“Well, I’ve never read a line of Tolstoï,” admitted Captain Over, who was carefully revolving his coffee-machine, “so I can’t argue with you. But work! This is all the work I want.”
“You are so provoking. There is all sorts of work you must do yourself.”
“Well, why do you remind me of anything so painful, when I am doing my best to forget it? You are not an altruist or a socialist, are you?”
“I’m not anything that some one else has invented. I believe in work, because idleness horrifies me; some primal instinct in me wars against it. The civilization that permits idleness in the rich and in those with just enough to relieve them from work, with none of the responsibilities and diversions of great fortunes, is no civilization at all, to my mind. Of course, I believe in progress, but I believe in hanging on to the conditions which first made progress possible; and when I saw those carriage-loads of ridiculous women and finery in Paris I wanted to go home and till the soil and restore the balance. How good that coffee smells!”
He poured her out a steaming cup. He had raided the kitchen for cream and bread, and he carried sugar with him. No orderly had ever made better coffee.
“What women?” he asked, smiling into her still angry eyes. They were seated at a little table close to the railing and the vines hung down in her hair. Her theories might be crude and somewhat vague, but at least she thought for herself.
She described the morning in the Rue de Rivoli and the procession of American butterflies.
“What can you expect in a new republic of sudden fortunes?” he asked. “Some one must spend the money, and the men haven’t time.”
“Then are your women something besides nerves and clothes—your leisure women?”
“I don’t wish to be rude, but they are. I am, of course, only comparing them with your idle class. I have had no chance to meet any other until now. But I have met scores of rich American women and girls in London and at country-houses, and I’ve come to the conclusion that what is the matter with them—aside from lack of traditions—is that their men leave them nothing to do but spend money and amuse themselves. With us rich women and poor are helpmeets, and what saves our fast set from being as empty-headed as yours is that they have grown up among men of affairs, have heard the great questions discussed all their lives. Then, of course, they are far better educated, and often extremely clever—something more than bright and amusing. Many of them are pretty hard cases, I’m not denying that; but few are silly. They have not had the chance to be, and that is where ancestors come in, too—serious ancestors. Personally, I have never been sensible to the famous charm of the American woman, and although there are exceptions, naturally—I am only generalizing—they strike me in the mass as being shallow, selfish, egotistical, nervous. I suppose the fundamental trouble is that they have so much that an impossible ideal of happiness is the result, and they are restless and dissatisfied because they can’t get it. Possibly in another generation or two they may develop the sort of brain that makes the women of the Old World well balanced and philosophical.”