There was no question about it. Life was supplying Kate Barrington with
a valuable amount of "data." On every hand the emergent or the
reactionary woman offered herself for observation, although to say that
Kate was able to take a detached and objective view of it would be going
altogether too far. The truth was, she threw herself into every friend's
trouble, and she counted as friends all who turned to her, or all whom
she was called upon to serve.
A fortnight after Mama's marriage, an interesting episode came Kate's
way. Mrs. Barsaloux had introduced to the Caravansary a Mrs. Leger whom
she had once met on the steamer on her way to Brindisi, and she had
invited her to join her during a stay in Chicago. Mrs. Barsaloux,
however, having gone off to France in a hot fit of indignation, Mrs.
Leger presented herself with a letter from Mrs. Barsaloux to Mrs.
Dennison. That hospitable woman consented to take in the somewhat
enigmatic stranger.
That she was enigmatic all were quick to perceive. She was beautiful,
with a delicate, high-bred grace, and she had the manner of a woman who
had been courted and flattered. As consciously beautiful as Mary
Morrison, she bore herself with more discretion. Taste governed all
that she said and did. Her gowns, her jewels, her speech were
distinguished. She seemed by all tokens an accomplished worldling; yet
it was not long before Kate discovered that it was anything but worldly
matters which were consuming her attention.
She had come to Chicago for the purpose of adjusting her fortune,--a
large one, it appeared,--and of concluding her relations with the world.
She had decided to go into a convent, and had chosen one of those
numerous sisterhoods which pass their devotional days upon the bright
hill-slopes without Naples. She refrained from designating the
particular sisterhood, and she permitted no discussion of her motives.
She only said that she had not been born a Catholic, but had turned to
Mother Church when the other details of life ceased to interest her. She
was a widow, but she seemed to regard her estate with quiet regret
merely. If tragedy had entered her life, it must have been subsequent to
widowhood. She had a son, but it appeared that he had no great need of
her. He was in the care of his paternal grandparents, who were giving
him an education. He was soon to enter Oxford, and she felt confident
that his life would be happy. She was leaving him an abundance; she had
halved her fortune and was giving her share to the convent.
If she had not been so exquisite, so skilled in the nuances of life, so
swift and elusive in conversation, so well fitted for the finest forms
of enjoyment, her renunciation of liberty would not have proved so
exasperating to Kate. A youthful enthusiasm for religion might have made
her step understandable. But enthusiasm and she seemed far apart.
Intelligent as she unquestionably was, she nevertheless seemed to have
given herself over supinely to a current of emotions which was sweeping
her along. She looked both pious and piteous, for all of her
sophisticated manner and her accomplishments and graces, and Kate felt
like throwing a rope to her. But Mrs. Leger was not in a mood to seize
the rope. She had her curiously gentle mind quite made up. Though she
was still young,--not quite eighteen years older than her son,--she
appeared to have no further concern for life. To the last, she was
indulging in her delicate vanities--wore her pearls, walked in charming
foot-gear, trailed after her the fascinating gowns of the initiate, and
viewed with delight the portfolios of etchings which Dr. von Shierbrand
chanced to be purchasing.
She was glad, she said, to be at the Caravansary, quite on a different
side of the city from her friends. She made no attempt to renew old
acquaintances or to say farewell to her former associates. Her
extravagant home on the Lake Shore Drive was passed over to a
self-congratulatory purchaser; the furnishings were sold at auction; and
her other properties were disposed of in such a manner as to make the
transfer of her wealth convenient for the recipients.
She asked Kate to go to the station with her.
"I've given you my one last friendship," she said. "I shall speak with
no one on the steamer. My journey must be spent in preparation for my
great change. But it seems human and warm to have you see me off."
"It seems inhuman to me, Mrs. Leger," Kate cried explosively. "Something
terrible has happened to you, I suppose, and you're hiding away from it.
You think you're going to drug yourself with prayer. But can you? It
doesn't seem at all probable to me. Dear Mrs. Leger, be brave and stay
out in the world with the other living people."
"You are talking of something which you do not understand," said Mrs.
Leger gently. "There is a secret manna for the soul of which the
chosen may eat."
"Oh!" cried Kate, almost angrily. "Are these your own words? I cannot
understand a prepossession like this on your part. It doesn't seem to
set well on you. Isn't there some hideous mistake? Aren't you under the
influence of some emotional episode? Might it not be that you were ill
without realizing it? Perhaps you are suffering from some hidden
melancholy, and it is impelling you to do something out of keeping with
the time and with your own disposition."
"I can see how it might appear that way to you, Miss Barrington. But I
am not ill, except in my soul, which I expect to be healed in the place
to which I am going. Try to understand that among the many kinds of
human beings in this world there are the mystics. They have a right to
their being and to their belief. Their joys and sorrows are different
from those of others, but they are just as existent. Please do not worry
about me."
"But you understand so well how to handle the material things in the
world," protested Kate. "You seem so appreciative and so competent. If
you have learned so much, what is the sense of shutting it all up in
a cell?"
"Did you never read of Purun Bhagat," asked Mrs. Leger smilingly, "who
was rich with the riches of a king; who was wise with the learning of
Calcutta and of Oxford; who could have held as high an office as any
that the Government of England could have given him in India, and who
took his beggar's bowl and sat upon a cavern's rim and contemplated the
secret soul of things? You know your Kipling. I have not such riches or
such wisdom, but I have the longing upon me to go into silence."
The lips from which these words fell were both tender and ardent; the
little gesticulating hands were clad in modish, mouse-colored suede;
orris root mixed with some faint, haunting odor, barely caressed the air
with perfume. Kate looked at her companion in despair.
"I must be an outer barbarian!" she cried. "I can imagine religious
ecstasy, but you are not ecstatic. I can imagine turning to a convent as
a place of hiding from shame or despair. But you are not going into it
that way. As for wishing to worship, I understand that perfectly. Prayer
is a sort of instinct with me, and all the reasoning in the world
couldn't make me cast myself out of communion with the unknown something
roundabout me that seems to answer me. But what you are doing seems, as
I said, so obsolete."
"I am looking forward to it," said Mrs. Leger, "as eagerly as a girl
looks forward to her marriage. It is a beautiful romance to me. It is
the completely beautiful thing that is going to make up to me for all
the ugliness I have encountered in life."
For the first time a look of passion disturbed the serenity of the
high-bred, conventional face.
Kate threw out her hands with a repudiating gesture.
"Well," she said, "in the midst of my freedom I shall think of you often
and wonder if you have found something that I have missed. You are
leaving the world, and books, and friends, and your son for some pale
white idea. It seems to me you are going to the embrace of a wraith."
Mrs. Leger smiled slowly, and it was as if a lamp showed for a moment in
a darkened house and then mysteriously vanished.
"Believe me," she reiterated, "you do not understand."
Kate helped her on the train, and left her surrounded by her fashionable
bags, her flowers, fruit, and literature. She took these things as a
matter of course. She had looked at her smart little boots as she
adjusted them on a hassock and had smiled at Kate almost teasingly.
"In a month," she said, "I shall be walking with bared feet, or, if the
weather demands, in sandals. I shall wear a rope about my waist over my
brown robe. My hair will be cut, my head coiffed. When you are thinking
of me, think of me as I really shall be."
"So many things are going to happen that you will not see!" cried Kate.
"Why, maybe in a little while we shall all be going up in
flying-machines! You wouldn't like to miss that, would you? Or your son
will be growing into a fine man and you'll not see him--nor the woman he
marries--nor his children." She stopped, breathing hard.
"It is like the sound of the surf on a distant shore," smiled Mrs.
Leger. "Good-bye, Miss Barrington. Don't grieve about me. I shall be
happier than you can know or dream."
The conductor swung Kate off the train after it was in motion.
* * * * *
So, among other things, she had that to think of. She could explain it
all merely upon the hypothesis that the sound of the awakening
trumpets--the trumpets which were arousing woman from her long
torpor--had not reached the place where this wistful woman dwelt, with
her tender remorses, her delicate aversions, her hunger for the
indefinite consolations of religion.
Moreover, she was beginning to understand that not all women were
maternal. She had, indeed, come across many incidents in her work which
emphasized this. Good mothers were quite as rare as good fathers; and it
was her growing belief that more than half of the parents in the world
were undeserving of the children born to them. Also, she realized that a
child might be born of the body and not of the spirit, and a mother
might minister well to a child's corporeal part without once ministering
to its soul. It was possible that there never had been any bond save a
physical one between Mrs. Leger and her son. Perhaps they looked at each
other with strange, uncomprehending eyes. That, she could imagine, would
be a tantalization from which a sensitive woman might well wish to
escape. It was within the realm of possibility that he was happier with
his grandmother than with his mother. There might be temperamental as
well as physical "throwbacks."
Kate remembered a scene she once had witnessed at a railway station. Two
meagre, hard-faced, work-worn women were superintending the removal of a
pine-covered coffin from one train to another, and as the grim box was
wheeled the length of a long platform, a little boy, wild-eyed,
gold-haired, and set apart from all the throng by a tragic misery, ran
after the truck calling in anguish:--
"Grandmother! Grandmother! Don't leave me! I'm so lonesome,
grandmother! I'm so afraid!"
"Stop your noise," commanded the woman who must have been his mother.
"Don't you know she can't hear you?"
"Oh, maybe she can! Maybe she can," sobbed the boy. "Oh, grandmother,
don't you hear me calling? There's nobody left for me now."
The woman caught him sharply by the arm.
"I'm left, Jimmy. What makes you say such a thing as that? Stay with
mother, that's a good boy."
They were lifting the box into the baggage-car. The boy saw it. He
straightened himself in the manner of one who tries to endure a
mortal wound.
"She's gone," he said. He looked at his mother once, as if measuring her
value to him. Then he turned away. There was no comfort for him there.
Often, since, Kate had wondered concerning the child. She had imagined
his grim home, his barren days; the plain food; the compulsory task; the
kind, yet heavy-handed, coarse-voiced mother. She was convinced that the
grandmother had been different. In the corner where she had sat, there
must have been warmth and welcome for the child. Perhaps there were
mellow old tales, sweet old songs, soft strokings of the head, smuggled
sweets--all the beautiful grandmotherly delights.