He had a very high standard of honour, too. Many men had that, and all whom she knew were supposed to have it, but there were few whom she felt that she could never possibly suspect of some little meanness. That was another step to the pedestal on which she had set up her ideal.
But perhaps one of the chief points which appealed to her sympathy was Ralston’s breadth of view, or absence of narrowness. He had spoken the strict truth that evening when he had said that he never laughed at any one’s religion, and, next to love, religion was at that time uppermost in Katharine Lauderdale’s mind. At her present stage of development everything she did, saw, read and heard bore upon one or the other, or both, which was not surprising considering the atmosphere in which she had grown up.
Alexander Junior had never made but one sacrifice for his wife, and that had been of a negative description. He had forgiven her for being a Roman Catholic, and had agreed never to mention the subject; and he had kept his word, as indeed he always did on the very rare occasions when he could be induced to give it. It is needless to say that he had made a virtue of his conduct in this respect, for he systematically made the most of everything in himself which could be construed into a virtue at all. But at all events he had never broken his promise. In the days when he had married Emma Camperdown there had been little or no difficulty about marriages between Catholics and members of other churches, and it had been understood that his children were to be brought up Presbyterians, though nothing had been openly said about it. His bride had been young, beautiful and enthusiastic, and she had believed in her heart that before very long she could effect her husband’s conversion, little dreaming of the rigid nature with which she should have to deal. It would have been as easy to make a Roman Catholic of Oliver Cromwell, as Mrs. Lauderdale soon discovered to her sorrow. He did not even consider that she had any right to talk of religion to her children.
Charlotte Lauderdale grew up in perfect indifference. Her mind developed young, but not far. In her childhood she was a favourite of old Mrs. Lauderdale,—formerly a Miss Mainwaring, of English extraction, and the mother of Mrs. Ralston,—and the old lady had taught her that Presbyterians were no better than atheists, and that Roman Catholics were idolaters, so that the only salvation lay in the Episcopal Church. The lesson had entered deep into the girl’s heart, and she had grown up laughing at all three; but on coming to years of discretion she went to an Episcopal church because most of her friends did. She enjoyed the weekly fray with her father, whom she hated for his own sake in the first place, and secondly because he was poor, and she once went so far as to make him declare, in his iron voice, that he vastly preferred Catholics to Episcopalians,—a declaration which she ever afterwards cast violently in his teeth when she had succeeded in drawing him into a discussion upon articles of faith. Her mother never had the slightest influence over her. The girl was quick-witted and believed herself clever, was amusing and thought she was witty, was headstrong, capricious and violent in her dislikes and was consequently convinced that she had a very strong will. She married Slayback for three reasons,—to escape from her family, because he was rich, and because she believed that she could do anything she chose with him. She was not mistaken in his wealth, and she removed herself altogether from the sphere of the Lauderdales, but Benjamin Slayback was not at all the kind of person she had taken him for.
Katharine was altogether different from her sister. She was more habitually silent, and her taste was never for family war. She thought more and read less than Charlotte, who devoured literature promiscuously and trusted to luck to remember something of what she read. Indeed, Katharine thought a great deal, and often reasoned correctly from inaccurate knowledge. In a healthy way she was inclined to be melancholic, and was given to following out serious ideas, and even to something like religious contemplation. Everything connected with belief in transcendental matters interested her exceedingly. She delighted in having discussions which turned upon the supernatural, and upon such things as seem to promise a link between the hither and the further side of death’s boundary,—between the cis-mortal and the trans-mortal, if the coining of such words be allowable. In this she resembled nine-tenths of the American women of her age and surroundings. The mind of the idle portion of American society to-day reminds one of a polypus whose countless feelers are perpetually waving and writhing in the fruitless attempt to catch the very smallest fragment of something from the other side, wherewith to satisfy the mortal hunger that torments it.
There is something more than painful, something like an act of the world’s soul-tragedy, in this all-pervading desire to know the worst, or the best,—to know anything which shall prove that there is something to know. There is a breathless interest in every detail of an ‘experience’ as it is related, a raising of hopes, a thrilling of the long-ready receptivity as the point is approached; and then, when the climax is reached and past, there is the sudden, almost agonizing relapse into blank hopelessness. The story has been told, but nothing is proved. We know where the door is, but before it is a screen round which we must pass to reach it. The screen is death, as we see it. To pass it and be within sight of the threshold is to die, as we understand death, and there lies the boundary of possible experience, for, so far as we know, there is no other door.
The question is undoubtedly the greatest which humanity can ask, for the answer must be immortality or annihilation. It seems that a certain proportion of mankind, driven to distraction by the battle of beliefs, has actually lost the faculty of believing anything at all, and the place where the faculty was aches, to speak familiarly.
That, at least, was how it struck Katharine Lauderdale, and it was from this point of view that she seriously contemplated becoming a Catholic. If she did so, she intended to accept the Church as a whole and refuse, forever afterwards, to reopen the discussion. She never could accept it as her mother did, for she had not been brought up in it, but there were days when she felt that by a single act of will she could bind herself to believe in all the essentials, and close her eyes to the existence of the non-essentials, never to open them again. Then, she thought, she should never have any more doubts.
But on other days she wished that there might be another way. She got odd numbers of the proceedings of a society devoted to psychological researches, and read with extreme avidity the accurately reported evidence of persons who had seen or heard unusual sights or sounds, and studied the figures illustrating the experiments in thought-transference. Then the conviction came upon her that there must be another door besides the door of death, and that, if she were only patient she might be led to it or come upon it unawares. She knew far too little of even what little there is to be known, to get any further than this vague and not unpleasant dream, and she was conscious of her ignorance, asking questions of every one she met who took the slightest interest in psychical enquiries. Of course, her attempts to gain knowledge were fruitless. If any one who is willing to be a member of civilized society knew anything definite about what we call the future state, the whole of civilized society would know it also in less than a month. Every one can be quite sure of that, and no one need therefore waste time in questioning his neighbour in the hope of learning anything certain.
There were even times when her father’s rigid and merciless view of the soul pleased her, and was in sympathy with her slightly melancholic temperament. The unbending, manly quality of the Presbyterian belief attracted her by its strength—the courage a man must have to go through life facing an almost inevitable hell for himself and the positive certainty of irrecoverable damnation for most of those dearest to him. If her father was in earnest, as he appeared to be, he could not have the slightest hope that her mother could be saved. At that idea Katharine laughed, being supposed to be a Presbyterian herself. Nevertheless, she sometimes liked his hard sayings and doings, simply because they were hard. Hamilton Bright had often told her that she had a lawyer’s mind, because she could not help seeing things from opposite sides at the same time, whereupon she always answered that though she despised prejudices, she liked people who had them, because such persons were generally stronger than the average. Ralston, who had not many, and had none at all about religious matters, was the man with whom she felt herself in the closest sympathy, a fact which went far to prove to Bright that he was not mistaken in his judgment of her.
On the whole, in spite of the declaration she had made to Ralston, Katharine Lauderdale’s state was sceptical, in the sense that her mind was in a condition of suspended judgment between no less than five points of view, the Presbyterian, the Catholic, the deistic, the psychologic, and the materialistic. It was her misfortune that her nature had led her to think of such matters at all, rather than to accept some existing form of belief and to be as happy as she could be with it from the first, as her mother had done: and though her intelligence was good, it was as totally inadequate to grapple with such subjects as it was well adapted to the ordinary requirements of worldly life. But she was not to be blamed for being in a state of mind to which her rather unusual surroundings had contributed much, and her thoughtful temperament not a little. If anything, she was to be pitied, though the mighty compensation of a genuine love had grown up year by year to neutralize the elements of unhappiness which were undoubtedly present.
It is worth noticing that at this time, which opened the crucial period of her life, she doubted her own religious convictions and her own stability of purpose, but she did not for a moment doubt the sincerity of her love for John Ralston, nor of his for her, as she conclusively proved when she determined to risk her whole life in such a piece of folly as a secret marriage.
When she came down to dinner on that memorable evening, she found her father and mother sitting on opposite sides of the fireplace. Alexander Junior was correctly arrayed in evening dress, and his clothes fitted perfectly upon his magnificent figure. The keen eye of a suspicious dandy could have detected that they were very old clothes, and Mr. Lauderdale would not have felt at all dismayed at the discovery of the fact. He prided himself upon wearing a coat ten years, and could tell the precise age of every garment in his possession. He tied his ties to perfection also, and this, too, was an economy, for such was his skill that he could wear a white tie twice, bringing the knot into exactly the same place a second time. Mont Blanc presented not a more spotless, impenetrable, and unchanging front than Alexander Junior’s shirt. He had processes of rejuvenating his shoes known to him alone, and in the old days of evening gloves, his were systematically cleaned and rematched, and the odd ones laid aside to replace possible torn ones in the future, constituting a veritable survival of the fittest. Five and twenty years of married life had not taught him that a woman could not possibly do the same with her possessions, and he occasionally enquired why his wife did not wear certain gowns which had been young with her daughters. He never put on the previously mentioned white tie, however, unless some one was coming to dinner. When the family was alone, he wore a black one. As he was not hospitable, and did not encourage hospitality in his wife, though he praised it extravagantly in other people, and never refused a dinner party, the black tie was the rule at home. Black ties last a long time.
Katharine noticed the white one this evening, and was surprised, as her mother had not spoken to her of any guest.
“Who is coming to dinner?” she asked, looking at her father, almost as soon as she had shut the door.
Mr. Lauderdale’s steel-grey upper lip was immediately raised in a sort of smile which showed his large white teeth—he had defied the dentist from his youth up, and his smile was hard and cold as an electric light.
“Ah, my dear child,” he answered in a clear, metallic voice, “I am glad you notice things. Little things are always worth noticing. Walter Crowdie is coming to dinner to-day. In fact, he is rather late—”
“With Hester?” asked Katharine, quickly. Hester Crowdie was Hamilton Bright’s sister, and Katharine liked her.
“No, my dear, without Hester. We could hardly ask two people to our every-day dinner.”
“Oh—it’s only Mr. Crowdie, then,” said Katharine in a tone of disappointment, sitting down beside her mother.
“I hope you’ll be nice to him, Katharine,” said Mr. Lauderdale. “There are many reasons—”
“Oh, yes! I’ll be nice to him,” answered the young girl, with a short, quick frown that disappeared again instantly.
“I don’t like your expression, my child,” said Alexander Junior, severely, “and I don’t like to be interrupted. Mr. Crowdie is very kind. He wishes to paint your portrait, and he proposes to give us the study he must make first, which will be just as good as the picture itself, I have no doubt. Crowdie is getting a great reputation, and a picture by him is valuable. One can’t afford to be rude to a man who makes such a proposal.”
“No,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale as though speaking to herself. “I should really like to have it. He is a great artist.”
“I haven’t the least intention of being rude to him,” answered Katharine. “What does he mean to do with my portrait—with the picture itself when he has painted it—sell it?”
“He would have a perfect right to sell it, of course—with no name. He means to exhibit it in Paris, I believe, and then I think he intends to give it to his wife. You always say she is a great friend of yours.”
“Oh—that’s all right, if it’s for Hester,” said Katharine. “Of course she’s a friend of mine. Hush! I hear the bell.”
“When did Mr. Crowdie talk to you about this?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, addressing her husband.
“This morning—hush! Here he is.”
Alexander Junior had an almost abnormal respect for the proprieties, and always preferred to stop talking about a person five minutes before he or she appeared. It was a part of his excessively reticent nature.
The door opened and Walter Crowdie appeared, a pale young man with heavy, red lips and a bad figure. His eyes alone redeemed his face from being positively repulsive, for they were of a very beautiful blue colour and shaded by extremely long brown lashes. A quantity of pale hair, too long to be neat, but not so long as worn by many modern musicians, concealed the shape of his head and grew low on his forehead. The shape of the face, as the hair allowed it to be seen, resembled that of a pear, wide and flaccid about the jaws and narrowing upwards towards the temples. Crowdie’s hands were small, cushioned with fat, and of a dead white—the fingers being very pointed and the nails long and polished. His shoulders sloped like a woman’s, and were narrow, and he was heavy about the waist and slightly in-kneed. He was too fashionable to use perfumes, but one instinctively expected him to smell of musk.
Both women experienced an unpleasant sensation when he entered the room. What Mr. Lauderdale felt it is impossible to guess, but as Katharine saw the two shake hands she was proud of her father and of the whole manly race from which she was descended.
Last of all the party came Alexander Senior, taking the utmost advantage of age’s privilege to be late. Even he, within sight of his life’s end, contrasted favourably with Walter Crowdie. He stooped, he was badly dressed, his white tie was crooked, and there were most evident spots on his coat; his eyes were watery, and there were wrinkles running in all directions through the eyebrows, the wrinkles that come last of all; he shambled a little as he walked, and he certainly smelt of tobacco smoke. He had not been the strongest of the three old brothers, though he was the eldest, and his faculties, if not impaired, were not what they had been. But the skull was large and bony, the knotted and wrinkled old hands were manly hands, and always had been, and the benevolent old grey eyes had never had the womanish look in them which belonged to Crowdie’s.
But the young man was quite unconscious of the unfavourable impression he always produced upon Mrs. Lauderdale and her daughter, and his languishing eyelids moved softly and swept his pale cheeks with their long lashes as he looked from one to the other and shook hands.
Alexander Junior, whose sense of punctuality had almost taken offence, rang the bell as his father entered, and a serving girl, who lived in terror of her life, drew back the folding doors a moment later.
The conversation at dinner did not begin brilliantly. Mrs. Lauderdale was tired, and Katharine was preoccupied; as was natural, old Mr. Lauderdale was not easily moved to talk except upon his favourite hobby, and Alexander Junior was solemnly and ferociously hungry, as many strong men are at regular hours. As for Crowdie, he always felt a little out of his element amongst his wife’s relations, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, and he was more observant than communicative at first. Katharine avoided looking at him, which she could easily do, as she sat between him and her father. As usual, it was her mother who made the first effort to talk.
“How is Hester?” she asked, looking across at Crowdie.
“Oh, very well, thanks,” he answered, absently. “Oh, yes,—she’s very well, thank you,” he added, repeating the answer with a little change and more animation. “She had a cold last week, but she’s got over it.”
“It was dreadful weather,” said Katharine, helping her mother to stir the silence. “All grandpapa’s idiots had the grippe.”
“All Mr. Lauderdale’s what?” asked Crowdie. “I didn’t quite catch—”
“The idiots—the asylum, you know.”
“Oh, yes—I remember,” said the young man, and his broad red lips smiled.
Alexander Senior, whose hand shook a little, had eaten his soup with considerable success. He glanced from Katharine to the young artist, and there was a twinkle of amusement in the kindly old eyes.
“Katharine always laughs at the idiots, and talks as though they were my personal property.” His voice was deep and almost musical still—it had been a very gentle voice in his youth.
“Not a very valuable property,” observed Alexander Junior, fixing his eye severely on the serving girl, who forthwith sprang at Mrs. Lauderdale’s empty plate as though her life depended on taking it away in time.
The Lauderdales had never kept a man-servant. The girl was a handsome Canadian, very smart in black and white.
“Wouldn’t it be rather an idea to insure all their lives, and make the insurance pay the expenses of the asylum?” enquired Crowdie, gravely looking at Alexander Junior.
“Not very practical,” answered the latter, with something like a smile.
“Why not?” asked his father, with sudden interest. “That strikes me as a very brilliant idea for making charities self-supporting. I suppose,” he continued, turning to his son, “that the companies could make no objections to insuring the lives of idiots. The rate ought to be very reasonable when one considers the care they get, and the medical attendance, and the immunity from risk of accident.”
“I don’t know about that. When an asylum takes fire, the idiots haven’t the sense to get out,” observed Alexander Junior, grimly.
“Nonsense! Nonsense, Alexander!” The old man shook his head. “Idiots are just as—well, not quite as sensible as other people,—that would be an exaggeration—but they’re not all so stupid, by any means.”
“No—so I’ve heard,” said Crowdie, gravely.
“So stupid as what, Mr. Crowdie?” asked Katharine, turning on him rather abruptly.
“As others, Miss Lauderdale—as me, for instance,” he answered, without hesitation. “Probably we both meant—Mr. Lauderdale and I—that all idiots are not so stupid as the worst cases, which are the ones most people think of when idiots are mentioned.”
“Exactly. You put it very well.” The old philanthropist looked pleased at the interruption. “And I repeat that I think Mr. Crowdie’s idea of insuring them is very good. Every time one dies,—they do die, poor things,—you get a sum of money. Excellent, very excellent!”
His ideas of business transactions had always been hazy in the extreme, and his son proceeded to set him right.
“It couldn’t possibly be of any advantage unless you had capital to invest and insured your own idiots,” said Alexander Junior. “And that would just amount to making a savings bank on your own account, and saving so much a year out of your expenses for each idiot. You could invest the savings, and the interest would be all you could possibly make. It’s not as though the idiots’ families paid the dues and made over the policies to you. There would be money in that, I admit. You might try it. There might be a streak of idiocy in the other members of the patient’s family which would make them agree to it.”
The old man’s gentle eyes suddenly lighted up with ill temper.
“You’re laughing at me, Alexander,” he said, in a louder voice. “You’re laughing at me!”
“No, sir; I’m in earnest,” answered the son, in his cool, metallic tones.
“Don’t the big companies insure their own ships?” asked the philanthropist. “Of course they do, and they make money by it.”
“I beg your pardon. They make nothing but the interest of what they set aside for each ship. They simply cover their losses.”
“Well, and if an idiot dies, then the asylum gets the money.”
“Yes, sir. But an idiot has no intrinsic value.”
“Why, then the asylum gets a sum of money for what was worth nothing, and it must be very profitable—much more so than insuring ships.”
“But it’s the asylum’s own money to begin with—”
“And as for your saying that an idiot has no intrinsic value, Alexander,” pursued the old man, going off on another tack, “I won’t have you say such things. I won’t listen to them. An idiot is a human being, sir, and has an immortal soul, I’d have you to know, as well as you or I. And you have the assurance to say that he has no intrinsic value! An immortal soul, made for eternal happiness or eternal suffering, and no intrinsic value! Upon my word, Alexander, you forget yourself! I should not have expected such an inhuman speech from you.”
“Is the ‘vital spark of heavenly flame’ a marketable commodity?” asked Crowdie, speaking to Katharine in a low voice.
“Idiots have souls, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist, looking straight across at him, and taking it for granted that he had said something in opposition.
“I’ve no doubt they have, Mr. Lauderdale,” answered the painter. “I never thought of questioning the fact.”
“Oh! I thought you did. I understood that you were laughing at the idea.”
“Not at all. It was the use of the word ‘intrinsic’ as applied to the value of the soul which struck me as odd.”
“Ah—that is quite another matter, my dear sir,” replied the old gentleman, who was quickly appeased. “My son first used the word in this discussion. I’m not responsible for it. The younger generation is not so careful in its language as we were taught to be. But the important point, after all, is that idiots have souls.”
“The soul is the only thing anybody really can be said to have as his own,” said Crowdie, thoughtfully.
Katharine glanced at him. He did not look like the kind of man to make such a speech with sincerity. She wondered vaguely what his soul would be like, if she could see it, and it seemed to her that it would be something strange—white, with red lips, singing an evil song, which she could not understand, in a velvet voice, and that it would smell of musk. The side of her that was towards him instinctively shrank a little from him.
“I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist with approbation. “It closes the discussion very fittingly. I hope we shall hear no more of idiots not having souls. Poor things! It is almost the only thing they have that makes them like the rest of us.”
“People are all so different,” replied the artist. “I find that more and more true every day. And it takes a soul to understand a soul. Otherwise photography would take the place of portrait painting.”
“I don’t quite see that,” said Alexander Junior, who had employed the last few minutes in satisfying his first pangs of hunger, having been interrupted by the passage of arms with his father. “What becomes of colour in photography?”
“What becomes of colour in a charcoal or pen and ink drawing?” asked Crowdie. “Yet either, if at all good, is preferable to the best photograph.”
“I’m not sure of that. I like a good photograph. It is much more accurate than any drawing can be.”
“Yes—but it has no soul,” objected Crowdie.
“How can an inanimate object have a soul, sir?” asked the philanthropist, suddenly. “That is as bad as saying that idiots—”
“I mean that a photograph has nothing which suggests the soul of the original,” said Crowdie, interrupting and speaking in a high, clear tone. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and sang well; and he possessed the power of making himself heard easily against many other voices.
“It is the exact representation of the person,” argued Alexander Junior, whose ideas upon art were limited.
“Excuse me. Even that is not scientifically true. There can only be one point in the whole photograph which is precisely in focus. But that is not what I mean. Every face has something besides the lines and the colour. For want of a better word, we call it the expression—it is the individuality—the soul—the real person—the something which the hand can suggest, but which nothing mechanical can ever reproduce. The artist who can give it has talent, even if he does not know how to draw. The best draughtsman and painter in the world is only a mechanic if he cannot give it. Mrs. Lauderdale paints—and paints well—she knows what I mean.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Lauderdale. “The fact that there is something which we can only suggest but never show would alone prove the existence of the soul to any one who paints.”
“I don’t understand those things,” said Alexander Junior.
“Grandpapa,” said Katharine, suddenly, “if any one asserted that there was no such a thing as the soul, what should you answer?”
“I should tell him that he was a blasphemer,” answered the old gentleman, promptly and with energy.
“But that wouldn’t be an argument,” retorted the young girl.
“He would discover the force of it hereafter,” said her father. The electric smile followed the words.
Crowdie looked at Katharine and smiled also, but she did not see.
“But isn’t a man entitled to an argument?” she asked. “I mean—if any one really couldn’t believe that he had a soul—there are such people—”
“Lots of them,” observed Crowdie.
“It’s their own fault, then, and they deserve no mercy—and they will find none,” said Alexander Junior.
“Then believing is a matter of will, like doing right,” argued the young girl. “And a man has only to say, ‘I believe,’ and he will believe, because he wills it.”
But neither of the Lauderdales had any intention of being drawn out on that point. They were good Presbyterians, and were Scotch by direct descent; and they knew well enough what direction the discussion must take if it were prolonged. The old gentleman put a stop to it.
“The questions of the nature of belief and free will are pretty deep ones, my dear,” he said, kindly, “and they are not of the sort to be discussed idly at dinner.”
Strange to say, that was the species of answer which pleased Katharine best. She liked the uncompromising force of genuinely prejudiced people who only allowed argument to proceed when they were sure of a logical result in their own favour. Alexander Junior nodded approvingly, and took some more beef. He abhorred bread, vegetables, and sweet things, and cared only for what produced the greatest amount of energy in the shortest time. It was astonishing that such iron strength should have accomplished nothing in nearly fifty years of life.
“Yes,” said Crowdie, “they are rather important things. But I don’t think that there are so many people who deny the existence of the soul as people who want to satisfy their curiosity about it, by getting a glimpse at it. Hester and I dine out a good deal—people are very kind, and always ask us to dinners because they know I can’t go out to late parties on account of my work—so we are always dining out; and we were saying only to-day that at nine-tenths of the dinners we go to the conversation sooner or later turns on the soul, or psychical research, or Buddhism, or ghosts, or something of the sort. It’s odd, isn’t it, that there should be so much talk about those things just now? I think it shows a kind of general curiosity. Everybody wants to get hold of a soul and study its habits, as though it were an ornithorynchus or some queer animal—it is strange, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, suddenly joining in the conversation. “If you once cut loose from your own form of belief there’s no particular reason why you should be satisfied with that of any one else. If a man leaves his house without an object there’s nothing to make him go in one direction rather than in another.”
“So far as that is concerned, I agree with you,” said Alexander Junior.
“There is truth to direct him,” observed the philanthropist.
“And there is beauty,” said Crowdie, turning his head towards Mrs. Lauderdale and his eyes towards Katharine.
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed the latter. “If you are going to jumble the soul, and art, and everything, all together, there are lots of things to lead one. Where does beauty lead you, Mr. Crowdie?”
“To imagine a vain thing,” answered the painter with a soft laugh. “It also leads me to try and copy it, with what I imagine it means, and I don’t always succeed.”
“I hope you’ll succeed if you paint my daughter’s portrait,” remarked Alexander Junior.
“No,” Crowdie replied thoughtfully, and looking at Katharine quite directly now. “I shan’t succeed, but if Miss Lauderdale will let me try, I’ll promise to do my very best. Will you, Miss Lauderdale? Your father said he thought you would have no objection.”
“I said you would, Katharine, and I said nothing about objections,” said her father, who loved accurate statements.
Katharine did not like to be ordered to do anything and the short, quick frown bent her brows for a second.
“I am much flattered,” she said coldly.
“You will not be, when I have finished, I fear,” said Crowdie, with quick tact. “Please, Miss Lauderdale, I don’t want you to sit to me as a matter of duty, because your father is good enough to ask you. That isn’t it, at all. Please understand. It’s for Hester, you know. She’s such a friend of yours, and you’re such a friend of hers, and I want to surprise her with a Christmas present, and there’s nothing she’d like so much as a picture of you. I don’t say anything about the pleasure it will be to me to paint you—it’s just for her. Will you?”
“Of course I will,” answered Katharine, her brow clearing and her tone changing.
She had not looked at him while he was speaking, and she was struck, as she had often been, by the exquisite beauty of his voice when he spoke familiarly and softly. It was like his eyes, smooth, rich and almost woman-like.
“And when will you come?” he asked. “To-morrow? Next day? Would eleven o’clock suit you?”
“To-morrow, if you like,” answered the young girl. “Eleven will do perfectly.”
“Will you come too, Mrs. Lauderdale?” Crowdie asked, without changing his manner.
“Yes—that is—not to-morrow. I’ll come one of these days and see how you are getting on. It’s a long time since I’ve seen you at work, and I should enjoy it ever so much. But I should rather come when it’s well begun. I shall learn more.”
“I’m afraid you won’t learn much from me, Mrs. Lauderdale. It’s very different work from miniature—and I have no rule. It seems to me that the longer I paint the more hopeless all rules are. Ten years ago, when I was working in Paris, I used to believe in canons of art, and fixed principles, and methods, and all that sort of thing. But I can’t any more. I do it anyhow, just as it seems to come—with anything—with a stump, a brush, a rag, hands, fingers, anything. I should not be surprised to find myself drawing with my elbow and painting with the back of my head! No, really—I sometimes think the back of my head would be a very good brush to do fur with. Any way—only to get at the real thing.”
“I once saw a painter who had no arms,” said the old gentleman. “It was in Paris, and he held the brushes with his toes. There is an idiot in the asylum now, who likes nothing better than to pull his shoes off and tie knots in a rope with his feet all day long.”
“He is probably one of us,” suggested Crowdie. “We artists are all half-witted. Give him a brush and see whether he has any talent for painting with his toes.”
“That’s an idea,” answered the philanthropist, thoughtfully. “Transference of manual skill from hands to feet,” he continued in a low, dreamy voice, thinking aloud. “Abnormal connections of nerves with next adjoining brain centres—yes—there might be something in it—yes—yes—”
The old gentleman had theories of his own about nerves and brain centres. He had never even studied anatomy, but he speculated in the wildest manner upon the probability of impossible cases of nerve derangement and imperfect development, and had long believed himself an authority on the subject.
The dinner was quite as short as most modern meals. Old Mr. Lauderdale and Crowdie smoked, and Alexander Junior, who despised such weaknesses, stayed in the dining-room with them. Neither Mrs. Lauderdale nor Katharine would have objected to smoking in the library, but Alexander’s inflexible conservatism abhorred such a practice.
“I can’t tell why it is,” said Katharine, when she was alone with her mother, “but that man is positively repulsive to me. It must be something besides his ugliness, and even that ought to be redeemed by his eyes and that beautiful voice of his. But it’s not. There’s something about him—” She stopped, in the sheer impossibility of expressing her meaning.
Her mother said nothing in answer, but looked at her with calm and quiet eyes, rather thoughtfully.
“Is it very foolish of me, mother? Don’t you notice something, too, when he’s near you?”
“Yes. He’s like a poisonous flower.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. That and—the title of Tennyson’s poem, what is it? Oh—‘A Vision of Sin’—don’t you know?”
“Poor Crowdie!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, laughing a little, but still looking at Katharine.
“I wonder what induced Hester to marry him.”
“He fascinated her. Besides, she’s very fond of music, and so is he, and he sang to her and she played for him. It seems to have succeeded very well. I believe they are perfectly happy.”
“Oh, perfectly. At least, Hester always says so. But did you ever notice—sometimes, without any special reason, she looks at him so anxiously? Just as though she expected something to happen to him, or that he should do something queer. It may be my imagination.”
“I never noticed it. She’s tremendously in love with him. That may account for it.”
“Well—if she’s happy—” Katharine did not finish the sentence. “He does stare dreadfully, though,” she resumed a moment later. “But I suppose all artists do that. They are always looking at one’s features. You don’t, though.”
“I? I’m always looking at people’s faces and trying to see how I could paint them best. But I don’t stare. People don’t like it, and it isn’t necessary. Crowdie is vain. He has beautiful eyes and he wants every one to notice them.”
“If that’s it, at all events he has the sense to be vain of his best point,” said Katharine. “He’s not an artist for nothing. And he’s certainly very clever in all sorts of ways.”
“He didn’t say anything particularly clever at dinner, I thought. By the bye, was the dinner good? Your father didn’t tell me Crowdie was coming.”
“Oh, yes; it did very well,” answered Katharine, in a reassuring tone. “At least, I didn’t notice what we had. He always takes away my appetite. I shall go and steal something when he’s gone. Let’s sit up late, mother—just you and I—after papa has gone to bed, and we’ll light a little wee fire, and have a tiny bit of supper, and make ourselves comfortable, and abuse Mr. Crowdie just as much as we like. Won’t that be nice? Do!”
“Well—we’ll see how late he stays. It’s only a quarter past nine yet. Have you got a book, child? I am going to read that article about wet paintings on pottery—I’ve had it there ever so long, and the men won’t come back for half an hour at least.”
Katharine found something to read, after handing her mother the review from the table.
“Perhaps reading a little will take away the bad taste of Crowdie,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, with a laugh, as she settled herself in the corner of the sofa.
“I wish something would,” answered Katharine, seating herself in a deep chair, and opening her book.
But she found it hard to fix her attention, and the book was a dull one, or seemed so, as the best books do when the mind is drawn and stretched in one direction. Her thoughts went back to the twilight hour, when Ralston had been there, and to the decided step she was about to take. The only wonder was that she had been able to talk with a tolerable continuity of ideas during dinner, considering what her position was. Assuredly it was a daring thing which she meant to do, and she experienced the sensation familiar even to brave men—the small, utterly unreasoning temptation to draw back just before the real danger begins. Most people who have been called upon to do something very dangerous, with fair warning and in perfectly cold blood, know that little feeling and are willing to acknowledge it. It is not fear. It is the inevitable last word spoken by the instinct of self-preservation.
There are men who have never felt it at all, rare instances of perfectly phlegmatic physical recklessness. They are not the ones who deserve the most credit for doing perilous deeds. And there are other men, even fewer, perhaps, who have felt it, but have ceased to feel it, in whom all love of life is so totally and hopelessly dead that even the bodily, human impulse to avoid death can never be felt again. Such men are very dangerous in fight. ‘Beware of him who seeks death,’ says an ancient Eastern proverb. So many things which seem impossible are easy if the value of life itself be taken out of the balance. But with the great majority of the human race that value is tolerably well defined. The poor Chinaman who sells himself, for the benefit of his family, to be sliced to death in the stead of the rich criminal, knows within an ounce or two of silver what his existence is worth. The bargain has been made so often by others that there is almost a tariff. It is not a pleasant subject, but, since the case really happens, it would be a curious thing to hear theologians discuss the morality of such suicide on the part of the unfortunate wretch. Would they say that he was forfeiting the hope of a future reward by giving himself to be destroyed for money, of his own free will? Or would they account it to him for righteousness that he should lay down his life to save his wife and children from starving to death? For a real case, as it is, it certainly presents difficulties which approach the fantastic.
It was very quiet in the room, as it had been once or twice when there had been a silence between Katharine and Ralston a few hours earlier. The furniture was all just as it had been—hardly a chair had been turned. The scene came back vividly to the young girl’s imagination, and the sound of Ralston’s voice, just trembling with emotion, rang again in her ears. That had been the sweetest of all the many sweet hours she had spent with him since they had been children. Her book fell upon her knees and her head sank back against the cushion. With lids half drooping, she gazed at a point she did not see. The softest possible light, the exquisite, trembling radiance of spotless maidenhood’s divinest dream, hovered about the lovely face and the girlish lips just parted to meet in the memory of a kiss.
Suddenly, from the next room, as the three men came towards the closed door of the library, Crowdie’s laugh broke the stillness, high, melodious, rich. Some men have a habit of laughing at anything which is said just as they leave the dining-room.
Katharine started as though she had been stung. She was unconscious that her mother had ceased reading, and had been looking at her for several minutes, wondering why she had never fully appreciated the girl’s beauty before.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, as she saw the start and the quick expression of resentment and repulsion.
“It’s that man’s voice—it’s so beautiful and yet—ugh!” She shivered as the door opened and the three men came in.
“You’ve not been long,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up at Crowdie. “I hope they gave you a cigar in there.”
“Oh, yes, thanks—and a very good one, too,” added the artist, who had not succeeded in smoking half of the execrable Connecticut six-for-a-quarter cigar which the philanthropist had offered him.
It seemed natural enough to him that a man who devoted himself to idiots should have no taste, and he would have opened his eyes if he had been told that the Connecticut tobacco was one of the economies imposed by Alexander Junior upon his long-suffering father. The old gentleman, however, was really not very particular, and his sufferings were not to be compared with those of Balzac’s saintly charity-maniac, when he gave up his Havanas for the sake of his poor people.
Crowdie looked at Katharine, as he answered her mother, and continued to do so, though he sat down beside the latter. Katharine had risen from her seat, and was standing by the mantelpiece, and Mrs. Lauderdale was sitting at the end of the sofa on the other side of the fireplace, under the strong, unshaded light of the gas. She made an effort to talk to her guest, for the sake of sparing the girl, though she felt uncomfortably tired, and was looking almost ill.
“Did you talk any more about the soul, after we left?” she asked, looking at Crowdie.
“No,” he answered, still gazing at Katharine, and speaking rather absently. “We talked—let me see—I think—” He hesitated.
“It couldn’t have been very interesting, if you don’t remember what it was about,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, pleasantly. “We must try and amuse you better than they did, or you won’t come near us again.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, I’ll come just as often as you ask me,” answered Crowdie, suddenly looking at his shoes.
But he made no attempt to continue the conversation. Mrs. Lauderdale felt a little womanly annoyance. The constant and life-long habit of being considered by men to be the most important person in the room, whenever she chose to be considered at all, had become a part of her nature. She made up her mind that Crowdie should not only listen and talk, but should look at her.
“What are you doing now? Another portrait?” she asked. “I know you are always busy.”
“Oh, yes—the wife of a man who has a silver mine somewhere. She’s fairly good-looking, for a wonder.”
His eyes wandered about the room, and, from time to time, went back to Katharine. Old Mr. Lauderdale was going to sleep in an arm-chair, and Alexander Junior was reading the evening paper.
“Does your work always interest you as it did at first?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, growing more and more determined to fix his attention, and speaking softly. “I mean—are you happy in it and with it?”
His languid glance met hers for an instant, with an odd look of lazy enquiry. He was keen and quick of intuition, and more than sufficiently vain. There is a certain tone of voice in which a woman may ask a man if he is happy which indicates a willingness to play at flirtation. Now, it had never entered the head of Walter Crowdie that Mrs. Lauderdale could possibly care to flirt with him. Yet the tone was official, so to say, and he had some right to be surprised, the more so as he had never heard any man—not even the famous club-liar, Stopford Thirlwall—even suggest that she had ever really flirted with any one, or do anything worse than dance to the very end of every dancing party, and generally amuse herself in an innocent way to an extent that would have ruined the constitutions of most women not born in Kentucky. Even as he turned to look at her, however, he realized the absurdity of the impression he had received, and his eyes went mechanically back to Katharine’s profile. The smile that moved his heavy, red mouth was for himself, as he answered Mrs. Lauderdale’s question.
“Oh, yes,” he said, quite naturally. “I love it. I’m perfectly happy.” And again he relapsed into silence.
Mrs. Lauderdale was annoyed. She turned her head, under the glaring light, towards the carved pillar at the right of the fireplace. An absurd little looking-glass hung by a silken cord from the mantelpiece to the level of her eyes—one of those small Persian mirrors set in a case of embroidery, such as are used for favours at cotillions.
She saw very suddenly the reflection of her own face. The glass was perhaps a trifle green, which made it worse, but she stared in a sort of dumb horror, realizing in a single moment that she had grown old, that the lines had deepened until every one could see them, that the eyes looked faded, the hair dull, the lips almost shrivelled, the once dazzling skin flaccid and sallow—that the queenly beauty was gone, a perishable thing already perished, a memory now and worse than a memory, a cruelly bitter regret left in the place of a possession half divine that was lost for ever and ever, dead beyond resurrection, gone beyond recall.
That was the most terrible moment in Mrs. Lauderdale’s life. Fate need not have made it so appallingly sudden—she had prepared for it so long, so conscientiously, trying always to wean herself from a vanity the sternest would forgive. And it had seemed to be coming so slowly, by degrees of each degree, and she had thought it would be so long in coming quite. And now it was come, in the flash of a second. But the bitterness was not past.
Instinctively in the silence she looked up before her and saw her daughter’s lovely face. Her head reeled, her sight swam. A great, fierce envy caught at her heart with iron fingers and wrung it, till she could have screamed,—envy of her who was dearest to her of all living things—of Katharine.
John Ralston had given his word to Katharine and he intended to keep it. Whenever he was assailed by doubts he recalled by an act of will the state of mind to which the young girl had brought him on Monday evening, and how he had then been convinced that there was no harm in the secret marriage. He analyzed his position, too, in a rough and ready way, with the intention of proving that the clandestine ceremony could not be of any advantage to himself, that it was therefore not from any selfish motive that he had undertaken to have it performed, and that, consequently, since the action itself was to be an unselfish one, there could be nothing even faintly dishonourable in it. For he did not really believe that old Robert Lauderdale would do anything for him. On the contrary, he thought it most likely that the old man would be very angry and would bid the young people abide by the consequences of their doings. He would blame Ralston bitterly. He would not believe that he had been disinterested. He would say that he had married Katharine, and had persuaded her to the marriage in the hope of forcing his uncle to help him, out of consideration for the girl. And he would refuse to do anything whatsoever. He might even go so far as to strike the names of both from his will, if he had left them a legacy, which was probable. But, to do Ralston justice, so long as he was sure of his own motives he had never cared a straw for the opinions others might form of them, and he was the last man in the world to assume a character for the sake of playing on the feelings of a rich relation. If Robert Lauderdale should send for him, and be angry, and reproach him with what he had done, John was quite capable of answering that he had acted from motives which concerned himself only, that he was answerable to no one but Katharine herself and that uncle Robert might make the best of it at his leisure. The young man possessed that sort of courage in abundance, as every one knew, and being aware of it himself, he suspected, not without grounds of probability, that the millionaire was aware of it also, and would simply leave him alone to his own devices, refusing Katharine’s request, and never mentioning the question again. That the old man would be discreet, was certain. With a few rare exceptions, men who have made great fortunes unaided have more discretion than other people, and can keep secrets remarkably well.
The difficulty which presented itself to Ralston at once was a material one. He did not in the least know how such an affair as a secret marriage should be managed. None of his close acquaintances had ever done anything so unusual, and although he knew of two cases which had occurred in New York society, the one in recent years and the other long ago, he had no means of finding out at short notice how the actual formalities necessary had been fulfilled in either case. He knew, however, that a marriage performed by a respectable clergyman of any denomination was legal, and that a certificate signed by him was perfectly valid. He had heard of marriages before a Justice of the Peace, and even of declarations made before respectable witnesses and vouched for, which had been legal marriages beyond dispute, but he did not like the look of anything in which there was no religious ceremony, respectfully indifferent though he was to all religion. The code of honour, which was his only faith, is connected, and not even very distantly, with Christianity. There are honourable men of all religions under the sun, including that of Confucius, but we do not associate the expression ‘the code of honour’ with non-Christians—which is singular enough, considering the view the said code takes of some moral questions.
There must be a marriage service, therefore, thought Ralston, and it must be performed in New York. There was no possibility of taking Katharine into a neighbouring State, and he had no wish to do so for many reasons. He was not without foresight, and he intended to be able to prove at any future time that the formality, the whole formality, and nothing but the formality of the ceremony had been fulfilled. It was not easy. He racked his recollections in vain, and he read all the newspapers published that morning with an interest he had certainly never felt in them before, in the hope of finding some account of a case similar to his own. He thought of going to a number of clergymen, of the social type, with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, and of laying the facts before each in turn, until one of them consented to marry him. But though many of them were excellent men, he had not enough confidence in their discretion. He laughed to himself when he thought that the only men he knew who seemed to possess the necessary qualities for such a delicate affair were Robert the Rich himself and Hamilton Bright, whom Ralston secretly suspected of being somewhat in love with Katharine on his own account. It was odd, he thought, that of all the family Bright alone should resemble old Robert, physically and mentally, but the resemblance was undeniable, though the relationship only consisted in the fact that Bright was descended from old Robert Lauderdale’s grandfather, the primeval Alexander often mentioned in these pages.
Ralston turned the case over and over in his mind. He thought of going to some dissenting minister quite unknown to him, and trying what eloquence could do. He had heard that some of them were men of heart to whom one could appeal in trouble. But he knew very well that every one of them would tell him to do the thing openly, or not at all, and the mere idea revived his own scruples. He wondered whether there were not churches where the marrying was done by batches of four and five couples on a certain Sunday in the month, as babies are baptized in some parts of the world, and whether he and Katharine could not slip in, as it were by mistake, and be married by a man who did not even know their names. But he laughed at the idea a moment later, and went on studying the problem.
Another of his ideas was to consult a detective, from a private office. Such men would, in all likelihood, know a good deal about runaway couples. And this seemed one of the wisest plans which had suggested itself, though it broke down for two reasons. He hated the thought of getting at his result by the help of a man belonging to what he considered a mean and underhand profession; and he reflected that such men were always on the lookout for private scandals, and that he should be putting himself in their power. At last he decided to consult a lawyer. Lawyers and doctors, as a rule, were discreet, he thought, because their success depended on their discretion. He could easily find a man whom he had never seen, honest and able to keep a secret, who would give him the information he wanted in a professional way and take a fee for the trouble. This seemed to him honourable and wise. He wished everything to be legal, and the best way to make it so was to follow a lawyer’s directions. There was not even a doubt but that the said lawyer, if requested, would make a memorandum of the case, and take charge of the document which was to prove that Katharine Lauderdale had become the lawful wife of John Ralston. There were lists and directories in which he could find the names of hundreds of such men. He was in his native city, and between the names and the places of business he thought he could form a tolerably accurate opinion of the reputation and standing of some, if not of all, of the individuals.
In the course of a couple of hours he had found what he wanted—a lawyer whose name was known to him as that of a man of good reputation and a gentleman, one whom he had never seen and who had probably never seen him, old enough, as he knew, to have a wide experience, yet not so old as to be justified in assuming airs of vast moral superiority in order to declare primly that he would never help a young man to commit an act of folly. For folly it was, as Ralston knew very well in his heart.
He lost no time, and within half an hour was interviewing the authority he had selected, for, by a bit of good luck, he was fortunate enough to meet the lawyer at the door of his office, just returning from luncheon. Otherwise he might have had some difficulty in gaining immediate admittance. He found him to be a grave, keen personage of uncertain age, who laid his glasses beside him on his desk whenever he spoke, and put them on again as soon as he had done. He wiped them carefully when Ralston had explained what he wanted, and then paused a moment before replying. Ralston was by no means prepared for what he said.
“I presume you are a novelist.”
The lawyer looked at him, smiled pleasantly, looked away and turned his glasses over again.
The young man was inclined to laugh. No one had ever before taken him for a man of letters. He hesitated, however, before he answered, wondering whether he had not better accept the statement in the hope of getting accurate information, rather than risk a refusal if he said he was in earnest. The lawyer took his hesitation for assent.
“Because, in that case, it would not be at all difficult to manage,” he continued, without waiting any longer for a reply. “Lots of things can happen in books, you see, and you can wind up the story and publish it before the people in the book who are to be kept in the dark have found out the secret. In real life, it is a little different, because, though it’s very easy to be married, it’s the duty of the person who marries you to send a certificate or statement of the marriage to the office where the record of statistics is kept.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Ralston, and his face fell. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. That’s necessary, on pain of a fine. And yet the marriage may remain a secret a long while—for a lifetime under favourable circumstances. So that if you are writing a story you can let the young couple take the chances, and you can give them in their favour.”
“Well—how, exactly?” asked John. “That sort of thing isn’t usual, I fancy.”
“Not usual—no.” The lawyer smiled. “But there are more secret marriages than most people dream of. If your hero and heroine must be married in New York, it is easy enough to do it. Nobody will marry them without afterwards making out the certificate, which is recorded. If anybody suspects that they are married, it is the easiest thing in the world to find out that the marriage has been registered. But if nobody looks for it, the thing will never be heard of. It’s a thousand to one against anybody’s finding it out by accident.”
“But if it were done in that way it would be absolutely legal and could never be contested?”
“Of course—perfectly legal. But it’s not so in all States, mind you.”
“I wanted to know about New York,” said Ralston. “It couldn’t possibly take place anywhere else.”
“Oh—well—in that case, you know all there is to be known.”
“I’m very grateful,” said John, rising. “I’ve taken up a great deal of your valuable time, sir. May I—”
In considerable doubt as to what he should do, he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and looked at the lawyer.
“My dear sir!” exclaimed the latter, rising also. “How can you think of such a thing? I’m very glad indeed to have been of service to—a young novelist.”
“You’re exceedingly kind, and I thank you very much,” said Ralston, shaking the outstretched hand, and making for the door as soon as possible.
He had not even given his name, which had been rather rude on his part, as he was well aware. At all events, the lawyer would not be able to trace him, which was a point to his advantage.
Oddly enough he felt a sense of satisfaction when he thought over what he had learned. He could tell Katharine that a really secret marriage was wholly impossible, and perhaps when she knew that she was running a risk of discovery she would draw back. He should be glad of that. Realizing the fact, he was conscious for the first time that he was seeking a way out of the marriage and not a way into it, and a conflict arose in his mind. On the one hand he had given Katharine his word that he would do what she asked, and his word was sacred, unless she would release him from the promise. On the other side stood that intimate conviction of his own that, in spite of all her arguments, it was not a perfectly honourable thing to do, on its own merits. He could not help feeling glad that a material difficulty stood in the way of his doing what she required of him.
In any case he must see her as soon as possible. He ascertained without difficulty that they need not show evidence that they had resided in New York during any particular period, nor were there any other formalities to be fulfilled. He went home to luncheon with his mother—it was on the day after he had given his promise to Katharine, for he had lost no time—and he went out again before three o’clock, hoping to find the young girl alone.
To his annoyance he found her with her mother in the library. Mrs. Lauderdale was generally at work at that hour, if she was at home, but to-day she, who was always well, had a headache and was nervous and altogether different from herself. Katharine saw that she was almost ill, and insisted upon staying at home with her, to read to her, or to talk, as she preferred, though Mrs. Lauderdale begged her repeatedly to go away and make visits, or otherwise amuse herself as she could. But the young girl was obstinate; she saw that her mother was suffering and she had no intention of leaving her that afternoon. Alexander Junior was of course at his office, and the philanthropist was in his own quarters upstairs, probably dozing before the fire or writing reports about idiots.
It was clear to Ralston in five minutes that Mrs. Lauderdale was not only indisposed, but that she was altogether out of temper, a state of mind very unusual with her. She found fault with little things that Katharine did in a way John had never noticed before, and as for himself, she evidently wished he had not come. There was a petulance about her which was quite new. She was not even sitting in her usual place, but had taken the deep arm-chair on the other side of the fireplace, and turned her back to the light.
“You seem to be as busy as usual, Jack,” she observed, after exchanging a few words.
“I’m wishing I were, at all events,” he answered. “You must take the wish for the deed.”
“They say that there’s always plenty of work for any one who wants it,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, coldly.
“If you’ll tell me where to find it—”
“Why don’t you go to the West, as young Bright did, and try to do something without help? Other men do.”
“Bright took money with him,” answered Ralston.
“Did he? Not much, then, I fancy. I know he lived a hard life and drove cattle—”
“And bought land in wild places which he found in the course of his cattle driving. The driving was a means of getting about—not unpleasant, either—and he had some money to invest. I could do the same, if I had any.”
“You know it’s quite useless, mother,” said Katharine, interposing before Mrs. Lauderdale could make another retort. “You all abuse him for doing nothing, and yet I hear you all say that every profession is overcrowded, and that nobody can do anything without capital. If uncle Robert chose, he could make Jack’s fortune by a turn of his hand.”
“Of course—he could give him a fortune outright and not feel it—unless he cared what became of it.”
There was something so harsh about the way in which she spoke the last words that Ralston and Katharine looked at each other. Ralston did not lose his temper, however, but tried to turn the subject with a laugh.
“My dear cousin Emma,” he said, “I’m the most hopeless case living. Please talk about somebody who is successful. There are lots of them. You’ve mentioned Bright already. Let us praise him. That will make you feel better.”
To this Mrs. Lauderdale said nothing. After waiting a moment Ralston turned to Katharine.
“Are you going out this afternoon?” he asked, by way of hinting that he wanted to see her alone.
“No,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, answering for her. “She says she means to stay at home and take care of me. It’s ever so good of her, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” answered Ralston, absently.
It struck Katharine that, considering that her mother had been trying for half an hour to persuade her to go out, it would have been natural to propose that she should go for a short walk with John, and that the answer had come rather suddenly.
“But you can’t stay at home all day,” said Ralston, all at once. “You’ll be having a headache yourself. Won’t you let Katharine come with me for half an hour, cousin Emma? We’ll walk twice round Washington Square and come right back. She looks pale.”
“Does she?” Mrs. Lauderdale glanced at the girl’s face. “I don’t think so,” she continued. “Besides—”
“What is it?” asked Ralston, as she hesitated and stopped. “Isn’t it proper? We’ve often done it.”
Mrs. Lauderdale rose from her chair and stood up, tall and slim, with her back to the mantelpiece. The light fell upon her face now, and Ralston saw how tired and worn she looked. Immediately she turned her back to the window again, and looked at him sideways, resting her elbow on the shelf.
“What is the use of you two going on in this way?” she asked suddenly.
There was an awkward silence, and again Katharine and Ralston looked at one another. They were momentarily surprised out of speech, for Mrs. Lauderdale had always taken their side, if not very actively, at least in a kindly way. She had said that Katharine should marry the man she loved, rich or poor, and that if she chose to wait for a poor man, like Ralston, to be able to support her, that was her own affair. The violent opposition had come from Katharine’s father when, a year previously, the two had boldly told him that they loved each other and wished to be married. Alexander Junior did not often lose his temper, but he had lost it completely on that occasion, and had gone so far as to say that Ralston should never enter the house again, a verdict which he had been soon forced to modify. But he had said that he considered John an idle good-for-nothing, who would never be able to support himself, let alone a wife and children; that his, Alexander’s, daughter should never marry a professional dandy, who was content to let his widowed mother pay his extravagant tailor’s bills, and who played poker at the clubs as a source of income; that it was not enough of a recommendation to be half a Lauderdale and to skim the cream from New York society in the form of daily invitations—and to have the reputation of being a good polo player with other people’s horses, a good yachtsman with other people’s yachts, and of having a strong head for other people’s wines. Those were not the noble qualities Alexander Junior looked for in a son-in-law. Not at all, sir. He preferred Benjamin Slayback of Nevada. The Lauderdales were quite able to make society accept Benjamin Slayback of Nevada, because Benjamin Slayback of Nevada was quite able to stand upon his own feet anywhere, having worked for all he had, like a man, and having pushed himself into the forefront of political life by sheer energy and ability, and having as good a right and as good a chance in every way as any man in the country. No, he was certainly not a Lauderdale. If Lauderdales were to go on marrying Lauderdales and no one else, there would soon be an end of society. He advised John Ralston to go to Nevada and marry Benjamin Slayback’s sister, if she would look at him, which was more than doubtful, considering that he was the most atrociously idle young ne’er-do-weel—here Alexander’s Scotch upper lip snapped like a steel trap—that ever wasted the most precious years of life between the society of infatuated women by day, sir, and the temptations of the card-table and the bottle by night—the favourite of fine ladies, the boon companion of roisterers and the sport of a London tailor.
Which was a tremendous speech when delivered at close quarters in Alexander Junior’s metallic voice, and in his most irately emphatic manner, while the grey veins swelled at his grey temples, and one iron hand was clenched ready to strike the palm of the other when the end of the peroration was reached. He allowed himself, as a relation, even more latitude in his language than he would have arrogated to himself as Katharine’s father. He met John Ralston not only as the angry stage father meets the ineligible and determined young suitor, but as one Lauderdale meeting another—the one knowing himself to be irreproachable, upbraiding the other as the disgrace of the family, the hardened young sinner, and the sport of his tailor. That last expression had almost brought a smile to Ralston’s angry face.
He had behaved admirably, however, under such very trying circumstances, and afterwards secretly took great credit to himself for not having attacked him whom he wished for a father-in-law with the furniture of the latter’s own library, the chairs being the only convenient weapons in the room. Alexander the Safe, as his own daughter called him, could probably have killed John Ralston with one back-hander, but John would have liked to try him in fight, nevertheless. Instead of doing anything of the kind, however, John drew back two steps, and said as much as he could trust himself to say without foaming at the mouth and seeing things in scarlet. He said that he did not agree with his cousin Alexander upon all the points the latter had mentioned, that he did not care to prolong a violent scene, and he wished him good morning. Thereupon he had left the house, which was quite the wisest thing he could do, for when Alexander was alone he found to his extreme annoyance that he had a distinct sensation of having been made almost ridiculous. But he soon recovered from that, for whatever the secret mainspring of his singular character might be, it was certainly not idle vanity.
Mrs. Lauderdale had consoled Katharine, and Ralston too, for that matter, as well as she could, and with sincere sympathy. Ralston continued to come to the house very much as he pleased, and Mr. Lauderdale silently tolerated his presence on the rare occasions of their meeting. He had certainly said more than enough to explain his point of view, and he considered the matter as settled. It was really not possible to keep a man who was his cousin altogether away, and he suffered also from a delusion common to many fathers, which led him to think that no one would ever dare to act against his once clearly expressed wishes.