“Well, as I tell Amy,” he said, “if our friends come here expecting to hear all the tittle-tattle of the place, they will be in for a disappointment. Amy and I like to give our friends a hearty welcome and a good dinner, and pleasant conversation about really interesting things. I know little about the gossip of the town; you would find me strangely ignorant if you wanted to talk about it. But politics now—one of those beastly Radical members of Parliament lunched with us only the week before last, and I assure you that Amy asked him some questions he found it hard to answer. In fact, he didn’t answer them: he begged the question, begged the question. There was one, I remember, which just bowled him out. She said, ‘What is to happen to the parks of the landed gentry, if you take them away from the owners?’ Well, that bowled him out, as they say in cricket. Look at Sir James’s place, for instance, your cousin’s place, Amy’s cousin’s place. Will they plant a row of villas along the garden terrace? And who is to live in them if they do? Grant that Lloyd George—she said that—grant that Lloyd George wants a villa there, that will be one villa. But the terrace there will hold a dozen villas. Who will take the rest of them? She asked him that. They take away all our property, and then expect us to build houses on other people’s! Don’t talk to me!”
The concluding sentence was not intended to put a stop on this pleasant conversation; it was only the natural ejaculation of one connected with landed proprietors. Mrs. Evans understood it in that sense.
“Do tell me all about it,” she said. “Of course, I am only a woman, and we are supposed to have no brains, are we not? and to be able to understand nothing about politics. But will they really take my cousin James’s place away from him? I think Radicals must be wicked.”
“More fools than knaves, I always say,” said Major Ames magnanimously. “They are deluded, like the poor Suffragettes. Suffragettes now! A woman’s sphere of influence lies in her home. Women are the queens of the earth; I’ve often said that, and what do queens want with votes? Would Amy have any more influence in Riseborough if she had a vote? Not a bit of it. Well, then, why go about smacking the faces of policemen and chaining yourself to a railing? If I had my way——”
Major Ames became of lower voice and greater confidence.
“Amy doesn’t wholly agree with me,” he said; “and it’s a pleasure to thrash the matter out with somebody like yourself, who has sensible views on the subject. What use are women in politics? None at all, as you just said. It’s for women to rock the cradle, and rule the world. I say, and I have always said, that to give them a vote would be to wreck their influence, God bless them. But Amy doesn’t agree with me. I say that I will vote—she’s a Conservative, of course, and so am I—I will vote as she wishes me to. But she says it’s the principle of the thing, not the practice. But what she calls principle, I call want of principle. Home: that’s the woman’s sphere.”
Mrs. Evans gave a little sigh.
“I never heard it so beautifully expressed,” she said. “Major Ames, why don’t you go in for politics?”
Major Ames felt himself flattered; he felt also that he deserved the flattery. Hence, to him now, it ceased to be flattery, and became a tribute. He became more confidential, and vastly more vapid.