“What reaction did you mean?” asked Hester, idly, as she made the tea.
“Oh — I meant the natural reaction after the tremendous excitement we’ve all been living in for so long.”
“Oh!” ejaculated her companion, rather coldly. “I see,” she continued after a pause, during which she had made a busy little clatter with the tea things, “you mean because we hoped to get the money and didn’t — therefore, I’m sleepy. That doesn’t sound very sensible.”
“Well — not as you put it,” answered Katharine, with a short laugh of embarrassment.
She had determined to attack the subject boldly, so as to break the ice once and for always. Hester’s aggressive answer put her out.
“How would you put it?” enquired the latter, leaning back again and waiting for the tea to draw. “Explain! I’m awfully dull to-day.”
“Don’t you think it’s natural?” asked Katharine. “It’s of no use to deny that we’ve all been tremendously excited during the last fortnight, and now the excitement has stopped. One’s nerves run down — that sort of thing, you know — and then one’s tired and feels depressed.”
“The depression’s natural — in our case,” answered Hester, lifting the cover and looking into the teapot in a futile way, as though she would see whether the tea were strong enough.
“Yes,” said Katharine, thoughtfully. “Do you know, dear? It seems to me as though you were thinking that it was my fault, in a way.”
“What? That I’m depressed? Don’t be silly! Do you like it strong? I’ve forgotten. It’s about right now, I should think.”
“A little water, please — no cream — one lump of sugar — thanks. No,” she continued, a little impatiently, “you know perfectly well what I mean, if you’ll only understand. I suppose that’s rather Irish—” she laughed again.
“It’s Greek to me!” replied Hester, smartly, as she poured out her own cup of tea. “You’re trying to say something — why don’t you say it?”
It began to be clear to Katharine that there were more difficulties in the way of what she was attempting to do, than she had dreamt of. She had expected that Hester would be quite ready to meet her half way, instead of intrenching herself behind an absurd and pretended misunderstanding, as she was doing. The best way seemed to be to enter into an explanation at once. She sipped her tea thoughtfully and then began again.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I mean,” she said; “so that you’ll see it as I do. I’m afraid that this question of money has come between you and me. And if it has, I’m very sorry, because I’m very fond of you, Hester.”
“Well — I’m fond of you,” answered Hester, in a matter-of-fact tone. “I don’t see why the money should make any difference.”
“I hope it doesn’t. Only — I’m afraid it does, in spite of what you say. I don’t feel as though we could ever be again exactly what we’ve always been until now. But it’s not fair, Hester. It’s not just. You know very well that if I could have done anything to make the will good, I would have done it. I couldn’t. What could I do? It’s simply a misfortune that we were on opposite sides of the fight — or our people were. I’m not exactly what you’d call gushing, I suppose — indeed, I know I’m not. But it hurts me to think that we’re to be like strangers, because three men couldn’t agree about a signature. It’s unnatural. It’s not right. I came here to-day, meaning to say so — and I’m glad I’ve had the courage to say it without waiting any longer. But if we’re only to know each other — in a general way like distant cousins — why, it’s better to acknowledge it at once. It shan’t come from me — that’s all. But I’d rather be prepared for it, you know.”
“So far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to fight,” said Hester, coolly. “I don’t see any reason why we should. Of course we don’t throw ourselves into each other’s arms and cry with delight every time we meet, like schoolgirls. We’ve outgrown that. But as for my quarrelling with you because your father’s inherited a fortune when I ought to have had a part of it — it’s too ridiculous. You would have had a share, too, under the will. Then you ought to quarrel with your own father, much more than with me. Isn’t that common sense?”
“Yes — I suppose it is. But you don’t say it exactly as though—”
Katharine stopped short. She was afraid of seeming impulsive, as many people of self-contained natures are. She knew that she was not herself very expansive, as a rule, in her expressions of affection. But Hester was, and the change from her former manner to her present coldness was startling. One may miss in others what one would not have in oneself, and one may resent another’s refusal to give it. The regret of missing anything is not measured by its value, but by the strength of the habit its presence has created. Men liberated after years of captivity have missed their chains. The Irish woman in the typical story complained that her husband no longer beat her. She missed it.
“I’ll say it in any way you like,” answered Hester, hardly. “It seems to me that we’re just as good friends as ever. I see no difference.”
“I do,” answered Katharine. “And there’s always going to be a difference, now,” she added, regretfully.
She was conscious that in some unaccountable way the positions had been reversed with regard to her character and her friend’s. It should naturally have been the more passionate, expansive, sensitive woman who should be almost begging that the old friendship might not be forgotten, and Katharine herself, the colder of the two, the one by far less easily carried away by passing emotions, should have been giving the assurance that nothing was changed. It was incomprehensible to her, as well it might be, since there was a cause for Hester’s behaviour which lay very far from the question of money, though the coldness which the latter had caused was helping to make matters worse.
“I suppose we’re outgrowing each other,” suggested Hester, who was more or less anxious to account for the change, since Katharine was laying such great stress upon it. “You know that’s the way of the world,” she added, tritely. “People are ever so fond of each other for a long time, and then all at once they find out that they’re not what they were, you know, and that they don’t really care.”
“Oh — do you look at it in that way?” Katharine’s voice and manner changed, for she was hurt. “But don’t you think this outgrowing, as you call it, has been rather sudden? It’s only about three weeks since we were talking quite differently. It can’t be more, I’m sure.”
“Isn’t it?” asked Hester, indifferently. “Really, it seems ever so long since we sat here and told each other things.”
There is a beautiful vagueness about the language of a woman when she wishes to have something forgotten.
“It seems long to me, too, — in another way,” answered Katharine. “It’s far off — like a good many things that happened then.”
Hester made no answer to this remark, but leaned back against her cushion and meditatively nibbled the edge of a ginger-snap.
“Of course,” said Katharine, “if you want it all to end here, I’m not going to cry and behave like the schoolgirl you talked about—”
“No,” interrupted Hester, munching her biscuit audibly; “it isn’t worth it.”
“Once upon a time we should both have thought it was,” answered the young girl. “But when a thing like friendship’s gone — it’s gone, that’s all, and there’s nothing more to be said about it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly, my dear!” exclaimed Hester, who, having swallowed the remains of the ginger-snap, suddenly realized that she might at least bury her intimacy with a protest to the effect that it was not dead. “You really go on as though we were lovers, and I had betrayed you. In the first place it doesn’t follow, because we’re grown up and not exactly what we used to be, that there’s no friendship between us. We can go on just the same as ever, even if we talk differently and gush less, and we can see just as much of each other as we always did. You’ve got some idea or other into your head
about my being cold, because I’m sleepy and dull to-day. Probably the next time we meet it will be just the opposite, and you’ll think me too gushing.”
So long as Hester had made no serious pretence of anything more than she felt, confining herself more or less to generalities and vaguely saying that she desired no break, Katharine had remained calm, but something in the last speech seemed to ring outrageously false, and the blood slowly rose to her throat and ebbed again without reaching her cheeks.
“Don’t pretend!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to get at the truth to-day, if we’re ever to get at it at all.”
Hester raised her beautiful eyebrows, as delicately and finely marked as though they had been drawn with pen and ink.
“My dear child!” she answered, with real or affected surprise. “Don’t fly into little pink rages like that.”
“I’m not in a rage,” protested Katharine. “And if I were, I shouldn’t be pink — I never am. But I don’t want you to pretend things you don’t feel. We’ve never pretended much with each other, and I don’t want to begin now. It’s over and done for. Let’s make up our minds to it and be sensible. I don’t see that there’s anything else to be done. But don’t let’s pretend things. I hate that.”
“Not half so much as I do, my dear,” said Hester, airily, as though to close the discussion. “I don’t see the slightest good in talking about it any more. You’ve got it into your head that I’ve changed. If you believe it, you know it, for Mr. Griggs says that—”
“Do leave Mr. Griggs alone!” cried Katharine, irritably. “It isn’t a mere idea, either. You said we’d outgrown each other. I’m not conscious of having grown a head taller in the last three weeks. But so far as talking about it goes, you’re quite right. Only—” her voice changed again and took a gentler tone— “let’s part friends, Hester, for the sake of all that has been.”
“Why, of course!” exclaimed Hester, with insincere frankness. “That is, if you insist upon parting, as you call it. But I declare! we might just as well be a pair of lovers quarrelling, you know. It’s just about as sensible, on the whole.”
“I suppose things mean more to me than they do to you,” answered Katharine, with sudden coldness. “Friendship — like everything else — like—”
She was going to say ‘like love,’ but checked herself. In that at least she felt that she must have been mistaken. Whatever else she might think of Hester, she knew that she was almost insanely in love with her husband. At the very moment when the words were on her lips the thought flashed through her mind, that with Hester it might be the half-desperate, all-absorbing passion which was draining her of all capacity for any other attachment. Katharine thought of herself and of her love for Ralston, and felt more real sympathy for her friend just then than she had felt for many a day.
As she ceased speaking she heard the hall door opened and shut again, just outside the sitting-room, and a moment later she heard Crowdie’s soft voice, low and sweet, humming to himself as he began to ascend the stairs. As she turned to Hester, as though to continue speaking, she saw how the pale face had changed in a moment. Every faculty was strained to catch the faint echo of the melody, the deep eyes gleamed, there was colour in the transparent cheeks, the dewy lips were just parted. There was nothing unreal nor affected in that.
CHAPTER XXIX.
KATHARINE COULD NOT keep the expression of curiosity out of her eyes as she watched Hester Crowdie. The woman’s whole manner had changed in an instant, and she seemed to be another person. She seemed trying to hold her breath to catch the distant and ever retreating sound of her husband’s voice. The colour in her pale cheeks heightened and paled and heightened again in visible variations. Her slender throat fluttered with quick pulsations like that of a singing bird or a chameleon, and her deep eyes were filled with light. Katharine even fancied that the little ringlets of soft brown hair trembled and waved like the leaves of a sensitive plant, impossible as it was. Hester’s whole being was all at once intensely alive, intensely sensitive, intensely brilliant. A few minutes earlier she had been leaning back against her cushion, suppressing a yawn from time to time, saying cold and disagreeable things, pale, cool, diaphanous.
Katharine moved slightly, and the white hand was upon hers instantly, with a light touch of warning, as though to silence her, lest a single faint echo of Crowdie’s voice should fail to reach Hester’s ears.
The young girl wondered whether she herself ever behaved so strangely when John Ralston was near, and whether any one sitting beside her could see his presence reflected in her eyes. She did not know, though she believed herself, as she really was, colder and less quick to show what she felt. The last note died away as Crowdie ascended the staircase and got out of hearing, and Hester sank back against her cushion again. The colour faded from her cheek, the light died in her eyes, and her throat was quiet. The bloodless hands just met on her knees, and the tips of the slight fingers tapped one another nervously two or three times, and then lay quite still.
There had been something in the quickly succeeding changes which struck Katharine as not exactly human, though she could have found no other word with which to describe better the phases of the passing sensitiveness she had witnessed. But it had been more like the infinitive sensitiveness of nature than the ordinary responses of an impressionable woman. Katharine had thought of the sensitive plant, for she had seen many in hot-houses and had often played with them, softly stroking the fern-like plumes made by the two rows of tiny oval leaves, and delighting to see how they rose and waved, and tried to find and follow her finger. And she thought, too, of stories she had heard about the behaviour of animals before an earthquake, a great storm, or any terrible convulsion of nature. She had never before quite understood that, but it was clear to her now.
At the same time she felt a strong sympathy for Hester, and for the love which was so unmistakable and real. It was impossible for her to comprehend how such love could exist for such a man as Crowdie, whom she herself thought so strangely repulsive, though she could find nothing to say against him. It could only be explained on the ground of an elective affinity, mysterious in its source, but most manifest in its results. She had never been allowed to read Goethe’s great book, but the title of it had always meant something to her, and represented a set of ideas which she used in order to explain the inexplicable. It was true, also, so far as she could see, that between Hester and Crowdie the affinity was mutual and almost equally strong, and Katharine thought with an unpleasant sensation of the way Crowdie sometimes smiled at his wife. Of course, she thought, if one did not object to a certain amount of womanliness in a man’s looks and manner, nor to a pale, pear-shaped face with intensely red lips, nor to a figure which altogether lacked masculine dignity — if one could forget all those things and consider what Crowdie must seem to a blind woman, for instance, and if one could forgive a certain insolent softness of speech which now and then was his, why, then, Crowdie was one of the most charming of men. There was no word but that one. Take him all in all, — his remarkable power as a portrait painter, developed by study and real industry, his exquisite voice and perfect taste in singing — so perfect that there was not a trace of that art which it is art’s mission to conceal — his conversation, which was often brilliant and almost always interesting, — taking him all in all, thought Katharine, and quite apart from his appearance, he was a marvellously gifted man. She had never known a man like him. Paul Griggs was not to be despised as a judge of men, for he had seen and known many who were worth knowing, and Paul Griggs liked Crowdie and was intimate with him. It was true that no other man of Katharine’s acquaintance liked him, but Griggs’ opinion might outweigh that of many just men. But when she thought of Crowdie’s appearance, she marvelled how any woman could love him. There was something about it which thrilled her painfully, like a strong, bad taste — yet not so as to hinder her from feeling sympathy for Hester, in spite of all the latter had said during the past half hour.
; “How you love him!” she exclaimed, when the voice had died away, and Hester leaned back again in her seat.
The words were spoken impulsively and half unconsciously — the natural expression of the young girl’s wonder. But Hester’s eyes turned quickly, with a suspicious glance which Katharine did not see and could not have understood.
“Well — is there any harm in my loving my husband?” asked Hester, in a tone of unmistakable resentment.
Katharine turned and looked at her in surprise, not realizing that she could possibly have given offence.
“Harm! why no — no more harm than there is in my saying so — nor than I meant, when I spoke. Why, are you angry?”
“I’m not angry. Why did you say it, though — and just then? I want to know.”
She fixed her eyes on Katharine, and a little colour came back suddenly to her cheeks, just where it had been while Crowdie was singing — as a transparent glass, that has been heated red in the flame and has cooled, flushes where it had flushed before, almost as soon as it is brought to the fire.
“Why did I say it?” repeated Katharine, surprised. “I don’t know, I’m sure. It was a very natural remark. Everybody knows that you love your husband very much. I suppose it struck me particularly at that moment. How strange of you to take offence!”
“I’m not offended. I only want to know why you said it just then. Did I change colour — or what?”
“A little colour came into your face — yes. It’s very becoming,” added Katharine, by way of propitiation.
“Yes — I know. You needn’t tell me that I’m generally too pale. Were my eyes different from usual?”
“They were very bright, with a far-away look at the same time — as though you saw him through the wall.”
“Do you think any one would have noticed how I looked? I mean — any one sitting near me, as you are?”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 747