SEEING JANE
1
Jane was taking the chair at a meeting of a section of the Society for Equal Citizenship. The speakers were all girls under thirty who wanted votes. They spoke rather well. They weren't old enough to have become sentimental, and they were mostly past the conventional cliches of the earlier twenties. In extreme youth one has to be second-hand; one doesn't know enough, one hasn't lived or learnt enough, to be first-hand; and one lacks self-confidence. But by five or six-and-twenty one should have left that behind. One should know what one thinks and what one means, and be able to state it in clear terms. That is what these girls—mostly University girls—did.
Jane left the chair and spoke too.
I hadn't known Jane spoke so well. She has a clever, coherent way of making her points, and is concise in reply if questioned, quick at repartee if heckled.
Lady Pinkerton was sitting in the row in front of Juke and me. Mother and daughter. It was very queer to me. That wordy, willowy fool, and the sturdy, hard-headed girl in the chair, with her crisp, gripping mind. Yet there was something…. They both loved success. Perhaps that was it. The vulgarian touch. I felt it the more clearly in them because of Juke at my side. And yet Jukie too … Only he would always be awake to it—on his guard, not capitulating.
2
Jane came round with me after the meeting to the Fact office, to go through some stuff she was writing for us about the meeting. She had to come then, though it was late, because next day was press day. We hadn't been there ten minutes when Hobart's name was sent in, with the message that he was just going home, and was Mrs. Hobart ready to come?
'Well, I'm not,' said Jane to me. 'I shall be quite ten minutes more.
I'll go and tell him.'
She went outside and called down, 'Go on, Oliver. I shall be some time yet.'