“Oh, as for the goodness,” he said. And then he remembered Miss Mildmay’s advice, and rubbed his hands over his eyes as if to take something out of them which he feared was there. Katherine sat down and looked at him very kindly, but her recollection was chiefly of the strong white teeth with which he had eaten the bread-and-butter in the dark of the winter morning afterthatnight. It was the only breakfast he was likely to have, going off as he did on her concerns, and he had been called out of his bed in the middle of the night, and had passed a long time by her father’s bedside. All these things made the simple impromptu meal very necessary; but still she had kept the impression on her mind of his strong teeth taking a large bite of the bread-and-butter, which was neither sentimental nor romantic. This was about all that passed between them on that day.
Thevillage society in Sliplin was not to be despised, especially by a girl who had no pretensions, like Katherine. When a person out of the larger world comes into such a local society, it is inevitable that he or she should look upon it with a more or less courteous contempt, and that the chief members should condole with him or her upon the inferiority of the new surroundings, and the absence of those intellectual and other advantages which he or she is supposed to have tasted in London, for example. But, as a matter of fact, the intellectual advantages are much more in evidence on the lower than on the higher ground. Lady Jane, no doubt, had her own particular box from Mudie’s and command of all the magazines, &c., at first hand; but then she read very little, having the Mudie books chiefly for her governess, and glancing only at some topic of the day, some great lady’s predilections on Society and its depravity, or some fad which happened to be on the surface for the moment, and which everybody was expected to be able to discuss. Whereas the Sliplin ladies read all the books, vying with each other who should get them first, and were great in theNineteenth Centuryand theFortnightly, and all the more weighty periodicals. They were members of mutual improvement societies, and of correspondence classes, and I don’t know all what. Some of them studied logic and other appalling subjects through the latter means, and many of them wrote modest little essays and chronicles of their reading for the press. When the University Extension Lectures were set up quite a commotion was made in the little town. Mr. Stanley, the rector, and Dr. Burnet were both on the committee, and everybody went to hear the lectures. They wereone year on the History of the Merovingians, and another year on Crockery—I mean Pottery, or rather Ceramic Art—and a third upon the Arctic Circle. They were thus calculated to produce a broad general intelligence, people said, though it was more difficult to see how they extended the system of the Universities, which seldom devote themselves to such varied studies. But they were very popular, especially those which were illustrated by the limelight.
All the ladies in Sliplin who had any respect for themselves attended these lectures, and a number read up the subjects privately, and wrote essays, the best of which were in their turn read out at subsequent meetings for the edification of the others. I think, however, these essays were rarely appreciated except by the families of the writers. But it may be easily perceived that a great deal of mental activity was going on where all this occurred.
The men of the community took a great deal less trouble in the improvement of their minds—two or three of them came to the lectures, a rather shame-faced minority amid the ranks of the ladies, but not one, so far as I have heard, belonged to a mutual improvement society, or profited by a correspondence class, or joined a Reading Union. Whether this was because they were originally better educated, or naturally had less intellectual enthusiasm, I cannot tell. In other places it might have been supposed to be because they had less leisure; but that was scarcely to be asserted in Sliplin, where nobody, or hardly anybody, had anything to do. There was a good club, and very good billiard tables, which perhaps supplied an alternative; but I would not willingly say anything to the prejudice of the gentlemen, who were really, in a general way, as intelligent as the ladies, though they did so much less for the improvement of their minds. Now, the people whom Katherine Tredgold had met at Steephill did none of these things—the officers and their society as represented by Charlie Somers and Algy Scott, and their original leader, Mrs. Seton, were, it is needless to state, absolutely innocent of any such efforts. Therefore Katherine, as may be said, had gainedrather than lost by being so much more drawn into this intellectually active circle when dropped by that of Lady Jane.
The chief male personages in this society were certainly the doctor and the clergyman. Curates came and curates went, and some of them were clever and some the reverse; but Mr. Stanley and Dr. Burnet went on for ever. They were of course invariably of all the dinner parties, but there the level of intelligence was not so high—the other gentlemen in the town and the less important ones in the country coming in as a more important element. But in the evening parties, which were popular in Sliplin during the winter, and the afternoon-tea parties which some people, who did not care to go out at night, tried hard to introduce in their place, they were supreme. It was astonishing how the doctor, so hard-worked a man, managed to find scraps of time for so many of these assemblages. He was never there during the whole of these symposia. He came very late or he went away very early, he put in half an hour between two rounds, or he ran in for ten minutes while he waited for his dog-cart. But the occasions were very rare on which he did not appear one time or another during the course of the entertainment. Mr. Stanley, of course, was always on the spot. He was a very dignified clergyman, though he had not risen to any position in the Church beyond that of Rector of Sliplin. He preached well, he read well, he looked well, he had not too much to do; he had brought up his motherless family in the most beautiful way, with never any entanglement of governesses or anything that could be found fault with for a moment. Naturally, being the father of a family, the eldest of which was twenty-two, he was not in his first youth; but very few men of forty-seven looked so young or so handsome and well set up. He took the greatest interest in the mental development of the Sliplin society, presiding at the University Extension as well as all the other meetings, and declaring publicly, to the great encouragement of all the other students, that he himself had “learned a great deal” from the Merovingians lectures and the Ceramic lectures, and those on the Arctic regions.
Mr. Stanley had three daughters, and a son who was at Cambridge; and a pretty old Rectory with beautiful rooms, and everything very graceful and handsome about him. The young people were certainly a drawback to any matrimonial aspirations on his part; but it was surmised that he entertained them all the same. Miss Mildmay was one of the people who was most deeply convinced on this subject. She had an eye which could see through stone walls in this particular. She knew when a man conceived the idea of asking a woman to marry him before he knew it himself. When she decided that a thing was to be (always in this line) it came to pass. Her judgment was infallible. She knew all the signs—how the man was being wrought up to the point of proposing, and what the woman’s answer was going to be—and she took the keenest interest in the course of the little drama. It was only a pity that she had so little exercise for her faculty in that way, for there were few marriages in Sliplin. The young men went away and found their wives in other regions; the young women stayed at home, or else went off on visits where, when they had any destiny at all, they found their fate. It was therefore all the more absorbing in its interest when anything of the kind came her way. Stella’s affair had been outside her orbit, and she had gained no advantage from it; but the rector and the doctor and Katherine Tredgold were a trio that kept her attention fully awake.
There was a party in the Rectory about Christmas, at which all Sliplin was present. It was a delightful house for a party. There was a pretty old hall most comfortably warmed—which is a rare attraction in halls—with a handsome oak staircase rising out of it, and a gallery above which ran along two sides. The drawing-room was also a beautiful old room, low, but large, with old furniture judiciously mingled with new, and a row of recessed windows looking to the south and clothed outside with a great growth of myrtle, with pink buds still visible at Christmas amid the frost and snow. Inside it was bright with many lamps and blazing fires; and there were several rooms to sit in, according to the dispositions of the guests—the hall where theyoung people gathered together, the drawing-rooms to which favoured people went when they were bidden to go up higher, and Mr. Stanley’s study, where a group of sybarites were always to be found, for it was the warmest and most luxurious of all. The hall made the greatest noise, for Bertie was there with various of his own order, home, like himself, for Christmas, and clusters of girls, all chattering at the tops of their voices, and urging each other to the point of proposing a dance, for which the hall was so suitable, and quite large enough. The drawing-room was full of an almost equally potent volume of sound, for everybody was talking, though the individual voices might be lower in tone. But in the study it was more or less quiet. The Rector himself had taken Katherine there to show her some of his books. “It would be absurd to call them priceless,” he said, “for any chance might bring a set into the market, and then, of course, a price would be put upon them, varying according to the dealer’s knowledge and the demand; but they are rare, and for a poor man like me to have been able to get them at all is—well, I think that, with all modesty, it is a feather in my cap; I mean, to get them at a price within my means.”
“It is only people who know that ever get bargains, I think,” Katherine said, in discharge of that barren duty of admiration and approval on subjects we do not understand, which makes us all responsible for many foolish speeches. Mr. Stanley’s fine taste was not quite pleased with the idea that his last acquisition was a bargain, but he let that pass.
“Yes; I think that, without transgressing the limits of modesty, I may allow that to be the case. It holds in everything; those who know what a friend is attain to the best friends; those who can appreciate a noble woman——”
“Oh!” said Katherine, a little startled, “that is carrying the principle perhaps too far. I was thinking of china, you know, and things of that sort—when you see an insignificant little pot which you would not give sixpence for, and suddenly a connoisseur comes in who puts down the sixpence in a great hurry and carries it off rejoicing—and you hear afterwards thatit was priceless, too, though not, of course,” she added apologetically, “like your books.”
“Quite true, quite true,” said the Rector blandly; “but I maintain my principle all the same, and the real prize sometimes stands unnoticed while some rubbish is chosen instead. I hope,” he added in a lower tone, “that you have good news from your sister, Miss Katherine, and at this season of peace and forgiveness that your father is thinking a little more kindly——”
“My father says very little on the subject,” Katherine said. She knew what he did say, which nobody else did, and the recollection made her shiver. It was very concise, as the reader knows.
“We must wait and hope—he has such excellent—perceptions,” said the Rector, stumbling a little for a word, “and so much—good sense—that I don’t doubt everything will come right.” Then he added, bending over her, “Do you think that I could be of any use?” He took her hand for a moment, half fatherly in his tender sympathy. “Could I help you, perhaps, to induce him——”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Katherine, drawing her hand away; her alarm, however, was not for anything further that the Rector might say to herself, but in terror at the mere idea of anyone ever hearing what Mr. Tredgold said.
“Ah, well,” he said with a sigh, “another time—perhaps another time.” And then by way of changing the subject Katherine hurried off to a little display of drawings on the table. Charlotte Stanley, the Rector’s eldest daughter, had her correspondence class like the other ladies; but it was a Drawing Union. She was devoted to art. She had made little drawings since ever she could remember in pencil and in slate-pencil, and finally in colour. Giotto could not have begun more spontaneously; and she was apt to think that had she been taken up as Giotto was, she, too, might have developed as he did. But short of that the Drawing Union was her favourite occupation. The members sent little portfolios about from one to another marked by pretty fictitious names. Charlottesigned herself Fenella, though it would have been difficult to tell why; for she was large and fair. The portfolio, with all the other ladies’ performances, was put out to delight the guests, and along with that several drawings of her own. She came up hastily to explain them, not, perhaps, altogether to her father’s satisfaction, but he yielded his place with his usual gentleness.
“We send our drawings every month,” said the young artist, “and they are criticised first and then sent round. Mr. Strange, of the Water Colour Society, is our critic. He is quite distinguished; here is his little note in the corner. ‘Good in places, but the sky is heavy, and there is a want of atmospheric effect’—that is Fair Rosamond’s. Oh, yes, I know her other name, but we are not supposed to mention them; and this is one of mine—see what he says: ‘Great improvement, shows much desire to learn, but too much stippling and great hardness in parts.’ I confess I am too fond of stippling,” Charlotte said. “And then every month we have a composition. ‘The Power of Music’ was the subject last time—that or ‘Sowing the Seed.’ I chose the music. You will think, perhaps, it is very simple.” She lifted a drawing in which a little child in a red frock and blue pinafore stood looking up at a bird of uncertain race in a cage. “You see what he says,” Charlotte continued—“‘Full of good intention, the colour perhaps a little crude, but there is much feeling in the sketch.’ Now, feeling was precisely what I aimed at,” she said.
Katherine was no judge of drawing any more than she was of literature, and though the little picture did not appeal to her (for there were pictures at the Cliff, and she had lived in the same room with several Hunts and one supreme scrap of Turner—bought a bargain on the information that it was a safe investment many years ago—and therefore had an eye more cultivated than she was aware of) she was impressed by her friend’s achievement, and thought it was a great thing to employ your time in such elevated ways. Evelyn, who was only seventeen and very frolicsome, wrote essays for the MutualImprovement Society. This filled Katherine, who did nothing particular, with great respect. She found a little knot of them consulting and arguing what they were to say in the next paper, and she was speechless with admiration. Inferior! Lady Jane did not think much of the Sliplin people. She had warned the girls in the days of her ascendency not to “mix themselves up” with the village folk, not to conduct themselves as if they belonged to the nobodies. But Lady Jane had never, Katherine felt sure, written an essay in her life. She had her name on the Committee of the University Extension centre at Sliplin, but she never attended a lecture. She it was who was inferior, she and her kind: if intellect counted for anything, surely, Katherine thought, the intellect was here.
And then Dr. Burnet, came flying in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. Though he had but a very short time to spare, he made his way to her through all the people who detained him. “I am glad to see you here; you don’t despise the village parties,” he said.
“Despise them!—but I am not nearly good enough for them. I feel so small and so ignorant—they are all thinking of so many things—essays and criticisms and I don’t know what. It is they who should despise me.”
“Oh, I don’t think very much of the essays—nor would you if you saw them,” Dr. Burnet said.
“I tell you all,” said Miss Mildmay, “though you are so grand with your theories and so forth, it is the old-fashioned girls who know nothing about such nonsense that the gentlemen like best.”
“The gentlemen—what gentlemen?” said Katherine, not at all comforted by this side of the question, and, indeed, not very clear what was meant.
“Oh, don’t pretend to be a little fool,” said Miss Mildmay. She was quite anxious to promote what she considered to be Katherine’s two chances—the two strings she had to her bow—but to put up with this show of ignorance was too much for her. She went off angrily to where her companion sat,yawning a little over an entertainment which depended so entirely for its success upon whether you had someone nice to talk to or not. “Kate Tredgold worries me,” she said. “She pretends she knows nothing, when she is just as well up to it as either you or I.”
“I am up to nothing,” said Mrs. Shanks; “I only know what you say; and I don’t believe Mr. Tredgold would give his daughter and only heiress to either of them—if Stella is cut off, poor thing——”
“Stella will not be cut off,” said Miss Mildmay. “Mark my words. He’ll go back to her sooner or later; and what a good thing if Katherine had someone to stand by her before then!”
“If you saw two straws lying together in the road you would think there was something between them,” cried Mrs. Shanks, yawning more than ever. “Oh, Ruth Mildmay, fancy our being brought out on a cold night and having to pay for the Midge and all that, and nothing more in it than to wag our heads at each other about Katherine Tredgold’s marriage, if it ever comes off!”
“Let me take you in to supper,” said the rector, approaching with his arm held out.
And then Mrs. Shanks felt that there was compensation in all things. She was taken in one of the first, she said afterwards; not the very first—she could not expect that, with Mrs. Barry of Northcote present, and General Skelton’s wife. The army and the landed gentry naturally were first. But Miss Mildmay did not follow till long after—till the doctor found her still standing in a corner, with that grim look of suppressed scorn and satirical spectatorship with which the proud neglected watch the vulgar stream pressing before them.
“Have you not beeninyet?” the doctor said.
“No,” said Miss Mildmay. “You see, I am not young to go with the girls, nor married to go with the ladies who are at the head of society. I only stand and look on.”
“That is just my case,” said Dr. Burnet. “I am not young to go with the girls, nor married to disport myself with Mrs.Barry or such magnates. Let us be jolly together, for we are both in the same box.”
“Don’t you let that girl slip through your fingers,” said Miss Mildmay solemnly, as she went “in” on his arm.
“Will she ever come within reach of my fingers?” the doctor said, shaking his head.
“You are not old, like that Stanley man; you’ve got no family dragging you back. I should not stand by if I were you, and let her be seduced into this house as the stepmother!” said Miss Mildmay with energy.
“Don’t talk like that in the man’s house. He is a good man, and we are just going to eat his sandwiches.”
“If there are any left,” Miss Mildmay said.
Thusit will be seen that Katherine’s new position as the only daughter of her father was altogether like a new beginning of life, though she had been familiar with the place and the people for years. Stella had been the leader in everything, as has been said. When she went to a party at the Rectory, she turned it into a dance or a romp at once, and kept the Drawing Union and the Mutual Improvement Society quite in the background. Even the books which for a year or two back the rector would have liked to show Katherine privately, beguiling her into separate talks, had been thrust aside necessarily when Katherine was imperiously demanded for Sir Roger de Coverley or a round game. Therefore these more studious and elevated occupations of the little community came upon her now with the force of a surprise. Her own home was changed to her also in the most remarkable way. Stella was not a creature whom anyone fully approved of, not even her sister. She was very indifferent to the comfort and wishes of others; she loved her own amusement by whatever way it could be best obtained. She was restrained by no scruples about the proprieties, or the risk—which was one of Katherine’s chief terrors—of hurting other people’s feelings. She did what she liked, instantaneously, recklessly, at any risk. And her father himself, though he chuckled and applauded and took a certain pride in her cleverness even when she cheated and defied him, did not pretend to approve of Stella; but she carried her little world with her all the same. There was a current, a whirl of air about her rapid progress. The stiller figures were swept on with her whether they liked it or not; and, as a matter of fact, they generally did like it when fairlyafloat upon that quick-flowing, rippling, continuous stream of youth and life.
But now that all this movement and variety had departed nothing could be imagined more dull than Mr. Tredgold’s house on the Cliff. It was like a boat cast ashore—no more commotion of the sea and waves, no more risk of hurricane or tempest, no need to shout against the noise of a cyclone, or to steer in the teeth of a gale. It was all silent, all quiet, nothing to be done, no tides to touch the motionless mass or tinkle against the dull walls of wood. When Katherine received her guests from the city, she felt as if she were showing them over a museum rather than a house. “This is the room we used to sit in when my sister was at home; I do not use it now.” How often had she to say such words as these! And when the heavy tax of these visits had been paid she found herself again high and dry, once more stranded, when the last carriage had driven away.
But the rush of little parties and festivities about Christmas, when all the sons and brothers were at home, into which she was half forced by the solicitations of her neighbours, and half by her own forlorn longing to see and speak to somebody, made a not unwelcome change. The ladies in Sliplin, especially those who had sons, had always been anxious to secure the two Miss Tredgolds, the two heiresses, for every entertainment, and there was nothing mercenary in the increased attention paid to Katherine. She would have been quite rich enough with half her father’s fortune to have fulfilled the utmost wishes of any aspirant in the village. The doctor and the rector had both thought of Katherine before there was any change in her fortunes—at the time when it was believed that Stella would have the lion’s share of the money, as well as, evidently, of the love. In that they were quite unlike the city suitors, who only found her worth their while from the point of view of old Tredgold’s entire and undivided fortune. Indeed, it is to be feared that Sliplin generally would have been overawed by the greatness of her heiresshood had it grasped this idea. But still nobody believed in the disinheriting of Stella. They believedthat she would be allowed to repent at leisure of her hasty marriage, but never that she would be finally cut off. The wooing of the rector and that of the doctor had only reached an acuter stage because now Katherine was alone. They felt that she was solitary and downcast, and wanted cheering and a companion to indemnify her for what she had lost, and this naturally increased the chances of the fortunate man who should succeed.
Mr. Stanley would (perhaps) have been alarmed at the idea of offering the position of stepmother to his children to Mr. Tredgold’s sole heiress; although he would not, perhaps, have thought that in justice to his family he could have asked her to share his lot had it not been evident that she must have her part of her father’s fortune. He was a moderate man—modest, as he would himself have said—and he had made up his mind that Katherine in Stella’s shadow would have made a perfect wife for him. Therefore he had been frightened rather than elated by the change in her position; but with the consciousness of his previous sentiments, which were so disinterested, he had got over that, and now felt that in her loneliness a proposal such as he had to make might be even more agreeable than in other circumstances. The doctor was in something of the same mind. He was not at all like Turny and Company. He felt the increased fortune to be a drawback, making more difference between them than had existed before, but yet met this difficulty like a man, feeling that it might be got over. He would probably have hesitated more if she had been cut off without a shilling as Stella was supposed, but never believed, to be.
Neither of these gentlemen had any idea of that formula upon which Mr. Tredgold stood. The money on the table, thousand for thousand, would have been inconceivable to them. Indeed, they did not believe, notwithstanding the experience of Sir Charles Somers, that there would be much difficulty in dealing with old Tredgold. He might tie up his money, and these good men had no objection—they did not want to grasp at her money. Let him tie it up! They would neither of them haveopposed that. As to further requirements on his part they were tranquil, neither of them being penniless, or in the condition, they both felt, to be considered fortune-hunters at all. The curious thing was that they were each aware of the other’s sentiments, without hating each other, or showing any great amount of jealousy. Perhaps the crisis had not come near enough to excite this; perhaps it was because they were neither of them young, and loved with composure as they did most things; yet the doctor had some seven years the advantage of the rector, and was emphatically a young man still, not middle-aged at all.
It was partly their unconscious influence that drew Katherine into the way of life which was approved by all around her. The doctor persuaded her to go to the ambulance class, which she attended weekly, very sure that she never would have had the courage to apply a tourniquet or even a bandage had a real emergency occurred. “Now, Stella could have done it,” she said within herself. Stella’s hands would not have trembled, nor her heart failed her. It was the rector who recommended her to join the Mutual Improvement Society, offering to look over her essays, and to lend her as many books as she might require. And it was under the auspices of both that Katherine appeared at the University Extension Lectures, and learned all about the Arctic regions and the successive expeditions that had perished there. “I wish it had been India,” she said on one occasion; “I should like to know about India, now that Stella is there.”
“I don’t doubt in the least that after Christmas we might get a series on India. It is a great, a most interesting subject; what do you think, Burnet?”
Burnet entirely agreed with him. “Nothing better,” he said; “capital contrast to the ice and the snow.”
And naturally Katherine was bound to attend the new series which had been so generously got up for her. There were many pictures and much limelight, and everybody was delighted with the change.
“What we want in winter is a nice warm blazing sun, andnot something colder than we have at home,” cried Mrs. Shanks.
And Katherine sat and looked at the views and wondered where Stella was, and then privately to herself wondered where James Stanford was, and what he could be doing, and if he ever thought now of the old days. There was not very much to think of, as she reflected when she asked herself that question; but still she did ask it under her breath.
“Remember, Miss Katherine, that all my books are at your service,” said the rector, coming in to the end of the drawing-room where Katherine had made herself comfortable behind the screens; “and if you would like me to look at your essay, and make perhaps a few suggestions before you send it in——”
“I was not writing any essay. I was only writing to—my sister,” said Katherine.
“To be sure. It is the India mail day, I remember. Excuse me for coming to interrupt you. What a thing for her to have a regular correspondent like you! You still think I couldn’t be of any use to say a word to your father? You know that I am always at your disposition. Anything I can do——”
“You are very good, but I don’t think it would be of any use.” Katherine shivered a little, as she always did at the dreadful thought of anyone hearing what her father said.
“I am only good to myself when I try to be of use to you,” the rector said, and he added, with a little vehemence, “I only wish you would understand how dearly I should like to think that you would come to me in any emergency, refer to me at once, whatever the matter might be——”
“Indeed, Mr. Stanley, I understand, and I do,” she said, raising her eyes to his gratefully. “You remember how I appealed to you that dreadful time, and how much—how much you did for us?”
“Ah, you sent Burnet to me,” he said, “that’s not exactly the same. Of course, I did what I could; but what I should like would be that you should come with full confidence totell me anything that vexes you, or to ask me to do anything you want done, like——”
“I know,” she said. “Like Charlotte and Evelyn. And, indeed, I should, indeed I will—trust me for that.”
The rector drew back, as if she had flung in his face the vase of clear water which was waiting on the table beside her for the flowers she meant to put in it. He gave an impatient sigh and walked to the window, with a little movement of his hands which Katherine did not understand.
“Oh, has it begun to snow?” she said, for the sky was very grey, as if full of something that must soon overflow and fall, and everybody had been expecting snow for twenty-four hours past.
“No, it has not begun to snow,” he said. “It is pelting hailstones—no, I don’t mean that; nothing is coming down as yet—at least, out of the sky. Perhaps I had better leave you to finish your letter.”
“Oh, there is no hurry about that. There are hours yet before post-time, and I have nearly said all I have to say. I have been telling her I am studying India. It is a big subject,” Katherine said. “And how kind you and Dr. Burnet were, getting this series of lectures instead of another for me—though I think everybody is interested, and the pictures are beautiful with the limelight.”
“I should have thought of it before,” said the rector. “As for Burnet, he wanted some scientific series about evolution and that sort of thing. Medical men are always mad after science, or what they believe to be such. But as soon as I saw how much you wished it——”
“A thing one has something to do with is always so much the more interesting,” Katherine said, half apologetically.
“I hope you know that if it were left to me I should choose only those subjects that you are interested in.”
“Oh, no,” cried Katherine, “not so much as that. You are so kind, you want to please and interest us all.”
“Kindness is one thing; but there are other motives that tell still more strongly.” The rector went to and from thewindow, where Katherine believed him to be looking out for the snow, which lingered so long, to the table, where she still trifled with her pen in her hand, and had not yet laid it down to put the flowers which lay in a little basket into water. The good clergyman was more agitated than he should have thought possible. Should he speak? He was so much wound up to the effort that it seemed as if it must burst forth at any moment, in spite of himself; but, on the other hand, he was afraid lest he might precipitate matters. He watched her hands involuntarily every time he approached her, and then he said to himself that when she had put down the pen and begun to arrange the flowers, he would make the plunge, but not till then. That should be his sign.
It was a long time before this happened. Katherine held her pen as if it had been a shield, though she was not at all aware of the importance thus assigned to it. She had a certain sense of protection in its use. She thought that if she kept up the fiction of continuing her letter Mr. Stanley would go away; and somehow she did not care for him so much as usual to-day. She had always had every confidence in him, and would have gone to him at any time, trusting to his sympathy and kindness; but to be appealed to to do this, as if it were some new thing, confused her mind. Why, of course she had faith in him, but she did not like the look with which he made that appeal. Why should he look at her like that? He had known her almost all her life, and taught her her Catechism and her duty, which, though they may be endearing things, are not endearing in that way. If Katherine had been asked in what way, she would probably have been unable to answer; but yet in her heart she wished very much that Mr. Stanley would go away.
At last, when it seemed to her that this was hopeless—that he would not take the hint broadly furnished by her unfinished letter—she did put down the pen, and, pushing her writing-book away, drew towards her the little basket of flowers from the conservatory, which the gardener brought her every day. They were very waxen and winterly, as flowers still are in January, and she took them up one by one, arranging them so asto make the most of such colour as there was. The rector had turned at the end of his little promenade when she did so, and came back rapidly when he heard the little movement. She was aware of the quickened step, and said, smiling, “Well, has the snow begun at last?”
“There is no question of snow,” he said hurriedly, and Katherine heard with astonishment the panting of his breath, and looked up—to see a very flushed and anxious countenance directed towards her. Mr. Stanley was a handsome man of his years, but his was a style which demanded calm and composure and the tranquillity of an even mind to do it justice. He was excited now, which was very unbecoming; his cheeks were flushed, his lips parted with hasty breathing. “Katherine,” he said, “it is something much more important than—any change outside.” He waved his hand almost contemptuously at the window, as if the snow was a slight affair, not worth mentioning. “I am afraid,” he said, standing with his hand on the table looking down upon her, yet rather avoiding her steady, half-wondering look, “that you are too little self-conscious to have observed lately—any change in me.”
“I don’t know,” she said faltering, looking up at him; “is there anything the matter, really? I have thought once or twice—that you looked a little disturbed.”
It flashed into her mind that there might be something wrong in the family, that Bertie might have been extravagant, that help might be wanted from her rich father. Oh, poor Mr. Stanley! if his handsome stately calm should be disturbed by such a trouble as that? Katherine’s look grew very kind, very sympathising as she looked up into his face.
“I have often, I am sure, looked disturbed. Katherine, it is not a small matter when a man like me finds his position changed in respect to—one like yourself—by an overmastering sentiment which has taken possession of him he knows not how, and which he is quite unable to restrain.”
“Rector!” cried Katherine astonished, looking up at him with even more feeling than before. “Mr. Stanley! have I done anything?”
“That shows,” he cried, with something like a stamp of his foot and an impatient movement of his hand, “how much I have to contend with. You think of me as nothing but your clergyman—a—a sort of pedagogue—and your thought is that he is displeased—that there is something he is going to find fault with——”
“No,” she said. “You are too kind to find fault; but—— I am sure I never neglect anything you say to me. Tell me what it is—and I—I will not take offence. I will do my very best——”
“Oh, how hard it is to make you understand! You put me on a pedestal—whereas it is you who—— Katherine! do you know that you are not a little girl any longer, but a woman, and a—most attractive one? I have struggled against it, knowing that was not the light in which I can have appeared to you, but it’s too strong for me. I have come to tell you of a feeling which has existed for years on my part—and to ask you—if there is any possibility, any hope, to ask you—to marry me——” The poor rector! his voice almost died away in his throat. He put one knee to the ground—not, I need not say, with any prayerful intention, but only to put himself on the same level with her, with his hands on the edge of her table, and gazed into her face.
“To—— What did you say, Mr. Stanley?” she asked, with horror in her eyes.
“Don’t be hasty, for the sake of heaven! Don’t condemn me unheard. I know all the disparities, all the—— But, Katherine, my love for you is more than all that. I have been trying to keep it down for years. I said, to marry me—to marry me, my dear and only——”
“Do you mean that you are on your knees to me, a girl whom you have catechised?” cried Katherine severely, holding her head high.
The rector stumbled up in great confusion to his feet. “No, I did not mean that. I was not kneeling to you. I was only—— Oh, Katherine, how small a detail is this! God knows I do not want to make myself absurd in youreyes. I am much older than you are. I am—but your true lover notwithstanding—for years; and your most fond and faithful—— Katherine! if you will be my wife——”
“And the mother of Charlotte and Bertie!” said Katherine, looking at him with shining eyes. “Charlotte is a year younger than I am. She comes between Stella and me; and Bertie thinks he is in love with me too. Is itthatyou come and offer to a girl, Mr. Stanley? Oh, I know. Girls who are governesses and poor have it offered to them and are grateful. But I am as well off as you are. And do you think it likely that I would want to change my age and be my own mother for the sake of—what? Being married? I don’t want to be married. Oh, Mr. Stanley, it is wicked of you to confuse everything—to change all our ways of looking at each other—to——” Katherine almost broke down into a torrent of angry tears, but controlled herself for wrath’s sake.
The rector stood before her with his head down, as sorely humiliated a man as ever clergyman was. “If you take it in that light, what can I say? I had hoped you would not take it in that light. I am not an old man. I have not been accustomed to—apologise for myself,” he said, with a gleam of natural self-assertion. He, admired of ladies for miles round—to the four seas, so to speak—on every hand. He could have told her things! But the man wasdigne; he was no traitor nor ungrateful for kindness shown him. “If you think, Katherine, that the accident of my family and of a very early first marriage is so decisive, there is perhaps nothing more to be said. But many men only begin life at my age; and I think it is ungenerous—to throw my children in my teeth—when I was speaking to you—of things so different——”
“Oh, Mr. Stanley,” cried Katherine, subdued, “I am very, very sorry. I did not mean to throw—anything in your teeth. But how could anyone forget Charlotte and Bertie and Evelyn and the rest? Do you call them an accident—all the family?” Katherine’s voice rose till it was almost shrill in the thought of this injury to her friends. “But I only thinkof you as their father and my clergyman—and always very, very kind,” she said.
The flowers had never yet got put into the water. She had thrown them down again into the basket. The empty vase stood reproachfully full and useless, reflecting in its side a tiny sparkle of the firelight; and the girl sitting over them, and the man standing by her, had both of them downcast heads, and did not dare to look at each other. This group continued for a moment, and then he moved again towards the window. “It has begun at last,” he said in a strange changed tone. “It is snowing fast.”
And the rector walked home in a blinding downfall, and was a white man, snow covered, when he arrived at home, where his children ran out to meet him, exclaiming at his beard which had grown white, and his hair, which, when his hat was taken off, exhibited a round of natural colour fringed off with ends of snow. The family surrounded him with chatterings and caresses, pulling off his coat, unwinding his scarf, shaking off the snow, leading him into the warm room by the warm fire, running off for warm shoes and everything he could want. An accident! The accident of a family! He submitted with a great effort over himself, but in his heart he would have liked to push them off, the whole band of them, into the snow.
Itwill perhaps be thought very unfeeling of Katherine to have received as she did this unlooked for elderly lover. All Sliplin, it is true, could have told her for some time past that the Rector was in love with her, and meant to make her an offer, and Miss Mildmay believed that she had been aware of it long before that. But it had never occurred to Katherine that the father of Charlotte and Gerard was occupied with herself in any way, or that such an idea could enter his mind. He had heard her say her catechism! He had given Charlotte in her presence the little sting of a reproof about making a noise, and other domestic sins which Katherine was very well aware she was intended to share. In thedouceurswhich, there was no denying, he had lately shed about, she had thought of nothing but a fatherly intention to console her in her changed circumstances; and to think that all the time this old middle-aged man, this father of a family, had it in his mind to make her his wife! Katherine let her flowers lie drooping, and paced up and down the room furious, angry even with herself. Forty-five is a tremendous age to three-and-twenty; and it was the first time she had ever received a proposal straight in the face, so to speak. Turny and Company had treated with her father, but had retreated from before her own severe aspect when she gave it to be seen how immovable she was. And to think that her first veritable proposal should be this—a thing that filled her with indignation! What! did the man suppose for a moment that she, his daughter’s friend, would marry him? Did all men think that a girl would do anything to be married?—or what did they think?
Katherine could not realise that Mr. Stanley to the Rector was not at all the same person that he was to her. The Rector thought himself in the prime of life, and so he was. The children belonged to him and he was accustomed to them, and did not, except now and then, think them a great burden; but himself was naturally the first person in his thoughts. He knew that he was a very personable man, that his voice was considered beautiful, and his aspect (in the pulpit) imposing. His features were good, his height was good, he was in full health and vigour. Why shouldn’t he have asked anybody to marry him? The idea that it was an insult to a girl never entered his mind. And it was no insult. He was not even poor or in pursuit of her wealth. No doubt her wealth would make a great difference, but that was not in the least his motive, for he had thought of her for years. And in his own person he was a man any woman might have been proud of. All this was very visible to him.
But to Katherine it only appeared that Mr. Stanley was forty-five, that he was the father of a girl as old as herself, and of a young man, whom she had laughed at, indeed, but who also had wished to make love to her. What would Gerard say? This was the first thing that changed Katherine’s mood, that made her laugh. It brought in a ludicrous element. What Charlotte would say was not half so funny. Charlotte would be horrified, but she would probably think that any woman might snatch at a man so admired as her father, and the fear of being put out of her place would occupy her and darken her understanding. But the thought of Gerard made Katherine laugh and restored her equilibrium. Strengthened by this new view she came down from her pinnacle of indignation and began to look after the things she had to do. The snow went on falling thickly, a white moving veil across every one of the windows; the great flickering flakes falling now quickly, now slowly, and everything growing whiter and whiter against the half-seen grey of the sky. This whiteness shut in the house, encircling it as with a flowing mantle. Nobody would come near the house that afternoon, nobodywould come out that could help it—not even the midge was likely to appear along the white path. The snow made an end of visitors, and Katherine felt herself shut up within it, condemned not to hear any voice or meet with any incident for the rest of the day. It was not a cheering sensation. She finished her letter to Stella, and paused and wondered whether she should tell her what had happened; but she fortunately remembered that a high standard of honour forbade the disclosure of secrets like this, which were the secrets of others as well as her own. She had herself condemned from that high eminence with much indignation the way in which other girls blazoned such secrets. She would not be like one of them. And besides, Stella and her husband would laugh and make jokes in bad taste and hold up the Rector to the laughter of the regiment, which would not be fair though Katherine was so angry with him. When she had finished her letter she returned to the flowers, and finally arranged them as she had intended to do long ago. And then she went and stood for a long time at the window watching the snow falling. It was very dull to see nobody, to be alone, all alone, for all these hours. There was a new novel fresh from Mudie’s on the table, which was always something to look forward to; but even a novel is but a poor substitute for society when you have been so shaken and put out of yourassietteas Katherine had been by a personal incident. Would she have told anyone if anyone had come? She said to herself, “No, certainly not.” But as she was still thrilling and throbbing all over, and felt it almost impossible to keep still, I cannot feel so sure as she was that she would not have followed a multitude to do evil, and betrayed her suitor’s secret by way of relieving her own mind. But I am sure that she would have felt very sorry had she done so as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
She had seated herself by the fire and taken up her novel, not with the content and pleasure which a well-conditioned girl ought to exhibit at the sight of a new story in three volumes (in which form it is always most welcome, accordingto my old-fashioned ideas) and a long afternoon to enjoy it in, but still with resignation and a pulse beating more quietly—when there arose sounds which indicated a visit after all. Katherine listened eagerly, then subsided as the footsteps and voices faded again, going off to the other end of the house.
“Dr. Burnet to see papa,” she said half with relief, half with expectation. She had no desire to see Dr. Burnet. She could not certainly to him breathe the faintest sigh of a revelation, or relieve her mind by the most distant hint of anything that had happened. Still, he was somebody. It was rather agreeable to give him tea. The bread and butter disappeared so quickly, and it had come to be such a familiar operation to watch those strong white teeth getting through it. Certainly he had wonderful teeth. Katherine gave but a half attention to her book, listening to the sounds in the house. Her father’s door closed, he had gone in, and then after a while the bell rang and the footsteps became audible once more in the corridor. She closed her book upon her hand wondering if he would come this way, or—— He was coming this way! She pushed her chair away from the hearth, feeling that, what with the past excitement and the glow of the fire, her cheeks were ablaze.
But Dr. Burnet did not seem to see this when he came in. She had gone to the window by that time to look out again upon the falling snow. It was falling, falling, silent and white and soft, in large flakes like feathers, or rather like white swan’s down. He joined her there and they stood looking at it together, and saying to each other how it seemed to close round the house and wrap everything up as in a downy mantle.
“I like to see it,” the doctor said, “which is very babyish, I know. I like to see that flutter in the air and the great soft flakes dilating as they fall. But it puts a great stop to everything. You have had no visitors, I suppose, to-day?”
“Oh, yes, before it came on,” said Katherine; and then she added in a voice which she felt to be strange even while she spoke, “The Rector was here.”
That was all—not another word did she say; but Dr. Burnet gave her a quick look, and he knew as well as the reader knows what had happened. The Rector, then, had struck his blow. No doubt it was by deliberate purpose that he had chosen a day threatening snow, when nobody was likely to interrupt him. And he had made his explanation and it had not been well received. The doctor divined all this and his heart gave a jump of pleasure, though Katherine had not said a word, and indeed had not looked at him, but stood steadily with a blank countenance in which there was nothing to be read, gazing out upon the snow. Sometimes a blank countenance displays more than the frankest speech.
“He is a handsome man—for his time of life,” Dr. Burnet said, he could not tell why.
“Yes?” said Katherine, as if she were waiting for further evidence; and then she added, “It is droll to think of that as being a quality of the Rector—just as you would say it of a boy.”
“Do you think that handsome is as handsome does, Miss Katherine? I should not have expected that of you. I always thought you made a great point of good looks.”
“I like nice-looking people,” she said, and in spite of herself gave a glance aside at the doctor, who in spite of those fine teeth and very good eyes and other points of advantage, could not have been called handsome by the most partial of friends.
“You are looking at me,” he said with a laugh, “and the reflection is obvious, though perhaps it is only my vanity that imagines you to have made it. I am not much to brag of, I know it. I am very ’umble. A man who knows he is good-looking must have a great advantage in life to begin with. It must give him so much more confidence wherever he makes his appearance—at least for the first time.”
“Do you think so?” she said. “I should think one would forget it so quickly, both the possessor himself and those who look at him. If people areniceyou think of that and not of their beauty, unless——”
“Unless what, Miss Katherine? You can’t think how interesting this talk is to me. Tell me something on which an ugly man can rest and take courage. You are thinking of John Wilkes’ famous saying that he only wanted half-an-hour’s start of the handsomest man——”
“Who was John Wilkes?” said Katherine with the serenest ignorance. “I suppose one of the men one ought to know; but then I know so little. After a year of the Mutual Improvement Society——”
“Don’t trouble about that,” cried the doctor, “but my ambulance classes are really of the greatest use. I do hope you will attend them. Suppose there was an accident before your eyes—on the lawn there, and nobody within reach—what should you do?”
“Tremble all over and be of use to nobody,” Katherine said with a shudder.
“That is just what I want to obviate—that is just what ought to be obviated. You, with your light touch and your kind heart and your quick eye——”
“Have I a quick eye and a light touch?” said Katherine with a laugh; “and how do you know? It is understood that every girl must have a kind heart. On the whole, I would rather write an essay, I think, than be called upon to render first aid. My hand is not at all steady if my touch is light.”
She lifted one of the vases as she spoke to change its position and her hand shook. He looked at it keenly, and she, not thinking of so sudden a test, put down the vase in a hurry with a wave of colour coming over her face.
“That’s not natural, that’s worry, that’s excitement,” Dr. Burnet said.
“The outlook is not very exciting, is it?” cried Katherine; “one does not come in the way of much excitement at Sliplin, and I have not even seen Miss Mildmay and Mrs. Shanks. No, it is natural, doctor. So you see how little use it would be to train me. Come to the fire and have some tea.”
“I must not give myself this pleasure too often,” he said. “I find myself going back to it in imagination when I am out in the wilds. It is precious cold in my dog-cart facing the wind, Miss Katherine. I say to myself, Now the tea is being brought in in the drawing-room on the Cliff, now it is being poured out. I smell the fragrance of it driving along the bitter downs; and then I go and order some poor wretch the beastliest draught that can be compounded to avenge myself for getting no tea.”
“You should give them nothing but nice things, then, when you do have tea—as now,” said Katherine.
He came after her to where the little tea-table shone and sparkled in the firelight, and took from her hand the cup of tea she offered him, and stood with his back to the fire holding it in his hand. His groom was driving his dog-cart round and round the snowy path, crossing the window from time to time, a dark apparition amid the falling of the snow. What the thoughts of the groom might be, looking in through the great window on this scene of comfort, the figure of Katherine in her pretty dress and colour stooping over the table, and his master behind standing against the firelight with his cup of tea, nobody asked. Perhaps he was making little comparisons as to his lot, perhaps only thinking of the time when he should be able to thrust his hands into his pockets and the doctor should have the reins. Yet Dr. Burnet did not ignore his groom. “There,” he said, “is fate awaiting me. This time she has assumed the innocent form of John Dobbs, my groom. I have got ten miles to drive, there and back, to see Mrs. Crumples, who could do perfectly well without me, and then to the Chine for a moment to ascertain if the new man there has digested his early dinner, and then to Steephill to look after the servants’ hall. I am not good enough, except on an emergency, for the family or Lady Jane.”
“I would not go more, then, if it is only for the servants’ hall,” cried Katherine.
“Why not?” he said. “I consider Mrs. Cole, the cook, is quite as valuable a member of society as Lady Jane. Theworld would not come to an end if Lady Jane were absent for a day, or laid up, but it would very nearly—at Steephill—if anything happened to the cook.”
“You said you were ’umble, Dr. Burnet, and I did not believe you. I see that you are really so, now.”
“Ah, there I disagree with you,” he said, a little flush on his face. “I am ’umble about my personal appearance, but I only don’t mind with Lady Jane. She thinks of me merely as the general practitioner from Sliplin, which shows she doesn’t know anything—for I am more than a general practitioner.”
“I know,” cried Katherine quickly, half with a generous desire not to leave him to sing his own praises, and half with a wondering scorn that he should think it worth the while; “you will be a great physician one of these days.”
“I hope so,” he said quietly. Then, after a while, “But I am still more than that; at least, what would seem more in Lady Jane’s eyes. I am not a doctor only, Miss Katherine. I have not such a bad little estate behind me. My uncle has it now, but I’m the man after him; and a family a good deal better known than the Uffingtons, who are not a century old.” He said this with a little excitement, and a flourish in his hand of the teaspoon with which he had been stirring his tea.
Jim Dobbs, driving past the window, white with snow, yet looking like a huge blackness in the solidity of the group, he and his high coat and his big horse amid the falling feathers, caught the gesture and wondered within himself what the doctor could be about; while Katherine, looking up at him from the tea-table, was scarcely less surprised. Why should he tell her this? Why at all? Why now? The faint wonder in her look made Dr. Burnet blush.
“What a fool I am! As if you cared about that,” he said with a stamp of his foot, in impatience with himself, and shame.
“Oh, yes, I care about it. I am glad to hear of it. But—Dr. Burnet, let me give you another cup of tea.”
“But,” he said, “you think what have I to do with the man’s antecedents? You see I want you to know that I can put my foot forward sometimes—like——” he paused for a moment and laughed, putting down his cup hastily. “No more! No more! I must tear myself from this enchanted cliff, or Jim Dobbs will mistake the window for the stable door—like my elderly friend, Miss Katherine,” he said over his shoulder as he went away.
Like—his elderly friend? Who was his elderly friend, and what did the doctor mean? Katherine watched from the window while Burnet got into his dog-cart and whirled away at a very different pace from that of his groom. She could not see this from her window, but listened till the sounds died away, looking out upon the snow. What a fascination that snow had, falling, falling, without any dark object now to disturb its absolute possession of the world! Katherine stood for a long time watching before she went back to her novel, which was only when the lamps were brought in, changing the aspect of the place. Did she care for Dr. Burnet’s revelations, or divine the object of them? In the first place not at all; in the second, I doubt whether she took the trouble to ask herself the question.
Butthough Dr. Burnet had been ’umble about his position at Steephill, and considered himself only as the physician of the servants’ hall, he was not invariably left in that secondary position. On this particular snowy evening, when master and horse and man were all eager to get home in view of the drifting of the snow, which was already very deep, and the darkness of the night, which made it dangerous, Lady Jane—who was alone at Steephill, i.e. without any house party, and enjoying the sole society of Sir John, her spouse, which was not lively—bethought herself that she would like to consult the doctor. She did not pretend that she had more than a cold, but then a cold may develop into anything, as all the world knows. It was better to have a talk with Dr. Burnet than not to say a word to anybody, and to speak of her cold rather than not to speak at all. Besides, she did want to hear something of old Tredgold, and whether Katherine was behaving well, and what chance there might be for Stella. The point of behaviour in Katherine about which Lady Jane was anxious was whether or not she was keeping her sister’s claims before her father—her conduct in other respects was a matter of absolute indifference to her former patroness.
“I have not been in Sliplin for quite a long time,” she said. “It may be a deficiency in me, but, you know, I don’t very much affect your village, Dr. Burnet.”
“No; few people do; unless they want it, or something in it,” the doctor said as he made out his prescription, of which I thinkeau sucrée, or something like it, was the chief ingredient.
“I don’t know what I should want in it or with it,” saidLady Jane with a touch of impatience. And then she added, modifying her tone, “Tell me about the Tredgolds, Dr. Burnet. How is the old man? Not a very satisfactory patient, I should think—so fond of his own way; especially when you have not Stella at hand to make him amenable.”
“He is not a bad patient,” said Dr. Burnet. “He does not like his own way better than most old men. He allows himself to be taken good care of on the whole.”
“Oh, I am glad to hear so good an opinion of him. I thought he was very headstrong. Now, you know, I don’t want you to betray your patient’s secrets, Dr. Burnet.”
“No,” he said; “and it wouldn’t matter, I fear, if you did,” he continued after a pause; “but I know no secrets of the Tredgolds, so I am perfectly safe——”
“That’s rather rude,” said Lady Jane, “but of course it’s the right thing to say; and of course also you know all about Stella and her elopement and the dreadful disappointment. I confess, for my own part, I did not think he could stand out against her for a day.”
“He is a man who knows his own mind very clearly, Lady Jane.”
“So it appears. And will he hold out, do you think, till the bitter end? Can Katherine do nothing? Couldn’t she do something if she were to try? I mean for those poor Somers—they are great friends of mine. He is, you know, a kind of relation. And poor Stella! Do tell me, Dr. Burnet, do you think there is no hope? Couldn’t you do something yourself? A doctor at a man’s bedside has great power.”
“It is not a power I would ever care to exercise,” Dr. Burnet said.
“Oh, you are too scrupulous! And when you consider how poor they are, doctor!—really badly off. Why, they have next to nothing! The pay, of course, is doubled in India, but beyond that—— Think of Charlie Somers living on his pay! And then there is, Stella the most expensive little person, accustomed to every luxury you can think of, and never used to deny herself anything. It is extremely hardlines for them, certain as they were that her father—— Oh, I can’t help thinking, Dr. Burnet, that Katherine could do something if she chose.”
“Then you may be quite at ease, Lady Jane, for I am sure she will choose—to do a hardness to anyone, let alone her sister——”
“Ah, Dr. Burnet,” cried Lady Jane, shaking her head, “it is so difficult to tell in what subtle forms self-interest will get in. Now there is one thing that I wish I could see as a way of settling the matter. I should like to see Katherine Tredgold married to some excellent, honourable man. Oh, I am not without sources of information. I have heard a little bird here and there. What a good thing if there was such a man, who would do poor little Stella justice and give her her share! Half of Mr. Tredgold’s fortune would be a very handsome fortune. It would make all the difference to—say, a rising professional man.”
Dr. Burnet pretended to make a little change in the prescription he had been writing. His head was bent over the writing-table, which was an advantage.
“I have no doubt half of Mr. Tredgold’s fortune would be very nice to have,” he said, “but unfortunately Miss Katherine is not married, nor do I know who are the candidates for her hand.”
“I assure you,” said Lady Jane, “if there was such a person I should take care to do everything I could to further his views. I have not seen much of Katherine lately, but I should make a point of asking her and him to meet here. There is nothing I would not do to bring such a thing about, and—and secure her happiness, you know. You will scarcely believe it, but it is the truth, that Katherine was always the one I liked best.”
What a delightful, satisfactory, successful lie one can sometimes tell by telling the truth. Dr. Burnet, who loved Katherine Tredgold, was touched by this last speech—there was the ring of sincerity in the words; and though Lady Jane had not in the least the welfare of Katherine in her head at this moment, still, these words were undoubtedly true.
He sat for some time making marks with the pen on the paper before him, and Lady Jane was so much interested in his reply that she did not press for it, but sat quite still, letting him take his time.
“Have you any idea,” he said, making as though he were about to alter the prescription for the third time, “on what ground Mr. Tredgold refused Sir Charles Somers, who was not ineligible as marriages go?” His extreme coolness, and the slight respect with which he spoke had a quite subduing influence upon Lady Jane. “Was it—for his private character, perhaps?”
“Nothing of the sort,” cried Lady Jane. “Do you know Charlie Somers is a cousin of mine, Dr. Burnet?”
“That,” said the doctor, “though an inestimable advantage, would not save him from having had—various things said about him, Lady Jane.”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “I acknowledge it. Various things have been said of him. The reason given was simply ludicrous. I don’t know if Charlie invented it—but I don’t think he was clever enough to invent it. It was something about putting money down pound for pound, or shilling for shilling, or some nonsense, and that he would give Stella to nobody that couldn’t do that. On the face of it that is folly, you know.”
“I am not so sure that it is folly. I have heard him say something of the kind; meaning, I suppose, that any son-in-law he would accept would have to be as wealthy as himself.”
“But that is absolute madness, Dr. Burnet! Good heavens! who that was as rich as old Tredgold could desire to be old Tredgold’s son-in-law? It is against all reason. A man might forgive to the girls who are so nice in themselves that they had such a father; but what object could one as rich as himself—— Oh! it is sheer idiocy, you know.”
“Not to him; and he, after all, is the person most concerned,” said Dr. Burnet, with his head cast down and rather a dejected look about him altogether. The thought was notcheerful to himself any more than to Lady Jane, and as a matter of fact he had not realised it before.
“But it cannot be,” she cried, “it cannot be; it is out of the question. Oh, you are a man of resource; you must find out some way to baffle this old curmudgeon. There must, there must,” she exclaimed, “be some way out of it, if you care to try.”
“Trying will not invent thousands of pounds, alas! nor can the man who has the greatest fund of resource but no money do it anyhow,” said Dr. Burnet sententiously. “There may be a dodge——”
“That is what I meant. There must be a dodge to—to get you out of it,” she cried.
“It is possible that the man whose existence you divine might not care to get a wife—if she would have him to begin with—by a dodge, Lady Jane.”
“Oh, rubbish!” cried the great lady, “we are not so high-minded as all that. I am of opinion that in that way anything, everything can be done. Charlie Somers is a fool and Stella another; but to a sensible pair with an understanding between them and plenty of time to work—and an old sick man,” Lady Jane laid an involuntary emphasis on the word sick—then stopped and reddened visibly, though her countenance was rather weather-beaten and did not easily show.
“A sick man—to be taken advantage of? No, I think that would scarcely do,” he said. “A sensible pair with an understanding, indeed—but then the understanding—there’s the difficulty.”
“No,” cried Lady Jane, anxiously cordial to wipe away the stain of her unfortunate suggestion. “Not at all—the most natural thing in the world—where there is real feeling, Dr. Burnet, on one side, and a lonely, sensitive girl on the other——”
“A lonely, sensitive girl,” he repeated. And then he looked up in Lady Jane’s face with a short laugh—but made no further remark.
Notwithstanding the safeguard of her complexion, LadyJane this time grew very red indeed; but having nothing to say for herself, she was wise and made no attempt to say it. And he got up, having nothing further to add by any possibility to his prescription, and put it into her hand.
“I must make haste home,” he said, “the snow is very blinding, and the roads by this time will be scarcely distinguishable.”
“I am sorry to have kept you so long—with my ridiculous cold, which is really nothing. But Dr. Burnet,” she said, putting her hand on his sleeve, “you will think of what I have said. Let justice be done to those poor Somers. Their poverty is something tragic. They had so little expectation of anything of the kind.”
“It is most unlikely that I can be of any use to them, Lady Jane,” he said a little stiffly, as he accepted her outstretched hand.
Perhaps Lady Jane had more respect for him than ever before. She held his prescription in her hand and looked at it for a moment.
“I think I’ll take it,” she said to herself as if making a heroic resolution. She had really a little cold.
As for the doctor, he climbed up into his dog-cart and took the reins from the benumbed hands of Jim, who was one mass of whiteness now instead of the black form sprinkled over with flakes of white which he had appeared at the Cliff. It was a difficult thing to drive home between the hedges, which were no longer visible, and with the big snow-flakes melting into his eyes and confusing the atmosphere, and he had no time to think as long as he was still out in the open country, without even the lights of Sliplin to guide him. It was very cold, and his hands soon became as benumbed as Jim’s, with the reins not sensible at all through his big gloves to his chilled fingers.