Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “I wish I had! What do you want? A love story?”

  “Of course. But what I want is a character. There are no new plots, nor incidents, nor things of that sort, you know. Everything that’s ever happened has happened so often. But there are new characters. The end of the century, the sharp end of the century, is digging them up out of the sands of life — as you might dig up clams with a pointed stick.”

  “That’s bathos!” laughed Crowdie. “The sands of life — and clams!”

  “I wish you’d stick to your daubs, Crowdie, and leave my English alone!” said Griggs. “It sells just as well as your portraits. No — what I mean is that just when fate is twisting the tail of the century—”

  “Really, my dear fellow — that’s a little too bad, you know! To compare the century to a refractory cow!”

  “Crowdie,” said Griggs, gravely, “in a former state I was a wolf, and you were a rabbit, and I gobbled you up. If you go on interrupting me, I’ll do it again and destroy your Totem.”

  Katharine started suddenly and stared at Griggs. It seemed so strange that he should have used the very words — wolf and rabbit — which had been in her mind more than once during the morning.

  “What is it, Miss Lauderdale?” he asked, in some surprise. “You look startled.”

  “Oh — nothing!” Katharine hastened to say. “I happened to have thought of wolves and rabbits, and it seemed odd that you should mention them.”

  “Write to the Psychical Research people,” suggested Crowdie. “It’s a distinct case of thought-transference.”

  “I daresay it is,” said Griggs, indifferently. “Everything is transferable — why shouldn’t thoughts be?”

  “Everything?” repeated Crowdie. “Even the affections?”

  “Oh, yes — even the affections — but punched, like a railway ticket,” answered Griggs, promptly. Everybody laughed a little, except Griggs himself.

  “Of course the affections are transferable,” he continued, meditatively. “The affections are the hat — the object is only the peg on which it’s hung. One peg is almost as good as another — if it’s within reach; but the best place for the hat is on the man’s own head. Nothing shields a man like devoting all his affections to himself.”

  “That’s perfectly outrageous!” exclaimed Hester Crowdie. “You make one think that you don’t believe in anything! Oh, it’s too bad — really it is!”

  “I believe in ever so many things, my dear lady,” answered Griggs, looking at her with a singularly gentle expression on his weather-beaten face. “I believe in lots of good things — more than Crowdie does, as he knows. I believe in roses, and green fields, and love, as much as you do. Only — the things one believes in are not always good for one — it depends — love’s path may lie among roses or among thorns; yet the path always has two ends — the one end is life, if the love is true.”

  “And the other?” asked Katharine, meeting his far-away glance.

  “The other is death,” he answered, almost solemnly.

  A momentary silence followed the words. Even Crowdie made no remark, while both Hester and Katharine watched the elder man’s face, as women do when a man who has known the world well speaks seriously of love.

  “But then,” added Griggs himself, more lightly, and as though to destroy the impression he had made, “most people never go to either end of the path. They enter at one side, look up and down it, cross it, and go out at the other. Something frightens them, or they don’t like the colour of the roses, or they’re afraid of the thorns — in nine cases out of ten, something drives them out of it.”

  “How can one be driven out of love?” asked Katharine, gravely.

  “I put the thing generally, and adorned it with nice similes and things — and now you want me to explain all the details!” protested Griggs, with a little rough laugh. “How can one be driven out of love? In many ways, I fancy. By a real or imaginary fault of the other person in the path, I suppose, as much as by anything. It won’t do to stand at trifles when one loves. There’s a meaning in the words of the marriage service— ‘for better, for worse.’”

  “I know there is,” said Katharine, growing pale, and choking herself with the words in the determination to be brave.

  “Of course there is. People don’t know much about one another when they get married. At least, not as a rule. They’ve met on the stage like actors in a play — and then, suddenly, they meet in private life, and are quite different people. Very probably the woman is jealous and extravagant, and has a temper, and has been playing the ingenuous young girl’s parts on the stage. And the man, who has been doing the self-sacrificing hero, who proposes to go without butter in order to support his starving mother-in-law, turns out to be a gambler — or drinks, or otherwise plays the fool. Of course that’s all very distressing to the bride or the bridegroom, as the case may be. But it can’t be helped. They’ve taken one another ‘for better, for worse,’ and it’s turned out to be for worse. They can go to Sioux City and get a divorce, but then that’s troublesome and scandalous, and one thing and another. So they just put up with it. Besides, they may love each other so much that the defects don’t drive them out of it. Then the bad one drags down the good one — or, in rare cases, the good one raises the bad one. Oh, yes — I’m not a cynic — that happens, too, from time to time.”

  Crowdie looked at his wife with his soft, languishing glance, and if Katharine had been watching him, she might have seen on his red lips the smile she especially detested. But she was looking down and pressing her hands together under the table. Hester Crowdie’s eyes were fixed on her face, for she was very pale and was evidently suffering. Griggs also looked at her, and saw that something unusual was happening.

  “Mrs. Crowdie,” he said, vigorously changing the subject, as a man can who has been leading the conversation, “if it isn’t a very rude question, may I ask where you get the extraordinary ham you always have whenever I lunch with you? I’ve been all over the world, and I’ve never eaten anything like it. I’m not sure whether it’s the ham itself, or some secret in the cooking.”

  Mrs. Crowdie glanced at Katharine’s face once more, and then looked at him. Crowdie also turned towards him, and Katharine slowly unclasped her hands beneath the table, as though the bitterness of death were passed.

  “Oh — the ham?” repeated Mrs. Crowdie. “They’re Yorkshire hams, aren’t they, Walter? You always order them.”

  “No, my dear,” answered Crowdie. “They’re American. We’ve not had any English ones for two or three years. Fletcher gets them. He’s a better judge than the cook. Griggs is quite right — there’s a trick about boiling them — something to do with changing the water a certain number of times before you put in the wine. Are you going to set up housekeeping, Griggs? I should think that oatmeal and water and dried herrings would be your sort of fare, from what I remember.”

  “Something of that kind,” answered Griggs. “Anything’s good enough that will support life.”

  The luncheon came to an end without any further incident, and the conversation ran on in the very smallest of small talk. Then Griggs, who was a very busy man, lighted a cigarette and took his departure. As he shook hands with Katharine, and bowed in his rather foreign way, he looked at her once more, as though she interested him very much.

  “I hope I shall see you again,” said Katharine, quietly.

  “I hope so, indeed,” answered Griggs. “You’re very kind to say so.”

  When he was gone the other three remained together in the little front room, which has been so often mentioned.

  “Will you sit for me a little longer, Miss Lauderdale?” asked Crowdie.

  “Oh, don’t work any more just yet, Walter!” cried Hester, with sudden anxiety.

  “Why? What’s the matter?” enquired Crowdie in some surprise.

  “You know what Mr. Griggs was just saying at luncheon. You work so hard! You’ll overdo it some day. It’s perfectly true, you know. You never
give yourself any rest!”

  “Except during about one-half of the year, my dear, when you and I do absolutely nothing together in the most beautiful places in the world — in the most perfect climates, and without one solitary little shadow of a care for anything on earth but our two selves.”

  “Yes — I know. But you work all the harder the rest of the time. Besides, we haven’t been abroad this year, and you say we can’t get away for at least two months. Do give yourself time to breathe — just after luncheon, too. I’m sure it’s not good for him, is it Katharine?” she asked, appealing to her friend.

  “Of course not!” answered Katharine. “And besides, I must run home. My dear, just fancy! I forgot to ask you to send word to say that I wasn’t coming, and they won’t know where I am. But we lunch later than you do — if I go directly, I shall find them still at table.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Hester. “You don’t want to go really? Do you? You know, I could send word still — it wouldn’t be too late.” She glanced at her husband, who shook his head, and smiled — he was standing behind Katharine. “Well — if you must, then,” continued Hester, “I won’t keep you. But come back soon. It seems to me that I never see you now — and I have lots of things to tell you.”

  Katharine shook hands with Crowdie, whose soft, white fingers felt cold in hers. Hester went out with her into the entry, and helped her to put on her thick coat.

  “Take courage, dear!” said Mrs. Crowdie in a low voice, as she kissed her. “It will come right in the end.”

  Katharine looked fixedly at her for a few seconds, buttoning her coat.

  “It’s not courage that I need,” she said slowly, at last. “I think I have enough — good-bye — Hester, darling — good-bye!”

  She put her arms round her friend and kissed her three times, and then turned quickly and let herself out, leaving Hester standing in the entry, wondering at the solemn way in which she had taken leave of her.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  KATHARINE’S MOOD HAD changed very much since she had entered the Crowdies’ house. She had felt then a certain sense of strength which had been familiar to her all her life, but which had never before seemed so real and serviceable. She had been sure that she could defy the world — in that black frock she wore — and that her face would be of marble and her heart of steel under all imaginable circumstances. She had carried her head high and had walked with a firm tread. She had felt that if she met John Ralston she could tell him what she thought of him, and hurt him, so that in his suffering, at least, he should repent of what he had done.

  It was different now. She did not attempt to find reasons for the difference, and they would have been hard to discover. But she knew that she had been exposed to a sort of test of her strength, and had broken down, and that Hester Crowdie had seen her defeat. Possibly it was the knowledge that Hester had seen and understood which was the most immediately painful circumstance at the present moment; but it was not the most important one, for she was really quite as brave as she had believed herself, and what suffered most in her was not her vanity.

  The conversation at table had somehow brought the whole truth more clearly before her, as the developer brings out the picture on a photographer’s plate. The facts were fixed now, and she could not hide them nor turn from them at will.

  Whether she were mistaken or not, the position was bad enough. As she saw it, it was intolerable. By her own act, by the exercise of her own will, and by nothing else, she had been secretly married to John Ralston. She had counted with certainty upon old Robert Lauderdale to provide her husband with some occupation immediately, feeling sure that within a few days she should be able to acknowledge the marriage and assume her position before the world as a married woman. But Robert Lauderdale had demonstrated to her that this was impossible under the conditions she required, namely, that John should support himself. He had indeed offered to make her independent, but that solution of the difficulty was not acceptable. To obtain what she and Ralston had both desired, it was necessary, and she admitted the fact, that John should work regularly in some office for a certain time. Robert Lauderdale himself could not take an idle man from a fashionable club and suddenly turn him into a partner in a house of business or a firm of lawyers, if the idle man himself refused to accept money in any shape. Even if he had accepted it, such a proceeding would have been criticised and laughed at as a piece of plutocratic juggling. It would have made John contemptible. Therefore it was impossible that John and Katharine should have a house of their own and appear as a married couple for some time, for at least a year, and probably for a longer period. Under such circumstances to declare the marriage would have been to make themselves the laughing-stock of society, so long as John continued to live under his mother’s roof, and Katharine with her father. The secret marriage would have to be kept a secret, except, perhaps, from the more discreet members of the family. Alexander Lauderdale would have to be told, and life would not be very pleasant for Katharine until she could leave the paternal dwelling. She knew that, but she would have been able to bear it, to look upon the next year or two as years of betrothal, and to give her whole heart and soul to help John in his work. It was the worst contingency which she had foreseen when she had persuaded him to take the step with her, and she had certainly not expected that it could arise; but since it had arisen, she was ready to meet it. There was nothing within the limits of reason which she would not have done for John, and she had driven those limits as far from ordinary common sense as was possible, to rashness, even to the verge of things desperate in their folly.

  She knew that. But she had counted on John Ralston with that singularly whole-hearted faith which characterizes very refined women. Many years ago, when analytical fiction was in its infancy, Charles de Bernard made the very wise and true observation that no women abandon themselves more completely in thought and deed to the men they love, or make such real slaves of themselves, as those whom he calls ‘great ladies,’ — that is, as we should say, women of the highest refinement, the most unassailable social position, and the most rigid traditions. The remark is a very profound one. The explanation of the fact is very simple. Women who have grown up in surroundings wherein the letter of honour is rigidly observed, and in which the spirit of virtue prevails for honour’s sake, readily believe that the men they love are as honourable as they seem, and more virtuous in all ways than sinful man is likely to be. The man whom such a woman loves with all her heart, before she has met truth face to face, cannot possibly be as worthy as she imagines that he is; and if he be an honest man, he must be aware of the fact, and must constantly suffer by the ever present knowledge that he is casting a shadow greater than himself, so to say — and to push the simile further, it is true that in attempting to overtake that shadow of himself, he often deliberately walks away from the light which makes him cast it.

  John Ralston could never, under any circumstances, have done all that Katharine had expected of him, although she had professed to expect so little. Woman fills the hours of her lover’s absence with scenes from her own sweet dreamland. In nine cases out of ten, when she has the chance of comparing what she has learned with what she has imagined, she has a moment of sickening disappointment. Later in life there is an adjustment, and at forty years of age she merely warns her daughter vaguely that she must not believe too much in men. That is the usual sequence of events.

  But Katharine’s case just now was very much worse than the common. It is not necessary to recapitulate the evidence against John’s soberness on that memorable Thursday. It might have ruined the reputation of a Father of the Church. Up to one o’clock on the following day no one but Mrs. Ralston and Doctor Routh were aware that there was anything whatsoever to be said on the other side of the question. So far as Katharine or any one else could fairly judge, John had been through one of the most outrageous and complete sprees of which New York society had heard for a long time. A certain number of people knew that he had practically f
ought Hamilton Bright in the hall of his club, and had undoubtedly tripped him up and thrown him. Katharine, naturally enough, supposed that every one knew it, and in spite of Bright’s reassuring words on the previous night, she fully expected that John would have to withdraw from the club in question. Even she, girl as she was, knew that this was a sort of public disgrace.

  There was no other word for it. The man she loved, and to whom she had been secretly married, had publicly disgraced himself on the very day of the marriage, had been tipsy in the club, had been seen drunk in the streets, had been in a light with a professional boxer, and had been incapable of getting home alone — much more of going to meet his wife at the Assembly ball.

  If he had done such things on their wedding day, what might he not do hereafter? The question was a natural one. Katharine had bound herself to a hopeless drunkard. She had heard of such cases, unfortunately, though they have become rare enough in society, and she knew what it all meant. There would be years of a wretched existence, of a perfectly hopeless attempt to cure him. She had heard her father tell such stories, for Alexander Junior was not a peaceable abstainer like Griggs and Crowdie. He was not an abstainer at all — he was a man of ferocious moderation. She remembered painful details about the drunkard’s children. Then there was a story of a blow — and then a separation — a wife who, for her child’s sake, would not go to another State and be divorced — and the going back to the father’s house to live, while the husband sank from bad to worse, and his acquaintances avoided him in the street, till he had been seen hanging about low liquor saloons and telling drunken loafers the story of his married life — speaking to them of the pure and suffering woman who was still his lawful wife — and laughing about it. Alexander had told it all, as a wholesome lesson to his household, which, by the way, consisted of his aged father, his wife, and his two daughters, none of whom, one might have thought, could ever stand in need of such lessons. Charlotte had laughed then, and Katharine had been disgusted. Mrs. Lauderdale’s perfectly classical face had expressed nothing, for she had been thinking of something else, and the old philanthropist had made some remarks about the close connection between intemperance and idiocy. But the so-called lesson was telling heavily against John Ralston now, two or three years after it had been delivered.