Маргарет Олифант
Old Mr. Tredgold
CHAPTER XLI
The next morning the new world began frankly, as if it was nothing out of the usual, as if it had already been for years. When Katherine, a little late after her somewhat melancholy vigils, awoke, she heard already the bustle of the houseful of people, so different from the stillness which had been the rule for years. She heard doors opening and shutting, steps moving everywhere, Sir Charles’ voice calling loudly from below, the loud tinkling of Stella’s bell, which rang upstairs near her maid’s room. Katherine’s first instinctive thought was a question whether that maid would look less worried—whether, poor thing, she had dreamt of bags and bandboxes all night. And then there came the little quaver, thrilling the air of a child’s cry; poor little dissipated Job, after his vigil with his father, crying to be awoke so early—the poor little boy who had tried to kick at her with his little naked feet, so white in the dimness of the corridor, on the night before. It was with the strangest sensation that Katherine got hurriedly out of bed, with a startled idea that perhaps her room might be wanted, in which there was no reason. At all events, the house had passed into new hands, and was hers no more.
Hannah came to her presently, pale and holding her breath. She had seen Job fly at the ayah, kicking her with the little feet on which she had just succeeded in forcing a pair of boots. “He said as now he could hurt her, as well as I could understand his talk. Oh! Miss Katherine, and such a little teeny boy, and to do that! But I said as I knew you would never let a servant be kicked in your house.”
“Neither will my sister, Hannah—but they are all tired and strange, and perhaps a little cross,” said Katherine, apologetically. She went downstairs to find the breakfast-table in all the disorder that arises after a large meal—the place at which little Job had been seated next to his father littered by crumbs and other marks of his presence, and the butler hastily bringing in a little tea-pot to a corner for her use.
“Sir Charles, Miss Katherine, he’s gone out; he’s inspecting of the horses in the stables; and my lady has had her breakfast in her room, and it’s little master as has made such a mess of the table.”
“Never mind, Harrison,” said Katherine.
“I should like to say, Miss Katherine,” said Harrison, “as I’ll go, if you please, this day month.”
“Oh, don’t be in a hurry!” she cried. “I have been speaking to Mrs. Simmons. Don’t desert the house in such haste. Wait till you see how things go on.”
“I’d stay with you Miss Katherine, to the last hour of my life; and I don’t know as I couldn’t make up my mind to a medical gentleman’s establishment, though it’s different to what I’ve been used to—but I couldn’t never stop in a place like this.”
“You don’t know in the least what is going to happen here. Please go now, and leave me to my breakfast. I will speak to you later on.”
A woman who is the mistress of her own house is compelled to endure these attacks, but a woman suddenly freed from all the responsibilities of ownership need not, at least, be subject to its drawbacks. Katherine took her small meal with the sensation that it was already the bread of others she was eating, which is always bitter. There had been no account made of her usual place, of any of her habits. Harrison had hastily arranged for her that corner at the lower end of the table, because of the disarray at the other, the napkins flung about, the cloth dabbled and stained. It was her own table no longer. Any philosophic mind will think of this as a very trifling thing, but it was not trifling to Katherine. The sensation of entire disregard, indifference to her comfort, and to everything that was seemly, at once chilled and irritated her; and then she stopped herself in her uncomfortable thoughts with a troubled laugh and the question, was she, indeed, with her strong objection to all this disorder, fitting herself, as Stella said, for the position of maiden aunt? One thing was certain at least, that for the position of dependent she never would be qualified.
It was a mild and bright October day: the greyness of the afternoon had not as yet closed in, the air was full of mid-day sunshine and life. Sir Charles had come in from his inspection of “the offices” and all that was outside. He had come up, with his large step and presence, to the dressing-room in which Stella, wrapped in a quilted dressing-gown and exclaiming at the cold, lay on a sofa beside the fire. She had emerged from her bath and all those cares of the person which precede dressing for the day, and was resting before the final fatigue of putting on her gown. Katherine had been admitted only a few minutes before Sir Charles appeared, and she had made up her mind that at last her communication must be fully made now; though it did not seem very necessary, for they had established themselves with such perfect ease in the house believing it to be hers, that it would scarcely make any difference when they were made aware that it was their own. Katherine’s mind, with a very natural digression, went off into an unconsciously humorous question—what difference, after all, it would have made if the house and the fortune had been hers? They would have taken possession just the same, it was evident, in any case—and she, could she ever have suggested to them to go away. She decided no, with a rueful amusement. She should not have liked Sir Charles as the master of her house, but she would have given in to it. How much better that it should be as it was, and no question on the subject at all!
“I want you to let me tell you now about papa’s will.”
“Poor papa!” said Stella. “I hope he was not very bad. At that age they get blunted, and don’t feel. Oh, spare me as many of the details as you can, please! It makes me wretched to hear of people being ill.”
“I said papa’s will, Stella.”
“Ah!” she cried, “that’s different. Charlie will like to know. He thinks you’ve done nicely for us, Katherine. Of course many things would have to be re-modelled if we stopped here; but in the meantime, while we don’t quite know what we are going to do–”
“I’d sell those old screws,” said Sir Charles, “they’re not fit for a lady to drive. I shouldn’t like to see my wife behind such brutes. If you like to give me carte blanche I’ll see to it—get you something you could take out Stella with, don’t you know!”
“I wish,” said Katherine, with a little impatience, “that you would allow me to speak, if it were only for ten minutes! Stella, do pray give me a little attention; this is not my house, it is yours—everything is yours. Do you hear? When papa died nothing was to be found but the will of ’seventy-one, which was made before you went away. Everybody thought he had changed it, but he had not changed it. You have got everything, Stella, everything! Do you hear? Papa did not leave even a legacy to a servant, he left nothing to me, nothing to his poor brother—everything is yours.”
Sir Charles stood leaning on the mantelpiece, with his back to the fire; a dull red came over his face. “Oh, by Jove!” he said in his moustache. Stella raised herself on her pillows. She folded her quilted dressing-gown, which was Chinese and covered with wavy lines of dragons, over her chest.
“What do you mean by everything?” she said. “You mean a good bit of money, I suppose; you told me so yesterday. As for the house, I don’t much care for the house, Kate. It is rococo, you know; it is in dreadful taste. You can keep it if you like. It could never be of any use to us.”
“It isn’t a bad house,” said Sir Charles. He had begun to walk up and down the room. “By Jove,” he said, “Stella is a cool one, but I’m not so cool. Everything left to her? Do you mean all the money, all old Tredgold’s fortune—all! I say, by Jove, don’t you know. That isn’t fair!”
“I don’t see why it isn’t fair,” said Stella; “I always knew that was what papa meant. He was very fond of me, poor old papa! Wasn’t he, Kate? He used to like me to have everything I wanted: there wasn’t one thing, as fantastic as you please, but he would have let me have it—very different from now. Don’t you remember that yacht—that we made no use of but to run away from here? Poor old man!” Here Stella laughed, which Katherine took for a sign of grace, believing and hoping that it meant the coming of tears. But no tears came. “He must have been dreadfully sorry at the end for standing out as he did, and keeping me out of it,” she said with indignation, “all these years.”
Sir Charles kept walking up and down the room, swearing softly into his moustache. He retained some respect for ladies in this respect, it appeared, for the only imprecation which was audible was a frequent appeal to the father of the Olympian gods. “By Jove!” sometimes “By Jupiter!” he said, and tugged at his moustache as if he would have pulled it out. This was the house in which, bewildered, he had taken all the shillings from his pocket and put them down on the table by way of balancing Mr. Tredgold’s money. And now all Mr. Tredgold’s money was his. He was not cool like Stella; a confused vision of all the glories of this world—horses, race-meetings, cellars of wine, entertainments of all kinds, men circling about him, not looking down upon him as a poor beggar but up at him as no end of a swell, servants to surround him all at once like a new atmosphere. He had expected something of the kind at the time of his marriage, but those dreams had long abandoned him; now they came back with a rush, not dreams any longer. Jove, Jupiter, George (whoever that deity may be) he invoked in turns; his blood took to coursing in his veins, it felt like quicksilver, raising him up, as if he might have floated, spurning with every step the floor on which he trod.
“I who had always been brought up so different!” cried Stella, with a faint whimper in her voice. “That never had been used to it! Oh, what a time I have had, Kate, having to give up things—almost everything I ever wanted—and to do without things, and to be continually thinking could I afford it. Oh, I wonder how papa had the heart! You think I should be grateful, don’t you? But I can’t help remembering that I’ve been kept out of it, just when I wanted it most, all these years–”
She made a pause, but nobody either contradicted or agreed with her. Stella expected either the one or the other. Sir Charles went up and down swearing by Jupiter and thinking in a whirl of all the fine things before him, and Katherine sat at the end of the sofa saying nothing. In sheer self-defence Stella had to begin again.
“And nobody knows what it is beginning a house and all that without any money. I had to part with my diamonds—those last ones, don’t you remember, Kate? which he gave me to make me forget Charlie. Oh, how silly girls are! I shouldn’t be so ready, I can tell you, to run away another time. I should keep my diamonds. And I have not had a decent dress since I went to India—not one. The other ladies got boxes from home, but I never sent to Louise except once, and then she did so bother me about a bill to be paid, as if it were likely I could pay bills when we had no money for ourselves! Tradespeople are so unreasonable about their bills, and so are servants, for that matter, going on about wages. Why, there is Pearson—she waits upon me with a face like a mute at a funeral all because she has not got her last half year’s wages! By the way, I suppose she can have them now? They have got such a pull over us, don’t you know, for they can go away, and when a maid suits you it is such a bore when she wants to go away. I have had such experiences, all through the want of money. And I can’t help feeling, oh how hard of him, when he hadn’t really changed his mind at all, to keep me out of it for those seven years! Seven years is a dreadful piece out of one’s life,” cried Stella, “and to have it made miserable and so different to what one had a right to expect, all for the caprice of an old man! Why did he keep me out of it all these years?” And Stella, now thoroughly excited, sobbed to herself over the privations that were past, from which her father could have saved her at any moment had he pleased.
“You ought to be pleased now at least,” said her husband. “Come, Stella, my little girl, let’s shake hands upon it. We’re awfully lucky, and you shall have a good time now.”
“I think I ought to have a good time, indeed!” cried Stella. “Why, it’s all mine! You never would have had a penny but for me. Who should have the good of it, if not I? And I am sure I deserve it, after all I have had to go through. Pearson, is that you?” she cried. “Bring me my jewel-box. Look here,” she said, taking out a case and disclosing what seemed to Katherine a splendid necklace of diamonds, “that’s what I’ve been driven to wear!” She seized the necklace out of the case and flung it to the other end of the room. The stones swung from her hand, flashing through the air, and fell in a shimmer and sparkle of light upon the carpet. “The odious, false things!” cried Stella. “Paris—out of one of those shops, don’t you know? where everything is marked ‘Imitation.’ Charlie got them for me for about ten pounds. And that is what I had to go to Government House in, and all the balls, and have compliments paid me on my diamonds. ‘Yes, they are supposed to be of very fine water,’ I used to say. I used to laugh at first—it seemed a capital joke; but when you go on wearing odious glass things and have to show them off as diamonds—for seven years!”
Sir Charles paused in his walk, and stooped and picked them up. “Yes,” he said, “I gave ten pounds for them, and we had a lot of fun out of them, and you looked as handsome in them, Stella, as if they had been the best. By Jove! to be imitation, they are deuced good imitation. I don’t think I know the difference, do you?” He placed the glittering thing on Katherine’s knee. He wanted to bring her into the conversation with a clumsy impulse of kindness, but he did not know how to manage it. Then, leaving them there, he continued his walk. He could not keep still in his excitement, and Stella could not keep silence. The mock diamonds made a great show upon Katherine’s black gown.
“Oh, I wish you’d take them away! Give them to somebody—give them to the children to play with. I’d give them to Pearson, but how could she wear a rivière? Fancy my wearing those things and having nothing better! You have no feeling, Kate; you don’t sympathise a bit. And to think that everything might have been quite different, and life been quite happy instead of the nightmare it was! Papa has a great, great deal to answer for,” Stella said.
“If that is all you think about it, I may go away,” said Katherine, “for we shall not agree. You ought to speak very differently of your father, who always was so fond of you, and now he’s given you everything. Poor papa! I am glad he does not know.”
“But he must have known very well,” cried Stella, “how he left me after pretending to be so fond of me. Do you think either Charlie or I would have done such a thing if we had not been deceived? And so was Lady Jane—and everybody. There was not one who did not say he was sure to send for us home, and see what has happened instead. Oh, he may have made up for it now. But do you think that was being really fond of me, Kate, to leave me out in India without a penny for seven years?”
Katherine rose, and the glittering stones, which had only yesterday been Lady Somers’ diamonds, and as such guarded with all the care imaginable—poor Pearson having acquired her perennial look of worry as much from that as anything, having had the charge of them—rattled with a sound like glass, and fell on the floor, where they lay disgraced as Katherine went hurriedly away. And there they were found by Pearson after Lady Somers had finished her toilet and gone downstairs to lunch. Pearson gave a kick at them where they lay—the nasty imitation things that had cost her so many a thought—but then picked them up, with a certain pity, yet awe, as if they might change again into something dangerous in her very hands.
CHAPTER XLII
Katherine had put herself unconsciously in her usual place at the head of the luncheon table before Stella came downstairs. At the other end was Sir Charles with little Job, set up on a pile of cushions beside him.
“Don’t wait for Stella, she’s always late,” said Somers, helping his son from the dish before him; but at this moment Stella, rustling in a coloured dress, came briskly in.
“Oh, I say, Kate, let me have my proper place,” she said; “you can’t sit down with Charlie opposite, it’s not decent. And oh the funny old room! Did you ever see such a rococo house, Charlie, all gilding and ornament? Poor papa could never have anything grand enough according to his views. We must have it all pulled to pieces, I couldn’t live in such a place. Eh? why, Kate, you don’t pretend you like it, you who always made a fuss.”
Katherine had transferred herself to a seat at the side of the table, not without a quick sensation of self-reproach and that inevitable shame upon being thus compelled to take a lower place which no philosophy can get rid of. “I did not think where I was sitting,” she cried, in instinctive apology; and then, “Let the poor house be, at least for the first week, Stella,” she said.
“Oh, that’s all sentiment and nonsense,” cried Lady Somers. “My experience is when you’re going to change a thing, do it directly; or else you just settle down and grow accustomed and think no more of it. For goodness’ sake, Charlie, don’t stuff that child with all the most improper things! He ought to have roast mutton and rice pudding, all the doctors say; and you are ruining his constitution, you know you are. Why isn’t there some roast mutton, William? Oh, Harrison! why can’t you see that there’s some roast mutton or that sort of thing, when you’ve got to feed a little boy.”
“Me don’t like roast mutton,” cried Job, with a whine. “Me dine wid fader; fader give Job nice tings.”
“I’ll look after you, my boy,” said Sir Charles, at one end of the table, while Harrison at the other, with a very solemn bow, discussed his position.
“It is not my place to horder the dinner, my lady; if your ladyship will say what you requires, I will mention it to Mrs. Simmons.”
“It is I who am in fault, I suppose, Stella,” cried Katherine, more angry than she could have imagined possible. “Perhaps you will see Simmons yourself to-morrow.”
“Oh, not I!” cried Stella. “Fancy the bore of ordering dinner with an old-fashioned English cook that would not understand a word one says. You can do it, Charlie. Don’t give the child pâté de foie gras,” she added, with a scream. “Who’s the doctor on the strength of the establishment now, Kate? He’ll have to be called in very soon, I can see, and the sooner Job has a bad liver attack the better, for then it may be possible to get him properly looked after. And I must have an English nurse that understands children, instead of that stupid ayah who gives them whatever they cry for. Don’t you think it’s dreadful training to give them whatever they cry for, Kate? You ought to know about children, living all this while at home and never marrying or anything. You must have gone in for charity or nursing, or Churchy things, having nothing to do. Oh, I wish you would take Job in hand! He minds nobody but his father, and his father stuffs him with everything he oughtn’t to have, and keeps him up half the night. One of these days he’ll have such a liver attack that it will cut him off, Charlie; and then you will have the satisfaction of feeling that it’s you that have killed him, and you will not be able to say I haven’t warned you hundreds of times.”
“We’ve not come to any harm as yet, have we, Job?” said the father, placing clandestinely another objectionable morsel on the child’s plate.
“No, fader. Job not dut off yet,” cried, in his little shrill voice, the unfortunate small boy.
In this babble the rest of the mid-day meal was carried on, Stella’s voice flowing like the principal part of the entertainment, interrupted now and then by a bass note from her husband or a little cry from her child, with a question to a servant and the respectful answer in an aside now and then. Katherine sat quite silent listening, not so much from intention as that there was no room for her to put in a word, and no apparent need for any explanation or intervention. The Somerses took calm possession, unsurprised, undisturbed by any question of right or wrong, of kindness or unkindness. Nor did Katherine blame them; she felt that they would have done exactly the same had the house and all that was in it been hers, and the real circumstances of the case made it more bearable and took away many embarrassments. She went out to drive with Stella in the afternoon, Sir Charles accompanying them that he might see whether the carriage horses were fit for his wife’s use. Stella had been partly covered with Katherine’s garments to make her presentable, and the little crape bonnet perched upon her fuzzy fair hair was happily very becoming, and satisfied her as to her own appearance. “Mourning’s not so very bad, after all,” she said, “especially when you are very fair. You are a little too dark to look nice in it, Kate. I shouldn’t advise you to wear crape long. It isn’t at all necessary; the rule now is crape three months, black six, and then you can go into greys and mauves. Mauve’s a lovely colour. It is just as bright as pink, though it’s mourning; and it suits me down to the ground—I am so fair, don’t you know.”
“These brutes will never do,” said Sir Charles. “Is this the pace you have been going, Miss Kate? Stella will not stand it, that’s clear. Not a likely person to nod along like a hearse or an old dowager, is she?—and cost just as much, the old fat brutes, as a proper turn-out.”
“It’s the same old landau, I declare,” cried Stella, “that we used to cram with people for picnics and dances and things. Mine was the victoria. Have you kept the victoria all the time, Kate? Jervis made it spin along I can tell you. And the little brougham I used to run about in, that took us down to the yacht, don’t you remember, Charlie, that last night; me in my wedding dress, though nobody suspected it—that is, nobody but those that knew. What a lot there were, though,” cried Stella, with a laugh, “that knew!—and what a dreadful bore, Kate, when you would insist upon coming with me, and everybody guessing and wondering how we’d get out of it. We did get out of it capitally, didn’t we, all owing to my presence of mind.”
“All’s well that ends well,” said Sir Charles. “We’ve both had a deuced lot of doubts on that question—between times. Miss Kate, would you mind telling me what kind of a figure it is, this fortune that Stella is supposed to have come into? Hang me if I know; it might be hundreds or it might be thousands. You see I’m a disinterested sort of fellow,” he said, with an uneasy laugh.
“The lawyer said,” Katherine explained, “that it could not be under, but might be considerably over, fifty thousand a year.”
Sir Charles was silent for a moment and grew very red, which showed up his sunburnt brick-red complexion like a sudden dye of crimson. He caught his breath a little, but with an effort at an indifferent tone repeated, “Fifty thousand pounds!”
“A year,” Katherine said.
“Well!” cried Stella, “what are you sitting there for, like a stuck pig, staring at me? Need there have been so much fuss about it if it had been less than that? Papa wasn’t a man to leave a few hundreds, was he? I wonder it’s so little, for my part. By the time you’ve got that old barrack of yours done up, and a tidy little house in town, and all our bills paid, good gracious, it’s nothing at all, fifty thousand a year! I hope it will turn out a great deal more, Kate. I daresay your lawyer is the sort of person to muddle half of it away in expenses and so forth. Who is he? Oh, old Sturgeon that used to come down sometimes. Well, he is not up to date, I am sure. He’ll be keeping the money in dreadful consols or something, instead of making the best of it. You can tell him that I shan’t stand that sort of thing. It shall be made the best of if it is going to belong to me.”
“And what have you, Miss Kate?” said her brother-in-law, “to balance this fine fortune of Stella’s—for it is a fine fortune, and she knows nothing about it, with her chatter.”
“Oh, I know nothing about it; don’t I?” said Stella. “Papa didn’t think so. He said I had a capital head for money, and that I was a chip of the old block, and all that sort of thing. What has Kate got? Oh, she’s got money of her own. I used to envy her so when we were girls. I had a deal more than she had, for papa was always silly about me—dresses and jewels and so forth that I had no business to have at that age; but Kate had money of her own. I could always get plenty from papa, but she had it of her own; don’t you remember, Kate? I always wished to be you; I thought that it was a shame that you should have all that left to you and me nothing. And if you come to that, so it was, for mamma was my mother as well as Kate’s, and she had no business to leave her money to one of us and take no notice of me.”
“We are quits now, at all events, Stella,” said Katherine, with the best sort of a smile which she could call up on her face.
“Quits! I don’t think so at all,” cried Stella, “for you have had it and I have been kept out of it for years and years. Quits, indeed; no, I’m sure I don’t think so. I have always envied you for having mamma’s money since I was twelve years old. I don’t deny I had more from papa; but then it wasn’t mine. And now I have everything from papa, which is the least he could do, having kept me out of it for so long; but not a penny from my mother, which isn’t justice, seeing I am quite as much her child as you.”
“Shut up, Stella!” said Sir Charles, in his moustache.
“Why should I shut up? It’s quite true that Katherine has had it since she was fifteen; that’s—let me see—fourteen years, nearly the half of her life, and no expenses to speak of. There must be thousands and thousands in the bank, and so little to do with it. She’s richer than we are, when all is said.”
“Stella, you must remember,” cried Katherine excitedly in spite of herself, “that the money in the bank was always–”
“Oh, I knew you would say that,” cried Stella, in an aggrieved tone; “you’ve lent it to me, haven’t you? Though not so very much of it, and of course you will get it back. Oh, don’t be afraid, you will get it back! It will be put among the other bills, and it will be paid with the rest. I would rather be in debt to Louise or any one than to a sister who is always thinking about what she has lent me. And it is not so very much, either; you used to dole it out to me a hundred at a time, or even fifty at a time, as if it were a great favour, while all the time you were enjoying papa’s money, which by law was mine. I don’t think very much of favours like that.”
“I hope, Miss Tredgold,” said Sir Charles, lifting his hat, “that after this very great injustice, as it seems to me, you will at least make your home with us, and see if—if we can’t come to any arrangement. I suppose it’s true that ladies alone don’t want very much, not like a family—or—or two careless spendthrift sort of people like Stella and me, but–”
“Well, of course,” cried Stella, “I hope, Kate, you’ll pay us a visit when—whenever you like, in short. I don’t say make your home with us, as Charlie says, for I know you wouldn’t like it, and it’s a mistake, I think, for relations to live together. You know yourself, it never works. Charlie, do hold your tongue and let me speak. I know all about it a great deal better than you do. To have us to fall back upon when she wants it, to be able to write and say, take me in—which, of course, I should always do if it were possible—that is the thing that would suit Kate. Of course you will have rooms of your own somewhere. I shouldn’t advise a house, for that is such a bother with servants and things, and runs away with such a lot of money, but– Oh, I declare, there is the Midge, with the two old cats! Shall we have to stop and speak if they see us? I am not going to do that. I heard of papa’s death only yesterday, and I am not fit to speak to anybody as yet,” she cried, pulling over her face the crape veil which depended from her bonnet behind. And the two old ladies in the Midge were much impressed by the spectacle of Stella driving out with her husband and her sister, and covered with a crape veil, on the day after her return. “Poor thing,” they said, “Katherine has made her come out to take the air; but she has a great deal of feeling, and it has been a great shock to her. Did you see how she was covered with that great veil? Stella was a little thing that I never quite approved of, but she had a feeling heart.”
Katherine was a little sick at heart with all the talk, with Stella’s rattle running through everything, with the fulfilment of all her fears, and the small ground for hope of any nobler thoughts. She was quite decided never under any circumstances to take anything from her sister. That from the first moment had been impossible. She had seen the whole position very clearly, and made up her mind without a doubt or hesitation. She was herself perfectly well provided for, she had said to herself, she had no reason to complain; and she had known all along how Stella would take it, exactly as she did, and all that would follow. But a thing seldom happens exactly as you believe it will happen; and the extreme ease with which this revolution had taken place, the absence of excitement, of surprise, even of exultation, had the most curious effect upon her. She was confounded by Stella’s calm, and yet she knew that Stella would be calm. Nothing could be more like Stella than her conviction that she herself, instead of being extraordinarily favoured, was on the whole rather an injured person when all was said and done. The whole of this had been in Katherine’s anticipations of the crisis. And yet she was as bitterly disappointed as if she had not known Stella, and as if her sister had been her ideal, and she had thought her capable of nothing that was not lofty and noble. A visionary has always that hope in her heart. It is always possible that in any new emergency a spirit nobler and better than of old may be brought out.
