“ I take it, then, that you haven’t reconsidered your position on granting women the right of suffrage? Come. Sit. Allow me to shave your mustache.” Bram led Arthur to a chair by the sink. His tools had already been laid out. Scissors, cream, straight razor. “Unless, of course, you’d like to perform the honors yourself?”
“No,” said Arthur. “I don’t believe I could bear it. I’ve had this mustache since I was six and ten years of age, did you know that? I was the first boy in my class to sprout follicles.” He sat in the chair, facing his friend, and closed his eyes. “And yes,” Arthur continued, “I have certainly reconsidered my position on the topic of women’s suffrage. I have considered it again and again, and each and every time I have found the argument of the suffragists to be wanting.”
Bram prepared the shaving cream in a clay mortar, whipping it quickly with a feathered brush. “And what is it about the argument for the rights of women which still leaves you unsatisfied?” he said. He took a pair of short steel scissors from the sink.
Arthur flinched. He gritted his teeth but kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to witness the extirpation of his own facial hair.
“It has nothing to do with rights, man,” he said quietly, barely moving his lips so that Bram could do his work. “It is about duty. Men have their duties to society, and women have their own. It is thus that the sexes are able to cohabitate happily. Can you imagine what would happen were wives to start voting alongside their husbands? It’s no secret that the Conservative Party finds far greater support among the women of England than the men.”
“Gladstone said as much when he sank the Reform Bill.” Having trimmed Arthur’s mustache down to a taut stump, Bram began applying cream with the aid of his brush.
“Quite so,” said Arthur. “You’ve a good memory for politics. The Liberals kicked the legs out from under the suffragists for their own electoral reasons. My larger point remains. Let us say the bill had passed and the society women of England had begun to vote. A young couple, freshly married, goes off together to the polls. The husband votes for, in this case, Gladstone. The wife votes for Cecil, the most honorable marquess of Salisbury. Why, the fights they would have! What a strain it would place on their marriage were the wife to suddenly commence telling her husband how to vote! Or how to tariff this year’s French grain! It would be as if men started telling their wives how to keep a soufflé from falling. The rate of divorce in this country would explode.”
When Arthur had finished speaking, Bram slid the razor cleanly across his upper lip in a dozen short strokes. Inch by inch, Arthur’s mustache was scraped from his face. Bram handed him a hot towel, which he’d taken great care to prepare.
Arthur opened his eyes. He examined his visage in the mirror. He looked so… nude.
“All right then,” said Bram. “Let’s get some eye shadow on you. A dab or two of powder to your cheeks and we’ll be off.”
“How did you come to know so much about ladies’ makeup?” asked Arthur as he accompanied Bram to the latter’s powder box.
“I work in the theater, Arthur,” Bram replied. “And I’m sure I’ve many talents of which you’re most likely unaware.”
Arthur held up a pouch of white powder. It looked just like flour, or unmelted cocaine.
“The powder will whiten you out, and then this”-here Bram displayed a razor-thin charcoal pencil-“will darken the lines around your eyes. Now sit, and let’s be quick. The lecture begins at eight. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll learn something.”
When Arthur and Bram arrived at Caxton Hall in Westminster, they found a mob already assembled. Their brougham joined a column of others along Palmer Street, as each cab deposited a suffragist at the curb. From his window Arthur could see a line of black bonnets stretching north for blocks. The bonnets bobbed up and down like apples in a water bucket as the ladies underneath stopped to greet one another. While Arthur stared, Bram paid their driver, who seemed eager to move along. Arthur was careful, at Bram’s urging, to grasp the folds of his skirt as he stepped out of the carriage. He hadn’t gone through all the trouble to become a woman only to botch it up by strutting about like a man.
As they approached the ticket booth, Arthur became nervous. This would be the first test of his disguise. So far none of the women who surrounded him had looked at him twice, but when he reached the front of the ticketing queue, he’d be but inches from the face of the young woman behind the glass. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years of age, Arthur noticed. She smiled to each customer merrily, just like a child.
Bram had attempted to enter the queue ahead of Arthur, but he was rebuffed. Arthur would go first. If his disguise were to be found out, it was better that it be done right away.
As he neared the front of the queue, it occurred to Arthur that he would actually have to speak to this woman. He had not prepared himself for that. Without moving his mouth, he began to contract his throat, trying to soundlessly practice forming a high and womanly voice. He hadn’t the foggiest notion as to whether this would be effective.
Finally he came to the front and stared directly into the eyes of the ticket girl. She beamed at him.
“How many tickets for you this evening?” she said perkily.
Arthur swallowed.
“Two, please,” he said, in the highest voice he could muster. Hearing his words out loud, he did not think that he sounded even remotely like a woman, but rather more like a boy of twelve. The ticket girl, however, simply smiled in response.
“That’ll be fourpence, ma’am,” she said.
Oh, thank goodness, thought Arthur. Without another word, he paid the girl for two tickets, and she passed them to him through a slot beneath the glass. Arthur handed one to Bram, who followed him through the great double doors of Caxton Hall.
Though it was still a quarter to eight, the hall was already full inside. Lines of stiff wooden chairs had been assembled in rows. Each chair squeaked and rattled as the lady upon it shifted back and forth to address her friends. Arthur and Bram spent five minutes searching for empty seats, which they eventually acquired along the far right edge of the audience, most of the way to the rear.
At least two hundred women-and three or four men-sat in the body of the hall. A brass beam ran the length of the stage, separating it from the floor. A squat lectern, no more than a foot high, lay atop a table at the front of the stage. Behind it a line of chairs had been set up facing the audience. A few were occupied by distinguished women of middle age, while others were still empty as ladies walked back and forth greeting one another warmly and pulling one another close for quick, furtive conversations. Banners draped the hall, bearing suffragist slogans. “Thoughts have gone forth whose whispers can sleep no more! Victory! Victory!” read the most prominent of them. In the mezzanine above, at least another hundred women perched along the wooden railing, peering down at the stage. All present were bright-eyed with excitement. The event was soon to begin.
Arthur searched through the crowd for Millicent Fawcett, but he could not find her. He kept his head down as best he could and deliberately avoided eye contact with the woman seated next to him. Though his disguise had fooled the ticket girl, it might not have the same effect on everyone. It was better to be cautious than to be discovered.
Finally one of the women on the stage approached the podium and brought the room to order. She was dressed all in white from head to toe and was one of the very few women in the building who was not sporting a wide-brimmed bonnet. Her brown hair glistened under the stage lights. She slammed a gavel sharply against the podium three times, and the room instantly fell into silence.