“It strikes me as hideous.”
“I mean that when women have been battered and mauled and hurt, as we have been, without a second’s loss of courage or resource; when we have not once failed to score every point we have preconceived, from the heckling of candidates half out of their senses, to arresting the gaze of the civilized world,—doesn’t it strike you that we may be something more than mere women?”
“Yes, fools, and shameless ones.”
“Well, I share Nigel Herbert’s theory, that we are a new sex and a new race. A new force let loose into the world, is how he expressed it. When I went north five months ago the Union in London numbered only a few hundreds. Now it’s as well known as the Liberal party. And all of the new active members have the same set grim intent look, although many are still in their teens. I believe they were born that way and only waited for the call. Not one of them looks as if she had ever given a thought to a lover —”
“And you extol them for that?”
“No, I merely mention it. You see, all revolutions demand and breed their martyrs; people who were born, so to speak, to fight and die in that cause and for no other purpose whatever. Hundreds of thousands will join us as converts, but only a limited number will join the fighting army. That sort of thing is in a woman or it isn’t. Many will help us with money and name and sympathy, vote when their time comes, and cheerfully accept such political duties as may be thrust upon them, but they are too soft, what you call too womanly, to fight. We make no complaint. The race must go on and these women may be depended upon to take care of it. But all these girls that are flocking to our standard, that speak to jeering crowds on street corners, that are hustled and twisted and pinched by policemen—when they interrupt meetings, or sell literature on the street—they are made of different elements, they are the ones chosen to win a cause, not to enjoy its victory. What matters it to them whether they are maimed for life, whether their youth goes before they have known any of its rights? Nothing. It is not of the least consequence. We sacrifice them as ruthlessly as they sacrifice themselves, as we would sacrifice ourselves. It is only the principle that matters. Let them die in a good cause, and be grateful for the opportunity. So they would, if they gave even that much thought to self. That is what you cannot understand. If you did, you would know what I mean by the word portentous —”
“How do you like the prospect of looking like those women—gray and dingy as the bark of an old tree?”
“Oh, they don’t all look gray and dingy. We have handsome women in the W. S. P. U.—several that are older than I. Many women are born dingy. Others have merely that freshness of youth which is as likely to vanish after one year of domestic life, as after the same time spent in fighting for a cause that will improve the lot of women in general. Don’t worry about me. What looks I have are indestructible. I learned secrets in the East. I know how to rest—a lesson many of these young enthusiasts wouldn’t learn if I could teach them. They are screwed up to be martyrs and won’t have anything else. But the heads of any movement must be all that and more, so I have no intention of going to pieces.”
“I am told that if—I—a—withdraw the seven hundred and fifty I have allowed you, you may be persuaded to go to work on a newspaper or make money in some other way—I understand you give the greater part of your income to this abominable cause —”
“Yes. I know how you must feel about that. I made sure you would withdraw it before this —”