"I--I think it's the wrong room, Poppy," I said. "There's the--"
It was the wrong room, and she knew it. The Sheriff was at the centre table and near him was a great serving stand, with hot and cold roasts and joints.
I tried to back out, but at that moment Poppy slammed the door and locked it.
"Don't yell!" she said to me under her breath, and dropped something ice-cold down my back. The key!
About half the men started to their feet. Poppy raised a hand.
"Gentlemen," she said, "you need not rise! I have a few things I would like to say while you finish luncheon. I shall be entirely orderly. The question of the Suffrage--"
They dodged as if she had been loaded with shrapnel instead of a speech. They shouted and clamored. They ordered us out. And all the time the door was locked and the key was down my back.
"Poppy!" I said, clutching her arm. "Poppy, for the love of heaven--"
She had forgotten me absolutely. When she finally turned her eyes on me, she never even saw me.
"The door is locked, gentlemen," she said. "Locked and the key hidden. If you will give me five minutes--"
But they would not listen. The Sheriff sat still and ate his luncheon. Time might come and time might go, tides flow and ebb, old eras give way to new but the British lion must be fed. But once I caught his eye, and I almost thought it twinkled. Perish the thought! The old order wink at the new!
They demanded the key. The lunch hour was over. The Assizes waited. In vain Poppy plead for five minutes to talk.
"After that, I'll turn over the key," she promised.
The only way she could have turned over the key was, of course, to take me into a corner, stand me on my head and jounce it out! I was very nervous, I'll confess. No one had laid a hand on a copy as yet. She was so young and good looking, and the minute anybody loomed very close, she turned her baby profile to him and he looked as if he'd been caught gunning for butterflies.
Finally, however, the noise becoming a tumult, and Poppy and I forced back against the door, the Lord High Sheriff which sounds like Gilbert & Sullivan approached. The crowd made respectful way for him.
"Now, young ladies," he said, "this has been an agreeable break in our long day. But all pleasant things must end. Open the door, please."
"Will you give me five minutest" Poppy demanded. "I'm a tax-payer. I help to pay the people in this room. I have a right to be heard."
"Open the door!" said the Sheriff.
"No."
"Then give up the key, and one of my men--"
I caught his arm. I couldn't stand it another minute. It is all well enough for Poppy to say it was cowardly, and that the situation was ours until I gave it away. The key was not down her back.
"Break the lock," I said frantically. "The the key is where I can't get it."
He was really twinkling now, but the crowd around was outraged for him and his dignity.
"You didn't swallow it, did you?" he asked in an undertone.
"It's down the back of my frock," I replied.
Poppy said afterwards that I cried and made a scene and disgraced her generally. It is not true. If tears came, they were tears of rage. It is not true that I cried on the Sheriff's breast. I only leaned my head against his arm for a minute, and he was not angry, for he patted my shoulder. I am terribly fond of Poppy, but she is not always reasonable, as you will see.
There had been a great deal of noise. I remember hearing echoes of the dining-room excitement from the hallway beyond the door, and some one pounding. They were breaking the lock from the outside. All the time Poppy was talking in her lovely soft voice. She said:
"Since woman is called on to obey the laws, she ought to have a voice in making them--"
"Hear, hear!" cried somebody.
"Since she doesn't make them, why should she obey them?" demanded Poppy, lifting violet eyes to the crowd.
"I didn't make the Ten Commandments," said a voice from the rear of the room, "but I'll get hell just the same if I break them. What have you got to say about that?"
Poppy was stumped for once. I believe it was the most humiliating moment of her public life.
Luckily the lock broke just then, and we were hustled out of the room. There was a crowd in the hall, and it was most disagreeable. I expected to be arrested, of course although I'd been arrested before, and if one is sensible and eats, it is not so bad but the crowd, feeling it had the best of things with the Ten Commandments, was in high good humor. They let us by without a word and the Sheriff himself stood on the steps while we got into our car.
Just as Poppy's chauffeur got the engine started, the landlord ran out and demanded the key. Poppy told the chauffeur to go on, in a frantic voice, but he hesitated. All the majesty of British law was there on the steps, and the gold coach was waiting. Of course, to be arrested for disturbing the peace with a suffrage speech is one thing, but theft is another. I threw a pleading glance at the Sheriff, and he came slowly down the steps. Men with wands kept the crowd back. The fat coachman with the wig did not turn his head, but the footman at the coach door leered and avenged his calves. Even Poppy went a little pale.
"Quick," said the Sheriff, ferociously, in a low tone, "give me something that looks like a key, and then get away as quickly as you can."
I opened my pocketbook. The only thing that was even the size of a key was my smelling salts bottle. So I gave him that, and he covered it with his big hand. Then, still frowning savagely, he made us a lordly gesture to move on.
(Have you ever been in the Forum Club building that Poppy decorated? The staircase walls are won derful crowds of women, poor and old, young and rich with clouds around them and so on, all ascending toward a saintly person with a key Saint Peter, or somebody. Well, the saint is the Sheriff at Guildford, and the key is a salts bottle, if you look closely.)
We slept at Bournemouth that night. Or rather, we didn't sleep. Poppy sat up half the night trying to think of an answer to the ten commandment thing. She said she'd get that again she felt it and what was she to say? I had recovered the key and my good humor by that time, but I could not help much. Seeing her so disturbed, I had not the heart to tell her what I suspected. But I was sure that I had seen Vivian Harcourt on the edge of the crowd at Guildford. It would have made her furious to think that she was under any sort of espionage. But Vivian was following us, I felt confident, with enough money to bail us out if she did anything reck less. He knew her, you see.
That is why all" the rest of it seems so silly. Vivian knew Poppy; he knew her convictions, and her courage. For him to do the baby thing later was stupid. And anyhow, if it was hard on him, what was it for me?
Poppy slept late in the morning, and I got up and went down to the pier, a melancholy place, wet with morning mist and almost deserted. There were rows of beach chairs, and bathing machines and over turned boats littering the beach, and not a soul in sight but a few fishermen. I sat there and thought of Newport on a bright July morning, with chil dren and nurses on the sand, and throngs of people, and white sailboats and nice young men in flannels--
I was awfully homesick for a minute. And it came over me, too, that I had no particular business helping the Cause in England, and having keys put down my back, and giving up my gold-topped salts bottle, which was a present from Basil Ward, when all the time the Cause at home was fighting just as grimly and much more politely.
Vivian was on the pier, at the very end. He was sitting looking out, with his finger hooked around his cigarette (which is Cambridge fashion, I believe, or may be the King does it) and looking very glum.
"Where is she? In jail?' he demanded. '
"She's asleep, poor thing," I said.
He snorted.
"Lots of sleep I've had," he said. "Look here, Madge, is she going to take her vacation by locking up Sheriffs all along the route? Because if she is, I'm going back to London."
"I think it very likely," I replied, coldly. "You'd better go back anyhow; she'll
be murderous if she knows she's followed."
He groaned.
"I can't leave her alone, can I?"
"I'm along."
He laughed. It was rude of him.
"You!" he said. "Madge, tell me honestly where was the key?"
"She put it down my back."
He fairly howled with joy. I hated him. But he calmed before long, and offered me a cigarette as a peace offering. I declined.
"You'd better go along," he said. "She may need the back again. Madge, is there any chance for me with her?"
"Well, she likes you, when you are not in the way."
"I'd be in the way now, I suppose, if I turned up to-night at where do you stop?"
"At Torquay. Look here, Vivian, I've just thought of something. She's put out about a thing a man said yesterday. She wants an answer. She's got arguments, but what she wants is a retort about six words and smart. If you could give her one, she'd probably forgive you hanging around, and all that."
So I told him about the ten commandments and Poppy knowing she'd get it again and sitting up to worry it out. He said it was easy. He'd have something to break his appearance at Torquay. But it wasn't as easy as it seemed at first. I left him sit ting there, looking out to sea, with a notebook on his knee. He called after me that he'd follow us, a few miles behind, but he wouldn't turn up until he had thought of something worth while.
According to Basil, it was he who finally thought of something. It seems that Vivian wrote out pages of a reply, saying that if the questioner compared man-made law with the ten commandments, then he made Parliament and the House of Lords divine, and that this was a reductio ad absurdum, which is Greek or something for ridiculous. But he almost went mad trying to make it short, and it wasn't funny at all. Whereas, as he knew very well, the only chance the speaker had, in such a case, was to get a laugh. What he really needed was a retort, not a reply.
We made rather slow progress. In the first place, Poppy learned that the chauffeur, who was a new one and quite intelligent, was not in favour of suf frage, and for hours we crawled along, while she ar gued with him. And in the second place, we stopped frequently to nail up posters along the roadside. Vivian said later that he trailed us quite easily, and that there were times when he was only one curve in the road behind. He used to get out and putter over the engine to pass the time and let us get ahead. He did not appear at Torquay, so I knew he wasn't getting along well with the ten commandments.
But except being put out of a hotel at Exeter for discovering a member of Parliament there, in bed with the gout, and flinging some handbills in through the transom, the rest of the trip was very peace ful. Dartmoor put Poppy into a trance; the heather was in bloom, and she made sketches and colour bits, and lay back in the car in a sort of dream, plan ning the next winter's work.
She was irritable when she was disturbed, too. The creative instinct is a queer thing. Once Booties, the chauffeur, asked her a question when she was trying to catch some combination or other, and she answered him sharply.
"When the women go to vote, Miss," he said, turning around and touching his cap, "who is going to mind the children?"
"We intend to establish a messenger service," said Poppy, with a crayon in her mouth.
"A messenger service?" Booties' eyes stuck out.
"Yes. To summon the fathers home from the pubs to hold the babies."
(A "pub" of course is an English saloon.)
The T. C. matter was still bothering Poppy at intervals. She knew as well as anyone that she needed a laugh in her retort, and as you have seen, Poppy is too earnest to be funny. I said this to Basil Ward the night we got to Tintagel.
Poppy was tired, and went to bed early. I walked out on the terrace, and Basil was there. He said Viv had sent for him on the T. C. matter, and he had something in view.
"He gave it up, poor chap," he said. "He isn't humorous, you know. As a matter of fact, he and Poppy are both so bally serious that it makes me wonder how they'll hit it off."
"If she's as earnest about matrimony as she is about Suffrage," I said, "she'll be a sincere wife."
Basil said nothing. We had walked out to the edge of the cliff, and were leaning against the rough stone parapet.
"It's rather nice, isn't it," he said suddenly. "Here we are, almost at Land's End, and the old Atlantic Madge, will you give me a perfectly honest answer to a question?"
I braced myself.
"Yes."
"Did you stay over here in England because your whole heart is in the Cause?"
"Ye-e-s."
"Your whole heart?"
"Our motives are always mixed, Basil," I said kindly. "It would have been awfully silly to have endured that miserable spring and not have stayed for June and July."
"You get a great many cablegrams from America."
"That," I said, with dignity, "is of course my own affair."
"About the Cause?"
"Not always."
"From a man, of course."
"Yes," I said sweetly, and went back to the hotel.
I broke the news to Poppy about Vivian and she stormed. But suddenly she stopped, with a calculating gleam in her eye.
"He's a fool to follow me," she said, "but he has gleams of intelligence, Madge. I shall put the T. C. matter up to him!"
So I sent Viv a note that night. You see one must manage Poppy--
"Dear Viv: She knows and the worst is over. Breakfast early and keep out of the way until noon. She is going to work, and anyhow, it will make her curious. If you have a good retort to the T. C. business, don't give it at once. It would humiliate her. Then, when you've given it to her, if she's pleased, you can ask he"r the other. She's silly about you, Viv, but she won't acknowledge it to herself.
Madge.
P. S. Don't make any stipulation about Suffrage, but make her promise to let you do and think as you like. Be sure. Get her to write it, if you can. I happen to know that if she marries you, she hopes you'll take alternate Sundays with her at the Monu ment, so she can speak at Camberwell.
M."
Poppy came down to breakfast in her best morning frock, looking lovely, and sat with her profile to the room. I thought she watched the door, too, and she took only an egg, although she usually has a kipper also.
But neither of the men showed up. She loitered over the Times, but at last she got her sketching things, and we went out to the cliff head, where there's a bench. It is a long tongue of rock, about twenty feet wide or so, and far below, on each side, the ocean. There was a rough-haired pony out there also, and the three of us were crowded. The pony wanted sugar or something, and kept getting in the way. Poppy sketched, but her heart wasn't in it and at every new halloo from some tourist exploring King Arthur's ruins (The Castle, of course) she looked up expectantly.
At last I caught sight of Basil waving to me from the hotel, and I went back. I left Poppy there alone, pretending to sketch, although it was perfectly clear to every one that the only view she had was of the pony's mangy side. Shortly after, I saw Vivian, in walking tweeds, going along one of the sheep's paths toward her, and looking very handsome and determined.
Basil and I sat on the terrace and "concentrated." It was my idea.
"Will her to take him," I said.
"I am," said Basil, looking at me.
"She's so pretty," said I.
"Lovely!" said Basil.
"And it's such a natural thing," I went on. "He has a lot of character, and he's gentle as well as firm."
"I thank you," said Basil, and bowed.
"I don't believe," I said severely, "that you are concentrating."
The pony had got around behind the bench, and we lost them for a moment. But the little beast moved off just then, and it was like lifting a curtain. Poppy's head was on Vivian's shoulder.
"Good old Viv!" said Basil. "Happy chap!" and sighed.
I met Vivian as I went down to luncheon. He was coming up three stairs at a time, but he stopped and drew me into a
corner.
"All fixed," he said. "You're a trump, Madge. The T. C. did it. She's promised all sorts of things."
"And you?" I demanded. I thought he evaded my eye.
"I?" he said. "Well, I've agreed not to interfere with her career. That's only reasonable."
"And Suffrage?"
"She's going to be less militant," he said. "Of course, her conviction is the same. I want her to stand by her principle. I wouldn't respect her if she didn't."
It didn't quite satisfy me. I knew Poppy. But he was so happy that I said nothing. After all, what could I say? Viv after all had never opposed Suffrage, except in its militant form although I don't believe he had felt the necessity for it. But the trouble was that Poppy was a born militant, a born aggressor. And he had promised her the strength of her convictions!
(I wrote it all to father that afternoon and his cablegram came when I was back in London again and settled.
"No great revolution ever accomplished without bloodshed.")
PART SECOND
WHEN Poppy and Vivian had been married and gone to Brittany, I went back to Daphne's. Daphne was very discouraging about them. I remember her standing by the fire and orating, with her tea cup in her hand.
"There's a loss somewhere bound to be," she said. Daphne is short and stout, and wears her hair short and curled over her head with an iron. "Either Suffrage loses her, or she loses a husband. I've watched it. It doesn't do, Maggie," which is her pet name for me. "A Suffragist as valuable as Poppy should not marry. You remember what Jane Willoughby's husband said to her, that he expected The Cause for his wife to be himself, and that if she'd rather raise votes for women than a family of children she would have to choose at once. When she asked him why she couldn't do both, he went to Africa!"
"Without giving her an answer?"
"Bless the child, there isn't any answer! It isn't wisdom that takes refuge in silence. It's silly, besotted, dumbheaded idiocy."
"Viv isn't an imbecile," I said feebly.
"He's a male," she snapped, and ran her fingers up through her fringe, so that she appeared to stand in a gale of wind.
The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate, and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with a glass roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase con necting. She was most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her first work was going to be his study walls.
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 415