Eleven Possible Cases — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Eleven Possible Cases
John Stuart Mill · en
After a time--and all the world still one sea of softened yellow, torn
in two by Charon's chasm of black waters--I silently leaped back,
replaced my boots on my feet and then held my breath. For I had seen, or
perhaps felt, an object move on the lifted levels of sand between us and
the moon.
Cautiously I sank down on my breast and peered low and long up the
horizon. I saw, heard nothing. Glancing around to where my companion
lay, I saw that she still had not stirred from the half reclining
position she had first taken, with half lifted face in her upturned
palm.
Then she had seen nothing, heard nothing. This, however, did not argue
much. Her life had not been of the desert. She had spent her years in
the study of men and women. I had spent mine with wild beasts. I could
trust her to detect motives in men, give the warning note of danger from
dangerous men; but the wild beasts and wilder men of the border were
mine to watch and battle with, not hers.
She had seen nothing; evidently she feared nothing, and so was resting,
resting in mind as in body. And as I glanced again over my shoulder and
saw how entirely content she seemed, I was glad. Surely she depended
entirely on me; on my watchfulness and my courage. And this made me more
watchful and more resolute and stout of heart. A man likes to be
trusted. A true man likes a true woman's trust, much indeed. A strong
man likes to be leaned upon. It makes him stronger, braver, better. Let
women never forget this. Admit that she, too, has her days of strength
and endurance; and admit that she, too, has her peculiar fortress of
strength and courage, and these also man respects and regards with
piteous tenderness. But man, incapable of her finer and loftier courage
and endurance, resents her invasion of his prerogative.
It is only a womanly man who can really love a manly woman. But to
continue: Looking up a third time to this woman at my side, I saw that
she had let her head sink low on her leaning arm. She was surely
sleeping. How I liked her trust and her faith in me? And how I liked her
courage, too, and her high quality of endurance. It was her courage that
had brought me up here this night to the contemplation of awful and
all-glorious Africa. Silently and without lifting a finger, she had
shown me a world of burnished gold. I had surely seen God through her.
We stood nearer together now than ever before. This single hour of
indescribable glory should forever stand as an altar in the desert. Our
souls had melted and flown and tided on, intermingled like molten gold
in the golden atmosphere and the yellow scene that wrapped us round
about, and no word had been said. When God speaks so audibly let man be
silent.