REAL CONVERSATION
BOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Or
if she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthy
consideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, did
you ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people act
when you "come in suddenly"? It is one of the petty tortures of everyday
existence. "They stopped talking the instant they saw me!" "They both
turned red, when I opened the door!" Well, what if they did? Is it a
happening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread of
discovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what? Stop and realize
the real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase "He was above
suspicion," and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evil
thoughts _of_ others as well as being safe from the holding of evil
thoughts _towards_ others. If people change color at your approach and
it makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of or
from others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root out
the double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable family
happenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of family
intercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through such
rapids is--as the Irishman said--to pick up your canoe and port around
them. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard,
because when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goes
down with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keep
them right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.
"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "we're having such an interesting time talking
about your religion."
Jane smiled. "I'm glad," she said simply. "Did you decide to absorb some
of it?"
"Oh, I'm converted, anyhow," said the aunt; "nobody could live in the
house with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while,
too."
Jane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. "It's a contagion in the
town," she said; "I feel like an ancient missionary."
"I know," said Susan, "holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures."
"Yes, and I hold up the cross, too," said Jane, "only most people
wouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-ago
times,--before the Christian era?" she asked Lorenzo quickly.
"No."
"It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It was
the holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodied divine life
descending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth."
"My!" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.
Jane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. "I love my
cross," she said; "it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and,
just because we are human, it will always keep coming back into our
lives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preached
as an opportunity."
Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He
felt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who
was so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just
him.
"You'll end by being like Dinah in _Adam Bede_," he said, trying to
laugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?"
"I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart and
lips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice."
"I don't think she's exactly human," said Susan meditatively; "she
doesn't strike me so."
"Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to be
human more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel
that I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as
unhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be
loved."
"But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt.
"But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman--or a
girl."
Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rath
and I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it
is that there are so few in these days."
"I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so
conspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.
"I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're the
wrong kind."
"I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home and
wasn't wild to get away and be going into business."
Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of
them feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and
work. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's
pushing us all on into different places."
"I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I
was thinking of the others."
"They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that we
don't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no
one can alter."
"Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can see
that it is so now that you've put it into my head."
"I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to
women who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted
to earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are,
too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power
that sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big
enough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better."
"Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are
acting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.
"No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand,
or grasp, or--or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is ordered
and ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day as
surely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conduct
of the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don't
understand it all as I wish that I did."
"You really do feel God as a friend," said Lorenzo, watching her
illuminated face. "He isn't just a religion to you, then?"
"He's _everything_ to me," said Jane reverently, "Help and Sunlight and
Strength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests in
us in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justice
manifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to use
them together, but they and all else are all God."
Susan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzo
by turns. "To think of talking like this in my house," she said; "this
is what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly did
lift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Every
kind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without the
least bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake for
tea, so I'll have to go."
She went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.
There was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally he
held out his hand abruptly. "You've gone a long way, Jane," he said,
"you've got a big grip on life and its meaning, and you make me
understand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that the
wheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you only
prove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet,
home-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in a
different way from what most people understand. When she still exists,
she exists for herself--not for a man."
Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly. "Why do you say that?"
"Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope to
get you. Could he?"
Her eyes dropped. "Do you think that it's all any harder on the man than
it is on the girl?" she asked. "If men feel bad nowadays over the
changes, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight and
forced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's created
for another kind of work, much harder and lasting, much longer than any
man's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone or
only half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are some
girls and women who like it,--but most of them don't. Most of them feel
dreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and live
the life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behind
nine out of every ten bread-winning women, whether they go out washing
or are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she's
forced to do so."
"Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you an
idealist? Look at Emily Mead--" he smiled in spite of his earnestness.
"If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't take
force."
Jane remained carefully grave. "That's more her mother's fault than
hers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry."
"And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?"
"It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man,
and the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leaven
which causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homeless
by separating them widely on earth."
"Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds of
thousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to be
old maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays."
"We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hang
to them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us."
"Do you mean woman?"
"No, I mean everybody."
"It's depressing, isn't it?"
"I don't think so. I think it's grand."
"Grand!"
"Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm a
woman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm also
gloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehension
that's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles."
"You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things."
"Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life,
because each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of.
I'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to be
guided by a rule that never fails."
Lorenzo couldn't but laugh. "I tell you what," he said gayly, "I'll let
you into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learn
how to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad and
gloriously happy, too."
"You've got to be in earnest, you know," Jane said. "It's handling live
wires to amuse oneself with any force of God, and will-power is more of
a force than electricity."
"Oh, I'm in earnest," said the artist. "I've made my picture--as you
say--and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel as
you do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one,
too."
"I'm making ever so many homes," said Jane. "I'm teaching home-making.
That's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me to
desert my task. Besides--" she paused.