The Balliols (20 page)

“You're very young for that kind of work.”

“I'm older than Annie Martin and Peggy Wilbur, oh, and lots of others.”

“Yes, but you've been brought up in a rather easier way. They can stand hard treatment at an earlier age than you could.”

“So you think that
is
the reason?”

The “is” was stressed. It was said quickly, so that Jane suspected that she had made some admission; had given herself away somehow. She was immediately on her guard.

“What reason did your Aunt Stella give?”

“Oh, I don't know. She talked about my being more use as a secretary.”

“So you are, of course. You're an educated and intelligent girl. Most of these girls couldn't spell a letter, much less compose one. I can imagine that your Aunt Stella would find herself in an extremely difficult position if you got into any kind of trouble. I know your father always says that his secretary knows more about the business than he does himself. I can quite understand why your Aunt doesn't want you to do anything that would lose you.”

“Oh yes, I see that.”

But Lucy had scarcely listened to her mother's argument. So she was right, then, and that was why Aunt Stella hadn't wanted her
to do real work. They didn't trust her. They thought she was too weak, too delicate; that she'd been trained in a soft school. All that about being more useful as a secretary was talk. Was an excuse. She'd thought so herself, only Aunt Stella had sounded so convincing. She herself had been so anxious to be convinced. She had so wanted to be of real value. But she hadn't been convinced; not entirely; and then when she had told her mother, of course to her, too, the obvious explanation came. Then when she heard what kind of excuse Aunt Stella had made, she embellished it, sugaring the pill, since it was clear that the swallowing was proving difficult.

It wasn't fair. Why should they think her weak, just because she had been brought up in healthy, comfortable surroundings? She ought to be stronger, not weaker, than girls out of poor homes. If she wasn't, then what was the point of this talk about hygiene and sanitation? Didn't it make children stronger. They might think what they liked; they might argue how they liked; they might think her weak, but she wasn't a fool. They couldn't hoodwink her. They might think her weak, but she wasn't: she'd be able to show them.

She was going to make quite certain first, however, that the reason for her aunt's refusal was the one that she suspected.

On the following afternoon, she approached the subject with Miss Draft, obliquely.

Miss Draft worked in the same building as Stella Balliol. She had not been advanced in the Movement as rapidly as she had hoped. The leaders, who were not remarkable for a sense of humour, had had a sufficient sense of the ridiculous to recognize that Miss Draft's presence on the platform would confirm the audience in its belief that the suffrage forces were largely recruited from the women whom no man would marry. Miss Draft had been kept in the background. She was nevertheless a figure of considerable importance. She was forceful in debate. In the committee room among other women she frequently over-ruled an opposition that had been at the start unanimous. She was sharp, hard, ruthless. By sheer persistence she got her way. A great many of the women were afraid of her. Lucy, however, had never been able to think of her otherwise than as a joke. She was never certain whether Miss Draft liked her or not for her independence. On the whole she was inclined to think she didn't.

Lucy adopted towards her the convivially flippant manner that a schoolboy uses to the master he proposes to rag.

“I don't suppose you consider me an indispensable factor of your organization?” she began.

Miss Draft sniffed.

“No one's indispensable. You do your work all right, if that's what you mean.”

“It's not what I mean. If I were to fall ill, would the entire office be disorganized?”

“Of course it wouldn't.”

“Satisfactory secretaries flower from every bush?”

“There are a great many competent young women seeking secretarial employment.”

“You'd find it easy to replace me?”

“Quite.”

“Easier than to find a dozen volunteers to set fire to Westminster?”

“If you are making fun of Jane Carland's unsuccessful attempt to set fire to that hayrick.…”

“I am not. I was merely offering my services for the next practical demonstration.”

Miss Draft blinked at her. She was surprised, frankly, at the girl's request. She had not pictured Lucy as a militant. She thought of her as, to begin with, she had thought of Stella: as one of those girls who played at being suffragettes, like the fashionable women who organized bazaars, and charity matinées, under the pretence that they were helping a hospital instead of amusing themselves. She had, indeed, rather resented Lucy's position as Stella's secretary. A gross case of nepotism, in her opinion. She was not quite certain that Lucy was sincere in her request. She hesitated.

“Do you think I'm too young?”

“Of course you're not.”

“Do you think I'm a pampered puppy who can't stand rough treatment?”

Miss Draft looked her up and down.

“I take it you're the kind that thinks nothing of four sets of tennis. Oh, no. You're strong enough.”

“Then whose hayricks shall I set alight?”

Every “Outrage” was the result of a carefully departmentalized arrangement, for which Miss Draft was in the main responsible. The militants of the W.S.M. came to her for orders. Secrecy of a high order was maintained. The less known the better. Even the leaders themselves did not know the exact details of each
manœuvre. Lucy could not have sought a safer confidante. She repeated her request.

“Well, what have you got for me to do?”

Miss Draft gave her instructions in the impatient way that the dispenser of charity hands alms to a beggar.

“To-morrow evening, when your work's finished, you can take a bus to Charing Cross Station. You will cross the road. There is a post office exactly opposite. At six o'clock precisely you will smash the window, and shout “Votes for Women!” I have arranged for the windows of a dozen post offices to be broken simultaneously in various parts of London. It will be headline news next day. That is what we want; the kind of militant action that attracts the Press. Isolated action is useless. It is overlooked. A paragraph in a corner of a column. We want something that people have got to discuss over their breakfast tables when they open their daily papers. I can rely upon you.”

That night when the house was silent, when the boards above her head had yielded their last creak, Lucy tiptoed silently down the stairs. A week earlier Francis had presented himself in the drawing-room covered with coal dust and eager with the news that he had discovered a new game. There was a pick-axe in the coal cellar. He had begun the tunnelling of a secret passage to the
Bull and Bush
. It seemed to Lucy that the pick-axe was admirably suited for the destruction of the Charing Cross post office window.

It proved to be. It was eighteen inches long; its head was a foot long. It was sharp, it was heavy; its own weight, without any effort of hers could be relied upon to destroy any normal window. It would fit conveniently into the small attaché case that she took down with her every morning. The first step was taken.

She woke to the sense of an occasion; a breathless eventfulness in the air: a premonition that the drama of a day had already started; that she was not beginning the day fresh; that something that had happened overnight had left its legacy.

She lay back upon her pillow staring at the ceiling, uncertain if she were waking to trouble or to pleasure. She was excited. But she was troubled. It was not that she was frightened, but that she was lonely. She wished that there were somebody she could confide in: someone to share the exploit with. It was not going to be easy; going there, alone.

She was more excited than she was lonely. At breakfast she looked round the table; at Francis bolting his food so as to get a last
five minutes at the repetition he had imperfectly mastered the night before: at her father methodically folding
The Times
as he took the first cursory impression of the day's events that he would supplement during the half hour's journey in the tube: at her mother cutting her toast into long slim fingers, glancing now and again at the pile of letters that she always left unopened by her side till the rest of the family had gone—her post was her day's chief interest; she hated waiting for it, but she would have hated even more to have her reading of it disturbed. What, thought Lucy, would they say if they were to be told the truth? If she were to say, “At six o'clock this evening I am going to break the window of the Charing Cross post office.” She wondered when she would next sit at this table.

It was with a similar feeling that she presented herself with her pad and pencil at Stella's desk. You think I'm weak, that I can't stand what these others can. You'll be surprised when you read your paper to-morrow morning.

More than anything she looked forward to the welcome that she would receive when she came out of prison. She would be justified at last. Stella would recognize her as an equal: would be proud of her. Because she knew me when I was a child, she thinks that I'm one still. She won't realize that I'm grown up.

She was proud to think how proud her aunt would be of her.

It was, however, an extremely timid girl who stood eight hours later at the corner of the Strand opposite the Charing Cross Hotel. It was five minutes to six. She had promised Miss Draft that she would wait till the first stroke of the clock. Miss Draft's journalistic sense appreciated the news value of thirteen post office windows smashing simultaneously. Lucy had read about minutes that seemed like hours. She knew now what novelists meant. She glanced towards the church clock opposite: four minutes. A man who was passing took a long steady look at her, he checked his stride, hesitated, looked round over his shoulder, turned. He's coming to speak to me. What'll I do? I couldn't give him in charge. In five minutes I'm going to be in charge myself. Do I look that kind of girl? I suppose any girl who stands about at street corners looks that kind of girl. Do I look conspicuous? Perhaps I do. I'd better move. I've got to get out of his way. I'll walk up Adelaide Street. It should take me a minute to reach the top. That'll be two minutes before I'm back. If I dawdle I could make it three. Then it'll be the time.

As she turned back from the corner of Chandos Street, it was
like the slow climb of the ladder to the highest diving platform on a cold day. In the same way that the swimmer, his toes working for their grip upon the matting, looks down on the steely inhospitable water into which in another second he must plunge, so Lucy saw at the end of the quiet little side street the thronged pavements of the Strand; the buses clattering by; the hansoms and the four-wheelers; an occasional taxi; all that stir of people; each one intent upon his own business; not one aware of her; not one noticing her. Yet in another minute that stir would have been stopped; every wandering attention would have been focussed upon her. A hundred people who at this instant would not have bothered to think twice about her would be saying as they opened their morning papers: “Do you see this about the girl smashing the window at Charing Cross? I was there when that happened.” Actresses must feel like this, when they stand shivering in the wings on their first night. I've got everything, haven't I? I must be careful to open my attaché case the right way. It would be awful if I opened it the wrong way up, and the axe fell out. It would be very easy. I must hold it against my side, with the fastening towards me. She lifted it up, tucking it under her arm in preparation, half practising how she would press back the catch and lift the lid with her left hand, while she kept her right hand free to pull out the axe. So busy was she over her rehearsal that she lost count of time. When the church clock began to strike she was twenty yards away from the turning of the Strand.

Heavens, I must hurry! She quickened her pace; half-opened her bag; felt for the handle of the axe; swung into the Strand; pulled out the axe; dropped her case; rushed up to the post office, swung back the axe above her head, with the clock striking its last peal, shouted
“Votes for Women!”
Crashed the axe into the pane.

There was a clatter of glass. Jubilantly she swung round to face the street.
“Votes for Women!”
she shouted with the full power of her lungs.

Picturing the scene in her imagination she had fancied that the window once broken all would be easy going; she would have made her start: that the rest of the caste would carry on the scene. She was quite unprepared for the blank silence that followed. The English never interfere if they can help it. At the sound of the crash a full twenty people wheeled round in their stride to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. When one person stops to look, another twenty will stop to see what he is looking at. In thirty seconds a large crowd had gathered, but not one of them did more than stare; it was not their window. A couple of men nudged
each other. “Suffragettes,” they whispered, then laughed. But the remainder stared up at her with a blank, stupid, but interested look upon their faces. Most of their mouths were agape. Lucy looked desperately about her. Was no one going to do anything? Did the second as well as the first move lie with her? The pick-axe was still in her hand. Desperate and wrought up, she waved it above her head and, turning, crashed it into the second pane.
“Votes for Women!”
she yelled again.

This second assault did slightly galvanize the crowd. A voice was raised in protest. “Look, you can't go on like this!” But no one thought of making any active protest. Have I got to go on breaking windows for ever? Unless something happens, I shall have to. Never had she welcomed any sound so much as the sudden bulky interruption of a policeman. “Now, what's all this about?” She was so relieved to see him that she entirely forgot that it was part of a suffragette's duty to resist capture.