The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (82 page)

     Phillip Redfern when he was a man was to most every one who ever came to know him a person having in him a strange and incalculable nature. The strong enthusiasm of emotion of his mother's nature early awoke in him with the stimulation she was always then giving to him very much interest to him for the emotional life he could have in him. The interest for knowledge and domination were in him equally strong and from the beginning he devoted himself to meditation and analysis of the emotions he had in him. The constant spectacle of an armed neutrality between his parents early filled him with an interest in the nature of marriage and the meaning of women.
     Many children who are always in the society of older men and women have their elder's feelings in them and these older men and women in their talking and their feeling if they have very decided quality in them to give to them the children always with them a knowledge of life quite out of relation to the reality of the children's experiencing and sometimes such a one one of such children while knowing and accepting many facts that his elders would have listened to in astonished horror from him often will be really ignorant of the meaning of the simplest things that happen to every one living which other children have in them as natural things for them to be knowing then. Phillip Redfern then had in him then when he was a young one and was living with his mother and his father as the only people then for him in him, his own living where there was much knowledge from reading and thinking, wonderful dreams, keen analysis, much real emotion of sympathising and very little experiencing of beginning living.
     From his father then and from his mother too then, then when he was a little one Phillip Redfern learned careful and scrupulous courtesy to women and to himself and to every one he was ever seeing or feeling or meeting in books or in living or in his hearing talking or in his dreaming, and from his father then power of reserve and these were in him without the determined standards that governed the elder Redfern. Phillip learned his principles from his mother and these were in her longings and aspirations rather than reasoned settled purposes and experiencing and they were real in him though really then he did not believe in them though then and longer he lived by them.
     When Phillip was beginning to be a young man he went to college as I was saying in my describing the living of Martha Hersland. He had never been to a school, his learning had been gathered from his father and largely by himself in reading. Now for the first time in his living he with his brilliant personality for he had that then to himself and to every one, keen intellect, ardent desires, moral aspirations and principles that he knew he could know by analysing them were not well reasoned principles for him to have in him but were to him as his mother's being was in him as a dear dear friend inside him, was to be thrown into familiar relations with young men and women.
     The college of which Redfern became a member was the typical coeducational college of the west, a completely democratic institution. Mostly no one there was conscious of a grand-father unless as remembering one as an old man living in the house with them or as living in another place and being written to sometimes by them and then having died and that was the end of grand-fathers to them. No one among them was held responsible for the father they had unless by some particular notoriety that had come to the father of some one. It was then a democratic western institution, this college where Redfern went to have his college education. This democracy was too simple and genuine to be discussed by any one then. No one was really interested how any man or woman of them came by the money that was educating them, whether it came through several generations of gentlemen to them, whether it came through two generations or one, whether one of them earned it for herself or for himself by working, or teaching, or working on a farm or at book-selling or at anything else that would bring money to them in the summer or whether they earned a little by being a janitor to a school building in the winter or had it given them by some one interested in them. This democracy was then almost complete among them and was the same between the men and women as between the men, as between the women. This democracy was really almost complete among all of them and included very simple comradeship among them all, all of the men and women there together then. The men mostly were simple, direct and earnest in their relations with the women there being educated with them, the men, most of them treating them with generosity and kindliness enough and never really doubting even for a moment their right to any learning or occupation the women, any of them were able to acquire then. The students were many of them earnest experienced men and women who had already struggled solidly with poverty and education. Many of them were interested in the sciences and the practical application of them but also there was among them a kind of feeling and yearning for beauty and this then often showed itself in them in much out of door wandering, and was beginning a little with some of them to realise itself in attempting making pictures and sculpture.
     It was of such a sober minded, earnest, moral, democratic community that Redfern was now become a part. His moral aspirations found full satisfaction in the serious life of the place and his interest in emotional enthusiasm found a new and delightful exercise in the problem of woman that presented itself so strangely here. At this time the return to honest nature to him, was complete delight in him for elaboration was then not so necessary in his conviction but that vigor and force unadorned then made him forgetful of subtlety and refinement. The free simple comradeship of the men and women at first filled him with astonishment and then with delight. He could not feel himself a part of it, he could not love the sense of danger in the presence and companionship of women, his instincts bade him be on guard but his ideal he felt to be here realised.
     Among the many vigorous young women in the place there was Martha Hersland. She was a blond good-looking young woman full of moral purpose and educational desires. She had an eager earnest intelligence, fixed convictions and principles by then, and restless energy. She and Redfern were students in the same studies in the same class and soon singled themselves out from the crowd, it was all new, strange and dangerous for the south-western man and all perfectly simple and matter of course for the western girl. They had long talks on the meanings of things, he discoursing of his life and aims, she listening, understanding and sympathising. This intercourse steadily grew more constant and familiar. Redfern's instincts were dangerous was always there as a conviction in him, his ideals simple and pure was almost always real inside him, slowly he realised in this constant companion the existence of instincts as simple and pure as his ideals.
     They were going through the country one wintry day, plunging vigorously through the snow and liking the cold air and rapid walking and excited with their own health and their youth and the freedom. “You are a comrade and a woman,” he cried out in his pleasure, “It is the new world,” “Surely, there is no difference our being together only it is pleasanter and we go faster,” was her eager answer. “I know it,” said Redfern, “I know it, it is the new world.” This comradeship continued through the three years. They spent much time in explaining to each other what neither quite understood. He never quite felt the reality of her simple convictions, she never quite realised what it was he did not understand.
     One spring day a boy friend came to see her a younger brother of John Davidson who used to play duets with her and all three went out in the country. It was a soft warm day, the ground was warm and wet and they were healthy and they did not mind that. They found a fairly dry hill-side and sat down all three too indolent to wander further. The young fellow, a boy of eighteen, threw himself on the ground and rested his head on Martha Hersland's lap. Redfern did not stop a start of surprise and Martha Hersland smiled. The next day Redfern frankly came to her with his perplexity. “I don't understand,” he said. “Was it alright for Davidson to do so yesterday. I almost believed it was my duty to knock him off.” “Yes I saw you were surprised,” she said and she looked uneasy and then she resolutely tried to make him see. “Do you know that to me a western woman it seems very strange that any one should see any wrong in his action. Yes I will say it, I have never understood before why you always seemed on guard”. She ended pretty steadily, he flushed and looked uneasy. He looked at her earnestly, whatever was there, he certainly could not doubt her honesty. It could not be a new form of deliberate enticement even though it made a new danger.
     After two years of marriage Redfern's realisation of her was almost complete. Martha was all that she had promised him to be, all that he had thought her, but that all proved sufficiently inadequate to his needs. She was moral, strenuous and pure and sought earnestly after higher things in life and art but her mind was narrow and in its way insistent, her intelligence quick but without grace and harsh and Redfern loved a gentle intelligence. Redfern was a hard man to hold, he had no tender fibre to make him gentle to discordant suffering and when once he was certain that this woman had no message for him there was no way in which she could make to him an appeal. Her narrow eager mind was helpless.
     It was part of his elaborate chivalry and she though harsh and crude should never cease to receive from him this respect. He knew she must suffer but what could he do. They were man and wife, their minds and natures were separated by great gulfs, it must be again an armed neutrality but this time it was not as with his parents an armed neutrality between equals but with an inferior who could not learn the rules of the game. It was just so much the more unhappy.
     Mrs. Redfern never understood what had happened to her. In a dazed blind way she tried all ways of breaking through the walls that confined her. She threw herself against them with impatient energy and again she tried to destroy them piece by piece. She was always thrown back bruised and dazed and never quite certain whence came the blow, how it was dealt or why. It was a long agony, she never became wiser or more indifferent, she struggled on always in the same dazed eager way.
     Such was the relation between Redfern and his wife when Redfern having made some reputation for himself in philosophy was called to Farnham college to fill the chair of philosophy there.
     There was then a dean presiding over the college of Farnham who in common with many of her generation believed wholly in the essential sameness of sex and who had devoted her life to the development of this doctrine. The Dean of Farnham had had great influence in the lives of many women. She was possessed of a strong purpose and vast energy. She had an extraordinary instinct for the qualities of men and rarely failed to choose the best of the young teachers as they came from the universities. She rarely kept them many years for either they attained such distinction that the great universities claimed them or they were dismissed as not being able enough to be called away.
     Phillip Redfern had taken his doctor's degree in philosophy, had married and presently then he came to hold the chair of philosophy at Farnham college. Two very interesting personalities in the place were the dean Miss Charles and her friend Miss Dounor.
     Redfern had previously had no experience of women's colleges, he knew some thing of the character of the dean but had heard nothing of any other member of the institution and went to make his bow to his fellow instructors in some wonder of anticipation and excitement of mind.
     The new professor of philosophy was invited by the dean to meet the assembled faculty at a tea at her house two days after his arrival in the place. He entered alone and was met by the dean who was then just about beginning the ending of her middle living. She was a dignified figure with a noble head and a preoccupied abrupt manner. She was a member of a family which was proud of having had in three successive generations three remarkable women.
     The first of these three was not known beyond her own community among whom she had great influence by reason of her strength of will, her powerful intellect, her strong common sense and her deep religious feeling. She carried to its utmost the then woman's life with its keen worldly sense, its power of emotion and prayer and its devout practical morality.
     The daughter of this vigorous woman was known to a wider circle and sought for truth in all varieties of ecstatic experience. She mingled with her genuine mystic exaltation a basal common sense and though spending the greater part of her life in examining and actively taking part in all the exaggerated religious enthusiasms of her time she never lost her sense of criticism and judgement and though convinced again and again of the folly and hypocrisy of successive saints never doubted the validity of mystic religious experience.
     In the third generation the niece of this woman, the dean Hannah Charles, found her expression in still wider experience. She did not expect her regeneration from religious experience and found her exaltation in resisting.
     Through her influence she was enabled to keep the college in a flourishing state and to keep the control of all things entirely in her own hands but she was anxious that in the teaching staff there should be some one who would be permanent, who would have great parts and a scholarly mind and would have no influence to trouble hers and before many years she found Miss Dounor who ideally fulfilled these conditions.
     Miss Douner was a graduate of an eastern college and had made some reputation. She was utterly unattached, being an only child whose parents died just before she entered college and was equally detached by her nature from all affairs of the world and was always quite content to remain where she was so long as some took from her all management of practical affairs and left her in peace with her work and her dreams. She was possessed of a sort of transfigured innocence which made a deep impression on the vigorous practical mind of Miss Charles who while keeping her completely under her control was nevertheless in awe of her blindness of worldly things and of the intellectual power of her clear sensitive mind.