“And a very lucky girl she is to be able to make money so easily,” the Captain remarked, after a pause. “By Jove! I wish that doing what pleased me most would give me a large income!” and the Captain, who certainly had made most conscientious efforts to fulfil his nature, and had, at least, tried to do what most pleased him all his life long, and withthe utmost energy, looked resentfully at his narrow well-kept finger-nails.
“Does she work all day long at her studio?” Peter asked, conscious of a certain hesitation in his voice. The mystery of Hilda’s afternoon absences would now be either solved or determined. It was determined—definitely. There was no shade of suspicion in Mrs. Archinard’s sighing, “Dear me, yes!” or in the Captain’s, “From morning till night. Wears herself out.”
Hilda, all too evidently, had a secret.
“She ought to go to two studios, it would tire her less. Her own half the day, and a large atelier the other.” Assurance might as well be made doubly sure.
“Hilda left Julian’s a long time ago. She has lived in her own place since then, really lived there. I haven’t seen it; of course I could not attempt the stairs. Katherine tells me there are terrible stairs. Most shockingly unhealthy life she leads, I think, and most,mostinconsiderate.”
At the dinner-table Odd knew that Hilda had only him to thank for the thorough “heckling” she received at the hands of both her parents. Her silence, with its element of vacant dulness, now admitted many interpretations. It hedged round a secret unknown to either father or mother. Unknown to Katherine? Her grave air of aloofness might imply as much, or might mean only a natural disapproval of the scolding process carried on before her lover, a loyalty to Hilda that would ask no question and make no reproach.
“Any one would tell you, Hilda, that it is positivelynotdecentin Paris for a young girl to be out alone after dusk,” said the Captain. “Odd will tell you so; he was speaking about it only this evening. You must come home earlier; I insist upon it.”
Odd sat opposite to her, and Hilda raised her eyes and met his.
He smiled gravely at her, and shook his head.
“Naughty little Hilda!” but his voice expressed all the tender sympathy the very sight of her roused in him, and Hilda smiled back faintly.
PETER brought Katherine the engagement ring a few days afterward. The drifting had ceased abruptly, and he felt the new sense of reality as most salutary. His personality and hers now filled the horizon; their relations demanded a healthy condensation of thoughts before expanded in wandering infinity, and he was thankful for the consciousness of definite duty and responsibility that made past years seem the refinement of egotism.
Katherine looked almost roguishly gay that afternoon, and, even after the ring was exclaimed over, put on, and Peter duly kissed for it, he felt that there was still an expression of happy knowingness not yet accounted for.
“The ring wasn’t a surprise, but you have one for me, Katherine.”
Katherine laughed out at his acuteness.
“The ring is lovely; clever, sensitive Peter!”
“You have quite convinced me of your pleasure and my own good taste. What is the news?”
“Well, Peter, a delightful thing has happened, or isgoingto happen, rather. Allan Hope is coming to Paris next week! Peter, we may have a double wedding!”
“Hilda has accepted him?”
“Oh, we have not openly discussed it, you know. Mamma got his letter this morning; very short. He hoped to see us all by Wednesday. Of course, mamma is charmed. Hilda said nothing, and went off to the studio as usual; but Hilda neverdoessay anything if she is really feeling.”
“Doesn’t she?” There was a musing quality in Odd’s voice.
“Ithink the child is in love with him; I thought so from the first. Wednesday! A week from to-morrow! Oh, of course she will have him!” Katherine said jubilantly.
“Allan isn’t the man to fail in anything. He has a great deal of determination.”
“Yes, he seems the very embodiment of success, doesn’t he? That is because he doesn’t try to see everything at once, like some people I know.” And Katherine nodded her head laughingly at herfiancé. “Intellectual epicureanism is fatal. Allan Hope has no unmanageable opinions. His party can always count on him. He is always there, unchanged—unless they change! He pins his faith to his party, and verily he shall have his reward! By mere force of honest mediocrity he will mount to the highest places!”
“Venomous little Katherine! What are you trying to insinuate?”
“Why, that Lord Allan isn’t particularly clever, nor particularly anything, except particularly useful to men who can be clever for him. He is the bricks they build with.”
“Allan is as honest as the day,” said Peter, a little shortly.
“Honest? Who’s a denygin’ of it, pray? His honesty is part of his supreme utility. My simile holds good; he is a brick; a dishonest man is a mere tool, fit only to be cast away, once used.”
“How rhetorical we are!” said Odd, smiling at her with a touch of friendly mockery.
“Lord Allan most devoutly believes that in his party lies the salvation of his country,” Katherine pursued. “Oh, I have talked to him!”
“You have, have you? Poor chap!” ejaculated Peter. “Will you ever serve me up in this neatly dissected way, as a result of our confidential conversations?”
“Willingly! but only to yourself. Don’t be afraid, Peter. I could dissect myself far more neatly, far more unpleasantly. I have a genius for the scalpel! And I have said nothing in the least derogatory to Allan Hope. He couldn’t disagree with his party, any more than a pious Catholic could disagree with his church. It is a matter of faith, and of shutting the eyes.”
If Hilda was so soon to pass to the supreme authority of an accepted lover, Peter felt that for his own satisfaction he must make the most of the time left him, and solve the riddle of her occupations. That delicate sense of loyal reticence had held him from a hinted question to even Katherine. If Katherine were as ignorant as he, a question would arouse and imply suspicion. Odd could suspect Hilda of nothing worse than a silly disobedience founded on a foolish idea of her own artistic worth; a dull self-absorption, unsaved by a touch of humor. Yet this very suspicion irritated Odd profoundly; it seemedlogical and yet impossible. He felt, in his very revulsion from it, a justification for a storming of her barriers.
That very evening, while Katherine played Schumann, the Captain having gone out and Mrs. Archinard dozing on the sofa, he determined to have the truth if possible.
Hilda stood behind her sister, listening. Her tall slenderness looked well in anything that fell in long lines, even if made by the mostpetiteofpetite couturières, as the gray silk had been. The white fichu covered deficiencies of fit, and left free the exquisite line of her throat. Her head, in its attitude of quiet listening, struck Odd with the old sense of a beauty significant, not the lovely mask of emptiness.
“Come and sit by me, Hilda,” he said from his place on the sofa, “you can hear better at this distance.”
The quick turn of her head, her pretty look of willingness were charming, he thought.
“I like to see you in that dress,” he said, as she sat down beside him on the sofa, “there isn’t a whiff of paint or palette about it, except that, in it, you look like a picture, and a prettier one than even you could paint.”
“That is a very subtle insult!” Hilda’s smile showed a most encouraging continuation of the pretty willingness.
“You see,” said Odd, “you are not fair to your friends. You should paint fewer pictures, and be more constantly a picture in yourself.” She showed a little uneasy doubtfulness of look.
“I am afraid I don’t understand you. I am afraid I am stupid.”
“You shouldbea little more, andacta little less.”
“But to act is to be,” said Hilda, with a sudden laugh. “We are not listening to Schumann,” she added, a trifle maliciously. Her face turned toward him in a soft shadow, a line of light just defining the cheek’s young oval, the lovely slimness of the throat affected Odd with a really rapturously artistic appreciation. The shape of her small head, too, with its high curves of hair, was elegant with an intimate elegance peculiarly characteristic. An inner gentle dignity, a voluntary submission to exterior facts of existence resulting in a higher freedom, a more perfect self-possession, seemed to emanate from her; the very poise of her head suggested it, and so strong and so sudden was the suggestion that Odd felt his curiosity intolerable, and those groping suspicions outrageously at sea.
“Hilda,” he said abruptly, “I went to your studio the other afternoon. You were not there.”
Her finger flashed warningly to her lip, and her glance towards her mother turned again to him, pained and beseeching.
“She—they can’t hear,” said Odd, in a still lower voice.
“No, I was not there,” Hilda repeated.
“And your father, your mother, Katherine, think you are there when you are not. Is that wise? Don’t be angry with me, my dear Hilda. You may have confidence in me. Tell me, do you work somewhere else?”
“No.I am not angry. You startled me.” Herlook was indeed shaken, but sweet, touched even. “Yes, I work somewhere else.”
“And you keep it a secret?”
She nodded.
“Is it safe to keep secrets from your father and mother? Or is it a secret kept for their sakes, Hilda?” Peter had made mental combinations, yet he suspected that in this one he was shooting rather far from the mark. No matter. Hilda looked away, and seemed revolving some inner doubt. Her hesitation surprised him; he was more surprised when, half unwillingly, she whispered, “Yes,” still not looking at him.
“For their sakes,” repeated Odd, his curiosity redoubled. “Come, Hilda, please tell me all about it. Fortheirsakes?”
“In one way.” Hilda spoke with the same air of half-unwilling confidence. But that she should confide, that she should not lock herself in stubborn silence, was much.
“And as you need not keep it for my sake, you may tell me,” he urged; “I may be able to help you.”
“Oh! I don’t need help.” She turned a slightly challenging look upon him. “It is no hardship to me, no trouble to keep my little secret.”
“You are really unkind now, Hilda.”
“No,”—her smile dwelt on him meditatively; “but I see no reason, no necessity for telling you. I have nothing naughty to confess!” and there was a touch of pride in her laugh.
“Yes, you are unkind, for you turn my real anxiety to a jest.”
“You must not be anxious.” Her eyes still rested on his, sweetly and gently.
“Not when I see you surrounded by an atmosphere of carping criticism? When I see you coming home, night after night, worn out, too fatigued to speak? When I see that you are thin and white and sad?”
Hilda drew herself up a little.
“Oh, you are mistaken. But—howkindof you!” and again the irradiated look lit up her face.
“Doesthatsurprise you? Hilda, Katherine is in the dark about this too?”
“Katherine knows; but please don’t ask her about it.”
“She doesn’t approve, then?”
“Not exactly. Besides, it might hurt her. Please don’t ask me either. It really isn’t worth any mystery, and yet I must keep it a secret.”
Odd was silent for a moment, a baffling sense of pitfalls and hiding-places upon him.
“But Katherine ought to tell me,” he said at last, smiling.
“Now you are pushing an unfair advantage. She thinks, probably, that it might hurtme. Really,really,” she added urgently, “it isn’t so serious as all this seems to make it. The one serious thing is that itwouldhurt mamma, and that is why I make such a mountain out of my mole-hill. How mystery does magnify the tiniest things!”
“Tell me, at least, where you go in the afternoon. I mean to what part of Paris, to what street.”
“I go to several streets,” said Hilda, smiling resignedly, “since youwillbe so curious.”
“Where are you going to-morrow? Give me just an idea of your prowess.”
“I go to-morrow to the Rue d’Assas.”
“Near the Luxembourg Gardens?”
“Yes.”
“I fancied you were walking yourself to death. And next day?”
“Next day—the Rue Poulletier.”
“And where may that be? I fancied I knew my Paris well.”
“It is a little street in the Île St. Louis. That is my favorite walk; home along the quays. I get the view of Notre Dame from the back, with all the flying buttresses, and the sunset beyond.”
“No wonder you are tired every night. You always walk?”
“Usually. I have Palamon with me, and they would not take him in a ‘bus. But from the Île St. Louis I often take the boat, and that is one of the treats of Paris, I think, especially when the lights are lit. And on some days I go to the Boulevard St. Germain. There; now you shall ask me no more questions.”
Odd made no further comment on the information he had received, but he resolved to be in the Rue d’Assas to-morrow. He did not intend to spy, but he did intend to walk home with Hilda, and to make her understand that one of the brotherly offices he claimed was the right to protecting companionship. He revolved therôleand its possibilities, as he lay back in the sofa watching Hilda’s profile, and listening to Schumann—arôlethat could, at all events, not last long, since Allan Hope arrivedon Wednesday. Allan’s arrival would put an end to mysteries, to a need for brotherly protection. Odd felt a certain curiosity on this point; indeed his attitude towards Hilda was one of continual curiosity.
“So Allan Hope turns up Wednesday week,” he said. “I shall be glad to see Allan again.”
Hilda’s silence might imply displeasure, but Odd, in an attitude of manly laziness, one leg crossed over the other, one hand holding an ankle, thought a little gentle teasing quite allowable.
“Will you go bicycling with him, unkind Hilda?” He was not prepared for the startled look she turned on him.
“When I would not go withyou?” Her own vehemence seemed to embarrass her. “I hardly know how to bicycle at all,” she added lamely; “I would have gone with you if I had had time.” She looked away again, and then, taking a book from the table beside her—
“Have you seen the last volume ofdécadentpoetry? Isn’t the binding nice?” Odd felt himself justly, but rather severely, reproved; yet the gentle candor of her eyes was kind and soothing. Katherine was playing the “Chopin” from Schumann’s “Carnaval,” and Peter, still holding his ankle and feeling rather like a naughty little boy forgiven, did not look at the fantastic volume she held, but at Hilda herself. How blue the shadows were on the milky whiteness of her skin. Odd’s eyes followed the thick, soft eddies of hair about her forehead.“Aren’t the margins generous?” said Hilda, turning the pages; “a mere trickle of print through the whiteness. Some of the verses are really very pretty,” and she talked gayly, in her gentle way, as they went through the pages together.
IT was just past four when Peter walked up the Rue Bonaparte and stationed himself at the corner of the Rue Vavin and the Rue d’Assas, opposite the Luxembourg Gardens.
From this point of vantage he could look up and down the street, and there would be no chance of missing her. She rarely reached home till past six, and, even allowing for very slow walking, he was if anything too early.
He felt, as he opened his umbrella—it had begun to rain—that his present position might look foolish, but was certainly justifiable. He would ask Hilda no questions, force in no way her confidence, but really on the gray dreariness of such a day she ought not to reject but rather to be glad for his proffered and unexpected companionship. The combined dreariness of the afternoon with its cold rain, the gray street, the desolate-looking branches of the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens, inspired him with a painful sympathy for Hilda’s pursuits. She was, probably, working in one of these tall, severe houses; perhaps with some atelier chum fallen beneath the ban of Mrs. Archinard’s disapproval, and clung to with a girl’s enthusiasm. Disobedient of Hilda, very. The chum might be masculine. This was a new and disagreeable supposition; a Marie Bashkirtseff,Bastien Lepage affair; Bohemia gloried in such audacities; it was difficult to associate Hilda with such feats of independence. There was a mystery somewhere, however, and if not mountainous, it must be more than mere mole-hill. It was very windy, and the rain blew slantingly. Katherine would find the situation amusing. A vision of the sympathetic amusement was followed by the realization that to betray his Quixotism might be to betray Hilda’s confidence. Yet Hilda had made no confidence. Peter rebelled at the mere suggestion of concealment. Knowing all, Katherine could surely know that he had been admitted into the outer courts of the mystery. He had ample time for every variety of reflection, for he had been standing in the rain for over an hour, when Hilda appeared not far from him, stepping from the door of one of the largest and most dignified of the gray houses. She paused on the wet pavement to open her umbrella, and Peter had a glimpse of the wide red lips and small black beard of an unpleasant-looking French youth, who seemed to loiter behind her with a certain air of expectancy. It was impossible to connect his commonplace vulgarity of aspect with Bohemian friendships or with Hilda, and, indeed, she gave him a mere nod, not looking at him at all, and came walking up the street, her skirt raised in one hand, showing slim feet and ankles. Odd, as he contemplated her advance, was reminded of the light poise of a Jean Goujon nymph. Her umbrella, lowered against the wind, hid him from her.
“Well, Hilda,” he said amicably, when she was almost beside him—the umbrella tilted back overher shoulder, and the rain fell on her startled face—“Here I am.”
Her stare of utmost amazement was very amusing, but she looked white and tired.
“I must get afiacre, I haven’t your taste for plodding through rain and mud, and you’ll be kind enough to forgo the enjoyment for one day, won’t you?” Her stupefaction at last resolved itself into one word: “Well!” she exclaimed with emphasis, and then she laughed outright.
“By Jove, child, you look done up. I’m glad you’re not angry, though. You wouldn’t laugh if you were angry, would you? Here is afiacre.” He hailed the approaching vehicle; thecocher’shat and cape, the roof of the cab, the horse’s waterproof covering glistened with rain in the dying light.
“You are very, very kind,” Hilda said, rather gravely now, as they stood side by side on the curb while thefiacrerattled up to them.
“I always intend to be kind, Hilda, if you will let me. Jump in.” He followed her, slamming the door with relief, and depositing the two dripping umbrellas in a corner.
“You must be drenched,” said Hilda solemnly.
“Imitation is the sincerest flattery, I believe; your fondness for drenchings inspired me. You are not one bit angry, then? You see I ask you no questions.”
“Angry? It was too good of you!” Her voice was still meditative.
“I am much relieved that you should say so. I was only conscious of guilt.”
“How long did you wait?”
“About an hour.”
“And it waspouring!”
“Oh no, not pouring. I have suffered far worse drenchings for far less pleasure. One has no umbrella in Scotland on the moors.”
“One has, at least, the scenery.” Hilda smiled.
“Yes; the Rue d’Assas isn’t particularly inspiring. I don’t disclaim honor; that corner was most wearing. Only the irritation of waiting for my mysterious little truant kept me from finding it dreary.”
“Don’t call me mysterious, please.”
“But you are mysterious, Hilda; very. However, I promised myself, and I promise you, to say no more about it, to ask no questions.”
“You are so kind, so good.” There was deep feeling in her voice; she looked at him with a certain wistful eagerness. “You really do care, don’t you? Shall I tell you? I should like to. It seems silly not to tell you, and I think you have a right to know—after to-day.”
“I really care a great deal, Hilda; but—I don’t want to take an unfair advantage, you know; I really have no right whatsoever. Wait till this impulse of unmerited gratitude has passed.”
“But it is nothing to tell, really nothing. You see—I make money. I have to—I teach. There; that is all.”
Peter looked at her, at the white oval of her face, at the unfashionable little hat, at the shabby coat and skirt. A lily of the field who toiled and spun. And a hot resentment rose within him as he thought of the father, the mother, the sister.
“Whyhaveyou to?” he asked, in a hard voice.
“We are so dreadfully poor, and we are so dreadfully in debt.”
“But why you alone? What canyoudo?”
“I can do a good deal. I have been very lucky. I love my work too, and I make money by it, so it is natural. Mamma, of course, would think it terrible, degrading even; but I can’t agree with mamma’s point of view; I think it is quite wrong. I see nothing terrible or degrading.”
“No; nothing terrible or degrading, I grant you.”
“You think I am right, don’t you?”
“Yes; quite right, dear, quite right.”
Odd paused before adding: “It is the incongruity that is shocking.”
“The incongruity?” Hilda’s voice was vague.
“Between your life and theirs; yes.”
“Oh, you don’t understand. I love my work; it is my pleasure. Besides, they don’t know; they don’t realize the necessity either.”
“Why the teaching? I thought your pictures sold well.”
“And so they do, often; but I took up the teaching some years ago, before I had any hope of selling my pictures; it is verysure, very well paid, and I really find it a rest after five hours of studio work; after five hours I don’t feel a picture any longer.”
“Yet they must know that the money comes from somewhere?”
Hilda’s voice in replying held a pained quality; this attack on her family very evidently perplexed her.
“Mamma thinks it comes from papa, and papa, I suppose, doesn’t think about it at all; he knows, too, that I sell my pictures. You mustn’t imagine,” she added, with a touch of pride and resentment, “that they would let me teach if they knew; you mustn’t imagine that for one moment. And I don’t mean to let them know, for then I couldn’t help them; as it is, my help is limited. The money goes, for the most part, towardsguardingmamma. She could not bear shocks and anxiety.”
Odd said nothing for some moments.
“How did it begin? how did you come to think of it?” he asked.
“It began some years ago, at the studio where I worked when I first came to Paris. There was a kind, dull French girl there; she had no talent, and she was very rich. She heard my work praised a good deal, and one day, after I had got a picture into the Salon for the first time, she came and asked me if I would give her lessons. Fifteen francs an hour.” Hilda paused in a way which showed Odd that the recollection was painful to her.
“It seemed averystrange thing to me at first, that she should ask me. I had, I’m afraid, rather silly ideas about Katherine and myself; as though we were very elevated young persons, above all the unpleasant realities of life. But my common sense soon got the better of my pride; or rather, I should say, the false pride made way for the honest. We wereawfullypoor just then. Papa, of course, never could, never even tried to make money; but that winter he went in for exasperated speculation, and really Katherine and I did not know what was to becomeof us. To keep it from mamma was the great thing. Katherine was just beginning to go out, and no money for gowns and cabs; no money, even, for mamma’s books. Keeping up with current literature is expensive, you know, and mamma has a horror of circulating libraries. The thought of poor mamma’s empty life soon decided me. I remember she had asked one day for John Addington Symonds’s last book, and Katherine and I looked at one another, knowing that it could not be bought. I realized then, that at all events I could make enough to keep mamma in books and Katherine in gloves. You can’t think how nasty, how egotistic my vulgar hesitation seemed to me. My life so full, so happy, and theirs on the verge of ruin. There is something very selfish about art, you know; it shuts one off so much from real life, makes one so indifferent to scrapings and pinchings. I realized that, with my shabby clothes and apparent talent, it was most natural for the French girl to think I should be glad of her offer; and indeed I was. It was soothing, too, to have her so eager. She wanted me very much, so I yielded gracefully.” Hilda gave a little smile of self-mockery. “I have taught her ever since. She lives in that house in the Rue d’Assas; rich, bourgeois people, common, but kind. She has no talent”—Hilda’s matter-of-fact manner of knowledge was really impressive—“but I don’t feel unfair in going on with her, for she really does see things now, and that is the greatest pleasure next to seeing and accomplishing; and, indeed, how rarely one accomplishes. Through her I have a great many pupils, for other girls at the studio heard ofher progress with me, and wanted private lessons too. All my afternoons are taken up, and, with fifteen francs an hour, you can see what a lot I make. It rather annoys me to think of people far cleverer than I am who can make nothing, and I, just because I have had luck, making so much. But among my pupils, I really have quite avogue; and Iama good teacher, I really think I am.”
“I am sure your pupils are very lucky. You have a great many, you say?”
“Yes, quite a lot. Sometimes I give three lessons in an afternoon. With Mademoiselle Lebon, my first pupil, I spend all the afternoon twice a week. She has a gorgeous studio.” Hilda smiled again. “It is very nice working there. To-morrow I go for two hours to an old lady; she lives in the Boulevard St. Germain; she is a dear, and a great deal of talent too; she does flowers exquisitely; not the dreadful feminine vulgarities one usually associates with women’s flower-painting; why all the incompetents should fall back on those loveliest and most difficult things, I never could understand. But my pupil really sees and selects. Only think how funny! Katherine met her son at a dance one night—the Comte de Chalons—insignificant but nice, she said; how little he could have connected Katherine with his mother’s teacher! Indeed, he never saw me,” and Hilda’s smile became decidedly clever. “I suppose the comtesse—she really is a dear, too—thinks that for a penniless young teacher I am too pretty. Well, I make on an average thirty francs an afternoon. I give Mademoiselle Lebon and Madame de Chalons double time for theirmoney, as old pupils. It would be easier to have a class in my studio, of course, but I would lose many of my most interesting pupils, who don’t care about going out; then, too, it would be almost impossible to keep my misdoings undiscovered. And there is all the mystery!” She leaned forward in the dusk of the cab to smile at him playfully. “I am glad to get it off my mind; glad, too, that you should know why I am so often cross and dull; by the time I reach home I am tired. I always bring Palamon, unless it is as rainy as to-day, and of course he puts omnibuses out of the question; omnibuses mount up, too, when one takes them every day. Excuse these sordid details.”
“I should think that a young lady who earns thirty francs an afternoon might afford a cab.” Odd found it rather difficult to speak. She was mercifully unaware of the aspect in which her drudging, crushed young life appeared to him.
“And then, what would Palamon and I do for exercise!” said Hilda lightly; “it is the walking that keeps me well, I am sure.”
His silence seemed to depress her gayety, for after a moment she added: “And really you don’t know how poor we are. I have no right to cabs, really. As it is, it often seems wrong to me spending the money as I do when we owe so much, so terribly much. Thirty francs is a lot, but we need every penny of it, for mere everyday life. I have paid off some of the smaller debts by instalments, but the weekly bills seem to swallow up everything.”
His realization of this silent struggle—the wholeweight of her selfish family on her frail shoulders—made Odd afraid of his own indignation. The remembrance of Mrs. Archinard’s whines, the Captain’s taunts, yes, and worst of all, Katherine’s gowns and gayety, almost overcame him. He took her hand in his and held it as they rolled along through the wetly shining streets. His continued silence rather alarmed Hilda. The relief of full confidence was so great that she could not bear it impaired by any misinterpretation.
“You do understand,” she said; “you do think I am right? My success seems unmerited to you, perhaps? But I try to give my best. I seem very selfish and unkind to mamma, I know, but I really am kind—don’t you think so?—in keeping the truth from her and letting her misjudge me. I know you have thought of me that I was one of those selfish idiots who neglect their real duties for their art; but I can do more for mamma outside our home. And I read to her in the evening. Oh, how conceited, egotistic, all that sounds! But I do want you to believe that I try to do what seems best and wisest.”
“Hilda! Hilda!” he put her hand to his lips and kissed the worn glove.
“You simply astound me,” he said, after a moment; “your little life facing this great Paris.”
“Oh, I am very careful, very wise,” Hilda said quickly.
“Careful? You mean that if you were not you might encounter unpleasantnesses?”
She looked at him with a look of knowledge that went strangely with her delicate face.
“Of course one must be careful. I am young—and pretty. I have learned that.”
“My child, what other things have you learned?” And Odd’s hold tightened on her hand.
“That terrifying things might happen if one were not brave. Don’t exaggerate, please. I really have found so few lions in my path, and a girl of dignity cannot be really annoyed beyond a certain point. Lions are very much magnified in popular and conventional estimation. A girl can, practically, do anything she likes here in Paris if she is quiet and self-reliant.”
Odd stared at her.
“Of course I have always been a coward, after a fashion; I was frightened at first,” said Hilda. He understood now the look of moral courage that had haunted him; natural timidity steeled to endurance. “The greatest trouble with me is that I am too noticeable, too pretty.” She spoke of her beauty in a tone of matter-of-fact experience; “it is a pity for a working woman.”
“My child,” Odd repeated. He felt dazed.
“Please don’t exaggerate,” Hilda reiterated.
“Exaggerate? Tell me about these lions. How have you vanquished them?”
“I have merely walked past them.”
His evident dismay gave her a merry little moment of superior wisdom.
“They frightened me and that was all. One was the husband of a person I taught. He used to lie in wait for me in the dining-room.” Hilda gave Odd a rather meditative glance. “You won’t beangry? Angry withmefor keeping on in my path of independence?”
“No; I won’t be angry with you.” Odd felt that his very lips were white.
“Well, he gave me a letter one day.” Hilda paused. “What a despicable man!” she said reflectively; “I taught his wife! I tore the letter in two, gave it back to him, and walked out. Naturally, I never went back again.” Her voice suddenly broke. “Oh! it was horrible! I felt—“
“What did you feel?”
“I felt as though I were for evermore set apart frommykind of girl, from girls like Katherine. I felt smirched, as though some one had thrown mud at me. That was morbid. I got over it.”
“Heavens!” Odd ejaculated. “Katherine knows this too?” he asked bitingly.
“Oh no, no! Mr. Odd, you are the only person. Never speak of it, will you? Never, never! Poor Kathy! It would drive her mad!”
“And she knows of your work?”
“Yes; I had to tell her of that. She felt dreadfully about it. She wanted me to go out with her, and have pretty dresses, and meet the clever people she meets. You should have seen how happy she was in London last spring! To have me with her! Wrenched away from my paint! Of course I could not give up my work, even if there had been money enough. I made her see that, and I can’t say I made her agree, but I made her yield. She takes a false view of it still, and worries over it. She wants me to give up the teaching and paint pictures only; but that would be too risky, theydon’t sell so surely. I have several on my hands. But Katherine knows nothing of lions and unpleasantness. I must keep such things secret, or I should not be allowed to go on.”
“You think I am safe. I must allow you, I suppose?”
“Yes, you must.” She smiled a very decided little smile, adding gravely, “I have confided in you.”
“Trust me.” There was silence in the cab for some moments. The tall trees of the Cours la Reine dripped in a misty mass on one side; on the other was the Seine with its lights.
“And the young man I saw at the door as you came out to-day?” said Odd.
“Oh, that is nothing, I hope. He is Mademoiselle Lebon’s brother. A harmlessly disagreeable creature, I fancy.” Odd resumed his brooding silence. “What are you thinking of so solemnly?” she asked.
“Of you.”
“Why so solemnly? I am afraid you are laboring under all sorts of false impressions. I have told my story stupidly.”
“The true impression has stupefied me. Good heavens! Theoretically I believe in the development of character at all costs, and you have certainly developed arara avisin the line; but practically, practically, my dear little girl, I would have you taken care of in cotton-wool, guarded, protected; you would always be lovely, and you would have been happy. You have been very unhappy.”
Hilda was looking at him with that rather vaguelook of impersonal contemplation characteristic of her.
“How you exaggerate things,” she said, smiling; “I have not been unhappy.”
“The pity of it! The pathos!” Odd pursued, not heeding her comment. Hilda looked at him rather sadly.
“You mean that I should have lost my ignorance? Yes, that made me feel badly,” she assented. “That is the worst of it. One becomes so suspicious. But, Mr. Odd, that is merely a sentimental regret. I have not lost my self-respect. I am not ignorant of things I should like to ignore; but one may know a great many things, and be unharmed.”
“My dear child, you are probably innocent of things familiar to many modern girls. No knowledge could harm you. You have a right to more than self-respect. You are a little heroine. Your unrewarded, unrecognized fight fills me with amazement and reverence. I did not know that such self-forgetful devotion existed.”
“Oh, please don’t talk like that! It is quite ridiculous! We must have money, and I can make it easily. I would be quite a monster if I sat idly at home, and saw mamma in squalid misery. I merely do my duty.” Hilda spoke quite sharply and decisively.
“Merely!” Odd ejaculated.
A thought of the near future, of Allan Hope, kept him silent, otherwise he might have indulged in reckless invective. He still held her hand, and again he raised it to his lips.
“That is a very stubborn and unconvinced salute, I am afraid,” Hilda said good-humoredly.
“May I come and get you now and then?” he asked.
“You think it would be wise?”
“How do you mean wise, Hilda?”
“I might be found out. I have given you my secret. You must help me to keep it.”
“I may speak of it to Katharine—since she knows?”
“Oh, of course, to Katherine. But don’teggher on to worry me!” laughed Hilda; “and speak to her withreservations—there are things she must not know.”
Peter wondered if the child-friendship, the brotherly relations, entitled him to seal the compact with a kiss upon her lips. He looked at her with a sudden quickening of breath. Her dimly seen face was very beautiful. This realization of her beauty’s attraction at that moment struck him with a sense of abasement before her. Surely no such poor tie held him to this lovely soul. And, at the turn of his own thoughts, Odd felt a vague stir of fear.
ODD was to take a walk in the Bois with Katherine the next morning, and he found her waiting for him in hat and coat and furs, a delightfully smart and wintry little figure. Katherine never failed in elegance, in well-groomed finish—her low-heeled little boots, her irreproachable snowy gloves, bore the same unmistakable stamp of thecachetthat costs, that is not to be procured ready made. Odd, as a rich man, had given very little thought to the power of money, and little thought to Katherine’s garments except as charmingly characteristic symbols of good taste; but to-day his eye noted the black fur that fell about her shoulders and trailed lustrous ends to her very feet, more for its richness than its becomingness.
Her bright though slightly grave smile failed to restore him to his usual attitude ofbon camaraderie. He smiled and kissed her, but he was conscious of underlying soreness, conscious, too, that he might lose his temper with Katherine; he had never lost it with Alicia. Katherine’s very superiority made it imperative to have things out with her. Kindly resignation was an impossibility. He realized that not to admire Katherine would make life with her intolerable. She would immediately perceive reservations and she would revolt against them. Hewondered whether he should be the one to broach the subject of Hilda’s ill-treatment, and was amazed at a certain embarrassed shrinking, as from a feeling too deep for words, that kept him silent as they walked along, taking a short cut to the Place de l’Etoile, where the Arc stood in almost cardboard clearness on the pale cold sky. It was Katherine who spoke—
“Hilda told me of your kindness yesterday. It touched her very much.”
In some subtle way it irritated Odd to hear Katherine vouch for Hilda’s feeling.
“And Hilda told you that I had been admitted into the mystery of the Archinard family?” His voice was even enough, but it held a certain keenness that Katherine was quick to recognize.
“You don’t think their mystery creditable, do you? Nor do I, Peter. But mamma knows nothing of it, nor papa; and I have tried to dissuade Hilda from the first.”
“My dear Katherine, the child has worked like a galley-slave for you all! Your necessities were more potent facts than your dissuasions, I fancy!”
Katherine gave a look at the fine severity of the profile beside her. She felt herself arraigned, and her impulse was towards rebellion. However, her voice was gentle, submissive even, as she answered him—
“I know it must look badly to you—cruel even. But, Peter, don’t you know—you do know—how thingsgrowaround one? One can hardly tell where the definite wrongdoing comes in, or rather the definite submission to a wrong situation.” Thiswas so true, that Katherine felt immediately the mollified quality of his voice as he answered—
“I know. I know submission was forced upon you, no doubt. But I had rather you had not submitted when once the situation grew definite. And I wish, Katherine, that you had helped her in making the situation easier. Granting that you could give her no material aid—granting that her faculty is good luck—still the actual burden might have been lightened.”
Odd paused; he could not say his thoughts outright—tell her that the comparative luxury of her life and her mother’s was outrageous, shocking to him now that he understood its source.
“It is part of Hilda’s good luck that her pleasures are not costly, or rather that she can herself defray their cost,” said Katherine quietly. “She has always lived in her art—seemed to care for nothing else. My life would indeed have been dreadful had I not accepted the interests that came into it. I have always felt, too, that in following the natural bent of my own character, I was laying foundations that might some day repay Hilda for everything. If she has friends—a public—it is owing to me. It was I who persuaded her to come to London last spring. I, therefore, who assured her future, in a sense, for there Allan Hope fell in love with her. I have felt that I have been doing my duty, in my own far less conventionally fine way, but doing it nevertheless. I make a circle for mamma; I brighten her life and my own and Hilda’s, as far as she will let me. Certaintoolsare necessary—Hilda needs brushes and canvases and studios; I, a few gowns,a few cabs, and a supply of neat boots and gloves. Still the contrast is uncomplimentary to me, I own; but when Hilda proposed this work of hers, I entreated her to give up the idea—I said we would all starve together rather. She insisted, and how can I interfere?”
“I can understand, Katherine, that everything you say is most convincing to yourself; I see the perfect honesty of your own point of view. But, my dear girl, it is slightly sophistical honesty. Hilda denies herself the commonest comforts of life, not only to give you the luxuries, but because her high sense of honor rebels against spending on herself money that is owed to others. Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t ask any such perhaps overstrained sense of responsibility from you. You have, no doubt, been fully justified in living your own life; but could it not have been lived with a little less elegance? I am sure that you would be welcomed everywhere, Katherine, with even fewer gowns and fewer gloves.”
Katherine flushed lightly; her flushes were never deep, and always becoming. It certainly cut her now to hear his almost unconscious implication—that from her he expected a less perfect sense of honor than from her sister. She swallowed a certain wrathful mortification that welled up, and answered with some apparent cheerfulness—
“You don’t know your world, Peter, if you fancy that even Katherine Archinard would be welcome in darned and dirty gloves!”
Odd walked on silently.
“And might she not be forced into taking somegirlish distraction?” he said presently. “It came out yesterday, with that astounding air ofexcusingherself she has, that she reads to her mother in the evening! Could not you do that, Katherine, and let Hilda profit now and then by theentourageyou have created for her?”
Katherine’s flush deepened.
“Mamma doesn’t care for my reading, and Hilda won’t go out; she goes to bed too early.”
“And then,” Odd continued, ignoring her comment in a way most irritating to Katherine’s smarting susceptibility, “you might have gone with her now and again to these houses where she teaches. You would have stood for protection. You would have seen for yourself if, in this drudgery, there lurked any unpleasantness, any danger. A girl of her extreme beauty is—exposed to insult.”
Katherine gave him a stare of frank astonishment.
“Oh, you must not give way to unpleasant romancing of that sort! Things like that only happen in novels of the silliest sort—even to beauties! And Hilda would have toldme. She tells meeverything. Really, Peter, she must have given you a wrong impression; she enjoys her life!”
“So she tried to convince me,” said Odd, with a good deal of sharpness; “there was no hint of complaint, regret, reproach, in Hilda’s recountal; don’t imagine it, Katherine.”
Katherine was telling herself that never in all her life had she experienced so many rebuffs. She contemplated her own good temper with some amazement; she also wondered how long it would last. By this time they were half-way down the Avenuedu Bois; the day was fine and clear, and the wintry trees were sharply definite against the sky.
“I have never even seen her in a well-made gown,” said Odd.
“Hilda scorns the fashion-plate garment, as I do. We are both original in that respect.”
“Your originality takes different forms.”
“Because it must adapt itself to different conditions, Peter. I won’t be scolded about my dresses. Men like you imagine that, because a woman looks well, she must spend a lot. It isn’t so with me. My dresses last forever, and, to go into details, Hilda by no means clothes me. Papa has money—now and then. Even Hilda could not support the family, and her money mainly goes for mamma’s books and oysters and hot-house grapes. If she will not spend it on herself, and if, now and then, I accept some of it, I cannot consent to feel unduly humiliated.”
There was a decisiveness in Katherine’s tone that warned Peter to self-control. Indeed the situation had been created for her. She had owned up frankly to her distaste for it, her realization of its wrong.
“I am not going to ask undue humiliation of you, my dear Katherine. Don’t think me such a priggish brute; but I am going to ask you to help me to put an end to this.” Katherine’s smiles had returned.
“Allan Hope will.”
Peter walked on, looking gloomy.
“You won’t realize that Hilda’s life is the one that gives her the greatest enjoyment. I have always envied Hilda tillyoucame; and even now”—Katherine’s smile was playful—“Allan Hope is very nice! Take patience, Peter, till Wednesday.”
“Yes; we must wait.”
“I have waited for so long! Hilda could not have minded what you call the ‘drudgery.’ She had only to lift her finger to end it.”
“Hilda would not be the girl to lift her finger.”
“You appreciate my Hilda, Peter; I am glad.” Katherine gave his abstracted countenance another of her bright contemplative glances. There was nothing sly in Katherine’s glances, and yet underlying this one was a world of kindly, though very keen analysis; disappointment, rebellion, and level-headed tolerance. This was decidedly not the man to be fitted to her frame. He could not be moulded to a clever woman’s liking, for all his indefiniteness. On certain points of the conduct of life, Katherine felt that she would meet an opposition sharply definite. Katherine understood and was perfectly tolerant of criticism, but she did not like it; nor did she like being put in the wrong. That Peter now considered her very much in the wrong was evident. She was also aware that the sophistry of her explanation had deceived herself even less than it had deceived him. That Hilda spent her life in drudgery, and that she spent hers in pleasure-seeking, were facts most palpable to Katherine’s very impartial vision. She knew she was wrong, and she knew that only frank avowal would meet Peter’s severity and touch his tenderness and humor. If she heaped shame on her own head, he would be the first to cry out against the injustice.
Yet Katherine hesitated to own herself wrong. She was not sure that she cared to place her lover in the sheltering and leading attitude of the Lovein the “Love and Life.” The meek, trembling look of Life had always irritated her in the picture. Katherine felt herself quite strong enough to stand alone, and felt that she would like to lead in all things. It was with a deep inner sense of humiliation that she said—
“Please don’t be cross with me, Peter. Please don’t scold me. I have been naughty—far naughtier than I dreamed of—you have made me realize it, though you are not quite just. But you must comfort me for my own misdoings.”
As Katherine went on she felt an artistic impulsiveness, almost real, and which sounded so real that Peter met the sweet pleading of her eyes with a start of self-disgust.
Peter was very tender-hearted, very sympathetic, very prone to self-doubt. Katherine’s look made him feel a very prig of pompous righteousness.
“Why, Katherine!” he said, pausing in his walk. “My dear Katherine! as if I could not appreciate the slow growth of necessity! I only hope you may never have to comfort me for far worse sins!”
This was satisfactory. But Katherine’s pride still squirmed.
Odd went to meet Hilda on Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. The distances were always great, and he insisted on cabs for the return trip. Palamon must be tired, even if Hilda were not. He was too old for such journeyings; and Hilda had smilingly to submit. Wednesday would end it all definitely; Peter thought that he saw the end with unmixed satisfaction, and yet when Allan Hope walked into his rooms early on Wednesdaymorning, this Perseus of Hilda’s womanhood gave the Perseus of her childhood a really unpleasant turn of the blood. There was something irritating in Allan Hope’s absolute fitness for therôle, emphasizing, as it did, Peter’s own unfitness, his forty years, and his desultory life.
Active energy, the go-ahead perseverance that knows no doubts, the honest and loyal convictions which were all arranged for him from his cradle, and which he would bequeath to his children unaltered, all things that make for order and well-being, looked at one from Lord Allan’s clear, light eyes. Odd suddenly felt himself to be an uncertain cumberer of the earth; failure personified beside the other’s air of inevitable success. He was fond of Hope and Hope fond of him, and they talked as old friends talk, with the intimacy that time brings; an intimacy far removed from the strong knittings of sympathy that an hour may accomplish; for, though Odd understood Allan very well, Allan did not muddle his direct views of things by a comprehension that implied condonation. He thought it rather a pity that Odd had not made more of his life. Odd’s books weren’t much good that he could see; better do something than write about the things other men have done. Odd felt that Allan was probably quite right. They hardly spoke of Hilda, but in Hope’s congratulations on Peter’s engagement there was a ring of heartfelt brotherly warmth that implied much, and left Peter in a gloomy rage with himself for feeling miserable. Peter had not analyzed the darks and glooms of the last few days.
Growth does not admit of much self-contemplation. One wakes suddenly to the accomplished change. If Peter was conscious of developments, he defined them as morbid enlargements of that self-doubt which would naturally thrill under the stress of new responsibilities.
Only from the force of newly formed habit did he go to the Rue Poulletier that afternoon, hardly expecting to meet Hilda. But Hilda had, as yet, not interrupted her usual avocations. She emerged from the gloomy portals of one of the old dismantled-lookinghôtelsthat line the Rue Poulletier with a certain dignity, and she looked toward the corner where he stood with a confident glance. It was the second time he had met her there, twice in the Rue d’Assas too.
“It is so kind of you,” she said, as she joined him and they turned into thequai; “only you mustn’t think that youmust, you know.”
“MayI think that Imust? Give me the assurance of necessity. I am always a little afraid of seeming officious.”
Hilda smiled round at him.
“Who is fishing? You know I love to have you come. You can’t think how I look forward to it.” She was walking beside him along thequai. The unobtrusive squareness of the “Doric little Morgue” was on their left, as they faced the keen wind and the dying sunset. Notre Dame stood gray upon a chilly evening sky of palest yellow. “I know now that Iwaslonely.”
“That implies the kindest compliment.”
“More thanimplies, I hope.”
“You really like to have me come?”
“You know I do. I am only afraid that you will rob yourself—of other things for me.”
The candor of her eyes was childlike.
“My little friend.” Odd felt that he could not quite trust himself, and took refuge in the convenient assertion.
The cold, clear wind blew against their faces; it ruffled the water, and the gray waves showed sharp steely lights. The leafless trees made an arabesque of tracery on the river and the sky. Hilda looked up at the kind, melancholy face beside her, a faint touch of cynicism in her sad smile; but the cynicism was all for herself, and it was not excessive. She accepted this renaissance gratefully, though the disillusions of the past were unforgettable.
“Tell me, Hilda, that you will be my friend whatever happens—to you or to me.”
“I have always been your friend, have I not?”
“Have you, Hilda, always?”
“I am dully faithful.” Hilda’s smile was a little baffling; it gave no warrant for the sudden quickening of the breath that he had experienced more than once of late.
“I feel as if I hadfoundyou, Hilda.”
“Did youlookfor me, then?”
The smile was now decidedly baffling and yet very sweet.
“You know,” she added, “I liked you from that first moment when you fished me out of the river. It seems that you are fated to act always the chivalrous part toward me.”
“I would ask no better fate. Hilda, you have seen Allan Hope? Not yet?”
“No; not yet.” Hilda’s face grew serious. “He is coming to tea this afternoon.”
“But you must be there.”
“Yes, I suppose I must.” This affectation of girlish indifference seemed to Odd more significant than noticeable shyness.
“We must take a cab,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
“Oh, it makes no difference. Cabs, you see, are never reckoned with in my arrivals. I am warranted to be late.”
“But you must not be late.”
“But if I want to?” There was certainly a touch of roguery in her eyes.
“If you want to and if I want you to, it shows that you are cruel and I conscienceless. Here is a cab. Away with you, Hilda.Au revoir.”
“Aren’t you coming too?” asked Hilda, pausing in the act of lifting Palamon.
“Not to-day; I can’t.” Odd knew that he was cowardly. “I shall see you to-morrow? I suppose not.”
“Why, yes, if you come to the Boulevard St. Germain.” Hilda had deposited Palamon on the floor of the cab and still stood by the open door looking rather dismayed.
“Really!”
“I shall go there.”
“I too, then. Remember our vow of friendship, Hilda. I wish you everything that is good and happy.”
There was seemingly a slightly hurt look on Hilda’s face as she drove away. In spite of the vow, Peter feared that this was the last of Hilda, of even this rather shadowy second edition of friendship.
He had done his duty; to hurt oneself badly seems a surety of having done one’s duty thoroughly.
HILDA drove home, with Palamon leaning his warm body against her feet as he sat on the floor of the cab. She put out her hand now and then and laid it on his head, but absently. She leaned back presently and closed her eyes, only rousing herself with a little start when the cab drew up with a jerk in the Rue Pierre Charron. Palamon stood dully on the pavement while she spoke to the cabman—but themonsieurhad paid him, as Hilda had forgotten for the moment. Palamon was evidently tired too, and with a little turn of dread she wondered if the time would come when she must leave Palamon to a lonely day in the apartment. Mrs. Archinard did not like dogs near her. Katherine was always out, and although Rosalie the cook was devoted to thetou-tou, Hilda would miss him terribly and he would miss her.
She said to herself that if it came to that she would allow herself a daily cab-fare rather than leave Palamon, and she toiled up the steep stairs carrying him. Taylor opened the door to her.
“Give me the dog, Miss Hilda; you do look that tired. You are to go at once into the drawing-room, Miss. Lord Allan Hope has been waiting for some time.”
Hilda was surprised to find that she had beenthinking of Palamon rather than of the ordeal before her. She felt calm now, perfectly, as she walked into the drawing-room, a little taken aback, however, to find Lord Allan there waiting for her and alone.
Katherine was in the next room, her own pretty room, a rather perplexed smile of expectancy on her face. Taylor brought in Palamon, and Katherine gave him a drink and patted him kindly. Palamon would go with Hilda to her new home—dear old Palamon! The thought of Hilda’s new home and homes—of the castle in Somersetshire and the shooting-lodge in Scotland, and the big house in Grosvenor Square, deepened the look of perplexity on Katherine’s brow.
While Palamon lapped the water, she watched him with an expression of absent-minded concentration. She could hear nothing in the drawing-room, except now and then the slightly raised quiet of Allan Hope’s fine voice. Presently there was a long silence, and Katherine paused near the door.
The quizzical lift of her eyebrows spoke her amused inquiry. She could hardly imagine Hilda allowing herself to be kissed, and as the silence continued, Katherine felt a touch of impatience color her sisterly sympathy. Lord Allan’s voice, pitched on a deep note of pain, startled her. There followed quite a burst of ardent eloquence. With a littlemoueof self-disapproval Katherine bent her ear to the door. She heard Lord Allan quite distinctly. He was pleading in more desperate accents than she could have imagined possible from him, and Katherine caught, too, the half frightened reiteration of Hilda’s voice: “I can’t, I can’t; really I can’t. Iam so—sosorry, so sorry—“ The childishness of this helpless repetition brought a quick frown to Katherine’s brow.
“Little idiot! Baby!”
She straightened herself and stood staring at the gray houses across the way. Then, at renewed silence in the drawing-room, she walked to the mirror and looked at her amethyst-robed reflection.
Her eyes lingered on the contour of her waist, the supple elegance of the line that fell gleaming from her hip. She met the half-shamed, half-daring glance of her deeply set eyes. The silence continued, and Katherine walked out through the entrance and into the drawing-room.
Hilda was sitting upright on a tall chair, looking at the floor with an expression of painful endurance, and Lord Allan stood looking at her.
He turned his eyes almost unseeingly on Katherine and remained silent, while Hilda rose and put out her hand to him. Hilda had no variety of metaphor; “I am so sorry,” she repeated.
She left her hand in his for one moment and then passed swiftly out of the room. Katherine was left facing the unfortunate lover. Katherine showed great tact.
“Lord Allan, don’t mind me. Sit down for a moment. Perhaps then you may be able to tell me. Perhaps I can help you.”
“No good, Miss Archinard; it’s all up with me.”
Her gentle voice evidently turned aside the current of his frank despair. Instead of rushing out, he dropped on the sofa and looked at the carpet over his locked hands.
“I am not going to talk to you for a little while.”
The lamps were lighted and the tea-things all in readiness on the little table. Katherine lit the kettle and turned a log on the fire. Lord Allan’s silence implied a dull acquiescence. He did not move until Katherine came and sat down on the chair beside him.
“Iam so sorry, too,” she said, with a sad little smile. “Lord Allan, I thought she cared for you.”
“I hoped so.”
“And have you no more hope?”
“None—absolutely none. I tell you it’s rough on a fellow, Miss Archinard. I—Iadorethat child.”
“Poor Lord Allan,” Katherine gently breathed. She stretched out her slim hand and laid it almost tenderly on his. Katherine was rather surprised at herself, and to herself her motives were rather confused. “I should have liked you as a brother, Lord Allan.”
“You are awfully kind.” He lifted his dreary eyes and surveyed her absently, but with some gratitude. “I suppose I had best be going,” he added suddenly, as if struck by the anti-climax of his position.
“No, no; not unless you feel you must.” Katherine put out her hand again and detained his rising. “I can’t bear to think of you going out alone like that into the cold. Just wait. You are bruised. Get back your breath. I am not going to be tiresome.”
Lord Allan leaned back in the sofa with a long sigh, relapsing into the same half stunned silence,while Katherine moved about the tea-table, measuring out the tea from the caddy to the teapot, pouring on the boiling water, and pausing to wait for the tea to steep. Presently Lord Allan was startled by a proffered steaming cup.
“Will you?” she said. “I made it for you. It is such a chilly evening.”
“Oh, how awfully kind of you,” he started from his crushed recumbency of attitude, “but you know I reallycan’t!” But at the grieved gentleness of Katherine’s eyes he took the cup. “It is too awfully kind of you. I do feel abominably chilly.” He gulped down the tea, and gave a half shame-faced smile as she took the cup for replenishment.
“No, don’t get up,” she urged, as he made an effort to collect his courtesy; “let me wait on you,” and she returned with a discreetly tempting plate of the thinnest bread and butter. She sat down beside him again, looking into the fire with kind, sad eyes as she stirred her tea. She asked him presently, in the same quietly gentle voice, some little question about the most recent debate in the House. Lord Allan had rather distinguished himself in that debate; it was on the crest of that wave of triumph that he had come to Hilda. From monosyllabic replies he was led on to a rather doleful recitation of his own prowess; it seemed that Katherine had followed it all in the newspapers, so tactfully intelligent were her comments. He found himself sipping his third cup of tea, enjoying in a dreary way the expounding of his favorite political theories to the quiet, purple-robed figure besidehim. He remembered that Miss Archinard had always been interested in his career; she, of course, was the intellectual one, though Hilda’s beauty sent a sharp stab of pain through him as he made the comparison; he appreciated now Miss Archinard’s kindness and sympathy with a brotherly warmth of gratitude. When he at last rose to go, he was dejected; but no longer the crushed individual of an hour before.
“You have been too good to a beaten man,” he said, taking her hand.
“Oh, Lord Allan, by the laws of compensation you must losesometimes. Hilda, poor child, doesn’t know what she has done; she cannot know. Her little achievements bound the world for her. She doesn’t see outside her studio walls.Yourgreat world of action, true beneficent action, would stun her. Do you leave Paris directly, Lord Allan? Yes! Then won’t you write to me now and then? I am interested in you. I won’t relinquish the claim of ‘it might have been.’ May I keep in touch with you—as a sister would?”
“You are too good, Miss Archinard.”
“To an old friend? A man I have followed and admired as I have you? Lord Allan, I respect you from the bottom of my heart for the way in which you have borne this knock-down from fate. You are strong, it won’t hurt you in the end. Let me know how you get on.”
Katherine’s eyes were compelling in their candid kindness. Lord Allan said that he would, with emphasis. As he went down the long staircase, the purple-robed figure filled his thoughts with areviving beneficence. He felt that the blow was perhaps not so bad as he had imagined—might even be for the best; better for him, for his career. Katherine’s words enveloped him in an atmosphere that was soothing.
Left alone, Katherine finished her second cup of tea, and made, as she looked thoughtfully into the fire, a second littlemoueof self-disapprobation.