Old Mr. Tredgold

“So much the better; my affairs have nothing to do with my sister,” Katharine said hastily. And, indeed, it was plain neither they nor any other intrusive affairs had much to do with Stella when she came in radiant, the blackness of her dress making the whiteness of her arms and throat almost too dazzling. She came in with her head held high, with a swing and movement of her figure which embodied the supremacy she felt. She understood now her own importance, her own greatness. It was her natural position, of which she had been defrauded for some time without ever giving up her pretensions to it; but now there was no further possibility of any mistake.

As I have already related the concluding incident of this party it is unnecessary now to go through its details. But when Mr. Sturgeon had gone to his train and Sir Charles to the smoking-room (though not without an invitation to the ladies to accompany him) Stella suddenly took her sister by the waist, and drew her close. “Well?” she said, in her cheerful high tones, “have you anything to tell me, Kate?”

“To tell you, Stella? I don’t know what I can tell you—you know the house as well as I do—and as you are going to have new servants–”

“Oh! if you think it is anything about the house, I doubt very much whether I shall keep up the house, it’s rococo to such a degree—and all about it—the very gardens are rococo.”

“It suits you very well, however,” Katherine said. “All this gilding seems appropriate, like a frame to a picture.”

“Do you think so?” said Stella, looking at herself in the great mirror over the mantelpiece with a certain fondness. It was nice to be able to see yourself like that wherever you turned, from head to foot. “But that is not in the least what I was thinking of,” she said; “tell me about yourself. Haven’t you something very particular to tell me—something about your own self?”

Katherine was surprised, yet but dimly surprised, not enough to cause her any emotion. Her heart had become as still as a stone.

“No,” she said; “I have nothing particular to tell you. I will leave The Cliff when you like—is that what you mean? I have not as yet made any plans, but as soon as you wish it–”

“Oh, as for that,” said Stella, “we shall be going ourselves. Charlie wants me to go to his horrid old place to see what can be done to it, and we shall stay in town for a little. Town is town, don’t you know, after you’ve been in India, even at the dullest time of the year. But these old wretches of servants will have to stay out their month I suppose, and if you like to stay while they’re here—of course, they think a great deal more of you than of me. It will be in order as long as they are here. After, I cannot answer for things. We may shut up the house, or we may let it. It should bring in a fine rent, with the view and all that. But I have not settled yet what I am going to do.”

“My plans then,” said Katherine, faintly smiling, “will be settled before yours, though I have not taken any step as yet.”

“That’s just what I want to know,” cried Stella, “that is what I was asking! Surely there’s nothing come between you and me, Kate, that would keep you from telling me? As for papa’s will, that was his doing, not mine. I cannot go against it, whatever anybody says—I can’t, indeed! It’s a matter of conscience with me to do whatever he wished, now he is dead. I didn’t when he was living, and that is just the reason why–” Stella shut her mouth tight, that no breath of inconsistency might ever come from it. Then once more putting her hand on Katherine’s waist, and inclining towards her: “Tell me what has happened; do tell me, Kate!”

“But nothing has happened, Stella.”

“Nothing! That’s impossible. I left you alone with him on purpose. I saw it was on his very lips, bursting to get it out; and he gave me such a look—Oh, why can’t you fade away?—which isn’t a look I’m accustomed to. And I don’t believe nothing has happened. Why, he came here for that very purpose! Do you think he wanted to see me or Charlie? He was always a person of very bad taste,” Stella said with a laugh. “He was always your own, Kate. Come! don’t bear any malice about the will or that—but tell.”

“There is nothing whatever to tell. Mr. Stanford told me about his child whom he has brought home.”

“Yes, that was to rouse your pity. He thought as you are one of the self-sacrificing people the idea of a baby to take care of—though it is not a baby now—it’s about as old as Job–. The mother died when it was born, you know, a poor little weakly thing. Did I never tell you when I wrote? It must have gone out of my head, for I knew all about it, the wedding and everything. How odd I didn’t tell you. I suppose you had thought that he had been wearing the willow for you, my dear, all this time!”

“It is not of the slightest consequence what I thought—or if I thought at all on the subject,” said Katherine, with, as she felt, a little of the stiffness of dignity injured, which is always ludicrous to a looker-on.

“I’ll be sworn you did,” cried Stella, with a pealing laugh. “Oh, no, my dear, there’s no such example now. And, Kate, you are old enough to know better—you should not be such a goose at your age. The man has done very well, he’s got an excellent appointment, and they say he’ll be a member of Council before he dies. Think what a thing for you with your small income! The pension alone is worth the trouble. A member of Council’s widow has—why she has thousands a year! If it were only for that, you will be a very silly girl, Kate, if you send James Stanford away.”

“Is it not time you joined your husband in the smoking-room, Stella? You must have a great deal to talk about. And I am going to bed.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Stella cried, “you want to get rid of me and my common-sense view. That is always how it happens. People think I am pretty and so forth, but they give me no credit for common-sense. Now that’s just my quality. Look here, Kate. What will you be as an unmarried woman with your income? Why, nobody! You will not be so well off as the old cats. If you and your maid can live on it that’s all; you will be of no consequence. I hear there’s a doctor who was after you very furiously for a time, and would have you still if you would hold up your little finger. But James Stanford would be far better. The position is better in every way—and think of the widow’s pension! why it is one of the prizes which anyone might be pleased to go in for. Kate, if you marry you may do very well yet. Mind my words—but if you’re obstinate and go in for fads, and turn your back on the world, and imagine that you are going to continue a person of importance on five hundred a year–”

“I assure you, Stella, I have no such thought.”

“What then—to be nobody? Do you think you will like to be nobody, Kate, after all the respect that’s been paid to you, and at the head of a large house, and carriages at your command, and all that—to drop down to be Miss Tredgold, the old maid in lodgings with one woman servant? Oh, I know you well enough for that. You will not like it, you will hate it. Marry one of them, for Heaven’s sake! If you have a preference I am sure I don’t object to that. But marry one of them, James Stanford for choice! or else, mark my words, Kate Tredgold, you will regret it all your life.”

Katherine got free at last, with a laugh on her lips at the solemnity of her sister’s address. If Stella had only known how little her common-sense meant, or the extreme seriousness of these views with which she endeavoured to move a mind so different from her own! Lady Somers went off full of the importance of the question, to discuss it over again with her husband, whose sense of humour was greatly tickled by the suggestion that the pension which James Stanford’s widow might have if he were made member of Council was an important matter to be taken into consideration, while Katherine went back again to her room, passing once more the nursery door where Job lay nervously half awake, calling out a dreary “Zat oo, fader?” as her step sounded upon the corridor. But she had no time to think of little Job in the midst of this darkness of her own life. “What does it matter to me, what does it matter to me?” she kept saying to herself as she went along—and yet it mattered so much, it made so great a change! If she had never seen James Stanford again it would not have mattered, indeed; but thus suddenly to find out that while she had been making of him the one little rainbow in her sky—had enshrined him as something far more than any actual lover, the very image of love itself and fidelity, he had been the lover, the husband of another woman, had gone through all the circle of emotion, had a child to remind him for ever of what had been. Katherine, on her side, had nothing save the bitter sense of an illusion fled. It was not anybody’s fault. The man had done nothing he had not a perfect right to do—the secret had not been kept from her by any malice or evil means—all was quite natural, simple, even touching and sad. She ought to be sorry for him, poor fellow! She was in a manner sorry for him—if only he had not come to insult her with words that could have no meaning, words repeated, which had answered before with another woman. The wrench of her whole nature turning away from the secret thing that had been so dear to her was more dreadful than any convulsion. She had cherished it in her very heart of hearts, turned to it when she was weary, consoled herself with it in the long, long endless flatness of those years that were past. And it had all been a lie; there was nothing of the kind, nothing to fall back upon, nothing to dream of. The man had not loved her, he had loved his wife, as was most just and right. And she had been a woman voluntarily deceived, a dreamer, a creature of vanity, attributing to herself a power which she had never possessed. There is no estimating the keenness of mortified pride with which a woman makes such a discovery. Her thoughts have been dwelling on him with a visionary longing which is not painful, which is sometimes happiness enough to support the structure of a life for years; but his had not been satisfied with this: the chain that held her had been nothing to him; he had turned to other consolations and exhausted them, and then came back. The woman’s instinct flung him from her, as she would have flung some evil thing. She wrenched herself away twisting her very heart out of its socket; that which had been, being shattered for ever by this blow, could be no more.

There was, as Stella said, no common-sense at all in the argument, or proper appreciation of a position which, taking into consideration everything, inclusive of the widow’s pension, was well worth any woman’s while.

CHAPTER XLVII

It is very difficult to change every circumstance of your life when a sudden resolution comes upon you all in a moment. To restless people indeed it is a comfort to be up and doing at once—but when there is no one to do anything for but yourself, and you have never done anything for yourself alone in all your life, then it is very hard to know how to begin. To resolve that this day, this very hour you will arise and go; that you will find out a new shelter, a new foundation on which, if not to build a house, yet to pitch a tent; to transfer yourself and everything that may belong to you out of the place where you have been all your life, where every one of your little possessions has its place and niche, into another cold unknown place to which neither you nor they belong—how could anything be harder than that? It was so hard that Katherine did not do it for day after day. She put it off every morning till to-morrow. You may think that, with her pride, to be an undesired visitor in her sister’s house would have been insupportable to her. But she did not feel as if she had any pride. She felt that she could support anything better than the first step out into the cold, the decision where she was to go.

The consequence of this was that the Somerses, always tranquilly pursuing their own way, and put out in their reckoning by no one, were the first to make that change. Sir Charles made an expedition to his own old house of which all the Somerses were so proud, and found that it could not only be made (by the spending of sixty thousand a year in it) a very grand old house, but that even now it was in very tolerable order and could receive his family whenever the family chose to inhabit it. When he had made this discovery he was, it was only natural, very anxious to go, to faire valoir as far as was possible what was very nearly his unique contribution to the family funds. There was some little delay in order that fires might be lighted and servants obtained, but it was still October when the party which had arrived from the Aurungzebe at the beginning of the month, departed again in something of the same order, the ayah more cold, and Pearson more worried; for though the latter had Lady Somers’ old rivière in her own possession, another rivière of much greater importance was now in her care, and her responsibilities instead of lessening were increased. It could scarcely be said even that Stella was more triumphant than when she arrived, the centre of all farewells and good wishes, at Tilbury Docks; for she had believed then in good fortune and success as she did now, and she had never felt herself disappointed. Sir Charles himself was the member of the party who had changed most. There was no embarrassment about him now, or doubt of that luck in which Stella was so confident. He had doubted his luck from time to time in his life, but he did so no longer. He carried down little Job on his shoulder from the nursery regions. “I say, old chap,” he said, “you’ll have to give up your nonsense now and be a gentleman. Take off your hat to your Aunt Kate, like a man. If you kick I’ll twist one of those little legs off. Hear, lad! You’re going home to Somers and you’ll have to be a man.”

Job had no answer to make to this astounding address; he tried to kick, but found his feet held fast in a pair of strong hands. “Me fader’s little boy,” he said, trying the statement which had always hitherto been so effectual.

“So you are, old chap; but you’re the young master at Somers too,” said the father, who had now a different meaning. Job drummed upon that very broad breast as well as he could with his little imprisoned heels, but he was not monarch of all he surveyed as before. “Good-bye, Kate,” Sir Charles said. “Stay as long as ever you like, and come to Somers as soon as you will. I’m master there, and I wish you were going to live with us for good and all—but you and your sister know your own ways best.”

“Good-bye, Charles. I shall always feel that you have been very kind.”

“Oh, kind!” he cried, “but I’m only Stella’s husband don’t you know, and I have to learn my place.”

“Good-bye, Kate,” cried Stella, coming out with all her little jingle of bracelets, buttoning her black gloves. “I am sure you will be glad to get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done, and clear out all your cupboards and things. You’ll let me know when you decide where you’re going, and keep that old wretch Simmons in order, and don’t give her too flaming a character. You’ll be sending them all off with characters as long as my arm, as if they were a set of angels. Mind you have proper dinners, and don’t sink into tea as ladies do when they’re alone. Good-bye, dear.” Stella kissed her sister with every appearance of affection. She held her by the shoulders for a moment and looked into her eyes. “Now, Kate, no nonsense! Take the good the Gods provide you—don’t be a silly, neglecting your own interest. At your age you really ought to take a common-sense view.”

Kate stood at what had been so long her own door and watched them all going away—Pearson and the soldier in the very brougham in which Stella had driven to the yacht on the night of her elopement. That and the old landau had got shabby chiefly for want of use in these long years. The baby, now so rosy, crowed in the arms of the dark nurse, and Sir Charles held his hat in his hand till he was almost out of sight. He was the only one who had felt for her a little, who had given her an honest if ineffectual sympathy. She felt almost grateful to him as he disappeared. And now to think this strange chapter in her existence was over and could never come again! Few, very few people in the world could have gone through such an experience—to have everything taken from you, and yet to have as yet given up nothing. She seemed to herself a shadow as she stood at that familiar door. She had lived more or less naturally as her sister’s dependent for the last week or two; the position had not galled her; in her desolation she might have gone on and on, to avoid the trouble of coming to a decision. But Stella was not one of the aimless people who are afraid of making decisions, and no doubt Stella was right. When a thing has to be done, it is better that it should be done, not kept on continually hanging over one. Stella had energy enough to make up half a dozen people’s minds for them. “Get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done”—these were the words of the lease on which Katherine held this house, very succinctly set down.

This was a curious interval which was just over, in many ways. Katherine’s relation to Stella had changed strangely; it was the younger sister now who was the prudent chaperon, looking after the other’s interests—and other relationships had changed too. The sight of James Stanford coming and going, who was constantly asked to dinner and as constantly thrown in her way, but whom Katherine, put on her mettle, had become as clever to avoid as Stella was to throw them together, was the most anxious experience. It had done her good to see him so often without seeing him, so to speak. It made her aware of various things which she had not remarked in him before. Altogether this little episode in life had enlarged her horizon. She had found out many things—or, rather, she had found out the insignificance of many things that had bulked large in her vision before. She went up and down the house and it felt empty, as it never had felt in the old time when there was nobody in it. It seemed to her that it had never been empty till now, when the children, though they were not winning children, and Stella, though she was so far from being a perfect person, had gone. There was no sound or meaning left in it; it was an echoing and empty place. It was rococo, as Stella said; a place made to display wealth, with no real beauty in it. It had never been a home, as other people know homes. And now all the faint recollections which had hung about it of her own girlhood and of Stella’s were somehow obliterated. Old Mr. Tredgold and his daughters were swept away. It was a house belonging to the Somerses, who had just come back from India; it looked dreadfully forlorn and empty now they had gone away, and bare also—a place that would be sold or let in all probability to the first comer. Katherine shivered at the disorder of all the rooms upstairs, with their doors widely opened and all the signs of departure about. The household would always be careless, perhaps, under Stella’s sway. There was the look of a desecrated place, of a house in which nothing more could be private, nothing sacred, in the air of its emptiness, with all those doors flung open to the wall.

She was called downstairs again, however, and had no time to indulge these fancies—and glancing out at a window saw the familiar Midge standing before the door; the voices of the ladies talking both together were audible before she had reached the stairs.

“Gone away? Yes, Harrison, we met them all—quite a procession—as we came driving up; and did you see that dear baby, Ruth Mildmay, kissing its little fat hand?”

“I never thought they would make much of a stay,” said Miss Mildmay; “didn’t suit, you may be sure; and mark my words, Jane Shanks–”

“How’s Miss Katherine? Miss Katherine, poor dear, must feel quite dull left alone by herself,” said Mrs. Shanks, not waiting to waste any words.

“I should have felt duller the other way,” said the other voice, audibly moving into the drawing-room. Then Katherine was received by one after another once more in a long embrace.

“You dear!” Mrs. Shanks said—and Miss Mildmay held her by the shoulders as if to impart a firmness which she felt to be wanting.

“Now, Katherine, here you are on your own footing at last.”

“Am I? It doesn’t feel like a very solid footing,” said Katherine with a faint laugh.

“I never thought,” said Mrs. Shanks, “that Stella would stay.”

“It is I that have been telling you all the time, Jane Shanks, that she would not stay. Why should she stay among all the people who know exactly how she’s got it and everything about it? And the shameful behaviour–”

“Now,” said Katherine, “there must not be a word against Stella. Don’t you know Stella is Stella, whatever happens? And there is no shameful behaviour. If she had tried to force half her fortune upon me, do you think I should have taken it? You know better than that, whatever you say.”

“Look here—this is what I call shameful behaviour,” cried Miss Mildmay, with a wave of her hand.

The gilded drawing-room with all its finery was turned upside down, the curiosities carried off—some of them to be sold, some of them, that met with Stella’s approval, to Somers. The screen with which Katherine had once made a corner for herself in the big room lay on the floor half covered with sheets of paper, being packed; a number of the pictures had been taken from the walls. The room, which required to be very well kept and cared for to have its due effect, was squalid and miserable, like a beggar attired in robes of faded finery. Katherine had not observed the havoc that had been wrought. She looked round, unconsciously following the movement of Miss Mildmay’s hand, and this sudden shock did what nothing had done yet. It was sudden and unlooked for, and struck like a blow. She fell into a sudden outburst of tears.

“This is what I call shameful behaviour,” Miss Mildmay said again, “and Katherine, my poor child, I cannot bear, for one, that you should be called on to live in the middle of this for a single day.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” cried Katherine, with a laugh that was half hysterical, through her tears. “Why should it be kept up when, perhaps, they are not coming back to it? And why shouldn’t they get the advantage of things which are pretty things and are their own? I might have thought that screen was mine—for I had grown fond of it—and carried it away with my things, which clearly I should have had no right to do, had not Stella seen to it. Stella, you know, is a very clever girl—she always was, but more than ever,” she said, the laugh getting the mastery. It certainly was very quick, very smart of Lady Somers to take the first step, which Katherine certainly never would have had decision enough to do.

“You ought to be up with her in another way,” said Miss Mildmay. “Katherine, there’s a very important affair, we all know, waiting for you to decide.”

“And oh, my dear, how can you hesitate?” said Mrs. Shanks, taking her hand.

“It is quite easy to know why she hesitates. When a girl marries at twenty, as you did, Jane Shanks, it’s plain sailing—two young fools together and not a thought between them. But I know Katherine’s mind. I’ve known James Stanford, man and boy, the last twenty years. He’s not a Solomon, but as men go he’s a good sort of man.”

“Oh, Ruth Mildmay, that’s poor praise! You should see him with that poor little boy of his. It’s beautiful!” cried Mrs. Shanks with tears in her eyes.

“You’ve spoilt it all, you–” Miss Mildmay said in a fierce whisper in her friend’s ear.

“Why should I have spoilt it all? Katherine has excellent sense, we all know; the poor man married—men always do: how can they help it, poor creatures?—but as little harm was done as could be done, for she died so very soon, poor young thing.”

Katherine by this time was perfectly serene and smiling—too smiling and too serene.

“Katherine,” said Miss Mildmay, “if you hear the one side you should hear the other. This poor fellow, James Stanford, came to Jane Shanks and me before he went back to India the last time. He had met you on the train or somewhere. He said he must see you whatever happened. I told Jane Shanks at the time she was meddling with other people’s happiness.”