Jean walked the length of the room and back without answering. Then she came and stood before the doctor.
"Mary, I'm getting pretty sick of the whole thing. It's just one tangled mass of red tape. Here we are, literally hundreds, right here in New York—and think of the whole country—intelligent men and women, doing what? We feed a huge machine with our strength and brains, and what comes out of it? What are we doing? What evils are we curing? What are we constructing? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. We are an obsolete institution. We are of no more use than the rudimentary fifth toe of a horse. And we're not even honest about it. That's the greatest danger. We pretend to ourselves and to society, that's too lazy to look into it, that we are tremendously important. We get out reports that look as if we were safeguarding humanity from all kinds of evil and imposture, and spend thousands in keeping alive the fact that Mrs. Jones got half a ton of coal last month. If we'd only be honest about it! But we pretend we're doing good. The whole business is a pitiful survival of the days when a kind lady went round in a pony cart and gave away red flannel."
"I know it. But most of us can only go on plodding in the road that's already made. We do what we can to broaden it or make it straighter, and then we die. But if you see another, Jean, get down on your knees, like mummy, and thank God."
"I have been thinking a lot lately about something I would like to try. I suppose you and the T.B.'s have stirred some sleeping ambitions. I don't know that in the end it would set the world on fire, but at least it would have the vigor of honesty. It won't be going round in a rut worn a mile deep by others. I want—hold tight, Mary—to gather together all the strength going to waste in women's clubs and harness it."
"Good Lord! Women's Clubs!"
"Go right on, Mary; there isn't a thing you can say that I haven't thought of. I know all about the fiddling little sections for doing fiddling, unnecessary things. I know all about the bickerings and miniature storms, every drawback to getting efficient action out of our sex. But—this is our century. It is our first real chance in history, and I don't know but what we're measuring up pretty well. I suppose there are a dozen bigger things one could do, but for some reason I want to get in on the ground floor of this."
"You want to start something all your own."
"That's it. I want to start something. I want to organize a body, local at first, but national before we're through with it, a kind of woman's congress to deal with all national questions that concern women. If we have problems we ought to settle them, not one little handful here and another there. And if we haven't, then let's stop ranting. I don't want a national representation of clubs that have separate interests. It's—well—'congress' is just as good a name as any other."
"Jean, I'd give a good deal to be fifteen or twenty years younger. I wouldn't let you get into this alone."
Something choked in Jean's throat, and the old feeling that she had had years ago in the clinic on the Hill, of gathering courage from this white-haired woman, swept over her.