“Oh, I don’t know! I have thought of that. No woman should have a child until she has been married three years. By that time she would know whether or not she had made a mistake.”
“And what shall you do if you are unable to support yourself?”
“Starve. No one has a right to live that the world has no use for, that can give the world nothing. Man’s chief end is not bread and butter. If I can give the world anything it will be glad to give me a living in return. If I am a failure I’ll walk out of existence as quietly as I altered my life. But I haven’t the slightest doubt of my ability to take care of myself.”
Mr. Peele pressed his lips together. The old man and the young woman regarded each other steadily, the one with malevolence in his eye, the other with defiance in hers. In that moment Mr. Peele hated her, and she knew it. She had made him feel old and a component part of the decaying order of things, while she represented the insolent confidence of youth in the future.
“Women make too much fuss,” continued Patience. “If they don’t like their life why don’t they alter it quietly, without taking it to the lecture platform or the polemical novel? If they don’t like the way man governs why don’t they educate their sons differently? They can do anything with the plastic mind. I am sure it could be proved that most corrupt politicians and bad husbands had weak or careless mothers. If the men of a country are bad you can be sure the women are worse—”
Beverly sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. “Damn it!” he cried. “You can talk all you like, but you are mine and I’ll have you.”
Patience turned and fixed her angry eyes on his face. “Oh, no, you will not. Your father will tell you that I am quite free.”
Mr. Peele gave a short dry laugh. “She has the best of it,” he said. “You cannot compel her to return to you, and she has the air of one who has tasted of the independence of making money—”
“Then I’ll dog her steps. I’ll make life hell for her—”
“You will do nothing of the sort, sir. Much as I disapprove of this young woman’s course, she has in me an unwilling abettor. I shall not have my domestic affairs made food for the newspapers and their hordes of vulgar readers. Field would take up her cause and hound me to my grave. You will keep quiet, and in the course of time get a divorce of which no one will be the wiser until you marry again. If the gossip does not get into the papers it will not rise above a murmur. If you add to my annoyance I shall turn you out of Peele Manor and cut you off without a cent. You will not pretend that you can support yourself.”