Part 70 (1/2)

'Like a woman!'

'The case before the Suffragists' was just coming on. I heard a noise. I saw the helmets of two policemen.'

'No, you didn't. They don't wear their helmets in court.'

'They were coming in from the corridor. As I saw them, I said to myself, ”What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a burglar being brought along between the two big policemen, or will it be a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the people, whose crime is, they ask for the vote?” But try as I would, I couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it some poor woman, I wondered?'

A tipsy tramp, with his battered bowler over one eye, wheezed out, 'Drunk again!' with an accent of weary philosophy. 'Syme old tyle.'

'Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw'--she waited an instant--'a little thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with?'

'Travellin' first with a third-cla.s.s ticket.' A boy offered a page out of personal history.

'Stealing. What had he been stealing, that small criminal? _Milk._ It seemed to me, as I sat there looking on, that the men who had had the affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made so poor a business of it----'

'Oh, pore devils! give 'em a rest!'

'Who've made so bad a business of it as to have the poor and the unemployed in the condition they're in to-day, whose only remedy for a starving child is to hale him off to the police court, because he had managed to get a little milk, well, I did wonder that the men refuse to be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to say to myself, ”Isn't it time the women lent a hand?”'

'Doin' pretty well fur a dumb lady!'

'Would you have women magistrates?'

She was stumped by the suddenness of the query.

'Haw! haw! Magistrates and judges! _Women!_'

'Let 'em prove first they're able to----'

It was more than the shabby art-student could stand.

'The schools are full of them!' he shouted. 'Where's their Michael Angelo? They study music by thousands: where's their Beethoven? Where's their Plato? Where's the woman Shakespeare?'

'Where's their Harry Lauder?'

At last a name that stirred the general enthusiasm.

'Who is Harry Lauder?' Jean asked her aunt.

Lady John shook her head.

'Yes, wot 'ave women ever _done_?'

The speaker had clenched her hands, but she was not going to lose her presence of mind again. By the time the chairman could make himself heard with, 'Now, men, it's one of our British characteristics that we're always ready to give the people we differ from a hearing,' Miss Levering, making the slightest of gestures, waved him aside with a low--

'It's all right.'

'These questions are quite proper,' she said, raising her voice. 'They are often asked elsewhere; and I would like to ask in return: Since when was human society held to exist for its handful of geniuses? How many Platos are there here in this crowd?'

'Divil a wan!' And a roar of laughter followed that free confession.