apply to the hired servant as well as to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron. And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the noblest figures anywhere depicted.'
'I know,' said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting impatiently again to declaim, 'that men, even ministers of religion, from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor. Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the sex, we shall continue to hear of such disgraces to England as I see in your police reports-brutal mechanics beating their wives.'
'I fear while physical force is on the side of the brute,' said Julius, 'no abstract recognition of equality would save her.'
'Society would take up her cause, and protect her.'
'So it is willing to do now, if she asks for protection.'
'Yes,' broke in Rosamond, 'but nothing would induce a woman worth sixpence to take the law against her husband.'
'There I think Lady Rosamond has at once demonstrated the higher nature of the woman,' said Mrs. Tallboys. 'What man would be capable of such generosity?'
'No one denies,' said Julius, 'that generous forbearance, patience, fortitude, and self-renunciation, belong almost naturally to the true wife and mother, and are her great glory; but would she not be stripped of them by self-assertion as the peer in power?'
'Turning our flank again with a compliment,' said Mrs. Duncombe. 'These fine qualities are very convenient to yourselves, and so you praise them up.'
'Not so!' returned Julius, 'because they are really the higher virtues!'
'Patience!' at once exclaimed the American and English emancipators with some scorn.
'Yes,' said Julius, in a low tone of thorough earnest. 'The patience of strength and love is the culmination of virtue.'
Jenny knew what was in his mind, but Mrs. Tallboys, with a curious tone, half pique, half triumph, said, 'You acknowledge this which you call the higher nature in woman-that is to say, all the passive qualities,-and you are willing to allow her a finer spiritual essence, and yet you do not agree to her equal rights. This is the injustice of the prejudice which has depressed her all these centuries.'
'Stay,' broke in Jenny, evidently not to the lady's satisfaction. 'That does not state the question. Nobody denies that woman is often of a higher and finer essence, as you say, than man, and has some noble qualities in a higher degree than any but the most perfect men; but that is not the question. It is whether she have more force and capacity than man, is in fact actually able to be on an equality.'
'And, I say,' returned Mrs. Tallboys, 'that man has used brute force to cramp woman's intellect and energy so long, that she has learnt to acquiesce in her position, and to abstain from exerting herself, so that it is only where she is partially emancipated, as in my own country, that any idea of her powers can be gained.'
'I am afraid,' said Julius, 'that more may be lost to the world than is gained! No; I am not speaking from the tyrant point of view. I am thinking whether free friction with the world way not lessen that sweetness and tender innocence and purity that make a man's home an ideal and a sanctuary-his best earthly influence.'
'This is only sentiment. Innocence is worthless if it cannot stand alone and protect itself!' said Mrs. Tallboys.
'I do not mean innocence unable to stand alone. It should be strong and trustworthy, but should have the bloom on it still, not rubbed off by contact or knowledge of evil. Desire of shielding that bloom from the slightest breath of contamination is no small motive for self-restraint, and therefore a great preservative to most men.'
'Women purify the atmosphere wherever they go,' said the lady.
'Many women do,' returned Julius; 'but will they retain that power universally if they succeed in obtaining a position where there will be less consideration for them, and they must be exposed to a certain hardening and roughening process?'
'If so,' exclaimed Mrs. Tallboys, 'if men are so base, we would soon assert ourselves. We are no frail morning glories for you to guard and worship with restraint, lest forsooth your natural breath should wither us away.'
As she spoke the door opened, and, with a strong reek of tobacco, in came the two other gentlemen. 'Well, Rector, have you given in?' asked the Captain. 'Is Lady Rosamond to mount the pulpit henceforth?'
'Ah! wouldn't I preach you a sermon,' returned Rosamond.
'To resume,' said Mrs. Tallboys, sitting very upright. 'You still go on the old assumption that woman was made for you. It is all the same story: one man says she is for his pleasure, another for his servant, and you, for-for his refinement. You would all have us adjectives. Now I defy you to prove that woman is not a substantive, created for herself.'
'If you said 'growed,' Mrs. Tallboys, it would be more consistent,' said Jenny. 'Her creation and her purpose in the world stand upon precisely the same authority.'
'I wonder at you, Miss Bowater,' said Mrs. Tallboys. 'I cannot understand a woman trying to depreciate her sex.'
'No,' thrust in Gussie Moy; 'I want to know why a woman can't go about without a dowager waddling after her' ('Thank you,' breathed Lady Tyrrell into Herbert's ear), 'nor go to a club.'
'There was such a club proposed in London,' said Captain Duncombe, 'and do you know, Gussie, the name of it?'
'No!'
'The Middlesex Club!'
'There! it is just as Mrs. Tallboys said; you will do nothing but laugh at us, or else talk sentiment about our refining you. Now, I want to be free to amuse myself.'
'I don't think those trifling considerations will be great impediments in your way,' said Lady Tyrrell in her blandest tone. 'Is that actually the carriage? Thank you, Mrs. Tallboys. This is good-bye, I believe. I am sorry there has not been more time for a fuller exposition to-night.'
'There would have been, but I never was so interrupted,' said Mrs. Tallboys in an undertone, with a displeased look at Jenny at the other end of the room.
Declamation was evidently more the Muse's forte than argument, but her aside was an aside, and that of the jockey friend was not. 'So you waited for us to give your part of the lecture, Miss Moy?'
'Of course. What's the use of talking to a set of women and parsons, who are just the same?'
Poor Herbert's indignant flush infinitely amused the party who were cloaking in the hall. 'Poor Gussie; her tongue runs fast,' said Mrs. Duncombe.
'Emancipated!' said Jenny. 'Good-bye, Mrs. Duncombe. Please let us be educated up to our privileges before we get them.'
'A Parthian shot, Jenny,' said Julius, as they gave her a homeward lift in the carriage. 'You proved yourself the fittest memberess for the future parliament to-night.'
'To be elected by the women and parsons,' said Jenny, with little chuckle of fun. 'Poor Herbert!'
'I only wish that girl was a man that I might horsewhip her,' the clerical sentiment growled out from Herbert's corner of the carriage. 'Degradation of her sex! She's a standing one!'
CHAPTER XX. Vivienne
Of all the old women that ever I saw, Sweet bad luck to my mother in law.-Irish Song
The Parliamentary Session had reached the stage that is ended by no power save that of grouse, and the streets were full of vans fantastically decorated with baths, chairs, bedsteads, and nursery gear.
Cecil could see two before different house-doors as she sat behind her muslin curtains, looking as fresh and healthful as ever, and scarcely more matronly, except that her air of self-assertion had become more easy and less aggressive now that she was undisputed mistress of the house in London.
There was no concern on her part that she was not the mother of either of the two latest scions of the house of Charnock. Certainly she did not like to be outdone by Rosamond; but then it was only a girl, and she could afford to wait for the son and heir; indeed, she did not yet desire him at the cost of all the distinguished and intellectual
