"Die of? Who, madam?"
"Those cities—those civilizations?"
"Why, they were conquered in war, doubtless; the inhabit- ants were put to the sword—some carried away as slaves, per- haps—and the cities razed to the ground ?"
"By whom?" she demanded. "Who did it?"
"Why, other peoples, other cultures, from other cities ?'
"Do you mean other peoples, or just other men ?" she asked.
He was puzzled. "Why, the soldiers were men, of course, but war was made by one nation against another."
"Do you mean that the women of the other nations were the governing power and sent the men to fight ?"
No, he did not mean that.
"And surely the children did not send them?" Of course not.
"But people are men, women and children, aren't they? And only the adult men, about one-fifth of the population, made war?"
This he admitted perforce, and Ellador did not press the point further.
"But in these cities were all kinds of people, wern't there? Women and children, as well as men ?"
This was obvious, also; and then she branched off a little: "What made them want to conquer a city?"
"Either fear—or revenge—or desire for plunder. Oftenest that. The ancient cities were the centers of production, of course." And he discoursed on the beautiful handicrafts of the past, the rich fabrics, the jewels and carved work and varied treasures.
"Who made them," she asked.
"Slaves, for the most part," he answered. "Men and women ?"
"Yes—men and women."
"I see," said Ellador. She saw more than she spoke of, even to me. In ancient Egypt she found much that pleased her in the power and place of historic womanhood. This satisfaction was shortlived as we went on eastward.
With a few books, with eager questioning of such experts as we met, and what seemed to me an almost supernatural skill in eliciting valuable and apposite information from unexpected quarters, my lady from Herland continued to fill her mind and her note-books.
To me, who grew more and more to admire her, to reverence her, to tenderly love her, as we traveled on together, there now appeared a change in her spirit, more alarming even than that produced by Europe's war. It was like the difference between the terror roused in one surrounded by lions, and the loathing experienced in the presence of hideous reptiles, this not in the least at the people, but at certain lamentable social conditions.
In visiting our world she had been most unfortunately first met by the hot horrors of war; and I had thought to calm her by the static nations, the older peoples, sitting still among their ruins, richly draped in ancient and interesting histories. But a very different effect was produced. What she had read, while it prepared her to understand the sequence of affairs, had in no case given what she recognized as the really important events and their results.
"I'm writing a little history of the world," she told me, with a restrained smile. "Just a little one, so that I can have something definite to show them."
"But how can you, dearest—in this time, with what da'ta you have ? I know you are wonderful—but a history of the world!"
"Only a little one," she answered. "Just a synopsis. You know we are used to condensing and simplifying for our children. I suppose that is where we get the 'grasp of salient features' you have spoken of so often. These historians I read now certainly do not have it."
She continued tender to me, more so if anything. Of two things we talked with pleasure: of Herland and my land, and al- ways of the beauty of nature. This seemed to her a ceaseless source of strength and comfort.
"It's the same world," she said, as we leaned side by side on the rail at the stern, and watched the white wake run uncoiling away from us, all silver-shining under the round moon. "The same sky, the same stars, some of them, the same blessed sun and moon. And the dear grass—and the trees—the precious trees."
Being by profession a forester, it was inevitable that she should notice trees; and in Europe she found much to admire, though lamenting the scarcity of foodbearing varieties. In Northern Africa she had noted the value of the palm, the olive, and others, and had readily understood the whole system of ir- rigation and its enormous benefits. What she did not easily grasp was its disuse, and the immeasurable futility of the fella- heen, still using the shadoof after all these ages of progress.
"I dont' see yet," she admitted, "what makes their minds so—so impervious. It can't be because they're men, surely. Men are not duller than women, are they, dear?"
"Indeed they are not!" I cried, rather stung by this new sug- gestion. "Men are the progressive sex, the thinkers, the innov- ators. It is the women who are conservative and slow. Even you will have to admit that."
"I certainly will if I find it so," she answered cheerfully. "I can see that these women are dull enough. But then —if they do things differently there are penalties, aren't there ?"
"Penalties?"
"Why, yes. If the women innovate and rebel the least that happens to them is that the men won't marry them—isn't that so?"
"I shouldn't think vou would call that a penalty, my dear," I answered.
"Oh, yes, it is; it means extinction— the end of that variety of woman. You seem to have quite successfully checked mutation in women; and they had neither education, opportunity, or en- couragement in other variation."
"Don't say 'you,'" I urged. "These are the women of the Ori- ent you are talking about, not of all the world. Everybody knows that their position is pitiful and a great check to pro- gress. Wait till you see my country!"
"I shall be glad to get there, dearest, I'm sure of that," she told me. "But as to these more progressive men among the Egyptians—there was no penalty for improving on the shadoof, was there? Or the method of threshing grain by the feet of cattle ?"
Then I explained, trying to show no irritation, that there was a difference in the progressiveness of nations, of various races;
but that other things being equal, the men were as a rule more progressive than the women."
"Where are the other things equal, Van?"
I had to laugh at that; she was a very difficult person to ar- gue with; but I told her they were pretty near equal in our Un- ited States, and that we thought our women fully as good as men, and a little tetter. She was comforted for a while, but as we went on into Asia, her spirit sank and darkened, and that change I spoke of became apparent.
Burmah was something of a comfort, and that surviving mat- riarchate in the island hills. But in our rather extended visit to India, guided and informed by both English and native friends, and supplied with further literature, she began to suffer deeply.
We had the rare good fortune to be allowed to accompany a scientific expedition up through the wonder of the Himalayas, through Thibet, and into China. Here that high sweet spirit drooped and shrunk, with a growing horror, a loathing, such as I had never seen before in her clear eyes. She was shocked beyond words at the vast area of dead country; skeleton coun- try, deforested, deshrubbed, degrassed, wasted to the bone, ly- ing there to burn in the sun and drown in the rain, feeding no one.
"Van, Van," she said. "Help me to forget the women a little and talk about the land! Help me to understand the— the holes in the minds of people. Here is intelligence, intellect, a high cultural development—of sorts. They have beautiful art in some lines. They have an extensive literature. They are old, very old, surely old enough to have learned more than any other people. And yet here is proof that they have never mastered the simple and obvious facts of how to take care of the land on which they live."
"But they still live on it, don't they ?"
"Yes—they live on it. But they live on it like swarming fleas on an emaciated kitten, rather than careful farmers on a well- cultivated ground. However," she brightened a little, "there's one thing; this horrible instance of a misused devastated land must have been of one great service. It must have served as an object lesson to all the rest of the world. Where such an old and wise nation has made so dreadful a mistake—for so long, at least no other nation need to make it."
I did not answer as fully and cheerfully as she wished, and she pressed me further.
"The world has learned how to save its trees—its soil—its beauty—its fertility, hasn't it? Of course, what I've seen is not all—it's better in other places ?"
"We did not go to Germany, you know, my dear. They have a high degree of skill in forestry there. In many countries it is now highly thought of. We are taking steps to preserve our own forests, though, so far, they are so extensive that we rather forgot there was any end of them."
"It will be good to get there, Van," and she squeezed my hand hard. "I must see it all. I must 'know the worst'—and surely I am getting the worst first! But you have free educa- tion—you have every advantage of climate—you have a mixture of the best blood on earth, of the best traditions. And you are brave and free and willing to learn. Oh, Van! I am so glad it was America that found us!"
I held her close and kissed her. I was glad, too. And I was proud clear through to have her speak so of us. Yet, still—I was not as perfectly comfortable about it as I had been at first.
She had read about the foot-binding process still common in so large a part of China, but somehow had supposed it was a thing of the past, and never general. Also, I fancy she had de- liberately kept it out of her mind, as something impossible to imagine. Now she saw it. For days and days, as we traveled through the less known parts of the great country, she saw the crippled women; not merely those serenely installed in rich gardens and lovely rooms, with big-footed slaves to do their bidding; or borne in swaying litters by strong Coolies; but poor women, working women, toiling in the field, carrying their little mats to kneel on while they worked, because their feet were helpless aching pegs.
Presently, while we waited in a village, and were entertained by a local magnate who had business relations with one of our guides, Ellador was in the women's apartment, and she heard it—the agony of the bound feet of a child. The child was promptly hushed, struck and chided; made to keep quiet, but Ellador had heard its moaning. From a woman missionary she got details of the process, and was shown the poor little shrunken stumps.
That night she would not let me touch her, come near her. She lay silent, staring with set eyes, long shudders running over her from time to time.
When it came to speech, which was some days later, she could still but faintly express it.
"To think," she said slowly, "that there are on earth men who can do a thing like that to women—to little helpless children!"
"But their men don't do it, dearest," I urged. "It is the wo- men, their own mothers, who bind the feet of the little ones. They are afraid to have them grow up 'big-footed women ? "
"Afraid of what?" asked Ellador, that shudder passing over her again.
Chapter 4
Nearing Home
WE stayed some little time in China, meeting most interesting and valuable people, missionaries, teachers, diplomats, mer- chants, some of them the educated English-speaking Chinese.
Ellador's insatiable interest, her exquisite courtesy and talent as a listener, made anyone willing to talk to her. She learned fast, and placed in that wide sunlit mind of hers each fact in due relation.
"I'm beginning to understand," she told me sweetly, "that I mustn't judge this—miscellaneous—world of yours as I do my country. We were just ourselves—an isolated homogeneous people. When we moved, we all moved together. You are all kinds of people, in all kinds of places, touching at the edges and getting mixed. And so far from moving on together, there are no two nations exactly abreast—that I can see; and they mostly are ages apart; some away ahead of the others, some going far faster than others, some stationary."
"Yes," I told her, "and in the still numerous savages we find the beginners, and the back-sliders—the hopeless back-sliders, in human progress."
"I see—I see—" she said reflectively. "When you say 'the civil- ized world' that is just a figure of speech. The world is not civil- ized yet—only spots in it, and those not wholly."
"That's about it," I agreed with her. "Of course, the civilized nations think of themselves as the world—that's natural."
"How does it compare—in numbers?" she inquired. "Let's look!"
So we consulted the statistics on the population of the earth, chasing through pages of classification difficult to sift, until we hit upon a little table: "Population of the earth according to race." "That ought to do, roughly speaking," I told her. "We'll call the white races civilized—and lump the others. Let's see how it comes out."
It came out that the total of IndoGermanic, or Aryan—White, for Europe, America, Persia, India and Australia, was 775,000,000; and the rest of the world, black, red, brown and yellow, was 788,000,000.
"Do you mean that the majority of mankind is still uncivil- ized?" she asked.
She didn't ask it unpleasantly. Ellador was never sarcastic or bitter. But the world was her oyster—to study, and she was quite impartial.
I, however, felt reproached by this cool estimate. "No in- deed," I said, "you can't call China uncivilized—it is one of the very oldest civilizations we have. This is only by race you see, by color."
"Oh, yes," she agreed, "and race or color do not count in civilization? Of course not—how stupid I was!"
But I laid down the pencil I was using to total up populations, and looked at her with a new and grave misgiving. She was so world-innocent. Even the history she had so swiftly absorbed had not changed her, any more than indecent novels affect a child; the child does not know the meaning of the words.
