“I think,” she said, “that Joseph will soon be better in our climate; when he was sent away from Poland, he was in perfect health. Do you remember how he looked in those days?”
“Certainly I do; very well indeed.”
And I proceeded to tell her of the expeditions we both used to make to Obojanski’s.
“But,” I observed, “you have worked a miracle; he was always absolutely insensible to the charms of womankind.” This I said out of kindness, fearing lest I might otherwise give occasion to thoughts of jealousy and suspicion.
I soon felt, however, that such delicacy was out of place and lost upon her; she was impervious to any fancies of that kind.
“When at the High School,” she told me, “I made it my purpose in life to reconcile my duties toward society with those that I owed to myself. People who are against women’s emancipation say that no woman can at the same time go in for book-learning and be a good wife and mother. That is their strongest argument. But, if only women themselves would recognize that this is possible, and that everything can be made to agree! I myself, my dear Madame, finished my course of Sociology in Brussels, where I even published a short paper in French. Since then I have followed the onward march of science, so as to be always up-to-date: I am reading continually, and am occupied in translating at present.... Sometimes, too, I am able to help Joseph with facts and information. And now I ask you, my dear Madame, could the most stolid bourgeoise, if placed in my circumstances, give herself more to her child than I do! Consider, I have no nursemaid, nor any of the aids which those much belauded ‘good mothers’ enjoy. I suckle the baby myself, I tidy the room, I do the cooking, the porteress brings me provisions from the market, and that is all. Oh, how I wish some of those keen-witted gentlemen could come here and see!”
“Yes,” Smilowicz put in here, “if a working woman is out of doors all day long, leaving her children uncared for, that is in order and reasonable and right! But let a woman consecrate a few hours to her studies in the evening, they will say this is emancipation, and incompatible with her duties as a mother.”
I could see how gratified she was to hear this.
“I am only sorry for those who do not know what exceeding happiness is to be found in marriage, if there is but mutual understanding and sympathy.” And she glanced at her husband with extreme tenderness.
Meanwhile, there was a continual noise on the other side of the partition, and there came a curiously disturbing sound of women’s voices, cackling with a sort of scandalized laughter—something between giggling and sobbing.