Part 39

GEOFFREY. I no longer count. You will go your way without me?

ANNYS. I must go the way I think right.

GEOFFREY. (He flings away.) If you win to-night you will do well to make the most of it. Take my advice and claim the seat.

ANNYS. (Looks at him puzzled.)

ELIZABETH. Why?

GEOFFREY. Because (with a short, ugly laugh) the Lord only knows when you’ll get another opportunity.

ELIZABETH. You are going to stop us?

GEOFFREY. To stop women from going to the poll. The Bill will be introduced on Monday. Carried through all its stages the same week.

ELIZABETH. You think it will pass?

GEOFFREY. The Whips assure me that it will.

ANNYS. But they cannot, they dare not, without your assent. The— (The light breaks in upon her.) Who is bringing it in?

GEOFFREY. I am.

ANNYS. (Is going to speak.)

GEOFFREY. (He stops her.) Oh, I’m prepared for all that—ridicule, abuse. “Chilvers’s Bill for the Better Regulation of Mrs. Chilvers,” they’ll call it. I can hear their laughter. Yours won’t be among it.

ANNYS. But, Geoffrey! What is the meaning? Merely to spite me, are you going to betray a cause that you have professed belief in—that you have fought for?

GEOFFREY. Yes—if it is going to take you away from me. I want you. No, I don’t want a friend—“a fellow-worker”—some interesting rival in well doing. I can get all that outside my home. I want a wife. I want the woman I love to belong to me—to be mine. I am not troubling about being up to date; I’m talking what I feel—what every male creature must have felt since the protoplasmic cell developed instincts. I want a woman to love—a woman to work for—a woman to fight for—a woman to be a slave to. But mine—mine, and nothing else. All the rest (he makes a gesture) is talk.

(He closes the window, shutting out the hubbub of the crowd.)

ANNYS. (A strange, new light has stolen in. She is bewildered, groping.) But—all this is new between us. You have not talked like this for—not since— We were just good friends—comrades.

GEOFFREY. And might have remained so, God knows! I suppose we’re made like that. So long as there was no danger passion slept. I cannot explain it. I only know that now, beside the thought of losing you, all else in the world seems meaningless. The Woman’s Movement! (He makes a gesture of contempt.) Men have wrecked kingdoms for a woman before now—and will again. I want you! (He comes to her.) Won’t you come back to me, that we may build up the home we used to dream of? Wasn’t the old love good? What has this new love to give you? Work that man can do better. The cause of the women—the children! Has woman loved woman better than man? Will the world be better for the children, man and woman contending? Come back to me. Help me. Help me to fight for all good women. Teach me how I may make the world better—for our children.

ANNYS. (The light is in her eyes. She stands a moment. Her hands are going out to him.)

ELIZABETH. (She comes between them.) Yes, go to him. He will be very good to you. Good men are kind to women, kind even to their dogs. You will be among the pampered few! You will be happy. And the others! What does it matter?

(They draw apart. She stands between them, the incarnation of the spirit of sex war.)

The women that have not kind owners—the dogs that have not kind masters—the dumb women, chained to their endless, unpaid drudgery! Let them be content. What are they but man’s chattel? To be honoured if it pleases him, or to be cast into the dust. Man’s pauper! Bound by his laws, subject to his whim; her every hope, her every aspiration, owed to his charity. She toils for him without ceasing: it should be her “pleasure.” She bears him children, when he chooses to desire them. They are his to do as he will by. Why seek to change it? Our man is kind. What have they to do with us: the women beaten, driven, overtasked—the women without hope or joy, the livers of grey lives that men may laugh and spend—the women degraded lower than the beasts to pander to the beast in man—the women outraged and abandoned, bearing to the grave the burden of man’s lust? Let them go their way. They are but our sisters of sorrow. And we who could help them—we to whom God has given the weapons: the brain, and the courage—we make answer: “I have married a husband, and I cannot come.”

(A silence.)

GEOFFREY. Well, you have heard. (He makes a gesture.) What is your answer?

ANNYS. (She comes to him.) Don’t you love me enough to humour me a little—to put up with my vexing ways? I so want to help, to feel I am doing just a little, to make the world kinder. I know you can do it better, but I want so to be “in it.” (She laughs.) Let us forget all this. Wake up to-morrow morning with fresh hearts. You will be Member for East Poplar. And then you shall help me to win Manchester. (She puts her hands upon his breast: she would have him take her in his arms.) I am not strong enough to fight alone.

GEOFFREY. I want you. Let Manchester find some one else.

ANNYS. (She draws away from him.) And if I cannot—will not?