“Year in year out, until I’m old, it will be like this, I suppose,” the girl said wearily to herself later on her way upstairs. And then, almost fiercely: “Why do we stand it? Why do we allow all the dull, uninteresting things to be forced on us? I do this—for food and shelter. And there isn’t any escape—except through marriage. Ugh!”
Arrived in her bedroom, leaning from the window looking out upon the stirless night, she admonished herself mutely.
“I don’t think that moonlight walks and agreeable society are altogether good for you, my dear. You grow discontented because every hour isn’t a perfect hour.”
A faint smile curved her lips. She leaned farther out into the fragrant darkness, and rested her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands, and gazed away towards the sea, and sighed.
“Life isn’t made up of perfect hours,” she reflected. “They are so few—so very few—that’s what makes them so good. He’s discontented too... Every one’s discontented. We want things—oh! all sorts of fine, impossible things—we keep on wanting them. And life goes on in the same solid, stolid way: we live; we grumble; we die. Sic transit...”
“No,” she contradicted presently, “that isn’t all. There is a glory concealed somewhere—the rainbow in the bubble, if we look long enough.”
And after that she ceased to speculate on the problem of life, and fell into a retrospective reverie and forgot the time.
Perhaps it is because women as a sex acquiesce too readily in the conditions of life, whatever they may be, instead of making a determined stand against what is unfavourable, that unfavourable conditions are imposed upon them. Men do not submit, and results justify their resistance—organised resistance is the charter of freedom. It is taught that there is beauty in submission—well, there isn’t. Submission is lacking in dignity, and beauty is always dignified. There is beauty in restraint, in control, in unselfishness; but none of these qualities necessarily include submission—rule it out, therefore; its day is done.
It was Matheson who gave Brenda Upton her first lesson in resistance. He was very authoritative and firm and convincing; also—he was going away. That was the strongest argument in favour of his demand. It was a demand; there was nothing in the nature of a request about it. He required her on the day before he left Cape Town to obtain, not an hour off, but the entire evening. He wanted her companionship, wanted to sit and talk uninterruptedly, as they had done on those other nights, and not to be worried with considerations of time. He met her on the beach during the hottest hour of the day, when Mrs Graham was enjoying her siesta, and stated his desire. Brenda looked amazed.
“She’ll not hear of it,” she said.