“Why not?” Bertram asked, with transparent simplicity.
“Why, just consider the consequences!” Frida exclaimed, with a blush, after a moment's hesitation.
“There couldn't be ANY consequences, unless they both liked and respected one another,” Bertram answered in the most matter-of-course voice in the world; “and if they do that, we think at home it's nobody's business to interfere in any way with the free expression of their individuality, in this the most sacred and personal matter of human intercourse. It's the one point of private conduct about which we're all at home most sensitively anxious not to meddle, to interfere, or even to criticise. We think such affairs should be left entirely to the hearts and consciences of the two persons concerned, who must surely know best how they feel towards one another. But I remember having met lots of taboos among other barbarians, in much the same way, to preserve the mere material purity of their women—a thing we at home wouldn't dream of even questioning. In New Ireland, for instance, I saw poor girls confined for four or five years in small wickerwork cages, where they're kept in the dark, and not even allowed to set foot on the ground on any pretext. They're shut up in these prisons when they're about fourteen, and there they're kept, strictly tabooed, till they're just going to be married. I went to see them myself; it was a horrid sight. The poor creatures were confined in a dark, close hut, without air or ventilation, in that stifling climate, which is as unendurable from heat as this one is from cold and damp and fogginess; and there they sat in cages, coarsely woven from broad leaves of the pandanus trees, so that no light could enter; for the people believed that light would kill them. No man might see them, because it was close taboo; but at last, with great difficulty, I persuaded the chief and the old lady who guarded them to let them come out for a minute to look at me. A lot of beads and cloth overcame these people's scruples; and with great reluctance they opened the cages. But only the old woman looked; the chief was afraid, and turned his head the other way, mumbling charms to his fetich. Out they stole, one by one, poor souls, ashamed and frightened, hiding their faces in their hands, thinking I was going to hurt them or eat them—just as your nieces would do if I proposed to-day to take them to Exeter—and a dreadful sight they were, cramped with long sitting in one close position, and their eyes all blinded by the glare of the sunlight after the long darkness. I've seen women shut up in pretty much the same way in other countries, but I never saw quite so bad a case as this of New Ireland.”
“Well, you can't say we've anything answering to that in England,” Frida put in, looking across at him with her frank, open countenance.
“No, not quite like that, in detail, perhaps, but pretty much the same in general principle,” Bertram answered warmly. “Your girls here are not cooped up in actual cages, but they're confined in barrack-schools, as like prisons as possible; and they're repressed at every turn in every natural instinct of play or society. They mustn't go here or they mustn't go there; they mustn't talk to this one or to that one; they mustn't do this, or that, or the other; their whole life is bound round, I'm told, by a closely woven web of restrictions and restraints, which have no other object or end in view than the interests of a purely hypothetical husband. The Chinese cramp their women's feet to make them small and useless: you cramp your women's brains for the self-same purpose. Even light's excluded; for they mustn't read books that would make them think; they mustn't be allowed to suspect the bare possibility that the world may be otherwise than as their priests and nurses and grandmothers tell them, though most even of your own men know it well to be something quite different. Why, I met a girl at that dance I went to in London the other evening, who told me she wasn't allowed to read a book called Tess of the D'Urbervilles, that I'd read myself, and that seemed to me one of which every young girl and married woman in England ought to be given a copy. It was the one true book I had seen in your country. And another girl wasn't allowed to read another book, which I've since looked at, called Robert Elsmere,—an ephemeral thing enough in its way, I don't doubt, but proscribed in her case for no other reason on earth than because it expressed some mild disbelief as to the exact literary accuracy of those Lower Syrian pamphlets to which your priests attach such immense importance.”
“Oh, Mr. Ingledew,” Frida cried, trembling, yet profoundly interested; “if you talk like that any more, I shan't be able to listen to you.”
“There it is, you see,” Bertram continued, with a little wave of the hand. “You've been so blinded and bedimmed by being deprived of light when a girl, that now, when you see even a very faint ray, it dazzles you and frightens you. That mustn't be so—it needn't, I feel confident. I shall have to teach you how to bear the light. Your eyes, I know, are naturally strong; you were an eagle born: you'd soon get used to it.”
Frida lifted them slowly, those beautiful eyes, and met his own with genuine pleasure.
“Do you think so?” she asked, half whispering. In some dim, instinctive way she felt this strange man was a superior being, and that every small crumb of praise from him was well worth meriting.
“Why, Frida, of course I do,” he answered, without the least sense of impertinence. “Do you think if I didn't I'd have taken so much trouble to try and educate you?” For he had talked to her much in their walks on the hillside.