Numbers of dingy2 streets have been flung about to help him. There is one of these in Bloomsbury, which was originally discovered by a student while looking for the British Museum. It runs a hundred yards in a straight line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his way, and hurries by another route out of the neighbourhood.
The houses are dull, except one, just where it doubles, which is gloomy.
This house is divided into sets of chambers3 and has a new frontage, but it no longer lets well. A few years ago there were two funerals from it within a fortnight, and soon afterward4 another of the tenants5 was found at the foot of the stair with his neck broken. These fatalities7 gave the house a bad name, as such things do in London.
It was here that Andrew's patron, the president, lived.
To the outcast from work to get an object in life is to be born again. Andrew bustled8 to the president's chambers on the Saturday night following the events already described, with his chest well set.
His springy step echoed of wages in the hearts of the unemployed9. Envious10 eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a few days before he had been as the thirteenth person at a dinner-party.
Such a change does society bring about when it empties a chair for the superfluous11 man.
It may be wondered that he felt so sure of himself, for the night had still to decide his claims.
Andrew, however, had thought it all out in his solitary12 lodgings13, and had put fear from him. He felt his failings and allowed for every one of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials were in his pocket. Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make him quite forget self.
It may not be possible to serve both God and mammon, but since Adam the world has been at it. We ought to know by this time.
The Society for Doing Without was as immoral14 as it certainly was illegal. The president's motives15 were not more disinterested16 than his actions were defensible. He even deserved punishment.
All these things may be. The great social question is not to be solved in a day. It never will be solved if those who take it by the beard are not given an unbiassed hearing.
Those were the young Scotchman's views when the president opened the door to him, and what he saw and heard that night strengthened them.
It was characteristic of Andrew's host that at such a time he could put himself in the young man's place.
He took his hand and looked him in the face more like a physician than a mere18 acquaintance. Then he drew him aside into an empty room.
"Let me be the first to congratulate you," he said; "you are admitted."
Andrew took a long breath, and the president considerately turned away his head until the young probationer had regained19 his composure. Then he proceeded:
"The society only asks from its probationers the faith which it has in them. They take no oath. We speak in deeds. The Brotherhood20 do not recognise the possibility of treachery; but they are prepared to cope with it if it comes. Better far, Andrew Riach, to be in your grave, dead and rotten and forgotten, than a traitor21 to the cause."
The president's voice trembled with solemnity.
He stretched forth22 his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the young man's neck.
Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
"You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage23 from one of the noblest women in the land. It will be your part to listen. To-night you will both hear and see strange things. Say nothing. Evince no surprise. Some members are irritable24. Come!"
Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed25 on the probationer's neck. There seemed to be something about it that he liked.
It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.
Without the president's presence they had no character.
The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the face.
The tenant6 might have been a medical student who knew that it was not worth while to unpack26 his boxes.
The only ornament27 on the walls was an elaborate sketch28 by a member, showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises29 of the Young Men's Christian30 Association.
There were a dozen men in the room, including the president of the Birmingham branch association and two members who had just returned from a visit to Edinburgh. These latter had already submitted their report.
The president introduced Andrew to the committee, but not the committee to him. Several of them he recognized from the portraits in the shop windows.
They stood or sat in groups looking over a probationer's thesis. It consisted of diagrams of machinery31.
Andrew did not see the sketches32, though they were handed round separately for inspection33, but he listened eagerly to the president's explanations.
"The first," said the president, "is a beautiful little instrument worked by steam. Having placed his head on the velvet34 cushion D, the subject can confidently await results.
"No. 2 is the same model on a larger scale.
"As yet 3 can be of little use to us. It includes a room 13 feet by 11. X is the windows and other apertures35; and these being closed up and the subjects admitted, all that remains36 to be done is to lock the door from the outside and turn on the gas. E, F, and K are couches, and L is a square inch of glass through which results may be noted37.
"The speciality of 4, which is called the 'water cure,' is that it is only workable on water. It is generally admitted that release by drowning is the pleasantest of all deaths; and, indeed, 4, speaking roughly, is a boat with a hole in the bottom. It is so simple that a child could work it. C is the plug.
"No. 5 is an intricate instrument. The advantage claimed for it is that it enables a large number of persons to leave together."
While the thesis was under discussion, the attendance was increased by a few members specially38 interested in the question of female suffrage. Andrew observed that several of these wrote something on a piece of paper which lay on the table with a pencil beside it, before taking their seats.
He stretched himself in the direction of this paper, but subsided39 as he caught the eyes of two of the company riveted40 on his neck.
From that time until he left the rooms one member or other was staring at his neck. Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece but could see nothing wrong.
The paper on the table merely contained such jottings as these:—
"Robert Buchanan has written another play."
"Schnadhörst is in town."
"Ashmead Bartlett walks in Temple Gardens 3 to 4."
"Talmage. Address, Midland Hotel."
"Andrew Lang (?)"
Andrew was a good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke43 for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor44 who had to keep the door until the meeting closed.
Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender45 a familiarity of reference to eminent46 persons, and Andrew had in his time struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his ninepins.
To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an argument was another matter.
It was with no ordinary mingling47 of respect with curiosity that he stood up with the others to greet Mrs. Fawcett as the president led her into the room. The young man's face, as he looked upon her for the first time, was the best book this remarkable48 woman ever wrote.
The proceedings49 were necessarily quiet, and the president had introduced their guest to the meeting without Andrew's hearing a word.
He was far away in a snow-swept University quadrangle on a windy night, when Mrs. Fawcett rose to her feet.
Some one flung open the window, for the place was close, and immediately the skirl of a bagpiper50 broke the silence.
It might have been the devil that rushed into the room.
Still Andrew dreamed on.
The guest paused.
The members looked at each other, and the president nodded to one of them.
He left the room, and about two minutes afterwards the music suddenly ceased.
Andrew woke with a start in time to see him return, write two words in the members' book, and resume his seat. Mrs. Fawcett then began.
"I have before me," she said, turning over the leaves of a bulky manuscript, "a great deal of matter bearing on the question of woman's rights, which at such a meeting as this may be considered read. It is mainly historical, and while I am prepared to meet with hostile criticism from the society, I assume that the progress our agitation51 has made, with its disappointments, its trials, and its triumphs, has been followed more or less carefully by you all.
"Nor shall I, after the manner of speakers on such an occasion, pay you the doubtful compliment of fulsomely52 extolling53 your aims before your face.
"I come at once to the question of woman's rights in so far as the society can affect them, and I ask of you a consideration of my case with as little prejudice as men can be expected to approach it.
"In the constitution of the society, as it has been explained to me, I notice chiefly two things which would have filled me with indignation twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of our ambition now.
"The first is a sin of omission54, the second one of commission, and the latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of course.
"I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on female candidature.
"As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders55 that such a veto in black and white was necessary. When they drew up the rules of membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper; it was forgotten. We owe our eligibility56 to many other offices (generally disputed at law) to the same accident. In short, the unwritten law of the argumentum ad crinolinam puts us to the side."
Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh, Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged57 physical limitations.
She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her over beaten ground.
So far the members had given her the courteous58 non-attention which thoughtful introductory remarks can always claim. It was when she reached her second head that they fastened upon her words.
Then Andrew had seen no sharper audience since he was one of a Scotch17 congregation on the scent59 of a heretic.
"At a full meeting of committee," said Mrs. Fawcett, with a ring of bitterness in her voice, "you passed a law that women should not enjoy the advantages of the association. Be they ever so eminent, their sex deprives them of your care. You take up the case of a petty maker60 of books because his tea-leaf solutions weary you, and you put a stop to him with an enthusiasm worthy61 of a nobler object.
"But the woman is left to decay.
"This society at its noblest was instituted for taking strong means to prevent men's slipping down the ladder it has been such a toil62 to them to mount, but the women who have climbed as high as they can fall from rung to rung.
"There are female nuisances as well as male; I presume no one here will gainsay63 me that. But you do not know them officially. The politicians who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude64, but you ignore their complements65 in the softer sex.
"Yet you call yourselves a society for suppressing excrescences! Your president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters from 'A British Matron' are of no account.
"I do not need to be told how Dr. Smith, the fashionable physician, was precipitated66 down that area the other day; but what I do ask is, why should he be taken and all the lady doctors left?
"Their degrees are as good as his. You are too 'manly,' you say, to arrest their course. Is injustice67 manliness68? We have another name for it. We say you want the pluck.
"I suppose every one of you has been reading a very able address recently delivered at the meeting of the Social Science Congress. I refer to my friend Mrs. Kendal's paper on the moral aspect of the drama in this country.
"It is a powerful indictment69 of the rank and file other professional brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor into social snobbishness70 and professional clap-trap.
"I do not know how the paper affected71 you. But since reading it I have asked in despair, how can this gifted lady continue to pick her way between the snares72 with which the stage is beset73?
"Is it possible that the time may come when she will advertise by photographs and beg from reporters the 'pars74' she now so scathingly criticises? Nay75, when I look upon the drop scene at the St. James's Theatre, I ask myself if the deterioration76 has not already set in.
"Gentlemen, is this a matter of indifference77 to you? But why do I ask? Has not Mrs. Lynn Linton another article in the new 'Nineteenth Century' that makes her worthy your attention? They are women, and the sex is outside your sphere."
It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mrs. Fawcett finished her address, and the society had adopted the good old rule of getting to bed betimes. Thus it was afterwards that Andrew learned how long and carefully the society had already considered the advisability of giving women equal rights with men.
As he was leaving the chambers the president slipped something into his hand. He held it there until he reached his room.
On the way a man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then shuffled78 off. He was muffled79 up, but Andrew wondered if he had not seen him at the meeting.
As soon as he reached home he unfolded the scrap81 of paper that had been pushed into his hand. It merely contained these words—
"Cover up your neck."
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1
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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4
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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fatalities
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| n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运 | |
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bustled
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| 闹哄哄地忙乱，奔忙( bustle的过去式和过去分词 )； 催促 | |
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9
unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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12
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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13
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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17
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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18
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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24
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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26
unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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28
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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29
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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33
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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34
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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apertures
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| n.孔( aperture的名词复数 )；隙缝；（照相机的）光圈；孔径 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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clement
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| adj.仁慈的；温和的 | |
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42
query
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| n.疑问，问号，质问；vt.询问，表示怀疑 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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44
janitor
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| n.看门人，管门人 | |
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engender
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| v.产生，引起 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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47
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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49
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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50
bagpiper
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| n.吹风笛的人，风笛手 | |
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51
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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52
fulsomely
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53
extolling
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| v.赞美( extoll的现在分词 )；赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的现在分词 ) | |
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54
omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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55
founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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56
eligibility
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| n.合格，资格 | |
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57
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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58
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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59
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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60
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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61
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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62
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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63
gainsay
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| v.否认，反驳 | |
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64
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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65
complements
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| 补充( complement的名词复数 )； 补足语； 补充物； 补集（数） | |
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66
precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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67
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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68
manliness
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| 刚毅 | |
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69
indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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70
snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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71
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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72
snares
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| n.陷阱( snare的名词复数 )；圈套；诱人遭受失败（丢脸、损失等）的东西；诱惑物v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的第三人称单数 ) | |
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73
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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74
pars
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| n.部，部分；平均( par的名词复数 )；平价；同等；（高尔夫球中的）标准杆数 | |
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75
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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76
deterioration
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| n.退化；恶化；变坏 | |
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77
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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78
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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79
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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80
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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81
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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