"It was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. Give the Liberals time!" she echoed. "Thirty-three years ago memorials in favour of the suffrage were presented to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli. In 1896, 257,000 women of these British Isles signed an appeal to the members of Parliament. Bills or Resolutions have been before the House, on and off, for the last thirty-six years. All that "time" thrown away!
At the opening of this year we found ourselves with no a.s.surance that if we went on in the same way, any girl born into the world in our time would ever be able to exercise the rights of citizenship though she lived to be a hundred. That was why we said all this has been in vain.
We must try some other way. How did you working men get the suffrage, we asked ourselves. Well, we turned up the records--and we _saw_. We don"t want to follow such a violent example. We would much rather not--but if that"s the only way we can make the country see we"re in earnest--we are prepared to show them!"
"An" they"ll show _you_!"
"Give ye another month "ard!"
In the midst of the laughter and interruptions, a dirty, beery fellow of fifty or so, from whom Stonor"s arm was shielding Jean, turned to the pal behind him with--
"Ow"d yer like to be _that_ one"s "usband? Think o" comin" "ome to _that_!"
"I"d soon learn "er!" answered the other, with a meaning look.
"Don"t think that going to prison again has any fears for us. We"d go for life if by doing that we got freedom for the rest of the women."
"Hear! Hear!"
"Rot!"
"W"y don"t the men "elp ye to get yer rights?"
"Here"s some one asking why the men don"t help. It"s partly they don"t understand yet--they _will_ before we"ve done!" She wagged her head in a sort of comical menace, and the crowd screamed with laughter--"partly, they don"t understand yet what"s at stake----"
"Lord!" said an old fellow, with a rich chuckle. "She"s a educatin" of us!"
"--and partly that the bravest man is afraid of ridicule. Oh, yes, we"ve heard a great deal all our lives about the timidity and the sensitiveness of women. And it"s true--we _are_ sensitive. But I tell you, ridicule crumples a man up. It steels a woman. We"ve come to know the value of ridicule. We"ve educated ourselves so that we welcome ridicule. We owe our sincerest thanks to the comic writers. The cartoonist is our unconscious friend. Who cartoons people who are of no importance? What advertis.e.m.e.nt is so sure of being remembered? If we didn"t know it by any other sign, the comic papers would tell us--_we"ve arrived_!"
She stood there for one triumphant moment in an att.i.tude of such audacious self-confidence, that Jean turned excitedly to her lover with--
"I know what she"s like! The girl in Ibsen"s "Master Builder"!"
"I don"t think I know the young lady."
"Oh, there was a knock at the door that set the Master Builder"s nerves quivering. He felt in his bones it was the Younger Generation coming to upset things. He _thought_ it was a young man----"
"And it was really Miss Ernestine Blunt? He has my sympathies."
The Younger Generation was declaring from the monument--
"Our greatest debt of grat.i.tude we owe to the man who called us female hooligans!"
That tickled the crowd, too; she was such a charming little pink-cheeked specimen of a hooligan.
"I"m being frightfully amused, Geoffrey," said Jean.
He looked down at her with a large indulgence. "That"s right," he said.
"We aren"t hooligans, but we hope the fact will be overlooked. If everybody said we were nice, well-behaved women, who"d come to hear us?
_Not the men._"
The people dissolved in laughter, but she was grave enough.
"Men tell us it isn"t womanly for us to care about politics. How do they know what"s womanly? It"s for women to decide that. Let them attend to being manly. It will take them all their time."
"Pore benighted man!"
"Some of you have heard it would be dreadful if we got the vote, because then we"d be pitted against men in the economic struggle. But it"s too late to guard against that. It"s fact. But facts, we"ve discovered, are just what men find it so hard to recognize. Men are so dreadfully sentimental." She smiled with the crowd at that, but she proceeded to hammer in her pet nail. "They won"t recognize those eighty-two women out of every hundred who are wage-earners. We used to believe men when they told us that it was unfeminine--hardly respectable--for women to be students and to aspire to the arts that bring fame and fortune. But men have never told us it was unfeminine for women to do the heavy drudgery that"s badly paid. That kind of work had to be done by somebody, and men didn"t hanker after it. _Oh_, no! Let the women scrub and cook and wash, or teach without diplomas on half pay. That"s all right. But if they want to try their hand at the better-rewarded work of the liberal professions--oh, very unfeminine indeed."
As Ernestine proceeded to show how all this obsolete unfairness had its roots in political inequality, Lady John dropped her gla.s.s with a sigh.
"You are right," she said to Jean. "This is Hilda, harnessed to a purpose. A portent to shake middle-aged nerves."
With Jean blooming there before him, Stonor had no wish to prove his own nerves middle-aged.
"I think she"s rather fun, myself. Though she ought to be taken home and well smacked."
Somebody had interrupted to ask, "If the House of Commons won"t give you justice, why don"t you go to the House of Lords?"
"What?" She hadn"t heard, but the question was answered by some one who had.
"She"d "ave to "urry up. Case of early closin"!"
"You"ll be allowed to ask any question you like," she said, "at the end of the meeting."
"Wot"s that? Oh, is it question time? I s"y, miss, "oo killed c.o.c.k Robin?"
"I"ve got a question, too," a boy called through his hollowed hands.
"Are--you--married?"
"Ere"s your chance. "E"s a bachelor."
"Here"s a man," says Ernestine, "asking, "If the women get full citizenship, and a war is declared, will the women fight?""
"Haw! haw!"
"Yes."
"Yes. Just tell us _that_!"
"Well"--she smiled--"you know some say the whole trouble about us is that we _do_ fight. But it"s only hard necessity makes us do that. We don"t want to fight--as men seem to--just for fighting"s sake. Women are for peace."
"Hear! hear!"
"And when we have a share in public affairs there"ll be less likelihood of war. Wasn"t it a woman, the Baroness von Suttner, whose book about peace was the corner-stone of the Peace Congress? Wasn"t it that book that converted the millionaire maker of armaments of war? Wasn"t it the Baroness von Suttner"s book that made n.o.bel offer those great international prizes for the Arts of Peace? I"m not saying women can"t fight. But we women know all war is evil, and we"re for peace. Our part--we"re proud to remember it--our part has been to go about after you men in war time and _pick up the pieces_!"
A great shout went up as the truth of that rolled in upon the people.
"Yes; seems funny, doesn"t it? You men blow people to bits, and then we come along and put them together again. If you know anything about military nursing, you know a good deal of our work has been done in the face of danger; _but it"s always been done_."