CHAPTER V.
Catharine stood a long time by the gate.
"Don't question the child," said Peter to her mother. He would not even look at her when she came in, but fidgeted about, his leathery jaws red as a girl's at the thought that Kitty loved and was beloved.
"Is supper over? I'm hungry," was all she said. They watched her furtively as she ate.
"It's prayer-meeting night, Catharine," said Mrs. Guinness when she was through, taking her bonnet from the closet.
"I'm not going."
"Mr. Muller will miss you, my dear."
"Mr. Muller never has enough of prayer-meetings," recklessly, "but I have. I prefer going to bed to-night;" and she went up stairs.
Before her mother was gone, however, she began to change her dress, putting on one which, when the cape was not worn, left her shoulders and arms bare. She shook down her hair after the fashion of a portrait in the book-shop of Kitty Clive, Peg Woffington or some other ancient beauty more amiable than discreet. There was a delicious flavor of wickedness in the taking out of every hairpin. Then she came down to Peter where he sat smoking.
"In the dark, father? I'll light the candles;" which she did, scolding Jane savagely between-times. "We'll have some old plays to-night, father," bringing a book which her mother had forbidden, and then bringing his sheepskin-lined chair up to the table. Peter eyed her furtively as he puffed out his cigar to the last ash. On the stage or in the ball-room he had never seen, he thought, a finer woman than Catharine; and the old man's taste in beauty or dress or wine had been keen enough when he was a young blood on the town. He was annoyed and irritable.
"Catharine," he said sharply "bring your shawl: the night is chilly." But he read the plays with outward good-humor, and with an inward delight and gusto, which he would not betray. All his youth—that old Peter Guinness, for whom each day's bumpers had been frothed so high—came back in the familiar exits and entrances. The words were innocent enough as he altered them in reading for Kitty, though a good deal disjointed as to meaning; but she was not critical—forced herself to take an interest in his stories of Burton and Kean, and how he first saw old Jefferson.
"I suppose," moving uneasily on her stool at his feet, "that this now is 'the world, the flesh and the devil!' But," viciously snapping her eyes, "I like it, I like it! I wish I could think of something else to do."
In the middle of Peter's croaking of "Poor Yarico," to show her how Catalani sang it on the London boards, she jumped up and went to the window. People were coming home from prayer-meeting, husbands and wives together.
"I suppose every woman must marry, father?" she said.
Peter looked doubtfully at her over his spectacles, opened his mouth and shut it once or twice. "I judge that is the highest lot for a woman," he said slowly, "to be the wife of a good man."
"A good man? Oh yes, good enough!" and with that she flung herself down on the floor, and, putting her head on Peter's knee, cried as if her heart would break. For Kitty was never in the habit of carrying her pain off into solitary places: when she cried it must be with her head on somebody's knee.
This chapter of Catharine's history every wide-awake young woman among our readers has doubtless finished for herself: she knows the closing-in process by which society, expediency, propinquity, even moral obligations, hedge many a man and woman and drive them into marriage.
In the weeks that followed she saw but one path open to her: in it lay her work for Christ and her woman's birthright to be a wife and mother (for Kitty, ever since she was a baby nursing dolls, had meant to be both).
She spent most of her time shut up with her Bible and hymn-book, sometimes praying over them, sometimes sticking in her forefinger and opening at chance verses to try her fortune about this affair. During this time she was usually unnaturally humble and meek, but there were days when her temper was intolerable.
"Don't come complaining to me," said Peter testily to her mother. "The child's a good child enough. But when you force her to stretch her heart over three hundred vicious little imps, no wonder it breaks."
"Kitty's a free agent," she replied calmly.
Kitty was a free agent, and at the end of two weeks she accepted Mr. Muller.
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]