a fortnight later julia was recalled to london. she took a small flat in clement’s inn, strand, where the w. s. p. u. was about to establish itself. she learned immediately that on the first day of the autumn session of parliament a deputation of women intended to go to the lobby of the house and send word to the prime minister that they expected some assurance from him regarding the prospects of franchise for their sex. hundreds would await the news without.
by this time there was no danger of any definite move by the women being overlooked by the press, and they were treated as news no matter with what lack of sympathy. as to be spectacular whenever the opportunity offered was a part of their policy, they overlooked no means to that end; quite aware that julia was as valuable an asset as they were likely to have, she was drafted to make one of the deputation to the house of commons on october third. by this time other women of the aristocracy had flocked to their standard, and several prominent in the arts, but julia had a very special personality, and a value for the press which insured her a separate “story” whether or not she were the chief figure in any of the carefully rehearsed scenes executed by the militants. therefore, having received her instructions for the third, she called on the duke the night of the second. she had not heard from him since the letter received at keighley, nor had she heard from his solicitors.
the duke was in the library and rose ceremoniously as she was shown in, but did not offer his hand. julia took the same chair from which she had defied him in a period of her life that now seemed identical with a lost personality.
“i should have called long ago,” she said, “but you were at bosquith when i returned from syria, and i have been out of london ever since.”
“i am quite aware of your movements during the past five months.” the duke spoke with all his innate formality, and infused his tone with icy sarcasm, but julia had detected in a glance that he looked far more of a human being than of old. bridgit had told her a strange tale of riding over to see her “aunt peg” when that dame was suffering from a broken leg, and catching a glimpse of the duke in an adjoining room, flat on the floor, with his boy and two little girls racing up and down his small but sacred person. julia had accused mrs. herbert of trying to impose on her credulity, but as she inspected that meagre countenance she found it decidedly less gray and tight than formerly, the eyes brighter, the prim lines of the mouth relaxed. yes; he was, conceivably, the uxorious parent.
“of course i know you must hate what i am doing. if you and thousands like you didn’t hate it, we shouldn’t be doing it, if you don’t mind a bull. but that is the point, you see. we intend to fight to the last ditch, and then win. you don’t guess this and so you prolong the fight. i haven’t come to convert you, but because i know exactly how you feel. you have behaved splendidly toward me, for i know you have longed, for months, to recall your generous allowance. you can’t make up your mind to violate your word, so i have come to renounce it myself.”
“ah!” the duke rose and began pacing up and down the room. “yes—you would suspect—you are clever enough. ah! if you would only divert your cleverness into a respectable channel. how could you go off your head about this atrocious nonsense?”
“nonsense? come down to clement’s inn and talk to the women for a few minutes. you might not approve of us any more than you do now, but you would no longer use the word nonsense. you might hate, but you would be forced to respect?—”
“respect? respect women that have parted with the last shred of female decency, that are distracting this poor country with their puerile demands, when she is faced by such grave problems within and without that we need every ounce of our energy, every moment of our time?—”
“quite so. that is one of our staple arguments. we are only asking to help you. turn the poor laws over to us, with the ballot, and you will have that much more time and energy to devote to the survival of the house of lords, and to the survival of great britain among nations.”
“and have a new and worse problem on our hands to distract us! it is bad enough now with half female england gone mad and making this great empire ridiculous in the eyes of the world—do you fancy we are mad enough even to argue the question of giving you power? never. you can raid the house of commons and force your way into the house of the prime minister, and fight with the police and go to gaol, and shriek and parade, until the day of doom, and you’ll be no nearer your object than you are to-day. that is what has made me lose all patience with you. i trained your mind, i watched you grow under my roof into as intellectual a woman as is possible with the limitations of the female brain; i guided you in your study of politics, and, save when you took the wrong side out of sheer perversity, i was quite satisfied with you. and now! it has saddened and angered me beyond description to see you making a public spectacle of yourself, suffering bodily injury, disgracing yourself, your sex, and your country, in a ridiculous and hopeless cause.”
“well, you see, we don’t believe it to be hopeless, and that sustains us.”
“what difference does it make what you believe?”
“not so much now, except as a means to an end. you said a moment ago that we had lost every shred of female decency, in other words, forgotten that we were mere women. does not that strike you as portentous?”
“it strikes me as hideous.”
“i mean that when women have been battered and mauled and hurt, as we have been, without a second’s loss of courage or resource; when we have not once failed to score every point we have preconceived, from the heckling of candidates half out of their senses, to arresting the gaze of the civilized world,—doesn’t it strike you that we may be something more than mere women?”
“yes, fools, and shameless ones.”
“well, i share nigel herbert’s theory, that we are a new sex and a new race. a new force let loose into the world, is how he expressed it. when i went north five months ago the union in london numbered only a few hundreds. now it’s as well known as the liberal party. and all of the new active members have the same set grim intent look, although many are still in their teens. i believe they were born that way and only waited for the call. not one of them looks as if she had ever given a thought to a lover?—”
“and you extol them for that?”
“no, i merely mention it. you see, all revolutions demand and breed their martyrs; people who were born, so to speak, to fight and die in that cause and for no other purpose whatever. hundreds of thousands will join us as converts, but only a limited number will join the fighting army. that sort of thing is in a woman or it isn’t. many will help us with money and name and sympathy, vote when their time comes, and cheerfully accept such political duties as may be thrust upon them, but they are too soft, what you call too womanly, to fight. we make no complaint. the race must go on and these women may be depended upon to take care of it. but all these girls that are flocking to our standard, that speak to jeering crowds on street corners, that are hustled and twisted and pinched by policemen—when they interrupt meetings, or sell literature on the street—they are made of different elements, they are the ones chosen to win a cause, not to enjoy its victory. what matters it to them whether they are maimed for life, whether their youth goes before they have known any of its rights? nothing. it is not of the least consequence. we sacrifice them as ruthlessly as they sacrifice themselves, as we would sacrifice ourselves. it is only the principle that matters. let them die in a good cause, and be grateful for the opportunity. so they would, if they gave even that much thought to self. that is what you cannot understand. if you did, you would know what i mean by the word portentous?—”
“how do you like the prospect of looking like those women—gray and dingy as the bark of an old tree?”
“oh, they don’t all look gray and dingy. we have handsome women in the w. s. p. u.—several that are older than i. many women are born dingy. others have merely that freshness of youth which is as likely to vanish after one year of domestic life, as after the same time spent in fighting for a cause that will improve the lot of women in general. don’t worry about me. what looks i have are indestructible. i learned secrets in the east. i know how to rest—a lesson many of these young enthusiasts wouldn’t learn if i could teach them. they are screwed up to be martyrs and won’t have anything else. but the heads of any movement must be all that and more, so i have no intention of going to pieces.”
“i am told that if—i—a—withdraw the seven hundred and fifty i have allowed you, you may be persuaded to go to work on a newspaper or make money in some other way—i understand you give the greater part of your income to this abominable cause?—”
“yes. i know how you must feel about that. i made sure you would withdraw it before this?—”
“i have tried to! i have been on the point of writing to my solicitors twenty times. but it would be the first time in my life that i had ever broken my word, taken back what i had given, and i have not been able to make up my mind to do it.”
“i know, so i shall do it for you. i’ll write to your solicitors to-morrow. i shall still have two hundred a year, and i am sure now that i can make money?—”
“make money! it is sickening. women of our class don’t talk about making money.”
“no, but a good many of them would make it if they could, and more than you know turn an honest penny?—”
“oh, let me keep my illusions!” the duke flung himself into a chair and grasped the arms. “can you imagine what it is to me to see my great country going to the dogs? socialism, democracy, the daily increasing power of a class that in my youth knew its place and kept it? and now women degrading their sex and proselytizing thousands that would have remained content with their duties to home and society if let alone! why, you hear nothing but this infernal suffrage—” the duke was never so impressive as when mildly profane. “margaret, of course, is unaffected, but the women that gather at my board! they babble about nothing else, whether for or against. to my mind the very subject among all decent people should be tab?. i sometimes feel as if i could hear the greatest nation the world has ever seen rattling about my ears. my poor country! and i would have her impeccable always in the eyes of europe—” (it was characteristic that he omitted the rest of the world.) “i would have her lower and middle classes respect her unquestioningly, without presuming to rule. the present government is an abomination, and the number of labor representatives in parliament is a disgrace in the history of england. and now the women! they should have pity on our troubles and give us their assistance, instead of adding to our problems and making us ridiculous. a fine reputation we are getting abroad—that we can no longer manage our women, that we are obliged to resort to physical violence, as if we were returned to the dark ages! oh, that we could shut them up in harems! let the turks take warning.”
“well, you can’t shut us up, and you can’t manage us, and that is the whole point. english women have grown up on politics; they have learned as much at the table as in the schoolroom; the bright ones have grown more and more like their fathers, and now you behold the result. as for the mohammedan women—ferrero calls attention to the fact that the british in india have noted that in public administration certain women keep the spirit of economy with which they manage a home; and that is why, especially in despotic states, they rule better than men. so, give us, who have had a vastly wider experience, the vote, and be grateful that we are willing to help you.”
“never. you will never obtain the franchise. put that idea out of your head. why not go and live on the continent for a while? the society in vienna is delightful?—”
julia rose. “i’ve said all i came to say, and more. i am very grateful for your generosity in the past, and i only wished to disabuse your mind of any fear you might have of subjecting me to privations. i shall manage splendidly. i pay very little for my flat in clement’s inn?—”
the duke writhed. “i can’t do it!” he cried. “i can’t! i gave you my word, and that is the end of it. besides, you lived with me so long that you are, in a sense, of my house. keep the money, but for heaven’s sake, come to your senses. i only ask one favor now. take no part in these disgraceful raids and street scenes.”
julia hesitated, but she was betraying no secret, for the women never struck without warning. “i’d like to thank you, go, and say no more, but i think i should tell you that a number of us are going to attend the opening of parliament to-morrow and demand a hearing. of course, there may be trouble with the police?—”
“do you mean that those termagants will begin to worry us on the very first day of parliament?”
“we lose no time. we’ll get in if we can, and if we can’t—well, we’ll make ourselves felt, one way or another.”
“i—i’d be grateful if you would give me your promise to stay at home.”
“you see i have given my promise to go to the house.”
“the police will certainly interfere. i fancy they will take the first opportunity— that is only a hint.”
“oh, we are quite convinced that the police have their orders from the government. but we mind nothing. nothing! at the same time let me tell you that we are not going to-morrow with the intention of creating a disturbance. we are not in love with rows, and although we are willing to be hurt, we are not in love with that, either. how we behave depends entirely upon how they behave.”
the duke regarded her for a minute. then he looked down and tapped a penholder on the table. “very well,” he said. “go with the others, i only trust and pray—i intercede for you every morning at prayers—that you won’t be accidentally hurt in these forays, and that you will come to your senses before long. as soon as you do we should be happy to have you come and live with us. i—i have always missed you.”
he rose. julia ran over and threw her arms about his neck. “you are a dear!” she cried. “and you always were nice to me in your funny way.”
the duke laughed, and disentangled himself.
“there, there!” he said. “you look now about as old as you did when you came to us. you are not quite remade. i shall hope.”
