Odd was to take a walk in the Bois with Katherine the next morning, and
he found her waiting for him in hat and coat and furs, a delightfully
smart and wintry little figure. Katherine never failed in elegance, in
well-groomed finish--her low-heeled little boots, her irreproachable
snowy gloves, bore the same unmistakable stamp of the _cachet_ that
costs, that is not to be procured ready made. Odd, as a rich man, had
given very little thought to the power of money, and little thought to
Katherine's garments except as charmingly characteristic symbols of good
taste; but to-day his eye noted the black fur that fell about her
shoulders and trailed lustrous ends to her very feet, more for its
richness than its becomingness.
Her bright though slightly grave smile failed to restore him to his
usual attitude of _bon camaraderie_. He smiled and kissed her, but he
was conscious of underlying soreness, conscious, too, that he might lose
his temper with Katherine; he had never lost it with Alicia. Katherine's
very superiority made it imperative to have things out with her. Kindly
resignation was an impossibility. He realized that not to admire
Katherine would make life with her intolerable. She would immediately
perceive reservations and she would revolt against them. He wondered
whether he should be the one to broach the subject of Hilda's
ill-treatment, and was amazed at a certain embarrassed shrinking, as
from a feeling too deep for words, that kept him silent as they walked
along, taking a short cut to the Place de l'Etoile, where the Arc stood
in almost cardboard clearness on the pale cold sky. It was Katherine who
spoke--
"Hilda told me of your kindness yesterday. It touched her very much."
In some subtle way it irritated Odd to hear Katherine vouch for Hilda's
feeling.
"And Hilda told you that I had been admitted into the mystery of the
Archinard family?" His voice was even enough, but it held a certain
keenness that Katherine was quick to recognize.
"You don't think their mystery creditable, do you? Nor do I, Peter. But
mamma knows nothing of it, nor papa; and I have tried to dissuade Hilda
from the first."
"My dear Katherine, the child has worked like a galley-slave for you
all! Your necessities were more potent facts than your dissuasions, I
fancy!"
Katherine gave a look at the fine severity of the profile beside her.
She felt herself arraigned, and her impulse was towards rebellion.
However, her voice was gentle, submissive even, as she answered him--
"I know it must look badly to you--cruel even. But, Peter, don't you
know--you do know--how things _grow_ around one? One can hardly tell
where the definite wrongdoing comes in, or rather the definite
submission to a wrong situation." This was so true, that Katherine felt
immediately the mollified quality of his voice as he answered--
"I know. I know submission was forced upon you, no doubt. But I had
rather you had not submitted when once the situation grew definite. And
I wish, Katherine, that you had helped her in making the situation
easier. Granting that you could give her no material aid--granting that
her faculty is good luck--still the actual burden might have been
lightened."
Odd paused; he could not say his thoughts outright--tell her that the
comparative luxury of her life and her mother's was outrageous, shocking
to him now that he understood its source.
"It is part of Hilda's good luck that her pleasures are not costly, or
rather that she can herself defray their cost," said Katherine quietly.
"She has always lived in her art--seemed to care for nothing else. My
life would indeed have been dreadful had I not accepted the interests
that came into it. I have always felt, too, that in following the
natural bent of my own character, I was laying foundations that might
some day repay Hilda for everything. If she has friends--a public--it is
owing to me. It was I who persuaded her to come to London last spring.
I, therefore, who assured her future, in a sense, for there Allan Hope
fell in love with her. I have felt that I have been doing my duty, in my
own far less conventionally fine way, but doing it nevertheless. I make
a circle for mamma; I brighten her life and my own and Hilda's, as far
as she will let me. Certain _tools_ are necessary--Hilda needs brushes
and canvases and studios; I, a few gowns, a few cabs, and a supply of
neat boots and gloves. Still the contrast is uncomplimentary to me, I
own; but when Hilda proposed this work of hers, I entreated her to give
up the idea--I said we would all starve together rather. She insisted,
and how can I interfere?"
"I can understand, Katherine, that everything you say is most convincing
to yourself; I see the perfect honesty of your own point of view. But,
my dear girl, it is slightly sophistical honesty. Hilda denies herself
the commonest comforts of life, not only to give you the luxuries, but
because her high sense of honor rebels against spending on herself money
that is owed to others. Don't misunderstand me; I don't ask any such
perhaps overstrained sense of responsibility from you. You have, no
doubt, been fully justified in living your own life; but could it not
have been lived with a little less elegance? I am sure that you would be
welcomed everywhere, Katherine, with even fewer gowns and fewer gloves."
Katherine flushed lightly; her flushes were never deep, and always
becoming. It certainly cut her now to hear his almost unconscious
implication--that from her he expected a less perfect sense of honor
than from her sister. She swallowed a certain wrathful mortification
that welled up, and answered with some apparent cheerfulness--
"You don't know your world, Peter, if you fancy that even Katherine
Archinard would be welcome in darned and dirty gloves!"
Odd walked on silently.
"And might she not be forced into taking some girlish distraction?" he
said presently. "It came out yesterday, with that astounding air of
_excusing_ herself she has, that she reads to her mother in the evening!
Could not you do that, Katherine, and let Hilda profit now and then by
the _entourage_ you have created for her?"
Katherine's flush deepened.
"Mamma doesn't care for my reading, and Hilda won't go out; she goes to
bed too early."
"And then," Odd continued, ignoring her comment in a way most irritating
to Katherine's smarting susceptibility, "you might have gone with her
now and again to these houses where she teaches. You would have stood
for protection. You would have seen for yourself if, in this drudgery,
there lurked any unpleasantness, any danger. A girl of her extreme
beauty is--exposed to insult."
Katherine gave him a stare of frank astonishment.
"Oh, you must not give way to unpleasant romancing of that sort! Things
like that only happen in novels of the silliest sort--even to beauties!
And Hilda would have told _me_. She tells me _everything_. Really,
Peter, she must have given you a wrong impression; she enjoys her life!"
"So she tried to convince me," said Odd, with a good deal of sharpness;
"there was no hint of complaint, regret, reproach, in Hilda's recountal;
don't imagine it, Katherine."
Katherine was telling herself that never in all her life had she
experienced so many rebuffs. She contemplated her own good temper with
some amazement; she also wondered how long it would last. By this time
they were half-way down the Avenue du Bois; the day was fine and clear,
and the wintry trees were sharply definite against the sky.
"I have never even seen her in a well-made gown," said Odd.
"Hilda scorns the fashion-plate garment, as I do. We are both original
in that respect."
"Your originality takes different forms."
"Because it must adapt itself to different conditions, Peter. I won't be
scolded about my dresses. Men like you imagine that, because a woman
looks well, she must spend a lot. It isn't so with me. My dresses last
forever, and, to go into details, Hilda by no means clothes me. Papa has
money--now and then. Even Hilda could not support the family, and her
money mainly goes for mamma's books and oysters and hot-house grapes. If
she will not spend it on herself, and if, now and then, I accept some of
it, I cannot consent to feel unduly humiliated."
There was a decisiveness in Katherine's tone that warned Peter to
self-control. Indeed the situation had been created for her. She had
owned up frankly to her distaste for it, her realization of its wrong.
"I am not going to ask undue humiliation of you, my dear Katherine.
Don't think me such a priggish brute; but I am going to ask you to help
me to put an end to this." Katherine's smiles had returned.
"Allan Hope will."
Peter walked on, looking gloomy.
"You won't realize that Hilda's life is the one that gives her the
greatest enjoyment. I have always envied Hilda till _you_ came; and even
now"--Katherine's smile was playful--"Allan Hope is very nice! Take
patience, Peter, till Wednesday."
"Yes; we must wait."
"I have waited for so long! Hilda could not have minded what you call
the 'drudgery.' She had only to lift her finger to end it."
"Hilda would not be the girl to lift her finger."
"You appreciate my Hilda, Peter; I am glad." Katherine gave his
abstracted countenance another of her bright contemplative glances.
There was nothing sly in Katherine's glances, and yet underlying this
one was a world of kindly, though very keen analysis; disappointment,
rebellion, and level-headed tolerance. This was decidedly not the man to
be fitted to her frame. He could not be moulded to a clever woman's
liking, for all his indefiniteness. On certain points of the conduct of
life, Katherine felt that she would meet an opposition sharply definite.
Katherine understood and was perfectly tolerant of criticism, but she
did not like it; nor did she like being put in the wrong. That Peter now
considered her very much in the wrong was evident. She was also aware
that the sophistry of her explanation had deceived herself even less
than it had deceived him. That Hilda spent her life in drudgery, and
that she spent hers in pleasure-seeking, were facts most palpable to
Katherine's very impartial vision. She knew she was wrong, and she knew
that only frank avowal would meet Peter's severity and touch his
tenderness and humor. If she heaped shame on her own head, he would be
the first to cry out against the injustice.
Yet Katherine hesitated to own herself wrong. She was not sure that she
cared to place her lover in the sheltering and leading attitude of the
Love in the "Love and Life." The meek, trembling look of Life had
always irritated her in the picture. Katherine felt herself quite strong
enough to stand alone, and felt that she would like to lead in all
things. It was with a deep inner sense of humiliation that she said--
"Please don't be cross with me, Peter. Please don't scold me. I have
been naughty--far naughtier than I dreamed of--you have made me realize
it, though you are not quite just. But you must comfort me for my own
misdoings."
As Katherine went on she felt an artistic impulsiveness, almost real,
and which sounded so real that Peter met the sweet pleading of her eyes
with a start of self-disgust.
Peter was very tender-hearted, very sympathetic, very prone to
self-doubt. Katherine's look made him feel a very prig of pompous
righteousness.
"Why, Katherine!" he said, pausing in his walk. "My dear Katherine! as
if I could not appreciate the slow growth of necessity! I only hope you
may never have to comfort me for far worse sins!"
This was satisfactory. But Katherine's pride still squirmed.
Odd went to meet Hilda on Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. The
distances were always great, and he insisted on cabs for the return
trip. Palamon must be tired, even if Hilda were not. He was too old for
such journeyings; and Hilda had smilingly to submit. Wednesday would end
it all definitely; Peter thought that he saw the end with unmixed
satisfaction, and yet when Allan Hope walked into his rooms early on
Wednesday morning, this Perseus of Hilda's womanhood gave the Perseus
of her childhood a really unpleasant turn of the blood. There was
something irritating in Allan Hope's absolute fitness for the _rôle_,
emphasizing, as it did, Peter's own unfitness, his forty years, and his
desultory life.
Active energy, the go-ahead perseverance that knows no doubts, the
honest and loyal convictions which were all arranged for him from his
cradle, and which he would bequeath to his children unaltered, all
things that make for order and well-being, looked at one from Lord
Allan's clear, light eyes. Odd suddenly felt himself to be an uncertain
cumberer of the earth; failure personified beside the other's air of
inevitable success. He was fond of Hope and Hope fond of him, and they
talked as old friends talk, with the intimacy that time brings; an
intimacy far removed from the strong knittings of sympathy that an hour
may accomplish; for, though Odd understood Allan very well, Allan did
not muddle his direct views of things by a comprehension that implied
condonation. He thought it rather a pity that Odd had not made more of
his life. Odd's books weren't much good that he could see; better do
something than write about the things other men have done. Odd felt that
Allan was probably quite right. They hardly spoke of Hilda, but in
Hope's congratulations on Peter's engagement there was a ring of
heartfelt brotherly warmth that implied much, and left Peter in a gloomy
rage with himself for feeling miserable. Peter had not analyzed the
darks and glooms of the last few days.
Growth does not admit of much self-contemplation. One wakes suddenly to
the accomplished change. If Peter was conscious of developments, he
defined them as morbid enlargements of that self-doubt which would
naturally thrill under the stress of new responsibilities.
Only from the force of newly formed habit did he go to the Rue
Poulletier that afternoon, hardly expecting to meet Hilda. But Hilda
had, as yet, not interrupted her usual avocations. She emerged from the
gloomy portals of one of the old dismantled-looking _hôtels_ that line
the Rue Poulletier with a certain dignity, and she looked toward the
corner where he stood with a confident glance. It was the second time he
had met her there, twice in the Rue d'Assas too.
"It is so kind of you," she said, as she joined him and they turned into
the _quai_; "only you mustn't think that you _must_, you know."
"_May_ I think that I _must_? Give me the assurance of necessity. I am
always a little afraid of seeming officious."
Hilda smiled round at him.
"Who is fishing? You know I love to have you come. You can't think how I
look forward to it." She was walking beside him along the _quai_. The
unobtrusive squareness of the "Doric little Morgue" was on their left,
as they faced the keen wind and the dying sunset. Notre Dame stood gray
upon a chilly evening sky of palest yellow. "I know now that I _was_
lonely."
"That implies the kindest compliment."
"More than _implies_, I hope."
"You really like to have me come?"
"You know I do. I am only afraid that you will rob yourself--of other
things for me."
The candor of her eyes was childlike.
"My little friend." Odd felt that he could not quite trust himself, and
took refuge in the convenient assertion.
The cold, clear wind blew against their faces; it ruffled the water, and
the gray waves showed sharp steely lights. The leafless trees made an
arabesque of tracery on the river and the sky. Hilda looked up at the
kind, melancholy face beside her, a faint touch of cynicism in her sad
smile; but the cynicism was all for herself, and it was not excessive.
She accepted this renaissance gratefully, though the disillusions of the
past were unforgettable.
"Tell me, Hilda, that you will be my friend whatever happens--to you or
to me."
"I have always been your friend, have I not?"
"Have you, Hilda, always?"
"I am dully faithful." Hilda's smile was a little baffling; it gave no
warrant for the sudden quickening of the breath that he had experienced
more than once of late.
"I feel as if I had _found_ you, Hilda."
"Did you _look_ for me, then?"
The smile was now decidedly baffling and yet very sweet.
"You know," she added, "I liked you from that first moment when you
fished me out of the river. It seems that you are fated to act always
the chivalrous part toward me."
"I would ask no better fate. Hilda, you have seen Allan Hope? Not yet?"
"No; not yet." Hilda's face grew serious. "He is coming to tea this
afternoon."
"But you must be there."
"Yes, I suppose I must." This affectation of girlish indifference seemed
to Odd more significant than noticeable shyness.
"We must take a cab," he said, trying to keep his voice level.
"Oh, it makes no difference. Cabs, you see, are never reckoned with in
my arrivals. I am warranted to be late."
"But you must not be late."
"But if I want to?" There was certainly a touch of roguery in her eyes.
"If you want to and if I want you to, it shows that you are cruel and I
conscienceless. Here is a cab. Away with you, Hilda. _Au revoir_."
"Aren't you coming too?" asked Hilda, pausing in the act of lifting
Palamon.
"Not to-day; I can't." Odd knew that he was cowardly. "I shall see you
to-morrow? I suppose not."
"Why, yes, if you come to the Boulevard St. Germain." Hilda had
deposited Palamon on the floor of the cab and still stood by the open
door looking rather dismayed.
"Really!"
"I shall go there."
"I too, then. Remember our vow of friendship, Hilda. I wish you
everything that is good and happy."
There was seemingly a slightly hurt look on Hilda's face as she drove
away. In spite of the vow, Peter feared that this was the last of Hilda,
of even this rather shadowy second edition of friendship.
He had done his duty; to hurt oneself badly seems a surety of having
done one's duty thoroughly.