The lady was a spinster, or she would not have talked in that style, but at length she had said all that she wanted, and paused for a reply.
‘I fear,’ said Wentworth, ‘that you and I can never agree. I don’t believe that man and woman are the same. Nature has made them different. A woman treads the earth with a lighter step, talks in a feebler voice. If she succeeds on the platform or in public life, it is because of her exceptional performance in that character; and owing to her more excitable temperament and physical peculiarities, and to the duties devolving on her as wife and mother, I argue that she is unfitted for public life. Her duty is at home. It is there she reigns a queen, and where, I ask, can she desire a nobler field? Our men are what their mothers make them. I say it is to the home that we have to look for the purification and elevation of our public life; it is to the mothers of to-day that we look for the great men of the morrow.’
‘And is this all you’ve got to say?’ said the lady, with a somewhat chap-fallen countenance. ‘I did hope, as a journalist, I might have heard something more satisfactory. There are many of us in Sloville. We are affiliated to a society whose headquarters are in London, and we are determined to vote for no man.’
‘Excuse me, I understood ladies had no votes.’
‘I mean we are determined that no man shall vote for anyone who is not sound on the question of Women’s Rights.’
‘I am quite ready to give a widow, or any woman housekeeper, or any woman in business, a vote. As a Liberal I don’t know whether I ought to say as much. The women will be sure to give a Tory vote. They are sure to vote as their favourite parson or priest wishes.’
‘Not the emancipated female of the future.’
‘Alas!’ said Wentworth, ‘I don’t know her. I can only talk of woman as she is—charming, lovely, worthy of all honour, in her own peculiar sphere.’
‘Thank you,’ said the lady haughtily; ‘we want something more;’ and she went out of the room to report to her committee that on Women’s Rights the candidate gave a very uncertain sound.
‘Will you,’ said one other fair enthusiast a little later on, ‘vote for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wentworth. ‘Why should I?’