The Senator and the Student

"To be safe, let's say two," Rebecca said. "Are there two other Progressives you might bring with you?"

"I'm quite sure there are, once one of us speaks up," Ellie said. "I'm ready to be that one, Rebecca."

Rebecca stood up, and Ellie followed suit. "You do realize, Ellie, if you come out in support of male suffrage and the bill fails, it may well cost you re-election?"

"I'd rather that than let those men go out to sea again for us without having a vote!"

"Excellent attitude, Ellie!" Rebecca couldn't resist hugging her surprised colleague, who responded in kind. "I saw our fearless leader was just getting settled in the chamber when we left. Shall we go surprise her?"

Scarcely ten minutes later, Rebecca sat triumphantly at her desk in the now-crowded chamber and looked on as Lady Sandrine yielded time to Senator Abood. The unsuspecting Premiere did not look up at Rebecca as Ellie took the floor, so Rebecca was free to gaze upon Lady Sandrine as she in turn watched Ellie clear her throat and begin.

"More whingeing about fish, no doubt," snickered Senator Norma Stone, a rock-ribbed Supremist whom Lady Sandrine had deliberately seated next to Rebecca to keep a close eye on her.

"Don't be so sure," Rebecca said.

Ellie was far from the most gifted orator in the Senate, that Rebecca knew. But she had the passion of youth and conviction, and on this occasion she had the zeal of the newly converted. As she started with a tribute to the heroic fisherman much like the one she had treated Rebecca to privately, her voice rang out with a flair none of her colleagues had heard before.

Nevertheless, few paid her much mind as they all expected yet another lecture about protecting the fishing industry.

And so the entire Senate, but for Rebecca, was caught off guard when Ellie made her proclamation. "The fishermen of my riding put their lives at risk to feed not just their families but yours, ladies, and each and every one of your constituents' as well; they depend upon us for the protection of their jobs and their industry, and yet they cannot vote. The time has come to change that."

Rebecca was not surprised to see Lady Sandrine whip her head around and glare up at her, but she was delighted nevertheless.

"I have pledged my support to Senator Wharton for her male suffrage bill," Ellie continued, "And I implore my fellow Progressives to join me. Together we can bring the hardworking men of our shires a step closer to equality. Let's get started today. Thank you, Madam Premiere, and I yield the balance of my time."

Rebecca led the standing ovation from her fellow Egalitarians and the few brave Progressives who were already openly in their corner, and she looked across the chamber at the likeliest candidates to follow in Ellie's footsteps. She was also rewarded with a wave of dirty looks from the Supremists and the few remaining Mainliners besides Lady Sandrine, who was already striding up the steps to her desk with three of her aides in tow.

Before her nemesis and her entourage could get to Rebecca, Senator Edwina Marsten -- another Progressive and closet supporter of Rebecca's bill -- came to her desk. "Count me in as well, now, Rebecca," she said. "I'm sorry I wasn't as brave as Ellie."

"Thank you," Rebecca said. "Any chance we can get a third one of your gang on board?"

"Leave it to me," Edwina said, touching Rebecca's hand. As Premiere Wynnton was just steps away, she turned and said, "Madame Premiere," cordially as she took her leave.

"Morning, Edwina," said Premiere Wynnton. "Rebecca."

"Madame Premiere?"

"I'm here to offer a deal, Rebecca," she said. "You don't need me to tell you how controversial that male suffrage bill of yours is, after all."

"Controversial yes, wrong no." Rebecca couldn't have hidden her triumphant smile if she'd wanted to.

"You're entitled to your opinion, Senator, but some would say it's disrespectful to hundreds of years of tradition, not to mention asking too much of men. They're not like us, you know. They're good for working the factories and farms and fighting our wars, but they lack the emotional versatility to make wise decisions. There's a reason why we haven't let them lead the way in the past, you know."

"Your point, Madame Premiere?" Rebecca knew Lady Sandrine would never change her mind, nor did she care.

"My point, Rebecca, is that the docket is quite full until the middle of December. So if you do force this silly bill of yours to the floor, you will unleash a terribly divisive new law upon us just in time for the holidays, and with the next election likely coming up in the near future beyond. Whatever your convictions about men and their place in our world, I'm sure you don't wish to sow such discord. I'm here to ask that you put a hold on the bill until after the elections."

"And give the Mainliners a chance to gain back some of the seats you lost last time, probably with new senators who would oppose my bill? Really, Sandrine!"

"Perhaps," the Premiere said. "But I could also loosen the purse strings on that education funding you want for the schools in Laucester."

"You could be a decent stateswoman and do that anyway, Sandrine," Rebecca pointed out. "And you could give the male suffrage bill a fair hearing and a chance to win or lose on its own merits. From where I stand, it looks like you just might have to, actually."

"Are you threatening me, Rebecca?"

"It sounds more like you're threatening me."

The Premiere sighed and looked at her two assistants, one of whom nodded with a nasty looking grin. "I did not want to have to stoop to this, my friend," she said. "But I know a little about your friend Chester."

"Chester Croft?" Rebecca asked. "What about him?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Lady Sandrine said. "And the entire press corps besides!" She spun on her heel and headed back down the steps. "Let me know before Friday if you come to your senses, Senator."

Rebecca was determined not to back down. But she did not want her family and friends getting involved in anything ugly.

And dear young Chester Croft was nearly both.

The fair-haired only son of Rebecca's dearest school chum, Winnifred Croft, Chester had been a light of joy for "Auntie Rebecca" from the first time he'd called her that. Always something of a mild disappointment to his parents in that he was gentle and retiring, he had always commanded Rebecca's greatest adoration for the same reason. Studious, indifferent to sport, he'd exhausted the nursery primers before his fifth birthday, whereupon Rebecca had surprised him with a few of her own favourite books from her own childhood. "Read them with me, Auntie Rebecca?" he'd pleaded, his blue eyes wide with longing.

"You read, I'll listen," she'd offered, snuggling up to him on the nursery couch. And he'd navigated the stories at least as well as Rebecca could recall doing when she was three or four years older.

Winnifred had not been impressed with her son's talent. "Something just isn't right about him," she'd groused to Rebecca later that same evening. "Harold's tried time and again to interest him in some rough and tumble game, and the little dear would rather read a book!"

"He's remarkably intelligent," Rebecca had replied. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if he were a girl," Winnifred had said. "But what good is all that book learning going to do him in the factory or the army?

"Maybe he ought to go to university instead?"

Winnifred had laughed haughtily. "A boy at university! Yes, Rebecca, and while I'm at it, why don't I just draw all my savings from the bank and set them afire! It's just as worthwhile a venture, isn't it?"

But Rebecca hadn't given up on her hopes for the dear boy, and she had continued to supply him with books and tutoring in any and all subjects he cared to learn. He had also continued to inspire her growing commitment to gender equality. Chester had been ten years old when Rebecca had been pregnant with Sarah, and he'd been utterly fascinated as Rebecca had let him rub her swollen belly to his heart's content. "I am ever so jealous of women, being able to grow life within," he'd told her once. "But I suppose I do understand why that makes you the dominant sex."

"Chester!" Rebecca had remembered to smile at him, but she'd sounded as firm as ever before or since as she'd grabbed at his shoulders and looked him in the eye. "Never believe you deserve to be inferior just because you were born a boy! When you grow up, you will be just as important and capable as I or any woman! Do you understand?"

"Not really, Auntie Rebecca. Mother and Father tell me my place is in the factory, unless I learn to shoot a rifle. They say when I'm older, I'll understand men are too hotheaded and impulsive to be trusted with the thinking professions. Brute strength is all we're good for."

"That just isn't true, Chester!" Rebecca had told him. "Plenty of us believe a boy ought to be able to go to the university if that's what he wants, and to try his hand at a skilled profession. Don't be so sure you won't have that option when the time comes. There are people lobbying hard for it this very day!"

"Including you, Auntie Rebecca?"

And from that day on, she had been one of them. But -- and Rebecca was convinced this was another early sign of his remarkable intelligence -- Chester had kept their conversation from his mother.

Chester's adolescent years had been as tumultuous as any, and Rebecca had seen him at his worst more than once. But the last of those years had coincided with the worst days of Rebecca's own life, just after Melvin had been lost in the last war, and Chester had been a wonderful support for her in those awful first weeks and months on her own with little Sarah. They were a blur to her now, but she would always recall Chester holding her while she sobbed, sitting at her bedside and reading to her just as she had done to him years before, vowing to do all he could to help Mother's dearest friend through her tunnel of grief.

It was on one of those days that Rebecca had told both Chester and his mother that she had decided to run for the Senate. "If Melvin's loss is not to be in vain, I must do my part to prevent another senseless war," she had explained.

"Splendid, Auntie Rebecca!" Chester had said.

"Oh, you're not going to join those silly Egalitarians, are you?" Winnifred had countered. "I know how you feel about men, but they don't get a vote, do they?"

"Which is just what I want to change, Winnifred."

"You'll understand if I cannot support you, my dear," Winnifred had said. "I love you, but I think you're utterly full of it on this equality nonsense. We can never be equal."

"You are entitled to your opinion." Rebecca had given Chester a sympathetic look, and her heart broke to see how accustomed he clearly was to hearing his mother say such things about his sex.

"And you to yours. But Lady Gwen has had a stranglehold on this riding since you and I were too young to vote."

"And she just voted against opening the universities to men," Chester said. "But we won that one, didn't we?"

"Yes, congratulations!" Rebecca had said while Winnifred had bitten her lip in disgust. "I intend to be there to vote to keep them open to you, Chester."

The following year, she had defeated Lady Gwen Rollins to become Laucester's first Egalitarian senator. A year after that, she'd been there to see Chester off to his first year at Laucestershire University, where his class of men wasn't the first but was still very much a novelty.

When the train arrived in Laucester just before dark that evening, Rebecca still wasn't sure what to make of the premiere's threat. Though she remained committed to bringing the bill for a vote and she wouldn't let Lady Sandrine bully her into submission, she did not want Chester or his mother getting hurt.

The cheerful round of applause that greeted her as she stepped down from the train improved her morale a bit. The news had obviously reached Laucester. "You've got our votes, Senator, once we can vote!" called out a bellboy.

"I want my man to have a voice!" added a young woman who was waiting on the platform. "Keep up the good work!"

"Thank you all," Rebecca said, privately hoping they wouldn't want her to stop and chat -- she would certainly do so if necessary, but she wanted more than anything to get home and have some time alone with Sarah.

To her relief, no one asked her attention for more than a moment, and presently she was settled in a carriage that drove her home through the lamplit streets. The bright yellow glow they sent up through the night never failed to cheer Rebecca, even in those dark days just after she'd lost Melvin; and once again they worked their magic. Win or lose, Rebecca reminded herself, she was terribly lucky to be living in a time and place of such progress and such beauty! And Christmas was coming as well, with the joyful decorations all along the high street. She remembered that feeling ever so well from girlhood, and it had never left her.

By the time Rebecca arrived at her townhouse and stepped up to the front door, she had almost managed to forget Lady Sandrine's unwelcome news.

Sarah's joyous greeting as she arrived in the foyer was no small help to that end. "Mother!" she threw herself at Rebecca most eagerly. "It's cold out there, isn't it?" she said, burying her face in Rebecca's coat.

"Yes," Rebecca said. "I'm quite glad to be home."

"Guy just lit the fire in the parlour," Sarah said. "Come join me?"

"Of course." Rebecca followed her daughter into the parlour, where Guy had indeed just left a roaring fire. "How was school today?"

"We learned about oxygen in science and Africa in geography," Sarah said. "And Misty Donovan's moving to the coast. How about you, have you gotten the vote for the boys yet?"

Rebecca laughed. "Not yet, but I think we're a big step closer."

"Daniel will be so happy to hear that!" Sarah said. "But his mother won't be."

"Yes, well, Daniel's mother will get over it soon enough," Rebecca said; she had heard more than she ever wanted to about Sarah's best friend and his mother's unsupportive politics. "But please don't tell any of your friends what I just said, darling. They'll be hearing about it in the news soon enough."

"Oh, I understand, Mother," Sarah said. She sat on her favourite cushion on the couch and patted the space beside her. "Can we read together, before dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world, darling." Rebecca brought down the volume from the bookcase that they'd been working through together, and lit the oil lamp on the table.

As Rebecca sat down and put her arm around her, Sarah looked up at her. "If you do win the vote for men, Mother, can we still read together?"

"Of course, dear!" Rebecca was indignant, but she kept that from Sarah. "Why on earth wouldn't we be able to?"

"Danny's mother says if men get the vote, ladies won't be able to be themselves anymore. No more cuddling or anything!"

"Danny's mother is misinformed and angry," Rebecca reassured her. "After all, Chester reads to you, doesn't he?"

"Yes, and he's marvellous at it."

"And he cuddles with you when you want?"

"Yes!"

"And he plays closetball with you when that's what you want?" Closetball was a game Chester had invented for himself and Sarah, in which they threw balls back and forth from two closet doorways opposite one another in the upstairs den; the goal was to get one's opponent to miss and let the ball make it into the closet.

"Yes, he's such a wonderful player at closetball!"

"Exactly, darling. If men get the vote, they'll be free to be just like you and me if that's what they like, and you'll be free to be more like them if that's what you want. Understood?"

"I think so, Mother."

As she left her office on Friday afternoon, Rebecca could only hope her daughter was being truthful with her. She, along with the rest of Laucester, was about to hear a lot of things about her mother's private life that were no one's business. Loath as Rebecca had been to admit it, it was true.

Martha was undoubtedly correct, Rebecca conceded as she stepped down the members-only stairwell. Opinion polls in Laucester were showing great division on the male suffrage bill that she had been championing from the day she'd been elected three years before. Laucester was a progressive city, and those in favour had a decent advantage; but those opposed were more committed, and more willing to play dirty. There was little reason to hope they would let her thoughts about Chester blow over.

Rebecca was disabused of any lingering hope to the contrary of that the moment she stepped out into the chilly afternoon. A gaggle of newswomen -- and one man, Edgar Murphy of the Gentlemen's Rights Journal -- were loitering on the cobblestones. They lost no time in swarming around Rebecca before the members' door had even closed behind her.

"Senator!" It was the only word Rebecca could make out at first as they all jockeyed for position and tried to out-ask one another. But Rebecca knew what to expect, and soon enough Chester's name and the words "journal" and "relationship" and "inappropriate" all bubbled to the surface.

Rebecca put on her politician's grin and raised her hands. "Ladies, gentlemen, please," she said. "I have but one thing to say: Chester Croft is a dear family friend, and he and I have always been dear to one another, but also utterly platonic. Any suggestion to the contrary is a damnable lie."

"Senator, what have you to say about the journal entry that was published?" asked Marlene Reed of the Capital Clarion.

"I say it's an invasion of my privacy and also deeply unfair to Chester Croft!" Rebecca could not hide her disgust entirely. "I'm not ashamed of anything I wrote, but I'm deeply disturbed that Chester might find such private musings about him in the newspaper. I can only hope he has been too busy with his studies to hear of it."

"He has heard of it, Senator," said Edgar Murphy.

"He has?" Rebecca was aghast, though not terribly surprised.

"We interviewed him this morning," Edgar confirmed. "He said he wasn't angry with you, but your words took him by surprise."

"Yes, well, as well they might." Rebecca had regained her composure, but in that instant she'd also made up her mind. She would be paying Chester a visit to offer her apologies and an explanation, and the consequence be damned.

"Senator, what might this mean for your men's suffrage bill?" asked Jessica Stratton of the Laucester Beacon.

"It means Premiere Wynnton and her friends are growing desperate," Rebecca said. "They may well defeat me, but they won't defeat equality, not in the long run. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a train to catch."

"Senator, what will you be telling Mr. Croft?" called out a young reporter she didn't know as she set off towards the train station.

"The truth," Rebecca said over her shoulder, and without another word she was off.

Martha was right, Rebecca conceded to herself as she gathered her coat about her and walked briskly to the station. She really ought to keep her distance from Chester just now. He knew his mother well enough to know she was more than likely behind the unwelcome news, after all. And there was nothing noble about losing her seat to a Supremist like Lady Gwen Rollins, who'd had a long and consistent record of voting to keep men in their traditional lower places for four terms before Rebecca had sent her to an early retirement three years ago.

That wasn't why Rebecca had challenged her, and she was quite sure it also wasn't why she had defeated her. Laucester was a progressive town, but it was also a town where the men were kept busy in the factories and the ladies of the establishment had no desire to upset the balance that had prevailed for generations. No, it was Senator Rollins' vote in favour of the war in the hills that was responsible for both. A remarkably bloody affair leaving the country still in charge of the largely uninhabitable frontier but once again short of any advantage to extend beyond the old lines, the war had been immensely popular at first -- as they always were -- and the widespread bloodlust had, to Rebecca's disgust, infected even her beloved Melvin.