It struck Tietjens that the young woman was a good deal more interested in the cause—of votes for women—than he had given her credit for. He wasn’t much in the mood for talking to young women, but it was with considerably more than the surface of his mind that he answered:
‘I don’t. I approve entirely of your methods: but your aims are idiotic.’
She said:
‘You don’t know, I suppose, that Gertie Wilson, who’s in bed at our house, is wanted by the police: not only for yesterday, but for putting explosives in a whole series of letter-boxes?’
He said:
‘I didn’t . . . but it was a perfectly proper thing to do. She hasn’t burned any of my letters or I might be annoyed; but it wouldn’t interfere with my approval.’
‘You don’t think,’ she asked earnestly, ‘that we . . . mother and I . . . are likely to get heavy sentences for shielding her? It would be beastly bad luck on mother. Because she’s an anti . . . ’
‘I don’t know about the sentence,’ Tietjens said, ‘but we’d better get her off your premises as soon as we can . . . ’
She said:
‘Oh, you’ll help?’
He answered:
‘Of course, your mother can’t be incommoded. She’s written the only novel that’s been fit to read since the eighteenth century.’
She stopped and said earnestly:
‘Look here. Don’t be one of those ignoble triflers who say the vote won’t do women any good. Women have a rotten time. They do, really. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, I’m not talking through my hat.’ Her voice became quite deep: she had tears in her eyes: ’Poor women do!‘ she said, ‘little insignificant creatures. We’ve got to change the divorce laws. We’ve got to get better conditions. You couldn’t stand it if you knew what I know.’
Her emotion vexed him, for it seemed to establish a sort of fraternal intimacy that he didn’t at the moment want. Women do not show emotion except before their families. He said drily:
‘I daresay I shouldn’t. But I don’t know, so I can!’ She said with deep disappointment:
‘Oh, you are a beast! And I shall never beg your pardon for saying that. I don’t believe you mean what you say, but merely to say it is heartless.’
This was another of the counts of Sylvia’s indictment and Tietjens winced again. She explained:
‘You don’t know the case of the Pimlico army clothing factory workers or you wouldn’t say the vote would be no use to women.’
‘I know the case perfectly well,’ Tietjens said: ‘It came under my official notice, and I remember thinking that there never was a more signal instance of the uselessness of the vote to anyone.’
‘We can’t be thinking of the same case,’ she said.
‘We are,’ he answered. ‘The Pimlico army clothing factory is in the constituency of Westminster; the Under-Secretary for War is member for Westminster; his majority at the last election was six hundred. The clothing factory employed seven hundred men at 1s. 6d. an hour, all these men having votes in Westminster. The seven hundred men wrote to the Under-Secretary to say that if their screw wasn’t raised to two bob they’d vote solid against him at the next election . . . ’
Miss Wannop said: ‘Well then!’
‘So,’ Tietjens said: ‘The Under-Secretary had the seven hundred men at eighteenpence fired and took on seven hundred women at tenpence. What good did the vote do the seven hundred men? What good did a vote ever do anyone?’
Miss Wannop checked at that and Tietjens prevented her exposure of his fallacy by saying quickly:
‘Now, if the seven hundred women, backed by all the other ill-used, sweated women of the country, had threatened the Under-Secretary, burned the pillar-boxes, and cut up all the golf greens round his country house, they’d have had their wages raised to half a crown next week. That’s the only straight method. It’s the feudal system at work.’
‘Oh, but we couldn’t cut up golf greens,’ Miss Wannop said. ‘At least the W.S.P.U. debated it the other day, and decided that anything so unsporting would make us too unpopular. I was for it personally.’
Tietjens groaned:
‘It’s maddening,’ he said, ‘to find women, as soon as they get in Council, as muddleheaded and as afraid to face straight issues as men! . . . ’
‘You won’t, by-the-by,’ the girl interrupted, ‘be able to sell our horse to-morrow. You’ve forgotten that it will be Sunday.’
‘I shall have to on Monday, then,’ Tietjens said. ‘The point about the feudal system . . . ’
Just after lunch—and it was an admirable lunch of the cold lamb, new potatoes and mint-sauce variety, the mint-sauce made with white wine vinegar and as soft as kisses, the claret perfectly drinkable and the port much more than that, Mrs Wannop having gone back to the late professor’s wine merchants—Miss Wannop herself went to answer the telephone . . .
The cottage had no doubt been a cheap one, for it was old, roomy and comfortable; but effort had no doubt, too, been lavished on its low rooms. The dining-room had windows on each side and a beam across; the dining silver had been picked up at sales, the tumblers were old cut glass; on each side of the ingle was a grandfather’s chair. The garden had red brick paths, sunflowers, hollyhocks and scarlet gladioli. There was nothing to it all, but the garden-gate was well hung.
To Tietjens all this meant effort. Here was a woman who, a few years ago, was penniless, in the most miserable-off circumstances, supporting life with the most exiguous of all implements. What effort hadn’t it meant! and what effort didn’t it mean? There was a boy at Eton . . . a senseless, but a gallant effort.
Mrs Wannop sat opposite him in the other grandfather’s chair; an admirable hostess, an admirable lady. Full of spirit in dashes; but tired. As an old horse is tired that, taking three men to harness it in the stable yard, starts out like a stallion, but soon drops to a jog-trot. The face tired, really; scarlet-cheeked with the good air, but seamed downward. She could sit there at ease, the plump hands covered with a black lace shawl, and descending on each side of her lap, as much at ease as any other Victorian great lady. But at lunch she had let drop that she had written for eight hours every day for the last four years—till that day—without missing a day. To-day being Saturday, she had no leader to write:
‘And, my darling boy,’ she had said to him. ‘I’m giving it to you. I’d give it to no other soul but your father’s son. Not even to . . . ’ And she had named the name that she most respected. ‘And that’s the truth,’ she had added. Nevertheless, even over lunch, she had fallen into abstractions, heavily and deeply, and made fantastic misstatements, mostly about public affairs . . . It all meant a tremendous record . . .
And there he sat, his coffee and port on a little table beside him; the house belonging to him . . .
She said:
‘My dearest boy . . . you’ve so much to do. Do you think you ought really to drive the girls to Plimsoll tonight? They’re young and inconsiderate, work comes first.’
Tietjens said:
‘It isn’t the distance . . . ’
‘You’ll find that it is,’ she answered humorously. ‘It’s twenty miles beyond Tenterden. If you don’t start till ten when the moon sets, you won’t be back till five, even if you’ve no accidents . . . The horse is all right, though . . . ’
Tietjens said:
‘Mrs Wannop, I ought to tell you that your daughter and I are being talked