Robert Lauderdale’s condition was precarious, and Mrs. Deems was well
aware of the fact as the minutes passed and neither of the doctors who
had been sent for appeared. It was Doctor Routh’s custom to come a few
minutes before dinner time, as well as in the morning, and his visit at
that hour was almost a certainty. As ill-luck would have it, Doctor
Cheever was also out when the carriage reached his house, having been
called away a few moments previously. Urgent messages were left for
both, and the brougham returned empty a second time. So far as the old
gentleman was concerned, Mrs. Deems knew well enough how to do what lay
in her power, and she could do nothing more than she had done for
Katharine already. But she knew how the least delay in setting a broken
bone increased the difficulty and the pain when it came to be done at
last, and her anxiety about Robert Lauderdale did not prevent her from
feeling nervous about the young girl.
No one spoke in the great drawing-room where the old man and Katharine
lay with closed eyes in their chairs, while the nurse and Ralston sat
watching them. But when Leek came with the news that Doctor Cheever
could not be found, either, Mrs. Deems was roused almost to anger.
“You’ve got to get a surgeon, anyway,” she said, sharply, to Ralston.
“If you don’t, they’ll have a bad time when it comes to setting her arm.
Mr. Lauderdale I can manage, perhaps, till the doctor comes, but I’m no
bone-setter.”
Ralston left the room, took the carriage, and went himself in search of
a surgeon, and returned with one in less than a quarter of an hour. A
few minutes later Doctor Routh appeared, and last of all came young
Doctor Cheever. Then everything was done quickly and well. The three
practitioners understood one another without words, and the machinery of
the great house of the old millionaire did their bidding.
But Doctor Routh shook his head when he was alone with John Ralston half
an hour later.
“I don’t like the look of things,” he said. “Of course, there’s no
telling about you Lauderdales. You’re pretty strong people all round. I
don’t want any confidences. I don’t want to know what’s happened. I can
see the results, and they’re enough for me. You’re a quarrelsome set,
but you’d better have managed to fight somewhere else. I’m afraid you’ve
killed him this time. However--there’s no telling.”
“How about Miss Lauderdale?” asked John, anxiously. “How long will she
be laid up?”
“Oh--three or four weeks. But they must keep her quiet for a day or two,
until the inflammation goes down. When the bone’s begun to heal and the
arm’s immobilized, she can be about. It’s no use your staying here. You
can’t see either of them. But if I were you--I don’t say anything
positive, I’m only giving you a hint--if I were you, I’d be at home this
evening. If things get worse, I’ll send for you.”
“Are you going to stay yourself?” asked Ralston.
“Of course. Practically, as far as one can judge, your uncle’s dying.
You may just as well be here as any one else. He’s very fond of you, in
spite of your little tiff last winter. You’re the only man in the family
he’d like to see, and you won’t be in the way.”
It was his manner of putting it. At any other time Ralston would have
smiled at the idea of being ‘in the way’ of death.
“I suppose there’s really no hope,” he answered, gravely. “But the only
person he’d really wish to have with him is Miss Lauderdale.”
“Well--that’s impossible, my dear boy. She can’t be running about the
house in the middle of the night with her arm just broken. It might be
dangerous.”
“You’d better not let her know if anything happens, then--or she will.”
John Ralston left the house very reluctantly at last, and returned to
his home, feeling broken and helpless, as people who have nervous
organizations do feel when they have been under great emotion and are
left in anxiety. Naturally enough, Katharine’s present condition was
uppermost in his mind, and every step which took him further from her
was an added pain. But a multitude of other considerations thrust
themselves upon him at the same time, and he asked himself what was to
happen on the morrow.
He had made up his mind, before Alexander Junior had left the house,
that it was absolutely necessary to put an end to the present situation
at once, and to declare his marriage without delay. He had never wished
it to be kept a secret, and he had now the best of reasons for insisting
that it should be made public. He might have been willing to believe
that Katharine’s fall had been an accident, and that her father had not
meant to hurt her, but the fact remained that the accident had occurred
through his brutal roughness, with the result that John had struck the
elder man in the face. It was not safe for Katharine to stay any longer
in her father’s house.
On the other hand, it seemed clear that Robert Lauderdale was near his
end. It was hardly to be hoped that he could survive the strain of his
late fit of passion, weakened as he was and old. Even Doctor Routh
thought it improbable. What would happen if he died that night? If
Katharine had to be moved,--she could scarcely stay in the house after
the old man was dead,--to whose house should she go? John swore,
inwardly, that she should not return to her father’s. And he thought,
too, of his next meeting with the latter. Society would be amazed and
horrified to hear that they had actually come to blows. Society,
especially in our country, detests the idea of personal violence. Its
verdict is against any use of such means to settle difficulties.
Society, therefore, must be kept in ignorance of what had happened. No
one had seen the blow, not even Katharine, who had just fallen to the
floor. She alone had seen John and her father struggling, for they had
loosed their hold on seeing that she was hurt, and the servants had
found them bending over her. Consequently, a great part of what had
happened would be kept secret. Robert Lauderdale would not speak of it,
and Mrs. Deems was bound to secrecy by her profession. John wondered how
Alexander Junior would meet him, however, and whether there was to be
any renewal of hostilities.
Altogether, when he let himself into his own house, he was in need of
counsel and advice. There was no one but his mother to whom he cared to
appeal for either. She had known all along of his devotion to Katharine
Lauderdale, though she knew nothing of the secret marriage. She knew
how hard Katharine’s life was made in the girl’s own home, by her
father’s determined opposition to the match, and John had told her
something of other matters--how old Robert had confided to Katharine
what he meant to do with his money, and how her father had tried to
force her to betray the confidence. Ralston was puzzled, too, by
Alexander Junior’s evident willingness to quarrel with his uncle, or at
least by his determination to make no concessions whatever to him, and
wondered whether his mother could not suggest some explanation.
Mrs. Ralston was, in some ways, very like her son, and the two
understood one another perfectly. It would, perhaps, be more accurate to
say that she had made him like herself, not intentionally, but by force
of example, a result very unusual in the relations between mother and
son. She was by no means a manlike woman, but she possessed many of the
qualities which make the best men. She was fearless and truthful, and
she was more than that--she had a man’s sense of honour from a man’s
point of view, and admitted to herself that honour was the only religion
in which she could believe. Like Katharine, she, the elder Katharine
Lauderdale, had been brought up amidst contradictory influences, and had
then married the Admiral, a brave officer, a man of considerable
scientific attainments, and a determined agnostic, of the school of
thirty years ago, when many people believed that science was to bring
about a sort of millennium within the next few years. In that direction
she went further than her son. Her sense of fairness had shown her how
unfair it would be to make an unbeliever of him before he was old enough
to judge for himself, and in this idea she had made him go to church
like other boys, and had persuaded his father not to talk atheism before
him. The result had been to produce, more or less, the state of mind
typical in these last years of the century, amongst a certain class of
people who are collectively described as cultured, though they cannot
always be spoken of individually as cultivated. John felt that he
believed in something, but he had not the slightest idea what that
something might be, and did not take the smallest trouble to find out.
In this respect he differed from Katharine. Under very similar
conditions, the young girl vacillated between a set of undefinable but
much discussed beliefs, which included pseudo-Buddhism, Psychological
Research, the wreck of what was for a few years Theosophy, and the
latest discoveries in hypnotism, taken altogether and kneaded into an
amorphous mass, on the one hand, while, on the other, she was attracted
by the rigid forms of actual Christianity, widely opposed, but nearest
in whole-heartedness, which are found in the Presbyterian and the Roman
Catholic churches. But John’s mother was a peaceable agnostic, who had
transferred the questions of right, wrong, and ultimate good before the
tribunal of honour which held perpetual session in her heart.
She never discussed such points if she could avoid doing so, and if
drawn into discussion against her will, she said frankly that she wished
she might believe, but could not. In dealing with the world, her
strength of character, her directness and her humanity stood her in good
stead. In her heart’s dealings with itself, she thought of Musset’s
famous lines--‘If Heaven be void, then we offend no God. But if God is,
let God be pitiful!’ And she offended no one, nor desired to offend any.
She had in life the advantage, the only one, perhaps, which the agnostic
has over the believer--the safety of her own soul was not in the balance
when the humanity of others appealed to her own. He who believes that he
has a soul to save can be unselfish only with his bodily safety.
Mrs. Ralston was eminently a woman of the world in the best sense of an
expression which many think can mean no good. She had never been
beautiful and had never been vain, but she had much which attracts as
beauty does, and holds as no beauty can. Of the Lauderdales now living,
she was undeniably the most gifted. Katharine might have rivalled her,
had she developed under more favourable circumstances. But with the
education she had received, good as it had been of its kind, it was not
probable that the young girl would grow up into such a woman.
Yet Mrs. Ralston had no accomplishments, in the ordinary sense of the
word. Her husband used to say that this was one of her chief attractions
in his eyes--he hated women who played the piano, and sang little songs,
and made little sketches, for the small price paid by cheap social
admiration, and greedily accepted by the performer of such tricks. There
were people who did such things well, and whose business it was to do
them. Why should any one do them badly? Mrs. Ralston never attempted
anything of the sort.
On the other hand, she was well acquainted with a number of modern
languages, and knew enough of the classics not to talk about ‘reading
Horace in the original Greek,’ which is as much knowledge in that
direction, perhaps, as a woman needs, and as most men have occasion to
use in daily life. She had read very widely, and her criticism, if not
that of pure reason, was that of a clear judgment. She had found out
early what most people never learn at all, that she could widen her
experience of life vicariously by assimilating that of other people, in
fact and even in fiction. Good fiction is very like reality. Bad fiction
is generally made up of fragments of reality unskilfully patched
together. She picked out truths wherever she found them, and set them in
their places in the body of all truth.
She was, in a way, the least American of all the Lauderdales. She
herself would have said, on the contrary, from her own point of view,
that she was the most really American in the tribe. She loved the
country, she especially loved New York, and she loved her own people
better than any other with which she was acquainted. This strong
attachment to everything American was in itself contrary to the ideas of
most persons with whom she was brought into close relations. What calls
itself society, pre-eminently, and numbers itself by hundreds, and shuts
itself off as much as possible, requiring those who would be counted
with it to pass a special examination in the subjects about which it
happens to be mad at the time--Society with a capital letter, in fact,
is tired of work, it associates home with hard labour and a bad climate,
and Europe with fine weather, idleness, and amusement. ‘They manage
those things better in France,’ expresses New York society’s opinion of
things in general apart from business. Mrs. Ralston differed from
Society, and thought that many things were managed quite as well in
America.
“That’s because you’ve been abroad so much, my dear,” said her friends.
“Wait till you’ve lived ten years at a stretch in New York. You’ll
think just as we do. You won’t like it half so much. And besides--think
of clothes and things!”
Now Mrs. Ralston did think of ‘clothes and things.’ She had never been
beautiful, but she had in a high degree the strength and grace
distinctive in many of the Lauderdales. She was tall, long-limbed,
slight as a girl, at five and forty years of age, less strong than
Katharine, perhaps, though that might be doubted, and certainly lighter
and much thinner. She, too, was dark--a keen, strong face, like her
son’s, with the same bright brown eyes, and the same fine hair, though
not nearly so black, but her face was kindlier than his, and far less
sad. She had possessed the power of enjoying things for their own sake
as long as Mrs. Lauderdale, Katharine’s mother, who had kept her faculty
of enjoying the world subjectively, with little interest in it for
itself, but with the intensely strong attachment of easily satisfied
personal vanity. The difference was, that the one form of enjoyment was
doomed to destruction with the beauty which was its source, while the
other increased with the ever broadening and deepening humanity in which
it found its dominant interest. If Mrs. Lauderdale had been shut off
from the gay side of social existence for a time, as Mrs. Ralston had
been in the first years of her widowhood, she would have become sour
and discontented. Mrs. Ralston had seen where the real bitterness of
life lay, and the bitterness had appealed to her heart almost as much as
ever the sweetness had. She had suffered in some ways much, but not
long; she had been disappointed more than once, but had been repaid.
Above all, she was her son’s friend. She had lived a woman’s life, and
in him she was living a man’s life, too. She had felt a mother’s fears
for him, a mother’s sympathy in his failures, in his downheartedness, in
the love for Katharine which had met with such bitter opposition. She
had almost known a mother’s despair in believing him lost and truly
worthless, and when she had found out her mistake, a mother’s triumph
had made her heart beat fast. And little by little through the last
months she had seen the man’s real character coming to the surface in
its strength and boldness, outgrowing the boyish weakness, the youthful
faults that were not vices yet and never would be now, and it was as
though the growth had been in her own heart, giving to herself new
interest, new life, and new vitality.
And John Ralston had forgotten that one hour in which she had doubted
him, though at the time he had found it hard to say that he ever should.
She was his best friend and was becoming his closest companion. Even
Katharine could not understand him so well, for she knew too little of
the world yet. She had given him her heart, and her sympathy was all
his, but neither the one nor the other was yet quite grown.
John and his mother dined alone together that evening, and afterwards
went upstairs and sat in a room which was called John’s study, by
courtesy, as it had been called the Admiral’s study when his father was
alive. It was a quiet, manlike room, with a small bookcase and a large
gun-rack, huge chairs covered with brown leather, an unnecessarily large
writing-table, a certain number of trophies of the chase, a well-worn
carpet and curtains that smelled of cigars. Mrs. Ralston had been
accustomed all her life to the smell of tobacco, and rather liked it
than otherwise. She settled her graceful figure comfortably in one of
the chairs, and Ralston sat down opposite to her in another and began to
smoke.
“There’s been a row, mother,” he began. “I couldn’t tell you before the
servants, but I’m going to tell you all about it now. I want your advice
and your help--all sorts of things of you. I’m rather worried.”
“Do you think I couldn’t see that in your face, Jack?” asked Mrs.
Ralston, smiling as she met his eyes. “There’s a certain line in your
forehead that always comes when there’s trouble. What is it, boy?”
John told his story briefly and accurately, without superfluous
comment, and as much of what had happened in Katharine’s life as she had
confided to him. He made it clear enough that she was being tormented to
give up Robert Lauderdale’s secret, and if he dwelt unduly upon any
point, it was upon this. Mrs. Ralston listened attentively. When he came
to the scene which had taken place on that afternoon, she leaned forward
in her chair, breathless with interest.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried. “You always seem to be fighting somebody!”
“Yes--but wasn’t I right, mother?” he asked, quickly. “What could I do?
He acted like a madman, and he dragged Katharine from me and whirled her
off upon the floor as though he’d been handling a man in a free fight. I
couldn’t stand that.”
“No--of course you couldn’t,” answered Mrs. Ralston. “I don’t see what
you could have done but hit him, I’m sure. And yet it’s a shocking
affair--it is, really. I’m afraid it’s cost uncle Robert his life, poor,
dear old man!”
“Poor man!” echoed Ralston, thoughtfully. “Routh didn’t seem to think he
could live through the night. We may get word at any moment.”
“The wonder is that he didn’t die then and there. And there’s no one
with him, either--Katharine laid up in her room--why didn’t you stay in
the house, Jack?”
“Routh wouldn’t let me. He’s there. He told me I should only be in the
way and that he’d send for me, if anything happened. It’s an odd thing,
mother--but there’s no one to go to uncle Robert but you and I and
cousin Emma. He’d have a fit if he saw cousin Alexander. And of course
the old gentleman can’t go.” He meant Robert’s brother.
“No--of course not.”
A short silence followed, and Mrs. Ralston seemed to be thinking over
the situation.
“Well, Jack,” she said, at last, “what are we going to do? This state of
things can’t go on.”
“No. It can’t. It shan’t. And I won’t let it. Mother--you know we talked
last winter--you said that if ever I wanted to marry Katharine--wanted
to! Well--that we could manage to live here--”
It would be hard to give any adequate idea of the reluctance with which
John approached the subject. Short of the consideration of Katharine’s
personal safety, which he believed to be endangered by the life she was
made to lead, nothing could have induced him to think of laying the
burden of his married life upon his mother’s comparatively slender
fortune. Although half of it was his, for she had made it over to him by
a deed during the previous winter, out of a conviction that he should
feel himself to be independent, yet he had never quite accepted the
position, and still regarded all there was as being, morally speaking,
her property. But now she met him more than half way.
“Jack,” she said, almost authoritatively, “if Katharine will marry you,
marry her to-morrow and bring her here.”
“Thank you, mother,” he answered, and was silent for a moment.
“We can live perfectly well--just as well as we do now. One person
more--what difference does it make?”
“It would make a difference--more than you think,” answered John. “But
there’s another thing about it, mother--there’s a secret I’ve kept from
you for a long time. I must tell you now. You must be the first to know
it. But I want to ask you first not to judge what I’ve done until I’ve
told you all about it.”
“Is it anything bad, Jack?” asked Mrs. Ralston, with quick anxiety,
bending far forward in her chair, while all her expression changed.
“No, mother--don’t be frightened. It’s this. Katharine and I were
married last winter.”
“Married!” cried Mrs. Ralston, in amazement. “Married!” she repeated in
a tone which showed that she was deeply hurt. “And you did not tell me!”
She said nothing more for a few moments, and John was silent, too,
giving her time to recover from her astonishment. She was the first to
speak.
“Either Katharine made you marry her, or you must have had some very
good reason for doing such a thing, Jack,” she said. “It’s not like you
to get married secretly. When was it?”
“It was on that day when I was so unlucky. When I lost my way, and
everybody thought I’d been drinking.”
“Jack! Do you mean to say that you had that on your mind, too? Oh, Jack
dear, why didn’t you tell me?”
“In the first place, I’d said I wouldn’t. The reasons seemed good then.
They haven’t seemed so good since. I’ll tell you the idea in two words.
We were to be privately married. Then we were to confide in uncle
Robert, expecting that he would find me something to do, that I could do
whatever he proposed well enough to earn a living without accepting
money as a gift. There was where the disappointment came. I found out
afterwards how true what he said was. Everybody’s on the lookout for a
congenial occupation that means living out of doors and enjoying
oneself. He said there was nothing to be done but to go back to Beman’s
and work at a desk for a year. Then he’d push me on. He tried to make me
take a lot of money, but I wouldn’t. I’m glad of that, anyhow. So we’ve
never said anything about it, except to him. But now something must be
done.”
“But you could have brought her here any time in these four months--at
least, you might have told me and I would have helped you.”
“I know--but then, it would have been a burden on you, as it’s going to
be now.”
“A burden! Don’t say such things.”
“Only that now--well--I don’t like to say it, but dear old uncle Robert
isn’t going to live long, and then you’ll be rich, compared to what you
are now, even if he only leaves you what he’d think a small legacy.”
“Yes--that’s true,” answered Mrs. Ralston, thoughtfully. “Isn’t life
strange, Jack?” she continued, after a short pause. “We’re both very
fond of him. We shall miss him very much more than we realize. I think
either you or I would do anything we could, and risk anything, to save
his life--and yet we can’t help counting on the money he’s sure to leave
us when he dies. I suppose most people would call it heartless to speak
about it, though they’d think about it from morning till night. But I
don’t think we’re heartless, do you?”
“No,” answered John, “I don’t. Not that it would be a crime if we were.
People are born so, or they aren’t. We can’t all be rough plastered with
goodness and stuccoed with virtue on top of it. We’re natural, that’s
all--and the majority of people aren’t. I don’t wish uncle Robert to
die, any more than you do, or than any one does, except cousin
Alexander. It’s only reasonable for us who are young to think of what we
may do when he’s gone, since he’s so old.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” assented Mrs. Ralston. “So you’ve been married all
these months! It hurts me a little to think that you shouldn’t have told
me. I’d have helped you. I’m sure I could have made it easier. But I
see--you were afraid that I should have to go without my toilet water
and have to wear ready made gloves, or some such ridiculous thing as
that! Married! Well--I’m not exactly sentimental, but I’d rather looked
forward to your wedding with Katharine. I always knew you’d marry her in
the end, and I liked to think of it. I’m glad, though--I’m glad it’s
done and can’t be undone, in spite of her father. Tell me all about it,
since you’ve told me everything else.”
It was not a long story--how Katharine had persuaded him, much against
his will, how he had found a clergyman willing to perform the ceremony,
and how Katharine and he had gone to the church early in the morning.
“And now she is Katharine Ralston, too, like me--and I’ve got a
daughter-in-law!” Mrs. Ralston smiled dreamily.
After the first moment of surprise and after the first sharp pain she
had felt for her son’s want of confidence in her, as she regarded his
secrecy, the news did not seem to disturb her much. For years she had
been convinced that Katharine was destined to be her son’s wife, and for
many months she had felt sure that, with his nature, his happiness and
success in life depended entirely upon his marrying her. She was
heartily glad that it had come, though, as she said, she had often
looked forward to the wedding as to something very bright in her own
existence.
“Jack,” she said, “leave it to me to set matters straight with the rest
of the family, will you?”
“Why--mother--if you think you can--of course,” answered Ralston, with
some hesitation. “The difficulty will be with cousin Alexander. We’re
enemies for life, now.”
“Yes. Until to-day you were only enemies by circumstance. You’ll never
be reconciled, now--not completely. You could never spend a night under
his roof after what has happened, could you? Of course you can say to
him that you acted under the impression that he was--well--what shall I
say?--that he was treating Katharine brutally, but that if he wasn’t,
you apologize for striking him. But after all, that’s only quibbling
with honour. It wouldn’t satisfy him and wouldn’t be very dignified for
you, it seems to me. And he’s not the man who would ever put out his
hand and forgive you frankly and say that by-gones should be by-gones.”
“Scarcely!” assented Ralston. “Not at all that kind of man. By the bye,
mother,--forgive me for going off to something else,--what do you think
is the reason why he seems so ready to offend uncle Robert, instead of
bowing down to him, as they all do? He wants the money more than any
one. He can’t suppose that if uncle Robert were to make a new will now,
after what has happened, he’d leave him anything. You should have heard
the old gentleman swear at him, and turn him out of the house!”
“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Ralston, thoughtfully, “unless he wants to
irritate uncle Robert, and drive him into making some extraordinary will
that wouldn’t hold. Then he’d get it broken. You see, Jack, my uncle
Alexander, who’s uncle Robert’s own brother, and I, who am the only
child of uncle Robert’s other brother, are the next of kin. If there
were no will, or if the will were broken, we two should get the whole
fortune, equally divided, half and half, and none of the rest would get
anything. Mr. Brett told me that a long time ago. As it is, we don’t
know how the money’s left, though uncle Robert has often told me that I
should have a big share.”
“Katharine knows,” said John. “That’s the reason her father leaves her
no peace.”
“And she’s not told you, Jack?”
“Mother! Do you suppose Katharine would betray a confidence like that?
You don’t know her!”
“No, dear. I didn’t seriously think she would. But then--she’s your
wife, Jack. She might tell you what she wouldn’t tell any one else, and
yet not think that she were giving away a secret. Most women would, I
think.”
“Katharine’s not like most women,” said Ralston, gravely.
A silence followed, during which his mother watched his face, and her
own grew beautiful with mother’s pride in man, and woman’s gladness for
woman’s dignity.
When Ralston and his mother separated, they had come to a clear
understanding about the future. They had decided to say nothing about
the marriage until Katharine had recovered sufficiently to leave Robert
Lauderdale’s home, and then to establish her in their house, and tell
the world that there had been a private wedding. If the old gentleman
died,--and they were obliged to take this probability into
consideration,--Katharine would have to be brought at once. If anything,
this would make matters simpler. The household would be in mourning,
Katharine would be unable to go out or to appear at all for some time,
and society would easily believe that during the two or three weeks
which must pass in this way, the marriage might have taken place.