Part 12 (1/2)
Many of these gentlewomen lose their health in their struggle to obtain good food, decent lodging, and a neat appearance on Government salaries, knowing full well that the moment they fall out of the ranks numbers will be waiting to fill their places.
And in the meantime enlightened authors and politicians write articles, and make speeches, holding forth upon the charm and beauty of the Home Woman, and drawing unflattering comparisons between her and the worker.
Comfortable elderly gentlemen, who have had successful careers and can now afford to dine unwisely every night, and keep their daughters in well-dressed indolence, self-satisfied, self-aggrandising, self-advertising young politicians, who, having obtained an attentive public, delight to cant about the rights of the citizen and the good of the Empire, clever, intuitive, charming novelists, who apparently possess an unaccountable vein of dense non-comprehension on some points - all harp upon this theme of the Home Woman, and the Home Sphere, and the infinite superiority, in their own lordly eyes, of the gentle, domesticated scion of the family hearth.
As if one-fourth of the women wage-earners, gentle or otherwise, in England to-day had any choice in the matter whatever. The rapidity with which a vacant place in the ranks is filled and the numbers waiting for it is surely sufficient proof of that; to say nothing of the pitiful conditions under which many, gentle and otherwise, cling to their posts long after a merciful fate should have given them the opportunity to save the remnants of their shattered health amidst country breezes.
It is useless to cry out to the woman that work and compet.i.tion with men is unbecoming to her. She _must_ work, and she _must_ compete, and seeing this, it is surely time the British Government accepted the fact magnanimously, and took more definite steps to a.s.sure her welfare.
If it can only be done through woman's suffrage, then woman's suffrage must surely come, because, whether British legislators care for the good of women or not, nature does care, and as the race moves forward the working woman will have to be protected.
It has been seen over and over again that no band of politicians, nor powerful men, nor tape-bound State can long defy any advancing good for the needs of the whole.
Wheter women work or not, they are the mothers of the future; and because this fact is greater than the sum of all other facts brought forward by the narrowness and short- sightedness of men, we may safely believe that, since they _must_ work, nature will see to it that they work under the most favourable conditions, no matter what rich men have to go the poorer for it.
Pity is that the hour is so delayed; that narrowness, and selfishness, and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt still flourish, to the eternal cost of those of England's mothers who bring weaklings into the world, through the hard conditions of their enforced labour.
The _true patriot_ of to-day will agitate not only for the highest possible efficiency in the Navy and Army; but, with no less resolve and sincerety, for the best possible conditions obtainable for all women-workers, that the Empire may not later sink suddenly to decay, in spite of her defences, through the impoverished, feeble, sickly off-spring who are all the men she has left.
The _true patriot_ will accept the ever-strengthening fact, however unpalatable, that the development and emanc.i.p.ation of womanhood has brought women to the front as workers, _to stay_; and he will perceive that therefore it is inc.u.mbent upon the men to endeavour to find that happy mean, where they can work together to the advantage of both, and to the stability and greatness of a beloved country.
Only now the women-workers toil bravely on, heartening each other with jests under conditions in which it is extremely likely men would merely cavil and sulk and fill the air with their complainings; dressing themselves daintily through personal effort in spite of meagre purses; throwing themselves with a splendid joyousness into their few precious days of freedom; banding themselves together often and often to wring occasional hours of gaiety from the months of toil; keeping brave eyes to the front and brave hearts to the task, while they wait steadfastly for the day when their worth shall be appreciated and their claims recognised.
Hastening to the office in the morning, or hastening home (probably to cook their own dinner) at night, they read those clever, carefully worded articles and speeches by the men of power and weight, harping upon the charm and beauty and superiority of the Home Woman; and they laugh across to each other with a frank, rather pitying, rather irritated laughter, at the extraordinary dull-wittedness of some brilliant brains.
They wonder gaily how these enlightened, clever gentlemen would like it if they all became sweet Home women in the workhouses, cultivating elegant gardens, and floating round in flowing gowns at their expense.
The men call them ”new women” with derision, or mannish, or uns.e.xed; but those who have been among them, and known them as friends, know that they hold in their ranks some of the most generous-hearted, unselfish, big-souled women to exist in England to-day; and that it is just because of that they are able to plod cheerfully on, and laugh that indulgent, pitying little laugh, when an outraged man swells with virtuous indignation, and waxes eloquent upon their want of womanly attributes.
Of such as the best of these was Ethel Hayward. Among the crowd now hurrying more or less tiredly into the open air, she might not have been noticed. So many had white faces, dark-circled eyes, shabby-genteel clothing, and just a commonplace fairness, that in the throng it was difficult to discover distinguis.h.i.+ng attributes.
One had to see her apart, and note the quick, urgent step, the independent, lofty poise of her head, and the steadfastness of the tired eyes, and firm, strong mouth, to feel that life had given her a heavy burden, which only a n.o.ble soul could have supported with heroism.
As she left the portals of the General Post Office she hesitated a few seconds as to her direction. ”Should she go straight back to the little flat in Holloway, or should she go west, and get the drawing-paper Basil was wanting?”
Doris could easily get the drawing-paper the next day, if she chose; and at the flat Dudley Pritchard would have arrived for the evening.
She surmised hastily that it was extremely probable Doris had made some other engagement for herself that she would be unwilling to delay, and that Dudley would in no wise regret her own tardy return.
The last thought caused her eyes to grow a little strained, as she walked quickly westwards - strained with the determination to face the fact unflinchingly, and try to overcome the deep, insistent ache it caused.
But the love of a lifetime is not dismissed at will, and looking a little pitifully backward, though she was but twenty-eight, Ethel felt she could not remember the time when she did not love Dudley Pritchard, though it had perhaps only crystallised into the great feature of her life at the time when, in silent, heroic endeavour, he had given of all he had to win his friend back to life and health.
It was Dudley's careful savings that he had paid for the great specialist and the big operation; Dudley's courage and devotion that had nerved the stricken man to take up the awful burden of perpetual invalidism; Dudley's never-failing encouragement and friends.h.i.+p that helped him still to bear the dreary months of utter weariness, in the little home kept together by his sister's salary.
High up in the dreary-looking block of flats in Holloway, attended through the day by the erratic ministrations of Doris, and at night by the yearning tenderness of Ethel, Basil Hayward dragged out a weary martyrdom, that prayed only for release. In vain Ethel murmured over him, that to work for him was a glory compared to what it would be to live without him; in the silent, tedious hours of her absence, his soul broke itself in hopeless, pa.s.sionate protest against the decree that compelled him to accept his daily bread at the hands of the sister he would gladly have striven for day and night.
It as a martyrdom across which one can but draw a curtain, and stand ”eyes front”. Look this way, look that, what answer is there, what reason, what explanation, of the hidden martyrdoms of the work-a-day world, which the blank wall of heaven seems to regard with utter unconcern?
Mankind to-day is less disposed than ever of yore to calmly fold the hands and say, ”It is the will of G.o.d.” They can no longer do so honestly without either blaming or criticising the Divine Will that not merely permits, but is said to send, such martyrdoms.
Better surley to accept bravely the enigma of the universe, and strive to lessen the suffering in our own little sphere, believing that same Divine Will is striving with us to mitigate the ills humanity has brought upon itself through blind disobedience and careless indifference to the laws of nature.