It was on a Thursday evening that Basil Ward came to Poppy's house at Lancaster Gate. We had been very glum at dinner, with Poppy staring through me with her fork half raised, and dabs of powder around her eyes so I wouldn't know she had been crying. Vivian's place was laid, but of course he was not there. And after dinner we went up to the drawing room, and Poppy worked at the kitchen clock.
We heard Basil coming up the stairs, and Poppy went quite pale. The alarm on the clock went off just then, too, and for a minute we both thought we'd been blown up.
Basil stood in the doorway—he's very good-looking, Basil, especially when he is excited. And he was excited now. Poppy rose and stared at him. It was very dramatic.
"Well?" she said.
"I'm deucedly sorry, Poppy," said Basil. "He absolutely refuses. He says he'll stay. Says he likes it. It's extremely quiet. He wants his pens and some paper sent over—has an idea for the new book."
Poppy's color came back in two spots in her cheeks.
"So he likes it!" she observed. "Very well. Then that's settled." She turned to me. "You've heard Basil, Madge, and you've heard me. That's all there is to it."
Poppy is very excitable, and as long as she had the clock in her hand Basil stayed near the door. Now, however, she put it down, and Basil came in.
"You and Vivian are a pair of young geese," he said to Poppy. "It's a horrible place."
"Vivian likes it."
"You are going to let him stay?"
"I didn't make the law. You men make these laws. Now try living up to them. When women have the vote——"
But Basil headed her off. He dropped his voice.
"That isn't the worst, Mrs. Viv," he said slowly. "He's—gone on a hunger strike!"
I'd been in England for six months visiting Daphne Delaney, who is my cousin. But visiting Daphne had been hard work. She is so earnest. One started out to go shopping with her, and ended up on a counter in Harrod's demanding of a mob of women hunting bargains in one-and-six kids (gloves) why they were sheep.
"Sheep!" she would say, eyeing them scornfully. "Silly sheep who do nothing but bleat—with but one occupation, or reason for living, to cover your backs!"
Then two or three stately gentlemen in frock-coats would pull her down, and I would try to pretend I was not with her.
Now I believe in Suffrage. I own a house back home in America. Father gave it to me so I could dress myself out of the rent. (But between plumbers and taxes and a baby with a hammer, which ruined the paint, I never get much. Mother has to help.) The first thing I knew, the men voted to pave the street in front of the old thing, and I had to give up a rose-coloured charmeuse and pass over a check. But that isn't all. The minute the street was paved, some more men came along and raised my taxes because the street was improved! So I paid two hundred dollars to have my taxes raised! Just wait!
That made me strong for Suffrage. And of course there are a lot of other things. But I'm not militant. You know as well as I do that it's coming. The American men are just doing what father does at Christmas time. For about a month beforehand he talks about hard times, and not seeing his way clear and all that. And on Christmas morning he comes down stairs awfully glum, with one hand behind him. He looks perfectly miserable, but he's really having the time of his life. We always play up. We kiss him and tell him never to mind; maybe he can do it next year. And we're always awfully surprised when he brings his hand around with checks for everybody, bigger than they'd expected.
(That's the way with Suffrage in America. The men are holding off, and having a good time doing it. But they'll hand it over pretty soon, with bells on. The American man always gives his womenkind what they want, if they want it hard enough. Only he's holding off a little, so they'll appreciate it when they get it.)
It was after the affair of the Prime Minister that I left Daphne. We kidnapped him, you remember, only it turned out to be someone else, and Violet Harcourt-Standish got in awfully wrong and had to go to the Riviera. I really did not wish to kidnap him, but the thing came up at tea at Daphne's one day, and one hates to stay out of things.
Poppy was going on a motor trip just then, and when she asked me to go along, I agreed. I was spending a Sunday with her.
"I'm not running away, Madge," she explained. "But I'm stony broke, and that's the truth. I'll have to get back to work."
"You can't work in the motor."
Poppy paints, and makes a lot of money—mural decorations, you know, panels for public buildings, and all that sort of thing.
"I want sea, sea with mist over it, and rocks. And a cave——"
"Caves are damp. There are plenty of hotels."
"A cave," she said, examining her cigarette dreamily, "with the sea coming in against a setting sun, and the spray every color in the world. I think it's Tintagel, Madge."
Poppy is terribly pretty, and this is her story, not mine.
"That's a sweet frock," I said. "Did you hear that man to-day, when you were speaking at the Monument? He said, 'Bless its pretty 'eart——'"
Poppy's hair is the softest, straightest hair you ever saw, and her nose is short and childish. Her eyes are soft, too, and her profile is so helpless that the bobbies help her across the streets. But her full face is full of character.
"Was he in front of me?" she demanded.
"At the side."
We both understood. It was her profile again. She fell back in her chair and sighed.
"If you could address the House of Lords in profile," I said, "you'd get the vote."
"That's rot, you know," she retorted. But she coloured. She knew and she knew I knew that her new photographs were profile ones. And we both knew, too, that they were taken because Vivian Harcourt had demanded a picture.
"You're not doing the right thing, Poppy," I accused her. "For one day in the week that Viv sees you, there are six days for him to look at that picture."
"He isn't obliged to look at it at all."
"So long as women beg the question like that," I said severely, "just so long do they postpone serious consideration for the Cause."
She leaned back and laughed—rather rudely. The English can be very rude sometimes. They call it frankness.
"The ridiculous thing about you is that you don't know anything about the Cause," she said. "With you, it's a fad. It's the only thing you can't have, so you want it, little Madge. With some of us it's—well, I can't talk about it."
It made me furious. The idea of dedicating your life to a thing, and then being accused——
"I think enough of the Cause to stand out all day in a broiling sun," I snapped, "and be burnt to a cinder. Didn't I pass out your wretched literature for hours and make six shillings?"
"Don't call it wretched literature," she said gently. "But—now think a minute. If it came to a showdown—your own expression, isn't it—a question between one of these men who are so mad about you, Basil or any of the others—and the Cause, which would it be?"
"Both," I replied promptly.
She laughed again.
"You delightful little hypocrite!" she cried. "A Compromise, then! Not victory, but a truce! Oh, martyr to the Cause!"
"And you?"
"The Cause," she said, and turned, fullface to me.
Well, of course that was Poppy's affair. I believe in living up to one's conviction, and all that. But when you think of the lengths to which she carried her conviction, and the horrible situation that developed, it seems an exceedingly selfish theory of life. I believe in diplomatic compromise.
(I wrote the whole conversation that night to father, and he cabled a reply. He generally cables, being very busy. He said, "Life is a series of compromises. Who is Basil?")
Well, we got started at last. Poppy left in a raging temper over something or other—a bill before the house, I think. I was so busy getting packed that I forgot what it was, if I ever knew—and hardly spoke for twenty miles. But at Guildford she recovered her temper. It was the time of the Assizes, and the Sheriff was lunching at our hotel. His gilt coach was at the door, with a footman in wig and plush, white stockings and buckles, and a most magnificent coachman. Poppy's eyes narrowed. She pointed to the footman's ornamented legs.
"The great babies!" she said. "How a man loves to dress! Government, is it? Eighteenth century costumes and mediæval laws! Government—in gold lace and a cocked hat! Law in its majesty, Madge, with common sense and common justice in rags. That can vote, while you and I——" she stopped for breath.
The footman's calves twitched, but he looked straight ahead.
I got her into the building somehow or other. She looked quite calm, except that she was breathing hard. I confess that I thought she was ashamed of herself; I reminded her that she had promised to be quiet on this trip, and I told her, as firmly as I could, that it wasn't proper to make fun of a man's legs.
She powdered her nose and looked penitent and distractingly pretty.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It's this parade of authority that gets on my nerves, and this glittering show of half the people ruling all the people."
When she came back from ordering the luncheon she was smiling. I thought it was all over. (I am telling this incident, not because it belongs to the story, but because it sheds a light on Poppy's character, and perhaps explains what came later.)
"Luncheon!" she said, cheerfully, "with strawberries as big as a teacup, and clotted cream."
I think my mind was on the clotted cream, for I followed her past one dining-room to a second, a long, low room, full of men. She pushed me in ahead.
"I—I think it's the wrong room, Poppy," I said. "There's the——"
It was the wrong room, and she knew it. The Sheriff was at the centre table and near him was a great serving stand, with hot and cold roasts and joints.
I tried to back out, but at that moment Poppy slammed the door and locked it.
"Don't yell!" she said to me under her breath, and dropped something ice-cold down my back. The key!
About half the men started to their feet. Poppy raised a hand.
"Gentlemen," she said, "you need not rise! I have a few things I would like to say while you finish luncheon. I shall be entirely orderly. The question of the Suffrage——"
They dodged as if she had been loaded with shrapnel instead of a speech. They shouted and clamored. They ordered us out. And all the time the door was locked and the key was down my back.
"Poppy!" I said, clutching her arm. "Poppy, for the love of heaven——"
She had forgotten me absolutely. When she finally turned her eyes on me, she never even saw me.
"The door is locked, gentlemen," she said. "Locked and the key hidden. If you will give me five minutes——"
But they would not listen. The Sheriff sat still and ate his luncheon. Time might come and time might go, tides flow and ebb, old eras give way to new—but the British lion must be fed. But once I caught his eye, and I almost thought it twinkled. Perish the thought! The old order wink at the new!
They demanded the key. The lunch hour was over. The Assizes waited. In vain Poppy plead for five minutes to talk.
"After that, I'll turn over the key," she promised.
The only way she could have turned over the key was, of course, to take me into a corner, stand me on my head and jounce it out! I was very nervous, I'll confess. No one had laid a hand on Poppy as yet. She was so young and good looking, and the minute anybody loomed very close, she turned her baby profile to him and he looked as if he'd been caught gunning for butterflies.
Finally, however, the noise becoming a tumult, and Poppy and I forced back against the door; the Lord High Sheriff—which sounds like Gilbert & Sullivan—approached. The crowd made respectful way for him.
"Now, young ladies," he said, "this has been an agreeable break in our long day. But—all pleasant things must end. Open the door, please."
"Will you give me five minutes?" Poppy demanded. "I'm a tax-payer. I help to pay the people in this room. I have a right to be heard."
"Open the door," said the Sheriff.
"No."
"Then give up the key, and one of my men——"
I caught his arm. I couldn't stand it another minute. It is all well enough for Poppy to say it was cowardly, and that the situation was ours until I gave it away. The key was not down her back.
"Break the lock," I said frantically. "The—the key is where I can't get it."
He was really twinkling now, but the crowd around was outraged for him and his dignity.
"You didn't swallow it, did you?" he asked in an undertone.
"It's down the back of my frock," I replied.
Poppy said afterwards that I cried and made a scene and disgraced her generally. It is not true. If tears came, they were tears of rage. It is not true that I cried on the Sheriff's breast. I only leaned my head against his arm for a minute, and he was not angry, for he patted my shoulder. I am terribly fond of Poppy, but she is not always reasonable, as you will see.
There had been a great deal of noise. I remember hearing echoes of the dining-room excitement from the hallway beyond the door, and some one pounding. They were breaking the lock from the outside. All the time Poppy was talking in her lovely soft voice. She said:
"Since woman is called on to obey the laws, she ought to have a voice in making them——"
"Hear, hear!" cried somebody.
"Since she doesn't make them, why should she obey them?" demanded Poppy, lifting violet eyes to the crowd.
"I didn't make the Ten Commandments," said a voice from the rear of the room, "but I'll get hell just the same if I break them. What have you got to say about that?"
Poppy was stumped for once. I believe it was the most humiliating moment of her public life.
Luckily the lock broke just then, and we were hustled out of the room. There was a crowd in the hall, and it was most disagreeable. I expected to be arrested, of course—although I'd been arrested before, and if one is sensible and eats, it is not so bad—but the crowd, feeling it had the best of things with the Ten Commandments, was in high good humor. They let us by without a word and the Sheriff himself stood on the steps while we got into our car.
Just as Poppy's chauffeur got the engine started, the landlord ran out and demanded the key. Poppy told the chauffeur to go on, in a frantic voice, but he hesitated. All the majesty of British law was there on the steps, and the gold coach was waiting. Of course, to be arrested for disturbing the peace with a suffrage speech is one thing, but theft is another. I threw a pleading glance at the Sheriff, and he came slowly down the steps. Men with wands kept the crowd back. The fat coachman with the wig did not turn his head, but the footman at the coach door leered and avenged his calves. Even Poppy went a little pale.
"Quick," said the Sheriff, ferociously, in a low tone, "give me something that looks like a key, and then get away as quickly as you can."
I opened my pocketbook. The only thing that was even the size of a key was my smelling salts bottle. So I gave him that, and he covered it with his big hand. Then, still frowning savagely, he made us a lordly gesture to move on.
(Have you ever been in the Forum Club building that Poppy decorated? The staircase walls are wonderful—crowds of women, poor and old, young and rich with clouds around them and so on, all ascending toward a saintly person with a key—Saint Peter, or somebody. Well, the saint is the Sheriff at Guildford, and the key is a salts bottle, if you look closely.)
We slept at Bournemouth that night. Or rather, we didn't sleep. Poppy sat up half the night trying to think of an answer to the ten commandment thing. She said she'd get that again—she felt it—and what was she to say? I had recovered the key and my good humor by that time, but I could not help much. Seeing her so disturbed, I had not the heart to tell her what I suspected. But I was sure that I had seen Vivian Harcourt on the edge of the crowd at Guildford. It would have made her furious to think that she was under any sort of espionage. But Vivian was following us, I felt confident, with enough money to bail us out if she did anything reckless. He knew her, you see.
That is why all the rest of it seems so silly. Vivian knew Poppy; he knew her convictions, and her courage. For him to do the baby thing later was stupid. And anyhow, if it was hard on him, what was it for me?
Poppy slept late in the morning, and I got up and went down to the pier, a melancholy place, wet with morning mist and almost deserted. There were rows of beach chairs, and bathing machines and overturned boats littering the beach, and not a soul in sight but a few fishermen. I sat there and thought of Newport on a bright July morning, with children and nurses on the sand, and throngs of people, and white sailboats and nice young men in flannels——I was awfully homesick for a minute. And it came over me, too, that I had no particular business helping the Cause in England, and having keys put down my back, and giving up my gold-topped salts bottle, which was a present from Basil Ward, when all the time the Cause at home was fighting just as grimly and much more politely.
Vivian was on the pier, at the very end. He was sitting looking out, with his finger hooked around his cigarette (which is Cambridge fashion, I believe, or may be the King does it) and looking very glum.
"Where is she? In jail?" he demanded.
"She's asleep, poor thing," I said.
He snorted.
"Lots of sleep I've had," he said. "Look here, Madge, is she going to take her vacation by locking up Sheriffs all along the route? Because if she is, I'm going back to London."
"I think it very likely," I replied, coldly. "You'd better go back anyhow; she'll be murderous if she knows she's followed."
He groaned.
"I can't leave her alone, can I?"
"I'm along."
He laughed. It was rude of him.
"You!" he said. "Madge, tell me honestly—where was the key?"
"She put it down my back."
He fairly howled with joy. I hated him. But he calmed before long, and offered me a cigarette as a peace offering. I declined.
"You'd better go along," he said. "She may need the—back again. Madge, is there any chance for me with her?"
"Well, she likes you, when you are not in the way."
"I'd be in the way now, I suppose, if I turned up to-night at—where do you stop?"
"At Torquay. Look here, Vivian, I've just thought of something. She's put out about a thing a man said yesterday. She wants an answer. She's got arguments, but what she wants is a retort—about six words and smart. If you could give her one, she'd probably forgive you hanging around, and all that."
So I told him about the ten commandments and Poppy knowing she'd get it again and sitting up to worry it out. He said it was easy. He'd have something to break his appearance at Torquay. But it wasn't as easy as it seemed at first. I left him sitting there, looking out to sea, with a notebook on his knee. He called after me that he'd follow us, a few miles behind, but he wouldn't turn up until he had thought of something worth while.
According to Basil, it was he who finally thought of something. It seems that Vivian wrote out pages of a reply, saying that if the questioner compared man-made law with the ten commandments, then he made Parliament and the House of Lords divine, and that this was a reductio ad absurdum, which is Greek or something for ridiculous. But he almost went mad trying to make it short, and it wasn't funny at all. Whereas, as he knew very well, the only chance the speaker had, in such a case, was to get a laugh. What he really needed was a retort, not a reply.
We made rather slow progress. In the first place, Poppy learned that the chauffeur, who was a new one and quite intelligent, was not in favour of suffrage, and for hours we crawled along, while she argued with him. And in the second place, we stopped frequently to nail up posters along the roadside. Vivian said later that he trailed us quite easily, and that there were times when he was only one curve in the road behind. He used to get out and putter over the engine to pass the time and let us get ahead. He did not appear at Torquay, so I knew he wasn't getting along well with the ten commandments.
But except being put out of a hotel at Exeter for discovering a member of Parliament there, in bed with the gout, and flinging some handbills in through the transom, the rest of the trip was very peaceful. Dartmoor put Poppy into a trance; the heather was in bloom, and she made sketches and colour bits, and lay back in the car in a sort of dream, planning the next winter's work.
She was irritable when she was disturbed, too. The creative instinct is a queer thing. Once Bootles, the chauffeur, asked her a question when she was trying to catch some combination or other, and she answered him sharply.
"When the women go to vote, Miss," he said, turning around and touching his cap, "who is going to mind the children?"
"We intend to establish a messenger service," said Poppy, with a crayon in her mouth.
"A messenger service?" Bootles' eyes stuck out.
"Yes. To summon the fathers home from the pubs to hold the babies."
(A "pub" of course is an English saloon.)
The T. C. matter was still bothering Poppy at intervals. She knew as well as anyone that she needed a laugh in her retort, and as you have seen, Poppy is too earnest to be funny. I said this to Basil Ward the night we got to Tintagel.
Poppy was tired, and went to bed early. I walked out on the terrace, and Basil was there. He said Viv had sent for him on the T. C. matter, and he had something in view.
"He gave it up, poor chap," he said. "He isn't humorous, you know. As a matter of fact, he and Poppy are both so bally serious that it makes me wonder how they'll hit it off."
"If she's as earnest about matrimony as she is about Suffrage," I said, "she'll be a sincere wife."
Basil said nothing. We had walked out to the edge of the cliff, and were leaning against the rough stone parapet.
"It's rather nice, isn't it," he said suddenly. "Here we are, almost at Land's End, and the old Atlantic—Madge, will you give me a perfectly honest answer to a question?"
I braced myself.
"Yes."
"Did you stay over here in England because your whole heart is in the Cause?"
"Ye—es."
"Your whole heart?"
"Our motives are always mixed, Basil," I said kindly. "It would have been awfully silly to have endured that miserable spring and not have stayed for June and July."
"You get a great many cablegrams from America."
"That," I said, with dignity, "is of course my own affair."
"About the Cause?"
"Not—always."
"From a man, of course."
"Yes," I said sweetly, and went back to the hotel.
I broke the news to Poppy about Vivian and she stormed. But suddenly she stopped, with a calculating gleam in her eye.
"He's a fool to follow me," she said, "but he has gleams of intelligence, Madge. I shall put the T. C. matter up to him!"
So I sent Viv a note that night. You see one must manage Poppy.
"Dear Viv:
She knows and the worst is over. Breakfast early and keep out of the way until noon. She is going to work, and anyhow, it will make her curious. If you have a good retort to the T. C. business, don't give it at once. It would humiliate her. Then, when you've given it to her, if she's pleased, you can ask her the other. She's silly about you, Viv, but she won't acknowledge it to herself.
"Madge.
"P. S. Don't make any stipulation about Suffrage, but make her promise to let you do and think as you like. Be sure. Get her to write it, if you can. I happen to know that if she marries you, she hopes you'll take alternate Sundays with her at the Monument, so she can speak at Camberwell.
"M."
Poppy came down to breakfast in her best morning frock, looking lovely, and sat with her profile to the room. I thought she watched the door, too, and she took only an egg, although she usually has a kipper also.
But neither of the men showed up. She loitered over the Times, but at last she got her sketching things, and we went out to the cliff head, where there's a bench. It is a long tongue of rock, about twenty feet wide or so, and far below, on each side, the ocean. There was a rough-haired pony out there also, and the three of us were crowded. The pony wanted sugar or something, and kept getting in the way. Poppy sketched, but her heart wasn't in it and at every new halloo from some tourist exploring King Arthur's ruins (The Castle, of course) she looked up expectantly.
At last I caught sight of Basil waving to me from the hotel, and I went back. I left Poppy there alone, pretending to sketch, although it was perfectly clear to every one that the only view she had was of the pony's mangy side. Shortly after, I saw Vivian, in walking tweeds, going along one of the sheep's paths toward her, and looking very handsome and determined.
Basil and I sat on the terrace and "concentrated." It was my idea.
"Will her to take him," I said.
"I am," said Basil, looking at me.
"She's so pretty," said I.
"Lovely!" said Basil.
"And it's such a natural thing," I went on. "He has a lot of character, and he's gentle as well as firm."
"I thank you," said Basil, and bowed.
"I don't believe," I said severely, "that you are concentrating."
The pony had got around behind the bench, and we lost them for a moment. But the little beast moved off just then, and it was like lifting a curtain. Poppy's head was on Vivian's shoulder.
"Good old Viv!" said Basil. "Happy chap!" and sighed.
I met Vivian as I went down to luncheon. He was coming up three stairs at a time, but he stopped and drew me into a corner.
"All fixed," he said. "You're a trump, Madge. The T. C. did it. She's promised all sorts of things."
"And you?" I demanded. I thought he evaded my eye.
"I?" he said. "Well, I've agreed not to interfere with her career. That's only reasonable."
"And—Suffrage?"
"She's going to be less militant," he said. "Of course, her conviction is the same. I want her to stand by her principle. I wouldn't respect her if she didn't."
It didn't quite satisfy me. I knew Poppy. But he was so happy that I said nothing. After all, what could I say? Viv after all had never opposed Suffrage, except in its militant form—although I don't believe he had felt the necessity for it. But the trouble was that Poppy was a born militant, a born aggressor. And he had promised her the strength of her convictions!
(I wrote it all to father that afternoon and his cablegram came when I was back in London again and settled.
"No great revolution ever accomplished without bloodshed.")
PART SECOND
When Poppy and Vivian had been married and gone to Brittany, I went back to Daphne's. Daphne was very discouraging about them. I remember her standing by the fire and orating, with her tea cup in her hand.
"There's a loss somewhere—bound to be," she said. Daphne is short and stout, and wears her hair short and curled over her head with an iron. "Either Suffrage loses her, or she loses a husband. I've watched it. It doesn't do, Maggie," which is her pet name for me. "A Suffragist as valuable as Poppy should not marry. You remember what Jane Willoughby's husband said to her, that he expected The Cause for his wife to be himself, and that if she'd rather raise votes for women than a family of children she would have to choose at once. When she asked him why she couldn't do both, he went to Africa!"
"Without giving her an answer?"
"Bless the child, there isn't any answer! It isn't wisdom that takes refuge in silence. It's silly, besotted, dumbheaded idiocy."
"Viv isn't an imbecile," I said feebly.
"He's a male," she snapped, and ran her fingers up through her fringe, so that she appeared to stand in a gale of wind.
The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate, and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with a glass roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase connecting. She was most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her first work was going to be his study walls.
Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted to talk over her plans with us, and there was no one else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the pony at Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the new play and the new paintings. The thing was a great success until half way through the dinner, when suddenly Poppy said:
"By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here to-day."
I felt, for some reason, as I had felt when the key went down my back.
Viv smiled, and went to his doom.
"Just imagine, Basil," he said. "The sweet young person across the table made more than I did last year! Four thousand pounds!"
"I'm too commercially successful to think I have any real genius," said Poppy, complacently.
"And some small sum the same sweet young person will have to pay over to the tax man," Basil observed.
Poppy raised her violet eyes.
"I don't intend to pay it," she said.
Vivian put down his glass.
"That's what Madge would call a 'bluff,'" he said, with his eyes on her. "You'll be obliged to pay it, dearest. You know that."
"'Taxation without representation' is what it amounts to." Poppy's face was dangerously agreeable. "The American colonies seceded, didn't they, for something like that? I paid it last year, but I made up my mind then I'd never do it again."
Basil was looking very uncomfortable.
"I gave you the privilege of your convictions," said Viv, stiffly. "Of course, if that's your intention, there is nothing more to be said."
Poppy looked puzzled.
"But it is wrong, isn't it?" she demanded. "Surely that's the a.b.c. of the reason for the discontent of Englishwomen."
"The principle may not be entirely equitable. Few laws work equally well for all." Vivian now, a little white about the lips. "But, such as it is, it's the law of your country."
"I didn't choose my country, or make it's laws," Poppy said coldly. "I have a right to protest; I'll not pay it."
Now, as I have said before, motives are seldom unmixed. I think what Poppy meant to do was simply to register a protest, refuse to pay, make a lot of fuss about it. If they sent her to jail, being the prominent person she was—she was the Honourable Poppy, I think I forgot to say that before—it would make a lot of feeling. She did not mind jail very much. She'd been there twice. Then, having asserted her principles, she could get sick or go on a hunger strike, and Vivian would pay the tax and get her out.
Basil laughed with assumed cheerfulness.
"Then Viv is stuck for the tax," he said.
Vivian looked across the table and met Poppy's eyes.
"That's hardly what you are getting at, is it?" he asked. "Your protest is against the imposition of the tax, isn't it? It's a matter of principle, isn't it? My paying it wouldn't help."
"I have not asked you to pay it."
"As a matter of fact, I haven't the slightest intention of paying it, Poppy. You put me in an absurd position, that's all."
We had finished dinner, and the men went up to the drawing room with us. A funny thought struck Basil on the way up. He chuckled.
"Of course, Viv," he said, "if Poppy sticks to that, you'll have to do something. There's the Husband's Liability Act. You're liable, you know."
Basil is a barrister.
Well, we talked of other things and pretended not to notice Vivian's strained eyes and Poppy's high color. She took me off after a time to see the new studio, and it did not take me long to tell her what I thought.
"It's absurd," I said. "Do you expect to break down iron bars by banging a head against them?"
"It's my head," she said sulkily.
"Not at all. It's Vivian's. They will jail him."
"I didn't make the law."
"Like the man with the Ten Commandments at Guildford!" I retorted. "He didn't make them, but you know where he said he'd go if he broke them. By the way, Poppy, I've always meant to ask you, did you ever get a retort ready in case the T. C. came up again?"
But the men came in just then, and I did not learn. It was rather a ghastly evening. We were all most polite and formal and Basil took me home. I told him about my house at home in the United States, and the way I'd been treated, and having nothing at the end of a year but plumber's bills and tax receipts.
"I'm glad you haven't any particular income," he said at last. "That's one element of discord removed."
"I don't understand."
"Yes, you do," he said calmly. "You know exactly what I mean, and what I hope and what I feel. I don't dare to say it, because if I start I'll—Madge, I shall not propose to you until my Uncle Egbert dies. I don't want you until I can support you comfortably—that's a lie. I want you damnably, all the time."
I do not remember that we said anything more until we reached Daphne's. Then, as he helped me out, I said:
"How old is Uncle Egbert?"
"Eighty-six," he replied grimly, and went away without shaking hands.
Well, to go back to Poppy, for of course it is her story I am telling, not mine. Mother came over soon after that and I went with her to Mentone for two months. Then she went back to America from Genoa, and I went back to London. Mother is the sweetest person in the world, and I adore her, but she represents the old-fashioned woman, and of course I stand for the advanced. For instance, she was much more interested in Basil Ward than in the Cause, and she absolutely disapproved of Poppy's stand about the income tax.
"I don't care to discuss the Cause," she said to me. "We have trouble enough now with only the men voting. Why should we double our anxieties?"
"That's silly, mother," I retorted. "Because one baby is a trouble and naughty sometimes, should one have only one child?"
Basil met me at Charing Cross, and I knew there was something up by the very way his stick hung to his arm.
"How's everything?" I asked, when he had called a cab and settled me in it. "How nice and sooty it is, after the Riviera!"
"Filthy hole!" said Basil grumpily. "Haven't had a decent day since you left."
(This was remarkable, because the papers had all said the weather in London was wonderful for that time of year.)
"And Poppy?"
"Poppy's a fool," Basil broke out. "I'm glad you're back, Madge. Maybe you can do something with her."
But he refused to tell me anything further. He asked if I would mind going directly to Lancaster Gate, and sat back in a corner eyeing me most of the way.
"You make me nervous," I said at last. "If you can't look at me pleasantly, why look at all?"
"I can't help looking at you, and I'm blessed if I can look pleasant. Madge, just how much is your heart and soul in the—er—Cause?"
Well, I was pretty tired of being questioned all the time. I said:
"There isn't any sacrifice I wouldn't make for it."
"If you were married——"
"I wouldn't marry a man who didn't think as I do."
He seemed to drop back further into his corner.
The whole thing puzzled me. For Basil said nothing, but looked dejected and beaten, somehow. And yet he had always believed that women should vote.
We found Poppy in her studio, but Viv's workroom below was empty and the door into the passage stood open. His desk was orderly and his pens in a row. It looked queer. Poppy was painting, standing before a huge canvas and looking very smeary; she gave me a cheek to kiss, and she was thin! Positively thin!
"You're looking very fit, Maggie," she said, without a smile. "We've missed her, haven't we, Basil?"
Basil grunted something. Suddenly it occurred to me that he and Poppy hardly glanced at one another, and that he was still holding his hat and gloves. Their constraint, and Viv not around and everything—I was very uncomfortable. Of course, if Basil cared for Poppy and I used to think he did, and if Vivian had found it out—
"No, thanks, Poppy," said Basil, "I'll—I'll drop in again."
"Crumpets for tea!" said Poppy. They'd engaged the cook for her crumpets.
"Thanks awfully," Basil muttered and having said something about seeing me again very soon, he got out. I stared after him. Could this be Basil the arrogant? Basil the abject? This brooding individual who did nothing but stare at me as if he were trying to work something out!
Poppy came over to me, with her fists in the pockets of her painting apron, and looked down at me.
"Frightened, like all the rest!" she said. "They say I'm responsible for hundreds of broken engagements! They made the law themselves, and now, when they see it in operation, they squeal."
It came over me then; Poppy's strained eyes, and her painting without a cigarette, and Basil looking so queer.
"Then Viv——"
"Viv is in jail, my dear," she said. "Men made the law, of course, but I wish you'd hear them! The Husband's Liability Act, child. A married woman's husband is responsible for her debts. I refused to pay my income tax as taxation without representation. Viv got stubborn, and said he wouldn't. Result, the entire male population screaming for help, engaged men breaking with Suffragist fiancées, the population prospects of the country poor, and—Viv in jail!"
I could hardly speak for a minute.
"That—that's what is wrong with Basil?"
"Of course I'm sorry, Maggie. You see, you have an income of your own and at any moment, by refusing to pay the tax on it, you can send Basil to jail."
"If he were any sort of a husband," I said furiously, "he could pay the tax and save all the trouble."
"Not at all. The men have banded together. They call it the Husband's Defence! They take turns at visiting Viv, and sending him books and things. It's—it's maddening."
Poppy asked me to stay with her. She was really in a bad way. She wasn't eating or sleeping, and that very night a crowd of men gathered in front of the house, and hissed and called her things. One of them made a speech. We listened from behind the curtains. He said his wife was holding out her taxes on him and he expected to "go up" the next day. Poppy went out on the balcony and tried to tell them why she had done it, and that it was a matter of principle, and all that. But they would not listen, and only jeered. She came back into the drawing room quite beaten, and covered her face with her hands.
It was the next evening that Basil told us that Vivian, feeling as he did that he represented the married men of the Kingdom and that he stood for principle also, had gone on a hunger strike!
After all, it was Daphne who came to the rescue. She came over to luncheon the day after and found Poppy in bed with cold cloths on her head, and her wedding ring off. Daphne sniffed.
"You and Viv are two children," she said. "You're a silly for thinking you can beat the government at its own game, which is taxation, and Viv's a fool for letting you be one."
Poppy is not placid of disposition, and she flung the cold cloths at Daphne and ordered her out. But Daphne only wrung out the cloths and hung them up, and raised the shades.
"You haven't got a headache; you have a pain in your disposition," she said. "Put this on again."
And Poppy put on her wedding ring.
"Now," said Daphne. "You won't pay this money as a matter of principle, and Viv won't, for the same reason. I won't because I haven't got it: Madge probably ditto. But it must be paid. Have you got it in the house?"
Poppy nodded.
"In notes?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"In my jewel case."
"Very well. Now," said Daphne, "Madge and I are going to fix this thing up. You are not to know anything about it. You can swear to that later on, if the question comes up. Is there any place in your studio where you keep money?"
"In the table drawer."
"Very well. To-night before you go to bed put that money there. Early to-morrow morning send a maid to the drawer. If, by any chance, it is not there, send for the police."
Poppy was sitting up in bed, her eyes narrowed.
"The door of that wing is always locked. Viv has one key; I have the other."
"Never mind about the keys," said Daphne, loftily. "Now lie back and take a nap. Madge and I are going to look at the new picture. And I'm taking Madge home to dinner. I want her to go with me to the Edgware Road meeting to-night."
We did not look at the picture very long. Daphne's lips were shut tight, and I was feeling very queer. I knew what Daphne meant to do—to have the exact amount of Poppy's tax stolen from the table, and reported to the police. And later on in the day to have it sent to the tax office in Poppy's name. Poppy could swear she had not done it and point to the robbery. But by that time it would be credited to her name, and Viv would be free.
"It's a knot," said Daphne, running her fingers through her hair. "It's past un-tying. We have to cut it."
I know it sounds silly now and father has advised me never to tell mother, but it seemed the only thing at the time. Here were Viv and Poppy at an impasse, as one may say, and things getting worse every day—Viv on a hunger strike, and Poppy's work waiting, and the vote, which was our natural solution, as far off as ever.
"I'll unlock a window in Viv's study," said Daphne, "and you can come back after midnight and crawl in. I'd do it, but I'm too fat. Once in, you've only to go up the little staircase to the studio, and get the money. The key's always in the side door. You can let yourself out."
"But I don't like it, Daphne."
"A broken window," said Daphne, "would look a lot better. More natural, you know. Here, hold a pillow."
She raised one of Viv's windows a little—we were in his study—and she put her arm outside, with a paper weight in her hand. A smart tap, and a pane fell in on my pillow. We listened but no servants had come running and the house next door was closed and shuttered.
Daphne is very clever. She unlocked the window, drew the shade as it had been before, and put the glass in a little heap on the floor. The area was outside, about five feet below.
"I could never do it," I protested. "I—I haven't your courage, Daffie. Be a dear and do it yourself."
"Have to be at Edgware Road," said Daphne. "After all, Poppy's your friend. You made the match, didn't you?"
"But if I'm arrested——"
"You won't be. Jane Willoughby is going with me to-night. I'll lend her some of your clothes and a veil. She can make a speech in your name. There's an alibi for you!"
Now it sounded all right at the time, but looking back, it seems queer. For of what use is an alibi if the police have you? But one thing I would not do. I would not climb in the window. Daphne finally put me behind one of Poppy's canvases in the studio on a chair.
"They'll think you broke in, which answers as well," she said. "And you can get the money and let yourself out the side door without any trouble."
"I sha'n't have any dinner," I reminded her. But she said she'd have something ready for me at home after I'd committed my crime, and went down the staircase whistling.
I shall never forget that awful night. I was most uncomfortable. There was a chance that the servants, locking up, would go into Viv's study and find the glass, although it was behind the curtain. But I'd seen Peters lock up before. He stood in a doorway and looked at each window, and if the curtains did not blow the house was safe. Luckily there was no wind that evening!
But I hated the whole thing. It got darker and darker and things scrambled in the walls. Poppy brought the money and put it in a drawer but of course I did not speak to her. She had to be able to swear she knew nothing. She kissed Viv's picture which she had painted, and trotted out again, sighing. Peters did not discover the broken window in the den below, because he never even went to look. And I felt very dreary, with no one really caring for me, and so far from America, and men—like Basil, for instance—acting so strange and uneasy.
Of course I could have taken the money and gone, as soon as it was dark. But a policeman took up a position outside the area door, and waited for somebody. He and Peters had a few words about Poppy's maid, and the policeman said he would see her if he had to stay there all night. He stayed for hours.
I got the money and put it in my handbag, and because I did not wish to get it mixed with my own, I put it by itself in one of the pockets. Then I think I dozed for two or three hours, for when waking the street was quiet and the policeman had gone away. I was stiff, tired, and out of humor, and I started down the little staircase past Viv's study to the area door. As I reached the bottom, somebody tried the lock outside. I nearly fainted. I turned and ran up in the dark, and the door below opened. A man came in stealthily and went directly to Vivian's den. And just then a church clock struck two.
I was frightened. It seemed to me that as soon as he ransacked the room below, he'd come up to the studio. Perhaps he knew about the money. Burglars seem to be able to smell money. And the idea of being caught in the studio, as in a cul de sac, made me panicky. I clutched my bag, and slipped down the staircase, past Vivian's door. The burglar was there, going through Viv's desk, with a light turned on and a cap down over his eyes.
I forgot to be cautious then. I bolted for the door, flung it open—it was a patent lock, with a knob inside—and stepped out into the night air and the policeman's arms.
"Easy a bit, hold girl!" he said. "Hi'm 'ere and you're 'ere. What's the 'urry?" He held me off and looked at me. Luckily I'd never seen him before. "Quick with your 'ands, ain't you! In you goes and in five minutes out you pops!"
"If you think I'm a burglar," I said haughtily, "I'm nothing of the sort. I'm——" It came over me, all at once, that I'd better not say I was a friend of Poppy's. You see she was being watched very closely. If I was searched, and the exact amount of her income tax in my pocket, it would look very queer, and the whole thing would be out, of course. "The burglar you followed is still in the house," I said. "He's in Mr.—in the study, just beyond that door."
"None of that, young woman," he said, sternly. "You'll just come along with me! 'Ouse-breaking it is; I watched you in and I watched you hout."
He took me by the arm, and I went along. There was nothing else to do. I tried to drop my hand bag as we went, but he heard it and picked it up. I was rather dazed. The only thing I could think of was that for the sake of the Cause and Poppy I must not tell who I was. But I begged him to send an officer to Poppy's house, because there was a burglar in it, probably after the idea of Vivian's new novel.
At the police station they telephoned Poppy, and here she made her terrible mistake. She said afterwards that if Daphne had only explained she'd have known. But she thought it was all a part of the plot, and she went back to her studio and said she'd lost the money out of a table drawer. She told how it was, in notes and gold, and, of course, they found the exact amount in my bag. She says that when they told her they had it and a young woman too, she almost swooned. She tried to find Basil, but he was not in his rooms and Daphne had been arrested at Edgware Road and was incommunicado!
Poppy's position was pitiable. She didn't know what to do. If she declared the plot and freed me, all London would laugh, and the Cause would suffer. If she did not declare the plot, I would get a prison sentence. I have drawn a poor picture of Poppy if you think I stood a chance against The Cause.
That is how things stood the next morning; Daphne, Vivian and I in jail, and Poppy in hysterics. Then a curious thing happened. The evening papers announced that Vivian had paid the tax for Poppy and was free. Viv repudiated the payment—said he had not done it, and refused his liberty.
"Mr. Harcourt," said one paper, "is quite thin and shows the strain of his confinement. He is apparently cheerful, but very feeble, supporting himself by the back of a chair while he stood. His eyes flashed, however, as he stated that the Income Tax office could not legally accept the payment, as it was not his money. If any of his supporters had, in mistaken zeal, taken a collection for this purpose, he could only regret their action and refuse to profit by it."
At this time I had refused to talk and Poppy was in bed.
But on the next day the Times published a letter, signed "Only a Man" which stirred the whole thing up again. The writer declared that the tax had been paid with Vivian's own money, that the writer himself had stolen it out of a desk in Mr. Harcourt's house, that it had been sent by messenger to the proper authorities, and a receipt issued, which was appended. And that, in other words, while Mr. Harcourt was to be lauded for his principles, his refusal to accept his liberty was now absurd. Also, the writer was under the impression that an innocent person was being held for his crime.
This story being investigated by the authorities and Poppy's recovering enough to come down and identify me, furiously indignant at my detention and outraged that I had not told my name and how I came to be leaving her house at that hour, which she said was because we had had a long talk about the next campaign, I was freed at last. It leaked out like this:
(a) Viv was free with no loss of principle.
(b) Poppy's tax was paid, with no loss of principle.
(c) "A Mere Man" was not apprehended.
(d) Basil reappeared, after a heavy cold.
I was not present when Viv and Poppy met, owing to some formalities of my release. I drove to the house with Poppy's money in my bag, and went up unannounced. Viv was not pale and wan. He looked rested and fit, and Poppy was on his knee. When I went in she moved to the arm of his chair, but no further, and she kept her profile toward him.
They were very apologetic and said how sorry they were, and Poppy said she knew Daphne and I meant well, but that one wrong would never help another. I was speechless with rage, and I took from my bag her money and held it out to her.
"Of course," I said, "Vivian has no idea of who 'A Mere Man' is?"
"None whatever," said Viv shamelessly.
"That's curious," I observed. "I saw him quite distinctly, you know, as I went down the stairs."
(I had—his back!)
I went out, with my head up. They called to me, and I think Vivian started to follow. But I got into a taxicab and drove to Daphne's. I was very depressed.
Basil came to see me that night. Daphne was still in jail, and very comfortable. She sent me word not to worry, as she was getting new material for speeches, and had two ready.
I refused to see Basil, but he followed the maid back, and stood looking down at me.
"Viv says you saw me," he began without any preamble.
"I did, but I didn't recognise you. You've committed yourself."
He changed colour.
"What else was there to do?" he demanded. "Those two geese would have gone on forever. Viv had the money in his desk, but it was my plan, not his."
As it happened, I had sent father a cablegram about Viv and Poppy just before I was arrested, and now I saw his reply on the mantel.
"Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he had cabled. Well, I had had the jail, and Basil had had—a cold! Basil followed my eyes.
"More cablegrams!" he said. "Why doesn't that chap come over and get you?"
"Because I am going back to him. I can't stand the pressure, Basil. Viv and Poppy are all right for this year, but how about next? Is it to be the same thing again?"
"They're going to Italy to live."
"A compromise?" I quoted, rather bitterly. "'Not victory but a truce.' You and I made that marriage. It was the T. C. that did it."
Basil took the cablegram from the mantel and deliberately read it. When he got to the signature he drew a long breath and then he grinned.
"So that's that!" he said. "Well, Maggie, are you going back to father, or—staying here with me?"
"You're afraid of me."
"I'll take the risk, Madge. I didn't tell you, Uncle Egbert died while you were away."
"I've been in jail for stealing," I quavered. "And I'd do it again, Basil, for the Cause."
"Bless the Cause," said Basil manfully. "Why shouldn't you vote, if you want to? Aren't you cleverer, and lovelier, and more courageous than any man that ever lived? Anyhow, you're right. Things are rotten. What sane government would lock a man up because his wife refuses to pay her taxes?"
I lifted my head from his shoulder.
"That wretched house at home——" I began.
But he was quite cheerful.
"We'll sell it," he said, "and you shall spend the money for pretties to wear, that don't pay a tax."
It was compromise again. I knew it, but I yielded. After a time I said:
"Basil, what was the retort you gave Poppy about the T. C.?"
"Nothing much," he replied complacently, "I told her, if any one sprung it at her again, to say that if men had made the Ten Commandments, they'd have added an eleventh amendment long ago, or else have annulled them."
THE END.