"Wot do they give ye," inquired a half-tipsy tramp, "fur "awkin" that rot about?"
She turned away quite unruffled. "Citizenship of Women, one penny."
"I hope you _do_ get paid for so disagreeable a job--forgive my saying so," said Vida.
"Paid? Oh, no!" she said cheerfully. "I"m too hard at work all week to help much. And I can"t speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship----"
"Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,"--Mrs. Fox-Moore detained the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eager little figure sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at the crowd--"is that one of them?"
"Oh, yes. I thought everybody knew _her_. That"s Miss Mary O"Brian."
She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that Vida asked--
"And who is Miss Mary O"Brian?" But the pamphlet-seller had descried a possible customer, and was gone.
"Mary O"Brian," said a blear-eyed old man, "is the one that"s just come out o" quod."
"Oh, thank you." Then to her sister Vida whispered, "What is quod?"
But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only shake her head. Even when they heard the words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to accompany sound.
"Oh, is _that_ Mary?" A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the extreme back of his head, began to sing, "Molly Darling."
""Ow"d yer like the skilly?" another shouted up at the girl.
"Skilly?" whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore.
Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn"t in the dictionary of any language she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was--
"Miss...o...b..ian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how she liked it."
"Oh, she"s going to tell us all about it. "Ow _nice_!" But they let the thin little slip of a girl alone after that.
It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe of the crowd--
"I say, Mary, w"en yer get yer rights will y" be a perliceman?" Even the tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they smiled at the suggested image.
After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people for a few minutes. It wasn"t often that life presented such an opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay, since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves--women had been capable of that before--but these didn"t even mind ridicule.
Which was new.
Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to open the meeting.
"Friends!" she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with.
But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other matters, they were met there to pa.s.s a censure on the Government----
"Haw! haw!"
""Ear, "ear!" said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his ear.
"And to express our sympathy with the brave women----"
The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor"s ""Ear, "ear!"
""E can"t "ear without "e shouts about it."
"Try and keep _yerself_ quiet," said he, with dignity. "We ain"t "ere to "ear _you_."
"----sympathy with the brave women," the steady voice went on, "who are still in prison."
"Serve "em jolly well right!"
"Give the speaker a chaunce, caun"t ye?" said the newsvendor, with a withering look.
It was plain this old gentleman was an unblushing adherent to the cause (undismayed by being apparently the only one in that vicinity), ready to cheer the chairman at every juncture, and equally ready to administer caustic reproof to her opponents.
"Our friends who are in prison, are there simply for trying to bring before a member of the Government----"
"Good old Effingham. Three cheers for Effingham!"
"Oh, yes," said the newsvendor, "go on! "E needs a little cheerin", awfter the mess "e"s made o" things!"
"For trying to put before a member of the Government a statement of the injustice----"
"_That_ ain"t why they"re in gaol. It"s fur ringin" wot"s-"is-name"s door-bell."
"Kickin" up rows in the street----"
"Oh, you shut up," says the old champion, out of patience. "You"ve "ad "arf a pint too much."
Everybody in the vicinity was obliged to turn and look at the youth to see what proportion of the charge was humour and how much was fact. The youth resented so deeply the turn the conversation had taken that he fell back for a moment on bitter silence.
"When you go to call on some one," the chairman was continuing, with the patient air of one instructing a cla.s.s in a kindergarten, "it is the custom to ring the bell. What do you suppose a door-bell is for? Do you think our deputation should have tried to get in without ringing at the door?"
"They "adn"t no business goin" to "is private "ouse."
"Oh, look "ere, just take that extry "arf pint outside the meetin" and cool off, will yer?"
It was the last time that particular opponent aired his views. The old man"s judicious harping on the ""arf pint" induced the ardent youth to moderate his political transports. They were not rightly valued, it appeared. After a few more mutterings he took his "extry "alf pint" into some more congenial society. But there were several others in the crowd who had come similarly fortified, and they were everywhere the most audible opponents. But above argument, denial, abuse, steadily in that upper air the clear voice kept on--
"Do you think they _wanted_ to go to his house? Haven"t you heard that they didn"t do that until they had exhausted every other means to get a hearing?"
To the shower of denial and objurgation that greeted this, she said with uplifted hand--
"Stop! Let me tell you about it."
The action had in it so much of authority that (as it seemed, to their own surprise) the interrupters, with mouths still open, suspended operations for a moment.
"Why, this is a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that doing in this _galere_?" Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able to enlighten her. "Can"t she see--even if there were anything in the "Cause," as she calls it--what an imbecile waste of time it is talking to these louts?"