The Master of Mrs Chilvers | Page 7

For various sufficient reasons.
MRS. MOUNTCALM-VILLIERS So many of the Irish members have
expressed themselves quite sympathetically.
LADY MOGTON We wish them to continue to do so. [Turns to ST.
HERBERT.] I'm sorry.
ST. HERBERT A leader of the Orange Party was opposed by a
Nationalist, and the proceedings promised to be lively. They promised
for a while to be still livelier, owing to the nomination at the last
moment of the local lunatic.
PHOEBE [To ANNYS.] This is where we come in.
ST. HERBERT There is always a local lunatic, who, if harmless, is
generally a popular character. James Washington McCaw appears to
have been a particularly cheerful specimen. One of his eccentricities
was to always have a skipping-rope in his pocket; wherever the traffic
allowed it, he would go through the streets skipping. He said it kept
him warm. Another of his tricks was to let off fireworks from the roof

of his house whenever he heard of the death of anybody of importance.
The Returning Officer refused his nomination--which, so far as his
nominators were concerned, was intended only as a joke--on the
grounds of his being by common report a person of unsound mind. And
there, so far as South-west Belfast was concerned, the matter ended.
PHOEBE Pity.
ST. HERBERT But not so far as the Returning Officer was concerned.
McCaw appears to have been a lunatic possessed of means, imbued
with all an Irishman's love of litigation. He at once brought an action
against the Returning Officer, his contention being that his mental state
was a private matter, of which the Returning Officer was not the person
to judge.
PHOEBE He wasn't a lunatic all over.
ST. HERBERT We none of us are. The case went from court to court.
In every instance the decision was in favour of the Returning Officer.
Until it reached the House of Lords. The decision was given yesterday
afternoon--in favour of the man McCaw.
ELIZABETH Then lunatics, at all events, are not debarred from going
to the poll.
ST. HERBERT The "mentally deficient" are no longer debarred from
going to the poll.
ELIZABETH What grounds were given for the decision?
ST. HERBERT [He refers again to his notes.] A Returning Officer can
only deal with objections arising out of the nomination paper. He has
no jurisdiction to go behind a nomination paper and constitute himself
a court of inquiry as to the fitness or unfitness of a candidate.
PHOEBE Good old House of Lords!
[LADY MOGTON hammers.]

ELIZABETH But I thought it was part of the Returning Officer's duty
to inquire into objections, that a special time was appointed to deal with
them.
ST. HERBERT He will still be required to take cognisance of any
informality in the nomination paper or papers. Beyond that, this
decision relieves him of all further responsibility.
JANET But this gives us everything.
ST. HERBERT It depends upon what you call everything. It gives a
woman the right to go to the poll--a right which, as a matter of fact, she
has always possessed.
PHOEBE Then why did the Returning Officer for Camberwell in 1885
-
ST. HERBERT Because he did not know the law. And Miss Helen
Taylor had not the means possessed by our friend McCaw to teach it to
him.
ANNYS [Rises. She goes to the centre of the room.]
LADY MOGTON Where are you going?
ANNYS [She turns; there are tears in her eyes. The question seems to
recall her to herself.] Nowhere. I am so sorry. I can't help it. It seems to
me to mean so much. It gives us the right to go before the people--to
plead to them, not for ourselves, for them. [Again she seems to lose
consciousness of those at the table, of the room.] To the men we will
say: "Will you not trust us? Is it harm we have ever done you? Have we
not suffered for you and with you? Were we not sent into the world to
be your helpmeet? Are not the children ours as well as yours? Shall we
not work together to shape the world where they must dwell? Is it only
the mother-voice that shall not be heard in your councils? Is it only the
mother- hand that shall not help to guide?" To the women we will say:
"Tell them--tell them it is from no love of ourselves that we come from
our sheltered homes into the street. It is to give, not to get--to mingle

with the sterner judgments of men the deeper truths that God, through
pain, has taught to women--to mingle with man's justice woman's pity,
till there shall arise the perfect law--not made of man nor woman, but
of both, each bringing what the other lacks." And they will listen to us.
Till now