Helen Harmon was glad when the colonel was gone. She went to a mirror,
fixed to the wall between the two windows of the room, and she carefully
rearranged her hair. She could not feel quite herself until she knew
that the scar was covered again and hidden from curious eyes. Then she
sat down, glad to be alone. It had been a great and unexpected pleasure
to see Wimpole, but the discovery he had made, and the things he had
said, had disturbed and unnerved her.
There had been conviction in his voice when he had said that Harmon
might recover, and the possibility of a change in her husband's
condition had crossed her mind more than once. She felt that a return to
such a state of things as had made up her life before he had become
insane, would kill her by slow torture. It was of no use any longer to
tell herself that recovery was impossible, and to persuade herself that
it was so by the mere repetition of the words. Words had no more weight,
now.
She thought of her freedom since that merciful deliverance. It was not
happiness, for there were other things yet to be suffered, but it was
real freedom. She had her son's affliction to bear, but she could bear
it alone and go and come with him as she pleased. She contrasted this
liberty with what she had borne for years.
The whole history of their married life came back to her, the gradual
progress of it from first to last, if indeed it had yet reached the end
and was not to go back to the beginning again.
First there had been the sort of half-contented resignation which many
young women feel during the early months of married life, when they have
made what is called by the world a good match, simply because they saw
no reason for not marrying and because they were ashamed to own that
they cared for a man who did not seem to be attached to them. Sometimes
the state lasts throughout life, a neutral, passionless, negative state,
in which the heart turns flat and life is soon stale, a condition in
which many women, not knowing what pain is, grow restless and believe
that it must be pleasanter to be hurt than to feel nothing.
Henry Harmon had been handsome, full of life and nerve and enthusiasm
for living, a rider, a sportsman, more reckless than brave and more
brave than strong-minded, with a gift for being, or seeming to be,
desperately in love, which had ultimately persuaded Helen to marry him
in spite of her judgment. He turned pale when he was long near her, his
eyes flashed darkly, his hands shook a little, and his voice trembled.
An older woman might have thought it all rather theatrical, but he
seemed to suffer, and that moved Helen, though it did not make her
really love him. Women know that weakness of theirs and are more afraid
of pitying an importunate suitor than of admiring him. So Helen married
Harmon.
Disillusionment came as daylight steals upon dancers in a ballroom. At
first it was not so painful as might have been imagined, for Helen was
not excessively sensitive, and she had never really loved the man in the
least. He grew tired of her and left her to herself a good deal. That
was a relief, at first, for after she had realized that she did not love
him, she shrank from him instinctively, with something very like real
shame, and to be left alone was like being respected.
"Mrs. Blank's husband is neglecting her," says one.
"She does not seem to care; she looks very happy," answers another.
And she is temporarily happy, because Mr. Blank's neglect gives her a
sense of bodily relief, for she knows that she has made a mistake in
marrying him. It was so with Helen, and as she was not a changeable nor
at all a capricious person, it might have continued to be so. But
Harmon changed rapidly in the years that followed. From having been
what people called fast, he became dissipated. He had always loved the
excitement of wine. When it failed him, he took to stronger stuff,
which presently became the essential requisite of his being. He had
been said to be gay, then he was spoken of as wild, then as dissipated.
Some people avoided him, and every one pitied Helen. Yet although he
ruined his constitution, he did not wreck his fortunes, for he was lucky
in all affairs connected with money. There remained many among his
acquaintances who could not afford to disapprove of him, because he had
power.
He drank systematically, as some men do, for the sake of daily
excitement, and Helen learned to know tolerably well when he was
dangerous and when he might be approached with safety. But more than
once she had made horrible mistakes, and the memories of them were like
dreams out of hell. In his drunkenness her face recalled other days to
him, and forgotten words of passion found thick and indistinct
utterance. Once she had turned on him, white and desperate in her
self-defence. He struck her on the forehead with a cut-glass decanter,
snatched from her toilet table. When she came to herself hours
afterwards, it was daylight. Harmon was in a drunken sleep, and the
blood on his face was hers.
She shuddered with pain from head to foot when she thought of it. Then
had come strange lapses of his memory, disconnected speech, even
hysterical tears, following senseless anger, and then he had ceased to
recognize any one, and had almost killed one of the men who took care of
him, so that it was necessary to take him to an asylum, struggling like
a wild beast. Twice, out of a sense of duty, she had been to see
whether he knew her, but he knew no one, and the doctors said it was a
hopeless case. Since then she had received a simple confirmation of the
statement every month, and there seemed to be no reason for expecting
any change, and she felt free.
Free was the only word she could find, and she applied it to herself in
a sense of her own, meaning that she had been liberated from the
thraldom in which she had lived so many years face to face with his
brutality, and hiding it from the world as best she could, protecting
and defending his name, and refusing pity as she would have refused
money had she been poor. People might guess what she suffered, but no
one should know it from her, and no one but herself could tell the half
of what she underwent.
Yet, now that it was all over, Wimpole suggested that it might begin
again, unless she took measures to defend herself. But her heart
revolted at the idea of a divorce. She wondered, as she tried to test
herself, whether she could be as strong if the case really arose. It
never occurred to her to ask whether her strength might not be folly,
for it lay in one of those convictions by which unusual characters are
generally moved, and conviction never questions itself.
It was not that in order to be divorced she must almost necessarily
bring up in public and prove by evidence a certain number of her many
wrongs. The publicity would be horrible. Every newspaper in the
country would print the details, with hideous head-lines. Even her
son's deficiency would be dragged into the light. She should have to
explain how she had come by the scar on her forehead, and much more that
would be harder to tell, if she could bring her lips to speak the words.
Nevertheless, she could do that, and bear everything, for a good cause.
If, for instance, Archie's future depended upon it, or even if it could
do him some good, she could do all that for his sake. But even for his
sake, she would not be divorced, not even if Harmon were let out of the
asylum and came back to her.
Some people, perhaps many, could not understand such a prejudice, or
conviction, now that all convictions are commonly spoken of as relative.
But will those who do not understand Helen Harmon consider how the world
looked upon divorce as recently as five and twenty years ago? Nothing
can give a clearer idea of the direction taken by social morality than
the way in which half the world has become accustomed to regard marriage
as a contract, and not as a bond, during the lifetime of people now
barely in middle age.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago divorces were so rare as to be regarded
in the light of very, uncommon exceptions to the general rule. The
divorce law itself is not yet forty years old in England, nor twenty
years old in France. In Italy there is no civil divorce whatever at the
present day, and the Catholic Church only grants what are not properly
divorces, but annullations of marriage, in very rare cases, and with the
greatest reluctance.
Even in America, every one can remember how divorce was spoken of and
thought of until very recently. Within a few years it was deemed to be
something very like a disgrace, and certainly a profoundly cynical and
immoral proceeding. To-day we can most of us count in our own
acquaintance half a dozen persons who have been divorced and have
married again. Whatever we may think of it in our hearts, or whatever
our religious convictions may be on the subject, it has become so common
that when we hear of a flagrant case of cruelty or unfaithfulness, by
which a man or woman suffers, the question at once rises to our lips,
'Why does he not divorce his wife?' or 'Why does she not divorce her
husband?' We have grown used to the idea, and, if it does not please
us, it certainly does not shock us. It shocked our fathers, but we are
perfectly indifferent.
Of course there are many, perhaps a majority, who, though not Roman
Catholics, would in their own lives put up with almost anything rather
than go to the divorce court for peace. Some actually suffer much and
ask for no redress. But there are very many who have not suffered
anything at all, excepting the favourite 'incompatibility of temper,'
and who have taken advantage of the loose laws in certain states to try
a second matrimonial experiment. In what calls itself society, there
seems still to be a prejudice against a third marriage for divorced
persons, but at the present rate of so-called progress this cannot last
long, and the old significance of the word marriage will be quite lost
before our great grandchildren are dead; in other words, by the end of
the next century, at the furthest.
There are various forms of honourable political dreaming and of
dishonourable political mischief-making nowadays, which we are
accustomed to call collectively 'socialism.' Most of these rely for
their hope of popular success upon their avowed intention of dividing
property and preventing its subsequent accumulation. Marriage is an
incentive of such accumulation, because it perpetuates families and
therefore keeps property together by inheritance. Therefore most forms
of socialism are at present in favour of divorce, as a means of
ultimately destroying marriage altogether. A proverb says that
whosoever desires the end, desires also the means. There is more truth
in the saying than morality in the point of view it expresses. But
there are those who desire neither the means nor the end to which they
lead, and a struggle is coming, the like of which has not been seen
since the beginning of the world, and of which we who are now alive
shall not see the termination.
The Civil War in the United States turned upon slavery incidentally, not
vitally. The cause of that great fight lay much deeper. In the same
way the Social War, which is coming, will turn incidentally upon
religion, and be perhaps called a religious war hereafter, but it will
not be declared for the sake of faith against unbelief, nor be fought at
first by any church, or alliance of churches, against atheism. It will
simply turn out that the men who fight on the one side will have either
the convictions or the prejudices of Christianity, or both, and that
their adversaries will have neither. But the struggle will be at its
height when the original steady current of facts which led to inevitable
strife has sunk into apparent insignificance under the raging storm of
conflicting belief and unbelief. The disadvantage of the unbelievers
will lie in the fact that belief is positive and assertive, whereas
unbelief is negative and argumentative. It is indeed easier to deny
than to prove almost anything. But that is not the question. In life
and war it is generally easier to keep than to take, and besides, those
who believe 'care,' as we say, whereas those who deny generally 'care'
very little. It is probable, to say the least of it, that so long as
the socialists of the near future believe assertively that they have
discovered the means of saving humanity from misery and poverty, and
fight for a pure conviction, they will have the better of it, but that
when they find themselves in the position of attacking half of mankind's
religious faith, having no idea, but only a proposition, to offer in its
place, they will be beaten.
That seems far from the question of divorce, but it is not. Before the
battle, the opposing forces are encamped and intrenched at a little
distance from each other, and each tries to undermine the other's
outworks. Socialism, collectively, has dug a mine under Social Order's
strongest tower, which is called marriage, and the edifice is beginning
to shake from its foundations, even before the slow-match is lighted.
To one who has known the world well for a quarter of a century, it seems
as though the would-be destroyers of the existing order had forgotten,
among several other things, the existence of woman, remembering only
that of the female. They practically propose to take away woman's
privileges in exchange for certain more or less imaginary 'rights.'
There is an apparent justice in the 'conversion,' as it would be called
in business. If woman is to have all the rights of man, which, indeed,
seem reducible to a political vote now and then, why should she keep all
the privileges which man is not allowed? But tell her that when she is
allowed to vote for the president of the United States once in four
years, no man shall be expected to stand up in a public conveyance to
give her a seat, nor to fetch and carry for her, nor to support her
instead of being supported by her, nor to keep her for his wife any
longer than he chooses, and the 'conversion' looks less attractive.
The reason why woman has privileges instead of rights is that all men
tacitly acknowledge the future of humanity to be dependent on her from
generation to generation. Man works or fights, and takes his rights in
payment therefor, as well as for a means of working and fighting to
greater advantage. And while he is fighting or working, his wife takes
care of his children almost entirely. There is not one household in a
hundred thousand, rich or poor, where there is really any question about
that. It sounds insignificant, perhaps, and it looks as though anybody
could take care of two or three small children. Those who have tried it
know better, and they are women. Now and then rich mothers are too lazy
to look after their children themselves. To do them such justice as one
may, they are willing to spend any amount of money in order to get it
well done for them, but the result is not encouraging to those who would
have all children brought up 'by the state.' Even if it were so, who
would bring them up? Women, of course. Then why not their own mothers?
Because mothers sometimes--or often, for the sake of argument--do not
exactly know how. Then educate the mothers, give them chances of
knowing how, let them learn, if you know any better than they, which is
doubtful, to say the least of it.
Moreover, does any man in his senses really believe that mothers, as a
whole, would submit and let their children be taken from them to a state
rearing-house, to be brought up under a number on a ticket by
professional baby-farmers, in exchange for the 'right' to vote at a
presidential election, and the 'right' to put away their husbands and
take others as often as they please, and the 'right' to run for
Congress? Yet the plan has been proposed gravely.
There seems to be a good deal to be said in favour of the existing state
of things, after all, and particularly in favour of marriage, and
therefore against divorce; and it is not surprising that woman, whose
life is in reality far more deeply affected by both questions than man's
life is, should have also the more profound convictions about them.
Woman brings us into the world, woman is our first teacher, woman makes
the world what it is, from century to century. We can no more escape
from woman, and yet continue to live our lives as they should be lived,
than we can hide ourselves from nature. We are in her care or in her
power during more than half our years, and often during all, from first
to last. We are born of her, we grow of her, as truly as trees and
flowers come of the mother earth and draw their life from the soil in
which they are planted. The man who denies his mother is a bad man, and
the man who has not loved woman is a man in darkness.
Man is not really unjust to woman in his thoughts of her either, unless
he be a lost soul, but he has not much reason in respect of her nor any
justice in his exactions. Because within himself he knows that she is
everything and all things for the life and joy of men, therefore he
would seem perfect in her eyes; and he rails against whatsoever in her
does not please him, as a blot upon the lustre of his ideal, which
indeed he would make a glorified reflexion of his own faults. When he
is most imperfect, he most exacts her praise; when he is weakest, she
must think him most strong; when he fails, she must call failure
victory, or at the least she must name it honourable defeat; she must
not see his meanness, but she must magnify the smallest of his
generosities to the great measure of his immeasurable vanity therein;
she must see faith in his unfaithfulness, honour in his disgrace,
heroism in his cowardice, for his sake; she must forgive freely and
forgettingly such injury as he would not pardon any man; in one word,
she must love him, that in her love he may think and boast himself a
god.
It is much to ask. And yet many a woman who loves a man with all her
heart has done and daily does every one of those things, and more; and
the man knows it, and will not think of it lest he should die of shame.
And, moreover, a woman has borne him, a woman has nursed him, a woman
taught him first; a woman gives him her soul and her body when he is a
man; and when he is dead, if tears are shed for him, they are a woman's.
If we men are honest, we shall say that we do not give her much for all
that, not much honour, not much faith. We think we do enough if we give
her life's necessities and luxuries in fair share to the limit of our
poverty or wealth; that we give much, if we love her; too much, if we
trust her altogether.
It is a wonder that women should love, seeing what some men are and what
most men may be when the devil is in them. It is a wonder that women
should not rise up in a body and demand laws to free them from marriage,
for one-half the cause that so many of them have.
But they do not. Even in this old age of history they still believe in
marriage, and cling to it, and in vast majority cry out against its
dissolution. No man ever believes in anything as a woman who loves him
believes in him. Men have stronger arms, and heads for harder work, but
they have no such hearts as women. And the world has been led by the
heart in all ages.
Even when the great mistake is made, many a woman clings to the faith
that made it, for the sake of what might have been, in a self-respect of
which men do not dream. Even when she has married with little love, and
taken a man who has turned upon her like a brute beast, her marriage is
still a bond which she will not break, and the vow made is not void
because the promise taken has been a vain lie. Its damnation is upon him
who spoke it, but she still keeps faith.
So, when her fair years of youth lay scattered and withered as blown
leaves along the desert of her past, Helen Harmon, wisely or unwisely,
but faithfully and with a whole heart, meant to keep that plighted word
which is not to be broken by wedded man and woman 'until death shall
them part.'