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Tree of Heaven

<h2>XVI</h2> It was a quarter past five on a fine morning, early in July. On the stroke of the quarter Captain Frank Drayton's motor-car, after exceeding the speed limit along the forlorn highway of the Caledonian Road, drew up outside the main entrance of Holloway Gaol. Captain Frank Drayton was alone in his motor-car. He had the street all to himself till twenty past five, when he was joined by another motorist, also conspicuously alone in his car. Drayton tried hard to look as if the other man were not there. The other man tried even harder to look as if he were not there himself. He was the first to be aware of the absurdity of their competitive pretences. He looked at his watch and spoke. "I hope they'll be punctual with those doors. I was up at four o'clock." "I," said Drayton, "was up at three." "I'm waiting for my wife," said the other man. "I am not," said Drayton, and felt that he had scored. The other man's smile allowed him the point he made. "Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall." The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke. Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister made notorious by his encounters with the Women's Franchise Union. Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons. And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting to take her out of prison. And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet. "Anyhow," said the Cabinet Minister, "we've done them out of their Procession." "What Procession?" All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend he had in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of Miss Dorothea Harrison's release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as the papers had it. "The Procession," said the Cabinet Minister, "that was to have met 'em at six-thirty. A Car of Victory for Mrs. Blathwaite, and a bodyguard of thirteen young women on thirteen white horses. The girl who smashed my knee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of 'em. In armour. Fact. There's to be a banquet for 'em at the Imperial at nine. We can't stop that. And they'll process down the Embankment and down Pall Mall and Piccadilly at eleven; but they won't process here. We've let 'em out an hour too soon." A policeman came from the prison-yard. He blew a whistle. Four taxi-cabs crept round the corner furtively, driven by visibly hilarious chauffeurs. "The triumphant procession from Holloway," said the Cabinet Minister, "is you and me, sir, and those taxi-cabs." On the other side of the gates a woman laughed. The released prisoners were coming down the prison-yard. The Cabinet Minister cranked up his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and the thirteen white horses. The prison-gates opened. The Cabinet Minister and Drayton raised their caps. The leaders, Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite and Mrs. Palmerston-Swete came first. Then Lady Victoria Threlfall. Then Dorothea. Then sixteen other women. Drayton did not look at them. He did not see what happened when the Cabinet Minister met his wife. He did not see the sixteen other women. He saw nothing but Dorothea walking by herself. She had no hat on. Her clothes were as the great raid had left them, a month ago. Her serge coat was torn at the breast pocket, the three-cornered flap hung, showing the white lining. Another three-cornered flap hung from her right knee. She carried her small, hawk-like head alert and high. Her face had the incomparable bloom of youth. Her eyes shone. They and her face showed no memory of the prison-cell, the plank-bed, and the prison walls; they showed no sense of Drayton's decency in coming to meet her, no sense of anything at all but of the queerness, the greatness and the glory of the world--of him, perhaps, as a part of it. She stepped into the car as if they had met by appointment for a run into the country. "I shan't hurt your car. I'm quite clean, though you mightn't think it. The cells were all right this time." He disapproved of her, yet he adored her. "Dorothy," he said, "do you want to go to that banquet?" "No, but I've got to. I must go through with it. I swore I'd do the thing completely or not at all." "It isn't till nine. We've three whole hours before we need start." "What are you going to do with me?" "I'm going to take you home first. Then I suppose I shall have to drive you down to that beastly banquet." "That won't take three and a half hours. It's a heavenly morning. Can't we do something with it?" "What would you like to do?" "I'd like to stop at the nearest coffee-stall. I'm hungry. Then--Are you frightfully sleepy?" "Me? Oh, Lord, no." "Then let's go off somewhere into the country." They went. <hr style="width: 25%;"> They pulled up in a green lane near Totteridge to finish the buns they had brought with them from the coffee-stall. "Did you ever smell anything like this lane? Did you ever eat anything like these buns? Did you ever drink anything like that divine coffee? If epicures had any imagination they'd go out and obstruct policemen and get put in prison for the sake of the sensations they'd have afterwards." "That reminds me," he said, "that I want to talk to you. No--but seriously." "I don't mind how seriously you talk if I may go on eating." "That's what I brought the buns for. So that I mayn't be interrupted. First of all I want to tell you that you haven't taken me in. Other people may be impressed with this Holloway business, but not me. I'm not moved, or touched, or even interested." "Still," she murmured, "you did get up at three o'clock in the morning." "If you think I got up at three o'clock in the morning to show my sympathy, you're mistaken." "Sympathy? I don't need your sympathy. It was worth it, Frank. There isn't anything on earth like coming out of prison. Unless it is going in." "That won't work, Dorothy, when I know why you went in. It wasn't to prove your principles. Your principles were against that sort of thing. It wasn't to get votes for women. You know as well as I do that you'll never get them that way. It wasn't to annoy Mr. Asquith. You knew Mr. Asquith wouldn't care a hang. It was to annoy me." "I wonder," she said dreamily, "if I shall ever be able to stop eating." "You can't take me in. I know too much about it. You said you were going to keep out of rows. You weren't going on that deputation because it meant a row. You went because I asked you not to go." "I did; and I should go again tomorrow for the same reason." "But it isn't a reason. It's not as if I'd asked you to go against your conscience. Your conscience hadn't anything to do with it." "Oh, hadn't it! I went because you'd no right to ask me not to." "If I'd had the right you'd have gone just the same." "What do you mean by the right?" "You know perfectly well what I mean." "Of course I do. You mean, and you meant that if I'd married you you'd have had the right, not just to ask me not to, but to prevent me. That was what I was out against. I'd be out against it tomorrow and the next day, and for as long as you keep up that attitude." "And yet--you said you loved me." "So I did. So I do. But I'm out against that too." "Good Lord, against what?" "Against your exploiting my love for your purposes." "My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?" She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment she became to him helpless and pathetic. "I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keep you out of it. Look here, you'd have thought me a rotter if I hadn't, wouldn't you? "Of course you would. And there's another thing. You weren't straight about it. You never told me you were going." "I never told you I wasn't." "I don't care, Dorothy; you weren't straight. You ought to have told me." "How could I tell you when I knew you'd only go trying to stop me and getting yourself arrested." "Not me. They wouldn't have touched me." "How was I to know that? If they had I should have dished you. And I'd have stayed away rather than do that. I didn't tell Michael or Nicky or Father for the same reason." "You'd have stayed at home rather than have dished me? Do you really mean that?" "Of course I mean it. And I meant it. It's you," she said, "who don't care." "How do you make that out?" He really wanted to know. He really wanted, if it were possible, to understand her. "I make it out this way. Here have I been through the adventure and the experience of my life. I was in the thick of the big raid; I was four weeks shut up in a prison cell; and you don't care; you're not interested. You never said to yourself, 'Dorothy was in the big raid, I wonder what happened to her?' or 'Dorothy's in prison, I wonder how she's feeling?' You didn't care; you weren't interested. "If it had happened to you, I couldn't have thought of anything else, I couldn't have got it out of my head. I should have been wondering all the time what you were feeling; I couldn't have rested till I knew. It would have been as if I was in prison myself. And now, when I've come out, all you think of is how you can rag and score off me." She was sitting beside him on the green bank of the lane. Her hands were clasped round her knees. One knickerbockered knee protruded through the three-cornered rent in her skirt; she stared across the road, a long, straight stare that took no heed of what she saw, the grey road, and the green bank on the other side, topped by its hedge of trees. Her voice sounded quiet in the quiet lane; it had no accent of self-pity or reproach. It was as if she were making statements that had no emotional significance whatever. She did not mean to hurt him, yet every word cut where he was sorest. "I wanted to tell you about it. I counted the days, the minutes till I could tell you; but you wouldn't listen. You don't want to hear." "I won't listen if it's about women's suffrage. And I don't want to hear if it's anything awful about you." "It is about me, but it isn't awful. "That's what I want to tell you. "But, first of all--about the raid. I didn't mean to be in it at all, as it happens. I meant to go with the deputation because you told me not to. You're right about that. But I meant to turn back as soon as the police stopped us, because I hate rows with the police, and because I don't believe in them, and because I told Angela Blathwaite I wasn't going in with her crowd any way. You see, she called me a coward before a lot of people and said I funked it. So I did. But I should have been a bigger coward if I'd gone against my own will, just because of what she said. That's how she collars heaps of women. They adore her and they're afraid of her. Sometimes they lie and tell her they're going in when their moment comes, knowing perfectly well that they're not going in at all. I don't adore her, and I'm not afraid of her, and I didn't lie. "So I went at the tail of the deputation where I could slip out when the row began. I swear I didn't mean to be in it. I funked it far too much. I didn't mind the police and I didn't mind the crowd. But I funked being with the women. When I saw their faces. You world have funked it. "And anyhow I don't like doing things in a beastly body. Ugh! "And then they began moving. "The police tried to stop them. And the crowd tried. The crowd began jeering at them. And still they moved. And the mounted police horses got excited, and danced about and reared a bit, and the crowd was in a funk then and barged into the women. That was rather awful. "I could have got away then if I'd chosen. There was a man close to me all the time who kept making spaces for me and telling me to slip through. I was just going to when a woman fell. Somewhere in the front of the deputation where the police were getting nasty. "Then I had to stay. I had to go on with them. I swear I wasn't excited or carried away in the least. Two women near me were yelling at the police. I hated them. But I felt I'd be an utter brute if I left them and got off safe. You see, it was an ugly crowd, and things were beginning to be jolly dangerous, and I'd funked it badly. Only the first minute. It went--the funk I mean--when I saw the woman go down. She fell sort of slanting through the crowd, and it was horrible. I couldn't have left them then any more than I could have left children in a burning house. "I thought of you." "You thought of me?" "Yes. I thought of you--how you'd have hated it. But I didn't care. I was sort of boosted up above caring. The funk had all gone and I was absolutely happy. Not insanely happy like some of the other women, but quietly, comfily happy. "After all, I didn't do anything you need have minded." "What did you do?" he said. "I just went on and stood still and refused to go back. I stuck my hands in my pockets so that I shouldn't let out at a policeman or anything (I knew you wouldn't like that). I may have pushed a bit now and then with my shoulders and my elbows; I can't remember. But I didn't make one sound. I was perfectly lady-like and perfectly dignified." "I suppose you know you haven't got a hat on?" "It didn't come off. I took it off and threw it to the crowd when the row began. It doesn't matter about your hair coming down if you haven't got a hat on, but if your hair's down and your hat's bashed in and all crooked you look a perfect idiot. "It wasn't a bad fight, you know, twenty-one women to I don't know how many policemen, and the front ones got right into the doorway of St. Stephen's. That was where they copped me. "But that, isn't the end of it. "The fight was only the first part of the adventure. The wonderful thing was what happened afterwards. In prison. "I didn't think I'd really like prison. That was another thing I funked. I'd heard such awful things about it, about the dirt, you know. And there wasn't any dirt in my cell, anyhow. And after the crowds of women, after the meetings and the speeches, the endless talking and the boredom, that cell was like heaven. "Thank God, it's always solitary confinement. The Government doesn't know that if they want to make prison a deterrent they'll shut us up together. You won't give the Home Secretary the tip, will you? "But that isn't what I wanted to tell you about. "It was something bigger, something tremendous. You'll not believe this part of it, but I was absolutely happy in that cell. It was a sort of deep-down unexcited happiness. I'm not a bit religious, but I know how the nuns feel in their cells when they've given up everything and shut themselves up with God. The cell was like a convent cell, you know, as narrow as that bit of shadow there is, and it had nice white-washed walls, and a planked-bed in the corner, and a window high, high up. There ought to have been a crucifix on the wall above the plank-bed, but there wasn't a crucifix. There was only a shiny black Bible on the chair. "Really Frank, if you're to be shut up for a month with just one book, it had better be the Bible. Isaiah's ripping. I can remember heaps of it: 'in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there ... the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing into Zion' ... 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.' I used to read like anything; and I thought of things. They sort of came to me. "That's what I wanted to tell you about. The things that came to me were so much bigger than the thing I went in for. I could see all along we weren't going to get it that way. And I knew we were going to get it some other way. I don't in the least know how, but it'll be some big, tremendous way that'll make all this fighting and fussing seem the rottenest game. That was one of the things I used to think about." "Then," he said, "you've given it up? You're corning out of it?" She looked at him keenly. "Are those still your conditions?" He hesitated one second before he answered firmly. "Yes, those are still my conditions. You still won't agree to them?" "I still won't agree. It's no use talking about it. You don't believe in freedom. We're incompatible. We don't stand for the same ideals." "Oh, Lord, what does that matter?" "It matters most awfully." "I should have thought," said Drayton, "it would have mattered more if I'd had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something." "It wouldn't, really." "Well, you seem to have thought about a lot of things. Did you ever once think about me, Dorothy?" "Yes, I did. Have you ever read the Psalms? There's a jolly one that begins: 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.' I used to think of you when I read that. I thought of you a lot. "That's what I was coming to. It was the queerest thing of all. Everything seemed ended when I went to prison. I knew you wouldn't care for me after what I'd done--you must really listen to this, Frank--I knew you couldn't and wouldn't marry me; and it somehow didn't matter. What I'd got hold of was bigger than that. I knew that all this Women's Suffrage business was only a part of it, a small, ridiculous part. "I sort of saw the redeemed of the Lord. They were men, as well as women, Frank. And they were all free. They were all free because they were redeemed. And the funny thing was that you were part of it. You were mixed up in the whole queer, tremendous business. Everything was ended. And everything was begun; so that I knew you understood even when you didn't understand. It was really as if I'd got you tight, somehow; and I knew you couldn't go, even when you'd gone." "And yet you don't see that it's a crime to force me to go." "I see that it would be a worse crime to force you to stay if you mean going. "What time is it?" "A quarter to eight." "And I've got to go home and have a bath. Whatever you do, don't make me late for that infernal banquet. You are going to drive me there?" "I'm going to drive you there, but I'm not going in with you." "Poor darling! Did I ask you to go in?" He drove her back to her father's house. She came out of it burnished and beautiful, dressed in clean white linen, with the broad red, white and blue tricolour of the Women's Franchise Union slanting across her breast. He drove her to the Banquet of the Prisoners, to the Imperial Hotel, Kingsway. They went in silence; for their hearts ached too much for speaking. But in Dorothy's heart, above the aching, there was that queer exaltation that had sustained her in prison. He left her at the entrance of the hotel, where Michael and Nicholas waited to receive her. Michael and Nicholas went in with her to the Banquet. They hated it, but they went in. Veronica was with them. She too wore a white frock, with red, white and blue ribbons. "Drayton's a bit of a rotter," Michael said, "not to see you through." "How can he when he feels like that about it?" "As if we didn't feel!" <hr style="width: 25%;"> Three hundred and thirty women and twenty men waited in the Banquet Hall to receive the prisoners. The high galleries were festooned with the red, white and blue of the Women's Franchise Union, and hung with flags and blazoned banners. The silk standards and the emblems of the Women's Suffrage Leagues and Societies, supported by their tall poles, stood ranged along three walls. They covered the sham porphyry with gorgeous and heroic colours, purple and blue, sky-blue and sapphire blue and royal blue, black, white and gold, vivid green, pure gold, pure white, dead-black, orange and scarlet and magenta. From the high table under the windows streamed seven dependent tables decorated with nosegays of red, white and blue flowers. In the centre of the high table three arm-chairs, draped with the tricolour, were set like three thrones for the three leaders. They were flanked by nine other chairs on the right and nine on the left for the eighteen other prisoners. There was a slight rustling sound at the side door leading to the high table. It was followed by a thicker and more prolonged sound of rustling as the three hundred and fifty turned in their places. The twenty-one prisoners came in. A great surge of white, spotted with red and blue, heaved itself up in the hall to meet them as the three hundred and fifty rose to their feet. And from the three hundred and fifty there went up a strange, a savage and a piercing collective sound, where a clear tinkling as of glass or thin metal, and a tearing as of silk, and a crying as of children and of small, slender-throated animals were held together by ringing, vibrating, overtopping tones as of violins playing in the treble. And now a woman's voice started off on its own note and tore the delicate tissue of this sound with a solitary scream; and now a man's voice filled up a pause in the shrill hurrahing with a solitary boom. To Dorothea, in her triumphal seat at Angela Blathwaite's right hand, to Michael and Nicholas and Veronica in their places among the crowd, that collective sound was frightful. From her high place Dorothea could see Michael and Nicholas, one on each side of Veronica, just below her. At the same table, facing them, she saw her three aunts, Louie, Emmeline and Edith. It was from Emmeline that those lacerating screams arose. <hr style="width: 25%;"> The breakfast and the speeches of the prisoners were over. The crowd was on its feet again, and the prisoners had risen in their high places. Out of the three hundred and seventy-one, two hundred and seventy-nine women and seven men were singing the Marching Song of the Militant Women. <blockquote>Shoulder to shoulder, breast to breast, Our army moves from east to west.     Follow on! Follow on! With flag and sword from south and north, The sounding, shining hosts go forth.     Follow on! Follow on! Do you not bear our marching feet, From door to door, from street to street?     Follow on! Follow on!</blockquote> Dorothea was fascinated and horrified by the singing, swaying, excited crowd. Her three aunts fascinated her. They were all singing at the top of their voices. Aunt Louie stood up straight and rigid. She sang from the back of her throat, through a mouth not quite sufficiently open; she sang with a grim, heroic determination to sing, whatever it might cost her and other people. Aunt Edie sang inaudibly, her thin shallow voice, doing its utmost, was overpowered by the collective song. Aunt Emmeline sang shrill and loud; her body rocked slightly to the rhythm of a fantastic march. With one large, long hand raised she beat the measure of the music. Her head was thrown back; and on her face there was a look of ecstasy, of a holy rapture, exalted, half savage, not quite sane. Dorothea was fascinated and horrified by Aunt Emmeline. The singing had threatened her when it began; so that she felt again her old terror of the collective soul. Its massed emotion threatened her. She longed for her white-washed prison-cell, for its hardness, its nakedness, its quiet, its visionary peace. She tried to remember. Her soul, in its danger, tried to get back there. But the soul of the crowd in the hail below her swelled and heaved itself towards her, drawn by the Vortex. She felt the rushing of the whirlwind; it sucked at her breath: the Vortex was drawing her, too; the powerful, abominable thing almost got her. The sight of Emmeline saved her. She might have been singing and swaying too, carried away in the same awful ecstasy, if she had not seen Emmeline. By looking at Emmeline she saved her soul; it stood firm again; she was clear and hard and sane. She could look away from Emmeline now. She saw her brothers, Michael and Nicholas. Michael's soul was the prey of its terror of the herd-soul. The shrill voices, fine as whipcord and sharp as needles, tortured him. Michael looked beautiful in his martyrdom. His fair, handsome face was set clear and hard. His yellow hair, with its hard edges, fitted his head like a cap of solid, polished metal. Weariness and disgust made a sort of cloud over his light green eyes. When Nicky looked at him Nicky's face twitched and twinkled. But he hated it almost as much as Michael hated it. She thought of Michael and Nicholas. They hated it, and yet they stuck it out. They wouldn't go back on her. She and Lady Victoria Threlfall were to march on foot before the Car of Victory from Blackfriars Bridge along the Embankment, through Trafalgar Square and Pall Mall and Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner. And Michael and Nicholas would march beside them to hold up the poles of the standard which, after all, they were not strong enough to carry. She thought of Drayton who had not stuck it out. And at the same time she thought of the things that had come to her in her prison cell. She had told him the most real thing that had ever happened to her, and he had not listened. He had not cared. Michael would have listened. Michael would have cared intensely. She thought, "'I am not come to bring peace, but a sword.'" The sword was between her and her lover. She had given him up. She had chosen, not between him and the Vortex, but between him and her vision which was more than either of them or than all this. She looked at Rosalind and Maud Blackadder who sang violently in the hall below her. She had chosen freedom. She had given up her lover. She wondered whether Rosalind or the Blackadder girl could have done as much, supposing they had had a choice? Then she looked at Veronica. Veronica was standing between Michael and Nicholas. She was slender and beautiful and pure, like some sacrificial virgin. Presently she would be marching in the Procession. She would carry a thin, tall pole, with a round olive wreath on the top of it, and a white dove sitting in the ring of the olive wreath. And she would look as if she was not in the Procession but in another place. When Dorothea looked at her she was lifted up above the insane ecstasy and the tumult of the herd-soul. Her soul and the soul of Veronica went alone in utter freedom. <blockquote>Follow on! Follow on! For Faith's our spear and Hope's our sword, And Love's our mighty battle-lord. Follow on! Follow on! And Justice is our flag unfurled, The flaming flag that sweeps the world. Follow on! Follow on! And "Freedom!" is our battle-cry; For Freedom we will fight and die. Follow on! Follow on!</blockquote> The Procession was over a mile long. It stretched all along the Embankment from Blackfriar's Bridge to Westminster. The Car of Victory, covered with the tricolour, and the Bodyguard on thirteen white horses were drawn up beside Cleopatra's Needle and the Sphinxes. Before the Car of Victory, from the western Sphinx to Northumberland Avenue, were the long regiments of the Unions and Societies and Leagues, of the trades and the professions and the arts, carrying their banners, the purple and the blue, the black, white and gold, the green, the orange and the scarlet and magenta. Behind the Car of Victory came the eighteen prisoners with Lady Victoria Threlfall and Dorothea at their head, under the immense tricolour standard that Michael and Nicholas carried for them. Behind the prisoners, closing the Procession, was a double line of young girls dressed in white with tricolour ribbons, each carrying a pole with the olive wreath and dove, symbolizing, with the obviousness of extreme innocence, the peace that follows victory. They were led by Veronica. She did not know that she had been chosen to lead them because of her youth and her processional, hieratic beauty; she thought that the Union had bestowed this honour on her because she belonged to Dorothea. From her place at the head of the Procession she could see the big red, white and blue standard held high above Dorothea and Lady Victoria Threlfall. She knew how they would look; Lady Victoria, white and tense, would go like a saint and a martyr, in exaltation, hardly knowing where she was, or what she did; and Dorothea would go in pride, and in disdain for the proceedings in which her honour forced her to take part; she would have an awful knowledge of what she was doing and of where she was; she would drink every drop of the dreadful cup she had poured out for herself, hating it. Last night Veronica had thought that she too would hate it; she thought that she would rather die than march in the Procession. But she did not hate it or her part in it. The thing was too beautiful and too big to hate, and her part in it was too little. She was not afraid of the Procession or of the soul of the Procession. She was not afraid of the thick crowd on the pavements, pressing closer and closer, pushed back continually by the police. Her soul was by itself. Like Dorothea's soul it went apart from the soul of the crowd and the soul of the Procession; only it was not proud; it was simply happy. The band had not yet begun to play; but already she heard the music sounding in her brain; her feet felt the rhythm of the march. Somewhere on in front the policemen made gestures of release, and the whole Procession began to move. It marched to an unheard music, to the rhythm that was in Veronica's brain. They went through what were once streets between walls of houses, and were now broad lanes between thick walls of people. The visible aspect of things was slightly changed, slightly distorted. The houses stood farther back behind the walls of people; they were hung with people; a swarm of people clung like bees to the house walls. All these people were fixed where they stood or hung. In a still and stationary world the Procession was the only thing that moved. She had a vague, far-off perception that the crowd was friendly. A mounted policeman rode at her side. When they halted at the cross-streets he looked down at Veronica with an amused and benign expression. She had a vague, far-off perception that the policeman was friendly. Everything seemed to her vague and far off. Only now and then it struck her as odd that a revolutionary Procession should be allowed to fill the streets of a great capital, and that a body of the same police that arrested the insurgents should go with it to protect them, to clear their triumphal way before them, holding up the entire traffic of great thoroughfares that their bands and their banners and their regiments should go through. She said to herself "What a country! It couldn't happen in Germany; it couldn't happen in France, or anywhere in Europe or America. It could only happen in England." Now they were going up St. James's Street towards Piccadilly. The band was playing the Marseillaise. And with the first beat of the drum Veronica's soul came down from its place, and took part in the Procession. As long as they played the Marseillaise she felt that she could march with the Procession to the ends of the world; she could march into battle to the Marseillaise; she could fight to that music and die. The women behind her were singing under their breath. They sang the words of the Women's Marseillaise. And Veronica, marching in front of them by herself, sang another song. She sang the Marseillaise of Heine and of Schumann. <blockquote>"'Daun reitet mein Kaiser wohl über mein Grab, Viel' Schwerter klirren und blitzen; Dann steig' ich gewaffnet hervor aus mein Grab,-- Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schützen!'"</blockquote> The front of the Procession lifted as it went up Tyburn Hill. Veronica could not see Michael and Nicholas, but she knew that they were there. She knew it by the unusual steadiness of the standard that they carried. Far away westwards, in the middle and front of the Procession, the purple and the blue, the gold and white, the green, the scarlet and orange and magenta standards rocked and staggered; they bent forwards; they were flung backwards as the west wind took them. But the red, white and blue standard that Michael and Nicholas carried went before her, steady and straight and high. And Veronica followed, carrying her thin, tall pole with the olive wreath on the top of it, and the white dove sitting in the ring of the wreath. She went with the music of Schumann and Heine sounding in her soul. <hr style="width: 35%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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