“I have been humiliated!” he exclaimed dramatically.
“Whatever is the matter?” I questioned.
“We are living in the most hellish country on earth!”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“A lady comes all the way from North America. She visits us, she stays here, we like her, and I must present her with this sordid bill!”
Some day when the fighting is over I shall return again to Spain.
Chapter Fourteen
O, TO BE IN ENGLAND
When I reached London it was spring, and beautiful as only spring in England can be. I longed to get out into the country and, through the kindness of Dr. Alice Vickery, was soon lodged in a private home in Hampstead Gardens next door to her quaint, ivy-covered, red-brick house. In the large garden in back we often had tea under the blossoming apple trees. There, dressed in gray or purple, with white collar and a wisp of lace not quite a bonnet on her head, she entertained the young and modern women of England who were working for reforms of no matter what kind. Still, at the age of eighty, she was alert upon all questions of the day, busily engaged in writing leaflets or articles pointing out the weak spots in social programs.
Dr. Vickery was so full of the living side of Neo-Malthusianism that I could ill afford to forego one possible hour with her. Often when we found ourselves alone in her drawing room I sat at her feet and heard the story of the pioneer Malthusians, what they had had to undergo, and what they had accomplished. For my benefit she brought out of her attic a veritable treasure of the early days—old circulars, pamphlets, and letters now, I am afraid, destroyed.
Almost every afternoon, taking her walking stick and with Dr. Binnie Dunlop for a companion, Dr. Vickery boarded the tram to attend some gathering. She had been one of the first to welcome the militant suffragettes, and she never missed a suffrage meeting, nor, for that matter, any other significant one on infant or maternal welfare, eugenics, or public health. She always went with the definite purpose of getting the audience down to fundamentals. In time she became a familiar figure. As soon as she entered a hall you could feel those present aligning themselves against her. They knew she was going to bring up a controversial subject that no one wanted discussed, such as birth control. It was like casting a boulder into a nice quiet lake, but, with an unruffled exterior and grim determination, she invariably rose just the same, asked the chairman to recognize her, and said her say on the Feminist side of the question. From the lips of this Victorian old lady it sounded strange to hear frank remarks about the importance of limiting offspring. Dr. Dunlop, with Scotch determination, was also bent on setting people straight; he followed her and expounded the medical aspects of population.