Claudia did not see the change in Ideala all at once. She said: "She is
looking her best, and is our own Ideala again--faults and all! How she
talked last night!"
"Just in the old way," I agreed, "but with a difference; for in the old
days she talked at random, but now I feel sure she has a plan and a
purpose, and all that she says is part of it."
This suggested new possibilities to Claudia, and when Ideala joined us
presently, she asked, abruptly: "Are you going back to China?"
Ideala answered deliberately: "I did think of becoming a
missionary--that was why I went out there. But I know all radical
reforms take time, and when I saw what the Chinese women were doing for
themselves, and compared their state with our own, it seemed to me that
there was work in plenty to be done at home, and so I returned.
Certainly, the Chinese women of the day bind their feet. When a girl is
seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody
approves, If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the
first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure
the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for
centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small
feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful
thing. When they are taught how wrong the practice is, how it cripples
them, and weakens them, and renders them unfit for their work in the
world, they take off their bandages! Think of that! and remember that
they are timid and sensitive in a womanly way to a degree that is
painful. When I learnt that, and when I remembered that my countrywomen
bind every organ in their bodies, though they know the harm of it, and
public opinion is against it, I did not feel that I had time to stay
and teach the heathen. It seemed to me that there was work enough left
yet to do at home."
"But, Ideala," Claudia protested, "what is the use of drawing degrading
comparisons between ourselves and other nations? You gave great offence
last night."
"I said more than I intended," she answered; "I always do. It was
Tourgenieff, was it not, who said that the age of talkers must precede
the age of practical reformers? I seem to have been born in the age of
talkers. But I shall not say much more. Last night I did not really
_intend_ to say anything. You led me on. But I _do_ want to make their
hearts burn within them, and if I succeed, then I shall not care about
the offence. An English-woman is nothing if she is not patriotic. She
will not bear the humiliation, if she is made to see that she is
really no better, with all her opportunities, than a much- despised
Chinese. She would not like the contempt the women of that nation feel
for her if she were made to acknowledge the truth--that she deserved
it. And so much depends on our women now. There are plenty of people,
you know, who believe that no nation can get beyond a certain point of
prosperity, and that when it reaches that point it cannot stay there,
but must begin to go down again; and they say that the English nation
has now reached its extreme point. They compare it with Rome in the
days which immediately preceded her decline and fall--when men ceased
to be brave and self-denying, and became idle, luxurious, and
effeminate; and women traded on their weakness, and made light of
their evil deeds. It is a question of the sanctity of marriage now, as
it was in the days of the decline of Rome. De Quincey traces her fall
to the loosening of the marriage tie. He says that few indeed, if any,
were the obligations in a proper sense _moral_ which pressed upon the
Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or
custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself
through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that
facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the
choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not
yield so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation of husband
and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans.
And, although it is not quite so bad with ourselves at present, that
is what it is coming to.
"But there are two sides to every question, and the one which we must
by no means lose sight of just now is not that which shows the respects
in which we resemble the Romans, so much as the one which shows the
respects in which we differ from them. It is therein that our hope
lies. And we differ from them in two important respects. We differ from
them in the matter of experience, and in the use we are disposed to
make of our experiences. We are beginning to know the rocks upon which
they split, and we shall soon be making use of our knowledge to steer
clear of them. But there is another respect in which we differ from all
the older nations, not even excepting the Jewish. I mean morality. We
have the grandest and purest ideal of morality that was ever preached
upon earth, and, if we do but practise it, there is no doubt that the
promise will be fulfilled, and our days as a nation will be prolonged
with rejoicing.
"The future of the race has come to be a question of morality and a
question of health. Perhaps I should reverse it, and say a question of
health and morality, since the latter is so dependent on the former. We
want grander minds, and we must have grander bodies to contain them.
And it all rests with us women. To us is confided the care of the
little ones--of the young bodies and the young minds yet unformed. Ours
will be the joy of success or the shame of failure, and we should fit
ourselves for the task both morally and physically by the practice of
every virtue, and by every art known to the science and skill of man."
"Englishwomen could not sit still and know that their lovely homes will
be wrecked eventually, and left desolate: that this country of theirs
will become a wilderness of ruin, such as Egypt is, but rank and
overgrown, its beauty of sweet grass and stately trees, and all its
rich luxuriance of flowers and fruits and foliage plants, only
accentuating the ruin--bearing witness to the neglect. No, our
greatness shall not depart. The decay may have begun, but it shall be
arrested. I am not afraid."
"But if it is the fate of nations, Ideala----"
"I propose to conquer fate," said Ideala. "Fate itself is no match for
one woman with a will, let alone for thousands! When horrid war is
threatened, men flock to fight for their country; and they volunteer
for every other arduous duty to be done. Do you think women are less
brave? No. When they realise the truth they will fight for it. They
will fly to arms. They will use the weapons with which Nature has
provided them; love, constancy, self-sacrifice, their intellectual
strength, and will. And so they will save the nation."
Claudia, the unimaginative, sat silent and perplexed.
"I would join," she said at last, "if I were quite sure----Oh, Ideala!
it is not a sort of Woman's Rights business, and all that, you are
going in for, is it? A woman can do good in her own sphere only."
Ideala laughed. "But 'her own sphere' is such a very indefinite
phrase," she observed. "It is nonsense, really. A woman may do anything
which she can do in a womanly way. They say that our brains are
lighter, and that therefore we must not be taught too much. But why not
educate us to the limit of our capacity, and leave it there? Why, if we
are inferior, should there be any fear of making us superior? We must
stop when we cannot go any further, and all this old-womanish cackle on
the subject, the everlasting trying to prove what is already said to be
proved--the looking for the square in space after laying it down as a
law that only the circle exists--is a curious way of showing us how to
control the 'exuberance of our own verbosity.' They say we shall not be
content when we get what we want, and there they are right, for as soon
as our own 'higher education' is secure we shall begin to clamour for
the higher education of men. For the prayer of every woman worth the
name is not 'Make me superior to my husband,' but, 'Lord, make my
husband superior to me!' Is there any more pitiful position in the
world than that of a right-minded woman who is her husband's superior,
and knows it! There is in every educated and refined woman an inborn
desire to submit, and she must do violence to what is best in herself
when she cannot. You know what the history of such marriages is. The
girl has been taught to expect to find a guide, philosopher, and friend
in her husband. He is to be head of the house and lord of her life and
liberty, sole arbiter on all occasions. It is right and convenient to
have him so; the world requires him to fill that position, and the wife
prefers that he should. But the probabilities are about equal that he,
being morally her inferior, will not be fit for it, and that,
therefore, she will find herself in a false position. There will then
be an interval of intense misery for the wife. Her education and
prejudices will make her try to submit at first to what her sense knows
to be impossible; but eventually she is forced out of her unnatural
position by circumstances. To save her house and family she must rebel,
take the reins of government into her own hands, and face life, a
disappointed and lonely woman."
"Heaven help her!" said Claudia. "One knows that the future of a woman
in that state of mind is only a question of circumstance and
temperament; she may rise, but----"
Ideala looked up quickly. "But she may fall, you were going to say--
yes. But you know if she does it is her own fault. She _must_ know
better."
"She may not be quite mistress of herself at the time--she may be
fascinated; she may be led on!" I interposed, quickly. Claudia seemed
to have forgotten. "But one thing is certain, if she has any real good
in her she will always stop before it is too late."
"I think," said Claudia, "it would be better, after all, if women were
taught to expect to find themselves their husbands' equals--the
disappointment would not be so great if the husband proved inferior;
but when a woman has been led to look for so much, her imagination is
full of dreams in which he figures as an infallible being; she expects
him to be her refuge, support, and comfort at all times; and when a man
has such a height to fall from in any one's estimation, there can be
but little of him left if he does fall."
Ideala sighed, and after a short pause she said: "I have been wondering
what makes it possible for a woman to love a man? Not the flesh that
she sees and can touch, though that may attract her as the colour of
the flower attracts. It must be the mind that is in him--the scent of
the flower, as it were. If she finds eventually that his mind is
corrupt, she must shrink from it as from any other form of corruption,
and finally abandon him on account of it, as she would abandon the
flower if she found its odour fetid--indeed, she has already abandoned
her husband when she acknowledges that he is not what she thought him."
She paused a moment, and then went on passionately: "I cannot tell you
what it was--the battling day by day with a power that was irresistible
because it had to put forth no strength to accomplish its work; it
simply was itself, and by being itself it lowered me. I cannot tell you
what it was to feel myself going down, and not to be able to help it,
try as I would; to feel the gradual change in my mind as it grew to
harbour thoughts which were reflections of his thoughts, low thoughts;
and to be filled with ideas, recollections of his conversations, which
had caused me infinite disgust at the time, but remained with me like
the taste of a nauseous drug, until I almost acquired a morbid liking
for them. Oh, if I could save other women from that!"
Claudia hastily interposed to divert her. "That is a good idea, the
higher education of men," she said. "I don't know whether they have
abandoned hope, or whether they think themselves already perfect,
certain it is the idea of improving themselves does not seem to occur
to them often. And we want good men in society. If the clergy and
priests are good, it is only what is required of them, what everybody
expects, and, therefore, their goodness is accepted as a matter of
course, and is viewed as indifferently as other matters of course. One
good man in society has more effect as an example than ten priests."
"But you have not told us what you propose to do, Ideala?" I said.
"I hope it is nothing unwomanly," Claudia interposed, anxiously.
Ideala looked at her and laughed, and Claudia laughed too, the moment
after she had spoken. The fear of Ideala doing anything unwomanly was
absurd, even to herself.
"An unwomanly woman is such a dreadful creature," Claudia added,
apologetically.
"Yes," said Ideala, "but you should pity her. In nine cases out of ten
there is a great wrong or a great grief at the bottom of all her
unwomanliness--perhaps both; and if she shrieks you may be sure that
she is suffering; ease her pain, and she will be quiet enough. The
average woman who is happy in her marriage does not care to know more
of the world than she can learn in her own nursery, nor to see more of
it, as a rule, than she can see from her own garden gate. She is a
great power; but, unfortunately, there is so very little of her!
"What I want to do is to make women discontented--you have heard of a
noble spirit of discontent? I thought for a long time that everything
had been done that could be done to make the world better; but now I
see that there is still one thing more to be tried. Women have never
yet united to use their influence steadily and all together against
that of which they disapprove. They work too much for themselves, each
trying to make their own life happier. They have yet to learn to take a
wider view of things, and to be shown that the only way to gain their
end is by working for everybody else, with intent to make the whole
world better, which means happier. And in order to accomplish this they
must be taught that they have only to _will_ it--each in her own
family and amongst her own friends; that, after having agreed with the
rest about what they mean to put down, they have only to go home and
use their influence to that end, quietly, consistently, and without
wavering, and the thing will be done. Our influence is like those
strong currents which run beneath the surface of the ocean without
disturbing it, and yet with irresistible force, and at a rate that may
be calculated. It is to help in the direction of that force that I am
going to devote my life. Do not imagine," she went on hurriedly, "that
I think myself fit for such a work. I have had conscientious scruples--
been sorely troubled about my own unworthiness, which seemed to unfit
me for any good work. But now I see things differently. One may be made
an instrument for good without merit of one's own. So long as we do not
deceive ourselves by thinking we are worthy, and so long as we are
trying our best to become so, I think we may hope; I think we may even
know that we shall eventually----" She stopped and looked at me.
"Be made worthy," said Claudia, kissing her; "and if it were not so,
Ideala, if everybody had to begin by being as good themselves as they
want others to be, there would be no good workers left in the world at
all."
At this moment a noisy party burst in upon our grave debate and carried
Ideala off for a ride. We saw them leave the house, and watched them
ride away until the last glimpse of them was veiled by the misty
brightness of the frosty air and the morning sunshine.
"How well she looks!" Claudia exclaimed; "better than any of them. She
has quite recovered, and is none the worse."
"I do not know about recovery," I answered, dubiously. "She will never
----"
But Claudia interrupted hotly: "I know what you are going to say, and I
do wish you would leave off speaking of Ideala in that way. Any one to
hear you would suppose she had committed a sin, and you know quite well
that that was not the case. If she acted without common prudence--and I
will not deny that she did--it was entirely your own fault. She has
never been intimate with any man but yourself, and you have made her
believe that all men are like you. How could she harbour suspicion when
she did not know what to suspect? Of course she saw everything wrongly
and awry. The old life had become impossible to her, and she nearly
made a mistake as to what the new one should be, that was all. I know
she wavered for a moment, but the weakness was more physical than
moral, I think. Her vision was clouded at the time, but as soon as she
was restored to health she saw things clearly enough. She is a great
and good woman, pure-hearted and full of charity. God bless her for all
her tenderness, and for her wonderful power to love. He alone can count
the number who have reason to wish her well."
"That is true," I answered. "And I was merely going to remark, when you
interrupted me, that she will never think herself 'none the worse'--"
"I don't see what difference that makes," Claudia again interposed.
"She always did think herself least of the least when she thought of
herself at all, and that was not often. You are dwelling too long on
the past, really, and making too much of it. Men, when they are saints,
are twice as bad as women."
I pointed out to my sister something confusing in her way of expressing
the fact, but my kindness seemed to exasperate her.
"You know what I mean quite well," she said tartly.
"Yes, _I_ know," I rejoined; "but I wanted to help you to make
yourself intelligible to other people."
Claudia made a gesture of impatience, but laughed, and left me; and I
remained for a long time thinking over all that Ideala had said, and
also thinking of her as she looked at the time; and the subject was so
inspiring that, although my strong point is landscape, in an ambitious
mood I began to paint an allegorical picture of her as a mother nursing
the Infant Goodness of the race. She saw it when it was nearly
finished, but did not recognise herself, and exclaimed; "What a gaunt
creature! and that baby weighs at least twelve stone!"
The picture was never finished.