Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 2 of 3)

by Edmund Yates

"I come here," said Mr. Guyon one morning in the library, where he had gone to write a letter, and where he found Katharine similarly employed,--"I come here to your house, and I find your husband an altered man. He has lost that cheerfulness, that energy, that buoyancy which distinguished him, and, in fact, he's become a doosid unpleasant dreary bird. How's this? Cheerful before marriage, and miserable after; looks as if marriage was the cause, doesn't it, Kate? And to think that my daughter has not--not striven to--to what d'ye call--bless the lot of the man who--doubles his joys and halves his sorrows, and all that kind of thing? Am I to think that you--but no, that could not be! I must remember----"

"You must remember, papa, if you please," said Kate, looking him full in the face, and speaking in a low stern voice,--"you must remember the manner in which and the conditions under which I married my husband! And, remembering them, you must be good enough never to dare--it is a strong word to use to one's father, but I repeat it--never to dare to address me in this way again. I know my duty to my husband, and--according to my lights, and under the peculiar circumstances of our union--I do it!"

It was not to be supposed that Katharine, however devoid of that instinctive perception of love which will make the dullest of women quick to see when trouble is hanging over one dear to her, was either blind or indifferent to the depression of Robert's spirits and the change in his appearance. Towards her, individually, he was always the same,--studious and eager to forward her wishes, and bounding his to making her happy; but he was preoccupied and gloomy. He was beginning to look old, too; the vigorous upright look which had been the first thing in his appearance to strike an observer, was less conspicuous than it had been, and his step was slower and heavier. His wife was not blind to the alteration, and she put it all down to the account of "business." In this general conclusion she was quite right; but Katharine had not the remotest glimmering of a suspicion that misfortune and loss were constituents of this "business." She believed her husband to be a very rich man, whose ambition it was to become very much richer, and whose life was devoted to the realisation of that ambition. She had never ceased to regard him as the "City man" of their first acquaintance; and though her ideas respecting the transactions carried on by City men had undergone considerable alteration since that time, she was as far as ever from a real comprehension of the risks and the anxieties which her husband's life included. The making of money in larger or smaller sums Katharine understood to be his calling; and so far as the variation was between larger and smaller, she comprehended anxiety being involved; but as to serious loss, as to ruin, she had not the faintest notion of such a possibility. Of Mr. Guyon's transactions with her husband Mrs. Streightley was also profoundly ignorant. Robert had taken care she should be so, for his sake as well as for her own. He knew Katharine's delicacy of feeling and her pride perfectly, and he also appreciated her acuteness and keenness as they deserved. From hurt and indignant mortification at discovering that her father had taken such means to "exploiter" her marriage, to questioning why a clever and shrewd man of business, such as Katharine well knew Robert to be, should admit such unscrupulous demands on her father's part, would be an easy and natural transition; and Robert shrunk with terror from the idea that any such clue should ever find its way to his wife's hands. No symptom of such danger had shown itself; the feelings with which Katharine regarded her father had ceased to be of a kind to prompt her to much personal interest in his affairs, and by nature she was not inquisitive. That Mr. Guyon's pursuits were frivolous in the extreme; that he presented that most contemptible of spectacles--an old man aping the dissolute manners of an objectionable order of youth, Katharine was becoming more and more painfully aware; but she looked no deeper into his life than the surface, from which she turned away with a feeling which, had she investigated it, she must have acknowledged to be contempt.

The nobility of Katharine's nature asserted itself in the manner in which she regarded the marriage of Gordon Frere and Hester Gould. That the intelligence should not cost her a pang of exceeding keenness was impossible; but she did battle with herself against the temptations to bitterness and enmity against Hester which beset her, and she came nobly out of the strife. Little did she dream how closely her demeanour was scrutinised; little did she imagine that the bright dark eyes of the obsequious Mr. Daniel Thacker, perhaps the humblest of Mrs. Streightley's servants and the most respectful of her admirers, were steadily directed to her face for many days during his stay at Middlemeads, with the purpose of reading what might appear on that fair dial indicative of storm and turmoil in her heart. She had no suspicion that she was watched; but, as she also had nothing whatever to hide, there was no danger in her unconsciousness. The brief sharp pain she endured had come and passed when she was alone. She remembered how she had envied Hester Gould her wealth, only because it left her free to marry as she liked: she remembered her own bitter saying, "she may buy instead of being bought," and she thought it had been strangely realised. But she would not be unjust either to Hester Gould or to her own false lover. She would acknowledge that Hester had many attractions other than her wealth; she would acknowledge her fair share of beauty, her talents, her good manners, the numerous charms which might easily secure a genuine attachment. She was ready to believe that Gordon Frere might really love Hester; and the more ready, as she had reason to know the shallowness and fickleness of his nature. "I daresay he cares for her as much as he cared for me," Katharine thought; "and in this case he can afford to indulge his fancy,--in mine he could not. She is fortunate that he can love her and marry her, otherwise she too would find that he would love her and leave her, as he left me, to the ridicule of her friends, and a broken heart, were she fool enough to break her heart for him. And he--he has only done exactly what I did, even supposing he does not love her. He has only married for money. With this difference, to be sure,--that I would have shared poverty with him, and he would not face it for me: with this other difference too, that I was in earnest, and he was only amusing himself. Our positions are pretty much the same in the end; we are both rich, we are parted from each other, and satisfied to be so, and another has the first claim on each. I have no right to despise him for the marriage he has made, nor dares he to despise me."

So Katharine wrote to Ellen Streightley, and expressed interest in the marriage, and hope of its happiness, which were perfectly sincere, and were most welcome to the recipient of her letter. She treated the subject with polite indifference in her reply to Lady Henmarsh. She understood cousin Hetty tolerably well, and disdained the spitefulness which she perceived too thoroughly to stoop to retaliation. It was a fortunate circumstance for Robert that his sister had remained with her mother at the Brixton villa after Miss Gould's marriage, and thus no occasion arose for the lengthened and frequent discussion of the event. Had Ellen been at Middlemeads, she would have talked about the wedding to an embarrassing extent. As it was, his reluctance to mention Gordon Frere's name--a reluctance which Katharine did not suspect--was seconded by her own, which Robert's state of mind prevented him from surmising; and after a mere formal comment, whose insufficiency, considering the intimacy subsisting between the Streightleys and Miss Gould, did not fail to strike Mr. Thacker, the subject was dropped. He tried to talk about the wedding, at which he had been present, and at which his sisters had officiated as bridesmaids; but he had not courage to persevere in the face of Robert's silence and the well-bred coldness of Katharine's manner, which plainly implied that the matter was one wholly devoid of interest to her; but, of course, if Mr. Thacker chose to pursue that topic of conversation, she was bound to listen and to reply.

Life at Middlemeads proceeded much as usual, except that the amusements of autumn were substituted for those of spring. There was no other change in the aspect of affairs at the stately and luxurious country-house, over which Katharine presided with grace and dignity which seemed to grow more and more remarkable. Her beauty was at its zenith now; and no doubt the subsidence of all angry and impetuous feeling, the "settling down" which had taken place within the past year, had told upon her physically as well as morally. She had not, indeed, acted upon Mrs. Stanbourne's advice in its spirit. She had not faced the fact that the greatest of all her obligations towards her husband was the obligation to love him. She had not tried to realise that; and in so far the change in her was maimed and incomplete. But she had kept the letter of her promise to her friend, and ruled her life with more consideration for her husband than in the earlier days of their marriage. Had there been no obstacle, as unfortunately there was, in the secret bound in Robert's conscience, to a perfect understanding between the husband and wife, it might have come about at this period, when Gordon Frere's marriage had completed the severance of the past from Katharine's present life.

Mrs. Stanbourne was at Middlemeads shortly after the marriage of Gordon and Hester, and had been even more anxious than before to find Katharine on good terms with Robert. She was about to leave England for an indefinite time; and she would fain have gone away leaving her young kinswoman more intent on happiness, and less intent on pleasure, than she had found her on her first visit to Middlemeads. Observation had but increased her respect and regard for Robert Streightley; and she now noticed his depressed and careworn manner with sincere regret. She was at a loss to what origin to ascribe it; for things were far better, in a domestic point of view, than they had been in the spring. Had Mrs. Stanbourne met Mr. Guyon at Middlemeads, she might have discerned at least a portion of the truth, bringing, as she would have done, clearer notions of "business" than those of Katharine to aid her observations; but that gentleman avoided her with a persistent caution, for which, while far from divining its motives, she was unfeignedly grateful. Mrs. Stanbourne could not have thoroughly understood Mr. Guyon, had she had ever so favourable an opportunity of detecting him; but she despised him intuitively, and had often taken herself to task for the unreasoning dislike with which he inspired her.

"My dear Kate, what quantities of money you spend on furniture!" said Mrs. Stanbourne to Katharine, a day or two before she left Middlemeads. She had entered the morning-room, and found Mrs. Streightley looking over an upholsterer's pattern-book; while a "young man" stood by, awaiting her decision and her orders. She had given them, and the young man had taken his departure, charged by Katharine to have certain articles ready for her inspection by a certain day of the ensuing week.

"Do I?" asked Katharine absently. "Well, perhaps I do; but I did not choose the things here myself, you know; and then, I like change."

"May I ask what you are changing now, Kate?"