“But you can’t suppose it. Why ever
should I?”
“Suppose you wanted to marry?”
Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality.
“Well, suppose the incredible. Suppose
I did. There’d be no comeback wanted there.
I could perfectly well marry and still keep my theory
of life; I could perfectly well marry and still keep
on in my career—and most certainly I would
still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life,
as you call it, or a very outstanding principle of
it. There’s nothing to me more detestable
in the whole business than the idea that because a
woman marries she therefore must give up her work.
That’s what is the reason the boarding house
and every boarding house and every home and street
and city swarms with derelicts—with derelict
women—just because their lives are all planned
as blind alley occupations, marriage at the end of
the alley, no need to do anything, no need to be anything
because it’s only a blind alley you’re
in. When you reach the end—you reach
the end! That’s it, Keggo. You reach
the end. You’re a woman, therefore for you—the
end!”
She laughed again. She was returning Keggo’s
vehemence without embarrassment upon the subject that
had made return difficult. She cried, “I’ve
got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say
they don’t issue return tickets to women.
No. Perhaps they don’t; but I’ll
tell you where they book them all to—from
the cradle to a terminus.”
Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie
was pleased with her adroit turning of metaphors.
She repeated “To a terminus. Well, I’ve
booked beyond, Keggo.” She laughed again.
“And then the idea of marriage for me!
I’ve granted the preposterous just for the sake
of the argument and just to floor the argument.
But you know, you know perfectly well from all our
talks, even so far back as at the Sultana’s,
that it’s simply too grotesque! Marriage,
for me! Why, if a million men came to me on their
bended knees, each with a million pounds on their
backs you know perfectly well that I’d just
feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats, tomcats, Cheshire
cats, wild cats, stray cats,—I’m
not going to set up a cats’ home. No thanks.”
So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.
But this was not to continue. Keggo began to
lapse; Rosalie began to weary of helping Keggo.
She had herself to think of. Those who go down
in life, whether by age or by misfortune, are prone,
engulfed, to cry to those ascending, “You could
help me!” There is a correct answer to this.
It is, “I have done (or I do) a great deal for
you. I cannot do more. It is not fair to
ask me to do more. I have a duty to myself.
I have myself to think of.” Our generation
endorses this.
Rosalie had herself to think of. By stages that
need not be detailed, they are the common facts of
life, the thing passes from that picture of those
two with Rosalie’s strong young arms about the
other to a new picture, the last, between them.
