Peter brought Katherine the engagement ring a few days afterward. The
drifting had ceased abruptly, and he felt the new sense of reality as
most salutary. His personality and hers now filled the horizon; their
relations demanded a healthy condensation of thoughts before expanded in
wandering infinity, and he was thankful for the consciousness of
definite duty and responsibility that made past years seem the
refinement of egotism.
Katherine looked almost roguishly gay that afternoon, and, even after
the ring was exclaimed over, put on, and Peter duly kissed for it, he
felt that there was still an expression of happy knowingness not yet
accounted for.
"The ring wasn't a surprise, but you have one for me, Katherine."
Katherine laughed out at his acuteness.
"The ring is lovely; clever, sensitive Peter!"
"You have quite convinced me of your pleasure and my own good taste.
What is the news?"
"Well, Peter, a delightful thing has happened, or is _going_ to happen,
rather. Allan Hope is coming to Paris next week! Peter, we may have a
double wedding!"
"Hilda has accepted him?"
"Oh, we have not openly discussed it, you know. Mamma got his letter
this morning; very short. He hoped to see us all by Wednesday. Of
course, mamma is charmed. Hilda said nothing, and went off to the studio
as usual; but Hilda never _does_ say anything if she is really feeling."
"Doesn't she?" There was a musing quality in Odd's voice.
"_I_ think the child is in love with him; I thought so from the first.
Wednesday! A week from to-morrow! Oh, of course she will have him!"
Katherine said jubilantly.
"Allan isn't the man to fail in anything. He has a great deal of
determination."
"Yes, he seems the very embodiment of success, doesn't he? That is
because he doesn't try to see everything at once, like some people I
know." And Katherine nodded her head laughingly at her _fiancé_.
"Intellectual epicureanism is fatal. Allan Hope has no unmanageable
opinions. His party can always count on him. He is always there,
unchanged--unless they change! He pins his faith to his party, and
verily he shall have his reward! By mere force of honest mediocrity he
will mount to the highest places!"
"Venomous little Katherine! What are you trying to insinuate?"
"Why, that Lord Allan isn't particularly clever, nor particularly
anything, except particularly useful to men who can be clever for him.
He is the bricks they build with."
"Allan is as honest as the day," said Peter, a little shortly.
"Honest? Who's a denygin' of it, pray? His honesty is part of his
supreme utility. My simile holds good; he is a brick; a dishonest man is
a mere tool, fit only to be cast away, once used."
"How rhetorical we are!" said Odd, smiling at her with a touch of
friendly mockery.
"Lord Allan most devoutly believes that in his party lies the salvation
of his country," Katherine pursued. "Oh, I have talked to him!"
"You have, have you? Poor chap!" ejaculated Peter. "Will you ever serve
me up in this neatly dissected way, as a result of our confidential
conversations?"
"Willingly! but only to yourself. Don't be afraid, Peter. I could
dissect myself far more neatly, far more unpleasantly. I have a genius
for the scalpel! And I have said nothing in the least derogatory to
Allan Hope. He couldn't disagree with his party, any more than a pious
Catholic could disagree with his church. It is a matter of faith, and of
shutting the eyes."
If Hilda was so soon to pass to the supreme authority of an accepted
lover, Peter felt that for his own satisfaction he must make the most of
the time left him, and solve the riddle of her occupations. That
delicate sense of loyal reticence had held him from a hinted question to
even Katherine. If Katherine were as ignorant as he, a question would
arouse and imply suspicion. Odd could suspect Hilda of nothing worse
than a silly disobedience founded on a foolish idea of her own artistic
worth; a dull self-absorption, unsaved by a touch of humor. Yet this
very suspicion irritated Odd profoundly; it seemed logical and yet
impossible. He felt, in his very revulsion from it, a justification for
a storming of her barriers.
That very evening, while Katherine played Schumann, the Captain having
gone out and Mrs. Archinard dozing on the sofa, he determined to have
the truth if possible.
Hilda stood behind her sister, listening. Her tall slenderness looked
well in anything that fell in long lines, even if made by the most
_petite_ of _petite couturières_, as the gray silk had been. The white
fichu covered deficiencies of fit, and left free the exquisite line of
her throat. Her head, in its attitude of quiet listening, struck Odd
with the old sense of a beauty significant, not the lovely mask of
emptiness.
"Come and sit by me, Hilda," he said from his place on the sofa, "you
can hear better at this distance."
The quick turn of her head, her pretty look of willingness were
charming, he thought.
"I like to see you in that dress," he said, as she sat down beside him
on the sofa, "there isn't a whiff of paint or palette about it, except
that, in it, you look like a picture, and a prettier one than even you
could paint."
"That is a very subtle insult!" Hilda's smile showed a most encouraging
continuation of the pretty willingness.
"You see," said Odd, "you are not fair to your friends. You should paint
fewer pictures, and be more constantly a picture in yourself." She
showed a little uneasy doubtfulness of look.
"I am afraid I don't understand you. I am afraid I am stupid."
"You should _be_ a little more, and _act_ a little less."
"But to act is to be," said Hilda, with a sudden laugh. "We are not
listening to Schumann," she added, a trifle maliciously. Her face turned
toward him in a soft shadow, a line of light just defining the cheek's
young oval, the lovely slimness of the throat affected Odd with a really
rapturously artistic appreciation. The shape of her small head, too,
with its high curves of hair, was elegant with an intimate elegance
peculiarly characteristic. An inner gentle dignity, a voluntary
submission to exterior facts of existence resulting in a higher freedom,
a more perfect self-possession, seemed to emanate from her; the very
poise of her head suggested it, and so strong and so sudden was the
suggestion that Odd felt his curiosity intolerable, and those groping
suspicions outrageously at sea.
"Hilda," he said abruptly, "I went to your studio the other afternoon.
You were not there."
Her finger flashed warningly to her lip, and her glance towards her
mother turned again to him, pained and beseeching.
"She--they can't hear," said Odd, in a still lower voice.
"No, I was not there," Hilda repeated.
"And your father, your mother, Katherine, think you are there when you
are not. Is that wise? Don't be angry with me, my dear Hilda. You may
have confidence in me. Tell me, do you work somewhere else?"
"_No._ I am not angry. You startled me." Her look was indeed shaken,
but sweet, touched even. "Yes, I work somewhere else."
"And you keep it a secret?"
She nodded.
"Is it safe to keep secrets from your father and mother? Or is it a
secret kept for their sakes, Hilda?" Peter had made mental combinations,
yet he suspected that in this one he was shooting rather far from the
mark. No matter. Hilda looked away, and seemed revolving some inner
doubt. Her hesitation surprised him; he was more surprised when, half
unwillingly, she whispered, "Yes," still not looking at him.
"For their sakes," repeated Odd, his curiosity redoubled. "Come, Hilda,
please tell me all about it. For _their_ sakes?"
"In one way." Hilda spoke with the same air of half-unwilling
confidence. But that she should confide, that she should not lock
herself in stubborn silence, was much.
"And as you need not keep it for my sake, you may tell me," he urged; "I
may be able to help you."
"Oh! I don't need help." She turned a slightly challenging look upon
him. "It is no hardship to me, no trouble to keep my little secret."
"You are really unkind now, Hilda."
"No,"--her smile dwelt on him meditatively; "but I see no reason, no
necessity for telling you. I have nothing naughty to confess!" and there
was a touch of pride in her laugh.
"Yes, you are unkind, for you turn my real anxiety to a jest."
"You must not be anxious." Her eyes still rested on his, sweetly and
gently.
"Not when I see you surrounded by an atmosphere of carping criticism?
When I see you coming home, night after night, worn out, too fatigued to
speak? When I see that you are thin and white and sad?"
Hilda drew herself up a little.
"Oh, you are mistaken. But--how _kind_ of you!" and again the irradiated
look lit up her face.
"Does _that_ surprise you? Hilda, Katherine is in the dark about this
too?"
"Katherine knows; but please don't ask her about it."
"She doesn't approve, then?"
"Not exactly. Besides, it might hurt her. Please don't ask me either. It
really isn't worth any mystery, and yet I must keep it a secret."
Odd was silent for a moment, a baffling sense of pitfalls and
hiding-places upon him.
"But Katherine ought to tell me," he said at last, smiling.
"Now you are pushing an unfair advantage. She thinks, probably, that it
might hurt _me_. Really, _really_," she added urgently, "it isn't so
serious as all this seems to make it. The one serious thing is that it
_would_ hurt mamma, and that is why I make such a mountain out of my
mole-hill. How mystery does magnify the tiniest things!"
"Tell me, at least, where you go in the afternoon. I mean to what part
of Paris, to what street."
"I go to several streets," said Hilda, smiling resignedly, "since you
_will_ be so curious."
"Where are you going to-morrow? Give me just an idea of your prowess."
"I go to-morrow to the Rue d'Assas."
"Near the Luxembourg Gardens?"
"Yes."
"I fancied you were walking yourself to death. And next day?"
"Next day--the Rue Poulletier."
"And where may that be? I fancied I knew my Paris well."
"It is a little street in the Île St. Louis. That is my favorite walk;
home along the quays. I get the view of Notre Dame from the back, with
all the flying buttresses, and the sunset beyond."
"No wonder you are tired every night. You always walk?"
"Usually. I have Palamon with me, and they would not take him in a 'bus.
But from the Île St. Louis I often take the boat, and that is one of the
treats of Paris, I think, especially when the lights are lit. And on
some days I go to the Boulevard St. Germain. There; now you shall ask me
no more questions."
Odd made no further comment on the information he had received, but he
resolved to be in the Rue d'Assas to-morrow. He did not intend to spy,
but he did intend to walk home with Hilda, and to make her understand
that one of the brotherly offices he claimed was the right to protecting
companionship. He revolved the _rôle_ and its possibilities, as he lay
back in the sofa watching Hilda's profile, and listening to Schumann--a
_rôle_ that could, at all events, not last long, since Allan Hope
arrived on Wednesday. Allan's arrival would put an end to mysteries, to
a need for brotherly protection. Odd felt a certain curiosity on this
point; indeed his attitude towards Hilda was one of continual curiosity.
"So Allan Hope turns up Wednesday week," he said. "I shall be glad to
see Allan again."
Hilda's silence might imply displeasure, but Odd, in an attitude of
manly laziness, one leg crossed over the other, one hand holding an
ankle, thought a little gentle teasing quite allowable.
"Will you go bicycling with him, unkind Hilda?" He was not prepared for
the startled look she turned on him.
"When I would not go with _you_?" Her own vehemence seemed to embarrass
her. "I hardly know how to bicycle at all," she added lamely; "I would
have gone with you if I had had time." She looked away again, and then,
taking a book from the table beside her--
"Have you seen the last volume of _décadent_ poetry? Isn't the binding
nice?" Odd felt himself justly, but rather severely, reproved; yet the
gentle candor of her eyes was kind and soothing. Katherine was playing
the "Chopin" from Schumann's "Carnaval," and Peter, still holding his
ankle and feeling rather like a naughty little boy forgiven, did not
look at the fantastic volume she held, but at Hilda herself. How blue
the shadows were on the milky whiteness of her skin. Odd's eyes followed
the thick, soft eddies of hair about her forehead.
"Aren't the margins generous?" said Hilda, turning the pages; "a mere
trickle of print through the whiteness. Some of the verses are really
very pretty," and she talked gayly, in her gentle way, as they went
through the pages together.