The Convert Part 29

'The converted don't need to come. It's you who need to come!' Above roars of derision: 'You felt that or, of course, you wouldn't be here.

Men are so reasonable! As to the women who write letters to the papers to say they're against the Suffrage, they are very ignorant, those ladies, or else it may be they write their foolish letters to please their menfolk. Some of them, I know, think the end and aim of woman is to please. I don't blame them; it's the penalty of belonging to the parasite cla.s.s. But those women are a poor little handful. They write letters to prove that they "don't count," and they _prove it_.' She waved them away with one slim hand. 'That's one reason we don't bother much with holding drawing-room meetings. The older Suffragists have been holding drawing-room meetings _for forty years_!' She brought it out to shouts. 'But we go to the mill gates! That's where we hold our meetings!

We hold them at the pit-brow; we hold them everywhere that men and women are working and suffering and hoping for a better time.'

With that Miss Ernestine sat down. They applauded her l.u.s.tily; they revelled in laughing praise, yielding to a glow that they imagined to be pure magnanimity.

'Are there any questions?' Miss Claxton, with her eyes still screwed up to meet the returning sun and the volley of interrogatory, appeared at the side of the cart. 'Now, one at a time, please. What? I can't hear when you all talk together. Write it down and hand it to me. Now, you people who are nearer--what? Very well! Here's a man who wants to know whether if women had the vote wouldn't it make dissension in the house, when husband and wife held different views?' She had smiled and nodded, as though in this question she welcomed an old friend, but instead of answering it she turned to the opposite side and looked out over the clamourers on the left. They were engaged for the most part in inquiring about her matrimonial prospects, and why she had carried that dog-whip.

Something in her face made them fall silent, for it was both good-humoured and expectant, even intent. 'I'm waiting,' she said, after a little pause. 'At every meeting we hold there's usually another question put at the same time as that first one about the quarrels that will come of husbands and wives holding different opinions. As though the quarrelsome ones had been waiting for women's suffrage before they fell out! When the man on my right asks, "Wouldn't they quarrel?"

there's almost always another man on my left who says, "If women were enfranchised we wouldn't be an inch forrader, because the wife would vote as her husband told her to. The man's vote would simply be duplicated, and things would be exactly as they were." Neither objector seems to see that the one scruple cancels the other. But to the question put this afternoon, I'll just say this.' She bent forward, and she held up her hand. 'To the end of time there'll be people who won't rest till they've found something to quarrel about. And to the end of time there'll be wives who follow blindly where their husbands lead. And to the end of time there'll be husbands who are influenced by their wives.

What's more, all this has gone on ever since there were husbands, and it will go on as long as there are any left, and it's got no more to do with women's voting than it has with their making cream tarts. No, not half as much!' she laughed. 'Now, where's that question that you were going to write?'

Some one handed up a wisp of white paper. Miss Claxton opened it, and upon the subject presented she embarked with the promising beginning, 'Your economics are pretty wobbly, my friend,' and proceeded to clear the matter up and incidentally to flatten out the man. One wondered that under such auspices 'Question Time' was as popular as it obviously was.

There is no doubt a fearful joy in adventuring yourself in certain danger before the public eye. Besides the excitement of taking a personal share in the game, there is always the hope that it may have been reserved to you to stump the speaker and to s.h.i.+ne before the mult.i.tude.

A gentleman who had vainly been trying to get her to hear him, again asked something in a hesitating way, stumbling and going back to recast the form of his question.

He was evidently quite in earnest, but either unaccustomed to the sound of his own voice or unnerved to find himself bandying words in Hyde Park with a Suffragette. So when he stuck fast in the act of fas.h.i.+oning his phrases, Miss Claxton bent in the direction whence the voice issued, and said, briskly obliging--

'You needn't go on. I know the rest. What this gentleman is trying to ask is----'

And although no denial on his part reached the public ear, it was not hard to imagine him seething with indignation, down there helpless in his crowded corner, while the facile speaker propounded as well as demolished his objection to her and all her works.

'Yes; one last question. Let us have it.'

'How can you pretend that women want the vote? Why, there are hardly any here.'

'More women would join us openly but for fear of their fellow-cowards.

Thousands upon thousands of women feel a sympathy with this movement they dare not show.'

'Lots of women don't want the vote.'

'What women don't want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought to like subservience, too? The very existence of a movement like this is a thorn in their sleek sides. We are a reproach and a menace to such women. But this isn't a movement to compel anybody to vote. It is to give the right to those who _do_ want it--to those signatories of the second largest pet.i.tion ever laid on the table of the House of Commons--to the 96,000 textile workers--to the women who went last month in deputation to the Prime Minister, and who represented over half a million belonging to Trades Unions and organized societies. To--perhaps more than all, to the unorganized women, those whose voices are never heard in public. _They_, as Mrs. Bewley told you--they are beginning to want it. The women who are made to work over hours--_they_ want the vote. To compel them to work over hours is illegal. But who troubles to see that laws are fairly interpreted for the unrepresented? I know a factory where a notice went up yesterday to say that the women employed there will be required to work twelve hours a day for the next few weeks. Instead of starting at eight, they must begin at six, and work till seven. The hours in this particular case are illegal--as the employer will find out!' she threw in with a flash, and one saw by that illumination the avenue through which his enlightenment would come. 'But in many shops where women work, twelve hours a day is legal. Much of women's employment is absolutely unrestricted, except that they may not be worked on Sunday. And while all that is going on, comfortable gentlemen sit in armchairs and write alarmist articles about the falling birth-rate and the horrible amount of infant mortality. A Government calling itself Liberal goes pettifogging on about side issues, while women are debased and babies die. Here and there we find a man who realizes that the main concern of the State should be its children, and that you can't get worthy citizens where the mothers are sickly and enslaved. The question of statecraft, rightly considered, always reaches back to the mother. That State is most prosperous that most considers her. No State that forgets her can survive. The future is rooted in the well-being of women. If you rob the women, your children and your children's children pay. Men haven't realized it--your boasted logic has never yet reached so far. Of all the community, the women who give the next generation birth, and who form its character during the most impressionable years of its life--of all the community, these mothers now or mothers to be ought to be set free from the monstrous burden that lies on the shoulders of millions of women. Those of you who want to see women free, hold up your hands.'

A strange, orchid-like growth sprang up in the air. Hands gloved and ungloved, hands of many shades and sizes, hands grimy and hands ringed.

Something curious to the unaccustomed eye, these curling, clutching, digitated members raised above their usual range and common avocations, suddenly endowed with speech, and holding forth there in the silent upper air for the whole human economy.

'Now, down.' The pallid growth vanished. 'Those against the freedom of women.' Again hands, hands. Far too many to suit the promoters of the meeting. But Miss Claxton announced, 'The ayes are in the majority. The meeting is with us.'

'She can't even count!' The air was full of the taunting phrase--'Can't count!'

'Yes,' said Miss Claxton, wheeling round again upon the people, as some of her companions began to get down out of the cart. 'Yes, she can count, and she can see when men don't play fair. Each one in that group held up _two_ hands when the last vote was taken.' She made a great deal of this incident, and elevated it into a principle. 'It is entirely characteristic of the means men will stoop to use in opposing the Women's Cause.'

To hoots and groans and laughter the tam-o'-shanter disappeared.

'Rank Socialists every one of 'em!' was one of the verdicts that flew about.

'They ought _all_ to be locked up.'

'A danger to the public peace.'

A man circulating about on the edge of the crowd was calling out, ''Andsome souvenir. Scented paper 'andkerchief! With full programme of Great Suffragette Meeting in 'Yde Park!'

As the crowd thinned, some of the roughs pressing forward were trying to 'rush' the speakers. The police hastened to the rescue. It looked as if there would be trouble. Vida and her maid escaped towards the Marble Arch.

''Andsome scented 'andkerchief! Suffragette Programme!' The raucous voice followed them, and not the voice alone. Through the air was wafted the cheap and stifling scent of patchouli.

CHAPTER X

Jean Dunbarton received Mr. Geoffrey Stonor upon his entrance into Mrs.

Freddy's drawing-room with a charming little air of fluttered responsibility.

'Mrs. Freddy and I have been lunching with the Whyteleafes. She had to go afterwards to say good-bye to some people who are leaving for abroad.

So Mrs. Freddy asked me to turn over my Girls' Club to your cousin Sophia----'

'Are you given to good works, too?' he interrupted. 'What a terribly philanthropic age it is!'

Jean smiled as she went on with her explanation. 'Although it wasn't her Sunday, Sophia, like an angel, has gone to the club. And I'm here to explain. Mrs. Freddy said if she wasn't back on the stroke----'

'Oh, I dare say I'm a trifle early.'

It was a theory that presented fewer difficulties than that he should be kept waiting.

'I was to beg you to give her a few minutes' grace in any case.'

Instead of finding a seat, he stood looking down at the charming face.

His indifference to Mrs Freddy's precise programme lent his eyes a misleading look of absent-mindedness, which dashed the girl's obvious excitement over the encounter.

'I see,' he had said slowly. What he saw was a graceful creature of medium height, with a clear colour and grey-blue eyes fixed on him with an interest as eager as it was frank. What the grey-blue eyes saw was probably some glorified version of Stonor's straight, firm features, a little blunt, which lacked that semblance of animation given by colour, and seemed to scorn to make up for it by any mobility of expression. The grey eyes, set somewhat too prominently, were heavy when not interested, and the claim to good looks which n.o.body had dreamed of denying seemed to rest mainly upon the lower part of his face. The lips, over-full, perhaps, were firmly moulded, but the best lines were those curves from the ear to the quite beautiful chin. The gloss on the straight light-brown hair may have stood to the barber's credit, but only health could keep so much grace still in the carriage of a figure heavier than should be in a man of forty--one who, without a struggle, had declined from polo unto golf. There was no denying that the old expression of incipient sullenness, fleeting or suppressed, was deepening into the main characteristic of his face, though it was held that he, as little as any man, had cause to present that aspect to a world content to be his oyster. Yet, as no doubt he had long ago learned, it was that very expression which was the cause of much of the general concern people seemed to feel to placate, to amuse, to dispel the menace of that cloud.

The girl saw it, and her heart failed her.

'Mrs. Freddy said if I told you the children were in the garden expecting you, you wouldn't have the heart to go away directly.'

'She is right. I _haven't_ the heart.' And in that lifting of his cloud, the girl's own face shone an instant.

'I should have felt it a terrible responsibility if you were to go.' She spoke as if the gladness that was not to be repressed called for some explanation. 'Mrs. Freddy says that she and Mr. Freddy see so little of you nowadays. That was why she made such a point of my coming and trying to--to----'

'You needed a great deal of urging then?' He betrayed the half-amused, half-ironic surprise of the man accustomed to find people ready enough, as a rule, to clutch at excuse for a _tete-a-tete_. Although she had flushed with mingled embarra.s.sment and excitement, he proceeded to increase her perturbation by suggesting, 'Mrs. Freddy had to overcome your dislike for the mission.'

'Dislike? Oh, no!'

'What then?'

'My--well----' She lifted her eyes, and dared to look him full in the face as she said, 'I suppose you know you are rather alarming.'