"You know I don't think that.But you are busy....""Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all--you are barely eighteen....We have given you all sorts of liberties."Her silence admitted it."But still," she said after a long pause, "there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things.They talk about--oh, all sorts of things.Freely....""You've been awfully good to me," she said irrelevantly."And of course this meeting was all pure accident."Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip.
"What exactly do you want, Eleanor? " he asked.
She looked up at him."Generally?" she asked.
"Your mother has the impression that you are discontented.""Discontented is a horrid word."
"Well--unsatisfied."
She remained still for a time.She felt the moment had come to make her demand.
"I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work.Ifeel--so horribly ignorant.Of all sorts of things.If I were a son I should go--""Ye--es," said the bishop and reflected.
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.
"You could read here," he tried.
"If I were a son, you wouldn't say that."His reply was vague."But in this home," he said, "we have a certain atmosphere..
He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from the hardier male.
Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply."It's just that," she said."One feels--" She considered it further."As if we were living in a kind of magic world--not really real.Out there--" she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night."One meets with different sorts of minds and different--atmospheres.All this is very beautiful.I've had the most wonderful home.But there's a sort of feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts and questionings--"She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.
The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly.
"The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock."She made no answer.She moved her head very slightly so that he could not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and awkwardly with her eyes upon the fire.
Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received that day....
It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke.At last he said: "We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we are less tired and have more time....You have been reading books....When Caxton set up his printing-press he thrust a new power between church and disciple and father and child....And Iam tired.We must talk it over a little later."The girl stood up.She took her father's hands."Dear, dear Daddy," she said, "I am so sorry to be a bother.I am so sorry Iwent to that meeting....You look tired out.""We must talk--properly," said the bishop, patting one hand, then discovering from her wincing face that it was the sprained one."Your poor wrist," he said.
"It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy.It isn't that I have hidden things...."She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she kissed him as though she was sorry for him....
It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the present for discussing these "questionings" of hers, and then his fatigue and shyness had the better of him again.
(11)
The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette disturbance.The White Blackbird said things about her.
It did not attack her.It did worse.It admired her...impudently.
It spoke of her once as "Norah," and once as "the Scrope Flapper."Its headline proclaimed: "Plucky Flappers Hold Up L.G."
