§ 14
“We progress, Christina Alberta,” said Devizes, “but it’s still generally the rule that a woman’s life is determined very largely by the character and occupations of—the leading man in the play. Have you by any chance been in love yet?”
She wanted to tell him all the truth about herself, but some things are untellable. She hesitated and blushed hotly. “Nowadays,” she said, and stopped. “I’ve some imagination. I’ve run about London. I’ve perhaps imagined things——”
His eyes were very searching for a moment but none the less kindly.
“I’ve been in love—in a kind of way,” she admitted.
He nodded with a dreadful effect of complete comprehension.
“I don’t want to run my life in relation to any man,” she extended.
“Clever girls never do. Any more than clever young men want to spend their lives adoring a goddess.”
“In any case I don’t see myself becoming a child-producing housekeeper,” she said.
“Even if you married. No. I doubt whether you are that type. But if you are going to reject that easy way—and it is an easy way, in spite of what people say—if you are going to be a citizen on your own as a man is, then you’ve got to do a man’s work, Christina Alberta. There’s to be none of the Pretty Fanny business you know.”
“Well, am I?” asked Christina Alberta.
“No, I don’t think you are. And in that case, I guess you want some more education. You’re clever, but you’re a bit patchy.”
“I’m good enough to get a job. And then learn.”
“Learn,” he said. “That’s enough to take you all your time. I’d rather we agreed it’s got to be a student for two or three years more. You need have no anxiety about ways and means. You and I are of the same Clan—a clan of two practically—and I am the head. I’ll see you through just as though you were a son. And now, what sort of work is it to be? Law? Medicine? a general education for journalism or affairs? Doors open to women now—fresh doors every day.”
To that Christina Alberta could speak a little more fully. She had been thinking out some of these things. She wanted to know about life and the world as a whole. Could she have a good year at physical science, biology and geology chiefly and anthropology? Would that be possible? And then if she was any good at medical work, another year at mental science or politics and public health? “It sounds ambitious I know,” she said.
“Ambitious! It’s an encyclopædia in a year.”
“But I want to know about all these things.”
“Naturally.”
“Could I have longer than that?”
“You’d have to have longer than that.”
“It seems to be asking for so much.”
“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to unsex you to that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?”
“You think I might do work—scientific work—at last—as you do?”
“Why not?”
“A girl?”
“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.”
“Do you think—some day—I might even come to work—to work with you?”
“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, with the completest recognition of their relationship “Why not?”
She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in her eyes and he had a momentary intimation of all that he might be to her. Gallant she was and fine and ambitious; a wonderful life to come out of nothingness into his own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it might grow, into something very great and deep for both of them.
He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men and women students and of men and women as workers. “You’ll never run parallel with men, you free women, so don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out a way that is similar perhaps but different. Different down to the roots.” He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had its qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, down even to a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time might come when we should be able to put a drop of blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope or apply some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, physical and mental. That keeps him to his course. Men compared with women are steadier and stupider. Women compared with men are quicker and sillier. Bludgeons and bodkins.”
He talked of his student days when women medical students were still rather novel intrusions, and from that he passed to his father’s prejudices, to his father’s treatment of his mother and his boyish days. Presently they were exchanging experiences of childish delusions and fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced he was in the ease of his talk. He told her about himself because he recognized her right to know about him; he listened with a friendly eagerness to all she chose to tell him of her Daddy and herself and about her impressions and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban student in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s kindly absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer him drink. The Crumbs had left a bottle of beer and a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make tea and helped her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they talked. She had never before met so intimate and delightful a curiosity as his. She had had friends before but no such friendliness; she had had a lover but never such intimacy.
It was one o’clock before he went away.
The talk had ebbed. He sat thoughtful for a moment.
“I must go,” he said, and stood up. They faced each other, a little at a loss for parting words.
“It’s been wonderful to talk to you,” she said.
“It’s a great thing to have discovered you.”
Another pause. “It’s a great thing for me,” she said lamely.
“We’ll talk—many times,” he said.
He wanted to call her “my dear,” and an absurd shyness prevented him. And she was aware of that suppression.
She stood up straight before him in the passage with a flush on her cheeks and her eyes alight, and he wondered he had not thought her beautiful from the beginning. “Good-bye for the time,” he said, and smiled at her gravely and took and held her hand for a moment.
“Good night,” she said, and hesitated and then opened the green door for him and stood and watched him go up the Mews.
At the top he turned and waved his hand to her before he disappeared. “Good night,” she whispered and started, and looked about her as if she feared that her unspoken thoughts had been audible.
Father. Her father!
So real fathers leave one aglow like this!
He had left her tense as a violin string on which the bow rests motionless. Now Daddy, who wasn’t her father, she would just have hugged and kissed.