Delia Blanchflower by Mrs. Humphry Ward (top 10 most read books in the world TXT) 📖

do give a lot of trouble!" Winnington laughed--paused--then looked straight at the fine young man who was evidently so glad to see him.

"Look here, Hewson--I'll tell you something--keep it to yourself! There'll be a lady in that procession to-morrow whom I don't want knocked about. I shall be here. Is there anything you can do to help me? I shall try and get her out of the crowd. Of course I shall have a motor here."

Hewson looked puzzled, but eager. He described where he was likely to be stationed, and where Winnington would probably find him. If Mr. Winnington would allow him, he would tip a wink to a couple of mates, who could be trusted--and if he could do anything to help, why, he would be "rare pleased" to do it.

"But I'm afraid it'll be a bad row, Sir. There's a lot of men coming--from Whitechapel--they say."

Winnington nodded and walked on. He went to his club, and dined there, refusing a friend's invitation to go and dine with him at home. And after dinner, as the best means of solitude, he went out again into the crowded streets, walking aimlessly. The thought of Delia arrested--refused bail--in a police cell--or in prison--tormented him. All the traditional, fastidious instincts of his class and type were strong in him. He loathed the notion of any hand laid upon her, of any rough contact between her clean youth, and the brutalities of a London crowd. His blood rushed at the thought of it. The mere idea of any insult offered her made him murderous.

He turned down Whitehall, and at a corner near Dover House he presently perceived a small crowd which was being addressed by a woman. She had brought a stool with her, and was standing on it. A thin slip of a girl, with a childish, open face and shrill voice. He went up to listen to her, and stood amazed at the ignorant passion, the reckless violence of what she was saying. It seemed indeed to have but little effect upon her hearers. Men joined the crowd for a few minutes, listened with upturned impassive faces, and went their way. A few lads attempted horse-play, but stopped as a policeman approached; and some women carrying bundles propped them against a railing near, and waited, lifting tired eyes, and occasionally making comments to each other. Presently, it appeared to Winnington that the speaker was no more affected by her own statements--appalling as some of them were--than her hearers. She appeared to be speaking from a book--to have just learnt a lesson. She was then a paid speaker? And yet he thought not. Every now and then phrases stood out--fiercely sincere--about the low wages of women, their exclusion from the skilled trades, the marriage laws, the exploiting and "selling" of women, and the like. And always, in the background of the girl's picture, the hungry and sensual appetites of men, lying in wait for the economic and physical weakness of the woman.

He waited until she had finished. Then he helped her down from her perch, and made a way for her through the crowd. She looked at him in astonishment. "Thank you, Sir,--don't trouble! Last night I was pelted with filth. Are you one of us?"

He shook his head, smiling.

"I didn't agree with you. I advise you to look up some of those things you said. But you speak very well. Good-night."

She looked at him angrily, gathered up her skirt with a rattle, in a small hand, and disappeared.

He presently turned back towards Buckingham Gate, and in a narrow Westminster street, as he passed the side of a high factory building, suddenly there emerged from a door-way a number of women and girls, who had evidently been working over-time. Some of them broke at once into loud talk and laughter, as though in reaction from the confinement and tension of their work, some--quite silent--turned their tired faces to him as they passed him; and some looked boldly, provocatively at the handsome man, who on his side was clearly observing them. They were of all types, but the majority of the quite young girls were pale and stunted, shewing the effect of long hours, and poor food. The coarse or vicious faces were few; many indeed were marked by a modest or patient gentleness. The thin line of hurrying forms disappeared into darkness and distance, some one way, some another; and Winnington was left to feel that in what he had seen--this everyday incident of a London street--he had been aptly reminded of what a man who has his occupation and dwelling amid rural scenes and occupations too readily forgets--that toiling host of women, married and unmarried, which modern industry is every day using, or devouring, or wasting. The stream of lives rushes day by day through the industrial rapids; some of it passing on to quiet and fruitful channels beyond the roar, and some lost and churned for ever in the main tumult of the river.

This new claim upon women, on the part of society, in addition to the old claims of home and motherhood--this vast industrial claim--must it not change and modify everything in time?--depress old values, create new? "The vote!--give us the vote! and all will be well. More wages, more food, more joy, more share in this glorious world!--that's what the vote means--give us the vote!" Such, in effect, had been the cry of that half-mad speaker in Whitehall, herself marked and injured by the economic struggle.

The appeal echoed in Winnington's heart. And Delia seemed to be at his side, raising her eager eyes to his, pressing him for admission. Had he, indeed, thought enough of these things?--taken enough to heart this new and fierce struggle of women with life and circumstance, that is really involved in the industrial organisation of the modern world?

He passed on--up Buckingham Gate, towards the Palace. Turning to the left, he was soon aware of two contrasted things:--an evening party going on at a well-known Embassy, cars driving up and putting down figures in flashing dresses, and gold-encrusted uniforms, emerging, and disappearing within its open doors--and only twenty yards away, a group of women huddled together in the cold, outside a closed fish-shop, waiting to buy for a few pence the broken or spoiled fish of the day. But a little further on he suddenly plunged into a crowd coming down Grosvenor Place. He stopped to watch it, and saw that it accompanied a long procession of men tramping back from Hyde Park. A banner held by the leaders bore the words--"Unemployed and starving! Give us work or bread." And Winnington remembered there was a docker's strike going on in Limehouse, passionately backed and defended by the whole body of the local clergy.

His eyes examined the faces and forms in the procession. Young and old, sickly and robust, they passed him by, all of them marked and branded by their tyrant, Labour; rolled like the women amid the rocks and whirlpools of the industrial stream; marred and worn like them, only more deeply, more tragically. The hollow eyes accused him as they passed--him, with his ease of honoured life. "What have you made of us, your brethren?--you who have had the lead and the start!--you who have had till now the fashioning of this world in which we suffer! What is wrong with the world? We know no more than you. But it is your business to know! For God's sake, you who have intelligence and education, and time to use them, think for us!--think with us!--find a way out! More wages--more food--more leisure--more joy!--By G--d! we'll have them, or bring down your world and ours in one ruin together!"

And then far back, from the middle of the last century, there came to Winnington's listening mind the cry of the founders of English democracy. "The vote!--give us the vote!--and bring in the reign of plenty and of peace." And the vote was given. Sixty years--and still this gaunt procession!--and all through Industrial England, the same unrest, the same bitterness!

The vote? What is it actually going to mean, in struggle for life and happiness that lies before every modern Community? How many other methods and forces have already emerged, and must yet emerge, beside it! The men know it. And meanwhile, the women--a section of women--have seized with the old faith, on the confident cries of sixty years ago?--with the same disillusion waiting in the path?

He passed on, drawn again down Constitution Hill, and the Mall, back to the Houses of Parliament and the River.... The night was clear and frosty. He paused on Westminster Bridge, and leant over the parapet, feasting his eyes on that incomparable scene which age cannot wither nor custom stale for the heart of an Englishman. The long front of the Houses of Parliament rose darkly over the faintly moonlit river; the wharves and houses beyond, a medley of strong or delicate line, of black shadow and pale lights, ran far into a vaporous distance powdered with lamps. On the other side St. Thomas's Hospital, and an answering chain of lamps, far-flung towards Battersea. Between, the river, heaving under a full tide, with the dim barges and tugs passing up and down. "The Mississippi, Sir, is dirty water--the St. Lawrence is cold, dirty water--but the Thames, Sir, is liquid 'istory!" That famous _mot_ of a Labour Minister delighted Mark's dreaming sense. The river indeed as it flowed by, between buildings new and old, seemed to be bearing the nation on its breast, to symbolise the ever-renewed life of a great people. What tasks that life had seen!--what vaster issues it had still to see!--

And in that dark building, like a coiled and secret spring ready to act when touched, the Idea which ruled that life, as all life, in the end, is ruled. On the morrow, a few hundred men would flock to that building, as the representatives and servants of the Idea--of that England which lives "while we believe."

And the vote behind them?--the political act which chose and sent them there? Its social power, and all its ordinary associations, noble or ignoble, seemed suddenly to vanish, for Winnington, engulfed in something infinitely greater, something vital and primitive, on which all else depended.

He hung, absorbed, over the sliding water, giving the rein to reverie. He seemed to see the English Spirit, hovering, proudly watchful, above that high roof beside the dark water-way, looking out to sea, and across the world. What indomitable force, what ichor gleaming fire, through the dark veins of that weary Titan, sustained him there?--amid the clash of alien antagonisms, and the mysterious currents of things? What but the lavished blood and brain of England's sons?--that rude primal power that men alone can bring to their country?

Let others solve their own problems! But can women share the male tasks that make and keep _us_ a Nation, amid a jarring and environing host of Nations?--an Empire, with the guardianship of half the world on its shoulders? And if not, how can men rightly share with women the act which controls those tasks, and chooses the men to execute them?

And yet!--all his knowledge of human life, all his tenderness for human suffering, rushed in to protest that the great question was only half answered, when it was answered so. He seemed to see the Spirit of England, Janus-like, two-faced, with one aspect looking out to sea, the other, brooding over the great city at its feet, and turned inland towards the green country and studded towns beyond. And as to that other, that home-face of England, his dreaming sense scarcely knew whether it was man or woman. There was in it male power, but also