Love, Mrs. Lauderdale had said in her absent-minded way, was not at all like other passions. The words remained in Katharine’s memory and pleased her and comforted her in a manner which would have surprised the elder woman, had she guessed that she had unintentionally drawn music from a human soul with one of those dull and stereotyped phrases which people fall back upon when they cannot or will not explain themselves.
But that was precisely what Katharine wished to believe—that love was not at all like other passions, that it bore not the slightest resemblance in its nature to those which she had seen asserting themselves so strongly around her, and of which she was beginning to understand something by proxy, as it were. For though she had said that her love for John Ralston was like her father’s love of money, she did not in the least wish to believe it. She attached to love the highest interpretation of which it is capable; she attributed to it the purest and most disinterested motives; she gave it in her thoughts the strongest and best qualities which anything can have.
She had a right to do so, and though she sought an explanation of her right, she was not disturbed because she found none. She dreamed of theories vague, but as beautiful as they were untenable, as men of ancient times imagined impossible, but deeply poetic, interpretations of nature and her doings. Her soul, and the soul of the man she loved had elected one another of old from amongst myriads; neither could give light without the other, nor could either live without the other’s life. Together they were one immortal; separate they must perish. The good of each was the triumphant enemy of evil in the other, and the evil in both was gradually to be driven out and forgotten in the perfection of the whole.
All that was contemplative in her nature was entranced before the exquisite beauty of her imagined deity. Little by little, as other attachments were rudely shaken, broken, and destroyed, the one of all others which she most valued grew stronger and fairer in the wreck of the rest; the one passion which she saw was good towered in her soul’s field as an archangel among devils, spotless, severe, and invincible. The angel was not John Ralston, nor were the devils those persons with whom her life had to do. They all had other features, immortal natures, and transcendent reasoning. At that time there was in her the foundation of a great mythology of ideals, good and bad, personified and almostnamed, among which love was king over all the rest, endowed with divine attributes, with knowledge of the human soul, and power to move the human heart, knowing all motives and divining all impulses,—a being to whom a prayer might be said in trouble, and whose beneficent hand would be swift and strong to help. Love, in her theory of the world, was the prime cause, the intelligent director, and at the same time the ultimate end. She and her husband were under his immediate and especial protection. If they were faithful to him, he would shield them from harm, and make them immortal with himself beyond the stars. If they denied him—that is, if they ceased to love one another—his face would grow dark, his right hand would be full of semi-biblical terrors, and he would abandon them to the wicked will of the devils,—which were the bad passions the girl saw in others,—to be tormented until they themselves should be extinguished in eternal night.
Practically, Katharine had constructed a religion for herself out of the most human thing in her nature, since she had lost the bearings of anything higher in the storms through which she had passed. It was by no means an unassailable religion, nor a very logical one, being derived altogether from the exaltation of the most human of all passions, and having its details deduced from the one-sided experience of an innocent child. But that very innocence,that very impossibility of conceiving that there should be anything not good in love that was true, gave it an enormous force against the powers which were evidently evil. There was an appearance of inexorably sound reason, too, in the conclusion that all human motive was passion of one kind or another, and that all passions but love were bad and self-destructive in the end, having their foundation in selfishness, and not in the other self that fills love-dreams.
Since passion and motive were one and the same, thought Katharine, there could be no question as to which of them all was the best, since true love such as hers was the only passion that had no one of the seven capital sins attached to it. Such an argument was manifestly unanswerable when it came from her, and she rejoiced in the security of knowing herself to be right in the midst of many wrongs, which is one of the highest satisfactions of human vanity for the young or the old. Day by day, through the changing events of the past year, the conviction had grown, until it was now the dominant cause and mover of her being, and was assuming superhuman proportions in her estimated values of things transcendent.
Paul Griggs, with his vaguely expressed explanations of things which meant much, and meant it clearly, to himself, had unconsciously helped Katharine to deify love at the expense, and to the ruin,of any form of religious belief to which she might have been inclined. He was assuredly not one of those men who seem to make it their business to destroy the convictions of others, and to give them nothing in exchange for what was consolation, if not salvation. He was, at least, a man who believed in belief, so to say, and who, perhaps, believed many things which must have seemed utterly incredible to ordinary beings of ordinary experience. But he was fond of stating the results he had reached, in a careless way, which seemed less than half-serious, without giving the smallest hint as to the means by which he had obtained them. The statements themselves were fragmentary: here a hand, there a head, now a foot, and next a bit of the shoulders. He was not conscious of his fault. To him the image was always present and complete. It seemed to him that he was but calling attention to one point or another of the visible whole, when it seemed to others as though he were offering them broken bits, often unrecognizable as belonging to any possible image whatsoever. Others sometimes put the bits together in their own way.
He was not in any sense an ordinary being, nor one to be judged by ordinary standards, though he rarely claimed the right to be treated as an exception. The difference between him and the average man lay not in any very unusual gifts, and many might have been found who, knowing him well,would have denied that there was any radical difference at all. He would certainly have taken little pains to persuade these of the contrary. Outwardly, he was a man of letters who had met with considerable success in his career—about as much as justifies good-natured people in making a lion of an author or an artist, but no more. He had written many books, and had learned his business in the bitter struggles which attend the commencement of an average literary man’s life, when the fight for bare existence forces the slender talent to bear burdens too heavy for its narrow shoulders, along paths not easy to tread for those most sure of foot. He had some valuable gifts, however, which had stood him in good stead. He possessed almost incredible physical strength in certain ways, without the heavy, sanguine temperament which requires regular exercise and perpetual nourishment. His endurance was beyond all comparison greater than that of men usually considered very strong, and he had been able to bear the strain of excessive labour which would have killed or paralyzed most people. That was one of the secrets of his success. Secondly, he had acquired an unusual mechanical facility in the handling of language and the arrangement of the matter he produced, so as to give it the most favourable appearance possible. His imagination was not abundant, but he did the best he could with it under all circumstances, and answered all criticswith the unassailable statement that he wrote for a living and did the best he could, and sincerely regretted that he was not Walter Scott, nor Goethe, nor Thackeray, nor any of the great ones. That was his misfortune, and not his fault. People flattered him, he said, by telling him that he could do better if he tried. It was not true. He could not do better.
But in all these points he did not differ very widely from the average man who attains to a certain permanent and generally admitted success by driving his faculties to their utmost in the struggle for a living. The chief difference between him and other men had been produced by an experience of life under varying circumstances, such as an ordinary individual rarely gets, and possibly by the long-continued action of unusual emotions with which this study, or history, of Katharine Lauderdale can have nothing to do, and which did not directly concern his literary career nor his relations with the world at large, though the outward result was to make unthinking people say that there was something mysterious about him, which either attracted them or repelled them, according to their temperaments and tastes. At all events, his life had tended to the creation of a form of belief and a mode of judgment which seemed very simple to himself, and perfectly incomprehensible to almost every one else. He showedother people fragments and bits of it, when he was in the humour, and sometimes seemed surprised that those who heard him should not also understand him. One of his fundamental articles of faith seemed to be that life as a possession was of no value whatsoever: a doctrine which attracted very few. But those who knew him and watched him were sure that there was no affectation in that part of his creed, though they might hesitate in finding reasons for his belief in it. It was strongly contrasted with his immovable faith—not in a life to come, for he despised the expression—but in the present fact of immortality. The mere fact that he laughed at the idea of ‘past’ and ‘future’ in their relation to the soul, sufficiently confused most of those who had heard him talk of such things.
Katharine Lauderdale had neither the man’s experience to help her in following him, nor any superior genius of insight to lead her to his conclusions by what one might call the shorthand of reason—intuition. She was simply attracted without understanding, as so many people are nowadays, by everything which promises a glimpse at the unknown, if not a knowledge of the unknowable. She took the longing for the power of comprehension, the fragments for the whole, and the crumbs for the bread of life. It was not unnatural, considering the tendencies of modern culture, but it was unfortunate.
She halved her soul, and gave John Ralston his share of it, though he had a very good one of his own. She elaborated a theory of interchangeable and interdependent selves for herself and him, which momentarily satisfied all her wants. She took his self with her own into the temple of love, and bade it bow down and worship with her the glorious deification of human passion which she had set up there. And his imaginary self, being really but that part of her own being which she called his, consented and obeyed, and did as she did. And the incense rose before the shrine, and the love-angels chanted love’s litany of praise, while Love himself smiled down upon her, and told her that he was immortal, and would make her deathless for her belief in him. The temple was beautiful beyond compare; the deity was spotless, fair of form, and noble of feature; the heart that worshipped was fresh, unsullied, and sincere. There had never been anything more perfect than it all was in Katharine’s imagination; and there could never, in all the long life that was before her, be anything so perfect again. John Ralston, single-hearted and deeply loving as he was, could never have any conception of the divinity his maiden wife adored in secret. Her instinct told her that though he was with her, the manliness in him looked at the world from another point of view; and in all their many exchanges ofthought she never spoke of her visions of blessedness. The fact that she kept them to herself gave them more strength, and preserved their intact beauty in all its splendid strength and all its infinite delicacy.
In a certain way she owed to Paul Griggs some of her sweetest and most exquisite thoughts, of which the memory must be with her all her life, long after the humanity of truth supplanted the dignity of the ideal. Not that he had taught her anything of what he believed and thought that he knew. She, like the rest, had received only fragments of his meaning; but out of them she had constructed a whole which was beautiful in itself, if nothing else—as lovers of art have dreamed an unbroken ideal of perfection upon bits of marble unearthed from the grave of a great thing destroyed, moulding theories upon it, and satisfying their tastes through it, each in his own way, though perhaps all very far from what was once the truth.
But, on the other hand, Griggs was partly responsible for the eclipse of what, in her nature, as in all, was essentially necessary. She did not at the present time feel the loss, if it were really a loss, and not a mere temporary shutting off of all higher possibilities from her mental sight. She did not, perhaps, fully realize the distance to which she had gone in unbelief in substituting one ideal for another; and she would have been profoundlyshocked had any one told her that she had at the present time wholly abandoned anything approaching to a form of Christianity. She would have reasoned that she said prayers, as she supposed other people did; but she would have found it hard to say what she thought when she said them. Nine-tenths of them were for John Ralston, and were in reality addressed to the divinity in the love temple—the remaining ones were mere words, and said in a perfunctory way, with a sort of sincerity of manner, but with no devotion whatever, and no attempt to strengthen them with a belief that they might be answered. She had been taught to say them, and continued to say them with the conscientiousness which is born of habit, before there can be any thought connected with the thing done.
Griggs and his talk had only contributed to this result. The quick and noiseless destruction of Katharine’s beliefs had been chiefly brought about by the actions of the persons with whom she had to do, and by the collapse of their principles in the face of difficulties, temptations and tests. It was natural that she should ask herself of what use her father’s blind faith and rigid practice could be, when neither the one nor the other could diminish his avarice nor check his cruelty when anything or any one stood between him and money. She was not to be blamed if she doubted theefficacy of the true faith, when she saw her religious mother half mad with envy of her own daughter’s youth and beauty. As for the rest of them all, they did not pretend to be religious people. Their misdeeds killed her faith in human nature, which is, perhaps, the ordinary key to that state of mind which believes in God, though it is by no means the only one.
Had she been able to discern and analyze what was going on in her own heart, she would have seen that her difficulty was the old one. The existence of evil in the world disproved to her the existence of a Supreme Power which was all good. But she neither analyzed nor discerned. It was sufficient for her that the earthly evil facts existed to assure her that the heavenly, transcendent Power was an impossibility. She never made the statement to herself, but she unconsciously took it for granted in substituting one divinity for the other. John Ralston said that he ‘believed in things’—and did, vaguely. But she had never found it possible to bring him to any concise statement of what his beliefs were. And yet he was, in her loving opinion, by far the morally best of all the men and women she had ever known. He did not go to church every Sunday, as her father did. She believed that he never went to church at all, in fact. But there was no denying the superiority of a man who had bravely overcomesuch temptation as John Ralston had formerly had to deal with, over one who, like her father, believed, trembled, and nevertheless gave himself up wholly to his evil passion.
So she had lost her belief in human nature. But as she could not afford to lose her belief in the man she loved, she had taken him out of the rest of humanity, and made him the half of herself, so that they two stood quite alone in the world, and had their temple to themselves, and their little god to themselves, and their faith and belief and religious practice altogether to themselves, though John Ralston was quite ignorant of the fact. But that made no difference to Katharine. He was in her earthly paradise, though he did not know it, and was as sincere a worshipper of the divinity as she herself.
In this way she excepted both him and her from common humanity, and was sure that she had found the true path which leads to the fields of the blessed. Love was the centre of hope and the circumference of life; it was the air she breathed, the thoughts she thought, and the actions she performed. There was nothing else. And since eternity was the present, as Griggs said, there was no hereafter, and so there could never be anything but love, even after men ceased to count time. In the midst of the prosaic surroundings of a society life, as in the midst of the great and evilpassions which do devilish deeds just below the calm, luxurious and dull surface, there was one true idealist, one maiden soul that dreamed of love’s immortality, and placed hers in love’s heart of hearts.
Theletter Alexander Lauderdale Junior had written to Ralston will have given some idea of what he was willing to sacrifice for the sake of having the will annulled. A moral degeneration had begun in him, which might go far in the end. The passion he had so long tried to conceal, with considerable success, and which had fed for many years on a small object, was stirred up and set at large by the enormous wealth now at stake. The man’s pride shrank away before it, and even his rigid principles wavered. He began to make those compromises with his conscience which circumstances suggested, and he forced his religious habits to help in doing the dirty work of his greed. In a lower walk of life, perhaps, such a man, in such a situation, would have committed crimes to obtain the money. Alexander Junior robbed his own soul, and murdered his own conscience. We shall know some day what difference there is between that and murder in the first degree.
It was not an affair of a few days. Such a character could not change easily nor quickly, either for better or for worse. For years the thought ofhis uncle’s money had been constantly present with him, and for many years he had dreamt the miser’s dream of endless gold. There was nothing new in it, nor, of itself, had it ever disturbed the equanimity of his well-practised righteousness. It had never even occurred to him that in not spending his hoarded income he was wronging any one. He had regarded his wife’s painting and selling her miniatures as a wholesome occupation, and as what certain persons call a moral discipline. The principles of economy which he forced his household to practise were agreeable to the ascetic disposition which in a greater or less degree showed itself in the Scotch blood of the Lauderdales. Economy was a means of feeling that he was better than other people, and, axiomatically, it cost nothing, and helped to satisfy his main passion. Only his sense of social importance, which was strong and hereditary, had hindered him from actually reducing his establishment to a condition of positive penury. But that would have been impossible, because it would have been impossible to conceal it. He preserved the limits so carefully that, while every one said that the Lauderdales lived very quietly, no one ever thought of saying that they lived poorly. Then, too, Mrs. Lauderdale was herself an excellent manager, and had long been deceived by her husband’s assurance that he was poor and wholly dependent upon the salaryhe received from the Trust Company, in which he held no interest, as he could always easily prove. As a matter of fact, though he practically directed the affairs of the Company himself, he considered United States’ bonds as a safer investment. He did not consider that he was deceiving his wife, either. In his own opinion he was poor. What was a million? There were some who had nearly two hundred millions. Scores, perhaps hundreds, in the country had more than fifty millions. What was a million? Was not a man poor who had but one dollar when his neighbour had two hundred? It was no business of his wife’s, nor of any one else, if he had something put away. It had always been possible, within the limits of the law, that his uncle might leave him nothing. So he had practised economy, and grown rich secretly.
But all his hardly hoarded savings were but as a drop to the sea of gold which surged upon the horizon of his hopes when he thought of Robert Lauderdale’s death, and which rushed forward all at once to his very feet, as soon as the old man was really dead. It washed away his elaborately drawn pattern of morality, as the tide obliterates the figures a child has scrawled upon the sand; it rose by quick degrees, and flowed higher than the rigid landmarks which he had driven like stakes into the flat expanses of his soul; it boiled up and sucked back the earth from beneath the very foundationsof the chapel of ease he had built for his conscience, over his own little spring of wealth, when all the shore had been dry and arid, and the golden ocean very far off.
The long cherished hope had prepared the circumstances for the reality. He meant now to have at least half the fortune, or perish in the attempt to get it. That is, he was ready to spend even what he had saved, in order to get possession of the greater sum. And he was far more ready to spend other things, such as his pride and his manliness. He was ready and willing to lay the shears to his garment of righteousness, and to clip and cut it to the very limits of moral decency, leaving but enough to cover the nakedness of his miserly soul.
Therefore he had written that letter to John Ralston, and one something like it to John’s mother, believing it probable that she had been told by her son of much that had taken place. His lawyer had told him that if the will were probated, and if it became necessary to attack it on other grounds, it would be of the highest importance that the next of kin should act in concert against the distant relations who had been so highly favoured. It became his business, therefore, to make sure of having the Ralstons on his side.
He distrusted them, after what had happened. He knew that they cared little for money, and much for a certain kind of sentiment which wasquite foreign to him, and he believed them capable of opposing him, merely in order that the dead man’s wishes might be carried out. The situation in which he found himself was an unexpected one, too. He had been taken by surprise and obliged to act at short notice, and he was no diplomatist. He merely took the first means which offered for carrying out his lawyer’s idea. The will itself was of an unusual character. He had expected that his uncle would either divide the fortune between the next of kin, in trusts for their children, with a legacy to the Brights, or that he would make something like an equal distribution amongst all the living members of the family. He had long cherished, however, the secret hope that as his own branch of the family was the most numerous, and as he himself had such an unassailable character for uprightness and economy, the largest share might be placed in his hands for administration, if not actually as his own property. He had been disappointed, and he considered the will a piece of flagrant injustice.
Many outsiders shared his opinion, and asked one another why the Brights should have so much, and Alexander Junior had the satisfaction of feeling that his action would be approved by a large number of hard-headed business men amongst his acquaintances. His lawyer, too, was encouraged by this fact; and looked forward confidently to pocketingan enormous fee. He was a man as hard headed, as upright, and as spotless in reputation as his client, and the high morality of their united forces was imposing.
If Alexander had conceived it possible that Mrs. Ralston and her son could agree to have no opinion in the matter, but to abide by their lawyer’s judgment, and let him act as he thought best, he might have spared himself the trouble and humiliation of writing the letter to John. He would have known that Mr. Henry Brett was not the man to advise his clients against taking their rights without any regard to sentiment, and Alexander’s joy was great when he found that Brett was with him—a much younger man than his own lawyer, but keen, business-like, and of excellent standing. Brett had married the widow of the notorious forger and defaulter, John Darche, and had diminished neither his popularity nor his credit by so doing.
Alexander reproached himself in a way that would have surprised his former virtue, for having so bitterly opposed Katharine’s marriage with John Ralston. He really could not conceive how he could ever have attached so much importance to the young fellow’s youthful follies. It was the most natural thing in the world as it seemed to him now, that with the prospect of boundless wealth the boy should have idled away his time and amused himself as other boys did. His mindwas full of excuses for Ralston. What he could not pardon, he allowed to be swamped by the gold-flood as soon as it presented itself. That one unpardonable thing was the blow he had received. When he could not help thinking of it, and when it stung his manliness—for he was a brave man—he took pains to recollect that he had at once got John by the throat, and would probably have broken some of his bones for him, if Katharine’s hurt had not interrupted the struggle. It was not as though he had received a blow tamely, without retaliation. His blood had been up, and Ralston must have got the worst of it if circumstances had not obliged him to pause in his vengeance. Nothing can equal the unconscious sophistry of a man whose main passion requires that he shall not feel that he has been insulted.
And so matters proceeded. The Brights’ lawyer did his best to force the will to probate. The Lauderdales’ and Ralstons’ legal advisers created delays, and as they were in possession of the will, they were able to prolong the situation, and prepare for action. Old Robert Lauderdale’s lawyer, Mr. Allen, was moreover their ally. He did not believe that the will was good, and resented the way in which his deceased client had surreptitiously employed a young fellow like Russell, before mentioned, to draw it up, after he, Allen, had drawn up one which had been irreproachable. The first pointthat arose was in connection with one of the witnesses, who was unluckily not forthcoming. The signature was that of one ‘John Simons.’ In the list of servants who were to receive annuities appeared the name of one ‘J. Simmons,’ a groom, who, strange to say, was not to be found either. The Lauderdale lawyers maintained that the witness and the servant were the same person, and that there had been a mistake in spelling the name in the list; a fact which would have debarred the will from probate, as no legatee can be a witness. This forced the Bright lawyers to ask time in order to find either the witness or the groom, or both, and meanwhile the other side looked into the will itself in search of irregularities connected with the suspension of the power of alienation, and the like. Mr. George W. Russell, who had drawn up the will, looked on with his hands in his pockets, and was ‘interested in the show’ from a purely artistic point of view.
The parties began to rage furiously together. Alexander Junior did not hesitate to say that he remembered the groom Simmons, and that his name was John. He assuredly believed that he did remember the fact, or he would not have said so. But Hamilton Bright remembered, with equal certainty, that the man had more than once gone with him when he had been consulted, as an authority, about the buying of horses for old Robert, andthat his name was James. He had called him James, and the man had answered to his name. That was proof positive. The servants of the accused did not know anything about it. The man had always been called Persimmons, because he lisped a little. He had been badly kicked by a horse during Mr. Lauderdale’s last days, and had been sent to St. Luke’s Hospital. At the hospital it was ascertained that he had been discharged in a few days. He had not come back to Mr. Lauderdale’s. He probably had some good reason for not coming back. It had been one of his duties to buy certain things for the stables. Possibly he had been dishonest and feared discovery. Mr. Russell, privately questioned, said that the man who had signed the will as a witness might have been a servant, and added, a few seconds later, that as he had not been present when the will was signed, he did not know. He was young enough to laugh to himself at his own pretended hesitation. He had drawn up the will. When or where it had been signed and witnessed was beyond his knowledge.
The other witnesses said that from his appearance the man might have been a respectable servant. He was clean shaven, and might have been a groom. They had not heard him speak, so that they did not know whether he lisped or not. They had never seen him before, and he had been in the room when they had been called in. They hadseen him write his name, and were prepared to swear to it. They should also recognize him if they saw him. Mr. Russell, privately questioned, said that he had copied the name ‘J. Simmons’ with a list of names given him by Mr. Lauderdale for the purpose. It had not struck him that it was informal to insert only the initial, since there was no other Simmons, a servant, in the house at the time. He was told severely, by the Brights’ lawyer, that it was. He said he regretted the fact, and put his hands into his pockets and looked on again.
Crowdie, who never swore, anathematized Alexander Junior in the dialect of the Paris studios, a language which Alexander could not have understood. Bright, who had driven cattle in the Nacimiento Valley, spoke differently. Aunt Maggie’s charity suddenly ceased to be universal, and excluded both Lauderdales and Ralstons from its benefits. From Washington, Charlotte Slayback wrote an unusually affectionate letter to her sister Katharine, in which she playfully compared the fair-haired aunt Maggie and Hamilton Bright to a lioness and her whelp, and all the tribe of Lauderdales to poor little innocent lambs with blue ribbons round their necks. Benjamin Slayback of Nevada, Member of Congress, said nothing. He was a singular man, having mines of silver of his own, and his solitary pleasure was in giving his wife much money, because she had none of herown. He reflected that if she were suddenly made rich in her own right, his pleasure would be greatly diminished. But on the whole, he believed in respecting dead men’s wishes, in spite of legal formalities. He had known wills made by word of mouth by men who had bullets in them before witnesses who had put the bullets there, but who were scrupulous in carrying out the instructions of the departed. He was a lawyer himself, however, and took an interest in the case. He talked of running up to New York, from Friday to Monday, to have a look at things, and a guess at which way the cat would jump.
Then Leek, the butler, who was anxious about his annuity, found Persimmons, the groom, in a down-town stable, and showed him how important it was for them both that he should at once go and swear that he was not the John Simons who had signed the will, which he immediately did. But on being confronted with the other witnesses, they said that the signer had been clean shaven, and about of the same height; that the room had been dimly lighted, and that they were not prepared to swear that Persimmons was not the signer. Then Persimmons, being indignant, and having had two goes of whiskey with Leek, lifted up his voice, and swore to his own identity, and gave an account of himself, and declared that his name was not and never had been John Simons, nor J. Simmons, norPersimmons, because he was not a Simmons at all, but one James Thwaite, and had changed his name when he left England, because he had been unjustly disqualified as a jockey, for roping Mr. Cranstoun’s mare in the Thousand Guineas. All of which further complicated matters, while the other witnesses grew more and more conscientiously sure that he was the man who had signed with them, and wished to see him in a brown jacket. Persimmons owned that he possessed such a garment, but refused to put it on to play Punch and Judy for a couple of noodles, which almost produced a free fight in Mr. Brett’s private office, and did not improve things at all, for the two witnesses promptly swore that this was the same Persimmons who had signed with them, and they should have liked to know whether a disqualified jockey were a proper person to sign with respectable persons like themselves—they should like to know that, once for all. And they departed, much ruffled. Privately questioned, Mr. Russell said that he had given Mr. Lauderdale no advice as to the selection of his witnesses. He supposed that Mr. Lauderdale, who had made at least two other wills in the course of his life, might have been expected to understand what was required of witnesses. The Brights’ legal adviser told him that it was the duty of a lawyer to tell his client how to make the signatures on a will legal. Mr. Russell thrust his handsinto his pockets and looked on. But the Brights’ lawyer began to think that things looked queer, and that he might not get the will through probate after all. He had not expected such a check at the outset. He had anticipated a fight over much more complicated questions.
The Brights tried to ascertain whether the court would admit the will to probate on the testimony of the two reliable witnesses. It seemed pretty clear that the court would not hear of it. There had been a recent case, argued the Brights, in which the testimony of one witness had been held to be sufficient to establish the signatures of the others, though at least one of the others was living at the time in a remote part of the world. They were told that this was all very well, but that in the case quoted there had been no question of any one of the witnesses being a legatee, still less of that one having given an assumed name and not being an American citizen, and that furthermore, in that case, there had been no prospect of any litigation arising between the heirs, because there had been only one heir, and excepting two small legacies, he would have got the fortune just as surely if the deceased had died intestate; and finally, that the Brights had better not come into court with any such trumped-up case, which was unkind to the Brights, because the will was in their favour, and they were not trumping up a case, but defending one.
Then Persimmons, finding that eighty millions of money depended upon his having signed or not signed the will, and that no one had, as yet, offered him so much as a drink, save Leek, the butler, went privately to Alexander Lauderdale Junior, and made certain propositions which immediately resulted in his being kicked into the middle of Broad Street by an unfeeling person in brass buttons, who answered to the name of Donald McCracken, having red hair, large bones, and a Scotch accent—very terrible.
On the advice of friends, Persimmons attempted to recover damages for indignities and bruises received on the premises of the Trust Company, and the popular feeling in the stables was with him. But he got nothing but the promise of more kicks, payable at sight, by Donald McCracken, and the hexecrations of Mister Leek who perceived that ‘is hannuity was vanishing before ‘is very heyes.
And now no lawyer would make bold to say in his heart whether Persimmons had signed or had not signed, and the war raged furiously, and the Lauderdales, being in possession of the will, swore that they would bring it to probate without delay, and that the Brights ought to be very much pleased at this, as they had been so anxious to get the will probated without delay. But the Brights were less anxious to do so than they had been a few days earlier, and looked about them for meansof strengthening testimony. Also, the whole story was well ventilated in the newspapers.
Then came a man privately to Hamilton Bright and said that he was John Simons, who spelled his name in the right way, and had been the witness of the will. He was in difficulties, and was obliged to hide from his creditors; but if a small sum of money were forthcoming—and so forth. Bright looked at him, and he was clean-shaven, and of average height, and wore a brown jacket. Bright hesitated, and then called the other witnesses, who unhesitatingly swore that the man who had signed was Persimmons and not this Simons. And nothing more was heard of the man in the brown jacket to this day. But another clean-shaven man of average height with another sort of brown jacket appeared the next morning, and many more after him, very much alike. But the departure of them from the office was much more precipitate than that of the first. And this also was in the morning and evening papers, and still the will was unprobated, and lay in Mr. Allen’s safe. After that the lawyers on each side began to accuse one another of causing delay, and while they were quarrelling about it the delay continued, and the public jeered, and the actors at Harrigan and Hart’s introduced jokes about the Lauderdale will which brought the house down, until Teddy Van De Water, chancing to be in the audience, tookfriendly action, and requested that the name should not be introduced in future. At this the public of the theatre took offence, and called all the Lauderdales gilt-edged galoots, and by other similar epithets commonly applied to the Four Hundred by a godless population which has not the fear of millions before its eyes, but rather a desire for the same.
About this time the quality of the cigars smoked by Alexander Lauderdale Senior suddenly improved at a wonderful and miraculous rate, so that in a few days he was brought by successive stages of delight from the ‘Old Virginia Cheroot,’ at ten cents for a package of five, to the refinement of Havanas, at thirty cents apiece, after which of his own accord he returned to what are known as Eden Bouquets from Park and Tilford’s. He smoked in silent surprise, not unmixed with an old man’s cunning curiosity, and not without much internal amusement. Reporters also came often to see him, ostensibly to make enquiries about the vast charities in which he was chiefly interested; but in reality they came cynically to have a look at him, and to tell the public what probabilities of life remained to him in which to enjoy his half of the Lauderdale fortune. Most of them came to the conclusion that he might live many years longer.
In the Lauderdale household there was peaceduring these days. Katharine had returned, and had been received by her father with reticent affection, and nothing more had been said about her offering an apology for her hasty speeches. From time to time the Ralstons were spoken of in connection with the family affairs, and then Alexander suggested to his wife that they might be asked to dinner. It would, in his favourite phrase, tend to cement the union between the two branches of the family which stood together in the great contention, pitted against the Brights and the Crowdies.
They came, and their coming was an event. Even the servants took an interest in it. Ralston and Lauderdale shook hands rather spasmodically, and each looked at Katharine’s arm a moment later, recalling the words they had exchanged when they had last met, and the blow and the struggle after it, and many other things of a similar nature. The Ralstons were very quiet, but behaved naturally and made conversation, avoiding the subject of the will as much as possible. After dinner John and Katharine sat in a corner for nearly half an hour, as they used to do long ago in the early days of their love-making, and Alexander Junior seemed well satisfied, and resolutely turned his back on them and talked with Mrs. Ralston.
John remembered having told his mother, when Katharine was still at the Brights’, that the nexttime Katharine entered her father’s house she should go as his wife; but fate had managed matters otherwise. Until the question of the fortune was settled, it would be as well to keep the marriage a secret. It could only be a question of days now. That was clear enough from Alexander’s face, which expressed his certainty of triumph as clearly as his cold features could express anything. His electric smile flashed more frequently than it had done for many years, and his steely eyes glittered in the light. But he had grown thin of late, for it was hard to wait so long before realizing the miser’s dream.
In the night, when he lay awake, he had a wild idea which haunted him in the dark hours, though it never crossed his brain during the daylight. He thought of realizing a whole million in gold coin, and of revelling in the delight of pouring it from one hand to another. He had a million of his own, in a very realizable shape, but somehow he would not have risked that, so long as he had not a second. Some one might rob him—one could never tell. He should like to be alone with the gold in his own room for one hour, and then know that it was safe. He considered whether the gas-light in his dressing-room were strong enough to make the metal glitter. Electric light would be better.
It was a childish thought, and in the daytime he paid no attention to it, but at night it cameupon him like hunger or thirst, drying his lips and driving away sleep. Then, in order to quiet his brain, he had to promise himself that he would really do the thing he longed to do as soon as it lay in his power. But in the morning, when he stood before his shaving-glass, and looked into his own hard eyes, he laughed scornfully.
So things went on for a few days more. Then Alexander arose and said that there should be no more delay, but that the will should be brought to probate at the next session of the court, which does not sit every day. And then the excitement grew more intense, and the Brights and the Lauderdales avoided one another in the street. Ralston still went regularly to the bank and saw Hamilton Bright every day. But though they were friends still, and there had been no unfriendly word spoken between them, they met as little as possible and merely nodded quickly when a meeting was unavoidable. But Ralston was displeased by the notice he attracted whenever he got up from his seat or sat down again. Occasionally an acquaintance of one of the numerous young gentlemen in the bank came in, and it was rarely that, after exchanging a few words with his friend, the stranger did not turn and glance at John, where he sat. Ralston did not like it, but he could do nothing against it.
Then came the day of judgment. Withoutwarning the Brights produced a man whom they believed to be the real John Simons, and who swore that he had signed the will in the presence of the testators and in the presence of the other witnesses.
This was a terrible blow to the Lauderdale side. But the other witnesses had previously sworn to and signed a statement, extracted from them by the Lauderdales, to the effect that Persimmons was the man who had signed with them; and whether the John Simons now present, who was a genuine John Simons of some kind, were the right one or not, they had no intention of laying themselves open to a possible action for perjury, and stuck to their original testimony, regardless of the fact that the witness now confronted with them, being also clean shaven, of average height, and possibly the possessor of a brown jacket, was a perfectly respectable citizen of New York. At this the legal advisers of the Brights were thunderstruck, and the court was surprised. But with the fear of prosecution by the Lauderdales before their eyes, the other two would not budge, though the real John Simons, whether he had signed or not, immediately threatened to prosecute them for perjury on his own account. But he did not look imposing enough, and they preferred that risk to the other.
In the face of such conflicting evidence the courtruled that, the witnesses not agreeing, the will could not be admitted to probate, and there was clearly nothing to be done but to give judgment that the deceased had died intestate, and that administrators must dispose of the property between the next of kin, Alexander Lauderdale Senior, and Katharine Lauderdale, widow of the late Admiral Ralston of the United States Navy.
When Alexander Junior heard the judgment he laughed hysterically, and showed his brilliant teeth. Hamilton Bright said nothing, but he, who generally reddened under emotion, turned white to his neck and under his ears.
“That’s all very well,” said Mr. Allen to Mr. Henry Brett, as they walked away together. “But if he didn’t happen to destroy the will I made for him, there may be trouble yet. I wonder where it is!”
But nobody seemed to know.
Itis not very easy to conceive of the disappointment felt by persons to whom a gigantic fortune has been left by a will which is then entirely set aside, so that they receive absolutely nothing. It would be useless to attempt an analysis of the state of mind which prevailed in the households of the Brights and the Crowdies after judgment had been given against them in the court of probate. The blow was sudden and stunning. Though they were all very well-to-do, even rich, in the ordinary acceptation of that word, their joint imagination had of late so completely outrun their present circumstances, that they felt impoverished when the hope of millions was removed beyond their reach. They could not realize that the will was absolutely valueless, and they still felt sure that something might be done.
Unfortunately for them the matter had been finally settled. In the presence of witnesses who denied one another’s identity, and threatened one another reciprocally with actions for perjury, the court could hardly have done otherwise than it had done. To this day it is still doubtful—froma legal point of view—which of the John Simonses signed as a witness, though everything goes to show that the last one produced was the right one, in spite of the fact that the others denied having known him. Persimmons had, from the first, denied having had anything to do with the matter, but he had subsequently sworn to all manner of statements. The confusion was complete. There was no doubt that the respectable John Simons who appeared last was a tenant of one of the Lauderdale houses in MacDougal Street, and he said that he had found himself at Robert Lauderdale’s house, having gone to complain of a leak in his roof to old Robert himself, after having vainly laid his grievance before the agent a number of times. The story was probably true, but the other witnesses remained firm in their assertion that he was not the man. They were, perhaps, telling the truth to the best of their ability. Neither Persimmons nor John Simons were men who had anything unusual about them to impress itself upon their memory. They themselves, somewhat awed by the presence of the great millionaire, had looked at him much more than at their insignificant fellow-witness. The room had not been light, for the signing had taken place late in the afternoon, as all agreed in stating, and they had not remained in one another’s presence more than three minutes altogether. Simons, saidthe other two, had stayed behind, whereas they had left the room immediately. It was not surprising that their memory of the man’s face should be indistinct.
The Brights, however, threw the whole blame upon the Lauderdales and their legal advisers. The latter had not the right, they said, to make the two witnesses sign an affidavit beforehand to the effect that they recognized the third. The Lauderdales answered that there was no law to hinder them from requesting any individual with whom they had to do, to swear to any statement he made. The two need not have signed unless they pleased. There had been no pressure brought to bear upon them. They had said that they recognized Persimmons. The Lauderdale lawyers wished to make sure that they did, so as to avoid any subsequent trouble, because Persimmons denied that he was the man, and might disappear before the hearing. What was more natural than that, out of pure caution, they should have wished to file an affidavit of the man’s identity? The Brights, amongst themselves, were obliged to admit that they did not really know who had signed, and that the only person who could have settled the dispute was dead, so that they could not blame the court for its decision.
After the judgment John Simons quarrelled with the other two, who turned upon him in defence oftheir own reputations. They swore out warrants against one another which were not served, and they pottered amongst shysters and legal small fry, until they had spent most of their money, and disappeared from the horizon with their quarrel. The private opinion of the judge who had settled the question was that there had been an unfortunate mistake, and that all three had originally intended to be perfectly honest. But he also thought it far more just that the fortune should go to the next of kin, in spite of Robert Lauderdale’s wishes.
Alexander Lauderdale did his best to conceal his delight in his triumph. It had been a far more easy victory than he had expected, and it was practically complete. The only drawback was that the fortune had come into his old father’s hands instead of into his own, but he anticipated no difficulty in ruling the old gentleman according to his own judgment, nor in getting control of the whole estate. He intended to treat it as he had treated his own comparatively small possessions, and he had hopes of seeing it doubled in his lifetime. He could make it double itself in twenty years at the utmost, and he was but fifty years of age, or thereabouts. He should live as long as that, with his iron constitution and careful habits.
His father received the news with an old man’s chuckle of pleasure, and one heavy hand fell intothe other with a loud slap of satisfaction. He had but one idea, which was to extend the scope and efficiency of his charitable institutions, and he saw at last that he had boundless power to do so.
“I always knew I should live to build that other asylum myself!” he cried, referring to one of his favourite schemes. “It will only cost a million or so, and another million as a foundation will run it. I’ll send for the architects at once.”
Alexander Junior smiled, for he believed that he was quite able to prevent any such extravagance by getting himself appointed his father’s guardian, on the ground that the old gentleman would squander everything in senseless charities. But in the meanwhile it would take some time to make the division of the property, which was almost wholly in real estate, as has been seen, and could not be so readily apportioned as though it had been held in bond and mortgage. Of course the administrators would allow either of the heirs to draw a large amount on credit before the settling, if they desired to do so.
Alexander Senior said that he meant to live in Clinton Place for the rest of his life, and his son considered this a very wise decision. The people who lived opposite began to watch the old gentleman, who had inherited over forty millions, when he went out on foot in his shabby coat for his airing on fine days. They wondered why he did not buya new one, as they did, when their overcoats were worn out.
Mrs. Lauderdale was indignant at the idea of continuing to inhabit the old house. In her mind it was associated with a quarter of a century of penurious economy, and she longed at last for the luxury she enjoyed so thoroughly in the houses of others.
“It’s perfectly absurd,” she said to Katharine, indignantly. “I’ve stood it all these years because I had to—but I won’t stand it any longer. If ever I paint another miniature! But I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t do that, even if we didn’t get all the money.”
“I should think so!” laughed Katharine. “Put away your paints and your brushes, mother, and say that you’ll never use them any more. You’ll be at it again as hard as ever in a week, because you really like it, you know!”
“I suppose so.” And Mrs. Lauderdale laughed, too. “Let’s go out, child. Let’s take a long drive—somewhere. I suppose we can drive as much as we like now.”
“From morning till night,” answered Katharine; “why don’t we use the horses and carriages? They’re all there, you know, and all the grooms and coachmen and everything, just as though nothing had happened.”
“Do you think we could just go there and ordera carriage?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, rather doubtfully.
“Why, of course! Whose are they all, if they’re not ours and the Ralstons’? We have a perfect right—”
“Yes—but if we were to meet people—don’t you know?”
“Well—they’re our carriages, not theirs.” Katharine laughed again. “The only question is whether they’ll belong to the Ralstons or to us. I suppose they’ll all be sold and we shall buy new ones.”
“I don’t see why,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale. “They’re perfectly good carriages, and there are some splendid horses—”
Twenty-five years of rigid economy were not to be forgotten in a day, and Alexander Junior saw with satisfaction that his wife showed no signs of developing any very reprehensible extravagance. But she enjoyed that first drive, lying back in the luxurious carriage with her daughter by her side, and feeling that it all belonged to her, or, at least, that she was privileged to consider that it did, as much as though she had inherited the fortune herself.
Aunt Maggie Bright saw the two in the Park and bent her head rather stiffly. She recognized the carriage and spoke of the meeting to her son that evening.
“They’ve a right to do as they please,” answered Hamilton gravely. “As for the carriages and all the personal belongings, they’d have had them anyway. I should like to know where that other will is, though. If he didn’t destroy it, it’s good now.”
“If it’s in existence, it will turn up amongst the papers one of these days.”
“Unless Alexander gets at them—then it won’t,” said Bright, savagely.
“Perhaps that isn’t quite just, Ham. I don’t think Alexander’s capable of destroying such a thing.”
“Oh—isn’t he! You don’t know him, mother. If you think anything would stand in the way of his defending his millions, you’re very much mistaken. There’s been something very queer about the whole affair. That affidavit wasn’t straight.”
They argued the case and talked over it, as they had done many times already, without coming to any conclusion, except that they should have had the money and Alexander should not. They always considered that he had got the property, though it was really his father’s. But they both knew how futile discussion was, and they abandoned it at last, as they always did, with a hopeless conviction that the truth could never be known.
Katharine on her side was much disturbed by what she knew of the previous will, and she took counsel with John Ralston, as to how she shouldact. There was not much to be done, since the will itself had not been found up to the present date, though the administrators had been already some time engaged in examining the papers. Of these there was no end, though the agent of the estate was acquainted with most of them. They consisted chiefly of title deeds and leases.
By this time Alexander had practically admitted that Katharine was engaged to be married to Ralston, but like every one else concerned, he thought it better to wait until the summer, before announcing the fact. To do so now would look as though the family had only waited for Robert Lauderdale’s death. Moreover, though it is so little the custom to wear mourning for any but the very nearest nowadays, the inheritance of wealth requires a corresponding show of grief on the part of the heirs. There is a sort of tacit understanding about that. When an uncle leaves a fortune, the particular nephew who gets it must acknowledge the fact and propitiate the shade of the dear departed with a decently broad hatband. The position of the Brights caused some amusement. They had worn something approaching to mourning after old Lauderdale’s death, but they did not think it necessary to continue to do so after the court had set aside the will. The Lauderdales and the Ralstons wore half mourning.
As has been said, Katharine’s engagement wasaccepted as a fact in the family, and she had no difficulty in seeing Ralston as often as she pleased, when he was free from his work. He had told Mr. Beman that he should prefer to stay in the bank for a time and learn something about business, and Beman had been delighted, especially when he saw that John came as regularly as ever.
Inthe late spring John and Katharine often walked together of an afternoon, between half past five and sunset.
It was during one of these walks that Katharine consulted him seriously. They went about together in unfrequented places, as a rule, not caring to meet acquaintances at every turn. Neither of them had any social duties to perform, and they were as free to do as they pleased as though they had not represented the rising generation of Lauderdales.
The spring had fairly come at last. It had rained, and the pavement dried in white patches, the willow trees in the square were a blur of green, and the Virginia creeper on the houses here and there was all rough with little stubby brown buds. It had come with a rush. The hyacinths were sticking their green curved beaks up through the park beds, and the little cock-sparrows were scraping their wings along the ground.
There was a bright youthfulness in everything,—in the air, in the sky, in the old houses, in the faces of the people in the streets. The Italianswith their fruit carts sunned themselves, and turned up their dark rough faces to the warmth. The lame boy who lived in the house at the corner of Clinton Place was out on the pavement, with a single roller skate on his better foot, pushing himself along with his crutch, and laughing all to himself, pale but happy. The old woman in grey, who hangs about that region and begs, had at last taken the dilapidated woollen shawl from her head, and had replaced it by a very, very poor apology for a hat, with a crumpled paper cherry and a green leaf in it, and only one string. And the other woman, who wants her car-fare to Harlem, seemed more anxious to get there than ever. Moreover the organ-grinders expressed great joy, and the children danced together to the cheerful discords, in Washington Square, under the blur of the green willows—slim American children, who talked through their noses, and funny little French children with ribbons in their hair, from South Fifth Avenue, and bright-eyed darkey children with one baby amongst them. And they took turns in holding it while the others danced.
Now also the patriotic Italians took occasion to bury a dead comrade or two, and a whole platoon of them, who had been riflemen in their own army at home, turned out in their smart, theatrical uniforms of green and red, with plumes of gleaming cock’s feathers lying over one side of their flatwaterproof hats. And they had a band of their own which played a funeral march, as their little legs moved with doll-like slowness to the solemn measure.
But Katharine and John Ralston followed less frequented paths, crossing Broadway from Clinton Place east, and striking past Astor Place and Lafayette Place—where the Crowdies lived—by Stuyvesant Street eastwards to Avenue A and Tompkins Square. And there, too, the spring was busy, blurring everything with green. Men were getting the benches out of the kiosk on the north side where they are stacked away all winter, and others were repairing the band stand with its shabby white dome, and everywhere there were children, rising as it were from the earth to meet the soft air—rising as the sparkling little air bubbles rise in champagne, to be free at last—hundreds of children, perhaps a thousand, in the vast area which many a New Yorker has not seen twice in his life, out at play in the light of the westering sun. They stared innocently as Katharine and Ralston passed through their midst, and held their breath a moment at the sight of a real lady and gentleman. All the little girls over ten years old looked at Katharine’s clothes and approved of them, and all the boys looked at John Ralston’s face to see whether he would be the right sort of young person to whom to address an ironical remark, but decided that he was not.
“There goes a son of a gamboleer,” observed one small chap on roller skates, as he looked after John. “He’s fly.”
“You bet! And his girl, she knows it,” replied his companion, sharing in his admiration.
“Your dad’s new coat’s that shape,” said the first. “But ’taint made that way. Fifth Av’nue, that is! Bet?”
“Lemme be!” retorted the other. “Botherin’ me ’bout dad’s coat. Mine’s better’n yours, anyhow.”
“Take a reef in your lip, Johnny, or I’ll sit on it!”
Thereupon they fought without the slightest hesitation. But Katharine and John Ralston went on, and crossed the great square and left it by the southeast corner, from which a quiet street leads across the remaining lettered avenues to an enormous timber yard at the water’s edge, a bad neighbourhood at night, and the haunt of the class generically termed dock rats, a place of murder and sudden death by no means unfrequently, but by day as quiet and safe as any one could wish.
“I don’t know what to do, Jack,” Katharine said, as they walked along. “The idea of that other will haunts me, and I lie awake thinking of it at night.”
“Don’t do that,” laughed Ralston. “It isn’t worth while. Besides, it wouldn’t make so much difference if it were found.”
“The Brights would get their share—as much as they ought to expect—instead of getting nothing. That’s the principal thing. But papa wouldn’t like it at all. As things are now, he’ll probably have all grandpapa’s share when grandpapa dies. I suppose he’ll have the management of it as it is. But if the old will were found, and were legal, you know—why then papa never could possibly have anything but the income of half my share. He wouldn’t like that.”
“What in the world does he want with so much?” asked Ralston, impatiently. “I do think you Lauderdales are the strangest people! If the will—”
“Don’t say ‘you Lauderdales’ to me like that, Jack!” interrupted Katharine, with a little laugh. “You’re every bit as much one as I am, you know—”
“Well—yes. I didn’t want to say disagreeable things about your father—”
“So you jumbled us all up together! That’s logical, at all events. Well—don’t!” she laughed again.
“No, I won’t. So I’ll say that your father is the strangest person I ever heard of. As it is now, he’s practically got half the fortune. If the old will turned up and were proved, heand your mother would get two-thirds of the income—”
“No they wouldn’t, Jack. The two-thirds would be divided equally between them and Charlotte and me.”
“Oh—I see! Then they’d only get one-third between them. Well—what difference does it make, after all? There’s such a lot of money, anyhow—”
“You don’t understand papa, Jack. I’m not sure that I do—quite. But I think what he wants is not the income, for he’ll never spend it. I believe if he had the whole eighty-two millions locked up in the Safe Deposit, he’d be quite happy, and would prefer to go on living in Clinton Place on ten or eleven thousand a year—or whatever it costs—just as he’s always lived. It’s the money he wants, I think, not the income of it. That’s the reason why I’m sure he wouldn’t like the other will. He’d fight it just as he fought this one. For my part I never could understand what made uncle Robert change his mind at the last minute, just after he’d spoken to me.”
“He did, anyhow. That’s the main point.”
“Yes. You know he was very much troubled in his mind about the money. I believe he’s been thinking for years how to divide it fairly. I could see, when he spoke to me, that he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d done. It was worrying him still.But now—about this other will—ought I to say anything? I mean, is it my duty to tell papa what was in it?”
“No, indeed! How could it be your duty? Everybody knows that uncle Robert had made a previous will. Mr. Allen drew it up, though of course he’s bound to say nothing about what was in it. It is always taken for granted that when a man makes a new will he burns his old one. That’s probably what uncle Robert did, like a sensible man. What’s the use of telling anybody about it? Besides—frankly—I wouldn’t trust your father, if he knew what was in it. He’d go out of his mind and do something foolish.”
“What, for instance? What could he do?”
“Well—it might fall into his hands by accident. One never knows. And he might say nothing about it. Of course, I don’t mean to say exactly that he would—”
“No, dear—please don’t say it. He’s my father, you know—and I don’t think you understand him as I do. He never would do anything like that—never! I don’t think it’s quite fair even to suggest such a thing.”
“I’m sorry I spoke,” answered Ralston, in a contrite voice, for he saw that she was really hurt. “You know what I mean—”
“Yes—” she replied in a doubtful tone. “But you don’t understand him, quite. It’s the viewof right and wrong, it isn’t the real right and wrong. He’s violent, and he’s been cruelly unkind to me, and—well—he loves money. I can’t deny it.”
“Hardly!” exclaimed Ralston, feeling that she was justifying him with every word.
“No. It’s much too clear. Nobody could deny it. But you’re very much mistaken if you think that papa would do anything which he knew to be dishonest. With all his faults he’s got that good point. He’s honest in the letter, and I think he means to be in the spirit.”
“How awfully charitable women are!” Ralston laughed rather scornfully.
“No,” answered Katharine. “I don’t go in for being charitable. I’m not telling you that I love him, nor that I can ever forgive some of the things he’s said and done. I suppose I ought to. But I’m just as human as other people. I can’t turn the other cheek, and that sort of thing, you know. I never mean to give him another chance of hurting me, if I can help it, because I don’t know what he might do. We’re very different, he and I, though we’re so much alike in some ways. But all the same, I say that papa’s not a bad man, and I won’t let any one else say it—not even you. He’s very limited. He’s fond of money. He’s got a cruel streak—I believe it’s his New England blood, for none of the other Lauderdales have it—”
“Except Hester Crowdie,” observed Ralston. “I’m sure she’s cruel.”
“Hester!” exclaimed Katharine, in surprise. “How absurd! She’s the kindest woman living.”
“I may be mistaken—I judge from her face, that’s all, and from her eyes when she sees Crowdie talking to any other woman.”
“Oh—she’s infatuated about him,” laughed Katharine. “She’s mad on that point, but as they love each other so tremendously, I think it’s rather nice of them both—don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” answered Ralston, indifferently. “Go on with what you were saying. You were talking about your father.”
“Yes. He has a cruel streak. In a small way, Charlotte has it, too. She can say the most horrid things sometimes, that give pain, and she seems to enjoy it. But you’re wrong about Hester—she’s kind-hearted. As for papa—it’s just that. His religion and his love of money are always fighting in him. His religion gets the better of it whenever he’s tempted to do anything that’s plainly wrong. But his love of money drives him up to the very edge of what’s fair. Now, for instance, he’s always told us that he was poor, and yet uncle Robert knew that he had a million put away somewhere. That’s fifty thousand a year, isn’t it? Yes, I’ve heard him say so. Yet, I’m quite sure that he really considered thatvery little, much too little to have divided it between us girls. So he’s made us live on a quarter of it all our lives. He felt poor, and he said he was. Those things are relative, Jack. Uncle Robert would have felt as poor as a church mouse with only a million to dispose of. As papa looked at it, it was true, though it didn’t seem so to us. Do you see what I mean?”
“Dear—if you wish to defend your father, defend him as much as you please. But let’s differ in our opinion of some of his peculiarities. It’s better to agree about differing, you know. We’ve both got the most awful tempers, you and I, and unless we label the disagreeable things, we shall quarrel over them. That’s one of them—your father. Put him away and lock up the idea. It’s safer.”
“But you and I wouldn’t really quarrel—even about him, Jack,” said Katharine, with sudden earnestness.
“Well—I don’t know. Not for long, of course.”
“Not for one minute,” said Katharine, in a tone of absolute certainty. “When have we quarrelled, Jack? Except last winter, over that wretched misunderstanding—and that was all my fault. You don’t think I’m angry about what you said of papa, do you? I’m not, and I’m sorry if you thought I was. But how could two people love each other as we do, and quarrel? You didn’t mean what you said, dear, or you don’t understand by quarrelling what I understand by it. Perhaps that’s it. I’ve grown up in an atmosphere of perpetual fighting, and I hate it. You’ve not. You don’t understand, as I said. You’ve never quarrelled with your mother, have you?”
“Never but once—at the same time, you know, when they were all against me. It didn’t last long.”
“Exactly. You’ve had your fights with men, I suppose, and all that. It’s quite different. But I’ve lived all my life in the most especial garden of our family tempers. Four of us—grandpapa, papa, Charlotte, and I—and my mother as the only peacemaker, with her Kentucky blood! But she’s always done her best, and we love each other dearly, she and I, though we’ve been tearing each other’s hair out for the last four months—until the other day. Now we’re friends again, Jack; she’s been splendid, you know, or rather, you don’t half know!”
“And what happened the other day, to save your remaining locks?” enquired Ralston, with a smile.
“Oh, I can’t tell you. Perhaps she will, some day. But as I was saying, you can’t imagine what my life at home has been all these years. I’m not sure whether it hasn’t been worse since Charlotte was married. You know what we are—we’re so awfully polite when we fight. Ham Bright’s the only one who gets rough when he’s excited. That’s California and Nevada, I suppose. But we! we quarrel with all solemnity. A family of undertakers couldn’t do it more gravely. It always seems to me that papa ought to have a band on his hat and black gloves when he begins. Yes, it’s funny to talk about. But it’s not pleasant to live in the middle of it. We’re all used to being on the defensive. Charlotte didn’t mind what she said to papa, but she used to pick her words and arrange her phrases—like knives all stuck up in a neat row for him to fall upon. And he generally fell, and hurt himself badly—poor papa! He’s not very clever, though he’s so precise about what he knows. And every now and then mother would strike out with one of her dashing southern sentiments, and then I’d say something, and when nobody thought that grandpapa had heard a word of the conversation, he’d suddenly make a remark—a regular Lauderdale remark that set everybody by the ears again. But it’s only since you and papa had that awful scene—you know, when you first wanted to marry me—it’s only since then that he’s got into the habit of raising his voice and being angry, and—” She stopped short.
“And generally behaving like a fiend incarnate,” suggested Ralston, by way of ending the sentence.
“Oh, well—let’s leave them alone, dear,” answered Katharine. “It’s all going to be so different now. I only wanted to explain to you what Imeant by quarrelling, that’s all. I want to forget all about it, and live with you forever and ever, and ever, and be perfectly peaceful and happy—as we shall be. Look at the sunset. That’s much better than talking about those horrid old times, isn’t it?”