Home > Authors Index > Elia W. Peattie > Precipice: A Novel > This page
The Precipice: A Novel, a novel by Elia W. Peattie |
||
Chapter 19 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XIX Whenever Kate had a free Sunday, she and Mrs. Dennison, the mistress of the Caravansary, would go together to the West Side to visit George and Marna Fitzgerald. It amused and enchanted Kate to think that in the midst of so much that was commonplace, with dull apartment buildings stretching around for miles, such an Arcadia should have located itself. It opened her eyes to the fact that there might be innumerable Arcadians concealed in those monotonous rows of three-and four-story flat buildings, if only one had the wisdom and wit to find them. Marna seemed to know of some. She had become acquainted with a number of these happy unknown little folk, to whom it never had occurred that celebrity was an essential of joy, and she liked them mightily. Marna, indeed, liked high and low--always providing she didn't dislike them. If they were Irish, her inclination toward them was accelerated. There were certain wonders of Marna's ardent soul which were for "Irish faces only"--Irish eyes were the eyes she liked best to have upon her. But she forgave Kate her Anglo-Saxon ancestry because of her talent for appreciating the Irish character. Time was passing beautifully with Marna, and her Bird of Hope was fluttering nearer. She told Kate that now she could see some sense in being a woman. "If you'd ask me," she said with childish audacity, "if such a foolish little thing as I could actually have a wonderful, dear little baby, I'd have said 'no' right at the start. I'm as flattered as I can be. And what pleases me so is that I don't have to be at all different from what I naturally am. I don't have to be learned or tremendously good; it isn't a question of deserts. It has just come to me--who never did deserve any such good!" Next door to Marna there was a young Irishwoman of whom the Fitzgeralds saw a good deal, the mother of five little children, with not more than sixteen months between the ages of any of them. Mary Finn had been beautiful--so much was evident at a glance. But she already wore a dragged expression; and work, far beyond her powers to accomplish, was making a sloven of her. She was petulant with the children, though she adored them--at least, sporadically. But her burden tired her patience out. Timothy Finn's income had not increased in proportion to his family. He was now in his young manhood, at the height of his earning capacity, and early middle-age might see him suffering a reduction. Mrs. Finn dropped in Sunday afternoon to share the cup of tea which Marna was offering her guests, and as she looked wistfully out of her tangle of dark hair,--in which lines of silver already were beginning to appear,--she impressed herself upon Kate's mind as one of the innumerable army of martyrs to the fetish of fecundity which had borne down men and women through the centuries. She had her youngest child with her. "It was a terrible time before I could get up from the last one," she said, "me that was around as smart as could be with the first. I'm in living terror all the time for fear of what's coming to me. A mother has no business to die, that's what I tell Tim. Who'd look to the ones I have, with me taken? I'm sharp with them at times, but God knows I'd die for 'em. Blessed be, they understand my scolding, the dears. It's a cuff and a kiss with me, and I declare I don't know which they like best. They may howl when I hurt them, but they know it's their own mother doing the cuffing, and in their hearts they don't care. It's that way with cubs, ye see. Mother bear knows how hard to box the ears of 'em. But it's truth I'm saying, Mrs. Fitzgerald; there's little peace for women. They don't seem to belong to themselves at all, once they're married. It's very happy you are, looking forward to your first, and you have my good wishes. More than that, I'll be proud to be of any service to you I can when your time comes--it's myself has had experience enough! But, I tell you, the joy runs out when you're slaving from morning to night, and then never getting the half done that you ought; and when you don't know what it is to have two hours straight sleep at night; and maybe your husband scolding at the noise the young ones make. Love 'em? Of course, you love 'em. But you can stand only so much. After that, you're done for. And the agony of passing and leaving the children motherless is something I don't like to think about." She bared her thin breast to her nursing babe, rocking slowly, her blue eyes straining into the future with its menace. "But," said Marna, blushing with embarrassment, "need there be such--such a burden? Don't you think it right to--to--" "Neither God nor man seems to have any mercy on me," cried the little woman passionately. "I say I'm in a trap--that's the truth of it. If I was a selfish, bad mother, I could get out of it; if I was a mean wife, I could, too, I suppose. I've tried to do what was right,--what other people told me was right,--and I pray it won't kill me--for I ought to live for the children's sake." The child was whining because of lack of nourishment, and Mrs. Finn put it to the other breast, but it fared little better there. Mrs. Dennison was looking on with her mild, benevolent aspect. "My dear," she said at last with an air of gentle authority, "I'm going out to get a bottle and good reliable infant food for that child. You haven't strength enough to more than keep yourself going, not to say anything about the baby." She took the child out of the woman's arms and gave it to Kate. "But I don't think I ought to wean it when it's so young," cried Mrs. Finn, breaking down and wringing her thin hands with an immemorial Hibernian gesture. "Tim wouldn't like it, and his mother would rage at me." "They'll like it when they see the baby getting some flesh on its bones," insisted Mrs. Dennison. "There's more than one kind of a fight a mother has to put up for her children. They used to think it fine for a woman to kill herself for her children, but I don't think it's so much the fashion now. As you say, a mother has no business to die; it's the part of intelligence to live. So you just have a set-to with your old-fashioned mother-in-law if it's necessary." "Yes," put in Kate, "the new generation always has to fight the old in the interests of progress." Marna broke into a rippling laugh. "That's her best platform manner," she cried. "Just think, Mrs. Finn, my friend talks on suffrage." "Oh!" gasped the little Irishwoman, involuntarily putting out her hands as if she would snatch her infant from such a contaminating hold. But Kate drew back smilingly. "Yes," she said significantly, "I believe in woman's rights." She held on to the baby, and Mrs. Dennison, putting on her hat and coat, went in search of a nursing-bottle. On the way home, Mrs. Dennison, who was of the last generation, and Kate, who was of the present one, talked the matter over. "She didn't seem to understand that she had been talking 'woman's rights,'" mused Kate, referring to Mrs. Finn. "The word frightened the poor dear. She didn't see that fatal last word of her 'love, honor, and obey' had her where she might even have to give her life in keeping her word." "Well, for my part," said Mrs. Dennison, in her mellow, flowing tones, "I always found it a pleasure to obey my husband. But, then, to be sure, I don't know that he ever asked anything inconsiderate of me." "You were a well-shielded woman, weren't you?" asked Kate. "I didn't need to lift my hand unless I wished," said Mrs. Dennison in reminiscence. "And you had no children--" "But that was a great sorrow." "Yes, but it wasn't a living vexation and drain. It didn't use up your vitality and suck up your brain power and make a slattern and a drudge of you as having five children in seven years has of little Mrs. Finn. It's all very well to talk of obeying when you aren't asked to obey--or, at least, when you aren't required to do anything difficult. But good Tim Finn, I'll warrant, tells his Mary when she may go and where, and he'd be in a fury if she went somewhere against his desire. Oh, she's playing the old medieval game, you can see that!" "Dear Kate," sighed Mrs. Dennison, "sometimes your expressions seem to me quite out of taste. I do hope you won't mind my saying so. You're so very emphatic." "I don't mind a bit, Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree, where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a different sort of woman." "I can't help looking forward, Kate, to the time when you'll be in your own home. You think you're all bound up in this public work, but I can tell by the looks of you that you're just the one to make a good wife for some fine man. I hope you don't think it impertinent of me, but I can't make out why you haven't taken one or the other of the men who want you." "You think some one wants me?" asked Kate provokingly. "Oh, we all know that Dr. von Shierbrand would rather be taking you home to see his old German mother than to be made President of the University of Chicago; and that nice Mr. McCrea is nearly crazy over the way you treat him." "But it would seem so stale--life in a home with either of them! Should I just have to sit at the window and watch for them to come home?" "You know you wouldn't," said Mrs. Dennison, almost crossly. "Why do you tease me? What's good enough for other women ought to be good enough for you." "Oh, what a bad one I am!" cried Kate. "Of course what is good enough for better women than I ought to be good enough for me. But yet--shall I tell the truth about myself?" "Do," said Mrs. Dennison, placated. "I want you to confide in me, Kate." "Well, you see, dear lady, suppose that I marry one of the gentlemen of whom you have spoken. Suppose I make a pleasant home for my husband, have two or three nice children, and live a happy and--well, a good life. Then I die and there's the end." "Well, of course I don't think that's the end," broke in Mrs. Dennison. Kate evaded the point. "I mean, there's an end of my earthly existence. Now, on the other hand, suppose I get this Bureau for Children through. Suppose it becomes a fact. Let us play that I am asked to become the head of it, or, if not that, at least to assist in carrying on its work. Then, suppose that, as a result of my work, the unprotected children have protection; the education of all the children in the country is assured--even of the half-witted, and the blind and the deaf and the vicious. Suppose that the care and development of children becomes a great and generally comprehended science, like sanitation, so that the men and women of future generations are more fitted to live than those we now see about us. Don't you think that will be better worth while than my individual happiness? They think a woman heroic when she sacrifices herself for her children, but shouldn't I be much more heroic if I worked all my life for other people's children? For children yet to be born? I ask you that calmly. I don't wish you to answer me to-day. I'm in earnest now, dear Mrs. Dennison, and I'd like you to give me a true answer." There was a little pause. Mrs. Dennison was trifling nervously with the frogs on her black silk jacket. When she spoke, it was rather diffidently. "I could answer you so much better, my dear Kate," she said at length, "if I only knew how much or how little vanity you have." "Oh!" gasped Kate. "Or whether you are really an egotist--as some think." "Oh!" breathed Kate again. "As for me, I always say that a person can't get anywhere without egotism. The word never did scare me. Egotism is a kind of yeast that makes the human bread rise. I don't see how we could get along without it. As you say, I'd better wait before answering you. You've asked me an important question, and I'd like to give it thought. I can see that you'd be a good and useful woman whichever thing you did. But the question is, would you be a happy one in a home? You've got the idea of a public life in your head, and very likely that influences you without your realizing it." "I don't say I'm not ambitious," cried Kate, really stirred. "But that ought to be a credit to me! It's ridiculous using the word 'ambitious' as a credit to a man, and making it seem like a shame to a woman. Ambition is personal force. Why shouldn't I have force?" "There are things I can't put into words," said Mrs. Dennison, taking a folded handkerchief from her bead bag and delicately wiping her face, "and one of them is what I think about women. I'm a woman myself, and it doesn't seem becoming to me to say that I think they're sacred." "No more sacred than men!" interrupted Kate hotly. "Life is sacred--if it's good. I can't say I think it sacred when it's deleterious. It's that pale, twilight sort of a theory which has kept women from doing the things they were capable of doing. Men kept thinking of them as sacred, and then they were miserably disappointed when they found they weren't. They talk about women's dreams, but I think men dream just as much as women, or more, and that they moon around with ideas about angel wives, and then are horribly shocked when they find they've married limited, commonplace, selfish creatures like themselves. I say let us train them both, make them comrades, give them a chance to share the burdens and the rewards, and see if we can't reduce the number of broken hearts in the world." "There are some burdens," put in Mrs. Dennison, "which men and women cannot share. The burden of child-bearing, which is the most important one there is, has to be borne by women alone. You yourself were talking about that only a little while ago. It's such a strange sort of a thing,--so sweet and _so_ terrible,--and it so often takes a woman to the verge of the grave, or over it, that I suppose it is that which gives a sacredness to women. Then, too, they'll work all their lives long for some one they love with no thought of any return except love. That makes them sacred, too. Most of them believe in God, even when they're bad, and they believe in those they love even when they ought not. Maybe they're right in this and maybe they're not. Perhaps you'll say that shows their lack of sense. But I say it helps the world on, just the same. It may not be sensible--but it makes them sacred." Mrs. Dennison's face was shining. She had pulled the gloves from her warm hands, and Kate, looking down at them, saw how work-worn they now were, though they were softly rounded and delicate. She knew this woman might have married a second time; but she was toiling that she might keep faith with the man she had laid in his grave. She was expecting a reunion with him. Her hope warmed her and kept her redolent of youth. She was still a bride, though she was a widow. She was of those who understood the things of the spirit. The essence of womanhood was in her--the elusive poetry of womanhood. To such implications of mystic beauty there was no retort. Kate saw in that moment that when women got as far as emancipation they were going to lose something infinitely precious. The real question was, should not these beautiful, these evanishing joys be permitted to depart in the interests of progress? Would not new, more robust satisfactions come to take the place of them? They rode on in silence, and Kate's mind darted here and there--darted to Lena Vroom, that piteous little sister of Icarus, with her scorched wings; darted to Honora Fulham with her shattered faith; to Mary Morrison with her wanton's wisdom; to Mary Finn, whose womanhood was her undoing; to Marna, who had given fame for love and found the bargain good; to Mrs. Leger, who had turned to God; to her mother, the cringing wife, who could not keep faith with herself and her vows of obedience, and who had perished of the conflict; to Mrs. Dennison, happy in her mid-Victorian creed. Then from these, whom she knew, her mind swept on to the others--to all the restless, disturbed, questioning women the world over, who, clinging to beautiful old myths, yet reached out diffident hands to grasp new guidance. The violence and nurtured hatred of some of them offended her deeply; the egregious selfishness of others seemed to her as a flaming sin. Militant, unrestrained, avid of coarse and obvious things, they presented a shameful contrast to this little, gentle, dreaming keeper of a boarding-house who sat beside her, her dove's eyes filled with the mist of memories. And yet--and yet-- _ |
||