"It's dirty work," Flossie confided one day to Madge Singleton. "Itrade on my silly face. Don't see that I'm much different to any of these poor devils." They were walking home in the evening from a theatre. "If I hadn't been stony broke I'd never have taken it up. I shall get out of it as soon as I can afford to.""I should make it a bit sooner than that," suggested the elder woman. "One can't always stop oneself just where one wants to when sliding down a slope. It has a knack of getting steeper and steeper as one goes on."Madge had asked Joan to come a little earlier so that they could have a chat together before the others arrived.
"I've only asked a few," she explained, as she led Joan into the restful white-panelled sitting-room that looked out upon the gardens. Madge shared a set of chambers in Gray's Inn with her brother who was an actor. "But I have chosen them with care."Joan murmured her thanks.
"I haven't asked any men," she added, as she fixed Joan in an easy chair before the fire. "I was afraid of its introducing the wrong element.""Tell me," asked Joan, "am I likely to meet with much of that sort of thing?""Oh, about as much as there always is wherever men and women work together," answered Madge. "It's a nuisance, but it has to be faced.""Nature appears to have only one idea in her head," she continued after a pause, "so far as we men and women are concerned. She's been kinder to the lower animals.""Man has more interests," Joan argued, "a thousand other allurements to distract him; we must cultivate his finer instincts.""It doesn't seem to answer," grumbled Madge. "One is always told it is the artist--the brain worker, the very men who have these fine instincts, who are the most sexual."She made a little impatient movement with her hands that was characteristic of her. "Personally, I like men," she went on. "It is so splendid the way they enjoy life: just like a dog does, whether it's wet or fine. We are always blinking up at the clouds and worrying about our hat. It would be so nice to be able to have friendship with them.
"I don't mean that it's all their fault," she continued. "We do all we can to attract them--the way we dress. Who was it said that to every woman every man is a potential lover. We can't get it out of our minds. It's there even when we don't know it. We will never succeed in civilizing Nature.""We won't despair of her," laughed Joan. "She's creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her. We have passed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes. Now we dare to criticize her. That shows we are growing up. She will learn from us, later on. She's a dear old thing, at heart.""She's been kind enough to you," replied Madge, somewhat irrelevantly. There was a note of irritation in her tone. "Isuppose you know you are supremely beautiful. You seem so indifferent to it, I wonder sometimes if you do.""I'm not indifferent to it," answered Joan. "I'm reckoning on it to help me.""Why not?" she continued, with a flash of defiance, though Madge had not spoken. "It is a weapon like any other--knowledge, intellect, courage. God has given me beauty. I shall use it in His service."They formed a curious physical contrast, these two women in this moment. Joan, radiant, serene, sat upright in her chair, her head slightly thrown back, her fine hands clasping one another so strongly that the delicate muscles could be traced beneath the smooth white skin. Madge, with puckered brows, leant forward in a crouching attitude, her thin nervous hands stretched out towards the fire.
"How does one know when one is serving God?" she asked after a pause, apparently rather of herself than of Joan. "It seems so difficult.""One feels it," explained Joan.
"Yes, but didn't they all feel it," Madge suggested. She still seemed to be arguing with herself rather than with Joan.
"Nietzsche. I have been reading him. They are forming a Nietzsche Society to give lectures about him--propagate him over here.
Eleanor's in it up to the neck. It seems to me awful. Every fibre in my being revolts against him. Yet they're all cocksure that he is the coming prophet. He must have convinced himself that he is serving God. If I were a fighter I should feel I was serving God trying to down Him. How do I know which of us is right?
Torquemada--Calvin," she went on, without giving Joan the chance of a reply. "It's easy enough to see they were wrong now. But at the time millions of people believed in them--felt it was God's voice speaking through them. Joan of Arc! Fancy dying to put a thing like that upon a throne. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
You can say she drove out the English--saved France. But for what?
The Bartholomew massacres. The ruin of the Palatinate by Louis XIV. The horrors of the French Revolution, ending with Napoleon and all the misery and degeneracy that he bequeathed to Europe.
History might have worked itself out so much better if the poor child had left it alone and minded her sheep.""Wouldn't that train of argument lead to nobody ever doing anything?" suggested Joan.
"I suppose it would mean stagnation," admitted Madge. "And yet Idon't know. Are there not forces moving towards right that are crying to us to help them, not by violence, which only interrupts--delays them, but by quietly preparing the way for them? You know what I mean. Erasmus always said that Luther had hindered the Reformation by stirring up passion and hate." She broke off suddenly. There were tears in her eyes. "Oh, if God would only say what He wants of us," she almost cried; "call to us in trumpet tones that would ring through the world, compelling us to take sides. Why can't He speak?""He does," answered Joan. "I hear His voice. There are things I've got to do. Wrongs that I must fight against. Rights that Imust never dare to rest till they are won." Her lips were parted.