Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
Mr Bristley Mounts his Hobby, and Brings the Dream Upon Lesbia.
When the Vicar of Dulham held what he was pleased to call a clerical meeting at his home, it was well understood by all the guests that no parochial ‘shop,’ was to be talked, but instead of it, the politics and science of the great outside world were to form a sort of intellectual symposium, with the aid of good wines. A still more peculiar feature of these gatherings was the presence at table of the vicar’s niece throughout the entire proceedings; the two holding firmly to the principle that whatever is fit to be said at all on any subject is fit to be said before women. ‘This soon came to be understood by those who attended the meetings, and they chatted away just as if no female were present, the only slip of the tongue that had to be carefully avoided being any sort of commonplace implying inequalities or differences between the sexes; if such a slip were ever made, the hosts, of course, took it good-humouredly, but the unlucky person who had made it at once felt that he had committed a solecism.
On the present occasion, however, after other topics of the day had been well thrashed out, Mr Smeeth, the oldest acquaintance of the family, saw an opening to take the bull by the horns.
‘But frankly, and in plain English, Bristley, am I to understand that the profession of arms ought, in your and Lesbia’s opinion, to be thrown open to the ladies equally with the other callings?’
‘Yes, decidedly, Mr Smeeth,’ answered Lesbia at once. ‘We can have no exceptions.’
‘Of course not,’ assented her uncle. ‘To admit that there may be any one thing suitable for men, but not for women, would weaken our position. If a thing be good for either sex, it is good for both; if it be bad for either, it is bad for both. Of course this doctrine is bounded by the possibilities of nature. Physically, a man cannot bear children; spiritually, a man can have no sanctity, either inherent or delegated.’
‘But he can lawfully pretend to have some, for a consideration,’ said Mr Smeeth dryly, at which the others tittered.
‘If his constituents please,’ was the ready reply. ‘If I refused pay to play the fool, I should be one.’
‘Never mind that, uncle,’ Lesbia checked him. ‘What were you going to say about women and arms?’
‘Why, I was going to say that preach as we will about the rights of morality to shape the conduct of the world, physical force will still remain in the background. Hence, so long as it is supposed that the female sex cannot compete with the male in the last resort, which is the resort to physical force, the rights we may concede to women will always appear as boons, as privileges existing upon sufferance. And previously to the march of modern science, this, no doubt, was actually the case. The bigger heavier animal, purposely trained in athletic habits from which the smaller though more highly organised animal was as purposely debarred, had an undeniable advantage over her with the club, the battle-axe, the bow, the cutlass. But those times are rapidly passing away. Fire-arms of precision, whereby you are picked off by an invisible enemy a mile or more distant, are beginning to take the place of the old hand-to-hand mêlee; mere gallantry and dash avails ever less and less against cool skill. Even in the works of peace, automatic machinery is every year more widely supplanting the brawny arm of the labourer or smith; in short, it is a patent fact that the steady and relentless progress of nineteenth century civilisation is neutralising, one by one, those physical advantages which men formerly possessed over women in the struggle for existence.’
‘Your inference from which, I suppose,’ said Mr Dimpleton, the father of Rose, who was among the clergy present, ‘is that we ought to set on foot female regiments along with the others?’
‘I think the military strength of every nation might be advantageously increased by enrolling as a volunteer corps such strong, and perhaps not very intellectual, young women as might take to the life from choice. Such a change would, in my belief, rather conduce to the maintenance of general peace. It would bring home to women the miseries of war, if they were liable to take part in it personally, and men might on their account also be less willing to engage in bloodshed. But whether this be so or not, as my niece observed just now, we can admit no distinctions. If women are to descend into the arena of life, they must do so without reserve.’
‘Will public opinion in this country ever sanction such a revolutionary innovation, think you?’ asked another parson.
‘Public opinion may have to accommodate itself to that and other changes, whether sanctioning them or not,’ returned Mr Bristley, in a somewhat defiant tone. ‘Revolution, when it comes, does not ask leave of people’s prejudices, And I have an undefined but very pronounced feeling that we want in England, and shall very shortly have, the new broom that sweeps clean. We are getting socially and politically demoralised,—losing tone; and the reason is not far to seek. Our actions as a nation are not up to our words. We talk of progress and free thought, but in morals and religion we progress not at all, and our thoughts, on those subjects, are not free. We are still wrapped up in our old insular bigotry, while we lack, whether for better or for worse, our old insular hardihood. Puff and pretentiousness take the place of solid earnestness in public relations, vulgarity in taste is becoming rampant—witness the stuff that is now most popular in literature, in the drama, and in music. Unavowed Nihilism seems to undermine social sincerity; and if we are less superstitious, we are more materialistic. Nevertheless, all this might pass muster, if only it could be regarded as a transitional state of things, incidental to the most important of all developments mankind has ever undergone or can undergo, the emancipation of the female half of the race. But that still hangs fire; the heart of the community is not in it, mainly, I suppose for the reason that the heart of the community is not to-day in anything that is not either sordid or frivolous. But this cannot last, on the face of it. We shall be called to account, depend upon it, for our national sins both of omission and commission, and I should not be surprised if the day of reckoning were much nearer than any one of us suspects. What’s the matter, Lesbie; do you feel unwell?’
The young girl had turned ghastly pale, and some small beads of perspiration were starting from her forehead, while her eyes had a fixed stare. But the attack, whatever it was, passed quickly, and as her colour came back, she smiled at the company, saying,—
‘Nothing, nothing, uncle; only a little dizziness; perhaps the port wine hasn’t agreed with me; but I don’t feel it now.’
‘I never knew this port disagree with anyone: I don’t think it can be that,’ said Mr Bristley. ‘Send it on, Smeeth,—no? Well, if nobody’ll have any more, shall we go to coffee in the drawing-room?’
Shortly afterwards the vicar had an opportunity of speaking to his niece alone.
‘It’s unlucky, Lesbie dear, that you should have an attack of vertigo to-day. But just at your age little things of that sort needn’t alarm one.’
‘It was hardly what you’d call vertigo, Uncle Spines,—rather a sort of trance; perhaps I inherit the disposition from mamma. What happened exactly was this: Your last words, about a day of reckoning, had the effect of bringing before me a part of my mother’s dream, as if I were dreaming it myself. I seemed to hear the notes of bugles mingled with heavy rolling thunder, and a curious dropping noise as if a cataract of loose stones kept slipping over a precipice. I didn’t see anything horrid; all I saw was a desolate hill with a tower like a lighthouse on its top, and a volume of white smoke, such as would come from a number of weed-heaps burning on a mild moist day; then there came a rainbow over all, and the noise ceased. I suppose I must have been what the mesmerists call en rapport with the past state of my mother’s mind when she had that awful vision. I wonder if she herself was thinking about it at the moment. I don’t like to ask her, because I want her to forget all about it; and, after all, my bit of a phantasm was a trifle to hers, poor darling mamma!’
‘Don’t like these women’s visions at all,’ Mr Bristley muttered to himself, looking deeply concerned. ‘Come, Lesbia,’ he said, turning back toward the dining-room, ‘it’s plain you're getting out of sorts. Come and correct the port with a whitewash of Madeira, eh?’
‘You're very practical, Uncle Spines,’ she answered, with a merry laugh; ‘but I won’t exorcise the demon in that ignoble way. No, no, enough wine for to-day, thanks; it may have been only a little biliousness, and if so, I oughtn’t to have taken any wine at all. If it comes again, I’ll have some medicine; but I don’t think it will, somehow.’