The Wedding Breaker Evelyn Rose Ebook Download
Jon Followell
Everybody within hearing laughed, except thewoman, who did not seem to be aware that theywere talking about her. She was on her feet,steadying herself by grasping the back of the seatin front of her, and her eyes, non-committal in theirlack of expression, were bent on the roaring, restlesscrowd that surged backwards and forwards inthe Square below, where progress was gradually becomingan impossibility due to the stream of trafficstruggling towards Whitehall. The thing shewanted to find was not down there, among the slipping[8]horses, the swaying men and women, the movinglines of policemen; nor did it lurk in those denserblocks of humanity that marked a spot, here andthere, where some resolute, battered woman wassetting her face towards the gate of St. Stephen's;nor was the thing she sought to be found behindthat locked gate of liberty where those in possession,stronger far in the convention of centuries thanlocks or bars could make them, stood in their well-bredsecurity, immeasurably shocked at the scenebefore them and most regrettably shaken, as someof them were heard to murmur, in a lifelong devotionto the women's cause.
The searching gaze of the woman on the omnibuswandered for an instant from all this, away toWestminster Bridge and the blue distance of Lambeth,where darting lamps, like will-o'-the-wispscome to town, added a touch of magic relief to thedinginess of night. Then she came back again tothe sharp realism of the foreground and found nowill-o'-the-wisps there, only the lights of Londonshining on a picture she should remember to theend of her life. It did not matter, for the thingbeyond it all that she wanted to be sure of, shonethrough rain and mud alike.
The woman with the passionless eyes was threadingher way through the straggling clusters ofpeople that fringed the great crowd where it thinnedout towards Broad Sanctuary. A girl wearing themilitant tricolour in her hat, brushed against her,whispered, "Ten been taken, they say; they'reknocking them about terribly to-night!" andpassed noiselessly away. The first woman wenton, as though she had not heard.
A roar of voices and a sudden sway of the throngthat pinned her against some railings at the bottomof Victoria Street, announced the eleventh arrest.A friendly artisan in working clothes swung her uptill she stood beside him on the stone coping, andtold her to "ketch on." She caught on, and recoveredher breath laboriously.
The woman, who had been arrested after beingturned back from the doors of the House repeatedlyfor two successive hours, was swept past in thecustody of an inspector, who had at last put aperiod to the mental and physical torment that a[10]pickpocket would have been spared. A swirlingmass of people, at once interested and puzzled,sympathetic and uncomprehending, was sweptalong with her and round her. In her eyes was thesame unemotional, detached look that filled the gazeof the woman clinging to the railings. It was theonly remarkable thing about her; otherwise, shewas just an ordinary workaday woman, ratherdrab-looking, undistinguished by charm or attraction,as these things are generally understood.
"Now then, please, every one who wants a votemust keep clear of the traffic. Pass along the footway,ladies, if you please; there's no votes to behad in the middle of the roadway," said the jocularvoice of the mounted constable, who was backinghis horse gently and insistently into the pushing,struggling throng.
The jesting tone was an added humiliation;and women in the crowd, trying to see the lastof their comrade and to let her know that theywere near her then, were beaten back, hot withhelpless anger. The mounted officer came relentlesslyon, successfully sweeping the pavementclear of the people whom he was exhorting with somuch official reasonableness not to invade theroadway. He paused once to salute and to avoidtwo men, who, having piloted a lady through thebackwash of the torrent set in motion by the plunginghorse, were now hoisting her into a place ofsafety just beyond the spot where the artisanand the other woman held on to the railings.
The crowd, friendly to the point of admiring astruggle against fearful odds which they yet allowedto proceed without their help, took up the wordswith enthusiasm; and the mud-bespattered womanwent away to the haven of the police station withher war-cry ringing in her ears.
The man who had led the cheer turned to thewoman beside him, as though to justify his impulse."It's their pluck," he said. "If the unemployedhad half as much, they'd have knocked sense intothis Government long ago!"
"This is the kind of thing you get on a biggerscale in war," he said, in a half-jesting tone, as ifashamed of seeming serious. "Same mud andslush, same grit, same cowardice, same stupidity andbeastliness all round. The women here are fightingfor something big; that's the only difference. Oh,there's another, of course; they're taking all thekicks themselves and giving none of 'em back.I suppose it has to be that way round whenyou're fighting for your souls and not for yourbodies."
"Oh, yes," returned the other, in the same toneof gentle raillery. "Don't you remember MonsieurBergeret? He was perfectly right. There is noseparate art of war, because in war you merelypractise the arts of peace rather badly, such asbaking and washing, and cooking and digging,and travelling about. On the spot it is a wretchedscuffle; and the side that wins is the side thatsucceeds in making the other side believe it to beinvincible. When the women can do that, they'vewon."
"Exactly. That proves it," retorted the man,who had fought in real wars. "They wouldn'tbring out six thousand police to arrest thirteen men,even if they all threw bombs, as your wife herewould like to see."
It did not strike her as strange that she should beclasping iron railings in Westminster, late on awet evening, talking to a working-man about Greektragedy. The new world she was treading to-night,in which things that mattered were given their trueproportions, and important scruples of a lifetimedwindled to nothingness, gave her a fresh and awhimsical insight into everything that happened;and the odd companion that chance had flung her,half an hour ago, became quite easily the friend shewanted at the most friendless moment she had everknown.
"And then," continued the woman, scorn risingin her voice, "when Clytaemnestra comes out of thehouse and explains why she has murdered herhusband, they find plenty to say because there is awoman to be blamed, though they never blamedAgamemnon for doing far worse things to her.That is the way the magistrate and the dailypapers will talk to-morrow, when our women arebrought up in the police court."
Big Ben tolled out ten strokes, and his companion,catching her breath, looked with suddenapprehension at the moving, throbbing block ofpeople, now grown so immense that the police,giving up the attempt to keep the road clear, weremerely concerned in driving back the throng on foursides and preserving an open space round the[17]cluster of buildings known to a liberty-lovingnation as the People's House. The gentlemen, whostill stood in interested groups behind the barredgates of it, found the prospect less entertainingnow that the action had been removed beyond therange of easy vision; and some of the bolder onesventured out into the hollow square, formed by anunbroken line of constables, who were standingshoulder to shoulder, backed by mounted menwho made little raids from time to time on thecrowd behind, now fast becoming a very ugly one.Every possible precaution was being taken to avoidthe chance of annoyance to any one who might stillwish to preserve a decorous faith in the principleof women's liberty.
Meanwhile, somewhere in that shouting, hustling,surging mass of humanity, as the woman onlookerknew full well, was the twelfth member of thewomen's deputation that had been broken up bythe police, two hours ago, before it could reachthe doors of the House; and knowing that herturn had come now, she pictured that twelfth womanbeating against a barrier that had been set upagainst them both ever since the world grewcivilized. There was not a friend near, when shenodded to the artisan and slipped down from hertemporary resting-place. The respectable andsympathetic portion of the crowd was cut off fromher, away up towards Whitehall, whither it hadfollowed the twelfth woman. On this side ofParliament Square all the idlers, all the coarse-tonguedreprobates of the slums of Westminster,[18]never far distant from any London crowd, wereherded together in a stupid, pitiless, ignorant mob.The slough of mud underfoot added the last sickeningtouch to a scene that for the flash of an instantmade her heart fail.
She smiled back at him from the kerbstone, whereshe stood hovering a second or two on the fringeof the tumult and confusion. Her moment'shesitation was gone, and the sure look had comeback to her eyes.
Shortly after midnight two men paused, talking,under the shadow of Westminster Abbey, andwatched a patrol of mounted police that ambledat a leisurely pace across the deserted Square. Thelight in the Clock Tower was out. Thirteen women,granted a few hours' freedom in return for a wordof honour, had gone to their homes, proudly consciousof having once more vindicated the invincibilityof their cause; and some five or six[19]hundred gentlemen had been able to issue in safetyfrom the stronghold of liberty, which they had oncemore proved to themselves to be impregnable. Andon the morrow the prisoners of war would againpay the price of the victory that both sides thoughtthey had won.
Once, when I went to Holloway Gaol to visita friend who had been sent there by a puzzledGovernment, the wardress who led me across theechoing stone yard was inspired to make a littlepleasant conversation.
At the time it was natural, perhaps, to credither with a grim sense of humour; but a morningspent not long afterwards in a London policecourt suggested another explanation. You cannotsit in a police court and watch while men and womenpass out into captivity, without realizing howmany there are of us who go through the worldsnatching desperately at the air for some of thecolour of life. I think my wardress-guide wouldscarcely have burst out with her involuntary remarkhad not some one come in from the outside toremind her that she lived in a grey semblance of aworld, full of people who had tried to take a shortcut to happiness and managed to get lost on theway. It was her instinctive human defence of a[21]system that thinks to cure a desire for sunshineby shutting it out.
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