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.