The Precipice | Page 7

sleeping-sickness yet."
It stung and she had meant it to. To insult Silvertree was to hurt the
doctor in his most tender vanity. It was one of his most fervid beliefs
that he had selected a growing town, conspicuous for its enterprise. In
his young manhood he had meant to do fine things. He was
public-spirited, charitable, a death-fighter of courage and persistence.
Though not a religious man, he had one holy passion, that of the
physician. He respected himself and loved his wife, but he had from
boyhood confused the ideas of masculinity and tyranny. He believed
that women needed discipline, and he had little by little destroyed the
integrity of the woman he would have most wished to venerate. That
she could, in spite of her manifest cowardice and moral circumventions,
still pray nightly and read the book that had been the light to countless
faltering feet, furnished him with food for acrid sarcasm. He saw in this
only the essential furtiveness, inconsistency, and superstition of the
female.
The evening dragged. The neighbors who would have liked to visit
them refrained from doing so because they thought the reunited family
would prefer to be alone that first evening. Kate did her best to preserve

some tattered fragments of the amenities. She told college stories,
talked of Lena Vroom and of beautiful Honora Fulham,--hinted even at
Ray McCrea,--and by dint of much ingenuity wore the evening away.
"In the morning," she said to her father as she bade him good-night,
"we'll both be rested." She had meant it for an apology, not for herself
any more than for him, but he assumed no share in it.
Up in her room her mother saw her bedded, and in kissing her
whispered,--
"Don't oppose your father, Kate. You'll only make me unhappy.
Anything for peace, that's what I say."

III
It was sweet to awaken in the old room. Through the open window she
could see the fork in the linden tree and the squirrels making free in the
branches. The birds were at their opera, and now and then the shape of
one outlined itself against the holland shade. Kate had been
commanded to take her breakfast in bed and she was more than willing
to do so. The after-college lassitude was upon her and her thoughts
moved drowsily through her weary brain.
Her mother, by an unwonted exercise of self-control, kept from the
room that morning, stopping only now and then at the door for a
question or a look. That was sweet, too. Kate loved to have her
hovering about like that, and yet the sight of her, so fragile, so
fluttering, added to the sense of sadness that was creeping over her.
After a time it began to rain softly, the drops slipping down into the
shrubbery and falling like silver beads from the window-hood. At that
Kate began to weep, too, just as quietly, and then she slept again. Her
mother coming in on tiptoe saw tears on the girl's cheek, but she did not
marvel. Though her experience had been narrow she was blessed with
certain perceptions. She knew that even women who called themselves
happy sometimes had need to weep.

* * * * *
The little pensive pause was soon over. There was no use, as all the
sturdier part of Kate knew, in holding back from the future. That very
afternoon the new life began forcing itself on her. The neighbors called,
eager to meet this adventurous one who had turned her back on the
pleasant conventions and had refused to content herself with the
Silvertree Seminary for Young Ladies. They wanted to see what the
new brand of young woman was like. Moreover, there was no one who
was not under obligations to be kind to her mother's daughter. So,
presently the whole social life of Silvertree, aroused from its
midsummer torpor by this exciting event, was in full swing.
Kate wrote to Honora a fortnight later:--
I am trying to be the perfect young lady according to dear mummy's
definition. You should see me running baby ribbon in my lingerie and
combing out the fringe on tea-napkins. Every afternoon we are
'entertained' or give an entertainment. Of course we meet the same
people over and over, but truly I like the cordiality. Even the
inquisitiveness has an affectionate quality to it. I'm determined to enjoy
my village and I do appreciate the homely niceties of the life here. Of
course I have to 'pretend' rather hard at times--pretend, for example,
that I care about certain things which are really of no moment to me
whatever. To illustrate, mother and I have some recipes which nobody
else has and it's our rôle to be secretive about them! And we have
invented a