During Henriette’s visit, one
of the meetings of the Preposterous Society fell due,
and she expressed a strong wish to be present.
She also craved the privilege of choosing the subject
of discussion. Finally, she received a formal
request from the members to give the lecture herself.
She was full of enthusiasm about the Society (such
an educating influence!), and prepared her paper with
great care. There had been a tendency among the
circle, to politely disagree with Henriette.
Her ideas respecting various burning topics were at
variance with the trend of opinion at Dunaghee, and
Miss Temperley was expected to take this opportunity
of enlightening the family. The family was equally
resolved not to be enlightened.
“I have chosen for my subject
to-night,” said the lecturer, “one that
is beginning to occupy public attention very largely:
I mean the sphere of woman in society.”
The audience, among whom Hubert had
been admitted at his sister’s earnest request,
drew themselves together, and a little murmur of battle
ran along the line. Henriette’s figure,
in her well-fitting Parisian gown, looked singularly
out of place in the garret, with the crazy old candle-holder
beside her, the yellow flame of the candle flinging
fantastic shadows on the vaulted roof, preposterously
distorting her neat form, as if in wicked mockery.
The moonlight streamed in, as usual on the nights
chosen by the Society for their meetings.
Henriette’s paper was neatly
expressed, and its sentiments were admirable.
She maintained a perfect balance between the bigotry
of the past and the violence of the present.
Her phrases seemed to rock, like a pair of scales,
from excess to excess, on either side. She came
to rest in the exact middle. This led to the
Johnsonian structure, or, as Hadria afterwards said,
to the style of a Times leading article:
“While we remember on the one hand, we must not
forget on the other
At the end of the lecture, the audience
found themselves invited to sympathize cautiously
and circumspectly with the advancement of women, but
led, at the same time, to conclude that good taste
and good feeling forbade any really nice woman from
moving a little finger to attain, or to help others
to attain, the smallest fraction more of freedom, or
an inch more of spiritual territory, than was now
enjoyed by her sex. When, at some future time,
wider privileges should have been conquered by the
exertions of someone else, then the really nice woman
could saunter in and enjoy the booty. But till
then, let her leave boisterous agitation to others,
and endear herself to all around her by her patience
and her loving self-sacrifice.
“That pays better for the present,”
Hadria was heard to mutter to an adjacent member.
The lecturer, in her concluding remarks,
gave a smile of ineffable sweetness, sadly marred,
however, by the grotesque effect of the flickering
shadows that were cast on her face by the candle.
After all, duty not right was the really
important matter, and the lecturer thought that it
would be better if one heard the former word rather
oftener in connection with the woman’s question,
and the latter word rather more seldom. Then,
with new sweetness, and in a tone not to be described,
she went on to speak of the natural responsibilities
and joys of her sex, drawing a moving, if somewhat
familiar picture of those avocations, than which she
was sure there could be nothing higher or holier.
For some not easily explained cause,
the construction of this sentence gave it a peculiar
unctuous force: “than which,” as Fred
afterwards remarked, “would have bowled over
any but the most hardened sinner.”
For weeks after this memorable lecture,
if any very lofty altitude had to be ascended in conversational
excursions, the aspirant invariably smiled with ineffable
tenderness and lightly scaled the height, murmuring
“than which” to a vanquished audience.
The lecture was followed by a discussion
that rather took the stiffness out of Miss Temperley’s
phrases. The whole party was roused. Algitha
had to whisper a remonstrance to the boys, for their
solemn questions were becoming too preposterous.
The lecture was discussed with much warmth. There
was a tendency to adopt the form “than which”
with some frequency. Bursts of laughter startled
a company of rats in the wainscoting, and there was
a lively scamper behind the walls. No obvious
opposition was offered. Miss Temperley’s
views were examined with gravity, and indeed in a
manner almost pompous. But by the end of that
trying process, they had a sadly bedraggled and plucked
appearance, much to their parent’s bewilderment.
She endeavoured to explain further, and was met by
guilelessly intelligent questions, which had the effect
of depriving the luckless objects of their solitary
remaining feather. The members of the society
continued to pine for information, and Miss Temperley
endeavoured to provide it, till late into the night.
The discussion finally drifted on to dangerous ground.
Algitha declared that she considered that no man had
any just right to ask a woman to pledge herself to
love him and live with him for the rest of her life.
How could she? Hubert suggested that the
woman made the same claim on the man.
“Which is equally absurd,”
said Algitha. “Just as if any two people,
when they are beginning to form their characters, could
possibly be sure of their sentiments for the rest
of their days. They have no business to marry
at such an age. They are bound to alter.”
“But they must regard it as
their duty not to alter with regard to one another,”
said Henriette.
“Quite so; just as they ought
to regard it as their duty among other things, not
to grow old,” suggested Fred.
“Then, Algitha, do you mean
that they may fall in love elsewhere?” Ernest
inquired.
“They very likely will
do so, if they make such an absurd start,” Algitha
declared.
“And if they do?”
“Then, if the sentiment stands
test and trial, and proves genuine, and not a silly
freak, the fact ought to be frankly faced. Husband
and wife have no business to go on keeping up a bond
that has become false and irksome.”
Miss Temperley broke into protest.
“But surely you don’t mean to defend such
faithlessness.”
Algitha would not admit that it was
faithlessness. She said it was mere honesty.
She could see nothing inherently wrong in falling in
love genuinely after one arrived at years of discretion.
She thought it inherently idiotic, and worse, to make
a choice that ought to be for life, at years of indiscretion.
Still, people were idiotic, and that must be
considered, as well as all the other facts, such as
the difficulty of really knowing each other before
marriage, owing to social arrangements, and also owing
to the training, which made men and women always pose
so ridiculously towards one another, pretending to
be something that they were not.
“Well done, Algitha,”
cried Ernest, laughing; “I like to hear you speak
out. Now tell me frankly: supposing you married
quite young, before you had had much experience; supposing
you afterwards found that you and your husband had
both been deceiving yourselves and each other, unconsciously
perhaps; and suppose, when more fully awakened and
developed, you met another fellow and fell in love
with him genuinely, what would you do?”
“Oh, she would just mention
it to her husband casually,” Fred interposed
with a chuckle, “and disappear.”
“I should certainly not go through
terrific emotions and self-accusations, and think
the end of the world had come,” said Algitha
serenely. “I should calmly face the situation.”
“Calmly! She by supposition
being madly in love!” ejaculated Fred, with
a chuckle.
“Calmly,” repeated Algitha.
“And I should consider carefully what would
be best for all concerned. If I decided, after
mature consideration and self-testing, that I ought
to leave my husband, I should leave him, as I should
hope he would leave me, in similar circumstances.
That is my idea of right.”
“And is this also your idea
of right, Miss Fullerton?” asked Temperley,
turning, in some trepidation, to Hadria.
“That seems to me right in the
abstract. One can’t pronounce for particular
cases where circumstances are entangled.”
Hubert sank back in his chair, and
ran his hand over his brow. He seemed about to
speak, but he checked himself.
“Where did you get such extraordinary
ideas from?” cried Miss Temperley.
“They were like Topsy; they growed,” said
Fred.
“We have been in the habit of
speculating freely on all subjects,” said Ernest,
“ever since we could talk. This is the blessed
result!”
“I am not quite so sure now,
that the Preposterous Society meets with my approval,”
observed Miss Temperley.
“If you had been brought up
in the bosom of this Society, Miss Temperley, you
too, perhaps, would have come to this. Think of
it!”
“Does your mother know what
sort of subjects you discuss?”
There was a shout of laughter.
“Mother used often to come into the nursery
and surprise us in hot discussion on the origin of
evil,” said Hadria.
“Don’t you believe what
she says, Miss Temperley,” cried Fred; “mother
never could teach Hadria the most rudimentary notions
of accuracy.”
“Her failure with my brothers,
was in the department of manners,” Hadria observed.
“Then she does not know
what you talk about?” persisted Henriette.
“You ask her,” prompted Fred, with undisguised
glee.
“She never attends our meetings,” said
Algitha.
“Well, well, I cannot understand
it!” cried Miss Temperley. “However,
you don’t quite know what you are talking about,
and one mustn’t blame you.”
“No, don’t,” urged Fred; “we
are a sensitive family.”
“Shut up!” cried Ernest with a warning
frown.
“Oh, you are a coarse-grained
exception; I speak of the family average,” Fred
answered with serenity.
Henriette felt that nothing more could
be done with this strange audience. Her business
was really with the President of the Society.
The girl was bent on ruining her life with these wild
notions. Miss Temperley decided that it would
be better to talk to Hadria quietly in her own room,
away from the influence of these eccentric brothers
and that extraordinary sister. After all, it
was Algitha who had originated the shocking view,
not Hadria, who had merely agreed, doubtless out of
a desire to support her sister.
“I have not known you for seven
years, but I am going to poke your fire,” said
Henriette, when they were established in Hadria’s
room.
“I never thought you would wait
so long as that,” was Hadria’s ambiguous
reply.
Then Henriette opened her batteries.
She talked without interruption, her companion listening,
agreeing occasionally with her adversary, in a disconcerting
manner; then falling into silence.
“It seems to me that you are
making a very terrible mistake in your life, Hadria.
You have taken up a fixed idea about domestic duties
and all that, and are going to throw away your chances
of forming a happy home of your own, out of a mere
prejudice. You may not admire Mrs. Gordon’s
existence; for my part I think she leads a very good,
useful life, but there is no reason why all married
lives should be like hers.”
“Why are they, then?”
“I don’t see that they are.”
“It is the prevailing type.
It shows the way the domestic wind blows. Fancy
having to be always resisting such a wind. What
an oblique, shorn-looking object one would be after
a few years!”
Henriette grew eloquent. She
recalled instances of women who had fulfilled all
their home duties, and been successful in other walks
as well; she drew pictures in attractive colours of
Hadria in a home of her own, with far more liberty
than was possible under her parents’ roof; and
then she drew another picture of Hadria fifteen years
hence at Dunaghee.
Hadria covered her face with her hands.
“You who uphold all these social arrangements,
how do you feel when you find yourself obliged to urge
me to marry, not for the sake of the positive joys
of domestic existence, but for the merely negative
advantage of avoiding a hapless and forlorn state?
You propose it as a pis-aller. Does that
argue that all is sound in the state of Denmark?”
“If you had not this unreasonable
objection to what is really a woman’s natural
destiny, the difficulty would not exist.”
“Have women no pride?”
Henriette did not answer.
“Have they no sense of dignity?
If one marries (accepting things on the usual basis,
of course) one gives to another person rights and powers
over one’s life that are practically boundless.
To retain one’s self-direction in case of dispute
would be possible only on pain of social ruin.
I have little enough freedom now, heaven knows; but
if I married, why my very thoughts would become the
property of another. Thought, emotion, love itself,
must pass under the yoke! There would be no nook
or corner entirely and indisputably my own.”
“I should not regard that as
a hardship,” said Henriette, “if I loved
my husband.”
“I should consider it not only
a hardship, but beyond endurance.”
“But, my dear, you are impracticable.”
“That is what I think domestic
life is!” Hadria’s quiet tone was suddenly
changed to one of scorn. “You talk of love;
what has love worthy of the name to do with this preposterous
interference with the freedom of another person?
If that is what love means the craving
to possess and restrain and demand and hamper and absorb,
and generally make mincemeat of the beloved object,
then preserve me from the master-passion.”
Henriette was baffled. “I
don’t know how to make you see this in a truer
light,” she said. “There is something
to my mind so beautiful in the close union of two
human beings, who pledge themselves to love and honour
one another, to face life hand in hand, to share every
thought, every hope, to renounce each his own wishes
for the sake of the other.”
“That sounds very elevating;
in practice it breeds Mr. and Mrs. Gordon.”
“Do you mean to tell me you
will never marry on this account?”
“I would never marry anyone
who would exact the usual submissions and renunciations,
or even desire them, which I suppose amounts almost
to saying that I shall never marry at all. What
man would endure a wife who demanded to retain her
absolute freedom, as in the case of a close friendship?
The man is not born!”
“You seem to forget, dear Hadria,
in objecting to place yourself under the yoke, as
you call it, that your husband would also be obliged
to resign part of his independence to you.
The prospect of loss of liberty in marriage often
prevents a man from marrying ("Wise man!” ejaculated
Hadria), so you see the disadvantage is not all on
one side, if so you choose to consider it.”
“Good heavens! do you think
that the opportunity to interfere with another person
would console me for being interfered with myself?
I don’t want my share of the constraining power.
I would as soon accept the lash of a slave-driver.
This moral lash is almost more odious than the other,
for its thongs are made of the affections and the domestic
‘virtues,’ than which there can be nothing
sneakier or more detestable!”
Henriette heaved a discouraged sigh.
“You are wrong, my dear Hadria,” she said
emphatically; “you are wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“How? why?”
“One can’t have everything
in this life. You must be willing to resign part
of your privileges for the sake of the far greater
privileges that you acquire.”
“I can imagine nothing that
would compensate for the loss of freedom, the right
to oneself.”
“What about love?” murmured Henriette.
“Love!” echoed Hadria
scornfully. “Do you suppose I could ever
love a man who had the paltry, ungenerous instinct
to enchain me?”
“Why use such extreme terms? Love does
not enchain.”
“Exactly what I contend,” interrupted
Hadria.
“But naturally husband and wife have claims.”
“Naturally. I have just
been objecting to them in what you describe as extreme
terms.”
“But I mean, when people care
for one another, it is a joy to them to acknowledge
ties and obligations of affection.”
“Ah! one knows what that euphemism means!”
“Pray what does it mean?”
“That the one serious endeavour
in the life of married people is to be able to call
each other’s souls their own.”
Henriette stared.
“My language may not be limpid.”
“Oh, I see what you mean.
I was only wondering who can have taught you all these
strange ideas.”
Hadria at length gave way to a laugh
that had been threatening for some time.
“My mother,” she observed simply.
Henriette gave it up.