The first five daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of holy calm, of awed watchful waiting, of breathless prayer. To them the longed-for motherhood was not only a personal joy, but a nation's hope. Their twenty-five daughters in turn, with a stronger hope, a richer, wider outlook, with the devoted love and care of all the surviving population, grew up as a holy sisterhood, their whole ardent youth looking forward to their great office.
And at last they were left alone; the white-haired First Mother was gone, and this one family, five sisters, twenty-five first cousins, and a hundred and twenty-five second cousins, began a new race.
Here you have human beings, unquestionably, but what we were slow in understanding was how these ultra-women, inheriting only from women, had eliminated not only certain masculine characteristics, which of course we did not look for, but so much of what we had always thought essentially feminine.
The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out. These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection. As to wild beasts--there were none in their sheltered land.
The power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly laud, was theirs of course, raised to its highest power;and a sister-love which, even while recognizing the actual relationship, we found it hard to credit.
Terry, incredulous, even contemptuous, when we were alone, refused to believe the story. "A lot of traditions as old as Herodotus--and about as trustworthy!" he said. "It's likely women--just a pack of women--would have hung together like that! We all know women can't organize--that they scrap like anything--are frightfully jealous.""But these New Ladies didn't have anyone to be jealous of, remember," drawled Jeff.
"That's a likely story," Terry sneered.
"Why don't you invent a likelier one?" I asked him.
"Here ARE the women--nothing but women, and you yourself admit there's no trace of a man in the country." This was after we had been about a good deal.
"I'll admit that," he growled. "And it's a big miss, too. There's not only no fun without 'em--no real sport--no competition; but these women aren't WOMANLY. You know they aren't."That kind of talk always set Jeff going; and I gradually grew to side with him. "Then you don't call a breed of women whose one concern is motherhood--womanly?" he asked.
"Indeed I don't," snapped Terry. "What does a man care for motherhood--when he hasn't a ghost of a chance at fatherhood?
And besides--what's the good of talking sentiment when we are just men together? What a man wants of women is a good deal more than all this `motherhood'!"We were as patient as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine months among the "Colonels" when he made that outburst;and with no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave us--save for our escape fiasco. I don't suppose Terry had ever lived so long with neither Love, Combat, nor Danger to employ his superabundant energies, and he was irritable.
Neither Jeff nor I found it so wearing. I was so much interested intellectually that our confinement did not wear on me; and as for Jeff, bless his heart!--he enjoyed the society of that tutor of his almost as much as if she had been a girl--I don't know but more.
As to Terry's criticism, it was true. These women, whose essential distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call "femininity." This led me very promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity--developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such conclusion.
"Just you wait till I get out!" he muttered.
