“Not well? Is he ill? Where is he? At home?” Katharine asked the questions all in a breath, with no suspicion that Hester had softened the truth almost altogether into something else.
“I suppose he’s at home, since he’s not here,” answered Mrs. Crowdie, wishing that she had said so at first and had said nothing more.
“Oh, Hester! What is it? I know it’s something dreadful!” cried Katharine. “I shall go and ask Mr. Crowdie if you won’t tell me.”
“Don’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Crowdie, so quickly and so loudly that the people near her turned to see what was the matter.
“You’ve told me, now—he must be very ill, or you wouldn’t speak like that!” Katharine’s lips began to turn white, and she half rose from her seat.
Mrs. Crowdie drew her back again very gently.
“No, dear—no, I assure—I give you my word it’s not that, dear—oh, I’m so sorry I said anything!” Katharine yielded, and resumed her seat.
“Hester, what is it?” she asked very gravely for the third time. “You’re my best friend—the only friend I have besides him. If it’s anything bad, I’d much rather hear it from you. But I can’t stand this suspense. I shall ask everybody until somebody tells me the truth.”
Mrs. Crowdie seemed to reflect for a moment before answering, but even while she was thinking of what she should say, her passionate eyes sought for her husband’s pale face in the crowd—the pale face and the red lips that so many women thought repulsive.
“Dear,” she said at last, “it’s foolish to make such a fuss and to frighten you. That sort of thing has happened to almost all men at one time or another—really, you know! You mustn’t blame Jack too much—”
“For what? For what? Speak, Hester! Don’t try to—”
“Katharine darling, Walter says that Jack was—well—you know—just a little far gone—and they had some trouble with him at the club. I don’t know—it seems that my brother tried to hold him for some reason or other—it’s not quite clear—and Jack threw Ham down, there in the hall of the club, before a lot of people—Katharine dearest, I’m so sorry I spoke!”
Katharine was leaning back against the cushion, her hands folded together, and her face set like a mask; but she said nothing, and scarcely seemed to be listening, though she heard every word.
“Of course, dear,” continued Mrs. Crowdie, “I know how you love him—but you mustn’t think any the worse of him for this. Ham just told me it wasn’t—well—it wasn’t as bad as Walter made out, and he was very angry with Walter for telling me—as though he would keep anything from me!”
She stopped again, being much more inclined to talk of Crowdie than of Ralston, and to defend his indiscretion. Katharine did not move nor change her position, and her eyes looked straight before her, though it was clear that they saw nothing.
“I’m glad it was you who told me,” she said in a low, monotonous tone.
“So am I,” answered her friend, sympathetically. “And I’m sure it’s not half as bad as they—”
“They all know it,” continued Katharine, not heeding her. “I can see it in their eyes when they look at me.”
“Nonsense, Katharine—nobody but Walter and Ham—”
“Your husband told my mother, too. She spoke very oddly. He’s been telling every one. Why does he want to make trouble? Does he hate Jack so?”
“Hate him? No, indeed! I think he’s rather fond of him—”
“It’s a very treacherous sort of fondness, then,” answered Katharine, with a bitter little laugh, and changing her position at last, so that she looked into her friend’s face.
“Katharine!” exclaimed Hester. “How can you talk like that—telling me that Walter is treacherous—”
“Oh—you mustn’t mind what I say—I’m a little upset—I didn’t mean to hurt you, dear.”
Katharine rose, and without another word she left her friend and began to go up the side of the room alone, looking for some one as she went. In a moment one of her numerous young adorers was by her side. He had seen her talking to Mrs. Crowdie, and had watched his opportunity.
“No,” said Katharine, absently, and without looking at him. “I don’t want to dance, thanks. I want to find my cousin, Hamilton Bright. Have you seen him?”
“Oh—ah—yes!” answered the young man, with an imitation of the advanced English manner of twenty years ago, which seems to have become the ideal of our gilded youth of to-day. “He’s in the corner under the balcony—he’s been—er—rather leathering into Crowdie—you know—er—for talking about Jack Ralston’s last, all over the place—I daresay you’ve heard of it, Miss Lauderdale—being—er—a cousin of your own, too. No end game, that Ralston chap!”
Katharine lost her temper suddenly. She stopped and looked the young dandy in the eyes. He never forgot the look of hers, nor the paleness of her lips as she spoke.
“You’re rather young to speak like that of older men, Mr. Van De Water,” she said.
She coolly turned her back on the annihilated youth and walked away from him alone, almost as surprised at what she had done as he was. He, poor boy, got very red in the face, stood still, helped himself into countenance by sticking a single glass in his eye and then went in search of his dearest friend, the man who had just discovered that extraordinary tailor in New Burlington Street, you know.
Katharine had been half stunned by what Hester Crowdie had told her, which she felt instinctively was not more than a moiety of the truth. She had barely recovered her self-possession when she was met by what rang like an insult in her ears. It was no wonder that her blood boiled. Without looking to the right or to the left, she went forward till she was under the great balcony, and there, by one of the pillars, she came upon Bright and Crowdie talking together in low, excited tones.
Bright’s big shoulders slowly heaved as in his anger he took about twice as much breath as he needed into his lungs at every sentence. His fresh, pink face was red, and his bright blue eyes flashed visibly. What the young dandy had said was evidently true. He was still ‘leathering into’ Crowdie with all his might, which was considerable.
Crowdie, perfectly cool and collected, leaned against the wooden pillar with a disagreeable sneer on his red mouth. One hand was in his pocket; the other hung by his side, and his fingers quietly tapped a little measure upon the fluted column. Almost every one has that trick of tapping upon something in moments of anxiety or uncertainty, but the way in which it is done is very characteristic of the individual. Crowdie’s pointed white fingers did it delicately, drawing back lightly from contact with the wood, as a woman’s might, or as though he were playing upon a fine instrument.
“It’s just like you, Walter,” Bright was saying, to go about telling the thing to all the women. Didn’t I tell you this afternoon that I was the principal person concerned, that it was my business and not yours and that if I wished it kept quiet, nobody need tell? And you said yourself that you hoped Hester might not hear it, and then the very first thing I find is that you’ve told her and cousin Emma and probably Katharine herself—”
“No, I’ve not told Katharine,” said Crowdie, calmly. “I shan’t, because she loves him. The Lord knows why! Drunken beast! I shall leave the club myself, since he’s not to be turned out—”
Crowdie stopped suddenly, for he was more timid than most men, and his face plainly expressed fear at that moment—but not of Hamilton Bright. Katharine Lauderdale was looking at him over Bright’s shoulder and had plainly heard what he had said. A man’s fear of woman under certain circumstances exceeds his utmost possible fear of man. The painter knew at once that he had accidentally done Katharine something like a mortal injury. He felt as a man must feel who has accidentally shot some one while playing with a loaded pistol.
As for Katharine, this was the third blow she had received within five minutes. The fact that she was in a measure prepared for it had not diminished its force. It had the effect, however, of quenching her rising anger instead of further inflaming it, as young Van De Water’s foolish remarks had done. She begun to feel that she had a real calamity to face—something against which mere anger would have no effect. She heard every word Crowdie said, and each struck her with cruel precision in the same aching spot. But she drew herself up proudly as she came between the two men. There was something almost queenly in the quiet dignity with which she affected to ignore what she had heard, even trying to give her white lips the shadow of a civil smile as she spoke.
“Mr. Crowdie, I wish to speak to Hamilton a moment—you don’t mind, do you?”
Crowdie looked at her with undisguised amazement and admiration. He uttered some polite but half inaudible words and moved away, glad, perhaps, to get out of the sphere of Bright’s invective. Bright understood very well that Katharine had heard, and admired her calmness almost as much as Crowdie did, though he did not know as much as the latter concerning Katharine’s relations with Ralston. Hester Crowdie, who told her husband everything, had told him most of what Katharine had confided to her, not considering it a betrayal of confidence, because she trusted him implicitly. No day of disenchantment had yet come for her.
“Won’t you come and sit down?” asked Bright, rather anxiously. “There’s a corner there.”
“Yes,” said Katharine, moving in the direction of the vacant seats.
“I’m afraid you heard what that brute said,” Bright remarked before they had reached the place. “If I’d seen you coming—”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Katharine answered. Then they sat down side by side. “It’s much too serious a matter to be angry about,” she continued, settling herself and looking at his face, and feeling that it was a relief to see a pair of honest blue eyes at last. “That’s why I come to you. It happened to you, it seems. Everybody is talking about it, and I have some right to know—” She hesitated and then continued. “He’s a near relation and all that, of course, and whatever he does makes a difference to us all—my mother has heard, too—I’m sure Mr. Crowdie told her. Didn’t he?”
“I believe so,” answered Bright. “He’s just like a—oh, well! I’ll swear at him when I’m alone.”
“I’m glad you’re angry with him,” said Katharine, and her eyes flashed a little. “It’s so mean! But that’s not the question. I want to know from your own lips what happened—and why he’s not here. I have a right to know because—because we were going to dance the cotillion together—and besides—”
She hesitated again, and stopped altogether this time.
“It’s very natural, I’m sure,” said Bright, who was not the type of men who seek confidences. “Crowdie has made it all out much worse than it was. He’s a—I mean—I wish I’d met him when I was driving cattle in the Nacimiento Valley!”
Katharine had never seen Bright so angry before, and the sight was very soothing and comforting to her. She fully concurred in Bright’s last-expressed wish.
“You’re Jack’s best friend, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, well—a friend—he always says he hasn’t any. But I daresay I’d do as much for him as most of them, though, if I had to. I always liked the fellow for his dash, and we generally get on very well together. He’s just a trifle lively sometimes, and he doesn’t go well on the curb when he’s had—when he’s too lively—”
“Why don’t you say when he drinks?” asked Katharine, biting on the words, as it were, though she forced herself to say them.
“Well, he doesn’t drink exactly,” said Bright. “He’s got an awfully strong head and a cast-iron constitution, but he’s a queer chap. He gets melancholy, and thinks he’s a failure and tries to cheer himself with cocktails. And then, you see, having such a nerve, he doesn’t know exactly how many he takes; and there’s a limit, of course—and the last one does the trick. Then he won’t take anything to speak of for days together. He got a little too much on board last Monday—but that was excusable, and I hadn’t seen him that way for a long time. I daresay you heard of it? He saved a boy’s life between a lot of carts and horse-cars, and got a bad fall; and then, quite naturally—just as I should have done myself—he swallowed a big dose of something, and it went to his head. But he went straight home in a cab, so I suppose it was all right. It was a pretty brave thing he did—talk of baseball! It was one of the smartest bits of fielding I ever saw—the way he caught up the little chap, and the dog and the perambulator—forgot nothing, though it was a close shave. Oh—he’s brave enough! It’s a pity he can’t find anything to do.”
“Monday,” repeated Katharine, thoughtfully. “Yes—I heard about it. Go on, please, Ham—about to-day. I want to hear everything there is.”
“Oh—Crowdie talks like a fool about it. I suppose Jack was a little depressed, or something, and had been trying to screw himself up a bit. Anyway, he looked rather wild, and I tried to persuade him to stay a little while before going out of the club—it was in the hall, you know. I behaved like an ass myself—you know I’m awfully obstinate. He really did look a little wild, though! I held his arm—just like that, you know—” he laid his broad hand upon Katharine’s glove—“and then, somehow, we got fooling together—there in the hall—and he tripped me up on my back, and ran out. It was all over in a minute; and I was rather angry at the time, because Crowdie and little Frank Miner were there, and a couple of servants. But I give you my word, I didn’t say anything beyond making them all four swear that they wouldn’t tell—”
“And this is the result!” said Katharine, with a sigh. “What was that he said about being turned out of the club?”
“Crowdie? Oh—some nonsense or other! He felt his ladyship offended because there had been a bit of a wrestling match in the hall of his club, that’s all, and said he meant to leave it—”
“No—but about Jack being turned out—”
“It’s all nonsense of Crowdie’s. Men are turned out of a club for cheating at cards, and that sort of thing. Besides, Jack’s popular with most of the men. I don’t believe you could get a committee to sit on his offences—not if he locked the oldest member up in the ice-chest, and threw the billiard-table out of the window. He says he has no friends—but it’s all bosh, you know—everybody likes him, except that doughy brother-in-law of mine!”
Katharine was momentarily comforted by Bright’s account of the matter, delivered in his familiar, uncompromising fashion. But she was very far from regaining her composure. She saw that Bright was purposely making light of the matter; and in the course of the silence, which lasted several minutes after he had finished speaking, it all looked worse than it had looked before she had known the exact truth.
She felt, too, an instinct of repulsion from Ralston, which she had never known, nor dreamed possible. Could he not have controlled himself a few hours longer? It was their wedding day. Twelve hours had not passed from the time when they had left the church together until he had been drunk—positively drunk, to the point of knocking down his best friend in such a place as a club. She could not deny the facts. Even Hamilton Bright, kind—more than kind, devoted—did not attempt to conceal the fact that Ralston had been what he called ‘lively.’ And if Bright could not try to make him out to have been sober, who could?
And they had been married that morning! If he had been sober—the word cut her like a whip—if he had been sober, they would at that very moment have been sitting together—planning their future—perhaps in that very corner.
She did not know all yet, either. The clock was striking twelve. It was about at that time that John Ralston was brought into his mother’s house by a couple of policemen, who had found his card-case in his pocket, and had the sense—with the hope of a handsome fee—to bring him home, insensible, stunned almost to death with the blow he had received.
They had waked him roughly, the conductor and the other man, who was really a prize fighter, at the end of the run, in front of the horse-car stables, and John had struck out before he was awake, as some excitable men do. The fight had followed as a matter of course, out in the snow. The professional had not meant to hurt him, but had lost his temper when John had reached him and cut his lip, and a right-handed counter had settled the matter—a heavy right-hander just under John’s left ear.
The policemen said they had picked him up out of a drunken brawl. According to them, everybody was drunk—Ralston, the prize fighter,—who had paid five dollars to be left in peace after the adventure,—the conductor, the driver and every living thing on the scene of action, including the wretched horses of the car.
There was a short account of the affair in the morning papers, but only one or two of them mentioned Ralston’s name.
Katharine had yet much to learn about the doings on her wedding day, when she suddenly announced her intention of going home before the ball was half over. Hester Crowdie took her, in her own carriage; and Mrs. Lauderdale and Crowdie stayed till the end.
Now against all this chain of evidence, including that of several men who had met John in Fifth Avenue about six o’clock, with no overcoat and his hat badly smashed, against evidence that would have hanged a man ten times over in a murder case, stood the plain fact, which nobody but Ralston knew, and which no one would ever believe—the plain fact that he had drunk nothing at all.
In the grey dawn of Friday morning Katharine woke from broken sleep to face the reality of what she had done twenty-four hours earlier. It had snowed very heavily during the night, and her first conscious perception was of that strange, cold glare which the snow reflects, and which makes even a bedroom feel like a chilly outer hall into which the daylight penetrates through thick panes of ground glass.
She had slept very little, and against her will, losing consciousness from time to time out of sheer exhaustion, and roused again by the cruel reuniting of the train of thought. Those who have received a wound by which a principal nerve has been divided, know how intense is the suffering when the severed cords begin to grow together, with agonizing slowness, day by day and week by week, convulsing the whole frame of the man in their meeting. Katharine felt something like that each time that the merciful curtains of sleep were suddenly torn asunder between herself and the truth of the present.
The pain was combined of many elements, too, and each hurt her in its own way. There was the shame of the thing, first, the burning, scarlet shame—the thought of it had a colour for her. John Ralston was disgraced in the eyes of all the world. Even the smooth-faced dandy, fresh from college, young Van De Water, might sneer at him and welcome, and feel superior to him, for never having gone so far in folly. Now if such men as Van De Water knew the story, it was but a question of hours, and all society must know it, too. Society would set down John Ralston as a hopeless case. Katharine wondered, with a sickening chill, whether the virtuous—like her father—would turn their backs on Ralston and refuse to know him. She did not know. But Ralston was her husband.
The thought almost drove her mad. There was that condition of the inevitable in her position which gives fate its hold over men’s minds. She could not escape. She could not go back to the point where she had been yesterday morning, and begin her life again. As she had begun it, so it must go on to the very end, ‘until death them should part’—the life of a spotless girl married to a man who was the very incarnation of a disgusting vice. In those first moments it would have been a human satisfaction to have been free to blame some one besides herself for what she had done.
But even now, when every bitter thought seemed to rise up against John Ralston, she could not say that the fault had been his if she had bound herself to him. To the very last he had resisted. This was Friday morning, and on the Wednesday night at the Thirlwalls’ he had told her that he could not be sure of himself. By and by, perhaps, that brave act of his might begin to tell in his favour with her, but not yet. The faces, the expressions, the words, of those from whom she had learned the story of his doings were before her eyes and present in her hearing now, as she lay wide awake in the early morning, staring with hot eyes at the cold grey ceiling of her room.
It was only yesterday that her sister Charlotte had sat there, lamenting her imaginary woes. How Katharine had despised her! Had she not deliberately chosen, of her own free will, and was she not bound to stand by her choice, out of mere self-respect? And Katharine had felt then that, come what might, for good or ill, better or worse, honour or dishonour, she was glad that she had married John Ralston and that she would face all imaginable deaths to help him, even a little. But now—now, it was different. He had failed her at the very outset. It was not that others had turned upon him, despising him wholly for a partial fault. The public disgrace made it all worse than it might have been, but it was only secondary, after all. The keenest pain was from the thrust that had entered Katharine’s own heart. It had been with him as though she had not existed. He had not been strong enough, for her sake, on their wedding day—the day of days to her—to keep himself sober from three o’clock in the afternoon until ten o’clock at night. Only seven hours, Katharine repeated to herself in the cold snow-glare of the early morning—seven little hours; her lips were hot and dry with anger, and her hands were cold, as she thought of it. It was not only the weakness of him, contemptible as that was—if it had at least been weakness for something less brutal, less beastly, less degrading. Katharine chose the strongest words she could think of, and smote him with them in her heart. Was he not her husband, and had she not the right to hate and despise what he had done? It was bad enough, as she said it, and as it appeared to most people that morning. There was not a link missing in the evidence, from the moment when John had begun to lose his temper with Miner at the club, until he had been brought home insensible to his mother’s house by a couple of policemen. His relations and his best friends were all convinced that he had been very drunk, and there was no reason why society in general should be more merciful than his own people. Robert Lauderdale said nothing, but when he saw the paragraph in a morning paper describing ‘Mr. John R——’s drunken encounter with a professional pugilist,’ he regarded the statement as an elucidatory comment on his interview with his great-nephew. No one spoke of the matter in Robert Lauderdale’s presence, but the old gentleman felt that it was a distinct shame to the whole family, and he inwardly expressed himself strongly. The only one who tried to make matters look a little better than every one believed they were, was Hamilton Bright. He could not deny the facts, but he put on a cheerful countenance and made the best of them, laughing good-humouredly at John’s misfortune, and asking every one who ventured an unfavourable comment whether John was the only man alive on that day in the city of New York who had once been a little lively, recommending the beardless critics of his friend’s conduct to go out and drive cattle in the Nacimiento Valley if they wished to understand the real properties of alcohol, and making the older ones feel uncomfortable by reminding them vividly of the errors of their youth. But no one else said anything in Ralston’s favour. He was down just then, and it was as well to hit him when everybody was doing the same thing.
Katharine tried to make up her mind as to what she should do, and she did not find it an easy matter. It would be useless to deny the fact that what she felt for Ralston on that morning bore little resemblance to love. She remembered vaguely, and with wonder, how she had promised to stand by him and help him to her utmost to overcome his weakness. How was she to help him now? How could she play a part and conceal the anger, the pain, the shame that boiled and burned in her? If he should come to her, what should she say? She had promised that she would never refer to the matter in any way, when it had seemed but the shadow of a possibility. But it had turned into the reality so soon, and into such a reality—far more repulsive than anything of which she had dreamed. Besides, she added in her heart, it was unpardonable on that day of all days. Married she was, but forgive she could not and would not. Wounded love is less merciful than any hatred, and Katharine could not help deepening the wound by recalling every circumstance of the previous evening, from the moment when she had looked in vain for John’s face in the crowded room, until she had broken down and asked Hester Crowdie to bring her home.
She rose at last to face the day, undecided, worn out with fatigue, and scared, had she been willing to admit the fact, by the possibilities of the next twelve hours. Half dressed, she paused and sat down to think it all over again—all she knew, for she had yet to learn the end of the story.
She had been married just four and twenty hours. Yesterday, at that very time, life had been before her, joyous, hopeful, merry. All that was to be had glistened with gold and gleamed with silver, with the silver of dreamland and the gold of hope, having love set as a jewel in the midst. To-day the precious things were but dross and tinsel and cheap glass. For it was all over, and there was no returning. Real life was beginning, began, had begun—the reality of an existence not defined except in the extent of its suffering, but desperately limited in the possibilities of its happiness.
Katharine tried to think it over in some other way. The snow-glare was more grey than ever, and her eyes ached with it, whichever way she turned. The room was cold, and her teeth chattered as she sat there, half dressed. Then, when she let in the hot air from the furnace, it was dry and unbearable. And she tried hard to find some other way in which to save her breaking heart—if so be that she might look at it so as not to see the break, and so, perhaps—if there were mercy in heaven, beyond that aching snow-glare—that by not seeing she might feel a little less, only a little less. It was hard that she should have to feel so much and so very bitterly, and all at once. But there was no other way. Instead of facing life with John Ralston, she had now to face life and John Ralston. How could she guess what he might do next? A drunken man has little control of his faculties—John might suddenly publish in the club the fact that he was her husband.
He was not the same John Ralston whom she had married yesterday morning, and whom she had seen yesterday afternoon for one moment at her door. The hours had changed him. Instead of his face there was a horrible mask; instead of his straight, elastic figure there was the reeling, delapidated body of the drunken wretch her father had once shown her in the streets. How could she love that thing? It was not even a man. She loathed it and hated it, for it had broken her life. She remembered having once broken a thermometer when she had been a little girl. She remembered the jagged edge of glass, and how the bright mercury had all run out and lost itself in tiny drops in the carpet. She recalled it vividly, and she felt that she was like the broken thermometer, and the idea was not ridiculous to her, as it must be to any one else, because she was badly hurt.
Vague ideas of a long and painful sacrifice rose before her—of something which must inevitably be begun and ended, like an execution. She had never understood what the inevitable meant until to-day.
Then, all at once, the great question presented itself clearly, the great query, the enormous interrogation of which we are all aware, more or less dimly, more or less clearly—the question which is like the death-rattle in the throat of the dying nineteenth century,—‘What is it all for?’
It came in a rush of passionate disappointment and anger and pain. It had come to Katharine before then, and she had faced it with the easy answer, that it was for love—that it was all for love of John Ralston—life, its thoughts, its deeds, its hopes, its many fears—all for him, so far as Katharine Lauderdale was concerned. Love made God true, and heaven a fact, the angels her guardians now and her companions hereafter. And her love had been so great that it had seemed to demand a wider wealth of heavenly things wherewith to frame it. God was hardly good enough nor heaven broad enough.
But if this were to be the end, what had it all meant? She stood before the window and looked at the grey sky till the reflection from the dead white snow beneath her window and on the opposite roof was painful. Yet the little physical pain was a relief. She turned, quite suddenly, and fell upon her knees beside the corner of the toilet table, and buried her face in her hands and became conscious of prayer.
That seems to be the only way of describing what she felt. The wave of pain beat upon her agonized heart, and though the wave could not speak words, yet the surging and the moaning, and the forward rushing, and the backward, whispering ebb, were as the sounds of many prayers.
Was God good? How could she tell? Was He kind? She did not know. Merciful? What would be mercy to her? God was there—somewhere beyond the snow-glare that hurt so, and the girl’s breaking heart cried to Him, quite incoherently, and expecting nothing, but consciously, though it knew more of its own bitterness than of God’s goodness, just then.
Momentarily the great question sank back into the outer darkness with which it was concerned, and little by little the religious idea of a sacrifice to be made was restored with greater stability than before. She had chosen her own burden, her own way of suffering, and she must bear all as well as she could. The waves of pain beat and crashed against her heart—she wondered, childishly, whether it were broken yet. She knew it was breaking, because it hurt her so.
There was no connected thread of thought in the torn tissue of her mind, any more than there was any coherence in the few words which from time to time tried to form themselves on her lips without her knowledge. So long as she had been lying still and staring at the grey ceiling, the storm had been brooding. It had burst now, and she was as helpless in it as though it had been a real storm on a real sea, and she alone on a driving wreck.
She lifted her face and wrung her hands together. It was as though some one from behind had taken a turn of rough rope round her breast—some one who was very strong—and as though the rope were tightening fast. Soon she should not be able to draw breath against it. As she felt it crushing her, she knew that the hideous picture her mind had made of John was coming before her eyes again. In a moment it must be there. This time she felt as though she must scream when she saw it. But when it came she made no sound. She only dropped her head again, and her forehead beat upon the back of her hands and her fingers scratched and drew the cover of the toilet table. Then the picture was drowned in the tide of pain—as though it had fallen flat upon the dark sands between her and the cruel surf of her immense suffering that roared up to crash against her heart again. It must break this time, she thought. It could not last forever—nor even all day long. God was there—somewhere.
A lull came, and she said something aloud. It seemed to her that she had forgotten words and had to make new ones—although those she spoke were old and good. With the sound of her own voice came a little courage, and enough determination to make her rise from her knees and face daylight again.
Mechanically, as she continued to dress, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her features did not seem to be her own. She remembered to have seen a plaster cast from a death mask, in a museum, and her face made her think of that. There were no lines in it, but there were shadows where the lines would be some day. The grey eyes had no light in them, and scarcely seemed alive. Her colour was that of wax, and there was something unnatural in the strong black brows and lashes.
The door opened at that moment, and Mrs. Lauderdale entered the room. She seemed none the worse for having danced till morning, and the freshness which had come back to her had not disappeared again. She stood still for a moment, looking at Katharine’s face as the latter turned towards her with an enquiring glance, in which there was something of fear and something of shyness. A nervous thoroughbred has the same look, if some one unexpectedly enters its box. Mrs. Lauderdale had a newspaper in her hand.
“How you look, child!” she exclaimed, as she came forward. “Haven’t you slept? Or what is the matter?”
She kissed Katharine affectionately, without waiting for an answer.
“Well, I don’t wonder,” she added, a moment later, as though speaking to herself. “I’ve been reading this—”
She paused and hesitated, as though not sure whether she should give Katharine the paper or not, and she glanced once more at the paragraph before deciding.
“What is it about?” Katharine asked, in a tired voice. “Read it.”
“Yes—but I ought to tell you first. You know, last night—you asked me about Jack Ralston, and I wouldn’t tell you what I had heard. Then I saw that somebody else had told you—you really ought to be more careful, dear! Everybody was noticing it.”
“What?”
“Why—your face! It’s of no use to advertise the fact that you are interested in Jack’s doings. They don’t seem to have been very creditable—it’s just as well that he didn’t try to come to the ball in his condition. Do you know what he was doing, late last night, just about supper-time? I’m so glad I spoke to you both the other day. Imagine the mere idea of marrying a man who gets into drunken brawls with prize fighters and is taken home by the police—”
“Stop—please! Don’t talk like that!” Katharine was trembling visibly.
“My dear child! It’s far better that I should tell you—it’s in the papers this morning. That sort of thing can’t be concealed, you know. The first person you meet will talk to you about it.”
Katharine had turned from her and was facing the mirror, steadying herself with her hands upon the dressing table.
“And as for behaving as you did last night—he’s not worth it. One might forgive him for being idle and all that—but men who get tipsy in the streets and fight horse-car conductors and pugilists are not exactly the kind of people one wants to meet in society—to dance with, for instance. Just listen to this—”
“Mother!”
“No—I want you to hear it. You can judge for yourself. ‘Mr. John R——, a well-known young gentleman about town and a near relation of—’ ”
“Mother—please don’t!” cried Katharine, bending over the table as though she could not hold up her head.
“ ‘—one of our financial magnates,’ ” continued Mrs. Lauderdale, inexorably, “and the hero of more than one midnight adventure, has at last met his match in the person of Tam Shelton, the famous light-weight pugilist. An entirety unadvertised and scantily attended encounter took place between these two gentlemen last night between eleven and twelve o’clock, in consequence of a dispute which had arisen in a horse-car. It appears that the representative of the four hundred had mistaken the public conveyance for his own comfortable quarters, and suddenly feeling very tired had naturally proceeded to go to bed—’ ”
With a very quick motion Katharine turned, took the paper from her mother’s hands and tore the doubled fourfold sheet through twice, almost without any apparent effort, before Mrs. Lauderdale could interfere. She said nothing as she tossed the torn bits under the table, but her eyes had suddenly got life in them again.
“Katharine!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, in great annoyance. “How can you be so rude?”
“And how can you be so unkind, mother?” asked Katharine, facing her. “Don’t you know what I’m suffering?”
“It’s better to know everything, and have it over,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, with astonishing indifference. “It only seemed to me that as every one would be discussing this abominable affair, you should know beforehand just what the facts were. I don’t in the least wish to hurt your feelings—but now that it’s all over with Jack, you may as well know.”
“What may I as well know? That you hate him? That you have suddenly changed your mind—”
“My dear, I’ll merely ask you whether a man who does such things is respectable. Yes, or no?”
“That’s not the question,” answered Katharine, with rising anger. “Something strange has happened to you. Until last Tuesday you never said anything against him. Then you changed, all in a moment—just as you would take off one pair of gloves and put on another. You used to understand me—and now—oh, mother!”
Her voice shook, and she turned away again. The little momentary flame of her anger was swept out of existence by the returning tide of pain.
Mrs. Lauderdale’s whole character seemed to have changed, as her daughter said that it had, between one day and the next. A strong new passion had risen up in the very midst of it and had torn it to shreds, as it were. Even now, as she gazed at Katharine, she was conscious that she envied the girl for being able to suffer without looking old. She hated herself for it, but she could not resist it, any more than she could help glancing at her own reflection in the mirror that morning to see whether her face showed any fatigue after the long ball. This at least was satisfactory, for she was as brilliantly fresh as ever. She could hardly understand how she could have seemed so utterly broken down and weary on Monday night and all day on Tuesday, but she could never forget how she had then looked, and the fear of it was continually upon her. Nevertheless she loved Katharine still. The conflict between her love and her envy made her seem oddly inconsequent and almost frivolous. Katharine fancied that her mother was growing to be like Charlotte. The appealing tone of the girl’s last words rang in Mrs. Lauderdale’s ears and accused her. She stretched out her hand and tried to draw Katharine towards her, affectionately, as she often did when she was seated and the girl was standing.
“Katharine, dear child,” she began, “I’m not changed to you—it’s only—”
“Yes—it’s only Jack!” answered Katharine, bitterly.
“We won’t talk of him, darling,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, softly, and trying to soothe her. “You see, I didn’t know how badly you felt about it—”
“You might have guessed. You know that I love him—you never knew how much!”
“Yes, sweetheart, but now—”
“There is no ‘but’—it’s the passion of my life—the first, the last, and the only one!”
“You’re so young, my darling, that it seems to you as though there could never be anything else—”
“Seems! I know.”
Though Mrs. Lauderdale had already repented of what she had done and really wished to be sympathetic, she could not help smiling faintly at the absolute conviction with which Katharine spoke. There was something so young and whole-hearted in the tone as well as in those words that only found an echo far back in the forgotten fields of the older woman’s understanding. She hardly knew what to answer, and patted Katharine’s head gently while she sought for something to say. But Katharine resented the affectionate manner, being in no humour to appreciate anything which had a savour of artificiality about it. She withdrew her hand and faced her mother again.
“I know all that you can tell me,” she said. “I know all there is to be known, without reading that vile thing. But I don’t know what I shall do—I shall decide. And, please—mother—if you care for me at all—don’t talk about it. It’s hard enough, as it is—just the thing, without any words.”
She spoke with an effort, almost forcing the syllables from her lips, for she was suffering terribly just then. She wished that her mother would go away, and leave her to herself, if only for half an hour. She had so much more to think of than any one could know, or guess—except old Robert Lauderdale and Jack himself.
“Well, child—as you like,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, feeling that she had made a series of mistakes. “I’m sure I don’t care to talk about it in the least, but I can’t prevent your father from saying what he pleases. Of course he began to make remarks about your not coming to breakfast this morning. I didn’t go down myself until he had nearly finished, and he seemed hurt at our neglecting him. And then, he had been reading the paper, and so the question came up. But, dearest, don’t think I’m unkind and heartless and all that sort of thing. I love you dearly, child. Don’t you believe me?”
She put her arm round Katharine’s neck and kissed her.
“Oh, yes!” Katharine answered wearily. “I’m sure you do.”
Mrs. Lauderdale looked into her face long and earnestly.
“It’s quite wonderful!” she exclaimed at last. “You’re a little pale—but, after all, you’re just as pretty as ever this morning.”
“Am I?” asked Katharine, indifferently. “I don’t feel pretty.”
“Oh, well—that will all go away,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, withdrawing her arm and turning towards the door. “Yes,” she repeated thoughtfully, as though to herself, “that will all go away. You’re so young—still—so young!”
Her head sank forward a little as she went out and she did not look back at her daughter.
Katharine drew a long breath of relief when she found herself alone. The interview had not lasted many minutes, but it had seemed endless. She looked at the torn pieces of the newspaper which lay on the floor, and she shuddered a little and turned from them uneasily, half afraid that some supernatural power might force her to stoop down and pick them up, and fit them together and read the paragraph to the end. She sat down to try and collect her thoughts.
But she grew more and more confused as she reviewed the past and tried to call up the future. For instance, if John Ralston came to the house that afternoon, to explain, to defend himself, to ask forgiveness of her, what should she say to him? Could she send him away without a word of hope? And if not, what hope should she give him? And hope of what? He was her husband. He had a right to claim her if he pleased—before every one.
The words all seemed to be gradually losing their meaning for her. The bells of the horse-cars as they passed through Clinton Place sang queer little songs to her, and the snow-glare made her eyes ache. There was no longer any apparent reason why the day should go on, nor why it should end. She did not know what time it was, and she did not care to look. What difference did it make?
Her ball gown was lying on the sofa, as she had laid it when she had come home. She looked at it and wondered vaguely whether she should ever again take the trouble to put on such a thing, and to go and show herself amongst a crowd of people who were perfectly indifferent to her.
On reflection, for she seriously tried to reflect, it seemed more probable that John would write before coming, and this would give her an opportunity of answering. It would be easier to write than to speak. But if she wrote, what should she say? It was just as hard to decide, and the words would look more unkind on paper, perhaps, than she could possibly make them sound.
Was it her duty to speak harshly? She asked herself the question quite suddenly, and it startled her. If her heart were really broken, she thought, there could be nothing for her to do but to say once what she thought and then begin the weary life that lay before her—an endless stretch of glaring snow, and endless jingling of horse-car bells.
She rose suddenly and roused herself, conscious that she was almost losing her senses. The monstrous incongruity of the thoughts that crossed her brain frightened her. She pressed her hand to her forehead and with characteristic strength determined there and then to occupy herself in some way or other during the day. To sit there in her room much longer would either drive her mad or make her break down completely. She feared the mere thought of those tears in which some women find relief, almost as much as the idea of becoming insane, which presented itself vividly as a possibility just then. Whatever was to happen during the day, she must at any cost have control over her outward actions. She stood for one moment with her hands clasped to her brows, and then turned and left the room.
On the present occasion John Ralston deserved very much more sympathy than he got from the world at large, which would have found it very hard to believe the truth about his doings on the afternoon and night of Thursday. He was still unconscious when he was carried into the house by the two policemen and deposited upon his own bed. When he opened his eyes, they met his mother’s, staring down upon him with an expression in which grief, fear and disgust were all struggling for the mastery. She was standing by his bedside, bending over him, and rubbing something on his temples from time to time. He was but just conscious that he was at home at last, and that she was with him, and he smiled faintly at her and closed his eyes again.
He had hardly done so, however, when he realized what a look was in her face. He was not really injured in any way, he was perfectly sober, and he was very hungry. As soon as the effect of the last blow began to wear off, his brain worked clearly enough. He understood at once that his mother must suppose him to be intoxicated. It was no wonder if she did, as he knew. He was in a far worse plight now than he had been on Monday afternoon, as far as appearances were concerned. His clothes were drenched with the wet snow, his hat had altogether disappeared in the fight, his head was bruised, and his face was ghastly pale. He kept his eyes shut for a while and tried to recall what had happened last. But it was not at all clear to him why he had been fighting with the man who wore the fur collar and the chain, nor why he had wandered to Tompkins Square. Those were the two facts which recalled themselves most vividly at first, in a quite disconnected fashion. Next came the vision of Robert Lauderdale and the recollection of the violent gesture with which the latter had accidentally knocked John’s hat out of his hand; and after that he recalled the scene at the club. It seemed to him that he had been through a series of violent struggles which had no connection with each other. His head ached terribly and he should have liked to be left in the dark to try and go to sleep. Then, as he lay there, he knew that his mother was still looking at him with that expression in which disgust seemed to him to be uppermost. It flashed across his mind instantly that she must naturally think he had been drinking. But though his memory of what had happened was very imperfect, and though he was dizzy and faint, he knew very well that he was sober, and he realized that he must impress the fact upon his mother at any cost, immediately, both for his own sake and for hers. He opened his eyes once more and looked at her, wondering how his voice would sound when he should speak.
“Mother dear—” he began. Then he paused, watching her face.
But her expression did not unbend. It was quite clear now that she believed the very worst of him, and he wondered whether the mere fact of his speaking connectedly would persuade her that he was telling the truth.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said in a low, hard voice. “I don’t want to know anything about your doings.”
“Mother—I’m perfectly sober,” said John Ralston, quietly. “I want you to listen to me, please, and persuade yourself.”
Mrs. Ralston drew herself up to her full height as she stood beside him. Her even lips curled scornfully, and the lines of temper deepened into soft, straight furrows in her keen face.
“You may be half sober now,” she answered with profound contempt. “You’re so strong—it’s impossible to tell.”
“So you don’t believe me,” said John, who was prepared for her incredulity. “But you must—somehow. My head aches badly, and I can’t talk very well, but I must make you believe me. It’s—it’s very important that you should, mother.”
This time she said nothing. She left the bedside and moved about the room, stopping before the dressing table and mechanically putting the brushes and other small objects quite straight. If she had felt that it were safe to leave him alone she would have left him at once and would have locked herself into her own room. For she was very angry, and she believed that her anger was justified. So long as he had been unconscious, she had felt a certain fear for his safety which made a link with the love she bore him. But, as usual, his iron constitution seemed to have triumphed. She remembered clearly how, on Monday afternoon, he had evidently been the worse for drink when he had entered her room, and yet how, in less than an hour, he had reappeared apparently quite sober. He was very strong, and there was no knowing what he could do. She had forgiven him that once, but it was not in her nature to forgive easily, and she told herself that this time it would be impossible. He had disgraced himself and her.
She continued to turn away from him. He watched her, and saw how desperate the situation was growing. He knew well enough that there would be some talk about him on the morrow and that it would come to Katharine’s ears, in explanation of his absence from the Assembly ball. His mind worked rapidly and energetically now, for it was quite clear to him that he had no time to lose. If he should fall asleep without having persuaded his mother that he was quite himself, he could never, in all his life, succeed in destroying the fatal impression she must carry with her. While she was turning from him he made a great effort, and putting his feet to the ground, sat upon the edge of his bed. His head swam for a moment, but he steadied himself with both hands and faced the light, thinking that the brilliant glare might help him.
“You must believe me, now,” he said, “or you never will. I’ve had rather a bad day of it, and another accident, and a fight with a better man than myself, so that I’m rather battered. But I haven’t been drinking.”
“Look at yourself!” answered Mrs. Ralston, scornfully. “Look at yourself in the glass and see whether you have any chance of convincing me of that. Since you’re not killed, and not injured, I shall leave you to yourself. I hope you won’t talk about it to-morrow. This is the second time within four days. It’s just a little more than I can bear. If you can’t live like a gentleman, you had better go away and live in the way you prefer—somewhere else.”
As she spoke, her anger began to take hold of her, and her voice fell to a lower pitch, growing concentrated and cruel.
“You’re unjust, though you don’t mean to be,” said John. “But, as I said, it’s very important that you should recognize the truth. All sorts of things have happened to me, and many people will say that I had been drinking. And now that it’s over I want you to establish the fact that I have not. It’s quite natural that you should think as you do, of course. But—”
“I’m glad you admit that, at least,” interrupted Mrs. Ralston. “Nothing you can possibly say or do can convince me that you’ve been sober. You may be now—you’re such a curiously organized man. But you’ve not been all day.”
“Mother, I swear to you that I have!”
“Stop, John!” cried Mrs. Ralston, crossing the room suddenly and standing before him. “I won’t let you—you shan’t! We’ve not all been good in the family, but we’ve told the truth. If you were sober you wouldn’t—”
John Ralston was accustomed to be believed when he made a statement, even if he did not swear to it. His virtues were not many, and were not very serviceable, on the whole; but he was a truthful man, and his anger rose, even against his own mother, when he saw that she refused to believe him. He forgot his bruises and his mortal weariness, and sprang to his feet before her. Their eyes met steadily, as he spoke.
“I give you my sacred word of honour, mother.”
He saw a startled look come into his mother’s eyes, and they seemed to waver for a moment and then grow steady again. Then, without warning, she turned from him once more, and went and seated herself in a small arm-chair by the fire. She sat with her elbow resting on her knee, while her hand supported her chin, and she stared at the smouldering embers as though in deep thought.
Her principal belief was in the code of honour, and in the absolute sanctity of everything connected with it, and she had brought up her son in that belief, and in the practice of what it meant. He did not give his word lightly. She did not at that moment recall any occasion upon which he had given it in her hearing, and she knew what value he set upon it.
The evidence of her senses, on the other hand, was strong, and that of her reason was stronger still. It did not seem conceivable that he could be telling the truth. It was not possible that as his sober, natural self he should have got into the condition in which he had been brought home to her. But it was quite within the bounds of possibility, she thought, that he should have succeeded in steadying himself so far as to be able to speak connectedly. In that case he had lied to her, when he had given his word of honour, a moment ago.
She tried to look at it fairly, for it was a question quite as grave in her estimation as one of life or death. She would far rather have known him dead than dishonourable, and his honour was arraigned at her tribunal in that moment. Her impulse was to believe him, to go back to him, and kiss him, and ask his forgiveness for having accused him wrongly. But the evidence stood between him and her as a wall of ice. The physical impression of horror and disgust was too strong. The outward tokens were too clear. Even the honesty of his whole life from his childhood could not face and overcome them.
And so he must have lied to her. It was a conviction, and she could not help it. And then she, too, felt that iron hands were tightening a band round her breast, and that she could not bear much more. There was but one small, pitiful excuse for him. In spite of his quiet tones, he might be so far gone as not to know what he was saying when he spoke. It was a forlorn hope, a mere straw, a poor little chance of life for her mother’s love. She knew that life could never be the same again, if she could not believe her son.
The struggle went on in silence. She did not move from her seat nor change her position. Her eyelids scarcely quivered as she gazed steadily at the coals of the dying wood fire. Behind her,