The Threat

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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Sir Lulworth Quayne sat in the lounge of his favourite restaurant, theGallus Bankiva, discussing the weaknesses of the world with his nephew,who had lately returned from a much-enlivened exile in the wilds ofMexico. It was that blessed season of the year when the asparagus andthe plover's egg are abroad in the land, and the oyster has not yetwithdrawn into it's summer entrenchments, and Sir Lulworth and his nephewwere in that enlightened after-dinner mood when politics are seen intheir right perspective, even the politics of Mexico. "Most of the revolutions that take place in this country nowadays," saidSir Lulworth, "are the product of moments of legislative panic. Take,for instance, one of the most dramatic reforms that has been carriedthrough Parliament in the lifetime of this generation. It happenedshortly after the coal strike, of unblessed memory. To you, who havebeen plunged up to the neck in events of a more tangled and tumbleddescription, the things I am going to tell you of may seem of secondaryinterest, but after all we had to live in the midst of them." Sir Lulworth interrupted himself for a moment to say a few kind words tothe liqueur brandy he had just tasted, and them resumed his narrative. "Whether one sympathises with the agitation for female suffrage or notone has to admit that its promoters showed tireless energy andconsiderable enterprise in devising and putting into action new methodsfor accomplishing their ends. As a rule they were a nuisance and aweariness to the flesh, but there were times when they verged on thepicturesque. There was the famous occasion when they enlivened anddiversified the customary pageantry of the Royal progress to openParliament by letting loose thousands of parrots, which had beencarefully trained to scream 'Votes for women,' and which circled roundhis Majesty's coach in a clamorous cloud of green, and grey and scarlet.It was really rather a striking episode from the spectacular point ofview; unfortunately, however, for its devisers, the secret of theirintentions had not been well kept, and their opponents let loose at thesame moment a rival swarm of parrots, which screeched 'I _don't_ think'and other hostile cries, thereby robbing the demonstration of theunanimity which alone could have made it politically impressive. In theprocess of recapture the birds learned a quantity of additional languagewhich unfitted them for further service in the Suffragette cause; some ofthe green ones were secured by ardent Home Rule propagandists and trainedto disturb the serenity of Orange meetings by pessimistic reflections onSir Edward Carson's destination in the life to come. In fact, the birdin politics is a factor that seems to have come to stay; quite recently,at a political gathering held in a dimly-lighted place of worship, thecongregation gave a respectful hearing for nearly ten minutes to ajackdaw from Wapping, under the impression that they were listening tothe Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was late in arriving." "But the Suffragettes," interrupted the nephew; "what did they do next?" "After the bird fiasco," said Sir Lulworth, "the militant section made ademonstration of a more aggressive nature; they assembled in force on theopening day of the Royal Academy Exhibition and destroyed some three orfour hundred of the pictures. This proved an even worse failure than theparrot business; every one agreed that there was always far too manypictures in the Academy Exhibition, and the drastic weeding out of a fewhundred canvases was regarded as a positive improvement. Moreover, fromthe artists' point of view it was realised that the outrage constituted asort of compensation for those whose works were persistently 'skied',since out of sight meant also out of reach. Altogether it was one of themost successful and popular exhibitions that the Academy had held formany years. Then the fair agitators fell back on some of their earliermethods; they wrote sweetly argumentative plays to prove that they oughtto have the vote, they smashed windows to show that they must have thevote, and they kicked Cabinet Ministers to demonstrate that they'd betterhave the vote, and still the coldly reasoned or unreasoned reply was thatthey'd better not. Their plight might have been summed up in aperversion of Gilbert's lines-- "Twenty voteless millions we, Voteless all against our will, Twenty years hence we shall be Twenty voteless millions still." And of course the great idea for their master-stroke of strategy camefrom a masculine source. Lena Dubarri, who was the captain-general oftheir thinking department, met Waldo Orpington in the Mall one afternoon,just at a time when the fortunes of the Cause were at their lowest ebb.Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-roomconcerts and can recognise bits from different composers withoutreferring to the programme, but all the same he occasionally has ideas.He didn't care a twopenny fiddlestring about the Cause, but he ratherenjoyed the idea of having his finger in the political pie. Also it ispossible, though I should think highly improbable, that he admired LenaDubarri. Anyhow, when Lena gave a rather gloomy account of the existingstate of things in the Suffragette World, Waldo was not merelysympathetic but ready with a practical suggestion. Turning his gazewestward along the Mall, towards the setting sun and Buckingham Palace,he was silent for a moment, and then said significantly, 'You haveexpended your energies and enterprise on labours of destruction; why hasit never occurred to you to attempt something far more terrific?' "'What do you mean?' she asked him eagerly. "'Create.' "'Do you mean create disturbances? We've been doing nothing else formonths,' she said. "Waldo shook his head, and continued to look westward along the Mall.He's rather good at acting in an amateur sort of fashion. Lena followedhis gaze, and then turned to him with a puzzled look of inquiry. "'Exactly,' said Waldo, in answer to her look. "'But--how can we create?' she asked; 'it's been done already.' "'Do it _again_,' said Waldo, 'and again and again--' "Before he could finish the sentence she had kissed him. She declaredafterwards that he was the first man she had ever kissed, and he declaredthat she was the first woman who had ever kissed him in the Mall, so theyboth secured a record of a kind. "Within the next day or two a new departure was noticeable in Suffragettetactics. They gave up worrying Ministers and Parliament and took toworrying their own sympathisers and supporters--for funds. The ballot-box was temporarily forgotten in the cult of the collecting-box. Thedaughters of the horseleech were not more persistent in their demands,the financiers of the tottering _ancien regime_ were not more desperatein their expedients for raising money than the Suffragist workers of allsections at this juncture, and in one way and another, by fair means andnormal, they really got together a very useful sum. What they were goingto do with it no one seemed to know, not even those who were most activein collecting work. The secret on this occasion had been well kept.Certain transactions that leaked out from time to time only added to themystery of the situation. "'Don't you long to know what we are going to do with our treasurehoard?' Lena asked the Prime Minister one day when she happened to sitnext to him at a whist drive at the Chinese Embassy. "'I was hoping you were going to try a little personal bribery,' heresponded banteringly, but some genuine anxiety and curiosity lay behindthe lightness of his chaff; 'of course I know,' he added, 'that you havebeen buying up building sites in commanding situations in and around theMetropolis. Two or three, I'm told, are on the road to Brighton, andanother near Ascot. You don't mean to fortify them, do you?' "'Something more insidious than that,' she said; 'you could prevent usfrom building forts; you can't prevent us from erecting an exact replicaof the Victoria Memorial on each of those sites. They're all privateproperty, with no building restrictions attached.' "'Which memorial?' he asked; 'not the one in front of Buckingham Palace?Surely not that one?' "'That one,' she said. "'My dear lady,' he cried, 'you can't be serious. It is a beautiful andimposing work of art--at any rate one is getting accustomed to it, andeven if one doesn't happen to admire it one can always look in anotherdirection. But imagine what life would be like if one saw that erectionconfronting one wherever one went. Imagine the effect on people withtired, harassed nerves who saw it three times on the way to Brighton andthree times on the way back. Imagine seeing it dominate the landscape atAscot, and trying to keep your eye off it on the Sandwich golf links.What have your countrymen done to deserve such a thing?' "'They have refused us the vote,' said Lena bitterly. "The Prime Minister always declared himself an opponent of anythingsavouring of panic legislation, but he brought a Bill into Parliamentforthwith and successfully appealed to both Houses to pass it through allits stages within the week. And that is how we got one of the mostglorious measures of the century." "A measure conferring the vote on women?" asked the nephew. "Oh dear, no. An Act which made it a penal offence to erectcommemorative statuary anywhere within three miles of a public highway."

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