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Ralstons

<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> Before John Ralston had gone back to Beman Brothers’, it had been easy enough for him and Katharine to meet in the course of the day, but the difficulties had increased unavoidably of late. Of course they saw each other in society, and as members of the same tribe they were often asked to the same parties, though that was by no means a matter of certainty. It was necessary to have a fixed understanding which should enable them to be sure of meeting and communicating with one another, and of knowing from day to day whether the next meeting were positively certain or not. John’s hour for going down town was fixed, but the time of his returning was not. That depended on the amount of work there chanced to be for him at the bank,—sometimes more, sometimes less. The habits of the Lauderdale household in Clinton Place were also very exact. Alexander Junior took charge, as it were, of the day, as soon as it appeared, and doled it out in portions. Breakfast was at half past eight, and he expected his wife and daughter to make their appearance in time to see him at least finish the solid steak or brace of chops with which he fortified himself for work. His father always came down late, in order to be able to smoke as soon as he had finished eating, without annoying any one, for the old man seemed to subsist largely upon tobacco smoke and fresh milk—which is a strange mixture, but not unhealthy for those who are accustomed to it. That he smoked ‘Old Virginia Cheroots’ at two cents each, was his misfortune and not his fault. Practically he lived upon his son, for he had long ago given away everything he possessed, and even the old house had passed into Alexander’s hands—for a very moderate equivalent, which the philanthropist had already spent in advance upon the introduction of a new heating apparatus in his favourite asylum. Alexander Junior supplied him with the necessaries of life, and by almost imperceptible degrees of change had at last substituted the cheroots for the fine Havanas to which his father had been addicted in his comparative prosperity. From time to time the old man made a mild remark about the deterioration of cigars. The observations of his friends, after smoking one of his, were less mild. Alexander Senior attributed the change to the McKinley Bill. Alexander Junior did not smoke. He left the house every morning at a quarter past nine, before the fumigation had begun. Katharine had always been free to go out for a walk alone in the early hours since she had been considered to be grown up, and she took advantage of the privilege now in order to meet John Ralston. He was expected to be at the bank at half past nine, and, as it was near the Rector Street Station, he could calculate his time with precision if he found himself near a station of the elevated road. He and Katharine had a simple system of signals. John came down to Clinton Place by the Sixth Avenue elevated, and got out at the corner. Thence he walked past the Lauderdales’ house to Fifth Avenue, and crossed Washington Square to South Fifth Avenue, by which he reached the Bleecker Street Station of the elevated railway. The usual place of meeting was on the south side of the Square. If Katharine were coming that morning there was something red in her window, a bit of ribbon, a red fan, or anything she chanced to pick up of the required colour. John could see it at a glance. He, on his part, let fall a few seeds or grains on the well-swept lower step of the house as he passed, to show that he had gone by. The convention was that the signal should consist of any kind of seed or grain. If, when she went out, there was nothing on the step, which very rarely happened, Katharine went back into the house and waited, easily finding an excuse if any one remarked her return, by alleging a mismatched pair of gloves, or a forgotten parasol or umbrella. The system worked perfectly. Two or three grains of wheat, or rice, or rye, a couple of peppercorns, a little millet, varied daily, according to the supply John had in his pockets, and dropped near one end of the step, were all that was required, for it was rarely that more than a few minutes elapsed between their being deposited there and the moment when Katharine saw them. Generally, the sparrows had got them before any one else came out. The only person who ever noticed the frequent presence of seeds of some kind on the doorstep was the old philanthropist, who made illogical reflections upon the habits of the birds that brought them there, as he naturally supposed. With regard to the place of meeting, the two changed it from time to time, or from day to day, as they thought best. Their minutes were counted, as John could not afford to be late at Beman Brothers’, and sometimes they only exchanged a few words, agreeing to meet in the evening, or, since the spring had come, after John’s business hours. Hitherto, they believed that none of their acquaintances had seen them, and they believed that none ever would. There seemed to be no reason why people they knew should be wandering in the purlieus and slums about South Fifth Avenue and Green Street, for instance, at nine o’clock in the morning. A few women in society patronized the little foreign shop in the Avenue, near the Square, where artificial flowers were made, but if they ever went there themselves, it was much later in the day. They met on the morning after Alexander Junior had spoken to Mr. Beman about John. The latter was standing before the church on the south side of Washington Square, puffing at the last end of a cigarette, when he saw Katharine’s figure, clad, as usual, in grey homespun, emerging from one of the walks which ended opposite to him. The colour came a little to her face as she caught sight of him. She walked quickly, and began to speak before she reached him. “Oh Jack! I do so want to see you!” She held out her hand as he lifted his hat. Their hands remained clasped a second longer, perhaps, than if they had been mere acquaintances, and their eyes were still meeting when their hands had parted. “Yes—so do I,” answered Ralston, with small regard for grammar. “You look tired, dear. What is it?” “It’s this life—I don’t know how much longer I can stand it,” answered Katharine, and they began to walk on. “Has anything happened? Has your father been teasing you again?” John asked, quickly. “Oh, yes! He leaves me no peace. It’s a succession of pitched battles whenever we meet. He’s made up his mind to know what uncle Robert said to me, and I’ve made up mine that he shan’t. What can I do? Why, Jack, I wouldn’t even tell you!” “I don’t want to know,” answered Ralston. “Uncle Robert isn’t going to die for twenty years, and I hope he may live thirty. Of course, when he dies, if we’re alive, we shall have heaps of money all round, and your father and grandfather will probably get the biggest shares. But there’ll be plenty for us all. Your father seems to me to have lost his head about it.” “He really has. It’s the same thing every day. He tells me that I’m all kinds of things—undutiful, and impertinent, and intolerable—altogether a perfect fiend, according to him. Then he threatens me—” “Threatens you?” repeated John, with a quick frown and a change of tone. “He’d better not!” “Well—he says that he’ll find means to make me speak, and that sort of thing. I don’t see myself what means he has at his command, I’m sure. I suppose when he’s angry he doesn’t know what he’s saying. So I try to smile—but I don’t like it.” “I should think not! But as you say, he can’t really do anything except talk. He’s permanently angry, though. He came into the bank yesterday and passed near me. I saw his face.” John added no comment, but his tone expressed well enough what he felt. “I know,” answered Katharine. “He always has that expression now,—one only used to see it now and then,—as though he meant to have something, if he had to kill somebody to get it. It’s the strangest thing! He, who has always preached to me about keeping the secret of other people’s confidence! It’s perfectly incomprehensible! It’s as though his whole nature had suddenly changed.” “He’s wild to know how much he’s to have,” observed John, thoughtfully. “It attacked him when they expected uncle Robert to die. And now that he knows that you know, he means to wring it out of you. I hate him. I should like to wring his neck.” “Jack!” “Oh, well—of course he’s your father, and I’m very sorry for expressing myself—all the same—” he finished his sentence inwardly. “At all events, he’s got to treat you properly, or I shall interfere. This can’t go on, you know.” “You, Jack dear? What could you do?” “What could I do? Take you away from him, of course. I’m your husband. Don’t forget that, Katharine.” “No, dear—I’m not likely to. But still—I don’t see—nothing’s changed, you know. The difficulties are just the same as they ever were.” “Yes. But the reasons are different. I can’t allow you to suffer. You know that after all that trouble last winter my mother insisted on making over half the property to me. Of course things go on just as they did, and we share everything. But I’ve got it all the same—six thousand a year, if I choose to call it my own. The reason why we don’t tell everybody that we’re married is, first, because it would make such an incredible row in the family, and secondly, because, as my mother and I have so little between us, she would have to reduce ever so many things if we set up at housekeeping with her, until I can make something. As long as you’re happy at home, that’s all very well. We’re young enough to wait six months or a year, though we don’t like it, and I’m going in for earning the respect of the Beman Brethren—they’re really awfully nice to me, I must say. Anything more ignorant than I am you can’t imagine!” “Never mind, Jack—you’re learning, at all events,” said Katharine, in an encouraging tone. “And I know, dear—I know how you care for me, and how brave you are to wait for the sake of what’s nice to your mother—” “Oh, don’t talk of courage! It’s what I ought to have done long ago, if I hadn’t been a born loafer and idiot. But if things are going to be different since your beloved father has got this idea into his head, if he’s going to torment you perpetually, and make your life a burden, and call you bad names out of the prayer-book—that sort of thing, you know—why, then, we must just do it, that’s all—just face the row, and the economies, and all, and you must come to my mother’s.” “But, Jack—just think of what would happen—” “Well—just think what’s happening now. It’s much worse, I’m sure, and if it’s going to last, I shall just do it. My mother always says that she wishes we could be married. Well—we are married. There’s nothing to be done but to tell her so. Besides, for her part, she’d be delighted. You don’t know her! She’s just like a man in some things. She’d put up with anything—boiled beef and cabbage, and a horse-car fare on Sundays by way of an outing. Only, of course, if it can possibly be helped, I don’t want her to have to pinch and screw about her gloves, and her cabs, and the little things she likes and has had all her life. That’s why I’m working. If I could only get a salary of two thousand a year, we could manage. I’ve figured it all out—it’s just that two thousand that would make the difference—it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” “It’s worse,” said Katharine. “It’s abominable.” “Yes—it’s everything you like—or don’t like, rather. But if you’re going to suffer, we must do as I say. I’ll tell you how we’ll manage it. You’ll just go up to our house some morning about ten o’clock, and go out of town with my mother for a few days. I’ll get a holiday from Beman’s, and I’ll go and see your mother and tell her, and then I’ll go down town and face your father. His office is a nice, quiet place, I believe. He’s nothing much to do but to be trusted, and he sits all day long by himself in the company’s showcase, and people trust him. That’s his profession. He represents the moral side of business. Once I’ve told him, I’ll disappear for a while,—going to you, of course,—and we three will come back together and tell the world that we’ve been quietly married—which is quite true. Lots of people do that nowadays to get out of the expense and fuss of a dress parade wedding. How does that strike you?” “Oh, it’s clever enough, and brave of you—as you always are—to be ready to face the parents alone. We shall have to do something of the kind in the end, you know, because we can’t be married over again. Uncle Robert suggested the same sort of plan last winter; only he wanted us to go to his place up the river, and he was going to ask the whole family. The dear old man forgot that his servants would remember for the rest of their lives that there had been no marriage service. It wasn’t practical.” “By the bye, where’s our marriage certificate?” asked John, suddenly. “You took it, you know. You never told me what became of it.” “Oh, uncle Robert said he’d keep it with his papers. I suppose it’s as safe there as anywhere. Still—if he were to die—” “It’s all right, if he’s kept it. It will be in a safe place, properly endorsed. As he’s the only person who knows the secret, he’d much better keep it, and he’s not at all likely to die now that he’s recovered. I’d been meaning to ask you for ever so long. But to go back—if things get any worse, or go on as badly as they’re going now, do you see any possible objection to doing what I propose?” “Well, the principal objection is that it will hamper your mother, Jack. I’d rather suffer a great deal more than I’m likely to, than thrust myself upon her. I know—you’ll tell me that she’s very fond of me and wants to see us married, and I know she’s in earnest about it and means every word she says. But I’ve lived in a rigidly economical household, as they call it. I know what it means, and it would be very difficult for any one who’s never been used to it. Don’t think about it, dear. Please don’t. You know I come to you with all my little woes—but you mustn’t take them too seriously. You’ll prevent me from speaking freely if you do, dear.” “It’s my business to take your happiness seriously. I’m not prepared to stand the idea of having your life made miserable on my account.” “But it isn’t about you, Jack. It’s altogether about the question of uncle Robert’s will.” “Never mind. I won’t have you made unhappy by anybody, do you understand? I’ve got the right of loving you, and the right of being your husband, and if that isn’t enough I’ll take the right. I’m in earnest, Katharine.” He stood still on the pavement; she stopped, also, and faced him. “Yes, dear; I know and I thank you,” she said, gently. “But it really isn’t as bad as I made out. I’m irritated, and I want to be with you all the time, and then the least little thing seems so much bigger than it is. Please, please don’t do anything rash, Jack, or without telling me just what you’re going to do! You know you are rash, dear—I’m always a little afraid of what you may do when you’re angry.” “I certainly shan’t be rash where you’re concerned,” answered Ralston. “You’re too much to me—we are to each other—and we mustn’t risk anything. But don’t imagine, either, that if anything goes wrong I shan’t know it, even if you won’t tell me. I can guess what you think of from your face, you know—I’ve often done it.” “That’s true—I’m sure I couldn’t conceal anything from you for long,” answered Katharine, womanly wise. She was concealing something from him at that very moment, something which she had meant to tell him, and would have told him, had he not spoken so decidedly of what he meant to do if her life were made unhappy. But she knew that he was quite capable of doing anything which he said he would do, no matter how rash. When she had at first spoken, she had not altogether realized how he would take up the question of her present unhappiness as a matter for immediate and decisive action. She loved him all the better for it, but she began to understand how careful she must be in future. John paused a moment after his last speech, and looked into her grey eyes. Perhaps some little doubt assailed him as to whether, if she tried, she could not, perhaps, keep from him something he wished to know—the doubt from which men who love are very rarely quite free. “But promise me, Katharine,” he said, presently, “promise me that if you are really suffering you will tell me, instead of just leaving me to guess.” “Ah—you see!” She laughed softly and happily. “You’re not so sure as you thought! Oh, yes—I’ll tell you if anything dreadful happens.” “You’d better!” Ralston laughed, too, out of sheer delight at being with her, and his laugh pleased her, for it came rarely. “And about your father—I’ll tell you what I think. His excitement will cool down as he sees that uncle Robert’s getting better, and he’ll leave you alone. You see, he’ll be afraid that you’ll go to uncle Robert and say that you’re being tormented to give up his secret. And then uncle Robert will descend upon Clinton Place and make a raid and raise Cain—and there’ll be something to pay all round and no pitch particularly hot. Do you see?” Katharine laughed again, but she understood that what he said was reasonable enough. “Now I must be going,” said Ralston. “I’m so angry about it all that I’m on the verge of being funny, which isn’t in my line. Can you come to-morrow? Is there any chance of seeing you to-night?” “I don’t know. There’s a little thing at the Vanbrughs’—are you going?” “Not asked, worse luck!” “Then I won’t go. How stupid of them not to ask you. I suppose you haven’t been near them for months. Have you? Confess!” “How can I do the card-leaving business now that I’m down town all day? It isn’t fair on a man. Besides, the Vanbrughs needn’t be so particular. She’s nice, though—much nicer since she’s given up Sunday-schooling. The last time we talked she knew all about the universe and the Bab faith and the life everlasting—and she was telling everybody. She hates me because I laughed. By Jove! I must be going, though. To-morrow, then? As usual. I say, Katharine—if you get a chance to give your father the sharp answer that wrath particularly dislikes, I hope you will—and tell me about it. Good-bye, sweetheart—only sixteen minutes to get to the bank!” “You did it in fourteen and a half last week, Jack,” answered Katharine, holding his hand. “Yes—but I just caught the train—I wouldn’t do it at all, if I could help it, you know.” “Of course not—I mustn’t be selfish. Run, dear—and good-bye!” In a moment he was gone. She watched his wiry, elastic movements as he ran at the top of his speed towards the station of the elevated, to the vicinity of which they had directed their walk while they had been talking. As he disappeared, flying up the covered iron stairs, two steps at a time, she turned and walked briskly homeward. The neighbourhood is a safe and quiet one, though it is largely inhabited by foreigners, but she did not care to slacken her pace till she got back to Washington Square. Then she moved more slowly. The spring was in the air and the sun was bright. She sauntered leisurely through the walks, wondering what the coming summer was to bring forth for her, and all the months after people began to go away. And she thought all the time of Ralston. It seemed such an absurd and senseless thing that they two, who were to be one day among the richest, and would be masters of all that the world can give to people not endowed with what is not in the world’s gift or market—that they two, being lawfully and christianly married, should be forced to meet by stealth for a few moments, to be separated again almost immediately by the necessity which drove John every day to his desk as a junior clerk in Mr. Beman’s employment. A week—a year—ten years, if uncle Robert lived so long—and then, if John went into the bank, the clerks, who were all his seniors, would lift their pens from the paper in the middle of a word to watch the representative of so much wealth go by. And old Mr. Beman would rise from his seat and offer Twenty-Five Millions a chair, as though he were a man of years and weight. Not but that the Bemans and John’s fellow-clerks, some of whom were acquaintances in his own world and beginning their life as he was, were all well aware that he had a good chance of getting something handsome in the end. But mere potential wealth is too common in the neighbourhood of Wall Street to be noticed or much respected. It is not the man who may have it, but the man who has it, who commands respect. Even the only son, the man who is sure to get it if he lives, is treated with a certain indifference. But when time has brought down his heavy hand upon the millionaire, and crushed him into the earth-darkness and his memory into a bit of stone with his name on it, when the last well-greased screw has been run into the polished coffin, when the black horses have waved their black plumes and the last carriage that followed the funeral is being washed down in the coach-house yard—then the man who is next stops, and lets future run ahead of him and himself becomes present fact, strong, gorgeous, worshipful. For at his mighty nod the wilderness may become real estate, or the secret places of Nassau Street and Exchange Place may be hideous with the groaning of the bulls he has beared out of the ring—and the solid security may to-morrow be wild-cat if he wills it, and the wild-cat emerge in the dawn with a gilt edge and an honest countenance, to be a joyful investment for the widow’s mite. Meanwhile, Jack was nobody down town. His cousin Hamilton Bright, who was a junior partner in Beman Brothers’, was a vastly more important person than he. For he had behind him what Ralston had before him, and a fair amount of capital in the present, besides. It was all very ridiculous, Katharine thought, and depended on the false state of society in which she was obliged to live. She thought bitterly of her father. He was a prominent figure in that false state—a man of fine principles and opportunist practice—she had caught the latter expression from Walter Crowdie, Bright’s brother-in-law, the well-known painter, who had painted a portrait of her during the winter, and who, as the husband of a distant cousin, was counted in the Lauderdale tribe. Her father, she thought, preached, prayed—and then acted far worse than average people who prayed little and sat still to be preached at on Sundays, in order that Providence might have a sort of weekly photograph of their souls, so to say, and because others did the same and it was expected of them. She and her father had never agreed very well, and had come into open conflict about John Ralston; but hitherto she had respected him for his uncompromising, unashamed piety. There had seemed to her to be something masculine and bold about it, and such as it was, she had believed in it. It had been far from being an idol, but it had been a very creditable statue, so to say, and now, on a sudden, the head had been knocked off it, and she saw, or thought she saw, that it was hollow and a sham. She was too young yet to admit the presence of good in the same place with evil, and the evil itself had been thrown directly in her path as a stumbling-block for herself, and in the hope that she might fall over it. And as though it were not enough to torment her perpetually with questions, there was that other thing which she had just concealed from John, because he had been so angry about the first. Her father and mother were apparently determined that she should be married before the summer was out, and were thrusting a match upon her in a way of which she would not have believed them capable. Ever since her mother had discovered that she was losing her beauty and that Katharine received three-fourths of all the admiration which had once been hers, the relations of the two had been changed. Mrs. Lauderdale was constantly between two conflicting emotions, which almost amounted to passions,—her real affection for Katharine, and her detestable envy of the girl’s freshness and youth. She was a good woman, and she despised herself more than any one else could possibly have despised her, for wishing that she might not be daily compared with her, handicapped, as she was, with nearly twenty years more to carry. To marry her daughter was to remove her from home, and perhaps from New York—and with her, to do away with the foundation of envy, the cause of the offence, the visible temptation to the sin which was destroying the elder woman’s happiness and undermining her peace of mind. Mrs. Lauderdale, whose sins had hitherto been few and pardonable, felt that if Katharine were once away, she should become again a good woman, and find courage to bear the terrible loss of her once supreme beauty. For she was keenly alive to the wickedness of what she felt, though she could not quite understand it. No man could boast that he had ever had a meaning look or an over-sympathetic pressure of the hand from Mrs. Lauderdale, during the five and twenty years of her married life, though she had loved society intensely, and enjoyed its amusements with a real innocence of which not every woman in her position would have been capable. But no man who had laid eyes upon her could boast—and it would have been a poor boast—that he had turned away at the first glance, without looking again and wondering at her loveliness, and saying to himself that Mrs. Lauderdale was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. It hurt her bodily to miss those eyes turned upon her from all sides, as she began to miss them now. It hurt her still more—and in spite of secret prayers and solemn resolutions and litanies of self-contempt, she turned pale with quiet, deadly anger against the world—when, as she entered a crowded room with Katharine, she felt, as well as saw, that those same eyes sought the pale, severe face of the dark-haired young girl, and overlooked her own fading perfection. The stately rose was drooping, just as the sweet white summer myrtle burst the bud. Let her not be judged too harshly, if she longed to be separated from Katharine just at that time. There was no ill-will, nothing like hatred, no touch of cruelty in the simple desire to be spared that daily contrast. It was rather that wish which many have felt, despairing of grace and strength to resist temptation, to have the cause of it removed, that they may find peace. A worse woman would not so long have been satisfied with beauty alone, and with compelling by her mere presence the admiration of a crowd in which no one face was dearer than the rest, nor than it should be. She longed with all her heart to see Katharine married, as her husband did from very different reasons. Nor were his arguments bad or unkind from his point of view. He feared lest she should marry Ralston in spite of him, and he honestly believed Ralston to be a worthless young fellow, who could make no woman happy. As for his daughter, he was attached to her, fond of her, perhaps, in his cold way; though loving with him seemed to be a negative affair and not able to go much further than a cessation of fault-finding, except for his wife, who had overcome him and kept him by her beauty alone. It was not until Katharine aroused the deep-seated passion of his unsatisfied avarice that he ceased to be kind to her, as he understood kindness. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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