odd was to take a walk in the bois with katherine the next morning, and he found her waiting for him in hat and coat and furs, a delightfully smart and wintry little figure. katherine never failed in elegance, in well-groomed finish—her low-heeled little boots, her irreproachable snowy gloves, bore the same unmistakable stamp of the cachet that costs, that is not to be procured ready made. odd, as a rich man, had given very little thought to the power of money, and little thought to katherine’s garments except as charmingly characteristic symbols of good taste; but to-day his eye noted the black fur that fell about her shoulders and trailed lustrous ends to her very feet, more for its richness than its becomingness.
her bright though slightly grave smile failed to restore him to his usual attitude of bon camaraderie. he smiled and kissed her, but he was conscious of underlying soreness, conscious, too, that he might lose his temper with katherine; he had never lost it with alicia. katherine’s very superiority made it imperative to have things out with her. kindly resignation was an impossibility. he realized that not to admire katherine would make life with her intolerable. she would immediately perceive reservations and she would revolt against them. he wondered whether he should be the one to broach the subject of hilda’s ill-treatment, and was amazed at a certain embarrassed shrinking, as from a feeling too deep for words, that kept him silent as they walked along, taking a short cut to the place de l’etoile, where the arc stood in almost cardboard clearness on the pale cold sky. it was katherine who spoke—
“hilda told me of your kindness yesterday. it touched her very much.”
in some subtle way it irritated odd to hear katherine vouch for hilda’s feeling.
“and hilda told you that i had been admitted into the mystery of the archinard family?” his voice was even enough, but it held a certain keenness that katherine was quick to recognize.
“you don’t think their mystery creditable, do you? nor do i, peter. but mamma knows nothing of it, nor papa; and i have tried to dissuade hilda from the first.”
“my dear katherine, the child has worked like a galley-slave for you all! your necessities were more potent facts than your dissuasions, i fancy!”
katherine gave a look at the fine severity of the profile beside her. she felt herself arraigned, and her impulse was towards rebellion. however, her voice was gentle, submissive even, as she answered him—
“i know it must look badly to you—cruel even. but, peter, don’t you know—you do know—how things grow around one? one can hardly tell where the definite wrongdoing comes in, or rather the definite submission to a wrong situation.” this was so true, that katherine felt immediately the mollified quality of his voice as he answered—
“i know. i know submission was forced upon you, no doubt. but i had rather you had not submitted when once the situation grew definite. and i wish, katherine, that you had helped her in making the situation easier. granting that you could give her no material aid—granting that her faculty is good luck—still the actual burden might have been lightened.”
odd paused; he could not say his thoughts outright—tell her that the comparative luxury of her life and her mother’s was outrageous, shocking to him now that he understood its source.
“it is part of hilda’s good luck that her pleasures are not costly, or rather that she can herself defray their cost,” said katherine quietly. “she has always lived in her art—seemed to care for nothing else. my life would indeed have been dreadful had i not accepted the interests that came into it. i have always felt, too, that in following the natural bent of my own character, i was laying foundations that might some day repay hilda for everything. if she has friends—a public—it is owing to me. it was i who persuaded her to come to london last spring. i, therefore, who assured her future, in a sense, for there allan hope fell in love with her. i have felt that i have been doing my duty, in my own far less conventionally fine way, but doing it nevertheless. i make a circle for mamma; i brighten her life and my own and hilda’s, as far as she will let me. certain tools are necessary—hilda needs brushes and canvases and studios; i, a few gowns, a few cabs, and a supply of neat boots and gloves. still the contrast is uncomplimentary to me, i own; but when hilda proposed this work of hers, i entreated her to give up the idea—i said we would all starve together rather. she insisted, and how can i interfere?”
“i can understand, katherine, that everything you say is most convincing to yourself; i see the perfect honesty of your own point of view. but, my dear girl, it is slightly sophistical honesty. hilda denies herself the commonest comforts of life, not only to give you the luxuries, but because her high sense of honor rebels against spending on herself money that is owed to others. don’t misunderstand me; i don’t ask any such perhaps overstrained sense of responsibility from you. you have, no doubt, been fully justified in living your own life; but could it not have been lived with a little less elegance? i am sure that you would be welcomed everywhere, katherine, with even fewer gowns and fewer gloves.”
katherine flushed lightly; her flushes were never deep, and always becoming. it certainly cut her now to hear his almost unconscious implication—that from her he expected a less perfect sense of honor than from her sister. she swallowed a certain wrathful mortification that welled up, and answered with some apparent cheerfulness—
“you don’t know your world, peter, if you fancy that even katherine archinard would be welcome in darned and dirty gloves!”
odd walked on silently.
“and might she not be forced into taking some girlish distraction?” he said presently. “it came out yesterday, with that astounding air of excusing herself she has, that she reads to her mother in the evening! could not you do that, katherine, and let hilda profit now and then by the entourage you have created for her?”
katherine’s flush deepened.
“mamma doesn’t care for my reading, and hilda won’t go out; she goes to bed too early.”
“and then,” odd continued, ignoring her comment in a way most irritating to katherine’s smarting susceptibility, “you might have gone with her now and again to these houses where she teaches. you would have stood for protection. you would have seen for yourself if, in this drudgery, there lurked any unpleasantness, any danger. a girl of her extreme beauty is—exposed to insult.”
katherine gave him a stare of frank astonishment.
“oh, you must not give way to unpleasant romancing of that sort! things like that only happen in novels of the silliest sort—even to beauties! and hilda would have told me. she tells me everything. really, peter, she must have given you a wrong impression; she enjoys her life!”
“so she tried to convince me,” said odd, with a good deal of sharpness; “there was no hint of complaint, regret, reproach, in hilda’s recountal; don’t imagine it, katherine.”
katherine was telling herself that never in all her life had she experienced so many rebuffs. she contemplated her own good temper with some amazement; she also wondered how long it would last. by this time they were half-way down the avenue du bois; the day was fine and clear, and the wintry trees were sharply definite against the sky.
“i have never even seen her in a well-made gown,” said odd.
“hilda scorns the fashion-plate garment, as i do. we are both original in that respect.”
“your originality takes different forms.”
“because it must adapt itself to different conditions, peter. i won’t be scolded about my dresses. men like you imagine that, because a woman looks well, she must spend a lot. it isn’t so with me. my dresses last forever, and, to go into details, hilda by no means clothes me. papa has money—now and then. even hilda could not support the family, and her money mainly goes for mamma’s books and oysters and hot-house grapes. if she will not spend it on herself, and if, now and then, i accept some of it, i cannot consent to feel unduly humiliated.”
there was a decisiveness in katherine’s tone that warned peter to self-control. indeed the situation had been created for her. she had owned up frankly to her distaste for it, her realization of its wrong.
“i am not going to ask undue humiliation of you, my dear katherine. don’t think me such a priggish brute; but i am going to ask you to help me to put an end to this.” katherine’s smiles had returned.
“allan hope will.”
peter walked on, looking gloomy.
“you won’t realize that hilda’s life is the one that gives her the greatest enjoyment. i have always envied hilda till you came; and even now”—katherine’s smile was playful—“allan hope is very nice! take patience, peter, till wednesday.”
“yes; we must wait.”
“i have waited for so long! hilda could not have minded what you call the ‘drudgery.’ she had only to lift her finger to end it.”
“hilda would not be the girl to lift her finger.”
“you appreciate my hilda, peter; i am glad.” katherine gave his abstracted countenance another of her bright contemplative glances. there was nothing sly in katherine’s glances, and yet underlying this one was a world of kindly, though very keen analysis; disappointment, rebellion, and level-headed tolerance. this was decidedly not the man to be fitted to her frame. he could not be moulded to a clever woman’s liking, for all his indefiniteness. on certain points of the conduct of life, katherine felt that she would meet an opposition sharply definite. katherine understood and was perfectly tolerant of criticism, but she did not like it; nor did she like being put in the wrong. that peter now considered her very much in the wrong was evident. she was also aware that the sophistry of her explanation had deceived herself even less than it had deceived him. that hilda spent her life in drudgery, and that she spent hers in pleasure-seeking, were facts most palpable to katherine’s very impartial vision. she knew she was wrong, and she knew that only frank avowal would meet peter’s severity and touch his tenderness and humor. if she heaped shame on her own head, he would be the first to cry out against the injustice.
yet katherine hesitated to own herself wrong. she was not sure that she cared to place her lover in the sheltering and leading attitude of the love in the “love and life.” the meek, trembling look of life had always irritated her in the picture. katherine felt herself quite strong enough to stand alone, and felt that she would like to lead in all things. it was with a deep inner sense of humiliation that she said—
“please don’t be cross with me, peter. please don’t scold me. i have been naughty—far naughtier than i dreamed of—you have made me realize it, though you are not quite just. but you must comfort me for my own misdoings.”
as katherine went on she felt an artistic impulsiveness, almost real, and which sounded so real that peter met the sweet pleading of her eyes with a start of self-disgust.
peter was very tender-hearted, very sympathetic, very prone to self-doubt. katherine’s look made him feel a very prig of pompous righteousness.
“why, katherine!” he said, pausing in his walk. “my dear katherine! as if i could not appreciate the slow growth of necessity! i only hope you may never have to comfort me for far worse sins!”
this was satisfactory. but katherine’s pride still squirmed.
odd went to meet hilda on thursday, saturday, monday, and tuesday. the distances were always great, and he insisted on cabs for the return trip. palamon must be tired, even if hilda were not. he was too old for such journeyings; and hilda had smilingly to submit. wednesday would end it all definitely; peter thought that he saw the end with unmixed satisfaction, and yet when allan hope walked into his rooms early on wednesday morning, this perseus of hilda’s womanhood gave the perseus of her childhood a really unpleasant turn of the blood. there was something irritating in allan hope’s absolute fitness for the r?le, emphasizing, as it did, peter’s own unfitness, his forty years, and his desultory life.
active energy, the go-ahead perseverance that knows no doubts, the honest and loyal convictions which were all arranged for him from his cradle, and which he would bequeath to his children unaltered, all things that make for order and well-being, looked at one from lord allan’s clear, light eyes. odd suddenly felt himself to be an uncertain cumberer of the earth; failure personified beside the other’s air of inevitable success. he was fond of hope and hope fond of him, and they talked as old friends talk, with the intimacy that time brings; an intimacy far removed from the strong knittings of sympathy that an hour may accomplish; for, though odd understood allan very well, allan did not muddle his direct views of things by a comprehension that implied condonation. he thought it rather a pity that odd had not made more of his life. odd’s books weren’t much good that he could see; better do something than write about the things other men have done. odd felt that allan was probably quite right. they hardly spoke of hilda, but in hope’s congratulations on peter’s engagement there was a ring of heartfelt brotherly warmth that implied much, and left peter in a gloomy rage with himself for feeling miserable. peter had not analyzed the darks and glooms of the last few days.
growth does not admit of much self-contemplation. one wakes suddenly to the accomplished change. if peter was conscious of developments, he defined them as morbid enlargements of that self-doubt which would naturally thrill under the stress of new responsibilities.
only from the force of newly formed habit did he go to the rue poulletier that afternoon, hardly expecting to meet hilda. but hilda had, as yet, not interrupted her usual avocations. she emerged from the gloomy portals of one of the old dismantled-looking h?tels that line the rue poulletier with a certain dignity, and she looked toward the corner where he stood with a confident glance. it was the second time he had met her there, twice in the rue d’assas too.
“it is so kind of you,” she said, as she joined him and they turned into the quai; “only you mustn’t think that you must, you know.”
“may i think that i must? give me the assurance of necessity. i am always a little afraid of seeming officious.”
hilda smiled round at him.
“who is fishing? you know i love to have you come. you can’t think how i look forward to it.” she was walking beside him along the quai. the unobtrusive squareness of the “doric little morgue” was on their left, as they faced the keen wind and the dying sunset. notre dame stood gray upon a chilly evening sky of palest yellow. “i know now that i was lonely.”
“that implies the kindest compliment.”
“more than implies, i hope.”
“you really like to have me come?”
“you know i do. i am only afraid that you will rob yourself—of other things for me.”
the candor of her eyes was childlike.
“my little friend.” odd felt that he could not quite trust himself, and took refuge in the convenient assertion.
the cold, clear wind blew against their faces; it ruffled the water, and the gray waves showed sharp steely lights. the leafless trees made an arabesque of tracery on the river and the sky. hilda looked up at the kind, melancholy face beside her, a faint touch of cynicism in her sad smile; but the cynicism was all for herself, and it was not excessive. she accepted this renaissance gratefully, though the disillusions of the past were unforgettable.
“tell me, hilda, that you will be my friend whatever happens—to you or to me.”
“i have always been your friend, have i not?”
“have you, hilda, always?”
“i am dully faithful.” hilda’s smile was a little baffling; it gave no warrant for the sudden quickening of the breath that he had experienced more than once of late.
“i feel as if i had found you, hilda.”
“did you look for me, then?”
the smile was now decidedly baffling and yet very sweet.
“you know,” she added, “i liked you from that first moment when you fished me out of the river. it seems that you are fated to act always the chivalrous part toward me.”
“i would ask no better fate. hilda, you have seen allan hope? not yet?”
“no; not yet.” hilda’s face grew serious. “he is coming to tea this afternoon.”
“but you must be there.”
“yes, i suppose i must.” this affectation of girlish indifference seemed to odd more significant than noticeable shyness.
“we must take a cab,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
“oh, it makes no difference. cabs, you see, are never reckoned with in my arrivals. i am warranted to be late.”
“but you must not be late.”
“but if i want to?” there was certainly a touch of roguery in her eyes.
“if you want to and if i want you to, it shows that you are cruel and i conscienceless. here is a cab. away with you, hilda. au revoir.”
“aren’t you coming too?” asked hilda, pausing in the act of lifting palamon.
“not to-day; i can’t.” odd knew that he was cowardly. “i shall see you to-morrow? i suppose not.”
“why, yes, if you come to the boulevard st. germain.” hilda had deposited palamon on the floor of the cab and still stood by the open door looking rather dismayed.
“really!”
“i shall go there.”
“i too, then. remember our vow of friendship, hilda. i wish you everything that is good and happy.”
there was seemingly a slightly hurt look on hilda’s face as she drove away. in spite of the vow, peter feared that this was the last of hilda, of even this rather shadowy second edition of friendship.
he had done his duty; to hurt oneself badly seems a surety of having done one’s duty thoroughly.
