Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman [best books to read ever TXT] 📗

the trees and flowers, many eyes were upon us. And everywhere, open country, village, or city⁠—only women. Old women and young women and a great majority who seemed neither young nor old, but just women; young girls, also, though these, and the children, seeming to be in groups by themselves generally, were less in evidence. We caught many glimpses of girls and children in what seemed to be schools or in playgrounds, and so far as we could judge there were no boys. We all looked, carefully. Everyone gazed at us politely, kindly, and with eager interest. No one was impertinent. We could catch quite a bit of the talk now, and all they said seemed pleasant enough.

Well⁠—before nightfall we were all safely back in our big room. The damage we had done was quite ignored; the beds as smooth and comfortable as before, new clothing and towels supplied. The only thing those women did was to illuminate the gardens at night, and to set an extra watch. But they called us to account next day. Our three tutors, who had not joined in the recapturing expedition, had been quite busy in preparing for us, and now made explanation.

They knew well we would make for our machine, and also that there was no other way of getting down⁠—alive. So our flight had troubled no one; all they did was to call the inhabitants to keep an eye on our movements all along the edge of the forest between the two points. It appeared that many of those nights we had been seen, by careful ladies sitting snugly in big trees by the riverbed, or up among the rocks.

Terry looked immensely disgusted, but it struck me as extremely funny. Here we had been risking our lives, hiding and prowling like outlaws, living on nuts and fruit, getting wet and cold at night, and dry and hot by day, and all the while these estimable women had just been waiting for us to come out.

Now they began to explain, carefully using such words as we could understand. It appeared that we were considered as guests of the country⁠—sort of public wards. Our first violence had made it necessary to keep us safeguarded for a while, but as soon as we learned the language⁠—and would agree to do no harm⁠—they would show us all about the land.

Jeff was eager to reassure them. Of course he did not tell on Terry, but he made it clear that he was ashamed of himself, and that he would now conform. As to the language⁠—we all fell upon it with redoubled energy. They brought us books, in greater numbers, and I began to study them seriously.

“Pretty punk literature,” Terry burst forth one day, when we were in the privacy of our own room. “Of course one expects to begin on child-stories, but I would like something more interesting now.”

“Can’t expect stirring romance and wild adventure without men, can you?” I asked. Nothing irritated Terry more than to have us assume that there were no men; but there were no signs of them in the books they gave us, or the pictures.

“Shut up!” he growled. “What infernal nonsense you talk! I’m going to ask ’em outright⁠—we know enough now.”

In truth we had been using our best efforts to master the language, and were able to read fluently and to discuss what we read with considerable ease.

That afternoon we were all sitting together on the roof⁠—we three and the tutors gathered about a table, no guards about. We had been made to understand some time earlier that if we would agree to do no violence they would withdraw their constant attendance, and we promised most willingly.

So there we sat, at ease; all in similar dress; our hair, by now, as long as theirs, only our beards to distinguish us. We did not want those beards, but had so far been unable to induce them to give us any cutting instruments.

“Ladies,” Terry began, out of a clear sky, as it were, “are there no men in this country?”

“Men?” Somel answered. “Like you?”

“Yes, men,” Terry indicated his beard, and threw back his broad shoulders. “Men, real men.”

“No,” she answered quietly. “There are no men in this country. There has not been a man among us for two thousand years.”

Her look was clear and truthful and she did not advance this astonishing statement as if it was astonishing, but quite as a matter of fact.

“But⁠—the people⁠—the children,” he protested, not believing her in the least, but not wishing to say so.

“Oh yes,” she smiled. “I do not wonder you are puzzled. We are mothers⁠—all of us⁠—but there are no fathers. We thought you would ask about that long ago⁠—why have you not?” Her look was as frankly kind as always, her tone quite simple.

Terry explained that we had not felt sufficiently used to the language, making rather a mess of it, I thought, but Jeff was franker.

“Will you excuse us all,” he said, “if we admit that we find it hard to believe? There is no such⁠—possibility⁠—in the rest of the world.”

“Have you no kind of life where it is possible?” asked Zava.

“Why, yes⁠—some low forms, of course.”

“How low⁠—or how high, rather?”

“Well⁠—there are some rather high forms of insect life in which it occurs. Parthenogenesis, we call it⁠—that means virgin birth.”

She could not follow him.

“ ‘Birth,’ we know, of course; but what is ‘virgin’?”

Terry looked uncomfortable, but Jeff met the question quite calmly. “Among mating animals, the term ‘virgin’ is applied to the female who has not mated,” he answered.

“Oh, I see. And does it apply to the male also? Or is there a different term for him?”

He passed this over rather hurriedly, saying that the same term would apply, but was seldom used.

“No?” she said. “But one cannot mate without the other surely. Is not each then⁠—virgin⁠—before mating? And, tell me, have you any forms of life in which there is birth from a father only?”

“I know of none,” he answered, and