The Green Bough

by E. Temple Thurston

His education was to have been the earth, the very soil his feet trod, not the riches that came out of that earth and more than the soft wet clay, soiled the hands of him who touched them. It was to give, not to enjoy; to labor, not to possess with which she had hedged him in upon his road to happiness and fulfillment. These were the realizations which, with the sound of her laughter, gave her hold again.

She saw the depth and darkness of that abyss, but shut her eyes to it. In full possession of herself, having gained equilibrium once more, she turned upon Liddiard with a scorn he had never seen in her.

"I'm forty now," she said, "and I don't think you'll deny that I have found and faced the world. In your sheltered place down there in Somerset, you can't maintain that you have met the world--as I've met it. The real things have never threatened you to crush your spirit or break your courage as they have mine. Setting up a chapel or building a tithe barn aren't the real things of life. Keeping your lawns cut and your borders trimmed won't make England great or set in order the vast forces of life that govern us. Inheriting isn't creating, possession isn't power. You want to train my son to the thought that it is. For twelve years I've trained his little mind to the knowledge that it isn't. You want him to possess and enjoy. I want him to labor and live. You want him to inherit your pride. I want him to create his own. Doesn't it ever occur to you that since your family established itself in its possessions in Somersetshire, it's been decaying in purpose, decaying in spirit, decaying in power? Doesn't it ever occur to you that you're making no surplus of energy in that house of Liddiard, but by means of the laws of inheritance are living upon a little circle of energy that goes round and round, always dissipating itself with every generation, always becoming the lesser instead of the greater; creating no energy that is new, only using up that which is old; setting up chapels for itself and building itself tithe barns, always for itself, never making that energy really free for the whole world to profit by?"

Liddiard stood staring at her in amazement. She was not talking with the words of a woman. She was talking with the words of a force, a new force; something, coming up against which he felt himself puny and small and well-nigh impotent.

"You think I'm talking like a street orator," she said, justly reading that look. "Very probably I am to you. I know nothing of the social science, none of the facts for what I'm saying. I've never even said things like this before. I'm not picking my words. I'm only saying what I feel, what I believe all women are feeling in their hearts. One and all, if their thoughts were known, I believe they know they have contributed long enough to the possessive passions of men. Long enough they've been through the pains of birth and the greater pain of disappointment in their sons in order to give men children to inherit the possessions that are theirs. Long enough they've been servants, slaves even, to the ideals of men. The laws have been constructed to make and keep them so. The civilization of the world has been built up on the principle of 'get by force and keep by servitude.' The women who marry into royalty must breed or they are put away. That's what we do with the cows here on this farm. If they don't have calves and give milk, they're sent away to the market and they're sold. But do you really think you can keep women upon that plane of life forever? Here, at Yarningdale, I set my teeth and close my eyes when the cow is driven away. But do you suppose women are getting for themselves no more soul than that beast has? Do you think they're always quietly going to be driven away? Do you think they merely want to be stalled and well-fed for their efficient service? Do you think with men as they are, making love and passion a horror to some women they marry, that we are forever going to believe they are fathers of our children and have supreme power to teach them none but their own ideals?"

She came a little closer to him as now they stood out there in the Highfield meadow.

"I'm outside your laws," she said. "You can't touch me. I believe there are countless women who would be as I am, if they dared. I believe there are countless women who would give all they know to be able to train their sons to their own ideals as I can train mine. We don't know anything about government or the forces that drive nations in peace and in war; but we do know that the real peace is not in possession, the real war is not in physical force and bloodshed to keep what you have got, or win a little more. One day there'll come a time when women won't give their sons for that, when they'll train themselves and train them to higher conceptions than you men have had."

Of a sudden she turned from the reason in her mind to the emotion in her breast.

"You shan't have my John!" she cried. "You shan't have him! I made him, as every woman could make her child if once she thought it was worth while. Well--I've thought it worth while, as now I think it worth while to fight for him and keep him. When you made your laws about illegitimacy and gave the woman the right in her child, it was because you considered that some men were fools and all women were cowards and that the one must be punished for his folly no less than the other for her fear. But what would you do if in the end that law turned round against you? What would you do if all women chose to do as I have done and refused to bind themselves in matrimony to the man who gave them a child? Men would still be fools, you may be sure of that. Nature relies upon their folly, while they have thought that what she relied upon was their power. Power it may be with the few, the few that can inspire real love; but folly it is with the most of men; folly and greed which causes them to make so many women scoff at and hate the thought of love. Yes--hate the thought of love, some women do. Every young girl shrinks at the thought of physical contact. Many a young woman goes to her marriage with terror in her heart and with many that terror becomes horror when she knows. Even we become the possession you take to yourselves. What most of you call love--is that. But I'm going to teach my John better things. When he comes to love, he shall come awed, as a woman comes, not tramping with the pride of victory and possession. When he comes to love, it shall be to make her find it as wonderful as now she falsely dreams it is. You can't prevent me. I don't belong to you."

Still it was a force that spoke in her, a force before which, with character alone, he felt he had no power to oppose. She was not even speaking as one amongst the countless women she had called upon, but as woman, setting herself up in conflict against man. This was real war. He had sensed well enough what she meant by that. Yet in the habit of his mind, with power or no power to oppose, he took such weapons as he could lay his hands upon and struck back at her.