Old Mr. Tredgold

CHAPTER XLVIII

Katherine was restless that afternoon; there was not much to delight her indoors, or any place where she could find refuge and sit down and rest, or read, or write, or occupy herself in any natural way, unless it had been in her own bedroom, and there Hannah was packing—a process which promoted comfort as little as any of the others. This condition of the house wounded her to the bottom of her heart. A few days, she said to herself, could have made no difference. Stella need not have set the workmen to work until the house at least was empty. It was a poor thing to invite her sister to remain and then to make her home uninhabitable. With anxious justice, indeed, she reminded herself that the house was not uninhabitable—that she might still live in the drawing-room if she pleased, after the screen and the pictures and the curiosities were taken away; or in the morning-room, though the piano was packed in a rough box; but yet, when all was said, it was not generous of Stella. She had nowhere to sit down—nowhere to rest the sole of her foot. She went out at last to the walk round the cliff. She had always been fond of that, the only one in the family who cared for it. It was like a thread upon which she had strung so many recollections—that time, long ago, when papa had sent James Stanford away, and the many times when Katherine, still so young, had felt herself “out of it” beside the paramount presence of Stella, and had retired from the crowd of Stella’s adorers to gaze out upon the view and comfort herself in the thought that she had some one of her own who wanted not Stella, but Katherine. And then there had been the day of Stella’s escapade, and then of Stella’s elopement all woven round and round about the famous “view.” Everything in her life was associated with it. That blue sky, that shining headland with the watery sun picking it out like a cliff of gold, the great vault of the sky circling over all, the dim horizon far away lost in distance, in clouds and immeasurable circles of the sea. Just now a little white sail was out as it might have been that fated little Stella, the yacht which Mr. Tredgold sold after her last escapade, and made a little money by, to his own extreme enjoyment. Katherine walked up and down, with her eyes travelling over the familiar prospect on which they had dwelt for the greater part of her life. She was very lonely and forlorn; her heart was heavy and her vitality low, she scarcely knew where she was going or what she might be doing to-morrow. The future was to-morrow to her as it is to a child. She had to make up her mind to come to some decision, and to-morrow she must carry it out.

It did not surprise her at all, on turning back after she had been there for some time, at the end of her promenade to see a figure almost by her side, which turned out to be that of Mr. Stanford. She was not surprised to see him. She had seen him so often, they were quite accustomed to meet. She spoke to him quite in a friendly tone, without any start or alarm: “You have come—to see the last of them, Mr. Stanford?” It was not a particularly appropriate speech, for there was no one here to see the last of, unless it had been Katherine herself; but nevertheless these were the words that came to her lips.

“They seem to have gone very soon,” he said, which was not a brilliant remark any more than her own.

“Immediately after lunch,” said Katherine, severely practical, “that they might get home in good time. You must always make certain allowances when you travel with young children. But,” she added, with a sudden rise of colour, “I should not attempt to enlighten you on that subject.”

“I certainly know what it is,” he said, with a grave face, “to consider the interests of a little child.”

“I know, I know,” cried Katherine with a sudden compunction, “I should not have said that.”

“I wish,” he said, “that you would allow me to speak to you on this subject. No, it is not on this subject. I tried to say what was in my heart before, but either you would not listen, or—I have a good deal to say to you that cannot be said. I don’t know how. If I could but convey it to you without saying it. It is only just to me that you should know. It may be just—to another—that it should not be said.”

“Let nothing be said,” she cried anxiously; “oh, nothing—nothing! Yet only one thing I should like you to tell me. That time we met on the railway—do you remember?”

“Do I remember!”

“Well; I wish to know this only for my own satisfaction. Were you married then?”

She stood still as she put the question in the middle of the walk; but she did not look at him, she looked out to sea.

He answered her only after a pause of some duration, and in a voice which was full of pain. “Are you anxious,” he said, “Katherine, to make me out not only false to you, but false to love and to every sentiment in the world?”

“I beg you will not think,” she cried, “that I blame you for anything. Oh, no, no! You have never been false to me. There was never anything between us. You were as free and independent as any man could be.”

“Let me tell you then as far as I can what happened. I came back by the train that same afternoon when you said you were coming, and you were not there. I hung about hoping to meet you. Then I saw our two old friends in the Terrace—and they told me that there were other plans—that the doctor was very kind to your father for your sake, and that you were likely–”

Katherine waved her hand with great vivacity; she stamped her foot slightly on the ground. What had this to do with it? It was not her conduct that was in dispute, but his. Her meaning was so clear in her face without words that he stopped as she desired.

“I went back to India very much cast down. I was without hope. I was at a lonely station and very dreary. I tried to say the other day how strongly I believed in my heart that it was better to hold for the best, even if you could never attain it, than to try to get a kind of makeshift happiness with a second best.”

“Mr. Stanford,” cried Katherine, with her head thrown back and her eyes glowing, “from anything I can discern you are about to speak of a lady of whom I know nothing; who is dead—which sums up everything; and whom no one should dare to name, you above all, but with the most devout respect.”

He looked at her surprised, and then bowed his head. “You are right, Miss Katherine,” he said; “my poor little wife, it would ill become me to speak of her with any other feeling. I told you that I had much to tell you which could not be said–”

“Let it remain so then,” she cried with a tremble of excitement; “why should it be discussed between you and me? It is no concern of mine.”

“It’s a great, a very great concern of mine. Katherine, I must speak; this is the first time in which I have ever been able to speak to you, to tell you what has been in my heart—oh, not to-day nor yesterday—for ten long years.” She interrupted him again with the impatient gesture, the same slight stamp on the ground. “Am I to have no hearing,” he cried, “not even to be allowed to tell you, the first and only time that I have had the chance?”

Katherine cleared her throat a great many times before she spoke. “I will tell you how it looks from my point of view,” she said. “I used to come out here many a time after you went away first, when we were told that papa had sent you away. I was grateful to you. I thought it was very, very fine of you to prefer me to Stella; afterwards I began to think of you a little for yourself. The time we met made you a great deal more real to me. It was imagination, but I thought of you often and often when I came out here and walked about and looked at the view. The view almost meant you—it was very vague, but it made me happy, and I came out nearly every night. That is nearly ten years since, too; it was nothing, and yet it was the chief I had to keep my life going upon. Finally you come back, and the first thing you have to say to me is to explain that, though you like me still and all that, you have been married, you have had a child, and another life between whiles. Oh, no, no, Mr. Stanford, that cannot be.”

“Katherine! must I not say a word in my own defence?”

“There is no defence,” she cried, “and no wrong. I am only not that kind of woman. I am very sorry for you and the poor little child. But you have that, it is a great deal. And I have nothing not even the view. I am bidding farewell to the view and to all those recollections. It is good-bye,” she said, waving her hand out to the sea, “to my youth as well as to the cliff, and to all my visions as well as to you. Good-bye, Mr. Stanford, good-bye. I think it is beginning to rain, and to-morrow I am going away.”

Was this the conclusion? Was it not a conclusion at all? Next day Katherine certainly did go away. She went to a little house at some distance from Sliplin—a little house in the country, half-choked in fallen leaves, where she had thought she liked the rooms and the prospect, which was no longer that of the bay and the headland, but of what we call a home landscape—green fields and tranquil woods, a village church within sight, and some red-roofed cottages. Katherine’s rooms were on the upper floor, therefore not quite on a level with the fallen leaves. It was a most digne retirement for a lady, quite the place for Katherine, many people thought; not like rooms in a town, but with the privacy of her own garden and nobody to interfere with her. There was a little pony carriage in which she could drive about, with a rough pony that went capitally, quite as well as Mr. Tredgold’s horses—growing old under the charge of the old coachman, who never was in a hurry—would ever go. Lady Jane, who approved so highly, was anxious to take a great deal of notice of Katherine. She sent the landau to fetch her when, in the first week of her retirement, Katherine went out to Steephill to lunch. But Katherine preferred the pony chaise. She said her rooms were delightful, and the pony the greatest diversion. The only grievance she had, she declared, was that there was nothing to find fault with. “Now, to be a disinherited person and to have no grievance,” she said, “is very hard. I don’t know what is to become of me.” Lady Jane took this in some unaccountable way as a satirical speech, and felt aggrieved. But I cannot say why.

It is a great art to know when to stop when you are telling a story—the question of a happy or a not happy ending rests so much on that. It is supposed to be the superior way nowadays that a story should end badly—first, as being less complete (I suppose), and, second, as being more in accord with truth. The latter I doubt. If there was ever any ending in human life except the final one of all (which we hope is exactly the reverse of an ending), one would be tempted rather to say that there are not half so many tours de force in fiction as there are in actual life, and that the very commonest thing is the god who gets out of the machine to help the actual people round us to have their own way. But this is not enough for the highest class of fiction, and I am aware that a hankering after a good end is a vulgar thing. Now, the good ending of a novel means generally that the hero and heroine should be married and sent off with blessings upon their wedding tour. What am I to say? I can but leave this question to time and the insight of the reader. If it is a fine thing for a young lady to be married, it must be a finer thing still that she should have, as people say, two strings to her bow. There are two men within her reach who would gladly marry Katherine, ready to take up the handkerchief should she drop it in the most maidenly and modest way. She had no need to go out into the world to look for them. There they are—two honest, faithful men. If Katherine marries the doctor, James Stanford will disappear (he has a year’s furlough), and no doubt in India will marry yet another wife and be more or less happy. If she should marry Stanford, Dr. Burnet will feel it, but it will not break his heart. And then the two who make up their minds to this step will live happy—more or less—ever after. What more is there to be said?

I think that few people quite understand, and no one that I know of, except a little girl here and there, will quite sympathise with the effect produced upon Katherine by her discovery of James Stanford’s marriage. They think her jealous, they think her ridiculous, they say a great many severe things about common-sense. A man in James Stanford’s position, doing so well, likely to be a member of Council before he dies, with a pension of thousands for his widow—that such a man should be disdained because he had married, though the poor little wife was so very discreet and died so soon, what could be more absurd? “If there had been a family of girls,” Stella said, “you could understand it, for a first wife’s girls are often a nuisance to a woman. But one boy, who will be sent out into the world directly and do for himself and trouble nobody–” Stella, however, always ends by saying that she never did understand Katherine’s ways and never should, did she live a hundred years.

This is what Stella, for her part, is extremely well inclined to do. Somers has been filled with all the modern comforts, and it is universally allowed to be a beautiful old house, fit for a queen. Perhaps its present mistress does not altogether appreciate its real beauties, but she loves the size of it, and the number of guests it can take in, and the capacity of the hall for dances and entertainments of all kinds. She has, too, a little house in town—small, but in the heart of everything—which Stella instinctively and by nature is, wherever she goes. All that is facilitated by the possession of sixty thousand a year, yet not attained; for there are, as everybody knows, many people with a great deal more money who beat at these charmed portals of society and for whom there is no answer, till perhaps some needy lady of the high world takes them up. But Stella wanted no needy lady of quality. She scoffed at the intervention of the Dowager Lady Somers, who would, if she could, have patronised old Tredgold’s daughter; but Lady Somers’ set were generally old cats to Stella, and she owed her advancement solely to herself. She is success personified—in her house, in her dress, in society, with her husband and all her friends. Little whining Job was perhaps the only individual of all her surroundings who retained a feeling of hostility as time went on against young Lady Somers. Her sister has forgiven her freely, if there was anything to forgive, and Sir Charles is quite aware that he has nothing to forgive, and reposes serenely upon that thought, indifferent to flirtations, that are light as air and mean nothing. Lady Somers is a woman upon whose stainless name not a breath of malice has ever been blown, but Job does not care for his mother. It is a pity, though it does not disturb her much, and it is not easy to tell the reason—perhaps because she branded him in his infancy with the name which sticks to him still. Such a name does no harm in these days of nicknames, but it has, I believe, always rankled in the boy’s heart.

On the other hand, there is a great friendship still between Job and his father, and he does not dislike his aunt. But this is looking further afield than our story calls upon us to look. It is impossible that Katherine can remain very long in a half rural, half suburban cottage in the environs of Sliplin, with no diversion but the little pony carriage and the visits of the Midge and occasionally of Lady Jane. The piece of land which Mr. Sturgeon sold for her brought in a pleasant addition to her income, and she would have liked to have gone abroad and to have done many things; but what can be done, after all, by a lady and her maid, even upon five hundred pounds a year?