Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and slower now to be aroused,
still then were such that she could weep for pity. It is a glimpse of
her not to be seen again. There was she on her knees by Keggo, and with
her arms about Keggo’s waist, and with her head on Keggo’s lap,
crying for Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo’s unfolding of her story
entreating her, as one that cried responses to a litany, “Don’t mind,
Keggo! Keggo, don’t mind now! Dear Keggo, poor Keggo, it’s all right
now.”
And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders’ medicine was; and all
the humiliation suffered in keeping in with “that vile man”; and that
vile man’s betrayal of her to the Sultana, and her dismissal; and all
the earlier dreadfulness of her first steps down into her dreadful
malady; and all the dreadful secrecy of all those years; and all the
horrible humiliation secretly to get her poison; and all the horrible
humiliations when her poison got. All the dark tale of that presently
told; and her head bowed down to Rosalie’s, and Rosalie’s wet face
against her face, and her face also wet; and just her murmurs, murmured
at intervals, as though her heart that had discharged its grievous load
ran slowly now, slowly to rise and then to well with, “God bless you,
Rosalie; oh, Rosalie, God bless you”; and for a long time just seated
thus, cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness bound about
with strength, sorrow in pity’s arms, travail in sanctuary....
It is desired that one should try to see that picture. Its counterpart
was not again in the life of Rosalie, hardening.
There were, after that, such happy evenings in Keggo’s room. Keggo,
with one to help her, fighting for herself; Rosalie, with one to help,
elevated upon that high happiness that comes with fighting for another.
For a short time there seemed to be no lapses in Keggo’s struggle. When
they came (as Rosalie knew afterwards) the practised cunning of years of
secrecy had no difficulty in concealing them from the unsuspecting eyes
of Rosalie. Ill that it was so! Rosalie was harder when came the lapse
that cunning could not hide. She did not cry. Her eyes were hard. She
said with thin lips, “Why, even all this time you have been deceiving
me!” the which egged on, in that vile way in which exchanges of a
quarrel are as knives sharpening one against the other, Keggo’s enflamed
retort, “The more fool you! Little fool!”
But at first, while the lapses were few and the cunning was equal to
them, only a closer friendship was set afoot between the woman that was
grown and the woman that was burgeoning, and there were such very happy
evenings in the room in Limpen Street. Such jolly talks.
There was one talk that, forgotten with the very evening of its passage,
afterwards very strongly returned to Rosalie and abode with her. It had
in it rather vital things for Rosalie.
She loved to talk about her work with intelligent and sympathetic Keggo,
and she had been on this occasion expounding to her the mysteries and
interest of life insurance: in particular explaining the “romance” of
vital statistics; in particular, again, the curious fact that, though
women in the United Kingdom largely outnumbered men, many more male
children were born than female. The disproportion “the other way about”
in maturity, said Rosalie, was because the death rate among men was much
higher--due to risks of their occupations. “A certain number of house
painters,” said Rosalie sagely, “fall off ladders every year and are
killed; women don’t paint houses, so they don’t fall off ladders and get
killed. Similarly on railways, Keggo. The death rate among railway men
is much higher in proportion, over an average, than the rate in any
other occupation. Porters doing shunting, for instance, are always
getting killed. Well, women don’t shunt trains so they don’t get killed
while shunting trains, so there you are again, so to speak. The thing in
a nutshell, Keggo, is that, by contrast, men lead dangerous lives.”
Keggo, who always was very alert in response, was here very long in
responding. Then she responded an extraordinary thing that Rosalie
afterwards remembered. She said slowly, “Oh, but Rosalie, it’s very
dangerous to be a woman.”
Rosalie questioned her.
Keggo said, “Rosalie, you’ve great ideas, and I think very shrewd and
very striking ideas, about the difference between men and women, but
there’s this difference I think you haven’t thought of--the danger that
women carry in themselves; right in them, here”--she had a hand against
her breast and she pressed it there--“born in them, inerradicable, and
that men have not. Men go into dangers but they come out of them and go
home to tea. That’s what it is with men, Rosalie. They can always get
out. They can always come back. They never belong to a thing, body and
soul and heart and mind. Rosalie, women do. That’s their danger. That’s
why it is so very, very dangerous being a woman. Women can’t come back.
They can’t, Rosalie. Look at me. They take to a thing and it becomes a
craze, it becomes an obsession, it becomes a drug. Look at me. They take
to a thing--anything; a poison like mine, or a pursuit like some one
else’s, or an idea like some other’s, or a--a career in life like, like
yours, Rosalie,--they take to it and go deep enough, and they’re its;
they never will get away from it, they never, never will be able to come
out of it. Never.”
She was extraordinarily vehement. It was embarrassing for Rosalie.
Rosalie desired to contest, as vehemently, these theories. She did
not believe them a bit. They were founded, she felt, on the tragedy of
Keggo’s own case. Keggo was unfairly, though very naturally, arguing
from the particular to the general, from the personal to the abstract.
But how could she reply to Keggo, “Of course you say that?”
She was silent; but she betrayed perhaps her thoughts in a gesture, her
difficulty in some expression of her face.
Keggo said very intensely, “But, Rosalie, if you only knew! With me
it’s drink and you’ll say--. But I say to you, Rosalie, never, never let
anything get the mastery of you. With me it’s drink and you’ll say that
is a matter altogether different, with which parallels are not to be
drawn. Oh, do not believe it, Rosalie. A woman should in all things be
desperately temperate--watchfully, desperately temperate. A man--nearly
every man--seems somehow to have his life and all his interests in
compartments. He can be immersed in one while he is in it, and can get
out of it and distribute himself over his others and close it and
forget it. Rosalie, a woman can’t. Men have hobbies. They don’t have
attachments; they have detachments. They detach themselves and turn to
a thing and they detach themselves from it and turn back again. Rosalie,
women don’t turn to a thing; they go to it. They don’t have hobbies,
they have obsessions. They don’t trifle, they plunge. They cannot sip,
they drain. It’s in their bone. They never would have occupied the place
they do occupy if it were not that from the beginning they have given
themselves over, or they were given over, to mastery. They are the
weaker vessel. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman gives herself,
forgets moderation and gives herself to anything, she is its captive for
ever. She may think she can come back, but she can’t come back. For a
woman there is no comeback. They don’t issue return tickets to women.
For women there is only departure; there is no return.”
Rosalie said, “Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won’t. But what I
can’t imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases--in by far
the great majority of cases. Take mine. You’re not warning me, are you?
I don’t see the possibility--”
Keggo said, “Darling, I’m not warning you and yet I am. I am warning you
because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are susceptible
to danger. It’s what I’ve said; it’s what I would have you remember
for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being a woman. I’m not
warning you, because there’s nothing to--well, but isn’t there? You’ve
got a theory of life and you are bent upon a career in life. There’s--”
Rosalie cried, “Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no return
tickets--well, I don’t want to come back; I don’t want a return ticket.”
“You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?”
“But you can’t suppose it. Why ever should I?”
“Suppose you wanted to marry?”
Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality. “Well, suppose the
incredible. Suppose I did. There’d be no comeback wanted there. I could
perfectly well marry and still keep my theory of life; I could perfectly
well marry and still keep on in my career--and most certainly I would
still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life, as you call it, or a very
outstanding principle of it. There’s nothing to me more detestable
in the whole business than the idea that because a woman marries she
therefore must give up her work. That’s what is the reason the boarding
house and every boarding house and every home and street and city swarms
with derelicts--with derelict women--just because their lives are all
planned as blind alley occupations, marriage at the end of the alley,
no need to do anything, no need to be anything because it’s only a blind
alley you’re in. When you reach the end--you reach the end! That’s it,
Keggo. You reach the end. You’re a woman, therefore for you--the end!”
She laughed again. She was returning Keggo’s vehemence without
embarrassment upon the subject that had made return difficult. She
cried, “I’ve got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say they don’t issue
return tickets to women. No. Perhaps they don’t; but I’ll tell you where
they book them all to--from the cradle to a terminus.”
Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie was pleased with her
adroit turning of metaphors. She repeated “To a terminus. Well, I’ve
booked beyond, Keggo.” She laughed again. “And then the idea of marriage
for me! I’ve granted the preposterous just for the sake of the argument
and just to floor the argument. But you know, you know perfectly well
from all our talks, even so far back as at the Sultana’s, that it’s
simply too grotesque! Marriage, for me! Why, if a million men came to
me on their bended knees, each with a million pounds on their backs
you know perfectly well that I’d just feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats,
tomcats, Cheshire cats, wild cats, stray cats,--I’m not going to set up
a cats’ home. No thanks.”
So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.