Chapter XX

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

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

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

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

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

"MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yours faithfully,

"KARL WANDER."

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

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

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

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

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

"MY DEAR MR. WANDER:--

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

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

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

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

"Yours sincerely,

"KATE BARRINGTON."

He wrote back:--

"MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:--

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

"You may not believe it, but, after all, that's the great
moment in their lives--you just take it from me who have seen
more than you might think and who have had a good deal of
time to think things out. I do wish you had seen your way to
come out here. There are any number of matters I would like
to talk over with you.

"You mustn't think me impudent for writing in this familiar
way. I write frankly because I'm sure you'll understand, and
the conventionalities have been cast aside because in this
case they seem so immaterial. I can assure you that I'm not
impudent--not where women are concerned, at any rate. I'm a
born lover of women, though I have been no woman's lover. I
haven't seen much of them. Sometimes I've gone a year without
seeing one, not even a squaw. But I judge them by my mother,
who made every one happy who came near her, and by some
others I have known; I judge them by you, though I saw you
only a minute. I suppose you will think me crazy or insincere
in saying that. I'm both sane and honest--ask Honora.

"You speak of my Italians. They are making me trouble. We
have been good friends and they have been happy here. I gave
them lots to build on if they would put up homes; and I
advanced the capital for the cottages and let them pay me
four per cent--the lowest possible interest. I got a school
for their children and good teachers, and I interested the
church down in Denver to send a priest out here and establish
a mission. I thought we understood each other, and that they
comprehended that their prosperity and mine were bound up
together. But an agitator came here the other day,--sent by
the unions, of course,--and there's discontent. They have
lost the friendly look from their eyes, and the men turn out
of their way to avoid speaking to me. Since I've been laid up
here, things have been going badly. There have been meetings
and a good deal of hard talk. I suppose I'm in for a fight,
and I tell you it hurts. I feel like a man at war with his
children. As I feel just now, I'd throw up the whole thing
rather than row with them, but the money of other men is
invested in these mines and I'm the custodian of it. So I've
no choice in the matter. Perhaps, too, it's for their own
good that they should be made to see reason. What do you say?

"Faithfully,

"WANDER."

Honora wrote the same day and to her quiet report of improved nights and endurable days she added:--

"I hope you will answer my cousin's letter. I can't tell you
what a good man he is, and so boyish, in spite of his being
strong and perfectly brave--oh, brave to the death! He's very
lonely. He always has been. You'll have to make allowances
for his being so Western and going right to the point in such
a reckless way. He hasn't told me what he's written you, but
I know if he wants to be friends with you he'll say so
without any preliminaries. He's very eager to have me talk of
you, so I do. I'm eager to talk, too. I always loved you,
Kate, but now I put you and Karl in a class by yourselves as
the completely dependable ones.

"The babies send kisses. Don't worry about me. I'm beginning
to see that it's not extraordinary for trouble to have come
to me. Why not to me as well as to another? I'm one of the
great company of sad ones now. But I'm not going to be
melancholy. I know how disappointed you'd be if I were. I'm
beginning to sleep better, and for all of this still, dark
cavern in my heart, so filled with voices of the past and
with the horrible chill of the present, I am able to laugh a
little at passing things. I find myself doing it
involuntarily. So at least I've got where I can hear what the
people about me are saying, and can make a fitting reply.
Yes, do write Karl. For my sake."