Free Unclouded Summer by Alec Waugh Page B

either, it was that young woman. She had a personal magnetism that immunized her followers against punishment or argument, he said. It was at the time when the militants’ campaign was getting out of hand. They had just destroyed the greens of my favorite golf course. I was inclined to agree with him. I had no idea how much at that very moment I was indebted to that young woman.”
    â€œNow Henry.”
    â€œBut it’s true, you know it is; if you hadn’t met Sylvia Pankhurst, if you hadn’t, what is the phrase, embraced the cause, there’s no doubt whatsoever that a young flippertigibbet like yourself, would the moment she reached the age of consent have eloped, and almost certainly, with the most appalling cad. Nothing could have saved you from that fate. As it was you heard Sylvia Pankhurst speaking on Sunday morning at the Whitestone Pond and the light of divine revelation descended on you, and straightaway you cast aside your nets and followed after, and instead of making a private exhibition of yourself in the divorce courts, you made a public exhibition of yourself assaulting policemen, pouring paraffin into letter boxes, smashing post-office windows, tearing up cricket pitches, going on hunger strikes in Holloway. In fact, keeping yourself generally busy until you had the good fortune to come under my good influence. If it hadn’t been for that lucky Schwarmarei …”
    â€œNow Henry, it wasn’t that.”
    â€œWasn’t it?” and his eyes were twinkling.
    â€œYou actually were a suffragette?” Francis asked.
    Judy turned the album over. Two pages later, there was another photograph cut from a daily paper; a blurred and smudgy photograph of a squad of policemen struggling witha number of women who appeared to be chained to a row of railings. The roofs and spires of Westminster were in the background.
    â€œYou can’t see very clearly but I’m second from the left,” she said.
    He stared, incredulous. The woman second from the left was hatless, her hair streaming over her shoulders; one stocking was loose over her shoe; one policeman was holding her by the wrists, a second held her by the ankles, while a third was trying to file off the chain. He looked at the date upon the newspaper. October 12, 1913. Thirteen years ago, when she was still in her teens. It was hardly credible that such things could have happened to anyone so young.
    â€œDid you go to prison?”
    â€œFor two years Holloway was the likeliest address for her,” Sir Henry said.
    Judy tapped the album. “It’s all there,” she said. “All the accounts of all my trials. I laugh sometimes when I hear people talking about that last marvelous summer of 1914 – the unending sunshine, the balls in travesti. I remember what my summer was. They had a thing called Cat-and-Mouse Act going. It was a very pretty game. When we went on hunger strike, they’d feed us forcibly or try to. It wasn’t so easy with some doctors, but we usually got our way. They had to let us out. But that wasn’t the end of the story, not by any means. As soon as we were fit again, they would rearrest us. That’s why we called it the Cat-and-Mouse Act. During that last golden summer, as the novelists call it now, I was in and out three times. The last time I came out I was so weak that my father insisted on sending me abroad. A long way too, so that I could forget the movement for a time. That was in July ‘14. Now you understand.”
    â€œAnd now you understand,” said Sir Henry, “why I on the third of August when I went round to the consulate and found this eccentricity sitting with a whole crowd of indignant applicants clamoring for passages to England, decided that she’d be causing much less nuisance if she stayed where she was than if she went back home.”
    â€œDarling, you hadn’t the foggiest notion who I was.”
    â€œI may not have.