The Precipice by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

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She remembered one person--one only--who had given her the impression of
abounding physical, mental, and spiritual life. True, she had seen him
but a moment--one swift, absurd, curiously haunting moment. That was
Karl Wander, Honora's cousin, and the cousin of Mary Morrison. They were
the children of three sisters, and from what Kate knew of their
descendants' natures, she felt these sisters must have been palpitating
creatures.

Yes, Karl Wander had seemed complete--a happy man, seething with plans,
a wise man who took life as it came; a man of local qualities yet of
cosmopolitan spirit--one who would not have fretted at his environment
or counted it of much consequence, whatever it might have been.

If she could have known him--

But Honora seldom spoke of him. Only sometimes she read a brief note
from him, and added:--

"He wishes to be remembered to you, Kate."

She did not hint: "He saw you only a second." Honora was not one of
those persons who take pleasure in pricking bubbles. She perceived the
beauty of iridescence. If her odd friend and her inexplicable cousin had
any satisfaction in remembering a passing encounter, they could have
their pleasure of it.

Kate, for her part, would not have confessed that she thought of him.
But, curiously, she sometimes dreamed of him.

At last Ray McCrea was coming home. His frequent letters, full of good
comment, announced the fact.

"I've been winning my spurs, commercially speaking," he wrote. "The old
department heads, whom my father taught me to respect, seem pleased with
what I have done. I believe that when I come back they will have ceased
to look on me as a cadet. And if they think I'm fit for
responsibilities, perhaps you will think so, too, Kate. At any rate, I
know you'll let me say that I am horribly homesick. This being in a
foreign land is all very well, but give me the good old American ways,
crude though they may be. I want a straightforward confab with some one
of my own sort; I want the feeling that I can move around without
treading on somebody's toes. I want, above all, to have a comfortable
entertaining evening with a nice American girl--a girl that takes
herself and me for granted, and isn't shying off all the time as if I
were a sort of bandit. What a relief to think that you'll not be
accompanied by a chaperon! I shall get back my self-respect once I'm
home again with you nice, self-confident young American women."

"It will be good to see him, I believe," mused Kate. "After all, he
always looked after me. I can't seem to remember just how much pleasure
I had in his society. At any rate, we'll have plenty of things to talk
about. He'll tell me about Europe, and I'll tell him about my work. That
ought to carry us along quite a while."

She set about making preparations for him. She induced Honora to let
her have an extra room, and she made her fine front chamber into a
sitting-room, with a knocker on the door, and some cheerful brasses and
old prints within. She came across oddities of this sort in her Russian
and Italian neighborhoods, but until now she had not taken very much
interest in what she was inclined to term "sublimated junk."

Mary Morrison took an almost vicious amusement in Kate's sudden efforts
at aesthetic domestication, and Marna Fitzgerald--who was
delighted--considered it as a frank confession of sentiment. Kate let
them think what they pleased. She presented to their inspection--even
Mary was invited up for the occasion--a cheerful room with a cream
paper, a tawny-colored rug, some comfortable wicker chairs, an
interesting plaster cast or two, and the previously mentioned "loot."
Mary, in a fit of friendliness, contributed a Japanese wall-basket
dripping with vines; Honora proffered a lamp with a soft shade; and
Marna took pride in bestowing some delicately embroidered cushions,
white, and beautiful with the beauty of Belfast linen.

It did not appear to occur to Kate, however, that personal adornment
would be desirable, and it took the united efforts of Marna and Mary to
persuade her that a new frock or two might be needed. Kate had a way of
avoiding shabbiness, but of late her interest in decoration had been
anything but keen. However, she ventured now on a rather beguiling
dress for evening--a Japanese crepe which a returned missionary sold her
for something more than a song. Dr. von Shierbrand said it was the color
of rust, but Marna affirmed that it had the hue of copper--copper that
was not too bright. It was embroidered gloriously with chrysanthemums,
and she had great pleasure in it. Mary Morrison drew from her rainbow
collection a scarf which accentuated the charm of the frock, and when
Kate had contrived a monk's cape of brown, she was ready for possible
entertainments--panoplied for sentiment. She would make no further
concessions. Her practical street clothes and her home-made frocks of
white linen, with which she made herself dainty for dinner at Mrs.
Dennison's, had to serve her.

"I'm so poor," she said to Marna, "that I feel like apologizing for my
inefficiency. I'm getting something now for my talks at the clubs, and
I'm paid for my writing, too. Now that it's begun to be published, I
ought to be opulent presently."

"You're no poorer than we," Marna said. "But of course there are two of
us to be poor together; and that makes it more interesting."

"Love doesn't seem to be flying out of your window," smiled Kate.

"We've bars on the windows," laughed Marna. "Some former occupant of the
flat put them on to keep the babies from dashing their brains out on the
pavement below, and we haven't taken them off." She blushed. "No,"
responded Kate with a _moue_; "what was the use?"

* * * * *

Unfortunately McCrea, the much-expected, had not made it quite plain
when he was to land in New York. To be sure, Kate might have consulted
the steamer arrivals, but she forgot to do that. So it happened that
when a wire came from Ray saying that he would be in Chicago on a
certain Saturday night in mid-May, Kate found herself under compulsion
to march in a suffrage procession.

David Fulham thought the circumstance uproariously funny, and he told
them about it at the Caravansary. They made rather an annoying jest of
it, but Kate held to her promise.

"It's an historic event to my mind," she said with all the dignity she
could summon. "I wouldn't excuse myself if I could. And I can't. I've
promised to march at the head of a division. We hope there'll be twenty
thousand of us."

Perhaps there were. Nobody knew. But all the city did know that down the
broad boulevard, in the mild, damp air of the May night, regiment upon
regiment of women marched to bear witness to their conviction and their
hope. Bands played, choruses sang, transparencies proclaimed watchwords,
and every woman in the seemingly endless procession swung a yellow
lantern. The onlookers crowded the sidewalks and hung from the towering
office buildings, to watch that string of glowing amber beads reaching
away to north and to south. College girls, working-girls, home-women,
fine ladies, efficient business women, vague, non-producing,
half-awakened women,--all sorts, all conditions, black, white, Latin,
Slav, Germanic, English, American, American, American,--they came
marching on. They were proud and they were diffident; they were sad and
they were merry; they were faltering and they were enthusiastic. Some
were there freely, splendidly, exultantly; more were there because some
force greater than themselves impelled them. Through bewilderment and
hesitancy and doubt, they saw the lights of the future shining, and they
fixed their eyes upon the amber lanterns as upon the visible symbols of
their faith; they marched and marched. They were the members of a new
revolution, and, as always, only a portion of the revolutionists knew
completely what they desired.

At the Caravansary there had been sharp disapproval of the whole thing.
The men had brought forth arguments to show Kate her folly. Mrs.
Dennison, Mrs. Goodrich, and Mrs. Applegate had spoken gentle words of
warning; Honora had vaguely suggested that the matter was immaterial;
Mary Morrison had smiled as one who avoided ugliness; and Kate had
laughingly defied them.

"I march!" she had declared. "And I'm not ashamed of my company."

It was, indeed, a company of which she was proud. It included the names
of the most distinguished, the most useful, the most talented, the most
exclusive, and the most triumphantly inclusive women in the city.

"Poor McCrea," put in Fulham. "Aren't you making him ridiculous? He'll
come dashing up here the moment he gets off the train. As a matter of
fact, he'll be half expecting you to meet him. You're making a mistake,
Miss Barrington, if you'll let a well-meaning fellow-being say so.
You're leaving the substance for the shadow."

"I've misled you about Ray, I'm afraid," Kate said with unexpected
patience. "He hasn't really any right to expect me to be waiting, and I
don't believe he will. Come to think of it, I don't know that I want to
be found waiting."

"Oh, well, of course--" said Fulham with a shrug, leaving his sentence
unfinished.

"Anyway," said Kate flushing, "I march!"

* * * * *

They told her afterward how McCrea had come toof-toofing up to the door
in a taxi, and how he had taken the steps two at a time.

"He wrung my hand," said Honora, "and got through the preliminary
amenities with a dispatch I never have seen excelled. Then he demanded
you. 'Is she upstairs?' he asked. 'May I go right up? She wrote me she
had a parlor of her own.' 'She has a parlor,' I said, 'but she isn't in
it.' He balanced on the end of a toe. 'Where is she?' I thought he was
going to fly. 'She's out with the suffragists,' I said. I didn't try to
excuse you. I thought you deserved something pretty bad. But I did tell
him you'd promised to go and that you hadn't known he was coming that
day. 'She's in that mess?' he cried. 'I saw the Amazon march as I came
along. You don't mean Kate's tramping the streets with those women!'
'Yes, she is,' I said, 'and she's proud to do it. But she was sorry not
to be here to welcome you.' 'Sorry!' he said; 'why, Mrs. Fulham, I've
been dreaming of this meeting for months.' Honestly, Kate, I was ashamed
for you. I asked him in. I told him you'd be home before long. But he
would not come in. 'Tell her I--I came,' he said. Then he went."

It was late at night, and Kate was both worn and exhilarated with her
marching. Honora's words let her down considerably. She sat with tears
in her eyes staring at her friend.

"But couldn't he see," she pleaded, "that I had to keep my word? Didn't
he understand how important it was? I can see him to-morrow just
as well."

"Then you'll have to send for him," said Honora decisively. "He'll not
come without urging."

She went up to bed with a stern aspect, and left Kate sitting staring
before her by the light of one of Mary's foolish candles.

"They seem to think I'm a very unnatural woman," said Kate to herself.
"But can't they see how much more important it was that the
demonstration should be a success than that two lovers should meet at a
certain hour?"

The word "lovers" had slipped inadvertently into her mind; and no
sooner had she really recognized it, looked at it, so to speak, fairly
in the face, than she rejected it with scorn.

"We're just friends," she protested. "One has many friends."

But her little drawing-room, all gay and fresh, accused her of deceiving
herself; and a glimpse of the embroidered frock reminded her that she
was contemptibly shirking the truth. One did not make such preparations
for a mere "friend." She sat down and wrote a note, put stamps on it to
insure its immediate delivery, and ran out to the corner to mail it.
Then she fell asleep arguing with herself that she had been right, and
that he ought to understand what it meant to give one's word, and that
it could make no difference that they were to meet a few hours later
instead of at the impetuous moment of his arrival.

* * * * *

She spent the next day at the Juvenile Court, and came home with the
conviction that there ought to be no more children until all those now
wandering the hard ways of the world were cared for. She was in no mood
for sweethearting, yet she looked with some covert anxiety at the
mail-box. There was an envelope addressed to her, but the superscription
was not in Ray's handwriting. The Colorado stamp gave her a hint of whom
it might have come from, and ridiculously she felt her heart quickening.
Yet why should Karl Wander write to her? She made herself walk slowly
up the stairs, and insisted that her hat and gloves and jacket should be
put scrupulously in their places before she opened her letter. It proved
not to be a letter, after all, but only a number of photographs, taken
evidently by the sender, who gave no word of himself. He let the
snow-capped solitary peaks utter his meanings for him. The pictures were
beautiful and, in some indescribable way, sad--cold and isolate. Kate
ran her fingers into the envelope again and again, but she could
discover no note there. Neither was there any name, save her own on
the cover.

"At least," said Kate testily, "I might have been told whom to thank."

But she knew whom to thank--and she knew with equal positiveness that
she would send no thanks. For the gift had been a challenge. It seemed
to say: "I dare you to open communication with me. I dare you to break
the conscious silence between us!"

Kate did not lift the glove that had been thrown down. She hid the
photographs in her clock and told no one about them.

At the close of the third day a note came from Ray. Her line, he said,
had followed him to Lake Forest and he had only then found time to
answer it. He was seeing old friends and was very much occupied with
business and with pleasure, but he hoped to see her before long. Kate
laughed aloud at the rebuff. It was, she thought, a sort of Silvertree
method of putting her in her place. But she was sorry, too,--sorry for
his hurt; sorry, indefinitely and indescribably, for something missed.
If it had been Karl Wander whom she had treated like that he would have
waited on her doorstep till she came, and if he had felt himself
entitled to a quarrel, he would have "had it out" before men and the
high gods.

At least, so she imagined he would have done; but upon consideration
there were few persons in the world about whom she knew less than about
Karl Wander. It seemed as if Honora were actually perverse in the way
she avoided his name.

XIV

The spring was coming. Signs of it showed at the park edges, where the
high willow hedges began to give forth shoots of yellowish-green; at
times the lake was opalescent and the sky had moments of tenderness and
warmth. Even through the pavement one seemed to scent the earth; and the
flower shops set up their out-of-door booths and solicited the passer-by
with blossoms.

When Kate could spare the money, she bought flowers for Marna--for it
was flower-time with Marna, and she had seen the Angel of the
Annunciation. All that was Celtic in her was coming uppermost. She
dreamed and brooded and heard voices. Kate liked to sit in the little
West-Side flat and be comforted of the happiness there. She was feeling
very absurd herself, and she was ashamed of her excursion into the
realms of feminine folly. That was the way she put her defection from
"common sense," and her little flare of sentiment for Ray, and all her
breathless, ridiculous preparation for him. She had never worn the
chrysanthemum dress, and she so loathed the sight of it that she boxed
it and put it in the bottom of her trunk.

No word came from Ray. "Sometime" had not materialized and he had failed
to call. His name was much in the papers as "best man" or cotillion
leader or host at club dinners. He moved in a world of which Kate saw
nothing--a rather competitive world, where money counted and where there
was a brisk exchange of social amenities. Kate's festivities consisted
of settlement dinners and tea here and there, at odd, interesting places
with fellow "welfare workers"; and now and then she went with Honora to
some University affair. A great many ladies sent her cards to their
"afternoons"--ladies whom she met at the home of the President of the
University, or with whom she came in contact at Hull House or some of
the other settlements. But such diversions she was obliged to deny
herself. They would have taken time from her too-busy hours; and she had
not the strength to do her work according to her conscience, and then to
drag herself halfway across town, merely for the amiability of making
her bow and eating an ice in a charming house. Not but that she enjoyed
the atmosphere of luxury--the elusive sense of opulence given her by the
flowers, the distant music, the smiling, luxurious, complimentary women,
the contrast between the glow within and the chill of twilight
without--twilight sparkling with the lights of the waiting motors, and
the glittering procession on the Drive. But, after all, while others
rode, she walked, and sometimes she was very weary. To be sure, she was
too gallant, too much at ease in her entertaining world, too expectant
of the future, to fret even for a moment about the fact that she was
walking while others rode. She hardly gave it a thought. But her
disadvantages made her unable to cope with other women socially. She
was, as she often said, fond of playing a game; but the social game
pushed the point of achievement a trifle too far.

Moreover, there was the mere bother of "dressing the part." Her handsome
heavy shoes, her strong, fashionable street gloves, her well-cared-for
street frock, and becoming, practical hat she could obtain and maintain
in freshness. She was "well-groomed" and made a sort of point of looking
competent, as if she felt mistress of herself and her circumstances; she
could even make herself dainty for a little dinner, but the silks and
furs, the prodigality of yard-long gloves, the fetching boots and
whimsical jewels of the ladies who made a fine art of feminine
entertainments, were quite beyond her. So, sensibly, she counted it
all out.

That Ray was at home in such surroundings, and that, had she been
willing to give him the welcome he expected, she might have had a
welcome at these as yet unopened doors through which he passed with
conscious suavity, sometimes occurred to her. She was but human--and but
woman--and she could not be completely oblivious to such things. But
they did not, after all, wear a very alluring aspect.

When she dreamed of being happy, as she often did, it was not amid such
scenes. Sometimes, when she was half-sleeping, and vague visions of joy
haunted the farther chambers of her brain, she saw herself walking
among mountains. The setting sun glittered on distant, splendid snows;
the torrent rushed by her, filling the world with its clamor; beneath
lay the valley, and through the gathering gloom she could see the light
of homes. Then, as sleep drew nearer and the actual world slipped
farther away, she seemed to be treading the path--homeward--with some
companion. Which of those lights spelled home for her she did not know,
and whenever she tried to see the face of her companion, the shadows
grew deeper,--as deep as oblivion,--and she slept.

She was lonely. She felt she had missed much in missing Ray. She knew
her friends disapproved of her; and she was profoundly ashamed that they
should have seen her in that light, expectant hour in which she awaited
this lover who appeared to be no lover, after all. But she deserved her
humiliation. She had conducted herself like the expectant bride, and she
had no right to any such attitude because her feelings were not those
of a bride.

The thing that she did desperately care about just now was the
fitting-up of a home for mothers and babes in the Wisconsin woods. It
was to be a place where the young Polish mothers of a part of her
district could go and forget the belching horror of the steel mills, and
the sultry nights in the crowded, vermin-haunted homes. She hoped for
much from it--much more than the physical recuperation, though that was
not to be belittled. There was some hitch, at the last, about the
endowment. A benevolent spinster had promised to remember the
prospective home in her will and neglected to do so and now there were
several thousands to be collected from some unknown source. Kate was
absorbed with that when she was not engaged with her regular work.
Moreover, she made a point of being absorbed. She could not endure the
thought that she might be going about with a love-lorn, he-cometh-not
expression.

* * * * *

Life has a way of ambling withal for a certain time, and then of
breaking into a headlong gallop--bolting free--plunging to catastrophe
or liberty. Kate went her busy ways for a fortnight, somewhat chastened
in spirit, secretly a little ashamed, and altogether very determined to
make such a useful person of herself that she could forget her apparent
lack of attractions (for she told herself mercilessly that if she had
been very much desired by Ray he would not have been able to leave her
upon so slight a provocation). Then, one day,--it was the last day of
May and the world had rejuvenated itself,--she came across him.

A more unlikely place hardly could have been chosen for their meeting
than an "isle of safety" in mid-street, with motors hissing and
toof-toofing round about, policemen gesticulating, and the crowd
ceaselessly surging. The two were marooned with twenty others, and met
face to face, squarely, like foes who set themselves to combat. At first
he tried not to see her, and she, noting his impulse, thought it would
be the part of propriety not to see him. Then that struck her as so
futile, so childish, so altogether a libel on the good-fellowship which
they had enjoyed in the old days, that she held out her hand.

He swept his hat from his head and grasped the extended hand in a
violent yet tremulous clutch.

"We seem to be going in opposite directions," she said. There was just a
hint of a rising inflection in the accent.

He laughed with nervous delight.

"We are going the same way," he declared. "That's a well-established
fact."

An irritable policeman broke in on them with:--

"Do you people want to get across the street or not?"

"Personally," said McCrea, smiling at him, "I'm not particular."

The policeman was Irish and he liked lovers. He thought he was looking
at a pair of them.

"Well, it's not the place I'd be choosing for conversation, sir," he
said.

"Right you are," agreed Ray. "I suppose you'd prefer a lane in
Ballamacree?"

"Yes, sir. Good luck to you, sir."

"Same to you," called back Ray.

He and Kate swung into the procession on the boulevard. Kate was smiling
happily.

"You haven't changed a bit!" she cried. "You keep right on enjoying
yourself, don't you?"

"Not a bit of it," retorted Ray indignantly. "I've been miserable! You
know I have. The only satisfaction I got at all was in hoping I was
making you miserable, too. Was I?"

"I wouldn't own to it if you had," said Kate. "Shall we forgive each
other?"

"Do you want it to be as easy as that--after all we've been through?
Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to quarrel?"

"You can if you want, of course," Kate laughed. "But hadn't it better be
with some other person? Really, I wanted to see you dreadfully--or, at
least, I wanted to see you pleasantly. I had made preparations. You
didn't let me know when to expect you, and I had an engagement when you
did come. Weren't you foolish to get in a rage?"

"But I was so frightfully disappointed. I expected so much and I had
expected it so long."

"Ray!" Her voice was almost stern, and he turned to look at her half
with amusement, half with apprehension. "Expect nothing. Enjoy
yourself to-day."

"But how can I enjoy myself to-day unless I am made to understand that
there is something I may expect from you? Circumstances have kept us
playing fast and loose long enough. Can't we come to an
understanding, Kate?"

Kate stopped to look in a florist's window and fixed her eyes upon a
vast bouquet of pale pink roses.

"Do say something," he said after a time. "Shall I speak from the
heart?"

"Oh, yes, please." He drew his breath in sharply between his teeth.

"Well, then, I'm not ready to give up my free life, Ray. I can't seem to
see my way to relinquishing any part of my liberty. I think you know
why. I've told you everything in my letters. I feel too experimental to
settle down."

"You don't love me!"

"Did I ever say I did?"

"You gave me to understand that you might."

"You wanted me to try."

"But you haven't succeeded? Then, for heaven's sake, let me go and make
out some other programme for myself. I've come back to you because I
couldn't be satisfied away from you. I've seen women, if it comes to
that,--cities of women. But there's no one like you, Kate, to my mind;
no one who so makes me enjoy the hour, or so plan for the future. Ever
since that day when you stood up by the C Bench and fought for the right
of women to sit on it,--that silly old C Bench,--I've liked your warring
spirit. And I come back, by Jove, to find you marching with the militant
women! Well, I didn't know whether to laugh or swear! Anyway, you do
beat the world."

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