Stonor looked down at the girl at his side. He saw her hands go up to her throat as though she were suffocating. The young face, where some harsh knowledge was struggling for birth, was in pity turned away from the man she loved.
The woman leaned down from the platform, and spoke her last words with a low and thrilling earnestness.
"I would say in conclusion to the women here, it"s not enough to be sorry for these, our unfortunate sisters. We must get the conditions of life made fairer. We women must organize. We must learn to work together. We have all (rich and poor, happy and unhappy) worked so long and so exclusively for men, we hardly know how to work for one another.
But we must learn. Those who can, may give money. Those who haven"t pennies to give, even those people are not so poor but what they can give some part of their labour--some share of their sympathy and support. I know of a woman--she isn"t of our country--but a woman who, to help the women strikers of an oppressed industry to hold out, gave a thousand pounds a week for thirteen weeks to get them and their children bread, and help them to stand firm. The masters were amazed. Week after week went by, and still the people weren"t starved into submission.
Where did this mysterious stream of help come from? The employers couldn"t discover, and they gave in. The women got back their old wages, and I am glad to say many of them began to put by pennies to help a little to pay back the great sum that had been advanced to them."
"She took their pennies--a rich woman like that?"
"Yes--to use again, as well as to let the working women feel they were helping others. I hope you"ll all join the Union. Come up after the meeting is over and give us your names."
As she turned away, "You won"t get any men!" a taunting voice called after her.
The truth in the gibe seemed to sting. Forestalling the chairman, quickly she confronted the people again, a new fire in her eyes.
"Then," she said, holding out her hands--"then _it is to the women I appeal_!" She stood so an instant, stilling the murmur, and holding the people by that sudden concentration of pa.s.sion in her face. "I don"t mean to say it wouldn"t be better if men and women did this work together, shoulder to shoulder. But the ma.s.s of men won"t have it so. I only hope they"ll realize in time the good they"ve renounced and the spirit they"ve aroused. For I know as well as any man could tell me, it would be a bad day for England if all women felt about all men _as I do_."
She retired in a tumult. The others on the platform closed about her.
The chairman tried in vain to get a hearing from the swaying and dissolving crowd.
Jean made a blind forward movement towards the monument. Stonor called out, in a toneless voice--
"Here! follow me!"
"No--no--I----" The girl pressed on.
"You"re going the wrong way."
"_This_ is the way----"
"We can get out quicker on this side."
"I don"t _want_ to get out."
"What?"
He had left Lady John, and was following Jean through the press.
"Where are you going?" he asked sharply.
"To ask that woman to let me have the honour of working with her."
The crowd surged round the girl.
"Jean!" he called upon so stern a note that people stared and stopped.
Others--not Jean.
CHAPTER XVII
A little before six o"clock on that same Sunday, Jean Dunbarton opened the communicating door between her own little sitting-room and the big bare drawing-room of her grandfather"s house in Eaton Square. She stood a moment on the threshold, looking back over her shoulder, and then crossed the drawing-room, treading softly on the parquet s.p.a.ces between the rugs. She went straight to the window, and was in the act of parting the lace curtains to look out, when she heard the folding doors open.
With raised finger she turned to say "Sh!" The servant stood silently waiting, while she went back to the door she had left open and with an air of caution closed it.
When she turned round again the butler had stepped aside to admit Mr.
Stonor. He came in with a quick impatient step; but before he had time to get a word out--"Speak low, please," the girl said. He was obviously too much annoyed to pay much heed to her request, which if he thought about it at all, he must have interpreted as consideration for the ailing grandfather.
"I waited a full half-hour for you to come back," he said in a tone no lower than usual.
The girl had led the way to the side of the room furthest from the communicating door. "I am sorry," she said dully.
"If you didn"t mind leaving me like that," he followed her up with his arraignment, "you might at least have considered Lady John."
"Is she here with you?" Jean stopped by the sofa near the window.
"No," he said curtly. "My place was nearer than this and she was tired.
I left her to get some tea. We couldn"t tell whether you"d be here, or _what_ had become of you!"
"Mr. Trent got us a hansom."
"Trent?"
"The chairman of the meeting."
"Got us----?"
"Miss Levering and me."
Stonor"s incensed face turned almost brick colour as he repeated, "_Miss Lev_----!"
Before he got the name out, the folding doors had opened again, and the butler was saying, "Mr. Farnborough."
That young gentleman was far too anxious and flurried himself, to have sufficient detachment of mind to consider the moods of other people. "At last!" he said, stopping short as soon as he caught sight of Stonor.
"Don"t speak loud, please," said Miss Dunbarton; "some one is resting in the next room."
"Oh, did you find your grandfather worse?"--but he never waited to learn. "You"ll forgive the incursion when you hear"--he turned abruptly to Stonor again. "They"ve been telegraphing you all over London," he said, putting his hat down in the nearest chair. "In sheer despair they set me on your track."
"Who did?"
Farnborough was fumbling agitatedly in his breast-pocket. "There was the devil to pay at Dutfield last night. The Liberal chap tore down from London, and took over your meeting."
"Oh? Nothing about it in the Sunday paper I saw."
"Wait till you see the press to-morrow! There was a great rally, and the beggar made a rousing speech."