Chapter Thirteen.
The Real Sacrifice.
Major Clare sat by the fire in his brother’s study at the Vicarage, smoking a cigar, and reflecting on the course of events. He had gone from home with a half intention of delaying that course of events, and he had returned with another half intention of precipitating it.
With much affection on both sides, he was getting tired of his stay at the Vicarage, and his brother’s family were perhaps beginning to feel that they had suited all their arrangements to him for a long enough time.
“It would be such a good thing for Robert to marry and settle,” and Robert himself thought so too. It was many a long year since that great unsettlement had come to him when things had gone wrong with his first hopes, and he could not have the girl he wanted. He had tried to fall in love several times since, and he was trying now, moved certainly by Kate’s fair fortune, and yet not quite mercenary enough to be indifferent to the want of spontaneous pleasure in his wooing. If either face could have recalled to him that never-forgotten one, it would not have been Kate’s. He had idly wished that the cousins would change places in the beginning of their acquaintance, but he could not allow himself to wish it now; and had indeed fully made up his mind to the piece of good fortune that seemed to have fallen at his feet—only, he was not in a hurry to secure it. Nevertheless it was dull, and he should like to see Kate blush and brighten at the sight of him.
So he discovered that Minnie wanted to go up to Kingsworth, and prepared to escort her thither.
Walter Kingsworth meanwhile had been seized with a fit of compunction and alarm, at the idea he had suggested to the unprepared mind of his cousin; the lawyer and the man of business awoke within him, as he reflected on the responsibility he had incurred in driving to a hasty resolution a girl so inexperienced as Kate.
He reflected on this, it is to be feared, all through the afternoon service to which he accompanied his cousins, and afterwards as they walked along the road till their ways divided, he caught a chance of saying,—
“Miss Kingsworth, you must not suppose I meant to say that any special line of conduct is incumbent on you. So imperfectly knowing the circumstances, how can I judge?”
“You can’t put the idea out of my head, now that you have put it in, cousin Walter,” said Kate, with blunt gravity. “But I shall not be of age for thirteen months, so I have plenty of time to think about it.”
And she did think about it with a new reticence that proved her to be, after all, her mother’s daughter. Slowly she recognised that she must make her own decision, that she did stand alone. She read her uncle’s letter over again, and saw that it was framed so as not to exclude the possibility of any decision. She was still child enough not to care very much about the position she would sacrifice, “for I might make mamma promise not to go back to Applehurst,” she thought, but the view that came to her most forcibly, perhaps from a sort of unconscious opposition to the pressure of her mother’s feelings, was that by declaring herself the false heiress, she might be doing a wrong to her father’s memory. “It would make people sure he had cheated, and perhaps, after all, he did not,” she thought, and then suddenly there came over her hard struggle for wisdom and sense, a thought so sweet, so absorbing, that all her trouble seemed to melt away in the warmth of it. If Major Clare were her lover, then he would know what was right. If she could tell him—poor Kate’s heart went out with a yearning longing desire, and it never struck her then that in honour, he ought to be told of her doubts if ever in real truth he were her lover. Never—till in some novel that she was reading, the plot turned on such a concealment. “Should I be a ‘villain’ if I didn’t tell him that perhaps I mean to give it up?” she thought. “Dear me, I had no idea how easy it was to be wicked! How he would despise me!”
Poor Katharine had not much notion of that other and Higher Counsel, which her uncle’s letter had advised her to seek. She had been taught to be dutiful and reverent; but it did not occur to her that “saying her prayers” would help her in her present trouble, though as she scrupulously asked in the unaltered language of her childhood to be “made good,” and helped to obey her mother, she found perhaps more guidance than she knew.
And then Major Clare came back, and in the glow and brightness of his increased attention, Kate was too happy to think of anything else, definitely or long. Emberance was wide awake now, and scrupulously careful not to interfere, and as Minnie and Rosa Clare were equally on the alert, opportunities did not lack. To go to the Vicarage and help to cover books for the Lending Library was a piece of parochial usefulness that even Mrs Kingsworth could not forbid to her young ladies, and if Uncle Bob did hang about with his newspaper, till he finally discarded it, and pasted and papered, with a firmness and handiness astonishing to the young ladies, it could only be regarded as good nature to his nieces—nay, between dining-room and drawing-room, mixing paste and getting afternoon tea, if a tête-à-tête could have been avoided, at least it did not seem unnatural.
Not unnatural, only intensely important, more important than anything in the world to Kate, and strangely silencing and embarrassing to the Major, as he looked at the little figure kneeling on the hearth-rug, stroking the Vicarage cat, with the firelight reddening and brightening her hair, and the uncertain light or her uncertain feeling, softening her fresh rosy face.
“Well,” said Major Clare, “I never thought to paste my fingers in Rosa’s service.”
“You paste better than any of us.”
“Masculine superiority?”
“I suppose so,” said the straightforward Kate.
“Do you think it has been a very dull day?” said Major Clare, coming nearer, and leaning his arms on the mantelpiece, “though we have been employed in such a dull occupation?”
“I haven’t been dull at all.”
“Nor I. Kate, do you think I have been pasting books to please Rosa?”
“Haven’t you?”
“No, indeed—shall I tell you what brought me? shall I tell you what I hope may be the end of a wandering homeless life?”
She looked up with that in her eyes, which, had he met them, must have brought the scene to a point at once, and given it a very different ending. But he was looking into the fire, and went on with a sort of sense that explanation was her due—went on talking of himself. “There has always been a great want in my life, and I’m grown old. I want to tell you something that a younger fellow would have got out in half the time. Has a battered old soldier any right to think his story would interest you?”
“I don’t think you’re old,” said Kate, abruptly, “but I ought, I want to tell you something first.”
Poor child, in the last word she showed that she understood him, as half with a longing for his counsel, half with a sense of honour towards himself, she said, “You know, I suppose, all the story about my father and Emberance’s.”
“I do not care a straw for old scandals.”
“They’re not scandals, at least mamma says it is true. So I am not sure if when I come of age—I ought not to give it back—I haven’t decided. But they say it is mine only through—a cheat.”
“Who has filled your mind with such a ridiculous scruple?” exclaimed the Major in rather unloverlike tones.
“No one, but I haven’t decided, only if I do decide that Kingsworth ought to belong to Emberance, I shall give it to her. That’s all.”
She spoke with a blunt simplicity, that jarred on Major Clare. If she had been woman enough to care for him, he thought she could not have checked his love tale with her scruple. She paused, half choked with the effort of speaking, and a sudden whirl of temptation seized the Major’s soul—Emberance! Emberance the heiress! What then? What did the child mean? Was there a flaw in her title? He hesitated and was silent, and forgot that the child was a woman after all, though in her very simplicity unable to understand a doubt.
She saw the test that she had never meant for a test, tell its tale. She knew the sacrifice that honour demanded, she knew how she must suffer for her father’s sin.
“He only cared for Kingsworth!” she thought, “he doesn’t love me!” and without giving Major Clare a moment’s time to achieve the self-conquest, on which he would probably have resolved, without letting him adjust his thoughts or his feelings, she sprang up from the hearth-rug.
“You needn’t tell me the rest of your story now. I don’t want to hear any more of it. I shall go to tea,” and she fled from him before he could say a word. She threw away her chance, where an older or more prudent woman would have kept it. The question was if it were worth keeping. He did not rush after her, and catch her, and silence all her doubts with one vehement protest, but he stamped his foot with anger at her impatience and want of confidence, and believed that he would have been true to her had she given him the chance.
Kate rushed into the drawing-room because it was the easiest way of escape from him, and not till she was there in the midst of the group of girls did she become conscious that she was trembling, and almost sobbing, hardly able to make a pretence of composure.
“Where’s Uncle Bob?” said Minnie.
Kate murmured something about the dining-room. Emberance glanced at her, and said,—
“Kitty, we mustn’t stay for tea, it is so dark, let us go home. Come,—come and put your hat on.”
Rosa and Minnie were not so utterly devoid of expectation that “something might have happened,” as to offer any objection to this proposal, and Kate hurried away with scarcely a word of farewell. She sped along the lane, still in silence, and Emberance thought it better not to speak to her, though much at a loss to know what could have passed. Surely no happy emotion could take such a form as this, such bitter sobs could not come of any mere excitement and agitation.
“Kitty, my darling,” she said at length, “what has happened to you?”
Kate turned round on her, and said passionately and bitterly,—
“Nothing!”
“Nothing?”
“No—but oh! I hate myself, and despise myself! I wish I could drown myself,” cried Katharine in her agony. “Have you quarrelled with Major Clare?”
“No!”
“Refused him?”
“No—oh no!” cried Kate, “never, never speak about him any more.”
Her grief was so violent, and in its free expression seemed so childish, that Emberance had no scruple in following her to her room, and in trying to soothe and comfort her; and for some minutes Kate sat with her head on her cousin’s lap, and sobbed as if her heart would break. At last she seemed to gather herself together, ceased crying, and sat up, gazing into the fire with a strange dreary look, as the quivering mouth grew still and set itself into harder lines.
“Emmy,” she said, “I’ve been a silly girl. He doesn’t care for me, he liked Kingsworth.”
“I don’t think you have been at all silly in thinking Major Clare liked you. Any one would have thought so,” said Emberance, warmly.
Kate turned and kissed her, while Emberance went on.
“But how can you tell—how can you possibly tell that he doesn’t really care about you? What makes you think so?”
“I don’t think I can tell you,” said Kate; “but I do know that he meant—meant to marry me because—I was rich. No, I cannot tell you how I found it out.”
“Oh, Kitty, are you sure? I don’t think it can have been all that.”
“Well, it is enough if it was partly that,” said Kate disdainfully, “I will never listen to him any more.” Emberance was puzzled, she could not tell how the discovery had come about, and moreover, she guessed that the facts were more complicated than Kate supposed. She saw that Kate was angry, and sore, and miserable, full of pain and disappointment; but she doubted if the very depths of her heart had been touched, thinking that if so, she would have been more ready to find excuses for her lover.
“Kate,” she said, “sometimes I have felt doubtful whether Major Clare was quite in earnest. I think he is rather a flirt, do you know?”
“No, he is a fortune-hunter,” said Kate, with great decision. She cried again as she spoke. It was a bitter experience even if it might have been bitterer still.
“Mamma is right,” she said, “it is hateful to be rich or to care about it.”
She kept her secret, Emberance could not tell what had passed, and Kate never told her, and never talked about her disappointment any more. She held her tongue, and felt brave and strong in her anger. Her mother hoped that the change in her ways showed that she was reflecting on her position altogether, and Kate said no word, not even when she heard that Major Clare had gone away on another visit. She was too straightforward to have expected him to try again to “deceive her,” as she called it; but as she stood alone, and looked out towards the Vicarage, there came over the poor child all in a minute the weariest feeling of wishing that he had. There came to her a moment, when if Major Clare had been beside her and spoken tenderly to her again, she would not have cared about asking the reason, would not, could not have turned away,—a moment when all her scruples seemed utterly valueless, compared to the love that they had cost her. Kate could not know that the sick pain of that hour of ungratified yearning was a light price to pay for the inheritance of her mother’s honesty which had saved her from her mother’s fate.