Walter Besant

“ Let us recognise the truth that a young man cannot but abhor and loathe so unnatural a union as that of twenty years with forty, fifty, sixty. For my own part, I do not wonder that a man so high-spirited as Lord Chester should have been driven to madness. All in this House know well, without any pretences as to the honour of Peeresses, that a majority in favour of the Duchess was certain. Can any one believe that the judgment of the House would have been given for the happiness of the young man? ”

“ And now, dear child,’—he called her, the late Home Secretary, ‘dear child,’—‘as this is a solemn night, and we have much to think of and to do ... one word before we part. Constance, you have by this act of yours, cast in your lot with us, because you thought to save my life. Everything is risked upon to-morrow’s victory. If we fail we die. Are you ready to die with me?’
She made no reply. The old feeling, the overwhelming force of the man, made her cheek white and her heart faint. ”

“ Does any educated woman now believe in the Perfect Woman, except as a means of keeping men down?
‘As for our trade, it is gone; as for our greatness, it is gone; as for our industries, they are gone; as for our arts, they have perished: we stand alone, the contempt of the world to whom we are no longer a Power. Our men are kept in ignorance; they are forbidden to rise, by their own work, from one class to another; class and caste distinctions are deepened, and differences in rank are multiplied; there is no more science; electricity, steam, heat, and air are the servants of man no longer ”

“ Don’t think I’m afeard for myself. I’m but a poor creature—easy to find plenty as good as me; and if so be I must end my days in a convict-prison, why, I’d rather do it for you, my lord, than for lying accusations.’
‘Good, Harry,’ Lord Chester held out his hand. ‘We understand each other. Death rather than a convict-prison. We strike for freedom. ”

“ After the bands came the mounted Guards; then followed heralds; then came the Venerable Bishop of London, who was to crown the King, in a carriage; then officers of State on horseback; then the King’s faithful Guards, those sturdy gamekeepers who stood by him at the beginning; and last of all, save for a regiment of cavalry which brought up the rear, the King himself on horseback—gallant, young, handsome, his face lit with the sunshine of success; and riding beside him—at sight of whom a shout went up that rent the air—no other than the beautiful Lady Carlyon herself. ”

“ When the ladies retired, the Bishop began to talk of the Great Cause.
‘Your training,’ he said to Lord Chester, ‘has been, by my directions, that of a Prince rather than a private gentleman. That is to say, you have been taught a great many things, but you have not become a specialist. These friends of ours,’—he pointed to his group of disciples,—‘are, each in his own line, better than yourself, and better than you will ever try to become. A Prince should be a patron of art, learning, and science and literature; but it does not become him to be an artist, a scholar, a philosopher, or a poet. ”

“ As girls at school, everybody had learned about the Great Transition, and the way in which the transfer of Power, which marked the last and greatest step of civilisation, had been brought about: the gradual substitution of women for men in the great offices; the spread of the new religion; the abolition of the monarchy; the introduction of pure theocracy, in which the ideal Perfect Woman took the place of a personal sovereign; the wise measures by which man’s rough and rude strength was disciplined into obedience,—all these things were mere commonplaces of education. ”

“ These men, they told each other, had torn down Religion, scoffed at things holy, and proclaimed divorce where the husband had been forced to marry; they pretended that theirs was the right to rule; they were going to destroy every social institution. Should such wretches be allowed to live?
Yet, always, the whisper, the suspicion, the doubt, the question, put not in words, but by looks and gestures,—‘What have we women done that we should deserve to rule? and which among us does not know that the Religion of the Perfect Woman was only invented by ourselves for the better suppression of man? ”

“ It is the calmness of repression. Those men in the fields, those working men sitting at the windows—they are all alike unhappy, and they know not why. It is because the natural order has been reversed; the sex which should command and create is compelled to work in blind obedience. You will see, as we go on, that we, who have usurped the power, have created nothing, improved nothing, carried on nothing. It is for you, Lord Chester, to restore the old order.’
‘If I can—if I can find words,’ he stammered. ”

“ Men worked their hardest in order to pour their treasures into the lap of woman. All the reverence, all the poetry, all the imagination with which the lower nature of man was endowed, had been freely spent and lavished in the service of woman. From his earliest infancy, women surrounded, protected, and thought for men. Why, what was this, what could this mean, but a foreshadowing, an indication, a revelation, by slow and natural means, of the worship of the Perfect Woman, dimly comprehended as yet, but manifesting its power over the heart? ”

“ Love knows no mastery. Yet man must rule outside the house.’
‘Oh!’ Constance could say no more.
‘Believe me, this is the true place of woman; she is the giver of happiness and love; she is the mother and the wife. As for us, we have reigned and have tried to rule. How much we have failed, no one knows better than yourself.’
Grace guided her companion to a great marquee, where the company of girls, sobered now, and rather tearful, because their sweethearts were to go a-fighting in earnest on the morrow, were making lint and bandages. ”

“ A greater shock was the simple service of the Ancient Faith which followed.
To begin with, there were no flowers, no incense girls, no anthems, no pictures of Sainted Women, no figures of the Holy Mother, no veiled Perfect Woman on an altar crowned with roses; and there were no genuflections, no symbolical robes, no mystic whisperings, no change of dress, no pretence at mysterious powers. All was perfectly simple—a few prayers, a lesson from a great book, a hymn, and then a short address. ”

“ Finally, the wife, stung by words whose bitterness was embittered by their truth, cried aloud, taking the bystanders to witness, that the husband for whose sake, she said, she had endured patiently the falsehoods and accusations of yonder hussy, was nothing better than a beater, a striker, a kicker, a trampler, and a cuffer of his wife.
‘I’ve borne it long,’ she cried, ‘but I will bear it no longer. To prison he shall go. If I am an old woman, and like to die, you shall never have him—do you hear? ”

“ Here, while the organ pealed among the venerable aisles of the University Church, while the clouds of incense rolled about before the Veiled Statue on the altar, while the hymn was lifted, while the preacher in shrill tones defended a knotty point in theology, while the dons and heads of houses slumbered in their places, while the few undergraduates remaining up for the Long leaned over the gallery and looked about among the men below for some handsome face to admire, Lord Chester sat motionless, gazing straight before him, obedient to the form, with his thoughts far away. ”

“ For my own part, I find the words touching and true to nature.’
‘How would it do?’ asked Lord Chester, smiling, ‘to invert the thing? Could we have a ballad showing how a young lady—she must be young—pined away and died for love of a man who broke his promise?’
They all laughed at this picture, but the young men looked as if Lord Chester had said something wonderful in its audacity. ”

“ The girls received him with smiles of welcome. The elder, Grace—a girl whose sweetness of face was new to Lord Chester, accustomed to the hard lines which a life of combat so early brings upon a woman’s eyes and brow—had, which was the first thing he noticed in her, large, clear gray eyes of singular purity. The other, Faith, was smaller, slighter, and perhaps more lovely, though in a different way, a less spiritual fashion. Both, in the outer world would have been considered painfully shy. Lord Chester was beginning to consider shyness as a virtue in women. ”

“ In those days, the flower of woman’s life was not wasted in study and competition. The maidens were wooed while they were young and beautiful; their lovers worked for them, surrounded them with pleasant things, lapped them in warmth, brought them all that they could desire, made their lives a restful dream of love. It has come to this, O women of the New Faith, that you have thrown away the love of men, and with it the whole joy of creation! ”

“ Why should women do all, as well as think for all? ‘It must be considered, again, that every man cannot be married; indeed, under the present state of things few women can think of marriage till they have arrived at middle age, and therefore most men must remain single. Why should we doom them to a long life of forced inaction? Happier far the rustic who ploughs the field, or the cobbler who patches the village boots.’ Then there followed an artful and specious reference to old times: ‘Under the former régime, men worked, and women, in the freedom of the house, thought. ”

“ But if a man cannot be allowed—for the sake of his precious reputation—to ride without a girl trailing at his heels, why, I suppose there is no more to be said. No, Constance; it is worse than the new groom.’
‘Edward, you are too masterful,’ said his cousin, gravely. ‘One cannot, even if he be Earl of Chester, fly in the face of all the convenances. Rules are made to protect the weak for their own sake; the strong obey them for the sake of the weak. ”

“ Ever since Lord Chester had become awakened to the degradation of man and the possibility of his restoration, his mind had been continually exercised by the absolute impossibility of reconciling his new Cause with his Religion. How could the Grand Revolt be carried out in the teeth of the most sacred commandments? How could he remain a faithful servant of the Church, and yet rebel against the first law of the Church? How could he continue to worship the Perfect Woman when he was thrusting woman out of her place? ”

“ Lastly, whereas no one was formerly allowed to marry unless she could support a husband and family, and then one had to go through all sorts of humiliating conferences with parents and guardians,—under the new régime every man seemed making love with all his might to every girl. Could anything be more delightful? Was it not infinitely better to be wooed and made love to when one was young, than to woo for oneself when one had already passed her best?
Then was born again that sweet feminine gift of coquetry: girls once more pretended to be cruel, whimsical, giddy, careless, and mischievous ”

“ The ignorance in which boys are brought up is disgraceful! A ward in Chancery to express an opinion upon his own marriage! Positively a real ward in Chancery! Is the world turning upside down?’
The audacity of the remark, and the happy calmness with which it was proffered, were irresistible. All the ladies, except the Chancellor, laughed. The Duchess loudly. This little escapade of youth and ignorance amused her. Constance laughed too, with a little pity. The Professor laughed with some show of shame, as if Lord Chester’s ignorance reflected in a manner upon herself. ”

“ A reputation of ill-temper is, fortunately, the best safeguard possible for a young man who would possess his soul in freedom. I try to persuade myself that necessary deception is harmless deception; and if we succeed——’ he paused and sighed. ‘Come, my lord, let me teach you something of the true Faith.’
They spent the whole morning together, while Clarence Veysey unfolded the mysteries of the Ancient Faith, and showed how divine a thing it was, and how fitted for every possible phase or emergency of life. His earnestness, the sincerity and honesty of his belief, deeply moved Lord Chester. ”

“ It was too much the custom in society for girls to show no regard whatever for the opinions or the wishes of their fathers.
The younger daughter, Faith, talked less; but Lord Chester noticed that as she sat next to Algy Dunquerque, that young man frequently ceased to join in the general conversation, and exchanged whispers with her; and they were whispers which made her eyes to soften and her cheek to glow. Good; in the new state of things the men would do the wooing for themselves. He thought of Constance, and wished she had been there. ”

“ The Duchess of Dunstanburgh! Sixty-five years of age; already thrice a widow; the Duchess of Dunstanburgh! She could not speak.
‘Have you nothing to say, Constance?’ asked the young man. ‘Do you not envy me my happy lot? My bride is not young to be sure, but she is a Duchess; the old Earldom will be lost in the new Duchy. She has buried three husbands already; one may look forward with joy to lying beside them in her gorgeous mausoleum. Her country house is finer than mine, but it is not so old. She is of rank so exalted that one need not inquire into her temper, which is said to be evil ”

“ We have lost our reigning family, and have neither king nor queen; we have thrown away our old hereditary aristocracy, and replaced it by a false and pretentious House, in which the old titles have descended through a line of women, and the new ones have been created for the noisiest of the first female legislators; we have abolished our House of Commons, and given all the power to the Peeresses; we have lost the old worship, and invented a creed which has not even the merit of commanding the respect of those who are most interested in keeping it up. ”

“ And in proportion to the soundness of his training, and the goodness of his heart, is he embarrassed when the time of his great happiness arrives.’ The Professor bowed, and spread her hands as if in agreement with so much wisdom so beautifully expressed. ‘Lord Chester,’ continued the Duchess, ‘I have long watched you in silence; I have seen in you qualities which, I believe, befit a consort of my rank. You possess pride of birth, dexterity, skill, grace; you know how to wield such authority as becomes a man. You will exchange your earl’s coronet for the higher one of a duke. ”

“ They say that Lord Chester is, of all men, the least submissive, the least docile, the least manly—in the highest sense of the word. He habitually assumes authority which belongs to Us; he flies into violent rages; he horsewhips stable-boys; he presumptuously defies orders; he almost openly derides the laws which regulate man’s obedience. He questions—he actually questions—the fundamental principles on which society and government are based.’
‘Quite as it should be,’ said the Duchess, folding her hands. ”