"I can wait," I said.
"But a girl like you could never stand that kind of life. You aren't fitted for it. You weren't brought up to be a poor man's wife."
"Plenty of tune to learn while waiting," I returned gayly enough, but heartsick at the thought of the long wait.
Carl, however, quite agreed with my brothers and wanted impetuously to start afresh in pursuit of the career in Wall Street he had forsworn, willing and eager—the darling!—to throw away ambition, change his inherited tastes, abandon his cultivated talents, and forget the five years he had "squandered in riotous learning," as he put it!
However, I was not willing—for his sake. He would regret it later. They always do. Besides, like Carl, I had certain unuttered ideals about serving the world in those days. We still have. Only now we better understand the world. Make no mistake about this. Men are just as noble as they used to be. Plenty of them are willing to sacrifice themselves—but not us. That is why so few of the sort most needed go in for teaching and preaching in these so-called materialistic days.
What was the actual, material result of my lover's having taken seriously the advice ladled out to him by college presidents and other evil companions of his innocent youth, who had besought him not to seek material gain?
At the time we found each other he was twenty-seven years of age and had just begun his career—an instructor in the economics department, with a thousand-dollar salary. That is not why he was called an economist; but can you blame my brothers for doing their best to break the engagement?... I do not—now. It was not their fault if Carl actually practiced what they merely preached. Should Carl be blamed? No; for he seriously intended never to marry at all—until he met me. Should I be blamed? Possibly; but I did my best to break the engagement too—and incidentally both our hearts—by going abroad and staying abroad until Carl—bless him!—came over after me.
I am not blaming anybody. I am merely telling why so few men in university work, or, for that matter, in most of the professions nowadays, can support wives until after the natural mating time is past. By that time their true mates have usually wed other men—men who can support them—not the men they really love, but the men they tell themselves they love! For, if marriage is woman's only true career, it is hardly true to one's family or oneself not to follow it before it is too late—especially when denied training for any other—even though she may be equally lacking in practical training for the only career open to her.
This sounds like a confession of personal failure due to the typical unpreparedness for marriage of the modern American girl. I do not think anyone could call our marriage a personal failure, though socially it may be. During the long period of our engagement I became almost as well prepared for my lifework as Carl was for his. Instead of just waiting in sweet, sighing idleness I took courses in domestic science, studied dietetics, mastered double-entry and learned to sew. I also began reading up on economics. The latter amused the family, for they thought the higher education of women quite unwomanly and had refused to let me go to college.
It amused Carl too, until I convinced him that I was really interested in the subject, not just in him; then he began sending me boxes of books instead of boxes of candy, which made the family laugh and call me strong-minded. I did not care what they called me. I was too busy making up for the time and money wasted on my disadvantageous advantages, which may have made me more attractive to men, but had not fitted me to be the wife of any man, rich or poor.