Equality Page 6

  CHAPTER VI.

  HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE.

  When we reached the house the doctor said:

  "I am going to leave you to Edith this morning. The fact is, my duties asmentor, while extremely to my taste, are not quite a sinecure. Thequestions raised in our talks frequently suggest the necessity ofrefreshing my general knowledge of the contrasts between your day andthis by looking up the historical authorities. The conversation thismorning has indicated lines of research which will keep me busy in thelibrary the rest of the day."

  I found Edith in the garden, and received her congratulations upon myfully fledged citizenship. She did not seem at all surprised on learningmy intention promptly to find a place in the industrial service.

  "Of course you will want to enter the service as soon as you can," shesaid. "I knew you would. It is the only way to get in touch with thepeople and feel really one of the nation. It is the great event we alllook forward to from childhood."

  "Talking of industrial service," I said, "reminds me of a question it hasa dozen times occurred to me to ask you. I understand that everyone whois able to do so, women as well as men, serves the nation from twenty-oneto forty-five years of age in some useful occupation; but so far as Ihave seen, although you are the picture of health and vigor, you have noemployment, but are quite like young ladies of elegant leisure in my day,who spent their time sitting in the parlor and looking handsome. Ofcourse, it is highly agreeable to me that you should be so free, but how,exactly, is so much leisure on your part squared with the universalobligation of service?"

  Edith was greatly amused. "And so you thought I was shirking? Had it notoccurred to you that there might probably be such things as vacations orfurloughs in the industrial service, and that the rather unusual andinteresting guest in our household might furnish a natural occasion forme to take an outing if I could get it?"

  "And can you take your vacation when you please?"

  "We can take a portion of it when we please, always subject, of course,to the needs of the service."

  "But what do you do when you are at work--teach school, paint china, keepbooks for the Government, stand behind a counter in the public stores, oroperate a typewriter or telegraph wire?"

  "Does that list exhaust the number of women's occupations in your day?"

  "Oh, no; those were only some of their lighter and pleasanteroccupations. Women were also the scrubbers, the washers, the servants ofall work. The most repulsive and humiliating kinds of drudgery were putoff upon the women of the poorer class; but I suppose, of course, you donot do any such work."

  "You may be sure that I do my part of whatever unpleasant things thereare to do, and so does every one in the nation; but, indeed, we have longago arranged affairs so that there is very little such work to do. But,tell me, were there no women in your day who were machinists, farmers,engineers, carpenters, iron workers, builders, engine drivers, or membersof the other great crafts?"

  "There were no women in such occupations. They were followed by menonly."

  "I suppose I knew that," she said; "I have read as much; but it isstrange to talk with a man of the nineteenth century who is so much likea man of to-day and realize that the women were so different as to seemlike another order of beings."

  "But, really," said I, "I don't understand how in these respects thewomen can do very differently now unless they are physically muchstronger. Most of these occupations you have just mentioned were tooheavy for their strength, and for that reason, largely, were limited tomen, as I should suppose they must still be."

  "There is not a trade or occupation in the whole list," replied Edith,"in which women do not take part. It is partly because we are physicallymuch more vigorous than the poor creatures of your time that we do thesorts of work that were too heavy for them, but it is still more anaccount of the perfection of machinery. As we have grown stronger, allsorts of work have grown lighter. Almost no heavy work is done directlynow; machines do all, and we only need to guide them, and the lighter thehand that guides, the better the work done. So you see that nowadaysphysical qualities have much less to do than mental with the choice ofoccupations. The mind is constantly getting nearer to the work, andfather says some day we may be able to work by sheer will power directlyand have no need of hands at all. It is said that there are actually morewomen than men in great machine works. My mother was first lieutenant ina great iron works. Some have a theory that the sense of power which onehas in controlling giant engines appeals to women's sensibilities evenmore than to men's. But really it is not quite fair to make you guesswhat my occupation is, for I have not fully decided on it."

  "But you said you were already at work."

  "Oh, yes, but you know that before we choose our life occupation we arethree years in the unclassified or miscellaneous class of workers. I amin my second year in that class."

  "What do you do?"

  "A little of everything and nothing long. The idea is to give us duringthat period a little practical experience in all the main departments ofwork, so that we may know better how and what to choose as an occupation.We are supposed to have got through with the schools before we enter thisclass, but really I have learned more since I have been at work than intwice the time spent in school. You can not imagine how perfectlydelightful this grade of work is. I don't wonder some people prefer tostay in it all their lives for the sake of the constant change in tasks,rather than elect a regular occupation. Just now I am among theagricultural workers on the great farm near Lexington. It is delightful,and I have about made up my mind to choose farm work as an occupation.That is what I had in mind when I asked you to guess my trade. Do youthink you would ever have guessed that?"

  "I don't think I ever should, and unless the conditions of farm work havegreatly changed since my day I can not imagine how you could manage it ina woman's costume."

  Edith regarded me for a moment with an expression of simple surprise, hereyes growing large. Then her glance fell to her dress, and when she againlooked up her expression had changed to one which was at once meditative,humorous, and wholly inscrutable. Presently she said:

  "Have you not observed, my dear Julian, that the dress of the women yousee on the streets is different from that which women wore in thenineteenth century?"

  "I have noticed, of course, that they generally wear no skirts, but youand your mother dress as women did in my day."

  "And has it not occurred to you to wonder why our dress was not liketheirs--why we wear skirts and they do not?"

  "Possibly that has occurred to me among the thousand other questions thatevery day arise in my mind, only to be driven out by a thousand othersbefore I can ask them; but I think in this case I should have ratherwondered why these other women did not dress as you do instead of why youdid not dress as they do, for your costume, being the one I wasaccustomed to, naturally struck me as the normal type, and this otherstyle as a variation for some special or local reason which I shouldlater learn about. You must not think me altogether stupid. To tell thetruth, these other women have as yet scarcely impressed me as being veryreal. You were at first the only person about whose reality I feltentirely sure. All the others seemed merely parts of a fantastic farragoof wonders, more or less possible, which is only just beginning to becomeintelligible and coherent. In time I should doubtless have awakened tothe fact that there were other women in the world besides yourself andbegun to make inquiries about them."

  As I spoke of the absoluteness with which I had depended on her duringthose first bewildering days for the assurance even of my own identitythe quick tears rushed to my companion's eyes, and--well, for a space theother women were more completely forgotten than ever.

  Presently she said: "What were we talking about? Oh, yes,I remember--about those other women. I have a confession to make. I havebeen guilty toward you all this time of a sort of fraud, or at least of aflagrant suppression of the truth, which ought not to be kept up a momentlonger. I sincerely hope you will forgive me, in considerati
on of mymotive, and not----"

  "Not what?"

  "Not be too much startled."

  "You make me very curious," I said. "What is this mystery? I think I canstand the disclosure."

  "Listen, then," she said. "That wonderful night when we saw you first, ofcourse our great thought was to avoid agitating you when you shouldrecover full consciousness by any more evidence of the amazing thingsthat had happened since your day than it was necessary you should see. Weknew that in your time the use of long skirts by women was universal, andwe reflected that to see mother and me in the modern dress would no doubtstrike you very strangely. Now, you see, although skirtless costumes arethe general--indeed, almost universal--wear for most occasions, allpossible costumes, ancient and modern, of all races, ages, andcivilizations, are either provided or to be obtained on the shortestpossible notice at the stores. It was therefore very easy for us tofurnish ourselves with the old-style dress before father introduced youto us. He said people had in your day such strange ideas of femininemodesty and propriety that it would be the best way to do. Can youforgive us, Julian, for taking such an advantage of your ignorance?"

  "Edith," I said, "there were a great many institutions of the nineteenthcentury which we tolerated because we did not know how to get rid ofthem, without, however, having a bit better opinion of them than youhave, and one of them was the costume by means of which our women used todisguise and cripple themselves."

  "I am delighted!" exclaimed Edith. "I perfectly detest these horriblebags, and will not wear them a moment longer!" And bidding me wait whereI was, she ran into the house.

  Five minutes, perhaps, I waited there in the arbor, where we had beensitting, and then, at a light step on the grass, looked up to see Edithwith eyes of smiling challenge standing before me in modern dress. I haveseen her in a hundred varieties of that costume since then, and havegrown familiar with the exhaustless diversity of its adaptations, but Idefy the imagination of the greatest artist to devise a scheme of colorand fabric that would again produce upon me the effect of enchantingsurprise which I received from that quite simple and hasty toilet.

  I don't know how long I stood looking at her without a thought of words,my eyes meanwhile no doubt testifying eloquently enough how adorable Ifound her. She seemed, however, to divine more than that in myexpression, for presently she exclaimed:

  "I would give anything to know what you are thinking down in the bottomof your mind! It must be something awfully funny. What are you turning sored for?"

  "I am blushing for myself," I said, and that is all I would tell her,much as she teased me. Now, at this distance of time I may tell thetruth. My first sentiment, apart from overwhelming admiration, had been aslight astonishment at her absolute ease and composure of bearing undermy gaze. This is a confession that may well seem incomprehensible totwentieth-century readers, and God forbid that they should ever catch thepoint of view which would enable them to understand it better! A woman ofmy day, unless professionally accustomed to use this sort of costume,would have seemed embarrassed and ill at ease, at least for a time, undera gaze so intent as mine, even though it were a brother's or a father's.I, it seems, had been prepared for at least some slight appearance ofdiscomposure on Edith's part, and was consciously surprised at a mannerwhich simply expressed an ingenuous gratification at my admiration. Irefer to this momentary experience because it has always seemed to me toillustrate in a particularly vivid way the change that has taken placenot only in the customs but in the mental attitude of the sexes as toeach other since my former life. In justice to myself I must hasten toadd that this first feeling of surprise vanished even as it arose, in amoment, between two heart-beats. I caught from her clear, serene eyes theview point of the modern man as to woman, never again to lose it. Then itwas that I flushed red with shame for myself. Wild horses could not havedragged from me the secret of that blush at the time, though I have toldher long ago.

  "I was thinking," I said, and I was thinking so, too, "that we ought tobe greatly obliged to twentieth-century women for revealing for the firsttime the artistic possibilities of the masculine dress."

  "The masculine dress," she repeated, as if not quite comprehending mymeaning. "Do you mean my dress?"

  "Why, yes; it is a man's dress I suppose, is it not?"

  "Why any more than a woman's?" she answered rather blankly. "Ah, yes, Iactually forgot for a moment whom I was talking to. I see; so it wasconsidered a man's dress in your day, when the women masqueraded asmermaids. You may think me stupid not to catch your idea more quickly,but I told you I was dull at history. It is now two full generationssince women as well as men have worn this dress, and the idea ofassociating it with men more than women would occur to no one but aprofessor of history. It strikes us merely as the only natural andconvenient solution of the dress necessity, which is essentially the samefor both sexes, since their bodily conformation is on the same generallines."