LADY CORINTHIA. Stop. No nearer. No vulgar sensuousness. If you must
adore, adore at a distance.
MITCHENER. This is worse than Mrs. Banger. I shall ask that estimable
woman to come back.
LADY CORINTHIA. Poor Mrs. Banger! Do not for a moment suppose, General
Mitchener, that Mrs. Banger represents my views on the suffrage
question. Mrs. Banger is a man in petticoats. I am every inch a woman;
but I find it convenient to work with her.
MITCHENER. Do you find the combination comfortable?
LADY CORINTHIA. I do not wear combinations, General: (with dignity) they
are unwomanly.
MITCHENER (throwing himself despairingly into the chair next the
hearthrug). I shall go mad. I never for a moment dreamt of alluding to
anything of the sort.
LADY CORINTHIA. There is no need to blush and become self-conscious at
the mention of underclothing. You are extremely vulgar, General.
MITCHENER. Lady Corinthia: you have my pistol. Will you have the
goodness to blow my brains out. I should prefer it to any further effort
to follow the gyrations of the weathercock you no doubt call your mind.
If you refuse, then I warn you that youll not get another word out of
me--not if we sit here until doomsday.
LADY CORINTHIA. I dont want you to talk. I want you to listen. You do
not yet understand my views on the question of the Suffrage. (She rises
to make a speech.) I must preface my remarks by reminding you that the
Suffraget movement is essentially a dowdy movement. The suffragets are
not all dowdies; but they are mainly supported by dowdies. Now I am not
a dowdy. Oh, no compliments--
MITCHENER. I did not utter a sound.
LADY CORINTHIA (smiling). It is easy to read your thoughts. I am one
of those women who are accustomed to rule the world through men. Man is
ruled by beauty, by charm. The men who are not have no influence. The
Salic Law, which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the
fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and
therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country
is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragets would
degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians,
the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our
influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand
women have the vote. What is the result? No poet ever makes a New
Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New
Zealand mutton. Look at the suffragets themselves. The only ones who are
popular are the pretty ones, who flirt with mobs as ordinary women flirt
with officers.
MITCHENER. Then I understand you to hold that the country should be
governed by the women after all.
LADY CORINTHIA. Not by all the women. By certain women. I had almost
said by one woman. By the women who have charm--who have artistic
talent--who wield a legitimate, a refining influence over the men.
(She sits down gracefully, smiling, and arranging her draperies with
conscious elegance.)
MITCHENER. In short, madam, you think that if you give the vote to the
man, you give the power to the women who can get round the man.
LADY CORINTHIA. That is not a very delicate way of putting it; but I
suppose that is how you would express what I mean.
MITCHENER. Perhaps youve never had any experience of garrison life.
If you had, you'd have noticed that the sort of woman who is clever at
getting round men is sometimes rather a bad lot.
LADY CORINTHIA. What do you mean by a bad lot?
MITCHENER. I mean a woman who would play the very devil if the
other women didnt keep her in pretty strict order. I dont approve of
democracy, because its rot; and Im against giving the vote to women
because Im not accustomed to it and therefore am able to see with an
unprejudiced eye what infernal nonsense it is. But I tell you plainly,
Lady Corinthia, that there is one game that I dislike more than either
Democracy or Votes For Women: and that is the game of Antony and
Cleopatra. If I must be ruled by women, let me have decent women and
not--well, not the other sort.
LADY CORINTHIA. You have a coarse mind, General Mitchener.
MITCHENER. So has Mrs. Banger. And by George! I prefer Mrs. Banger to
you!
LADY CORINTHIA (bounding to her feet.) You prefer Mrs. Banger to me!!!
MITCHENER. I do. You said yourself she was splendid.
LADY CORINTHIA. You are no true man. You are one of those unsexed
creatures who have no joy in life, no sense of beauty, no high notes.
MITCHENER. No doubt I am, Madam. As a matter of fact, I am not clever at
discussing public questions, because, as an English gentleman, I was not
brought up to use my brains. But occasionally, after a number of remarks
which are perhaps sometimes rather idiotic, I get certain convictions.
Thanks to you, I have now got a conviction that this woman question is
not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The
average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming
anything else. She hasnt any charm; and she has no high notes except
when shes giving her husband a piece of her mind, or calling down the
street for one of the children.
LADY CORINTHIA. How disgusting!
MITCHENER. Somebody must do the dowdy work! If we had to choose between
pitching all the dowdies into the Thames and pitching all the lovely and
accomplished women, the lovely ones would have to go.
LADY CORINTHIA. And if you had to do without Wagner's music or do
without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. Pray does that make
eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better
than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our
bare existence than the cathedral. Even humbler apartments might make
the same claim. But which is the more essential to the higher life?
MITCHENER. Your arguments are so devilishly ingenious that I feel
convinced you got them out of some confounded book. Mine--such as they
are--are my own. I imagine its something like this. There is an old
saying that if you take care of the pence, the pounds will take care
of themselves. Well, perhaps if we take care of the dowdies and the
butchers and the bakers, the beauties and the bigwigs will take care of
themselves. (Rising and facing her determinedly.) Anyhow, I dont want to
have things arranged for me by Wagner. Im not Wagner. How does he know
where the shoe pinches me? How do you know where the shoe pinches your
washerwoman?--you and your high F in alt. How are you to know when you
havent made her comfortable unless she has a vote? Do you want her to
come and break your windows?
LADY CORINTHIA. Am I to understand that General Mitchener is a democrat
and a suffraget?
MITCHENER. Yes: you have converted me--you and Mrs. Banger.
LADY CORINTHIA. Farewell, creature. (Balsquith enters hurriedly.) Mr.
Balsquith: I am going to wait on General Sandstone. He at least is an
officer and a gentleman. (She sails out.)
BALSQUITH. Mitchener: the game is up.
MITCHENER. What do you mean?
BALSQUITH. The strain is too much for the Cabinet. The old Liberal
and Unionist Free Traders declare that if they are defeated on their
resolution to invite tenders from private contractors for carrying on
the Army and Navy, they will go solid for votes for women as the only
means of restoring the liberties of the country which we have destroyed
by compulsory military service.
MITCHENER. Infernal impudence?
BALSQUITH. The Labor party is taking the same line. They say the men got
the Factory Acts by hiding behind the women's petticoats, and that they
will get votes for the army in the same way.
MITCHENER. Balsquith: we must not yield to clamor. I have just told this
lady that I am at last convinced--
BALSQUITH (joyfully). That the suffragets must be supported.
MITCHENER. No: that the anti-suffragets must be put down at all hazards.
BALSQUITH. Same thing.
MITCHENER. No. For you now tell me that the Labor Party demands votes
for women. That makes it impossible to give them, because it would be
yielding to clamor. The one condition on which we can consent to grant
anything in this country is that nobody shall presume to want it.
BALSQUITH (earnestly). Mitchener: its no use. You cant have the
conveniences of Democracy without its occasional inconveniences.
MITCHENER. What are its conveniences, I should like to know?
BALSQUITH. When you tell people that they are the real rulers and they
can do what they like, nine times out of ten, they say, "All right, tell
us what to do." But it happens sometimes that they get an idea of their
own; and then of course youre landed.