Part 16 (1/2)

she said, after Odd had come, and greetings had pa.s.sed between them.

”Shall we? You have been too patient all along, Miss Archinard.” Odd smiled down at her as he held her hand. ”You make me feel that I have been driving you--arrantly egotistic.”

”No; I like our work immensely, as you know.” Katherine remained standing by the fireplace. She leaned her arm on the mantelpiece, and turned her head to look directly at him. ”I am not at all happy this morning, Mr. Odd.” Odd's kind eyes showed an almost boyish dismay.

”What is it? Can I help you?” His tone was all sympathetic anxiety and friendly warmth.

”No; just the contrary. Mr. Odd, I am ashamed that you should have seen the depths of our poverty. It is not a poverty one can be proud of.

Poverty to be honorable must work, and must not borrow.”

Odd flushed.

”You exaggerate,” he said, but he liked her for the exaggeration.

”I did not know till yesterday that papa owed to you his Riviera trip.”

”Really, Katherine”--he had not used her name before, it came now most naturally with this new sense of intimacy--”you mustn't misunderstand, misjudge your father. He couldn't work; his life has unfitted him for it; it would be a false pride that would make him hesitate to ask an old friend for a loan; an old friend so well able to lend as I am. You women judge these things far too loftily.” And Peter liked her for the loftiness.

”Would you mind telling me how much you lent him last time? I was with him when he cashed the check. I saw the name, not the amount.”

”It was nothing of any importance,” said Odd shortly. He exaggerated now. The Captain had told him that the furniture would be seized unless some creditors were satisfied, and, with a very decided hint as to the inadvisability of another trip for retrievement to the Riviera, Peter had given him the money, ten thousand francs; a sum certainly of importance, for Odd was no millionaire.

Katherine looked hard at him.

”You won't tell me because you want to spare me.”

”My dear Katherine, I certainly want to spare you anything that would add a straw's weight to your distress; you have no need, no right to shoulder this. It is your father's affair--and mine. You must not give it another thought.”

”That is so easy!” Katherine clenched her hand on the mantelpiece. She was not given to vehemence of demonstration; the little gesture showed a concentration of bitter rebellion. Odd, standing beside her, put his own hand over hers; patted it soothingly.

”It's rather hard on me, you know, a slur on my friends.h.i.+p, that you should take a merely conventional obligation so to heart.”

Katherine now looked down into the fire.

”Take it to heart? What else have I had on my heart for years and years?

It is a mere variation on the same theme, a little more poignantly painful than usual, that is all! What a life to lead. What a future to look forward to. I wonder what else I shall have to endure.” Odd had never seen her before in this mood of fierce hopelessness.

”Our poverty has poisoned everything, everything. I have had no youth, no happiness. Every moment of forgetfulness means redoubled keenness of gnawing anxiety. Debts! Duns! hara.s.sing, sordid cares that drag one down. Mr. Odd, I have had to coax butchers and bakers; I have had to plead with horrible men with doc.u.ments of all varieties! I have had to p.a.w.n my trinkets, and all with surface gayety; everything must be kept from mamma, and papa's extravagance is incorrigible.”

Odd was all grave amazement, grave pity, and admiration.

”You are a brave woman, Katherine.”

”No, no; I am not brave. I am frightened--frightened to death sometimes.

I see before me either a hideous struggle with want or--a _mariage de convenance_. I have none of the cla.s.sified, pigeon-holed knowledge one needs nowadays to become a teaching drudge, and I can't make up my mind to sell myself, though, in spite of my lack of beauty and lack of money, that means of escape has often presented itself. I have had many offers of marriage. Only I _can't_.”

Odd was silent under the stress of a new thought, an entirely new thought.

”For Hilda I have no fear,” Katherine continued, still speaking with the same steady quiet voice, still looking into the fire. ”In the past her art has absorbed and protected her, and her future is a.s.sured. She will marry a good husband.” A flash as of Hilda's beauty crossed the growing definiteness of Peter's new thought. That old undoing, that mirage of beauty; he put it aside with some self-disgust, feeling, as he did so, a queer sense of impersonality as though putting away himself as he put away his weakness. He seemed to contemplate himself from an outside aloofness of observation. The trance-like feeling of the illusion of all things which he had felt more than once of late made him hold more firmly to the tonic thought of a fine common-sense.