odd, as usual, found katherine in the drawing-room when he called next morning. the captain and mrs. archinard had assumed almost the aspect of illusions of late; for the regularity of his daily routine—the morning spent with katherine, and the afternoon with hilda—excluded the hours of their appearance, and odd was rather glad of the discovered immunity.
katherine was reading beside the fire, one slim sole tilted towards the blaze, and she looked round at odd as he came in, without moving. odd’s face wore a curiously strained expression, and, under it, seemed thinner, older than usual. he looked even haggard, katherine thought. she liked his thin face. it satisfied perfectly her sense of fitness, as odd did indeed. it offered no stupidities, no pretences of any kind for mockery to fasten on. the clever feminine eye is quick to remark the subtlest signs of fatuity or complacency. katherine’s eye was very clever, and this morning, in looking at odd, she was conscious of a little inner sigh. katherine had asked herself more than once of late whether a husband, not only too superior for success, but morally her superior, might not make life a little wearing. some such thought crossed her mind now as she met his eyes, and she realized that through allan hope’s discomfiture she herself was as wrongly placed as ever, and hilda’s drudgery as binding.
indeed, several thoughts mingled with that general sense of malaise.
one was that allan hope’s smooth, handsome face was rather fatuous; the face that knows no doubts is in danger of seeming fatuous to a katherine.
another thought held a keen conjecture on peter’s haggard looks.
she put out her hand to him, and, stooping over her, he kissed her with more tenderness than he always showed. their engagement had left almost untouched the easy unsentimental attitude of earlier days.
“well,” he said, and katherine understood and resented somewhat the quick attack of the absorbing subject. she shook her head.
“bad news, peter. bad and very unexpected.”
odd stood upright and looked at her.
“bad!” he repeated.
“she refused him,” katherine said tersely, and her glance turned once more from the fire to peter’s face. he looked at her silently.
“she is a foolish baby,” added katherine.
“she refused him—definitely?”
“quite. she had to face the music last night, of course. mamma and papa were rather—shabby—let us say, in their disinterested disappointment.” odd flushed a little at the cool cynicism of katherine’s tone. “she told me, when i removed her from the battlefield, that she doesn’t love him and never will. so, of course, from every high and mighty point of view she is right, quite right.”
katherine’s eyes returned contemplatively to the fire. odd was still silent.
“she ought to love him, of course; that is where she is so foolish. i am afraid she has ruined her life. i love you, peter, and he is every bit as good-looking as you are.” katherine glanced at him with a sad and whimsical smile. peter, certainly, was looking rather dazed. he stooped once more and kissed her.
“thank you for loving me, katherine.”
“you are welcome. it is a pity, isn’t it?”
“yes, it is”—peter seated himself on the sofa, where allan had sat the night before—“an awful pity,” he added. “i am astonished. i thought she cared for him.”
“so did i.”
“she cares for some one else, perhaps.” odd locked his hands behind his head, and he too stared at the fire.
“there is no one else she could care for. i know hilda’s outlook too well.”
“and she refused him,” he repeated musingly.
“really, peter, that sounds a little dull—not like you.” katherine smiled at him.
“i feel dulled. i am awfully sorry. it would have been so satisfactory. and what’s to be done now?”
“that is for you to suggest, peter. my power over hilda is very limited. you may have more influence.”
“she might come and live with us.”
“that would be very nice,” katherine assented, “and it is very dear of you to suggest it.”
peter was conscious of sudden terrors that prompted him to add with self-scorn—
“what would your mother do?”
“without her? i don’t know.”
“of course,” peter hastened to add, “as far as money goes, you know; you understand, dear, that your mother shall want nothing. but to rob her of the companionship of both daughters?” peter rose and walked to the window. it needed some heroism, he thought, to put aside the idea of hilda living with them; he tried to pride himself on the renunciation, while under the poor crust of self-approbation lurked jibing depths of consciousness. heroism would not lie in renunciation, but in living with her. the cowardice of his own retreat left him horribly shaken.
katherine watched him from her chair, calmly.
“but hilda’s work must cease at once,” he said presently, finding a certain relief in decisive measures. “she won’t show any false pride, i hope, about allowing me to put an end to it.”
“it would be like her,” said katherine, sliding a sympathetic gloom of voice over the hard reality of her conclusions; conclusions half angry, half sarcastic. peter was dull after all. katherine felt alarmed, humiliated, and amused, but she steeled herself inwardly to a calm contemplation of facts. she joined him at the window. “what a burden you have taken on your poor shoulders, peter.” peter immediately put his arm around her waist, and, though katherine felt a deeper humiliation, she saw that alarm was needless; a proof of peter’s superiority, a proof, too, of his stupidity; as her own most original and clever superiority was proved by the fact of her calm under humiliation. could she accept that humiliation as the bitter drop in the cup of good things peter had to offer her? katherine asked herself the question; it was answered by another. just how far did the humiliation go? peter’s infidelity might be mere shallow passion, passagère; the fine part might be to feign blindness and help him out of it. attendons summed up katherine’s mental attitude at the moment.
“don’t talk to me of burdens, dear katherine,” said peter. “don’t try to spoil my humble little pleasure. if i can make you and yours happier, what more can i ask?” he looked at her with kind, tired eyes.
“i won’t thwart you, but hilda will.”
“hilda will find it difficult when we are married. that must be soon, katherine.”
katherine looked pensively out of the window.
“we will see,” she replied, with a pretty evasiveness.
it was fine and cold as odd walked down the boulevard st. germain that afternoon. he walked at a tremendous pace, for human nature hopes to cheat thought by physical effort. indeed, peter did not think much, and was convinced that his mind was a comparatively happy blank as he paused before the tall house where hilda was pursuing her avocations. if he made any definite reflections while he walked up and down between the doorway and the next corner, they were on his last few conversations with hilda; and then on rather abstract points merely. he had drawn the child out. he had penetrated the reserved mind that acquired for enjoyment, not for display. he had found out that hilda knew italian literature, from dante to leopardi, almost as well as he himself did, and loved it just as well. the fiction of russia and scandinavia was deeply appreciated by her, and the essayists of france. her tastes were as delicately discriminative as katherine’s, but lacked that metallic assurance of which lately peter had become rather uncomfortably aware. as for the english tongue, from the old meeting-ground of chaucer they could range with delightful sympathy to stevenson’s sweet radiance.
peter thought quite intently of this literary survey and evaded any trespassing beyond its limits. his reticence was not put to a prolonged test. hilda met him before half-a-dozen trips to the corner were accomplished. she showed no signs of conscious guilt, though peter was not sure that she was not a “foolish baby.”
“let us walk,” she said, “it is such a lovely day.”
“we will walk at least till the sun goes. we will just have time to catch the sunset on the seine.”
“yes; what a lovely day! i wish i were ten, with short skirts, and a hoop, that i could run and roll.”
“you would like a bicycle ride. come to-morrow with katherine and me.”
“i can’t. don’t think me a prig, but my model is due and i am finishing my picture. thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good.”
“if palamon is tired i will carry him, hilda.”
“oh, he isn’t tired. see how he pulls at his cord. the sunlight is getting into his veins. what delicious air.”
“the sunlight is getting into your veins too, hilda. you are looking a little as you should look.”
hilda did not ask him how she should look. it was an original characteristic of hilda’s that she did not seem at all anxious to talk about herself, and odd continued, looking down at her profile—
“that’s what you ought to have—sunlight. you are a little white flower that has grown in a shadow.” hilda did not glance up at him; she smiled rather distantly.
“what a sad simile!”
“is it a true one, hilda?”
“i don’t think so. i never thought of myself in that sentimental light. i suppose to friendly eyes every life has a certain pathos.”
“no; some lives are too evidently and merely flaunting in the sunlight for even friendly eyes to poetize—to sentimentalize, as you rather unkindly said.”
“sunlight is poetic, too.”
“success and selfishness, and all the commonplaces that make up a happy life, are not poetic.”
“that is rather morbid, you know—décadent.”
“i don’t imply a fondness for illness and wrongness. rather the contrary. it is a very beautiful rightness that keeps in the shade to give others the sunshine.”
hilda’s eyes were downcast, and in her look a certain pale reserve that implied no liking for these personalities—personalities that glanced from her to others, as odd realized.
he paused, and it was only after quite a little silence that hilda said, with all her gentle quiet—
“you must not imagine that i am unhappy, or that my life has been an unhappy life. it is very good of you to trouble about it, but i can’t claim the rather self-righteously heroic r?le you give me. i think it is others who live in the shadow. i think that any work, however feebly done, is a happy thing. i find so much pleasure in things other people don’t care about.”
“a very nicely delivered little snub, hilda. you couldn’t have told me to mind my own business more kindly.” odd’s humorous look met her glance of astonished self-reproach. he hastened on, “will you try to find pleasure in a thing most girls do care for? will you go to the meltons’ dance on monday? katherine told me i must go, this morning, and i said i would try to persuade you.”
“i didn’t mean to snub you.”
“very well; convince me of it by saying you will come to the dance.”
the girlish pleasure of her face was evident.
“do you really want me to?”
“it would make me very happy.”
“it is against my rules, you know. i can’t get up at six and go out in the evening besides. but i will make an exception for this once, to show you i wasn’t snubbing you! and, besides, i should love to.” the gayety of her look suddenly fell to hesitation. “only i am afraid i can’t. i remember i haven’t any dress.”
“any dress will do, hilda.”
“but i haven’t any dress. the gray silk is impossible.”
peter’s mind made a most unmasculine excursion into the position.
“but you were in london last year. you went to court. you must have had dresses.”
“yes, but i gave them to katherine when i came back. i had no need for them. her own wore out, and mine fit her very well—a little too long and narrow, but that was easily altered. perhaps the white satin would do, if it wasn’t cut at the bottom; it could be let down again, if it was only turned up. it is trimmed with mousseline de soie, and the flounce would hide the line.”
peter stared at her look of thoughtful perplexity; he found it horribly touching. “it might do.”
“it must do. if it doesn’t, another of katherine’s can be metamorphosized.”
“and you will dance with me? i love dancing, and i don’t know many people. of course katherine will see that i am not neglected, but i should like to depend on you; and if i am left sitting alone in a corner, i shall beckon to you. will you be responsible for me?” her smiling eyes met the badly controlled emotion of his look.
“hilda, you are quite frivolous.” terms of reckless endearment were on his lips; he hardly knew how he kept them down. “how shall i man?uvre that you be left sitting alone in corners? remember that if the miracle occurs i shall come, whether you beckon or no.”
