Part 4

ANNYS. Mamma isn’t here, is she?

PHOEBE. (Shakes her head.) Reaches St. Pancras at two-forty. (Looks at her watch.) Train’s late, I expect.

(HAKE has entered.)

ANNYS. (She hands HAKE her hat and coat.) Have something ready in case Lady Mogton hasn’t lunched. Is your master in?

HAKE. A messenger came for him soon after you left, ma’am. I was to tell you he would most likely be dining at the House.

ANNYS. Thank you.

(HAKE goes out.)

ANNYS. (To ELIZABETH.) I so want you to meet Geoffrey. He’ll alter your opinion of men.

ELIZABETH. My opinion of men has been altered once or twice—each time for the worse.

ANNYS. Why do you dislike men?

ELIZABETH. (With a short laugh.) Why does the slave dislike the slave-owner?

PHOEBE. Oh, come off the perch. You spend five thousand a year provided for you by a husband that you only see on Sundays. We’d all be slaves at that price.

ELIZABETH. The chains have always been stretched for the few. My sympathies are with my class.

ANNYS. But men like Geoffrey—men who are devoting their whole time and energy to furthering our cause; what can you have to say against them?

ELIZABETH. Simply that they don’t know what they’re doing. The French Revolution was nursed in the salons of the French nobility. When the true meaning of the woman’s movement is understood we shall have to get on without the male sympathiser.

(A pause.)

ANNYS. What do you understand is the true meaning of the woman’s movement?

ELIZABETH. The dragging down of man from his position of supremacy. What else can it mean?

ANNYS. Something much better. The lifting up of woman to be his partner.

ELIZABETH. My dear Annys, the men who to-day are advocating votes for women are doing so in the hope of securing obedient supporters for their own political schemes. In New Zealand the working man brings his female relations in a van to the poll, and sees to it that they vote in accordance with his orders. When man once grasps the fact that woman is not going to be his henchman, but his rival, men and women will face one another as enemies.

(The door opens. HAKE announces LADY MOGTON and DORIAN ST. HERBERT. LADY MOGTON is a large, strong-featured woman, with a naturally loud voice. She is dressed with studied carelessness. DORIAN ST. HERBERT, K.C., is a tall, thin man, about thirty. He is elegantly, almost dandily dressed.)

ANNYS. (Kissing her mother.) Have you had lunch?

LADY MOGTON. In the train.

PHOEBE. (Who has also kissed her mother and shaken hands with ST. HERBERT.) We are all here except Villiers. She’s coming. Did you have a good meeting?

LADY MOGTON. Fairly. Some young fool had chained himself to a pillar and thrown the key out of window.

PHOEBE. What did you do?

LADY MOGTON. Tied a sack over his head and left him there.

(She turns aside for a moment to talk to ST. HERBERT, who has taken some papers from his despatch-box.)