The Convert Part 21

'There's a good many voters here,' said a tall, gloomy-looking individual, wearing a m.u.f.fler in lieu of a collar. 'She's politician enough to know that.'

Mrs. Fox-Moore looked through the man. 'The only rea.s.suring thing I see in the situation,' she said to her sister, 'is that they don't find many women to come and listen to their nonsense.'

'Well, they've got you and me! Awful thought! Suppose they converted us!'

Mrs. Fox-Moore didn't even trouble to reply to such levity. What was interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and hara.s.sed by the crowd--even more surprising she bore with the most recalcitrant members of it--tried to win them over, and yet when they were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight--this well-bred woman standing there in front of the soaring column, talking with grave pa.s.sion to those loafers about the 'Great Woman Question,' and they treating it as a Sunday afternoon street entertainment.

The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw nothing but 'low c.o.c.kney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own language--they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-aged man in a soft hat.

'That's 'im!'

'Yes. Lothian Scott!'

Small need for the chairwoman to introduce the grey man with the northern burr in his speech, and the northern turn for the uncompromising in opinion. Every soul there save the two 'educated'

ladies knew this was the man who had done more to make the Labour Party a political force to be reckoned with than any other creature in the three kingdoms. Whether he was conscious of having friends in a gathering largely Tory (as lower-cla.s.s crowds still are), certainly he did not spare his enemies.

During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs.

Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running comment--

'Oh, of _course_! He says that to curry favour with the mob--a rank demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning sharply to her companion, '_He wants votes!_' she said, as though detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh, no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness, _I_ call it, stirring up cla.s.s against cla.s.s! I begin to wonder what the police are thinking about.' She looked round uneasily.

The excitement had certainly increased as the little grey politician denounced the witlessness of the working-cla.s.s, and when they howled at him, went on to expound a trenchant doctrine of universal Responsibility, which preceded the universal Suffrage that was to come.

Much of what he said was drowned in uproar. It had become clear that his opinions revolted the majority of his hearers even more than they did the two ladies. So outraged were the sensibilities of the hooligan and the half-drunk that they drowned as much of the speech as they were able in cat-calls and jeers. But enough still penetrated to ears polite not only to horrify, but to astonish them--such force has the spoken word above even its exaggeration in cold print.

The ladies had read--sparingly, it is true--that these things were said, but to _hear_ them!

'He doesn't, after all, seem to be saying what the mob wants to hear,'

said the younger woman.

'No; mercifully the heart of the country is still sound!'

But for one of these two out of the orderlier world, the opposition that the 'rank demagogue' roused in the mob was to light a lamp whereby she read wondering the signs of an unsuspected bond between Janet Fox-Moore and the reeking throng.

When, contrary to the old-established custom of the demagogue, the little politician in homespun had confided to the men in front of him what he thought of them, he told them that the Woman's Movement which they held themselves so clever for ridiculing, was in much the same position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor any of the men in front of him would have the right to vote to-day.

'You ridicule and denounce these women for trying peacefully--yes, I say _peacefully_--to get their rights as citizens. Do you know what our fathers did to get ours? They broke down Hyde Park railings, they burnt the Bristol Munic.i.p.al Buildings, they led riots, and they shed blood.

These women have hurt n.o.body.'

'What about the policeman?'

He went on steadily, comparing the moderation of the women with the red-hot violence of their Chartist forbears--till one half-drunken listener, having lost the thread, hiccuped out--

'Can't do nothin'--them women. Even after we've showed 'em _'ow_!'

'Has he got his history right?' Vida asked through her smiling at the last sally. 'Not that it applies, of course,' she was in haste to add.

'Oh, what does it matter?' Her sister waved it aside. 'An unscrupulous politician hasn't come here to bother about little things like facts.'

'I don't think I altogether agree with you _there_. That man may be a fanatic, but he's honest, I should say. Those Scotch peasants, you know----'

'Oh, because he's rude, and talks with a burr, you think he's a sort of political Thomas Carlyle?'

Though Vida smiled at the charge, something in her alert air as she followed the brief recapitulation of the Chartist story showed how an appeal to justice, or even to pity, may fail, where the rousing of some dim sense of historical significance (which is more than two-thirds fear), may arrest and even stir to unsuspected deeps. The grave Scotsman's striking that chord even in a mind as innocent as Vida's, of accurate or ordered knowledge of the past, even here the chord could vibrate to a strange new sense of possible significance in this scene '----after all.' It would be queer, it would be horrible, it was fortunately incredible, but what if, 'after all,' she were ignorantly a.s.sisting at a scene that was to play its part in the greatest revolution the world had seen? Some such mental playing with possibilities seemed to lurk behind the intent reflective face.

'There are far too many voters already,' her sister had flung out.

'Yes--yes, a much uglier world they want to make!'

But in the power to make history--if these people indeed had that, then indeed might they be worth watching--even if it were only after one good look to hide the eyes in dismay. That possibility of historic significance had suddenly lifted the sordid exhibition to a different plane.

As the man, amid howls, ended his almost indistinguishable peroration, the unmoved chairman stepped forward again to try to win back for the next speaker that modic.u.m of quiet attention which he, at all events, had the art of gaining and of keeping. As she came forward this time one of her auditors looked at the Woman Leader in the Crusade with new eyes--not with sympathy, rather with a vague alarm. Vida Levering's air of almost strained attention was an unconscious public confession: 'I haven't understood these strange women; I haven't understood the spirit of the mob that hoots the man we know vaguely for their champion; I haven't understood the allusions nor the argot that they talk; I can't check the history that peasant has appealed to. In the midst of so much that is obscure, it is meet to reserve judgment.' Something of that might have been read in the look lifted once or twice as though in wonderment, above the haggard group up there between the guardian lions, beyond even the last reach of the tall monument, to the cloudless sky of June. Was the great shaft itself playing a part in the impression? Was it there not at all for memory of some battle long ago, but just to mark on the fair bright page of afternoon a huge surprise? What lesser accent than just this t.i.tanic exclamation point could fitly punctuate the record of so strange a portent!--women confronting the populace of the mightiest city in the world--pleading in her most public place their right to a voice in her affairs.

In the face of this unexpected mood of receptivity, however unwilling, came a sharp corrective in the person of the next speaker.

'Oh, it's not going to be one that's been to prison!'

'Oh, dear! It's the one with the wild black hair and the awful "picture hat"!' But they stared for a few moments as if, in despite of themselves, fascinated by this lady be-feathered, be-crimped, and be-ringed, wearing her huge hat c.o.c.ked over one ear with a defiant coquetry above a would-be conquering smile. The unerring wits in the crowd had already picked her out for special attention, but her active 'public form' was even more torturing to the fastidious feminine sense than her 'stylish' appearance. For her language, flowery and grandiloquent, was excruciatingly genteel, one moment conveyed by minced words through a pursed mouth, and the next carried away on a turgid tide of rhetoric--the swimmer in this sea of sentiment flinging out braceleted arms, and bawling appeals to the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_'

The crowd howled with derisive joy.

All the same, when they saw she had staying power, and a kind of Transpontine sense of drama in her, the populace mocked less and applauded more. Why not? She was very much like an overblown Adelphi heroine, and they could see her act for nothing. But every time she apostrophized the '_Wim--men--nof--Vinglund!_' two of those same gave way to overcharged feelings.

'Oh, my dear, I can't stand this! I'm going home!'

'Yes, yes. Let's get away from this terrible female. I suppose they keep back the best speakers for the last.'

The two ladies turned, and began to edge their way out of the tightly packed ma.s.s of humanity.

'It's rather a pity, too,' said Mrs. Fox-Moore, looking back, 'for this is the only chance we'll ever have. I did want to hear what the skilly was.'

'Yes, and about the dog-whip.'

'Skilly! Sounds as if it might be what she hit the policeman with.' Mrs.

Fox-Moore was again pausing to look back. 'That gyrating female is more what I expected them _all_ to be.'

'Yes; but just listen to that.'

'To what?'

'Why, the way they're applauding her.'

'Yes, they positively revel in the creature!'

It was a long, tiresome business this worming their way out. They paused again and again two or three times, looking back at the scene with a recurrent curiosity, and each time repelled by the platform graces of the lady who was so obviously enjoying herself to the top of her bent.

Yet even after the fleeing twain arrived on the fringe of the greatly augmented crowd, something even then prevented their instantly making the most of their escape. They stood criticizing and denouncing.

Again Mrs. Fox-Moore said it was a pity, since they were there, that they should have to go without hearing one of those who had been in prison, 'For we'll never have another chance.'

'Perhaps,' said her sister, looking back at the gesticulating figure--'perhaps we're being a little unreasonable. We were annoyed at first because they weren't what we expected, and when we get what we came to see, we run away.'