Mr. Courtenay, for his part, though not quite so happy about his niece, and troubled by disagreeable pricks of conscience in respect to her, made all right by promises. He would come in a week or two—as soon as his cold was better—when he had got rid of the threatening of the gout, which rather frightened his doctor. Finally, he promised without doubt that he would come in the Easter recess, and make everything comfortable. But in the Easter recess it became absolutely necessary for him, for important private affairs, to go down to the Duke of Dorchester’s marine palace, where there were some people going whom it was absolutely essential that he should meet. And thus it came to pass that Kate spent her twentieth birthday all alone at Langton-Courtenay. Nobody knew or remembered that it was her birthday. There was not so much as an old servant about the place to think of it. Maryanne, to be sure, might have remembered, but did not until next morning, when she broke forth with, ‘La, Miss Kate!’ into good wishes and regrets, which Kate, with a flushed face and sore heart, put a stop to at once. No, no one knew. It is a hard thing, even when one is old, to feel that such domestic anniversaries have fallen into oblivion, and no one cares any longer for the milestones of our life; but when one is young—!
Kate went about all day long with this secret bursting in her heart. She would not tell it for pride, though, if she had, all the Hardwick family, at least, would have been ready enough with kisses and congratulations. She carried it about with her like a pain that she was hiding. ‘It is my birthday,’ she said to herself, when she paused before the big glass, and looked at her own solitary figure, and tried to make a little forlorn fun of herself; ‘good morning, Kate, I will give you a present. It will be the only one you will get to-day,’ she said, laughing, and nodding at her representative in the glass, whose eyes were rather red; ‘but I will not wish you many returns, for I am sure you don’t want them. Oh! you poor, poor girl!’ she cried, after a moment—‘I am so sorry for you! I don’t think there is anyone so solitary in all the world.’ And then Kate and her image both sat down upon the floor and cried.
But in the afternoon she went to Westerton, with Minnie Hardwick all unconscious beside her in the carriage, and bought herself the present she had promised. It was a tiny little cross, with the date upon it, which Minnie marvelled at much, wondering if it was to herself that this memento was to be presented. Kate had a strong inclination to place the words ‘Infelicissimo giorno’ over the date, but stopped, feeling that it might look romantic; but it was the unhappiest day to her—the worst, she thought, she had ever yet had to bear.
When she came home, however, a letter was put into her hands. It was from Mrs. Anderson at last.
CHAPTER LXI.
Kate’s existence, however, was too monotonous to be dwelt upon for ever, and though all that can be afforded to the reader is a glimpse of other scenes, yet there are one or two such glimpses which may help him to understand how other people were affected by this complication of affairs. Bertie Hardwick went up to London after that second brief visit at the Rectory, when Miss Courtenay had so successfully eluded seeing him, with anything but comfortable feelings. He had never quite known how she looked upon himself, but now it became apparent to him that whatever might be the amount of knowledge which she had acquired, it had been anything but favourable to him. How far he had a right to Kate’s esteem, or whether, indeed, it was a right thing for him to be anxious about it, is quite a different question. He was anxious about it. He wanted to stand well in the girl’s eyes. He had known her all his life, he said to himself. Of course they could only be acquaintances, not even friends, in all probability, so different must their lines of life be; but still it was hard to feel that Kate disliked him, that she thought badly of him. He had no right to care, but he did care. He stopped in his work many and many a day to think of it. And then he would lay down his book or his pen, and gnaw his nails (a bad habit, which his mother vainly hoped she had cured him of), and think—till all the law went out of his head which he was studying.
This was very wrong, and he did not do it any more than he could help; but sometimes the tide of rising thought was too much for him. Bertie was settling to work, as he had great occasion to do. He had lost much time, and there was not a moment to be lost in making up for it. Within the last three months, indeed, his careless life had sustained a change which filled all his friends with satisfaction. It was but a short time to judge by, but yet, if ever man had seen the evil of his ways, and set himself, with true energy, to mend them, it was Bertie, everybody allowed. He had left his fashionable and expensive cousin the moment they had arrived in London. Instead of Bertie Eldridge’s fashionable quarters, in one of the streets off Piccadilly, which hitherto he had shared, he had established himself in chambers in the Temple, up two pair of stairs, where he was working, it was reported, night and day. Bertie Eldridge, indeed, had so frightened all his people by his laughing accounts of the wet towels which bound the other Bertie’s head of nights, while he laboured at his law books, that the student received three several letters on the subject—one from each of his aunts, and one from his mother.
‘My dear, it goes to my heart to hear how you are working,’ the latter said. ‘I thank God that my own boy is beginning to see what is necessary to hold his place in life. But not too much, dearest Bertie, not too much. What would it avail me if my son came to be Lord Chancellor, and lost his health, or even his life, on the way?’
This confusing sentence did not make Bertie ridicule the writer, for he was, strange to say, very fond of his mother, but he wrote her a merry explanation, and set her fears at rest. However, though he did not indulge in wet towels, he had begun to work with an energy no one expected of him. He had a motive. He had seen the necessity, as his mother said. To wander all over the world with Bertie Eldridge, whose purse was carelessly free, but whose way it was, unconsciously, while intending to save his friends from expense, to draw them into greater and ever greater outlay, was not a thing which could be done, or which it would be at all satisfactory to do for life. And many very grave thoughts had come to Bertie on the journey home. Perhaps he had grown just a little disgusted with his cousin, who saw everything from his own point of view, and could not enter into the feelings and anxieties of a poorer man.
‘Oh! bother! All will come right in the end,’ he would say, when his cousin pointed out to him the impossibility for himself of the situation, so far as he himself was concerned.