The suffragette, though a trifle damped, continued, “It isn’t that their arguments are strong, nobody minds that, but it’s that they don’t bother to have any arguments. Just like the hooligans, only in different words. It’s no more an argument than it is one between God and Satan. One side is established, the other doesn’t exist. It makes you see that to-morrow is never strong enough to fight to-day. It would take an angel to admit to-morrow as a fact at all, and unfortunately it’s men we’re up against.”
“Then what’s the good of all this?” asked the poetess, who was naturally becoming more and more depressed.
“Oh, a losing battle’s fine,” said the suffragette. “I’d rather wear a black eye than a wig, or a crown, any day.”
“’Ear, ’ear,” said the dock-hand.
“Wiv Parliament, for instance,” said the little mother, who was evidently accustomed to fill her sphere with her voice. “They sits an’ argoos about Welsh Establishment, an’ all the while I ’ed my little gel die of underfeeding, becos I wuz carryin’ this one, and couldn’t get work.”
“Thet’s all very well,” said the dock-hand; “but wot do you expec’? You carn’t expec’ the lawyers to frow up their wig an’ say the Law’s a Liar. (Not but wot it ain’t.) You carn’t expec’ the Prime Minister to tell ’isself ‘There’s Mrs. Smiff’s biby dyin’, I mus’ go dahn an’ see abaht it.’ (Not but wot it ain’t ’ard.”)
“There are lots of things you can’t kill,” said the suffragette. “But you can always try. Men don’t try, because impossibility is one of the things they believe in.”
“You carn’t kill Votes fer Women,” shouted the little mother, with a burst of enthusiasm. She waved her baby instead of a banner.
At that moment a yelling horror dropped like a bomb upon the level street. The suffragette saw the mounted policeman, complete with his horse, fall sideways, like a toy. She saw a chequered crowd of perspiring faces come upon her like a breaking wave. She saw the banners ahead stagger like flowers before a wind. She saw the poetess fall, and some one stamp on her shoulder. She saw a man with a fierce-coloured handkerchief knotted round his throat seize the little mother’s chin and wrench it up and down, as he cursed in her face. The suffragette, who never could be angry in a dignified way, gave a hoarse croak and snatched his arm. Possibly she felt like the child Hercules during his interview with the serpents, but she did not look like that at all. The man jerked his arm up, the suffragette’s seven stone went up too. She was waved like a flag. The tears were shaken out of her eyes. Her feet kicked the air. And then she alighted against a wall. She saw a chinless and unshaven face heave into her upper vision, and a great hand, like black lightning, cleft the fog. The knuckles of the hand cut like a blunt knife. In North London we always repeat our arguments, when we consider them good ones. The suffragette, who was a person of no muscular ability at all, gave up hoping for the chance of a retort in kind, after the third repetition. So the argument went on undisputed, until the dock-hand perceived it, when it was successfully overborne.
The suffragette picked up her hat. She hated it because it looked so dirty. She hated her heart because it felt so sick. She picked up the poetess and hated her because she was crying. She was crying herself, but she thought she looked courageously wrathful.