§ 12

this conversation was a cardinal event in joan’s life. wilmington’s suggestions raised out of the grave of forgetfulness and incorporated with themselves a conversation she had had long ago with adela—one christmas at pelham ford when adela had been in love with sopwith greene. adela too had maintained that it was the business of a woman to choose her man and not wait to be chosen, and that it was the woman who had to make love. “a man’s in love with women in general,” had been adela’s idea, “but women fall in love with men in particular.” adela had used a queer phrase, “it’s for a woman to find her own man and keep him and take care of him.” men had to do their own work; they couldn’t think about love as women were obliged by nature to think about love. “love’s just a trouble to a real man, like a mosquito singing in his ear, until some woman takes care of him.”

all those ideas came back now to joan’s mind, and she did her best to consider them and judge them as generalizations. but indeed she judged with a packed court, and all her being clamoured warmly for her to “get” peter, to “take care”—most admirable phrase—of peter. her decision was made, and still she argued with herself. was it beneath her dignity to set out and capture her peter?—he 494was her peter. only he didn’t know it. she tried to generalize. had it ever been dignified for a woman to wait until a man discovered her possible love? was that at best anything more than the dignity of the mannequin?

three-quarters at least of the art and literature of the world is concerned with the relations of the sexes, and yet here was joan, after thirty centuries or so of human art and literature, still debating the elementary facts of her being. there is so much excitement in our art and literature and so little light. the world has still to discover the scope and vastness of its educational responsibilities. most of its teaching in these matters hitherto has been less in the nature of enlightenment than strategic concealment; we have given the young neither knowledge nor training, we have restrained and baffled them and told them lies. and then we have inflamed them. we have abused their instinctive trust when they were children with stories of old bogey designed to save us the bother that unrestrained youthful enterprise might cause, and with humorous mockery of their natural curiosity. jocularities about storks and gooseberry bushes, sham indignations at any plainness of speech, fierce punishments of imperfectly realized offences, this against a background of giggles, knowing innuendo, and careless, exciting glimpses of the mystery, have constituted the ordinary initiation of the youth of the world. right up to full age, we still fail to provide the clear elemental facts. our young men do not know for certain whether continence is healthy or unhealthy, possible or impossible; the sex is still assured with all our power of assurance, that the only pure and proper life for it is a sexless one. until at last the brightest of the young have been obliged to get down to the bare facts in themselves and begin again at the beginning....

so joan, co-heiress of the ages with peter, found that because of her defaulting trustees, because we teachers, divines, writers and the like have shirked what was disagreeable and difficult and unpopular, she inherited nothing but debts and dangers. she had not even that touching faith in nature which sustained the generation of jean jacques rousseau. she had to set about her problem with peter as though he and she were eve and adam in a garden overrun 495with weeds and thorns into which god had never come.

joan was too young yet to have developed the compensating egotism of thwarted femininity. she saw peter without delusions. he was a bigger and cleverer creature than herself; he compelled her respect. he had more strength, more invention, more initiative, and a relatively tremendous power of decision. and at the same time he was weak and blind and stupid. his flickering, unstable sensuousness, his light adventurousness and a certain dishonesty about women, filled her with a comprehensive pity and contempt. there was a real difference not merely in scale but in nature between them. it was clear to her now that the passionate and essential realities of a woman’s life are only incidental to a man. but on the other hand there were passionate and essential realities for peter that made her own seem narrow and self-centred. she knew far more of his mental life than oswald did. she knew that he had an intense passion for clear statement, he held to scientific and political judgments with a power altogether deeper and greater than she did; he cared for them and criticized them and polished them, like weapons that had been entrusted to him. beneath his debonair mask he was growing into a strong and purposeful social and mental personality. she perceived that he was only in the beginning of his growth—if he came on no misadventure, if he did not waste himself. and she did not believe that she herself had any great power of further growth except through him. but linked to him she could keep pace with him. she could capture his senses, keep his conscience, uphold him....

she had convinced herself now that that was her chief business in life.

her mind was remarkably free from doubts about the future if once she could get at her peter. mountains and forests of use and wont separated them, she knew. peter had acquired a habit of not making love to her and of separating her from the thought of love. but if ever peter came over these mountains, if ever he came through the forest to her—— in the heart of the forest, she would keep him. she wasn’t afraid that peter would leave her again. wilmington had been wrong there. that he had suggested 496in the bitterness of his heart. men like huntley and winterbaum were always astray, but peter was not “looking for women.” he was just a lost man, distracted by desire, desire that was strong because he was energetic, desire that was mischievous and unmeaning because he had lost his way in these things.

“i don’t care so very much how long it takes, peter; i don’t care what it costs me,” said joan, getting her rôle clear at last. “i don’t even care—not vitally anyhow—how you wander by the way. no. because you’re my man, peter, and i am your woman. because so it was written in the beginning. but you are coming over those mountains, my peter, though they go up to the sky; you are coming through the forests though i have to make a path for you. you are coming to my arms, peter ... coming to me....”

so joan framed her schemes, regardless of the swift approach of the day of battle for peter. she was resolved to lose nothing by neglect or delay, but also she meant to do nothing precipitate. to begin with she braced herself to the disagreeable task of really thinking—instead of just feeling—about hetty. she compared herself deliberately point by point with hetty. long ago at pelham ford she had challenged hetty—and peter had come out of the old library in spite of hetty to watch her dancing. she was younger, she was fresher and cleaner, she was a ray of sunlight to hetty’s flames. hetty was good company—perhaps. but peter and joan had always been good company for each other, interested in a score of common subjects, able to play the same games and run abreast. but hetty was “easy.” there was her strength. between her and peter there were no barriers, and between joan and peter was a blank wall, a stern taboo upon the primary among youthful interests, a long habit of aloofness, dating from the days when “soppy” was the ultimate word in the gamut of human scorn.

“it’s just like that,” said joan.

those barriers had to be broken down, without a shock. and before that problem joan maintained a frowning, unsuccessful siege. she couldn’t begin to flirt with peter. she couldn’t make eyes at him. such things would be intolerable. she couldn’t devise any sort of signal. and so 497how the devil was this business ever to begin? and while she wrestled vainly with this perplexity she remained more boyish, more good-fellow and companion with peter than ever....

and while she was still meditating quite fruitlessly on this riddle of changing her relationship to peter, he was snatched away from her to france.

the thing happened quite unexpectedly. he came up to see her at hampstead late in the afternoon—it was by a mere chance she was back early. he was full of pride at being chosen to go so soon. he seemed brightly excited at going, keen for the great adventure, the most lovable and animated of peters—and he might be going to his death. but it was the convention of the time never to think of death, and anyhow never to speak of it. some engagement held him for the evening, some final farewell spree; she did not ask too particularly what that was. she could guess only too well. altogether they were about five-and-twenty minutes together, with miss jepson always in the room with them; for the most part they talked air shop; and then he prepared to leave with all her scheming still at loose ends in the air. “well,” he said, “good-bye, old joan,” and held out his hand.

“no,” said joan, with a sudden resolution in her eyes. “this time we kiss, peter.”

“well,” said peter, astonished.

she had surprised him. he stared at her for an instant with a half-framed question in his eyes. and then they kissed very gravely and carefully. but she kissed him on the mouth.

for some seconds solemnity hung about them. then peter turned upon miss jepson. “do you want a kiss?” said peter....

miss jepson was all for kissing, and then with a laugh and an effect of escape peter had gone ... into the outer world ... into the outer air....

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