Mrs. Prescott made vivid and compelling those days, those things, which
Katie had a little while before had the fancy of so easily slipping away
from. She made them things which wove themselves around one, or rather,
things of which one seemed an organic part, from which one could no more
pull away than the tree's branch could pull away from the tree's trunk.
In her presence Katie was claimed by those things out of which she had
grown, claimed so subtly that it seemed a thing outside volition. Mrs.
Prescott did not, in any form, say things were as they were; it was only
that she breathed it.
How could one combat with words, or in action, that rooted so much deeper
than mere words or action?
She was a slight and simple looking lady to be doing anything so large as
stemming the tide of a revolutionary impulse. She had never lost the
girlishness of her figure--or of her hands. So much had youth left her.
Her face was thin and pale, and of the contour vaguely called
aristocratic. It was perhaps the iron gray hair rolling back from the
pale face held the suggestion of austerity. But that which best expressed
her was the poise of her head. She carried it as if she had a right to
carry it that way.
It was of small things she talked: the people she had met, people they
knew whom Katie knew. It was that net-work of small things she wove
around Katie. One might meet a large thing in a large way. But that
subtle tissue of the little things!
They talked of Katie's mother, and as they talked it came to Katie that
perhaps the most live things of all might be the dead things. Katie's
mother had not been unlike Mrs. Prescott, save that to Katie, at least,
she seemed softer and sweeter. They had been girls together in
Charleston. They had lived on the same street, gone to the same school,
come out at the same party, and Katie's mother had met Katie's father
when he came to be best man at Mrs. Prescott's wedding. Then they had
been stationed together at a frontier post in a time of danger. Wayne had
been born at that post. They had been together in times of birth and
times of death.
Mrs. Prescott spoke of Worth, and of how happy she knew Katie was to have
him with her. She talked of the responsibility it brought Katie, and as
they talked it did seem responsibility, and responsibility was another
thing which stole subtly up around her, chaining her with intangible--and
because intangible, unbreakable--chains.
Mrs. Prescott wanted to know about Wayne. Was he happy, or had the
unhappiness of his marriage gone too deep? "Your dear mother grieved so
about it, Katie," she said. "She saw how it was going. It hurt her."
"Yes," said Katie, "I know. It made mother very sad."
"I am glad that her death came before the separation."
"Oh, I don't know," said Katie; "I think mother would have been glad."
"She did not believe in divorce; your mother and I, Katie, were the
old-fashioned kind of churchwomen."
"Neither did mother believe in unhappiness," said Katie, and drew a
longer breath for saying it, for it was as if the things claiming her had
crowded up around her throat.
Mrs. Prescott sighed. "We cannot understand those things. It is a strange
age in which we are living, Katie. I sometimes think that our only hope
is to trust God a little more."
"Or help man a little more," said Katie.
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Prescott gently, "that giving more trust to God
would be giving more help to man."
"I'm not sure I get the connecting link," said Katie, more sure of
herself now that it had become articulate.
Mrs. Prescott put one of her fine hands over upon Katie's. "Why, child,
you can't mean that. That would have hurt your mother."
For the moment Katie did not speak. "If mother had understood just what I
meant--understood all about it--I don't believe it would." A second time
she was silent, as it struggled. "And if it had"--she spoke it as a thing
not to be lightly spoken--"I should be very deeply sorry, but I would
not be able to help it."
"Why, child!" murmured her mother's friend. "You're talking strangely.
You--the devoted daughter you always were--not able to 'help' hurting
your mother?"
Katie's eyes filled. It had become so real: the things stealing around
her, the thing in her which must push them back, that it was as if she
were hurting her mother, and suffering in the consciousness of bringing
suffering. Memory, the tenderest of memories, was another thing weaving
itself around her, clinging to her heart, claiming her.
But suddenly she leaned forward. "Would I be able to _help_ being
myself?" she asked passionately.
Mrs. Prescott seemed startled. "I fear," she said, perplexed by the tears
in Katie's eyes and the stern line of her mouth, "that we are speaking of
things I do not understand."
Katie was silent, agreeing with her.
Mrs. Prescott broke the silence. "The world is changing."
And again agreeing, Katie saw that in those changes friends bound
together by dear ties might be driven far apart.
"Katie," she asked after a moment, "tell me of my boy and your friend."
There was a wistful, almost tremulous note in her voice. "You have
sympathy and intelligence, Katie. You must know what a time like this
means to a mother."
Katie could not speak. It seemed she could bear little more that night.
And she longed for time to think it out, know where she stood, come to
some terms with herself.
But forced to face it, she tried to do so lightly. She thought it just
a fancy of Harry's. Wasn't he quite given to falling in love with
pretty girls?
His mother shook her head. "He cares for her. I know. And do you not see,
Katie, that that makes her about the biggest thing in life to me?"
Katie's heart almost stood still. She was staggered. Through her
wretchedness surged a momentary yearning to be one of those people--oh,
one of those _safe_ people--who never found the peep-holes in their
enclosure!
"Tell me of her, Katie," urged her mother's friend. "Harry seems to think
she means much to you. Just what is it she means to you?"
For the moment she was desperate in her wondering how to tell it. And
then it happened that from her frenzied wondering what to say of it she
sank into the deeper wondering what it _was_. What it was--what in truth
it had been all the time--Ann meant to her.
Why had she done it? What was that thing less fleeting than fancy, more
imperative than sympathy, made Ann mean more than things which had all
her life meant most?
Watching Katie, Mrs. Prescott wavered between gratification and
apprehension: pleased that that light in Katie's eyes, a finer light than
she had ever known there before, should come through thought of this
girl for whom Harry cared; troubled by the strangeness and the sternness
of Katie's face.
It was Katie herself Mrs. Prescott wanted--had always wanted. She had
always hoped it would be that way, not only because she loved Katie, but
because it seemed so as it should be. She believed that summer would have
brought it about had it not been for this other girl--this stranger.
Katie's embarrassment had fallen from her, pushed away by feeling. She
was scarcely conscious of Mrs. Prescott.
She was thinking of those paths of wondering, every path leading into
other paths--intricate, limitless. She had been asleep. Now she was
awake. It was through Ann it had come. Perhaps more had come through Ann
than was in Ann, but beneath all else, deeper even than that warm
tenderness flowering from Ann's need of her, was that tenderness of the
awakened spirit--a grateful song coming through an opening door.
It had so claimed her that she was startled at sound of Mrs. Prescott's
voice as she said, with a nervous little laugh: "Why, Katie, you alarm
me. You make me feel she must be strange."
"She is strange," said Katie.
"Would you say, Katie," she asked anxiously, "that she is the sort of
girl to make my boy a good wife?"
Suddenly the idea of Ann's making Harry Prescott any kind of wife
came upon Katie as preposterous. Not because she would be bringing
him a "past," but because she would bring gifts he would not know
what to do with.
"I don't think of Ann as the making some man a good wife type. I think of
Ann," she tried to formulate it, "as having gone upon a quest, as being
ever upon a quest."
"A--quest?" faltered Mrs. Prescott. "For what?"
"Life," said Katie, peering off into the darkness.
Mrs. Prescott was manifestly disturbed at the prospect of a
daughter-in-law upon a quest. "She sounds--temperamental," she said
critically.
"Yes," said Katie, laughing a little grimly, "she's temperamental
all right."
They could not say more, as Ann and Wayne were coming toward them across
the grass.
And almost immediately afterward the Osborne car again stopped before the
house. It was Mr. Osborne himself this time, bringing the Leonards, who
had been dining with him. They had stopped to see Mrs. Prescott.
Katie was not sorry, for it turned Mrs. Prescott from Ann. Like the
football player who has lost his wind, she wanted a little time
counted out.
But she soon found that she was not playing anything so kindly as a game
of hard and fast rules.
It seemed at first that Ann's ride had done her good. She seemed to have
relaxed and did not give Katie that sense of something smoldering within
her. Katie sat beside her, an arm thrown lightly about Ann's
shoulders--lightly but guardingly.
Neither of them talked much. Mrs. Prescott and Mrs. Leonard were
"visiting"; the men talking of some affairs of Mr. Osborne's. He was
commending the army for minding its own business--not "butting in" and
trying to ruin business the way some other departments of the Government
did. The army seemed in high favor with Mr. Osborne.
Suddenly Mrs. Leonard turned to Katie. She was a large woman, poised by
the shallow serenity of self-approval.
"I do feel so sorry for Miss Osborne," she said. "Such a shocking thing
has occurred. One of the girls at the candy factory--you know she's
trying so hard to help them--has committed suicide!"
Mrs. Prescott uttered an exclamation of horror. Katie patted the shoulder
beside her soothingly, understandingly, and as if begging for calm. Even
under her light touch she seemed to feel the nerves leap up.
Mr. Osborne turned to them. "Poor Cal, she'd better let things alone.
What's the use? She can't do anything with people like that."
"It's the cause of the suicide that's the disgusting thing," said
Colonel Leonard.
"Or rather," amended his wife, "the lack of cause."
"But surely," protested Mrs. Prescott, "no girl would take her life
without--what she thought was cause. Surely all human beings hold life
and death too sacred for that."
"Oh, do they?" scoffed Mrs. Leonard. "Not that class. I scarcely expect
you to believe me--I had a hard time believing it myself--but she says
she committed suicide--she left a note for her room-mate--because she
was 'tired of not having any fun!'"
The hand upon Ann's shoulder grew fairly eloquent. And Ann seemed trying.
Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap.
"Why, I don't know," said Wayne, "I think that's about one of the best
reasons I can think of."
"This is not a jesting matter, Captain Jones," said Mrs. Leonard
severely.
"Far from it," said Wayne.
"Think what it means to a girl like Caroline Osborne! A girl who is
trying to do something for humanity--to find the people she wants to
uplift so trivial--so without souls!"
"It is hard on Cal," agreed Cal's father.
"Though perhaps just a trifle harder," ventured Wayne, "on the
girl who did."
"Well, what did she do it for?" he demanded. "Come now, Captain, you
can't make out much of a case for her. Mrs. Leonard's word is just
right--trivial. She said she was tired of things. Tired--tired--tired of
things, she put it. Tired of walking down the same street. Tired of
hanging her hat on the same kind of a peg! Now, Captain--if you can put
up any defense for a girl who kills herself because she's tired of
hanging her hat on a certain kind of peg! Well," he laughed, "if you can,
all I've got to say is that you'd better leave the army and go in for
criminal law."
"Why didn't she walk down some other street," he resumed, as no one
broke the pause. "If it's a matter of life and death--a person might walk
down some other street!"
"And I've no doubt," said Captain Prescott, "that if it were known her
life, as well as her hat, hung upon it--she might have had a different
kind of peg."
They laughed.
"Oh, of course, the secret of it is," pronounced the Colonel, "she was a
neurotic."
For the first time Katie spoke. "I think it's such a fine thing we got
hold of that word. Since we've known about neurotics we can just throw
all the emotion and suffering and tragedy of the world in the one heap
and leave it to the scientists. It lets _us_ out so beautifully,
doesn't it?"
"Oh, but Katie!" admonished Mrs. Prescott. "Think of it! What is the
world coming to? Going forth to meet one's God because one doesn't like
the peg for one's hat!"
Katie had a feeling of every nerve in Ann's body leaping up in frenzy.
"_God_?" she laughed wildly. "Don't drag _Him_ into it! Do you think _He_
cares"--turning upon Mrs. Prescott as if she would spring at her--"do you
think for a minute _He_ cares--_what kind of pegs our hats are on_!"