It was in Mary's sensations as though, all unprepared, she had turned a
sudden corner and found herself looking into an abyss, the darkness and
depth of which was unfathomable. All sense of balance and equilibrium
seemed to leave her. She reeled and was giddy in her mind. She could
have laughed aloud. Her mental stance upon the plane of thought became
a negation. Her grip was gone. She was floating, nebulously,
foolishly, without power of volition to gravitate herself to a solid
conception of anything.
He proposed to take John away from her. He was suggesting to her by
every word he said that it was her duty to John to let him go. Not only
could she laugh at the thought of it--she did. After all these twelve
years when the whole of her life and John's too were planned out like a
design upon a loom, needing only the spinning, she was to tear the whole
fabric into shreds and fling it away! It was preposterous, unbelievable
that he could have thought it worth while to come to her with such a
suggestion. Yet she laughed, not because it was so ludicrous as to be
unbelievable, but because Fate had so ordered it that, in a depth of her
consciousness, she knew he could have done nothing else.
From the world's point of view it was the natural and inevitable
sequence in an extraordinary chain of events. Many a woman would be
glad of such an advancement for her son. Most conceivable it was that a
man should desire his own flesh and blood to inherit and carry on in his
name that of which the generations had made him proud. All this she
realized. All this was the darkness and depth of the abyss into which
she looked.
But then the sound of her laughter in her ears gave her hold again.
More real than all worldly considerations became the cruelty it was to
her. More real even than that was the destruction of the ideal she had
cherished in her heart and nurtured and fed in John's.
His education was to have been the earth, the very soil his feet trod,
not the riches that came out of that earth and more than the soft wet
clay, soiled the hands of him who touched them. It was to give, not to
enjoy; to labor, not to possess with which she had hedged him in upon
his road to happiness and fulfillment. These were the realizations
which, with the sound of her laughter, gave her hold again.
She saw the depth and darkness of that abyss, but shut her eyes to it.
In full possession of herself, having gained equilibrium once more, she
turned upon Liddiard with a scorn he had never seen in her.
"I'm forty now," she said, "and I don't think you'll deny that I have
found and faced the world. In your sheltered place down there in
Somerset, you can't maintain that you have met the world--as I've met
it. The real things have never threatened you to crush your spirit or
break your courage as they have mine. Setting up a chapel or building a
tithe barn aren't the real things of life. Keeping your lawns cut and
your borders trimmed won't make England great or set in order the vast
forces of life that govern us. Inheriting isn't creating, possession
isn't power. You want to train my son to the thought that it is. For
twelve years I've trained his little mind to the knowledge that it
isn't. You want him to possess and enjoy. I want him to labor and
live. You want him to inherit your pride. I want him to create his
own. Doesn't it ever occur to you that since your family established
itself in its possessions in Somersetshire, it's been decaying in
purpose, decaying in spirit, decaying in power? Doesn't it ever occur to
you that you're making no surplus of energy in that house of Liddiard,
but by means of the laws of inheritance are living upon a little circle
of energy that goes round and round, always dissipating itself with
every generation, always becoming the lesser instead of the greater;
creating no energy that is new, only using up that which is old; setting
up chapels for itself and building itself tithe barns, always for
itself, never making that energy really free for the whole world to
profit by?"
Liddiard stood staring at her in amazement. She was not talking with
the words of a woman. She was talking with the words of a force, a new
force; something, coming up against which he felt himself puny and small
and well-nigh impotent.
"You think I'm talking like a street orator," she said, justly reading
that look. "Very probably I am to you. I know nothing of the social
science, none of the facts for what I'm saying. I've never even said
things like this before. I'm not picking my words. I'm only saying what
I feel, what I believe all women are feeling in their hearts. One and
all, if their thoughts were known, I believe they know they have
contributed long enough to the possessive passions of men. Long enough
they've been through the pains of birth and the greater pain of
disappointment in their sons in order to give men children to inherit
the possessions that are theirs. Long enough they've been servants,
slaves even, to the ideals of men. The laws have been constructed to
make and keep them so. The civilization of the world has been built up
on the principle of 'get by force and keep by servitude.' The women who
marry into royalty must breed or they are put away. That's what we do
with the cows here on this farm. If they don't have calves and give
milk, they're sent away to the market and they're sold. But do you
really think you can keep women upon that plane of life forever? Here,
at Yarningdale, I set my teeth and close my eyes when the cow is driven
away. But do you suppose women are getting for themselves no more soul
than that beast has? Do you think they're always quietly going to be
driven away? Do you think they merely want to be stalled and well-fed
for their efficient service? Do you think with men as they are, making
love and passion a horror to some women they marry, that we are forever
going to believe they are fathers of our children and have supreme power
to teach them none but their own ideals?"
She came a little closer to him as now they stood out there in the
Highfield meadow.
"I'm outside your laws," she said. "You can't touch me. I believe
there are countless women who would be as I am, if they dared. I
believe there are countless women who would give all they know to be
able to train their sons to their own ideals as I can train mine. We
don't know anything about government or the forces that drive nations in
peace and in war; but we do know that the real peace is not in
possession, the real war is not in physical force and bloodshed to keep
what you have got, or win a little more. One day there'll come a time
when women won't give their sons for that, when they'll train themselves
and train them to higher conceptions than you men have had."
Of a sudden she turned from the reason in her mind to the emotion in her
breast.
"You shan't have my John!" she cried. "You shan't have him! I made
him, as every woman could make her child if once she thought it was
worth while. Well--I've thought it worth while, as now I think it worth
while to fight for him and keep him. When you made your laws about
illegitimacy and gave the woman the right in her child, it was because
you considered that some men were fools and all women were cowards and
that the one must be punished for his folly no less than the other for
her fear. But what would you do if in the end that law turned round
against you? What would you do if all women chose to do as I have done
and refused to bind themselves in matrimony to the man who gave them a
child? Men would still be fools, you may be sure of that. Nature
relies upon their folly, while they have thought that what she relied
upon was their power. Power it may be with the few, the few that can
inspire real love; but folly it is with the most of men; folly and greed
which causes them to make so many women scoff at and hate the thought of
love. Yes--hate the thought of love, some women do. Every young girl
shrinks at the thought of physical contact. Many a young woman goes to
her marriage with terror in her heart and with many that terror becomes
horror when she knows. Even we become the possession you take to
yourselves. What most of you call love--is that. But I'm going to teach
my John better things. When he comes to love, he shall come awed, as a
woman comes, not tramping with the pride of victory and possession. When
he comes to love, it shall be to make her find it as wonderful as now
she falsely dreams it is. You can't prevent me. I don't belong to
you."
Still it was a force that spoke in her, a force before which, with
character alone, he felt he had no power to oppose. She was not even
speaking as one amongst the countless women she had called upon, but as
woman, setting herself up in conflict against man. This was real war.
He had sensed well enough what she meant by that. Yet in the habit of
his mind, with power or no power to oppose, he took such weapons as he
could lay his hands upon and struck back at her.
"Don't let's stand here, like this," said he. "Can't we sit down on the
grass and talk it out?"
She sat down and, as her body touched the ground, discovered that she
was trembling in every limb.
"You're an extraordinary woman, Mary," he began. "The most extraordinary
woman I've ever known. You talk with your heart and yet you make me feel
all the time as though your heart were unapproachable. I've never
touched it. I know that. I never touched it even those two nights in
Bridnorth. I thought I had, but your letter afterwards soon proved to
me I hadn't. Some man could, I suppose, but as you talk, I can't
conceive the type he'd be. You know you frighten me and you'd terrify
most men. I don't say it in any uncomplimentary fashion, but most men,
hearing what you've said just now, would go to the ends of the earth
rather than make love to or marry you."
"You needn't talk about lack of compliment," she said with a wry smile.
"I'm quite aware of it. Women like me don't attract men. They say we're
not natural. They like natural women and by that they mean they like
women who are submissive. But if they think that's the natural woman,
their conception of women has stopped with the animals. We aren't
passive. We're coming to know that we're a force. Look at the way this
talk of the enfranchisement of women is growing. Who'd have listened to
it twenty years ago? I don't profess to know what it means. I don't
profess to conjecture what it's coming to. But it's growing; you can't
deny it."
She must have thought she had won her way. Passing like this to abstract
and speculative things, she must have believed he had no more to say;
that question no longer existed about her keeping John. It only proved
the want of knowledge of facts she admitted and it was inevitable she
must have. She had spent all the force of the vital energy of her
defense, but she had not subdued the man in him. Right as he knew in
his heart she was, there was yet all the reserve of reason in his mind.
The generations of years of precedent were all behind him. She had not
subdued him merely by victory over his emotions. The force she had was
young and ill-tried. She had set it up against convention and triumphed
for all these years. She did not realize now what weight of pressing
power there was behind it, the overbearing numbers that must tell in the
end.
He was only waiting for this moment; this moment when in the flush of
seeming victory she was weakest of all; this moment when in confidence
her mind relaxed from its purpose and, as was always happening with his
sex and hers, he could take her unawares. None of this conscious intent
there was in him. He was merely articulating in his mind in obedience
to the common instinct which through all the years of habit and custom
and use have become the nature of man.
"Yes, that idea about the enfranchisement of women is growing," he
admitted generously, "but I quite agree we can none of us know what
it'll come to. It can't alter one thing, Mary."
In a moment alert with the unyielding note in his voice, she inquired
what that might be.
"It can't alter the fact that each one of us, child, of whatever
enfranchisement we may be, stands utterly and completely alone,
encouraged or hampered in our fulfillment by the circumstances of birth
that are made for us. It happens that men are more equipped for the
making of those circumstances than women are. It happens that men are
more capable of wrestling with and overcoming the difficulties of
environment, well, in other words, of providing the encouragement of
circumstance. I don't think you can get away from that. I don't think
you can get away from the fact that in this short life we don't want to
waste our youth in making a suitable environment whenever it's possible
to start so much ahead and conserve our energies for the best that's in
us."
He turned quickly as he sat and looked at her.
"What have you called him?" he asked.
"John," she replied. "He's John Throgmorton."
"Well, do you think you're giving him the best chance of trying his soul
with the biggest things? Whatever ideals you have for him, he stands
alone with the circumstances of life in which you place him. Do you
think he's going to do the best with them here? Do you believe when he
grows up, he'll live to bless you for the chances of life you threw away
for him to-day? Do you think, if he has ambition, he'll be thankful that
he started life as a farmer's boy with scarcely any education and but
small prospects, when he could have been a master of men with a big
estate and no need to consider the hampering necessity of making ends
meet? Do you think if he's ambitious, he'll be thankful to you for that?
Ask any one who has the widest and most generous experience of the world
what they imagine will be his state of mind when, with ambition
awakening, he comes to learn that he started with that handicap. Your
ideals and ideas may be perfect in theory. How do you think they'll come
out in practice? Ideas are nothing unless they can stand against the
melting flames of fact. The experience of every one would go to tell
you that in a practical world, which this is, you were wrong. Can you
prove you will be right? Can you prove that when John grows up and
ambition lights in him, he'll thank you for your choice to-day?"
She sat in silence, listening to every word; every word that beat with
the mechanical insistence of a hammer stroke against her brain. They
were all arguments she would have expected any one to use in such a
case. They were all the very forces against which she had fought for so
long. Yet hearing them now with this added element of emotion
concerning John, which drove them not only into her brain, but beating
up against her heart as well, she realized how unanswerable they sounded
in--he had said it---in a practical world.
Supposing John did come to reproach her when he learnt the opportunity
of life she had refused for him? Her heart shrank and sickened from the
thought of it. If it were for herself alone, how easy it would be to
refuse; how easy to stand by the principles and ideals she knew in her
soul were true.
But why should he ever know? Who would there ever be here in
Yarningdale to tell him? For one instant that thought consoled and the
next assailed her with venomous accusations. Was it not the
self-confession of weakness to hope for concealment and deception to
save her from retribution? The very realization of it shook her faith.
To be true, to be worthy, to endure, ideals must be able to face the
fiercest light; must live, be tried, be nailed to the cross if
necessary. Only through such a test could they outlive the mockery of
those who railed at and spat on them. She knew she could face the
contempt of the whole world. In her own world had she not faced it
already? But could she endure the recriminations of him whose whole
life was so inextricably woven with her own?
"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God."
Those words came to her, a beacon across the heads of all the years; but
it seemed very far away to her then. The light of it flickered an
instant bringing courage to her heart and then died out again.
She did fear now. More than anything she had feared in her life, did
she shrink from the reproach of John when he should come to years of
appreciation. Her heart was here involved. Too shrewdly had Liddiard
struck home at her weakest point.
"Do you think he'll live to bless you for the chances in life you threw
away for him to-day?"
But why should it be to-day? Why in a sudden moment should this
situation be thrust upon her? Why should she be harassed like this to
say what she would do?
"You can't expect me to give you a decision about this all at once," she
said, and there were rough edges to her voice. These were not the
smooth words of an easy mind.
He heard each note. He knew she was swaying from her purpose. He
realized the approach of what he had come there determined to secure.
"I don't wish you to give a decision to-day," he replied. "Of course I
couldn't expect you to. Do you think I don't realize what I'm asking
you--however much it may be for his sake."
"No--but I don't mean to-day or this year or the next," she went on in
her distress. "Can't you wait until it can be put to him, until he's
old enough to judge for himself; until he's learnt something of all I
want to teach him?"
Liddiard put out his hand. She did not see it.
"My dear Mary," he said, as he withdrew it again, "wonderful as your
ideals are, you have the fault of all idealists. You don't equip them
to meet the facts of life. They're like flowers planted on a highway.
You don't reckon on the traffic of the world that will break them down.
Whatever your dreams may be, they cannot stop that traffic. The carts
must go by. You can't prevent a man from setting out on his journeys.
You can only hinder him from reaching his destination by the beast you
give him to draw the vehicle of his ambitions, by the sound of the
ramshackle vehicle itself which you provide him with to reach his
journey's end. John couldn't come to Wenlock Hall with the education of
a farmer's boy. That would be too cruel. That would hamper him at
every turn. The springs of his cart would be creaking. It would be like
asking him to drive down Rotten Row in a muck cart. Do you think he'd
find that fair? He must go to school. He must go to the University. He
must learn the things that it is necessary he should know to fill a
position like that. You can't send him. It must be me. I don't want
your decision at once. I can wait a week, a month, more. But you must
see yourself it can't be years. It can't be till he's able to choose
for himself. That is the unpractical side of your ideals. You don't
realize it would be too late then."
Mary sat with her elbows resting on her knees, her face locked and
hidden in her hands. It was an abyss which, round that unexpected
corner, she had seen yawning at her feet. It was deep. It was dark.
Nothing so dark or deep or fathomless had presented itself to her in her
life before. She felt herself falling, falling, falling into the
bottomless pit of it and not one hand was there in all the world that
stretched itself out to save her.
She had come so far, knowing at every turn that, for all the rough and
broken surfaces, her road was right; thinking, however hard or merciless
to her feet, it yet would lead to sweet and quiet places. Courage she
had had and fear she had known along the whole way. Still she had
striven on as one, bearing a heavy burden, who knows there is release
and rest at her journey's end.
But before the chasm of this abyss that fronted her, it was not so much
courage she lost as the vital essence of volition. For herself she did
not feel afraid. Whatever destruction might be awaiting her in those
depths, she did not shrink from it. Eagerly, willingly, she would have
sacrificed herself, but had no strength to take the hazard of what might
chance and sacrifice him.
There was little need for Liddiard to tell her how every precedent in
life opposed the thing she had set herself to do. And once John had
come in contact with life itself, how could she be sure the pressure of
his thoughts would not be tinctured with regret. What more bitter
inheritance, what more accusing testimony of her failure than that?
Not always a faun could she keep him. Not always with a dryad could he
play in happy meadows. The world it seemed had grown too old, too worn,
for that. Something must happen to stir human nature to its depths and
rearrange the threadbare and accepted values before it could ever be
young again.
Here she knew she was but dreaming dreams. There lay the abyss before
her. Nothing in the wildest flights of her imagination she could
conceive was able to fill its depths or make a bridge, however
treacherous, to span it.
He had said it. These things were unanswerable in a practical world;
and in a practical world there was no true sense of vision. The
possessions of men had become their limitations. Beyond them and the
ease they brought to the few years that were theirs, they could not see.
The vision she had had was but a glimpse; a world beyond, not a world
about her. As Liddiard watched her, she sank her head upon her knees.
He thought she had turned to tears. But a heart, breaking, turns to
that water that does not flow out of the eyes.
He thought she had turned to weeping and in genuine sympathy laid his
hand gently on her arm. And this was the spear thrust that set free the
water from the gash his touching hand made in her side.
She drew away and lifted her head and looked at him.
"You're strangling all the joy in the world," she said.