Susan Proudleigh. Herbert George De Lisser
ringing jeer was more than any ordinary woman could tolerate. Susan tried to answer it with a laugh as contemptuous, but failed, her wrath choking her. Then she put all pretence aside, and swiftly moving up to Maria she thrust her face into the face of the other girl. “See here, ma’am,” she hissed, “I want to ask you one thing: is it me you laughing at?”
“But stop!” exclaimed Maria, backing away a little, and defiantly placing her arms akimbo. “Stop! You ever see my trial! Then I can’t laugh without your permission, eh?” Saying which she laughed again as contemptuously as before, and swung round with a flounce so as to bring one of her elbows into unpleasant proximity to Susan’s waist.
“I don’t say you can’t laugh, an’ I don’t care if y’u choose to laugh till you drop,” cried Susan bitterly; “but I want to tell you that y’u can’t laugh at me!”
“So you’re better than everybody else?” sneered Maria. “Y’u think you are so pretty, eh? Well! there is a miss for you! She can’t even behave herself in de public street, though she always walk an’ shake her head as if she was a princess, an’ though she call herself ‘young lady.’ But perhaps she think she lose something good, an’ can’t recover from the loss as yet!” And again that maddening peal of laughter rang out.
Susan did not answer Maria directly. She eyed that young woman swiftly, and noticed that her dress was old and her shoes poor and dusty. This gave her the advantage she needed in dealing with a girl who was all contempt while she herself was all temper. She turned to her sister and to Maria’s friends, and pointed to Maria with scorn.
“Look at her!” she cried. “Look how she stand! Her face is like a cocoa-nut trash, and she don’t even have a decent frock to put on!”
Maria might have passed over the reference to her face; she knew it was only spiteful abuse. But the allusion to the scantiness of her wardrobe was absolutely unforgivable. If not exactly true, it yet approached perilously near the truth, and so it cut her to the quick. No sooner were the words uttered than Maria’s forefinger was wagging in Susan’s face, and:
“Say that again, an’ I box you!” she screamed.
“Box me?” hissed Susan. “Box me? My good woman, this would be the last day of you’ life. Take you’ hand out of me face at once—take it out, I say—take it out!”—and without waiting to see whether Maria would remove the offending member, she seized it and pushed Maria violently away.
In a moment the two were locked in one another’s arms. There was a sound of heavy blows, two simultaneous shrieks of “Murder!” and a hasty movement of about forty persons towards the scene of the combat.
Catherine now thought it time to interfere. She threw herself upon the combatants, making a desperate but vain attempt to separate them. Maria’s friends protested loudly that Susan was ill-treating Maria, though, as the latter was at least as strong as Susan, it was difficult to see where the ill-treatment came in. A dignified-looking man standing on the piazza loudly remonstrated with the crowd for allowing “those two females to fight,” but made not the slightest effort himself to put a stop to the struggle. The little boys and girls in the vicinity cheered loudly. The one thing lacking was a policeman. Noticing this, the dignified-looking man audibly expressed his opinion on the inefficiency of the force.
“Let me go, I say, let me go!” gasped Susan, her head being somewhere under Maria’s right arm.
“You wants to kill me!” stammered Maria, whose sides Susan was squeezing with all the strength she possessed—“murder, murder!”
But neither one would let the other go. Neither one was much hurt as yet. The struggle continued about a minute longer, when some one in the crowd shouted, “Policeman coming!”
Then indeed both Susan and Maria came to their senses. They separated, and vainly tried to put on an appearance of composure. It was time, for yonder, moving leisurely through the crowd, now composed of over a hundred persons, was the policeman who had been spied by one of the spectators. The girls made no effort to run, for that would surely have provoked the policeman to an unusual display of energy, and, justly angered at having been compelled to exert himself, he might have arrested them both on the charge of obstructing him in the execution of his duty. They waited where they stood, their eyes still flashing, their bosoms heaving, and their bodies trembling with rage.
But angry as she was, Susan had already begun to feel ashamed of fighting in the street. She had always had a horror of street scenes; people of her class did not participate in them; before this event she would not have thought it possible that she could ever be mixed up in such an affair as this. Oh, the humiliation of being handled by a constable! She heartily wished she were a thousand miles from the spot.
In the meantime the policeman, having arrived at the outskirts of the crowd, began busily to work his way through to the centre. True to its traditions, the crowd was hostile to him and friendly to the culprits; so some of the women managed to put themselves in his way, then angrily asked him what he was pushing them for.
“What is all dis?” was his first question as he came up to the spot where Susan and Maria stood. “What is de meaning of this?” He looked fixedly at the gas-lamp as if believing that that object could give him the most lucid explanation of the circumstances.
Nobody answered.
“What is all dis, I say?” he again demanded in a more peremptory tone of voice.
“These two gals was fighting, sah,” explained a small boy, in the hope of seeing somebody arrested.
“Mind your own business, buoy!” was all the reward the policeman gave him for his pains, and then the arm of the law, feeling that something was expected of him, proceeded to deliver a speech.
“The truth of de matter is dis,” he observed, looking round with an air of grave authority: “You common folkses are too ignorant. You are ignorant to extreme. You ever see white ladies fight in de street? Answer me that!”
No one venturing to answer, he continued:
“White people don’t fight in de street, because them is ladies and gentleman. But I can’t understand the people of my own colour; they have no respect for themself!”
He spoke more in sorrow than in anger; almost as though he were bitterly lamenting the deficiencies of the working classes. But Susan, though in trouble, would not even then allow herself to be classed with the policeman and others in the category of “common folkses.” “I am not common,” she answered defiantly; “I am not your set!”
“Silence, miss!” thundered the policeman, scandalized. “I am the law! Do you know dat?”
“I never see a black law yet,” cheekily replied Susan, who thought that, if she had to be arrested, there would be at least some satisfaction in humiliating the policeman.
“If y’u say another impertinence word I will arrest you!” was the policeman’s threat. “Now de whole of you walk right off! Right off, I say, or I teck you all to jail!” He included the crowd with one comprehensive sweep of his arm, perceiving that his edifying attempt to awaken in his audience a sense of respectability had not been favourably received.
There was no disputing his authority, especially as he had begun to get angry. Susan knew, too, that she had mortally offended him by claiming to belong to a better class than his: which remark had also lost her the sympathy of the greater part of the crowd. So she was the first to take advantage of his command, and Maria followed her example by disappearing as quickly as she could. In another minute or two the normal activity of the street had been resumed, and the policeman had again started upon his beat, hoping that he would no more be disturbed that night. But both Susan and Maria knew that the fight would have a sequel. For war had now openly been declared between them.
CHAPTER III
THE CASE IN COURT