Katherine Lauderdale; Vol. 2 of 2

by F. Marion Crawford

“Oh, perfectly!” answered Ralston, with a smile. “But will you do that for me, Frank?”

“Of course I will. You’re one of my illusions, as I told you. I’m willing to do lots of things for my illusions. I’ll go now, and then I’ll come back and tell you what the old chap says. If by any chance he gets into a rage, I’ll tell him that I didn’t come so much to talk about you as to consult him about certain symptoms of nervous prostration I’m beginning to feel. He’s death on nervous prostration—he’s a perfect terror at it—he’ll hypnotise me, and put me into a jar of spirits, and paint my nose with nervine and pickled electricity and things, and sort of wake me up generally.”

“All right—if you can stand it, I can,” said Ralston. “I’d go myself—only only—”

“You’re pretty badly used up,” interrupted Miner, completing the sentence in his own way. “I know. I remember trying to play football once. Those little games aren’t much in my line. Nature meant me for higher things. I tried football, though, and then I said, like Napoleon—you remember?—‘Ces balles ne sont pas pour moi.’ I couldn’t tell where I began and the football ended—I felt that I was a safe under-study for a shuttlecock afterwards. That’s just the way you feel, isn’t it? As though it were Sunday, and you were the frog—and the boys had gone back to afternoon church? I know! Well—I’ll come back as soon as I’ve seen Routh. Good-bye, old man—don’t smoke too much. I do—but that’s no reason.”

The little man nodded cheerfully, knocked the ashes carefully from the end of his cigar—he was neat in everything he did—and returned it to his lips as he left the room. Ralston leaned back in his arm-chair again and rested his feet on the fender. The fire his mother had made so carefully was burning in broad, smoking flames. He felt cold and underfed and weary, so that the warmth was very pleasant; and with all that came to his heart now, as he thought of his mother, there mingled also a little simple, childlike gratitude to her for having made up such a good fire.

The time passed, and still no word came from Katharine. He was willing to find reasons or, at least, excuses, for her silence, but he was conscious that they were of little value. He knew, now, that there had really been paragraphs in the papers about him, as he had expected, and that they had been of a very disagreeable nature. Katharine had probably seen them, or one of them, besides having heard the stories that had been circulated by Crowdie and others during the previous evening. He fancied that he could feel her unbelief, hurting him from a distance, as it were. Her face, cold and contemptuous, rose before him out of the fire, and he took up the magazine again, and tried to hide it. But it could not be hidden.

Surely by this time she must have got his letter. There could be no reasonable doubt of that. He looked at his watch again, as he had done once in every quarter of an hour for some time. It was twelve o’clock. Miner had not stayed long.

John went over the scene on Wednesday evening, at the Thirlwalls’. Katharine had been very sure of herself, at the last—sure that, whatever he did, she should always stand by him. Events had put her to the test soon enough, and this was the result. They had been married twenty-four hours, and she would not even answer his note, because appearances were against him.

And the great, strong sense of real innocence rose in him and defied and despised the woman who could not trust him even a little. If the very least of the accusations had been true, he would have humbled himself honestly and said that she was right, and that she had promised too much, in saying all she had said. At all times he was a man ready to take the full blame of all he had done, to make himself out worse than he really was, to assume at once that he was a failure and could do nothing right. On the slightest ground, he was ready to admit everything that people brought against him. Katharine, if he had even been living as usual, would have been at liberty to reproach him as bitterly as she pleased with his weakness, to turn her back on him and condemn him unheard, if she chose. He would have been patient and would have admitted that he deserved it all, and more also. He was melancholy, he was discouraged with himself, and he was neither vain nor untruthful.

But he had made an effort, and a great one. There was in him something of the ascetic, with all his faults, and something of the enthusiasm which is capable of sudden and great self-denial if once roused. He knew what he had done, for he knew what it had cost him, mentally and physically. Lean as he had been before, he had grown perceptibly thinner since Monday. He knew that, so far, he had succeeded. For the first time, perhaps, he had every point of justice on his side. If he had been inclined to be merciful and humble and submissive towards those who doubted him now, he would not have been human. The two beings whom he loved in the world, his mother and Katharine, were the very two who had doubted him most. As for his mother, he had not persuaded her, for she had persuaded herself—by means of such demonstration as no sane being could have rejected, namely, the authoritative statement of a great doctor, personally known to her. What had followed had produced a strange result, for he felt that he was more closely bound to her than ever before, a fact which showed, at least, that he did not bear malice, however deeply he had been hurt. But he could not go about everywhere for a week with Doctor Routh at his heels to swear to his sobriety. He told himself so with some contempt, and then he thought of Katharine, and his face grew harder as the minutes went by and no answer came to his letter.