Why Marry? Part 6

HELEN

But wasn't I womanly for years? Instead of going down-town and working with highbrows, I stayed up-town and played with lowbrows--until I was bored to death.

LUCY

[_sighs_]

Yes, that's what comes of going to college, leaving the home, getting these new ideas. All the same, Helen, the men, really nice men, don't like it.

HELEN

Well, you see, I don't like really nice men, so that makes it agreeable all around.

LUCY

If it were only art or music or something feminine, but that awful laboratory! How can a lady poison poor, innocent little monkeys?

HELEN

If I were a lady I'd _dine_ with monkeys.... Do you know what the word means, Lucy? In Anglo-Saxon times "lady" meant "one who gives loaves"; now, one who _takes_ a loaf.

LUCY

Very clever, my dear, but some day you'll be sorry. No man, Helen, likes a woman to have independent views.

JEAN

Helen can afford to have independent views; she has an independent income--she earns it.

LUCY

Independent income! Her salary wouldn't pay for your hats.

JEAN

All the same, I wish I had gone to college; I wish I had learned a profession.

LUCY

What have these New Women accomplished? Just one thing: they are destroying chivalry!

HELEN

Not entirely, Lucy, not entirely. For instance, I am the best a.s.sistant Ernest Hamilton has, but the worst paid; the others are all men. Hurray for chivalry!

LUCY

Well, I'm just an old-fashioned wife. Woman's sphere is the home. My husband says so.

HELEN

But suppose you haven't any husband! What can a spinster do in the home?

LUCY

_Stay_ in it--till she gets one! That's what the old-fashioned spinster used to do.

HELEN

The old-fashioned spinster used to spin.

LUCY

At any rate, the old-fashioned spinster did not stay out of her home all night and get herself compromised, talked about, sent abroad! Or, if she did, she knew enough to remain abroad until the gossip blew over.

[_Lucy turns to leave._

HELEN

[_mischievously_]

Ah, that wonderful night! [_LUCY turns back, amazed._] The night we discovered the Hamilton ant.i.toxin, the night that made the Baker Inst.i.tute famous! And, just think, I had a hand in it, Lucy, a hand in the unwomanly work of saving children's lives! But, of course, an old-fashioned spinster would have blushed and said: "Excuse me, Doctor Hamilton, but we must now let a year's work go to waste because you are a man and I am a woman, and it's dark outdoors!" ... That's the way to preserve true chivalry.

LUCY

You think we can't see through all this? Science--fiddlesticks! The good-looking young scientist--that's why you couldn't stay abroad. We see it, John sees it, and now every one will see it. Then how will you feel?

HELEN

Ernest _is_ rather good-looking, isn't he?