Elizabeth Robins

“ She could turn more than one mishap to account.
'Oh, Freddy! Oh, Lady Whyteleafe! I've just gone and said the most awful, dreadful, appalling thing! Oh, I should like to creep under the sofa and die!'
'What's up?' demanded Mr. Freddy, with an air of relief at being reinforced.
'I've been talking to Vida Levering and that funereal sister of hers.'
'Oh, Mrs. Fox-Moore!' said Lady Whyteleafe, obviously disappointed. 'She's a step-sister, isn't she?'
'Yes, yes. Oh, I wish she'd never stepped over my threshold!'
'Why?' said Mr. Freddy, sticking in his eyeglass.
'Don't, Freddy. Don't look at her. ”

“ Just in front of where Miss Levering and her satellite first came to a standstill, was a cheerful, big, sandy man with long flowing moustachios, a polo cap, and a very dirty collar. At intervals he inquired of the men around him, in a great jovial voice, 'Are we down-'earted?' as though the meeting had been called, not for the purpose of rousing interest in the question of woman's share in the work of the world, but as though its object were to humiliate and disfranchise the men. ”

“ High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won, you've got to bring the women into line.'
'What's to become of chivalry?'
'What has become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to puzzle out a conundrum.
'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same employers to live on six shillings a week? ”

“ The woman bent over the crowd. Nothing misty in her eyes now—rather a keener light than before.
'Don't you see,' she appealed to them as equals—'don't you see that in your improvement of the world you men have taken women's business out of her home? In the old days there was work and responsibility enough for woman without going outside her own gate. The women were the bakers and brewers, the soap and candle-makers, the loom-workers of the world. You men,' she said, delicately flattering them, 'you have changed all that. You have built great factories and warehouses and mills. ”

“ 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 sturdy 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. ”

“ During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs. Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running comment—
'Oh, of course! He says that to curry favour with the mob—a rank demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning sharply to her companion, 'He wants votes!' she said, as though detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh, no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness, I call it, stirring up class against class! ”

“ But Lady John, upon perceiving her niece, had said hurriedly—
'If what you say is so, it's the fault of those women agitators.'
'Sex-Antagonism wasn't their invention,' Miss Levering answered. 'No woman begins that way. Every woman is in a state of natural subjection'—she looked up, and seeing Jean's face, smiled—'no, I'd rather say "allegiance" to her idea of romance and her hope of motherhood; they're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest things in life till man kills them. ”

“ Lady John cleared the whole trivial business away with a laugh.
'Now, be nice to Paul. He's dying to talk to you about his book. Let us go and join them in the garden. See if you can stand before my yellow blaze and not feel melted.'
The elder woman and the younger went down the terrace through a little copse to her ladyship's own area of experimentation. A gate of old Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and jonquil. ”

“ Lord John hurried in from the garden as the motor-horn sounded louder.
'Who do you think is coming round the drive?'
Jean caught hold of him. 'Oh, dear! are those other people all about? How am I ever going to be able to behave like a girl who—who isn't engaged to the only man in the world worth marrying!'
'You were expecting Mr. Stonor all the time!' exclaimed Aunt Lydia.
'He promised he'd come to luncheon if it was humanly possible. I was afraid to tell you for fear he'd be prevented.'
Lord John was laughing as he went towards the lobby. ”

“ She threw the worthless counsel into the air and tossed contempt after it. 'It is man's oldest advice to woman!'
'All our trouble fur nothin'!' groaned an impish boy.
'We see now that patience has been our bane. If it hadn't been for this same numbing slavish patience we wouldn't be standing before the world to-day, political outcasts—catalogued with felons and lunatics——'
'And peers!' called a voice.
'We are done with patience!' said Ernestine, hotly; 'and for that reason there is at last some hope for the women's cause. ”

“ Then, apparently thinking she'd been serious enough, 'There might be some sense in talking to us about chivalry if you paid our taxes for us,' she said; while the people recovered their spirits in roaring with delight at the coolness of that suggestion.
'If you forgave us our crimes because we are women! If you gave annuities to the eighty-two women out of every hundred in this country who are slaving to earn their bread—many of them having to provide for their children; some of them having to feed sick husbands or old parents. But chivalry doesn't carry you men as far as that! ”

“ It no doubt had the effect of chilling and alienating the 'philanthropist on the make.' Even to the less ungenerous, not bargainers for approbation or for influence, even in their case the deep-rooted suspicion we have been taught to cultivate for one another, makes the gift of good faith so difficult that it can be given freely only to people like these, people who plainly and daily suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the world's good word. ”

“ Even in his most rationalized vision of the New Time, he can't help betraying his old-fashioned prejudice in favour of the "dolly" view of women. His hero says, "I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind——"' Vida's finger skipped, lifting to fall on the heroine's name. ”

“ Her opening remarks, which, in the face of a fire of interruption, took the form of an attack upon the Government, showed her an alert, competent, cut-and-thrust, imperturbably self-possessed politician, who knew every aspect of the history of the movement, as able to answer any intelligent question off-hand as to snub an impudent irrelevance, able to take up a point and drive it well in—to shrug and smile or frown and point her finger, all with most telling effect, and keep the majority of her audience with her every minute of the time. ”

“ If there are helpers she sends them up and down the street sowing a fresh crop of handbills. When Ernestine is ready to begin she stands up on that chair, in the open street and, as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world, she begins ringing that dinner bell. Naturally people stop and stare and draw nearer. Ernestine tells me that Battersea has got so used now to the ding-dong and to associating it with "our meeting," that as far off as they hear it the inhabitants say, "It's the Suffragettes! Come along!" and from one street and another the people emerge laughing and running. ”

“ What is Freddy thinking about!'
[12]
'Dinner!' replied a voice at her elbow with characteristic laconism, and Freddy Tunbridge pulled out his watch.
'Oh, give them five minutes more,' said his wife, indulgently.
'That's not a daughter of old Sir Hervey?' pursued the other man, his eyes still on the young woman talking to Lady John and the foreign ambassador.
'Yes; go on,' said Mrs. Freddy, with as cloudless a brow as though she had no need to manufacture conversation while the dinner was being kept waiting. 'Go on! They all do it.'
'Do what?' demanded the great man, suspiciously. ”

“ We have searched through the world for jewels to crown her. We have built millions of temples to our ideal of womanhood and called them homes. We have fought and wrought and sung for her—and all we ask in return is that she should tend the sacred fire, so that the light of Beauty might not die out of the world.' He was not ill-pleased with his period. 'But women'—he leaned back, and illustrated with the pliant white hands that were ornamented with outlandish rings—'women are not content with their high and holy office.'
'Some women,' amended Hermione, softly. ”

“ Farnborough's the culprit!' said a smartly dressed woman, with a nervous, rather angry air, though the ropes of fine pearls she wore might, some would think, have soothed the most savage breast.
'Yes, Dick and Captain Beeching!' said Mrs. Freddy; 'and I shall give them just two minutes more!'
'Aunt Ellen said it couldn't be a woman,' remarked the girl in pink, as one struck with such perspicacity.
'Well, I wouldn't ask them again to my house,' said the discontented person with the pearls.
'Yes, she would,' Lady John said aside to Borrodaile. ”

“ Here's one luckless woman! but—here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out of other women's way. And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman, by herself, can move that rock of offence. But,' she ended with a sudden sombre flare of enthusiasm, 'if many help, Geoffrey, the thing can be done.'
He looked down on her from his height with a wondering pity. ”

“ Miss Levering nodded. 'Into the Underworld.'
'You went!' Even Lady John was aghast.
'How could you?' Jean whispered.
'I put on an old gown and a tawdry hat——' She turned suddenly to her hostess. 'You'll never know how many things are hidden from a woman in good clothes. The bold free look of a man at a woman he believes to be destitute—you must feel that look on you before you can understand—a good half of history.'
Mrs. Heriot rose as her niece sat down on the footstool just below the writing-table. ”

“ 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 glass with a sigh. ”

“ A little crowd of perhaps a hundred collected on one side of the cart—the loafers on the outermost fringe, lying on the grass. Never a sign of a Suffragette, and nearly three o'clock! Impossible for any passer-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. ”

“ Women are graciously permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they should be caring for their own babies. In Birmingham'—she raised the clear voice and bent her flushed face over the crowd—'in Birmingham those same "fragile flowers" make bicycles to keep alive! At Cradley Heath we make chains. At the pit brows we sort coal. But a vote would soil our hands! You may wear out women's lives in factories, you may sweat them in the slums, you may drive them to the streets. ”