One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl, she’s bold! I thought
you knew more than a girl ought to know: until—you did
—you set my heart going. You spoke of the poor women
like an angel of compassion. You said, we were all mixed up
with their fate—I forget the words. But no one ever heard in
Church anything that touched me so. I worshipped you. You
said, you thought of them often, and longed to find out what
you could do to help. And I thought, if they could hear you,
and only come near you, as I was—ah, my heaven! Unhappy
experiences? Yes. But when men get women on the slope to
their perdition, they have no mercy, none. They deceive, and
they lie; they are false in acts and words; they do as much as
murder. They’re never hanged for it. They make the Laws!
And then they become fathers of families, and point the finger
at the “wretched creatures.” They have a dozen names
against women, for one at themselves.’
‘It maddens me at times to think … !’ said Nesta, burning
with the sting of vile names.
Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men: but men
have the power and the lead, and they take advantage of it;
and then they turn round and execrate us for not having
what they have robbed us of!’
‘I blame women—if I may dare, at my age,’ said Nesta,
and her bosom heaved. ‘Women should feel for their sex;
they should not allow the names; they should go among their
unhappier sisters. At the worst, they are sisters! I am sure,
that fallen cannot mean—Christ shows it does not. He
changes the tone of Scripture. The women who are made
outcasts, must be hopeless and go to utter ruin. We should,
if we pretend to be better, step between them and that. There
cannot be any goodness unless it is a practiced goodness.
Otherwise it is nothing more than paint on canvas. You speak
to me of my innocence. What is it worth, if it is only a picture
and does no work to help to rescue? I fear I think most
of the dreadful names that redden and sicken us.—The Old
Testament!—I have a French friend, a Mademoiselle Louise
de Seines—you should hear her: she is intensely French, and
a Roman Catholic, everything which we are not: but so human,
so wise, and so full of the pride of her sex! I love her. It
is love. She will never marry until she meets a man who has
the respect for women, for all women. We both think we
cannot separate ourselves from our sisters. She seems to me
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