Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's MovementJohnston, Harry
General
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement
Johnston, Harry
Feminism -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was
Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even
in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South
America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a
corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune
perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any
other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest
of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with
a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be
fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But
he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast
wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket,
Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in
fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers
of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds
of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands,
generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account.
But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock
market he was or had become a bad loser. He lost his temper at the
same time. On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom
would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's
book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds. Viewed in the right
proportion it would be equivalent to our--you and me--having given a
florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a
penny. But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for
him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning
of the King's horse. Yet his outburst and the shocking language he
applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him
Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something
on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade.
[Footnote 1: He died in 1917. My jury of matrons has excised his
phrases.]
She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr.
----. In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by
fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal
life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and
palaces of Mr. ---- at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the
neighbourhood of Doncaster.
Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily
Davison's funeral. Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her
self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant
kinswoman. Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little
lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation. His motor-brougham,
containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed
in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin
across London from Victoria station to King's Cross. A halt was made
outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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