England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love stories; Marriage -- Fiction
With a bound, Killick, the brooding visionary, the Utopian Socialist,
was at the top of the steps, brandishing a pit-prop and haranguing his
comrades. There was no stopping him. Mrs Brash had fired the train and
Killick was the explosion. His words gushed out--hot, passionate,
delirious. The man's sense of proportion, always unstable, was gone
entirely. He burned with the conviction of his own wrongs and those of
his fellows. _Nobilis ira_ gave him eloquence. He laid violent hands
upon wealth and power and greed and tyranny, and flung them one by one
down the steps on to the heads of his hearers. Most of what he said
was entirely irrelevant; a great deal more was entirely untrue; but it
served. For the moment Sir John Carr stood for all the injustice and
cruelty that strength has ever inflicted upon weakness. Every word
told. The mob was aflame at last. They hung upon Killick's fiery
sentences, surging ever more closely round the steps. The next wave,
Juggernaut saw, would bring them in a flood upon the terrace; and
then--what? He thought coolly and rapidly. There was Daphne to
consider--also little Brian. Daphne, he knew, was close by, standing
with beating heart behind the curtains of the library window. He had
forbidden her to come farther. Perhaps, though, she had been sensible,
and taken the opportunity of this delay to slip away. Of course, of
course.
There was a movement beside him, and he realised that his education in
femininity still left something to be desired. A hand slid into his,
and Daphne's voice whispered in his ear--
"Jack, I want to speak to them."
Her husband turned and smiled upon her curiously.
"What are you going to say?" he asked.
"I am going to tell them about--about the tea and sugar. It's the only
thing to do," said Daphne eagerly.
"I would rather be knocked on the head by a pit-prop!" said
Juggernaut. And he meant it. Some of us are terribly afraid of being
exposed as sentimentalists.
Meanwhile the crowd had caught sight of Daphne. The men fell silent,
as men are fain to do when a slim goddess, arrayed in black velvet,
appears to them, silhouetted against a richly glowing window. But
there was a vindictive shriek from the women.
"Get back at once, dear," said Juggernaut. "You are in great danger.
Telephone to the police, and tell Graves to get the fire-hose out. It
may be useful in two ways. I promise to come in if things get worse.
Hallo! who is that?"
A burly man in a bowler hat, panting with the unwonted exertion of a
two-mile run, was approaching him along the terrace. He had come up
the drive unnoticed, and having skirted the edge of the crowd had
gained access to the terrace from another flight of steps at the end.
It was Mr Walker, the mine manager.
"I tried to get you on the telephone," he shouted in Juggernaut's ear;
"but they have cut the wire."
"What is it?" asked Juggernaut.
Walker told him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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