Читать книгу The Precipice - Elia Wilkinson Peattie - Страница 9

Table of Contents

"We're to have a new member in the family, Kate," Honora said one morning, as she and Kate made their way together to the Caravansary. "It's my cousin, Mary Morrison. She's a Californian, and very charming, I understand."

"She's to attend the University?"

"I don't quite know as to that," admitted Honora, frowning slightly. "Her father and mother have been dead for several years, and she has been living with her brother in Santa Barbara. But he is to go to the Philippines on some legal work, and he's taking his family with him. Mary begs to stay here with me during his absence."

"Is she the sort of a person who will need a chaperon? Because I don't seem to see you in that capacity, Honora."

"No, I don't know that I should care to sit against the wall smiling complacently while other people were up and doing. I've always felt I wouldn't mind being a chaperon if they'd let me set up some sort of a workshop in the ballroom, or even if I could take my mending, or a book to read. But slow, long hours of vacuous smiling certainly would wear me out. However, I don't imagine that Mary will call upon me for any such service."

"But if your cousin isn't going to college, and doesn't intend to go into society, how will she amuse herself?"

"I haven't an idea--not an idea. But I couldn't say no to her, could I? I've so few people belonging to me in this world that I can't, for merely selfish reasons, bear to turn one of my blood away. Mary's mother and my mother were sisters, and I think we should be fond of each other. Of course she is younger than I, but that is immaterial."

"And David--does he like the idea? She may be rather a fixture, mayn't she? Haven't you to think about that?"

"Oh, David probably won't notice her particularly. People come and go and it's all the same to him. He sees only his great problems." Honora choked a sigh.

"Who wants him to do anything else!" defended Kate quickly. "Not you, surely! Why, you're so proud of him that you're positively offensive! And to think that you are working beside him every day, and helping him--you know it's all just the way you would have it, Honora."

"Yes, it is," agreed Honora contritely, "and you should see him in the laboratory when we two are alone there, Kate! He's a changed man. It almost seems as if he grew in stature. When he bends over those tanks where he is making his great experiments, all of my scientific training fails to keep me from seeing him as one with supernatural powers. And that wonderful idea of his, the finding out of the secret of life, the prying into this last hidden place of Nature, almost overwhelms me. I can work at it with a matter-of-fact countenance, but when we begin to approach the results, I almost shudder away from it. But you must never let David know I said so. That's only my foolish, feminine, reverent mind. All the trained and scientific part of me repudiates such nonsense."

They turned in at the door of the Caravansary.

"I don't want to see you repudiating any part of yourself," cried Kate with sudden ardor. "It's so sweet of you, Honora, to be a mere woman in spite of all your learning and your power."

Honora stopped and grasped Kate's wrist in her strong hand.

"But am I that?" she queried, searching her friend's face with her intense gaze. "You see, I've tried--I've tried--"

She choked on the words.

"I've tried not to be a woman!" she declared, drawing her breath sharply between her teeth. "It's a strange, strange story, Kate."

"I don't understand at all," Kate declared.

"I've tried not to be a woman because David is so completely and triumphantly a man."

"Still I don't understand."

"No, I suppose not. It's a hidden history. Sometimes I can't believe it myself. But let me ask you, am I the woman you thought I would be?"

Kate smiled slowly, as her vision of Honora as she first saw her came back to her.

"How soft and rosy you were!" she cried. "I believe I actually began my acquaintance with you by hugging you. At any rate, I wanted to. No, no; I never should have thought of you in a scientific career, wearing Moshier gowns and having curtain-less windows. Never!"

Honora stood a moment there in the dim hall, thinking. In her eyes brooded a curiously patient light.

"Do you remember all the trumpery I used to have on my toilet-table?" she demanded. "I sent it to Mary Morrison. They say she looks like me."

She put her hand on the dining-room door and they entered. The others were there before them. There were growing primroses on the table, and the sunlight streamed in at the window. A fire crackled on the hearth; and Mrs. Dennison, in her old-fashioned widow's cap, sat smiling at the head of her table.

Kate knew it was not really home, but she had to admit that these busy undomestic moderns had found a good substitute for it: or, at least, that, taking their domesticity through the mediumship of Mrs. Dennison, they contrived to absorb enough of it to keep them going. But, no, it was not really home. Kate could not feel that she, personally, ever had been "home." She thought of that song of songs, "The Wanderer."

"Where art thou? Where art thou, O home so dear?"

She was thinking of this still as, her salutation over, she seated herself in the chair Dr. von Shierbrand placed for her.

"Busy thinking this morning, Miss Barrington?" Mrs. Dennison asked gently. "That tells me you're meaning to do some good thing to-day. I can't say how splendid you social workers seem to us common folks."

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Dennison!" Kate protested. "You and your kind are the true social workers. If only women--all women--understood how to make true homes, there wouldn't be any need for people like us. We're only well-intentioned fools who go around putting plasters over the sores. We don't even reach down as far as the disease--though I suppose we think we do when we get a lot of statistics together. But the men and women who go about their business, doing their work well all of the time, are the preventers of social trouble. Isn't that so, Dr. von Shierbrand?"

That amiable German readjusted his glasses upon his handsome nose and began to talk about the Second Part of "Faust." The provocation, though slight, had seemed to him sufficient.

"My husband has already eaten and gone!" observed Honora with some chagrin. "Can't you use your influence, Mrs. Dennison, to make him spend a proper amount of time at the table?"

"Oh, he doesn't need to eat except once in a great while. He has the ways of genius, Mrs. Fulham. Geniuses like to eat at odd times, and my own feeling is that they should be allowed to do as they please. It is very bad for geniuses to make them follow a set plan," said Mrs. Dennison earnestly.

"That woman," observed Dr. von Shierbrand under his breath to Kate, "has the true feminine wisdom. She should have been the wife of a great man. It was such qualities which Goethe meant to indicate in his Marguerite."

Honora, who had overheard, lifted her pensive gray eyes and interchanged a long look with Dr. von Shierbrand. Each seemed to be upon the verge of some remark.

"Well," said Kate briskly, "if you want to speak, why don't you? Are your thoughts too deep for words?"

Von Shierbrand achieved a laugh, but Honora was silent. She seemed to want to say that there was more than one variety of feminine wisdom; while Von Shierbrand, Kate felt quite sure, would have maintained that there was but one--the instinctive sort which "Marguerite knew."

The day that Mary Morrison was to arrive conflicted with the visit of a very great Frenchman to Professor Fulham's laboratory.

"I really don't see how I'm to meet the child, Kate," Honora said anxiously to her friend. "Do you think you could manage to get down to the station?"

Kate could and did go. This girl, like herself, was very much on her own resources, she imagined. She was coming, as Kate had come only the other day, to a new and forbidding city, and Kate's heart warmed to her. It seemed rather a tragedy, at best, to leave the bland Californian skies and to readjust life amid the iron compulsion of Chicago. Kate pictured her as a little thing, depressed, weary with her long journey, and already homesick.

The reality was therefore somewhat of a surprise. As Kate stood waiting by the iron gate watching the outflowing stream of people with anxious eyes, she saw a little furore centered about the person of an opulent young woman who had, it appeared, many elaborate farewells to make to her fellow-passengers. Two porters accompanied her, carrying her smart bags, and, even with so much assistance, she was draped with extra garments, which hung from her arms in varying and seductive shades of green. She herself was in green of a subtle olive shade, and her plumes and boa, her chains and chatelaine, her hand-bags and camera, marked her as the traveler triumphant and expectant. Like an Arabian princess, borne across the desert to the home of her future lord, she came panoplied with splendor. The consciousness of being a personage, by the mere right conferred by regal womanhood-in-flower, emanated from her. And the world accepted her smilingly at her own estimate. She wished to play at being queen. What more simple? Let her have her game. On every hand she found those who were--or who delightedly pretended to be--her subjects.

Once beyond the gateway, this exuberant creature paused. "And now," she said to a gentleman more assiduous than the rest, who waited upon her and who was laden with her paraphernalia, "you must help me to identify my cousin. That will be easy enough, too, for they say we resemble each other."

That gave Kate her cue. She went forward with outstretched hand.

"I am your cousin's emissary, Miss Morrison," she said. "I am Kate Barrington, and I came to greet you because your cousin was unable to get here, and is very, very sorry about it."

Miss Morrison revealed two deep dimples when she smiled, and held out so much of a hand as she could disengage from her draperies. She presented her fellow-traveler; she sent a porter for a taxi. All was exhilaratingly in commotion about her; and Kate found herself apportioning the camera and some of the other things to herself.

They had quite a royal setting-forth. Every one helped who could find any excuse for doing so; others looked on. Miss Morrison nodded and smiled; the chauffeur wheeled his machine splendidly, making dramatic gestures which had the effect of causing commerce to pause till the princess was under way.

"Be sure," warned Miss Morrison, "to drive through the pleasantest streets."

Then she turned to Kate with a deliciously reproachful expression on her face.

"Why didn't you order blue skies for me?" she demanded.

Kate never forgot the expression of Miss Morrison's face when she was ushered into Honora's "sanitary drawing-room," as Dr. von Shierbrand had dubbed it. True, the towers of Harper Memorial Library showed across the Plaisance through the undraped windows, mitigating the gravity of the outlook, and the innumerable lights of the Midway already began to render less austere the January twilight. But the brown walls, the brown rug, the Mission furniture in weathered oak, the corner clock,--an excellent time-piece,--the fireplace with its bronze vases, the etchings of foreign architecture, and the bookcase with Ruskin, Eliot, Dickens, and all the Mid-Victorian celebrities in sets, produced but a grave and unillumined interior.

"Oh!" cried Miss Morrison with ill-concealed dismay. And then, after a silence: "But where do you sit when you're sociable?"

"Here," said Kate. She wasn't going to apologize for Honora to a pair of exclamatory dimples!

"But you can be intimate here?" Miss Morrison inquired.

"We're not intimate," flashed Kate. "We're too busy--and we respect each other too much."

Miss Morrison sank into a chair and revealed the tint of her lettuce-green petticoat beneath her olive-green frock.

"I'm making you cross with me," she said regretfully. "Please don't dislike me at the outset. You see, out in California we're not so up and down as you are here. If you were used to spending your days in the shade of yellow walls, with your choice of hammocks, and with nothing to do but feed the parrot and play the piano, why, I guess you'd--"

She broke off and stared about her.

"Why, there isn't any piano!" she cried. "Do you mean Honora has no piano?"

"What would be the use? She doesn't play."

"I must order one in the morning, then. Honora wouldn't care, would she? Oh, when do you suppose she'll be home? Does she like to stay over in that queer place you told me of, fussing around with those frogs?"

Kate had been rash enough to endeavor to explain something of the Fulhams' theories regarding the mechanistic conception of life. There was nothing to do but accord Miss Morrison the laugh which she appeared to think was coming to her.

"I can see that I shouldn't have told you about anything like that," Kate said. "I see how mussy you would think any scientific experiment to be. And, really, matters of greater importance engage your attention."

She was quite serious. She had swiftly made up her mind that Mary Morrison, with her conscious seductions, was a much more important factor in the race than austere Honora Fulham. But Miss Morrison was suspicious of satire.

"Oh, I think science important!" she protested.

"No, you don't," declared Kate; "you only wish you did. Come, we'll go to your room."

It was the rear room on the second floor, and it presented a stern parallelogram occupied by the bare necessaries of a sleeping-apartment. The walls and rug were gray, the furniture of mahogany. Mary Morrison looked at it a moment with a slow smile. Then she tossed her green coat and her hat with its sweeping veil upon the bed. She flung her camera and her magazines upon the table. She opened her traveling-bag, and, with hands that almost quivered with impatience, placed upon the toilet-table the silver implements that Honora had sent her and scattered broadcast among them her necklaces and bracelets.

"I'll have some flowering plants to-morrow," she told Kate. "And when my trunks and boxes come, I'll make the wilderness blossom like a rose. How have you decorated your room?"

"I haven't much money," said Kate bluntly; "but I've--well, I've ventured on my own interpretations of what a bed-sitting-room should be."

Miss Morrison threw her a bright glance.

"I'll warrant you have," she said. "I should think you'd contrive a very original sort of a place. Thank you so much for looking after me. I brought along a gown for dinner. Naturally, I didn't want to make a dull impression at the outset. Haven't I heard that you dine out at some sort of a place where geniuses congregate?"

Years afterward, Kate used to think about the moment when Honora and her cousin met. Honora had come home, breathless from the laboratory. It had been a stirring afternoon for her. She had heard words of significant appreciation spoken to David by the men whom, out of all the world, she would have chosen to have praise him. She looked at Miss Morrison, who had come trailing down in a cerise evening gown as if she were a bright creature of another species, somewhat, Kate could not help whimsically thinking, as a philosophic beaver might have looked at a bird of paradise. Then Honora had kissed her cousin.

"Dear blue-eyed Mary!" she had cried. "Welcome to a dull and busy home."

"How good of you to take me in," sighed Miss Morrison. "I hated to bother you, Honora, but I thought you might keep me out of mischief."

"Have you been getting into mischief?" Honora asked, still laughing.

"Not quite," answered her cousin, blushing bewitchingly. "But I'm always on the verge of it. It's the Californian climate, I think."

"So exuberant!" cried Honora.

"That's it!" agreed "Blue-eyed Mary." "I thought you'd understand. Here, I'm sure, you're all busy and good."

"Some of us are," agreed Honora. "There's my Kate, for example. She's one of the most useful persons in town, and she's just as interesting as she is useful."

Miss Morrison turned her smiling regard on Kate. "But, Honora, she's been quite abrupt with me. She doesn't approve of me. I suppose she discovered at once that I wasn't useful."

"I didn't," protested Kate. "I think decorative things are of the utmost use."

"There!" cried Miss Morrison; "you can see for yourself that she doesn't like me!"

"Nonsense," said Kate, really irritated. "I shall like you if Honora does. Let me help you dress, Honora dear. Are you tired or happy that your cheeks are so flushed?"

"I'm both tired and happy, Kate. Excuse me, Mary, won't you? If David comes in you'll know him by instinct. Believe me, you are very welcome."

Up in Honora's bedroom, Kate asked, as she helped her friend into the tidy neutral silk she wore to dinner: "Is the blue-eyed one going to be a drain on you, girl? You oughtn't to carry any more burdens. Are you disturbed? Is she more of a proposition than you counted on?"

Honora turned her kind but troubled eyes on Kate.

"I can't explain," she said in so low a voice that Kate could hardly catch the words. "She's like me, isn't she? I seemed to see--"

"What?"

"Ghosts--bright ghosts. Never mind."

"You're not thinking that you are old, are you?" cried Kate. "Because that's absurd. You're wonderful--wonderful."

Laughter arose to them--the mingled voices of David Fulham and his newfound cousin by marriage.

"Good!" cried Honora with evident relief. "They seem to be taking to each other. I didn't know how David would like her."

He liked her very well, it transpired, and when the introductions had been made at the Caravansary, it appeared that every one was delighted with her. If their reception of her differed from that they had given to Kate, it was nevertheless kindly--almost gay. They leaped to the conclusion that Miss Morrison was designed to enliven them. And so it proved. She threw even the blithe Marna Cartan temporarily into the shade; and Dr. von Shierbrand, who was accustomed to talking with Kate upon such matters as the national trait of incompetence, or the reprehensible modern tendency of coddling the unfit, turned his attention to Miss Morrison and to lighter subjects.

Two days later a piano stood in Honora's drawing-room, and Miss Morrison sat before it in what may be termed occult draperies, making lovely music. Technically, perhaps, the music left something to be desired. Mrs. Barsaloux and Marna Cartan thought so, at any rate. But the habitués of Mrs. Dennison's near-home soon fell into the way of trailing over to the Fulhams' in Mary Morrison's wake, and as they grouped themselves about on the ugly Mission furniture, in a soft light produced by many candles, and an atmosphere drugged with highly scented flowers, they fell under the spell of many woven melodies.

When Mary Morrison's tapering fingers touched the keys they brought forth a liquid and caressing sound like falling water in a fountain, and when she leaned over them as if to solicit them to yield their kind responses, her attitude, her subtle garments, the swift interrogative turns of her head, brought visions to those who watched and listened. Kate dreamed of Italian gardens--the gardens she never had seen; Von Shierbrand thought of dark German forests; Honora, of a moonlit glade. These three confessed so much. The others did not tell their visions, but obviously they had them. Blue-eyed Mary was one of those women who inspire others. She was the quintessence of femininity, and she distilled upon the air something delicately intoxicating, like the odor of lotus-blossoms.

It was significant that the Fulhams' was no longer a house of suburban habits. Ten o'clock and lights out had ceased to be the rule. After music there frequently was a little supper, and every one was pressed into service in the preparation of it. Something a trifle fagged and hectic began to show in the faces of Mrs. Dennison's family, and that good woman ventured to offer some reproof.

"You all are hard workers," she said, "and you ought to be hard resters, too. You're not acting sensibly. Any one would think you were the idle rich."

"Well, we're entitled to all the pleasure we can get," Mary Morrison had retorted. "There are people who think that pleasure isn't for them. But I am just the other way--I take it for granted that pleasure is my right. I always take everything in the way of happiness that I can get my hands on."

"You mean, of course, my dear child," said the gentle Mrs. Goodrich, "all that you can get which does not belong to some one else."

Blue-eyed Mary laughed throatily.

"Fortunately," she said, "there's pleasure enough to go around. It's like air, every one can breathe it in."