The conversation at dinner did not begin brilliantly. Mrs. Lauderdale
was tired, and Katharine was preoccupied; as was natural, old Mr.
Lauderdale was not easily moved to talk except upon his favourite hobby,
and Alexander Junior was solemnly and ferociously hungry, as many strong
men are at regular hours. As for Crowdie, he always felt a little out of
his element amongst his wife’s relations, of whom he stood somewhat in
awe, and he was more observant than communicative at first. Katharine
avoided looking at him, which she could easily do, as she sat between
him and her father. As usual, it was her mother who made the first
effort to talk.
“How is Hester?” she asked, looking across at Crowdie.
“Oh, very well, thanks,” he answered, absently. “Oh, yes,--she’s very
well, thank you,” he added, repeating the answer with a little change
and more animation. “She had a cold last week, but she’s got over it.”
“It was dreadful weather,” said Katharine, helping her mother to stir
the silence. “All grandpapa’s idiots had the grippe.”
“All Mr. Lauderdale’s what?” asked Crowdie. “I didn’t quite catch--”
“The idiots--the asylum, you know.”
“Oh, yes--I remember,” said the young man, and his broad red lips
smiled.
Alexander Senior, whose hand shook a little, had eaten his soup with
considerable success. He glanced from Katharine to the young artist, and
there was a twinkle of amusement in the kindly old eyes.
“Katharine always laughs at the idiots, and talks as though they were my
personal property.” His voice was deep and almost musical still--it had
been a very gentle voice in his youth.
“Not a very valuable property,” observed Alexander Junior, fixing his
eye severely on the serving girl, who forthwith sprang at Mrs.
Lauderdale’s empty plate as though her life depended on taking it away
in time.
The Lauderdales had never kept a man-servant. The girl was a handsome
Canadian, very smart in black and white.
“Wouldn’t it be rather an idea to insure all their lives, and make the
insurance pay the expenses of the asylum?” enquired Crowdie, gravely
looking at Alexander Junior.
“Not very practical,” answered the latter, with something like a smile.
“Why not?” asked his father, with sudden interest. “That strikes me as a
very brilliant idea for making charities self-supporting. I suppose,” he
continued, turning to his son, “that the companies could make no
objections to insuring the lives of idiots. The rate ought to be very
reasonable when one considers the care they get, and the medical
attendance, and the immunity from risk of accident.”
“I don’t know about that. When an asylum takes fire, the idiots haven’t
the sense to get out,” observed Alexander Junior, grimly.
“Nonsense! Nonsense, Alexander!” The old man shook his head. “Idiots are
just as--well, not quite as sensible as other people,--that would be an
exaggeration--but they’re not all so stupid, by any means.”
“No--so I’ve heard,” said Crowdie, gravely.
“So stupid as what, Mr. Crowdie?” asked Katharine, turning on him rather
abruptly.
“As others, Miss Lauderdale--as me, for instance,” he answered, without
hesitation. “Probably we both meant--Mr. Lauderdale and I--that all
idiots are not so stupid as the worst cases, which are the ones most
people think of when idiots are mentioned.”
“Exactly. You put it very well.” The old philanthropist looked pleased
at the interruption. “And I repeat that I think Mr. Crowdie’s idea of
insuring them is very good. Every time one dies,--they do die, poor
things,--you get a sum of money. Excellent, very excellent!”
His ideas of business transactions had always been hazy in the extreme,
and his son proceeded to set him right.
“It couldn’t possibly be of any advantage unless you had capital to
invest and insured your own idiots,” said Alexander Junior. “And that
would just amount to making a savings bank on your own account, and
saving so much a year out of your expenses for each idiot. You could
invest the savings, and the interest would be all you could possibly
make. It’s not as though the idiots’ families paid the dues and made
over the policies to you. There would be money in that, I admit. You
might try it. There might be a streak of idiocy in the other members of
the patient’s family which would make them agree to it.”
The old man’s gentle eyes suddenly lighted up with ill temper.
“You’re laughing at me, Alexander,” he said, in a louder voice. “You’re
laughing at me!”
“No, sir; I’m in earnest,” answered the son, in his cool, metallic
tones.
“Don’t the big companies insure their own ships?” asked the
philanthropist. “Of course they do, and they make money by it.”
“I beg your pardon. They make nothing but the interest of what they set
aside for each ship. They simply cover their losses.”
“Well, and if an idiot dies, then the asylum gets the money.”
“Yes, sir. But an idiot has no intrinsic value.”
“Why, then the asylum gets a sum of money for what was worth nothing,
and it must be very profitable--much more so than insuring ships.”
“But it’s the asylum’s own money to begin with--”
“And as for your saying that an idiot has no intrinsic value,
Alexander,” pursued the old man, going off on another tack, “I won’t
have you say such things. I won’t listen to them. An idiot is a human
being, sir, and has an immortal soul, I’d have you to know, as well as
you or I. And you have the assurance to say that he has no intrinsic
value! An immortal soul, made for eternal happiness or eternal
suffering, and no intrinsic value! Upon my word, Alexander, you forget
yourself! I should not have expected such an inhuman speech from you.”
“Is the ‘vital spark of heavenly flame’ a marketable commodity?” asked
Crowdie, speaking to Katharine in a low voice.
“Idiots have souls, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist, looking
straight across at him, and taking it for granted that he had said
something in opposition.
“I’ve no doubt they have, Mr. Lauderdale,” answered the painter. “I
never thought of questioning the fact.”
“Oh! I thought you did. I understood that you were laughing at the
idea.”
“Not at all. It was the use of the word ‘intrinsic’ as applied to the
value of the soul which struck me as odd.”
“Ah--that is quite another matter, my dear sir,” replied the old
gentleman, who was quickly appeased. “My son first used the word in this
discussion. I’m not responsible for it. The younger generation is not so
careful in its language as we were taught to be. But the important
point, after all, is that idiots have souls.”
“The soul is the only thing anybody really can be said to have as his
own,” said Crowdie, thoughtfully.
Katharine glanced at him. He did not look like the kind of man to make
such a speech with sincerity. She wondered vaguely what his soul would
be like, if she could see it, and it seemed to her that it would be
something strange--white, with red lips, singing an evil song, which she
could not understand, in a velvet voice, and that it would smell of
musk. The side of her that was towards him instinctively shrank a little
from him.
“I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist
with approbation. “It closes the discussion very fittingly. I hope we
shall hear no more of idiots not having souls. Poor things! It is almost
the only thing they have that makes them like the rest of us.”
“People are all so different,” replied the artist. “I find that more and
more true every day. And it takes a soul to understand a soul. Otherwise
photography would take the place of portrait painting.”
“I don’t quite see that,” said Alexander Junior, who had employed the
last few minutes in satisfying his first pangs of hunger, having been
interrupted by the passage of arms with his father. “What becomes of
colour in photography?”
“What becomes of colour in a charcoal or pen and ink drawing?” asked
Crowdie. “Yet either, if at all good, is preferable to the best
photograph.”
“I’m not sure of that. I like a good photograph. It is much more
accurate than any drawing can be.”
“Yes--but it has no soul,” objected Crowdie.
“How can an inanimate object have a soul, sir?” asked the
philanthropist, suddenly. “That is as bad as saying that idiots--”
“I mean that a photograph has nothing which suggests the soul of the
original,” said Crowdie, interrupting and speaking in a high, clear
tone. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and sang well; and he possessed
the power of making himself heard easily against many other voices.
“It is the exact representation of the person,” argued Alexander Junior,
whose ideas upon art were limited.
“Excuse me. Even that is not scientifically true. There can only be one
point in the whole photograph which is precisely in focus. But that is
not what I mean. Every face has something besides the lines and the
colour. For want of a better word, we call it the expression--it is the
individuality--the soul--the real person--the something which the hand
can suggest, but which nothing mechanical can ever reproduce. The artist
who can give it has talent, even if he does not know how to draw. The
best draughtsman and painter in the world is only a mechanic if he
cannot give it. Mrs. Lauderdale paints--and paints well--she knows what
I mean.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Lauderdale. “The fact that there is something
which we can only suggest but never show would alone prove the existence
of the soul to any one who paints.”
“I don’t understand those things,” said Alexander Junior.
“Grandpapa,” said Katharine, suddenly, “if any one asserted that there
was no such a thing as the soul, what should you answer?”
“I should tell him that he was a blasphemer,” answered the old
gentleman, promptly and with energy.
“But that wouldn’t be an argument,” retorted the young girl.
“He would discover the force of it hereafter,” said her father. The
electric smile followed the words.
Crowdie looked at Katharine and smiled also, but she did not see.
“But isn’t a man entitled to an argument?” she asked. “I mean--if any
one really couldn’t believe that he had a soul--there are such people--”
“Lots of them,” observed Crowdie.
“It’s their own fault, then, and they deserve no mercy--and they will
find none,” said Alexander Junior.
“Then believing is a matter of will, like doing right,” argued the young
girl. “And a man has only to say, ‘I believe,’ and he will believe,
because he wills it.”
But neither of the Lauderdales had any intention of being drawn out on
that point. They were good Presbyterians, and were Scotch by direct
descent; and they knew well enough what direction the discussion must
take if it were prolonged. The old gentleman put a stop to it.
“The questions of the nature of belief and free will are pretty deep
ones, my dear,” he said, kindly, “and they are not of the sort to be
discussed idly at dinner.”
Strange to say, that was the species of answer which pleased Katharine
best. She liked the uncompromising force of genuinely prejudiced people
who only allowed argument to proceed when they were sure of a logical
result in their own favour. Alexander Junior nodded approvingly, and
took some more beef. He abhorred bread, vegetables, and sweet things,
and cared only for what produced the greatest amount of energy in the
shortest time. It was astonishing that such iron strength should have
accomplished nothing in nearly fifty years of life.
“Yes,” said Crowdie, “they are rather important things. But I don’t
think that there are so many people who deny the existence of the soul
as people who want to satisfy their curiosity about it, by getting a
glimpse at it. Hester and I dine out a good deal--people are very kind,
and always ask us to dinners because they know I can’t go out to late
parties on account of my work--so we are always dining out; and we were
saying only to-day that at nine-tenths of the dinners we go to the
conversation sooner or later turns on the soul, or psychical research,
or Buddhism, or ghosts, or something of the sort. It’s odd, isn’t it,
that there should be so much talk about those things just now? I think
it shows a kind of general curiosity. Everybody wants to get hold of a
soul and study its habits, as though it were an ornithorynchus or some
queer animal--it is strange, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, suddenly joining in the
conversation. “If you once cut loose from your own form of belief
there’s no particular reason why you should be satisfied with that of
any one else. If a man leaves his house without an object there’s
nothing to make him go in one direction rather than in another.”
“So far as that is concerned, I agree with you,” said Alexander Junior.
“There is truth to direct him,” observed the philanthropist.
“And there is beauty,” said Crowdie, turning his head towards Mrs.
Lauderdale and his eyes towards Katharine.
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed the latter. “If you are going to jumble the
soul, and art, and everything, all together, there are lots of things to
lead one. Where does beauty lead you, Mr. Crowdie?”
“To imagine a vain thing,” answered the painter with a soft laugh. “It
also leads me to try and copy it, with what I imagine it means, and I
don’t always succeed.”
“I hope you’ll succeed if you paint my daughter’s portrait,” remarked
Alexander Junior.
“No,” Crowdie replied thoughtfully, and looking at Katharine quite
directly now. “I shan’t succeed, but if Miss Lauderdale will let me try,
I’ll promise to do my very best. Will you, Miss Lauderdale? Your father
said he thought you would have no objection.”
“I said you would, Katharine, and I said nothing about objections,” said
her father, who loved accurate statements.
Katharine did not like to be ordered to do anything and the short, quick
frown bent her brows for a second.
“I am much flattered,” she said coldly.
“You will not be, when I have finished, I fear,” said Crowdie, with
quick tact. “Please, Miss Lauderdale, I don’t want you to sit to me as a
matter of duty, because your father is good enough to ask you. That
isn’t it, at all. Please understand. It’s for Hester, you know. She’s
such a friend of yours, and you’re such a friend of hers, and I want to
surprise her with a Christmas present, and there’s nothing she’d like so
much as a picture of you. I don’t say anything about the pleasure it
will be to me to paint you--it’s just for her. Will you?”
“Of course I will,” answered Katharine, her brow clearing and her tone
changing.
She had not looked at him while he was speaking, and she was struck, as
she had often been, by the exquisite beauty of his voice when he spoke
familiarly and softly. It was like his eyes, smooth, rich and almost
woman-like.
“And when will you come?” he asked. “To-morrow? Next day? Would eleven
o’clock suit you?”
“To-morrow, if you like,” answered the young girl. “Eleven will do
perfectly.”
“Will you come too, Mrs. Lauderdale?” Crowdie asked, without changing
his manner.
“Yes--that is--not to-morrow. I’ll come one of these days and see how
you are getting on. It’s a long time since I’ve seen you at work, and I
should enjoy it ever so much. But I should rather come when it’s well
begun. I shall learn more.”
“I’m afraid you won’t learn much from me, Mrs. Lauderdale. It’s very
different work from miniature--and I have no rule. It seems to me that
the longer I paint the more hopeless all rules are. Ten years ago, when
I was working in Paris, I used to believe in canons of art, and fixed
principles, and methods, and all that sort of thing. But I can’t any
more. I do it anyhow, just as it seems to come--with anything--with a
stump, a brush, a rag, hands, fingers, anything. I should not be
surprised to find myself drawing with my elbow and painting with the
back of my head! No, really--I sometimes think the back of my head
would be a very good brush to do fur with. Any way--only to get at the
real thing.”
“I once saw a painter who had no arms,” said the old gentleman. “It was
in Paris, and he held the brushes with his toes. There is an idiot in
the asylum now, who likes nothing better than to pull his shoes off and
tie knots in a rope with his feet all day long.”
“He is probably one of us,” suggested Crowdie. “We artists are all
half-witted. Give him a brush and see whether he has any talent for
painting with his toes.”
“That’s an idea,” answered the philanthropist, thoughtfully.
“Transference of manual skill from hands to feet,” he continued in a
low, dreamy voice, thinking aloud. “Abnormal connections of nerves with
next adjoining brain centres--yes--there might be something in
it--yes--yes--”
The old gentleman had theories of his own about nerves and brain
centres. He had never even studied anatomy, but he speculated in the
wildest manner upon the probability of impossible cases of nerve
derangement and imperfect development, and had long believed himself an
authority on the subject.
The dinner was quite as short as most modern meals. Old Mr. Lauderdale
and Crowdie smoked, and Alexander Junior, who despised such weaknesses,
stayed in the dining-room with them. Neither Mrs. Lauderdale nor
Katharine would have objected to smoking in the library, but Alexander’s
inflexible conservatism abhorred such a practice.
“I can’t tell why it is,” said Katharine, when she was alone with her
mother, “but that man is positively repulsive to me. It must be
something besides his ugliness, and even that ought to be redeemed by
his eyes and that beautiful voice of his. But it’s not. There’s
something about him--” She stopped, in the sheer impossibility of
expressing her meaning.
Her mother said nothing in answer, but looked at her with calm and quiet
eyes, rather thoughtfully.
“Is it very foolish of me, mother? Don’t you notice something, too, when
he’s near you?”
“Yes. He’s like a poisonous flower.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. That and--the title of Tennyson’s
poem, what is it? Oh--‘A Vision of Sin’--don’t you know?”
“Poor Crowdie!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, laughing a little, but still
looking at Katharine.
“I wonder what induced Hester to marry him.”
“He fascinated her. Besides, she’s very fond of music, and so is he, and
he sang to her and she played for him. It seems to have succeeded very
well. I believe they are perfectly happy.”
“Oh, perfectly. At least, Hester always says so. But did you ever
notice--sometimes, without any special reason, she looks at him so
anxiously? Just as though she expected something to happen to him, or
that he should do something queer. It may be my imagination.”
“I never noticed it. She’s tremendously in love with him. That may
account for it.”
“Well--if she’s happy--” Katharine did not finish the sentence. “He does
stare dreadfully, though,” she resumed a moment later. “But I suppose
all artists do that. They are always looking at one’s features. You
don’t, though.”
“I? I’m always looking at people’s faces and trying to see how I could
paint them best. But I don’t stare. People don’t like it, and it isn’t
necessary. Crowdie is vain. He has beautiful eyes and he wants every one
to notice them.”
“If that’s it, at all events he has the sense to be vain of his best
point,” said Katharine. “He’s not an artist for nothing. And he’s
certainly very clever in all sorts of ways.”
“He didn’t say anything particularly clever at dinner, I thought. By the
bye, was the dinner good? Your father didn’t tell me Crowdie was
coming.”
“Oh, yes; it did very well,” answered Katharine, in a reassuring tone.
“At least, I didn’t notice what we had. He always takes away my
appetite. I shall go and steal something when he’s gone. Let’s sit up
late, mother--just you and I--after papa has gone to bed, and we’ll
light a little wee fire, and have a tiny bit of supper, and make
ourselves comfortable, and abuse Mr. Crowdie just as much as we like.
Won’t that be nice? Do!”
“Well--we’ll see how late he stays. It’s only a quarter past nine yet.
Have you got a book, child? I am going to read that article about wet
paintings on pottery--I’ve had it there ever so long, and the men won’t
come back for half an hour at least.”
Katharine found something to read, after handing her mother the review
from the table.
“Perhaps reading a little will take away the bad taste of Crowdie,” said
Mrs. Lauderdale, with a laugh, as she settled herself in the corner of
the sofa.
“I wish something would,” answered Katharine, seating herself in a deep
chair, and opening her book.
But she found it hard to fix her attention, and the book was a dull one,
or seemed so, as the best books do when the mind is drawn and stretched
in one direction. Her thoughts went back to the twilight hour, when
Ralston had been there, and to the decided step she was about to take.
The only wonder was that she had been able to talk with a tolerable
continuity of ideas during dinner, considering what her position was.
Assuredly it was a daring thing which she meant to do, and she
experienced the sensation familiar even to brave men--the small, utterly
unreasoning temptation to draw back just before the real danger begins.
Most people who have been called upon to do something very dangerous,
with fair warning and in perfectly cold blood, know that little feeling
and are willing to acknowledge it. It is not fear. It is the inevitable
last word spoken by the instinct of self-preservation.
There are men who have never felt it at all, rare instances of perfectly
phlegmatic physical recklessness. They are not the ones who deserve the
most credit for doing perilous deeds. And there are other men, even
fewer, perhaps, who have felt it, but have ceased to feel it, in whom
all love of life is so totally and hopelessly dead that even the bodily,
human impulse to avoid death can never be felt again. Such men are very
dangerous in fight. ‘Beware of him who seeks death,’ says an ancient
Eastern proverb. So many things which seem impossible are easy if the
value of life itself be taken out of the balance. But with the great
majority of the human race that value is tolerably well defined. The
poor Chinaman who sells himself, for the benefit of his family, to be
sliced to death in the stead of the rich criminal, knows within an ounce
or two of silver what his existence is worth. The bargain has been made
so often by others that there is almost a tariff. It is not a pleasant
subject, but, since the case really happens, it would be a curious thing
to hear theologians discuss the morality of such suicide on the part of
the unfortunate wretch. Would they say that he was forfeiting the hope
of a future reward by giving himself to be destroyed for money, of his
own free will? Or would they account it to him for righteousness that he
should lay down his life to save his wife and children from starving to
death? For a real case, as it is, it certainly presents difficulties
which approach the fantastic.
It was very quiet in the room, as it had been once or twice when there
had been a silence between Katharine and Ralston a few hours earlier.
The furniture was all just as it had been--hardly a chair had been
turned. The scene came back vividly to the young girl’s imagination, and
the sound of Ralston’s voice, just trembling with emotion, rang again in
her ears. That had been the sweetest of all the many sweet hours she had
spent with him since they had been children. Her book fell upon her
knees and her head sank back against the cushion. With lids half
drooping, she gazed at a point she did not see. The softest possible
light, the exquisite, trembling radiance of spotless maidenhood’s
divinest dream, hovered about the lovely face and the girlish lips just
parted to meet in the memory of a kiss.
Suddenly, from the next room, as the three men came towards the closed
door of the library, Crowdie’s laugh broke the stillness, high,
melodious, rich. Some men have a habit of laughing at anything which is
said just as they leave the dining-room.
Katharine started as though she had been stung. She was unconscious that
her mother had ceased reading, and had been looking at her for several
minutes, wondering why she had never fully appreciated the girl’s beauty
before.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, as she saw the start and the quick
expression of resentment and repulsion.
“It’s that man’s voice--it’s so beautiful and yet--ugh!” She shivered as
the door opened and the three men came in.
“You’ve not been long,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up at Crowdie. “I
hope they gave you a cigar in there.”
“Oh, yes, thanks--and a very good one, too,” added the artist, who had
not succeeded in smoking half of the execrable Connecticut
six-for-a-quarter cigar which the philanthropist had offered him.
It seemed natural enough to him that a man who devoted himself to idiots
should have no taste, and he would have opened his eyes if he had been
told that the Connecticut tobacco was one of the economies imposed by
Alexander Junior upon his long-suffering father. The old gentleman,
however, was really not very particular, and his sufferings were not to
be compared with those of Balzac’s saintly charity-maniac, when he gave
up his Havanas for the sake of his poor people.
Crowdie looked at Katharine, as he answered her mother, and continued to
do so, though he sat down beside the latter. Katharine had risen from
her seat, and was standing by the mantelpiece, and Mrs. Lauderdale was
sitting at the end of the sofa on the other side of the fireplace, under
the strong, unshaded light of the gas. She made an effort to talk to her
guest, for the sake of sparing the girl, though she felt uncomfortably
tired, and was looking almost ill.
“Did you talk any more about the soul, after we left?” she asked,
looking at Crowdie.
“No,” he answered, still gazing at Katharine, and speaking rather
absently. “We talked--let me see--I think--” He hesitated.
“It couldn’t have been very interesting, if you don’t remember what it
was about,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, pleasantly. “We must try and amuse you
better than they did, or you won’t come near us again.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, I’ll come just as often as you ask me,”
answered Crowdie, suddenly looking at his shoes.
But he made no attempt to continue the conversation. Mrs. Lauderdale
felt a little womanly annoyance. The constant and life-long habit of
being considered by men to be the most important person in the room,
whenever she chose to be considered at all, had become a part of her
nature. She made up her mind that Crowdie should not only listen and
talk, but should look at her.
“What are you doing now? Another portrait?” she asked. “I know you are
always busy.”
“Oh, yes--the wife of a man who has a silver mine somewhere. She’s
fairly good-looking, for a wonder.”
His eyes wandered about the room, and, from time to time, went back to
Katharine. Old Mr. Lauderdale was going to sleep in an arm-chair, and
Alexander Junior was reading the evening paper.
“Does your work always interest you as it did at first?” asked Mrs.
Lauderdale, growing more and more determined to fix his attention, and
speaking softly. “I mean--are you happy in it and with it?”
His languid glance met hers for an instant, with an odd look of lazy
enquiry. He was keen and quick of intuition, and more than sufficiently
vain. There is a certain tone of voice in which a woman may ask a man if
he is happy which indicates a willingness to play at flirtation. Now, it
had never entered the head of Walter Crowdie that Mrs. Lauderdale could
possibly care to flirt with him. Yet the tone was official, so to say,
and he had some right to be surprised, the more so as he had never heard
any man--not even the famous club-liar, Stopford Thirlwall--even suggest
that she had ever really flirted with any one, or do anything worse than
dance to the very end of every dancing party, and generally amuse
herself in an innocent way to an extent that would have ruined the
constitutions of most women not born in Kentucky. Even as he turned to
look at her, however, he realized the absurdity of the impression he had
received, and his eyes went mechanically back to Katharine’s profile.
The smile that moved his heavy, red mouth was for himself, as he
answered Mrs. Lauderdale’s question.
“Oh, yes,” he said, quite naturally. “I love it. I’m perfectly happy.”
And again he relapsed into silence.
Mrs. Lauderdale was annoyed. She turned her head, under the glaring
light, towards the carved pillar at the right of the fireplace. An
absurd little looking-glass hung by a silken cord from the mantelpiece
to the level of her eyes--one of those small Persian mirrors set in a
case of embroidery, such as are used for favours at cotillions.
She saw very suddenly the reflection of her own face. The glass was
perhaps a trifle green, which made it worse, but she stared in a sort
of dumb horror, realizing in a single moment that she had grown old,
that the lines had deepened until every one could see them, that the
eyes looked faded, the hair dull, the lips almost shrivelled, the once
dazzling skin flaccid and sallow--that the queenly beauty was gone, a
perishable thing already perished, a memory now and worse than a memory,
a cruelly bitter regret left in the place of a possession half divine
that was lost for ever and ever, dead beyond resurrection, gone beyond
recall.
That was the most terrible moment in Mrs. Lauderdale’s life. Fate need
not have made it so appallingly sudden--she had prepared for it so long,
so conscientiously, trying always to wean herself from a vanity the
sternest would forgive. And it had seemed to be coming so slowly, by
degrees of each degree, and she had thought it would be so long in
coming quite. And now it was come, in the flash of a second. But the
bitterness was not past.
Instinctively in the silence she looked up before her and saw her
daughter’s lovely face. Her head reeled, her sight swam. A great, fierce
envy caught at her heart with iron fingers and wrung it, till she could
have screamed,--envy of her who was dearest to her of all living
things--of Katharine.