Theregiment had been six years in India and was ordered home before that lingering and perpetually-recurring malady of Mr. Tredgold’s came to an end. It had come and gone so often—each seizure passing off in indeed a reduced condition of temporary relief and comfort, but still always in a sort of recovery—that the household had ceased to be alarmed by them as at first. He was a most troublesome patient, and all had to be on the alert when he was ill, from his personal attendant down to the grooms, who might at a moment’s notice be sent scouring over the country after the doctor, without whom the old man did not think he could breathe when his attacks came on, and this notwithstanding the constant presence of the professional nurse, who was now a regular inmate; but the certainty that he would “come round” had by this time got finally established in the house. This gave a sense of security, but it dispelled the not altogether unpleasant solemnity of excitement with which a household of servants await the end of an illness which may terminate in death. There was nothing solemn about it at all—only another of master’s attacks!—and even Katherine was now quite accustomed to be called up in the middle of the night, or sent for to her father’s room at any moment, as the legitimate authority, without any thrill of alarm as to how things might end. Nobody was afraid of his life, until suddenly the moment came when the wheel was broken at the cistern and the much frayed thread of life snapped at last.
These had been strange years. Fortunately the dark times that pass over us come only one day at a time, and we are not aware that they are to last for years, or enabled to grasp them and consent that so much of life should be spent in that way.It would no doubt have appalled Katherine, or any other young woman, to face steadily so long a period of trouble and give herself up to live it through, consenting that all the brightness and almost all the interest of existence should drop from her at the moment when life is usually at its fairest. She would have done it all the same, for what else could she do? She could not leave her father to go through all these agonies of ending life by himself, even though she was of so little use to him and he had apparently such small need of natural affection or support. Her place was there under all circumstances, and no inducement would have made her leave it; but when Katherine looked back upon that course of years it appalled her as it had not done when it was in course of passing day by day. She was twenty-three when it began and she was twenty-nine when it came to an end. She had been old for her age at the first, and she was still older for her age in outward appearance, though younger in heart, at the last—younger in heart, for there had been no wear and tear of actual life any more than if she had spent these years in a convent, and older because of the seclusion from society and even the severe self-restraint in the matter of dress, which, however, was not self-restraint so much as submission to necessity, for you cannot do two things with one sum of money, as many a poor housekeeper has to ascertain daily. Dressmakers’ bills for Katherine were not consistent with remittances to Stella, and it was naturally the least important thing that was sacrificed. She had accordingly lost a great deal of her bloom and presented an appearance less fair, less graceful—perhaps less loveable—to the eyes of Dr. Burnet as she rose from the lonely fireside in her black dress, slim and straight, slimmer perhaps and straighter than of old—pale, without either reflection or ornament about her, looking, he thought, five-and-thirty, without any elasticity, prematurely settled down into the rigid outlines of an old maid, when he went into the well-known drawing-room in an October evening to tell her that at last the dread visitor, anticipated yet not believed in for so long, was now certainly at hand.
Dr. Burnet had behaved extremely well during all these years. He had not been like the rector. He had borne no malice, though he had greater reason to do so had he chosen. He never now made use of her Christian name and never allowed himself to be betrayed into any sign of intimacy, never lingered in her presence, never even looked at the tea on the little tea-table over which he had so often spent pleasant moments. He was now severely professional, giving her his account of his patient in the most succinct phrases and using medical terms, which in the long course of her father’s illness Katherine had become acquainted with. But he had been as attentive to Mr. Tredgold as ever, people said; he had never neglected him, never hesitated to come at his call night or day, though he was aware that he could do little or nothing, and that the excellent nurse in whose hands the patient was was fully capable of caring for him; yet he always came, putting a point of honour in his sedulous attendance, that it never might be said of him that he had neglected the father on account of the daughter’s caprice and failure. It might be added that Mr. Tredgold was a little revenue to the doctor—a sort of landed estate producing so much income yearly and without fail—but this was a mean way of accounting for his perfect devotion to his duty. He had never failed, however other persons might fail.
He came into the drawing-room very quietly and unannounced. He was not himself quite so gallant a figure as he had been when Katherine had left himplanté là; he was a little stouter, not so perfect in his outline. They had both suffered more or less from the progress of years. She was thinner, paler, and he fuller, rougher—almost, it might be said, coarser—from five years more of exposure to all-weathers and constant occupation, without any restraining influence at home to make him think of his dress, of the training of his beard, and other small matters. It had been a great loss to him, even in his profession, that he had not married. With a wife, and such a wife as Katherine Tredgold, he would have been avowedly the only doctor, the first in the island, in a position of absolute supremacy. As it was a quite inferior person, whowas a married man, ran him hard, although not fit to hold a candle to Dr. Burnet. And this, too, he set down more or less to Katherine’s account. It is to be hoped that he did not think of all this on the particular evening the events of which I take so long to come to. And yet I am afraid he did think of it, or at least was conscious of it all in the midst of the deeper consciousness of his mission to-night. He could scarcely tell whether it was relief or pain he was bringing to her—a simpler or a more complex existence—and the sense of that enigma mingled with all his other feelings. She rose up to meet him as he came in. The room was dimly lighted; the fire was not bright. There was no chill in the air to make it necessary. And I don’t know what it was which made Katherine divine the moment she saw the doctor approaching through the comparative gloom of the outer room that he was bringing her news of something important. Mr. Tredgold had not been worse than usual in the beginning of this attack; the nurse had treated it just as usual, not more seriously than before. But she knew at once by the sound of the doctor’s step, by something in the atmosphere about him, that the usual had departed for ever and that what he came to tell her of was nothing less than death. She rose up to meet him with a sort of awe, her lips apart, her breath coming quick.
“I see,” he said, “that you anticipate what I am going to say.”
“No,” she said with a gasp, “I know of nothing—nothing more than usual.”
“That is all over,” he answered with a little solemnity. “I am sorry I can give you so little hope—this time I fear it is the end.”
“The end!” she cried, “the end!” She had known it from the first moment of his approach, but this did not lessen the shock. She dropped again upon her seat, and sat silent contemplating that fact—which no reasoning, no explanation, could get over. The end—this morning everything as usual, all the little cares, the hundred things he wanted, the constantservice—and afterwards nothing, silence, stillness, every familiar necessity gone. Katherine’s heart seemed to stand still, the wonder of it, the terror of it, the awe—it was too deep and too appalling for tears.
After awhile she inquired, in a voice that did not seem her own, “Is he very ill? May I go to him now?”
“He is not more ill than you have seen him before. You can go to him, certainly, but there are some things that you must take into consideration, Miss Tredgold. He is not aware of any change—he is not at all anxious about himself. He thinks this is just the same as the other attacks. If you think it necessary that he should be made aware of his condition, either because of his worldly affairs, or—any other——” Dr. Burnet was accustomed to death-beds. He was not overawed like Katherine, and there seemed something ludicrous to him in the thought of old Tredgold, an old man of the earth, earthly, having—other affairs.
Katherine looked up at him, her eyes looking twice as large as usual in the solemnity of their trouble and awe. There seemed nothing else in the room but her eyes looking at him with an appeal, to which he had no answer to give. “Would it make any difference—now?” she said.
“I cannot tell what your views may be on that subject. Some are very eager that the dying should know—some think it better not to disturb them. It will do him no harm physically to be told; but you must be the judge.”
“I have not thought of it—as I ought,” she said. “Oh, Dr. Burnet, give me your opinion, give me your own opinion! I do not seem able to think.”
“It might give him a chance,” said the doctor, “to put right some wrong he might otherwise leave behind him. If what you are thinking of is that, he might put himself right in any spiritual point of view—at this last moment.”
Katherine rose up as if she were blind, feeling before her with her hands. Her father, with all his imperfections—with nothing that was not imperfection or worse than imperfection—with a mind that had room for nothing but the lowest elements,who had never thought of anything higher, never asked himself whither he was going—— She walked straight forward, not saying anything, not able to bear another word. To put himself right—at the last moment. She felt that she must hasten to him, fly to him, though she did not know, being there, what she should do.
The room was so entirely in its usual condition—the nurse settling for the night, the medicines arranged in order, the fire made up, and the nightlight ready to be lighted—that it seemed more and more impossible to realise that this night there was likely to occur something different, something that was not on the invalid’s programme. The only thing that betrayed a consciousness of any such possibility was the look which the nurse rapidly gave Katherine as she came in. “I am putting everything as usual,” she said in a whisper, “but I think you should not go to bed.” That was all—and yet out of everything thus settled and habitual around him, he was going away, going absolutely away to no one could tell where, perhaps this very night. Katherine felt herself stupefied, confounded, and helpless. He was going away all alone, with no directions, no preparations for the journey. What could she tell him of the way? Could any guide be sent with him? Could any instinct lead him? A man accustomed only to business, to the state of the stocks and the money market. Her heart began to beat so fast that it sickened her, and she was conscious of scarcely anything but its sound and the heaving of her breast.
The invalid, however, was not composed as usual. He was very restless, his eyes shining from his emaciated face. “Ah, that’s you, Katie,” he said; “it’s too late for you to be up—and the doctor back again. What brings the doctor back again? Have you any more to do to me, eh, to-night?”
“Only to make sure that you’re comfortable,” Dr. Burnet said.
“Oh, comfortable enough—but restless. I don’t seem as if I could lie still. Here, Katie, as you’re here, change me a little—that’s better—a hold of your shoulder—now I can pushmyself about. Never been restless like this before, doctor. Nervous, I suppose you think?”
“No, you’ve never been like this before,” the doctor said, with an unconsciously solemn voice.
“Oh, papa,” cried Katherine, “you are very ill; I fear you are very ill.”
“Nothing of the sort,” he cried, pushing her away by the shoulder he had grasped; “nothing the matter with me—that is, nothing out of the ordinary. Come here, you nurse. I want to lie on the other side. Nothing like a woman that knows what she is about and has her living to make by it. Dear they are—cost a lot of money—but I never begrudged money for comfort.”
“Papa,” said Katherine. What could she say? What words were possible to break this spell, this unconsciousness and ignorance? It seemed to her that he was about to fall over some dreadful precipice without knowing it, without fearing it; was it better that he should know it, that he should fear, when he was incapable of anything else? Should the acute pang of mortal alarm before be added to—whatever there might be afterwards? Wild words whirled through her head—about the great judgment seat, about the reckoning with men for what they had done, and the cry of the Prophet, “Prepare to meet thy God.” But how could this restless old man prepare for anything, turning and returning upon his bed. “Papa,” she repeated, “have you anything to say to me—nothing about—about Stella?”
He turned his face to her for a moment with the old familiar chuckle in his throat. “About Stella—oh, you will hear plenty about Stella—in time,” he said.
“Not only about Stella, papa! Oh, about other things, about—about—” she cried in a kind of despair, “about God.”
“Oh,” he said, “you think I’m going to die.” The chuckle came again, an awful sound. “I’m not; you were always a little fool. Tell her, doctor, I’m going to sleep—tuck in the clothes, nurse, and put—out—the light.”
The last words fell from him drowsily, and calm succeeded to the endless motion. There was another little murmur as of a laugh. Then the nurse nodded her head from the other side of the bed, to show that he was really going to sleep. Dr. Burnet put his hand on Katherine’s arm and drew her into the dressing-room, leaving the door open between. “It may last only a few minutes,” he said, “or it may last for ever; but we can do nothing, neither you nor I. Sit down and wait here.”
It did last for ever. The sleep at first was interrupted with little wakings, and that chuckle which had been the accompaniment of his life broke in two or three times, ghastly, with a sort of sound of triumph. And then all sound died away.
Katherine was awakened—she did not know if it was from a doze or a dream—by a touch upon her arm. The doctor stood there in his large and heavy vitality like an embodiment of life, and a faint blueness of dawn was coming in at the window. “There was no pain,” he said, “no sort of suffering or struggle. Half-past four exactly,” he had his watch in his hand. “And now, Miss Tredgold, take this and go to bed.”
“Do you mean?” Katherine cried, rising hastily, then falling back again in extreme agitation, trembling from head to foot.
“Yes, I mean it is all over, it is allwellover. Everything has been done that could be done for him. And here is your maid to take care of you; you must go to bed.”
But Katherine did not go to bed. She went downstairs to the drawing-room, her usual place, and sat by the dead fire, watching the blue light coming in at the crevices of the shutters, and listening to the steps of the doctor, quick and firm, going away upon the gravel outside. And then she went and wandered all over the house from one room to another, she could not tell why. It seemed to her that everything must have changed in that wonderful change that had come to pass without anyone being able to intervene, so noiselessly, so suddenly. She never seemed to have expectedthat. Anythingelse, it seemed to her now, might have happened but not that. Why, all the house had been full of him, all life had been full of him yesterday; there had been nothing to do but contrive what he should eat, how the temperature in the room should be kept up, how everything should be arranged for his comfort. And now he wanted nothing, nothing, nor was anything wanted for him. It did not seem to be grief that moved her so much as wonder, an intolerable pressure of surprise and perplexity that such a thing could have happened with so many about to prevent anything from happening, and that he should have been removed to some other place whom nobody could imagine to be capable of other conditions than he had here. What had he to do with the unseen, with sacred things, with heaven, with a spiritual life? Nothing, nothing, she said to herself. It was not natural, it was not possible. And yet it was true. When she at last lay down at the persuasion of Mrs. Simmons and the weeping Hannah, in the face of the new full shining day which had not risen for him, which cared for none of these things, Katherine still got no relief of sleep. She lay on her bed and stared at the light with no relief of tears either, with no sense of grief—only wondering, wondering. She had not thought of this change, although she knew that in all reason it must be coming. Still less did she think of the new world which already began to turn its dewy side to the light.
Mr. Tredgoldhad no relations to speak of, and not very many old friends. Mr. Turny the elder, who was one of Mr. Tredgold’s executors, came down for the funeral, and so did the solicitor, Mr. Sturgeon, who was the head of a great city firm, and would certainly not have spared the time had the fortune that was now to become a subject of so much interest been less great. He brought with him a shabby man, who was in his office and carried a black bag with papers, and also turned out to be Mr. Tredgold’s brother, the only other member of the family who was known. His appearance was a surprise to Katherine, who had not heard of his existence. She was aware there had been aunts, married and bearing different names, and that it was possible perhaps to find cousins with those designations, which, however, she was not acquainted with; but an uncle was a complete surprise to her. And indeed, to tell the truth, to say “uncle” to this shambling individual in the long old great-coat, which she recognised as a very ancient garment of her father’s, was not a pleasant sensation. She shrank from the lean, grey, hungry, yet humble being who evidently was very little at his ease sitting at the same table with his master, though he attempted, from time to time, to produce himself with a hesitating speech. “He was my brother, you know—I was his brother, his only brother,” which he said several times in the course of the long dreadful evening which preceded the funeral day. Katherine in compassion carried off this new and terrible relative into the drawing-room while the two men of business discoursed together. Mr. Robert Tredgold did not like to be carried off from the wine. He saw in this step precautionary measures to whichhe was accustomed, though Katharine did not even know of any occasion for precaution—and followed her sulkily, not to the drawing-room, but to that once gay little room which had been the young ladies’ room in former days. Katherine had gone back to it with a sentiment which she herself did not question or trace to its origin, but which no doubt sprang from the consciousness in her mind that Stella was on her way home, and that there was no obstacle now in the way of her return. She would have been horrified to say in words that her father was the obstacle who had been removed, and the shock and awe of death were still upon her. But secretly her heart had begun to rise at the thought of Stella, and that it would be her happy office to bring Stella home.
“It ain’t often I have the chance of a good glass of wine,” Robert Tredgold said; “your poor father was a rare judge of wine, and then you see he had always the money to spend on it. My poor brother would have given me a chance of a glass of good wine if he’d brought me here.”
“Would you like the wine brought here? I thought you would be happier,” said Katherine, “with me than with those gentlemen.”
“I don’t see,” he said, somewhat sullenly, “why I ain’t as good as they are. Turny’s made a devil o’ money, just like my poor brother, but he’s no better than us, all the same; and as for old Sturgeon, I know him well enough, I hope. My poor brother would never have let that man have all his business if it hadn’t been for me. I heard him say it myself. ‘You provide for Bob, and you shall have all as I can give you.’ Oh, he knows which side his bread’s buttered on, does Sturgeon. Many a time he’s said to me, ‘A little more o’ this, Bob Tredgold, and you shall go,’ but I knew my brother was be’ind me, bless you. I just laughed in his face. ‘Not while my brother’s to the fore,’ I’ve always said.”
“But,” said Katherine, “poor papa is not, as you say, to the fore now.”
“No; but he’s provided for me all right; he always said as he would provide for me. I haven’t, perhaps, been as steadyas I ought. He never wanted me to show along of his fine friends. But for a couple of fellows like that, that know all about me, I don’t see as I need have been stopped of a good glass of my brother’s port wine.”
“You shall not, indeed,” said Katherine, ringing the bell.
“And I say,” said this uncomfortable uncle, “you can tell them to bring the spirit case as well. I saw as there was a spirit case, with five nice bottles, and lemons and sugar, and a kettle, you know, though there ain’t nothing to set it upon as I can see in that bit of a fireplace—uncomfortable thing, all shine and glitter and no use. I daresay my poor brother had some sort of a ’ob for the hot water in any room as he sat in—I say, old gentleman, bring us——”
Katherine interposed with her orders, in haste, and turned the butler hastily away. “You must remember,” she said, “that to-night is a very sad and terrible night in this house.”
“Ah! Were they all as fond of him as that?” the brother said.
“Oh,” said Katherine, “if you are my uncle, as they say, you should stand by me and help me; for there is sure to be a great deal of trouble, however things turn out.”
“I’ll stand by you! Don’t you be afraid, you can calculate on me. I don’t mind a bit what I say to old Sturgeon nor Turny neither, specially as I know he’s provided for me, my poor brother ’as, he always said as he would. I don’t consider myself in old Sturgeon’s office not from this day. My poor brother ’as provided for me, he always said he would; and I’ll stand by you, my dear, don’t you be afraid. Hullo! here’s nothing but the port wine—and not too much of that neither. I say, you fellow, tell the old man to bring the spirits; and he can sit down himself and ’ave a glass; it’s a poor ’eart as never rejoices, and once in a way it’ll do him no harm.”
“The other gentlemen—have got the spirits,” the footman said, retiring, very red in the face with laughter suppressed.
“And what a poor house,” said Bob Tredgold, contemptuously, “to have but one case of spirits! I’ve always noticedas your grand houses that are all gilt and grandeur are the poorest—as concern the necessaries of life.”
Katherine left her uncle in despair with his half-filled bottle of port. He was not a very creditable relation. She went to her own room and shut herself in to think over her position. In the fulness of her thoughts she forgot the dead master of the house, who lay there all silent, having nothing now to do with all that was going on in it, he who a little while ago had been supreme master of all. She did not know or ask what he had done with his wealth, no question about it entered her mind. She took it for granted that, Stella being cut off, it would come to herself as the only other child—which was just the same as if it had been left to Stella in their due and natural shares. All that was so simple, there was no need to think of it. Even this dreadful uncle—if her father had not provided for him Katherine would, there was no difficulty about all that. If the money was hers, it would be hers only for the purpose of doing everything with it which her father ought—which if he had been in his right condition, unbiassed by anger or offence, he would have done. He had always loved Stella best, and Stella should have the best—the house, every advantage, more than her share.
Katherine sat down and began to think over the work she would have to do in the ensuing week or so, till theAurungzebearrived with Lady Somers on board. The ship was due within a few days, and Katherine intended to go to meet her sister, to carry her, before she landed even, the news which, alas! she feared would only be good news to Stella. Alas! was it not good news to Katherine too? She stopped and wept a few bitter tears, but more for the pity of it, the horror of it, than for grief. Stella had been his favourite, his darling, and yet it would be good news to Stella. Her sister hoped that she would cry a little, that her heart would ache a little with the thought of never more seeing her father, never getting his forgiveness, nor any kind message or word from him. But at the utmost that would be all, a few tears, a regret, an exclamation of “poor papa!” and then joy at the goodnews, joy to be delivered from poverty and anxiety, to be able to surround herself again with all the beautiful things she loved, to provide for her children (she had two by this time), and to replace her husband in his position. Was it possible that she could weep long, that she could mourn much for the father who had cast her off and whom she had not seen for six years, with all this happiness behind? Katherine herself had but few tears to shed. She was sad because she was not sufficiently sad, because it was terrible that a human soul should go away out of the world and leave so few regrets, so little sorrow behind. Even the old servants, the housekeeper who had been with him for so many years, his personal attendant, who had been very kind, who had taken great care of him, were scarcely sorry. “I suppose, Miss, as you’ll be having Miss Stella home now,” Mrs. Simmons said, though she had a white handkerchief in her hand for appearance sake. And the man was chiefly anxious about his character and the testimonials to be given him. “I hope as I never neglected my duty. And master was an ’eavy ’andful, Miss,” he said, with relief, too, in his countenance. Katherine thought she would be willing to give half of all she had in the world to secure one genuine mourner, one who was truly sorry for her father’s death. Was she herself sorry? Her heart ached with the pity and the horror of it, but sorrow is a different sentiment from that.
In the meantime the solicitor and executor were in Mr. Tredgold’s sitting-room which he had occupied so long. A fire had been lighted in haste, to make the cold uninhabited place a little more cheerful. It was lighted by a lamp which hung over the table, shaded so as to concentrate its light on that spot, leaving all the rest of the room in the dark. And the two forms on either side of it were not of a character to be ennobled by the searching light. The solicitor was a snuffy man, with a long lean throat and a narrow head, with tufts of thin, grey hair. He had a ragged grey beard of the same description, long and ill grown, and he wore spectacles pushed out from his eyes and projecting as if they might fall off altogether.Mr. Turny had a shining bald head, which reflected the light, bent, as it was, over the papers on the table. They had been examining these papers, searching for the will which they expected to find there, but had come as yet upon no trace of it.
“I should have thought,” said Mr. Turny, “that he’d have had another will drawn out as soon as that girl ran away—indeed I was in a great mind to take steps——” He stopped here, reflecting that it was as well perhaps to say nothing of Fred and what those steps were. But Mr. Sturgeon had heard of the repeated visits of the family, and knew that young Fred was “on the outlook,” as they said, and knew.
“Ah, here it is at last,” Mr. Sturgeon said. He added, after a few minutes, in a tone of disappointment: “No, it’s the old will of ten years ago, the one I sent him down at his own request after the young lady ran away. I kept expecting for a long time to have his instructions about another, and even wrote to him on the subject. I suppose he must have employed some man here. This, of course, must be mere waste paper now.”
“What was the purport of it?” Mr. Turny asked.
“You must have heard at the time. It was not a will I approved—nothing unnatural ever gets any support from me. They say lawyers are full of dodges; it would have been better for me if I had put my principles in my pocket many a time. Men have come to me with the most ridiculous instructions, what I call wicked—they take a spite at some one, or some boy behaves foolishly (to be sure, it’s a girl in this case, which is more uncommon), and out he goes out of the will. I don’t approve of such pranks for my part.”
“You would like the good to share with the bad, and the guilty with the innocent,” said Turny, not without a reflection of his own.
“Not so much as that; but it doesn’t follow—always—that a boy is bad because he has kicked over the traces in his youth—and if he is bad, then he is the one above all that wants some provision made for him to keep him from getting badder.There’s that poor wretch, Bob Tredgold; I’ve kept him in my office, he thinks, because his brother always stood up for him. Nothing of the kind; Tredgold would have been delighted to hear he had tripped into the mire or gone down under an underground railway train on his way home. And the poor beggar believes now that his brother has provided for him—not a penny will he have, or I am mistaken. I must try to get something for him out of the girls.”
“The oldest girl, of course, will have it all?” Mr. Turny said.
“I suppose so,” said the solicitor, “if he don’t prove intestate after all; that’s always on the cards with that sort of man, indeed with every sort of man. They don’t like to part with it even on paper, and give the power into someone else’s hands. Women are rather different. It seems to amuse them to give all their things away—on paper. I don’t know that there’s much good searching further. He must have sent for some local man, that would save him trouble. And then he knew I would remonstrate if there was any ridiculous vengeance in his thoughts, which most likely there would have been.”
“What’s the scope of that old one, the one you’ve got in your hand?”
“Oh, that!” said Mr. Sturgeon, looking at it as if it were a reptile. “You remember, I am sure you must have heard it at the time, most of the money was left to the other, what was her ridiculous name? Something fantastic, I know.”
“Stella,” the executor said, peering eagerly through his double gold glasses at the paper, into which his fellow executor showed no inclination to give him further insight.
“That’s it, Stella! because she was his favourite—the eldest sister, to my mind, being much the nicest of the two.”
“She is a nice, quiet girl,” said Mr. Turny. And he thought with a grudge of Fred, who might have been coming into this fine fortune if he had been worth his salt. “There is this advantage in it,” he said, “it makes a fine solid lump of money. Divide it, and it’s not half the good.”
“A man shouldn’t have a lot of children who entertains that idea,” said Mr. Sturgeon.
“That’s quite true. If Mr. Tredgold had kept up his business as I have done; but you see I can provide for my boys without touching my capital. They are both in the business, and smart fellows, too, I can tell you. It does not suffer in their hands.”
“We haven’t got girls going into business—yet,” said the solicitor; “there is no saying, though, what we may see in that way in a year or two; they are going it now, the women are.”
“No girls of mine certainly shall ever do so. A woman’s sphere is ’ome. Let ’em marry and look after their families, that is what I always say to mine.”
“They are best off who have none,” said the solicitor briefly. He was an old bachelor, and much looked down upon by his city clients, who thought little of a man who had never achieved a wife and belongings of his own.
“Well, that depends,” Mr. Turny said.
“I think we may as well go to bed,” said the other. “It’s not much of a journey, but the coming is always a bother, and we’ll have a heavy day to-morrow. I like to keep regular hours.”
“Nothing like ’em,” said Mr. Turny, rising too; “no man ever succeeds in business that doesn’t keep regular hours. I suppose you’ll have to find out to-morrow if there’s been any other solicitor employed.”
“Yes, I’ll see after that—funeral’s at two, I think?”
“At two,” said the other. They lit their candles with some solemnity, coming out one after the other into the lighted hall. The hall was lighted, but the large staircase and corridors above were dark. They separated at the head of the stairs and went one to the right and the other to the left, Mr. Turny’s bald head shining like a polished globe in the semi-darkness, and the solicitor, with his thin head and projecting spectacles, looking like some strange bird making its way through the night. Mr. Sturgeon passed the door within which his dead client was lying, and hesitated a moment as he did so. “Ifwe only knew what was in that damned head of yours before the face was covered over,” he said to himself. He was not in an easy condition of mind. It was nothing to him; not a penny the poorer would he be for anything that might happen to the Tredgold girls. Bob Tredgold would be turned off into the workhouse, which was his proper place, and there would be an end of him. But it was an ugly trick for that old beast to play, to get some trumpery, country fellow, who no doubt would appear to-morrow, like the cock-o’-the-walk, with his new will and all the importance of the family solicitor. Family, indeed. They hadn’t a drop of blood in their veins that was better than mud, though that eldest one was a nice girl. It was something in her favour, too, that she would not have Fred Turny, that City Swell. But the great point of offence with Mr. Sturgeon was that the old beast should have called in some local man.
Bob Tredgold, the only brother, was escorted upstairs by one of the footmen a little later in the night. He was very affectionate with John Thomas, and assured him of his continued friendship when he should have come into his annuity. “Always promised to provide for me, don’t ye know, did my poor brother; not capital ’cause of this, don’t ye know,” and the unfortunate made the sign of lifting a glass to his mouth; “’nuity, very com-m-for-able, all the rest of my life. Stand a good glass to any man. Come and see me, any time you’re there, down Finsbury way.” John Thomas, who appreciated a joke, had a good laugh to himself after he had deposited thistristepersonage in the room which was so much too fine for him. And then the footman remembered what it was that was lying two or three doors off, locked in there with the lights burning, and went softly with a pale face to his own den, feeling as if Master’s bony hand might make a grab at his shoulder any moment as he hurried down the stairs.
Mr. Sturgeonhad carried off the old will with him from Mr. Tredgold’s bureau, the document drawn up in his own office in its long blue envelope, with all its details rigorously correct. He put it into his own bag, the bag which Bob Tredgold had carried. Bob’s name was not in it; there were no gracious particulars of legacy or remembrance. Perhaps the one which he fully expected to be produced to-morrow would be more humane. And yet in the morning he took this document out again and read it all over carefully. There were one or two pencil-marks on it on the margin, as of things that were meant to be altered, but no change whatever, no scribbling even of other wishes or changed intentions. The cross in pencil opposite Stella’s name was the only indication of any altered sentiment, and that, of course, was of no consequence and meant nothing. The solicitor read it over and put it back again carefully. If by any chance there was no other will to propound! But that was a thing not to be contemplated. The old beast, he said to himself, was not surely such an old beast as that.
Old Mr. Tredgold was buried on a bright October day, when everything about was full of colour and sunshine. His own trees, the rare and beautiful shrubs and foliage which had made his grounds a sight for tourists, were all clad in gala robes, in tints of brown and yellow and crimson, with feathery seedpods and fruit, hips and haws and golden globes to protect the seed. As he was carried away from his own door a gust of playful wind scattered over the blackness of the vehicle which carried him a shower of those gay and fluttering leaves. If it had been any fair creature one would have said it wasNature’s own tribute to the dead, but in his case it looked more like a handful of coloured rags thrown in mockery upon the vulgar hearse.
And it was a curious group which gathered round the grave. The rector, stately in his white robes, with his measured tones, who had indeed sat at this man’s board and drank his wine, but had never been admitted to speak a word of spiritual admonition or consolation (if he had any to speak), and who still entertained in his heart a grudge against the other all wrapped in black, who stood alone, the only mourner, opposite to him, with the grave between them. Even at that moment, and while he read those solemn words, Mr. Stanley had half an eye for Katherine, half a thought for her loneliness, which even now he felt she had deserved. And behind her was the doctor, who had stood by her through every stage of her father’s lingering illness, certainly taking no personal vengeance on her—far, oh far from that!—yet never forgetting that she had dismissed him amid circumstances that made the dismissal specially bitter—encouraged him, drawn him on, led him to commit himself, and then tossed him away. He had been very kind to Katherine; he had omitted no one thing that the tenderest friend could have done, but he had never forgotten nor forgiven her for what she had done to him. Both of these men thought of her as perhaps triumphant in her good fortune, holding much power in her hands, able to act as a Providence to her sister and to others, really a great lady now so far as money goes. The feeling of both in their different way was hostile to Katherine. They both had something against her; they were angry at the position which it was now expected she would attain. They were not sorry for her loneliness, standing by that grave. Both of them were keenly aware that it was almost impossible for her to entertain any deep grief for her father. If she had, it would have softened them perhaps. But they did not know what profound depression was in her mind, or if they had known they would have both responded with a careless exclamation. Depression that would last for a day! Sadness, the effect of the circumstances,which would soon be shaken off in her triumph. They both expected Katherine to be triumphant, though I cannot tell why. Perhaps they both wished to think ill of her if they could now that she was out of their reach, though she had always been out of their reach, as much six years ago as to-day.
The church, the churchyard, every inch of space, was full of people. There is not very much to look at in Sliplin, and the great hearse with its moving mass of flowers was as fine a sight as another. Flowers upon that old curmudgeon, that old vile man with his money who had been of no use to anyone! But there were flowers in plenty, as many as if he had been beautiful like them. They were sent, it is to be supposed, to please Katherine, and also from an instinctive tribute to the wealth which gave him importance among his fellow-men, though if they could have placed the sovereigns which these wreaths cost upon his coffin it would have been a more appropriate offering. Sir John and Lady Jane sent their carriage (that most remarkable of all expressions of sympathy) to follow in the procession. That, too, was intended to please Katherine, and the wreath out of their conservatory as a reminder that Stella was to be provided for. Mr. Tredgold thus got a good deal of vicarious honour in his last scene, and he would have liked it all had he been there (as perhaps he was) to see. One thing, however, he would not have liked would have been the apparition of Robert Tredgold, dressed for the occasion in his brother’s clothes, and saying, “He was my brother. I’m his only brother!” to whoever would listen. Bob was disappointed not to give his niece his arm, to stand by her as chief mourner at the foot of the grave.
They all went into the drawing-room when they returned to the house. Katherine had no thought of business on that particular day, and her father’s room was too cold and dreary, and full as of a presence invisible, which was not a venerable presence. She shuddered at the idea of entering it; and probably because she was alone, and had no one to suggest it to her, the idea of a will to be read, or arrangements to besettled, did not enter into her mind. She thought they were coming to take leave of her when they all trooped into the gay, much-decorated room, with its gilding and resplendent mirrors. The blinds had been drawn up, and it was all as bright as the ruddy afternoon and the blazing fire could make it. She sat down in her heavy veil and cloak and turned to them, expecting the little farewell speeches, and vulgar consolations, and shaking of hands. But Mr. Sturgeon, the solicitor, drew his chair towards the round table of Florentine work set in gay gilding, and pushed away from before him the books and nick-nacks with which it was covered. His black bag had somehow found its way to him, and he placed it as he spoke between his feet.
“I have had no opportunity all day of speaking to you, Miss Katherine,” he said, “nor last night. You retired early, I think, and our search was not very productive. You can tell me now, perhaps, what solicitor your late father, our lamented friend, employed. He ought to have been here.”
“He engaged no solicitor that I know of,” she replied. “Indeed, I have always thought you had his confidence—more than anyone——”
“I had,” said the solicitor. “I may say I had all his affairs in my hands; but latterly I supposed—— There must surely be someone here.”
“No one that I know of,” said Katherine. “We can ask Harrison if you like. He knew everything that went on.”
Here there uprose the voice of Bob Tredgold, who even at lunch had made use of his opportunities.
“I want to have the will read,” he said; “must have the will read. It’s a deal to me is that will. I’m not going to be hung up any more in suspense.”
“Catch hold of this bag,” said the solicitor contemptuously, flinging it to him. Mr. Sturgeon had extracted from it the long blue envelope which he had found in Mr. Tredgold’s bureau—the envelope with his own stamp on it. Mr. Turny fixed his eyes upon this at once. Those little round eyes began to glisten, and his round bald head—the excitementof a chance which meant money, something like the thrill of the gambler, though the chance was not his, filled him with animation. Katherine sat blank, looking on at a scene which she did not understand.
“Harrison, will you tell this gentleman whether my father”—she made a little pause over the words—“saw any solicitor from Sliplin, or did any business privately?”
“Within the last five or six years?” Mr. Sturgeon added.
“No solicitor, sir,” the man answered at once, but with a gleam in his eyes which announced more to say.
“Go on, you have got something else in your mind. Let us hear what it is, and with no delay.”
“Master, sir,” said Harrison thus adjured, “he said to me more than once, ‘I’m a going to send for Sturgeon,’ he says. Beg your pardon, sir, for naming you like that, short.”
“Go on—go on.”
“And then he never did it, sir,” the man said.
“That’s not the question. Had he any interview, to your knowledge, with any solicitor here? Did he see anybody on business? Was there any signing of documents? I suppose you must have known?”
“I know everything, sir, as master did. I got him up, sir, and I put him to bed. There was never one in the house as did a thing for him but me. Miss Katherine she can tell as I never neglected him; never was out of the way when he wanted me; had no ’olidays, sir.” Harrison’s voice quivered as he gave this catalogue of his own perfections, as if with pure self-admiration and pity he might have broken down.
“It will be remembered in your favour,” said Mr. Sturgeon. “Now tell me precisely what happened.”
“Nothing at all happened, sir,” Harrison said.
“What, nothing? You can swear to it? In all these five, six years, nobody came from the village, town—whatever you call it—whom he consulted with, who had any documents to be signed, nothing, nobody at all?”
“Nothing!” said Harrison with solemnity, “nothing! I’ll take my Bible oath; now and then there was a gentlemansubscribing for some charity, and there was the doctor every day or most every day, and as many times as I could count on my fingers there would be some one calling, that gentleman, sir,” he said suddenly, pointing to Mr. Turny, who looked up alarmed as if accused of something, “as was staying in the house.”
“But no business, no papers signed?”
“Hadn’t you better speak to the doctor, Sturgeon? He knew more of him than anyone.”
“Not more nor me, sir,” said Harrison firmly; “nobody went in or out of master’s room that was unknown to me.”
“This is all very well,” said Bob Tredgold, “but it isn’t the will. I don’t know what you’re driving at; but it’s the will as we want—my poor brother’s daughter here, and me.”
“I think, Miss Katherine,” said the lawyer, “that I’d rather talk it over with—with Mr. Turny, who is the other executor, and perhaps with the doctor, who could tell us something of your father’s state of mind.”
“What does it all mean?” Katherine said.
“I’d rather talk it over first; there is a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders, between myself and Mr. Turny, who is the other executor. I am sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Katherine.”
“Oh, it is of no consequence,” Katherine said. “Shall I leave you here? Nobody will interrupt you, and you can send for me if you want me again. But perhaps you will not want me again?”
“Yes, I fear we shall want you.” The men stood aside while she went away, her head bowed down under the weight of her veil. But Robert Tredgold opposed her departure. He caught her by the cloak and held her back. “Stop here,” he said, “stop here; if you don’t stop here none of them will pay any attention to me.”
“You fool!” cried the lawyer, pushing him out of the way, “what have you got to say to it? Take up your bag, and mind your business; the will is nothing to you.”
“Don’t speak to him so,” cried Katherine. “You are allso well off and he is poor. And never mind,” she said, touching for a moment with her hand the arm of that unlovely swaying figure, “I will see that you are provided for, whether it is in the will or not. Don’t have any fear.”
The lawyer followed her with his eyes, with a slight shrug of his shoulders and shake of his head. Dr. Burnet met her at the door as she went away.
“They have sent for me,” he said; “I don’t know why. Is there anything wrong? Can I be of any use?”
“I know of nothing wrong. They want to consult you, but I don’t understand on what subject. It is a pity they should think it’s necessary to go on with their business to-day.”
“They have to go back to town,” he said.
“Yes, to be sure, I suppose that is the reason,” she answered, and with a slight inclination of her head she walked away.
But no one spoke for a full minute after the doctor joined them; they stood about in the much gilded, brightly decorated room, in the outer portion outside that part which Katherine had separated for herself. Her table, with its vase of flowers, her piano, the low chair in which she usually sat, were just visible within the screen. The dark figures of the men encumbered the foreground between the second fireplace and the row of long windows opening to the ground. Mr. Sturgeon stood against one of these in profile, looking more than ever like some strange bird, with his projecting spectacles and long neck and straggling beard and hair.
“You sent for me, I was told,” Dr. Burnet said.
“Ah, yes, yes.” Mr. Sturgeon turned round. He threw himself into one of the gilded chairs. There could not have been a more inappropriate scene for such an assembly. “We would like you to give us a little account of your patient’s state, doctor,” he said, “if you will be so good. I don’t mean technically, of course. I should like to know about the state of his mind. Was he himself? Did he know what he was doing? Would you have said he was able to take a clearview of his position, and to understand his own intentions and how to carry them out?”
“Do you mean to ask me if Mr. Tredgold was in full possession of his faculties? Perfectly, I should say, and almost to the last hour.”
“Did he ever confide in you as to his intentions for the future, Doctor? I mean about his property, what he meant to do with it? A man often tells his doctor things he will tell to no one else. He was very angry with his daughter, the young lady who ran away, we know. He mentioned to you, perhaps, that he meant to disinherit her—to leave everything to her sister?”
“My poor brother,” cried Bob Tredgold, introducing himself to Dr. Burnet with a wave of his hand, “I’m his only brother, sir—swore always as he’d well provide for me.”
Dr. Burnet felt himself offended by the question; he had the instinctive feeling so common in a man who moves in a limited local circle that all his own affairs were perfectly known, and that the expectations he had once formed, and the abrupt conclusion to which they had come, were alluded to in this quite uncalled for examination.
“Mr. Tredgold never spoke to me of his private affairs,” he said sharply. “I had nothing to do with his money or how he meant to leave it. The question was one of no interest to me.”
“But, surely,” said the lawyer, “you must in the course of so long an illness have heard him refer to it, make some remark on the subject—a doctor often asks, if nothing more, whether the business affairs are all in order, whether there might be something a man would wish to have looked to.”
“Mr. Tredgold was a man of business, which I am not. He knew what was necessary much better than I did. I never spoke to him on business matters, nor he to me.”
There was another pause, and the two city men looked at each other while Dr. Burnet buttoned up his coat significantly as a sign of departure. At last Mr. Turny with his bald head shining said persuasively, “But, you knew, he was very angry—with the girl who ran away.”
“I knew only what all the world knew,” said Dr. Burnet. “I am a very busy man, I have very little time to spare. If that is all you have to ask me, I must beg you to——”
“One minute,” said the solicitor, “the position is very serious. It is very awkward for us to have no other member of the family, no one in Miss Tredgold’s interest to talk it over with. I thought, perhaps, that you, Dr. Burnet, being I presume, by this time, an old family friend as well as——”
“I can’t pretend to any such distinction,” he said quickly with an angry smile, for indeed although he never showed it, he had never forgiven Katherine. Then it occurred to him, though a little late, that these personal matters might as well be kept to himself. He added quickly, “I have, of course, seen Miss Tredgold daily, for many years.”
“Well,” said Mr. Sturgeon, “that’s always something, as she has nobody to stand by her, no relation, no husband—nothing but—what’s worse than nothing,” he added with a contemptuous glance at Robert Tredgold, who sat grasping his bag, and looking from one to another with curious and bewildered eyes.
Dr. Burnet grew red, and buttoned up more tightly than ever the buttons he had undone. “If I can be of any use to Miss Tredgold,” he said. “Is there anything disagreeable before her—any prohibition—against helping her sister?”
“Dr. Burnet,” said the solicitor imperiously, “we can find nothing among Mr. Tredgold’s papers, and I have nothing, not an indication of his wishes, except the will of eighteen hundred and seventy-one.”
WhenKatherine came into the room again at the call of her father’s solicitor it was with a sense of being unduly disturbed and interfered with at a moment when she had a right to repose. She was perhaps half angry with herself that her thoughts were already turning so warmly to the future, and that Stella’s approaching arrival, and the change in Stella’s fortunes which it would be in her power to make, were more and more occupying the foreground of her mind, and crowding out with bright colours the sombre spectacle which was just over, and all the troublous details of the past. When a portion of one’s life has been brought to an end by the closure of death, something to look forward to is the most natural and best of alleviations. It breaks up the conviction of the irrevocable, and opens to the soul once more the way before it, which, on the other hand, is closed up and ended. Katherine had allowed that thought to steal into her mind, to occupy the entire horizon. Stella was coming home, not merely back, which was all that she had allowed herself to say before, but home to her own house, or rather to that which was something still more hers than her own by being her sister’s. There had been, no doubt, grievances against Stella in Katherine’s mind, in the days when her own life had been entirely overshadowed by her sister’s; but these were long gone, long lost in boundless, remorseful (notwithstanding that she had nothing to blame herself with) affection and longing for Stella, who after all was her only sister, her only near relation in the world. She had begun to permit herself to dwell on that delightful thought. It had been a sort of forbidden pleasure while her father lay dead in the house, and she had felt that every thought was due to him, thatshe had not given him enough, had not shown that devotion to him of which one reads in books, the triumph of filial love over every circumstance. Katherine had not been to her father all that a daughter might have been, and in these dark days she had much and unjustly reproached herself with it. But now everything had been done for him that he could have wished to be done, and his image had gone aside amid the shadows of the past, and she had permitted herself to look forward, to think of Stella and her return. It was a great disturbance and annoyance to be called again, to be brought back from the contemplation of those happier things to the shadow of the grave once more—or, still worse, the shadow of business, as if she cared how much money had come to her or what was her position. There would be plenty—plenty to make Stella comfortable she knew, and beyond that what did Katherine care?
The men stood up again as she came in with an air of respect which seemed to her exaggerated and absurd—old Mr. Turny, who had known her from a child and had allowed her to open the door for him and run errands for him many a day, and the solicitor, who in his infrequent visits had never paid any attention to her at all. They stood on each side letting her pass as if into some prison of which they were going to defend the doors. Dr. Burnet, who was there too, closely buttoned and looking very grave, gave her a seat; and then she saw her Uncle Robert Tredgold sunk down in a chair, with Mr. Sturgeon’s bag in his arms, staring about him with lack-lustre eyes. She gave him a little nod and encouraging glance. How small a matter it would be to provide for that unfortunate so that he should never need to carry Mr. Sturgeon’s bag again! She sat down and looked round upon them with for the first time a sort of personal satisfaction in the thought that she was so wholly independent of them and all that it was in their power to do—the mistress of her own house, not obliged to think of anyone’s pleasure but her own. It was on her lips to say something hospitable, kind, such as became the mistress of the house; she refrained only from the recollection that, after all, it was her father’s funeral day.
“Miss Tredgold,” said the solicitor, “we have now, I am sorry to say, a very painful duty to perform.”
Katherine looked at him without the faintest notion of his meaning, encouraging him to proceed with a faint smile.
“I have gone through your late lamented father’s papers most carefully. As you yourself said yesterday, I have possessed his confidence for many years, and all his business matters have gone through my hands. I supposed that as I had not been consulted about any change in his will, he must have employed a local solicitor. That, however, does not seem to have been the case, and I am sorry to inform you, Miss Tredgold, that the only will that can be found is that of eighteen hundred and seventy-one.”
“Yes?” said Katherine indifferently interrogative, as something seemed to be expected of her.
“Yes—the will of eighteen hundred and seventy-one—nearly eight years ago—drawn out when your sister was in full possession of her empire over your late father, Miss Tredgold.”
“Yes,” said Katherine, but this time without any interrogation. She had a vague recollection of that will, of Mr. Sturgeon’s visit to the house, and the far-off sound of stormy interviews between her father and his solicitor, of which the girls in their careless fashion, and especially Stella, had made a joke.
“You probably don’t take in the full significance of what I say.”
“No,” said Katherine with a smile, “I don’t think that I do.”
“I protested against it at the time. I simply cannot comprehend it now. It is almost impossible to imagine that in present circumstances he could have intended it to stand; but here it is, and nothing else. Miss Tredgold, by this will the whole of your father’s property is left over your head to your younger sister.”
“To Stella!” she cried, with a sudden glow of pleasure, clapping her hands. The men about sat and stared at her, Mr. Turny in such consternation that his jaw dropped as he gazed.Bob Tredgold was by this time beyond speech, glaring into empty space over the bag in his arms.
Then something, whether in her mind or out of it, suggested by the faces round her struck Katherine with a little chill. She looked round upon them again, and she was dimly aware that someone behind her, who could only be Dr. Burnet, made a step forward and stood behind her chair. Then she drew a long breath. “I am not sure that I understand yet. I am glad Stella has it—oh, very glad! But do you mean that I—am left out? Do you mean—— I am afraid,” she said, after a pause, with a little gasp, “that is not quite just. Do you mean really everything—everything, Mr. Sturgeon?”
“Everything. There is, of course, your mother’s money, which no one can touch, and there is a small piece of land—to build yourself a cottage on, which was all you would want, he said.”
Katherine sat silent a little after this. Her first thought was that she was balked then altogether in her first personal wish, the great delight and triumph of setting Stella right and restoring to her her just share in the inheritance. This great disappointment struck her at once, and almost brought the tears to her eyes. Stella would now have it all of her own right, and would never know, or at least believe, what had been Katherine’s loving intention. She felt this blow. In a moment she realised that Stella would not believe it—that she would think any assertion to that effect to be a figment, and remained fully assured that her sister would have kept everything to herself if she had had the power. And this hurt Katherine beyond expression. She would have liked to have had that power! Afterwards there came into her mind a vague sense of old injustice and unkindness to herself, the contemptuous speech about the cottage, and that this was all she would want. Her father thought so; he had thought so always, and so had Stella. It never occurred to Katherine that Stella would be anxious to do her justice, as she would have done to Stella. That was an idea that never entered her mind at all. She was thrown back eight years ago to the time when she lived habitually in thecold shade. After all, was not that the one thing that she had been certain of all her life? Was it not a spell which had never been broken, which never could be broken? She murmured to herself dully: “A cottage—which was all I should want.”
“I said to your father at the time everything that could be said.” Mr. Sturgeon wanted to show his sympathy, but he felt that, thoroughly as everybody present must be persuaded that old Tredgold was an old beast, it would not do to say so in his own house on his funeral day.
The other executor said nothing except “Tchich, tchich!” but he wiped his bald head with his handkerchief and internally thanked everything that he knew in the place of God—that dark power called Providence and other such—that Katherine Tredgold had refused to have anything to say to his Fred. Dr. Burnet was not visible at all to Katherine except in a long mirror opposite, where he appeared like a shadow behind her chair.
“And this poor man,” said Katherine, looking towards poor Bob Tredgold, with his staring eyes; “is there nothing for him?”
“Not a penny. I could have told you that; I have told him that often enough. I’ve known him from a boy. He shall keep his corner in my office all the same. I didn’t put him there, though he thinks so, for his brother’s sake.”
“He shall have a home in the cottage—when it is built,” said Katherine, with a curious smile; and then she became aware that in both these promises, the lawyer’s and her own, there was a bitter tone—an unexpressed contempt for the man who was her father, and who had been laid in his grave that day.
“I hope,” she said, “this is all that is necessary to-day; and may I now, if you will not think it ungracious, bid you good-bye? I shall understand it all better when I have a little time to think.”
She paused, however, again after she had shaken hands with them. “There is still one thing. I am going to meet my sister when she arrives. May I have the—the happiness oftelling her? I had meant to give her half, and it is a little disappointment; but I should like at least to carry the news. Thanks; you must address to her here. Of course she will come at once here, to her own home.”
She scarcely knew whose arm it was that was offered to her, but took it mechanically and went out, not quite clear as to where she was going, in the giddiness of the great change.
“This is a strange hearing,” Dr. Burnet said.
“How kind of you to stand by me! Yes, it is strange; and I was pleasing myself with the idea of giving back the house and her share of everything besides to Stella. I should have liked to do that.”
“It is to be hoped,” he said, “that she will do the same by you.”
“Oh, no!” she cried with a half laugh, “that’s impossible.” Then, after a pause, “you know there’s a husband and children to be thought of. And what I will have is really quite enough for me.”
“There is one thing at your disposal as you please,” he said in a low voice. “I have not changed, Katherine, all these years.”
“Dr. Burnet! It makes one’s heart glad that you are so good a man!”
“Makemeglad, that will be better,” he said.
Katherine shook her head but said nothing. And human nature is so strange that Dr. Burnet, after making this profession of devotion, which was genuine enough, did not feel so sorry as he ought to have done that she still shook her head as she disappeared up the great stairs.
Katherine went into her room a very different woman from the Katherine who had left it not half-an-hour before. Then she had entertained no doubt that this was her own house in which she was, this her own room, where in all probability she would live all her life. She had intended that Stella should have the house, and yet that there should always be a nook for herself in which the giver of the whole, half by right and wholly by love, should remain, something more than aguest. Would Stella think like that now that the tables were turned, that it was Katherine who had nothing and she all? Katherine did not for a moment imagine that this would be the case. Without questioning herself on the subject, she unconsciously proved how little confidence she had in Stella by putting away from her mind all idea of remaining here. She had no home; she would have no home unless or until the cottage was built for which her father had in mockery, not in kindness, left her the site. She looked round upon all the familiar things which had been about her all her life; already the place had taken another aspect to her. It was not hers any longer, it was a room in her sister’s house. She wondered whether Stella would let her take her favourite things—a certain little cabinet, a writing table, some of the pictures. But she did not feel any confidence that Stella would allow her to do so. Stella liked to have a house nicely furnished, not to see gaps in the furniture. That was a small matter, but it was characteristic of the view which Katherine instinctively took of the whole situation. And it would be vain to say that it did not affect her. It affected her strongly, but not as the sudden deprivation of all things might be supposed to affect a sensitive mind. She had no anticipation of any catastrophe of the kind, and yet now that it had come she did not feel that she was unprepared for it. It was not a thing which her mind rejected as impossible, which her heart struggled against. Now that it had happened, it fitted in well enough to the life that had gone before.
Her father had never cared for her, and he had loved Stella. Stella was the one to whom everything naturally came. Poor Stella had been unnaturally depressed, thrown out of her triumphant place for these six years; but her father, even when he had uttered that calm execration which had so shaken Katherine’s nerves but never his, had not meant any harm to Stella. He had not been able to do anything against her. Katherine remembered to have seen him seated at his bureau with that large blue envelope in his hand. This showed that he had taken the matter into consideration; but it had notproved possible for him to disinherit Stella—a thing which everybody concluded had been done as soon as she left him. Katherine remembered vaguely even that she had seen him chuckling over that document, locking it up in his drawer as if there was some private jest of his own involved. It was the kind of jest to please Mr. Tredgold. The idea of such a discovery, of the one sister who was sure being disappointed, and the other who expected nothing being raised to the heights of triumph, all by nothing more than a scratch of his pen, was sure to please him. She could almost hear him chuckling again at her own sudden and complete overthrow. When she came thus far Katherine stopped herself suddenly with a quick flush and sense of guilt. She would not consciously blame her father, but she retained the impression on her mind of his chuckle over her discomfiture.
Thus it will be seen that Katherine’s pain in the strange change was reduced by the fact that there was no injured love to feel the smart. She recognised that it was quite a thing that had been likely, though she had not thought of it before, that it was a thing that other people would recognise as likely when they heard of it. Nobody, she said to herself, would be very much surprised. It was unnatural, now she came to think of it, that she should have had even for a moment the upper hand and the extreme gratification, not to say superiority, of restoring Stella. Perhaps it was rather a mean thing to have desired it—to have wished to lay Stella under such an obligation, and to secure for herself that blessedness of giving which everybody recognised. Her mind turned with a sudden impulse of shame to this wish, that had been so strong in it. Everybody likes to give; it is a selfish sort of pleasure. You feel yourself for the moment a good genius, a sort of providence, uplifted above the person, whoever it may be, upon whom you bestow your bounty. He or she has the inferior position, and probably does not like it at all. Stella was too careless, too ready to grasp whatever she could get, to feel this very strongly; but even Stella, instead of loving her sister the better for hastening to her with her hands full, might haveresented the fact that she owed to Katherine’s gift what ought to have been hers by right. It was perhaps a poor thing after all. Katherine began to convince herself that it was a poor thing—to have wished to do that. Far better that Stella should have what she had a right to by her own right and not through any gift.