Short Plays · Press Cuttings (2/2) (2/2) (4/5)

| Mrs. Banger | You are a soldier. Obey your orders. Put me out. If I got such an order I should not hesitate. | | The Orderly | To Mitchener. Would you mind lendin’ me a ’and, Guvner? | | Lady Corinthia | Raising her revolver. I shall be obliged to shoot you if you stir, General. | | Mrs. Banger | To the Orderly. When you are ordered to put a person out you should do it like this. She hurls him from the room. He is heard falling headlong downstairs and crashing through a glass door. I shall now wait on General Sandstone. If he shows any sign of weakness, he shall share that poor wretch’s fate. She goes out. | | Lady Corinthia | Isn’t she magnificent? | | Mitchener | Thank heaven she’s gone. And now, my dear lady, is it necessary to keep that loaded pistol to my nose all through our conversation? | | Lady Corinthia | It’s not loaded. It’s heavy enough, goodness knows, without putting bullets in it. | | Mitchener | Triumphantly snatching his revolver from the drawer. Then I am master of the situation. This is loaded. Ha, ha! | | Lady Corinthia | But since we are not really going to shoot one another, what difference can it possibly make? | | Mitchener | Putting his pistol down on the table. True. Quite true. I recognize there the practical good sense that has prevented you from falling into the snares of the suffragettes. | | Lady Corinthia | The suffragettes, General, are the dupes of dowdies. A really attractive and clever woman⁠— | | Mitchener | Gallantly. Yourself, for instance. | | Lady Corinthia | Snatching up his revolver. Another step and you are a dead man. | | Mitchener | Amazed. My dear lady! | | Lady Corinthia | I am not your dear lady. You are not the first man who has concluded that because I am devoted to music and can reach F in alt with the greatest facility⁠—Patti never got above E flat⁠—I am marked out as the prey of every libertine. You think I am like the thousands of weak women whom you have ruined⁠— | | Mitchener | I solemnly protest⁠— | | Lady Corinthia | Oh, I know what you officers are. To you a woman’s honor is nothing, and the idle pleasure of the moment is everything. | | Mitchener | This is perfectly ridiculous. I never ruined anyone in my life. | | Lady Corinthia | Never! Are you in earnest? | | Mitchener | Certainly I am in earnest. Most indignantly in earnest. | | Lady Corinthia | Throwing down the pistol contemptuously. Then you have no temperament; you are not an artist. You have no soul for music. | | Mitchener | I’ve subscribed to the regimental band all my life. I bought two sarrusophones for it out of my own pocket. When I sang Tosti’s “Goodbye Forever” at Knightsbridge in 1880 the whole regiment wept. You are too young to remember that. | | Lady Corinthia | Your advances are useless. I⁠— | | Mitchener | Confound it, madam, can you not receive an innocent compliment without suspecting me of dishonorable intentions? | | Lady Corinthia | Love⁠—real love⁠—makes all intentions honorable. But you could never understand that. | | Mitchener | I’ll not submit to the vulgar penny-novelette notion that an officer is less honorable than a civilian in his relations with women. While I live I’ll raise my voice⁠— | | Lady Corinthia | Tush! | | Mitchener | What do you mean by tush? | | Lady Corinthia | You can’t raise your voice above its natural compass. What sort of voice have you? | | Mitchener | A tenor. What sort had you? | | Lady Corinthia | Had! I have it still. I tell you I am the highest living soprano. Scornfully. What was your highest note, pray? | | Mitchener | B flat⁠—once⁠—in 1879. I was drunk at the time. | | Lady Corinthia | Gazing at him almost tenderly. Though you may not believe me, I find you are more interesting when you talk about music than when you are endeavoring to betray a woman who has trusted you by remaining alone with you in your apartment. | | Mitchener | Springing up and fuming away to the fireplace. Those repeated insults to a man of blameless life are as disgraceful to you as they are undeserved by me, Lady Corinthia. Such suspicions invite the conduct they impute. She raises the pistol. You need not be alarmed: I am only going to leave the room. | | Lady Corinthia | Fish. | | Mitchener | Fish! This is worse than tush. Why fish? | | Lady Corinthia | Yes, fish: coldblooded fish. | | Mitchener | Dash it all, madam, do you want me to make advances to you? | | Lady Corinthia | I have not the slightest intention of yielding to them; but to make them would be a tribute to romance. What is life without romance? | | Mitchener | Making a movement towards her. I tell you⁠— | | Lady Corinthia | Stop. No nearer. No vulgar sensuousness. If you must adore, adore at a distance. | | Mitchener | This is worse than Mrs. Banger. I shall ask that estimable woman to come back. | | Lady Corinthia | Poor Mrs. Banger! Do not for a moment suppose, General Mitchener, that Mrs. Banger represents my views on the suffrage question. Mrs. Banger is a man in petticoats. I am every inch a woman; but I find it convenient to work with her. | | Mitchener | Do you find the combination comfortable? | | Lady Corinthia | I do not wear combinations, General: with dignity they are unwomanly. | | Mitchener | Throwing himself despairingly into the chair next the hearthrug. I shall go mad. I never for a moment dreamt of alluding to anything of the sort. | | Lady Corinthia | There is no need to blush and become self-conscious at the mention of underclothing. You are extremely vulgar, General. | | Mitchener | Lady Corinthia: you have my pistol. Will you have the goodness to blow my brains out. I should prefer it to any further effort to follow the gyrations of the weathercock you no doubt call your mind. If you refuse, then I warn you that you’ll not get another word out of me⁠—not if we sit here until doomsday. | | Lady Corinthia | I don’t want you to talk. I want you to listen. You do not yet understand my views on the question of the Suffrage. She rises to make a speech. I must preface my remarks by reminding you that the suffragette movement is essentially a dowdy movement. The suffragettes are not all dowdies; but they are mainly supported by dowdies. Now I am not a dowdy. Oh, no compliments⁠— | | Mitchener | I did not utter a sound. | | Lady Corinthia | Smiling. It is easy to read your thoughts. I am one of those women who are accustomed to rule the world through men. Man is ruled by beauty, by charm. The men who are not have no influence. The Salic Law, which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragettes would degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians, the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand women have the vote. What is the result? No poet ever makes a New Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New Zealand mutton. Look at the suffragettes themselves. The only ones who are popular are the pretty ones, who flirt with mobs as ordinary women flirt with officers. | | Mitchener | Then I understand you to hold that the country should be governed by the women after all. | | Lady Corinthia | Not by all the women. By certain women. I had almost said by one woman. By the women who have charm⁠—who have artistic talent⁠—who wield a legitimate, a refining influence over the men. She sits down gracefully, smiling, and arranging her draperies with conscious elegance. | | Mitchener | In short, madam, you think that if you give the vote to the man, you give the power to the women who can get round the man. | | Lady Corinthia | That is not a very delicate way of putting it; but I suppose that is how you would express what I mean. | | Mitchener | Perhaps you’ve never had any experience of garrison life. If you had, you’d have noticed that the sort of woman who is clever at getting round men is sometimes rather a bad lot. | | Lady Corinthia | What do you mean by a bad lot? | | Mitchener | I mean a woman who would play the very devil if the other women didn’t keep her in pretty strict order. I don’t approve of democracy, because it’s rot; and I’m against giving the vote to women because I’m not accustomed to it and therefore am able to see with an unprejudiced eye what infernal nonsense it is. But I tell you plainly, Lady Corinthia, that there is one game that I dislike more than either democracy or votes for women; and that is the game of Antony and Cleopatra. If I must be ruled by women, let me have decent women, and not⁠—well, not the other sort. | | Lady Corinthia | You have a coarse mind, General Mitchener. | | Mitchener | So has Mrs. Banger. And, by George! I prefer Mrs. Banger to you! | | Lady Corinthia | Bounding to her feet. You prefer Mrs. Banger to me!!! | | Mitchener | I do. You said yourself she was splendid. | | Lady Corinthia | You are no true man. You are one of those unsexed creatures who have no joy in life, no sense of beauty, no high notes. | | Mitchener | No doubt I am, madam. As a matter of fact, I am not clever at discussing public questions, because, as an English gentleman, I was not brought up to use my brains. But occasionally, after a number of remarks which are perhaps sometimes rather idiotic, I get certain convictions. Thanks to you, I have now got a conviction that this woman question is not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming anything else. She hasn’t any charm; and she has no high notes except when she’s giving her husband a piece of her mind, or calling down the street for one of the children. | | Lady Corinthia | How disgusting! | | Mitchener | Somebody must do the dowdy work! If we had to choose between pitching all the dowdies into the Thames and pitching all the lovely and accomplished women, the lovely ones would have to go. | | Lady Corinthia | And if you had to do without Wagner’s music or do without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. Pray does that make eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our bare existence than the cathedral. Even humbler apartments might make the same claim. But which is the more essential to the higher life? | | Mitchener | Your arguments are so devilishly ingenious that I feel convinced you got them out of some confounded book. Mine⁠—such as they are⁠—are my own. I imagine it’s something like this. There is an old saying that if you take care of the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves. Well, perhaps if we take care of the dowdies and the butchers and the bakers, the beauties and the bigwigs will take care of themselves. Rising and facing her determinedly. Anyhow, I don’t want to have things arranged for me by Wagner. I’m not Wagner. How does he know where the shoe pinches me? How do you know where the shoe pinches your washerwoman? you and your high F in alt! How are you to know when you haven’t made her comfortable unless she has a vote? Do you want her to come and break your windows? | | Lady Corinthia | Am I to understand that General Mitchener is a democrat and a suffragette? | | Mitchener | Yes: you have converted me⁠—you and Mrs. Banger. | | Lady Corinthia | Farewell, creature. Balsquith enters hurriedly. Mr. Balsquith: I am going to wait on General Sandstone. He, at least, is an officer and a gentleman. She sails out. | | Balsquith | Mitchener: the game is up. | | Mitchener | What do you mean? | | Balsquith | The strain is too much for the Cabinet. The old Liberal and Unionist Free Traders declare that if they are defeated on their resolution to invite tenders from private contractors for carrying on the Army and Navy, they will go solid for votes for women as the only means of restoring the liberties of the country which we have destroyed by compulsory military service. | | Mitchener | Infernal impudence! | | Balsquith | The Labor Party is taking the same line. They say the men got the Factory Acts by hiding behind the women’s petticoats, and that they will get votes for the army in the same way. | | Mitchener | Balsquith: we must not yield to clamor. I have just told this lady that I am at last convinced⁠— | | Balsquith | Joyfully.⁠—that the suffragettes must be supported? | | Mitchener | No: that the anti-suffragettes must be put down at all hazards. | | Balsquith | Same thing. | | Mitchener | No. For you now tell me that the Labor Party demands votes for women. That makes it impossible to give them, because it would be yielding to clamor. The one condition on which we can consent to grant anything in this country is that nobody shall presume to ask for it. | | Balsquith | Earnestly. Mitchener: it’s no use. You can’t have the conveniences of Democracy without its occasional inconveniences. | | Mitchener | What are its conveniences, I should like to know? | | Balsquith | Well, when you tell people that they are the real rulers and they can do what they like, nine times out of ten, they say “All right: tell us what to do.” But it happens sometimes that they get an idea of their own; and then of course you’re landed. | | Mitchener | Sh⁠— | | Balsquith | Desperately shouting him down. No: it’s no use telling me to shoot them down: I’m not going to do it. After all, I don’t suppose votes for women will make much difference. It hasn’t in the other countries in which it has been tried. | | Mitchener | I never supposed it would make any difference. What I can’t stand is giving in to that Pankhurst lot. Hang it all, Balsquith, it seems only yesterday that we put them in quod for a month. I said at the time that it ought to have been ten years. If my advice had been taken this wouldn’t have happened. It’s a consolation to me that events are proving how thoroughly right I was. | | | *The Orderly* rushes in. | | The Orderly | Look ’ere, sir: Mrs. Banger locked the door of General Sandstone’s room on the inside; an’ she’s sittin’ on his ’ead ’til he signs a proclamation for women to serve in the army. | | Mitchener | Put your shoulder to the door and burst it open. | | The Orderly | It’s only in storybooks that doors burst open as easy as that. Besides, I’m only too thankful to ’av a locked door between me and Mrs. B.; and so is all the rest of us. | | Mitchener | Cowards. Balsquith: to the rescue! He dashes out. | | Balsquith | Ambling calmly to the hearth. This is the business of the Sergeant at Arms rather than of the leader of the House. There’s no use in my tackling Mrs. Banger: she would only sit on my head too. | | The Orderly | You take my tip, Mr. Balsquith. Give the women the vote and give the army civil rights; and ’av done with it. | | | Mitchener returns and comes between them. | | Mitchener | Balsquith: prepare to hear the worst. | | Balsquith | Sandstone is no more? | | Mitchener | On the contrary, he is particularly lively. He has softened Mrs. Banger by a proposal of marriage in which he appears to be perfectly in earnest. He says he has met his ideal at last, a really soldierly woman. She will sit on his head for the rest of his life; and the British Army is now to all intents and purposes commanded by Mrs. Banger. When I remonstrated with Sandstone she positively shouted “Right about face. March” at me in the most offensive tone. If she hadn’t been a woman I should have punched her head. I precious nearly punched Sandstone’s. The horrors of martial law administered by Mrs. Banger are too terrible to be faced. I demand civil rights for the army. | | The Orderly | Chuckling. Wot ’oh, General! Wot ’oh! |