Lady Jane gave Katherine a great deal of good advice before she allowed
her to return home. They talked much of Stella, as was natural, and of
the dreadful discovery it was to her to find that after all she had no
power over her father, and that she must remain in India with her
husband for the sake of the mere living instead of returning home in
triumph as she had hoped, and going to court and having the advantage at
once of her little title and of her great fortune.
“The worst is that she seems to have given up hope,” Lady Jane said. “I
tell her that we all agreed we must give your father a year; but she has
quite made up her mind that he never will relent at all.”
“I am afraid I am of her opinion,” said Katherine; “not while he lives.
I hope indeed--that if he were ill--if he were afraid of--of anything
happening----”
“And you, of course, would be there to keep him up in his good
intentions, Katherine? Oh, don’t lose an opportunity! And what a good
thing for you to have a sensible understanding man like Dr. Burnet to
stand by you. I am quite sure he will do everything he can to bring your
father to a proper frame of mind.”
“If he had anything to do with it!” said Katherine a little surprised.
“A doctor, my dear, has always a great deal to do with it. He takes the
place that the priest used to take. The priest you need not send for
unless you like, but the doctor you must have there. And I have known
cases in which it made all the difference--with a good doctor who made a
point of standing up for justice. Dr. Burnet is a man of excellent
character, not to speak of his feeling for you, which I hope is apparent
enough.”
“Lady Jane! I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well,” said Lady Jane with composure, “there is no accounting for the
opaqueness of girls in some circumstances. You probably did not remark
either, Katherine, the infatuation of that unfortunate Rector, which you
should have done, my dear, and stopped him before he came the length of
a proposal, which is always humiliating to a man. But I was speaking of
the doctor. He takes a great interest in poor Stella; he would always
stand up for her in any circumstances, and you may find him of great use
with your father at any--any crisis--which let us hope, however, will
not occur for many a long year.”
Lady Jane’s prayer was not, perhaps, very sincere. That old Tredgold
should continue to cumber the ground for many years, and keep poor
Stella out of her money, was the very reverse of her desire; but the old
man was a very tough old man, and she was afraid it was very likely that
it would be so.
“I think,” said Katherine with a little heat, “that it would be well
that neither Dr. Burnet nor any other stranger should interfere.”
“I did not say interfere,” said Lady Jane; “everything of that kind
should be done with delicacy. I only say that it will be a great thing
for you to have a good kind man within reach in case of any emergency.
Your father is, we all know, an old man, and one can never tell what may
happen--though I think, for my part, that he is good for many years.
Probably you will yourself be married long before that, which I will
rejoice to see for my part. You have no relations to stand by you, no
uncle, or anything of that sort? I thought not; then, my dear, I can
only hope that you will find a good man----”
“Thank you for the good wish,” said Katherine with a laugh. “I find it
is a good man to look after Stella’s interests rather than anything that
will please me that my friends wish.”
“My dear,” said Lady Jane with a little severity, “I should not have
expected such a speech from you. I have always thought a good quiet man
of high principles would be far more suitable for you than anything like
Charlie Somers, for example. Charlie Somers is my own relation, but I’m
bound to say that if I proposed to him to secure to his sister-in-law
half of his wife’s fortune I shouldn’t expect a very gracious answer.
These sort of men are always so hungry for money--they have such
quantities of things to do with it. A plain man with fewer needs and
more consideration for others---- Katherine, don’t think me interested
for Stella only. You know I like her, as well as feeling partly
responsible; but you also know, my dear, that of the two I always
preferred you.”
“You are very kind,” said Katherine; but she was not grateful--there was
no _effusion_ in her manner. Many girls would have thrown themselves
upon Lady Jane’s neck with an enthusiasm of response. But this did not
occur to Katherine, nor did she feel the gratitude which she did not
express.
“And I should like, I confess, to see you happily married, my dear,”
said Lady Jane impressively. “I don’t think I know any girl whom I
should be more glad to see settled; but don’t turn away from an honest,
plain man. That is the sort of man that suits a girl like you best. You
are not a butterfly, and your husband shouldn’t be of the butterfly
kind. A butterfly man is a dreadful creature, Katherine, when he
outgrows his season and gets old. There’s Algy Scott, for example, my
own cousin, who admired you very much--you would tire of him in a week,
my dear, or any of his kind; they would bore you to death in ten days.”
“I have no desire, Lady Jane, to try how long it would take to be bored
to death by----”
“And you are very wise,” Lady Jane said. “Come and let’s look at the
aloe and see how much it has unfolded since _that_ night. And is it
quite certain, Katherine, that you must go to-morrow? Well, you have had
a very dull visit, and I have done nothing but bore you with my dull
advice. But Sir John will be broken-hearted to lose you, and you will
always find the warmest welcome at Steephill. Friends are friends, my
dear, however dull they may be.”
Katherine went home with her whole being in a state of animation, which
is always a good thing for the mind even when it is produced by
disagreeable events. The spirit of men, and naturally of women also, is
apt to get stagnant in an undisturbed routine, and this had been
happening to her day by day in the home life which so many things had
concurred to make motionless. The loss of Stella, the double break with
society, in the first place on that account, in the second because of
the Rector, her partial separation from Steephill on one side and from
the village on the other, had been, as it were, so many breakages of
existence to Katherine, who had not sufficient initiative or sufficient
position to make any centre for herself. Now the ice that had been
gathered over her was broken in a multitude of pieces, if not very
agreeably, yet with advantage to her mind. Katherine reflected with no
small sense of contrariety and injustice of the continued comparison
with Stella which apparently was to weigh down all her life. Lady Jane
had invited her, not for her own attractiveness--though she did not
doubt that Lady Jane’s real sentiment at bottom was, as she said, one of
partiality for Katherine--but to be put into the way she should go in
respect to Stella and kept up to her duty. That Stella should not
suffer, that she should eventually be secured in her fortune, that was
the object of all her friends. It was because he would be favourable to
Stella that Lady Jane had thrust Dr. Burnet upon her, indicating him
almost by name, forcing her, as it were, into his arms. Did Dr. Burnet
in the same way consider that he was acting in Stella’s interests when
he made himself agreeable to her sister? Katherine’s heart--a little
wounded, sore, mortified in pride and generosity (as if she required to
be pushed on, to be excited and pricked up into action for
Stella!)--seemed for a moment half disposed to throw itself on the other
side, to call back the Rector, who would probably think it right that
Stella should be punished for her disobedience, or to set up an
immovable front as an unmarried woman, adopting that _rôle_ which has
become so common now-a-days. She would, she felt, have nobody
recommended to her for her husband whose chief characteristic was that
he would take care of Stella. It was an insult to herself. She would
marry nobody at second-hand on Stella’s account. Better, far better,
marry nobody at all, which was certainly her present inclination, and so
be free to do for Stella, when the time came, what she had always
intended, of her own accord and without intervention.
I think all the same that Lady Jane was quite right, and that the
butterfly kind of man--the gallant, gay Algy or any of his
fellows--would have been quite out of Katherine’s way; also that a man
like Dr. Burnet would have been much in her way. But to Katherine these
calculations seemed all, more or less, insulting. Why an elderly
clergyman with a grown-up family should suppose himself to be on an
equality with her, a girl of twenty-three, and entitled to make her an
offer, so very much at second-hand, of his heart and home, which was too
full already; and why, in default of him, a country practitioner with no
particular gifts or distinction should be considered the right thing for
Katherine, gave her an angry sense of antagonism to the world. This,
then, was all she was supposed to be good for--the humdrum country life,
the humdrum, useful wife of such a man. And that everything that was
pleasant and amusing and extravagant and brilliant should go to Stella:
that was the award of the world. Katherine felt very angry as she drove
home. She had no inclination towards any “military swell.” She did not
admire her brother-in-law nor his kind; she (on the whole) liked Dr.
Burnet, and had a great respect for his profession and his
much-occupied, laborious, honourable life. But to have herself set down
beforehand as a fit mate only for the doctor or the clergyman, this was
what annoyed the visionary young person, whose dreams had never been
reduced to anything material, except perhaps that vague figure of James
Stanford, who was nobody, and whom she scarcely knew!
Yet all this shaking up did Katherine good. If she had been more
pleasantly moved she would perhaps scarcely have been so effectually
startled out of the deadening routine of her life. The process was not
pleasant at all, but it made her blood course more quickly through her
veins, and quickened her pulses and cleared her head. She was received
by her father without much emotion--with the usual chuckle and “Here you
are!” which was his most affectionate greeting.
“Well, so you’ve got home,” he said. “Find home more comfortable on the
whole, eh, Katie? Better fires, better cooking, more light, eh? I
thought you would. These grand folks, they have to save on something;
here you’re stinted in nothing. Makes a difference, I can tell you, in
life.”
“I don’t think there is much stinting in anything, papa, at Steephill.”
“Not for the dinner party, perhaps. I never hold with dinner parties.
They don’t suit me; sitting down to a large meal when you ought to be
thinking of your bed. But Sir John puts his best foot forward, eh, for
that? Saves up the grapes, I shouldn’t wonder, till they go bad, for one
blow-out, instead of eating ’em when he wants ’em, like we do, every
day.”
This speech restored the equilibrium of Katherine’s mind by turning the
balance of wit to the other side.
“You are not at all just to Sir John, papa. You never are when you don’t
know people. He is very honest and kind, and takes very little trouble
about his dinner parties. They were both very kind to me.”
“Asked young Fortescue to meet you, I hear. A young fellow with a lot of
poor land and no money. Meaning to try me on another tack this time, I
suppose. Not if he had a hundred miles of downs, Katie; you remember
that. Land’s a confounded bad investment. None of your encumbered
estates for me.”
“You need not distress yourself, papa. I never spoke to Mr. Fortescue,”
said Katherine.
There was a little offence in her tone. She had not forgiven Lady Jane
for the fact that Mr. Fortescue, the only young man of the party, had
not been allotted to her for dinner, as she felt would have been the
right thing. Katherine thought him very red in the face, weatherbeaten,
and dull--so far as appearances went; but she was piqued and offended
at having been deprived of her rights. Did Lady Jane not think her good
enough, _par exemple_, for young Fortescue? And her tone betrayed her,
if Mr. Tredgold had taken any trouble to observe her tone.
“He need not come here to throw dust in my eyes--that’s all,” said the
old man. “I want none of your landed fellows--beggars! with more to give
out than they have coming in. No; the man that can put down his money on
the table----”
“Don’t you think I have heard enough of your money down on the table?”
said Katherine, very red and uncomfortable. “No one is likely to trouble
you about me, papa, so we may leave the money alone, on the table or off
it.”
“I’m not so sure about that. There’s young Fred Turny would like nothing
better. And a capital fellow that. Plenty of his own, and going into all
the best society, and titled ladies flinging themselves at his head.
Mind you, I don’t know if you keep shilly-shallying, whether he’ll stand
it long--a young fellow like that.”
“He knows very well there is no shilly-shallying about me,” said
Katherine.
And she left her father’s room thinking within herself that though Lady
Jane’s way of recommending a plain man was not pleasant, yet the other
way was worse. Fred Turny, it was certain, would not hear of dividing
his wife’s fortune with her sister, should her father’s will give it all
to herself; neither would Charlie Somers, Lady Jane assured her. Would
Dr. Burnet do this? Katherine, possessed for the moment of a prejudice
against the doctor, doubted, though that was the ground on which he was
recommended. Would any man do so? There was one man she thought (of whom
she knew nothing) who would; who cared nothing about the money; whose
heart had chosen herself while Stella was there in all her superior
attractions. Katherine felt that this man, of whom she had seen so
little, who had been out of the country for nearly four years, from whom
she had never received a letter, and scarcely even could call to mind
anything he had ever said to her, was the one man whom she could trust
in all the world.
Dr. Burnet came that afternoon, as it was his usual day for visiting Mr.
Tredgold. He was very particular in keeping to his days. It was a
beautiful spring-like afternoon, and the borders round the house were
full of crocuses, yellow and blue and white. The window was open in
Katherine’s corner, and all the landscape outside bright with the
westering light.
“What a difference,” he said, “from that snowstorm--do you remember the
snowstorm? It is in this way an era for me--as, indeed, it was in the
whole island. We all begin to date by it: before the snowstorm, or at
the time of the snowstorm.”
“I wonder,” said Katherine, scarcely conscious of what she was saying,
“why it was an era to you?”
“Ah, that I cannot tell you now. I will, perhaps, if you will let me,
sometime. Come out and look at the crocuses. This is just the moment,
before the sun goes down.”
“Yes, they shut when the sun goes down,” Katherine said, stepping out
from the window.
The air had all the balm of spring, and the crocuses were all the
colours of hope. It is delightful to come out of winter into the first
gleam of the reviving year.
“We are nothing if not botanical,” said the doctor. “You remember the
aloe. It is a fine thing but it is melancholy, for its blossoming is its
death. It is like the old fable of the phœnix. When the new comes the
old dies. And a very good thing too if we did not put our ridiculous
human sentiment into everything.”
“Do you think human sentiment is ridiculous?” said Katherine, half
disposed to back him up, half to argue it out.
“Of course I don’t!” said the doctor with vehemence; and then he laughed
and said, “We are talking like a book. But I am glad you went to
Steephill; there is not any such sentiment there.”
“Do you think, then, I am liable to be attacked by fits of sentiment? I
don’t think so,” she said, and then she invited the doctor to leave the
crocuses and to come in to tea.
I think it was that day that Dr. Burnet informed Katherine that her
father had symptoms of illness more or less serious. He hoped that he
might be able to stave off their development, and Mr. Tredgold might yet
have many years of tolerable health before him. “But if I am right,” he
said, “I fear he will not have the calm life he has had. He will be
likely to have sudden attacks, and suffer a good deal, from time to
time. I will always be at hand, of course, and ready night and day. And,
as I tell you, great alleviations are possible. I quite hope there will
be many intervals of comfort. But, on the other hand, a catastrophe is
equally possible. If he has any affairs to attend to, it would perhaps
be--a good thing--if he could be persuaded to--look after them, as a
matter of prudence, without giving him any alarm.”
Such an intimation makes the heart beat of those to whom the angel of
death is thus suddenly revealed hovering over their home; even when
there is no special love or loss involved. The bond between Mr. Tredgold
and his children was not very tender or delicate, and yet he was her
father. Katherine’s heart for a moment seemed to stand still. The colour
went out of her face, and the eyes which she turned with an appealing
gaze to the doctor filled with tears.
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” she said.
“Don’t be alarmed; there is nothing to call for any immediate
apprehension. It is only if you want to procure any modification--any
change in a will, or detail of that kind.”
“You mean about Stella,” she said. “I don’t know what he has done about
Stella; he never tells me anything. Is it necessary to trouble him,
doctor? If he has not changed his will it will be all right; if he has
destroyed it without making another it will still be all right, for some
one told me that in that case we should share alike--is that the law?
Then no harm can come to Stella. Oh, that we should be discussing in
this calm way what might happen--after!” Two big tears fell from
Katherine’s eyes. “If the worst were to happen even,” she said; “if
Stella were left out--it would still be all right, doctor, so long as I
was there to see justice done.”
“Dear Katherine!” he said, just touching her hand for a moment. She
scarcely perceived in her agitation that he had left out the prefix, and
the look which he gave her made no impression on her preoccupied mind.
“You will remember,” he said, “that I am to be called instantly if
anything unusual happens, and that I shall always be ready--to do the
best I can for him, and to stand by you--to the end.”