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
He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a
few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April. His father was
full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his
barrister son had attained. "You'll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a
K.C., before I'm dead! But marry, boy, _marry_. _That's_ what you
must do now. Marry and give me grandchildren." The burly curate
privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to
the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had
worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and
had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and
London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded
virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by
Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life.
If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of
greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However,
he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire's
daughter; who as she somehow thought David _ought_ to have married
_her_, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was
a Galahad.
Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the
explanation of the enigma if it ever came.
Returned to London and Fig Tree Court--which he was soon
vacating--David obtained through his and her bankers a passport for
himself and another for Miss Vivien Warren, thirty-four, British
subject, and so forth, travelling on the Continent, a lady of
independent means. He re-arranged all David's and Vivie's money
matters, stored such of Vivie's property and his own as was
indispensable at Honoria Armstrong's house in Kensington, and left a
box containing a complete man's outfit in charge of Bertie Adams;
bade farewell as "David Williams" and "Uncle David" to Honoria and
her two babies, and to the still unkindly-looking Colonel Armstrong
(who very much resented the "uncle" business, which was perhaps why
Honoria out of a wholesome _taquinage_ kept it up); and called in
for a farewell chat with dear old Praddy--beginning to look a bit
shaky and rather too much bossed by his parlour-maid. Honoria had
said as he departed "Do try to run up against Vivie somewhere abroad
and tell her I shan't be happy till she returns and takes up her
abode among us once more. 'Army' is _longing_ to know her." ('Army'
didn't look it.) "Now pettums! Wave handikins to Uncle David. He's
goin' broadies. 'Army' dear, would you ask them to whistle for a
taxi? I know David doesn't want to walk all the way back to the
Temple in those lovely button boots."
Praed told him all he wanted to know about the localities of the
Warren Private Hotels; most of all, that at which Vivie's mother
resided in the Rue Royale, Brussels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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