Almost a year had passed in this way, and there had seemed to be no prospect of a solution, when Katharine had taken the law into her own hands, being at that time nineteen years old. She had persuaded John that if he would marry her secretly, she could at once prevail on old Robert Lauderdale to find him some occupation in the West. After much hesitation John Ralston had consented, on condition that uncle Robert should be told immediately. The pair were secretly married by a clergyman whom John persuaded to perform the ceremony, and an hour later Katharine had told the old gentleman her secret. He at once offered to make her and John independent—for the honour of the family; but John had stipulated that he was to receive nothing of the nature of money. That would have been like begging with a loaded pistol. What he wanted was a position in which he might do some sort of work, and receive an equivalent sufficient to support himself and his wife. Robert Lauderdale at once proved to his grand-niece that such a scheme was wholly impracticable. John could do nothing which could earn him a dollar a day. Katharine had to own at last that he was right. He said that if John would work steadily in an office in New York, even for a year, it would be easy to push him rapidly into success.
The compromise was accepted as the only way out of the difficulty. The secret marriage remained a secret, and a mere accomplished formality. John continued to live with his mother as though he were a bachelor; Katharine stayed under her father’s roof as Miss Lauderdale. John returned to Beman Brothers, and was now working there, as has been said more than once. Katharine had to bear all the difficulties of a totally false position in society. These had been the results of the secret marriage, so far as actual consequences in fact were concerned. Morally speaking, there could be no question but that John Ralston, at least, had profited enormously by the sense of honourable responsibility Katharine had forced upon him. He had made one of those supreme efforts of which natures nervous by temperament, melancholy, and sometimes susceptible of exaltation, are often capable. The almost divine dignity which his mother had taught him to attribute to the code of honour stood him in good stead. He saw by the light which guides heroes, things not heroic in themselves to be done, but brave at least, and they were easy to him, because, for Katharine’s sake, he would have done much more.
So far as Katharine was concerned, the effect upon her was different. It might even be questioned whether it were a good effect. She was helpless to do anything which could improve her position, and the result was a feeling of hostility against her surroundings. The whole fabric of society seemed to her to rest upon a doubtful foundation, since two young people so eminently fitted for each other could be forced by it into such a situation.
They were of equal standing in every way; she had even lately learned that their prospects of fortune, which were little short of colossal, were precisely the same. They loved each other. They were married by church and law. Yet between John’s code of honour, on the one hand, and Alexander Lauderdale’s determined opposition, on the other, they dared not so much as own that they were husband and wife, lest some enormous social scandal should ensue. They had but one alternative—to leave New York together, which meant starvation, or else to accept Robert Lauderdale’s help in the form of money, which John was too proud to do. And though John would have been quite ready to starve alone, he had no intention of subjecting Katharine to any such ordeal. He blamed himself most bitterly for having accepted the secret marriage at all, but since the thing was done, he meant to do his share and bear his burden manfully and honourably. It was all he could do to atone for his weakness in having yielded, and for the trouble he had caused Katharine.
But she had no such active part as he. He must work, for he had chosen that salvation for his self-respect, and it was her portion to wait until he could win his independence on his own merits, since he would not be indebted for it to any one. The waiting is often harder to bear than the working. Katharine grew impatient of the conventions in the midst of which she lived, and found fault with the system of all modern society.
She was strangely repelled, too, by the attentions of the young men she met daily, and danced with, and sat beside at dinner. They had amused her until the last winter. She was not one of those girls who either feign indifference to amusement, or really feel it, and so long as she had been free to enjoy herself without any secondary thoughts about the meaning of enjoyment, she had found the world a pleasant place. Now, however, she was for the first time made conscious that several of the young fellows who surrounded her at parties really wished to marry her. The genuine and pure-hearted convictions concerning the inviolable sanctity of marriage, which are peculiarly strong in American young girls, asserted themselves with Katharine at every moment. Being the lawfully wedded wife of John Ralston, it seemed an outrage that young Van De Water, for instance, should seek occasion to assure her of his devotion. Yet, since he, like the rest, knew nothing of the truth, she could not blame him if he had chanced to fall in love with her. She could only refuse to listen to him and discourage his advances, feeling all the while a most unreasonable and yet womanly desire to hand him over to her husband’s tender mercies, together with a firm faith that John was not only able, but would also be quite disposed, to slay the offender forthwith.
This seems to prove that woman is naturally good, and that harm can only reach her by slow stages. And it is a curious reflection that generally in the world good, when it comes, comes quickly and evil slowly. Great purifying religions have arisen and washed whole nations clean, almost in one man’s lifetime, whereas it has always required generations of luxury and vice to undermine the solidity of any strong people. A first sin is rarely more than an episode, too often exaggerated by those who would direct the conscience, and who leave the offenders to the terrible danger of discovering such exaggerations later, and then of setting down all wrong-doing as insignificant because the first was made to appear greater than it was.
Katharine hated the falseness of her position, and the perpetual irritation to which she was exposed unsettled the balance of her girlish convictions as they had emerged from the process of education, ready-made, honest, and somewhat conventional. The disturbance awakened abnormal activity in her mind, and she fell into the habit of questioning and discussing almost every accepted article of creeds social and spiritual.
Hence her liking for the society of Paul Griggs, whose experience was a fact, but whose convictions were a mystery not easily fathomed. Alexander Lauderdale especially detested the man for his easy way of accepting anybody’s religious beliefs, as though the form of religion were of no importance whatever, while perpetually thrusting forward the humanity of mankind as the principal point of interest in life. But when he was alone with Katharine, or with some kindred spirit, Griggs sometimes talked of other things.
The day on which Katharine, returning from Robert Lauderdale’s house, refused to answer her father’s questions was an important one in her history and in the lives of many closely connected with her; and this has seemed the best place for offering an explanation of such preceding events as bear directly upon all that followed. Here, therefore, ends the prologue to the story which is to tell of the lives of John Ralston and his wife, commonly known as Miss Lauderdale, during the great battle for the Lauderdale fortune. It has been a long prologue, and, as is usually the case in such tiresome preliminary pieces, the majority of the actors in the real play have not yet appeared, and the few who have come before the curtain crave as yet indulgence rather than applause. They have shown their faces and have explained the general nature of what is to be represented, and they retire as gracefully as they can, under rather difficult circumstances, to reappear in such actions and situations as should explain themselves.