CATHARINE
"Such was my mother's way, learnt from Thee in the school of the heart, where Thou art Master."
CHAPTER XVI
In the little drawing-room at Forkéd Pond Catharine and Mary Elsmere were sitting at work. Mary was embroidering a curtain in a flowing Venetian pattern—with a handful of withered leaves lying beside her to which she occasionally matched her silks. Catharine was knitting. Outside the rain was howling through the trees; the windows streamed with it. But within, the bright wood-fire threw a pleasant glow over the simple room, and the figures of the two ladies. Mary's trim jacket and skirt of prune-coloured serge, with its white blouse fitting daintily to throat and wrist, seemed by its neatness to emphasize the rebellious masses and the fare colour of her hair. She knew that her hair was beautiful, and it gave her a pleasure she could not help, though she belonged to that type of Englishwoman, not yet nearly so uncommon as modern newspapers and books would have us believe, who think as little as they can of personal adornment and their own appearance, in the interests of some hidden ideal that "haunts them like a passion; of which even the most innocent vanity seems to make them unworthy."
In these feelings and instincts she was, of course, her mother's daughter. Catharine Elsmere's black dress of some plain woollen stuff could not have been plainer, and she wore the straight collar and cuffs, and—on her nearly white hair—the simple cap of her widowhood. But the spiritual beauty which had always been hers was hers still. One might guess that she, too, knew it; that in her efforts to save persons in sin or suffering she must have known what it was worth to her; what the gift of lovely line and presence is worth to any human being. But if she had been made to feel this—passingly, involuntarily—she had certainly shrunk from feeling it.
Mary put her embroidery away, made up the fire, and sat down on a stool at her mother's feet.
"Darling, how many socks have you knitted since we came here? Enough to stock a shop?"
"On the contrary. I have been very idle," laughed Catharine, putting her knitting away. "How long is it? Four months?" she sighed.
"It has done you good?—yes, it has!" Mary looked at her closely.
"Then why don't you let me go back to my work?—tyrant!" said Catharine, stroking the red-gold hair.