Julia France and Her Times: A Novel

X

Julia smiled all through this letter, and wondered if the original boy in some men ever grew up, and if even in the United States there were another Daniel Tay. Then she read it over again, and then she answered it. The moment she took up her pen she came to herself with a shock. She had been travelling between San Francisco and Bosquith, and now she realized that she had nothing to write him about but her work in the cause upon which she was embarked. She had, these last months, bestowed barely a thought on all that had gone before, and she did not feel the least desire to write of anything else. Would it bore as well as disillusionize him? Well, what if it did? To write to him again was irresistible, but she must write out her present self; if he didn’t answer—well—perhaps, so much the better.

But, beyond the subject, she was at no pains to bore him. She took pride in writing him a far better letter than her first and gave the liveliest possible account of her numerous adventures. She even told him all she had felt during those twenty-four hours in prison, something she had never intended to confide to any one; but although she would not have admitted it, she had a secret hankering for his complete sympathy and understanding.

“And you’ve no idea,” she concluded, “what a wonderful thing it is to have a vital interest in life, to live wholly outside of yourself, to strive for a sort of perfection, while at the same time your vanity is titillated with the thought that you are helping to make history. I really do not know whether I have any personal ambition left or not. When I started out I was consumed with it. This great cause was merely but a means to an end. But now—I don’t know whether it is because I have never a moment to think of myself, I am so busy, or whether the cause is so much greater than any individual can be—I don’t know. I don’t know. The balance may be struck later. The only thing I strive to hold on to is my sense of humor.”

When this letter was sealed, she had a sudden access of conscience and indited another to Nigel, whom she had quite neglected since her departure from London. She reminded him that he had published nothing for a year, and asked him to consider her suggestion that he go to Acca and write the Bahai-Socialism novel. “I shall worry until you do,” she concluded this epistle, “for it would be a thousand pities if the subject were cheapened by the horde of third-raters, always nosing for new ‘copy.’ The Bahais want a big man. And how you would enjoy writing on Mount Carmel. Do write me that you will go at once.”

The landlady knocked and announced that her dinner was ready. She snatched up Tay’s letter and made an instinctive movement to put it in her bosom, but was reminded that her blouse buttoned in the back. Nor had she a pocket. So she put the letter into her hand-bag, and wondered if fashion would be the death of romance.

After dinner, she started for the moor. She wanted a spray of white heather, and to walk in the paths of the Brontës. The long crooked street of the village was deserted, the good people lingering over their Sunday meal. But Julia felt little interest in them. As she reached the end of the street and looked out over the great purple expanse undulating away until it melted into the low pale sky brushed with white, she was wondering which of these narrow paths had been Charlotte’s and trying to conjure up the tragic figure of Emily, one of her literary loves. She walked for several miles and managed to find the nook in the glen which she had been told by the landlady of the Black Bull was the spot where Charlotte had sat so often to dream the books that must have transformed her bleak life into wonderland. No object she for all the sympathy that had been wasted on her. Immortality! Julia, whose ego was enjoying a brief recrudescence, felt that it was a small thing to be half starved and lonely, afflicted by a drunken brother, and sisters dying of consumption, when consoled with an imagination that not only swamped life for this poor sickly little mortal, but must have whispered to her of undying fame. And she had contributed her share to the cause of which this devotee at her shrine was a symbol, vastly different from all that is modern as she had been; for had she not been of the few to make the world recognize the genius of woman? She had, in truth, been one of the flaming torches.

Julia climbed out of the glen and started to return. After she had traversed several of the knolls, she saw that the moor down by the village was alive with people. The landlady had told her that all Haworth took its Sunday afternoon walk on the moor, but she still felt no interest in them, and renewed her search for white heather.

She passed the first group and nodded, as she had a habit of doing, for she had come to feel as if the toilers of England were her especial charge. They smiled in return, and one stared and whispered to the others. Julia guessed that she had been at the meeting in Keighley the night before. The crowd became thicker and she was soon in the midst of it. She would have been stared at in any case, for strangers were rare in Haworth. Tourists came for an hour to visit the Brontë Museum, and hastened off to catch their train. And Julia was fair to look upon and exceeding well dressed. The girls turned to look after her with approval, and when she made her way out of what would seem to be a large family party gossiping pleasantly, and, wandering off, stooped once more, a girl followed and asked her shyly if she were looking for white heather.

“Oh,” said Julia, “would you help me? I should like a spray for luck, and as a memento of your village.”

“It’s hard to find, miss, but we can look. I’ve found many a bit.”

They strayed off together, Julia good-naturedly answering the eager questions. Suddenly the girl turned.

“Why!” she exclaimed. “They’re all coming this way, and that excited!”

Julia looked and saw that the whole company was streaming toward her. They paused, held a hurried conference, and then one of the younger women came directly up to the stranger.

“We are thinking,” she said diffidently, “that you may be Mrs. France, who spoke last night at Keighley, and has been speaking all over the north.”

“Yes, I am Mrs. France,” said Julia, wondering what was coming.

“And you really are a suffragette?”

“That is what they call us.”

“We’ve never seen one, only one or two of us who were at the meeting last night. The rest of us didn’t go, we was that tired, and we’re wondering if you wouldn’t give us a speech here.”

“Oh—really—I rarely speak on Sunday, and even suffragettes must rest, you know.”

The woman’s face fell, but she said politely, “Of course. We know what work is. But we may never have another chance—and we’re that curious. We’d like to know what it’s all about.”

Julia hesitated. What right had she to refuse this simple request? It was her business to advance the cause of Suffrage and make converts wherever she could. Nor was she tired. She was merely in a dreaming mood, and wanted to think of the Brontës; to anticipate, as she realized in a flash of annoyance, the rereading of Tay’s letter. She had deliberately been trying to forget it.

“I will speak with pleasure,” she said. “Have you something I could stand on? I’m not very tall, you know.”

“One of the men went for a table. We made sure you would be so kind.”

The man was even now stalking up the moor with a kitchen table balanced on his head. As Julia walked toward the smiling company she felt once more the ardent propagandist.

“If I may, ma’am,” said a tall young man. He lifted her lightly and stood her on the table.

“Now,” said Julia, smiling down into several hundred faces, a few set in disdain, but for the most part friendly, “what is it you wish me to tell you? How much do you know of this great movement?”

“Well,” said one of the older women, “we read a lot about militants, and suffragettes, and fighting the police, and going to prison, and big meetings all over England, and we’d like to know what it’s all about. That’s all.”

“You might begin,” said one of the men, with a faint accent of sarcasm, “by telling us what good the vote’ll do you when you get it.”

Julia began by reminding them of the interest that so many of the factory women of the north had taken in the enfranchisement of their sex for several years before the militant movement began, and of the many Annie Kennys whose eyes were opened to the injustice of the absence of a minimum wage for women. One of the men interrupted her.

“Yes, ma’am, and if you raise women’s wages so that they can no longer undercut men, the lot of ’em’ll be kicked out.”

“Not all. The best will be retained, for the best are as efficient as the men. The inferior ones will find other employment, or be taken care of by men, who will then be able to support their families. They can return to their place in the home, that woman’s sphere of which we hear so much.”

This was received with cheers, but the man growled: —

“It’ll take time. It’ll take time. Better let well enough alone.”

“As it is the women that suffer, it is for them to say whether it is well enough. Of course it will take time. We do not promise Utopia in a day—nor ever, for that matter. But, if you will take the trouble to observe, it is the women of this country that are waging war on poverty, not the men. Without the ballot they are forced to advance at a snail’s pace. On all the boards to which they are admitted they do the work, and the men, who outnumber them, defeat every project for the betterment of the poor that would force the ratepayers to disgorge a few more shillings. Doctors, and all thinking and humane men, for that matter, would be thankful if these boards were composed entirely of women, for they alone understand the needs of other women and of children. Man lacks the instinct, to begin with, and has long since grown callous to the sources of his income. Higher wages mean smaller dividends, and he chooses to close his eyes to the fact that his dividends are largely due to the toil of wornout women and stunted children; of women that have all the duties of their households to discharge after they come home from the mills, children whose minds must remain as undeveloped as their ill-nourished bodies.”

“You want to go to Parliament, and right all that, I suppose?”

“We have not even thought of it. What we want is the power to send men to Parliament, who will be forced to keep their election promises if they would be returned a second time. Doubtless an ultimate result of the ballot would be a Woman’s Parliament which would deal exclusively with the Poor Laws. Then the men who oppose us now will be profoundly relieved that they no longer are obliged to waste valuable hours solemnly sitting upon such questions as the proper sort of nursing bottles to be adopted for pauper children, what shall be done with milk, or whether cabbage is a normal breakfast for school children. Do you know that if the House sat day and night for 365 days of the year, they could not begin to dispose of all the bills brought before it, and that many of these bills are of a pressing domestic nature? However well disposed, they cannot deal adequately with the Poor Laws, and that they do not welcome the assistance of women is but one more evidence of that conservatism in men’s minds which is a logical result of having had their own way, uncriticised, too long. Their fear of us is childish. They would not be thrown out of business. Every day they are confronted by questions of the gravest nature—questions of national and international policy which require their best faculties and all of their time. Women have more time than man ever thinks he has, in any case; and we have the maternal instincts and the nagging conscience which would force us to discharge our duties to the poor.

“Let me add that the women of this new militant movement have eliminated from their compositions all the old sentimentality and bathos which weakened the Suffrage cause for so many years. Sentimentality is sympathy run amôk. It roused that distrust of men we are fighting to-day, and made many of their public utterances asinine. You will hear no frantic protests to-day that women want the vote because they have as much right to it as men. That is a good argument in itself, but the women of to-day have progressed far beyond that or even of the old war cry, ‘Taxation without representation.’ They are animated, in their greater experience, by one purpose only, the desire to eliminate poverty and all the evils, moral and physical, that are always its partners; to reduce the hours of work and increase wages, to give every child good food, a decent education, and a comfortable home. The millions must work, but we are determined that they shall work for their own comfort as well as for that of their employers, that they shall have a reasonable amount of leisure and of the pleasures of life, cease to be machines whose only object in living is to contribute to the comfort and idleness of the thousands above them. We appreciate the wastage among the poor of England. Given strong bodies and a fair education, many would rise in the world and have respectable if not distinguished careers. What we further desire is to give these exceptional boys and girls a chance, the same chance they would have if born in the middle class. Beyond that we promise nothing. The point now is, not only that the misery in this country is appalling, but that these boys and girls have no chance of rising out of the rut unless possessed of positive genius. Hundreds have latent talent, thousands a certain amount of ability which would raise them above the station in which they were born —”

“Are you a Socialist?” demanded an abrupt voice.

“Yes, and England is already half socialistic in her institutions, only the pill has been gilded with less offensive names, so that she need not recognize it. But that old-time Socialism, which was only a weak step-sister of anarchy, no longer exists save in the minds of the old and tired theorists. The younger men and women who are giving their brains and time to the question would do nothing so futile as to divide the wealth of the world into small and equal shares. The modern Socialists would have as little mercy on the idle and vicious and lazy as Society has. All must work, and if the confiscation of much land forces the aristocrat to work, so much the better for him. All will be given the chance to work, to rise. More than that no mortal laws can accomplish, or should attempt, in justice to the human race. Socialism perfected is neither more nor less than the primal law of Nature reëstablished, rescued from the vagaries of a blundering civilization and crystallized into brain. Man will work, do his share, or go out into the by-ways, lie down and die.

“A word as to our much-abused Militant Tactics. Although we are women we are by no means too proud to learn from men. If you will glance back to that time when the laboring men of England were demanding the franchise,—in the ’30’s,—you may recall that they did not confine themselves to heckling, holding indignation meetings, forcing their way into halls where great men were speaking, and demanding their rights. They arose and smashed things. They burned the Mansion House in Bristol, the Custom House, the Bishop’s Palace, the Excise Office, three prisons, four toll houses, and forty-two private dwellings, and they set several towns on fire. So far we have borrowed only the mildest of their tactics. We have hurt no one physically, and we have been moderate in all our demonstrations; but because we are women we are as severely criticised as if we had blown up the entire Cabinet and set fire to London. Such is the hopeless conservatism of the human mind. But because we are women and enlightened, we hope we never shall have to resort to measures so extreme. We hope to educate the average mind out of its conservatism. If we fail, then of course we shall have to forget that we are women and emulate the great sex which now thinks it despises us, but is proving every day how much it fears us. As yet, it does not fear us enough. That is the whole trouble at present.”

Although she had too much tact and experience to talk down to any audience, however humble, she knew when to drop the abstract and divert with anecdote and illustration. Her address had been listened to respectfully, and interrupted with many a “Hear! Hear!” and when she paused, flung out her hands, smiled, and said, “Now let me tell you the true story of several of our adventures with the police,” they clapped and cheered. She talked for ten minutes longer, and her anecdotes, while making them laugh delightedly, inspired as much indignation as if they had been delivered with solemn passion; no doubt more so. When she finally leaped down, they escorted her in a body to the inn, where those that were not too bashful shook hands with her heartily; and many vowed they would “turn it over” and “pass the word on” to those that had not had the good fortune to hear her.

XI

Julia, excited, and well content, ran up to her room. As she opened the door she was astonished to see Bridgit Herbert standing at the window, scowling at the tombstones.

“You! How jolly!” she cried, as Mrs. Herbert turned. “How did you trace me? I purposely left no word —”

“You forget your maid—”

“What is the matter? You look— Sit down.”

“I’ve come north to see you. The devil is to pay.”

“The Militants haven’t disbanded—”

“Good lord, no. They’re all right. It’s I that have gone clean to the devil.”

“You?” Julia stared at her. Mrs. Herbert certainly looked worn, even haggard. The fresh color was no longer in her dark face, her black eyes were heavy as if with much wakefulness. Even her spirited nostrils hung limp.

“Do come out with it!” gasped Julia.

“I’m in love,” said Mrs. Herbert. And she sat down.

“Oh!” exclaimed Julia. And then she added thoughtfully, “What a bore.”

“Isn’t it? And I thought I was immune, having had the disease so hard the first time. But the young thirties! Oh, lord!”

“Can’t you get over it?”

“Can’t you imagine how I’ve tried? That’s the reason I look like this. It’s a wonder he doesn’t run when he sees me. But it’s no use. I’m done for.”

“What sort of a man can he be to bowl you over? Do I know him?”

“Possibly. He’s a cousin of Geoff’s, although I never met him till lately, as it happened. They weren’t friends, and he was away nearly all the time I was coruscating in society. His name’s Robert Maundrell; he’s also a cousin of Lord Barnstaple, who married that beautiful Californian. It was at their place, Maundrell Abbey, where I went for the Twelfth, that the mischief was done. I met him at Cannes, but he was clever enough to amuse me without rousing my suspicions; to interest me, and then make me miss him a bit. At just the right moment he reappeared—at Maundrell Abbey! Heaven! but it’s bad. After all I’ve gone through for the cause, after standing on my own two feet for years, not giving a hang if all the men on earth were exterminated—rather wishing they were! I feel like a slave. It’s hideous to feel that you no longer belong to yourself.”

“But you won’t chuck the cause?”

“Rather not. But the trouble is that I thought I was made on the same pattern as those women up in London, desexed, all brain and nerve and religious devotion to an ideal. And now I’m—Oh, lord! And to make matters worse I’m marrying a man who cares about as much for the cause as he does for Mohammedanism. Oh, damn! And I thought myself possessed of the true martyr’s fire. I wonder if you are?”

“Bridgit!” said Julia, with equal abruptness. “Be quite honest. Did you never think of this, never dream of falling in love once more—of the real thing?”

Mrs. Herbert stood up and thrust her hands into the pockets of her covert coat. For a moment she glared at Julia, then shrugged her shoulders. “Well—I don’t fancy I admitted it at the time—but I also fancy it was in the back of my head more or less. Oh—here goes—I used to wake up in the night and wonder in a sort of fury where he was—what are you laughing at?”

“Oh, I fancy we idiots are all alike.”

“So you’ve been through it, too? Good. But you’ll probably win out. You’ve got the ruthless will, like those others. Oh! I worship the very air they breathe. They are the true women of destiny, equipped at every point, a new sex. And I—the worst of it is, when I did give my fancy rein it was to imagine a man who would be a great intellectual force in the world, a great editor or statesman to whom men deferred, who would fight single-handed, if necessary, to give the vote to women. I shouldn’t have cared a bit if he had sprung from the people. Should have rather liked it, as I’d have felt the more consistent. But—well, we make ideals out of imported cloth, and then we marry our own sort. I fancy Nature takes a hand in manipulating our instincts. Oh, lord!” And she began pacing up and down the room.

“You haven’t told me anything about Mr. Maundrell. He can’t be a fool —”

“Rather not!”

“What attracted you to him? I don’t fancy I ever met him —”

“You’d remember him if you had. He’s beastly good-looking, and he’s travelled and explored, and is as well-read as any man I ever met. He went out as a volunteer in the South African war and got three medals, one with clasps. Now he’s standing for Parliament—at a by-election next week. Oh, he’s all right, as the Americans say, only he doesn’t care a hang for Suffrage —”

“He’ll make you desert us—”

“No, he won’t. I may be an ass, as the man said in ‘The Liars,’ but I’m not a silly ass. If he were as bad as that, I’d have been strong enough to resist him. No, he’s big in all his ideas. He only exacts the promise that I shall take part in no more raids, run no further risk of gaol, and not make engagements that would separate us. Otherwise, I can speak in public, and give up every moment of my time to Suffrage when he is not at home. He will also vote for our bill when it comes up.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Oh, it could be worse. But I wish I’d met him when I was eighteen, or had proved my strength by rooting this out, or had never met him at all. I’d have preferred the second, for I gloried in my strength. I’m not one of the chosen, like those women up there. That’s what rankles. I wonder if you are!”

She sat down abruptly and leaned forward. “I wonder? You’ve beauty. There’s the rub. They won’t let us alone. They give us the chance.”

“Tell me,” said Julia, hastily, “how did he ever make you consent? He must have had a difficult wooing.”

“He almost shook his fist in my face, if you will know; swore he’d have me if he had to beat me into submission—oh, worse! He didn’t frighten me, but he fascinated me. If the primal woman is born in you, there she is for good and all. I had the haunting sense that this man was my mate, the other half of me, and when a woman gets that idea into her head she’s done for. It’s more than passion, more than any longing for companionship. All sorts of subtle chords vibrate, inheritances from all the women, complex and simple, that have contributed to her brain cells. When those chords begin to hum you’re done for. I’m not one of the chosen, that’s all there is to it. I’ve got to marry and be happy.”

And then they both laughed.

In a moment Julia said grimly, “The only thing to do is to set your ideal of man so high that no mortal can fill it.”

“Rot. When the man comes along that can set those chords humming, ideals fly off in company with good resolutions. Now tell me your experience. You’ve had one of some sort. It’s only fair you should tell me. I’ve admired you more than any living woman, and I’d feel better if I could admire you less. You look ruthless, and you’ve had a good training to make you so—I used to rejoice at it—but, well, you are young and beautiful and you’ve red hair. Out with it.”

Julia, who under all her careless frankness, was intensely reserved, colored and hesitated; but this exasperated baring of her haughty friend’s inner self merited response, and she told the tale of her sudden awakening in India, of her deliberate search for a lover. Mrs. Herbert nodded triumphantly.

“But you see,” added Julia, “I couldn’t find him, because I wanted too much. They all made me laugh sooner or later, and a finer set of men I never met. They are all picked men out there, so to speak. They must be almost perfect physically, or they couldn’t stand the climate; they are absolutely without fear; they have every manly qualification, in fact, and quite enough brains. Many were charming. But they all seemed to melt into one composite man and made no deeper impression on me than if they were a statue erected to the glorification of British manhood. One can’t marry that.”

“All the men in the world are not in India. How about Nigel?”

“I like him better than anyone, but I can’t fall in love with him. I don’t fancy I’d have the chance again even if I wanted it. He’s now the head of his house and the last of it, and he takes his duties as a Whig peer with Socialist tendencies very seriously. To marry me would put an end to his public usefulness, for he would have to live out of England. When a man of Nigel’s sort reaches his age he faces his responsibilities, and when he balances them against a love-marriage that would cut him off from a good half of them he keeps out of temptation. I like him all the better for it, and if I had not become almost depersonalized in this cause, the woman in me might —”

“I don’t think it’s Nigel, but I do believe that one day you’ll have a battle to fight —”

“Not now. For a few days after I came back from India, perhaps. But I doubt if I ever have time again even to think of it. When I’m not talking, or speaking, or writing, I deliberately relax, as my master taught me, and that banishes thought. Every morning—during my walk—I recall some bit of the knowledge I was taught by Hadji Sadrä, and I could do this if my mind were excited, threatened with a deluge. Oh, I have had discipline of all sorts!”

“It sounds formidable enough. Perhaps you are one of the chosen. But —”

“I even wrote a long letter this morning to a man I might say I don’t know,” continued Julia, now in the full tide of self-revelation. “And it interested me mightily for the moment —”

“Ha!”

“Not at all. He was a boy of fifteen when I met him at Bosquith. I had forgotten his existence, but when I heard of the frightful disaster in San Francisco, his home, I thought it only decent to write to him. Of course he answered, and as his letter was lost for months—I only got it yesterday—and as he really has been through a tragic experience—he lost his fortune, and just missed losing his life—it was the least I could do to write again.”

“H’m. There’s nothing more fascinating than a correspondence with a man you don’t know. I’ve had one or two. The saving grace is, that you are always disappointed when you meet them. They are commonplace, if only by contrast with the arbitrary figure in your imagination. But it’s a bad sign—or a healthy one—that you can be interested even to that extent while conducting a Suffrage campaign with the fury of the martyr in your soul—I can’t imagine any of those women up there —”

“It means nothing to me!” said Julia, angrily. “And if I hadn’t posted my letter, I’d tear it up. I don’t care in the least whether I ever see him again or not. And I probably won’t, for I wrote of nothing but the cause. I couldn’t think of anything else. He’ll hate that. Besides, he can’t leave California for years yet. You know what those American business men are. He’s keen on making his millions. That’s all he thinks of.”

“Good. See that you don’t go to California when they send you over to lecture. Let me see his letter?”

Julia made an instinctive, almost tigerish, and wholly traditional movement toward her bosom. Then she remembered that the letter was in the hand-bag, laughed, and produced it.

“Why not?”

Mrs. Herbert’s black eyes flashed through it.

“H’m!” she commented. “He seems to be a jolly sort. He’s a man. And there’s a sort of fresh Western breeze in his letter. I can smell and hear the Pacific—and see those wonderful ruins. I love that expression—‘makes the Roman Forum look like thirty cents.’ That’s fifteen pence—one and three. It’s not effective at all translated. But I’ve always liked American slang. There’s something big and free and young about it. And so is this man, I should say —”

“Oh, nonsense! Don’t romance about him, please. He’s the antithesis of the man I’d made up in my imagination when I bolted from Calcutta —”

“That makes just about as much difference as if I had made up my mind that Robert Maundrell should fall in love with somebody else. Mr. Tay may give your ideal one in the eye that will make it look like—thirty cents. Describe him to me. Is he good-looking?”

“I don’t know,” said Julia, crossly. “I’ve forgotten. He was a dark wiry boy with a lean face and a square jaw. He suggests the North American Indian, but is a new type altogether—Western American, no doubt. But I’d rather talk about you. You’ve disappointed me, but I don’t see why you should be quite so cut up about it. Ishbel is married and in love and has two babies, but she has come out as an ardent suffragette; so much so that her business has suffered —”

“Yes, but she marches in no parades, and takes part in no raids. Dark will stand for a good deal, but he’s threatened to go to India if she goes too far; and she won’t. Trust her. She’s just like any other woman in love. And Dark’s a good fellow, not the sort a woman would care to sacrifice. So is Robert. There you are.”

“I love Ishbel as much as ever,” said Julia, thoughtfully. “But somehow I don’t find her as interesting —”

“A happy woman has no psychology in her. Her mind may go on developing, but her ego is at a standstill. That’s where I’m aiming! And I wanted to stand alone! I’m not the myself I thought. That’s what cuts. After those six men mauled me and broke my rib, and I lay in that wretched prison all night, I thought I was seasoned for life. And I wasn’t!”

Julia sprang to her feet. “What’s the use of worrying about what can’t be helped?” she cried angrily. “Let’s go down to supper.”

XII

A fortnight later Julia was recalled to London. She took a small flat in Clement’s Inn, Strand, where the W. S. P. U. was about to establish itself. She learned immediately that on the first day of the autumn session of Parliament a deputation of women intended to go to the Lobby of the House and send word to the Prime Minister that they expected some assurance from him regarding the prospects of franchise for their sex. Hundreds would await the news without.

By this time there was no danger of any definite move by the women being overlooked by the press, and they were treated as news no matter with what lack of sympathy. As to be spectacular whenever the opportunity offered was a part of their policy, they overlooked no means to that end; quite aware that Julia was as valuable an asset as they were likely to have, she was drafted to make one of the deputation to the House of Commons on October third. By this time other women of the aristocracy had flocked to their standard, and several prominent in the arts, but Julia had a very special personality, and a value for the press which insured her a separate “story” whether or not she were the chief figure in any of the carefully rehearsed scenes executed by the Militants. Therefore, having received her instructions for the third, she called on the duke the night of the second. She had not heard from him since the letter received at Keighley, nor had she heard from his solicitors.

The duke was in the library and rose ceremoniously as she was shown in, but did not offer his hand. Julia took the same chair from which she had defied him in a period of her life that now seemed identical with a lost personality.

“I should have called long ago,” she said, “but you were at Bosquith when I returned from Syria, and I have been out of London ever since.”

“I am quite aware of your movements during the past five months.” The duke spoke with all his innate formality, and infused his tone with icy sarcasm, but Julia had detected in a glance that he looked far more of a human being than of old. Bridgit had told her a strange tale of riding over to see her “Aunt Peg” when that dame was suffering from a broken leg, and catching a glimpse of the duke in an adjoining room, flat on the floor, with his boy and two little girls racing up and down his small but sacred person. Julia had accused Mrs. Herbert of trying to impose on her credulity, but as she inspected that meagre countenance she found it decidedly less gray and tight than formerly, the eyes brighter, the prim lines of the mouth relaxed. Yes; he was, conceivably, the uxorious parent.

“Of course I know you must hate what I am doing. If you and thousands like you didn’t hate it, we shouldn’t be doing it, if you don’t mind a bull. But that is the point, you see. We intend to fight to the last ditch, and then win. You don’t guess this and so you prolong the fight. I haven’t come to convert you, but because I know exactly how you feel. You have behaved splendidly toward me, for I know you have longed, for months, to recall your generous allowance. You can’t make up your mind to violate your word, so I have come to renounce it myself.”

“Ah!” The duke rose and began pacing up and down the room. “Yes—you would suspect—you are clever enough. Ah! If you would only divert your cleverness into a respectable channel. How could you go off your head about this atrocious nonsense?”

“Nonsense? Come down to Clement’s Inn and talk to the women for a few minutes. You might not approve of us any more than you do now, but you would no longer use the word nonsense. You might hate, but you would be forced to respect —”

“Respect? Respect women that have parted with the last shred of female decency, that are distracting this poor country with their puerile demands, when she is faced by such grave problems within and without that we need every ounce of our energy, every moment of our time —”

“Quite so. That is one of our staple arguments. We are only asking to help you. Turn the Poor Laws over to us, with the ballot, and you will have that much more time and energy to devote to the survival of the House of Lords, and to the survival of Great Britain among nations.”

“And have a new and worse problem on our hands to distract us! It is bad enough now with half female England gone mad and making this great Empire ridiculous in the eyes of the world—do you fancy we are mad enough even to argue the question of giving you power? Never. You can raid the House of Commons and force your way into the house of the Prime Minister, and fight with the police and go to gaol, and shriek and parade, until the day of doom, and you’ll be no nearer your object than you are to-day. That is what has made me lose all patience with you. I trained your mind, I watched you grow under my roof into as intellectual a woman as is possible with the limitations of the female brain; I guided you in your study of politics, and, save when you took the wrong side out of sheer perversity, I was quite satisfied with you. And now! It has saddened and angered me beyond description to see you making a public spectacle of yourself, suffering bodily injury, disgracing yourself, your sex, and your country, in a ridiculous and hopeless cause.”

“Well, you see, we don’t believe it to be hopeless, and that sustains us.”

“What difference does it make what you believe?”

“Not so much now, except as a means to an end. You said a moment ago that we had lost every shred of female decency, in other words, forgotten that we were mere women. Does not that strike you as portentous?”

“It strikes me as hideous.”

“I mean that when women have been battered and mauled and hurt, as we have been, without a second’s loss of courage or resource; when we have not once failed to score every point we have preconceived, from the heckling of candidates half out of their senses, to arresting the gaze of the civilized world,—doesn’t it strike you that we may be something more than mere women?”

“Yes, fools, and shameless ones.”

“Well, I share Nigel Herbert’s theory, that we are a new sex and a new race. A new force let loose into the world, is how he expressed it. When I went north five months ago the Union in London numbered only a few hundreds. Now it’s as well known as the Liberal party. And all of the new active members have the same set grim intent look, although many are still in their teens. I believe they were born that way and only waited for the call. Not one of them looks as if she had ever given a thought to a lover —”

“And you extol them for that?”

“No, I merely mention it. You see, all revolutions demand and breed their martyrs; people who were born, so to speak, to fight and die in that cause and for no other purpose whatever. Hundreds of thousands will join us as converts, but only a limited number will join the fighting army. That sort of thing is in a woman or it isn’t. Many will help us with money and name and sympathy, vote when their time comes, and cheerfully accept such political duties as may be thrust upon them, but they are too soft, what you call too womanly, to fight. We make no complaint. The race must go on and these women may be depended upon to take care of it. But all these girls that are flocking to our standard, that speak to jeering crowds on street corners, that are hustled and twisted and pinched by policemen—when they interrupt meetings, or sell literature on the street—they are made of different elements, they are the ones chosen to win a cause, not to enjoy its victory. What matters it to them whether they are maimed for life, whether their youth goes before they have known any of its rights? Nothing. It is not of the least consequence. We sacrifice them as ruthlessly as they sacrifice themselves, as we would sacrifice ourselves. It is only the principle that matters. Let them die in a good cause, and be grateful for the opportunity. So they would, if they gave even that much thought to self. That is what you cannot understand. If you did, you would know what I mean by the word portentous —”

“How do you like the prospect of looking like those women—gray and dingy as the bark of an old tree?”

“Oh, they don’t all look gray and dingy. We have handsome women in the W. S. P. U.—several that are older than I. Many women are born dingy. Others have merely that freshness of youth which is as likely to vanish after one year of domestic life, as after the same time spent in fighting for a cause that will improve the lot of women in general. Don’t worry about me. What looks I have are indestructible. I learned secrets in the East. I know how to rest—a lesson many of these young enthusiasts wouldn’t learn if I could teach them. They are screwed up to be martyrs and won’t have anything else. But the heads of any movement must be all that and more, so I have no intention of going to pieces.”

“I am told that if—I—a—withdraw the seven hundred and fifty I have allowed you, you may be persuaded to go to work on a newspaper or make money in some other way—I understand you give the greater part of your income to this abominable cause —”

“Yes. I know how you must feel about that. I made sure you would withdraw it before this —”

“I have tried to! I have been on the point of writing to my solicitors twenty times. But it would be the first time in my life that I had ever broken my word, taken back what I had given, and I have not been able to make up my mind to do it.”

“I know, so I shall do it for you. I’ll write to your solicitors to-morrow. I shall still have two hundred a year, and I am sure now that I can make money —”

“Make money! It is sickening. Women of our class don’t talk about making money.”

“No, but a good many of them would make it if they could, and more than you know turn an honest penny —”

“Oh, let me keep my illusions!” The duke flung himself into a chair and grasped the arms. “Can you imagine what it is to me to see my great country going to the dogs? Socialism, democracy, the daily increasing power of a class that in my youth knew its place and kept it? And now women degrading their sex and proselytizing thousands that would have remained content with their duties to home and society if let alone! Why, you hear nothing but this infernal Suffrage—” The duke was never so impressive as when mildly profane. “Margaret, of course, is unaffected, but the women that gather at my board! They babble about nothing else, whether for or against. To my mind the very subject among all decent people should be tabû. I sometimes feel as if I could hear the greatest nation the world has ever seen rattling about my ears. My poor country! And I would have her impeccable always in the eyes of Europe—” (It was characteristic that he omitted the rest of the world.) “I would have her lower and middle classes respect her unquestioningly, without presuming to rule. The present Government is an abomination, and the number of labor representatives in Parliament is a disgrace in the history of England. And now the women! They should have pity on our troubles and give us their assistance, instead of adding to our problems and making us ridiculous. A fine reputation we are getting abroad—that we can no longer manage our women, that we are obliged to resort to physical violence, as if we were returned to the dark ages! Oh, that we could shut them up in harems! Let the Turks take warning.”

“Well, you can’t shut us up, and you can’t manage us, and that is the whole point. English women have grown up on politics; they have learned as much at the table as in the schoolroom; the bright ones have grown more and more like their fathers, and now you behold the result. As for the Mohammedan women—Ferrero calls attention to the fact that the British in India have noted that in public administration certain women keep the spirit of economy with which they manage a home; and that is why, especially in despotic states, they rule better than men. So, give us, who have had a vastly wider experience, the vote, and be grateful that we are willing to help you.”

“Never. You will never obtain the franchise. Put that idea out of your head. Why not go and live on the continent for a while? The society in Vienna is delightful —”

Julia rose. “I’ve said all I came to say, and more. I am very grateful for your generosity in the past, and I only wished to disabuse your mind of any fear you might have of subjecting me to privations. I shall manage splendidly. I pay very little for my flat in Clement’s Inn —”

The duke writhed. “I can’t do it!” he cried. “I can’t! I gave you my word, and that is the end of it. Besides, you lived with me so long that you are, in a sense, of my house. Keep the money, but for heaven’s sake, come to your senses. I only ask one favor now. Take no part in these disgraceful raids and street scenes.”

Julia hesitated, but she was betraying no secret, for the women never struck without warning. “I’d like to thank you, go, and say no more, but I think I should tell you that a number of us are going to attend the opening of Parliament to-morrow and demand a hearing. Of course, there may be trouble with the police —”

“Do you mean that those termagants will begin to worry us on the very first day of Parliament?”

“We lose no time. We’ll get in if we can, and if we can’t—well, we’ll make ourselves felt, one way or another.”

“I—I’d be grateful if you would give me your promise to stay at home.”

“You see I have given my promise to go to the House.”

“The police will certainly interfere. I fancy they will take the first opportunity— That is only a hint.”

“Oh, we are quite convinced that the police have their orders from the Government. But we mind nothing. Nothing! At the same time let me tell you that we are not going to-morrow with the intention of creating a disturbance. We are not in love with rows, and although we are willing to be hurt, we are not in love with that, either. How we behave depends entirely upon how they behave.”

The duke regarded her for a minute. Then he looked down and tapped a penholder on the table. “Very well,” he said. “Go with the others, I only trust and pray—I intercede for you every morning at prayers—that you won’t be accidentally hurt in these forays, and that you will come to your senses before long. As soon as you do we should be happy to have you come and live with us. I—I have always missed you.”

He rose. Julia ran over and threw her arms about his neck. “You are a dear!” she cried. “And you always were nice to me in your funny way.”

The duke laughed, and disentangled himself.

“There, there!” he said. “You look now about as old as you did when you came to us. You are not quite remade. I shall hope.”

XIII