The Dull Miss Archinard Part 24

There was a decisiveness in Katherine's tone that warned Peter to self-control. Indeed the situation had been created for her. She had owned up frankly to her distaste for it, her realization of its wrong.

"I am not going to ask undue humiliation of you, my dear Katherine.

Don't think me such a priggish brute; but I am going to ask you to help me to put an end to this." Katherine's smiles had returned.

"Allan Hope will."

Peter walked on, looking gloomy.

"You won't realize that Hilda's life is the one that gives her the greatest enjoyment. I have always envied Hilda till _you_ came; and even now"--Katherine's smile was playful--"Allan Hope is very nice! Take patience, Peter, till Wednesday."

"Yes; we must wait."

"I have waited for so long! Hilda could not have minded what you call the 'drudgery.' She had only to lift her finger to end it."

"Hilda would not be the girl to lift her finger."

"You appreciate my Hilda, Peter; I am glad." Katherine gave his abstracted countenance another of her bright contemplative glances.

There was nothing sly in Katherine's glances, and yet underlying this one was a world of kindly, though very keen a.n.a.lysis; disappointment, rebellion, and level-headed tolerance. This was decidedly not the man to be fitted to her frame. He could not be moulded to a clever woman's liking, for all his indefiniteness. On certain points of the conduct of life, Katherine felt that she would meet an opposition sharply definite.

Katherine understood and was perfectly tolerant of criticism, but she did not like it; nor did she like being put in the wrong. That Peter now considered her very much in the wrong was evident. She was also aware that the sophistry of her explanation had deceived herself even less than it had deceived him. That Hilda spent her life in drudgery, and that she spent hers in pleasure-seeking, were facts most palpable to Katherine's very impartial vision. She knew she was wrong, and she knew that only frank avowal would meet Peter's severity and touch his tenderness and humor. If she heaped shame on her own head, he would be the first to cry out against the injustice.

Yet Katherine hesitated to own herself wrong. She was not sure that she cared to place her lover in the sheltering and leading att.i.tude of the Love in the "Love and Life." The meek, trembling look of Life had always irritated her in the picture. Katherine felt herself quite strong enough to stand alone, and felt that she would like to lead in all things. It was with a deep inner sense of humiliation that she said--

"Please don't be cross with me, Peter. Please don't scold me. I have been naughty--far naughtier than I dreamed of--you have made me realize it, though you are not quite just. But you must comfort me for my own misdoings."

As Katherine went on she felt an artistic impulsiveness, almost real, and which sounded so real that Peter met the sweet pleading of her eyes with a start of self-disgust.

Peter was very tender-hearted, very sympathetic, very p.r.o.ne to self-doubt. Katherine's look made him feel a very prig of pompous righteousness.

"Why, Katherine!" he said, pausing in his walk. "My dear Katherine! as if I could not appreciate the slow growth of necessity! I only hope you may never have to comfort me for far worse sins!"

This was satisfactory. But Katherine's pride still squirmed.

Odd went to meet Hilda on Thursday, Sat.u.r.day, Monday, and Tuesday. The distances were always great, and he insisted on cabs for the return trip. Palamon must be tired, even if Hilda were not. He was too old for such journeyings; and Hilda had smilingly to submit. Wednesday would end it all definitely; Peter thought that he saw the end with unmixed satisfaction, and yet when Allan Hope walked into his rooms early on Wednesday morning, this Perseus of Hilda's womanhood gave the Perseus of her childhood a really unpleasant turn of the blood. There was something irritating in Allan Hope's absolute fitness for the _role_, emphasizing, as it did, Peter's own unfitness, his forty years, and his desultory life.

Active energy, the go-ahead perseverance that knows no doubts, the honest and loyal convictions which were all arranged for him from his cradle, and which he would bequeath to his children unaltered, all things that make for order and well-being, looked at one from Lord Allan's clear, light eyes. Odd suddenly felt himself to be an uncertain c.u.mberer of the earth; failure personified beside the other's air of inevitable success. He was fond of Hope and Hope fond of him, and they talked as old friends talk, with the intimacy that time brings; an intimacy far removed from the strong knittings of sympathy that an hour may accomplish; for, though Odd understood Allan very well, Allan did not muddle his direct views of things by a comprehension that implied condonation. He thought it rather a pity that Odd had not made more of his life. Odd's books weren't much good that he could see; better do something than write about the things other men have done. Odd felt that Allan was probably quite right. They hardly spoke of Hilda, but in Hope's congratulations on Peter's engagement there was a ring of heartfelt brotherly warmth that implied much, and left Peter in a gloomy rage with himself for feeling miserable. Peter had not a.n.a.lyzed the darks and glooms of the last few days.

Growth does not admit of much self-contemplation. One wakes suddenly to the accomplished change. If Peter was conscious of developments, he defined them as morbid enlargements of that self-doubt which would naturally thrill under the stress of new responsibilities.

Only from the force of newly formed habit did he go to the Rue Poulletier that afternoon, hardly expecting to meet Hilda. But Hilda had, as yet, not interrupted her usual avocations. She emerged from the gloomy portals of one of the old dismantled-looking _hotels_ that line the Rue Poulletier with a certain dignity, and she looked toward the corner where he stood with a confident glance. It was the second time he had met her there, twice in the Rue d'a.s.sas too.

"It is so kind of you," she said, as she joined him and they turned into the _quai_; "only you mustn't think that you _must_, you know."

"_May_ I think that I _must_? Give me the a.s.surance of necessity. I am always a little afraid of seeming officious."

Hilda smiled round at him.

"Who is fishing? You know I love to have you come. You can't think how I look forward to it." She was walking beside him along the _quai_. The un.o.btrusive squareness of the "Doric little Morgue" was on their left, as they faced the keen wind and the dying sunset. Notre Dame stood gray upon a chilly evening sky of palest yellow. "I know now that I _was_ lonely."

"That implies the kindest compliment."

"More than _implies_, I hope."

"You really like to have me come?"

"You know I do. I am only afraid that you will rob yourself--of other things for me."

The candor of her eyes was childlike.

"My little friend." Odd felt that he could not quite trust himself, and took refuge in the convenient a.s.sertion.

The cold, clear wind blew against their faces; it ruffled the water, and the gray waves showed sharp steely lights. The leafless trees made an arabesque of tracery on the river and the sky. Hilda looked up at the kind, melancholy face beside her, a faint touch of cynicism in her sad smile; but the cynicism was all for herself, and it was not excessive.

She accepted this renaissance gratefully, though the disillusions of the past were unforgettable.

"Tell me, Hilda, that you will be my friend whatever happens--to you or to me."

"I have always been your friend, have I not?"

"Have you, Hilda, always?"

"I am dully faithful." Hilda's smile was a little baffling; it gave no warrant for the sudden quickening of the breath that he had experienced more than once of late.

"I feel as if I had _found_ you, Hilda."

"Did you _look_ for me, then?"

The smile was now decidedly baffling and yet very sweet.

"You know," she added, "I liked you from that first moment when you fished me out of the river. It seems that you are fated to act always the chivalrous part toward me."

"I would ask no better fate. Hilda, you have seen Allan Hope? Not yet?"

"No; not yet." Hilda's face grew serious. "He is coming to tea this afternoon."

"But you must be there."

"Yes, I suppose I must." This affectation of girlish indifference seemed to Odd more significant than noticeable shyness.

"We must take a cab," he said, trying to keep his voice level.

"Oh, it makes no difference. Cabs, you see, are never reckoned with in my arrivals. I am warranted to be late."

"But you must not be late."

"But if I want to?" There was certainly a touch of roguery in her eyes.

"If you want to and if I want you to, it shows that you are cruel and I conscienceless. Here is a cab. Away with you, Hilda. _Au revoir_."

"Aren't you coming too?" asked Hilda, pausing in the act of lifting Palamon.