Chapter VI: Part II (4)

My sisters became workers, and they also became ardent Suffragists, which would have shocked my father dreadfully if he had been alive, for he was of opinion that woman's proper sphere is the home, though, of course, if you have not got a home or any money it seems rather difficult for women to remain in their sphere.

I, being provided for, remained perfectly womanly, of the type that the Anti-Suffrage League, and the sterner sex especially, admire. I took care of my appearance, I dressed charmingly on the very small allowance which Aunt Pussy doled out to me, I was an adept at all the little details which make a home pleasant, I never wanted to do anything except to marry Mark.

For across the even tenor of our lives, in a little villa in Kensington, as even as the parting down Flossie's back, presently came two great events. Aunt Pussy inherited an enormous fortune, and the following year, I being then twenty, fell in love with Mark and accepted him. I can't tell you whether he, poor dear, was quite disinterested at first. It was, of course, known that I should inherit all my aunt's money. He was rather above me in the social scale. I have sometimes thought that his old painted, gambling Jezebel of a mother prodded him in my direction.

But if he was not disinterested at first, he became so. We were two perfectly ordinary young people. But we were meant for each other, and we both knew it.

We never for a moment thought there would be any real difficulty in the way of our marriage. Aunt Pussy was, of course, exasperatingly niggardly, but she was now very wealthy, and she approved of Mark, partly because he was not without means. He was an only child with a little of his own, and with expectations from his mother. He had had a sunstroke in Uganda, which had forced him to give up his profession, but he was independent of it. Aunt Pussy, however, though she was most kind and sentimental about us, could not at first be induced to say anything definite about money.

When, after a few months, I began to grow pale and thin, she went so far as to say that she would give me an allowance equal to his income. I fancy even that concession cost her nights of agony. If he could make up five hundred a year she would make up the same.

Was this the moment, I ask you, for his wicked old mother to gamble herself into disgrace and bankruptcy? My poor Mark came, swearing horribly, to her assistance. But when he had done so, and had given her a pittance to live on, there was nothing left for himself.

Even then neither of us thought it mattered much. Aunt Pussy would surely come round. But we had not reckoned on the effect that a large fortune can make on a miserly temperament. She clutched at the fact that Mark was penniless as a reason to withdraw her previous promise. She would not part with a penny. She did not want to part with me. She put us off with one pretext after another. After several years of irritation and anger and exasperation, we discovered what we ought to have known from the first, that nothing would induce her to give up anything in her life-time, though she was much too religious to break her promise to my father. She intended to leave me everything. But she was not going to part with sixpence as long as she could hold on to it.

We tried to move her, but she was not to be moved. On looking back I see now that she was more eccentric than we realised at the time. In the course of twelve years Mark and I went through all the vicissitudes that two commonplace people deeply in love do go through if they can't marry.

We became desperate. We decided to part. We urged each other to marry someone else. We conjured each other to feel perfectly free. We doubted each other. He swore. I wept. He tried to leave me and he couldn't. I did not try. I knew it was no use. We each had opportunities of marrying advantageously if we could only have disentangled ourselves from each other. I learned what jealousy can be of a woman, younger and better looking, and sweeter-tempered and with thicker hair than myself.

He asseverated with fury that he was never jealous of me. If that was so, his outrageous behaviour to his own cousin, a rich and blameless widower in search of a wife, was inexplicable. And now, after twelve years, we had reached a point where we could only laugh. There was nothing else to be done. He was growing stout, and I was growing lean. If only middle-aged men could grow thin, and poor middle-aged women a little plump, life would be easier for them. But we reversed it. Aunt Pussy alone seemed untouched by time. Even Mark's optimistic eye could never detect any sign of "breaking up" about her.

And throughout those dreary years we had one supreme consolation, and a very painful consolation it was. We loved each other.

"It's damnable!" said Mark again. "Well, if I'm not to murder her, if you're going to thwart me in every little wish just as if we were married already, I don't see what there is to be done. I've inquired about a post obit."

"Oh, Mark!"

"It's no use saying 'Oh, Mark'! I tell you I've inquired about a post obit, and if you had a grain of affection for me you would have done the same yourself years ago. But it seems you can't raise money on a promise which may be broken. As I said before, there is no way out of it except by bloodshed. I shall have to murder her, and then you can marry me or not as you like. You will like, safe enough, if I am handy with the remains."

The door opened, and Aunt Pussy hurried in. She was always in a hurry. We did not start away from each other, but remained stolidly seated side by side on the horsehair dining-room sofa with anger in our hearts against her. She had never given me a sitting-room. I always had to interview Mark in the dining-room with a plate of oranges on the sideboard, like a heroine in "The Quiver."

Aunt Pussy was a small, dried-up woman of between fifty and sixty, with a furtive eye and a perpetually moving mouth, who looked as if she had been pinched out of shape by someone with a false sense of humour and no reverence. She was dressed in every shade of old black--rusty black, green black, brown black, spotted black, figured black, plain black. Mark got up slowly, and held out his hand.

"How do you do, Mark?" she said nervously. "I will own I'm somewhat surprised to see you here," ignoring his hand, and taking some figs out of a string bag, and placing them on an empty plate (the one that ought to have had oranges in it) on the sideboard. "I have brought you some figs, Janet; you said you liked them. I thought it was agreed that until Mark had some reasonable prospect of being able to support a wife his visits here had better cease."

"I never agreed," said Mark, "I was always for their continuing. I've been against a long engagement from the first."

"Well, in any case, you must have a cup of tea now you are here," continued Aunt Pussy, taking off her worn gloves, which I had mended for her till the fingers were mere stumps. "Ring the bell, Janet. We will have tea in here as there isn't a fire in the drawing-room."

She put down more parcels on the table, and then her face changed.

"My bag!" she gasped, and collapsed into a chair like one felled by emotion. "My bag!"

We looked everywhere. Mark explored the hall and the umbrella-stand. No handbag was to be seen.

"I knew something would happen if the month began with a Friday!" moaned Aunt Pussy.

"Had it a great deal in it?" I asked.

"Twenty pounds!" said Aunt Pussy, as if it were the savings of a lifetime. "I had drawn twenty pounds to pay the monthly books." And she became the colour of lead.

I flew for her salts, and made tea quickly, and presently she recovered sufficiently to drink it. But her hand shook.

"Twenty pounds!" she repeated, below her breath.

We questioned her as to where she last remembered using the bag, and at length elicited the information that she had no recollection of its society after visiting Brown and Prodgers, the great shop in Baskaville Road, where she recalled eating a meat lozenge, drawn from its recesses. Mark offered to go round there at once, and see if it had been found.

"I've never lost anything before," she said when he had gone, "but I felt this morning that some misfortune was going to happen. There was a black cat on the leads when I looked out. As sure as fate, if I see a black cat something goes wrong. Last time I saw one, two of my handkerchiefs were missing from the wash."

As Aunt Pussy bought her handkerchiefs in the sales for less than sixpence each, I felt that the black cat made himself rather cheap.

Mark returned with the cheering news that a bag had been found at Brown and Prodgers, and one of the principal shopwalkers had taken charge of it. And if Aunt Pussy would call in person to-morrow, and accurately describe its contents, it would be returned to her.

Aunt Pussy was so much relieved that she actually smiled on him, and offered him a second cup of tea. But next morning at breakfast I saw at once that something was gravely amiss.

Had she slept?

Yes.

Had she seen the black cat?

No.

"The truth is, Janet," she said, "I have had a most terrible dream. I feel sure it was a warning, and I really don't know whether I ought to call for it or not."

"Call for what?"

"The bag."

"Was the dream about the bag?"

"What else could it be about? I took one of my little bromides last night, for I knew I had not a chance of sleep after the agitation of the day. And I fell asleep at once. And I dreamed that it was morning, and I was in my outdoor things going to Brown and Prodgers for the bag. And the black cat walked all the way before me with its tail up. But it did not come in. And when I got there I told a shopwalker who was standing near the door what I had come about. He was a tall, dark man with a sort of down look. He bowed and said, 'Follow me, madam.' And I followed him. And we went through the--ahem! the gentlemen's underclothing, which I make a point of never going through, I always go round by the artificial flowers, until we came to a glass door near the lift. And he unlocked the door and I went in, and there on the table lay my bag. I was so delighted I ran to take it. But he stopped me, and I saw then what an evil-looking man he was. And he said, 'Look well at this bag, madam. Do you recognise it as yours?' And I looked and I said I did. There was the place where you had mended the handle.

"Then he took it up, and put it in my hand, and said, 'Look well at the contents, madam, and verify that they are all there.'

"So I looked at them, and they were all there, the tradesmen's books and everything. And I counted the money and it came right. The only thing I could not be sure about was the number of the meat lozenges. I thought one might have been stolen.

"Then when I had finished he said, 'Look well at me, madam, for I am your murderer.' And I was so terrified that I dropped the bag and woke with a scream. Now, Janet, don't you think it would be flying in the face of Providence to go there this morning? Dreams like that are not sent for nothing."

"Well, perhaps it would be better not," I said maliciously, for I knew very well that Aunt Pussy would risk any form of death rather than lose twenty pounds.

"I thought perhaps you would not mind getting it for me. The danger would not be the same for you."

"I should not mind in the least, but they will only give it up to you."

Aunt Pussy's superstition struggled with her miserliness throughout her frugal breakfast. Need I say her miserliness won. Had it ever sustained one defeat in all her life! But she remained agitated and nervous to an extreme degree. I offered to go with her, but she felt that was not protection enough. So I telephoned to Mark, and presently he arrived and Aunt Pussy solemnly recapitulated her dream, and we all three set out together, she walking a little ahead, evidently on the look-out for the black cat.

Mark whispered to me that the portent about the black cat was being verified for us, not her, and that the shopwalker was evidently a very decent fellow, and that if he did his duty by us he should certainly ask him to be best man at our wedding. He had not made up his mind how deep his mourning ought to be for a murdered aunt-in-law, and was, to use his own expression, still poised like a humming-bird between a grey silk tie and a black one with a white spot, when we reached the shop.

It was early, and there were very few customers about. A tall dark man was walking up and down. Aunt Pussy instantly clutched my arm, and whispered, "It's him!"

He saw us looking at him, and came up to us, a melancholy downcast, unprepossessing-looking man. As Aunt Pussy could only stare at him, Mark, who had spoken to him the day before, told him the lady had come to identify the bag lost on the previous afternoon. The man bowed to Aunt Pussy, and said, "Follow me, madam," and we followed him through several departments.

"Gentlemen's outfitting!" hissed Aunt Pussy suddenly in my ear, pointing with a trembling finger at a line of striped and tasselled pyjamas which she had avoided for many years.

Presently we came to a glass door, and the man took a key from his pocket, opened the door, and ushered us in. And there on a small table lay a bag--_the_ bag--Aunt Pussy's bag, with the mended handle. She groaned.

The man fixed his eyes on her and said:

"Look well at this bag, madam. Do you recognise it as yours?"

"I do," said Aunt Pussy, as inaudibly as a bride at the altar.

He then asked her what the contents were, and she described them categorically. He then took up the bag, put it into her hand, and said, "Look well at the contents, madam, and verify that they are all there."

They were all there. As Aunt Pussy was too paralysed to utter another word I said so for her.

There was a long pause. The man looked searchingly from one to the other of us, and sighed. If he expected a tip he was disappointed. After a moment he moved towards Aunt Pussy to open the door behind her. As he did so she gave a faint scream, and subsided on the floor in a swoon.

When we had resuscitated and conveyed her home, and Mark had gone, she said in a hollow voice:

"Wasn't it enough to make anybody faint?"

I said cheerfully that I did not see any cause for alarm; that the man no doubt always used exactly the same formula whenever lost property had to be identified.

"But why should he have said just at the last moment, 'Look well at me, madam, I am your murderer?'"

"Dear Aunt Pussy, of course he never said any such thing!"

"He did! I heard him! That was why I fainted."

It was in vain I assured her that she was mistaken. She only became hysterical and said I was deceiving her; that she saw I had heard it, too. She had been eccentric before, but from this time onwards she became even more so. She would not deal at Brown and Prodgers any more. She would not even pass the shop. She became more penurious than ever.

We could hardly persuade servants to stay with us so rigid was she about the dripping. It was all I could do to obtain the necessary money for our economical housekeeping. As the lease of our house was drawing to a close, she decided to move into a flat, thinking it might be cheaper. But when it was all arranged and the lease signed, she refused to go in, because the man who met us there with a selection of wallpapers was, she averred, the same man whom she always spoke of as her murderer.

And I believe she was right. I thought I recognised him myself. I asked him if he had not formerly been at Brown and Prodgers, and he replied that he had; but was now employed by Whisk and Blake. After this encounter nothing would induce Aunt Pussy to enter her new home. She had to pay heavily for her changeableness, but she only wrung her hands and paid up. The poor little woman had a hunted look. She evidently thought she had had a great escape.

Mark, who did not grow more rational with increasing years, said that this was obviously the psychological moment for us to marry, and drew a vivid picture of the group at the altar--the blushing bridegroom and determined bride, and how when Aunt Pussy saw her murderer step forward as the best man, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, she would die of shock on the spot. And after handsomely remunerating our benefactor, he and I should whisk away in a superb motor, with a gross of shilling cigars on an expensive honeymoon.

Six months passed, and there was no talk of any honeymoons. And then the lease of our house came to an end, and Aunt Pussy, having refused to allow any other house or flat to be taken, she was forced to warehouse her furniture, and we had recourse to the miseries of hotel life. Needless to say, we did not go to a quiet residential hotel, but to one of those monster buildings glued on to a railway station, where the inmates come and go every day.

Strangely enough, the galvanised activity of hotel existence pleased Aunt Pussy. She called it "seeing life." She even made timid advances to other old ladies, knitting and dozing in the airless seclusion of the ladies' drawing-room, for, of course, we had no sitting-room. I saw plainly enough that we should live in those two small adjoining bedrooms under the roof, looking into a tiled air-shaft, for the remainder of Aunt Pussy's life.

Three months we lived there, and then at the cheapest time in the year, when the hotel was half empty and the heat of our rooms appalling, she consented to move for a short time into the two rooms exactly below ours, which looked on the comparatively balmy open of the August thoroughfare, and had a balcony.

I had realised by this time that Aunt Pussy was no longer responsible for her long cruelty to Mark and me, and my old affection for her revived somewhat with her pathetic dependence on me. She could hardly bear me out of her sight.

A certain Mrs. Curtis, a benevolent old Australian widow, living in rooms next ours on this lower floor, showed us great kindness. She grasped at once what Aunt Pussy was, and she would sit with her by the hour, enabling me to go out in the air. She took me for drives. She soon discovered there was a Mark in the background, and often asked us to dine at her table, and invited him too.

She was said to be enormously wealthy, and she certainly wore a few wonderful jewels, but she was always shabbily dressed. Aunt Pussy became very fond of her, and must have been a great trial to her, running in and out of her rooms at all hours. She gave us tea in her sitting-room next door to us, and this gave Aunt Pussy special satisfaction, as we, having no sitting-room, could not possibly, as she constantly averred, return the civility.

Towards the end of September the hotel began to fill again, and the prices of the lower rooms were raised. So we moved back to our old quarters, and Mrs. Curtis, who had a noisy bedroom, took for herself and her son the two we had vacated. Her son was expected, and I have never forgotten her face of joy when she received a telegram from him during dinner saying he had reached Calais, and should arrive next morning.

We were dining early, for the kind old woman was taking Mark and me to the play. The play was delightful, and he and I, sitting together laughing at it, forgot our troubles, forgot that our youth was irretrievably gone, and that we were no nearer happiness than we had been thirteen years before. Our little friend in her weird black gown, with her thin fingers covered with large diamonds clutching an opera glass, looked at us with pained benevolence.

Mark saw us back to the door of our hotel, and after he was gone Mrs. Curtis took my arm as we mounted the steps and said gently:

"You and that nice absurd man must keep your courage up. I waited seventeen years for my husband, and when it was over it was only like a day."

The night porter appeared at the lift door, and we got in. He stood with his back to me, and I did not look at him till he said: "What floor?" The servants knew us so well that I was surprised at the question, and glanced at him. It was Aunt Pussy's murderer. I recognised him instantly, and I will own my first thought was one of self-congratulation.

"Now we shall leave this horrible place," I thought. "She will never stay another day if he is here."

But my second thought was for her. She might go clean out of her mind if she were suddenly confronted with him. What would it be best to do?

When he had put down Mrs. Curtis at Floor 7, and we were rumbling towards Floor 8, he volunteered, as we bumped with violence against the roof that he was new to the work. I asked him what hours he came on and went off at. He said, "Heleven p.hem. to hate hay-hem." He did not recognise me--as, indeed, why should he?--but he looked more downcast and villainous than ever. It was evident that life had not gone well with him since he had been foreman at Brown and Prodgers.

"Lady's son from Horsetralia just arrived," he remarked conversationally, jerking his thumb towards the lower landing. "Took 'im up 'arf an hour ago."

I was surprised that Mr. Curtis should have already arrived, but in another moment I forgot all about it, for the first object that met my eyes as I opened my door was Aunt Pussy in a state of great agitation, sitting fully dressed on my bed. It seemed that after we had started for the play she had stood a moment in the hall looking after us, and she had seen her murderer pass, and not only had he passed, but he had exchanged a few words with the hall porter airing himself on the hotel steps.

"We must leave. We must leave to-morrow, Janet," she repeated, in an agony of terror. "I know he'll get in and kill me. That's why he spoke to the porter. Let's go and live at Margate. No, not Margate; it's too public. But I saw a little house at Southwold once; tumbling down it was, with no road up to it. Such a horrid place! We might go and live _there_. No one would ever think I should go there. Promise me you will take me away from London to-morrow, Janet."

I promised, I realised that we must go at once, and I calculated that if Aunt Pussy, who always breakfasted in her room, only left it at ten o'clock to enter a cab to take her to the station it was impossible she should run across the new night porter, who went off duty several hours earlier. She must never know that he was actually in the house.

I tried to calm her, but dawn was already in the sky, or rather reflected on the tiles of our air-shaft, before she fell asleep, and I could go to my room and try to do the same.

I did it so effectually that it was nearly ten o'clock before I went down to breakfast, leaving Aunt Pussy still slumbering.

While I drank my coffee I looked out the trains for Southwold, and noted down the name of a quiet hotel there, and then went to the manager's office to give up our rooms. When I got there a tired, angry young man, with a little bag, was interviewing the manager, who was eyeing him doubtfully, while a few paces away the hall porter, all gold braid and hair-oil and turned-out feet, was watching the scene.

"Surely Mrs. Curtis told you she was expecting me, her son," he was saying as I came up.

"Yes, sir," said the manager, civil but suspicious. "No doubt, sir. Mrs. Curtis said as you were expected this morning, but, begging your pardon, you arrived last night, sir. Mr. Gregory Curtis arrived last night just after I retired for the evening."

"Impossible," said the young man, impatiently. "There is some mistake. Take me to Mrs. Curtis's room at once."

The manager hesitated.

"This certainly is Mr. Gregory Curtis," I said, coming forward. "He is exactly like the photograph of her son which stands on Mrs. Curtis's table, and which I have seen scores of times."

The young man looked gratefully at me. And then, in a flash, as it were, we all took alarm.

"Then who _did_ you take up to my mother's rooms last night?" said her son. "And who took him up?"

"Not me, sir," said the hall porter promptly. "I was off duty. Clarke, the new night porter, must have took him up."

"Where _is_ Clarke?" asked the manager, seizing down a key from a peg on the wall.

"Gone to bed, sir. Not been gone five minutes."

"Bring him to me at once. And take this gentleman and me up in the lift first."

"This lady also," said Gregory, indicating me.

A horrible sense of guilt was stealing over me. Why hadn't I waited to see the fragile little old woman safely into her rooms?

The manager and Gregory did not speak. I dared not look at them. The lift came to a standstill, and in a moment the manager was out of it, and fitting his master key into the lock of No. 10, almost knocking over a can of hot water on the mat. The door opened, and we all went in.

The room was dark, and as the manager went hastily forward to draw the curtain his foot struck against something and he drew back with an exclamation. I, who was nearest the door, turned on the electric light.

Mrs. Curtis was lying with outstretched arms on her face on the floor. Her widow's cap had fallen off, revealing on the crown of the head a dark stain. Her small hands, waxen white, were spread out as if in mild deprecation. There were no rings on them. The despatch box on the dressing table had been broken open, and the jewel cases lay scattered on the floor.

After a moment of stupor, Gregory and I raised the little figure and laid it on the bed. It was obvious that there was nothing to be done. As we did so the door opened and the day porter dragged in the new lift man, holding him strongly by the arm.

They both looked at the dead woman on the bed. And then the lift man began to shake as with an ague, and his face became as ashen as hers.

"You saw her last alive," said the manager, "and you took up the party to her room last night."

The lift man was speechless. The drops stood on his forehead. He looked the image of guilt.

And as we stood staring at him Aunt Pussy ambled in in her dressing-gown, with her comb in her hand, having probably left something in the room she had only yesterday vacated.

Her eyes fell first on the dead body, and then on the lift man.

I expected her to scream or faint, but she did neither. She seemed frozen. Then she raised a steady comb and pointed it at the lift man.

"He is her murderer," she said solemnly. "He meant to murder me. He told me so a year ago. He has followed me here to do it. But he did not know I had changed my rooms, and he has killed her instead."

I don't know what happened after that, for I was entirely taken up with Aunt Pussy. I put my hand over her mouth, and hustled her back to her rooms.

"He will be hanged now," she said over and over again throughout that awful day. "He is _certain_ to be hanged, and when he is really dead I shall feel safe. Then I shall take a house, and you shall have a motor, and anything you like, Janet. He's in prison now, isn't he?"

"Yes, poor creature. He is under arrest. A policeman has taken him away."

"Safe in prison now, and hanged very soon. I shan't be easy otherwise. And then I shall sleep peacefully in my bed."

She was better than she had been for the last year. She ate and slept, and seemed to have taken a new lease of life. She was absolutely callous about Mrs. Curtis's death, and suggested that half-a-guinea was quite enough to give for a wreath.

"If you're thinking of the number of times she gave us tea," she said, "it could not possibly, with tea as cheap as it is now--Harrod's own only one and seven--come to more than eight and six." And she opened her "Daily Mail" and pored over it. She had of late ceased to take in any paper, but now she took in the "Daily Mail" and the "Evening Standard," and read the police news with avidity, looking for the trial of "her murderer."

Mark and I went to the funeral, and he was very low all the way home. He was really distressed about Mrs. Curtis and Gregory, but of course he would not allow it, and accounted for his depression by saying that he had been attending the _wrong_ funeral. He said he did not actually blame Clarke (the lift man), for he had shown good intentions, but the man was evidently a procrastinator and a bungler, who had deceived the confidence he (Mark) had reposed in him, and on whom no one could place reliance. Such men, he averred, were better hanged and out of the way.

When I got back to our rooms I found Aunt Pussy leaning back in her armchair near the window, with the "Evening Standard" spread out on her knee. A large heading caught my eye:

"SENSATIONAL ARREST OF THE
MURDERER OF MRS. CURTIS."

"RELEASE OF CLARKE."

It had caught Aunt Pussy's eye too. And her sheer terror had been too much for her. She would never be frightened any more. She had had her last shock. She was dead.

* * * * *

A month later Mark came to see me in the evening. We did not seem to have much to say to each other, perhaps because we were to be married next day. But I presently discovered that he was suffering from a suppressed communication.

"Out with it," I said. "You've got a wife and five small children at Peckham. There is still time to counter-order the motor and the wedding and the shilling cigars and--me."

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 Reinfranchisement League, of course. You know,
Eugenia, you promised to interview a deputation of them at 5
o'clock, and they determined to have a mass 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 pass. 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 pass. 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 passing 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 pass 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 passes 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 sexes. 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 sex 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
reinfranchisement by fifty years. It shows how unsuited the sex 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 emancipate 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'état_, 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 entitled 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 entitled to a hearing.

EUGENIA. Your ignorance of the force that rules the world is assumed
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
shipbuilders, 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 sex 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_.

EUGENIA [_with benignant dignity_]. I am all for the equality of the
sexes within certain limits, the limits imposed by nature. But the
long and the short of it is, to put it bluntly, no man, my dear
Henry, can give birth to a child, and until he can he will be
ineligible by the laws of nature, not by any woman-made edict, to
govern, and the less he talks about it the better. Sensible men and
older men know that and hold their tongues, and women respect their
silence. Man has his sphere, and a very important and useful sphere
in life it is. The defence of the nation is entrusted to him. Where
should we be without our trusty soldiers and sailors, and, as you
have just reminded me, our admirable police force? Where physical
strength comes in men are paramount. When I think of all the work
men are doing in the world I assure you, Henry, my respect and
admiration for them knows no bounds. But if they step outside their
own sphere of labour, then--

HENRY. But if only you would look into the old records, as I have been
doing, you would see that Lord Curzon and Lord James and Lord
Cromer, and many others employed these same arguments in order to
withhold the suffrage from women.

EUGENIA. I dare say.

HENRY. And there is another thing which does not seem to me to be
fair. Men are so ridiculed if they are suffragists. _Punchinella_
always draws them as obese disappointed old bachelors, and there are
many earnest young married men among the ranks of the suffragists.
Look at the procession which has just passed. Our best men were in
it. And to look at _Punchinella_ or to listen to the speeches in the
House you would think that the men who want the vote are mostly
repulsive old bachelors stung by the neglect of women. Why only last
week the member for Maidenhead, Mrs. Colthorpe it was got up and
said that if only this "brawling brotherhood" of single gentlemen,
who had missed domestic bliss, could find wives they would not
trouble their heads about reinfranchisement.

EUGENIA. There is no doubt there is an element of sex resentment in
the movement, dear Henry. That is why I have always congratulated
myself on the fact that, you, as my husband, were opposed to it.

HENRY. Personally I can't imagine now that women have the upper hand
why they don't keep up their number numerically. It is their only
safeguard against our one day regaining the vote. It was their
numerical majority plus adult suffrage which suddenly put them in
the position to disfranchise men. And yet women are allowing their
number to decline and decline until really for all practical
purposes there seems to be about two men to every woman.

EUGENIA. The laws of nature render our position infinitely stronger
than that of men ever was. We mounted by the ladder of adult
suffrage, but we kicked it down immediately afterwards. It will
never be revived. Men had no tremors about the large surplusage of
women as long as they were without votes. Why should we have any now
about the surplusage of men?

HENRY. Then there is another point. You talk so much about the
importance of the physique of the race, and I agree with all my
heart. But there are so few women to marry nowadays, and women show
such a marked disinclination towards marriage till their youth is
quite over, that half the men I know can't get wives at all. And
those who do, have almost no power of selection left to them, and
are forced to put up with ill-developed, sickly, peevish, or ugly
women past their first bloom rather than remain unmarried and
childless.

EUGENIA. The subject is under consideration at this moment, but when
the position was reversed in Edward the Seventh's time, and there
were not enough men to go round, women were in the same plight, and
men said nothing _then_ about the deterioration of the race. They
did not even make drunkards' marriages a penal offence. Drunkards
and drug-takers, and men dried up by nicotine constantly married and
had children in those days.

HENRY. I can't think the situation was as difficult for women as it is
now for men. I was at Oxford last week, and do you know that during
the last forty years only five per cent. of the male Dons and
Professors have been able to find mates. Women won't look at them.

EUGENIA. In the nineteenth century, when first women went to
Universities and became highly educated, only four per cent. of them
afterwards married, and then to schoolmasters.

HENRY. And I assure you the amount of hysteria and quarrelling among
the older Dons is lamentable.

EUGENIA. I appointed a committee which reported to me on the subject
last year, and I gathered that the present Dons are not more
hysterical than they were in Victorian days, when they forfeited
their fellowships on marriage. You must remember, Henry, that from
the earliest times men and women have always hated anything "blue"
in the opposite sex. Female blue stockings were seldom attractive to
men in bygone days. And nowadays women are naturally inclined to
marry young men, and healthy and athletic men, rather than sedentary
old male blue stockings. It is most fortunate for the race that is
is so.

HENRY [_with a sigh_]. Well, all the "blue" women can marry nowadays.

EUGENIA. Yes, thank heaven, _all_ women can marry nowadays. What women
must have endured in the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth
century makes me shudder. For if they did not marry they were never
spared the ridicule or the contemptuous compassion of men. It seems
incredible, looking back, to realise that large families of
daughters were kept idle and unhappy at home, after their youth was
over, not allowed to take up any profession, only to be turned
callously adrift in their middle age at their father's death, with a
pittance on which they could barely live. And yet these things were
done by educated and kindly men who professed to care for the
interests of women, and were personally fond of their daughters.
Over and over again in the biographies of notable women of the
Victorian and Edward the Seventh's time one comes across instances
of the way in which men of the country-squire type kept their
daughters at home uneducated till they were beyond the age when they
could take up a profession, and then left them to poverty. They did
not even insure their lives for each child as we do now. Surely,
Henry, it is obvious that women have done one thing admirably. The
large reduction which they have effected in their own numbers has
almost eliminated the superfluous, incompetent, unhappy women who
found it so difficult to obtain a livelihood a hundred years ago,
and has replaced them by an extra million competent, educated,
fairly contented men who are all necessary to the State, who are
encouraged, almost forced into various professions.

HENRY. Not contented, Eugenia.

EUGENIA. More contented, because actively employed, than if they were
wandering aimlessly in the country lanes of their fathers' estates
as thousands of intelligent uneducated women were doing a hundred
years ago, kept ferociously at home by the will of the parent who
held the purse-strings.

HENRY. I rather wish I had lived in those good old times, when the
lanes were full of pretty women.

EUGENIA. But you, at any rate, Henry, had a large choice. I was much
afraid at one time that you would never ask me.

HENRY. Ah! But then I was a great heir, and all heirs have a wide
choice. Not that I had any choice at all. I had the good luck to be
accepted by the only woman I ever cared a pin about, and the only
one I was sure was disinterested.

EUGENIA. Dearest!

HENRY [_tentatively_]. And yet our marriage falls short of an ideal
one, my Eugenia.

EUGENIA [_apologetically_]. Dear Henry, I know it does, but as soon as
I cease to be Prime Minister I will do my duty to the country, and,
what I think much more of, by you. What is a home without children?
Besides, I must set an example. When you came in I was framing a
bill to meet the alarming decline of the birth-rate. Unless
something is done the nation will become extinct. The results of
this tendency among women to marry later and later are disastrous.

HENRY. And what is your bill, Eugenia?

EUGENIA. That every healthy married woman or female celibate over
twenty-five and under forty, members of the government excepted,
must do her duty to the State by bringing into the world--

HENRY. Celibate! Bringing into the world! Eugenia! and I thought the
sanctity of marriage and home life were among your deepest
convictions. Just think how you have upheld them to--_men_.

EUGENIA. Patriotism must come first. By bringing into the world three
children, a girl and two boys. If her income is insufficient to rear
them, the State will take charge of them. One extra boy is needed to
supply the wastage of accidents in practical work, and in case of
war. I shall stand or fall by this bill, for unless the women of
England can be aroused to do their duty--unless there is general
conscription to motherhood, as in Germany, England will certainly
become a second-class power.

HENRY. Perhaps when there are two men to every woman we shall be
strong enough to force women to do justice to us.

EUGENIA. Men never did justice to us when they had the upper hand.