“There is no defence,” she cried, “and no wrong. I am only not that kind of woman. I am very sorry for you and the poor little child. But you have that, it is a great deal. And I have nothing not even the view. I am bidding farewell to the view and to all those recollections. It is good-bye,” she said, waving her hand out to the sea, “to my youth as well as to the cliff, and to all my visions as well as to you. Good-bye, Mr. Stanford, good-bye. I think it is beginning to rain, and to-morrow I am going away.”
Was this the conclusion? Was it not a conclusion at all? Next day Katherine certainly did go away. She went to a little house at some distance from Sliplin—a little house in the country, half-choked in fallen leaves, where she had thought she liked the rooms and the prospect, which was no longer that of the bay and the headland, but of what we call a home landscape—green fields and tranquil woods, a village church within sight, and some red-roofed cottages. Katherine’s rooms were on the upper floor, therefore not quite on a level with the fallen leaves. It was a most digne retirement for a lady, quite the place for Katherine, many people thought; not like rooms in a town, but with the privacy of her own garden and nobody to interfere with her. There was a little pony carriage in which she could drive about, with a rough pony that went capitally, quite as well as Mr. Tredgold’s horses—growing old under the charge of the old coachman, who never was in a hurry—would ever go. Lady Jane, who approved so highly, was anxious to take a great deal of notice of Katherine. She sent the landau to fetch her when, in the first week of her retirement, Katherine went out to Steephill to lunch. But Katherine preferred the pony chaise. She said her rooms were delightful, and the pony the greatest diversion. The only grievance she had, she declared, was that there was nothing to find fault with. “Now, to be a disinherited person and to have no grievance,” she said, “is very hard. I don’t know what is to become of me.” Lady Jane took this in some unaccountable way as a satirical speech, and felt aggrieved. But I cannot say why.
It is a great art to know when to stop when you are telling a story—the question of a happy or a not happy ending rests so much on that. It is supposed to be the superior way nowadays that a story should end badly—first, as being less complete (I suppose), and, second, as being more in accord with truth. The latter I doubt. If there was ever any ending in human life except the final one of all (which we hope is exactly the reverse of an ending), one would be tempted rather to say that there are not half so many tours de force in fiction as there are in actual life, and that the very commonest thing is the god who gets out of the machine to help the actual people round us to have their own way. But this is not enough for the highest class of fiction, and I am aware that a hankering after a good end is a vulgar thing. Now, the good ending of a novel means generally that the hero and heroine should be married and sent off with blessings upon their wedding tour. What am I to say? I can but leave this question to time and the insight of the reader. If it is a fine thing for a young lady to be married, it must be a finer thing still that she should have, as people say, two strings to her bow. There are two men within her reach who would gladly marry Katherine, ready to take up the handkerchief should she drop it in the most maidenly and modest way. She had no need to go out into the world to look for them. There they are—two honest, faithful men. If Katherine marries the doctor, James Stanford will disappear (he has a year’s furlough), and no doubt in India will marry yet another wife and be more or less happy. If she should marry Stanford, Dr. Burnet will feel it, but it will not break his heart. And then the two who make up their minds to this step will live happy—more or less—ever after. What more is there to be said?
I think that few people quite understand, and no one that I know of, except a little girl here and there, will quite sympathise with the effect produced upon Katherine by her discovery of James Stanford’s marriage. They think her jealous, they think her ridiculous, they say a great many severe things about common-sense. A man in James Stanford’s position, doing so well, likely to be a member of Council before he dies, with a pension of thousands for his widow—that such a man should be disdained because he had married, though the poor little wife was so very discreet and died so soon, what could be more absurd? “If there had been a family of girls,” Stella said, “you could understand it, for a first wife’s girls are often a nuisance to a woman. But one boy, who will be sent out into the world directly and do for himself and trouble nobody——” Stella, however, always ends by saying that she never did understand Katherine’s ways and never should, did she live a hundred years.
This is what Stella, for her part, is extremely well inclined to do. Somers has been filled with all the modern comforts, and it is universally allowed to be a beautiful old house, fit for a queen. Perhaps its present mistress does not altogether appreciate its real beauties, but she loves the size of it, and the number of guests it can take in, and the capacity of the hall for dances and entertainments of all kinds. She has, too, a little house in town—small, but in the heart of everything—which Stella instinctively and by nature is, wherever she goes. All that is facilitated by the possession of sixty thousand a year, yet not attained; for there are, as everybody knows, many people with a great deal more money who beat at these charmed portals of society and for whom there is no answer, till perhaps some needy lady of the high world takes them up. But Stella wanted no needy lady of quality. She scoffed at the intervention of the Dowager Lady Somers, who would, if she could, have patronised old Tredgold’s daughter; but Lady Somers’ set were generally old cats to Stella, and she owed her advancement solely to herself. She is success personified—in her house, in her dress, in society, with her husband and all her friends. Little whining Job was perhaps the only individual of all her surroundings who retained a feeling of hostility as time went on against young Lady Somers. Her sister has forgiven her freely, if there was anything to forgive, and Sir Charles is quite aware that he has nothing to forgive, and reposes serenely upon that thought, indifferent to flirtations, that are light as air and mean nothing. Lady Somers is a woman upon whose stainless name not a breath of malice has ever been blown, but Job does not care for his mother. It is a pity, though it does not disturb her much, and it is not easy to tell the reason—perhaps because she branded him in his infancy with the name which sticks to him still. Such a name does no harm in these days of nicknames, but it has, I believe, always rankled in the boy’s heart.
On the other hand, there is a great friendship still between Job and his father, and he does not dislike his aunt. But this is looking further afield than our story calls upon us to look. It is impossible that Katherine can remain very long in a half rural, half suburban cottage in the environs of Sliplin, with no diversion but the little pony carriage and the visits of the Midge and occasionally of Lady Jane. The piece of land which Mr. Sturgeon sold for her brought in a pleasant addition to her income, and she would have liked to have gone abroad and to have done many things; but what can be done, after all, by a lady and her maid, even upon five hundred pounds a year?
THE END