Chapter 23. The Blue City

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_ CHAPTER XXIII. THE BLUE CITY

In the following month, on a Saturday afternoon, Audrey, Miss Ingate, and Jane Foley were seated at an open-air cafe in the Blue City.

The Blue City, now no more, was, as may be remembered, Birmingham's reply to the White City of London, and the imitative White City of Manchester. Birmingham, in that year, was not imitative, and, with its chemical knowledge, it had discovered that certain shades of blue would resist the effects of smoke far more successfully than any shade of white. And experience even showed that these shades of blue were improved, made more delicate and romantic, by smoke. The total impression of the show--which it need hardly be said was situated in the polite Edgbaston district--was ethereal, especially when its minarets and towers, all in accordance with the taste of the period, were beheld from a distance. Nor was the exhibition entirely devoted to pleasure. It had a moral object, and that object was to demonstrate the progress of civilisation in our islands. Its official title, indeed, was "The National Progress Exhibition," but the citizens of Birmingham and the vicinity never called it anything but the Blue City.

On that Saturday afternoon a Cabinet Minister historically hostile to the idols of Birmingham was about to address a mass meeting in the Imperial Hall of the Exhibition, which held seven thousand people, in order to prove to Birmingham that the Government of which he was a member had done far more for national progress than any other Government had done for national progress in the same length of time. The presence of the Cabinet Minister accounted for the presence of Jane Foley; the presence of Jane Foley accounted for the presence of Audrey; and the presence of Audrey accounted for the presence of Miss Ingate.

Although she was one of the chief organisers of victory, and perhaps--next to Rosamund and the family trio whose Christian names were three sweet symphonies--the principal asset of the Suffragette Union, Jane Foley had not taken an active part in the Union's arrangements for suitably welcoming the Cabinet Minister; partly because of her lameness, partly because she was writing a book, and partly for secret reasons which it would be unfair to divulge. Nearly at the last moment, however, in consequence of news that all was not well in the Midlands, she had been sent to Birmingham, and, after evading the watch of the police, she had arrived on the previous day in Audrey's motor-car, which at that moment was waiting in the automobile park outside the principal gates of the Blue City.

The motor-car had been chosen as a means of transit for the reason that the railway stations were being watched for notorious suffragettes by members of a police force whose reputations were at stake. Audrey owed her possession of a motor-car to the fact that the Union officials had seemed both startled and grieved when, in response to questions, she admitted that she had no car. It was communicated to her that members of the Union as rich as she reputedly was were expected to own cars for the general good. Audrey thereupon took measures to own a car. Having seen in many newspapers an advertisement in which a firm of middlemen implored the public thus: "Let us run your car for you. Let us take all the worry and responsibility," she interviewed the firm, and by writing out a cheque disembarrassed herself at a stroke of every anxiety incident to defective magnetos, bad petrol, bad rubber, punctures, driving licences, bursts, collisions, damages, and human chauffeurs. She had all the satisfactions of owning a car without any of the cares. One of the evidences of progress in the Blue City was an exhibit of this very firm of middlemen.

From the pale blue tripod table at which sat the three women could be plainly seen the vast Imperial Hall, flanked on one side by the great American Dragon Slide, a side-show loudly demonstrating progress, and on the other by the unique Joy Wheel side-show. At the doorway of the latter a man was bawling proofs of progress through a megaphone.

Immense crowds had been gathering in the Imperial Hall, and the lines of political enthusiasts bound thither were now thinning. The Blue City was full of rumours, as that the Cabinet Minister was too afraid to come, as that he had been smuggled to the hall inside a tea-chest, and as that he had walked openly and unchallenged through the whole Exhibition. It was no rumour, but a sure fact, that two women had been caught hiding on the roof of the Imperial Hall, under natural shelters formed by the beams and boarding supporting the pediment of the eastern facade, and that they were ammunitioned with flags and leaflets and a silk ladder, and had made a hole in the roof exactly over the platform. These two women had been seen in charge of policemen at the Exhibition police-station. It was understood by many that they were the last hope of militancy that afternoon; many others, on the contrary, were convinced that they had been simply a feint.

"Well," said Miss Ingate suddenly, glancing up at the Imperial clock, "I think I shall move outside and sit in the car. I think that'll be the best place for me. I said that night in Paris that I'd get my arm broken, but I've changed my mind about that." She rose.

"Winnie," protested Audrey, "aren't you going to see it out?"

"No," said Miss Ingate.

"Are you afraid?"

"I don't know that I'm afraid. I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street, and it was smashed to pieces. But I don't want to go to prison. Really, I don't _want_ to. If me going to prison would bring the Vote a single year nearer, I should say: 'Let it wait a year.' If me not going to prison meant no Vote for ever and ever, I should say: 'Well, struggle on without the Vote.' I've no objection to other people going to prison, if it suits them, but it wouldn't suit me. I know it wouldn't. So I shall go outside and sit in the car. If you don't come, I shall know what's happened, and you needn't worry about me."

The dame duly departed, her lips and eyes equally ironic about her own prudence and about the rashness of others.

"Let's have some more lemonade--shall we?" said Jane Foley.

"Oh, let's!" agreed Audrey, with rapture. "And more sponge-cake, too! You do look lovely like that!"

"Do I?"

Jane Foley had her profuse hair tightly bound round her head and powdered grey. It was very advisable for her to be disguised, and her bright hair was usually the chief symptom of her in those disturbances which so harassed the police. She now had the appearance of a neat old lady kept miraculously young by a pure and cheerful nature. Audrey, with a plain blue frock and hat which had cost more than Jane Foley would spend on clothes in twelve months, had a face dazzling by its ingenuous excitement and expectation. Her little nose was extraordinarily pert; her forehead superb; and all her gestures had the same vivacious charm as was in her eyes. The white-aproned, streamered girl who took the order for lemonade and sponge-cakes to a covered bar ornamented by advertisements of whisky, determined to adopt a composite of the styles of both the customers on her next ceremonious Sunday. And a large proportion of the other sippers and nibblers and of the endless promenading crowds regarded the pair with pleasure and curiosity, never suspecting that one of them was the most dangerous woman in England.

The new refreshments, which had been delayed by reason of an altercation between the waitress and three extreme youths at a neighbouring table, at last arrived, and were plopped smartly down between Audrey and Miss Foley. Having received half a sovereign from Audrey, the girl returned to the bar for change. "None o' your sauce!" she threw out, as she passed the youths, who had apparently discovered new arguments in support of their case. Audrey was fired by the vigorous independence of the girl against three males.

"I don't care if we are caught!" she murmured low, looking for the future through the pellucid tumbler. She added, however: "But if we are, I shall pay my own fine. You know I promised that to Miss Ingate."

"That's all right, so long as you don't pay mine, my dear," said Jane Foley with an affectionate smile.

"Jenny!" Audrey protested, full of heroine-worship. "How could you think I would ever do such a mean thing!"

There came a dull, vague, voluminous sound from the direction of the Imperial Hall. It lasted for quite a number of seconds.

"He's beginning," said Jane Foley. "I do feel sorry for him."

"Are we to start now?" Audrey asked deferentially.

"Oh, no!" Jane laughed. "The great thing is to let them think everything's all right. And then, when they're getting careless, let go at them full bang with a beautiful surprise. There'll be a chance of getting away like that. I believe there are a hundred and fifty stewards in the meeting, and they'll every one be quite useless."

At intervals a muffled roar issued from the Imperial Hall, despite the fact that the windows were closely shut.

In due time Jane Foley quietly rose from the table, and Audrey did likewise. All around them stretched the imposing blue architecture of the Exhibition, forming vistas that ended dimly either in the smoke of Birmingham or the rustic haze of Worcestershire. And, although the Imperial Hall was crammed, every vista was thickly powdered with pleasure-seekers and probably pleasure-finders. Bands played. Flags waved. Brass glinted. Even the sun feebly shone at intervals through the eternal canopy of soot. It was a great day in the annals of the Blue City and of Liberalism.

And Jane Foley and Audrey turned their backs upon all that, and--Jane concealing her limp as much as possible--sauntered with affected nonchalance towards the precincts of the Joy Wheel enclosure. Audrey was inexpressibly uplifted. She felt as if she had stepped straight into romance. And she was right--she had stepped into the most vivid romance of the modern age, into a world of disguises, flights, pursuits, chicane, inconceivable adventures, ideals, martyrs and conquerors, which only the Renaissance or the twenty-first century could appreciate.

"Lend me that, will you?" said Jane persuasively to the man with the megaphone at the entrance to the enclosure.

He was, quite properly, a very loud man, with a loud thick voice, a loud purple face, and a loud grey suit. To Audrey's astonishment, he smiled and winked, and gave up the megaphone at once.

Audrey paid sixpence at the turnstile, admittance for two persons, and they were within the temple, which had a roof like an umbrella over the central, revolving portion of it, but which was somewhat open to the skies around the rim. There were two concentric enclosing walls, the inner one was unscalable, and the outer one about five feet six inches high. A second loud man was calling out: "Couples please. Ladies _and_ gentlemen. Couples if _you_ please." Obediently, numbers of the crowd disposed themselves in pairs in the attitudes of close affection on the circling floor which had just come to rest, while the remainder of the numerous gathering gazed upon them with sarcastic ecstasy. Then the wheel began slowly to turn, and girls to shriek in the plenitude of happiness. And progress was proved geometrically.

Jane, bearing the megaphone, slipped by an aperture into the space between the two walls, and Audrey followed. Nobody gave attention to them except the second loud man, who winked the wink of knowledge. The fact was that both the loud men, being unalterable Tories, had been very willing to connive at Jane Foley's scheme for the affliction of a Radical Minister.

The two girls over the wall had an excellent and appetising view of the upper part of the side of the Imperial Hall, and of its high windows, the nearest of which was scarcely thirty feet away.

"Hold this, will you?" said Jane, handing the megaphone to Audrey.

Jane drew from its concealment in her dress a small piece of iron to which was attached a coloured streamer bearing certain words. She threw, with a strong movement of the left arm, because she was left-handed. She had practised throwing; throwing was one of her several specialties. The bit of iron, trailing its motto like a comet its tail, flew across space and plumped into the window with a pleasing crash and disappeared, having triumphed over uncounted police on the outskirts and a hundred and fifty stewards within. A roar from the interior of the hall supervened, and varied cries.

"Give me the meg," said Jane gently.

The next instant she was shouting through the megaphone, an instrument which she had seriously studied:

"Votes for women. Why do you torture women? Votes for women. Why do you torture women?"

The uproar increased and subsided. A masterful voice resounded within the interior. Many people rushed out of the hall. And there was a great scurry of important and puzzled feet within a radius of a score of yards.

"I think I'll try the next window," said Jane, handing over the megaphone. "You shout while I throw."

Audrey's heart was violently beating. She took the megaphone and put it to her lips, but no sound would come. Then, as though it were breaking through an obstacle, the sound shot forth, and to Audrey it was a gigantic voice that functioned quite independently of her will. Tremendously excited by the noise, she bawled louder and still louder.

"I've missed," said Jane calmly in her ear. "That's enough, I think. Come along."

"But they can't possibly see us," said Audrey, breathless, lowering the instrument.

"Come along, dear," Jane Foley insisted.

People with open mouths were crowding at the aperture of the inner wall, but, Jane going first, both girls pushed safely through the throng. The wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and Audrey were the authoresses of the pother.

Jane still leading, they made for the exit. But the first loud man rushed chivalrously in.

"Perlice!" he cried. "Two bobbies a-coming."

"Here!" said the second loud man. "Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They'll never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back." He jumped on to the wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in, and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran in.

"That's them," said the rosette. "I saw her with the grey hair from the gallery."

The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was equally floored.

As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane Foley and clutching at Jane Foley's skirts with her hands behind her--the locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the law--she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning. She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Madame Piriac's prophecy. She was ready to wish the past year annihilated and herself back once more in parental captivity at Moze, the slave of an unalterable routine imposed by her father, without responsibility, without initiative and without joy. And she lived again through the scenes in which she had smiled at the customs official, fibbed to Rosamund, taken the wounded Musa home in the taxi, spoken privily with the ageing yacht-owner, and laughed at the drowned detective in the area of the palace in Paget Gardens.

Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at length to a second view of the sprawling policemen. Whereupon she thought queerly: "What do I care about the vote, really?" And finally she thought with anger and resentment: "What a shame it is that women haven't got the vote!" And then she heard a gay, quiet sound. It was Jane Foley laughing gently behind her.

"Can you see the big one now, darling?" asked Jane roguishly. "Has he picked himself up again?"

Audrey laughed.

And at last the audience laughed also. It laughed because the big policeman, unconquerable, had made another intrepid dash for the centre of the wheel and fallen upon his stomach as upon a huge india-rubber ball. The audience did more than laugh--it shrieked, yelled, and guffawed. The performance to be witnessed was worth ten times the price of entry. Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement. And in describing the affair the next morning as "unique" the _Birmingham Daily Post_ for once used that adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens--centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete. Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular two policemen would have known that they were seeking the impossible and fighting against that which was stronger than ten thousand policemen. But they would not give up. At each fresh attempt they hoped by guile to overcome their unseen enemy, as the gambler hopes at each fresh throw to outwit chance. The jeers of the audience pricked them to desperation, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public. But centrifugal force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with those whom ridicule has covered. The strange and side-splitting effects of centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the wheel. Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently from the tent. And then while her back was towards the entrance she was deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob. The two policemen had fled also--probably for reinforcements and appliances against centrifugal force. In their pardonable excitement they had, however, committed the imprudence of departing together. An elementary knowledge of strategy should have warned them against such a mistake. The wheel stopped immediately. The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him. Audrey at any rate was as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.

"Here's th' back way," said the second loud man, pointing to a coarse curtain in the obscurity of the nether parts of the enclosure.

They ran, Jane Foley first, and vanished from the regions of the Joy Wheel amid terrific acclamations given in a strong Midland accent.

The next moment they found themselves in a part of the Blue City which nobody had taken the trouble to paint blue. The one blue object was a small patch of sky, amid clouds, overhead. On all sides were wooden flying buttresses, supporting the boundaries of the Joy Wheel enclosure to the south-east, of the Parade Restaurant and Bar to the south-west, and of a third establishment of good cheer to the north. Upon the ground were brick-ends, cinders, bits of wood, bits of corrugated iron, and all the litter and refuse cast out of sight of the eyes of visitors to the Exhibition of Progress.

With the fear of the police behind them they stumbled forward a few yards, and then saw a small ramshackle door swinging slightly to and fro on one hinge. Jane Foley pulled it open. They both went into a narrow passage. On the mildewed wall of the passage was pinned up a notice in red ink: "Any waitress taking away any apron or cap from the Parade Restaurant and Bar will be fined one shilling." Farther on was another door, also ajar. Jane Foley pushed against it, and a tiny room of irregular shape was disclosed. In this room a stout woman in grey was counting a pile of newly laundered caps and aprons, and putting them out of one hamper into another. Audrey remembered seeing the woman at the counter of the restaurant and bar.

"The police are after us. They'll be here in a minute," said Jane Foley simply.

"Oh!" exclaimed the woman in grey, with the carelessness of fatigue. "Are you them stone-throwing lot? They've just been in to tell me about it. What d'ye do it for?"

"We do it for you--amongst others," Jane Foley smiled.

"Nay! That ye don't!" said the woman positively. "I've got a vote for the city council, and I want no more."

"Well, you don't want us to get caught, do you?"

"No, I don't know as I do. Ye look a couple o' bonny wenches."

"Let's have two caps and aprons, then," said Jane Foley smoothly. "We'll pay the shilling fine." She laughed lightly. "And a bit more. If the police get in here we shall have to struggle, you know, and they'll break the place up."

Audrey produced another half-sovereign.

"But what shall ye do with yer hats and coats?" the woman demanded.

"Give them to you, of course."

The woman regarded the hats and coats.

"I couldn't get near them coats," she said. "And if I put on one o' them there hats my old man 'ud rise from the grave--that he would. Still, I don't wish ye any harm."

She shut and locked the door.

In about a minute two waitresses in aprons and streamered caps of immaculate purity emerged from the secret places of the Parade Restaurant and Bar, slipped round the end of the counter, and started with easy indifference to saunter away into the grounds after the manner of restaurant girls who have been gifted with half an hour off. The tabled expanse in front of the Parade erection was busy with people, some sitting at the tables and supporting the establishment, but many more merely taking advantage of the pitch to observe all possible exciting developments of the suffragette shindy.

And as the criminals were modestly getting clear, a loud and imperious voice called:

"Hey!"

Audrey, lacking experience, hesitated.

"Hey there!"

They both turned, for the voice would not be denied. It belonged to a man sitting with another man at a table on the outskirts of the group of tables. It was the voice of the rosetted steward, who beckoned in a not unfriendly style.

"Bring us two liqueur brandies, miss," he cried. "And look slippy, if ye please."

The sharp tone, so sure of obedience, gave Audrey a queer sensation of being in reality a waitress doomed to tolerate the rough bullying of gentlemen urgently desiring alcohol. And the fierce thought that women--especially restaurant waitresses--must and should possess the Vote surged through her mind more powerfully than ever.

"I'll never have the chance again," she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.

"Two liqueur brandies, please," she said to the woman in grey, who had left her apron calculations. "That's all right," she murmured, as the woman stared a question at her. Then the woman smiled to herself, and poured out the liqueur brandies from a labelled bottle with startling adroitness, and dashed the full glasses on to a brass tray.

As Audrey walked across the gravel carefully balancing the tray, she speculated whether the public eye would notice the shape of her small handbag, which was attached by a safety pin to her dress beneath the apron, and whether her streamers were streaming out far behind her head.

Before she could put the tray down on the table, the rosetted steward, who looked pale, snatched one of the glasses and gulped down its entire contents.

"I wanted it!" said he, smacking his lips. "I wanted it bad. They'll catch 'em all right. I should know the young 'un again anywhere. I'll swear to identify her in any court. And I will. Tasty little piece o' goods, too!... But not so good-looking as you," he added, gazing suddenly at Audrey.

"None o' your sauce," snapped Audrey, and walked off, leaving the tray behind.

The two men exploded into coarse but amiable laughter, and called to her to return, but she would not. "You can pay the other young lady," she said over her shoulder, pointing vaguely to the counter where there was now a bevy of other young ladies.

Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock. Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.

That night they reached Northampton. At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram. And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey:

"It won't be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow. And perhaps not to any of our places in London."

"That won't matter," said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact. "We'll go anywhere, won't we, Winnie?"

And Miss Ingate assented.

"Well," said Jane Foley. "I've just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton."

"You don't mean Frinton-on-Sea?" exclaimed Miss Ingate, suddenly excited.

"It _is_ on the sea," said Jane. "We have to go through Colchester. Do you know it?"

"Do I know it!" repeated Miss Ingate. "I know everybody in Frinton, except the Germans. When I'm at home I buy my bacon at Frinton. Are you going to an hotel there?"

"No," said Jane. "To some people named Spatt."

"There's nobody that is anybody named Spatt living at Frinton," said Miss Ingate.

"They haven't been there long."

"Oh!" murmured Miss Ingate. "Of course if that's it...! I can't guarantee what's happened since I began my pilgrimages. But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester. This afternoon's business has been too feverish for me. When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught. I shall just go home."

"I don't care much about going to Frinton, Jenny," said Audrey.

Indeed, Moze lay within not many miles of Frinton-on-Sea.

Then Audrey and Miss Ingate observed a phenomenon that was both novel and extremely disturbing. Tears came into the eyes of Jane Foley.

"Don't say it, Audrey, don't say it!" she appealed in a wet voice. "I shall have to go myself. And you simply can't imagine how I hate going all alone into these houses that we're invited to. I'd much sooner be in lodgings, as we were last night. But these homes in quiet places here and there are very useful sometimes. They all belong to members of the Union, you know; and we have to use them. But I wish we hadn't. I've met Mrs. Spatt once. I didn't think you'd throw me over just at the worst part. The Spatts will take all of us and be glad."

("They won't take me," said Miss Ingate under her breath.)

"I shall come with you," said Audrey, caressing the recreant who, while equal to trifles such as policemen, magistrates, and prisons, was miserably afraid of a strange home. In fact Audrey now liked Jane much more than ever, liked her completely--and perhaps admired her rather less, though her admiration was still intense. And the thought in Audrey's mind was: "Never will I desert this girl! I'm a militant, too, now, and I shall stick by her." And she was full of a happiness which she could not understand and which she did not want to understand.

The next morning all the newspaper posters in Northhampton bore the words: "Policemen and suffragettes on Joy Wheel," or some variation of these words. And they bore nothing else. And in all the towns and many of the villages through which they passed on the way to Colchester, the same legend greeted their flying eyes. Audrey and Miss Ingate, in the motor-car, read with great care all the papers. Audrey blushed at the descriptions of herself, which were flattering. It seemed that the Cabinet Minister's political meeting had been seriously damaged by the episode, for the reason that rumours of the performance on the Joy Wheel had impaired the spell of eloquence and partially emptied the hall. And this was the more disappointing in that the police had been sure that nothing untoward would occur. It seemed also that the police were on the track of the criminals.

"Are they!" exclaimed Jane Foley with a beautiful smile.

Then the car approached a city of towers on a hill, and as it passed by the station, which was in the valley, Miss Ingate demanded a halt. She got out in the station yard and transferred her belongings to a cab.

"I shall drive home from here," she said. "I've often done it before. After all, I did play the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street. Surely I can rest on the barrel organ, can't I, Miss Foley--at my age? ... What a business I shall have when I _do_ get home, and nobody expecting me!"

And when certain minor arrangements had been made, the car mounted the hill into Colchester and took the Frinton road, leaving Miss Ingate's fly far behind. _

Read next: Chapter 24. The Spatts

Read previous: Chapter 22. The Detective

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