The Revolt of Man. Walter Besant
was a small stand full of books, chiefly of a lighter kind, prettily bound and profusely gilt. Some were novels, with such titles as The Hero of the Cricket Field, The Long Jump, The Silver Racket, and so on. Some were apparently poems, among them being Lady Longspin’s Vision of the Perfect Knight, with a frontispiece, showing the Last Lap of the Seven-Mile Race; Julia Durdle’s poems of the Young Man’s Crown of Glory, and Aunt Agatha’s Songs for Girls at School or College. There were others of a miscellaneous character, such as Guide to the Young Politician, being a series of letters to a peeress at Oxford; Meditations in the University Church; Hymns for Men; the Sacrifice of the Faithful Heart; The Womanhood of Heaven; or, the Light and Hope of Men, with many others whose title proclaimed the nature of their contents. The appearance of the books, however, did not seem to show that they were much read.
‘I should have thought,’ said the Professor, ‘that Constance would have turned all this rubbish out of her breakfast-room. After all, though, what could she put in its place here?’
As the clock struck eleven, the door opened, and the young lady whom the Professor spoke of as Constance appeared.
She was a girl of twenty, singularly beautiful, her face was one of those very rare faces which seem as if nature, after working steadily in one mould for a good many generations, has at last succeeded in perfecting her idea. Most of our faces, somehow, look as if the mould had not quite reached the conception of the sculptor. Unfortunately, while such faces as that of Constance, Countess of Carlyon, are rare, they are seldom reproduced in children. Nature, in fact, smashes her mould when it is quite perfect, and begins again upon another. The hair was of that best and rarest brown, in which there is a touch of gold when the sun shines upon it. Her eyes were of a dark, deep blue; her face was a beautiful and delicate oval; her chin was pointed; her cheek perhaps a little too pale, and rather thin; and there was a broad edging of black under her eyes, which spoke of fatigue, anxiety, or disappointment. But she smiled when she saw her guest.
‘Good morning, Professor,’ she said, kissing the wrinkled cheek. ‘It was good indeed of you to come. I only heard you were in town last night.’
‘You are well this morning, Constance?’ asked the Professor.
‘Oh, yes!’ replied the girl wearily. ‘I am well enough. Let us have breakfast. I have been at work since eight with my secretary. You know that we resign to-day.’
‘I gathered so much,’ said the Professor, ‘from the rag they call the Official Gazette. They do not report fully, of course, but it is clear that you had an exciting debate, and that you were defeated.’
The Countess sighed. Then she reddened and clenched her hands.
‘I cannot bear to think of it,’ she cried. ‘We had a disgraceful night. I shall never forget it – or forgive it. It was not a debate at all; it was the exchange of unrestrained insults, rude personalities, humiliating recrimination.’
‘Take some breakfast first, my dear,’ said the Professor, ‘and then you shall tell me as much as you please.’
Most of the breakfast was eaten by the Professor herself. Long before she had finished, Constance sprang from the table and began to pace the room in uncontrollable agitation.
‘It is hard – oh! it is very hard – to preserve even common dignity, when such attacks are made. One noble peeress taunted me with my youth. It is two years since I came of age – I am twenty, – but never mind that. Another threw in my teeth my – my – my cousin Chester,’ – she blushed violently; ‘to think that the British House of Peeresses should have fallen so low! Another charged me with trying to be thought the loveliest woman in London; can we even listen to such things without shame? And the Duchesse de la Vieille Roche’ – here she laughed bitterly – ‘actually had the audacity to attack my Political Economy – mine; and I was Senior in the Tripos! When they were tired of abusing me, they began upon each other. No reporters were present. The Chancellor, poor lady! tried in vain to maintain order; the scene – with the whole House, as it seemed, screeching, crying, demanding to be heard, throwing accusations, innuendoes, insinuations, at each other – made one inclined to ask if this was really the House of Peeresses, the Parliament of Great Britain, the place where one would expect to find the noblest representatives in the whole world of culture and gentlehood.’
Constance paused, exhausted but not satisfied. She had a good deal more to say, but for the moment she stood by the window, with flashing eyes and trembling lips.
‘The last mixed Parliament,’ said the Professor, thoughtfully – ‘that in which the few men who were members seceded in a body – presented similar characteristics. The abuse of the liberty of speech led to the abolition of the Lower House. Absit omen!’
‘Thank Heaven,’ replied the Countess, ‘that it was abolished! Since then we have had – at least we have generally had – decorum and dignity of debate.’
‘Until last night, dear Constance, and a few similar last nights. Take care.’
‘They cannot abolish us,’ said Constance, ‘because they would have nothing to fall back upon.’
The Professor coughed dryly, and took another piece of toast.
The Countess threw herself into a chair.
‘At least,’ she said, ‘we have changed mob-government for divine right.’
‘Ye – yes.’ The Professor leaned back in her chair. ‘James II., in the old time, said much the same thing; yet they abolished him. To be sure, in his days, divine right went through the male line.’
‘Men said so,’ said the Countess, ‘to serve their selfish ends. How can any line be continued except through the mother? Absurd!’
Then there was silence for a little, the Professor calmly eating an egg, and the Home Secretary playing with her tea-spoon.
‘We hardly expected success,’ she continued, after a while; ‘it was only in the desperate condition of the Party that the Cabinet gave way to my proposal. Yet I did hope that the nature of the Bill would have awakened the sympathy of a House which has brothers, fathers, nephews, and male relations of all kinds, and does not consist entirely of orphaned only daughters.’
‘That is bitter, Constance,’ sighed the Professor. ‘I hope you did not begin by saying so.’
‘No, I did not. I explained that we were about to ask for a Commission into the general condition of the men of this country. I set forth, in mild and conciliating language, a few of my facts. You know them all; I learned them from you. I showed that the whole of the educational endowments of this country have been seized upon for the advantage of women. I suggested that a small proportion might be diverted for the assistance of men. Married men with property, I showed, have no protection from the prodigality of their wives. I pointed out that the law of evidence, as regards violence towards wives, presses heavily on the man. I showed that single men’s wages are barely sufficient to purchase necessary clothing. I complained of the long hours during which men have to toil in solitude or in silence, of the many cases in which they have to do housework and attend to the babies, as well as do their long day’s work. And I ventured to hint at the onerous nature of the Married Mother’s Tax – that five per cent. on all men’s earnings.’
‘My dear Constance,’ interrupted the Professor, ‘was it judicious to show your whole hand at once? Surely step by step would have been safer.’
‘Perhaps. I ventured next to call the serious attention of the House to the grave discontent among the younger women of the middle classes who, by reason of the crowded state of the professions, are unable to think of marriage, as a rule, before forty, and often have to wait later. This was received with cold disapprobation: the House is always touchy on the subject of marriage. But when I went on to hint that there was danger to the State in the reluctance with which the young men entered the married state under these conditions, there was such a clamour that I sat down.’
The Professor nodded.
‘Just what one would have expected. Talk the