Rebel women Part 5

Penelope and I fled downstairs to escape detection.

"She was converted all the time; I told you she would be," I remarked on the doorstep.

"Now for the immortal grudge!" sighed Penelope.

VI

At a Street Corner

"People of London!" faltered the lady who had just stepped upon the sugar-box at the edge of the pavement.

The people of London, who happened just then to be a very little girl carrying a very large baby, stared in some astonishment. Another lady, who had been distributing handbills farther along the street, came back and prompted the speaker encouragingly.

"Go on; that's splendid!" she said with friendly warmth.

The woman on the sugar-box, who had never stood on a sugar-box before, smiled wanly. "Why do they never have earthquakes except in countries where people don't want them?" she sighed. Her friend being engaged at the moment in pressing a handbill upon the little girl, who obligingly gripped the baby with one hand and her chin in order to take it, there came no response to the appeal of the orator in the gutter; and she pulled herself together and made a fresh start.

"People of London!" she repeated amiably. "We have come here to tell you about 'Votes for----'"

"Why, it's these 'ere Suffra_gites_!" suddenly yelled the people of London, s.h.i.+fting the baby on to the other arm; and the debutante on the sugar-box broke down and laughed deprecatingly.

"I really must wait for some more people," she protested.

"You needn't," said her more experienced companion. "They always come along fast enough as soon as they see some one like you standing on a sugar-box."

"That doesn't surprise me," remarked the inexperienced one, thinking regretfully of a happy past in which the chief aim of a well-ordered life had been to avoid doing anything that would attract attention.

"Here they come," continued the lady with the handbills. "Just keep them going while I get rid of these, there's a dear! It doesn't matter what you say," she added consolingly, as she went towards two approaching women with outstretched hand and an ingratiating smile.

"_Ah! ce sont les suffragettes!_" exclaimed one of these unexpectedly.

"_Nous sommes des suffragistes francaises, nous aussi! Vive le feminisme!_"

"Oh, how perfectly delightful!" said the English suffragist, beaming on them. "Do stop and listen. _Nous allons avoir un_--oh, bother! What is 'meeting'?--_un rendez-vous, mesdames!_"

"_Tiens!_" gasped the French suffragists, as well they might.

At this moment the speaker, her mind a blank concerning all the carefully prepared sentences she had been learning by heart for days, could be heard announcing that she would now call upon the other lady to address the meeting; and the crowd, increasing every minute, cheered inconsequently.

"Well, there ain't much of her, but give 'er a chaunce!" remarked a wit, as the second speaker mounted the sugar-box.

A small boy hitched up his trousers and moved off. "I shall turn into a woman if I stay here," he observed.

"No such luck for you, my boy!" came the quick retort from the rickety platform, and the impressionable crowd grinned with appreciation.

The speaker pounced upon her opportunity and began to sketch the history of Reform. She used long words purposely, so they made an instant show of listening, it being out of the question, of course, to allow that any woman, least of all a Suffragette, could talk over their heads. The astonis.h.i.+ng statement that women in the past had enjoyed a certain measure of political power, was, however, too much for one youth.

"Where did you git that from?" he shouted.

"My friend has forgotten his history," said the speaker indulgently. "It is an historical fact----"

The interrupter turned his back contemptuously on the sugar-box, and addressed the audience in a loud and overpowering voice.

"Look at 'er!" he adjured them, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

"History, she says! Believin' what she's towld in a book. Ain't that jest like a woman?"

Having thus disposed of the facts of history, he went on to deal more largely with the question as a whole. "Pack o' women!" he snorted. "Why don't they stay at 'ome and mind the baby? Why don't they cook the old man's dinner? Why don't they----?"

"This gentleman evidently thinks it is question time," struck in the real speaker with undisturbed composure. "Perhaps, when he reaches the age that will ent.i.tle him to use a vote, he will know more about the procedure of a political meeting----"

"Well, you ain't got a vote yourself, anyhow!" said the incensed youth, turning round amid the laughter of the crowd to face the woman on the sugar-box, which, of course, was exactly what she wanted him to do.

"Ah, I was wrong," she smiled back at him. "I see you do know something about the present political situation. If you will kindly keep your questions till I have finished speaking, I shall be very happy to----"

"Yuss!" agreed a supporter. "Stow it, Jim, till the lidy's had 'er say."

"But I don't want to hear no bloomin' Suffragette," grumbled the youth, angrily conscious that the crowd was no longer with him.

"Then git out!" advised the crowd; and the speaker's voice was drowned for a minute or so in the altercation that followed.

"What's it all about?" asked one woman of another, at the edge of the crowd.

The other, encircling a large bundle with her arms, shook her head.

"I dunno," she said; "but I loves to 'ear 'em talk."

The woman on the sugar-box was just giving the obvious reply to another interrupter, who wanted to know how a woman could find time to vote if she had a husband and six children to look after.

"How does a man find time to vote, if he has a wife and six children to support?" she demanded; and the woman with the bundle nodded approvingly.

"Now she's talkin' sense, and I likes sense," she remarked to her companion. "I don't 'old with women bein' Prime Ministers, but I likes sense."

The hostile youth, growing tired of being made the sport of the crowd, moved off with the remark that he would like "to see 'em all drowned"; and the speaker profited by a temporary lull and began to talk of economics. She held her audience now without difficulty, telling them things about the labour market that they knew to be true; and a kind of tense hush was over the crowd round the sugar-box, when a well-dressed woman came strolling along the pavement on her way home from the Park.

"Why, I do believe that is a real live Suffragette! How chic!" she exclaimed with an amused smile.

The Suffragette caught the remark, and determined to catch the woman who made it. In a minute or two the amused smile was gone, and another comment floated up to the sugar-box.

"Jack, are you there? You must come and listen to this--you positively must! I--I had no idea they were like that!"

The woman in the French hat was won, but the crowd was again temporarily lost, and wild din reigned for the next few moments while supporters yelled for silence and opponents sang songs. At the first semblance of a pause, the Suffragette broke in again, the smile still predominating.

"I can see how anxious you are to help the Suffragettes," she said sweetly; and once more she carried the joking, irresponsible crowd along with her. "You women who are here, come to our demonstration in Hyde Park next Sunday----"

"Hold on, young woman, who's going to cook the Sunday dinner for the kids?" interposed a voice.