V: THE HOMESTEAD
To my annoyance I found that the bell was not a summons to a meal, but to a meeting of the family of five women for a kind of a service. This consisted in reading aloud from the speeches of William Christmas, the idealist who had provoked this monstrous state of affairs. His portrait hung on the wall opposite the door, and I must confess that his face was singularly beautiful. The woman who had roused me from my bed read a passage beginning: “The tyranny of the old is due to their stupidity, which neither young men nor women have yet had the patience to break through.” And as she closed the book she said, “Thus spake William Christmas.” Whereupon the other women muttered, “of blessed memory, which endureth for ever and ever. Amen.” These women were plain and forbidding. Their eyes were fixed on the portrait with a dog-like subjection which I found most repulsive. They stood transfixed while the woman-farmer declaimed: “For guidance, William Christmas, spirit of woman incarnate, we look to thee in the morning and in the evening, in our goings out and our comings in, and woe to her who stumbles on the way of all flesh into the snares of men.” On that the five of them turned and glared sorrowfully at my old friend and me until I was hard put to it not to laugh. The meeting then came to an end, and we were told to prepare supper. We withdrew to the kitchen, and there Professor Baffin began to snigger, and when I asked him what amused him he said:
“The joke of it is that this Christmas, like all idealists, was as great a lecher as Julius Cæsar. It was his lechery made his position in the old order of society impossible.”
I laughed too, for I had begun dimly to understand the passion which moved these virgins in their chastity, and I was filled with a fierce hatred of the lot of them, and resolved as soon as possible to escape.
We cooked a meal of fish and eggs, and having laid the table we had to wait on the family. I was struck by the triviality of their discourse and the absence from it of any general argument. The five women twittered like sparrows in mid-winter and not once did they laugh. They talked of the condition of their beasts and their crops, and so earnest, so careful were they that I understood that it must be barren soil indeed that would resist their efforts. They were discussing what goods they would requisition from the district store in return for their contribution to the State granaries. I wondered if they had succeeded in abolishing money, and upon enquiry I found that they had. The Professor told me that they had abolished everything which before the change had made them dependent upon men and their pleasure.
“But why do you men stand it?” I cried.
“We would starve else. We have no credit. Contributions to the State granaries are not accepted from men, nor are men allowed to trade direct with the stores.”
“But cannot they revolt and use their strength?”
“The strange thing is,” said the Professor, “that men cannot now endure the sight of each other. They are as jealous of each other as women were in the old days. Besides, writing is forbidden, and no book is allowed save the posthumous works of the lecherous William. The libraries were destroyed on the same day as the arsenals. Intelligence is gagged. Thrift and a terrible restless activity are now our only virtues.”
“And art?”
“Art? How should there be art? It was never more than the amusement of women in their idleness. They are no longer idle and I must admit that they are admirably methodical in their work, energetic and straightforward as men never were. But it is ill living in a woman-made world and I shall not be sorry when death comes.”