The Convert Part 23

'There were _others_ up there in the little pen that night!--women, too--but women with enough decency to be revolted, and with enough character to resent such treatment as the members down there on the floor of the House were giving to our measure. Though the women who ought to have felt it most sat there cowed and silent, I am proud to think there were other women who cried out, "_Shame!_" Yes, yes,' she interrupted the interrupters, 'those women were dragged away to prison, and all the world was aghast. But I tell you that cry was the beginning of a new chapter in human history. It began with "Shame!" but it will end with "Honour."'

The old newsvendor led the applause.

'Janet! That woman never spat in a policeman's face.'

'Pull down your veil,' was the lady's sharp response. 'Quick----'

'My----'

'Yes, pull it down, and don't turn round.'

A little dazed by the red-hot torrent the woman on the plinth was still pouring down on the people, Vida's mind at the word 'veil,' so peremptorily uttered, reverted by some trick of a.s.sociation to the Oriental significance of that mark in dress distinctively the woman's.

'Why should I pull down my veil?' she answered abstractedly.

'They're looking this way. Don't turn round. Come, come.'

With a surprising alacrity and skill Mrs. Fox-Moore made her way out of the throng. Vida, following, yet looking back, heard--

'Now, I want you men to give a fair hearing to a woman who----'

'Vida, _don't_ look! Mercifully, they're too much amused to notice us.'

Disobeying the mandate, the younger woman's eyes fell at last upon the figures of two young men hovering on the outer circle. The sun caught their tall, glossy hats, played upon the single flower in the frock coat, struck on the eyegla.s.s, and gleamed mockingly on the white teeth of the one who smiled the broadest as they both stood, craning their necks, whispering and laughing, on the fringe of the crowd.

'Why, it's d.i.c.k Farnborough--and that friend of his from the Austrian Emba.s.sy.'

Vida pulled down her veil.

CHAPTER VIII

Devoutly thankful at having escaped from her compromising position unrecognized, Mrs. Fox-Moore firmly declined to go 'awskin' fur the vote' again! When Vida gave up her laughing remonstrance, Mrs. Fox-Moore thought her sister had also given up the idea. But as Vida afterwards confessed, she told herself that she would go 'just once more.' It could not be but what she was under some illusion about that queer spectacle.

From one impression each admitted it was difficult to shake herself free. Whatever those women were or were not, they weren't fools. What did the leaders (in prison and out), what did they think they were accomplishing, besides making themselves hideously uncomfortable? The English Parliament, having flung them out, had gone on with its routine, precisely as though nothing had happened. _Had_ anything happened? That was the question. The papers couldn't answer. They were given over to lies. The bare idea of women pretending to concern themselves with public affairs--from the point of view of the Press, it was enough to make the soberest sides shake with Homeric laughter.

So, then, one last time to see for one's self. And on this occasion no pettiness of disguise, Miss Levering's aspect seemed to say--no recurrence of any undignified flight. She had been frightened away from her first meeting, but she would not be frightened from the second, which was also to be the last.

An instinct una.n.a.lyzed, but significant of what was to follow, kept her from seeking companionship outside. Had Wark not gone over to the market-gardener, her former mistress would have had no misgiving about taking the woman into her confidence. But Wark, with lightning rapidity, had become Mrs. Anderson Slynes, and was beyond recall. So the new maid was told the following Sunday, that she might walk with her mistress across Hyde Park (where the papers said the meetings in future were to be), carrying some music which had to be returned to the Tunbridges.

Pursuing this programme, what more natural than that those two chance pedestrians should be arrested by an apparition on their way, of a flaming banner bearing, along with a demand for the vote, an outrageous charge against a distinguished public servant--'a pity the misguided creatures didn't know him, just a little!'

Yes. There it was! a rectangle of red screaming across the vivid green of the park not a hundred yards from the Marble Arch, the denunciatory banner stretched above the side of an uncovered van. A little crowd of perhaps a hundred collected on one side of the cart--the loafers on the outermost fringe, lying on the gra.s.s. Never a sign of a Suffragette, and nearly three o'clock! Impossible for any pa.s.ser-by to carry out the programme of pausing to ask idly, 'What are those women screeching about?'

Seeming to search in vain for some excuse to linger, Miss Levering's wandering eye fell upon a young mother wheeling a perambulator. She had glanced with mild curiosity at the flaunting ensign, and then turned from it to lean forward and straighten her baby's cap.

'I wonder what _she_ thinks of the Woman Question,' Miss Levering observed, in a careless aside to her maid.

Before Gorringe could reply: 'Doddy's a bootiful angel, isn't Doddy?'

said the young mother, with subdued rapture.

'Ah, she's found the solution,' said the lady, looking back.

Other pedestrians glanced at the little crowd about the cart, read demand and denunciation on the banner, laughed, and they, too, for the most part, went on.

An Eton boy, who looked as if he might be her grandson, came by with a white-haired lady of distinguished aspect, who held up her voluminous silken skirts and stared silently at the legend.

'Do you see what it says?' the Eton boy laughed as he looked back. '"_We demand the vote._" Fancy! They "demand" it. What awful cheek!' and he laughed again at the fatuity of the female creature.

Vida glanced at the dignified old dame as though with an uneasy new sense of the incongruity in the att.i.tude of those two quite commonplace, everyday members of a world that was her world, and that yet could for a moment look quite strange.

She turned and glanced back at the ridiculous cart as if summoning the invisible presence of Mrs. Chisholm to moderate the insolence of the budding male. Still there was no sign either of Mrs. Chisholm or any of her fellow-conspirators against the old order of the world. Miss Levering stood a moment hesitating.

'I believe I'm a little tired,' she said to the discreet maid. 'We'll rest here a moment,' and she sat down with her back to the crowd.

A woman, apparently of the small shopkeeping cla.s.s, was already established at one end of the only bench anywhere near the cart. Her child who was playing about, was neatly dressed, and to Vida's surprise wore sandals on her stockingless feet. This fashion for children, which had been growing for years among the upper cla.s.ses, had found little imitation among tradesmen or working people. They presumably were still too near the difficulty of keeping their children in shoes and stockings, to be able to see anything but a confession of failure in going without. In the same way, the 'Simple Life,' when led by the rich, wears to the poverty-struck an aspect of masked meanness--a matter far less tolerable in the eyes of the pauper than the traditional splendour of extravagance in the upper cla.s.s, an extravagance that feeds more than the famished stomach with the crumbs that it lets fall.

As Miss Levering sat watching the child, and wondering a little at the sandals, the woman caught her eye.

'Could you please tell me the time?' she asked.

Miss Levering took out her watch, and then spoke of the wisdom of that plan of sandals.

The woman answered with such self-possession and good sense, that the lady sent a half-amused glance over her shoulder as if relishing in advance the st.u.r.dy disapproval of this highly respectable young mother when she should come to realize how near she and the precious daughter were to the rostrum of the Shrieking Sisterhood. It might be worth prolonging the discussion upon health and education for the amus.e.m.e.nt there would be in seeing what form condemnation of the Suffragettes took among people of this kind. By turning her head to one side, out of the tail of her eye the lady could see that an excitement of some sort was agitating the crowd. The voices rose more shrill. People craned and pushed. A derisive cheer went up as a woman appeared on the cart. The wearer of the tam-o'-shanter! Three others followed--all women. Miss Levering saw without seeming to look, still listening while the practical-minded mother talked on about her child, and what 'was good for it.' All life had resolved itself into pursuit of that.

An air of semi-abstraction came over the lady. It was as if in the presence of this excellent bourgeoise she felt an absurd constraint in showing an interest in the proceedings of these uns.e.xed creatures behind them.

To her obvious astonishment the mother of the child was the first to jump up.

'Now they're going to begin!' she said briskly.

'Who?' asked Miss Levering.

'Why, the Suffrage people.'

'Oh! Are _you_ going to listen to them?'

'Yes; that's what I've come all this way for.' And she and her bare-legged offspring melted into the growing crowd.

Vida turned to the maid and met her superior smile. 'That woman says she has come a long way to hear these people advocating Woman's Suffrage,'

and slowly with an air of complete detachment she approached the edge of the crowd, followed by the supercilious maid. They were quickly hemmed in by people who seemed to spring up out of the ground. It was curious to look back over the vivid green expanse and see the dotted humanity running like ants from all directions to listen to this handful of dowdy women in a cart!

In finding her way through the crowd it would appear that the lady was not much sustained by the presence of a servant, however well-meaning.

Much out of place in such a gathering as Mrs. Fox-Moore or any ultra-oldfashioned woman was, still more incongruous showed there the relation of mistress and maid. The punctilious Gorringe was plainly horrified at the proximity to her mistress of these canaille, and the mistress was not so absorbed it would seem but what she felt the affront to seemliness in a servant's seeing her pushed and shoved aside--treated with slight regard or none. Necessary either to leave the scene with lofty disapproval, or else make light of the discomfort.

'It doesn't matter!' she a.s.sured the girl, who was trying to protect her mistress's dainty wrap from contact with a grimy tramp. And, again, when half a dozen boys forced their way past, 'It's all right!' she nodded to the maid, 'it's no worse than the crowd at Charing Cross coming over from Paris.'