Chapter XXII — The Chemistry of Mr. Crooke (2)

    “Because,” cried Patrick Dalroy; and his voice lifted itself like a lonely trumpet before the charge, “because I shall not have broken the law. Because alcoholic liquors have been three days on these premises. Three months more likely. Because this is a common grog-shop, Phillip Ivywood. Because that man behind the counter lives by selling spirits to all the cowards and hypocrites who are rich enough to bribe a bad doctor.”
    And he pointed suddenly at the small medicine glass on the counter by Hibbs and Leveson.
    “What is that man drinking?” he demanded.
    Hibbs put out his hand hastily for his glass, but the indignant clock-mender had snatched it first and drained it at a gulp.
    “Scortch,” he said, and dashed the glass to atoms on the floor. “Right you are too,” roared the plasterer, seizing a big medicine bottle in each hand. “We’re goin’ to ’ave a little of the fun now, we are. What’s in that big red bowl up there—I reckon it’s port. Fetch it down, Bill.”
    Ivywood turned to Crooke and said, scarcely moving his lips of marble, “This is a lie.”
    “It is the truth,” answered Crooke, looking back at him with equal steadiness. “Do you think you made the world, that you should make it over again so easily?”
    “The world was made badly,” said Phillip, with a terrible note in his voice, “and I will make it over again.”
    Almost as he spoke the glass front of the shop fell inward, shattered, and there was wreckage among the moonlike, coloured bowls; almost as if spheres of celestial crystal cracked at his blasphemy. Through the broken windows came the roar of that confused tongue that is more terrible than the elements; the cry that the deaf kings have heard at last; the terrible voice of mankind. All the way down the long, fashionable street, lined with the Crooke plate-glass, that glass was crashing amid the cries of a crowd. Rivers of gold and purple wines sprawled about the pavement.
    “Out in the open!” shouted Dalroy, rushing out of the shop, sign-board in hand, the dog Quoodle barking furiously at his heels, while Dorian with the cheese and Humphrey with the keg followed as rapidly as they could. “Goodnight, my lord.
    “Perhaps our meeting next may fall,
    At Tomworth in your castle hall.
    Come along, friends, and form up. Don’t waste time destroying property. We’re all to start now.”
    “Where are we all going to?” asked the plasterer.
    “We’re all going into Parliament,” answered the Captain, as he went to the head of the crowd.
    The marching crowd turned two or three corners, and at the end of the next long street, Dorian Wimpole, who was toward the tail of the procession, saw again the grey Cyclops tower of St. Stephens, with its one great golden eye, as he had seen it against that pale green sunset that was at once quiet and volcanic on the night he was betrayed by sleep and by a friend. Almost as far off, at the head of the procession, he could see the sign with the ship and the cross going before them like an ensign, and hear a great voice singing—
    “Men that are men again, Who goes home?
    Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?
    The voice valedictory—who is for Victory?
    Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?”