Chapter VII

by Susan Glaspell

　　Wayne had gone over to Colonel Leonard's for bridge. Kate was to havegone too, but had pleaded fatigue. The plea was not wholly hollow. Thelast thirty hours had not been restful ones.

　　And now she was to go upstairs and do something which she did not knowhow to do, or why she was doing. Sitting there alone in the library shegrew serious in the thought that a game was something more than a gamewhen played with human beings.

　　Not that seriousness robbed her of the charm that was her own. Thedistinctive thing about Katie was that there always seemed a certainlight about her, upon her, coming from her. Usually it was as iridescentlights dancing upon the water; but to-night it was more as one light, amore steady, deeper light. It made her gray eyes almost black; made herclear-cut nose and chin seem more finely chiseled than they actuallywere, and brought out both the strength and the tenderness of her notvery small mouth. Katie's friends, when pinned down to it, alwaysadmitted with some little surprise that she was not pretty; they madeamends for that, however, in saying that she just missed being beautiful."But that's not what you think of when you see her," they would tell you."You think, 'What a good sort! She must be great fun!'" And there weresome few who would add: "Katie is the kind you would expect to find doingsplendid service in that last ditch."

　　Yet even those few were not familiar with the Katie Jones of that moment,for it was a new Katie, less new when leaning forward, tense, puzzled,hand clenched, brow knitted, her whole well-knit, athletic body atattention than when leaning back—lax, open to new and awesome things.And as though she must come back where she felt acquainted with herself,she suddenly began to whistle. Katie found whistling a convenient andpleasant recepticle for excess emotion. She had enjoyed it when a littlegirl because she had been told it was unladylike; kept it up to find outif it were really true that it would spoil her mouth, and now liked doingit because she could do it so successfully.

　　She was still whistling herself back to familiar things as she ranlightly up the stairs; had warmed to a long final trill as she stood inthe doorway. The girl looked up in amazement. She had been sitting there,elbows on her knees, face in her hands. It was hard to see what mighthave been seen in her face because at that moment the chief thing seenwas astonishment. Katie slipped down among the pillows of the couch, anarm curled about her head. "Didn't know I could do that, did you?" shelaughed. "Oh yes, I have several accomplishments. Whistling is perhapsthe chiefest thereof. Then next I think would come golf. My game's notbad. Then there are a few wizardy things I do with a chafing dish, andlastly, and after all lastly should be firstly, is my genius for gettingeverything and everybody into a most hopeless mess."

　　The girl moved impatiently at first, as if determined not to be evaded bythat light mood, but sight of Katie, lying there so much as a child wouldlie, seemed to suggest how truly Katie might have spoken and she wasbetrayed into the shadow of a smile.

　　"I suppose there has never been a human being as gifted in balling thingsup as I am," meditatively boasted Kate.

　　"Now here you are," she continued plaintively. "You want to go away.Well, of course, that's your affair. Why should you have to stay here—ifyou don't want to? But in the twenty-four hours you've been here Ipresume I've told twenty-four unnecessary lies to my brother. And if youdo go away—as I admit you have a perfect right to do—it will put me insuch a compromising position, because of those deathless lies that willtrail me round through life that—oh, well," she concluded petulantly,"I suppose I'll just have to go away too."

　　But the girl put it resolutely from her. A wave of sternness swept herface as she said, with a certain dignity that made Katie draw herself toa position more adapted to the contemplation of serious things: "That'sall very well. Your pretending—trying to pretend—that I would be doingyou a favor in staying. It is so—so clever. I mean so cleverly kind. ButI can't help seeing through it, and I'm not going to accept hospitalityI've no right to—stay here under false pretenses—pretend to be what I'mnot—why what I couldn't even pretend to be!" she concluded withbitterness.

　　Katie was leaning forward, all keen interest. "But do you know, I thinkyou could. I honestly believe we could put it through! And don't you seethat it would be the most fascinating—altogether jolliest sort of thingfor us to try? It would be a game—a lark—the very best kind of sport!"

　　She saw in an instant that she had wounded her. "I'm sorry; I would likevery much to do something for you after all this. But I am afraid this issport I cannot furnish you. I am not—I'm not feeling just like—a lark."

　　"Now do you see?" Kate demanded with turbulent gesture. "Talk aboutballing things up! I like you; I want you to stay; and when I come inhere and try and induce you to stay what do I do but muddle things sothat you'll probably walk right out of the house! Why was I born likethat?" she demanded in righteous resentment.

　　"'Katherine,' a worldly-wise aunt of mine said to me once, 'you have twograve faults. One is telling the truth. The other is telling lies. I havenever known you to fail in telling the one when it was a time to tell theother.' Can't you see what a curse it is to mix times that way?"

　　As one too tired to resist the tide, not accepting, but going with it forthe minute because the tide was kindly and the force to withstand itsmall, the girl, her arm upon the table, her head leaning wearily uponher hand, sat there looking at Katie, that combination of thenon-accepting and the unresisting which weariness can breed.

　　Kate seemed in profound thought. "Of course, you would naturally besuspicious of me," she broke in as if merely continuing the thinkingaloud; Katie's fashion of doing that often made commonplace things seemvery intimate—a statement to which considerable masculine testimonycould be affixed. "I don't blame you in the least. I'd be suspicious,too, in your place. It's not unnatural that, not knowing me well, youshould think I had some designs about 'doing good,' or helping you, andof course nothing makes self-respecting persons so furious as the thoughtthat some one may be trying to do them good. Now if I could only prove toyou, as could be proved, that I never did any good in my life, thenperhaps you'd have more belief in me, or less suspicion of me. I wonderif you would do this? Could you bring yourself to stay just long enoughto see that I am not trying to do you good? Fancy how I should feel tohave you go away looking upon me as an officious philanthropist! Isn't itonly square to give me a chance to demonstrate the honor of myworthlessness?"

　　Still the girl just drifted, her eyes now revealing a certainhalf-amused, half-affectionate tenderness for the tide which would bearher so craftily.

　　"And speaking of honor, moves me to my usual truth-telling blunder, and Ican't resist telling you that in one respect I really have designs onyou. But be at peace—it has nothing to do with your soul. Never havingso much as discovered my own soul, I should scarcely presume to undertakethe management of yours, but what I do want to do is to feed you eggs!

　　"No—now don't take it that way. You're thinking of eggs one orders at ahotel, or—or a boarding-house, maybe. But did you ever eat the eggsthat were triumphantly announced by the darlingest bantam—?"

　　She paused—beaten back by the things gathering in the girl's face.

　　"Tell me the truth!" it broke. "What are you doing this for? What haveyou to gain by it?"

　　"I hadn't thought just what I had to—gain by it," Katie stammered, at aloss before so fierce an intensity. "Does—must one always 'gain'something?"

　　"If you knew the world," the girl threw out at her, "you'd know wellenough one always expects to gain something! But you don't know theworld—that's plain."

　　Katie was humbly silent. She had thought she knew the world. She hadlived in the Philippines and Japan and all over Europe and America. Shewould have said that the difference between her and this other girl wasin just that thing of her knowing the world—being of it. But thereseemed nothing to say when Ann told her so emphatically that she did notknow the world.

　　The girl seemed on fire. "No, of course not; you don't know theworld—you don't know life—that's why you don't know what an unheard-ofthing you're doing! What do you know about me?" she thrust at herfiercely. "What do you think about me?"

　　"I think you have had a hard time," Katie murmured, thinking to herselfthat one must have had hard time—

　　"And what's that to you? Why's that your affair?"

　　"It's not exactly my affair, to be sure," Katie admitted; "except that weseem to have been—thrown together, and, as I said, there's somethingabout you that I've—taken a fancy to."

　　It drew her, but she beat it back. Resistance made her face the morestern as she went on: "Do you think I'm going to impose on you—justbecause you know so little? Why with all your cleverness, you're just ababy—when it comes to life! Shall I tell you what life is like?" Hergaze narrowed and grew hard. "Life is everybody fighting forsomething—and knocking down everybody in their way. Life is people whoare strong kicking people who are weak out of their road—then going onwith a laugh—a laugh loud enough to drown the groans. Life is lying andscheming to get what you want. Life is not caring—giving up—gettinghardened—I know it. I loathe it."

　　Katie sat there quite still. She was frightened.

　　"And you! Here in a place like this—what do you know about it? Whyyou're nothing but an—outsider!"

　　An outsider, was she?—and she had thought that Ann—

　　The girl's passion seemed suddenly to flow into one long, cunning look."What are you doing it for?" she asked quietly with a sort of insolentlyindifferent suspicion.

　　"I don't know," Katie replied simply. "At least until a minute ago Ididn't know, and now I wonder if perhaps, without knowing it, I was nottrying to make up for some of those people—for I fear some of them werefriends of mine—who have gone ahead by kicking other people out of theirway. Perhaps their kicks provided my laughs. Perhaps, unconsciously,it—bothered me."

　　Passion had burned to helplessness, the appealing helplessness of theweary child. She sat there, hands loosely clasped in her lap, looking atKatie with great solemn eyes, tired wistful mouth. And it seemed to Katethat she was looking, not at her, but at life, that life which had casther out, looking, not with rage now, but with a hurt reproachfulness inwhich there was a heartbreaking longing.

　　It drew Katie over to the table. She stretched her hand out across it, asif seeking to bridge something, and spoke with an earnest dignity. "Yousay I'm an outsider. Then won't you take me in? I don't want to be anoutsider. You mustn't think too badly of me for it because you see I havejust stayed where I was put. But I want to know life. I love it now, andyet, easy and pleasant though it is, I can't say that I find it verysatisfying. I have more than once felt it was cheating me. I'm notgetting enough—just because I don't know. Loving a thing because youdon't know it isn't a very high way of loving it, is it? I believe Icould know it and still love it—love it, indeed, the more truly. No, youdon't think so; but I want to try." She paused, thinking; then saw it andspoke it strongly. "I've never done anything real. I've never doneanything that counted. That's why I'm an outsider. If making a place foryou here is going to make one for me there—on the inside, I mean—you'renot going to refuse to take me in, are you?"

　　Something seemed to leap up in the girl's eyes, but to crouch back,afraid. "What do you know about me?" she whispered.

　　"Not much. Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them muchbetter, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've foughtin the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie'seyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity infighting—yes, and losing—in the real, than just sitting around whereyou get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To losefighting—or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question aboutit. What do I know about you?" she came back to it.

　　"Only that you seemed just shot into my life, strangely disturbing it,ruffling it so queerly. It's too ruffled now to settle down without—moreruffling. So you're not going away leaving it in any such distressingstate, are you?" she concluded with a smile which lighted her face with afine seriousness.

　　She made a last stand. "But you don't know. You don't understand."

　　"No, I don't know. And don't think I ever need know, as a matter ofobligation. But should there ever come a time when you feel I wouldunderstand, understand enough to help, then I should be glad and proud toknow, for it would make me feel I was no longer an outsider. And let metell you something. In whatever school you learned about life, there'sone thing they taught you wrong. They've developed you too much insuspicion. They didn't give you a big enough course in trust. All thepeople in this world aren't designing and cruel. Why the old globe isjust covered with beautiful people who are made happy in doing things forthe people about them."

　　"I haven't met them," were the words which came from the sob.

　　"I see you haven't; that's why I want you to. Your education has beenone-sided. So has mine. Perhaps we can strike a balance. What would youthink of our trying to do that?"

　　The wonder of it seemed stealing up upon the girl, growing upon her. "Youmean," she asked, in slow, hushed voice, "that I should stayhere—here?—as a friend of yours?"

　　"Stay here as a friend—and become a friend," came the answer,quick and true.

　　So true that it went straight to the girl's heart. Tears came, differenttears, tears which were melting something. And yet, once again shewhispered: "But I don't understand."

　　"Try to understand. Stay here with me and learn to laugh and be foolish,that'll help you understand. And if you're ever in the least oppressedwith a sense of obligation—horrid thing, isn't it?—just put it downwith, 'But she likes it. It's fun for her.' For really now, Ann, I hopethis is not going to hurt you, but I simply can't help getting fun out ofthings. I get fun out of everything. It's my great failing. Not aparticularly unkind sort of fun, though. I don't believe you'll mind itas you get used to it. My friends all seem to accept the fact thatI—enjoy them. And then my curiosity. Well, like the eggs. It's notentirely to make you stronger. It's to see whether the things I've alwaysheard about milk and eggs are really so. See how it works—not altogetherfor the good of the works, you see? Oh, I don't know. Motives areslippery things, don't you think so? Mine seem particularly athletic.They hop from their pigeon holes and turn hand-springs and do all sortsof stunts the minute I turn my back. So I never know for sure why I wantto do a thing. For that matter, I don't know why I named you Ann. I hadto give you a name—I thought you might prefer my not using yours—so allin a flash I had to make one up—and Ann was what came. I love that name.It never would have come if something in you hadn't called it. The Ann inyou has had a hard time." She was speaking uncertainly, timidly, as if onground where words had broken no paths. "Oh, I'm not so much the outsiderI can't see that. But the Ann in you has never died. That I see, too.Maybe it was to save Ann you were going to—give up Verna. And because Isee Ann—like her—because I called her back, won't you let her stayhere and—" Katie's voice broke, so to offset that she cocked her headand made a wry little face as she concluded, not succeeding in concealingthe deep tenderness in her eyes, "just try—the eggs?"