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 electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of
the wall which served two cells. She awoke; Bertie awoke. He was
still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face
looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection. Loth to awaken him to
reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell--for
the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door
ajar. She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own
quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she
undressed and slept dreamlessly.
But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning! It was
snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was
lead-coloured. Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed.
She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she
had finished. Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white
powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast. She
swallowed it. If it were poison sent by the German Government, what
matter? But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off
sorrow.
Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose. They spent the
morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily.
With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times. Neither
would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a
transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the
Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of
Chancery Lane.
When however she returned to his cell after her evening meal, his
mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed. He had moods of
despair and wild crying. No response had come, no answer to Vivie's
appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker's activities. Bertie
reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in. "An
injection in the arm? So! He will sleep now till morning. Esperons
toujours! Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle. Vous etes excedee.
Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?"
But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her,
though she promised "se maitriser"--to keep calm.
What a night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was
preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was
audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into
the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer--nearer--nearer
till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened.
She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. "You've brought a
reprieve?" she gasped. But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only
stood with downcast faces. "It will soon be morning," the Directeur
said. "There is no hope of a reprieve. He is to be executed at seven
at the Tir National. All we have secured for you is permission to
accompany him to the end. But if you think _that_ too painful, too
great a strain, I would suggest that you--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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