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The Precipice: A Novel, a novel by Elia W. Peattie |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII Kate was alone at last. She had time to think. There were still three days left of the vacation for which she had begged when she perceived Honora's need of her, and these she spent in settling her room. It would not accommodate all of the furniture she had accumulated during those days of enthusiasm over Ray McCrea's return, so she sold the superfluous things. Truth to tell, however, she kept the more decorative ones. Honora's fate had taught her an indelible lesson. She saw clearly that happiness for women did not lie along the road of austerity. Was it humiliating to have to acknowledge that women were desired for their beauty, their charm, for the air of opulence which they gave to an otherwise barren world? Her mind cast back over the ages--over the innumerable forms of seduction and subserviency which the instinct of women had induced them to assume, and she reddened to flame sitting alone in the twilight. Yet, an hour later, still thinking of the subject, she realized that it was for men rather than for women that she had to blush. Woman was what man had made her, she concluded. Yet man was often better than woman--more generous, more just, more high-minded, possessed of a deeper faith. Well, well, it was at best a confusing world! She seemed to be like a ship without a chart or a port of destination. But at least she could accept things as they were--even the fact that she herself was not "in commission," and was, philosophically speaking, a derelict. "Other women seem to do things by instinct," she mused, "but I have, apparently, to do them from conviction. It must be the masculine traits in me. They say all women have masculine traits, that if they were purely feminine, they would be monstrous; and that all civilized men have much of the feminine in them or they would not be civilized. I suppose there's rather more of the masculine in me than in the majority of women." Now Mary Morrison, she concluded, was almost pure feminine--she was the triumphant exposition of the feminine principle. Some lines of Arthur Symons came to her notice--lines which she tried in vain not to memorize. '"I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen "'I live and am immortal; in my eyes
Oh, the shame of it! The shame of being a woman! Kate denied herself to McCrea when he called. She plunged into the development of her scheme for an extension of motherhood. State motherhood it would be. Should the movement become national, as she hoped, perhaps it had best be called the Bureau of Children. It was midsummer by now and there was some surcease of activity even in "welfare" circles. Many of the social workers, having grubbed in unspeakable slums all winter, were now abroad among palaces and cathedrals, drinking their fill of beauty. Many were in the country near at hand. For the most part, neophytes were in charge at the settlement houses. Kate was again urged to domesticate herself with Jane Addams's corps of workers, but she had an aversion to being shut between walls. She had been trapped once,--back at the place she called home,--and she had not liked it. There was something free and adventurous in going from house to house, authoritatively rearranging the affairs of the disarranged. It suited her to be "a traveling bishop." Moreover, it left her time for the development of her great Idea. In a neighborhood house privacy and leisure were the two unattainable luxuries. She was still writing at odd times'; and now her articles were appearing. They were keen, simple, full of meat, and the public liked them. As Kate read them over, she smiled to find them so emphatic. She was far from _feeling_ emphatic, but she seemed to have a trick of expressing herself in that way. She was still in need of great economy. Her growing influence brought little to her in the way of monetary rewards, and it was hard for her to live within her income because she had a scattering hand. She liked to dispense good things and she liked to have them. A liberal programme suited her best--whatever gave free play to life. She was a wild creature in that she hated bars. Of all the prison houses of life, poverty seemed one of the most hectoring. But poverty, to be completely itself, must exclude opportunity. Kate had the key to opportunity, and she realized it. In the letters she received and wrote bringing her into association with men and women of force and aspiration, she had a privilege to which, for all of her youth, she could not be indifferent. She liked the way these purposeful persons put things, and felt a distinct pleasure in matching their ideas with her own. As the summer wore on, she was asked to country homes of charm and taste--homes where wealth, though great, was subordinated to more essential things. There she met those who could further her purposes--who could lend their influence to aid her Idea, now shaping itself excellently. At the suggestion of Miss Addams, she prepared an article in which her plan unfolded itself in all its benevolent length and breadth--an article which it was suggested might yet form a portion of a speech made before a congressional committee. There was even talk of having Kate deliver this address, but she had not yet reached the point where she could contemplate such an adventure with calmness. However, she was having training in her suffrage work, which was now assuming greater importance in her eyes. She addressed women audiences in various parts of the city, and had even gone on a few flying motor excursions with leading suffragists, speaking to the people in villages and at country schoolhouses. There was an ever-increasing conviction in this department of her work. She had learned to count the ballot as the best bulwark of liberty, and she could find no logic to inform her why, if it was a protection for man,--for the least and most insignificant of men,--it was not equally a weapon which women, searching now as never before for defined and enduring forms of liberty, should be permitted to use. She not only desired it for other women,--women who were supposed to "need it" more,--but she wished it for herself. She felt it to be merely consistent that she, in whom service to her community was becoming a necessity, should have this privilege. It never would be possible for her to exercise murderous powers of destruction in behalf of her country. She would not be allowed to shoot down innocent men whose opinions were opposed to her own, or to make widows and orphans. She would be forbidden to stand behind cannon or to sink submarine torpedoes. But it was within her reach to add to the sum total of peace and happiness. She would, if she could get her Bureau of Children established, exercise a constructive influence completely in accord with the spirit of the time. This being the case, she thought she ought to have the ballot. It would make her stand up straighter, spiritually speaking. It would give her the authority which would point her arguments; put a cap on the sheaf of her endeavors. She wanted it precisely as a writer wants a period to complete a sentence. It had a structural value, to use the term of an architect. Without it her sentence was foolish, her building insecure. "Why is it," she demanded of the women of Lake Geneva when, in company with a veteran suffragist, she addressed them there, "that you grow weary in working for your town? It is because you cannot demonstrate your meaning nor secure the continuation of your works by the ballot. Your efforts are like pieces of metal which you cannot weld into useful form. You toil for deserted children, indigent mothers, for hospitals and asylums, starting movements which, when perfected, are absorbed by the city. What happens then to these benevolent enterprises? They are placed in the hands of politicians and perfunctorily administered. Your disinterested services are lost sight of; the politicians smile at the manner in which you have toiled and they have reaped. You see sink into uselessness, institutions, which, in the compassionate hands of women, would be the promoters of good through the generations. The people you would benefit are treated with that insolent arrogance which only a cheap man in office can assume. Causes you have labored to establish, and which no one denies are benefits, are capriciously overthrown. And there is one remedy and one only: for you to cast your vote--for you to have your say as you sit in your city council, on your county board, or in your state legislature and national congress. "You may shrink from it; you may dread these new responsibilities; but strength and courage will come with your need. You dare not turn aside from the road which opens before you, for to tread it is now the test of integrity." "Ought you to have said that?" inquired the older suffragist, afterward looking at Kate with earnest and burning eyes from her white spiritual face. "I dare say I care much more about suffrage than you. I have been interested in it since I was a child, and I am now no longer a young woman. Yet I feel that integrity is not allied to this or that opinion. It is a question of sincerity--of steadfastness of purpose." "There, there," said Kate, "don't expect me to be too moderate. How can I care about anything just now if I have to be moderate? I love suffrage because it gives me something to care about and to work for. The last generation has destroyed pretty much all of the theology, hasn't it? Service of man is all there is left--particularly that branch of it known as the service of woman. Isn't that what all of the poets and playwrights and novelists are writing about? Isn't that the most interesting thing in the world at present? You've all urged me to go into it, haven't you? Very well, I have. But I can't stay in it if I'm to be tepid. You mustn't expect me to modify my utterance and cut down my climaxes. I've got to make a hot propaganda of the thing. I want the exhilaration of martyrdom--though I'm not keen for the discomforts of it. In other words, dear lady, because you are judicious, don't expect me to be. I don't want to be judicious--yet. I want to be fervid." "You are a dear girl," said the elder woman, "but you are an egotist, as of course you know." "If I had been a modest violet by a mossy stone," laughed Kate, "should I have taken up this work?" "I'm free to confess that you would not," said the other, checking a sigh as if she despaired of bringing this excited girl down to the earth. "Yet I am bound to say--" She hesitated and Kate took up the word. "I _do_ know--I really understand," she cried contritely. "You are not an egotist at all, dear lady. Though you have held many positions of honor, you have never thought of yourself. Your sacrifices have been _bona fide_. You who are so delicate and tender have done things which men might have shrunk from. I know what you mean by sincerity, and I am aware that you have it completely and steadily, whereas I have more enthusiasm than is good either for myself or the cause. But you wouldn't want me to form myself on you, would you now? Temperament is just as much a fact as physique. I've got to dramatize woman's disadvantages if I am to preach on the subject. Though I really think there are tragedies of womanhood which none could exaggerate." "Oh, there are, there are, Miss Barrington." "How shall I make you understand that I am to be trusted!" Kate cried. "I know I'm avid. I want both pain and joy. I want to suffer with the others and enjoy with the others. I want my cup of life full and running over with a brew of a thousand flavors, and I actually believe I want to taste of the cup each neighbor holds. I have to know how others feel and it's my nature to feel for them and with them. When I see this great wave of aspiration sweeping over women,--Chinese and Persian women as well as English and American,--I feel magnificent. I, too, am standing where the stream of influence blows over me. It thrills me magnificently, and I am meaning it when I say that I think the women who do not feel it are torpid or cowardly." The elder woman smiled patiently. After all, who was she that she should check her flaming disciple? _ |
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