The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find out what we are talking about,” Dick was prompt on the uptake[388]. “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 “As if the hand of God had been withdrawn midway in the making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping soul at best.”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 think you think intentionally. Did you really think, then your sense of the beauty of the world would not be inexpressible, unutterable. It would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it into words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, and definite as your thoughts and words. Ergo[389], Leo, when you deem, in exalted moods, that you are at the summit of existence, in truth you are thrilling, vibrating, dancing a mad orgy of the senses and not knowing a step of the dance or the meaning of the orgy. You don’t know yourself. Your soul, your personality, at that moment, is a vague and groping thing. Possibly the bullfrog, inflating himself on the edge of a pond and uttering hoarse croaks through the darkness to a warty mate, possesses also, at that moment, a vague and groping personality.

“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[390]. 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 – manmade 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 cérébrale[391],” 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.