Herland [67]
I necessarily enjoyed her society on any terms. Only--when I had had her with me in her de-feminine capacity for a sixteen-hour day, I could go to my own room and sleep without dreaming about her.
The witch! If ever anybody worked to woo and win and hold a human soul, she did, great superwoman that she was. I couldn't then half comprehend the skill of it, the wonder. But this I soon began to find: that under all our cultivated attitude of mind toward women, there is an older, deeper, more "natural" feeling, the restful reverence which looks up to the Mother sex.
So we grew together in friendship and happiness, Ellador and I, and so did Jeff and Celis.
When it comes to Terry's part of it, and Alima's, I'm sorry-- and I'm ashamed. Of course I blame her somewhat. She wasn't as fine a psychologist as Ellador, and what's more, I think she had a far-descended atavistic trace of more marked femaleness, never apparent till Terry called it out. But when all is said, it doesn't excuse him. I hadn't realized to the full Terry's character --I couldn't, being a man.
The position was the same as with us, of course, only with these distinctions. Alima, a shade more alluring, and several shades less able as a practical psychologist; Terry, a hundredfold more demanding--and proportionately less reasonable.
Things grew strained very soon between them. I fancy at first, when they were together, in her great hope of parentage and his keen joy of conquest--that Terry was inconsiderate. In fact, I know it, from things he said.
"You needn't talk to me," he snapped at Jeff one day, just before our weddings. "There never was a woman yet that did not enjoy being MASTERED. All your pretty talk doesn't amount to a hill o'beans--I KNOW." And Terry would hum:
I've taken my fun where I found it. I've rogued and I've ranged in my time,
and
The things that I learned from the yellow and black, They 'ave helped me a 'eap with the white.
Jeff turned sharply and left him at the time. I was a bit disquieted myself.
Poor old Terry! The things he'd learned didn't help him a heap in Herland. His idea was to take--he thought that was the way. He thought, he honestly believed, that women like it. Not the women of Herland! Not Alima!
I can see her now--one day in the very first week of their marriage, setting forth to her day's work with long determined strides and hard-set mouth, and sticking close to Ellador. She didn't wish to be alone with Terry--you could see that.
But the more she kept away from him, the more he wanted her--naturally.
He made a tremendous row about their separate establishments, tried to keep her in his rooms, tried to stay in hers. But there she drew the line sharply.
He came away one night, and stamped up and down the moonlit road, swearing under his breath. I was taking a walk that night too, but I wasn't in his state of mind. To hear him rage you'd not have believed that he loved Alima at all--you'd have thought that she was some quarry he was pursuing, something to catch and conquer.
I think that, owing to all those differences I spoke of, they soon lost the common ground they had at first, and were unable to meet sanely and dispassionately. I fancy too--this is pure conjecture--that he had succeeded in driving Alima beyond her best judgment, her real conscience, and that after that her own sense of shame, the reaction of the thing, made her bitter perhaps.
They quarreled, really quarreled, and after making it up once or twice, they seemed to come to a real break--she would not be alone with him at all. And perhaps she was a bit nervous, I don't know, but she got Moadine to come and stay next door to her. Also, she had a sturdy assistant detailed to accompany her in her work.
Terry had his own ideas, as I've tried to show. I daresay he thought he had a right to do as he did. Perhaps he even convinced himself that it would be better for her.
The witch! If ever anybody worked to woo and win and hold a human soul, she did, great superwoman that she was. I couldn't then half comprehend the skill of it, the wonder. But this I soon began to find: that under all our cultivated attitude of mind toward women, there is an older, deeper, more "natural" feeling, the restful reverence which looks up to the Mother sex.
So we grew together in friendship and happiness, Ellador and I, and so did Jeff and Celis.
When it comes to Terry's part of it, and Alima's, I'm sorry-- and I'm ashamed. Of course I blame her somewhat. She wasn't as fine a psychologist as Ellador, and what's more, I think she had a far-descended atavistic trace of more marked femaleness, never apparent till Terry called it out. But when all is said, it doesn't excuse him. I hadn't realized to the full Terry's character --I couldn't, being a man.
The position was the same as with us, of course, only with these distinctions. Alima, a shade more alluring, and several shades less able as a practical psychologist; Terry, a hundredfold more demanding--and proportionately less reasonable.
Things grew strained very soon between them. I fancy at first, when they were together, in her great hope of parentage and his keen joy of conquest--that Terry was inconsiderate. In fact, I know it, from things he said.
"You needn't talk to me," he snapped at Jeff one day, just before our weddings. "There never was a woman yet that did not enjoy being MASTERED. All your pretty talk doesn't amount to a hill o'beans--I KNOW." And Terry would hum:
I've taken my fun where I found it. I've rogued and I've ranged in my time,
and
The things that I learned from the yellow and black, They 'ave helped me a 'eap with the white.
Jeff turned sharply and left him at the time. I was a bit disquieted myself.
Poor old Terry! The things he'd learned didn't help him a heap in Herland. His idea was to take--he thought that was the way. He thought, he honestly believed, that women like it. Not the women of Herland! Not Alima!
I can see her now--one day in the very first week of their marriage, setting forth to her day's work with long determined strides and hard-set mouth, and sticking close to Ellador. She didn't wish to be alone with Terry--you could see that.
But the more she kept away from him, the more he wanted her--naturally.
He made a tremendous row about their separate establishments, tried to keep her in his rooms, tried to stay in hers. But there she drew the line sharply.
He came away one night, and stamped up and down the moonlit road, swearing under his breath. I was taking a walk that night too, but I wasn't in his state of mind. To hear him rage you'd not have believed that he loved Alima at all--you'd have thought that she was some quarry he was pursuing, something to catch and conquer.
I think that, owing to all those differences I spoke of, they soon lost the common ground they had at first, and were unable to meet sanely and dispassionately. I fancy too--this is pure conjecture--that he had succeeded in driving Alima beyond her best judgment, her real conscience, and that after that her own sense of shame, the reaction of the thing, made her bitter perhaps.
They quarreled, really quarreled, and after making it up once or twice, they seemed to come to a real break--she would not be alone with him at all. And perhaps she was a bit nervous, I don't know, but she got Moadine to come and stay next door to her. Also, she had a sturdy assistant detailed to accompany her in her work.
Terry had his own ideas, as I've tried to show. I daresay he thought he had a right to do as he did. Perhaps he even convinced himself that it would be better for her.