The Balliols Read online

  Lucy accompanied her when she spoke at Hampstead. For a year now, Lucy had been an energetic worker. She had not yet taken any very active part in the militant campaign. She was considered too young for that. She did clerical work. She joined in processions. She organized bazaars, distributed pamphlets. Occasionally she made short introductory speeches. She had a good platform manner. An audience liked her, she was so young and earnest. She was not pretty, but she was so nearly beautiful that you felt that great happiness or great sadness would make a beauty of her. She was patently sincere. She would stand at the edge of the cart, her hands rested on the side, her forehead slightly furrowed. She would speak rather haltingly, not as though she were uncertain of her words, but as though she were trying to convince herself at the same time as her audience, as though she were saying: “Now, these are the facts. It must follow, mustn’t it, from them, that we have to think this way? “It was a manner that in a long speech would be monotonous but was extremely effective as an interlude between two speeches of more forceful oratory. Very often she proved more convincing than her more competent colleagues; in the same way that at a theatre one very often takes away a clearer picture of a minor than of a major part; although had the minor part been given further scope, one would have found it tiresome. It was Stella’s private opinion that Lucy was of greater value to the cause now than she would be later, when she was promoted to more responsible tasks. “But perhaps we shall have the vote by then.” She did not visualize the alternative by which Edward Balliol was consoled, that long before that time Lucy would have lost all interest in the movement. It was his chief consolation.

  As he stood among the crowd at the White Stone Pond on a chill Sunday morning in the spring of 1911 he reflected that unless he had that consolation he would be desperately worried. With controlled, but vivid power his sister was justifying the tactics of the militants.

  “You say that we should be patient, that we should wait. But we have waited, we have been patient. We accepted the Liberals’ promise that our rights would be considered when they came into power. They were not considered. We realized that we should be ignored as long as we let ourselves be ignored. Yet we have always been ready to arbitrate. We have been reasonable even in battle. We called a truce of six months last year because the Government promised they would grant our rights. They did not grant our rights. The truce is over. A battle has begun that will not cease, till the claims of justice are allowed.”

  At her side sat Lucy with an eager and responsive expression. Her lips were moving; what our journalists would call “drinking in her words,” he thought. If only this absurd craze of hers would end. She was twenty-one now. Sooner or later she was bound to meet some man who would stop all this nonsense. Young girls invariably had a craze of some sort. They became religious; or they went in for art; or they wanted to educate the poor. Unless they were of the snob kind that wanted “to get into Society,” or were the athletic county kind that in the old colonel’s phrases “worked out that rubbish” on the hunting-field. There was the schoolroom, then there was an interval to be filled before a woman’s real life began: her life as a wife, a hostess, a mother. Till that real life began, a girl had to focus her emotion somewhere. The moment her real life started, she put away her easels, her shrine, her social tracts. In a few years’ time Lucy would be looking back on all this, laughing at it. But in the meantime it was very definitely a problem.

  Whenever Stella addressed a meeting on the Heath, she lunched afterwards at Ilex. The placid, comfortable atmosphere of her brother’s dining-room provided a pleasantly ironic contrast to the tub that a few moments before she had been thumping.

  “I wonder if those toughs who heckle me realize that I’m quite a normal human being off the platform.”

  Ordinarily no reference was made to Stella’s public life; in much the same way that her brother never discussed his business in his home. The view was held that careers were not quite good form and that you discussed friends, families and all such sections of the newspaper as did not personally concern you. On this afternoon, however, when they were alone together, after lunch, Balliol did bring up the question.

  “I suppose there is no doubt that you’ve embarked on what we used to call in the nursery ‘War to death’?”

  “More or less.”

  “You can scarcely expect a parent not to feel rather alarmed when his daughter is called on active service.”

  “It’s scarcely as serious as that.”

  “No, but.…” He paused. Then, abandoning his habitual flippancy: “You must have a great many members of your movement who are not actual militants; who don’t, I mean to say, take part in any of your more spectacular demonstrations; in whom you have some equivalent for the Army Service Corps. You’re not all fighting forces?”

  “Of course. There are a great many women who’re too old, some have dependents that would make it impossible for them to get into trouble.”

  “How far is it a matter of choice with them?”

  “To a large extent. But all our demonstrations are organized centrally. Nothing militant is done without our sanction. We allow no hooliganism. Everything is planned.”

  “Then it would be quite possible for you to prevent anybody, whom for various reasons you did not consider fitted for that kind of exploit, from militant activities?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “In that case, I should be very grateful if you could see that Lucy’s share was of a routine nature.”

  He flushed slightly as he spoke. He was not in the habit of asking favours. He gave or took. He did not ordinarily give the impression of caring enough to be bothered to ask for what he was not strong enough to take. Stella was surprised. Also a little touched. It humanized her brother. He had put the request in the one way that could have influenced her against her judgment.

  “I suppose I could, for a time, at any rate. It’ll be difficult later on. These young people are very keen. They encourage one another. They feel out of it.”

  “But there’s no need to encourage her yourself.”

  “None at all.”

  “As long as you can, then, keep her out of it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  But Stella knew that it would not be easy. The suffragettes who had not been arrested, who had not been in prison, who at least had not taken part in some exploit that if detected would have resulted in prison, felt out of things, when the others were describing their experiences. They felt themselves to be non-combatants. The hunger strikers were the heroines of the movement. They formed a kind of aristocracy. To have been in prison was like joining an exclusive club of which every suffragette was a potential candidate. Stella knew how anxious her niece must be to join. She would have difficulties with her, she knew that.

  A few days later, at the end of the morning’s dictation, Lucy did not, as usual, gather up her pad, pencils and the pile of correspondence to which she had taken the replies. She stood at the side of Stella’s desk, hesitating.

  “Well, what is it?” Stella asked.

  “There’s something that I want to ask you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “It’s about my work. I want to do more than I’m doing.”

  “You’re working long hours here. I could, of course, find you evening work. A lot of our women aren’t here till after six. But it might be more than you ought to undertake.”

  “I didn’t mean more work in that way. I meant a different kind of work. I don’t want to spend my whole time in an office. I want to be out, doing things.”

  “You’re more valuable where you are.”

  “Oh, but I’m not. Anyone could do this work. Any old woman could. There are things I could do that no old woman could. I’m young. I’m strong. I want to do active work—militant work.”

  It was the plea that Stella had expected; she knew how useless it would be to make the excuse that Lucy was too young. Lucy would quote examples in plenty of girls no older than herself who h
ad taken their share in the actual fighting. That argument would carry little weight with Lucy. Stella resorted to that first simile of her brother’s; the Army Service Corps.

  “I’m sorry, Lucy, I know how you feel. But there are certain works that are not spectacular but are essential. In a battle, for instance, the actual fighting troops are dependent upon their supplies; upon a smooth running organization. Battles are won just as much by the people who never fight as by those who do. The W.S.M. is like an army. I am one of its generals, it’s more important that I should have an adjutant whom I can trust, whom I can rely on, who will see my orders carried out, than that there should be seven rather than six militants waving flags at an Asquith meeting.”

  Lucy looked at her, pensively, dubiously.

  “You really mean that: that my being your secretary is as important as all that?”

  “Of course it is. I can’t tell you how much trouble you save me; how everything is made easier for me by my knowing that there’s you to look after things.”

  “Oh well, in that case, then…” she hesitated: then quickly and quietly gathered up her papers and left the room. There had been a thoughtful, enquiring, self-questioning expression on her face that puzzled Stella. “That’s an odd child,” she thought.

  Lucy rarely discussed with her parents and never with her father the extent of her association with the W.S.M. There was a tacit agreement to leave it undiscussed, to accept the pleasant fiction that she was her aunt’s secretary, to ignore the unpleasant nature of her aunt’s occupation. For that matter, she very rarely did discuss anything serious with her father. He had a way of taking any statement that she was worried as a criticism of himself: as though it were his fault that she was not completely and ecstatically happy. So worried, indeed, did he become about any worry of hers, that she soon realized that he became more worried about it than she was herself, and that instead of his consoling her, she found herself saying to him: “But, Daddy darling, there’s nothing to worry about, truly there isn’t. I’m really quite all right.”

  With her mother it was different. She thought of her mother less as a mother than an elder sister, with whom she could discuss herself impersonally; who was fond of her, and interested in her, but was not going to spend sleepless nights on her account. In consequence she confided far more in her mother than in her father.

  It was to her that she brought the account of her interview with Stella.

  “I had so wanted to do something real. It’s not exciting, sitting in a room being dictated to, typing, answering telephones; particularly when all those letters and telephone calls are about exciting things. I feel out of it.”

  “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 e
nough.”

  “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.