Chapter IX

by Susan Glaspell

　　Having conquered the son, Katie that evening set vigorously about for theconquest of the father.

　　"The trouble is," she turned it over in giving a few minutes to her owntoilet for dinner, after having given many minutes to Ann's, "thatthere's simply no telling about Wayne. He is just the most provokinglyuncertain man now living."

　　And yet it was not a formidable looking man she found in the library afew minutes before the dinner hour. He was poring over some pictures ofPanama in one of the weeklies, sufficiently deep in them to permit Katieto sit there for the moment pondering methods of attack. But instead ofoutlining her campaign she found herself concluding, what she hadconcluded many times before, that Wayne was very good-looking. "Nothandsome, like Harry Prescott," she granted, "but Wayne seems the productof something—the result of things to be desired. He hasn't a new look."

　　"Katherine is going to give us more trouble than Wayne ever will," theirmother had sighed after one of those escapades which made life morecolorful than restful during Katie's childhood. To which Major Jonesreplied that while Kate might give them more trouble, he thought itprobable Wayne would give himself the more. Certain it had been from thefirst that if Wayne could help it no one would know what trouble he mightbe giving himself.

　　Old-fashioned folk who expected brothers and sisters to be alike had, onthe surface at least, a sorry time with Wayneworth and Katherine Jones.Katie was sunny. Katie had a genius for play. She laughed and danced upand down the highways and the byways of life and she had such a joyoustime about it that it had not yet occurred to any one to expect her tohelp pay the fiddler. Just watching Katie dance would seem pay enoughfor any reasonable fiddler. Katie laughed a great deal, and was smilingmost of the time; she seemed always to have things in her thoughts tomake smiles. Wayne laughed little and some of his smiles made oneunderstand how the cat felt about having its fur rubbed the wrong way.Their friend Major Darrett once said: "When I meet Katie I have a fancyshe has just come from a jolly dip in the ocean; that she lay on thesands in the sun and kicked up her heels longer than she had anybusiness to, and now she's flying along to keep the most enchantingengagement she ever had in all her life. She's smiling to herself tothink how bad she was to lie in the sand so long, and she's not at allconcerned, because she knows her friends will be so happy to see herthat they'll forget to scold her for being late. Katie's spoiled," theMajor concluded, "but we like her that way."

　　Of Wayne this same friend remarked: "Wayne's a hard nut to crack."

　　Many army people felt that way. In fact, Wayne was a nut the army itselfhad not quite cracked. Some army people maintained that Wayne wasdisagreeable. But that may have been because he was not just like allother army people. He did not seem to have grasped the idea that being"army" set him apart. Sometimes he made the mistake of judging armyaffairs by ordinary standards. That was when they got some idea of howthe cat felt. And of all cats an army cat would most resent having itsfur rubbed in any but the prescribed direction.

　　Katie, continuing her ruminations about Wayne as the product of things,had come to see that with it all he was detached from those desirablethings which had produced him. One knew that Wayne had traditions, yet hewas not tradition fettered; he suggested ancestors without being ancestorconscious. Was it the gun—as Wayne the Worthy persisted in callingit—and the gun's predecessors—for Wayne always had something—made himso distinctly more than the mere result of things which had formed him?"It is the gun," Katie decided, taking him in with half shut eyes as aportrait painter might. "Had the same ancestors myself, and yet I'm bothless and more of them than he is. What I need's a gun! Then I'd stand outof the background better, too." Then with one of Katie's queer twists offancy—Ann! Might not Ann be her gun? Perhaps she had been wanting a gunfor a long time without knowing what it was she was wanting when surelywanting something. Perhaps every one felt the gun need to make them lessthe product and more the person.

　　Then there was another thing. The thing that had traced those lines aboutWayne's mouth, and had whitened, a little, the brown hair of his temples.Wayne had cared for Clara. Heaven only knew how he could—Katie'sthoughts ran on. Perhaps heaven did understand those things—certainly itwas too much for mere earth. Why Wayne, about whom there had alwaysseemed a certain brooding bigness, certainly a certain rare indifference,should have fallen so absurdly in love with the most vain and selfish andvapid girl that ever wrecked a post was more than Katie could make out.And it had been her painful experience to watch Wayne's disappointmentdevelop, watch that happiness which had so mellowed him recede as day byday Clara fretted and pouted and showed plainly enough that to her lovewas just a convenient thing which might impel one's husband to get one anew set of furs. She remembered so well one evening she had been inClara's room when Wayne came in after having been away since earlymorning. So eager and tender was Wayne's face as he approached Clara, whowas looking over an advertising circular. There was a light in his eyeswhich it would seem would have made Clara forget all about advertisingcirculars. But before he had said a word, but stood there, loving herwith that look—and it would have to be admitted Clara did look lovely,in one of the neglige affairs she affected so much—she said, with ababyish little whine she evidently thought alluring: "I just don't see,Wayne, why we can't have a new rug for the reception room. We cancertainly afford things as well as the Mitchells." And Wayne had juststood there, with a smile which closed the gates and said, with an ironynot lost upon Katie, at least: "Why I fancy we can have a new rug, ifthat is the thing most essential to our happiness." Clara had cried: "OhWayne—you dear!" and twittered and fluttered around, but thetwittering and fluttering did not bring that light back to Wayne's face.He went over to the far side of the room and began reading the paper, andthat grim little understanding smile—a smile at himself—made Katieyearn to go over and wind her arms about his neck—dear strange Wayne whohad believed there was so much, and found so little, and who was so aliveto the bitter humor of being drawn to the heart of things only to bepushed back to the outer rim. But Katie knew it was not her arms could doany good, and so she had left the room, not clear-eyed, Clara stilltwittering about the kind of rug she would have. And day by day she hadwatched Wayne go back to the outer circle, that grim little smile asmile-stones in his progress.

　　But he was folding his paper; it was growing too near the hour tospeculate longer on Wayne and his past.

　　"Wayne?" she began.

　　He looked up, smiling at the beseeching tone. "Yes? What is it, Katie?

　　Just what brand of boredom are you planning to inflict?"

　　"You can be so nice, Wayne—when you want to be."

　　"'Um—hum. A none too subtle way of calling a man a brute."

　　"I presume there are times when you can't help being a brute, Wayne; but

　　I do hope to-night will not be one of them."

　　"Why it must be something very horrible indeed, that you must approachwith all this flaunting of diplomacy."

　　"It is something a long way from horrible, I assure you," she repliedwith dignity. "Ann will be down for dinner to-night, Wayne."

　　He leaned back and devoted himself to his cigarette with maddeningdeliberation. Then he smiled. "Through sleeping?"

　　"Wayne—I'm in earnest. Please don't get yourself into a hateful mood!"

　　He laughed in real amusement at sight of Katie's puckered face. "I amconscious that feminine wiles are being exercised upon me. Iwonder—why?"

　　"Because I am so anxious you should like Ann, Wayne, and—be nice toher."

　　"Why?" Again it was that probing, provoking why.

　　"Because of what she means to me, I suppose."

　　Something in her voice made him look at her differently. "And what doesshe mean to you, Katie?"

　　"Ann is different from all the other girls I've known. Shemeans—something different."

　　"Strange I've never heard you speak of her."

　　"I think you have, and have forgotten. Though possibly not—just becauseof the way I feel about her." She paused, seeking to express how she feltabout her. Unable to do so, she concluded simply: "I have a very tenderfeeling for Ann."

　　"I see you have," he replied quietly. He looked at her meditatively, andthen asked, humorously but gently: "Well Katie, what were you expectingme to do? Order her out of the house?"

　　"But I want you to be more than civil, Wayne; I want you to besympathetic."

　　"I'll be civil and you can bring Prescott on for the sympathetic," helaughed. "You know I haven't great founts of sympathy gushing up in myheart for the jeune fille."

　　"Ann's not the jeune fille, Wayne. She's something far more interestingand worth while than that." She paused, again trying to get it, but coulddo no better than: "I sometimes think of Ann as sitting a little apart,listening to beautiful music."

　　He smiled. "I can only reply to that, Katie, that I trust she is moreinviting than your pictures of her. A young woman who looked as thoughsitting apart listening to beautiful music should certainly be leftsitting apart."

　　"I'll bring her down," laughed Kate, rising; "then you can get yourown picture."

　　"I'll be decent, Katie," he called after her in laughing butreassuring voice.

　　The meeting had been accomplished. Dinner had reached the salad, and allwas well. Yes, and a little more than well.

　　From the moment she stood in the doorway of Ann's room and the girlrose at her suggestion of dinner, Katie's courage had gone up. Ann'swhole bearing told that she was on her mettle. And what Katie foundmost reassuring was less the results of the effort Ann was makingthan her unmistakable sense of the necessity for making it. There washope in that.

　　Not that she suggested anything so hopeless as effort. She suggestedreserve feeling, and she was so beautiful—so rare—that thesuggestion was of feeling more beautiful and rare than a determinationto live up to the way she was gowned. Her timidity was of a qualitywhich seemed related to things of the spirit rather than to socialembarrassment. Jubilantly Kate saw that Ann meant to "put it over,"and her depth of feeling on the subject suggested a depth which initself dismissed the subject.

　　She saw at a glance that Wayne related Ann to the things her appearancesuggested rather than to the suggestions causing that appearance. AsKatie said, "Ann, I am so glad that at last my brother is to know you,"she was thinking that it seemed a friend to whom one might indeed beproud to present one's brother. She never lost the picture of the Annwhom Wayne advanced to meet. She loved her in that rose pink muslin, theskirt cascaded in old-fashioned way, an old-fashioned looking surpliceabout the shoulders, and on her long slim throat a lovely Florentinecameo swinging on the thinnest of old silver chains. She might have beena cameo herself.

　　And she never forgot the way Ann said her first words to Wayne. They weretwo most commonplace words, merely the "Thank you" with which sheresponded to his hospitable greeting, but that "Thank you" seemed let outof a whole under sea of feeling for which it would try to speak.

　　Before Wayne could carry out his unmistakable intention of sayingmore, Katie was airily off into a story about the cook, dragging itin with a thin hook about the late dinner, and the cook in thepresent case suggested a former cook in Washington whom Katie held,and sought to prove, nature had ordained for a great humorist. Theever faithful subject of cooks served stanchly until they had reachedthe safety of soup.

　　Katie was in story-telling mood. She seemed to have an inexhaustible fundof them in reserve which she could deftly strap on as life-preserver atthe first far sign of danger. And she would flash into her stories an "Asyou said, Ann," or "As you would put it, Ann," whenever she foundanything to fit the Ann she would create.

　　Several times, however, the rescuing party had to knock down good formand trample gentle breeding under foot to reach the spot in time. Waynespoke of a friend in Vienna from whom he had heard that day and turned toAnn with an interrogation about the Viennese. Katie, contemplating thesuppleness of Ann's neck, momentarily asleep at her post, missed the"Come over and help us" look, and Ann had begun upon a fatal, "I havenever been in—" when Katie, with ringing laugh broke in: "Isn't it odd,Ann, that you should never have been in Vienna, when you lived all thoseyears right there in Florence? I do think it the oddest thing!"

　　Ann agreed that it was odd—Wayne concurring.

　　But driven from Vienna, he sought Florence. "And Italy? I presume I go onrecord as the worst sort of bounder in asking if you really care greatlyabout living there?"

　　Katie thought it time Ann try a stroke for herself. One would neverdevelop strength on a life-preserver.

　　Seeing that she had it to make, she paused before it an instant. Fearseemed to be feeling, and a possible sense of the absurdity of hersituation made for a slightly tremulous dignity as she said: "I do loveit. Love it so much it is hard to tell just how much—or why." And thenit was as if she shrank back, having uncovered too much. She looked asthough she might be dreaming of the Court of the Uffizi, or Santa MariaNovella, but Katie surmised that that dreamy look was not failing to findout what Wayne was going to do with his lettuce. But one who suggesteddreams of Tuscany when taking observations on the use of the saladfork—was there not hope unbounded for such a one?

　　Wayne was silent for the moment, as though getting the fact that the loveof Italy, or perhaps its associations, was to this girl not a thing tobe compressed within the thin vein of dinner talk. "Well," he laughedunderstanding, "to be sure I don't know it from the inside. I never wasof it; I merely looked at it. And I thought the plumbing was abominable."

　　"Wayne," scoffed Kate, "plumbing indeed! Have you no soul?"

　　"Yes, I have; and bad plumbing is bad for it."

　　Ann laughed quite blithely at that, and as though finding confidence inthe sound of her own laugh, she boldly volunteered a stroke. "I don'tknow much about plumbing," Katie heard Ann saying. "I suppose perhaps itis bad. But do you care much about plumbing when looking at"—her pausebefore it might have been one of reverence—"The Madonna of the Chair?"

　　Katie treated herself to a particularly tender bit of lettuce andsecretly hugged herself, Ann, and "Days in Florence." The Madonna of theChair furnished the frontispiece for that valuable work.

　　Ann had receded, flushed, her lip trembling a little; Wayne was lookingat her thoughtfully—and a little as one might look at the Madonna of theChair. Katie heard the trump of duty call her to another story.