Part 9 (1/2)
Fixed by the gla.s.sy eye of the camera, we were unable to reply to this; so our scornful critic went away, doubtless confirmed in his belief that there is no higher reward for a rebel woman than that of standing in a thin blouse, at a street corner, to be photographed, blown about by a cutting east wind, jostled by yelling children, and exposed to the chance of recognition at any minute by some disapproving friend or relative.
”n.o.body will ever look upon us as real people in business, after that,”
sighed one of our shop a.s.sistants when we regained comparative privacy behind the counter.
”n.o.body,” acquiesced our militant member, gloomily. ”And only this morning, I was really feeling like a genuine tradesman when I took down the shutters and agreed with the man next door that trade will never improve as long as this Government is in power.”
”Our trade certainly won't,” agreed a chorus of anti-Government agitators.
The door was suddenly flung open, and a boy came in and flung a sovereign on the counter.
”Could you oblige Mr. Bunting with change, please, miss?” he asked briskly.
That was all. There was no condescension in his tone. There was no impudence in his manner. He did not ask if we wanted our rights now, or if we would sooner wait till we got them. He did not say he had no wish to see women sitting in _his_ Parliament. He just stood there, as shopman to shopman, waiting to effect a trade transaction that raised us, once and for all, beyond the level of amateurs.
Nothing approaching a sovereign's worth of change was in the chocolate-box hopefully described by us as the till; but our militant member, now as ever, knew how to rise to a great occasion. She looked up from the column of figures she had hastily pretended to be adding up when the shop bell tinkled, seemed to take in the boy's request with difficulty, called ”Forward, dear, please!” in a languid tone up the spiral staircase, then returned to the column of figures. No lady of business experience in any shop or any post office could have been more exasperatingly irrelevant.
The rest of us looked fearfully at the boy in front of the counter. He was kicking his heels together and whistling tunelessly. Her procedure had, indeed, not erred in a single detail; and he saw nothing aggressive in her behaviour. Henceforth we knew we could count on being treated in the trade as equals.
XI
The Person who cannot Escape
The lady of the manor seemed gently amused when I criticized the architecture of the cottage in which I had taken rooms, on the farther side of the village.
”It is not picturesque, like those that belong to us,” she admitted; ”and I always think it was a little unwise of Horace to let that piece of land for building purposes without having the plans submitted to us first. Still, the land was no good for anything else, not even for allotments; and if we had stipulated for gables and things of that sort we might have it still on our hands, a prey to taxation.”
”I'm not thinking of the outside,” I said; ”it's the inside that matters when you have to live in a place. Nor am I thinking of myself, being in a position to leave whenever I find it impossible to endure the discomfort another minute----”
”My dear,” said the lady of the manor, looking concerned, ”is it as bad as that? I told you it was absurd to expect to find rooms in a primitive place like this----”
”I am not thinking of myself,” I repeated, ”but of poor Mr. and Mrs.
Jim Bunce, who have to live there always because there isn't another cottage in the place, to say nothing of all the little Bunces, three boys and a little----”
”Oh!” she smiled, instantly rea.s.sured; ”don't worry about them. They are not writing books, like their lodger. You must remember that the poor do not feel things, as you and I do; otherwise, they would appreciate nice houses when they get them. Only think how disheartened Horace and I were over those sweet gabled cottages we re-fronted for them down by the marsh----”
”Were those the ones you told me on no account to go to?” I interrupted, presuming unkindly on an old friends.h.i.+p.
I was told not to be unreasonable. ”Naturally, I advised you to go to a newer place where the sanitation would be better,” said my hostess. ”I am sorry you don't like the Bunces' house, but that is your own fault for not coming here when you were invited.”
”It seems to me rather more the fault of the man who built the Bunces'
house,” I represented, still unreasonably, as I gathered from her expression. ”Have you seriously studied its front elevation? A child could draw it on a slate:--two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs; two windows upstairs, two windows downstairs; chimneys anywhere you like, but never in direct communication with fireplaces, as the lodger discovers when the fire is lighted in the sitting-room.”
”It is no use trying to teach these people anything,” murmured the lady of the manor; ”of course, damp wood, badly laid----”
”It reminds me,” I continued, ”of a dolls' house I once had, made out of a packing-case, neatly divided into four compartments, with a staircase jammed against one side of it and brought to an abrupt termination by the doorstep. The staircase is exactly like my dolls' house one, so steep that a false step lands one straight in the front garden with no conscious interval for falling. Mrs. Jim kindly provides against this contingency by leaving the front door always open,” I added hastily, in deference to a look of renewed concern.