KATHLEEN WEIR.
Ralph Webster did as he said he would, and went on the following
afternoon to call on the actress, Miss Kathleen Weir.
She was expecting him, and her pretty flat was charmingly arranged to
receive him, and herself charmingly dressed for the same purpose. She
had admired his strong, earnest, dark face in the court the day before,
and she was not in the least afraid of showing this. As she rose to
receive him--a tall, graceful, slender woman--she held out a shapely
white hand.
"I am very much pleased that you have come to see me, Mr. Webster," she
said.
"Thanks, very much, for your kind permission to do so," replied Ralph
Webster.
She was really scarcely handsome, and yet she gave you the impression
that she was so. She had large, restless gray eyes, and rather a
pretty, piquant nose, but her mouth was not good. It was too wide, and
her smile somewhat saucy and defiant. Yet altogether her appearance was
attractive, and many men, it was said, had fallen victims to her charms.
"I owe you a debt of gratitude," she went on in her airy fashion,
smiling on Ralph Webster; "but for you my character for honesty would
be gone."
"I trust not quite that."
Miss Weir held up her pretty white hands.
"I wish you had seen the senior Mr. Jordon's face then, when I
offered my poor paste diamonds for his inspection, telling him how
much the brooch and earrings had cost. He looked, 'Woman, dare you
attempt to impose on me!' if ever a man's thoughts were written on his
countenance."
"Do you think they often are?"
"Yes. All our thoughts are written on our faces at times, but I try to
wear a mask when I can; do you?"
Ralph Webster laughed a low, soft laugh.
"We are forced to hide our thoughts and feelings sometimes," he said.
"Do you know I could imagine your doing that with a very strong curb,"
went on Kathleen Weir, fixing her large gray eyes on Webster's face. "I
can fancy you crushing down your strongest feelings and putting your
heel on them allegorically. You have a strong will power."
"I am not so sure of that."
"Oh! yes, you have! If you were in love with a woman, and did not mean
to tell her so, you would go away from her, and not flutter around the
flame like a weaker man would do."
"Suppose my wings were already singed?" laughed Webster.
"You would bear the pain and still go. I envy your strength."
"But you are imagining it."
"No! But here I am forgetting the duties of hospitality to you on your
first visit. What will you take; tea, coffee, or some more masculine
refreshment. They are standing there in the inner room." And she
pointed to the draped archway between the two small drawing-rooms as
she spoke.
"Thanks, I will not take anything," answered Webster.
"May I ask if you wear a concealed bit of blue ribbon? If you are a
total abstainer, as I believe they call themselves?" smiled Kathleen
Weir.
"I can truthfully answer no," said Webster, also smiling.
"Have some champagne then."
"I will have nothing, thanks."
"What were we talking of? Ah, about being able to conceal one's
feelings. I can't; I wish I could; I must speak my mind, and it's
brought me no end of trouble."
"But you are clever enough, I am sure, to get out of trouble."
"Not always; I had once to deal with a very peculiar nature, or mine
was peculiar perhaps--so he said--but we could not pull together, and
that brought me no end of trouble--but I have got over it." And Miss
Weir shrugged her handsome shoulders.
"You showed your wisdom," said Webster, a little grimly.
"I know that; what is the use of grieving and fretting and losing one's
good looks for the sake of a person who has ceased to care for one?
Love is never rekindled, you know; its ashes never again take fire."
"Do you speak from experience?"
"Yes," answered Kathleen Weir, sharply. "I've watched the flame die
out, and the last flicker expire. It's an unpleasant experience, when
the ice has not already touched your own heart."
"I could never imagine it happening to you."
"You say that because I am an actress; a woman used to, and who loves
flattery, you are thinking. But it did happen to me, Mr. Webster!
Perhaps it was my temper, perhaps it was his, but my gentleman turned
cold and disagreeable--and in the end we parted."
Ralph Webster felt slightly embarrassed.
"And, now," went on Miss Weir, throwing back her well-shaped head,
crowned with its thick chestnut hair, "he is no more to me than last
year's snow! He changed first, but I afterward. But why need I bore you
with all this? Perhaps you do know that I am a married woman parted
from my husband?"
"I certainly did not know it."
"Yes, nine years ago I married a young man called Temple--"
"Temple?" interrupted Webster, quickly.
"Yes, John Temple; he was then a very young man, studying for the bar,
but he never practiced, for he had some money, and he had no ambition.
I think he thought I had spoiled his life."
A physical pain seemed to thrill through Webster's heart, and he bit
his lips to hide his emotion.
"And," he said, after a moment's pause, "do you never see him? What is
he like?"
"I have not seen him for these six years, but I know he is still in
the land of the living, and that I am not entitled to a widow's cap,
for each six months his lawyer regularly sends me one hundred and
fifty pounds. He allows me, in fact, three hundred a year, and perfect
liberty. I do whatever I like." And Kathleen Weir laughed a little
bitterly.
"And you chose the stage?" said Ralph Webster, in a low tone.
"I was on the stage when he had what I suppose he calls the misfortune
to marry me. He was a young fellow--barely twenty-one--and I was three
years older. We lived together for about three years, principally
abroad, and then he tired of it. That is, he had been tiring of it all
the time; we did not pull together somehow."
Ralph Webster drew a long breath.
"What is he like, I may have seen him?" he asked.
"Like? Good-looking, with gray eyes and a very taking manner when he
chose. But to me he was often eminently disagreeable."
"And you do not know where he is now?"
"Not in the very least; abroad most likely, for the sunny south suited
his pleasure-loving nature best. He had no energy, and I hate men
without it. Men are born to fight in the battle of life, but John
Temple stood smiling at it; he will never succeed in anything, and I
love success."
"And you have achieved it."
"Not as much as I wish, but I am fighting for it, and will fight to the
end. John Temple is a dreamer; but we can not live in dreams. Had he
been worth anything his name would have been known now at the bar, as
yours is."
"And--" hesitated Webster, "you have heard nothing of him lately?"
"Not a word. But you seem interested? Have you ever met him?"
"I think not," answered Webster. "Do you know to what family of Temples
he belongs?"
"I can not even tell you that. He told me he was a younger son's son,
I remember, and he was fairly well off, and by no means given to
extravagance, though in his first ardor he actually gave me the diamond
earrings that so nearly got me into trouble--but for you."
"It is kind of you to say so."
"It is true; that woman Margaret Johnstone, who was as brazen as brass,
broke down under your cross-examination like a reed with the strong
wind. How powerful you were! Every word told."
"You must not flatter me."
"I never flatter; but the truth is that you have deservedly made a
name, and will make a still greater one. I shall swagger some day that
my case was won by the great Q. C., Sir Ralph Webster."
Ralph Webster laughed, and a faint color stole to his dark face, and
then he rose to take his leave.
"Going so soon?" said Kathleen Weir. "Then I must conclude you are
tired of my company."
"Please conclude nothing of the sort, but I am going to dine with two
very kind old aunts at Bayswater, and I must not keep them waiting."
"No, of course not," and Kathleen Weir held out her white hand. "I am
coming out in a new piece to-morrow; will you go and see me act, and
then have supper with me afterward?"
"It is a most tempting invitation--"
"That is settled then, and now I will give you a ticket, or tickets,
whichever you like. But I warn you not to bring the aunts, as the piece
is a trifle fast."
"Still I should like to see it--and to see you act."
"Of course you must say that!" And Kathleen Weir rose and laughed as
she did so, and, having crossed the room, she opened an inlaid cabinet,
and brought out some stall tickets and placed two in Webster's hand.
"One is for to-morrow; the other for Friday--and good-by for the
present; this has been your first visit to me, but I trust it will not
be your last."
"I am quite sure it will not if you give me permission to come."
"I do give you permission; you will always be welcome here."
They shook hands and parted; and after Webster was gone Kathleen
Weir went to a mirror at one side of the room and looked at herself
attentively.
"I wonder if he thinks me good-looking," she was reflecting. "What
a clever face he has! He is a man I think that a woman could be
desperately in love with; that she could give up everything for, though
more fool she! Luckily, I never fall in love, and I mean to stick to
this in spite of Mr. Webster."
In the meanwhile Ralph Webster had called a cab, and was being driven
to Pembridge Terrace in--for him--a strange state of excitement.
The story he had just heard--the story of a wife forsaken by a John
Temple--had filled his mind with a sudden suspicion. Could this be the
John Temple who had married the fair girl in secret, now living under
his aunt's roof? Was this the cause of his secrecy? This other wife,
of whom he had tired, had left to fight her own way in the world. It
seemed feasible, and if it were so, how was he himself to act? Could he
throw a bombshell in this poor child's path, and in a moment destroy
all her happiness and hopes? But on the other hand--and Webster frowned
and bit his lips.
"He must be a cursed scoundrel if he has wronged her so cruelly," he
muttered, and he determined during the evening to obtain from his aunts
a complete personal description of the John Temple who had married May
Churchill.
"No doubt Miss Weir has some portrait of her lost husband," he thought
a little scornfully; "but at all events he did not break her heart. Her
description of a dead love was not bad. However, she is a woman I could
not love."
The woman he could love was in Miss Webster's drawing-room alone when
he entered it, and as he did so May held out her hand with a smile.
"You have come to tell us all about your visit to the pretty actress?"
she said.
"Yes," he answered a little grimly.
"And is she very pretty? Does she look as well off the stage as on?"
"She looks very well off, at all events, and I have never seen her on,
but I am going to see her to-morrow."
May laughed her sweet girlish laugh.
"And is she nice?" she said. "How does she talk?"
"I don't think you could call her nice. She talks in a hard, worldly
fashion, but she is clever. She puts things in a quaint, original way
that somehow has a certain charm in it. No, nice is not the word for
Miss Kathleen Weir."
"And what did she talk about?"
"She discoursed on the folly of loving anyone if they had ceased to
love you."
The rose-bloom deepened on May's cheek.
"But," she hesitated, "if--if you had really loved anyone I do not
think you could cease to love them because they had tired of you."
"And you really think," went on Ralph Webster with a ring of pain in
his voice, and with his dark, searching eyes fixed on May's fair face,
"that if you had cared for anyone and found out they were unworthy,
that you would not change?"
"I think love can not change," answered May in a low tone, and Ralph
Webster suppressed a sigh as she spoke.
"Perhaps not," he said, slowly, but at this moment Aunt Eliza entered
the room, and hurried up to him with her kind welcoming hand.
"My dear Ralph," she said, "I did not know you were here, or I should
have been down before."
"I have been hearing all about Miss Kathleen Weir, the actress, Miss
Eliza," said May, smiling.
"Oh! my dear--well, it may be an old-fashioned prejudice, I dare say it
is--but I do not like actresses," sighed Miss Eliza.
"It's all a matter of training," said Ralph Webster; "fancy Aunt Eliza
on the stage!"
"Oh, Ralph, how can you say such things?" said Miss Eliza,
reproachfully.
Ralph Webster laughed, and then the conversation changed. But before he
left Pembridge Terrace for the night he took an opportunity of speaking
to Miss Margaret Webster alone.
"Aunt Margaret," he said, "what is Mr. John Temple like who married
your pretty guest?"
"Good-looking; yes, I should say very good-looking indeed," answered
Miss Webster; "he has such a pleasant expression, and nice gray eyes."
"Gray eyes," repeated Webster, thoughtfully; he was remembering Miss
Kathleen Weir's description of her husband.
"Yes, gray eyes with dark lashes. But Ralph, my dear, if you would like
to see it, I have a photograph of him?"
"I should like to see it," answered her nephew; and Miss Webster at
once rose and produced her old-fashioned photograph book.
"This is our dear father," she said, turning to one page, and pointing
out a mild-faced old gentleman in clerical garb; "and this, Ralph, is
your dear father--ah! looking at this book always makes me a little
sad, and brings back old times."
"Yes," said Ralph Webster, glancing somewhat impatiently at his
grandfather and father; "but where is this wonderful Mr. Temple?"
Miss Webster then turned over several more pages of her book; pages
where she and Miss Eliza were represented as young girls, then as young
women in costumes of other days. Finally, she pointed to the smiling,
good-looking face of a young man.
"This is Mr. John Temple," she said, "and is exactly like what he was
when--he resided here; but he looks rather older now."
"He is certainly good-looking," answered Webster, slowly, looking
steadily at the face portrayed before him.
"There is no doubt of that, and he has a very pleasant manner, and one
can not wonder at his young wife being so much attached to him. There
is only one thing I do not like; that I can not approve of."
"You mean that the marriage was a secret one?"
"Yes, and he made such a point of the secrecy. He said for both their
sakes it must not be mentioned."
"Perhaps he had good reason to keep it quiet," said Ralph Webster.
"Oh! my dear, I hope not! Only he is afraid of his uncle's anger, I
suppose."
"Perhaps so," and then Ralph Webster shook hands with his aunt and went
away; but as he walked down the quiet street he made up his mind to
make further inquiries about Miss Kathleen Weir's husband.