Part 52 (1/2)
Professor Fortescue held that woman's ”goodness” had done as much harm in the world as men's badness. The one was merely the obverse of the other.
”This is strange teaching!” cried Lady Engleton.
The Professor reminded her that truth was always stranger than fiction.
”To the best men,” observed Valeria, ”women show all their meanest qualities. It is the fatality of their training.”
Professor Theobald had noted the same trait in other subject races.
”Pray, don't call us a subject race!” remonstrated Lady Engleton.
”Ah, yes, the truth,” cried Hadria, ”we starve for the truth.”
”You are courageous, Mrs. Temperley.”
”Like the Lady of Shallott, I am sick of shadows.”
”The bare truth, on this subject, is hard for a woman to face.”
”It is harder, in the long run, to waltz eternally round it with averted eyes.”
”But, dear me, why is the truth about ourselves hard to face?” demanded Valeria.
”I am placed between the horns of a dilemma: one lady clamours for the bare truth: another forbids me to say anything unpleasing.”
”I withdraw my objection,” Valeria offered.
”The ungracious task shall not be forced upon unwilling chivalry,” said Hadria. ”If our conditions have been evil, some scars must be left and may as well be confessed. Among the faults of women, I should place a tendency to trade upon and abuse real chivalry and generosity when they meet them: a survival perhaps from the Stone Age, when the fittest to bully were the surviving elect of society.”
Hadria's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement.
”Freedom alone teaches us to meet generosity, generously,” said Professor Fortescue; ”you can't get the perpendicular virtues out of any but the really free-born.”
”Then do you describe women's virtues as horizontal?” enquired Miss Du Prel, half resentfully.
”In so far as they follow the prevailing models. Women's love, friends.h.i.+p, duty, the conduct of life as a whole, speaking very roughly, has been lacking in the quality that I call perpendicular; a quality implying something more than _upright_.”
”You seem to value but lightly the woman's acknowledged readiness for self-sacrifice,” said Lady Engleton. ”That, I suppose, is only a despised horizontal virtue.”
”Very frequently.”
”Because it is generally more or less abject,” Hadria put in. ”The sacrifice is made because the woman is a woman. It is the obeisance of s.e.x; the acknowledgment of servility; not a simple desire of service.”
”The adorable creature is not always precisely obeisant,” observed Theobald.
”No; as I say, she may be capricious and cruel enough to those who treat her justly and generously” (Hadria's eyes instinctively turned towards the distant Priory, and Valeria's followed them); ”but ask her to sacrifice herself for nothing; ask her to cherish the selfishness of some bully or fool; a.s.sure her that it is her duty to waste her youth, lose her health, and stultify her mind, for the sake of somebody's whim, or somebody's fears, or somebody's absurdity, _then_ she needs no persuasion. She goes to the stake smiling. She swears the flames are comfortably warm, no more. Are they diminis.h.i.+ng her in size? Oh no--not at all--besides she _was_ rather large, for a woman. She smiles encouragement to the other chained figures, at the other stakes. Her reward? The sense of exalted worth, of humility; the belief that she has been sublimely virtuous, while the others whom she serves have been--well the less said about them the better. She has done her duty, and sent half a dozen souls to h.e.l.l!”
Henriette uttered a little cry.
”Where one expects to meet her!” Hadria added.