Dr. Burnet did not know anything of James Stanford. He thought of Katherine as a little shy, a little cold, perhaps from the persistent shade into which she had been cast by her sister, unsusceptible as people say; but he did not at all despair of moving her out of that calm. He had thought indeed that there were indications of the internal frost yielding, before his interview with Lady Jane. With Lady Jane’s help he thought there was little doubt of success. But even that security made him cautious. It was evident that she was a girl with whom one must not attempt to go too fast. The Rector had tried to carry the fort by a coup de main, and he had perished ingloriously in the effort. Dr. Burnet drew himself in a little after he acquired the knowledge of that event, determined not to risk the same fate. He had continued his visits but he had been careful to give them the most friendly, the least lover-like aspect, to arouse no alarms. When he received the salutation of Lady Jane in passing, and her promise that he should hear from her, his sober heart gave a bound, which was reflected unconsciously in the start of the mare making a dash forward by means of some magnetism, it is to be supposed conveyed to her by the reins from her master’s hand—so that he had to exert himself suddenly with hand and whip to reduce her to her ordinary pace again. If the manœuvre had been intentional it would have been clever as showing his skill and coolness in the sight of his love and of his patroness. It had the same effect not being intentional at all.
I am not sure either whether it was Lady Jane’s intention to enhance the effect of Dr. Burnet by the extreme dulness of the household background upon which she set him, so to speak, to impress the mind of Katherine. There was no party at Steephill. Sir John, though everything that was good and kind, was dull; the tutor, who was a young man fresh from the University, and no doubt might have been very intellectual or very frivolous had there been anything to call either gifts out, was dull also because of having little encouragement to be anything else. Lady Jane indeed was not dull, but she had no call upon her for any exertion; and the tone of the house was humdrum beyond description. The old clergyman dined habitually at Steephill on the Sunday evenings, and he was duller still, though invested to Katherine with a little interest as the man who had officiated at her sister’s marriage. But he could not be got to recall the circumstance distinctly, nor to master the fact that this Miss Tredgold was so closely related to the young lady whom he had made into Lady Somers. “Dear! dear! to think of that!” he had said when the connection had been explained to him, but what he meant by that exclamation nobody knew. I think it very likely that Lady Jane herself was not aware how dull her house was when in entire repose, until she found it out by looking through the eyes of a chance guest like Katherine. “What in thunder did you mean by bringing that poor girl here to bore her to death, when there’s nobody in the house?” Sir John said, whose voice was like a westerly gale. “Really, Katherine, I did not remember how deadly dull we were,” Lady Jane said apologetically. “It suits us well enough—Sir John and myself; but it’s a shame to have asked you here when there’s nobody in the house, as he says. And Sunday is the worst of all, when you can’t have even your needlework to amuse you. But there are some people coming to dinner to-morrow.” Katherine did her best to express herself prettily, and I don’t think even that she felt the dulness so much as she was supposed to do. The routine of a big family house, the machinery of meals and walks and drives and other observances, the children bursting in now and then, the tutor appearing from time to time tremendously comme il faut, and keeping up his equality, Sir John, not half so careful, rolling in from the inspection of his stables or his turnips with a noisy salutation, “You come out with me after lunch, Miss Tredgold, and get a blow over the downs, far better for you than keeping indoors.” And then after that blow on the downs, afternoon tea, and Mr. Montgomery rubbing his hands before the fire, while he asked, without moving, whether he should hand the kettle. All this was mildly amusing, in the proportion of its dulness, for a little while. We none of us, or at least few of us, feel heavily this dull procession of the hours when it is our own life; when it is another’s, our perceptions are more clear.
“But there are people coming to dinner to-morrow,” Lady Jane said. There was something in the little nod she gave, of satisfaction and knowingness, which Katherine did not understand or attempt to understand. No idea of Dr. Burnet was associated with Steephill. She was not aware that he was on visiting terms there—he had told her that he attended the servants’ hall—so that it was with a little start of surprise that, raising her eyes from a book she was looking at, she found him standing before her, holding out his hand as the guests gathered before dinner. The party was from the neighbourhood—county, or, at least, country people—and when Dr. Burnet was appointed to take Katherine in to dinner, that young lady, though she knew the doctor so well and liked him so much, did not feel that it was any great promotion. She thought she might have had somebody newer, something that belonged less to her own routine of existence, which is one of the mistakes often made by very astute women of the world like Lady Jane. There was young Fortescue, for instance, a mere fox-hunting young squire, not half so agreeable as Dr. Burnet, whom Katherine would have preferred. “He is an ass; he would not amuse her in the very least,” Lady Jane had said. But Sir John, who was not clever at all, divined that something new, though an ass, would have amused Katherine more. Besides, Lady Jane had her motives, which she mentioned to nobody.
Dr. Burnet did the very best for himself that was possible. He gave Katherine a report of her father, he told her the last thing that had transpired at Sliplin since her departure, he informed her who all the people were at table, pleased to let her see that he knew them all. “That’s young Fortescue who has just come in to his estate, and he promises to make ducks and drakes of it,” Dr. Burnet said. Katherine looked across the table at the young man thus described. She was not responsible for him in any way, nor could it concern her if he did make ducks and drakes of his estate, but she would have preferred to make acquaintance with those specimens of the absolutely unknown. A little feeling suddenly sprang up in her heart against Dr. Burnet, because he was Dr. Burnet and absolutely above reproach. She would have sighed for Dr. Burnet, for his quick understanding and the abundance he had to say, had she been seated at young Fortescue’s side.
After dinner, when she had talked a little to all the ladies and had done her duty, Lady Jane caught Katherine’s hand and drew her to a seat beside herself, and then she beckoned to Dr. Burnet, who drew a chair in front of them and sat down, bending forward till his head, Katherine thought, was almost in Lady Jane’s lap. “I want,” she said, “Katherine, to get Dr. Burnet on our side—to make him take up our dear Stella’s interests as you do, my dear, and as in my uninfluential way I should like to do too.”
“How can Dr. Burnet take up Stella’s interests?” cried Katherine, surprised and perhaps a little offended too.
“My dear Katherine, a medical man has the most tremendous opportunities—all that the priest had in old times, and something additional which belongs to himself. He can often say a word when none of the rest of us would dare to do so. I have immense trust in a medical man. He can bring people together that have quarrelled, and—and influence wills, and—do endless things. I always try to have the doctor on my side.”
“Miss Katherine knows,” said Dr. Burnet, trying to lead out of the subject, for Lady Jane’s methods were entirely, on this occasion, too straightforward, “that the medical man in this case is always on her side. Does not Mrs. Swanson, Lady Jane, sing very well? I have never heard her. I am not very musical, but I love a song.”
“Which is a sign that you are not musical. You are like Sir John,” said Lady Jane, as if that was the worst that could be said. “Still, if that is what you mean, Dr. Burnet, you can go and ask her, on my part. He is very much interested in you all, I think, Katherine,” she added when he had departed on this mission. “We had a talk the other day—about you and Stella and the whole matter. I think, if he ever had it in his power, that he would see justice done her, as you would yourself.”
“He is very friendly, I daresay,” said Katherine, “but I can’t imagine how he could ever have anything in his power.”