How Dear Is Life (6 page)

Phillip had thought of joining to increase his muscles. Many of the men at Head Office were in the London Highlanders. Downham was. So, among the Hill-ites, were Peter Wallace, and Mr. Bolton’s son. Peter’s father, Mr. Wallace, had been in them too, a sergeant in the days of the Volunteers.

“Why don’t you come along with me, as my guest, to a canteen sing-song, young Phil?” said Bertie, one evening, when Phillip, to his surprise, had been asked to make a fourth at tennis. “We want recruits, and apart from all else, it’s a top-hole club, with no subscription.”

Phillip was much exhilarated that Bertie didn’t really look down on him. The two Bank of England men were awfully decent.

“Yes, I’ll think about it, after my holiday.”

“When are you going?”

“In September.”

“Any idea where you’re going?”

“Not yet, Bertie. But it may be to Devon. Mother’s written to Aunt Dora, to ask if I can go to her cottage.” His voice dropped. “The trouble is, only don’t mention it to your friends, will you, we don’t know whether Aunt Dora was mixed up in that race-horse business, yesterday. So she may be back in prison again.”

“All the best people are, anyway, young Phil! Well, so long!”

“So long! And thanks for the game, Bertie.”

“Delighted, old thing!”

It was wonderful to be called ‘old thing’ by Cousin Bertie, and in the hearing of the two Bank of England men.

*

“Well, you know where good intentions lead to, don’t you, Hetty?” Phillip heard Father’s voice saying to Mother (it was always to Mother when he used that forceful tone of voice). “And that is putting it at its most charitable aspect. The real trouble with Dora is that she has too much spare time on her hands—you know the proverb, I dare say, about Satan and idle hands. Well, this Epsom business is the last straw. As
The
Trident
says——”

Phillip hesitated: if Father were in grumbling mood he would slip away, and see Mrs. Neville.

“It’s about the Suffragettes,” Doris whispered to him, as he hesitated on the mat.

“I know.”

“Ah well,” said Mother’s voice, “it is all very sad. I think I shall write to Dora and urge her to give up her activities for her own sake. But perhaps it will sound ungracious if I do it at the same time that I inquire about Phillip’s holiday.”

“Well, you must decide for yourself,” said Father; and his newspaper rustled.

Phillip went down into the sitting-room.

The letter was posted that night to Dora’s address in Old Ford, where she was helping to run the East London Suffragettes Federation. Before a reply could come, the very next day in fact, Hetty heard from Miss Martinant, a suffragette living in Charlotte Road, whose daughter was friendly with Doris (the
daughter was, well—no matter, it would be wrong to allow it to make any difference) that Theodora Maddison would be carrying a banner at the funeral of Emily Davidson, who had seized the bridle of the king’s colt Amna, at Tattenham Corner, and been trampled on. Whereupon Hetty returned home at once to ask Aunt Marian to go with her to London, to see the funeral procession. Perhaps she might have a chance to talk to Dora afterwards.

Hetty walked beside Aunt Marian to the ‘bus with some trepidation: for the outrage had caused much angry comment. They took a 36 to Vauxhall, and walked from there, in beautiful summer weather, to Hyde Park corner, where a crowd was already gathered.

Hetty was afraid of crowds, and fearing for Aunt Marian, who was nearly eighty, she suggested crossing over to the park railings, to be near several policemen standing there, in case there was a crush.

After waiting awhile, they heard in the distance the music of the
Dead
March
in
Saul
. It was very solemn and sad; deeply, deeply sad. She thought of Mamma, of Hugh, of Jennie, of Mr. Newman—the dead in her life who lived with her yet, who now seemed to be faces watching, not in sorrow, but with happy gentleness.

The leaves of the plane tree rustled overhead, so green, so lightly in the warm summer day; then as the procession came nearer, they seemed to be shaking with the heavy beats of the funeral music, the thuddings of the muffled drums. Glancing at Aunt Marian’s face, she saw tears running down her cheeks. But Aunt Marian held herself upright, her shoulders squared.

She noticed in the waiting crowd banners and placards bearing slogans hostile to the procession. Quite near a lady in a big hat, expensively dressed, was giving away handbills. Hetty took one from her. It was headed
Woman’s
League
Against
the
Suffrage
. Aunt Marian said that she resembled the photographs of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the great novelist. Hetty had read
Robert
Elsmere
,
and had been much impressed. She and Dora had read the book together, in the days at Cross Aulton. It seemed strange that the authoress should be against the Movement, which was really so idealistic. But Mrs. Humphrey Ward was rich, and probably knew little about the sufferings of the poor.

In this thought, Hetty needlessly hurt herself: for Mrs. Ward
was, and had been, actively engaged in creating rest rooms and play rooms for children among the poor. It was the methods of the militant suffragettes (who went to the root of the matter, rather than a branch) to which the famous novelist objected.

Hetty took Aunt Marian’s arm; Aunt Marian took her hand, and squeezed it.

The coffin, drawn by black horses, and covered with a purple pall on which three laurel leaves were resting, followed behind the band now playing the beautiful uplifting passage of resurrection. But what was happening? She was startled to hear people in the crowd shouting out in anger. With relief she saw that the procession was accompanied by policemen walking on either side. The crowd booed when the banner was carried past.

Then she saw Dora. She was dressed in white, like the others. Some carried posies of purple irises and red peonies, and bunches of white violets for woman’s purity. She gave, without thinking, a little wave of her hand; then she was glad she had not attracted Dora’s attention. Dora looked straight ahead. There followed a banner of the Woman’s Social and Political Union, with the purple, green and white colours.

The booing was very loud. As Dora passed, she inclined her head slightly, but did not smile. She had seen them! Perhaps Dora considered it advisable not to recognise anyone at that juncture.

On the other hand, she thought, perhaps Dora was a little hurt by what she had written in her letter, begging her to give up the hopeless struggle, which Dickie had said was directed by mad women who in the old days would have been burned at the stake as witches. Windows of London houses had been smashed by stones covered with paper; empty mansions burned down; vitriol poured into pillar-boxes, destroying hundreds of letters; Cabinet Ministers had been assaulted; dynamite bombs placed in public buildings. Property to the value of over half a million pounds had been destroyed.

She held Aunt Marian’s arm tightly. How calm, how self-possessed Aunt Marian always was! What a splendid character! How glad she was to be beside her. Oh dear, more angry shouting!

“What about the King’s jockey? Three cheers for ’im, boys!”

Mingled cheers and boos arose. Mounted policemen were now pressing their chargers against the edge of the crowd.

“Smash up the coffin! What right has the likes o’ ’er for Christian burial?”

A ragged man was trying to pull a policeman off his horse. An inspector, in blue pill-box hat and tight jacket, trotted up. A terrible harsh noise from the crowd arose.

She began to feel terror. Her children, her children! What would happen to them, who would look after them, and Dickie, if the crowd got out of hand, and anything happened to her? She felt she could not breathe. Her high collar, with its whalebone stiffeners that constricted breathing, her high straw hat covered with artificial flowers and tilted downwards from her piled hair, the sleeves of her blouse fastened at the wrist, her heavy dragging skirt, her boots so hot round the ankles—she thought that if she did not have air she would faint. She tried to tell Aunt Marian that she must get away.

Marian Turney held her up when she fainted. With the help of policemen clearing a way, she was carried into the Park; and after recovery, and a long wait on a seat, with Aunt Marian’s arm round her shoulders, in the shade of a tall tree with a vista of mown grass before her, she was saying that she felt much better, and perhaps it would be wiser to return home, when she saw a white figure coming towards her—a Dora whose face shocked her, it was so sallow, so lined, so dreadfully thin.

“Hetty, my dear friend! How very dear of you to have come! And how are you, dearest Aunt Marian? You must tell me all your news. How is Dickie, and Phillip, and Mavis, and little Doris? Why, you look pale, Hetty, are you feeling unwell, dear?”

“Oh, it is nothing really, Dora. Very foolishly, I fainted earlier on.”

“Hetty, my dear dear girl——” Dora sat beside her, took her hand. “You are too sensitive, you should not have come.”

Pigeons were cooing in the trees, and flying down to the grass, to strut and feed, to pursue and be pursued. Young ladies, habited and riding side-saddle, followed by grooms, cantered sedately down Rotten Row. It was the height of the season. Children followed, in basket-seats strapped to Shetland ponies, accompanied by nurses in uniforms of grey bonnets and capes, while under-grooms, or stable boys in livery, held the bridles.
Carriages passed, open landaus and victorias wherein sun-shaded dowagers taking the air of the London season and beautiful prim women in wide hats sat and bowed to their friends in passing. Among the equipages was the yellow landau of Lord and Lady Lonsdale, which Dora recognised.

“Just think of the contrast, Hetty. I suppose that splendid English family receives one hundred thousand a year in royalties from coal alone. Yet how many realise the other side? Do you know, two million, eight hundred thousand people, no less, sleep out, homeless, in our cities every night of the year—in darkest England? Lord Lonsdale is a worthy man, a great sportsman, a landlord of the best type; it is the dark forces of the System which are to blame. It cannot go on much longer. A crisis is very near, all the signs point to it. There is violence everywhere, at home and abroad—gun-running in Ulster—Labour violence, violence at the docks—violence in the House of Commons. Violence in our Movement, yes, yes, you deplore it, I know; but a cauterising violence, Hetty, to cure the proud flesh from becoming gangrenous, and killing the body. Women must save the children, which are England’s future. Either there must be a better future, or no future at all. It is we women who must help, in the direction of the new earth which is to be, a nation based on truth; but if we do not come to power
now
, all will be lost. Our violence is deliberate, Hetty, to prevent great catastrophe, perhaps the final catastrophe of the West. It is the same in Germany, another nation possessed by the hubris of industrial power, for the sake of money. In the end such men say, ‘We are the nation’. Such men are uncertain of their true strength, Hetty; their ‘national’ violence is of their true nature thwarted, and too often darkened for ever, in the gehenna of the little helpless child’s mind, in its very soul, shut up as in a dark cupboard, suffering nightmares which are but writhings of a soul in darkness to find the light—to find the truth—to be saved from fear by love. This, my dear friend, is the only reply I can make to your most kind letter.”

Dora’s face quivered as she sought Hetty’s hand. Aunt Marian sat between them, a protecting arm given to each.

“The truth will prevail, the truth will prevail,” she said stalwartly.

“If only all English people, in the more comfortable classes, could but sec what I have seen, what I see daily, hourly, what I
know is waiting to leap forth from the maimed minds of children, now grown-up, everywhere, in all classes—but most of all in the poverty classes, since they are most numerous—O, we are doing the Lord’s work, we are, we are.”

After this confession, uttered in a voice that was so sweetly reasonable that Hetty wondered how anyone could ever gainsay what her dear friend ever said, Dora looked up, and blinking away her tears, saw those in the eyes of her friend, and bending down her head, kissed the hand she held between her own. Then she touched with her lips the reticulated cheek of the old woman beside her.

“And now,” she said, with a smile, meeting Hetty’s smile, “before I forget—I am not always a wild and wilful woman, you know!—about my little cottage in Lynmouth—how well I remember our wonderful holiday together when my god-son was only three months old!—well, Hetty, my dear, it is for you or Phillip or Dickie to visit and stay in so long as you like, and at any time any of you care to go there. Just send me a line at any time, with a few days’ notice if possible, so that I can be sure of having the place ready for you.”

“Thank you, Dora dear, thank you very much, it is most kind of you I am sure,” said Hetty, still unhappy that her letter had caused a restraint between them, despite Dora’s gracious manner.

Hardly had she spoken when two brown-moustached men in straw-yards, jackets and trousers of dark material, and big black boots, got out of a taxicab which had stopped on the drive opposite the seat, and walked to the seat.

“Are you Theodora Maddison? I have a warrant for your arrest under the Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill-health Act, Section 1, subsection 12a. Now then, no trouble, miss, be reasonable, and come along quietly.”

Hetty and her Aunt Marian were left on the seat.

*

Phillip hoped that by the time his friend Desmond Neville came home for the summer holidays the kestrel would be tame and they could take it on the Hill and fly it; but the bird proved intractable. Whenever he opened its cage, it ran out and squatted on the lawn; soon it attracted spadgers, the sooty little cockney sparrows, always quarrelling and chittering, always scrapping for their rights. The spadgers hopped around it,
scolding. The kestrel appeared to shrink into its shoulders. The sparrows hopped nearer. Phillip, like the kestrel, remained absolutely still. Then running sideways with unbelievable speed, the fierce, brown-eyed falcon managed to snatch a spadger before it could fly up with the others. Yet this did not, apparently, warn the others; back they came, sooner rather than later, to mob the kestrel. Again the sudden dash on yellow feet, feathered thighs like little pantaloons moving so swiftly that the broken wing had not appeared even to drag. The snatch, the crushing power of a yellow foot with its black claws of sharpest horn, had to be felt on your forearm, through your jacket sleeve, to be realized. The falcon stood on the spadger, squeezed its life out as it crouched there, all the bird’s life and cockiness turned to an escaping scream of terror as it lay gripped shapeless under black claws.