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Katharine Lauderdale Volume 1

<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2> The conversation at dinner did not begin brilliantly. Mrs. Lauderdale was tired, and Katharine was preoccupied; as was natural, old Mr. Lauderdale was not easily moved to talk except upon his favourite hobby, and Alexander Junior was solemnly and ferociously hungry, as many strong men are at regular hours. As for Crowdie, he always felt a little out of his element amongst his wife’s relations, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, and he was more observant than communicative at first. Katharine avoided looking at him, which she could easily do, as she sat between him and her father. As usual, it was her mother who made the first effort to talk. “How is Hester?” she asked, looking across at Crowdie. “Oh, very well, thanks,” he answered, absently. “Oh, yes,—she’s very well, thank you,” he added, repeating the answer with a little change and more animation. “She had a cold last week, but she’s got over it.” “It was dreadful weather,” said Katharine, helping her mother to stir the silence. “All grandpapa’s idiots had the grippe.” “All Mr. Lauderdale’s what?” asked Crowdie. “I didn’t quite catch—” “The idiots—the asylum, you know.” “Oh, yes—I remember,” said the young man, and his broad red lips smiled. Alexander Senior, whose hand shook a little, had eaten his soup with considerable success. He glanced from Katharine to the young artist, and there was a twinkle of amusement in the kindly old eyes. “Katharine always laughs at the idiots, and talks as though they were my personal property.” His voice was deep and almost musical still—it had been a very gentle voice in his youth. “Not a very valuable property,” observed Alexander Junior, fixing his eye severely on the serving girl, who forthwith sprang at Mrs. Lauderdale’s empty plate as though her life depended on taking it away in time. The Lauderdales had never kept a man-servant. The girl was a handsome Canadian, very smart in black and white. “Wouldn’t it be rather an idea to insure all their lives, and make the insurance pay the expenses of the asylum?” enquired Crowdie, gravely looking at Alexander Junior. “Not very practical,” answered the latter, with something like a smile. “Why not?” asked his father, with sudden interest. “That strikes me as a very brilliant idea for making charities self-supporting. I suppose,” he continued, turning to his son, “that the companies could make no objections to insuring the lives of idiots. The rate ought to be very reasonable when one considers the care they get, and the medical attendance, and the immunity from risk of accident.” “I don’t know about that. When an asylum takes fire, the idiots haven’t the sense to get out,” observed Alexander Junior, grimly. “Nonsense! Nonsense, Alexander!” The old man shook his head. “Idiots are just as—well, not quite as sensible as other people,—that would be an exaggeration—but they’re not all so stupid, by any means.” “No—so I’ve heard,” said Crowdie, gravely. “So stupid as what, Mr. Crowdie?” asked Katharine, turning on him rather abruptly. “As others, Miss Lauderdale—as me, for instance,” he answered, without hesitation. “Probably we both meant—Mr. Lauderdale and I—that all idiots are not so stupid as the worst cases, which are the ones most people think of when idiots are mentioned.” “Exactly. You put it very well.” The old philanthropist looked pleased at the interruption. “And I repeat that I think Mr. Crowdie’s idea of insuring them is very good. Every time one dies,—they do die, poor things,—you get a sum of money. Excellent, very excellent!” His ideas of business transactions had always been hazy in the extreme, and his son proceeded to set him right. “It couldn’t possibly be of any advantage unless you had capital to invest and insured your own idiots,” said Alexander Junior. “And that would just amount to making a savings bank on your own account, and saving so much a year out of your expenses for each idiot. You could invest the savings, and the interest would be all you could possibly make. It’s not as though the idiots’ families paid the dues and made over the policies to you. There would be money in that, I admit. You might try it. There might be a streak of idiocy in the other members of the patient’s family which would make them agree to it.” The old man’s gentle eyes suddenly lighted up with ill temper. “You’re laughing at me, Alexander,” he said, in a louder voice. “You’re laughing at me!” “No, sir; I’m in earnest,” answered the son, in his cool, metallic tones. “Don’t the big companies insure their own ships?” asked the philanthropist. “Of course they do, and they make money by it.” “I beg your pardon. They make nothing but the interest of what they set aside for each ship. They simply cover their losses.” “Well, and if an idiot dies, then the asylum gets the money.” “Yes, sir. But an idiot has no intrinsic value.” “Why, then the asylum gets a sum of money for what was worth nothing, and it must be very profitable—much more so than insuring ships.” “But it’s the asylum’s own money to begin with—” “And as for your saying that an idiot has no intrinsic value, Alexander,” pursued the old man, going off on another tack, “I won’t have you say such things. I won’t listen to them. An idiot is a human being, sir, and has an immortal soul, I’d have you to know, as well as you or I. And you have the assurance to say that he has no intrinsic value! An immortal soul, made for eternal happiness or eternal suffering, and no intrinsic value! Upon my word, Alexander, you forget yourself! I should not have expected such an inhuman speech from you.” “Is the ‘vital spark of heavenly flame’ a marketable commodity?” asked Crowdie, speaking to Katharine in a low voice. “Idiots have souls, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist, looking straight across at him, and taking it for granted that he had said something in opposition. “I’ve no doubt they have, Mr. Lauderdale,” answered the painter. “I never thought of questioning the fact.” “Oh! I thought you did. I understood that you were laughing at the idea.” “Not at all. It was the use of the word ‘intrinsic’ as applied to the value of the soul which struck me as odd.” “Ah—that is quite another matter, my dear sir,” replied the old gentleman, who was quickly appeased. “My son first used the word in this discussion. I’m not responsible for it. The younger generation is not so careful in its language as we were taught to be. But the important point, after all, is that idiots have souls.” “The soul is the only thing anybody really can be said to have as his own,” said Crowdie, thoughtfully. Katharine glanced at him. He did not look like the kind of man to make such a speech with sincerity. She wondered vaguely what his soul would be like, if she could see it, and it seemed to her that it would be something strange—white, with red lips, singing an evil song, which she could not understand, in a velvet voice, and that it would smell of musk. The side of her that was towards him instinctively shrank a little from him. “I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist with approbation. “It closes the discussion very fittingly. I hope we shall hear no more of idiots not having souls. Poor things! It is almost the only thing they have that makes them like the rest of us.” “People are all so different,” replied the artist. “I find that more and more true every day. And it takes a soul to understand a soul. Otherwise photography would take the place of portrait painting.” “I don’t quite see that,” said Alexander Junior, who had employed the last few minutes in satisfying his first pangs of hunger, having been interrupted by the passage of arms with his father. “What becomes of colour in photography?” “What becomes of colour in a charcoal or pen and ink drawing?” asked Crowdie. “Yet either, if at all good, is preferable to the best photograph.” “I’m not sure of that. I like a good photograph. It is much more accurate than any drawing can be.” “Yes—but it has no soul,” objected Crowdie. “How can an inanimate object have a soul, sir?” asked the philanthropist, suddenly. “That is as bad as saying that idiots—” “I mean that a photograph has nothing which suggests the soul of the original,” said Crowdie, interrupting and speaking in a high, clear tone. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and sang well; and he possessed the power of making himself heard easily against many other voices. “It is the exact representation of the person,” argued Alexander Junior, whose ideas upon art were limited. “Excuse me. Even that is not scientifically true. There can only be one point in the whole photograph which is precisely in focus. But that is not what I mean. Every face has something besides the lines and the colour. For want of a better word, we call it the expression—it is the individuality—the soul—the real person—the something which the hand can suggest, but which nothing mechanical can ever reproduce. The artist who can give it has talent, even if he does not know how to draw. The best draughtsman and painter in the world is only a mechanic if he cannot give it. Mrs. Lauderdale paints—and paints well—she knows what I mean.” “Of course,” said Mrs. Lauderdale. “The fact that there is something which we can only suggest but never show would alone prove the existence of the soul to any one who paints.” “I don’t understand those things,” said Alexander Junior. “Grandpapa,” said Katharine, suddenly, “if any one asserted that there was no such a thing as the soul, what should you answer?” “I should tell him that he was a blasphemer,” answered the old gentleman, promptly and with energy. “But that wouldn’t be an argument,” retorted the young girl. “He would discover the force of it hereafter,” said her father. The electric smile followed the words. Crowdie looked at Katharine and smiled also, but she did not see. “But isn’t a man entitled to an argument?” she asked. “I mean—if any one really couldn’t believe that he had a soul—there are such people—” “Lots of them,” observed Crowdie. “It’s their own fault, then, and they deserve no mercy—and they will find none,” said Alexander Junior. “Then believing is a matter of will, like doing right,” argued the young girl. “And a man has only to say, ‘I believe,’ and he will believe, because he wills it.” But neither of the Lauderdales had any intention of being drawn out on that point. They were good Presbyterians, and were Scotch by direct descent; and they knew well enough what direction the discussion must take if it were prolonged. The old gentleman put a stop to it. “The questions of the nature of belief and free will are pretty deep ones, my dear,” he said, kindly, “and they are not of the sort to be discussed idly at dinner.” Strange to say, that was the species of answer which pleased Katharine best. She liked the uncompromising force of genuinely prejudiced people who only allowed argument to proceed when they were sure of a logical result in their own favour. Alexander Junior nodded approvingly, and took some more beef. He abhorred bread, vegetables, and sweet things, and cared only for what produced the greatest amount of energy in the shortest time. It was astonishing that such iron strength should have accomplished nothing in nearly fifty years of life. “Yes,” said Crowdie, “they are rather important things. But I don’t think that there are so many people who deny the existence of the soul as people who want to satisfy their curiosity about it, by getting a glimpse at it. Hester and I dine out a good deal—people are very kind, and always ask us to dinners because they know I can’t go out to late parties on account of my work—so we are always dining out; and we were saying only to-day that at nine-tenths of the dinners we go to the conversation sooner or later turns on the soul, or psychical research, or Buddhism, or ghosts, or something of the sort. It’s odd, isn’t it, that there should be so much talk about those things just now? I think it shows a kind of general curiosity. Everybody wants to get hold of a soul and study its habits, as though it were an ornithorynchus or some queer animal—it is strange, isn’t it?” “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, suddenly joining in the conversation. “If you once cut loose from your own form of belief there’s no particular reason why you should be satisfied with that of any one else. If a man leaves his house without an object there’s nothing to make him go in one direction rather than in another.” “So far as that is concerned, I agree with you,” said Alexander Junior. “There is truth to direct him,” observed the philanthropist. “And there is beauty,” said Crowdie, turning his head towards Mrs. Lauderdale and his eyes towards Katharine. “Oh, of course!” exclaimed the latter. “If you are going to jumble the soul, and art, and everything, all together, there are lots of things to lead one. Where does beauty lead you, Mr. Crowdie?” “To imagine a vain thing,” answered the painter with a soft laugh. “It also leads me to try and copy it, with what I imagine it means, and I don’t always succeed.” “I hope you’ll succeed if you paint my daughter’s portrait,” remarked Alexander Junior. “No,” Crowdie replied thoughtfully, and looking at Katharine quite directly now. “I shan’t succeed, but if Miss Lauderdale will let me try, I’ll promise to do my very best. Will you, Miss Lauderdale? Your father said he thought you would have no objection.” “I said you would, Katharine, and I said nothing about objections,” said her father, who loved accurate statements. Katharine did not like to be ordered to do anything and the short, quick frown bent her brows for a second. “I am much flattered,” she said coldly. “You will not be, when I have finished, I fear,” said Crowdie, with quick tact. “Please, Miss Lauderdale, I don’t want you to sit to me as a matter of duty, because your father is good enough to ask you. That isn’t it, at all. Please understand. It’s for Hester, you know. She’s such a friend of yours, and you’re such a friend of hers, and I want to surprise her with a Christmas present, and there’s nothing she’d like so much as a picture of you. I don’t say anything about the pleasure it will be to me to paint you—it’s just for her. Will you?” “Of course I will,” answered Katharine, her brow clearing and her tone changing. She had not looked at him while he was speaking, and she was struck, as she had often been, by the exquisite beauty of his voice when he spoke familiarly and softly. It was like his eyes, smooth, rich and almost woman-like. “And when will you come?” he asked. “To-morrow? Next day? Would eleven o’clock suit you?” “To-morrow, if you like,” answered the young girl. “Eleven will do perfectly.” “Will you come too, Mrs. Lauderdale?” Crowdie asked, without changing his manner. “Yes—that is—not to-morrow. I’ll come one of these days and see how you are getting on. It’s a long time since I’ve seen you at work, and I should enjoy it ever so much. But I should rather come when it’s well begun. I shall learn more.” “I’m afraid you won’t learn much from me, Mrs. Lauderdale. It’s very different work from miniature—and I have no rule. It seems to me that the longer I paint the more hopeless all rules are. Ten years ago, when I was working in Paris, I used to believe in canons of art, and fixed principles, and methods, and all that sort of thing. But I can’t any more. I do it anyhow, just as it seems to come—with anything—with a stump, a brush, a rag, hands, fingers, anything. I should not be surprised to find myself drawing with my elbow and painting with the back of my head! No, really—I sometimes think the back of my head would be a very good brush to do fur with. Any way—only to get at the real thing.” “I once saw a painter who had no arms,” said the old gentleman. “It was in Paris, and he held the brushes with his toes. There is an idiot in the asylum now, who likes nothing better than to pull his shoes off and tie knots in a rope with his feet all day long.” “He is probably one of us,” suggested Crowdie. “We artists are all half-witted. Give him a brush and see whether he has any talent for painting with his toes.” “That’s an idea,” answered the philanthropist, thoughtfully. “Transference of manual skill from hands to feet,” he continued in a low, dreamy voice, thinking aloud. “Abnormal connections of nerves with next adjoining brain centres—yes—there might be something in it—yes—yes—” The old gentleman had theories of his own about nerves and brain centres. He had never even studied anatomy, but he speculated in the wildest manner upon the probability of impossible cases of nerve derangement and imperfect development, and had long believed himself an authority on the subject. The dinner was quite as short as most modern meals. Old Mr. Lauderdale and Crowdie smoked, and Alexander Junior, who despised such weaknesses, stayed in the dining-room with them. Neither Mrs. Lauderdale nor Katharine would have objected to smoking in the library, but Alexander’s inflexible conservatism abhorred such a practice. “I can’t tell why it is,” said Katharine, when she was alone with her mother, “but that man is positively repulsive to me. It must be something besides his ugliness, and even that ought to be redeemed by his eyes and that beautiful voice of his. But it’s not. There’s something about him—” She stopped, in the sheer impossibility of expressing her meaning. Her mother said nothing in answer, but looked at her with calm and quiet eyes, rather thoughtfully. “Is it very foolish of me, mother? Don’t you notice something, too, when he’s near you?” “Yes. He’s like a poisonous flower.” “That’s exactly what I wanted to say. That and—the title of Tennyson’s poem, what is it? Oh—‘A Vision of Sin’—don’t you know?” “Poor Crowdie!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale, laughing a little, but still looking at Katharine. “I wonder what induced Hester to marry him.” “He fascinated her. Besides, she’s very fond of music, and so is he, and he sang to her and she played for him. It seems to have succeeded very well. I believe they are perfectly happy.” “Oh, perfectly. At least, Hester always says so. But did you ever notice—sometimes, without any special reason, she looks at him so anxiously? Just as though she expected something to happen to him, or that he should do something queer. It may be my imagination.” “I never noticed it. She’s tremendously in love with him. That may account for it.” “Well—if she’s happy—” Katharine did not finish the sentence. “He does stare dreadfully, though,” she resumed a moment later. “But I suppose all artists do that. They are always looking at one’s features. You don’t, though.” “I? I’m always looking at people’s faces and trying to see how I could paint them best. But I don’t stare. People don’t like it, and it isn’t necessary. Crowdie is vain. He has beautiful eyes and he wants every one to notice them.” “If that’s it, at all events he has the sense to be vain of his best point,” said Katharine. “He’s not an artist for nothing. And he’s certainly very clever in all sorts of ways.” “He didn’t say anything particularly clever at dinner, I thought. By the bye, was the dinner good? Your father didn’t tell me Crowdie was coming.” “Oh, yes; it did very well,” answered Katharine, in a reassuring tone. “At least, I didn’t notice what we had. He always takes away my appetite. I shall go and steal something when he’s gone. Let’s sit up late, mother—just you and I—after papa has gone to bed, and we’ll light a little wee fire, and have a tiny bit of supper, and make ourselves comfortable, and abuse Mr. Crowdie just as much as we like. Won’t that be nice? Do!” “Well—we’ll see how late he stays. It’s only a quarter past nine yet. Have you got a book, child? I am going to read that article about wet paintings on pottery—I’ve had it there ever so long, and the men won’t come back for half an hour at least.” Katharine found something to read, after handing her mother the review from the table. “Perhaps reading a little will take away the bad taste of Crowdie,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, with a laugh, as she settled herself in the corner of the sofa. “I wish something would,” answered Katharine, seating herself in a deep chair, and opening her book. But she found it hard to fix her attention, and the book was a dull one, or seemed so, as the best books do when the mind is drawn and stretched in one direction. Her thoughts went back to the twilight hour, when Ralston had been there, and to the decided step she was about to take. The only wonder was that she had been able to talk with a tolerable continuity of ideas during dinner, considering what her position was. Assuredly it was a daring thing which she meant to do, and she experienced the sensation familiar even to brave men—the small, utterly unreasoning temptation to draw back just before the real danger begins. Most people who have been called upon to do something very dangerous, with fair warning and in perfectly cold blood, know that little feeling and are willing to acknowledge it. It is not fear. It is the inevitable last word spoken by the instinct of self-preservation. There are men who have never felt it at all, rare instances of perfectly phlegmatic physical recklessness. They are not the ones who deserve the most credit for doing perilous deeds. And there are other men, even fewer, perhaps, who have felt it, but have ceased to feel it, in whom all love of life is so totally and hopelessly dead that even the bodily, human impulse to avoid death can never be felt again. Such men are very dangerous in fight. ‘Beware of him who seeks death,’ says an ancient Eastern proverb. So many things which seem impossible are easy if the value of life itself be taken out of the balance. But with the great majority of the human race that value is tolerably well defined. The poor Chinaman who sells himself, for the benefit of his family, to be sliced to death in the stead of the rich criminal, knows within an ounce or two of silver what his existence is worth. The bargain has been made so often by others that there is almost a tariff. It is not a pleasant subject, but, since the case really happens, it would be a curious thing to hear theologians discuss the morality of such suicide on the part of the unfortunate wretch. Would they say that he was forfeiting the hope of a future reward by giving himself to be destroyed for money, of his own free will? Or would they account it to him for righteousness that he should lay down his life to save his wife and children from starving to death? For a real case, as it is, it certainly presents difficulties which approach the fantastic. It was very quiet in the room, as it had been once or twice when there had been a silence between Katharine and Ralston a few hours earlier. The furniture was all just as it had been—hardly a chair had been turned. The scene came back vividly to the young girl’s imagination, and the sound of Ralston’s voice, just trembling with emotion, rang again in her ears. That had been the sweetest of all the many sweet hours she had spent with him since they had been children. Her book fell upon her knees and her head sank back against the cushion. With lids half drooping, she gazed at a point she did not see. The softest possible light, the exquisite, trembling radiance of spotless maidenhood’s divinest dream, hovered about the lovely face and the girlish lips just parted to meet in the memory of a kiss. Suddenly, from the next room, as the three men came towards the closed door of the library, Crowdie’s laugh broke the stillness, high, melodious, rich. Some men have a habit of laughing at anything which is said just as they leave the dining-room. Katharine started as though she had been stung. She was unconscious that her mother had ceased reading, and had been looking at her for several minutes, wondering why she had never fully appreciated the girl’s beauty before. “What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, as she saw the start and the quick expression of resentment and repulsion. “It’s that man’s voice—it’s so beautiful and yet—ugh!” She shivered as the door opened and the three men came in. “You’ve not been long,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up at Crowdie. “I hope they gave you a cigar in there.” “Oh, yes, thanks—and a very good one, too,” added the artist, who had not succeeded in smoking half of the execrable Connecticut six-for-a-quarter cigar which the philanthropist had offered him. It seemed natural enough to him that a man who devoted himself to idiots should have no taste, and he would have opened his eyes if he had been told that the Connecticut tobacco was one of the economies imposed by Alexander Junior upon his long-suffering father. The old gentleman, however, was really not very particular, and his sufferings were not to be compared with those of Balzac’s saintly charity-maniac, when he gave up his Havanas for the sake of his poor people. Crowdie looked at Katharine, as he answered her mother, and continued to do so, though he sat down beside the latter. Katharine had risen from her seat, and was standing by the mantelpiece, and Mrs. Lauderdale was sitting at the end of the sofa on the other side of the fireplace, under the strong, unshaded light of the gas. She made an effort to talk to her guest, for the sake of sparing the girl, though she felt uncomfortably tired, and was looking almost ill. “Did you talk any more about the soul, after we left?” she asked, looking at Crowdie. “No,” he answered, still gazing at Katharine, and speaking rather absently. “We talked—let me see—I think—” He hesitated. “It couldn’t have been very interesting, if you don’t remember what it was about,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, pleasantly. “We must try and amuse you better than they did, or you won’t come near us again.” “Oh, as far as that goes, I’ll come just as often as you ask me,” answered Crowdie, suddenly looking at his shoes. But he made no attempt to continue the conversation. Mrs. Lauderdale felt a little womanly annoyance. The constant and life-long habit of being considered by men to be the most important person in the room, whenever she chose to be considered at all, had become a part of her nature. She made up her mind that Crowdie should not only listen and talk, but should look at her. “What are you doing now? Another portrait?” she asked. “I know you are always busy.” “Oh, yes—the wife of a man who has a silver mine somewhere. She’s fairly good-looking, for a wonder.” His eyes wandered about the room, and, from time to time, went back to Katharine. Old Mr. Lauderdale was going to sleep in an arm-chair, and Alexander Junior was reading the evening paper. “Does your work always interest you as it did at first?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, growing more and more determined to fix his attention, and speaking softly. “I mean—are you happy in it and with it?” His languid glance met hers for an instant, with an odd look of lazy enquiry. He was keen and quick of intuition, and more than sufficiently vain. There is a certain tone of voice in which a woman may ask a man if he is happy which indicates a willingness to play at flirtation. Now, it had never entered the head of Walter Crowdie that Mrs. Lauderdale could possibly care to flirt with him. Yet the tone was official, so to say, and he had some right to be surprised, the more so as he had never heard any man—not even the famous club-liar, Stopford Thirlwall—even suggest that she had ever really flirted with any one, or do anything worse than dance to the very end of every dancing party, and generally amuse herself in an innocent way to an extent that would have ruined the constitutions of most women not born in Kentucky. Even as he turned to look at her, however, he realized the absurdity of the impression he had received, and his eyes went mechanically back to Katharine’s profile. The smile that moved his heavy, red mouth was for himself, as he answered Mrs. Lauderdale’s question. “Oh, yes,” he said, quite naturally. “I love it. I’m perfectly happy.” And again he relapsed into silence. Mrs. Lauderdale was annoyed. She turned her head, under the glaring light, towards the carved pillar at the right of the fireplace. An absurd little looking-glass hung by a silken cord from the mantelpiece to the level of her eyes—one of those small Persian mirrors set in a case of embroidery, such as are used for favours at cotillions. She saw very suddenly the reflection of her own face. The glass was perhaps a trifle green, which made it worse, but she stared in a sort of dumb horror, realizing in a single moment that she had grown old, that the lines had deepened until every one could see them, that the eyes looked faded, the hair dull, the lips almost shrivelled, the once dazzling skin flaccid and sallow—that the queenly beauty was gone, a perishable thing already perished, a memory now and worse than a memory, a cruelly bitter regret left in the place of a possession half divine that was lost for ever and ever, dead beyond resurrection, gone beyond recall. That was the most terrible moment in Mrs. Lauderdale’s life. Fate need not have made it so appallingly sudden—she had prepared for it so long, so conscientiously, trying always to wean herself from a vanity the sternest would forgive. And it had seemed to be coming so slowly, by degrees of each degree, and she had thought it would be so long in coming quite. And now it was come, in the flash of a second. But the bitterness was not past. Instinctively in the silence she looked up before her and saw her daughter’s lovely face. Her head reeled, her sight swam. A great, fierce envy caught at her heart with iron fingers and wrung it, till she could have screamed,—envy of her who was dearest to her of all living things—of Katharine. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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