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Next morning's post brought a letter from Bertie, which was a kind of complement to Katherine's reflections of the night before. After explaining that he had hitherto been unable to take a holiday from his various avocations, he promised to spend the following week with his sister and Miss Liddell. He then described the success of Mrs. Needham's bazar, and proceeded thus:
"Meeting my old friend Mrs. Dodd a few days ago, I was sorry to find from her that your favorite, Rachel Trant, had been very unwell. She had had a great deal of work, thanks to your kind efforts on her behalf, and sat at it early and late; then she took cold. I went to see her, and found her in a state of extreme depression, like that from which you succeeded in rousing her. I think it would be well if she could have a little change. Are there any cheap, humble lodgings at Sandbourne, where she might pass a week or two? I shall pass this matter in your hands."
"I am sure old Norris's wife would take her in. They have a nice cottage, almost on the beach, close to the point."
"No doubt. Really that Rachel of yours is in great luck. I wonder how many poor girls in London are dying for a breath of sea-air?"
"Ah, hundreds, I fear. But then, you see, they have not been brought under my notice, and Rachel has; so I will do the best I can for her. I am sure she is no common woman."
"At all events she has no common luck."
Katherine lost no time in visiting Mrs. Norris, and found that she was in the habit of letting a large, low, but comfortable room upstairs, where the bed was gorgeous with a patchwork quilt of many colors, and permitting her lodgers to dine in a small parlor, which was her own sitting-room.
The old woman had not had any "chance" that season, as she termed it, and gladly agreed to take the young person recommended by her husband's liberal employer. So Katherine walked back to write both to Bertie and their protegee .
During her absence De Burgh had called, but left no message. And Katherine felt a little sorry to have missed him, as she thought it probable he would go on to town that afternoon, and she wanted to hear some tidings of Errington, yet could hardly nerve herself to ask.
The evening was gloriously fine, and as Miss Payne did not like boating, the pony-carriage was given up to her, the boys, and Miss North the governess, for a long drive to a farm-house where the boys enjoyed rambling about, and Miss Payne bought new-laid eggs.
When they had set out, Katherine took a white woolen shawl over her arm—for even in July the breeze was sometimes chill at sundown—and strolled along the road, or rather cart track, which led between the cliffs and the sea to the boatman's cottage. She passed this, nodding pleasantly to the sturdy old man, who was busy in his cabbage garden, and pursued a path which led as far as a footing could be found, to where the sea washed against the point. It was a favorite spot with Katherine, who was tolerably sure of being undisturbed here. The view across the bay was tranquilly beautiful; the older part of Sandbourne only, with the pretty old inn, was visible from her rocky seat among the bowlders and debris which had fallen from above, while the old tower at the opposite point of the bay stood out black and solid against the flood of golden light behind it. She sat there very still, enjoying the air, the scene, the sweet salt breath of the sea, thinking intently of Rachel Trant's experience, of her fatal weakness, of the unpitying severity of that rule of law under which we social atoms are constrained to live; of the evident fact that were we but wise and good we might always be the beneficent arbiters of our own fate; that there are few pleasures which have not their price; and after all, though she, Katherine, had paid high for hers, it had not cost too much, considering she had been groping in the dimness of imperfect knowledge. Oh, hew she wished she had never attempted to act providence to her mother and herself, but trusted to Errington's sense of generosity and justice! Of course it would have been humiliating to beg from a stranger, yet before that stranger she had been compelled to lower herself to the dust, and—
The unwonted sound of approaching feet startled her. She turned, to see De Burgh within speaking distance. "I am like Robinson Crusoe in my solitude here," she said, smiling. "I turn pale at the sound of an unexpected step, as he did at the print of Friday's foot."
"And to continue the smile," he returned, leaning against a rock near her, "the footprint or step, as in Crusoe's case, only announces the advent of a devoted slave." He spoke lightly, and Katherine scarce noticed what seemed to her an idle compliment.
"I fancied you had gone to town," she said.
"No; I am not going to town; I don't know or care where I am going. Some kind friends might say I am on my way to the dogs."
"I hope not," said Katherine, gravely. "I imagine, Mr. De Burgh, that if you had some object of ambition—"
"I should become an Admirable Crichton? I don't think so. There are such dreary pauses in the current of all careers!"
"Of course. You would not live in a tornado!"
"I am not so sure"—laughing. "At all events I shall never be satisfied with still life like our friend Errington."
"Do you know anything of him? Mrs. Ormonde never mentions his name."
"Of course not; when a fellow can't keep pace with his peers, away with him, crucify him."
"As long as a few special friends are true——"
"If they are," interrupted De Burgh; and Katherine did not resume, hoping he would continue the theme, which he did, saying: "He has left his big house, gone into chambers somewhere, and has I believe, taken up literature, politics, and social subjects. So Lady Mary Vincent says. I fancy he is a clever fellow in a cast-iron style."
"What a change for him!"
"I believe there was something coming to him out of the wreck, and I think he is a sort of man who will float. I never liked him myself, chiefly, I fancy, because I know he doesn't like me. Indeed, I don't care for people in general." There was a pause, during which Katherine glanced at her companion, and was struck by his sombre expression, the stern compression of his lips.
"Did you call at the cottage?" she asked.
"No; you were out this morning, and I did not like to intrude again," he laughed. "Growing modest in my sere and yellow days, you see; so I thought I should perhaps find you here, as I saw your numerous party drive past the hotel."
"I like this corner, and often come here. But, Mr. De Burgh, you look as if the times were out of joint."
"So they are"—suddenly seating himself on a flat stone nearly at Katherine's feet, leaning his elbow on another, and resting his head on his hand, so as to look up easily in her face.
"What gloomy dark eyes he has!" she thought.
"I should like to tell you why," he went on.
"Very well," returned Katherine, who felt a little uneasy.
"I am pretty considerably in debt, to begin with. If I paid up I should have about three half-pence a year to live on. Besides my debts I have an unconscionably ancient relative whose title and a beggarly five thousand a year must come to me when he dies, if he ever dies. This venerable impediment has some hundred or more thousands which he can bequeath to whom he likes. Hitherto he has not considered me a credit to the family. Well, I went to him the other day, on his own invitation, and to my amazement he offered to pay my debts—on one condition."
"I do hope he will," cried Katherine, as De Burgh paused. She was quite interested and relieved by the tone of his narrative.
"Ay, but there's the rub. I can't fulfil the condition, I fear. It is that I should marry a woman rich enough to replace the money my debts will absorb; a particular woman who doesn't care for me, and whom, knowing the hideous tangle of motives that hangs round the central idea of winning her, I am almost ashamed to ask; but a woman that any man might court; a woman I have loved from the first moment my eyes met hers, who has haunted and distracted me ever since, and who is, I dare say, a great deal too good for me; but a creature I will strive to win, no matter what the cost of success. This girl or rather (for there is a richness and ripeness of nature about her which deserves the term) this fair, sweet woman—I need not name her to you." He stopped, and his passionate pleading eyes held hers. Katherine grew white, half with fear, half with sincere compassion. She tried to speak. At last the words came.
"You make me terribly sad, Mr. De Burgh," she said, with trembling lips. "You make me so sorry that I cannot marry you; but I cannot—indeed I cannot. Will Lord De Burgh not pay your debts if he knows you have done your best to persuade me to marry you?"
De Burgh laughed a cynical laugh. "You are infinitely practical, Katherine. (I am going to call you Katherine for the next few minutes. Because I think of you as Katherine, I love to speak your name to yourself; it seems to bring me a little nearer to you.) Listen to me. Don't you think you could endure me as a husband? I am a better fellow than I seem, and mine is no foolish boy's fancy. I am a better man when I am near you. Then this old cousin of mine will leave me all he possesses if you are my wife, and the Baroness de Burgh, with money enough to keep her place among her peers, would have no mean position; nor is a husband passionately devoted to you unworthy of consideration."
"It is not indeed. But, Mr. De Burgh, do you honestly think that devotion would last? These violent feelings often work their own destruction."
"Ay: God knows they do, amazingly fast," he returned, with a sigh and a far-away look. "But what you say applies to all men. If you ever marry you must run the risk of inconstancy in the man you accept. I am at least old enough and experienced enough to value a good woman when I have found one, especially when she does not make her goodness a bore. And you—you have inspired me with something different from anything I have ever felt before. Yes, yes," he went on, angrily, as he noticed a slight smile on her lips. "I see you try to treat this as only the stereotype talk of a lover who wants your money more than yourself; but if you listen to the judgment of your own heart, it is true and honest enough to recognize truth in another, and it will tell you that, whatever my faults (and they are legion), sneaking and duplicity are not among them. It is quite true that when first I heard of you I thought your fortune would be just the thing to put me right, as I have no doubt my dear friend Mrs. Ormonde has impressed upon you, but from the moment I first spoke to you I felt, I knew, there was something about you different from other women. I also knew that in the effort to win the heiress I was heavily handicapped by the sudden strong passion for the woman which seized me."
"That surely ought to have been a means of success?" said Katherine, a good deal interested in his account of himself.
"No: it made me, for the first time in my life, hesitating, self-distrustful, and awfully disgusted at having to take your money into consideration. Had you been an ordinary woman, ready to exchange your fortune for the social position I could give my wife, and perhaps with a certain degree of liking for the kind of free-lance reputation I am told I possess, I should have carried my point, and presented the future Baroness de Burgh to my venerable kinsman months ago."
"And suppose the unfortunate heiress had been a soft-hearted, simple girl?" said Katherine, with a slight faltering in her tones. "Suppose she were credulous, loving, attracted by you—you are probably attractive to some women—and married you believing in your disinterested affection?"
De Burgh, who had risen from half-recumbent position, and stood leaning against a larger fragment of rock, paused before he replied: "I think that I am a gentleman enough not to be a brute, but I rather believe a woman of the type you describe would not have a blissful existence with me."
"I am sure of it. You are quite capable of making the life of such a woman too dreadful to think of." She shuddered slightly.
De Burgh looked curiously at her. "If you will have the goodness to undertake my punishment," he said, "by marrying me without love, and letting me prove how earnestly I could serve you and strive to win it, I'll strike the bargain this moment. I have been reckless and unfortunate. Now give me a chance; for I do love you, Katherine. I'd love you if you were the humblest of undowered women."
The tears stood in her eyes, for the passion and feeling in his voice struck home to her.
"I believe it," she said, softly, "and I am almost sorry I cannot love you. But I do not, nor do I think I ever could. You will find others quite as likely to draw forth your affection as I am. But there are some natural barriers of disposition, and—oh, I cannot define what—which hold us apart. Yet I am interested in you, and would like to know you were happy. Yet, Mr. De Burgh, I must not sacrifice my life to you. If I did, the result might not be satisfactory even to yourself."
"Sacrifice your life! What an unflattering expression!" cried De Burgh, with a hard laugh. "So there is no hope for me?"
Katherine shook her head.
"I felt there was but little when I began," he said, as if to himself. "Tell me, are you free? Has some more fortunate fellow than myself touched that impregnable heart of yours? I know I have no right to ask such a question."
"You have not indeed, Mr. De Burgh. And if I could not with truth say 'no,' I should be vexed with you for asking it. Weighted as I am with money enough to excite the greed of ordinary struggling men, I shall not be in a hurry to renounce my comfortable independence."
De Burgh's eyes again held hers with a look of entreaty. "That independence will last just as long as your heart escapes the influence of the man whom you will love one day; for though love lies sleeping, it is in you, and will spring to life some time, all the stronger and more irresistible because his birth has not come early. Then you will feel more for me than you do now."
"I do feel for you, Mr. De Burgh"—raising her moist eyes to his.
"Thank you"—taking her hand and kissing it. "Will you, then be my friend, and promise not to banish me? I'll be sensible, and give you no trouble."
"Oh yes, certainly," said Katherine, glad to be able to comfort him in any way; and she withdrew her hand.
"I am not going to worry you with my presence now," he continued. "I shall say good-by for the present. I am going away north. I have entered a horse for a big steeple-chase at Barton Towers, and will ride him myself. If I win I can hold out awhile longer. You must wish me success."
"I am sure I do, heartily. After this, do give up racing."
"Very well. But"—pressing her hand hard—"I'll tell you what I will not give up, my hope of winning you , until you are married to some one else and out of my reach."
He kissed her hand again, and then, without any further adieu, turned away, walking with long swift steps toward the town, not once looking back.
"Thank God he is gone!" was Katherine's mental exclamation as the sound of his foot-fall died away. She was troubled by his intensity and determination, and touched by his unmistakable sincerity. "If I loved him I should not be afraid to marry him. I think he might possibly make a good husband to a woman he was really attached to; but I have not the least spark of affection for him, though there is something very distinguished in his figure and bearing; even his ruggedness is perfectly free from vulgarity. Yes, he is a sort of man who might fascinate some women; but he is terribly wrong-headed. If he keeps hoping on until I marry, he has a long spell of celibacy before him. I dare say he will be married himself before two years are over."
She sat awhile longer thinking, her face growing softer and sadder. Then she rose, wrapped her shawl round her, and walked slowly back to the cottage, where she found the rest of the party just returned, joyous and hungry.
Bertie came down late on the following Saturday, and brought a note from Rachel Trant to Katherine, accepting her offer of quarters at Sandbourne with grateful readiness. Katherine was always pleased with her letters; they expressed so much in a few words; a spirit of affectionate gratitude breathed through their quiet diction.
Katherine was very glad to receive it, for Bertie's accounts of their protegee made her uneasy. She had at first refused to move, saying it was really of no use spending money upon her, and seemed to be sinking back into the lethargic condition from which Katherine had woke her.
Her kind protectress therefore set off early on Monday to tell Mrs. Norris she was coming, and to make her room look pretty and cheerful. By her orders the boatman's son was despatched to meet their expected tenant on her arrival. Miss Payne having arranged a picnic for that day, at which Katherine's company could not be dispensed with.
When they returned it was already evening; still Katherine could not refrain from visiting her friend. "She will be so strange and lonely with people she has never seen before," she said to Bertie. "As soon as tea is over I shall go and see her."
"It will be rather late, yet it will be a great kindness. I will go with you, and wait for you among the rocks on the beach."
Miss Payne expressed her opinion that it was unwise to set beggars on horseback, but offered no further opposition.
The sun had not quite sunk as Katherine and her companion walked leisurely by the road which skirted the beach toward the boatman's dwelling.
"I wish we could find some occupation that could so fill Rachel Trant's mind as to prevent these dreadful fits of depression," began Katherine.
"She had plenty of work, and seemed successful in her performance of it," he returned; "but it does not seem to have kept her from a recurrence of these morbid moods. Loneliness does not appear to suit her."
"Sitting from morning till night, unremittingly at work, in silence, alone with memories which must be very sad, is not the best method of recovering cheerfulness, and unfortunately, Rachel is too much above her station to make many friends in it. She wants movement as well as work," remarked Katherine.
"As you consider her so good a dressmaker, it might be well to establish her on a larger scale, and give her some of the older girls from our Home as apprentices. Looking after and teaching them would amuse as well as occupy her."
"It is an idea worth developing!" exclaimed Katherine; and they walked on a few paces in silence.
"So De Burgh has been paying you a visit?" said Bertie at length.
"He has been paying Sandbourne a visit. He did not stay with us."
"It is wonderful that he could tame his energies even to stay here a few days."
"He was here only two days the last time."
" You cannot have much in common with such a man."
"Not much, certainly; still, he interests me. He has had such a narrow escape of being a good man."
"Narrow escape! I should say he never was in much danger of that destiny."
"Perhaps if the door of every heart were opened to us we should see more good in all than we could expect." A few words more brought them to the boatman's house, where they parted.
Miss Trant was at home, Mrs. Norris said. Katherine ascended the steep ladder-like stair, and having knocked at the door, entered the room. Rachel was seated in the window, which was wide open. Her elbows rested on a small table, and her chin on her clasped hands, while her large blue eyes looked steadily out over the bay, which slept blue and peaceful below; the lines of her slightly bent figure looked graceful and refined, but there was infinite sadness in her pose.
"I am very glad to see you again," said Katherine. Rachel, who was too deep in thought to hear her enter, started up to clasp her offered hand. Her pale thin face was lit with pleasure, and her grave, almost stern eyes softened.
"And so am I. You do not know how glad. Do you know, I began to think I never should see you again," and she kissed the hand she held.
"Do not!" said Katherine, bending forward to kiss her brow. "Were you so ill, then?"
"Not physically ill, except for my cough; but for all that I felt dying, and really I often wonder why you try to keep me alive. I am a trouble to you, and I do very little good. Had I not been a coward I should have left the world, where I have no particular place, long ago."
"Well, you see, I have a sort of superstition that life is a goodly gift which must not be cast aside for a whim; and why should you despair of finding peace? There is so much that is delightful in life!"
"And so much that is tragic!"
"Ah, yes! but if we only seek for the sorrowful we destroy our own lives, without helping any one. You must let the dead past bury its dead."
"How if the dead past comes and crosses your path, and looks you in the face?"
"What do you mean, Rachel?"
"You will think me weak and contemptible, but I must confess to you the cause of my late prostration."
"Yes, do; it may be a relief."
"About a month ago," said Rachel, sitting down by the table opposite Katherine, and again resting her elbow on it, while she half hid her face by placing her open hand over her eyes, "I was walking to Mrs. Needham's with some work I had finished, when, turning into Lowndes Square, I came face to face with—him. It is true I had a thick veil on, and my large parcel must have partially disguised me, but he did not recognize me. He passed me with the most unconscious composure, and he was looking better, brighter, than I had ever seen him. The sight of him brought back all the torturing pangs of helpless sorrow for the sweetness, the intense happiness I can never know again; the stinging shame, the poison of crushed hopes, the profound contempt for myself, the sense of being of no value to any one on earth. I think if I could have spoken to you , I might have shaken off these fiends of thought; but I was alone, always alone: why should I live?"
"Rachel, you must put this cruel man out of your mind. He has been the destroyer of your life. Try and cast the idea of the past from you. Life is too abundant to be exhausted by one sorrow. You have years before you in which to build up a new existence and find consolation. I will not listen to another word about your former life; let us only look forward. I have a plan for you—at least Mr. Payne has suggested the idea—in which you can help us and others, and which will need all your time and energy. But I will not even talk of this business. We must try lighter and pleasanter topics. Not another word about by-gone days will I speak. You have started afresh under my auspices, and I mean you to float. Now that you are here, Rachel, you must read amusing books, and be out in the open air all day. You will be a new creature in a week. You must come and see my cottage and my nephews; they are dear little fellows. Are you fond of children?"
"I don't think I am. I never had anything to do with them. But I would rather not go to your house, dear Miss Liddell. I feel as if I could not brave Miss Payne's eyes."
"That is mere morbidness. There is no reason why you should fear any one. You must discount your future rights. A few years hence, when you are a new woman, you will, I am sure, look back with wonder and pity as if reading the memoir of another. I know that spells of self-forgiveness come to us mercifully."
"When I listen to you, and hear in the tones of your voice more even than in your words that you are my friend, that you really care for me, that it will be a real joy to you to see me rise above myself, I feel that I can live and strive and be something more than a galvanized corpse. You give me strength. I wonder if I shall ever be able to prove to you what you have done for me. Stand by me, and I will try to put the past under my feet. I do not wish to presume on the great goodness you have shown me nor to forget the difference between us socially, but oh! let me believe you love me—even me—with the kindly affection that can forgive even while it blames."
"Be assured of that, Rachel," cried Katherine, her eyes moist and beautiful with the divine light of kindness and sympathy, as she stretched out her hand to clasp Rachel's. "I have from the first been drawn to you strangely—it is something instinctive—and I have firm belief in your future, if you will but believe in yourself. You are a strong, brave woman, who can dare to look truth in the face. You will be useful and successful yet."
Rachel held her hand tightly for a minute in silence; then she said, in a low but firm voice: "I will try to realize your belief. I should be too unworthy if I failed to do my very best. There! I have discarded the past; you shall hear of it no more."
They were silent for a while; then a solemn old eight-day clock with a fine tone struck loudly and deliberatedly in the room below. Katherine, with a smile, counted each stroke. "Nine!" she exclaimed, when the last had sounded; "and though it is 9 P.M., let it be the first hour of your new life." She rose, and passing her arm over Rachel's shoulder, kissed her once more with sisterly warmth. "Mr. Payne is waiting for me, so I must leave you. I have sent you some books; I have but few here. One will amuse you, I am sure, though it is old enough—a translation of the Memoirs of Madam d'Abrantes . It is full of such quaint pictures of the great Napoleon's court, and does not display much dignity or nobility, yet it is an honest sort of book."
"Thank you. I don't want novels now; they generally pain me. But my greatest solace is to forget myself in a book."
Bertie Payne's visit was a very happy one. The boys adored him, and subjects of discussion and difference of opinion never failed between Katherine and himself. She consulted him as to what school would be best for Cecil, and he advised that he should be left as a boarder at the one which he now attended, and where he had made fair progress, when Miss Payne and Katherine returned to town.
Bertie looked a new man when he bade them good-by, promising to come again soon.
Beyond sending a newspaper which recorded his victory in the Barton Towers steeple-chase De Burgh made no sign, and life ran smoothly in its ordinary grooves at Sandbourne.
Rachel Trant revived marvellously. The change of scene, the fresh salt-air, above all the society of Katherine, who frequently visited and walked with her, all combined to give her new life—even emboldening her to look at the future. Her manner, always grave and respectful, won reluctant approval from Miss Payne. And the boys were always pleased to run to the boatman's cottage with flowers or fruit, and talk to, or rather question, their new friend. Rachel seemed always glad to see them, though she evidently shrank from returning their visits. She was never quite herself, or off guard, except when alone with Katherine. Then she spoke out of her heart, and uttered thoughts and opinions which often surprised Katherine, and set her thinking more seriously than she had ever done before. Finally, hearing from her good old landlady that some of her customers had returned to town and were inquiring for her, Rachel said it was time her holiday came to an end.
"I feel now that I can bear to live and try to be independent. Indeed my life is yours; you have given it back to me, and I will yet prove to you that I am not unworthy of your wonderful generosity," she said, the morning of the day she was to start for London, as she sat with Katherine among the rocks at the point. "The idea of an establishment such as Mr. Payne suggests is excellent. It ought to be your property, and good property—I need only be your steward—while it may be of great use to others."
"I feel quite impatient to carry out the project, and we will set about it as soon as I return to town," returned Katherine.
"Will you write to me sometimes?" asked Rachel, humbly. "I feel as if I dare not let you go: all of hope or promise that can come into my wrecked life centres in you. While you are my friend I can face the world."
"Yes, Rachel, write to me as often as you like, and I will answer your letters. Trust me: I will always be your true friend."