“I am a free woman!” said Miss Wentworth.
I was not clear as to the pertinence of her claim, which was uttered almost hysterically.
“There is also,” I said, “the test of life consequences. For example, what are the effects of one modality of life as opposed to another? Suppose one way of life reduces vitality, produces unhappiness, boredom, even misery, and anomie, a sense of meaninglessness, and another modality of life increases vitality, enhances life, produces happiness, charges one with energy, gives meaningfulness to one’s existence, and so on. Which is to be preferred?”
“I am a free woman!” she cried.
I was not disputing that. I wondered at her outburst.
She was still, of course, in her tunic.
Perhaps that was what motivated her outburst. Perhaps she wanted to utter something which might seem to belie her appearance, an appearance which doubtless made her uneasy, or somehow troubled her. Certainly Pertinax and I had no difficulty in accepting that she was a free woman. It did not seem, then, that she should be trying to convince us of that. Who then was she trying to convince? Pertinax naturally, from his background, I supposed, the antecedents of our situation, and so on, would think of her as a free woman. And I, too, thought of her as a free woman, particularly in view of her awkwardness, clumsiness, stiffness, and such, to say nothing of her manifest psychological and emotional problems. The contrast with Cecily was obvious. Cecily, now, not only accepted her sex, but rejoiced in it. At a man’s feet, owned, and mastered, she had found herself.
She had wanted to end her confusions and conflicts, and had discovered the sweetness and wholeness of a total surrender to the male, her master.
She kissed his feet and became herself.
“I am a free woman,” said Miss Wentworth, “a free woman, a free woman!”
“Of course,” I said.
“I wonder,” said Pertinax, thoughtfully.
Pertinax’s remark surprised me. I had not expected it.
“What?” cried Miss Wentworth.
“In the offices, amongst the desks,” said he, “did I not imagine you often not in your svelte business wear, and high heels, so chic and yet so provocative, so arrogantly, insolently, calculatedly, deliberately provocative, but rather barefoot on the carpeting, naked and collared?”
“You beast, White!” she screamed.
“You will address me as Pertinax,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“There is no ship,” he said. “Much has changed.”
“There will be a ship!” she cried. “Nothing has changed!”
“I have changed,” he said.
I had the thought, now, that Pertinax might leave a hut, to look after a trussed property, even were a sleen in the vicinity.
And certainly a property, helplessly trussed, lying outside in the darkness, might fervently hope that he might do so.
“I trust,” said Miss Wentworth to Pertinax, “you are not toying with contemplating the possible meaning of your bestial strength, that you are not tempted to acknowledge your desires.”
Pertinax regarded her, angrily.
How fortunate she was that he was not Gorean!
“Your strength and desires must be ignored,” said Miss Wentworth. “It is best if you can convince yourself that they do not exist. Struggle desperately to do that. If that is not possible, you must put them to the side. One must choose sorrow and righteous grief over opportunity and gratification.”
Yes, very fortunate.
“Why?” asked Pertinax.
“Because you are of Earth!” she said.
“Perhaps an Earth which has too long ignored certain truths,” he said, “an Earth in sorry need of recollection, of reformation.”
“You are a cultural artifact,” she said, “engineered to conform to imposed standards, as much as an envelope or motor.”
“No,” he said, “I am a man.”
“A cultural construct!” she said. “A manufactured product, designed to cohere with a complex set of systematically interrelated roles.”
“Surely,” I said, “a test of cultural value should have some relevance to the happiness and fulfillment of human beings.”
“No,” she said.
“To what then?” I asked.
“To the culture itself,” she said, “its prolongation.”
“I see,” I said.
A culture did seem to have its own dynamics, its own life, a life, a biography, to which the welfare or happiness of its components might be only indirectly related, if at all. A plant was organic, and the health of the plant assured the health of its components. A culture, on the other hand, though it might crumble and lapse into obsolescence, was commonly not organic, but mechanistic, and the functioning of the machine required not the happiness, health, or welfare of its parts, but only that they functioned appropriately, contributing to the pointless longevity of the machine itself.
“Is there no such thing as nature?” I asked. “Is there only misery, prisons, guns, and hatred?”
“Nature does not exist,” she said.
“You cannot be serious,” I said.
“It does not exist in any important sense,” she said.
“If not,” I said, “why must it be so fiercely contested, so strenuously fought against?”
“It is inimical to civilization,” she said.
“Only to unnatural civilizations,” I said.
“All civilizations are unnatural,” she said.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “There is no reason why a civilization cannot be an expression of nature, rather than her enemy, in its way an enhancement of nature, a celebration of nature.”
“There are no such civilizations!” she said.
“There have been several,” I said.
“None now!” she cried.
“I know of at least one,” I said.
“No!” she said. “No, no, no!”
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
“I am not afraid!” she cried. She pulled down, desperately, at the hem of her tunic, with both hands. “Do not look at me so!” she cried to Pertinax.
“There is no ship,” said Pertinax.
I think Pertinax had begun to sense how a woman might be viewed, particularly one in such a tunic.
Women were not men.
They were quite different.
“Do not look at me so!” she said to Pertinax. “Are you some boor, or brute? Have you not been educated?”
“I was not educated,” said Pertinax. “I was trained, indoctrinated. Perhaps only now has my education begun.”
“Beast!” she cried.
“What of the test of life consequences?” I asked.
“I do not understand!” she wept.
“Does the mastery not fill a man with power,” I asked, “with zest, with vitality, with a sense of reality and identity, with a sense of fittingness, with a sense of being himself, with a sense at last of being a part of nature rather than a dislocated, lost, wandering fragment shorn from her?”
“Why have we not been brought before Lord Nishida!” she cried.
“The mastery fulfills a man,” I said. “What man is complete until he has at his feet a slave?”
“A slave! Oh, yes, a slave!” laughed Miss Wentworth, scornfully.
Then she turned to Cecily.
“Slave!” she said.
“Mistress?” said Cecily.
“You are a slave, are you not?” asked Miss Wentworth.
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cecily, frightened.
Surely Miss Wentworth could see that her fair throat was enclosed in the circlet of bondage.
“Worthless, degraded, meaningless, naked slave!” said Miss