Meanwhile Mrs. d.i.c.kson stood grinning--grinning wide and visibly. It was the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each other for the one poor indomitable face.
"Well, ee _could_ "a told yer, if e"d ad the mind," she said, nodding, "for ee knows. Ee"s been out o" work this twelve an a arf year--well, come, I"ll bet yer, anyway, as ee "asn"t done a "and"s turn this three year--an I don"t blime im. Fust, there isn"t the work to be got, and then yer git out of the way o" wantin it. An beside, I"m used to im.
When Janey--no, it were Sue!--were seven month old, he come in one night from the public, an after ee"d broke up most o" the things, he says to me, "Clear out, will yer!" An I cleared out, and Sue and me set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the door, an ee says, "What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my breakfast?" An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays--the _women won"t do it_!--"
Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. d.i.c.kson still grinned.
"An so there"s nothink but _settin_", as I said before--settin" till yer can"t set no more. If I begin o" seven, I gets Mr. d.i.c.kson to put the teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don"t "ave to get up more"n jes to fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me--tea an bread, and a red "erring Sundays; an Mr. d.i.c.kson, "e gets "is meals out. I gives "im the needful, and "e don"t make no trouble; an the children is dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if I can _set_--set till I "ear Stepney Church goin twelve--I can earn my ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of "em. Wot does any lidy or genelman want, a comin" meddlin down "ere? Now, that"s the middle an both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was "ere, why, "e"d--"
She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their silence her own mood changed.
Suddenly she whipped up her ap.r.o.n. She drew it across her eyes, and flung it away again pa.s.sionately.
"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet piteously. "But we"ve got to git there fust. An I don"t want no shops, thank yer!"
She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed.
"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady"s ear--"Poor galley-slave in praise of servitude!"
"Her slavery keeps her alive, please."
"Yes--and drags down the standard of a whole cla.s.s!"
"You"ll admit she seemed content?"
"It"s that content we want to kill.--Ah! _at last!_" and Watton clapped loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent.
Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen.
She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady"s senses. The squalid monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him pa.s.sed from his mind.
Her beauty redressed the balance. ""Loveliness, magic, and grace--they are here; they are set in the world!"--and ugliness and pain have not conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing less, was the cry of the young man"s heart and imagination as he strained forward, waiting for her voice.
Then he settled himself to listen--only to pa.s.s gradually from expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay.
What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a hesitation he had not expected. But now--had she lost her thread--or what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress!
Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton looked at each other.
A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She _had_ lost it.
At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell"s wife. But by the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered.
Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and Fontenoy"s lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect.
Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own vanity suffered in her lack of triumph.
Amazing! How _could_ her personal magic--so famous on so many fields--have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart?
Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination--he understood.
He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell"s sentences, Maxwell"s manner--even, at times, Maxwell"s voice! He had been rehearsing to her his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away--no doubt they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife"s adoration showed through her very failure--through this strange conversion of all that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused ma.s.s of facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold!
Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, whispering in Tressady"s ear, "and too technical. They can"t follow."
And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as though in a pain of listening.
Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over.
But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly let him hear.
Ah!--those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of pa.s.sion--they were her own--herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a little tremulous--words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the speaker--he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He _felt_ the woman"s heart, oppressed with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like a point in s.p.a.ce, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing woe and tragedy of human things--the creeping hunger and pain--the struggle that leads no whither--the life that hates to live and yet dreads to die--the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man.
A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it were, to claim his own share of the common pain.
"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the crowd, "and let the lady pa.s.s."
Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round the doors.
"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very tired, I fear. Please lean upon me."
Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police!
For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, into a fierce confusion and tumult--why, Tressady hardly now understood.
A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear him--hurled names at him--"thief," "blackleg"--as he attempted to speak.
Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately acting, rose in a ma.s.s and booed at the unionists; and finally some of the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng around the platform.
Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and open a pa.s.sage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road.
Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the banks of it might be able to give.
Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab.
"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a pa.s.sage by dint of using his own stalwart frame as a ram.
They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell pa.s.sed. "Let "em stop at "ome and mind their own "usbands--yah!"
"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I"ll scrag yer!" For this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting fed and strengthened before an operation.
But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell"s foot was already on the step, when Tressady felt something fly past him.
There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned.
"You are hurt!" he said.
"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first to Mile End Road?"
"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?"
He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood.
"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament.
By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough but tolerable bandage.
Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a feeling of dismay.