The Balliols (24 page)

She gave no sign that there were such secrets. Indeed, as she set out from her home on the morning when she had decided to test her resolve finally, anyone passing her would have thought: “There's a typical example of the healthy young English girl. Why aren't there more like her?”

It was with extreme self-confidence that Lucy made her request to her immediate employer.

“Miss Draft, it's time you gave me another militant piece of work.”

She knew exactly the kind of work she wanted. She didn't want just to be arrested and sent to prison. As a gesture. Then as a further gesture to attempt a hunger strike. She was not equal to that; she knew it now. Her courage must be tested not by her powers of resistance against doctors and wardresses, but by a single feat of skill and daring. Whereas she could carry through, she was certain, one spectacular and effective act, her nerves would be broken by a long strain. It was the contrast between the stamina required by a runner in a cross-country race and the pace and dash required of him in a sprint. She began to explain what she had in mind, when Miss Draft cut her short.

“I'm sorry, but everyone in this office is working under the direct orders of your aunt. I can't arrange anything for the members of the staff without her direct permission.”

“You were able to, the last time.”

“That was different. It was because of that last time, as a matter of fact, that this regulation was made. We can't have routine work upset. I can't do anything without your aunt's permission.”

“I suppose she'll give it me.”

“I dare say.”

“It's not, I mean, as though I were doing something here that anyone else couldn't do; that anyone else couldn't pick up at a moment's notice?”

“N—no.”

“If my aunt were to refer the matter back to you, I mean, if she were to ask if you could spare me, you'd say you could, wouldn't you?”

“Yes, oh yes, I suppose I should.”

Stella was busy over a pile of papers when Lucy came into her room. She looked up with a quick, preoccupied frown.

“Yes, what is it?”

“I want to do something militant. Miss Draft says she can't arrange anything for me without your permission.”

“Miss Draft's quite right. We can't have our office routine upset.”

“But Miss Draft says it won't make any difference if I go; that she can easily get someone to take my place.”

“No doubt she could. But that new person would have to be taught her work. That would mean that for two or three days things would not be working smoothly.”

“But if Miss Draft says.…”

“It doesn't matter what Miss Draft says or thinks. She takes her instructions from me.”

“Do you mean to say that you won't let me?”

“I certainly do.”

“But.…”

“I can't discuss it.”

Stella spoke in a stern voice that made it very clear that her mind was made up, that she was not going to reconsider her decision. She picked up her pile of papers and resumed her study of them. Lucy hesitated; then left the room. As the door closed behind her, Stella shook her head. It was a nuisance having relatives to work for one. You never could get those straightforward, clearly defined relationships on which the success of an undertaking ultimately depended. Lucy was a nice child, but she was a nuisance about the place.

At her typewriter by Miss Draft's side Lucy tapped out the addresses of the innumerable recipients of the Movement's latest
manifesto. She did the work conscientiously, carefully, but without pleasure. When she had worked for Stella, she had taken delight and pride in doing the most trivial things as well as possible; so as to help Stella, to make things easier for Stella. Even though Stella did not notice. But for Miss Draft she was a machine. Steadily, through the long morning, she typed out the long list of addresses; now and again answering the telephone; now and again satisfying the demands of callers for whom Stella would not have time. Towards one o'clock, the number of calls and visitors had lessened. Stella had gone out to lunch. Lucy was alone with Miss Draft. There was no sound but the scratch of Miss Draft's pen and the tapping of Lucy's fingers on the keyboard. The time had come for her to ask the question that all the morning had perplexed her.

“Miss Draft, my aunt won't let me do anything militant. Do you think that's really because she doesn't want the routine of the office disturbed or because she doesn't think I'm fit to do that kind of thing?”

The question disturbed Miss Draft in the phrasing of a particularly difficult paragraph. She looked up impatiently. She resented the interruption. She did not like Lucy particularly. One of these girls with rich parents, who played at work; who would marry a rich man, and lead one of those futile, leisurely lives whose doings she saw chronicled in the illustrated papers. People like Lucy Balliol should keep quiet; not interrupt people like herself to whom this room was not a pastime but the background of an entire life. She was in no mood for a pacific, conciliatory, or indeed tactful, answer.

“A bit of both,” she answered.

“You mean because I didn't go through with the hunger strike?”

But Miss Draft was in no mood for discussion. She had things to get on with, if this young chit hadn't.

“I don't know what she had in mind. She told me that you were brought up soft. That's all I know about it.” And she returned her attention to the sheet of foolscap across which the testing paragraph presented itself as a labyrinth of erasions, brackets and insertions.

Lucy rested her wrists against the keyboard. So that
was
it, then. Stella had lost faith in her; lost interest in her; thought she was good for nothing; because she had been brought up soft. That was what Stella thought. After all that she had faced: all the ignominy, the nausea, the actual pain. No account taken of all that; no allowance made; no chance given to her to retrieve that past. But I must. She mustn't be allowed to think that of me. I must
show her what I really am. She must believe in me. If other people look down on me, I don't care. They don't matter. They're different. But she.… I've got to show her. What am I to do? I could leave here altogether. There are at least three different parties. I could get into touch with some of the other leaders. They would give me my chance. But that wouldn't do. I would be separated from Stella. I couldn't bear that. There is no point in what is not done for Stella. I must be near her, so that I can see her, so that she can know what I'm doing. But I can't stay here, typing envelopes for Miss Draft; being ignored; not trusted; while other people are sharing her thoughts, her confidences. I can't accept my failure, sit down under it, let myself be written down as a failure. I've got to show them. I'll have to do it on my own; if they won't help me. It's against the regulations, I know that. But I can't help it. There's nothing else for me to do.

Three days later, half-way through the morning's Work, Lucy stopped in the middle of the typing, got up from her chair, walked with a stagger towards the window, flung up the sash and leant forward, her arms rested on the sill. A gust of air blew into the room, scattering the papers on Miss Draft's desk.

She looked up quickly, with customary impatience.

“What's all this?”

“I'm sorry. I felt faint suddenly.”

“Oh!”

Lucy stood, huddled in the window, while the cool wind beat upon Miss Draft's book. Miss Draft shivered. Her own discomfort made her susceptible to Lucy's condition.

“Is there anything really the matter with you?”

“No, no. I'll be all right in a second.”

But it was a good two minutes before the window was lowered and Lucy returned unsteadily to her seat. The tapping of the keyboard was resumed; not, however, with its usual steady rhythm. There were pauses, and sudden spurts, as when a beginner hunts for a lost letter and then rushes at a word she knows. The unevenness worried Miss Draft. She found herself continually glancing over her shoulder at Lucy.

“Are you really all right?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

But a little later, after a particularly spasmodic burst of typing, Lucy dropped her wrists upon the keys.

“Do you mind if I open the window? It feels awfully stuffy in here.”

To Miss Draft it had seemed anything but stuffy; a nice reasonable temperature for May. With the windows open and a breeze blowing down her neck and fluttering her papers, it was a January atmosphere. If the girl thought this was a proper temperature, then there was very clearly something wrong with her. The sooner she was out of the room and the windows shut, the better.

“You'd better go home,” she said. “You aren't fit. I can see that. You'll only knock yourself up if you stay here. Then
you'll be away for a week instead of an afternoon. Now, don't argue. I can manage here all right. Ring up if you are not fit to-morrow.”

Obediently Lucy packed her things together. The success of her little ruse pleased her. She had wanted to be given leave, instead of having had to ask for it. It looked less like a running away.

“Good-bye, Miss Draft.”

She took a last look round the room. When will I see you again?.… If I ever see you again, she added.

It was a late spring day; one of those May mornings when London suddenly realizes that winter is past, that summer is at hand. The sky is of a hyacinth blue with that faint haze that tells you that over the Surrey hills the sun is beating with a summer radiance. The plane trees in the square are flecked with emerald; the window boxes are bright with the dull gold and yellow of wallflowers and marigolds. The air is warm; there is no need for wraps and overcoats and scarves. No need to keep the blood moving quickly with a hurried step. Young women saunter slowly in light frocks, so that the pavements are bright with live flowers like a succession of herbaceous borders. The long cavalcade of summer has begun. The Londoner, wearied of the frosts and fogs of February, sees a sudden prospect of windless afternoons, flannels and parasols, wide, floppy hats, the ping of tennis balls, strawberries and cream, cool bathing pools, rocks and yellow sand; punts drifted into shaded backwaters; a gramophone and fingers trailing in the stream.

“I'll take a bus,” thought Lucy.

She climbed to the top deck. “Young ladies don't go on the tops of buses,” her nurse had told her. “Make the most of it while you can enjoy it.” But that was ten years ago. Things were different now. Young ladies
did
go on the tops of buses. Or plenty did. And anyhow, even if they didn't, it wouldn't matter now. She went to the front seat. She had always refused to go to the front seat in the days of horse-buses. Ruth had been so annoyed. “Don't be silly. You see much better here.” “I daresay, but I don't like seeing the driver whip the horses.” She had hated, too, the sight of the horses' straining flanks; of the effort with which they started on an incline; their hooves slipping on the tarred roadway. She had been terrified lest one of them should fall. But Ruth had been right. You did see very, very much better from the front. It was nice that there were so few horse-buses now.

In ten years' time there probably wouldn't be one left. How few hansoms there were nowadays. London would be quite a different place in the nineteen twenties. Pressed tight into her corner seat, she leant over the side, looking down, watching the panorama of the streets, as though she were to fix upon the retina of her mind's memory, sights that would not be here for her to see in 1920. Yet she remarked, not the things which would be caught away upon the stream of change, but sights that in a different form had been familiar to the Londoner of the ‘nineties and would to his grandson in the ‘fifties.

At the corner of Ayr Street and Piccadilly a newspaper placard of the
Star
was announcing Captain Coe's final wire. The kind of man that was described in
Punch
cartoons as a seedy-looking individual was standing in the middle of the pavement, jostled from both sides, the paper spread open wide, his eyes fixed eagerly on the stop press column.

A girl was standing in the entrance of the Burlington Arcade. Under a wide-brimmed, claret-coloured hat, she was peering anxiously at the passers-by. She had a sullen, sallow look. Then suddenly her face lit up. She was pretty and gay and laughing. Her hand had been taken, tucked under a long lean arm. With her quick, short steps she was trying to keep pace with a long slow stride. She was looking up, chattering, laughing as she talked.

In a bow window on the north side of Piccadilly a very old man was peering through spectacles at the leader column of
The Times
. His hands and his head were shaking. Over a high, white collar the loose skin of his neck hung in thin, creased folds. There was a small table at his side; a half empty glass of sherry stood upon it.

How clearly I see it all; just as though I were seeing it for the first time. All the way westwards, past the bow windows of Piccadilly, up the rise of Constitution Hill, past the bright, brief greenery of the Park, past the shops of Knightsbridge, she had the same sense of seeing things with a distinctness never before granted her. As the bus rattled into Kensington the clocks were striking twelve. In another quarter of an hour she would be at Earl's Court. The Wild West show was about five minutes' walk from the entrance of the Exhibition. The first performance was at twelve. It lasted about half an hour. That would give her just time to see the end. It was the end she wanted to see. She remembered it pretty well. It was only a fortnight since she had taken Francis; as a good-bye treat before the end of holidays. But she had taken no particular notice; she knew it in general outline but not in detail. It was the detail that she needed to know. There must be no mistake;
this
time.

She reached Earl's Court, as she had expected, at a little after the quarter past. It was a week-day; but the fine weather had lured many Londoners to the Exhibition. There was a steady thread growing along the sidewalks. The flying boats were circling above the lake. Every three or four minutes a boat-load of screaming girls was propelled down the watershoot. Over the tracks of the scenic railway cars shot and dived and rose. Rifles cracked, Aunt Sallies were detoothed, targets were wedged with darts. Children tugging at their mothers' arms shouted, ‘Oh, look. We must see that!” Canoes glided into the dark mysteries of the river caves. Young men standing in the swing-boats, the cords discarded, were vieing with each other to somersault the bar. The helter-skelter was doing a busy trade. Lucy noted, without pausing to note, the changing scene. She knew what she had to do. She remembered where she had to go.