X
When she returned, Robert Monteith sat asleep over his paper in hiseasy-chair. It was his wont at night when he returned from business.Frida cast one contemptuous glance as she passed at his burly,unintelligent form, and went up to her bedroom.
But all that night long she never slept. Her head was too full ofBertram Ingledew.
Yet, strange to say, she felt not one qualm of conscience for theirstolen meeting. No feminine terror, no fluttering fear, disturbed herequanimity. It almost seemed to her as if Bertram's kiss had releasedher by magic, at once and for ever, from the taboos of her nation.She had slipped out from home unperceived, that night, in fear andtrembling, with many sinkings of heart and dire misgivings, while Robertand Phil were downstairs in the smoking-room; she had slunk round,crouching low, to Miss Blake's lodgings: and she had terrified her soulon the way with a good woman's doubts and a good woman's fears as to thewrongfulness of her attempt to say good-bye to the friend she might nowno longer mix with. But from the moment her lips and Bertram's touched,all fear and doubt seemed utterly to have vanished; she lay there allnight in a fierce ecstasy of love, hugging herself for strange delight,thinking only of Bertram, and wondering what manner of thing was thispromised freedom whereof her lover had spoken to her so confidently. Shetrusted him now; she knew he would do right, and right alone: whateverhe advised, she would be safe in following.
Next day, Robert went up to town to business as usual. He was immersedin palm-oil. By a quarter to two, Frida found herself in the fields.But, early as she went to fulfil her tryst, Bertram was there beforeher. He took her hand in his with a gentle pressure, and Frida felt aquick thrill she had never before experienced course suddenly throughher. She looked around to right and left, to see if they were observed.Bertram noticed the instinctive movement. "My darling," he said in a lowvoice, "this is intolerable, unendurable. It's an insult not to be bornethat you and I can't walk together in the fields of England withoutbeing subjected thus to such a many-headed espionage. I shall have toarrange something before long so as to see you at leisure. I can't be sobound by all the taboos of your country."
She looked up at him trustfully. "As you will, Bertram," she answered,without a moment's hesitation. "I know I'm yours now. Let it be what itmay, I can do what you tell me."
He looked at her and smiled. He saw she was pure woman. He had met atlast with a sister soul. There was a long, deep silence.
Frida was the first to break it with words. "Why do you always call themtaboos, Bertram?" she asked at last, sighing.
"Why, Frida, don't you see?" he said, walking on through the deep grass."Because they ARE taboos; that's the only reason. Why not give themtheir true name? We call them nothing else among my own people. Alltaboos are the same in origin and spirit, whether savage or civilised,eastern or western. You must see that now: for I know you areemancipated. They begin with belief in some fetich or bogey or othernon-existent supernatural being; and they mostly go on to regardcertain absolutely harmless--nay, sometimes even praiseworthy or morallyobligatory--acts as proscribed by him and sure to be visited with hiscondign displeasure. So South Sea Islanders think, if they eat someparticular luscious fruit tabooed for the chiefs, they'll be instantlystruck dead by the mere power of the taboo in it; and English peoplethink, if they go out in the country for a picnic on a tabooed day,or use certain harmless tabooed names and words, or inquire into thehistorical validity of certain incredible ancient documents, accountedsacred, or even dare to think certain things that no reasonable man canprevent himself from thinking, they'll be burned for ever in eternalfire for it. The common element is the dread of an unreal sanction. Soin Japan and West Africa the people believe the whole existence ofthe world and the universe is bound up with the health of their ownparticular king or the safety of their own particular royal family; andtherefore they won't allow their Mikado or their chief to go outsidehis palace, lest he should knock his royal foot against a stone, and soprevent the sun from shining and the rain from falling. In other places,it's a tree or a shrub with which the stability and persistence ofthe world is bound up; whenever that tree or shrub begins to droop orwither, the whole population rushes out in bodily fear and awe, bearingwater to pour upon it, and crying aloud with wild cries as if theirlives were in danger. If any man were to injure the tree, which ofcourse is no more valuable than any other bush of its sort, they'dtear him to pieces on the spot, and kill or torture every member of hisfamily. And so too, in England, most people believe, without a shadow ofreason, that if men and women were allowed to manage their own personalrelations, free from tribal interference, all life and order would goto rack and ruin; the world would become one vast, horrible orgy; andsociety would dissolve in some incredible fashion. To prevent thisimaginary and impossible result, they insist upon regulating oneanother's lives from outside with the strictest taboos, like those whichhem round the West African kings, and punish with cruel and relentlessheartlessness every man, and still more every woman, who dares totransgress them."
"I think I see what you mean," Frida answered, blushing.
"And I mean it in the very simplest and most literal sense," Bertramwent on quite seriously. "I'd been among you some time before itbegan to dawn on me that you English didn't regard your own taboos asessentially identical with other people's. To me, from the very first,they seemed absolutely the same as the similar taboos of CentralAfricans and South Sea Islanders. All of them spring alike from acommon origin, the queer savage belief that various harmless or actuallybeneficial things may become at times in some mysterious way harmful anddangerous. The essence of them all lies in the erroneous idea that ifcertain contingencies occur, such as breaking an image or deserting afaith, some terrible evil will follow to one man or to the world, whichevil, as a matter of fact, there's no reason at all to dread in any way.Sometimes, as in ancient Rome, Egypt, Central Africa, and England, thewhole of life gets enveloped at last in a perfect mist and labyrinth oftaboos, a cobweb of conventions. The Flamen Dialis at Rome, you know,mightn't ride or even touch a horse; he mightn't see an army under arms;nor wear a ring that wasn't broken; nor have a knot in any part of hisclothing. He mightn't eat wheaten flour or leavened bread; he mightn'tlook at or even mention by name such unlucky things as a goat, a dog,raw meat, haricot beans, or common ivy. He mightn't walk under a vine;the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could onlybe cut by a free man, and with a bronze knife; he was encased andsurrounded, as it were, by endless petty restrictions and regulationsand taboos--just like those that now surround so many men, andespecially so many young women, here in England."
"And you think they arise from the same causes?" Frida said,half-hesitating: for she hardly knew whether it was not wicked to sayso.
"Why, of course they do," Bertram answered confidently. "That's notmatter of opinion now; it's matter of demonstration. The worst ofthem all in their present complicated state are the ones that concernmarriage and the other hideous sex-taboos. They seem to have beenamong the earliest human abuses; for marriage arises from the stone-agepractice of felling a woman of another tribe with a blow of one's club,and dragging her off by the hair of her head to one's own cave as aslave and drudge; and they are still the most persistent and cruel ofany--so much so, that your own people, as you know, taboo even the fairand free discussion of this the most important and serious question oflife and morals. They make it, as we would say at home, a refuge forenforced ignorance. For it's well known that early tribes hold the mostsuperstitious ideas about the relation of men to women, and dread themost ridiculous and impossible evils resulting from it; and these absurdterrors of theirs seem to have been handed on intact to civilisedraces, so that for fear of I know not what ridiculous bogey of their ownimaginations, or dread of some unnatural restraining deity, men won'teven discuss a matter of so much importance to them all, but, ratherthan let the taboo of silence be broken, will allow such horrible thingsto take place in their midst as I have seen with my eyes for theselast six or seven w
eeks in your cities. O Frida, you can't imaginewhat things--for I know they hide them from you: cruelties of lust andneglect and shame such as you couldn't even dream of; women dying offoul disease, in want and dirt deliberately forced upon them by thewill of your society; destined beforehand for death, a hateful lingeringdeath--a death more disgusting than aught you can conceive--in orderthat the rest of you may be safely tabooed, each a maid intact, for theman who weds her. It's the hatefullest taboo of all the hateful taboosI've ever seen on my wanderings, the unworthiest of a pure or moralcommunity."
He shut his eyes as if to forget the horrors of which he spoke. Theywere fresh and real to him. Frida did not like to question him further.She knew to what he referred, and in a dim, vague way (for she was lesswise than he, she knew) she thought she could imagine why he found itall so terrible.
They walked on in silence a while through the deep, lush grass of theJuly meadow. At last Bertram spoke again: "Frida," he said, with atrembling quiver, "I didn't sleep last night. I was thinking this thingover--this question of our relations."
"Nor did I," Frida answered, thrilling through, responsive. "I wasthinking the same thing.... And, Bertram, 'twas the happiest night Iever remember."
Bertram's face flushed rosy red, that native colour of triumphant love;but he answered nothing. He only looked at her with a look more eloquentby far than a thousand speeches.
"Frida," he went on at last, "I've been thinking it all over; and Ifeel, if only you can come away with me for just seven days, I couldarrange at the end of that time--to take you home with me."
Frida's face in turn waxed rosy red; but she answered only in a very lowvoice: "Thank you, Bertram."
"Would you go with me?" Bertram cried, his face aglow with pleasure."You know, it's a very, very long way off; and I can't even tell youwhere it is or how you get there. But can you trust me enough to try?Are you not afraid to come with me?"
Frida's voice trembled slightly.
"I'm not afraid, if that's all," she answered in a very firm tone."I love you, and I trust you, and I could follow you to the world'send--or, if needful, out of it. But there's one other question. Bertram,ought I to?"
She asked it, more to see what answer Bertram would make to her thanfrom any real doubt; for ever since that kiss last night, she felt surein her own mind with a woman's certainty whatever Bertram told herwas the thing she ought to do; but she wanted to know in what light heregarded it.
Bertram gazed at her hard.
"Why, Frida," he said, "it's right, of course, to go. The thing that'sWRONG is to stop with that man one minute longer than's absolutelynecessary. You don't love him--you never loved him; or, if you everdid, you've long since ceased to do so. Well, then, it's a dishonourto yourself to spend one more day with him. How can you submit to thehateful endearments of a man you don't love or care for? How wrong toyourself, how infinitely more wrong to your still unborn and unbegottenchildren! Would you consent to become the mother of sons and daughtersby a man whose whole character is utterly repugnant to you? Naturehas given us this divine instinct of love within, to tell us with whatpersons we should spontaneously unite: will you fly in her face andunite with a man whom you feel and know to be wholly unworthy of you?With us, such conduct would be considered disgraceful. We think everyman and woman should be free to do as they will with their own persons;for that is the very basis and foundation of personal liberty. But ifany man or woman were openly to confess they yielded their persons toanother for any other reason than because the strongest sympathy andlove compelled them, we should silently despise them. If you don't loveMonteith, it's your duty to him, and still more your duty to yourselfand your unborn children, at once to leave him; if you DO love me, it'syour duty to me, and still more your duty to yourself and ourunborn children, at once to cleave to me. Don't let any sophisms oftaboo-mongers come in to obscure that plain natural duty. Do rightfirst; let all else go. For one of yourselves, a poet of your own, hassaid truly:
'Because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.'"
Frida looked up at him with admiration in her big black eyes. She hadfound the truth, and the truth had made her free.
"O Bertram," she cried with a tremor, "it's good to be like you. I feltfrom the very first how infinitely you differed from the men about me.You seemed so much greater and higher and nobler. How grateful I oughtto be to Robert Monteith for having spoken to me yesterday and forbiddenme to see you! for if he hadn't, you might never have kissed melast night, and then I might never have seen things as I see them atpresent."
There was another long pause; for the best things we each say to theother are said in the pauses. Then Frida relapsed once more into speech:"But what about the children?" she asked rather timidly.
Bertram looked puzzled. "Why, what about the children?" he repeated in acurious way. "What difference on earth could that make to the children?"
"Can I bring them with me, I mean?" Frida asked, a little tremulous forthe reply. "I couldn't bear to leave them. Even for you, dear Bertram, Icould never desert them."
Bertram gazed at her dismayed. "Leave them!" he cried. "Why, Frida, ofcourse you could never leave them. Do you mean to say anybody would beso utterly unnatural, even in England, as to separate a mother from herown children?"
"I don't think Robert would let me keep them," Frida faltered, withtears in her eyes; "and if he didn't, the law, of course, would take hisside against me."
"Of course!" Bertram answered, with grim sarcasm in his face, "ofcourse! I might have guessed it. If there IS an injustice or a barbaritypossible, I might have been sure the law of England would make hasteto perpetrate it. But you needn't fear, Frida. Long before the law ofEngland could be put in motion, I'll have completed my arrangements fortaking you--and them too--with me. There are advantages sometimes evenin the barbaric delay of what your lawyers are facetiously pleased tocall justice."
"Then I may bring them with me?" Frida cried, flushing red.
Bertram nodded assent. "Yes," he said, with grave gentleness. "You maybring them with you. And as soon as you like, too. Remember, dearest,every night you pass under that creature's roof, you commit the vilestcrime a woman can commit against her own purity."