Counsel for the Defense Part 44

"Not at all," she went on rapidly, pleadingly. "But I see no reason why there should not be both. Our happiness should be all the greater because of my work. I've studied myself, Arnold, and I know what I need. To be thoroughly happy, I need work; useful work, work that interests me. I tell you we'll be happier, and our happiness will last longer, if only you let me work. I know! I know!"

"Dream stuff! You're following a mere will-o'-the-wisp!"

"That's what women have been following in the past," she returned breathlessly. "Look among your married friends. How many ideally happy couples can you count? Very, very few. And why are there so few? One reason is, because the man finds, after the novelty is worn off, that his wife is uninteresting, has nothing to talk about; and so his love cools to a good-natured, pa.s.sive tolerance of her. Most married men, when alone with their wives, sit in stupid silence. But see how the husband livens up if a man joins them! This man has been out in the interesting world. The wife has been cooped up at home. The man has something to talk about. The wife has not. Well, I am going to be out in the interesting world, doing something. I am going to have something to talk to my husband about. I am going to be interesting to him, as interesting to him as any man. And I am going to try to hold his love, Arnold, the love of his heart, the love of his head, to the very end!"

He was exasperated by her persistence, but he still held himself in check.

"That sounds very plausible to you. But there is one thing in your argument you forget."

"And that?"

"We are grown-up people, you and I. I guess we can talk straight out."

"Yes. Go on!"

He gazed at her very steadily for a moment.

"There are such things as children, you know."

She returned his steady look.

"Of course," she said quickly. "Every normal woman wants children. And I should want them too."

"There--that settles it," he said with triumph. "You can't combine children and a profession."

"But I can!" she cried. "And I should give the children the very best possible care, too! Of course there are successive periods in which the mother would have to give her whole attention to the children. But if she lives till she is sixty-five the sum total of her forty or forty-five married years that she has to give up wholly to her children amounts to but a few years. There remains all the balance of her life that she could give to other work. Do you realize how tremendously the world is changing, and how women's work is changing with it?"

"Oh, let's don't mix in statistics, and history, and economics with our love!"

"But we've got to if our love is to last!" she cried. "We're living in a time when things are changing. We've got to consider the changes.

And the greatest changes are, and are going to be, in woman's work. Up in our attic are my great-grandmother's wool carders, her spinning wheel, her loom, all sorts of things; she spun, wove, made all the clothing, did everything. These things are now done by professional experts; that sort of work has been taken away from woman. Now all that's left for the woman to do in the home is to cook, clean, and care for children. Life is still changing. We are still developing.

Some time these things too will be done, and better done, by professional experts--though just how, or just when, I can't even guess. Once there was a strong sentiment against the child being taken from the mother and being sent to school. Now most intelligent parents are glad to put their children in charge of trained kindergartners at four or five. And in the future some new inst.i.tution, some new variety of trained specialist, may develop that will take charge of the child for a part of the day at an even earlier age. That's the way the world is moving!"

"Thanks for your lecture on the Rise, Progress and Future of Civilization," he said ironically, trying to suppress himself. "But interesting as it was, it has nothing whatever to do with the case.

We're not talking about civilization, and the universe, and evolution, and the fourth dimension, and who's got the b.u.t.ton. We're talking about you and me. About you and me, and our love."

"Yes, Arnold, about you and me and our love," she cried eagerly. "I spoke of these things only because they concern you and me and our love so very, very much."

"Of all things for two lovers to talk about!" he exclaimed with mounting exasperation.

"They are the things of all things! For our love, our life, hangs upon them!"

"Well, anyhow, you haven't got these new inst.i.tutions, these new experts," he retorted, brus.h.i.+ng the whole matter aside. "You're living to-day, not in the millennium!"

"I know, I know. In the meantime, life for us women is in a stage of transition. Until these better forms develop we are going to have a hard time. It will be difficult for me to manage, I know. But I'm certain I can manage it."

He stood up. His face was very red, and he swallowed once or twice before the words seemed able to come out.

"I'm surprised, Katherine--surprised!--that you should be so persistent in this nonsense. What you say is all against nature. It won't work."

"Perhaps not. But at least you'll let me try! That's all I ask of you--that you let me try!"

"It would be weak in me, wrong in me, to yield."

"Then you're not willing to give me a chance?"

He shook his head.

She rose and moved before him.

"But, Arnold, do you realize what you are doing?" she cried with desperate pa.s.sion. "Do you realize what it is I'm asking you for?

Work, interesting work--that's what I need to make me happy, to make you happy! Without it, I shall be miserable, and you will be miserable in having a miserable wife about you--and all our years together will be years of misery. So you see what a lot I'm fighting for: work, development, happiness!--the happiness of all our married years!"

"That's only a delusion. For your sake, and my sake, I've got to stand firm."

"Then you will not let me?"

"I will not."

She stared palely at his square, adamantine face.

"Arnold!" she breathed. "Arnold!--do you know what you're trying to do?"

"I am trying to save you from yourself!"

"You're trying to break my will across yours," she cried a little wildly. "You're trying to crush me into the iron mould of your idea of a woman. You're trying to kill me--yes, to kill me."

"I am trying to save you!" he repeated, his temper breaking its frail leash. "Your ideas are all wrong--absurd--insane!"

"Please don't be angry, Arnold!" she pleaded.

"How can I help it, when you won't listen to reason! When you are so perversely obstinate!"

"I'm not obstinate," she cried breathlessly, holding one of his hands tightly in both her own. "I'm just trying to cling as hard as I can to life--to our happiness. Please give me a chance, Arnold! Please, please!"

"Confound such obstinate wrong-headedness!" he exploded. "No, I tell you! No! And that settles it!"

She shrank back.

"Oh!" she cried. Her breast began to rise and fall tumultuously, and her cheeks slowly to redden. "Oh!" she cried again. Then her words leaped hotly out: "Oh, you bigot!"

"If to stand by what I know is right, and to save you from making a fool of yourself, is to be a bigot--then I'm a bigot all right, and I thank the G.o.d that made me one!"

"And you think you are going to save me from myself?" she demanded.

He stepped nearer, and towering over her, he took hold of her shoulders in a powerful grasp and looked down upon her dominantly.

"I know I am! I am going to make you exactly what I want you to be!"