Something was called out that Vida could not hear, but that brought the painful scarlet into the young face.
"Shame! shame!" Some of the men were denouncing the interjection.
After a little pause the girl found her voice. "You make it difficult for me to tell you what I think you ought to know. I don"t believe I could go on if I didn"t see over there the Reformer"s Tree. It makes me think of how much had to be borne before other changes could be brought about." She reminded the people of what had been said and suffered on that very spot in the past, before the men standing before her had got the liberties they enjoyed to-day.
"They were _men_!"
"Yes, and so perhaps it wasn"t so hard for them. I don"t know, and I"m sure it was hard enough. When we women remember what _they suffered_--though you think meanly of us because we can"t be soldiers, you may as well know we are ready to do whatever has to be done--we are ready to bear whatever has to be borne. There seem to be things harder to face than bullets, but it doesn"t matter, they"ll be faced."
The lady standing with her maid in the incongruous crowd, looked round once or twice with eyes that seemed to say, "How much stranger life is than we are half the time aware, and how much stranger it bids fair to be!" The rude platform with the scarlet backing flaming in the face of the glorious summer afternoon, near the very spot upon which the great battles for Reform had been fought out in the past, and in place of England"s st.u.r.dy freeman making his historic appeal for justice, and admission to the Commons--a girl pouring out this stream of vigorous English, upholding the cause her family had stood for. Her voice failed her a little towards the close, or rather it did not so much fail as betray to any sensitive listener the degree of strain she put upon it to make it carry above laughter and interjection. As she raised the note she bent over the crowd, leaning forward, with her neck outstretched, the cords in it swelling, and the heat of the sun bringing a flush and a moisture to her face, steadying her voice as the thought of the struggle to come, shook and clouded it, and calling on the people to judge of this matter without prejudice. It was a thing to live in the memory--the vision of that earnest child trying to fire the London louts with the great names of the past, and failing to see her bite her lip to keep back tears, and, bending over the rabble, find a choked voice to say--
"If your forefathers and foremothers who suffered for the freedom you young men enjoy--if they could come out of their graves to-day and see how their descendants use the great privileges they won--I believe they would go back into their graves and pull the shrouds over their eyes to hide them from your shame!"
"Hear! Hear!" "Right you are."
But she was done. She turned away, and found friendly hands stretched out to draw her to a seat.
The next speaker was an alert little woman with a provincial accent and the briskness of a c.o.c.k-sparrow, whose prettiness, combined with pertness, rather demoralized the mob.
"Men and women," she began, pitching her rather thin voice several notes too high.
"Men and women!" some one piped in mimicry; and the crowd dissolved in laughter.
It was curious to note again how that occasional exaggerated shrillness of the feminine voice when raised in the open air--how it amused the mob. They imitated the falsetto with squeals of delight. Each time she began afresh she was met by the shrill echo of her own voice. The contest went on for several minutes. The spectacle of the agitated little figure, bobbing and gesticulating and nothing heard but shrill squeaks, raised a very pandemonium of merriment. It didn"t mend matters for her to say when she did get a hearing--
"I"ve come all the way from----" (place indistinguishable in the confusion) "to talk to you this afternoon----"
""ow kind!"
"Do you reely think they could spare you?"
"And I"m going to convert every man within reach of my voice."
Groans, and "Hear! Hear!"
"Let"s see you try!"
She talked on quite inaudibly for the most part. A phrase here and there came out, and the rest lost. So much hilarity in the crowd attracted to it a bibulous gentleman, who kept calling out, "Oh, the pretty dear!" to the rapture of the bystanders. He became so elevated that the police were obliged to remove him. When the excitement attending this pa.s.sage had calmed down, the reformer was perceived to be still piping away.
""ow long are you goin" on like this?"
"Ain"t you _never_ goin" to stop?"
"Oh, not for a long time," she shrilled cheerfully. "I"ve got the acc.u.mulations of _centuries_ on me, and I"m only just beginning to unload! Although we haven"t got the vote--_not yet_--never mind, we"ve got our tongues!"
"Lord, don"t we know it!" said a sad-faced gentleman, in a rusty topper.
"This one"s too intolerable," said a man to his companion.
"Yes; she ought to be smacked."
They melted out of the crowd.
"We"ve got our tongues, and I"ve been going round among all the women I know getting them to promise to _use_ their tongues----"
"You stand up there and tell us they needed _urgin"_?"
"To use their tongues to such purpose that it won"t be women, but _men_, who get up the next monster pet.i.tion to Parliament asking for Woman"s Suffrage."
She went down under a flood of jeers, and rose to the surface again to say--
"A man"s pet.i.tion, praying Parliament for goodness" sake give those women the vote! Yes, you"d better be seeing about that pet.i.tion, my friends, for I tell you there isn"t going to be any peace till we get the franchise."
"Aw now, they"d give _you_ anything!"
When the jeering had died a little, and she came to the top once more, she was discovered to be shouting--
"You men "ad just better keep an eye on us----"
"Can"t take our eyes off yer!"
"We Suffragettes _never_ have a Day of Rest! Every day in the week, while you men are at work or sitting in the public-house, we are visiting the women in their homes, explaining and stirring them up to a sense of their wrongs."
"This I should call an example of what _not_ to say!" remarked a shrewd-looking man with a grin.
The crowd were ragging the speaker again, while she shouted--
"We are going to effect such a revolution as the world has never seen!"
"I"d like to bash her head for her!"
"We let them know that so long as women have no citizenship they are outside the pale of the law. If we are outside the law, we can"t _break_ the law. It is not our fault that we"re outlaws. It is you men"s fault."
"Don"t say that," said a voice in mock agony. "I love you so."
"I know you can"t help it," she retorted.
"If we gave you the vote, what would you do with it? Put it in a pie?"
"Well, I wouldn"t make the _hash_ of it you men do!" and she turned the laugh. "Look at you! _Look_ at you!" she said, when quiet was restored.
The young revellers gave a rather blank sn.i.g.g.e.r, as though they had all along supposed looking at them to be an exhilarating occupation for any young woman.
"What do you do with your power? You throw it away. You submit to being taxed and to _our_ being taxed to the tune of a hundred and twenty-seven millions, that a war may be carried on in South Africa--a war that most of you know nothing about and care nothing about--a war that some of us knew only too much about, and wanted only to see abandoned. We see constantly how you men either misuse the power you have or you don"t use it at all. Don"t appreciate it. Don"t know what to do with it. Haven"t a notion you ought to be turning it into good for the world. Hundreds of men don"t care anything about political influence, except that women shouldn"t have it."
She was getting on better till some one called out, "You ought to get married."
"I"m going to. If you don"t be good you won"t be asked to the wedding."