Then Katherine began to try to take back the thread of the thoughts which had been in her mind before she was called downstairs to speak to those men. Her first trial resulted merely in a strong sensation of dislike to “those men” and resentment, which was absurd, for, after all, it was not they who had done it. She recalled them to her mind, or rather the image of them came into it, with a feeling of angry displeasure. Mr. Sturgeon, the solicitor, had in no way been offensive to Katherine. He had been indignant, he had been sorry, he had been, in fact, on her side; but she gave him no credit for that. And the bald head of the other seemed to her to have a sort of twinkle as of mockery in it, though, to tell the truth, poor Mr. Turny’s face underneath was much troubled and almost ashamed to look at Katherine after being instrumental in doing her so much harm. She wondered with an intuitive perception whether he were not very glad now that she had refused Fred. And then with a leap her mind went back to other things. Would they all be very glad now? Would the Rector piously thank heaven, which for his good had subjected him to so small a pang, by way of saving him later from so great a disappointment? Would the doctor be glad? Even though he had made that very nice speech to her—that generous and faithful profession of attachment still—must not the doctor, too, be a little glad? And then Katherine’s mind for a moment went circling back into space, as it were—into an unknown world to which she had no clue. He who had disappeared there, leaving no sign, would he ever hear, would he ever think, could it touch him one way or another? Probably it would not touch him in any way. He might be married to some woman; he might have a family of children round him. He might say, “Oh,the Tredgolds! I used to see a good deal of them. And so Lady Somers has the money after all? I always thought that was how it would end.” And perhaps he would be glad, too, that Katherine, who was the unlucky one, the one always left in the cold shade, whatever happened, had never been anything more to him than a passing fancy—a figure flitting by as in a dream.
A wholeweek had still to pass before the arrival of theAurungzebe. After such a revolution and catastrophe as had happened, there is always a feeling in the mind that the stupendous change that is about to ensue should come at once. But it is very rare indeed that it does so. There is an inevitable time of waiting, which to some spirits clinging to the old is a reprieve, but to others an intolerable delay. Katherine was one of those to whom the delay was intolerable. She would have liked to get it all over, to deposit the treasure, as it were, at her sister’s feet, and so to get away, she did not know where, and think of it no more.
She was not herself, as she now assured herself, so very badly off. The amount of her mother’s fortune was about five hundred a year—quite a tolerable income for a woman alone, with nobody to think of but herself. And as Katherine had not wanted the money, or at least more than a part of it (for Mr. Tredgold had considered it right at all times that a girl with an income of her own should pay for her own dress), a considerable sum had accumulated as savings which would have been of great use to her now, and built for her that cottage to which her father had doomed her, had it not been that almost all of it had been taken during those five years past for Stella, who was always in need, and had devoured the greater part of Katherine’s income besides. She had thus no nest egg, nothing to build the cottage, unless Stella paid her back, which was a probability upon which Katherine did not much reckon. It was curious, even to herself, to find that she instinctively did not reckon on Stella at all. She was even angry with herself for this, and felt that she did not do Stella justice, yetalways recurred unconsciously to the idea that there was nothing to look for, nothing to be reckoned on, but her five hundred a year, which surely, she said to herself, would be quite enough. She and old Hannah, from whom she did not wish to separate herself, could live upon that, even with a residue for poor Robert Tredgold, who had returned to his desk in the dreariest disappointment and whose living was at Mr. Sturgeon’s mercy. Stella would not wish to hear of that disreputable relation, and yet perhaps she might be got to provide for him if only to secure that he should never cross her path.
Katherine’s thoughts were dreary enough as she lived through these days, in the house that was no longer hers; but she had a still harder discipline to go through in the visits of her neighbours, among whom the wonderful story of Mr. Tredgold’s will began to circulate at once. They had been very kind to her, according to the usual fashion of neighbourly kindness. There had been incessant visits and inquiries ever since the interest of the place had been quickened by the change for the worse in the old man’s state, and on his death Katherine had received many offers of help and companionship, even from people she knew slightly. The ladies about were all anxious to be permitted to come and “sit with her,” to take care of her for a day, or more than a day, to ensure her from being alone. Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay, though neither of these ladies liked to disturb themselves for a common occasion, were ready at an hour’s notice to have gone to her, to have been with her during the trying period of the funeral, and they were naturally among the first to enter the house when its doors were open, its shutters unbarred, and the broad light of the common day streamed once more into the rooms. Everything looked so exactly as it used to do, they remarked to each other as they went in, leaving the Midge considerably the worse for wear, and Mr. Perkins, the driver, none the better at the door. Exactly the same! The gilding of the furniture in the gorgeous drawing-room was not tarnished, nor the satin dimmed of its lustre, by Mr. Tredgold’s death. The servants, perhaps, were a little less confident, shades of anxiety were on the countenance of the butler and the footman; they did not know whether they would be servants good enough for Lady Somers. Even Mrs. Simmons—who did not, of course, appear—was doubtful whether Lady Somers would retain her, notwithstanding all the dainties which Simmons had prepared for her youth; and a general sense of uneasiness was in the house. But the great drawing-room, with all its glow and glitter, did not show any sympathetic shadow. The two fireplaces shone with polished brass and steel, and the reflection of the blazing fires, though the windows were open—which was a very extravagant arrangement the ladies thought, though quite in the Tredgold way. And yet the old gentleman was gone! and Katherine, hitherto the dispenser of many good things and accustomed all her life to costly housekeeping, was left like any poor lady with an income of five hundred a year. Both Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay, who put firebricks in their fireplaces and were very frugal in all their ways, and paid their visits in the Midge, had as much as that. No one could be expected to keep up a house of her own and a couple of servants on that. But Stella surely would do something for her sister, Mrs. Shanks said. Miss Mildmay was still shaking her head in reply to this when they entered the drawing-room, where Katherine advanced to meet them in her black dress. She had ceased to sit behind the screens in that part of the room which she had arranged for herself. The screens were folded back, the room was again one large room all shining with its gilded chairs and cabinets, its Florentine tables, its miles of glowing Aubusson carpet. She was the only blot upon its brightness, with her heavy crape and her pale face.
“My dear Katherine, my dearest Katherine,” the old ladies said, enfolding her one after the other in the emphatic silence of a long embrace. This was meant to express something more than words could say—and, indeed, there were few words which could have adequately expressed the feelings of the spectators. “So your old brute of a father has gone atlast, and a good riddance, and has cheated you out of every penny he could take away from you, after making a slave of you all these years!” Such words as these would have given but a feeble idea of the feelings of these ladies, but it is needless to say that it would have been impossible to say them except in some as yet undiscovered Palace of Truth. But each old lady held the young one fast, and pressed a long kiss upon her cheek, which answered the same purpose. When she emerged from these embraces Katherine looked a little relieved, but still more pale.
“Katherine, my dear, it is impossible not to speak of it,” said Mrs. Shanks; “you know it must be in our minds all the while. Are you going to do anything, my dear child, to dispute this dreadful will?”
“Jane Shanks and I,” said Miss Mildmay, “have talked of nothing else since we heard of it; not that I believe you will do anything against it, but I wish you had a near friend who would, Katherine. A near friend is the thing. I have never been very much in favour of marrying, but I should like you to marry for that.”
“In order to dispute my father’s will?” said Katherine. “Dear Miss Mildmay, you know I don’t want to be rude, but I will not even hear it discussed.”
“But Katherine, Katherine——”
“Please not a word! I am quite satisfied with papa’s will. I had intended to do—something of the sort myself, if I had ever had the power. You know, which is something pleasanter to talk of, that theAurungzebehas been signalled, and I am going to meet Stella to-morrow.”
The two old ladies looked at each other. “And I suppose,” said Mrs. Shanks, “you will bring her home here.”
“Stella has seen a great deal since she was here,” said Miss Mildmay, “I should not think she would come, Katherine, if that is what you wish. She will like something more in the fashion—or perhaps more out of the fashion—in the grand style, don’t you know, like her husband’s old house. She will turn up her nose at all this, and at all of us, and perhapsat you too. Stella was never like you, Katherine. If she falls into a great fortune all at once there will be no bounds to her. She’ll probably sell this place, and turn you out.”
“She may not like the place, and neither do I,” said Katherine like a flash; “if she wishes to part with it I shall certainly not oppose her. You must not speak so of my sister.”
“And what shall you do, Katherine, my dear?”
“I am going away,” cried Katherine; “I have always intended to go away. I have a piece of land to build a cottage on.” She made a pause, for she had never in words stated her intentions before. “Papa knew what I should like,” she said, with the rising of a sob in her throat. The sense of injury now and then overcame even her self-control. “In the meantime perhaps we may go abroad, Hannah and I; isn’t it always the right thing when you are in mourning and trouble to go abroad?”
“My dear girl,” said Miss Mildmay solemnly, “how far do you think you can go abroad you and your maid—upon five hundred a year?”
“Can’t we?” said Katherine, confused; “oh, yes, we have very quiet ways. I am not extravagant, I shall want no carriage or anything.”
“Do you know how much a hotel costs, Katherine? You and your maid couldn’t possibly live for less than a pound a day—a pound a day means three hundred and sixty-five pounds a year—and that without a pin, without a shoe, without a bit of ribbon or a button for your clothes, still less with anything new to put on. How could you go abroad on that? It is impossible—and with the ideas you have been brought up on, everything so extravagant and ample—I can’t imagine what you can be thinking of, a practical girl like you.”
“She might go to a pension, Ruth Mildmay. Pensions are much cheaper than hotels.”
“I think I see Katherine in a pension! With a napkin done up in a ring to last a week, and tablecloths to match!”
“Well then,” said Katherine, with a feeble laugh, “if thatis so I must stay at home. Hannah and I will find a little house somewhere while my cottage is building.”
“Hannah can never do all the work of a house,” said Miss Mildmay, “Hannah has been accustomed to her ease as well as you. You would need at least a good maid of all work who could cook, besides Hannah; and then there are rent and taxes, and hundreds of things that you never calculate upon. You could not live, my dear, even in a cottage with two maids, on five hundred a year.”
“I think I had better not live at all!” cried Katherine, “if that is how it is; and yet there must be a great many people who manage very well on less than I have. Why, there are families who live on a pound a week!”
“But not, my dear, with a lady’s maid and another,” Miss Mildmay said.
Katherine was very glad when her friends went away. They would either of them have received her into their own little houses with delight, for a long visit—even with her maid, who, as everybody knows, upsets a little house much more than the mistress. She might have sat for a month at a time in either of the drawing-rooms under the green verandah, and looked out upon the terrace gardens with the sea beyond, and thus have been spared so much expense, a consideration which would have been fully in the minds of her entertainers; but their conversation gave her an entirely new view of the subject. Her little income had seemed to her to mean plenty, even luxury. She had thought of travelling. She had thought (with a little bitterness, yet amusement) of the cottage she would build, a dainty little nest full of pretty things. It had never occurred to her that she would not have money enough for all that, or that poor old Hannah if she accompanied her mistress would have to descend from the pleasant leisure to which she was accustomed. This new idea was not a pleasant one. She tried to cast it away and to think that she would not care, but the suggestion that even such a thing as the little drawing-room, shadowed by the verandah, was above her reach gave her undeniably a shock. It was not a pretty room;in the winter it was dark and damp, the shabby carpet on a level with the leaf-strewn flags of the verandah and the flower borders beyond. She had thought with compassion of the inhabitants trying to be cheerful on a dull wintry day in the corner between the window and the fire. And yet that was too fine—too expensive for her now. Mrs. Shanks had two maids and a boy! and could have the Midge when she liked in partnership with her friend. These glories could not be for Katherine. Then she burst into a laugh of ridicule at herself. Other women of her years in all the villages about were working cheerfully for their husbands and babies, washing the clothes and cooking the meals, busy and happy all day long. Katherine could have done that she felt—but she did not know how she was to vegetate cheerfully upon her five hundred a year. To be sure, as the reader will perceive, who may here be indignant with Katherine, she knew nothing about it, and was not so grateful as she ought to be for what she had in comparison with what she had not.
Lady Jane came to see her the same day, and Lady Jane was over-awed altogether by the news. She had a scared look in her face. “I can only hope that Stella will show herself worthy of our confidence and put things right between you at once,” she said; but her face did not express the confidence which she put into words. She asked all about the arrival, and about Katherine’s purpose of meeting her sister at Gravesend. “Shall you bring them all down here?” she said.
“It will depend upon Stella. I should like to bring them all here. I have had our old rooms prepared for the nurseries; and there are fires everywhere to air the house. They will feel the cold very much, I suppose. But if the fine weather lasts——. There is only one thing against it, Stella may not care to come.”
“Oh, Stella will come,” said Lady Jane, “the island is the right place, don’t you know, to have a house in, and everybody she used to know will see her here in her glory—and then her husband will be able to run up to town—and begin to squander the money away. Charlie Somers is my own relation,Katherine, but I don’t put much faith in him. I wish it had been as we anticipated, and everything had been in your hands.”
“You know what I should have done at once, Lady Jane, if it had——”
“I know—not this, however, anyhow. I hope you would have had sense enough to keep your share. It would have been far better in the long run for Stella, she would always have had you to fall back upon. My heart is broken about it all, Katherine. I blame myself now more than at the first. I should never have countenanced them; and I never should if I had thought it would bring disaster upon you.”
“You need not blame yourself, Lady Jane, for this was the will of ’71; and if you had never interfered at all, if there had been no Charles Somers, and no elopement, it would have been just the same.”
“There is something in that,” Lady Jane said. “And now I hope, I do hope, that Stella—she is not like you, my dear Katherine. She has never been brought up to think of any one but herself.”
“She has been brought up exactly as I was,” Katherine said with a smile.
“Ah yes, but it is different, quite different; the foolish wicked preference which was shown for her, did good to you—you are a different creature, and most likely it is more or less owing to that. Katherine, you know there are things in which I think you were wrong. When that good, kind man wanted to marry you, as indeed he does now——”
“Not very much, I think, Lady Jane; which is all the better, as I do not wish at all to marry him.”
“I think you are making a mistake,” said Lady Jane. “He is not so ornamental perhaps as Charlie Somers, but he is a far better man. Well, then, I suppose there is nothing more to be said; but I can’t help thinking that if you had a man to stand by you they would never have propounded that will.”
“Indeed,” said Katherine, “you must not think they hadanything to do with it; the will was propounded because it was the only one that was there.”
“I know that women always are imposed upon in business, where it is possible to do it,” Lady Jane said in tones of conviction. And it was with great reluctance that she went away, still with a feeling that it was somehow Katherine’s fault, if not at bottom her own, for having secretly encouraged Stella’s runaway match. “She had never thought of this,” she declared, for a moment. She had been strongly desirous that Stella should have her share, and she knew that Katherine would have given her her share. As for Stella’s actions, no one could answer for them. She might have a generous impulse or she might not; and Charlie Somers, he was always agape for money. If he had the Duke of Westminster’s revenues he would still open his mouth for more. “But you may be sure I shall put their duty very plainly before them,” she said.
“Oh, don’t, please don’t,” cried Katherine. “I do not want to have anything from Stella’s pity—I am not to be pitied at all. I have a very sufficient income of my own.”
“A very sufficient income—for Mr. Tredgold’s daughter!” cried Lady Jane, and she hurried away biting her lips to prevent a string of evil names as long as her arm bursting from them. The old wretch! the old brute! the old curmudgeon! were a few of the things she would have liked to say. But it does not do to scatter such expressions about a man’s house before he has been buried a week. These are decorums which are essential to the very preservation of life.
Then Katherine’s mind turned to the other side of the question, and she thought of herself as Stella’s pensioner, of living on sufferance in Stella’s house, with a portion of Stella’s money substracted from the rest for her benefit. It would have been just the same had it been she who had endowed Stella, as she had intended, and given her the house and the half of the fortune. The same, and yet how different. Stella would have taken everything her sister had given, and waited and craved for more. But to Katherine it seemed impossiblethat she should take anything from Stella. It would be charity, alms, a hundred ugly things; it would have been mere and simple justice, as she would have felt it had the doing of it been in her own hands.
But it was not with any of these feelings, it was with the happiness of real affection in seeing her sister again, and the excitement of a great novelty and change and of a new chapter of life quite different from all that she had known before, and probably better, more happy, more comforting than any of her anticipations, that she set out next day to meet Stella and to bring her home.
A river-seabetween two widely separated banks, so calm that it was like a sea of oil bulging towards the centre from over-fullness; a big ship upon an even keel, moving along with almost imperceptible progress, the distant hazy banks gliding slowly past; the ease and relief of a long voyage over, not only on every face, but on every line of cordage; a bustle of happy people rushing up upon deck to see how near home they were, and of other people below crowding, bustling over portmanteaux to be packed, and all the paraphernalia of the voyage to be put away. It was a very curious scene to Katherine’s eyes, not to speak of the swarming dark figures everywhere—the Lascars, who were the crew, the gliding ayhas in their white wrappings. She was led to the cabin in which Stella, half-dressed, was standing in the midst of piles of clothes and other belongings, all thrown about in a confusion which it seemed impossible ever to reduce to order, with a box or two open and ready to receive the mass which never could be got in. She was so busy that she could not at first be got to understand that somebody from shore had come for her. And even then, though she gave a little cry and made a little plunge at Katherine, it was in the midst of a torrent of directions, addressed sometimes in English, sometimes in Hindostanee, to an English maid and a Hindoo woman who encumbered the small cabin with their presence. A pink-and-white—yet more white than pink—baby lay sprawling, half out of its garments, upon the red velvet steamboat couch. Katherine stood confused, disappointed, longing to take her sister to her heart, and longing to snatch up the little creature who was so new and so strangean element, yet suddenly caught, stopped, set down, in the exaltation of her love and eagerness by the deadly commonplace of the scene. Stella cried, with almost a shriek:
“You, Katherine! Is it possible?” and gave her a hurried kiss; and then, without drawing breath, called out to the women: “For goodness’ sake take care what you’re doing. That’s my best lace. And put all the muslins at the bottom—I sha’n’t want them here,” with a torrent of other directions in a strange tongue to the white-robed ayah in the background. Then—“Only wait,” Stella cried, “till I get a dress on. But there is never anything ready when I want it. Give me that gown—any gown—and look sharp, can’t you? I am never ready till half an hour after everybody. I never can get a thing to put on.”
“Don’t mind for to-day, Stella; anything will do for to-day. I have so much to tell you.”
“Oh!” said Stella, looking at her again, “I see. Your crape’s enough, Kate, without a word. So it’s all over? Well, perhaps it is for the best. It would have made me miserable if he had refused to see me. And Charlie would have insisted—and—— Poor papa! so he’s gone—really gone. Give me a handkerchief, quick! I was, of course, partly prepared. It’s not such a shock as it might have been.” A tear fell from Stella’s eyes upon the dress which her maid was arranging. She wiped it off carefully, and then her eyes. “You see how careful I have to be now-a-days,” she said; “I can’t have my dress spotted, I haven’t too many of themnow. Poor papa! Well, it is a good thing it has happened when I have all the distractions of the journey to take off my mind. Have you done now fumbling? Pin my veil properly. Now I’ll go on deck with you, Katherine, and we’ll watch the ship getting in, and have our talk.”
“Mayn’t I kiss the baby first?” Katherine said. She had been looking at that new and wonderful thing over the chaos of the baggage, unable to get further than the cabin door.
“Oh, you’ll see the baby after. Already you’re beginning to think of the baby and not of me. I knew that was how itwould be,” said Stella, pettishly. She stepped over an open box, dragging down a pile of muslins as she moved. “There’s no room to turn round here. Thank heaven we’ve done with it at last. Now, Kate—Kate, tell me; it will be the first thing Charlie will want to know. Did he relent to me at the last?”
“There is so much to tell you, Stella.”
“Yes—yes—about his illness and all. Poor papa! I am sure I am just as sorry as if I knew all about it already. But Kate, dear, just one word. Am I cut off in the will? That is what I want to know.”
“No,” said Katherine, “you are not cut off in the will.”
“Hurrah!” cried Stella, clapping her hands. It was but for one second, and then she quieted down. “Oh, we have had such a time,” she cried, “and Charlie always insinuating, when he didn’t say it outright, that it was my fault, for, of course, we never, never believed, neither he nor I, that papa would have held out. And so he did come to at the end? Well, it is very hard, very hard to have been kept out of it so long but I am glad we are to have what belongs to us now. Oh—h!” cried Stella, drawing a long breath as she emerged on deck, leading the way, “here’s the old Thames again, bless it, and the fat banks; and we’re at home, and have come into our money. Hurrah!”
“What are you so pleased about, Lady Somers? The first sight of ugly old England and her grey skies,” said someone who met them. The encounter sobered Stella, who paused a moment with a glance from her own coloured dress to Katherine’s crape, and a sudden sense of the necessities of the position.
“They aren’t very much to be pleased about, are they?” she said. “Will you find Charlie for me, please. Tell him my sister has come to meet us, and that there’s news which he will like to hear.”
“Stella,” cried Katherine, “there may not be much sorrow in your heart, yet I don’t think you should describe your own father’s death as something your husband will like to hear.”
“It is not papa’s death, bless you,” cried Stella, lightly.“Oh, look, they are getting out the ropes. We shall soon be there now—it is the money, to be sure. You have never been hard up for money, Kate, or you would know what it was. Look, there’s Charlie on the bridge with little Job; we call him Job because he’s always been such a peepy-weepy little fellow, always crying and cross for nothing at all; they say it was because I was in such a temper and misery when he was coming, about having no money, and papa’s cruelty. Charlie! That silly man has never found him, though he might have known he was on the bridge. Cha—arlie!” Stella made a tube of her two hands and shouted, and Katherine saw a tall man on the bridge over their heads turn and look down. He did not move, however, for some minutes till Stella’s gestures seemed to have awakened his curiosity. He came down then, very slowly, leading with much care an extremely small child, so small that it was curious to see him on his legs at all, who clung to his hand, and whom he lifted down the steep ladder stairs.
“Well,” he said, “what’s the matter now?” when he came within speaking distance. Katherine had scarcely known her sister’s husband in the days of his courtship. She had not seen him more than three or four times, and his image had not remained in her mind. She saw now a tall man a little the worse for wear, with a drooping moustache, and lips which drooped, too, at the corners under the moustache, with a look which was slightly morose—the air of a discontented, perhaps disappointed, man. His clothes were slightly shabby, perhaps because they were old clothes worn for the voyage, his hair and moustache had that rusty dryness which comes to hair which does not grow grey, and which gives a shabby air, also as of old clothes, to those natural appendages. The only attractive point about him was the child, the very, very small child which seemed to walk between his feet—so close did it cling to him, and so very low down.
“Nothing’s the matter,” said Stella. “Here is Kate come to bid us welcome home.”
“O—oh,” he said, and lifted his limp hat by the crown; “it’s a long time since we have met; I don’t know that Ishould have recognised you.” His eyes went from her hat to her feet with a curious inspection of her dress.
“Yes,” said Katherine, “you are right; it is so. My father is dead.”
A sudden glimmer sprang into his eyes and a redness to his face; it was as if some light had flashed up over them; he gave his wife a keen look. But decorum seemed more present with him than with Stella. He did not put any question. He said mechanically, “I am sorry,” and stood waiting, giving once more a glance at his wife.
“All Kate has condescended to tell me,” said Stella, “is that I am not out of the will. That’s the great thing, isn’t it? How much there’s for us she doesn’t say, but there’s something for us. Tell him, Kate.”
“There is a great deal for you,” Katherine said, quietly, “and a great deal to say and to tell you; but it is very public and very noisy here.”
The red light glowed up in Somers’ face. He lifted instinctively, as it seemed, the little boy at his feet into his arms, as if to control and sober himself. “We owe this,” he said, “no doubt to you, Miss Tredgold.”
“You would have owed it to me had it been in my power,” said Katherine, with one little flash of self-assertion, “but as it happens,” she added hastily, “you do not owe anything to me. Stella will be as rich as her heart can desire. Oh, can’t we go somewhere out of this noise, where I can tell you, Stella? Or, if we cannot, wait please, wait for the explanations. You have it; isn’t that enough? And may I not make acquaintance with the children? And oh, Stella, haven’t you a word for me?”
Stella turned round lightly and putting her arms round Katherine kissed her on both cheeks. “You dear old thing!” she said. And then, disengaging herself, “I hope you ordered me some mourning, Kate. How can I go anywhere in this coloured gown? Not to say that it is quite out of fashion and shabby besides. I suppose I must have crape—not so deep as yours, though, which is like a widow’s mourning. But crapeis becoming to a fair complexion. Oh, he won’t have anything to say to you, don’t think it. He is a very cross, bad-tempered, uncomfortable little boy.”
“Job fader’s little boy,” said the pale little creature perched upon his father’s shoulder and dangling his small thin legs on Somers’ breast. He would indeed have nothing to say to Katherine’s overtures. When she put out her arms to him he turned round, and, clasping his arms round his father’s head, hid his own behind it. Meanwhile a look of something which looked like vanity—a sort of sublimated self-complacence—stole over Sir Charles’ face. He was very fond of the child; also, he was very proud of the fact that the child preferred him to everybody else in the world.
It was with the most tremendous exertion that the party at last was disembarked, the little boy still on his father’s shoulder, the baby in the arms of the ayah. The countless packages and boxes, which to the last moment the aggrieved and distracted maid continued to pack with items forgotten, came slowly to light one after another, and were disposed of in the train, or at least on shore. Stella had forgotten everything except the exhilaration of knowing that she had come into her fortune as she made her farewells all round. “Oh, do you know? We have had great news; we have come into our money,” she told several of her dearest friends. She was in a whirl of excitement, delight, and regrets. “We have had such a good time, and I’m so sorry to part; you must come and see us,” she said to one after another. Everybody in the ship was Stella’s friend. She had not done anything for them, but she had been good-humoured and willing to please, and she was Stella! This was Katherine’s involuntary reflection as she stood like a shadow watching the crowd of friends, the goodbyes and hopes of future meeting, the kisses of the ladies and close hand-clasping of the men. Nobody was so popular as Stella. She was Stella, she was born to please; wherever she went, whatever she did, it was always the same. Katherine felt proud of her sister and subdued by her, and a little amused at the same time. Stella—with her husband by herside, the pale baby crowing in its dark nurse’s arms, and the little boy clinging round his father, the worried English maid, the serene white-robed ayah, the soldier-servant curt and wooden, expressing no feeling, and the heaps of indiscriminate baggage which formed a sort of entrenchment round her—was a far more important personage than Katherine could ever be. Stella did not require the wealth which was now to be poured down at her feet to make her of consequence. Without it, in her present poverty, was she not the admired of all beholders—the centre of a world of her own? Her sister looked on with a smile, with a certain admiration, half pleased with the impartiality (after all) of the world, half jarred by the partiality of nature. Her present want of wealth did not discredit Stella, but nature somehow discredited Katherine and put her aside, whatever her qualities might be. She looked on without any active feeling in these shades of sentiment, neutral tinted, like the sky and the oily river, and the greyness of the air, with a thread of interest and amusement running through, as if she were looking on at the progress of a story—a story in which the actors interested her, but in which there was no close concern of her own.
“Kate!” she heard Stella call suddenly, her voice ringing out (she had never had a low voice) over the noise and bustle. “Kate, I forgot to tell you, here’s an old friend of yours. There she is, there she is, Mr.——. Go and speak to her for yourself.”
Katherine did not hear the name, and had not an idea who the old friend was. She turned round with a faint smile on her face.
Well! There was nothing wonderful in the fact that he had come home with them. He had, it turned out afterwards, taken his passage in theAurungzebewithout knowing that the Somers were going by it, or anything about them. It would be vain to deny that Katherine was startled, but she did not cling to anything for support, nor—except by a sudden change of colour, for which she was extremely angry with herself—betray any emotion. Her heart gave a jump, but then it becamequite quiet again. “We seem fated to meet in travelling,” she said, “and nowhere else.” Afterwards she was very angry with herself for these last words. She did not know why she said them—to round off her sentence perhaps, as a writer often puts in words which he does not precisely mean. They seemed to convey a complaint or a reproach which she did not intend at all.
“I have been hoping,” he said, “since ever I knew your sister was on board that perhaps you might come, but——” He looked at Katherine in her mourning, and then over the crowd to Stella, talking, laughing, full of spirit and movement. “I was going to say that I—feared some sorrow had come your way, but when I look at Lady Somers——”
“It is that she does not realise it,” said Katherine. “It is true—my father is dead.”
He stood looking at her again, his countenance changing from red to brown (which was now its natural colour). He seemed to have a hundred things to say, but nothing would come to his lips. At last he stammered forth, with a little difficulty it appeared, “I am—sorry—that anything could happen to bring sorrow to you.”
Katherine only answered him with a little bow. He was not sorry, nor was Stella sorry, nor anyone else involved. She felt with a keen compunction that to make up for this universal satisfaction over her father’s death she ought to be sorry—more sorry than words could say.
“It makes a great difference in my life,” she said simply, and while he was still apparently struggling for something to say, the Somers party got into motion and came towards the gangway, by which most of the passengers had now landed. The little army pushed forward, various porters first with numberless small packets and bags, then the man and worried maid with more, then the ayah with the baby, then Lady Somers, who caught Katherine by the arm and pushed through with her, putting her sister in front, with the tall figure of the husband and the little boy seated on his shoulder bringing up the rear. Job’s little dangling legs were on a level with Stanford’sshoulder, and kicked him with a friendly farewell as they passed, while Job’s father stretched out a large hand and said, “Goodbye, old fellow; we’re going to the old place in the Isle of Wight. Look us up some time.” Katherine heard these words as she landed, with Stella’s hand holding fast to her arm. She was amused, too, faintly to hear her sister’s husband’s instant adoption of the old place in the Isle of Wight. Sir Charles did not as yet know any more than that Stella was not cut off, that a great deal was coming to her. Stella had not required any further information. She had managed to say to him that of course to go to the Cliff would be the best thing, now that it was Katherine’s. It would be a handy headquarters and save money, and not be too far from town.
The party was not fatigued as from an inland journey. They had all bathed and breakfasted in such comfort as a steamship affords, so that there was no need for any delay in proceeding to their journey’s end. And the bustle and the confusion, and the orders to the servants, and the arrangements about the luggage, and the whining of Job on his father’s shoulder, and the screams of the baby when it was for a moment moved from its nurse’s arms, and the sharp remarks of Sir Charles and the continual talk of Stella—so occupied every moment that Katherine found herself at home again with this large and exigent party before another word on the important subject which was growing larger and larger in her mind could be said.
Theevening passed in a whirl, such as Katherine, altogether unused to the strange mingled life of family occupations and self-indulgence, could not understand. There was not a tranquil moment for the talk and the explanations. Stella ran from room to room, approving and objecting. She liked the state apartment with its smart furniture in which she had herself been placed, but she did not like the choice of the rooms for the babies, and had them transferred to others, and the furniture altered and pulled about to suit their needs. The house had put on a gala air for the new guests; there were fires blazing everywhere, flowers everywhere, such as could be got at that advanced season. Stella sent the chrysanthemums away, which were the chief point in the decorations. “They have such a horrid smell. They make my head ache—they remind me,” she said, “of everything that’s dreadful.” And she stood over the worried maid while she opened the boxes, dragging out the dresses by a corner and flinging them about on the floors. “I shall not want any of those old things. Isn’t there a rag of a black that I can wear now? Kate, you were dreadfully remiss not to order me some things. How can I go downstairs and show myself in all my blues and greens? Oh, yes, of course I require to be fitted on, but I’d rather have an ill-fitting gown than none at all. I could wear one of yours, it is true, but my figure is different from yours. I’m not all one straight line from head to foot, as you are; and you’re covered over with crape, which is quite unnecessary—nobody thinks of such a thing now. I’ll wearthat,” she added, giving a little kick to a white dress, which was one of those she had dragged out by a flounce and flung onthe floor. “You can put some black ribbons to it, Pearson. Oh, how glad I shall be to get rid of all those old things, and get something fit to wear, even if it’s black. I shall telegraph at once to London to send someone down about my things to-morrow, but I warn you I’m not going to wear mourning for a whole year, Kate. No one thinks of such a thing now.”
“You always look well in black, my lady, with your complexion,” said Pearson, the maid.
“Well, perhaps I do,” said Stella mollified. “Please run down and send off the telegram, Kate; there is such a crowd of things to do.”
And thus the day went on. At dinner there was perforce a little time during which the trio were together; but then the servants were present, making any intimate conversation impossible, and the talk that was was entirely about the dishes, which did not please either Sir Charles or his wife. Poor Mrs. Simmons, anxious to please, had with great care compounded what she called and thought to be a curry, upon which both of them looked with disgust. “Take it away,” they both said, after a contemptuous examination of the dish, turning over its contents with the end of a fork, one after the other. “Kate, why do you let that woman try things she knows nothing about?” said Stella severely. “But you never care what you eat, and you think that’s fine, I know. Old Simmons never could do much but what English people call roast and boil—what any savage could do! and you’ve kept her on all these years! I suppose you have eaten meekly whatever she chose to set before you ever since I went away.”
“I think,” said Sir Charles in his moustache, “if I am to be here much there will certainly have to be a change in the cook.”
“You can do what you please, Stella—as soon as everything is settled,” Katherine said. Her sister had taken her place without any question at the head of the table; and Somers, perhaps unconsciously, had placed himself opposite. Katherine had taken with some surprise and a momentaryhesitation a seat at the side, as if she were their guest—which indeed she was, she said to herself. But she had never occupied that place before; even in the time of Stella’s undoubted ascendancy, Katherine had always sat at the head of the table. She felt this as one feels the minor pricks of one’s great troubles. After dinner, when she had calculated upon having time for her explanation, Sir Charles took out his cigar case before the servants had left the room. Stella interrupted him with a little scream. “Oh, Charles, Kate isn’t used to smoke! She will be thinking of her curtains and all sorts of things.”
“If Kate objects, of course,” he said, cutting the end off his cigar and looking up from the operation.
Katherine objected, as many women do, not to the cigar but to the disrespect. She said, “Stella is mistress. I take no authority upon me,” with as easy an air as she could assume.
“Come along and see the children,” Stella cried, jumping up, “you’ll like that, or else you’ll pretend to like it,” she said as they went out of the room together, “to please me. Now, you needn’t trouble to please me in that way. I’m not silly about the children. There they are, and one has to make the best of them, but it’s rather hard to have the boy a teeny weeny thing like Job. The girl’s strong enough, but it don’t matter so much for a girl. And Charlie is an idiot about Job. Ten to one he will be upstairs as soon as we are, snatching the little wretch out of his bed and carrying him off. They sit and croon for hours together when there’s no one else to amuse Charlie. And I’m sure I don’t know what is to become of him, for there will be nobody to amuse him here.”
“But it must be so bad for the child, Stella. How can he be well if you allow that to go on?”
“Oh,” cried Stella, clapping her hands, “I knew you would be the very model of a maiden aunt! Now you’ve found your realrôlein life, Kate. But don’t go crossing the ayah, for she won’t understand you, and you’ll come to dreadful grief. Oh, the children! We should only disturb them ifwe went in. I said that for an excuse to get you away. Come into my room, and let’s look over my clothes. I am sure I have a black gown somewhere. There was a royal mourning, don’t you know, and I had to get one in a hurry to go to Government House in—unless Pearson has taken it for herself. Black is becoming to my complexion, I know—but I don’t like it all the same—it shows every mark, and it’s hot, and if you wear crape it should always be quite fresh. This of yours is crumpled a little. You’ll look like an old woman from the workhouse directly if you wear crumpled crape—it is the most expensive, the most——”
“You need not mind that now, Stella; and for papa’s sake——”
“Good gracious! what a thing that is to say! I need never mind it! Charlie will say I should always mind it. He says no income could stand me. Are you there, Pearson? Well, it is just as well she isn’t; we can look them over at our ease without her greedy eyes watching what she is to have. She’ll have to get them all, I suppose, for they will be old-fashioned before I could put them on again. Look here,” cried Stella, opening the great wardrobe and pulling down in the most careless way the things which the maid had placed there. She flung them on the floor as before, one above the other. “This is one I invented myself,” she said. “Don’t you think that grey with the silver is good? It had a greatsuccès. They say it looked like moonlight. By the bye,” she added, “that might come in again. Grey with silver is mourning! What a good thing I thought of that! It must have been an inspiration. I’ve only worn it once, and it’s so fantastic it’s independent of the fashion. It will come in quite well again.”
“Stella, I do wish you would let me tell you how things are, and how it all happened, and——”
“Yes, yes,” cried Lady Somers, “another time! Here’s one, again, that I’ve only worn once; but that will be of no use, for it’s pink—unless we could make out somehow that it was mauve, there is very little difference—a sort of blue shade cast upon it, which might be done by a little draping, and itwould make such a pretty mauve. There is very little difference between the two, only mauve is mourning and pink is—frivolity, don’t you know. Oh, Pearson, here you are! I suppose you have been down at your supper? What you can do to keep you so long at your supper I never can tell. I suppose you flirt with all the gentlemen in the servants’ hall. Look here, don’t you think this pink, which I have only worn once, could be made with a little trouble to look mauve? I am sure it does already a little by this light.”
“It is a very bright rose-pink, my lady,” said Pearson, not at all disposed to see one of the freshest of her mistress’s dresses taken out of her hands.
“You say that because you think you will get it for yourself,” said Lady Somers, “but I am certain with a little blue carefully arranged to throw a shade it would make a beautiful mauve.”
“Blue-and-pink are the Watteau mixture,” said Pearson, holding her ground, “which is always considered the brightest thing you can wear.”
“Oh, if you are obstinate about it!” cried the mistress. “But recollect I am not at your mercy here, Pearson, and I shall refer it to Louise. Kate, I’m dreadfully tired; I think I’ll go to bed. Remember I haven’t been on solid ground for ever so long. I feel the motion of the boat as if I were going up and down. You do go on feeling it, I believe, for weeks after. Take off this tight dress, Pearson, quick, and let me get to bed.”
“Shall I sit by you a little after, and tell you, Stella?”
“Oh goodness, no! Tell me about a death and all that happened, in the very same house where it was, to make me nervous and take away my rest! You quite forget that I am delicate, Kate! I never could bear the things that you, a great, robust, middle-aged woman, that have never had any drain on your strength, can go through. Do let me have a quiet night, my first night after a sea voyage. Go and talk to Charlie, if you like, he has got no nerves; and Pearson, put the lemonade by my bed, and turn down the light.”
Katherine left her sister’s room with the most curious sensations. She was foiled at every point by Stella’s lightness, by her self-occupation, the rapidity of her loose and shallow thoughts, and their devotion to one subject. She recognised in a half-angry way the potency and influence of this self-occupation. It was so sincere that it was almost interesting. Stella found her own concerns full of interest; she had no amiable delusions about them. She spoke out quite simply what she felt, even about her children. She did not claim anything except boundless indulgence for herself. And then it struck Katherine very strangely, it must be allowed, to hear herself described as a great, robust, middle-aged woman. Was that how Stella saw her—was shethat, probably, to other people? She laughed a little to herself, but it was not a happy laugh. How misguided was the poet when he prayed that we might see ourselves as others see us! Would not that be a dreadful coming down to almost everybody, even to the fairest and the wisest. The words kept flitting through Katherine’s mind without any will of hers. “A great, robust, middle-aged woman.” She passed a long mirror in the corridor (there were mirrors everywhere in Mr. Tredgold’s much decorated house), and started a little involuntarily to see the slim black figure in it gliding forward as if to meet her. Was this herself, Katherine, or was it the ghost of what she had thought she was, a girl at home, although twenty-nine? After all, middle-age does begin with the thirties, Katherine said to herself. Dante was thirty-five only when he described himself as at themezzo del cammin. Perhaps Stella was right. She was three years younger. As she went towards the stairs occupied by these thoughts, she suddenly saw Sir Charles, a tall shadow, still more ghost-like than herself, in the mirror, with a little white figure seated on his shoulder. It was the little Job, the delicate boy, his little feet held in his father’s hand to keep them warm, his arms clinging round his father’s head as he sat upon his shoulder. Katherine started when she came upon the group, and made out the little boy’s small face and staring eyes up on those heights. Her brother-in-law greeted her witha laugh: “You wouldn’t stop with me to smoke a cigar, so I have found a companion who never objects. You like the smoke, don’t you, Job?”
“Job fader’s little boy,” said the small creature, in a voice with a shiver in it.
“Put a shawl round him, at least,” cried Katherine, going hastily to a wardrobe in the corridor; “the poor little man is cold.”
“Not a bit, are you, Job, with your feet in father’s hand?”
“Indland,” said the child, with a still more perceptible shiver, “Indland’s cold.”
But he tried to kick at Katherine as she approached to put the shawl round him, which Sir Charles stooped to permit, with an instinct of politeness.
“What, kick at a lady!” cried Sir Charles, giving the child a shake. “But we are not used to all these punctilios. We shall do very well, I don’t fear.”
“It is very bad for the child—indeed, he ought to be asleep,” Katherine could not but say. She felt herself the maiden aunt, as Stella had called her, the robust middle-aged woman—a superannuated care-taking creature who did nothing but interfere.
“Oh, we’ll look after that, Job and I,” the father said, going on down the stairs without even the fictitious courtesy of waiting till Katherine should pass. She stood and watched them going towards the drawing-room, the father and child. The devotion between them was a pretty sight—no doubt it was a pretty sight. The group of the mother and child is the one group in the world which calls forth human sentiment everywhere; and yet the father and child is more moving, more pathetic still, to most, certainly to all feminine, eyes. It seems to imply more—a want in the infant life to which its mother is not first, a void in the man’s. Is it that they seem to cling to each other for want of better? But that would be derogatory to the father’s office. At all events it is so. Katherine’s heart melted at this sight. The poor little child uncared for in the midst of so much ease, awake with his bigexcited eyes when he ought to have been asleep, exposed to the cold to which he was unaccustomed, shivering yet not complaining, his father carrying him away to comfort his own heart—negligent, but not intentionally so, of the child’s welfare, holding him as his dearest thing in the world. The ayah, on hearing the sound of voices, came to the door of the room, expostulating largely in her unknown tongue, gesticulating, appealing to the unknown lady. “He catch death—cold,” she cried, and Katherine shook her head as she stood watching them, the child recovering his spirits in the warmth of the shawl, his little laugh sounding through the house. Oh, how bad it was for little Job! and yet the conjunction was so touching that it went to her heart. She hesitated for a moment. What would be the use of following them, of endeavouring through Sir Charles’ cigar and Job’s chatter to give her brother-in-law the needful information, joyful though it must be. She did not understand these strange, eager, insouciant, money-grasping, yet apparently indifferent people, who were satisfied with her curt intimation of their restoration to wealth, even though they were forever, as Lady Jane said, agape for more. She stood for a moment hesitating, and then she turned away in the other direction to her own room, and gave it over for the night.
But Katherine’s cares were not over; in her room she found Mrs. Simmons waiting for her, handkerchief in hand, with her cap a little awry and her eyes red with crying. “I’m told, Miss Katherine,” said Simmons with a sniff, “as Miss Stella, which they calls her ladyship, don’t think nothing of my cookin’, and says I’m no better than a savage. I’ve bin in this house nigh upon twenty years, and my things always liked, and me trusted with everything; and that’s what I won’t take from no one, if it was the Lord Chamberlain himself. I never thought to live to hear myself called a savage—and it’s what I can’t put up with, Miss Katherine—not to go again you. I wouldn’t cross you not for no money. I’ve ’ad my offers, both for service and for publics, and other things. Mr. Harrison, the butler, he have been very pressin’—but I’vesaid just this, and it’s my last word, I won’t leave Miss Katherine while she’s in trouble. I know my dooty better nor that, I’ve always said.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Simmons; you were always very good to me,” said Katherine, “and you must not mind anything that is said at table. You know Stella always was hasty, and never meant half she said.”
“Folks do say, Miss Katherine,” said Simmons, “as it’s a going to be Miss Stella’s house.”
“Yes, it will be her house; but whether she will stay in it or not I cannot tell you yet. It would be very nice for you, Simmons, to be left here as housekeeper with a maid or two to attend you, and nothing to do.”
“I hope,” said Simmons, with again a sniff, “as I am not come so low down as that—to be a caretaker, me at my time of life. And it don’t seem to me justice as Miss Stella should have the house as she runned away from and broke poor old master’s heart. He’s never been himself from that day. I wonder she can show her face in it, Miss Katherine, that I do! Going and calling old servants savages, as has been true and faithful and stood by him, and done their best for him up to the very last.”
“You must not be offended, Simmons, by a foolish word; and you must not speak so of my sister. She is my only sister, and I am glad she should have everything, everything!” Katherine cried with fervour, the moisture rising to her eyes.
“Then, Miss Katherine, it’s more nor anyone else is, either in the servants’ hall or the kitchen. Miss Stella, or her ladyship as they calls her, is a very ’andsome young lady, and I knows it, and dreadful spoiled she has been all her life. But she don’t have no consideration for servants. And we’ll clear out, leastways I will for one, if she is to be the Missus here.”
“I hope you will wait first and see what she intends. I am sure she would be very sorry, Simmons, to lose so good a servant as you.”
“I don’t know as it will grieve her much—me as she has called no better nor a savage; but she’ll have to stand it allthe same. And the most of the others, I warn you, Miss Katherine, will go with me.”
“Don’t, dear Simmons,” said Katherine. “Poor Stella has been nearly seven long years away, and she has been among black people, where—where people are not particular what they say; don’t plunge her into trouble with her house the moment she gets back.”
“She ought to have thought of that,” cried Simmons, “afore she called a white woman and a good Christian, I hope, a savage—a savage! I am not one of them black people; and I doubt if the black people themselves would put up with it. Miss Katherine, I won’t ask you for a character.”
“Oh, Simmons, don’t speak of that.”
“No,” said Simmons, dabbing her eyes, then turning to Katherine with an insinuating smile, “because—because I’ll not want one if what I expect comes to pass. Miss Katherine, you haven’t got no objections to me.”
“You know I have not, Simmons! You know I have always looked to you to stand by me and back me up.”
“Your poor old Simmons, Miss Katherine, as made cakes for you, and them apples as you were so fond of when you were small! And as was always ready, no matter for what, if it was a lunch or if it was a supper, or a picnic, or whatever you wanted, and never a grumble; if it was ever so unreasonable, Miss Katherine, dear! If this house is Miss Stella’s house, take me with you! I shouldn’t mind a smaller ’ouse. Fifteen is a many to manage, and so long as I’ve my kitchenmaid I don’t hold with no crowds in the kitchen. Take me with you, Miss Katherine—you might be modest about it—seeing as you are not a married lady and no gentleman, and a different style of establishment. But you will want a cook and a housekeeper wherever you go—take me with you, Miss Katherine, dear.”
“Dear Simmons,” said Katherine, “I have not money enough for that. I shall not be rich now. I shall have to go into lodgings with Hannah—if I can keep Hannah.”
“You are joking,” said Simmons, withdrawing with wonder her handkerchief from her eyes. “You, Mr. Tredgold’s daughter, you the eldest! Oh, Miss Katherine, say it plain if you won’t have me, but don’t tell me that.”
“But indeed it is true,” cried Katherine. “Simmons, you know what things cost better than I do, and Mrs. Shanks says and Miss Mildmay——”
“Oh, Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay! Them as you used to call the old cats! Don’t you mind, Miss Katherine, what they say.”
“Simmons, tell me,” asked Katherine, “what can I do, how many servants can I keep, with five hundred a year?”
Simmons’ countenance fell, her mouth opened in her consternation, her jaw dropped. She knew very well the value of money. She gasped as she repeated; “Five hundred a year!”
Thenext morning the new world began frankly, as if it was nothing out of the usual, as if it had already been for years. When Katherine, a little late after her somewhat melancholy vigils, awoke, she heard already the bustle of the houseful of people, so different from the stillness which had been the rule for years. She heard doors opening and shutting, steps moving everywhere, Sir Charles’ voice calling loudly from below, the loud tinkling of Stella’s bell, which rang upstairs near her maid’s room. Katherine’s first instinctive thought was a question whether that maid would look less worried—whether, poor thing, she had dreamt of bags and bandboxes all night. And then there came the little quaver, thrilling the air of a child’s cry; poor little dissipated Job, after his vigil with his father, crying to be awoke so early—the poor little boy who had tried to kick at her with his little naked feet, so white in the dimness of the corridor, on the night before. It was with the strangest sensation that Katherine got hurriedly out of bed, with a startled idea that perhaps her room might be wanted, in which there was no reason. At all events, the house had passed into new hands, and was hers no more.
Hannah came to her presently, pale and holding her breath. She had seen Job fly at the ayah, kicking her with the little feet on which she had just succeeded in forcing a pair of boots. “He said as now he could hurt her, as well as I could understand his talk. Oh! Miss Katherine, and such a little teeny boy, and to do that! But I said as I knew you would never let a servant be kicked in your house.”
“Neither will my sister, Hannah—but they are all tired and strange, and perhaps a little cross,” said Katherine, apologetically.She went downstairs to find the breakfast-table in all the disorder that arises after a large meal—the place at which little Job had been seated next to his father littered by crumbs and other marks of his presence, and the butler hastily bringing in a little tea-pot to a corner for her use.
“Sir Charles, Miss Katherine, he’s gone out; he’s inspecting of the horses in the stables; and my lady has had her breakfast in her room, and it’s little master as has made such a mess of the table.”
“Never mind, Harrison,” said Katherine.
“I should like to say, Miss Katherine,” said Harrison, “as I’ll go, if you please, this day month.”
“Oh, don’t be in a hurry!” she cried. “I have been speaking to Mrs. Simmons. Don’t desert the house in such haste. Wait till you see how things go on.”
“I’d stay with you Miss Katherine, to the last hour of my life; and I don’t know as I couldn’t make up my mind to a medical gentleman’s establishment, though it’s different to what I’ve been used to—but I couldn’t never stop in a place like this.”
“You don’t know in the least what is going to happen here. Please go now, and leave me to my breakfast. I will speak to you later on.”
A woman who is the mistress of her own house is compelled to endure these attacks, but a woman suddenly freed from all the responsibilities of ownership need not, at least, be subject to its drawbacks. Katherine took her small meal with the sensation that it was already the bread of others she was eating, which is always bitter. There had been no account made of her usual place, of any of her habits. Harrison had hastily arranged for her that corner at the lower end of the table, because of the disarray at the other, the napkins flung about, the cloth dabbled and stained. It was her own table no longer. Any philosophic mind will think of this as a very trifling thing, but it was not trifling to Katherine. The sensation of entire disregard, indifference to her comfort, and to everything that was seemly, at once chilled and irritated her; and then shestopped herself in her uncomfortable thoughts with a troubled laugh and the question, was she, indeed, with her strong objection to all this disorder, fitting herself, as Stella said, for the position of maiden aunt? One thing was certain at least, that for the position of dependent she never would be qualified.
It was a mild and bright October day: the greyness of the afternoon had not as yet closed in, the air was full of mid-day sunshine and life. Sir Charles had come in from his inspection of “the offices” and all that was outside. He had come up, with his large step and presence, to the dressing-room in which Stella, wrapped in a quilted dressing-gown and exclaiming at the cold, lay on a sofa beside the fire. She had emerged from her bath and all those cares of the person which precede dressing for the day, and was resting before the final fatigue of putting on her gown. Katherine had been admitted only a few minutes before Sir Charles appeared, and she had made up her mind that at last her communication must be fully made now; though it did not seem very necessary, for they had established themselves with such perfect ease in the house believing it to be hers, that it would scarcely make any difference when they were made aware that it was their own. Katherine’s mind, with a very natural digression, went off into an unconsciously humorous question—what difference, after all, it would have made if the house and the fortune had been hers? They would have taken possession just the same, it was evident, in any case—and she, could she ever have suggested to them to go away. She decided no, with a rueful amusement. She should not have liked Sir Charles as the master of her house, but she would have given in to it. How much better that it should be as it was, and no question on the subject at all!
“I want you to let me tell you now about papa’s will.”
“Poor papa!” said Stella. “I hope he was not very bad. At that age they get blunted, and don’t feel. Oh, spare me as many of the details as you can, please! It makes me wretched to hear of people being ill.”
“I said papa’s will, Stella.”
“Ah!” she cried, “that’s different. Charlie will like to know. He thinks you’ve done nicely for us, Katherine. Of course many things would have to be re-modelled if we stopped here; but in the meantime, while we don’t quite know what we are going to do——”
“I’d sell those old screws,” said Sir Charles, “they’re not fit for a lady to drive. I shouldn’t like to see my wife behind such brutes. If you like to give mecarte blancheI’ll see to it—get you something you could take out Stella with, don’t you know!”
“I wish,” said Katherine, with a little impatience, “that you would allow me to speak, if it were only for ten minutes! Stella, do pray give me a little attention; this is not my house, it is yours—everything is yours. Do you hear? When papa died nothing was to be found but the will of ’seventy-one, which was made before you went away. Everybody thought he had changed it, but he had not changed it. You have got everything, Stella, everything! Do you hear? Papa did not leave even a legacy to a servant, he left nothing to me, nothing to his poor brother—everything is yours.”
Sir Charles stood leaning on the mantelpiece, with his back to the fire; a dull red came over his face. “Oh, by Jove!” he said in his moustache. Stella raised herself on her pillows. She folded her quilted dressing-gown, which was Chinese and covered with wavy lines of dragons, over her chest.
“What do you mean by everything?” she said. “You mean a good bit of money, I suppose; you told me so yesterday. As for the house, I don’t much care for the house, Kate. It is rococo, you know; it is in dreadful taste. You can keep it if you like. It could never be of any use to us.”
“It isn’t a bad house,” said Sir Charles. He had begun to walk up and down the room. “By Jove,” he said, “Stella is a cool one, but I’m not so cool. Everything left to her? Do you mean all the money, all old Tredgold’s fortune—all! I say, by Jove, don’t you know. That isn’t fair!”
“I don’t see why it isn’t fair,” said Stella; “I always knewthat was what papa meant. He was very fond of me, poor old papa! Wasn’t he, Kate? He used to like me to have everything I wanted: there wasn’t one thing, as fantastic as you please, but he would have let me have it—very different from now. Don’t you remember that yacht—that we made no use of but to run away from here? Poor old man!” Here Stella laughed, which Katherine took for a sign of grace, believing and hoping that it meant the coming of tears. But no tears came. “He must have been dreadfully sorry at the end for standing out as he did, and keeping me out of it,” she said with indignation, “all these years.”
Sir Charles kept walking up and down the room, swearing softly into his moustache. He retained some respect for ladies in this respect, it appeared, for the only imprecation which was audible was a frequent appeal to the father of the Olympian gods. “By Jove!” sometimes “By Jupiter!” he said, and tugged at his moustache as if he would have pulled it out. This was the house in which, bewildered, he had taken all the shillings from his pocket and put them down on the table by way of balancing Mr. Tredgold’s money. And now all Mr. Tredgold’s money was his. He was not cool like Stella; a confused vision of all the glories of this world—horses, race-meetings, cellars of wine, entertainments of all kinds, men circling about him, not looking down upon him as a poor beggar but up at him as no end of a swell, servants to surround him all at once like a new atmosphere. He had expected something of the kind at the time of his marriage, but those dreams had long abandoned him; now they came back with a rush, not dreams any longer. Jove, Jupiter, George (whoever that deity may be) he invoked in turns; his blood took to coursing in his veins, it felt like quicksilver, raising him up, as if he might have floated, spurning with every step the floor on which he trod.
“I who had always been brought up so different!” cried Stella, with a faint whimper in her voice. “That never had been used to it! Oh, what a time I have had, Kate, having to give up things—almost everything I ever wanted—and todo without things, and to be continually thinking could I afford it. Oh, I wonder how papa had the heart! You think I should be grateful, don’t you? But I can’t help remembering that I’ve been kept out of it, just when I wanted it most, all these years——”