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Title: The strike of a sex
A novel.
Author: George Noyes Miller
Release date: May 9, 2025 [eBook #76051]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Wm. Reeves, 1895
Credits: Carla Foust, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRIKE OF A SEX ***
THE STRIKE OF A SEX
_THE BELLAMY LIBRARY.--No. 12_
THE
STRIKE OF A SEX
A Novel.
BY
GEORGE NOYES MILLER.
(_Member of the Oneida Community)._
[Illustration]
LONDON:
WM. REEVES: 183, CHARING CROSS RD. W.C.
Printed by the New Temple Press, Grant Road, Croydon.
SPECIAL PREFACE TO ENGLISH EDITION.
An English edition of this celebrated American story seems called for
by the great and increasing interest felt in the problem of property
in the old and crowded countries of Europe. It is nearly a hundred
years since Malthus expounded the true relation between poverty and
the increase of the human race: and it is more than thirty years since
Darwin, in his “Origin of Species,” showed that the Malthusian Law lies
at the basis of all organic evolution. No further apology is needed for
a tale which points to a discovery, already tested by experience, which
claims to solve, at one and the same time, the Malthusian or population
problem, the Darwinian or eugenic problem, the problem of social
purity, and the problem of personal health in relation to sex.
F. W. F.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
To tell the truth, I put forth this slight piece of literature in
much fear and trembling. Not that I had any morbid dread of literary
condemnation, or any solicitude about financial failure. My anxiety was
solely in regard to the reception that my little book might meet from
women. To my mind, there was no other judge: and I awaited her verdict
in real suspense.
But my suspense was happily short and in its relief, I think that I
tasted something like the overpowering joy which the prisoner feels
when he is declared to be innocent. The letters of gratitude which I
have received and am receiving from noble women in two continents have
fairly overwhelmed me and they have rewarded me a hundredfold.
The whole world is plainly in travail to lift the primeval curse of
brutalizing labour from man. But the just, at least, are beginning to
perceive that the primeval curse must also be lifted from woman. When
these long-borne curses are really lifted from man and woman--what then?
The Garden of Eden!
GEORGE NOYES MILLER.
188, WEST HOUSTON ST., N.Y.
JAN., 1891.
WOMAN’S FUTURE.
Oppression with her leaden mein
Nor there is seen,
Nor can the wrinkled brow of Care
Find entrance there.
[Illustration]
THE STRIKE OF A SEX.
CHAPTER I.
I was greatly fatigued, and a feeling of irresistible drowsiness
had begun to creep over my senses, when my flagging energies were
suddenly aroused by the appearance of a town which, though I had not
before observed it, now seemed quite close at hand. Tall and graceful
spires, glistening domes, and high-rearing chimneys, from which poured
plentiful volumes of smoke, betokened a place of thrift and business
importance. I therefore began to enter one of its residence streets
with the pleasant mental exhilaration which the pedestrian feels when
he opens his eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of a strange city.
But I had not gone far before I was compelled to acknowledge to
myself that the city belied in some unaccountable respects the smart
appearance which it had borne from a distance. The men whom I began to
meet, although seemingly full of a kind of jaded activity, bore strange
marks of carelessness, not to say positive disorder in their attire.
Their untrimmed beards showed a great lack of taste and neatness.
Their collars and cuffs were soiled and wrinkled, and their neckties,
fastened about their necks in all sorts of ungainly knots, were very
much awry. All had a deeply preoccupied air, and I noticed that many
of them had a finger or hand clumsily wrapped in rags of a mottled and
dingy hue, as if they had met with untoward accidents, such as burns,
cuts, or bruises. The odour of arnica pervaded the atmosphere.
But I soon began to perceive that the most perplexing feature of this
universal disorder, or I might say dilapidation of attire, was the
total absence of buttons from garments of every description. It was
as if some greedy speculator or anaconda-like Trust had suddenly made
a corner of the entire product of buttons and put them so far beyond
the reach of his kind that man had been compelled to supply the place
of these indispensable little articles with all sorts of mechanical
makeshifts. Pins, strings, hooks, and I observed in some instances,
shingle nails, held together the textile frame-work which invested
every man I saw.
When I had become somewhat accustomed to this oddity, although
inwardly much wondering what should cause it, I began to observe
that the residences themselves although substantial in structure and
ornamental in design, bore the same marks of surprising carelessness
that I saw in their owners. The fine stone and marble doorsteps were
strangely littered and untidy. Curious utensils for such places such
as coffee-pots and dishpans, stood in the front windows of the various
rooms. The parlours, which I could plainly see through the carelessly
left open windows, were in a state of great disorder. Dust and
confusion seemed to reign unmolested, and the curtains were clumsily
fastened as if by unskilful hands.
These visible signs of a slatternly kind of housekeeping seemed to
multiply as I advanced, but my attention to them soon began to be
somewhat distracted by my sense of smell. Mysterious and inscrutable
odours, defying all my powers of analysis, emanated from these
residences. From one it was like burnt rags, from another it seemed
to be grease in some stage of decomposition, from another the odour
was that of musty and decaying food, while from still others there
proceeded an indescribable mixture of all these.
More and more puzzled by the strange sights and smells to which my
senses had grown more acute as I proceeded, I soon found that they
were, after all, almost wholly driven from my mind by an infinitely
sharper sense of the utter joylessness of the place. In spite of the
hurrying crowds of men who jostled one another upon the streets, I
began to be conscious of an overpowering sense of desolation such as I
had never before known. An unaccountable gloom, which seemed to cover
the whole town like a funeral pall, began to settle upon my hitherto
buoyant spirits. It was as if the sun were not merely obscured by a
passing cloud, but had been wholly withdrawn from the heavens, leaving
the earth to be lighted only by some murky and baleful star. I recalled
the fact that though many of the irregularities of apparel which I had
noticed were in a high degree ludicrous, I had not seen the ghost of a
smile upon the face or heard anything approaching a jest from the lips
of a human being since I entered the town. I attempted to arouse myself
and shake off the deadly chill that was beginning to envelope me, and
as I did so I unconsciously muttered, “One would think it were the
town of Hamelin from which the Pied Piper had just drawn away all the
children.”
No sooner had these words passed my lips than, like an electric shock,
I remembered that I had not only not seen a child but I had not seen a
woman since I entered the town. This dizzying fact was so astounding
to me that I stopped in sheer and sudden fright and leaned against a
tree near at hand in order to assure myself that it was true. Step by
step, with minutest accuracy, I went over in my mind the ground which
I had trodden. I recalled the anxious, hurrying figures of men, whose
oddities of raiment no longer tempted me to smile, but not the face
of a woman could I conjure up in the retrospect, nor even the glimpse
of a woman’s garment. I had not, with a weakness which I think the
angels forgive, turned on the streets to look after a woman’s beautiful
figure. I surely had not seen a woman on those unswept doorsteps, I had
not caught a glimpse of a woman in those dust-ridden parlours. Even the
blooming faces and joyous, sparkling chatter of school-girls had been
wholly absent from the streets which I had traversed.
With a sigh I thought of the still younger girls, the unspeakably
innocent little ones of three and four years of age whose charming
prattle I tried to persuade myself that I had surely heard about some
doorstep. But no, I never failed to notice these darlings, and my
memory told me with unfailing accuracy that I had seen only men. Men,
no one but men, bald, angular men, and these in their bold loneliness
appearing to be robbed of all the graces and sweetness of immortal
beings!
My speculations as to the meaning of the strange state of things which
I had observed in the town into which I had fallen, had hitherto been
only those prompted by a dignified and philosophical curiosity. But the
shock which I experienced on discovering the utter absence of woman
from my environment had now made them positively painful. I stood
still and shivered in the street. Surely I had gotten into an uncanny
place, from which the sweetness and beauty of woman and the innocence
of children had been banished! I could bear the suspense no longer.
Casting my hitherto dignified deportment to the winds I ran recklessly
after a man who had emerged from a drug store at some distance in front
of me and seized him almost rudely by the arm.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
It was a fine-looking man that I had thus unceremoniously grasped by
the arm, albeit he seemed to be plunged into the same deep dejection
that I had observed in all his fellows. Like them, his hair and beard
were neglected and unkempt, and there was a devouring melancholy in
his eyes. His collar, instead of being fastened by any mechanical
contrivance, depended solely upon his scarf for being held in
place. This scarf was closely tied around his neck in a hard knot.
Occasionally, when he turned his head to one side or the other, one end
of his collar would escape from the scarf and stand off from his throat
at an obtuse angle. But of this he appeared to be quite careless, and
for the most part unconscious. Like many other men whom I had seen,
one hand was awkwardly wrapped up in a cloth of sombre hue, and in the
other hand he carried a bottle labelled “For Burns.”
“Excuse me, sir,” I cried, “but I beg you to tell me what horrible
misfortune has befallen this place. It seems like a land of mysterious
mourning. Has some fearful plague devastated it? For Heaven’s sake,
tell me, where are the women?”
The man regarded me with an air of deep surprise, which, however, lent
no animation to his cheerless countenance as he replied:
“Is it possible that you are not aware of the Great Woman’s Strike
which has now been in progress here for more than three months? The
women of this country have combined as a sex to utterly refuse to
perform any longer those duties and functions which have hitherto
been magnanimously marked out for them by man as being the sole tasks
predestined for them by the Creator. They say that the chains which
have bound them for unnumbered ages, although artfully garlanded with
flowers and called by sentimental and endearing names, are older and
more galling than those of any bondspeople on the globe. They have
decided that the time has come to throw off those chains.”
“Do you really mean,” I gasped, “that the women have struck for what
they suppose to be their rights, _as a sex_?”
“That is exactly what I mean,” replied the man, “They have struck for
their rights as a sex;” and he fumbled for the end of his collar.
My surprise at this statement was so overwhelming, the idea of woman
ever combining and striking as a sex had been so utterly undreamed
of in my philosophy that I could not speak for several moments,
seeing which the man said, while for the first time a sickly and
self-conscious smile appeared upon his features:
“I must be off. I left my clothes boiling on the parlour stove this
morning, and as it is now past noon, I fear that the water has all
boiled away.” And he turned away.
“But for God’s sake,” I cried after him, “where have the women gone,
and their innocent children? Tell me that before I flee from this
accursed place and shake its dust from off my feet forever. Surely the
women have not made away with themselves?”
“Oh, no,” said the man, “it is not quite so bad as that. The women
have simply wholly withdrawn from their habitations with men. They
have taken possession of the commodious buildings of a large institute
on the hill overlooking the town. There they confer with delegations
from the masculine authorities. They left not a single female of any
class in the town, taking with them even the poor, the sick, and the
aged. The grandmothers, the matrons, the blooming girls of sixteen,
and the little girls of four or five are all together there. All male
children who were so young as to be dependent on their mothers for care
they also took. There is not a woman young or old in the town. Woman’s
abandonment of man has been complete, and,” he added with a shudder,
“final, unless the guarantee they ask is given them.”
Having said this the man hastened down a side street, cutting, as
I afterwards remembered, a very grotesque figure, the tails of his
buttonless coat flying loosely behind him.
But the questions which now began to crowd my excited mind respecting
the strange state of affairs by which I was surrounded, imperatively
demanded an answer, and I lost no time in looking for some one who
should further satisfy me. The man who first caught my attention
was loitering near a corner, apparently studying the numerous
advertisements of pain-killers, salves, ointments and cures for burns
which were conspicuously displayed in the windows of a drug store. He
stood with his hands in his pockets, and had a more jaunty air than
any one whom I had yet observed. He was tall and thin, with whiskers
on the end of his chin. There was a look of loquacity about him which
encouraged approach, and also a “make the best of it” air which had
the effect of somewhat relieving my painful concern of mind. This man
had given up collars entirely. His coat was wide open and his whole
attitude seemed to defiantly assert that collars and buttons were
not, and never had been, any essential part of his make-up. To my
observation respecting the Woman’s Strike, which I made as general and
incidental as possible in order to get at his view of it, he replied:
“Yaas, it’s a kind of a hinderment. But the worst thing about it is
the set-back it’s going to give the population here in Hustleburg. Now
there’s Sprawltown, the rival town in our county what’s trying to git
the County Seat away from us. At the last census by doin’ some of the
tallest kind of lyin’ and takin’ names off from all the tombstones in
the cemetery, they made out that they had about five more inhabitants
than we had. Well, now to make things wuss, the women of Sprawltown
didn’t tumble to the idea of strikin’ till about a month after the
women of Hustleburg did, an’ the birth rate goin’ right on’ll give it a
great start.”
“Do you mean to say that the Strike has completely separated husbands
and wives?” I asked.
“Reckon it has, stranger,” replied the man. “Oh a woman’s got grit
when she makes her mind up, and they say they’re goin’ to have their
rights this time or they’ll let the race die clean off from the globe.
Shouldn’t wonder, if this thing ain’t settled before long, if some one
should have the chance to act out the part of ‘Campbell’s Last Man’
that I used to speak when I went to school. If I am the last man you
can just bet I’ll go over to Sprawltown to declaim it after every one
there’s been laid out. I’d just like to show that snipe that edits the
_Sprawltown Git There_ that the population of Hustleburg was ahead once
without counting any dead men either.”
“But how did the women get the idea of striking for their rights in
this unheard of way? Such an idea was never before to my knowledge
discussed or dreamed of.”
“Well,” said the man, “that young fellow who is coming yonder can
tell you a good deal more about it than I can. He was engaged to be
married when the Strike came on, and what did his best girl do but drop
her weddin’-dress, half finished as if it were a hot pertater, and
leave him like a shot. Jehoshaphat! to think that Solomon, the wisest
man that ever lived, should ask thousands of years ago, if ‘a bride
could forget her attire,’ and then to have one up and do it here in
this nineteenth century. I’ll introduce you to the young chap. He’s
naturally desperately anxious to get things fixed up, and he knows just
what the women want.”
The young man referred to, who had now come up to where we stood, was
a broad-shouldered, good-looking young fellow who bore a serious,
introspective air, together with one of brave manliness. My chance
acquaintance introduced the young man to me as Mr. Justin Lister, and I
offered my name in return--Rodney Carford.
I was impatient to begin serious conversation with Mr. Lister, but our
loquacious introducer stopped long enough to say, as he pointed at the
advertisements, in the druggist’s window, of oil for burns, which were
named after all the saints in the calendar:
“This man who runs this drug store’s gettin’ ready to retire from
business. Got rich sellin’ arnica and St. Huldy’s oil since the strike
began. You see men can’t monkey around stoves and flat-irons and such
things in a kitchen without knockin’ the skin off from their knuckles
and burnin’ their fingers. They ain’t got the patience of women, if
they had the skill. I’m thinking of buyin’ this man out if the Strike
continers, and as I know two or three other men who’ve got their eyes
on the place, I’ll have to leave you to close up the deal.” And he
disappeared into the drug store.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
I turned eagerly toward Mr. Justin Lister, as soon as our companion
had left us. He was about my age, and there was a certain sympathetic
friendliness in the glance of his frank blue eye that established a
kind of magnetic rapport between us at once. It was therefore an easy
matter for me to ask the privilege of accompanying him wherever he was
going in order that I might have an opportunity to talk with him. He
assented to my request readily and added that he was going to his own
house, and if I could put up with such awkward hospitality as a man
unassisted by woman could give, he would be pleased to entertain me. I
accepted his offer with pleasure, and as we walked leisurely along the
well-paved and shaded street, I lost no time in begging him to acquaint
me with the beginning of this astounding Woman’s Strike. “How did it
come about?”
“Why,” said Mr. Lister, “it came about in the most simple way in the
world, so simple in fact that it reminds one of Artemus Ward’s story
about the man who was confined for sixteen years in a loathsome dungeon
without food or drink. A bright idea struck him and he opened the
window and got out. You remember what an eye-opener the great Strike
of the London dockmen was; the whole world suddenly realized, as by
an electric shock, that Labour, instead of being the footstool or
fawning slave of Capital as it had stupidly been assumed to be, was
easily its master. Through its enormous power for combination, Labour
was King, and could dictate terms to Capital which it could enforce
whenever it pleased. This discovery, for it was as really a discovery
as if a new continent had been found, illumined the whole civilised
globe. All classes of people in the world who were suffering from
oppression began to look carefully about them to see if the weapons
for their deliverance were not lying unperceived and rusting in their
own hands. Like a flash of lightning the women of this country saw
that they possessed as great an advantage as the London dockmen did.
They saw that by combining as a sex into one solid mass they could
place such limitations and embargoes upon man, as would wrest from
him at one master-stroke the tardy rights for which they had been
cringing and suing for wearisome years. Why, good Heavens! the very
perpetuity of the race was in their hands. About this time also there
was much earnest talk in many periodicals which sprang up, about the
‘Brotherhood of Man.’ Strange as it may appear, the women suddenly took
up the notion that if all men were brothers, all women were none the
less sisters, and as such should minister to each other like sisters,
and protect each other from all harm. This great idea of the Sisterhood
of Women, joined with woman’s discovery of her real power when in
combination, led to the Great Woman’s Strike which you see now in
progress.”
“And this,” I said, a sudden light breaking in upon my mind, “is, of
course, the cause of the utter lack of taste and neatness which I see
everywhere, in the persons of men as well as in the keeping of the
dwellings. And can it also be the reason,” I added musingly, “that I
see no buttons on the garments of any one rich or poor?”
“Oh, the buttons!” said Mr. Lister, with the first genuine laugh that I
had heard that day; “one of the first things that the women did after
the strike began, was to send word to the tailors, that inasmuch as
the sewing of buttons on to garments had from time immemorial been
the chief high prerogative which man had grandly conceded to woman,
they did not propose to allow any one to take it from them. Small and
poor as woman’s privileges had been in the world’s great history she
could not part with a single one of them. They made the poor tailors
quake in their shoes by threatening that they should never know the
smile of a woman again if they sewed a single button on to a garment
of any kind. The tailors hastened to send a delegation to the Women’s
Executive Committee, meekly promising to obey. They even offered to
take the buttons off from all the garments they had on hand, if any
such propitiation was needed.”
“This regulation in regard to buttons, must have been rather hard on
the button manufacturers?” I suggested, with an effort at jocularity
which I had not deemed possible under the circumstances.
“Yes,” said Mr. Lister, “it has completely extinguished that industry
for the present. I understand that the Button Manufacturers have a
delegation now on its knees before the Woman’s Executive Committee
imploring them to rescue them from gaping ruin. But the young woman who
is chairwoman of that committee is a person of great spirit, a regular
Jeanne d’Arc. She will never yield,” and Mr. Justin Lister sighed
so deeply that I suddenly remembered that the Strike had summarily
deprived him of a prospective bride.
We walked along in silence for a few moments when all at once it
occurred to my mind that I had not made any inquiry as to the nature of
the rights for which woman was contending.
In fact, I had assumed, so completely as a matter of course, that the
rights she was asking for were simply those which I had seen from time
to time sarcastically enumerated in some scoffing newspaper, that it
seemed unnecessary for me to say as I did to Mr. Lister:
“These rights which women are asking in such an imperious fashion are
doubtless the old ones with which I am familiar: greater security in
the holding of property, the right to vote, and to be eligible for all
civil offices, including, perhaps, the Presidency, to be placed on an
equal footing with man, as regards wages and all material advantages.
These, doubtless cover all the things that they are contending for?”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Lister, “every one of the things which you mention
were granted to women within two weeks after the strike began. So far
as they are concerned, woman is to-day the full equal of man. Those
rights were all included in one great Omnibus Bill, which was passed as
quickly as the most expert legislation could accomplish it. I assure
you that such was the awful completeness of the Great Woman’s Strike
that it did not take man three days to discover that life was not worth
living without her. If it had been simply the withdrawal of a single
class of women and their absence from a few scattered households the
effect would not have been so absolutely terrifying. But to have woman
forsake man as a whole, completely withdrawing her graces and softening
influences from his environment, created a monstrous chasm, a void,
at which angels might shudder. It was like the divorce of Heaven and
Earth, or as if the lamp of civilization had suddenly been turned
down, and men appeared to each other in the twilight which ensued like
strange, wolfish animals.”
“I can readily understand that,” I said with a slight shudder, “but
if all the rights I mentioned have been granted to woman, I cannot
conceive of any further occasion for the Strike. Why is it not at an
end?”
“It is not at an end,” said Mr. Lister, “because since woman has
discovered her power, she has greatly enlarged the category of her
rights, and it includes one now beside which all those you have named
are trivial indeed. She has fitly named this great right her Magna
Charta, nor could she have ever made such an unprecedented stand as
she is now making on a less vital principal of justice than that of
Habeas Corpus. It is a striking evidence of the tremendous attachment
that exists between the sexes, that man, eager for the restoration of
the cheering sunshine of his natural companion, was disposed to grant
this final great concession as precipitately as he did the right to
political equality, but it could not be done so lightly. It called for
the most serious, philosophical consideration on the part of every
individual man, and therefore some time has unavoidably elapsed. But
the frightful contingency of allowing the race to lapse from the earth
admits of but little delay. The granting of Woman’s Magna Charta is to
be decided by the ballot. To-day is Friday and on Monday next the fate
of the world will be decided.”
“What is this Magna Charta?” I said in awe, for the picture which my
companion’s words brought to my mind of a desolated planet reeling
through space, made me feel strangely weak. I could scarcely persuade
myself that I was not dreaming.
“The Woman’s Magna Charta,” replied Mr. Lister, “is--”
But at this moment a passing newsboy shouted, “Extra Hue and Cry!
Rejection of the Button Manufacturers’ Petition! Complete collapse of
the Corset Industry! Great failures among the Ladies’ Tailors!”
My friend bought a copy of the paper and leading the way up the steps
of a handsome residence, at which we had now arrived, said:
“You are heartily welcome to my home, but I must again remind you that
the soul of all delicate and artistic hospitality has vanished from it.
It does not contain a woman.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
Although the house to which Mr. Justin Lister now introduced me was
more orderly than many which I had observed on the streets through
which I had passed, the absence of woman from its walls was still
painfully apparent. It was as if warmth and light and flowers and sweet
perfumes were suddenly wanting in a place in which you had always been
accustomed to find them and to solace yourself with them. Indeed, the
suddenness of woman’s flight, if I may so term it, was brought much
more sharply to my consciousness by this visit to a house in which
she had so recently held sway. There were unmistakable signs on every
hand of unfinished feminine occupations. The piano stood open with a
sonata by Beethoven lying upon it; artistic needlework with the needles
still sticking in it lay in a window-seat, and a half finished sketch
upon an easel all bore mute but telling testimony to the irreparable
loss of gentle and artistic hands. Plants which had evidently had the
cherishing care of feminine tenderness were languishing in a window,
and a drooping canary disconsolately buried its head in its feathers
in its cage. But that which weighed most heavily upon my sunken
spirits was the indescribably pathetic sighing and whining of a large
Newfoundland dog as he constantly roamed from room to room in search of
a mistress’s caressing hand. I finally had to entreat Mr. Lister with
tears in my eyes to put him away where I could not see his grief.
Mr. Lister, as he explained to me, had lost not only his sweetheart and
prospective bride by the Great Woman’s Strike, but his mother and two
sisters as well. This fact raised the question in my mind as to how the
women were supported in their retirement, and I said:
“I can easily understand how the dockmen of London could stand the
hunger of protracted idleness with their muscular frames and rude
tastes, but how can refined and delicate women undergo the hardships of
such a siege?”
“You forget,” said Mr. Lister, “that the London dockmen had many
sympathizers who contributed food and money to their cause. The women
also have a legion of sympathizers, and if they had not, no man who
has a mother or a sister would see them want. The result is that the
women are like a vast army which is voluntarily supported by the very
persons with whom they are in controversy.”
The meal which Mr. Lister now prepared with his own hands, consisted
wholly of canned meats and vegetables which he had procured from
a neighbouring grocery. These he had warmed on the stove in their
original packages, in order, as he explained, “to save dish-washing.”
“Fourier,” he added, “was claimed by his disciples to be a truly great
man, and in his ‘Division of Labour’ he did not put dish-washing into
the ‘Class of Attractiveness,’ but into the ‘Class of Necessity,’ so
you see I am trying to dispense with it altogether.”
But the rudeness of the service or the incompleteness of the meal
scarcely provoked a thought, so deeply was my mind engrossed by the
consideration of the astounding facts of which I had that day for the
first time been made aware. I had read and heard many times before,
with a pang, of the breaking up of single households and the parting
of husbands and wives by divorce, but to have the ties which bound
together all men and all women sundered so suddenly, produced a groping
confusion of mind that made it impossible for me to think with any
continuity. I mention this fact because it may seem strange to the
reader that I did not immediately pursue my inquiry as to the specific
nature of the right which woman was asking of man. To tell the truth,
that inquiry had for the time being entirely passed out of my mind,
and I could only express such fitful ideas as came to me without any
premeditation.
When the simple meal was finished and the cans containing it were
(manlike) tucked away in the corner of a bookshelf, we settled
ourselves in easy chairs for the evening, and Mr. Lister produced
cigars. After we had smoked for a few minutes in silence, I said, as
the first thought that chanced to come into my mind:
“I understood you to say that the Strike included all classes of women,
but of course you excepted the courtesans. I cannot help wondering how
the Strike affects their condition.”
“Courtesans!” said Mr. Lister in a tone of deep surprise. “Don’t you
know that there are no courtesans?”
“No courtesans!” I exclaimed. I abruptly arose from my chair and
walked aimlessly into the centre of the room. Then, partly recovering
myself, I walked back and again sat down. The continuous succession
of surprises which the day had brought to me had insensibly worn upon
my nervous system. I repeated mechanically, more to myself than to Mr.
Lister, “No courtesans!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lister. “I did not think but that you knew it, there
are no courtesans. When woman saw that the success of her movement
depended upon her solidly combining into one vast Sisterhood, she was
confronted at the outset by the fearful chasm which existed between
her and her so-called fallen sisters. How could the chasm be bridged?
Studying this problem with agonizing earnestness, woman soon saw that
the only way to solve it was for woman herself to at once and forever
abolish the courtesan class. She clearly recognized the fact, and it
was like a revelation to her, that the courtesan was but the extreme
victim of an intolerably cruel and satanic dispensation; that the
courtesan had been but a little more deeply trodden under foot than her
more respectable sister. With this new view woman utterly discarded
the idea that the courtesan was a special sinner to be approached with
a moral tract and a condescending kind of forgiveness. The courtesan
had been unspeakably sinned against, not only by man but by woman as
well, and more, perhaps, than any sufferer from cruelty on the globe,
deserved the loving pity and succour of her sisters. Seeing this, with
real contrition the women decided at once that it was their first
business to take these sisters who had been so cruelly perverted by
man, to their own bosoms, not as if they were prodigals, but as if they
were loved ones who had met with the most cruel blow of misfortune.”
“This, bear in mind, was the first great act in the Woman’s Strike. By
an edict which was as effectual and will be as celebrated in history as
Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation, woman has forever abolished the
courtesan class. There can never be another courtesan, simply because
woman has formed a self-protecting league that will never permit
it. Dastards there may be among men who will hereafter seek to take
advantage of woman’s love, or her sweet complaisance toward man, but
if such there be it were better for them if they had never been born.
They only will be the sufferers. Held up to the scorn of the universe
and forever ostracised by woman, their punishment will be as heavy as
Cain’s. But whatever may take place, woman will never again allow one
of her own sex to lose caste through man’s treachery. They will defend
each other against the world.”
“Can it be possible,” I said, “that so terrible a problem as the social
evil, that has been hopelessly discussed by moral philosophers for
ages, could be solved so quickly, and by woman, too?”
“And who in God’s name,” said Mr. Lister, “if you stop to think of
it, who but woman could ever abolish the courtesan class? Certainly
not man. He is constantly creating courtesans. Nothing but a
self-protecting league among all women, uniting them into one common
sisterhood, could ever have stopped this evil. Moreover, the power to
do it came with their combination into a universal sisterhood.”
Too much overwhelmed by the strange things that I had heard to keep
up the conversation, I sank into a seemingly hopeless labyrinth of
confusing thoughts. This lasted till Mr. Lister, who observed that I
was very tired, showed me to my room, having first accomplished the
somewhat difficult and precarious task of filling a lamp with coal
oil. The room to which he conducted me was evidently the choicest
guest-chamber in the house, and it was equally evident that it had
not been occupied since the flight of the women. It was in the most
exquisite order. No man’s hand could have equalled the artistic
precision with which the snowy coverings were laid upon the spotless
bed. Weary as I was I gazed upon it with a feeling of profound awe. To
lie upon that couch which showed the last skilful touch of a vanished
woman’s hand was a profanation of which, thank Heaven, I was not
capable. A luxurious rug which lay on the floor beside the bed better
accorded with my feeling of deep humility. I stretched myself upon it,
and, completely worn out by the fatigues and mental shocks of the day,
swiftly sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
When I awoke the next morning my mind was clear, and though the
recollection of the fact that woman had forsaken man came back to me
like the memory of a deeply painful blow, I was still enough like
myself to assist Mr. Lister in the task of breakfast-getting with
some show of cheerfulness. Breakfast was, however, with the exception
of coffee, in the making of which Mr. Lister showed some skill, a
repetition of the supper of the previous evening. That it was not again
eaten from the original tin cans was, I remember, due to my calling
Mr. Lister’s attention to the fact that it was said to be dangerous to
eat food which had stood for even a brief period of time in open tin
cans. This suggestion threw him back unwillingly upon the necessity
of dish-washing, for he had to open fresh cans and empty the contents
into dishes, which he procured from the pantry. I had observed before
during my life that where men, under the stress of circumstances, had
assumed the function of dish-washing their dish-cloths speedily took on
a grotesque blackness that made them a positively fascinating study.
Two or three times after this, in spite of the strange facts which were
pressing upon my attention, I found myself absorbed in a kind of rapt
contemplation of Mr. Lister’s dish-cloths.
While the meal was in progress I remember that I inquired of Mr. Lister
how I could possibly pass the time till the ballots should be cast, for
I was conscious of such a horror of home-sickness that I felt I must do
something to divert my mind till the terrible suspense should be over.
Among other things which I suggested at random, I spoke of visiting
some club, as I presumed, without doubt, that there must be several in
the town.
“My dear Mr. Carford,” said Mr. Lister looking at me sympathetically,
“I fear you have only just begun to fathom the depth of the effect of
this desolating and singular Strike, if you suppose that men’s clubs
could possibly exist after woman had forsaken man as she has now done.”
“Clubs not exist!” I replied in astonishment. “I should suppose that
they would be the only solace in this intolerable gloom.”
“I know,” said Mr. Lister, “that clubs drew men from their homes before
the Strike began, and that they were therefore the source of some
domestic trouble from woman’s natural jealousy of them. But this you
must bear in mind was when the man who went to his club possessed a
home made radiant by a patient, beautiful, subjugated woman who awaited
his lordly pleasure. Man took the ownership of woman as a matter
of course, a desirable and comforting thing to be sure, but still
something that was always to be at his beck and call, and therefore a
thing for which he was not called upon to make any sacrifice. But when
all women, calling each other sisters, withdrew themselves utterly
from men with the awful completeness which you now see, there was a
fearful reaction. For days men shunned each other as if they were
wild beasts, and the thought of assembling together for anything like
social interchange, was simply intolerable. The club houses closed
immediately.”
“But there are the theatres, are there not?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said Mr. Lister. “The theatres made a desperate
effort to continue for a time, and even sought to carry on their dramas
by having their male actors personate women. But all men fled from this
hollow deceit as if it were a ghastly mockery, and the actors were
soon stalking before empty seats. The theatres, too, closed.”
“But the churches,” I said, with a groan; “surely the churches are
accessible?”
Mr. Lister shook his head. “I am sorry,” said he, “to have to deny
you that last consolation. When the Strike began the churches were
suddenly filled to overflowing by men who seldom or never went there
before. They seemed to have an unreasoning instinct that the church
might afford them some salutary consolation in their unexampled
bereavement, but such did not prove to be the case. The truth was, that
the ministers themselves felt as much as any class the deep reproach
which woman’s action cast upon all mankind. They justly felt that
teachers though they were, and exemplars though they were supposed
to be, they had done even less than far less favoured men to lighten
woman’s woes. Hence their perfunctory ministrations were without force,
utterly inadequate, valueless, and comfortless. It was but a little
while before they were feebly talking to empty pews. The churches
closed. There are no assemblies of men of any kind except such as are
for urging on the completion of the guarantee, and arranging for the
casting of the ballots. This, as I told you, will take place the day
after to-morrow. Till then I will spend as much time as possible with
you, but I must now excuse myself as I have some clerical duties to
perform in connection with the coming casting of the ballots.”
Having said this, Mr. Lister withdrew from the house, but before doing
so he showed me into his well-filled library and promised to return at
noon.
Left alone, I essayed to read a volume of new poems, but the face of a
woman, not that of any particular woman whom I had known, but a typical
face representing all women, hovered persistently, and with reproachful
mien, between mine eyes and the page. I cast the book aside. I was
strangely nervous. Presently the door-bell rang, and I sprang from my
chair in unreasoning terror. For several moments I stood motionless in
the centre of the room, muttering only, like Macbeth, “Silence that
dreadful bell,” but at last arousing myself I went to the door. A boy
stood there holding a bundle of papers under his arm, one of which he
pertly extended toward me.
“Have a _Bitter Cry_, Mister?”
“A _Bitter Cry_!” said I petulantly, “what in Heaven’s name is that?”
The boy stared at me for a moment in great surprise, and then said:
“Why it is the paper which the women print every morning; just out,
don’t yer know?”
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said I, eagerly snatching at the paper which
he held toward me. “Give me the _Bitter Cry_; it is the echo of my own
soul.” The boy stared at me in irreverent wonder, but took the coin I
gave him and dashed down the street, while I closed the door and sank
into a chair to read. I absorbed rather than read the contents of this
strange paper, and this was the first article upon which my eye fell in
the _Bitter Cry_:
“TIMOTHY’S COMING.”
Considering the vast number of people who positively did not want
little Timothy Totten, but who would have felt infinitely obliged to
him if he had utterly stayed away, it is somewhat surprising that he
should have ventured into this cold world.
In the first place, his once patient, much-enduring mother, on whose
breast he lay alternately squalling and sleeping, cannot be said to
have wanted him for she had already borne nine like him, and had long,
long ago spent all of her beauty and most of her strength in bearing
and caring for Timothy’s troublesome predecessors. On her part, then,
it must be admitted at the outset, that the bearing of Timothy was
simply a common example of the sublime and unsurpassable endurance of
woman, combined with the stolid submission of a drudge who sees no
escape from her lot. Indeed, the sentiments of Timothy’s mother in
regard to having children had long ago come to be quite the reverse
of those of the Bible Rachel. Instead of saying, “Give me children or
I die,” the feelings of her heart on this subject, had they found any
expression, through many wearisome years, would have taken this form:
“Save me from undesired children or I die.” Certainly, whoever else in
the wide world may have wanted Timothy, it was clear that his mother
did not want him.
There is but little less doubt that Timothy’s coming was unwelcome to
his father, although he observed it with his usual stolid indifference.
He was a day-labourer, and already had so many children that he
could not support them in anything like comfort or decency; and for
Timothy to come and swell the number of gaping mouths, just when it
was so difficult to get work, and labour was so cheap, was decidedly
inconsiderate on his part and a downright piece of ill-luck. Then there
would be some scanty clothing to be bought for Timothy, and possibly a
doctor’s bill, and school taxes (provided Timothy had any schooling),
and as all these things loomed up, in prospect, before Timothy’s
father, he felt decidedly inhospitable toward Timothy, and as though,
if it were possible, he would like to send him back where he came from
with a surly note of rejection. Yes, nothing was plainer than that, so
far as Timothy’s father was concerned, Timothy was not wanted. He was
superfluous, or _de trop_, as the French say.
As Timothy’s parents clearly did not want him, neither can it be said
that Timothy’s brothers and sisters wanted him. They always licked
their plates and fingers very clean at their meagre table, and sighed
ruefully for more, and had they in any way realized that their already
too scanty rations were to be divided with this new-comer, they would
have clamored louder than anybody against his coming. Timothy’s
brothers and sisters, already poorly cared for, were evidently to gain
nothing by his coming, therefore they could not possibly want him. He
had better have stayed away so far as they were concerned.
Then there was a silent but general conviction on the part of the
inhabitants of the town in which Timothy was born, that there were
Tottens enough. Although they might not have held a town-meeting to
take any steps to prevent the coming of Timothy, if they had had a
foreknowledge of it, there is none the less doubt that they regarded
his coming as something of a public calamity. They could not expect
that Timothy, with his slender chances for education and moral
training, would be any improvement on the other nine Tottens, and
these had long been looked upon as a grievous infliction. All of the
boys had been in the Reform School (the only schooling they ever had)
and they were generally accredited with all the hen-roost robbing,
watermelon thieving, and miscellaneous trouble-making which took place
in the village. The overseer of the poor regarded them as a future
inheritance, and even the Census Taker (although a stranger), when he
visited the house, looked as though he thought there were too many of
them. But perhaps his prejudice may have been owing to the fact that
when he got up to wipe his pen Bill Totten moved his chair back a
little, and when he sat down again it was not there.
In this swelling tide of remonstrance against the coming of Timothy, it
cannot in justice be omitted that even the dogs and cats of his native
village, as well as an ancient donkey who grazed upon the Common, would
have loudly joined could they have had any intelligent sense of it. Nor
would the very frogs in the adjacent marshes, already sorely stoned by
Timothy’s brothers, have failed to add their dismal, croaking protest
to the universal cry. To all these helpless creatures the coming of
Timothy simply meant the advent of another tormentor. It was of course
utterly impossible that they should want him.
Finally to add to this cloud of objectors to Timothy’s coming, a dry
and hard-headed and terrible old man by the name of Malthus, had
written a book on Population, in which he had proved by many stony
facts and immutable figures, that Timothy was not wanted; that, in
fact, the world would be greatly better off without him, and that he
ought, by every reasonable means, to be discouraged from coming.
All scientific people had great respect for this book, so that if
all the conditions had been understood, and a vote had been taken
throughout the whole world as to whether Timothy should come or not,
there is no doubt that there would have been an overwhelming, universal
negative.
But in spite of this general, though silent protest, beginning with
his own father and mother, and extending in larger and larger circles
to society and the great public, and even including the mute sufferers
among the beasts and birds and fishes, Timothy has come, and, as he
has thus audaciously braved the public, and defied the very universe,
as it were, he must smart for it. Of course he ought to smart for it,
and happily his worst enemy could not wish him a greater punishment
than that which will befall him. Indeed, we doubt not that if Timothy
himself could see the stony path which lies before him, he would
bitterly repent of having come, and would cry out as Cain did: “My
punishment is greater than I can bear!”
In the first place, though the milk which he draws from his mother’s
breast may taste sweet to him, there will be no love in his mother’s
heart for him, but in its stead a dull sense of hopeless bitterness and
abuse, of which, in spite of herself, Timothy will be the scape-goat.
Her motherly nature, long deadened to patience and gentleness, will
have left only harsh words for Timothy’s baby-fretfulness, and rude
blows for his baby-mischievousness. Kisses and caresses, a mother’s
yearning tenderness toward him, a mother’s guiding influence over
him, a mother’s aspirations for him, these Timothy will never know.
He will simply be sullenly and peevishly endured, so long as it would
be a flagrant crime to expel him, and will be left to his own harmful
devices as soon as possible. But then what business had Timothy to
come? He was not wanted.
To his father, little, curious Timothy will simply be as one of the
hens or pigs with which he plays around the back door, though of course
of nothing like the same importance to the Totten household. Rough
words, and blows unalternated by anything kindlier, rags and dirt, cold
and hunger, will be his home associations, and his education will be
gotten in the street. Brought up to no habits of settled industry, yet
impelled to in some way feed fierce passions which have been trained to
no other restraint than that of cruel want, what wonder that Timothy
becomes the little wild beast which society so much dreaded, and which
it was so fearfully interested to have kept back!
But Timothy grows up a predaceous, devouring creature, with life before
him which he must get through in some way.
Happily for society, he may be fenced in by jails for a part of the
time, and thus gotten rid of, but reappearing again at intervals
with accumulated terrors, he pursues his predatory career until, his
constitution too broken for active violence, he becomes an unsightly,
malodorous, pestiferous tramp, and thus ends his short, eventful
history,--a mournful example of retributive justice for coming where he
was not wanted.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
“Are you prepared to enjoy the sight of a woman’s face?” was Mr.
Lister’s first salutation to me as he entered the parlour where I was
sitting soon after noon. The copy of _The Bitter Cry_ which I was
reading fell from my hands. I looked at him searchingly, thinking that
he must be jesting; but as his face was perfectly serious I concluded
that he must refer to the golden time when the “Strike” should be
peacefully settled, and woman should happily resume her wonted place in
the universe, or a much larger one. I accordingly assured him sincerely
that there was no sight on earth that would give me greater pleasure
than the sight of a woman, and that I should await the result of the
ballot on Monday with feverish impatience.
“But you need not wait the result of the ballot,” said Mr. Lister, “for
the women have given notice that they will pass in procession through
the town to-morrow afternoon.”
“Do you really mean that the women are going to parade?” I asked,
aghast at this unexpected novelty.
“Well,” replied Mr. Lister, “I suppose it might be called a parade,
though that term usually carries the idea of a noisy and sensational
display, and there will be none of this in the women’s passage through
the town. Drums, trumpets, banners, inscriptions, uniforms, speeches,
and all the paraphernalia of customary parades will be conspicuously
absent. Clothed in their ordinary garb, the women will exhibit nothing
but themselves, in simple, critical sincerity. Before the ballots are
cast they deem it to be both just and proper that man should see, in a
simple panorama, exactly the condition of woman as it has been up to
to-day. To-morrow will be Sunday, but as there are no church services
the women think it the most proper time for them to walk quietly
through the town.”
Again it seemed to me that I must be dreaming. Mobs there might have
been in history of women clamouring for bread in some oppressed and
king-ridden city, but the organization of all the women of Free America
into one vast Sisterhood, and their peaceful, speechless procession
through streets lined with homes which they had so lately occupied
with men, and of which they had been the beacon, was a thought
calculated to fill one with speculative awe!
But there were still many things concerning the Strike which I did not
understand, and about which I wished to be fully informed before I
should witness any such public exhibition. Accordingly, as Mr. Lister
was at leisure that afternoon, I gave myself wholly to the task of
learning all that I could about this strange situation of the sexes.
And first I said:
“It is still exceedingly difficult for me to realize that woman could
ever take such a bold step as to practically declare her independence
of man. Although I have always known of a few so-called strong-minded
women, yet these were not only covertly ridiculed by the men, but by
the majority of their own sex as well. It certainly has been generally
supposed, and with much apparent reason, that woman, as a whole did
not possess that strength and earnestness of character that would ever
enable her to carry out any great concerted movement for what she might
suppose to be her emancipation. I confess,” I continued, with a new and
sudden sense of shame, “that now I think of it, I have always regarded
woman myself somewhat as I would a beautiful toy, the sweetest and
most charming accessory to life’s happiness, but still so much devoted
to personal ornament as to be forever incapable of any serious,
persistent contention of a principle. The sight of a gay ribbon or the
prospect of a new bonnet was, it was believed, sufficient to divert
woman from any such vagary as man denominated her ‘rights’ to be.
Moreover, at the time that I last gave any attention to the subject,
woman’s vaulting social ambition was preternaturally active in seeking
and buying, through marriage, the titled coronets of a profligate
and imbecile nobility. How then could there be a transformation of
character so sudden, and a precipitate movement requiring such sheer,
desperate earnestness as this Woman’s strike?”
“All that you say,” replied Mr. Lister, “has been more or less true
of woman’s character in the narrow conditions into which she has been
forced in the past, but you must bear in mind that man as yet has
never seen woman in her deepest and truest character. The warped and
distorted exhibition of woman which has been given up to this day, has
been, in the main, like the acting of fantastically dressed puppets in
a children’s show. It is for the future, dating from this great Woman’s
Strike to show the sublime possibilities of woman’s real character.
And how in Heaven’s name could woman have shown any strength of purpose
in the past? Robbed of all other means of employing her brilliant
faculties, and bowed down to the doctrine that to look pretty was the
chief end of her being, what wonder that her taste for the trappings
and frivolities of life should have become abnormally developed? What
wonder that being denied all distinction but a vain and showy social
distinction, to be obtained only through marriage, she should have
aimed at the tinsel stars in that firmament? If you bring up a child on
bon-bons and charlotte russe to the exclusion of a more natural diet,
you will have a very different kind of being from what you would have
if a less artificial regimen were adopted. But after all it was the
sudden discovery of her hitherto unsuspected power that transformed,
or, rather, gave vent to woman’s true character, as quickly as the
turning of a wheel. So long as she felt, as she had done for centuries,
that she was a beggar, beholden to man’s bounty for everything she
had, she submitted to being cajoled and wheedled by the airy trifles
which he prescribed for her, and which developed only one side of her
character. But when woman realized that she was in very truth a queen,
that she was man’s indispensable complement, and that as such she had
an equal right to the free development of all her faculties, and that
she possessed the means for enforcing that right, the scales fell from
her eyes. She struck so quickly that it was like the sudden stopping of
a clock, but it was the world’s pendulum that ceased to move.”
“But I cannot conceive,” I said, “what woman should want more than
you have told me has already been given her. As I understood you, she
already has every political and economic right that pertains to man.
Does she wish to compel man to do penance for the blackness of his
past sins toward her? Does she wish to make man acknowledge that he is
inferior to woman?”
“By no means,” said Mr. Lister. “The women were very careful in framing
the statement of their grievances, not only to acknowledge but to
distinctly proclaim their belief that man was the true head of woman,
and as such, was, when a true relationship should be established,
entitled to her most loyal recognition. But while she thus nobly
recognised his dynamic character, she none the less declared, as I have
told you, that she was his indispensable complement, that she was not a
whit less essential than he in the great plan of the universe, and that
she was, therefore, clearly entitled to the free development of her
own nature, untrammelled by the heavy burdens which have been heaped
upon her. Woman, who was made to be the glory of man, claims that man
knows nothing whatever of what that glory might be if she existed in an
atmosphere of freedom. She would be like the electric light as compared
with the tallow candle of our forefathers. It would be a glory that
would dazzle mankind.”
“But what is this freedom that woman seeks?” I said. “I beg you to tell
me at once what this great right is that she calls her MAGNA CHARTA.”
“It is,” said Mr. Lister, turning and looking me squarely in the face,
“the right to the perfect ownership of her own person.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
I did not fully understand the meaning of Mr. Lister’s words. “In what
respect,” I said, “does woman want the ownership of her own person?
Does she not have it already?”
“In respect to maternity,” he replied.
“I do not understand you,” I said; “please explain more fully.”
“Well,” said Mr. Lister, “the women say that while they are willing,
under all proper conditions, to undergo what George Sand grandly called
‘the august martyrdom of maternity,’ they utterly refuse to have that
martyrdom imposed upon them any longer. They say that maternity,
multiplied and practically enforced as it is, constitutes the primeval
curse that has rested upon them since they were driven out from the
Garden of Eden. They say that they can bear that curse no longer, and
that the time has come for man, by the same enlightenment that is
flooding all other fields of knowledge, to adopt a manner of life that
shall remove it.”
“In short, they demand, as a final, inalienable right, that man shall
give them an irrevocable, perpetual guarantee, that no woman from this
time forth and forever, shall be subjected to the woes of maternity
without her free and specific consent in all cases.”
“What a preposterous idea!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “Upon what
ground do they base this extraordinary claim?”
“Simply,” replied my friend, “upon the ground that maternity is what
George Sand called it, a ‘martyrdom.’ It puts the life of every woman
who enters upon it in real jeopardy. It imperils an existence which is
as sweet to woman under true conditions as man’s existence is to him.
The terrible risks of maternity are woman’s and woman’s alone. They
cannot be shared by man, and woman therefore contends that she alone
should freely elect when she should incur those risks. Besides the real
peril and physical anguish of maternity, there are the weary months
of sleepless watching, of wearing care and wasting anxiety. For man
to lightly or indifferently expose woman to such peril and suffering
without her free and undoubted assent, is, she claims, worse than the
worst form of African slavery, obsolete, barbaric and unchristian.”
“Unchristian!” I feeble echoed, for the sudden opening of such an
entirely new field to me for woman’s rights confused me so that I
mechanically repeated his last word in a kind of stupor, “Unchristian!”
“Yes, unchristian,” he resumed; “the women quote the saying of St.
Paul, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour,’ and say that man, under
the sacred name of love, casts upon woman, who is his nearest and
dearest neighbour, the most grievous ills that humanity is capable of
bearing. He compels woman to continually run a gauntlet as cruel as
the Indian’s tomahawk, and multitudes of them sink down before it is
run. In the face of such terrible ills as man heaps upon woman, ‘the
clods of the valley are sweet to her.’ See, here is a specimen of the
exceeding bitter cry which began to be heard in the public magazines
just before the Strike began.” And Mr. Lister picked up a magazine
which lay on the table, and opening it, pointed to a letter which was
contained in an article entitled “To marry or not to marry.” This
letter was entitled
WHY I CANNOT THANK GOD FOR MY CHILDREN.
Poetically speaking, children are the rose-buds of life;
practically, they are the torments of existence, I speak from a
long and miserable experience. Married at twenty-five, I am now, at
thirty-five, the mother of seven children, the eldest nine years, the
youngest nine weeks. I am called their mother, but am really their
slave. I was once a careless, happy, joyous girl, but my children
have made me a fretful, nervous, care-worn woman. All the romance
of my life has gone, the poetry of existence has changed to the
dullest prose. I live in the midst of quarrelling children, instead
of enjoying the society of congenial friends. From Monday morning
till Saturday night I am working for my children, yet they show not
the slightest gratitude, and make not the least return for all the
devotion lavished upon them. Sick or well, I am compelled to live
in a state of noise and confusion, distracting to my nerves and
detestable to all my finer feelings.
I do not think my children are exceptionally bad or mischievous;
all children are more or less so; and, of course, the more children
there are in a family, the more trouble they give. Had the Roman
matron, Cornelia, been the mother of seven children, instead of two,
she would not have treasured them so highly, and called them her
“jewels,” as the story says. Instead of being her pets, they would
have been the pests of her life, as my seven children are of mine.
I feel--I know I am made for a better, a higher destiny than to be
the helpless victim of seven little domestic despots. The delicious
bloom of my life is gone for ever. The sweet fancies, the lovely
aspirations, the serene happiness that made my girlhood a perpetual
joy, will nevermore be mine. My days are passed in a pandemonium from
which there is no escape.
I love my husband devotedly, and he deserves all my love, for a
kinder, sweeter, tenderer husband never lived; but, dear as he is to
me, had I known that marriage would have made my life what it is, I
never would have married him.
A MISERABLE MOTHER.
“But surely,” said I, after I had finished reading the letter, “this
must be a very extreme case. There are women who prefer large families,
and who think the rearing of them no hardship.”
“I scarcely think that it can be said that they do not consider it
any hardship to rear such families,” replied Mr. Lister. “I remember
hearing my grandmother say once that for nineteen years she did not
know a single night’s unbroken rest. She had nine children. But
if there be now and then a woman who is content to become a mere
propagative drudge, the great majority of them are not. They have
tastes and aspirations of their own, and do not care to merge them all
in children. But I beg you to remember that the essential point which
woman seeks to gain in her controversy with man on this subject, is
the acknowledgment of her undeniable right to the complete ownership
of her own person, whether the children she bears may be many or few.
And on this point I assure you that woman is in dead earnest. She will
have this ownership of her own person or she will allow the race to
lapse from the face of the earth. Malthus certainly never foresaw any
such fearful contingency. It can be compared to nothing in the entire
history of the human race, unless it be the stopping of the sun at
Joshua’s command.”
“But if woman is granted this astonishing right,” I said, “will she not
seek to escape the burden of maternity to such a degree as to seriously
diminish the population?”
“Of that,” replied Mr. Lister, “we have no certain means of judging.
Nor does it, indeed, concern the principle of justice involved. _Fiat
justitia ruat cælum._ But if woman is really given her freedom, her
innate instincts will undoubtedly expand naturally and strongly, and
certainly the desire for children is strongly implanted in her. But
her children from this time forward, if she ever has any, will be
only children which are desired, and to the bearing of which she has
joyfully consented. This simple condition alone must mark the beginning
of a new race.”
As at many times before during the last two days, I could scarcely
persuade myself that I was not dreaming. The discovery of this
astounding separation between the sexes, the strange intelligence that
woman, by a simple edict of her own, had solved the social evil and
swept it summarily into the limbo of the abominations of the past, and
now this undreamed of right to say whether she should bear children or
not!
I knew not what to say; the world seemed turned to sudden and
inexplicable chaos; a thousand difficulties and perplexities presented
themselves to my mind, and I was about to excuse myself and go out
into the street to cool my heated brain, when a dull, heavy alarm bell
sounded in the town.
“It is fire,” said Mr. Lister, springing from his chair. “Good God!
what if it should be among the buildings occupied by the women!”
Even as he spoke there came the sound of the swelling, hurrying rush
and tread that springs up in the track of a dread ravager. We rushed
tumultuously into the street.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII.
I had known the terror that seizes upon the heart at the sudden alarm
of devastating fires before. I had been awakened by such alarms from
a peaceful sleep at midnight. I had felt rather than heard the dull
vibration of heavy axes beating in barred doors to break an entrance
into buildings where fierce fires were raging. Through the rents made
by frenzied blows, I had caught intermittent gleams of licking tongues
of fire curling upward with devouring eagerness. I had heard the
blood-curdling cries of the watchmen. I had witnessed the mad galloping
of the engines. I had seen the dismay of the terrified occupants of
burning buildings suddenly shaken from sound slumber, and rushing
almost naked into the streets. None of these things were strange to
me, and still I trust I may never know again the sickening, contagious
terror I felt when I reached the street and knew that the fire was
located in the buildings which the women had chosen for their retreat.
No one told me this. I instinctively felt it the moment I joined the
throng of hatless, coatless, pale-faced men who were hurrying with
frantic, but speechless haste toward the bridge which led to the
women’s home. All the treasures of the earth were but as dust compared
with those that were in jeopardy on that hill-side.
A groan of relief escaped the lips of those about me as we drew near
the noble group of buildings, which the women had chosen for their
home, and saw that the one that was on fire stood at such a distance
from the others that it did not greatly endanger them. The building
which was on fire was in fact built for a hospital, and was, therefore,
purposely kept aloof from the rest. But though the anxiety lest there
should be a general conflagration among the women’s quarters was
assuaged, the progress of the flames in the burning building was
sufficiently terrifying. Flames had begun to dart intermittently from
an upper window, and a huge column of black smoke was heavily drifting
into the starlit sky.
It is true that women, as a rule, are not cool and clear-headed in
the presence of the peril of sudden fire, though it is also true
that many men are not more so. This fact it appeared had been clearly
recognized by the women, and only the trained women nurses, who were
employed in the hospital,--those noiseless, efficient, self-possessed,
self-denying creatures, who pass their gentle lives in the dim
twilight of sick-rooms,--had been allowed by the women to remain near
the building after the fire had been discovered. With quiet celerity
these trained nurses had got the greater part of the patients safely
out of the building before a man arrived. All was calmness, action,
and self-restraining nerve. It was only when in response to the
dire summons of the alarm bell, the impetuous wave of men surged up
the hill and around the building, that there was anything like mad
disorder, and fruitless panic. Not a man stopped for a instant after
reaching the burning building, but plunged madly into its interior.
The halls became choked with them, they stumbled over each other on
the staircases, with demoniac strength they forced all opposing doors
from their hinges, wildly groping through the blinding smoke after any
woman that might possibly have been left. Every instant brought fresh
panting relays of men, who disappeared into the building as swiftly as
those who had gone before them. Suddenly, in the midst of the dire and
increasing confusion, a tall and slender woman emerged from the smoke
at the broad entrance. Great masses of chestnut hair were held back
from her pure, impassioned face by some chance fastening caught up at
the moment. There was a lofty seriousness and a noble self-possession
in her stately bearing that made the desperate men who were pressing
toward the entrance pause and draw back as if suddenly confronted by
an angelic apparition. She had raised her hands to press them against
the breasts of the men who were tumultuously advancing, but there was
no need. A sudden hush and calm had fallen on them all at sight of her.
But the words that she spoke sounded as strangely as the words of an
incongruous dream.
“Where are the engines?” she said quietly.
Where indeed? Up to this time there had been a constant arrival of
men who were more like madmen than anything else, but there had not
appeared the slightest sign of any appliances, either for putting out
the fire or for rescuing those in peril. The strong panting men whom
this beautiful young woman addressed in such quiet but earnest tones,
hung their heads upon their breasts speechless and abashed. The truth
was apparent. At the first sound of the alarm of fire in the woman’s
quarters every man in the town, filled with a sickening fear, and torn
with a mad anxiety lest woman should really be lost forever past all
recovery, had rushed headlong to the spot, leaving prudence, caution
and forethought utterly behind him. The one mad idea which controlled
them all was to rush into the flames and tear their beloved away from
them with their own powerful hands. They had left the means of staying
the fire behind them. The woman saw it all in an instant, and in a
voice which was both quiet and imperious, she said:
“Go back at once and get the engines, and be quick.”
The men did not need a second word. Seizing horses which were at hand
they disappeared across the bridge in sufficient numbers to bring all
the appliances for rescue and for putting out fire that were in the
town.
But in the meantime the flames had not stayed. They had broken out in a
lower storey, and all the men who had reached the top storey in their
frantic search for any woman who might be there, were imprisoned by
the fire which enveloped the staircases. To add to the terror of the
situation, it was discovered that a lame girl who had been a patient in
the ward on the top floor of the building, had not been seen and could
not be found. She must be in the building. This discovery was a signal
for a fresh rush of heroic, reckless men into the flames in search for
her at any peril. But the same magnificent woman who had sent for the
engines stopped them with a command that they could not disobey.
“You will only throw your lives away,” she said; “the men who are
already in the building will take care of the lame girl if it is
possible to save either.”
As she said this a great sympathetic cry arose from the crowd who were
gazing anxiously up at the burning building.
The men who were imprisoned by the fire, about twenty in number, had
gained the roof and were triumphantly holding up in their strong arms
the lame girl. The flames had driven them to one end of the building
and appeared to be surrounding them, leaving only one corner unexposed.
Merciful Heavens, would the engines and scaling ladders never arrive!
Steadily the flames advanced, but fortunately the night was perfectly
still, so that their progress was slow. The men on the roof, falling
back foot by foot, had at last placed the lame girl at the least
exposed spot and formed a hollow square around her presenting only
their own dauntless breasts to the destroyer that threatened her.
“Call to them,” said the woman who had directed the men, “tell them to
have courage, courage!” The strong man to whom she spoke essayed to
do as she told him. He hoarsely cried out, but his voice weakened and
broke into weeping. He was completely unnerved.
At this terrible moment there came a noise like rolling thunder on the
bridge, and in another instant all the appliances for quenching fire
and for rescue were in the eager hands of a hundred feverish workers.
Deluging streams of water poured on to the flames which surrounded the
band on the roof. Ladders were quickly hoisted, and borne in strong
arms, arms to whom woman was precious as never before, the lame girl,
without the smell of fire upon her garments, was gently placed upon
the ground beside the woman. As they embraced each other I heard the
lame girl call her “Allegra.” The men who had been her companions, and
who had been tenderly assisted to the ground, eyed them at a little
distance with haggard, pathetic interest.
It was three o’clock in the morning when Mr. Lister and I, in company
with a host of wan and forlorn-looking men, re-crossed the bridge and
betook ourselves toward our homes. With faces blackened by smoke,
their clothing torn and burnt, their beards singed, and without coats,
hats or shoes, they looked like the stern and ravaged remnant of some
historic Old Guard returning from a desperate assault. Jaded as I
was, I remember that the thought of burning Moscow and the desperate,
heroic retreat of Marshall Ney and his valiant rear guard, passed
vaguely through my mind. But at the homes toward which these men were
turning, there were no women to meet them with tears of love and pity,
and to bind up their wounds with tender hands! They sternly entered
their empty homes in silence. But so utterly exhausted was I with the
excitement of the night, that this strange, pathetic spectacle did not
greatly move me. Mr. Lister and I, without exchanging a word, staggered
up the steps of his house like drunken men.
But though I was nearly worn out with fatigue, the thought of going to
my room and of being alone with my thoughts was utterly intolerable.
I knew that I could not sleep. The excitement of the struggle with
fire in which we had just been engaged the anticipation of the curious
parade which I was to witness on the morrow, to say nothing of the
strange revelations which had crowded upon me in the past two days,
made sleep a sheer impossibility. And yet it seemed to me that I must
have some diversion or I should go mad. What to do I knew not.
As I could think of no other diversion, I determined, as a last resort,
to go to my room and spend the night in reading. To do so I had to go
by Mr. Lister’s room, the door of which, for the first time when I had
passed it, stood wide open. As I chanced to raise my eyes to the wall
opposite the door, I stopped in sudden awe, as if confronted by the
shrine of a Madonna. An exquisite oil portrait of a woman hung there,
and I saw at a glance that it was the beautiful, imperious creature who
had such a magic influence in controlling the men at the fire.
There were the same large eyes looking upward from under a drift of
gold-flecked chestnut hair. Her expression was that of eager, almost
prophetic anticipation. A ravishing smile of hope and confidence
was on her slightly parted lips, and the velvet curve of a resolute
but womanly chin showed deep courage and devotion. This, then, was
undoubtedly Mr. Lister’s prospective bride. If I could but hear the
love story of this man and woman what a diversion it would be!
I determined to fearlessly ask Mr. Lister to tell me his love story
that night.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
My absorption had been so deep in gazing at the beautiful portrait
that I had not observed that Mr. Lister had come up the stairs and was
standing silently behind me.
“Is she not beautiful?” he whispered. “Was she not magnificent at the
fire?”
“She was magnificent, she is beautiful,” I replied, deliberately
turning and facing him. He was a man fair to look upon, and one that
could not fail to be pleasing to a woman’s eye. He was slightly above
the medium height. His well-knit and athletic frame was surmounted by
a well-shaped, intellectual head, which was crowned with clustering
brown hair. A strong, well-shaped nose, rather deep-set, introspective
eyes, and a refined and sensitive mouth, made a countenance of more
than usual interest. Just now it appeared somewhat wan and heavy from
watching, but his was evidently one of those gifted natures that are
subject to sudden, brilliant kindling, like the cheery flame which
sometimes leaps from a smouldering fire.
“Surely,” I thought, “this woman could not but have deeply loved this
man. And yet she left him for the sake of woman.” As this thought
passed through my mind, I unconsciously looked from my friend to the
portrait, and back to him again.
“What are you thinking of?” said Mr. Lister. “That portrait is Allegra
Alliston. You saw her at the fire to-night. She was to have been
married to me on Monday, if it had not been for the Woman’s Strike.”
“I am thinking,” I said slowly, replying to his question, “that I
cannot sleep, and that I would like above all things at this moment to
hear the love story of Justin Lister and Allegra Alliston.”
Mr. Lister, without seeming to hear what I said, took me by the arm and
drew me into his room. He pressed me into an easy chair, and sinking
down into a cosy window-seat opposite, he said, as if continuing what
he had said before:
“Yes, we were to have been married on Monday, the very day when the
ballots are to be cast that will decide the fate of the human race.
But when the Strike came, she said she could not allow her personal
pleasure to stand between her and the obtaining for woman of rights
that were so plainly hers. She is a noble enthusiast in the cause
of woman, and though she was in the midst of preparing her bridal
outfit when the Strike was proposed, she brushed it aside as if it
were cobwebs. She said that she felt that the supreme hour of woman’s
destiny had come, and to miss it were to be a renegade from everything
noble.
“She is beautiful,” continued Mr. Lister, glancing fondly toward the
portrait, “but her irresistible charm is in what she says and in her
manner of saying it. Although she is simple and pure as a lily, she is
continually saying unexpected things, things that give you a start of
surprise, upset your conventionalism and put you into a stimulating
glow in spite of yourself.
“It was a genuine case of love at first sight, or rather of love at
the first meeting, for it was really so dark when I first met her that
I could not distinguish her features clearly. She does not belong to
the wealthy class, and she gave music lessons in order to support
herself and her two little brothers. She called here at this house
at twilight one evening with an acquaintance of my mother to see if
she could obtain a pupil in my sister. It was dusk when I casually
entered the parlour where they sat. The lamps had not been lighted.
I was feeling rather dull and listless from the fatigues of the day,
and scarcely noticed Miss Alliston after the formal introduction. I
sat down rather indifferently, preoccupied with my own thoughts, while
she continued conversation with my mother. Suddenly I remember hearing
her say in answer to some inquiry of my mother, that she was a ‘Yankee
through and through.’ It was a simple thing to say, but, good Heavens!
what subtle power there was in her! That speech aroused me as if I had
been suddenly shaken from sleep! Two or three minutes later she said
something in her bright, bracing, dashing way, that made me feel as
one feels who has had a mirth-provoking tumble. Before I had been in
her society ten minutes, I was talking to her, and was like a man who
was recklessly swallowing wine, glass after glass! When, at last, I
followed her to the carriage in which her friend had brought her, I
loved her as madly as a man ever loved a woman. I could have kissed her
from head to foot. The touch of my hand on her waist as I helped her
into the carriage that evening!--it thrills me now. I can never forget
that, if the Strike should be continued and I should never see her
again.
“After that evening I can truly say that I never went out of my way to
seek her. I know not what the instinct was that restrained me. It is
one of those things about the human heart that is past finding out.
It is true that I thought of her every day, and oftentimes I cast a
wistful glance toward the street in which I knew she lived, but as I
had nothing but my love for me to call there, I could not go.
“And that period when I loved her unknown to herself or to any human
being is treasured up in my soul as one of the purest and sweetest
in existence. I really discovered, past any doubt, that there is a
depth of exquisite joy in simply loving, whether the person you love
knows of your love or not, or whether she returns it or not. It was
like the secret discovery of a clear bubbling spring beside which my
world-wearied spirit could linger in purest contentment and serenest
joy. Love can distil its exquisite perfume in your own soul, whether
it is wafted to others or not. It was when I was feeding upon the
sweet bliss of this discovery that this verse formed itself almost
unconsciously in my mind:
“Hast thou found Love in all the sphere?
Then know it by this perfect token,
Thy love was never known or spoken,
And still thy joy was all unbroken:
Such love the stars revere!
“Sometimes I fancied that she could hear my soul calling to her in the
voiceless night, and that her soul made sweet responses.
“But though I refrained almost conscientiously from seeking Allegra
Alliston, fate seem to continually throw us together without the
slightest design on our part. Do you want to know the surest sign of
love in the world? It is when you can tell every time at which you
have seen her whom you love, without missing a single instance. It may
have been nothing more than a passing glimpse of her face in a prosaic
street car but it is as firmly photographed in your memory as if you
had held her tightly in your arms. I could not only remember every
glimpse I had ever had of Allegra Alliston during the next six months,
but I could repeat, with the accuracy of a phonograph, every word she
had said in my hearing.
“Once during this time I was passing a house in which she gave music
lessons, although I did not know it until I heard her rapturous voice
singing. I had never heard the song before, but being sung by her it
was indelibly fixed in my memory. See, I can repeat it now:
“COME BACK.
“‘Come back!’ from many a broken home
There comes a voice of sad endeavour
To bring the loved ones back who roam
To bring them back to dwell forever.
‘Come back, dear ones, Love calls you home,
No more to doubt, no more to roam
Come back--come back.’
“’Tis borne across the ocean’s main
And blown along the desert’s tract
In words which tell earth’s deepest pain.
Come back! ye loved ones, O come back.
‘Come back, dear ones, Love calls you home,
From her warm arms no more to roam,
Come back--come back.’
“‘Dear ones come back to that sweet home
Where loves strong ties are parted never,
No more to weep, no more to roam,
Come back and dwell in peace forever
Come back dear ones, Love calls you home,
From her fond breast no more to roam,
Come back--come back.’”
“As I said, although Miss Alliston did not enter our house again for
a long time after that first evening, fate threw us together in the
most unexpected ways. At last when I had not seen her for some weeks, I
started to drive to a village a few miles distant on a business errand.
As I drove along the lonely country road, I was in an exceedingly
happy frame of mind. The solitude and a radiant fragrant autumn day
were favourable to my deep enjoyment of the incense that burned upon
the secret altar of my soul. I remember feeling a special glow of
satisfaction that morning that I was content simply to have Love as a
noble guest in the chambers of my heart. I asked no other gifts from
her hands.
“As I made a turn in the road, which was lined with woods on one side,
I noticed to my surprise a woman dressed in black picking her way
somewhat daintily along the muddy roadside at some distance ahead of
me. By the way, don’t you like to see women dressed in black? It is my
favourite dress. There is a rich grace and dignity about women dressed
in black that seems wanting in any other colour. Their throats are so
white, and their forms so sweetly and seriously graceful; it makes them
doubly mysterious and captivating to me.
“Of course when I saw this lady walking by the roadside, I decided at
once to offer her a seat in my carriage. But I had not the slightest
idea who she might be, nor indeed did I spend a moment’s thought upon
it. Judge then of my electrifying surprise when I had stopped the
carriage, and she had for the first time turned her face toward me, to
see that it was Allegra Alliston! I felt as if I were in a dream as I
helped her into the carriage, and she was apparently as much surprised
as I was. But the explanation of her being there was very simple.
She had obtained a new pupil in the sleepy village toward which we
were going, and as she had no other means of getting there, she was
heroically walking, although the distance was five miles.
“Do you believe in the sharpness of woman’s intuition? If there is such
a thing, I told Allegra Alliston that I loved her a thousand times
during that short ride. Not in words, or by any intent, but--I made a
desperate effort to appear natural and unconcerned. There was a rich
glow upon her face from walking. I drew the carriage robes around her
and asked her if she was dressed warmly enough to ride. I tried to hide
my secret, but every motion I made, every word I uttered seemed to give
it hopelessly away. I became positively frightened, for it seemed as if
at every turn of the carriage wheels I was saying, ‘I love you, I love
you, I love you!’
“As we drew near the little village, Miss Alliston said something
about its dulness, and I replied that possibly it might become a
populous city some day; that sometimes such places, after long lying in
lethargy, were found to possess unsuspected advantages, and sprang into
sudden life and importance.
“‘But it will be after our time,’ she said, ‘some hundreds of years
from now. Where shall we be then?’
“I did not premeditate at all what I said in reply to this. A man who
is deeply in love has a tongue that is set on a hair trigger. I talked
without knowing what I was saying.
“‘If we meet in another sphere, Miss Alliston, and I confess I indulge
myself in the perhaps foolish hope that congenial souls will meet and
recognize each other hereafter, I shall have something to tell you
about this strange and far-distant earth-life. I assume that there will
be no such artificial trammels there as to prevent me from speaking to
you without fear.’
“‘Oh,’ said she, with the charming audacity that is so characteristic
of her, ‘tell me now. A woman, you know, can neither keep a secret, nor
rest till she finds one out.’
“‘Tell you!’ I cried, with a sudden burst of vehemence that was almost
like anger. ‘I have told you a thousand times. Oh, God! I have tried to
hide it, and yet you know as well as if I had shouted it to the hills,
that I love you unutterably, that I have never ceased loving you since
I first saw you.’
“The reins had fallen from my hands and the horse had stopped in
uncertainty. She caught the reins, but strange as it may seem, this
burst of vehemence produced something very much like it in her. Her
great eyes turned upon me with a blazing light which I had never seen
in them before.
“‘And you, too!’ she cried, ‘do you blame me for my skill at
concealing my heart? Since when has woman been permitted to manifest
her feelings toward man in the slightest degree? You could not hide
your love because man has always had the liberty to express it. But
woman, compelled for ages to stifle every heart-beat, has learned her
unnatural lesson too well. Like the stoical Indian she can bear her
torture without flinching. But,--but,’ and her splendid voice began to
falter, ‘I have loved you none the less.’ And we were both crying.
“Had a traveller been concealed on that country road he would have
been puzzled to see a young man and woman sitting in a carriage, and
apparently quarrelling at one moment, but at the next locked in each
other’s arms and smothering each other with kisses.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X.
Mr. Lister paused a moment in the narration of a story to which I had
listened with absorbing interest, and then said:
“Ah me, that was eight years ago.”
“Eight years ago?” I exclaimed, “what a long courtship!”
“It did not seem long to us. We had both discovered from much
observation of our married friends that courtship was the true elysium
in every one’s life, and a far happier state than marriage. Noting this
we asked each other why we should not prolong this happy season. In it
we realised that each was to the other a delightful and never-ending
mystery. We saw that in courtship we had a feeling of deep reverence
for each other which was almost wholly wanting among married people.
In courtship we each felt that love was generous condescension in the
other. I did not feel that I was at all worthy of her, and she did not
feel that she was worthy of me. We were inexpressibly sacred objects in
each other’s eyes, and above all things we desired to remain so.
“Besides, to tell the truth, we saw some terribly dark spots in
marriage from which we shrank as from the contemplation of the slimy
things in a pool. It seemed ‘filled with the habitations of cruelty!’
She confided to me that she had a schoolmate, a dear friend, who had
been married a few years before. She was a radiant, fragrant being,
fitted by every gift of Nature to shed light and perfume, joy and
laughter wherever she went. But alas, she was not physically adapted
to the fearful treadmill of enforced maternity. After twice becoming
a mother and barely escaping the ordeal with her life, she was
warned that another risk of that kind would undoubtedly have a fatal
termination. And this innocent, helpless being, with a sword hanging
over her bright young life, went on her way scattering gentle words and
loving deeds along her blackly shadowed path. But O, the pity of it!
the sword fell. Within a year she was a martyr to the fearful Moloch
which yawns continually over woman’s life. She escaped by death from
a life so fraught with cruel suffering, so filled with unutterable
indignities, that the wonder is that woman did not strike long ago!
“In the ecstasy of our love Allegra Alliston and I vowed that we would
never take part in a system that permitted such unspeakable cruelty. We
chose rather to enjoy the quiet pleasures of courtship and be satisfied
with them.”
“And yet,” said I, “you had decided to get married. You said that
Miss Alliston was preparing her wedding-dress at the time of the
commencement of the Strike.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Lister, “the great discovery of Zugassent opened up a
manner of life by which married people could preserve their sacred
reverence for each other, and make the state of courtship a perpetual
one. When we saw that we could enter into the joys of marriage without
ravaging each other like wild beasts, we had no longer any reason for
not doing so. We decided to get married at once.”
“But,” said I, as soon as I could speak, “you talk as though I knew
all about Zugassent and his discovery, when in fact I never heard of
either.”
“Why,” said Mr. Lister, “it was the wonderful discovery of Zugassent
that emboldened the women to strike, and gave a logical basis for
their movement. Before that discovery was made, much as they desired
the Magna Charta which they are now asking, they were reasonable, and
scarcely saw how man could give it. The problem seemed too deep and
intricate for any possible solution. But when Zugassent’s discovery was
made, they saw that it took away from man all excuse for withholding
this right. They demanded it at once.”
At this fresh promise of an utterly unlooked-for revelation, I felt a
despairing kind of anger. Could this be the same world in which I had
for thirty-five years lived a sober and commonplace life? Mr. Lister
had already, in the few days which I had spent with him, dazed me and
amazed me with the stunning character of the intelligence which he had
conveyed to me. Did he wish to craze me also? Unconsciously I put my
hand to my head and stared at him in helpless, pathetic reproach. But
he did not appear to be conscious of my feelings. At last when I had
mastered myself enough to speak calmly, I said:
“I wish that you would tell me all about Zugassent and his discovery.
I have been trying to find out the causes of this singular Strike, and
now I hear for the first time that it was assisted by a great discovery
about which I am entirely ignorant. I entreat you to tell me who
Zugassent was and what was his discovery?”
“Zugassent,” said Mr. Lister, and his lip quivered, and a sudden
moisture sprang into his eyes as he spoke, “was a pure and noble soul
who believed that everything that was of human interest was worthy of
conscientious, painstaking study, and that everything which involved
human happiness or misery was a legitimate field for honest effort for
improvement. The appalling sum of misery resulting to woman from the
present system of marriage, and indirectly to men and children as well
through the too great division of the means of subsistence, filled his
heart with a divine compassion. It is said that his attention was first
called to this subject by observing the suffering of his own wife.
That he should be the cause of producing such unavailing suffering
became a source of deep disquietude to him. He resolved rather than to
pursue a course so fraught with evil to woman, to return to the simple
relations of courtship. He fondly loved his wife, but he had firmly
decided to content himself with the purely Platonic and spiritual
pleasures of her society. Being, however, a natural thinker and a man
of studious tastes and habits, he could not help revolving the problem
in his thoughts, much wondering at its mind-baffling character. The
more he pondered the matter the more was he struck with the astounding
anomaly presented by this scientific age. He saw that the explorer, the
discoverer and the pioneer were pushing their caravans and wagon-trains
into every unmapped land on the globe, and steering their barks into
every unknown sea. Applauded by the world, they were daring the
burning fevers of Central Africa, and leaving their bones for others
as determined discoverers to find in the frozen regions of the North
Pole. He saw that in the domain of Science, and Art, and Invention an
innumerable host of patient, earnest workers and thinkers, lured on by
the highest rewards which Earth could offer, were burning midnight oil
in an agonizing search after improvement. Consuming brain and nerve
with unremitting and profligate energy, these toilers after newer and
better ways were fast robbing the earth of all its material secrets.
Even in Religion the rock-bound creeds of hoary churches were being
diligently revised and unscrupulously altered to adapt them to the
new light of a refulgent present. Everywhere there was light, change,
improvement, discarding the old and adopting the newer and better,
except in the social relation of man and woman. This alone remained,
not, indeed, unquestioned, but unexplored and unimproved, the one
stationary fixture of an obsolete and decrepit past. Zugassent saw
with absolute and increasing wonder that none of the new light which
was flooding the world was allowed to penetrate this dark Continent. A
superstition as black, as unreasoning, as utterly inconsistent as that
which compelled Galileo to retract his affirmation about the earth’s
motion, shrouded this dark Continent and forbade any student to set
foot therein. No matter how pure the motive, no matter what misery it
was sought to alleviate, the leperous cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ was
ready to be raised at any one who should seek to direct some of the
unstinted light of a marvellous age into this dark domain of ignorance
and injustice. To be sure, every one freely acknowledged that black and
mephitic vapours were continually arising from this great uncleared
land. Every one marvelled that it could be so enveloped in darkness,
when there was life and light, change and improvement continually going
on about it. The wailing which came from this dark Continent was a
source of continual commiseration on the part of every one, and the
recitals of the heartrending cruelties, the pestilential scandals, and
the shameful deeds that were enacted in this dark country, and which
far exceeded those of Siberia, constituted a large and staple part of
the intelligence of the newspapers. An age which boasted that it could
foretell its weather, and measure the stars, and girdle the earth,
was supinely and superstitiously content to let the relation between
man and woman remain an unstudied and unimproved part and parcel of
a benighted and slave-driving past! As if beyond anything else that
concerned mankind, his relations to woman, next to his relation to
his Creator, were not the most important, the most deserving of free
scientific and conscientious research, and the one supreme improvement
for which the world’s highest premiums should be offered.”
There was a choking sound in Mr. Lister’s throat. He seemed like one
about to weep. But he continued,
“Zugassent saw all this. He fully realized that the man who
conscientiously gave his mind to the study of these problems, who
honestly sought to illumine this great department of human life
with some of the light which was being prodigally shed elsewhere,
would be reviled and misunderstood. He knew that the impure would
call him impure, and that the thoughtless would jeer at him. He knew
that many good people, still somewhat bound by the fast-failing
chains of superstition, would suspect his motives, and would deem
any investigation of this subject unlawful. Nevertheless, Zugassent
determined that in no other field of human interest was discovery and
improvement so wofully and pitifully lacking, and that though for the
present his name might be covered with obloquy, future generations
would respect his effort if this did not. He therefore resolved, with
all the desperate earnestness of a man who is preparing to take leave
of his home and friends forever, to light his humble torch and go alone
into the murky caverns of this dark Continent. He would, if possible,
open some part of it to the light of day. He did so, and his beneficent
discovery, but just beginning to be made known, has placed him at the
very head of those who have honestly and successfully toiled for the
betterment of the human race.”
“And Zugassent’s discovery?” said I, eagerly. But the rays of the
morning sun were bursting in at the window. It was broad daylight.
Mr. Lister arose. His face was wet with tears. “My dear Mr. Carford,”
said he, “have you forgotten that to-day is Sunday, and that we are to
witness the woman’s parade this afternoon? It is absolutely necessary
that we should take some rest before that. I will give you Zugassent’s
book and let him speak for himself.”
I went to my room and lay down upon the rug. As I passed along the
hall I heard Mr. Lister singing the snatches of a song as he prepared
himself to rest; and as I drifted into sleep, it was with the words of
his song running in my mind:
Love lingers not where sorrow dwells,
She cannot bide the downcast face;
Where laughter rings like golden bells
Is Love’s abiding place.
Love follows those, though seeming vain,
Who gild life’s path with faith and hope;
She smiles on those who smile again,
Not on the misanthrope.
Love smiles on those who smile again,
Not on the misanthrope.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI.
It was noon when I awoke from the deep stupor rather than sleep into
which I had plunged. How swiftly, when one is waked out of sleep, comes
back the engrossing joy or grief which lay upon his heart when sleep
stole it away! But at this awakening I was conscious only of a strange,
dull sense of grief. I was for some time too much dazed to analyze my
sensations or to fully realize what had occurred in the past few days,
and on attempting to rise I found that I was stiff and sore, as after
unusual exertion.
The copy of the _Bitter Cry_ which I had left in my room the day before
lay on the floor. It served to recall to me the reality of the strange
circumstances into which I had fallen. I remember that a humorous
account of the Button Manufacturers’ plea before the Woman’s Executive
Committee to allow mankind to continue the use of buttons, first
caught my attention, and that afterward I read the following:
“LOVE WORKETH NO ILL TO HIS NEIGHBOUR.”
It was with more than his usual unction that the Rev. Jonathan
Holworthy announced his text one bright Sunday May morning, to the
distinctly rural congregation of Middlebrook.
Smoothing out with one soft, plump hand the pages of the large Bible
which lay on the pulpit cushion in front of him, he raised the other
impressively, and shot a comprehensive and penetrating glance toward
his humble and unpretending auditors. This glance, proceeding from
under a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and passing over the gold-rimmed
spectacles set low on his nose, was intended as a kind of preliminary
shot to awaken in the congregation any who were sleepily disposed,
and to draw the attention of each one of his parishioners to the
unusually “great effort” which he was about to make. And it must be
confessed that this impressive manner and sharp glance had the effect
of uncomfortably arousing several rather torpid individuals who had
settled themselves comfortably into their pews, and on whom the
ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Holworthy had usually the effect of the
droning of a bumble bee in August.
“Wonder if we’re going to have another ‘Great Awakenin’’ such as I
remember forty years ago,” said Deacon Weatherby to himself. “The
minister ’pears to have something powerful on his mind.”
And Deacon Weatherby, like several others in the congregation, shook
off the sleepy fit which usually came on with great regularity as soon
as he had settled himself in his pew. He now sat bolt upright, with an
air of alertness that he did not manifest even in the numerous keen
horse trades in which he participated, and in which he was always
credited with coming off “first best.”
The Rev. Jonathan Holworthy, who had stood in silence with his hand
on the page of the open Bible, critically surveying the assembled
farmers and village folks of Middlebrook, appeared to be well satisfied
with the effect of his unusual impressiveness. He therefore proceeded
to deliberately announce his text, repeating it twice, slowly, as
if each word were heavy, and he had to lift it with an effort:
“Love-worketh-no-ill-to-his-neighbour--Love-worketh-no-ill-to-his-
neighbour.”
Having thus delivered his text with much solemnity, and having
apparently divided it in his mind under several heads, the Rev. Mr.
Holworthy first addressed himself to the subject of Love. But Love
cannot be said to have been the particular game which he was hunting
in the great oratorical effort which he had planned for himself that
morning. Beyond a few general platitudes interspersed with Scriptural
quotations, he did not, therefore, expatiate upon this branch of his
discourse. It was only when he came to consider the subject of “his
neighbour” that he may be said to have really struck the trail, and to
have warmed up in the pursuit of his argument. “Who is my neighbour?”
he suddenly demanded, with so much imperative force, that a half-witted
young man, who sat in the front row, promptly replied, “Ike Hunniwell,
the infidel.”
This reply to the minister’s inquiry produced a half-frightened
smile on the faces of some of the congregation. It must, however, be
admitted, that in general to the simple-minded farmers of Middlebrook,
unaccustomed as they were to much allegory or metaphor, their
“neighbours” were simply the plain, hard-featured, but kindly, men and
women who lived on the farms adjoining their own, and the but little
more stylish men and women whose humble homes lined the streets of
Middlebrook.
But the Rev. Mr. Holworthy was looking for a very different neighbour
from any of these, and he therefore only frowned at the reply of
half-witted Ira Aliter.
And in pursuit of this anomalous, hypothetical neighbour, the Rev. Mr.
Holworthy may then be said to have proceeded to compass sea and land.
He sought him in the far-off jungles of India, on the trackless wastes
of Africa, among the nomadic hordes of Tartary, and in the rigorous
confines of Siberia. No land known to be inhabited by the human
race was too distant or too inaccessible for the broad sweep of his
resistless benevolence to reach. Indeed, if man had been amphibious,
there is but little doubt that he would have dragged the sea in the
ardour of his all-pervading search for this neighbour to whom “love”
was to “work no ill.” But as man did not occupy the depths of the
sea, the Rev. Mr. Holworthy contented himself with traversing, in
his astonishing mental flight, all the most distant and uncivilized
countries known to the geographer.
And in all these far-away places, some of which the bewildered farmers
of Middlebrook had never heard of before, the Rev. Mr. Holworthy had
no difficulty in triumphantly finding “his neighbour”; and having thus
found “his neighbour” at the uttermost ends of the earth, the Rev. Mr.
Holworthy unceremoniously haled him as it were, taking him by the
nape of the neck, metaphorically speaking, and holding him up for the
dumbfounded farmers of Middlebrook to gaze upon.
Having thus shown to the undiscriminating inhabitants of Middlebrook
who their real “neighbours” were, the Rev. Mr. Holworthy proceeded
to invest these “neighbours” with the garments made by the local
branch of the Missionary Society, putting these garments on to these
imaginary “neighbours” somewhat as a constable would clap handcuffs on
to a miserable wretch who had long eluded justice. Thus, the Rev. Mr.
Holworthy, to his own satisfaction, showed to his congregation that
through the efforts of their local branch of the Missionary Society
they were working no ill but positive good to their “neighbours” in
the antipodes. He then indulged in much self-gratulatory and flowery
complacence, assuring his congregation that they were sublimely proving
the Apostle Paul’s great sentence that “Love worketh no ill to his
neighbour.”
In the minister’s pew, a little way to the left of the front of the
pulpit, sat a pale and faded ghost of a woman. She sat in the middle
of the pew, and on her right, looking very uneasy in tight jackets and
broad white collars, sat five stout boys. On her left, in stiffly
starched sun-bonnets and white aprons, were four print and meek-faced
girls. Mrs. Holworthy was looking more than commonly pale and fragile
on this particular May morning. The delicate blue veins in her white
throat and in her slender wrists showed plainly. Two or three times
that morning Mr. Holworthy had sent peremptory word out from his
study that the children must be kept more quiet, as he was putting
the finishing touches on his great sermon, “Love worketh no ill to
his neighbour.” Two or three times that morning, while undergoing the
fatigues of preparing the children for church, Mrs. Holworthy had
stopped with a sudden fainting and fluttering at her heart. And now,
while she turned her white, patient face toward the pulpit, strange
fancies began to crowd her mind, interrupted only when Mr. Holworthy,
in rounding off one of his turgid periods, brought out with extra force
the beautiful words of St. Paul, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour.”
In Mrs. Holworthy’s fancy, she seemed to see herself as she was at
eighteen, a joyous care-free girl, with many tastes for art and books,
and high companionships and charity, and great and noble deeds. Life,
then, had stretched before her like a flower-strewn pathway, not
devoid of suffering and sacrifice, to be sure, but the suffering and
the sacrifice were to have had the sweetness and recompense of being
her chosen own, freely accepted and joyfully submitted to with the
sublime consciousness of her own soul’s development thereby.
Then Mrs. Holworthy remembered with a sudden shudder in the retrospect,
of her meeting with Mr. Holworthy. Did she love the heavy, phlegmatic
young minister who visited at her father’s house so long ago? No, she
could see, oh, so clearly now, that she did not, that she had never
known love, that she was too young and inexperienced to divine the
depths of meaning in that word. She saw she had been somewhat flattered
by the attentions of the young minister, that she had been drawn into
marriage with him by the assiduous teaching that marriage was woman’s
sole sphere, and that marriage with a clergyman was eminently pure and
respectable. As she looked back over her married life, she saw that at
its very threshold she had been compelled to lay aside all her tastes
for art, her aspirations for doing something good and noble in her own
way, even her simple enjoyment of her own poor little life, all had
been ruthlessly sacrificed. From the day that her first child was born,
she had never known an unbroken night’s rest, she had scarcely looked
into a book, she had lost the use of her pen and pencil, the cares of
breeding had absorbed her whole life, and what had she to show for
them? Her children, to be sure; but even these could never compensate
her for her ruthless dispossession of all the golden opportunities and
innocent cravings of her own nature.
As Mrs. Holworthy mused thus over her mutilated past, the beautiful
text of Mr. Holworthy’s sermon began to mingle with her thoughts,
and to arouse strange questionings in her mind. Could these heathen
“neighbours,” whom Mr. Holworthy was seeking so strenuously in the
far-off Isles of the Sea, have a more unmitigated slavery than hers had
been? However unenlightened they might be, were they not quite as free
and happy as she, bound as she had been to bear children for this great
man, whether she wanted to or not, whether she was able to or not?
Surely, if any one deserved pity and needed succour, it was one whose
lot had been like hers. Her head began to feel strangely confused. She
repeated Mr. Holworthy’s text to herself, “Love worketh no ill to his
neighbour.” Beautiful words! What could they mean? It was plain that
something had worked ill to her unreconciled life, and therefore it
could not be love. No, it was a blinding mistake, a fearful travesty,
a hideous misnomer to call it love. “Love worketh no ill to his
neighbour,” she repeated till her brain was dizzy.
Just as the Rev. Mr. Holworthy had completed his great effort and
driven the last nail home, as it were, by reciting for the last
time the noble words of St. Paul which had formed the theme of his
discourse, there was a sudden stir in the congregation. Mrs. Holworthy
had fallen forward in her seat, and her children were peering at her
face with the unsuspecting curiosity of those who have experienced
neither care nor sorrow. When the kind-hearted women who came to her
relief had laid her on the cushioned seat, her lips moved as if she
were repeating something, but the only word they could catch was
“Love.” She had gone to a place where love truly “worketh no ill to his
neighbour.”
“This is indeed a mysterious dispensation of Providence,” said the Rev.
Mr. Holworthy to his awe-stricken parishioners.
But the village doctor, who was a man of few words, confided to his
wife that evening that he thought that Mrs. Holworthy had died of a
“dispensation of children.”
I had just finished reading this article in the _Bitter Cry_, when
there was a knock at my door, and Mr. Lister entered.
“Come Mr. Carford,” he said, “it is past two o’clock and as the women’s
parade will not pass through this street, we must take our luncheon at
once and go down to the public square.”
I sprang up. “Let us go,” I said. “I would not miss such a spectacle
for worlds. The sun never looked down on its like before, and it
probably never will again.”
And taking a hasty luncheon, we left the house.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII.
The street through which the women were to pass was, we found when we
reached it, already thickly lined with men, many of whom bore marks of
their fearful struggle with fire of the night before. Arms and hands
bound up in slings, and foreheads bandaged with cloths, told of the
scathing wounds that had been received in the fiery conflict. Blanched
and haggard faces and heavy eyes also told of sleepless anxiety before
and after the fire. Some of those who had been so injured as to be
unable to appear on the streets, were propped in easy chairs at the
open windows. Not to see womankind after such an unprecedented absence,
was a deprivation not to be endured. It would have been like missing
the sight of the sun after a dreary, Arctic winter.
But though all the men in the town, excepting those who were disabled
by wounds, were on the streets and squares through which the women were
to pass, there was a silence like a spell upon the vast multitude.
It was a perfectly noiseless congregation that had gathered there.
Anything like gossip or badinage were as utterly absent as they would
have been from before the altar of a cathedral. Truly there was no
place for speech in that strange concourse, and Mr. Lister and I took
our places in it without uttering a word. A feeling of solemnity akin
to awe had taken possession of me. I recalled Mr. Lister’s words when
he first told me of the parade: “The women wish man to see in a simple
panorama exactly what woman has been up to this day.”
What could the panorama be?
But I did not have long to wait. And the tense excitement of the
moment when the women appeared on the bridge, toward which all eyes
were strained, how can I describe it! It seemed for a moment to make
me dizzy. When the mist which swam before my eyes had cleared away,
the head of a majestic host had crossed the bridge, and was slowly
advancing, without noise or gesture, toward the spot where I stood.
Seen from a little distance, I remember a first vague impression that
the women had taken great liberties with the fashions that had existed
when I last saw them. I called to mind that Mr. Lister had told me
that among the other relics of what had become to them an obsolete
and withered past, the women had cast off many of the unreasoning
fetters of fashion that they had spent much earnest study and practical
experiment in their retirement in finding the most natural and comely
dress for women. I will not say that the sight of woman in any garb
would not have been thrilling under such strange circumstances as those
under which I was now about to behold her, but certainly the women who
were approaching me were dressed with a simplicity and taste such as I
had never before seen. Their comely outlines seemed invested with a new
sense of freedom of motion such as one might have who had been suddenly
released from a weary, dragging ball and chain.
But all thought of the vesture of these self-banished daughters of the
Universe vanished like a breath the instant they drew near enough for
me to note the rise and fall of their tremulous bosoms, to search their
serious faces, and to study the arrangement of their noiseless and
modest pageant. Their speechless procession was divided in a way that I
did not at first comprehend, but there was a sense of plain, critical
sincerity about it, a perception that it was intended to be a bare
exposition of simple, unvarnished truth, that sharpened my intellect
so that I was not long in perceiving its vivid meaning.
First in this strange procession came the unmarried women, or “old
maids” as they had always been called, and although there were no
upbraidings in their serious, modest eyes, the intolerable injustice
and cruelty which had been meted out by man to these patient, helpless
souls, was made as clear as the blackly vivid painting of a guilty
conscience.
“These are they,” a voice seemed to say, “whom man has for ages
taunted with a derision as contemptible and unchivalrous as the
striking of a cripple. These gentle sisters of men, who have been
by their nature ever ready to perform the kindest and most sisterly
acts for their recreant brothers, have been laughed to scorn if they
manifested the slightest desire for marriage, and bitterly mocked if
they failed. Spurred by contumely toward the only goal which man had
allowed them, they had been heartlessly derided for missing it, and
relegated to a life of coldness and contempt as cruel as the grave.
Instead of reaching a strong, brotherly arm toward these sisters, man
had added to her natural weakness the abuse of a coarse ridicule and
the unutterably grievous burden of a cruel disrespect. To this had
been added in innumerable instances, the single-handed struggle with
dire poverty.” Before these unreproaching creatures, who had suffered
such unnumerable cruelties at the hands of their natural protectors,
I felt a self-abasement that was akin to remorse. I longed to throw
myself in the dust before them, to kiss their hands and to crave
their forgiveness. Surely the woes of the “old maids” called for the
just vengeance of Heaven. And how many there were of them! Who would
have dreamed, without seeing such a panorama as this, that so large a
proportion of women were old maids, living in a state of contemptuous
abasement or humiliating sufferance? As I gazed at them, strange
and confusing questions, never before thought of, began to thrust
themselves into my mind. Had not this great mass of women social and
maternal instincts as deep and inexpugnable as any of their kind? What
sort of social system was this, then, that remorselessly crushed and
cruelly starved the strongest and most innocent desires of a great
majority of its subjects? Could it be possible that sane men and women
believed that a just Heaven looked with any complaisance upon such a
system?
A space divided the old maids from the part of the procession that
came next, and I turned with curiosity to look at the faces of the men
by whom I was surrounded. To my satisfaction, I saw plainly written
there the poignant workings of a deeply troubled conscience; I saw
there the unutterable shame of having done an unchivalrous act, and the
still heavier reproach of having done a cruel one. There was no need of
upbraiding words.
The part of the procession which next drew near seemed to be nearly as
numerous as the “old maids.” With a sudden shock, I saw that it was the
“courtesans,” or rather those who had been courtesans, for I remembered
that Woman had, by an irrevocable edict, forever banished the name and
calling of the courtesan from the earth.
But if the contemplation of the soul-wearying burdens borne by the
uncomplaining “old maids” produced in the men who gazed upon them the
compunctions of pity and remorse, the scarred and wasted wrecks of
man’s passion which now passed in long review before him, reproached
him with a poignancy ten-fold greater. These women, bearing the
ineffaceable marks of man’s ravages, had differed, it appeared, only by
an accident from those whom he esteemed pure. Dragged from the garden
of purity by man’s own perfidy, they had been doomed without hope of
forgiveness, to forever minister to his lust. Disregarding for ages the
example and spirit of the Great Teacher, man had thrust the victims
he had thus made, deeper and deeper into the blackness of a bottomless
pit. I turned away my head with a shudder from a spectacle before which
all men stood in awful condemnation!
Fully two-thirds of the procession had passed by, and the woman’s
panorama had shown nothing but unmerited contumely or ruthless
devastation. What could there be left?
It was a band of exceedingly frail and wasted women, that I next looked
upon. Feeble invalids they appeared with but a remnant of days before
them. Borne down by disease they dragged out lives of continual pain.
The ashes of hope were in their eyes, the ashes of beauty were in their
faces, and the ashes of strength were in their feeble frames. These,
it appeared, were women who had married young profligates, “to save
them.” They looked like flowers which had been hopelessly blasted by a
deadly, blighting wind. The fearful scars and moral pollution which had
been in the souls of their husbands, had been wrecked upon them to the
uttermost, and there had been no voice to protest, no sheltering arm to
interpose.
These were followed by a very small band of women who were said to have
been happily married. But the chains of these seemed in many respects
as heavy, though a little more gilded, than those of the women who had
preceded them. They appeared to have paid their all for the narrow
happiness which they enjoyed, and it had been fraught with deadly
perils, against which they had had no adequate protection. Even some
of these, it seemed, had been bartered for gold or titles, and only a
filmy legal fiction stood between them and the name and stain of the
concubine. Following them closely was the army of married women, who,
unfortunately mismated or overborne by the evils of undesired maternity
and its dire accompaniment, poverty, formed the strong rank and file of
the Great Woman’s Strike.
As I gazed upon them, a strange hallucination possessed me. It seemed
to me that I was looking, not merely at the passing procession, but
at the tender mothers of all mankind, and that, with them, I saw the
mountain of anguish, the unremembered toil, the care and undying
self-sacrifice which they had borne since the race began. What did not
man owe to woman!
In the close of the procession came the young women who were just
verging upon marriageable age, the tender and blooming maidens who were
still dallying in the primrose path of free and beautiful girlhood.
The sight of these innocent and care-free creatures would seem to
have lightened and dissipated the effect of the sight of the unabated
misery that had preceded them, but on the contrary, it immeasurably
heightened the awful effect. For these, it appeared, were the perfumed
and garlanded victims who were soon to be offered up to the fearful
Moloch who presided over woman’s destiny. “A few short years,” it
seemed to say, “and the rosy hours of youth’s unfettered dance will be
over. Then, I claim you for the three great classes into which women
are divided,--despised old maids, feeding on the social crusts thrown
from a profligate’s table; equally despised courtesans, sitting at that
table with man in wanton revelry; and married menials, propagative
drudges, meekly waiting upon that table, having no voice in the
allotment of their own destiny, and no power over their own persons.”
This voice ringing in my ears, together with the woeful procession
which had passed before my eyes, had completely daunted me. I could
bear it no longer. It was as if my conscience had been preternaturally
aroused, and had brought before my mind’s eye, in long defile, a black
array of unsuspected sins. Rapt as I had been in the contemplation of
this strange procession, I felt that I must flee from it as I would
flee from a spot where I had committed a dastardly crime. I turned in
anguish to break my way through the crowd of men, anywhere to get away
from the awful evidence of misery in the producing of which I had been
an accomplice with all men. Judge, then, of my speechless amazement, my
absolute horror, on turning, to find that there was not a man in sight.
Pierced as I had been with an agonising contrition, it still appeared
that I was more callous than the men by whom I had been surrounded.
Unable to bear the heavy reproach of their consciences, they had slunk
away one after another, till I, without knowing it, had been left
entirely alone. This discovery was too great for my nerves, weakened as
they had been by the ceaseless shocks of the past few days. My brain
whirled. I was conscious of a sudden movement toward me by some of the
women in the procession and then all was a blank.
I had fainted.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII.
I did not remain unconscious long. When I revived, I was lying on some
wraps which were spread upon the ground near where I had stood, and
gentle hands were bathing my forehead. I opened my eyes, and saw that
two women were kneeling over me with solicitous faces, while a third,
a commanding brunette, stood a little way off watching us. The rest of
the procession were returning across the bridge toward the women’s home.
The first thought that came into my mind as I opened my eyes and saw
the gentle faces hovering over me, was that henceforth I should love
all women, that as a sex they were forever entitled to the deep and
admiring admiration and affection of all men. Until a new and more
humane social order should be safely established, I would patiently
bide my time without license or anarchy, but no power on earth should
prevent me from loyally regarding every woman as my sister from that
time forth. I murmured confused thanks for their kindness, and arose in
deep embarrassment.
“Are you well enough to go to your home?” said the young woman who had
been watching us. Her manner was that of sincere solicitude, unmixed
with either embarrassment or affectation.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, and turned briskly on my heel; but I had gone
but a few steps when my feet began to falter; my knees were strangely
weak.
“I think you had better see him safely home,” said the brunette to the
two women under whose ministrations I had revived. Weak as I was I
could not refuse, and the two women, gently taking each an arm, began
to slowly walk with me toward Mr. Lister’s house.
Many times during the past few days, as the reader knows, it had seemed
to me that I must be dreaming, such was the astounding strangeness of
my surroundings. Let him then imagine what a wildly preposterous vision
it must have seemed to me, Rodney Carford, to be escorted by two women
toward a home in a town in which woman had utterly forsaken man. To be
thus escorted, too, on the eve of the casting of a ballot which was to
decide the perpetuity of the human race!
To add to the overpowering strangeness of my situation, I suddenly
realized that the two women who were accompanying me toward Mr.
Lister’s home belonged to the two most injured classes in the women’s
panorama. One was an old maid, and the other had been a courtesan.
This discovery revived in my mind the deep remorse which I had felt in
beholding their pathetic pageant. I remember weakly trying to decide in
my mind which of the two had been most cruelly injured by man. I longed
to throw my arms around them both, but I scarcely dared to look into
their faces as we walked slowly along. At last, as I stood at the door
of Mr. Lister’s house, I raised my eyes to theirs. “Forgive me,” I said
to the old maid. “Forgive me,” I said to the courtesan. They made no
reply, but a serene light, unmixed with any bitterness, shone in their
eyes and gave me comfort. As they turned away after leaving me at the
door of Mr. Lister’s house, I followed them wistfully with my eyes.
They had wound their arms about each other like sisters, and without a
single backward glance, were walking toward the bridge.
I have no recollection how I passed the night that ensued, but I
suppose I must have slept. I remember that Mr. Lister had retired when
I entered the house, and as I felt no inclination for conversation, it
was a relief to me to seek the solitude of my room.
The day on which the ballots were to be cast dawned as all other days
of great import to the human days have dawned. Although it was a day
that was to decide a question never before conceived of, and one that
involved the possible extinction of the human race, it was not marked
by any demonstration of any kind. On the contrary, the conspicuous
thing about the day, making it totally unlike any previous balloting
in the world’s history, was the noiselessness with which everything
was conducted. There were no harangues upon the street corners, no
attempt at persuasion anywhere, not even any inquiry among men as to
how individuals were going to vote. Each man seemed wholly wrapped in
his own thoughts, but there was a stern directness of manner, a total
absence of any appearance of vacillation, that showed that the time for
the decision was ripe.
The system of voting was the Australian, and how each man was to vote
was a secret known only to his own soul. After spending some time with
Mr. Lister in visiting the polling-places, I returned to the house to
pass the day as best I could in his library.
At noon Mr. Lister returned with an interesting piece of news. The
polls were to close at four o’clock, and at that hour the women were
to assemble in the great Auditorium which formed one of the group of
buildings which they occupied. There they were to await the report of
the decision of the ballots, and any one was free to go there to hear
it. To pass the time till then I reminded Mr. Lister of his promise to
give me “Zugassent’s Discovery.” He placed the book in my hands, and,
having arranged with me to meet him at the Woman’s Auditorium at four
o’clock, he left the house to attend to business pertaining to the
balloting.
It was with a feeling of rare curiosity, not unmixed with profound awe,
that I opened a book which promised to have made a discovery of value
in a field in which no other discoverer had ever had the temerity to
set foot. That this discovery was as innocent of evil as the white
light of day, and profoundly scientific as well, that it was in keeping
with the noble advancement of man in all other departments of wisdom,
I was assured both from what I had been told of the character of
Zugassent, and because it commended itself to such pure-minded lovers
as Justin Lister and Allegra Alliston. But I had not the slightest idea
of what this discovery might be. I accordingly plunged into the book
as one plunges on a summer’s day in a stream of whose depth he has no
conception.
As I got deeper and deeper into “Zugassent’s Discovery,” my interest
became absorbingly, wonderfully, and overpoweringly intense. I forgot
all about the Great Woman’s Strike. I forgot where I was. I forgot
everything which had happened in the exciting days through which I
had just passed. Hour after hour flew by, and as I turned page after
page there was gradually unfolded to my wondering perceptions a
discovery that appeared to be the perfection of chivalry, the essence
of unselfishness, the culminating and consummate flower of the true
refinement of all ages. Civilizing and ennobling man beyond all
precedent, it seemed to lift the primeval curse from woman not less
really than if it had been done by an Omnipotent fiat. With breathless
interest I read on. Once only I paused, as the question rose in my
mind, “Was it feasible?” At that critical moment a clock struck, and
I counted the strokes. Five o’clock! Like a flash the recollection of
everything came back to me. It was an hour after the time at which I
had promised to meet Mr. Lister at the Woman’s Auditorium! Thrusting
“Zugassent’s Discovery” into my pocket, I seized my hat, and leaving
the house, hurried toward the bridge which led to the women’s home.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV.
As I entered the Auditorium, and hastened to a seat beside Mr. Lister,
I saw that the vast floor was filled with men and women, but that they
were separated by a wide space. A woman whom I quickly recognized as
Allegra Alliston was speaking from the platform. As I entered she was
saying:
“Remove but this monstrous shadow which continually yawns over woman’s
life, and she promises to become the true glory of man, and to cheer
and lighten his pathway with a radiance more dazzling than his wildest
dreams ever conceived of.”
As the speaker proceeded I became conscious that I was surrounded by
a growing tumult of weeping. The deep conviction of having cruelly
oppressed and wronged and ravaged woman for unnumbered ages, which I
had seen on the strained and anxious faces of the men when I first
entered the hall, had given way to sobs and groans. The speaker paused
for a moment with emotion. Suddenly as if it had been traced by a hand
on the wall, the conviction burst upon that weeping multitude that
immeasurably above all ties of consanguinity, and even higher than
any more sentimental tie, clear and serene stood the great, practical
truth that all men and women were brothers and sisters, the children of
one common Father, and as such were forever entitled to each other’s
deepest love and compassion. Filled with this sublime thought, they
gazed at each other with the glistening, eager eyes that welcome a long
absent brother or sister.
The speaker seemed inspired with this thought. With a radiant smile,
she continued:
“You weep at the contemplation of the bitter woes of the past. Let me,
I beseech you, lift up your eyes to the near glories of a possible
future, when the new man and woman, neither oppressing nor oppressed,
shall pass down the centuries hand in hand ministering to each other
from the sweet fountains of eternal affection. Who shall say that in
that union a power may not be evolved from which Death himself shall
draw back dismayed?”
As the speaker concluded, she did not perceive that a dainty little
girl had entered the building unnoticed, and come upon the stage. In
one hand she bore a white rose, and in the other a paper to which she
sought to draw the speaker’s attention by tugging at her garments.
There was a murmur among the audience that it was the news of the
decision of the ballots, the guarantee on which the fate of not only a
single race but all races hung.
Miss Alliston caught the deep significance of the murmur. She took the
paper in her trembling hands, and pressing it against her tumultuous
bosom, advanced to the front of the platform. Instantly every man in
the great building arose, and with eyes riveted intently on the paper,
waited as if for a sentence of doom or a joyful pardon.
The fearful suspense of that crucial moment! How can I describe it? It
seemed as if the very atmosphere of the room throbbed with so high a
magnetic tension that it must burst. A deathly stillness had succeeded
the storm of weeping. Pale as marble and with one pleading glance at
the foremost row of stern, but wan-faced men, Allegra Alliston opened
the paper. For a time, which seemed agonizing ages, her eyes rested on
the contents. Then her hand containing the paper slowly dropped to her
side. A seraphic smile beamed upon her countenance, as she said, in a
voice broken with emotion:
“The shadow is removed from woman. The guarantee is granted forev----.”
But the reaction of the pent-up emotion of that awful alienation could
be stayed no longer. It seemed as though nothing in Heaven above or on
the earth beneath could restrain what followed. With a cry which must
have been heard at the throne of God, and before Allegra Alliston could
finish her sentence, the men and women in that vast hall had rushed
into each other’s arms as the uncontrollable sea rushes back to its
pristine bed. There were tears, but they were tears of such illimitable
joy as earth had never seen before, and might never see again. Homely
or handsome, it mattered not. In that souls’ jubilee there was a
brother’s and a sister’s joyful caress for every one.
It seemed as though my heart must burst at beholding the mighty
spectacle of man and woman thus forever reconciled and united as they
never had been since they were driven from the Garden of Eden. In the
vehemence of my emotions, I essayed to rise, to speak, to cry out I
know not what; but, instead, I awoke from what had been but a dream. I
was sobbing with convulsive joy.
FINIS.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
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