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The Precipice by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

E >> Elia Wilkinson Peattie >> The Precipice




She had grown terrible, and her questions had the effect of being
spoken by some daemonic thing within her--something that made of her
mouth a medium as the priestesses did of the mouths of the
ancient oracles.

"Miss Barrington," shuddered Mary, "I'm trying to hold on to myself, but
I don't think I can do it much longer. Something is hammering at my
throat. I feel as if I were being strangled--" she was choking in the
grasp of hysteria.

Kate drew Honora away with a determined violence.

"She'll be screaming horribly in a minute," she said. "You don't want to
hear that, do you?"

Honora gave one last look at the miserable girl.

"Of course, you know," she said, throwing into her words an intensity
which burned like acid, "that he did not die for you, Mary. He died to
save his soul alive. He died to find himself--and me. Just that much I
have to have you know."

At that Kate forced her to go into the Pullman, and seated her by the
window where the rising wind, bringing its tale of eternal solitude,
eternal barrenness, could fan her cheek. A gentleman who had been pacing
the platform alone approached Mary and seemed to offer her assistance
with anxious solicitude. She drooped upon his arm, and as she passed
beneath the window the odor of her perfumes stole to Honora's nostrils.

"How dare she walk beneath my window?" Honora demanded of Kate. "Isn't
she afraid I may kill her?"

"No, I don't think she is, Honora. Why should she suspect anything
ignoble of you?"

Silence fell. A dull golden star blossomed in the West.

"All aboard! All aboard!" called the conductors. The people began
straggling toward their trains, laughing their farewells.

"Hope I'll meet you again sometime!"

"East or West, home's the best."

"You're sure you're not going on my train?"

"Me for God's country! You'll find nothing but fleas and flubdub on the
Coast."

"You'll be back again next year, just the same. Everybody comes back."

"All aboard! All aboard!"

"God willing," said Honora, "I shall never see her again."

Suddenly she ceased to be primitive and became a civilized woman with a
trained conscience and artificial solicitude.

"How do you suppose she's going to live, Kate? She had no money. Will
David have made any arrangement for her? Oughtn't I to see to that?"

"You are neither to kill nor pension her," said Kate angrily. "Keep
still, Honora."

The fiery worms became active, and threshed their way across the
fast-chilling and silent plain. On the eastbound one two women sat in
heavy reverie. On the westbound one a group of solicitous ladies and
gentlemen gathered about a golden-haired daughter of California offering
her sal volatile, claret, brandy-and-water. She chose the claret and
sipped it tremblingly. Its deep hue answered the glow in the great ruby
in her ring. By a chance her eye caught it and she turned the jewel
toward her palm.

"A superb stone," commented one of the kindly group. "You purchased it
abroad?" The inquiry was meant to distract her thoughts. It did not
quite succeed. She put the wine from her and covered her face with her
hands, for suddenly she was assailed by a memory of the burning kisses
with which that gem had been placed upon her finger by lips now many
fathoms beneath the surface of the sun-warmed world.



XXXIV

Kate and Honora left the train at the station of Wander, and the man for
whom it was named was there to meet them. If it was summer with the
world, it was summer with him, too. Some new plenitude had come to him
since Kate had seen him last. His full manhood seemed to be realized. A
fine seriousness invested him--a seriousness which included, the
observer felt sure, all imaginable fit forms of joy. Clothed in gray,
save for the inevitable sombrero, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, capable,
renewed with hope, he took both women with a protecting gesture into his
embrace. The three rejoiced together in that honest demonstration which
seems permissible in the West, where social forms and fears have not
much foothold.

They talked as happily of little things as if great ones were not
occupying their minds. To listen, one would have thought that only
"little joys" and small vexations had come their way. It would be by
looking into their faces that one could see the marks of passion--the
passion of sorrow, of love, of sacrifice.

As they came out of the pinon grove, Honora discovered her babies. They
were in white, fresh as lilies, or, perhaps, as little angels, well
beloved of heavenly mothers; and they came running from the house,
their golden hair shining like aureoles about their eager faces. Their
sandaled feet hardly touched the ground, and, indeed, could they have
been weighed at that moment, it surely had been found that they had
become almost imponderable because of the ethereal lightness of their
spirits. Their arms were outstretched; their eyes burning like the eyes
of seraphs.

"Stop!" cried Honora to Karl in a choking voice. He drew up his
restless, home-bound horses, and she leaped to the ground. As she ran
toward her little ones on swift feet, the two who watched her were
convinced that she had regained her old-time vigor, and had acquired an
eloquence of personality which never before had been hers. She gathered
her treasures in her arms and walked with them to the house.

Kate had not many minutes to wait in the living-room before Wander
joined her. It was a long room, with triplicate, lofty windows facing
the mountains which wheeled in majestic semicircle from north to west.
At this hour the purple shadows were gathering on them, and great peace
and beauty lay over the world.

There was but one door to this room and Wander closed it.

"I may as well know my fate now," he said. "I've waited for this from
the moment I saw you last. Are you going to be my wife, Kate?"

He stood facing her, breathing rather heavily, his face commanded to a
tense repose.

"My answer is 'no,'" cried Kate, holding out her hands to him. "I love
you as my life, and my answer is 'no.'"

He took the hands she had extended.

"Kiss me!" He gathered her into his arms, and upon her welcoming lips he
laid his own in such a kiss as a man places upon but one woman's lips.

"Now, what is your answer?" he breathed after a time. "Tell me your
answer now, you much-loved woman--tell it, beloved."

She kissed his brow and his eyes; he felt her tears upon his cheeks.

"You know all that I have thought and felt," she said; "you know--for I
have written--what my life may be. Do you ask me to let it go and to
live here in this solitude with you?"

"Yes, by heaven," he said, his eyes blazing, "I ask it."

Some influence had gone out from them which seemed to create a palpitant
atmosphere of delight in which they stood. It was as if the spiritual
essence of them, mingling, had formed the perfect fluid of the soul, in
which it was a privilege to live and breathe and dream.

"I am so blessed in you," whispered Karl, "so completed by you, that I
cannot let you go, even though you go on to great usefulness and great
goodness. I tell you, your place is here in my home. It is safe here. I
have seen you standing on a precipice, Kate, up there in the mountain. I
warned you of its danger; you told me of its glory. But I repeat my
warning now, for I see you venturing on to that precipice of loneliness
and fame on which none but sad and lonely women stand."

"Oh, I know what you say is true, Karl. I mean to do my work with all
the power there is in me, and I shall be rejoicing in that and in
Life--it's in me to be glad merely that I'm living. But deep within my
heart I shall, as you say, be both lonely and sad. If there's any
comfort in that for you--"

"No, there's no comfort at all for me in that, Kate. Stay with me, stay
with me! Be my wife. Why, it's your destiny."

Kate crossed the room as if she would move beyond that aura which
vibrated about him and in which she could not stand without a too
dangerous delight. She was very pale, but she carried her head high
still--almost defiantly.

"I mean to be the mother to many, many children, Karl," she said in a
voice which thrilled with sorrow and pride and a strange joy. "To
thousands and thousands of children. But for the Idea I represent and
the work I mean to do they would be trampled in the dust of the world.
Can't you see that I am called to this as men are called to honorable
services for their country? This is a woman's form of patriotism. It's a
higher one than the soldier's, I think. It's come my way to be the
banner-carrier, and I'm glad of it. I take my chance and my honor just
as you would take your chance and your honor. But I could resign the
glory, Karl, for your love, and count it worth while."

"Kate--"

"But the thing to which I am faithful is my opportunity for great
service. Come with me, Karl, my dear. Think how we could work together
in Washington--think what such a brain and heart as yours would mean to
a new cause. We'd lose ourselves--and find ourselves--laboring for one
of the kindest, lovingest ideas the hard old world has yet devised. Will
you come and help me, Karl, man?"

He moved toward her, his hands outspread with a protesting gesture.

"You know that all my work is here, Kate. This is my home, these mines
are mine, the town is mine. It is not only my own money which is
invested, but the money of other men--friends who have trusted me and
whose prosperity depends upon me."

"Oh, but, Karl, aren't there ways of arranging such things? You say I am
dear to you--transfer your interests and come with me--Karl!" Her voice
was a pleader's, yet it kept its pride.

"Kate! How can I? Do you want me to be a supplement to you--a hanger-on?
Don't you see that you would make me ridiculous?"

"Would I?" said Kate. "Does it seem that way to you? Then you haven't
learned to respect me, after all."

"I worship you," he cried.

Kate smiled sadly.

"I know," she said, "but worship passes--"

"No--" he flung out, starting toward her.

But she held him back with a gesture.

"You have stolen my word," she said with an accent of finality. "'No'"
is the word you force me to speak. I am going on to Washington in the
morning, Karl.

They heard the children running down the hall and pounding on the door
with their soft fists. When Kate opened to them, they clambered up her
skirts. She lifted them in her arms, and Karl saw their sunny heads
nestling against her dark one. As she left the room, moving unseeingly,
she heard the hard-wrung groan that came from his lips.

A moment later, as she mounted the stairs, she saw him striding up the
trail which they, together, had ascended once when the sun of their hope
was still high.

She did not meet him again that day. She and Honora ate their meals in
silence, Honora dark with disapproval, Kate clinging to her spar of
spiritual integrity.

If that "no" thundered in Karl's ears the night through while he kept
the company of his ancient comforters the mountains, no less did it beat
shatteringly in the ears of the woman who had spoken it.

"No," to the deep and mystic human joys; "no" to the most holy privilege
of women; "no" to light laughter and a dancing heart; "no" to the
lowly, satisfying labor of a home. For her the steep path, alone; for
her the precipice. From it she might behold the sunrise and all the
glory of the world, but no exalted sense of duty or of victory could
blind her to its solitude and to its danger.

Yet now, if ever, women must be true to the cause of liberty. They had
been, through all the ages, willing martyrs to the general good. Now it
was laid upon them to assume the responsibilities of a new crusade, to
undertake a fresh martyrdom, and this time it was for themselves.
Leagued against them was half--quite half--of their sex. Vanity and
prettiness, dalliance and dependence were their characteristics. With a
shrug of half-bared shoulders they dismissed all those who, painfully,
nobly, gravely, were fighting to restore woman's connection with
reality--to put her back, somehow, into the procession; to make, by new
methods, the "coming lady" as essential to the commonwealth as was the
old-time chatelaine before commercialism filched her vocations and left
her the most cultivated and useless of parasites.

Oh, it was no little thing for which she was fighting! Kate tried to
console herself with that. If she passionately desired to create an
organization which should exercise parental powers over orphaned or
poorly guarded children, still more did she wish to set an example of
efficiency for women, illustrating to them with how firm a step woman
might tread the higher altitudes of public life, making an achievement,
not a compromise, of labor.

Moreover, no other woman in the country had at present had an
opportunity that equaled her own. Look at it how she would, throb as she
might with a woman's immemorial nostalgia for a true man's love, she
could not escape the relentless logic of the situation. It was not the
hour for her to choose her own pleasure. She must march to battle
leaving love behind, as the heroic had done since love and combat were
known to the world.



XXXV

Morning came. She was called early that she might take the train for the
East, and arising from her sleepless bed she summoned her courage
imperatively. She determined that, however much she might suffer from
the reproaches of her inner self,--that mystic and hidden self which so
often refuses to abide by the decisions of the brain and the
conscience,--she would not betray her falterings. So she was able to go
down to the breakfast-room with an alert step and a sufficiently gallant
carriage of the head.

Honora was there, as pale as Kate herself, and she did not scruple to
turn upon her departing guest a glance both regretful and forbidding.
Kate looked across the breakfast-table at her gloomy aspect.

"Honora," she said with some exasperation, "you've walked _your_ path,
and it wasn't the usual one, now, was it? But I stood fast for your
right to be unusual, didn't I? Then, when the whole scheme of things
went to pieces and you were suffering, I didn't lay your misfortune to
the singularity of your life. I knew that thousands and thousands of
women, who had done the usual thing and chosen the beaten way, had
suffered just as much as you. I tried to give you a hand
up--blunderingly, I suppose, but I did the best I could. Of course, I'm
a beast for reminding you of it. But what I want to know is, why you
should be looking at me with the eyes of a stony-hearted critic because
I'm taking the hardest road for myself. You don't suppose I'd do it
without sufficient reason, do you? Standing at the parting of the ways
is a serious matter, however interesting it may be at the moment."

Honora's face flushed and her eyes filled.

"Oh," she cried, "I can't bear to see you putting happiness behind you.
What's the use? Don't you realize that men and women are little more
than motes in the sunshine, here for an hour and to-morrow--nothing! I'm
pretty well through with those theories that people call principles and
convictions. Why not be obedient to Nature? She's the great teacher.
Doesn't she tell you to take love and joy when they come your way?"

"We've threshed all that out, haven't we?" asked Kate impatiently. "Why
go over the ground again? But I must say, if a woman of your
intelligence--and my friend at that--can't see why I'm taking an uphill
road, alone, instead of walking in a pleasant valley with the best of
companions, then I can hardly expect any one else to sympathize with me.
However, what does it matter? I said I was going alone so why should I
complain?"

Her glance fell on the fireplace before which she and Karl had sat the
night when he first welcomed her beneath his roof. She remembered the
wild silence of the hour, the sense she had had of the invisible
presence of the mountains, and how Karl's love had streamed about her
like shafts of light.

"I've seen nothing of Karl," said Honora abruptly. "He went up the trail
yesterday morning, and hasn't been back to the house since."

"He didn't come home last night? He didn't sleep in his bed?"

"No, I tell you. He's had the Door of Life slammed in his face, and I
suppose he's pretty badly humiliated. Karl isn't cut out to be a beggar
hanging about the gates, is he? Pence and crumbs wouldn't interest him.
I wonder if you have any idea how a man like that can suffer? Do you
imagine he is another Ray McCrea?"

"Pour my coffee, please, Honora," said Kate.

Honora took the hint and said no more, while Kate hastily ate her
breakfast. When she had finished she said as she left the table:--

"I'd be glad if you'll tell the stable-man that I'll not take the
morning train. I'm sorry to change my mind, but it's unavoidable."

The smart traveling-suit she had purchased in Los Angeles was her
equipment that morning. To this she added her hat and traveling-veil.

"If you're going up the mountain," said the maladroit Honora, "better
not wear those things. They'll be ruined."

"Oh, things!" cried Kate angrily. She stopped at the doorway. "That
wasn't decent of you, Honora. I _am_ going up the mountain--but what
right had you to suppose it?"

The whole household knew it a moment later--the maids, the men at the
stables and the corral. They knew it, but they thought more of her. She
went so proudly, so openly. The judgment they might have passed upon
lesser folk, they set aside where Wander and his resistant sweetheart
were concerned. They did not know the theater, these Western men and
women, but they recognized drama when they saw it. Their deep love of
romance was satisfied by these lovers, so strong, so compelling, who
moved like demigods in their unconcern for the opinions of others.

Kate climbed the trail which she and Wander had taken together on the
day when she had mockingly proclaimed her declaration of independence.
She smiled bitterly now to think of the futility of it. Independence?
For whom did such a thing exist? Karl Wander was drawing her to him as
that mountain of lode in the Yellowstone drew the lightnings of heaven.

In time she came to the bench beside the torrent where she and Wander
had rested that other, unforgettable day. She paused there now for a
long time, for the path was steep and the altitude great. The day had
turned gray and a cold wind was arising--crying wind, that wailed among
the tumbled boulders and drove before it clouds of somber hue.

After a time she went on, and as she mounted, encountering ever a
steeper and more difficult way, she tore the leather of her shoes, rent
the skirt of her traveling-frock, and ruined her gloves with soil
and rock.

"If I have to go back as I came, alone," she reflected, "all in tatters
like this, to find that he is at the mines or the village, attending to
his work, I shall cut a fine figure, shan't I? The very gods will
laugh at me."

She flamed scarlet at the thought, but she did not turn back.

Presently she came to a place where the path forked. A very narrow,
appallingly deep gorge split the mountain at this point, each path
skirting a side of this crevasse.

"I choose the right path," said Kate aloud.

Her heart and lungs were again rebelling at the altitude and the
exertion, and she was forced to lie flat for a long time. She lay with
her face to the sky watching the roll of the murky clouds. Above her
towered the crest of the mountain, below her stretched the abyss. It was
a place where one might draw apart from all the world and contemplate
the little thing that men call Life. Neither ecstasy nor despair came to
her, though some such excesses might have been expected of one whose
troubled mind contemplated such magnificence, such terrific beauty.
Instead, she seemed to face the great soul of Truth--to arrive at a
conclusion of perfect sanity, of fine reasonableness.

Conventions, pettiness, foolish pride, waywardness, secret egotism,
fell away from her. The customs of society, with what was valuable in
them and what was inadequate, assumed their true proportions. It was as
if her House of Life had been swept of fallacy by the besom of the
mountain wind. A feeling of strength, courage, and clarity took
possession of her. There was an expectation, too,--nay, the
conviction,--that an event was at hand fraught for her with vast
significance.

The trail, almost perpendicular now, led up a mighty rock. She pulled
herself up, and emerging upon the crown of the mountain, beheld the
proud peaks of the Rockies, bare or snow-capped, dripping with purple
and gray mists, sweeping majestically into the distance. Such solemnity,
such dark and passionate beauty, she never yet had seen, though she was
by this time no stranger to the Rockies, and she had looked upon the
wonders of the Sierras. She envisaged as much of this sublimity as eye
and brain might hold; then, at a noise, glanced at that tortuous
trail--yet more difficult than the one she had taken--which skirted the
other side of the continuing crevasse.

On it stood Karl Wander, not as she had seen him last, impatient, racked
with mental pain, and torn with pride and eager love. He was haggard,
but he had arrived at peace. He was master over himself and no longer
the creature of futile torments. To such a man a woman might well
capitulate if capitulation was her intent. With such a chieftain might
one well treat if one had a mind to maintain the suzerainty of
one's soul.

The wind assailed Kate violently, and she caught at a spur of rock and
clung, while her traveling-veil, escaped from bounds, flung out like a
"home-going" pennant of a ship.

"A flag of truce, Kate?" thundered Wander's voice.

"Will you receive it?" cried Kate.

Now that she had sought and found him, she would not surrender without
one glad glory of the hour.

"Name your conditions, beloved enemy."

"How can we talk like this?"

"We're not talking. We're shouting."

"Is there no way across?"

"Only for eagles."

"What did you mean by staying up here? I was terrified. What if you had
been dying alone--"

"I came up to think things out."

"Have you?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Kate, we must be married."

"Yes," laughed Kate. "I know it."

"But--"

"Yes," called Kate, "that's it. But--"

"But you shall do your work: I shall do mine."

"I know," said Kate. "That's what I meant to¸ say to you. There's more
than one way of being happy and good."

"Go your way, Kate. Go to your great undertaking. Go as my wife. I stay
with my task. It may carry me farther and bring me more honor than we
yet know. I shall go to you when I can: you must come to me--when you
will. What more exhilarating? A few years will bring changes. I hear
they may send me to Washington, after all. But they'll not need to send
me. Lead where you will, I will follow--on condition!"

"The condition?"

She stood laughing at him, shining at him, free and proud as the
"victory" of a sculptor's dream.

"That you follow my leadership in turn. We'll have a Republic of Souls,
Kate, with equal opportunity--none less, none greater--with high
expediency for the watchword."

"Yes. Oh, Karl, I came to say all this!"

"Then some day we'll settle down beneath one roof--we'll have a
hearthstone."

"Yes," cried Kate again, this time with an accent that drowned forever
the memory of her "no."

"Turn about, Kate; turn about and go down the trail. You'll have to do
it alone, I'm afraid. I can't get over there to help."

"I don't need help," retorted Kate. "It's fine doing it alone."

"Follow your path, and I will follow mine. We can keep in sight almost
all the way, I think, and,¸ as you know, a little below this height, the
paths converge."

Kate stood a moment longer, looking at him, measuring him.

"How splendid to be a man," she called. "But I'm glad I'm a woman," she
supplemented hastily.

"Not half so glad as I, Kate, my mate,--not a thousandth part so glad as
I."

She held out her arms to him. He gave a great laugh and plunged down the
path. Kate swept her glance once more over the dark beauty of the
mountain-tops--her splendid world, wrought with illimitable joy in
achievement by the Maker of Worlds,--and turning, ran down the great
rock that led to the trail.


THE END