"And then?"
Patrine heard a strange voice from her own stiff lips asking the question.
"Then both of 'em were removed from the Dock. It was done—in time!" Rhona's light eyes danced with enjoyment. "Such a scrimmage! Such a rumpus! Took three men and a woman to tackle each of 'em. We could hear 'em giving tongue all the way down to the cells. Then they had to go on with the Trial without 'em." She chuckled. "You may guess there were a lot of us at the back of the Court waiting—just for that! Perfect wadge all together. Hell and trimmings when we started. They had to eject us before they could jog on with their gay old summing-up!"
"But in the end they got through?" The weary voice was so unlike Patrine's that she wondered why Rhona did not jump and stare at her. But Rhona was mounted on her hobby-horse, and unobservant of other things.
"Through right enough! And Fan and Kitty—" Rhona screwed up her lips into the shape of a whistle, and winked away a tear that hung on one of her fair eyelashes; "It's too brutal! Three months each, and poor little Kitty dying of lung-trouble. They only brought her back from Davos in May. That riles me!" She clenched her hands fiercely and went on, cautiously lowering her tone: "So far I've taken no active share in any Militant Demonstration. Partly because I'd be wiped off the Club books if I got spouting in public, or was mixed up in any police-court business, partly because I'm funky—there's the word! But at last I'm wound up! It was Kitty's little peaky-white face did it! ... She—she broke a blood-vessel as the warders were carrying her down to the cells."
A sob choked Rhona's voice, and a spasm of misery wrenched her. She controlled herself. She was deadly in earnest—wound up to go, as she had said. She went on, talking rapidly, in a tone that only reached the ear it had been meant for. How many such secret disclosures the Club divan had known.
"I've thought.... A regular swarm of Distinguished French and Belgian Big Pots and Little Pots—Mayors—Prefects and Deputies, Judges, Press Representatives and Inspectors-General—are engaged in Discovering England this week as ever is. It's an echo of the Entente Cordiale. Behind the badge of the International Advancement Association—I've got one!—I might drop in at one of their farewell speechifications, I believe the next's on Friday at Leamington—and heckle 'em like one o'clock! Ask 'em why women don't have the Vote in France and Belgium——"
"Don't they?"
"Nix a bit! Not for all the fuss they make about the sex. Or—to fix the scene of my maiden effort nearer home—there's a Banquet of Archbishops, Bishops and their wives at the Mansion House to-morrow night. Music just after the flesh-pots and before the speeches or after—a select company of Concert Artistes, the gemmen in boiled shirts and the usual accompaniments; the ladies in white with black sashes and black gloves. And that's where I shall come in—in white with black trimmings. Land of Hope and Glory!—when I get up and ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to plump for Female Suffrage!—or shall it be the Lord Mayor? ... Won't my Uncle Gustavus burst the buttons off his episcopal waistcoat. You've seen him. He's Bishop of Dorminster—and they fasten 'em at the back."
"Let the Bishop keep his buttons on!" said Patrine, suddenly and savagely. "What the—devil does it matter whether women get the Vote? Would we keep it if we got it, or throw it away—oh! idiots—idiots!—to gratify some vulgar vanity, or some beastly sensual whim?"