"Well, we're entitled to all the pleasure we can get," Mary Morrison had retorted. "There are people who think that pleasure isn't for them. But I am just the other way--I take it for granted that pleasure is my right. I always take everything in the way of happiness that I can get my hands on."
"You mean, of course, my dear child," said the gentle Mrs. Goodrich, "all that you can get which does not belong to some one else."
Blue-eyed Mary laughed throatily.
"Fortunately," she said, "there's pleasure enough to go around. It's like air, every one can breathe it in."
VII
But though Miss Morrison had made herself so brightly, so almost universally at home, there was one place into which she did not venture to intrude. This was Kate's room. Mary had felt from the first a lack of encouragement there, and although she liked to talk to Kate, and received answers in which there appeared to be no lack of zest and response, yet it seemed to be agreed that when Miss Barrington came tramping home from her hard day's work, she was to enjoy the solitude of her chamber.
Mary used to wonder what went on there. Miss Barrington could be very still. The hours would pass and not a sound would issue from that high upper room which looked across the Midway and included the satisfactory sight of the Harper Memorial and the massed University buildings. Kate would, indeed, have had difficulty in explaining that she was engaged in the mere operation of living. Her life, though lonely, and to an extent undirected, seemed abundant. Restless she undoubtedly was, but it was a restlessness which she succeeded in holding in restraint. At first when she came up to the city the daze of sorrow was upon her. But this was passing. A keen awareness of life suffused her now and made her observant of everything about her. She felt the tremendous incongruities of city life, and back of these incongruities, the great, hidden, passionate purpose which, ultimately, meant a city of immeasurable power. She rejoiced, as the young and gallant dare to do, that she was laboring in behalf of that city. Not one bewildered, wavering, piteous life was adjusted through her efforts that she did not feel that her personal sum of happiness had received an addition. That deep and burning need for religion, or for love, or for some splendid and irresistible impetus, was satisfied in part by her present work.
To start out each morning to answer the cry of distress, to understand the intricate yet effective machinery of benevolent organizations, so that she could call for aid here and there, and have instant and intelligent coöperation, to see broken lives mended, the friendless befriended, the tempted lifted up, the evil-doer set on safe paths, warmed and sustained her. That inquisitive nature of hers was now so occupied with the answering of practical and immediate questions that it had ceased to beat upon the hollow doors of the Unknown with unavailing inquiries.
So far as her own life was concerned, she seemed to have found, not a haven, but a broad sea upon which she could triumphantly sail. That shame at being merely a woman, with no task, no utility, no independence, had been lifted from her. So, in gratitude, everywhere, at all times, she essayed to help other women to a similar independence. She did not go so far as to say that it was the panacea for all ills, but she was convinced that more than half of the incoherent pain of women's lives could be avoided by the mere fact of financial independence. It became a religion with her to help the women with whom she came in contact, to find some unguessed ability or applicability which would enable them to put money in their purses. With liberty to leave a miserable condition, one often summoned courage to remain and face it. She pointed that out to her wistful constituents, the poor little wives who had found in marriage only a state of supine drudgery, and of unexpectant, monotonous days. She was trying to give them some game to play. That was the way she put it to them. If one had a game to play, there was use in living. If one had only to run after the balls of the players, there was not zest enough to carry one along.