The Tree of Heaven Part 35

"How do you make that out?"

He really wanted to know. He really wanted, if it were possible, to understand her.

"I make it out this way. Here have I been through the adventure and the experience of my life. I was in the thick of the big raid; I was four weeks shut up in a prison cell; and you don't care; you're not interested. You never said to yourself, 'Dorothy was in the big raid, I wonder what happened to her?' or 'Dorothy's in prison, I wonder how she's feeling?' You didn't care; you weren't interested.

"If it had happened to you, I couldn't have thought of anything else, I couldn't have got it out of my head. I should have been wondering all the time what you were feeling; I couldn't have rested till I knew. It would have been as if I was in prison myself. And now, when I've come out, all you think of is how you can rag and score off me."

She was sitting beside him on the green bank of the lane. Her hands were clasped round her knees. One knickerbockered knee protruded through the three-cornered rent in her skirt; she stared across the road, a long, straight stare that took no heed of what she saw, the grey road, and the green bank on the other side, topped by its hedge of trees.

Her voice sounded quiet in the quiet lane; it had no accent of self-pity or reproach. It was as if she were making statements that had no emotional significance whatever.

She did not mean to hurt him, yet every word cut where he was sorest.

"I wanted to tell you about it. I counted the days, the minutes till I could tell you; but you wouldn't listen. You don't want to hear."

"I won't listen if it's about women's suffrage. And I don't want to hear if it's anything awful about you."

"It is about me, but it isn't awful.

"That's what I want to tell you.

"But, first of all--about the raid. I didn't mean to be in it at all, as it happens. I meant to go with the deputation because you told me not to. You're right about that. But I meant to turn back as soon as the police stopped us, because I hate rows with the police, and because I don't believe in them, and because I told Angela Blathwaite I wasn't going in with her crowd any way. You see, she called me a coward before a lot of people and said I funked it. So I did. But I should have been a bigger coward if I'd gone against my own will, just because of what she said. That's how she collars heaps of women. They adore her and they're afraid of her. Sometimes they lie and tell her they're going in when their moment comes, knowing perfectly well that they're not going in at all. I don't adore her, and I'm not afraid of her, and I didn't lie.

"So I went at the tail of the deputation where I could slip out when the row began. I swear I didn't mean to be in it. I funked it far too much.

I didn't mind the police and I didn't mind the crowd. But I funked being with the women. When I saw their faces. You world have funked it.

"And anyhow I don't like doing things in a beastly body. Ugh!

"And then they began moving.

"The police tried to stop them. And the crowd tried. The crowd began jeering at them. And still they moved. And the mounted police horses got excited, and danced about and reared a bit, and the crowd was in a funk then and barged into the women. That was rather awful.

"I could have got away then if I'd chosen. There was a man close to me all the time who kept making s.p.a.ces for me and telling me to slip through. I was just going to when a woman fell. Somewhere in the front of the deputation where the police were getting nasty.

"Then I had to stay. I had to go on with them. I swear I wasn't excited or carried away in the least. Two women near me were yelling at the police. I hated them. But I felt I'd be an utter brute if I left them and got off safe. You see, it was an ugly crowd, and things were beginning to be jolly dangerous, and I'd funked it badly. Only the first minute. It went--the funk I mean--when I saw the woman go down. She fell sort of slanting through the crowd, and it was horrible. I couldn't have left them then any more than I could have left children in a burning house.

"I thought of you."

"You thought of me?"

"Yes. I thought of you--how you'd have hated it. But I didn't care. I was sort of boosted up above caring. The funk had all gone and I was absolutely happy. Not insanely happy like some of the other women, but quietly, comfily happy.

"After all, I didn't do anything you _need_ have minded."

"What _did_ you do?" he said.

"I just went on and stood still and refused to go back. I stuck my hands in my pockets so that I shouldn't let out at a policeman or anything (I knew you wouldn't like _that_). I may have pushed a bit now and then with my shoulders and my elbows; I can't remember. But I didn't make one sound. I was perfectly lady-like and perfectly dignified."

"I suppose you _know_ you haven't got a hat on?"

"It didn't _come_ off. I _took_ it off and threw it to the crowd when the row began. It doesn't matter about your hair coming down if you haven't got a hat on, but if your hair's down and your hat's bashed in and all crooked you look a perfect idiot.

"It wasn't a bad fight, you know, twenty-one women to I don't know how many policemen, and the front ones got right into the doorway of St.

Stephen's. That was where they copped me.

"But that, isn't the end of it.

"The fight was only the first part of the adventure. The wonderful thing was what happened afterwards. In prison.

"I didn't think I'd really _like_ prison. That was another thing I funked. I'd heard such awful things about it, about the dirt, you know.

And there wasn't any dirt in my cell, anyhow. And after the crowds of women, after the meetings and the speeches, the endless talking and the boredom, that cell was like heaven.

"Thank G.o.d, it's always solitary confinement. The Government doesn't know that if they want to make prison a deterrent they'll shut us up together. You won't give the Home Secretary the tip, will you?

"But that isn't what I wanted to tell you about.

"It was something bigger, something tremendous. You'll not believe this part of it, but I was absolutely happy in that cell. It was a sort of deep-down unexcited happiness. I'm not a bit religious, but I _know_ how the nuns feel in their cells when they've given up everything and shut themselves up with G.o.d. The cell was like a convent cell, you know, as narrow as that bit of shadow there is, and it had nice white-washed walls, and a planked-bed in the corner, and a window high, high up.

There ought to have been a crucifix on the wall above the plank-bed, but there wasn't a crucifix. There was only a s.h.i.+ny black Bible on the chair.

"Really Frank, if you're to be shut up for a month with just one book, it had better be the Bible. Isaiah's ripping. I can remember heaps of it: 'in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be gra.s.s with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there ... the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing into Zion' ... 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.' I used to read like anything; and I thought of things. They sort of came to me.

"That's what I wanted to tell you about. The things that came to me were so much bigger than the thing I went in for. I could see all along we weren't going to get it that way. And I knew we _were_ going to get it some other way. I don't in the least know how, but it'll be some big, tremendous way that'll make all this fighting and fussing seem the rottenest game. That was one of the things I used to think about."

"Then," he said, "you've given it up? You're corning out of it?"

She looked at him keenly. "Are those still your conditions?"

He hesitated one second before he answered firmly. "Yes, those are still my conditions. You still won't agree to them?"

"I still won't agree. It's no use talking about it. You don't believe in freedom. We're incompatible. We don't stand for the same ideals."

"Oh, Lord, what _does_ that matter?"

"It matters most awfully."

"I should have thought," said Drayton, "it would have mattered more if I'd had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something."

"It wouldn't, _really_."

"Well, you seem to have thought about a lot of things. Did you ever once think about me, Dorothy?"

"Yes, I did. Have you ever read the Psalms? There's a jolly one that begins: 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.' I used to think of you when I read that. I thought of you a lot.

"That's what I was coming to. It was the queerest thing of all.

Everything seemed ended when I went to prison. I knew you wouldn't care for me after what I'd done--you must really listen to this, Frank--I knew you couldn't and wouldn't marry me; and it somehow didn't matter.

What I'd got hold of was bigger than that. I knew that all this Women's Suffrage business was only a part of it, a small, ridiculous part.

"I sort of saw the redeemed of the Lord. They were men, as well as women, Frank. And they were all free. They were all free because they were redeemed. And the funny thing was that you were part of it. You were mixed up in the whole queer, tremendous business. Everything was ended. And everything was begun; so that I knew you understood even when you didn't understand. It was really as if I'd got you tight, somehow; and I knew you couldn't go, even when you'd gone."