Rebel women Part 3

If you don't like it, you should ha' let me stay at home, as I wanted to."

She stuffed a ma.s.s of dropped st.i.tches into a torn work-bag, and went down the steps, her chin in the air. "If that's politics," she called back to him from the pavement, "then it's time women got the vote, if it's only to put a stop to them!"

The girl in grey came round the corner of the building and joined her comrade, who still waited in the shadow cast by the cathedral. Her m.u.f.f was gone, her cap lopped over one eye, and she held her hand to her throat where the collar had been wrenched at; but her eyes shone with their unalterable courage and spirit. She knew better than any one that every skirmish in the battle they were out to fight was always won before a single blow was struck.

"All right, are you? You did splendidly, for a first shot! Come along to the Martyrs' Cross; the police say we may hold a meeting there. Oh, I know you never have, but you can come and try. Any _idiot_ can speak after being chucked out of a Cabinet Minister's meeting!"

Encouraged by this quaint process of exhaustion to regard herself as an orator, the woman who had never been to a political meeting till she went to be thrown out of one, walked across the market-place to shake hands with the Middle Ages on a spot where men and women were made to die, centuries ago, for having been born too soon.

She found the girl in grey cheerfully a.s.suring an interested crowd that she stood there as the champion of free speech.

IV

Filling the War Chest

As a pa.s.ser-by, I had known that spot in a busy street all my life; or rather, I thought I knew it. It was only when I took my courage in both hands and a money-box in one of them, and went to stand there every day for a week, that I discovered how wide a gulf it is that separates the pa.s.ser-by from those who are pa.s.sed by.

It was all right as long as the sun shone and sent charming side-lights across the bunches of colour in the flower-lady's basket, and put gay and human feelings into the heart of the public so that it lingered and bought daffodils and pink newspapers and ephemeral air-b.a.l.l.s from my companions of the gutter, and even sometimes gave me a coin as well as an amused smile. One liked it almost as well when the wind blew up unimportant showers, so hurriedly and unexpectedly that the rain seemed almost out of breath when it came; for this turned the bit of western sky that blocked the end of the street into a fine country sky, that ought to have swept across a moor instead of scudding past a London Tube station. But when it snowed, or rained long and uncompromisingly, and when the wind blew swift and cold without blowing up anything interesting with it, there were no street effects and no smiles, and the public shut its impressionable heart against colour and pink news and polemics, and everything else we were hawking; and one learned suddenly the meaning of being pa.s.sed by. Perhaps it was worth learning--one of those odd, disagreeable experiences that are worth gathering up by the way when you stand on the edge of a London pavement, helping to fill a war chest for rebel women. Certainly I might not otherwise have reached the heart of my fellows in the gutter.

"It's a 'ard life, ain't it?" said the flower-lady sympathetically. I had known her in the past, too--the past that seemed so long ago and yet dated back only to last week--had sometimes bought flowers of her because she looked cold, and had generally found her unprepossessing and much inclined to grumble. I thought I knew now, as I stamped my feet to keep warm, and shook my box invitingly in front of cold and distant people who refused to be invited, how very much she might have had to grumble at. The queer part of it was that she was not grumbling now; she had ceased to grumble, in fact, for the very reason that made me understand for the first time why she should grumble. Standing there beside her, in G.o.d's rain that knew no respect of persons, I was no longer a client out of whom another penny might with tact be wheedled; I was just a boon companion, bent like herself on wheedling that penny from a miserly public that eternally hurried by. So she gave me her pity, though I wore a fur coat and she only a threadbare shawl, and the same biting wind bit at us both.

The newspaper sellers at first held aloof; so did the girl who sold air-b.a.l.l.s.

"I haven't took a bloomin' copper all the afternoon," she complained, looking pointedly after the lady who had just dropped a shilling in my box. I considered the wisdom of explaining that what I was doing was going to help her in the long run, but decided that under similar circ.u.mstances I should prefer a more practical and immediate evidence of good-will from any one who offered me such an explanation. For the worst of the long run, mean this what it may, is that it never, never runs.

Luckily for our future relations, a gust of wind carried off a blue air-ball, and in the chase that followed I came off victorious, and was able to hand it to the owner with a disarming smile. She unbent slightly in return.

"Dessay you find it chilly out here, not bein' used to it," she suggested, pulling the knot in the string tighter with her teeth.

"What are they doin' it for? That's what I arst! What are they doin' it for?" said the lame newsboy in a slightly peevish tone.

My agility in capturing the air-ball had made him sore, I think, though he had no reason to feel any envy on that score. Seeing the alertness and speed with which he dragged his useless limb after him when he came to show me anything uncomplimentary about the Suffragettes that happened to appear in his pink newspaper, I could but marvel at the thought of what he might have accomplished on two legs. One could only suppose that his agility, like the flower-lady's sympathy, was the result of a lifelong evasion of difficulties.

The elderly gentleman who sold the penny Conservative paper knew why we were doing it. He never failed to wink joyously to his friends if a male elector stopped to argue across my money-box about the cause for which I was shaking it.

"Doin' it to git theirselves 'usbands, that's what they're doin' it for," he would say conclusively, in denial of the usual contention of the anti-suffragist, that we are doing it because of our distaste for husbands.

When the enemy attacked, my fellow-hawkers waited with grim antic.i.p.ation for my replies.

"Is not this a terrible condescension on your part?" asked one disapproving lady, putting up her lorgnette to read the inscription on the box. "Oh, I quite believe in your cause, but why do this sort of thing? How much better to get round the men another way!"

She looked gently pained when I explained rather obviously that I should consider that a condescension, and so would the right sort of man; and my companions looked with puzzled eyes after the retreating lady who seemed to belong to a strange world out of their ken, in which helplessness had a market value. It was pleasantly illuminating to find, however, as the week wore on, that they had come to accept me as an equal, not because I could hold my own against the pa.s.ser-by, but because they saw me, like themselves, exposed to all the discomforts of being pa.s.sed by. That, I am sure, is why the elderly paper-seller gave me so much friendly information about goloshes, and why the lame boy observed so sympathetically, one wet evening, that I had had a quiet day.

"Yes; nice and quiet, wasn't it?" I answered gladly, being a militant suffragist of many and strenuous experiences that would not generally be called either nice or quiet. It was only when I caught his astonished expression that I understood him to be referring, not to political pa.s.sions, but to trade.

Even when you are filling the war chest at the edge of the pavement it is not impossible, I find, to spare a little pity for those who pa.s.s as well as for those who are pa.s.sed by. "_L'homme oisif tue le temps; le temps tue l'homme oisif_," as it is expressed by the nation that knows better than any other, possibly, how to kill time gracefully. Time seemed to be killing a good many idle people, I thought, during the week of days that I stood outside that Tube station. The habitual hawker, of course, was a loiterer by profession; so was the friendly constable who remarked, "Well, you ladies do have to face somethink, you do!"

referring, I imagine, to the snow, which was soft and soothing compared to some of the street witticisms I had to face in the course of business. The real waster was rather the person who stood at the entrance of the station, sometimes for hours, waiting, not for something to happen, or even in most cases for somebody to come, but just waiting.

Sometimes the idler was a man. For one whole afternoon it was a man with a pale and purposeless blue eye that stamped him at once as being one of those who, in killing time, are being gradually killed by it. He said something about the weather to the policeman, something about the winners to the boy who sold pink information about winners; but he did not spend a halfpenny on the information, nor did he look as though he had spent a halfpenny on information in the whole of his life. Even when a motor-car broke down opposite, he did not cross the road to look at it. You have to be really interested in life, I suppose, to form one of a street crowd.

Most of the women loiterers seemed to be the victims, either of their small unearned incomes, or of somebody else's unpunctuality. One of these, after stamping her feet in unison with mine for more than half an hour, asked me if I had seen a lady in a green hat. I think I had seen hundreds, which was not very helpful; but the enquiry made an opening, and I shook my box gently and seductively in her direction. She was quite affable, told me she had believed in woman suffrage all her life, and thought it an excellent idea for other people to stand out in the rain collecting money for it.

"It gives you a pinched look, and then people throw you something before they see what it is for," she added genially.

Evidently my complexion had not taken her unawares in this way, for she made no effort to support the cause in which she had believed all her life. She had so many claims, she said. I understood what she meant when one of the claims, wearing a mountainous hat in emerald-green straw, bore down upon her with torrential apologies for being late, and carried her off to the shops.

"It's for something to do up my every-evening black, and you have such a good eye for colour," was the cryptic remark I overheard, as they went.

In about half an hour they were back again, and the girl in the green mountain was dropping two-pence in my box. She smiled rather nicely, and on a sudden impulse I asked her what she had bought for the every-evening black.

She stared, laughed a little, and ended on a sigh. "Nothing," she confessed. "Isn't it tragic?"

"It must be," I tried to agree. I suppose I succeeded in sounding a human note, for she still lingered.

"I hope you'll get your vote soon, and not have to go on wasting your time like this," she said.

"It isn't my vote particularly, or my waste of time," I called after her. But she was gone, her ridiculous hat bobbing up and down in the crowd like a Chinese lantern on a stick; and I wondered if she would some day make a truce with time and save her soul alive.

Time, though a deadly murderer, does not succeed in killing all the people who are trying so hard to kill him; and hope, even for a serious cause, lurked sometimes in that stream of bored and idle pa.s.sers-by, who seemed so bent on cheating their nature out of everything it demanded of them. It was always a pleasant shock when women and girls, wearing the most preposterous hats and the most fearsome of purple-spotted veils, slid something into my hand and hurried on, trying to look as if they had done nothing of the kind. And my knowledge of things human played me entirely false over the expensive dowager in sable and velvet.

She had stood in front of the nearest shop window for some minutes, discussing with a patient companion the rival qualities of jet tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and gold braid. "Jet lasts," she observed ponderously.

"It does last," agreed the companion.

"Perhaps that gold edging would look handsomer," proceeded the old lady, a.s.sailed by sudden doubts.

"Oh, yes, it might," said the companion hastily, adapting her tone.

"You are looking at the wrong one," said the old lady bluntly. "It isn't likely I should put a four-three edging on my best satin between-wrap."

Then she veered round and saw me.

Naturally I expected something very cutting, the more so that a kindly supporter threw me a shilling just then from the top of an omnibus, and a money-box not being so handy as a tambourine, I spent the next few seconds grovelling in the snow at the lady's feet. When I came up again, successful but apprehensive, I found her smiling blandly.

"If I were ten years younger I should be out in the street fighting with you," was the astonishing remark that accompanied a handsome donation to the war chest.

"Do come, all the same," I urged, caught by the lightning gleam in her little grey eye. But she shook her head and returned to the jet and the gold edging--a wicked waste of a warlike grey eye!

So the week drew to an end, and I was no longer to be numbered among those who are pa.s.sed by at the edge of the pavement. In my foolishness I thought it would be easy to remain on friendly terms with my fellow-hawkers of yesterday; and with that idea in my mind I took an early opportunity of returning to the spot and buying a halfpenny pink paper and a penny white paper and a blue air-ball and a bunch of daffodils.

I met with a chilly civility from them all, with the exception of the flower lady, who shamelessly overcharged me for the daffodils.

"Yes, lady, they are dear this morning; cost me that in the market, they did--thank you, lady, much obliged, I'm sure. Yes, it is cold for a body, sitting out here all day."

That was all--from the friend and sister who had almost offered me her shawl, a week ago, because she saw me shivering.

The sun was shining, and the snow had gone, and I suppose the patch of sky at the western end of the street was all right. But I had been put back in my place as a pa.s.ser-by; and neither sun nor sky belonged to me any longer.