Again the crowd made a rush; on the other side of the square a woman had managed to get arrested, and a strong body of constables was escorting her across to the police-station. Captors and captive walked quickly, anxious to get the thing through. The woman had a scared yet triumphant look in her eyes: she had succeeded in making the police do what they did not want to do; and now for a fortnight, or a month, or for two months—according to what these men might swear to, or the magistrate think—she and a few score of others would find in a criminal cell that temporary goal at which they had aimed; and the press would quiet the public conscience by saying that they had done it "for notoriety."
Always friendliest when it saw a woman actually under arrest, the crowd broke into applause—dividing its cheers impartially between prisoner and police. For this was what it had come out to see: this was why it had paid tram-fares from distant slums, sacrificing its evening at the "pub" and its pot of beer. These men of hard toiling lives and dull imagination were there to see women of a class and education superior to their own break the law and get "copped" for it, just like one of themselves.
"Quite right too! teach them to be'ave as they ought to," was the comment passed here and there—though as a matter of fact it had already been abundantly proved that it taught them nothing of the kind. But that, after all, is "Government" as understood by the man in the street; he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who, smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of prisoner and escort passed on its way.
"Three cheers for the Women's Charter!" cried a voice somewhere in the crowd; and there went up in response a genial roar, half of derision, half of sympathy.
"Give 'em hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" he cried.
"They're getting it!" laughed a pale youth with an underhung jaw.
Wherever the eye turned hell could be seen having its will, and deriving a curious satisfaction from its momentary power to do foul things under the public eye.
"Oh, save me! save me! save me!" whimpered a woman's voice. Down in the gulf below, buried under the shoulders of men, a small elderly figure was clinging to the King's arm.
"Oh, can't you do anything for me?" wailed the poor little Chartist, with nerve utterly gone.
"Why don't you go home?" inquired the King kindly.