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Page 82
"I dare say I've talked too much," returned Carley. "It's been a rather
hard winter on me. Perhaps, indeed, I've tried the patience of my friends."
"See here, Carley," said Geralda, deliberately, "just because you've had
life turn to bitter ashes in your mouth you've no right to poison it for
us. We all find it pretty sweet. You're an unsatisfied woman and if you
don't marry somebody you'll end by being a reformer or fanatic."
"I'd rather end that way than rot in a shell," retorted Carley.
"I declare, you make me see red, Carley," flashed Geralda, angrily. "No
wonder Morrison roasts you to everybody. He says Glenn Kilbourne threw you
down for some Western girl. If that's true it's pretty small of you to vent
your spleen on us."
Carley felt the gathering of a mighty resistless force, But Geralda Conners
was nothing to her except the target for a thunderbolt.
"I have no spleen," she replied, with a dignity of passion. "I have only
pity. I was as blind as you. If heartbreak tore the scales from my eyes,
perhaps that is well for me. For I see something terribly wrong in myself,
in you, in all of us, in the life of today."
"You keep your pity to yourself. You need it," answered Geralda, with heat.
"There's nothing wrong with me or my friends or life in good old New York."
"Nothing wrong!" cried Carley. "Listen. Nothing wrong in you or life
today--nothing for you women to make right? You are blind as bats--as dead
to living truth as if you were buried. Nothing wrong when thousands of
crippled soldiers have no homes--no money--no friends--no work--in many
cases no food or bed? . . . Splendid young men who went away in their prime
to fight for you and came back ruined, suffering! Nothing wrong when sane
women with the vote might rid politics of partisanship, greed, crookedness?
Nothing wrong when prohibition is mocked by women--when the greatest boon
ever granted this country is derided and beaten down and cheated? Nothing
wrong when there are half a million defective children in this city?
Nothing wrong when there are not enough schools and teachers to educate our
boys and girls, when those teachers are shamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong
when the mothers of this great country let their youngsters go to the dark
motion picture halls and night after night in thousands of towns over all
this broad land see pictures that the juvenile court and the educators and
keepers of reform schools say make burglars, crooks, and murderers of our
boys and vampires of our girls? Nothing wrong when these young adolescent
girls ape you and wear stockings rolled under their knees below their
skirts and use a lip stick and paint their faces and darken their eyes and
pluck their eyebrows and absolutely do not know what shame is? Nothing
wrong when you may find in any city women standing at street corners
distributing booklets on birth control? Nothing wrong when great magazines
print no page or picture without its sex appeal? Nothing wrong when the
automobile, so convenient for the innocent little run out of town, presents
the greatest evil that ever menaced American girls! Nothing wrong when
money is god--when luxury, pleasure, excitement, speed are the striven for?
Nothing wrong when some of your husbands spend more of their time with
other women than with you? Nothing wrong with jazz--where the lights go out
in the dance hall and the dancers jiggle and toddle and wiggle in a
frenzy? Nothing wrong in a country where the greatest college cannot report
birth of one child to each graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race
suicide and the incoming horde of foreigners? . . . Nothing wrong with you
women who cannot or will not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of
you, when if you did have a child, you could not nurse it? . . . Oh, my
God, there's nothing wrong with America except that she staggers under a
Titanic burden that only mothers of sons can remove! . . . You doll women,
you parasites, you toys of men, you silken-wrapped geisha girls, you
painted, idle, purring cats, you parody of the females of your species--
find brains enough if you can to see the doom hanging over you and revolt
before it is too late!"
CHAPTER XI
Carley burst in upon her aunt.
"Look at me, Aunt Mary!" she cried, radiant and exultant. "I'm going back
out West to marry Glenn and live his life!"
The keen old eyes of her aunt softened and dimmed. "Dear Carley, I've known
that for a long time. You've found yourself at last."
Then Carley breathlessly babbled her hastily formed plans, every word of
which seemed to rush her onward.
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