The Housekeeper spent the evening on the stairs gossiping at every door. There was not much to learn from her. A mystery was hinted—many mysteries were hinted. The truth I do not know to this moment. I only know that before the seven days of our wonder were over, the Agent, more careworn than ever if that were possible, made a round of visits in the house, giving to each tenant an ample and abject apology written by Mr. Allan. At the end of the quarter, the Second Floor Back was again to let.
We should have parted with Mr. Allan less light-heartedly could we have anticipated what was in store for us. He was no sooner gone than the Suffragettes came in.
I have no quarrel on political grounds with the Suffragettes. Theoretically, I believe that women of property and position should have their vote and that men without should not, but I think it a lesser evil for women to be denied the vote than for the suffrage to become as universal for women as for men, and to grant it on any other conditions would be an indignity. I state the fact to explain that I am without prejudice. I do not argue, for, to tell the truth, shocking as it may be, I am not keen one way or the other. Life for me has grown crowded enough without politics, and years have lessened the ardour for abstract justice that was mine when, in my youth, I wrote the "Life of Mary Wollstonecraft," and militant Suffragettes as yet were not. Ours are of the most militant variety, and it is not their fault if the world by this time does not know what this means. Even so, on general principles, I should have no grievance against them. Every woman is free to make herself ridiculous, and it is none of my business if my neighbours choose to make a public spectacle of themselves by struggling in the arms of policemen, or going into hysterics at meetings where nobody wants them; if they like to emulate bad boys by throwing stones and breaking windows, or if it amuses them to slap and whip unfortunate statesmen who, physically, could easily convince them of their inferiority. But when they make themselves a nuisance to me personally I draw the line. And they are a nuisance to me.
They have brought pandemonium into the Quarter where once all was pleasantness and peace. Of old, if the postman, the milkman, a messenger boy, and one or two stray dogs and children lingered in our street, we thought it a crowd; since the coming of the Suffragettes, I have seen the same street packed solid with a horde of the most degenerate creatures in London summoned by them "to rush the House of Commons." They have ground their hurdy-gurdies at our door, Heaven knows to what end; vans covered with their posters have obstructed our crossing; motor-cars adorned with their flags have missed fire and exploded in our street; and they have had themselves photographed as sandwiches on our Terrace. Our house is in a turmoil from morning till night with women charging in like a mob, or stealing out like conspirators. Their badges, their sandwich boards, their banners lie about in our hall, so much in everybody's way that I sympathized with the infuriated tenant whom I caught one night kicking the whole collection into the cellar. They talk so hard on the stairs that often they pass their own door and come on to ours, bringing Augustine from her work and disturbing me at mine, for she can never open to them without poking her head into my room to tell me, "Encore une sale Suffragette!" In their chambers they never stop chattering, and their high shrill treble penetrates through the floor and reaches us up above. The climax came with their invasion of our roof.
This roof, built "after the fire," is a modern invention, designed for the torture of whoever lives underneath. It is flat, with a beautiful view to be had among the chimney-pots and telephone wires; it is so thin that a pigeon could not waddle across without being heard by us; and as it is covered with gravel, every sound is accompanied by a scrunching warranted to set the strongest nerves in a quiver. We had already been obliged to represent to the Agent that it was not intended for the Housekeeper's afternoon parties or young people's games of tag, that there were other, more suitable places where postmen could take a rest, or our actress recite her lines, or lovers do their courting amid the smuts. Our patience, indeed, had been so tried in one way or another that at the first sound from above, at any hour of the day or night, J. was giving chase to the trespassers, and they were retreating before the eloquence of his attack. It was in a corner of this roof, just above the studio and in among wood-enclosed cisterns, that the Suffragettes elected to send off fire-balloons, which, in some way best known to themselves, were to impress mankind with the necessity of giving them the vote. The first balloon floated above the chimney-tops, a sheet of flame, and was dropping, happily into the Thames, when J., straight from his printing-press, in blouse, sleeves rolled up, arms and hands black with ink, a cap set sideways, was on the roof, and the Secretary of the Militants and a young man in the brown suit and red tie that denote the Socialist, in their hands matches and spirits of wine, were flying downstairs. I was puzzled to account for their meekness unless it was that never before had they seen anybody so inky, never before listened to language so picturesque and American. J., without giving them time to take breath, called in the Landlord's Agent, supported by the Landlord's Solicitor, and they were convinced of the policy of promising not to do it again. And of course they did.
A week later the Prime Minister was unveiling a statue, or performing some equally innocent function in the garden below our windows, when the Suffragettes, from the roofs of near woodsheds, demanded him through a megaphone to give Votes to Women. We followed the movement with such small zest that when we were first aware something out of the common was going on in the Quarter, the two heroines were already in the arms of policemen, where of late so much of the Englishwoman's time has been spent, and heads were at every window up and down our street, housekeepers at every door, butchers' and bakers' boys grouped on the sidewalk, one or two tradesmen's carts drawn up in the gutter, battalions of police round the corner. The women no doubt to-day boast of the performance as a bold strike for freedom, and recall with pride the sensation it created.
At this point I lost sight of the conflict on the roof below, for, from the roof above, a balloon shot upwards, so high that only the angels could have read the message it bore. The familiar scrunching, though strangely muffled, was heard, and J., again in blouse and ink, was up and away on a little campaign of his own. This time he found six women, each with a pair of shoes at her side and her feet drawn up under her, squatting in a ring behind the cisterns, bending over a can of spirits of wine, and whispering and giggling like school-girls.
"It won't go off," they giggled, and the next minute all chance of its ever going off was gone, for J. had seized the balloon and torn it to tatters.
"You have destroyed our property," shrieked a venerable little old lady, thin and withered, with many wrinkles and straggling grey hair.
He told her that was what he had intended to do.