Katherine was awakened—she did not know if it was from a doze or a dream—by a touch upon her arm. The doctor stood there in his large and heavy vitality like an embodiment of life, and a faint blueness of dawn was coming in at the window. “There was no pain,” he said, “no sort of suffering or struggle. Half-past four exactly,” he had his watch in his hand. “And now, Miss Tredgold, take this and go to bed.”
“Do you mean?” Katherine cried, rising hastily, then falling back again in extreme agitation, trembling from head to foot.
“Yes, I mean it is all over, it is all well over. Everything has been done that could be done for him. And here is your maid to take care of you; you must go to bed.”
But Katherine did not go to bed. She went downstairs to the drawing-room, her usual place, and sat by the dead fire, watching the blue light coming in at the crevices of the shutters, and listening to the steps of the doctor, quick and firm, going away upon the gravel outside. And then she went and wandered all over the house from one room to another, she could not tell why. It seemed to her that everything must have changed in that wonderful change that had come to pass without anyone being able to intervene, so noiselessly, so suddenly. She never seemed to have expected that. Anything else, it seemed to her now, might have happened but not that. Why, all the house had been full of him, all life had been full of him yesterday; there had been nothing to do but contrive what he should eat, how the temperature in the room should be kept up, how everything should be arranged for his comfort. And now he wanted nothing, nothing, nor was anything wanted for him. It did not seem to be grief that moved her so much as wonder, an intolerable pressure of surprise and perplexity that such a thing could have happened with so many about to prevent anything from happening, and that he should have been removed to some other place whom nobody could imagine to be capable of other conditions than he had here. What had he to do with the unseen, with sacred things, with heaven, with a spiritual life? Nothing, nothing, she said to herself. It was not natural, it was not possible. And yet it was true. When she at last lay down at the persuasion of Mrs. Simmons and the weeping Hannah, in the face of the new full shining day which had not risen for him, which cared for none of these things, Katherine still got no relief of sleep. She lay on her bed and stared at the light with no relief of tears either, with no sense of grief—only wondering, wondering. She had not thought of this change, although she knew that in all reason it must be coming. Still less did she think of the new world which already began to turn its dewy side to the light.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Mr. Tredgold had no relations to speak of, and not very many old friends. Mr. Turny the elder, who was one of Mr. Tredgold’s executors, came down for the funeral, and so did the solicitor, Mr. Sturgeon, who was the head of a great city firm, and would certainly not have spared the time had the fortune that was now to become a subject of so much interest been less great. He brought with him a shabby man, who was in his office and carried a black bag with papers, and also turned out to be Mr. Tredgold’s brother, the only other member of the family who was known. His appearance was a surprise to Katherine, who had not heard of his existence. She was aware there had been aunts, married and bearing different names, and that it was possible perhaps to find cousins with those designations, which, however, she was not acquainted with; but an uncle was a complete surprise to her. And indeed, to tell the truth, to say “uncle” to this shambling individual in the long old great-coat, which she recognised as a very ancient garment of her father’s, was not a pleasant sensation. She shrank from the lean, grey, hungry, yet humble being who evidently was very little at his ease sitting at the same table with his master, though he attempted, from time to time, to produce himself with a hesitating speech. “He was my brother, you know—I was his brother, his only brother,” which he said several times in the course of the long dreadful evening which preceded the funeral day. Katherine in compassion carried off this new and terrible relative into the drawing-room while the two men of business discoursed together. Mr. Robert Tredgold did not like to be carried off from the wine. He saw in this step precautionary measures to which he was accustomed, though Katharine did not even know of any occasion for precaution—and followed her sulkily, not to the drawing-room, but to that once gay little room which had been the young ladies’ room in former days. Katherine had gone back to it with a sentiment which she herself did not question or trace to its origin, but which no doubt sprang from the consciousness in her mind that Stella was on her way home, and that there was no obstacle now in the way of her return. She would have been horrified to say in words that her father was the obstacle who had been removed, and the shock and awe of death were still upon her. But secretly her heart had begun to rise at the thought of Stella, and that it would be her happy office to bring Stella home.
“It ain’t often I have the chance of a good glass of wine,” Robert Tredgold said; “your poor father was a rare judge of wine, and then you see he had always the money to spend on it. My poor brother would have given me a chance of a glass of good wine if he’d brought me here.”
“Would you like the wine brought here? I thought you would be happier,” said Katherine, “with me than with those gentlemen.”
“I don’t see,” he said, somewhat sullenly, “why I ain’t as good as they are. Turny’s made a devil o’ money, just like my poor brother, but he’s no better than us, all the same; and as for old Sturgeon, I know him well enough, I hope. My poor brother would never have let that man have all his business if it hadn’t been for me. I heard him say it myself. ‘You provide for Bob, and you shall have all as I can give you.’ Oh, he knows which side his bread’s buttered on, does Sturgeon. Many a time he’s said to me, ‘A little more o’ this, Bob Tredgold, and you shall go,’ but I knew my brother was be’ind me, bless you. I just laughed in his face. ‘Not while my brother’s to the fore,’ I’ve always said.”
“But,” said Katherine, “poor papa is not, as you say, to the fore now.”