Katherine was restless that afternoon; there was not much to delight her
indoors, or any place where she could find refuge and sit down and rest,
or read, or write, or occupy herself in any natural way, unless it had
been in her own bedroom, and there Hannah was packing--a process which
promoted comfort as little as any of the others. This condition of the
house wounded her to the bottom of her heart. A few days, she said to
herself, could have made no difference. Stella need not have set the
workmen to work until the house at least was empty. It was a poor thing
to invite her sister to remain and then to make her home uninhabitable.
With anxious justice, indeed, she reminded herself that the house was
not uninhabitable--that she might still live in the drawing-room if she
pleased, after the screen and the pictures and the curiosities were
taken away; or in the morning-room, though the piano was packed in a
rough box; but yet, when all was said, it was not generous of Stella.
She had nowhere to sit down--nowhere to rest the sole of her foot. She
went out at last to the walk round the cliff. She had always been fond
of that, the only one in the family who cared for it. It was like a
thread upon which she had strung so many recollections--that time, long
ago, when papa had sent James Stanford away, and the many times when
Katherine, still so young, had felt herself “out of it” beside the
paramount presence of Stella, and had retired from the crowd of Stella’s
adorers to gaze out upon the view and comfort herself in the thought
that she had some one of her own who wanted not Stella, but Katherine.
And then there had been the day of Stella’s escapade, and then of
Stella’s elopement all woven round and round about the famous “view.”
Everything in her life was associated with it. That blue sky, that
shining headland with the watery sun picking it out like a cliff of
gold, the great vault of the sky circling over all, the dim horizon far
away lost in distance, in clouds and immeasurable circles of the sea.
Just now a little white sail was out as it might have been that fated
little _Stella_, the yacht which Mr. Tredgold sold after her last
escapade, and made a little money by, to his own extreme enjoyment.
Katherine walked up and down, with her eyes travelling over the familiar
prospect on which they had dwelt for the greater part of her life. She
was very lonely and forlorn; her heart was heavy and her vitality low,
she scarcely knew where she was going or what she might be doing
to-morrow. The future was to-morrow to her as it is to a child. She had
to make up her mind to come to some decision, and to-morrow she must
carry it out.
It did not surprise her at all, on turning back after she had been there
for some time, at the end of her promenade to see a figure almost by her
side, which turned out to be that of Mr. Stanford. She was not surprised
to see him. She had seen him so often, they were quite accustomed to
meet. She spoke to him quite in a friendly tone, without any start or
alarm: “You have come--to see the last of them, Mr. Stanford?” It was
not a particularly appropriate speech, for there was no one here to see
the last of, unless it had been Katherine herself; but nevertheless
these were the words that came to her lips.
“They seem to have gone very soon,” he said, which was not a brilliant
remark any more than her own.
“Immediately after lunch,” said Katherine, severely practical, “that
they might get home in good time. You must always make certain
allowances when you travel with young children. But,” she added, with a
sudden rise of colour, “I should not attempt to enlighten you on that
subject.”
“I certainly know what it is,” he said, with a grave face, “to consider
the interests of a little child.”
“I know, I know,” cried Katherine with a sudden compunction, “I should
not have said that.”
“I wish,” he said, “that you would allow me to speak to you on this
subject. No, it is not on this subject. I tried to say what was in my
heart before, but either you would not listen, or--I have a good deal to
say to you that cannot be said. I don’t know how. If I could but convey
it to you without saying it. It is only just to me that you should know.
It may be just--to another--that it should not be said.”
“Let nothing be said,” she cried anxiously; “oh, nothing--nothing! Yet
only one thing I should like you to tell me. That time we met on the
railway--do you remember?”
“Do I remember!”
“Well; I wish to know this only for my own satisfaction. Were you
married _then_?”
She stood still as she put the question in the middle of the walk; but
she did not look at him, she looked out to sea.
He answered her only after a pause of some duration, and in a voice
which was full of pain. “Are you anxious,” he said, “Katherine, to make
me out not only false to you, but false to love and to every sentiment
in the world?”
“I beg you will not think,” she cried, “that I blame you for anything.
Oh, no, no! You have never been false to me. There was never anything
between us. You were as free and independent as any man could be.”
“Let me tell you then as far as I can what happened. I came back by the
train that same afternoon when you said you were coming, and you were
not there. I hung about hoping to meet you. Then I saw our two old
friends in the Terrace--and they told me that there were other
plans--that the doctor was very kind to your father for your sake, and
that you were likely----”
Katherine waved her hand with great vivacity; she stamped her foot
slightly on the ground. What had this to do with it? It was not her
conduct that was in dispute, but his. Her meaning was so clear in her
face without words that he stopped as she desired.
“I went back to India very much cast down. I was without hope. I was at
a lonely station and very dreary. I tried to say the other day how
strongly I believed in my heart that it was better to hold for the best,
even if you could never attain it, than to try to get a kind of
makeshift happiness with a second best.”
“Mr. Stanford,” cried Katherine, with her head thrown back and her eyes
glowing, “from anything I can discern you are about to speak of a lady
of whom I know nothing; who is dead--which sums up everything; and whom
no one should dare to name, you above all, but with the most devout
respect.”
He looked at her surprised, and then bowed his head. “You are right,
Miss Katherine,” he said; “my poor little wife, it would ill become me
to speak of her with any other feeling. I told you that I had much to
tell you which could not be said----”
“Let it remain so then,” she cried with a tremble of excitement; “why
should it be discussed between you and me? It is no concern of mine.”
“It’s a great, a very great concern of mine. Katherine, I must speak;
this is the first time in which I have ever been able to speak to you,
to tell you what has been in my heart--oh, not to-day nor yesterday--for
ten long years.” She interrupted him again with the impatient gesture,
the same slight stamp on the ground. “Am I to have no hearing,” he
cried, “not even to be allowed to tell you, the first and only time that
I have had the chance?”
Katherine cleared her throat a great many times before she spoke. “I
will tell you how it looks from my point of view,” she said. “I used to
come out here many a time after you went away first, when we were told
that papa had sent you away. I was grateful to you. I thought it was
very, very fine of you to prefer me to Stella; afterwards I began to
think of you a little for yourself. The time we met made you a great
deal more real to me. It was imagination, but I thought of you often and
often when I came out here and walked about and looked at the view. The
view almost meant you--it was very vague, but it made me happy, and I
came out nearly every night. That is nearly ten years since, too; it was
nothing, and yet it was the chief I had to keep my life going upon.
Finally you come back, and the first thing you have to say to me is to
explain that, though you like me still and all that, you have been
married, you have had a child, and another life between whiles. Oh, no,
no, Mr. Stanford, that cannot be.”
“Katherine! must I not say a word in my own defence?”
“There is no defence,” she cried, “and no wrong. I am only not that kind
of woman. I am very sorry for you and the poor little child. But you
have that, it is a great deal. And I have nothing not even the view. I
am bidding farewell to the view and to all those recollections. It is
good-bye,” she said, waving her hand out to the sea, “to my youth as
well as to the cliff, and to all my visions as well as to you. Good-bye,
Mr. Stanford, good-bye. I think it is beginning to rain, and to-morrow I
am going away.”
Was this the conclusion? Was it not a conclusion at all? Next day
Katherine certainly did go away. She went to a little house at some
distance from Sliplin--a little house in the country, half-choked in
fallen leaves, where she had thought she liked the rooms and the
prospect, which was no longer that of the bay and the headland, but of
what we call a home landscape--green fields and tranquil woods, a
village church within sight, and some red-roofed cottages. Katherine’s
rooms were on the upper floor, therefore not quite on a level with the
fallen leaves. It was a most _digne_ retirement for a lady, quite the
place for Katherine, many people thought; not like rooms in a town, but
with the privacy of her own garden and nobody to interfere with her.
There was a little pony carriage in which she could drive about, with a
rough pony that went capitally, quite as well as Mr. Tredgold’s
horses--growing old under the charge of the old coachman, who never was
in a hurry--would ever go. Lady Jane, who approved so highly, was
anxious to take a great deal of notice of Katherine. She sent the landau
to fetch her when, in the first week of her retirement, Katherine went
out to Steephill to lunch. But Katherine preferred the pony chaise. She
said her rooms were delightful, and the pony the greatest diversion. The
only grievance she had, she declared, was that there was nothing to find
fault with. “Now, to be a disinherited person and to have no grievance,”
she said, “is very hard. I don’t know what is to become of me.” Lady
Jane took this in some unaccountable way as a satirical speech, and felt
aggrieved. But I cannot say why.
* * * * *
It is a great art to know when to stop when you are telling a story--the
question of a happy or a not happy ending rests so much on that. It is
supposed to be the superior way nowadays that a story should end
badly--first, as being less complete (I suppose), and, second, as being
more in accord with truth. The latter I doubt. If there was ever any
ending in human life except the final one of all (which we hope is
exactly the reverse of an ending), one would be tempted rather to say
that there are not half so many _tours de force_ in fiction as there are
in actual life, and that the very commonest thing is the god who gets
out of the machine to help the actual people round us to have their own
way. But this is not enough for the highest class of fiction, and I am
aware that a hankering after a good end is a vulgar thing. Now, the good
ending of a novel means generally that the hero and heroine should be
married and sent off with blessings upon their wedding tour. What am I
to say? I can but leave this question to time and the insight of the
reader. If it is a fine thing for a young lady to be married, it must be
a finer thing still that she should have, as people say, two strings to
her bow. There are two men within her reach who would gladly marry
Katherine, ready to take up the handkerchief should she drop it in the
most maidenly and modest way. She had no need to go out into the world
to look for them. There they are--two honest, faithful men. If Katherine
marries the doctor, James Stanford will disappear (he has a year’s
furlough), and no doubt in India will marry yet another wife and be more
or less happy. If she should marry Stanford, Dr. Burnet will feel it,
but it will not break his heart. And then the two who make up their
minds to this step will live happy--more or less--ever after. What more
is there to be said?
I think that few people quite understand, and no one that I know of,
except a little girl here and there, will quite sympathise with the
effect produced upon Katherine by her discovery of James Stanford’s
marriage. They think her jealous, they think her ridiculous, they say a
great many severe things about common-sense. A man in James Stanford’s
position, doing so well, likely to be a member of Council before he
dies, with a pension of thousands for his widow--that such a man should
be disdained because he had married, though the poor little wife was so
very discreet and died so soon, what could be more absurd? “If there had
been a family of _girls_,” Stella said, “you could understand it, for a
first wife’s girls are often a nuisance to a woman. But one boy, who
will be sent out into the world directly and do for himself and trouble
nobody----” Stella, however, always ends by saying that she never did
understand Katherine’s ways and never should, did she live a hundred
years.
This is what Stella, for her part, is extremely well inclined to do.
Somers has been filled with all the modern comforts, and it is
universally allowed to be a beautiful old house, fit for a queen.
Perhaps its present mistress does not altogether appreciate its real
beauties, but she loves the size of it, and the number of guests it can
take in, and the capacity of the hall for dances and entertainments of
all kinds. She has, too, a little house in town--small, but in the heart
of everything--which Stella instinctively and by nature is, wherever she
goes. All that is facilitated by the possession of sixty thousand a
year, yet not attained; for there are, as everybody knows, many people
with a great deal more money who beat at these charmed portals of
society and for whom there is no answer, till perhaps some needy lady of
the high world takes them up. But Stella wanted no needy lady of
quality. She scoffed at the intervention of the Dowager Lady Somers, who
would, if she could, have patronised old Tredgold’s daughter; but Lady
Somers’ set were generally old cats to Stella, and she owed her
advancement solely to herself. She is success personified--in her house,
in her dress, in society, with her husband and all her friends. Little
whining Job was perhaps the only individual of all her surroundings who
retained a feeling of hostility as time went on against young Lady
Somers. Her sister has forgiven her freely, if there was anything to
forgive, and Sir Charles is quite aware that he has nothing to forgive,
and reposes serenely upon that thought, indifferent to flirtations, that
are light as air and mean nothing. Lady Somers is a woman upon whose
stainless name not a breath of malice has ever been blown, but Job does
not care for his mother. It is a pity, though it does not disturb her
much, and it is not easy to tell the reason--perhaps because she branded
him in his infancy with the name which sticks to him still. Such a name
does no harm in these days of nicknames, but it has, I believe, always
rankled in the boy’s heart.
On the other hand, there is a great friendship still between Job and his
father, and he does not dislike his aunt. But this is looking further
afield than our story calls upon us to look. It is impossible that
Katherine can remain very long in a half rural, half suburban cottage in
the environs of Sliplin, with no diversion but the little pony carriage
and the visits of the Midge and occasionally of Lady Jane. The piece of
land which Mr. Sturgeon sold for her brought in a pleasant addition to
her income, and she would have liked to have gone abroad and to have
done many things; but what can be done, after all, by a lady and her
maid, even upon five hundred pounds a year?
THE END