A Crooked Path Part 59

"If you will allow me to come some Sunday----"

"Certainly. You will sympathise with Miss Payne. She shares your deep-rooted distrust of your fellow-creatures. Yet even _she_ has some faint faith in Rachel Trant."

"That is the best symptom about the affair I have yet heard of.

By-the-bye, this Miss Payne has made you comfortable? she has been a successful experiment?"

"Very successful indeed. I quite like her, and respect her; but I shall not stay longer than the time I agreed for. I want to make a home for the boys and myself."

"What! Will Mrs. Ormonde give them up?"

"Not avowedly, but they will ultimately glide into my hands."

"I trust you will not regret the charge you are taking on yourself."

"I do not fear failure. These children are a great source of pleasure to me."

A few more words, a promise on Mr. Newton's part to hurry matters, and Katherine, bidding him adieu for the present, descended to the brougham which she usually hired for distant expeditions. Ordering the coachman to stop at Howell& James', Katherine leaned back and reflected on the interview with Mr. Newton. No doubt he thought he had given her a good deal of curious information. If he only knew what a living lie she was!

Her duplicity met her at every turn, and cried shame upon her. However, she had the pardon and permission of him against whom she had chiefly offended; that counted for much. Still, it was too hard a punishment that the ghost of her transgression should thus cry out against her, and she had done her best to rectify it. She felt profoundly depressed. It was an effort to execute the commissions intrusted to her by Miss Payne.

These performed, she was leaving the shop, when a gentleman who was pa.s.sing rapidly almost ran against her. He paused and raised his hat as if to apologize. It was Errington.

"Miss Liddell!" he exclaimed, a startled, pleased look animating his eyes. "I understood you were out of town. I hardly hoped to meet you again."

Katherine flushed up, and then grew white. "I have been out of town ever since--" Since what?--that turning-point in her life when she confessed all to him?

"And I have been _in_ town," rejoined Errington. "It is not nearly so bad as some people imagine. Where are you staying?"

"Oh, I am always with Miss Payne, in Wilton Street."

"I remember. But I am keeping you standing. May I come and see you?"

"Oh no; I would rather not," cried Katherine, with an irresistible impulse which she regretted the next moment.

"You are always frank," said Errington, with a kind smile, yet in a disappointed tone. "I will not intrude, then. How are your nephews, and Mrs. Ormonde? I seem to have lost sight of every one, for I have become a very busy man."

"Yes, I know," she returned, her color going and coming, her heart beating so fast she could hardly speak. "I must seem so rude! But I have read some of your papers in _The Age_. It must, indeed, take time and study to produce such articles."

"And patience on the part of a young lady to wade through them."

"No; they always interest me, even when a little over my head. Though I do not want you to come and see me, I am always so glad to hear about you, to know you are well."

"Then why avoid me?"

"How can I help it?"--looking at him with dewy eyes and quivering lips.

"Well, I must accept your decision. I wish--But I will not detain you."

He opened the carriage door and handed her in.

For an instant her eyes sought his with a wistful, deprecating look, then she said, "Tell him 'home,' please," and she drove off.

The encounter unhinged her for the day. Why had he crossed her path, and why had she allowed herself to reject his friendly offer to come and see her? Yet it would have made her miserable to bear the quiet scrutiny of his eyes through a whole visit. He had evidently quite forgiven her, but that could not restore her self-respect or render her less keenly alive to the silent reproach of his presence. And yet it was pleasant to hear him speak, his voice was so clear, so well modulated, so intelligent.

And how well he looked!--better and brighter than she had ever seen him.

It was evident that he was not breaking his heart about Lady Alice. How could she have given him up?

Though nothing was more natural or probable than that they should meet when both lived in the same town, huge as it is, it was an immense surprise to Katherine, who had somehow come to the conclusion that they were never to set eyes on each other again. This impression upset her.

She was constantly on the outlook for Errington wherever she drove or walked, and the composure which she had been diligently, and with a sort of sad resignation to Errington's wishes, building up, was replaced by a feverish, restless antic.i.p.ation of she knew not what.

The result was increased eagerness to see the completion of her dressmaking scheme, and she made Mr. Newton's life a burden to him till all was accomplished.

In this she found a shrewd a.s.sistant in Mrs. Needham, who took up the cause furiously, and drove hither and thither, exhorting, entreating, commanding, and really bringing in customers, somewhat to Katherine's surprise, as she did not expect much wool from so great a cry.

Shortly before Christmas Miss Trant's establishment was in full working order, a couple of clever a.s.sistants had been engaged, and Rachel herself seemed to wake up to the full energy of her nature under the spur of responsibility.

The affair was not brought to a conclusion, however, without a struggle on the part of Mr. Newton against Katherine's resolution not to appear in the matter. The house was bought in Rachel Trant's name, the sale was made to her, and Miss Liddell's name never appeared. Newton declared it to be sheer madness; even Bertie Payne considered it unwise; but Katherine was immovable.

"I am Miss Trant's creditor," she said. "If successful, she will pay me: if not, why, she will give up the house to me. I have full faith in her, and I wish her to be perfectly unshackled in the undertaking. As the owner of a house she will more readily obtain any credit she may need."

"Which means," said Mr. Newton, crossly, "that you will have to pay her debts if you ever intend to get possession of the house."

"Well, I have made up my mind to the risk," returned Katherine, with smiling determination; "so we will say no more about it."

The unexpected meeting with Errington haunted Katherine for many a day, and many a night was broken by unpleasant dreams. She was filled with regret for having so hastily refused his proffered visit. Yet had he come she would have been uneasy in his presence. She longed to see him again; she came home from driving or walking each day with aching eyes and dulled heart because she had been disappointed in encountering him.

Yet she dreaded to meet him, and trembled at the idea of speaking to him. She was dismayed at the restless dissatisfaction of her own mind.

Was she never to find peace? never to know real enjoyment in her ill-gotten fortune? Why was it that the image of this man was perpetually before her, the sound of his voice in her ears? Then the answer of her inner consciousness came to overwhelm her with shame and confusion: "Because you love him with all the strength and fervor of a heart that has never frittered away its force in senseless flirtations or pa.s.sing fancies." This was the climax of misfortune. To know that the one of all others she most looked up to must, in spite of his kind forbearance, despise her as a cheat. Surely it was a sufficient punishment for a delicately proud woman to know that she had given her love unasked. All that remained for her was to hide her deep wounds, that by stifling the new and vivid feelings which troubled her they would die out, and so leave her in a state of monotonous repose. She would endeavor by all possible means to win forgetfulness.

When Cis came back for the Christmas holidays, therefore, he found his auntie ready to go out with Charlie and himself to circus and pantomime, Polytechnic and wax-works, to his heart's content. It was not a brisk frosty Christmas, or she would no doubt have been with them on the ice, and the round of boyish dissipations called forth an oracular sentence from Miss Payne. "It's just as well those boys are going back to school, Katherine. You are more foolish about them than you used to be, and if they staid on you would completely ruin them."

Just before the holidays were over, Mrs. Ormonde visited London, or rather paused in pa.s.sing through from the distinguished Christmas gathering to which, to her pride and satisfaction, she had been invited at Lady Mary Vincent's. The little boys were indifferently glad to see her, and with the jealousy inherent in a disposition such as hers she was vexed at not being first with her own boys, yet delighted to hand over the care and trouble of them to any one who would undertake it.

These mixed feelings ruffled the bright surface of her self-content, inflated as it was by her increasing social success.

She chose to put up at a quiet hotel in Dover Street rather than accept Katherine's and Miss Payne's joint invitation to Wilton Street.

"I know you will not mind, Katie dear," she said, as she sat at tea (to which refreshment she had invited her sister-in-law). "You see if it were your own house, quite your own, I should prefer staying with you to going anywhere else. As it is----"

"You are quite right to please yourself," put in Katherine.

"Yes, you are always kind and considerate. But, do you know, both Colonel Ormonde and I are very anxious you should establish yourself on a proper footing. Believe me, you do not take the social position you ought, living with an obscure old maid like Miss Payne"--this in a tone of strong common-sense. "The proper place for you is with us at Castleford in the autumn and winter, and a house in town with us in the spring. Then you and I might go abroad sometimes together, and leave Ormonde to his turnips and hunting. You would be sure to marry well--quite sure."

"But I am going to settle myself in a house of my own this spring," said Katherine, smiling.

Against this project Mrs. Ormonde exhausted herself in eloquent if contradictory argument: but finding she made no impression, suddenly changed the subject. "That is a very expensive school you have chosen for the boys, Katherine. 'Duke thinks it ridiculous. Sixty pounds a year for such a little fellow as Cis! and now Charlie will cost as much."

"It is not cheap, certainly; but it is, I think, worth the money. Cecil has improved marvellously, and Sandbourne agrees so well with them both."

"You will do as you think best, of course. We have the highest regard for your opinion. But you must remember that what with clothes and travelling and--oh, and doctors!--it all comes to more than three hundred a year, and at Castleford I could keep them for next to nothing, while the stingy trustees you have chosen only allow me four hundred and fifty."

"So you have only about a hundred and fifty out of the total for your personal expenses, eh?" said Katherine, laughing. "Then you have a husband behind you."