This speech restored the equilibrium of Katherine’s mind by turning the balance of wit to the other side.
“You are not at all just to Sir John, papa. You never are when you don’t know people. He is very honest and kind, and takes very little trouble about his dinner parties. They were both very kind to me.”
“Asked young Fortescue to meet you, I hear. A young fellow with a lot of poor land and no money. Meaning to try me on another tack this time, I suppose. Not if he had a hundred miles of downs, Katie; you remember that. Land’s a confounded bad investment. None of your encumbered estates for me.”
“You need not distress yourself, papa. I never spoke to Mr. Fortescue,” said Katherine.
There was a little offence in her tone. She had not forgiven Lady Jane for the fact that Mr. Fortescue, the only young man of the party, had not been allotted to her for dinner, as she felt would have been the right thing. Katherine thought him very red in the face, weatherbeaten, and dull—so far as appearances went; but she was piqued and offended at having been deprived of her rights. Did Lady Jane not think her good enough,par exemple, for young Fortescue? And her tone betrayed her, if Mr. Tredgold had taken any trouble to observe her tone.
“He need not come here to throw dust in my eyes—that’s all,” said the old man. “I want none of your landed fellows—beggars! with more to give out than they have coming in. No; the man that can put down his money on the table——”
“Don’t you think I have heard enough of your money down on the table?” said Katherine, very red and uncomfortable. “No one is likely to trouble you about me, papa, so we may leave the money alone, on the table or off it.”
“I’m not so sure about that. There’s young Fred Turny would like nothing better. And a capital fellow that. Plenty of his own, and going into all the best society, and titled ladies flinging themselves at his head. Mind you, I don’t know if you keep shilly-shallying, whether he’ll stand it long—a young fellow like that.”
“He knows very well there is no shilly-shallying about me,” said Katherine.
And she left her father’s room thinking within herself that though Lady Jane’s way of recommending a plain man was not pleasant, yet the other way was worse. Fred Turny, it was certain, would not hear of dividing his wife’s fortune with her sister, should her father’s will give it all to herself; neither would Charlie Somers, Lady Jane assured her. Would Dr. Burnet do this? Katherine, possessed for the moment of a prejudice against the doctor, doubted, though that was the ground on which he was recommended. Would any man do so? There was one man she thought (of whom she knew nothing) who would; who cared nothing about the money; whose heart had chosen herself while Stella was there in all her superior attractions. Katherine felt that this man, of whom she had seen so little, who had been out of the country for nearly four years, from whom she had never received aletter, and scarcely even could call to mind anything he had ever said to her, was the one man whom she could trust in all the world.
Dr. Burnet came that afternoon, as it was his usual day for visiting Mr. Tredgold. He was very particular in keeping to his days. It was a beautiful spring-like afternoon, and the borders round the house were full of crocuses, yellow and blue and white. The window was open in Katherine’s corner, and all the landscape outside bright with the westering light.
“What a difference,” he said, “from that snowstorm—do you remember the snowstorm? It is in this way an era for me—as, indeed, it was in the whole island. We all begin to date by it: before the snowstorm, or at the time of the snowstorm.”
“I wonder,” said Katherine, scarcely conscious of what she was saying, “why it was an era to you?”
“Ah, that I cannot tell you now. I will, perhaps, if you will let me, sometime. Come out and look at the crocuses. This is just the moment, before the sun goes down.”
“Yes, they shut when the sun goes down,” Katherine said, stepping out from the window.
The air had all the balm of spring, and the crocuses were all the colours of hope. It is delightful to come out of winter into the first gleam of the reviving year.
“We are nothing if not botanical,” said the doctor. “You remember the aloe. It is a fine thing but it is melancholy, for its blossoming is its death. It is like the old fable of the phœnix. When the new comes the old dies. And a very good thing too if we did not put our ridiculous human sentiment into everything.”
“Do you think human sentiment is ridiculous?” said Katherine, half disposed to back him up, half to argue it out.
“Of course I don’t!” said the doctor with vehemence; and then he laughed and said, “We are talking like a book. But I am glad you went to Steephill; there is not any such sentiment there.”
“Do you think, then, I am liable to be attacked by fits of sentiment? I don’t think so,” she said, and then she invited the doctor to leave the crocuses and to come in to tea.
I think it was that day that Dr. Burnet informed Katherine that her father had symptoms of illness more or less serious. He hoped that he might be able to stave off their development, and Mr. Tredgold might yet have many years of tolerable health before him. “But if I am right,” he said, “I fear he will not have the calm life he has had. He will be likely to have sudden attacks, and suffer a good deal, from time to time. I will always be at hand, of course, and ready night and day. And, as I tell you, great alleviations are possible. I quite hope there will be many intervals of comfort. But, on the other hand, a catastrophe is equally possible. If he has any affairs to attend to, it would perhaps be—a good thing—if he could be persuaded to—look after them, as a matter of prudence, without giving him any alarm.”
Such an intimation makes the heart beat of those to whom the angel of death is thus suddenly revealed hovering over their home; even when there is no special love or loss involved. The bond between Mr. Tredgold and his children was not very tender or delicate, and yet he was her father. Katherine’s heart for a moment seemed to stand still. The colour went out of her face, and the eyes which she turned with an appealing gaze to the doctor filled with tears.
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” she said.
“Don’t be alarmed; there is nothing to call for any immediate apprehension. It is only if you want to procure any modification—any change in a will, or detail of that kind.”
“You mean about Stella,” she said. “I don’t know what he has done about Stella; he never tells me anything. Is it necessary to trouble him, doctor? If he has not changed his will it will be all right; if he has destroyed it without making another it will still be all right, for some one told me that in that case we should share alike—is that the law? Then no harm can come to Stella. Oh, that we should be discussing in this calm way what might happen—after!” Two bigtears fell from Katherine’s eyes. “If the worst were to happen even,” she said; “if Stella were left out—it would still be all right, doctor, so long as I was there to see justice done.”
“Dear Katherine!” he said, just touching her hand for a moment. She scarcely perceived in her agitation that he had left out the prefix, and the look which he gave her made no impression on her preoccupied mind. “You will remember,” he said, “that I am to be called instantly if anything unusual happens, and that I shall always be ready—to do the best I can for him, and to stand by you—to the end.”
Thismade again a delay in Dr. Burnet’s plans. You cannot begin to make love to a girl when you have just told her of the serious illness, not likely to end in anything but death, which is hovering over her father. It is true that old Tredgold was not, could not, be the object of any passionate devotion on the part of his daughter. But even when the tie is so slight that, once broken, it has but a small effect on life, yet the prospect of that breaking is always appalling, more or less worse than the event itself. All that a man can say in such circumstances, Dr. Burnet said—that he would be at her service night or day, that everything he could do or think of he would do, and stand by her to the last. That was far more appropriate than professions of love, and it was a little trying to him to find that she had not even noticed how he looked at her, or that he said, “Dear Katherine!” which, to be sure, he had no right to say. She was not even aware of it! which is discouraging to a man.
Dr. Burnet was a good doctor, he knew what he was about; and it was not long before his prophecy came true. Mr. Tredgold was seized with an alarming attack in the spring, which brought him to the very verge of the grave, and from which at one time it was not expected he would ever rally. The old man was very ill, but very strong in spirit, and fought with his disease like a lion; one would have said a good old man to see him lying there with no apparent trouble on his mind, nothing to pre-occupy time or draw him away from the immediate necessity of battling for his life, which he did with a courage worthy of a better cause. His coolness, his self-possession, his readiness to second every remedy, and give himselfevery chance, was the admiration of the watchers, doctors, and nurses alike, who were all on the alert to help him, and conquer the enemy. Could there be a better cause than fighting for your life? Not one at least of more intimate interest for the combatant; though whether it is worth so much trouble when a man is over seventy, and can look forward to nothing better than the existence of an invalid, is a question which might well be debated. Mr. Tredgold, however, had no doubt on the subject. He knew that he possessed in this life a great many things he liked—what he would have in another he had very little idea. Probably, according to all that he had ever heard, there would be no money there, and if any difference between the beggar and the rich man, a difference in favour of the former. He did not at all desire to enter into that state of affairs. And the curious thing was that it could never be discovered that he had anything on his mind. He did not ask for Stella, as the large circle of watchers outside who read the bulletins at the lodge, and discussed the whole matter with the greatest interest, feeling it to be as good as a play, fondly hoped. He never said a word that could be construed into a wish for her, never, indeed, mentioned her name. He did not even desire to have Katherine by him, it was said; he preferred the nurses, saying in his characteristic way that they were paid for it, that it was their business, and that he never in anything cared for amateurs; he said amateurs, as was natural, and it was exactly the sentiment which everybody had expected from Mr. Tredgold. But never to ask for Stella, never to call upon her at his worst moment, never to be troubled by any thought of injustice done to her, that was the extraordinary thing which the community could not understand. Most people had expected a tragic scene of remorse, telegrams flying over land and sea, at the cost of a sovereign a word—but what was that to Mr. Tredgold?—calling Stella home. The good people were confounded to hear, day by day, that no telegram had been sent. It would have been a distinction for the little post-office in Sliplin to have a telegram of such a character to transmit to India. The postmistress awaited,feeling as if she were an inferior, but still very important, personage in the play, attending her call to go on. But the call never came. When the patient was at his worst various ladies in the place, and I need not say Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay, had many whispered conferences with the people at the post. “No telegram yet? Is it possible?”
“No, indeed, ma’am, not a word.”
“I wonder at you for expecting it now,” cried Miss Mildmay, angry at the failure of all those hopes which she had entertained as warmly as anyone. “What use would it be. She couldn’t come now; he’ll be gone, poor man, weeks and weeks before Stella could be here.”
But Mr. Tredgold did not go, and then it began to be understood that he never meant nor expected to go, and that this was the reason why he did not disturb himself about Stella. The spectators were half satisfied, yet half aggrieved, by this conclusion, and felt, as he got slowly better, that they had been cheated out of their play; however, he was an old man, and the doctor shook his head over all the triumphant accounts of his recovery which were made in the local papers; and there was yet hope of a tragedy preceded by a reconciliation, and the restoration of Stella to all her rights. Dr. Burnet was, throughout the whole illness, beyond praise. He was at the Cliff at every available moment, watching every symptom. Not a day elapsed that he did not see Katherine two or three times to console her about her father, or to explain anything new that had occurred. They were together so much that some people said they looked as if they had been not only lovers but married for years, so complete seemed their confidence in each other and the way they understood each other. A glance at Dr. Burnet’s face was enough for Katherine. She knew what it meant without another word; while he divined her anxiety, her apprehensions, her depression, as the long days went on without any need of explanation. “As soon as the old man is well enough there will, of course, be a marriage,” it was generally said. “And, of course, the doctor will go and live there,” said Mrs. Shanks, “such a comfortto have the doctor always on the spot—and what a happy thing for poor Mr. Tredgold that it should be his son-in-law—a member of his family.”
“Mr. Tredgold will never have a son-in-law in his house,” said Miss Mildmay, “if Katherine is expecting that she is reckoning without her father. I don’t believethatwill ever be a marriage whatever you may say. What! send off Sir Charles Somers, a man with something at least to show for himself, and take in Dr. Burnet? I think, Jane Shanks, that you must be off your head!”
“Sir Charles Somers could never have been of any use to poor, dear Mr. Tredgold,” said Mrs. Shanks, a little abashed, “and Dr. Burnet is. What a difference that makes!”
“It may make a difference—but it will not make that difference; and I shouldn’t like myself to be attended by my son-in-law,” said the other lady. “He might give you a little pinch of something at a critical moment; or he might change your medicine; or he might take away a pillow—you can’t tell the things that a doctor might do—which could never be taken hold of, and yet——”
“Ruth Mildmay!” cried Mrs. Shanks, “for shame of yourself, do you think Dr. Burnet would murder the man?”
“No; I don’t think he would murder the man,” said Miss Mildmay decidedly, but there was an inscrutable look in her face, “there are many ways of doing a thing,” she said, nodding her head to herself.
It appeared, however, that this time at least Dr. Burnet was not going to have the chance, whether he would have availed himself of it or not. Mr. Tredgold got better. He came round gradually, to the surprise of everybody but himself. When he was first able to go out in his bath chair he explained the matter to the kind friends who hastened to congratulate him, in the most easy way. “You all thought I was going to give in this time,” he said, “but I never meant to give in. Nothing like making up your mind to it. Ask the doctor. I said from the beginning, ‘I ain’t going to die this bout, don’t you think it.’Hethought different; ignorant pack, doctors,not one of ’em knows a thing. Ask him. He’ll tell you it wasn’t him a bit, nor his drugs neither, but me as made up my mind.”
The doctor had met the little procession and was walking along by Mr. Tredgold’s chair. He laughed and nodded his head in reply, “Oh yes, he is quite right. Pluck and determination are more than half of the battle,” he said. He looked across the old man’s chair to Katherine on the other side, who said hastily: “I don’t know what we should have done without Dr. Burnet, papa.”
“Oh, that’s all very well,” said old Tredgold. “Pay each other compliments, that’s all right. He’ll say, perhaps, I’d have been dead without your nursing, Katie. Not a bit of it! Always prefer a woman that is paid for what she does and knows her duty. Yes, here I am, Rector, getting all right, in spite of physic and doctors—as I always meant to do.”
“By the blessing of God,” said the Rector, with great solemnity. He had met the group unawares round a corner, and to see Burnet and Katherine together, triumphant, in sight of all the world, was bitter to the injured man. That this common country doctor should be preferred to himself added an additional insult, and he would have gone a mile round rather than meet the procession. Being thus, however, unable to help himself, the Rector grew imposing beyond anything that had ever been seen of him. He looked a Bishop, at least, as he stood putting forth no benediction, but a severe assertion that belied the words. “By the blessing of God,” he said.
“Oh!” said old Mr. Tredgold, taken aback. “Oh yes, that’s what you say. I don’t mean to set myself against that. Never know, though, do you, how it’s coming—queer thing to reckon on. But anyhow, here I am, and ten pounds for the poor, Rector, if you like, to show as I don’t go against that view.”
“I hope the improvement will continue,” the Rector said, with his nose in the air. “Good morning, Miss Katherine, I congratulate you with all my heart.”
On what did he congratulate her? The doctor, though hiscomplexion was not delicate, coloured high, and so did Katherine, without knowing exactly what was the reason; and Sliplin, drawing its own conclusions, looked on. The only indifferent person was Mr. Tredgold, always sure of his own intentions and little concerned by those of others, to whom blushes were of as little importance as any other insignificant trifles which did not affect himself.
It was perhaps this little incident which settled the question in the mind of the community. The Rector had congratulated the pair in open day; then, of course, the conclusion was clear that all the preliminaries were over—that they were engaged, and that Mr. Tredgold, who had rejected Sir Charles Somers, was really going to accept the doctor. The Rector, who, without meaning it, thus confirmed and established everything that had been mere imagination up to this time, believed it himself with all the virulence of an injured man. And Katherine, when Dr. Burnet had departed on his rounds and she was left to accompany her father home, almost believed herself that it must be true. He had said nothing to her which could be called a definite proposal, and she had certainly given no acceptance, no consent to anything of the kind, yet it was not impossible that without any intention, without any words, she had tacitly permitted that this should be. Looking back, it seemed to her, that indeed they had been always together during these recent days, and a great many things had passed between them in their meetings by her father’s bedside, outside his door, or in the hall, at all times of the night and day. And perhaps a significance might be given to words which she had not attached to them. She was a little alarmed—confused—not knowing what had happened. She had met his eyes full of an intelligence which she did not feel that she shared, and she had seen him redden and herself had felt a hot colour flushing to her face. She did not know why she blushed. It was not for Dr. Burnet; it was from the Rector’s look—angry, half malignant, full of scornful meaning. “I congratulate you!” Was that what it meant, and that this thing had really happened which had been floating in the air so long?
When she returned to the Cliff, Katherine did not go in, but went along the edge of the path, as she had done so often when she had anything in her mind. All her thinkings had taken place there in the days when she had often felt lonely and “out of it,” when Stella was in the ascendant and everything had rolled on in accordance with her lively views. She had gone there with so many people to show them “the view,” who cared nothing for the view, and had lingered afterwards while they returned to more noisy joys, to think with a little sigh that there was someone in the world, though she knew not where, who might have preferred to linger with her, but had been sent away from her, never to be seen more. And then there had been the night of Stella’s escapade in the little yacht, and then of Stella’s second flight with her husband, and of many a day beside when Katherine’s heart had been too full to remain quietly indoors, and when the space, the sky, the sea, had been her consolers. She went there now, and with a languor which was half of the mind and half of the body walked up and down the familiar way. The tamarisks were beginning to show a little pink flush against the sea. It was not warm enough yet to develop the blossom wholly, but yet it showed with a tinge of colour against the blue, and all the flowering shrubs were coming into blossom and flowers were in every crevice of the rocks. It was the very end of April when it is verging into May, and the air was soft and full of the sweetness of the spring.
But Katherine’s mind was occupied with other things. She thought of Dr. Burnet and whether it was true that she was betrothed to him and would marry him and have him for her companion always from this time forth. Was it true? She asked herself the question as if it had been someone else, some other girl of whom she had heard this, but almost with less interest than if it had been another girl. She would, indeed, scarcely have been moved had she heard that the doctor had been engaged to Charlotte Stanley or to anyone else in the neighbourhood. Was it true that it was she, Katherine Tredgold, who was engaged to him? The Rector’s fierce lookhad made her blush, but she did not blush now when she thought over this question alone. Was she going to marry Dr. Burnet? Katherine felt indifferent about it, as if she did not care. He would be useful to papa; he would be a friend to Stella—he would not oppose her in anything she might do for her sister. Why not he as well as another? It did not seem to matter so very much, though she had once thought, as girls do, that it mattered a great deal. There was Charlie Somers, for whom (though without intending it) Stella had sacrificed everything. Was he better worth than Dr. Burnet? Certainly, no. Why not, then, Dr. Burnet as well as another? Katherine said to herself. It was curious how little emotion she felt—her heart did not beat quicker, her breath came with a kind of languid calm. There were no particular objections that she knew of. He was a good man; there was nothing against him. Few country doctors were so well bred, and scarcely anyone so kind. His appearance was not against him either. These were all negatives, but they seemed to give her a certain satisfaction in the weariness of soul. Nothing against him, not even in her own mind. On the contrary, she approved of Dr. Burnet. He was kind, not only to her, but to all. He spared no trouble for his patients, and would face the storm, hurrying out in the middle of the night for any suffering person who sent for him without hesitation or delay. Who else could say the same thing? Perhaps the Rector would do it too if he were called upon. But Katherine was not disposed to discuss with herself the Rector’s excellencies, whereas it seemed necessary to put before herself, though languidly, all that she had heard to the advantage of the doctor. And how many good things she had heard! Everybody spoke well of him, from the poorest people up to Lady Jane, who had as good as pointed him out in so many words as the man whom Katherine should marry. Was she about to marry him? Had it somehow been all settled?—though she could not recollect how or when.
She was tired by the long strain of her father’s illness, notso much by absolute nursing, though she had taken her share of that (but Mr. Tredgold, as has been said, preferred a nurse who was paid for her work on the ordinary business principle), as by the lengthened tension of mind and body, the waiting and watching and suspense. This no doubt was one great reason for her languid, almost passive, condition. Had Dr. Burnet spoken then she would have acquiesced quite calmly, and indeed she was not at all sure whether it might not have so happened already.
So she pursued her musing with her face towards the lawn and the shrubberies. But when Katherine turned to go back along the edge of the cliff towards the house, her eyes, as she raised them, were suddenly struck almost as by a blow, by the great breadth of the sea and the sky, the moving line of the coast, the faint undulation of the waves, the clouds upon the horizon white in flakes of snowy vapour against the unruffled blue. It was almost as if someone had suddenly stretched a visionary hand out of the distance, and struck her lightly, quickly, to bring her back to herself. She stood still for a moment with a shiver, confused, astonished, awakened—and then shook herself as if to shake something, some band, some chain, some veil that had been wound round her, away.
Butwhether the result of this awaking would have told for anything in Katherine’s life had it not been for another incident which happened shortly after, it would be impossible to say. She forgot the impression of that sudden stroke of nature, and when she went back to her father, who was a little excited by his first outing, there revived again so strong an impression of the need there was of the doctor and his care, and the importance of his position in the house as a sort ofdeus ex machinâ, always ready to be appealed to and to perform miracles at pleasure, that the former state of acquiescence in whatever he might demand as the price of his services, came back strongly to her mind, and the possibility was that there would have been no hesitation on her part, though no enthusiasm, had he seized the opportunity during one of the days of that week, and put his fate to the touch. But a number of small incidents supervened; and there is a kind of luxury in delay in these circumstances which gains upon a man, the pleasure of the unacknowledged, the delightful sense of feeling that he is sure of a favourable response, without all the responsibilities which a favourable response immediately brings into being. The moment that he asked and Katherine consented, there would be the father to face, and all the practical difficulties of the position to be met. He would have to take “the bull by the horns.” This is a very different thing from those preliminaries, exciting but delightful, which form the first step. To declare your sentiments to the girl you love, to receive that assent and answering confession of which you are almost sure—only so much uncertainty in it as makes the moment thrilling with an alarm and timidity which is moresweet than confidence. That is one thing; but what follows is quite another; the doctor a little “funked,” as he himself said, that next important step. There was no telling what might come out of that old demon of a father. Sometimes Dr. Burnet thought that he was being encouraged, that he had become so necessary to Mr. Tredgold that the idea of securing his attendance would be jumped at by the old man; and sometimes he thought otherwise. He was, in fact, though a brave man, frightened of the inevitable second step. And therefore he let the matter linger, finding much delight in the happy unconsciousness that he was risking nothing, that she understood him and all his motives, and that his reward was certain, when he did make up his mind to ask for it at last.
Things were in this condition when one day, encouraged by her father’s improvement, Katherine went to town, as everybody in the country is bound to do, to go through that process which is popularly known as “shopping.” In previous years Stella’s enterprise and activity had provided clothes for every season as much in advance as fashion permitted, so that there never was any sudden necessity. But Katherine had never been energetic in these ways, and the result was that the moment arrived, taking her a little unawares, in which even Katherine was forced to see that she had nothing to wear. She went to town, accordingly, one morning in the beginning of June, attended by the maid who was no more than an elderly promoted upper housemaid, who had succeeded Stevens. Katherine had not felt herself equal to a second Stevens entirely for herself, indeed, she had been so well trained by Stella, who always had need of the services of everybody about her, that she was very well able to dispense with a personal attendant altogether. But it was an admirable and honourable retirement for Hannah to give up the more active work of the household and to become Miss Katherine’s maid, and her conscientious efforts to fulfil the duties of her new position were entertaining at least. A more perfect guardian, if any guardian had been necessary, of all the decorums could not have been than was this highly respectableperson who accompanied her young mistress to London with a sense of having a great responsibility upon her shoulders. As a matter of fact, no guardian being in the least necessary, it was Katherine who took care of her, which came to exactly the same thing and answered all purposes.
The train was on this occasion rather full, and the young lady and her maid were put into a compartment in which were already two passengers, a lady and gentleman, at the other extremity of the carriage, to all appearance together. But it soon turned out that they were not together. The lady got out at one of the little stations at which they stopped, and then, with a little hesitation, the gentleman rose and came over to the side on which Katherine was. “It is long since we have met,” he said in a voice which had a thrill in it, noticeable even to Hannah, who instinctively retired a little, leaving the place opposite Katherine at his disposition (a thing, I need not remark, which was quite improper, and ought not to have been done. Hannah could not for a long time forgive herself, when she thought it over, but for the moment she was dominated by the voice). “I have not seen you,” he repeated, with a little faltering, “for years. Is it permitted to say a word to you, Miss Tredgold?”
The expression of his eyes was not a thing to be described. It startled Katherine all the more that she had of late been exposed to glances having a similar meaning, yet not of that kind. She looked at him almost with a gasp. “Mr. Stanford! I thought you were in India?”
“So I was,” he said, “and so I am going to be in a few months more. What a curious unexpected happi—I mean occurrence—that I should have met you—quite by accident.”
“Oh yes, quite by accident,” she said.
“I have been in the island,” he said, “and near Sliplin for a day or two, where it would have been natural to see you, and then when I was coming away in desp—without doing so, what a chance that of all places in the world you should have been put into this carriage.”
He seemed so astonished at this that it was very difficult to get over it. Katherine took it with much more composure, and yet her heart had begun to beat at the first sound of his voice.
He asked her a great many questions about her father, about Stella; even, timidly, about herself, though it soon became apparent that this was not from any need of information. He had heard about Stella’s marriage, “down there,” with a vague indication of the point at which their journey began; and that Mr. Tredgold had been ill, and that—— But he did not end that sentence. It was easily to be perceived that he had acquired the knowledge somewhere that Katherine was still—Katherine—and took a great satisfaction in the fact. And then he began to tell her about himself. He had done very well, better than could have been expected. He had now a very good appointment, and his chief was very kind to him. “There are no fortunes to be made now in India—or, at least, not such as we used to hear were once made. The life is different altogether. It is not a long martyrdom and lakhs of rupees, but a very passable existence and frequent holidays home. Better that, I think.”
“Surely much better,” said Katherine.
“I think so. And then there are the hills—Simla, and so forth, which never were thought of in my father’s time. They had to make up their minds and put up with everything. We have many alleviations—the ladies have especially,” he added, with a look that said a great deal more. Why should he add by his looks so much importance to that fact? And how was it that Katherine, knowing nothing of the life in India, took up his meaning in the twinkling of an eye?
“But the ladies,” she said, “don’t desert the plains where their—their husbands are, I hope, to find safety for themselves on the hills?”
“I did not mean that,” he said, with a flush of colour all over his brown face (Katherine compared it, in spite of herself, to Dr. Burnet’s recent blush, with conclusions not favourable to the latter). “I mean that it is such a comfort to mento think that—what is most precious to them in the world—may be placed in safety at any critical moment.”
“I wonder if that is Charlie Somers’ feeling,” Katharine said with an involuntary laugh. It was not that she meant to laugh at Charlie Somers; it was rather the irrestrainable expression of a lightening and rising of her own heart.
“No doubt every man must,” James Stanford said.
And they went on talking, he telling her many things which she did not fully understand or even receive into her mind at all, her chief consciousness being that this man—her first love—was the only one who had felt what a true lover should, the only one to whom her heart made any response. She did not even feel this during the course of that too rapid journey. She felt only an exhilaration, a softening and expansion of her whole being. She could not meet his eyes as she met Dr. Burnet’s; they dazzled her; she could not tell why. Her heart beat, running on with a tremulous accompaniment to those words of his, half of which her intelligence did not master at the time, but which came to her after by degrees. He told her that he was soon going back to India, and that he would like to go and see Stella, to let her know by an independent testimony how her sister was. Might he write and give her his report? Might he come—this was said hurriedly as the train dashed into the precincts of London, and the end of the interview approached—to Sliplin again one day before he left on the chance of perhaps seeing her—to inquire for Mr. Tredgold—to take anything she might wish to send to Lady Somers? Katherine felt the flush on her own face to be overwhelming. Ah, how different from that half-angry confused colour which she had been conscious of when the Rector offered his congratulations!
“Oh no,” she said with a little shake of her head, and a sound of pathos in her voice of which she was quite conscious; “my father is ill; he is better now, but his condition is serious. I am very—sorry—I am distressed—to say so—but he must not be disturbed, he must not. I have escaped for a little to-day. I—had to come. But at home I am altogethertaken up by papa. I cannot let you—lose your time—take the trouble—of coming for nothing. Oh, excuse me—I cannot——” Katherine said.
And he made no reply, he looked at her, saying a thousand things with his eyes. And then there came the jar of the arrival. He handed her out, he found a cab for her, performing all the little services that were necessary, and then he held her hand a moment while he said goodbye.
“May I come and see you off? May I be here when you come back?”
“Oh, no, no!” Katherine said, she did not know why. “I don’t know when we go back; it perhaps might not be till to-morrow—it might not be till—that is, no, you must not come, Mr. Stanford—I—cannot help it,” she said.
Still he held her hand a moment. “It must still be hope then, nothing but hope,” he said.
She drove away through London, leaving him, seeing his face wherever she looked. Ah, that was what the others had wanted to look like but had not been able—that was—all that one wanted in this world; not the Tredgold money, nor the fortune of the great City young man, nor the Rector’s dignity, nor Dr. Burnet’s kindness—nothing but that, it did not matter by what accompanied. What a small matter to be poor, to go away to the end of the earth, to be burned by the sun and wasted by the heat, to endure anything, so long as you hadthat. She trembled and was incoherent when she tried to speak. She forgot where to tell the cabman to go, and said strange things to Hannah, not knowing what she said. Her heart beat and beat, as if it was the only organ she possessed, as if she were nothing but one pulse, thumping, thumping with a delicious idiocy, caring for nothing, and thinking of nothing. Thinking of nothing, though rays and films of thought flew along in the air and made themselves visible to her for a moment. Perhaps she should never see him again; she had nothing to do with him, there was no link between them; and yet, so to speak, there was nothing else but him in the world. She saw the tall tower of the Parliament in a mist that somehowencircled James Stanford’s face, and broad Whitehall was full of that vapour in which any distinctions of other feature, of everything round about her, was lost.
How curious an effect to be produced upon anyone so reasonable, so sensible as Katherine! After a long time, she did not know how long, she was recalled to common day by her arrival at the dressmaker’s where she had to get out and move and speak, all of which she seemed to do in a dream. And then the day turned round and she had to think of her journey back again. Why did she tell him not to come? It would have harmed nobody if he had come. Her father had not forbidden her to see him, and even had he forbidden her, a girl who was of age, who was nearly twenty-four, who had after all a life of her own to think of, should she have refrained from seeing him on that account? All her foundations were shaken, not so much by feeling of her own as by the sight and certainty of his feeling. She would not desert her father, never, never run away from him like Stella. But at least she might have permitted herself to see James Stanford again. She said to herself, “I may never marry him; but now I shall marry nobody else.” And why had she not let him come, why might they not at least have understood each other? The influence of this thought was that Katherine did not linger for the afternoon train, to which Stanford after all did go, on the chance of seeing her, of perhaps travelling with her again, but hurried off by the very first, sadly disappointing poor Hannah, who had looked forward to the glory of lunching with her young mistress in some fine pastrycook’s as Stevens had often described. Far from this, Hannah was compelled to snatch a bun at the station, in the hurry Miss Katherine was in; and why should she have hurried? There was no reason in the world. To be in London, and yet not in London, to see nothing, not even the interior of Verey’s, went to Hannah’s heart. Nor was Katherine’s much more calm when she began to perceive that her very impetuosity had probably been the reason why she did not see him again; for who could suppose that she who had spoken of perhaps notgoing till to-morrow, should have fled back again in an hour, by a slow train in which nobody who could help it ever went?
By that strange luck which so often seems to regulate human affairs, Dr. Burnet chose this evening of all others for the explanation of his sentiments. He paid Mr. Tredgold an evening visit, and found him very well; and then he went out to join Katherine, whom he saw walking on the path that edged the cliff. It was a beautiful June evening, serene and sweet, still light with the lingering light of day, though the moon was already high in the sky. There was no reason any longer why Dr. Burnet should restrain his feelings. His patient was well; there was no longer any indecorum, anything inappropriate, in speaking to Katherine of what she must well know was nearest to his heart. He, too, had been conscious of the movement in the air—the magnetic communication from him to her on the day of Mr. Tredgold’s first outing, when they had met the Rector, and he had congratulated them. To Katherine it had seemed almost as if in some way unknown to herself everything had been settled between them, but Dr. Burnet knew different. He knew that nothing had been settled, that no words nor pledge had passed between them; but he had little doubt what the issue would be. He felt that he had the matter in his own hands, that he had only to speak and she to reply. It was a foregone conclusion, nothing wanting but the hand and seal.
Katherine had scarcely got beyond the condition of dreaming in which she had spent the afternoon. She was a little impatient when she saw him approaching. She did not want her thoughts to be disturbed. Her thoughts were more delightful to her than anything else at this moment, and she half resented the appearance of the doctor, whom her mind had forsaken as if he had never been. The dreaming state in which she was, the preoccupation with one individual interest is a cruel condition of mind. At another moment she would have read Dr. Burnet’s meaning in his eyes, and would have been prepared at least for what was coming—she who knew so wellwhat was coming, who had but a few days ago acquiesced in what seemed to be fate. But now, when he began to speak, Katherine was thunderstruck. A sort of rage sprang up in her heart. She endeavoured to stop him, to interrupt the words on his lips, which was not only cruel but disrespectful to a man who was offering her his best, who was laying himself, with a warmth which he had scarcely known to be in him, at her feet. He was surprised at his own ardour, at the fire with which he made his declaration, and so absorbed in that that he did not for the first moment see how with broken exclamations and lifted hands she was keeping him off.
“Oh, don’t, doctor! Oh, don’t say so, don’t say so!” were the strange words that caught his ear at last; and then he shook himself up, so to speak, and saw her standing beside him in the gathering dimness of the twilight, her face not shining with any sweetness of assent, but half convulsed with pain and shame, her hands held up in entreaty, her lips giving forth these words, “Oh, don’t say so!”
It was his turn to be struck dumb. He drew up before her with a sudden pause of consternation.
“What?” he cried—“what?” not believing his ears.
And thus they stood for a moment speechless, both of them. She had stopped him in the middle of his love tale, which he had told better and with more passion than he was himself sensible of. She had stopped him, and now she did not seem to have another word to say.
“It is my anxiety which is getting too much for me,” he said. “You didn’t say that, Katherine—not that? You did not mean to interrupt me—to stop me? No. It is only that I am too much in earnest—that I am frightening myself——”
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” she cried, instinctively putting her hands together. “It is I who am to blame. Oh, do not be angry with me. Let us part friends. Don’t—don’t say that any more!”
“Say what?—that I love you, that I want you to be my wife? Katherine, I have a right to say it! You have knownfor a long time that I was going to say it. I have been silent because of—for delicacy, for love’s sake; but you have known. I know that you have known!” he cried almost violently, though in a low voice.
She had appealed to him like a frightened girl; now she had to collect her forces as a woman, with her dignity to maintain. “I will not contradict you,” she said. “I cannot; it is true. I can only ask you to forgive me. How could I stop you while you had not spoken? Oh no, I will not take that excuse. If it had been last night it might have been otherwise, but to-day I know better. I cannot—it is impossible! Don’t—oh don’t let us say any more.”
“There is a great deal more to be said!” he cried. “Impossible! How is it impossible? Last night it would have been possible, but to-day—— You are playing with me, Katherine! Why should it be impossible to-day?”
“Not from anything in you, Dr. Burnet,” she said; “from something in myself.”
“From what in yourself? Katherine, I tell you you are playing with me! I deserve better at your hands.”
“You deserve—everything!” she cried, “and I—I deserve nothing but that you should scorn me. But it is not my fault. I have found out. I have had a long time to think; I have seen things in a new light. Oh, accept what I say! It is impossible—impossible!”
“Yet it was possible yesterday, and it may be possible to-morrow?”
“No, never again!” she said.
“Do you know,” said the doctor stonily, “that you have led me on, that you have given me encouragement, that you have given me almost a certainty?—and now to cast me off, without sense, without reason——”
The man’s lip quivered under the sting of this disappointment and mortification. He began not to know what he was saying.
“Let us not say any more—oh, let us not say any more! That was unkind that you said. I could give you no certainty,for I had none; and to-day—I know that it is impossible! Dr. Burnet, I cannot say any more.”
“But, Miss Tredgold,” he cried in his rage, “there is a great deal more to be said! I have a right to an explanation! I have a right to—— Good heavens, do you mean that nothing is to come of it after all?” he cried.
Itturned out that there was indeed a great deal more to be said. Dr. Burnet came back after the extraordinary revelation of that evening. He left Katherine on the cliff in the silvery light of the lingering day, with all the tender mists of her dream dispersed, to recognise the dreadful fact that she had behaved very badly to a man who had done nothing but good to her. It was for this he had been so constant night and day. No man in the island had been so taken care of, so surrounded with vigilant attention, as old Mr. Tredgold—not for the fees he gave certainly, which were no more than those of any other man, not for love of him, but for Katherine. And now Katherine refused to pay the price—nay, more, stood up against any such plea—as if he had no right to ask her or to be considered more than another man. Dr. Burnet would not accept his dismissal, he would not listen to her prayer to say no more of it. He would not believe that it was true, or that by reasoning and explanation it might not yet be made right.
There were two or three very painful interviews in that corner of the drawing-room where Katherine had established herself, and which had so many happy associations to him. He reminded her of how he had come there day after day during the dreary winter, of that day of the snowstorm, of other days, during which things had been said and allusions made in which now there was no meaning. Sometimes he accused her vehemently of having played hot and cold with him, of having led him on, of having permitted him up to the very last to believe that she cared for him. And to some of these accusations Katherine did not know how to reply. She had not led him on, but she had permitted a great deal to be implied if not said,and she had acquiesced. She could not deny that she had acquiesced even in her own mind. If she had confessed to him how little of her heart was in it at any time, or that it was little more than a mental consent as to something inevitable, that would have been even less flattering to him than her refusal; this was an explanation she could not make. And her whole being shrank from a disclosure of that chance meeting on the railway and the self-revelation it brought with it. As a matter of fact the meeting on the railway had no issue any more than the other. Nothing came of it. There was nothing to tell that could be received as a reason for her conduct. She could only stand silent and pale, and listen to his sometimes vehement reproaches, inalterable only in the fact that it could not be.
There had been a very stormy interview between them one of those evenings after he had left her father. He was convinced at last that it was all over, that nothing could be done, and the man’s mortification and indignant sense of injury had subsided into a more profound feeling, into the deeper pang of real affection rejected and the prospects of home and happiness lost.
“You have spoiled my life,” he had said to her. “I have nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for. Here I am and here I shall be, the same for ever—a lonely man. Home will never mean anything to me but dreary rooms to work in and rest in; and you have done it all, not for any reason, not with any motive, in pure wantonness.” It was almost more than he could bear.
“Forgive me,” Katherine said. She did not feel guilty to that extent, but she would not say so. She was content to put up with the imputation if it gave him any comfort to call her names.
And then he had relented. After all had been said that could be said, he had gone back again to the table by which she was sitting, leaning her head on her arm and half covering it with her hand. He put his own hand on the same table and stooped a little towards her.
“All this,” he said with difficulty, “will of course make no difference. You will send for me when I am wanted for your father all the same.”
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” was all she said.
“Of course,” he said almost roughly, “you will send for me night or day all the same. It makes no difference. You may forsake me, but I will not forsake you.” And with that, without a word of leavetaking or any courtesy, he went away.
Was that how she was to be represented to herself and the world now and for ever? Katherine sat with her head on her hand and her thoughts were bitter. It seemed hard, it seemed unjust, yet what could she say? She had not encouraged this man to love her or build his hopes upon her, but yet she had made no stand against it; she had permitted a great deal which, if she had not been so much alone, could not have been. Was it her fault that she was alone? Could she have been so much more than honest, so presumptuous and confident in her power, as to bid him pause, to reject him before he asked her? These self-excusing thoughts are self-accusing, as everybody knows. All her faults culminated in the fact that whereas she was dully acquiescent before, after that going to London the thing had become impossible. From that she could not save herself—it was the only truth. One day the engagement between them was a thing almost consented to and settled; next day it was a thing that could not be, and that through no fault in the man. He had done nothing to bring about such a catastrophe. It was no wonder that he was angry, that he complained loudly of being deceived and forsaken. It was altogether her fault, a fault fantastic, without any reason, which nothing she could say would justify. And indeed how could she say anything? It was nothing—a chance encounter, a conversation with her maid sitting by, and nothing said that all the world might not hear.
There was the further sting in all this that, as has been said, nothing had come, nothing probably would ever come, of that talk. Time went onand there was no sign—not so much as a note to say—— What was there to say? Nothing! And yet Katherine had not been able to help a faint expectation that something would come of it. As a matter of fact Stanford came twice to Sliplin with the hope of seeing Katherine again, but he did not venture to go to the house where his visits had been forbidden, and either Katherine did not go out that day or an evil fate directed her footsteps in a different direction. The second time Mr. Tredgold was ill again and nothing could possibly be seen of her. He went to Mrs. Shanks’, whom he knew, but that lady was not encouraging. She told him that Katherine was all but engaged to Dr. Burnet, that he had her father’s life in his hands, and that nothing could exceed his devotion, which Katherine was beginning to return. Mrs. Shanks did not like lovers to be unhappy; if she could have married Katherine to both of them she would have done so; but that being impossible, it was better that the man should be unhappy who was going away, not he who remained. And this was how it was that Katherine saw and heard no more of the man whose sudden appearance had produced so great an effect upon her, and altered at a touch what might have been the current of her life.
It was not only Dr. Burnet who avenged his wrongs upon her. Lady Jane came down in full panoply of war to ask what Katherine meant by it.
“Yes, you did encourage him,” she said. “I have seen it with my own eyes—if it were no more than that evening at my own house. He asked you to go into the conservatory with him on the most specious pretext, with his intentions as plainly written in his face as ever man’s were. And you went like a lamb, though you must have known——”
“But, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “he said nothing to me, whatever his intentions may have been.”
“No,” said Lady Jane with a little snort of displeasure; “I suppose you snubbed him when you got him there, and he was frightened to speak. That is exactly what I object to. You have blown hot and blown cold, made him feel quite sure of you, and then knocked him down again like a ninepin. All that may be forgiven if you take a man at the end. But torefuse him when it comes to the point at last, after having played him off and on so long—it is unpardonable, Katherine, unpardonable.”
“I am very sorry,” Katherine said, though indeed Lady Jane’s reproaches did not touch her at all. “It is a fact that I might have consented a few days ago; no, not happily, but with a kind of dull acquiescence because everybody expected it.”
“Then you allow that everybody had a right to expect it?”
“I said nothing about any right. You did all settle for me it appears without any will of mine; but I saw on thinking that it was impossible. One has after all to judge for oneself. I don’t suppose that Dr. Burnet would wish a woman to—to marry him—because her friends wished it, Lady Jane.”
“He would take you on any terms, Katherine, after all that has come and gone.”
“No one shall have me on any terms,” cried Katherine. “It shall be because I wish it myself or not at all.”
“You have a great opinion of yourself,” said Lady Jane. “Under such a quiet exterior I never saw a young woman more self-willed. You ought to think of others a little. Dr. Burnet is far the best man you can marry in so many different points of view. Everybody says he has saved your father’s life. He is necessary, quite necessary, to Mr. Tredgold; and how are you to call him in as a doctor after disappointing him so? And then there is Stella. He would have done justice to Stella.”
“It will be strange,” cried Katherine, getting up from her seat in her agitation, “if I cannot do justice to Stella without the intervention of Dr. Burnet—or any man!”
Lady Jane took this action as a dismissal, and rose up, too, with much solemnity. “You will regret this step you have taken,” she said, “Katherine, not once but all your life.”
The only person who did not take a similar view was the Rector, upon whom the news, which of course spread in the same incomprehensible way as his own failure had done, had a very consolatory effect. It restored him, indeed, to much ofhis original comfort and self-esteem to know that another man had been treated as badly as himself—more badly indeed, for at least there had been no blowing hot and cold with him. He said that Miss Katherine Tredgold was a singular young lady, and evidently, though she had the grace to say little about them, held some of the advanced ideas of the time. “She feels herself called to avenge the wrongs of her sex,” he said with a bitterness which was mitigated by the sense that another man was the present sufferer. But from most of her neighbours she received nothing but disapproval—disapproval which was generally unexpressed in words, for Katherine gave little opening for verbal remonstrance, but was not less apparent for that.
Miss Mildmay was, I think, the only one who took approvingly something of the same view. “If she is capricious,” that lady said, “there is plenty of caprice on the other side; loving and riding away and so forth; let them just try how they like it for once! I don’t object to a girl showing a little spirit, and doing to them as others have been done by. It is a very good lesson to the gentlemen.”
“Oh, Ruth Mildmay!” said Mrs. Shanks half weeping; “as if it could ever be a good thing to make a man unhappy for life!”
Mrs. Shanks felt that she knew more about it than anyone else, which would have been delightful but for the other consciousness that her intervention had done no good. She had not served Dr. Burnet, but she had sacrificed the other lover. And she had her punishment in not daring to whisper even to her nearest friend her special knowledge, or letting it be seen she knew—which but for her action in sending young Stanford away would have been a greater satisfaction than words can tell.
The result was that Katherine had a season of great discomfort and even unhappiness. She had freed herself from that passive submissiveness to fate into which she had been about to fall, but she had got nothing better in its place. She thought that he could not care much, since he had never eventried to see or communicate with her, and she was ashamed of the rush with which her heart had gone out to him. She had not, she hoped, betrayed it, but she was herself aware of it, which was bad enough. And now that momentary episode was over and nothing had come of it—it was as if it had not been.
After this there came a long period of suspense and waiting in Katharine’s life. Her father had one attack of illness after another, through all of which she was, if not the guiding spirit, at least the head and superintendent of all that went on in the house. The character of the house had changed when Stella left it. It changed still more now. It became a sick house, the home of an invalid. Even the city people, the old money-making friends, ceased to come from Saturday to Monday when it became known among them that old Mr. Tredgold was subject to a seizure at any time, and might be taken ill at last with all his friends sitting round him. This is not a thing that anyone likes to face, especially people who were, as old as he was, and perhaps, they could not tell, might be liable to seizures too. When this occasional society failed at the Cliff all other kinds of society failed too. Few people came to the house—a decorous caller occasionally, but nothing more. It was a very dull life for Katherine, everybody allowed, and some kind people held periodical consultations with each other as to what could be done for her, how she could be delivered from the monotony and misery of her life; but what could anyone do? The rector and the doctor were the most prominent men in Sliplin. A girl who had ill-treated them both could only be asked out with extreme discretion, for it was almost impossible to go anywhere without meeting one or other of these gentlemen. But the ladies might have spared themselves these discussions, for whatever invitations Katherine received she accepted none of them. She would not go to Steephill again, though Lady Jane was magnanimous and asked her. She would go nowhere. It showed that she had a guilty conscience, people said; and yet that it must be very dull for Katherine was what everybody lamenting allowed.
She had trouble, too, from another quarter, which was perhaps worst of all. As the months, went on and ran into years, Stella’s astonishment that she was not recalled, her complaints, her appeals and denunciation of her sister as able to help her if she would do so, became manifold and violent. She accused Katherine of the most unlikely things, of shutting up their father, and preventing him from carrying out his natural impulses—of being her, Stella’s, enemy when she had so often pledged herself to be her friend, even of having encouraged her, Stella, in the rash step she had taken, with intent to profit by it, and build her own fortune on her sister’s ruin. Any stranger who had read these letters would have supposed that Katherine had been the chief agent in Stella’s elopement—that it had been she that had arranged everything, and flattered Stella with hopes of speedy recall, only to betray her. Katherine was deeply moved by this injustice and unkindness at first, but soon she came to look at them with calm, and to take no notice of the outcries which were like outcries of a hurt child. There were so many things that called forth pity that the reproaches were forgotten. Stella’s life—which had been so triumphant and gay, and which she had intended and expected should be nothing but a course of triumph and gaiety—had fallen into very different lines from any she had anticipated. After she had upbraided her sister for keeping her out of her rights, and demanded with every threat she could think of their restoration, and that Katherine should conspire no more against her, her tone would sink into one of entreaty, so that the epistle which had begun like an indictment ended like a begging letter. Stella wanted money, always money; money to keep her position, money to pay her debts, money at last for what she called the common necessaries of life. There was scarcely a mail which did not bring over one of these appeals, which tore Katherine’s heart. Though she was the daughter of so rich a man, she had very little of her own. Her allowance was very moderate, for Mr. Tredgold, though he was liberal enough, loved to be cajoled and flattered out of his money, as Stella had done—an art which Katherine hadnever possessed. She had a little from her mother, not enough to be called a fortune, and this she sent almost entirely to her sister. She sent the greater part of her allowance to Lady Somers, content to confine herself to the plainest dress, in order to satisfy the wants of one who had always had so many wants. It was thus that her best years, the years of her brightest bloom and what ought to have been the most delightful of her life, passed drearily away.