KATHERINE had put herself unconsciously in her usual place at the head of the luncheon table before Stella came downstairs. At the other end was Sir Charles with little Job, set up on a pile of cushions beside him.
“Don’t wait for Stella, she’s always late,” said Somers, helping his son from the dish before him; but at this moment Stella, rustling in a coloured dress, came briskly in.
“Oh, I say, Kate, let me have my proper place,” she said; “you can’t sit down with Charlie opposite, it’s not decent. And oh the funny old room! Did you ever see such a rococo house, Charlie, all gilding and ornament? Poor papa could never have anything grand enough according to his views. We must have it all pulled to pieces, I couldn’t live in such a place. Eh? why, Kate, you don’t pretend you like it, you who always made a fuss.”
Katherine had transferred herself to a seat at the side of the table, not without a quick sensation of self-reproach and that inevitable shame upon being thus compelled to take a lower place which no philosophy can get rid of. “I did not think where I was sitting,” she cried, in instinctive apology; and then, “Let the poor house be, at least for the first week, Stella,” she said.
“Oh, that’s all sentiment and nonsense,” cried Lady Somers. “My experience is when you’re going to change a thing, do it directly; or else you just settle down and grow accustomed and think no more of it. For goodness’ sake, Charlie, don’t stuff that child with all the most improper things! He ought to have roast mutton and rice pudding, all the doctors say; and you are ruining his constitution, you know you are. Why isn’t there some roast mutton, William? Oh, Harrison! why can’t you see that there’s some roast mutton or that sort of thing, when you’ve got to feed a little boy.”
“Me don’t like roast mutton,” cried Job, with a whine. “Me dine wid fader; fader give Job nice tings.”
“I’ll look after you, my boy,” said Sir Charles, at one end of the table, while Harrison at the other, with a very solemn bow, discussed his position.
“It is not my place to horder the dinner, my lady; if your ladyship will say what you requires, I will mention it to Mrs. Simmons.”
“It is I who am in fault, I suppose, Stella,” cried Katherine, more angry than she could have imagined possible. “Perhaps you will see Simmons yourself to-morrow.”
“Oh, not I!” cried Stella. “Fancy the bore of ordering dinner with an old-fashioned English cook that would not understand a word one says. You can do it, Charlie. Don’t give the child pâté de foie gras,” she added, with a scream. “Who’s the doctor on the strength of the establishment now, Kate? He’ll have to be called in very soon, I can see, and the sooner Job has a bad liver attack the better, for then it may be possible to get him properly looked after. And I must have an English nurse that understands children, instead of that stupid ayah who gives them whatever they cry for. Don’t you think it’s dreadful training to give them whatever they cry for, Kate? You ought to know about children, living all this while at home and never marrying or anything. You must have gone in for charity or nursing, or Churchy things, having nothing to do. Oh, I wish you would take Job in hand! He minds nobody but his father, and his father stuffs him with everything he oughtn’t to have, and keeps him up half the night. One of these days he’ll have such a liver attack that it will cut him off, Charlie; and then you will have the satisfaction of feeling that it’s you that have killed him, and you will not be able to say I haven’t warned you hundreds of times.”
“We’ve not come to any harm as yet, have we, Job?” said the father, placing clandestinely another objectionable morsel on the child’s plate.
“No, fader. Job not dut off yet,” cried, in his little shrill voice, the unfortunate small boy.
In this babble the rest of the mid-day meal was carried on, Stella’s voice flowing like the principal part of the entertainment, interrupted now and then by a bass note from her husband or a little cry from her child, with a question to a servant and the respectful answer in an aside now and then. Katherine sat quite silent listening, not so much from intention as that there was no room for her to put in a word, and no apparent need for any explanation or intervention. The Somerses took calm possession, unsurprised, undisturbed by any question of right or wrong, of kindness or unkindness. Nor did Katherine blame them; she felt that they would have done exactly the same had the house and all that was in it been hers, and the real circumstances of the case made it more bearable and took away many embarrassments. She went out to drive with Stella in the afternoon, Sir Charles accompanying them that he might see whether the carriage horses were fit for his wife’s use. Stella had been partly covered with Katherine’s garments to make her presentable, and the little crape bonnet perched upon her fuzzy fair hair was happily very becoming, and satisfied her as to her own appearance. “Mourning’s not so very bad, after all,” she said, “especially when you are very fair. You are a little too dark to look nice in it, Kate. I shouldn’t advise you to wear crape long. It isn’t at all necessary; the rule now is crape three months, black six, and then you can go into greys and mauves. Mauve’s a lovely colour. It is just as bright as pink, though it’s mourning; and it suits me down to the ground—I am so fair, don’t you know.”
“These brutes will never do,” said Sir Charles. “Is this the pace you have been going, Miss Kate? Stella will not stand it, that’s clear. Not a likely person to nod along like a hearse or an old dowager, is she?—and cost just as much, the old fat brutes, as a proper turn-out.”
“It’s the same old landau, I declare,” cried Stella, “that we used to cram with people for picnics and dances and things. Mine was the victoria. Have you kept the victoria all the time, Kate? Jervis made it spin along I can tell you. And the little brougham I used to run about in, that took us down to the yacht, don’t you remember, Charlie, that last night; me in my wedding dress, though nobody suspected it—that is, nobody but those that knew. What a lot there were, though,” cried Stella, with a laugh, “that knew!—and what a dreadful bore, Kate, when you would insist upon coming with me, and everybody guessing and wondering how we’d get out of it. We did get out of it capitally, didn’t we, all owing to my presence of mind.”
“All’s well that ends well,” said Sir Charles. “We’ve both had a deuced lot of doubts on that question—between times. Miss Kate, would you mind telling me what kind of a figure it is, this fortune that Stella is supposed to have come into? Hang me if I know; it might be hundreds or it might be thousands. You see I’m a disinterested sort of fellow,” he said, with an uneasy laugh.
“The lawyer said,” Katherine explained, “that it could not be under, but might be considerably over, fifty thousand a year.”
Sir Charles was silent for a moment and grew very red, which showed up his sunburnt brick-red complexion like a sudden dye of crimson. He caught his breath a little, but with an effort at an indifferent tone repeated, “Fifty thousand pounds!”
“A year,” Katherine said.
“Well!” cried Stella, “what are you sitting there for, like a stuck pig, staring at me? Need there have been so much fuss about it if it had been less than that? Papa wasn’t a man to leave a few hundreds, was he? I wonder it’s so little, for my part. By the time you’ve got that old barrack of yours done up, and a tidy little house in town, and all our bills paid, good gracious, it’s nothing at all, fifty thousand a year! I hope it will turn out a great deal more, Kate. I daresay your lawyer is the sort of person to muddle half of it away in expenses and so forth. Who is he? Oh, old Sturgeon that used to come down sometimes. Well, he is not up to date, I am sure. He’ll be keeping the money in dreadful consols or something, instead of making the best of it. You can tell him that I shan’t stand that sort of thing. It shall be made the best of if it is going to belong to me.”
“And what have you, Miss Kate?” said her brother-in-law, “to balance this fine fortune of Stella’s—for it is a fine fortune, and she knows nothing about it, with her chatter.”
“Oh, I know nothing about it; don’t I?” said Stella. “Papa didn’t think so. He said I had a capital head for money, and that I was a chip of the old block, and all that sort of thing. What has Kate got? Oh, she’s got money of her own. I used to envy her so when we were girls. I had a deal more than she had, for papa was always silly about me—dresses and jewels and so forth that I had no business to have at that age; but Kate had money of her own. I could always get plenty from papa, but she had it of her own; don’t you remember, Kate? I always wished to be you; I thought that it was a shame that you should have all that left to you and me nothing. And if you come to that, so it was, for mamma was my mother as well as Kate’s, and she had no business to leave her money to one of us and take no notice of me.”
“We are quits now, at all events, Stella,” said Katherine, with the best sort of a smile which she could call up on her face.
“Quits! I don’t think so at all,” cried Stella, “for you have had it and I have been kept out of it for years and years. Quits, indeed; no, I’m sure I don’t think so. I have always envied you for having mamma’s money since I was twelve years old. I don’t deny I had more from papa; but then it wasn’t mine. And now I have everything from papa, which is the least he could do, having kept me out of it for so long; but not a penny from my mother, which isn’t justice, seeing I am quite as much her child as you.”
“Shut up, Stella!” said Sir Charles, in his moustache.
“Why should I shut up? It’s quite true that Katherine has had it since she was fifteen; that’s—let me see—fourteen years, nearly the half of her life, and no expenses to speak of. There must be thousands and thousands in the bank, and so little to do with it. She’s richer than we are, when all is said.”
“Stella, you must remember,” cried Katherine excitedly in spite of herself, “that the money in the bank was always——”
“Oh, I knew you would say that,” cried Stella, in an aggrieved tone; “you’ve lent it to me, haven’t you? Though not so very much of it, and of course you will get it back. Oh, don’t be afraid, you will get it back! It will be put among the other bills, and it will be paid with the rest. I would rather be in debt to Louise or any one than to a sister who is always thinking about what she has lent me. And it is not so very much, either; you used to dole it out to me a hundred at a time, or even fifty at a time, as if it were a great favour, while all the time you were enjoying papa’s money, which by law was mine. I don’t think very much of favours like that.”
“I hope, Miss Tredgold,” said Sir Charles, lifting his hat, “that after this very great injustice, as it seems to me, you will at least make your home with us, and see if—if we can’t come to any arrangement. I suppose it’s true that ladies alone don’t want very much, not like a family—or—or two careless spendthrift sort of people like Stella and me, but——”
“Well, of course,” cried Stella, “I hope, Kate, you’ll pay us a visit when—whenever you like, in short. I don’t say make your home with us, as Charlie says, for I know you wouldn’t like it, and it’s a mistake, I think, for relations to live together. You know yourself, it never works. Charlie, do hold your tongue and let me speak. I know all about it a great deal better than you do. To have us to fall back upon when she wants it, to be able to write and say, take me in—which, of course, I should always do if it were possible—that is the thing that would suit Kate. Of course you will have rooms of your own somewhere. I shouldn’t advise a house, for that is such a bother with servants and things, and runs away with such a lot of money, but—— Oh, I declare, there is the Midge, with the two old cats! Shall we have to stop and speak if they see us? I am not going to do that. I heard of papa’s death only yesterday, and I am not fit to speak to anybody as yet,” she cried, pulling over her face the crape veil which depended from her bonnet behind. And the two old ladies in the Midge were much impressed by the spectacle of Stella driving out with her husband and her sister, and covered with a crape veil, on the day after her return. “Poor thing,” they said, “Katherine has made her come out to take the air; but she has a great deal of feeling, and it has been a great shock to her. Did you see how she was covered with that great veil? Stella was a little thing that I never quite approved of, but she had a feeling heart.”
Katherine was a little sick at heart with all the talk, with Stella’s rattle running through everything, with the fulfilment of all her fears, and the small ground for hope of any nobler thoughts. She was quite decided never under any circumstances to take anything from her sister. That from the first moment had been impossible. She had seen the whole position very clearly, and made up her mind without a doubt or hesitation. She was herself perfectly well provided for, she had said to herself, she had no reason to complain; and she had known all along how Stella would take it, exactly as she did, and all that would follow. But a thing seldom happens exactly as you believe it will happen; and the extreme ease with which this revolution had taken place, the absence of excitement, of surprise, even of exultation, had the most curious effect upon her. She was confounded by Stella’s calm, and yet she knew that Stella would be calm. Nothing could be more like Stella than her conviction that she herself, instead of being extraordinarily favoured, was on the whole rather an injured person when all was said and done. The whole of this had been in Katherine’s anticipations of the crisis. And yet she was as bitterly disappointed as if she had not known Stella, and as if her sister had been her ideal, and she had thought her capable of nothing that was not lofty and noble. A visionary has always that hope in her heart. It is always possible that in any new emergency a spirit nobler and better than of old may be brought out.
Katherine stole out in the early twilight to her favourite walk. The sea was misty, lost in a great incertitude, a suffusion of blueness upon the verge of the sand below, but all besides mist in which nothing could be distinguished. The horizon was blurred all round, so that no one could see what was there, though overhead there was a bit of sky clear enough. The hour just melting out of day into night, the mild great world of space, in which lay hidden the unseen sea and the sky, were soothing influences, and she felt her involuntary anger, her unwilling disappointment, die away. She forgot that there was any harm done. She only remembered that Stella was here with her children, and that it was so natural to have her in her own home. The long windows of the drawing-room were full of light, so were those of Stella’s bedroom, and a number of occupied rooms shining out into the dimness. It was perhaps rococo, as they said, but it was warm and bright. Katherine had got herself very well in hand before she heard a step near her on the gravel, and looking up saw that her brother-in-law was approaching. She had not been much in charity with Sir Charles Somers before, but he had not shown badly in these curious scenes. He had made some surprised exclamations, he had exhibited some kind of interest in herself. Katherine was very lonely, and anxious to think well of someone. She was almost glad to see him, and went towards him with something like pleasure.
“I have come to bring you in,” he said; “Stella fears that you will catch cold. She says it is very damp, even on the top of the cliff.”
“I don’t think I shall take cold; but I will gladly go in if Stella wants me,” said Katherine; then, as Somers turned with her at the end of her promenade, she said: “The house is rococo, I know; but I do hope you will like it a little and sometimes live in it, for the sake of our youth which was passed here.”
“You don’t seem to think where you are to live yourself,” he said hurriedly. “I think more of that. We seem to be putting you out of everything. Shouldn’t you like it for yourself? You have more associations with it than anyone I wish you would say you would like to have it—for yourself——”
“Oh, no,” said Katherine, “not for the world. I couldn’t keep it up, and I should not like to have it—not for the world.”
“I am afraid all this is dreadfully unjust. There should be a—partition, there should be some arrangement. It isn’t fair. You were always with the old man, and nursed him, and took care of him, and all that——”
“No,” said Katherine; “my father was a little peculiar—he liked to have the nurse who was paid, as he said, for that. I have not any claim on that ground. And then I have always had my own money, as Stella told you. I am much obliged to you, but you really do not need to trouble yourself about me.”
“Are you really sure that is so?” he said in a tone between doubt and relief. Then he looked round, shivering a little at the mist, and said that Stella was looking for her sister, and that he thought it would be much more comfortable if they went in to tea.