KATHERINE scarcely heard what Stanford said to her after that astounding speech about his little child. She rose to her feet as if it had touched some sudden spring in her; though she could no more have told why than she could have told what it was that made her head giddy and her heart beat. She had a momentary sense that she had been insulted; but that too was so utterly unreasonable that she could not explain her conduct to herself by it, any more than by any other rule. She did not know how she managed to get out of the room, on what pretext, by what excuse to the astonished visitor, whose look alone she saw in her mind afterwards, startled and disturbed, with the eyelids puckered over his eyes. He had been conscious, too, that she had received a shock; but he had not been aware, any more than she was, what he had done to produce this impression upon her.
She ran upstairs to her own room, and concealed herself there in the gathering twilight, in the darkest corner, as if somebody might come to look for her. There had been a great many thoughts in that room through these long years—thoughts that, perhaps, were sometimes impatient, occasionally pathetic, conscious of the passing of her youth from her, and that there had been little in it that was like the youth of other women. To be sure, she might have married had she been so minded, which is believed to be the chief thing in a young woman’s life; but that had not counted for very much in Katherine’s. There had been one bit of visionary romance, only one, and such a little one! but it had sufficed to make a sort of shining, as of a dream, over her horizon. It had never come nearer than the horizon; it had been a glimmer of colour, of light, of poetry, and the unknown. It had never been anything, she said to herself, with emphasis, putting her foot down firmly on the ground, with a faint sound of purpose and meaning—never—anything! She was the most desperate fool in the world to feel herself insulted, to feel as if he had struck her in the face when he spoke of his little child. Why should he not have a little child like any other man, and a kind wife waiting for him, amid all the brightness of a home? Why not? Why not? There was no reason in the world. The effect it produced upon her was absurd in the last degree. It was an effect of surprise, of sudden disillusion. She was not prepared for that disclosure. This was the only way in which she could account for the ridiculous impression made upon her mind by these few words.
She had so much to do accounting to herself for this, that it was not for a long time that she came to imagine what he would think of her sudden start and flight. What could he think of it? Could he think she was disappointed, that she had been building hopes upon his return? But that was one of the thoughts that tend to madness, and have to be crushed upon the threshold of the mind. She tried not to think of him at all, to get rid of the impression which he had made on her. Certainly he had not meant to insult her, certainly it was no blow in the face. There had been some foolish sort of talk before—she could not recall it to mind now—something that had nothing in the world to do with his position, or hers, or that of anyone in the world, which probably was only to pass the time; and then he had begun to speak to her about his child. How natural to speak about his child! probably with the intention of securing her as a friend for his child—she who had been a playmate of his own childhood. If she had not been so ridiculous she would have heard of the poor little thing brought from India (like little Job, but that was scarcely an endearing comparison) to be left alone among strangers. Poor little thing! probably he wanted her to be kind to it, to be a friend to it—how natural that idea was!—his own playfellow, the girl whom he had read Dante with in those days. But why, why did he recall those days? It was that that made her feel—when he began immediately after to speak of his child—as if he had given her a blow in the face.
Katherine went down to dinner as if she were a visitor in the house. She passed the nursery door, standing wide open, with the baby making a great whiteness in the middle of the room, and Job watching like an ill-tempered little dog, ready to rush out with a snarl and bite at any passer-by whom he disliked; and her sister’s door, where Stella’s voice was audibly high and gay, sometimes addressing her maid, sometimes in a heightened tone her husband, in his dressing-room at the other side. They were the proprietors of the place, not Katherine. She knew that very well, and wondered at herself that she should still be here, and had made no other provision for her loneliness. She was a guest—a guest on sufferance—one who had not even been invited. William, the soldier-servant, was in possession of the hall. He opened the door for her with a respectful tolerance. She was missus’s sister to William. In the drawing-room was Mr. Sturgeon, who rose as she entered from the side of the fire. He was going back by the train immediately after dinner, and was in his old-fashioned professional dress, a long black coat and large black tie. One looked for a visionary bag of papers at his feet or in his hands. His influence had a soothing effect upon Katherine; it brought her back to the practical. He told her what he had been able to do—to get gratuities for the servants, and a pension, such as it was, for poor old Bob Tredgold. “It will keep him in comfort if he can be kept off the drink,” he said. All this brought her out of herself, yet at the same time increased the sense in her of two selves, one very much interested in all these inconsiderable arrangements, the other standing by looking on. “But about your affairs, Miss Katherine, not a thing could I do,” Mr. Sturgeon was beginning, when happily Sir Charles came downstairs.
“So much the better; my affairs have nothing to do with my sister,” Katharine said hastily. And, indeed, it was plain neither they nor any other intrusive affairs had much to do with Stella when she came in radiant, the blackness of her dress making the whiteness of her arms and throat almost too dazzling. She came in with her head held high, with a swing and movement of her figure which embodied the supremacy she felt. She understood now her own importance, her own greatness. It was her natural position, of which she had been defrauded for some time without ever giving up her pretensions to it; but now there was no further possibility of any mistake.
As I have already related the concluding incident of this party it is unnecessary now to go through its details. But when Mr. Sturgeon had gone to his train and Sir Charles to the smoking-room (though not without an invitation to the ladies to accompany him) Stella suddenly took her sister by the waist, and drew her close. “Well?” she said, in her cheerful high tones, “have you anything to tell me, Kate?”
“To tell you, Stella? I don’t know what I can tell you—you know the house as well as I do—and as you are going to have new servants——”
“Oh! if you think it is anything about the house, I doubt very much whether I shall keep up the house, it’s rococo to such a degree—and all about it—the very gardens are rococo.”
“It suits you very well, however,” Katherine said. “All this gilding seems appropriate, like a frame to a picture.”
“Do you think so?” said Stella, looking at herself in the great mirror over the mantelpiece with a certain fondness. It was nice to be able to see yourself like that wherever you turned, from head to foot. “But that is not in the least what I was thinking of,” she said; “tell me about yourself. Haven’t you something very particular to tell me—something about your own self?”
Katherine was surprised, yet but dimly surprised, not enough to cause her any emotion. Her heart had become as still as a stone.
“No,” she said; “I have nothing particular to tell you. I will leave The Cliff when you like—is that what you mean? I have not as yet made any plans, but as soon as you wish it——”
“Oh, as for that,” said Stella, “we shall be going ourselves. Charlie wants me to go to his horrid old place to see what can be done to it, and we shall stay in town for a little. Town is town, don’t you know, after you’ve been in India, even at the dullest time of the year. But these old wretches of servants will have to stay out their month I suppose, and if you like to stay while they’re here—of course, they think a great deal more of you than of me. It will be in order as long as they are here. After, I cannot answer for things. We may shut up the house, or we may let it. It should bring in a fine rent, with the view and all that. But I have not settled yet what I am going to do.”
“My plans then,” said Katherine, faintly smiling, “will be settled before yours, though I have not taken any step as yet.”
“That’s just what I want to know,” cried Stella, “that is what I was asking! Surely there’s nothing come between you and me, Kate, that would keep you from telling me? As for papa’s will, that was his doing, not mine. I cannot go against it, whatever anybody says—I can’t, indeed! It’s a matter of conscience with me to do whatever he wished, now he is dead. I didn’t when he was living, and that is just the reason why——” Stella shut her mouth tight, that no breath of inconsistency might ever come from it. Then once more putting her hand on Katherine’s waist, and inclining towards her: “Tell me what has happened; do tell me, Kate!”
“But nothing has happened, Stella.”
“Nothing! That’s impossible. I left you alone with him on purpose. I saw it was on his very lips, bursting to get it out; and he gave me such a look—Oh, why can’t you fade away?—which isn’t a look I’m accustomed to. And I don’t believe nothing has happened. Why, he came here for that very purpose! Do you think he wanted to see me or Charlie? He was always a person of very bad taste,” Stella said with a laugh. “He was always your own, Kate. Come! don’t bear any malice about the will or that—but tell.”
“There is nothing whatever to tell. Mr. Stanford told me about his child whom he has brought home.”
“Yes, that was to rouse your pity. He thought as you are one of the self-sacrificing people the idea of a baby to take care of—though it is not a baby now—it’s about as old as Job——. The mother died when it was born, you know, a poor little weakly thing. Did I never tell you when I wrote? It must have gone out of my head, for I knew all about it, the wedding and everything. How odd I didn’t tell you. I suppose you had thought that he had been wearing the willow for you, my dear, all this time!”
“It is not of the slightest consequence what I thought—or if I thought at all on the subject,” said Katherine, with, as she felt, a little of the stiffness of dignity injured, which is always ludicrous to a looker-on.
“I’ll be sworn you did,” cried Stella, with a pealing laugh. “Oh, no, my dear, there’s no such example now. And, Kate, you are old enough to know better—you should not be such a goose at your age. The man has done very well, he’s got an excellent appointment, and they say he’ll be a member of Council before he dies. Think what a thing for you with your small income! The pension alone is worth the trouble. A member of Council’s widow has—why she has thousands a year! If it were only for that, you will be a very silly girl, Kate, if you send James Stanford away.”
“Is it not time you joined your husband in the smoking-room, Stella? You must have a great deal to talk about. And I am going to bed.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Stella cried, “you want to get rid of me and my common-sense view. That is always how it happens. People think I am pretty and so forth, but they give me no credit for common-sense. Now that’s just my quality. Look here, Kate. What will you be as an unmarried woman with your income? Why, nobody! You will not be so well off as the old cats. If you and your maid can live on it that’s all; you will be of no consequence. I hear there’s a doctor who was after you very furiously for a time, and would have you still if you would hold up your little finger. But James Stanford would be far better. The position is better in every way—and think of the widow’s pension! why it is one of the prizes which anyone might be pleased to go in for. Kate, if you marry you may do very well yet. Mind my words—but if you’re obstinate and go in for fads, and turn your back on the world, and imagine that you are going to continue a person of importance on five hundred a year——”
“I assure you, Stella, I have no such thought.”
“What then—to be nobody? Do you think you will like to be nobody, Kate, after all the respect that’s been paid to you, and at the head of a large house, and carriages at your command, and all that—to drop down to be Miss Tredgold, the old maid in lodgings with one woman servant? Oh, I know you well enough for that. You will not like it, you will hate it. Marry one of them, for Heaven’s sake! If you have a preference I am sure I don’t object to that. But marry one of them, James Stanford for choice! or else, mark my words, Kate Tredgold, you will regret it all your life.”
Katherine got free at last, with a laugh on her lips at the solemnity of her sister’s address. If Stella had only known how little her common-sense meant, or the extreme seriousness of these views with which she endeavoured to move a mind so different from her own! Lady Somers went off full of the importance of the question, to discuss it over again with her husband, whose sense of humour was greatly tickled by the suggestion that the pension which James Stanford’s widow might have if he were made member of Council was an important matter to be taken into consideration, while Katherine went back again to her room, passing once more the nursery door where Job lay nervously half awake, calling out a dreary “Zat oo, fader?” as her step sounded upon the corridor. But she had no time to think of little Job in the midst of this darkness of her own life. “What does it matter to me, what does it matter to me?” she kept saying to herself as she went along—and yet it mattered so much, it made so great a change! If she had never seen James Stanford again it would not have mattered, indeed; but thus suddenly to find out that while she had been making of him the one little rainbow in her sky—had enshrined him as something far more than any actual lover, the very image of love itself and fidelity, he had been the lover, the husband of another woman, had gone through all the circle of emotion, had a child to remind him for ever of what had been. Katherine, on her side, had nothing save the bitter sense of an illusion fled. It was not anybody’s fault. The man had done nothing he had not a perfect right to do—the secret had not been kept from her by any malice or evil means—all was quite natural, simple, even touching and sad. She ought to be sorry for him, poor fellow! She was in a manner sorry for him—if only he had not come to insult her with words that could have no meaning, words repeated, which had answered before with another woman. The wrench of her whole nature turning away from the secret thing that had been so dear to her was more dreadful than any convulsion. She had cherished it in her very heart of hearts, turned to it when she was weary, consoled herself with it in the long, long endless flatness of those years that were past. And it had all been a lie; there was nothing of the kind, nothing to fall back upon, nothing to dream of. The man had not loved her, he had loved his wife, as was most just and right. And she had been a woman voluntarily deceived, a dreamer, a creature of vanity, attributing to herself a power which she had never possessed. There is no estimating the keenness of mortified pride with which a woman makes such a discovery. Her thoughts have been dwelling on him with a visionary longing which is not painful, which is sometimes happiness enough to support the structure of a life for years; but his had not been satisfied with this: the chain that held her had been nothing to him; he had turned to other consolations and exhausted them, and then came back. The woman’s instinct flung him from her, as she would have flung some evil thing. She wrenched herself away twisting her very heart out of its socket; that which had been, being shattered for ever by this blow, could be no more.
There was, as Stella said, no common-sense at all in the argument, or proper appreciation of a position which, taking into consideration everything, inclusive of the widow’s pension, was well worth any woman’s while.