"A gentleman to see you, Sir, downstairs."
Winnington descended, and found Andrews—breathless with news.
Eighty women arrested—Miss Marvell among the ringleaders, for all of whom bail has been refused? While the riot had been going on in Parliament Square, another detachment of women had passed along Whitehall, smashing windows as they went. And at the same moment, a number of shop-windows had been broken in Piccadilly. The Prime Minister had been questioned in the Commons, and Sir Wilfrid Lang had denounced the "Daughters'" organisation, and the mad campaign of violence to which they were committed, in an indignant speech much cheered by the House.
* * * * *
The days that followed were days of nightmare both for Delia and those who watched over her.
Gertrude Marvell and ten others went to prison, without the option of a fine. About forty of the rank and file who refused to pay their fines, or give surety for good behaviour, accompanied their leaders into duress. The country rang with the scandal of what had happened, and with angry debate as to how to stop the scandal in the future. The Daughters issued defiant broadsheets, and filled the Tocsin with brave words. And the Constitutionalists who had pinned their hopes on the Suffrage Bill before the House, wrung their hands, and wailed to heaven and earth to keep these mad women in order.
Delia sat waiting—waiting—all these intolerable hours. She scarcely spoke to Winnington, except to ask him for news, or to thank him, when every evening, owing to a personal knowledge of the Home Secretary, he was able to bring her the very latest news of what was happening in prison. Gertrude had refused food; forcible feeding would very soon have to be abandoned; and her release, on the ground of danger to life, might have to be granted. But in view of the hot indignation of the public, the Government were not going to release any of the prisoners before they absolutely must.
Delia herself was maimed and powerless. How the wrenching of her arm had come about—whether in the struggle with the two constables who had separated her from Gertrude, or in the attempt to raise her companion from the ground—she could not now remember. But a muscle had been badly torn; she wore a sling and suffered constant and often severe pain. Neither Alice Matheson, nor Lady Tonbridge—who had rushed up to town—ever heard her complain, except involuntarily, of this pain. Madeleine indeed believed that there was some atoning satisfaction in it, for Delia's wounded spirit. If she was not with Gertrude in prison, at least she too was suffering—if only a fraction of what Gertrude was enduring.
The arm however was not the most serious matter. As France had long since perceived, she had been overstrained in nursing Weston, and the events since she left Maumsey had naturally increased the mischief. She had become sleepless and neurasthenic. And Winnington watched day by day the eclipse of her radiant youth, with a dumb wrath almost as Pagan as that which a similar impression had roused in Lathrop.
The nights were her worst time. She lived then, in prison, with Gertrude, vividly recalling all that she had ever heard from the Daughters who had endured it, of the miseries and indignities of prison life. But she also lived again through the events which had preceded and followed the riot; her quick intelligence pondered the comments of the newspapers, the attitude of the public, the measured words and looks of these friends who surrounded her. And there were many times when sitting up in bed alone, suffering and sleepless, she asked herself bitterly—"were we just fools!—just fools?"