“Oh, it’s clever enough, and brave of you—as you always are—to be ready to face the parents alone. We shall have to do something of the kind in the end, you know, because we can’t be married over again. Uncle Robert suggested the same sort of plan last winter; only he wanted us to go to his place up the river, and he was going to ask the whole family. The dear old man forgot that his servants would remember for the rest of their lives that there had been no marriage service. It wasn’t practical.”
“By the bye, where’s our marriage certificate?”asked John, suddenly. “You took it, you know. You never told me what became of it.”
“Oh, uncle Robert said he’d keep it with his papers. I suppose it’s as safe there as anywhere. Still—if he were to die—”
“It’s all right, if he’s kept it. It will be in a safe place, properly endorsed. As he’s the only person who knows the secret, he’d much better keep it, and he’s not at all likely to die now that he’s recovered. I’d been meaning to ask you for ever so long. But to go back—if things get any worse, or go on as badly as they’re going now, do you see any possible objection to doing what I propose?”
“Well, the principal objection is that it will hamper your mother, Jack. I’d rather suffer a great deal more than I’m likely to, than thrust myself upon her. I know—you’ll tell me that she’s very fond of me and wants to see us married, and I know she’s in earnest about it and means every word she says. But I’ve lived in a rigidly economical household, as they call it. I know what it means, and it would be very difficult for any one who’s never been used to it. Don’t think about it, dear. Please don’t. You know I come to you with all my little woes—but you mustn’t take them too seriously. You’ll prevent me from speaking freely if you do, dear.”
“It’s my business to take your happiness seriously.I’m not prepared to stand the idea of having your life made miserable on my account.”
“But it isn’t about you, Jack. It’s altogether about the question of uncle Robert’s will.”
“Never mind. I won’t have you made unhappy by anybody, do you understand? I’ve got the right of loving you, and the right of being your husband, and if that isn’t enough I’ll take the right. I’m in earnest, Katharine.”
He stood still on the pavement; she stopped, also, and faced him.
“Yes, dear; I know and I thank you,” she said, gently. “But it really isn’t as bad as I made out. I’m irritated, and I want to be with you all the time, and then the least little thing seems so much bigger than it is. Please, please don’t do anything rash, Jack, or without telling me just what you’re going to do! You know you are rash, dear—I’m always a little afraid of what you may do when you’re angry.”
“I certainly shan’t be rash where you’re concerned,” answered Ralston. “You’re too much to me—we are to each other—and we mustn’t risk anything. But don’t imagine, either, that if anything goes wrong I shan’t know it, even if you won’t tell me. I can guess what you think of from your face, you know—I’ve often done it.”
“That’s true—I’m sure I couldn’t conceal anything from you for long,” answered Katharine, womanly wise.
She was concealing something from him at that very moment, something which she had meant to tell him, and would have told him, had he not spoken so decidedly of what he meant to do if her life were made unhappy. But she knew that he was quite capable of doing anything which he said he would do, no matter how rash. When she had at first spoken, she had not altogether realized how he would take up the question of her present unhappiness as a matter for immediate and decisive action. She loved him all the better for it, but she began to understand how careful she must be in future.
John paused a moment after his last speech, and looked into her grey eyes. Perhaps some little doubt assailed him as to whether, if she tried, she could not, perhaps, keep from him something he wished to know—the doubt from which men who love are very rarely quite free.
“But promise me, Katharine,” he said, presently, “promise me that if you are really suffering you will tell me, instead of just leaving me to guess.”
“Ah—you see!” She laughed softly and happily. “You’re not so sure as you thought! Oh, yes—I’ll tell you if anything dreadful happens.”
“You’d better!” Ralston laughed, too, out of sheer delight at being with her, and his laugh pleased her, for it came rarely. “And about your father—I’ll tell you what I think. His excitementwill cool down as he sees that uncle Robert’s getting better, and he’ll leave you alone. You see, he’ll be afraid that you’ll go to uncle Robert and say that you’re being tormented to give up his secret. And then uncle Robert will descend upon Clinton Place and make a raid and raise Cain—and there’ll be something to pay all round and no pitch particularly hot. Do you see?”
Katharine laughed again, but she understood that what he said was reasonable enough.
“Now I must be going,” said Ralston. “I’m so angry about it all that I’m on the verge of being funny, which isn’t in my line. Can you come to-morrow? Is there any chance of seeing you to-night?”
“I don’t know. There’s a little thing at the Vanbrughs’—are you going?”
“Not asked, worse luck!”
“Then I won’t go. How stupid of them not to ask you. I suppose you haven’t been near them for months. Have you? Confess!”
“How can I do the card-leaving business now that I’m down town all day? It isn’t fair on a man. Besides, the Vanbrughs needn’t be so particular. She’s nice, though—much nicer since she’s given up Sunday-schooling. The last time we talked she knew all about the universe and the Bab faith and the life everlasting—and she was telling everybody. She hates me because I laughed. By Jove!I must be going, though. To-morrow, then? As usual. I say, Katharine—if you get a chance to give your father the sharp answer that wrath particularly dislikes, I hope you will—and tell me about it. Good-bye, sweetheart—only sixteen minutes to get to the bank!”
“You did it in fourteen and a half last week, Jack,” answered Katharine, holding his hand.
“Yes—but I just caught the train—I wouldn’t do it at all, if I could help it, you know.”
“Of course not—I mustn’t be selfish. Run, dear—and good-bye!”
In a moment he was gone. She watched his wiry, elastic movements as he ran at the top of his speed towards the station of the elevated, to the vicinity of which they had directed their walk while they had been talking. As he disappeared, flying up the covered iron stairs, two steps at a time, she turned and walked briskly homeward. The neighbourhood is a safe and quiet one, though it is largely inhabited by foreigners, but she did not care to slacken her pace till she got back to Washington Square. Then she moved more slowly.
The spring was in the air and the sun was bright. She sauntered leisurely through the walks, wondering what the coming summer was to bring forth for her, and all the months after people began to go away. And she thought all the time of Ralston. It seemed such an absurd and senseless thing thatthey two, who were to be one day among the richest, and would be masters of all that the world can give to people not endowed with what is not in the world’s gift or market—that they two, being lawfully and christianly married, should be forced to meet by stealth for a few moments, to be separated again almost immediately by the necessity which drove John every day to his desk as a junior clerk in Mr. Beman’s employment. A week—a year—ten years, if uncle Robert lived so long—and then, if John went into the bank, the clerks, who were all his seniors, would lift their pens from the paper in the middle of a word to watch the representative of so much wealth go by. And old Mr. Beman would rise from his seat and offer Twenty-Five Millions a chair, as though he were a man of years and weight. Not but that the Bemans and John’s fellow-clerks, some of whom were acquaintances in his own world and beginning their life as he was, were all well aware that he had a good chance of getting something handsome in the end. But mere potential wealth is too common in the neighbourhood of Wall Street to be noticed or much respected. It is not the man who may have it, but the man who has it, who commands respect. Even the only son, the man who is sure to get it if he lives, is treated with a certain indifference. But when time has brought down his heavy hand upon the millionaire, and crushed him into theearth-darkness and his memory into a bit of stone with his name on it, when the last well-greased screw has been run into the polished coffin, when the black horses have waved their black plumes and the last carriage that followed the funeral is being washed down in the coach-house yard—then the man who is next stops, and lets future run ahead of him and himself becomes present fact, strong, gorgeous, worshipful. For at his mighty nod the wilderness may become real estate, or the secret places of Nassau Street and Exchange Place may be hideous with the groaning of the bulls he has beared out of the ring—and the solid security may to-morrow be wild-cat if he wills it, and the wild-cat emerge in the dawn with a gilt edge and an honest countenance, to be a joyful investment for the widow’s mite.
Meanwhile, Jack was nobody down town. His cousin Hamilton Bright, who was a junior partner in Beman Brothers’, was a vastly more important person than he. For he had behind him what Ralston had before him, and a fair amount of capital in the present, besides. It was all very ridiculous, Katharine thought, and depended on the false state of society in which she was obliged to live.
She thought bitterly of her father. He was a prominent figure in that false state—a man of fine principles and opportunist practice—shehad caught the latter expression from Walter Crowdie, Bright’s brother-in-law, the well-known painter, who had painted a portrait of her during the winter, and who, as the husband of a distant cousin, was counted in the Lauderdale tribe.
Her father, she thought, preached, prayed—and then acted far worse than average people who prayed little and sat still to be preached at on Sundays, in order that Providence might have a sort of weekly photograph of their souls, so to say, and because others did the same and it was expected of them. She and her father had never agreed very well, and had come into open conflict about John Ralston; but hitherto she had respected him for his uncompromising, unashamed piety. There had seemed to her to be something masculine and bold about it, and such as it was, she had believed in it. It had been far from being an idol, but it had been a very creditable statue, so to say, and now, on a sudden, the head had been knocked off it, and she saw, or thought she saw, that it was hollow and a sham. She was too young yet to admit the presence of good in the same place with evil, and the evil itself had been thrown directly in her path as a stumbling-block for herself, and in the hope that she might fall over it.
And as though it were not enough to torment her perpetually with questions, there was that other thing which she had just concealed fromJohn, because he had been so angry about the first. Her father and mother were apparently determined that she should be married before the summer was out, and were thrusting a match upon her in a way of which she would not have believed them capable. Ever since her mother had discovered that she was losing her beauty and that Katharine received three-fourths of all the admiration which had once been hers, the relations of the two had been changed. Mrs. Lauderdale was constantly between two conflicting emotions, which almost amounted to passions,—her real affection for Katharine, and her detestable envy of the girl’s freshness and youth. She was a good woman, and she despised herself more than any one else could possibly have despised her, for wishing that she might not be daily compared with her, handicapped, as she was, with nearly twenty years more to carry. To marry her daughter was to remove her from home, and perhaps from New York—and with her, to do away with the foundation of envy, the cause of the offence, the visible temptation to the sin which was destroying the elder woman’s happiness and undermining her peace of mind. Mrs. Lauderdale, whose sins had hitherto been few and pardonable, felt that if Katharine were once away, she should become again a good woman, and find courage to bear the terrible loss of her once supreme beauty.
For she was keenly alive to the wickedness of what she felt, though she could not quite understand it. No man could boast that he had ever had a meaning look or an over-sympathetic pressure of the hand from Mrs. Lauderdale, during the five and twenty years of her married life, though she had loved society intensely, and enjoyed its amusements with a real innocence of which not every woman in her position would have been capable. But no man who had laid eyes upon her could boast—and it would have been a poor boast—that he had turned away at the first glance, without looking again and wondering at her loveliness, and saying to himself that Mrs. Lauderdale was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.
It hurt her bodily to miss those eyes turned upon her from all sides, as she began to miss them now. It hurt her still more—and in spite of secret prayers and solemn resolutions and litanies of self-contempt, she turned pale with quiet, deadly anger against the world—when, as she entered a crowded room with Katharine, she felt, as well as saw, that those same eyes sought the pale, severe face of the dark-haired young girl, and overlooked her own fading perfection. The stately rose was drooping, just as the sweet white summer myrtle burst the bud.
Let her not be judged too harshly, if she longedto be separated from Katharine just at that time. There was no ill-will, nothing like hatred, no touch of cruelty in the simple desire to be spared that daily contrast. It was rather that wish which many have felt, despairing of grace and strength to resist temptation, to have the cause of it removed, that they may find peace. A worse woman would not so long have been satisfied with beauty alone, and with compelling by her mere presence the admiration of a crowd in which no one face was dearer than the rest, nor than it should be.
She longed with all her heart to see Katharine married, as her husband did from very different reasons. Nor were his arguments bad or unkind from his point of view. He feared lest she should marry Ralston in spite of him, and he honestly believed Ralston to be a worthless young fellow, who could make no woman happy. As for his daughter, he was attached to her, fond of her, perhaps, in his cold way; though loving with him seemed to be a negative affair and not able to go much further than a cessation of fault-finding, except for his wife, who had overcome him and kept him by her beauty alone. It was not until Katharine aroused the deep-seated passion of his unsatisfied avarice that he ceased to be kind to her, as he understood kindness.
Katharinewas in her room that afternoon towards five o’clock, when a servant knocked at her door, disturbing her as she was composing a letter to her best friend, Hester Crowdie. She looked up with an expression of annoyance as the door opened and the maid entered.
“Oh—what’s the matter?” she asked, impatiently striking the point of her pen upon the edge of the glass inkstand.
“Mr. Wingfield’s downstairs, Miss Katharine,” answered the girl.
“Oh—is he? Well—”
Katharine tapped her pen thoughtfully upon the glass again, and a quick contraction of the brow betrayed her displeasure.
“Shall I tell the gentleman that you’ll be down, Miss Katharine?” enquired the other.
“No, Annie. Tell him I’m out. That is—I’m not out, am I?”
“No, Miss Katharine.”
Katharine let her pen fall, rose and went to the window in hesitation. The bit of red ribbon which had served as a signal to John was pinnedto the small curtain stretched over the lower sash. She looked at it thoughtfully, and forgot Mr. Wingfield for a moment.
“Shall I show the gentleman into the library, Miss Katharine?” asked Annie, in an insinuating tone.
“Oh, well! Yes,” said Katharine, turning suddenly. “Tell Mr. Wingfield that I’ll be down in a few minutes, if he doesn’t mind waiting. I suppose I’ve got to,” she added, audibly, before Annie was well out of the room.
She glanced at herself in the looking-glass, but without interest. Then she slipped her unfinished letter into the drawer of the little writing-table by the window, at which she had been sitting, and turned towards the door. But before she left the room she paused, hesitated, and then went back to the table, locking the drawer and withdrawing the key, which she slipped behind the frame of an engraving. She had become unreasonably distrustful of late.
Instead of going down to the library, she knocked at the door of her mother’s morning room. It chanced that Mrs. Lauderdale was at home that afternoon, which was unusual in fine weather. Mrs. Lauderdale was sitting by the window at the table she used for her miniature painting. She had talent, and had been well taught in her girlhood, and her work was distinctlygood. Amateurs more often succeed with miniature than in any other branches of art. It is harder to detect faults when the scale of the whole is very minute.
Mrs. Lauderdale was bending over a piece of work she had lately begun. All the little things she used were lying about her on the wooden table, the tiny brushes, the saucers for colours, the needle-pointed pencils. She looked up as Katharine entered, and the latter saw all the lines in the still beautiful face accentuated by the earnest attention given to the work. The eyelids were contracted and tired, the lips drawn in, one eyebrow was raised a little higher than the other, so that there were fine, arched wrinkles in the forehead immediately over it. The faces of American women of a certain age, when the complexion is fair, favour the formation of a multitude of very delicate crossing and recrossing lines, not often seen in the features of other nationalities.
“What is it, child?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, quietly, with her soft southern intonation.
“Mr. Wingfield’s there again,” answered Katharine, with unmistakable disgust.
“Well, my dear, go down and see him,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, blandly. “Did you send word that you’d receive?”
“Yes. I’m going to tell him not to come any more.”
Katharine went behind the table, so that she faced her mother and looked directly into her eyes. For several seconds neither spoke.
“I hope you won’t do anything so rude,” said Mrs. Lauderdale at last, without avoiding the gaze that met hers. “We all like Mr. Wingfield very much.”
“I daresay. I’m not finding fault with him, nor his looks, nor his manners, nor anything.”
“Well, then—I don’t see—”
“Oh, yes, you do, mother,—forgive my contradicting you,—you know very well that he wants to marry me, and that you want me to marry him. But I don’t mean to. So I shall tell him, as nicely as I can, to give up the idea, and to make his visits to you, and not to me.”
“But, Katharine, dear—nobody wishes to force you to marry him. We don’t live in the Middle Ages, you know.”
“There’s a resemblance,” answered Katharine, bitterly.
“Katharine! How can you say anything so unjust!”
“Because it’s true, mother. I’m not blind, you know, and I’m not perfectly insensible. I see, and I can feel. You don’t seem to think it’s possible to hurt me—and I don’t think you mean to hurt me, as papa does.”
“You’re quite out of your mind, my child!Your father loves you dearly. He wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Don’t talk such nonsense, Katharine. Go and see Mr. Wingfield, and be decently civil for half an hour—he won’t stay even as long as that. Besides, you can’t tell him not to come any more. He hasn’t asked you to marry him. You may think he means to, but you can hardly take it for granted like that.”
“No, but he means to ask me to-day,” answered Katharine. “And I haven’t encouraged him in the least.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Oh—one can always tell.”
“It’s not exactly true to say that you’ve not encouraged him,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, thoughtfully. “He’s been here very often of late, and you’ve danced the cotillion with him twice, at least. Then there was his coaching party—only the other day—and you sat beside him. He’s always sending you flowers, and books, and things, too. It isn’t fair to say that he’s had no encouragement. You’ll get the reputation of being a flirt if you go on in this way.”
“I’d rather be called a flirt than marry Archibald Wingfield,” replied Katharine.
“At all events you might have some consideration for him, if you’ve none for yourself. Don’t be foolish, Katharine dear. Take my advice. Of course, if you could take a fancy to him, quitenaturally, we should all be very glad. I like him—I can’t help it. He’s so handsome, and has such good manners, and speaks French like a Parisian. I know—you may laugh—but in these days, when people are abroad half the time—and then, after all, my dear, you certainly can’t be really sure that he means to ask you to-day. Very likely he won’t, just because you think he’s going to.”
“Of course, mother, you know that’s absurd! As though it wasn’t evident—besides, those flowers this morning. Didn’t you see them?”
“What about them? He often sends you flowers.”
“Why, the box was all full of primroses, and just two roses—extraordinary ones—lying in the middle and tied together with a bit of grass. Imagine doing such a thing! And I know he tied them himself, on account of the knot. He’s a yachting man, and doesn’t tie knots like the men at the flower shops.”
“Oh, well, my dear—if you are going to judge a man by the way he ties knots—”
Mrs. Lauderdale laughed as she broke off in her incomplete sentence. Then her face grew grave all at once.
“Take my advice, my child—marry him,” she said, bending over her table once more and taking up a little brush, as though she wished to end the interview.
“Certainly not!” answered Katharine, in a tone which discouraged further persuasion.
Mrs. Lauderdale sighed.
“Well—I don’t know what you young girls expect,” she said, in a tone of depression. “Mr. Wingfield’s young, good-looking, well-educated, rich, and he adores you. Perhaps you don’t love him precisely, but you can’t help liking him. You act as though you were always expecting a fine, irresistible, mediæval passion to come and carry you off. It won’t, you know. That sort of thing doesn’t happen any more. When you want to get married at last, you’ll be too old. You have your choice of almost any of them. For a girl who has no money and isn’t likely to have much for a long time, I don’t know any one who’s more surrounded than you are. Of course I want you to marry. I don’t believe in waiting till you’re twenty-five or thirty.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Well, you will, my dear, unless you make up your mind soon. It’s all—”
“Mother,” interrupted Katharine, “you know very well that I’ve made my choice, and that I mean to stand by it.”
“Oh—Jack Ralston, you mean?” Mrs. Lauderdale affected a rather contemptuous indifference. “That was a foolish affair. Girls always fall in love with their cousins. You’ll forget all abouthim, and I’m sure he’s forgotten all about you. He hardly ever comes to the house now. Besides, you never could have married poor Jack, with his dissipated habits, and no money. Uncle Robert doesn’t mean to leave him anything. He’d gamble it all away.”
“You called me unjust a moment ago,” said Katharine, in an altered voice, and growing pale.
“Of course—you take his part. It’s no use to discuss it—”
“It’s not discussion to abuse a man who’s bravely doing his best. Jack doesn’t need any one to take his part. Do you know that he’s altogether given up his old life at the club—and all that? He’s at Beman Brothers’ all day long, and when you don’t see him in society, he’s quietly at home with cousin Katharine.”
“Yes—I heard he was doing a little better. But he’ll never get rid of the reputation he’s given himself. My dear, you don’t seem to remember that poor Mr. Wingfield is waiting for you all this time downstairs.”
“It will be the last time, at all events,” answered Katharine, in a low voice. “I’ll never see him alone again.”
She turned from her mother towards the door. Mrs. Lauderdale followed her with her eyes for a moment, then rose swiftly and overtook her before she could let herself out.
“Katharine—I won’t let you send Mr. Wingfield away like that!” said Mrs. Lauderdale, in a quick, decided tone.
“Won’t let me?” repeated Katharine, slowly.
“No—certainly not. It’s quite out of the question—you really mustn’t do it!” Mrs. Lauderdale was becoming agitated.
“Do you mean that it’s out of the question for me to refuse to marry Mr. Wingfield?” Katharine had her back against the door and her right hand upon the knob of the lock.
“Oh—well—no. Of course you have the right to refuse him, if he asks you in so many words—”
“Of course I have! What are you thinking of?” There was a look of something between indignation and amusement in her face.
“Yes—but there are so many ways, child. Katharine,” she continued, almost appealingly, “you can’t just say ‘no’ and tell him to stop coming—you’ll change your mind—you don’t know what a nice young fellow he is—”
Katharine’s hand dropped from the door-handle, and she folded her arms as she faced her mother.
“What is all this?” she asked, deliberately and with emphasis. “You seem to me to be very excited. I should almost fancy that you had something else in your mind, though I can’t understand what it is.”
“No—no; certainly not. It’s only for yoursake and his,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, hurriedly. “I’ve known it happen so often that a girl refuses a man just because she’s in a temper about something, and then—afterwards, you know—she regrets it, when it’s too late, and the man has married some one else out of spite.”
“How strangely you talk!” exclaimed Katharine, gazing at her mother in genuine surprise.
“My dear, I only don’t want you to do anything rash and unkind. You spoke as though you meant to be as hard and cold as a mill-stone—as though he’d done something outrageous in wanting to marry you.”
“Not at all. I said that I should refuse him and beg him to stop coming to see me. There’s nothing particularly like a mill-stone in that. It’s the honest truth in the first place—for I won’t marry him, and you can’t force me to—”
“But nobody thinks of forcing you—”
“I don’t know. Perhaps not,” answered the young girl, doubtfully. “But it’s of no use, for I won’t. And as for telling him not to come—why, it’s rather natural, I think. It just makes the refusal a little more definite. I don’t like that way girls have of refusing a man once a month, and letting him come to see them for a whole season, and then marrying him after all. There’s something mean about it—and I don’t think much of the man who lets himself be treated in that way,either. If Mr. Wingfield is really all you say he is, he may not be just that kind, and he’ll understand and take his refusal like a gentleman, and not torment me any more. But it’s just as well to make sure.”
“Promise me that you’ll be kind to him, Katharine—”
“Kind? Oh, yes—I’ll be kind enough. I’ll be perfectly civil—”
“Well—what shall you say to him? That you like him, and hope to be good friends, but that you don’t feel—”
“Dear mother!” exclaimed Katharine, with perfect simplicity, “I’ve refused men before. I know how to do it.”
“Yes—of course—but Mr. Wingfield—”
“You’ve got Mr. Wingfield on the brain, mother!” She laughed a little scornfully. “One would think that you were his mother, and were begging me to be kind and nice and marry your son. I don’t understand you to-day. Meanwhile, he’s waiting.”
“One moment, child!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, laying her hand on Katharine’s as it went out towards the knob of the door. “You don’t know—there are particular—well, there are so many reasons why you shouldn’t be rough with him. Can’t you just say that you’re touched by his proposal and will think it over?”
“Certainly not!” cried Katharine, indignantly. “Why should I keep the poor man hanging on when I don’t mean to marry him—when I won’t—I’ve said it often enough, I’m sure. Why should I?”
“It would be so much easier for him, if you would—to please me, darling child,” continued Mrs. Lauderdale, in an almost imploring way, “just to please me! I don’t often ask you to do anything for me, do I, dear? And you’re not like Charlotte—we’ve always been such good friends, love. And now I ask you this one thing for myself. It isn’t much, I’m sure—just to say that you’ll think it over. Won’t you? I know you will—there’s a dear girl!”
Mrs. Lauderdale bent her head affectionately and kissed Katharine on the cheek. The young girl tried to draw back, but finding herself against the door, could only turn her face away as much as possible. She did not understand her mother’s manner, and she did not like it.
“But it’s only a moment ago that you were talking about my acting like a flirt!” she objected, vehemently. “If it isn’t flirting to give a man hope when there is none, what is?”
“No, dear; that’s not flirting; it’s only prudence. You may like him better by and by, and I should be so glad! Flirting is drawing a man on as you’ve done with him, and then throwing him over cruelly and all at once.”
“I’ve not drawn him on, mother! You shan’t say that I ever encouraged him.”
“I don’t know. You’ve accepted his flowers and his books—”
“What was I to do? Send them back?”
“You might have told him not to send so many, and so often; you needn’t have read the books. He’d have seen that you didn’t care.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous, you know!”
“No, it’s not, my darling! And as for the flowers, of course you couldn’t exactly send them back, but you weren’t obliged to wear them.”
“Nobody wears flowers now, so it wasn’t probable that I should feel obliged to. Really, mother, you’re losing your head!”
Mrs. Lauderdale shifted her position a little, moving towards the side of the door on which the lock was placed, and laying her hand affectionately on Katharine’s, as though still to detain her.
“Yes,” she said, “I’d forgotten that we don’t wear flowers any longer. But that isn’t the question, dear. I only ask you not to send him away suddenly, with a ‘no’ that can’t possibly be taken back. I’m dreadfully afraid that you’ll hurt the poor fellow, and I can’t help feeling that he has reason—that you’ve given him reason to expect that you’ll at least consider the question. Dear child, I only ask you this once. Won’t you do it to please me? We’re all so fond of Wingfield—”
“But why? why? If I don’t mean to have him, how can I? I really can’t understand. Is there any family reason for being so particular about Mr. Wingfield’s feelings? We’ve never been so very intimate with his people.”
“Reasons,” repeated Mrs. Lauderdale, absently. “Reasons? Well, yes—but it isn’t that—” She stopped short.
“Mother!” Katharine looked keenly into her face. “You’ve been talking to him yourself! I can see it in your eyes!”
“Oh, no!” answered Mrs. Lauderdale. “Oh, no—what makes you think that?”
But she looked away, and Katharine saw the blush of confusion rising under the transparent skin in her mother’s cheek.
“Yes—you’ve given Mr. Wingfield to understand that I’m in love with him,” said Katharine, in a low voice.
“Katharine, how can you!” Mrs. Lauderdale was making a desperate effort to recover herself, but she was a truthful woman, and found it hard to lie. “You’ve no right to say such things!”
“Yes—I see,” answered Katharine, not heeding her. “It’s all quite clear to me now. You and papa have drawn him on and encouraged him, and now you’re afraid that I shall put you in an awkward position by sending him away. I see it all. That’s the reason why you’re so excited about it.”
“Katharine, dear, don’t accuse me of such things! All I said was—” She stopped short.
“Then you did say something? Of course. I knew that was the truth of it!”
“I said nothing,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, going back to a total denial. “Except, perhaps, we have given him to understand that we should be glad if you would marry him.”
“We? Has papa been talking to him, too?” asked Katharine, indignantly.
“Don’t be so angry, child. It’s quite natural. You don’t know how glad your father would be. It’s just the sort of match he’s always dreamed of for you. And then I think it was very honourable in young Wingfield, when he found that he was in love with you, to speak to your father first.”
“Scrupulously! He might be French! He might have tried to find out first whether I cared for him at all. But I’ve no doubt you told him that he had only to ask and I should take him to my heart with pride and pleasure! Oh, mother, mother! You never used to act like this!”
“But, my dear child—”
“Oh no,—don’t call me your dear child like that—it doesn’t mean anything now. You’re completely changed—no, don’t keep me! That poor fellow’s waiting all this time. You can’t have anything more to say to me, for I know itall. A word more—which you may have said to him, or a word less—what does it matter? You’ve turned on me, and now you’re doing your best to marry me, just to get rid of me. As for papa, he leaves me no peace about poor uncle Robert’s will. And he calls himself an honest man, when he’s trying to force a confidence that doesn’t belong to him, out of—yes—out of sheer love of money. Oh, it’s not to be believed! Let me go, mother! I won’t keep that man waiting any longer. It isn’t decent. There’ll be one lie less, at all events!”
“Katharine, dear! Stay a minute! Don’t go when you’re angry—like this!”
But Katharine’s firm hand was opening the door in spite of her mother’s gentle, almost timid, resistance.
“No—I’m not angry now,” answered the young girl. “It’s something different—I won’t hurt him—never fear!”
In a moment she had left the room, and her mother heard the quick footfall on the stairs, as she stood listening by the open door. Mrs. Lauderdale had got herself into terrible trouble, and she knew it. Katharine had, in part, guessed rightly, for if Mrs. Lauderdale had not told young Wingfield in so many words that her daughter loved him, she had yet allowed him to think so, and had been guilty of a sin of omission in notundeceiving him. There is a way of listening which means assent, as there is a way of assenting in words which mean a flat refusal. Alexander Lauderdale had gone farther. He had distinctly told Wingfield, in his wife’s presence, that he had no reason to believe that his daughter might not,—he saved his scrupulous conscience by the ‘might,’—might not ultimately accept a proposal which was so agreeable to his own wishes. Mrs. Lauderdale had been shocked, for, as it was spoken, the phrase sounded very untrue, though when precipitated upon paper and taken to pieces, it is found to be cautious enough. ‘Might,’ not ‘would’—and ‘ultimately,’ not by any means at the first attempt. Yet the impression had been conveyed to Wingfield’s mind that Katharine was predisposed in his favour, in spite of the reports which had so long been circulated about her engagement to Ralston. Mrs. Lauderdale had, for a moment, almost believed that her husband had told an untruth. But on talking the matter over with him, his dignity of manner, his clear recollection of his own words, and the moderate stress which he laid upon the ‘might’ and the ‘ultimately,’ not only reassured her, but persuaded her to say almost the same thing the next time she saw Wingfield. The young fellow always sought her out at a party, and confided to her all he felt for Katharine, and Mrs. Lauderdale sympathizedwith him, as she had once sympathized with Jack Ralston, unconscious that she was doing anything wrong. He was handsome, frank, and winning, and she longed to see Katharine married. The reasons were plenty. Many cold and good women enjoy being made the confidantes of young lovers. The atmosphere of the passion is agreeable to them, though they may know little of the passion itself. Mrs. Lauderdale had not fully realized the meaning of what she had been doing until Katharine made it plain to her that afternoon. And then, although her conscience told her that she was in the wrong, and though she had spoken to the girl entreatingly and gently, she became angry with her as soon as she was left to herself. The tortuousness of a good woman’s mind when she has hurt her own conscience surpasses by many degrees that of an ordinary criminal’s straightforwardly bad ingenuity.
Meanwhile, Katharine descended to the library, paused a moment in the entry, and then opened the door. Archibald Wingfield’s black eyes met her as she entered the room. He was standing before the empty fireplace, with his hands behind him, warming them perhaps at an imaginary fire, for they were cold. He was very much in love with her, and Katharine’s girlish instinct was right, for he had come with the determined purpose of asking her to be his wife. She had kepthim waiting fully twenty minutes, and during that time he had interpreted the delay in at least as many different ways. As she came in, the colour rose in his brown cheeks and his heart beat fast.
Archibald Wingfield was said to be the handsomest young man in New York society, which is saying a good deal, notwithstanding those captious persons who write and speak sarcastically about the round-shouldered, in-kneed, flabby-cheeked youth of the present day. Of late years, during the growth of what is now the young generation in society, there has been a very sudden improvement in the race and type of boys and girls. Any one can see that who does not wilfully close his eyes.
Wingfield stood fully six feet four inches without his shoes, was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and thin-waisted as a young Achilles. His feet were narrow, strong, and straight, his legs those of a runner rather than a walker, his hands broad and brown, with great, determined-looking thumbs, marked sinews, and the high, blue veins of a thoroughbred animal. The splendid form was topped by a small, energetic head, with slightly aquiline features, the clean-shaven lips that made a bold, curved, bow-like mouth, flat, healthy, brown cheeks, a well-rounded chin, deepened in the middle with the depression which is nature’s hall-mark on superior physical beauty—a moderately full forehead,very small ears, jet black, short, smooth hair, and wide, honest black eyes with rough black eyebrows. Under the brown colour there was rich blood, that mantled like scarlet velvet in summer’s dusk.
He spoke in a low, self-possessed, unaffected voice, with an English accent, common enough to-day among young men who have been much abroad during their education. Wingfield had been at Christ Church, had got his degree in the ordinary course, and was hesitating as to his future career between the law, for which he was now reading, and a country life of gentleman farming and horse-breeding in western New York, which attracted him. His people were all rich, all good-looking, and all happy. His ideals were chiefly in his own family. When he had returned from England, he had been something of a hero among the young, owing to his having pulled five in the Oxford boat when the latter had won the University race in the previous spring, a very unusual distinction for a foreign-born athlete in England. With his great height, he was still proud of having trained to twelve stone eleven for the race.
In the matter of outward advantages John Ralston’s spare figure and lean, Indian face could not compare favourably with such a man as Archibald Wingfield. Nor had Wingfield’s reputation borne the strain and the shocks which John’s had barelysurvived. The man seemed born to success, happiness and popularity, as many of his family had been successful, popular and happy before him. He himself believed that all he needed in order to be happier than any of them was to get Katharine Lauderdale’s consent to be his wife. And he loved her so much, and was so nervous in the anticipation of what was to come, that his hands had turned cold, his healthy heart was bouncing like a football in his big chest, the blood rushed to his brown cheeks, and he almost dropped his silk hat as she entered the room.
“How do you do, Miss Lauderdale?”
He came forward with a gigantic stride, and then suddenly made a short little step, as he found himself already close to her.
“How do you do?” she asked, quietly repeating the inane question we have adopted as a form of greeting and recognition.
She looked up—far up, it seemed to her—into his brilliant black eyes, and understood how much in earnest he was, before he said anything more. Vaguely, as in a dream, she remembered how, several months earlier, in that very room and almost at that very hour, John Ralston had come to her and she had persuaded him to make her his wife.
“Thank you so much for the flowers,” she said, sitting down in her favourite little arm-chair on one side of the empty fireplace.
He murmured in a pleased but incoherent fashion as he pushed a chair into a convenient position and sat down—not too near her—setting his hat upon the floor beside him. He rested his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his folded hands, and looked at her with unblushing, boyish admiration.
“But please don’t send me any more flowers, Mr. Wingfield,” said Katharine, going straight to the point by an effort of will.
A puzzled look came into his face instantly. His hands dropped upon his knees, and he sat upright in his chair.
“Why not?” he asked, simply. “I mean,” he added, fancying he had put the question roughly, “is it rude to ask why not? It gives me so much pleasure—if you like them a little, you know.”
It hurt Katharine to see the simplicity of the man, and it made her face burn to think that he had been played upon.
“Because I’d rather not,” she answered, very gently.
“I—I don’t think I quite understand,” said Wingfield, with some hesitation. “I know—you often say that I mustn’t send them so much—but then, you know, one always says that, doesn’t one? It doesn’t seem to mean anything except a sort of second ‘thank you’—”
“I mean more than that,” said Katharine, smiling faintly, in spite of herself.
“But so do I!” exclaimed the young man. “I mean so much more than that—I always have, from the very beginning—”
“Please don’t!” cried Katharine, anxiously, for she saw that he meant to speak at once—but it was too late.
“From the very beginning, since almost the first time I ever saw you—oh, my—my dear Miss Lauderdale—won’t you let me say it at last?”
“No—no—please—”
“If you only knew how hard I’ve tried—not to say it before,” he blurted out, as the blood rose warm in his brown cheeks.
Katharineturned her eyes from him and looked thoughtfully at the hearth-rug. A little silence followed Wingfield’s last speech, as he sat gazing at her and hoping for a word of encouragement. But none came, and by slow degrees the eager expression faded from his face and left it anxious and pained.
“Miss Lauderdale—” he began, in an altered tone, and then stopped suddenly. “Miss—Katharine—” he began again, more softly, and still hesitated.
She looked up, and though her eyes were turned towards him, he fancied they did not see him. She was pale, and her lips were a little drawn together, and there was an incongruity between her attempt to smile and the weary tension of the brows. Everything in her face told that she pitied him with all her heart.
“I’m very sorry,” she said, with real sympathy. “It’s been a mistake from the beginning—a great mistake.”
“Please don’t say that!” he answered, impulsively—for he was impulsive, in spite of his solid,well-balanced strength. “Please don’t answer me yet—”
“But I must!” she protested, and the look of pity became more set.
“No, no! Please don’t! Wait a little—and—and let me tell you—”
“It can do no good,” she answered, with a sudden rough effort. “You’ve been misled—I didn’t know—”
“What?” he asked, softly. “That—that I cared so much—and meant always—all along—from the very first—it’s always been so, ever since I saw you that first night at the Bretts’, after I came back from Europe—only it’s more so, every time, till I can’t keep it back any more, and I’ve got to speak, and tell you—”
“Mr. Wingfield—” began Katharine, thinking, womanlike, to chill him by the formal enunciation of his name with a protest in the tone, kindly though it was.
“Yes—you think so now,” he answered, irrelevantly. “But I don’t ask you to answer, I only ask you to listen to me—and, indeed, I don’t want you to think that it’s any one’s fault, nor that there’s any fault at all, because I know it will all come right, and you’ll care for me a little, even if you don’t now. I’ve spoken too soon, perhaps, and perhaps I’ve been rough or rude—or something—and I don’t know how to tell you as I should—because I’ve never told anybody such things—don’t you believe me, Miss Katharine? But you wouldn’t think any the better of me if I knew how to make beautiful speeches and phrases, and that sort of thing, would you?”
“Oh, no—no—and you’ve not been anything but nice—only—”
“I can’t help it—you’re my whole life, and I must tell you so now. Of course, lots of men worship you, and I daresay they know how to say it ever so much better—and that they’re very much nicer men than I am. But—but there isn’t one of them, I don’t care who he is, who cares—who loves you as I do, or would do what I’d do for your sake, if I could, or if I had a chance. And even if you don’t care for me at all yet, I’ll love you so that you will—some day—and it’s not the sort of love that’s just flowers and attention and that, you know, like everybody’s. It’s got hold of me—hard, and it won’t let go—ever! It’s changed my whole life. I’m not at all as I used to be. You’re in everything I do, and see, and think, and hear, as life is—and without you there wouldn’t be any life in anything. Don’t think I don’t feel things because I’m so big, and I don’t look sensitive, and all that—or because I can’t put it into words that touch you. It’s true, for all that, and all I ask is that you should believe me. Won’t you believe me a little, Katharine?”
The great limbs of the young Achilles quivered, and his strong hands strained upon one another, and there was the clear ring of whole-hearted truth in the deep voice, in spite of the incoherence and poverty of the words.
“I believe you,” answered Katharine, looking at the rug again. “It isn’t that. But I won’t let you think for one instant that there’s the least possibility of my ever caring for you, or marrying you. It’s absolutely impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible!” he answered, impetuously. “Nothing except that you should never care at all when I’d give my life for your little finger, and my soul for your life—with all my heart, and be glad to give either—”
“It hurts me very much to hear you talk like this—because you’ve been misled and deceived—my father and mother—”
“How can they know what you think and feel?” asked Wingfield. “I only spoke to them because it seemed right and fair, being so much in earnest, and I couldn’t tell but what there might be some one else—I had no right to pry into your secrets and watch you and try and find out—it wouldn’t have seemed nice. So I asked your father, and then Mrs. Lauderdale—but I didn’t suppose they knew absolutely—of course they couldn’t answer for you—in that way. And I say it again—don’t make up your mind—don’t send me off—wait—only wait! You don’t know how love grows out of what seems to be nothing till it’s bigger and stronger than the biggest and strongest of us—you can’t feel it growing any more than you could feel that you were growing yourself when you were small; and you can’t remember when it began, any more than you can remember what you thought of when you were a year old. That doesn’t make it less real afterwards—love’s such a little thing at the beginning, and by and by it takes in everything, so that the whole world is nothing beside it. And if you’ll only not make up your mind—”
“It’s made up for me, long ago—in a way you don’t dream of. It’s absolutely, and wholly, and altogether impossible, and it always will be, no matter what happens. Oh, I can’t say more than that, Mr. Wingfield—and it wouldn’t be true if I said less!”
“But it can’t be really true!” he protested, bending forward in his low chair. “Of course you think so—but how can you possibly tell? I don’t mean to say that you’re changeable, or capricious, or anything of that kind—but people do change, you know. Why—I hate to say it—but you couldn’t say more than that if you were married and I didn’t know it!”
Katharine started, though she was strong and her nerves were good. He had made the reflection very naturally, in answer to the very positivewords she had spoken. But to her it seemed as though he must know, or at least guess, the truth. She lost her balance for a moment, as she gazed earnestly into his honest black eyes.
“Mr. Wingfield—do you know what you’re saying?” she asked, in a low voice.
He was afraid he had said something monstrous, and his face fell.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he stammered, awkwardly. “I’m awfully sorry if I said anything I shouldn’t—”
Katharine forgot his contrition, and forgot to reassure him in the anxiety caused her by the mere suspicion that he might know the truth. She sat staring at him in silence for several seconds, wondering what he knew. It was more than he could bear. He bent still nearer to her, from the edge of his chair, and his hands moved a little towards her, beseechingly, in as near an approach to an eloquent gesture as such a man could have used.
“Please don’t be angry with me!” he said.
“Oh, no!” she answered, in an odd voice, with a little start. “I was only thinking—”
He did not understand, and he moved backward into his chair suddenly, crossed one knee over the other with an impatient jerk, and looked away from her.
“What a brute I am!” he exclaimed, in a barely audible tone.
Katharine paid no attention to this self-condemnation. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on his face, and she seemed to be reflecting. She was examining her own conscience, trying to find out how far her actions could have brought about the state of things she saw. A woman who loves one man with all her heart has small pity for any other, though she may know that she ought to feel pity and to show it. But she does not therefore lose her sense of justice.
“Will you tell me one thing, Mr. Wingfield? Will you answer me one question?” she asked, at last.
He turned to her quickly again, with a look of surprise. She was out of tune with him, so to say, and her words and tone jarred strongly upon his own mood.
“Certainly,” he answered, much more coldly than he had spoken yet. “I’ll try and answer any question you ask me.”
“Do you really and truly feel that I’ve encouraged you, as though I meant anything?” she asked, slowly.
It would not have been easy to put a question harder to answer honestly. Wingfield did not like it. A man hates to be put in the position of either telling a falsehood or giving offence, with no alternative but an unmannerly refusal to speak at all. Wingfield felt that, in the first place, he hadbeen badly used in spite of his protestations to the effect that no one was to blame. It had been unpardonable of Mr. and Mrs. Lauderdale to be so mistaken in their own daughter—he put it charitably—as to expose him to such an uncompromising and final refusal as he had received. He went no further in that direction. He did not think of himself as a very desirable son-in-law, and a very good match in fortune, because, like most people, he supposed that when the Lauderdale estate was divided, Katharine would ultimately have her share of it, a fact to which he was indifferent. He did not, therefore, accuse the Lauderdales of having intentionally led him on. But they had acted irresponsibly. And now he fancied that Katharine was very angry with him for what he had said a few moments earlier, and he thought she was unjust, since he had really said nothing very terrible. So he resented her last question as soon as she had asked it, and he hesitated before replying. Katharine waited patiently a few moments.
“Do you really think I’ve been flirting?” she asked at last, seeing that he did not answer.
“No!” he cried, at once. “Oh, no—not that! Never. If you ask me whether you’ve ever looked at me, or spoken to me as though you really cared—no, you never have. Not once. But then—there are other things.”
“What other things? What have I done?”Feeling that he had admitted the main point in her favour, she grew a little hard.
“Well—you’ve let me come a great deal to see you, and you’ve let me send you—oh, well! No—I’m not going to say that sort of thing. I got the impression, somehow—that’s all.”
“You got the impression, from what I did, that I liked you—that I encouraged you?” she asked, anxiously.
“Yes. I got that impression. Besides, you’ve often shown plainly enough that you liked to dance with me—”
“That’s true—I do. You dance very well. And I do like you—as I like several other people. It isn’t wrong to like in that way, is it? It isn’t flirting? It isn’t as though I said things I didn’t mean, is it?”
“No,” answered Wingfield, in an injured tone. “It’s not. Still—”
“Still, you think there’s been something in my behaviour to make you think I might care? I’m very sorry—I’m very, very sorry,” she repeated, her voice changing suddenly with an expression of profound regret. “Will you believe me when I tell you that it’s been altogether unconscious? You can’t think—if you care for me—that I’d be so heartless and cruel. You won’t, will you?”
“No—I don’t want to think it. I misunderstood—that’s all. Put it all on me.”
He was very young, and he was cruelly hurt. He spoke coldly, lest his words should choke him.
“No,” answered Katharine, speaking almost to herself, “there are other people to blame, whose fault it is.”
“Perhaps.”
A silence followed. It was warm in the room. One of the windows was a little raised, and the bells of the horse-cars jingled cheerfully in the spring air. At last Katharine spoke again.
“I suppose it doesn’t mean much to you when I say I’m sorry,” she said. “If you knew, it would mean much more. I’m very much in earnest, and I shall never forget this afternoon, for I know I’ve hurt you. I think you’re a little angry just now. It’s natural. You have a right to be. Since you think that I’ve made you understand things I didn’t mean, I wonder you’re not much more angry—that you don’t say much harder things to me. It wouldn’t really be just, because I’m very unhappy, whether I’m to blame or not. But you’re generous. I shall always be grateful to you. You won’t bear me any more ill-will than you can help, will you?”
“Ill-will? I? No! I’m too fond of you—and besides, I’ve not done hoping yet. I shall always hope, as long as I live.”
“No—you mustn’t hope anything,” answered Katharine, determined not to allow him the shadowof any consolation. “It wouldn’t be just to me. It would be like thinking that I were capricious. I’m not going to talk to you about friendship, and all that, as people do in books. I want you to try and forget me altogether—for I believe you—you really care for me. So there’s no other way—when one really cares. Don’t come here any more for the present—don’t try to meet me at parties—don’t ask me to dance with you. The world’s very big, and you needn’t see me unless you wish to. By and by it will be different. Perhaps you could go abroad for a little while again. I don’t know what your plans are, but it would be better if you could. The season will be over—it’s almost over now, and then you’ll go one way and I shall go another, and there’s no reason why we should meet. We mustn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to me, and it wouldn’t be fair to you, either. You see—it’s not as though you were disagreeable. If we meet at all, I couldn’t help being very much the same as ever, and you know what I’ve made you think of that. You’ll promise, won’t you?”
“Not to try and see you sometimes? No, I won’t promise that. I shall always hope—”
“But there is no hope. There’s not the slightest possibility of any hope. If you knew about me, you’d understand it.”
“Miss Lauderdale—will you think it very rude if I ask one question? I’ve—I’ve put my wholelife into this—and you’re sending me away without a word. So perhaps—I think you might—”
“What is it?” asked Katharine, kindly.
“Are you engaged to Jack Ralston? I’ve heard people say that you were, so often. Would you tell me?”
Katharine was silent for a moment. She did not know exactly how far it would be true to say that she was engaged to John, seeing that she was married to him. Her marriage, she thought, might be looked upon as a formal betrothal, and there would have been little harm in taking that view of it, under such circumstances. But she had inherited from her father something of his formal respect for the mere letter of truth, and she did not like to say anything which did not conform to it.
“We’re not exactly engaged,” she answered, after a short pause. “But we care for each other very much.”
Wingfield’s brow cleared a little. He had one of those dispositions which hope in spite of apparent certainty against them.
“Then I’ll go away for awhile,” he said, with sudden resolution and considerable generosity, from his point of view. “If you don’t marry him, I’ll come back, that’s all. I’m glad you told me. Thank you.”
It requires considerable self-control to act as Archibald Wingfield did on that occasion. Hisvoice did not tremble, and he did not turn pale, because it was not in his nature to experience that sort of physical weakness when he was making an effort. But what he did was not easy. Even Katharine could see that. He sat still a few moments after he had spoken, glanced at her once, as though to make sure that there was to be no appeal, and then rose suddenly from his seat, and stood towering above her.
“Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand, and stooping to bring it within her reach. Now that the effort had been made, his voice trembled a little.
“Good-bye,” answered Katharine, taking his hand, and lifting her head almost without raising her eyes.
There was something almost like timidity in her tone. She felt how he had been wronged by her father and mother, and in her trouble she was willing to believe that she was really a little to blame herself. She realized, too, that he was acting very bravely and honestly, and that he was really suffering. It was not a grand, dramatic agony, and eloquence was the least of his gifts, but he was strong, young, and in earnest, and had been made to undergo pain for her sake. She was ashamed of having been the cause of it.
No other words suggested themselves to her, but he waited one moment, as though expectingthat she would speak again. Then he silently dropped her hand, and bowing his head a little, went quietly to the door without looking back. She did not follow him with her eyes, but she listened for the sound of the latch, and it did not come quite so soon as she expected. He had turned to look at her once more, his hand on the door.
“God bless you—Katharine,” he said, in a low voice.
She looked round at him quickly, and the faint, sorrowful smile came back to her face. Her lips moved, but no words came. He gazed at her one moment, and then took his young grief out into the spring air and the evening sunshine.
When Katharine was alone, she sighed and gazed at the hearth-rug, bending forward in a thoughtful attitude, her chin supported in her hand.
“How hard it is!” she exclaimed to herself.
It seemed to her that the difficulties of her life grew with every passing day. She had, indeed, cut the knot of one of them within the last half hour, and so far as Archibald Wingfield was concerned, the hard thing had been done, and he knew the worst. But she, on her part, had much to bear yet. She had seen to-day, for the first time, how her father and mother longed to have her married. Even now, she found it difficult to suspecteither of them of intentional cruelty, or of attempting to use anything more than persuasion in pushing her into the match. With her faculty for seeing both sides of a question at once, she was just. It was natural, perhaps, that they should wish her to marry such a man. She had never seen any one like him—such a magnificent specimen of youthful manhood. Even her father could not compare with him. And he had much besides his looks to recommend him, much besides his fortune and his position and his popularity. He was brave and honest, and able to love truly, as it seemed.
He would recover, of course, she said to herself. He was sought after, flattered, and pursued for many reasons. He could find plenty of young girls only too delighted to marry him, and he would certainly marry one of them before long. His life was not blighted, and she had not broken his heart, if hearts ever break at all. She remembered what she had once borne, in the belief that John Ralston was disgraced for life on that memorable occasion when all New York had learned that he had been brought home, apparently drunk, after a midnight encounter with a pugilist, who had found occasion to quarrel with him in a horse-car. The belief had lasted a whole night and a whole day, and she did not think that young Wingfield could be suffering anything like that. Moreover, her love for Ralstonmade her ruthless and almost hard about every other man. Nevertheless, she was sincerely sorry for the man who had just left her—the more so, perhaps, because she had little or nothing with which to reproach herself.
Katharine was not left to her own reflections very long. By a process akin to telepathy, Mrs. Lauderdale was soon aware that Archibald Wingfield had left the house. In the half hour during which his visit had lasted, she had not touched her miniature, though she had looked at it, and turned it to and from the light many times. She was very nervous, and she wished that when he went away he might forthwith take himself off to China, at the very least. She did not wish to meet him that evening, nor the next, to be called to account by him for having exceeded her powers in the impression she had conveyed of Katharine’s readiness to marry him. Yet she remembered that she had acted very much in the same way when Charlotte had married Benjamin Slayback. It was true that Slayback was a much older man, and well able to take care of himself, and that Charlotte had not at the time been showing any especial preference for any of her adorers. She had, in fact, just then dismissed one for the grievous offence of having turned out an unutterable bore after three weeks of almost unbroken conversation, during which she had exhausted his not fertile intellect,as furnace heat dries a sponge. Charlotte’s heart had been comparatively free, therefore, and she had been indulging in dreams of power and personal influence. But Mrs. Lauderdale and her husband had on that occasion used to Mr. Slayback almost the identical words which she had lately repeated to Wingfield; Slayback had come, had proposed,—in what manner Charlotte had never revealed,—and had been immediately accepted. Surely, there was nothing wrong in assuming that Katharine might possibly behave in the same way, seeing how very much more desirable a suitor Wingfield was than Slayback. Thus argued Mrs. Lauderdale, as she tried to trip up her conscience and step over it. But she was too good by nature to be successful in such a fraud upon goodness, and in the midst of her involuntary self-reproaches, her heart was beating with anxiety to know the result of the interview.
It meant a great deal to her, for she was sure that if Katharine could be removed from the household, peace must descend upon her own soul once more, and she longed for peace. Somehow, she felt that if she could only enjoy that supremacy of her wonderful beauty for one month more—for one last month, before she grew old—she could meet Katharine again, and forgive her all her youth and freshness, and forgive herself for having envied them. As her life was now, shecould not, try how she would. The pain was upon her hourly, and she could not but resent it, and almost hate the cause of it.
Though she constantly looked at her miniature, and moved the brushes and little saucers on the table, her hearing was preternaturally sharpened, as it was in reality the barely audible sound of the distant front door which told her that Wingfield was gone. Instinctively she looked towards the door of her own room, hesitated, then rose suddenly, and went out with a quick, nervous step, and a determined look in her face. Without stopping to consider what she should say, she descended to the library.
Katharine looked up with an expression of annoyance as her mother entered.
“He’s gone, then?” said Mrs. Lauderdale, interrogatively.
“Yes. He’s just gone,” answered Katharine, in a voice that did not promise confidence.
“What did you tell him, dear?”
Mrs. Lauderdale sat down beside her daughter. The smile she put on was as unnatural as the endearing tone, and Katharine observed it. She suffered in the artificiality which had developed in her mother of late, so unlike the dignified personality which she had been used to love.
“Really, mother, I can’t repeat the conversation. I couldn’t if I wished to. What difference does itmake what I said, since he’s gone? I told you what I should say. Well—I’ve said it.”
“You’ve sent him away for good—just like that?”
“I’ve told him the plain truth, and he’s gone. He won’t come back—unless he wants to see you,” she added, rather bitterly. “I don’t think he will, though. You’ve not exactly helped him to be happy.”
“Katharine!” There was an injured protest in the tone.
“I don’t see why you should be surprised,” answered the young girl. “Of course he might take it into his head to be angry with you for what you’ve done. It wasn’t very nice. I’m not sure that, in his place, I should ever wish to see you again.”
“My child, what an exaggeration! You talk as though I had deliberately sought him out and asked him to the house—almost asked him to marry you.”
“It comes to that,” observed Katharine, coldly.
“Really, Katharine, you’re—beyond words!” Mrs. Lauderdale drew back a little, in displeasure, and looked at her severely.