Part 19 (1/2)

At first I never even thought of her ”in that way,” as the girls have it. I had not come to the country with any Turkish-harem intentions, and I was no woman-wors.h.i.+pper like Jeff. I just liked that girl ”as a friend,” as we say. That friends.h.i.+p grew like a tree. She was SUCH a good sport! We did all kinds of things together. She taught me games and I taught her games, and we raced and rowed and had all manner of fun, as well as higher comrades.h.i.+p.

Then, as I got on farther, the palace and treasures and snowy mountain ranges opened up. I had never known there could be such a human being.

So--great. I don't mean talented. She was a forester--one of the best--but it was not that gift I mean. When I say GREAT, I mean great--big, all through. If I had known more of those women, as intimately, I should not have found her so unique; but even among them she was n.o.ble. Her mother was an Over Mother--and her grandmother, too, I heard later.

So she told me more and more of her beautiful land; and I told her as much, yes, more than I wanted to, about mine; and we became inseparable.

Then this deeper recognition came and grew. I felt my own soul rise and lift its wings, as it were. Life got bigger. It seemed as if I understood--as I never had before--as if I could Do things--as if I too could grow--if she would help me. And then It came--to both of us, all at once.

A still day--on the edge of the world, their world. The two of us, gazing out over the far dim forestland below, talking of heaven and earth and human life, and of my land and other lands and what they needed and what I hoped to do for them--

”If you will help me,” I said.

She turned to me, with that high, sweet look of hers, and then, as her eyes rested in mine and her hands too--then suddenly there blazed out between us a farther glory, instant, overwhelming--quite beyond any words of mine to tell.

Celis was a blue-and-gold-and-rose person; Alma, black-and-white-and-red, a blazing beauty. Ellador was brown: hair dark and soft, like a seal coat; clear brown skin with a healthy red in it; brown eyes--all the way from topaz to black velvet they seemed to range--splendid girls, all of them.

They had seen us first of all, far down in the lake below, and flashed the tidings across the land even before our first exploring flight. They had watched our landing, flitted through the forest with us, hidden in that tree and--I shrewdly suspect--giggled on purpose.

They had kept watch over our hooded machine, taking turns at it; and when our escape was announced, had followed along-side for a day or two, and been there at the last, as described. They felt a special claim on us--called us ”their men”--and when we were at liberty to study the land and people, and be studied by them, their claim was recognized by the wise leaders.

But I felt, we all did, that we should have chosen them among millions, unerringly.

And yet ”the path of true love never did run smooth”; this period of courts.h.i.+p was full of the most unsuspected pitfalls.

Writing this as late as I do, after manifold experiences both in Herland and, later, in my own land, I can now understand and philosophize about what was then a continual astonishment and often a temporary tragedy.

The ”long suit” in most courts.h.i.+ps is s.e.x attraction, of course. Then gradually develops such comrades.h.i.+p as the two temperaments allow. Then, after marriage, there is either the establishment of a slow-growing, widely based friends.h.i.+p, the deepest, tenderest, sweetest of relations, all lit and warmed by the recurrent flame of love; or else that process is reversed, love cools and fades, no friends.h.i.+p grows, the whole relation turns from beauty to ashes.

Here everything was different. There was no s.e.x-feeling to appeal to, or practically none. Two thousand years' disuse had left very little of the instinct; also we must remember that those who had at times manifested it as atavistic exceptions were often, by that very fact, denied motherhood.

Yet while the mother process remains, the inherent ground for s.e.x-distinction remains also; and who shall say what long-forgotten feeling, vague and nameless, was stirred in some of these mother hearts by our arrival?

What left us even more at sea in our approach was the lack of any s.e.x-tradition. There was no accepted standard of what was ”manly” and what was ”womanly.”

When Jeff said, taking the fruit basket from his adored one, ”A woman should not carry anything,” Celis said, ”Why?” with the frankest amazement. He could not look that fleet-footed, deep-chested young forester in the face and say, ”Because she is weaker.” She wasn't. One does not call a race horse weak because it is visibly not a cart horse.

He said, rather lamely, that women were not built for heavy work.

She looked out across the fields to where some women were working, building a new bit of wall out of large stones; looked back at the nearest town with its woman-built houses; down at the smooth, hard road we were walking on; and then at the little basket he had taken from her.

”I don't understand,” she said quite sweetly. ”Are the women in your country so weak that they could not carry such a thing as that?”

”It is a convention,” he said. ”We a.s.sume that motherhood is a sufficient burden--that men should carry all the others.”

”What a beautiful feeling!” she said, her blue eyes s.h.i.+ning.

”Does it work?” asked Alima, in her keen, swift way. ”Do all men in all countries carry everything? Or is it only in yours?”

”Don't be so literal,” Terry begged lazily. ”Why aren't you willing to be wors.h.i.+pped and waited on? We like to do it.”

”You don't like to have us do it to you,” she answered.