She throws herself face downwards on the sofa upon which she had been reclining so daintily, when Lady Manderton called in upon her but a short time since. There is a big black void all round Vivi Trevor’s heart, a dull, hopeless feeling of despair. Large tears are welling up into her beautiful eyes, and bitter sobs shake her slight, girlish frame.
Poor Vivi! She is truly miserable, and yet she has no idea how to end that misery. In a like position, Lady Manderton had risen equal to the occasion; but then the latter is of different stuff to her hitherto gay, unthinking friend, a woman of stronger brain and sterner mould, one who is able to make up her mind, and act promptly when occasion requires it.
There she lies, this victim of neglected childhood and unfair, unnatural laws. She lies there, a living protest against the selfishness and conceit that have built up that wall within which she lies imprisoned. Of what good is life to such as she, whose education since childhood has been vain, mindless, ephemeral? If Vivi Trevor had never been born, the world would have lost nothing. And yet, as a drop is to an ocean, so is the life of this one despairing soul to the thousands who, like her, have gone down to their graves in uselessness and obscurity, not because in natural body and mind they were unfitted to work in the great army of man, not because in desire and willingness they were found wanting, but because of that barrier, that artificial mountain which one sex has forbidden the other sex to climb, which one sex has erected in the face of Nature, to shut out the operations of Nature’s laws.
These words but reflect the thoughts of thousands, who, wearily struggling along the path of life, ask themselves wonderingly, “Why existence, if this is all it brings?” Many a tired and saddened soul has lain itself down to die, with the undefined feeling that the wasted life left behind might not have been if only—only—ay, if only what? Gloria de Lara, Flora Desmond, and others, could answer that vague, yearning cry. They would reply, “If only Nature had been obeyed.” Therein lies the secret of the troubles of this world, the suffering, agony, and misery that millions have to put up with, while a clique lives and reigns, making laws and leading the multitude by the nose under the guise of liberty and freedom! For every happy heart, thousands there are of wretched ones; for every well-fed mortal, thousands there are who starve and suffer. The world is old, its years unknown to the ken of man. Through all these years man has ruled therein, and this is what he has brought it to! Can he do nothing better? Yes, but only hand in hand with woman. Nature declares it; and he who would fight against Nature, must create the evils that torture the world.
CHAPTER VII.
Downing Street is awake betimes, and within the precincts of the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury an unusual stir and signs of an unwonted anxiety are perceivable. Seated around a long oblong table in a singularly doleful-looking room, are a baker’s dozen of gentlemen, apparently in eager discussion. Perplexity and anxiety is on every face, not unmixed, in some cases, with vacuity. A stranger dropped from the clouds, and unaccustomed to the ways, and manners, and customs of our planet, might innocently inquire who these disturbed-looking personages are, and what their business? He would be told in reply that the personages are nothing more nor less than the Sovereign of Great Britain’s Ministers, their business, the holding of a Cabinet Council. But at such an hour, nine o’clock in the morning! Why, in the ordinary course of affairs, poor old Lord Muddlehead, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, would be adjusting his night-cap, and turning over for his second sleep in bed, and that excellent nonentity, Lord Donothing, Lord President of the Council and Privy Seal, would be sweetly dreaming of rest and peace, well merited and well earned, after the arduous and fatiguing duties attaching to his noble office!
However, a matter of importance has shaken sleep from their eyes, as they have been summoned post-haste to attend their chief on urgent public business.
The chief in question, the first Lord of the Treasury, the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Ireland, is the Duke of Devonsmere, a tall, aristocratic-looking man, with thick moustaches, whiskers, and beard, in which the grey hairs of advancing age are rapidly gathering. He has thick lips, a not very pleasant eye, and a forehead chiefly remarkable for the crease or wrinkle, which, starting from the centre, runs down perpendicularly to meet the nose. He has a voice far from genial; and, in fact, his manner all round is cold, and haughty, and unwinning.
The duke is a good speaker. That is his chief forte. He has not particularly distinguished himself through life as a great politician, though he has held high posts in various Ministries. He has been Secretary for War in a former Ministry, but seceded from his chief when this latter brought in his Irish Home Rule Bill. No one has ever been able to accuse the Duke of Devonsmere of attempting to aggrandise himself. In politics he has been strictly honest according to his lights, though many believe that in the old days of Conservatives and Liberals, he would have graced more appropriately the ranks of the former, which as a Unionist he eventually joined. However, those days are past. There are no Liberals, or Conservatives, or Unionists now. The former having adopted the Progressist title, the two latter become merged in the National party, of which party the Duke of Devonsmere is the head.