When Katharine left Robert Lauderdale’s house that morning, she felt
that trouble had begun and was not to cease for a long time. She had
entered her uncle’s library full of hope, sure of success and believing
that John Ralston’s future depended only upon the rich man’s good will
and good word. She went out fully convinced at last that he must take
one or the other of the much-despised chances he had neglected and
forthwith do the best he could with it. She thought it was very hard,
but she understood old Lauderdale’s clear statement and she saw that
there was no other way.
She sympathized deeply with John in his dislike of the daily drudgery,
for which it was quite true that he was little fitted by nature or
training. But she did her best to analyze that unfitness, so as to try
and discover some gift or quality to balance it and neutralize it. And
her first impulse was not to find him at once and tell him what had
happened, but rather to put off the evil moment in which she must tell
him the truth. This was the first sign of weakness which she had
exhibited since that Monday afternoon on which she had persuaded him to
take the decisive step.
She turned into Madison Avenue as soon as she could, for the sake of the
quiet. The morning sun shone full in her eyes as she began to make her
way southwards, and she was glad of the warmth, for she felt cold and
inwardly chilled in mind and body. She had walked far, but she still
walked on, disliking the thought of being penned in with a dozen or more
of unsympathizing individuals for twenty minutes in a horse-car.
Moreover, she instinctively wished to tire herself, as though to bring
down her bodily energy to the low ebb at which her mental activity
seemed to be stagnating. Strong people will understand that desire to
balance mind and body.
She was quite convinced that her uncle was right. The more she turned
the whole situation over, the clearer what he had said became to her.
The only escape was to accept the money which he was willing to give
her--for the honour of the family. But if neither she nor John would
take that, there was no alternative but for John to go to work in the
ordinary way, and show that he could be steady for at least a year. That
seemed a very long time--as long as a year can seem to a girl of
nineteen, which is saying much.
Katharine had seen such glorious visions for that year, too, that the
darkness of the future was a tangible horror now that they were fading
away. The memory of a dream can be as vivid as the recollection of a
reality. The something which John was to find to do had presented itself
to her mind as a sort of idyllic existence somewhere out of the world,
in which there should be woods and brooks and breezes, and a convenient
town not far away, where things could be got, and a cottage quite unlike
other cottages, and a good deal of shooting and fishing and riding, with
an amount of responsibility for all these things equal in money to six
or seven thousand dollars a year, out of which Katharine was sure that
she could save a small fortune in a few years. It had not been quite
clear to her why the responsibility was to be worth so much in actual
coin of the Republic, but people certainly succeeded very quickly in the
West. Besides, she was quite ready to give up all the luxuries and
amusements of social existence--much more ready to do so than John
Ralston, if she had known the truth.
It must not be believed that she was utterly visionary and unpractical,
because she had taken this rose-coloured view of the life uncle Robert
was to provide for her and her husband. There are probably a great many
young women in the Eastern cities who imagine just such things to be
quite possible, and quite within the power and gift of a millionaire, in
the American sense of that word, which implies the possession of more
than one million, and more often refers in actual use to income than
merely to capital. In Paris, a man who has twenty thousand dollars a
year is called a millionaire. In New York a man with that income is but
just beyond the level of the estimable society poor, and within the
ranks of the ‘fairly well-off.’ The great fortunes being really as
fabulous as those in fairy tales, it is not surprising that the
possession of them should be supposed to bring with it an almost
fabulous power in all directions. Men like Robert Lauderdale, the
administration of whose estates requires a machinery not unlike that of
a small nation’s treasury, are thought to have in their gift all sorts
of remunerative positions, for which the principal qualifications are an
unlimited capacity for enjoying the fresh air and some talent for
fishing. As a matter of fact, though so much richer than ordinary men,
they are so much poorer than all except the very small nations that they
cannot support so many idlers.
Katharine knew a good deal about life in New York and its possibilities,
but very little of what could be done elsewhere. She was perfectly well
aware of the truth of all that her uncle had told her concerning the
requirements for business or the law, for she had heard such matters
discussed often enough. In her own city she was practical, for she
understood her surroundings as well as any young girl could. It was
because she understood them that she dreamed of getting out of them as
soon as practicable, and of beginning that vaguely active and
remunerative existence which, for her, lay west of Illinois and anywhere
beyond that, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. John Ralston
himself knew very little about it, but he had rightly judged its
mythical nature when he had told her that Robert Lauderdale would do
nothing for him.
The sun warmed Katharine as she walked down Madison Avenue, but
everything was black--felt black, she would have said, had she thought
aloud. Ralston would not turn upon her and say, ‘I told you so,’ because
he loved her, but she could see the expression of his face as she looked
forward to the interview. He would nod his head slowly and say nothing.
The corners of his mouth would be drawn down for a moment and his
eyelids would contract a little while he looked away from her. He would
think the matter over during about half a minute, and then, with a look
of determination, he would say that he would try what uncle Robert
proposed. He would not say anything against the plan of keeping the
marriage a secret, now that old Lauderdale knew of it, for he would see
at once that there was absolutely nothing else to be done. They had gone
over the possibilities so often--there was not one which they had not
carefully considered. It was all so hopelessly against them still, in
spite of the one great effort Katharine had made that morning.
She walked more slowly after she had passed the high level above the
railway, where it runs out of the city under ground from the central
station. As she came nearer to the neighbourhood in which John lived,
she felt for the first time in her life that she did not wish to meet
him. Though she did not admit to herself that she feared to tell him the
result of her conversation with her uncle, and though she had no
intention of going to his mother’s house and asking for him, her pace
slackened at the mere idea of being nearer to him.
Then she realized what she was doing, and with a bitter little smile of
contempt at her own weakness she walked on more briskly. She had often
read in books of that sudden change in the aspect of the outer world
which disappointment brings, but she had never quite believed in it
before. She realized it now. There was no light in anything. The faces
of the people who passed her looked dead and uninteresting. Every house
looked as though a funeral procession might at any moment file out of
its door. The very pavement, drying in patches in the sunshine, felt
cold and unsympathetic under her feet.
She began to wonder what she had better do,--whether she should write
John Ralston a long letter, explaining everything, or whether she
should write him a short one, merely saying that the news was
unfavourable--‘unfavourable’ sounded better than ‘bad’ or
‘disappointing,’ she thought--and asking him to come and see her in the
afternoon. The latter course seemed preferable, and had, moreover, the
advantage of involving fewer practical difficulties, for her command
over her mother tongue was by no means very great when subjected to the
test of black and white, though in conversation it was quite equal to
her requirements on most occasions. She could even entirely avoid the
use of slang, by making a determined effort, for her father detested it,
and her mother’s conversational weaknesses were Southern and of a
different type. But on paper she was never sure of being quite right.
Punctuation was a department which she affected to despise, but which
she inwardly feared, and when alone she admitted that there were words
which she seemed to spell not as they were spelled in books--‘parallel,’
for instance, ‘psychology’ and ‘responsibility.’ She avoided those
words, which were not very necessary to her, but with a disagreeable
suspicion that there might be others. Had ‘develop’ an ‘e’ at the end of
it, or had it not? She could never remember, and the dictionary lived in
her grandfather’s den, at some distance from her own room. The
difficulties of writing a long letter to John Ralston, whose mother had
taught him his English before it could be taught him all wrong at a
fashionable school, rose before her eyes with absurd force, and she
decided forthwith to send for Ralston in the afternoon.
Having come to a preliminary conclusion, life seemed momentarily a
little easier. She turned out of her way into Fourth Avenue, took a
horse-car, got transferred to a Christopher Street one, and in the
course of time got out at the corner of Clinton Place. She wrote the
shortest possible note to John Ralston, went out again, bought a special
delivery stamp and took the letter up to the Thirteenth Street
Post-Office--instead of dropping it into an ordinary letter-box. She did
everything, in short, to make the message reach its destination as
quickly as possible without employing a messenger.
Charlotte Slayback appeared at luncheon. She preferred that meal when
she invited herself, because her father was never present, and a certain
amount of peaceful conversation was possible in his absence. It was some
time since she had been in New York, and the glimpse of her old room on
the previous afternoon irresistibly attracted her again. Katharine
hoped, however, that she would not stay long, as Ralston was to come at
three o’clock, this being usually the safest hour for his visits. Mrs.
Lauderdale would then be either at work or out of the house, the
philanthropist would be dozing upstairs in a cloud of smoke before a
table covered with reports, and Alexander Junior would be still down
town. In consideration of the importance of getting Charlotte out of the
way, Katharine was more than usually cordial to her--a mistake often
made by young people, who do not seem to understand the very simple fact
that the best way to make people go away is generally to be as
disagreeable as possible.
The consequence was that Charlotte enjoyed herself immensely, and it
required the sight of her father’s photograph, which stood upon Mrs.
Lauderdale’s writing-table in the library, to keep her from proposing to
spend two or three days in the house after her husband should have gone
back to Washington. But the photograph was there, and it was one taken
by the platinum process, which made the handsome, steely face look more
metallic than ever. Charlotte gazed at it thoughtfully, and could almost
hear the maxims of virtue and economy with which those even lips had
preached her down since she had been a child, and she decided that she
would not stay. Her husband was not to her taste, but he never preached.
Mrs. Lauderdale had for her eldest daughter that sentiment which is
generally described as a mother’s love, and which, as Frank Miner had
once rather coarsely put it, will stand more knocking about than old
boots. Charlotte was spoiled, capricious, frivolous in the extreme,
ungrateful beyond description, weak where she should have been strong
and strong where she should have been tender. And Mrs. Lauderdale knew
it all, and loved her in spite of it all, though she disapproved of her
almost at every point. Charlotte had one of those characters of which
people are apt to say that they might have turned out splendidly, if
properly trained, than which no more foolish expression falls from the
lips of commonplace, virtuous humanity. Charlotte, like many women who
resemble her, had received an excellent training. The proof was that,
when she chose to behave herself, no one could seem to be more docile,
more thoughtful and considerate of others or more charming in
conversation. She had only to wish to appear well, as the phrase goes,
and the minutest details necessary to success were absolutely under her
control. What people meant when they said that she might have turned out
splendidly--though they did not at all understand the fact--was that a
woman possessing Charlotte Slayback’s natural gifts and acquired
accomplishments might have been a different person if she had been born
with a very different character--a statement quite startling in its
great simplicity. As it was, there was nothing to be done. Charlotte had
been admirably ‘trained’ in every way--so well that she could exhibit
the finest qualities, on occasion, without any perceptible effort, even
when she felt the utmost reluctance to do so. But the occasions were
few, and were determined by questions of personal advantage, and even
more often by mere caprice.
On that particular day, when she lunched quietly in her old home, her
conduct was little short of angelic, and Katharine found it hard to
realize that she was the same woman who on the previous afternoon had
made such an exhibition of contemptible pettiness and unreasoning
discontent. Katharine, had she known her sister less well, would almost
have been inclined to believe that Benjamin Slayback of Nevada was a
person with whom no wife of ordinary sensibility would possibly live.
But she knew Charlotte very well indeed.
And as the hands of the clock went round towards three, Charlotte showed
no intention of going away, to Katharine’s infinite annoyance, for she
knew that Ralston would be punctual, and would probably come even a
little before the time she had named. It would not do to let him walk
into the library, after the late scene between him and her mother. The
latter had said nothing more about the matter, but only one day had
intervened since Mrs. Lauderdale had so unexpectedly expressed her total
disapproval of Katharine’s relations with John. It was not probable
that Mrs. Lauderdale, who was not a changeable woman, would go back to
her original position in the course of a few hours, and there would
certainly be trouble if John appeared with no particular excuse.
Katharine, as may be imagined, was by no means in a normal mood, and if
she made herself agreeable to her sister, it was not at first without a
certain effort, which did not decrease, in spite of Charlotte’s own
exceptionally good temper, because as the latter grew more and more
amiable, she also seemed more and more inclined to spend the whole
afternoon where she was.
Hints about going out, about going upstairs to the room in which Mrs.
Lauderdale painted, about possible visitors, had no effect whatever.
Charlotte was enjoying herself and her mother was delighted to keep her
and listen to her conversation. Katharine thought at last that she
should be reduced to the necessity of waiting in the entry until Ralston
came, in order to send him away again before he could get into the
library by mistake. She hated the plan, which certainly lacked dignity,
and she watched the hands of the clock, growing nervous and absent in
what she said, as she saw that the fatal hour was approaching.
At twenty minutes to three Charlotte was describing to her mother the
gown worn by the English ambassadress at the last official dinner at
the White House. At a quarter to three she was giving an amusing account
of the last filibustering affray in the House, which she had
witnessed--it having been arranged beforehand to take place at a given
point in the proceedings--from the gallery reserved for members’
families. Five minutes later she was telling anecdotes about a
deputation from the South Sea Islands. Katharine could hardly sit still
as she watched the inexorable hands. At five minutes to three Charlotte
struck the subject of painting, and Katharine felt that it was all over.
Suddenly Charlotte herself glanced at the clock and sprang up.
“I had forgotten all about poor little Crowdie!” she exclaimed. “He was
coming at three to take me to the Loan Exhibition,” she added, looking
about her for her hat and gloves.
“Here?” asked Katharine, aghast.
“Oh, no--at the hotel, of course. I must run as fast as I can. There are
still cabs at the Brevoort House corner, aren’t there? Thank you, my
dear--” Katharine had found all her things and was already tying on the
little veil. “I do hope he’ll wait.”
“Of course he will!” answered Katharine, with amazing certainty. “You’re
all right, dear--now run!” she added, pushing her sister towards the
door.
“Do come to dinner, Charlie!” cried Mrs. Lauderdale, following her.
“It’s so nice to see something of you!”
“Oh, yes--she’ll come--but you mustn’t keep her, mamma--she’s awfully
late as it is!”
From a condition of apparently hopeless apathy, Katharine was suddenly
roused to exert all her energies. It was two minutes to three as she
closed the glass door behind her sister. Fortunately Ralston had not
come before his time.
“I suppose you’re going to work now, mamma?” Katharine suggested, doing
her best to speak calmly, as she turned to her mother, who was standing
in the door of the library.
She had never before wished that Ralston were an unpunctual man, nor
that her mother, to whom she was devotedly attached, were at the bottom
of the sea.
“Oh, yes! I suppose so,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale. “How delightful
Charlotte was to-day, wasn’t she?”
Her face was fresh and rested. She leaned against the doorpost as though
deciding whether to go upstairs at once or to go back into the library.
With a movement natural to her she raised her graceful arms, folding her
hands together behind her head, and leaning back against the woodwork,
looking lazily at Katharine as she did so. She felt that small
difficulty, at the moment, of going back to the daily occupation after
spending an exceptionally pleasant hour in some one’s company, which is
familiar to all hard workers. Katharine stood still, trying to hide her
anxiety. The clock must be just going to strike, she thought.
“What’s the matter, child? You seem nervous and worried about
something.” She asked the question with a certain curiosity.
“Do I?” asked Katharine, trying to affect indifference.
Mrs. Lauderdale did not move. In the half light of the doorway she was
still very beautiful, as she stood there trying to make up her mind to
go to her work. Katharine was in despair, and turned over the cards that
lay in a deep dish on the table, reading the names mechanically.
“Yes,” continued her mother. “You look as though you were expecting
something--or somebody.”
The clock struck, and almost at the same instant Katharine heard
Ralston’s quick, light tread on the stone steps outside the house. She
had a sudden inspiration.
“There’s a visitor coming, mother!” she whispered quickly. “Run away,
and I’ll tell Annie not to let him in.”
Mrs. Lauderdale, fortunately, did not care to receive any one, but
instead of going upstairs she merely nodded, just as the bell rang, and
retired into the library again, shutting the door behind her. Katharine
was left alone in the entry, and she could see the dark, indistinct
shape of John Ralston through the ground-glass pane of the front door.
She hesitated an instant, doubting whether it would not be wisest to
open the door herself, send him away, and then, slipping on her things,
to follow him a moment later into the street. But in the same instant
she reflected that her mother had very possibly gone to the window to
see who the visitor had been when he should descend the steps again.
Most women do that in houses where it is possible. Then, too, her mother
would expect to hear Annie’s footsteps passing the library, as the girl
went to the front door.
There was the dining-room, and it could be reached from the entry by
passing through the pantry. Annie was devoted to Katharine, and at a
whispered word would lead Ralston silently thither. The closed room
between the dining-room and the library would effectually cut off the
sound of voices. But that, too, struck Katharine as being beneath
her--to confide in a servant! She could not do it, and was further
justified by the reflection that even if she followed that course, her
mother, who was doubtless at the window, would not see Ralston go away,
and would naturally conclude that the visitor had remained in the house,
whoever he might be.
Katharine stood irresolute, watching Ralston’s shadow on the pane, and
listening to Annie’s rapidly approaching tread from the regions of the
pantry at the end of the entry. A moment later and the girl was by her
side.
“If it’s Mr. Ralston, don’t shut the door again till I’ve spoken to
him,” she said, in a low voice. “My mother isn’t receiving, if it’s a
visitor.”
She stood behind Annie as the latter opened the door. John was there, as
she had expected, and Annie stepped back. Katharine raised her finger to
her lips, warning him not to speak. He looked surprised, but stood
bareheaded on the threshold.
“You must go away at once, Jack,” she whispered. “My mother is in the
library, looking out of the window, and I can’t possibly see you alone.
Wait for me near the door at the Assembly to-night. Go, dear--it’s
impossible now. I’ll tell you afterwards.”
In her anxiety not to rouse her mother’s suspicions, she shut the door
almost before he had nodded his assent. She scarcely saw the blank look
that came into his face, and the utter disappointment in his eyes.
Seeing that the door was shut, Annie turned and went away. Katharine
hesitated a moment, passed her hand over her brow, glanced mechanically
once more at the cards in the china dish on the table and then went into
the library. To her surprise her mother was not there, but the folding
door which led to the dark drawing-room was half rolled back, and it
was clear that Mrs. Lauderdale had gone through the dining-room, and had
probably reached her own apartment by the back staircase of the house.
Katharine was on the point of running into the street and calling
Ralston back. She hesitated a moment, and then going hastily to the
window threw up the sash and looked out, hoping that he might be still
within hearing. But looking eastward, towards Fifth Avenue, he was not
to be seen amongst the moving pedestrians, of whom there were many just
then. She turned to see whether he had taken the other direction, and
saw him at once, but already far down the street, walking fast, with his
head bent low and his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. He was
evidently going to take the elevated road up town.
“Oh, Jack--I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed softly to herself, still looking
after him as he disappeared in the distance.
Then she drew down the window again, and went and sat in her accustomed
place in the small armchair opposite to her mother’s sofa. She thought
very uncharitably of Charlotte during the next quarter of an hour, but
she promised herself to get into a corner with Ralston that evening, at
the great ball, and to explain all the circumstances to him as minutely
as they have been explained here. She was angry with her mother, too,
for not having gone up the front staircase, as she might just as well
have done, but she was very glad she had not condescended to the
manœuvre of introducing John into the dining-room by the back way, as
she would have probably just met Mrs. Lauderdale as the latter passed
through. On the whole, it seemed to Katharine that she had done as
wisely as the peculiarly difficult circumstances had allowed, and that
although there was much to regret, she had done nothing of which she
needed to repent.
It seemed to her, too, as she began to recover from the immediate
annoyance of failure, that she had gained several hours more than she
had expected, in which to think over what she should say to Ralston when
they met. And she at once set herself the task of recalling everything
that Robert Lauderdale had said to her, with the intention of repeating
it as accurately as possible, since she could not expect to say it any
better than he had said it himself. It was necessary that Ralston should
understand it, as she had understood it, and should see that although
uncle Robert was quite ready to be generous he could not undertake to
perform miracles. Those had been the old gentleman’s own words.
Then she began to wonder whether, after all, it would not be better to
accept what he offered--the small, settled income which was so good to
think of--and to get rid of all this secrecy, which oppressed her much
more since she had been told that it must last, than when she had
expected that it would involve at most the delay of a week. The deep
depression which she began to feel at her heart, now that she was alone
again, made the simple means of escape from all her anxieties look very
tempting to her, and she dwelt on it. If she begged Ralston to forget
his pride for her sake, as she was willing to forget her own for his,
and to let her take the money, he would surely yield. Once together,
openly married before the world, things would be so much easier. He and
she could talk all day, unhindered and unobserved, and plan the future
at their leisure, and it was not possible that with all the joint
intelligence they could bring to bear upon the problem, it should still
remain unsolved.
Meanwhile, Ralston had gone up town, very much more disappointed than
Katharine knew. Strange to say, their marriage seemed far more important
in his eyes than in hers, and he had lived all day, since they had
parted at ten o’clock in the morning, in nervous anticipation of seeing
her again before night. He had gone home at once, and had spent the
hours alone, for his mother had gone out to luncheon. Until the
messenger with Katharine’s specially stamped letter rang at the door, he
would not have gone out of the house for any consideration, and after
he had read it he sat counting the minutes until he could reasonably
expect to use up the remaining time in walking to Clinton Place. As it
was, he had reached the corner a quarter of an hour before the time, and
his extreme punctuality was to be accounted for by the fact that he had
set his watch with the Lauderdales’ library clock,--as he always did
nowadays,--and that he looked at it every thirty seconds, as he walked
up and down the street, timing himself so exactly that the hands were
precisely at the hour of three when he took hold of the bell.
There are few small disappointments in the world comparable with that of
a man who has been told by the woman he loves to come at a certain hour,
who appears at her door with military punctuality and who is told to go
away again instantly, no adequate excuse being given for the summary
dismissal. Men all know that, but few women realize it.
“Considering the rather unusual situation,” thought Ralston, angrily,
“she might have managed to get her mother out of the way for half an
hour. Besides, her mother wouldn’t have stoned me to death, if she had
let me come in--and, after last night, I shouldn’t think she would care
very much for the sort of privacy one has in a ball-room.”
He had waited all day to see her, and he had nothing to do until the
evening, when he had to go to a dinner-party before the Assembly ball.
He naturally thought of his club, as a quiet place where he could be
alone with his annoyances and disappointments between three and four
o’clock, and he took the elevated road as the shortest way of getting
there.