“Oh goodness, no! Tell me about a death and all that happened, in the very same house where it was, to make me nervous and take away my rest! You quite forget that I am delicate, Kate! I never could bear the things that you, a great, robust, middle-aged woman, that have never had any drain on your strength, can go through. Do let me have a quiet night, my first night after a sea voyage. Go and talk to Charlie, if you like, he has got no nerves; and Pearson, put the lemonade by my bed, and turn down the light.”
Katherine left her sister’s room with the most curious sensations. She was foiled at every point by Stella’s lightness, by her self-occupation, the rapidity of her loose and shallow thoughts, and their devotion to one subject. She recognised in a half-angry way the potency and influence of this self-occupation. It was so sincere that it was almost interesting. Stella found her own concerns full of interest; she had no amiable delusions about them. She spoke out quite simply what she felt, even about her children. She did not claim anything except boundless indulgence for herself. And then it struck Katherine very strangely, it must be allowed, to hear herself described as a great, robust, middle-aged woman. Was that how Stella saw her—was she that, probably, to other people? She laughed a little to herself, but it was not a happy laugh. How misguided was the poet when he prayed that we might see ourselves as others see us! Would not that be a dreadful coming down to almost everybody, even to the fairest and the wisest. The words kept flitting through Katherine’s mind without any will of hers. “A great, robust, middle-aged woman.” She passed a long mirror in the corridor (there were mirrors everywhere in Mr. Tredgold’s much decorated house), and started a little involuntarily to see the slim black figure in it gliding forward as if to meet her. Was this herself, Katherine, or was it the ghost of what she had thought she was, a girl at home, although twenty-nine? After all, middle-age does begin with the thirties, Katherine said to herself. Dante was thirty-five only when he described himself as at the mezzo del cammin. Perhaps Stella was right. She was three years younger. As she went towards the stairs occupied by these thoughts, she suddenly saw Sir Charles, a tall shadow, still more ghost-like than herself, in the mirror, with a little white figure seated on his shoulder. It was the little Job, the delicate boy, his little feet held in his father’s hand to keep them warm, his arms clinging round his father’s head as he sat upon his shoulder. Katherine started when she came upon the group, and made out the little boy’s small face and staring eyes up on those heights. Her brother-in-law greeted her with a laugh: “You wouldn’t stop with me to smoke a cigar, so I have found a companion who never objects. You like the smoke, don’t you, Job?”
“Job fader’s little boy,” said the small creature, in a voice with a shiver in it.
“Put a shawl round him, at least,” cried Katherine, going hastily to a wardrobe in the corridor; “the poor little man is cold.”
“Not a bit, are you, Job, with your feet in father’s hand?”
“Indland,” said the child, with a still more perceptible shiver, “Indland’s cold.”
But he tried to kick at Katherine as she approached to put the shawl round him, which Sir Charles stooped to permit, with an instinct of politeness.
“What, kick at a lady!” cried Sir Charles, giving the child a shake. “But we are not used to all these punctilios. We shall do very well, I don’t fear.”
“It is very bad for the child—indeed, he ought to be asleep,” Katherine could not but say. She felt herself the maiden aunt, as Stella had called her, the robust middle-aged woman—a superannuated care-taking creature who did nothing but interfere.
“Oh, we’ll look after that, Job and I,” the father said, going on down the stairs without even the fictitious courtesy of waiting till Katherine should pass. She stood and watched them going towards the drawing-room, the father and child. The devotion between them was a pretty sight—no doubt it was a pretty sight. The group of the mother and child is the one group in the world which calls forth human sentiment everywhere; and yet the father and child is more moving, more pathetic still, to most, certainly to all feminine, eyes. It seems to imply more—a want in the infant life to which its mother is not first, a void in the man’s. Is it that they seem to cling to each other for want of better? But that would be derogatory to the father’s office. At all events it is so. Katherine’s heart melted at this sight. The poor little child uncared for in the midst of so much ease, awake with his big excited eyes when he ought to have been asleep, exposed to the cold to which he was unaccustomed, shivering yet not complaining, his father carrying him away to comfort his own heart—negligent, but not intentionally so, of the child’s welfare, holding him as his dearest thing in the world. The ayah, on hearing the sound of voices, came to the door of the room, expostulating largely in her unknown tongue, gesticulating, appealing to the unknown lady. “He catch death—cold,” she cried, and Katherine shook her head as she stood watching them, the child recovering his spirits in the warmth of the shawl, his little laugh sounding through the house. Oh, how bad it was for little Job! and yet the conjunction was so touching that it went to her heart. She hesitated for a moment. What would be the use of following them, of endeavouring through Sir Charles’ cigar and Job’s chatter to give her brother-in-law the needful information, joyful though it must be. She did not understand these strange, eager, insouciant, money-grasping, yet apparently indifferent people, who were satisfied with her curt intimation of their restoration to wealth, even though they were forever, as Lady Jane said, agape for more. She stood for a moment hesitating, and then she turned away in the other direction to her own room, and gave it over for the night.