It turned out that there was indeed a great deal more to be said. Dr.
Burnet came back after the extraordinary revelation of that evening. He
left Katherine on the cliff in the silvery light of the lingering day,
with all the tender mists of her dream dispersed, to recognise the
dreadful fact that she had behaved very badly to a man who had done
nothing but good to her. It was for this he had been so constant night
and day. No man in the island had been so taken care of, so surrounded
with vigilant attention, as old Mr. Tredgold--not for the fees he gave
certainly, which were no more than those of any other man, not for love
of him, but for Katherine. And now Katherine refused to pay the
price--nay, more, stood up against any such plea--as if he had no right
to ask her or to be considered more than another man. Dr. Burnet would
not accept his dismissal, he would not listen to her prayer to say no
more of it. He would not believe that it was true, or that by reasoning
and explanation it might not yet be made right.
There were two or three very painful interviews in that corner of the
drawing-room where Katherine had established herself, and which had so
many happy associations to him. He reminded her of how he had come there
day after day during the dreary winter, of that day of the snowstorm, of
other days, during which things had been said and allusions made in
which now there was no meaning. Sometimes he accused her vehemently of
having played hot and cold with him, of having led him on, of having
permitted him up to the very last to believe that she cared for him. And
to some of these accusations Katherine did not know how to reply. She
had not led him on, but she had permitted a great deal to be implied if
not said, and she had acquiesced. She could not deny that she had
acquiesced even in her own mind. If she had confessed to him how little
of her heart was in it at any time, or that it was little more than a
mental consent as to something inevitable, that would have been even
less flattering to him than her refusal; this was an explanation she
could not make. And her whole being shrank from a disclosure of that
chance meeting on the railway and the self-revelation it brought with
it. As a matter of fact the meeting on the railway had no issue any more
than the other. Nothing came of it. There was nothing to tell that could
be received as a reason for her conduct. She could only stand silent and
pale, and listen to his sometimes vehement reproaches, inalterable only
in the fact that it could not be.
There had been a very stormy interview between them one of those
evenings after he had left her father. He was convinced at last that it
was all over, that nothing could be done, and the man’s mortification
and indignant sense of injury had subsided into a more profound feeling,
into the deeper pang of real affection rejected and the prospects of
home and happiness lost.
“You have spoiled my life,” he had said to her. “I have nothing to look
forward to, nothing to hope for. Here I am and here I shall be, the same
for ever--a lonely man. Home will never mean anything to me but dreary
rooms to work in and rest in; and you have done it all, not for any
reason, not with any motive, in pure wantonness.” It was almost more
than he could bear.
“Forgive me,” Katherine said. She did not feel guilty to that extent,
but she would not say so. She was content to put up with the imputation
if it gave him any comfort to call her names.
And then he had relented. After all had been said that could be said, he
had gone back again to the table by which she was sitting, leaning her
head on her arm and half covering it with her hand. He put his own hand
on the same table and stooped a little towards her.
“All this,” he said with difficulty, “will of course make no difference.
You will send for me when I am wanted for your father all the same.”
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” was all she said.
“Of course,” he said almost roughly, “you will send for me night or day
all the same. It makes no difference. You may forsake me, but I will not
forsake you.” And with that, without a word of leavetaking or any
courtesy, he went away.
Was that how she was to be represented to herself and the world now and
for ever? Katherine sat with her head on her hand and her thoughts were
bitter. It seemed hard, it seemed unjust, yet what could she say? She
had not encouraged this man to love her or build his hopes upon her, but
yet she had made no stand against it; she had permitted a great deal
which, if she had not been so much alone, could not have been. Was it
her fault that she was alone? Could she have been so much more than
honest, so presumptuous and confident in her power, as to bid him pause,
to reject him before he asked her? These self-excusing thoughts are
self-accusing, as everybody knows. All her faults culminated in the fact
that whereas she was dully acquiescent before, after that going to
London the thing had become impossible. From that she could not save
herself--it was the only truth. One day the engagement between them was
a thing almost consented to and settled; next day it was a thing that
could not be, and that through no fault in the man. He had done nothing
to bring about such a catastrophe. It was no wonder that he was angry,
that he complained loudly of being deceived and forsaken. It was
altogether her fault, a fault fantastic, without any reason, which
nothing she could say would justify. And indeed how could she say
anything? It was nothing--a chance encounter, a conversation with her
maid sitting by, and nothing said that all the world might not hear.
There was the further sting in all this that, as has been said, nothing
had come, nothing probably would ever come, of that talk. Time went on
and there was no sign--not so much as a note to say---- What was there
to say? Nothing! And yet Katherine had not been able to help a faint
expectation that something would come of it. As a matter of fact
Stanford came twice to Sliplin with the hope of seeing Katherine again,
but he did not venture to go to the house where his visits had been
forbidden, and either Katherine did not go out that day or an evil fate
directed her footsteps in a different direction. The second time Mr.
Tredgold was ill again and nothing could possibly be seen of her. He
went to Mrs. Shanks’, whom he knew, but that lady was not encouraging.
She told him that Katherine was all but engaged to Dr. Burnet, that he
had her father’s life in his hands, and that nothing could exceed his
devotion, which Katherine was beginning to return. Mrs. Shanks did not
like lovers to be unhappy; if she could have married Katherine to both
of them she would have done so; but that being impossible, it was better
that the man should be unhappy who was going away, not he who remained.
And this was how it was that Katherine saw and heard no more of the man
whose sudden appearance had produced so great an effect upon her, and
altered at a touch what might have been the current of her life.
It was not only Dr. Burnet who avenged his wrongs upon her. Lady Jane
came down in full panoply of war to ask what Katherine meant by it.
“Yes, you did encourage him,” she said. “I have seen it with my own
eyes--if it were no more than that evening at my own house. He asked you
to go into the conservatory with him on the most specious pretext, with
his intentions as plainly written in his face as ever man’s were. And
you went like a lamb, though you must have known----”
“But, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “he said nothing to me, whatever his
intentions may have been.”
“No,” said Lady Jane with a little snort of displeasure; “I suppose you
snubbed him when you got him there, and he was frightened to speak. That
is exactly what I object to. You have blown hot and blown cold, made him
feel quite sure of you, and then knocked him down again like a ninepin.
All that may be forgiven if you take a man at the end. But to refuse
him when it comes to the point at last, after having played him off and
on so long--it is unpardonable, Katherine, unpardonable.”
“I am very sorry,” Katherine said, though indeed Lady Jane’s reproaches
did not touch her at all. “It is a fact that I might have consented a
few days ago; no, not happily, but with a kind of dull acquiescence
because everybody expected it.”
“Then you allow that everybody had a right to expect it?”
“I said nothing about any right. You did all settle for me it appears
without any will of mine; but I saw on thinking that it was impossible.
One has after all to judge for oneself. I don’t suppose that Dr. Burnet
would wish a woman to--to marry him--because her friends wished it, Lady
Jane.”
“He would take you on any terms, Katherine, after all that has come and
gone.”
“No one shall have me on any terms,” cried Katherine. “It shall be
because I wish it myself or not at all.”
“You have a great opinion of yourself,” said Lady Jane. “Under such a
quiet exterior I never saw a young woman more self-willed. You ought to
think of others a little. Dr. Burnet is far the best man you can marry
in so many different points of view. Everybody says he has saved your
father’s life. He is necessary, quite necessary, to Mr. Tredgold; and
how are you to call him in as a doctor after disappointing him so? And
then there is Stella. He would have done justice to Stella.”
“It will be strange,” cried Katherine, getting up from her seat in her
agitation, “if I cannot do justice to Stella without the intervention of
Dr. Burnet--or any man!”
Lady Jane took this action as a dismissal, and rose up, too, with much
solemnity. “You will regret this step you have taken,” she said,
“Katherine, not once but all your life.”
The only person who did not take a similar view was the Rector, upon
whom the news, which of course spread in the same incomprehensible way
as his own failure had done, had a very consolatory effect. It restored
him, indeed, to much of his original comfort and self-esteem to know
that another man had been treated as badly as himself--more badly
indeed, for at least there had been no blowing hot and cold with him. He
said that Miss Katherine Tredgold was a singular young lady, and
evidently, though she had the grace to say little about them, held some
of the advanced ideas of the time. “She feels herself called to avenge
the wrongs of her sex,” he said with a bitterness which was mitigated by
the sense that another man was the present sufferer. But from most of
her neighbours she received nothing but disapproval--disapproval which
was generally unexpressed in words, for Katherine gave little opening
for verbal remonstrance, but was not less apparent for that.
Miss Mildmay was, I think, the only one who took approvingly something
of the same view. “If she is capricious,” that lady said, “there is
plenty of caprice on the other side; loving and riding away and so
forth; let them just try how they like it for once! I don’t object to a
girl showing a little spirit, and doing to them as others have been done
by. It is a very good lesson to the gentlemen.”
“Oh, Ruth Mildmay!” said Mrs. Shanks half weeping; “as if it could ever
be a good thing to make a man unhappy for life!”
Mrs. Shanks felt that she knew more about it than anyone else, which
would have been delightful but for the other consciousness that her
intervention had done no good. She had not served Dr. Burnet, but she
had sacrificed the other lover. And she had her punishment in not daring
to whisper even to her nearest friend her special knowledge, or letting
it be seen she knew--which but for her action in sending young Stanford
away would have been a greater satisfaction than words can tell.
The result was that Katherine had a season of great discomfort and even
unhappiness. She had freed herself from that passive submissiveness to
fate into which she had been about to fall, but she had got nothing
better in its place. She thought that he could not care much, since he
had never even tried to see or communicate with her, and she was
ashamed of the rush with which her heart had gone out to him. She had
not, she hoped, betrayed it, but she was herself aware of it, which was
bad enough. And now that momentary episode was over and nothing had come
of it--it was as if it had not been.
After this there came a long period of suspense and waiting in
Katharine’s life. Her father had one attack of illness after another,
through all of which she was, if not the guiding spirit, at least the
head and superintendent of all that went on in the house. The character
of the house had changed when Stella left it. It changed still more now.
It became a sick house, the home of an invalid. Even the city people,
the old money-making friends, ceased to come from Saturday to Monday
when it became known among them that old Mr. Tredgold was subject to a
seizure at any time, and might be taken ill at last with all his friends
sitting round him. This is not a thing that anyone likes to face,
especially people who were, as old as he was, and perhaps, they could
not tell, might be liable to seizures too. When this occasional society
failed at the Cliff all other kinds of society failed too. Few people
came to the house--a decorous caller occasionally, but nothing more. It
was a very dull life for Katherine, everybody allowed, and some kind
people held periodical consultations with each other as to what could be
done for her, how she could be delivered from the monotony and misery of
her life; but what could anyone do? The rector and the doctor were the
most prominent men in Sliplin. A girl who had ill-treated them both
could only be asked out with extreme discretion, for it was almost
impossible to go anywhere without meeting one or other of these
gentlemen. But the ladies might have spared themselves these
discussions, for whatever invitations Katherine received she accepted
none of them. She would not go to Steephill again, though Lady Jane was
magnanimous and asked her. She would go nowhere. It showed that she had
a guilty conscience, people said; and yet that it must be very dull for
Katherine was what everybody lamenting allowed.
She had trouble, too, from another quarter, which was perhaps worst of
all. As the months, went on and ran into years, Stella’s astonishment
that she was not recalled, her complaints, her appeals and denunciation
of her sister as able to help her if she would do so, became manifold
and violent. She accused Katherine of the most unlikely things, of
shutting up their father, and preventing him from carrying out his
natural impulses--of being her, Stella’s, enemy when she had so often
pledged herself to be her friend, even of having encouraged her, Stella,
in the rash step she had taken, with intent to profit by it, and build
her own fortune on her sister’s ruin. Any stranger who had read these
letters would have supposed that Katherine had been the chief agent in
Stella’s elopement--that it had been she that had arranged everything,
and flattered Stella with hopes of speedy recall, only to betray her.
Katherine was deeply moved by this injustice and unkindness at first,
but soon she came to look at them with calm, and to take no notice of
the outcries which were like outcries of a hurt child. There were so
many things that called forth pity that the reproaches were forgotten.
Stella’s life--which had been so triumphant and gay, and which she had
intended and expected should be nothing but a course of triumph and
gaiety--had fallen into very different lines from any she had
anticipated. After she had upbraided her sister for keeping her out of
her rights, and demanded with every threat she could think of their
restoration, and that Katherine should conspire no more against her, her
tone would sink into one of entreaty, so that the epistle which had
begun like an indictment ended like a begging letter. Stella wanted
money, always money; money to keep her position, money to pay her debts,
money at last for what she called the common necessaries of life. There
was scarcely a mail which did not bring over one of these appeals, which
tore Katherine’s heart. Though she was the daughter of so rich a man,
she had very little of her own. Her allowance was very moderate, for Mr.
Tredgold, though he was liberal enough, loved to be cajoled and
flattered out of his money, as Stella had done--an art which Katherine
had never possessed. She had a little from her mother, not enough to be
called a fortune, and this she sent almost entirely to her sister. She
sent the greater part of her allowance to Lady Somers, content to
confine herself to the plainest dress, in order to satisfy the wants of
one who had always had so many wants. It was thus that her best years,
the years of her brightest bloom and what ought to have been the most
delightful of her life, passed drearily away.