Chapter XXXVI

by Susan Glaspell

　　To get out into the air was the thing she was always wanting in thosedays, or at least for the last two months it had been so. At first shehad been too wretched to be conscious of needing anything.

　　But Katie was not built for wretchedness; everything in her was fightingnow for air, what air meant to spirit and body.

　　It was in the sense of the spirit that she most of all wanted to get outinto the air, out into a more spacious country than the world Clarasuggested, out where the air was clear and keen and where there weredistances more vast than those which would shut her in.

　　For she had looked into a larger country. Allegiance to the smaller onecould not be whole-hearted.

　　She wondered if it were true she was getting hard. Something in her didseem hardening. At any rate, something in her was wanting to fight, fightfor air, fight, no matter who must be hurt in the struggle, for thatbigger country into which she had looked, those greater distances, morespacious sweeps. Sometimes she had a sense of being in a close room, andnothing in the world was so dreadful to Katie as a close room, and feltthat she had but to open a door and find herself out where the wind wouldblow upon her face. And the door was not bolted. It was hers to open, ifshe would. There were no real chains. There were only dead hands, handswhich live hands had power to brush away. And the room was made close byall those things which they of the dead hands had loved, things whichthey had served, things which, for them, had been out in the open, notmaking the air unbearable in a close room. And when she wanted to tellthem that she must get out of the room because it was too close for her,that she could no longer stay with things which shut out the air, itseemed they could not understand—for they were dead, but they could lookat her with love and trust, those hands, which could have been so easilybrushed away, as bolts on the door of the room holding the things theyhad left for her to guard.

　　And they were proud, and their trusting eyes seemed to say they knew shewould not make all their world sorry for them.

　　She walked slowly across Pont du Carrousel, watching the people, thepeople going their many ways, meeting their many problems, wondering ifmany of them had well loved hands, either of life or death, as bolts uponthe doors which held them from more spacious countries, holding them sosecurely because they could be so easily brushed away. It was people,people of the crowds, who saved her from a sense of isolation her ownfriends brought: for she was always certain that in the crowds was someone else who was wondering, longing, perhaps a courageous some one whowas fighting.

　　Paris itself had fought, was fighting all the time. She loved it anew inthe new sense of its hurts and its hopes. And always it had laughed. Shefelt kinship to it in that. Seeming so little caring, yet so deeplyunderstanding. The laughter-loving city had paid stern price that itschildren might laugh. It seemed to her sometimes that one could love andhate Paris for every known reason, but in the end always love for thefull measure it gave. She stood for a moment looking at the spire ofSainte Chapelle, slender as a fancy, yet standing out like a conviction;watching the people on the busses, the gesticulating crowds—blockades ofemotion, the men on the Quai rummaging among the book-stalls for possibletreasures left by men who had loved it long before, looking at the thanksin stone for yesterday's vision of to-morrow, and everywhere cabs—aswords carrying ideas—breathlessly bearing eager people from one vividpoint to another in the hurrying, highly-pitched, articulate city.

　　It interested her for a time, as things that were live always interestedKatie. The city's streets had always been for her as waves which bore herjoyously along. But after a time, perhaps just because she was so live,it made her unbearably lonely.

　　The things they might do together in Paris! The things to see—totalk about.

　　And still filled with her revolt against Clara's self-delusions, sheasked of herself how much the demand of her spirit to soar was promptedby the hunger of her heart to love.

　　She could not say. She wondered how many of the world's people would beable to say. How many of the spacious countries would have been gainedhad men been fighting only for their philosophies, pushed only by thebeating of wings that would soar. But did that make the distances lessvast? Less to be desired? Though visioning be child of desiring—was thevision less splendid, and was not the desire ennobled?

　　Her speculations were of such nature as to make her hurry home to seewhether there was American mail.

　　A certain letter which sometimes came to her was called "American mail."All the rest of the American mail which reached Paris was privileged tobe classed with that letter.

　　Katie had come over in October with her Aunt Elizabeth, who felt the needof recuperation from the bitter blow of her son's marriage. Katie, too,felt the need of recuperation—she did not say from what, but fromsomething that made her intolerant of her aunt's form of distress. Heraunt said that Katie was changing: growing unsympathetic, hard,unfeminine. She thought it was because she did not marry. It would softenher to care for some one, was the theory of her Aunt Elizabeth.

　　She had remained in order to be with Worth; and, too, because thereseemed nothing to go back to. Mrs. Prescott had come over to be for atime with a niece who was studying music, and she and Katie weretogether. Now the older woman was beginning to talk of wanting to goback; she was getting letters from Harry which made her want to see him.The letters sounded as though he were in love again.

　　And Katie was getting letters herself, letters to make her want to seethe writer thereof. They, too, sounded as if written by one in love. Withthings as regards Worth adjusted, Katie would be free to go with herfriend, and she was homesick. At least that was the non-committal nameshe gave to something that was tugging at her heart.

　　But—go home to what? For what?

　　Her vision had not grown any clearer. It was only that the "homesickness"was growing more acute.

　　And that night's mail did not fill her with a yearning to become anexpatriate.

　　In addition to the "American mail" there was a letter from Ann. Thatevening after Worth was asleep and Mrs. Prescott had gone to her room,Katie reread both letters, and a number of others, and thought about anumber of things.

　　Wayne had undertaken the supervision of Ann. In his first letter, thatunsatisfactory letter in which he gave so few details about finding Ann,he had said quite high-handedly that he was going to look after thingshimself. "I think, Katie," he wrote, "that with the best of intentions,your method was at fault. I can see how it all came about, but it is notthe way to go on. It was too unreal. The time of make-believe is over.Ann is a real person and should work out her life in a real way, her ownway, not following your fancyings. She must be helped until she getsstronger and more prepared. You've had the thing come too tragically toyou to see it just right, so I'm going to step in and I want you to leavethings to me."

　　So Wayne had "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to studystenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did nothave a dream-like or an Ann-like sound—but a very Wayne-like one!—buthad entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable toenter protest about anything.

　　Wayne seemed to her curt and rather unfeeling about the whole thing,insisting, somewhat indelicately, she thought, on the point that Ann beprepared to earn her own living and that there be no more nonsense abouther. She hoped he was kinder with Ann than he sounded in his lettersabout her.

　　Ann was in New York. Wayne had said, and Katie agreed with him, thatChicago was not the place for her to start in anew. She had gone throughtoo many hard things there. And Katie was glad for other reasons. WithWayne in Washington, she would have no more occasion to be in themiddle-west and Ann would be too far away in Chicago.

　　But Katie was looking desperately homesick at that thought of having nomore occasion to be in the middle-west.

　　The man who mended the boats was still out there, mending boats andfinishing his play, which she knew now was to be about the army. Onereason he had wanted to mend boats there was that he might know some ofthe men who worked in the shops at the Arsenal, interested in thatrelation of labor to militarism.

　　For two months Katie had heard nothing from him. In those first monthshe, too, seemed helpless before it, seemed to understand that Katie'sfeeling was a thing he could not hope to understand—much less, change.

　　Then there rose in him the impulse to fight, for her, against it all,stir her to fight.

　　"Katie," he wrote in that first letter, letter she was re-reading thatnight, "we have seen two sides of the same thing. Our two visions,experiences, have roused in us two very different emotions. Does thatmean it must kill for us what we have said is the biggestemotion—experience—the greatest joy and brightest hope life hasbrought us?

　　"We're both bound by it. I by the hurt it's brought me, you by thehappiness; I by the hate it roused, you by the love that lingers roundit. Are we going to make no efforts to set ourselves free? Are we so muchof the past that the institutions of the past and the experiences andprejudices of those institutions can shut us out from the future and fromeach other?

　　"Katie, you have the rich gift of the open mind. I don't believe that,lastingly, there's anything you'll shut out as impossible to consider.Your eyes say it, Katie—say they'll look at everything, and just asfairly as they can. Oh they're such honest, fearless, just eyes—so wiseand so tender. And it was I—I who love them so—brought that awful lookof hurt to those wonderful eyes. Katie—I want to spend all of my lifekeeping that hurt look from those dear eyes!

　　"You're asked to do a hard thing, dear Katie. It's cruel it should beyou so hard a thing is asked of. Asked to look at a thing you seethrough the feeling of a lifetime as though seeing it for the first time.To look at all you've got to push aside things you regarded as fixed. Isuppose every one has something that to him seems the things unshakable,something he finds it terrifying to think of moving. All your traditions,all your love and loyalty cling round this thing which it seems to youyou can't have touched. But Katie, as you read these pages won't you tryto think of things, not as you've been told they were, but just as theyseem to you from what you read? Think of them, not in the old grooves,but just as it comes in to you as the story of a life?

　　"You'll try to do that for me, won't you, dear fair-minded,loving-spirited Katie?

　　"I was a country boy; lived on a farm, got lonesome, thought about thingsI had nobody to talk to about, read things and wanted more things toread, part the dreamer and part the great husky fellow wanting life,adventure, wanting to see things and know things—most of all, experiencethings. I want to tell you a lot about it sometime. I can't let go theidea that there is going to be a sometime. Just because there's so muchto tell, if nothing else. And, Katie, isn't there something else?

　　"No way to begin the story of one's life!

　　"Then I went away from home. To see the world. Try my fortune.

　　Experience. Adventure. That was the call.

　　"And the very first thing I fell in with that recruiting officer in thewhite suit. I can see just how that fellow looked. Get every intonationas he drew the glowing picture of life in the army.

　　"The army sounded good. The army was experience, adventure, with avengeance. A life among men. A chance. He told me that an intelligentfellow like me would soon be an officer. Of course I agreed perfectly Iwas an intelligent fellow, impressed with army intelligence in picking mefor one. Why I could see myself as commander-in-chief in no time!

　　"There's the cruelty of it, Katie. The expectation they rouse to getyou—the contemptuous treatment after they've got you. The differencebetween the army of the 'Men Wanted For the Army' posters and the armythose men find after those posters have done their work.

　　"Remember your telling me about visiting at Fort Riley when you werequite a youngster? The good time you had?—how gay it was? How charmingyour host was? As nearly as I can figure it out, I was there at the sametime, filling the noble office of garbage man. Now, far be it from me,believing in the dignity of all labor, to despise the office of garbageman. I can think of conditions under which I would be quite happy toserve my country in that capacity. But having enlisted because of thenoble figure of a soldier carrying a flag, I grew pretty sore at the'Damn you, we've got you' manner in which I was ordered to carrythings—well, not to be too indelicate let us merely say things lessattractive than the flag.

　　"It's not having to peel potatoes and wash dishes; it's seeming to bedespised for doing it that stirs in men's hearts the awful soreness thatmakes them deserters.

　　"In our regiment men were leaving right along. Our company had aparticularly bad record on desertions. Our captain, a decent fellow, wasaway most of the time and the lieutenant in command was a cur. I'd find amore gentle word for him if I could, but I know none such. Army men talka great deal about discipline. But there's a difference betweendiscipline and bullying. This fellow couldn't issue an order withoutmaking you feel that difference.

　　"He had a laugh that was a sneer. It wasn't a laugh, just a smile; asmile that sneered. He couldn't pass a crowd of men cutting grass withoutmaking their hearts sore.

　　"I don't say he's the typical army man. I don't doubt that there are menhigh in the army who, if all were known, would despise him as much as themen in his company did. But I do say that if there were not a good many agood deal like him more than fifty thousand young men of America wouldnot have deserted from the United States army in the past twelve years.

　　"There was a fellow in our company I had been particularly sorry for. Hewasn't a bad sort at all; he was more dazed than anything else; didn'tunderstand the army manner; the army snobbishness. This lieutenantcouldn't look at him without making him sullen.

　　"One day he told him to do a loathsome thing, then stood there with thatsneering smile watching him do it. Well, he did it, all right; that'swhat gets you, that powerlessness under what you know for injustice.But that night he left.

　　"I knew he was going. He wanted me to go with him. I don't know why Ididn't. I don't blame men for deserting. But for my own part, it wouldonly be two years more; I used to say to myself, 'You got into this.You'll see it through.'

　　"They caught him, brought him back the next day. I happened to be thereat the time. So did our spick and span lieutenant. The man who had beencaught—or boy, rather, for he was but that—was anything but spick andspan. His clothes were torn and muddy, his face dirty and bloody—it hadbeen scratched by something. He knew what he was in for. Court martialand imprisonment for desertion. We knew what that meant.

　　"He was a sorry, unsoldierly sight. Gone to pieces. Unnerved. All in. Hischin was quivering. And then the little lieutenant came along, startingout for golf. He stood in front of him and looked him up and down—thisboy who had been caught. Boy who would be imprisoned. And as he looked athim he laughed; or smiled rather, that smile that was a sneer.

　　"He stood there continuing to smile—torturing him with that smile hecouldn't do a thing about—this boy who was down; this fellow who was allin. That was when I struck him in the face and knocked him down.

　　"The penalty for that, as I presume I need not tell an army girl, isdeath. 'Or such other punishment as a court martial may direct.'

　　"The thing directed in my case was imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth forfive years. Most of the men in that prison would say, 'Give me death.'

　　"I'd better not say much about it. Something gets hot in my head when Ibegin to talk about it. If you were with me—your cooling hand, yoursteadying eyes—I could tell you about it. 'If you were with me'! I findthat a very arresting phrase, Katie.

　　"Those were black years. Cruel years. Years to twist a man's soul. Theytook something from me that will not be mine again. I remember yourtelling how Ann said there were things to make perfect happiness foreverimpossible. She was right. There are hours that stay.

　　"I went into the army just an adventurous boy. I came from it anembittered man. My experience with it made me suspect all of life. Iwas more than unhappy. I was sullen. I hated—and I wanted to geteven. Oh it was a lovely spirit in which I went forth a second time tomeet the world.

　　"I don't know what might not have happened, I think I was right in lineto become a criminal, like so many of the rest of them who have servedtime at Leavenworth—I don't suppose the United States has any finerschool anywhere than its academy for criminals at Fort Leavenworth—hadit not been for a man I met.

　　"I got a job in a garage. I had always been pretty good at mechanicalthings and knew a little about it. And there I met this man—and throughhim came salvation.

　　"I don't know, Katie, maybe socialism will not save the world. I don'tsee how it can miss it—but be that as it may, I know it has saved many aman's soul. I know it saved mine.

　　"This fellow—an older man with whom I worked—talked to me. He saw thestate I was in, won my confidence and got my story. And then he begantalking to me and gave me books. He got me to come to his house insteadof the places I was going to, saying nothing against the other places,but just making his things so much more attractive. We used to talk andargue and gradually other things fell away just because there was noroom for them.

　　"You know I had loved books—read all I could get—but didn't seem to getthe right ones. Well, after I had served time breaking clay I didn't careanything about books—too sore, too dogged, too full of hate. But thelove for the books came back, and through the books, and through thisfriend, came the splendid saving vision.

　　"Vision of what the world might be—world with the army left out, withall that the army represented to me vanished from the earth. With mennot ruling and cursing other men; but working together—the world forall and all for the world. And the thing that saved me was that I sawthere was something to work for—something to believe in—lookat—think about—when old memories of the guard knocking me down withthe butt of his gun would tear into my soul and bring me low with thehate they roused.

　　"And so I began again, Katie dear, that sense of things as they mightbe—that vision—taking some of the sting from what I had suffered fromthings as they were. I stopped hating and cursing; I began thinking anddreaming. There came the desire to know. I tore into books like amadman. I couldn't go on hating my fellow-men because I was too busytrying to find out about them. And so it happened that there were thingsmore interesting to think about than the things I had suffered in thearmy; I was carried out of myself—and saved.

　　"I wish I could talk to some of those other fellows! Some of those boyswho ran away from the army, not because they were criminals and cowards,but just because they didn't know what to make of things. I wish I couldtalk to some of those men who dug clay with me at Fort Leavenworth—menwho went away cursing the government, loathing the flag, hating all men,and who have nothing to take them out of it. I wish I could take them upwith me to the hill-top and say—'There! Don't look at the little pitdown below! Look out! Look wide!'

　　"Katie—you aren't going to save men by putting them at back-breakingwork under brutalized guards. You aren't going to redeem men bybelittling them. You're going to save them by making them see. And thecrime of our whole system of punishments is that it does all in itspower, not to make them see, but to shut them out from seeing…."

　　In the letters which followed he told her other things, things he haddone, the work he hoped to do, what he wanted to do with his life. Toldit with the simplicity of sincerity, the fine seriousness untainted withthe self-consciousness called modesty.

　　He believed he could work with men; things he had already done made himbelieve he could do more, bigger things. He wanted to help fight thebattles of the people who worked; not with any soldier of fortune notion,but because he was one of those people, because he had suffered as one ofthose people, and believed he saw their way more clearly than the mass ofthem were seeing it.

　　And he wanted to write about men; had some reason for believing he could.He was hoping that his play would open the way to many other things; itlooked as though it were going to be put on.

　　He told of his feeling for it. "More than a showing up and a gettingeven, though there is that. It will be no prancing steed and clankingsaber picture of the army. More digging of clay than waving of the flag.I see significant things arising from that survival of autocracy in ademocracy, an interesting study in the bitter things coming out of therelation of the forms and habits of a vanishing order to the aspirationsand tendencies of a forming one. And in that bending of spirit to form,the army codes and standards making for the army habit of mind, the armysnobbishness and narrowness. The things that shape men, until a givenbody of men have particular characteristics, particular limitations. Yousaid that if you loved them for nothing else you would love army peoplefor their hospitality. But in the higher sense of that beautiful wordthey are the least hospitable of people. Their latch string of the spiritis not out. Their minds are tight—fixed. They have not that openness ofspirit and flexibility of mind that make for wider visioning.

　　"And it's not that they haven't, but why they haven't, brings oneto the vein.

　　"Yes, I got the article you sent me, written by your army friend,eloquent over the splendid things war has done for the human race, thegreat things it has bred in us. Well if the 'war virtues' aren't killedby an armed peace, then I don't think we need worry much about everlosing them. It's the people at war for peace who are going to conserveand utilize for the future the strong and shining things which days ofwar have left us. Men who must base their great claim on what has beendone in the past are not the men to shape the future—or even carry theheritage across the bridge. War is now a faithful servant of capitalism.Its glorious days are over. It's even a question whether it's longervaluable as a servant. It may lose its job before its master loses his.In any case, it goes with capitalism; and if the good old war virtues areto be saved out of the wreck it's the wreckers will save them!

　　"Which is not what I started out to say. This play into which I'mseeking to get the heart of what I've lived and thought and dreamed isnot the impersonal thing this harangue might make it sound. I trust it'snothing so bloodless as a study of economic forces or picture of therelationship of old things to new. It's that only as that touches a man'slife, means something to that life. It's about the army because this manhappens, for a time, to be in the army—it's what the army does to himthat's the thing.

　　"Though it seems to me a pretty dead thing in these days. Life itself isa dead thing with you gone from it."

　　In the letter she received that night he wrote: "Katie, is it going tospoil it for us? Can it? Need it? We who have come so close? Have somuch? Are outlived things to push us apart? That seems too bitter!

　　"Oh don't think that I don't see. The things it would mean giving up.The wrench. And, for what?—your friends would say. At times I wonder howI can—ask it, hope for it. Then there lives for me again yourwonderful face as it was when you lifted it to me that first time.You—and I grow bold again.

　　"I don't say you wouldn't suffer. I don't say there wouldn't be hurts,big hurts brought by the little things arising from lives differentlylived. I know there would be times of longing for things gone. For thesunny paths. For it couldn't be all sunny paths with me, Katie. Thoseyears in the dark will always throw their shadow.

　　"Then, how dare I? Loving you—laughing, splendid you—how can I?

　　"Because I believe that you love me. Remembering that light in your eyes,knowing you, I dare believe that the hurts would be less than the hurtof being spared those hurts.

　　"I can hear your friends denouncing me. Hear their withering arguments,and I'll own that at times they do wither. But, Katie, I just can't seemto stay withered!

　　"You're such an upsetting person, dear Katie. To both heart andphilosophy. It's not possible to hate a world that Katie's in. World thatdidn't spoil Katie. And if there are many of the you—oh no other realyou!—but many who, awakened, can fight as you can fight and love as youcan love—wouldn't it be a joke on us revolutionists if we were cheatedout of our revolution just by the love in the hearts of the Katies?

　　"Well, nobody would be so happy in that joke as would the defraudedrevolutionists!

　　"You make me wonder, Katie, if perhaps it isn't less the vision than thevisioning. Less the thing seen than that thing of striving to see. Makeme feel the narrowness in scorning the trying to see just because notagreeing with the thing seen. Sometimes I have a new vision of the world.Vision of a world visioning. Of the vision counting less than thevisioning.

　　"Those moments of glow bear me to you. Persuade me that our visions mustbe visioned together.

　　"Life's all empty without you. The radiance is not there. In these dayslight comes only through dreams, and so I dream dreams and see visions.

　　"Dreams of us—visions of the years we'd meet together. And you arenot bowed and broken in those visions, Katie. You're very strong andbuoyant—and always eager for life—and always tender. No, notalways tender. Sometimes fighting! Telling me I don't know what I'mtalking about. It's a splendid picture of Katie fighting—eyesshining, cheeks red.

　　"And then at the very height of her scorn, Katie happens to think ofsomething funny. And she says the something funny in her inimitableway. Then she laughs, and after her laugh she's tender again, and saysshe loves me, though still maintaining I didn't know what I wastalking about!

　　"And in the visions there are times when Katie is very quiet. So still.Hushed by the wonder of love. Then Katie's laughing eyes are deep withmystery, Katie's face seems melted to pure love, and from it shines thelight that makes life noble.

　　"In these days of a fathomless loneliness I dare not look long uponthat vision.

　　"Do you ever hear a call, dear heart? A call to a freer country thanany country you have known? Call to a country where the things whichbind you could bind no more? And if in fancy you sometimes letyourself drift into that other country, am I with you there? Do youever have a picture of our venturing together into the unknownways—daring—suffering—rejoicing—growing? Sometimes sunshine andsometimes storm—but always open country and everwidening sky-line. OhKatie—how splendid it might be!"

　　She read and re-read it, dreaming and picturing. And at length theresettled upon her that stillness, that pause before life's wonder andmystery. Her eyes were deep. The light that makes life noble glorifiedher tender face.

　　She broke from it at last to look for a card they had there giving datesof sailings.