The great rally had a fourfold purpose: to celebrate the victory of the Militants in the general election, during which they had fought the Liberals in forty constituencies; their energy, cleverness, and resource being not the least of the factors which had transferred eighteen seats to the Conservatives (thus throwing the Government upon the Labor and Irish vote for support); to protest once more against the inhuman treatment of the hunger strikers in Holloway gaol; to add to the £100,000 fund; and to listen to Mrs. France’s account of her three months’ lecture tour in the United States.
When Julia had risen to speak, she had been greeted by a magnificent demonstration. Every woman in the audience had sprung to her feet, cheered, and waved her banner for five minutes. This enthusiasm was not inspired by Julia’s notable tour only, nor to the money she had brought back with her, but to her four years’ record of steadfast and valuable work in the Militant cause, the large number of recruits she had brought in by her personal efforts, the many Liberal candidates she had helped to defeat at by-elections, her religious devotion to a work for which nothing in her previous life would seem to have prepared her, and above all, to the great gift for leadership she had displayed during the last year and a half. For her indomitable courage, her indifference to personal comfort, and to bodily suffering when maltreated by police, stewards, or hooligans, or endured in gaol, they had no applause; this was a mere matter of course. But in addition to her services, Julia was a favorite with all of them: she was picturesque without being sensational, a brilliant powerful persuasive speaker, and a lovely picture on the platform. Moreover, she possessed (and desperately clung to) the priceless gift of humor, and humor in suffragette ranks was rare. Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughters, great speakers as they were, had not a ray of it; and even Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, the most genial of women, fell under the spell of the world’s tragedy the moment she rose to speak.
To-night, Julia, knowing that most of the minds present were oppressed by the sufferings in Holloway, made the account of her American experiences as diverting as possible, although she finished with a passionate denunciation of the Government, and an appeal to her audience to proselytize unceasingly, until their numbers were irresistible.
When she sat down, Mrs. Lawrence, preparatory to making her appeal for funds, gave a graphic and terrible picture of the hunger strikers, who, forcibly fed through the nose and throat with surgical instruments of torture, were now having a dose of martyrdom that compared favorably with any in the records of the Inquisition. Julia, too well acquainted with the horrible details, glanced over the House and nodded to Ishbel Dark and Bridgit Maundrell, seated in a box. Ishbel was still the prettiest woman in any assembly she chose to grace, and her attire, as ever, looked like the petals of a flower. Bridgit, severely tailored, albeit in velvet, was sitting forward tensely, her eyes flashing at the iniquities of man. Julia noted with amusement that Maundrell was behind her, and listening with an expression no less indignant. Dark consistently refused to show himself at Suffrage rallies, although more sympathetic of late, but Maundrell was not only complaisant, but converted. To have lived with Bridgit for three years and failed to be impressed by that burning and immovable faith would have stamped him superman, and the next step was to surrender to a cause capable of making such an apostle. He already had made a number of speeches, in and out of the House, advocating the extension of the franchise to a limited number of women, and as he was a man of distinguished abilities, there was much rejoicing in Suffrage ranks. He had even permitted his wife to take part in the last great raid on the House, although, without her knowledge, he had circled near her, and diverted the attention of the police when she had been too eager for trouble. He had no intention of letting her go to gaol and ruin her health.
But the Westminster police avoided arresting women of Mrs. Maundrell’s position unless their official faces were slapped. For that matter they were growing more and more averse from arresting women at all, and had been heard to wish that the Parliamentarians would come out and do their own dirty work. The women had so far won their liking and respect that when the Government wanted them knocked about, they were forced to order up reserves from the slums. The Westminster officers formed woman-proof cordons about the Houses of Parliament, effectively protecting the men within, but repulsed their assailants good-naturedly, only making arrests when the women were inexorable. When Julia, determined upon arrest in one of the raids of 1909, made a technical assault upon a tall policeman’s chin, he had whispered: “Harder, Mrs. France. Give me a good crack on me cheek. That’ll be assault, as the Inspector’s looking this way, and I’ll have to arrest ye.”
The great number of Militants arrested, the injustice of their trials and sentences, the severity of their treatment in gaol, had succeeded as nothing else had done in arousing the women of Great Britain. Very nearly a million had declared themselves in favor of Suffrage, and many of these had joined one or other of the forty-one societies and unions.
Only the mean-spirited, the hopelessly old-fashioned, and the sex idolaters had failed to rally to their cause. Never in the history of England had there been such monster mass-meetings, such impressive parades, such a widespread upheaval. If these rebels had been Socialists, or any other body of men demanding concessions, they would have won their battle long since.
Mrs. Lawrence passed on to her favorite subject, the injustice of visiting the penalties of the law upon desperate girls for infanticide, while ignoring her partner in crime. Julia, whose mind had wandered to her own prison experiences, happily over before the hunger strike was organized, and the devices to which she had resorted before she had compelled arrest in spite of the duke’s vigilance, suddenly, without an instant’s transition, began to think vividly of Daniel Tay. She started and sat up straighter, drawing her brows together in perplexity. Her thought was very consecutive these days.
During their long but irregular correspondence—often conducted on his part by cable—she had thought of him exclusively while writing, or reading his characteristic letters, and then dismissed him from her mind. There was always a certain excitement in “talking” confidentially into a mind on the other side of the globe, and his epistles, however brief, were sympathetic. He had long since given up his attempt to turn her from her purpose; he recognized her as a force, and asserted that he was proud of her. She fancied that he no longer cared to meet her again, but found his own amusement in the novelty of the correspondence; and she too no longer experienced tremors at sight of his handwriting. But she was conscious of a bond, and welcomed an occasional vibration from the other end of the line.
And now she suddenly found herself thinking of him intensely. She peered out into that acre of faces. Could he be present? Hardly, as he had written but a few weeks ago that he was “up to his neck” in business and politics. The famous Graft Prosecution was sitting expectantly on the edge of its grave, dug by corrupting gold, the rallying of every dishonest business man in San Francisco to the standard of the scoundrels in politics, and a few mistakes of its own. Business, too, was “awful,” San Francisco’s luck not having turned since the morning of the earthquake. No, he could not be present, but she stirred uneasily, nevertheless. She was highly organized, and quick to respond to the concentration of another mind upon her own. Once more she searched that mass of faces, but they seemed to melt into one. She banished Tay from her mind. He returned promptly. She frowned, but gave it up and let her mind drift.