“Look,” said the suffragette, in a voice thin with scorn.
The gardener looked, but could see nothing that aroused in him a horror proportionate to his companion’s tone.
“Listen,” said the suffragette half an octave higher.
The gardener listened. But all he heard was, “Oh, my dear, it was too killing....”
Then, because the chauffeur on the bank paused in mid-sandwich, as if about to rebuke their curiosity, they walked on.
“One is born a woman,” said the suffragette. “A woman in her sphere—which is the home. One starts by thinking of one’s dolls, later one thinks about one’s looks, and later still about one’s clothes. But nobody marries one. And then one finds that one’s sphere—which is the home—has been a prison all along. Has it ever struck you that the tragedy of a woman’s life is that she has time to think—she can think and organise her sphere at the same time. Her work never lets her get away from herself. I tell you I have cried with disgust at the sound of my own name—I won’t give it to you, but it might as well be Jane Brown. I have gasped appalled at the banality of my Sunday hat. Yet I kept house excellently. And now I have run away, I am living a wide and gorgeous life of unwomanliness. I am trying to share your simplest privilege—the privilege you were born to through no merit of your own, you silly little boy—the privilege of having interests as wide as the world if you like, and of thinking to some purpose about England’s affairs. My England. Are you any Englisher than I?”
“You are becoming incoherent,” said the gardener. “You are enjoying a privilege which you do not share with me—the privilege of becoming hysterical in public and yet being protected by the law. You are a woman, and goodness knows that is privilege enough. It covers everything except politics. Also you have wandered from the point, which at one time appeared to be a picnic.”
(Courage. There is only a little more of this. But you must allow the woman the privilege of the last word. It is always more dignified to allow her what she is perfectly certain to take in any case.)
“The picnic was an example of that sphere of which ‘Oh, my dear, too killing ...’ is the motto. You educate women—to that. I might have been under one of those four hats—only I’m not pretty enough. You have done nothing to prevent it. I might have been an ‘Oh, my dear’ girl, but thank heaven I’m an incendiary instead.”
That was the end of that argument. The gardener could not reply as his heart prompted him, because the arguments that pressed to his lips were too obvious.