The Daughters of Danaus Part 59

Hadria smiled thoughtfully.

"While I am about it, I may as well finish this disclosure of feeling, which, again I warn you, is _not_ peculiar to myself, however you may lay that flattering unction to your soul. I have seen and heard of many a saddening evidence of our s.e.x's slavery since I came to this terrible and wonderful city: the crude, obvious buying and selling that we all shudder at; but hideous as it is, to me it is far less awful than this other respectable form of degradation that everyone glows and smirks over."

Miss Temperley clasped her hands in despair.

"I simply can't understand you. What you say is rank heresy against all that is most beautiful in human nature."

"Surely the rank heresy is to be laid at the door of those who degrade and enslave that which they a.s.sert to be most beautiful in human nature.

But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count upon me for a point of attack. Try something else."

"But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to throw contempt on motherhood _per se_?"

"I am not discussing motherhood _per se_; no woman has yet been in a position to know what it is _per se_, strange as it may appear. No woman has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of it _per se_, for the present, is to discuss the transcendental."

There was a moment's excited pause, and Hadria then went on more rapidly. "You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And indeed many _do_ seek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens knows as well as she knows her own name?"

But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency.

"I don't deny the potency of the instinct," said Hadria, "but I do say that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations can make it so! All the Past as well as all the weight of opinion and training in the Present has been at work on it, thrusting and alluring and coercing the woman to her man-allotted fate."

"_Nature_-allotted, if you please," said Henriette. "There is no need for alluring or coercing."

"Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended.

Would _you_ feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this sort (however n.o.ble and so on you might think it _per se_), if you knew that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as a joy?"

"I should acknowledge it as a duty, if I did not welcome it as a joy."

"In other words, you would accept the position of a slave."

"How so?"

"By bartering your womanhood, by using these powers of body, in return for food and shelter and social favour, or for the sake of so-called 'duty' irrespective of--perhaps in direct opposition to your feelings.

How then do you differ from the slave woman who produces a progeny of young slaves, to be disposed of as shall seem good to her perhaps indulgent master? I see no essential difference."

"I see the difference between honour and ignominy," said Henriette.

Hadria shook her head, sadly.

"The differences are all in detail and in circ.u.mstance. I am sorry if I offend your taste. The facts are offensive. The bewildering thing is that the facts themselves never seem to offend you; only the mention of them."

"It would take too long to go into this subject," said Henriette. "I can only repeat that I fail to understand your extraordinary views of the holiest of human instincts."

"_That_ catch-word! And you use it rashly, Henriette, for do you not know that the deepest of all degradation comes of misusing that which is most holy?"

"A woman who does her duty is not to be accused of misusing anything,"

cried Miss Temperley hotly.

"Is there then no sin, no misuse of power in sending into the world swarms of fortuitous, poverty-stricken human souls, as those souls must be who are born in bondage, with the blended instincts of the slave and the master for a proud inheritance? It sounds awful I know, but truth is apt to sound awful. Motherhood, as our wisdom has appointed it, among civilized people, represents a prost.i.tution of the reproductive powers, which precisely corresponds to that other abuse, which seems to most of us so infinitely more shocking."

Miss Temperley preferred not to reply to such a remark, and the entrance of little Martha relieved the tension of the moment. Henriette, though she bore the child a grudge, could not resist her when she came forward and put up her face to be kissed.

"She is really growing very pretty," said Henriette, in a tone which betrayed the agitation which she had been struggling to hide.

Martha ran for her doll and her blue man, and was soon busy at play, in a corner of the room, building Eiffel Towers out of stone bricks, and knocking them down again.

"I don't yet quite understand, Henriette, your object in coming to Paris." Hadria's voice had grown calmer.

"I came to make an appeal to your sense of duty and your generosity."

"Ah!"

"I came," Henriette went on, bracing herself as if for a great effort, "to remind you that when you married, you entered into a contract which you now repudiate."

Hadria started up, reddening with anger.

"I did no such thing, and you know it, Henriette. How do you _dare_ to sit there and tell me that?"

"I tell you nothing but the truth. Every woman who marries enters, by that fact, into a contract."

Miss Temperley had evidently regarded this as a strong card and played it hopefully.

Hadria was trembling with anger. She steadied her voice. "Then you actually intended to _entrap_ me into this so-called contract, by leading me to suppose that it would mean nothing more between Hubert and myself than an unavoidable formality! You tell me this to my face, and don't appear to see that you are confessing an act of deliberate treachery."

"Nonsense," cried Henriette. "There was nothing that any sane person would have objected to, in our conduct."

Hadria stood looking down scornfully on her sister-in-law. She shrugged her shoulders, as if in bewilderment.

"And yet you would have felt yourselves stained with dishonour for the rest of your lives had you procured anything _else_ on false pretences!

But a woman--that is a different affair. The code of honour does not here apply, it would seem. _Any_ fraud may be honourably practised on _her_, and wild is the surprise and indignation if she objects when she finds it out."

"You are perfectly mad," cried Henriette, tapping angrily with her fingers on the arm of her chair.

"What I say is true, whether I be mad or sane. What you call the 'contract' is simply a cunning contrivance for making a woman and her possible children the legal property of a man, and for enlisting her own honour and conscience to safeguard the disgraceful transaction."

"Ah," said Henriette, on the watch for her opportunity, "then you admit that her honour and conscience _are_ enlisted?"

"Certainly, in the case of most women. That enlistment is a masterpiece of policy. To make a prisoner his own warder is surely no light stroke of genius. But that is exactly what I refused to be from the first, and no one could have spoken more plainly. And now you are shocked and pained and aggrieved because I won't eat my words. Yet we have talked over all this, in my room at Dunaghee, by the hour. Oh! Henriette, why did you not listen to your conscience and be honest with me?"

"Hadria, you insult me."

"Why could not Hubert choose one among the hundreds and thousands of women who would have pa.s.sed under the yoke without a question, and have gladly harnessed herself to his chariot by the reins of her own conscience?"

"I would to heaven he _had_!" Henriette was goaded into replying.

Hadria laughed. Then her brow clouded with pain. "Ah, why did he not meet my frankness with an equal frankness, at the time? All this trouble would have been saved us both if _only_ he had been honest."

"My dear, he was in love with you."

"And so he thought himself justified in deceiving me. There is _indeed_ war to the knife between the s.e.xes!" Hadria stood with her elbows on the back of a high arm-chair, her chin resting on her hands.