A howl of wrath rose from the audience, amid which the closing words of Delia's speech were lost. Winnington caught a glimpse of her face—pale and excited—as she retreated from the front of the waggon in order to make room for her co-speaker.
Gertrude Marvell, as Winnington soon saw, was far more skilled in street oratory than her pupil. By sheer audacity she caught her audience at once, and very soon, mingling defiance with sarcasm, she had turned the news of the burnt pier into a Suffragist parable. What was that blaze in the night, lighting up earth and sea, but an emblem of women's revolt flaming up in the face of dark injustice and oppression? Let them rage! The women mocked. All tyrannies disliked being disturbed—since the days of Nebuchadnezzar. And thereupon, without any trace of excitement, or any fraction of Delia's eloquence, she built up bit by bit, and in face of the growing hostility of the crowd, an edifice of selected statements, which could not have been more adroit. It did not touch or persuade, but it silenced; till at the end she said—each word slow and distinct—
"Now—all these things you may do to women, and nobody minds—nobody troubles at all. But if we make a bonfire of a pier, or an empty house, by way of drawing attention to your proceedings, then, you see red. Well, here we are!—do what you like—torture, imprison us!—you are only longing, I know—some of you—to pull us down now and trample on us, so that you may show us how much stronger men are than women! All right!—but where one woman falls, another will spring up. And meanwhile the candle we are lighting will go on burning till you give us the vote. Nothing simpler—nothing easier. Give us the vote!—and send your canting Governments, Liberal, or Tory, packing, till we get it. But until then—windows and empty houses, and piers and such-like, are nothing—but so many opportunities of making our masters uncomfortable, till they free their slaves! Lucky for you, if the thing is no worse!"
She paused a moment, and then added with sharp and quiet emphasis—
"And why is it specially necessary that we should try to stir up this district—whether you like our methods or whether you don't? Because—you have living here among you, one of the worst of the persecutors of women! You have here a man who has backed up every cruelty of the Government—who has denied us every right, and scoffed at all our constitutional demands—your neighbour and great landlord, Sir Wilfrid Lang! I call upon every woman in this district, to avenge women on Sir Wilfrid Lang! We are not out indeed to destroy life or limb—we leave that to the men who are trying to coerce women—but we mean to sweep men like Sir Wilfrid Lang out of our way! Meanwhile we can pay special attention to his meetings—we can harass him at railway stations—we can sit on his doorstep—we can put the fear of God into him in a hundred ways—in short we can make his life a tenth part as disagreeable to him as he can make ours to us. We can, if we please, make it a burden to him—and we intend to do so! And don't let men—or women either—waste their breath in preaching to us of 'law and order.' Slaves who have no part in making the law, are not bound by the law. Enforce it if you can! But while you refuse to free us, we despise both the law and the making of the law. Justice—which is a very different thing from law—Justice is our mistress!—and to her we appeal."
Folding her arms, she looked the crowd in the face. They seemed to measure each other; on one side, the lines of upturned faces, gaping youths, and smoking workmen, farmers and cattlemen, women and children; on the other, defying them, one thin, neatly-dressed woman, her face, under the lamps, a gleaming point in the dark.
Then a voice rose from a lounging group of men, smoking like chimneys—powerful fellows; smeared with the clay of the brickfields.
"Who's a-makin' slaves of you, Ma'am? There's most of us workin' for a woman!"
A woman in the middle of the crowd laughed shrilly—a queer, tall figure in a battered hat—
"Aye—and a lot yo' give 'er ov a Saturday night, don't yer?"