CHAPTER XIII. BY MARY AUSTIN
Close on Young Remington's groan of utter disillusionment came a sound from the street, formless and clumsy, but brought to a sharp climax with the crash of breaking glass.
Even through the closed window which Penfield Evans hastily threw up, there was an obvious quality to the disturbance which revealed its character even before they had grasped its import.
The street was still full of morning shadows, with here and there a dancing glimmer on the cobbles of the still level sun, caught on swinging dinner pails as the loosely assorted crowd drifted toward shop and factory.
In many of the windows half-drawn blinds marked where spruce window trimmers added last touches to masterpieces created overnight, but directly opposite nothing screened the offense of the Voiceless Speech, which continued to display its accusing questions to the passer-by.
Clean through the plate-glass front a stone had crashed, leaving a heap of shining splinters, on either side of which a score of men and boys loosely clustered, while further down a ripple of disturbance marked where the thrower of the stone had just vanished into some recognized port of safety.
It was a clumsy crowd, half-hearted, moved chiefly by a cruel delight in destruction for its own sake, and giving voice at intervals to coarse comment of which the wittiest penetrated through a stream of profanity, like one of those same splinters of glass, to the consciousness of at least two of the three men who hung listening in the window above:
"To hell with the——suffragists!"
At the same moment another stone hurled through the break sent the Voiceless Speech toppling; it lay crumpled in a pathetic feminine sort of heap, subject to ribald laughter, but Penny Evans' involuntary cry of protest was cut off by his partner's hand on his shoulder. "They're Noonan's men, Penny; it's a put-up job."
George had marked some of the crowd at the meetings Noonan had arranged for him, and the last touch to the perfunctory character of the disturbance was added by the leisurely stroll of the policeman turning in at the head of the street. Before he reached the crowd it had redissolved into the rapidly filling thoroughfare.