The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett (booksvooks TXT) 📕

of iron, trailing its motto like a comet its tail, flew across space and plumped into the window with a pleasing crash and disappeared, having triumphed over uncounted police on the outskirts and a hundred and fifty stewards within. A roar from the interior of the hall supervened, and varied cries.

"Give me the meg," said Jane gently.

The next instant she was shouting through the megaphone, an instrument which she had seriously studied:

"Votes for women. Why do you torture women? Votes for women. Why do you torture women?"

The uproar increased and subsided. A masterful voice resounded within the interior. Many people rushed out of the hall. And there was a great scurry of important and puzzled feet within a radius of a score of yards.

"I think I'll try the next window," said Jane, handing over the megaphone. "You shout while I throw."

Audrey's heart was violently beating. She took the megaphone and put it to her lips, but no sound would come. Then, as though it were breaking through an obstacle, the sound shot forth, and to Audrey it was a gigantic voice that functioned quite independently of her will. Tremendously excited by the noise, she bawled louder and still louder.

"I've missed," said Jane calmly in her ear. "That's enough, I think. Come along."

"But they can't possibly see us," said Audrey, breathless, lowering the instrument.

"Come along, dear," Jane Foley insisted.

People with open mouths were crowding at the aperture of the inner wall, but, Jane going first, both girls pushed safely through the throng. The wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and Audrey were the authoresses of the pother.

Jane still leading, they made for the exit. But the first loud man rushed chivalrously in.

"Perlice!" he cried. "Two bobbies a-coming."

"Here!" said the second loud man. "Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They'll never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back." He jumped on to the wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in, and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran in.

"That's them," said the rosette. "I saw her with the grey hair from the gallery."

The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was equally floored.

As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane Foley and clutching at Jane Foley's skirts with her hands behind her--the locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the law--she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning. She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Madame Piriac's prophecy. She was ready to wish the past year annihilated and herself back once more in parental captivity at Moze, the slave of an unalterable routine imposed by her father, without responsibility, without initiative and without joy. And she lived again through the scenes in which she had smiled at the customs official, fibbed to Rosamund, taken the wounded Musa home in the taxi, spoken privily with the ageing yacht-owner, and laughed at the drowned detective in the area of the palace in Paget Gardens.

Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at length to a second view of the sprawling policemen. Whereupon she thought queerly: "What do I care about the vote, really?" And finally she thought with anger and resentment: "What a shame it is that women haven't got the vote!" And then she heard a gay, quiet sound. It was Jane Foley laughing gently behind her.

"Can you see the big one now, darling?" asked Jane roguishly. "Has he picked himself up again?"

Audrey laughed.

And at last the audience laughed also. It laughed because the big policeman, unconquerable, had made another intrepid dash for the centre of the wheel and fallen upon his stomach as upon a huge india-rubber ball. The audience did more than laugh--it shrieked, yelled, and guffawed. The performance to be witnessed was worth ten times the price of entry. Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement. And in describing the affair the next morning as "unique" the _Birmingham Daily Post_ for once used that adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens--centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete. Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular two policemen would have known that they were seeking the impossible and fighting against that which was stronger than ten thousand policemen. But they would not give up. At each fresh attempt they hoped by guile to overcome their unseen enemy, as the gambler hopes at each fresh throw to outwit chance. The jeers of the audience pricked them to desperation, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public. But centrifugal force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with those whom ridicule has covered. The strange and side-splitting effects of centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the wheel. Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently from the tent. And then while her back was towards the entrance she was deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob. The two policemen had fled also--probably for reinforcements and appliances against centrifugal force. In their pardonable excitement they had, however, committed the imprudence of departing together. An elementary knowledge of strategy should have warned them against such a mistake. The wheel stopped immediately. The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him. Audrey at any rate was as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.

"Here's th' back way," said the second loud man, pointing to a coarse curtain in the obscurity of the nether parts of the enclosure.

They ran, Jane Foley first, and vanished from the regions of the Joy Wheel amid terrific acclamations given in a strong Midland accent.

The next moment they found themselves in a part of the Blue City which nobody had taken the trouble to paint blue. The one blue object was a small patch of sky, amid clouds, overhead. On all sides were wooden flying buttresses, supporting the boundaries of the Joy Wheel enclosure to the south-east, of the Parade Restaurant and Bar to the south-west, and of a third establishment of good cheer to the north. Upon the ground were brick-ends, cinders, bits of wood, bits of corrugated iron, and all the litter and refuse cast out of sight of the eyes of visitors to the Exhibition of Progress.

With the fear of the police behind them they stumbled forward a few yards, and then saw a small ramshackle door swinging slightly to and fro on one hinge. Jane Foley pulled it open. They both went into a narrow passage. On the mildewed wall of the passage was pinned up a notice in red ink: "Any waitress taking away any apron or cap from the Parade Restaurant and Bar will be fined one shilling." Farther on was another door, also ajar. Jane Foley pushed against it, and a tiny room of irregular shape was disclosed. In this room a stout woman in grey was counting a pile of newly laundered caps and aprons, and putting them out of one hamper into another. Audrey remembered seeing the woman at the counter of the restaurant and bar.

"The police are after us. They'll be here in a minute," said Jane Foley simply.

"Oh!" exclaimed the woman in grey, with the carelessness of fatigue. "Are you them stone-throwing lot? They've just been in to tell me about it. What d'ye do it for?"

"We do it for you--amongst others," Jane Foley smiled.

"Nay! That ye don't!" said the woman positively. "I've got a vote for the city council, and I want no more."

"Well, you don't want us to get caught, do you?"

"No, I don't know as I do. Ye look a couple o' bonny wenches."

"Let's have two caps and aprons, then," said Jane Foley smoothly. "We'll pay the shilling fine." She laughed lightly. "And a bit more. If the police get in here we shall have to struggle, you know, and they'll break the place up."

Audrey produced another half-sovereign.

"But what shall ye do with yer hats and coats?" the woman demanded.

"Give them to you, of course."

The woman regarded the hats and coats.

"I couldn't get near them coats," she said. "And if I put on one o' them there hats my old man 'ud rise from the grave--that he would. Still, I don't wish ye any harm."

She shut and locked the door.

In about a minute two waitresses in aprons and streamered caps of immaculate purity emerged from the secret places of the Parade Restaurant and Bar, slipped round the end of the counter, and started with easy indifference to saunter away into the grounds after the manner of restaurant girls who have been gifted with half an hour off. The tabled expanse in front of the Parade erection was busy with people, some sitting at the tables and supporting the establishment, but many more merely taking advantage of the pitch to observe all possible exciting developments of the suffragette shindy.

And as the criminals were modestly getting clear, a loud and imperious voice called:

"Hey!"

Audrey, lacking experience, hesitated.

"Hey there!"

They both turned, for the voice would not be denied. It belonged to a man sitting with another man at a table on the outskirts of the group of tables. It was the voice of the rosetted steward, who beckoned in a not unfriendly style.

"Bring us two liqueur brandies, miss," he cried. "And look slippy, if ye please."

The sharp tone, so sure of obedience, gave Audrey a queer sensation of being in reality a waitress doomed to tolerate the rough bullying of gentlemen urgently desiring alcohol. And the fierce thought that women--especially restaurant waitresses--must and should possess the Vote surged through her mind more powerfully than ever.

"I'll never have the chance again," she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.

"Two liqueur brandies, please," she said to the woman in grey, who had