XXIII
THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE

I never knew how really splendid a possession was this of the vote until the last election. It is no wonder to me now that women throw dignity to the four winds of heaven, leaving it to chance and the grace of God whether it ever blows back to them again. It is no wonder to me that, for the moment, they can forget their glorious heritage in order to obtain this mysterious joy of recording their vote on a little slip of paper in the secrecy of the ballot-box.

As a mystery—and all mysteries are power—it had never appealed to me. As a means of urging the laws of the country in such direction as one was pleased to consider for that country’s good, it did once seem to me to be invaluable. I know by now what a hopeless fallacy that is. But at that time, nursing a political conviction that Home Rule would be good for Ireland as a people, much as I am led to believe food is good to a starving man, or a sense of religion to a drifting woman, I listened to the eloquent appeal of a canvasser for a Unionist candidate.

When he had finished telling me much more than either of us knew about Tariff Reform, and had built such a Navy before my eyes as would have frightened the whole German Government and any single English ratepayer out of their wits, I asked him what the Unionist candidate felt about Home Rule.

“Home Rule?” said he, carefully—“You approve of Home Rule?”

I walked gently and easily into the canvasser’s trap.

“You don’t denationalise a country,” said I, “because you conquer it. You can’t cut the soul out of Ireland any more than you can wash a nigger white. You can only boycott it. You can only paint a nigger. But boycotting won’t starve the soul of any nation. If it can’t get food for itself from the nation’s stores, it will still live, feeding from the country-side on the wild herb of endurance. But there is that which you can do. You can boycott it.”

“And you think that Home Rule will encourage the development of the Irish people?” said he.

I admitted that the idea had occurred to me.

“Well, Mr. —— is quite of your way of thinking,” he replied.

“He would support it with his vote in the House?” said I.

“Most assuredly!” he declared.

“I shall vote for Mr. ——,” said I.

And so I should, had I not gone to one of his meetings in the Town Hall. He, too, spoke eloquently about Tariff Reform and a Navy that would keep our country what it was; but in the midst of it, a cockney voice endeavoured to heckle him from the back of the hall.

“’Ow about ’Ome Rule?” shouted the voice.

The Unionist candidate had been heckled before.

“How about it?” he asked sharply, like the crack of a pistol.

“Are you going to let the Roman Catholics get the ’old in Ireland?”

“And make them a menace to England, too—do you think it’s likely?” replied the candidate.

I walked away. “The vote,” said I to myself, “the vote is only a catchpenny title for a popular game. It would be much better to gamble than vote. You might get something for your money if you backed the right man with a shilling; but you get nothing for backing him with your vote. In future,” said I, “I shall bet.”

Yet only a little while afterwards I was to learn what a glorious thing the vote is.

In my village there is an amiable labourer with that cast of countenance upon which, as on the possessions of his great country, the sun never sets. And with it all, he has that placidity of manner, that evenness of gait which suggest that he is always going to or coming from a service at his chapel.

No one would ever dream of consulting him upon anything, though, indeed, I once did ask him the name of a certain plant.

“There be some as call it the Deadly shade,” said he, “and some as call it the Nightly shade, but I don’t know rightly which it be.”

When later on, for my own foolish amusement, I said I had heard it was called the Deadly shade, he replied in precisely the same fashion. I tried him once more, by saying that I had looked up a book on the subject and found it to be the Nightly shade. Again he replied, word for word, as before.

At last, a few weeks later, I came to him and said—

“You know we were all wrong about that plant. I find at South Kensington Museum that the proper name for it is the Deadly Nightshade.”

And what do you think he replied? “There be some,” said he, “as call it the Deadly shade, and some as call it the Nightly shade, but I don’t know rightly which it be.”

Now that man’s wife had no respect for him, and truly I’m not surprised. I found out, too, that he knew it—it would not, of course, be a difficult fact to ascertain—and I felt sorry for him.

And then one day—the day before the polling in our village—all my pity for him was ended. I met him on the road, carrying home his bag of tools.

“Well,” said I, “are you going to vote to-morrow?”

His face broadened with a beaming smile.

“I am that,” said he.

“Who are you going to vote for?” I asked.

A cunning look crept into his little twinkling eyes, and he said—

“Ah—that’s telling.”

I admitted that there was that to it and asked him to tell me.

He shook his head.

“I keeps that to myself,” said he. “We’re not supposed to tell who we vote for. All they votes is counted secret.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t tell anybody?” I asked.

“No,” he replied—“I don’t tell none.”

“But you tell your wife,” said I.

He shook his head again, and his smile was broader and his eyes more cunning than ever.

“Surely she wants to know,” I exclaimed.

“Ah—she may want to know, but that ain’t my tellin’ her—is it?”

Then I suddenly realised what a glorious weapon he possessed. A weapon which, when everything else—even intelligence—failed, would make him master in his own house.

“That must give you a splendid sense of importance in your own home,” said I—“Don’t they think you’re a fine fellow?”

“P’raps they do.”

“And all because you’ve got the mystery of a vote.”

“I can’t think of no other reason,” said he.

So whenever the question of giving women the vote is raised, I can think, too, of no other reason for their wanting it. A woman will bow her head before a mystery when all sense of worship has left her. It is this which gives her so much respect for the priesthood; it is this perhaps which gives her her desire for the vote.