Katherine had put herself unconsciously in her usual place at the head
of the luncheon table before Stella came downstairs. At the other end
was Sir Charles with little Job, set up on a pile of cushions beside
him.
“Don’t wait for Stella, she’s always late,” said Somers, helping his son
from the dish before him; but at this moment Stella, rustling in a
coloured dress, came briskly in.
“Oh, I say, Kate, let me have my proper place,” she said; “you can’t sit
down with Charlie opposite, it’s not decent. And oh the funny old room!
Did you ever see such a rococo house, Charlie, all gilding and ornament?
Poor papa could never have anything grand enough according to his views.
We must have it all pulled to pieces, I couldn’t live in such a place.
Eh? why, Kate, you don’t pretend you like it, you who always made a
fuss.”
Katherine had transferred herself to a seat at the side of the table,
not without a quick sensation of self-reproach and that inevitable shame
upon being thus compelled to take a lower place which no philosophy can
get rid of. “I did not think where I was sitting,” she cried, in
instinctive apology; and then, “Let the poor house be, at least for the
first week, Stella,” she said.
“Oh, that’s all sentiment and nonsense,” cried Lady Somers. “My
experience is when you’re going to change a thing, do it directly; or
else you just settle down and grow accustomed and think no more of it.
For goodness’ sake, Charlie, don’t stuff that child with all the most
improper things! He ought to have roast mutton and rice pudding, all the
doctors say; and you are ruining his constitution, you know you are.
Why isn’t there some roast mutton, William? Oh, Harrison! why can’t you
see that there’s some roast mutton or that sort of thing, when you’ve
got to feed a little boy.”
“Me don’t like roast mutton,” cried Job, with a whine. “Me dine wid
fader; fader give Job nice tings.”
“I’ll look after you, my boy,” said Sir Charles, at one end of the
table, while Harrison at the other, with a very solemn bow, discussed
his position.
“It is not my place to horder the dinner, my lady; if your ladyship will
say what you requires, I will mention it to Mrs. Simmons.”
“It is I who am in fault, I suppose, Stella,” cried Katherine, more
angry than she could have imagined possible. “Perhaps you will see
Simmons yourself to-morrow.”
“Oh, not I!” cried Stella. “Fancy the bore of ordering dinner with an
old-fashioned English cook that would not understand a word one says.
You can do it, Charlie. Don’t give the child _pâté de foie gras_,” she
added, with a scream. “Who’s the doctor on the strength of the
establishment now, Kate? He’ll have to be called in very soon, I can
see, and the sooner Job has a bad liver attack the better, for then it
may be possible to get him properly looked after. And I must have an
English nurse that understands children, instead of that stupid ayah who
gives them whatever they cry for. Don’t you think it’s dreadful training
to give them whatever they cry for, Kate? You ought to know about
children, living all this while at home and never marrying or anything.
You must have gone in for charity or nursing, or Churchy things, having
nothing to do. Oh, I wish you would take Job in hand! He minds nobody
but his father, and his father stuffs him with everything he oughtn’t to
have, and keeps him up half the night. One of these days he’ll have such
a liver attack that it will cut him off, Charlie; and then you will have
the satisfaction of feeling that it’s you that have killed him, and you
will not be able to say I haven’t warned you hundreds of times.”
“We’ve not come to any harm as yet, have we, Job?” said the father,
placing clandestinely another objectionable morsel on the child’s plate.
“No, fader. Job not dut off yet,” cried, in his little shrill voice, the
unfortunate small boy.
In this babble the rest of the mid-day meal was carried on, Stella’s
voice flowing like the principal part of the entertainment, interrupted
now and then by a bass note from her husband or a little cry from her
child, with a question to a servant and the respectful answer in an
aside now and then. Katherine sat quite silent listening, not so much
from intention as that there was no room for her to put in a word, and
no apparent need for any explanation or intervention. The Somerses took
calm possession, unsurprised, undisturbed by any question of right or
wrong, of kindness or unkindness. Nor did Katherine blame them; she felt
that they would have done exactly the same had the house and all that
was in it been hers, and the real circumstances of the case made it more
bearable and took away many embarrassments. She went out to drive with
Stella in the afternoon, Sir Charles accompanying them that he might see
whether the carriage horses were fit for his wife’s use. Stella had been
partly covered with Katherine’s garments to make her presentable, and
the little crape bonnet perched upon her fuzzy fair hair was happily
very becoming, and satisfied her as to her own appearance. “Mourning’s
not so very bad, after all,” she said, “especially when you are very
fair. You are a little too dark to look nice in it, Kate. I shouldn’t
advise you to wear crape long. It isn’t at all necessary; the rule now
is crape three months, black six, and then you can go into greys and
mauves. Mauve’s a lovely colour. It is just as bright as pink, though
it’s mourning; and it suits me down to the ground--I am so fair, don’t
you know.”
“These brutes will never do,” said Sir Charles. “Is this the pace you
have been going, Miss Kate? Stella will not stand it, that’s clear. Not
a likely person to nod along like a hearse or an old dowager, is
she?--and cost just as much, the old fat brutes, as a proper turn-out.”
“It’s the same old landau, I declare,” cried Stella, “that we used to
cram with people for picnics and dances and things. Mine was the
victoria. Have you kept the victoria all the time, Kate? Jervis made it
spin along I can tell you. And the little brougham I used to run about
in, that took us down to the yacht, don’t you remember, Charlie, that
last night; me in my wedding dress, though nobody suspected it--that is,
nobody but those that knew. What a lot there were, though,” cried
Stella, with a laugh, “that knew!--and what a dreadful bore, Kate, when
you would insist upon coming with me, and everybody guessing and
wondering how we’d get out of it. We did get out of it capitally, didn’t
we, all owing to my presence of mind.”
“All’s well that ends well,” said Sir Charles. “We’ve both had a deuced
lot of doubts on that question--between times. Miss Kate, would you mind
telling me what kind of a figure it is, this fortune that Stella is
supposed to have come into? Hang me if I know; it might be hundreds or
it might be thousands. You see I’m a disinterested sort of fellow,” he
said, with an uneasy laugh.
“The lawyer said,” Katherine explained, “that it could not be under, but
might be considerably over, fifty thousand a year.”
Sir Charles was silent for a moment and grew very red, which showed up
his sunburnt brick-red complexion like a sudden dye of crimson. He
caught his breath a little, but with an effort at an indifferent tone
repeated, “Fifty thousand pounds!”
“A year,” Katherine said.
“Well!” cried Stella, “what are you sitting there for, like a stuck pig,
staring at me? Need there have been so much fuss about it if it had been
less than that? Papa wasn’t a man to leave a few hundreds, was he? I
wonder it’s so little, for my part. By the time you’ve got that old
barrack of yours done up, and a tidy little house in town, and all our
bills paid, good gracious, it’s nothing at all, fifty thousand a year! I
hope it will turn out a great deal more, Kate. I daresay your lawyer is
the sort of person to muddle half of it away in expenses and so forth.
Who is he? Oh, old Sturgeon that used to come down sometimes. Well, he
is not up to date, I am sure. He’ll be keeping the money in dreadful
consols or something, instead of making the best of it. You can tell him
that I shan’t stand that sort of thing. It shall be made the best of if
it is going to belong to me.”
“And what have you, Miss Kate?” said her brother-in-law, “to balance
this fine fortune of Stella’s--for it is a fine fortune, and she knows
nothing about it, with her chatter.”
“Oh, I know nothing about it; don’t I?” said Stella. “Papa didn’t think
so. He said I had a capital head for money, and that I was a chip of the
old block, and all that sort of thing. What has Kate got? Oh, she’s got
money of her own. I used to envy her so when we were girls. I had a deal
more than she had, for papa was always silly about me--dresses and
jewels and so forth that I had no business to have at that age; but Kate
had money of her own. I could always get plenty from papa, but she had
it of her own; don’t you remember, Kate? I always wished to be you; I
thought that it was a shame that you should have all that left to you
and me nothing. And if you come to that, so it was, for mamma was my
mother as well as Kate’s, and she had no business to leave her money to
one of us and take no notice of me.”
“We are quits now, at all events, Stella,” said Katherine, with the best
sort of a smile which she could call up on her face.
“Quits! I don’t think so at all,” cried Stella, “for you have had it and
I have been kept out of it for years and years. Quits, indeed; no, I’m
sure I don’t think so. I have always envied you for having mamma’s money
since I was twelve years old. I don’t deny I had more from papa; but
then it wasn’t mine. And now I have everything from papa, which is the
least he could do, having kept me out of it for so long; but not a penny
from my mother, which isn’t justice, seeing I am quite as much her child
as you.”
“Shut up, Stella!” said Sir Charles, in his moustache.
“Why should I shut up? It’s quite true that Katherine has had it since
she was fifteen; that’s--let me see--fourteen years, nearly the half of
her life, and no expenses to speak of. There must be thousands and
thousands in the bank, and so little to do with it. She’s richer than we
are, when all is said.”
“Stella, you must remember,” cried Katherine excitedly in spite of
herself, “that the money in the bank was always----”
“Oh, I knew you would say that,” cried Stella, in an aggrieved tone;
“you’ve lent it to me, haven’t you? Though not so very much of it, and
of course you will get it back. Oh, don’t be afraid, you will get it
back! It will be put among the other bills, and it will be paid with the
rest. I would rather be in debt to Louise or any one than to a sister
who is always thinking about what she has lent me. And it is not so very
much, either; you used to dole it out to me a hundred at a time, or even
fifty at a time, as if it were a great favour, while all the time you
were enjoying papa’s money, which by law was mine. I don’t think very
much of favours like that.”
“I hope, Miss Tredgold,” said Sir Charles, lifting his hat, “that after
this very great injustice, as it seems to me, you will at least make
your home with us, and see if--if we can’t come to any arrangement. I
suppose it’s true that ladies alone don’t want very much, not like a
family--or--or two careless spendthrift sort of people like Stella and
me, but----”
“Well, of course,” cried Stella, “I hope, Kate, you’ll pay us a visit
when--whenever you like, in short. I don’t say make your home with us,
as Charlie says, for I know you wouldn’t like it, and it’s a mistake, I
think, for relations to live together. You know yourself, it never
works. Charlie, do hold your tongue and let me speak. I know all about
it a great deal better than you do. To have us to fall back upon when
she wants it, to be able to write and say, take me in--which, of course,
I should always do if it were possible--that is the thing that would
suit Kate. Of course you will have rooms of your own somewhere. I
shouldn’t advise a house, for that is such a bother with servants and
things, and runs away with such a lot of money, but---- Oh, I declare,
there is the Midge, with the two old cats! Shall we have to stop and
speak if they see us? I am not going to do that. I heard of papa’s death
only yesterday, and I am not fit to speak to anybody as yet,” she cried,
pulling over her face the crape veil which depended from her bonnet
behind. And the two old ladies in the Midge were much impressed by the
spectacle of Stella driving out with her husband and her sister, and
covered with a crape veil, on the day after her return. “Poor thing,”
they said, “Katherine has made her come out to take the air; but she has
a great deal of feeling, and it has been a great shock to her. Did you
see how she was covered with that great veil? Stella was a little thing
that I never quite approved of, but she had a feeling heart.”
Katherine was a little sick at heart with all the talk, with Stella’s
rattle running through everything, with the fulfilment of all her fears,
and the small ground for hope of any nobler thoughts. She was quite
decided never under any circumstances to take anything from her sister.
That from the first moment had been impossible. She had seen the whole
position very clearly, and made up her mind without a doubt or
hesitation. She was herself perfectly well provided for, she had said to
herself, she had no reason to complain; and she had known all along how
Stella would take it, exactly as she did, and all that would follow. But
a thing seldom happens exactly as you believe it will happen; and the
extreme ease with which this revolution had taken place, the absence of
excitement, of surprise, even of exultation, had the most curious effect
upon her. She was confounded by Stella’s calm, and yet she knew that
Stella would be calm. Nothing could be more like Stella than her
conviction that she herself, instead of being extraordinarily favoured,
was on the whole rather an injured person when all was said and done.
The whole of this had been in Katherine’s anticipations of the crisis.
And yet she was as bitterly disappointed as if she had not known Stella,
and as if her sister had been her ideal, and she had thought her
capable of nothing that was not lofty and noble. A visionary has always
that hope in her heart. It is always possible that in any new emergency
a spirit nobler and better than of old may be brought out.
Katherine stole out in the early twilight to her favourite walk. The sea
was misty, lost in a great incertitude, a suffusion of blueness upon the
verge of the sand below, but all besides mist in which nothing could be
distinguished. The horizon was blurred all round, so that no one could
see what was there, though overhead there was a bit of sky clear enough.
The hour just melting out of day into night, the mild great world of
space, in which lay hidden the unseen sea and the sky, were soothing
influences, and she felt her involuntary anger, her unwilling
disappointment, die away. She forgot that there was any harm done. She
only remembered that Stella was here with her children, and that it was
so natural to have her in her own home. The long windows of the
drawing-room were full of light, so were those of Stella’s bedroom, and
a number of occupied rooms shining out into the dimness. It was perhaps
_rococo_, as they said, but it was warm and bright. Katherine had got
herself very well in hand before she heard a step near her on the
gravel, and looking up saw that her brother-in-law was approaching. She
had not been much in charity with Sir Charles Somers before, but he had
not shown badly in these curious scenes. He had made some surprised
exclamations, he had exhibited some kind of interest in herself.
Katherine was very lonely, and anxious to think well of someone. She was
almost glad to see him, and went towards him with something like
pleasure.
“I have come to bring you in,” he said; “Stella fears that you will
catch cold. She says it is very damp, even on the top of the cliff.”
“I don’t think I shall take cold; but I will gladly go in if Stella
wants me,” said Katherine; then, as Somers turned with her at the end of
her promenade, she said: “The house is _rococo_, I know; but I do hope
you will like it a little and sometimes live in it, for the sake of our
youth which was passed here.”
“You don’t seem to think where you are to live yourself,” he said
hurriedly. “I think more of that. We seem to be putting you out of
everything. Shouldn’t you like it for yourself? You have more
associations with it than anyone I wish you would say you would like to
have it--for yourself----”
“Oh, no,” said Katherine, “not for the world. I couldn’t keep it up, and
I should not like to have it--not for the world.”
“I am afraid all this is dreadfully unjust. There should be
a--partition, there should be some arrangement. It isn’t fair. You were
always with the old man, and nursed him, and took care of him, and all
that----”
“No,” said Katherine; “my father was a little peculiar--he liked to have
the nurse who was paid, as he said, for that. I have not any claim on
that ground. And then I have always had my own money, as Stella told
you. I am much obliged to you, but you really do not need to trouble
yourself about me.”
“Are you really sure that is so?” he said in a tone between doubt and
relief. Then he looked round, shivering a little at the mist, and said
that Stella was looking for her sister, and that he thought it would be
much more comfortable if they went in to tea.