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 only _tante_ will 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'm_ outrageously
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.
* * * * *