The woman paused, her voice breaking a little. Kitty Foster tossed her head.
"What are most women in hospital for?" she said, shrilly. "By the fault of men!—one way or the other. That's what we think of."
"Yes I know—that's one of the shameless things you say—to us who have husbands and sons we thank God for!" said the elder woman, quivering. "Go and get a husband!—if you can find one to put up with you, and hold your tongue!" She turned her back.
The girl laughed affectedly.
"I can do without one, thank you. It's you happy married women that are the chief obstacle in our path. Selfish things!—never care for anybody but yourselves!"
"Hallo—Lathrop's down—that's Miss Blanchflower!" said Andrews, excitedly. "Let's go on!"
And at the same moment a mounted constable, who had been steadily making his way to them, opened a way for the two J.P.'s through the crowd, which after the tumult of hooting mingled with a small amount of applause, which had greeted Lathrop's peroration, had relapsed into sudden silence as Delia Blanchflower came forward, so that her opening words, in a rich clear voice were audible over a large area of the market-place.
* * * * *
What did she say? Certainly nothing new! Winnington knew it all by heart—had read it dozens of times in their strident newspaper, which he now perused weekly, simply that he might discover if he could, what projects his ward might be up to.
The wrongs of women, their wrongs as citizens, as wives, as the victims of men, as the "refuse of the factory system"—Winnington remembered the phrase in the Tocsin of the week before—the uselessness of constitutional agitation—the need "to shake England to make her hear"—it was all the "common form" of the Movement; and yet she was able to infuse it with passion, with conviction, with a wild and natural eloquence. Her voice stole upon him—hypnotized him. His political and economic knowledge told him that half the things she said were untrue, and the rest irrelevant. His moral sense revolted against her violence—her defence of violence. A girl of twenty-one addressing this ugly, indifferent crowd, and talking calmly of stone-throwing and arson, as though they were occupations as natural to her youth as dancing or love-making!—the whole thing was abhorrent—preposterous—to a man of order and peace. And yet he had never been more stirred, more conscious of the mad, mixed poetry of life, than he was, as he stood watching the slender figure on the waggon—the gestures of the upraised arm, and the play of the lights from the hotel, and from the side lamps, now on the deep white collar that lightened her serge jacket, and on the gesticulating hand, or the face that even in these disfiguring cross-lights could be nothing else than lovely.