IV

“You don’t think he will?” said Hermione.

“I’m sure he won’t,” said Eteoneus.

“I don’t like to think my father a coward,” said Hermione, “but it will be difficult to explain his staying at home now. It’s not only his nephew who needs him; the murdered man is his own brother, and decency requires him to see justice done.”

“He’s no coward, not in the ordinary sense,” said Eteoneus. “Your mother dissuaded him. You heard her do it. When she began urging him to go and help Orestes, so that he could arrange the sooner for your wedding, and when she reminded him that he’d have to arrange the wedding details with Clytemnestra, I knew there’d be no helping Orestes, and no wedding. I’m not one of your mother’s devoted worshippers—first and last I’m your father’s man—but you have to admit she’s clever.”

“That’s no reason why father should not go. He knows I can arrange the marriage without his help; he can ignore Clytemnestra, if he prefers.”

“I wonder if he can ignore her in this revenge,” said Eteoneus. “Didn’t you think your mother and your father were evading that aspect of the case? It was half mentioned, but they didn’t follow it up. In justice Clytemnestra ought to be punished for murdering her husband. Your mother doesn’t wish to plead for her sister, or seem to plead, but naturally she doesn’t want her own husband to kill her sister. It’s quite a situation. Orestes certainly won’t kill his mother, so if anybody is to take vengeance on her, it must be Menelaus. What kind of mess would it be if he came home and told us that the ghost of Agamemnon had been properly satisfied by the blood of his murderers, Clytemnestra and Ægisthus? Do you think he and Helen could sit down comfortably to their dinner, after that, and talk about the news of the house since he went away? Helen says severe things of her sister, but Menelaus knows he had better not lift his hand against Clytemnestra.”

“Eteoneus, do you think Orestes is strong enough to meet Ægisthus?”

“Alone, yes; but if Clytemnestra is helping her lover, Orestes should be careful. The combination was too much for Agamemnon. That’s another reason why Menelaus will stay here, I think. Even if they leave Clytemnestra alone, she’s not likely to repay them by keeping out of the quarrel; no doubt she’d be glad to stick a knife into your father, if he came with any unkind designs on Ægisthus. They ought to cut her throat first, and deal with Ægisthus afterward.”

“How bloody-minded you are, Eteoneus!” said Hermione. “You could have been another Pyrrhus, if you had given your attention to it.”

“I suspect you mean no compliment,” said Eteoneus. “What’s the trouble with Pyrrhus?”

“He’s a brute,” said Hermione. “He doesn’t mind killing women, not a bit; in fact, if he were in Orestes’ place, I dare say he’d rather kill Clytemnestra and let Ægisthus go free.”

“There’s something to be said for that point of view; she’s the guilty one,” said Eteoneus, “and she’s a woman.”

“Just the reason for sparing her,” said Hermione.

“I know,” said Eteoneus, “that’s the last word in fine manners, but I don’t believe in it. Women make most of the trouble in the world, and it’s weakness, I say, to spare them their punishment. Otherwise they’d always be doing as they liked.”

“You are talking nonsense, Eteoneus, and you know better. Woman’s life is a succession of trouble and sorrows. It’s hard enough just to be a woman, but men make her lot infinitely wretched.”

“I don’t see that at all,” said Eteoneus. “As far as I’ve been able to observe, the women like the men and all their ways; they like men to be brutes; they help to make them so. When a woman tells me she has a hard lot, I say, ‘Haven’t you, though!’ or something like that, and we’re both satisfied. It’s a fiction.”

“You don’t mean it’s a fiction that Pyrrhus treated Polyxena badly when he sacrificed her on his father’s tomb?”

“No worse than he treated the men he killed in the sack of Troy.”

“But they could defend themselves!”

“So could she.”

“Women are defenceless before men,” said Hermione.

“Are they!” said Eteoneus. “Clytemnestra!”

“That’s a special case, and it’s not what I’m talking about,” said Hermione.

“It’s the most recent case,” said Eteoneus, “and it’s not without precedent. All women are trouble-makers.”

“I wonder if Andromache thinks so,” said Hermione. “Pyrrhus carried her home with him, his slave, and the woman who had been Hector’s wife was forced to put up with the brutal caresses of that murderer. They say she’s going to have a child.”

“Does Andromache say his caresses are brutal?” asked Eteoneus. “If that’s an important question with you, you ought to ask her. You really should not talk about him until you have made inquiries. How do you know she doesn’t like him? You say you don’t want to marry Pyrrhus because he has treated Andromache badly. You don’t seem to know much of women, Hermione, and I dare say you are as ignorant of men. The real reason why you shouldn’t marry Pyrrhus is that Andromache would be jealous of you; she would probably treat you as Clytemnestra did Cassandra.”

“You don’t know any more about Andromache than I do,” said Hermione, “but assuming that you are right, I repeat what I said, that women in general have a hard time, and that men treat us so badly we lose our respect for them.”

“It can’t be done,” said Eteoneus. “You can’t treat a woman so badly as to lose her respect—that is, provided you still show some sort of interest in her.”

“Then I suppose you think a woman is happy, perhaps even deeply complimented, if one of your precious sex makes love to her, and betrays her, and deserts her. That sort of thing composes the tragic story of many women, no matter how you men choose to shut your eyes to it.”

“I suppose they generally don’t like to be deserted,” said Eteoneus—“that is, so long as they like the man; when they grow tired of him, he can’t desert too soon. But generally, as I said, you women like attention. As to the other parts of the tragedy you sketch, it’s all bosh, Hermione. Women aren’t seduced. I know what I’m talking about. They want the men and the men want them. They both get what they want, and as far as I can see, the men get the worst of it.”

“I’d no idea you were such a woman-hater,” said Hermione. “So hard in your emotions! I thought experience brought more tenderness.”

“I’m no woman-hater,” said Eteoneus. “I simply happen to have some of that experience you speak of. You can’t tell me much about women.”

“You’ve never been married, I believe,” said Hermione.

“Do you interpret that fact to mean I don’t know anything about women?” said Eteoneus. “It’s the proof of my wisdom.”

“Oh, that’s all very well for a joke, Eteoneus, but the fact that you’ve avoided my sex doesn’t prove you understand their feelings, their sufferings under the treatment they receive from men.”

“I suppose I’ll have to speak plainly if I’m to get anywhere in this argument,” said Eteoneus, “and I’m not sure you’ll like me any better after I’ve spoken, but the fact is, Hermione, I belong to the older and tougher generation which you despise; my manners before age reduced me to gate-keeping were quite correct by the standards of our time, but they would seem to you—what was your word?—brutal. I haven’t avoided women. You misunderstood me; I avoided marriage.”

“Oh!” said Hermione … “I’m sorry to say there are still a number of men who lead that sort of life.”

“Yes, a number of men,” said Eteoneus, “and several women in your family.”

“Don’t you think it’s wrong?” said Hermione. “I always supposed you didn’t approve of my mother’s conduct.”

“Certainly not,” said Eteoneus. “All irregularities should be punished, if society is to last, but it’s natural to do it, after all. I tell you, Hermione, your mother’s running away didn’t surprise me much; women will do anything. What disturbed me was your father’s forgiving her.”

“Did you think this way in your young wild days,” said Hermione, “when you were teaching girls to do wrong?”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Eteoneus, “you can’t teach women anything. Yes, I always thought this way. Wrong is wrong, but some of it is natural. I ought to have been punished, I dare say. I wasn’t. It would have been worth it.”

“I mustn’t listen to such talk,” said Hermione. “I knew there were men who thought as you do, but I never met one before. You make me feel creepy all over. Here I’ve known you since I was born, and you’ve been so careful of us all, yet you believe in such immoral things! I didn’t suspect it.”

“Watching this family in recent years has made me think a lot,” said Eteoneus, “about morality. Before that, I took the world for granted, and did what other men did—the ones I admired. I must say I can’t see that the modern ways are very different, or come to more satisfactory ends. I go on the principle that women are still what they were in my time—and men, too. I’m sorry people try to understand them by new theories. Now, you say I’m immoral, and it makes you creepy all over to hear me. Perhaps. But I rather think you were interested, or you wouldn’t have stayed to listen. That’s the way women used to be. You know how we always did after a fight, when we had captured a town. Your generation think it’s not civilized, but it was the correct thing when I was young, and no one complained. We’d kill the men, and then we’d take the women. Most of the women I’ve known, I met on such occasions. You think that kind of adventure is cruel to the women, don’t you? Well, I never had a girl that way who seemed to mind it very much; the protests were merely formal. They’d run away from you, and you’d catch them, and carry them off to some quiet place, and—well, that’s all there was to it. I can’t see that marriage is different, except in the length of the courtship. And it’s perfectly fair in war, as we used to go about it; the women knew in advance what would happen to them if their side got beaten—they’d be married to a stranger, but he’d be the better man. Now Achilles and some of the youngsters behave differently, I’m told; Chryseis was a captive, but he had nothing to do with her. He had the right to do as he liked, of course, but I don’t see any particular advantage in such conduct. Pyrrhus and Agamemnon have the old-fashioned point of view. Agamemnon was a great man. He made only one mistake.”

“Why, Eteoneus, according to your principles Paris was right!”

“I won’t say he was wrong,” said Eteoneus, “if he wanted to take so desperate a risk. They killed him, you remember. The whole episode would have been managed no differently in my day, except that your mother would not have returned.”

“You don’t mean you would have had my father kill her?”

“Well, that kind of thing has been done,” said Eteoneus. “Of course it is embarrassing to discuss the theory specifically with your mother here. I’m far from plotting to kill her now, though I’m still perturbed whenever I see her—it’s like living with a dead person.”

“See here, Eteoneus—you wouldn’t have Orestes or my father kill Clytemnestra?”

“Certainly not Orestes; that would be impious, to kill his own mother. If it were his wife, that would be another thing. Agamemnon ought to have killed her. That was his mistake. She was faithless.”

“How about the men who are faithless?” said Hermione. “You confess to having led what I should call a bad and a cruel life, and you never reformed; you simply became too old to misbehave. Why wouldn’t it have been proper for some woman whom you had deserted to kill you? This faithfulness shouldn’t be all on one side.”

“That was Clytemnestra’s idea,” said Eteoneus. “That woman is strangely modern, considering her age.”

“Age!” said Hermione. “You are tottering into the grave, Eteoneus, with the beastliest set of ideas I’ve ever heard. If you are like Pyrrhus, my worst fears of him are confirmed. I’m glad I belong to another generation!”