her as odd. She had made the suggestion because his mere presence was so absurdly irritating to her that she longed for Hester’s company as an alleviation. But it was evident that Crowdie did not want his wife at that moment. He wanted to be alone with Katharine.
“You might send and find out,” said the young girl, mercilessly.
“I’m pretty sure she’s gone out,” Crowdie replied, moving up an easel upon which was set a large piece of grey pasteboard. “Even if she is in, she always has things to do at this time.”
He looked steadily at Katharine’s face and then made a quick stroke on the pasteboard, then looked again and then made another stroke.
“What have you decided?” she enquired.
“Just as you are now, with your head a little on one side and that clear look in your eyes—no—you were looking straight at me, but not in full face. Think of what you were thinking about just when you looked.”
Katharine smiled. The thought had not been flattering to him. But she did as he asked and met his eyes every time he glanced at her. He worked rapidly, with quick, sure strokes, using a bit of brown chalk. Then he took a long, new, black lead pencil, with a very fine point, from the breast-pocket of his jacket, and very carefully made a few marks with it. Instead of putting it back when he used the bit of pastel again, he held the pencil in his teeth. It was long and stuck out on each side of his bright red lips. Oddly enough, Katharine thought it made him look like a cat with black whiskers, and the straight black line forced his mouth into a wide grin. She even fancied that to increase the resemblance his eyes looked green when he gazed at her intently, and that the pupils were not quite round, but were turning into upright slits. She looked away for a moment and almost smiled. His legs were a little in-kneed, as those of a cat look when she stands up to reach after anything. There was something feline even in his little feet, which were short with a very high instep, and he wore low shoes of dark russet leather.
“There is a smile in your eyes, but not in your face,” said Crowdie, taking the pencil from between his teeth. “I suppose it’s rude to ask you what you are thinking about?”
“Not at all,” answered Katharine. “I was thinking how funny you looked with that pencil in your mouth.”
“Oh!” Crowdie laughed carelessly and went on with his work.
Katharine noticed that when he next wished to dispose of the pencil he put it into his pocket. As he had chosen a position in which she must look directly at him, she could not help observing all his movements, while her thoughts went back to her own interests and to Ralston. It was much more pleasant to think of John than of Crowdie.
“I’m discouraged already,” said Crowdie, suddenly, after a long silence, during which he had worked rapidly. “But it’s only a first attempt at a sketch. I want a lot of them before I begin to paint. Should you like to rest a little?”
“Yes.”
Katharine rose and came forward to see what he had been doing. She felt at once a little touch of disappointment and annoyance, which showed that she was not altogether deficient in vanity, though of a pardonable sort, considering what she saw. To her unpractised eye the sketch presented a few brown smudges, through which a thin pencil-line ran here and there.
“You don’t see any resemblance to yourself, I suppose,” said Crowdie, with some amusement.
“Frankly—I hope I’m better looking than that,” laughed Katharine.
“You are. Sometimes you’re divinely beautiful.” His voice grew exquisitely caressing.
Katharine was not pleased.
“I didn’t ask for impossible compliments,” she said coolly.
“Now look,” answered Crowdie, taking no notice of the little rebuke, and touching the smudge with his fingers. “You mustn’t look too close, you know. You must try and get the effect—not what you see, but what I see.”
Without glancing at her face he quickly touched the sketch at many points with his thumb, with his finger, with his bit of crayon, with his needle-pointed lead pencil. Katharine watched him intently.
“Shut your eyes a little, so as not to see the details too distinctly,” he said, still working.
The face began to stand out. There was very little in the sketch, but there was the beginning of the expression.
“I begin to see something,” said Katharine, with increasing interest.
“Yes—look!”
He glanced at her for a moment. Then, holding the long pencil almost by the end and standing well back from the pasteboard, he drew a single line—the outline of the part of the face and head furthest from the eye, as it were. It was so masterly, so simple, so faultless, and yet so striking in its effect, that Katharine held her breath while the point moved, and uttered an exclamation when it stopped.
“You are a great artist!”
Crowdie smiled.
“I didn’t ask for impossible compliments,” he said, repeating her own words and imitating her tone, as he stepped back from the easel and looked at what he had done. “She’s not so bad-looking, is she?” He fumbled in his pocket and found two or three bits of coloured pastels and rubbed a little of each upon the pasteboard with his fingers. “More life-like, now. How do you like that?”
“It’s wonderful!”
“Wonderfully like?”
“How can I tell? I mean that it’s a wonderful performance. It’s not for me to judge of the likeness.”
“Isn’t it? In spite of proverbs, we’re the only good judges of ourselves—outwardly or inwardly. Will you sit down again, if you are rested? Do you know, I’m almost inclined to dab a little paint on the thing—it’s a lucky hit—or else you’re a very easy subject, which I don’t believe.”
“And yet you were so discouraged a moment ago.”
“That’s always my way. I don’t know about other artists, of course. It’s only amateurs that tell each other their sensations about their daubs. We don’t. But I’m always in a fit just before I’m going to succeed.”
Katharine said nothing as she went back to her seat, but the expression he had just used chilled her suddenly. She had received a vivid impression from the account Hester had given her of his recent attack, and she had unconsciously associated the idea of a fit with his ailment. Then she was amused at her own folly.
Crowdie looked at her keenly, then at his drawing, and then seemed to contemplate a particular point at the top of her head. She was not watching him, as she knew that he was not yet working again. There was an odd look in his beautiful eyes which would not have pleased her, had she seen it. He left the easel again and came towards her.
“Would you mind letting me arrange your hair a little?” he asked, stopping beside her.
Katharine instinctively raised one hand to her head, and it unexpectedly met his fingers, which were already about to touch her hair. The sensation was so inexpressibly disagreeable to her that she started, lowering her head as though to avoid him, and speaking sharply.
“Don’t!” she cried. “I can do it myself.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Crowdie, drawing back. “It’s the merest trifle—but I don’t see how you can do it yourself. I didn’t know you were so nervous, or I would have explained. Won’t you let me take the end of my pencil and just lift your hair a little? It makes such a difference in the outline.”
It struck Katharine that she was behaving very foolishly, and she sat up straight in her chair.
“Of course,” she said, quite naturally. “Do it in any way you like. I’ve a horror of being touched unexpectedly, that’s all. I suppose I really am nervous.”
Which was not at all true in general, though as regards Crowdie it was not half the truth.
“Thank you,” he answered, proceeding to move her hair, touching it very delicately with his pointed white fingers. “It was stupid of me, but most people don’t mind. There—if you only knew what a difference it makes. Just a little bit more, if you’ll let me—on the other side. Now let me look at you, please—yes—that’s just it.”
Katharine suffered intensely during those few moments. Something within her, of which she had never been conscious before, but which was most certainly a part of herself, seemed to rise up in fury, outraged and insulted, against something in the man beside her, which filled her with a vague terror and a positive disgust. While his soft and womanish fingers touched her hair, she clasped her hands together till they hurt, and repeated to herself with set lips that she was foolish and nervous and unstrung. She could not help the sigh of relief which escaped her lips when he had finished and went back to his easel. Perhaps he noticed it. At all events he became intent on his work and said nothing for fully five minutes.
During that time she looked at him and tried to solve the mystery of her unaccountable sensations. She thought of what her mother had said—that Crowdie was like a poisonous flower. He was so white and red and soft, and the place was so still and warm, with its masses of rich drapery that shut off every sound of life from without. And she thought of what Miner had said—oddly enough, in exactly the same strain, that he was like some strange tropical fruit—gone bad at the core. Fruit or flower, or both, she thought. Either was apt enough.
The air was perfectly pure. It was only warm and still. Possibly there was the slightest smell of turpentine, which is a clean smell and a wholesome one. Whatever the perfumes might be which he occasionally burned, they left no trace behind. And yet Katharine fancied they were there—unholy, sweet, heavy, disquieting, offending that something which in the young girl had never been offended before. The stillness seemed too warm—the warmth too still—his face too white—his mouth was as scarlet and as heavy as the blossom of the bright red calla lily. There was something repulsively fascinating about it, as there is in a wound.
“You’re getting tired,” he said at last. “I’m not surprised. It must be much harder to sit than to paint.”
“How did you know I was tired?” asked Katharine, moving from her position, and looking at a piece of Persian embroidery on the opposite wall.
“Your expression had changed when I spoke,” he said. “But it’s not at all necessary to sit absolutely motionless as though you were being photographed. It’s better to talk. The expression is like—” He stopped.
“Like what?” she asked, curious to hear a definition of what is said too often to be undefinable.
“Well—I don’t know. Language isn’t my strong point, if I have any strong point at all.”
“That’s an affectation, at all events!” laughed Katharine, becoming herself again when not obliged to look at him fixedly.
“Is it? Well—affectation is a good word. Expression is not expression when it’s an affected expression. It’s the tone of voice of the picture. That sounds wild, but it means something. A speech in print hasn’t the expression it has when it’s well spoken. A photograph is a speech in print. It’s the truth done by machinery. It’s often striking at first sight, but you get tired of it, because what’s there is all there—and what is not there isn’t even suggested, though you know it exists.”
“Yes, I see,” said Katharine, who was interested in what he said, and had momentarily forgotten his personality.
“That shows how awfully clever you are,” he answered with a silvery little laugh. “I know it’s far from clear. There’s a passage somewhere in one of Tolstoi’s novels—‘Peace and War,’ I think it is—about the impossibility of expressing all one thinks. It ought to follow that the more means of expression a man has, the nearer he should get to expressing everything in him. But it doesn’t. There’s a fallacy somewhere in the idea. Most things—ideas, anything you choose to call them—are naturally expressible in a certain material—paint, wood, fiddle-strings, bronze and all that. Come and look at yourself now. You see I’ve restrained my mania for oils a few minutes. I’m trying to be conscientious.”
“I wish you would go on talking about expression,” said Katharine, rising and coming up to the easel. “It seems very much improved,” she added as she saw the drawing. “How fast you work!”
“There’s no such thing as time when things go right,” replied Crowdie. “Excuse me a moment. I’ll get something to paint with.”
He disappeared behind the curtain in the corner, to the out-built closet in which he kept his colours and brushes, and Katharine was left alone. She stood still for a few moments contemplating the growing likeness of herself. There was as yet hardly any colour in the sketch, no more, in fact, than he had rubbed on while she had watched him do it, when she had rested the first time. It was not easy to see what he had done since, and yet the whole effect was vastly improved. As she looked, the work itself, the fine pencil-line, the smudges of brown and the suggestions of colouring seemed all so slight as to be almost nothing—and yet she felt that her expression was there. She thought of her mother’s laborious and minutely accurate drawing, which never reached any such effect as this, and she realized the almost impossible gulf which lies between the artist and the amateur who has tried too late to become one—in whom the evidence of talent is made unrecognizable by an excess of conscientious but wholly misapplied labour. The amateur who has never studied at all may sometimes dash off a head with a few lines, which would be taken for the careless scrawling of a clever professional. But the amateur who, too late, attempts to perfect himself by sheer study and industry is almost certainly lost as an artist—a fact which is commonly interpreted to mean that art itself comes by inspiration, and that so-called genius needs no school; whereas it only means that if we go to school at all we must go at the scholar’s age and get the tools of expression, and learn to handle them, before we have anything especial to express.
“Still looking at it?” asked Crowdie, coming out of his sanctum with a large palette in his left hand, and a couple of brushes in his right. “Now I’m going to begin by spoiling it all.”
There were four or five big, butter-like squeezings of different colours on the smooth surface of the board. Crowdie stuck one of his brushes through the thumb-hole of the palette, and with the other mixed what he wanted, dabbing it into the paints and then daubing them all together. Katharine sat down once more.
“I thought painters always used palette-knives,” she said, watching him.
“Oh—anything answers the purpose. I sometimes paint with my fingers—but it’s awfully messy.”
“I should think so,” she laughed, taking her position again as he looked at her.
“Yes—thank you,” he said. “If you won’t mind looking at me for a minute or two, just at first. I want your eyes, please. After that you can look anywhere you like.”
“Do you always paint the eyes first?” asked Katharine, idly, for the sake of not relapsing into silence.
“Generally—especially if they’re looking straight out of the picture. Then they’re the principal thing, you know. They are like little holes—if you look steadily at them you can see the real person inside. That’s the reason why a portrait that looks at you, if it’s like at all, is so much more like than one that looks away.”
“How naturally you explain things!” exclaimed the young girl, becoming interested at once.
“Things are so natural,” answered the painter. “Everything is natural. That’s one of my brother-in-law’s maxims.”
“It sounds like a truism.”
“Everything that is true sounds like a truism—and is one. We know everything that’s true, and it all sounds old because we do know it all.”
“What an extraordinary way of putting it—to say that we know everything! But we don’t, you know!”
“Oh, yes, we do—as far as we ever can know at all. I don’t mean little peddling properties of petroleum and tricks with telephones—what they call science, you know. I mean about big things that don’t change—ideas.”
“Oh—about ideas. You mean right and wrong, and the future life and the soul, I suppose.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. In a hundred thousand ages we shall never get one inch further than we are now. A little bit more to the right, please—but go on looking at me a moment longer, if you’re not tired.”
“I’ve only just sat down again. But what you were saying—you meant to add that we know nothing, and that it’s all a perfectly boundless uncertainty.”
“Not at all. I think we know some things and shan’t lose them, and we don’t know some others and never shall.”
“What kind of things, for instance?” asked Katharine. “In the first place, there is a soul, and it is immortal.”
“Lucretius says that there is a soul, but that it isn’t immortal. There’s something, anyhow—something I can’t paint. People who deny the existence of the soul never tried to paint portraits, I believe.”
“You certainly have most original ideas.”
“Have I? But isn’t that true? I know it is. There’s something in every face that I can’t paint—that the greatest painter that ever lived can’t paint. And it’s not on account of the material, either. One can get just as near to it in black and white as in colours,—just near enough to suggest it,—and yet one can see it. I call it the ghost. I don’t know whether there are ghosts or not, but people say they’ve seen them. They are generally colourless, apparently, and don’t stay long. But did you ever notice, in all those stories, that people always recognize the ghost instantly if it’s that of a person they’ve known?”
“Yes. Now I think of it, that’s true,” said Katharine.
“Well, that’s why I call the recognizable something about the living person his ghost. It’s what we can’t get. Now, another thing. If one is told that the best portrait of some one whom one knows is a portrait of some one else instead, one isn’t much surprised. No, really—I’ve tried it, just to test the likeness. Most people say they are surprised, but they’re not. They fall into the trap in a moment, and tell you that they see that they were mistaken, but that it’s a strong resemblance. That couldn’t happen with a real person. It happens easily with a photograph—much more easily than with a picture. But with a real person it’s quite different, even though he may have changed immensely since you saw him—far beyond the difference between a good portrait and the sitter, so far as details are concerned. But the person—you recognize him at once. By what? By that something which we can’t catch in a picture. I call it the ghost—it’s a mere fancy, because people used to believe that a ghost was a visible soul.”
“How interesting!” exclaimed Katharine. “And it sounds true.”
“A thing must sound true to be interesting,” said Crowdie. “Excuse me a moment. I want another colour.”
He dived into the curtained recess, and Katharine watched the disagreeable undulation of his movements as he walked. She wondered why she was interested as soon as he talked, and repelled as soon as he was silent. Much of what he said was more or less paradoxical, she thought, and not altogether unlike the stuff talked by cynical young men who pick up startling phrases out of books, and change the subject when they are asked to explain what they mean. But there was something more in what he said, and there was the way of saying it, and there was the weight a man’s sayings carry when he is a real master of one thing, no matter how remote from the subject of which he is speaking. Crowdie came back almost immediately with his paint.
“Your eyes are the colour of blue fox,” he remarked, dabbing on the palette with his brush.
“Are they? They’re a grey of some sort, I believe. But you were talking about the soul.”
“Yes, I know I was; but I’m glad I’ve done with it. I told you that language wasn’t my strong point.”
“Yes—but you may be able to say lots of interesting things, besides painting well.”
“Not compared with people who are good at talking. I’ve often been struck by that.”
He stopped speaking, and made one or two very careful strokes, concentrating his whole attention for the moment.
“Struck by what?” asked Katharine.
“By the enormous amount some men know as compared with what they can do. I believe that’s what I meant to say. It wasn’t particularly worth saying, after all. There—that’s better! Just one moment more, please. I know I’m tiring you to death, but I’m so interested—”
Again he executed a very fine detail.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Now we can talk. Don’t you want to move about a little? I don’t ask you to look at the thing—it’s a mere beginning of a sketch—it isn’t the picture, of course.”
“But I want to see it,” said Katharine.
“Oh, of course. But you won’t like it so much now as you did at first.”
Katharine saw at once that he was right, and that the painting was not in a stage to bear examination, but she looked at it, nevertheless, with a vague idea of learning something about the art by observing its processes. Crowdie stood at a little distance behind her, his palette and brushes still in his hand. Indeed, there was no place but the floor where he could have laid them down. She knew that he was there, and she was certain that he was looking at her. The strange nervousness and sense of repulsion came over her at once, but in her determination not to yield to anything which seemed so foolish, she continued to scrutinize the rough sketch on the easel. Crowdie, on his part, said nothing, as though fearing lest the sound of his voice should disturb the graceful lines of her figure as she stood there.
At last she moved and turned away, but not towards him. Suddenly, from feeling that he was looking at her, she felt that she could not meet his eyes. She knew just what they would be like, long, languishing and womanish, with their sweeping lashes, and they attracted her, though she did not wish to see them. She walked a few steps down the length of the great room, and she was sure that those eyes were following her. An intense and quite unaccustomed consciousness overcame her, though she was never what is called shy.
She was positively certain that his eyes were fixed on the back of her head, willing her to turn and look at him; but she would not. Then she saw that she was reaching the end of the room, and that, unless she stood there staring at the tapestries and embroideries, she must face him. She felt the blood rush suddenly to her throat and just under her ears, and she knew that she who rarely blushed at all was blushing violently. She either did not know or she forgot that a blush is as beautiful in most dark women as it is unbecoming and even painful to see in fair ones. She was only conscious that she had never, in all her many recollections, felt so utterly foolish, and angry with herself, and disgusted with the light, as she did at that moment. Just as she reached the wall, she heard his footstep, and supposing that he had changed his position, she turned at once with a deep sense of relief.
Crowdie was standing before his easel again, studying what he had done, as unconcernedly as though he had not noticed her odd behaviour.
“I feel flushed,” she said. “It must be very warm here.”
“Is it?” asked Crowdie. “I’ll open something. But if you’ve had enough of it for the first day, I can leave it as it is till the next sitting. Can you come to-morrow?”
“Yes. That is—no—I may have an engagement.” She laughed nervously as she thought of it.
“The afternoon will do quite as well, if you prefer it. Any time before three o’clock. The light is bad after that.”
“I think the day after to-morrow would be better, if you don’t mind. At the same hour, if you like.”
“By all means. And thank you, for sitting so patiently. It’s not every one who does. I suppose I mustn’t offer to help you with your hat.”
“Thanks, I can easily manage it,” answered Katharine, careful, however, to speak in her ordinary tone of voice. “If you had a looking-glass anywhere—” She looked about for one.
“There’s one in my paint room, if you don’t mind.”
He led the way to the curtain behind which he had disappeared in search of his colours, and held it up. There was an open door into the little room—which was larger than Katharine had expected—and a dressing-table and mirror stood in the large bow-window that was built out over the yard. Crowdie stood holding the curtain back while she tied her veil and ran the long pin through her hat. It did not take more than a minute, and she passed out again.
“That’s a beautiful arrangement,” she said. “A looking-glass would spoil the studio.”
“Yes,” he answered, as he walked towards the door by her side. “You see there isn’t an object but stuffs and cushions in the place, and a chair for you—and my easels—all colour. I want nothing that has shape except what is human, and I like that as perfect as possible.”
“Give my love to Hester,” said Katharine, as she went out. “Oh, don’t come down; I know the way.”
He followed her, of course, and let her out himself. It was past twelve o’clock, and she felt the sun on her shoulders as she turned to the right up Lafayette Place, and she breathed the sparkling air with a sense of wild delight. It was so fresh and pure, and somehow she felt as though she had been in a contaminating atmosphere during the last three quarters of an hour.
Alexander Lauderdale Junior was a man of regular ways, as has been seen, and of sternly regular affections, so far as he could be said to have any at all. Most people were rather afraid of him. In the Trust Company which occupied his attention he was the executive member, and it was generally admitted that it owed something of its exceptional importance to his superior powers of administration, his cast-iron probity and his cold energy in enforcing regulations. The headquarters of the Company were in a magnificent granite building, on the second floor at the front, and Alexander Junior sat all day long in a spotless and speckless office, behind a highly polished table and before highly polished bookcases, upon which the light fell in the daytime through the most expensive and highly polished plate glass windows, and on winter afternoons from glittering electric brackets and chandeliers. He himself was not less perfect and highly polished in appearance than his surroundings. He was like one of those beautiful models of machinery which work silently and accurately all day long, apparently for the mere satisfaction of feeling their own wheels and cranks go round, behind the show window of the shop where the patent is owned, producing nothing, indeed, save a keen delight in the soul of the admiring mechanician.
He was perfect in his way. It was enough to catch one glimpse of him, as he sat in his office, to be sure that the Trust Company could be trusted, that the widow’s portion should yield her the small but regular interest which comforts the afflicted, and that the property of the squealing and still cradle-ridden orphan was silently rolling up, to be a joy to him when he should be old enough to squander it. The Trust Company was not a new institution. It had been founded in the dark ages of New York history, by just such men as Alexander Junior, and just such men had made it what it now was. Indeed, the primeval Lauderdale, whom Charlotte Slayback called Alexander the Great, had been connected with it before he died, his Scotch birth being counted to him for righteousness, though his speech was imputed to him for sin. Neither of his sons had, however, had anything to do with it, nor his sons’ sons, but his great-grandson, Alexander the Safe, was predestined from his childhood to be the very man wanted by the Company, and when he was come to years of even greater discretion than he had shown as a small boy, which was saying much, he was formally installed behind the plate glass and the very shiny furniture of the office he had occupied ever since. With the appearance of his name on the Company’s reports the business increased, for in the public mind all Lauderdales were as one man, and that one man was Robert the Rich, who had never been connected with any speculation, and who was commonly said to own half New York. Acute persons will see that there must have been some exaggeration about the latter statement, but as a mere expression it did not lack force, and pleased the popular mind. It mattered little that New York should have enough halves to be distributed amongst a considerable number of very rich men, of whom precisely the same thing was said. Robert the Rich was a very rich man, and he must have his half like his fellow rich men.
Alexander Junior had no more claim upon his uncle’s fortune than Mrs. Ralston. His father was one of Robert’s brothers and hers had been the other. Nor was Robert the Rich in any way constrained to leave any money to any of his relations, nor to any one in particular in the whole wide world, seeing that he had made it himself, and was childless and answerable to no man for his acts. But it was probable that he would divide a large part of it between his living brother, the philanthropist, and the daughter of his dead brother Ralph—the soldier of the family, who had been killed at Chancellorsville. Now as it was certain that the philanthropist, for his part, if he had control of what came to him, would forthwith attempt to buy the Central Park as an airing ground for pauper idiots, or do something equally though charitably outrageous, the chances were that his portion—if he got any—would be placed in trust, or that it would be paid him as income by his son, if the latter were selected to manage the fortune. This was what most people expected, and it was certainly what Alexander Junior hoped.
It was natural, too, and in a measure just. The male line of the Lauderdales was dying out, and Alexander Junior would be the last of them, in the natural succession of mortality, being by far the youngest as he was by far the strongest. It would be proper that he should administer the estate until it was finally divided amongst the female heirs and their children.
He was really and truly a man of spotless probity, in spite of the suspicion which almost inevitably attaches to people who seem too perfect to be human. On the surface these perfections of his were so hard that they amounted to defects. It is aggressive virtue that chastises what it loves—by its mere existence. But neither his probity, nor his exterior mechanical superiority, so to say, was connected with the mainspring of his character. That lay much deeper, and he concealed it with as much skill as though to reveal its existence would have ruined him in fortune and reputation, though it would probably have affected neither the one nor the other. The only members of the family who suspected the truth were his daughter Charlotte and Robert the Rich.
Charlotte, who was afraid of nothing, not even of certain things which she might have done better to respect, if not to fear, said openly in the family, and even to the face of her father, that she did not believe he was poor. Thereupon, Alexander Junior usually administered a stern rebuke in his metallic voice, whereat Charlotte would smile and change the subject, as though she did not care to talk of it just then, but would return to it by and by. She had magnificent teeth, and, when she chose, her smile could be almost as terribly electric as Alexander’s own.
As for Robert Lauderdale, he had more accurate knowledge, but not much. Like many eminently successful men he had an unusual mastery of details, and an unfailing memory for those which interested him. He knew the exact figure of his nephew’s salary from the Trust Company, and he was able to calculate with tolerable exactness, also, what the Lauderdales spent, what Mrs. Lauderdale earned and how much the annual surplus must be. He knew also that Alexander Junior’s mother, who had thoroughly understood her husband, the philanthropist, had left what she possessed to her only son, and only a legacy to her husband. Her property had been owned in New England; the executor had been a peculiarly taciturn New England lawyer, and Alexander had never said anything to any one else concerning the inheritance. His mother had died after he had come of age, but before he had been married, and there were no means whatever of ascertaining what he had received. The philanthropist and his son had continued to live together, as they still did; but the old gentleman had always left household matters and expenses in his wife’s charge, and had never in the least understood, nor cared to understand, the details of daily life. He had his two rooms, he had enough to eat and he spent nothing on himself, except for the large quantity of tobacco he consumed and for his very modest toilet. As for the cigars, Alexander had brought him down, in the course of ten years, by very fine gradations, from the best Havanas which money could buy to ‘old Virginia cheroots,’ at ten cents for a package of five,—a luxury which even the frugal inhabitant of Calabrian Mulberry Street would consider a permissible extravagance on Sundays. Alexander, who did not smoke, saw that the change had not had any ill effect upon his father’s health, and silently triumphed. If the old gentleman’s nerves had shown signs of weakness, Alexander had previously determined to retire up the scale of prices to the extent of one cent more for each cigar. In the matter of dress the elder Alexander pleased himself, and in so doing pleased his son also, for he generally forgot to get a new coat until the old one was dropping to pieces, and he secretly bought his shoes of a little Italian shoemaker in the South Fifth Avenue, as has been already noticed; the said shoemaker being the unhappy father of one of the philanthropist’s most favourite and unpromising idiots.
But of old Mrs. Lauderdale’s money, nothing more was ever heard, nor of several thousand dollars yearly, which, according to old Robert’s calculations, Alexander Junior saved regularly out of his salary.
Yet the youngest of the Lauderdale men was always poor, and his wife worked as hard as she could to earn something for her own little pleasures and luxuries. Robert the Rich had once been present when Alexander Junior had borrowed five dollars of his wife. It had impressed him, and he had idly wondered whether the money had ever been returned, and whether Alexander did not manage in this way to extract a contribution from his wife’s earnings, as a sort of peace-offering to the gold-gods, because she wasted what she got by such hard work, in mere amusement and hats, as Alexander cruelly put it. But Robert, who had a broader soul, thought she was quite right, since, next to true love, those were the things by which a woman could be made most happy. It is true that Robert the Rich had never been married. As a matter of fact, Alexander Lauderdale never returned the small sums he succeeded in borrowing from his wife from time to time. But he kept a rigidly accurate account of them, which he showed her occasionally, assuring her that she ‘might draw on him’ for the money, and that he credited her with five per cent interest so long as it was ‘in his hands’—which were of iron, as she knew—and further, that it would be to her advantage to invest all the money she earned in the same way, with him. A hundred dollars, he said, would double itself in fourteen years, and in time it would become a thousand, which would be ‘a nice little sum for her.’ He had a set of expressions which he used in speaking of money, wherewith he irritated her exceedingly. More than once she asked him to give her a trifle out of what she had lent him, when she was in a hurry, or really had nothing. But he invariably answered that he had nothing about him, as he always paid everything by cheque,—which was true,—and never spent but ten cents daily for his fare in the elevated road to and from his office. He lunched somewhere, she supposed, during the day, and would need money for that; but in this she was mistaken, for his strong constitution needed but two meals daily, breakfast at eight and dinner at half-past seven. At one o’clock he drank a glass of water in his office, and in fine weather took a turn in Broad Street or Broadway. He sometimes, if hard pressed by her, said that he would include what she wanted in the next cheque he drew for household expenses—and he examined the accounts himself every Saturday afternoon—but he always managed to be alone when he did this, and invariably forgot to make any allowance for the purpose of paying his just debts.
Robert Lauderdale knew, therefore, that there must be a considerable sum of money, somewhere, the property of Alexander Junior, unless the latter had privately squandered it. This, however, was a supposition which not even the most hopelessly moonstruck little boy in the philanthropist’s pet asylum would have entertained for a moment. The rich man had watched his nephew narrowly from his boyhood to his middle age, and was a knower of men and a good judge of them, and he was quite sure that he was not mistaken. Moreover, he knew likewise Alexander’s strict adherence to the letter of truth, for he had proved it many times, and Alexander had never said that he had no money. But he never failed to say that he was poor—which was a relative term. He would go so far as to say that he had no money for a particular object, clearly meaning that he would not spend anything in that direction, but he had never said that he had nothing. Now the great Robert was not the man to call a sum of several hundred thousands a nothing, because he had so much more himself. He knew the value of money as well as any man living. He used to say that to give was a matter of sentiment, but that to have was a matter of fact,—probably meaning thereby that the relation between length of head and breadth of heart was indeterminate, but that although a man might not have fifty millions, if he had half a million he was well enough off to be able to give something to somebody, if he chose. But Robert the Rich was fond of rather enigmatical sayings. He had seen the world from quite an exceptional point of view and believed that he had a right to judge it accordingly.
He had watched his nephew during more than thirty years, and one half of that period had sufficed to bring him to the conclusion that Alexander Junior was a thoroughly upright but a thoroughly miserly person, and the remaining half of the time had so far confirmed this judgment as to make him own that the younger man was not only miserly, but in the very most extended sense an old-fashioned miser in the midst of a new-fashioned civilization, and therefore an anachronism, and therefore, also, not a man to be treated like other men.
Robert had long ago determined that Alexander should have some of the money to do with as he pleased. His sole idea would be to hoard it and pile it up to fabulous dimensions, and if anything happened to it he would probably go mad, thought the great man. But the others were also to have some of it, more or less according to their characters, and it was interesting to speculate upon their probable actions when they should be very rich. None of them, Robert believed, were really poor, and certainly Alexander Junior was not. If they had been in need, the old gentleman would have helped them with actual sums of money. But they were not. As for Mrs. Lauderdale and her daughters, they really had all that was necessary. Alexander did not starve them. He did not go so far as that—perhaps because in his social position it would have been found out. His wife was an excellent housekeeper, and old Robert liked the simplicity of the little dinners to which he occasionally came without warning, asking for ‘a bite,’ as though he were a poor relation. He loved what was simple and, in general, all things which could be loved for their own sake, and not for their value, and which were not beyond his rather limited æsthetic appreciation.
It was a very good thing, he thought, that Mrs. Lauderdale should do a little work and earn a little money. It was an interest and an occupation for her. It was fitting that people should be willing to do something to earn money for their charities, or even for their smaller luxuries, though it was very desirable that they should not feel obliged to work for their necessities. If everybody were in that position, he supposed that every one would be far happier. And Mrs. Lauderdale had her beauty, too. Robert the Rich was fond of her in a fatherly way, and knowing what a good woman she was, he had determined to make her a compensation when she should lose her good looks. When her beauty departed, she should be made rich, and he would manage it in such a way that her husband should not be able to get hold of any of her wealth, to bury with what Robert was sure he had, in secret and profitable investment. Alexander Junior should have none of it.
As for his elder brother, the philanthropist, Robert Lauderdale had his own theories. He did not think that the old man’s charities were by any means always wise ones, and he patronized others of his own, of which he said nothing. Robert thought that too much was done for the deserving poor, and too little for the undeserving poor, and that the starving sinner might be just as hungry as the starving saint—a point of view not popular with the righteous, who covet the unjust man’s sunshine for themselves and accuse him unfairly of bringing about cloudy weather, though every one knows that clouds, even the very blackest, are produced by natural evaporation.
But it was improbable, as Robert knew, that his brother should outlive him, and he contributed liberally to the support and education of the idiots, and his brother was mentioned in the will in connection with a large annuity which, however, he had little chance of surviving to enjoy.
There were plenty of others to divide the vast inheritance when the time should come. There were Mrs. Lauderdale and her two daughters, and her baby grandson, Charlotte’s little boy. And there was Katharine Ralston and there was John. And then there were the two Brights and their mother, whose mother had been a Lauderdale, so that they were direct relations. And there were the Miners—the three old-maid sisters and little Frank Miner, who really seemed to be struggling hard to make a living by literature—not near connections, these Miners, but certainly included in the tribe of the Lauderdales on account of their uncle’s marriage with the millionaire’s first cousin—whom he remembered as ‘little cousin Meg’ fifty years ago. Robert the Rich always smiled—a little sadly—when he reached this point in the enumeration of the family, and was glad that the Miners were in his will.
The Miners would really have been the poorest of the whole connection, for their father had been successively a spendthrift bankrupt, a drunkard and a lunatic,—which caused Alexander Junior to say severely that Livingston Miner had an unnatural thirst for emotions; but a certain very small investment which Frank Miner had made out of the remnants of the estate had turned out wonderfully well. Miner had never known that old Lauderdale had mentioned the investment to old Beman, and that the two great men had found the time to make it roll over and over and grow into a little fortune at a rate which would have astonished persons ignorant of business—after which they had been occupied with other things, each in his own way, and had thought nothing more about the matter. So that the Miners were comparatively comfortable, and the three old maids stayed at home and ‘took care’ of their extremely healthy brother instead of going out as governesses—and when they were well stricken in old-maidhood they had a queer little love story all to themselves, which perhaps will be told some day by itself.
The rich man made few presents, for he had few wants, and did not understand them in others. He was none the less on that account a generous man, and would often have given, had he known what to give; but those who expressed their wishes were apt to offend him by expressing them too clearly. The relations all lived in good houses and had an abundance of bread and a sufficient allowance of butter, and John Ralston was the only one in connection with whom he had heard mention of a tailor’s bill—John Ralston was more in the old gentleman’s mind than any one knew. What did the others all want? Jewels, perhaps, and horses and carriages and a lot of loose cash to throw out of the window. That was the way he put it. He had never kept a brougham himself until he was fifty years of age. It was true that he had no womankind and was a strong man, like all his tribe. But then, many of his acquaintances who might have kept a dozen horses, said it was more trouble than it was worth, and hired what they wanted. His relations could do the same—it was a mere curiosity on their part to experience the sensation of looking rich. Robert Lauderdale knew the sensation very well and knew that it was quite worthless. Of course, he thought, they all knew that at his death they would be provided for—even lazy Jack, as he mentally nicknamed Ralston. At least, he supposed that they knew it. They should have a fair share of the money in the end.
But he was conscious, and acutely conscious, that most of them wanted it, and he had very little belief in the disinterested affection of any of them. Even the old philanthropist, if he had been offered the chance by a playful destiny, would have laid violent hands on it all for his charities, to the exclusion of the whole family. His son would have buried it in his own Trust Company, and longed to have it for that purpose, and for no other. Jack Ralston wanted to squander it; Hamilton Bright wanted to do banking with it and to out-Rothschild the Rothschilds in the exchanges of the world. Crowdie, whom Robert the Rich detested, wanted his wife to have it in order that he might build marble palaces with it on the shores of more or less mythic lakes. Katharine Ralston would have liked some of it because she liked to be above all considerations of money, and her husband’s death had made a great difference in her income. Mrs. Lauderdale wanted it, of course, and her ideal of happiness would be realized in having three or four princely establishments, in moving with the seasons from one to the other and in always having her house full of guests. She was born in Kentucky—and she would be a superb hostess. Perhaps she should have a chance some day. Charlotte Slayback wanted as much as she could get because her husband was rich, and she had nothing, and she had good blood in her veins, but an abundance of evil pride in her heart. There was Katharine Lauderdale, about whom the great man was undecided. He liked her and thought she understood him. But of course she wanted the money too—in order to marry lazy Jack—and wake up love’s young dream with a jump, as he expressed it familiarly. She should not have it for that purpose, at all events. It would be much better that she should marry Hamilton Bright, who was a sensible fellow. Had not Ralston been offered two chances, at both of which he had pitiably failed? He had no idea of doing anything more for the boy at present. If he ever got any of the money it should be from his mother. The two Katharines were out and out the best of the tribe. He had a great mind to tear up his old will and divide the whole fortune equally between Katharine Ralston and Katharine Lauderdale. No doubt there would be a dispute about the will in any case—he might just as well follow his inclinations, if he could not prevent fighting.
And then, when he reached that point, he was suddenly checked by a consideration which does not present itself to ordinary men. As he leaned back in his leathern writing chair, while his knotted fingers played with the cork pen-holder he used, his great head slowly bowed itself, and he sat long in deep thought.
It was all very well for him to play at being just a capricious old uncle with some money to leave, as he pleased, to this one or that one, as old uncles did in story books, making everybody happy in the end. That was all very well. He had his little likes and dislikes, his attachments and his detestations, and he had a right to have them, as smaller men had. A little here and a little there would of course give pleasure and might even make happiness. But how much would it need to make them all rich, compared with their present position? Robert Lauderdale did not laugh as he answered the question to himself. One year’s income alone, divided amongst them, would give each a fortune. The income of two years would give them wealth. And the capital would remain—the vast possession which in a few years he must lay down forever, which at any moment might be masterless, for he was an old man, over seventy years of age. If he had a son, it would be different. Things would follow their natural course for good or evil, and he would not himself be to blame for what happened. But he had no one, and the thing he must leave to some one was great power in its most serviceable form—money.
He had been face to face with the problem for years and had not solved it. It is a great one in America, at the present day, and Robert Lauderdale knew it. He was well aware that he and a score of others, some richer, some less rich than himself, were execrated by a certain proportion of the community and pointed out as the disturbers of the equal distribution of wealth. He was made personally sure of the fact by hundreds of letters, anonymous and signed, warning him of the approaching destruction of himself and his property. People who did not even know that he was a bachelor, threatened to kidnap his children and keep them from him until he should give up his wealth. He was threatened, entreated, admonished, preached at and held up to ridicule by every species of fanatic which the age produces. He was not afraid of any of them. He did not have himself guarded by detectives in plain clothes and athletes in fashionable coats, when he chose to walk in the streets, and he did not yield to the entreaties of women who wrote to him from Texas that they should be perfectly happy if he would send them grand pianos to the addresses they gave. He was discriminating, he was just according to his light and he tried to do good, while he took no notice of those who raved and abused him. But he knew that there was a reason for the storm, and was much more keenly alive to the difficulties of the situation than any of his anonymous correspondents.
He had in his own hands and at his absolute disposal the wealth which, under a proper administration, would perpetually supply between seven and eight thousand families with the necessaries of life. He had made that calculation one day, not idly, but in the endeavour to realize what could really be done with so much money. He was not a visionary philanthropist like his brother, though he helped him in many of his schemes. He was not a saint, though he was a good man, as men go. He had not the smallest intention of devoting a gigantic fortune exclusively to the bettering of mankind, for he was human. But he felt that in his lonely wealth he was in a measure under an obligation to all humanity—that he had created for himself a responsibility greater than one man could bear, and that he and others like him had raised a question, and proposed a problem which had not before been dreamt of in the history of the world. He, an individual with no especial gifts besides his keen judgment in a certain class of affairs, with nothing but his wealth to distinguish him from any other individual, possessed the equivalent of a sum of money which would have seemed very large in the treasury of a great nation, or which would have been considered sufficient as a reserve wherewith to enter upon a great war. And there were others in an exactly similar position. He knew several of them. He could count half a dozen men who, together with himself, could upset the finances of the world if they chose. It needed no tortuous reasoning and but little vanity to show him that he and they did not stand towards mankind as other men stood. And the thought brought with it the certainty that there was a right course for him to pursue in the disposal of his money, if he could but see it in the right light.
This was the man whom all the Lauderdale tribe called uncle Robert, and to whom Katharine intended to appeal as soon as she had been secretly married to John Ralston, and from whom she felt sure of obtaining what she meant to ask. He was capable of surprising her.
‘You have a good house, good food, good clothes—and so has your husband. What right have you, Katharine Lauderdale, or Mrs. John Ralston, to claim more than any member of each of the seven or eight thousand families whom I could support would get in the distribution?’
That was the answer she might receive—in the form of a rather unanswerable question.
The afternoon which followed the first sitting in Crowdie’s studio seemed very long to Katharine. She did all sorts of things to make the time pass, but it would not. She even set in order a whole drawer full of ribbons and gloves and veils and other trifles, which is generally the very last thing a woman does to get rid of the hours.
And all the time she was thinking, and not sure whether it would not be better to fight against her thoughts. For though she was not afraid of changing her mind she had a vague consciousness that the whole question might raise its head again and face her like a thing in a dream, and insist that she should argue with it. And then, there was the plain and unmistakable fact that she was on the eve of doing something which was hardly ever done by the people amongst whom she lived.
It was not that she was timid, or dreaded the remarks which might be made. Any timidity of that sort would have checked her at the very outset. If the man she loved had been any one but Jack Ralston, whom she had known all her life, she could never have thought of proposing such a thing. Oddly enough, she felt that she should blush, as she had blushed that morning at the studio, at the mere idea of a secret marriage, if Ralston were any one else. But not from any fear of what other people might say. Not only had the two been intimate from childhood—they had discussed during the last year their marriage, and all the possibilities of it, from every point of view. It was a subject familiar to them, the difficulties to be overcome were clear to them both, they had proposed all manner of schemes for overcoming them, they had talked for hours about running away together and had been sensible enough to see the folly of such a thing. The mere matter of saying certain words and of giving and receiving a ring had gradually sunk into insignificance as an event. It was an inevitable formality in Ralston’s eyes, to be gone through with scrupulous exactness indeed, and to be carefully recorded and witnessed, but there was not a particle of romance connected with it, any more than with the signing and witnessing of a title-deed or any other legal document.
Katharine had a somewhat different opinion of it, for it had a real religious value in her eyes. That was one reason why she preferred a secret wedding. Of course, the moment would come, sooner or later, for they were sure to be married in the end, publicly or privately. But in any case it would be a solemn moment. The obligations, as she viewed them, were for life. The very words of the promise had an imposing simplicity. In the church to which she strongly inclined, marriage was called a sacrament, and believed to be one, in which the presence of the Divine personally sanctified the bond of the human. Katharine was quite willing to believe that, too. And the more she believed it, the more she hated the idea of a great fashionable wedding, such as Charlotte Slayback had endured with much equanimity. She could imagine nothing more disagreeable, even painful, than to be the central figure of such an exhibition.
That holy hour, when it came at last, should be holy indeed. There should be nothing, ever thereafter, to disturb the pure memory of its sanctity. A quiet church, the man she loved, herself and the interpreter of God. That was all she wanted—not to be disturbed in the greatest event of her life by all the rustling, glittering, flower-scented, grinning, gossiping crowd of critics, whose ridiculous presence is considered to lend marriage a dignity beyond what God or nature could bestow upon it.
This was Katharine’s view, and as she had no intention of keeping her marriage to Ralston a secret during even so much as twenty-four hours, it was neither unnatural nor unjustifiable. But in spite of all the real importance which she gave to the ceremony as a fact, it seemed so much a matter of course, and she had thought of it so long and under so many aspects, that in the chain of future events it was merely a link to be reached and passed as soon as possible. It was not the ring, nor the promise nor the blessing, by which her life was to be changed. She knew that she loved John Ralston, and she could not love him better still from the instant in which he became her lawful husband. The difficulties began beyond that, with her intended attack upon uncle Robert. She told herself that she was sure of success, but she was not, since she could not see into the future one hour beyond the moment of her meeting with the old gentleman. That seeing into the future is the test of confidence, and the only one.
It struck her suddenly that everything which was to happen after the all-important interview was a blank to her. She paused in what she was doing—she was winding a yellow ribbon round her finger—and she looked out of the window. It was raining, for the weather had changed quickly during the afternoon. Rain in Clinton Place is particularly dreary. Katharine sat down upon the chair that stood before her little writing table in the corner by the window, and watched the grey lace veil which the falling raindrops wove between her and the red brick houses opposite.
A feeling of despair came over her. Uncle Robert would refuse to do anything. What would happen then? What could she do? She was brave enough to face her father’s anger and her mother’s distress, for she loved Ralston with all her heart. But what would happen? If uncle Robert failed her, the future was no longer blank but black. No one else could do anything. Of what use would the family battle be? Her father could not, and would not, do anything for her or her husband. He was the sort of man who would take a stern delight in seeing her bear the consequences of her mistake—it could not be called a fault, even by him. To impose herself on Mrs. Ralston was more than Katharine’s pride could endure to contemplate. Of course, it would be possible to live—barely to live—on the charity of her husband’s mother. Mrs. Ralston would do anything for her son, and would sacrifice herself cheerfully. But to accept any such sacrifice was out of the question. And then, too, Katharine knew what extreme economy meant, for she had suffered from it long under her father’s roof, and it was not pleasant. Yet they would be poorer still at the Ralstons, and she would be the cause of it.
If uncle Robert refused to help them, the position would be desperate. She watched the rain and tried to think it all over. She supposed that her father would insist upon—what? Not upon keeping the secret, for that would not be like him. He was a horribly virtuous man, Charlotte used to say. Oh, no! he would not act a lie on any account, not he! Katharine wondered why she hated this scrupulous truthfulness in her father and admired it above all things in Ralston. Jack would not act a lie either. But then, if there were to be no secret, and if the marriage were to be announced, what would happen? Would her father insist upon her living at home until her husband should be able to support her? What a situation! She cared less than most girls about social opinion, but she really wondered what society would say. Her father would say nothing. He would smile that electric smile of his, and hold his head higher than ever. ‘This is what happens to daughters who disobey their parents,’ he would seem to tell the world. She had always thought that he might be like the first Brutus, and she felt sure of it now.
It seemed like weakness to think of going to uncle Robert that very afternoon, before the inevitable moment was past. Yet it would be such an immense satisfaction to have had the interview and to have his promise to do something for Ralston. The thought seemed cowardly and yet she dwelt on it. Of course, her chief weapon with the old gentleman was to be the fact that the thing was done and could not be undone, so that he could have no good advice to give. And, yet, perhaps she might move him by saying that she had made up her mind and was to be married to-morrow. He might not believe her, and might laugh and send her away—with one of his hearty avuncular kisses—she could see his dear old face in her imagination. But if he did that, she could still return to-morrow, and show him the certificate of her marriage. He would not then be able to say that she had not given him fair warning. She wished it would not rain. She would have walked in the direction of his house, and when she was near it she knew in her heart that she would yield—since it seemed like a temptation—and perhaps it would be better.
But it was raining, and uncle Robert lived far away from Clinton Place in a house he had built for himself at the corner of a new block facing the Central Park. He had built the whole block and had kept possession of it afterwards. It was almost three miles from Alexander Lauderdale’s house in unfashionable Clinton Place—three miles of elevated road, or of horse-car or of walking—and in any case it meant getting wet in such a rain storm. Moreover, Katharine rarely went alone by the elevated road. She wished it would stop raining. If it would only stop for half an hour she would go. Perhaps it was as well to let fate decide the matter in that way.
Just then a carriage drove up to the door. She flattened her face against the window, but could not see who got out of it. It was a cab, however, and the driver had a waterproof hat and coat. In all probability it came from one of the hotels. Any one might have taken it. Katharine drew back a little and looked idly at the little mottled mist her breath had made upon the window pane. The door of her room opened suddenly.
“Kitty, are you there?” asked a woman’s voice.
Katharine knew as the handle of the latch was turned that her sister Charlotte had come. No one else ever entered her room without knocking, and no one else ever called her ‘Kitty.’ She hated the abbreviation of her name and she resented the familiarity of the unbidden entrance. She turned rather sharply.
“Oh—is that you? I thought you were in Washington.” She came forward, and the two exchanged kisses mechanically.
“Benjamin Slayback of Nevada had business in New York, so I came up to get a breath of my native microbes,” said Charlotte, going to the mirror and beginning to take off her hat very carefully so as not to disturb her hair. “We are at a hotel, of course—but it’s nice, all the same. I suppose mamma’s at work and I know papa’s down town, and the ancestor is probably studying some new kind of fool—so I came to your room.”
“Will you have some tea?” asked Katharine.
“Tea? What wild extravagance! I suppose you offer it to me as ‘Mrs. Slayback.’ I wonder if papa would. I can see him smile—just like this—isn’t it just like him?”
She smiled before the mirror and then turned suddenly on Katharine. The mimicry was certainly good. Mrs. Slayback, however, was fair, like her mother, with a radiant complexion, golden hair and good features,—larger and bolder than Mrs. Lauderdale’s, but not nearly so classically perfect. There was something hard in her face, especially about the eyes.
“It’s just the same as ever,” she said, seating herself in the small arm-chair—the only one in the room. “The same dear, delightful, dreary, comfortless, furnace-heated, gas-lighted, ‘put-on-your-best-hat-to-go-to-church’ sort of existence that it always was! I wonder how you all stand it—how I stood it so long myself!”
Katharine laughed and turned her head. She had been looking out of the window again and wondering whether the rain would stop after all. She and her sister had never lived very harmoniously together. Their pitched battles had begun in the nursery with any weapons they could lay hands on, pillows, moribund dolls, soapy sponges, and the nurse’s shoes. Though Katharine was the younger, she had soon been the stronger at close quarters. But Charlotte had the sharper tongue and was by far the better shot with any projectile when safely entrenched behind the bed. At the first show of hostilities she made for both sponges—a rag-doll was not a bad thing, if she got a chance to dip it into the basin, but there was nothing like a sponge, when it was ‘just gooey with soap,’ as the youthful Charlotte expressed it. She carried the art of throwing to a high degree of perfection, and on very rare occasions, after she was grown up, she surprised her adorers by throwing pebbles at a mark with an unerring accuracy which would have done credit to a poacher’s apprentice.
Since the nursery days the warfare had been carried on by words and the encounters had been less frequent, but the contrast was always apparent between Katharine’s strength and Charlotte’s quickness. Katharine waited, collected her strength, chose her language and delivered a heavy blow, so to say. Charlotte, as Frank Miner put it, ‘slung English all over the lot.’ Both were effective in their way. But they had the good taste to quarrel in private and, moreover, in many things they were allies. With regard to their father, Katharine took an evil and silent delight in her sister’s sarcasms, and Charlotte could not help admiring Katharine’s solid, unyielding opposition on certain points.
“Oh, yes!” said Katharine, answering Charlotte’s last remark. “There’ll be less change than ever now that you’re married.”
“I suppose so. Poor Kitty! We used to fight now and then, but I know you enjoyed looking on when I made a row at dinner. Didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. I’m a human being.” Katharine laughed again. “Won’t you really have tea? I always have it when I want it.”
“You brave little thing! Do you? Well—if you like. You quiet people always have your own way in the end,” added Mrs. Slayback, rather thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s the steady push that does it.”
“Don’t you have your way, too?” asked Katharine, in some surprise at her sister’s tone of voice.
“No. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t. No—” She seemed to be recapitulating events. “No—I don’t have my way at all—not the least little bit. I have the way of Benjamin Slayback of Nevada.”
“Why do you talk of your husband in that way?” enquired Katharine.
“Shall I call him Mr. Slayback?” asked Charlotte, “or Benjamin—dear little Benjamin! or Ben—the ‘soldier bold’? How does ‘Ben’ strike you, Kitty? I know—I’ve thought of calling him Minnie—last syllable of Benjamin, you see. There was a moment when I hesitated at ‘Benjy’—‘Benjy, darling, another cup of coffee?’—it would sound so quiet and home-like at breakfast, wouldn’t it? It’s fortunate that papa made us get up early all our lives. My dream of married happiness—a nice little French maid smiling at me with a beautiful little tea-tray just as I was opening my eyes—I had thought about it for years! Well, it’s all over. Benjamin Slayback of Nevada takes his breakfast like a man—a regular Benjamin’s portion of breakfast, and wants to feast his eyes on my loveliness, and his understanding on my wit, and his inner man on the flesh of kine—and all that together at eight o’clock in the morning—Benjamin Slayback of Nevada—there’s no other name for him!”
“The name irritates me—you repeat it so often!”
“Does it, dear? The man irritates me, and that’s infinitely worse. I wish you knew!”
“But he’s awfully good to you, Charlie. You can’t deny that, at all events.”
“Yes—and he calls me Lottie,” answered Charlotte, with much disgust. “You know how I hate it. But if you are going to lecture me on my husband’s goodness—Kitty, I tell you frankly, I won’t stand it. I’ll say something to you that’ll make you—just frizzle up! Remember the soapy sponge of old, my child, and be nice to your sister. I came here hoping to see you. I want to talk seriously to you. At least—I’m not sure. I want to talk seriously to somebody, and you’re the most serious person I know.”
“More so than your husband?”
“He’s grave enough sometimes, but not generally. It’s almost always about his constituents. They are to him what the liver is to some people—only that they are beyond the reach of mineral waters. Besides—it’s about him that I want to talk. You look surprised, though I’m sure I don’t know why. I suppose—because I’ve never said anything before.”
“But I don’t even know what you’re going to say—”
Mrs. Slayback looked at her younger sister steadily for a moment, and then looked at the window. The rain was still falling fast and steadily; and the room had a dreary, dingy air about it as the afternoon advanced. It had been Charlotte’s before her marriage, and Katharine had moved into it since because it was better than her own. The elder girl had filled it with little worthless trifles which had brightened it to a certain extent; but Katharine cared little for that sort of thing, and was far more indifferent to the aspect of the place in which she lived. There were a couple of dark engravings of sacred subjects on the walls,—one over the narrow bed in the corner, and the other above the chest of drawers, and there was nothing more which could be said to be intended for ornament. Yet Charlotte Slayback’s hard face softened a little as her eyes wandered from the window to the familiar, faded wall paper and the old-fashioned furniture. The silence lasted some time. Then she turned to her sister again.