Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/230

 "What the devil do you want?" he shouted angrily. "Get out of my way!"

They clamoured the louder, pressed him the closer, and, as he put his hand in a pocket of his trousers for coins, another hand accompanied his and clawed the coins from his fingers before either hand emerged. He felt contaminated; he was furious and now began to be a little frightened, too. The face nearest his—and it was near indeed—was not all of a face; but the bloodshot eyes of it were passionately alive and held that excluding look in which he had been interested a little while before. So had all the other bloodshot eyes close to his own that look; and it was the look that frightened him.

"Get out!" he shouted, though their chattering, close to his ears, made it difficult for him to hear his own voice. "Get out of my way! Get out, you dirty brutes!" And helplessly he began to swear.

Then suddenly the pressure of unclean bodies against him was withdrawn; the plucking hands ceased to touch him; the voices were gone from his ears. Brown feet fled noiselessly down the way they had come; rags flitted into holes, and, like shredding mist, the rabble vanished.

From the brighter open space above, there came