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?