Affinities and Other Stories Part 36

That's only reasonable."

"And--Suffrage?"

"She's going to be less militant," he said. "Of course, her conviction is the same. I want her to stand by her principle. I wouldn't respect her if she didn't."

It didn't quite satisfy me. I knew Poppy. But he was so happy that I said nothing. After all, what could I say? Viv after all had never opposed Suffrage, except in its militant form--although I don't believe he had felt the necessity for it. But the trouble was that Poppy was a born militant, a born aggressor. And he had promised her the strength of her convictions!

(I wrote it all to father that afternoon and his cablegram came when I was back in London again and settled.

"No great revolution ever accomplished without bloodshed.")

PART SECOND

When Poppy and Vivian had been married and gone to Brittany, I went back to Daphne's. Daphne was very discouraging about them. I remember her standing by the fire and orating, with her tea cup in her hand.

"There's a loss somewhere--bound to be," she said. Daphne is short and stout, and wears her hair short and curled over her head with an iron.

"Either Suffrage loses her, or she loses a husband. I've watched it. It doesn't do, Maggie," which is her pet name for me. "A Suffragist as valuable as Poppy should not marry. You remember what Jane Willoughby's husband said to her, that he expected The Cause for his wife to be himself, and that if she'd rather raise votes for women than a family of children she would have to choose at once. When she asked him why she couldn't do both, he went to Africa!"

"Without giving her an answer?"

"Bless the child, there isn't any answer! It isn't wisdom that takes refuge in silence. It's silly, besotted, dumbheaded idiocy."

"Viv isn't an imbecile," I said feebly.

"He's a male," she snapped, and ran her fingers up through her fringe, so that she appeared to stand in a gale of wind.

The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate, and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with a gla.s.s roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase connecting. She was most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her first work was going to be his study walls.

Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted to talk over her plans with us, and there was no one else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the pony at Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the new play and the new paintings. The thing was a great success until half way through the dinner, when suddenly Poppy said:

"By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here to-day."

I felt, for some reason, as I had felt when the key went down my back.

Viv smiled, and went to his doom.

"Just imagine, Basil," he said. "The sweet young person across the table made more than I did last year! Four thousand pounds!"

"I'm too commercially successful to think I have any real genius," said Poppy, complacently.

"And some small sum the same sweet young person will have to pay over to the tax man," Basil observed.

Poppy raised her violet eyes.

"I don't intend to pay it," she said.

Vivian put down his gla.s.s.

"That's what Madge would call a 'bluff,'" he said, with his eyes on her.

"You'll be obliged to pay it, dearest. You know that."

"'Taxation without representation' is what it amounts to." Poppy's face was dangerously agreeable. "The American colonies seceded, didn't they, for something like that? I paid it last year, but I made up my mind then I'd never do it again."

Basil was looking very uncomfortable.

"I gave you the privilege of your convictions," said Viv, stiffly. "Of course, if that's your intention, there is nothing more to be said."

Poppy looked puzzled.

"But it _is_ wrong, isn't it?" she demanded. "Surely that's the a.b.c.

of the reason for the discontent of Englishwomen."

"The principle may not be entirely equitable. Few laws work equally well for all." Vivian now, a little white about the lips. "But, such as it is, it's the law of your country."

"I didn't choose my country, or make it's laws," Poppy said coldly. "I have a right to protest; I'll not pay it."

Now, as I have said before, motives are seldom unmixed. I think what Poppy meant to do was simply to register a protest, refuse to pay, make a lot of fuss about it. If they sent her to jail, being the prominent person she was--she was the Honourable Poppy, I think I forgot to say that before--it would make a lot of feeling. She did not mind jail very much. She'd been there twice. Then, having a.s.serted her principles, she could get sick or go on a hunger strike, and Vivian would pay the tax and get her out.

Basil laughed with a.s.sumed cheerfulness.

"Then Viv is stuck for the tax," he said.

Vivian looked across the table and met Poppy's eyes.

"That's hardly what you are getting at, is it?" he asked. "Your protest is against the imposition of the tax, isn't it? It's a matter of principle, isn't it? My paying it wouldn't help."

"I have not asked you to pay it."

"As a matter of fact, I haven't the slightest intention of paying it, Poppy. You put me in an absurd position, that's all."

We had finished dinner, and the men went up to the drawing room with us. A funny thought struck Basil on the way up. He chuckled.

"Of course, Viv," he said, "if Poppy sticks to that, you'll have to do something. There's the Husband's Liability Act. You're liable, you know."

Basil is a barrister.

Well, we talked of other things and pretended not to notice Vivian's strained eyes and Poppy's high color. She took me off after a time to see the new studio, and it did not take me long to tell her what I thought.

"It's absurd," I said. "Do you expect to break down iron bars by banging a head against them?"

"It's my head," she said sulkily.

"Not at all. It's Vivian's. They will jail him."

"I didn't make the law."

"Like the man with the Ten Commandments at Guildford!" I retorted. "He didn't make them, but you know where he said he'd go if he broke them.

By the way, Poppy, I've always meant to ask you, did you ever get a retort ready in case the T. C. came up again?"