The Cave Man

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_ DON'T you think the primitive is just simply
too fascinating for anything? We've all
got it in us, you know, and it seems like
nowadays the more cultured and advanced one is the
more likely the primitives is to break out on one.

I have a strong strain of the primitive in me, you know.

I wouldn't take anything for it -- it's simply
wonderful -- wonderful!

It comes over me so strong at times, the yearning
for the primitive does, that I just sit with a dreamy
look on my face and murmur to myself: "ALONE,
ALONE -- UNDER THE STARS! ALONE!"

Mamma overheard me saying that the other day
and thought I had gone crazy, and she said: "for
Heaven's sake, Hermione, what are you thinking
about, and what do you want?"

"The stars," I murmured, scarcely knowing that
I spoke aloud, "the stars and my Cave Man!"

Mamma was shocked -- she says for an unmarried
woman to think of Cave Men is simply indelicate.

Mamma is not at all advanced, you know.

She's dear and sweet, but she doesn't believe in
Trial Marriages at all.

And I must admit they shocked me when I first
heard about them. But that was before I had taken
up these things seriously.

"Mamma," I said to her, "it is no use for you to
pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness.
And happiness to me means being alone, under the
stars, and walking barefoot and bareheaded in the
dew."

"Alone with a Cave Man!" she said. And then
she cried.

Tears! -- that is so like the old-fashioned woman!

"Mamma," I said, kindly, but firmly, "If it is my
destiny to be kidnaped by a Cave Man and taken
into the waste places, under the stars, can I avoid it?"

She said I could at least be respectable, and that
I was acting like I WANTED to be kidnaped.

And, you know, at times I do feel as if that
might be my fate, "really. I am so psychic, you
know, and psychics feel their fate coming on quicker
than most people.

I told Mamma that I felt every woman had a
right to choose the father of her own children, and
she was shocked again. And then she wanted to
know what being kidnaped by a Cave Man had
to do with choosing the father of one's own children,
and how did I know but these Cave Men
kidnaped a different woman every year?

But I settled her.

"Mamma," I said, "you are NOT advanced, and
so I cannot argue with you. You wouldn't understand.
But if I AM primitive -- and I feel that
I am -- whose fault is it? Who did I inherit it from?"

She couldn't say anything to that. She didn't
like to own that I inherited it from her. And she
knew if she blamed it onto Papa I would ask her
how she DARED to deny me a primitive man when
she had married one herself.

Finally she quit crying and said, pressing her
lips together: "Hermione, do you KNOW any of
those Cave Men?"

But I refused to answer. I went to my room.

Dissension disturb's the soul's harmony.

One's subliminal consciousness must ever vibrate
in harmony with the Cosmic All.

I never fuss when a person disturbs me. I just
go into the Silences and vibrate there.

But I kept thinking: "DO I know any Cave Men?"

I Think I do -- one. He tries to conceal it. But
it's his secret. I'm sure.

He has the most luminous eyes!

Like a wolf's, you know, when it gallops across
the waste places -- under the stars, alone!

And the way he eats! I don't mean that he's
noisy, you know. But the way he crunched a chicken
bone the last time he dined with me was perfectly
WONDERFUL -- so nonchalant, you know, and loudly
and -- and -- well, primitive! I'm SURE he's one!

I wouldn't go autoing with him for anything --
unless, of course, he gave me one of those compelling
glances, like Cave Men do in the magazines, you know.
Then I'd know it was destiny and useless to resist. _

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