Old Mr. Tredgold :: CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XX.

Katherine was perhaps not in very good condition after Lady Jane’s visit, though that great personage found it, on the whole, satisfactory, and felt that she had settled the future terms on which they were to meet in quite a pleasant way—to receive the first letter which Stella sent her, an epistle which arrived a day or two later. Stella’s epistle was very characteristic indeed. It was dated from Paris:

“Dearest Kate,—I can’t suppose that you have not heard everything about all that we have done and haven’t done. I don’t excuse myself for not writing on the plea that you couldn’t possibly be anxious about me, as you must have known all this by next morning, but I can’t help feeling that you must have been angry, both you and papa, and I thought it would perhaps be better just to let you cool down. I know you have cause to be angry, dear; I ought to have told you, and it was on my lips all the time; but I thought you might think it your duty to make a row, and then all our plans might have been turned upside down. What we had planned to do was to get across to Southsea in the yacht, and go next morning by the first train to London, and on here at once, which, with little divergencies, we carried out. You see we have never been to say out of reach; but it would have done you no good to try to stop us, for, of course, from the moment I was Charlie’s wife my place was with him. I know you never would have consented to such a marriage; but it is perfectly all right, I can assure you—as good as if it had come off in St. George’s, Hanover Square. And we have had a delightful time. Stevens met me at Southsea with the few things I wanted (apologies for taking her from you, but you never made so much use of her as I did, and I don’t think you ever cared for Stevens), and next day we picked up our things at London. I wish you could see my things, they are beautiful. I hope papa won’t be dreadfully angry that I took him at his word; and I am quite frightened sometimes to think what it will all cost—the most lovely trousseau all packed in such nice boxes—some marked cabin and some—but that’s a trifle. The important thing is that the clothes are charming, just what you would expect from Madame’s tastes. I do hope that papa will not make any fuss about her bill. They are not dear at all, for material and workmanship (can you say workmanship, when it’s needlework, and all done by women?) are simply splendid. I never saw such beautiful things.

“And so here I am, Kate, a married woman, off to India with my husband. Isn’t it wonderful? I can’t say that I feel much different myself. I am the same old Stella, always after my fun. I shouldn’t wonder in the least if after a while Charlie were to set up a way of his own, and think he can stop me; but I don’t advise him to try, and in the meantime he is as sweet as sugar and does exactly what I like. It is nice, on the whole, to be called my Lady, and it is very nice to see how respectful all the people are to a married person, as if one had grown quite a great personage all at once. And it is nicer still to turn a big man round your little finger, even when you have a sort of feeling, as I have sometimes, that it may not last. One wonderful thing is that he is always meeting somebody he knows. People in society I believe know everybody—that is, really everybody who ought to be known. This man was at school with him, and that man belongs to one of his clubs, and another was brother to a fellow in his regiment, and so on, and so on—so we need never be alone unless we like: they turn up at every corner. Of course, he knows the ladies too, but this is not a good time in the year for them, for the grandees are at their country houses and English people only passing through. We did see one gorgeous person, who was a friend of his mother’s (who is dead, Heaven be praised!), and to whom he introduced me, but she looked at me exactly as if she had heard that Charlie had married a barmaid, with a ‘How do you do?’ up in the air—an odious woman. She was, of course, Countess of Something or Other, and as poor as a Church mouse. Papa could buy up dozens of such countesses; tell him I said so.

“You will wonder what we are doing knocking about in Paris when the regiment is on the high seas; but Charlie could not take me, you know, in a troopship, it would have been out of the question, and we couldn’t possibly have spent our honeymoon among all those men. So he got his leave and we are going by a P. and O. boat, which are the best, and which we pick up at Brindisi, or at Suez, or somewhere. I am looking forward to it immensely, and to India, which is full of amusement, everybody tells me. I intend to get all the fun I can for the next year, and then I hope, I do hope, dear Katie, that papa may send for us home.

“How is poor dear papa? You may think I am a little hypocrite, having given him such a shock, but I did really hope he would see some fun in it—he always had such a sense of humour. I have thought of this, really, truly, in all I have done. About the trousseau (which everybody thinks the greatest joke that ever was), and about going off in the yacht, and all that, I kept thinking that papa, though he would be very angry, would see the fun. I planned it all for that—indeed, indeed, Kate, I did, whatever you may think. To be sure, Charlie went for half in the planning, and I can’t say I think he has very much sense of humour, but, still, that was in my mind all the time. Was he very, very angry when he found out? Did you wake him in the night to tell him and risk an illness? If you did, I think you were very, very much to blame. There is never any hurry in telling bad news. But you are so tremendously straightforward and all that. I hope he only heard in the morning, and had his good night’s rest and was not disturbed. It was delicious this time in the yacht, as quiet almost as a mill-pond—just a nice soft little air that carried us across the bay and on to Southsea; such a delightful sail! I ought to have thought of you promenading about in the cold waiting for me without any companion, but I really couldn’t, dear. Naturally we were too much taken up with ourselves, and the joy of having got off so nicely. But I do beg your pardon most sincerely, dear Katie, for having left you out in the cold, really out in the cold—without any figure of speech—like that.

“But my thoughts keep going back constantly to dear papa. You will miss me a little, I hope, but not as he will miss me. What does he say? Was he very angry? Do you think he is beginning to come round? Oh, dear Kate, I hope you take an opportunity when you can to say something nice to him about me. Tell him Charlie wanted to be married in London, but I knew what papa would think on this subject, and simply insisted for his sake that it should be in the little Steephill Church, where he could go himself, if he liked, and see the register and make sure that it was all right. And I have always thought of him all through. You may say it doesn’t look very like it, but I have, I have, Kate. I am quite sure that he will get very fond of Charlie after a time, and he will like to hear me called Lady Somers; and now that my mind is set at rest and no longer drawn this way and that way by love affairs, don’t you know? I should be a better daughter to him than ever before. Do get him to see this, Kate. You will have all the influence now that I am away. It is you that will be able to turn him round your little finger. And, oh, I hope, I hope, dear, that you will do it, and be true to me! You have always been such a faithful, good sister, even when I tried you most with my nonsense. I am sure I tried you, you being so different a kind from such a little fool as Stella, and so much more valuable and all that. Be sure to write to me before we leave Paris, which will be in a week, to tell me how papa is, and how he is feeling about me—and, oh, do be faithful to us, dear Kate, and make him call us back within a year! Charlie does not mind about his profession; he would be quite willing to give it up and settle down, to be near papa. And then, you see, he has really a beautiful old house of his own in the country, which he never could afford to live in, where we could arrange the most charming appartement, as the French say, for papa for part of the year.

“Do, dearest Kate, write, write! and tell me all about the state of affairs. With Charlie’s love,

“Your most affectionate sister,
“Stella (Lady) Somers.”

“I have a letter from—Stella, papa,” said Katherine the same night.

“Ah!” he said, with a momentary prick of his ears; then he composed himself and repeated with the profoundest composure, “God damn her!” as before.

“Oh, papa, do not say that! She is very anxious to know how you are, and to ask you—oh, with all her heart, papa—to forgive her.”

Mr. Tredgold did not raise his head or show any interest. He only repeated with the same calm that phrase again.

“You have surely something else to say at the mention of her name than that. Oh, papa, she has done very, very wrong, but she is so sorry—she would like to fling herself at your feet.”

“She had better not do that; I should kick her away like a football,” he said.

“You could never be cruel to Stella—your little Stella! You always loved her the best of us two. I never came near her in one way nor another.”

“That is true enough,” said the old man.

Katherine did not expect any better, but this calm daunted her. Even Stella’s absence did not advance her in any way; she still occupied the same place, whatever happened. It was with difficulty that she resumed her questions.

“And you will miss her dreadfully, papa. Only think, those long nights that are coming—how you will miss her with her songs and her chatter and her brightness! I am only a dull companion,” said Katherine, perhaps a little, though not very reasonably, hoping to be contradicted.

“You are that,” said her father calmly.

What was she to say? She felt crushed down by this disapproval, the calm recognition that she was nobody, and that all her efforts to be agreeable could never meet with any response. She did make many efforts, far more than ever Stella had done. Stella had never taken any trouble; her father’s comfort had in reality been of very little importance to her. She had pleased him because she was Stella, just as Katherine, because she was Katherine, did not please him. And what was there more to be said? It is hard upon the unpleasing one, the one who never gives satisfaction, but the fact remains.

“You are very plain spoken,” said Katherine, trying to find a little forlorn fun in the situation. “You don’t take much pains to spare my feelings. Still, allowing that to be all true, and I don’t doubt it for a moment, think how dull you will be in the evenings, papa! You will want Stella a hundred times in an hour, you will always want her. This winter, of course, they could not come back; but before another winter, oh, papa, think for your own advantage—do say that you will forgive her, and that they may come back!”

“We may all be dead and gone before another winter,” Mr. Tredgold said.

“That is true; but then, on the other hand, we may all be living and very dull and in great, great need of something to cheer us up. Do hold out the hope, papa, that you will forgive her, and send for her, and have her back!”

“What is she to give you for standing up for her like this?” said the old man with his grim chuckling laugh.

“To give—me?” Katherine was so astonished this time that she could not think of any answer.

“Because you needn’t lose your breath,” said her father, “for you’ll lose whatever she has promised you. I’ve only one word to say about her, and that I’ve said too often already to please you—God damn her,” her father said.

And Katherine gave up the unequal conflict—for the moment at least. It was not astonishing, perhaps, that she spent a great deal of her time, as much as the weather would allow, which now was grim November, bringing up fog from land and sea, upon the cliff, where she walked up and down sometimes when there was little visible except a grey expanse of mist behind the feathery tracery of the tamarisk trees; sometimes thinking of those two apparitions of the Stella in the bay, which now seemed to connect with each other like two succeeding events in a story, and sometimes of very different things. She began to think oftener than she had ever done of her own lover, he whom she had not had time to begin to love, only to have a curious half-awakened interest in, at the time when he was sent so summarily about his business. Had he not been sent about his business, probably Katherine might never have thought of him at all. It was the sudden fact of his dismissal and the strange discovery thus made, that there was one person in the world at least whose mind was occupied with her and not with Stella, that gave him that hold upon her mind which he had retained.

She wondered now vaguely what would have happened had she done what Stella had done? (It was impossible, because she had not thought of him much, had not come to any conscious appropriation of him until after he was gone; but supposing, for the sake of argument, that she had done what Stella had done). She would have been cut off, she and he, and nobody would have been much the worse. Stella, then, being the only girl of the house, would have been more serious, would have been obliged to think of things. She would have chosen someone better than Charlie Somers, someone that would have pleased her father better; and he would have kept his most beloved child, and all would have been well. From that point of view it would perhaps have been better that Katherine should have done evil that good might come. Was it doing evil to elope from home with the man you loved, because your father refused him—if you felt you could not live without him? That is a question very difficult to solve. In the first place, Katherine, never having been, let us say, very much in love herself, thought it was almost immodest in a woman to say that she could not live without any man. It might be that she loved a man who did not love her, or who loved somebody else, and then she would be compelled, whatever she wished, to live without him. But, on the other hand, there was the well-worn yet very reasonable argument that it is the girl’s life and happiness that is concerned, not the parents’, and that to issue a ukase like an emperor, or a bull like a pope, that your child must give up the man who alone can make her happy is tyrannical and cruel. You are commanded to obey your parents, but there are limits to that command; a woman of, say, thirty for instance (which to Katherine, at twenty-three, was still a great age), could not be expected to obey like a child; a woman of twenty even was not like a little girl. A child has to do what it is told, whether it likes or not; but a woman—and when all her own life is in question?

Those were thoughts which Katherine pondered much as she walked up and down the path on the cliff. For some time she went out very little, fearing always to meet a new group of interested neighbours who should question her about Stella. She shrank from the demands, from the criticisms that were sometimes very plain, and sometimes veiled under pretences of interest or sympathy. She would not discuss her sister with anyone, or her father, or their arrangements or family disasters, and the consequence was that, during almost the whole of that winter she confined herself to the small but varied domain which was such a world of flowers in summer, and now, though the trees were bare, commanded all the sun that enlivens a wintry sky, and all the aspects of the sea, and all the wide expanse of the sky. There she walked about and asked herself a hundred questions. Perhaps it would have been better for all of them if she had run away with James Stanford. It would have cost her father nothing to part with her; he would have been more lenient with the daughter he did not care for. And Stella would have been more thoughtful, more judicious, if there had been nobody at home behind her to bear the responsibility of common life. And then, Katherine wondered, with a gasp, as to the life that might have been hers had she been James Stanford’s wife. She would have gone to India, too, but with no trousseau, no diamonds, no gay interval at Paris. She would have had only him, no more, to fill up her horizon and occupy her changed life. She thought of this with a little shiver, wondering—for, to be sure, she was not, so to speak, in love with him, but only interested in him—very curious if it had been possible to know more about him, to get to understand him. It was a singular characteristic in him that it was she whom he had cared for and not Stella. He was the first and only person who had done so—at least, the only man. Women, she was aware, often got on better with her than with her sister; but that did not surprise her, somehow, while the other did impress her deeply. Why should he have singled out her, Katherine, to fall in love with? It showed that he must be a particular kind of man, not like other people. This was the reason why Katherine had taken so much interest in him, thought so much of him all this time, not because she was in love with him. And it struck her with quite a curious impression, made up of some awe, some alarm, some pleasure, and a good deal of abashed amusement, to think that she might, like Stella, have eloped with him—might have been living with him as her sole companion for two or three years. She used to laugh to herself and hush up her line of thinking abruptly when she came to this point, and yet there was a curious attraction in it.

Soon, however, the old routine, although so much changed, came back, the usual visitors came to call, there were the usual little assemblages to luncheon, which was the form of entertainment Mr. Tredgold preferred; the old round of occupations began, the Stanley girls and the others flowed and circled about her in the afternoon, and, before she knew, Katherine was drawn again into the ordinary routine of life.

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