Katharine had no anxiety about the future, and it seemed to her that she
had managed matters in the wisest and most satisfactory manner possible.
She had provided, as she thought, against the possibility of any
subsequent interference with her marriage in case she should see fit to
take the step of which she had spoken. The combination seemed perfect,
and even a sensible person, taking into consideration all the
circumstances, might have found something to say in favour of a marriage
which should not be generally discussed. Ralston and Katharine, though
not rich, were decidedly prominent young people in their own society,
and their goings and comings interested the gossips and furnished food
for conversation. There were many reasons for this. Neither of them was
exactly like the average young person in the world. But the great name
of Lauderdale, which was such a real power in the financial world,
contributed most largely to the result. Every one who bore it, or who
was as closely connected with it as the Ralstons, was more or less
before the public. Most of the society paragraph writers in the
newspapers spoke of the family, collectively and individually, as often
as they could find anything to say about it, and as a general rule the
tone of their remarks was subdued and laudatory, and betrayed something
very like awe. The presence of the Lauderdales and the Ralstons was
taken for granted in all accounts of big parties, first nights at the
opera and Daly’s, and of other similar occasions. From time to time a
newspaper man in a fit of statistics calculated how many dollars of
income accrued to Robert Lauderdale at every minute, and proceeded to
show how much each member of the family would have if it were all
equally divided. As Robert the Rich had made his money in real estate,
and his name never appeared in connection with operations in Wall
Street, he was therefore not periodically assailed by the wrathful
chorus of the sold and ruined, abusing him and his people to the
youngest of the living generation, an ordeal with which the great
speculators are familiar. But from time to time the daily papers
published wood-cuts supposed to be portraits of him and his connections,
and the obituary notice of him--which was, of course, kept ready in
every newspaper office--would have given even the old gentleman himself
some satisfaction. The only member of the family who suffered at all for
being connected with him was Benjamin Slayback, the member of Congress.
If he ever dared to hint at any measure implying expenditure on the part
of the country, he was promptly informed by some Honourable Member on
the other side, that it was all very well for him to be reckless, with
the whole Lauderdale fortune at his back, but that ordinary mortals had
to content themselves with ordinary possibilities. The member from
California called him the Eastern Crœsus, and the member from
Massachusetts called him the Western Millionaire, and the member from
Missouri quoted Scripture at him, while the Social-Democrat member from
Somewhere--there was one at that time, and he was a little curiosity in
his way--called him a Capitalist, than which epithet the
social-democratic dictionary contains none more biting and more
offensive in the opinion of its compilers. Altogether, at such times the
Honourable Slayback of Nevada had a very bad quarter of an hour because
he had married Charlotte Lauderdale,--penniless but a Lauderdale, very
inadequately fitted out for a bride, though she was the grand-niece of
Robert the Rich. Slayback of Nevada, however, had a certain rough
dignity of his own, and never mentioned those facts. He had plenty of
money himself and did not covet any that belonged to his wife’s
relations.
“I’m not as rich as your uncle Robert,” he said to her on the day after
their marriage, “and I don’t count on being. But you can have all you
want. There’s enough to go round, now. Maybe you wouldn’t like to be
bothering me all the while for little things? Yes, that’s natural; so
I’ll just put something up to your credit at Riggs’s and you can have a
cheque-book. When you’ve got through it, tell Riggs to let me know. You
might be shy of telling me.”
And Benjamin Slayback smiled in a kindly fashion not at all familiar to
his men friends, and on the following day Charlotte received a notice
from the bank to the effect that ten thousand dollars stood to her
credit. Never having had any money of her own, the sum seemed a fortune
to her, and she showed herself properly grateful, and forgave Benjamin a
multitude of small sins, even such as having once worn a white satin tie
in the evening, and at the opera, of all places.
Katharine was perfectly well aware that the smallest actions of her
family were subjects for public discussion, and she knew how people
would talk if it were ever discovered that she had been secretly married
to John Ralston. On the other hand, the rest of the Lauderdales were in
the same position, and would be quite willing, when they were acquainted
with the facts, to say that the marriage had been a private one, leaving
it to be supposed that they had known all about it from the first. She
had no anxiety for the future, therefore, and believed that she was
acting with her eyes open to all conceivable contingencies and
possibilities. Matters were not, indeed, finally settled, for even after
she was married she would still have the interview with her uncle to
face; but she felt sure of the result. It was so easy for him to do
exactly what he pleased, as it seemed to her, to make or unmake men’s
fortunes at his will, as she could tie and untie a bit of string.
And her confidence in Ralston was boundless. Considering his capacities,
as they appeared to her, his failure to do anything for himself in the
two positions which had been offered to him was not to be considered a
failure at all. He was a man of action, and he was an exceptionally
well-educated man. How could he ever be expected to do an ordinary
clerk’s work? It was absurd to suppose that he could change his whole
character at a moment’s notice, and it was an insult to expect that he
should change it at all. It was a splendid nature, she thought,
generous, energetic, brave, averse to mean details, of course, as such
natures must be, impatient of control, independent and dominating. There
was much to admire in Ralston, she believed, even if she had not loved
him. And perhaps she was right, from her point of view. Of his chief
fault she really knew nothing. The little she had heard of his being
wild, as it is called, rather attracted than repelled her. She despised
men whom she looked upon as ‘duffers’ and ‘muffs.’ Even her father,
whose peculiarities were hard to bear, was manly in his way. He had been
good at sports in his youth, he was a good rider, and could be trusted
with horses that did not belong to him, which was fortunate, as he had
never possessed any of his own; he was a good shot, as she had often
heard, and he periodically disappeared upon solitary salmon-fishing
expeditions on the borders of Canada. For he was a strong man and a
tough man, and needed much bodily exercise. The only real ‘muff’ there
had ever been in the family Katharine considered to be her grandfather,
the philanthropist, and he was so old that it did not matter much. But
the tales he told of his studious youth disgusted her, for some occult
reason. All the other male relations were manly fellows, even to little
Frank Miner, who was as full of fight as a cock-sparrow, in spite of his
diminutive stature. Benjamin Slayback, too, was eminently manly, in an
awkward, constrained fashion. Hamilton Bright was an athlete. And John
Ralston could do all the things which the others could do, and did most
things a trifle better, with a certain finished ‘style’ which other men
envied. He was eminently the kind of man whose acquaintances at the club
will back for money in every contest requiring skill and strength.
It was no wonder that Katharine admired him. But she told herself that
her admiration had nothing to do with her love. There was much more in
him than the world knew of, and she was quite sure of it. Her ideals
were high, and Ralston fulfilled most of them. She always fancied that
there was something knightly about him, and it appealed to her more than
any other characteristic.
She felt that he could be intimate without ever becoming familiar. There
is more in that idea than appears at first sight, and the distinction is
not one of words. Up to a certain point she was quite right in making
it, for he was naturally courtly, as well as ordinarily courteous, and
yet without exaggeration. He did certain things which few other men did,
and which she liked. He walked on her left side, for instance, whenever
it was possible, if they chanced to be together in the street. She had
never spoken of it to him, but she had read, in some old book on court
manners, that it was right a hundred years ago, and she was pleased.
They had been children together, and yet almost since she could remember
he had always opened the door for her when she left a room. And not for
her only, but for every woman. If she and her mother were together when
they met him, he always spoke to her mother first. If they got into a
carriage he expected to sit on the left side, even if he had to leave
the pavement and go to the other door to get in. He never spoke of her
simply as ‘Katharine’ if he had to mention her name in her presence to
any one not a member of the family. He said ‘my cousin Katharine,’ or
‘Miss Lauderdale,’ according to circumstances.
They were little things, all of them, but by no means absurd in her
estimation, and he would continue to do them all his life. She supposed
that his mother had taught him the usages of courtesy when he had been a
boy, but they were a part of himself now. How many men, thought
Katharine, who believed themselves ‘perfect gentlemen,’ and who were
undeniably gentlemen in every essential, were wholly lacking in these
small matters! How many would have called such things old-fashioned
nonsense, who had never so much as noticed that Ralston did them all,
because he did them unobtrusively, and because, in reality, most of them
are founded on perfectly logical principles, and originally had nothing
but the convenience of society for their object. Katharine had thought
it out. For instance, most men, being right-handed, have the more
skilful hand and the stronger arm on the lady’s side, with which to
render her any assistance she may need, if they find themselves on her
left. There was never any affectation of fashion about really good
manners, Katharine believed, and everything appertaining thereto had a
solid foundation in usefulness. During Slayback’s courtship of her
sister she had found numberless opportunities of contrasting what she
called the social efficiency of the man who knew exactly what to do with
the inefficiency of him who did not; and, on a more limited scale, she
found such opportunities daily when she saw Ralston together with other
men.
He had a very high standard of honour, too. Many men had that, and all
whom she knew were supposed to have it, but there were few whom she felt
that she could never possibly suspect of some little meanness. That was
another step to the pedestal on which she had set up her ideal.
But perhaps one of the chief points which appealed to her sympathy was
Ralston’s breadth of view, or absence of narrowness. He had spoken the
strict truth that evening when he had said that he never laughed at any
one’s religion, and, next to love, religion was at that time uppermost
in Katharine Lauderdale’s mind. At her present stage of development
everything she did, saw, read and heard bore upon one or the other, or
both, which was not surprising considering the atmosphere in which she
had grown up.
Alexander Junior had never made but one sacrifice for his wife, and that
had been of a negative description. He had forgiven her for being a
Roman Catholic, and had agreed never to mention the subject; and he had
kept his word, as indeed he always did on the very rare occasions when
he could be induced to give it. It is needless to say that he had made a
virtue of his conduct in this respect, for he systematically made the
most of everything in himself which could be construed into a virtue at
all. But at all events he had never broken his promise. In the days when
he had married Emma Camperdown there had been little or no difficulty
about marriages between Catholics and members of other churches, and it
had been understood that his children were to be brought up
Presbyterians, though nothing had been openly said about it. His bride
had been young, beautiful and enthusiastic, and she had believed in her
heart that before very long she could effect her husband’s conversion,
little dreaming of the rigid nature with which she should have to deal.
It would have been as easy to make a Roman Catholic of Oliver Cromwell,
as Mrs. Lauderdale soon discovered to her sorrow. He did not even
consider that she had any right to talk of religion to her children.
Charlotte Lauderdale grew up in perfect indifference. Her mind developed
young, but not far. In her childhood she was a favourite of old Mrs.
Lauderdale,--formerly a Miss Mainwaring, of English extraction, and the
mother of Mrs. Ralston,--and the old lady had taught her that
Presbyterians were no better than atheists, and that Roman Catholics
were idolaters, so that the only salvation lay in the Episcopal Church.
The lesson had entered deep into the girl’s heart, and she had grown up
laughing at all three; but on coming to years of discretion she went to
an Episcopal church because most of her friends did. She enjoyed the
weekly fray with her father, whom she hated for his own sake in the
first place, and secondly because he was poor, and she once went so far
as to make him declare, in his iron voice, that he vastly preferred
Catholics to Episcopalians,--a declaration which she ever afterwards
cast violently in his teeth when she had succeeded in drawing him into a
discussion upon articles of faith. Her mother never had the slightest
influence over her. The girl was quick-witted and believed herself
clever, was amusing and thought she was witty, was headstrong,
capricious and violent in her dislikes and was consequently convinced
that she had a very strong will. She married Slayback for three
reasons,--to escape from her family, because he was rich, and because
she believed that she could do anything she chose with him. She was not
mistaken in his wealth, and she removed herself altogether from the
sphere of the Lauderdales, but Benjamin Slayback was not at all the kind
of person she had taken him for.
Katharine was altogether different from her sister. She was more
habitually silent, and her taste was never for family war. She thought
more and read less than Charlotte, who devoured literature promiscuously
and trusted to luck to remember something of what she read. Indeed,
Katharine thought a great deal, and often reasoned correctly from
inaccurate knowledge. In a healthy way she was inclined to be
melancholic, and was given to following out serious ideas, and even to
something like religious contemplation. Everything connected with belief
in transcendental matters interested her exceedingly. She delighted in
having discussions which turned upon the supernatural, and upon such
things as seem to promise a link between the hither and the further side
of death’s boundary,--between the cis-mortal and the trans-mortal, if
the coining of such words be allowable. In this she resembled
nine-tenths of the American women of her age and surroundings. The mind
of the idle portion of American society to-day reminds one of a polypus
whose countless feelers are perpetually waving and writhing in the
fruitless attempt to catch the very smallest fragment of something from
the other side, wherewith to satisfy the mortal hunger that torments it.
There is something more than painful, something like an act of the
world’s soul-tragedy, in this all-pervading desire to know the worst, or
the best,--to know anything which shall prove that there is something
to know. There is a breathless interest in every detail of an
‘experience’ as it is related, a raising of hopes, a thrilling of the
long-ready receptivity as the point is approached; and then, when the
climax is reached and past, there is the sudden, almost agonizing
relapse into blank hopelessness. The story has been told, but nothing is
proved. We know where the door is, but before it is a screen round which
we must pass to reach it. The screen is death, as we see it. To pass it
and be within sight of the threshold is to die, as we understand death,
and there lies the boundary of possible experience, for, so far as we
know, there is no other door.
The question is undoubtedly the greatest which humanity can ask, for the
answer must be immortality or annihilation. It seems that a certain
proportion of mankind, driven to distraction by the battle of beliefs,
has actually lost the faculty of believing anything at all, and the
place where the faculty was aches, to speak familiarly.
That, at least, was how it struck Katharine Lauderdale, and it was from
this point of view that she seriously contemplated becoming a Catholic.
If she did so, she intended to accept the Church as a whole and refuse,
forever afterwards, to reopen the discussion. She never could accept it
as her mother did, for she had not been brought up in it, but there were
days when she felt that by a single act of will she could bind herself
to believe in all the essentials, and close her eyes to the existence of
the non-essentials, never to open them again. Then, she thought, she
should never have any more doubts.
But on other days she wished that there might be another way. She got
odd numbers of the proceedings of a society devoted to psychological
researches, and read with extreme avidity the accurately reported
evidence of persons who had seen or heard unusual sights or sounds,
and studied the figures illustrating the experiments in thought-transference.
Then the conviction came upon her that there must be another door
besides the door of death, and that, if she were only patient she might
be led to it or come upon it unawares. She knew far too little of even
what little there is to be known, to get any further than this vague and
not unpleasant dream, and she was conscious of her ignorance, asking
questions of every one she met who took the slightest interest in
psychical enquiries. Of course, her attempts to gain knowledge were
fruitless. If any one who is willing to be a member of civilized society
knew anything definite about what we call the future state, the whole of
civilized society would know it also in less than a month. Every one can
be quite sure of that, and no one need therefore waste time in
questioning his neighbour in the hope of learning anything certain.
There were even times when her father’s rigid and merciless view of the
soul pleased her, and was in sympathy with her slightly melancholic
temperament. The unbending, manly quality of the Presbyterian belief
attracted her by its strength--the courage a man must have to go through
life facing an almost inevitable hell for himself and the positive
certainty of irrecoverable damnation for most of those dearest to him.
If her father was in earnest, as he appeared to be, he could not have
the slightest hope that her mother could be saved. At that idea
Katharine laughed, being supposed to be a Presbyterian herself.
Nevertheless, she sometimes liked his hard sayings and doings, simply
because they were hard. Hamilton Bright had often told her that she had
a lawyer’s mind, because she could not help seeing things from opposite
sides at the same time, whereupon she always answered that though she
despised prejudices, she liked people who had them, because such persons
were generally stronger than the average. Ralston, who had not many, and
had none at all about religious matters, was the man with whom she felt
herself in the closest sympathy, a fact which went far to prove to
Bright that he was not mistaken in his judgment of her.
On the whole, in spite of the declaration she had made to Ralston,
Katharine Lauderdale’s state was sceptical, in the sense that her mind
was in a condition of suspended judgment between no less than five
points of view, the Presbyterian, the Catholic, the deistic, the
psychologic, and the materialistic. It was her misfortune that her
nature had led her to think of such matters at all, rather than to
accept some existing form of belief and to be as happy as she could be
with it from the first, as her mother had done: and though her
intelligence was good, it was as totally inadequate to grapple with such
subjects as it was well adapted to the ordinary requirements of worldly
life. But she was not to be blamed for being in a state of mind to which
her rather unusual surroundings had contributed much, and her thoughtful
temperament not a little. If anything, she was to be pitied, though the
mighty compensation of a genuine love had grown up year by year to
neutralize the elements of unhappiness which were undoubtedly present.
It is worth noticing that at this time, which opened the crucial period
of her life, she doubted her own religious convictions and her own
stability of purpose, but she did not for a moment doubt the sincerity
of her love for John Ralston, nor of his for her, as she conclusively
proved when she determined to risk her whole life in such a piece of
folly as a secret marriage.
When she came down to dinner on that memorable evening, she found her
father and mother sitting on opposite sides of the fireplace. Alexander
Junior was correctly arrayed in evening dress, and his clothes fitted
perfectly upon his magnificent figure. The keen eye of a suspicious
dandy could have detected that they were very old clothes, and Mr.
Lauderdale would not have felt at all dismayed at the discovery of the
fact. He prided himself upon wearing a coat ten years, and could tell
the precise age of every garment in his possession. He tied his ties to
perfection also, and this, too, was an economy, for such was his skill
that he could wear a white tie twice, bringing the knot into exactly the
same place a second time. Mont Blanc presented not a more spotless,
impenetrable, and unchanging front than Alexander Junior’s shirt. He had
processes of rejuvenating his shoes known to him alone, and in the old
days of evening gloves, his were systematically cleaned and rematched,
and the odd ones laid aside to replace possible torn ones in the future,
constituting a veritable survival of the fittest. Five and twenty years
of married life had not taught him that a woman could not possibly do
the same with her possessions, and he occasionally enquired why his wife
did not wear certain gowns which had been young with her daughters. He
never put on the previously mentioned white tie, however, unless some
one was coming to dinner. When the family was alone, he wore a black
one. As he was not hospitable, and did not encourage hospitality in his
wife, though he praised it extravagantly in other people, and never
refused a dinner party, the black tie was the rule at home. Black ties
last a long time.
Katharine noticed the white one this evening, and was surprised, as her
mother had not spoken to her of any guest.
“Who is coming to dinner?” she asked, looking at her father, almost as
soon as she had shut the door.
Mr. Lauderdale’s steel-grey upper lip was immediately raised in a sort
of smile which showed his large white teeth--he had defied the dentist
from his youth up, and his smile was hard and cold as an electric light.
“Ah, my dear child,” he answered in a clear, metallic voice, “I am glad
you notice things. Little things are always worth noticing. Walter
Crowdie is coming to dinner to-day. In fact, he is rather late--”
“With Hester?” asked Katharine, quickly. Hester Crowdie was Hamilton
Bright’s sister, and Katharine liked her.
“No, my dear, without Hester. We could hardly ask two people to our
every-day dinner.”
“Oh--it’s only Mr. Crowdie, then,” said Katharine in a tone of
disappointment, sitting down beside her mother.
“I hope you’ll be nice to him, Katharine,” said Mr. Lauderdale. “There
are many reasons--”
“Oh, yes! I’ll be nice to him,” answered the young girl, with a short,
quick frown that disappeared again instantly.
“I don’t like your expression, my child,” said Alexander Junior,
severely, “and I don’t like to be interrupted. Mr. Crowdie is very kind.
He wishes to paint your portrait, and he proposes to give us the study
he must make first, which will be just as good as the picture itself, I
have no doubt. Crowdie is getting a great reputation, and a picture by
him is valuable. One can’t afford to be rude to a man who makes such a
proposal.”
“No,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale as though speaking to herself. “I should
really like to have it. He is a great artist.”
“I haven’t the least intention of being rude to him,” answered
Katharine. “What does he mean to do with my portrait--with the picture
itself when he has painted it--sell it?”
“He would have a perfect right to sell it, of course--with no name. He
means to exhibit it in Paris, I believe, and then I think he intends to
give it to his wife. You always say she is a great friend of yours.”
“Oh--that’s all right, if it’s for Hester,” said Katharine. “Of course
she’s a friend of mine. Hush! I hear the bell.”
“When did Mr. Crowdie talk to you about this?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale,
addressing her husband.
“This morning--hush! Here he is.”
Alexander Junior had an almost abnormal respect for the proprieties, and
always preferred to stop talking about a person five minutes before he
or she appeared. It was a part of his excessively reticent nature.
The door opened and Walter Crowdie appeared, a pale young man with
heavy, red lips and a bad figure. His eyes alone redeemed his face from
being positively repulsive, for they were of a very beautiful blue
colour and shaded by extremely long brown lashes. A quantity of pale
hair, too long to be neat, but not so long as worn by many modern
musicians, concealed the shape of his head and grew low on his forehead.
The shape of the face, as the hair allowed it to be seen, resembled that
of a pear, wide and flaccid about the jaws and narrowing upwards towards
the temples. Crowdie’s hands were small, cushioned with fat, and of a
dead white--the fingers being very pointed and the nails long and
polished. His shoulders sloped like a woman’s, and were narrow, and he
was heavy about the waist and slightly in-kneed. He was too fashionable
to use perfumes, but one instinctively expected him to smell of musk.
Both women experienced an unpleasant sensation when he entered the room.
What Mr. Lauderdale felt it is impossible to guess, but as Katharine saw
the two shake hands she was proud of her father and of the whole manly
race from which she was descended.
Last of all the party came Alexander Senior, taking the utmost advantage
of age’s privilege to be late. Even he, within sight of his life’s end,
contrasted favourably with Walter Crowdie. He stooped, he was badly
dressed, his white tie was crooked, and there were most evident spots on
his coat; his eyes were watery, and there were wrinkles running in all
directions through the eyebrows, the wrinkles that come last of all; he
shambled a little as he walked, and he certainly smelt of tobacco smoke.
He had not been the strongest of the three old brothers, though he was
the eldest, and his faculties, if not impaired, were not what they had
been. But the skull was large and bony, the knotted and wrinkled old
hands were manly hands, and always had been, and the benevolent old grey
eyes had never had the womanish look in them which belonged to
Crowdie’s.
But the young man was quite unconscious of the unfavourable impression
he always produced upon Mrs. Lauderdale and her daughter, and his
languishing eyelids moved softly and swept his pale cheeks with their
long lashes as he looked from one to the other and shook hands.
Alexander Junior, whose sense of punctuality had almost taken offence,
rang the bell as his father entered, and a serving girl, who lived in
terror of her life, drew back the folding doors a moment later.