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The Precipice by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

E >> Elia Wilkinson Peattie >> The Precipice




She let the statement hang in the air for a moment, while Wander's color
deepened yet more. He was being wounded in the place of his dreams and
the pang was sharp.

"If some one, dying, called you 'Faithful slave,'" resumed Kate, "would
that make you proud? Would it not rather be a humiliation? Now, 'good
wife' might be synonymous with 'faithful slave.' That's what I'd have to
ascertain before I could be complimented as Clarinda was complimented by
those words. I'd have to have my own approval. No one else could comfort
me with a 'well done' unless my own conscience echoed the words. 'Good
wife,' indeed!"

"What would reconcile you to such commendations?" asked Wander with a
reproach that was almost personal.

"The possession of those privileges and mediums by which liberty is
sustained."

"For example?"

"My own independent powers of thought; my own religion, politics, taste,
and direction of self-development--above all, my own money. By that I
mean money for which I did not have to ask and which never was given to
me as an indulgence. Then I should want definite work commensurate with
my powers; and the right to a voice in all matters affecting my life or
the life of my family."

"That is what you would take. But what would you give?"

"I would not 'take' these things any more than my husband would 'take'
them. Nor could he bestow them upon me, for they are mine by
inherent right."

"Could he give you nothing, then?"

"Love. Yet it may not be correct to say that he could give that. He
would not love me because he chose to do so, but because he could not
help doing so. At least, that is my idea of love. He would love me as I
was, with all my faults and follies, and I should love him the same way.
I should be as proud of his personality as I would be defensive of my
own. I should not ask him to be like me; I should only ask him to be
truly himself and to let me be truly myself. If our personalities
diverged, perhaps they would go around the circle and meet on the
other side."

"Do you think, my dear woman, that you would be able to recognize each
other after such a long journey?"

"There would be distinguishing marks," laughed Kate; "birthmarks of the
soul. But I neglected to say that it would not satisfy me merely to be
given a portion of the earnings of the family--that portion which I
would require to conduct the household and which I might claim as my
share of the result of labor. I should also wish, when there was a
surplus, to be given half of it that I might make my own experiments."

"A full partnership!"

"That's the idea, precisely: a full partnership. There is an assumption
that marriages are that now, but it is not so, as all frank persons
must concede."

"_I_ concede it, at any rate."

"Now, you must understand that we women are asking these things because
we are acquiring new ideas of duty. A duty is like a command; it must be
obeyed. It has been laid upon us to demand rights and privileges equal
to those enjoyed by men, and we wish them to be extended to us not
because we are young or beautiful or winning or chaste, but because we
are members of a common humanity with men and are entitled to the same
inheritance. We want our status established, so that when we make a
marriage alliance we can do it for love and no other reason--not for a
home, or support, or children or protection. Marriage should be a
privilege and a reward--not a necessity. It should be so that if we
spinsters want a home, we can earn one; if we desire children, we can
take to ourselves some of the motherless ones; and we should be able to
entrust society with our protection. By society I mean, of course, the
structure which civilized people have fashioned for themselves, the
portals of which are personal rights and the law."

"But what will all the lovers do? If everything is adjusted to such a
nicety, what will they be able to sacrifice for each other?"

"Lovers," smiled Kate, "will always be able to make their own paradise,
and a jewelled sacrifice will be the keystone of each window in their
house of love. But there are only a few lovers in the world compared
with those who have come down through the realm of little morning clouds
and are bearing the heat and burden of the day."

"How do you know all of these things, Wise Woman? Have you had so much
experience?"

"We each have all the accumulated experience of the centuries. We don't
have to keep to the limits of our own little individual lives."

"I often have dreamed of bringing you up on this trail," said Wander
whimsically, "but never for the purpose of hearing you make your
declaration of independence."

"Why not?" demanded Kate. "In what better place could I make it?"

Beside the clamorous waterfall was a huge boulder squared almost as if
the hand of a mason had shaped it. Kate stepped on it, before Wander
could prevent her, and stood laughing back at him, the wind blowing her
garments about her and lifting strands of her loosened hair.

"I declare my freedom!" she cried with grandiose mockery. "Freedom to
think my own thoughts, preach my own creeds, do my own work, and make
the sacrifices of my own choosing. I declare that I will have no master
and no mistress, no slave and no neophyte, but that I will strive to
preserve my own personality and to help all of my brothers and sisters,
the world over, to preserve theirs. I declare that I will let no
superstition or prejudice set limits to my good will, my influence, or
my ambition!"

"You are standing on a precipice," he warned.

"It's glorious!"

"But it may be fatal."

"But I have the head for it," she retorted. "I shall not fall!"

"Others may who try to emulate you."

"That's Fear--the most subtle of foes!"

"Oh, come back," he pleaded seriously, "I can't bear to see you standing
there!"

"Very well," she said, giving him her hand with a gay gesture of
capitulation. "But didn't you say that men liked to climb? Well,
women do, too."

They were conscious of being late for dinner and they turned their faces
toward home.

"How ridiculous," remarked Wander, "that we should think ourselves
obliged to return for dinner!"

"On the contrary," said Kate, "I think it bears witness to both our
health and our sanity. I've got over being afraid that I shall be
injured by the commonplace. When I open your door and smell the roast
or the turnips or whatever food has been provided, I shall like it just
as well as if it were flowers."

Wander helped her down a jagged descent and laughed up in her face.

"What a materialist!" he cried. "And I thought you were interested only
in the ideal."

"Things aren't ideal because they have been labeled so," declared Kate.
"When people tell you they are clinging to old ideals, it's well to find
out if they aren't napping in some musty old room beneath the cobwebs.
I'm a materialist, very likely, but that's only incidental to my
realism. I like to be allowed to realize the truth about things, and you
know yourself that you men--who really are the sentimental sex--have
tried as hard as you could not to let us."

"You speak as if we had deliberately fooled you."

"You haven't fooled us any more than we have fooled ourselves." They had
reached the lower level now, and could walk side by side. "You've kept
us supplemental, and we've thought we were noble when we played the
supplemental part. But it doesn't look so to us any longer. We want to
be ourselves and to justify ourselves. There's a good deal of complaint
about women not having enough to do--about the factories and shops
taking their work away from them and leaving them idle and inexpressive.
Well, in a way, that's true, and I'm a strong advocate of new vocations,
so that women can have their own purses and all that. But I know in my
heart all this is incidental. What we really need is a definite set of
principles; if we can acquire an inner stability, we shall do very well
whether our hands are perpetually occupied or not. But just at present
we poor women are sitting in the ruins of our collapsed faiths, and we
haven't decided what sort of architecture to use in erecting the
new one."

"There doesn't seem to be much peace left in the world," mused Wander.
"Do you women think you will have peace when you get this new faith?"

"Oh, dear me," retorted Kate, "what would you have us do with peace? You
can get that in any garlanded sepulcher. Peace is like perfection, it
isn't desirable. We should perish of it. As long as there is life there
is struggle and change. But when we have our inner faith, when we can
see what the thing is for which we are to strive, then we shall cease to
be so spasmodic in our efforts. We'll not be doing such grotesque
things. We'll come into new dignity."

"What you're trying to say," said Wander, "is that it is ourselves who
are to be our best achievement. It's what we make of ourselves
that matters."

"Oh, that's it! That's it!" cried Kate, beating her gloved hands
together like a child. "You're getting it! You're getting it! It's what
we make of ourselves that matters, and we must all have the right to
find ourselves--to keep exploring till we find our highest selves. There
mustn't be such a waste of ability and power and hope as there has
been. We must all have our share in the essentials--our own relation
to reality."

"I see," he said, pausing at the door, and looking into her face as if
he would spell out her incommunicable self. "That's what you mean by
universal liberty."

"That's what I mean."

"And the man you marry must let you pick your own way, make your own
blunders, grow by your own experience."

"Yes."

Honora opened the door and looked at them. She was weak and she leaned
against the casing for her support, but her face was tender and calm,
and she was regnant over her own mind.

"What is the matter with you two?" she asked. "Aren't you coming in to
dinner? Haven't you any appetites?"

Kate threw her arms about her.

"Oh, Honora," she cried. "How lovely you look! Appetites? We're
famished."



XXX

Another week went by, and though it went swiftly, still at the end of
the time it seemed long, as very happy and significant times do. Honora
was still weak, but as every comfort had been provided for her journey,
it seemed more than probable that she would be benefited in the long run
by the change, however exhausting it might be temporarily.

"It's the morning of the last day," said Wander at breakfast. "Honora is
to treat herself as if she were the finest and most highly decorated
bohemian glass, and save herself up for her journey. All preparations, I
am told, are completed. Very well, then. Do you and I ride to-day, Miss
Barrington?"

"'Here we ride,'" quoted Kate. Then she flushed, remembering the
reference.

Did Karl recognize it--or know it? She could not tell. He could, at
will, show a superb inscrutability.

Whether he knew Browning's poem or not, Kate found to her
irritation that she did. Lines she thought she had forgotten,
trooped--galloped--back into her brain. The thud of them fell like
rhythmic hoofs upon the road.

"Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
What need to strive with a life awry?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss."

She wove her braids about her head to the measure; buckled her boots and
buttoned her habit; and then, veiled and gauntleted she went down the
stairs, still keeping time to the inaudible tune:--

"So might I gain, so might I miss."

The mare Wander held for her was one which she had ridden several times
before and with which she was already on terms of good feeling. That
subtle, quick understanding which goes from horse to rider, when all is
well in their relations, and when both are eager to face the wind,
passed now from Lady Bel to Kate. She let the creature nose her for a
moment, then accepted Wander's hand and mounted. The fine animal
quivered delicately, shook herself, pawed the dust with a motion as
graceful as any lady could have made, threw a pleasant, sociable look
over her shoulder, and at Kate's vivacious lift of the rein was off.
Wander was mounted magnificently on Nell, a mare of heavier build, a
black animal, which made a good contrast to Lady Bel's shining
roan coat.

The animals were too fresh and impatient to permit much conversation
between their riders. They were answering to the call of the road as
much as were the humans who rode them. Kate tried to think of the
scenes which were flashing by, or of the village,--Wander's "rowdy"
village, teeming with its human stories; but, after all, it was
Browning's lines which had their way with her. They trumpeted themselves
in her ear, changing a word here and there, impishly, to suit her case.

"We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,
As the world rushed by on either side.
I thought, All labor, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty Done, the Undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped he would love me. Here we ride."

They were to the north of the village, heading for a canon. The road was
good, the day not too warm, and the passionate mountain springtime was
bursting into flower and leaf. Presently walls of rock began
to rise about them. They were of innumerable, indefinable rock
colors--grayish-yellows, dull olives, old rose, elusive purples, and
browns as rich as prairie soil. Coiling like a cobra, the Little
Williston raced singing through the midst of the chasm, sun-mottled and
bright as the trout that hid in its cold shallows. Was all the world
singing? Were the invisible stars of heaven rhyming with one another?
Had a lost rhythm been recaptured, and did she hear the pulsations of a
deep Earth-harmony--or was it, after all, only the insistent beat of the
poet's line?

"What if we still ride on, we two,
With life forever old, yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,--
And Heaven just prove that I and he
Ride, ride together, forever ride?"

What Wander said, when he spoke, was, "Walk," and the remark was made to
his horse. Lady Bel slackened, too. They were in the midst of great
beauty--complex, almost chaotic, beauty, such as the Rocky Mountains
often display.

Wander drew his horse nearer to Kate's, and as a turning of the road
shut them in a solitary paradise where alders and willows fringed the
way with fresh-born green, he laid his hand on her saddle.

"Kate," he said, "can you make up your mind to stay here with me?"

Kate drew in her breath sharply. Then she laughed.

"Am I to understand that you are introducing or continuing a topic?" she
asked.

He laughed, too. They were as willing to play with the subject as
children are to play with flowers.

"I am continuing it," he affirmed.

"Really?"

"And you know it."

"Do I?"

"From the first moment that I laid eyes on you, all the time that I was
writing to Honora and really was trying to snare your interest, and
after she came here,--even when I absurdly commanded you not to write
to me,--and now, every moment since you set foot in my wild country,
what have I done but say: 'Kate, will you stay with me?'"

"And will I?" mused Kate. "What do you offer?"

She once had asked the same question of McCrea.

"A faulty man's unchanging love."

"What makes you think it will not change--especially since you are a
faulty man?"

"I think it will not change because I am so faulty that I must have
something perfect to which to cling."

"Nonsense! A Clarinda dream! There's nothing perfect about me! The whole
truth is that you don't know whether you'll change or not!"

"Well, say that I change! Say that I pass from shimmering moonlight to
common sunlight love! Say that we walk a heavy road and carry burdens
and that our throats are so parched we forget to turn our eyes toward
each other. Still we shall be side by side, and in the end the dust of
us shall mingle in one earth. As for our spirits--if they have triumphed
together, where is the logic in supposing that they will know
separation?"

"You will give me love," said Kate, "changing, faulty, human love! I ask
no better--in the way of love. I can match you in faultiness and in
changefulness and in hope. But now what else can you give me--what
work--what chance to justify myself, what exercise for my powers? You
have your work laid out for you. Where is mine?"

Wander stared at her a moment with a bewildered expression. Then he
leaped from his horse and caught Kate's bridle.

"Where is your work, woman?" he thundered. "Are you teasing me still or
are you in earnest? Your work is in your home! With all your wisdom,
don't you know that yet? It is in your home, bearing and rearing your
sons and your daughters, and adding to my sum of joy and your own. It is
in learning secrets of happiness which only experience can teach. Listen
to me: If my back ached and my face dripped sweat because I was toiling
for you and your children, I would count it a privilege. It would be the
crown of my life. Justify yourself? How can you justify yourself except
by being of the Earth, learning of her; her obedient and happy child?
Justify yourself? Kate Barrington, you'll have to justify yourself
to me."

"How dare you?" asked Kate under her breath. "Who has given you a right
to take me to task?"

"Our love," he said, and looked her unflinchingly in the eye. "My love
for you and your love for me. I demand the truth of you,--the deepest
truth of your deepest soul,--because we are mates and can never escape
each other as long as we live, though half the earth divides us and all
our years. Wherever we go, our thoughts will turn toward each other.
When we meet, though we have striven to hate each other, yet our hands
will long to clasp. We may be at war, but we will love it better than
peace with others. I tell you, I march to the tune of your piping; you
keep step to my drum-beats. What is the use of theorizing? I speak of
a fact."

"I am going to turn my horse," she said. "Will you please stand aside?"

He dropped her bridle.

"Is that all you have to say?"

She looked at him haughtily for a moment and whirled her horse. Then she
drew the mare up.

"Karl!" she called.

No answer.

"I say--Karl!"

He came to her.

"I am not angry. I know quite well what you mean. You were speaking of
the fundamentals."

"I was."

"But how about me? Am I to have no importance save in my relation to
you?"

"You cannot have your greatest importance save in your relation to me."

She looked at him long. Her eyes underwent a dozen changes. They taunted
him, tempted him, comforted him, bade him hope, bade him fear.

"We must ride home," she said at length.

"And my question? I asked you if you were willing to stay here with me?"

"The question," she said with a dry little smile, "is laid very
respectfully on the knees of the gods."

He turned from her and swung into his saddle. They pounded home in
silence. The lines of "The Last Ride" were besetting her still.

"Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being; had I signed the bond--
Still one must lead some life beyond,--
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test?"

She gave him no chance to help her dismount, but leaping to the ground,
turned the good mare's head stableward, and ran to her room. He did not
see her till dinner-time. Honora was at the table, and occupied their
care and thought.

Afterward there was the ten-mile ride to the station, but Kate sat
beside Honora. There was a full moon--and the world ached for lovers.
But if any touched lips, Karl Wander and Kate Barrington knew nothing of
it. At the station they shook hands.

"Are you coming back?" asked Wander. "Will you bring Honora back home?"

In the moonlight Kate turned a sudden smile on him.

"Of course I'm coming back," she said. "I always put a period to my
sentences."

"Good!" he said. "But that's a very different matter from writing a
'Finis' to your book."

"I shall conclude on an interrupted sentence," laughed Kate, "and I'll
let some one else write 'Finis.'"

The great train labored in, paused for no more than a moment, and was
off again. It left Wander's world well denuded. The sense of aching
loneliness was like an agony. She had evaded him. She belonged to him,
and he had somehow let her go! What had he said, or failed to say? What
had she desired that he had not given? He tried to assure himself that
he had been guiltless, but as he passed his sleeping village and
glimpsed the ever-increasing dumps before his mines, he knew in his
heart that he had been asking her to play his game. Of course, on the
other hand--

But what was the use of running around in a squirrel cage! She was gone.
He was alone.



XXXI

The Federation of Women's Clubs!

Two thousand women gathered in the name of--what?

Why, of culture, of literature, of sisterhood, of benevolence, of music,
art, town beautification, the abolition of child-labor, the abolition of
sweat-shops, the extension of peace and opportunity.

And run how? By politics, sharp and keen, far-seeing and combative.

The results? The cooeperation of forceful women, the encouragement of
timid ones; the development of certain forms of talent, and the
destruction of some old-time virtues.

The balance? On the side of good, incontestably.

"Yes, it's on the side of good," said Honora, who was, after all, like a
nun (save that her laboratory had been her cell, and a man's fame her
passion), and who therefore brought to this vast, highly energized,
capable, various gathering a judgment unprejudiced, unworldly, and
clear. As she saw these women of many types, from all of the States,
united in great causes, united, too, in the cultivation of things not
easy of definition, she felt that, in spite of drawbacks, it must be
good. She listened to their papers, heard their earnest propaganda. A
distinguished Jewess from New York told of the work among the
immigrants and the methods by which they were created into intelligent
citizens; a beautiful Kentuckian spoke of the work among the white
mountaineers; a very venerable gentlewoman from Chicago, exquisitely
frail, talked on behalf of the children in factories; a crisp, curt,
efficient woman from Oregon advocated the dissemination of books among
the "lumber-jacks." They were ingenious in their pursuit of
benevolences, and their annual reports were the impersonal records of
personal labors. They had started libraries, made little parks,
inaugurated playgrounds, instituted exchanges for the sale of women's
wares, secured women internes in hospitals, paid for truant officers,
founded children's protective associations, installed branches of the
Associated Charities, encouraged night schools, circulated art exhibits
and traveling libraries; they had placed pictures in the public schools,
founded kindergartens--the list seemed inexhaustible.

"Oh, decidedly," Kate granted Honora, "the thing seems to be good."

Moreover, there was good being done of a less assertive but equally
commendable nature. The lines of section grew vague when the social
Georgian sat side by side with the genial woman from Michigan. Mrs.
Johnson of Minnesota and Mrs. Cabot of Massachusetts, Mrs. Hardin of
Kentucky and Mrs. Garcia of California, found no essential differences
in each other. Ladies, the world over, have a similarity of tastes. So,
as they lunched, dined, and drove together they established
relationships more intimate than their convention hall could have
fostered. If they had dissensions, these were counterbalanced by the
exchange of amenities. If their points of view diverged in lesser
matters, they converged in great ones.

And then the women of few opportunities--the farmers' wives representing
their earnest clubs; the village women, wistful and rather shy; the
emergent, onlooking company of few excursions, few indulgences--what of
the Federation for them? At first, perhaps, they feared it; but
cautiously, like unskilled swimmers, they took their experimental
strokes. They found themselves secure; heard themselves applauded. They
acquired boldness, and presently were exhilarated by the consciousness
of their own power. If the great Federation could be cruel, it could be
kind, too. One thing it had stood for from the first, and by that thing
it still abided--the undeviating, disinterested determination
to help women develop themselves. So the faltering voice was
listened to, and the report of the eager, kind-eyed woman from the
little-back-water-of-the-world was heard with interest. The Federation
knew the value of this woman who said what she meant, and did what she
promised. They sent her home to her town to be an inspiration. She was a
little torch, carrying light.