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The Precipice: A Novel, a novel by Elia W. Peattie |
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Chapter 32 |
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_ CHAPTER XXXII 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.
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. _ |
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