Houses of Stone, KATHY [classic literature books TXT] 📗

domination. "Men have had every advantage of us in telling their story . . . The pen has been in their hands."

She didn't have to belabor the point. Dirty old man, she thought, smiling sweetly at the Colonel, whose complexion had darkened from crimson to purple. With a polite "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," she gathered up her unused notes.

An isolated outburst of applause drew her eyes to Bill Meyer. He was on his feet, clapping enthusiastically.

"I can't imagine what came over me," Karen repeated for the tenth time.

They were in Peggy's room at the hotel—"hiding out," as Peggy put it. Karen had collapsed onto the bed, her head in her hands.

Peggy got her amusement under control and wiped her eyes. "Well, you sure took care of Mrs. Fowler. She won't be sticking any more cute little notes under your door. And you gave me the thrill of a lifetime. I haven't enjoyed myself so much since . . . Never mind. Stop berating yourself; it was worth it, even if you did antagonize the old lady."

"Oh, I don't regret giving them a taste of feminist criticism." Karen raised her head and gave Peggy a defiant look. "Those quotations speak for themselves; all you have to do is hear them to realize how absurd and unfair and silly they are. It isn't what I said that bothers me—it's the way I said it. Not only was it counterproductive, it was rude! Those poor stupid pompous people can't help being the way they are. They were trying to be nice to me. And what gives me the right to assume they are all stupid and pompous? Am I turning into a damned intellectual snob? I could have got the point across without going out of my way to offend them."

"You could have, but it wouldn't have been as much fun."

Karen groaned and hid her face in her hands. "I sounded like Bill Meyer," she mumbled.

"He loved every word," Peggy said. "I was watching him."

"Thanks, that's just what I needed to hear."

Peggy said nothing. Karen sat up with a sigh. "Ah, well. I made a mistake. I regret it, I'll try not to repeat it, but I'm not going to brood about it or go into hiding."

"Are you going to apologize to Mrs. F. ?"

"No. That would imply that I'd done it on purpose. Seems to me my best defense is innocent unawareness of wrongdoing. They claim to be a literary society, don't they? I paid them the compliment of speaking to them as if they really were."

"You're probably right," Peggy said. "It's a minor tempest in a very small teapot, after all. There was no lasting harm done." Smiling, she added, "Look at it as a symbol of how far women have come. A hundred years ago they'd have ostracized you. Two hundred years ago—"

" 'Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart, By the women of Marblehead.' "

"Is that a quote? Sounds familiar."

"It's a poem, by Whittier," Karen said abstractedly. "It was old Floyd Ireson they tarred and feathered—for his hard heart."

"They didn't tar and feather uppity women, even then."

"No, they just exiled them into the wilderness, like Anne Hutchinson, or hanged them as witches, or ducked them till they drowned, or—"

"Enough of this," Peggy said firmly. "I'm going to change out of this ridiculous outfit and then we are going to pay a business call. Lisa Fairweather has agreed to let me inspect the rest of the family papers."

"Lisa?" Karen repeated in surprise. "When did you talk to her?"

"Before your speech. Bill introduced us, and then tactfully withdrew. I'm beginning to think he really has reformed."

"The hell with him, I don't want to talk about him. That's good news, Peggy."

Peggy pulled a blouse and skirt off their hangers and headed for the bathroom. "I'm not counting on any great discoveries, but it's a loose end we have to tie up. Be with you in a minute. Have a drink while you're waiting."

"No, thanks."

Karen sat unmoving, her hands limp in her lap. Peggy was one hundred percent right; the incident had been a tempest in a teapot. Even if Bill Meyer reported it to their colleagues, it would arouse mild amusement in some quarters, and enthusiastic commendation in others—the quarters whose approval meant most to her. So why did it bother her so much?

There had been no alien intrusion into her mind that day, no eerie sense of another voice speaking with her tongue. The voice had been her own, amplified ... by what? Anger, vast and uncontrolled. And hate. For an hour-long interval she had hated those poor silly people. And she had felt the hatred hidden behind their smiling masks, even before she started to speak.

She couldn't get the image out of her head—the image of a mob, out of control and bent on violence. Peggy was mistaken. Women—fallen women, prostitutes—had been tarred and feathered and run out of town as recently as a hundred years ago; Mark Twain mentioned it in Huck Finn. Huck had seen the King and the Duke being ridden out of town by such a mob. "They didn't look like nothing in the world that was human," he had said, adding, "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."

Lisa's apartment was in a new development on the outskirts of town. The buildings looked like thousands of others in thousands of other towns across the country: rectangular blocks of brick, with minuscule balconies and neat conventional landscaping. Karen knew the style; she lived in a building very much like Lisa's. Even in this peaceful country town security had become a problem. They had to ring from the lobby before the inner door unlocked.

Neat and slim in well-cut pants, her hair tied at the nape of her neck with a bow, Lisa greeted them at the door of the apartment. A blast of cold air issued from the living room; she had the air-conditioning on full. The living room looked just about as Karen