The Collar
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aken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise onthe sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her--betterhowever there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than oneither side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As itwas, Vivie when she coughed spat blood. A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she wasready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: anexcursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to theparapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser andWarren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room openedto her manipulations--it had been carefully left unbolted beforeher departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly byher suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself--or Mr.Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly inher male form. Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet andthe chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrancecame a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk toact as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr.Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hitheralso came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changesof clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young manwith a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat oroffice of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the windingway between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladderstill he too reached the parapet, entered through the openedcasement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumedlike Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman onlywaiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man--shopsteward--and begin a large family of children. From this leader,Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no moredisabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches andthe risk of going to prison or of attracting too much policeattention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre atpresent. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police havebeen at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the reallyprecious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is:walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't comeyet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and _you_ won'tflinch, _I'm_ quite sure..." As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness,her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, herwide education, her command of French (improved by the frequenttrips to Brussels--where indeed she deposited securely in hermother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documentsof the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies werenot to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value.There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was incourt for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecutingCounsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" anddrag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throwdiscredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course ifthe true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphantfrom such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of mud and some ofit will stick.... And what _was_ her full, true story? Even in thepure passion of the fight for liberty among these young andmiddle-aged women, the tongue of scandal occasionally wagged inmoments of lassitude, discouragement, undeception. At such timessome weaker sister with a vulgar mind, or a mind with vulgar streaksin it, might hint at the great interest taken in Vivie by adistinguished man of science who had become an M.P. and a ragingsuffragist. Or indecorum would be hinted in the relations betweenthis enigmatic woman, so prone seemingly to don male costume, andthe burly clerk who attended her so faithfully and had brought herhome on the night of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's spirited raid. So much so, that Vivie with a sigh, as soon as she attainedconvalescence was fain to send for Bertie and tell him withunanswerable decision that he must return to his work with Rossiterand thither she would send from time to time special instructions ifhe could help her business in any way. This was done in January, 1912. Vivie's feet were now healed and thewoman surgeon was satisfied that she could walk on them withoutdisplacing the reset bones. The slight fracture in the breastbonehad repaired itself by one of Nature's magic processes. So one dayour battered heroine doffed the invalid garments of Michaelis anddonned those of any well-dressed woman of 1912, including a thickveil. Thus attired she passed from the parapet to the fire-escape(recalling the agony these gymnastics had caused her the previousNovember), and from the fire-escape to the roof of No. 92(continuous with the roof of 94), and past the chimney stacks, intothe top storey of 94, and so on down to the street, where a taxi waswaiting to convey her to the Lilacs. (The W.S.P.U., by the bye, to bluff Scotland Yard had added to thename of "Algernon Mainwaring, 5th Floor," the qualification of"Hygienic Corset-maker," as an explanation--possibly--of why so manywomen found their way to the top storey of No. 94.) Arrived at the Lilacs, Vivie took up for a brief spell the life ofan ordinary young woman of the well-to-do middle class, seriouslyinterested in the suffrage question but non-militant. She attendedseveral of Honoria's or Mrs. Fawcett's suffrage parties or publicmeetings and occasionally spoke and spoke well. She also went overto Brussels twice in 1912 to keep in touch with her mother. Mrs.Warren had had one or two slight warnings that a life of pleasuresaps the strongest constitution.[1] She lived now mainly at herfarm, the Villa Beau-sejour, and only occasionally occupied her_appartement_ in the Rue Royale. She must have been about fifty-ninein the spring of 1912, and was beginning to "soigner son salut,"that is to say to take stock of her past life, apologize for it toherself and see how she could atone reasonably for what she had donewrong. A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion,inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religionexpounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She wouldhave confessed her past, slightly or very considerably _gazee_, tosome indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented ahandsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety. But shehad survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immenserespect for her clever daughter. Vivie should be her spiritualdirector; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliationthree years previously had seemed the most practical way of makingamends to Woman for having made money in the past out of theeconomic and physiological weakness of women. She had fined herselfTen Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fiftyor Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to herdaughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as furtherreparation. Still, she found the frequentation of churches soothingand gave much and often to the mildly beseeching Little Sisters ofthe Poor when they made their rounds in town or suburbs. [Footnote 1: Or so the observers say who haven't had a life of pleasure.] "What do you think about Religion, Viv old girl?" she said one dayin the Eastertide of 1912, when Vivie was spending a deliciousfortnight at Villa Beau-sejour. "Personally," said Vivie, "I hate all religions, so far as I havehad time to study them. They bind up with undisputed ethics more orless preposterous theories concerning life and death, the propertiesof matter, man, God, the universe, the laws of nature, the food weshould eat, the relations of the sexes, the quality of the weeklyday of rest. Gradually they push indisputable ethics on one side andare ready to apply torture, death, or social ostracism to thesupport of these preposterous theories and explanations of God andMan. Such theories"--went on Vivie, though her mother's attentionhad wandered to some escaped poultry that were scratchingdisastrously in seed beds--"Such theories and explanations, markyou--_do_ listen, mother, since you asked the question..." "I'm listenin', dearie, but you talk like a book and I don't knowwhat some of your words mean--What's ethics?" "Well 'ethics' means er--er--'morality'; it comes from a Greek wordmeaning 'character.'..." _Mrs. Warren_: "You talk like a book--" _Vivie_: "I do sometimes, when I remember something I've read. Butnow I've lost my thread.... What I meant to finish up with wassomething like this 'Such theories and explanations were formulatedseveral hundred, or more than two thousand years ago, in times whenMan's knowledge of himself, of his surroundings, of the earth andthe universe was almost non-existent, yet they are preserved to ourtimes as sacred revelations, though they are not superior to thefancies and fetish rites of a savage.' There! All that answer isquoted from Professor Rossiter's little book (_Home UniversityLibrary_, "The Growth of the Human Mind")." _Mrs. Warren_: "Rossiter! Is that the man you're sweet on?" _Vivie_: "Don't put it so coarsely. There is a great friendshipbetween us. We belong to a later generation than you. A man and awoman can be friends now without becoming lovers." _Mrs. Warren_: "Go _on_! Don't humbug me. Men and women's the sameas when I was young. I'm sorry, all the same, dear girl. There areyou, growin' middle-aged and not married to some good-'earted chapas 'd give you three-four children I could pet in me old age.Wodjer want to go fallin' in love with some chap as 'as got a wifealready? _I_ know your principles. There's iron in yer blood, sameas there is in that proud priest, your father. I know you'd breakyour 'eart sooner 'n have a good time with the professor. My! Itseems to me Love's as bad as Religion for bringin' about sorrer!" _Vivie_: "If you mean that it is answerable for the same intensehappiness and even more intense _un_happiness, I suppose you'reright. I'm _miserable_, mother, and it's some relief to me to sayso. If I could become honourably the wife of Michael Rossiter I'mafraid I should let Suffrage have the go-by. But as I can't, whythis struggle for the vote is the only thing that keeps me going. Ishall fight for it for another ten years, and by that time certainphysiological changes may have taken place in me, and my feelingstowards Rossiter will have calmed down." (Here Mrs. Warren proceeded to call out rather disharmoniously inFlemish to the poultry woman, and asked why the something-or-othershe let the Houdans spoil the seed beds.) _Mrs. Warren_ resuming: "Well it's clear you're your father'sdaughter. 'E'd 'ave gone on--_did_ go on--in just such a way. 'Imand me were jolly well suited to one another. I'd got to reg'larlove 'im. I'd 'a bin a true wife to him, and 'ave worked my fingersto the bone for 'im, and you bet I'd 'ave made a livin' somehow. Andhe'd have written some jolly good books and 'ave made lots of money.But no! This beastly Religion comes in with its scare of Hell fireand back 'e goes to the priests and 'is prayers and 'is penances.The last ten years or so 'e's bin filled up with pride. 'Is passions'ave died down and 'e thinks 'imself an awful swell as the head ofhis Order. And they do say as 'e's got 'is fingers in several piesand is a reg'lar old conspirator, working up the Irish to dosomething against England. Yer know since I've made my peace withyou.... _Ain't_ it a rum go, by the bye? Ten or twenty years agoit'd 'a bin 'my peace with God.' I dunno nothin' about God--can'tsee 'im at the end of a telescope, anyways. But I _can_ see you,Vivie, and there's no one livin' I respect more" (speaks with realfeeling).... "Well, as I was sayin', since I'd set myself right withyou and wound up the business of the hotels I ain't so easy cowed by'is looks as I used to be. So every now and then it amuses me to runover in my auto to Louvain and stroll about there and watch 'im as'e comes out for 'is promenade, pretendin' to be readin' a breviaryor some holy book. I know it riles 'im.... "Well, but for high principles, 'e and I might 'a bin as 'appy as'appy and 'ad a large family. And there was nothin' to stop 'ima-marryin' me, if that was all he wanted to feel comfortable aboutit. But jus' see. He's had a life that seems to me downrightsterile, and I--well, I ain't been _really_ happy till we made it upthree years ago" (leans over, and kisses Vivie a littletimorously). "Now there's you, burning yourself out 'cos your high principleswon't let you go for once in a way on the spree with thisRossiter--s'posin' 'e's game, of course.... You've too much pride tothrow yourself at his head. But if he loves you as bad as you loves'im, why don't you ask him" (instinctively the old ministress oflove speaks here) "ask 'im to take you over to Paris for a trip?I'll lay 'e 'as to go over now'n again to the Sorbonne or one ofthem scientific institutes. _She'd_ never come to 'ear of it. An'after one or two such honeymoons you'd soon get tired of 'im,specially now you're gettin' on a bit in years, and may be you'dsettle down quietly after that. Or if you ain't reg'lar set on_'im_, why not giv' up this suffrage business and live a bit with mehere? There's plenty of upstanding, decent, Belgian men in goodpositions as'd like to have an English wife. _They_ wouldn't looktoo shy at my money..." _Vivie_: "Get thee behind me, Satan! Mother, you oughtn't to makesuch propositions. Don't you understand, we must all have a religionsomewhere. Some principle to which we sacrifice ourselves. Rossiterwould be horrified if he could hear you. His mistress is Science,besides which he is really devoted to his wife and would do nothingthat could hurt her. You don't know England, it's clear. Supposingfor one moment I could consent--and I couldn't--we should be foundout to a certainty, and then Michael's career would be ruined. "My religion, though I sometimes weary of it and sneer at it, isWomen's Rights: women must have precisely the same rights as men, nodisqualification whatever based merely on their being women. Did youread those disgusting letters in the _Times_ by the surgeon, themidwifery man, Sir Wrigsby Blane? Declaring that the demand for theVote was based on immorality, and pretending that once a month, tillthey were fifty, and for several years _after_ they were fifty,women were not responsible for their actions, because of what hevaguely called 'physiological processes.' What poisonous rubbish!You know as well as I do that in most cases it makes little or nodifference; and if it does, what about men? Aren't _they_ at certaintimes not their normal selves? When they're full up with wine orbeer or whiskey, when they're courting, when they're pursuing someillicit love, when after fifty they get a little odd in their waysthrough this, that and the other internal trouble or change offunction? What's true of the one sex is equally true of the other.Most men and women between twenty and sixty jolly well know whatthey want, and generally they want something reasonable. We don'tlegislate for the freaks, the unbalanced, the abnormal; or if we dorestrict the vote in those cases, let's restrict it for males aswell as females--But don't you see at the same time what a text Ishould furnish to this malign creature if I ran away to Paris withMichael, and made the slightest false step ... even though it had nobearing on the main argument?..." At this juncture Vivie, whose obsession leads her more and more toaddress every one as a public meeting--is interrupted by the smiling_bonne a tout faire_ who announces that _le dejeuner de Madame estservi_, and the two women gathering up books and shawls go in to thegay little _saile-a-manger_ of the Villa Beau-sejour. On Vivie's return to London, after her Easter holiday, she threwherself with added zest into the Suffrage struggle. The fortnight ofgood feeding, of quiet nights and lazy days under her mother's roofhad done her much good. She was not quite so thin, the dark circlesunder her grey eyes had vanished, and she found not only in herselfbut even in the most middle-aged of her associates a delightfulspirit of tomboyishness in their swelling revolt against the Liberalleaders. It was specially during the remainder of 1912 that Vivienoted the enormous good which the Suffrage movement had done and wasdoing to British women. It was producing a splendid camaraderiebetween high and low. Heroines like Lady Constance Lyttonmingled as sister with equally heroic charwomen, factory girls,typewriteresses, waitresses and hospital nurses. Women doctors ofScience, Music, and Medicine came down into the streets and did thebravest actions to present their rights before a public that nowbegan to take them seriously. Debutantes, no longer quivering withfright at entering the Royal Presence, modestly but audibly calledtheir Sovereign's attention to the injustice of Mr. Asquith'sattitude towards women, while princesses of the Blood Royal haddifficulty in not applauding. Many a tame cat had left the fire-sideand the skirts of an inane old mother (who had plenty of people tolook after her selfish wants) and emerged, dazed at first, into aworld that was unknown to her. Such had thrown away their crochethooks, their tatting-shuttles and fashion articles, their Churchalmanacs, and Girl's Own Library books, and read and talked ofsocial, sexual, and industrial problems that have got to be facedand solved. Colour came into their cheeks, assurance into theirfaded manners, sense and sensibility into their talk; and whateverhappened afterwards they were never crammed back again into theprison of Victorian spinsterhood. They learnt rough cooking, skilledconfectionery, typewriting, bicycling, jiu-jitsu perhaps. "Themaidens came, they talked, they sang, they read; till she not fairbegan to gather light, and she that was became her former beautytreble" sang in prophecy, sixty years before, the greatest of poetsand the poet-prophet of Woman's Emancipation. Many a woman hasdirectly owed the lengthened, happier, usefuller life that becamehers from 1910-1911-1912 onwards to the Suffrage movement for theLiberation of Women. The crises of 1912 moreover were not so acute as bitterly to envenomthe struggle in the way that happened during the two followingyears. There was always some hope that the Ministry might permit thepassing of an amendment to the Franchise Bill which would in somedegree affirm the principle of Female Suffrage. It is true that acertain liveliness was maintained by the Suffragettes. The W.S.P.U.dared not relax in its militancy lest Ministers should think thestruggle waning and Woman already tiring of her claims. The vauntedManhood Suffrage Bill had been introduced by an anti-woman-suffrageQuaker Minister and its Second reading been proposed by an equallyanti-feminist Secretary of State--this was in June-July, 1912; andno member of the Cabinet had risen to say a word in favour of theWomen's claims. Still, something might be done in Committee, in theautumn Session--if there were one--or in the following year. Therewas a simmering in the Suffragist ranks rather than any alarmingexplosion. In March, before Vivie went to Brussels, Mrs. Pankhursthad carried out a window-smashing raid on Bond Street and RegentStreet and the clubs of Piccadilly, during which among the twohundred and nineteen arrests there were brought to light as"revolutionaries" two elderly women surgeons of great distinctionand one female Doctor of Music. In revenge the police had raided theW.S.P.U. offices at Clifford's Inn, an event long foreseen andprovided against in the neighbouring Chancery Lane. The Irish Nationalist Party had shown its marked hostility to theenfranchisement of women in any Irish Parliament and so a fewimpulsive Irish women had thrown things at Nationalist M.P.'swithout hurting them. Mr. Lansbury had spoken the plain truth to thePrime Minister in the House of Commons and had been denied access tothat Chamber where Truth is so seldom welcome. In July the slumbering movement towards resisting the payment oftaxes by vote-less women woke up into real activity, and there weremany ludicrous and pathetic scenes organized often by Vivie andBertie Adams at which household effects were sold and bought in byfriends to satisfy the claims of a tax-collector. In the autumnVivie and others of the W.S.P.U. organized great pilgrimages--themarches of the Brown Women--from Scotland, Wales, Devon and Norfolkto London, to some goal in Downing Street or Whitehall, somedoor-step which already had every inch of its space covered bypolicemen's boots. These were among the pleasantest of themanifestations and excited great good humour in the populace of townand country. They were extended picnics of ten days or a fortnight.The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the womengood; the food _en route_ was abundant and eaten with tremendousappetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification inphysical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man. Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part inthese manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. AsVivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to thepopulace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance,telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt asDavid Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause atthe Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. CountessFeenix took her up, invited her to dinner parties where she foundherself placed next to statesmen in office, who at first morose andnervous--expecting every moment a personal assault--graduallythawed when they found her a good conversationalist, a clever womanof the world, becomingly dressed. After all, she had been a thirdwrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent lifecould not be irregular, according to a man's standard in England ofwhat an unmarried woman's life should be. She deprecated theviolence of the militants in this phase. But she was Protean. Much of her work, the lawless part of it, wasorganized in the shape and dress of Mr. Michaelis. Some of herletters to the Press were signed Edgar McKenna, Albert Birrell,Andrew Asquith, Edgmont Harcourt, Felicia Ward, Millicent Curzon,Judith Pease, Edith Spenser-Churchhill, Marianne Chamberlain, orEmily Burns; and affected to be pleas for the granting of theSuffrage emanating from the revolting sons or daughters, aunts,sisters or wives of great statesmen, prominent for their oppositionto the Women's Cause. The W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it didnot cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names andsupplied with the home address of the great personage whom it wasintended to annoy. One such card as an evidence of good faith wouldbe attached to the plausibly-worded letter. The _Times_ was seldomtaken in, but great success often attended these audacious
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