“No,” said Susan. “It’s for life. Tell them about it, Jenny. They don’t know.”
Jane Foley laughed lightly.
“It was all in the day’s work,” she said. “It was at my last visit to Holloway.”
Audrey, gazing at her entranced, like a child, murmured with awe:
“Have you been to prison, then?”
“Three times,” said Jane pleasantly. “And I shall be going again soon. I’m only out while they’re trying to think of some new way of dealing with me, poor things! I’m generally watched. It must cost them a fearful lot of money. But what are they to do?”
“But how were you lamed? I can’t eat any tea if you don’t tell me—really I can’t!”
“Oh, all right!” Jane laughed. “It was after that Liberal mass meeting in Peel Park, at Bradford. I’d begun to ask questions, as usual, you know—questions they can’t answer—and then some Liberal stewards, with lovely rosettes in their buttonholes, came round me and started cutting my coat with their penknives. They cut it all to pieces. You see that was the best argument they could think of in the excitement of the moment. I believe they’d have cut up every stitch I had, only perhaps it began to dawn on them that it might be awkward for them. Then two of them lifted me up, one by the feet and the other by the shoulders, and carried me off. They wouldn’t let me walk. I told them they’d hurt my leg, but they were too busy to listen. As soon as they came across a policeman they said they had done it all to save me from being thrown into the lake by a brutal and infuriated mob. I just had enough breath left to thank them. Of course, the police weren’t going to stand that, so I was taken that night to London. Everything was thought of except my tea. But I expect they forgot that on purpose so that I should be properly hungry when I got to Holloway. However, I said to myself, ‘If I can’t eat and drink when I want, I won’t eat and drink when they want!’ And I didn’t.
“After I’d paid my respects at Bow Street, and was back at Holloway, I just stamped on everything they offered me, and wrote a petition to the Governor asking to be treated as a political prisoner. Instead of granting the petition he kept sending me more and more beautiful food, and I kept stamping on it. Then three magistrates arrived and sat on my case, and sentenced me to the punishment cells. They ran off as soon as they’d sentenced me. I said I wouldn’t go to their punishment cells. I told everybody again how lame I was. So five wardresses carried me there, but they dropped me twice on the way. It was a very interesting cell, the punishment cell was. If it had been in the Tower, everybody would go to look at it because of its quaintness. There were two pools of water near to the bed. I was three days in the cell, and those pools of water were always there; I could see them because from where I lay on the bed the light glinted on them. Just one gleam from the tiny cobwebby window high up. I hadn’t anything to read, of course, but even if I’d had something I couldn’t see to read. The bed was two planks, just raised an inch or two above the water, and the pillow was wooden. Never any trouble about making beds like that! The entire furniture of this cosy drawing-room was—you’ll never guess—a tree-stump, meant for a chair, I think. And on this tree-stump was an india-rubber cup. I could just see it across the cell.
“At night the wardresses were struck with pity, or perhaps it was the Governor. Anyhow, they brought me a mattress and a rug. They told me to get up off the bed, and I told them I couldn’t get up, couldn’t even turn over. So they said, ‘Very well, then; you can do without these things,’ and they took them away. The funny thing was that I really couldn’t get up. If I tried to move, my leg made me want to shriek.