by Willa Cather
McKann opened the door. “That’s all right, but you’ll have to hurry. It’s eleven-ten now. You’ve only got fifteen minutes to make the train. Tell her to come along.”
The maid drew back and looked up at him in amazement. “But, the hand-luggage to carry, and Mademoiselle to walk! The street is like glass!”
McKann threw away his cigar and followed her. He stood silent by the door of the derelict, while the maid explained that she had found help. Miss Ayrshire seemed not at all apprehensive; she had not doubted that a rescuer would be forthcoming. She moved deliberately; out of a whirl of skirts she thrust one fur-topped shoe—McKann saw the flash of the gold stocking above it by the street lamp—and alighted. “So kind of you! So fortunate for us!” she murmured. One hand she placed upon his sleeve, and with the other she guarded an armful of roses that had been sent up to the concert stage. The petals showered upon the sooty, sleety pavement as she picked her way along. They would be lying there tomorrow morning, and the children in those houses would wonder if there had been a funeral. The maid followed with two leather bags. As soon as he had lifted Kitty into his cab she exclaimed:
“My jewel-case! I have forgotten it. It is on the back seat, please. I am so careless!”
He dashed back, ran his hand along the cushions, and discovered a small leather bag. When he returned he found the maid and the luggage bestowed on the front seat, and a place left for him on the back seat beside Kitty and her flowers.
“Shall we be taking you far out of your way?” she asked, sweetly. “I haven’t an idea where the station is. I’m not even sure about the name. Céline thinks it is East Liberty, but I think it is West Liberty. An odd name, anyway. It is a Bohemian quarter, perhaps? A district where the law relaxes a trifle?”
McKann replied grimly that he didn’t think the name referred to that kind of liberty.
“So much the better,” sighed Kitty. “I am a Californian, you know; that’s the only part of America I know very well, and out there, when we called a place Liberty Hill or Liberty Hollow—well, we meant it. You will excuse me if I’m uncommunicative, won’t you? I must not talk in this raw air. My throat is sensitive after a long programme.” She lay back in her corner and closed her eyes.
When the cab rolled down the incline at East Liberty station, the New York express was whistling in. A porter opened the door. McKann sprang out, gave him a claim check and his Pullman ticket, and told him to get his bag at the check-stand and rush it on that train.
Miss Ayrshire, having gathered up her flowers, put out her hand to take his arm. “Why, it’s you!” she exclaimed, as she saw his face in the light. “What a coincidence!” She made no further move to alight, but sat smiling as if she had just seated herself in a drawing-room and were ready for talk and a cup of tea.
McKann caught her arm. “You must hurry, Miss Ayrshire, if you mean to catch that train. It stops here only a moment. Can you run?”
“Can I run!” she laughed. “Try me!”
As they raced through the tunnel and up the inside stairway, McKann admitted that he had never before made a dash with feet so quick and sure stepping out beside him. The white-furred boots chased each other like lambs at play, the gold stockings flashed like the spokes of a bicycle wheel in the sun. They reached the door of Miss Ayrshire’s stateroom just as the train began to pull out. McKann was ashamed of the way he was panting, for Kitty’s breathing was as soft and regular as when she was reclining on the back seat of his taxi. It had somehow run in his head that all these stage women were a poor lot physically—unsound, overfed creatures, like canaries that are kept in a cage and stuffed with song-restorer. He retreated to escape her thanks. “Good night! Pleasant journey! Pleasant dreams!” He gave a friendly nod in Kitty’s direction and closed the door behind him.
He was somewhat surprised to find his own bag, his Pullman ticket in the strap, on the seat just outside Kitty’s door. But there was nothing strange about it. He had got the last section left on the train, No. 13, next the drawing-room. Every other berth on the train was made up. He was just starting to look for the porter when the door of the stateroom opened and Kitty Ayrshire came out. She seated herself carelessly in the front seat beside his bag.
“Please talk to me a little,” she said coaxingly. “I’m always wakeful after I sing, and I have to hunt some one to talk to. Céline and I get so tired of each other. We can speak very low, and we shall not disturb any one.” She crossed her feet and rested her elbow on his Gladstone. Though she still wore her gold slippers and stockings, she did not, he thanked Heaven, have on her concert gown, but a very demure black velvet one with some sort of pearl trimming about the neck. “Wasn’t it funny,” she proceeded, “that it happened to be you who picked me up? I wanted a word with you, anyway.”
McKann smiled in a way that meant he wasn’t being taken in. “Did you? We are not very old acquaintances.”
“No, perhaps not. But you disapproved tonight, and I thought I was singing very well. You are very critical in such matters?”
He had been standing, but now he sat down. “My dear young lady, I am not critical at all. I know nothing about such matters.”
“And care less?” she said for him. “Well, then we know where we are, in so far as that is concerned. What did displease you? My gown, perhaps? It may seem a little outré here, but it’s the sort of thing all the imaginative designers abroad are doing, and somebody has to be a missionary and spread the new idea. You like the English sort of concert gown better?”
“About gowns,” said McKann, “I know even less than about music. If I looked uncomfortable, it was probably because I was uncomfortable. The seats were bad and the lights were annoying.”
Kitty looked up with solicitude. “I was sorry they sold those seats. I don’t like to make people uncomfortable in any way. Did the lights give you a headache? They are very trying. They burn one’s eyes out in the end, I believe.” She paused and waved the porter away with a smile as he came toward them. Half-clad Pittsburgers were tramping up and down the aisle, casting sidelong glances at McKann and his companion. “How much better they look with all their clothes on,” she murmured. Then, turning directly to McKann again: “I saw you were not well seated, but I felt something quite hostile and personal. You were displeased with me. Doubtless many people are, but I so seldom get an opportunity to question them. You would be really generous if you took the trouble to tell me why you were displeased.”
She spoke frankly, pleasantly, without a shadow of challenge or hauteur. She did not seem to be angling for compliments. McKann settled himself in his seat. He thought he would try her out. She had come for it, and he would let her have it. He found, however, that it was harder to formulate the grounds of his disapproval than he would have supposed. Now that he sat face to face with her, now that she was leaning against his bag, he had no wish to hurt her.
“I’m a hard-headed business man,” he said, evasively, “and I don’t much believe in any of you fluffy-ruffles people. I have a sort of natural distrust of them all, the men more than the women.”
She looked thoughtful. “Artists, you mean?” drawing her words slowly. “What is your business?”
“Coal.”
“I don’t feel any natural distrust of business men, and I know ever so many. I don’t know any coal-men, but I think I could become very much interested in coal. Am I larger-minded than you?”
McKann laughed. “I don’t think you know when you are interested or when you are not. I don’t believe you know what it feels like to be really interested. There is so much fake about your job. It’s an affectation on both sides. I know a great many of the people who went to hear you tonight, and I know that most of them neither know nor care anything about music. They imagine they do because it’s supposed to be a fine thing.”
Kitty sat upright and looked interested. She was certa
inly a lovely creature—the only one of her tribe he had ever seen that he would cross the street to see again. Those were remarkable eyes she had—curious, penetrating, restless, somewhat impudent, but not at all dulled by self-conceit. Just now they were rather fierce.
“But isn’t that so in everything?” she cried. “How many of your clerks are honest because of a fine, individual sense of honor? They are honest because it is the accepted rule of good conduct in business. Do you know”—she looked at him squarely—“I thought you would have something quite definite to say to me; but this is funny-paper stuff, the sort of objection I’d expect from your office-boy.”
“Then you don’t think it silly for a lot of people to get together and pretend to enjoy something they know nothing about?”
“Of course I think it silly, but that’s the way God made audiences. Don’t people go to church in exactly the same way? If there were a spiritual-pressure test-machine at the door to test the congregation I suspect not many of you would get to your pews.”
“How do you know I go to church?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, people with these old, ready-made opinions usually go to church. But you can’t evade me like that.” She tapped the edge of his seat with the toe of her gold slipper. “You sat there all evening, glaring at me as if you could eat me alive. Now I give you a chance to state your objections, and you merely criticize my audience. What is it? Is it merely that you happen to dislike my personality? In that case, of course, I won’t press you.”
“No,” McKann frowned, “I perhaps dislike your professional personality. As I told you, I have a natural distrust of your variety.”
“Natural, I wonder?” Kitty murmured. “I don’t see why you should naturally dislike singers any more than I naturally dislike coal-men. I don’t classify people by their jobs. Doubtless I should find some coal-men repulsive, and you may find some singers so. But I have reason to believe that, at least, I’m one of the less repelling.”
“I don’t doubt it,” McKann laughed, “and you’re a shrewd woman to boot. But you are, all of you, according to my standards, light people. You’re brilliant, some of you, but you’ve no depth.”
Kitty seemed to assent, with a dive of her girlish head. “Well, it’s a merit in some things to be heavy, and in others to be light. Some things are meant to go deep, and others to go high. Do you want all the women in the world to be profound, or of cast-iron?”
“You are all,” he went on steadily, watching her with indulgence, “fed on hectic emotions. You are pampered. You don’t help to carry the burdens of the world. You are self-indulgent and appetent.”
“Yes, I am,” she assented, with a candour which he did not expect. “Not all artists are, but I am. Why not? If I could once get a convincing statement as to why I should not be self-indulgent, I might change my ways. As for the burdens of the world—” Kitty rested her chin on her clasped hands and looked thoughtful. “One should give pleasure to others. My dear sir, granting that the great majority of people can’t enjoy anything very keenly, you’ll admit that I give pleasure to many more people than you do. One should help others who are less fortunate; at present I am supporting just eighteen people, besides those I hire. There was never another family in California that had so many cripples and hard-luckers as that into which I had the honor to be born. The only ones who could take care of themselves were ruined by the San Francisco earthquake some time ago. One should make personal sacrifices. I do; I give money and time and effort to talented students. Oh, I give something much more than that! Something that you probably have never given to any one. I give, to the really gifted ones, my wish, my desire, my light, if I have any; and that, sometimes, when I am tired to death. That, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, is like giving one’s blood! It’s the kind of thing you prudent people never give. That is what was in the box of precious ointment.” Kitty threw off her fervor with a slight gesture, as if it were a scarf, and leaned back in her seat, tucking her slipper up on the edge of his. “If you saw the houses I keep up,” she sighed, “and the people I employ, and the motorcars I run—And, after all, I’ve only this to do it with.” She indicated her slender person, which Marshall could almost have broken in two with his bare hands.
She was, he thought, very much like any other charming woman, except that she was more so. Her familiarity was natural and simple. She was at ease because she was not afraid of him or of herself, or of certain half-clad acquaintances of his who had been wandering up and down the car oftener than was necessary. Well, he was not afraid, either.
Kitty put her arms over her head and sighed again, feeling the smooth part in her black hair. Her head was small—capable of great agitation, like a bird’s; or of great resignation, like a nun’s. “I can’t see why I shouldn’t be self-indulgent, when I indulge others. I can’t understand your equivocal scheme of ethics. Now I can understand Count Tolstoy’s, perfectly. I had a long talk with him once, about his book What is Art? As nearly as I could get it, he believes that we are a race who can exist only by gratifying appetites; the appetites are evil, and the existence they carry on is evil. We were always sad, he says, without knowing why; even in the stone men. In some miraculous way a divine ideal was disclosed to us, directly at variance with our appetites. It gave us a new craving, which we could only satisfy by starving all the other hungers in us. Happiness lies in ceasing to be and to cause being, because the thing revealed to us is dearer than any existence our appetites can ever get for us. I can understand that. It’s something one often feels in art. It is even the subject of the greatest of all operas, which, because I can never hope to sing it, I love more than all the others.” Kitty pulled herself up. “Perhaps you agree with Tolstoy?” she added languidly.
“No; I think he’s a crank,” said McKann, cheerfully.
“What do you mean by a crank?”
“I mean an extremist.”
Kitty laughed. “Weighty word! You’ll always have a world full of people who keep to the golden mean. Why bother yourself about me and Tolstoy?”
“I don’t, except when you bother me.”
“Poor man! It’s true this isn’t your fault. Still, you did provoke it by glaring at me. Why did you go to the concert?”
“I was dragged.”
“I might have known!” she chuckled, and shook her head. “No, you don’t give me any good reasons. Your morality seems to me the compromise of cowardice, apologetic and sneaking. When righteousness becomes alive and burning, you hate it as much as you do beauty. You want a little of each in your life, perhaps—adulterated, sterilized, with the sting taken out. It’s true enough they are both fearsome things when they get loose in the world; they don’t, often.”
McKann hated tall talk. “My views on women,” he said slowly, “are simple.”
“Doubtless,” Kitty responded, dryly, “but are they consistent? Do you apply them to your stenographers as well as to me? I take it for granted you have unmarried stenographers. Their position, economically, is the same as mine.”
McKann studied the toe of her shoe. “With a woman, everything comes back to one thing.” His manner was judicial.
She laughed indulgently. “So we are getting down to brass tacks, eh? I have beaten you in argument, and now you are leading trumps.” She put her hands behind her head and her lips parted in a half-yawn. “Does everything come back to one thing? I wish I knew. It’s more than likely that, under the same conditions, I should have been very like your stenographers—if they are good ones. Whatever I was, I would have been a good one. I think people are a good deal alike. You are more different than any one I have met for some time, but I know that there are a great many more at home like you. And even you—I believe there is a real creature down under these custom-made prejudices that save you the trouble of thinking. If you and I were shipwrecked on a desert island, I have no doubt that we would come to a s
imple and natural understanding. I’m neither a coward nor a shirk. You would find, if you had to undertake any enterprise of danger or difficulty with a woman, that there are several qualifications quite as important as the one to which you doubtless refer.”
McKann felt nervously for his watch-chain. “Of course,” he brought out, “I am not laying down any generalizations—” His brows wrinkled.
“Oh, aren’t you?” murmured Kitty. “Then I totally misunderstood. But remember”—holding up a finger—“it is you, not I, who are afraid to pursue this subject further. Now, I’ll tell you something.” She leaned forward and clasped her slim, white hands about her velvet knee. “I am as much a victim of these ineradicable prejudices as you. Your stenographer seems to you a better sort. Well, she does to me. Just because her life is, presumably, grayer than mine, she seems better. My mind tells me that dullness, and a mediocre order of ability, and poverty are not in themselves admirable things. Yet in my heart I always feel that the saleswomen in shops and the working girls in factories are more meritorious than I. Many of them, with my opportunities, would be more selfish than I. Some of them, with their own opportunities, are more selfish. Yet I make this sentimental genuflection before the nun and the charwoman. Tell me, haven’t you any weakness? Isn’t there any foolish natural thing that unbends you a trifle and makes you feel gay?”
“I like to go fishing.”
“To see how many fish you can catch?”
“No, I like the woods and the weather. I like to play a fish and work hard for him. I like the pussy-willows and the cold; and the sky, whether it’s blue or gray—night coming on, everything about it.”
He spoke devoutly, and Kitty watched him through half-closed eyes. “And you like to feel that there are light-minded girls like me, who only care about the inside of shops and theaters and hotels, eh? You amuse me, you and your fish! But I mustn’t keep you any longer. Haven’t I given you every opportunity to state your case against me? I thought you would have more to say for yourself. Do you know, I believe it’s not a case you have at all, but a grudge. I believe you are envious; that you’d like to be a tenor, and a perfect lady-killer!” She rose, smiling, and paused with her hand on the door of her stateroom. “Anyhow, thank you for a pleasant evening. And, by the way, dream of me tonight, and not of either of those ladies who sat beside you. It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.” She noticed his bricky flush. “You are very naïf, after all, but, oh, so cautious! You are naturally afraid of everything new, just as I naturally want to try everything: new people, new religions—new miseries, even. If only there were more new things—If only you were really new! I might learn something. I’m like the Queen of Sheba—I’m not above learning. But you, my friend, would be afraid to try a breakfast food. It isn’t gravitation that holds the world in place; it’s the lazy, obese cowardice of the people on it. All the same”—taking his hand and smiling encouragingly—“I’m going to haunt you a little. Adios!”