CHAPTER VII.

A MEDLEY OF CONVERSATION.

Ned dreaded that rejoining the others on the verandah, but he need not have.  They had forced the conversation at first, but gradually it became natural.  It had turned on the proper sphere of woman, and went on without being interrupted by the new-comers.  Nobody took any notice of them.  The girls were seated.  Stratton lay smoking in the hammock.  The other men perched smoking on the railing.  The gaslight had been turned down and in the gloom the cigar ends gleamed with each respiration.  In spite of the damp it was very cosy.  From the open door behind a ray of light fell upon the darkness-covered water below.  Beyond were circling the lights of Sydney.  Dotting the black night here and there were the signal lamps of anchored ships.

“We want perfect equality for woman with man,” asserted Ford, in a conclusive tone of voice.

“We want woman in her proper sphere,” maintained Stratton, from the hammock.

“What do you call ‘her proper sphere?’” asked Nellie.

“This:  That she should fulfil the functions assigned to her by Nature.  That she should rule the home and rear children.  That she should be a wife and a mother.  That she should be gentle as men are rough, and, to pirate the Americanism, as she rocked the cradle should rock the world.”

“How about equality?” demanded Ford.

“Equality!  What do you mean by equality?  Is it equality to scramble with men in the search for knowledge, narrow hipped and flat-chested?  Is it equality to grow coarse and rough and unsexed in the struggle for existence?  Ah!  Let our women once become brutalised, masculinised, and there will be no hope for anything but a Chinese existence.”

“Who wants to brutalise them?” asked Ford.

“What would your women be like?” asked Nellie.

“Look out for Madame there, Stratton!” said George.

“What would my women be like?  Full-lipped and broad-hearted, fit to love and be loved!  Full-breasted and broad-hipped fit to have children!  Full-brained and broad-browed, fit to teach them!  My women should be the embodiment of the nation, and none of them should work except for those they loved and of their own free will.”

“Sort of queen bees!” remarked Nellie.  “Why have them work at all?”

“Why?  Is it ‘work’ for a mother to nurse her little one, to wash it, to dress it, to feed it, to watch it at night, to nurse it when it sickens, to teach it as it grows?  And if she does that does she not do all that we have a right to ask of her?  Need we ask her to earn her own living and bear children as well?  Shall we make her a toy and a slave, or harden her to battle with men?  I wouldn’t.  My women should be such that their children would hold them sacred and esteem all women for their sakes.  I don’t want the shrieking sisterhood, hard-voiced and ugly and unlovable, perpetuated.  And they will not be perpetuated.  They can’t make us marry them.  Their breed must die out.”