“Victim is nonsense,” said Miss Mildmay sharply; “the man’s just a man, no better and no worse. We told him, it’s true, Katherine, that the doctor was there night and day, that he spared no pains about your poor father to please you—and it would be a dreadful thing to break it all up and to take you from poor Mr. Tredgold’s bedside.”
“No one need have given themselves any trouble about that,” said Katherine, very pale; “I should never have left papa.”
“Well, that was what I said,” cried Mrs. Shanks.
“So you see it was us who sent him away. Punish us, Katherine, don’t punish the man. You should have seen how he went away! Afterwards, having no hope, I suppose, and seeing someone that he thought he could like, and wanting a home—and a family—and all that——”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Shanks with fervour, “there are always a hundred apologies for a man.” Katherine had been gradually recovering herself while this interchange went on.
“Now let us say no more about Mr. Stanford,” she cried with a sudden movement. “Come into the morning room, it is not in such disorder as this, and there we can sit down and talk, and you can give me your advice. I must decide at once between these two lodgings, now—oh,” she cried, “but it is still worse here!” The morning room, the young ladies’ room of old, had many dainty articles of furniture in it, especially an old piano beautifully painted with an art which is now reviving. Sir Charles had told his wife that it would suit exactly with the old furniture of his mother’s boudoir at Somers, and with Stella to think was to do. The workmen had at that moment brought the box in which the piano was to travel, and filled the room, coaxing the dainty instrument into the rough construction of boards that was to be its house. Katherine turned her visitors away with a wild outbreak of laughter. She laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks—all the men, and one or two of the servants, and the two ladies standing about with the gravest faces. “Oh, Stella is wonderful!” she said.
They had their consultation afterwards in that grim chamber which had been Mr. Tredgold’s, and which Somers had turned into a smoking-room. It was the only place undisturbed where his daughter, thrown off by him upon the world, could consult with her friends about the small maidenly abode which was all she could afford henceforward. The visitors were full of advice, they had a hundred things to say; but I am not sure that Katherine’s mind had much leisure to pay attention to them. She thought she saw her father there, sitting in his big chair by the table in which his will was found—the will he had kept by him for years, but never had changed. There she had so often seen him with his hands folded, his countenance serene, saying “God damn them!” quite simply to himself. And she, whom he had never cared for? Had he ever cursed her too, where he sat, without animosity, and without compunction? She was very glad when the ladies had said everything they could think of, although she had derived but little benefit by it; and following them out of the room turned the key sharply in the door. There was nothing there at least which anyone could wish to take away.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Katherine was restless that afternoon; there was not much to delight her indoors, or any place where she could find refuge and sit down and rest, or read, or write, or occupy herself in any natural way, unless it had been in her own bedroom, and there Hannah was packing—a process which promoted comfort as little as any of the others. This condition of the house wounded her to the bottom of her heart. A few days, she said to herself, could have made no difference. Stella need not have set the workmen to work until the house at least was empty. It was a poor thing to invite her sister to remain and then to make her home uninhabitable. With anxious justice, indeed, she reminded herself that the house was not uninhabitable—that she might still live in the drawing-room if she pleased, after the screen and the pictures and the curiosities were taken away; or in the morning-room, though the piano was packed in a rough box; but yet, when all was said, it was not generous of Stella. She had nowhere to sit down—nowhere to rest the sole of her foot. She went out at last to the walk round the cliff. She had always been fond of that, the only one in the family who cared for it. It was like a thread upon which she had strung so many recollections—that time, long ago, when papa had sent James Stanford away, and the many times when Katherine, still so young, had felt herself “out of it” beside the paramount presence of Stella, and had retired from the crowd of Stella’s adorers to gaze out upon the view and comfort herself in the thought that she had some one of her own who wanted not Stella, but Katherine. And then there had been the day of Stella’s escapade, and then of Stella’s elopement all woven round and round about the famous “view.” Everything in her life was associated with it. That blue sky, that shining headland with the watery sun picking it out like a cliff of gold, the great vault of the sky circling over all, the dim horizon far away lost in distance, in clouds and immeasurable circles of the sea. Just now a little white sail was out as it might have been that fated little Stella, the yacht which Mr. Tredgold sold after her last escapade, and made a little money by, to his own extreme enjoyment. Katherine walked up and down, with her eyes travelling over the familiar prospect on which they had dwelt for the greater part of her life. She was very lonely and forlorn; her heart was heavy and her vitality low, she scarcely knew where she was going or what she might be doing to-morrow. The future was to-morrow to her as it is to a child. She had to make up her mind to come to some decision, and to-morrow she must carry it out.
It did not surprise her at all, on turning back after she had been there for some time, at the end of her promenade to see a figure almost by her side, which turned out to be that of Mr. Stanford. She was not surprised to see him. She had seen him so often, they were quite accustomed to meet. She spoke to him quite in a friendly tone, without any start or alarm: “You have come—to see the last of them, Mr. Stanford?” It was not a particularly appropriate speech, for there was no one here to see the last of, unless it had been Katherine herself; but nevertheless these were the words that came to her lips.