After a few minutes, to my surprise and intense delight, my eldest brother was shown in. He gave me good news of those at home. Before long I was pouring out to him the facts and my pent-up commentary concerning Mrs. Macdonald, in spite of frequent protests from the wardress, who exclaimed from time to time that it was against the rules to make communications to outsiders about fellow-prisoners or the prison authorities. This time I was careful not to reprove my loved visitor for anything, and before our all-too-short interview came to an end I was able to send a message to my sister to make good my regrets about her visit.
The variety of leniency of the different officials, and of the same officials on different days, gave a certain savour of adventure to the dreariness of prison life. Here are two instances of the brighter side. Mrs. Lawrence and I were one afternoon allowed to walk up and down the length of the ward side by side talking in low voices. She told me about the early days of the militant movement and supplemented my book-study of that miraculous fairy tale in which I was now privileged to take part. As I listened and reproached myself continually with the thought, “Women had all this to face and I was not helping them,” there seemed a positive charm in the trials of imprisonment--the suffering about my home people, the grim sights and sounds of our surroundings, the rudeness of prison officers, the physical discomforts of unaccustomed clothing, thunder-stuffed pillows, etc. Now that I passed the nights in a cell and came into the ward only for meals and part of the day, I noticed with keener insight how remarkably the atmosphere of leadership clung round Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. Her clothes and the disciplined routine were exactly the same in her case as in ours, she conformed to all the rules and seemed to adapt herself to the life as if it had been of her choice and not imposed upon her. Yet the authority, and above all, the wisdom in her personality seemed to shine out more prominently even than they did in free life when she was controlling the many departments of the office at Clement’s Inn for which she was responsible, or of the public movement from a platform. Everyone came to her for advice, even the prison officers seemed instinctively to refer matters to her. It was, for once, quite intelligible why they had separated her from the bulk of the Suffragist prisoners by putting her in hospital. It was obvious that her control over them would far outweigh the authority of prison rules and rulers should she choose to exert it. The reason given, however, was that she too was suffering from heart disease, but this medical verdict did not prevent her being sent to the cells, where the full prison labour of floor washing and tin polishing was exacted of her, as soon as our shorter sentences had expired and she was left to finish her unjustifiably longer term in solitude.