XIII: IN THE CAPITAL
As luck would have it my guardian on the long journey by road—for motor-cars had not been renounced—was a little chatterbox of a woman, who coquetted with me in the innocent and provocative manner of the born flirt. She meant no harm by it, but could not control her eyes and gestures. I encouraged her to make her talk, and she told me it would have gone hardly with me but that the medical superintendent had been passing by the gate of the nunnery as I was thrust in. But for her I should have been condemned to work in the sewers or to sell stamps in the post office, menial work reserved for criminals, for the authorities were becoming exasperated with the agitation for the rights of men. The outlaws no one minded. They inhabited the ruined cities and sooner or later would be starved out. It was absurd to expect the new society to be rid altogether of the pests which had plagued the old, but every reasonable woman was determined that for generations men should not enjoy the rights which they had so wantonly abused.
“But,” I said, “men never claimed rights.”
“No,” answered my coquette, “they stole them when we were not looking. They insisted that we should all be mothers, so that we should be too busy to keep them out of mischief.”
“My dear child,” said I, “it is the women who have kept us in mischief.”
“No one can say,” she replied, “that we do not keep you out of it now.” And she gave me one of those arch involuntary invitations which have before now been the undoing of Empires. I could not resist it. I seized her in my arms and kissed her full on the lips.
I half expected her to stop the car and denounce me, but when she had made sure that the girl driving had not seen she was undisturbed and remarked with a charming smile:
“Some foreign ways are rather pretty.”
I repeated the offence, and by the journey’s end we were very good friends and understood each other extremely well. She agreed with me when I said that all forms of society were dependent upon a lot of solemn humbug. She said yes, and she expected that before she had done she would be put upon her trial. I did not then understand her meaning, for we parted at the door of a large house, where she was given a receipt for me. She saluted me, the dear little trousered flirt, by putting her finger to her lips as the car drove off.
There were no women in that house. Its inhabitants were a number of young men like myself, all superb in physique and many of them extremely handsome, but they were all gloomy and depressed. I was right in guessing them to be other candidates for fatherhood. They were guarded and served by very old men in long robes like tea-gowns. Horrible old creatures they were, like wicked midwives who vary their habit of bringing human beings into the world by preparing their dead bodies to leave it. But the young men were hardly any better: they were dull, stupid, and listless, and their conversation was obscene.
We had to spend our time in physical exercise, in taking baths and anointing our bodies with unguents and perfumes. We were decked out in beautiful clothes. Embroidered coats and white linen kilts. In the evenings there were lectures on physiology, and we were made to chant a poetical passage from the works of William Christmas, a description of the glory of the bridegroom, of which I remember nothing except an offensive comparison with a stallion.
The humiliation was terrible, and when I remembered the superintendent speaking of “the mothers of my children” I was seized with a nausea which I could not shake off, until, two days after my arrival, an epidemic of suicide among the candidates horrified me into a wholesome reaction against my surroundings. I found it hard to account for the epidemic until I noticed the coincidence of the disappearance of the most comely of the young men with the periodic visits of the high officials. This pointed, though at first I refused to believe it, to the vilest abuse of the system set up by the women in their pathetic attempt to solve the problem of population scientifically. Far, far better were it had they been content with their refusal to bear children and to impose chastity upon all without exception, and to let the race perish. Must the stronger sex always seek to degrade the weaker? My experience in that house filled me with an ungovernable hatred of women. The sight of them with the absurdities of their bodies accentuated by the trousered costumes they had elected to adopt filled me with scorn and bitter merriment. The smell of them, to which in my hatred I became morbidly sensitive, made me sick. The sound of their voices set my teeth on edge.
Such was my condition when, after three weeks’ training, I was called before the examination committee.