Feminist fiction; Suffragists -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
An hour later, while the old man was nursing his gout by the library
window, he saw the ladies getting into a hansom. In spite of the
inconvenience to his afflicted member he got up and opened the window.
'Don't tell me you're doing anything so rational--you two--as going to a
concert.'
'Why do you say that? You know I never like to take the horses out on
Sunday----'
'Rubbish! You think a dashing, irresponsible hansom is more in keeping
with the Factory Girls' Club or some giddy Whitechapel frivolity!'
Mrs. Fox-Moore gave her sister a look of miserable apprehension; but the
younger woman laughed and waved a hand. She knew that, even more than
the hansom, their 'get up' had given them away. It must be confessed she
had felt quite as strongly as her sister that it wouldn't do to be
recognized at a Suffragette meeting. Even as a nameless 'fine lady'
standing out from a mob of the dowdy and the dirty, to be stared at by
eyes however undiscerning, under circumstances so questionable, would be
distinctly distasteful.
So, reversing the order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a
'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her
discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque,
the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an
old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' In
spite of having herself taken these precautions, Vida had broken into
uncontrollable smiles at the apparition of Mrs. Fox-Moore, asking with
pride--
'Will I do? I look quite like a Woman of the People, don't I?'
The unconscious humour of the manifestation filled Miss Levering with an
uneasy merriment every time she turned her eyes that way.
Little as Mr. Fox-Moore thought of his wife's taste, either in clothes
or in amusements, he would have been more mystified than ever he had
been in his life had he seen her hansom, ten minutes later, stop on the
north side of Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Gallery.
'Look out and see,' she said, retiring guiltily into the corner of the
conveyance. 'Are they there?' And it was plain that nothing could more
have relieved Mrs. Fox-Moore at that moment than to hear 'they' were
not.
But Vida, glancing discreetly out of the side window, had said--
'There? I should think they are--and a crowd round them already. Look at
their banners!' and she laughed as she leaned out and read the legend,
'We demand VOTES FOR WOMEN' inscribed in black letters on the white
ground of two pieces of sheeting stretched each between a pair of
upright poles, standing one on either side of the plinth of Nelson's
column. In the very middle, and similarly supported, was a banner of
blood red. Upon this one, in great white letters, appeared the legend--
'EFFINGHAM, THE ENEMY
OF
WOMEN AND THE WORKERS.'
As Vida read it out--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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