Stella Benson

“ When you see the Lock you feel like an ant seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The suffragette, as she stood on the iron way that goes along the top edge of one of the gates, had to think of all the biggest things she had ever imagined to keep herself from dwindling out of existence. Even Women’s Rights grew small in the light of this man-made immensity. She was standing on the highest gate, and she could look across a perspective of three empty cube-worlds, at the white Canal and the white sea beyond it. ”

“ If you are a rebel of thorough nature, you believe that your cause is such a good cause that no supporter can be worthy of it. And, in the effort to reach worth, you may possibly arrive, step by step, at the Theory of the Hair Shirt, to which my suffragette had attained. For in throwing her little weight on the side of the best cause she could see, she cowed: “All my life long to discard everything superfluously comfortable or easy. To despise peace, and to love loneliness....”
This is the texture of the Hair Shirt worn beneath the armour of a rebel. You may call it hysteria. ”

“ No doubt Courtesy would have risen to the occasion, but for once Heaven was quicker. The sun suddenly shouldered its way round the intruding cloud, and made one great shining jewel of the world. Park View, that forward house, residence of the retiring Miss Brown, stood bold upon the sky-line.
The gardener’s heart did not leap within him when he saw Park View. Only in books does Fate disguised stir the heart to such activity. In real life, when I stumble on the little thing that is to change my life, I merely kick it aside, and hurry on. ”

“ Only the great creepers throw cables of hope from tree to tree, and the orchids nestle blood-red against the colourless hearts of the cotton trees.
The huts for the homeless had been built in a wide clearing in the woods, only divided from the sea by the road, a belt of palms, and a frill of sand so white that the word white sounded dirty as you looked at it. The rocks leant out of opal water into pearl air. A pensive pelican, resting its double chin upon its breast, stood waiting on a low rock.
The gardener dismounted with great care. ”

“ The Red Place lost its flame-like life at night. Night, that blind angel, has no dealings with colour, and turns even the auburn of the pine-trunks to cold silver. But before the gardener awoke again, the sun had roused the gods of the place to discover the theft of their red gold, and to replace it.
The gardener, as he trilled like a lark in one of the red-tiled bathrooms, was suddenly reminded that he was a merry vagabond. ”

“ She used to sit on the poop, where nobody else would sit, with the wind in her hair and the sun in her eyes, building theories.
There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth. Whenever the suffragette thought of the gardener, she broke the thought with a theory. It is sad to be burdened with a brain that must always track illusion to disillusionment. ”

“ So the suffragette went on shore to listen to the band.
The Isthmus band is as gaudy in attire as it is sombre in complexion, and it plays to a stratum of society as striking to the eye as any in the world. The Isthmus is the centre of nigger fashion. Here, under the glare and the flare of a hot night in the season, you may see the effect of a layer of civilisation on an aboriginal worship of colour. Crimson, gold, and silver are the prevailing motifs. As to the coiffure of the ladies, for every plait to be found on a Trinity Island head there are half a dozen on the Isthmus. ”

“ All novelties are interesting to One Who is Seeing Life, but novelty is unfortunately an elusive phantom to pursue. After a fortnight spent in inquiry, the gardener began to feel his heart sink at the mention of flour. He suffered from the gift of enthusiasm, in place of the gift of interest, and enthusiasm is like the seed that fell upon stony ground, the suns of monotony scorch it quickly. To do the gardener justice, it must be admitted that there was very little left to do. Union Town was not very long in adjusting itself to the emergency. ”

“ But some of us carry our lives about with us sealed up in our holy of holies, and take pride in hiding the precious burden that we bear. Copy-collecting may become a religion; to the suffragette, who never put pen to paper for any one else’s benefit, and who never told an anecdote, this pursuit was the great consolation for a bleak life. At the gate of death, or on the step of Paradise, such a soul may be found filling its pockets with the gold of secret experience. ”

“ And the gardener’s world regained its feet, he wondered why he had been so frightened.
“Poor little mites,” said Courtesy to Aitch and Zed. “They won’t forget this in a hurry, will they?”
There is something very comforting in the utterly banal. That is why the instinct is so strong in good women to make you a cup of tea, and poke the fire, when you are crossed in love.
“But if she had been the suffragette ...” thought the gardener. He knew quite well that the thing would not have been so well done, had it been the suffragette. ”

“ The gardener, the only person who might have cast a doubt upon this statement, was not present. Still posing as the strenuous seeker, he had gone for a walk before breakfast.
There is a great glitter about morning in the hills which drags the optimist for long walks in the small hours upon an empty stomach, and causes even the pessimist to attack his grape fruit at breakfast with a jovial trill. The little tables on the verandah of the New Hotel have a glamour of heaped bright fruit upon white linen. ”

“ Hilda sat wistfully on the recess of the porthole, leaning her forehead against the glass. She had a bud, chosen to match Courtesy’s hair. Just as Hilda’s stalk was necessary to hold her bud upright, so Courtesy herself was necessary to support the conflagration of her hair on the level of the onlooker’s eye. Both were necessities, and both were artistically negligible.
The gardener looked around the cabin. There is something depressing about other people’s clothes. There is something depressing in an incessant attack on one’s skull by inanimate objects. ”

“ The conversation was from beginning to end above the policeman’s head. But such a very hot buckra man must be humoured. At random the policeman pointed up the main street. The gardener was indeed a man of luck, for that was the right direction.
The main street on a fiery afternoon was as long as eternity, but in certain states of mind a man may bridge eternity in a breath, and not know what he has crossed.
He was on the race-course. He looked back and the launch was approaching the Caribbeania in the far-off bay, like a dwarf panting defiance at a giant. ”

“ Miss Brown says she does not believe in doing a thing unless you do it thoroughly. She says this as if it had never been said before; she propounds it as one propounds a revolutionary theory. But unlike most theory makers, she always translates such boasts into action. She performed the feat of keeping a militant suffragette in bed for the rest of that day.
The suffragette lay and imagined the gardener and the earthquake at different stages of contact. ”

“ You can’t discover the heaven in a thing without also tripping over the hell. I like a black and white life.”
“Don’t think,” said the gardener suddenly, and almost turned the patting of her knee into a slap. “It’s a thing that should only be done in moderation. Some day you won’t be able to control your craving for thought, and then you’ll die of Delirium Tremens.”
“It’s not such a dangerous drug as some,” smiled the suffragette. “I’d rather have that craving than the drink craving, or the society craving, or the love craving.” ”

“ This was the suffragette’s atmosphere. My poor suffragette! It is so much more difficult to bear the snub than the insult. Insult is like a bludgeon thrown at the inflated balloon of our conceit. With the very blunt force of it we rebound. But the snub is a pin-prick, which lets our supporting pride out, and leaves us numb and nothing. I always feel the insult is founded on passion, while the snub springs from innate dislike.
“May I introduce Miss Courtesy Briggs ...” began the gardener, hoping for an inspiration before the end of the sentence. “Miss Courtesy Briggs....” ”

“ The gardener all unawares had crossed in one lucky stride those bitter channels that divide the brown man from the black, the yellow man from the brown, the white man from the yellow, and the buckra, the man from England, from all the world. ”

“ The little ordinary fiery things of youth had been shorn out of her life, she had been crushed by the responsibility of being a woman and a devotee.
No man would believe that such a woman exists. The pathetic vanity of man would never be convinced that any woman could prefer her own independence to his kisses.
By the time the suffragette had reached the front door of Park View, the interview with the gardener was but a pulse beating at the back of her mind. ”

“ But there was something indescribable, peculiar to the suffragette, that made it impossible to humble oneself before her. She was anything but a queen among women; no man had ever wished to be trodden under her feet, though they were small and pretty. Plain people often have pretty hands and feet, a mark of Nature’s tardy self-reproach.
To any other woman, the gardener might have said, “Please, my dear ...” with excellent results. He had a good voice with a tenor edge to it, and he could pose very nicely as a supplicator. But not to the suffragette. ”

“ Strange things in barbaric colours made the garden outside a whirlpool. Sometimes these things say to you: “You are a very long way from home”; and you exult, and think This is Life. But sometimes they say again: “You are a very long way from home”; and you cry out, and think This is Worse than Death.
Now there are moral drawbacks about the posing habit. But there are also advantages, though possibly none deserved. For after three minutes of despair the gardener straightened himself, blinked, and began putting his spare shirt into a drawer that would not shut. ”

“ It is not in the least romantic to be hurt. There is something curiously dirty in the feeling of one’s own pain, and in the sight of one’s own blood, though wounds in others are rather dramatic.
Now Courtesy was a person who, without ever trying to be sensational, was often unexpected by mistake. Coincidence seemed to haunt her. Out of the hundred streets that lay shattered in Union Town that afternoon, she chose the one in which the gardener lay, and, accompanied by the priest, she bore down upon that unheroic hero, laden with brandy and bandages. ”

“ It is a bold woman that would squeeze Heaven into a pigeon-hole.
Theresa stopped in front of the gardener’s chair. Theresa’s surname had been blown away from her with the first Atlantic wind. So had the shining system in her yellow hair. So had most of her land conventions. She was not a thing of the ocean, but a thing of the ocean liner. She had immediately become Everybody’s Theresa. I could not say that everybody loved Theresa, but I know that everybody felt they ought to. ”

“ Very late that night, when Courtesy, Mrs. Rust, the gardener, and an unknown young man picked up at the club by the gardener, were playing Bridge in the verandah, a very young boy with a very fat dog appeared, asking for Mr. Gardener. The boy was too well educated to be afraid of duppies. The solid Scottie, too, was felt to be a sound defence against the supernatural.
“What is this?” asked the gardener, who had assumed the melancholy pose of the Rejected One, and had unconsciously acquired a sad sweet smile to correspond. Even on his death-bed the gardener will pose as a dying man. ”

“ Sports and rumours of sports followed you even unto your nightly bunk. Everybody developed talents hitherto successfully concealed in napkins. Courtesy found her life’s vocation in dropping potatoes into buckets. She brought this homely pursuit to a very subtle art, and felt that she had not lived in vain. Not that she ever suffered from morbid illusions as to her value. The gardener brought to light a latent gift for sitting astride upon a spar while other men tried with bolsters to remove him. The suffragette, when nobody was looking, acquired proficiency in the art of shuffling the board. ”

“ He had assumed the pose of philanthropist, which, when conducted at some one else’s expense, is one of the most delightful poses conceivable. The pleasure to be found in helping the dirty destitute seems to need an explanation beyond the plea of altruism. There is a real charm in domineering to good purpose. To say unto one man Go and he goeth, and to another Come and he cometh, is at all times pleasant, but when such a luxury as autocracy becomes a virtue, there are few who disregard its glamour.
The gardener’s broken leg recovered as quickly as any leg could have done. ”

“ The pose of indifference to the world’s opinion is apt, sooner or later, to lead to the pose of wilful pricking of the world’s good taste. The gardener had a morbid craving for unpopularity; it was part of the unique pose. Unpopularity is an excellent salve to the conscience; it is delicious to be misunderstood.
The priest did not appear exasperated. He was tolerant. The man who aims at unlimited tolerance, as a rule, only achieves the absorbent and rather undecided status of spiritual blotting-paper. But he is a dreadfully difficult man to anger. ”

“ She was very lucky; one always is when one doesn’t deserve to be so. She might have found a room with a brown wet ceiling curtseying floorward under the stress of many rains. She might have found a room peopled by a smell incredible, with rags stuffed into panes that had been broken by a merciful accident. She might have found walls discoloured by dark patches that looked like old blood. All these things are apt to decorate Woman’s Sphere in the Brown Borough.
But the suffragette had, by mistake, knocked on the door of the most respectable house in the most respectable street in the district. ”

“ A lot of people are dead, and a lot of other people’s people are dead....”
“The longer I live ...” said the gardener, from the summit of his twenty-three years, “the surer I am that we make a fuss which is almost funny over death. We run after it all over the world, and then we grumble at it when it catches us up from behind. ”

“ In the hands of those who declare themselves to be our enemies? A fair question from a woman never gets a fair answer. Windows are smashed—not as an argument, but as a protest.”
“A protest strikes me as a futile thing. No one ever does anything that looks unfair or tyrannical without being perfectly sure that was the thing they meant to do. If a protest is successful it creates discord without altering what is done. ”

“ If you are a suffragette, you have to be your own friend. You must not stretch out your hands to find the hands of another; you must keep them clenched by your side. On the other hand, even a suffragette is human— (I daresay you have doubted this) —and my suffragette was only a little less human than you or I. The fact must stand, therefore, that when she thought of the gardener in pain, she forgot to clench her fists. ”

“ As a race they have either more or less perspicacity than ourselves—you may look at it as you will—and they seldom concur with the public verdict of humanity on its own species. And in the suffragette a confiding dog was never disappointed, for she knew the exact spot where the starched buckram of one’s ear is sewn on to one’s skull, on which it is almost unbearably good to be scratched.
This dog was the sort whose name is always Scottie when he is owned by the unenterprising. He wore his forelegs so short and so bent that he looked as though he were continually posing as being thoroughbred. ”

“ Fervent men and women throng the pews, shouting hymns down the back of each other’s neck, and groaning away sins they do not realise, to the accompaniment of words they do not understand. Those who have lived together in innocent sin hurry to the altar for the ring, which, to these harmless transgressors, is as the fig-leaf apron of Eden, and heralds virtuous tragedy.
When the gardener became well enough to resent being ill, he was allowed visitors, among whom was one, by name Dallas Tring, Esquire. ”

“ The suffragette was excited and flushed. She looked almost pretty.
“I can’t imagine why I came,” she said when the change was effected and greetings had been exchanged. “I think I must have come in delirium. The woman I used to be never comes into the country except on business, and, in the case of friends, makes a principle of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”
“I hope you left that woman behind—permanently,” said the gardener.
“No. That’s the worst of it. They’re both here. Each acts as conscience while the other one’s in power. Why wasn’t one brought into the world by oneself?” ”

“ Nigger huts are quickly built, and even the villas of the coffee-coloured aristocracy, the most serious sufferers from the disaster, are not the work of ages. The Post Office continued to lie upon its face in the High Street, but the bare feet of the people soon trod a path around it. Government House remained huddled in a heap upon its own cellars, but Governors, after all, are not human, and it makes but little difference to the population to hear of its viceroy sleeping under canvas.
In the gardener’s mind, during the past fortnight, the suffragette had had Union Town as a serious rival. ”