“I am much flattered,” she said coldly.
“You will not be, when I have finished, I fear,” said Crowdie, with quick tact. “Please, Miss Lauderdale, I don’t want you to sit to me as a matter of duty, because your father is good enough to ask you. That isn’t it, at all. Please understand. It’s for Hester, you know. She’s such a friend of yours, and you’re such a friend of hers, and I want to surprise her with a Christmas present, and there’s nothing she’d like so much as a picture of you. I don’t say anything about the pleasure it will be to me to paint you — it’s just for her. Will you?”
“Of course I will,” answered Katharine, her brow clearing and her tone changing.
She had not looked at him while he was speaking, and she was struck, as she had often been, by the exquisite beauty of his voice when he spoke familiarly and softly. It was like his eyes, smooth, rich and almost woman-like.
“And when will you come?” he asked. “To-morrow? Next day? Would eleven o’clock suit you?”
“To-morrow, if you like,” answered the young girl. “Eleven will do perfectly.”
“Will you come too, Mrs. Lauderdale?” Crowdie asked, without changing his manner.
“Yes — that is — not to-morrow. I’ll come one of these days and see how you are getting on. It’s a long time since I’ve seen you at work, and I should enjoy it ever so much. But I should rather come when it’s well begun. I shall learn more.”
“I’m afraid you won’t learn much from me, Mrs. Lauderdale. It’s very different work from miniature — and I have no rule. It seems to me that the longer I paint the more hopeless all rules are. Ten years ago, when I was working in Paris, I used to believe in canons of art, and fixed principles, and methods, and all that sort of thing. But I can’t any more. I do it anyhow, just as it seems to come — with anything — with a stump, a brush, a rag, hands, fingers, anything. I should not be surprised to find myself drawing with my elbow and painting with the back of my head! No, really — I sometimes think the back of my head would be a very good brush to do fur with. Any way — only to get at the real thing.”
“I once saw a painter who had no arms,” said the old gentleman. “It was in Paris, and he held the brushes with his toes. There is an idiot in the asylum now, who likes nothing better than to pull his shoes off and tie knots in a rope with his feet all day long.”
“He is probably one of us,” suggested Crowdie. “We artists are all half-witted. Give him a brush and see whether he has any talent for painting with his toes.”
“That’s an idea,” answered the philanthropist, thoughtfully. “Transference of manual skill from hands to feet,” he continued in a low, dreamy voice, thinking aloud. “Abnormal connections of nerves with next adjoining brain centres — yes — there might be something in it — yes — yes—”
The old gentleman had theories of his own about nerves and brain centres. He had never even studied anatomy, but he speculated in the wildest manner upon the probability of impossible cases of nerve derangement and imperfect development, and had long believed himself an authority on the subject.
The dinner was quite as short as most modern meals. Old Mr. Lauderdale and Crowdie smoked, and Alexander Junior, who despised such weaknesses, stayed in the dining-room with them. Neither Mrs. Lauderdale nor Katharine would have objected to smoking in the library, but Alexander’s inflexible conservatism abhorred such a practice.
“I can’t tell why it is,” said Katharine, when she was alone with her mother, “but that man is positively repulsive to me. It must be something besides his ugliness, and even that ought to be redeemed by his eyes and that beautiful voice of his. But it’s not. There’s something about him—” She stopped, in the sheer impossibility of expressing her meaning.
Her mother said nothing in answer, but looked at her with calm and quiet eyes, rather thoughtfully.
“Is it very foolish of me, mother? Don’t you notice something, too, when he’s near you?”
“Yes. He’s like a poisonous flower.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. That and — the title of Tennyson’s poem, what is it? Oh— ‘A Vision of Sin’ — don’t you know?”
“Poor Crowdie!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, laughing a little, but still looking at Katharine.
“I wonder what induced Hester to marry him.”
“He fascinated her. Besides, she’s very fond of music, and so is he, and he sang to her and she played for him. It seems to have succeeded very well. I believe they are perfectly happy.”
“Oh, perfectly. At least, Hester always says so. But did you ever notice — sometimes, without any special reason, she looks at him so anxiously? Just as though she expected something to happen to him, or that he should do something queer. It may be my imagination.”
“I never noticed it. She’s tremendously in love with him. That may account for it.”
“Well — if she’s happy—” Katharine did not finish the sentence. “He does stare dreadfully, though,” she resumed a moment later. “But I suppose all artists do that. They are always looking at one’s features. You don’t, though.”
“I? I’m always looking at people’s faces and trying to see how I could paint them best. But I don’t stare. People don’t like it, and it isn’t necessary. Crowdie is vain. He has beautiful eyes and he wants every one to notice them.”
“If that’s it, at all events he has the sense to be vain of his best point,” said Katharine. “He’s not an artist for nothing. And he’s certainly very clever in all sorts of ways.”
“He didn’t say anything particularly clever at dinner, I thought. By the bye, was the dinner good? Your father didn’t tell me Crowdie was coming.”
“Oh, yes; it did very well,” answered Katharine, in a reassuring tone. “At least, I didn’t notice what we had. He always takes away my appetite. I shall go and steal something when he’s gone. Let’s sit up late, mother — just you and I — after papa has gone to bed, and we’ll light a little wee fire, and have a tiny bit of supper, and make ourselves comfortable, and abuse Mr. Crowdie just as much as we like. Won’t that be nice? Do!”
“Well — we’ll see how late he stays. It’s only a quarter past nine yet. Have you got a book, child? I am going to read that article about wet paintings on pottery — I’ve had it there ever so long, and the men won’t come back for half an hour at least.”
Katharine found something to read, after handing her mother the review from the table.
“Perhaps reading a little will take away the bad taste of Crowdie,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, with a laugh, as she settled herself in the corner of the sofa.
“I wish something would,” answered Katharine, seating herself in a deep chair, and opening her book.
But she found it hard to fix her attention, and the book was a dull one, or seemed so, as the best books do when the mind is drawn and stretched in one direction. Her thoughts went back to the twilight hour, when Ralston had been there, and to the decided step she was about to take. The only wonder was that she had been able to talk with a tolerable continuity of ideas during dinner, considering what her position was. Assuredly it was a daring thing which she meant to do, and she experienced the sensation familiar even to brave men — the small, utterly unreasoning temptation to draw back just before the real danger begins. Most people who have been called upon to do something very dangerous, with fair warning and in perfectly cold blood, know that little feeling and are willing to acknowledge it. It is not fear. It is the inevitable last word spoken by the instinct of self-preservation.
There are men who have never felt it at all, rare instances of perfectly phlegmatic physical recklessness. They are not the ones who deserve the most credit for doing perilous deeds. And there are other men, even fewer, perhaps, who have felt it, but have ceased to feel it, in whom all love of life is so totally and hopelessly dead that even the bodily, human impulse to avoid death can never be felt again. Such men are very dangerous in fight. ‘Beware of him who se
eks death,’ says an ancient Eastern proverb. So many things which seem impossible are easy if the value of life itself be taken out of the balance. But with the great majority of the human race that value is tolerably well defined. The poor Chinaman who sells himself, for the benefit of his family, to be sliced to death in the stead of the rich criminal, knows within an ounce or two of silver what his existence is worth. The bargain has been made so often by others that there is almost a tariff. It is not a pleasant subject, but, since the case really happens, it would be a curious thing to hear theologians discuss the morality of such suicide on the part of the unfortunate wretch. Would they say that he was forfeiting the hope of a future reward by giving himself to be destroyed for money, of his own free will? Or would they account it to him for righteousness that he should lay down his life to save his wife and children from starving to death? For a real case, as it is, it certainly presents difficulties which approach the fantastic.
It was very quiet in the room, as it had been once or twice when there had been a silence between Katharine and Ralston a few hours earlier. The furniture was all just as it had been — hardly a chair had been turned. The scene came back vividly to the young girl’s imagination, and the sound of Ralston’s voice, just trembling with emotion, rang again in her ears. That had been the sweetest of all the many sweet hours she had spent with him since they had been children. Her book fell upon her knees and her head sank back against the cushion. With lids half drooping, she gazed at a point she did not see. The softest possible light, the exquisite, trembling radiance of spotless maidenhood’s divinest dream, hovered about the lovely face and the girlish lips just parted to meet in the memory of a kiss.
Suddenly, from the next room, as the three men came towards the closed door of the library, Crowdie’s laugh broke the stillness, high, melodious, rich. Some men have a habit of laughing at anything which is said just as they leave the dining-room.
Katharine started as though she had been stung. She was unconscious that her mother had ceased reading, and had been looking at her for several minutes, wondering why she had never fully appreciated the girl’s beauty before.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, as she saw the start and the quick expression of resentment and repulsion.
“It’s that man’s voice — it’s so beautiful and yet — ugh!” She shivered as the door opened and the three men came in.
“You’ve not been long,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up at Crowdie. “I hope they gave you a cigar in there.”
“Oh, yes, thanks — and a very good one, too,” added the artist, who had not succeeded in smoking half of the execrable Connecticut six-for-a-quarter cigar which the philanthropist had offered him.
It seemed natural enough to him that a man who devoted himself to idiots should have no taste, and he would have opened his eyes if he had been told that the Connecticut tobacco was one of the economies imposed by Alexander Junior upon his long-suffering father. The old gentleman, however, was really not very particular, and his sufferings were not to be compared with those of Balzac’s saintly charity-maniac, when he gave up his Havanas for the sake of his poor people.
Crowdie looked at Katharine, as he answered her mother, and continued to do so, though he sat down beside the latter. Katharine had risen from her seat, and was standing by the mantelpiece, and Mrs. Lauderdale was sitting at the end of the sofa on the other side of the fireplace, under the strong, unshaded light of the gas. She made an effort to talk to her guest, for the sake of sparing the girl, though she felt uncomfortably tired, and was looking almost ill.
“Did you talk any more about the soul, after we left?” she asked, looking at Crowdie.
“No,” he answered, still gazing at Katharine, and speaking rather absently. “We talked — let me see — I think—” He hesitated.
“It couldn’t have been very interesting, if you don’t remember what it was about,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, pleasantly. “We must try and amuse you better than they did, or you won’t come near us again.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, I’ll come just as often as you ask me,” answered Crowdie, suddenly looking at his shoes.
But he made no attempt to continue the conversation. Mrs. Lauderdale felt a little womanly annoyance. The constant and life-long habit of being considered by men to be the most important person in the room, whenever she chose to be considered at all, had become a part of her nature. She made up her mind that Crowdie should not only listen and talk, but should look at her.
“What are you doing now? Another portrait?” she asked. “I know you are always busy.”
“Oh, yes — the wife of a man who has a silver mine somewhere. She’s fairly good-looking, for a wonder.”
His eyes wandered about the room, and, from time to time, went back to Katharine. Old Mr. Lauderdale was going to sleep in an arm-chair, and Alexander Junior was reading the evening paper.
“Does your work always interest you as it did at first?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, growing more and more determined to fix his attention, and speaking softly. “I mean — are you happy in it and with it?”
His languid glance met hers for an instant, with an odd look of lazy enquiry. He was keen and quick of intuition, and more than sufficiently vain. There is a certain tone of voice in which a woman may ask a man if he is happy which indicates a willingness to play at flirtation. Now, it had never entered the head of Walter Crowdie that Mrs. Lauderdale could possibly care to flirt with him. Yet the tone was official, so to say, and he had some right to be surprised, the more so as he had never heard any man — not even the famous club-liar, Stopford Thirlwall — even suggest that she had ever really flirted with any one, or do anything worse than dance to the very end of every dancing party, and generally amuse herself in an innocent way to an extent that would have ruined the constitutions of most women not born in Kentucky. Even as he turned to look at her, however, he realized the absurdity of the impression he had received, and his eyes went mechanically back to Katharine’s profile. The smile that moved his heavy, red mouth was for himself, as he answered Mrs. Lauderdale’s question.
“Oh, yes,” he said, quite naturally. “I love it. I’m perfectly happy.” And again he relapsed into silence.
Mrs. Lauderdale was annoyed. She turned her head, under the glaring light, towards the carved pillar at the right of the fireplace. An absurd little looking-glass hung by a silken cord from the mantelpiece to the level of her eyes — one of those small Persian mirrors set in a case of embroidery, such as are used for favours at cotillions.
She saw very suddenly the reflection of her own face. The glass was perhaps a trifle green, which made it worse, but she stared in a sort of dumb horror, realizing in a single moment that she had grown old, that the lines had deepened until every one could see them, that the eyes looked faded, the hair dull, the lips almost shrivelled, the once dazzling skin flaccid and sallow — that the queenly beauty was gone, a perishable thing already perished, a memory now and worse than a memory, a cruelly bitter regret left in the place of a possession half divine that was lost for ever and ever, dead beyond resurrection, gone beyond recall.
That was the most terrible moment in Mrs. Lauderdale’s life. Fate need not have made it so appallingly sudden — she had prepared for it so long, so conscientiously, trying always to wean herself from a vanity the sternest would forgive. And it had seemed to be coming so slowly, by degrees of each degree, and she had thought it would be so long in coming quite. And now it was come, in the flash of a second. But the bitterness was not past.
Instinctively in the silence she looked up before her and saw her daughter’s lovely face. Her head reeled, her sight swam. A great, fierce envy caught at her heart with iron fingers and wrung it, till she could have screamed, — envy of her who was dearest to her of all living things — of Katharine.
CHAPTER VII.
JOHN RALSTON HAD given his word to Katharine and he intended to keep it. Whenever he was assailed by doubts he recalled by
an act of will the state of mind to which the young girl had brought him on Monday evening, and how he had then been convinced that there was no harm in the secret marriage. He analyzed his position, too, in a rough and ready way, with the intention of proving that the clandestine ceremony could not be of any advantage to himself, that it was therefore not from any selfish motive that he had undertaken to have it performed, and that, consequently, since the action itself was to be an unselfish one, there could be nothing even faintly dishonourable in it. For he did not really believe that old Robert Lauderdale would do anything for him. On the contrary, he thought it most likely that the old man would be very angry and would bid the young people abide by the consequences of their doings. He would blame Ralston bitterly. He would not believe that he had been disinterested. He would say that he had married Katharine, and had persuaded her to the marriage in the hope of forcing his uncle to help him, out of consideration for the girl. And he would refuse to do anything whatsoever. He might even go so far as to strike the names of both from his will, if he had left them a legacy, which was probable. But, to do Ralston justice, so long as he was sure of his own motives he had never cared a straw for the opinions others might form of them, and he was the last man in the world to assume a character for the sake of playing on the feelings of a rich relation. If Robert Lauderdale should send for him, and be angry, and reproach him with what he had done, John was quite capable of answering that he had acted from motives which concerned himself only, that he was answerable to no one but Katharine herself and that uncle Robert might make the best of it at his leisure. The young man possessed that sort of courage in abundance, as every one knew, and being aware of it himself, he suspected, not without grounds of probability, that the millionaire was aware of it also, and would simply leave him alone to his own devices, refusing Katharine’s request, and never mentioning the question again. That the old man would be discreet, was certain. With a few rare exceptions, men who have made great fortunes unaided have more discretion than other people, and can keep secrets remarkably well.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 664