III
She was tall and angular. Her hair was red, and scarce, and untidy. Her hands were large and packed all over with knuckles and her feet would have turned inwards at the toes, only that she was aware of and corrected their perversities.
She was sitting all alone, and did not look up as I approached—
"Tell me," said I, "why you have sat for more than an hour with your eyes fixed on nothing, and your hands punching your lap?"
She looked at me for a fleeting instant, and then, looking away again, she began to speak.—Her voice was pleasant enough, but it was so strong that one fancied there were bones in it—
"I do not dislike women," said she, "but I think they seldom speak of anything worth listening to, nor do they often do anything worth looking at: they bore and depress me, and men do not."
"But," said I, "you have not explained why you thump your lap with your fist?"
She proceeded—
"I do not hate women, nor do I love men. It was only that I did not take much notice of the one, and that I liked being with the other, for, as things are, there is very little life for a person except in thinking. All our actions are so cumbered by laws and customs that we cannot take a step beyond the ordinary without finding ourselves either in gaol or in Coventry."
Having said this, she raised her bleak head and stared like an eagle across the wastes.
After I had coughed twice I touched her arm, and said—
"Yes?"
"One must live," said she quickly. "I do not mean that we must eat and sleep—these mechanical matters are settled for many of us, but life consists in thinking, and nothing else, yet many people go from the cradle to the grave without having lived differently from animals. I do not want to be one of them. Their whole theory of life is mechanical. They eat and drink. They invite each other to their houses to eat and drink, and they use such speech as they are gifted with in discussing their food and whatever other palpable occurrence may have chanced to them in the day. It is a step, perhaps, towards living, but it is still only one step removed from stagnation. They have some interest in an occurrence, but how that occurrence happened, and what will result from it does not exercise them in the least, and these, which are knowledge and prophecy, are the only interesting aspects of any event."
"But," said I, "you have not told me why you sit for a full hour staring at vacancy, and thumping on your knee with your hand?"
She continued—.
"Sometimes one meets certain people who have sufficient of the divine ferment in their heads to be called alive: they are almost always men. We fly to them as to our own people. We abase ourselves before them in happy humility. We crave to be allowed to live near them in order that we may be assured that everything in the world is not nonsense and machinery—and then, what do we find—?"
She paused, and turned a large fierce eye upon me.
"I do not know," said I, and I endeavoured vainly to look everywhere but at her eye.
"We find always that they are married," said she, and, saying so, she lapsed again to a tense and worried reflection.
"You have not told me," I insisted gently, "why you peer earnestly into space, and thump at intervals upon your knee with the heel of your fist?"
"These men," said she sternly, "are surrounded by their wives. They are in gaol and their wives are their warders. You cannot go to them without a permit. You may not speak to them without a listener. You may not argue with them for fear of raising an alien and ridiculous hostility. Scarcely can you even look at them without reproach.—How then can we live, and how will the torch of life be kept alight?"
"I do not know," I murmured.
She turned her pale eye to me again.
"I am not beautiful," said she.
But there was just a tremor of doubt in her voice, so that the apparent statement became packed with curiosity, and had all the quality of a question.
I did not shrug my shoulder nor raise an eyebrow—
"You are very nice," I replied.
"I do not want to be beautiful," she continued severely. "Why should I? I have no interest in such things. I am interested only in living, and living is thinking; but I demand access to my fellows who are alive. Perhaps, I did not pay those others enough attention. How could I? They cannot think. They cannot speak. They make a complicated verbal noise, but all I am able to translate from it is, that a something called lip-salve can be bought in some particular shop one penny cheaper than it can in a certain other shop. They will twitter for hours about the way a piece of ribbon was stitched to a hat which they saw in a tramcar. They agitate themselves wondering whether a muff should be this size or that size?—I say, they depress me, and if I do turn my back on them when men are present I am only acting sensibly and justly. Why cannot they twitter to each other and let me and other people alone?"
She turned to me again—
"I do not know," said I meekly.
"And," she continued, "the power they have; the amazing power they have to annoy other folk. All kinds of sly impertinences, vulgar evasions, and sneering misunderstandings. Why should such women be allowed to take men into their captivity, to sequester, and gag, and restrain them from those whom they would naturally be eager to meet?
"What," she continued fiercely, "had my hat to do with that woman, or my frock?"
I nodded slowly and grievously, and repeated—
"What indeed?"
"A hat," said she, "is something to cover one's head from the rain, and a frock is something to guard one's limbs from inclement weather.—To that extent I am interested in these things: but they would put a hat on my mind, and a black cloth on my understanding."
We sat in silence for a little time, while she surveyed the bleak horizon as an eagle might.
"And when I call at their houses," said she, "their servants say 'Not at home,' a lie, you know, and they close their doors on me."
She was silent again—
"I do not know what to do," said she.
"Is that," said I, "the reason why you beat your lap with your hand, and stare abroad like a famished eagle?"
She turned quickly to me—
"What shall I do to open those doors?" said she.
"If I happened to be you," I replied, "I would cut off my hair, I'd buy a man's clothes and wear them always, I'd call myself Harry or Tom; and then I'd go wherever I pleased, and meet whoever I wanted to meet?"
She stared fixedly at herself in these garments, and under these denominations—
"They would know I was not a man," said she gravely.
I looked at her figure—
"No person in the world would ever guess it," said I.
She arose from her seat. She clutched her reticule to her breast—
"I'll do it," said she, and she stalked gauntly across the fields.