PALLAS
Not even her intimates knew the nature of the humiliations and the
sufferings that had created Mrs. Falconer’s attitude towards man.
She was a tall and rather silent woman, fair-haired, grey-eyed, with a
face that was young in outline and old in its white reserve. There was
nothing slipshod or casual about her. She dressed with discrimination,
yet even in the wearing of her clothes she suggested the putting on of
armour, the linking up of chain mail. Someone had nicknamed her
“Pallas.” She moved finely, stood still finely, and spoke in a level,
full-toned voice that had a peculiar knack of dominating the
conversation without effort and without self-consciousness. People
turned and looked at her directly she entered a room.
Yet Mrs. Falconer did not play to her public. It was not the case of a
superlatively clever woman conducting an ambitious campaign. There was
something behind her cold serenity, a silent forcefulness, a superior
vitality that made people turn to her, watch her, listen to what she
said. She suggested the instinctive thought, “This woman has suffered;
this woman knows; she is implacable; can keep a secret.” And all of us
are a little afraid of the silent people who can keep secrets, who watch
us, who listen while we babble, and who, with one swift sentence, send
an arrow straight to the heart of things while we have been shooting all
over the target.
Sentimentalists might have said that Mrs. Falconer was a splendid white
rose without any perfume. Whether the emotions had been killed in her,
whether she had ever possessed them, or whether she concealed them
jealously, was a matter of conjecture. She was well off, had a house
near Hyde Park and a cottage in Sussex. She was more than a mere clever,
highly cultured woman of the world. Weininger would have said that she
was male. The name of Pallas suited her.
Eve Carfax had lain in bed for a week in a little room on the third
floor of Mrs. Falconer’s house, and during that week she had been
content to lie there without asking herself any questions. The woman
doctor who attended her was a lanky good fellow, who wore pince-nez and
had freckles all over her face. Eve did not do much talking. She smiled,
took what she was given, slept a great deal, being aware of an emptiness
within her that had to be filled up. She had fallen among friends, and
that was sufficient.
The window of her room faced south, and since the weather was sunny, and
the walls were papered a soft pink, she felt herself in a pleasant and
delicate atmosphere. She took a liking to Dr. Alice Keck. The freckled
woman had been a cheeky, snub-nosed flapper on long stilts of legs, and
her essential impudence had lingered on, and mellowed into a breezy
optimism. She had the figure of a boy, and talked like a pseudo-cynical
man of forty.
“You want turning out to grass for a month, then all the kick will come
back. You have done enough experimenting on your own. I tried it once,
and I didn’t like it!”
“When can I see Mrs. Falconer?”
Mrs. Falconer’s name seemed to instil sudden seriousness into Dr. Alice
Keck.
“Oh, in a day or two!”
“I haven’t seen her yet, and I want to thank her.”
“Take my advice, and don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, it is not in her line—the emotions! You’d feel foolish, as though
you had taken a box of matches to set light to the North Pole.”
“That sounds rather discouraging.”
“Rot! Wait and see. They call her Pallas, you know. If you begin hanging
emotions on Kate Falconer you’ll end up by thinking you are shoving
tinsel and beads on a fine statue. I’ll tell her you want to see her. I
think she wants to see you.”
Eve’s vitality was returning, and one of the first evidences of its
return showed itself in a curiosity concerning this woman who had
befriended her. All the little delicate refinements of life had been
given her—flowers, books, early tea served in dainty china, a bottle of
scent had even been placed on the table beside her bed. These things had
seemed feminine and suggestive. The room had a warmth of atmosphere that
did not seem to belong to the house of a woman who would not care to be
thanked.
But from the very first moment that Eve saw Kate Falconer in the flesh,
she understood the aptness of Alice Keck’s similes. Eve was unusually
intuitive. She felt an abnormal presence near her, something that piqued
her interest.
“I am glad that you are so much better.”
She came and sat down beside the bed, and Eve could see her profile
against the window. A warm, evening light was pouring in, but Pallas’s
white face and grey dress were not warmed by it. There was nothing
diaphanous or flamboyant about her; neither was she reactive or
absorbent. The poise was complete; the whole world on one side, this
woman on the other.
She made Eve feel self-conscious.
“I am much better, thanks to all your kindness.”
“It was the obvious thing to do.”
“I cannot quite look at it like that.”
It struck her as absurd that this woman should speak of doing what was
obvious. Eve’s intuition did not hail her as an obvious person, though
it was possible that Mrs. Falconer’s cold brilliancy made what seemed
complex to most people, obvious to her. There was a moment’s constraint,
Eve feeling herself at a disadvantage.
“I thought you might like to talk.”
“I ought to explain things a little.”
“You are under no obligation to explain anything. We women must help one
another. It is part of the new compact.”
“Against men?”
“Against male dominance.”
“I should like to tell you some of my experiences!”
“I should like to hear them!”
Eve found it difficult to begin. She doubted whether this woman could
distinguish the subtle emotional colour shades, but in this she was
mistaken. She soon discovered that Mrs. Falconer was as experienced as a
sympathetic Romish priest, yet the older woman seemed to look at life
objectively, and to read all its permutations and combinations as a
mathematician may be able to read music at sight.
“You have just worked out all the old conclusions, but there is nothing
like working out a thing for oneself. It is like touching, seeing,
tasting. I suppose it has made you one of the so-called fanatics?”
“I want things altered!”
“To what extent?”
“I want the divorce law made equal, and I want divorce made easier. I
want commercial equality. I want it understood that an unmarried woman
who has a child shall not be made to carry all the supposed disgrace!”
Mrs. Falconer turned in her chair. Her face was in the shadow, and Eve
could not see her eyes very plainly, but she felt that she was being
looked at by a woman who regarded her views as rather crude.
“I should like you to try and think in the future, not only in the
present.”
“I have tried that, but it all seems so chaotic.”
“I suppose you know that there are certain life groups where the
feminine element is dominant?”
“You mean spiders and bees?”
“Exactly! It is my particular belief that woman had her period of
dominance and lost it. It has been a male world, so far as humanity is
concerned, for a good many thousand years. And what has European man
given us? Factories, mechanics, and the commercial age. I think we can
do better than that.”
“You mean that we must make woman the dominant force?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
It was obvious, splendidly obvious, when one had the thorough audacity
to regard it in that light.
“But how——”
“By segregating the sexes, massing ourselves against the men, by
refusing them everything that they desire as men. We shall use the
political machinery as well. Man is the active principle, woman more
passive, but passivity must win if it remains obdurate. Why have women
always surrendered or sold themselves? Haven’t we that in us which gives
us the right to rule?”
“Motherhood?”
“Yes, motherhood! We are the true creators.”
“But men——”
“The best of them shall serve.”
“And how can you be sure of persuading all women to mass themselves into
one sisterhood?”
“That is just the problem we have to deal with. It will be solved so
soon as the ordinary woman is taught to think woman’s thought.”
Eve lay mute, thinking. It was very easy to theorise on these lines, but
what about human nature? Could one count, even in the distant future, on
the ordered solidarity of a whole sex? Would every woman be above her
own impulses, above the lure of the emotions? It seemed to Eve that Mrs.
Falconer who talked of developments as being obvious, was overlooking
the most obvious of opponents—Nature.
“But do you think that men will ever accept such a state of things?”
“Of course they would resist.”
“It would mean a sex war. They are stronger than we are!”
“No, not stronger! Besides, methods of violence, if we come to them, can
be used now by women as well as by men. The trigger and the fuse are
different from the club. I don’t count on such crude methods. We are in
the majority. We shall just wear men out. We can bear more pain than
they can.”
“But what an immense revolution!”
“Yet it has happened. We see it in insect life, don’t we? How did it
come about?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it is there, a fact.”
“Yes. All the same, when I had finished reading a book on the ways of
bees, I thought that they were detestable little beasts.”
“Because they killed off the useless males, and let the queen
assassinate her rivals. We are not bees. We shall do better than that.”
Her level, full-toned voice had never varied, and she talked with
perfect and assured serenity of turning society upside down. She was a
fanatic with ideas and a subnormal temperature. She believed what she
foresaw. It was like one of the Fates deigning to be conversational in a
drawing-room.
She rose, and, walking to the window, looked down into the street.
“Do you think that women would have perpetrated London? It took man to
do that. I must not tire you. Have you everything you want?”
“Thank you, everything.”
“I will come up and see you again to-morrow.”
Eve had plenty of leisure for meditation, and Mrs. Falconer’s theories
gave her abundant material for thought. Rest in bed, with good food, and
pleasant refinements round her had restored her normal poise, and she
found that there was far less edge to her enthusiasm. She was a little
shocked by the discovery. The disharmonies of the life that she had been
studying had not changed, and she was troubled by this discovery that
she did not react as she had reacted two weeks ago. When we are young we
are distressed by the subtle transfigurations that overtake our ideals.
We hatch so many eggs that persist in giving us ducklings instead of
chickens. We imagine that we shall always admire the same things,
believe the same beliefs, follow out the strenuous beginnings. When
changes come, subtle, physical changes, perhaps, we are astonished at
ourselves. So it was with Eve when she discovered that her enthusiasm
had passed from a white heat to a dull and more comfortable glow.
Accusing herself of inconstancy, lack of sustained purpose, did not
explain the change in the least. She tried to convince herself that it
was mere sloth, the result of a comfortable bed and good food.
In a day or two she found herself driven to explain a second surprising
fact, a growing hostility towards Mrs. Falconer. It was not a dislike
that could be reasoned with and suppressed, but a good, vigorous,
temperamental hatred as natural and as self-assertive as hunger, thirst,
or passion. It seemed to Eve abominable that she should be developing
such an attitude towards this woman, who had shown her nothing but
kindness, but this irresponsible antipathy of hers seemed to have leapt
up out of some elemental underworld where intellect counted as nothing.
Mrs. Falconer came up daily to talk to her as to a fellow fanatic, and
her temperament roused in Eve an instinctive sense of resistance. She
found herself accusing her hostess to herself of intolerance and
vindictiveness. It was like listening to a hell-fire sermon preached
against the male sex, a denunciation that was subtilised with all the
cleverness of a mind that had played with all the scientific theories of
the day. Mrs. Falconer was a vitalist. She hated the mechanical school
with fine consistency, and clasped hands with Bergson and Hans Driesch.
Yet she disagreed with some of her fellow mystics in believing that
women possessed more of the “_élan vital_” than man. Therefore, woman
was the dominant force of the future, and it behoved her to assert her
power.
Eve found herself on tip-toe to contradict Mrs. Falconer, just as one is
tempted to jump up and contradict the dogmatist who talks down at us
from the pulpit. She tried to argue one or two things out, but soon
realised that this woman was far too clever for her, far too well armed.
Mrs. Falconer had masked batteries everywhere. She had reserves of
knowledge that Eve had no chance of meeting. And yet, though she could
not meet her arguments, Eve had an intense conviction that Mrs.
Falconer’s ideals were hopelessly wrong. There was la revanche behind it
all. Her head could not confute the theorist, but her heart did. Human
nature would not be cajoled.
She had an idea that Mrs. Falconer was a very busy woman. The house
seemed full of voices, and of the sound of coming and going, but Eve did
not discover how busy her hostess was till Dr. Alice Keck let her go
downstairs. There were two big rooms on the second floor fitted up like
offices, with a dozen women at work in them. Letters were being written,
directories consulted, lists of names made out, statistics compiled,
money received and disbursed. People came and went, brought and received
information. There was no laughter. Everyone was in grim earnest.
Eve saw Mrs. Falconer’s personality translated into action. This rich
woman’s house was a nerve centre of the new movement, and Mrs.
Falconer’s presence suggested one of those subtle ferments that are
supposed to stimulate the complex processes of life. She did nothing
herself. She was a presence. People came to her when they needed the
flick of her advice. She co-ordinated everything.
Eve was introduced to all these girls and women, and was given a table
to herself with several sheets of foolscap and a file of papers. Mrs.
Falconer came and stood by her, and explained the work she wanted her to
do.
“There is nothing like attacking people with facts. They penetrate the
British skull! We are collecting all these cases, and making a register
of them. We shall publish them in a cheap form, and have them sent all
over the country.”
“You want all these papers fair copied?”
“Yes. They are in the rough, just as they were sent in to us. You will
find that they are numbered.”
Eve discovered that she had before her a series of reports dealing with
well-authenticated cases of women who had been basely treated by men.
Some of them were written on ordinary letter paper, others on foolscap,
and not a few on the backs of circulars and bills. Nor was the batch
that had been given her the first that had been handled. Each case was
numbered, and Eve’s batch began at 293.
There was a sordid and pathetic similarity about them all.
“M—— W——, typist, 31, orphan. Engaged to be married to a clerk. The
man borrowed her savings, got her into trouble, and then refused to
marry her. Girl went into Queen Charlotte’s hospital. Baby born dead.
The mother developed puerperal fever, but recovered. She was unable to
get work for some time, and went into domestic service. Her health broke
down. She is now in a workhouse infirmary.”
“V—— L——. A particularly cruel case that ended in suicide. She had
spent a little sum of money that had been left her, on educating
herself. Obtained a very good post as secretary. Her employer took her
with him to Paris, pretending that as she could speak French she would
be very useful to him in certain business transactions. Drugs were used.
Five months later the girl committed suicide in London by throwing
herself under a Tube train.”
All day, and for several days, Eve worked at these pathetic records,
till she felt nauseated and depressed. It was a ghastly indictment drawn
up against man, and yet it did not have the effect on her that Mrs.
Falconer had expected. It did not drive her farther towards fanaticism.
On the contrary, she was overcome by a feeling of helplessness and of
questioning compassion. It was all so pitiable and yet so inevitable as
things were, and through all the misery and the suffering she was
brought to see that the whole blame could not be credited to the man. It
was the system more than the individual.
A function that is natural and clean enough in itself has been fouled by
the pruderies of priests and pedants. Sex has been disguised with all
manner of hypocrisies and make-believes. Society pretends that certain
things do not happen, and when Nature insists upon their happening,
Society retaliates upon the woman by calling her foul names and making
her an outcast. The men themselves are driven by the system to all those
wretched meannesses, treacheries, deceptions. And the worst of it all is
that Society tries to keep the truth boxed up in a cellar. English good
form prides itself with a smirk on not talking about such things, and on
playing the ostrich with its head under a pew cushion. Nature is not
treated fairly and squarely. We are immorally moral in our conventions.
Until we decide to look at sex cleanly and wholesomely, stripping
ourselves of all mediæval nastiness and cowardly smuggery, we shall
remain what we are, furtive polygamists, ashamed of our own bodies, and
absurdly calling our own children the creatures of sin.
The work depressed Eve. Her fellow workers were hardly more enlivening.
They belonged to a distinct type, the neutral type that cannot be
appealed to either as man or woman. Meals were served at a long table in
one of the lower rooms, and Eve noticed that her neighbours did not in
the least care what they ate. They got through a meal as quickly as
possible, talking hard all the time. Now Eve did care about what she
ate, and whether it was delicately served. She had the palate of a
healthy young woman, and it mattered to her whether she had ragged
mutton and rice pudding every day, or was piqued by something with a
flavour.
She was carnal. She told herself so flatly one afternoon as she went up
to her bedroom, and the charge produced a thrill of natural laughter.
She had a sudden wild desire to run out and play, to be greedy as a
healthy child is greedy, to tumble hay in a hay field, to take off her
clothes and bathe in the sea. The natural vitality in her turned
suddenly from all this sour, quarrelsome, pessimistical campaigning and
demanded life—the life of feeling and seeing.
The house oppressed her, so she put on her hat and escaped, and made her
way into the park. May was in, green May, with lush grass and opening
leaves. The sun shone. There was sparkle in the air. One thought of wood
nymphs dancing on forest lawns while fauns piped and jigged, and the
great god Pan delighted himself with wine and honey. It was only a
London park, but it was the nearest thing to Nature that Eve could find.
Her heart expanded suddenly. An irrational, tremulous joyousness came
over her. She wanted to sing, to weep, to throw herself down and bury
her face in the cool green grass. The country in May! She had a swift
and passionate desire for the country, for green glooms and quiet waters
and meadows dusted with gold. To get out of this loathsome complication
of tragedies, to breathe smokeless air, to think of things other than
suicides, prostitutions, treacheries, the buying and selling of souls.
She felt like a child before a holiday, and then she thought of Lynette.
What a vision of wholesomeness and of joy! It was like cool water
bubbling out of the earth, like a swallow gliding, a thrush singing at
dawn. She could not bear to think of wasting all the spring in London.
She must escape somehow, escape to a healthier outlook, to cooler
thinking.
When she went back Mrs. Falconer sent for her. Eve wondered afterwards
whether it was a coincidence or not that Mrs. Falconer should have said
what she did that day.
“You have not been looking well. You want a change!”
“I almost think I do.”
“You don’t like me. It is a pity.”
Eve was taken by surprise.
“Don’t like you?”
“It is quite obvious to me, but it does not make any difference. I knew
it, almost from the first. A matter of temperament. I understand some
things better than you suspect. You want action, more warmth of
movement. This statistical work disgusts you. I can give you your
opportunity.”
Eve remained mute. It was useless to protest in the presence of such a
woman.
“Two of our missionaries are going to tour in Sussex and Surrey. I think
you might join them. I wonder if you are strong enough.”
“Oh, yes!”
“You see, they tramp most of the way, and speak in the villages, and
small towns. Sometimes they are treated rather roughly.”
Eve beheld the green country within the clasp of her arms, and was ready
to accept anything.
“Yes, I’ll go. I should love to go. I’m strong, and I’m not afraid. I
think I want action.”
“Yes, you are not made for dealing with harsh facts. They disgust you
too much, and weaken you. It is all temperament. You are one of those
who must spend themselves, obtain self-expression.”
“I wonder how you know that?”
“My dear, I was a woman before I became a thinker.”
* * * * *