“So many of what?” he demanded.
“Respectable wives and mothers bringing up large families,” she replied, demurely. “I don’t blame them, I’m sure! They only follow the race habit.”
“What do you imply by that profound utterance?” he asked, sarcastically. “The ‘race habit,’ as you call it, is the natural habit.”
“Exactly!” she agreed. “The habit of wild nature — untrained nature — nature going up and down on the same old road — but not nature advancing to the highest possibilities and power.”
He changed his attitude in order to confront her fully. —
“You talk nonsense,” he said. “Nature is the organ of universal production, and a woman like yourself who deliberately sets aside the real function of womanhood, which is to produce new generations of humanity, is an incongruity in the general scheme. And you say you believe in Christmas! Why, the very idea of Christmas is a Mother and Child—”
He paused, astonished at the sudden glow of positive beauty which transfigured her face.
“Yes!” she said, softly. “A Mother who would have been ‘put away privily’ and shamed but for the dream of an Angel! A Child born God-in-Man! That is why I believe in Christmas — because of a Dream! — and because I know the God-in-man can be realized even in our day!”
He smiled tolerantly.
“Is that what you are waiting for? I’m afraid you’ll wait a long time! ‘Race habits’ are not easily overcome.”
“Not easily, no, but much more easily than you Imagine,” she answered. “In the beginnings of life on this planet, if we are to believe science, the ‘race habit’ evolved the creation of monster mammals and strange reptiles, traces of which we now find only in fossils and strata. Their ‘race habit’ was to propagate themselves till the type arrived at the process of transformation, when their former ‘race habit’ was overcome. The ‘race habit’ of human beings follows the same course. They are still more animal than spiritual — men copy perishing types, not having got sufficient individuality to evolve higher forms. Poets tell them of ‘love,’ and they sometimes listen and make a feeble effort to understand that divine element — but they fail and fall back on mere ‘sex attraction.’ Sex attraction results only in what a cynical modern author has styled ‘the manners and customs of the poultry yard.’ Those manners and customs do not appeal to me.”
“They are manners and customs which are likely to last as long as this world is in being,” he said. “Sex attraction is the chief business of life.”
“Of a certain phase of animal life — oh, yes — I know that well enough!” she acquiesced, cheerfully. “But it is rather absurd to continue in one phase when there are others waiting. Sex attraction means nothing more to me than the buzzing of midges if it is devoid of the real ‘love’ that is beyond all sex. The birth of children is an additional burden to the world and a sorrow to themselves unless they are born of that higher love. You know there is a further ‘phase’ where we ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven!”’
“I think you are mad!” he said, angrily.
Her eyes sparkled bewitchingly, and she laughed. “Really! Perhaps I am! Anyway, I must be so to you — you, who write articles to order on the policy of the present governments in Europe! Such a waste of time! Nobody reads them!”
“Women like you never ready anything,” he declared, impatiently, “except novels and shopping lists! As for politics, you never understand them. You fought for female suffrage, and now you’ve got the vote you don’t know what to do with it!”
“Do you know what to do with it?” she asked, lightly. “Don’t you wait till you’re told how to vote? Of course you do! — just as you write what you’re told to write! You’re a bound slave whichever way you turn! Don’t you envy me my ‘glorious liberty of the free’?”
She turned her bright face fully up to his, and though he was reluctant to acknowledge her charm of movement and manner he was conscious of a thrill of desire to awaken in her what he considered “natural” feeling in woman — namely, respect and admiration for man, the special man in this case being himself. The knowledge that such an effort was hopeless vexed him to an almost absurd degree.
“No,” he replied. “I don’t envy you at all. I always pity an old maid.”
The smile in her eyes grew more radiant.
“Your pity is quite wasted!” she said. “There is no such creature as an old maid, except through the ‘race habit’ and race traditions. Oldness itself is a race habit; youth is the law of nature. Nothing can ever make me old unless I choose to make myself so!” He gave a gesture with his hand as though throwing something away in scorn.
“As I said before, you are mad!” he exclaimed. “You are mentally obsessed by a foolish idea!”
“Well, let it be so!” she laughed. “We are all mentally obsessed by something or other. A number of my women friends have been mentally obsessed by the ‘foolish idea’ of marrying. They have married — and many of them wish they hadn’t. Some of them are physical wrecks; some have children who are the misery and despair of their lives; and all have lost the illusion of ‘love’ which first captivated their fancy. My ‘mental obsession,’ whatever it may be, keeps me in good health at any rate, and gives me happiness and freedom — so there is something to be said for it. But why should we argue? You came down for a breath of country air — do take it thankfully, and praise God for a fine day!”
Her voice had a sweet, inspiring tone, and as he met her straight, kind look he smiled, albeit reluctantly. “I cannot deny that you look wonderfully well and happy,” he said. “But—”
She held up a finger warningly.
“There are no ‘buts’,” she interruped him. “To be well and happy is enough.” She came nearer and laid a hand lightly on his arm. “You are tired, you know you are! Your daily journalism gives you no rest. You tell people the things your editor wishes you to tell them, and people never listen. Your platitudes recoil on yourself with a kind of nausea. The world is always with you as it never is with me.”
“Yet you call it a beautiful house,” he said.
“So it is — but I am not a snail or a tortoise to carry my house on my back!” she answered, merrily. “In one sense, as a temporary dwelling, the world is a house — but in another and truer form it is just a stepping-star.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “Another of your light, fantastic notions?”
“Perhaps!” she replied. “But see! — here we stand on one side of this lovely little river — we can watch it running down from the heights above us, now in sunshine, now in shadow, sparkling, chattering, and jumping like a conscious creature over the stones and rocks in its path; to me it is like life itself — and look at those boulders worn smooth by its passage! — they make a natural bridge across it — to the other side!”
She pointed with her fine, daintily shaped hand to the opposite bank, the arch in the trees, and the soft blue glimpse of the hills beyond. He looked at her, and something in her aspect struck him as strange and almost unreal.
“Well!” he said, and a slight tremor ran through his blood as though he were suddenly chilled.
“Well!” she echoed, and smiled. “We can pass over the water easily on those stepping-stones and find a fresh view of the landscape. In the same way we can pass over the world as a stepping-star, to a fresh phase of life. There are such a number of phases — we should not be stupidly content with one, for that is to be no more ambitious than the insects or the cattle.”
“It’s the only one we know of,” he said. “When we die we may perhaps discover something new—”
“But why wait to die in order to discover?” she queried. “Now is the time to find out all we can in this present life. You do not understand! I know — for I have proved it — that there are many phases of existence here and now; it is only human obstinacy that hinders experience. You talk of marriage as if the only destiny
of women must be to mate with men, and the only destiny of man, to propagate his own kind without any change or improvement — all that is merest animalism! Some of us dream of something better; some of us grow tired of standing on only one ride of the stream of life, some of us take courage to cross over on the stepping-star to a finer point of view, just as I cross over this water — quite simply and easily.”
She lifted her white skirt daintily in one hand, then paused.
“It is all a matter of progress and transformation,” she said. “Surely you know that? There is no stop in our ‘going on and never to die’ destiny. First, the germ, then the tiny spark of life, then the insect, the reptile, the bird, the animal, the man — all, all evolving to the Angel! It is only our obstinate and unbelieving selves that put a drag on the wheel!”
And with her dress held above the brawling little river she stepped on each stone dividing the one bank from the other. The water swirled and played round her without wetting her feet, and the autumn sunshine poured a stream of deep gold straight down on her light, well-poised figure and soft brown hair. He watched her with assumed indifference, secretly admiring nevertheless the exceeding grace of her movements, and in his own mind doubting whether he could follow her without an awkward slip or ludicrous tumble.
She reached the opposite bank and ascending it, stood within the archway formed by the overhanging trees, then turned toward him.
“Are you coming?” she called.
But he was stricken dumb with sudden amazement and fear. Was he dreaming? — or did he see another figure behind her own? — a figure apparently projected from herself, identical in outline, but of an exceeding beauty, luminous as a rainbow and as delicately ethereal.
“Are you coming?” again called the sweet voice, and he saw her hand beckoning to him. “It’s quite safe!”
He tried to master his nervous terror.
“Wait! Wait one moment!” he stammered; and then — the sparkling water seemed to rush over him in a silver whirl, and he fell senseless.
When he recovered, she was kneeling beside him, supporting his head and bathing his forehead with her handkerchief dipped in the cold stream. As he opened his eyes she smiled.
“That’s better!” she said, cheerily. “I’m so sorry I asked you to come over to the other side! Some people can’t even think of crossing running water on stepping-stones without feeling giddy. I’m really very sorry! As soon as I saw you fall I came back at once — there! — now are you all right?”
Ashamed of his weakness, he murmured an affirmative and managed to raise himself and stand up. But he was uneasily conscious that the strange outline of light he had seen about her form still clung to her, making a shimmer of pale splendour in the hazy autumn atmosphere. With an effort at self-control, he said:
“I was not giddy — and I was quite ready to cross over to the other side. But — you played me a strange trick! — you are playing it now!”
She had risen from her knees and stood confronting him. Her eyes expressed a great wonder.
“A strange trick?” she echoed. “I? Why, what have I done?”
“What have you done? I may ask what are you doing? — at this very instant? What is all this mysterious light I see accompanying you as you move? Science can do many remarkable things nowadays, and projection of light can be manifested in various forms — but that it should take your shape and be, as it were, part of yourself, is a kind of conjuring that seems inexplicable!”
She looked at him fully and frankly.
“If it is as you say,” she answered, simply, “I am quite unconscious of it.”
“Unconscious!” He gave an incredulous gesture. “Come, come! Do you mean to tell me that you do not know of, and cannot see, your other Self (or so it seems) behind you?”
Her surprise was entirely unaffected.
“No, truly!” she said. “Of course I am aware that I have another Self — in the making, and that I am doing all I can to help it in its effort — but I have never seen that actual ME! What am I like?”
A nervous shiver overcame him — he grew very pale. “I cannot tell you,” he murmured. “The thing is altogether beyond me—” He broke off and looked uneasily around him. There was nothing of an alarming nature in the beautiful landscape, bathed in the deepening glory of the sun — the little river chattered over its pebbly bed like a child having too much at once to talk about, and presently, as his gaze came slowly back to the fair woman beside him, he gave a long breath of relief as he saw that the mysterious “nimbus” he had seen around her was no longer visible. The tension of his nerves relaxed — his self-possession returned, and he smiled.
“It must have been something wrong with my eyes,” he said, affecting an easy indifference. “The sunshine, the water, and your white gown dazzled them curiously. I have often been warned of possible mischief likely to happen to them. I work too early and too late.”
“Yes?” she queried, tentatively. “And why?”
“Why? Because I must work to live.”
“True — but must you work at the expense of sight?”
“Perhaps not — but I like work.”
“So do I,” she said. “But I work to strengthen my vision — not to lose it!” She paused, then— “I wish you could have told me what I was like! That Other Self of mine!”
“It was a delusion — a mirage!” he answered, impatiently. “The result of your fantastic talk, no doubt!”
“No doubt!” she echoed, dreamily. “Rays of light take strange ways of action sometimes, and science is only just beginning to find out some of those ways. You remember the words!— ‘Lo, the Star which they saw in the East went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.’ That was a wonderful ‘projection of light,’ as you call it, used for the first Christmas! To my mind such light should stand over every ‘young child’ as a mark of the God-in-man — that is to say, every child born of pure spirituality in love — not animalism. You asked if I believed in Christmas, and I do — simply because it is the symbol of the future when we have evolved from our present phase to the next development — not after death but here in this life.”
“I have told you that I cannot follow you,” he said, impatiently. “You are what men most dislike, a clever woman — more than that and worse, a feminine scientist, and you seem incapable of seeing that you are making havoc of your life—”
“How?” she asked, quickly. “Where do you see any signs of havoc? I am happier and healthier than any woman I have ever met, or, for that matter, any man. You came down here on a day’s visit ‘for a breath of fresh air’ so you wrote — but really you came to try and persuade me to marry your brother. Yes, you know you did! He, as a scientist himself, is pleased to consider that I might possibly be useful to him, not only as a wife but an assistant investigator — his proposal of marriage amounted to that.” He made a deprecatory movement of his hand. “Oh, do not deny it!” she went on, laughingly. “I refused. Can you imagine my accepting him? And having once said ‘No,’ can you suppose I would ever say ‘Yes?’”
Her eyes flashed a merriment and disdain intermingled.
“Souvent femme varite!” he murmured. “You may be no exception to the rule!”
“Christmas is coming!” she said, still smiling. “And New Year. And the beautiful house in which we all live will see me a long way apart from the way in which you walk! I hope your brother will marry a nice woman who will be a respectable wife and mother and bring up a large family! I don’t think he will make much progress in his scientific researches that way — but what does it matter? — scientific research is not a race habit — bringing up a large family is!”
“You are the most aggravating woman I have ever met!” he said, irritably.
She laughed.
“I’m sure I am! Please don’t mind it! Let us go back to the house — it’s nearing the time for your train. We’ve had a pleasant little ramble and an unsatisfactory little talk — and yo
u have had the singular privilege of seeing ME! — that is, the ‘Me’ in so far as I have been able to move ahead a little out of the ‘race habit’! I hope I was worth seeing?”
He grew pale, and as he walked beside her he switched his cane unmercifully among the meadow flowers, striking their slender stems to the ground.
“I tell you my eyes deceived me,” he said, “I saw, or thought I saw, a Winged Form behind you, exactly of your height and outline — it was an exquisite mirage!”
Her smiling eyes met his.
“I’m glad it was exquisite!” she said. “I think I may go so far as to assure you that it could have been no ‘mirage.’ It must have been truly ‘Me’ as I hope to become in time. I am still in the chrysalis, but I am making my way out of it!”
He frowned.
“What you say is mere folly!” he said. “You are mentally unhinged; and though you may be very clever with your ‘Light’ problems and experiments, they are proving too much for you. That is my honest opinion, and I am sorry for you!”
“Kind man!” she murmured, still smiling.
He flushed angrily.
“Oh, you are satirical!” he said. “All clever women are! — they like to put men to ridicule—”
“When they make themselves ridiculous!” she interposed. “The inherent sense of humour cannot always be repressed!”
“You think me ridiculous, I suppose!”
Half laughingly she deprecated the suggestion. “Oh, no! — not more so than any one of the eminent men who denounced Galileo because he said the earth moved round the sun. It does so move — but to their minds (constituted like yours!) he was ‘mentally obsessed by a foolish idea!’”
“Your example is badly chosen,” he said. “Galileo was a learned man—”
“His learning did not save him from imprisonment in his old age,” she replied, “and if I were ever so ‘learned’ you would not spare me your contemptuous criticism and condemnation because — I am a woman!” She lifted her fair head with a fine movement of self reliance that had no touch of pride. “Just consider the position logically — you are fond of logic! — hare am I, a ‘lone lorn woman’ like Dickens’s dear ‘Mrs. Gummidge,’ only not at all conscious of my lone lornness! — with a small fortune, left to me by an unhappy old uncle who made himself miserable because he could not eat enough of his money, and instead of passing my time in the ordinary feminine way of ‘catching’ men, I set my mind on study. Then your brother, a much-praised professor with at least a quarter of the alphabet tacked onto his name, proposes to marry me. And why? Because, being interested in some of my observations, he thinks I might ‘by chance’ make one or two important discoveries. If I did so, when married to him, I should be like Madame Curie, and he, like her husband, would be given half the glory or more by men, simply because he is a man! Rather than engage in this sort of thing, I choose to live and work alone — without any extraneous advice or assistance. What ‘mental obsession’ is there in this?”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 958
