A HOUSEHOLD KATE.
"What an odd girl you are, Kate!" said Mrs. Battersea, as the sisters
sat at breakfast next morning in their pretty suburban garden, with a
table drawn under the acacia-tree, and as many birds, roses, and
strawberries about them as if they were a hundred miles from London.
"You lost the best chance yesterday that ever woman had, and all because
you couldn't be in time for a train. My dear, I don't often scold; but
it _does_ provoke me to see you throw yourself away. I begin to think
you'll never _settle_, Kate. You're worse than I was; you're worse than
I am _now_!"
"That's a bad state of things," answered Kate saucily. "I shouldn't have
thought it possible. But what's the use of settling, Auntie." The elder
sister had once been taken for the younger's aunt, and the nickname had
stuck to her. "You talk as if I was some sort of mess on a kitchen hob.
Why _should_ I settle, and why do you stir me up? I'm very nice as I
am."
"So Mr. Goldthred seems to think!" answered her sister; "and if you'd
only been with us yesterday, you'd have had him to yourself the whole
afternoon. I'm sure he was disappointed; and to see the barefaced way
that odious little Rosie made up to him was quite sickening!
Kate--Kate--don't you want an establishment of your own?"
"What's the good?" replied the other, dipping a bit of cake in her
coffee. "I'm very happy as I am--
'O give me back my hollow tree,
My crust of bread, and liberty!'
Freedom and simplicity, say I; communism, equality, and fraternity!"
"Kate, you're talking nonsense," pursued Mrs. Battersea. "Nature never
intended _you_ for a country-mouse, and there's no such thing as
equality, fraternity, and all that. Talk of men being brothers! Bosh!
Men are intended for husbands, only you must strike while the iron's
hot. They harden sadly if they're allowed to get cool. Oh, Kate! I do
wish you'd been with us yesterday! We went on the river after dinner.
There was a moon, and everything!"
"Did you have a good dinner?" asked Kate saucily.
"Of course we had," said the other. "But that's nothing to the purpose.
I tell you the whole party were paired off, except Goldie; and he went
about like a poor disconsolate bird in a frost. Rosie tried hard for
him; but he wouldn't look at her; and, besides, she'd got her own
admirer. I tell you, if you'd only been on the spot, the whole thing
might have been settled."
"Who was there for _you_?" inquired Miss Kate, with mischievous eyes and
a ripe cherry in her mouth, not much redder than the lips against which
it bobbed.
"Why the Colonel, naturally," answered Mrs. Battersea. "You knew that
quite well, so what's the use of asking? I shall 'shunt' the Colonel,
Kate, after Goodwood, he's getting so _very_ grey, and it looks really
ridiculous amongst young people, like our party yesterday."
"By all means," assented Kate. "And who's to replace him? Not that
half-bred American, Mr. Picard, I hope. Trust me, Auntie; I have
predatory instincts, and they never deceive me. That man is an
adventurer; he's not a gentleman. Look at him by the others: you see it
at once."
Mrs. Battersea burst out laughing.
"Well done, Kate! This is indeed teaching your grandmother. Do you think
I'm still too young to run alone? I ought to be flattered, and I _am_.
Don't you trouble your head about Picard and me. He's useful for the
present. When I've done with him, you may be pretty sure I shall drop
him. Now tell me, dear, what the temptation was that kept you away all
yesterday, and deprived our party, as the Colonel said, of the 'bonniest
bud in the bouquet.'"
"I'd an adventure," enunciated Kate solemnly.
"Was he good looking?" exclaimed Mrs. Battersea.
"_Very!_" answered Kate. "But I only saw him asleep. He had the blackest
curls and the longest eye-lashes I ever beheld on man or woman. Such a
darling, Auntie! But though I kissed him without disturbing him one bit,
I don't suppose he'll ever pay me the gloves I'm entitled to by all the
rules of racing."
Mrs. Battersea looked puzzled.
"What _do_ you mean?" said she. "I never can quite make you out when
you're in these wild moods. I hope you haven't been getting into
mischief. Your spirits run away with you so, I ought never to let you
out of my sight."
Kate laughed merrily.
"It's not much of a scrape this time," she answered, "nor much of a lark
neither. I paid a morning visit in a fashionable quarter, and was
detained longer than I anticipated, that's all. What should you say if
I'd found something 'stolen or strayed, lost or mislaid;' something not
actually advertised, but that would be worth 'a reward' all the same, if
I was to produce it at one or two places I know in London, not to
mention the cavalry barracks at Windsor?"
"You speak in parables," said the other, crumbling up bread and cream
for her parrot. "When you come down to plain English and common sense, I
shall be able to understand."
"I've found Miss Ross!" Kate closed her pretty lips so tight after this
startling information that the cherry snapped off at its stalk, and
bobbed into her coffee-cup.
"You've found Miss Ross!" repeated her sister, in accents of the utmost
astonishment. "Well, it's _too_ bad of Captain Vanguard; quite too bad,
I must say! And, Kate, I won't have you getting mixed up with that kind
of thing. Recollect we can scarcely hold our own where we are; and
although, for myself, I think respectable society rather _slow_, I don't
want you to make the mistakes I did. Never set the world at defiance, my
dear; it don't answer. You may humbug people to any extent, but they
won't stand being bullied! Don't go near her again, Kate, I beg.
Somebody is sure to see you."
"Captain Vanguard has no more to do with it than _you_ have," retorted
Miss Cremorne, ignoring her sister's late monitions and reverting to the
first count in the indictment. "Why can you never let him alone? Tell
me, Auntie, once for all, what's this grudge of yours against Frank?
Poor thing! How has it affronted its aunt?"
Mrs. Battersea looked grave.
"He'll never have a chance of affronting _me_, Kate, unless he does it
through _you_. He hangs about here a great deal too much. He haunts the
places we go to like a ghost; and he _looks_ like a ghost besides, for
he has lost his colour, grown very silent, and never smiles. I say
nothing, but----"
"You _think_ a great deal, no doubt," replied her sister. "You think
wrong this time, though, if you fancy I care two straws about Frank, or
Frank about _me_. He _was_ pleasant enough, I grant you; but now that
he's got sad, and quiet, and stupidish, he bores me. You ought to know
my tastes better than most people, dear. You may be pretty sure one of
your languishing swains has very little chance. I hate long stories,
long memories, long sighs, and long faces. If people like one, they
should make one happy:
'When Love is kind,
Lightsome, and free,
Love's sure to find
Welcome from me;
But if Love brings
Heart-ache or pang,
Tears, or such things,
Love may go hang!"
"Which only proves you were never in earnest, Kate," answered the elder
woman; adding, with a sigh, "So much the better for _you_."
Perhaps Mrs. Battersea was thinking of a time long before she met the
late Major Battersea, a time when Kate was a little toddling thing, with
fat legs, chubby arms, and the manners of a confirmed and shameless
flirt; a time when the sands of the Isle of Wight borrowed a golden
gleam from that light which so irradiates the present to leave behind it
such grim, ghostly shadows on the past; when the waves sang soft sweet
music, softer, sweeter, for the whisper that stole through the drowsy
wash and murmur of the tide,--sadder, too, for an instinct that warns
the human heart how they will make the same melodious moan, unchanged,
unpitying, after they have closed over its happiness for ever; when
morning was a vision of hope, and evening a dream of peace, and all day
long a waking reality of happiness, because of a straw hat, a sun-burned
face, and a light laugh. Perhaps she was contrasting a certain frank,
innocent, loving girl, trusting, and true-hearted, with the woman of
after years, marred and warped by her first disappointment, carrying war
on bravely in the enemy's country, but aching still under all her armour
of pride and indifference, with the dull pain of that first grievous
wound.
"So much the better for me," repeated Kate thankfully. "You would have
said so, indeed, if you could have seen that poor thing yesterday. Pale,
worn, dejected, and, my dear, so very badly dressed! I declare I hardly
knew her again, and I used to think, for quite a dark beauty, she was
the best-looking woman in London. Do you suppose, Auntie, there really
_is_ such a thing as a broken heart, or is it all nonsense and what they
put in novels, and poems, and things? It must hurt horribly if there
is!"
"Some people mind it more than others," answered her sister. "Let us be
thankful, Kate, that you and I are not of the caring sort. But what do
you suppose has brought Miss Ross to this pass? She used to be one of
your regular high-fliers. Went to Court, I fancy, and all the rest of
it. And how do you know your precious Frank Vanguard hadn't a finger in
the pie?"
"Because I _do_ know," affirmed Miss Kate. "You never saw such a place
as she was living in; and I got everything out of the people in the
house before I had been there ten minutes."
"I can easily believe it," said her sister. "As usual, taking up
another's business and neglecting your own."
"But I mean to make it my own," protested Kate. "You would have been as
keen about it as I am if you had seen the poor thing huddled up in her
refuge like a frightened cat in a corner. Table on three legs, chairs
falling to pieces, such a small room, such stuffy furniture, and you
might have written your name in the dust on everything. Even her gown
was all frayed at the skirt, and there wasn't another in the wardrobe,
for I peeped in to see. I shall be off again directly after breakfast,
and perhaps to-day I may worm something out of her, and get her to let
me help her in earnest, you know. How sad, Auntie, to come to such a
pass! Fancy not having enough to eat, and only one gown to put on!"
"But the child," persisted Mrs. Battersea, "the child couldn't have come
there by chance. Kate, I wish you'd let it all alone."
"The child was as clean as a new pin," answered Miss Cremorne. "There
was everything he could want arranged for him as nicely as if he was a
little Emperor! That's why I'm sure she's his mother. I don't care if
she's his _grandmother_ a hundred times over. I'll stick by her now
through this mess, whatever it is. I've gone in for it, and I'll see it
out! I'll charter a Hansom, though; I won't take the brougham, it makes
people stare."
Mrs. Battersea pondered, and the parrot, waiting for his breakfast,
shrieked hideously.
"Don't you think I'm right?" asked the impatient girl.
"I know you won't be stopped," answered the other, "right or wrong. But
were I in your place I should certainly not interfere. If Captain
Vanguard has anything to do with the business, I cannot see what good
will come of your mixing yourself up in it. Frank's very good-looking, I
grant you, and pleasanter company than half the men we meet; but I don't
suppose he really cares two pins for anything but his horses; and as for
heart, my dear Kate, these guardsmen are all alike--they throw the
article systematically away before their moustache is grown, and find
they get on very much better without it afterwards."
"They may throw them about till they're tired," answered Kate. "They'll
have to wait a long time before I stoop to pick one up, Auntie. I never
saw the man yet that was worth crossing the street for, after a shower.
Did you?"
"_One_, Kate," said Mrs. Battersea, "long ago. I'd have gone into the
Serpentine, up to my neck at least, for _him_."
"Why didn't you?" asked the other. "What has become of him?"
"He never asked me," replied Mrs. Battersea, with something of a tremble
in her voice. "I thought I was so sure of him, I could get him back at
any time, and one fine morning I pulled my thread the least thing too
hard, and it broke. I saw him the other day, Kate, quite by accident. He
hasn't forgiven, for all the years that are past,--and, though it seems
ridiculous, I haven't forgotten."
"Never say die! Auntie," laughed the girl. "You've plenty of admirers
left!"
"Plenty!" said Mrs. Battersea; "but they're not the real stuff. They're
like cheap dresses, my dear, look well enough while they're new, but
when they've been worn a little, particularly in bad weather, they go
all to pieces."
"The Colonel, for instance," observed Kate. "He's so threadbare now, I
don't think he'll even make up into patch-work or even pen-wipers.
Auntie, you're very hard upon the Colonel, and I do believe he's fond of
you."
"So he ought to be," answered Mrs. Battersea. "But let the Colonel
alone, Kate, and take my advice. If you find a man who really likes you
better than his dinner, his Derby, his covert-shooting, or his best
horse, don't stop to consider whether he is romantic, and popular, and
admired. Make up your mind at once. Take him frankly, unless you
absolutely hate the creature. Stand by him honestly, and never throw him
over. When you're as old as I am you'll be glad you followed my advice."
"I must first _catch_ my hare," replied Miss Kate, rising from the
table; "and then there's an end of the excitement, the ups-and-downs,
the ins-and-outs, the falls and fences, in short, all the fun of the
hunt. Well, who knows! Perhaps my time may come, like another's.
'Puis ce que ça doit se tirer au sort.'
But meanwhile I do very well as I am, and when I've found my master it
will be quite soon enough to 'knuckle down' and give in. So now I'm off
to my poor sick bird, to nurse her chick, and sleek her feathers, and
put to rights her untidy little nest."
Accordingly, in less than ten minutes Miss Cremorne emerged into the
sunshine, as well-looking and as well-dressed a young lady as could be
seen treading the pavement of any street in London. A butcher's boy,
with tray on shoulder, stopped short in his whistle to look after her,
transported with admiration. A young man from the country stood
stock-still under the very pole of an omnibus, and grinned his approval
open-mouthed; while an old gentleman, who ought to have known better,
crossed the muddiest part of the street, and affected great interest in
an upholsterer's window, to get one more look at her pretty face as she
tripped past. The very cabman whom she signalled off the rank forbore to
overcharge her, and came down officiously from the perch of his Hansom
to keep her dress off the wheel when she alighted, wondering the while
at the homely exterior of the dwelling in which this vision of beauty
disappeared.
"It's a queer start!" soliloquised that worthy in his own expressive
vernacular; "and females, as a general rule, is up to all sorts of
games. But she ain't one of that sort, she ain't. Blessed if she don't
look as bold as Britannia, the beauty! and as h'innocent as a nosegay
all the while!"