Sunshine Jane Part 24

"Yes, I have. I'm very sorry for her. A nice mess the next generation will be."

"Oh, dear."

"My one comfort is that boys take after their mothers, and I'm looking to see a future generation of men so strong-minded that they smash ladies back to where they belong--in the rear with the tents."

"Goodness, Mr. Rath, then you don't like any of the ways things are going?"

"Of course I don't. Once upon a time a busy man's time was sacred; now any woman who feels like taking it, appropriates it mercilessly."

"I should lock the door, if I felt that way. But now really, don't you think that we might speak quite openly and frankly?"

Lorenzo began to put up his paints.

"I want to get to the bottom of a lot of things."

"Well?"

"You're the first man that I've ever known that I felt could understand what I meant, and I do want to know the man's side of things."

"A man hasn't got any side nowadays. He's not allowed one."

Emily looked a little surprised. "You speak bitterly."

"I think I've a right. Men are still observing the rules of the game and suffering bitter consequences."

"What do you mean?"

"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket money until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you never can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's pay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in business, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay and to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on bread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own home at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes to somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with perhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere."

"Dear me," said Emily, "I never thought of that."

"No," said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, "women don't think of that. But men do."

"But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families."

"Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call 'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!"

Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was not exactly what she had antic.i.p.ated. It certainly was in no way romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.

"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?"

"I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with civilization." He rose to his feet.

"Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be a.s.sisted to rise.

"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way G.o.d meant. I loathe this modern inst.i.tution limping along with its burden of carefully fed and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I were a Zulu."

"Good Heavens!"

"Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now."

"Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet.

"I'd done all that I could under the circ.u.mstances."

"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time...." Emily was quite unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what her presence meant to the unhappy artist.

"Come, come," he repeated impatiently.

They walked away then through the pretty winding lane.

"It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless," Emily went on presently. "We are all put here and often see just what should be done and can't do it possibly."

"I do exactly what I choose," said Lorenzo,--then he added: "as a usual thing."

"You must be very happy." She paused. "I suppose that you have plenty of money to live as you please."

"I'm fortunate enough not to have any."

"Goodness!" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was dreadful. "Why do you call that fortunate?" she asked, after a little hasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, s.p.a.ced off by going to the theater.

"Because it makes me know that I shall do something in the world. A very little money is enough to swamp a man nowadays, when the idea of later being supported by a woman is always a possibility. Oh," said Lorenzo, with sudden irritation, "if there weren't so many perfectly splendid women and girls in the world, I'd go off and become a Trappist.

Everything's being knocked into a c.o.c.ked hat. I've had girls practically make love to me. Disgusting."

Emily felt her heart hammer hard. "You're very old-fas.h.i.+oned in your views," she said, a little faintly.

They came out by her mother's back gate as she spoke.

"Yes, I am," said Lorenzo, "I admit it."

Mrs. Mead came running out of the back door. "Oh, Emily," she cried, "old Mrs. Croft is dead. Jane sent for the doctor--she sent a boy running--but she's dead. Wherever have you been for so long?"

CHAPTER XIV

JANE'S CONVERTS

THE feelings which revolved around the dead body of old Mrs. Croft can be better imagined than described; everybody had wondered as to every contingency except this. In the midst of the confusion Jane moved quietly, a little white and with lips truly saddened. "And I meant to do such a lot for her,--I meant to help her so much," she murmured from time to time.

The doctor, a ponderous gentleman of great weight in all ways, was very grave. The doctor said that he had warned the daughter of such a possible ending twenty years before. "Heart failure was _always_ imminent," he declared severely, looking upon Jane, Susan, and Mrs.

Cowmull, who had driven out with him and thus become instantly a privileged person. "She never ought to have been left alone a minute during these last forty years. Even if she had lived to be a hundred, the danger was always there. Such neglect is awful." He stopped and shook his head vigorously. "Awful," he declared again with emphasis, "awful!"

"I didn't know that she had heart disease," said Jane.

"No blame attaches to you," said the doctor, veering suddenly about as to the point in discussion; "n.o.body can blame you. I shall exonerate you completely. Of course, if you were not aware of the state of the case, you couldn't be expected to consider its vital necessities."