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."
Meantime, Ray McCrea had neglected to take his summer vacation. He was staying in the city, and twice a week he called on Kate. Kate liked him neither more nor less than at the beginning. He was clever and he was kind, and it was his delight to make her happy. But it was with the surface of her understanding that she listened to him and the skimmings of her thoughts that she passed to him. He had that light, acrid accent of well-to-do American men. Reasonably contented himself, he failed to see why every one else should not be so, too. He was not religious for the same reason that he was not irreligious--because it seemed to him useless to think about such matters. Public affairs and politics failed to interest him because he believed that the country was in the hands of a mob and that the "grafters would run things anyway." He called eloquence spell-binding, and sentiment slush,--sentiment, that is, in books and on the stage,--and he was indulgently inclined to suspect that there was something "in it" for whoever appeared to be essaying a benevolent enterprise. Respectable, liberal-handed, habitually amused, slightly caustic, he looked out for the good of himself and those related to him and considered that he was justified in closing his corporate regards at that point. He had no cant and no hypocrisy, no pose and no fads. A sane, aggressive, self-centered, rational materialist of the American brand, it was not only his friends who thought him a fine fellow. He himself would have admitted so much and have been perfectly justified in so doing.
Kate received flowers, books, and sweets from him, and now and then he asked her why he had lost ground with her. Sometimes he would say:--
"I can see a conservative policy is the one for me, Kate, where you're concerned. I'm going to lie low so as not to give you a chance to send me whistling."
Once, when he grew picturesquely melancholy, she refused to receive his offerings. She told him he was making a villainess out of her, and that she'd end their meetings. But at that he promised so ardently not to be ardent that she forgave him and continued to read the novels and to tend the flowers he brought her. They went for walks together; sometimes she lunched with him in the city, and on pleasant evenings they attended open-air concerts. He tried to be discreet, but in August, with the full moon, he had a relapse. Kate gave him warning; he persisted,--the moon really was quite wonderful that August,--and then, to his chagrin, he received a postcard from Silvertree. Kate had gone to see her father.
She would not have gone but for a chance word in one of Wander's letters.
"I hear your father is still living," he wrote. "That is so good! I have no parents now, but I like to remember how happy I was when I had them. I was young when my mother died, but father lived to a good age, and as long as he was alive I had some one to do things for. He always liked to hear of my exploits. I was a hero to him, if I never was to any one else. It kept my heart warmed up, and when he went he left me very lonely, indeed."
Kate reddened with shame when she read these words. Had Honora told him how she had deserted her father--how she had run from him and his tyranny to live her own life, and was he, Wander, meaning this for a rebuke? But she knew that could not be. Honora would have kept her counsel; she was not a tattler. Karl was merely congratulating her on a piece of good fortune, apparently. It threw a new light on the declaration of independence that had seemed to her to be so fine. Was old-time sentiment right, after all? The ancient law, "Honor thy father and thy mother," did not put in the proviso, "if they are according to thy notion of what they should be."
So Kate was again at Silvertree and in the old, familiar and now lifeless house. It was not now a caressed and pampered home; there was no longer any one there to trick it out in foolish affectionate adornments. In the first half-hour, while Kate roamed from room to room, she could hardly endure the appalling blankness of the place. No stranger could have felt so unwelcomed as she did--so alien, so inconsolably homeless.
She was waiting for her father when he came home, and she hoped to warm him a little by the surprise of her arrival. But it was his cue to be deeply offended with her.
"Hullo, Kate," he said, nodding and holding out his hand with a deliberately indifferent gesture.
"Oh, see here, dad, you know you've got to kiss me!" she cried.
So he did, rather shamefacedly, and they sat together on the dusty veranda and talked. He had been well, he said, but he was far from looking so. His face was gray and drawn, his lips were pale, and his long skillful surgeon's hands looked inert and weary. When he walked, he had the effect of dragging his feet after him.
"Aren't you going to take a vacation, dad?" Kate demanded. "If ever a man appeared to be in need of it, you do."
"What would I do with a vacation? And where could I go? I'd look fine at a summer resort, wouldn't I, sitting around with idle fools? If I could only go somewhere to get rid of this damned neurasthenia that all the fool women think they've got, I'd go; but I don't suppose there's such a place this side of the Arctic Circle."
Kate regarded him for a moment without answering. She saw he was almost at the end of his strength and a victim of the very malady against which he was railing. The constant wear and tear of country practice, year in and year out, had depleted him of a magnificent stock of energy and endurance. Perhaps, too, she had had her share of responsibility in his decline, for she had been severe with him; had defied him when she might have comforted him. She forgot his insolence, his meanness, his conscienceless hectoring, as she saw how his temples seemed fallen in and how his gray hair straggled over his brow. It was she who assumed the voice of authority now.
"There's going to be a vacation," she announced, "and it will be quite a long one. Put your practice in the hands of some one else, let your housekeeper take a rest, and then you come away with me. I'll give you three days to get ready."
He cast at her the old sharp, lance-like look of opposition, but she stood before him so strong, so kind, so daughterly (so motherly, too), that, for one of the few times in his life of senseless domination and obstinacy, he yielded. The tears came to his eyes.
"All right, Kate," he said with an accent of capitulation. He really was a broken old man.
She passed a happy evening with him looking over advertisements of forest inns and fishing resorts, and though no decision was reached, both of them went to bed in a state of pleasant anticipation. The following day she took his affairs in hand. The housekeeper was delighted at her release; a young physician was pleased to take charge of Dr. Barrington's patients.
Kate made him buy new clothes,--he had been wearing winter ones,--and she set him out in picturesque gear suiting his lank length and old-time manner. Then she induced him to select a place far north in the Wisconsin woods, and the third day they were journeying there together.
It seemed quite incredible that the dependent and affectionate man opposite her was the one who had filled her with fear and resentment such a short time ago. She found herself actually laughing aloud once at the absurdity of it all. Had her dread of him been fortuitous, his tyranny a mere sham? Had he really liked her all the time, and had she been a sensitive fool? She would have thought so, indeed, but for the memory of the perplexed and distracted face of her mother, the cringing and broken spirit of her who missed truth through an obsession of love. No, no, a tyrant he had been, one of a countless army of them!
But now he leaned back on his seat very sad of eye, inert of gesture, without curiosity or much expectancy. He let her do everything for him. She felt her heart warming as she served him. She could hardly keep herself from stooping to kiss his great brow; the hollows of his eyes when he was sleeping moved her to a passion of pity. After all, he was her own; and now she had him again. The bitterness of years began to die, and with it much of that secret, instinctive aversion to men--that terror of being trapped and held to some uninspiring association or dragging task.
For now, when her father awoke from one of his many naps, he would turn to her with: "Have I slept long, Kate?" or "We'll be going in to lunch soon, I suppose, daughter?" or "Will it be very long now before we reach our destination?"
It was reached at dawn of an early autumn day, and they drove ten miles into the pine woods. The scented silence took them. They were at "God's green caravansarie," and the rancor that had poisoned their hearts was gone. They turned toward each other in common trust, father and daughter, forgiving, if not all forgetting, the hurt and angry years.
"It really was your cousin who brought it about," Kate wrote Honora. "He reminded me that I was fortunate to have a father. You see, I hadn't realized it! Oh, Honora, what a queer girl I am--always having to think things out! Always making myself miserable in trying to be happy! Always going wrong in striving to be right! I should think the gods would make Olympus ring laughing at me! I once wrote your cousin that women of my sort were worn out with their struggle to reconcile their convictions and their instincts. And that's true. That's what is making them so restless and so strange and tumultuous. But of course I can't think it their fault--merely their destiny. Something is happening to them, but neither they nor any one else can quite tell what it is."
Dr. Barrington was broken, no question about that. Even the stimulation of the incomparable air of those Northern woods could not charge him with vitality. He lay wrapped in blankets, on the bed improvised for him beneath the trees, or before the leaping fire in the inn, with the odors of the burning pine about him, and he let time slip by as it would.
The people at the inn thought they never had seen a more devoted daughter than his. She sat beside him while he slept; she read or talked to him softly when he awakened; she was at hand with some light but sustaining refreshment whenever he seemed depressed or too relaxed. But there were certain things which the inn people could not make out. The sick man had the air of having forgiven this fine girl for something. He received her service like one who had the right to expect it. He was tender and he was happy, but he was, after all, the dominator. Nor could they quite make out the girl, who smiled at his demands,--which were sometimes incessant,--and who obeyed with the perfect patience of the strong. They did not know that if he had once been an active tyrant, he was now a supine one. As he had been unable, for all of his intelligence, to perceive the meaning of justice from the old angle, so he was equally unable to get it from his present point of view. He had been harsh with his daughter in the old days; so much he would have admitted. That he would have frustrated her completely, absorbed and wasted her power, he could not perceive. He did not surmise that he was now doing in an amiable fashion what he hitherto had tried to do in a masterful and insolent one. He did not realize that the tyranny of the weak is a more destructive thing when levelled at the generous than the tyranny of the strong.
Had he been interrupted in mid-career--in those days when his surgery was sure and bold--to care for a feeble and complaining wife, he would have thought himself egregiously abused. That Kate, whose mail each day exceeded by many times that which he had received in his most influential years, whose correspondence was with persons with whom he could not at any time have held communication, should be taken from her active duties appeared to him as nothing. He was a sick father. His daughter attended him in love and dutifulness. He was at peace--and he knew she was doing her duty. It really did not occur to him that she or any one else could have looked at the matter in a different light, or that any loving expression of regret was due her. Such sacrifices were expected of women. They were not expected of men, although men sometimes magnificently performed them.
To tell the truth, no such idea occurred to Kate either. She was as happy as her father. At last, in circumstances sad enough, she had reached a degree of understanding with him. She had no thought for the inconvenience under which she worked. She was more than willing to sit till past the middle of the night answering her letters, postponing her engagements, sustaining her humbler and more unhappy friends--those who were under practical parole to her--with her encouragement, and always, day by day, extending the idea of the Bureau of Children. For daily it took shape; daily the system of organization became more apparent to her. She wrote to Ray McCrea about it; she wrote to Karl Wander on the same subject. It seemed to suffice or almost to suffice her. It kept her from anticipating the details of the melancholy drama which was now being enacted before her eyes.
For her father was passing. His weakness increased, and his attitude toward life became one of gentle indifference. He was homesick for his wife, too. Though he had seemed to take so little satisfaction in her society, and had not scrupled when she was alive to show the contempt he felt for her opinions, now he liked to talk of her. He had made a great outcry against sentiment all of his life, but in his weakness he found his chief consolation in it. He had been a materialist, denying immortality for the soul, but now he reverted to the phrases of pious men of the past generation.
"I shall be seeing your mother soon, Kate," he would say wistfully, holding his daughter's hand. Kate was involuntarily touched by such words, but she was ashamed for him, too. Where was all his hard-won, bravely flaunted infidelity? Where his scientific outlook?
It was only slowly, and as the result of her daily and nightly association with him, that she began to see how his acquired convictions were slipping away from him, leaving the sentiments and predilections which had been his when he was a boy. Had he never been a strong man, really, and had his violence of opinion and his arrogance of demeanor been the defences erected by a man of spiritual timidity and restless, excitable brain? Had his assertiveness, like his compliance, been part and parcel of a mind not at peace, not grounded in a definite faith? Perhaps he had been afraid of the domination of his gentle wife with her soft insistence, and had girded at her throughout the years because of mere fanatic self-esteem. But now that she had so long been beyond the reach of his whimsical commands, he turned to the thought of her like a yearning child to its mother.
"If you hadn't come when you did, Kate," he would say, weeping with self-pity, "I should have died alone. I wouldn't own to any one how sick I was. Why, one night I was so weak, after being out thirty-six hours with a sick woman, that I had to creep upstairs on my hands and knees." He sobbed for a moment piteously, his nerves too tattered to permit him to retain any semblance of self-control. Kate tried in vain to soothe him. "What would your mother have thought if you had let me die alone?" he demanded of her.
It was useless for her to say that he had not told her he was ill. He was in no condition to face the truth. He was completely shattered--the victim of a country physician's practice and of an unrestrained irritability. Her commiseration had been all that was needed to have him yield himself unreservedly to her care.
It had been her intention to stay in the woods with him for a fortnight, but the end of that time found his lassitude increasing and his need for her greater than ever. She was obliged to ask for indefinite leave of absence. A physician came from Milwaukee once a week to see him; and meantime quiet and comfort were his best medicines.
The autumn began to deepen. The pines accentuated their solemnity, and out on the roadways the hazel bushes and the sumac changed to canary, to russet, and to crimson. For days together the sky would be cloudless, and even in the dead of night the vault seemed to retain its splendor. There are curious cloths woven on Persian and on Turkish looms which appear to the casual eye to be merely black, but which held in sunlight show green and blue, purple and bronze, like the shifting colors on a duck's back. Kate, pacing back and forth in the night after hours of concentrated labor,--labor which could be performed only when her father was resting,--noted such mysterious and evasive hues in her Northern sky. Never had she seen heavens so triumphant. True, the stars shone with a remote glory, but she was more inspired by their enduring, their impersonal magnificence, than she could have been by anything relative to herself.
A year ago, had she been so isolated, she might have found herself lonely, but it was quite different now. She possessed links with the active world. There were many who wanted her--some for small and some for great things. She felt herself in the stream of life; it poured about her, an invisible thing, but strong and deep. Sympathy, understanding, encouragement, reached her even there in her solitude and heartened her. Weary as she often was physically, drained as she could not but be mentally, her heart was warm and full.
October came and went bringing little change in Dr. Barrington's condition. It did not seem advisable to move him. Rest and care were the things required; and the constant ministrations of a physician would have been of little benefit. Kate prayed for a change; and it came, but not as she had hoped. One morning she went to her father to find him terribly altered. It was as if some blight had fallen upon him in the night. His face was gray in hue, his pulse barely fluttering, though his eyes were keener than they had been, as if a sudden danger had brought back his old force and comprehension. Even the tone in which he addressed her had more of its old-time quality. It was the accent of command, the voice he had used as a physician in the sick-room, though it was faint.
"Send for Hudson," he said. "We'll be needing him, Kate. The fight's on. Don't feel badly if we fail. You've done your best."
It was six hours before the physician arrived from Milwaukee.
"I couldn't have looked for anything like this," he said to Kate. "I thought he was safe--that six months' rest would see him getting about again."
They had a week's conflict with the last dread enemy of man, and they lost. Dr. Barrington was quite as much aware of the significance of his steady decline as any one. He had practical, quiet, encouraging talks with his daughter. He sent for an attorney and secured his property to her. Once more, as in his brighter days, he talked of important matters, though no longer with his old arrogance. He seemed to comprehend at last, fully and proudly, that she was the inheritor of the best part of him. Her excursive spirit, her inquisitive mind, were, after all, in spite of all differences, his gift to her. He gave her his good wishes and begged her to follow whatever forces had been leading her. It was as if, in his weakness, he had sunk for a period into something resembling childhood and had emerged from it into a newer, finer manhood.
"I kept abreast of things in my profession," he said, "but in other matters I was obstinate. I liked the old way--a man at the helm, and the crew answering his commands. No matter how big a fool the man was, I still wanted him at the helm." He smiled at her brightly. There was, indeed, a sort of terrible brilliancy about him, the result, perhaps, of heroic artificial stimulation. But these false fires soon burned themselves out. One beautiful Sunday morning they found him sinking. He himself informed his physician that it was his day of transition.
"I've only an hour or two more, Hudson," he whispered cheerfully. "Feel that pulse!"
"Oh, we may manage to keep you with us some time yet, Dr. Barrington," said the other with a professional attempt at optimism.
But the older man shook his head.
"Let's not bother with the stock phrases," he said. "Ask my daughter to come. I'd like to look at her till the last."
So Kate sat where he could see her, and they coaxed the fluttering heart to yet a little further effort. Dr. Barrington supervised everything; counted his own pulse; noted its decline with his accustomed accuracy.
The sunlight streamed into the room through the tall shafts of trees; outside the sighing of the pines was heard, rising now and then to a noble requiem. It lifted Kate's soul on its deep harmonies, and she was able to bear herself with fortitude.
"It's been so sweet to be with you, dear," she murmured in the ears which were growing dull to earthly sounds. "Say that I've made up to you a little for my willfulness. I've always loved you--always."
"I know," he whispered. "I understand--everything--now!"
In fact, his glance answered hers with full comprehension.
"The beat is getting very low now, Doctor," he murmured, the fingers of his right hand on his left wrist; "very infrequent--fifteen minutes more--"
Dr. Hudson tried to restrain him from his grim task of noting his own sinking vitality, but the old physician waved him off.
"It's very interesting," he said. It seemed so, indeed. Suddenly he said quite clearly and in a louder voice than he had used that day: "It has stopped. It is the end!"
Kate sprang to her feet incredulously. There was a moment of waiting so tense that the very trees seemed to cease their moaning to listen. In all the room there was no sound. The struggling breath had ceased. The old physician had been correct--he had achieved the thing he had set himself to do. He had announced his own demise.
Kate had him buried beside the wife for whom he had so inconsistently longed. She sold the old house, selected a few keepsakes from it, disposed of all else, and came, late in November, back to the city. Marna's baby had been born--a little bright boy, named for his father. Mrs. Barsaloux, relenting, had sent a layette of French workmanship, and Marna was radiantly happy.
"If onlytantewill come over for Christmas," Marna lilted to Kate, "I shall be almost too happy to live. How good she was to me, and how ungrateful I seemed to her! Write her to come, Kate, mavourneen. Tell her the baby won't seem quite complete till she's kissed it."
So Kate wrote Mrs. Barsaloux, adding her solicitation to Marna's. Human love and sympathy were coming to seem to her of more value than anything else in the world. To be loved--to be companioned--to have the vast loneliness of life mitigated by fealty and laughter and tenderness--what was there to take the place of it?
Her heart swelled with a desire to lessen the pain of the world. All her egotism, her self-assertion, her formless ambitions had got up, or down, to that,--to comfort the comfortless, to keep evil away from little children, to let those who were in any sort of a prison go free. Yet she knew very well that all of this would lack its perfect meaning unless there was some one to say to her--to her and to none other: "I understand."
Mrs. Barsaloux did not come to America at Christmas time. Karl Wander did not--as he had thought he might--visit Chicago. The holiday season seemed to bring little to Kate except a press of duties. She aspired to go to bed Christmas night with the conviction that not a child in her large territory had spent a neglected Christmas. This meant a skilled coöperation with other societies, with the benevolently inclined newspapers, and with generous patrons. The correspondence involved was necessarily large, and the amount of detail to be attended to more than she should have undertaken, unaided, but she was spurred on by an almost consuming passion of pity and sisterliness. That sensible detachment which had marked her work at the outset had gradually and perhaps regrettably disappeared. So far from having outgrown emotional struggle, she seemed now, because of something that was taking place in her inner life, to be increasingly susceptible to it.
Her father's death had taken from her the last vestige of a home. She had now no place which she could call her own, or to which she would instinctively turn at Christmas time. To be sure, there were many who bade her to their firesides, and some of these invitations she accepted with gratitude and joy. But she could, of course, only pause at the hearthstones of others. Her thoughts winged on to other things--to the little poor homes where her wistful children dwelt, to the great scheme for their care and oversight which daily came nearer to realization.
A number of benevolent women--rich in purse and in a passion for public service--desired her to lecture. She was to explain the meaning of the Bureau of Children at the state federations of women's clubs, in lyceum courses, and wherever receptive audiences could be found. They advised, among other things, her attendance at the biennial meeting of the General Federation of Women's Clubs which was meeting that coming spring in Southern California.
The time had been not so far distant when she would have had difficulty in seeing herself in the rôle of a public lecturer, but now that she had something imperative to say, she did not see herself in any "rôle" at all. She ceased to think about herself save as the carrier of a message.
Her Christmas letter from Wander was at once a disappointment and a shock.
"I've made a mess of things," he wrote, "and do not intend to intrude on you until I have shown myself more worthy of consideration. I try to tell myself that my present fiasco is not my fault, but I've more than a suspicion that I'm playing the coward's part when I think that. You can be disappointed in me if you like.I'moutrageously disappointed. I thought I was made of better stuff."I don't know when I'll have time for writing again, for I shall be very busy. I suppose I'll think about you more than is good for me. But maybe not. Maybe the thoughts of you will be crowded out. I'm rather curious to see. It would be better for me if they would, for I've come to a bad turn in the road, and when I get around it, maybe all of the old familiar scenes--the window out of which your face looked, for example--will be lost to me. I send my good wishes to you all the same. I shall do that as long as I have a brain and a heart."Faithfully,"WANDER."
"That means trouble," reflected Kate, and had a wild desire to rush to his aid.
That she did not was owing partly--only partly--to another letter which, bearing an English postmark, indicated that Ray McCrea, who had been abroad for a month on business, was turning his face toward home. What he had to say was this:--
"DEAREST KATE:--"I'm sending you a warning. In a few days I'll be tossing on that black sea of which I have, in the last few days, caught some discouraging glimpses. It doesn't look as if it meant to let me see the Statue of Liberty again, but as surely as I do, I'm going to go into council with you."I imagine you know mighty well what I'm going to say. For years you've kept me at your call--or, rather, for years I have kept myself there. You've discouraged me often, in a tolerant fashion, as if you thought me too young to be dangerous, or yourself too high up to be called to account. I've been patient, chiefly because I found your society, as a mere recipient of my awkward attentions, too satisfactory to be able to run the risk of foregoing it. But if I were to sit in the outer court any longer I would be pusillanimous. I'm coming home to force you to make up that strange mind of yours, which seems to be forever occupying itself with the thing far-off and to-be-hoped-for, rather than with what is near at hand."You'll have time to think it over. You can't say I've been precipitate."Yours--always,"RAY."
At that she flashed a letter to Colorado.
"What is your cousin's trouble?" she asked Honora. "Is it at the mines?"
"It's at the mines," Honora replied. "Karl's life has been and is in danger. Friends have warned me of that again and again. There's no holding these people--these several hundred Italians that poor Karl insisted upon regarding as his wards, his 'adopted children.' They're preparing to leave their half-paid-for homes and their steady work, and to go threshing off across the country in the wave of a hard-drinking, hysterical labor leader. He has them inflamed to the explosive point. When they've done their worst, Karl may be a poor man. Not that he worries about that; but he's likely to carry down with him friends and business associates. Of course this is not final. He may win out, but such a catastrophe threatens him.
"But understand, all this is not what is tormenting him and turning him gaunt and haggard. No, as usual, the last twist of the knife is given by a woman. In this case it is an Italian girl, Elena Cimiotti, the daughter of one of the strikers and of the woman who does our washing for us. She's a beautiful, wild creature, something as you might suppose the daughter of Jorio to be. She has come for the washing and has brought it home again for months past, and Karl, who is thoughtful of everybody, has assisted her with her burden when she was lifting it from her burro's back or packing it on the little beast. Sometimes he would fetch her a glass of water, or give her a cup of tea, or put some fruit in her saddle-bags. You know what a way he has with all women! I suppose it would turn any foolish creature's head. And he has such an impressive way of saying things! What would be a casual speech on the tongue of another becomes significant, when he has given one of his original twists to it. I think, too, that in utter disregard of Italian etiquette he has sometimes walked on the street with this girl for a few steps. He is like a child in some ways,--as trusting and unconventional,--and he wants to be friends with everybody. I can't tell whether it is because he is such an aristocrat that it doesn't occur to him that any one can suspect him of losing caste, or because he is such a democrat that he doesn't know it exists.
"However that may be, the girl is in love with him. These Italian girls are modest and well-behaved ordinarily, but when once their imagination is aroused they are like flaming meteors. They have no shame because they can't see why any one should be ashamed of love (and, to tell the truth, I can't either). But this girl believes Karl has encouraged her. I suppose she honestly believed that he was sweethearting. He is astounded and dismayed. At first both he and I thought she would get over it, but she has twice been barely prevented from killing herself. Of course her countrymen think her desperately ill-treated. She is the handsomest girl in the settlement, and she has a number of ardent admirers. To the hatred which they have come to bear Karl as members of a strike directed against him, they now add the element of personal jealousy.
"So you see what kind of a Christmas we are having! I have had Mrs. Hays take the babies to Colorado Springs, and if anything happens to us here, I'll trust to you to see to them. You, who mean to look after little children, look after mine above all others, for their mother gave you, long since, her loving friendship. I would rather have you mother my babies, maiden though you are, than any woman I know, for I feel a great force in you, Kate, and believe you are going on until you get an answer to some of the questions which the rest of us have found unanswerable.
"Karl wants me to leave, for there is danger that the ranch house may be blown up almost any time. These men play with dynamite as if it were wood, anyway, and they make fiery enemies. Every act of ours is spied upon. Our servants have left us, and Karl and I, obstinate as mules and as proud as sheiks, after the fashion of our family, hold the fort. He wants me to go, but I tell him I am more interested in life than I ever dared hope I would be again. I have been bayoneted into a fighting mood, and I find it magnificent to really feel alive again, after crawling in the dust so long, with the taste of it in my mouth. So don't pity me. As for Karl--he looks wild and strange, like the Flying Dutchman with his spectral hand on the helm. But I don't know that I want you to pity him either. He is a curious man, with a passionate soul, and if he flares out like a torch in the wind, it will be fitting enough. No, don't pity us. Congratulate us rather."
"Now what," said Kate aloud, "may that mean?"
"Congratulate us!"
The letter had a note of reckless gayety. Had Honora and Karl, though cousins, been finding a shining compensation there in the midst of many troubles? It sounded so, indeed. Elena Cimiotti might swing down the mountain roads wearing mountain flowers in her hair if she pleased, and Kate would not have thought her dangerous to the peace of Karl Wander. If the wind were wild and the leaves driving, he might have kissed her in some mad mood. So much might be granted--and none, not even Elena, be the worse for it. But to live side by side with Honora Fulham, to face danger with her, to have the exhilaration of conflict, they two together, the mountains above them, the treacherous foe below, a fortune lost or gained in a day, all the elements of Colorado's gambling chances of life and fortune at hand, might mean--anything.
Well, she would congratulate them! If Honora could forget a shattered heart so soon, if Wander could take it on such easy terms, they were entitled to congratulations of a sort. And if they were killed some frantic night,--were blown to pieces with their ruined home, and so reached together whatever lies beyond this life,--why, then, they were to be congratulated, indeed! Or if they evaded their enemies and swung their endangered craft into the smooth stream of life, still congratulations were to be theirs.
She confessed to herself that she would rather be in that lonely beleaguered house facing death with Karl Wander than be the recipient of the greatest honor or the participant in the utmost gayety that life could offer.
That the fact was fantastic made it none the less a fact.
Should she write to Honora: "I congratulate you?"
Or should she wire Karl?
She got out his letters, and his words were as a fresh wind blowing over her spirit. She realized afresh how this man, seen but once, known only through the medium of infrequent letters, had invigorated her. What had he not taught her of compassion, of "the glory of the commonplace," of duty eagerly fulfilled, of the abounding joy of life--even in life shadowed by care or sickness or poverty?
No, she would write them nothing. They were her friends in fullness of sympathy. They, like herself, were of those to whom each day and night is a privilege, to whom sorrow is an enrichment, delight an unfoldment, opposition a spur. They were of the company of those who dared to speak the truth, who breathed deep, who partook of the banquet of life without fear.
She had seen Honora in the worst hour of tribulation that can come to a good woman, and she knew she had arisen from her overthrow, stronger for the trial; now Karl was battling, and he had cried out to her in his pain--his shame of defeat. But it would not be his extinction. She was sure of that. They might, among them, slay his body, but she could not read his letters, so full of valiant contrasts, and doubt that his spirit must withstand all adversaries.
No, sardonic with these two she could never be. Like that poor Elena, she might have mistaken Wander's meanings. He was a man of too elaborate gestures; something grandiose, inherently his, made him enact the drama of life with too much fervor. It was easy, Honora had insinuated, for a woman to mistake him!
Kate gripped her two strong hands together and clasped them about her head in the first attitude of despair in which she ever had indulged in her life. She was ashamed! Honora had said there was nothing to be ashamed of in love. But Kate would not call this meeting of her spirit with Karl's by that name. She had no idea whether it was love or not. On the whole, she preferred to think that it was not. But when they faced each other, their glances had met. When they had parted, their thoughts had bridged the space. When she dreamed, she fancied that she was mounting great solitary peaks with him to look at sunsets that blazed like the end of the world; or that he and she were strong-winged birds seeking the crags of the Andes. What girl's folly! The time had come to put such vagrant dreams from her and to become a woman, indeed.
Ray telephoned that he was home.
"Come up this evening, then," commanded Kate.
Then, not being as courageous as her word, she wept brokenly for her mother--the mother who could, at best, have given her but such indeterminate advice.