Wayward Winds (19 page)

 34 
Suffragette or Society Belle?

Never in her life had Amanda Rutherford been so busy. Balancing her exciting new social life with ongoing suffragette activities, every day was full from morning till night. Despite the brief awkwardness at the coronation reception, and the occasional annoyance of Geoffrey's presence, she had to admit it was a wonderful time. This is what she had always dreamed her life in London would be.

Even though she had been, as she saw it, deprived of a proper coming out at seventeen, and her family had never been part of the London scene, Amanda knew well enough what it all meant. She had read her Austen and Dickens, her Thackeray and Trollope. There was a surface gaiety to many of the gatherings. But she knew that fathers from throughout England came to London for the season to engage in the serious business of shopping their daughters around in what was rudely referred to as the “marriage market.” She realized well enough that she was being “looked at.”

Amanda was not anxious to marry. But she would play along, relish in the attention, and enjoy the round of concerts, parties, dances, dinner parties, and myriad other social occasions which the London season offered. Generally, if a girl did not get herself married within two or three seasons, she was in danger of being considered a failure altogether. But Amanda was enough of a modernist not
to worry about such conventions. That she had started late did not make her the more anxious, but rather enabled her to take a more modest perspective of her future.

And she had come to admit, there was more to Cousin Martha than first met the eye. In her own way, Amanda admired her for being able to content herself in her marriage to Gifford Rutherford. Not that Amanda would ever be content with a man like her father's first cousin. But Martha managed to find purpose and meaning in her life in spite of it, and Amanda respected her for it.

Emmeline Pankhurst couldn't tolerate such women, and railed against exactly Martha's kind for contributing to the male domination of society.

Yet Amanda could not despise Cousin Martha. Maybe every woman couldn't fight for equality in the same way. Maybe what Cousin Martha had said to her on their first meeting was true, that there were different ways to exert one's influence, and she had chosen hers.

Amanda's supply of funds continued slowly to dwindle. She said nothing about it. Yet Martha seemed to understand and did what she could to make things easier for her.

There could not help but be awkwardness, of course, being involved with both Ramsay and Geoffrey, especially when both appeared at many of the same places. But as much as she would have loved to, Amanda could not ignore Geoffrey. The simple fact was, he was her ticket to society.

All the while, Amanda had not paused to reflect deeply concerning just what she really wanted, and why. Sooner or later she would no doubt be forced to choose between being a suffragette or a young lady of society. For the present, even Amanda herself did not understand what were her innermost driving passions.

So much of what she had become involved with had initially been a means to get away from home and express her individuality and independence. She
thought
she wanted to change the world and make it a better place. But did the suffragette cause really drive her as it did the Pankhursts? Amanda had not really stopped to ask.

She
thought
she wanted to be part of society. But did she really want to marry? Or did her motives spring merely from desiring to be the center of attention in what, on the surface at least, seemed
an exciting and romantic world? Neither was this a query she had considered.

To ask herself such questions would have plunged Amanda into more self-analysis than she was prepared for. Thus she went along—her motives and activities and hopes filled with more contradictions than logic—doing what came to her to do, all the while trying to convince herself that it was the fun and fulfilling and independent life she had always longed for.

Meanwhile, by late 1911 it became apparent that the slippery Mr. Asquith had managed again to evade bringing the House of Commons to a resolution on the matter of women's suffrage. Several meetings were held between parliamentary leaders and the Pankhursts, without result.

One afternoon following such a meeting Emmeline was obviously upset. She calmed long enough as they sat down for afternoon tea to give a brief prayer of thanks, and to ask God's blessing on their activities. As Amanda bowed her head and listened, the curious fact did not strike her that the Pankhursts' religion did not grate on her like that of her father.

“Sylvia, would you pour?” said Emmeline as she passed the plate of breads to Christabel. The two daughters always took seats on either side of their mother, whether at the tea table, in a cab, or when standing before a crowd of women. Christabel spoke as she passed the plate on to Amanda.

“So what did you mean, Mother,” she said, “when you came in a while ago, that today was the last straw?”

“I have tried to be patient,” replied Emmeline, sipping at her tea but obviously still agitated. “We have tried to work through the system of government. But the House of Commons is intractable. It became obvious to me at today's meeting that they have no intention of granting us the vote. There is talk, talk, talk, all very soothing and placating. They pretend to be in agreement, but nothing is ever done.”

“So what do you mean by the last straw?” asked Amanda.

“Just this—that it is time to take matters into our own hands. It is time to initiate our own tactics to show this country and its leaders that we will not be put off so easily.”

As she listened to her mother speak, Christabel's eyes were alight. “What are we going to do, Mother?” she asked.

“We will begin with London's windows,” replied Mrs. Pankhurst. “I am certain
that
will get Parliament's attention!”

And indeed, as soon as they could arrange it, a window-smashing raid was led against the home office, the war office, the foreign office, and at least a dozen other governmental buildings and men's clubs. Carrying rocks and hammers in their bags and under their coats, hundreds of women shattered thousands of windows. Over two hundred women were arrested, and a hundred and fifty sent to prison for varying sentences of up to a month.

Emmeline and Sylvia and Christabel thought nothing now of being arrested. Christabel, in fact, was slowly coming to replace her mother as the leader of the militant arm of the movement. At night, carloads of women drove out of the city to replenish their stores of rocks. Nor was jail a deterrent. For in prison the women could go on hunger strikes, which gained as much publicity for their cause as did riots, marches, and speeches.

Meanwhile, their magazine
Votes for Women
occupied more and more time and advocated more outlandish tactics. Telephone wires were cut, jam and tar were spread in mailboxes of notables who opposed them. Some fires in London and a few small bombs were attributed to the suffragettes.

By now all London was in an uproar, and public opinion was sharply divided.

Amanda, however, was no longer interested in being in jail or going on a hunger strike. And she certainly wasn't about to conceal a knife or hatchet in her coat at a rally! Even going to a ball on Cousin Geoffrey's arm was better than throwing a bomb, setting a fire, starving herself, or being arrested. Gradually it became more and more difficult for Amanda to identify herself with the Pankhursts and all they stood for.

 35 
The Chest

As Amanda walked the tightrope between remaining a suffragette while living the life of a society debutante, and not really sure how much of either world she even wanted to be part of, her brother and sister were involved in an adventure of their own.

High in the garret portion of one wing of Heathersleigh Hall, still without benefit of electricity, George led Catharine, with an oil lantern in his hand, through a darkened and narrow passageway, then down a flight of stairs.

“Are you still frightened in here,” said George as they went, “like you were the first time I showed it to you?”

“I wasn't afraid.”

“You were too!” chided George playfully. “Don't you remember—you were worried about ghosts.”

“Amanda put that into my head, but I knew there weren't any. And later, I only asked you about ghosts to make it more interesting for you so that you would
think
I was afraid.”

“I must admit that to be an original explanation!”

“But what I have always been curious about,” said Catharine, changing the subject, “is why all these funny passageways were built in the first place.”

“That's why I brought you here today,” said George. “I think I have finally discovered something to shed some light on that mystery.”

“Really? George, that's great . . . what!”

“Well, maybe not
why
 . . . but possibly
who
. And that might be the first step toward unraveling the why as well.”

George led the way through various narrow passageways until they came at length to the storeroom on the second floor of the north wing from which he had first discovered the hidden labyrinth within the walls of the Hall. Up the narrow stairs through the floor of the room George climbed. He extinguished the lantern and set it on the floor, then reached down to lend Catharine a steadying hand as she climbed up. A minute later they were both in the room where only two weeks ago George and his father had completed the installation of an overhead light.

“Now we'll be able to see what we're doing,” said George. “Isn't the light great?”

“But why does a storage room need electricity?”

“Father and I want to have current in every room of the Hall. And we almost have. But I want to show you what's in this old chest.”

“Why did we come through the garret instead of just walking up the stairs and down the hall?” asked Catharine.

“It just seemed more fitting, since we were going to try to unravel the mystery.”

“George, were you
trying
to see if you could frighten me!”

“I would never do that,” he replied with a grin. “I was just getting us into the right frame of mind—you know, Sherlock Holmes and all that. Although now that you put the idea in my head, I'll have to see what kind of spookiness I might think up.”

“It won't work. I'm too old for all that.”

“What about some dark and stormy night, with the wind howling and the lightning flashing . . .”

“There's nothing spooky about that.”

“Ah, but what if right at the stroke of midnight, you heard a wailing scream from somewhere behind the walls of your room?”

“You wouldn't dare!” laughed Catharine. Even as she tried to make light of it, however, her expression gave away the merest hint of anxiety that her brother might be serious.

“
Me
 . . . dare what?” replied George innocently. “I'm sure if something like that happened, I would be asleep in my bed. I was only asking what you would do in such a case?”

“Well it's not going to happen, because if it did, you would know that something worse just might come
your
way a few nights later . . . so there!”

George smiled shrewdly. Catharine returned the look with a flash of her grey eyes. The challenge had been laid down, and both knew it.

“What I brought you here to show you was this,” said George, now dragging the wooden container into the center of the room. “That's how I first discovered the stairway beneath the floorboards. I got curious about this chest—what was I, probably about sixteen at the time—and when I pulled it out, the boards underneath it were loose. I had been prowling around and exploring for years. But that's when I discovered how this room connected with the library, the garret, and the tower.”

“How does all that tell us who was behind it?” asked his sister.

“It's in the chest,” rejoined George. “The instant I found it I was curious what was inside it. But as soon as I discovered the passageway under the stairs, I forgot all about it. It was just full of papers anyway. But then when Father and I were working in here a week or two ago, I saw it still sitting there against the wall and was reminded of my earlier curiosity. And I thought to myself, ‘What if there's something in those papers that might be interesting?'”

“Was there?”

“It's interesting to me. I'll show you. Father and I've been so busy with the wiring and putting in fixtures that I didn't get a chance to come back and dig into it until this morning . . .”

George paused and opened the lid of the chest.

“—that's when I found this.”