The rush carried her across the street. Letty and Marian, her daughters, growing up.
If I knuckle under now, she thought, what of them? She could feel them pressing against her, Letty's silky head under her throat, Marian's firm, slim body against her arm. What I do can't matter very much, directly, to them. They have to live, themselves. She was humble, feeling their individualness, their growth as a curious progression of miracles in which she was merely an incidental tool. Women devote themselves to their families, so that their daughters may grow up and devote themselves to their families, so that—— Catherine laughed. Some one has to break through that circle, she thought.
She entered the Park, walking more slowly along the winding path. If she had only sons—the thought of Spencer stood up like a straight candle flame in her murky drifting—that would be different. There was her own mother. Catherine could see her, being wheeled along the beach at Atlantic City, with her friend, Alethea, on a little holiday to recover from the shock of Spencer's accident. How does she manage it, that poise of hers, that sufficiency?
The walk had come to a cluster of animal houses. Catherine looked about her, and on a sudden whim went past the attendant into the monkey house. The warm, acid, heavy odor affronted her. She didn't want to be here. Years ago she had come in, before she married. She turned to go, and met the melancholy flat stare of a small gray monkey. The animal clung to the bars of the cage with one hand, the long, naked fingers moving restlessly, and looked at Catherine, while the fingers of the other hand dug pensively into the fur of her breast. Catherine felt her heart pause; she had a sensation of white excitement, as if she hung poised over an abyss of infinite knowledge, comprehension. A second monkey swung chattering across the cage and dropped from the bar, grabbing at the tail of the monkey that stared, and the moment was gone. Catherine went hastily out into the clear, sweet air. I hate them, she muttered, and hurried away across the brown, dead stretches of park. But she could not escape the vivid recollection of that earlier visit, years ago. She had seen then a female monkey nursing her young, and the pathos of the close-set unwinking eyes over the tiny furry thing had made the curve of long monkey arm a symbol of protective mother instinct.
They're too like us. That's why I hate them. And then, fiercely, men have climbed out of that. Some ways. But they want to keep us monkey women. Loving our mate and children. Nothing else.
She came presently to a stretch of water at the other side of the park, and stopped a moment on the shore. Blue, quiet, with long black reflections of trees from the opposite bank.
My mind has made itself up, she thought. Her pallor and sullenness had given place to an intense vitality in her wide, dark eyes, in the curve of her mouth. It isn't selfishness, nor egoism, this hankering of mine. It's more than that. I'll tell Charles—she laughed softly, out of the wholeness of her release from doubt—I'll tell him that I can't be a monkey woman. He'll help me. He must help me.
XII
She waited until the children were asleep and the house was quiet. Then she knocked at the study door, behind which Charles sat, working on a lecture. She scarcely waited for his "Come" but went in swiftly, closing the door.
"Most through work?" She drew a small chair near his desk. "Why, you aren't working." His desk was orderly, bare.