English…»
No one at the table suspected that Dick deliberately dangled the bait of a new trend to the conversation, nor did Leo dream afterward that it was the master-craft and deviltry of Dick rather than his own question that changed the subject when he demanded to know what part the female sporting dominants played in the race.
«Females don't sport, Leo, my lad,» Terrence, with a wink to the others, answered him. «Females are conservative. They keep the type true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog on the chariot of progress. If it wasn't for the females every blessed mother's son of us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our distinguished breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have with us this evening to verify my random statements.»
«Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find out what we are talking about,» Dick was prompt on the uptake. «What is woman?» he demanded with an air of earnestness.
«The ancient Greeks said woman was nature's failure to make a man,» Dar Hyal answered, the while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners of his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips derisively.
Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain in his eyes and his lips were trembling as he looked wistful appeal to Dick.
«The half-sex,» Hancock gibed. «As if the hand of God had been withdrawn midway in the making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping soul at best.»
«No I no!» the boy cried out. «You must not say such things!—Dick, you know. Tell them, tell them.»
«I wish I could,» Dick replied. «But this soul discussion is vague as souls themselves. We all know, of our selves, that we often grope, are often lost, and are never so much lost as when we think we know where we are and all about ourselves. What is the personality of a lunatic but a personality a little less, or very much less, coherent than ours? What is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? Of a feeble– minded child? Of a horse? A dog? A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A garden snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality when you sleep and dream? When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have colic? When you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly with the fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense of the beauty of the world and think you think all inexpressible unutterable thoughts?
«I say
«No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of our vague personalities to grasp. There are seeming men with the personalities of women. There are plural personalities. There are two-legged human creatures that are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, float like fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses and light-flashings. It is all fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in the thick of the mystery.»
«Maybe it's mystification instead of mystery—man-made mystification,»
Paula said.
«There talks the true woman that Leo thinks is not a half-soul,» Dick retorted. «The point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and tangled together, and we know little of one and less of the other.»
«But women are beautiful,» the boy stammered.
«Oh, ho!» Hancock broke in, his black eyes gleaming wickedly. «So,
Leo, you identify woman with beauty?»
The young poet's lips moved, but he could only nod.
«Very well, then, let us take the testimony of painting, during the last thousand years, as a reflex of economic conditions and political institutions, and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into the image of his desire, and how she has permitted him—»
«You must stop baiting Leo,» Paula interfered, «and be truthful, all of you, and say what you do know or do believe.»
«Woman is a very sacred subject,» Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly.
«There is the Madonna,» Graham suggested, stepping into the breach to
Paula's aid.
«And the cГ©rГ©brale,» Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from
Dar Hyal.
«One at a time,» Hancock said. «Let us consider the Madonna-worship, which was a particular woman- worship in relation to the general woman– worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he to do?»
«Trust him to find a way—the cunning rascal,» Terrence interjected.
«He made a heavenly image of her,» Hancock kept on. «He idealized her good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn't get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy pipe of peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary every-day woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his thoughts and remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of life and custodian of immortality.
«Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do then?»
«Ah, the rascal,» Terrence grinned.
«He said: 'I will make of you a dream and an illusion.' And he did. The Madonna was his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. He transferred all his idealized qualities of her to the earthly woman, to every woman, and he has fooled himself into believing in them and in her ever since… like Leo does.»
«For an unmarried man you betray an amazing intimacy with the pestiferousness of woman,» Dick commented. «Or is it all purely theoretical?» Terrence began to laugh.
«Dick, boy, it's Laura Marholm Aaron's been just reading. He can spout her chapter and verse.»
«And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of her garment,» Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo.
«There is love,» Leo breathed. «No one has said one word about love.»
«And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free love,» Hancock rattled off.
«And why, Leo,» Dar Hyal queried, «is woman, in the game of love, always the pursuer, the huntress?»
«Oh, but she isn't,» the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior knowledge. «That is just some of your Shaw nonsense.»
«Bravo, Leo,» Paula applauded.
«Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange surrenders?» Dar Hyal asked.
«But don't you see,» protested Leo, «all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey.» As he turned to Dick, he stole a side glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. «Is she a creature of prey, Dick?»
«No,» Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy's eyes. «I cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man— «
«And of much foolishness,» Hancock added.
«Of much fine foolishness,» Dick gravely amended.
