When Katherine came into the room again at the call of her father’s
solicitor it was with a sense of being unduly disturbed and interfered
with at a moment when she had a right to repose. She was perhaps half
angry with herself that her thoughts were already turning so warmly to
the future, and that Stella’s approaching arrival, and the change in
Stella’s fortunes which it would be in her power to make, were more and
more occupying the foreground of her mind, and crowding out with bright
colours the sombre spectacle which was just over, and all the troublous
details of the past. When a portion of one’s life has been brought to an
end by the closure of death, something to look forward to is the most
natural and best of alleviations. It breaks up the conviction of the
irrevocable, and opens to the soul once more the way before it, which,
on the other hand, is closed up and ended. Katherine had allowed that
thought to steal into her mind, to occupy the entire horizon. Stella was
coming home, not merely back, which was all that she had allowed herself
to say before, but home to her own house, or rather to that which was
something still more hers than her own by being her sister’s. There had
been, no doubt, grievances against Stella in Katherine’s mind, in the
days when her own life had been entirely overshadowed by her sister’s;
but these were long gone, long lost in boundless, remorseful
(notwithstanding that she had nothing to blame herself with) affection
and longing for Stella, who after all was her only sister, her only near
relation in the world. She had begun to permit herself to dwell on that
delightful thought. It had been a sort of forbidden pleasure while her
father lay dead in the house, and she had felt that every thought was
due to him, that she had not given him enough, had not shown that
devotion to him of which one reads in books, the triumph of filial love
over every circumstance. Katherine had not been to her father all that a
daughter might have been, and in these dark days she had much and
unjustly reproached herself with it. But now everything had been done
for him that he could have wished to be done, and his image had gone
aside amid the shadows of the past, and she had permitted herself to
look forward, to think of Stella and her return. It was a great
disturbance and annoyance to be called again, to be brought back from
the contemplation of those happier things to the shadow of the grave
once more--or, still worse, the shadow of business, as if she cared how
much money had come to her or what was her position. There would be
plenty--plenty to make Stella comfortable she knew, and beyond that what
did Katherine care?
The men stood up again as she came in with an air of respect which
seemed to her exaggerated and absurd--old Mr. Turny, who had known her
from a child and had allowed her to open the door for him and run
errands for him many a day, and the solicitor, who in his infrequent
visits had never paid any attention to her at all. They stood on each
side letting her pass as if into some prison of which they were going to
defend the doors. Dr. Burnet, who was there too, closely buttoned and
looking very grave, gave her a seat; and then she saw her Uncle Robert
Tredgold sunk down in a chair, with Mr. Sturgeon’s bag in his arms,
staring about him with lack-lustre eyes. She gave him a little nod and
encouraging glance. How small a matter it would be to provide for that
unfortunate so that he should never need to carry Mr. Sturgeon’s bag
again! She sat down and looked round upon them with for the first time a
sort of personal satisfaction in the thought that she was so wholly
independent of them and all that it was in their power to do--the
mistress of her own house, not obliged to think of anyone’s pleasure but
her own. It was on her lips to say something hospitable, kind, such as
became the mistress of the house; she refrained only from the
recollection that, after all, it was her father’s funeral day.
“Miss Tredgold,” said the solicitor, “we have now, I am sorry to say, a
very painful duty to perform.”
Katherine looked at him without the faintest notion of his meaning,
encouraging him to proceed with a faint smile.
“I have gone through your late lamented father’s papers most carefully.
As you yourself said yesterday, I have possessed his confidence for many
years, and all his business matters have gone through my hands. I
supposed that as I had not been consulted about any change in his will,
he must have employed a local solicitor. That, however, does not seem to
have been the case, and I am sorry to inform you, Miss Tredgold, that
the only will that can be found is that of eighteen hundred and
seventy-one.”
“Yes?” said Katherine indifferently interrogative, as something seemed
to be expected of her.
“Yes--the will of eighteen hundred and seventy-one--nearly eight years
ago--drawn out when your sister was in full possession of her empire
over your late father, Miss Tredgold.”
“Yes,” said Katherine, but this time without any interrogation. She had
a vague recollection of that will, of Mr. Sturgeon’s visit to the house,
and the far-off sound of stormy interviews between her father and his
solicitor, of which the girls in their careless fashion, and especially
Stella, had made a joke.
“You probably don’t take in the full significance of what I say.”
“No,” said Katherine with a smile, “I don’t think that I do.”
“I protested against it at the time. I simply cannot comprehend it now.
It is almost impossible to imagine that in present circumstances he
could have intended it to stand; but here it is, and nothing else. Miss
Tredgold, by this will the whole of your father’s property is left over
your head to your younger sister.”
“To Stella!” she cried, with a sudden glow of pleasure, clapping her
hands. The men about sat and stared at her, Mr. Turny in such
consternation that his jaw dropped as he gazed. Bob Tredgold was by
this time beyond speech, glaring into empty space over the bag in his
arms.
Then something, whether in her mind or out of it, suggested by the faces
round her struck Katherine with a little chill. She looked round upon
them again, and she was dimly aware that someone behind her, who could
only be Dr. Burnet, made a step forward and stood behind her chair. Then
she drew a long breath. “I am not sure that I understand yet. I am glad
Stella has it--oh, very glad! But do you mean that I--am left out? Do
you mean---- I am afraid,” she said, after a pause, with a little gasp,
“that is not quite just. Do you mean really everything--_every_thing,
Mr. Sturgeon?”
“Everything. There is, of course, your mother’s money, which no one can
touch, and there is a small piece of land--to build yourself a cottage
on, which was all you would want, he said.”
Katherine sat silent a little after this. Her first thought was that she
was balked then altogether in her first personal wish, the great delight
and triumph of setting Stella right and restoring to her her just share
in the inheritance. This great disappointment struck her at once, and
almost brought the tears to her eyes. Stella would now have it all of
her own right, and would never know, or at least believe, what had been
Katherine’s loving intention. She felt this blow. In a moment she
realised that Stella would not believe it--that she would think any
assertion to that effect to be a figment, and remained fully assured
that her sister would have kept everything to herself if she had had the
power. And this hurt Katherine beyond expression. She would have liked
to have had that power! Afterwards there came into her mind a vague
sense of old injustice and unkindness to herself, the contemptuous
speech about the cottage, and that this was all she would want. Her
father thought so; he had thought so always, and so had Stella. It never
occurred to Katherine that Stella would be anxious to do her justice, as
she would have done to Stella. That was an idea that never entered her
mind at all. She was thrown back eight years ago to the time when she
lived habitually in the cold shade. After all, was not that the one
thing that she had been certain of all her life? Was it not a spell
which had never been broken, which never could be broken? She murmured
to herself dully: “A cottage--which was all I should want.”
“I said to your father at the time everything that could be said.” Mr.
Sturgeon wanted to show his sympathy, but he felt that, thoroughly as
everybody present must be persuaded that old Tredgold was an old beast,
it would not do to say so in his own house on his funeral day.
The other executor said nothing except “Tchich, tchich!” but he wiped
his bald head with his handkerchief and internally thanked everything
that he knew in the place of God--that dark power called Providence and
other such--that Katherine Tredgold had refused to have anything to say
to his Fred. Dr. Burnet was not visible at all to Katherine except in a
long mirror opposite, where he appeared like a shadow behind her chair.
“And this poor man,” said Katherine, looking towards poor Bob Tredgold,
with his staring eyes; “is there nothing for him?”
“Not a penny. I could have told you that; I have told him that often
enough. I’ve known him from a boy. He shall keep his corner in my office
all the same. I didn’t put him there, though he thinks so, for his
brother’s sake.”
“He shall have a home in the cottage--when it is built,” said Katherine,
with a curious smile; and then she became aware that in both these
promises, the lawyer’s and her own, there was a bitter tone--an
unexpressed contempt for the man who was her father, and who had been
laid in his grave that day.
“I hope,” she said, “this is all that is necessary to-day; and may I
now, if you will not think it ungracious, bid you good-bye? I shall
understand it all better when I have a little time to think.”
She paused, however, again after she had shaken hands with them. “There
is still one thing. I am going to meet my sister when she arrives. May I
have the--the happiness of telling her? I had meant to give her half,
and it is a little disappointment; but I should like at least to carry
the news. Thanks; you must address to her here. Of course she will come
at once here, to her own home.”
She scarcely knew whose arm it was that was offered to her, but took it
mechanically and went out, not quite clear as to where she was going, in
the giddiness of the great change.
“This is a strange hearing,” Dr. Burnet said.
“How kind of you to stand by me! Yes, it is strange; and I was pleasing
myself with the idea of giving back the house and her share of
everything besides to Stella. I should have liked to do that.”
“It is to be hoped,” he said, “that she will do the same by you.”
“Oh, no!” she cried with a half laugh, “that’s impossible.” Then, after
a pause, “you know there’s a husband and children to be thought of. And
what I will have is really quite enough for me.”
“There is one thing at your disposal as you please,” he said in a low
voice. “I have not changed, Katherine, all these years.”
“Dr. Burnet! It makes one’s heart glad that you are so good a man!”
“Make _me_ glad, that will be better,” he said.
Katherine shook her head but said nothing. And human nature is so
strange that Dr. Burnet, after making this profession of devotion, which
was genuine enough, did not feel so sorry as he ought to have done that
she still shook her head as she disappeared up the great stairs.
Katherine went into her room a very different woman from the Katherine
who had left it not half-an-hour before. Then she had entertained no
doubt that this was her own house in which she was, this her own room,
where in all probability she would live all her life. She had intended
that Stella should have the house, and yet that there should always be a
nook for herself in which the giver of the whole, half by right and
wholly by love, should remain, something more than a guest. Would
Stella think like that now that the tables were turned, that it was
Katherine who had nothing and she all? Katherine did not for a moment
imagine that this would be the case. Without questioning herself on the
subject, she unconsciously proved how little confidence she had in
Stella by putting away from her mind all idea of remaining here. She had
no home; she would have no home unless or until the cottage was built
for which her father had in mockery, not in kindness, left her the site.
She looked round upon all the familiar things which had been about her
all her life; already the place had taken another aspect to her. It was
not hers any longer, it was a room in her sister’s house. She wondered
whether Stella would let her take her favourite things--a certain little
cabinet, a writing table, some of the pictures. But she did not feel any
confidence that Stella would allow her to do so. Stella liked to have a
house nicely furnished, not to see gaps in the furniture. That was a
small matter, but it was characteristic of the view which Katherine
instinctively took of the whole situation. And it would be vain to say
that it did not affect her. It affected her strongly, but not as the
sudden deprivation of all things might be supposed to affect a sensitive
mind. She had no anticipation of any catastrophe of the kind, and yet
now that it had come she did not feel that she was unprepared for it. It
was not a thing which her mind rejected as impossible, which her heart
struggled against. Now that it had happened, it fitted in well enough to
the life that had gone before.
Her father had never cared for her, and he had loved Stella. Stella was
the one to whom everything naturally came. Poor Stella had been
unnaturally depressed, thrown out of her triumphant place for these six
years; but her father, even when he had uttered that calm execration
which had so shaken Katherine’s nerves but never his, had not meant any
harm to Stella. He had not been able to do anything against her.
Katherine remembered to have seen him seated at his bureau with that
large blue envelope in his hand. This showed that he had taken the
matter into consideration; but it had not proved possible for him to
disinherit Stella--a thing which everybody concluded had been done as
soon as she left him. Katherine remembered vaguely even that she had
seen him chuckling over that document, locking it up in his drawer as if
there was some private jest of his own involved. It was the kind of jest
to please Mr. Tredgold. The idea of such a discovery, of the one sister
who was sure being disappointed, and the other who expected nothing
being raised to the heights of triumph, all by nothing more than a
scratch of his pen, was sure to please him. She could almost hear him
chuckling again at her own sudden and complete overthrow. When she came
thus far Katherine stopped herself suddenly with a quick flush and sense
of guilt. She would not consciously blame her father, but she retained
the impression on her mind of his chuckle over her discomfiture.
Thus it will be seen that Katherine’s pain in the strange change was
reduced by the fact that there was no injured love to feel the smart.
She recognised that it was quite a thing that had been likely, though
she had not thought of it before, that it was a thing that other people
would recognise as likely when they heard of it. Nobody, she said to
herself, would be very much surprised. It was unnatural, now she came to
think of it, that she should have had even for a moment the upper hand
and the extreme gratification, not to say superiority, of restoring
Stella. Perhaps it was rather a mean thing to have desired it--to have
wished to lay Stella under such an obligation, and to secure for herself
that blessedness of giving which everybody recognised. Her mind turned
with a sudden impulse of shame to this wish, that had been so strong in
it. Everybody likes to give; it is a selfish sort of pleasure. You feel
yourself for the moment a good genius, a sort of providence, uplifted
above the person, whoever it may be, upon whom you bestow your bounty.
He or she has the inferior position, and probably does not like it at
all. Stella was too careless, too ready to grasp whatever she could get,
to feel this very strongly; but even Stella, instead of loving her
sister the better for hastening to her with her hands full, might have
resented the fact that she owed to Katherine’s gift what ought to have
been hers by right. It was perhaps a poor thing after all. Katherine
began to convince herself that it was a poor thing--to have wished to do
that. Far better that Stella should have what she had a right to by her
own right and not through any gift.
Then Katherine began to try to take back the thread of the thoughts
which had been in her mind before she was called downstairs to speak to
those men. Her first trial resulted merely in a strong sensation of
dislike to “those men” and resentment, which was absurd, for, after all,
it was not they who had done it. She recalled them to her mind, or
rather the image of them came into it, with a feeling of angry
displeasure. Mr. Sturgeon, the solicitor, had in no way been offensive
to Katherine. He had been indignant, he had been sorry, he had been, in
fact, on her side; but she gave him no credit for that. And the bald
head of the other seemed to her to have a sort of twinkle as of mockery
in it, though, to tell the truth, poor Mr. Turny’s face underneath was
much troubled and almost ashamed to look at Katherine after being
instrumental in doing her so much harm. She wondered with an intuitive
perception whether he were not very glad now that she had refused Fred.
And then with a leap her mind went back to other things. Would they all
be very glad now? Would the Rector piously thank heaven, which for his
good had subjected him to so small a pang, by way of saving him later
from so great a disappointment? Would the doctor be glad? Even though he
had made that very nice speech to her--that generous and faithful
profession of attachment still--must not the doctor, too, be a little
glad? And then Katherine’s mind for a moment went circling back into
space, as it were--into an unknown world to which she had no clue. He
who had disappeared there, leaving no sign, would he ever hear, would he
ever think, could it touch him one way or another? Probably it would not
touch him in any way. He might be married to some woman; he might have a
family of children round him. He might say, “Oh, the Tredgolds! I used
to see a good deal of them. And so Lady Somers has the money after all?
I always thought that was how it would end.” And perhaps he would be
glad, too, that Katherine, who was the unlucky one, the one always left
in the cold shade, whatever happened, had never been anything more to
him than a passing fancy--a figure flitting by as in a dream.