Mrs. Warrens Daughter | Page 6

whenever he could get away from Storrington or
some such place and from his City office, he used to visit Beryl. This
had been going on for three years. But last February she had to break it
to her mother that she was six months gone. The other wife knows all
about it but refuses to divorce the naughty architect, and at the same
time has cut off supplies--What cowards men are and how little women
stand by women! And then it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five
younger brothers that have got to be educated. Her sculpture was little
more than commissions executed for her architect's building and I
expect that resource will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her
in here, when she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and
you know we are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House
Agent ... She writes sometimes for Country Life..."

_Vivie_: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our
college-mates. Any more gone wrong?"
_Norie_: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see that it
is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storgé' and have a baby out
of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society doesn't damn
the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; but it does its best
to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress or a singer. If a woman
likes to go through all the misery of pregnancy and the pangs of
delivery on her own account and without being legally tied up with a
man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate, is quite unashamed, and says
she shall have as many children as her earnings support ... that it will be
great fun choosing their sires--more variety in their types.... Is she the
New Woman, I wonder?"
_Vivie_: "Well the whole thing bores me ... I suppose I am embittered
and disgusted. I'm sick of all this sexual nonsense.... Yes, after all, I
approve of the marriage tie: it takes away the romance of love, and it's
that romance which is usually so time-wasting and so dangerous. It
conceals often a host of horrors ... But I'm a sort of neuter. All I want in
life is hard work ... a cause to fight for.... Revenge ... revenge on Man.
God! How I hate men; how I despise them! We can do anything they
can if we train and educate. I have taken to your business because it is
one of the crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man's fastnesses of
the Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work..."
_Norie_: "My dear! You have quite a platform manner already. I
predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious women....
But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want women to
work--even at quite humble things--before they insist on equal rights
with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an honest livelihood
without depending on some one man.... Business seems to be good, eh?
If the first half of this year is equalled by the second, I should think
there would be a profit to be divided of quite a thousand pounds?"
_Vivie_: "Quite. Of course we are regular pirates. None of the actuarial
or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can't pass exams
and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated accountants. But

if women clients choose to consult us there is no law to prevent them,
or to make our giving advice illegal. So we advise and estimate and do
accounts and calculate probabilities. Then although we can't call
ourselves Solicitors we can--or at any rate we do--give legal advice.
We can't figure on the Stock Exchange, but we can advise clients about
their investments and buy and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I
want you to give me your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on
that Kent fruit farm). We are consulted on contracts ... I'm going to start
a women authors' branch, and perhaps a tourist agency. Some day we
will have a women's publishing business, we'll set up a women's
printing press, a paper mill.... Of course as you know I am working
hard on law ... not only to understand men's roguery in every direction,
but so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other
woman's solicitor work. That's going to be my first struggle with Man:
to claim admittance to the Bar.... If we can once breach that rampart the
Vote must inevitably follow. Oh how we have been dumb before our
shearers! The rottenness of Man's law.... The perjury, corruption, waste
of time,