第61章 CHAPTER IV(5)
"They say women have one great and noble work left them, and they do it ill. That is true; they do it execrably. It is the work that demands the broadest culture, and they have not even the narrowest. The lawyer may see no deeper than his law-books, and the chemist see no further than the windows of his laboratory, and they may do their work well. But the woman who does woman's work needs a many-sided, multiform culture; the heights and depths of human life must not be beyond the reach of her vision; she must have knowledge of men and things in many states, a wide catholicity of sympathy, the strength that springs from knowledge, and the magnanimity which springs from strength. We bear the world, and we make it. The souls of little children are marvellously delicate and tender things, and keep forever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the mother's or at best a woman's. There was never a great man who had not a great mother--it is hardly an exaggeration. The first six years of our life make us; all that is added later is veneer; and yet some say, if a woman can cook a dinner or dress herself well she has culture enough.
"The mightiest and noblest of human work is given to us, and we do it ill.
Send a navvie to work into an artist's studio, and see what you will find there! And yet, thank God, we have this work," she added, quickly--"it is the one window through which we see into the great world of earnest labour.
The meanest girl who dances and dresses becomes something higher when her children look up into her face and ask her questions. It is the only education we have and which they cannot take from us."
She smiled slightly. "They say that we complain of woman's being compelled to look upon marriage as a profession; but that she is free to enter upon it or leave it, as she pleases.
"Yes--and a cat set afloat in a pond is free to sit in the tub till it dies there, it is under no obligation to wet its feet; and a drowning man may catch at a straw or not, just as he likes--it is a glorious liberty! Let any man think for five minutes of what old maidenhood means to a woman--and then let him be silent. Is it easy to bear through life a name that in itself signifies defeat? to dwell, as nine out of ten unmarried women must, under the finger of another woman? Is it easy to look forward to an old age without honour, without the reward of useful labour, without love? I wonder how many men there are who would give up everything that is dear in life for the sake of maintaining a high ideal purity."
She laughed a little laugh that was clear without being pleasant.
"And then, when they have no other argument against us, they say, 'Go on; but when you have made woman what you wish, and her children inherit her culture, you will defeat yourself. Man will gradually become extinct from excess of intellect, the passions which replenish the race will die.'
Fools!" she said, curling her pretty lip. "A Hottentot sits at the roadside and feeds on a rotten bone he has found there, and takes out his bottle of Cape-smoke and swills at it, and grunts with satisfaction; and the cultured child of the nineteenth century sits in his armchair, and sips choice wines with the lip of a connoisseur, and tastes delicate dishes with a delicate palate, and with a satisfaction of which the Hottentot knows nothing. Heavy jaw and sloping forehead--all have gone with increasing intellect; but the animal appetites are there still--refined, discriminative, but immeasurably intensified. Fools! Before men forgave or worshipped, while they were weak on their hind legs, did they not eat and drink, and fight for wives? When all the latter additions to humanity have vanished, will not the foundation on which they are built remain?"
She was silent then for a while, and said somewhat dreamily, more as though speaking to herself than to him, "They ask, What will you gain, even if man does not become extinct?--you will have brought justice and equality on to the earth, and sent love from it. When men and women are equals they will love no more. Your highly- cultured women will not be lovable, will not love.
"Do they see nothing, understand nothing? It is Tant Sannie who buries husbands one after another, and folds her hands resignedly,--'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord,'-- and she looks for another. It is the hard-headed, deep thinker who, when the wife who has thought and worked with him goes, can find no rest, and lingers near her till he finds sleep beside her.
"A great soul draws and is drawn with a more fierce intensity than any small one. By every inch we grow in intellectual height our love strikes down its roots deeper, and spreads out its arms wider. It is for love's sake yet more than for any other that we look for that new time."
She had leaned her head against the stones, and watched with her sad, soft eyes the retreating bird. "Then when that time comes," she said lowly, "when love is no more bought or sold, when it is not a means of making bread, when each woman's life is filled with earnest, independent labour, then love will come to her, a strange, sudden sweetness breaking in upon her earnest work; not sought for, but found. Then, but not now--"
Waldo waited for her to finish the sentence, but she seemed to have forgotten him.
"Lyndall," he said, putting his hand upon her--she started--"if you think that that new time will be so great, so good, you who speak so easily--"
She interrupted him.
"Speak! speak!" she said, "the difficulty is not to speak; the difficulty is to keep silence."
"But why do you not try to bring that time?" he said with pitiful simplicity. "When you speak I believe all you say; other people would listen to you also."
"I am not so sure of that," she said with a smile.
Then over the small face came the weary look it had worn last night as it watched the shadow in the corner, Ah, so weary!