“Perhaps,” said Katharine. “Mrs. Simmons, I am sure, is a much better woman than I am; but we don’t ask her to come in to dinner.”
“Hold your impudence!” her father cried, who was never choice in his expressions. “Do you put my friends on a level with your servants?” He would not have called them her servants in any other conversation, but in this it seemed to point the moral better.
“They are not so well bred, papa,” she said, which was a speech which from Stella would have delighted the old man, but from Katherine it made him angry.
“Don’t let me hear you set up such d—— d pretensions,” he cried. “Who are you, I wonder, to turn up your nose at the Turnys of Lothbury? There is not a better firm in London, and young Turny’s got his grandfather’s money, and many a one of your grand ladies would jump at him. If you don’t take your chance when you find it, you may never have another, my fine lady. None of your beggars with titles for me. My old friends before all.”
This was a fine sentiment indeed, calculated to penetrate the most callous heart; but it made Katherine glow all over, and then grow chill and pale. She divined what was intended—that there were designs to unite her, now the representative of the Tredgolds, with the heir of the house of Turny. There was no discrepancy of fortune there. Old Turny could table thousand by thousand with Mr. Tredgold, and it was a match that would delight both parties. Why should Katherine have felt so violent a pang of offended pride? Mr. Turny was no better and no worse in origin than she. The father of that family was her father’s oldest friend; the young people had been brought up with “every advantage”—even a year or two of the University for the eldest son, who, however, when he was found to be spending his time in vanities with other young men like himself—not with the sons of dukes and earls, which might have made it bearable—was promptly withdrawn accordingly, but still could call himself an Oxford man. The girls had been to school in France and in Germany, and had learned their music in Berlin and their drawing in Paris. They were far better educated than Katherine, who had never had any instructor but a humble governess at home. How, then, did it come about that the idea of young Turny having the insolence to think of her should have made Katherine first red with indignation, then pale with disgust? I cannot explain it, neither could she to herself; but so it was. We used to hear a great deal about nature’s noblemen in the days of sentimental fiction. But there certainly is such a thing as a natural-born aristocrat, without any foundation for his or her instinct, yet possessing it as potently as the most highly descended princess that ever breathed. Katherine’s grand-father, as has been said, had been a respectable linen-draper, while the Turnys sprung from a house of business devoting itself to the sale of crockery at an adjoining corner; yet Katherine felt herself as much insulted by the suggestion of young Turny as a suitor as if she had been a lady of high degree and he a low-born squire. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
Two or three of such suitors crossed her path within a short time. Neither of the sisters might have deserved the attentions of these gentlemen had they been likely to share their father’s wealth; but now that the disgrace of one was generally known, and the promotion of the other as sole heiress generally counted upon, this was what happened to Katherine. She was exceedingly civil in a superior kind of way, with an air noble that indeed sat very well upon her, and a dignity worthy of a countess at least to these visitors: serious and stately with the mothers, tolerant with the fathers, gracious with the daughters, but altogether unbending with the sons. She would have none of them. Two other famous young heroes of the city (both of whom afterwards married ladies of distinguished families, and who has not heard of Lady Arabella Turny?) followed the first, but with the same result. Mr. Tredgold was very angry with his only remaining child. He asked her if she meant to be an infernal fool too. If so, she might die in a ditch for anything her father cared, and he would leave all his money to a hospital.
“A good thing too. Far better than heaping all your good money, that you’ve worked and slaved for, on the head of a silly girl. Who are you, I wonder,” he said, “to turn up your dashed little nose? Why, you’re not even a beauty like the other; a little prim thing that would never get a man to look twice at you but for your father’s money at your back. But don’t you make too sure of your father’s money—to keep up your grandeur,” he cried. Nevertheless, though he was so angry, Mr. Tredgold was rather pleased all the same to see his girl turn up her nose at his friends’ sons. She was not a bit better than they were—perhaps not so good. And he was very angry, yet could not but feel flattered too at the hang-dog looks with which the Turnys and others went away—“tail between their legs,” he said to himself; and it tickled his fancy and pride, though he was so much displeased.
CHAPTER XXII.
Perhaps the village society into which Katherine was now thrown was not much more elevating than the Turnys, &c.; but it was different. She had known it all her life, for one thing, and understood every allusion, and had almost what might be called an interest in all the doings of the parish. The fact that the old Cantrells had grown so rich that they now felt justified in confessing it, and were going to retire from the bakery and set up as private gentlefolks while their daughter and son-in-law entered into possession of the business, quite entertained her for half an hour while it was being discussed by Miss Mildmay and Mrs. Shanks over their tea. Katherine had constructed for herself in the big and crowded drawing-room, by means of screens, a corner in which there was both a fireplace and a window, and which looked like an inner room, now that she had taken possession of it. She had covered the gilded furniture with chintzes, and the shining tables with embroidered cloths. The fire always burned bright, and the window looked out over the cliff and the fringe of tamarisks upon the sea. The dual chamber, the young ladies’ room, with all its contrivances for pleasure and occupation, was shut up, as has been said, and this was the first place which Katherine had ever had of her very own.
She did not work nearly so much for bazaars as she had done in the old Stella days. Then that kind of material occupation (though the things produced were neither very admirable in themselves nor of particular use to anyone) gave a sort of steady thread, flimsy as it was, to run through her light and airy life. It meant something if not much. Elle fait ses robes—which is the last height of the good girl’s excellence in modern French—would have been absurd; and to make coats and cloaks for the poor by Stella’s side would have been extremely inappropriate, not to say that such serious labours are much against the exquisite disorder of a modern drawing-room, therefore the bazaar articles had to do. But now there was no occasion for the bazaars—green and gilt paper stained her fingers no more. She had no one to keep in balance; no one but herself, who weighed a little if anything to the other side, and required, if anything, a touch of frivolity, which, to be sure, the bazaars were quite capable of furnishing if you took them in that way. She read a great deal in this retreat of hers; but I fear to say it was chiefly novels she read. And she had not the least taste for metaphysics. And anything about Woman, with a capital letter, daunted her at once. She was very dull sometimes—what human creature is not?—but did not blame anyone else for it, nor even fate. She chiefly thought it was her own fault, and that she had indeed no right to be dull; and in this I think she showed herself to be a very reasonable creature.