THE INCREDIBLE THING HAPPENS
I
Since the break-up of his plans the King had been finding consolation in
his son's book, an advance copy of which had reached him while Max was
still abroad. Consolation is, perhaps, hardly the right word; it had
distracted him in more ways than one; partly, and in a good sense, from
his own personal depression over things gone wrong, but more with a
scared apprehension of the terrible hubbub that would arise when its
contents became known. The title, _Government and the Governed_, was
sober enough, and the post-diluvian motto once threatened by Max had
been omitted; but the contents were of a highly revolutionary character,
and the bland "take-or-leave me" attitude of the author toward the
public he would some day be called upon to rule was on a par with that
statement of her prison doings which Charlotte was preparing for the
delectation of Hans Fritz Otto, Prince of Schnapps-Wasser. In neither
case did it seem likely that such a confession would draw parties
together.
And so before the King had even finished reading he felt it his duty to
write imploring his son not to publish.
Before an answer could reach him important events supervened. The
reverberations of the bomb brought Max flying back to the bosom of his
family; and then the Charlotte episode had followed, over which Max had
not been at all sympathetic, for in spite of his emancipated views about
things in general, he had still the particular notion that revolution
belonged only to men, and that women, incapable of conducting it
efficiently, had far better leave it alone.
And so it was that only when things had begun to resettle themselves was
any fresh reference made to the book's forthcoming publication.
As soon as the subject was broached Max presented a face of polite
astonishment.
"I thought you knew, sir," he said.
"Knew what?"
"The most important event in recent history; I even thought you might
have instigated it."
"I don't know what you are talking about."
"Then I must break the news. My book has been burned to the ground." He
spoke as though it had been an edifice. "I am told, for my consolation,
that it burned extremely well--'fiercely,' the papers said--and gave the
firemen a lot of trouble. Your letter and the news reached me almost
simultaneously; I knew, therefore, that you would be glad."
"No, no, don't say 'glad,'" protested the King; "in a way I am sorry,
even. I only wanted it to be anonymous. One can do things anonymously.
How did it come about?"
"It was the work of an incendiary."
"How do you know that?"
"There was absolute proof,--something which refused to burn,--a box of
matches made in Jingalo, or some other fire-resistant of a similar kind.
The perpetrator got off. Yes--the House of Ganz-Wurst certainly seems at
the present moment particularly to attract the attentions of these
obscurantists in politics. Who knows whether the hand which threw the
bomb at you had not already been dipped in the petrol which had given so
flaming an account of my claims to authorship?"
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Reprint, I suppose, as soon as I can afford it, or do you still wish me
not to? You hold almost the only copy that is left."
The King shook his head. "As I told you, Max, I think publication would
be very unwise; you would be sure to regret it afterwards. Remember
that some day you will come to the throne; and what you think you can do
now you can't do then. All at once it becomes impossible."
And then the King gave a queer consternated gasp, for he himself
remembered something--something he had conditionally promised, believing
that the conditions would never be fulfilled; and now fate had brought
them about; and if Max so willed it a thing would presently be taking
place much more disturbing to the institution of royalty than the
publication of a mere book.
To the King's last remark Max merely replied: "At present, sir, it is
you who are upon the throne and not I--a circumstance over which I have
very particular reasons for being glad. And now, sir, something has just
occurred to me: do not think that I am going to anticipate the date you
fixed, that is not till next week, but when all is settled, as it so
soon will be if I remain of sane mind, then I will present all the
preserved copies of my book to the lady whom you so disapprove of, and
she shall do with them exactly as she wishes--order a new edition, or
put them on the fire to help her make soup for the poor. That is a
little device of mine, sir, for bringing her into your good graces; for
if I know anything of her mind she will maintain that to publish such a
book without a full intention of putting its principles into practice is
a mere parade of insincerity and foolishness. And so--from your point of
view--she will be saving the monarchy from a danger which no one else
can avert; for I am not prepared to surrender my power to do mischief
into any hands but hers. A copy of the book, you may be interested to
hear, has already gone to her; and her silence about it warns me that
the epoch it so strenuously makes for is not the one that she desires."
"You are still talking like a book, Max," said the King sarcastically,
wishing to divert discussion for the time being from that which he was
referring to.
"Ah, yes," said Max; "as a bird who mourns his mate. Why, for a while,
should I not indulge my grief? I shall never write another; all I had it
in me to say was said there. In future--though you may hear in my voice
an echo of that lost romance--I am going to be a man not of words but of
deeds."
The King smiled.
"You look incredulous, sir; but I have already startled that Commission
you put me on, and compelled it to include in the scope of its inquiry
things which it did not want to inquire into at all. Believe me, sir; if
we get before us all the evidence that I intend we shall find ourselves
forced into making a very unpopular report--far more unpopular than my
book would have been, and far more subversive of the established order
of things than at present you can have any idea. Even your coats,
sir--exorbitant though their price now is--are going to cost you more as
a result of this Commission, unless we can so arrange that in future a
little less shall be paid for the 'cut' and a little more for the needle
and thread that join the cuttings together. I am going to have it said
in this report of ours--for I have discovered it to be a fact--that the
very clothes which are your daily wear (and mine) are put together by
men and women paid at something less than twopence-half-penny an hour.
And I am going to get it put in that scandalously personal way (your
clothes and mine--the clothes we go to open Parliament in, and set the
fashions in, and when we have worn them some half-dozen times hand on to
charity), I am going to have it thus put that all may be conscious and
ashamed when they see us so exhibiting ourselves, and no longer think a
well-cut coat under modern commercial conditions a fit adjunct for
royalty. That, sir, will do a great deal more harm to 'trade' than my
book would have done. The public conscience does not like to have these
things brought home to royalty itself; we and the 'social evil' are in
no way to be connected with each other, lest it should be seen that we
help to make its ways easy. Only the other day I was credibly informed
that a man who headed with twenty thousand pounds the list of a charity
bearing my mother's name, has been allowed by the police to get out of
this country scot free--though guilty of infamous conduct,--merely
because the contribution of that tainted donation to a royal fund would
not have 'looked well.'"
"Oh, stop talking to me, Max!" cried the King, made irritable by his
increased sense of helplessness. "Go and do what you like, say what you
like, report what you like; you've got the Commission to play with; run
it for all it is worth; but for Heaven's sake let me have peace for a
while! Why should you trouble me? You know that I can do nothing."
"You have done a great deal," said Max, whose admiration for his father
had grown very considerably during the past year.
"I have missed doing a great deal; but of that you know nothing, and I'm
not going to tell you." And then he could stand it no more. "Do you
imagine I should have made you that idiotic promise," he cried, "if I
had supposed for a moment that I should still be here when you came to
claim it?" And so saying he got up and, diplomatic in retreat, hurried
out of the room.
Max, left to his own surmisings, opened wide and wondering eyes. "Did he
throw that bomb at himself?" he murmured in astonishment. "It looks very
much as if he did."
II
Parliament opened again without any difficulty in the middle of
December; and the enormous popularity of the King and Queen was greatly
enhanced by the circumstance of their reappearance within so short a
time for an occasion so closely similar. Only another bomb could have
increased the favorable impression made upon the populace by their
affable return to the charge--if a slow walking-pace may be so
described--within three weeks of the attempted outrage.
As the Prime Minister had promised the police spared no pains to insure
their safety, and behind the hoardings of the new Government offices
detectives were packed like herrings in a barrel, with special eye-holes
bored through so that they might note the actual passing of the royal
carriage, and have it well under observation at the point of danger
which was, presumably, that at which the last explosion had occurred.
Then the whole police force held its breath, and the coach got past
without any difficulty; and immediately the waiting multitude in Regency
Row became violently demonstrative as though some great acrobatic feat
had been achieved. And the piebald ponies came stepping like
rope-dancers each held by a groom; and everything--except the fresh bomb
for which so many stage preparations had been made--went off with all
the success imaginable.
The King did not read his own speech: he had a sore throat for the
occasion, and only with his ears did he swallow the bitter pill of that
foreshadowed scheme which he had so long and vainly resisted; for now he
was bound by his own promise, and could no longer "stand in the way."
And so, by the mouth of the Lord High Commissioner, the Bishops heard
under its smooth-sounding title the plan for their approaching doom read
out from the steps of the Throne, and as soon as the King and the Queen
had retired, budding members on the ministerial side in both Houses
rose up to congratulate the Cabinet and the country on those wise and
statesmanlike proposals, and hardened veterans upon the other, the
Archbishop included, rose up to condemn them. And after that, for three
or four days a general wrangling--all leading to nothing--went on.
But while Parliament talked vacuously within, outside came rumblings of
storm; the discontent of certain sections of the community with
conditions unsettled or unattended to was gathering to a head. And on
the third day after the session had opened, Charlotte said to her father
with rather a tragic look, "Papa, do you know what is going to happen
to-night?" And then she told him.
It was those Women Chartists again.
The King had been true to his word, he had made inquiries; in a way he
had even "looked into the matter," and had received from the right and
official quarter bland assurances that there was nothing in it--merely a
general obstreperousness and a wish to cause trouble to the police. But
his conscience, which so often ran away with him, was still troubled;
and so when the evening came he sent once again for the newly appointed
Home Minister; and in reply to rather anxious questions was given
confidently to understand that the police arrangements were quite
adequate for the occasion, that everything would be done as quietly and
as leniently as possible; and that no edge of the disturbance would in
any case be allowed to overflow in the direction of the royal palace. As
he listened to the cocksure tone of this new minister, and the almost
patronizing air with which he exposed his official fitness for the post
so recently conferred on him, the King ceased to ask questions--let the
man talk himself out,--and then, when silence seemed to give consent,
got rid of him.
It was now time that he should go to dress for dinner, but the motive
force was absent. He stood for a while considering, then went to the
window, and opening it let in the distant hum of the city traffic.
All sounded as usual, pleasant, busy, peaceable. Yet if what his
daughter told him was true, within half-an-hour those quietly-sounding
streets would be thronged with thousands upon thousands waiting for the
arrival of the women to claim their old historical right of petition;
and serried lines of police--thousands of them also--would be standing
to bar their way, whatever direction they might go in quest of the
governing authority. And in the hands of these women would be petitions
personally addressed to himself; yet never had any minister put to him
the question whether he would be willing to receive them and hear what
they had to say; such an idea seemed not to have entered their heads--or
was it the fear lest such a reception might give the cause too great an
importance in the public eye? Here, once again, then, proof met him of
the conspiracy of modern government constantly going on to bring about
disconnection between the Crown and the real life-needs and aspirations
of the people. Suffocating traditions closed him round making a cypher
of him--to himself a scorn and a derision, and a monster unto many--just
as much, by this denial of petition, a breaker of his Crown oath as
those who in the past had paid penalty for it with their lives!
There outside, in the nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a
liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of
newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees
of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps below, and
emergent like a full moon on a misty sky the face of the great
Parliament clock dawned luminous to his gaze.
So long he stood, and listened, and waited, that before he closed the
window again the clock had told the three-quarters to eight. Then he
hesitated no more; passing out of his study and down to a lower corridor
he came presently to the cloak lobby, and selecting a rough full-length
overcoat, a motor cap, and from a drawer a pair of clouded snow-glasses,
arrayed himself in these, and with flaps drawn down and coat collar
turned high, passed out by a small side-entrance which led on to the
terrace.
Chill air and a bosom of darkness received him; through the thick
barrier of trees skirting the walled precincts scarcely a light winked;
only the large domed conservatory behind him threw a pale radiance
before his feet as he crossed the terrace and moved off by a winding
path in the direction of a small postern concealed in shrubbery.
As he quitted the grass, the sound of his own footfalls upon firm gravel
made him guiltily afraid; and it was not without some moral effort that
he, a king in his own domain, kept himself from stepping back
secretively to the turfed edge. Suppressing the inclination, he
proceeded at a smart pace, and coming presently to the door with a
slip-latch on its inner side he opened it and passed through.
At the sound of opening a policeman stationed outside turned and stood
passively regarding him; his muffled appearance seemed sufficiently in
keeping with the uses to which this particular exit was put by others to
awaken neither suspicion nor surprise. With a half-waggish air of
respect the man touched his helmet. "Good-evening, sir," said he, as
though there subsisted between the habitués of that door and himself a
sort of understanding.
To make a quicker escape from the man's scrutiny and the glare of the
lamp commanding the entrance, the King crossed the road, and took up his
course along the more dimly lighted footway on the further side. At this
hour the park row in which he found himself was almost deserted; now and
again single pedestrians went by, and as he received from none of these
more than a cursory and inattentive glance, his sense of incognito
increased, and he stepped out more confidently to the task that lay
ahead.
Presently he was passing along the palace front and under the
eyes of sentries standing motionless at their posts; and again
he had satisfaction in perceiving that as he went by there was no
inclination on the part of any one of them to present arms. He
glanced up at the palace façade, with its windows softly lighted
through blinds. He could pick out his own sitting-room, and the
Queen's, where probably she was now reading the note he had sent to
inform her that urgent business called him away. There were the
lights of the smaller dining-hall, within which a table richly adorned
with gold and silver plate stood even now waiting its twenty accustomed
guests--the minister-in-attendance and the higher permanent officials of
the Court. No one else from outside was coming to-night except Prince
Max. That was fortunate, Max would take his place.
As soon as he was outside the borders of the park the King quitted the
main thoroughfare for narrow and dimly lit alleys, avoiding the streets
of wide pavements and shops which had scarcely yet begun to close; and
before long found that he had lost his way.
The fact was sufficiently absurd; here within a stone's throw of his own
palace, and stretching almost to the doors of the House of Legislature
whereto he went in so much state every year, lay an unknown territory
which he had never thought to explore. The intricacy of back streets was
quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be
stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn
back again. In a short time all sense of the points of the compass was
gone.
A small ragged urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of
communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch--it was
already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with
their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour
and he had not heard it. Away scurried the urchin as though already late
for something, excitedly calling on others to follow; and the King, with
the presumption that these running feet would be sure to lead him in the
direction where he wished to go, followed them round two corners. After
that all trace of them was gone.
A sound of shrill singing now struck his ear. He was in a narrow
asphalted way surrounded by workmen's tenements. Right in the middle,
occupying the place of the non-existent traffic, ten or a dozen children
were dancing a sort of figure, and singing the while. As he drew near he
caught snatches of the words.
Of an elder child, who stood looking on, he stopped and asked the way.
She told him, gesticulating as to which corners he was to pass, pointing
all the time to the promised goal. Incautiously he dropped a coin into
her hand; and, as kings do not carry coppers, immediately there was a
cry. The singers stopped and surrounded him, stretching up clamorous
palms; a whole dozen were now feverishly anxious to show him every step
of the way.
"It's the 'Chartises' as you want to see, arn't it, mister?" inquired
one. "I'll show you where they go; I know all of 'em."
The King pressed hurriedly on, hoping to get rid of them; but his
flustered air appealed to the tormenting instincts of youth, and told
them that here they had got some one capable of being worried into
surrender. Still clamoring and thrusting up hands for backsheesh they
kept pace with him. A few of them started singing again, and the rest
joined in: perhaps singing was what the gentleman liked best--and so a
better way for gaining their end. The shrill voices fell into chorus;
and to a queer lilting tune the words rang clear.
"Come to me
Quietlee,
Do not do me an injuree!
Gently, Johnnie of Jingalo."
"What's that?" cried the King, stopping short in his amazement; "what's
that you say?" A new bewilderment seized on him. It was
impossible--quite impossible that the children should know who he really
was, yet there were the words with their implied accusation, as though
personally directed at him, and at him alone.
The small street singers, taking the inquiry for an encore, sang it
again; and this time the words had a curious flirtatious meaning which
made them even worse. What was he being charged with?
"Where did you get that from?" he inquired, hot of face.
"One of the Chartises taught it us," said a child more ready of speech
than the rest. "They all sings it now. It's one of their songs, that
is!" So with reduplicating speech she conveyed intelligence to his mind.
Never before had any word of poetry struck him a blow like this. He had
said that he did not understand poetry, but here was meaning only too
clear; in this song--so gentle, pleading, and pathetic in character, he,
John of Jingalo, stood publicly accused of all the injuries that were
being done to women in that necessary defense of law and order against
which, petition in hand, they were so obstinately setting themselves.
What was all his popularity worth, if by the mouths of little children
his name was to be thus cried in the streets? It was scandalous,
indecent; and yet--was it altogether without justification?
To be rid of his small tormentors and free for his own meditations, he
took the most practical means that suggested itself.
"There, there!" he cried. "Run away, run away, all of you!" and throwing
a random coin into their midst moved hastily away. Behind him as he went
he heard battle royal being waged; liberal though the donation, and
sufficient to distribute sustenance to all, each was now claiming it as
her own perquisite.
And so at his back the shrill sounds of wrath and contention went on
till they became merged in a louder roar, the origin of which was
presently made apparent.
He turned a corner and saw before him a huge crowd, and Regency Row
packed with seething humanity from end to end.
III
For the first time in his life the King formed part of a crowd, and knew
what it was like to feel his body and limbs packed in by the bodies and
limbs of others and to have the breath squeezed out of him. In this
crowd the proportion of men to women was as ten to one; from the
physical point of view, therefore, the chances for these conflicting
women were nil. All the same they were there in large numbers, and not
for the first time; many of them were already sufficiently well known to
the police.
A curiously corporate movement possessed this crowd; when it shifted at
all it shifted in large sections--three or four hundred at once; a whole
street-width of men driving forward at a lunge, before which the
strongest barrier of police momentarily gave way. And wherever this kind
of movement went on a few women formed the center of it.
Small bundles of humanity, they shot by in the grip of that huge force,
mischievous and uncontrolled; tossed, tousled, and squeezed, shedding as
they went small fragments of their outer raiment, lost momentarily to
view in the surging mass of men, cornered, crushed back, held down as
within a vise--emerging again like popped corks followed by a foaming
rush of shouting youths, jeering or cheering them on; and still through
all that pressure obstinately retaining their human form, and enduring
with a strange silence what was being done to them by this great roaring
mob which had come out "for fun."
Some went their way wide-eyed, with terror in their looks, yet still set
to their end; some with rigid faces and eyes shut fast, as though
scarcely conscious--their souls elsewhere, submitting passively to the
buffetings of fate; and a few--strangest sight of all--smiling to
themselves, almost with a look of peace, as though in the very violence
by which they were assailed they discerned a triumph for their cause.
And with all the screwing, pushing, and wrenching, the driving forward
and the hurling back, scarcely one woman's arm was raised, except now
and again to protect her breast from the lewd or wanton assaults of the
crowd. Some held, tight clasped in their hands, crumpled bits of
paper--the petition, presumably, over which all this trouble
arose--stained, torn, almost illegible now, useless, yet still a symbol
of the fight that was being waged. Now and then above the turmoil, in
the dimness that lay between the lighted streets and the crowning
darkness of night, went sudden flashes like sheet-lightning in storm;
and at the stroke horses plunged, and youths screamed, facetiously
imitating the voice of women. It was the work of photographers,
securing, from some point of vantage overhead, flashlight records for
the delectation of the music halls. Again and again, with pistol-like
report, the monstrous dose was administered, the night took it at a
gulp, and the rabble responded with noise and shoutings.
The genial voice of a mounted policeman working his way through the
crowd sounded humanly above the din.
"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" There was a touch of
humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his
wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went
pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness
mingled itself with the crowd.
"Oh! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" Away he went on his
disciplined errand of mercy, a man of kindliness, good counsel, and
understanding, carrying out his orders in as human a way as was
possible.
"Now then! Now then! Now then! I'm coming. Oh, I'm coming!"
The roaring multitude swallowed him; his cry grew faint, merged in the
general din.
By the gradual compression and movement of the multitude toward some
fancied center the King had been borne a good many hundred yards from
his original point. Presently he found himself in a large open space,
with its low-railed inclosure guarded by police. Here the crowd was
denser than ever and its sway harder to withstand. A woman's form was
driven sharply against him. To avoid elbowing her off he offered the
shelter of his arm; and she, finding herself up against something not
immediately repellent, stayed to breathe. He saw the sweat pour from her
skin, and as she panted in his arms she had the rank scent of a creature
when it is hunted. Yet in her face there was no fear at all, only the
white strain of physical exhaustion nearing its last point.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"The police; are they treating you properly?"
"I have nothing to complain of," she said.
"Won't you go home? You must see it is no use."
She turned away as though she had not heard him, and threw herself once
more against the barrier she was unable to overcome. Into the shock of
it she went, with "nothing to complain of," forgetful of self, forgetful
of all but her blind unreasoning determination to gain her end. Her
passive yet battling form was borne away from him in the huge eddies of
the crowd.
"Hot work!" said a voice at his side; a little man, with keen, appetized
face, ferreting this way and that, was hurriedly taking notes as though
his life depended on it. The King looked at him in surprise, and
wondered what it meant.
"Got any news?" inquired the man, still scribbling at his notebook.
"What kind of news?"
"I'm not particular; anything suits me. I'm the Press."
"The Press?"
"Yes, reporter." And, as one proud of his great connection, he named the
King's favorite journal.
Never it is to be hoped to his dying day did that poor penny-a-liner
know what a piece of news he allowed in that moment to slip by--news
which to him would have meant almost a fortune; and here he was actually
rubbing shoulders with it; and making no profit.
"How many arrested?" he inquired.
"I don't know."
"Any of the leaders yet?"
"I have not heard."
Unprofitable company; the man moved away. They were separated by a
fresh movement of the crowd.
A royal mail-van drove through the square, the police with difficulty
making way for it. And the crowd, mistaking it for something else,
rushed off to gaze and cheer excitedly at the prisoners within. The
postman who sat mounting guard over the netted window at the rear smiled
wittily at the popular error which made him for a few brief moments so
conspicuous a figure. No doubt the incident gave the newspaper-man some
copy, and the van, having contributed its share to the general
amusement, rolled on its way.
Again the crowd made a rush; on the other side of the square a woman had
managed to get arrested, and a strong body of constables was escorting
her across to the police-station. Captors and captive walked quickly,
anxious to get the thing through. The woman had a scared yet triumphant
look in her eyes: she had succeeded in making the police do what they
did not want to do; and now for a fortnight, or a month, or for two
months--according to what these men might swear to, or the magistrate
think--she and a few score of others would find in a criminal cell that
temporary goal at which they had aimed; and the press would quiet the
public conscience by saying that they had done it "for notoriety."
Always friendliest when it saw a woman actually under arrest, the crowd
broke into applause--dividing its cheers impartially between prisoner
and police. For this was what it had come out to see: this was why it
had paid tram-fares from distant slums, sacrificing its evening at the
"pub" and its pot of beer. These men of hard toiling lives and dull
imagination were there to see women of a class and education superior to
their own break the law and get "copped" for it, just like one of
themselves.
"Quite right too! teach them to be'ave as they ought to," was the
comment passed here and there--though as a matter of fact it had already
been abundantly proved that it taught them nothing of the kind. But
that, after all, is "Government" as understood by the man in the street;
he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who,
smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is
down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to
ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of
prisoner and escort passed on its way.
"Three cheers for the Women's Charter!" cried a voice somewhere in the
crowd; and there went up in response a genial roar, half of derision,
half of sympathy.
"Give 'em hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage
and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on,
butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him;
nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" he cried.
"They're getting it!" laughed a pale youth with an underhung jaw.
Wherever the eye turned hell could be seen having its will, and deriving
a curious satisfaction from its momentary power to do foul things under
the public eye.
"Oh, save me! save me! save me!" whimpered a woman's voice. Down in the
gulf below, buried under the shoulders of men, a small elderly figure
was clinging to the King's arm.
"Oh, can't you do anything for me?" wailed the poor little Chartist,
with nerve utterly gone.
"Why don't you go home?" inquired the King kindly.
"I want to go home!" she said. "Take me!"
"The first thing, then, is to get out of this crowd. Keep hold of my
arm."
"No!" A perverse tag of conscience held her back. "I don't want to! I've
got a petition; it has to go to the King. Oh, if he only knew!"
"Give it to me! I will see that he gets it."
"You? You'd only throw it away when my back was turned."
"No; I promise you I would not. Give it me! It shall really go to him."
"You are not making fun of me?"
"Indeed I am not. Here, where is it? Give it to me, quick!"
She put the precious crumpled document into his hand. Poor nameless
soul, unconscious of what she had achieved--"I hope I've done right,"
she said.
A fresh movement of the crowd drove them against the railings. The
elderly little woman cried out like a frightened child.
"Oh, oh! They are killing me!"
The King lifted her up and put her over into free space on the other
side.
"Here! none of that!" cried a big voice beside him. A rough hand seized
hold of him and wrenched him back; he turned round and found himself in
a policeman's charge. Then another came and took hold of him on the
other side.
Incredibly the thing had happened: he was arrested. Triumphantly,
through a roaring, eddying crowd, the strong arm of the law bore him
away.