Old Mr. Tredgold

by Mrs. Oliphant

“How kind of you to stand by me! Yes, it is strange; and I was pleasing myself with the idea of giving back the house and her share of everything besides to Stella. I should have liked to do that.”

“It is to be hoped,” he said, “that she will do the same by you.”

“Oh, no!” she cried with a half laugh, “that’s impossible.” Then, after a pause, “you know there’s a husband and children to be thought of. And what I will have is really quite enough for me.”

“There is one thing at your disposal as you please,” he said in a low voice. “I have not changed, Katherine, all these years.”

“Dr. Burnet! It makes one’s heart glad that you are so good a man!”

“Make me glad, that will be better,” he said.

Katherine shook her head but said nothing. And human nature is so strange that Dr. Burnet, after making this profession of devotion, which was genuine enough, did not feel so sorry as he ought to have done that she still shook her head as she disappeared up the great stairs.

Katherine went into her room a very different woman from the Katherine who had left it not half-an-hour before. Then she had entertained no doubt that this was her own house in which she was, this her own room, where in all probability she would live all her life. She had intended that Stella should have the house, and yet that there should always be a nook for herself in which the giver of the whole, half by right and wholly by love, should remain, something more than a guest. Would Stella think like that now that the tables were turned, that it was Katherine who had nothing and she all? Katherine did not for a moment imagine that this would be the case. Without questioning herself on the subject, she unconsciously proved how little confidence she had in Stella by putting away from her mind all idea of remaining here. She had no home; she would have no home unless or until the cottage was built for which her father had in mockery, not in kindness, left her the site. She looked round upon all the familiar things which had been about her all her life; already the place had taken another aspect to her. It was not hers any longer, it was a room in her sister’s house. She wondered whether Stella would let her take her favourite things—a certain little cabinet, a writing table, some of the pictures. But she did not feel any confidence that Stella would allow her to do so. Stella liked to have a house nicely furnished, not to see gaps in the furniture. That was a small matter, but it was characteristic of the view which Katherine instinctively took of the whole situation. And it would be vain to say that it did not affect her. It affected her strongly, but not as the sudden deprivation of all things might be supposed to affect a sensitive mind. She had no anticipation of any catastrophe of the kind, and yet now that it had come she did not feel that she was unprepared for it. It was not a thing which her mind rejected as impossible, which her heart struggled against. Now that it had happened, it fitted in well enough to the life that had gone before.

Her father had never cared for her, and he had loved Stella. Stella was the one to whom everything naturally came. Poor Stella had been unnaturally depressed, thrown out of her triumphant place for these six years; but her father, even when he had uttered that calm execration which had so shaken Katherine’s nerves but never his, had not meant any harm to Stella. He had not been able to do anything against her. Katherine remembered to have seen him seated at his bureau with that large blue envelope in his hand. This showed that he had taken the matter into consideration; but it had not proved possible for him to disinherit Stella—a thing which everybody concluded had been done as soon as she left him. Katherine remembered vaguely even that she had seen him chuckling over that document, locking it up in his drawer as if there was some private jest of his own involved. It was the kind of jest to please Mr. Tredgold. The idea of such a discovery, of the one sister who was sure being disappointed, and the other who expected nothing being raised to the heights of triumph, all by nothing more than a scratch of his pen, was sure to please him. She could almost hear him chuckling again at her own sudden and complete overthrow. When she came thus far Katherine stopped herself suddenly with a quick flush and sense of guilt. She would not consciously blame her father, but she retained the impression on her mind of his chuckle over her discomfiture.

Thus it will be seen that Katherine’s pain in the strange change was reduced by the fact that there was no injured love to feel the smart. She recognised that it was quite a thing that had been likely, though she had not thought of it before, that it was a thing that other people would recognise as likely when they heard of it. Nobody, she said to herself, would be very much surprised. It was unnatural, now she came to think of it, that she should have had even for a moment the upper hand and the extreme gratification, not to say superiority, of restoring Stella. Perhaps it was rather a mean thing to have desired it—to have wished to lay Stella under such an obligation, and to secure for herself that blessedness of giving which everybody recognised. Her mind turned with a sudden impulse of shame to this wish, that had been so strong in it. Everybody likes to give; it is a selfish sort of pleasure. You feel yourself for the moment a good genius, a sort of providence, uplifted above the person, whoever it may be, upon whom you bestow your bounty. He or she has the inferior position, and probably does not like it at all. Stella was too careless, too ready to grasp whatever she could get, to feel this very strongly; but even Stella, instead of loving her sister the better for hastening to her with her hands full, might have resented the fact that she owed to Katherine’s gift what ought to have been hers by right. It was perhaps a poor thing after all. Katherine began to convince herself that it was a poor thing—to have wished to do that. Far better that Stella should have what she had a right to by her own right and not through any gift.