three women with dusty shoes and brown faces came along under the downs to bignor village. they wore rough brown skirts, white blouses, and straw hats, and each carried a knapsack strapped over her shoulder.
now bignor is particularly and remotely beautiful, especially when you have left the flat country behind you and climbed up to the church by the winding lanes. it is pure country, almost uninvaded by modernity, and so old in the midst of its perennial youth that you might hardly wonder at meeting a roman cohort on the march, or a bevy of bronze-haired british girls laughing and singing between the hedgerows. the village shop with its timber and thatch might be a wood-cut from a romance. the downs rise up against the blue, and their solemn green slopes, over which the roman highway climbs, seem to accentuate the sense of silence and of mystery. great beech woods shut in steep, secret meadows. there are lush valleys where the grass grows tall, and flowers dream in the sunlight.
the three women came to bignor church, and camped out in the churchyard to make their midday meal. eve carfax was one of them, brown, bright-eyed, with a red mouth that smiled mysteriously at beauty. next to her sat joan gaunt, lean, strenuous, with roman nose, and abrupt sharp-edged mouth. her wrists and hands were big-boned and thin. the line of her blouse and skirt showed hardly a curve. she wore square-toed oxford shoes, and very thick brown stockings. lizzie straker sat a little apart, restless even in repose, a pinched frown set permanently between her eyebrows, her assertive chin uptilted. she was the eloquent splutterer, a slim, mercurial woman with prominent blue eyes and a lax mouth, who protruded her lips when she spoke, and whose voice was a challenge.
eve had wanted to turn aside to see the remains of the roman villa, but her companions had dropped scorn on the suggestion.
“wasting time on a few old bits of tesselated pavement! what have we got to do with the romans? it’s the present that matters!”
eve had suggested that one might learn something, even from the romans, and the glitter of fun in her eyes had set lizzie straker declaiming.
“what tosh! and you call yourself an artist, and yet admire the romans. don’t you know that artists were slaves at rome? don’t ask me to consider any society that subsisted on slavery. it’s dead; doesn’t come into one’s line of vision. i call archæology the most abominable dilettante rot that was ever invented to make some old gentlemen bigger bores than their neighbours.”
and so she had spluttered on all the way to bignor church, working her voluble mouth, and punching the air with a small brown fist. the eloquence was still in her when she opened her packet of sandwiches, and her energy divided itself between declamation and disposing of mouthfuls of bread and ham.
eve sat looking countrywards, thinking, “oh, do be quiet!” she wanted to lose herself in the beauty of the landscape, and she was in a mood to be delighted by a fern growing in a wall, or by the way the fresh green of a tree caught the sunlight. for the moment her spirit escaped and climbed up among the branches of an old yew, and fluttered there in the sparkling gloom, while lizzie straker kept up her caterwauling below.
they had been on the open road for a fortnight, and lizzie straker still had the autumn tints of a black eye that an apple thrown in a sussex village had given her. they had been hustled and chased on two occasions, joan gaunt coming in for most of the eggs and flour, perhaps because of her fierce leathery face and her defiant manner. eve had recollections of cleaning herself in a station waiting-room, while a sergeant and two constables guarded the door. and, strange to say, some of her sympathies had been with the crowd.
these three women had tramped and suffered together, yet each day only emphasised eve’s discovery that she was failing to tone with her companions. they had begun by boring her, and they were beginning to exasperate her, rousing a spirit of antagonism that was ready to criticise them without mercy. never in her life had eve been in the presence of two such masses of ferocious prejudice. their attitude towards the country was in complete contrast to hers. they were two blind fanatics on a pilgrimage, while eve was a wayfarer whose eyes and ears and nostrils were open to nature. joan gaunt and lizzie straker lived for words, bundles of phrases, arguments, assertions, accusations. they were two polemical pamphlets on legs sent out walking over god’s green earth.
eve noticed that their senses were less alive than hers, and that they were absurdly unobservant. perhaps they had passed a cottage garden full of wallflowers, blood red and gold, and eve had asked, “did you smell them?”
“smell what?”
“the flowers.”
“what flowers?”
“the wallflowers in that garden.”
they had neither seen nor smelt anything, and they had looked at her as though she were a sentimental trifler.
on another occasion, an orchard in bloom, filling a green hollow between two woods, had made eve stand gazing.
“isn’t that perfect?”
lizzie straker saw nothing but what her mad prejudices were allowing her to see.
“i should like to come along with an axe and chop down all those trees. it would make quite a good protest.”
eve had felt satirical.
“why shouldn’t we blow up chanctonbury ring?”
and they had taken her seriously.
“we should want such a lot of dynamite.”
“but it’s an idea, quite an idea.”
at the small town of battle they had thirsted to blow up the great abbey gateway, while eve was letting her eyes take in all the grey beauty of the stonework warmed by the evening sunlight. these two women had “a mad” against property. protest by violence was becoming an obsession with them. they were like hostile troops marching through a rich and hated land.
now, from the very first day in the country, a change had come over eve. a crust of hardness seemed to have fallen from her, and once more she had felt herself to be the possessor of an impressionable and glowing body, whose skin and senses responded to the sunlight, the winds, the colours and the scent of the earth. she no longer felt like a little pricking thorn in the big body of life. she belonged to the earth. she was in the apple blossom and in the red flare of a bed of tulips. self was no longer dissevered from the all-consciousness of the life round her. the tenderness came back to her, all those mysterious, elusive and exultant moods that came she knew not whence and went she knew not whither. she had ceased to be a pathological specimen corked up in a bottle, and had become part of the colour and the smell, the joy and the pathos of things vital.
in the fields eve saw lambs at play, skipping absurdly, butting each other. birds were singing and making love, and the bees were busy in the furze. a sense of the immensity, of the exultant rush of life, possessed her. and this pilgrimage of theirs, all this spouting and declaiming, this lean-necked heroism, seemed futile and rather ridiculous. was one to tell nature that she must stand aside, and order youth not to look into the eyes of youth? it might serve for the few. they were like children making castles and dykes and rivulets on the sands, within the reach of the sea. eve imagined that nature must be amused, but that she would wipe out these eccentricities so soon as they began to bore her. she felt herself in the midst of elemental things; whereas joan gaunt had studied botany in a museum.
that afternoon they marched on to pulborough, and, entering an inn, announced to the landlord that they intended staying for the night. joan gaunt managed the practical side of the pilgrimage. she entered the inn with the air of an officer commanding food and beds in time of war.
“three bedrooms, and a cold supper at nine!”
the landlord was a sussex man, short, stolid, and laconic. he looked at joan gaunt out of staring blue eyes, and asked whether their luggage had been left at the station.
“we have not got any luggage. we are on a walking tour. you can give us our tea in the garden.”
joan gaunt did not hear what the landlord said to his wife, who was cleaning table-silver in a pantry at the end of a long passage. it was terse and unflattering, and included such phrases as, “three tooth brushes and a change of stockings.” “a scrag of mutton without so much as a frill to the bone end.”
the three comrades had tea in the garden, and were studied suspiciously by the landlord’s wife, a comely little woman with bright, brown eyes. the few words that she uttered were addressed to eve.
“a nice may we’re having!”
“splendid.”
and then joan gaunt proceeded to make an implacable enemy of her by telling her to see that the beds were properly aired.
about seven o’clock pulborough discovered that it had been invaded by suffragettes. three women had stationed themselves with their backs to a wall at a place where three roads met, and one of the women—it was lizzie straker—brandished a small flag. pulborough gathered. the news spread somehow even to the outlying cottages. stale eggs are to be found even in the country, and a certain number of stale eggs rushed to attend the meeting.
lizzie straker was the speaker, and the people of pulborough appeared to discover something intensely funny in lizzie straker. her enthusiastic and earnest spluttering tickled them. the more she frowned and punched the air with that brown fist of hers, the more amusing they found her. the executive had not been wise in its choice of an itinerant orator, for lizzie straker lost her temper very quickly on such occasions, and growing venomous, began to say scathing things, things that even a sussex brain can understand.
some of the younger spirits began to jeer.
“do you wonder she be’unt married!”
“can’t she talk! like a kettle a-boiling over!”
“what’s she wanting a vote for?”
“i’ll tell you for why; to have laws made so as all the pretty girls shall be sent off to canada.”
their humour was hardly less crude than lizzie straker’s sneering superiority. and then an egg flew, and broke against the wall behind joan gaunt’s head. the crowd closed in threateningly. the flag was snatched from lizzie straker, and someone threw a dead mouse in joan gaunt’s face.
the retreat to the inn was not dignified. the rest of the eggs followed them, but for some reason or other eve was spared. her two comrades came in for all the honour. the crowd accompanied them to the inn, and found the blue-eyed landlord standing in the doorway.
“chuck ’em out, mister crowhurst!”
“we don’t want the likes of them in pulborough!”
joan gaunt was for pushing her way in, and the landlord gave way. he said a few words to the crowd, shut the door, and followed the suffragettes into the long passage.
“sorry, ladies, but you’ll have to turn out. i can’t keep you. it isn’t safe.”
lizzie straker’s claws were still out.
“but you have got to. you keep a public house. it’s the law!”
a voice chimed in from the end of the passage:
“john, i won’t have those women in my house! no, i won’t; that’s a fact. they’ve got neither sense nor manners.”
“all right, my dear.”
“if i had my way, i’d have them all put in asylums. disgusting fools. i don’t care; let them summon us. i won’t have them in my house.”
joan gaunt tried her roman manner.
“i shall insist on staying. where are the police?”
“that’s right, call for the men.”
“where are the police?”
the landlord grinned.
“can’t say. i’ll take you out the back way, and through the orchard into the fields. it’s getting dark.”
“but we are not going.”
“i shall let the crowd in, ladies, in three minutes. that’s all i have got to say.”
eve ran upstairs and brought down the three knapsacks.
“let’s go,” she said, “we’re causing a lot of bother.”
“that’s the only sensible one of the lot,” said the voice, “and what’s more, she’s worth looking at.”
the crowd was growing restive and noisy. there was the sound of breaking glass. the landlord jerked a thumb in the direction of the front door.
“there you are—they’re getting nasty. you come along with me!”
they went under protest, with the exception of eve, who paused at the end of the passage and spoke to the little woman with the brown eyes.
“i’m sorry. i’ll send some money for the glass. and what do we owe for the tea?”
“three shillings, miss. thank you. and what do you do it for?”
eve laughed.
“oh, well, you see——”
“i wouldn’t go along with those scrags, if i were you. it’s silly!”
the little woman had pluck, for she went out to cajole the crowd, and kept it in play while her husband smuggled the suffragettes through the garden and orchard and away across the fields. they escaped unmolested, and the dusk covered their retreat.
after the landlord had left them they walked about three miles and lost themselves completely and thoroughly in a net-work of by-roads. shelter for the night became a consideration, and it was eve who sighted a haystack in the corner of a field, and who suggested it as a refuge. they scrambled over a gate and found that the haystack had been cut into, and that there was a deep fragrant walled recess sheltered from the road.
lizzie straker began to pull down some loose hay and spread it to make a cushion.
“we must teach those savages a lesson. we ought to set fire to this in the early morning.”
eve was tired of lizzie straker.
“i don’t think that would be sport, burning the thing that has sheltered you.”
the hay was fragrant, but it could not mask the odour that had attached itself to her companions’ clothes. eve had been spared the rotten eggs, but she was made to suffer indirectly, and persuaded to edge away into the corner of the recess. they had had to fly without their supper, and a few dry rock-cakes and some biscuits were all that they had in their knapsacks.
lizzie straker produced a candle-end and a box of matches. it was a windless night, and by the light of the candle the two women examined each other’s scars.
“we might get some of it off with the hay.”
“isn’t it disgusting! and no water to wash in.”
they proceeded to rub each other down, taking turns in holding the candle.
eve had a suggestion to make.
“you will have to get some new blouses at the next town. i shall have to go in and shop for you.”
they glanced at her critically, realising for the first time that she had escaped without any of the marks of martyrdom.
“didn’t you get any?”
“no; you seem to have been the favourites.”
“disgusting savages!”
“the sussex people always were the worst boors in england.”
when they had made some sort of job of their mutual grooming, and had eaten a few rock-cakes and biscuits, joan gaunt unbuttoned her blouse and drew from the inner depths a long white envelope. lizzie straker sidled nearer, still holding the candle. eve had not seen this envelope before.
she stood up and looked down over their shoulders as they sat. joan gaunt had drawn out a sheet of foolscap that was covered with cipher.
lizzie straker pointed an eager finger.
“that’s the place. it’s between horsham and guildford.”
“and there’s no proper caretaker, only a man at the lodge.”
“we can make a blaze of it. we shall hear from galahad at horsham.”
they were human enough to feel a retaliating vindictiveness, after the way they had been pelted at pulborough, and eve, looking down at the paper that joan gaunt held, realised at last that they were incendiaries as well as preachers. she could not read the precious document, but she guessed what it contained.
“is that our black list?”
“yes.”
they did not offer to explain the cipher to her, for she was still something of a probationer. moreover the candle was guttering out, and lizzie straker had to smother it in the grass beside the stack. eve returned to her corner, made a nest, took off her hat, and, turning her knapsack into a pillow, lay down to look at the stars. a long day in the open had made her sleepy, but joan gaunt and lizzie straker were still talking. eve fell asleep, with the vindictive and conspiring murmur of their voices in her ears.
