The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his parable—the battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words poured forth, platitude on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury signifying elusively, sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the mere sans-culotte hatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on the impression made by the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved slightly apart from the crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland on his way home, walking sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch. He ran across the few yards of intervening space and accosted his friend gaily.
“Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear the other side of the political question.”
“What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast.
“You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it. Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk, capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple and fine linen will be a red rag to him.”
Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the speaker. Morland listened superciliously for a few moments.
“What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked.
“It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human—the infinite aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.”
The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference, and the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in the temporary silence:
“In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the weakest and the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of Providence, no longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut car of wealth, no longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's chariot-wheels and whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no longer shall the poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's desecration of the once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness, foulness, stench, iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely folded in the angel wings of peace!”
He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the crowd, and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been his platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a gold-mounted cane at the late speaker.