Chapter XXXV

by Susan Glaspell

　　Paris was in one of her gray moods that January afternoon. Everything wasgray except the humanity. Emotion never seemed to grow gray in Paris.From her place by the window in Clara's apartment Katie was looking downinto the narrow street, the people passing to and fro. Two men wereshaking hands. They would stop, then begin again. They had been doingthat for the last five minutes. They seemed to find life a very livething. So did the femme de menage and her soldier, who also had beenstanding over there for the last five minutes. Katie did not want to looklonger at the femme de menage and her soldier, so she turned her chaira little about and looked more directly at Clara.

　　Clara was in gray mood, too. Only Clara differed from the streets in thatit was the emotion was gray; the robe de chambre was red.

　　So were Clara's eyes. "It's not pleasant, Katie," she was saying, "havingto remain here in Paris for these foggy months—with all one's friendsdown on the Riviera."

　　"No," said Katie grimly, "life's hard."

　　Clara's tears flowed afresh. "I've often thought you were hard, Katie.

　　It's because you've never—cared. You've never—suffered."

　　Katie smiled slightly, again looking out the window at the femme andher soldier, who were as contented with the seclusion offered by alamp-post as though it were seclusion indeed. As she watched them, "hard"did not seem the precise word for something in Katie's eyes.

　　"You see, Katie," Clara had resumed, as if her woe gave her the right torebuke Katie for the lack of woe, "you've always had everything just theway you wanted it."

　　"Just exactly," said Katie, still looking at the femme de menage.

　　"Your grandfather left you all that money, and when you want to do athing all you have to do is do it. What can you know of the real sorrowsand hardships of life?"

　　"What indeed?" responded Katie briskly.

　　"And your heart has never been touched—and I don't believe it ever willbe," Clara continued spitefully—Katie seemed so complacent. "You have noreal feeling. You're just like Wayne."

　　Katie laughed at that and looked at Clara; then laughed again, and

　　Clara flushed.

　　"Speaking of Wayne," said Katie in off-hand fashion, "he's beenmade a major."

　　She watched Clara as she said it. There were things Katie could be ratherbrutal about.

　　"I'm sure that's very nice," said the woman who had divorced Wayne.

　　"Yes, isn't it? And other things are going swimmingly. One of thosethings he used to be always puttering over—you may remember, Clara,mentioning, from time to time, those things he used to be putteringaround with—has been adopted with a whoop. A great fuss is being madeover it. It looks as though Wayne was confronted with something thatmight be called a future."

　　"I'm sure I'm very glad," said Clara, "that somebody is to have somethingthat might be called a future. Certainly a woman with barely enough tolive on isn't in much danger of being confronted with one."

　　Katie made no apology to herself for the pleasure she took in "rubbing itin." She remembered too many things too vividly.

　　"It's pretty hard," said Clara, "when one has a—duty to society, andnothing to go on."

　　Katie was thinking that society must be a very vigorous thing, persistingthrough all the "duties" people had to it.

　　She smiled now in seeing that the thing which had brought her to Clarathat day was in the nature of a "duty to society" and that in her case,too, a duty to society and a personal inclination moved happily together.

　　Katie was there that afternoon to buy Worth.

　　So she put it to herself in what Clara would have called hercharacteristically brutal fashion.

　　She was sure Worth could be had for a price. She had that price and shebelieved the psychological moment was at hand for offering it.

　　The reason for its being the psychological moment was that Clara wantedto join a party at Nice and did not have money enough to buy theclothes which would make her going worth while. For there was a manthere—an American, a rich westerner—whom Clara's duty to society movedher to marry.

　　That was Katie's indelicate deduction from Clara's delicate hints.

　　And Katie wanted Worth. It wasn't wholly a matter of either affection orconvenience. It had to do, and in almost passionate sense, with somethingwhich was at least in the category with such things as duties to society.Worth seemed to her too fine, too real, to be reared by a "truly femininewoman," as Clara had been known to call herself. Clara's great idea forWorth was that he be well brought up. That was Clara's idea of her dutyto society. And it was Katie's notion of her duty to society to save himfrom being too well brought up.

　　The things she had been seeing, and suffering, in the past year made herfeel almost savagely on the subject.

　　Katie had been there since October. Clara had magnanimously permittedWorth to remain with his Aunt Kate most of the time, with the provisionthat Katie bring him to her as often as she wanted him. This wasunselfish of Clara, and cheaper.

　　Clara's alimony was not small, but neither were her tastes. Indeed thelatter rose to the proportions of duties to society.

　　Katie knew it was as such she must treat them in the next half hour. Shemust save the "maternal instinct" Clara was always talking about—usuallyadding that it was a thing which Katie, of course, could notunderstand—by taking it under the sheltering wing of the "child's good."

　　Katie knew just how to reach the emotions which Clara had, withoutoutraging too much the emotions she persuaded herself she had.

　　So she began speaking in a large way of life, how hard it was, howcomplicated. How they all loved Worth and wished to do the best thing forhim, how she feared it must hurt the child's personality, living in thatunsettled fashion, now under one influence, now under another. She spokeof Clara's own future, how she had that to think of and how it was hardshe be so—restricted. She drew a vivid picture of what life might be ifClara didn't "provide for the future"—she was careful to use no phraseso raw to truly feminine ears as "make a good marriage." And then, rathercurtly when it came to it, tired of the ingratiating preamble, she askedClara what she would think of relinquishing all claim on Worth and takingtwenty thousand dollars.

　　Clara tried to look more insulted by the proposition than invited by thesum. But Katie got a glimmer of that look of greed known to her of old.

　　She went on talking. She was sure every one would think it beautiful ofClara to let Worth go to them just because they had a better way ofcaring for him, just because it was for the child's good. Every one wouldknow how it must hurt her and admire her for the sacrifice. And thenKatie mentioned the fact that the matter could be closed immediately andClara start at once for Nice and perhaps that itself would "meansomething to the future."

　　From behind Clara's handkerchief—Clara's tears were in close relation toClara's sense of the fitness of things—Katie made out that life seemeddriving her to this, but that it hurt her to think so tragic a thingshould be associated with so paltry a sum.

　　"It's my limit," said Katie shortly. "Take it or leave it."

　　Amid more sobs Katie got that all the Jones family were heartless, thatlife was cruel, but that she was willing to make any sacrifice for herchild's good.

　　"Then I'll go down and get him," said Katie, rising.

　　Clara's sobs ceased instantly. "Get who?"

　　"My lawyer. I left him down there talking to the concierge."

　　"Katie Jones—how could you!"

　　"Oh she looks like a decent enough woman," said Katie. "I don't think itwill hurt him any."

　　"Katie, you have grown absolutely—vulgar. And so hard. You have nofineness—no intuition—nothing feminine about you. And how dared youbring your lawyer here to me? What right had you to assume I'd do this?"

　　"Why I knew you well enough, Clara, to believe you would be willing to doit—for your child's good."

　　Clara looked at her suspiciously and Katie hastened to add that shebrought him because she wanted to pay ten thousand francs on account andshe thought Clara might want to get the disagreeable business allsettled up at once so she could hurry on to Nice before those friends ofhers got over to Algiers, or some place where Clara might not be able togo after them.

　　Clara again looked suspicious, but only said it was inconsiderate ofKatie to expect her to receive a lawyer with her poor eyes in thatcondition.

　　But when Katie returned with him Clara's eyes were a softer red and shemanaged to extract from the interview the pleasure of showing him thatshe was suffering.

　　As she watched the transaction, Katie felt a little ashamed of herself.Not because she was doing it, but because she had known so well how to doit. But with a grimace she banished her compunctions in the thought ofits being for the child's good, and hence a duty to society.

　　Less easy to banish was the hideous thought that she might have been ableto get him for less!

　　By the time the attorney had gone Clara seemed to be looking upon herselfas one hallowed by grief; she was in the high mood of one set apart bysuffering. In her eyes was something which she evidently felt to be alook of resignation. In her hand something which she certainly felt to bean order for ten thousand francs.

　　The combination first amused and then irritated Katie. It wasexasperating to have Clara giving herself airs about the grief which wasto make such a sorry cut in Katie's income.

　　Clara, in her mellowed mood, spoke of the past, why it had all been asit had. She was even so purged by suffering as to speak gently of Wayne."I hope, Katie—yes, actually hope—that Wayne will some time find itpossible to care, and be happy."

　　And when Katie thought of how much Wayne had cared, why he had not beenhappy, it grew more and more difficult to treat Clara as one sanctifiedby sorrow.

　　It gave her a fierce new longing for the real, the real at all costs, acontempt for all that artifice and self-delusion which made for thethings at war with the real.

　　She had enough malice to entertain an impulse to strip Clara of hercomplacency, take away from her her pleasant cup of sorrow, make her takeone good look at herself for the woman she was rather than the woman shewas flaunting. But she had no zest for it. What would be the use? And,after all, self-deception seemed a thing one was entitled to practice, ifone wished.

　　What Katie wanted most was to get out into the air.