A Little Journey in the World. Charles Dudley Warner

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СКАЧАТЬ mean making Christianity practical?”

      “Partially that. It is a part of the general problem of what women are going to make of the world, now they have got hold of it, or are getting hold of it, and are discontented with being women, or with being treated as women, and are bringing their emotions into all the avocations of life.”

      “They cannot make it any worse than it has been.”

      “I'm not sure of that. Robustness is needed in churches as much as in government. I don't know how much the cause of religion is advanced by these church clubs of Christian Endeavor if that is the name, associations of young boys and girls who go about visiting other like clubs in a sufficiently hilarious manner. I suppose it's the spirit of the age. I'm just wondering whether the world is getting to think more of having a good time than it is of salvation.”

      “And you think woman's influence—for you cannot mean anything else—is somehow taking the vigor out of affairs, making even the church a soft, purring affair, reducing us all to what I suppose you would call a mush of domesticity.”

      “Or femininity.”

      “Well, the world has been brutal enough; it had better try a little femininity now.”

      “I hope it will not be more cruel to women.”

      “That is not an argument; that is a stab. I fancy you are altogether skeptical about woman. Do you believe in her education?”

      “Up to a certain point, or rather, I should say, after a certain point.”

      “That's it,” spoke up my wife, shading her eyes from the fire with a fan. “I begin to have my doubts about education as a panacea. I've noticed that girls with only a smattering—and most of them in the nature of things can go, no further—are more liable to temptations.”

      “That is because 'education' is mistaken for the giving of information without training, as we are finding out in England,” said Mr. Lyon.

      “Or that it is dangerous to awaken the imagination without a heavy ballast of principle,” said Mr. Morgan.

      “That is a beautiful sentiment,” Margaret exclaimed, throwing back her head, with a flash from her eyes. “That ought to shut out women entirely. Only I cannot see how teaching women what men know is going to give them any less principle than men have. It has seemed to me a long while that the time has come for treating women like human beings, and giving them the responsibility of their position.”

      “And what do you want, Margaret?” I asked.

      “I don't know exactly what I do want,” she answered, sinking back in her chair, sincerity coming to modify her enthusiasm. “I don't want to go to Congress, or be a sheriff, or a lawyer, or a locomotive engineer. I want the freedom of my own being, to be interested in everything in the world, to feel its life as men do. You don't know what it is to have an inferior person condescend to you simply because he is a man.”

      “Yet you wish to be treated as a woman?” queried Mr. Morgan.

      “Of course. Do you think I want to banish romance out of the world?”

      “You are right, my dear,” said my wife. “The only thing that makes society any better than an industrial ant-hill is the love between women and men, blind and destructive as it often is.”

      “Well,” said Mrs. Morgan, rising to go, “having got back to first principles—”

      “You think it is best to take your husband home before he denies even them,” Mr. Morgan added.

      When the others had gone, Margaret sat by the fire, musing, as if no one else were in the room. The Englishman, still alert and eager for information, regarded her with growing interest. It came into my mind as odd that, being such an uninteresting people as we are, the English should be so curious about us. After an interval, Mr. Lyon said:

      “I beg your pardon, Miss Debree, but would you mind telling me whether the movement of Women's Rights is gaining in America?”

      “I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Lyon,” Margaret replied, after a pause, with a look of weariness. “I'm tired of all the talk about it. I wish men and women, every soul of them, would try to make the most of themselves, and see what would come of that.”

      “But in some places they vote about schools, and you have conventions—”

      “Did you ever attend any kind of convention yourself, Mr. Lyon?”

      “I? No. Why?”

      “Oh, nothing. Neither did I. But you have a right to, you know. I should like to ask you one question, Mr. Lyon,” the girl, continued, rising.

      “Should be most obliged.”

      “Why is it that so few English women marry Americans?”

      “I—I never thought of that,” he stammered, reddening. “Perhaps—perhaps it's because of American women.”

      “Thank you,” said Margaret, with a little courtesy. “It's very nice of you to say that. I can begin to see now why so many American women marry Englishmen.”

      The Englishman blushed still more, and Margaret said good-night.

      It was quite evident the next day that Margaret had made an impression on our visitor, and that he was struggling with some new idea.

      “Did you say, Mrs. Fairchild,” he asked my wife, “that Miss Debree is a teacher? It seems very odd.”

      “No; I said she taught in one of our schools. I don't think she is exactly a teacher.”

      “Not intending always to teach?”

      “I don't suppose she has any definite intentions, but I never think of her as a teacher.”

      “She's so bright, and—and interesting, don't you think? So American?”

      “Yes; Miss Debree is one of the exceptions.”

      “Oh, I didn't mean that all American women were as clever as Miss Debree.”

      “Thank you,” said my wife. And Mr. Lyon looked as if he couldn't see why she should thank him.

      The cottage in which Margaret lived with her aunt, Miss Forsythe, was not far from our house. In summer it was very pretty, with its vine-shaded veranda across the front; and even in winter, with the inevitable raggedness of deciduous vines, it had an air of refinement, a promise which the cheerful interior more than fulfilled. Margaret's parting word to my wife the night before had been that she thought her aunt would like to see the “chrysalis earl,” and as Mr. Lyon had expressed a desire to see something more of what he called the “gentry” of New England, my wife ended their afternoon walk at Miss Forsythe's.

      It was one of the winter days which are rare in New England, but of which there had been a succession all through the Christmas holidays. Snow had not yet come, all the earth was brown and frozen, whichever way you looked the interlacing branches and twigs of the trees made a delicate lace-work, the sky СКАЧАТЬ