A WOMAN'S PARLIAMENT.
Lucy saw Pamela Gwatkin once only during the day, and that was at
dinner. She only caught a far-off glimpse of her at the High table.
Pamela very often sat at the 'High' among the Dons. The younger Dons
were very fond of her: her opinions kept pace with theirs--they were
very advanced opinions--and sometimes they outran them. She would be a
Don herself some day, and she would be a pioneer in quite a new school
of thought.
Lucy watched her with a feeling of awe as she sat among those great
minds eating gooseberry pie--Lucy wouldn't have sat there for the
world. The presence of so much learning would have taken away
her appetite. The presence of the Master of St. Benedict's at the
dinner-table never took away her appetite, but the dear old thing
never talked above her head. He was very fond of recalling those
old days, as he sat at meat, when Dick--not Lucy's father, but her
great-grandfather--used to drive a team afield, and his good wife kept
the stall in the butter market.
But the President and the Dons of 'Newe' never discussed such
commonplace topics. They talked of literature, philosophy, science,
with a fine breadth of handling which is peculiar to a woman's college.
Pamela Gwatkin was in her right place among them.
There was the weekly political meeting held after Hall--a little
miniature House of Commons--where the affairs of the nation were
discussed, a foretaste of what will be by-and-by, when things are
rearranged.
When the House took its seat at nine o'clock, Lucy found herself in
the Opposition, and a long way off from the benches occupied by the
Government of the country.
Lucy only represented an insignificant little borough that nobody else
would stoop to represent. She had a little freehold in it--her only
freehold--six feet of earth beneath the east window of her father's
church at Thorpe Regis. Most people have a freehold of this sort, but
it does not always give them a voice in the affairs of the nation. Lucy
was returned unopposed on the strength of her little freehold, and as
her views, if she had any, were not at all advanced, she found herself
in the minority.
Pamela Gwatkin, or, as the girls called her, Newnham Assurance, was
the Leader of the House, and Annabel Crewe Secretary for the Colonies,
and Capability Stubbs had been unanimously elected Chancellor of the
Exchequer; every girl that was worth anything had a place in the
Cabinet.
Lucy hadn't much interest in the business that was going on, and she
took out her knitting and turned the heel of a sock while the great
affairs of the State were being discussed.
It was quite clear from what she did gather from the speeches on the
Ministerial side that the country had been misgoverned long enough by
the feeble race of men. It was quite time there was a change. A great
deal of time had been lost; ages had been lost in the history of the
world. Men had been first in the field; women took a longer time to
ripen. They had ripened now; they were quite, quite ripe; they were
ready for the change.
Oh, it was beautiful to hear the girls speak! There is an idea among
narrow-minded people that debating societies encourage volubility of
speech. Perhaps they do among men, and the practice of public speaking
is apt to make them too loquacious, too apt to air their elementary
knowledge and crude information in senseless verbiage. But garrulity is
not the sin of the students of colleges for women. They not only know
a great deal more than men know, but they have the delightful gift of
ready and accurate language. They do not haggle and hesitate, and 'H'm'
and 'Ah,' and have that dreadful difficulty in finding words that even
prevails in a real House of Commons.
It was remarkable to see with what ease the Newnham girls handled
those topics which old-fashioned legislators have been puzzling over
Session after Session. There was a certain fine breadth in their way of
handling them that would have taken a Conservative Leader's (the Leader
of a real House of Commons) breath away.
It didn't take anybody's breath away in the Ladies' Parliament.
Everybody knitted and listened unmoved, and when eleven o'clock came
two very important Bills that had been brought forward from last
Session were advanced a stage.
There was an exciting division before the House separated, that
resulted in an overwhelming majority for the motion, 'That the Legal
Profession and the Church be thrown open to women.'
That foolish little Lucy voted in the minority; there were not a dozen
girls in Newnham who showed such a poor spirit, and of these five, it
was rumoured, were engaged to curates.
The girls ran off to their rooms when the sitting of the House was
ended in the highest possible spirits. Some of them sang snatches of
songs, and some caught each other round the waist and waltzed madly
down corridors. The thing was practically settled. The Bar and the
Church opened vistas, immense vistas, for every sort of talent, and
especially for the kind of talent that Newnham produced.
There would have to be more colleges for women--Newnham and Girton
could not turn out nearly enough--there would have to be a great many
Newnhams. Some girls, no doubt, sat down at once and began to prepare
a sermon, and others took down Blackstone and began seriously to study
law.
Lucy went back to her room alone. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
though she 'kept' next door, wouldn't take the slightest notice of her.
She had lighted her lamp, and was just thinking what she would give for
a cup of tea, when someone knocked at her door. It wasn't a girl with a
cup of tea, as she hoped it might be--the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
with all her fine airs, generally brought her in a cup of tea before
she went to bed, and sometimes she condescended to sit down for five
minutes and discuss the burning questions of the day. It was not the
Chancellor of the Exchequer--it was a far greater person--it was the
Leader of the House.
'Well?' she said, when she came in and had shut the door after
her--'well?'
She had come in so suddenly, and Lucy's mind was so full of the motion
of the evening--this Parliamentary business was quite a new thing to
her, and she had taken it _au serieux_--that she could not collect
herself sufficiently to think what Pamela meant. Her mind was so full
of the lady curates and the female barristers that she looked up at the
Leader of the House in bewilderment.
'Well,' said Pamela impatiently, 'how is he? I saw by your face at Hall
that he was not dead. Is he going to get well?'
Then Lucy remembered all about it.
'Oh dear!' she said, 'how could I have forgotten! Yes, he is going to
get well, I think. He will owe his life if he does to Eric. Oh, Eric
has been lovely!'
'Eric has done no more than anyone else would have done,' Pamela said
coldly; 'no more than a woman would have done if a woman had been in
his place.'
'I don't think a woman _could_ have done what Eric has done,' Lucy said.
She was thinking of those stitches he had put in, and how he had
struggled with the poor fellow all night, and how he had been watching
and praying beside him for two whole nights and days.
Nurse Brannan would have done as much as most women, but she would not
have done all this.
'Oh, you don't know what women can do!' Pamela said, with a little curl
of her lip. Her lips were so thin and so hard--such crisp lips that
they couldn't help curling. 'You are only a fresher; when you have been
here three years you will have found out what a woman can do. He would
never have cut his throat if a woman had been near him.'
'No,' said Lucy eagerly, 'I am sure he wouldn't--not if a woman he
loved had been near. Oh dear! you should have seen the wistfulness in
his poor eyes when I put the wet bandage on his head! It was enough to
melt one's heart. Eric says he will be sure to do it again--at least,
that we must never leave off praying for him. I am sure that there is
only one thing that can save him from doing it again.'
'Only one thing?' Pamela repeated, with just an inflection of scorn in
her voice. 'And what is this panacea for his wickedness and folly? What
is this fine thing that is to save him from himself?'
'Don't speak of it so lightly; it is not a little thing!'
There were tears in Lucy's voice as she spoke, and in her eyes. She
had the picture before her of the strong man, with his beautiful
bare chest, and his splendid frame, and those wistful eyes, and the
loathing and the dread with which he shrank from the creature on his
pillow. The pity of it was strong upon her, and she was deeply moved.
'A great love would save him--the love of a good woman. He would do a
great thing for a woman he loved; he would make any sacrifice. I don't
think anything else would save him.'
The Leader of the House of Commons turned from white to pink. Lucy
might have been talking about her. She wore a very pretty white gown
of some soft silky stuff, and it was folded across the bosom, and
the folds heaved up and down as Lucy spoke, as if she were breathing
heavily.
'Perhaps he has done this for a woman's sake,' she said bitterly. 'Men
are such fools! they will do anything for a woman's sake--not always a
worthy woman.'
'I am sure he has not!' said Lucy hotly. 'He has been working too
hard, and he has broken down. I heard at the lodge that he was working
ten hours a day; that he was certain to come out first. Oh, you don't
know how they are building upon him at St. Benedict's! It isn't a
woman--it's overwork.'
Pamela smiled.
'You are a capital champion, my dear, only don't suffer yourself to get
too much interested in this foolish young man; it will interfere with
your work. You must not make a mistake and let pity drift into--love.'
She made a little pause before the word, and the colour came again into
her cheeks. She looked ever so much prettier talking about pity--and
love--than she did speaking on those troublesome Bills that had already
occupied the time of two Sessions.
'Oh, he is never likely to love me!' said Lucy. 'He could only love his
equal; no one else would have any influence over him. He would only
love a queen among women.'
'Perhaps he has found his queen already. Most men have before they are
twenty-three.'
The colour went out of the girl's face, and the cold light came back
into her eyes, and her lips, that a moment before were tremulous and
tender, were hard and firm.
'I wouldn't go too often to Mr. Edgell's rooms, if I were you, dear,'
she said when she went away. 'The authorities would make a fuss if
they heard of it. We are not supposed, you know, to visit a man's room
without a chaperon. I don't think it would do to take a chaperon there.
If you have any more interest in him, I will find out for you how he is
going on from Eric.'
'Thank you,' said Lucy warmly; 'I can find out for myself. I can hear
all about the St. Benedict's men at the lodge.'
She was quite frightened at herself for speaking in that way to the
Prime Minister. She had got into the way now, since she had been at
Newnham, of taking her own part; she was beginning to have no respect
for dignities.