The Precipice by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

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Next door to Marna there was a young Irishwoman of whom the Fitzgeralds
saw a good deal, the mother of five little children, with not more than
sixteen months between the ages of any of them. Mary Finn had been
beautiful--so much was evident at a glance. But she already wore a
dragged expression; and work, far beyond her powers to accomplish, was
making a sloven of her. She was petulant with the children, though she
adored them--at least, sporadically. But her burden tired her patience
out. Timothy Finn's income had not increased in proportion to his
family. He was now in his young manhood, at the height of his earning
capacity, and early middle-age might see him suffering a reduction.

Mrs. Finn dropped in Sunday afternoon to share the cup of tea which
Marna was offering her guests, and as she looked wistfully out of her
tangle of dark hair,--in which lines of silver already were beginning to
appear,--she impressed herself upon Kate's mind as one of the
innumerable army of martyrs to the fetish of fecundity which had borne
down men and women through the centuries.

She had her youngest child with her.

"It was a terrible time before I could get up from the last one," she
said, "me that was around as smart as could be with the first. I'm in
living terror all the time for fear of what's coming to me. A mother has
no business to die, that's what I tell Tim. Who'd look to the ones I
have, with me taken? I'm sharp with them at times, but God knows I'd die
for 'em. Blessed be, they understand my scolding, the dears. It's a cuff
and a kiss with me, and I declare I don't know which they like best.
They may howl when I hurt them, but they know it's their own mother
doing the cuffing, and in their hearts they don't care. It's that way
with cubs, ye see. Mother bear knows how hard to box the ears of 'em.
But it's truth I'm saying, Mrs. Fitzgerald; there's little peace for
women. They don't seem to belong to themselves at all, once they're
married. It's very happy you are, looking forward to your first, and you
have my good wishes. More than that, I'll be proud to be of any service
to you I can when your time comes--it's myself has had experience
enough! But, I tell you, the joy runs out when you're slaving from
morning to night, and then never getting the half done that you ought;
and when you don't know what it is to have two hours straight sleep at
night; and maybe your husband scolding at the noise the young ones make.
Love 'em? Of course, you love 'em. But you can stand only so much.
After that, you're done for. And the agony of passing and leaving the
children motherless is something I don't like to think about."

She bared her thin breast to her nursing babe, rocking slowly, her blue
eyes straining into the future with its menace.

"But," said Marna, blushing with embarrassment, "need there be
such--such a burden? Don't you think it right to--to--"

"Neither God nor man seems to have any mercy on me," cried the little
woman passionately. "I say I'm in a trap--that's the truth of it. If I
was a selfish, bad mother, I could get out of it; if I was a mean wife,
I could, too, I suppose. I've tried to do what was right,--what other
people told me was right,--and I pray it won't kill me--for I ought to
live for the children's sake."

The child was whining because of lack of nourishment, and Mrs. Finn put
it to the other breast, but it fared little better there. Mrs. Dennison
was looking on with her mild, benevolent aspect.

"My dear," she said at last with an air of gentle authority, "I'm going
out to get a bottle and good reliable infant food for that child. You
haven't strength enough to more than keep yourself going, not to say
anything about the baby."

She took the child out of the woman's arms and gave it to Kate.

"But I don't think I ought to wean it when it's so young," cried Mrs.
Finn, breaking down and wringing her thin hands with an immemorial
Hibernian gesture. "Tim wouldn't like it, and his mother would rage
at me."

"They'll like it when they see the baby getting some flesh on its
bones," insisted Mrs. Dennison. "There's more than one kind of a fight a
mother has to put up for her children. They used to think it fine for a
woman to kill herself for her children, but I don't think it's so much
the fashion now. As you say, a mother has no business to die; it's the
part of intelligence to live. So you just have a set-to with your
old-fashioned mother-in-law if it's necessary."

"Yes," put in Kate, "the new generation always has to fight the old in
the interests of progress."

Marna broke into a rippling laugh.

"That's her best platform manner," she cried. "Just think, Mrs. Finn, my
friend talks on suffrage."

"Oh!" gasped the little Irishwoman, involuntarily putting out her hands
as if she would snatch her infant from such a contaminating hold.

But Kate drew back smilingly.

"Yes," she said significantly, "I believe in woman's rights."

She held on to the baby, and Mrs. Dennison, putting on her hat and coat,
went in search of a nursing-bottle.

On the way home, Mrs. Dennison, who was of the last generation, and
Kate, who was of the present one, talked the matter over.

"She didn't seem to understand that she had been talking 'woman's
rights,'" mused Kate, referring to Mrs. Finn. "The word frightened the
poor dear. She didn't see that fatal last word of her 'love, honor, and
obey' had her where she might even have to give her life in keeping
her word."

"Well, for my part," said Mrs. Dennison, in her mellow, flowing tones,
"I always found it a pleasure to obey my husband. But, then, to be sure,
I don't know that he ever asked anything inconsiderate of me."

"You were a well-shielded woman, weren't you?" asked Kate.

"I didn't need to lift my hand unless I wished," said Mrs. Dennison in
reminiscence.

"And you had no children--"

"But that was a great sorrow."

"Yes, but it wasn't a living vexation and drain. It didn't use up your
vitality and suck up your brain power and make a slattern and a drudge
of you as having five children in seven years has of little Mrs. Finn.
It's all very well to talk of obeying when you aren't asked to obey--or,
at least, when you aren't required to do anything difficult. But good
Tim Finn, I'll warrant, tells his Mary when she may go and where, and
he'd be in a fury if she went somewhere against his desire. Oh, she's
playing the old medieval game, you can see that!"

"Dear Kate," sighed Mrs. Dennison, "sometimes your expressions seem to
me quite out of taste. I do hope you won't mind my saying so. You're so
very emphatic."

"I don't mind a bit, Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather
violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the
vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree,
where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et
cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my
time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a different sort of woman."

"I can't help looking forward, Kate, to the time when you'll be in your
own home. You think you're all bound up in this public work, but I can
tell by the looks of you that you're just the one to make a good wife
for some fine man. I hope you don't think it impertinent of me, but I
can't make out why you haven't taken one or the other of the men who
want you."

"You think some one wants me?" asked Kate provokingly.

"Oh, we all know that Dr. von Shierbrand would rather be taking you home
to see his old German mother than to be made President of the University
of Chicago; and that nice Mr. McCrea is nearly crazy over the way you
treat him."

"But it would seem so stale--life in a home with either of them! Should
I just have to sit at the window and watch for them to come home?"

"You know you wouldn't," said Mrs. Dennison, almost crossly. "Why do
you tease me? What's good enough for other women ought to be good
enough for you."

"Oh, what a bad one I am!" cried Kate. "Of course what is good enough
for better women than I ought to be good enough for me. But yet--shall I
tell the truth about myself?"

"Do," said Mrs. Dennison, placated. "I want you to confide in me, Kate."

"Well, you see, dear lady, suppose that I marry one of the gentlemen of
whom you have spoken. Suppose I make a pleasant home for my husband,
have two or three nice children, and live a happy and--well, a good
life. Then I die and there's the end."

"Well, of course I don't think that's the end," broke in Mrs. Dennison.

Kate evaded the point.

"I mean, there's an end of my earthly existence. Now, on the other hand,
suppose I get this Bureau for Children through. Suppose it becomes a
fact. Let us play that I am asked to become the head of it, or, if not
that, at least to assist in carrying on its work. Then, suppose that, as
a result of my work, the unprotected children have protection; the
education of all the children in the country is assured--even of the
half-witted, and the blind and the deaf and the vicious. Suppose that
the care and development of children becomes a great and generally
comprehended science, like sanitation, so that the men and women of
future generations are more fitted to live than those we now see about
us. Don't you think that will be better worth while than my individual
happiness? They think a woman heroic when she sacrifices herself for her
children, but shouldn't I be much more heroic if I worked all my life
for other people's children? For children yet to be born? I ask you that
calmly. I don't wish you to answer me to-day. I'm in earnest now, dear
Mrs. Dennison, and I'd like you to give me a true answer."

There was a little pause. Mrs. Dennison was trifling nervously with the
frogs on her black silk jacket. When she spoke, it was rather
diffidently.

"I could answer you so much better, my dear Kate," she said at length,
"if I only knew how much or how little vanity you have."

"Oh!" gasped Kate.

"Or whether you are really an egotist--as some think."

"Oh!" breathed Kate again.

"As for me, I always say that a person can't get anywhere without
egotism. The word never did scare me. Egotism is a kind of yeast that
makes the human bread rise. I don't see how we could get along without
it. As you say, I'd better wait before answering you. You've asked me an
important question, and I'd like to give it thought. I can see that
you'd be a good and useful woman whichever thing you did. But the
question is, would you be a happy one in a home? You've got the idea of
a public life in your head, and very likely that influences you without
your realizing it."

"I don't say I'm not ambitious," cried Kate, really stirred. "But that
ought to be a credit to me! It's ridiculous using the word 'ambitious'
as a credit to a man, and making it seem like a shame to a woman.
Ambition is personal force. Why shouldn't I have force?"

"There are things I can't put into words," said Mrs. Dennison, taking a
folded handkerchief from her bead bag and delicately wiping her face,
"and one of them is what I think about women. I'm a woman myself, and it
doesn't seem becoming to me to say that I think they're sacred."

"No more sacred than men!" interrupted Kate hotly. "Life is sacred--if
it's good. I can't say I think it sacred when it's deleterious. It's
that pale, twilight sort of a theory which has kept women from doing the
things they were capable of doing. Men kept thinking of them as sacred,
and then they were miserably disappointed when they found they weren't.
They talk about women's dreams, but I think men dream just as much as
women, or more, and that they moon around with ideas about angel wives,
and then are horribly shocked when they find they've married limited,
commonplace, selfish creatures like themselves. I say let us train them
both, make them comrades, give them a chance to share the burdens and
the rewards, and see if we can't reduce the number of broken hearts in
the world."

"There are some burdens," put in Mrs. Dennison, "which men and women
cannot share. The burden of child-bearing, which is the most important
one there is, has to be borne by women alone. You yourself were talking
about that only a little while ago. It's such a strange sort of a
thing,--so sweet and _so_ terrible,--and it so often takes a woman to
the verge of the grave, or over it, that I suppose it is that which
gives a sacredness to women. Then, too, they'll work all their lives
long for some one they love with no thought of any return except love.
That makes them sacred, too. Most of them believe in God, even when
they're bad, and they believe in those they love even when they ought
not. Maybe they're right in this and maybe they're not. Perhaps you'll
say that shows their lack of sense. But I say it helps the world on,
just the same. It may not be sensible--but it makes them sacred."

Mrs. Dennison's face was shining. She had pulled the gloves from her
warm hands, and Kate, looking down at them, saw how work-worn they now
were, though they were softly rounded and delicate. She knew this woman
might have married a second time; but she was toiling that she might
keep faith with the man she had laid in his grave. She was expecting a
reunion with him. Her hope warmed her and kept her redolent of youth.
She was still a bride, though she was a widow. She was of those who
understood the things of the spirit. The essence of womanhood was in
her--the elusive poetry of womanhood. To such implications of mystic
beauty there was no retort. Kate saw in that moment that when women got
as far as emancipation they were going to lose something infinitely
precious. The real question was, should not these beautiful, these
evanishing joys be permitted to depart in the interests of progress?
Would not new, more robust satisfactions come to take the place of them?

They rode on in silence, and Kate's mind darted here and there--darted
to Lena Vroom, that piteous little sister of Icarus, with her scorched
wings; darted to Honora Fulham with her shattered faith; to Mary
Morrison with her wanton's wisdom; to Mary Finn, whose womanhood was her
undoing; to Marna, who had given fame for love and found the bargain
good; to Mrs. Leger, who had turned to God; to her mother, the cringing
wife, who could not keep faith with herself and her vows of obedience,
and who had perished of the conflict; to Mrs. Dennison, happy in her
mid-Victorian creed. Then from these, whom she knew, her mind swept on
to the others--to all the restless, disturbed, questioning women the
world over, who, clinging to beautiful old myths, yet reached out
diffident hands to grasp new guidance. The violence and nurtured hatred
of some of them offended her deeply; the egregious selfishness of others
seemed to her as a flaming sin. Militant, unrestrained, avid of coarse
and obvious things, they presented a shameful contrast to this little,
gentle, dreaming keeper of a boarding-house who sat beside her, her
dove's eyes filled with the mist of memories.

And yet--and yet--

XX

The next day, as it happened, she was invited to Lake Forest to attend a
"suffrage tea." A distinguished English suffragette was to be present,
and the more fashionable group of Chicago suffragists were gathering to
pay her honor.

It was a torrid day with a promise of storm, and Kate would have
preferred to go to the Settlement House to do her usual work, which
chanced just now to be chiefly clerical. But she was urged to meet the
Englishwoman and to discuss with her the matter of the Children's
Bureau, in which the Settlement House people were now taking the keenest
interest. Kate went, gowned in fresh linen, and well pleased, after all,
to be with a holiday crowd riding through the summer woods. Tea was
being served on the lawn. It overlooked the lake, and here were gathered
both men and women. It was a company of rather notable persons, as Kate
saw at a glance. Almost every one there was distinguished for some
social achievement, or as the advocate of some reform or theory, or
perhaps as an opulent and fashionable patron. It was at once interesting
and amusing.

Kate greeted her hostess, and looked about her for the guest of honor.
It transpired that the affair was quite informal, after all. The
Englishwoman was sitting in a tea-tent discoursing with a number of
gentlemen who hung over her with polite attentions. They were well-known
bachelors of advanced ideas--men with honorary titles and personal
ambitions. The great suffragist was very much at home with them. Her
deep, musical voice resounded like a bell as she uttered her dicta and
her witticisms. She--like the men--was smoking a cigarette, a feat which
she performed without coquetry or consciousness. She was smoking because
she liked to smoke. It took no more than a glance to reveal the fact
that she was further along in her pregnancy than Marna--Marna who
started back from the door when a stranger appeared at it lest she
should seem immodest. But the suffragette, having acquired an applauding
and excellent husband, saw no reason why she should apologize to the
world for the processes of nature. Quite as unconscious of her condition
as of her unconventionality in smoking, she discoursed with these
diverted men, her transparent frock revealing the full beauties of her
neck and bust, her handsome arms well displayed--frankly and insistently
feminine, yet possessing herself without hesitation of what may be
termed the masculine attitude toward life.

For some reason which Kate did not attempt to define, she refrained from
discussing the Bureau of Children with the celebrated suffragette,
although she did not doubt that the Englishwoman would have been capable
of keen and valuable criticism. Instead, she returned to the city, sent
a box of violets to Marna, and then went on to her attic room.

A letter was awaiting her from the West. It read:

"MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:--

"Honora and the kiddies are here. I have given my cousin a
room where she can see the mountains on two sides, and I hope
it will help. I've known the hills to help, even with pretty
rough customers. It won't take a creature like Honora long to
get hold of the secret, will it? You know what I mean,
I guess.

"I wish you had come. I watched the turn in the drive to see
if you wouldn't be in the station wagon. There were two
women's heads. I recognized Honora's, and I tried to think
the second one was yours, but I really knew it wasn't. It was
a low head--one of that patient sort of heads--and a flat,
lid-like hat. The nurse's, of course! I suppose you wear
helmet-shaped hats with wings on them--something like
Mercury's or Diana's. Or don't they sell that kind of
millinery nowadays?

"Honora tells me you're trying to run the world and that you
make up to all kinds of people--hold-up men as well as
preachers. Do you know, I'm something like that myself? I
can't help it, but I do seem to enjoy folks. One of the
pleasantest nights I ever spent was with a lot of bandits in
a cave. I was their prisoner, too, which complicated matters.
But we had such a bully time that they asked me to join
them. I told them I'd like the life in some respects. I could
see it was a sort of game not unlike some I'd played when I
was a boy. But it would have made me nervous, so I had to
refuse them.

"Well, I'm talking nonsense. What if you should think I
counted it sense! That would be bad for me. I only thought
you'd be having so may pious and proper letters that I'd have
to give you a jog if I got you to answer this. And I do wish
you would answer it. I'm a lonely man, though a busy one. Of
course it's going to be a tremendous comfort having Honora
here when once she gets to be herself. She's wild with pain
now, and nothing she says means anything. We play chess a
good deal, after a fashion. Honora thinks she's amusing me,
but as I like 'the rigor of the game,' I can't say that I'm
amused at her plays. The first time she thinks before she
moves I'll know she's over the worst of her trouble. She
seems very weak, but I'm feeding her on cream and eggs. The
kiddies are dears--just as cute as young owls. They're not
afraid of me even when I pretend I'm a coyote and howl.

"Do write to me, Miss Barrington. I'm as crude as a cabbage,
but when I say I'd rather have you write me than have any
piece of good fortune befall me which your wildest
imagination could depict, I mean it. Perhaps that will scare
you off. Anyway, you can't say I didn't play fair.

"I'm worn out sitting around with this fractured leg of mine
in its miserable cast. (I know stronger words than
'miserable,' but I use it because I'm determined to behave
myself.) Honora says she thinks it would be all right for you
to correspond with me. I asked her.

"Yours faithfully,

"KARL WANDER."

"What a ridiculous boy," said Kate to herself. She laughed aloud with a
rippling merriment; and then, after a little silence, she laughed again.

"The man certainly is naif," she said. "Can he really expect me to
answer a letter like that?"

She awoke several times that night, and each time she gave a fleeting
thought to the letter. She seemed to see it before her eyes--a purple
eidolon, a parallelogram in shape. It flickered up and down like an
electric sign. When morning came she was quite surprised to find the
letter was existent and stationary. She read it again, and she wished
tremendously that she might answer it. It occurred to her that in a way
she never had had any fun. She had been persistently earnest,
passionately honest, absurdly grim. Now to answer that letter would come
under the head of mere frolic! Yet would it? Was not this curious,
outspoken man--this gigantic, good-hearted, absurd boy--giving her
notice that he was ready to turn into her lover at the slightest gesture
of acquiescence on her part? No, the frolic would soon end. It would be
another of those appalling games-for-life, those woman-trap affairs.
And she liked freedom better than anything.

She went off to her work in a defiant frame of mind, carrying, however,
the letter with her in her handbag.

What she did write--after several days' delay--was this:--

"MY DEAR MR. WANDER:--

"I can see that Honora is in the best place in the world for
her. You must let me know when she has checkmated you. I
quite agree that that will show the beginning of her
recovery. She has had a terrible misfortune, and it was the
outcome of a disease from which all of us 'advanced' women
are suffering. Her convictions and her instincts were at war.
I can't imagine what is going to happen to us. We all feel
very unsettled, and Honora's tragedy is only one of several
sorts which may come to any of us. But an instinct deeper
than instinct, a conviction beyond conviction, tells me that
we are right--that we must go on, studying, working,
developing. We may have to pay a fearful price for our
advancement, but I do not suppose we could turn back now
if we would.

"You ask if I will correspond with you. Well, do you suppose
we really have anything to say? What, for example, have you
to tell me about? Honora says you own a mine, or two or
three; that you have a city of workmen; that you are a
father to them. Are they Italians? I think she said so.
They're grateful folk, the Italians. I hope they like you.
They are so sweet when they do, and so--sudden--when
they don't.

"I have had something to do with them, and they are very dear
to me. They ask me to their christenings and to other
festivals. I like their gayety because it contrasts with my
own disposition, which is gloomy.

"Upon reflection, I think we'd better not write to each
other. You were too explicit in your letter--too
precautionary. You'd make me have a conscience about it, and
I'd be watching myself. That's too much trouble. My business
is to watch others, not myself. But I do thank you for giving
such a welcome to Honora and the babies. I hope you will soon
be about again. I find it so much easier to imagine you
riding over a mountain pass than sitting in the house with a
leg in plaster.

"Yours sincerely,

"KATE BARRINGTON."

He wrote back:--

"MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:--

"I admire your idea of gloom! Not the spirit of gloom but of
adventure moves you. I saw it in your eye. When I buy a
horse, I always look at his eye. It's not so much viciousness
that I'm afraid of as stupidity. I like a horse that is
always pressing forward to see what is around the next turn.
Now, we humans are a good deal like horses. Women are,
anyway. And I saw your eye. My own opinion is that you are
having the finest time of anybody I know. You're shaping your
own life, at least,--and that's the best fun there is,--the
best kind of good fortune. Of course you'll get tired of it
after a while. I don't say that because you are a woman, but
I've seen it happen over and over again both with men and
women. After a little while they get tired of roving and
come home.

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