The Ralstons

by F. Marion Crawford

She tried to laugh to reassure him. Then a sharp twinge from the broken limb drew her face. The expression of her suffering was instantly reflected in the old man’s features, and his bushy white eyebrows bent themselves.

“Routh will be here in a minute,” he said, as though reassuring her. “I’ve sent for him.”

She nodded her thanks, but said nothing. Then with her left hand she found one of his, and pressed it affectionately. He lifted hers, and pressed his bearded lips to it softly.

“It will be the worse for him,” he said, consoling her, as many men console women, with the promise of vengeance.

In his mouth the words might mean much. There are few things which a just man, justly angry, cannot accomplish against an offender, with the aid of eighty millions of working capital, so to say. Moreover, Robert Lauderdale was not dead yet, and could so change his will, if he pleased, as to keep Alexander from ever receiving any share whatsoever of the great fortune.

But Katharine was avenged already, and wished no further evil to her father. She had seen him humiliated and driven from the house, and she had felt that he was not her father, but the man who had insulted and cruelly wronged John Ralston, her lawful husband. She had not seen the blow Ralston had struck, for at that moment she had just fallen to the floor. But all the rest had happened before her eyes, and she had neither spoken word nor made sign to spare him. So far, she had been utterly merciless.

Afterwards, she wondered how she could have been so utterly hard and unforgiving, and tried to remember what she had felt, but she found it impossible. It is hard to recall an old scald when one is floating in cool water. Not that she ever forgave her father for what he did and said during those twenty-four hours—that is, in the sense of forgiving entirely and thinking of him as though nothing had happened. That would have been impossible—perhaps it would have been scarcely human. The virtue that turns the other cheek to be smitten is in danger of having its head broken by the second buffet, for cowardice takes arms of charity. But they did not quarrel to the end of their natural lives, and it seemed strange to Katharine, at a later period, that she should have looked on with a calm satisfaction that soothed her bodily pain while Robert Lauderdale ordered her father to be forcibly turned out of the house. But that is not strange, for humanity’s hardest present problem is almost always the problem of yesterday, which is in black and white, rather than the expectation of to-morrow, confusedly shadowed upon the mist of what is not yet, by the light of the hope of what may be.

There was a sort of justice, too, in the fact that Robert Lauderdale, who had once quarrelled with John during the winter, should now be taking his side, and be forced to take it by every conviction of fairness. The only thing which Katharine could not understand was her father’s own behaviour towards his uncle. It was in accordance with his temper that he should behave to her as he had behaved, and to John Ralston also. But it would have seemed more natural that he should have controlled himself, even by a great effort, rather than have risked offending the possessor of the fortune. On that afternoon he had seemed from the first to be braving the old man’s anger. This was a mystery to Katharine. It seemed almost like premeditation. Yet she knew her father’s limitations, and was sure that he was not able to form a deep scheme and carry it out, while mystifying every one who looked on. He was dull, he was methodical, he was exact. He was also miserly, as she had lately discovered. But he was a man to keep a secret, rather than to produce one which should need keeping, and she almost suspected that he had lost his senses out of sheer anger, though she knew that he was able to control his temper longer than most men, when he pleased.

So far as the present was concerned, she felt, as she might well feel, that she was amply avenged, and when Robert Lauderdale seemed to be threatening further vengeance, she protested.

“Don’t make it any worse, uncle Robert,” she said, with an effort, for she was growing very faint. “But you must keep me here till I’m well, if you will. I can’t go home to him now.”