The Romance of His Life Part 24

He took no notice.

"I've seen Clarke," he said. "Poor devil! They won't have him back at the hotel, think he's unlucky, a sort of Jonah. His face certainly isn't his fortune, is it? And I hope you won't mind, Janet, I--"

"You've asked him to be best man instead of Gregory?"

"Well, no, I haven't. But I was sorry for him, and I gave him fifty pounds. Your money of course. I felt we owed him something for bringing us together. For you know, in a way, he really _has_, though he has been some time about it."

Votes for Men[3]

_Two hundred years hence, possibly less._

[3] First Published in 1909.

EUGENIA, _Prime Minister, is sitting at her writing table in her library. She is a tall, fine looking woman of thirty, rather untidy and worn in appearance._

EUGENIA [_to herself, taking up a paper_]. There is no doubt that we must carry through this bill or the future of the country will be jeopardized.

HENRY [_outside_]. May I come in?

EUGENIA. Do come in, dearest.

HENRY [_a tall, athletic man of thirty, faultlessly dressed, a contrast to her dusty untidiness_]. I thought I could see the procession best from here. [_Goes to windows and opens them._] It is in sight now. They are coming down the wind at a great pace.

EUGENIA [_slightly bored_]. What procession?

HENRY. Why the Men's Reinfranchis.e.m.e.nt League, of course. You know, Eugenia, you promised to interview a deputation of them at 5 o'clock, and they determined to have a ma.s.s meeting first.

EUGENIA. So they did. I had forgotten. I wish they would not pester me so. Really, the government has other things to attend to than Male Suffrage at times like this.

[_The procession sails past the windows in planes decked with the orange and white colours of the league. The occupants preserve a dead silence, saluting_ EUGENIA _gravely as they pa.s.s. From the streets far below rises a confused hubbub of men's voices shouting "Votes for men!"_

HENRY. How stately the clergy look, Eugenia! Why, there are the two Archbishops in their robes heading the whole procession, and look at the bevy of Bishops in their lawn sleeves in the great Pullman air car behind. What splendid men. And here come the clergy in their academic gowns by the hundred, in open trucks.

EUGENIA. I must say it is admirably organised, and no brawling.

HENRY. Why should they brawl? I believe you are disappointed that they don't. They are all saluting you, Eugenia, as they pa.s.s. They won't take any notice of me, of course, because it is known I am the President of the Anti-Suffrage League. The doctors are pa.s.sing now.

How magnificent they look in their robes! What numbers of them! It makes me proud I am a man. And now come the lawyers in crowds in their wigs and gowns.

EUGENIA. Every profession seems to be represented, but of course I am well aware that it is not the real wish of the men of England to obtain the vote. The suffragists must do something to convince me that the bulk of England's thoughtful and intelligent men are not opposed to it before I move in the matter.

HENRY. I often wonder what would convince you, Eugenia, or what they could do that they have not done. These must be the authors and artists and journalists, and quite a number of women with them. Do you notice that? Look, that is Hobson the poet, and Bagg the millionaire novelist, each in their own Swallow planes. How they dart along. I should like to have a Swallow, Eugenia. And are all those great lumbering tumbrils of men journalists?

EUGENIA. No doubt.

HENRY. It is very impressive. I wish they did not pa.s.s so fast, but the wind is high. Here come all the trades with the Lord Mayor of London in front! What hordes and hordes of them! The procession is at least a mile long. And I suppose those are miners and agricultural labourers, last of all, trying to keep up in those old Wilbur Wrights and Zeppelins. I did not know there were any left except in museums.

[_The procession pa.s.ses out of sight._ EUGENIA _sighs_.

HENRY. Demonstrations like this make a man think, Eugenia. I really can't see, though you often tell me I do, why men should not have votes. They used to have them. You yourself say that there is no real inequality between the s.e.xes. The more I think of it the more I feel I ought to retire from being President of the Anti-Suffrage League. And all the men on it are old enough to be my father. The young men are nearly all in the opposite camp. I sometimes wish I was there too.

EUGENIA. Henry!

HENRY. Now don't, Eugenia, make any mistake. I abhor the "brawling brotherhood" as much as you do. I was quite ashamed for my s.e.x when I saw that bellowing brute riveted to the balcony of your plane the other day, shouting "Votes for men."

EUGENIA [_coldly_]. That sort of conduct puts back the cause of men's reinfranchis.e.m.e.nt by fifty years. It shows how unsuited the s.e.x is to be trusted with the vote. Imagine that sort of hysterical screaming in the House itself.

HENRY. But ought the cause to be judged by the folly of a few howling dervishes? Sometimes it really seems, Eugenia, as if women were determined to regard the brawling brotherhood as if it represented the men who seek for the vote. And yet the sad part is that these brawlers have done more in two years to advance the cause than their more orderly brothers have achieved in twenty. For years past I have heard quiet suffragists say that all their efforts have been like knocking in a padded room. They can't make themselves heard.

Women smiled and said the moment was not opportune. The press gave garbled accounts of their sayings and doings.

EUGENIA. Your simile is unfortunate. No one wants to emanc.i.p.ate the only persons who are confined in padded rooms.

HENRY. Not if they are unjustly confined?

EUGENIA [_with immense patience_]. Dear Henry, must we really go over this old ground again? Men used to have votes as we all know. In the earliest days of all, of course, both men and women had them. The ancient records prove that beyond question, and that women presented themselves with men at the hustings. Then women were practically disfranchised, and for hundreds of years men ruled alone, though it was not until near the reign of Victoria the First that by the interpolation of the word "male" before "persons" in the Reform Act of 1832 women were legally disfranchised. Men were disfranchised almost as suddenly in the reign of Man-hating Mary the Second of blessed memory.

HENRY. I know, I know, but....

EUGENIA [_whose oratorical instincts are not exhausted by her public life_]. You must remember I would have you all--I mean I would have you, Henry, remember that men were only disfranchised after the general election of 2009. It was the wish of the country. We must bow to that.

HENRY. You mean it was the wish of the women of the country, who were a million stronger numerically than men.

EUGENIA. It was the wish of the majority, including many thousands of enlightened men, my grandfather among them, who saw the danger to their country involved in continued male suffrage. After all, Henry, it was men who were guilty of the disaster of adult suffrage. Women never asked for it--they were deeply opposed to it. They only demanded the suffrage on the same terms that men had it in Edward the Seventh's time. Adult suffrage was the last important enactment of men, and one which ought to prove to you, considering the incalculable harm it did, that men, in spite of their admirable qualities, are not sufficiently far-sighted to be trusted with a vote. Adult suffrage lost us India. It all but lost us our Colonies, for the corner-men and wastrels and unemployed who momentarily became our rulers saw no use for them. The only good result of adult suffrage was that women, by the happy chance of their numerical majority, and with the help of Mary the Man-hater, were able to combine, to outvote the men and so to seize the reins and abolish it.

HENRY. And abolish us too.

EUGENIA. It was an extraordinary _coup d'etat_, the one good result of the disaster of adult suffrage. It was a bloodless revolution, but the most amazing in the annals of history. And it saved the country.

HENRY. I do not deny it. But you can't get away from the fact that men did give women the vote originally. And now men have lost it themselves. Why should not women give it back to men--I mean, of course, only to those who have the same qualifications as to property as women voters have? After all it was by reason of our physical force that we were ent.i.tled to rule, at least men always said so. Over and over again they said so in the House, and that women can't be soldiers and sailors and special constables as we can. And our physical force remains the greater to this day.

EUGENIA. We do everything to encourage it.

HENRY. Without us, Eugenia, you would have no army, no navy, no miners. We do the work of the world. We guard and police the nation, and yet we are not ent.i.tled to a hearing.

EUGENIA. Your ignorance of the force that rules the world is a.s.sumed for rhetorical purposes.

HENRY. I suppose you will say brain ought to rule. Well, some of us are just as able as some of you. Look at our great electricians, our s.h.i.+pbuilders, our inventors, our astronomers, our poets, nearly all are men. Shakespeare was a man.

EUGENIA [_sententiously_]. There was a day, and a very short day it was, when it was said that brain ought to rule. Brain did make the attempt, but it could no more rule this planet than brute force could continue to do so. You know, and I know, and every schoolgirl knows, that what rules the birth-rate rules the world.

HENRY [_for whom this sentiment has evidently the horrid familiarity of the senna of his childhood_]. It used not to be so.

EUGENIA. It is so now. It is no use arguing; it is merely hysteria to combat the basic fact that the s.e.x which controls the birth-rate must by nature rule the nation which it creates. This is not a question with which law can deal, for nature has decided it.

[HENRY _preserves a paralysed silence_.