Маргарет Олифант
Old Mr. Tredgold
CHAPTER XVIII
It proved not at all difficult to find out everything, or almost everything, about the runaway pair. The doctor’s mission, though it seemed likely to be the most important of all, did not produce very much. In the bustle of the embarkation he had found it difficult to get any information at all, but eventually he had found Captain Scott, whom he had attended during his illness, and whom he now sent peremptorily down below out of the cold. “If that’s your duty, you must not do it, that’s all,” he had said with the decision of a medical man, though whether he had secured his point or not, Katherine, ungratefully indifferent to Algy, did not ascertain. But he found that Sir Charles Somers had got leave and was going out with a P. and O. from Brindisi to join his regiment when it should reach India.
“It will cost him the eyes out of his head,” Algy said. “Lucky beggar, he don’t mind what he spends now.”
“Why?” the doctor asked, and was laughed at for not knowing that Charlie had run off with old Tredgold’s daughter, who was good for any amount of money, and, of course, would soon give in and receive the pair back again into favour. “Are you so sure of that?” the doctor said. And Algy had replied that his friend would be awfully up a tree if it didn’t turn out so. The doctor shook his head in relating this story to Katherine. “I have my doubts,” he said; but she knew nothing on that subject, and was thinking of nothing but of Stella herself, and the dreadful thought that she might see her no more.
The vicar, on his side, had been busy with his inquiries too, and he had found out everything with the greatest ease; in the first place from Andrews, the young coachman, who declared that he had always taken his orders from Miss Stella, and didn’t know as he was doing no wrong. Andrews admitted very frankly that he had driven his young mistress to the little church, one of the very small primitive churches of the island near Steephill, where the tall gentleman with the dark moustaches had met her, and where Miss Stevens had turned up with a big basketful of white chrysanthemums. They had been in the church about half an hour, and then they had come out again, and Miss Stevens and the young lady had got into the brougham. The chrysanthemums had been for the decoration of the ballroom, as everybody knew. Then he had taken Miss Stevens to meet the last train for Ryde; and finally he had driven his young ladies home with a gentleman on the box that had got down at the gate, but whether he came any further or not Andrews did not know. The vicar had gone on in search of information to Steephill Church, and found that the old rector there, in the absence of the curate—he himself being almost past duty by reason of old age—had married one of the gentlemen living at the Castle to a young lady whose name he could not recollect further than that it was Stella. The old gentleman had thought it all right as it was a gentleman from the Castle, and he had a special licence, which made everything straight. The register of the marriage was all right in the books, as the vicar had taken care to see. Of course it was all right in the books! Katherine was much surprised that they should all make such a point of that, as if anything else was to be thought of. What did it matter about the register? The thing was that Stella had run away, that she was gone, that she had betrayed their trust in her, and been a traitor to her home.
But a girl is not generally judged very hardly when she runs away; it is supposed to be her parents’ fault or her lover’s fault, and she but little to blame. But when Katherine thought of her vigil on the cliff, her long watch in the moonlight, without a word of warning or farewell, she did not think that Stella was so innocent. Her heart was very sore and wounded by the desertion. The power of love indeed! Was there no love, then, but one? Did her home count for nothing, where she had always been so cherished; nor her father, who had loved her so dearly; nor her sister, who had given up everything to her? Oh, no; perhaps the sister didn’t matter! But at least her father, who could not bear that she should want anything upon which she had set her heart! Katherine’s heart swelled at the thought of all Stella’s contrivances to escape in safety. She had carried all her jewels with her, those jewels which she had partly acquired as the price of abandoning Sir Charles. Oh, the treachery, the treachery of it! She could scarcely keep her countenance while the gentlemen came with their reports. She felt her features distorted with the effort to show nothing but sorrow, and to thank them quietly for all the trouble they had taken. She would have liked to stamp her foot, to dash her clenched hands into the air, almost to utter those curses which had burst from her father. What a traitor she had been! What a traitor! She was glad to get the men out of the house, who were very kind, and wanted to do more if she would let them—to do anything, and especially to return and communicate to Mr. Tredgold the result of their inquiries when he woke from his long sleep. Katherine said No, no, she would prefer to tell him herself. There seemed to be but one thing she desired, and that was to be left alone.
After this hot fit there came, as was natural, a cold one. Katherine went upstairs to her own room, the room divided from that other only by an open door, which they had occupied ever since they were children. Then her loneliness came down upon her like a pall. Even with the thrill of this news in all her frame, she felt a foolish impulse to go and call Stella—to tell Stella all about it, and hear her hasty opinion. Stella never hesitated to give her opinion, to pronounce upon every subject that was set before her with rapid, unhesitating decisions. She would have known exactly what to say on this subject. She would have taken the girl’s part; she would have asked what right a man had because he was your father to be such a tyrant. Katherine could hear the very tone in which she would have condemned the unnatural parent, and see the indignant gesture with which she would have lifted her head. And now there was nobody, nothing but silence; the room so vacant, the trim bed so empty and cold and white. It was like a bed of death, and Katherine shivered. The creature so full of impulses and hasty thoughts and crude opinions and life and brightness would never be there again. No, even if papa would forgive—even if he would receive her back, there would be no Stella any more. This would not be her place; the sisterly companionship was broken, and life could never more be what it had been.
She sat down on the floor in the middle of the desolation and cried bitterly. What should she do without Stella? Stella had always been the first to think of everything; the suggestion of what to do or say had always been in her hands. Katherine did not deny to herself that she had often thought differently from Stella, that she had not always accepted either her suggestions or her opinions; but that was very different from the silence, the absence of that clear, distinct, self-assured little voice, the mind made up so instantaneously, so ready to pronounce upon every subject. Even in this way of looking at it, it will be seen that she was no blind admirer of her sister. She knew her faults as well as anyone. Faults! she was made up of faults—but she was Stella all the same.
She had cried all her tears out, and was still sitting intent, with her sorrowful face, motionless, in the reaction of excitement, upon the floor, when Simmons, the housekeeper, opened the door, and looked round for her, calling at last in subdued tones, and starting much to see the lowly position in which her young mistress was. Simmons came attended by the little jingle of a cup and spoon, which had been so familiar in the ears of the girls in all their little childish illnesses, when Simmons with the beef-tea or the arrowroot, or whatever it might be, was a change and a little amusement to them, in the dreadful vacancy of a day in bed. Mrs. Simmons, though she was a great personage in the house and (actually) ordered the dinners and ruled over everything, notwithstanding any fond illusions that Katherine might cherish on that subject, had never delegated this care to anyone else, and Katherine knew very well what was going to be said.
“Miss Katherine, dear, sit up now and take this nice beef-tea. I’ve seen it made myself, and it’s just as good as I know how. And you must take something if you’re ever to get up your strength. Sit up, now, and eat it as long as it’s nice and hot—do!” The address was at once persuasive, imploring, and authoritative. “Sit up, now, Miss Katherine—do!”
“Oh, Simmons, it isn’t beef-tea I want this time,” she said, stumbling hastily to her feet.
“No,” Simmons allowed with a sigh, “but you want your strength kep’ up, and there’s nothing so strengthening. It’ll warm you too. It’s a very cold morning and there’s no comfort in the house—not a fire burning as it ought to, not a bit of consolation nowhere. We can’t all lay down and die, Miss Katherine, because Miss Stella, bless her, has married a very nice gentleman. He ain’t to your papa’s liking, more’s the pity, and sorry I am in many ways, for a wedding in the house is a fine thing, and such a wedding as Miss Stella’s, if she had only pleased your papa! It would have been a sight to see. But, dear, a young lady’s fancy is not often the same as an old gentleman’s, Miss Katherine. We must all own to that. They thinks of one thing and the young lady, bless her, she thinks of another. It’s human nature. Miss Stella’s pleased herself, she hasn’t pleased Master. Well, we can’t change it, Miss Katherine, dear; but she’s very ’appy, I don’t make a doubt of it, for I always did say as Sir Charles was a very taking man. Lord bless us, just to think of it! I am a-calling her Miss Stella, and it’s my Lady she is, bless her little heart!”
Though she despised herself for it, this gave a new turn to Katherine’s thoughts too. Lady Somers! yes, that was what Stella was now. That little title, though it was not an exalted one, would have an effect upon the general opinion, however lofty might be the theories expressed, as to the insignificance of rank. Rank; it was the lowest grade of anything that could be called rank. And yet it would have a certain effect on the general mind. She was even conscious of feeling it herself, notwithstanding both the indignation and the sorrow in her mind. “My sister, Lady Somers!” Was it possible that she could say it with a certain pleasure, as if it explained more or less now (a question which had always been so difficult) who the Tredgolds were, and what they were worth in the island. Now Katherine suddenly realised that people would say, “One of the daughters married Sir Charles Somers.” It would be acknowledged that in that case the Tredgolds might be people to know. Katherine’s pride revolted, yet her judgment recognised the truth of it. And she wondered involuntarily if it would affect her father—if he would think of that?
“Is my father awake yet, Simmons?” she asked.
“Beginning to stir, Miss Katherine,” Dolby said. “How clever they are, them doctors, with their sleeping draffs and things! Oh, I’m quite opposed to ’em. I don’t think as it’s right to force sleep or anything as is contrary to the Almighty’s pleasure. But to be such nasty stuff, the effeck it do have is wonderful. Your papa, as was so excited like and ready to shoot all of us, right and left, he has slep’ like a baby all these hours. And waking up now, Dolby says, like a lamb, and ready for his breakfast.”
“I must go to him at once, Simmons,” cried Katherine, thrusting back into Simmons’s hand the cup and the spoon.
“You won’t do nothing of the sort, Miss, if so be as you’ll be guided by me. He’ll not think of it just at once, and he’ll eat his breakfast, which will do him a lot of good, and if he don’t see you, why, he’ll never remember as anything’s up. And then when he comes to think, Dolby will call you, Miss Katherine, if the doctor isn’t here first, which would be the best way.”
“I think I ought to go to him at once,” Katherine said. But she did not do so. It was no pleasant task. His looks when he burst forth into those oaths and curses (though she had herself felt not very long ago as if to do the same might have been a relief to her surcharged and sickened soul), and when he lay, with his keen small eyes gleaming red with passion, in his bed, looking at her, came back to her with a shudder. Perhaps she had not a very elevated ideal of a father. The name did not imply justice or even tenderness to her mind. Katherine was well aware that he had never done her justice all her life. He had been kind—enough; but his kindness had been very different from the love he had shown to Stella. He had elevated the younger sister over the elder since ever the children had known how to distinguish between good and evil. But still he was papa. It might be that an uneasy feeling that she was not proud of her father had visited the girl’s mind more than once, when she saw him among other men; but still he was papa just as Stella was Stella, and therefore like no one else, whatever they might say or do. She did not like to go to him again, to renew his misery and her own, to hear him curse the girl whom he had adored, to see that dreadful look as if of a fiend in his face. Her own feelings had fallen into a sort of quietude now by means of exhaustion, and of the slow, slow moments, which felt every one of them as if it were an hour.
It was some time longer before she was called. Mr. Tredgold had got up; he had made his toilet, and gone down to his sitting-room, which communicated with his bedroom by a little private staircase. And it was only when he was there that his eyes fell on his clock, and he cried with a start:
“Half-past twelve, and I just come downstairs! What does this mean—what does it mean? Why wasn’t I called at the right time?”
“You had a—a restless night, sir,” said the man, trembling. (“Oh, where’s that Miss Katherine, where’s that young person,” he said to himself.)
“A restless night! And why had I a restless night? No supper, eh? Never eat supper now. Girls won’t let me. Hollo! I begin to remember. Wasn’t there an alarm of burglars? And none of you heard, you deaf fools; nobody but me, an old man! I let go one barrel at them, eh? Enough to send them all flying. Great fun that. And then Katherine, Katherine—what do I remember about Katherine? Stopped me before I could do anything, saying there was nobody. Fool, to mind what she said; quite sure there was somebody, eh? Can’t you tell me what it was?”
“Don’t know, indeed, sir,” said the man, whose teeth were chattering with fear.
“Don’t know, indeed! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Speak out, you fool. Was it burglars–”
“No, sir. I think not, sir. I—don’t know what it was, sir. Something about Miss– about Miss–”
“About whom?” the old man cried.
“Oh, sir, have a little patience—it’s all right, it’s all right, sir—just Miss Stella, sir, that—that is all right, sir—all safe, sir,” the attendant cried.
Old Tredgold sat upright in his chair; he put his elbows on the table to support his head. “Miss Stella!” he said with a sudden hoarseness in his voice.
And then the man rushed out to summon Katherine, who came quietly but trembling to the call.
He uncovered his face as she came in. It was ghastly pale, the two gleaming points of the eyes glimmering out of it like the eyes of a wild beast. “Stella, Stella!” he said hoarsely, and, seizing Katherine by the arm, pressed her down upon a low chair close to him. “What’s all this cock and a bull story?” he said.
“Oh, papa!”
He seized her again and shook her in his fury. “Speak out or I’ll—I’ll kill you,” he said.
Her arm was crushed as in an iron vice. Body and soul she trembled before him. “Papa, let me go or I can say nothing! Let me go!”
He gave her arm one violent twist and then he dropped it. “What are you afraid of?” he said, with a gleam of those angry eyes. “Go on—go on—tell me what happened last night.”
Katherine’s narrative was confused and broken, and Mr. Tredgold was not usually a man of very clear intelligence. It must have been that his recollections, sent into the background of his mind by the extreme shock of last night, and by the opiate which had helped him to shake it off, had all the time been working secretly within him through sleeping and waking, waiting only for the outer framework of the story now told him. He understood every word. He took it all up point by point, marking them by the beating of his hand upon the arm of his chair. “That’s how it was,” he said several times, nodding his head. He was much clearer about it than Katherine, who did not yet realise the sequence of events or that Stella was already Charlie Somers’s wife when she came innocently back with her white flowers, and hung about her father at his luncheon, doing everything possible to please him; but he perceived all this without the hesitation of a moment and with apparent composure. “It was all over, then,” he said to himself; “she had done it, then. She took us in finely, you and me, Kate. We are a silly lot—to believe what everyone tells us. She was married to a fine gentleman before she came in to us all smiling and pleasant;” and, then, speaking in the same even tone, he suddenly cursed her, without even a pause to distinguish the words.
“Papa, papa!” Katherine cried, almost with a shriek.
“What is it, you little fool? You think perhaps I’ll say ‘Bless you, my children,’ and have them back? They think so themselves, I shouldn’t wonder; they’ll find out the difference. What about those diamonds that I gave her instead of him—instead of–” And here he laughed, and in the same steady tone bade God curse her again.
“I cannot hear you say that—I cannot, I cannot! Oh, God bless and take care of my poor Stella! Oh, papa, little Stella, that you have always been so fond of–”
Mr. Tredgold’s arm started forth as if it would have given a blow. He dashed his fist in the air, then subsided again and laughed a low laugh. “I shan’t pay for those diamonds,” he said. “I’ll send them back, I’ll– And her new clothes that she was to get—God damn her. She can’t have taken her clothes, flying off from a ball by night.”
“Oh, what are clothes, or money, or anything, in comparison with Stella!” Katherine said.
“Not much to you that don’t have to pay for them,” he said. “I shan’t pay for them. Go and pack up the rags, don’t you hear? and bring me the diamonds. She thinks we’ll send ’em after her.” And here the curse again. “She shan’t have one of them, not one. Go and do what I tell you, Katie. God damn her and her–”
“Oh, papa, for the sake of everything that is good! Yes, I will go—I will go. What does it matter? Her poor little frocks, her–”
“They cost a deal of money all the same. And bring me the diamonds,” Mr. Tredgold said.
And then there suddenly flashed upon Katherine a strange revelation, a ludicrous tragic detail which did not seem laughable to her, yet was so–“The diamonds,” she said faltering, half turning back on her way to the door.
“Well! the diamonds?”
“Oh, forgive her, forgive her! She never could have thought of that; she never could have meant it. Papa, for God’s sake, forgive her, and don’t say—that again. She was wearing them all at the ball. She was in her ball dress. She had no time to change—she–”
He seized and shook her savagely as if she had been confessing a theft of her own, and then rose up with his habitual chuckle in his throat. “George, she’s done me,” he said. “She’s got her fortune on her back. She’s—she’s a chip of the old block, after all.” He dropped down again heavily in his chair, and then with a calm voice, looking at Katherine, said tranquilly, “God damn her” once more.
CHAPTER XIX
It was afterwards discovered that Stella had calculated her elopement in a way which justified most perfectly the unwilling applause elicited from her father—that she was a chip of the old block. She had over-decorated herself, as had been remarked, it now appeared, by everybody at the ball, on the night of her flight, wearing all the diamonds she had got from her father as an equivalent for her lover—and other things besides, everything she had that was valuable. It was ridiculous enough to see a girl blazing in all those diamonds; but to have her pearl necklace as well, adjusted as an ornament on her bodice, and bracelets enough to go up almost to the elbow, was more absurd still, and Katherine, it now appeared, was the only person who had not observed this excess of jewellery. She remembered now vaguely that she had felt Stella to be more radiant, more dazzling than ever, and had wondered with a sort of dull ache whether it was want of heart, whether it was over-excitement, or what it was which made her sister’s appearance and aspect so brilliant on the very eve of her parting from her lover. “Partings which press the life from out young hearts.” How was it possible that she could be so bright, so gay, so full of life, and he going away? She had felt this, but she had not noticed, which was strange, the extraordinary number of Stella’s bracelets, or the manner in which her pearls were fastened upon the bosom of her dress. This was strange, but due chiefly perhaps to the fact that Stella had not shown herself, as usual, for her sister’s admiration, but had appeared in a hurry rather late, and already wrapped in her cloak.
It was found, however, on examining her drawers, that Stella had taken everything she had which was of any value. It was also discovered later that she had taken advantage of her father’s permission to get as many new frocks as she pleased—always to make up for the loss of Charlie—by ordering for herself an ample trousseau, which had been sent to await her to a London hotel. She had all these things now and the lover too, which was so brilliant a practical joke that it kept the regiment in laughter for a year; but was not so regarded at home, though Mr. Tredgold himself was not able to refrain from a certain admiration when he became fully aware of it, as has been seen. It afflicted Katherine, however, with a dull, enduring pain in the midst of her longing for her sister and her sense of the dreadful vacancy made by Stella’s absence. The cheerful calculation, the peaceful looks with which Stella had hid all her wiles and preparations gave her sister a pang, not acute but profound—a constant ache which took away all the spring of her life. Even when she tried to escape from it, making to herself all those banal excuses which are employed in such circumstances—about love, to which everything is permitted, and the lover’s entreaties, to which nothing can be refused, and the fact that she had to live her own life, not another’s, and was obeying the voice of Nature in choosing for herself—all these things, which Katherine presented to herself as consolations, were over and over again refused. If Stella had run away in her little white frock and garden hat, her sister could have forgiven her; but the trousseau, the maid, the diamonds, even the old pearls which had been given to both of them, and still remained the chief of Katherine’s possessions—that Stella should have settled and arranged all that was more than Katherine could bear. She locked away her own pearls, with what she felt afterwards to be a very absurd sentiment, and vowed that she would never wear them again. There seemed a sort of insult in the addition of that girlish decoration to all her other ornaments. But this, the reader will perceive, was very high-flown on Katherine’s part.
A day or two after this tremendous crisis, which, I need not say, was by far the most delightful public event which had occurred in Sliplin for centuries, and which moved the very island to its centre, Lady Jane called with solemnity at the Cliff. Lady Jane was better dressed on this occasion than I believe she had ever been seen to be in the memory of men. She was attired in black brocade with a train, and wore such a mantle as everybody said must have been got for the occasion, since it was like nothing that had ever been seen on Lady Jane’s shoulders before. The furs, too, were unknown to Sliplin; perhaps she wore them in more favoured places, perhaps she had borrowed them for the occasion. The reason of all this display was beyond the divination of Katherine, who received her visitor half with the suppressed resentment which she felt she owed to everyone who could be supposed privy to Stella’s plans, and half with the wistful longing for an old friend, a wiser and more experienced person, to console herself. Katherine had abandoned the young ladies’ room, with all its double arrangements and suggestions of a life that was over. She sat in the large drawing-room, among the costly, crowded furniture, feeling as if, though less expensive, she was but one of them—a daughter needed, like the Italian cabinets, for the due furnishing of the house.
Lady Jane came in, feeling her way between the chairs and tables. It was appropriate that so formal a visit should be received in this formal place. She shook hands with Katherine, who held back visibly from the usual unnecessary kiss. It marked at once the difference, and that the younger woman felt herself elevated by her resentment, and was no longer to be supposed to be in any way at Lady Jane’s feet.
“How do you do?” said Lady Jane, carrying out the same idea. “How is your father? I am glad to hear that he has, on the whole, not suffered in health—nor you either, Katherine, I hope?”
“I don’t know about suffering in health. I am well enough,” the girl said.
“I perceive,” said Lady Jane, “by your manner that you identify me somehow with what has happened. That is why I have come here to-day. You must feel I don’t come as I usually do. In ordinary circumstances I should probably have sent for you to come to me. Katherine, I can see that you think I’m somehow to blame, in what way, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I have never expressed any blame. I don’t know that I have ever thought anyone was to blame—except–”
“Except—except themselves. You are right. They are very hot-headed, the one as much as the other. I don’t mean to say that he—he is a sort of relation of mine—has not asked my advice. If he has done so once he has done it a hundred times, and I can assure you, Katherine, all that I have said has been consistently ‘Don’t ask me.’ I have told him a hundred times that I would not take any responsibility. I have said to him, ‘I can’t tell how you will suit each other, or whether you will agree, or anything.’ I have had nothing to do with it. I felt, as he was staying in my house at the time, that you or your father might be disposed to blame me. I assure you it would be very unjust. I knew no more of what was going on on Wednesday last—no more than—than Snap did,” cried Lady Jane. Snap was the little tyrant of the fields at Steephill, a small fox terrier, and kept everything under his control.
“I can only say that you have never been blamed, Lady Jane. Papa has never mentioned your name, and as for me–”
“Yes, Katherine, you; it is chiefly you I think of. I am sure you have thought I had something to do with it.”
Katherine made a pause. She was in a black dress. I can scarcely tell why—partly, perhaps, from some exaggerated sentiment—actually because Mrs. Simmons, who insisted on attending to her till someone could be got to replace Stevens, had laid it out. And she was unusually pale. She had not in reality “got over” the incident so well as people appeared to hope.
“To tell the truth,” she said, “all the world has seemed quite insignificant to me except my sister. I have had so much to do thinking of her that I have had no time for anything else.”
“That’s not very complimentary to people that have taken so great an interest in you.” Lady Jane was quite discomposed by having the word insignificant applied to her. She was certainly not insignificant, whatever else she might be.
“Perhaps it is not,” Katherine said. “I have had a great deal to think of,” she added with a half appeal for sympathy.
“I dare say. Is it possible that you never expected it? Didn’t you see that night? All those jewels even might have told their story. I confess that I was vaguely in a great fright; but I thought you must have been in her confidence, Katherine, that is the truth.”
“I in her confidence! Did you think I would have helped her to—to—deceive everybody—to—give such a blow to papa?”
“Is it such a blow to your papa? I am told he has not suffered in health. Now I look at you again you are pale, but I don’t suppose you have suffered in health either. Katherine, don’t you think you are overdoing it a little? She has done nothing that is so very criminal. And your own conduct was a little strange. You let her run off into the dark shrubberies to say farewell to him, as I am told, and never gave any alarm till you saw the yacht out in the bay, and must have known they were safe from any pursuit. I must say that a girl who has behaved like that is much more likely to have known all about it than an outsider like me!”
“I did not know anything about it,” cried Katherine—“nothing! Stella did not confide in me. If she had done so—if she had told me–”
“Yes; what would you have done then?” Lady Jane asked with a certain air of triumph.
Katherine looked blankly at her. She was wandering about in worlds not realised. She had never asked herself that question. And yet perhaps her own conduct, her patience in that moonlight scene was more extraordinary in her ignorance than it would have been had she sympathised and known. The question took her breath away, and she had no answer to give.
“If she had told you that she had been married to Charlie Somers that morning; that he was starting for India next day; that whatever her duty to her father and yourself might have been (that’s nonsense; a girl has no duty to her sister), her duty to her husband came first then. If she had told you that at the last moment, Katherine, what would you have done?”
