Chapter XVI

by Susan Glaspell

　　Perhaps after all it was neither the dog nor the literature, but theheat. For the heat of that next day was the kind to prey throughcountries of make-believe. It oppressed every one, but Ann it seemedto excite, as if it stirred memories in their sleep. "Don't fightheat, Ann," Katie finally admonished, puzzled and disturbed by the wayAnn kept moving about. "The only way to get ahead of the heat is togive up to it."

　　"Can you always do what you want to do?" Ann demanded with a touch ofpetulance. "Isn't there ever something makes you do things you knowaren't the things to do?"

　　"Oh, dear me, yes," laughed Kate. "But you're simply your own worst enemywhen you try to get ahead of the heat."

　　"I don't know how you're going to help being your own worst enemy,"

　　Ann murmured.

　　She picked some leaves from the vines and threw them away, purposelessly;she made the cat get out of a chair and sat down in it herself, only toget up again and pile all the magazines in a different way, notfacilitating anything by the change. Then, after walking the length ofthe veranda, she stood there looking at Katie: Katie in the coolest andcoolest-looking of summer dresses, leaning back in a cool-lookingchair—adjusting herself to things as they were, poised, victorious inher submission.

　　Then Ann said a strange thing. "A hot day's just nothing but a hot day toyou, is it?"

　　The words themselves said less than the laugh which followed them—alaugh which carried both envy and resentment, which at once admired andaccused, a laugh straight from the girl they were trying to ignore.

　　And pray what was a hot day to her, Katie wondered. What was a hotday—save a hot day? But as she watched Ann in the next few moments sheseemed to be surveying a figure oppressed less by heat than by that towhich the heat laid her open. It seemed that the hot day might stand forthe friction and the fretting of the world, for things which closed inupon one as heat closed in, bore down as heat bore down. As Ann pushedback the hair from her forehead it seemed she would push back the weightof the years.

　　It was at that moment that Caroline Osborne, richest and most prominentgirl of the vicinity, stepped from her motor car.

　　Katie had met her a few nights before at the dance. And Wayne knew herfather—a man of many interests. It was his quarrel with the forestservice that had brought her cousin Fred Wayneworth there. Fred was notone of his admirers.

　　"Isn't this heat distressing?" was her greeting, though she had succeededin keeping herself very fresh and sweet looking under the distress.

　　As Katie turned to introduce the two girls she saw that Ann was pullingat her handkerchief nervously. Was it irritating to have people for whomhot days were but hot days call heat distressing?

　　"Though one always has a breeze motoring," she took it up. "There are somany ways in which automobiles make life more bearable, don't you find itso, Miss Jones?"

　　Katie replied, inanely—Ann was still pulling at her handkerchief—thatthey were indispensable, of course, though personally she was so fond ofhorses—.

　　Yes, Miss Osborne loved horses too. Indeed it was army people had taughther to ride; once when she visited at Fort Riley—she had spent a monththere with Mrs. Baxter. Katie knew her?

　　Oh, yes, Katie knew her, and almost all the rest of the army people whomMiss Osborne told of adoring. Of a common world, they were not longstrangers. They came together through a whole network of associations.Finally they reached South Carolina and concluded they must berelated—something about Katie's grandmother and Miss Osborne'sgreat-aunt—.

　　Katie, in the midst of her interest turning instinctively to includeAnn, was curiously arrested. Ann was sitting a little apart. And thereseemed so poignant a significance in her sitting apart. It was an orderof things from which she sat apart. The network went too far back, toodeep down; it was too intricate for either sympathy or ingenuity toshape it at will.

　　Though Katie tried. For Katie, enough that she was sitting apart, andconsciously. Leaving grandmothers and great-aunts in a sadly unfinishedstate she was lightly off into a story of something which had oncehappened to her and Ann in Rome.

　　But Ann was as an actor refusing to play her part. Perhaps she was tooresentfully conscious of its being but a part—of her having no approachsave through a part. For the first time she failed in that adaptabilitywhich had always made the stories plausible. In the midst of her taleKatie met Ann's eyes, and faltered. They were mocking eyes.

　　As best she could she turned the conversation to local affairs, for Miss

　　Osborne was looking curiously at Miss Jones' unresponsive friend.

　　And as Ann for the first time seemed deliberately—yes, maliciously tofail—Katie for the first time felt out of patience, and injured. Perhapsthe heat was enervating, but was that sufficient reason for embarrassingone's hostess? Perhaps it did make her think of hard things, but was thatany reason for failing in the things that made all this possible? It wasnot appreciative, it was not kind, it did not show the right spirit,Katie told herself as she listened, with what she was pleased to considerboth atoning and rebuking graciousness, to the plans for Miss Osborne'sgarden party.

　　"It is for the working girls, especially the lower class of workinggirls, who are in the factories. For instance, the candy factory girls. Iam especially interested in that as father owns the candy factory—it isa pet side issue of his. You can see it from here, across the riverthere on the little neck of land. You see? The girls are just beginningto come from work now."

　　The three girls looked across the river, where groups of other girls werequitting a large building. They could be seen but dimly, but even at thatdistance something in the prevalent droop suggested that they, too, hadfound the day "distressingly warm."

　　"I hadn't realized," said Katie, "that making candy was such seriousbusiness."

　　"It couldn't have been very pleasant today," their guest granted, "but Ibelieve it is regarded a very good place to work."

　　The book Katie had been reading the night before had shown her the valueof facts when it came to judging places where women worked, and she wasmoved to the blunt inquiry: "How much do those girls make?"

　　"About six dollars a week, I believe," Miss Osborne replied.

　　Katie watched them: the long dim line of girls engaged in preparation ofthe sweets of life. She was wondering what she would have thought itworth to go over there and work all day. "Then each of those girls made adollar today?" she asked, and her inflection was curious.

　　"Well—no," Miss Osborne confessed. "The experienced and the skillfulmade a dollar."

　　"And how much," pressed Katie, "did the least experienced andskillful make?"

　　"Fifty cents, I believe," replied Miss Osborne, seeming to have lessenthusiasm when the scientific method was employed.

　　There was a jarring sound. The girl "sitting apart" had pushed her chairstill farther back. "You call that a good place to work?" She addressedit to Miss Osborne in voice that scraped as the chair had scraped.

　　"Why yes, as places go, I believe so. Though that is why I am giving thegarden party. They do need more pleasure in their lives. It is one of theunder-lying principles of life—is it not?—that all must have theirpleasures."

　　Ann laughed recklessly. Miss Osborne looked puzzled; Katie worried.

　　"And we are organizing this working girl's club. We think we can do agreat deal through that."

　　"Oh yes, help them get higher wages, I suppose?" Katie asked innocently.

　　"N—o; that would scarcely be possible. But help them to get on betterwith what they have. Help them learn to manage better."

　　Again Ann laughed, not only recklessly but rudely. "That is surely asplendid thing," she said, and the voice which said it was high-pitchedand unsteady, "helping a girl to 'manage better' on fifty cents a day!"

　　"You do not approve of these things?" Miss Osborne asked coldly.

　　And with all the heat Katie felt herself growing suddenly cold as sheheard Ann replying: "Oh, if they help you—pass the time, I don'tsuppose they do any harm."

　　"You see," Katie hastened, "Miss Forrest and I were once associated withone of those things which wasn't very well conducted. I fearit—prejudiced us."

　　"Evidently," was Miss Osborne's reply.

　　"Though to be sure," Kate further propitiated, resentment at having to doso growing with the propitiation, "that is very narrow of us. I am sureyour club will be quite different. We may come to the garden party?"

　　Katie followed her guest to her car. "I am hoping it will be coolersoon," she said. "My friend is here to grow stronger, and this heat isquite unnerving her."

　　Miss Osborne accepted it with polite, "I trust she will soon be muchbetter. Yes, the heat is trying."

　　Katie did not return to Ann, but sat at the head of the steps, lookingacross the river.

　　She was genuinely offended. She knew nothing more unpardonable than toembarrass one's hostess. She grew hard in contemplation of it. Nothingjustified it;—nothing.

　　A few girls were still coming from the candy factory. Miss Osborne's carhad crossed the bridge and was speeding toward her beautiful home up theriver—just the home for a garden party. The last group of girls, goingalong very slowly, had to step back for the machine to rush by.

　　Katie forgot her own grievance in wondering about those girls who hadwaited for the Osborne car to pass.

　　She knew where Miss Osborne was going, where and how she lived; she waswondering where the girls not enjoying the breeze always to be found inmotoring were going, what they would do when they got there, and whatthey thought of the efforts to help them "manage better" on their dollaror less a day.

　　It made her rise and return to Ann.

　　Ann, too, was looking across the river at the girls who had given MissOsborne right of way. Two very red spots burned in Ann's cheeks and hereyes, also, were feverish.

　　"I suppose I shouldn't have spoken that way to your friend," she began,but less contritely than defiantly.

　　Katie flushed. She had been prepared to understand and be kind. Butshe was not equal to being scoffed at, she who had been soembarrassed—and betrayed.

　　"It was certainly not very good form," she said coolly.

　　"And of course that's all that matters," said Ann shrilly. "It's justgood form that matters—not the truth."

　　"Oh I don't see that you achieved any great thing for the truth, Ann.

　　Anyhow, rudeness is no less rude when called truth."

　　"Garden parties!" choked Ann.

　　"I am not giving the garden party, Ann," said Katie long-sufferingly. "Iwas doing nothing more than being civil to a guest—against ratherheavy odds."

　　"You were pretending to think it was lovely. But of course that'sgood form!"

　　Her perilously bright eyes had so much the look of an animal pushed intoa corner that Katie changed. "Come, Ann dear, let's not quarrel with eachother just because it has been a disagreeable day, or because CarolineOsborne may have a mistaken idea of doing good—and I a mistaken idea ofbeing pleasant. I promised Worth a little spin on the river beforedinner. You'll come? It will be cooling."

　　"My head aches," said Ann, but the tension of her voice broke on a sob."If you don't mind—I'll stay here." She looked up at her in a way whichremotely suggested the look of that little dog the day before, "Katie, Idon't mean you. When I say things like that—I don't mean you. Imean—I suppose I mean—the things back of you. All those things—"

　　She stopped, but Katie did not speak. "You see," said Ann, "there are twoworlds, and you and I are in different ones."

　　"I don't believe in two worlds," said Katie promptly. "It's not ademocratic view of things. It's all one world."

　　"Your Miss Osborne and the fifty cents a day girls—all one world? I amafraid," laughed Ann tremulously, "that even the 'underlying principlesof life' would have a hard time making them one."