Katherine felt that, though duty may be bracing and fortifying, it strongly resembles a cold salt bath when the thermometer is below zero.
She spent many solitary hours walking in the little wood which led to the sea, or sitting where she had sat with Framlingham, thinking over the immense task which lay before her, and wondering how it was best to execute it. She searched her heart relentlessly for any selfish or unworthy motive which might lurk in it. All alone under the pine trees as she was, she felt herself flush with consciousness as she asked herself: was she moved by any personal desire? She felt that she would be glad to vindicate herself in the eyes of Hurstmanceaux—to force him to acknowledge that one basely born might act well and with honor. She longed to show him that she could shake off the ill-gotten wealth which he despised and which the world adored. Something of this might move her—so much her conscience compelled her to admit—but with perfect honesty she could also feel that, had she never seen him, she would none the less have desired to undo, as far as should be in her power, the evil which her father had done to the poor and helpless.
Again, was she wronging her mother? Was she leaving the real duty, which lay close at hand, for the imaginary duty, which lay far away? She knew that many a dreamer did so; that many an enthusiast left his own garden to weed and drought, whilst he went to sow in strange lands. She held in horror the religion which taught that the soul should be saved, however the hearth and home were deserted.
These days of indecision and mental conflict were days of infinite pain, for her own nature was resolute and not wavering, and to such a temper irresolution seems a form of cowardice. Moreover she, who had read widely and thought deeply, knew that it is easier to move the mountains or to arrest the tides than it is to do any real good to the mass of mankind. She had none of the illusions of the socialist, none of the distorted idealism of revolutionists and philanthropists; she was not sustained by any erroneous idolatry of humanity; she did not expect the seed she would sow to bring forth any fruit which would change the face of Nature; but the impulse to cast from her the wealth acquired by fraud, by violence, and by usury, was too strong in her for her to be able to resist it.
She knew that what she wished to do was fraught with innumerable difficulties, and that might, unless well done, cause more evil than good. She had hoped to find in Framlingham some guidance, some help; but she saw that she must rely on no one but herself. It saddened her to know that it was so, but it did not entirely discourage her. Conscience is a lamp which burns low in the press of the world, but lights clearly enough the path of the solitary.
In the autumn of that year, sixteen months after the death of William Massarene, she sailed from Southampton for that dread Northwest, which remained in the memories of her earliest childhood as a place of horror, whose summer meant sandstorms, and drought, and sunstroke, and the whirling of the mad tornado, and the scorching billows of the forest fires, and winter meant the pall of snow on hill and plain, the driving of the dreadful blizzard, the lowing of starved cattle, the mourning of famished wolves, the shapeless heaps upon the ice which were the bodies of frozen travelers and foundered caravans.
It was terrible to her to return there, and behold all which she must see there; but it was more terrible to her to remain possessor of the millions which had been acquired in that hell.
“Why can that young woman be gone to America?” said Daddy Gwyllian.
“Gone to look after her property, I presume,” said Hurstmanceaux, whom he addressed.
“It is a joli denier to look after. That cad was second only to Vanderbilt and Pullman.”