They were by now in Hyde Park, beyond the carriage road, nearly alone with the trees and grass and certain sooty sheep which cropped there. He found her a chair, but himself sat on the ground and clasped his knees. She must hear his views upon the Bible; but she had to press for them. No, no, he told her at first—it wasn’t his business to preach. Presently, however, he broke out. “You’re just a counter in a game at this hour—put up between the dressmaker and the policeman. You are property—and that’s the Bible’s doing. Why—why—look at the Ten Commandments—‘His wife, servant, maid, ox, ass—everything that is his!’ You come after his house, if you remember; you come with the flocks and herds—there you are, even now—and there you must be until the system breaks down. Your jealous God, your jealous husband—don’t you see that they’re one and the same? The policeman and the dressmaker; the dueña and the eunuch of the door. Oh, good Lord! That’s Oriental, you know, Turk’s delight. You won’t find that in ‘Don Quixote’—a sane, Latin book; but it’s in half of the New Testament. Saint Paul! Women must cover their heads in church. Why? I’ll tell you: the yashmak! The harem is not to be seen—shameful. . . .
“The Catholics are right. They keep the Bible for the learned. They know it won’t do. If the Italians, for instance, the most practical, clear-headed people in Europe, were to get familiar with the Bible, the Pope might have his throat cut. There’d be a revolution. . . .
“That’s only one point out of a thousand, but it’s a good one. It concerns the welfare of more than half mankind, and its relation with the other fraction. If men are to buy and hoard women, it’s quite clear that women mayn’t have souls of their own. . . . The whole social system depends upon their having none. You are property my friend—marketed by the dressmaker, safeguarded by the policeman. It is really too degrading. It degrades the man more than the woman; makes him a kind of stock-keeper, the most atrocious form of capitalist there can be. The Bible, of course, did not establish that—the system’s as old as Hell; no, but it sanctioned it once and for all. Ever since that Levantine sophist saw ‘big business’ in Christianity, and ran it in Europe, the only hope of religion has been in what lurked of paganism—lurked in the uplands of Tuscany, in the German forests and Irish swamps. . . .
“Religion is a habit of mind—not a taught thing. We are all religious in a thunderstorm. But we don’t get it out of the Decalogue. We are all religious when we are in love; laws of property are forgotten—men and women are themselves. The accursed part of the system is this, that they can’t be themselves from the beginning. You must learn the rules before you can break them. Now if there were no rules at all there would be no rebels. I hope that’s clear.”
She listened with head gently inclined and pondering eyes, partly amused, partly disturbed by his vehemence, but not scandalized, because it was so like him, and because he was he. Womanlike, however, she must reduce his theories to practice, apply his rules, bring them home, or near home. Women, he had said, were property—well, was she her husband’s property? Bought? Marketed by the dressmaker? What did that mean, exactly? When, with a grunt, he stopped his harangue, she tried to formulate her speculations.
“I believe that I see what you mean about rules—keeping and breaking. It’s all very puzzling. Women are put wrong with men from the very beginning—I see that now. What did you mean about ‘being themselves?’ Have I ever been myself?”
He laughed, staring at the ground. “Never.”
“Well, but—how am I to begin?”
“Go your own way. Defy the dressmaker.”
She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Do tell me what you mean about the dressmaker.”