III
Night came, and the night had no terrors for Julia. Her Hindu master had taught her the science of relaxation, and given her certain powerful suggestions, one being that she should fall asleep within half an hour of going to bed and not awaken for eight hours.
The morning, therefore, found her refreshed; and although she was still annoyed at the discovery that she had not made herself over once for all, she had no intention of rocking her feminine ego in her arms again for some time to come. Another lesson she had learned was to switch thought off and on; she relegated her femaleness to the depths, and turned her attention to the work that had drawn her to England. The monthly bulletins with which Mrs. Herbert had remorselessly pursued her, alone would have kept her informed on every phase of the Woman’s War, and she had heard somewhat of it elsewhere. She was satisfied that in this new and menacing demand for the ballot, women were prompted neither by vanity nor mere superfluous energy, but by an experience with poverty which had taught them that this great problem was their peculiar province. They were prepared to devote their lives to its solution, to court sacrifices such as man had never contemplated; and they had the time, the instinct, the practical knowledge, which would enable them, if armed with political power, to solve this hideous and disgraceful problem once for all.
Julia had driven through a famine district in India and felt her brain wither, her veins freeze, as she stared at mile after mile of starving skeletons, lying or huddled by the roadside, feebly begging with eyes that seemed to accuse the Almighty for multiplying the superfluous of earth. What to do for these wretches, dying by the million, she had no more idea than Great Britain herself; but if it was beyond human power to grapple with the question of starving millions in a season of drought in India, so much the more reason to attack the less desperate but no less abominable question in a land where the poor were the result of the callousness of man. In dealing with this complicated problem many lessons would be learned that might later be applied to poverty on the grand scale.
The ballot, therefore, was but a means to an end, and to assist in winning it she had returned; meaning to devote to it all her time, her energies, and her talents. But must she join this new “militant movement”? She frowned with distaste. As to many at that date, it seemed both foolish and vulgar. Moreover, like all fastidious women that wish for fame, she shrank from notoriety, from figuring in any sort of public mess. However! She should soon be given her rôle, and whatever it might be, she was resolved to play it to a finish, and without protest.
Meanwhile she was eating her breakfast, the one appetizing meal in England, and when she was further refreshed, she opened the newspaper on the tray, remembering the disaster in San Francisco. The news was more encouraging. The city was still burning, but the loss of life had been comparatively small, and the inhabitants were either escaping in droves to the towns across the bay or camping on the hills behind San Francisco. Once more Julia’s thoughts flew to Daniel Tay, and she conceived the idea of writing to him. Surely an old friend could do no less, and now if ever he would be grateful for remembrance.
Therefore, as soon as she was dressed, she went to the desk in the drawing-room and committed the most momentous act of her life. She wrote to Tay a long and lively letter, full of feminine sympathy, of concern for his welfare and for that of his city. There were many allusions to their brief but unforgotten friendship (she had almost forgotten it!), references to his boyish sympathy, and assurances that she was now well, happy, free, and full of interest in life. “Do write to me,” she concluded. “That is, if you ever receive this; and tell me all about your life in the past ten years. Did you go on your ten-thousand-dollar spree? Have you made your great fortune? Are you ruling the destinies of your city? I have always felt sure you would never stop at being merely a rich man. And Mrs. Bode? And Ella?” (alas!) “I do hope they have not suffered too much in this terrible disaster. If you like, if you have not wholly forgotten me all these years, I’ll write you of my life in the East these past four, and much else. I remember how freely I used to talk to you, dear little boy that you were, and I don’t think I have ever talked so freely to any one else. It would be rather exciting to correspond with you. But if you have quite lost interest in me, at least remember that I have not in you,—no! not for one moment—and long to hear how you have weathered this frightful calamity.”
Now, why do women lie like that? Julia was as truthful as any mortal who is a component part of that complicated organism known as society may be, but she wrote these lines without flinching, quite persuaded for the moment, indeed, that she meant every word of them. Perhaps here lies the explanation, in so much as all memories are alive in the subconsciousness, and leap to the mind the instant their slumbers are disturbed by the essential vibration; there to assume full and dazzling control. Let it go at that.
Julia, as a matter of fact, looked somewhat dubiously at the last paragraph of her letter. It was not in the least Oriental. She was also astonished at the length of the letter itself. She had long since discovered, however, that there are some people to whom one can write, and many more to whom one cannot. Oddly enough Nigel Herbert was of the last. He wrote a colorless letter himself, never striking that spark which fires the epistolary ardor; but Julia reflected that she could write for hours on end to Daniel Tay; she felt as if embarked on some vital current which leaped direct from London to San Francisco, no less than seven thousand miles. She sealed the letter.
Then she discovered that the sun was out and remembered that she had an aunt. Her feelings for her only relative in England were not of unmixed cordiality, but it would be something at least to bask for a little in the presence of one so entirely satisfied with herself. Moreover, she wanted news of her mother; and this duty was inevitable in any case.
She determined to walk the short distance to Tilney Street as she wished to post the letter herself. Still exhilarated at the writing of it, she ignored the mud of the streets, sniffed the old familiar grimy air, with some abatement of nostalgia for the East, and even found amusement in the windows of Bond Street.
When she came to the first pillar box and applied her letter to its yawning mouth, she paused suddenly, assailed by one of those subtle feminine presentiments which her long residence in the Orient had not taught her to despise. She withdrew the letter and walked on, smiling, but disturbed. She even passed two more boxes, but at the fourth shot the letter in. Her planets had long since made a fatalist of her, more or less. And she had adventurous blood.
She found Mrs. Winstone risen, groomed, coifed, with even her smile on, and seated before her desk in the front ell of the drawing-room, answering notes and cards of invitation.
“Ah, Julia!” she said casually, as she rose and offered her cheek. “Home again? How nice. But that coat and skirt, my dear! Quite old style.”
“Rather!” said Julia, making herself comfortable. “I took them out with me. Who’s your tailor now?”
“Oh, a new man. A duck. I’ll take you to him this afternoon. Just left one of the big houses, so his prices are quite possible—at present. Glad you’ve kept your complexion. How is it you don’t sunburn?”
“I don’t fancy people born in the tropics ever do. Glad you haven’t grown fat.”
“I’d put on a bit if it weren’t the fashion to look like a plank back and front. I’ve got to the age where I’d look better filled out. ’Fraid I’m really gettin’ on. Beaux are younger every year.”
“You look quite unchanged to me,” said Julia, politely. “How’s the duke?”
“Quite fit, I believe. They’re still at Bosquith. Margaret broke her leg huntin’.”
“Have you heard from my mother lately? I have not, for several months. I had hoped to find a letter here.”
“I got her usual quarterly page the other day. She seems well enough. I’ve been to Nevis since you left. Nerves got rackety, and the doctor told me to go where I’d really be quiet. I was! But I shouldn’t wonder if I went again some day. Never looked so well in my life as when I came back. Simply vegetated.”
“And how does my mother look? I cannot imagine her changed—but—it is a good many years!”
“She looks exactly the same. Ain’t you ever goin’ back?”
“Not until she sends for me. I can’t help feeling that she doesn’t want me,—prefers not to be actively reminded of the last and most tragic disappointment of her life. I sometimes wonder that she writes to me. Her letters are even briefer than those to you.”
“Perhaps you are right. She hasn’t forgiven you—or herself. I tried to tell her some of your charmin’ experiences with Harold,—there was so little to talk about, I thought it might be interestin’ to see how she took it,—but she wouldn’t listen!”
“Poor mother! What a life! I wonder if she would let me have Fanny?”
“Fanny?”
“Yes, I am quite alone, you know. I could do for her nicely, and it would almost be like having a child of my own.”
“I detest Fanny,” said Mrs. Winstone, with some show of human emotion. “She’s a minx. Jane will have her hands full three or four years from now.”
“She was such a dear little thing.”
“Well, she’s a little devil now. I don’t say she mightn’t be halfway decent if she’d led a life like other children, but she’s never played with a white child, and rules those pic’nies like a she-dragon—she’s not too unlike Jane in some things. Her only companion is a washed-out middle-aged governess, who might as well try to manage a hurricane. Jane vows she shall never marry. Her mistake in France seems to have fixed her hatred of man once for all, and although Fanny bores her, she’s of no two minds as to her duty toward the brat. She is never to meet a young man of her own class, if you please, and as soon as she is old enough is to be trained in all the duties relating to the estate. Nice time Jane’ll have preventin’ Fanny meetin’ men if only one sets foot on the island; and there’s talk of rebuildin’ Bath House. She’s overcharged with vitality, that child, she’s a will of iron, and she’s already an adept at deceivin’ her grandmother—no mean accomplishment! And she’ll get worse instead of better in that ghastly life. I wouldn’t trust her across the street three years from now.”
“Oh, the poor little thing! She must be rescued. Surely if my mother doesn’t care for her she’ll be the more willing to give her up. But she must, a little. She was strict with me, but always kind and even affectionate.”
“She’s not to Fanny. She looks upon her as a plague; and with good reason, for a noisier or more messy child I never saw. But she’ll do her duty as she sees it.”
“I believe Fanny is really adorable. I shall write at once and beg for her.”
“You won’t get her, and you needn’t regret it. I’m no fool where my sex is concerned: Fanny’s the sort that’s put into the world to make trouble. What are your plans? Shall you take a flat in town?”
“It will depend.” Julia paused a moment and then hurled her bomb. “I’ve come back to enroll in the Woman’s War.”
“What?” Mrs. Winstone looked about to faint; then her expression became stony. “Why, women are disgracin’ their sex, makin’ perfect fools of themselves! Bridgit Herbert must have gone mad. All her friends will cut her. A woman of her class fightin’ men and sleepin’ in prison! She deserved all she got, and so will you if you’ve anything to do with these tatterdermalion females shriekin’ for notoriety. That’s all they’re after. Forcin’ their way into the House of Commons! No wonder the men are disgusted. It’s a middle-class movement, anyhow. You! That’s the reason, I suppose, you don’t mind wearin’ a coat and skirt four years old.”
“Oh, but I do mind! I hope you’ll take me to your tailor this very day.”
“There! I knew you were jokin’. I should simply retire if I had a suffragette in the family. Come down to luncheon and then we’ll go out and shop.”
IV
During the early weeks of this same year, Christabel Pankhurst had established in London a branch of the Woman’s Social and Political Union founded in Manchester in 1903 by Mrs. Pankhurst. The rooms were in Park Walk, Chelsea, and here were the headquarters of that “Militant Movement” so execrated by the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage Societies, and by Society in general. Their numbers were few, their funds were almost nil, their years, with one or two exceptions, absurdly young, they were thrown entirely upon one another for sympathy and approval, a goodly proportion had already been severely pummelled by men twice their size, and in the proportion of three or more to one, and several were still in hospital, injured, perhaps for life. But they had made all England talk about them, and a few, a very few, farsighted men had apprehended them as a definite and permanent factor in the politics of the twentieth century.
Of these was Nigel Herbert, and it was from him that Julia learned all that she did not know already of their history. Bridgit had sent her clippings from newspapers containing references to the opening of the campaign by Miss Pankhurst and Annie Kenny, at the first great Liberal meeting of the General Election in October, which resulted in their arrest and imprisonment. At Acca she had heard the movement discussed by English pilgrims; and in English newspapers, read in continental reading-rooms, she had come across many comments—indignant, sarcastic, infuriate—upon the performances of these outrageous females. But from Bridgit she had not heard since a few days before that lady’s own battle royal, and it was to Nigel that she turned for unimpassioned information. He had told her something in the train, and he gave a concise history of the new movement as soon as he was permitted once more to sun himself in her presence.
“They’re here to stay,” he said. “I know six or eight of them personally; been making a study of them, although they don’t know it. They’re like no other women under the sun—nor any sun that has ever shone. They’ve a new group of brain cells, and something new and big is coming out of it. The only historical analogy I know of is those old martyrs that died in the cause of some new departure in religion; those that make such excellent subjects for stained-glass windows. They’ve got the same look those old leader-martyrs had when chained up to the stake and waiting for the faggot. The same grim patient mouths, the same clairvoyant eyes, as if looking straight at the unborn millions liberated by the martyrdom of the few. Their enthusiasm is cold—and eternal. They are as deliberate as death. There are no better brains in the world. Precious few as good. They never take a step that isn’t calculated beforehand, and they never take a step backward. Discouragement and fear are sensations they have never experienced. When they are hurt they don’t know it. They fear injury or death no more than they fear the brutes that maul them. In short, they’re a new force let loose into the world; and the geese outside put them down as hysterical females. But if this silly old world had always been quick to see and wise to act we’d have no history. So there you are.”
And the next day Julia accepted this estimate without reserve. Having introduced herself at headquarters, registered, and paid her dues, she sat for a time listening to a quick incisive debate upon all steps to be taken in the House of Commons, on the night of the 25th, in case the Woman’s Suffrage Resolution, for which Mr. Kier Hardie had secured a place, should be talked out by its enemies.
After a time Julia forgot to listen, being quite convinced that they would act as they purposed to act, and make no misstep. Their looks interested her far more than their words. With possibly two exceptions, whose flesh gave them a superficially conventional appearance, they did not look like women at all. They looked pure brain, sexless, selfless, ruthless. Most of them had as little flesh as it is possible to carry and live, as if Nature herself had sent them into the world trained and hardened for fight and for no other purpose whatever. Julia saw not the slightest evidence of personal ambition in those grim set faces, with eyes that were preternaturally keen in debate, and, to use Nigel’s word, clairvoyant in repose; merely that stern inflexible purpose which has been the equipment of martyrs since Society emerged out of chaos; but directed by a mental power, a modern balance, that saved them from the stupidities of fanaticism. That they were ready to go to the stake, or the hangman, she did not doubt, and it was possible that some of them would, unless the enemy came to its senses in time; but that they would fail in their purpose ultimately was as unthinkable as that they would ever lay down their arms. Truly a new force unleashed. Were these the immortal women?
Julia felt thrilled, exalted. All the iron in her nature, a gift of inheritance which had saved her from degradation and melancholy and the common foolishness of women; which, in a word, had made her stronger than life, rose from its long sleep and exulted. Here was a career, and here were associates worth while. The cause of woman in the abstract had left her cold, but when she realized the immense brain power, the unqualified courage, the unhuman endurance, imperative to put the right sort of new life into a great but long moribund cause, and sweep it to a triumphant finish, she felt on fire with enthusiasm; the abilities she had so long played with crystallized suddenly and leapt at their opportunity. Some day she should command these women, or their successors, and to do that would be as great a feat as to lead them to victory. She was more than willing to consecrate her personal ambition to the future of her sex, but that she never could lose sight of it would but give her an additional power. She could become as grim, as relentless, as indomitable as they, but she doubted she could ever be as selfless, or if she wished to be. For a moment she envied as much as she admired them, but the personality she once had believed murdered by her husband had long since revived with a double vitality, and the time was not yet when it could dissolve in the crucible of a cause.
When the meeting broke up she asked to be given active work to do, being well aware that one must serve before fit to command. They had been taught to expect her by Mrs. Herbert, and her offer of service as well as her donation was thankfully accepted. One of their number was told off to instruct her, and she was ordered to hold herself in readiness to go to the Midlands and take part in a by-election, working to defeat the liberal candidate if he persisted in his attitude of hostility to woman’s demand for the vote. She and her present instructor, Mrs. Lime, should heckle him when he spoke, canvass, distribute suffrage literature, and speak against him in the market-place, or at any corner where they could gather a crowd.
The latter part of the program was by no means to Julia’s taste, but she had made up her mind to obey orders, and she took them in the same matter-of-fact fashion in which they were delivered. Mentally, she shrugged her shoulders. If these women could stand it, she could. There was not a coarse, a vulgar, a hard face among them. And should she not exult in the prospect of a stirring career, the constant outlet for her energies, the lethe for her womanhood? The more adventurous the details, the better!
“She looks like Lady Macbeth,” said one of the girls as Julia departed with an armful of literature, and accompanied by Mrs. Lime. “Cool, calculating, ambitious, intellectual, unscrupulous in the grand manner.”
“H’m,” said another, dubiously. “Lady Macbeth had her weaknesses, and lost her mind,—something Mrs. France must retain if she is to be as useful to this cause as Mrs. Herbert and Lady Dark would have us believe.”
“Lady Macbeth up to date, then. The original was shut up in a castle with too few interests and opportunities; nothing to distract her mind. And remember she accomplished her purpose first.”
V
If one will dig deeply enough into the psychology of those great enthusiasms which have altered the course of history, one will generally discover some personal, overlaid, self-forgotten motive which bred the martyrs and kindled the leaders necessary to arrest the attention of the world, and make the vast number of converts essential to give any cause dignity and insure to it victory. It may be an acute disappointment in human nature, some assault upon highest instincts or treasured convictions, or even disappointed ambition; but above all is it likely to have its seed in that burning hatred of injustice which animates all minds with a natural bias for reform. The Prophets may have been inspired and preordained, but leaders and martyrs hardly, although they are entitled to the first rank in the history of the Great Causes.
With Bridgit Herbert it had been not only the profound reaction of a fine mind from the empty life of society, but the bitter recognition that she had lavished the wealth of her nature on a handsome fool, who laughed and kissed her when her ego struggled out of its embryo and looked for wings on his. Then had come the amazing discovery that the men she most liked, of whose friendly devotion she had felt assured, had no possible use for her when they found that she purposed to console herself with her intellect instead of with themselves; that so slight was the impression the greatness in her nature had made on them, they would be the first to balk her on every issue she held most dear. Her vanity soon healed, but she had been cut to the quick; and all the obstinacy, scorn, and strength in her arose, and counselled her to pay back to man something of what woman had suffered at his hand throughout the ages.
It is possible that if Christabel Pankhurst, bred on suffrage as she was, had not been refused admission to the Bar when she applied to the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she might not have conceived the Militant Movement at the psychological moment. Julia needed no further inducement to enter the career she once for all elected to follow that afternoon in Chelsea, but she, too, needed the sharp personal jolt to banish the abstract, and substitute the concrete enthusiasm; and she got it long before her impersonal ardor had time to cool.
Ten days after she had received her first instructions, she arrived with Mrs. Lime in the Midland town where the by-election campaign was to open. Mrs. Lime was an experienced heckler, and was already acquainted with the inside of prison and gaol, but unknown in the Midlands. Julia had found much inspiration in Mrs. Lime, a typical product of that awakening which began in 1901. Her small body looked as if it might have an unbreakable skeleton of steel, and her gaunt, dark, rapt face was deeply lined, although she was but twenty-four. Like Annie Kenny, she had been a half-timer at the loom at the age of ten, and had worked in the cotton mill until she married a plumber eight years later. Her husband died when she was twenty-two, and she was using his savings in the cause which she knew to be the one hope for thousands of girls, overworked and underfed, as she had been. In her early youth she had managed, against desperate odds, to acquire an education of sorts, and her speeches were remarkably effective; terse, logical, and informing. Once she would have worshipped the luminous beauty of this new recruit, but now she merely regarded it as a practical asset.
“Don’t let yourself run down,” she said to Julia as they sat in their hotel the night before the opening of the campaign, discussing their own. “Keep that hair bright, and wear your good clothes, as long as you’ve got them. Our ladies think too little about clothes, and its natural, being at this business all their lives, as you might say. But with you it’s different. You’ve got the born style, and you’d have hard work looking dingy. Don’t try. You’ve got just the air and the beauty to attract the crowd at the street corner, although you’ll soon be too familiar a figure to the police to get past the door. But ugly little things like me can do the heckling.”
The Liberal candidate made his first speech on the following night, but neither Julia nor Mrs. Lime found it possible to enter the hall. Men were learning wisdom. All women without cards or escorts were barred. Both the girls were roughly handled as they attempted again and again to obtain entrance; and as there was no crowd outside to address, they went back to the hotel to await the candidate’s return. They sat in the passage, and when he came in, shortly after eleven o’clock, Mrs. Lime immediately confronted him.
“You will tell us, if you please,” she said, “what you mean to do about giving the ballot to women.”
The candidate, who had congratulated himself upon accomplishing the exclusion of suffragettes from the hall, and had even taken the precaution to leave by the back door, colored with annoyance; and his eyes flashed contempt upon the plain little figure planted in his path.
“I state my intentions on the platform,” he said haughtily, and attempted to brush past her. But Mrs. Lime changed her own position and once more impeded his progress.
“Your intentions regarding votes for women,” she said in her even emotionless voice. “You are said to oppose it. I warn you that unless you assert that this is not true, and that you will do all in your power to assist us in winning the ballot, we shall do all we can to defeat you in this election.”
“We?” He laughed outright. “How many more of them are there like you?”
Julia rose and came forward. “Two,” she said. “And two against one is a proportion never to be despised.”
The man stared at her and his overbearing manner underwent a change.
“Oh, you!” he said. “Well you might get something out of a man if you tried hard enough.”
France had more than once burst out that his wife had the north pole in her eyes, that it was a waste of time to look for it anywhere else; and the frozen stare which this candidate received dashed his mounting ardor. He frowned heavily. “I say!” he said. “Get out of this. It’s no business for you.”
“Since when have politics ceased to be the business of English women? You will declare for us publicly and unmistakably, or I shall make it my business to defeat you.”
He stared at her again, this time in some dismay. He had yet to learn the power of women in general, when possessed of the brain and courage and holy fervor that are no mean substitutes for beauty and family, but he well knew the power that women of the class to which this antagonist belonged had wielded in the political history of England. For a moment he hesitated. What was a promise to a woman? And it would be safe to get rid of this woman as quickly as possible. The other, of course, didn’t matter. But he was an honest man in politics, whatever his other failings, and he would as soon have given the vote to the devil as to women. He turned on his heel.
“Do your worst,” he said. “That’s all you’ll get out of me.”
The next day Julia hired a motor car, and they pursued the candidate from town to town and village to village. He was contesting a large borough, whose member, returned at the general election, had died suddenly. It contained several towns and many villages. In the latter, Julia and Mrs. Lime visited every cottage, petted the children, distributed their literature, promised all they conscientiously could if the ballot were given to women, and implored help in defeating a man who was an avowed enemy. They converted most of the women, and made no little impression on the men, most of them colliers, who gathered about their car in the evenings. The car impressed the men almost as much as the eloquence of the speakers. Their thick heads, generally thicker at eight in the evening, were as impervious to female suffrage as the heads at Westminster, but Julia and Mrs. Lime had borrowed all the arguments of the Conservative candidate and used them with no less eloquence, and the more penetrating ingenuity of their sex.
At every hall they were refused admittance. Julia soon grew accustomed to being pulled about; her arms were black and blue; and she had twice been obliged to invest in new hats both for herself and Mrs. Lime. Her diffidence had vanished, and, her fighting blood up, and now completely interested, she spoke whenever the opportunity offered.
One dark night, when they had had the usual experience at the hall entrance, they were prowling about hoping to find an unguarded door, when they espied a scaffolding under one of the high windows. It was elevated on a rough trestle. The same idea animated them simultaneously. Without a word they climbed the precarious foothold, tearing their skirts, and splintering their hands, and felt their way along the scaffolding until they were close to the window. Then they unrolled their white banners inscribed “Votes for Women,” and waited. The candidate, who possessed the inestimable advantage of belonging to the party just come into power, was lauding its virtues, promising all things in its name, and reiterating the abominations, now somewhat stale, of the party that was responsible for the colossal war taxes, and the industrial depression. There were pertinent questions asked, which he answered good-naturedly; for although he would fain have gone through his carefully rehearsed speech uninterrupted, he was far too keen a politician to insult a voter.
“Now!” whispered Mrs. Lime, and simultaneously two heads appeared at the window, two banners were waved, and Julia, having the more carrying voice, cried out: —
“And how about Votes for Women?”
If a flaming sword had appeared, there could not have been more excitement. The candidate turned purple. The chairman jumped to his feet, crying “outrageous,” and the audience took up the word and shouted it, some shaking their fists. Several men ran down the aisle.
“The stewards!” whispered Mrs. Lime, “and they’ll be joined by the door police.”
It was darker than ever without, after the glare of the hall, but once more they felt their way along the scaffolding, reached the uprights, and clambered down just as a dark mass turned the corner of the building.
There was no time to cross the street. Mrs. Lime seized Julia’s hand and darted under the trestle. “Lie down with your face to the wall, and close,” she commanded.
Their clothes were dark and they were unobserved by the men, who stood for a moment looking up.
“I’ll go up this side,” said one of the policemen, after straining the back of his neck in vain, “and you go up the other. The rest look in that shed behind. That’s where they likely are.”
The men mounted gingerly, the others disappeared. Mrs. Lime gave Julia a tug, they wriggled out, and ran round to the front entrance. Before those on the rear benches knew what was happening, the two girls were halfway down the middle aisle. Then another roar arose.
“Put them out! Put them out!”
Julia and Mrs. Lime attempted to mount a bench, but were pulled down. About them was a sea of astonished indignant faces, such as, no doubt, confronted the British working-man years before when he so far forgot himself as to demand equal political rights with the gentry and the employer. Julia laughed outright as she saw those scandalized faces, but it would have fared ill with them when the police and stewards came running back, had not several gentlemen, who, unwilling to see violence done to women, however they might disapprove of their tactics, formed a bodyguard, and escorted them to the door. Quite satisfied with their night’s work they went to their inn and slept soundly.
VI
So far they had not spoken in any of the larger towns, for in this manufacturing and colliery district it was difficult to collect a crowd in the market-place except on Saturday nights, and heretofore heavy rains had kept the men indoors with their pipe and beer. But they distributed their literature on the streets, and in shops and hotel dining-rooms, visited every house to which they could obtain entrance, and scored one signal triumph. The Conservative candidate, watching their progress, and having no fixed scruples to violate, came out sonorously for Woman. He even called on them personally and promised his active help in Parliament if they would canvass for him. They did not place too much faith in his word, but they were out to defeat an enemy, one who was also a member of that party responsible for all the indignities visited upon their cause. By this time that momentous night had come and gone when Mrs. Pankhurst and her band were forcibly ejected from the latticed gallery above the House of Commons, after hearing their bill talked out; and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, after receiving the deputation of representative women with amiability and encouragement, had astounded them with the warning that they were to expect nothing from his Cabinet. So war had been declared on the Government, and this was merely the first of the by-elections which was to give the women an opportunity to exhibit their power.
“We’ve a chance!” said Mrs. Lime, as the Conservative candidate smiled himself out of their presence. Her dark eyes were full of light, her sad mouth smiling. “Oh, but a chance! If we could only win! There’d be some head-shaking up there at Westminster.”
“Well!” said Julia, also triumphant, “at least we’ve made the Liberal candidate look persecuted. I know that every time he catches sight of us he longs to call the police.”
The following day was Saturday and they arrived at one of the most important towns in the district. The sun was out and it was immediately decided to take the corner hustings. By this time, Julia had quite forgotten her old objection to street corners; it seemed to her that she had forgotten everything she had known on any subject than the one in possession; and she was further inspired by the discovery that her tongue possessed both persuasiveness and power. Even bad speakers like to hear themselves talk as soon as they have mastered fright, and never was there a good one that would not rather be on the stump than off it. Julia was enjoying this hard fighting as she had never enjoyed anything in her life.
The town was surrounded by cigarette factories, and on this Saturday afternoon it seemed to Julia that every girl they employed must be promenading the streets with her hooligan swain. They were bold-looking creatures, cheaply and loudly attired, and universally hilarious. By this time Julia had concluded that the common people of this section of the Midlands were more common, more rude, more offensive than any she had encountered in England, with the possible exception of the barbarians in the London slaughter houses. Even Mrs. Lime remarked sadly that comparative prosperity did not seem to improve her class. But Julia had yet to learn that these young people had a brutal license in their natures, a ribald savagery, that was a part of their general indifference to morals or any sense of decency.
She and Mrs. Lime immediately divided the town into districts, and seeing a group on a corner near to which there was a convenient box, Julia mounted her platform and began to address the eight or ten young men and women. At first they merely gave a rough laugh; then one cried out: —
“W’y, it’s a bloomin’ suffragette! Oh, I say, wot a lark! W’y ain’t ’er golden ’air ’anging down ’er back?”
Julia had heard remarks of this sort before, although her speaking experience had lain almost altogether in the villages, where the human animal, less sophisticated, is also less aggressive. In a few moments the group had become a crowd that blocked the street, and she quite believed that no speaker had ever looked into so many hard and hostile eyes. The face of every man wore an insulting grin. She went on unperturbed, however, welcoming them at any price, for this was her first opportunity to address a town crowd. The more hostile, the better. She was confident of getting their ear in time.
But it was soon evident that they had no intention of giving her their ear. They roared with laughter, they gave unearthly cat-calls. Finally one hurled a vile epithet at her. This was a signal which unloosed their proudest accomplishment. When they had exhausted their vocabulary, and it was a large one when it came to obscenity, they began again; but finding that she looked down at them undisturbed, merely waiting for a pause, they began to grow angry, and pushed forward. Julia’s box was already against the wall, there was no possible means of retreat, and there was not a friendly face in that ugly crowd. But she was not conscious of any fear. Not only was she fearless by nature, but she had been trained during these last four years to impassivity in any crisis. What she really felt was the profound disdain of the aristocrat for the brainless mob, and although she did not realize this at the moment, it did flash through her mind that here was one section of the poor that might go to the devil for all the help and sympathy it would ever get from her. But of these and other uncomplimentary sentiments she betrayed no more than she did of fear, although she was not sufficiently hardened to suppress an inward quiver at the foul language with which she had now been assailed for some ten minutes.
“Oh, I say!” cried one of the girls, when her companions finally paused to draw breath. “Is she a bloomin’ stature? Let’s put some life in ’er.” And another shrieked, “Wot’s golden ’air for if it ain’t ’anging down ’er back? Let’s put it w’ere it belongs.”
“That’s right.”
The crowd surged forward. Julia, looking into those primitive faces, the faces of good old barbarians, full of the lust to hurt, wondered if her time had come. She made no doubt that they would tear the clothes off her back, perhaps trample her underfoot, for they had lashed their passions far beyond their limited powers of restraint. She squared her shoulders. For the moment the world looked to her full of eyes and fists. Then she hastily glanced to right and left. Down the street two blue-clad figures were advancing, accompanied by the Liberal candidate and another man. She drew a long breath of relief. She had grown to look upon the British policeman as her natural enemy, but now she hailed him as her only friend on earth.
She raised her arm and indicated the approach of the law. One of the men followed her gesture, and shouted, “The bobbies.” The clinched hands dropped and the crowd fell back. As the two policemen strode up Julia expected to see official fists fly, and as many arrests made as two men of law could handle. To her amazement the policemen pushed their way through the mob and jerked her off the box.
“Nice doings, this,” cried one, indignantly. “Obstructing traffic and collecting crowds. Ain’t you suffragettes ever going to learn sense?”
“I!” cried Julia, with still deeper indignation. “You had better arrest your townspeople. Couldn’t you hear them using language that alone ought to send them to jail? And couldn’t you see that they would have torn me to pieces in another moment? Why don’t you arrest them?”
“It’s you we’re going to arrest. It’s you that’s obstructing traffic and collecting crowds, not them. They’re out for their ’arf ’oliday.”
“But I tell you they threatened me with violence.”
“Serves you right. You come along, and if you make any fuss you’ll get hurt, sure enough.”
And Julia, filled with a wrath of which she had never dreamed herself capable, was dragged off between the two policemen, while the crowd jeered and howled, and the Liberal candidate stood on the other side of the street laughing softly.
Once her fury so far overcame her that she struggled and attempted to break away, but one of the men gave her arm such a wrench that she walked quietly to the Town Hall, thankful that anger had burned up her tears.
At the Town Hall she was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing traffic, and promptly committed to a cell, to await trial on Monday morning.
So Julia spent twenty-four hours in prison. She could have summoned sleep at night had she been disposed, but nothing was farther from her thought. She was too infuriated to sleep and forget for a moment the gross injustice to which she had been subjected by the laws of a country supposed to be the most enlightened on the globe. She had mounted a box to make a peaceable—not an incendiary—speech, something men did whenever they listed, and with no fear of punishment. Her denouncement of the Liberal candidate and her plea for Suffrage would have contained no offence against law and order; but she had been treated as if she had incited a riot, while the vile creatures that had insulted and threatened her were not even reprimanded.
In a mind naturally fair and just, nothing will cause rebellion so profound as an act of gross injustice. Had Julia, from a safe vantage point, seen Mrs. Lime or any other woman treated as she had been, her soul would have boiled with righteous wrath; but it takes the personal indignity to sink deep and bear results. Julia in that long night and the day that followed, cold, half-fed, alone, in a vermin-ridden cell, forgot her ambitions, her artistic pleasure in playing a part well, and became as rampant a suffragette as any of the little band in Park Walk. She would war against these stupid brutes in power as long as they left breath in her, fight to give women the opportunity to do better. Something was rotten when justice worked automatically without logic; and if men were too indifferent to effect a cure, it was time another sex took hold. No wonder these chosen women were indifferent to femininity, and gowns, and all that had given woman her superficial power in the past. What mortal happiness they missed mattered nothing. They were equipped for one purpose only, to avenge and protect the millions ignored by nature and fortune, and the victims of man-made laws; and if they were mauled, and torn, and despised, and killed, it was but the common fate of the advance guard, the martyrs in all great reforms; they were quite consistent in being as indifferent to sympathy as to the denunciations of the fools that saw in them but a new variety of the unwomanly woman.
And so Julia received her baptism of fire.
VII
On Sunday afternoon, her wrath had burned itself out, but not its consequences. As she had no intention of making herself ill she was about to lie down and sleep, when her door was opened and she was told that she was free.
This was by no means welcome, for she wished to express herself in court, refuse to pay her fine, and go to gaol, that being the program of the suffragettes. But she was told to depart, and no explanation was given her. Wondering if the duke had been telegraphed to, and brought swift influence to bear, she left the prison with some uneasiness; her old-fashioned relative was her one source of apprehension. If disapproval overcame his sense of justice and he cut down her income, she should have that much less to devote to the Suffrage cause.
At the inn she found that Mrs. Lime, who had escaped arrest, was out, and ordered the maid to bring her bath. When she had finished, the maid returned with her tea, and stood by sympathetically.
“So you’ve been to prison?” she asked.
“I have,” said Julia.
“That’s no place for you, mum. Wot’s the perlice thinking of, giving you wot for like that?”
“Do you belong to this town?”
“I do, mum.”
“Then, let me tell you, it is a disgrace to a civilized country.”
“Oh, I say!”
Julia, who wanted to talk to somebody, gave an account of her adventure with the mob, and while omitting their language, let it be understood in her descriptions of their appearance and performance.
The woman nodded emphatically. “Right you are. It’s them factory girls. They’re no good. Trollops, all of ’em. W’y, d’you know, I worked in one of them factories for seven years, and I was the only girl in the lot that kep’ me virtue.” (She looked like a black-and-tan terrier and was not much larger.) “That I did, though!” And she nodded her head as if keeping time to a hymn.
Julia, who had finished her tea, stood up and began to unpin her hair as a hint that she would like to be alone. But the woman set down the tray and exclaimed in a voice of rapture: —
“Oh, my eye, wot hair! Oh, but I’ve always admired golden ’air, me own’s that black.”
“It’s very disreputable hair at present,” said Julia, amiably. “It hasn’t been down since yesterday morning. Naturally I couldn’t use the prison comb—if there was one!”
“Oh—would you—would you let me brush it, now?” cried the woman, eagerly. “I’ve never ’ad me ’ands in ’air like that. I’d enjoy it, that I would.”
“Why—if you like.” Julia, who was tired, felt that it would not be unpleasant to have the services of a maid once more.
She sat down and the woman began to unbraid the long plaits.
“Are you sure you have the time?” asked Julia, perfunctorily.
“Oh, yes. Me ’usband’s ’ead waiter, and the master would give up the ’otel before ’im; and he—Jim—-don’t dare say nothing to me, for fear I’d caterwaul. I can do that awful. Oh, my eye, but this is ’air!”
She shook out the long strands and held one up to the light. “Oh, Gawd!” she cried, with mounting fervor. “No wonder them trollops wanted to mar you. They were jealous, that’s wot. They’d ’ave cut it off if the perlice ’adn’t come along, and pinned it on their own ’eads. And beauties they’d ’ave been!”
“Do you suppose they were drunk?”
“ ’Alf and ’alf. It wasn’t time to be full up, but you oughter see them in the market-place at ten o’clock!”
“What makes them so brutal, then? I’ve never seen anything like them in England.”
“Oh, I fawncy they’re about the worst England’s got. Maybe it’s the cigarette factories does it, I cawn’t say. But they’re a rotten lot, and all me sisters was the same. I ’ad a blond sister, but her hair was more whitish, not gold like yours. She was pretty and more gentle-like, but she went to the bad fast enough. I swore I’d keep me virtue an’ I did. I never spoke to a man I wasn’t introduced to proper until the night I met Jim in the merry-go-round—in the same seat, he was, and he made up to me—fell that in love he couldn’t see straight, and when he tried ’is nonsense, he got wot for and then he respected me from that day forth—I’ve read me penny dreadfuls, you see. Well, we got married proper, and now we ’ave two good positions, and may own a public some day. It pays to be virtuous, it do. He isn’t the only sweetheart I ever ’ad, either,” she rambled on; and Julia, seeing that nothing would quench her, resigned herself, for the woman’s touch was deft and light. “I ’ad a fine ’andsome sweetheart once—Jim ain’t nothing to look at, and would drink if I didn’t caterwaul so—’andsome and upstanding he was, and all the girls was after him; and he was steady, too, had one job and kep’ it. He was in a big Manchester draper’s shop. He used to come ’ere, and I used to visit me aunt—he was me cousin and ’is name was Harry Muggs. He was in love with me that desperate he’d swear he’d kill himself if I didn’t ’ave ’im. He knew I’d kep’ me virtue, and he thought me grand. Once he was down ’ere after me ’ard, and we took a walk and come to a pond, and when I told ’im once more I wouldn’t ’ave ’im, and started to go ’ome, I was that tired saying no, he caught me round me waist and ’eld me over the pond and swore he’d drop me in if I didn’t ’ave ’im. I was that frightened I thought I’d die, and I screamed like I was stuck. But I wouldn’t give in, and then he threw me on the bank and run off and I’ve never seen ’im since.”
“Why didn’t you marry him, if he was such a paragon?” asked Julia, languidly.
“Oh, I couldn’t, mum. He was a chance child. Me aunt ’ad ’im by a butler where she lived. I ’adn’t kep’ me virtue for that—wot’s the matter —”
Julia was doubled up.
“Oh—nothing—really—I think I must be a bit hysterical after my experience. Would you mind telling me what the weather looks like? It was rather threatening when I came in.”
The woman went to the window and lifted the sash curtain. “It damps, mizzles like,” she said dubiously. “But I don’t fawncy it’ll rain ’ard. ’Ere comes your friend. She was ready to drop last night. My, but she’s that stringy to look at.”
“Would you mind telling her that I am here? She must be anxious.”
The woman departed unwillingly, her eyes fixed to the last on the hair Julia was braiding. A moment later Mrs. Lime came in. She looked thinner and gaunter than ever, but her eyes burned with sombre enthusiasm.
“Oh, you poor dear!” she exclaimed. “But you mustn’t mind, for the more unfair treatment we receive, the sooner will the right-thinking people of the country be roused, and the more recruits we shall get. That’s where the law shows its stupidity.”
“I didn’t mind in the least,” said Julia, dryly. But she made no confidences. That violent upheaval and readjustment were sacred to herself.
“There’s another thing,” said Mrs. Lime. “A reporter was with the Liberal candidate and the policemen at the time of your arrest. He’s also the correspondent of a London paper. He hunted me up at once to get some particulars about your family, etc. —”
“Oh!” exclaimed Julia. “Did you tell him?”
“Why, of course. We cannot have too much publicity, and you will be a great help to us. The story will be in the London newspaper to-morrow morning as well as here. No doubt there will be a London reporter down to interview you —”
“Ah!” Julia’s color had been steadily rising. “I can’t have that.”
“There’s only one thing to think of,” said Mrs. Lime, severely, “and that is the cause. People complain that we’re sensational, trying to attract public attention. Why, of course we are. Rather. How otherwise can we make ourselves known, much less felt, become a political issue, if we don’t take the obvious method? No newspaper would notice our existence if we didn’t make ourselves ‘news’ and force their hand. Peaceful demonstrations, like shrinking personalities, belong to the dark ages of Suffrage, when nothing was accomplished. Now, if that reporter comes down from London, you must talk. Jump at every chance to further the cause that’s given you. It isn’t so often we’re interviewed.”
“Very well,” said Julia, and half wished she had changed her name and dyed her skin and hair.
As Mrs Lime had anticipated, a reporter of one of the less conservative London newspapers arrived on the following morning. He was accompanied by the correspondent of a chain of American newspapers, commonly referred to as “Yellow.” Mrs. Lime saw them first and gave a full account of the campaign. Then Julia descended, and having made up her mind to talk, she talked to some purpose. When she finished, there was no confusion in either of the young men’s minds as to her opinion of the Government, the police, and the prison system of England. Her description of the mob was so graphic that the American correspondent nodded with approval.
“Say!” he exclaimed. “You ought to have six months of this experience, and then go over to the U. S. and lecture. You’d make money for your cause all right, all right. Better think it over.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Mrs. Lime, with enthusiasm. “We will think it over.”
During the afternoon the girls once more started off on the heels of the candidate. But their work was almost done. The polling took place on the following Thursday. Almost as much to their own amazement as to that of every one else, the Liberal candidate was defeated by a small majority. But if it was the first demonstration of the power of the Militants in by-elections, it was by no means the last.
There was no question in the London press of ignoring this issue and its cause. With one accord it expressed astonishment, indignation, and righteous wrath, at the unpatriotic selfishness of a set of women that were a disgrace to their country and their sex.
VIII
Mrs. Lime was recalled to London, and Julia, being now full fledged, was ordered to make a tour of certain districts of the north and west, speak in all circumstances, and make converts not only to the cause of Suffrage, but to the Woman’s Social and Political Union.
Julia for the next four months spoke nearly every day, sometimes twice a day. She had encounters with the police, although she tactfully avoided street corners, and they hardly could eject her from a hall she herself had hired. There were towns, however, where the feeling among men was so strong against the new manifestation of Suffrage, that owners refused to rent her their halls, and then she spoke either in a friendly drawing-room, at a working-girls’ club, on the common, or, on Sunday, in an open field. On the whole, however, she had far less trouble with the authorities than she expected and fewer unfriendly demonstrations. Occasionally, the rear benches were occupied by hooligans employed to howl her down, and to these infringements the police were deaf; but in the audience there was usually a sprinkling of respectable men who had come to hear what she had to say; and when they were tired of the interruptions, they arose as one man and disposed of the intruders.
She found herself addressing great and greater crowds, for the north was awakening in earnest; the laboring women had been ready for years, and now the middle class, long torpid, was furnishing recruits every hour. Annie Kenny’s second and long imprisonment caused wide-spread interest as well as indignation, and her release was celebrated by great meetings of welcome both in London and the provinces. After addressing crowds in Lancashire, and receiving an ovation, she went to Wales to speak, and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Bridgit Herbert, once more whole and belligerent, held a series of meetings in Yorkshire.
Like a heather fire the new gospel of Suffrage swept over the north, and where a few months since the W. S. P. U. had struggled along with a few hundred members, it now reckoned its thousands.
Julia, like many another aspirant for fame, found that she must submit to have notoriety thrust upon her first. She was regarded as “news” both by the British and the American press. Reporters followed her about, she had been ordered by headquarters to have her photograph taken, and it frequently embellished the sumptuous weekly newspapers. There was no question of her popularity as a speaker, aside from the growing popularity of her subject. She not only spoke with a full command of the principles and intentions of the new movement, often brilliantly, and always well, never with sentimentality, and often with power, but she was a charming figure to look at. She had sent for her trunks and her maid.
She rarely felt tired, for the artificial method of relaxation which she had been taught, and practised daily, gave both brain and body a more complete rest than sleep itself. Therefore, was she always in form, and never looked worn. As her fame grew, more and more of the county people attended her meetings, and many distinguished names upon which the Government relied for opposition were added to the list of converts.
She was also complimented by covert offers from the pillars of the anti-suffrage party, and one supporter of the Government went so far as to make love to her; then, finding himself inoculated with his own virus, retired in discomfort after a dry reference by Julia to Parnell and Mrs. O’Shea.
“How do you like being famous?” asked Mrs. Herbert one day. They had planned to meet for Sunday.
“Famous? Is that what you call it?”
“Rather. We live in the twentieth century. The advertising poster is the modern work of art. I’m told your picture has appeared in every illustrated paper in the United States. It’s not only your beauty and brains and Kingsborough connection. Some people have a magnetism for the public, and you are one of them. You strike the spark.”
“The oddest thing about it all is that there doesn’t seem to be the least jealousy among the women in London. They might easily resent that a newcomer with no more ability than themselves should suddenly shoot up into what you call fame. It’s almost uncanny.”
“Jealous? Not they. What they’re after is freedom and power for women, and they don’t care tuppence whose sun shines the brightest in the process. They’re depersonalized, those women.”
“All the same it’s uncanny. It makes them the more formidable. As Nigel says, they’re a new race. I believe I’m growing just like them. I’d go to the stake myself, or blow up Westminster. The only thing that worries me is the attitude of the duke. Of course he is furious, looks upon me as a disgrace to the family, particularly since I can’t keep out of the newspapers. I’ve had two letters from him, threatening to withdraw my income if I don’t retire into private life. He’s not the man to take back what he has given, without qualms, but I fancy he will, and that will leave me with exactly two hundred pounds a year,—all that I am allowed from Harold’s estate. That would merely keep me, and so far I’ve never called upon the Union’s exchequer. I wish I might always be able not only to pay my own expenses, but contribute largely to the fund.”
“The duke running the W. S. P. U. is sufficiently humorous. However, you’ve nothing to worry about. The American public would pay much gold to hear you speak, and you can always write.”
IX
Early in September Julia spoke in Bradford and Keighley, and on the following Sunday she slipped away and went to Haworth, not only to rest and read a number of letters forwarded by her solicitors, but to worship at the shrine of the Brontës.
She took a fly at the station in the valley, but halfway up the steep road which leads to the village she descended precipitately; the fly and the horse had executed a right angle. She walked the rest of the distance, the rough stones giving a foothold, and soon reached the long crooked street which begins with the Black Bull Inn and finishes at the moor. Short streets ending nowhere radiated from this central thoroughfare at irregular intervals. There was no business to speak of in Haworth. The men worked in Keighley or Bradford, the young women in the worsted mills of the valley. Julia, driving the day before, had watched the long procession of girls, shawls pinned about their heads, file out of the factories, and, two by two, cross the valley either to the road that led up to Haworth, or to another village higher above the moor. It was the proud boast of Haworth that every inhabitant had a bank book, and Julia felt it would be a relief to visit one village where there was no poverty. It looked trim and prosperous, picturesque though it was, and such men and women as were to be seen had none of that pinched hopeless look which had put fire into so many of her speeches.
After she had duly admired Branwell Brontë’s chair, which the landlady of the inn assumed she had come to see, and had made it understood that she really intended to stay overnight, she was shown to a large room upstairs, overlooking the churchyard. The inn, in fact, formed one of its walls, and there were flat stones directly beneath her window. It was a gloomy crowded churchyard, with toppling box-tombs and heavy dusty trees, its farther boundary the low stone parsonage that had sheltered the Brontës. They, too, could read the inscriptions on the stones from their windows. Small wonder they died of consumption.
From the street came the sound of children’s voices and wooden clogs. Her room, with its old four-post bed, was almost sumptuous. Julia would have liked to stay a month. But time pressed. She established herself comfortably and slit the large envelope containing her letters.
At sight of one she sat upright and changed color, but put it aside to read last.
The first she opened was from the duke. He wrote tersely and to the point. This was his final warning. The next time she should receive his communication through his solicitors. Another was from Hadji Sadrä containing much advice and some approval. Her mother, to whom Mrs. Winstone had sent numerous printed accounts of her “performances,” wrote as briefly as the duke and even more to the point. Julia was a public woman and a disgrace to her blood. (It would never have occurred to Mrs. Edis to add that she was a disgrace to her sex.) The request for Fanny had some time since been curtly refused.
Then she looked at the envelope of Tay’s letter, and finally opened it. To her surprise it was dated May second. It began characteristically.