Short Plays

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 you’ll not get another word out of me⁠—not if we sit here until doomsday. Lady Corinthia I don’t 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 suffragette movement is essentially a dowdy movement. The suffragettes 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 suffragettes 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 suffragettes 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 you’ve 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 didn’t keep her in pretty strict order. I don’t approve of democracy, because it’s rot; and I’m against giving the vote to women because I’m 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 hasn’t any charm; and she has no high notes except when she’s 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 it’s 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