The Ape Who Guards the Balance (2 page)

“I believe they are about to begin,” Ramses said.

A rather ragged line formed, and placards were handed out. Mine read “Free the victims of male oppression!”

A little crowd of spectators had gathered. A hard-faced man in the front ranks glared at me and called out, “You ought to be ‘ome washin’ of your ‘usband’s trousers!”

Ramses, following behind me with a placard reading “Votes for WomenNOW !” replied loudly and good-humoredly, “I assure you, sir, the lady’s husband’s trousers are not in such sore need of laundering as your own.”

We proceeded in a straggling line past the gates of Romer’s house. They were closed, and guarded by two blue-helmeted constables, who watched us curiously. There was no sign of life at the curtained windows of the mansion. It did not appear likely that Mr. Romer was in the mood to accept a petition.

As we turned to retrace our steps, Miss Christabel hurried up and drew Ramses out of the line. Naturally I followed after them. “Mr. Emerson,” she exclaimed. “We are counting on you!”

“Certainly,” said Ramses. “To do what, precisely?”

“Mrs. Markham is ready to carry our petition to the house. We ladies will converge upon the constable to the left of the gate and prevent him from stopping her. Could you, do you think, detain the other police officer?”

Ramses’s eyebrows went up. “Detain?” he repeated.

“You must not employ violence, of course. Only clear the way for Mrs. Markham.”

“I will do my best” was the reply.

“Splendid! Be ready—they are coming.”

Indeed they were. A phalanx of females, marching shoulder to shoulder, was bearing down on us. There were only a dozen or so of them—obviously the leaders. The two ladies heading the procession were tall and stoutly built, and both brandished heavy wooden placards with suffragist slogans. Behind them, almost hidden by their persons, I caught a glimpse of a large but tasteful flowered and feathered hat. Could the individual under it be the famous Mrs. Markham, on whom so much depended? The man in the velvet cape, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat, marched at her side. The only individual I recognized was Mrs. Pankhurst, who brought up the rear.

They slowed their inexorable advance for neither constable nor sympathizer; I was forced to skip nimbly out of their way as they trotted past. Christabel, her face flushed with excitement, cried, “Now,” as the marchers surrounded the astonished constable to the left of the gates. I heard a thump and a yelp, as one of the wooden placards landed on his helmeted head.

His companion shouted, “ ’Ere now,” and started to the defense of his friend. Ramses stepped in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I beg you will remain where you are, Mr. Jenkins,” he said in a kindly voice.

“Oh, now, Mr. Emerson, don’t you do this!” the officer exclaimed piteously.

“You two are acquainted?” I inquired. I was not surprised. Ramses has quite a number of unusual acquaintances. Police officers are more respectable than certain of the others.

“Yes,” said Ramses. “How is your little boy, Jenkins?”

His voice was affable, his pose casual, but the unfortunate constable was gradually being pushed back against the railing. Knowing Ramses could manage quite nicely by himself, I turned to see if the ladies required my assistance in “restraining” the other constable.

The man was flat on the ground, tugging at the helmet which had been pushed over his eyes, and the gate had yielded to the impetuous advance of the delegation. Led by the two large ladies and the poetically garbed gentleman, it reached the door of the house.

I could not but admire the strategy, and the military precision with which it had been carried out, but I doubted the delegation would get any farther. Already the sound of police whistles rent the air; running feet and cries of “Now, then, what’s all this?” betokened the arrival of reinforcements. Mrs. Markham had prevaricated or had been deceived; if Romer had agreed to receive a petition, this forceful stratagem would not have been necessary. The door of the mansion would surely be locked, and Romer was not likely to allow his butler to open it.

Even as this thought entered my mind, the portal opened. I caught a glimpse of a pale, astonished face which I took to be that of the butler before it was hidden by the invading forces. They pushed their way in, and the door slammed behind them.

Outside on the street, matters were not going so well. Half a dozen uniformed men had gone to the rescue of their beleaguered colleague. Laying rough hands upon the ladies, they pulled them away and actually threw several to the ground. With a cry of indignation I raised my parasol and would have rushed forward had I not been seized in a respectful but firm grasp.

“Ramses, let go of me this instant,” I gasped.

“Wait, Mother—I promised Father—” He extended one foot and the constable who had been coming up behind me toppled forward with a startled exclamation.

“Oh, you promised your father, did you? Curse it,” I cried. But frustration and the compression of my ribs by the arm of my son prevented further utterance.

The constable Ramses had tripped got slowly to his feet. “Bleedin’ ’ell,” he remarked. “So it’s you, Mr. Emerson? I didn’t recognize you in that fancy getup.”

“Look after my mother, will you, Mr. Skuggins?” Releasing me, Ramses began picking up prostrate ladies. “Really, gentlemen,” he said, in tones of freezing disapproval, “this is no way for Englishmen to behave. Shame!”

A temporary lull ensued. The men in blue shuffled their feet and looked sheepish, while the ladies straightened their garments and looked daggers at the constables. I was surprised to see Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter, for I had assumed they had entered the house with the other leaders of the delegation.

Then one of the police officers cleared his throat. “That’s all very well, Mr. Emerson, sir, but wot about Mr. Romer? Those there ladies forced their way in—”

“An unwarranted assumption, Mr. Murdle,” said Ramses. “Force was not employed. The door was opened by Mr. Romer’s servant.”

At that strategic moment the door opened again. There was no mistaking the identity of the man who stood on the threshold. The blaze of light behind him set his silvery hair and beard aglow. Just as unmistakable as his appearance was the resonant voice that had earned him his reputation as one of England’s greatest orators.

“My lords, ladies and . . . er, that is . . . your attention, please. I have agreed to hear the petition of my old friend Mrs. Markham on condition that the rest of you disperse peacefully and without delay. Return your men to their duties, Sergeant.”

Behind him I caught a glimpse of an exuberantly flowered hat before the door closed with a decisive bang.

Mrs. Pankhurst’s was the first voice to break the silence. “There, now,” she said triumphantly. “Did I not assure you Mrs. Markham would prevail? Come, ladies, we may retreat with honor.”

They proceeded to do so. The mob, disappointed at this tame ending, followed their example, and before long the only persons remaining were my son and myself and a single constable, who drew the violated gates together again before stationing himself in front of them.

“Shall we go, Mother?” Ramses took my arm.

“Hmmm,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did you observe anything unusual about . . .”

“About what?”

I decided not to mention my strange fancy. If Ramses had observed nothing out of the way I had probably been mistaken.

I ought to have known better. I am seldom mistaken. My only consolation for failing to speak is that even if Ramses had believed me, the constable certainly would not have done, and that by the time I forced someone in authority to heed my advice, the crime would already have been committed.

Darkness was complete before we reached the house, and a thin black rain was falling. Gargery had been looking out for me; he flung the door open before I could ring, and announced in an accusing tone that the other members of the family were waiting for us in the library.

“Oh, are we late for tea?” I inquired, handing him my parasol, my cloak, and my hat.

“Yes, madam. The Professor is getting quite restive. If we had been certain Mr. Ramses was with you, we would not have worried.”

“I beg your pardon for neglecting to inform you,” said Ramses, adding his hat to the pile of garments Gargery held.

If he meant to be sarcastic, the effect was lost on Gargery. He had participated in several of our little adventures, and had enjoyed them a great deal. Now he considered himself responsible for us and sulked if he was not kept informed about our activities. A sulky butler is a cursed inconvenience, but in my opinion it was a small price to pay for loyalty and affection.

Taking Gargery’s hint, we went straight in without changing, and found the others gathered round the tea table. My devoted husband greeted me with a scowl. “You are cursed late, Peabody. What kept you?”

None of us likes to be waited upon when we are en famille, so Nefret had taken charge of the teapot. She was wearing one of the embroidered Egyptian robes she preferred for informal wear, and her red-gold hair had been tied back with a ribbon.

Strictly speaking, she was not our adopted daughter, or even our ward, since she had come of age the previous year and—thanks to my dear Emerson’s insistence on
this
young woman’s rights—was now in control of the fortune she had inherited from her grandfather. She had no other kin, however, and she had become as dear to Emerson and me as our own daughter. She had been thirteen when we rescued her from the remote Nubian oasis where she had lived since her birth, and it hadn’t been easy for her to adjust to the conventions of modern England.

It hadn’t been easy for me either. At times I wondered why Heaven had blessed me with two of the most difficult children a mother has ever encountered. I am not the sort of woman who coos over babies and dotes on small children, but I venture to assert that Ramses would have tried any mother’s nerves; he was hideously precocious in some areas and appallingly normal in others. (The normal behavior of a young boy involves a considerable quantity of dirt and a complete disregard for his own safety.) Just when I thought I had got Ramses past the worst stage, along came Nefret—strikingly pretty, extremely intelligent, and consistently critical of civilized conventions. A girl who had been High Priestess of Isis in a culture whose citizens go about half-clothed could not be expected to take kindly to corsets.

Compared to them, the third young person present had been a refreshing change. A casual observer might have taken him and Ramses for close kin; he had the same brown skin and waving black hair, the same long-lashed dark eyes. The resemblance was only coincidental; David was the grandson of our foreman, Abdullah, but he was Ramses’s closest friend and an important part of our family ever since he had gone to live with Emerson’s brother. He was not much of a talker, possibly because he found it difficult to get a word in when the rest of us were present. With an affectionate smile at me he drew up a hassock for my feet and placed a cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches on a table at my elbow.

“Your eyes look tired,” I said, inspecting him. “Have you been working on the drawings for the Luxor Temple volume by artificial light? I told you over and over you should not—”

“Leave off fussing, Peabody,” Emerson snapped. “You only want him to be ill so you can dose him with those noxious medicines of yours. Drink your tea.”

“I will do so at once, Emerson. But David should not—”

“He wanted to finish before we left for Egypt,” Nefret said. “Don’t worry about his eyesight, Aunt Amelia, the latest research indicates that reading by electric light is not harmful to one’s vision.”

She spoke with an authority which was, I had to admit, justified by her medical studies. Acquiring that training had been a struggle in itself. Over the violent objections of its (male) medical faculty, the University of London had, finally, opened its degrees to women, but the major universities continued to deny them, and the difficulty of obtaining clinical practice was almost as great as it had been a century earlier. Nefret had managed it, though, with the help of the dedicated ladies who had founded a woman’s medical college in London and forced some of the hospitals to admit women students to the wards and the dissecting rooms. She had spoken once or twice of continuing her studies in France or Switzerland, where (strange as it may seem to a Briton) the prejudice against female physicians was not so strong. I believe that she was loath to leave us, however; she adored Emerson, who was putty in her little hands, and she and Ramses really were like brother and sister. That is to say, they were on the best of terms except when they were being rude to one another.

“Why are you wearing those silly clothes?” she now inquired, studying Ramses’s elegantly garbed form with contemptuous amusement. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Miss Christabel Pankhurst was there.”

“Not much of a guess,” said Ramses. “You knew she would be.”

“What does Miss Christabel have to do with Ramses’s attire?” I inquired suspiciously.

My son turned to me. “That was Nefret’s feeble attempt at a joke.”

“Ha!” said Nefret. “I assure you, dear boy, you won’t think it is a joke if you continue to encourage the girl. Men seem to find conquests of that sort amusing, but she is a very determined young woman, and you won’t get rid of her as easily as you do the others.”

“Good Gad!” I exclaimed. “What others?”

“Another joke,” said Ramses, rising in haste. “Come and keep me company while I change, David. We will talk.”

“About Christabel,” Nefret murmured in saccharine tones.

Ramses was already halfway to the door. This last “joke” was too much for him; he stopped and turned. “If you had been at the demonstration,” he said, biting off the words, “you would have been able to observe my behavior for yourself. I was under the impression that you meant to attend.”

Nefret’s smile faded. “Uh—I had the chance to watch an interesting dissection.”

“You were not at the hospital this afternoon.”

“How the devil . . .” She glanced at me and bit her lip. “No. I went for a walk instead. With a friend.”