Katharine Lauderdale slept sweetly that night. She had, as she thought, at last reached the crisis of her life, and the moment of action was at hand. She felt, too, that almost at the last moment she had avoided a great risk and made a good resolution—she felt as though she had saved John Ralston from destruction. Loving him as truly as she did, her satisfaction over what she had done was far greater than her pain at what he had told her of himself.

But this was not insignificant, though she wilfully made it seem as small as she could. It was quite clear that it was not a matter to be laughed at, and that Ralston did not deserve to be called quixotic because he had thought it his duty to tell her of his weakness. It was not a mountain, she was sure, but she admitted that it was not a mole-hill either. Men who exaggerated the golden letter of virtue at the expense of the gentle spirit of charity, as her father did, exaggerated also, as a rule, those forms of wickedness to which they were themselves least liable. She knew that. But she was also aware that drinking too much was not by any means an imaginary vice. It was a matter of fact, with which whole communities had to deal, and about which men very unlike her father in other ways spoke gravely. Nevertheless, though a fact, all details connected with it were vague. It seemed to her a matter of certainty that John Ralston would at once change his life and become in that respect, as in all others, exactly what her ideal of a man always had been since she had loved him.

Her mistake, if it were one, was pardonable enough. Had she become aware of his fault by accident, and when, having succumbed to his weakness, she could have seen him not himself, the whole effect upon her mind would have been very different. But she had never seen him, as she believed, in any such condition. It was as though he had told it as of another man, and she found it impossible really to connect any such ideas of inebriety as she had with the man she loved. It was as vague as though he had told her that he had once had the scarlet fever. She would have known very well what the scarlet fever was like, but she could not have associated it with him in any really distinct way. It was because it had seemed such a small matter at first sight that she had been suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of bitter disappointment when he had refused to give his promise for her sake. As soon as she had begun to understand even a little of what he really felt, she had been as ready and as determined to stand by him through everything as though it had been a question of a bodily illness, for which he was not responsible, but in which she could really help him. When she had been angry, and afterwards, when, in spite of him, she had so strongly insisted upon the marriage, she had been alike under a false impression, though in different degrees. She had not now any idea of what she had really undertaken to do.

With her nature she would probably have acted just as she did in the last case, even had she understood all, by actual experience. She was capable of great sacrifices—even greater than she dreamed of. But, not understanding, it did not seem to her that she had done or promised anything very extraordinary, and she was absolutely confident of success. It was natural to her to accept wholly what she accepted at all, and it had always seemed to her that there was something mean in complaining of what one had taken voluntarily, and in finding fault with details when one had agreed, as it were, to take over the whole at a moral valuation.

It has seemed necessary to dwell at great length on the events which filled the days preceding Katharine’s marriage. Her surroundings had made her what she was, and justified, if anything could justify, the extraordinary step she was about to take, and which she actually took on the morning after the dance at the Thirlwalls’. It is under such circumstances that such things are done, when they are done at all. The whole balance of opinion in her family was against her marrying John Ralston. The whole weight of events, so far as she was concerned, was in favour of the marriage.

That she loved him with all her heart, there was no doubt; and he loved her with all that his nature could give of love, which was, indeed, less than what she gave, but was of a good and faithful sort in its way. Love, like most passions, good and bad, flourishes under restraint when it is real and perishes almost immediately before opposition when it has grown out of artificial circumstances—to revive, sometimes, in the latter case, if the artificiality is resuscitated. Katharine had found herself opposed at every turn in her love for Ralston. The result was natural and simple—it had grown to be altogether the dominant reality of her life.

Even those persons who did not actively do their best to hinder her marriage, contributed, by their actions and even by their existence, to the fortifying of her resolution, as it seemed to her, but in reality to the growth of the passion which needed no resolutions to direct it. For instance, Crowdie’s repulsive personality threw Ralston’s undeniable advantages into higher relief. His wife’s devotion to him made Katharine’s devotion to John seem ten times more reasonable than it was. Charlotte Slayback’s wretchedly petty and miserable life with a man whom she had not married for love, made a love match seem the truest foundation for happiness. Old Robert Lauderdale’s solitary existence was itself an argument in favour of marriage. The small, daily discomfort which Alexander Junior’s miserly economy imposed upon his household, and which Katharine had been forced to endure all her life, made Ralston’s careless generosity a virtue by contrast. Even Mrs. Lauderdale had turned against her daughter at last, for reasons which the young girl could not understand, either at the time or for a long time afterwards.

She felt herself very much alone in the world, in spite of her position. And yet, since her mother had begun to lose her supreme beauty, Katharine was looked upon as the central figure of the Lauderdale tribe, next to Robert the Rich himself. ‘The beautiful Miss Lauderdale’ was a personage of much greater importance than she herself knew, in the eyes of society. She had grown used to hearing reports to the effect that she was engaged to be married to this man, or that, and that her uncle Robert had announced his intention of wrapping his wedding present in a cheque for a million of dollars. Stories of that sort got into the papers from time to time, and Alexander Junior never failed to write a stern denial of the report to the editor of the journal in which the tale appeared. Katharine was used to seeing the family name in print on all possible occasions and paid little attention to it. She did not know how far people must have become subjects of general conversation before they become the paragraphist’s means of support in the dull season of the year. The paragraphists on a great daily paper have an intimate knowledge of the public taste, for which they get little credit amongst the social lights, who flatter themselves that the importance of the paper in question depends very largely on their opinion of it. Society is very much like a little community of lunatics, who live in an asylum all by themselves, and who know nothing whatever about the great public that lives beyond the walls, whereas the public knows a good deal about the lunatics, and takes a lively interest in their harmless, or dangerous, vagaries. And in the same way society itself forms a small public for its own most prominent individuals,—for its own favourite lunatics, so to say,—and watches their doings and talks about them with constant interest, and flatters them when it thinks they are agreeable, and abuses them bitterly behind their backs when it thinks they are not. The daily dinner-party conversation is society’s imprinted but widely circulated daily paper. It is often quite ignorant of state secrets, but it is never unacquainted with social events, and generally has plenty of sound reasons with which to explain them. Society’s comparative idleness, even in America, gives it opportunities of conversation which no equally large body of men and women can be said to possess outside of its rather elastic limits. It talks the same sort of matter which the generally busy great public reads and wishes to read in the daily press—and as talking is a quicker process than controversy in print, society manages to say as much for and against the persons it discusses, in a day, as the newspapers can say in a week, or perhaps more. As a mere matter of statistics, there is no doubt that a couple of talkative people spending an evening together can easily ‘talk off’ ten thousand words in an hour—which is equal to about eight columns of an ordinary big daily paper, and they are not conscious of making any great effort. It is manifestly possible to say a great many things in eight columns of a newspaper, especially if one is not very particular about what one says.

Katharine realized, no doubt, that there would some day be plentiful discussion of her rashness in marrying Ralston against the wishes of the family, and she knew that the circumstances would to some extent be regarded as public property. But she was far from realizing her own social importance, or that of the whole Lauderdale tribe, as compared with that of many people who spent enormous sums in amusing their friends, consciously and unconsciously, but who could never be Lauderdales, though it was not their fault.

At the juncture she had now reached, such considerations would have had little weight with her, but the probability is that, had she known exactly what she was doing, and how it would be regarded should others know of it, she would have vastly preferred to rebel openly and to leave New York with John Ralston on the day she married him, in uncompromising defiance of her family. Most people have known in the course of life of one or two secret marriages and must have noticed that the motives to secrecy generally seem inadequate. As a rule, they are, if taken by themselves. But in actual fact they have mostly acted upon the persons concerned through a medium of some sort of ignorance and in conjunction with an impatient passion. It is common enough, even in connection with more or less insignificant matters, to hear some one say, ‘I wonder why I did that—I might have known better!’ Humanity is never wholly logical, and is never more than very partially wise, even when it is old enough to ‘know better.’ In nine cases out of ten, when it is said of a man that ‘a prophet is without honour in his own country,’ the reason is that his own country is the best judge of what he prophesies. And similarly, society judges the doings of all its members by its own individual knowledge of its own customs, so that very few who do anything not sanctioned by those customs get any credit, but, on the contrary, are in danger of being called fools for believing that anything not customary can be done at all.

At half-past eight on Thursday morning Katharine left the house in Clinton Place, and turned eastward to meet John Ralston. Her only source of anxiety was the fear lest her father should by some accident go out earlier than usual. There was no particular reason to expect that he should be irregular on that particular day of all others, and she had left him over his beefsteak, discussing the relative amounts of the nutriment—as compared with the price per pound—contained in beef and mutton. He had never been able to understand why any one who could get meat should eat anything else, and the statistics of food consumption interested his small but accurate mind. His wife listened quietly but without response, so that the discussion was very one-sided. The philanthropist generally shuffled down to breakfast when everything was cold, a point about which he was utterly indifferent. He had long ago discovered that by coming down late he could always be the last to finish his meal, and could therefore begin to smoke as soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful which was a habit very important to his enjoyment and very destructive to that of any one else, especially since his son had reduced him to ‘Old Virginia Cheroots’ at ten cents for five.

But Alexander Junior was no more inclined than usual to reach his office a moment before his accustomed time. Katharine generally left the dining-room as soon as she had finished breakfast, and often went out immediately afterwards for a turn in Washington Square, so that her departure excited no remark. The rain had ceased, and though the air was still murky and the pavements wet, it was a decently fine morning. Ralston was waiting for her, walking up and down on a short beat, and the two went away together.

At first they were silent, and the silence had a certain constraint about it which both of them felt, but did not know how to escape from. Ralston was the first to speak.

“You ought not to have come,” he said rather awkwardly, with a little laugh.

“But I told you I was coming,” she answered demurely. “Didn’t I?”

“I know. That’s just it. You told me so suddenly that I couldn’t protest. I ran after you, but you were gone to get your things, and when you came downstairs there were a lot of people, and I couldn’t speak to you.”

“I saw you,” said Katharine. “It was just as well. You had nothing to say to me that I didn’t know, and we couldn’t have begun the discussion of the matter all over again at the last instant. And now, please, Jack dear, don’t begin and argue. I’ve told you a hundred times that I know exactly what I’m doing—and that it’s I who am making you do it. And remember that unless we are married first uncle Robert will never make up his mind to do anything for us. It’s never of any use to try and overcome people’s objections. The only way is to ignore them, which is just what we’re doing.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” answered Ralston. “There’s one thing I look forward to with pleasure, in the way of a row, though—I mean when your father finds it out. I hope you’ll let me tell him and not spoil my fun. Won’t you?”

“Oh, yes, if you like. Why not? Not that I’m at all afraid. You don’t know papa. When he finds that the thing is done, that it’s the inevitable course of events, in fact, he’ll be quite different. He’ll very likely talk of submission to the Divine will and offer to speak to Beman Brothers about letting you try the clerkship again. I know papa! Providence has an awfully good time with him—but nobody else does.”

At which piece of irreverence Ralston laughed, for it exactly expressed his idea of Alexander Junior’s character.

“And there’s one other thing I don’t want you to speak of, Jack,” pursued Katharine, more gravely. “I mean what you told me last night. I don’t intend ever to mention it again—do you understand, dear? I’ve thought it all over since then. I’m glad you told me, and I admire you for telling me, because it must have been hard, especially until I began to understand. A woman doesn’t know everything, you see! Indeed, we don’t know much about anything. We can only feel. And it did seem very hard at first—only for a moment, Jack—that you should not be willing to promise what I asked, when it was to make such a difference to me, and I was willing to promise you anything. You see how I felt, don’t you?”

“Of course,” answered Ralston, looking down at the pavement as he walked on and listened. “It was natural.”

“Yes. I’m so glad you see it. But afterwards, when I thought of things I’d heard—why, then I thought a great deal too much, you know—dreadful things! But I understood better what it all meant. You see, at first, it seemed so absurd! Just as though I had asked you not to—not to wear a green tie, for instance, as Charlotte asked her husband. Absurd, wasn’t it? So I was frightfully angry with you and got up and went away. I’m so ashamed of myself for it, now. But then, when it grew clearer—when I really knew that there was suffering in it, and remembered hearing that it was something like morphia and such things, that have to be cured by degrees—you know what I mean—why, then I wanted you more than ever. You know I’d give anything to help you—just to make it a little easier for you, dear.”

“You do! You’re doing everything—you’re giving me everything,” said Ralston, earnestly.

“Well—not everything—but myself, because that’s all I have to give—if it’s any use to you.”

“Dear—as if you weren’t everything the world has, and the only thing and the best thing altogether!”

“And if I didn’t love you better than anything—better than kings and queens—I wouldn’t do it. Because, after all, though I’m not much, I’m all I have. And then—I’m proud—inside, you know, Jack. Papa says I’m not, because mamma and I sometimes go to the theatre in the gallery, for economy. But that’s hardly a test in real life, I think—and besides, I know I am. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes—a little, in the right way. It’s nice. I like it in you.”

“I’m so glad. It’s because I’m proud that I don’t want to talk about that matter any more. It just doesn’t exist for me. That’s what I want you to feel. But I want you to feel, too, that I’m always there, that I shall always understand, and that if I can help you the least little bit, I mean to. I’ve turned into a woman all at once, Jack, in the last twenty-four hours, and now in an hour I shall be your wife, though nobody will know about it for a day or two. But I don’t mean to turn into your grandmother, too, and be always lecturing you and asking questions, and that sort of thing. You wouldn’t like it either, would you?”

“Hardly!”

Ralston laughed again, for everything she said made him feel happier and helped to destroy the painful impression of the previous night.

“Why do you laugh, Jack? Oh, I suppose it’s my way of putting it. But it’s what I mean, and that’s the principal thing. I’d rather die than watch you all the time, to see what you do. Imagine if I were always asking questions—‘Jack, where did you go last night?’ And—‘Jack, is that your third or fourth glass of wine to-day?’ The mere idea is disgusting. No. You must just do your best, and feel that I’m always there—even when I’m not—and that I’m never watching you, even when I look as though I were, and that neither you nor I are ever going to say a word about it—from this very minute, forever! Do you understand? Isn’t that the best way, Jack? And that I’m perfectly sure that it will be all right in the end—you must remember that, too.”

“I think you’re right,” said Ralston. “You’ve suddenly turned into a woman, and into a very clever one. Those are just the things which most women never will understand. They’d be much happier if they did.”

The two walked on rapidly, talking as they went, and assuredly not looking at all like a runaway couple. But though it was very early, they avoided the streets in which they might easily meet acquaintances, for it was the hour when men who had any business were going to it in various ways, according to their tastes, but chiefly by the elevated road. They had no difficulty in reaching unobserved the house of the clergyman who had promised to marry them.

He was in readiness, and at his window, and as they came in sight he left the house and met them. All three walked silently to his church, and he let them in with his own key, followed them and locked the door behind them.

In ten minutes the ceremony was over. The clergyman beckoned them into the vestry, and immediately signed a form of certificate which he had already filled in, and handed it to John without a word. John took a new treasury note from his pocket-book and laid it upon the oak table.

“I’m sure you must have many poor people in your parish,” he said, in explanation.

“I have,” said the clergyman. “Thank you,” he added, placing the money in his own pocket-book, which was an old black one, much the worse for wear.

“It is we who have to thank you,” answered John, “for helping us out of a very difficult situation.”

“Hm!” ejaculated the elder man, rubbing his chin with his hand and fixing a penetrating glance on Ralston’s face. “Perhaps you won’t thank me hereafter,” he said suddenly. “Perhaps you think it strange that a man in my position should be a party to a secret marriage. But I do not anticipate that you will ask me for a justification of my action. I had reasons—reasons—old reasons.” He continued to rub his chin thoughtfully. “I should like to say a word to you, Mrs. Ralston,” he added, turning to Katharine.

She started and blushed a little. She had not expected to be addressed by what was now her name. But she held up her head, proudly, as though she were by no means ashamed of it.

“I shall not detain you a moment,” continued the clergyman, looking at her as earnestly as he had looked at John. “I have perfect confidence in Mr. Ralston, as I have shown by acceding to his very unusual request. He has told you what I said to him yesterday, and I do not wish him to doubt that I am sure that he has done so. It is merely as a matter of conscience, to satisfy my own scruples in fact, that I wish to repeat, as nearly as possible, the same words, ‘mutatis mutandis,’ which I said to him. I have married you and have given you my certificate that the ceremony has been duly and properly performed, and you are man and wife. But I have married you thus secretly and without witnesses—none being indispensable—on the distinct understanding that your union is not to be kept a secret by you any longer than you shall deem secrecy absolutely necessary to your future happiness. Mr. Ralston informed me that it was your intention to acknowledge what you had done to a near relation, the head of your family, in fact, without any delay. I am sure that it is really your intention to do so. But let me entreat you, if it is possible, to lose no time, but to go, even at this hour, to the person in question and tell your story, one or the other of you, or both together. I am an old man, and human life is very uncertain, and human honour is rightly held very dear, for if honour means anything, it means the social application of that truth which is by nature divine. To-morrow I may no longer be here to testify that I signed that document with my own hand. To-day the person in whom you intend to confide can come and see me and I will answer for what I have done, or he can acknowledge your marriage without question, whichever he chooses to do; it will be better if it be done quickly. It always seems to me that to-morrow is the enemy of to-day, and lies in ambush to attack it unawares. Therefore, I entreat you to go at once to him you have chosen and tell him what you have done. And so good-bye, and may God bless you and make you happy and good.”

“I shall go now,” said Katharine. “And we thank you very much,” she added, holding out her hand.

The clergyman let them out and stood looking after them for a few seconds. Then he slowly nodded twice and re-entered the church. Ralston and Katharine walked away very slowly, both looking down, and each inwardly wondering whether the other would break the silence. It was natural that they should not speak at first. The words of the service had brought very clearly before them the meaning of what they had done, and the clergyman’s short speech, made as he said for the sake of satisfying his own scruples of conscience, had influenced them by its earnestness. They reached a crossing without having exchanged a syllable. As usual in such cases, a chance exclamation broke the ice.

“Take care!” exclaimed Ralston, laying his hand on Katharine’s arm, and looking at an express wagon which was bearing down on them.

“It’s ever so far off still,” said Katharine, smiling suddenly and looking into his face. “But I like you to take care of me,” she added.

He smiled, too, and they waited for the wagon to go by. The clouds had broken away at last and the low morning sun shone brightly upon them.

“I’m so glad it’s fine on our wedding day, Jack!” exclaimed Katharine. “It was horrid yesterday afternoon. How long ago that seems! Did you hear him call me Mrs. Ralston? Katharine Ralston—how funny it sounds! It’s true, that’s your mother’s name.”

“You’ll be Mrs. John Ralston—to distinguish.” John laughed. “Yes—it does seem long ago. What did you do with yourself yesterday?”

“Yesterday? Let me see—I sat for my portrait, and then I went home, and then late in the afternoon Charlotte suddenly appeared, and then I dined with the Joe Allens—the young couple, you know, don’t you? And then I went to the dance. I hardly knew what I was doing, half the time.”

“And I hardly know why I asked the question. Isn’t it funny? I believe we’re actually trying to make conversation!”

“You are—I’m not,” laughed Katharine. “It was you who began asking. I was talking quite sentimentally and appropriately about yesterday seeming so long ago, you know. But it’s true. It does—it seems ages. I wonder when time will begin again—I feel as though it had stopped suddenly.”

“It will begin again, and it will seem awfully long, before this afternoon—when uncle Robert has refused to have anything to do with us.”

“He won’t refuse—he shan’t refuse!” Katharine spoke with an energy which increased at every syllable. “Now that the thing is done, Jack, just put yourself in his position for a moment. Just imagine that you have anywhere between fifty and a hundred millions, all of your own. Yes—I know. You can’t imagine it. But suppose that you had. And suppose that you had a grand-niece, whom you liked, and who wasn’t altogether a disagreeable young person, and whom you had always rather tried to pet and spoil—not exactly knowing how to do it, but out of sheer good nature. And suppose that you had known ever so long that there was only one thing which could make your nice niece perfectly happy—”

“It’s all very well, Katharine,” interrupted Ralston, “but has he known that?”

“I’ve never failed to tell him so, on the most absurdly inadequate provocation. So it must be his fault if he doesn’t know it—and I shall certainly tell him all over again before I bring out the news. It wouldn’t do to be too sudden, you know. Well, then—suppose all that, and that the young gentleman in question was a proper young gentleman enough, as young gentlemen go, and didn’t want money, and wouldn’t take it if it were offered to him, but merely asked for a good chance to work and show what he could do. That’s all very simple, isn’t it? And then realize—don’t suppose any more—just what’s going to happen inside of half an hour. The devoted niece goes to the good old uncle, and says all that over again, and calmly adds that she’s done the deed and married the young gentleman and got a certificate, which she produces—by the bye, you must give it to me. Don’t be afraid of my losing it—I’m not such a goose. And she goes on to say that unless the good uncle does something for her husband, she will simply make the uncle’s life a perfectly unbearable burden to him, and that she knows how to do it, because if he’s a Lauderdale, she’s a Lauderdale, and her husband is half a Lauderdale, so that it’s all in the family, and no entirely unnecessary consideration is to be shown to the victim—well? Don’t you think that ought to produce an effect of some sort? I do.”

“Yes,” laughed Ralston, “I think so, too. Something is certainly sure to happen.”

END OF VOL. I.