The Visioning

The Visioning

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Title: The Visioning
Author: Susan Glaspell
Release Date: February 21, 2004 [EBook #11217]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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VISIONING ***

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THE VISIONING
A NOVEL BY SUSAN GLASPELL
1911

CHAPTER I
Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones was bunkered. Having been
bunkered many times in the past, and knowing that she would be
bunkered upon many occasions in the future, Miss Jones was not

disposed to take a tragic view of the situation. The little white ball was
all too secure down there in the sand; as she had played her first nine,
and at least paid her respects to the game, she could now scale the
hazard and curl herself into a comfortable position. It was a seductively
lazy spring day, the very day for making arm-chairs of one's hazards.
And let it be set down in the beginning that Miss Jones was more given
to a comfortable place than to a tragic view.
Katherine Wayneworth Jones, affectionately known to many friends in
many lands as Katie Jones, was an "army girl." And that not only for
the obvious reasons: not because her people had been of the army, even
unto the second and third generations, not because she had known the
joys and jealousies of many posts, not even because bachelor officers
were committed to the habit of proposing to her--those were but the
trappings. She was an army girl because "Well, when you know her,
you don't have to be told, and if you don't know her you can't be," a
floundering friend had once concluded her exposition of why Katie was
so "army." For her to marry outside the army would be regarded as
little short of treason.
To-day she was giving a little undisturbing consideration to that thing
of her marrying. For it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-fifth
birthdays are prone to knock at the door of matrimonial possibilities.
Just then the knock seemed answered by Captain Prescott.
Unblushingly Miss Jones considered that doubtless before the summer
was over she would be engaged to him. And quite likely she would
follow up the engagement with a wedding. It seemed time for her to be
following up some of her engagements.
She did not believe that she would at all mind marrying Harry Prescott.
All his people liked all hers, which would facilitate things at the
wedding; she would not be rudely plunged into a new set of friends,
which would be trying at her time of life. Everything about him was
quite all right: he played a good game of golf, not a maddening one of
bridge, danced and rode in a sort of joy of living fashion. And she liked
the way he showed his teeth when he laughed. She always thought
when he laughed most unreservedly that he was going to show more of

them; but he never did; it interested her.
And it interested her the way people said: "Prescott? Oh yes--he was in
Cuba, wasn't he?" and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle,
and added:
"Great fellow--Prescott. Never made a mess of things, anyhow."
To have vague association with the mysterious things of life, and yet
not to have "made a mess of things"--what more could one ask?
Of course, pounding irritably with her club, the only reason for not
marrying him was that there were too many reasons for doing so. She
could not think of a single person who would furnish the stimulus of an
objection. Stupid to have every one so pleased! But there must always
be something wrong, so let that be appeased in having everything just
right. And then there was Cuba for one's adventurous sense.
She looked about her with satisfaction. It frequently happened that the
place where one was inspired keen sense of the attractions of some
other place. But this time there was no place she would rather be than
just where she found herself. For she was a little tired, after a long
round of visits at gay places, and this quiet, beautiful island out in the
Mississippi--large, apart, serene--seemed a great lap into which to sink.
She liked the quarters: big old-fashioned houses in front of which the
long stretch of green sloped down to the river. There was something
peculiarly restful in the spaciousness and stability, a place which