Women -- Great Britain -- Social conditions; Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
Meanwhile, somewhere in that shouting, hustling, surging mass of
humanity, as the woman onlooker knew full well, was the twelfth member
of the women's deputation that had been broken up by the police, two
hours ago, before it could reach the doors of the House; and knowing
that her turn had come now, she pictured that twelfth woman beating
against a barrier that had been set up against them both ever since the
world grew civilized. There was not a friend near, when she nodded to
the artisan and slipped down from her temporary resting-place. The
respectable and sympathetic portion of the crowd was cut off from her,
away up towards Whitehall, whither it had followed the twelfth woman. On
this side of Parliament Square all the idlers, all the coarse-tongued
reprobates of the slums of Westminster, never far distant from any
London crowd, were herded together in a stupid, pitiless, ignorant mob.
The slough of mud underfoot added the last sickening touch to a scene
that for the flash of an instant made her heart fail.
"St. James's Park is the nearest station, miss," said the man, giving
her a helping hand. "Don't advise you to try the Bridge; might find it a
bit rough getting across."
She smiled back at him from the kerbstone, where she stood hovering a
second or two on the fringe of the tumult and confusion. Her moment's
hesitation was gone, and the sure look had come back to her eyes.
"I am not going home," she told him. "I am the thirteenth woman, you
see."
She left the artisan staring at the spot near the edge of the pavement
where the crowd had opened and swallowed her up.
"And she so well-informed too!" he murmured. "I don't like to think of
it--I don't like to think of it!"
* * * * *
Shortly after midnight two men paused, talking, under the shadow of
Westminster Abbey, and watched a patrol of mounted police that ambled at
a leisurely pace across the deserted Square. The light in the Clock
Tower was out. Thirteen women, granted a few hours' freedom in return
for a word of honour, had gone to their homes, proudly conscious of
having once more vindicated the invincibility of their cause; and some
five or six hundred gentlemen had been able to issue in safety from the
stronghold of liberty, which they had once more proved to themselves to
be impregnable. And on the morrow the prisoners of war would again pay
the price of the victory that both sides thought they had won.
"If that is like real war too," said one of the men to the other, who
had just made these observations aloud, "how does anybody ever know
which side has won?"
"By looking to see which side pays the price of victory," answered the
man who had fought in real wars.
II
To Prison while the Sun Shines
Once, when I went to Holloway Gaol to visit a friend who had been sent
there by a puzzled Government, the wardress who led me across the
echoing stone yard was inspired to make a little pleasant conversation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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