A Sudden Sun (8 page)

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W
HEN I STOOD there with our sisters in Boston, and heard the tales of women all over the world fighting for that same right that even the lowest and meanest of men may take for granted—sisters, it stirred me to the soul!” Mrs. Peters declared. She stood behind the podium in Temperance Hall, her face transfigured as if with a light from heaven, though Lily recognized that it was probably just a fine sheen of perspiration lit by the reflection of the lights. The building, only recently rebuilt after the fire, had been fitted with electric lights instead of the old gas lamps, and Lily found it hard to get accustomed to their harsher illumination. “How can we, the women of Newfoundland, do less than to stand with these other brave women around the world?” Mrs. Peters asked. “When we see all around us poverty, drunkenness, and degradation, when we see the women of Newfoundland suffering for the sins of men, how can we not hope to better those around us by standing up to make our voices heard?”

All around, women applauded, and some jumped to their feet. Lily stood up, drawn as if by a puppeteer’s string, so powerful was
the pull of Mrs. Peters’s words. Over the winter, Mrs. Peters had attended a great WCTU rally in the United States at which a number of suffrage speakers as well as temperance speakers had taken the stage. “Imagine it!” she had said to the women gathered here in St. John’s to hear her report. “All women speakers—not a man in sight! Women gathered to talk about issues of concern to women—first and foremost, Prohibition and the vote!”

After the lecture, women gathered in little groups for tea. Lily found herself pulled along with her old schoolmate Martha Withycombe in a circle that included Martha’s mother Frances, Mrs. Ohman, and several other ladies. “The great pity is those who need to hear this message are not the women gathered in this room, but the men at the Colonial Building!” one said. “But when no woman can speak at a public lecture, who will hear our calls for justice?”

“If we can’t speak, surely we can write?” Lily ventured. She brandished the new copy of the
Water Lily
, the first issue to roll off the press since July. Eight months had passed since the fire; most newspapers and periodicals had ceased publication since nearly all the printshops had been devastated in the blaze, as her father’s shop had been. But now, as the burned city was beginning to rebuild, the presses, too, were rolling again. Mrs. Ohman’s temperance paper was one of the latest to resume publishing.

“But it’s only the same thing, my dear,” Mrs. Williams said kindly. “Mrs. Ohman puts out a fine paper, of course, but it’s written by women and read by women. Is any man going to pick up a copy of the
Water Lily
to see what the women of St. John’s have to say about the issues of the day?”

Inspiring as women’s meetings were, they always came down to this basic problem, Lily reflected as she circulated around the room at the end of the evening, picking up discarded papers and fans. Temperance women talked to each other, but women who were not concerned for the cause, or were actively opposed to it,
remained uninformed. Meanwhile the great mass of men, who made all the decisions, thought of the temperance women as harmless do-gooders.

Lily had spent a long, dull winter shut up in her grandparents’ house in Harbour Grace with little to do except read and write. By the time Papa had written to say the house was ready to move into, Lily longed to be back in town. A week after Uncle Wesley’s schooner brought her and her mother back to St. John’s, Lily had gone with a group of old school friends to the big Temperance Convention at St. Mary’s Anglican church. She was thrilled to be part of such a big gathering, to hear the speakers who talked not only about the importance of passing a prohibition law but also about the important work the WCTU ladies were doing, how essential the women’s voice was to the cause.

She had spoken to Mrs. Ohman there, who had told her she ought to come out to the regular WCTU meetings. When she learned that Lily liked to write, Mrs. Ohman asked to see something she had written, and chose a poem to be printed in the very first post-fire edition of the
Water Lily
. Seeing her own words in print—though not, of course, her name, since the piece had been published anonymously—had convinced Lily that she might, after all, have a little part to play in the great work that was now going forward.

The WCTU was circulating a petition to submit to the House of Assembly. It asked for a vote for women—not a general suffrage, but the right to vote in local elections on the prohibition issue. Lily had signed the petition at her first WCTU meeting and borrowed Mrs. Ohman’s sheet for a few days to try to get more signatures.

She had tried at home: Mother wouldn’t hear of it and told Lily to be quiet lest Papa should catch wind of what she was up to. Lily had also talked about it to her girlfriends, the young women with whom she had attended the Methodist College a few years earlier. Some of them were married or preparing to be married
now. The brides and brides-to-be were least likely to want to hear about votes for women. The single girls were willing to hear her out, but Abby Hayward was the only one who actually signed. She had gone with Lily to the Temperance Convention—Abby was always ready to go any place there was likely to be a large crowd that included young men—but she refused Lily’s invitations to come to WCTU meetings. “What, a bunch of old biddies clucking about closing down the rum-shops? A bit dull for me, I’m afraid.” Abby had spent the winter after the fire in New York with her aunt, going to concerts and having new frocks made. “But as for the vote, of course I’ll sign. The new century is going to be the century of women, haven’t you heard? It’s silly to let men hold us back.”

Just yesterday, Lily had gone down to the kitchen to urge Sally to sign the petition. Sally had come back to work for them as soon as the house was completed, glad to have her comfortable little room up under the eaves again, since her family had been burned out of their home too. Lily and her mother had been unable to take Sally to Harbour Grace with them: there wasn’t room in Grandmother’s house for another servant girl. Sally had lived in a tent in the park with her own people for a fortnight and then moved into a crowded apartment with two other families. The Hunts’ new house was still not fully furnished and there was finishing work to be done but Sally considered her little upstairs bedroom a great improvement over conditions her parents were living in.

When Lily explained about the petition, Sally had put up her hands as if warding off an angry goose. “Oh, no, Miss Lily, that’s not for the likes of me.”

“But it is, Sally! If we’re going to stop the liquor trade we need the vote for all women, rich and poor. Why, Evans has the vote now. Why shouldn’t you?” She knew that a few years ago the rules had been changed so that all men, not just property owners, had the vote. Educated ladies like Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Ohman and even
Lady Thorburn, whose husband used to be premier, thought it was most unfair that even a servant or a bum on the street could vote to put his man into government, while they could not.

“How would I know what to vote for? Sure, I can’t even sign me name on that paper, all I knows how to do is make an X.”

“It doesn’t matter a bit. You know how hard it is on women when men go and get drunk on payday and then come home with no money for the market and beat the children? Don’t you? Well, if you’d like to have the right to vote against that, for yourself and for other women, then you make your X and I’ll print your name next to it.” She put the pen in Sally’s hand, but Sally dropped it on the countertop.

“No, Miss Lily, it’s not right, is what. Do your mother know about this? Because she’ll tell the Mister, and I don’t want you to get in trouble. Your Pop don’t have no time for folks who don’t know their places, and I don’t say he’d be happy with this vote business, neither.”

The threat of Papa, who had never struck Lily as being so particularly strict or stern, hung over every conversation she had with anyone about the suffrage petition—except with Abby Hayward, who viewed it, like everything else, as a great joke. Lily brought her page of the petition back sadly to the next WCTU meeting with only her own signature and Abby’s.

Now, as the meeting ended and ladies picked up their wraps and left the hall, Lily unfolded the paper from her handbag and gave it to Mrs. Ohman. “I’m sorry, it’s not much. I only got one signature, besides my own.”

Mrs. Ohman unfolded the paper, looked at the two written lines, then refolded it into her own bag. “Oh, Lily, you mustn’t let it daunt you. Those of us who fight for the rights of women will face opposition on all sides, even within our own families! But it must never stop us. We must never be discouraged. Do you think
you’ll be allowed to come out to hear the debate, when our bill comes before the House?”

“Oh, I don’t know if Papa will allow…”

“Well, you must see what you can do. We badly need you younger women.”

Across the room, as if emblematic of the younger women, Mrs. Bulley’s two daughters were going out the door, stepping into their father’s waiting carriage. Not only was their mother a leader in the cause, their father posed no objection to his wife and daughters crusading for temperance and suffrage. It must be nice to live in an enlightened household, Lily thought.

At least she could show up to WCTU meetings. Mother and Papa would not oppose temperance work. A few days later Lily turned up the collar of her coat against a brisk cold wind with a swirl of flurries and walked to the office of the
Evening Herald
, where the WCTU did most of its printing business. Mrs. Ohman had asked her to pick up the latest batch of handbills. Lily was glad the WCTU did not do its printing with her father’s shop; when the handbills were penned by Mrs. Ohman the language could get a touch strident.

The smell of a printshop was as familiar as the smell of bread baking in the kitchen to Lily. She stood in the outer office breathing the odour of paper and ink as she waited for the boy to come back with a parcel of handbills when a half-familiar voice said, “Hello, Miss Hunt.”

She turned to see David Reid, the young newspaperman she had met on the day of the fire. They had had two chance meetings over half a year ago, yet it seemed he remembered her as easily as she remembered him.

“Mr.—Mr. Reid, was it? Of course, we met in Bannerman Park after the fire—didn’t Mrs. Ohman introduce us?”

He smiled broadly. He had dimples: an odd sight on a grown man, but not an unattractive one. “She may have done or she
may not have. I’d remember your face forever, even if we’d never been introduced.”

“Mr. Reid!”

“Excuse me, I’m trying out my gallantry. I don’t think it goes well, does it? Oh, nor does the hat,” he added, removing his bowler. Flecks of snow dotted its brim. “Yes, Miss Hunt, I’m David Reid, sadly no relation to the railway Reid and thus no millionaire. Forgive me. The truth is I’m all out of sorts, seeing you unexpectedly like this. I’ve been planning out all kinds of clever speeches for when I saw you again, but they told me you’d left town for the winter.”

“I’ve been back nearly a month now. You—you inquired after me?”

“I had some business with your father. Don’t think he was best pleased at me making the inquiry, but you can’t hang a man for asking, can you? Well, depending on what he’s asking, I suppose.”

There seemed no appropriate way to respond to any of this, so it was perhaps fortunate that just at that moment the boy came back from the shop with her parcel. Lily paid him and turned to go.

“What is it you’re picking up here, then?” Mr. Reid asked, hurrying to get the door for her. “I’d have thought your father would take care of any printing you might want done. Not wedding invitations, I hope, is it?”

“Why, you are impertinent, aren’t you, sir?” Lily knew she ought to stalk away with her head held high, but she couldn’t suppress a giggle. She did walk away, but just a few steps, and then turned back to say, “As it happens, I am here to pick up handbills for the WCTU rally.”

“Ah, the noble cause! What better reason could there be to carry a packet of handbills down Prescott Street? Are you going to Temperance Hall? Yes? I’ll walk you there, will I? That couldn’t possibly be improper, could it now?”

“I think it might be. Especially as I met you coming
into
the printshop, and now you’ve left without conducting your business.”

“Oh no, I think this is my business. At least, it is now. Delivering an article to the press can always wait an hour, even when a man’s two hours past his deadline. Walking alongside a lovely lady who left town the day after I met her—well, that’s far more pressing. And to find out the lady has a social conscience and supports the women’s franchise to boot—well, what more could a fellow ask?”

She hadn’t mentioned the franchise, only the WCTU, but clearly Mr. Reid, like many people, considered the two causes closely linked. He was walking in step with her down Prescott Street regardless of her faint protests, and had managed to take possession of her parcel.

“You are mocking me, sir,” Lily said.

“I couldn’t possibly! How can you accuse me so cruelly?”

“You pretend to admire the suffrage cause.”

“Why do you think it’s a pretense?”

“Don’t try to tell me you’re a supporter of women’s emancipation!”

He ran a step or two ahead of her and turned back, holding his hat over his chest. “I swear to you, I am a supporter of everyone’s emancipation, women’s no less than men’s. Well, I write for the
Herald
, don’t I?” The
Herald
was the anti-government, pro-reform paper. Its editor had published several articles supporting rights of women and carried a regular WCTU column.