The Visioning by Susan Glaspell

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THE VISIONING

A NOVEL BY SUSAN GLASPELL

1911

CHAPTER I

Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones was bunkered. Having been bunkered many
times in the past, and knowing that she would be bunkered upon many
occasions in the future, Miss Jones was not disposed to take a tragic
view of the situation. The little white ball was all too secure down
there in the sand; as she had played her first nine, and at least paid
her respects to the game, she could now scale the hazard and curl herself
into a comfortable position. It was a seductively lazy spring day, the
very day for making arm-chairs of one's hazards. And let it be set down
in the beginning that Miss Jones was more given to a comfortable place
than to a tragic view.

Katherine Wayneworth Jones, affectionately known to many friends in many
lands as Katie Jones, was an "army girl." And that not only for the
obvious reasons: not because her people had been of the army, even unto
the second and third generations, not because she had known the joys and
jealousies of many posts, not even because bachelor officers were
committed to the habit of proposing to her--those were but the trappings.
She was an army girl because "Well, when you know her, you don't have to
be told, and if you don't know her you can't be," a floundering friend
had once concluded her exposition of why Katie was so "army." For her to
marry outside the army would be regarded as little short of treason.

To-day she was giving a little undisturbing consideration to that thing
of her marrying. For it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-fifth
birthdays are prone to knock at the door of matrimonial possibilities.
Just then the knock seemed answered by Captain Prescott. Unblushingly
Miss Jones considered that doubtless before the summer was over she would
be engaged to him. And quite likely she would follow up the engagement
with a wedding. It seemed time for her to be following up some of her
engagements.

She did not believe that she would at all mind marrying Harry Prescott.
All his people liked all hers, which would facilitate things at the
wedding; she would not be rudely plunged into a new set of friends, which
would be trying at her time of life. Everything about him was quite all
right: he played a good game of golf, not a maddening one of bridge,
danced and rode in a sort of joy of living fashion. And she liked the way
he showed his teeth when he laughed. She always thought when he laughed
most unreservedly that he was going to show more of them; but he never
did; it interested her.

And it interested her the way people said: "Prescott? Oh yes--he was in
Cuba, wasn't he?" and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle,
and added:

"Great fellow--Prescott. Never made a mess of things, anyhow."

To have vague association with the mysterious things of life, and yet not
to have "made a mess of things"--what more could one ask?

Of course, pounding irritably with her club, the only reason for not
marrying him was that there were too many reasons for doing so. She could
not think of a single person who would furnish the stimulus of an
objection. Stupid to have every one so pleased! But there must always be
something wrong, so let that be appeased in having everything just right.
And then there was Cuba for one's adventurous sense.

She looked about her with satisfaction. It frequently happened that the
place where one was inspired keen sense of the attractions of some other
place. But this time there was no place she would rather be than just
where she found herself. For she was a little tired, after a long round
of visits at gay places, and this quiet, beautiful island out in the
Mississippi--large, apart, serene--seemed a great lap into which to sink.
She liked the quarters: big old-fashioned houses in front of which the
long stretch of green sloped down to the river. There was something
peculiarly restful in the spaciousness and stability, a place which the
disagreeable or distressing things of life could not invade. Most of the
women were away, which was the real godsend, for the dreariness and
desolation of pleasure would be eliminated. A quiet post was charming
until it tried to be gay--so mused Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones.

And of various other things, mused she. Her brother, Captain Wayneworth
Jones, was divorced from his wife and wedded to something he was hoping
would in turn be wedded to a rifle; all the scientific cells of the
family having been used for Wayne's brain, it was hard for Katie to get
the nature of the attachment, but she trusted the ordnance department
would in time solemnly legalize the affair--Wayne giving in
marriage--destruction profiting happily by the union. Meanwhile Wayne was
so consecrated to the work of making warfare more deadly that he scarcely
knew his sister had arrived. But on the morrow, or at least the day
after, would come young Wayneworth, called Worth, save when his Aunt Kate
called him Wayne the Worthy. Wayne the Worthy was also engaged in
perfecting a death-dealing instrument, the same being the interrogation
point. Doubtless he would open fire on Aunt Kate with--Why didn't his
mother and father live in the same place any more, and--Why did he have
to live half the time with mama if he'd rather stay all the time with
father? Poor Worth, he had only spent six years in a world of law and
order, and had yet to learn about courts and incompatibilities and
annoying things like that. It did not seem fair that the hardest part of
the whole thing should fall to poor little Wayne the Worthy. He couldn't
help it, certainly.

But how Worthie would love those collie pups! They would evolve all sorts
of games to play with them. Picturing herself romping with the boy and
dogs, prowling about on the river in Wayne's new launch, lounging under
those great oak trees reading good lazying books, doing everything
because she wanted to and nothing because she had to, flirting just
enough with Captain Prescott to keep a sense of the reality of life, she
lay there gloating over the happy prospect.

And then in that most irresponsible and unsuspecting of moments
something whizzed into her consciousness like a bullet--something
shot by her vision pierced the lazy, hazy, carelessly woven web of
imagery--bullet-swift, bullet-true, bullet-terrible--striking the center
clean and strong. The suddenness and completeness with which she sat up
almost sent her from her place. For from the very instant that her eye
rested upon the figure of the girl in pink organdie dress and big hat she
knew something was wrong.

And when, within a few feet of the river the girl stopped running, shrank
back, covered her face with her hands, then staggered on, she knew that
that girl was going to the river to kill herself.

There was one frozen instant of powerlessness. Then--what to do? Call to
her? She would only hurry on. Run after her? She could not get there. It
was intuition--instinct--took the short cut a benumbed reason could not
make; rolling headlong down the bunker, twisting her neck and mercilessly
bumping her elbow, Katherine Wayneworth Jones emitted a shriek to raise
the very dead themselves. And then three times a quick, wild
"Help--Help--Help!" and a less audible prayer that no one else was near.

It reached; the girl stopped, turned, saw the rumpled, lifeless-looking
heap of blue linen, turned back toward the river, then once more to the
motionless Miss Jones, lying face downward in the sand. And then the girl
who thought life not worth living, delaying her own preference, with
rather reluctant feet--feet clad in pink satin slippers--turned back to
the girl who wanted to live badly enough to call for help.

Through one-half of one eye Katie could see her; she was thinking that
there was something fine about a girl who wanted to kill herself putting
it off long enough to turn back and help some one who wanted to live.

Miss Jones raised her head just a trifle, showed her face long enough to
roll her eyes in a grewsome way she had learned at school, and with a
"Help me!" buried her face in the sand and lay there quivering.

The girl knelt down. "You sick?" she asked, and Katie had the fancy of
her voice sounding as though she had not expected to use it any more.

"So ill!" panted Kate, rolling over on her back and holding her heart.
"Here! My heart!"

The girl looked around uncertainly. It must be a jar, Katie conceded,
being called back to life, expected to fight for the very thing one was
running away from. Her rescuer was evidently considering going to the
river for water--saving water (Katie missed none of those fine
points)--but instead she pulled the patient to a sitting position,
supporting her.

"You can breathe better this way, can't you?" she asked solicitously.
"Have you had them before? Will it go away? Shall I call some one?"

Katie rolled her head about as she had seen people do who were dying on
the stage. "Often--before. Go away--soon. But don't leave me!" she
implored, clutching at the girl wildly.

"I will not leave you," the stranger assured her. "I have plenty of
time."

Miss Jones made what the doctors would call a splendid recovery. Her
breath began coming more naturally; her spine seemed to regain control of
her head; her eyes rolled less wildly. "It's going," she panted; "but
you'll have to help me to the house."

"Why of course," replied the girl who was being delayed. "Do you think
I'd leave a sick girl sitting out here all alone?"

Kate felt like apologizing. It seemed rather small--that interrupting a
death to save a life.

"Where do you live?" her companion was asking. She pointed to the
quarters. "In one of those?"

"The second one," Katie told her. "And thank Heaven," she told herself,
"the first one is closed!"

"Lean on me," directed the girl in pink, with a touch of the gentle
authority of strong to weak. "Don't be afraid to lean on me."

Kate felt the quick warm tears against her eyelids. "You're very kind,"
she said, and the quiver in her voice was real.

They walked slowly on, silently. Katie was trembling now, and in
earnest. "My name is Katherine Jones," she said at last, looking timidly
at the girl who was helping her.

It wrought a change. The girl's mouth closed in a hard line. A hard,
defending glitter seemed to seal her eyes. She did not respond.

"May I ask to whom I am indebted for this kindness?" It was asked with
gentleness.

But for the moment it brought no response. "My name is Verna Woods," came
at last with an unsteady defiance.

They had reached the steps of the big, hospitable porch. With deep relief
Katie saw that there was no one about. Nora had gone out with one of her
adorers from the barracks.

They turned, and were looking back to the river. It was May at May's
loveliest: the grass and trees so tender a green, the river so gently
buoyant, and a softly sympathetic sky over all. A soldier had appeared
and was picking twigs from the putting green in front of them; another
soldier was coming down the road with some eggs which he was evidently
taking to Captain Prescott's quarters. He was whistling. Everything
seemed to be going very smoothly. And a launch was coming down the river;
a girl's laugh came musically across the water and the green; it inspired
the joyful throat of a nearby robin. And into this had been shot--!

Katie turned to the intruder. "It's lovely, isn't it?" she asked in a
queer, hushed way.

The girl looked at her, and at the fierce rush of things Kate took a
frightened step backward. But quickly the other had turned away her face.
Only her clenched hand and slightly moving shoulder told anything.

There was another call to make, and instinct alone could not reach this
time. For the moment thought of it left her mute.

"You have been so kind to me," she began, her timidity serving well as
helplessness, "so very kind. I wonder if I may ask one thing more? Am--am
I keeping you from anything you should be doing?"

There was no response at first, just a little convulsive clenching of the
hand, an accentuated movement of the shoulder. Then, "I have time
enough," was the low, curt answer, face still averted.

"I am alone here, as you see. I am just a little afraid of a--a return
attack. I wonder--would you be willing to come up to my room with
me--help make a cup of tea for us and--stay with me a little while?"

Again for the minute, no reply. Then the girl turned hotly upon her,
suspicion, resentment--was it hatred, too?--in her eyes. But what she saw
was as a child's face--wide eyes, beseeching mouth. Women who wondered
"what in the world men saw in Katie Jones" might have wondered less had
they seen her then.

The girl did not seem to know what to say. Suddenly she was trembling
from head to foot.

Kate laid a hand upon the quivering arm. "I've frightened you," she said
regretfully and tenderly. "You need the tea, too. You'll come?"

The girl's eyes roved all around like the furtive eyes of a frightened
animal. But they came back to Katie's steadying gaze. "Why yes--I'll
come--if you want me to," she said in voice she was clearly making
supreme effort to steady.

"I do indeed," said Kate simply and led the way into the house.

CHAPTER II

And now that they were face to face across a tea-table Miss Jones was
bunkered again. How get out of the sand? She did not know. She did not
even know what club to use.

For never had she drunk tea under similar circumstances. Life had brought
her varied experiences, but sitting across the teacups from one whom she
had interrupted on the brink of suicide did not chance to be among them.
She was wholly without precedent, and it was trying for an army girl to
be stripped of precedent.

They were sitting at a window which overlooked the river; the river which
was flowing on so serenely, which was so blue and lazy and lovely that
May afternoon. She looked to the place where--then back to the girl
across from her--the girl who but for her--

She shivered.

"Is it coming back?" the girl asked.

"N--o; I think not; but I hope you will not go." Then, desperately
resolved to break through, she asked boldly: "Am I keeping you from
anything important?"

A strange gleam, compounded of things she did not understand, shot out at
her. To be followed with: "Important? Oh I don't know. That depends on
how you look at it. The only thing I have left to do is to kill myself.
I guess it won't take long."

Kate met it with a sharp, involuntary cry. For the sullen steadiness,
dispassionateness, detachment with which it was said made it more real
than it had been at the water's edge.

"But--but you see it's such a lovely day. You know--you know it's such a
beautiful place," was what the resourceful Miss Jones found herself
stammering.

"Yes," agreed her companion, "pleasant weather, isn't it?" She looked at
Katie contemptuously. "You think _weather_ makes any difference? That's
like a girl like you!"

Katie laughed. Laughing seemed the only sand club she had just then. "I
_am_ a fool," she agreed. "I've often thought so myself. But like most
other fools I mean well, and this just didn't seem to me the sort of day
when it would occur to one to kill one's self. Now if it were terribly
hot, the kind of hot that takes your brains away, or so cold you were
freezing, or even if it were raining, not a decent rain, but that
insulting drizzle that makes you hate everything--why then, yes, I might
understand. But to kill one's self in the sunshine!"

As she was finishing she had a strange sensation. She saw that the girl
was looking at her compassionately. Katherine Wayneworth Jones was not
accustomed to being viewed with compassion.

"It would be foolish to try to make you understand," said the girl
simply, finality in her weariness. "It would be foolish to try to make a
girl like you understand that nothing can be so bad as sunshine."

Katie leaned across the table. This interested her. "Why I suppose that
might be true. I suppose--"

But the girl was not listening. She was leaning back in the great wicker
chair. She seemed actually to be relaxing, resting. That seemed strange
to Kate. How could she be resting in an hour which had just been tacked
on to her life? And then it came to her that perhaps it was a long time
since the girl had sat in a chair like that. If she had had a chance,
when things were going badly, to sit in such a chair and rest, might the
river have seemed a less desirable place? She had always supposed it was
_big_ things--queer, abstract, unknowable things like forces and traits
that made life and death. Did _chairs_ count?

As the girl's eyes closed, surrenderingly, Katie was glad that no matter
what she might decide to do about things she had had that hour in the
big, tenderly cushioned wicker chair. It might be a kinder memory to take
with her from life than anything she had known for a long time.

Katherine had grown very still, still both outwardly and inwardly. People
spoke of her enviously as having experienced so much; living in all parts
of the world, knowing people of all nations and kinds. But it seemed all
of that had been mere splashing around on the beach. She was out in the
big waves now.

She looked at the girl; looked with the eyes of one who would understand.

And what she saw was that some one, something, had, as it were, struck a
blow at the center, and the girl, the something that really _was_ her,
had gone to pieces. Everything was scattered. Even her features scarcely
seemed to belong to each other, so how must it not be with those other
things, inner things, oh, things one did not know what to call? Was it
because she could not get things together it seemed to her she must make
them all stop? Was that it? Did people lose the power to hold themselves
in the one that made you _you_?

What could do that? Something that reached the center; not many things
could; something, perhaps, that kept battering at it for a long time, and
just shook it at first, and then--

It was too dreadful to think of it that way. She tried to make
herself stop.

The girl's face was turned to the out-of-doors; to a great tree in
front of the window, a tree in which some robins had built their nests.
Such a tired face! So many tear marks, and so much less reachable than
tear stains.

A beautiful face, too. If all were back which the blow at the center had
struck away, if she had all of her--if lighted--it would be a rarely
beautiful face.

The girl was like a flower; a flower, it seemed to Kate, which had not
been planted in the right place. The gardener had been unwise in his
selection of a place for this flower; perhaps he had not used the right
kind of soil, perhaps he had put it in the full heat of the sun when it
was a flower to have more shade; perhaps too much wind or too much
rain--Katie wondered just what the mistake had been. For the flower would
have been so lovely had the gardener not made those mistakes.

Even now, it was lovely: lovely with a saddening loveliness, for one saw
at a glance how easily a breeze too rough could beat it down. And one
knew there had been those breezes. Every petal drooped.

A strange desire entered the heart of Katherine: a desire to see whether
those petals could take their curves again, whether a color which
blunders had faded could come back to its own. She was like the new
gardener eager to see whether he can redeem the mistakes of the old. And
the new gardener's zeal is not all for the flower; some of it is to show
what he can do, and much of it the true gardener's passion for
experiment. Katie Jones would have made a good gardener.

And yet it was something less cold than the experimenting instinct
tightened her throat as she looked at the frail figure of the girl for
whom life had been too much.

"I must go now," she was saying, with what seemed mighty effort to summon
all of herself over which she could get command. "You are all right now.
I must go."

But she sank back in the chair, as if that one thing left at the center
pulled her back, crying out that if it could but have a little more
time there--

The girl in blue linen was sitting at the feet of the girl in pink
organdie. She had hold of her hand, so slim a hand. Everything about the
girl was slim, built for favoring breezes.

"I have one thing more to ask." It was Kate's voice was not well
controlled this time.

"You may call it a whim, a notion, foolish notion; call it what you like,
but I want you to stay here to-night."

The girl was looking down at her, down into the upturned face, all light
and strength and purpose as one standing apart and disinterested might
view a spectacle. Slowly, comprehendingly, dispassionately she shook her
head. "It would be--no use."

"Perhaps," Katie acquiesced. "Some of the very nicest things in life
are--no use. But I have something planned. May I tell you what it is I
want to do?"

Still she did not take her eyes from Katie's kindling face, looking at it
as at something a long way off and foreign.

"I am not a philanthropist, have no fears of that. But I have an idea, a
theory, that what seem small things are perhaps the only things in life
to help the big things. For instance, a hot bath. I can't think of any
sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit."

"Now we have such a beautiful bathroom. I loathe hot baths in tiny
bathrooms, where the air gets all steamy and you can't get your breath.
Perhaps one thing the matter with you is that all the bathrooms you've
been in lately were too small. Of course, you didn't _know_ that was one
thing the matter; like once at a dance I thought I was very sad about a
man's dancing so much with another girl, a new girl--don't you loathe
'new girls'?--but when I got home I found that one of my dress stays was
digging into me and when I got my dress off I didn't feel half so broken
up about the man."

An odd thing happened; one thing struck away came back. There was a light
in the eyes telling that something human and understanding, something to
link her to other things human, would like to come back. She looked and
listened as to something nearer.

Seeing it, Katie chattered on, against time, about nothing; foolish talk,
heartless talk, it might even seem, to be pouring out to a girl who felt
there was no place for her in life. But it was nonsense carried by
tenderness. Nonsense which made for kinship. It reached. Several times
the girl who thought she must kill herself was not far from a smile and
at last there was a tear on the long lashes.

"So I'm going to undress you," Katie unfolded her plan, encouraged by the
tear, "and then let's just see what hot water can do about it. And maybe
a little rub. I used to rub my mother's spine. She said life always
seemed worth living after I had done that." She patted the hand she held
ever so lightly as she said: "How happy I would be if I could make you
feel that way about it, too. Then I've a dear room to take you into, all
soft grays and greens, and oh, such a good bed! Why you know you're
tired! That's what's the matter with you, and you're just too tired to
know what's the matter."

The girl nodded, tears upon her cheeks, looking like a child that has
had a cruel time and needs to be comforted.

Katie's voice was lower, different, as she went on: "Then after I've
brushed your hair and done all those 'comfy' things I'm going to put you
in a certain, a very special gown I have. It was made by the nuns in a
convent in Southern France. As they worked upon it they sat in a garden
on a hillside. They thought serene thoughts, those nuns. You see I know
them, lived with them. I don't know, one has odd fancies sometimes, and
it always seemed to me that something of the peace of things there was
absorbed in that wonderful bit of linen. It seems far away from things
that hurt and harm. Almost as if it might draw back things that had
gone. I was going to keep it--" Katie's eyes deepened, there was a
little catch in her voice. "Well, I was just keeping it. But because you
are so tired--oh just because you need it so.--I want you to let me give
it to you."

And with a tender strength holding the sobbing girl Katie unfastened her
collar and began taking off her dress.

CHAPTER III

"Kate," demanded Captain Jones, "what's that noise?"

"How should I know?" airily queried Kate.

"I heard a noise in the room above. This chimney carries every sound."

"Nonsense," jeered his sister. "Wayne, you've lived alone so long that
you're getting spooky."

He turned to the other man. "Prescott, didn't you hear something?"

"Believe I did. It sounded like a cough."

"Well, what of it?" railed Kate. "Isn't poor Nora permitted to cough, if
she is disposed to cough? She's in there doing the room for me. I'm going
to try sleeping in there--isn't insomnia a fearful thing? But the
fussiness of men!"

They were in the library over their coffee. Kate was peculiarly charming
that night in one of the thin white gowns she wore so much, and which it
seemed so fitting she should wear. She had been her gayest. Prescott was
thinking he had never known any one who seemed to sparkle and bubble that
way; and so easily and naturally, as though it came from an inner fount
of perpetual action, and could more easily rise than be held down. And he
was wondering why a girl who had so many of the attributes of a boy
should be so much more fascinating than any mere girl. "There are two
kinds of girl," he had heard an older officer once say. "There are girls,
and then there is Katie Jones." He had condemned that as distinctly
maudlin at the time, but recalled it to-night with less condemnation.

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