Her mother scanned Catharine when she came in as she had never done
before. She was "taking stock" of her, so to speak: she wished to know
what was in the girl to have secured this lover, or what there was
to hold him should he ever hear Hugh's damning story. Her eye ran
over her. She was able to hold her motherly fondness aside while she
judged her. Kitty was flushed and awakened from head to foot with the
excitement of this single visitor.
"At her age," thought Mrs. Guinness, "_I_ could have faced a regiment
of lovers. Kitty's weak: I always felt her brain was small--small. She
has nothing of my face, or address either. There's no beauty there
but youth, and her curious eyes." She never had been sure whether she
admired Kitty's eyes or not.
But clergymen and reformers were as vulnerable as other men to soft,
flushing cheeks and moist lips, and Mr. Muller, as she judged from his
agitation, was no wiser than the rest. He pressed nervously forward,
bridging his nose with his eye-glasses.
"Catharine, my child, will you walk out with me? I wish to consult you
on a little matter."
"Oh, with pleasure," said Kitty.
Her mother stood aghast. Like the mass of women, she viewed the
matter of love from the sentimental, L.E.L. stand-point. It had been a
forbidden subject to Kitty. Her heart her mother supposed, slept, like
the summer dawn, full of dreams, passion, dewy tenderness, waiting for
the touch of the coming day. What kind of awakening would the plump
"Will you marry me?" of this fat little clergyman be? In the street
of Berry town, too! in the middle of the afternoon! If it were only
moonlight!
"Pray wait until evening, Catharine: you're always famished for your
supper," she cried anxiously.
"But I'm not hungry now at all," running up the stairs. For
politeness' sake Kitty would lie with a smile on her mouth though a
fox were gnawing at her stomach. Something in her running reminded Mr.
Muller that she was a school-girl and he a middle-aged noted reformer.
He fidgeted about the room, looking at the prints of La Fayette and
Franklin on the whitewashed wall, and the Tomb of Washington done in
faded chenilles by Mr. Guinness's first wife, buttoning his gloves
with an anxious frown.
"I'm sure I don't know what my sister Maria will say to this," after
one or two uneasy laughs. "I never mean to be eccentric, yet somehow
I always am different from anybody else. Now, in church-matters--_I_
never intended to leave the orthodox communion, yet when I showed how
my Church was clinging to worn-out dogmas, and opened my Reformatory
in Berrytown, the Free-Religionists in Boston seized me, and printed
my opening sermon under one cover with that of an Oneidaite and a
Spiritualist. Do _I_ look like a medium or a Free-Lover? That was
going a little too far, I take it."
"Ah?" came Mrs. Guinness's calm interrogatory. No more.
William Muller was a man of culture and a certain force in one
direction, and when pleading the cause of the vicious children to
whom he was giving his life could hold men of real mental strength
attentive and subdued. He did not know why, when this commonplace
little woman had her steady eye on him, he should always dribble out
all his weakness to her. But he did it--talked on in a leaky way
of his squabble with his church and the praises he had received in
newspapers for his school, until he heard Kitty's step on the stairs.
"Ah! there she is!" he cried relieved.
Catharine came back, close buttoned in a brown dress, with high-laced
boots, and a light stick in her hand. She used to call it her
alpenstock, and make all Switzerland out of the New Jersey sands with
it. She ran in to kiss her father good-bye, blushing and delighted.
It was the first time she had ever walked with any man but himself.
"Here's an adventure!" she whispered. Every day she and Peter expected
an adventure before night. She drew back startled at the strange,
uneasy look he gave her. Her mother, too, pulled her hastily away, and
walked beside her to the gate.
"Child," she whispered breathlessly, "he is your lover."
"Lover?" said Kitty aloud. "Lover?" But Mr. Muller joined her at the
moment, and opening the gate motioned for her to precede him. They
went down the quiet street together.
Mrs. Guinness went back and watched them from the shop-window. "It is
as I thought," she said triumphantly.
Peter nodded. She came behind him, leaning on his shoulder. "It was
only proper for me to speak to him of--of--" It was fifteen years
since Hugh's name had passed between them.
"Whatever was necessary to protect you and Catharine," he said
quietly. She pressed her hands on his forehead beneath his wig, and
presently he drew one of them down and held it to his lips, thinking
how forbearing she had been with his boy. Mrs. Guinness went up stairs
then and knelt down by the bed. She was rather fond of the exercise
which she called praying--taking a larger image of herself into her
confidence. Her one idea of Him was that He could provide comfortably
here and elsewhere for herself and Catharine. But to-day her
conscience irritated her like a nettle. Could it be that she was at
soul tricky? Could God hold her, rigorous church-member, fond wife
and mother as she was, guilty of this boy's blood? Nettles, however,
do not sting very deeply. She rose presently, unfolded her work, and
sat sewing and singing a hymn, a complacent smile on her good-humored
face.
Down in the shop Peter had taken out the violin again, and was playing
some nameless old air, into the two or three monotonous notes of which
had crept an infinite stillness and longing. He often played it, but
only when he was alone, for he would not allow Kitty to hear any but
merry, vivacious music.