“They were contented.”
“Contented! hah! that’s a word we use for other people’s patience. Old-fashioned women were not contented. We say they were because other people’s sorrows don’t bother us, especially when they are dead. But they mattered then to them. If you ever read the newspapers of those days, or the letters, or the novels, or the plays, you’ll find that people were not contented in the past at any time.
“People used to say that laborers were contented to be treated like cattle. But they weren’t, and since they learned how to lift their heads they’ve demanded more and more.”
Bret had been having a prolonged wrestle with a labor-union. He snarled: “Don’t you quote the laboring-men to me. There’s no satisfying them!”
“And it’s for the good of the world that they should demand more. It’s for the good of the world that everybody should be doing his best, and getting all there is in it and out of it and wanting more.”
“Is nobody to stay at home?”
“Of course! There’s my sister Dorothy—nicest girl in the world, but not temperamental enough to make a flea wink. She’s got sense enough to know it. You couldn’t drive her on the stage. Why the devil didn’t you marry her? Then you both could have stayed at home. You belong at home because you’re a manufacturer. I should stay at home because I’m a writer. But a postman oughtn’t to stay at home, or a ship-captain, or a fireman.”
Bret attempted a mild sarcasm: “So all the women ought to leave home and go on the stage, eh?”
Vickery threw up his hands. “God forbid! I think that nine-tenths of the actresses ought to leave the stage and go home. Too many of them are there because there was nowhere else to go or they drifted in by accident. Nice, stupid, fatheads who would be the makings of a farm or an orphan-asylum are trying to interpret complicated rôles. Dulcie Ormerod ought to be waiting on a lunch-counter, sassing brakemen and brightening the lot of the traveling-men. But women like Mrs. Siddons and Ellen Terry, Bernhardt and Duse and Charlotte Cushman and Marlowe and any number of others, including Mrs. Bret Winfield, ought to be traveling the country like missionaries of art and culture and morality.”
“Morality!” Bret roared. “The stage is no place for a good woman, and you know it.”