"You said a little while ago it would do very well for another year. Anyway, Bill promised me something for clothes this month—and he also said that he'd pay my school of art fees, at Wanchester, and give me a third season ticket. Is that all done with too?"
The girl sat erect, her face with its sparkling eyes expressing mingled humiliation and bitterness.
"Oh, well really, I can't stand these constant disputes!" said Mrs. Andrews, rising angrily from the sofa. "You'd better go to your brother. If he likes to waste his money, he can of course. But I've got none to spare." She paused at the door—"As for your underclothing, I daresay I could find you something of mine you could make do for a bit. Now do be sensible!—and don't make a scene with Bill!"
She closed the door. Marion walked to the side window of the drawing-room, and stood looking at the wooded slope of the hill, with Monk Lawrence in the distance.
Her heart burned within her. She was thirty-four. She had never had any money of her own—she had never been allowed any education that would fit her to earn. She was absolutely dependent on her mother and brother. Bill was kind enough, though careless, and often selfish. But her mother rubbed her dependence into her at every turn—"And yet I earn my clothes and my keep—every penny of them!" she thought, fiercely.
A year before this date she had been staying in London with a cousin who sometimes took pity on her and gave her a change of scene. They had gone together for curiosity's sake to a "militant" meeting in London. A lady, slight in figure, with dark eyes and hair, had spoken on the "economic independence of women"—as the only path to the woman's goal of "equal rights" with men. She had spoken with passion, and Marion's sore heart had leapt to answer her.
That lady was Gertrude Marvell. Marion had written to her, and there had been a brief acquaintance, enough to kindle the long-repressed will and passion of the girl's stormy nature. She had returned home, to read, in secret, everything that she could find on the militant movement. The sheer violence of it appealed to her like water to the thirsty. War, war!—on a rotten state of society, and the economic slavery of women!
And now her first awakener, her appointed leader, her idol had appeared in this dead country-side, with orders to give, and tasks to impose. And she should be obeyed—to the letter!
The girl's heavy eyes kindled to a mad intensity, as she stood looking at the hill-side, now almost dark, except for that distant light, which she knew as the electric lamp still lit at sunset, even in Sir Wilfrid's absence, over the stately doorway of Monk Lawrence.
But she was not going to the Latchford meeting. "Don't give yourself away. Don't be seen with the others. Keep out of notice. There are more important things for you to do—presently. Wait!"