A Suffragette in America by Pankhurst E. Sylvia.;Connelly Katherine.;

Author:Pankhurst, E. Sylvia.;Connelly, Katherine.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

A FESTIVAL

The little flat was like a tiny piece of England transplanted to New York. The pictures on the plain white walls, the big chesterfield couch, the broad brass bed with its quilt of varied eider plumage, a delight for childish eyes, all had come from London. The house had been built before the advent of steam radiators and there were big open fireplaces, with beautifully carved white marble mantle pieces, such as are not made nowadays. Though it was hard, not soft coal, that was burning, the bright fire helped to make an English traveller think of home. I had told Cora, the dusky maidservant with gleaming teeth, that I could see no one, for my book was going through the press and I was busy cutting it down and correcting it for impatient publishers.

I was sitting on the big chesterfield, with bundles of typewritten manuscript and long strips of proof piled all around me, when suddenly an elfin maiden appeared in the room. She was dressed in black and dark grey, with masses of faint brown hair. Her face, on its slender neck, was delicate as a flower, pale and wan and sadder than a heart should be, yet strangely lit with joy. Her eyes were a soft grey green brown and she had a gift, all her own, of raising her eyelids, so that one saw a glimpse of the white above the iris, as though she would see more keenly into hidden things. Work was forgotten whilst she stayed with me.

Two days later she came again, bringing a sister Fay, an etherialized Rossetti maiden, with brooding gaze and hair and eyes dark as the deep woods at night.

We set out together. I was deceived by the warmth of the house and meeting the bitter outside air, I shivered and held my coat more closely round me; but my companions, with their slender throats uncovered, did not seem even to know the wind was cold. They hurried me along through the streets of immense buildings with huge glaring advertisements of moving lights, that showed Boadicea with chariot wheels revolving, a kitten ever catching its tail and innumerable verbal signs in red green and yellow letters that winked jerkily out and in. They hastened across the wide thoroughfares, until gradually the surroundings grew dingier and more squalid. Now the ways were thronged with dark and swarthy foreigners, and the shops bore Yiddish signs. At last, we turned into a darkened street of houses and at the door of one of these, with hurried introductions they left me and sped away.

* * *

The doorway, reached by high steps, is old fashioned, straight and narrow. Inside is a blaze of light and a bewildering number of kindly women. One of these, with gentle face and silver hair, takes the visitor through quiet rooms to lay aside wraps and then down to where the gracious lady mother of the house receives her guests and leads them into the great dining room,

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