“But he is sure to have landed by now,” thought the suffragette. She felt unsentimentally interested in the fact. It was too hot to feel more.
“I happened to mention the Book of Genesis,” said the lady novelist. “And Albert produced a most ingenious theory about the scientific explanation of the fable of creation. I wish I had such a nephew. What a marvellous link with the coming generation!”
“On the other hand,” said Mr. Wise, “I happened to mention Alice in Wonderland, and he said it was out of date, and, as a dream, most improbable.”
“I am sorry he criticised the Bible in your hearing,” apologised Miss Brown. “I am afraid he has a tendency towards irreverence.”
“I wish he had,” muttered Mr. Wise.
Acres of sugar filed past the window. High waved the proud crests of it, all innocent of its mean latter end as a common comestible. The suffragette’s mind laboured under a rocking confusion of green tufted miles,—and somewhere on the outskirts of her thoughts, a little sallow Albert entrenched behind an enormous pair of spectacles.
“A glorious child,” said the lady novelist, in her monopolising tones. “Simply glorious. Quite an experience to have met him.”
“Good copy, eh?” grinned Mr. Wise.
“Excellent. You know I collect copy.”
Now the suffragette collected copy, but she did it without self-consciousness. There are several kinds of copy-collectors. Some of us squeeze our copy into little six-shilling novels, or hack it into so many columns for the benefit of an unfeeling press. Some of us live three-score years and ten, and then wake suddenly to find our copy-coffers full. Upon which we become bores, and our relations hasten to engage a paid companion for us. But some of us carry our lives about with us sealed up in our holy of holies, and take pride in hiding the precious burden that we bear. Copy-collecting may become a religion; to the suffragette, who never put pen to paper for any one else’s benefit, and who never told an anecdote, this pursuit was the great consolation for a bleak life. At the gate of death, or on the step of Paradise, such a soul may be found filling its pockets with the gold of secret experience. I think the mania is most acute when no thought of eventual print intrudes. Its most encouraging characteristic to the lonely is the sense of irresponsibility it brings. After all I may go and turn cart-wheels down the Strand, I may murder you, or throw my last shilling into the Thames, I may go half-way to Hell, and if I miscalculate the distance and fall in—it’s all copy. To the lady novelist, however, copy was but a currency to spend. Every experience in her eyes formed a part of a printed page, surrounded by a halo of favourable reviews. She never wrote a letter without an eye on her posthumous biography, never met a notable individual without taking a mental note for the benefit of a future series of “Jottings about my Generation.” Both she and the suffragette kept diaries, but only the suffragette’s had a lock and key.