RENUNCIATIONS
After the recital the woman flagged again, and presently could hardly keep her eyes open. At a sign from her man she lay down and was dead asleep almost before she had drawn up her knees in the posture assumed by the sleeping savage all the world over, the antenatal position in which the pre-dynastic Egyptians buried their dead.
But Pŭl-Yūn could not sleep. He had passed through every phase of mental agony; had spent a long day at the torture-stake of suspense and anticipation, and had been released from it to find himself confronted by a crisis in his domestic relations.
He understood only too well what had happened. Since the world and wiving began was there ever such a woman?—Was there ever such a predicament for the husband of a woman? Use and wont and the immemorial practice of his own, and all other tribes, had fixed the relative positions of the sexes. This man believed as firmly as did the Apostle Paul that the Man was made first, and was the Head of the Woman, who was provided for him, for his comfort and use by his Goddess, the Sun, and over whom he, the man, was bound to exercise the rights of mastery and lordship to the very fullest extent. Whilst young and comely the wife was a valuable possession, but, when stringy and past work and child-bearing, it had until recently been a question in times of scarcity whether she might not be eaten. That the Sun-Disc Men had recently decided against the older use is a point in favour of the Sun-Disc Men which we, their descendants, may score to their credit. The Fuegians, at the time of Charles Darwin's visit, still occasionally dined upon their grandmothers.[5] As to conceding to one of the subject sex equal rights, the thing was extra-revolutionary, it was indeed inconceivable, it was outside the region of discussion.
But, what was this that had happened?—Here, in this chance-begun housekeeping, the whole matter had been turned topsy-turvy; the moccasins were on contrary feet; the hatchet was in the wrong hand. He had come out to capture a wife, and a wife had captured him. He had broken his leg and she had mended it. Twice he had been attacked by a bear and twice she (not he), had beaten it off, killing it—actually killing the monster,—at the second encounter (think of it!—whoever heard the like?) On that occasion he, the man, had borne himself stoutly, and as a brave; he had faced his foe axe in hand, without hope, and had made no moan, and would have taken his mauling, and his death, without a whimper. Thus had he preserved his self-respect, had participated in the fight, and had in some roundabout fashion come to persuade himself that the skin was his, and that the necklace of claws and teeth which was now around his neck had a right to be there. (It did not sit comfortably as yet, but, comfort and assurance would have come in time, never fear. Did not the Prince Regent assert so frequently that as "Major Brown" he had fought at Mont St Jean, that at length, as George the Fourth his gracious Majesty related the story with embellishments at the Waterloo banquet and appealed to Wellington himself for substantiation?—"'Twas I gave the order—'Up Guards and at 'em!'—You heard me, Arthur?")
Such, alack, is poor human nature in these latter days, nor was it more veracious in The Days of Ignorance.
Yes, Pŭl-Yūn had begun to believe that he had killed that bear.
But, who killed the three braves whose raw scalps lay upon the cave floor? Those three scalps were another guess matter, a different story altogether. There was no straight, or even plausible manner of accounting for them. He saw no way of persuading himself now, or in the future, that he had had any hand in the taking of them.
In a word, they were his wife's, every single hair of them—not his, alas, not his!