not even her intimates knew the nature of the humiliations and the sufferings that had created mrs. falconer’s attitude towards man.
she was a tall and rather silent woman, fair-haired, grey-eyed, with a face that was young in outline and old in its white reserve. there was nothing slipshod or casual about her. she dressed with discrimination, yet even in the wearing of her clothes she suggested the putting on of armour, the linking up of chain mail. someone had nicknamed her “pallas.” she moved finely, stood still finely, and spoke in a level, full-toned voice that had a peculiar knack of dominating the conversation without effort and without self-consciousness. people turned and looked at her directly she entered a room.
yet mrs. falconer did not play to her public. it was not the case of a superlatively clever woman conducting an ambitious campaign. there was something behind her cold serenity, a silent forcefulness, a superior vitality that made people turn to her, watch her, listen to what she said. she suggested the instinctive thought, “this woman has suffered; this woman knows; she is implacable; can keep a secret.” and all of us are a little afraid of the silent people who can keep secrets, who watch us, who listen while we babble, and who, with one swift sentence, send an arrow straight to the heart of things while we have been shooting all over the target.
sentimentalists might have said that mrs. falconer was a splendid white rose without any perfume. whether the emotions had been killed in her, whether she had ever possessed them, or whether she concealed them jealously, was a matter of conjecture. she was well off, had a house near hyde park and a cottage in sussex. she was more than a mere clever, highly cultured woman of the world. weininger would have said that she was male. the name of pallas suited her.
eve carfax had lain in bed for a week in a little room on the third floor of mrs. falconer’s house, and during that week she had been content to lie there without asking herself any questions. the woman doctor who attended her was a lanky good fellow, who wore pince-nez and had freckles all over her face. eve did not do much talking. she smiled, took what she was given, slept a great deal, being aware of an emptiness within her that had to be filled up. she had fallen among friends, and that was sufficient.
the window of her room faced south, and since the weather was sunny, and the walls were papered a soft pink, she felt herself in a pleasant and delicate atmosphere. she took a liking to dr. alice keck. the freckled woman had been a cheeky, snub-nosed flapper on long stilts of legs, and her essential impudence had lingered on, and mellowed into a breezy optimism. she had the figure of a boy, and talked like a pseudo-cynical man of forty.
“you want turning out to grass for a month, then all the kick will come back. you have done enough experimenting on your own. i tried it once, and i didn’t like it!”
“when can i see mrs. falconer?”
mrs. falconer’s name seemed to instil sudden seriousness into dr. alice keck.
“oh, in a day or two!”
“i haven’t seen her yet, and i want to thank her.”
“take my advice, and don’t.”
“why not?”
“oh, it is not in her line—the emotions! you’d feel foolish, as though you had taken a box of matches to set light to the north pole.”
“that sounds rather discouraging.”
“rot! wait and see. they call her pallas, you know. if you begin hanging emotions on kate falconer you’ll end up by thinking you are shoving tinsel and beads on a fine statue. i’ll tell her you want to see her. i think she wants to see you.”
eve’s vitality was returning, and one of the first evidences of its return showed itself in a curiosity concerning this woman who had befriended her. all the little delicate refinements of life had been given her—flowers, books, early tea served in dainty china, a bottle of scent had even been placed on the table beside her bed. these things had seemed feminine and suggestive. the room had a warmth of atmosphere that did not seem to belong to the house of a woman who would not care to be thanked.
but from the very first moment that eve saw kate falconer in the flesh, she understood the aptness of alice keck’s similes. eve was unusually intuitive. she felt an abnormal presence near her, something that piqued her interest.
“i am glad that you are so much better.”
she came and sat down beside the bed, and eve could see her profile against the window. a warm, evening light was pouring in, but pallas’s white face and grey dress were not warmed by it. there was nothing diaphanous or flamboyant about her; neither was she reactive or absorbent. the poise was complete; the whole world on one side, this woman on the other.
she made eve feel self-conscious.
“i am much better, thanks to all your kindness.”
“it was the obvious thing to do.”
“i cannot quite look at it like that.”
it struck her as absurd that this woman should speak of doing what was obvious. eve’s intuition did not hail her as an obvious person, though it was possible that mrs. falconer’s cold brilliancy made what seemed complex to most people, obvious to her. there was a moment’s constraint, eve feeling herself at a disadvantage.
“i thought you might like to talk.”
“i ought to explain things a little.”
“you are under no obligation to explain anything. we women must help one another. it is part of the new compact.”
“against men?”
“against male dominance.”
“i should like to tell you some of my experiences!”
“i should like to hear them!”
eve found it difficult to begin. she doubted whether this woman could distinguish the subtle emotional colour shades, but in this she was mistaken. she soon discovered that mrs. falconer was as experienced as a sympathetic romish priest, yet the older woman seemed to look at life objectively, and to read all its permutations and combinations as a mathematician may be able to read music at sight.
“you have just worked out all the old conclusions, but there is nothing like working out a thing for oneself. it is like touching, seeing, tasting. i suppose it has made you one of the so-called fanatics?”
“i want things altered!”
“to what extent?”
“i want the divorce law made equal, and i want divorce made easier. i want commercial equality. i want it understood that an unmarried woman who has a child shall not be made to carry all the supposed disgrace!”
mrs. falconer turned in her chair. her face was in the shadow, and eve could not see her eyes very plainly, but she felt that she was being looked at by a woman who regarded her views as rather crude.
“i should like you to try and think in the future, not only in the present.”
“i have tried that, but it all seems so chaotic.”
“i suppose you know that there are certain life groups where the feminine element is dominant?”
“you mean spiders and bees?”
“exactly! it is my particular belief that woman had her period of dominance and lost it. it has been a male world, so far as humanity is concerned, for a good many thousand years. and what has european man given us? factories, mechanics, and the commercial age. i think we can do better than that.”
“you mean that we must make woman the dominant force?”
“isn’t that obvious?”
it was obvious, splendidly obvious, when one had the thorough audacity to regard it in that light.
“but how——”
“by segregating the sexes, massing ourselves against the men, by refusing them everything that they desire as men. we shall use the political machinery as well. man is the active principle, woman more passive, but passivity must win if it remains obdurate. why have women always surrendered or sold themselves? haven’t we that in us which gives us the right to rule?”
“motherhood?”
“yes, motherhood! we are the true creators.”
“but men——”
“the best of them shall serve.”
“and how can you be sure of persuading all women to mass themselves into one sisterhood?”
“that is just the problem we have to deal with. it will be solved so soon as the ordinary woman is taught to think woman’s thought.”
eve lay mute, thinking. it was very easy to theorise on these lines, but what about human nature? could one count, even in the distant future, on the ordered solidarity of a whole sex? would every woman be above her own impulses, above the lure of the emotions? it seemed to eve that mrs. falconer who talked of developments as being obvious, was overlooking the most obvious of opponents—nature.
“but do you think that men will ever accept such a state of things?”
“of course they would resist.”
“it would mean a sex war. they are stronger than we are!”
“no, not stronger! besides, methods of violence, if we come to them, can be used now by women as well as by men. the trigger and the fuse are different from the club. i don’t count on such crude methods. we are in the majority. we shall just wear men out. we can bear more pain than they can.”
“but what an immense revolution!”
“yet it has happened. we see it in insect life, don’t we? how did it come about?”
“i don’t know.”
“but it is there, a fact.”
“yes. all the same, when i had finished reading a book on the ways of bees, i thought that they were detestable little beasts.”
“because they killed off the useless males, and let the queen assassinate her rivals. we are not bees. we shall do better than that.”
her level, full-toned voice had never varied, and she talked with perfect and assured serenity of turning society upside down. she was a fanatic with ideas and a subnormal temperature. she believed what she foresaw. it was like one of the fates deigning to be conversational in a drawing-room.
she rose, and, walking to the window, looked down into the street.
“do you think that women would have perpetrated london? it took man to do that. i must not tire you. have you everything you want?”
“thank you, everything.”
“i will come up and see you again to-morrow.”
eve had plenty of leisure for meditation, and mrs. falconer’s theories gave her abundant material for thought. rest in bed, with good food, and pleasant refinements round her had restored her normal poise, and she found that there was far less edge to her enthusiasm. she was a little shocked by the discovery. the disharmonies of the life that she had been studying had not changed, and she was troubled by this discovery that she did not react as she had reacted two weeks ago. when we are young we are distressed by the subtle transfigurations that overtake our ideals. we hatch so many eggs that persist in giving us ducklings instead of chickens. we imagine that we shall always admire the same things, believe the same beliefs, follow out the strenuous beginnings. when changes come, subtle, physical changes, perhaps, we are astonished at ourselves. so it was with eve when she discovered that her enthusiasm had passed from a white heat to a dull and more comfortable glow. accusing herself of inconstancy, lack of sustained purpose, did not explain the change in the least. she tried to convince herself that it was mere sloth, the result of a comfortable bed and good food.
in a day or two she found herself driven to explain a second surprising fact, a growing hostility towards mrs. falconer. it was not a dislike that could be reasoned with and suppressed, but a good, vigorous, temperamental hatred as natural and as self-assertive as hunger, thirst, or passion. it seemed to eve abominable that she should be developing such an attitude towards this woman, who had shown her nothing but kindness, but this irresponsible antipathy of hers seemed to have leapt up out of some elemental underworld where intellect counted as nothing.
mrs. falconer came up daily to talk to her as to a fellow fanatic, and her temperament roused in eve an instinctive sense of resistance. she found herself accusing her hostess to herself of intolerance and vindictiveness. it was like listening to a hell-fire sermon preached against the male sex, a denunciation that was subtilised with all the cleverness of a mind that had played with all the scientific theories of the day. mrs. falconer was a vitalist. she hated the mechanical school with fine consistency, and clasped hands with bergson and hans driesch. yet she disagreed with some of her fellow mystics in believing that women possessed more of the “élan vital” than man. therefore, woman was the dominant force of the future, and it behoved her to assert her power.
eve found herself on tip-toe to contradict mrs. falconer, just as one is tempted to jump up and contradict the dogmatist who talks down at us from the pulpit. she tried to argue one or two things out, but soon realised that this woman was far too clever for her, far too well armed. mrs. falconer had masked batteries everywhere. she had reserves of knowledge that eve had no chance of meeting. and yet, though she could not meet her arguments, eve had an intense conviction that mrs. falconer’s ideals were hopelessly wrong. there was la revanche behind it all. her head could not confute the theorist, but her heart did. human nature would not be cajoled.
she had an idea that mrs. falconer was a very busy woman. the house seemed full of voices, and of the sound of coming and going, but eve did not discover how busy her hostess was till dr. alice keck let her go downstairs. there were two big rooms on the second floor fitted up like offices, with a dozen women at work in them. letters were being written, directories consulted, lists of names made out, statistics compiled, money received and disbursed. people came and went, brought and received information. there was no laughter. everyone was in grim earnest.
eve saw mrs. falconer’s personality translated into action. this rich woman’s house was a nerve centre of the new movement, and mrs. falconer’s presence suggested one of those subtle ferments that are supposed to stimulate the complex processes of life. she did nothing herself. she was a presence. people came to her when they needed the flick of her advice. she co-ordinated everything.
eve was introduced to all these girls and women, and was given a table to herself with several sheets of foolscap and a file of papers. mrs. falconer came and stood by her, and explained the work she wanted her to do.
“there is nothing like attacking people with facts. they penetrate the british skull! we are collecting all these cases, and making a register of them. we shall publish them in a cheap form, and have them sent all over the country.”
“you want all these papers fair copied?”
“yes. they are in the rough, just as they were sent in to us. you will find that they are numbered.”
eve discovered that she had before her a series of reports dealing with well-authenticated cases of women who had been basely treated by men. some of them were written on ordinary letter paper, others on foolscap, and not a few on the backs of circulars and bills. nor was the batch that had been given her the first that had been handled. each case was numbered, and eve’s batch began at 293.
there was a sordid and pathetic similarity about them all.
“m—— w——, typist, 31, orphan. engaged to be married to a clerk. the man borrowed her savings, got her into trouble, and then refused to marry her. girl went into queen charlotte’s hospital. baby born dead. the mother developed puerperal fever, but recovered. she was unable to get work for some time, and went into domestic service. her health broke down. she is now in a workhouse infirmary.”
“v—— l——. a particularly cruel case that ended in suicide. she had spent a little sum of money that had been left her, on educating herself. obtained a very good post as secretary. her employer took her with him to paris, pretending that as she could speak french she would be very useful to him in certain business transactions. drugs were used. five months later the girl committed suicide in london by throwing herself under a tube train.”
all day, and for several days, eve worked at these pathetic records, till she felt nauseated and depressed. it was a ghastly indictment drawn up against man, and yet it did not have the effect on her that mrs. falconer had expected. it did not drive her farther towards fanaticism. on the contrary, she was overcome by a feeling of helplessness and of questioning compassion. it was all so pitiable and yet so inevitable as things were, and through all the misery and the suffering she was brought to see that the whole blame could not be credited to the man. it was the system more than the individual.
a function that is natural and clean enough in itself has been fouled by the pruderies of priests and pedants. sex has been disguised with all manner of hypocrisies and make-believes. society pretends that certain things do not happen, and when nature insists upon their happening, society retaliates upon the woman by calling her foul names and making her an outcast. the men themselves are driven by the system to all those wretched meannesses, treacheries, deceptions. and the worst of it all is that society tries to keep the truth boxed up in a cellar. english good form prides itself with a smirk on not talking about such things, and on playing the ostrich with its head under a pew cushion. nature is not treated fairly and squarely. we are immorally moral in our conventions. until we decide to look at sex cleanly and wholesomely, stripping ourselves of all mediæval nastiness and cowardly smuggery, we shall remain what we are, furtive polygamists, ashamed of our own bodies, and absurdly calling our own children the creatures of sin.
the work depressed eve. her fellow workers were hardly more enlivening. they belonged to a distinct type, the neutral type that cannot be appealed to either as man or woman. meals were served at a long table in one of the lower rooms, and eve noticed that her neighbours did not in the least care what they ate. they got through a meal as quickly as possible, talking hard all the time. now eve did care about what she ate, and whether it was delicately served. she had the palate of a healthy young woman, and it mattered to her whether she had ragged mutton and rice pudding every day, or was piqued by something with a flavour.
she was carnal. she told herself so flatly one afternoon as she went up to her bedroom, and the charge produced a thrill of natural laughter. she had a sudden wild desire to run out and play, to be greedy as a healthy child is greedy, to tumble hay in a hay field, to take off her clothes and bathe in the sea. the natural vitality in her turned suddenly from all this sour, quarrelsome, pessimistical campaigning and demanded life—the life of feeling and seeing.
the house oppressed her, so she put on her hat and escaped, and made her way into the park. may was in, green may, with lush grass and opening leaves. the sun shone. there was sparkle in the air. one thought of wood nymphs dancing on forest lawns while fauns piped and jigged, and the great god pan delighted himself with wine and honey. it was only a london park, but it was the nearest thing to nature that eve could find. her heart expanded suddenly. an irrational, tremulous joyousness came over her. she wanted to sing, to weep, to throw herself down and bury her face in the cool green grass. the country in may! she had a swift and passionate desire for the country, for green glooms and quiet waters and meadows dusted with gold. to get out of this loathsome complication of tragedies, to breathe smokeless air, to think of things other than suicides, prostitutions, treacheries, the buying and selling of souls.
she felt like a child before a holiday, and then she thought of lynette. what a vision of wholesomeness and of joy! it was like cool water bubbling out of the earth, like a swallow gliding, a thrush singing at dawn. she could not bear to think of wasting all the spring in london. she must escape somehow, escape to a healthier outlook, to cooler thinking.
when she went back mrs. falconer sent for her. eve wondered afterwards whether it was a coincidence or not that mrs. falconer should have said what she did that day.
“you have not been looking well. you want a change!”
“i almost think i do.”
“you don’t like me. it is a pity.”
eve was taken by surprise.
“don’t like you?”
“it is quite obvious to me, but it does not make any difference. i knew it, almost from the first. a matter of temperament. i understand some things better than you suspect. you want action, more warmth of movement. this statistical work disgusts you. i can give you your opportunity.”
eve remained mute. it was useless to protest in the presence of such a woman.
“two of our missionaries are going to tour in sussex and surrey. i think you might join them. i wonder if you are strong enough.”
“oh, yes!”
“you see, they tramp most of the way, and speak in the villages, and small towns. sometimes they are treated rather roughly.”
eve beheld the green country within the clasp of her arms, and was ready to accept anything.
“yes, i’ll go. i should love to go. i’m strong, and i’m not afraid. i think i want action.”
“yes, you are not made for dealing with harsh facts. they disgust you too much, and weaken you. it is all temperament. you are one of those who must spend themselves, obtain self-expression.”
“i wonder how you know that?”
“my dear, i was a woman before i became a thinker.”
