Katharine’s mood had changed very much since she had entered the
Crowdies’ house. She had felt then a certain sense of strength which had
been familiar to her all her life, but which had never before seemed so
real and serviceable. She had been sure that she could defy the
world--in that black frock she wore--and that her face would be of
marble and her heart of steel under all imaginable circumstances. She
had carried her head high and had walked with a firm tread. She had felt
that if she met John Ralston she could tell him what she thought of him,
and hurt him, so that in his suffering, at least, he should repent of
what he had done.
It was different now. She did not attempt to find reasons for the
difference, and they would have been hard to discover. But she knew that
she had been exposed to a sort of test of her strength, and had broken
down, and that Hester Crowdie had seen her defeat. Possibly it was the
knowledge that Hester had seen and understood which was the most
immediately painful circumstance at the present moment; but it was not
the most important one, for she was really quite as brave as she had
believed herself, and what suffered most in her was not her vanity.
The conversation at table had somehow brought the whole truth more
clearly before her, as the developer brings out the picture on a
photographer’s plate. The facts were fixed now, and she could not hide
them nor turn from them at will.
Whether she were mistaken or not, the position was bad enough. As she
saw it, it was intolerable. By her own act, by the exercise of her own
will, and by nothing else, she had been secretly married to John
Ralston. She had counted with certainty upon old Robert Lauderdale to
provide her husband with some occupation immediately, feeling sure that
within a few days she should be able to acknowledge the marriage and
assume her position before the world as a married woman. But Robert
Lauderdale had demonstrated to her that this was impossible under the
conditions she required, namely, that John should support himself. He
had indeed offered to make her independent, but that solution of the
difficulty was not acceptable. To obtain what she and Ralston had both
desired, it was necessary, and she admitted the fact, that John should
work regularly in some office for a certain time. Robert Lauderdale
himself could not take an idle man from a fashionable club and suddenly
turn him into a partner in a house of business or a firm of lawyers, if
the idle man himself refused to accept money in any shape. Even if he
had accepted it, such a proceeding would have been criticised and
laughed at as a piece of plutocratic juggling. It would have made John
contemptible. Therefore it was impossible that John and Katharine should
have a house of their own and appear as a married couple for some time,
for at least a year, and probably for a longer period. Under such
circumstances to declare the marriage would have been to make themselves
the laughing-stock of society, so long as John continued to live under
his mother’s roof, and Katharine with her father. The secret marriage
would have to be kept a secret, except, perhaps, from the more discreet
members of the family. Alexander Lauderdale would have to be told, and
life would not be very pleasant for Katharine until she could leave the
paternal dwelling. She knew that, but she would have been able to bear
it, to look upon the next year or two as years of betrothal, and to give
her whole heart and soul to help John in his work. It was the worst
contingency which she had foreseen when she had persuaded him to take
the step with her, and she had certainly not expected that it could
arise; but since it had arisen, she was ready to meet it. There was
nothing within the limits of reason which she would not have done for
John, and she had driven those limits as far from ordinary common sense
as was possible, to rashness, even to the verge of things desperate in
their folly.
She knew that. But she had counted on John Ralston with that singularly
whole-hearted faith which characterizes very refined women. Many years
ago, when analytical fiction was in its infancy, Charles de Bernard made
the very wise and true observation that no women abandon themselves more
completely in thought and deed to the men they love, or make such real
slaves of themselves, as those whom he calls ‘great ladies,’--that is,
as we should say, women of the highest refinement, the most unassailable
social position, and the most rigid traditions. The remark is a very
profound one. The explanation of the fact is very simple. Women who have
grown up in surroundings wherein the letter of honour is rigidly
observed, and in which the spirit of virtue prevails for honour’s sake,
readily believe that the men they love are as honourable as they seem,
and more virtuous in all ways than sinful man is likely to be. The man
whom such a woman loves with all her heart, before she has met truth
face to face, cannot possibly be as worthy as she imagines that he is;
and if he be an honest man, he must be aware of the fact, and must
constantly suffer by the ever present knowledge that he is casting a
shadow greater than himself, so to say--and to push the simile further,
it is true that in attempting to overtake that shadow of himself, he
often deliberately walks away from the light which makes him cast it.
John Ralston could never, under any circumstances, have done all that
Katharine had expected of him, although she had professed to expect so
little. Woman fills the hours of her lover’s absence with scenes from
her own sweet dreamland. In nine cases out of ten, when she has the
chance of comparing what she has learned with what she has imagined, she
has a moment of sickening disappointment. Later in life there is an
adjustment, and at forty years of age she merely warns her daughter
vaguely that she must not believe too much in men. That is the usual
sequence of events.
But Katharine’s case just now was very much worse than the common. It is
not necessary to recapitulate the evidence against John’s soberness on
that memorable Thursday. It might have ruined the reputation of a Father
of the Church. Up to one o’clock on the following day no one but Mrs.
Ralston and Doctor Routh were aware that there was anything whatsoever
to be said on the other side of the question. So far as Katharine or any
one else could fairly judge, John had been through one of the most
outrageous and complete sprees of which New York society had heard for
a long time. A certain number of people knew that he had practically
fought Hamilton Bright in the hall of his club, and had undoubtedly
tripped him up and thrown him. Katharine, naturally enough, supposed
that every one knew it, and in spite of Bright’s reassuring words on the
previous night, she fully expected that John would have to withdraw from
the club in question. Even she, girl as she was, knew that this was a
sort of public disgrace.
There was no other word for it. The man she loved, and to whom she had
been secretly married, had publicly disgraced himself on the very day of
the marriage, had been tipsy in the club, had been seen drunk in the
streets, had been in a light with a professional boxer, and had been
incapable of getting home alone--much more of going to meet his wife at
the Assembly ball.
If he had done such things on their wedding day, what might he not do
hereafter? The question was a natural one. Katharine had bound herself
to a hopeless drunkard. She had heard of such cases, unfortunately,
though they have become rare enough in society, and she knew what it all
meant. There would be years of a wretched existence, of a perfectly
hopeless attempt to cure him. She had heard her father tell such
stories, for Alexander Junior was not a peaceable abstainer like Griggs
and Crowdie. He was not an abstainer at all--he was a man of ferocious
moderation. She remembered painful details about the drunkard’s
children. Then there was a story of a blow--and then a separation--a
wife who, for her child’s sake, would not go to another State and be
divorced--and the going back to the father’s house to live, while the
husband sank from bad to worse, and his acquaintances avoided him in the
street, till he had been seen hanging about low liquor saloons and
telling drunken loafers the story of his married life--speaking to them
of the pure and suffering woman who was still his lawful wife--and
laughing about it. Alexander had told it all, as a wholesome lesson to
his household, which, by the way, consisted of his aged father, his
wife, and his two daughters, none of whom, one might have thought, could
ever stand in need of such lessons. Charlotte had laughed then, and
Katharine had been disgusted. Mrs. Lauderdale’s perfectly classical face
had expressed nothing, for she had been thinking of something else, and
the old philanthropist had made some remarks about the close connection
between intemperance and idiocy. But the so-called lesson was telling
heavily against John Ralston now, two or three years after it had been
delivered.
It was clear to Katharine that her life was ruined before it had begun.
In those first hours after the shock it did not occur to her that she
could ever forgive John. She was therefore doubly sure that the ruin he
had wrought was irretrievable. She could not naturally think now of the
possibility of ever acknowledging her marriage. To proclaim it meant to
attempt just such a life as she had heard her father describe.
Unfortunately, too, in that very case, she knew the people, and knew
that Alexander Junior, who never exaggerated anything but the terrors of
the life to come, had kept within the truth rather than gone beyond it.
She did not even tell herself that matters would have been still worse
if she had been made publicly John Ralston’s wife on the previous day.
At that moment she did not seek to make things look more bearable, if
they might. She had faced the situation and it was terrible--it
justified anything she might choose to do. If she chose to do something
desperate to free herself, she wished to be fully justified, and that
desired justification would be weakened by anything which should make
her position seem more easy to bear.
Indeed, she could hardly have been blamed, whatever she had done. She
was bound without being united, married and yet not married, but
necessarily shut off from all future thought of marriage, so long as
John Ralston lived.
She had assumed duties, too, which she was far from wishing to avoid. In
her girlish view, the difference between the married and the single
state lay mainly in the loss of the individual liberty which seemed to
belong to the latter. She had been brought up, as most American girls
are, in old-fashioned ideas on the subject, which are good,--much better
than European ideas,--though in extended practice they occasionally lead
to some odd results, and are not always carried out in after life. In
two words, our American idea is that, on being married, woman assumes
certain responsibilities, and ceases, so to say, to be a free dancer in
a ball-room. The general idea in Europe is that, at marriage, a woman
gets rid of as many responsibilities as she can, and acquires the
liberty to do as she pleases, which has been withheld from her before.
Katharine felt, therefore, even at that crisis, that she had forfeited
her freedom, and, amidst all she felt, there was room for that bitter
regret. A French girl could hardly understand her point of view; a
certain number of English girls might appreciate it, and some might
possibly feel as she did; to an American girl it will seem natural
enough. It was not merely out of a feeling of self-respect that she
looked upon a change as necessary, nor out of a blind reverence for the
religious ceremony which had taken place. Every inborn and cultivated
instinct and tradition told her that as a married woman, though the
whole world should believe her to be a young girl, she could not behave
as she had behaved formerly; that a certain form of perfectly innocent
amusement would no longer be at all innocent now; that she had forfeited
the right to look upon every man she met as a possible admirer--she went
no further than that in her idea of flirtation--and finally that,
somehow, she should feel out of place in the parties of very young
people to which she was naturally invited.
She was a married woman, and she must behave as one, for the rest of her
natural life, though no one was ever to know that she was married. It
was a very general idea, with her, but it was a very strong one, and
none the less so for its ingenuous simplicity.
But the fact that she regretted her liberty did not even distantly
suggest that she might ever fall in love with any one but John Ralston.
Her only wish was to make him feel bitterly what he had done, that he
might regret it as long as he lived, just as she must regret her
liberty. The offence was so monstrous that the possibility of forgiving
it did not cross her mind. She did not, however, ask herself whether the
love that still remained was making the injury he had done it seem yet
more atrocious. Love was still in a state of suspended animation--there
was no telling what he might do when he came to life again. For the time
being he was not to be taken into consideration at all. If she were to
love him during the coming years, that would only make matters much
worse.
There is not, perhaps, in the yet comparatively passionless nature of
most young girls so great a capacity for real suffering as there is in
older women. But there is something else instead. There is a
sensitiveness which most women lose by degrees to a certain point,
though never altogether, the sensitiveness of the very young animal when
it is roughly exposed to the first storm of its first winter, if it has
been born under the spring breezes and reared amongst the flowers of
summer.
It will suffer much more acutely later,--lash and spur, or shears and
knife, sharper than wind and snow,--but it will never be so sensitive
again. It will never forget how the cruel cold bit its young skin, and
got into its delicate throat, and made its slender limbs tremble like
the tendrils of a creeper.
It was snowing again, but Katharine walked slowly, and went out of her
way in her unformulated wish to lose time, and to put off the moment at
which she must meet the familiar faces and hear the well-known voices at
home. Until Griggs had broached the fatal subject at table, she had been
taken out of herself at the Crowdies’. She must go back to herself now,
and she hated the thought as she hated all her own existence. But the
regions between Clinton Place and Fourth Avenue are not the part of New
York in which it is best for a young girl to walk about alone. She did
not like to be stared at by the loafers at the corners, nor to be
treated with too much familiarity by the patronizing policeman who saw
her over the Broadway crossing. Then, too, she remembered that she had
given no notice of her absence from luncheon, and that her mother might
perhaps be anxious about her. There was nothing for it but to take
courage and go home. She only hoped that Charlotte might not be there.
But Charlotte had come, in the hope of enjoying herself as she had done
on the previous day. Katharine ascertained the fact from the girl who
let her in, and went straight to her room, sending word to her mother
that she had lunched with the Crowdies and would come down presently.
Even as she went up the stairs she felt a sharp pain at the thought that
her mother and sister were probably at that very moment discussing
John’s mishaps, and comparing notes about the stories they had
heard--and perhaps reading more paragraphs from the papers. The shame of
the horrible publicity of it all overcame her, and she locked her door,
and tried the handle to be sure that it was fast--with a woman’s
distrust of all mechanical contrivances when she wishes to be quite sure
of a situation. It was instinctive, and she had no second thought which
she tried to hide from herself.
As she took off her hat and coat she grew very pale, and the deep
shadows came under her eyes--so dark that she wondered at them vaguely
as she glanced at herself in the mirror. She felt faint and sick. She
drank a little water, and then, with a sudden impulse, threw herself
upon her bed, and lay staring at the ceiling, as she had lain at dawn.
The same glare still came in from the street and penetrated every
corner, but not so vividly as before, for the snow was falling fast, and
the mist of the whirling flakes softened the light.
It was a forlorn little room. Robert the Rich would have been very much
surprised if he could have seen it. He was a generous man, and was very
fond of his grand-niece, and if he had known exactly how she lived under
her father’s roof it would have been like him to have interfered. All
that he ever saw of the house was very different. There was great
simplicity downstairs, and his practised eye detected the signs of a
rigid economy--far too rigid, he thought, when he calculated what
Alexander Junior must be worth; a ridiculously exaggerated economy, he
considered, when he thought of his own wealth, and that his only
surviving brother lived in the house in Clinton Place. But there was
nothing squalid or mean about it all. The meanness was relative. It was
like an aspersion upon the solidity of Robert’s fortune, and upon his
intention of providing suitably for all his relations.
Upstairs, however, and notably in Katharine’s room, things had a
different aspect. Nothing had been done there since long before
Charlotte had been married. The wall-paper was old-fashioned, faded, and
badly damaged by generations of tacks and pins. The carpet was
threadbare and patched, and there were holes where even a patch had not
been attempted. The furniture was in the style of fifty years ago or
more, veneered with dark mahogany, but the veneering was coming off in
places, leaving bare little surfaces of dusty pine wood smeared with
yellowish, hardened glue. Few objects can look more desperately shabby
than veneered furniture which is coming to pieces. There was nothing in
the room which Katharine could distinctly remember to have seen in good
condition, except the old carpet, which had been put down when she and
Charlotte had been little girls. To Charlotte herself, when she had come
in on Wednesday afternoon, there had been something delightful in the
renewal of acquaintance with all her old dinginess of intimate
surroundings. Charlotte’s own life was almost oppressed with luxury, so
that it destroyed her independence. But to Katharine, worn out and
heartsore with the troubles of her darkening life, it was all
inexpressibly depressing. She stared at the ceiling as she lay there, in
order not to look at the room itself. She was very tired, too, and she
would have given anything to go to sleep.
It was not merely sleep for which she longed. It was a going out. Again
the thought crossed her mind, as it had that morning, that if the whole
world were a single taper, she would extinguish the flame with one short
breath, and everything would be over. And now, too, in her exhaustion,
came the idea that something less complete, but quite as effectual, was
in her power. It had passed through her brain half an hour previously,
when she had bidden Hester Crowdie good-bye--with a sort of intuitive
certainty that she was never to see her friend again. She had left
Hester with a vague and sudden presentiment of darkness. She had
assuredly not any intention of seeking death in any definite form, but
it had seemed to be close to her as she had said those few words of
farewell. It came nearer still as she lay alone in her own room. It came
nearer, and hovered over her, and spoke to her.
It would be the instant solution of all difficulties, the end of all
troubles. The deep calm against which no storm would have power any
more. On the one hand, there was life in two aspects. Either to live an
existence of misery and daily torture with the victim of a most
degrading vice, a man openly disgraced, and at whom every one she
respected would forever look askance. Or else to live out that other
life of secret bondage, neither girl nor wife, so long as John Ralston
was alive, suffering each time he was dragged lower, as she was
suffering to-day, bound, tied in every way, beyond possibility of
escaping. Why should she suffer less to-morrow than now? It would be the
same, since all the conditions must remain unchanged. It would be the
same always. Those were the two aspects of living on in the future which
presented themselves. The torn carpet and the broken veneering of the
furniture made them seem even more terrible. There may be a point at
which the trivial has the power to push the tragic to the last
extremity.
And on the other side stood death, the liberator, with his white smile
and far-away eyes. The snow-glare was in his face, and he did not seem
to feel it, but looked quietly into it, as though he saw something very
peaceful beyond. It was a mere passing fancy that evoked the picture in
the weary, restless mind, but it was pleasant to gaze at it, so long as
it lasted. It was gone in a moment again, leaving, however, a new
impression--that of light, rather than of darkness. She wished it would
come back.
Possibly she had been almost or quite dozing, seeing that she was so
much exhausted. But she was wide awake again now. She turned upon her
side with a long-drawn sigh, and stared at the hideous furniture, the
ragged carpet, and the dilapidated wall-paper. It was not that they
meant anything of themselves--certainly not poverty, as they might have
seemed to mean to any one else. They were the result of a curious
combination of contradictory characters in one family, which ultimately
produced stranger results than Katharine Lauderdale’s secret marriage,
some of which shall be chronicled hereafter. The idea of poverty was not
associated with the absence of money in Katharine’s mind. She might be
in need of a pair of new gloves, and she and her mother might go to the
opera upstairs, because the stalls were too dear. But poverty! How could
it enter under the roof of any who bore the name of Lauderdale? If,
yesterday, she had begged uncle Robert to give her half a million,
instead of refusing a hundred thousand, it was quite within the bounds
of possibility that he might have written the cheque there and then. No.
The shabby furniture in Katharine’s room had nothing to do with poverty,
nor with the absence of money, either. It was the fatal result of
certain family peculiarities concerning which the public knew nothing,
and it was there, and at that moment it had a strong effect upon
Katharine’s mind. It represented the dilapidation of her life, the
literal dilapidation, the tearing down of one stone after another from
the crowning point she had reached yesterday to the deep foundation
which was laid bare as an open tomb to-day. She dwelt on the idea now,
and she stared at the forlorn objects, as she had at first avoided both.
Death has a strange fascination, sometimes, both for young and old
people. Men and women in the prime and strength of life rarely fall
under its influence. It is the refuge of those who, having seen little,
believe that there is little to see, and of the others who, having seen
all, have died of the sight, inwardly, and desire bodily death as the
completion of experience. Let one, or both, be wrong or right; it
matters little, since the facts are there. But the fascination aforesaid
is stronger upon the young than upon the old. They have fewer ties, and
less to keep them with the living. For the ascendant bond is weaker than
the descendant in humanity, and the love of the child for its mother is
not as her love for the child. It is right that it should be so. In
spite of many proverbs, we know that what the child owes the parent is
as nothing compared with the parent’s debt to it. Have we all found it
so easy to live that we should cast stones upon heart-broken youths and
maidens who would fain give back the life thrust upon them without their
consent?
Katharine clasped her hands together, as she lay on her side, and prayed
fervently that she might die that day--at that very hour, if possible.
It would be so very easy for God to let her die, she thought, since she
was already so tired. Her heart had almost stopped beating, her hands
were cold, and she felt numb, and weary, and miserable. The step was so
short. She wondered whether it would hurt much if she took it herself,
without waiting. There were things which made one go to sleep--without
waking again. That must be very easy and quite, quite painless, she
thought. She felt dizzy, and she closed her eyes again.
How good it would be! All alone, in the old room, while the snow was
falling softly outside. She should not mind the snow-glare any more
then. It would not tire her eyes. That white smile--it came back to her
at last, and she felt it on her own face. It was very strange that she
should be smiling now--for she was so near crying--nearer than she
thought, indeed, for as the delicate lips parted with the slow, sighing
breath, the heavy lids--darkened as though they had been hurt--were
softly swelling a little, and then very suddenly and quickly two great
tears gathered and dropped and ran and lost themselves upon the pillow.
Ah, how peaceful it would be--never to wake again, when the little step
was passed! Perhaps, if she lay quite still, it would come. She had
heard strange stories of people in the East, who let themselves die when
they were weary. Surely, none of them had ever been as weary as she.
Strange--she was always so strong! Every one used to say, ‘as strong as
Katharine Lauderdale.’ If they could see her now!
She wanted to open her eyes, but the snow-glare must be still in the
room, and she could not bear it--and the shabby furniture. She would
breathe more slowly. It seemed as though with each quiet sigh the
lingering life might float away into that dear, peaceful beyond--where
there would be no snow-glare and the furniture would not be shabby--if
there were any furniture at all--beyond--or any John Ralston--no
‘marriage nor giving in marriage’--all alone in the old room--
Two more tears gathered, more slowly this time, though they dropped and
lost themselves just where the first had fallen, and then, somehow, it
all stopped, for what seemed like one blessed instant, and then there
came a loud knocking, with a strange, involved dream of carpenters and
boxes and a journey and being late for something, and more knocking, and
her mother’s voice calling to her through the door.
“Katharine, child! Wake up! Don’t forget that you’re to dine at the Van
De Waters’ at eight! It’s half past six now!”
It was quite dark, save for the flickering light thrown upon the ceiling
from the gas-lamp below. Katharine started up from her long sleep,
hardly realizing where she was.
“All right, mother--I’m awake!” she answered sleepily.
As she listened to her mother’s departing footsteps, it all came back to
her, and she felt faint again. She struggled to her feet in the gloom
and groped about till she had found a match, and lit the gas and drew
down the old brown shades of the window. The light hurt her eyes for a
moment, and as she pressed her hands to them she felt that they were
wet.
“I suppose I’ve been crying in my sleep!” she exclaimed aloud. “What a
baby I am!”
She looked at herself in the mirror with some curiosity, before
beginning to dress.
“I’m an object for men and angels to stare at!” she said, and tried to
laugh at her dejected appearance. “However,” she added, “I suppose I
must go. I’m Katharine Lauderdale--‘that nice girl who never has
headaches and things’--so I have no excuse.”
She stopped for a moment, still looking at herself.
“But I’m not Katharine Lauderdale!” she said presently, whispering the
words to herself. “I’m Katharine Ralston--if not, what am I? Ah, dear
me!” she sighed. “I wonder how it will all end!”
At all events, Katharine Lauderdale, or Katharine Ralston, she was
herself again, as she turned from the mirror and began to think of what
she must wear at the Van De Waters’ dinner-party.