Major Clare did not come back to the Vicarage, and Minnie and Rosa
ceased to talk much of him to their friend. Katharine never knew with
what explanation he had satisfied his family as to the cessation of
their intercourse, nor for that matter did his nieces, while "She won't
do, Charley, I can't work it this time," had been the brief explanation
with which he had disappointed his brother's hopes on his behalf. The
Vicar feared that Miss Kingsworth must be disappointed, and his
daughters were sure of it, as they observed the change in Kate's girlish
gaiety. After much debate as to whether matters had gone far enough for
a word or two of explanation to be Katharine's due, Mrs Clare, a kind
gentle person, resolved on confiding to Emberance the story of Major
Clare's youthful disappointment, as the kindest way to both parties of
accounting for his supposed vacillation, ending with, "You see, my dear,
he never can forget poor Alice, who was made to refuse him because of
his poor prospects. And then his manners are so engaging."
"I think," said the prudent Emberance, with due regard for her cousin's
dignity, "that Katharine found out the nature of Major Clare's
attentions for herself. I don't think he altered or dropped them. I
believe her mind is quite made up. And she is very young. I don't at
all think Aunt Mary would wish her to many yet," concluded Emberance, as
if she had been Kate's maiden aunt at least.
Mrs Clare, a little embarrassed, murmured something about "a little
passing experience," and Emberance, after some hesitation, decided on
telling Kate what had been said.
"Oh yes," said Kate, quietly, "I know all about that Alice; he told me--
once, just down by Widow Sutton's gate, when we were gathering the last
blackberries. He said--other things--I don't want to repeat them."
"Dear Kitty, I hope you won't be very dull and unhappy, after I have
gone."
"I suppose I shall be unhappy," said Kate, "there's plenty to make me
so."
She cried a little as she spoke, in a half melancholy, half impatient
way.
"But you'll come after Christmas and stay with Uncle Kingsworth, and
then we shall see each other again?"
"Oh yes, and I shall be as tired of Kingsworth as I used to be of
Applehurst. Nothing turns out well for mamma and me."
Indeed, when Emberance, reluctantly enough, went home for Christmas,
Katharine felt as if all the unsatisfactoriness of the old Applehurst
life had returned, added to the new dreariness that hung over
Kingsworth.
Strange puzzle, while the mother sat longing and praying that her child
might have strength to sacrifice her worldly prospects to her sense of
truth, the daughter felt that the sacrifice had all been made already,
and that to push the burden away would be likely to come in the light of
a relief.
She had lost her lover, and had in fact discovered that she had never
inspired him with any real affection; and life with her mother at
Kingsworth seemed but a dreary prospect. She hated the responsibilities
in which she was involved, and was altogether vexed, disappointed and
unhappy.
But perhaps the very fact that life had opened to her in so many aspects
all at once, had prevented one of them from being utterly overpowering.
Her feelings had not had time to become full grown, and as she read a
story of an utterly heart-broken maiden, she thought to herself,--
"After all, I don't feel quite like _this_."
And happily, it never occurred to Kate that it was a pity that she did
not.
She was quite enough to be pitied, poor little thing, under the weight
of her troubles, _even if_ her heart _was_ only three quarters broken.
"I think, Katie," said her mother, one morning when she had been for
some time watching her listless attitude, "that you find it as possible
to be dull at Kingsworth as at Applehurst."
"I suppose," said Kate, "that one may be dull anywhere? Aren't you ever
dull, mamma?"
"No," said Mrs Kingsworth, "I don't think I am ever quite what you call
dull. Of course I don't mean to say that I find life always enjoyable."
"You care more for reading and that sort of thing than I do," said Kate.
"Yes, Katie, but even a love of intellectual pursuits is not enough by
itself. There is only one thing that can keep up one's interest in
life,--that it should be filled by an earnest purpose."
"You mean trying to be good," said Kate, with less impatience than her
mother's formal sentences awoke within her in general.
Mrs Kingsworth felt a little rebuked, she hardly knew why.
"Every one is called to some duty," she said, "I meant the strict
fulfilment of that. It is a call to arms."
There was a slight ring in the mother's voice that might have seemed
more proper to the girl, but then, much as such a view would have
astonished Kate, the old Canon was wont to say that "Mary had kept
herself shut up till she was just as romantic as a girl of eighteen."
Perhaps her high-mindedness with all its defects had kept her heart
young. She went on, her eyes kindling.
"Each soldier has his post, it is dishonour to desert it; we have a post
in life, a special duty, if we shrink from it we are deserters,
_cowards_, while the sense that we are at our guard is quite enough to
atone for any amount of dulness as you call it, or, I should say, for
any sacrifice."
Kate made no answer, she was conscious of no such glow of
self-satisfaction.
"But we cannot fight each other's battles," continued Mrs Kingsworth,
"and sometimes a good soldier has to see the breach that _he_ would have
given his life to defend left open by another."
She spoke in her usual concentrated earnest manner, and Kate having now
the clue to these utterances was seized with a sudden impulse of
impatience, and forgot her own determination not to commit herself, and
the Canon's advice to use her own unbiassed judgment.
"I am sure, mamma," she said, hastily, "if you mean that you want me
very much to give up Kingsworth, I don't care a fig about it. I had
much rather be quit of it _now_, and go away and have an easy mind to
enjoy myself. I'm sure I wish it was buried in the sea!"
Mrs Kingsworth could hardly believe her ears, she started from her
seat, with fleeting colour and throbbing heart. Could it be that the
burden of years would be let slip at last?
"Kate, you mean it!" she said, breathlessly.
"Yes," said Katharine, with the petulant languor of her fretted spirits.
"I don't care about it, I had much rather not have all the trouble of
looking after the poor people."
"You mean that you will make restitution--give it back to Emberance?"
"I'm sure I would if there was an end of all the bother about it!"
Mrs Kingsworth sat down again in silence. Was it true? was it
possible? Was her long purpose coming to its fulfilment? Was the
desire of her life fulfilled at last? Would she really soon lie down to
sleep and feel that the burden had rolled away, that the great deed was
done?
Katharine sat pulling at a knot in her silk. She was a little flushed
and frowning, but not looking much as if she had come to the crucial
moment of her life.
"You see it all now?" said her mother.
"I don't know--I had much rather get rid of it all. That is, if it
isn't wrong."
"Wrong?"
Kate was silent; she knew quite well that in yielding to her impatience
of her mother's hints, to her dread of the associations of her brief
love story, and to the general weariness of her unsatisfactory life, she
had acted entirely against the spirit of her uncle's letter, and had
relapsed into the childish love of ease and submission to her mother's
ascendancy, out of which she had been dimly struggling.
"There is no use in my saying anything till I'm twenty-one," she said.
"But you will not retract, Katharine, you will not fall again into
temptation? Give me your promise--surely I may ask for that now."
"No, mamma," said Kate, "I won't promise. I'd rather get rid of it, a
great deal, especially if you promise me not to go back to Applehurst.
But all the same, I had better not promise, for that would be the same
thing as doing it now. I'll wait till I'm one-and-twenty."
"But you wish _now_ to restore it?"
"Oh yes, I'm sure it has been no good to me," said Kate, and gathering
up her work, she left the room.
Then Mrs Kingsworth rose and walked about, too restless to sit still.
How often had she pictured to herself the bliss of this moment, the
finding herself at one with her daughter, the cessation of the perpetual
doubt of the girl's worthiness, the joy of the united act of
restitution, the peace of the ill-gotten wealth laid down. And now was
it the newness of the relief, or what? she could not be sensible of this
unwonted rapture, nor realise that Katharine was not a disappointment.
As for Katharine, she felt rather self-reproachful, and conscious of
having acted in a fit of impatience, conscious too that a trifle might
make her think and feel differently. Neither lady realised that the
carrying out of the plan would involve considerable delay and
difficulty. Katharine thought that she had only to tell her uncle the
resolution she had come to, and then pack up her things and leave
Emberance in possession; while Mrs Kingsworth had thought so much more
of Katharine being willing to make restitution than of the restitution
itself that she had thought very little of the process.
The projected visit to Fanchester did not however take place till March,
for Mrs Kingsworth caught cold just before they had intended to start,
and for the first time within Kate's recollection was confined to her
room for some weeks, and though not ill enough to cause any alarm, was
sufficiently so to be unable to take a journey in the winter. She did
not care very much for Kate's attendance, and the girl was left more to
herself than had ever been the case before. Major Clare did not
reappear, and though she walked out with the girls at the Vicarage and
saw a good deal of them, there was a check on the fervour of her
friendship for them.
She was just as idle, just as often dull, just as eager for a bit of
gaiety it seemed as ever, no worthier a creature so far as her mother
could see than before she had resolved on the act of reparation.
And yet, under all the surface of vexation and weariness, and balked
desire of a pleasanter life, there was a tiny bit of self-respect in
Kate's heart that had not been there formerly.
She had followed her poor little fluctuating uncertain conscience at the
most critical moment of her life, she _had_ done the best she knew. She
had been open and honest, and she would have been a worse girl if she
had stifled her instinct of telling Major Clare the truth, though she
fancied now that she would have been a much happier one.
But this her mother could not know, and as Katharine did not try much to
conquer and did not succeed at all in concealing her discontent and
impatience, she was not likely to find it out.