“O—oh,” he said, and lifted his limp hat by the crown; “it’s a long time since we have met; I don’t know that I should have recognised you.” His eyes went from her hat to her feet with a curious inspection of her dress.
“Yes,” said Katherine, “you are right; it is so. My father is dead.”
A sudden glimmer sprang into his eyes and a redness to his face; it was as if some light had flashed up over them; he gave his wife a keen look. But decorum seemed more present with him than with Stella. He did not put any question. He said mechanically, “I am sorry,” and stood waiting, giving once more a glance at his wife.
“All Kate has condescended to tell me,” said Stella, “is that I am not out of the will. That’s the great thing, isn’t it? How much there’s for us she doesn’t say, but there’s something for us. Tell him, Kate.”
“There is a great deal for you,” Katherine said, quietly, “and a great deal to say and to tell you; but it is very public and very noisy here.”
The red light glowed up in Somers’ face. He lifted instinctively, as it seemed, the little boy at his feet into his arms, as if to control and sober himself. “We owe this,” he said, “no doubt to you, Miss Tredgold.”
“You would have owed it to me had it been in my power,” said Katherine, with one little flash of self-assertion, “but as it happens,” she added hastily, “you do not owe anything to me. Stella will be as rich as her heart can desire. Oh, can’t we go somewhere out of this noise, where I can tell you, Stella? Or, if we cannot, wait please, wait for the explanations. You have it; isn’t that enough? And may I not make acquaintance with the children? And oh, Stella, haven’t you a word for me?”
Stella turned round lightly and putting her arms round Katherine kissed her on both cheeks. “You dear old thing!” she said. And then, disengaging herself, “I hope you ordered me some mourning, Kate. How can I go anywhere in this coloured gown? Not to say that it is quite out of fashion and shabby besides. I suppose I must have crape—not so deep as yours, though, which is like a widow’s mourning. But crape is becoming to a fair complexion. Oh, he won’t have anything to say to you, don’t think it. He is a very cross, bad-tempered, uncomfortable little boy.”
“Job fader’s little boy,” said the pale little creature perched upon his father’s shoulder and dangling his small thin legs on Somers’ breast. He would indeed have nothing to say to Katherine’s overtures. When she put out her arms to him he turned round, and, clasping his arms round his father’s head, hid his own behind it. Meanwhile a look of something which looked like vanity—a sort of sublimated self-complacence—stole over Sir Charles’ face. He was very fond of the child; also, he was very proud of the fact that the child preferred him to everybody else in the world.
It was with the most tremendous exertion that the party at last was disembarked, the little boy still on his father’s shoulder, the baby in the arms of the ayah. The countless packages and boxes, which to the last moment the aggrieved and distracted maid continued to pack with items forgotten, came slowly to light one after another, and were disposed of in the train, or at least on shore. Stella had forgotten everything except the exhilaration of knowing that she had come into her fortune as she made her farewells all round. “Oh, do you know? We have had great news; we have come into our money,” she told several of her dearest friends. She was in a whirl of excitement, delight, and regrets. “We have had such a good time, and I’m so sorry to part; you must come and see us,” she said to one after another. Everybody in the ship was Stella’s friend. She had not done anything for them, but she had been good-humoured and willing to please, and she was Stella! This was Katherine’s involuntary reflection as she stood like a shadow watching the crowd of friends, the goodbyes and hopes of future meeting, the kisses of the ladies and close hand-clasping of the men. Nobody was so popular as Stella. She was Stella, she was born to please; wherever she went, whatever she did, it was always the same. Katherine felt proud of her sister and subdued by her, and a little amused at the same time. Stella—with her husband by her side, the pale baby crowing in its dark nurse’s arms, and the little boy clinging round his father, the worried English maid, the serene white-robed ayah, the soldier-servant curt and wooden, expressing no feeling, and the heaps of indiscriminate baggage which formed a sort of entrenchment round her—was a far more important personage than Katherine could ever be. Stella did not require the wealth which was now to be poured down at her feet to make her of consequence. Without it, in her present poverty, was she not the admired of all beholders—the centre of a world of her own? Her sister looked on with a smile, with a certain admiration, half pleased with the impartiality (after all) of the world, half jarred by the partiality of nature. Her present want of wealth did not discredit Stella, but nature somehow discredited Katherine and put her aside, whatever her qualities might be. She looked on without any active feeling in these shades of sentiment, neutral tinted, like the sky and the oily river, and the greyness of the air, with a thread of interest and amusement running through, as if she were looking on at the progress of a story—a story in which the actors interested her, but in which there was no close concern of her own.