Afterward Kate took Honora down to the sea. They found a little house
that fairly bathed its feet in the surf, and here they passed the days
very quietly, at least to outward seeming. The Pacific thundered in upon
them; they could hear the winds, calling and calling with an immemorial
invitation; they knew of the little jewelled islands that lay out in the
seas and of the lands of eld on the far, far shore; and they dreamed
strange dreams.
Sitting in the twilight, watching the light reluctantly leave the sea,
they spoke of many things. They spoke most of all of women, and it
sometimes seemed, as they sat there,--one at the doorway of the House of
Life and one in a shaded inner chamber,--as if the rune of women came to
them from their far sisters: from those in their harems, from others in
the blare of commercial, Occidental life; from those in chambers of
pain; from those freighted with the poignant burdens which women bear in
their bodies and in their souls.
As the darkness deepened, they grew unashamed and then reticences fell
from them. The eternally flowing sea, the ever-recurrent night gave them
courage, though they were women, to speak the truth.
"When I found how deeply I loved David," said Honora, "and that I could
serve him, too, by marrying him, I would no more have put the idea of
marriage with him out of my mind than I would have cast away a hope of
heaven if I had seen that shining before me. I would no more have turned
from it than I would have turned from food, if I had been starving; or
water after I had been thirsting in the desert. Why, Kate, to marry him
was inevitable! The bird doesn't think when it sings or the bud when it
flowers. It does what it was created to do. I married David the
same way."
"I understand," said Kate.
They sat on their little low, sand-swept balcony, facing the sea. The
rising tide filled the world with its soft and indescribable cadence.
The stars came out into the sky according to their rank--the greatest
first, and after them the less, and the less no more lacking in beauty
than the great. All was as it should be--all was ordered--all was fit
and wonderful.
"So," went on Honora, after a silence which the sea filled in with its
low harmonies, "if you loved Karl--"
"Wait!" said Kate. So Honora waited. Another silence fell. Then Kate
spoke brokenly.
"If to feel when I am with him that I have reached my home; if to suffer
a strangeness even with myself, and to feel less familiar with myself
than with him, is to love, then I love him, Honora. If to want to work
with him, and to feel there could be no exultation like overcoming
difficulties with him, is love, then truly I love him. If just to see
him, at a distance, enriches the world and makes the stream of time turn
from lead to gold is anything in the nature of love, then I am his
lover. If to long to house with him, to go by the same name that he
does, to wear him, so to speak, carved on my brow, is to love, then
I do."
"Then I foresee that you will be one of the happiest women in the
world."
"No! No; you mustn't say that. Aren't there other things than love,
Honora,--better things than selfish delight?"
"My dear, you have no call to distress yourself about the occult
meanings of that word 'selfish.' Unselfish people--or those who mean to
be so--contrive, when they refuse to follow the instincts of their
hearts, to cause more suffering even than the out-and-out selfish ones."
"But I have an opportunity to serve thousands--maybe hundreds of
thousands of human beings. I can set in motion a movement which may have
a more lasting effect upon my country than any victory ever gained by it
on a field of battle; and perhaps in time the example set by this land
will be followed by others. Dare I face that mystic, inner ME and say:
'I choose my man, I give him all my life, and I resign my birthright of
labor. For this personal joy I refuse to be the Sister of the World; I
let the dream perish; I hinder a great work'? Oh, Honora, I want him, I
want him! But am I for that reason to be false to my destiny?"
"You want celebrity!" said Honora with sudden bitterness. "You want to
go to Washington, to have your name numbered among the leading ones of
the nation; you are not willing to spend your days in the solitude of
Williston Ranch as wife to its master."
"I will not say that you are speaking falsely, but I think you know you
are setting out only a little part of the truth. Admit it, Honora."
Honora sighed heavily.
"Oh, yes," she said at length, "I do admit it. You must forgive me,
Kate. It seems so easy for you two to be happy that I can't help feeling
it blasphemous for you to be anything else. If it were an ordinary
marriage or an ordinary separation, I shouldn't feel so agonized over
it. But you and Karl--such mates--the only free spirits I know! How you
would love! It would be epic. And I should rejoice that you were living
in that savage world instead of in a city. You two would need room--like
great beautiful buildings. Who would wish to see you in the jumble of a
city? With you to aid him, Karl may become a distinguished man. Your
lives would go on together, widening, widening--"
"Oh!" interrupted Kate with a sharp ejaculation; "we'll not talk of it
any more, Honora. You must not think because I cannot marry him that he
will always be unhappy. In time he will find another woman--"
"Kate! Will you find another man?"
"You know I shall not! After Wander? Any man would be an anticlimax to
me after him."
"Can you suspect him of a passion or a fealty less than your own? If you
refuse to marry him, I believe you will frustrate a great purpose of
Nature. Why, Kate, it will be a crime against Love. The thought as I
feel it means more--oh, infinitely more--than I can make the words
convey to you; but you must think them over, Kate,--I beg you to think
them over!"
In the darkness, Kate heard Honora stealing away to her room.
So she was alone, and the hour had come for her decision.
"'Bitter, alas,'" she quoted to the rising trouble of the sea, '"the
sorrow of lonely women.'" The distillation of that strange duplex soul,
Fiona Macleod, was as a drop of poisoned truth upon her parched tongue.
"We who love are those who suffer;
We who suffer most are those who most do love."
She went down upon the sands. The tongues of the sea came up and lapped
her feet. The winds of the sea enfolded her in an embrace. For the first
time in her life, freely, without restraint, bravely, as sometime she
might face God, she confronted the idea of Love. And a secret, wonderful
knowledge came to her--the knowledge of lovely spiritual ecstasies, the
realization of rich human delights. Sorrow and cruel loss might be on
their way, but Joy was hers now. She feigned that Karl was waiting for
her a little way on in the warm darkness--on, around that
scimitar-shaped bend of the beach. She chose to believe that he was
running to meet her, his eyes aflame, his great arms outstretched; she
thrilled to the rain of his kisses; she thought those stars might hear
the voice with which he shouted, "Kate!"
Then, calmer, yet as if she had run a race, panting, palpitant, she
seated herself on the sands. She let her imagination roam through the
years. She saw the road of life they would take together; how they would
stand on peaks of lofty desire, in sunlight; how, unfaltering, they
would pace tenebrous valleys. Always they would be together. Their
laughter would chime and their tears would fall in unison. Where one
failed, the other would redeem; where one doubted, the other would hope.
They would bear their children to be the vehicle of their ideals--these
fresh new creatures, born of their love, would be trained to achieve
what they, their parents, had somehow missed.
Then her bolder thought died. She, who had forced herself so
relentlessly to face the world as a woman faces it, with the knowledge
and the courage of maturity, felt her wisdom slip from her. She was a
girl, very lonely, facing a task too large for her, needing the comfort
of her lover's word. She stretched herself upon the sand, face downward,
weeping, because she was afraid of life--because she was wishful for
the joy of woman and dared not take it.
* * * * *
"Have you decided?" asked Honora in the morning.
"I think so," answered Kate.
Honora scrutinized the face of her friend.
"Accept," she said, "my profound commiseration." Her tone seemed to
imply that she included contempt.
After this, there was a change in Honora's attitude toward her. Kate
felt herself more alone than she ever had been in her life. It was as if
she had been cast out into a desert--a sandy plain smitten with the
relentless Sun of Life, and in it was no house of refuge, no comfortable
tree, no waters of healing. No, nor any other soul. Alone she walked
there, and the only figures she saw were those of the mirage. It gave
her a sort of relief to turn her face eastward and to feel that she must
traverse the actual desert, and come at the end to literal combat.