This was quite dreadful; Mrs. Ames had been prepared for her husband’s anger, and for pride and aversion from people like Mrs. Altham. What was totally unexpected and unwelcome was that she was supposed to have scored a sort of popular success, that Riseborough considered the dreadful fiasco of last night as an achievement, something not only to talk about, but a kind of new game, more exciting than croquet or criticism. She had begun by thinking of the Suffragette movement as an autumn novelty, but leanness came very near her soul when she found that it now appeared to others as she had first thought of it herself. She had travelled since then; she had seen the hinterland of it; the idea that rose up behind it, austere and beautiful and wise. All that these others saw was just the hysterical jungle that bounded the coast. To her this morning, after her experience of it, the hysterical jungle seemed—an hysterical jungle. If it was only by that route that the heights could be attained, then that route must be followed. She was willing to try it again. But was there not somewhere and somehow a better road?
It was not necessary to be particularly cordial to Mrs. Altham, and she held out no certain prospect of an immediate repetition of last night’s scenes, nor of a desire for additional recruits. But further trials awaited her in this short walk. Dr. Evans, driving the high-stepping cob, wheeled round, and dismounted, throwing the reins to the groom.
“I must just congratulate you,” he said, “for Millie told me about last night. I’ve been telling her that if she had half your pluck, she would be the better for it. I hope you didn’t catch cold; beastly night, wasn’t it? Do let me know when it will come on again. I hate your principles, you know, but I love your practise. I shall come and shout, too!”
This was perfectly awful. Nobody understood; they all sympathized with her, but cared not two straws for that which had prompted her to do these sensational things.... They liked the sensational things ... it was fun to them. But it was no fun to those who believed in the principles which prompted them. They thought of her as a clown at a pantomime; they wanted to see Dan Leno.
She was some minutes late when she reached Mr. Turner’s house, depressed and not encouraged by this uncomprehending applause that took as an excellent joke all the manifestations which had been directed by so serious a purpose. What to her was tragic and necessary, was to them a farce of entertaining quality. But now she would meet her co-religionists again, those who knew, those whose convictions, of the same quality as hers, were of such weight as to make her feel that even her quarrel with Lyndhurst was light in comparison.
The jovial Turner family, father, mother, daughter, were in the drawing-room, and they hailed her as a heroine. If it had not been for her, there would have been no “scene” at all. Did the policemen hurt? Mr. Turner had got a small bruise on his knee, but it was quite doubtful whether he got it when he was taken out. Mrs. Turner had lost a small pearl ornament, but she was not sure whether she had put it on before going to the meeting. Miss Turner had a cold to-day, but it was certain that she had felt it coming on before they were all put out into the rain. None of them had seen the end; it was supposed that Mrs. Ames had thrown a glass of water at a policeman, and had hit Mr. Chilcot. They were all quite ready for Sir James’ next meeting; or would he be a coward, and cause scrutiny to be held on those who desired admittance?
Mrs. Brooks arrived; she had not been turned out last night, but she had caught cold, and did not think that much had been achieved. Mr. Chilcot had made his speech, apparently a very clever one, about Tariff Reform, and Sir James had followed, without interruption, telling the half empty but sympathetic benches about the House of Lords. There had been no allusion made to the disturbance, or to the motives that prompted it. Also she had lost her Suffragette rosette. It must have been torn off her, though she did not feel it go.
Mrs. Currie brought more life into the proceedings. She could get four porters to come to the next meeting, and could make another banner, as well as ensuring the proper unfurling of the first, which had stuck so unaccountably. It had waved quite properly when she had tried it an hour before, and it had waved quite properly (for it had been returned to her after she had been ejected) when she tried it again an hour later at home. Two banners expanding properly would be a vastly different affair from one that did not expand at all. Her husband had laughed fit to do himself a damage over her account of the proceedings.
A dozen more only of the league made an appearance, for clearly there was a reaction and a cooling after last night’s conflagration, but all paid their meed of appreciation to Mrs. Ames. Their little rockets had but fizzed and spluttered until she “showed them the way,” as Mrs. Currie expressed it. But to them even it was the ritual, so to speak, the disturbance, the shouting, the sense of doing something, rather than the belief that lay behind the ritual, which stirred their imaginations. Could the cause be better served by the endurance of an hour’s solitary toothache, than by waving banners in the town hall, and being humanely ejected by benevolent policemen, there would have been less eagerness to suffer. And Mrs. Ames would so willingly have passed many hours of physical pain rather than suffer the heartache which troubled her this morning. And nobody seemed to understand; Mrs. Currie with her four porters and two banners, Mrs. Brooks with her cold in the head and odour of eucalyptus, the cheerful Turners who thought it would be such a good idea to throw squibs on to the platform, were all as far from the point as General Fortescue, chatting at the club, or even as Lyndhurst with the high-chipped bacon and the slammed front door. It was a game to them, as it had originally presented itself to her, an autumn novelty for, say, Thursday afternoon from five till seven. If only the opposite effects had been produced; if they all had taken it as poignantly as Lyndhurst, and he as cheerily as they!
He, meantime, after slamming the front door, had stormed up St. Barnabas Road, in so sincere a passion that he had nearly reached the club before he remembered that he had hardly touched his breakfast or glanced at the paper. So, as there was no sense in starving himself (the starvation consisting in only having half his breakfast), he turned in at those hospitable doors, and ordered himself an omelette. Never in his life had he been so angry, never in the amazing chronicle of matrimony, so it seemed to him, had a man received such provocation from his wife. She had insulted the guests who had dined with her, she made a public and stupendous ass of herself, and when, next morning, he, after making such expostulations as he was morally bound to make, had been so nobly magnanimous as to assure her that he would patch it all up for her, and live it down with her, he had been told that it was for him to apologize! No wonder he had sworn; Moses would have sworn; it would have been absolutely wrong of him not to swear. There were situations in which it was cowardly for a man not to say what he thought. Even now, as he waited for his omelette, he emitted little squeaks and explosive exclamations, almost incredulous of his wrongs.