Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Again the two exchanged a little pressure of hands, and there was silence.

  “It will be different when the money is divided,” said old Lauderdale, at last. “You’ll have to acknowledge your marriage then.”

  Katharine started slightly. She had her back to the windows, but the whiteness of everything in the room threw reflected light into her face, and the blush that very rarely came spread all over it in an instant.

  Only four living persons knew that she had been secretly married to John Ralston during the winter; namely, John and herself, the clergyman who had married them, and Robert Lauderdale. At that time she had with great difficulty persuaded John to go through the ceremony, hoping thereby to force her uncle into finding her husband some congenial occupation in the West. Half an hour after taking the decisive step, she had come to Robert Lauderdale with her story, and he had demonstrated to her that John’s only path to success lay through the office of a banker or a lawyer, and John had then returned to Beman Brothers, after refusing to accept a large sum of money, with which old Lauderdale had proposed to make him independent. He had not been willing to give his uncle the smallest chance of thinking that he had married Katharine as a begging speculator, nor had the old gentleman succeeded in making him change his mind since then. Nor had he referred to the marriage when speaking with Katharine, except on one or two occasions, when it had seemed absolutely necessary to do so. And now that he had spoken of it, he saw the burning blush and did not understand it. Women had entered little into his long life. He fancied that he had hurt her, and was very sorry. The great hand closed slowly, as though with an effort, upon the white young fingers.

  “I didn’t mean to pain you, my dear; forgive me,” he said, simply.

  Katharine looked at him with a little surprise, and the blush instantly disappeared. Then she laughed softly and bent forward with a quick movement.

  “You didn’t, uncle dear! You didn’t pain me in the least. It’s only — sometimes I don’t quite realize that I’m Jack’s wife. When I do — like that, just now — it makes me happy. That’s all.”

  Robert Lauderdale looked at her, tried to understand, failed, and nodded his big head kindly but vacantly.

  “Well — I’m glad,” he said. “But you see, my dear child, when John’s a rich man, you can acknowledge your marriage, and have a house of your own. You really must, and of course you will. John can’t refuse to take his share. We never quarrelled, that I know of, but that once, last winter, and you say he has forgotten that. Has he? Are you quite sure?”

  Katharine nodded quickly and a whispered ‘yes’ just parted her fresh lips. In her eyes there was a gentle, almost entreating look, as though she besought him to believe her.

  “Well,” he said, and he spoke very slowly— “well — I’m glad. He can’t refuse to take his share when I’m dead and gone — his fair share and no more.” He paused for some seconds. “Katharine,” he said, very earnestly, at last, “there’s a great deal of money to be divided amongst you all. Many of them want it. They’ll all have some — perhaps more than they expect. There’s a great deal of money, child.”

  “Yes, I know there is,” answered Katharine, quietly.

  “When I’m gone they’ll say that the old man was richer than they thought he was. I can hear them — I’ve heard it so often about other men! ‘Just guess how much old Bob Lauderdale left,’ they’ll say. ‘Nearly eighty-two millions! Who’d have thought it!’ That’s what the men will be saying to each other. Eighty millions is a vast amount of money, child. You can’t guess how much it is.”

  “Eighty millions.” Katharine repeated the stupendous words softly, as though trying to realize their meaning.

  “No — you can’t understand.” The old man’s eyes closed wearily. A few moments later they opened again, and he smiled at her.

  “How did you ever manage to make so much?” she asked, smiling, too, and with a look of wonder.

  “I don’t know,” answered the great millionaire, as simply as a child. “I worked hard at first, and I saved small things for a purpose. My father was rich — in those days. He left us each a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Your uncle Alexander gave it to the poor — as much of it as the poor did not take without asking his leave. Ralph spent some of it, and left the rest to Katharine Ralston when he was killed in the war. I saved mine. It seemed good to have money. And then it came — it came — somehow. I was lucky — fortunate investments in land. I ran after it till I was forty-five; then it began to run after me, and it’s outrun me, every time. But I wasn’t a miser, Katharine. I don’t want you to think that I was mean and miserly when I was young. You don’t, do you, my dear?”

  “No, indeed!” Katharine gave the answer readily enough. “But, uncle Robert, aren’t you talking too much? Doctor Routh said you were not to — that it might hurt you. And your voice is so hoarse! I am sure it can’t be good for you.”

  The old man patted her hand laboriously, for he was very weak.

  “I want my talk out,” he said. “It doesn’t matter much whether it hurts me. A year or two, more or less, when I’ve had it all, everything, and so long. I’m tired, my child, though when I am well I look so strong. It isn’t only strength that’s needed to live with. It takes more.”

  “But there are other things — there is so much in your life — so many people. There are all of us. Don’t you care to live for our sakes — just a little, uncle?”

  “If they were all like you — more like you — well, I might. I’m very fond of you, Katharine. You know it, don’t you? Yes. That’s why I sent for you. I don’t believe I’m going to die — I told Routh so half an hour ago. But I might — I may. I didn’t want to go over without having had my talk out with you. That’s it. I want to have my talk out with you. I should be sorry to slip away without seeing you. There are things — things that come into my head when I’m alone — and I’ve been alone a great deal in my life. Oh, I could have married, if I had liked. Queens would have married me — queer, little, divorced queens from out-of-the-way little kingdoms, you know. But I didn’t want to be married for my money, and there were no Katharine Lauderdales when I was young.”

  Again, with an unsteady, laboured movement, the old hand caressed the young one as it lay on the soft, white, knitted Shetland shawl which covered the bed, and again Katharine smiled affectionately and laughed gently at the flattery. Then all was quiet. She leaned back in her chair, thinking — the aged head rested on the white pillow, thinking.

  “Katharine,” — the eyes opened again,— “what does it all mean, child?”

  “What?” asked the young girl, meeting him again out of her reverie.

  “Life.”

  “Ah — if I knew that—”

  “You’re at the beginning of it — I’m at the end — almost, or quite, it doesn’t matter. What’s the meaning of all those things I’ve done, and which you’re going to do? They must mean something. I ought to have got at the meaning in so many years.”

  Katharine was silent. Of late, she, too, had heard the great question asked, which rattles in the throat of the dying century, and is to-day in the ears of all, whether they desire to hear it or not. And no man has answered it yet. A year earlier Katharine would have said but one word in reply. She could not say it now.

  In the still, white room she sat by the old man’s side and bowed her head silently.

  “It’s puzzled me a great deal,” he said, at last, in his familiar speech. “So long as I cared for things, — money, principally, I suppose, — it didn’t puzzle me at all. It all seemed quite natural. But when I got worn out inside — used up with the wear and tear of having too much — well, then I couldn’t care for things any more, and I began to think. And it’s all a puzzle, Katharine. It’s all a puzzle. We find it all in bits when we come, taken to pieces by the people who have just gone. We spend all our lives in trying to put the thing together on some theory of our own, and in the end we give it up, and go to sleep—
‘perchance to dream’ — that’s Hamlet, isn’t it? But I never dreamt much. If it’s anything, it isn’t a dream. Well, then, what is it?”

  Katharine looked up at him with a little, half-childish glance of wonder.

  “Why, uncle Robert,” she said, “I always thought you were a religious man — like papa, you know.”

  “No.” The old man smiled faintly. “I’m not like your father. I fancy I’m more like you — in some ways. Aren’t you religious, as you call it, my dear?”

  “I’m religious, as I call it — but not as ‘they’ call it.” She laughed a little, perhaps at herself. “I seem to see something, and I believe in it, without quite seeing it. Oh, I can’t explain! I’ve tried so often, but it’s quite hopeless.”

  “Try again,” said old Lauderdale. “It can’t do any harm, and it may do me good. I’m so lonely.”

  Katharine was perhaps too young to understand that loneliness, but the look in the sunken blue eyes touched her. She rose and bent over him, and kissed the pale, wrinkled forehead twice.

  “It’s our fault — the fault of all us,” she said, sinking into her seat again.

  “No; it’s not,” he answered. “I didn’t want you all, and I couldn’t have the ones I wanted. It doesn’t matter now. I want to hear you talk. Try and tell me what you think it all means, from your end of life. I’ve forgotten — it’s so long ago.”

  He sighed, then coughed, raising himself a little, and then sank back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as though to listen.

  “People say so many things,” Katharine began. “Perhaps that’s the trouble. One hears so much that disturbs one’s belief, and one hears nothing that settles it in any new way. That’s what happens to every one. In trying to find reasons for things, people ruin the things themselves with the tools they use. You can’t find out the reason of a flower — certainly not by sticking the point of a steel knife into it and cutting the heart out. You can see how it’s made — that’s science. But the reason of its being a flower has nothing to do with science. If it had, science would find it out, because science can do anything possible in its own line. But it’s always the steel knife — always, always. You can’t tell why things exist, by taking them to pieces, can you?”

  “No — no — that’s it.” The old man turned his head slowly from side to side. Then it trembled a little and lay still again. “And the short cut is to say there is no reason for things — that they’re all accidents, by selection.”

  “Yes; that’s the short cut, as you say,” answered Katharine. “The trouble is that when we’ve taken it, if we don’t want to go back, we ought to want to go on to the end. Nobody will do that. They meet you with a moral right and wrong, after denying that there’s a ground for morality. I know — I’ve talked with a great many people this winter. It’s very funny, if you listen to them from any one point of view, no matter which. Then they all seem to be mad. But if one listens inside, — with one’s self, I mean, — it’s different. It hurts, then. It would break my heart to believe that I had no soul, as some people do. Better believe that one has one’s own to begin with, and the fragments of a dozen others clinging to it besides, than to have none at all.”

  “What’s that?” asked the old man, opening his eyes with a look of interest. “What’s that about fragments of other people’s souls?”

  “Oh — it’s what some people say. I got it from Mr. Griggs. Of course it’s nonsense — at least — I don’t know. It’s the one idea that appeals to one — that we go on living over and over again. And he says that in that theory there’s an original self, sometimes dormant, sometimes dominant, but which goes on forever — or indefinitely, at least; and then that fragments of the other personalities, of the people we have lived with in a former state, better or worse than the original self, fasten themselves on our own self, and influence its doings, and may put it to sleep, and may eat it up altogether — and that’s why we don’t always seem to ourselves to be the same person. But I can’t begin to remember it all. You should get Mr. Griggs to talk about it. He’s very interesting.”

  “It’s a curious theory,” said old Lauderdale, evidently disappointed. “It’s an ingenious explanation, but it isn’t a reason. Explanations aren’t reasons — I mean, they’re not causes.”

  “No,” answered Katharine, “of course they’re not. The belief is the cause, I suppose.”

  The sick man glanced at her keenly and then closed his eyes once more. Katharine rose quietly and went to the windows to draw down the shades a little.

  “Don’t!” cried Lauderdale, sharply, in his hoarse voice. “I like the light. It’s all the light I have.”

  Katharine came back and sat down beside him again.

  “I wasn’t going to sleep,” he said, presently. “I was thinking of what you had said, that belief was the cause. Well — if I believe in God, I must ask, ‘Domine quo vadis?’ — mustn’t I? You know enough Latin to understand that. What do you answer?”

  “Tendit ad astra.”

  It was one of those quick replies which any girl who knew a few Latin phrases might easily make. But it struck the ears of the man whose strength was far spent. He raised his hands a little, and brought them together with a strangely devout gesture.

  “To the stars,” he said in a whisper, and his eyes looked upwards.

  Katharine rested her chin upon her hand, leaning forwards and watching him. An expression passed over his face which she had never seen, though she had read of the mysterious brightness which sometimes illuminates the features of dying persons. She thought it must be that, and she was suddenly afraid, yet fascinated. But she was mistaken. It was only a gleam of hope. Words can mean so much more than the things they name.

  And a dream-like interpretation of the two Latin phrases suggested itself to her. It was as though, looking at the venerable and just man who was departing, she had asked of him, ‘Sir, whither goest thou?’ And as though a voice had answered her, ‘Starwards’ — and as though her own eyes might be those stars — the stars of youth and life — from which he had come long ago and to which he was even now returning, to take new childish strength and to live again through the years. Then he spoke, and the dream vanished.

  “I believe in Something,” he said. “Call it God, child, and let me pray to It, and die in peace.”

  CHAPTER III.

  KATHARINE SAID NOTHING, not knowing what to say. During what seemed to her a long time, old Lauderdale lay quite still. Then he seemed to rouse himself, and as he turned his head he coughed painfully.

  “I want you to know how I’ve left the money,” he said abruptly, when he had recovered his breath.

  “Do you think I ought to know?” asked Katharine, in some surprise.

  “Yes — I don’t know whether you ought — no. But I want you to know. I’ve confidence in your judgment, my dear.”

  “Oh, uncle Robert! As though your own were not a thousand times better!”

  “In matters of business it may be. But this is quite another thing. You see, there are a good many who ought to have a share, and a good many who expect some of it, whether they have any claim or not. I want to know if you think I’ve acted fairly by everybody. Will you tell me, quite honestly? Nobody else would — except Katharine Ralston, perhaps.”

  “But I don’t want to be made the judge of your actions, dear uncle Robert!” protested Katharine.

  “Well — make a sacrifice, then, and do something you don’t like,” answered the old man, gruffly.

  It would have pleased Doctor Routh to see how soon his temper rose at the merest sign of opposition.

  “Well — tell me, then,” said Katharine, reluctantly.

  “It’s a simple will,” began the old man, and then he paused, as though reflecting upon it. “Well — you see,” he continued, presently, “I argued in this way. I said to myself that the money ought either to go back to its original source — I’ve thought a great deal about that, too, and I’ve made sketches of will
s leaving everything to the poor, in a big trust — I suppose every rich man has made rough sketches of queer wills at one time or another.” He paused a moment and seemed to be thinking. “Yes,” he resumed, presently, “either it should go back to the people, or else it ought to go amongst the Lauderdales, as directly as possible. Now there’s my brother, first — your grandfather. He’s older than I am, but he’s careless and foolish about money. He’d give it all away — better leave something to his asylums and things, and give him an income but no capital. He doesn’t want anything for himself — he’s a good man, and I wish I were like him. Then there’s your father, next, and Katharine Ralston — my nephew and niece. They don’t want a lot of money, either, do they?”

  Katharine’s eyes expressed a little astonishment in spite of herself, and the old man saw it. He hesitated a while, coughed, cleared his throat, and then seemed to make up his mind.

  “It’s been my opinion for a long time,” he said, slowly, “that your father has a good deal of his own.”

  “Papa!” exclaimed Katharine. “Why — he always says he’s so poor! You don’t know how economical he is, and makes us be. I’m sure he can’t be rich.”

  “Rich — h’m — that’s a relative expression nowadays. He’s not rich, compared with me — but he has enough, he has quite enough.”

  “Oh — enough — yes,” answered the young girl. “The house is comfortable, and we have plenty to eat.” She laughed a little. “But as for clothes, you know — well, if my mother didn’t sell her miniatures, I don’t know exactly what she and I should do — nor what Charlotte would have done, before she was married.”

  Robert Lauderdale looked at her intently for several seconds.

  “Do you mean to say,” he asked, at length, “that when your dear mother sells her little paintings, it’s to get money for her and you to dress on?”