The Dull Miss Archinard Part 26

Katherine was reading beside the fire, one slim sole tilted towards the blaze, and she looked round at Odd as he came in, without moving. Odd's face wore a curiously strained expression, and, under it, seemed thinner, older than usual. He looked even haggard, Katherine thought.

She liked his thin face. It satisfied perfectly her sense of fitness, as Odd did indeed. It offered no stupidities, no pretences of any kind for mockery to fasten on. The clever feminine eye is quick to remark the subtlest signs of fatuity or complacency. Katherine's eye was very clever, and this morning, in looking at Odd, she was conscious of a little inner sigh. Katherine had asked herself more than once of late whether a husband, not only too superior for success, but morally her superior, might not make life a little wearing. Some such thought crossed her mind now as she met his eyes, and she realized that through Allan Hope's discomfiture she herself was as wrongly placed as ever, and Hilda's drudgery as binding.

Indeed, several thoughts mingled with that general sense of _malaise_.

One was that Allan Hope's smooth, handsome face was rather fatuous; the face that knows no doubts is in danger of seeming fatuous to a Katherine.

Another thought held a keen conjecture on Peter's haggard looks.

She put out her hand to him, and, stooping over her, he kissed her with more tenderness than he always showed. Their engagement had left almost untouched the easy unsentimental att.i.tude of earlier days.

"Well," he said, and Katherine understood and resented somewhat the quick attack of the absorbing subject. She shook her head.

"Bad news, Peter. Bad and very unexpected."

Odd stood upright and looked at her.

"Bad!" he repeated.

"She refused him," Katherine said tersely, and her glance turned once more from the fire to Peter's face. He looked at her silently.

"She is a foolish baby," added Katherine.

"She refused him--definitely?"

"Quite. She had to face the music last night, of course. Mamma and papa were rather--shabby--let us say, in their disinterested disappointment."

Odd flushed a little at the cool cynicism of Katherine's tone. "She told me, when I removed her from the battlefield, that she doesn't love him and never will. So, of course, from every high and mighty point of view she is right, quite right."

Katherine's eyes returned contemplatively to the fire. Odd was still silent.

"She ought to love him, of course; that is where she is so foolish. I am afraid she has ruined her life. I love you, Peter, and he is every bit as good-looking as you are." Katherine glanced at him with a sad and whimsical smile. Peter, certainly, was looking rather dazed. He stooped once more and kissed her.

"Thank you for loving me, Katherine."

"You are welcome. It _is_ a pity, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is"--Peter seated himself on the sofa, where Allan had sat the night before--"an awful pity," he added. "I am astonished. I thought she cared for him."

"So did I."

"She cares for some one else, perhaps." Odd locked his hands behind his head, and he too stared at the fire.

"There is no one else she could care for. I know Hilda's outlook too well."

"And she refused him," he repeated musingly.

"Really, Peter, that sounds a little dull--not like you." Katherine smiled at him.

"I feel dulled. I am awfully sorry. It would have been so satisfactory.

And what's to be done now?"

"That is for you to suggest, Peter. My power over Hilda is very limited.

You may have more influence."

"She might come and live with us."

"That would be very nice," Katherine a.s.sented, "and it is very dear of you to suggest it."

Peter was conscious of sudden terrors that prompted him to add with self-scorn--

"What would your mother do?"

"Without her? I don't know."

"Of course," Peter hastened to add, "as far as money goes, you know; you understand, dear, that your mother shall want nothing. But to rob her of the companions.h.i.+p of both daughters?" Peter rose and walked to the window. It needed some heroism, he thought, to put aside the idea of Hilda living with them; he tried to pride himself on the renunciation, while under the poor crust of self-approbation lurked jibing depths of consciousness. Heroism would not lie in renunciation, but in living with her. The cowardice of his own retreat left him horribly shaken.

Katherine watched him from her chair, calmly.

"But Hilda's work must cease at once," he said presently, finding a certain relief in decisive measures. "She won't show any false pride, I hope, about allowing me to put an end to it."

"It would be like her," said Katherine, sliding a sympathetic gloom of voice over the hard reality of her conclusions; conclusions half angry, half sarcastic. Peter was dull after all. Katherine felt alarmed, humiliated, and amused, but she steeled herself inwardly to a calm contemplation of facts. She joined him at the window. "What a burden you have taken on your poor shoulders, Peter." Peter immediately put his arm around her waist, and, though Katherine felt a deeper humiliation, she saw that alarm was needless; a proof of Peter's superiority, a proof, too, of his stupidity; as her own most original and clever superiority was proved by the fact of her calm under humiliation. Could she accept that humiliation as the bitter drop in the cup of good things Peter had to offer her? Katherine asked herself the question; it was answered by another. Just how far did the humiliation go? Peter's infidelity might be mere shallow pa.s.sion, _pa.s.sagere;_ the fine part might be to feign blindness and help him out of it. _Attendons_ summed up Katherine's mental att.i.tude at the moment.

"Don't talk to me of burdens, dear Katherine," said Peter. "Don't try to spoil my humble little pleasure. If I can make you and yours happier, what more can I ask?" He looked at her with kind, tired eyes.

"I won't thwart you, but Hilda will."

"Hilda will find it difficult when we are married. That must be soon, Katherine."

Katherine looked pensively out of the window.

"We will see," she replied, with a pretty evasiveness.

It was fine and cold as Odd walked down the Boulevard St. Germain that afternoon. He walked at a tremendous pace, for human nature hopes to cheat thought by physical effort. Indeed, Peter did not think much, and was convinced that his mind was a comparatively happy blank as he paused before the tall house where Hilda was pursuing her avocations. If he made any definite reflections while he walked up and down between the doorway and the next corner, they were on his last few conversations with Hilda; and then on rather abstract points merely. He had drawn the child out. He had penetrated the reserved mind that acquired for enjoyment, not for display. He had found out that Hilda knew Italian literature, from Dante to Leopardi, almost as well as he himself did, and loved it just as well. The fiction of Russia and Scandinavia was deeply appreciated by her, and the essayists of France. Her tastes were as delicately discriminative as Katherine's, but lacked that metallic a.s.surance of which lately Peter had become rather uncomfortably aware.

As for the English tongue, from the old meeting-ground of Chaucer they could range with delightful sympathy to Stevenson's sweet radiance.

Peter thought quite intently of this literary survey and evaded any trespa.s.sing beyond its limits. His reticence was not put to a prolonged test. Hilda met him before half-a-dozen trips to the corner were accomplished. She showed no signs of conscious guilt, though Peter was not sure that she was not a "foolish baby."

"Let us walk," she said, "it is such a lovely day."

"We will walk at least till the sun goes. We will just have time to catch the sunset on the Seine."

"Yes; what a _lovely_ day! I wish I were ten, with short skirts, and a hoop, that I could run and roll."

"You would like a bicycle ride. Come to-morrow with Katherine and me."

"I can't. Don't think me a prig, but my model is due and I am finis.h.i.+ng my picture. Thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good."

"If Palamon is tired I will carry him, Hilda."