“You can’t forgive me now, but perhaps you will some day. Whatever you feel towards me, whatever I do, I shall still be always
“The account papers, tradesmen addresses, wages paper, are in the lift-up place of desk on dining-room writing table. I expect I shall be away from you a month. The others will cling round you. If I were going a trip abroad you would not resent the separation. In my little warm cupboard nest in Holloway my only thought of the outer world will be of you. I shall try anyhow to get back to you to-night.
I went to 4, Clement’s Inn, lunched there with Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Christabel, Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Tuke; Miss Neal came too. She kindly undertook to post my letter to mother and buy me a brush and comb and toothbrush in case we should be sent to the 1st Division.
I had a cracking headache and felt quite dazed. They kindly put me to lie down in the upstairs rest room boudoir, where Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel had remained hidden from the police on October 14, 1908.
At about six o’clock we had supper. I ate next to nothing. Miss Elsa Gye, who had been summoned by telegraph to come and assist me through the Deputation, was at supper. She was a delightful girl, young and fresh-looking. I had been told that she was just engaged to be married, and I felt it was horrible that she should risk weeks of imprisonment solely because of me.
I had disguised myself by doing my hair in an early-Victorian way, so that the police, if on the look out for me, should not recognise me and so be tempted not to arrest me; for people whose relatives might make a fuss effectively are considered awkward customers.
At about seven Miss Gye and I set out and hailed a taxi. I found I had left my ticket behind for the Caxton Hall Meeting. So I flew back to Clement’s Inn to get it. It was a raw, cold night, but I had been advised to dispense with my muff and boa, as these, I was told, would almost certainly be torn to shreds “in the hustling”; this gave one a rather gruesome warning of what was to be expected from the handling of the police. We were each given a copy of the resolution which was to be put to the meeting. As we drove to Caxton Hall, it suddenly struck me that I had not sufficiently learnt up my part. “What does one have to do?” I asked. “I suppose I must do something to show that I mean business.” “Oh, no,” my companion answered, “you needn’t bother about what you’ll do. It will all be done _to_ you. There is only one thing you must remember. It is our business to go forward, and whatever is said to you and whatever is done to you, you must on no account be turned back.” That seemed to me at the time, and has seemed to me ever since, to be the essence of our militant tactics. I afterwards heard it yet better summarised by Mrs. Pankhurst: “Our demand is just and moderate. We press our cause reasonably and in a law-abiding spirit, but in such a way that we give the Government but two alternatives--either to do us justice or to do us violence.” My companion also told me that if the police became too violent, I could cut matters short and ensure instant arrest by the semblance of making a speech or collecting a crowd round me for that purpose, since these offences constituted a breach of the peace. Miss Gye and I sat in the body of the hall, we had on the “Votes for Women” sashes and were to join the Deputation unostentatiously as it left the building.