"Just look at that!" she said. "The man is a doctor—and thinks the removal of parental power is no loss to 'sex'! What men—yes, and some women, too— seem to mean by sex is just their preliminary pleasure… . When your women are really awake and know what they are for, seeing men as the noblest kind of assistants, nature's latest and highest device for the im- provement of parentage, then they will talk less of 'sex' and more of children."
I urged, as genuinely as I could, the collateral value and uses of sex indulgence ; not the common theories of "necessity," which any well-trained athlete can deny, but the more esoteric claims of higher flights of love, and of far-reaching stimulus to all artistic faculty: the creative inpulse in our work.
She listened patiently, but shook her head when I was done. "Even if all those claims were true," she said, "they would not weigh as an ounce to a ton beside the degradation of women, the corruption of the body and mind through these wholly un- necessary diseases, and the miserable misborn children. Why, Van, what's 'creative impulse' and all its 'far-reaching stimulus' to set beside the stunted, meager starveling children, the mil- lions of poor little sub-ordinary children, children who are mere accidents and by-products of this much-praised 'sex'? It's no use, dear, until all the children orf the world are at least healthy; at least normal; until the average man and woman are free from taint of sex-disease and happy in their love—lastingly happy in their love—there is not much to boast of in this popu- lar idea of sex and sex indulgence.
"It can not be changed in a day or a year," she said. "This is evidently a matter of long inheritance, and that's why I allow three generations to get over it. But nothing will help much till the women are free and see their duty as mothers."
"Some of the 'freest' women are urgirig more sex freedom," I teminded her. "They want to see the women doing as men have done, apparently."
"Yes, I know. They are almost as bad as the antis—but not quite. They are merely a consequence of wrong teaching and wrong habits; they were there before, those women, only not saying what they wanted. Surely, you never imagined that all men could be unchaste and all women chaste, did you?"
I shamefacedly admitted that that was exactly what we had imagined, and that we had most cruelly punished the women who were not.
"It's the most surprising thing I ever heard of," she said; "and you bred and trained plenty of animals, to say nothing of know- ing the wild ones. Is there any case in nature of a species with such a totally opposite traits in the two sexes?"
There wasn't, that I knew of, outside of their special distinc- tions, of course.
All these side issues she continually swept aside, all the minor points and discussable questions, returning again and again to the duty of women.
"As soon as the women take the right ground, men will have to follow suit," she said, "as soon as women are free, independ- ent and conscientious. They have the power in their own hands, by natural law."
"What is going to rouse them, to make them see it?" I asked. "A number of things seems to be doing that," she said, medit-
atively. "From my point of view, I should think the sense of ma- ternal duty would be the strongest thing, but there seem to be many forces at work here. The economic change is the most imperative, more so, even, than the political, and both are going on fast. There's the war, too, that is doing wonders for women. It is opening the eyes of men, millions of men, at once, as no arguments ever could have."
"Aren't you pleased to see the women working for peace ?" I asked.
"Immensely, of course. All over Europe they are at it — that's what I mean."
"But I meant the Peace Movement."
"Oh, that? Talking for peace, you mean, and writing and tele- graphing. Yes, that's useful, too. Anything that brings women out into social relation, into a sense of social responsibility, is good. But all that they say and write and urge will not count as much as what they do.
"Your women will surely have more sense than the men about economics," she suggested. "It does not seem to me pos- sible for business women to mishandle food as men do, or to build such houses. It is all so—unreasonable: to make people eat what is not good, or live in dark, cramped little rooms."
"You don't think they show much sense in their own clothes?" I offered, mischievously.
"No, they don't. But that is women as they are, the kind of women you men have been so long manufacturing. I'm speak- ing of real ones, the kind that are there underneath, and sure to come out as soon as they have a chance. And what a glorious time they will have—cleaning up the world! I'd almost like to stay and help a little."
Gradually it had dawned upon me that Ellador did not mean to stay, even in America. I wanted to be sure.
"Like to stay ? Do you mean that you want to go back—for good ?"
"It is not absolutely clear to me yet," she answered. "But one thing I'm certain about. If I live here I will not have a child."
I thought for a moment that she meant the distress about her would have some deleterious effect and prevent it; but when I looked at her, saw the folded arms, the steady mouth, the fixed determination in her eyes, I knew that she meant "will not" when she said it.
"It would not be right," she added, simply. "There is no place in all your world, that I have seen or read of, where I should be willing to raise a child."
"We could go to some lovely place alone," I urged; "some is- land, clean and beautiful——"
"But we should be 'alone' there. That is no place for a child." "You could teach it — as they do in Herland," I still urged. "I teach it ? I ? What am I, to teach a child?" "You would be its mother," I answered.
"And what is a mother to teach a solitary little outcast thing as you suggest? Children need the teaching of many women, and the society of many children, for right growth. Also, they need a social environment—not an island!"
"You see, dear," she went on, after a little, "in Herland everything teaches. The child sees love and order and peace and comfort and wisdom everywhere. No child, alone, could grow up so—so richly endowed. And as to these countries I have seen—these cities of abomination—I would die childless rather than to bear a child in this world of yours."
In Herland to say "I would die childless" is somewhat equival- ent to our saying "I would suffer eternal damnation." It is the worst deprivation they can think of.
"You are going to leave me!" I cried. It burst upon me with sudden bitterness. She was not "mine," she was a woman of Herland, and her heavenly country, her still clear hope of motherhood, were more to her than life in our land with me. What had I to offer her that was comparable to that upland paradise?
She came to me, then, and took me in her arms—strong, tender, loving arms— and gave me one of her rare kisses.
"I'm going to stay with you, my husband, as long as I live—if you want me. Is there anything to prevent your coming back to Herland?"
As a matter of fact, there was really nothing to prevent it, nothing I might leave behind which would cost me the pain her exile was costing her; and especially nothing which could com- pensate for losing my wife.
We began to discuss it, with eager interest. "I don't mean to forsake this poor world," she assured me. "We can come back again—later, much later. My mind is full of great things that can be done here, and I want to get all the wisdom of Herland at work to help. But let us go back now, while we are young, and before this black, stupid confusion has—has hurt me any worse. Perhaps it is no harm, that I have suffered so. Perhaps our child will have a heart that aches for all the world — and will do more than any of us to help it. Especially if it is—a Boy."
"Do you want a boy, darling?"
"Oh, do I not! Just think—none of us, ever, in these two thou- sand years, has had one. If we, in Herland, can begin a new kind of men!" …
"What do you want of them?" I said, teasingly. "Surely you women alone have accomplished all that the world needs, haven't you?"
"Indeed, no, Van. We haven't begun. Ours is only a—a sample: a little bit of a local exhibit. If what we have done is the right thing, then it becomes our clearest duty to spread it to all the world. Such a new life as you have opened to us, Van, you Splendid Man!"
"Splendid Man! Splendid! I thought you thought we were to blame for all the misery in the world? Just look at the harm we've done!"
"Just look at the good you've done, too! Why, my darling, the harm you have done is merely the result of your misunder- standing and misuse of Sex; and the good you have done is the result of the humanness of you, the big, noble humanness that has grown and grown, that has built and lifted and taught the world in spite of all the dragging evil. Why, dear, when I see the courage, the perseverance, the persistent growth you men have shown, cumbered as you have been from the beginning by the fruits of your mistakes, it seems as if you were almost more than human?"
I was rather stunned by this. No man who had seen Herland and then come back to our tangled foolishness, waste and pain, could be proud of his manmade world. No man who had solidly grasped the biological facts as to the initial use of his sex, and his incredible misuse of it, could help the further shame for the anomalous position of the human male, completely mistaken, and producing a constant train of evils.
I could see it all plainly enough. And now, to have her talk like this!
"Remember, dear, that men never meant to do it, or any part of it," she tenderly explained. "The trouble evidently began when nobody knew much; it became an ironclad 'custom' even before religion took it up, and law. Remember, too, that the women haven't died— they are here yet, in equal numbers. Also, even the unjust restrictions have saved them from a great deal of suffering which the men met. And then nothing could rob them of their inheritance. Every step the men really made upward lifted the women, too. And don't forget Love, ever. That has lived and triumphed even through all the lust and slavery and shame."
I felt comforted, relieved.
"Besides," she went on, "you men ought to feel proud of the real world work you have done, even crippled as you were by your own excessive sex, and by those poor, dragging dead- weights of women you had manufactured. In spite of it all, you have invented and discovered and built and adorned the world. You have things as far along as we have, even some things bet- ter, and many sciences and crafts we know nothing about. And you've done it alone—just men! It's wonderful."
In spite of all the kindness and honest recognition she showed, I could not help a feeling of inner resentment at this tone. Of course, we three men had been constantly impressed with all that they had done in Herland—just women, alone— but that she thought it equally wonderful for men to do it was not wholly gratifying.
She went on serenely.
"We had such advantages, you see. Being women, we had all the constructive and organizing tendencies of motherhood to urge us on and, having no men, we missed all that greediness and quarreling your history is so sadly full of. Also, being isol- ated, we could just grow—like a sequoia in a sheltered moun- tain glade.
"But you men, in this mixed, big world of yours, in horrid confusion of mind and long ignorance, with all those awful reli- gions to mix you up and hold you back, and with so little real Happiness—still, you have built the world ! Van, dear, it shows how much stronger humanity is than sex, even in men. All that I have had to learn, you see, for we make no distinction at home—women are people, and people are women. "At first I thought of men just as males—a Herlander would, you know. Now I know that men are people, too, just as much as women art; and it is as one person to another that I feel this big love for you, Van. You are so nice to live with. You are such good company. I never get tired of you. I like to play with you, and to work with you. I admire and enjoy the way you do things. And when we sit down quietly, near together—it makes me so happy, Van!"
* * * * * * * *
There were still a few big rubies in that once fat little bag she so wisely brought with her. We made careful plans, which included my taking a set of thorough lessons in aviation and mechanics; there must be no accidents on this trip. By a previ- ous steamer we sent the well-fitted motorboat that should carry us and our dissembled aeroplane up that long river.
Of baggage, little could be carried, and that little, on Ellador's part, consisted largely of her mass of notes, all most carefully compressed, and done on the finest and lightest pa- per. She also urged that we take with us the lightest and new- est of encyclopaedias. "We can leave it in the boat, if neces- sary, and make a separate trip," she suggested. Also photo- graphs she took, and a moving picture outfit with well-selected films. "We can make them, I'm sure," she said; "but this one will do to illustrate." It did.
After all, her requirements did not weigh more than the third passenger whom we might have carried.
The river trip was a growing joy; day after day of swift glid- ing through those dark, drooping forests and wide, reedy flats; and when at last we shot out upon the shining silver of that hidden lake, and she saw above her the heights of Herland — my calm goddess trembled and cried, stretching her arms to it like a child to its mother.
But we set swiftly to work on our aeroplane, putting it all soundly together and fastening in the baggage, and then sealed up the tight sheathed boat like a trim cocoon.
Then the purr of our propeller, the long, skating slide on the water, and up— and up—in a widening spiral, Ellador breath- less, holding fast to the supports, till we topped the rocky rim, rose above the forest, her forest — and sailed out over the se- rene expanse of that fair land. "O, let's look," she begged; "let's look at the whole of it first—it's the whole of it that I love!" So we swept in a great circle above, as one might sweep over Hol- land: the green fields, blossoming gardens, and dark woods,
