That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
her cloak, and the gleam of white cuffs framing the gloved hands with
which she gestured, suggested a Hospital nurse to Patrine. "Taxation
without Representation is a crying injustice--and the men will wake up
to it one of these days.... And Mrs. Clash may be a noisy person--and
Fanny Leaven may drop her haiches--I do myself when I get stirred up.
But they're in earnest--and they've suffered--cruel!--for their
convictions. Look at this Petrell--that one that always takes the Chair.
She's a physical wreck--with the treatment she's had--and I know what
I'm talking about! Haven't we had Suffragettes brought to the Hospital
for treatment over and over--after they'd been pitched out of Political
Meetings by Stewards and half-throttled by Police. What I say
is--Moses! how late! ... We shall get locked out of the Home if we don't
run for it!"
And their light hurrying footsteps and the unmistakable frou-frou of
starched print accompanying, passed away up Harley Street. They must
have come from the Mass Meeting of Suffragists that had taken place at
the Royal Hall.
It had been a memorable evening. The atmosphere of the Royal Hall,
thronged not only with the members of the W.S.S.S. but with
representatives of many other Women's Unions and Associations and
Societies and Leagues, was highly charged with electricity. Mrs.
Petrell, resolute-lipped, quiet-eyed, clear of diction and composed of
manner, knew, as she sat in her chair beside the little table in the
middle of the crowded platform, and better even than the plain-clothes
police among the audience--that at any moment the storm might break.
She had advocated with all her much-tried strength an armistice for the
War-period, involving a temporary abandonment of militant methods and
inflammatory addresses, in favour of a policy of active help and
practical sympathy, alike honourable to her head and heart.
Other Societies, Unions, Leagues, and Associations might have followed
the lead of their Presidents. But would the W.S.S.S. accept her
programme? Militancy had been its motto and the breath of its nostrils
through all these troubled years. Since the outbreak of War, Flaming
Fanny had busily sown the whirlwind, advocating fresh Demonstrations in
conjunction with a system of Unlimited Strikes. Woman must hold her
hand, now that her help was needed. Man, the Oppressor of all time, must
be coerced by Woman's flat refusal to take part in Relief Work, or War
Work, or Work of any kind whatever, into yielding the withheld right.
And Mrs. Clash sided with Fanny--and others, nearer home.
Little wonder then that Pressmen, sensing the imminence of riot, had
turned out in their shabbiest tweeds and left their watches and tie-pins
at home. Little wonder that Medical Students, who had not already
joined the Service, with betting-men and patrons of the pugilistic Prize
Ring, found themselves baulked of anticipated entertainment, or that
loafers and crooks, pickpockets and rowdies, disappointed of a
pleasurable evening, expressed themselves in unmeasured terms regarding
that Mass Meeting at the Royal Hall.
A melodious speaking-voice can be a magical wand, wielded by the mouth
of a plain woman. But when the woman is beautiful and intellectual,
when soul breathes through her words, and strength and tenderness, then
she becomes a Force to reckon with, a Power to move mountains and bring
water of tears from the living rock of the hardest human heart.
The officially-checked lights of the Hall shone down upon a sea of
threatening faces. The electric battens over the speaker's head showed
her to be a tall, fair, slender woman, dressed in filmy grey, veiling
soft clinging silk of the same shade. The simplicity of her dress was
unrelieved by ornaments other than a chain of pearls about her long
throat. The red-brown hair seemed heavy for the little Greek head, the
lovely pale face with the sensitive lips, wore a look of patient sorrow,
the eyes she turned upon the audience--a seething mixture of
irreconcilable elements--had in them courage, sympathy and
understanding, and knowledge too. Before she spoke she had created an
impression. Strangers were ingratiated by her beauty and evident
refinement. Those who best knew her were among the wildest and most
reckless there. They had quieted, when she had risen up in her
unnoticed corner of the platform, and moved forwards to the speaker's
place opposite the Chair, as though oil had been cast upon the waters of
a stormy sea.
"When God Willed this War that we call Armageddon," she had said to
them--"for without the permission of the Most High the earthly Powers
that planned and prepared it could not have plucked the fruit of their
desire--it came in time to prevent the declaration of a War even more
terrible. War, to the Death, between Woman and Man."
In a few trenchant words she painted the dire results of such hostility.
"That unnatural horror has been mercifully averted," she said to them.
"The old sore is healed, there is no hatred nor rancour left. We women
have learned what a price has to be paid for the Franchise of Manhood.
It is the brave blood that is drenching the soil of Belgium and France
and Poland--that will flow in rivers as wide as the Thames at Vauxhall
Bridge before Peace is proclaimed again. They have answered the Call.
They are pouring into the recruiting offices--in thousands of
thousands--those who have given up their loved ones, their homes, their
hopes of success in Arts or Sciences, professions or businesses or
trades. Will women be as unselfish and as generous when their Call
comes? For it will come. It is coming while I stand here!"
They were strangely quiet, under the spell of the beautiful voice, and
the eyes that were luminous and deep with tenderness:
"There are faithful Christians among you; brave earnest souls who have
prayed to GOD for guidance among the difficulties that beset the way for
working-women, and weaker souls have been maddened to frenzy and plunged
into unbelief by the intolerance and the injustice, the shrieking wrongs
and the unpurged evils that Man, who enters upon his heritage the world,
by the Gate of Motherhood, has ignorantly accumulated upon the shoulders
of the sex he professes to respect."
There was a murmur of approval at this. She lifted a hand, and they
were silent.
"I say to those who have despaired, 'Despair no longer!' I say to those
who have prayed--'Your prayer is answered!' Take up the work that has
dropped from the hands that are busy with the rifle. Prove your right
to the Parliamentary Franchise. Take your place amongst the World's
Workers, for good and for all. The Vote will be granted: it cannot be
denied! But if you had it now, passionately as you desire it, and the
choice were offered you--Oh! my sisters!--would you not yield it up with
gladness to bring those dead men back to life again?"
And after a pause of unbroken silence she added:
"For they have fought even better than they knew. They have re-conquered
Woman. Freely and willingly as comrade and helper she takes her place
and her share of the burden. Peace is proclaimed. The War between the
sexes is at an end!"
We know how truly the speaker prophesied. Quietly as the vast Atlantic
flows into and fills a labyrinth of empty, echoing, rock-caverns, the
vast body of unemployed women took the places of the male workers called
away to the Front. They had clicked into the slots before the world was
well aware of it, or they themselves understood that a miracle had been
wrought.
Said the breeched and gaitered lady-conductor of a North-West tram the
other day:
"Now the ones that was brought up active has got their chance to do a
bit, and the ones that was brought up idle 'ave found out that they like
work, will they ever be content to sit and twiddle their thumbs again?
I don't think!" She clipped pink tickets with zeal, and when a
red-nosed, watery-eyed elderly man who had offered her a pewter shilling
cursed her venomously as she thrust the coin back on him: "'Ere you! ...
'Op it!" she said to the offender, and caught him neatly by the scruff,
hauled him down the cork-screw stairway, and deposited him in the Camden
Road without turning a hair.
*CHAPTER LXVIII*
*THE DEVIL-EGG*
Von Herrnung had quitted the earth sober, to discover at the height of a
thousand metres that his potations had dulled his brain. As he ceased
to climb and brought down the nose of the Taube to the level, he
realised that he was dizzy, and that at the pit of his stomach squatted
the aviator's deadly foe, the demon of nausea. He pictured it as a
yellow, frog-like thing with frothing leathery lips and green eyes that
squinted. This image vexed him, and would not be driven away.
He switched on the hawk-hoverer and sensed the drag of the twin
horizontal flanged screws against the thrust of the propeller, adding to
its drone the vibration of the endless travelling-chains running in
their sheath of transparent talc. To make room for its long groove in
the floor of the bird-body, the thick glass port beneath the pilot's
feet had been removed by the sergeant-mechanic of the Flight Squadron.
Now there were two ports, one on either side. Through these the German
looked down upon the shell-pounded ruins of the village-town, its
roofless homes and broken enclosures giving the effect of a wild-bees'
nest laid open by the gardener's shovel after the gardener has smoked
out the bees. As von Herrnung located the baker's house by aid of his
recently acquired binoculars, another swirl of sickness took him, and he
shuddered and spat bile over the side.
Those distant voices of guns had not ceased their sullen calling. In
the rose-flushed south towards which the Taube faced as it hovered above
the ruins of the village, black columns of vapour swelled and towered,
and acrid flashes stabbed through the murkiness. One should be there,
his manlier self said to him. Better to be a brave German bird dodging
Death amongst the puffs of shrapnel, dropping devil-eggs on the British
batteries, winning back the forfeited Cross and the lost Imperial
favour, than to be here, hanging like a carrion-vulture over the maimed
body of a dying man.
Perhaps. But one had promised oneself revenge for the scorn that had
stung like fire. And one had bragged to the English boy of what one
meant to do. He looked back, and called through the speaking-tube that
traversed the canvas over-deck between the pilot's seat and the
passenger's:
"Unstrap yourself and come to me and take the control-stick.
_Schnell_--do you hear? What is that you say?" He put the voice-tube
to his ear and heard the shrill pipe answer through it. "You think it
best to tell me that you take back your parole?" The big teeth grinned
under the red moustache. "All right!" said the Enemy. "While we are in
the air, you are free to jump out if you like, and run away. When we
get to the ground again, that is another matter. Come now, sit in front
of me and take over the controls!"
And as the boy obeyed, creeping beneath the intervening deck and under
the canvas partition, the Enemy moved back upon the pilot-seat, keeping
his feet on the lower controls, and separating his knees so as to leave
a ledge for Bawne to occupy. Still laughing, he took spare
safety-straps that hung on each side against the bulwarks, and clipped
the patent pneumatic studs to the belt that girt the boy.
It did not do to run risks. Some day, it might occur to the Emperor to
order von Herrnung to deliver up his captive. And--the little devil was
useful--hellishly! He had come into the world, twelve years
ago--possessed of the Flying Gift. He had taken to the air as naturally