10 November, 1894 — Bartonburg
When the
news broke last month Calvin's sister had been at his kitchen table within an hour. The suffrage bill had been hinted at here and there in the news for months but this was the first time they had anything approaching details, so there was plenty to discuss. It didn't go far enough, he pointed out — speaking so freely on the subject only because it was just the pair of them alone in his kitchen. She was too caught up in the moment to allow his cynicism.
It was her idea to ask Berkwood to dinner to interrogate him on the subject. Cal wouldn't have minded some more answers on how they'd gotten to this bill and where the Minister actually stood on the matter, sure, but he was hardly keen to just come right out and
ask, and particularly not to make a whole evening of it. His sister was nothing if not persistent, though, so she'd eventually worn him down and he'd sent an invitation. Not to discuss politics or voting reform, just for dinner. He thought it was a compromise; he hadn't realized until Berkwood arrived and the three of them settled in for dinner that it had actually been an ambush. His sister did most of the talking, per usual. Eventually she had to excuse herself to use the bathroom, leaving Calvin alone with Berkwood and a table full of dirtied dinner dishes. He didn't have staff in the evenings to clear things away; he was a bachelor living alone, and therefore not generally in the position of hosting dinner parties. But Harry Berkwood was also a bachelor living alone, so maybe his expectations for supper weren't as high as they might have been otherwise.
"So that's it, then," he said, with a raise of his eyebrows to imply it was a question even if his tone hadn't conveyed as much. "You're done."
To be honest, Harry was relieved to have the whole business with voting committee to be over and done with. Oh, he'd been glad to have a part--it was important, and feeling like he was actively doing something was always better than sitting on his hands and hoping for the best. He hadn't expected anything about the whole thing to be easy, mind you, but it was better than the alternative.
Maybe he should have known better than to accept a dinner invitation at such a time, but perhaps he'd been worn down by the effort to keep his thoughts to himself in public. No one had ever accused Harry Berkwood of being a quiet man, and while he was actually very good at keeping secrets--see his real connection to Marigold Davenport for proof of that--it was exhausting when everyone and their brother knew he had secrets to keep.
Still, at Paxton's question, Harry couldn't help but snort. "That's probably my last foray into taking such an active part in politics, yeah," he said. That was more or less true. He still had a very real interest in reform, but public roles weren't really for him, he'd discovered.
Calvin wouldn't have envied Berkwood that element of his position, so he couldn't fault his answer. Still, it seemed odd. The whole thing was odd. Berkwood on a committee for voting reform in the first place, when he was still young by most people's standards and had never expressed any overt opinion in politics. The committee itself working in near secrecy until they had suddenly produced a bill. The bill passing, and the whole thing just — dissolved? It was like this had happened in a dream; the logic seemed to follow from one point to the next well enough, but it was devoid of any real-world context. When they all woke up they would discover none of this had really happened at all.
Cal was going to wait and see whether women actually were able to register for the vote before he counted any of his chickens. The paper might say that was the new law, and they might say it would be easy, but that didn't mean it would be true. In theory there was nothing preventing a woman from having an occupation, either, and yet most of his coworkers at the Ministry or at the hospital before were men. It would take a bout of willful ignorance to suppose that was because all the rest of the women simply hadn't wanted to earn money.
"And the Minister?" he asked, pushing his plate towards the edge of the table slightly so that he had enough room to rest his fingers on the edge. "You talked to him. Did you get the sense that he's done? With reform?"
"I can't really speak for Minister Dempsey," Harry said, mostly to be diplomatic. "But I think the old guard's going to be hard pressed to let much through anytime soon." It had been hard enough to get voting reform passed, and that was a months' long process on its own. Not that Harry had expected it to be quick. Honestly, if things had dragged on even longer than they had, he wouldn't have been surprised, either. If it was a worthwhile pursuit, than it was worth the time.
Theoretically, more reform could come with enough time, but it had taken so much effort to get here, Harry didn't have high hopes. "Then again, with more people having a say in things now, they might need to give it more consideration."
Calvin frowned. This bit about the old-guard felt like the sort of thing politicians said to make excuses for the fact that they weren't accomplishing any real change. Maybe Harry Berkwood had a future in politics after all, if he was already getting the rhetoric down.
"It feels like the smallest possible step you could take and still claim he followed through on his campaign promises," he pointed out. Dempsey had said he supported women's suffrage during the campaign, but he notably had not claimed he supported universal suffrage. This act was in some ways a step back for some groups — in a decade there might be a fair number of men who didn't have the vote, if they worked in off-the-record sorts of professions like street vendors or low-level craftsmen. Apprentices or those in service whose employers didn't think they'd really earned a say in how their world worked yet. It obviously didn't grant universal suffrage to women, either; they were more likely to be disfranchised across the bounds of class, rather than men who were primarily likely to get the shaft if they were poor. How had people like Laurel Potts, a married woman with a dozen daughters, signed off on a reform like this?
"I can't say I disagree," Harry said grimly. It wasn't the outcome he had hoped for, but it felt like the more realistic one. "Realistic" here meant "especially sub-optimal. "I was in favor of universal suffrage, and I told Dempsey that when he approached me." It felt like they'd moved a few steps forward and then just as many back, having done little more than reshuffle things. It was... progress. Technically. But not in the way he'd wanted.
"I wonder if Wright would have any more success," Harry mused. "I suppose it depends on how he would have approached bringing about reform." It didn't really do to wonder about "what ifs" when there wasn't something to do about them. As frustrating as that was, because knowing it was useless didn't really help make it easier.