Odd, as usual, found Katherine in the drawing-room when he called next
morning. The Captain and Mrs. Archinard had assumed almost the aspect of
illusions of late; for the regularity of his daily routine--the morning
spent with Katherine, and the afternoon with Hilda--excluded the hours
of their appearance, and Odd was rather glad of the discovered immunity.
Katherine was reading beside the fire, one slim sole tilted towards the
blaze, and she looked round at Odd as he came in, without moving. Odd's
face wore a curiously strained expression, and, under it, seemed
thinner, older than usual. He looked even haggard, Katherine thought.
She liked his thin face. It satisfied perfectly her sense of fitness, as
Odd did indeed. It offered no stupidities, no pretences of any kind for
mockery to fasten on. The clever feminine eye is quick to remark the
subtlest signs of fatuity or complacency. Katherine's eye was very
clever, and this morning, in looking at Odd, she was conscious of a
little inner sigh. Katherine had asked herself more than once of late
whether a husband, not only too superior for success, but morally her
superior, might not make life a little wearing. Some such thought
crossed her mind now as she met his eyes, and she realized that through
Allan Hope's discomfiture she herself was as wrongly placed as ever, and
Hilda's drudgery as binding.
Indeed, several thoughts mingled with that general sense of _malaise_.
One was that Allan Hope's smooth, handsome face was rather fatuous; the
face that knows no doubts is in danger of seeming fatuous to a
Katherine.
Another thought held a keen conjecture on Peter's haggard looks.
She put out her hand to him, and, stooping over her, he kissed her with
more tenderness than he always showed. Their engagement had left almost
untouched the easy unsentimental attitude of earlier days.
"Well," he said, and Katherine understood and resented somewhat the
quick attack of the absorbing subject. She shook her head.
"Bad news, Peter. Bad and very unexpected."
Odd stood upright and looked at her.
"Bad!" he repeated.
"She refused him," Katherine said tersely, and her glance turned once
more from the fire to Peter's face. He looked at her silently.
"She is a foolish baby," added Katherine.
"She refused him--definitely?"
"Quite. She had to face the music last night, of course. Mamma and papa
were rather--shabby--let us say, in their disinterested disappointment."
Odd flushed a little at the cool cynicism of Katherine's tone. "She told
me, when I removed her from the battlefield, that she doesn't love him
and never will. So, of course, from every high and mighty point of view
she is right, quite right."
Katherine's eyes returned contemplatively to the fire. Odd was still
silent.
"She ought to love him, of course; that is where she is so foolish. I am
afraid she has ruined her life. I love you, Peter, and he is every bit
as good-looking as you are." Katherine glanced at him with a sad and
whimsical smile. Peter, certainly, was looking rather dazed. He stooped
once more and kissed her.
"Thank you for loving me, Katherine."
"You are welcome. It _is_ a pity, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is"--Peter seated himself on the sofa, where Allan had sat the
night before--"an awful pity," he added. "I am astonished. I thought she
cared for him."
"So did I."
"She cares for some one else, perhaps." Odd locked his hands behind his
head, and he too stared at the fire.
"There is no one else she could care for. I know Hilda's outlook too
well."
"And she refused him," he repeated musingly.
"Really, Peter, that sounds a little dull--not like you." Katherine
smiled at him.
"I feel dulled. I am awfully sorry. It would have been so satisfactory.
And what's to be done now?"
"That is for you to suggest, Peter. My power over Hilda is very limited.
You may have more influence."
"She might come and live with us."
"That would be very nice," Katherine assented, "and it is very dear of
you to suggest it."
Peter was conscious of sudden terrors that prompted him to add with
self-scorn--
"What would your mother do?"
"Without her? I don't know."
"Of course," Peter hastened to add, "as far as money goes, you know; you
understand, dear, that your mother shall want nothing. But to rob her of
the companionship of both daughters?" Peter rose and walked to the
window. It needed some heroism, he thought, to put aside the idea of
Hilda living with them; he tried to pride himself on the renunciation,
while under the poor crust of self-approbation lurked jibing depths of
consciousness. Heroism would not lie in renunciation, but in living with
her. The cowardice of his own retreat left him horribly shaken.
Katherine watched him from her chair, calmly.
"But Hilda's work must cease at once," he said presently, finding a
certain relief in decisive measures. "She won't show any false pride, I
hope, about allowing me to put an end to it."
"It would be like her," said Katherine, sliding a sympathetic gloom of
voice over the hard reality of her conclusions; conclusions half angry,
half sarcastic. Peter was dull after all. Katherine felt alarmed,
humiliated, and amused, but she steeled herself inwardly to a calm
contemplation of facts. She joined him at the window. "What a burden you
have taken on your poor shoulders, Peter." Peter immediately put his arm
around her waist, and, though Katherine felt a deeper humiliation, she
saw that alarm was needless; a proof of Peter's superiority, a proof,
too, of his stupidity; as her own most original and clever superiority
was proved by the fact of her calm under humiliation. Could she accept
that humiliation as the bitter drop in the cup of good things Peter had
to offer her? Katherine asked herself the question; it was answered by
another. Just how far did the humiliation go? Peter's infidelity might
be mere shallow passion, _passagère;_ the fine part might be to feign
blindness and help him out of it. _Attendons_ summed up Katherine's
mental attitude at the moment.
"Don't talk to me of burdens, dear Katherine," said Peter. "Don't try to
spoil my humble little pleasure. If I can make you and yours happier,
what more can I ask?" He looked at her with kind, tired eyes.
"I won't thwart you, but Hilda will."
"Hilda will find it difficult when we are married. That must be soon,
Katherine."
Katherine looked pensively out of the window.
"We will see," she replied, with a pretty evasiveness.
It was fine and cold as Odd walked down the Boulevard St. Germain that
afternoon. He walked at a tremendous pace, for human nature hopes to
cheat thought by physical effort. Indeed, Peter did not think much, and
was convinced that his mind was a comparatively happy blank as he paused
before the tall house where Hilda was pursuing her avocations. If he
made any definite reflections while he walked up and down between the
doorway and the next corner, they were on his last few conversations
with Hilda; and then on rather abstract points merely. He had drawn the
child out. He had penetrated the reserved mind that acquired for
enjoyment, not for display. He had found out that Hilda knew Italian
literature, from Dante to Leopardi, almost as well as he himself did,
and loved it just as well. The fiction of Russia and Scandinavia was
deeply appreciated by her, and the essayists of France. Her tastes were
as delicately discriminative as Katherine's, but lacked that metallic
assurance of which lately Peter had become rather uncomfortably aware.
As for the English tongue, from the old meeting-ground of Chaucer they
could range with delightful sympathy to Stevenson's sweet radiance.
Peter thought quite intently of this literary survey and evaded any
trespassing beyond its limits. His reticence was not put to a prolonged
test. Hilda met him before half-a-dozen trips to the corner were
accomplished. She showed no signs of conscious guilt, though Peter was
not sure that she was not a "foolish baby."
"Let us walk," she said, "it is such a lovely day."
"We will walk at least till the sun goes. We will just have time to
catch the sunset on the Seine."
"Yes; what a _lovely_ day! I wish I were ten, with short skirts, and a
hoop, that I could run and roll."
"You would like a bicycle ride. Come to-morrow with Katherine and me."
"I can't. Don't think me a prig, but my model is due and I am finishing
my picture. Thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good."
"If Palamon is tired I will carry him, Hilda."
"Oh, he isn't tired. See how he pulls at his cord. The sunlight is
getting into his veins. What delicious air."
"The sunlight is getting into your veins too, Hilda. You are looking a
little as you should look."
Hilda did not ask him how she should look. It was an original
characteristic of Hilda's that she did not seem at all anxious to talk
about herself, and Odd continued, looking down at her profile--
"That's what you ought to have--sunlight. You are a little white flower
that has grown in a shadow." Hilda did not glance up at him; she smiled
rather distantly.
"What a sad simile!"
"Is it a true one, Hilda?"
"I don't think so. I never thought of myself in that sentimental light.
I suppose to friendly eyes every life has a certain pathos."
"No; some lives are too evidently and merely flaunting in the sunlight
for even friendly eyes to poetize--to sentimentalize, as you rather
unkindly said."
"Sunlight is poetic, too."
"Success and selfishness, and all the commonplaces that make up a happy
life, are not poetic."
"That is rather morbid, you know--_décadent_."
"I don't imply a fondness for illness and wrongness. Rather the
contrary. It is a very beautiful rightness that keeps in the shade to
give others the sunshine."
Hilda's eyes were downcast, and in her look a certain pale reserve that
implied no liking for these personalities--personalities that glanced
from her to others, as Odd realized.
He paused, and it was only after quite a little silence that Hilda said,
with all her gentle quiet--
"You must not imagine that I am unhappy, or that my life has been an
unhappy life. It is very good of you to trouble about it, but I can't
claim the rather self-righteously heroic _rôle_ you give me. I think it
is others who live in the shadow. I think that any work, however feebly
done, is a happy thing. I find so much pleasure in things other people
don't care about."
"A very nicely delivered little snub, Hilda. You couldn't have told me
to mind my own business more kindly." Odd's humorous look met her glance
of astonished self-reproach. He hastened on, "Will you try to find
pleasure in a thing most girls _do_ care for? Will you go to the
Meltons' dance on Monday? Katherine told me I must go, this morning, and
I said I would try to persuade you."
"I _didn't_ mean to snub you."
"Very well; convince me of it by saying you will come to the dance."
The girlish pleasure of her face was evident.
"Do you really want me to?"
"It would make me very happy."
"It is against my rules, you know. I can't get up at six and go out in
the evening besides. But I will make an exception for this once, to show
you I wasn't snubbing you! And, besides, I should love to." The gayety
of her look suddenly fell to hesitation. "Only I am afraid I can't. I
remember I haven't any dress."
"_Any_ dress will do, Hilda."
"But I haven't any dress. The gray silk is impossible."
Peter's mind made a most unmasculine excursion into the position.
"But you were in London last year. You went to court. You must have had
dresses."
"Yes, but I gave them to Katherine when I came back. I had no need for
them. Her own wore out, and mine fit her very well--a little too long
and narrow, but that was easily altered. Perhaps the white satin would
do, if it wasn't cut at the bottom; it could be let down again, if it
was only turned up. It is trimmed with _mousseline de soie_, and the
flounce would hide the line."
Peter stared at her look of thoughtful perplexity; he found it horribly
touching. "It might do."
"It must do. If it doesn't, another of Katherine's can be
metamorphosized."
"And you will dance with me? I love dancing, and I don't know many
people. Of course Katherine will see that I am not neglected, but I
should like to _depend_ on you; and if I am left sitting alone in a
corner, I shall beckon to you. Will you be responsible for me?" Her
smiling eyes met the badly controlled emotion of his look.
"Hilda, you are quite frivolous." Terms of reckless endearment were on
his lips; he hardly knew how he kept them down. "How shall I manoeuvre
that you be left sitting alone in corners? Remember that if the miracle
occurs I shall come, whether you beckon or no."