Parliament don't have the enlightenment that you men have--of
+hearing what women _really_ think when we hear men laugh as you did just
+now about our going to prison. They don't know that we find it just a
+little strange'--she bent over the scattering rabble and gathered it
+into a sudden fellowship--'doesn't it strike you, too, as strange that
+when a strong man goes to prison for his convictions it is thought to be
+something rather fine (I don't say it is myself--though it's the general
+impression). But when a weak woman goes for _her_ convictions, men find
+it very humorous indeed. Our prisoners have to bear not only the
+hardships of Holloway Gaol, but they have to bear the worse pains and
+penalties inflicted by the general public. You, too, you laugh! and yet
+I say'--she lifted her arms and spread them out above the people--'I say
+it was not until women were found ready to go to prison--not till then
+was the success of the cause assured.' Her bright eyes were shining
+brighter still with tears.
+
+'If prison's so good fur the cause, why didn't _you_ go?'
+
+'Here's a gentleman who asks why I didn't go to prison. The answer to
+that is, I did go.'
+
+She tossed the information down among the cheers and groans as lightly
+as though it had no more personal significance for her than a dropped
+leaflet setting forth some minor fact.
+
+'That delicate little girl!' breathed Vida.
+
+'You never told _me_ that item in her history,' said Borrodaile.
+
+'She never told me--never once spoke of it! They put her in prison!' It
+was as if she couldn't grasp it.
+
+'Of course one person's going isn't of much consequence,' Ernestine was
+winding up with equal spirit and _sang-froid_. 'But the fact that dozens
+and scores--all sorts and conditions--are ready to go--_that_ matters!
+And that's the place our reprehensible tactics have brought the movement
+to. The meeting is closed.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They dropped Sophia at her own door, but Lord Borrodaile said he would
+take Vida home. They drove along in silence.
+
+When they stopped before the tall house in Queen Anne's Gate, Vida held
+out her hand.
+
+'It's late. I won't ask you in.'
+
+'You are over-tired. Go to bed.'
+
+'I wish I could. I'm dining out.'
+
+He looked at her out of kind eyes. 'It begins to be dreadfully stuffy in
+town. I'm glad, after all, we're going on that absurd yachting trip.'
+
+'I'm not going,' she said.
+
+'Oh, nonsense! Sophia and I would break our hearts.'
+
+'I'm sure about Sophia.'
+
+'It will do you good to come and have a look at the Land of the Midnight
+Sun,' he said.
+
+'I'm going to have a look at the Land of Midnight where there's no sun.
+And everybody but you and Sophia and my sister will think I'm in
+Norway.'
+
+When she explained, he broke out:
+
+'It's the very wildest nonsense that ever---- It would kill you.' The
+intensity of his opposition made him incoherent. 'You, of all women in
+the world! A creature who can't even stand people who say "serviette"
+instead of "table-napkin"!'
+
+'Fancy the little Blunt having been in prison!'
+
+'Oh, let the little Blunt go to----' He checked himself. 'Be reasonable,
+child.' He turned and looked at her with an earnestness she had never
+seen in his eyes before. 'Why in heaven should _you_----'
+
+'Why? You heard what that woman said.'
+
+'I heard _nothing_ to account for----'
+
+'That's partly,' she interrupted, 'why I must make this experiment. When
+a man like you--as good a man as you'--she repeated with slow
+wonder--'when you and all the other good men that the world is full
+of--when you all know everything that that woman knows--and more! and
+yet see nothing in it to account for what she feels, and what I--I too,
+am beginning to feel----!' she broke off. 'Good-bye! If I go far on this
+new road, it's you I shall have to thank.'
+
+'I?'
+
+He shrugged drearily at the absurd charge, making no motion to take the
+offered hand, but sat there in the corner of the hansom looking rather
+old and shrunken.
+
+'You and one other,' she said.
+
+That roused him. 'Ah, he has come, then.'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'The other. The man who is going to count.'
+
+Her eyelids drooped. 'The man who was to count most for me came a long
+while ago. And a long while ago--he went.'
+
+Borrodaile looked at her. 'But this---- Who is the gentleman who shares
+with me the doubtful, I may without undue modesty say the undeserved,
+honour of urging you to disappear into the slums? Who is it?'
+
+'The man who wrote this.'
+
+It was the book he had seen in her hands before the meeting. He read on
+the green cover, 'In the Days of the Comet.'
+
+'Oh, that fellow! Well, he's not my novelist, but it's the keenest
+intelligence we have applied to fiction.'
+
+'He _is_ my novelist. So I've a right to be sorry he knows nothing
+about women. See here! Even in his most rationalized vision of the New
+Time, he can't help betraying his old-fashioned prejudice in favour of
+the "dolly" view of women. His hero says, "I prayed that night, let me
+confess it, to an image I had set up in my heart, an image that still
+serves with me as a symbol for things inconceivable, to a Master
+Artificer, the unseen captain of all who go about the building of the
+world, the making of mankind----"' Vida's finger skipped, lifting to
+fall on the heroine's name. '"Nettie... She never came into the temple
+of that worshipping with me."' Swiftly she turned the pages back.
+'Where's that other place? Here! The man says to the heroine--to his
+ideal woman he says, "Behind you and above you rises the coming City of
+the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only
+happiness!" That's the whole view of man in a nutshell. Even the highest
+type of woman such an imagination as this can conjure up----' She shook
+her head. '"You are only happiness, dear"--a minister of pleasure,
+negligible in all the nobler moods, all the times of wider vision or
+exalted effort! Tell me'--she bent her head and looked into her
+companion's face with a new passion dawning in her eyes--'in the
+building of that City of the Future, in the making of it beautiful,
+shall women really have no share?'
+
+'My dear, I only know that I shall have no share myself.'
+
+'Ah, we don't speak of ourselves.' She opened the hansom doors and her
+companion got out. 'But this Comet man,' she said as she followed, '_he_
+might have a share if only he knew why all the great visions have never
+yet been more than dreams. That this man should think foundations can be
+well and truly laid when the best of one half the race are "only
+happiness, dear!"' She turned on the threshold. '_Whose_ happiness?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The fall of the Liberal Ministry was said by the simple-minded to have
+come as a bolt from the blue. Certainly into the subsequent General
+Election were entering elements but little foreseen.
+
+Nevertheless, the last two bye-elections before the crash had resulted
+in the defeat of the Liberal candidate not by the Tory antagonist, but
+in one case by the nominee of the Labour party, in the other by an
+independent Socialist. Both these men had publicly thanked the
+Suffragettes for their notable share in piling up those triumphant and
+highly significant majorities. Now the country was facing an election
+where, for the first time in the history of any great nation, women were
+playing a part that even their political enemies could hardly with easy
+minds call subordinate.
+
+Only faint echoes of the din penetrated the spacious quiet of Ulland
+House. Although the frequent week-end party was there, the great hall on
+this particular morning presented a deserted appearance as the tall
+clock by the staircase chimed the hour of noon. The insistence of the
+ancient timepiece seemed to have set up a rival in destruction of the
+Sunday peace, for no sooner had the twelfth stroke died than a bell
+began to ring. The little door in the wainscot beyond the clock was
+opened. An elderly butler put his head round the huge screen of Spanish
+leather that masked the very existence of the modest means of
+communication with the quarters of the Ulland domestics. So little was a
+ring at the front door expected at this hour that Sutton was still
+slowly getting into the left sleeve of his coat when his mistress
+appeared from the garden by way of the French window. The old butler
+withdrew a discreet instant behind the screen to put the last touches to
+his toilet, but Lady John had seen that he was there.
+
+'Has Miss Levering gone for a walk?' she inquired of the servant.
+
+'I don't know, m'lady.'
+
+'She's not in the garden. Do you think she's not down yet?'
+
+'I haven't seen her, m'lady,' said Sutton, emerging from his retirement
+and approaching the wide staircase on his way to answer the front-door
+bell.
+
+'Never mind'--his mistress went briskly over to a wide-winged
+writing-table and seated herself before a litter of papers--'I won't
+have her disturbed if she's resting,' Lady John said, adding half to
+herself, 'she certainly needs it.'
+
+'Yes, m'lady,' said Sutton, adjusting the maroon collar of his livery
+which had insisted upon riding up at the back.
+
+'But I want her to know'--Lady John spoke while glancing through a
+letter before consigning it to the wastepaper basket--'the moment she
+comes down she must be told that the new plans arrived by the morning
+post.'
+
+'Plans, m'la----'
+
+'She'll understand. There they are.' The lady held up a packet about
+which she had just snapped an elastic band. 'I'll put them here. It's
+very important she should have them in time to look over before she
+goes.'
+
+'Yes, m'lady.'
+
+Sutton opened a door and disappeared. A footstep sounded on the marble
+floor of the lobby.
+
+Over her shoulder Lady John called out, 'Is _that_ Miss Levering?'
+
+'_No_, m'lady. Mr. Farnborough.'
+
+'I'm afraid I'm scandalously early.' In spite of his words the young man
+whipped off his dust coat and flung it to the servant with as much
+precipitation as though what he had meant to say was 'scandalously
+late.' 'I motored up from Dutfield. It didn't take me nearly so long as
+Lord John said.'
+
+The lady had given the young man her hand without rising. 'I'm afraid my
+husband is no authority on motoring--and he's not home yet from church.'
+
+'It's the greatest luck finding _you_.' Farnborough sat himself down in
+the easy-chair on the other side of the wide writing-table undaunted by
+its business-like air or the preoccupied look of the woman before it. 'I
+thought Miss Levering was the only person under this roof who was ever
+allowed to observe Sunday as a real day of rest.'
+
+'If you've come to see Miss Levering----' began Lady John.
+
+'Is she here? I give you my word I didn't know it.'
+
+'Oh?' said the lady, unconvinced.
+
+'I thought she'd given up coming.'
+
+'Well, she's begun again. She's helping me about something.'
+
+'Oh, helping you, is she?' said Farnborough with absent eyes; and then
+suddenly 'all there,' 'Lady John, I've come to ask you to help _me_.'
+
+'With Miss Levering?' said Hermione Heriot's aunt. 'I can't do it.'
+
+'No, no--all that's no good. She only laughs.'
+
+'Oh,' breathed the lady, relieved, 'she looks upon you as a boy.'
+
+'Such nonsense,' he burst out suddenly. 'What do you think she said to
+me the day before she went off yachting?'
+
+'That she was four years older than you?'
+
+'Oh, I knew that. No. She said _she_ knew she was all the charming
+things I'd been saying, but there was only one way to prove it, and that
+was to marry some one young enough to be her son. She'd noticed, she
+said, that was what the _most_ attractive women did--and she named
+names.'
+
+Lady John laughed. '_You_ were too old!'
+
+He nodded. 'Her future husband, she said, was probably just entering
+Eton.'
+
+'Exactly like her.'
+
+'No, no.' Dick Farnborough waived the subject away. 'I wanted to see you
+about the secretaryship.'
+
+'You didn't get it then?'
+
+'No. It's the grief of my life.'
+
+'Oh, if you don't get one you'll get another.'
+
+'But there _is_ only one,' he said desperately.
+
+'Only one vacancy?'
+
+'Only one man I'd give my ears to work for.'
+
+Lady John smiled. 'I remember.'
+
+He turned his sanguine head with a quick look. 'Do I _always_ talk about
+Stonor? Well, it's a habit people have got into.'
+
+'I forget, do you know Mr. Stonor personally, or'--she smiled her
+good-humoured tolerant smile--'or are you just dazzled from afar?'
+
+'Oh, I know him! The trouble is he doesn't know me. If he did he'd
+realize he can't be sure of winning his election without my valuable
+services.'
+
+'Geoffrey Stonor's re-election is always a foregone conclusion.'
+
+Farnborough banged his hand on the arm of the chair. 'That the great man
+shares that opinion is precisely his weak point'--then breaking into a
+pleasant smile as he made a clean breast of his hero-worship--'his
+_only_ weak point!'
+
+'Oh, you think,' inquired Lady John, lightly, 'just because the Liberals
+swept the country the last time, there's danger of their----'
+
+'How can we be sure _any_ Conservative seat is safe, after----' as Lady
+John smiled and turned to her papers again. 'Forgive me,' said the young
+man, with a tolerant air, 'I know you're not interested in politics
+_qua_ politics. But this concerns Geoffrey Stonor.'
+
+'And you count on my being interested in him like all the rest?'
+
+He leaned forward. 'Lady John, I've heard the news.'
+
+'What news?'
+
+'That your little niece, the Scotch heiress, is going to marry him.'
+
+'Who told you that?'
+
+She dropped the paper she had picked up and stared. No doubt about his
+having won her whole attention at last.
+
+'Please don't mind my knowing.'
+
+But Lady John was visibly perturbed. 'Jean had set her heart on having a
+few days with just her family in the secret, before the flood of
+congratulation broke loose.'
+
+'Oh, _that's_ all right,' he said soothingly. 'I always hear things
+before other people.'
+
+'Well, I must ask you to be good enough to be very circumspect.' Lady
+John spoke gravely. 'I wouldn't have my niece or Mr. Stonor think that
+any of us----'
+
+'Oh, of course not.'
+
+'She'll suspect something if you so much as mention Stonor; and you
+can't help mentioning Stonor!'
+
+'Yes, I can. Besides I shan't see her!'
+
+'But you will'--Lady John glanced at the clock. 'She'll be here in an
+hour.'
+
+He jumped up delighted. 'What? To-day. The future Mrs. Stonor!'
+
+'Yes,' said his hostess, with a harassed air. 'Unfortunately we had one
+or two people already asked for the week and----'
+
+'And I go and invite myself to luncheon! Lady John.' He pushed back the
+armchair like one who clears the field for action. He stood before her
+with his legs wide apart, and a look of enterprise on his face. 'You can
+buy me off! I'll promise to remove myself in five minutes if you'll put
+in a word for me.'
+
+'Ah!' Lady John shook her head. 'Mr. Stonor inspires a similar
+enthusiasm in so many young----'
+
+'They haven't studied the situation as I have.' He sat down to explain
+his own excellence. 'They don't know what's at stake. They don't go to
+that hole Dutfield, as I did, just to hear his Friday speech.'
+
+'But you were rewarded. My niece, Jean, wrote me it was "glorious."'
+
+'Well, you know, I was disappointed,' he said judicially. 'Stonor's too
+content just to criticize, just to make his delicate pungent fun of the
+men who are grappling--very inadequately of course--still _grappling_
+with the big questions. There's a carrying power'--he jumped to his feet
+again and faced an imaginary audience--'some of Stonor's friends ought
+to point it out--there's a driving power in the poorest constructive
+policy that makes the most brilliant criticism look barren.'
+
+She regarded the budding politician with good-humoured malice.
+
+'Who told you that?'
+
+'You think there's nothing in it because _I_ say it. But now that he's
+coming into the family, Lord John or somebody really ought to point
+out--Stonor's overdoing his role of magnificent security.'
+
+The lady sat very straight. 'I don't see even Lord John offering to
+instruct Mr. Stonor,' she said, with dignity.
+
+'Believe me, that's just Stonor's danger! Nobody saying a word,
+everybody hoping he's on the point of adopting some definite line,
+something strong and original, that's going to fire the public
+imagination and bring the Tories back into power----'
+
+'So he will.'
+
+'Not if he disappoints meetings,' said Farnborough, hotly; 'not if he
+goes calmly up to town, and leaves the field to the Liberals.'
+
+'When did he do anything like that?'
+
+'Yesterday!' Farnborough flung out the accusation as he strode up and
+down before the divan. 'And now he's got this other preoccupation----'
+
+'You mean----?'
+
+'Yes, your niece--the spoilt child of fortune.' Farnborough stopped
+suddenly and smacked his forehead. 'Of _course_!'--he wheeled round upon
+Lady John with accusing face--'I understand it now. _She_ kept him from
+the meeting last night! _Well!_'--he collapsed in the nearest chair--'if
+that's the effect she's going to have, it's pretty serious!'
+
+'You are,' said his hostess.
+
+'I can assure you the election agent's more so. He's simply tearing his
+hair.'
+
+She had risen. 'How do you know?' she asked more gravely.
+
+'He told me so himself, yesterday. I scraped acquaintance with the
+agent, just to see if--if----'
+
+'I see,' she smiled. 'It's not only here that you manoeuvre for that
+secretaryship!'
+
+As Lady John moved towards the staircase she looked at the clock.
+Farnborough jumped up and followed her, saying confidentially--
+
+'You see, you can never tell when your chance might come. The election
+chap's promised to keep me posted. Why, I've even taken the trouble to
+arrange with the people at the station to receive any message that might
+come over from Dutfield.'
+
+'For you?' She smiled at his self-importance.
+
+Breathlessly he hurried on: 'Immense unexpected pressure of work, you
+know--now that we've forced the Liberals to appeal to the country----'
+
+He stopped as the sound of light steps came flying through the lobby,
+and a young girl rushed into the hall calling out gaily--
+
+'Aunt Ellen! Here I----'
+
+She stopped precipitately, and her outstretched arms fell to her sides.
+A radiant, gracious figure, she stood poised an instant, the light of
+gladness in her eyes only partially dimmed by the horrid spectacle of an
+interloper in the person of a strange young man.
+
+'My darling Jean!'
+
+Lady John went forward and kissed her at the moment that the master of
+the house came hurrying in from the garden with a cheerful--
+
+'I _thought_ that was you running up the avenue!'
+
+'Uncle, dear!'
+
+The pretty vision greeted him with the air of a privileged child of the
+house, interrupting only for an instant the babel of cross-purpose
+explanation about carriages and trains.
+
+Lord John had shaken hands with Dick Farnborough and walked him towards
+the window, saying through the torrent--
+
+'Now they'll tell each other for the next ten minutes that she's an hour
+earlier than we expected.'
+
+Although young Farnborough had looked upon the blooming addition to the
+party with an undisguised interest, he readily fell in with Lord John's
+diplomatic move to get him out of the way. He even helped towards his
+own effacement, looking out through the window with--
+
+'The Freddy Tunbridges said they were coming to you this week.'
+
+'Yes, they're dawdling through the park with the Church Brigade.'
+
+'Oh, I'll go and meet them;' and Farnborough disappeared.
+
+As Lord John turned back to his two ladies he offered it as his
+opinion--
+
+'That discreet young man will get on.'
+
+'But _how_ did you get here?' Lady John was still wondering.
+
+Breathless, the girl answered, 'He motored me down.'
+
+'Geoffrey Stonor?'
+
+She nodded, beaming.
+
+'Why, where is he then?'
+
+'He dropped me at the end of the avenue, and went on to see a supporter
+about something.'
+
+'You let him go off like that!' Lord John reproached her.
+
+'Without ever----' Lady John interrupted herself to take Jean's two
+hands in hers. 'Just tell me, my child, is it all right?'
+
+'My engagement? Absolutely.'
+
+Such radiant security shone in the soft face that the older woman,
+drawing the girl down beside her on the divan, dared to say--
+
+'Geoffrey Stonor isn't going to be--a little too old for you.'
+
+Jean chimed out the gayest laugh in the world. 'Bless me! am I such a
+chicken?'
+
+'Twenty-four used not to be so young, but it's become so.'
+
+'Yes, we don't grow up so quick,' she agreed merrily. 'But, on the other
+hand, we _stay_ up longer.'
+
+'You've got what's vulgarly called "looks," my dear,' said her uncle,
+'and that will help to _keep_ you up.'
+
+'I know what Uncle John's thinking,' she turned on him with a pretty air
+of challenge. 'But I'm not the only girl who's been left "what's
+vulgarly called" money.'
+
+'You're the only one of our immediate circle who's been left so
+beautifully much.'
+
+'Ah! but remember, Geoffrey could--everybody _knows_ he could have
+married any one in England.'
+
+'I am afraid everybody does know it,' said her ladyship, faintly ironic,
+'not excepting Mr. Stonor.'
+
+'Well, how spoilt is the great man?' inquired Lord John, mischievously.
+
+'Not the least little bit in the world. You'll see! He so wants to know
+my best-beloved relations better.' She stopped to bestow another embrace
+on Lady John. 'An orphan has so few belongings, she has to make the most
+of them.'
+
+'Let us hope he'll approve of us on further acquaintance.'
+
+'Oh, he will! He's an angel. Why, he gets on with my grandfather!'
+
+'Does he?' said her aunt, unable to forbear teasing her a little. 'You
+mean to say Mr. Geoffrey Stonor isn't just a tiny bit "superior" about
+Dissenters.'
+
+'Not half as much so as Uncle John, and all the rest of you! My
+grandfather's been ill again, you know, and rather difficult--bless him!
+but Geoffrey----' she clasped her hands to fill out her wordless content
+with him.
+
+'Geoffrey _must_ have powers of persuasion, to get that old Covenanter
+to let you come in an abhorred motor-car, on Sunday, too!'
+
+Jean pursed her red lips and put up a cautionary finger with a droll
+little air of alarm.
+
+'Grandfather didn't know!' she half whispered.
+
+'Didn't know?'
+
+'I honestly meant to come by train,' she hastened to exculpate herself.
+'Geoffrey met me on my way to the station. We had the most glorious run!
+Oh, Aunt Ellen, we're so happy!' She pressed her cheek against Lady
+John's shoulder. 'I've so looked forward to having you to myself the
+whole day just to talk to you about----'
+
+Lord John turned away with affected displeasure. 'Oh, very well----'
+
+She jumped up and caught him affectionately by the arm. '_You'd_ find it
+dreffly dull to hear me talk about Geoffrey the whole blessed day!'
+
+'Well, till luncheon, my dear----' Lady John had risen with a glance at
+the clock. 'You mustn't mind if I----' She broke off and went to the
+writing-table, saying aside to her husband, 'I'm beginning to feel a
+little anxious; Miss Levering wasn't only tired last night, she was
+ill.'
+
+'I thought she looked very white,' said Lord John.
+
+'Oh, dear! Have you got other people?' demanded the happy egoist.
+
+'One or two. Your uncle's responsible for asking that old cynic, St.
+John Greatorex, and I'm responsible for----'
+
+Jean stopped in the act of taking off her long gloves. 'Mr. Greatorex!
+He's a Liberal, isn't he?' she said with sudden gravity.
+
+'Little Jean!' Lord John chuckled, 'beginning to "think in parties!"'
+
+'It's very natural now that she should----'
+
+'I only meant it was odd he should be _here_. Of course I'm not so
+silly----'
+
+'It's all right, my child,' said her uncle, kindly. 'We naturally expect
+now that you'll begin to think like Geoffrey Stonor, and to feel like
+Geoffrey Stonor, and to talk like Geoffrey Stonor. And quite proper,
+too!'
+
+'Well,'--Jean quickly recovered her smiles--'if I _do_ think with my
+husband, and feel with him--as of course I shall--it will surprise me if
+I ever find myself talking a tenth as well!' In her enthusiasm she
+followed her uncle to the French window. 'You should have heard him at
+Dutfield.' She stopped short. 'The Freddy Tunbridges!' she exclaimed,
+looking out into the garden. A moment later her gay look fell. 'What?
+Not Aunt Lydia! Oh-h!' She glanced back reproachfully at Lady John, to
+find her making a discreet motion of 'I couldn't help it!' as the party
+from the garden came in.
+
+The greetings of the Freddys were cut short by Mrs. Heriot, who embraced
+her niece with a significant warmth.
+
+'_I_ wasn't surprised,' she said _sotto voce_. 'I always prophesied----'
+
+'Sh--_Please_----' the girl escaped.
+
+'We haven't met since you were in short skirts,' said the young man who
+had been watching his opportunity. 'I'm Dick Farnborough.'
+
+'Oh, I remember.' Jean gave him her hand.
+
+Mrs. Freddy was looking round and asking where was the Elusive One?
+
+'Who is the Elusive One?' Jean demanded.
+
+'Lady John's new ally in good works!' said Mrs. Freddy. 'Why, you met
+her one day at my house before you went back to Scotland.'
+
+'Oh, you mean Miss Levering.'
+
+'Yes; nice creature, isn't she?' said Lord John, benevolently.
+
+'I used rather to love her,' said Mrs. Freddy, brightly, 'but she
+doesn't come to us any more. She seems to be giving up going anywhere,
+except here, so far as I can make out.'
+
+'She knows she can rest here,' said Lady John.
+
+'What does she do to tire her?' demanded Mr. Freddy. 'Hasn't she been
+amusing herself in Norway?'
+
+'Since she came back she's been helping my sister and me with a scheme
+of ours,' said Lady John.
+
+'She certainly knows how to juggle money out of the men!' admitted Mrs.
+Heriot.
+
+'It would sound less equivocal, Lydia, if you added that the money is to
+build baths in our Shelter for Homeless Women.'
+
+'Homeless women?' echoed Mr. Freddy.
+
+'Yes; in the most insanitary part of Soho.'
+
+'Oh--a--really.' Mr. Freddy stroked his smart little moustache.
+
+'It doesn't sound quite in Miss Levering's line,' Farnborough hazarded.
+
+'My dear boy,' said his hostess, 'you know as little about what's in a
+woman's line as most men.'
+
+'Oh, I say!' Mr. Freddy looked round with a laugh.
+
+Lord John threw out his chest and dangled his eyeglass with an indulgent
+air.
+
+'Philanthropy,' he said, 'in a woman like Miss Levering, is a form of
+restlessness. But she's a _nice_ creature. All she needs is to get some
+"nice" fella to marry her!'
+
+Mrs. Freddy laughingly hooked herself on her husband's arm.
+
+'Yes; a woman needs a balance wheel, if only to keep her from flying
+back to town on a hot day like this.'
+
+'Who,' demanded the host, 'is proposing anything so----'
+
+'The Elusive One,' said Mrs. Freddy.
+
+'Not Miss----'
+
+'Yes; before luncheon.'
+
+Dick Farnborough glanced quickly at the clock, and then his eyes went
+questing up the great staircase. Lady John had met the chorus of
+disapproval with--
+
+'She must be in London by three, she says.'
+
+Lord John stared. '_To-day?_ Why she only came late last night! What
+must she go back for, in the name of----'
+
+'Well, _that_ I didn't ask her. But it must be something important, or
+she would stay and talk over the plans for the new Shelter.'
+
+Farnborough had pulled out his cigarette case and stepped out through
+the window into the garden. But he went not as one who means to take a
+stroll and enjoy a smoke, rather as a man on a mission.
+
+A few minutes after, the desultory conversation in the hall was arrested
+by the sound of voices near the windows.
+
+They were in full view now--Vida Levering, hatless, a cool figure in
+pearl-grey with a red umbrella; St. John Greatorex, wearing a Panama
+hat, talking and gesticulating with a small book, in which his fingers
+still kept the place; Farnborough, a little supercilious, looking on.
+
+'I protest! Good Lord! what are the women of this country coming to? I
+_protest_ against Miss Levering being carried indoors to discuss
+anything so revolting.'
+
+As Lord John moved towards the window the vermilion disk of the umbrella
+closed and dropped like a poppy before it blooms. As the owner of it
+entered the hall, Greatorex followed in her wake, calling out--
+
+'Bless my soul! what can a woman like you _know_ about such a thing?'
+
+'Little enough,' said Miss Levering, smiling and scattering
+good-mornings.
+
+'I should think so indeed!' He breathed a sigh of relief and recovered
+his waggishness. 'It's all this fellow Farnborough's wicked
+jealousy--routing us out of the summer-house where we were sitting,
+_perfectly_ happy--weren't we?'
+
+'Ideally,' said the lady.
+
+'There. You hear!'
+
+He interrupted Lord John's inquiry as to the seriousness of Miss
+Levering's unpopular and mysterious programme for the afternoon. But the
+lady quietly confirmed it, and looked over her hostess's shoulder at the
+plan-sheet that Lady John was silently holding out between two extended
+hands.
+
+'Haled indoors on a day like this'--Greatorex affected a mighty scorn of
+the document--'to talk about--Public Sanitation, forsooth! Why, God
+bless my soul, do you realize that's _drains_!'
+
+'I'm dreadfully afraid it is,' said Miss Levering, smiling down at the
+architectural drawing.
+
+'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out
+the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me
+that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.'
+
+'But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness--don't you
+think--than baths?' She took the book from him, shutting her
+handkerchief in the place where his finger had been.
+
+'No, no'--Greatorex, Panama in hand, was shaking his piebald head--'I
+can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. You're too--much
+too---- Leave it to others!'
+
+'What others?'
+
+'Oh, the sort of woman who smells of india-rubber,' he said, with
+smiling impertinence. 'The typical English spinster. You've seen her.
+Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a
+collapsible bath--_rubber_. When you look at her it's borne in upon you
+that she doesn't only smell of rubber. She is rubber, too.'
+
+They all laughed.
+
+'Now you frivolous people go away,' Lady John said. 'We've only got a
+few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Barlow's munificence
+before the carriage comes for Miss Levering.'
+
+In the midst of the general movement to the garden, Mrs. Freddy asked
+Farnborough did he know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John
+L8000 for her charity before he died?
+
+'Who got him to?' demanded Greatorex.
+
+'Miss Levering,' answered Lady John. 'He wouldn't do it for me, but she
+brought him round.'
+
+'Bah-ee Jove!' said Freddy. 'I expect so.'
+
+'Yes.' Mrs. Freddy beamed in turn at her lord and at Farnborough as she
+strolled with them through the window. '_Isn't_ she wonderful?'
+
+'Too wonderful,' said Greatorex to the lady in question, lowering his
+voice, 'to waste your time on the wrong people.'
+
+'I shall waste less of my time after this.' Miss Levering spoke
+thoughtfully.
+
+'I'm relieved to hear it. I can't see you wheedling money for shelters
+and rot of that sort out of retired grocers.'
+
+'You see, you call it rot. We couldn't have got L8000 out of _you_.'
+
+Speaking still lower, 'I'm not sure,' he said slyly.
+
+She looked at him.
+
+'If I gave you that much--for your little projects--what would you give
+me?' he demanded.
+
+'Barlow didn't ask that.' She spoke quietly.
+
+'Barlow!' he echoed, with a truly horrified look. 'I should think not!'
+
+'Barlow!' Lord John caught up the name on his way out with Jean. 'You
+two still talking Barlow? How flattered the old beggar'd be! Did you
+hear'--he turned back and linked his arm in Greatorex's--'did you hear
+what Mrs. Heriot said about him? "So kind, so munificent--so _vulgar_,
+poor soul, we couldn't know him in London--but we shall meet him in
+heaven!"'
+
+The two men went out chuckling.
+
+Jean stood hesitating a moment, glancing through the window at the
+laughing men, and back at the group of women, Mrs. Heriot seated
+magisterially at the head of the writing-table, looking with inimical
+eyes at Miss Levering, who stood in the middle of the hall with head
+bent over the plan.
+
+'Sit here, my dear,' Lady John called to her. Then with a glance at her
+niece, 'You needn't stay, Jean; this won't interest you.'
+
+Miss Levering glanced over her shoulder as she moved to the chair
+opposite Lady John, and in the tone of one agreeing with the dictum just
+uttered, 'It's only an effort to meet the greatest evil in the world,'
+she said, and sat down with her back to the girl.
+
+'What do you call the greatest evil in the world?' Jean asked.
+
+A quick look passed between Mrs. Heriot and Lady John.
+
+Miss Levering answered without emphasis, 'The helplessness of women.'
+
+The girl still stood where the phrase had arrested her.
+
+After a moment's hesitation, Lady John went over to her and put an arm
+about her shoulder.
+
+'I know, darling, you can think of nothing but "him," so just go----'
+
+'Indeed, indeed,' interrupted the girl, brightly, 'I can think of
+everything better than I ever did before. He has lit up everything for
+me--made everything vivider, more--more significant.'
+
+'Who has?' Miss Levering asked, turning round.
+
+As though she had not heard, Jean went on, 'Oh, yes, I don't care about
+other things less but a thousand times more.'
+
+'You _are_ in love,' said Lady John.
+
+'Oh, that's it. I congratulate you.' Over her shoulder Miss Levering
+smiled at the girl.
+
+'Well, now'--Lady John returned to the outspread plan--'_this_, you see,
+obviates the difficulty you raised.'
+
+'Yes, it's a great improvement,' Miss Levering agreed.
+
+Mrs. Heriot, joining in for the first time, spoke with emphasis--
+
+'But it's going to cost a great deal more.'
+
+'It's worth it,' said Miss Levering.
+
+'But we'll have nothing left for the organ at St. Pilgrim's.'
+
+'My dear Lydia,' said Lady John, 'we're putting the organ aside.'
+
+'We can't afford to "put aside" the elevating influence of music.' Mrs.
+Heriot spoke with some asperity.
+
+'What we must make for, first, is the cheap and humanely conducted
+lodging-house.'
+
+'There are several of those already; but poor St. Pilgrim's----'
+
+'There are none for the poorest women,' said Miss Levering.
+
+'No; even the excellent Barlow was for multiplying Rowton Houses. You
+can never get men to realize--you can't always get women----'
+
+'It's the work least able to wait,' said Miss Levering.
+
+'I don't agree with you,' Mrs. Heriot bridled, 'and I happen to have
+spent a great deal of my life in works of charity.'
+
+'Ah, then,'--Miss Levering lifted her eyes from the map to Mrs. Heriot's
+face--'you'll be interested in the girl I saw dying in a tramp ward a
+little while ago. _Glad_ her cough was worse, only she mustn't die
+before her father. Two reasons. Nobody but her to keep the old man out
+of the workhouse, and "father is so proud." If she died first, he would
+starve--worst of all, he might hear what had happened up in London to
+his girl.'
+
+With an air of profound suspicion, Mrs. Heriot interrupted--
+
+'She didn't say, I suppose, how she happened to fall so low?'
+
+'Yes, she did. She had been in service. She lost the train back one
+Sunday night, and was too terrified of her employer to dare to ring him
+up after hours. The wrong person found her crying on the platform.'
+
+'She should have gone to one of the Friendly Societies.'
+
+'At eleven at night?'
+
+'And there are the Rescue Leagues. I myself have been connected with one
+for twenty years----'
+
+'Twenty years!' echoed Miss Levering. 'Always arriving "after the
+train's gone,"--after the girl and the wrong person have got to the
+journey's end.'
+
+Mrs. Heriot's eyes flashed, but before she could speak Jean asked--
+
+'Where is she now?'
+
+'Never mind.' Lady John turned again to the plan.
+
+'Two nights ago she was waiting at a street corner in the rain.
+
+'Near a public-house, I suppose?' Mrs. Heriot threw in.
+
+'Yes; a sort of public-house. She was plainly dying. She was told she
+shouldn't be out in the rain. "I mustn't go in yet," she said. "_This_
+is what he gave me," and she began to cry. In her hand were two pennies
+silvered over to look like half-crowns.'
+
+'I don't believe that story!' Mrs. Heriot announced. 'It's just the sort
+of thing some sensation-monger trumps up. Now, who tells you these----?'
+
+'Several credible people. I didn't believe them till----'
+
+'Till?' Jean came nearer.
+
+'Till I saw for myself.'
+
+'_Saw?_' exclaimed Mrs. Heriot. 'Where----?'
+
+'In a low lodging-house not a hundred yards from the church you want a
+new organ for.'
+
+'How did _you_ happen to be there?'
+
+'I was on a pilgrimage.'
+
+'A pilgrimage?' echoed Jean.
+
+Miss Levering nodded. 'Into the Underworld.'
+
+'_You_ went!' Even Lady John was aghast.
+
+'How could you?' Jean whispered.
+
+'I put on an old gown and a tawdry hat----' She turned suddenly to her
+hostess. 'You'll never know how many things are hidden from a woman in
+good clothes. The bold free look of a man at a woman he believes to be
+destitute--you must _feel_ that look on you before you can understand--a
+good half of history.'
+
+Mrs. Heriot rose as her niece sat down on the footstool just below the
+writing-table.
+
+'Where did you go--dressed like that?' the girl asked.
+
+'Down among the homeless women, on a wet night, looking for shelter.'
+
+'Jean!' called Mrs. Heriot.
+
+'No wonder you've been ill,' Lady John interposed hastily.
+
+'And it's like _that_?' Jean spoke under her breath.
+
+'No,' came the answer, in the same hushed tone.
+
+'No?'
+
+'It's so much worse I dare not tell about it, even if you weren't here I
+couldn't.'
+
+But Mrs. Heriot's anger was unappeased. 'You needn't suppose, darling,
+that those wretched creatures feel it as we would.'
+
+Miss Levering raised grave eyes. 'The girls who need shelter and work
+aren't _all_ serving-maids.'
+
+'We know,' said Mrs. Heriot, with an involuntary flash, 'that all the
+women who make mistakes aren't.'
+
+'That is why _every_ woman ought to take an interest in this,' said Miss
+Levering, steadily; 'every girl, too.'
+
+'Yes. Oh, yes!' Jean agreed.
+
+'No.' Lady John was very decisive. 'This is a matter for us older----'
+
+'Or for a person who has some special knowledge,' Mrs. Heriot amended,
+with an air of sly challenge. '_We_ can't pretend to have access to such
+sources of information as Miss Levering.'
+
+'Yes, you can'--she met Mrs. Heriot's eye--'for I can give you access.
+As you suggest, I have some personal knowledge about homeless girls.'
+
+'Well, my dear'--with a manufactured cheerfulness Lady John turned it
+aside--'it will all come in convenient.' She tapped the plan.
+
+Miss Levering took no notice. 'It once happened to me to take offence at
+an ugly thing that was going on under my father's roof. Oh, _years_ ago!
+I was an impulsive girl. I turned my back on my father's house.'
+
+'That was ill-advised.' Lady John glanced at her niece.
+
+'So all my relations said'--Miss Levering, too, looked at Jean--'and I
+couldn't explain.'
+
+'Not to your mother?' the girl asked.
+
+'My mother was dead. I went to London to a small hotel, and tried to
+find employment. I wandered about all day and every day from agency to
+agency. I was supposed to be educated. I'd been brought up partly in
+Paris, I could play several instruments and sing little songs in four
+different tongues.'
+
+In the pause Jean asked, 'Did nobody want you to teach French or sing
+the little songs?'
+
+'The heads of schools thought me too young. There were people ready to
+listen to my singing. But the terms, they were too hard. Soon my money
+was gone. I began to pawn my trinkets. _They_ went.'
+
+'And still no work?'
+
+'No; but by that time I had some real education--an unpaid hotel bill,
+and not a shilling in the world. Some girls think it hardship to have to
+earn their living. The horror is not to be allowed to.'
+
+Jean bent forward. 'What happened?'
+
+Lady John stood up. 'My dear,' she asked her visitor, 'have your things
+been sent down?'
+
+'Yes. I am quite ready, all but my hat.'
+
+'Well?' insisted Jean.
+
+'Well, by chance I met a friend of my family.'
+
+'That was lucky.'
+
+'I thought so. He was nearly ten years older than I. He said he wanted
+to help me.' Again she paused.
+
+'And didn't he?' Jean asked.
+
+Lady John laid her hand on Miss Levering's shoulder.
+
+'Perhaps, after all, he did,' she said. 'Why do I waste time over
+myself? I belonged to the little class of armed women. My body wasn't
+born weak, and my spirit wasn't broken by the _habit_ of slavery. But,
+as Mrs. Heriot was kind enough to hint, I do know something about the
+possible fate of homeless girls. What was true a dozen years ago is true
+to-day. There are pleasant parks, museums, free libraries in our great
+rich London, and not one single place where destitute women can be sure
+of work that isn't killing, or food that isn't worse than prison fare.
+That's why women ought not to sleep o' nights till this Shelter stands
+spreading out wide arms.'
+
+'No, no,' said the girl, jumping up.
+
+'Even when it's built,'--Mrs. Heriot was angrily gathering up her
+gloves, her fan and her Prayer-book--'you'll see! Many of those
+creatures will prefer the life they lead. They _like_ it. A woman told
+me--one of the sort that knows--told me many of them like it so much
+that they are indifferent to the risk of being sent to prison. "_It
+gives them a rest_,"' she said.
+
+'A rest!' breathed Lady John, horror-struck.
+
+Miss Levering glanced at the clock as she rose to go upstairs, while
+Lady John and Mrs. Heriot bent their heads over the plan covertly
+talking.
+
+Jean ran forward and caught the tall grey figure on the lower step.
+
+'I want to begin to understand something of----,' she began in a
+beseeching tone. 'I'm horribly ignorant.'
+
+Miss Levering looked down upon her searchingly. 'I'm a rather busy
+person,' she said.
+
+'I have a quite special reason for wanting _not_ to be ignorant. I'll go
+to town to-morrow,' said Jean, impulsively, 'if you'll come and lunch
+with me--or let me come to you.'
+
+'Jean!' It was Aunt Lydia's voice.
+
+'I must go and put my hat on,' said Miss Levering, hurrying up the
+stair.
+
+Mrs. Heriot bent towards her sister and half whispered, 'How little she
+minds talking about horrors!'
+
+'They turn me cold. Ugh! I wonder if she's signed the visitor's book.'
+Lady John rose with harassed look. 'Such foolishness John's new plan of
+keeping it in the lobby. It's twice as likely to be forgotten.'
+
+'For all her Shelter schemes, she's a hard woman,' said Aunt Lydia.
+
+'Miss Levering is!' exclaimed Jean.
+
+'Oh, of course _you_ won't think so. She has angled very adroitly for
+your sympathy.'
+
+'She doesn't look----' protested the girl.
+
+Lady John, glancing at her niece, seemed in some intangible way to take
+alarm.
+
+'I'm not sure but what she does. Her mouth--always like this--as if she
+were holding back something by main force.'
+
+'Well, so she is,' slipped out from between Aunt Lydia's thin lips as
+Lady John disappeared into the lobby.
+
+'Why haven't I seen Miss Levering before this summer?' Jean asked.
+
+'Oh, she's lived abroad.' The lady was debating with herself. 'You don't
+know about her, I suppose?'
+
+'I don't know how Aunt Ellen came across her, if that's what you mean.'
+
+'Her father was a person everybody knew. One of his daughters made a
+very good marriage. But this one--I didn't bargain for you and Hermione
+getting mixed up with her.'
+
+'I don't see that we're either of us---- But Miss Levering seems to go
+everywhere. Why shouldn't she?'
+
+With sudden emphasis, 'You mustn't ask her to Eaton Square,' said Aunt
+Lydia.
+
+'I have.'
+
+Mrs. Heriot half rose from her seat. 'Then you'll have to get out of
+it!'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I am sure your grandfather would agree with me. I warn you I won't
+stand by and see that woman getting you into her clutches.'
+
+'Clutches? Why should you think she wants me in her clutches?'
+
+'Just for the pleasure of clutching! She's the kind that's never
+satisfied till she has everybody in the pitiful state your Aunt Ellen's
+in about her. Richard Farnborough, too, just on the very verge of asking
+Hermione to marry him!'
+
+'Oh, is that it?' the girl smiled wisely.
+
+'No!' Too late Mrs. Heriot saw her misstep. 'That's _not_ it! And I am
+sure, if Mr. Stonor knew what I do, he would agree with me that you must
+not ask her to the house.'
+
+'Of course I'd do anything he asked me to. But he would give me a
+reason. And a very good reason, too!' The pretty face was very stubborn.
+
+Aunt Lydia's wore the inflamed look not so much of one who is angry as
+of a person who has a cold in the head.
+
+'I'll give you the reason!' she said. 'It's not a thing I should have
+preferred to tell you, but I know how difficult you are to guide--so I
+suppose you'll have to know.' She looked round and lowered her voice.
+'It was ten or twelve years ago. I found her horribly ill in a lonely
+Welsh farmhouse.'
+
+'Miss Levering?'
+
+Mrs. Heriot nodded. 'We had taken the Manor for that August. The
+farmer's wife was frightened, and begged me to go and see what I
+thought. I soon saw how it was--I thought she was dying.'
+
+'_Dying?_ What was the----'
+
+'I got no more out of her than the farmer's wife did. She had no
+letters. There had been no one to see her except a man down from London,
+a shady-looking doctor--nameless, of course. And then this result. The
+farmer and his wife, highly respectable people, were incensed. They were
+for turning the girl out.'
+
+'_Oh_! but----'
+
+'Yes. Pitiless some of these people are! Although she had forfeited all
+claim--still she was a daughter of Sir Hervey Levering. I insisted they
+should treat the girl humanely, and we became friends--that is, "sort
+of." In spite of all I did for her----'
+
+'What did you do?'
+
+'I--I've told you, and I lent her money. No small sum either----'
+
+'Has she never paid it back?'
+
+'Oh, yes; after a time. But I _always_ kept her secret--as much as I
+knew.'
+
+'But you've been telling me----'
+
+'That was my duty--and I never had her full confidence.'
+
+'Wasn't it natural she----'
+
+'Well, all things considered, she might have wanted to tell me who was
+responsible.'
+
+'Oh, Aunt Lydia.'
+
+'All she ever said was that she was ashamed'--Mrs. Heriot was fast
+losing her temper and her fine feeling for the innocence of her
+auditor--'ashamed that she "hadn't had the courage to resist"--not the
+original temptation, but the pressure brought to bear on her "not to go
+through with it," as she said.'
+
+With a shrinking look the girl wrinkled her brows. 'You are being so
+delicate--I'm not sure I understand.'
+
+'The only thing you need understand,' said her aunt, irritably, 'is that
+she's not a desirable companion for a young girl.'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'When did you see her after--after----'
+
+Mrs. Heriot made a slight grimace. 'I met her last winter at--of all
+places--the Bishop's!'
+
+'They're relations of hers.'
+
+'Yes. It was while you were in Scotland. They'd got her to help with
+some of their work. Now she's taken hold of ours. Your aunt and uncle
+are quite foolish about her, and I'm debarred from taking any steps, at
+least till the Shelter is out of hand.'
+
+The girl's face was shadowed--even a little frightened. It was evident
+she was struggling not to give way altogether to alarm and repulsion.
+
+'I do rather wonder that after that, she can bring herself to talk
+about--the unfortunate women of the world.'
+
+'The effrontery of it!' said her aunt.
+
+'Or--the courage!' The girl put her hand up to her throat as if the
+sentence had caught there.
+
+'Even presumes to set _me_ right! Of course I don't _mind_ in the least,
+poor soul--but I feel I owe it to your dead mother to tell you about
+her, especially as you're old enough now to know something about life.'
+
+'And since a girl needn't be very old to suffer for her ignorance'--she
+spoke slowly, moving a little away. But she stopped on the final
+sentence: 'I _felt_ she was rather wonderful!'
+
+'_Wonderful!_'
+
+'To have lived through _that_, when she was--how old?'
+
+Mrs. Heriot rose with an increased irritation. 'Nineteen or
+thereabouts.'
+
+'Five years younger than I!' Jean sat down on the divan and stared at
+the floor. 'To be abandoned, and to come out of it like this!'
+
+Mrs. Heriot went to her and laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.
+
+'It was too bad to have to tell you such a sordid story to-day of all
+days.'
+
+'It is a terrible story, but this wasn't a bad time. I feel very sorry
+to-day for women who aren't happy.' She started as a motor-horn was
+faintly heard. 'That's Geoffrey!' She jumped to her feet.
+
+'Mr. Stonor. What makes you think----?'
+
+'Yes, yes. I'm sure. I'm sure!' Every shadow fled out of her face in the
+sudden burst of sunshine.
+
+Lord John hurried in from the garden as the motor-horn sounded louder.
+
+'Who do you think is coming round the drive?'
+
+Jean caught hold of him. 'Oh, dear! are those other people all about?
+How am I ever going to be able to behave like a girl who--who isn't
+engaged to the only man in the world worth marrying!'
+
+'You were expecting Mr. Stonor all the time!' exclaimed Aunt Lydia.
+
+'He promised he'd come to luncheon if it was humanly possible. I was
+afraid to tell you for fear he'd be prevented.'
+
+Lord John was laughing as he went towards the lobby. 'You felt we
+couldn't have borne the disappointment!'
+
+'I felt I couldn't,' said the girl, standing there with a rapt look.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+She did not look round when Dick Farnborough ran in from the garden,
+saying: '_Is_ it--is it really?' For just then on the opposite side of
+the great hall, the centre of a little buzz of welcome, Stonor's tall
+figure appeared between host and hostess.
+
+'What luck!' Farnborough said under his breath.
+
+He hurried back and faced the rest of the party who were clustered
+outside the window trying to look unconcerned.
+
+'Yes, by Jove!' he set their incredulity at rest. 'It _is_!'
+
+Discreetly they glanced and craned and then elaborately turned their
+backs, pretending to be talking among themselves. But, as though the
+girl standing there expectant in the middle of the hall were well aware
+of the enormous sensation the new arrival had created, she herself
+contributed nothing to it. Stonor came forward, and she met him with a
+soft, happy look, and the low words: 'What a good thing you managed it!'
+Then she made way for Mrs. Heriot's far more impressive greeting,
+innocent of the smallest reminder of the last encounter!
+
+It was Lord John who cut these amenities short by chaffing Stonor for
+being so enterprising all of a sudden. 'Fancy your motoring out of town
+to see a supporter on Sunday!'
+
+'I don't know how we ever covered the ground in the old days,' he
+answered. 'It's no use to stand for your borough any more. The American,
+you know, he "runs" for Congress. By-and-by we shall all be flying after
+the thing we want.' He smiled at Jean.
+
+'Sh!' She glanced over her shoulder and spoke low. 'All sorts of
+irrelevant people here.'
+
+One of them, unable any longer to resist the temptation, was making a
+second foray into the hall.
+
+'How do you do, Mr. Stonor?' Farnborough stood there holding out his
+hand.
+
+The great man seemed not to see it, but he murmured, 'How do you do?'
+and proceeded to share with Lady John his dislike of any means of
+locomotion except his own legs or those of a horse.
+
+It took a great deal to disconcert Farnborough. 'Some of us were arguing
+in the smoking-room last night,' he said, 'whether it didn't hurt a
+candidate's chances going about in a motor.'
+
+As Mr. Stonor, not deigning to reply to this, paused the merest instant
+in what he was saying to his hostess, Lord John came to the rescue of
+the audacious young gentleman.
+
+'Yes, we've been hearing a great many stories about the unpopularity of
+motor-cars--among the class that hasn't got 'em, of course.'
+
+'I'm sure,' Lady John put in, 'you gain more votes by being able to
+reach so many more of your constituents than we used----'
+
+'Well, I don't know,' said Stonor. 'I've sometimes wondered whether the
+charm of our presence wasn't counterbalanced by the way we tear about
+smothering our fellow-beings in dust and running down their pigs and
+chickens,--not to speak of their children.'
+
+'What on the whole are the prospects?' Lord John asked.
+
+'We shall have to work harder than we realized,' Stonor answered
+gravely.
+
+Farnborough let slip an 'Ah, I said so!' meant for Lady John, and then
+before Stonor's raised eyes, the over-zealous young politician retreated
+towards the window--but with hands in his pockets and head held high,
+like one who has made his mark. And so in truth he had. For Lady John
+let drop one or two good-natured phrases--what he had done, his
+hero-worship, his mother had been a Betham--Yes, he was one of the
+Farnboroughs of Moore Abbey. Though Stonor made no comment beyond a dry,
+'The staple product of this country, young men like that!'--it appeared
+later that Lady John's good offices in favour of a probable
+nephew-in-law had not been invoked in vain.
+
+Despite the menace of 'the irrelevant' dotting the lawn immediately
+outside the windows, the little group on the farther side of the hall
+still stood there talking in low tones with the sense of intimacy which
+belongs to a family party.
+
+Jean had slipped her arm in her uncle's, and was smiling at Stonor--
+
+'He says he believes I'll be able to make a real difference to his
+chances,' she said, half aside. 'Isn't it angelic of him?'
+
+'Angelic?' laughed the great man. 'Macchiavellian. I pin all my hopes on
+your being able to counteract the pernicious influence of my opponent's
+glib wife.'
+
+'You want me to have a real share in it all, don't you, Geoffrey?'
+
+'Of course I do.' He smiled into her eyes.
+
+That moth Farnborough, whirling in the political effulgence, was again
+hovering on the outskirts. He even made conversation to Mrs. Heriot, as
+an excuse to remain inside the window.
+
+'But you don't mean seriously,' Lord John asked his guest, 'you don't
+mean, do you, that there's any possible complication about _your_ seat?'
+
+'Oh, I dare say it's all right'--Stonor drew a Sunday paper out of his
+pocket. 'There's this agitation about the Woman Question. Oddly enough,
+it seems as if it might--there's just the off-chance--it _might_ affect
+the issue.'
+
+'Affect it? How? God bless my soul!' Lord John's transparent skin
+flushed up to his white hair. 'Don't tell me any responsible person is
+going even to consider the lunacy of tampering with the British
+Constitution----'
+
+'We _have_ heard that suggested, though for better reasons,' Stonor
+laughed, but not Lord John.
+
+'Turn over the destinies of the Empire,' he said hotly, 'to a lot of
+ignorant women just because a few of 'em have odious manners and violent
+tongues!' The sight of Stonor's cool impassivity calmed him somewhat. He
+went on more temperately. 'Every sane person sees that the only trouble
+with England to-day is that too many ignorant people have votes
+already.'
+
+'The penalty we pay for being more republican than the Republics.'
+
+Lord John had picked up the Sunday paper and glanced down a column.
+
+'If the worst came to the worst, you can do what the other four hundred
+have done.'
+
+'Easily! But the mere fact that four hundred and twenty members have
+been worried into promising support--and then, once in the House, have
+let the matter severely alone----'
+
+'Let it alone?' Lord John burst out again. 'I should think so indeed!'
+
+'Yes,' laughed Stonor, 'only it's a device that's somewhat worn.'
+
+'Still,' Lord John put on a Macchiavellian air that sat rather
+incongruously on his honest English face, 'Still, if they think they're
+getting a future Cabinet Minister on their side----'
+
+'It will be sufficiently embarrassing for the Cabinet Minister.'
+
+Stonor caught sight of Farnborough approaching and lowered his voice. He
+leaned his elbow on the end of the wide mantelpiece and gave his
+attention exclusively to Lord John, seeming to ignore even the pretty
+girl who still stood by her uncle with a hand slipped through his arm.
+
+'Nobody says much about it,' Stonor went on, 'but it's realized that the
+last Labour member, and that Colne Valley Socialist--those men got in
+largely through the tireless activity of the women.'
+
+'The Suffragettes!' exclaimed the girl, '_they_ were able to do that?'
+
+'They're always saying they don't favour _any_ party,' said a voice.
+
+Stonor looked up, and, to Jean's obvious relief, refrained from snubbing
+the irrepressible Farnborough.
+
+'I don't know what they _say_----' began Stonor.
+
+'Oh, _I_ do!' Farnborough interrupted. 'They're not _for_ anybody.
+They're simply agin the Government.'
+
+'Whatever they say, they're all Socialists.' Lord John gave a snort.
+
+'No,' said Farnborough, with cool audacity. 'It only looks like that.'
+
+Jean turned quite pink with anxiety. She, and all who knew him well, had
+seen Stonor crush the cocksure and the unwary with an awful effectualness.
+But Farnborough, with the courage of enthusiasm--enthusiasm for himself
+and his own future--went stoutly on.
+
+'There are Liberals and even Unionists among 'em. And they do manage to
+hold the balance pretty even. I go and hear them, you see!'
+
+'And speaking from the height of your advantage,' although Stonor was
+slightly satirical, he was exercising an exceptional forbearance, 'do
+you mean to tell me they are not more in sympathy with the Labour party
+than with any other?'
+
+'If they are, it's not because the Suffragists are all for Socialism.
+But because the Labour party is the only one that puts Women's Suffrage
+in the forefront of its programme.'
+
+Stonor took his elbow off the mantel. 'Whatever the reason,' he said
+airily, 'the result is momentarily inconvenient. Though I am one of
+those who think it would be easy to overestimate the importance----'
+
+He broke off with an effect of dismissing both the matter and the man.
+As he turned away, he found himself without the smallest warning face to
+face with Vida Levering. She had come down the great staircase
+unobserved and unobserving; her head bent, and she in the act of forcing
+a recalcitrant hatpin through her hat--doing it under certain
+disadvantages, as she held her gloves and her veil in one hand.
+
+As she paused there, confronting the tall figure of the new-comer,
+although it was obvious that her unpreparedness was not less than his
+own, there was to the most acute eye nothing in the remotest degree
+dramatic about the encounter--hardly more than a cool surprise, and yet
+there was that which made Jean say, smiling--
+
+'Oh, you know one another already?'
+
+'Everybody in this part of the world knows Mr. Stonor,' the lady said,
+'but he doesn't know me.'
+
+'This is Miss Levering. You knew her father, didn't you?'
+
+Even before Lady John had introduced them, the people in the garden
+seemed not to be able to support the prospect of Miss Levering's
+threatened monopoly of the lion. They swarmed in--Hermione Heriot and
+Paul Filey appearing for the first time since church--they overflowed
+into the Hall, while Jean Dunbarton, with artless enthusiasm, was
+demanding of Miss Levering if the reason she knew Mr. Stonor was that
+she had been hearing him speak.
+
+'Yes,' the lady met his eyes, 'I was visiting some relations near
+Dutfield. They took me to hear you.'
+
+'Oh--the night the Suffragettes made their customary row----'
+
+'They didn't attack _you_,' she reminded him.
+
+'They will if we win the election!' he said, with a cynical
+anticipation.
+
+It was a mark of how far the Women's Cause had travelled that, although
+there was no man there (except the ineffectual Farnborough)--no one to
+speak of it even with tolerance, there was also no one, not even
+Greatorex, who any longer felt the matter to be much of a joke. Here
+again in this gathering was happening what the unprejudiced observer
+was seeing in similar circumstances all over England. The mere mention
+of Women's Suffrage in general society (rarest of happenings now)--that
+topic which had been the prolific mother of so much merriment, bred in
+these days but silence and constraint. The quickest-witted changed the
+topic amid a general sense of grateful relief. The thing couldn't be
+laughed at any longer, but it could still be pretended it wasn't there.
+
+'You've come just in time to rescue me!' Mrs. Freddy said, sparkling at
+Stonor.
+
+'You don't appear to be in any serious danger,' he said.
+
+'But I am, or I _was_! They were just insisting I should go upstairs and
+change my frock.'
+
+'Is there anybody here so difficult as not to like that one?'
+
+She made him a smart little curtsey. 'Although we're going to have
+luncheon in less than an hour, somebody was going to insist (out of pure
+mistaken philanthropy) in taking me for a walk. I've told Freddy that
+when I've departed for realms of bliss, he is to put on my tombstone,
+"Died of changing her clothes." I know the end will come some Sunday. We
+appear at breakfast dressed for church. That's a long skirt. We are
+usually shooed upstairs directly we get back, to put on a short one, so
+that we can go and look at the kennels or the prize bull. We come back
+muddy and smelling of stables. We get into something fresh for luncheon.
+After luncheon some one says, "Walk!" Another short skirt. We come back
+draggled and dreadful. We change. Something sweetly feminine for tea!
+The gong. We rush and dress for dinner! You've saved me one change,
+anyhow. You are my benefactor. Why don't you ask after my babies?'
+
+'Well, how are the young barbarians?' He rubbed his hand over the lower
+part of his face. 'Your concern for personal appearance reminds me that
+a little soap and water after my dusty drive----'
+
+Little as had fallen from him since his entrance, as he followed Lord
+John upstairs, he left behind that sense of blankness so curiously
+independent of either words or deeds. Greatorex, in his patent leather
+shoes and immaculate white gaiters, pattered over to Miss Levering, but
+she unkindly presented her back, and sat down at the writing-table to
+make a note on the abhorred Shelter plan. He showed his disapproval by
+marching off with Mr. Freddy, and there was a general trickling back
+into the garden in that aimless, before-luncheon mood.
+
+But Mrs. Heriot and Lady John sat with their heads close together on the
+sofa, discussing in undertones the absorbing subject of the prospective
+new member of the family.
+
+Mrs. Freddy perched on the edge of the writing-table between Miss
+Levering, who sat in front of it, and Jean, whose chair was on the other
+side. She was nearest Jean, but it was to her children's sworn friend
+that she turned to say enthusiastically--
+
+'Delightful his coming in like that!' And no one needed to be told whose
+coming brought delight. 'We must tell Sara and Cecil.'
+
+As Miss Levering seemed to be still absorbed in making notes on that
+boring plan, the lively Mrs. Freddy turned to her other neighbour.
+
+'Penny for your thoughts,' she demanded with such suddenness that Jean
+Dunbarton started and reddened. 'Something very weighty, to judge
+from----'
+
+'I believe I was thinking it was rather odd to hear two men like my
+uncle and Mr. Stonor talking about the influence of the Suffrage women
+really quite seriously. _Oh!_'--she clutched Mrs. Freddy's arm, laughing
+apologetically--'I beg your pardon. I forgot. Besides, I wasn't thinking
+of your kind; I was thinking of the Suffragettes.'
+
+'As the only conceivable ones to be exercising any influence. Thank
+you.'
+
+'Oh, no, no. Indeed, I didn't mean----'
+
+'Yes, you did. You're like the rest. You don't realize how we prepared
+the ground. All the same,' she went on, with her unfailing good humour,
+'it's frightfully exciting seeing the Question come into practical
+politics at last. I only hope those women won't go and upset the
+apple-cart again.'
+
+'How?'
+
+'Oh, by doing something that will alienate all our good friends in both
+parties. It's queer they can't see our only chance to get what we want
+is by winning over the men.'
+
+There was a low sound of impatience from the person at the
+writing-table, and a rustle of paper as the plan was thrown down.
+
+'What's the matter?' said Mrs. Freddy.
+
+'"Winning over the men" has been the woman's way since the Creation. Do
+you think the result should make us proud of our policy? Yes? Then go
+and walk in Piccadilly at midnight.'
+
+Lady John and Mrs. Heriot rose as one, while Miss Levering was adding--
+
+'No, I forgot----'
+
+'Yes,' interposed Mrs. Heriot, with majesty, 'it is not the first time
+you've forgotten.'
+
+'What I forgot was the magistrate's ruling. He said no decent woman had
+any business to be in London's main thoroughfares at night "_unless she
+has a man with her_." You can hear that in Soho, too. "You're obliged to
+take up with a chap!" is what the women say.'
+
+In a highly significant silence, Mrs. Heriot withdrew with her niece and
+Mrs. Freddy to where Hermione sat contentedly between two young men on
+the window-step. Lady John, naturally somewhat ruffled, but still quite
+kind, bent over her indiscreet guest to say--
+
+'What an odd mood you are in to-day, my dear. I think Lydia Heriot's
+right. We oughtn't to do anything, or _say_ anything to encourage this
+ferment of feminism--and I'll tell you why: it's likely to bring a very
+terrible thing in its train.'
+
+'What terrible thing?'
+
+'Sex-Antagonism.'
+
+'It's here.'
+
+'Don't say that!' Lady John spoke very gravely.
+
+'You're so conscious it's here, you're afraid to have it mentioned.'
+
+Lady John perceived that Jean had quietly slipped away from the others,
+and was standing behind her.
+
+If Mrs. Heriot had not been too absorbed in Dick Farnborough and
+Hermione she would have had a moment's pleasure in her handiwork--that
+half-shamed scrutiny in Jean Dunbarton's face. But as the young girl
+studied the quiet figure, looked into the tender eyes that gazed so
+steadily into some grey country far away, the effect of Mrs. Heriot's
+revelation was either weakened or transmuted subtly to something
+stronger than the thing that it replaced.
+
+As the woman sat there leaning her head a little wearily on her hand,
+there was about the whole _Wesen_ an indefinable nobility that answered
+questions before they were asked.
+
+But Lady John, upon perceiving her niece, had said hurriedly--
+
+'If what you say is so, it's the fault of those women agitators.'
+
+'Sex-Antagonism wasn't their invention,' Miss Levering answered. 'No
+woman begins that way. Every woman is in a state of natural
+subjection'--she looked up, and seeing Jean's face, smiled--'no, I'd
+rather say "allegiance" to her idea of romance and her hope of
+motherhood; they're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest
+things in life till man kills them. Let's be fair. If that allegiance
+dies, each woman knows why.'
+
+Lady John, always keenly alive to any change in the social atmosphere,
+looked up and saw her husband coming downstairs with their guest. As she
+went to meet them, Stonor stopped halfway down to say something. The two
+men halted there deep in discussion. But scarcely deeper than those
+other two Lady John had left by the writing-table.
+
+'Who is it you are going to marry?' Miss Levering had asked.
+
+'It isn't going to be announced for a few days yet.' And then Jean
+relented enough to say in an undertone, almost confidentially, 'I should
+think you'd guess.'
+
+'Guess what?' said the other, absent-mindedly, but again lifting her
+eyes.
+
+'Who I'm going to marry.'
+
+'Oh, I know him, then?' she said, surprised.
+
+'Well, you've seen him.'
+
+Miss Levering shook her head. 'There are so very many young men in the
+world.' But she looked with a moment's wondering towards the window,
+seeming to consider first Filey and then Farnborough.
+
+'What made you think of going on that terrible pilgrimage?' asked the
+girl.
+
+'Something I heard at a Suffrage meeting.'
+
+'Well, do you know, ever since that Sunday at the Freddys', when you
+told us about the Suffragettes, I--I've been curious about them.'
+
+'You said nothing would ever induce you to listen to such people.'
+
+'I know, and it's rather silly, but one says a thing like that on the
+spur of the moment, and then one is bound by it.'
+
+'You mean one imagines one is bound.'
+
+'Then, too, I've been in Scotland ever since; but I've often thought
+about you and what you said that day at the Freddys'!'
+
+'And yet you've been a good deal absorbed----'
+
+'You see,' the girl put on a pretty little air of superiority, 'it isn't
+as if the man I'm going to marry wasn't very broad-minded. He wants me
+to be intelligent about politics. Are those women holding meetings in
+London now as well as in the constituencies?'
+
+They both became aware at the same moment that Lord John was coming
+slowly down the last steps, with Stonor still more slowly following,
+talking Land Tenure. As Miss Levering rose and hurriedly turned over the
+things on the table to look for her veil, the handkerchief she had shut
+in her little Italian book dropped out. A further shifting of plans and
+papers sent it unobserved to the floor. Jean put once more the question
+that had remained unanswered.
+
+'They collect too great crowds,' Miss Levering answered her. 'The
+authorities won't let them meet in Trafalgar Square after to-day. They
+have their last meeting there at three o'clock.'
+
+'To-day! That's no use to people out of town--unless I could invent some
+excuse----'
+
+'Wait till you can go without inventions and excuses.'
+
+'You think all that wrong!'
+
+'I think it rather undignified.'
+
+'So do I--but if I'm ever to go----'
+
+Lord John came forward, leaving Stonor to his hostess. 'Still talking
+over your Shelter plan?' he asked benevolently.
+
+'No,' answered Miss Levering, 'we left the Shelter some time ago.'
+
+He pinched his niece's ear with affectionate playfulness.
+
+'Then what's all this chatterment about?'
+
+The girl, a little confused, looked at her fellow-conspirator.
+
+'The latest things in veils,' said Miss Levering, smiling, as she caught
+up hers.
+
+'The invincible frivolity of women!' said Lord John, with immense
+geniality.
+
+'Oh, they're coming for you,' Jean said. 'Don't forget your book. When
+shall I see you again, I wonder?'
+
+But instead of announcing the carriage the servant held out a salver. On
+it lay a telegraph form scribbled over in pencil.
+
+'A telephone message, miss.'
+
+'For me?' said Jean, in surprise.
+
+'Yes, miss. I didn't know you was here, miss. They asked me to write it
+down, and let you have it as soon as possible.'
+
+'I knew how it would be if I gave in about that telephone!' Lord John
+arraigned his wife. Even Mr. Stonor had to sympathize. 'They won't leave
+people in peace even one day in the week.'
+
+'I've got your book,' Jean said, looking at Miss Levering over the top
+of the telegraph form, and then glancing at the title as she restored
+the volume to its owner. 'Dante! Whereabouts are you?' She opened it
+without waiting to hear. 'Oh, the Inferno.'
+
+'No, I'm in a worse place,' said the other, smiling vaguely as she drew
+on her gloves.
+
+'I didn't know there was a worse.'
+
+'Yes, it's worse with the Vigliacchi.'
+
+'I forget, were they Guelf or Ghibelline?'
+
+'They weren't either, and that was why Dante couldn't stand them. He
+said there was no place in Heaven nor in Purgatory--not even a corner in
+Hell, for the souls who had stood aloof from strife.' The smile faded as
+she stood there looking steadily into the girl's eyes. 'He called them
+"wretches who never lived," Dante did, because they'd never felt the
+pangs of partisanship. And so they wander homeless on the skirts of
+limbo, among the abortions and off-scourings of Creation.'
+
+The girl drew a fluttering breath. Miss Levering glanced at the clock,
+and turned away to make her leisurely adieux among the group at the
+window.
+
+Mrs. Heriot left it at once. 'What was that about a telephone message,
+Jean darling?'
+
+The girl glanced at the paper, and then quite suddenly said to Lady
+John--
+
+'Aunt Ellen, I've got to go to London!'
+
+'Not to-day!'
+
+'My dear child!'
+
+'Nonsense!'
+
+'Is your grandfather worse?'
+
+'N--no. I don't think my grandfather is any worse. But I must go, all
+the same.'
+
+'You _can't_ go away,' whispered Mrs. Heriot, 'when Mr. Stonor----'
+
+'Back me up!' Jean whispered to Lady John. 'He said he'd have to leave
+directly after luncheon. And anyhow--all these people--please have us
+another time.'
+
+'I'll just see Miss Levering off,' said Lady John, 'and then I'll come
+back and talk about it.'
+
+In the midst of the good-byeing that was going on over by the window,
+Jean suddenly exclaimed--
+
+'There mayn't be another train! Miss Levering!'
+
+But Stonor was standing in front of the girl barring the way. 'What if
+there isn't? I'll take you back in my motor,' he said aside.
+
+'_Will_ you?' In her rapture at the thought Jean clasped her hands, and
+the paper fluttered to the floor. 'But I must be there by three,' she
+said.
+
+He had picked up the telegraph form as well as the handkerchief lying
+near.
+
+'Why, it's only an invitation to dine--Wednesday!'
+
+'Sh!' She took the paper.
+
+'Oh! I see!' He smiled and lowered his voice. 'It's rather dear of you
+to arrange our going off like that. You _are_ a clever little girl!'
+
+'It's not exactly that I was arranging. I want to hear those women in
+Trafalgar Square--the Suffragettes.'
+
+He stared at her more than half incredulous, but smiling still.
+
+'How perfectly absurd! Besides,'--he looked across the room at Lady
+John--'besides, I expect she wouldn't like my carrying you off like
+that.'
+
+'Then she'll have to make an excuse, and come too.'
+
+'Ah, it wouldn't be quite the same if she did that.'
+
+But Jean had thought it out. 'Aunt Ellen and I could get back quite well
+in time for dinner.'
+
+The group that had closed about the departing guest dissolved.
+
+'Why are you saying good-bye as if you were never coming back?' Lord
+John demanded.
+
+'One never knows,' Miss Levering laughed. 'Maybe I shan't come back.'
+
+'Don't talk as if you meant never!' said Mrs. Freddy.
+
+'Perhaps I do mean never.' She nodded to Stonor.
+
+He bowed ceremoniously.
+
+'Never come back! What nonsense are you talking?' said Lady John.
+
+'Is it premonition of death, or don't you like us any more?' laughed her
+husband.
+
+The little group trailed across the great room, escorting the guest to
+the front door, Lady John leading the way. As they passed, Geoffrey
+Stonor was obviously not listening very attentively to Jean's
+enthusiastic explanation of her plan for the afternoon. He kept his eyes
+lowered. They rested on the handkerchief he had picked up, but hardly as
+if, after all, they saw it, though he turned the filmy square from
+corner to corner with an air partly of nervousness, partly of
+abstraction.
+
+'Is it mine?' asked Jean.
+
+He paused an instant. 'No. Yours,' he said, mechanically, and held out
+the handkerchief to Miss Levering.
+
+She seemed not to hear. Lord John had blocked the door a moment,
+insisting on a date for the next visit. Jean caught up the handkerchief
+and went running forward with it. Suddenly she stopped, glancing down at
+the embroidered corner.
+
+'But that's not an L! It's V--i----'
+
+Stonor turned his back, and took up a magazine.
+
+Lady John's voice sounded clear from the lobby. 'You must let Vida go,
+John, or she'll miss her train.'
+
+Miss Levering vanished.
+
+'I didn't know her name was Vida; how did you?' said Jean.
+
+Stonor bent his head silently over the book. Perhaps he hadn't heard.
+That deafening old gong was sounding for luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The last of the Trafalgar Square meetings was half over when the great
+chocolate-coloured motor, containing three persons besides the
+chauffeur, slowed up on the west side of the square. Neither of the two
+ladies in their all-enveloping veils was easily recognizable, still less
+the be-goggled countenance of the Hon. Geoffrey Stonor. When he took off
+his motor glasses, he did not turn down his dust collar. He even pulled
+farther over his eyes the peak of his linen cap.
+
+By coming at all on this expedition, he had given Jean a signal proof of
+his desire to please her--but it was plain that he had no mind to see in
+the papers that he had been assisting at such a spectacle. While he gave
+instructions as to where the car should wait, Jean was staring at the
+vast crowd massed on the north side of the column. It extended back
+among the fountains, and even escaped on each side beyond the vigilance
+of the guardian lions. There were scores listening there who could not
+see the speakers even as well as could the occupants of the car. In
+front of the little row of women on the plinth a gaunt figure in brown
+serge was waving her arms. What she was saying was blurred in the
+general uproar.
+
+'Oh, that's one!' Jean called out excitedly. 'Oh, let's hurry.'
+
+But even after they left the car and reached the crowd, to hurry was a
+thing no man could do. For some minutes the motor-party had only
+occasional glimpses of the speakers, and heard little more than
+fragments.
+
+'Who is that, Geoffrey?'
+
+'The tall young fellow with the stoop? That appears to be the chairman.'
+Stonor himself stooped--to the eager girl who had clutched his sleeve
+from behind, and was following him closely through the press. 'The
+artless chairman, I take it, is scolding the people for not giving the
+woman a hearing!' They laughed together at the young man's foolishness.
+
+Even had an open-air meeting been more of a commonplace to Stonor, it
+would have had for him that effect of newness that an old thing wears
+when seen by an act of sympathy through new eyes.
+
+'You must be sure and explain _everything_ to me, Geoffrey,' said the
+girl. 'This is to be an important chapter in my education.' Merrily and
+without a shadow of misgiving she spoke in jest a truer word than she
+dreamed. He fell in with her mood.
+
+'Well, I rather gather that he's been criticizing the late Government,
+and Liberals have made it hot for him.'
+
+'I shall never be able to hear unless we get nearer,' said Jean,
+anxiously.
+
+'There's a very rough element in front there----'
+
+'Oh, don't let us mind!'
+
+'Most certainly I mind!'
+
+'Oh, but I should be miserable if I didn't hear.'
+
+She pleaded so bewitchingly for a front seat at the Show that
+unwillingly he wormed his way on. Suddenly he stood still and stared
+about.
+
+'What's the matter?' said Lady John.
+
+'I can't have you ladies pushed about in this crowd,' he said under his
+breath. 'I must get hold of a policeman. You wait just here. I'll find
+one.'
+
+The adoring eyes of the girl watched the tall figure disappear.
+
+'Look at her face!' Lady John, with her eyeglass up, was staring in the
+opposite direction. 'She's like an inspired charwoman!'
+
+Jean turned, and in her eagerness pressed on, Lady John following.
+
+The agreeable presence of the young chairman was withdrawn from the
+fighting-line, and the figure of the working-woman stood alone. With her
+lean brown finger pointing straight at the more outrageous of the young
+hooligans, and her voice raised shrill above their impertinence--
+
+'I've got boys of me own,' she said, 'and we laugh at all sorts o'
+things, but I should be ashymed, and so would they, if ever they wus to
+be'yve as you're doin' to-d'y.'
+
+When they had duly hooted that sentiment, they were quieter for a
+moment.
+
+'People 'ave been sayin' this is a Middle-Class Woman's Movement. It's
+a libel. I'm a workin' woman m'self, the wife of a workin' man----'
+
+'Pore devil!'
+
+'Don't envy 'im, m'self!'
+
+As one giving her credentials, she went on, 'I'm a Pore Law
+Guardian----'
+
+'Think o' that, now! Gracious me!'
+
+A friendly person in the crowd turned upon the scoffer.
+
+'Shut up, cawn't yer.'
+
+'Not fur you!
+
+Further statements on the part of the orator were drowned by--
+
+'Go 'ome and darn your ol' man's stockin's.'
+
+'Just clean yer _own_ doorstep.'
+
+She glowered her contempt upon the interrupters.' It's a pore sort of
+'ousekeeper that leaves 'er doorstep till Sunday afternoon. Maybe that's
+when you would do your doorstep. I do mine in the mornin', before you
+men are awake!' They relished that and gave her credit for a bull's eye.
+
+'You think,' she went on quietly, seeing she had 'got them'--'you think
+we women 'ave no business servin' on Boards and thinking about
+politics.' In a tone of exquisite contempt, 'But wot's politics!' she
+demanded. 'It's just 'ousekeepin' on a big scyle.' Somebody applauded.
+'Oo among you workin' men 'as the most comfortable 'omes? Those of you
+that gives yer wives yer wyges.'
+
+'That's it! That's it!' they roared with passion.
+
+'Wantin' our money.'
+
+'That's all this agitation's about.'
+
+'Listen to me!' She came close to the edge of the plinth. 'If it wus
+only to use fur _our_ comfort, d'ye think many o' you workin' men would
+be found turnin' over their wyges to their wives? No! Wot's the reason
+thousands do--and the best and the soberest? Because the workin' man
+knows that wot's a pound to _'im_ is twenty shillins to 'is wife, and
+she'll myke every penny in every one o' them shillins _tell_. She gets
+more fur 'im out of 'is wyges than wot 'e can. Some o' you know wot the
+'omes is like w'ere the men _don't_ let the women manage. Well, the Poor
+Laws and the 'ole Government is just in the syme muddle because the men
+'ave tried to do the national 'ousekeepin' without the women!'
+
+They hooted, but they listened, too.
+
+'Like I said to you before, it's a libel to say it's only the well-off
+women wot's wantin' the vote. I can tell you wot plenty o' the poor
+women think about it. I'm one o' them! And I can tell you we see there's
+reforms needed. _We ought to 'ave the vote_; and we know 'ow to
+appreciate the other women 'oo go to prison for tryin' to get it for
+us!'
+
+With a little final bob of emphasis, and a glance over her shoulder at
+the old woman and the young one behind her, she was about to retire. But
+she paused as the murmur in the crowd grew into distinct phrases.
+
+''Inderin' policemen!'--'Mykin' rows in the street;' and a voice called
+out so near Jean that the girl jumped, 'It's the w'y yer goes on as
+mykes 'em keep ye from gettin' votes. They see ye ain't fit to 'ave----'
+
+And then all the varied charges were swallowed in a general uproar.
+
+'Where's Geoffrey? Oh, _isn't_ she too funny for words?'
+
+The agitated chairman had come forward. 'You evidently don't know,' he
+said, 'what had to be done by _men_ before the extension of suffrage in
+'67. If it hadn't been for demonstrations----' But the rest was drowned.
+
+The brown-serge woman stood there waiting, wavering a moment; and
+suddenly her shrill note rose clear over the indistinguishable Babel.
+
+'You s'y woman's plyce is 'ome! Don't you know there's a third of the
+women in this country can't afford the luxury of stayin' in their 'omes?
+They _got_ to go out and 'elp make money to p'y the rent and keep the
+'ome from bein' sold up. Then there's all the women that 'aven't got
+even miserable 'omes. They 'aven't got any 'omes _at all_.'
+
+'You said _you_ got one. W'y don't you stop in it?'
+
+'Yes, that's like a man. If one o' you is all right he thinks the rest
+don't matter. We women----'
+
+But they overwhelmed her. She stood there with her gaunt arms
+folded--waiting. You felt that she had met other crises of her life with
+just that same smouldering patience. When the wave of noise subsided
+again, she was discovered to be speaking.
+
+'P'raps _your_ 'omes are all right! P'raps your children never goes
+'ungry. P'raps you aren't livin', old and young, married and single, in
+one room.'
+
+'I suppose life is like that for a good many people,' Jean Dunbarton
+turned round to say.
+
+'Oh, yes,' said her aunt.
+
+'I come from a plyce where many fam'lies, if they're to go on livin' _at
+all_, 'ave to live like that. If you don't believe me, come and let me
+show you!' She spread out her lean arms. 'Come with me to Canning
+Town--come with me to Bromley--come to Poplar and to Bow. No, you won't
+even think about the over-worked women and the underfed children, and
+the 'ovels they live in. And you want that _we_ shouldn't think
+neither----'
+
+'We'll do the thinkin'. You go 'ome and nuss the byby.'
+
+'I do nurse my byby; I've nursed seven. What have you done for yours?'
+She waited in vain for the answer. 'P'raps,' her voice quivered, 'p'raps
+your children never goes 'ungry, and maybe you're satisfied--though I
+must say I wouldn't a thought it from the look o' yer.'
+
+'Oh, I s'y!'
+
+'But we women are not satisfied. We don't only want better things for
+our own children; we want better things for all. _Every_ child is our
+child. We know in our 'earts we oughtn't to rest till we've mothered 'em
+every one.'
+
+'Wot about the men? Are _they_ all 'appy?'
+
+There was derisive laughter at that, and 'No! No!' 'Not precisely!'
+'_'Appy?_ Lord!'
+
+'No, there's lots o' you men I'm sorry for,' she said.
+
+'Thanks, awfully!'
+
+'And we'll 'elp you if you let us,' she said.
+
+''Elp us? You tyke the bread out of our mouths.'
+
+'Now you're goin' to begin about us blackleggin' the men! _W'y_ does any
+woman tyke less wyges than a man for the same work? Only because we
+can't get anything better. That's part the reason w'y we're yere to-d'y.
+Do you reely think,' she reasoned with them as man to man; 'do you
+think, now, we tyke those low wyges because we got a likin' fur low
+wyges? No. We're just like you. We want as much as ever we can get.'
+
+''Ear! 'ear!'
+
+'We got a gryte deal to do with our wyges, we women has. We got the
+children to think about. And w'en we get our rights, a woman's flesh and
+blood won't be so much cheaper than a man's that employers can get rich
+on keepin' you out o' work and sweatin' us. If you men only could see
+it, we got the syme cause, and if you 'elped us you'd be 'elpin'
+yerselves.'
+
+'Rot!'
+
+'True as gospel!' some one said.
+
+'Drivel!'
+
+As she retired against the banner with the others, there was some
+applause.
+
+'Well, now,' said a man patronizingly, 'that wusn't so bad--fur a
+woman.'
+
+'N--naw. Not fur a woman.'
+
+Jean had been standing on tip-toe making signals. Ah, at last Geoffrey
+saw her! But why was he looking so grave?
+
+'No policeman?' Lady John asked.
+
+'Not on that side. They seem to have surrounded the storm centre, which
+is just in front of the place you've rather unwisely chosen.' Indeed it
+was possible to see, further on, half a dozen helmets among the hats.
+
+What was happening on the plinth seemed to have a lessened interest for
+Jean Dunbarton. She kept glancing sideways up under the cap brim at the
+eyes of the man at her side.
+
+Lady John on the other hand was losing nothing. 'Is _she_ one of them?
+That little thing?'
+
+'I--I suppose so,' answered Stonor, doubtfully, though the chairman,
+with a cheerful air of relief, had introduced Miss Ernestine Blunt to
+the accompaniment of cheers and a general moving closer to the monument.
+
+Lady John, after studying Ernestine an instant through her glass, turned
+to a dingy person next her, who was smoking a short pipe.
+
+'Among those women up there,' said Lady John, 'can you tell me, my man,
+which are the ones that a--that make the disturbances?'
+
+The man removed his pipe and spat carefully between his feet. Then with
+deliberation he said--
+
+'The one that's doing the talking now--she's the disturbingest o' the
+lot.'
+
+'Not that nice little----'
+
+'Don't you be took in, mum;' and he resumed the consolatory pipe.
+
+'What is it, Geoffrey? Have I done anything?' Jean said very low.
+
+'Why didn't you stay where I left you?' he answered, without looking at
+her.
+
+'I couldn't hear. I couldn't even see. Please don't look like that.
+Forgive me,' she pleaded, covertly seeking his hand.
+
+His set face softened. 'It frightened me when I didn't see you where I
+left you.'
+
+She smiled, with recovered spirits. She could attend now to the thing
+she had come to see.
+
+'I'm sorry you missed the inspired charwoman. It's rather upsetting to
+think--do you suppose any of our servants have--views?'
+
+Stonor laughed. 'Oh, no! Our servants are all too superior.' He moved
+forward and touched a policeman on the shoulder. What was said was not
+audible--the policeman at first shook his head, then suddenly he turned
+round, looked sharply into the gentleman's face, and his whole manner
+changed. Obliging, genial, almost obsequious. 'Oh, he's recognized
+Geoffrey!' Jean said to her aunt. 'They _have_ to do what a member tells
+them! They'll stop the traffic any time to let Geoffrey go by!' she
+exulted.
+
+Stonor beckoned to his ladies. The policeman was forging a way in which
+they followed.
+
+'This will do,' Stonor said at last, and he whispered again to the
+policeman. The man replied, grinning. 'Oh, really,' Stonor smiled, too.
+'This is the redoubtable Miss Ernestine Blunt,' he explained over his
+shoulder, and he drew back so that Jean could pass, and standing so,
+directly in front of him, she could be protected right and left, if need
+were, by a barrier made of his arms.
+
+'Now can you see?' he asked.
+
+She looked round and nodded. Her face was without cloud again. She
+leaned lightly against his arm.
+
+Miss Ernestine had meanwhile been catapulting into election issues with
+all the fervour of a hot-gospeller.
+
+'What outrageous things she says about important people--people she
+ought to respect and be rather afraid of,' objected Jean, rather
+scandalized.
+
+'Impudent little baggage!' said Stonor.
+
+Reasons, a plenty, the baggage had why the Party which had so recently
+refused to enfranchise women should not be returned to power.
+
+'You're in too big a hurry,' some one shouted. 'All the Liberals want is
+a little time.'
+
+'Time! You seem not to know that the first petition in favour of giving
+us the Franchise was signed in 1866.'
+
+'How do _you_ know?'
+
+She paused a moment, taken off her guard by the suddenness of the
+attack.
+
+'_You_ wasn't there!'
+
+'That was the trouble. Haw! Haw!'
+
+'That petition,' she said, 'was presented forty years ago.'
+
+'Give 'er a 'reain' now she _'as_ got out of 'er crydle.'
+
+'It was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. Give the
+Liberals time!' she echoed. 'Thirty-three years ago memorials in favour
+of the suffrage were presented to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli. In
+1896, 257,000 women of these British Isles signed an appeal to the
+members of Parliament. Bills or Resolutions have been before the House,
+on and off, for the last thirty-six years. All that "time" thrown away!
+At the opening of this year we found ourselves with no assurance that if
+we went on in the same way, any girl born into the world in our time
+would ever be able to exercise the rights of citizenship though she
+lived to be a hundred. That was why we said all this has been in vain.
+We must try some other way. How did you working men get the suffrage, we
+asked ourselves. Well, we turned up the records--and we _saw_. We don't
+want to follow such a violent example. We would much rather not--but if
+that's the only way we can make the country see we're in earnest--we are
+prepared to show them!'
+
+'An' they'll show _you_!'
+
+'Give ye another month 'ard!'
+
+In the midst of the laughter and interruptions, a dirty, beery fellow of
+fifty or so, from whom Stonor's arm was shielding Jean, turned to the
+pal behind him with--
+
+'Ow'd yer like to be _that_ one's 'usband? Think o' comin' 'ome to
+_that_!'
+
+'I'd soon learn 'er!' answered the other, with a meaning look.
+
+'Don't think that going to prison again has any fears for us. We'd go
+for life if by doing that we got freedom for the rest of the women.'
+
+'Hear! Hear!'
+
+'Rot!'
+
+'W'y don't the men 'elp ye to get yer rights?'
+
+'Here's some one asking why the men don't help. It's partly they don't
+understand yet--they _will_ before we've done!' She wagged her head in a
+sort of comical menace, and the crowd screamed with laughter--'partly,
+they don't understand yet what's at stake----'
+
+'Lord!' said an old fellow, with a rich chuckle. 'She's a educatin' of
+us!'
+
+'--and partly that the bravest man is afraid of ridicule. Oh, yes, we've
+heard a great deal all our lives about the timidity and the
+sensitiveness of women. And it's true--we _are_ sensitive. But I tell
+you, ridicule crumples a man up. It steels a woman. We've come to know
+the value of ridicule. We've educated ourselves so that we welcome
+ridicule. We owe our sincerest thanks to the comic writers. The
+cartoonist is our unconscious friend. Who cartoons people who are of no
+importance? What advertisement is so sure of being remembered? If we
+didn't know it by any other sign, the comic papers would tell us--_we've
+arrived_!'
+
+She stood there for one triumphant moment in an attitude of such
+audacious self-confidence, that Jean turned excitedly to her lover
+with--
+
+'I know what she's like! The girl in Ibsen's "Master Builder"!'
+
+'I don't think I know the young lady.'
+
+'Oh, there was a knock at the door that set the Master Builder's nerves
+quivering. He felt in his bones it was the Younger Generation coming to
+upset things. He _thought_ it was a young man----'
+
+'And it was really Miss Ernestine Blunt? He has my sympathies.'
+
+The Younger Generation was declaring from the monument--
+
+'Our greatest debt of gratitude we owe to the man who called us female
+hooligans!'
+
+That tickled the crowd, too; she was such a charming little pink-cheeked
+specimen of a hooligan.
+
+'I'm being frightfully amused, Geoffrey,' said Jean.
+
+He looked down at her with a large indulgence. 'That's right,' he said.
+
+'We aren't hooligans, but we hope the fact will be overlooked. If
+everybody said we were nice, well-behaved women, who'd come to hear us?
+_Not the men._'
+
+The people dissolved in laughter, but she was grave enough.
+
+'Men tell us it isn't womanly for us to care about politics. How do they
+know what's womanly? It's for women to decide that. Let them attend to
+being manly. It will take them all their time.'
+
+'Pore benighted man!'
+
+'Some of you have heard it would be dreadful if we got the vote, because
+then we'd be pitted against men in the economic struggle. But it's too
+late to guard against that. It's fact. But facts, we've discovered, are
+just what men find it so hard to recognize. Men are so dreadfully
+sentimental.' She smiled with the crowd at that, but she proceeded to
+hammer in her pet nail. 'They won't recognize those eighty-two women out
+of every hundred who are wage-earners. We used to believe men when they
+told us that it was unfeminine--hardly respectable--for women to be
+students and to aspire to the arts that bring fame and fortune. But men
+have never told us it was unfeminine for women to do the heavy drudgery
+that's badly paid. That kind of work had to be done by somebody, and men
+didn't hanker after it. _Oh_, no! Let the women scrub and cook and wash,
+or teach without diplomas on half pay. That's all right. But if they
+want to try their hand at the better-rewarded work of the liberal
+professions--oh, very unfeminine indeed.'
+
+As Ernestine proceeded to show how all this obsolete unfairness had its
+roots in political inequality, Lady John dropped her glass with a sigh.
+
+'You are right,' she said to Jean. 'This is Hilda, harnessed to a
+purpose. A portent to shake middle-aged nerves.'
+
+With Jean blooming there before him, Stonor had no wish to prove his own
+nerves middle-aged.
+
+'I think she's rather fun, myself. Though she ought to be taken home and
+well smacked.'
+
+Somebody had interrupted to ask, 'If the House of Commons won't give you
+justice, why don't you go to the House of Lords?'
+
+'What?' She hadn't heard, but the question was answered by some one who
+had.
+
+'She'd 'ave to 'urry up. Case of early closin'!'
+
+'You'll be allowed to ask any question you like,' she said, 'at the end
+of the meeting.'
+
+'Wot's that? Oh, is it question time? I s'y, miss, 'oo killed Cock
+Robin?'
+
+'I've got a question, too,' a boy called through his hollowed hands.
+'Are--you--married?'
+
+'Ere's your chance. 'E's a bachelor.'
+
+'Here's a man,' says Ernestine, 'asking, "If the women get full
+citizenship, and a war is declared, will the women fight?"'
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Yes. Just tell us _that_!'
+
+'Well'--she smiled--'you know some say the whole trouble about us is
+that we _do_ fight. But it's only hard necessity makes us do that. We
+don't want to fight--as men seem to--just for fighting's sake. Women are
+for peace.'
+
+'Hear! hear!'
+
+'And when we have a share in public affairs there'll be less likelihood
+of war. Wasn't it a woman, the Baroness von Suttner, whose book about
+peace was the corner-stone of the Peace Congress? Wasn't it that book
+that converted the millionaire maker of armaments of war? Wasn't it the
+Baroness von Suttner's book that made Nobel offer those great
+international prizes for the Arts of Peace? I'm not saying women can't
+fight. But we women know all war is evil, and we're for peace. Our
+part--we're proud to remember it--our part has been to go about after
+you men in war time and _pick up the pieces_!'
+
+A great shout went up as the truth of that rolled in upon the people.
+
+'Yes; seems funny, doesn't it? You men blow people to bits, and then we
+come along and put them together again. If you know anything about
+military nursing, you know a good deal of our work has been done in the
+face of danger; _but it's always been done_.'
+
+'That's so. That's so.'
+
+'Well, what of it?' said a voice. 'Women must do something for their
+keep.'
+
+'You complain that more and more we're taking away from you men the work
+that's always been yours. You can't any longer keep woman out of the
+industries. The only question is, on what terms shall she continue to be
+in? As long as she's in on bad terms, she's not only hurting herself,
+she's hurting you. But if you're feeling discouraged about our competing
+with you, we're willing to leave you your trade in war. Let the men take
+life! We _give_ life!' Her voice was once more moved and proud. 'No one
+will pretend ours isn't one of the dangerous trades either. I won't say
+any more to you now, because we've got others to speak to you, and a new
+woman helper that I want you to hear.'
+
+With an accompaniment of clapping she retired to hold a hurried
+consultation with the chairman.
+
+Jean turned to see how Geoffrey had taken it. 'Well?'
+
+He smiled down at her, echoing, 'Well?'
+
+'Nothing so _very_ reprehensible in what she said, was there?'
+
+'Oh, "reprehensible"!'
+
+'It makes one rather miserable all the same.'
+
+He pressed his guardian arm the closer. 'You mustn't take it as much to
+heart as all that.'
+
+'I can't help it. I can't indeed, Geoffrey. I shall _never_ be able to
+make a speech like that.'
+
+He stared, considerably taken aback. 'I hope not indeed.'
+
+'Why? I thought you said you wanted me to----'
+
+'To make nice little speeches with composure? So I did. So I do----' as
+he looked down upon the upturned face he seemed to lose his thread.
+
+She was for helping him to recover it. 'Don't you remember how you
+said----'
+
+'That you have very pink cheeks? Well, I stick to it.'
+
+She smiled. 'Sh! Don't tell everybody.'
+
+'And you're the only female creature----'
+
+'That's a most proper sentiment.'
+
+'The only one I ever saw who didn't look a fright in motor things.'
+
+'I'm glad you don't think me a fright. Oh!'--she turned at the sound of
+applause--'we're forgetting all about----'
+
+A big sandy man, not hitherto seen, was rolling his loose-knit body up
+and down the platform, smiling at the people and mopping a great bony
+skull, on which, low down, a few scanty wisps of colourless hair were
+growing.
+
+'If you can't afford a bottle of Tatcho,' a boy called out, 'w'y don't
+you get yer 'air cut?'
+
+He just shot out one hand and wagged it in grotesque greeting, not in
+the least discomposed.
+
+'I've been addressin' a big meetin' at 'Ammersmith this morning, and
+w'en I told 'em I wus comin' 'ere this awfternoon to speak fur the
+women--well--then the usual thing began.'
+
+An appreciative roar rose from the crowd.
+
+'Yes,' he grinned, 'if you want peace and quiet at a public meetin',
+better not go mentionin' the lydies these times!'
+
+He stopped, and the crowd filled in the hiatus with laughter.
+
+'There wus a man at 'Ammersmith, too, talkin' about Woman's sphere bein'
+'Ome. 'Ome do you call it? _'Ome!_' and at the word his _bonhomie_
+suffered a singular eclipse. ''Ome!' he bellowed, as if some one had
+struck him in a vital spot, and the word was merely a roar of pain.
+'_'Ome!_ You've got a kennel w'ere you can munch your tommy. You got a
+corner w'ere you can curl up fur a few hours till you go out to work
+again. But 'omes! No, my men, there's too many of you ain't able to
+_give_ the women 'omes fit to live in; too many of you in that fix fur
+you to go on jawin' at those o' the women 'oo want to myke the 'omes a
+little more deservin' o' the name.'
+
+'If the vote ain't done us any good,' a man bawled up at him, ''ow'll it
+do the women any good?'
+
+'Look 'ere! See 'ere!' he rolled his shapeless body up and down the
+stone platform, taking in great draughts of cheer from some invisible
+fountain. 'Any men here belongin' to the Labour Party?' he inquired.
+
+To an accompaniment of shouts and applause he went on, smiling and
+rubbing his hands in a state of bubbling Brotherliness.
+
+'Well, I don't need tell those men the vote 'as done us _some_ good.
+They _know_ it. And it'll do us a lot more good w'en you know 'ow to use
+the power you got in your 'and.'
+
+'Power!' grumbled an old fellow. 'It's those fellows at the bottom of
+the street'--he hitched his head toward St. Stephen's--'it's them that's
+got the power.'
+
+The speaker pounced on him. 'It's you and men like you that give it to
+them. Wot did you do last election? You carried the Liberals into
+Parliament Street on your own shoulders. You believed all their fine
+words. You never asked yerselves, "Wot's a Liberal, anyway?"'
+
+In the chorus of cheers and booing some one sang out, 'He's a jolly good
+fellow!'
+
+'No 'e ain't,' said the Labour man, with another wheel about and a
+pounce. 'No 'e ain't, or, if 'e's jolly, it's only because 'e thinks
+you're such a cod-fish you'll go swellin' 'is majority again.'
+
+Stonor joined in that laugh. He rather liked the man.
+
+'Yes, it's enough to make any Liberal "jolly" to see a sheep like you
+lookin' on, proud and 'appy, while you see Liberal leaders desertin'
+Liberal principles.'
+
+Through the roar of protest and argument, he held out those grotesque
+great hands of his with the suggestion--
+
+'You show me a Liberal, and I'll show you a Mr. Facing-both-ways. Yuss.
+The Liberal, 'e sheds the light of his warm and 'andsome smile on the
+workin' man, and round on the other side 'e's tippin' the wink to the
+great landowners. Yuss. That's to let 'em know 'e's standin' between
+them and Socialists. Ha! the Socialists!' Puffing and flushed and
+perspiring he hurled it out again and again over the heads of the
+people. 'The Socialists! Yuss. _Socialists!_ Ha! ha!' When he and the
+audience had a little calmed down, 'The Liberal,' he said, with that
+look of sly humour, ''e's the judicial sort o' chap that sits in the
+middle.'
+
+'On the fence.'
+
+He nodded. 'Tories one side, Socialists the other. Well, it ain't always
+so comfortable in the middle. No. Yer like to get squeezed. Now, I says
+to the women, wot I says is, the Conservatives don't promise you much,
+but wot they promise they _do_.' He whacked one fist into the other with
+tremendous effect.
+
+'This fellow isn't half bad,' Stonor said to Lady John.
+
+'But the Liberals, they'll promise you the earth and give you the whole
+o' nothin'.'
+
+There were roars of approval. Liberal stock had sunk rather low in
+Trafalgar Square.
+
+'Isn't it fun?' said Jean. 'Now aren't you glad I brought you?'
+
+'Oh, this chap's all right!'
+
+'We men 'ave seen it 'appen over and over. But the women can tyke an
+'int quicker 'n what we can. They won't stand the nonsense men do. Only
+they 'aven't got a fair chawnce even to agitate fur their rights. As I
+wus comin' up ere, I 'eard a man sayin', "Look at this big crowd. W'y,
+we're all _men_! If the women want the vote, w'y ain't they here to s'y
+so?" Well, I'll tell you w'y. It's because they've 'ad to get the dinner
+fur you and me, and now they're washin' up dishes.'
+
+'D'you think we ought to st'y at 'ome and wash the dishes?'
+
+He laughed with good-natured shrewdness. 'Well, if they'd leave it to us
+once or twice per'aps we'd understand a little more about the Woman
+Question. I know w'y _my_ wife isn't here. It's because she _knows_ I
+can't cook, and she's 'opin' I can talk to some purpose. Yuss,'--he
+acknowledged another possible view,--'yuss, maybe she's mistaken.
+Any'ow, here I am to vote for her and all the other women, and to----'
+
+They nearly drowned him with '_Oh-h!_' and 'Hear! hear!'
+
+'And to tell you men what improvements you can expect to see w'en women
+'as the share in public affairs they ought to 'ave!'
+
+Out of the babel came the question, 'What do you know about it? You
+can't even talk grammar.'
+
+His broad smile faltered a little.
+
+'Oh, what shame!' said Jean, full of sympathy. 'He's a dear--that funny
+cockney.'
+
+But he had been dashed for the merest moment.
+
+'I'm not 'ere to talk grammar, but to talk Reform. I ain't defendin' my
+grammar,' he said, on second thoughts, 'but I'll say in pawssing that if
+my mother 'ad 'ad 'er rights, maybe my grammar would 'ave been better.'
+
+It was a thrust that seemed to go home. But, all the same, it was clear
+that many of his friends couldn't stomach the sight of him up there
+demeaning himself by espousing the cause of the Suffragettes. He kept
+on about woman and justice, but his performance was little more than
+vigorous pantomime. The boyish chairman looked harassed and anxious,
+Miss Ernestine Blunt alert, watchful.
+
+Stonor bent his head to whisper something in Jean Dunbarton's ear. She
+listened with lowered eyes and happy face. The discreet little
+interchange went on for several minutes, while the crowd booed at the
+bald-headed Labourite for his mistaken enthusiasm. Geoffrey Stonor and
+his bride-to-be were more alone now in the midst of this shouting mob
+than they had been since the Ulland House luncheon-gong had broken in
+upon and banished momentary wonderment about the name--that name
+beginning with V. Plain to see in the flushed and happy face that Jean
+Dunbarton was not 'asking questions.' She was listening absorbed to the
+oldest of all the stories.
+
+And now the champion of the Suffragettes had come to the surface again
+with his--
+
+'Wait a bit--'arf a minute, my man.'
+
+'Oo you talkin' to? I ain't your man!'
+
+'Oh, that's lucky for me. There seems to be an individual here who
+doesn't think women ought to 'ave the vote.'
+
+'One? Oh-h!'
+
+They all but wiped him out again in laughter; but he climbed on the top
+of the great wave of sound with--
+
+'P'raps the gentleman who thinks they oughtn't to 'ave a vote, p'raps 'e
+don't know much about women. Wot? Oh, the gentleman says 'e's married.
+Well, then, fur the syke of 'is wife we mustn't be too sorry 'e's 'ere.
+No doubt she's s'ying, "'Eaven be prysed those women are mykin' a
+demonstrytion in Trafalgar Square, and I'll 'ave a little peace and
+quiet at 'ome for one Sunday in me life."'
+
+The crowd liked that, and found themselves jeering at the interrupter as
+well as at the speaker.
+
+'Why, you'--he pointed at some one in the crowd--'_you_'re like the man
+at 'Ammersmith this morning. 'E wus awskin' me, "'Ow would you like men
+to st'y at 'ome and do the fam'ly washin'?" I told 'im I wouldn't advise
+it. I 'ave too much respect fur'--they waited while slyly he brought
+out--'me clo'es.'
+
+'It's their place,' said some one in a rage; 'the women _ought_ to do
+the washin'.'
+
+'I'm not sure you aren't right. For a good many o' you fellas from the
+look o' you, you cawn't even wash yourselves.'
+
+This was outrageous. It was resented in an incipient riot. The helmets
+of the police bobbed about. An angry voice had called out--
+
+'Oo are you talkin' to?'
+
+The anxiety of the inexperienced chairman was almost touching.
+
+The Socialist revelled in the disturbance he'd created. He walked up and
+down with that funny rolling gait, poking out his head at intervals in a
+turtle-esque fashion highly provocative, holding his huge paws kangaroo
+fashion, only with fingers stiffly pointed, and shooting them out at
+intervals towards the crowd in a very ecstasy of good-natured contempt.
+
+'Better go 'ome and awsk yer wife to wash yer fice,' he advised. '_You_
+cawn't even do _that_ bit o' fam'ly washin'. Go and awsk _some_ woman.'
+
+There was a scuffle in the crowd. A section of it surged up towards the
+monument.
+
+'Which of us d'you mean?' demanded a threatening voice.
+
+'Well,' said the Socialist, coolly looking down, 'it takes about ten of
+your sort to make a man, so you may take it I mean the lot of you.'
+Again the hands shot out and scattered scorn amongst his critics.
+
+There were angry, indistinguishable retorts, and the crowd swayed. Miss
+Ernestine Blunt, who had been watching the fray with serious face,
+turned suddenly, catching sight of some one just arrived at the end of
+the platform. She jumped up, saying audibly to the speaker as she passed
+him, 'Here she is,' and proceeded to offer her hand to help some one to
+get up the improvised steps behind the lion.
+
+The Socialist had seized with fervour upon his last chance, and was
+flinging out showers of caustic advice among his foes, stirring them up
+to frenzy.
+
+Stonor, with contracted brows, had stared one dazed instant as the head
+of the new-comer came up behind the lion on the left.
+
+Jean, her eyes wide, incredulous, as though unable to accept their
+testimony, pressed a shade nearer the monument. Stonor made a sharp move
+forward, and took her by the arm.
+
+'We're going now,' he said.
+
+'Not yet--oh, _please_ not just yet,' she pleaded as he drew her round.
+'Geoffrey, I do believe----'
+
+She looked back, with an air almost bewildered, over her shoulder, like
+one struggling to wake from a dream.
+
+Stonor was saying with decision to Lady John, 'I'm going to take Jean
+out of this mob. Will you come?'
+
+'What? Oh, yes, if you think'--she had disengaged the chain of her
+eyeglass at last. 'But isn't that, surely it's----'
+
+'Geoffrey----!' Jean began.
+
+'Lady John's tired,' he interrupted. 'We've had enough of this
+idiotic----'
+
+'But you don't see who it is, Geoffrey. That last one is----' Suddenly
+Jean bent forward as he was trying to extricate her from the crowd, and
+she looked in his face. Something that she found there made her tighten
+her hold on his arm.
+
+'We can't run away and leave Aunt Ellen,' was all she said; but her
+voice sounded scared. Stonor repressed a gesture of anger, and came to a
+standstill just behind two big policemen.
+
+The last-comer to that strange platform, after standing for some seconds
+with her back to the people and talking to Ernestine Blunt, the tall
+figure in a long sage-green dust coat and familiar hat, had turned and
+glanced apprehensively at the crowd.
+
+It was Vida Levering.
+
+The girl down in the crowd locked her hands together and stood
+motionless.
+
+The Socialist had left the platform with the threat that he was 'coming
+down now to attend to that microbe that's vitiating the air on my right,
+while a lady will say a few words to you--if she can myke 'erself
+'eard.'
+
+He retired to a chorus of cheers and booing, while the chairman, more
+harassed than ever, it would seem, but determined to create a diversion,
+was saying that some one had suggested--'and it's such a good idea I'd
+like you to listen to it--that a clause shall be inserted in the next
+Suffrage Bill that shall expressly give to each Cabinet Minister, and to
+any respectable man, the power to prevent a vote being given to the
+female members of his family, on his public declaration of their lack
+of sufficient intelligence to entitle them to one.'
+
+'Oh! oh!'
+
+'Now, I ask you to listen as quietly as you can to a lady who is not
+accustomed to speaking--a--in Trafalgar Square, or--a--as a matter of
+fact, at all.'
+
+'A dumb lady!'
+
+'Hooray!'
+
+'Three cheers for the dumb lady!'
+
+The chairman was dreadfully flustered at the unfortunate turn his speech
+had taken.
+
+'A lady who, as I've said, will tell you, if you'll behave
+yourselves----'
+
+'Oh! oh!'
+
+'Will tell you something of her impression of police-court justice in
+this country.'
+
+Jean stole a wondering look at Stonor's sphinx-like face as Vida
+Levering came forward.
+
+There she stood, obviously very much frightened, with the unaccustomed
+colour coming and going in her white face--farther back than any of the
+practised speakers--there she stood like one who too much values the
+space between her and the mob voluntarily to lessen it by half an inch.
+The voice was steady enough, though low, as she began.
+
+'Mr. Chairman, men, and women----'
+
+'Speak up.'
+
+She flushed, came nearer to the edge of the platform, and raised the key
+a little.
+
+'I just wanted to tell you that I was--I was present in the police court
+when the women were charged for creating a disturbance.'
+
+'You oughtn't to get mix'd up in wot didn't concern you!'
+
+'I--I----' She stumbled and stopped.
+
+'Give the lady a hearing,' said a shabby art-student, magisterially. He
+seemed not ill-pleased when he had drawn a certain number of eyes to his
+long hair, picturesque hat, and flowing Byronic tie.
+
+'Wot's the lydy's nyme?'
+
+'I ain't seen this one before.'
+
+'Is she Mrs. or Miss?'
+
+'She's dumb, anyway, like 'e said.'
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+The anxious chairman was fidgeting in an agony of apprehension. He
+whispered some kind prompting word after he had flung out--
+
+'Now, see here, men; fair play, you know.'
+
+'I think I ought----' Vida began.
+
+'No wonder she can't find a word to say for 'em. They're a disgryce,
+miss--them women behind you. It's the w'y they goes on as mykes the
+Govermint keep ye from gettin' yer rights.'
+
+The chairman had lost his temper. 'It's the way _you_ go on,' he
+screamed; but the din was now so great, not even he could be heard. He
+stood there waving his arms and moving his lips while his dark eyes
+glittered.
+
+Miss Levering turned and pantomimed to Ernestine, 'You see it's no use!'
+
+Thus appealed to, the girl came forward, and said something in the ear
+of the frantic chairman. When he stopped gyrating, and nodded, Miss
+Blunt came to the edge of the platform, and held up her hand as if
+determined to stem this tide of unfavourable comment upon the dreadful
+women who were complicating the Election difficulties of both parties.
+
+'Listen,' says Ernestine; 'I've got something to propose.' They waited
+an instant to hear what this precious proposal might be. 'If the
+Government withholds the vote because they don't like the way some of us
+ask for it, let them give it to the quiet ones. Do they want to punish
+all women because they don't like the manners of a handful? Perhaps
+that's men's notion of justice. It isn't ours.'
+
+'Haw! haw!'
+
+'Yes'--Miss Levering plucked up courage, seeing her friend sailing along
+so safely. 'This is the first time I've ever "gone on," as you call it,
+but they never gave me a vote.'
+
+'_No_,' says Miss Ernestine, with energy--'and there are'--she turned
+briskly, with forefinger uplifted punctuating her count--'there are two,
+three, four women on this platform. Now, we all want the vote, as you
+know.'
+
+'Lord, yes, we know _that_.'
+
+'Well, we'd agree to be disfranchised all our lives if they'd give the
+vote to all the other women.'
+
+'Look here! You made one speech--give the lady a chance.'
+
+Miss Blunt made a smiling little bob of triumph. 'That's just what I
+wanted you to say!' And she retired.
+
+Miss Levering came forward again. But the call to 'go on' had come a
+little suddenly.
+
+'Perhaps you--you don't know--you don't know----'
+
+'_How_'re we going to know if you can't tell us?' demanded a sarcastic
+voice.
+
+It steadied her. 'Thank you for that,' she said, smiling. 'We couldn't
+have a better motto. How _are_ you to know if we can't somehow manage to
+tell you?' With a visible effort she went on, 'Well, _I_ certainly
+didn't know before that the sergeants and policemen are instructed to
+deceive the people as to the time such cases are heard.'
+
+'It's just as hard,' said a bystander to his companion, '_just_ as hard
+for learned counsel in the august quiet of the Chancery Division to find
+out when their cases are really coming on.'
+
+'You ask, and you're sent to Marlborough Police Court,' said Miss
+Levering, 'instead of to Marylebone.'
+
+'They oughter send yer to 'Olloway--do y' good.'
+
+'You go on, miss. Nobody minds 'im.'
+
+'Wot can you expect from a pig but a grunt?'
+
+'You are told the case will be at two o'clock, and it's really called
+for eleven. Well, I took a great deal of trouble, and I didn't believe
+what I was told.' She was warming a little to her task. 'Yes, that's
+almost the first thing we have to learn--to get over our touching faith
+that because a man tells us something, it's true. I got to the right
+court, and I was so anxious not to be late, I was too early.'
+
+'Like a woman!'
+
+'The case before the Suffragists' was just coming on. I heard a noise. I
+saw the helmets of two policemen.'
+
+'No, you didn't. They don't wear their helmets in court.'
+
+'They were coming in from the corridor. As I saw them, I said to myself,
+"What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a
+burglar being brought along between the two big policemen, or will it be
+a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the
+people, whose crime is, they ask for the vote?" But try as I would, I
+couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it some poor woman, I
+wondered?'
+
+A tipsy tramp, with his battered bowler over one eye, wheezed out,
+'Drunk again!' with an accent of weary philosophy. 'Syme old tyle.'
+
+'Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw'--she waited an instant--'a
+little thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with?'
+
+'Travellin' first with a third-class ticket.' A boy offered a page out
+of personal history.
+
+'Stealing. What had he been stealing, that small criminal? _Milk._ It
+seemed to me, as I sat there looking on, that the men who had had the
+affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made
+so poor a business of it----'
+
+'Oh, pore devils! give 'em a rest!'
+
+'Who've made so bad a business of it as to have the poor and the
+unemployed in the condition they're in to-day, whose only remedy for a
+starving child is to hale him off to the police court, because he had
+managed to get a little milk, well, I did wonder that the men refuse to
+be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to
+say to myself, "Isn't it time the women lent a hand?"'
+
+'Doin' pretty well fur a dumb lady!'
+
+'Would you have women magistrates?'
+
+She was stumped by the suddenness of the query.
+
+'Haw! haw! Magistrates and judges! _Women!_'
+
+'Let 'em prove first they're able to----'
+
+It was more than the shabby art-student could stand.
+
+'The schools are full of them!' he shouted. 'Where's their Michael
+Angelo? They study music by thousands: where's their Beethoven? Where's
+their Plato? Where's the woman Shakespeare?'
+
+'Where's their Harry Lauder?'
+
+At last a name that stirred the general enthusiasm.
+
+'Who is Harry Lauder?' Jean asked her aunt.
+
+Lady John shook her head.
+
+'Yes, wot 'ave women ever _done_?'
+
+The speaker had clenched her hands, but she was not going to lose her
+presence of mind again. By the time the chairman could make himself
+heard with, 'Now, men, it's one of our British characteristics that
+we're always ready to give the people we differ from a hearing,' Miss
+Levering, making the slightest of gestures, waved him aside with a low--
+
+'It's all right.'
+
+'These questions are quite proper,' she said, raising her voice. 'They
+are often asked elsewhere; and I would like to ask in return: Since when
+was human society held to exist for its handful of geniuses? How many
+Platos are there here in this crowd?'
+
+'Divil a wan!' And a roar of laughter followed that free confession.
+
+'Not one,' she repeated. 'Yet that doesn't keep you men off the
+register. How many Shakespeares are there in all England to-day? Not
+one. Yet the State doesn't tumble to pieces. Railroads and ships are
+built, homes are kept going, and babies are born. The world goes
+on'--she bent over the crowd with lit eyes--'the world goes on _by
+virtue of its common people_.'
+
+There was a subdued 'Hear! hear!'
+
+'I am not concerned that you should think we women could paint great
+pictures, or compose immortal music, or write good books. I am
+content'--and it was strange to see the pride with which she said it, a
+pride that might have humbled Vere de Vere--'I am content that we should
+be classed with the common people, who keep the world going. But'--her
+face grew softer, there was even a kind of camaraderie where before
+there had been shrinking--'I'd like the world to go a great deal better.
+We were talking about justice. I have been inquiring into the kind of
+lodging the poorest class of homeless women can get in this town of
+London. I find that only the men of that class are provided for. Some
+measure to establish Rowton Houses for Women has been before the London
+County Council. They looked into the question very carefully--so their
+apologists say. And what did they decide? They decided that they could
+do nothing.
+
+'Why could that great, all-powerful body do nothing? Because, they said,
+if these cheap and decent houses were opened, the homeless women in the
+streets would make use of them. You'll think I'm not in earnest, but
+that was actually the decision, and the reason given for it. Women that
+the bitter struggle for existence had forced into a life of horror might
+take advantage of the shelter these decent, cheap places offered. But
+the _men_, I said! Are the men who avail themselves of Lord Rowton's
+hostels, are _they_ all angels? Or does wrong-doing in a man not matter?
+Yet women are recommended to depend on the chivalry of men!'
+
+The two tall policemen who had been standing for some minutes in front
+of Mr. Stonor in readiness to serve him, seeming to feel there was no
+further need of them in this quarter, shouldered their way to the left,
+leaving exposed the hitherto masked figure of the tall gentleman in the
+motor cap. He moved uneasily, and, looking round, he met Jean's eyes
+fixed on him. As each looked away again, each saw that for the first
+time Vida Levering had become aware of his presence. A change passed
+over her face, and her figure swayed as if some species of
+mountain-sickness had assailed her, looking down from that perilous high
+perch of hers upon the things of the plain. While the people were asking
+one another, 'What is it? Is she going to faint?' she lifted one hand to
+her eyes, and her fingers trembled an instant against the lowered lids.
+But as suddenly as she had faltered, she was forging on again, repeating
+like an echo of a thing heard in a dream--
+
+'Justice and chivalry! Justice and chivalry remind me of the story that
+those of you who read the police-court news--I have begun only lately to
+do that--but _you_'ve seen the accounts of the girl who's been tried in
+Manchester lately for the murder of her child.'
+
+People here and there in the crowd regaled one another with choice
+details of the horror.
+
+'Not pleasant reading. Even if we'd noticed it, we wouldn't speak of it
+in my world. A few months ago I should have turned away my eyes and
+forgotten even the headline as quickly as I could.'
+
+'My opinion,' said a shrewd-looking young man, 'is that she's forgot
+what she meant to say, and just clutched at this to keep her from drying
+up.'
+
+'Since that morning in the police-court I read these things. This, as
+you know, was the story of a working girl--an orphan of seventeen--who
+crawled with the dead body of her new-born child to her master's back
+door and left the baby there. She dragged herself a little way off and
+fainted. A few days later she found herself in court being tried for the
+murder of her child. Her master, a married man, had of course reported
+the "find" at his back door to the police, and he had been summoned to
+give evidence. The girl cried out to him in the open court, "You are the
+father!" He couldn't deny it. The coroner, at the jury's request,
+censured the man, and regretted that the law didn't make him
+responsible. But'--she leaned down from the plinth with eyes
+blazing--'he went scot free. And that girl is at this moment serving her
+sentence in Strangeways Gaol.'
+
+Through the moved and murmuring crowd, Jean forced her way, coming in
+between Lady John and Stonor, who stood there immovable. The girl
+strained to bring her lips near his ear.
+
+'Why do you dislike her so?'
+
+'I?' he said. 'Why should you think----'
+
+'I never saw you look as you did;' with a vaguely frightened air she
+added, 'as you do.'
+
+'Men make boast'--the voice came clear from the monument--'that an
+English citizen is tried by his peers. What woman is tried by hers?'
+
+'She mistakes the sense in which the word was employed,' said a man who
+looked like an Oxford Don.
+
+But there was evidently a sense, larger than that one purely academic,
+in which her use of the word could claim its pertinence. The strong
+feeling that had seized her as she put the question was sweeping the
+crowd along with her.
+
+'A woman is arrested by a man, brought before a man judge, tried by a
+jury of men, condemned by men, taken to prison by a man, and by a man
+she's hanged! Where in all this were _her_ "peers"? Why did men, when
+British justice was born--why did they so long ago insist on trial by "a
+jury of their peers"? So that justice shouldn't miscarry--wasn't it? A
+man's peers would best understand his circumstances, his temptation, the
+degree of his guilt. Yet there's no such unlikeness between different
+classes of men as exists between man and woman. What man has the
+knowledge that makes him a fit judge of woman's deeds at that time of
+anguish--that hour that some woman struggled through to put each man
+here into the world. I noticed when a previous speaker quoted the
+Labour Party, you applauded. Some of you here, I gather, call yourselves
+Labour men. Every woman who has borne a child is a Labour woman. No man
+among you can judge what she goes through in her hour of darkness.'
+
+Jean's eyes had dropped from her lover's set white face early in the
+recital. But she whispered his name.
+
+He seemed not to hear.
+
+The speaker up there had caught her fluttering breath, and went on so
+low that people strained to follow.
+
+'In that great agony, even under the best conditions that money and
+devotion can buy, many a woman falls into temporary mania, and not a few
+go down to death. In the case of this poor little abandoned working
+girl, what man can be the fit judge of her deeds in that awful moment of
+half-crazed temptation? Women know of these things as those know burning
+who have walked through fire.'
+
+Stonor looked down at the girl at his side. He saw her hands go up to
+her throat as though she were suffocating. The young face, where some
+harsh knowledge was struggling for birth, was in pity turned away from
+the man she loved.
+
+The woman leaned down from the platform, and spoke her last words with a
+low and thrilling earnestness.
+
+'I would say in conclusion to the women here, it's not enough to be
+sorry for these, our unfortunate sisters. We must get the conditions of
+life made fairer. We women must organize. We must learn to work
+together. We have all (rich and poor, happy and unhappy) worked so long
+and so exclusively for men, we hardly know how to work for one another.
+But we must learn. Those who can, may give money. Those who haven't
+pennies to give, even those people are not so poor but what they can
+give some part of their labour--some share of their sympathy and
+support. I know of a woman--she isn't of our country--but a woman who,
+to help the women strikers of an oppressed industry to hold out, gave a
+thousand pounds a week for thirteen weeks to get them and their children
+bread, and help them to stand firm. The masters were amazed. Week after
+week went by, and still the people weren't starved into submission.
+Where did this mysterious stream of help come from? The employers
+couldn't discover, and they gave in. The women got back their old
+wages, and I am glad to say many of them began to put by pennies to help
+a little to pay back the great sum that had been advanced to them.'
+
+'She took their pennies--a rich woman like that?'
+
+'Yes--to use again, as well as to let the working women feel they were
+helping others. I hope you'll all join the Union. Come up after the
+meeting is over and give us your names.'
+
+As she turned away, 'You won't get any men!' a taunting voice called
+after her.
+
+The truth in the gibe seemed to sting. Forestalling the chairman,
+quickly she confronted the people again, a new fire in her eyes.
+
+'Then,' she said, holding out her hands--'then _it is to the women I
+appeal_!' She stood so an instant, stilling the murmur, and holding the
+people by that sudden concentration of passion in her face. 'I don't
+mean to say it wouldn't be better if men and women did this work
+together, shoulder to shoulder. But the mass of men won't have it so. I
+only hope they'll realize in time the good they've renounced and the
+spirit they've aroused. For I know as well as any man could tell me, it
+would be a bad day for England if all women felt about all men _as I
+do_.'
+
+She retired in a tumult. The others on the platform closed about her.
+The chairman tried in vain to get a hearing from the swaying and
+dissolving crowd.
+
+Jean made a blind forward movement towards the monument. Stonor called
+out, in a toneless voice--
+
+'Here! follow me!'
+
+'No--no--I----' The girl pressed on.
+
+'You're going the wrong way.'
+
+'_This_ is the way----'
+
+'We can get out quicker on this side.'
+
+'I don't _want_ to get out.'
+
+'What?'
+
+He had left Lady John, and was following Jean through the press.
+
+'Where are you going?' he asked sharply.
+
+'To ask that woman to let me have the honour of working with her.'
+
+The crowd surged round the girl.
+
+'Jean!' he called upon so stern a note that people stared and stopped.
+
+Others--not Jean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A little before six o'clock on that same Sunday, Jean Dunbarton opened
+the communicating door between her own little sitting-room and the big
+bare drawing-room of her grandfather's house in Eaton Square. She stood
+a moment on the threshold, looking back over her shoulder, and then
+crossed the drawing-room, treading softly on the parquet spaces between
+the rugs. She went straight to the window, and was in the act of parting
+the lace curtains to look out, when she heard the folding doors open.
+With raised finger she turned to say 'Sh!' The servant stood silently
+waiting, while she went back to the door she had left open and with an
+air of caution closed it.
+
+When she turned round again the butler had stepped aside to admit Mr.
+Stonor. He came in with a quick impatient step; but before he had time
+to get a word out--'Speak low, please,' the girl said. He was obviously
+too much annoyed to pay much heed to her request, which if he thought
+about it at all, he must have interpreted as consideration for the
+ailing grandfather.
+
+'I waited a full half-hour for you to come back,' he said in a tone no
+lower than usual.
+
+The girl had led the way to the side of the room furthest from the
+communicating door. 'I am sorry,' she said dully.
+
+'If you didn't mind leaving me like that,' he followed her up with his
+arraignment, 'you might at least have considered Lady John.'
+
+'Is she here with you?' Jean stopped by the sofa near the window.
+
+'No,' he said curtly. 'My place was nearer than this and she was tired.
+I left her to get some tea. We couldn't tell whether you'd be here, or
+_what_ had become of you!'
+
+'Mr. Trent got us a hansom.'
+
+'Trent?'
+
+'The chairman of the meeting.'
+
+'Got us----?'
+
+'Miss Levering and me.'
+
+Stonor's incensed face turned almost brick colour as he repeated, '_Miss
+Lev_----!'
+
+Before he got the name out, the folding doors had opened again, and the
+butler was saying, 'Mr. Farnborough.'
+
+That young gentleman was far too anxious and flurried himself, to have
+sufficient detachment of mind to consider the moods of other people. 'At
+last!' he said, stopping short as soon as he caught sight of Stonor.
+
+'Don't speak loud, please,' said Miss Dunbarton; 'some one is resting in
+the next room.'
+
+'Oh, did you find your grandfather worse?'--but he never waited to
+learn. 'You'll forgive the incursion when you hear'--he turned abruptly
+to Stonor again. 'They've been telegraphing you all over London,' he
+said, putting his hat down in the nearest chair. 'In sheer despair they
+set me on your track.'
+
+'Who did?'
+
+Farnborough was fumbling agitatedly in his breast-pocket. 'There was the
+devil to pay at Dutfield last night. The Liberal chap tore down from
+London, and took over your meeting.'
+
+'Oh? Nothing about it in the Sunday paper I saw.'
+
+'Wait till you see the press to-morrow! There was a great rally, and the
+beggar made a rousing speech.'
+
+'What about?'
+
+'Abolition of the Upper House.'
+
+'They were at that when I was at Eton.' Stonor turned on his heel.
+
+'Yes, but this man has got a way of putting things--the people went
+mad.'
+
+It was all very well for a mere girl to be staring indifferently out of
+the window, while a great historic party was steering straight for
+shipwreck; but it really was too much to see this man who ought to be
+taking the situation with the seriousness it deserved, strolling about
+the room with that abstracted air, looking superciliously at Mr.
+Dunbarton's examples of the Glasgow school. Farnborough balanced himself
+on wide-apart legs and thrust one hand in his trousers' pocket. The
+other hand held a telegram. 'The Liberal platform as defined at Dutfield
+is going to make a big difference,' he pronounced.
+
+'You think so,' said Stonor, dryly.
+
+'Well, your agent says as much.' He pulled off the orange-brown
+envelope, threw it and the reply-paid form on the table, and held the
+message under the eyes of the obviously surprised gentleman in front of
+him.
+
+'My agent!' Stonor had echoed with faint incredulity.
+
+He took the telegram. '"Try find Stonor,"' he read. 'H'm! H'm!' His eyes
+ran on.
+
+Farnborough looked first at the expressionless face, and then at the
+message.
+
+'You see!'--he glanced over Stonor's shoulder--'"tremendous effect of
+last night's Liberal manifesto ought to be counteracted in to-morrow's
+papers."' Then withdrawing a couple of paces, he said very earnestly,
+'You see, Mr. Stonor, it's a battle-cry we want.'
+
+'Clap-trap,' said the great man, throwing the telegram down on the
+table.
+
+'Well,' said Farnborough, distinctly dashed, 'they've been saying we
+have nothing to offer but personal popularity. No practical reform,
+no----'
+
+'No truckling to the masses, I suppose.'
+
+Poor Farnborough bit his lip. 'Well, in these democratic days, you're
+obliged (I should _think_), to consider----' In his baulked and snubbed
+condition he turned to Miss Dunbarton for countenance. 'I hope you'll
+forgive my bursting in like this, but'--he gathered courage as he caught
+a glimpse of her averted face--'I can see you realize the gravity of the
+situation.' He found her in the embrasure of the window, and went on
+with an air of speaking for her ear alone. 'My excuse for being so
+officious--you see it isn't as if he were going to be a mere private
+member. Everybody knows he'll be in the Cabinet.'
+
+'It may be a Liberal Cabinet,' came from Stonor at his dryest.
+
+Farnborough leapt back into the fray. 'Nobody thought so up to last
+night. Why, even your brother----' he brought up short. 'But I'm afraid
+I'm really seeming rather _too_----' He took up his hat.
+
+'What about my brother?'
+
+'Oh, only that I went from your house to the club, you know--and I met
+Lord Windlesham as I rushed up the Carlton steps.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'I told him the Dutfield news.'
+
+Stonor turned sharply round. His face was much more interested than any
+of his words had been.
+
+As though in the silence, Stonor had asked a question, Farnborough
+produced the answer.
+
+'Your brother said it only confirmed his fears.'
+
+'Said that, did he?' Stonor spoke half under his breath.
+
+'Yes. Defeat is inevitable, he thinks, unless----' Farnborough waited,
+intently watching the big figure that had begun pacing back and forth.
+It paused, but no word came, even the eyes were not raised.
+
+'Unless,' Farnborough went on, 'you can manufacture some political
+dynamite within the next few hours. Those were his words.'
+
+As Stonor resumed his walk he raised his head and caught sight of Jean's
+face. He stopped short directly in front of her.
+
+'You are very tired,' he said.
+
+'No, no.' She turned again to the window.
+
+'I'm obliged to you for troubling about this,' he said, offering
+Farnborough his hand with the air of civilly dismissing him. 'I'll see
+what can be done.'
+
+Farnborough caught up the reply-paid form from the table. 'If you'd like
+to wire I'll take it.'
+
+Faintly amused at this summary view of large complexities, 'You don't
+understand, my young friend,' he said, not unkindly. 'Moves of this sort
+are not rushed at by responsible politicians. I must have time for
+consideration.'
+
+Farnborough's face fell. 'Oh. Well, I only hope some one else won't jump
+into the breach before you.' With his watch in one hand, he held out the
+other to Miss Dunbarton. 'Good-bye. I'll just go and find out what time
+the newspapers go to press on Sunday. I'll be at the Club,' he threw
+over his shoulder, 'just in case I can be of any use.'
+
+'No; don't do that. If I should have anything new to say----'
+
+'B-b-but with our party, as your brother said, "heading straight for a
+vast electoral disaster," and the Liberals----'
+
+'If I decide on a counter-blast, I shall simply telegraph to
+headquarters. Good-bye.'
+
+'Oh! A--a--good-bye.'
+
+With a gesture of 'the country's going to the dogs,' Farnborough opened
+the doors and closed them behind him.
+
+Jean had rung the bell. She came back with her eyes on the ground, and
+paused near the table where the crumpled envelope made a dash of
+yellow-brown on the polished satinwood. Stonor stood studying the
+carpet, more concern in his face now that there was only Jean to see it.
+
+'"Political dynamite," eh?' he repeated, walking a few paces away. He
+returned with, 'After all, women are much more Conservative _naturally_
+than men, aren't they?'
+
+Jean's lowered eyes showed no spark of interest in the issue. Her only
+motion, an occasional locking and unlocking of her fingers. But no words
+came. He glanced at her, as if for the first time conscious of her
+silence.
+
+'You see now'--he threw himself into a chair--'one reason why I've
+encouraged you to take an interest in public questions. Because people
+like us don't go screaming about it, is no sign we don't--some of
+us--see what's on the way. However little they may want to, women of our
+class will have to come into line. All the best things in the world,
+everything civilization has won, will be in danger if--when this change
+comes--the only women who have practical political training are the
+women of the lower classes. Women of the lower classes,' he repeated,
+'_and_'--the line between his eyebrows deepening--'women inoculated by
+the Socialist virus.'
+
+'Geoffrey!'
+
+He was in no mood to discuss a concrete type. To so intelligent a girl,
+a hint should be enough. He drew the telegraph-form that still lay on
+the table towards him.
+
+'Let us see how it would sound, shall we?'
+
+He detached a gold pencil from one end of his watch-chain, and, with
+face more and more intent, bent over the paper, writing.
+
+The girl opened her lips more than once to speak, and each time fell
+back again on her silent, half-incredulous misery.
+
+When Stonor finished writing, he held the paper off, smiling a little,
+with the craftsman's satisfaction in his work, and more than a touch of
+shrewd malice--
+
+'Enough dynamite in that,' he commented. 'Rather too much, isn't there,
+little girl?'
+
+'Geoffrey, I know her story.'
+
+He looked at her for the first time since Farnborough left the room.
+
+'Whose story?'
+
+'Miss Levering's.'
+
+'_Whose?_' He crushed the rough note of his manifesto into his pocket.
+
+'Vida Levering's.'
+
+He stared at the girl, till across the moment's silence a cry of misery
+went out--
+
+'Why did you desert her?'
+
+'I?' he said, like one staggered by the sheer wildness of the charge.
+'_I?_'
+
+But no comfort of doubting seemed to cross the darkness of Jean's
+backward look into the past.
+
+'Oh, why did you do it?'
+
+'What, in the name of----? What has she been saying to you?'
+
+'Some one else told me part. Then the way you looked when you saw her at
+Aunt Ellen's--Miss Levering's saying you didn't know her--then your
+letting out that you knew even the curious name on the handkerchief--oh,
+I pieced it together.'
+
+While she poured out the disjointed sentences, he had recovered his
+self-possession.
+
+'Your ingenuity is undeniable,' he said coldly, rising to his feet. But
+he paused as the girl went on--
+
+'And then when she said that at the meeting about "the dark hour," and I
+looked at her face, it flashed over me----Oh, why did you desert her?'
+
+It was as if the iteration of that charge stung him out of his chill
+anger.
+
+'I _didn't_ desert her,' he said.
+
+'Ah-h!' Her hands went fluttering up to her eyes, and hid the quivering
+face. Something in the action touched him, his face changed, and he made
+a sudden passionate movement toward the trembling figure standing there
+with hidden eyes. In another moment his arms would have been round her.
+Her muffled voice saying, 'I'm glad. I'm glad,' checked him. He stood
+bewildered, making with noiseless lips the word '_Glad?_' She was 'glad'
+he hadn't tired of her rival? The girl brushed the tears from her eyes,
+and steadied herself against the table.
+
+'She went away from you, then?'
+
+The momentary softening had vanished out of Geoffrey Stonor's face. In
+its stead the look of aloofness that few dared brave, the warning 'thus
+far and no farther' stamped on every feature, he answered--
+
+'You can hardly expect me to enter into----'
+
+She broke through the barrier without ruth--such strength, such courage
+has honest pain.
+
+'You mean she went away from you?'
+
+'Yes!' The sharp monosyllable fell out like a thing metallic.
+
+'Was that because you wouldn't marry her?'
+
+'I couldn't marry her--and she knew it.' He turned on his heel.
+
+'Did you want to?'
+
+He paused nearly at the window, and looked back at her. She deserved to
+have the bare 'yes,' but she was a child. He would soften a little the
+truth's harsh impact upon the young creature's shrinking jealousy.
+
+'I thought I wanted to marry her then. It's a long time ago.'
+
+'And why couldn't you?'
+
+He controlled a movement of strong irritation. 'Why are you catechizing
+me? It's a matter that concerns another woman.'
+
+'If you say it doesn't concern me, you're saying'--her lip
+trembled--'saying that you don't concern me.'
+
+With more difficulty than the girl dreamed, he compelled himself to
+answer quietly--
+
+'In those days--I--I was absolutely dependent on my father.'
+
+'Why, you must have been thirty, Geoffrey.'
+
+'What? Oh--thereabouts.'
+
+'And everybody says you're so clever.'
+
+'Well, everybody's mistaken.'
+
+She left the table, and drew nearer to him. 'It must have been terribly
+hard----'
+
+Sounding the depth of sympathy in the gentle voice, he turned towards
+her to meet a check in the phrase--
+
+'----terribly hard for you both.'
+
+He stood there stonily, but looking rather handsome in his big, sulky
+way. The sort of person who dictates terms rather than one to accept
+meekly the thing that might befall.
+
+Something of that overbearing look of his must have penetrated the
+clouded consciousness of the girl, for she was saying--
+
+'You! a man like _you_ not to have had the freedom, that even the lowest
+seem to have----'
+
+'Freedom?'
+
+'To marry the woman they choose.'
+
+'She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her.'
+
+'Why was it, then?'
+
+'You're too young to discuss such a story.' He turned away.
+
+'I'm not so young,' said the shaking voice, 'as she was when----'
+
+'Very well, then, if you will have it!' His look was ill to meet, for
+any one who loved him. 'The truth is, it didn't weigh upon her as it
+seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her.'
+
+'Why are you so sure of that?'
+
+'Because she didn't so much as hint at it when she wrote that she meant
+to break off the--the----'
+
+'What made her write like that?'
+
+'Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended?'
+
+'What reason did she give?'
+
+'If your curiosity has so got the upper hand, _ask her_.'
+
+Her eyes were upon him. In a whisper, 'You're afraid to tell me,' she
+said.
+
+He went over to the window, seeming to wait there for something that did
+not come. He turned round at last.
+
+'I still hoped, at _that_ time, to win my father over. She blamed me
+because'--again he faced the window and looked blindly out--'if the
+child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to
+overlook it.'
+
+'You--wanted--it _overlooked_?' the girl said faintly. 'I don't
+underst----'
+
+He came back to her on a wave of passion. 'Of course you don't
+understand. If you did you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent
+child you are.' He took her hand, and tried to draw her to him.
+
+She withdrew her hand, and shrank from him with a movement, slight as it
+was, so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time caught hold of
+him.
+
+'I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your
+fault, after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up.'
+
+'_Cleared up?_'
+
+'Yes, cleared up.'
+
+'You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as
+forgotten----'
+
+He did not see the horror-struck glance at the door, but he heard the
+whisper--
+
+'_Forgotten!_'
+
+'No, no'--he caught himself up--'I don't mean exactly forgotten. But
+you're torturing me so that I don't know what I'm saying.' He went
+closer. 'You aren't going to let this old thing come between you and
+me?'
+
+She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and then took it away.
+
+'I can't make or unmake the past,' she said steadily. 'But I'm glad, at
+least, that you didn't mean to desert her in her trouble. You'll remind
+her of that first of all, won't you?'
+
+She was moving across the room as she spoke, and, when she had ended,
+the handkerchief went quickly to her lips again as if to shut the door
+on sobbing.
+
+'Where are you going?' He raised his voice. 'Why should I remind
+_any_body of what I want only to forget?'
+
+'Hush! Oh, hush!' A moment she looked back, holding up praying hands.
+
+His eyes had flown to the door. 'You don't mean _she's_----'
+
+'Yes. I left her to get a little rest.'
+
+He recoiled in an access of uncontrollable anger. She followed him.
+Speechless, he eluded her, and went for his hat.
+
+'Geoffrey,' she cried, 'don't go before you hear me. I don't know if
+what I think matters to you now, but I hope it does. You can still'--her
+voice was faint with tears--'still make me think of you without
+shrinking--if you will.'
+
+He fixed her for a moment with eyes more stern than she had ever seen.
+
+'What is it you are asking of me?' he said.
+
+'To make amends, Geoffrey.'
+
+His anger went out on a wave of pity. 'You poor little innocent!'
+
+'I'm poor enough. But'--she locked her hands together like one who
+summons all her resolution--'I'm not so innocent but what I know you
+must right that old wrong now, if you're ever to right it.'
+
+'You aren't insane enough to think I would turn round in these few hours
+and go back to something that ten years ago was ended forever!' As he
+saw how unmoved her face was, 'Why,' he burst out, 'it's stark, staring
+madness!'
+
+'No!' She caught his arm. 'What you did ten years ago--that was mad.
+This is paying a debt.'
+
+Any man looking on, or hearing of Stonor's dilemma, would have said,
+'Leave the girl alone to come to her senses.' But only a stupid man
+would himself have done it. Stonor caught her two hands in his, and drew
+her into his arms.
+
+'Look, here, Jeannie, you're dreadfully wrought up and excited--tired,
+too.'
+
+'No!' She freed herself, and averted the tear-stained face. 'Not tired,
+though I've travelled far to-day. I know you smile at sudden
+conversions. You think they're hysterical--worse--vulgar. But people
+must get their revelation how they can. And, Geoffrey, if I can't make
+you see this one of mine, I shall know your love could never mean
+strength to me--only weakness. And I shall be afraid,' she whispered.
+Her dilated eyes might have seen a ghost lurking there in the
+commonplace room. 'So afraid I should never dare give you the chance of
+making me loathe myself.' There was a pause, and out of the silence fell
+words that were like the taking of a vow. 'I would never see you again.'
+
+'How right I was to be afraid of that vein of fanaticism in you!'
+
+'Certainly you couldn't make a greater mistake than to go away now and
+think it any good ever to come back. Even if I came to feel different, I
+couldn't _do_ anything different. I should _know_ all this couldn't be
+forgotten. I should know that it would poison my life in the end--yours
+too.'
+
+'She has made good use of her time!' he said bitterly. Then, upon a
+sudden thought, 'What has changed _her_? Has she been seeing visions
+too?'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Why is she intriguing to get hold of a man that ten years ago she
+flatly refused to see or hold any communication with?'
+
+'Intriguing to get hold of? She hasn't mentioned you!'
+
+'What! Then how, in the name of Heaven, do you know--she wants--what you
+ask?'
+
+'There can't be any doubt about that,' said the girl, firmly.
+
+With all his tenderness for her, so little still did he understand what
+she was going through, that he plainly thought all her pain had come of
+knowing that this other page was in his life--he had no glimpse of the
+girl's passionate need to think of that same long-turned-over page as
+unmarred by the darker blot.
+
+'You absurd, ridiculous child!' With immense relief he dropped into the
+nearest chair. 'Then all this is just your own unaided invention. Well,
+I could thank God!' He passed his handkerchief over his face.
+
+'For what are you thanking God?'
+
+He sat there obviously thinking out his plan of action.
+
+'Suppose--I'm not going to risk it--but _suppose_----' He looked up, and
+at the sight of Jean's face he rose with an expression strangely gentle.
+The rather hard eyes were softened in a sudden mist. 'Whether _I_
+deserve to suffer or not, it's quite certain _you_ don't. Don't cry,
+dear one. It never was the real thing. I had to wait till I knew you
+before I understood.'
+
+Her own eyes were brimming as she lifted them in a passion of gratitude
+to his face.
+
+'Oh! is that true? Loving you has made things clear to me I didn't dream
+of before. If I could think that because of me you were able to do
+this----'
+
+'You go back to that?' He seized her by the shoulders, and said
+hoarsely, 'Look here! Do you seriously ask me to give up the girl I
+love--to go and offer to marry a woman that even to think of----'
+
+'You cared for her once!' she cried. 'You'll care about her again. She
+is beautiful and brilliant--_every_thing. I've heard she could win any
+man----'
+
+He pushed the girl from him. 'She's bewitched you!' He was halfway to
+the door.
+
+'Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you aren't going away like that? This isn't _the
+end_?'
+
+The face he turned back upon her was dark and hesitating. 'I suppose if
+she refused me, you'd----'
+
+'She won't refuse you.'
+
+'She did once.'
+
+'She didn't refuse to marry you.'
+
+As she passed him on the way to her sitting-room he caught her by the
+arm.
+
+'Stop!' he said, glancing about like one hunting desperately for a means
+of gaining a few minutes. 'Lady John is waiting all this time at my
+house for the car to go back with a message.'
+
+'_That's_ not a matter of life and death!' she said, with all the
+impatience of the young at that tyranny of little things which seems to
+hold its unrelenting sway, though the battlements of righteousness are
+rocking, and the tall towers of love are shaken to the nethermost
+foundation-stones.
+
+'No, it's not a matter of life and death,' Stonor said quietly. 'All the
+same, I'll go down and give the order.'
+
+'Very well.' Of her own accord this time she stopped on her way to that
+other door, behind which was the Past and the Future incarnate in one
+woman. 'I'll wait,' said Jean. She went to the table. Sitting there with
+her face turned from him, she said, quite low, 'You'll come back, if
+you're the man I pray you are.'
+
+Her self-control seemed all at once to fail. She leaned her elbows on
+the table and broke into a flood of silent tears, with face hidden in
+her hands.
+
+He came swiftly back, and bent over her a moved, adoring face.
+
+'Dearest of all the world,' he began, in that beautiful voice of his.
+
+His arms were closing round her, when the door on the left was softly
+opened. Vida Levering stood on the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+She drew back as soon as she saw him, but Stonor had looked round. His
+face darkened as he stood there an instant, silently challenging her.
+Not a word spoken by either of them, no sound but the faint, muffled
+sobbing of the girl, who sat with hidden face. With a look of speechless
+anger, the man went out and shut the doors behind him. Not seeing, only
+hearing that he had gone, Jean threw her arms out across the table in an
+abandonment of grief. The other woman laid on a chair the hat and cloak
+that she was carrying. Then she went slowly across the room and stood
+silent a moment at Jean's side.
+
+'What is the matter?'
+
+The girl started. Impossible for her to speak in that first moment. But
+when she had dried her eyes, she said, with a pathetic childish air--
+
+'I--I've been seeing Geoffrey.'
+
+'Is this the effect "seeing Geoffrey" has?' said the other, with an
+attempt at lightness.
+
+'You see, I know now,' Jean explained, with the brave directness that
+was characteristic.
+
+The more sophisticated woman presented an aspect totally unenlightened.
+
+'I know how he'--Jean dropped her eyes--'how he spoiled some one else's
+life.'
+
+'Who tells you that?' asked Miss Levering.
+
+'Several people have told me.'
+
+'Well, you should be very careful how you believe what you hear.'
+
+'You know it's true!' said the girl, passionately.
+
+'I know that it's possible to be mistaken.'
+
+'I see! You're trying to shield him----'
+
+'Why should I? What is it to me?'
+
+'Oh-h, how you must love him!' she said with tears.
+
+'I? Listen to me,' said Vida, gravely. As she drew up a chair the girl
+rose to her feet.
+
+'What's the use--what's the use of your going on denying it?' As she saw
+Vida was about to break in, she silenced her with two words, '_Geoffrey
+doesn't._' And with that she fled away to the window.
+
+Vida half rose, and then relinquished the idea of following the girl,
+seemed presently to forget her, and sat as one alone with sorrow. When
+Jean had mastered herself, she came slowly back. Not till she was close
+to the motionless figure did the girl lift her eyes.
+
+'Oh, don't look like that,' the girl prayed. 'I shall bring him back to
+you.'
+
+She was on her knees by Vida's chair. The fixed abstraction went out of
+the older face, but it was very cold as she began--
+
+'You would be impertinent--if--you weren't a romantic child. You can't
+bring him back.'
+
+'Yes, yes, he----'
+
+'No. But'--Vida looked deep into the candid eyes--'there is something
+you _can_ do----'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Bring him to a point where he recognizes that he is in our debt.'
+
+'In _our_ debt?'
+
+Vida nodded. 'In debt to Women. He can't repay the one he robbed.'
+
+Jean winced at that. The young do not know that nothing but money can
+ever be paid back.
+
+'Yes,' she insisted, out of the faith she still had in him, ready to be
+his surety. 'Yes, he can. He will.'
+
+The other shook her head. 'No, he can't repay the dead. But there are
+the living. There are the thousands with hope still in their hearts and
+youth in their blood. Let him help _them_. Let him be a Friend to
+Women.'
+
+'I understand!' Jean rose up, wide-eyed. 'Yes, _that_ too.'
+
+The door had opened, and Lady John was coming in with Stonor towering
+beside her. When he saw the girl rising from her knees, he turned to
+Lady John with a little gesture of, 'What did I tell you?'
+
+The moment Jean caught sight of him, 'Thank you!' she said, while her
+aunt was briskly advancing, filling all the room with a pleasant silken
+rustling, and a something nameless, that was like clear noonday after
+storm-cloud or haunted twilight.
+
+'Well,' she said in a cheerful commonplace tone to Jean; 'you rather
+gave us the slip! Vida, I believe Mr. Stonor wants to see you for a few
+minutes, but'--she glanced at her watch--'I'd like a word with you
+first, as I must get back. Do you think the car'--she turned to
+Stonor--'your man said something about recharging----'
+
+'Oh, did he? I'll see about it.' As he went out he brushed past the
+butler.
+
+'Mr. Trent has called, miss, to take the lady to the meeting,' said that
+functionary.
+
+'Bring Mr. Trent into my sitting-room,' said Jean hastily, and then to
+Miss Levering, 'I'll tell him you can't go to-night.'
+
+Lady John stood watching the girl with critical eyes till she had
+disappeared into the adjoining room and shut the door behind her. Then--
+
+'I know, my dear'--she spoke almost apologetically--'you're not aware of
+what that impulsive child wants to insist on. I feel it an embarrassment
+even to tell you.'
+
+'I know.'
+
+'You know?' Lady John waited for condemnation of Jean's idea. She waited
+in vain. 'It isn't with your sanction, surely, that she makes this
+extraordinary demand?'
+
+'I didn't sanction it at first,' said the other slowly; 'but I've been
+thinking it over.'
+
+Lady John's suavity stiffened perceptibly. 'Then all I can say is, I am
+greatly disappointed in you. You threw this man over years ago, for
+reasons, whatever they were, that seemed to you good and sufficient. And
+now you come in between him and a younger woman, just to play Nemesis,
+so far as I can make out.'
+
+'Is that what he says?'
+
+'He says nothing that isn't fair and considerate.'
+
+'I can see he's changed.'
+
+'And you're unchanged--is that it?'
+
+'I'm changed even more than he.'
+
+Lady John sat down, with pity and annoyance struggling for the mastery.
+
+'You care about him still?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'No? And yet you--I see! There are obviously certain things he can give
+his wife, and you naturally want to marry somebody.'
+
+'Oh, Lady John,' said Vida, wearily, 'there are no men listening.'
+
+'No'--she looked round surprised--'I didn't suppose there were.'
+
+'Then why keep up that old pretence?'
+
+'What pret----'
+
+'That to marry _at all costs_ is every woman's dearest ambition till the
+grave closes over her. You and I _know_ it isn't true.'
+
+'Well, but----' Her ladyship blinked, suddenly seeing daylight. 'Oh! It
+was just the unexpected sight of him bringing it all back! _That_ was
+what fired you this afternoon. Of course'--she made an honest attempt at
+sympathetic understanding--'the memory of a thing like that can never
+die--can never even be dimmed for the woman.'
+
+'I mean her to think so.'
+
+'Jean?'
+
+Vida nodded.
+
+'But it isn't so?'
+
+Lady John was a little bewildered.
+
+'You don't seriously believe,' said Vida, 'that a woman, with anything
+else to think about, comes to the end of ten years still absorbed in a
+memory of that sort?'
+
+Lady John stared speechless a moment. 'You've got over it, then?'
+
+'If it weren't for the papers, I shouldn't remember twice a year there
+was ever such a person as Geoffrey Stonor in the world.'
+
+'Oh, I'm _so_ glad!' said Lady John, with unconscious rapture.
+
+Vida smiled grimly. 'Yes, I'm glad, too.'
+
+'And if Geoffrey Stonor offered you--er--"reparation," you'd refuse it?'
+
+'Geoffrey Stonor! For me he's simply one of the far back links in a
+chain of evidence. It's certain I think a hundred times of other women's
+present unhappiness to once that I remember that old unhappiness of mine
+that's past. I think of the nail and chain makers of Cradley Heath, the
+sweated girls of the slums; I think,' her voice fell, 'of the army of
+ill-used women, whose very existence I mustn't mention----'
+
+Lady John interrupted her hurriedly. 'Then why in heaven's name do you
+let poor Jean imagine----'
+
+Vida suddenly bent forward. 'Look--I'll trust you, Lady John. I don't
+suffer from that old wrong as Jean thinks I do, but I shall coin her
+sympathy into gold for a greater cause than mine.'
+
+'I don't understand you.'
+
+'Jean isn't old enough to be able to care as much about a principle as
+about a person. But if my old half-forgotten pain can turn her
+generosity into the common treasury----'
+
+'What do you propose she shall do, poor child?'
+
+'Use her hold over Geoffrey Stonor to make him help us.'
+
+'To help you?'
+
+'The man who served one woman--God knows how many more--very ill, shall
+serve hundreds of thousands well. Geoffrey Stonor shall make it harder
+for his son, harder still for his grandson, to treat any woman as he
+treated me.'
+
+'How will he do that?' said the lady coldly.
+
+'By putting an end to the helplessness of women.'
+
+'You must think he has a great deal of power,' said her ladyship, with
+some irony.
+
+'Power? Yes,' answered the other, 'men have too much over penniless and
+frightened women.'
+
+'What nonsense! You talk as though the women hadn't their share of human
+nature. _We_ aren't made of ice any more than the men.'
+
+'No, but we have more self-control.'
+
+'Than men?'
+
+Vida had risen. She looked down at her friend. 'You know we have,' she
+said.
+
+'I know,' said Lady John shrewdly, 'we mustn't admit it.'
+
+'For fear they'd call us fishes?'
+
+Lady John had been frankly shocked at the previous plain speaking, but
+she found herself stimulated to show in this moment of privacy that even
+she had not travelled her sheltered way through the world altogether in
+blinkers.
+
+'They talk of our lack of self-control, but,' she admitted, 'it's the
+last thing men _want_ women to have.'
+
+'Oh, we know what they want us to have! So we make shift to have it. If
+we don't, we go without hope--sometimes we go without bread.'
+
+'Vida! Do you mean to say that you----'
+
+'I mean to say that men's vanity won't let them see it, but the thing's
+largely a question of economics.'
+
+'You _never_ loved him, then!'
+
+'Yes, I loved him--once. It was my helplessness that turned the best
+thing life can bring into a curse for both of us.'
+
+'I don't understand you----'
+
+'Oh, being "understood"! that's too much to expect. I make myself no
+illusions. When people come to know that I've joined the Women's
+Union----'
+
+'But you won't'
+
+'----who is there who will resist the temptation to say "Poor Vida
+Levering! What a pity she hasn't got a husband and a baby to keep her
+quiet"? The few who know about me, they'll be equally sure that, not the
+larger view of life I've gained, but my own poor little story, is
+responsible for my new departure.' She leaned forward and looked into
+Lady John's face. 'My best friend, she will be surest of all, that it's
+a private sense of loss, or lower yet, a grudge, that's responsible for
+my attitude. I tell you the only difference between me and thousands of
+women with husbands and babies is that I am free to say what I think.
+_They aren't!_'
+
+Lady John opened her lips and then closed them firmly. After all, why
+pursue the matter? She had got the information she had come for.
+
+'I must hurry back;' she rose, murmuring, 'my poor ill-used guests----'
+
+Vida stood there quiet, a little cold. 'I won't ring,' she said. 'I
+think you'll find Mr. Stonor downstairs waiting for you.'
+
+'Oh--a--he will have left word about the car in any case.'
+
+Lady John's embarrassment was not so much at seeing that her friend had
+divined the gist of the arrangement that had been effected downstairs.
+It was that Vida should be at no pains to throw a decent veil over the
+fact of her realization that Lady John had come there in the character
+of scout. With an openness not wholly free from scorn, the younger woman
+had laid her own cards on the table. She made no scruple at turning her
+back on Lady John's somewhat incoherent evasion. Ignoring it she crossed
+the room and opened the door for her.
+
+Jean was in the corridor saying good-bye to the chairman of the
+afternoon.
+
+'Well, Mr. Trent,' said Miss Levering in even tones, 'I didn't expect to
+see you this evening.'
+
+He came forward and stood in the doorway. 'Why not? Have I ever failed?'
+
+'Lady John,' said Vida, turning, 'this is one of our allies. He is good
+enough to squire me through the rabble from time to time.'
+
+'Well,' said Lady John, advancing quite graciously, 'I think it's very
+handsome of you after what she said to-day about men.'
+
+'I've no great opinion of most men myself,' said the young gentleman. 'I
+might add, or of most women.'
+
+'Oh!' Lady John laughed. 'At any rate I shall go away relieved to think
+that Miss Levering's plain speaking hasn't alienated _all_ masculine
+regard.'
+
+'Why should it?' he said.
+
+'That's right.' Lady John metaphorically patted him on the back. 'Don't
+believe all she says in the heat of propaganda.'
+
+'I _do_ believe all she says. But I'm not cast down.'
+
+'Not when she says----'
+
+'Was there never,' he made bold to interrupt, 'a misogynist of _my_ sex
+who ended by deciding to make an exception?'
+
+'Oh!' Lady John smiled significantly; 'if _that's_ what you build on!'
+
+'Why,' he demanded with an effort to convey 'pure logic,' 'why shouldn't
+a man-hater on your side prove equally open to reason?'
+
+'That aspect of the question has become irrelevant so far as I'm
+personally concerned,' said Vida, exasperated by Lady John's look of
+pleased significance. 'I've got to a place where I realize that the
+first battles of this new campaign must be fought by women alone. The
+only effective help men could give--amendment of the law--they refuse.
+The rest is nothing.'
+
+'Don't be ungrateful, Vida. Here is this gentleman ready to face
+criticism in publicly championing you----'
+
+'Yes, but it's an illusion that I, as an individual, need a champion. I
+am quite safe in the crowd. Please don't wait for me and don't come for
+me again.'
+
+The sensitive dark face flushed. 'Of course if you'd rather----'
+
+'And that reminds me,' she went on, unfairly punishing poor Mr. Trent
+for Lady John's meaning looks, 'I was asked to thank you, and to tell
+you, too, that they won't need your chairmanship any more--though that,
+I beg you to believe, has nothing to do with any feeling of mine.'
+
+He was hurt and he showed it. 'Of course I know there must be other men
+ready--better known men----'
+
+'It isn't that. It's simply that we find a man can't keep a rowdy
+meeting in order as well as a woman.'
+
+He stared.
+
+'You aren't serious?' said Lady John.
+
+'Haven't you noticed,' Miss Levering put it to Trent, 'that all our
+worst disturbances come when men are in charge?'
+
+'Ha! ha! Well--a--I hadn't connected the two ideas.'
+
+Still laughing a little ruefully, he suffered himself to be taken
+downstairs by kind little Miss Dunbarton, who had stood without a word
+waiting there with absent face.
+
+'That nice boy's in love with you,' said Lady John, _sotto voce_.
+
+Vida looked at her without answering.
+
+'Good-bye.' They shook hands. 'I _wish_ you hadn't been so unkind to
+that nice boy.'
+
+'Do you?'
+
+'Yes; for then I would be more sure of your telling Geoffrey Stonor that
+intelligent women don't nurse their wrongs indefinitely, and lie in wait
+to punish them.'
+
+'You are _not_ sure?'
+
+Lady John went up close and looked into her face with searching anxiety.
+'Are _you_?' she asked.
+
+Vida stood there mute, with eyes on the ground. Lady John glanced
+nervously at her watch, and, with a gesture of perturbation, hurriedly
+left the room. The other went slowly back to her place by the table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The look she bent on Stonor as he came in seemed to take no account of
+those hurried glimpses at the Tunbridges' months before, and twice
+to-day when other eyes were watching. It was as if now, for the first
+time since they parted, he stood forth clearly. This man with the
+changed face, coming in at the door and carefully shutting it--he had
+once been Mystery's high priest and had held the keys of Joy. To-day,
+beyond a faint pallor, there was no trace of emotion in that face that
+was the same and yet so different. Not even anger there. Where a less
+complex man would have brought in, if not the menace of a storm, at
+least an intimation of masterfulness that should advertise the
+uselessness of opposition, Stonor brought a subtler ally in what, for
+lack of better words, must be called an air of heightened
+fastidiousness--mainly physical. Man has no shrewder weapon against the
+woman he has loved and wishes to exorcise from his path. For the simple,
+and even for those not so much simple as merely sensitive, there is
+something in that cool, sure assumption of unapproachableness on the
+part of one who once had been so near--something that lames advance and
+hypnotizes vision. Geoffrey Stonor's aloofness was not in the 'high
+look' alone; it was as much as anything in the very way he walked, as if
+the ground were hardly good enough, in the way he laid his shapely hand
+on the carved back of the sofa, the way his eyes rested on inanimate
+things in the room, reducing whoever was responsible for them to the
+need of justifying their presence and defending their value.
+
+As the woman in the chair, leaning cheek on hand, sat silently watching
+him, it may have been that obscure things in those headlong hours of the
+past grew plainer.
+
+However ludicrous the result may look in the last analysis, it is clear
+that a faculty such as Stonor's for overrating the value of the
+individual in the scheme of things, does seem more effectually than any
+mere patent of nobility to confer upon a man the 'divine right' to
+dictate to his fellows and to look down upon them. The thing is founded
+on illusion, but it is founded as firm as many another figment that has
+governed men and seen the generations come to heel and go crouching to
+their graves.
+
+But the shining superiority of the man seemed to be a little dimmed for
+the woman sitting there. The old face and the new face, she saw them
+both through a cloud of long-past memories and a mist of present tears.
+
+'Well, have they primed you?' she said very low. 'Have you got your
+lesson--by heart at last?'
+
+He looked at her from immeasurable distance. 'I am not sure that I
+understand you,' he said. He waited an instant, then, seeing no
+explanation vouchsafed, 'However unpropitious your mood may be,' he went
+on with a satirical edge in his tone, 'I shall discharge my errand.'
+
+Still she waited.
+
+Her silence seemed to irritate him. 'I have promised,' he said, with a
+formality that smacked of insolence, 'to offer you what I believe is
+called "amends."'
+
+The quick change in the brooding look should have warned him.
+
+'You have come to realize, then--after all these years--that you owed me
+something?'
+
+He checked himself on the brink of protest. 'I am not here to deny it.'
+
+'Pay, then,' she said fiercely--'pay.'
+
+A moment's dread flickered in his eye and then was gone. 'I have said
+that, if you exact it, I will.'
+
+'Ah! If I insist, you'll "make it all good"! Then, don't you know, you
+must pay me in kind?'
+
+He looked down upon her--a long, long way. 'What do you mean?'
+
+'Give me back what you took from me--my old faith,' she said, with
+shaking voice. 'Give me that.'
+
+'Oh, if you mean to make phrases----' He half turned away, but the swift
+words overtook him.
+
+'Or, give me back mere kindness--or even tolerance! Oh, I don't mean
+_your_ tolerance.' She was on her feet to meet his eyes as he faced her
+again. 'Give me back the power to think fairly of my brothers--not as
+mockers--thieves.'
+
+'I have not mocked you. And I have asked you----'
+
+'Something you knew I should refuse. Or'--her eyes blazed--'or did you
+dare to be afraid I wouldn't?'
+
+'Oh, I suppose'--he buttressed his good faith with bitterness--'I
+suppose if we set our teeth we could----'
+
+'I couldn't--not even if I set my teeth. And you wouldn't dream of
+asking me if you thought there was the smallest chance.'
+
+Ever so faintly he raised his heavy shoulders. 'I can do no more than
+make you an offer of such reparation as is in my power. If you don't
+accept it----' He turned away with an air of '_that's_ done.'
+
+But her emotion had swept her out of her course. She found herself at
+his side.
+
+'Accept it? No! Go away and live in debt. Pay and pay and pay--and find
+yourself still in debt--for a thing you'll never be able to give me
+back. And when you come to die'--her voice fell--'say to yourself, "I
+paid all my creditors but one."'
+
+He stopped on his way to the door and faced her again. 'I'm rather
+tired, you know, of this talk of debt. If I hear that you persist in it,
+I shall have to----' Again he checked himself.
+
+'What?'
+
+'No. I'll keep to my resolution.'
+
+He had nearly reached the threshold. She saw what she had lost by her
+momentary lack of that boasted self-control. She forestalled him at the
+door.
+
+'What resolution?' she asked.
+
+He looked down at her an instant, clothed from head to foot in that
+indefinable armour of unapproachableness. This was a man who asked other
+people questions, himself ill-accustomed to be catechised. If he replied
+it was a grace.
+
+'I came here,' he said, 'under considerable pressure, to speak of the
+future. Not to reopen the past.'
+
+'The future and the past are one,' said the woman at the door.
+
+'You talk as if that old madness was mine alone; it is the woman's way.'
+
+'I know,' she agreed, to his obvious surprise, 'and it's not fair. Men
+suffer as well as we by the woman's starting wrong. We are taught to
+think the man a sort of demi-god. If he tells her, "Go down into hell,"
+down into hell she goes.'
+
+He would not have been human had he not resented that harsh summary of
+those days that lay behind.
+
+'Make no mistake,' he said. 'Not the woman alone. _They go down
+together._'
+
+'Yes, they go down together. But the man comes up alone. As a rule. It
+is more convenient so--_for him_. And even for the other woman.'
+
+Both pairs of eyes went to Jean's door.
+
+'My conscience is clear,' he said angrily. 'I know--and so do you--that
+most men in my position wouldn't have troubled themselves. I gave myself
+endless trouble.'
+
+She looked at him with wondering eyes. 'So you've gone about all these
+years feeling that you'd discharged every obligation?'
+
+'Not only that. I stood by you with a fidelity that was nothing short of
+Quixotic. If, woman-like, you _must_ recall the past, I insist on your
+recalling it correctly.'
+
+'You think I don't recall it correctly?' she said very low.
+
+'Not when you make--other people believe that I deserted you!' The
+gathering volume of his righteous wrath swept the cool precision out of
+his voice. 'It's a curious enough charge,' he said, 'when you stop to
+consider----' Again he checked himself, and, with a gesture of
+impatience, was for sweeping the whole thing out of his way, including
+that figure at the door.
+
+But she stood there. 'Well, when we do just for five minutes out of ten
+years--when we do stop to consider----'
+
+'We remember it was _you_ who did the deserting. And since you had to
+rake the story up, you might have had the fairness to tell the facts.'
+
+'You think "the facts" would have excused you?'
+
+It was a new view. She left the door, and sat down in the nearest chair.
+
+'No doubt you've forgotten the facts, since Lady John tells me you
+wouldn't remember my existence once a year, if the papers didn't----'
+
+'Ah!' she interrupted, with a sorry little smile, 'you minded that!'
+
+'I mind your giving false impressions,' he said with spirit. As she was
+about to speak he advanced upon her. 'Do you deny'--he bent over her,
+and told off those three words by striking one clenched fist into the
+palm of the other hand--'do you deny that you returned my letters
+unopened?'
+
+'No,' she said.
+
+'Do you deny that you refused to see me, and that when I persisted you
+vanished?'
+
+'I don't deny any of those things.'
+
+'Why'--he stood up straight again, and his shoulders grew more square
+with justification--'why I had no trace of you for years.'
+
+'I suppose not.'
+
+'Very well, then.' He walked away. 'What could I do?'
+
+'Nothing. It was too late to do anything.'
+
+'It wasn't too late! You knew, since you "read the papers," that my
+father died that same year. There was no longer any barrier between us.'
+
+'Oh, yes, there was a barrier.'
+
+'Of your own making, then.'
+
+'I had my guilty share in it, but the barrier'--her voice trembled on
+the word--'the barrier was your invention.'
+
+'The only barrier I knew of was no "invention." If you had ever known my
+father----'
+
+'Oh, the echoes! the echoes!' She lay back in the chair. 'How often you
+used to say, if I "knew your father." But you said, too'--her voice
+sank--'you called the greatest "barrier" by another name.'
+
+'What name?'
+
+So low that even he could hardly hear she answered, 'The child that was
+to come.'
+
+'That was before my father died,' Stonor returned hastily, 'while I
+still hoped to get his consent.'
+
+She nodded, and her eyes were set like wide doors for memory to enter
+in.
+
+'How the thought of that all-powerful personage used to terrorize me!
+What chance had a little unborn child against "the last of the great
+feudal lords," as you called him?'
+
+'You _know_ the child would have stood between you and me.'
+
+'I know the child did stand between you and me.'
+
+He stared at her. With vague uneasiness he repeated, '_Did_ stand----'
+
+She seemed not to hear. The tears were running down her rigid face.
+
+'Happy mothers teach their children. Mine had to teach me----'
+
+'You talk as if----'
+
+'----teach me that a woman may do that for love's sake that shall kill
+love.'
+
+Neither spoke for some seconds. Fearing and putting from him fuller
+comprehension, he broke the silence, saying with an air of finality--
+
+'You certainly made it plain you had no love left for me.'
+
+'I had need of it all for the child.' Her voice had a curious crooning
+note in it.
+
+He came closer. He bent down to put the low question, 'Do you mean,
+then, that after all--it lived?'
+
+'No. I mean that it was sacrificed. But it showed me no barrier is so
+impassable as the one a little child can raise.'
+
+It was as if lightning had flashed across the old picture. He drew back
+from the fierce illumination.
+
+'Was _that_ why you----' he began, in a voice that was almost a whisper.
+'Was that why?'
+
+She nodded, speechless a moment for tears. 'Day and night there it was
+between my thought of you and me.'
+
+He sat down, staring at her.
+
+'When I was most unhappy,' she went on, in that low voice, 'I would wake
+thinking I heard it cry. It was my own crying I heard, but I seemed to
+have it in my arms. I suppose I was mad. I used to lie there in that
+lonely farmhouse pretending to hush it. It was so I hushed myself.'
+
+'I never knew----'
+
+'I didn't blame you. You couldn't risk being with me.'
+
+'You agreed that, for both our sakes----'
+
+'Yes, you had to be very circumspect. You were so well known. Your
+autocratic father, your brilliant political future----'
+
+'Be fair. Our future--as I saw it then.'
+
+'Yes, everything hung on concealment. It must have looked quite simple
+to you. You didn't know the ghost of a child that had never seen the
+light, the frail thing you meant to sweep aside and forget'--she was on
+her feet--'_have_ swept aside and forgotten!--you didn't know it was
+strong enough to push you out of my life.' With an added intensity, 'It
+can do more!' she said. She leaned over his bowed figure and whispered,
+'It can push that girl out!' As again she stood erect, half to herself
+she added, 'It can do more still.'
+
+'Are you threatening me?' he said dully.
+
+'No, I am preparing you.'
+
+'For what?'
+
+'For the work that must be done. Either with your help or that girl's.'
+
+The man's eyes lifted a moment.
+
+'One of two things,' she said--'either her life, and all she has, given
+to this new Service; or a ransom if I give her up to you.'
+
+'I see. A price. Well----?'
+
+She looked searchingly at him for an instant, and then slowly shook her
+head.
+
+'Even if I could trust you to pay the price,' she said, 'I'm not sure
+but what a young and ardent soul as faithful and as pure as hers--I'm
+not sure but I should make a poor bargain for my sex to give that up for
+anything you could do.'
+
+He found his feet like a man roused out of an evil dream to some reality
+darker than the dream. 'In spite of your assumption, she may not be your
+tool,' he said.
+
+'You are horribly afraid she is! But you are wrong. She's an instrument
+in stronger hands than mine. Soon my little personal influence over her
+will be merged in something infinitely greater. Oh, don't think it's
+merely I that have got hold of Jean Dunbarton.'
+
+'Who else?'
+
+'The New Spirit that's abroad.'
+
+With an exclamation he turned away. And though his look branded the idea
+for a wild absurdity, sentinel-like he began to pace up and down a few
+yards from Jean's door.
+
+'How else,' said the woman, 'should that inexperienced girl have felt
+the new loyalty and responded as she did?'
+
+'"New," indeed!' he said under his breath, 'however little "loyal."'
+
+'Loyal, above all. But no newer than electricity was when it first lit
+up the world. It had been there since the world began--waiting to do
+away with the dark. _So has the thing you're fighting._'
+
+'The thing I'm fighting'--and the violence with which he spoke was only
+in his face and air; he held his voice down to its lowest register--'the
+thing I'm fighting is nothing more than one person's hold upon a highly
+sensitive imagination. I consented to this interview with the hope'--he
+made a gesture of impotence.
+
+'It only remains for me to show her that your true motive is revenge.'
+
+'Once say that to her, and you are lost.'
+
+He stole an uneasy look at the woman out of a face that had grown
+haggard.
+
+'If you were fighting for that girl only against me, you'd win,' she
+said. 'It isn't so--and you will fail. The influence that has hold of
+her is in the very air. No soul knows where it comes from, except that
+it comes from the higher sources of civilization.'
+
+'I see the origin of it before my eyes!'
+
+'As little as you see the beginnings of life. This is like the other
+mysterious forces of Mother Earth. No warning given--no sign. A night
+wind passes over the brown land, and in the morning the fields are
+green.'
+
+His look was the look of one who sees happiness slipping away. 'Or it
+passes over gardens like a frost,' he said, 'and the flowers die.'
+
+'I know that is what men fear. It even seems as if it must be through
+fear that your enlightenment will come. The strangest things make you
+men afraid! That's why I see a value in Jean Dunbarton far beyond her
+fortune.'
+
+He looked at her dully.
+
+'More than any other girl I know--if I keep her from you, that gentle,
+inflexible creature could rouse in men the old half-superstitious
+fear----'
+
+'Fear! Are you mad?'
+
+'Mad!' she echoed. 'Unsexed'--those are the words to-day. In the Middle
+Ages men cried out 'Witch!' and burnt her--the woman who served no man's
+bed or board.
+
+'You want to make the poor child believe----'
+
+'She sees for herself we've come to a place where we find there's a
+value in women apart from the value men see in them. You teach us not to
+look to you for some of the things we need most. If women must be freed
+by women, we have need of such as----' Her eyes went to the door that
+Stonor still had an air of guarding. 'Who knows--she may be the new Joan
+of Arc.'
+
+He paused, and for that moment he seemed as bankrupt in denunciation as
+he was in hope. This personal application of the new heresy found him
+merely aghast, with no words but 'That _she_ should be the sacrifice!'
+
+'You have taught us to look very calmly on the sacrifice of women,' was
+the ruthless answer. 'Men tell us in every tongue, it's "a necessary
+evil."'
+
+He stood still a moment, staring at the ground.
+
+'One girl's happiness--against a thing nobler than happiness for
+thousands--who can hesitate? _Not Jean._'
+
+'Good God! can't you see that this crazed campaign you'd start her
+on--even if it's successful, it can only be so through the help of men?
+What excuse shall you make your own soul for not going straight to the
+goal?'
+
+'You think we wouldn't be glad,' she said, 'to go straight to the goal?'
+
+'I do. I see you'd much rather punish me and see her revel in a morbid
+self-sacrifice.'
+
+'You say I want to punish you only because, like other men, you won't
+take the trouble to understand what we do want--or how determined we are
+to have it. You can't kill this New Spirit among women.' She went
+nearer. 'And you couldn't make a greater mistake than to think it finds
+a home only in the exceptional or the unhappy. It is so strange to see a
+man like you as much deluded as the Hyde Park loafers, who say to
+Ernestine Blunt, "Who's hurt _your_ feelings?" Why not realize'--she
+came still closer, if she had put out her hand she would have touched
+him--'this is a thing that goes deeper than personal experience? And
+yet,' she said in a voice so hushed that it was full of a sense of the
+girl on the other side of the door, 'if you take only the narrowest
+personal view, a good deal depends on what you and I agree upon in the
+next five minutes.'
+
+'You recommend my realizing the larger issues. But in your ambition to
+attach that poor girl to the chariot-wheels of Progress'--his voice put
+the drag of ironic pomposity upon the phrase--'you quite ignore the fact
+that people fitter for such work, the men you look to enlist in the end,
+are ready waiting'--he pulled himself up in time for an anti-climax--'to
+give the thing a chance.'
+
+'Men are ready! What men?'
+
+His eyes evaded hers. He picked his words. 'Women have themselves to
+blame that the question has grown so delicate that responsible people
+shrink for the moment from being implicated in it.'
+
+'We have seen the shrinking.'
+
+'Without quoting any one else, I might point out that the New Antagonism
+seems to have blinded you to the small fact that I for one am not an
+opponent.'
+
+'The phrase has a familiar ring. We have heard it four hundred and
+twenty times.'
+
+His eyes were shining with anger. 'I spoke, if I may say so, of some one
+who would count. Some one who can carry his party along with him--or
+risk a seat in the cabinet over the issue.'
+
+'Did you mean you are "ready" to do that?' she exclaimed.
+
+'An hour ago I was.'
+
+'Ah! an hour ago!'
+
+'Exactly! You don't understand men. They can be led; they can't be
+driven. Ten minutes before you came into the room I was ready to say I
+would throw in my political lot with this Reform.'
+
+'And now?'
+
+'Now you block my way by an attempt at coercion. By forcing my hand you
+give my adherence an air of bargain-driving for a personal end. Exactly
+the mistake of the ignorant agitators in Trafalgar Square. You have a
+great deal to learn. This movement will go forward, not because of the
+agitation outside, but in spite of it. There are men in Parliament who
+would have been actively serving the Reform to-day--as actively as so
+vast a constitutional change----'
+
+She smiled faintly. 'And they haven't done it because----'
+
+'Because it would have put a premium on breaches of decent behaviour and
+defiance of the law!'
+
+She looked at him with an attempt to appear to accept this version. What
+did it matter what reasons were given for past failure, if only the
+future might be assured? He had taken a piece of crumpled paper from his
+pocket and smoothed it out.
+
+'Look here!' He held the telegram before her.
+
+She flushed with excitement as she read. 'This is very good. I see only
+one objection.'
+
+'Objection!'
+
+'You haven't sent it.'
+
+'That is your fault.' And he looked as if he thought he spoke the truth.
+
+'When did you write this?'
+
+'Just before you came in--when she began to talk about----'
+
+'Ah, Jean!' Vida gave him back the paper. 'That must have pleased Jean.'
+
+It was a master stroke, the casual giving back, and the invocation of a
+pleasure that had been strangled at the birth along with something
+greater. Did he see before him again the girl's tear-filled, hopeless
+eyes, that had not so much as read the wonderful message, too intent
+upon the death-warrant of their common happiness? He threw himself
+heavily into a chair, staring at the closed door. Behind it, in a prison
+of which this woman held the key, Jean waited for her life sentence.
+Stonor's look, his attitude, seemed to say that he too only waited now
+to hear it. He dropped his head in his hand.
+
+When Vida spoke, it was without raising her eyes from the ground.
+
+'I could drive a hard-and-fast bargain with you; but I think I won't. If
+love and ambition both urge you on, perhaps----' She looked up a little
+defiantly, seeming to expect to meet triumph in his face. Instead, her
+eye took in the profound hopelessness of the bent head, the slackness of
+the big frame, that so suddenly had assumed a look of age. She went over
+to him silently, and stood by his side. 'After all,' she said, 'life
+hasn't been quite fair to you.' At the new thing in her voice he raised
+his heavy eyes. 'You fall out of one ardent woman's dreams into
+another's,' she said.
+
+'Then you don't--after all, you don't mean to----'
+
+'To keep you and her apart? No.'
+
+For the first time tears came into his eyes.
+
+After a little silence he held out his hand. 'What can I do for you?'
+
+She seemed not to see the hand he offered. Or did she only see that it
+was empty? She was looking at the other. Mere instinct made him close
+his left hand more firmly on the message.
+
+It was as if something finer than her slim fingers, the woman's
+invisible antennae, felt the force that would need be overcome if trial
+of strength should be precipitated then. Upon his 'What can I do?' she
+shook her head.
+
+'For the real you,' he said. 'Not the Reformer, or the would-be
+politician--for the woman I so unwillingly hurt.' As she only turned
+away, he stood up, detaining her with a hold upon her arm. 'You may not
+believe it, but now that I understand, there is almost nothing I
+wouldn't do to right that old wrong.'
+
+'There's nothing to be done,' she said; and then, shrinking under that
+look of almost cheerful benevolence, 'You can never give me back my
+child.'
+
+More than at the words, at the anguish in her face, his own had changed.
+
+'Will that ghost give you no rest?' he said.
+
+'Yes, oh, yes.' She was calm again. 'I see life is nobler than I knew.
+There is work to do.'
+
+On her way to the great folding doors, once again he stopped her.
+
+'Why should you think that it's only you these ten years have taught
+something to? Why not give even a man credit for a willingness to learn
+something of life, and for being sorry--profoundly sorry--for the pain
+his instruction has cost others? You seem to think I've taken it all
+quite lightly. That's not fair. All my life, ever since you disappeared,
+the thought of you has hurt. I would give anything I possess to know
+you--were happy again.'
+
+'Oh, happiness!'
+
+'Why shouldn't you find it still?'
+
+He said it with a significance that made her stare, and then?--
+
+'I see! she couldn't help telling you about Allen Trent--Lady John
+couldn't!'
+
+He ignored the interpretation.
+
+'You're one of the people the years have not taken from, but given more
+to. You are more than ever----You haven't lost your beauty.'
+
+'The gods saw it was so little effectual, it wasn't worth taking away.'
+
+She stood staring out into the void. 'One woman's mishap--what is that?
+A thing as trivial to the great world as it's sordid in most eyes. But
+the time has come when a woman may look about her and say, What general
+significance has my secret pain? Does it "join on" to anything? And I
+find it _does_. I'm no longer simply a woman who has stumbled on the
+way.' With difficulty she controlled the shake in her voice. 'I'm one
+who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and
+the tears from her face--and said to herself not merely: Here's one
+luckless woman! but--here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if
+it can't be moved out of other women's way. And she calls people to come
+and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman, _by herself_, can move that
+rock of offence. But,' she ended with a sudden sombre flare of
+enthusiasm, 'if _many_ help, Geoffrey, the thing can be done.'
+
+He looked down on her from his height with a wondering pity.
+
+'Lord! how you care!' he said, while the mist deepened before his eyes.
+
+'Don't be so sad,' she said--not seeming to see his sadness was not for
+himself. It was as if she could not turn her back on him this last time
+without leaving him comforted. 'Shall I tell you a secret? Jean's ardent
+dreams needn't frighten you, if she has a child. _That_--from the
+beginning it was not the strong arm--it was the weakest, the little,
+little arms that subdued the fiercest of us.'
+
+He held out a shaking hand, so uncertain, that it might have been
+begging pity, or it might have been bestowing it. Even then she did not
+take it, but a great gentleness was in her face as she said--
+
+'You will have other children, Geoffrey; for me there was to be only
+one. Well, well,' she brushed the tears away, 'since men have tried, and
+failed to make a decent world for the little children to live in, it's
+as well some of us are childless. Yes,' she said quietly, taking up the
+hat and cloak, '_we_ are the ones who have no excuse for standing aloof
+from the fight!'
+
+Her hand was on the door.
+
+'Vida!'
+
+'What?'
+
+'You forgot something.'
+
+She looked back.
+
+He was signing the message. '_This_,' he said.
+
+She went out with the paper in her hand.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The following pages are advertisements of
+
+  THE MACMILLAN STANDARD LIBRARY
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+
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+
+EACH VOLUME, CLOTH, 12MO, 50 CENTS NET; POSTAGE, 10 CENTS EXTRA
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+ADDAMS--THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE CITY STREETS
+
+BY JANE ADDAMS
+
+"Shows such sanity, such breadth and tolerance of mind, and such
+penetration into the inner meanings of outward phenomena as to make it a
+book which no one can afford to miss."--_New York Times._
+
+
+BAILEY--THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+BY L. H. BAILEY
+
+"... clearly thought out, admirably written, and always stimulating in
+its generalization and in the perspectives it opens."--_Philadelphia
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+
+
+BAILEY AND HUNN--THE PRACTICAL GARDEN BOOK
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+BY L. H. BAILEY AND C E. HUNN
+
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+
+
+CAMPBELL--THE NEW THEOLOGY
+
+BY R. J. CAMPBELL
+
+"A fine contribution to the better thought of our times written in the
+spirit of the Master."--_St. Paul Dispatch._
+
+
+CLARK--THE CARE OF A HOUSE
+
+BY T. M. CLARK
+
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+CONYNGTON--HOW TO HELP: A MANUAL OF PRACTICAL CHARITY
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+BY MARY CONYNGTON
+
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+COOLIDGE--THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD POWER
+
+BY ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE
+
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+
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+CROLY--THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE
+
+BY HERBERT CROLY
+
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+
+
+DEVINE--MISERY AND ITS CAUSES
+
+BY EDWARD T. DEVINE
+
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+
+
+EARLE--HOME LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS
+
+BY ALICE MORSE EARLE
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+ELY--EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
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+BY RICHARD T. ELY
+
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+
+BY RICHARD T. ELY
+
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+This book should be a help to every man in active business
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+
+
+FRENCH--HOW TO GROW VEGETABLES
+
+BY ALLEN FRENCH
+
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+GOODYEAR--RENAISSANCE AND MODERN ART
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+W. H. GOODYEAR
+
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+HAPGOOD--ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE
+
+BY NORMAN HAPGOOD
+
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+HAULTAIN--THE MYSTERY OF GOLF
+
+BY ARNOLD HAULTAIN
+
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+HEARN--JAPAN: AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION
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+BY LAFCADIO HEARN
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+HILLIS--THE QUEST OF HAPPINESS
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+BY REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
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+HILLQUIT--SOCIALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
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+BY MORRIS HILLQUIT
+
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+
+HODGES--EVERYMAN'S RELIGION
+
+BY GEORGE HODGES
+
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+HORNE--DAVID LIVINGSTONE
+
+BY SILVESTER C. HORNE
+
+The centenary edition of this popular work. A clear, simple, narrative
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+
+
+HUNTER--POVERTY
+
+BY ROBERT HUNTER
+
+"Mr. Hunter's book is at once sympathetic and scientific. He brings to
+the task a store of practical experience in settlement work gathered in
+many parts of the country."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+HUNTER--SOCIALISTS AT WORK
+
+BY ROBERT HUNTER
+
+"A vivid, running characterization of the foremost personalities in the
+Socialist movement throughout the world."--_Review of Reviews._
+
+
+JEFFERSON--THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH
+
+BY CHARLES E. JEFFERSON
+
+"A book that should be read by every minister."
+
+
+KING--THE ETHICS OF JESUS
+
+BY HENRY CHURCHILL KING
+
+"I know no other study of the ethical teaching of Jesus so scholarly, so
+careful, clear and compact as this."--G. H. PALMER, Harvard University.
+
+
+KING--RATIONAL LIVING
+
+BY HENRY CHURCHILL KING
+
+"An able conspectus of modern psychological investigation, viewed from
+the Christian standpoint."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
+
+
+LONDON--THE WAR OF THE CLASSES
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+"Mr. London's book is thoroughly interesting, and his point of view is
+very different from that of the closest theorist."--_Springfield
+Republican._
+
+
+LONDON--REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+"Vigorous, socialistic essays, animating and insistent."
+
+
+LYON--HOW TO KEEP BEES FOR PROFIT
+
+BY EVERETT D. LYON
+
+"A book which gives an insight into the life history of the bee family,
+as well as telling the novice how to start an apiary and care for
+it."--_Country Life in America._
+
+
+MCLENNAN--A MANUAL OF PRACTICAL FARMING
+
+BY JOHN MCLENNAN
+
+"The author has placed before the reader in the simplest terms a means
+of assistance in the ordinary problems of farming."--_National
+Nurseryman._
+
+
+MABIE--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: POET, DRAMATIST, AND MAN
+
+BY HAMILTON W. MABIE
+
+"It is rather an interpretation than a record."--_Chicago Standard._
+
+
+MAHAFFY--RAMBLES AND STUDIES IN GREECE
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+"To the intelligent traveler and lover of Greece this volume will prove
+a most sympathetic guide and companion."
+
+
+MATHEWS--THE CHURCH AND THE CHANGING ORDER
+
+BY SHAILER MATHEWS
+
+"The book throughout is characterized by good sense and restraint.... A
+notable book and one that every Christian may read with profit."--_The
+Living Church._
+
+
+MATHEWS--THE GOSPEL AND THE MODERN MAN
+
+BY SHAILER MATHEWS
+
+"A succinct statement of the essentials of the New
+Testament."--_Service._
+
+
+PATTEN--THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION
+
+BY SIMON N. PATTEN
+
+"A work of substantial value"--_Continent._
+
+
+PEABODY--THE APPROACH TO THE SOCIAL QUESTION
+
+BY FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY
+
+"This book is at once the most delightful, persuasive, and sagacious
+contribution to the subject."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+
+PIERCE--THE TARIFF AND THE TRUSTS
+
+BY FRANKLIN PIERCE
+
+"An excellent campaign document for a
+non-protectionist."--_Independent._
+
+
+RAUSCHENBUSCH--CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS
+
+BY WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH
+
+"It is a book to like, to learn from, and to be charmed with."--_New
+York Times._
+
+
+RIIS--THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN
+
+BY JACOB RIIS
+
+"Its romance and vivid incident make it as varied and delightful as any
+romance."--_Publisher's Weekly._
+
+
+RIIS--THEODORE ROOSEVELT, THE CITIZEN
+
+BY JACOB RIIS
+
+"A refreshing and stimulating picture."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+RYAN--A LIVING WAGE; ITS ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS
+
+BY REV. J. A. RYAN
+
+"The most judicious and balanced discussion at the disposal of the
+general reader."--_World To-day._
+
+
+ST. MAUR--A SELF-SUPPORTING HOME
+
+BY KATE V. ST. MAUR
+
+"Each chapter is the detailed account of all the work necessary for one
+month--in the vegetable garden, among the small fruits, with the fowls,
+guineas, rabbits, and in every branch of husbandry to be met with on the
+small farm."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+
+SHERMAN--WHAT IS SHAKESPEARE?
+
+BY L. A. SHERMAN
+
+"Emphatically a work without which the library of the Shakespeare
+student will be incomplete."--_Daily Telegram._
+
+
+SIDGWICK--HOME LIFE IN GERMANY
+
+BY A. SIDGWICK
+
+"A vivid picture of social life and customs in Germany to-day."
+
+
+SMITH--THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
+
+BY J. ALLEN SMITH
+
+"Not since Bryce's 'American Commonwealth' has a book been produced
+which deals so searchingly with American political institutions and
+their history."--_New York Evening Telegram._
+
+
+SPARGO--SOCIALISM
+
+BY JOHN SPARGO
+
+"One of the ablest expositions of Socialism that has ever been
+written."--_New York Evening Call._
+
+
+TARBELL--HISTORY OF GREEK ART
+
+BY T. B. TARBELL
+
+"A sympathetic and understanding conception of the golden age of art."
+
+
+VALENTINE--HOW TO KEEP HENS FOR PROFIT
+
+BY C. S. VALENTINE
+
+"Beginners and seasoned poultrymen will find in it much of
+value."--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+VAN DYKE--THE GOSPEL FOR A WORLD OF SIN
+
+BY HENRY VAN DYKE
+
+"One of the basic books of true Christian thought of to-day and of all
+times."--_Boston Courier._
+
+
+VAN DYKE--THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
+
+BY HENRY VAN DYKE
+
+"Undoubtedly the most notable interpretation in years of the real
+America. It compares favorably with Bryce's 'American
+Commonwealth.'"--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+VEBLEN--THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS
+
+BY THORSTEIN B. VEBLEN
+
+"The most valuable recent contribution to the elucidation of this
+subject."--_London Times._
+
+
+WELLS--NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
+
+BY H. G. WELLS
+
+"As a presentation of Socialistic thought as it is working to-day, this
+is the most judicious and balanced discussion at the disposal of the
+general reader."--_World To-day._
+
+
+WHITE--THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
+
+BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
+
+"The present status of society in America. An excellent antidote to the
+pessimism of modern writers on our social system."--_Baltimore Sun._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN FICTION LIBRARY
+
+A new and important series of some of the best popular novels which have
+been published in recent years.
+
+These successful books are now made available at a popular price in
+response to the insistent demand for cheaper editions.
+
+EACH VOLUME, CLOTH, 12MO, 50 CENTS NET; POSTAGE, 10 CENTS EXTRA
+
+
+ALLEN--A KENTUCKY CARDINAL
+
+BY JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+"A narrative, told with naive simplicity, of how a man who was devoted
+to his fruits and flowers and birds came to fall in love with a fair
+neighbor."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+ALLEN--THE REIGN OF LAW, _A TALE OF THE KENTUCKY HEMPFIELDS_
+
+BY JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+"Mr. Allen has style as original and almost as perfectly finished as
+Hawthorne's.... And rich in the qualities that are lacking in so many
+novels of the period."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+
+ATHERTON--PATIENCE SPARHAWK
+
+BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+"One of the most interesting works of the foremost American novelist."
+
+
+CHILD--JIM HANDS
+
+BY RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
+
+"A big, simple, leisurely moving chronicle of life. Commands the
+profoundest respect and admiration. Jim is a real man, sound and
+fine."--_Daily News._
+
+
+CRAWFORD--THE HEART OF ROME
+
+BY MARION CRAWFORD
+
+"A story of underground mysterie."
+
+
+CRAWFORD--FAIR MARGARET: A PORTRAIT
+
+BY MARION CRAWFORD
+
+"A story of modern life in Italy, visualizing the country and its
+people, and warm with the red blood of romance and melodrama."--_Boston
+Transcript._
+
+
+DAVIS--A FRIEND OF CAESAR
+
+BY WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS
+
+"There are many incidents so vivid, so brilliant, that they fix
+themselves in the memory."--NANCY HUSTON BANKS in _The Bookman_.
+
+
+DRUMMOND--THE JUSTICE OF THE KING
+
+BY HAMILTON DRUMMOND
+
+"Read the story for the sake of the living, breathing people, the
+adventures, but most for the sake of the boy who served love and the
+King."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
+
+
+ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN
+
+"It is full of nature in many phases--of breeze and sunshine, of the
+glory of the land, and the sheer joy of living."--_New York Times._
+
+
+GALE--LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE
+
+BY ZONA GALE
+
+"... full of fresh feeling and grace of style, a draught from the
+fountain of youth."--_Outlook._
+
+
+HERRICK--THE COMMON LOT
+
+BY ROBERT HERRICK
+
+"A story of present-day life, intensely real in its picture of a young
+architect whose ideals in the beginning were, at their highest, aesthetic
+rather than spiritual. It is an unusual novel of great interest."
+
+
+LONDON--ADVENTURE
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+"No reader of Jack London's stories need be told that this abounds with
+romantic and dramatic incident."--_Los Angeles Tribune._
+
+
+LONDON--BURNING DAYLIGHT
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+"Jack London has outdone himself in 'Burning Daylight.'"--_The
+Springfield Union._
+
+
+LOTI--DISENCHANTED
+
+BY PIERRE LOTI
+
+"It gives a more graphic picture of the life of the rich Turkish women
+of to-day than anything that has ever been written."--_Brooklyn Daily
+Eagle._
+
+
+LUCAS--MR. INGLESIDE
+
+BY E. V. LUCAS
+
+"He displays himself as an intellectual and amusing observer of life's
+foibles with a hero characterized by inimitable kindness and
+humor."--_The Independent._
+
+
+MASON--THE FOUR FEATHERS
+
+BY A. E. W. MASON
+
+"'The Four Feathers' is a first-rate story, with more legitimate thrills
+than any novel we have read in a long time."--_New York Press._
+
+
+NORRIS--MOTHER
+
+BY KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+"Worth its weight in gold."--_Catholic Columbian._
+
+
+OXENHAM--THE LONG ROAD
+
+BY JOHN OXENHAM
+
+"'The Long Road' is a tragic, heart-gripping story of Russian political
+and social conditions."--_The Craftsman._
+
+
+PRYOR--THE COLONEL'S STORY
+
+BY MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR
+
+"The story is one in which the spirit of the Old South figures largely;
+adventure and romance have their play and carry the plot to a satisfying
+end."
+
+
+REMINGTON--ERMINE OF THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+BY JOHN REMINGTON
+
+"A very original and remarkable novel wonderful in its vigor and
+freshness."
+
+
+ROBERTS--KINGS IN EXILE
+
+BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
+
+"The author catches the spirit of forest and sea life, and the reader
+comes to have a personal love and knowledge of our animal
+friends."--_Boston Globe._
+
+
+ROBINS--THE CONVERT
+
+BY ELIZABETH ROBINS
+
+"'The Convert' devotes itself to the exploitation of the recent
+suffragist movement in England. It is a book not easily forgotten, by
+any thoughtful reader."--_Chicago Evening Post._
+
+
+ROBINS--A DARK LANTERN
+
+BY ELIZABETH ROBINS
+
+A powerful and striking novel, English in scene, which takes an
+essentially modern view of society and of certain dramatic situations.
+
+
+WARD--DAVID GRIEVE
+
+BY MRS. HUMPHREY WARD
+
+"A perfect picture of life, remarkable for its humor and extraordinary
+success at character analysis."
+
+
+WELLS--THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+
+BY H. G. WELLS
+
+"Mr. Wells is beyond question the most plausible romancer of the
+time."--_The New York Tribune._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN JUVENILE LIBRARY
+
+This collection of juvenile books contains works of standard quality, on
+a variety of subjects--history, biography, fiction, science, and
+poetry--carefully chosen to meet the needs and interests of both boys
+and girls.
+
+_EACH VOLUME, CLOTH, 12MO, 50 CENTS NET; POSTAGE, 10 CENTS EXTRA_
+
+
+ALTSHELER--THE HORSEMEN OF THE PLAINS
+
+BY JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
+
+"A story of the West, of Indians, of scouts, trappers, fur traders, and,
+in short, of everything that is dear to the imagination of a healthy
+American boy."--_New York Sun._
+
+
+BACON--WHILE CAROLINE WAS GROWING
+
+BY JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+
+"Only a genuine lover of children, and a keenly sympathetic observer of
+human nature, could have given us a book as this."--_Boston Herald._
+
+
+CARROLL--ALICE'S ADVENTURES, AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
+
+BY LEWIS CARROLL
+
+"One of the immortal books for children."
+
+
+DIX--A LITTLE CAPTIVE LAD
+
+BY MARIE BEULAH DIX
+
+"The human interest is strong, and children are sure to like
+it."--_Washington Times._
+
+
+GREENE--PICKETT'S GAP
+
+BY HOMER GREENE
+
+"The story presents a picture of truth and honor that cannot fail to
+have a vivid impression upon the reader."--_Toledo Blade._
+
+
+LUCAS--SLOWCOACH
+
+BY E. V. LUCAS
+
+"The record of an English family's coaching tour in a great
+old-fashioned wagon. A charming narrative, as quaint and original as its
+name."--_Booknews Monthly._
+
+
+MABIE--BOOK OF CHRISTMAS
+
+BY H. W. MABIE
+
+"A beautiful collection of Christmas verse and prose in which all the
+old favorites will be found in an artistic setting."--_The St. Louis
+Mirror._
+
+
+MAJOR--THE BEARS OF BLUE RIVER
+
+BY CHARLES MAJOR
+
+"An exciting story with all the thrills the title implies."
+
+
+MAJOR--UNCLE TOM ANDY BILL
+
+BY CHARLES MAJOR
+
+"A stirring story full of bears, Indians, and hidden
+treasures."--_Cleveland Leader._
+
+
+NESBIT--THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
+
+BY E. NESBIT
+
+"A delightful story revealing the author's intimate knowledge of
+juvenile ways."--_The Nation._
+
+
+WHYTE--THE STORY BOOK GIRLS
+
+BY CHRISTINA G. WHYTE
+
+"A book that all girls will read with delight--a sweet, wholesome story
+of girl life."
+
+
+WRIGHT--DREAM FOX STORY BOOK
+
+BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
+
+"The whole book is delicious with its wise and kindly humor, its just
+perspective of the true value of things."
+
+
+WRIGHT--AUNT JIMMY'S WILL
+
+BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
+
+"Barbara has written no more delightful book than this."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[beginning of moved advertising]
+
+THE BEST NEW BOOKS AT THE LEAST PRICES
+
+Each volume in the Macmillan Libraries sells for 50 cents, never more,
+wherever books are sold.
+
+THE MACMILLAN STANDARD LIBRARY
+
+  ADDAMS--The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.
+  BAILEY--The Country Life Movement in the United States.
+  BAILEY & HUNN--The Practical Garden Book.
+  CAMPBELL--The New Theology.
+  CLARK--The Care of a House.
+  CONYNGTON--How to Help: A Manual of Practical Charity.
+  COOLIDGE--The United States as a World Power.
+  CROLY--The Promise of American Life.
+  DEVINE--Misery and Its Causes.
+  EARLE--Home Life in Colonial Days.
+  ELY--Evolution of Industrial Society.
+  ELY--Monopolies and Trusts.
+  FRENCH--How to Grow Vegetables.
+  GOODYEAR--Renaissance and Modern Art.
+  HAPGOOD--Lincoln, Abraham, The Man of the People.
+  HAULTAIN--The Mystery of Golf.
+  HEARN--Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation.
+  HILLIS--The Quest of Happiness.
+  HILLQUIT--Socialism in Theory and Practice.
+  HODGES--Everyman's Religion.
+  HORNE--David Livingstone.
+  HUNTER--Poverty.
+  HUNTER--Socialists at Work.
+  JEFFERSON--The Building of the Church.
+  KING--The Ethics of Jesus.
+  KING--Rational Living.
+  LONDON--The War of the Classes.
+  LONDON--Revolution and Other Essays.
+  LYON--How to Keep Bees for Profit.
+  MCLENNAN--A Manual of Practical Farming.
+  MABIE--William Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man.
+  MAHAFFY--Rambles and Studies in Greece.
+  MATHEWS--The Church and the Changing Order.
+  MATHEWS--The Gospel and the Modern Man.
+  PATTEN--The Social Basis of Religion.
+  PEABODY--The Approach to the Social Question.
+  PIERCE--The Tariff and the Trusts.
+  RAUSCHENBUSCH--Christianity and the Social Crisis.
+  RIIS--The Making of an American Citizen.
+  RIIS--Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen.
+  RYAN--A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects.
+  ST. MAUR--A Self-supporting Home.
+  SHERMAN--What is Shakespeare?
+  SIDGWICK--Home Life in Germany.
+  SMITH--The Spirit of the American Government.
+  SPARGO--Socialism.
+  TARBELL--History of Greek Art.
+  VALENTINE--How to Keep Hens for Profit.
+  VAN DYKE--The Gospel for a World of Sin.
+  VAN DYKE--The Spirit of America.
+  VEBLEN--The Theory of the Leisure Class.
+  WELLS--New Worlds for Old.
+  WHITE--The Old Order Changeth.
+
+THE MACMILLAN FICTION LIBRARY
+
+  ALLEN--A Kentucky Cardinal.
+  ALLEN--The Reign of Law.
+  ATHERTON--Patience Sparhawk.
+  CHILD--Jim Hands.
+  CRAWFORD--The Heart of Rome.
+  CRAWFORD--Fair Margaret: A Portrait.
+  DAVIS--A Friend of Caesar.
+  DRUMMOND--The Justice of the King.
+  ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN.
+  GALE--Loves of Pelleas and Etarre.
+  HERRICK--The Common Lot.
+  LONDON--Adventure.
+  LONDON--Burning Daylight.
+  LOTI--Disenchanted.
+  LUCAS--Mr. Ingleside.
+  MASON--The Four Feathers.
+  NORRIS--Mother.
+  OXENHAM--The Long Road.
+  PRYOR--The Colonel's Story.
+  REMINGTON--Ermine of the Yellowstone.
+  ROBERTS--Kings in Exile.
+  ROBINS--The Convert.
+  ROBINS--A Dark Lantern.
+  WARD--David Grieve.
+  WELLS--The Wheels of Chance.
+
+THE MACMILLAN JUVENILE LIBRARY
+
+  ALTSHELER--The Horsemen of the Plains.
+  BACON--While Caroline Was Growing.
+  CARROLL--Alice's Adventures and Through the Looking Glass.
+  DIX--A Little Captive Lad.
+  GREENE--Pickett's Gap.
+  LUCAS--Slow Coach.
+  MABIE--Book of Christmas.
+  MAJOR--The Bears of Blue River.
+  MAJOR--Uncle Tom Andy Bill.
+  NESBIT--The Railway Children.
+  WHYTE--The Story Book Girls.
+  WRIGHT--Dream Fox Story Book.
+  WRIGHT--Aunt Jimmy's Will.
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+ NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
+ ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+
+ LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
+ MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+TORONTO
+
+  [end of moved advertising]
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
+as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
+typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the
+like) have been corrected. Corrections [in brackets] in the
+text are noted below:
+
+page 7: hyphen removed
+
+    about that long'--he measured less than an inch on his minute
+    fore-finger[hyphen removed]--'with long holes through so they
+
+page 9: typographical error corrected
+
+    refusal to let attenion[attention] go was mitigated by something
+    in the quietness,
+
+page 17: hyphen removed
+
+    'Why?' said Mr. Freddy, sticking in his eye-glass.[hyphen removed]
+
+page 36: hyphen added
+
+    kept watching with a kind of half-absent-[hyphen added]minded scorn
+
+page 102: quotation typographical error corrected
+
+    Dr. Pankhurst and Mr. Jacob Bright passed a second reading."[']
+
+page 105: quotation typographical error corrected
+
+    next monster petition to Parliament asking for Woman's Suffrage."[']
+
+page 110: typographical error corrected
+
+    the vivid scarlet lips; almost spleepy[sleepy] the heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+page 125: quotation typographical error corrected
+
+    Those of you who want to see women free, hold up your hands."[']
+
+page 248: typographical error corrected
+    'We got a gryte deal to do with our wgyes[wyges], we women has.
+
+page 250: quotation typographical error corrected
+
+    'Why didn't you stay where I left you?"['] he answered, without
+
+page 252: added single quotation mark
+
+    a rich chuckle. 'She's a educatin' of us![']
+
+page 258: added double quotation mark
+
+    "Look at this big crowd. W'y, we're all _men_! If the
+    women want the vote, w'y ain't they here to s'y so?["] Well,
+    I'll tell you w'y. It's because they've 'ad to get
+
+page 260: typographical error corrected
+
+    in a turtle-esque fashion highty[highly] provocative,
+
+page 265: quotation typographical error corrected
+
+    whose crime is, they ask for the vote?'["] But try as I would,
+
+page 292: typographical error corrected
+
+    Stonor as he came in seemed to take no acccount[account] of those
+
+page 299: typographical error corrected
+
+    for that moment he semed[seemed] as bankrupt in denunciation
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONVERT***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 26420.txt or 26420.zip *******
+
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