The Convert Part 22

While still they lingered, with a final fling of arms and toss of plumes, the champion of the women of England sat down in the midst of applause.

'You hear? It's all very well. Most of them simply loved it.'

And now the chairman, in a strikingly different style, was preparing the way for the next speaker, at mention of whom the crowd seemed to feel they'd been neglecting their prerogative of hissing.

'What name did she say? Why do they make that noise?'

The two ladies began to worm their way back; but this was a different matter from coming out.

'Wot yer doin'?' some one inquired sternly of Mrs. Fox-Moore.

Another turned sharply, 'Look out! Oo yer pus.h.i.+n', old girl?'

The horrid low creatures seemed to have no sense of deference. And the stuff they smoked!

'Pah!' observed Mrs. Fox-Moore, getting the full benefit of a noxious puff. '_Pah!_'

'_Wot!_' said the smoker, turning angrily. 'Pah to you, miss!' He eyed Mrs. Fox-Moore from head to foot with a withering scorn. 'Comin' 'ere awskin' us fur votes' (Vida nearly fainted), 'and ain't able to stand a little tobacco.'

'Stand in front, Janet,' said Miss Levering, hastily recovering herself.

'_I_ don't mind smoke,' she said mendaciously, trying to appease the defiler of the air with a little smile. Indeed, the idea of Mrs.

Fox-Moore having come to 'awsk' this person for a vote was sufficiently quaint.

'This is the sort of thing they mean, I suppose,' said that lady, 'when they talk about c.o.c.kney humour. It doesn't appeal to me.'

Vida bit her lip. Her own taste was less pure. 'We needn't try to get any nearer,' she said hastily. 'This chairman-person can make herself heard without screeching.'

But having lost the key during the pa.s.sage over the pipe, they could only make out that she was justifying some one to the mob, some one who apparently was coming in for too much sharp criticism for the chairman to fling her to the wolves without first diverting them a little. The battle of words that ensued was almost entirely unintelligible to the two ladies, but they gathered, through means more expressive than speech, that the chairman was dealing with some sort of crisis in the temper of the meeting, brought about by the mention of a name.

The only thing clear was that she was neither going to give in, nor going to turn over the meeting in a state of ferment to some less practised hand.

'Yes, she did! She had a perfect right,' the chairman maintained against a storm of noes--'more than a right, _a duty_, to perform in going with that deputation on public business to the house of a public servant, since, unlike the late Prime Minister, he had refused to women all opportunity to treat with him through the usual channels always open to citizens having a political grievance.'

'Citizens? Suffragettes!'

'Very well.' She set her mouth. 'Suffragettes if you like. To get an abuse listened to is the first thing; to get it understood is the next.

Rather than not have our cause stand out clear and unmistakable before a preoccupied, careless world, we accept the clumsy label; we wear it proudly. And it won't be the first time in history that a name given in derision has become a badge of honour!'

Why, the woman's eyes were suffused!--a flush had mounted up to her hair!

How she cared!

'Yer ain't told us the reason ye _want_ the vote.'

'Reason? Why, she's a woman!'

'Haw! haw!'

The speaker had never paused an instant, but--it began to be clear that she heard any interruption it suited her to hear.

'Some one asking, at this time of day, why women want the vote? Why, for exactly the same reason that you men do. Because, not having any voice in public affairs, our interests are neglected; and since woman's interests are man's, all humanity suffers. We want the vote, because taxation without representation is tyranny; because the laws as they stand bear hardly on women; and because those unfair, man-made laws will never be altered till women have a share in electing the men who control legislation.'

'Yer ought ter leave politics to us----'

'We can't leave politics to the men, because politics have come into the home, and if the higher interests of the home are to be served, women must come into politics.'

'That's a bad argument!'

'Wot I always say is----'

'Can't change nature. Nature says----'

'Let 'er st'y at 'ome and mind 'er business!'

The interjections seemed to come all at once. The woman bent over the crowd. Nothing misty in her eyes now--rather a keener light than before.

'Don't you see,' she appealed to them as equals--'don't you see that in your improvement of the world you men have taken women's business out of her home? In the old days there was work and responsibility enough for woman without going outside her own gate. The women were the bakers and brewers, the soap and candle-makers, the loom-workers of the world. You men,' she said, delicately flattering them, '_you_ have changed all that. You have built great factories and warehouses and mills. But how do you keep them going? By calling women to come in their thousands and help you. But women love their homes. You couldn't have got these women out of their homes without the goad of poverty. You men can't always earn enough to keep the poor little home going, so the women work in the shops, they swarm at the mill gates, and the factories are full.'

'True! True, every blessed word!' said the old newsvendor.

'Hus.h.!.+' she said. 'Don't interrupt. In taking women's business out of the home you haven't freed her from the need to see after the business.

The need is greater than ever it was. Why, eighty-two per cent of the women of this country are wage-earning women! Yet, you go on foolishly echoing: Woman's place is at home.'

'True! True!' said the aged champion, unabashed.

'Then there are those men, philanthropists, statesmen, who believe they are safeguarding the interests of women by making laws restricting their work, and so restricting their resources without ever consulting these women. If they consulted these women, they would hear truths that would open their blind eyes. But no, the woman isn't worthy of being consulted. She is worthy to do the highest work given to humanity, to bear and to bring up children; she is worthy to teach and to train them; she is worthy to pay the taxes that she has no voice in levying. If she breaks the law that she has no share in making, she is worth hanging, but she is not worth consulting about her own affairs--affairs of supremest importance to her very existence--affairs that no man, however great and good, can understand so well as she. She will never get justice until she gets the vote. Even the well-to-do middle-cla.s.s woman----'

'Wot are _you_?'

'And even the woman of what are called the upper cla.s.ses--even she must wince at the times when men throw off the mask and let her see how in their hearts they despise her. A few weeks ago Mr. Lothian Scott----'

'Boo! Boo!'

'Hooray!'

''ray for Lothian Scott!'

In the midst of isolated cheers and a volume of booing, she went on--

'When he brought a resolution before the House of Commons to remove the s.e.x disqualification, what happened?'

'Y' kicked up a row!'

'Lot o' yer got jugged!'

'The same thing happened that has been happening for half a century every time the question comes up in that English Parliament that Englishmen are supposed to think of with such respect as a place of dignity. What _happened_?' She leaned forward and her eyes shone. 'What happened in that sacred place, that Ark where they safeguard the honour of England? What happened to _our_ honour, that these men dare tell us is so safe in their hands? Our cause was dragged through filth. The very name "woman" was used as a signal for jests and ribald laughter, and for such an exhibition of s.e.x rancour and mistrust that it pa.s.sed imagination to think what the mothers and wives of the members must think of the public confession of the deep disrespect their menfolk feel for them. Some one here spoke of "a row."' She threw back her head, and faced the issue as though she knew that by bringing it forward herself, she could turn the taunt against the next speaker into a t.i.tle of respect. 'You blame us for making a scene in that holy place! You would have us imitate those other women--the well-behaved--the women who think more of manners than of morals. There they were--for an example to us--that night of the debate, that night of the "row"--there they sat as they have always done, like meek mute slaves up there in their little gilded pen, ready to listen to any insult, ready to smile on the men afterward. In only one way, but it was an important exception, in just one way that debate on Woman Suffrage differed from any other that had ever taken place in the House of Commons.'

A voice in the crowd was raised, but before the jeer was out Mrs.

Chisholm had flung down her last ringing sentences.