Old Mr. Tredgold

by Mrs. Oliphant

CHAPTER XXXIII.

It turned out that there was indeed a great deal more to be said. Dr. Burnet came back after the extraordinary revelation of that evening. He left Katherine on the cliff in the silvery light of the lingering day, with all the tender mists of her dream dispersed, to recognise the dreadful fact that she had behaved very badly to a man who had done nothing but good to her. It was for this he had been so constant night and day. No man in the island had been so taken care of, so surrounded with vigilant attention, as old Mr. Tredgold—not for the fees he gave certainly, which were no more than those of any other man, not for love of him, but for Katherine. And now Katherine refused to pay the price—nay, more, stood up against any such plea—as if he had no right to ask her or to be considered more than another man. Dr. Burnet would not accept his dismissal, he would not listen to her prayer to say no more of it. He would not believe that it was true, or that by reasoning and explanation it might not yet be made right.

There were two or three very painful interviews in that corner of the drawing-room where Katherine had established herself, and which had so many happy associations to him. He reminded her of how he had come there day after day during the dreary winter, of that day of the snowstorm, of other days, during which things had been said and allusions made in which now there was no meaning. Sometimes he accused her vehemently of having played hot and cold with him, of having led him on, of having permitted him up to the very last to believe that she cared for him. And to some of these accusations Katherine did not know how to reply. She had not led him on, but she had permitted a great deal to be implied if not said, and she had acquiesced. She could not deny that she had acquiesced even in her own mind. If she had confessed to him how little of her heart was in it at any time, or that it was little more than a mental consent as to something inevitable, that would have been even less flattering to him than her refusal; this was an explanation she could not make. And her whole being shrank from a disclosure of that chance meeting on the railway and the self-revelation it brought with it. As a matter of fact the meeting on the railway had no issue any more than the other. Nothing came of it. There was nothing to tell that could be received as a reason for her conduct. She could only stand silent and pale, and listen to his sometimes vehement reproaches, inalterable only in the fact that it could not be.

There had been a very stormy interview between them one of those evenings after he had left her father. He was convinced at last that it was all over, that nothing could be done, and the man’s mortification and indignant sense of injury had subsided into a more profound feeling, into the deeper pang of real affection rejected and the prospects of home and happiness lost.

“You have spoiled my life,” he had said to her. “I have nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for. Here I am and here I shall be, the same for ever—a lonely man. Home will never mean anything to me but dreary rooms to work in and rest in; and you have done it all, not for any reason, not with any motive, in pure wantonness.” It was almost more than he could bear.

“Forgive me,” Katherine said. She did not feel guilty to that extent, but she would not say so. She was content to put up with the imputation if it gave him any comfort to call her names.

And then he had relented. After all had been said that could be said, he had gone back again to the table by which she was sitting, leaning her head on her arm and half covering it with her hand. He put his own hand on the same table and stooped a little towards her.

“All this,” he said with difficulty, “will of course make no difference. You will send for me when I am wanted for your father all the same.”

“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” was all she said.

“Of course,” he said almost roughly, “you will send for me night or day all the same. It makes no difference. You may forsake me, but I will not forsake you.” And with that, without a word of leavetaking or any courtesy, he went away.