Sally Bishop | Page 9

chaste Sally Bishop, the very opposite of a revolutionary--is one in the
ranks of a great army who are marching, they scarcely know whither, to
a command they have scarcely heard, strained to a mighty endurance in
a cause they scarcely understand. She seems too young to be of service,
too frail to bear the hardships of the way. How can she stand out
against the forced marches, the weary, sleepless camping at night?
There are going to be many in this great campaign who will drop
exhausted from the ranks--many who, under cover of night, when the
sentinel is drowsy at his post, will slip out into the darkness, weary of
the fatigue, regardless of the consequences--a deserter from the cause
that is so ill-understood. There are going to be many who, through a
passing village where all is peace and contentment, will hear the
tempting whisper of mutiny. What is the good of it all--to what does it
lead, this endless forced march towards a vague encounter with the
enemy who are never to be seen? If only they might pitch tents there

and then--there and then dig trenches, make positions, occupy
heights--put the rifle to the shoulder and fire--into hell if need be. But
no--this endless, toilsome marching, marching--always onward, yet
never at the journey's end.
Who blames them if they fall by the way? Even the sergeant of the
division, passing their crumpled bodies by the roadside, becomes a
hypocrite if he kicks them into an obedience of their orders. In his heart
he might well wish to drop out as they have done. Who blames them,
too, if they slink off, hiding behind any cover that will conceal their
trembling bodies until the whole army has gone by?--who blames them
if they sham illness, lameness, anything that may be put forward as an
excuse to set them free?--who blames them if a wayside cottage offers
them shelter and, taking it, they leave the other poor wretches to go on?
Who blames them then? No one--no one with a heart could do so. The
great tragedy lies in the fact that they are left to blame themselves.
And this--this is the way that Nature wages war--a civil war, that is the
worst, the most harrowing of all. She fights her own kith and kin; she
gives battle to the very conditions which she herself has made. There is
very seldom a hand-to-hand encounter. Only your French Revolutions
and your Russian Massacres mark the spots where the two armies have
met, where blood has flowed like wine from the broken goblets of
some thousands of lives. But usually it is the forced marches, with the
enemy ever retreating over its own ground. And in this position of
women, it is the army of Nature that has begun to move. Not the mere
rising of a rebellious faction, but the entire unconquerable force of
humanity whose whole existence is threatened by the invading power
of population.
And Sally Bishop--frail, tender-hearted, sensitive Sally Bishop--has
donned the bandolier and the haversack and is off with the rest, just one
unit in the rank and file, one slender individual in Nature's army that is
out on a campaign to effect the inevitable change in the social
conditions of the sex. It makes no matter that she will never reap the
benefit; it counts not at all that she will never touch the spoil. The lines
must be filled up. When she falls, there must be others to take her place.

The bugle has sounded in the hearts of thousands of women of her type,
and they have had to obey its shrilling call.
Stand for half an hour in the morning at any of the main termini of
London's traffic-ways, and you will see them in their thousands. They
little know the law they are obeying; they little realize the cause for
which they are working, or the effect it will produce. In another book
from this pen it has been declared that the words of Maeterlinck--"the
spirit of the hive"--are an inspired phrase. Here, in these conditions,
with no need to don the protecting gauze, you may see its vivid
illustration, as only the great draughtsmanship of life can illustrate the
wondrous schemes of Nature.
For two years Sally Bishop had been one amongst them. For two years
she had caught her tram at Kew Bridge in the morning and her tram
again at Hammersmith at night. Only her Sundays and her Saturday
afternoons were free, except for those two wonderful weeks in the
summer and the yawning gaps in the side of the year which are known
as National holidays.
When--where did the bugle sound that called Sally to her conscription?
What press-gang of circumstances waylaid her, in what peaceful
wandering