Herland

“Oh – we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us.”

“But eternal life goes on WITHOUT DYING.”

“The same person?”

“Yes, the same person, unending, immortal.” I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated.

“Here?” asked Ellador. “Never to die – here?” I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her.

“Oh no, indeed, not here – hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we ‘enter into eternal life.’ The soul lives forever.”

“How do you know?” she inquired.

“I won’t attempt to prove it to you,” I hastily continued. “Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?”

Again she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. “Shall I be quite, quite honest?”

“You couldn’t be anything else,” I said, half gladly and half a little sorry. The transparent honesty of these women was a never-ending astonishment to me.

“It seems to me a singularly foolish idea,” she said calmly. “And if true, most disagreeable.”

Now I had always accepted the doctrine of personal immortality as a thing established. The efforts of inquiring spiritualists, always seeking to woo their beloved ghosts back again, never seemed to me necessary. I don’t say I had ever seriously and courageously discussed the subject with myself even; I had simply assumed it to be a fact. And here was the girl I loved, this creature whose character constantly revealed new heights and ranges far beyond my own, this superwoman of a superland, saying she thought immortality foolish! She meant it, too.

“What do you WANT it for?” she asked.

“How can you NOT want it!” I protested. “Do you want to go out like a candle? Don’t you want to go on and on – growing and – and – being happy, forever?”

“Why, no,” she said. “I don’t in the least. I want my child – and my child’s child – to go on – and they will. Why should I want to?”

“But it means Heaven!” I insisted. “Peace and Beauty and Comfort and Love – with God.” I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality – that was surely a noble faith.

“Why, Van,” she said, holding out her hands to me. “Why Van – darling! How splendid of you to feel it so keenly. That’s what we all want, of course – Peace and Beauty, and Comfort and Love – with God! And Progress too, remember; Growth, always and always. That is what our religion teaches us to want and to work for, and we do!”

“But that is HERE,” I said, “only for this life on earth.”

“Well? And do not you in your country, with your beautiful religion of love and service have it here, too – for this life – on earth?”

None of us were willing to tell the women of Herland about the evils of our own beloved land. It was all very well for us to assume them to be necessary and essential, and to criticize – strictly among ourselves – their all-too-perfect civilization, but when it came to telling them about the failures and wastes of our own, we never could bring ourselves to do it.

Moreover, we sought to avoid too much discussion, and to press the subject of our approaching marriages.

Jeff was the determined one on this score.

“Of course they haven’t any marriage ceremony or service, but we can make it a sort of Quaker wedding, and have it in the temple – it is the least we can do for them.”

It was. There was so little, after all, that we could do for them. Here we were, penniless guests and strangers, with no chance even to use our strength and courage – nothing to defend them from or protect them against.

“We can at least give them our names,” Jeff insisted.

They were very sweet about it, quite willing to do whatever we asked, to please us. As to the names, Alima, frank soul that she was, asked what good it would do.

Terry, always irritating her, said it was a sign of possession. “You are going to be Mrs. Nicholson,” he said. “Mrs. T. O. Nicholson. That shows everyone that you are my wife.”

“What is a ‘wife’ exactly?” she demanded, a dangerous gleam in her eye.

“A wife is the woman who belongs to a man,” he began.

But Jeff took it up eagerly: “And a husband is the man who belongs to a woman. It is because we are monogamous, you know. And marriage is the ceremony, civil and religious, that joins the two together – ‘until death do us part,’” he finished, looking at Celis with unutterable devotion.

“What makes us all feel foolish,” I told the girls, “is that here we have nothing to give you – except, of course, our names.”

“Do your women have no names before they are married?” Celis suddenly demanded.

“Why, yes,” Jeff explained. “They have their maiden names – their father’s names, that is.”

“And what becomes of them?” asked Alima.

“They change them for their husbands’, my dear,” Terry answered her.

“Change them? Do the husbands then take the wives’ ‘maiden names’?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “The man keeps his own and gives it to her, too.”

“Then she just loses hers and takes a new one – how unpleasant! We won’t do that!” Alima said decidedly.

Terry was good-humored about it. “I don’t care what you do or don’t do so long as we have that wedding pretty soon,” he said, reaching a strong brown hand after Alima’s, quite as brown and nearly as strong.

“As to giving us things – of course we can see that you’d like to, but we are glad you can’t,” Celis continued. “You see, we love you just for yourselves – we wouldn’t want you to – to pay anything. Isn’t it enough to know that you are loved personally – and just as men?”

Enough or not, that was the way we were married. We had a great triple wedding in the biggest temple of all, and it looked as if most of the nation was present. It was very solemn and very beautiful. Someone had written a new song for the occasion, nobly beautiful, about the New Hope for their people – the New Tie with other lands – Brotherhood as well as Sisterhood, and, with evident awe, Fatherhood.

Terry was always restive under their talk of fatherhood. “Anybody’d think we were High Priests of – of Philoprogenitiveness!” he protested. “These women think of NOTHING but children, seems to me! We’ll teach ‘em!”

He was so certain of what he was going to teach, and Alima so uncertain in her moods of reception, that Jeff and I feared the worst. We tried to caution him – much good that did. The big handsome fellow drew himself up to his full height, lifted that great chest of his, and laughed.

“There are three separate marriages,” he said. “I won’t interfere with yours – nor you with mine.”

So the great day came, and the countless crowds of women, and we three bridegrooms without any supporting “best men,” or any other men to back us up, felt strangely small as we came forward.

Somel and Zava and Moadine were on hand; we were thankful to have them, too – they seemed almost like relatives.

There was a splendid procession, wreathing dances, the new anthem I spoke of, and the whole great place pulsed with feeling – the deep awe, the sweet hope, the wondering expectation of a new miracle.

“There has been nothing like this in the country since our Motherhood began!” Somel said softly to me, while we watched the symbolic marches. “You see, it is the dawn of a new era. You don’t know how much you mean to us. It is not only Fatherhood – that marvelous dual parentage to which we are strangers – the miracle of union in life-giving – but it is Brotherhood. You are the rest of the world. You join us to our kind – to all the strange lands and peoples we have never seen. We hope to know them – to love and help them – and to learn of them. Ah! You cannot know!”

Thousands of voices rose in the soaring climax of that great Hymn of The Coming Life. By the great Altar of Motherhood, with its crown of fruit and flowers, stood a new one, crowned as well. Before the Great Over Mother of the Land and her ring of High Temple Counsellors, before that vast multitude of calm-faced mothers and holy-eyed maidens, came forward our own three chosen ones, and we, three men alone in all that land, joined hands with them and made our marriage vows.

CHAPTER 11. Our Difficulties