“Who asks you to suffer, Kate? But you don’t wait for the asking. You’re only too willing to offer yourself as a souffre-douleur on all occasions.”
Then Mrs. Archinard retired behind her book in scornful resignation and, after twenty minutes of silence, the little girls were very glad to get away to bed.
Hilda was just undressed when Mrs. Archinard sent for her to come to her room. Her head ached, and Hilda must brush her hair; it was early yet. This was a customary task, and one that Hilda prided herself upon accomplishing with sovereign beneficence. Taylor’s touch irritated Mrs. Archinard; Hilda only was soothing.
In dressing-gown and slippers she ran to her mother’s room.
Mrs. Archinard’s long hair—as black and as fine as Hilda’s—fell over the back of the large arm-chair in which she reclined.
“Such a headache!” she sighed, as Hilda took up the brush and began to pass it slowly and gently down the length of hair. “It is really brutal of your father to forget my head as he does.”
Hilda’s heart sank. The unideal attitude of her father and mother toward one another was one of her great sorrows. Papa was certainly fond of his pretty wife, but he was so fretful and impatient, and mamma so continually grieved. It was all wrong. Hilda had already begun to pass judgment, unconsciously, on her father; but her almost maternal tenderness for her mother as yet knew no doubt.
“It would be very dreadful if the horses had to go, wouldn’t it?” she said. Her father’s bad temper might be touching if its cause were suggested.
“Of course it would; and so are most things dreadful. I am sure that life is nothing but dreadfulness in every form.” Yet Mrs. Archinard was not at all an unhappy woman. Her life was delicately epicurean. She had few wants, but those few were never thwarted. From the early cup of exquisite tea brought to her bedside, through all the day of dilettante lounging over a clever book—a day relieved from monotony by pleasant episodes—dainty dishes especially prepared, visits from acquaintances, with whom she had a reputation for languid cynicism and quite awesome literary and artistic cleverness—to this hour of hair-brushing, few of her moments were not consciously appreciative of the most finely flavored mental and physical enjoyment. But the causes for enjoyment certainly seemed so slight that Mrs. Archinard’s graceful pessimism usually met with universal sympathy. Hilda was very sorry for her mother. To lie all day reading dreary books; condemned to an inaction that cut her off from all the delights of outdoor life, seemed to her tragic. Mrs. Archinard did not undeceive her; indeed, perhaps, the most fascinating of Mrs. Archinard’s artistic occupations was to fancy herself very tragic. Hilda went back to her room much depressed.
The girls slept together, and Katherine was sitting up in her night-gown writing her journal by candlelight and enjoying a sense of talent flowing at all costs—for writing by candlelight was strictly forbidden—as she dotted down what she felt to be a very original and pungent account of the day and the people it had introduced.