Chapter XLVI

“How we are made for happiness! how work
Grows play, adversity a winning fight!”

ROBERT BROWNING.

Katherine felt certain, as soon as she saw Bert, that he was keeping something back. He looked older and very much more determined, and there was a restless, anxious expression in his eyes. He got on singularly well, she noticed, with her mother, and her father, though he left his wife to do most of the entertaining, smoked in evident enjoyment of his company. Katherine was anxious that her father should like him, but she was more anxious that he should like her father.

“I have got,” said Mrs. Dalgeny, “to decorate the church for the Harvest Festival to-morrow, and I want some Autumn leaves, and things to hang down and drape well. Suppose you and Katherine go out and get them, Mr. Russell, and meet me at the church. The fields are certain to be wet and Katherine immensely enjoys discomfort, as I know by experience. It makes you feel like an early Christian Martyr, doesn’t it, dear?” she asked her daughter.

“On the contrary,” Katherine replied, “it makes me feel capable of becoming a savage.”

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Dalgeny lightly. “Saints and savages were both very primitive, and could afford to get their feet wet. I shall stay here, and drive to the church later.” She dismissed them with a smile of content. After they had left the room she turned to the Colonel. “Katherine,” she said, “is twenty-five, she will never marry sensibly. This young man is delightful, but certain to be poor. Nevertheless one might do worse, she must marry him.” The Colonel smoked in silence.

“You have a way of talking about these things,” he said at last, “which I don’t like, Louie; and it is no use saying ‘must’ to Katherine.”

“I should never dream of saying it to Katherine,” said his wife, smiling, “I was saying it to you. I told Katherine last night I did not see much in him.” The Colonel was curious.

“What did she say?” he ventured.

“Why—nothing!” said Mrs. Dalgeny, “but a few moments afterwards, she suggested he might stay over Sunday.”

“I wish you weren’t so infernally sly, Louie,” said her husband, angrily. “I don’t want Katherine to marry anybody.” His wife laughed.

“Men never like their daughters to marry,” she said, “and mothers never like them to be old maids. It is very easily explained. You can see the drawbacks of marriage for any woman except your wife, and your wife can see its consolations for any woman but herself. Besides, no woman likes to have an elderly daughter with grown-up critical eyes for ever in the drawing-room.”

“Do you know, Louie,” he said slowly, “sometimes you strike me as being very hard?” Mrs. Dalgeny laughed.

“That is the way sensible people always strike one,” she said; “but I can assure you that it is really only the sentimentalists who are brutal, and I am quite sure men are much more prone to that than women, they call things by such easy names, and throw sunbeams over their past. Sunbeams are much nicer to get on with than remorse.”

“What do you know about remorse, I wonder?” asked her husband in a queer voice.

“I know it is a very uncomfortable thing to have,” said Mrs. Dalgeny, “and also a little absurd. Now I am going to drive to the church. Can I do anything for you in the village?” The Colonel shook his head.

The autumn fields were rough with dew, and the trees gave a light of dusky gold in response to the bright sunshine breaking its way through the river mist. The dampness of the place brought out wonderful tones of crimson and brown, and the woods on the horizon were shaded black and mauve.

“English autumn is more toned down than our Fall,” said Katherine’s companion. “We die in a blaze of madness, but your old English trees drift softly into death with quiet colours. They are too old to make a fuss!”

“Ah! but we understand it is all coming back to us,” said Katherine eagerly. “I like that best; we are content because we know that death is a phase and life a permanence. The faith of generations has made us calm and sure;” her thoughts went back to the surgeon. “Mr. Field must have been sure,” she said, “or he couldn’t have been so brave, only he didn’t _know_ he was sure. Don’t you think, Mr. Russell, that all good people—people, I mean, who have struggled to live up to a standard—are immensely looked after, and unconsciously possessed by the God they think they do not believe in?

“Of course, conscious faith is best, because it is so much simpler, and one can meet things with it so much more possibly, but an unconscious faith seems to me to have a wonderful hold upon unseen powers.”

“Yes,” said Bert, “I guess that God’s belief in us is the bigger of the two, and can keep a hold of us just as long as we don’t fight against it with our character. What we think we know, and what we believe we think, is a precious little part of it all, and fortunately not such a very large part of us.” Katherine caught a branch above her head and broke it short with a turn of her wrist. “My! but you’re strong!” said Bert, admiringly. Katherine flushed.

They had their arms full of leaves, red, brown, and gold, and about them both was the bloom of the fresh, sweet morning. They sat down to rest on a fallen trunk, and Bert Russell turned his bright, dark eyes on her.

“I am going home,” he said; “England has had enough of me.” Katherine put down her armful of leaves, and bent over to sort them.

“I thought you had work here,” she said.

“Why, yes! I have work,” said Bert, thoughtfully, “but I can’t get on! They don’t want me to. I want to press ahead and make the other papers jump, but they don’t seem to want the other papers to jump. They’re quite willing for the whole lot to crawl. Now I didn’t come over here to crawl. Besides, I can’t make enough money here; I am going to be married, and I want some more money pretty quick.”

“Yes,” said Katherine, “marriage is very expensive, isn’t it?” (It was really too cold to sit out in October; she might be strong, but she felt very tired. If he married an American girl, he would have to go out for his walks alone.) “I am so glad,” Katherine said, “so very glad; do you care for her very much?”

“Why, yes,” said Bert, “with all my heart, or I wouldn’t want to marry her.” (He was capable of changing his heart very quickly, Katherine thought.) “You’ll be good to her?” he said gently, “won’t you?”

“I shall not have much opportunity to be good to her if you are to live in America,” Katherine said, a little stiffly. She loved the way his hair grew at the back of his neck, and the queer little way he had of wrinkling up his forehead, as if it helped him to think. She wondered if the American girl noticed these things.

“I have my doubts as to whether I ought to marry her,” he went on; “I am not very well off, you know, and she has a profession of her own which I don’t like asking her to give up.”

“You won’t need to ask her to give it up,” said Katherine in a low voice, “if she cares for you, and she’d love to have you poor so that she could help you.

“She’d have to live a long way from her home,” he continued.

“Nonsense!” said Katherine briskly, “she will make her own home; women are not so incapable as you seem to think! Even if you wanted her to go to a strange country she would probably manage very well.”

“Well—I do want her to go to a different country,” said Bert, watching the way she was trying to arrange her leaves and—failing. “See here,” he said, “let me fix those for you,” and he took them out of her hand Their fingers touched, and involuntarily Katherine gave a little cry.

“I ran a splinter into my finger,” she explained. And then she blushed furiously and hated herself, because it was not true. “Then she’s an English girl?” she said carelessly.

“Yes—she’s an English girl,” said Bert. There was something in his voice that made her turn and look at him. He was wrinkling up his forehead, but his eyes were dancing with fun and tenderness.

“Oh!” she cried, springing to her feet. “How dare you! What do you mean?”

“Is there another splinter in your finger?” he said. “I am a real good hand at taking them out.” He spoke lightly, but he was terribly afraid; he had risked everything, and Katherine’s eyes were blazing. “Katherine,” he said, “oh! Katherine, it’s so much to ask a woman to give up! Do you think she’ll come back with me?” Katherine looked away for a moment; when her eyes met his again the anger had quite gone.

“There—there wasn’t a splinter in my finger,” said Katherine.

Mrs. Dalgeny waited for half-an-hour in the church. Then she got some Virginia Creeper from a cottage near by. It did just as well.

* * * * *

“Do you wish him told?” said the Colonel. They stood together by the fire in the library. He had been very good to her and it had, none of it, been so difficult as she had thought.

“I am not afraid of his knowing,” she said, a little proudly. “It would make no difference.”

“Men don’t look at these things in the same light as women do,” said the Colonel. “But it would be very hard for me and your mother——” he paused a moment. “I could not tell her that I had done it,” he finished gravely, “she would not understand.”

“You think he should know?” said Katherine. The Colonel looked into the fire; it is hard to answer “yes” or “no” to most questions worth asking, and it is very hard to inflict one’s own punishment.

“It seems to me his due,” he said at last.

“Then I am quite sure you will tell him,” said his daughter. There was a long pause; the Colonel walked up and down his room, and bit his grey moustache rather savagely. He came to a stand in front of his daughter.

“Katherine,” he said, “this Russell is a poor man, and I am very well off. You are my only child. Two years ago I offered you an allowance which you would not take. I do not think anything has ever hurt me quite so much. Will you take it now?” The girl hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Thank you,” she said simply, “thank you very much, it will be a great help to us.” The door opened and Bert Russell came in.

“Help,” he said, “who’s going to help us.”

“My father,” said Katherine quietly as she left the room. A few moments later he joined her in the drawing-room. She was playing on the piano, and he came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Why, Katherine!” he said, “my Katherine! you’re crying!”

“No, I’m not,” said Katherine furiously, brushing away the tears from her eyes. “Only—only I was thinking of what you said about temptation, do you remember? You said, ‘sometimes the oughts drop out.’”

“Well—have they?” laughed her lover.

“No,” said Katherine, “only I can see quite well how they might.”

“And you don’t go on treating people as they deserve?” he asked her, his eyes twinkling.

“You can ask me that?” said Katherine. “Oh! Bert, I don’t treat you as you deserve!”

“No!” he said, smiling down at her, “you only treat me the way I’d like to deserve!” Katherine shook her head.

“You deserve more than I can ever give you,” she said, “but I will give you all I can.” Bert slipt his arm about her—and kissed her forehead.

“Do you know,” he said, “I somehow guess it _does_ make a difference after all.”

The Colonel, sitting in his study opposite the picture of his dead wife, had buried his face in his hands. He had loved her, and she had been a very good woman, and yet he had sinned. Now he was face to face with the emptiness of future years—and must for ever carry in his heart “the torment of the difference till he die.”