KATHERINE’S life at Sliplin was in no small degree affected by the result of the Rector’s unfortunate visit. How its termination became known nobody could tell. No one ventured to say “She told me herself,” still less, “He told me.” Yet everybody knew. There were some who had upheld that the Rector had too much respect for himself ever to put himself in the position of being rejected by old Tredgold’s daughter; but even these had to acknowledge that this overturn of everything seemly and correct had really happened. It was divined, perhaps, from Mr. Stanley’s look, who went about the parish with his head held very high, and an air of injury which nobody had remarked in him before. For it was not only that he had been refused. That is a privilege which no law or authority can take from a free-born English girl, and far would it have been from the Rector’s mind to deny to Katherine this right; but it was the manner in which it had been exercised which gave him so deep a wound. It was not as the father of Charlotte and Evelyn that Mr. Stanley had been in the habit of regarding himself, nor that he had been regarded. His own individuality was too remarkable and too attractive, he felt with all modesty, to lay him under such a risk; and yet here was a young woman in his own parish, in his own immediate circle, who regarded him from that point of view, and who looked upon his proposal as ridiculous and something like an insult to her youth. Had she said prettily that she did not feel herself good enough for such a position, that she was not worthy—but that she was aware of the high compliment he had paid her, and never would forget it—which was the thing that any woman with a due sense of fitness would have said, he might have forgiven her. But Katherine’s outburst of indignation, her anger to have been asked to be the stepmother of Charlotte and Evelyn her playfellows, her complete want of gratitude or of any sense of the honour done her, had inflicted a deep blow upon the Rector. That he should be scorned as a lover seemed to him impossible, that a woman should be so insensible to every fact of life. He did not get over it for a long time, nor am I sure that he ever did get over it; not the disappointment, which he bore like a man, but the sense of being scorned. So long as he lived he never forgave Katherine that insult to his dearest feelings.
And thus Katherine’s small diversions were driven back into a still narrower circle. She could not go to the Rectory, where the girls were divided between gratitude to her for not having turned their life upside down, and wrath against her for not having appreciated papa; nor could she go where she was sure to meet him, and to catch his look of offended pride and wounded dignity. It made her way very hard for her to have to think and consider, and even make furtive enquiries whether the Stanleys would be there before going to the mildest tea party. When Mrs. Shanks invited her to meet Miss Mildmay, she was indeed safe. Yet even there Mr. Stanley might come in to pay these ladies a call, or Charlotte appear with her portfolio of drawings, or Evelyn fly in for a moment on her way to the post. She went even to that very mild entertainment with a quiver of anxiety. The great snowstorm was over which had stopped everything, obliterating all the roads, and making the doctor’s dog-cart and the butcher’s and baker’s carts the only vehicles visible about the country—which lay in one great white sheet, the brilliancy of which made the sea look muddy where it came up with a dull colour upon the beach. Everything, indeed, looked dark in comparison with that dazzling cloak of snow, until by miserable human usage the dazzling white changed into that most squalid of all squalid things, the remnant of a snowstorm in England, drabbled by all kinds of droppings, powdered with dust of smoke and coal, churned into the chillest and most dreadful of mud. The island had passed through that horrible phase after a brief delicious ecstasy of skating, from which poor Katherine was shut out by the same reasons already given, but now had emerged green and fresh, though cold, with a sense of thankfulness which the fields seemed to feel, and the birds proclaimed better and more than the best of the human inhabitants could do.
The terrace gardens of Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay shone with this refreshed and brightened greenness, and the prospect from under the verandah of their little houses was restored to its natural colour. The sea became once more the highest light in the landscape, the further cliffs were brown, the trees showed a faint bloom of pushing buds and rising sap, and glowed in the light of the afternoon sun near its setting. Mrs. Shanks’ little drawing room was a good deal darkened by its little verandah, but when the western sun shone in, as it was doing, the shade of the little green roof was an advantage even in winter; and it was so mild after the snow that the window was open, and a thrush in a neighbouring shrubbery had begun to perform a solo among the bushes, exactly, as Mrs. Shanks said, like a fine singer invited for the entertainment of the guests.
“It isn’t often you hear a roulade like that,” she said. “I consider Miss Sherlock was nothing to it.” Miss Sherlock was a professional lady who had been paying a visit in Sliplin, and who at afternoon teas and evening parties, being very kind and ready to “oblige,” had turned the season into a musical one, and provided for the people who were so kind as to invite her, an entertainment almost as cheap as that of the thrush in Major Toogood’s shrubbery.
“I hope the poor thing has some crumbs,” said Miss Mildmay. “I always took great pains to see that there was plenty of bread well peppered put out for them during the snow.”
“Was Miss Sherlock so very good?” said Katherine. “I was unfortunate, I never heard her, even at her concert. Oh, yes, I had tickets—but I did not go.”
“That is just what we want to talk to you about, my dear Katherine. Fancy a great singer in Sliplin, and the Cliff not represented, not a soul there. Oh, if poor dear Stella had but been here, she would not have stayed away when there was anything to see or hear.”
“Yes, I am a poor creature in comparison,” said Katherine, “but you know it isn’t nice to go to such places alone.”
“If there was any need to go alone! You know we would have called for you in the midge any time; but that’s ridiculous for you with all your carriages; it would have been more appropriate for you to call for us. Another time, Katherine, my dear——”
“Oh, I know how kind you are; it was not precisely for want of some one to go with.”
“Jane Shanks,” said Miss Mildmay, “what is the use of pretences between us who have known the child all her life? It is very well understood in Sliplin, Katherine, that there must be some motive in your seclusion. You have some reason, you cannot conceal it from us who know you, for shutting yourself up as you do.”
“What reason? Is it not a good enough reason that I am alone now, and that to be reminded of it at every moment is—oh, it is hard,” said Katherine, tears coming into her eyes. “It is almost more than I can bear.”
“Dear child!” Mrs. Shanks said, patting her hand which rested on the table. “We shouldn’t worry her with questions, should we?” But there was no conviction in her tone, and Katherine, though her self-pity was quite strong enough to bring that harmless water to her eyes, was quite aware not only that she did not seclude herself because of Stella, but also that her friends were not in the least deceived.
“I ask no questions,” said Miss Mildmay, “I hope I have a head on my shoulders and a couple of eyes in it. I don’t require information from Katherine! What I’ve got to say is that she mustn’t do it. Most girls think very little of refusing a man; sometimes they continue good friends, sometimes they don’t. When a man sulks it shows he was much in earnest, and is really a compliment. But to stay at home morning and night because there is a man in the town who is furious with you for not marrying him; why, that’s a thing that is not to be allowed to go on, not for a day——”
“Nobody has any right to say that there is any man whom——”
“Oh, don’t redden up, Katherine, and flash your eyes at me! I have known you since you were that high, and I don’t care a brass button what you say. Do you think I don’t know all about you, my dear? Do you think that there’s a thing in Sliplin which I don’t know or Jane Shanks doesn’t know? Bless us, what is the good of us, two old cats, as I know you call us——”
“Miss Mildmay!” cried Katherine; but as it was perfectly true, she stopped there and had not another word to say.
“Yes, that’s my name, and her name is Mrs. Shanks; but that makes no difference. We are the two old cats. I have no doubt it was to Stella we owed the title, and I don’t bear her any malice nor you either. Neither does Jane Shanks. We like you, on the contrary, my dear; but if you think you can throw dust in our eyes—— Why, there is the Rector’s voice through the partition asking for me.”
“Oh,” said Katherine, “I must go, really I must go; this is the time when papa likes me to go to him. I have stayed too long, I really, really must go now——”
“Sit down, sit down, dear. It is only her fun. There is nobody speaking through the partition. The idea! Sliplin houses are not very well built, but I hope they are better than that.”
“I must have been mistaken,” said Miss Mildmay grimly. “I believe after all it is only Jane Shanks’ boy; he has a very gruff manly voice, though he is such a little thing, and a man’s voice is such a rarity in these parts that he deceives me. Well, Katherine, the two old cats hear everything. If it does not come to me it comes to her. My eyes are the sharpest, I think, but she hears the best. You can’t take us in. We know pretty well all that has happened to you, though you have been so very quiet about it. There was that young city man whom you wouldn’t have, and I applaud you for it. But he’ll make a match with somebody of much more consequence than you. And then there is poor Mr. Stanley. The Stanleys are as thankful to you as they can be, and well they may. Why, it would have turned the whole place upside down. A young very rich wife at the Rectory and the poor girls turned out of doors. It just shows how little religion does for some people.”
“Oh, stop! stop!” cried Mrs. Shanks. “What has his religion to do with it? It’s not against any man’s religion to fall in love with a nice girl.”
“Please don’t say any more on this subject,” cried Katherine; “if you think it’s a compliment to me to be fallen in love with—by an old gentleman!—— But I never said a word about the Rector. It is all one of your mistakes. You do make mistakes sometimes, Miss Mildmay. You took little Bobby’s voice for—a clergyman’s.” It gave more form to the comparison to say a clergyman than merely a man.
“So I did,” said Miss Mildmay, “that will always be remembered against me; but you are not going to escape, Katherine Tredgold, in that way. I shall go to your father, if you don’t mind, and tell him everything, and that you are shutting yourself up and seeing nobody, because of—— Well, if it is not because of that, what is it? It is not becoming, it is scarcely decent that a girl of your age should live so much alone.”
“Please let me go, Mrs. Shanks,” said Katherine. “Why should you upbraid me? I do the best I can; it is not my fault if there is nobody to stand by me.”
“We shall all stand by you, my dear,” said Mrs. Shanks, following her to the door, “and Ruth Mildmay is never so cross as she seems. We will stand by you, in the midge or otherwise, wherever you want to go. At all times you may be sure of us, Katherine, either Ruth Mildmay or me.”
But when the door was closed upon Katherine Mrs. Shanks rushed back to the little drawing-room, now just sinking into greyness, the last ray of the sunset gone. “You see,” she cried, “it’s all right, I to——”
But she was forestalled with a louder “I told you so!” from Miss Mildmay; “didn’t I always say it?” that lady concluded triumphantly. Mrs. Shanks might begin the first, but it was always her friend who secured the last word.
Katherine walked out into the still evening air, a little irritated, a little disgusted, and a little amused by the offer of these two chaperons and the midge to take her about. She had to walk through the High Street of Sliplin, and everybody was out at that hour. She passed Charlotte Stanley with her portfolio under her arm, who would probably have rushed to her and demanded a glance at the sketches even in the open road, or that Katherine should go in with her to the stationer’s to examine them at her ease on the counter; but who passed now with an awkward bow, having half crossed the road to get out of her way, yet sending a wistful smile nevertheless across what she herself would have called the middle distance. “Now what have I done to Charlotte?” Katherine said to herself. If there was anyone who ought to applaud her, who ought to be grateful to her, it was the Rector’s daughters. She went on with a sort of rueful smile on her lips, and came up without observing it to the big old landau, in which was seated Lady Jane. Katherine was hurrying past with a bow, when she was suddenly greeted from that unexpected quarter with a cry of “Katherine! where are you going so fast?” which brought her reluctantly back.
“My dear Katherine! what a long time it is since we have met,” said Lady Jane.
“Yes,” said Katherine sedately. “That is very true, it is a long time.”
“You mean to say it is my fault by that tone! My dear, you have more horses and carriages, and a great deal more time and youth and all that than I. Why didn’t you come to see me? If you thought I was huffy or neglectful, why didn’t you come and tell me so? I should have thought that was the right thing to do.”
“I should not have thought it becoming,” cried Katherine, astonished by this accost, “from me to you. I am the youngest and far the humblest——”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” cried the elder lady, “that’s not true humility, that’s pride, my dear. I was an old friend; and though poor dear Stella always put herself in the front, you know it was you I liked best, Katherine. Well, when will you come, now? Come and spend a day or two, which will be extremely dull, for we’re all alone; but you can tell me of Stella, as well as your own little affairs.”
“I don’t know that I can leave papa,” Katherine said, with a little remnant of that primness which had been her distinction in Captain Scott’s eyes.
“Nonsense! He will spare you to me,” said Lady Jane with calm certainty. “Let me see, what day is this, Tuesday? Then I will come for you on Saturday. You can send over that famous little brougham with your maid and your things, and keep it if you like, for we have scarcely anything but dog-carts, except this hearse. Saturday; and don’t show bad breeding by making any fuss about it,” Lady Jane said.
Katherine felt that the great lady was right, it would have been bad breeding; and then her heart rose a little in spite of herself at the thought of the large dull rooms at Steephill in which there was no gilding, nor any attempt to look finer than the most solid needs of life demanded, and where Lady Jane conducted the affairs of life with a much higher hand than any of the Sliplin ladies. After being so long shut up in Sliplin, and now partly out of favour in it, the ways of Lady Jane seemed bigger, the life more easy and less self-conscious, and she consented with a little rising of her heart. She was a little surprised that Lady Jane, with her large voice, should have shouted a cordial greeting to the doctor as he passed in his dog-cart. “I am going to write to you,” she cried, nodding her head at him; but no doubt this was about some little ailment in the nursery, for with Katherine, a young lady going on a visit to Steephill, what could it have to do?