West Wind Drift

by George Barr McCutcheon

“Yes, because she believes we are going to die—every one of us. It takes pluck to keep going when you've got that sort of thing to face, doesn't it?”

Her gesture took in the dozen or more men within range of her vision. “It should take no more pluck to keep a woman going than a man, my friend. You do not call yourself plucky, do you? I do not call myself plucky. On the contrary, I call myself a coward. I am afraid to stay in my stateroom. I like to be out in the open like zis. One has to be very, very brave, Mr. Percivail, to lie in one's bed all alone and think that death is waiting just outside the thin little walls. Miss Clinton is splendid, but she is not plucky. She is as I am: afraid of the darkness, afraid to be alone, afraid to be where she cannot know and see all zat is happening. She has a woman's courage, just as I have it,—if you please. It is the courage that depends so much on the courage of others. You think I am brave. I am brave because I am with trained, efficient men. But if the Captain were to come to me now as I stand here, and say zat the ship is to sink in ten minutes and that we all must go down with her, would I face it bravely? No! I would throw myself down on the floor and scream and pray and tear my hair. Why? Because the men had given up. I am kept up by the courage of others. That is the courage of woman. She must be supported in her pain, in her suffering, in her courage.”

“Well, if you put it that way, there are very few men who would take such an announcement from the Captain calmly.”

“Perhaps not, my friend. But if there were room for but few in the boats, who would stay behind and go down with the ship? Nine out of every ten of the men. Why? Not because they are all courageous, I grant you, but because of the horrible conceit that makes them our masters. Pride and conceit constitute what stands for courage in most men. The wild animal has no conceit, he has no pride. Does the male lion rush out to be shot in place of his mate? He do not. He sneaks off in the high reeds and leaves her to take care of herself. The Captain of this steamer is so full of pride zat he will stay on it till it goes under the wave. It is not courage, Mr. Percivail. It is his pride in the power zat—that God has give to his sex. These men here,—you, my friend,—face the danger now so unflinching for why? Because for ages and ages you have believe in and depend upon the man beside you, the men around you. Zat is the difference between man and woman. Woman believes in and depends on man. She has no faith in her own sex. So, you see, my friend, when I say I am brave and you say Miss Clinton is plucky, it is all because we have men about us who are so proud and conceited zat they will die before they will admit that they are not as helpless and as weak as we are in times like zis.”

“You may be right,” he mused, struck by her argument. “It's usually pride that makes a man stand up and fight another, even when he knows he's sure to be beaten. It's neither confidence nor courage. It's just plain fear of being a coward.”

“You will admit then that I understand the wonderful male animal which struts on two legs and rules all the other animals of the world, eh? It is the only animal in the whole big world zat—that is completely satisfied with itself. So now, Mr. Percivail, you have the secret of the so-called courage of the male of our species.”

“I hope all women haven't gone into the subject so deeply,” he said, with a rueful smile. “You make rather small potatoes of us.”

“Ah, do not say that,” she cried, “for, alas, I am denied potatoes.”

“Well, then,” he said, laughing, “if all women understood us as well as you do, we wouldn't rule the world very much longer. They'd yank us off the pedestal and revile us forevermore.”

“But you do not understand women, my friend. Did we not bring you into the world? Are you not our sons, and therefore begotten to be kings? We may despise our husbands, we may loathe our brothers and our fathers, we women, but our sons are the gods we worship. My dear Mr. Percivail, women will go on being ruled to the end of time unless they cease populating the world with sons. The mother of the man is the humblest subject of the son and yet the proudest. The mothers of kings, of emperors, of presidents,—do they think of them as kings, emperors, presidents? No. They think of them as sons. That is why man is supreme. That is why he rules. To be sure, we women are not always disposed to have our husbands rule, we even go so far as to say they are not fit to rule, but alas, the men we are permitted to know the best of all are always the sons of some one else, and so there you have the endless chain. Sons! Sons! Sons! Sons to create new sons,—sons without end, amen! God bless our sons!”