Scene: the Dean horrified, stern, and ashamed; Mrs. Oliver shocked and repressive; Daphne sulky and defiant, and refusing to promise not to do it again.
“We’ve joined the militants, several of us,” she said.
“Who?” inquired her mother. “I’m sure Molly hasn’t.”
“No, Molly hasn’t,” said Daphne, with disgust. “All the Bellairs’ are too frightfully well-bred to fight for what they ought to have. They’re antis, all of them. Nevill approves of forcible feeding.”
“So does anyone, of course,” said the Dean. “Prisoners can’t be allowed to die on our hands just because they are criminally insane. Once for all, Daphne, I will not have a repetition of this disgusting episode. Other people’s daughters can make fools of themselves if they like, but mine isn’t going to. Is that quite clear?”
Daphne muttered something and looked rebellious; but the Dean did not think she would flatly disobey him. She did not, in fact, repeat the disgusting episode of the Jeye, but she was found a few evenings later trying to set fire to a workmen’s shelter after dark, and arrested. She was naturally anxious to go to prison, to complete her experiences, but she was given the option of a fine (which the Dean insisted, in spite of her protests, on paying), and bound over not to do it again. The Dean said after that that he was ashamed to look his neighbours in the face, and very shortly he had a stroke. Daphne decided reluctantly that militant methods must be in abeyance till he was recovered, and more fit to face shocks. To relieve herself, she engaged in a violent quarrel with Nevill Bellairs, who was home for Whitsuntide and ventured to remonstrate with her on her proceedings. They parted in sorrow and anger, and Daphne came home very cross, and abused Nevill to Eddy as a stick-in-the-mud.
“But it is silly to burn and spoil things,” said Eddy. “Very few things are silly, I think, but that is, because it’s not the way to get anything. You’re merely putting things back; you’re reactionaries. All the sane suffragists hate you, you know.”
Daphne was not roused to say anything about peaceful methods having failed, and the time having come for violence, or any of the other things that are natural and usual to say in the circumstances; she was sullenly silent, and Eddy, glancing at her in surprise, saw her sombre and angry.
Wondering a little, he put it down to her disagreement with Nevill. Perhaps she really felt that badly. Certainly she and Nevill had been great friends during the last year. It was a pity they should quarrel over a difference of opinion; anything in the world, to Eddy, seemed a more reasonable cause of alienation. He looked at his young sister with a new respect, however; after all, it was rather respectable to care as much as that for a point of view.
Molly Bellairs threw more light on the business next day when Eddy went to tennis there (Daphne had refused to go).