Part 44 (2/2)

The King pressed hurriedly on, hoping to get rid of them; but his fl.u.s.tered air appealed to the tormenting instincts of youth, and told them that here they had got some one capable of being worried into surrender. Still clamoring and thrusting up hands for backsheesh they kept pace with him. A few of them started singing again, and the rest joined in: perhaps singing was what the gentleman liked best--and so a better way for gaining their end. The shrill voices fell into chorus; and to a queer lilting tune the words rang clear.

”Come to me Quietlee, Do not do me an injuree!

Gently, Johnnie of Jingalo.”

”What's that?” cried the King, stopping short in his amazement; ”what's that you say?” A new bewilderment seized on him. It was impossible--quite impossible that the children should know who he really was, yet there were the words with their implied accusation, as though personally directed at him, and at him alone.

The small street singers, taking the inquiry for an encore, sang it again; and this time the words had a curious flirtatious meaning which made them even worse. What was he being charged with?

”Where did you get that from?” he inquired, hot of face.

”One of the Chartises taught it us,” said a child more ready of speech than the rest. ”They all sings it now. It's one of their songs, that is!” So with reduplicating speech she conveyed intelligence to his mind.

Never before had any word of poetry struck him a blow like this. He had said that he did not understand poetry, but here was meaning only too clear; in this song--so gentle, pleading, and pathetic in character, he, John of Jingalo, stood publicly accused of all the injuries that were being done to women in that necessary defense of law and order against which, pet.i.tion in hand, they were so obstinately setting themselves.

What was all his popularity worth, if by the mouths of little children his name was to be thus cried in the streets? It was scandalous, indecent; and yet--was it altogether without justification?

To be rid of his small tormentors and free for his own meditations, he took the most practical means that suggested itself.

”There, there!” he cried. ”Run away, run away, all of you!” and throwing a random coin into their midst moved hastily away. Behind him as he went he heard battle royal being waged; liberal though the donation, and sufficient to distribute sustenance to all, each was now claiming it as her own perquisite.

And so at his back the shrill sounds of wrath and contention went on till they became merged in a louder roar, the origin of which was presently made apparent.

He turned a corner and saw before him a huge crowd, and Regency Row packed with seething humanity from end to end.

III

For the first time in his life the King formed part of a crowd, and knew what it was like to feel his body and limbs packed in by the bodies and limbs of others and to have the breath squeezed out of him. In this crowd the proportion of men to women was as ten to one; from the physical point of view, therefore, the chances for these conflicting women were nil. All the same they were there in large numbers, and not for the first time; many of them were already sufficiently well known to the police.

A curiously corporate movement possessed this crowd; when it s.h.i.+fted at all it s.h.i.+fted in large sections--three or four hundred at once; a whole street-width of men driving forward at a lunge, before which the strongest barrier of police momentarily gave way. And wherever this kind of movement went on a few women formed the center of it.

Small bundles of humanity, they shot by in the grip of that huge force, mischievous and uncontrolled; tossed, tousled, and squeezed, shedding as they went small fragments of their outer raiment, lost momentarily to view in the surging ma.s.s of men, cornered, crushed back, held down as within a vise--emerging again like popped corks followed by a foaming rush of shouting youths, jeering or cheering them on; and still through all that pressure obstinately retaining their human form, and enduring with a strange silence what was being done to them by this great roaring mob which had come out ”for fun.”

Some went their way wide-eyed, with terror in their looks, yet still set to their end; some with rigid faces and eyes shut fast, as though scarcely conscious--their souls elsewhere, submitting pa.s.sively to the buffetings of fate; and a few--strangest sight of all--smiling to themselves, almost with a look of peace, as though in the very violence by which they were a.s.sailed they discerned a triumph for their cause.

And with all the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, pus.h.i.+ng, and wrenching, the driving forward and the hurling back, scarcely one woman's arm was raised, except now and again to protect her breast from the lewd or wanton a.s.saults of the crowd. Some held, tight clasped in their hands, crumpled bits of paper--the pet.i.tion, presumably, over which all this trouble arose--stained, torn, almost illegible now, useless, yet still a symbol of the fight that was being waged. Now and then above the turmoil, in the dimness that lay between the lighted streets and the crowning darkness of night, went sudden flashes like sheet-lightning in storm; and at the stroke horses plunged, and youths screamed, facetiously imitating the voice of women. It was the work of photographers, securing, from some point of vantage overhead, flashlight records for the delectation of the music halls. Again and again, with pistol-like report, the monstrous dose was administered, the night took it at a gulp, and the rabble responded with noise and shoutings.

The genial voice of a mounted policeman working his way through the crowd sounded humanly above the din.

”I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!” There was a touch of humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness mingled itself with the crowd.

”Oh! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!” Away he went on his disciplined errand of mercy, a man of kindliness, good counsel, and understanding, carrying out his orders in as human a way as was possible.

”Now then! Now then! Now then! I'm coming. Oh, I'm coming!”

The roaring mult.i.tude swallowed him; his cry grew faint, merged in the general din.

By the gradual compression and movement of the mult.i.tude toward some fancied center the King had been borne a good many hundred yards from his original point. Presently he found himself in a large open s.p.a.ce, with its low-railed inclosure guarded by police. Here the crowd was denser than ever and its sway harder to withstand. A woman's form was driven sharply against him. To avoid elbowing her off he offered the shelter of his arm; and she, finding herself up against something not immediately repellent, stayed to breathe. He saw the sweat pour from her skin, and as she panted in his arms she had the rank scent of a creature when it is hunted. Yet in her face there was no fear at all, only the white strain of physical exhaustion nearing its last point.

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