“Suppose we don’t win this year?” asked Julia, languidly.
“We won’t!” said Mrs. Maundrell, emphatically. “They’re merely hedging. There’s nothing for us but to fight the Liberals at every general election until we get the Conservatives in.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Ishbel, who, like many of the women, was certain of victory in that year of 1910 which was to bring their “Black Friday.” “The Government may hate us, but they have given ample proof that they fear us; they know it is time to make friends of us. They will consent to the enfranchisement of only a limited number, of course, but I wouldn’t care if they only enfranchised the wives of Cabinet ministers. Let them make the fatal admission that woman has a political and legal existence and the rest is only a matter of time.”
“Yes, and nobody knows that better than themselves. They may be brutes, but they are not fools. I don’t hope for it—perhaps not even from the Conservatives—until fully four-fifths of the wives of this country have risen and devilled the lives out of their husbands. And the average British female is about as easy to wake up as a stuffed hippopotamus. She merely protrudes her front teeth and says, ‘How very odd!’ No, Julia can’t leave us. Fatal gift, that of leadership. Must take the consequences, old girl.”
“Who said I wouldn’t? Women have fallen in love without marrying before this. I intend to remain in love for a fortnight longer. Then I shall forget it and return to work.”
“Yes, if you can. I fought, fought like the devil. Didn’t I confide in you? Didn’t I look like the last rose? You are strong, but so am I. Let me tell you that love is a disease —”
“Quite so. There you have it. Love is a disease—of the subconscious or instinctive mind. It is a profound auto-suggestion, induced, in the region where the primal instincts dwell, by the superior suggestive power of some one else, and can be treated mentally like any disease of the body.”
Bridgit flung herself on the floor and clasped her knees. “How diabolically interesting! Tell us how you do it.”
Ishbel smiled and lit another cigarette.
“I may not be able to do it myself. Love, like sleep, the circulation of the blood, the digestive apparatus, to say nothing of drug and drink habits, is controlled by the subconscious mind. We can unwittingly give ourselves suggestions, but not deliberately. But all mental diseases, short of insanity, can be cured by counter-suggestions, administered by an expert. If I found that my will was helpless before intermittent attacks of love fever, and all that horrible accompaniment of longing and aching we read about, to say nothing of confusion of mind which unfits one for work, I should go to Paris and put myself in the hands of an eminent psychotherapeutist I know of. He would throw me into a semicataleptic state, or hypnotic, if I were not amenable in the other, and give me counter-suggestions until I was as completely cured as if I merely had had an attack of insomnia, or had taken a drug until it had weakened my will.”