“Oh, kind!” he cried, “but I’m only Stella’s husband don’t you know, and I have to learn my place.”
“Good-bye, Kate,” cried Stella, coming out with all her little jingle of bracelets, buttoning her black gloves. “I am sure you will be glad to get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done, and clear out all your cupboards and things. You’ll let me know when you decide where you’re going, and keep that old wretch Simmons in order, and don’t give her too flaming a character. You’ll be sending them all off with characters as long as my arm, as if they were a set of angels. Mind you have proper dinners, and don’t sink into tea as ladies do when they’re alone. Good-bye, dear.” Stella kissed her sister with every appearance of affection. She held her by the shoulders for a moment and looked into her eyes. “Now, Kate, no nonsense! Take the good the Gods provide you—don’t be a silly, neglecting your own interest. At your age you really ought to take a common-sense view.”
Kate stood at what had been so long her own door and watched them all going away—Pearson and the soldier in the very brougham in which Stella had driven to the yacht on the night of her elopement. That and the old landau had got shabby chiefly for want of use in these long years. The baby, now so rosy, crowed in the arms of the dark nurse, and Sir Charles held his hat in his hand till he was almost out of sight. He was the only one who had felt for her a little, who had given her an honest if ineffectual sympathy. She felt almost grateful to him as he disappeared. And now to think this strange chapter in her existence was over and could never come again! Few, very few people in the world could have gone through such an experience—to have everything taken from you, and yet to have as yet given up nothing. She seemed to herself a shadow as she stood at that familiar door. She had lived more or less naturally as her sister’s dependent for the last week or two; the position had not galled her; in her desolation she might have gone on and on, to avoid the trouble of coming to a decision. But Stella was not one of the aimless people who are afraid of making decisions, and no doubt Stella was right. When a thing has to be done, it is better that it should be done, not kept on continually hanging over one. Stella had energy enough to make up half a dozen people’s minds for them. “Get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done”—these were the words of the lease on which Katherine held this house, very succinctly set down.
This was a curious interval which was just over, in many ways. Katherine’s relation to Stella had changed strangely; it was the younger sister now who was the prudent chaperon, looking after the other’s interests—and other relationships had changed too. The sight of James Stanford coming and going, who was constantly asked to dinner and as constantly thrown in her way, but whom Katherine, put on her mettle, had become as clever to avoid as Stella was to throw them together, was the most anxious experience. It had done her good to see him so often without seeing him, so to speak. It made her aware of various things which she had not remarked in him before. Altogether this little episode in life had enlarged her horizon. She had found out many things—or, rather, she had found out the insignificance of many things that had bulked large in her vision before. She went up and down the house and it felt empty, as it never had felt in the old time when there was nobody in it. It seemed to her that it had never been empty till now, when the children, though they were not winning children, and Stella, though she was so far from being a perfect person, had gone. There was no sound or meaning left in it; it was an echoing and empty place. It was rococo, as Stella said; a place made to display wealth, with no real beauty in it. It had never been a home, as other people know homes. And now all the faint recollections which had hung about it of her own girlhood and of Stella’s were somehow obliterated. Old Mr. Tredgold and his daughters were swept away. It was a house belonging to the Somerses, who had just come back from India; it looked dreadfully forlorn and empty now they had gone away, and bare also—a place that would be sold or let in all probability to the first comer. Katherine shivered at the disorder of all the rooms upstairs, with their doors widely opened and all the signs of departure about. The household would always be careless, perhaps, under Stella’s sway. There was the look of a desecrated place, of a house in which nothing more could be private, nothing sacred, in the air of its emptiness, with all those doors flung open to the wall.
She was called downstairs again, however, and had no time to indulge these fancies—and glancing out at a window saw the familiar Midge standing before the door; the voices of the ladies talking both together were audible before she had reached the stairs.
“Gone away? Yes, Harrison, we met them all—quite a procession—as we came driving up; and did you see that dear baby, Ruth Mildmay, kissing its little fat hand?”
“I never thought they would make much of a stay,” said Miss Mildmay; “didn’t suit, you may be sure; and mark my words, Jane Shanks——”
“How’s Miss Katherine? Miss Katherine, poor dear, must feel quite dull left alone by herself,” said Mrs. Shanks, not waiting to waste any words.
“I should have felt duller the other way,” said the other voice, audibly moving into the drawing-room. Then Katherine was received by one after another once more in a long embrace.
“You dear!” Mrs. Shanks said—and Miss Mildmay held her by the shoulders as if to impart a firmness which she felt to be wanting.