Lady Cloistertown caught the Chancellor’s eye. I suppose you know her extraordinary command of commonplaces. She asked whether the House was prepared to place man on an equality with woman; she supposed we should like to see him sitting with ourselves, voting with the rudeness of his intellect, even speaking with the bluntness of the masculine manner. And then she burst into a scream. “Irreligion,” she cried, “was rampant; was this a moment for bringing forward such a motion? Not only women, but even men, had begun to doubt the Perfect Woman; the rule of the higher intellect was threatened; the new civilisation was tottering; we might even expect an attempt to bring about a return of the reign of brute force-“ Heavens! and that was only a beginning. Then followed the weary platitudes that we know so well. Can no one place truth before us in words of freshness?’
‘If you insist upon every kind of truth being naked,’ said the Professor, ‘you ought not to grumble if her limbs sometimes look unlovely.’
‘Then let us for a while agree to accept truth in silence.’
‘I would we could!’ echoed the elder lady. ‘I know the weariness of the commonplace. When we are every year invaded by gentlemen at Commemoration, I have to go through the same dreary performance. The phrases about the higher intellect, the sex which is created to carry on the thought, while the other executes the work of this world; the likeness and yet unlikeness between us due to that beautiful arrangement of nature; the extraordinary success we are making of our power; the loveliness of the new religion, revealed bit by bit, to one woman after another, until we were able to reach unto the conception, the vision, the realisation of the Perfect Woman – ’
‘Professor,’ interrupted Constance, laying her hand on her friend’s shoulder, ‘do not talk so. Strengthen my faith; do not destroy what is left of religion by a sneer. Alas! everything seems falling away; nothing satisfies; there is no support anywhere, nor any hope. I suppose I am not strong enough for my work; at least I have failed. The whole country is crying out with discontent. The Lancashire women cannot sell their husband’s work. I hear that they are taking to drink. Wife-beating has broken out again in the Potteries. It is reported that secret associations are again beginning to be formed among the men; and then there are these county magistrates with their unjust sentences. A man at Leicester has been sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years because his wife says he swore at her and threatened her. I wrote for information; the magistrate says she thought an example was needed. And, innocent or guilty, the husband is not allowed to cross-examine his wife. Then look at the recent case at Cambridge.’
‘Yes,’ said the Professor; ‘that is bad indeed.’
‘The husband – a man of hitherto blameless character, – young, well-born, handsome, good at his trade, and with some pretensions to the higher culture – sentenced to penal servitude for life for striking his wife, one of the senior fellows of Trinity!’
The Professor’s eyes flashed.
‘As you are going out of office to-day, my Lady Home Secretary, and can do no more justice for a while, I will tell you the truth of that case. The wife was tired of her husband. It was a most unhappy match. She wanted to marry another man, so she trumped up the charge; that is the disgraceful truth. No fishwife of Billingsgate could have lied more impudently. He, in accordance with our, no doubt most just and well-intentioned, laws, becomes a convict for the rest of his days; she marries again. Everybody knows the truth, but nobody ventures to state it. She banged her own arm black and blue herself with the poker, and showed it in open court as the effects of his violence. As for her husband, I visited him in prison. He was calm and collected. He says that he is glad there are no children to lament his disgrace, that prison life is preferable to living any longer with such a woman, and that, on the whole, death is better than life when an innocent man can be so treated in a civilised country.’
‘Poor man!’ groaned Constance. ‘Stay; I have a few hours yet of power. His name? she sprang to her desk.
‘John Phillips – no; Phillips is the wife’s name. I forgot that the sentence itself carries divorce with it. His bachelor name was Coryton.’
Constance wrote rapidly.
‘John Coryton. He shall be released. A free pardon from the Home Secretary cannot be appealed against. He is free.’
She sprang from the table and rang the bell. Her private secretary appeared.
‘This despatch to be forwarded at once,’ she said. ‘Not a moment’s delay.’
‘Constance!’ The Professor seized her hand. ‘You will have the thanks of every woman who knows the truth. All those who do not will curse the weakness of the Home Secretary.’
‘I care not,’ she said. ‘I have done one just action in my short term of office. I – who looked to do so many good and just actions!’
‘It is difficult, more difficult than one ever suspects, for a Minister to do good. Alas! my dear, John Coryton’s case is only one of many.’
‘I know,’ replied Constance sighing. ‘Yet what can I do! Our greatest enemies are – ourselves. Oh, Professor! when I think of the men working at their looms from morning until night, cooking the dinners and looking after the children, while the women sit about the village pump or in their clubs, to talk unmeaning politics – Tell me, logician, why our theories are all so logical, and our practice is so bad?’
‘Everything,’ said the Professor, ‘in our system is rigorously logical and just. If it could not be proved scientifically – if it were not absolutely certain – the system could never be accepted by the exact intellect of cultivated women. Have not Oxford and Cambridge proclaimed this from a hundred pulpits and in a thousand text-books? My dear Lady Carlyon, you yourself proved it when you took your degree in the most brilliant essay ever written.’
The Countess winced.
‘Must we, then,’ she asked, ‘cease to believe in logic?’
‘Nay,’ replied Professor Ingleby; ‘I said not that. But every conclusion depends upon the minor premiss. That, dear Countess, in the case of our system, appears to me a little uncertain.’
‘But where is the uncertainty? Surely you will allow me, my dear Professor,’ – Constance smiled, – ‘although I am only a graduate of two years’ standing, to know enough logic to examine a syllogism?’
‘Surely, Constance. My dear, I do not presume to doubt your reasoning powers. It was only an expression of perplexity. We are so right, and things go so wrong.’
Both ladies were silent for a few moments, and Constance sighed.
‘For instance,’ the Professor went on, ‘we were logically right when we suppressed the Sovereignty. In a perfect State, the head must also be perfect. Whom, then, could we acknowledge as head but the Perfect Woman? So we became a pure theocracy. Then, again, we were right when we abolished the Lower House; for in a perfect State, the best rulers must be those who are well-born, well-educated, and well-bred. All this requires no demonstration. Yet – ’
But the Countess shook her head impatiently, and sprang to her feet.
‘Enough, Professor! I am tired of debates and the battles of phrase. The House may get on without me. And I will inquire no more, even of you, Professor, into the foundations of faith, constitution, and the rest of it. I am brave, when I rise in my place, about the unalterable principles of religious and political economy: brave words do not mean brave heart. Like so many who are outspoken, which I cannot be – at least yet – my faith is sapped, I doubt.’
‘She who doubts,’ said the Professor, ‘is perhaps near the truth.’
‘Nay; for I shall cease to investigate; I shall go down to the country and talk with my tenants.’
‘Do you learn much,’ asked the Professor, ‘of your country tenants?’
The Countess laughed.
‘I teach a great deal, at least,’ she replied. ‘Three times a-week I lecture the women on constitutional law, and twice on the best management of husbands, sons, and farm-labourers, and so forth.’
‘And