Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  The compromise was accepted as the only way out of the difficulty. The secret marriage remained a secret, and a mere accomplished formality. John continued to live with his mother as though he were a bachelor; Katharine stayed under her father’s roof as Miss Lauderdale. John returned to Beman Brothers, and was now working there, as has been said more than once. Katharine had to bear all the difficulties of a totally false position in society. These had been the results of the secret marriage, so far as actual consequences in fact were concerned. Morally speaking, there could be no question but that John Ralston, at least, had profited enormously by the sense of honourable responsibility Katharine had forced upon him. He had made one of those supreme efforts of which natures nervous by temperament, melancholy, and sometimes susceptible of exaltation, are often capable. The almost divine dignity which his mother had taught him to attribute to the code of honour stood him in good stead. He saw by the light which guides heroes, things not heroic in themselves to be done, but brave at least, and they were easy to him, because, for Katharine’s sake, he would have done much more.

  So far as Katharine was concerned, the effect upon her was different. It might even be questioned whether it were a good effect. She was helpless to do anything which could improve her position, and the result was a feeling of hostility against her surroundings. The whole fabric of society seemed to her to rest upon a doubtful foundation, since two young people so eminently fitted for each other could be forced by it into such a situation.

  They were of equal standing in every way; she had even lately learned that their prospects of fortune, which were little short of colossal, were precisely the same. They loved each other. They were married by church and law. Yet between John’s code of honour, on the one hand, and Alexander Lauderdale’s determined opposition, on the other, they dared not so much as own that they were husband and wife, lest some enormous social scandal should ensue. They had but one alternative — to leave New York together, which meant starvation, or else to accept Robert Lauderdale’s help in the form of money, which John was too proud to do. And though John would have been quite ready to starve alone, he had no intention of subjecting Katharine to any such ordeal. He blamed himself most bitterly for having accepted the secret marriage at all, but since the thing was done, he meant to do his share and bear his burden manfully and honourably. It was all he could do to atone for his weakness in having yielded, and for the trouble he had caused Katharine.

  But she had no such active part as he. He must work, for he had chosen that salvation for his self-respect, and it was her portion to wait until he could win his independence on his own merits, since he would not be indebted for it to any one. The waiting is often harder to bear than the working. Katharine grew impatient of the conventions in the midst of which she lived, and found fault with the system of all modern society.

  She was strangely repelled, too, by the attentions of the young men she met daily, and danced with, and sat beside at dinner. They had amused her until the last winter. She was not one of those girls who either feign indifference to amusement, or really feel it, and so long as she had been free to enjoy herself without any secondary thoughts about the meaning of enjoyment, she had found the world a pleasant place. Now, however, she was for the first time made conscious that several of the young fellows who surrounded her at parties really wished to marry her. The genuine and pure-hearted convictions concerning the inviolable sanctity of marriage, which are peculiarly strong in American young girls, asserted themselves with Katharine at every moment. Being the lawfully wedded wife of John Ralston, it seemed an outrage that young Van De Water, for instance, should seek occasion to assure her of his devotion. Yet, since he, like the rest, knew nothing of the truth, she could not blame him if he had chanced to fall in love with her. She could only refuse to listen to him and discourage his advances, feeling all the while a most unreasonable and yet womanly desire to hand him over to her husband’s tender mercies, together with a firm faith that John was not only able, but would also be quite disposed, to slay the offender forthwith.

  This seems to prove that woman is naturally good, and that harm can only reach her by slow stages. And it is a curious reflection that generally in the world good, when it comes, comes quickly and evil slowly. Great purifying religions have arisen and washed whole nations clean, almost in one man’s lifetime, whereas it has always required generations of luxury and vice to undermine the solidity of any strong people. A first sin is rarely more than an episode, too often exaggerated by those who would direct the conscience, and who leave the offenders to the terrible danger of discovering such exaggerations later, and then of setting down all wrong-doing as insignificant because the first was made to appear greater than it was.

  Katharine hated the falseness of her position, and the perpetual irritation to which she was exposed unsettled the balance of her girlish convictions as they had emerged from the process of education, ready-made, honest, and somewhat conventional. The disturbance awakened abnormal activity in her mind, and she fell into the habit of questioning and discussing almost every accepted article of creeds social and spiritual.

  Hence her liking for the society of Paul Griggs, whose experience was a fact, but whose convictions were a mystery not easily fathomed. Alexander Lauderdale especially detested the man for his easy way of accepting anybody’s religious beliefs, as though the form of religion were of no importance whatever, while perpetually thrusting forward the humanity of mankind as the principal point of interest in life. But when he was alone with Katharine, or with some kindred spirit, Griggs sometimes talked of other things.

  The day on which Katharine, returning from Robert Lauderdale’s house, refused to answer her father’s questions was an important one in her history and in the lives of many closely connected with her; and this has seemed the best place for offering an explanation of such preceding events as bear directly upon all that followed. Here, therefore, ends the prologue to the story which is to tell of the lives of John Ralston and his wife, commonly known as Miss Lauderdale, during the great battle for the Lauderdale fortune. It has been a long prologue, and, as is usually the case in such tiresome preliminary pieces, the majority of the actors in the real play have not yet appeared, and the few who have come before the curtain crave as yet indulgence rather than applause. They have shown their faces and have explained the general nature of what is to be represented, and they retire as gracefully as they can, under rather difficult circumstances, to reappear in such actions and situations as should explain themselves.

  CHAPTER IV.

  IN ITSELF, ROBERT Lauderdale’s will was a very fair one. It provided, as has been seen, that each of the living members of the family in the direct line should have an equal income, while insuring the important condition that the money should remain in the hands of the Lauderdales and Ralstons as long as possible, since the income paid to the four elder members, Alexander Lauderdale Senior, Alexander Junior, the latter’s wife and Mrs. Ralston, John’s mother, should revert at the deaths of each to the three younger heirs, John Ralston, Katharine, and Charlotte Slayback, and afterwards to the children of each.

  This result seemed just and, on the whole, to be desired. Robert Lauderdale had devoted much thought to the subject, and had seen no other way of acting fairly and at the same time of providing as far as possible against the subdivision and disappearance of the great fortune he had amassed. The will was to constitute three separate trusts, one for each of the direct legatees and their children, at whose death the trusts would expire, and the property be further divided amongst the succeeding generations in each line.

  The old millionaire was a very enlightened man, and had honestly endeavoured during his lifetime to understand the conditions and obligations to which the possessors of very large fortunes should submit. Looking at the matter from this point of view, he had come to regard the accumulation and dissipation of wealth as a succession of natural phenomena, somewhat analogous to those of evaporation and r
ain, beneficial when gradual, destructive when sudden. As water is drawn up in the form of vapour, in invisible atoms, gradually to accumulate in the form of clouds, which, moving under natural conditions, are borne towards those regions where moisture is most needed, to descend gently and be lost in showers that give earth life, until the sky above is clear again, and all the fields below are green with growing things — so, thought Robert Lauderdale, should wealth follow a reasonable and beneficial course of constant distribution and redistribution, to promote which was a moral obligation upon those through whose hands it passed. He was not sure that it was in any way his duty to leave vast sums for charities, nor to hasten the subdivision of the property in any violent way; for he knew well enough that sudden divisions generally mean the forcible depression of values, in which case wealth, of which the income being spent regularly should find its way to the points where it is most needed, must, on the contrary, become dormant until values are restored, if indeed they ever are restored altogether.

  If he had been the father of one or more children, there is no knowing how he might have acted. If there had been in the whole family one man whom he sincerely trusted to act wisely, he might have left him the bulk of the fortune, giving each of the others a sum which would have been large compared with what they had of their own, but wholly insignificant by the side of the main property. But no such selection was possible. His brother was a very old man, wholly unfitted for the purpose. His brother’s son was a miser, and a dull one at that, in Robert’s estimation. John Ralston was not to be thought of for a moment. Hamilton Bright would have answered the conditions, but he was far removed in relationship, being a descendant of Robert Lauderdale’s uncle through a female line. Nevertheless, Robert Lauderdale hesitated.

  It was perhaps natural that Alexander Junior should believe that he was the proper person for his uncle to select as the principal heir. He was the only son of the eldest of the family. He was a man of stainless reputation, occupying a position of high importance and trust. No one could have denied that he was scrupulous in business matters to a degree rare even amongst the most honourable men of his own city. He was comparatively young, being only fifty years old, and he might live a quarter of a century to administer and hold together the Lauderdale estate, for his health was magnificent and his strength of iron.

  He had thought it all over daily for so many years, that he could see no possible reason why he should not be the principal heir. In arguing the case, he told himself that his uncle was not capricious, that he would certainly not leave his fortune to Hamilton Bright, who was the only other sensible man of business in the whole connection, and that it was generally in the nature of very rich men to wish to know that their wealth was to be kept together after they were dead. No one could possibly do that better than Alexander Lauderdale Junior.

  Nevertheless, he felt conscious that his uncle disliked him personally, and in moments of depression, when he had taken too little exercise and his liver was torpid, the certainty of this caused him much uneasiness. There was no apparent reason for it, and it suggested to his self-satisfied nature the idea that some caprice entered, after all, into the nature of his uncle. On such occasions he rarely failed to instruct Mrs. Lauderdale to ask uncle Robert to dinner, and to be particularly careful that the fish should be perfect. Uncle Robert was fond of fish and a quiet family party. Katharine was his favourite, but he liked Mrs. Lauderdale, and his brother, the old philanthropist, was congenial to him, though the two took very different views of humanity and the public good. Alexander Senior’s dream was to get possession of all Robert’s millions and distribute them within a week amongst a number of asylums and charitable institutions which he patronized. He should then feel that he had done a good work and that his benevolent instincts had been satisfied. He sometimes sat in his study in a cloud of smoke — for he smoked execrable tobacco perpetually — and tried to persuade himself that ‘brother Bob’ might perhaps after all leave him the whole fortune. There would be great joy among the idiots on that day, thought old Alexander, as the two-cent ‘Virginia cheroot’ dropped from his hand, and he fell asleep in his well-worn armchair. And then came dreams of unbounded charity, of unlimited improvement and education of the poor and deficient. The greatest men of the age should be employed to devote their lives to the happiness of the poor little blind boys, and of the little girls born deaf, and of the vacantly staring blear-eyed youths whom nature had made carelessly, and whom God had sent into the world, perhaps, as a means of grace to those more richly endowed. For old Alexander was charitable to every one — even to the Supreme Being, whose motives he ventured to judge. He was incapable of an unkind thought, and in the heaven of his old fancy he would have founded an asylum for reformed devils and would not have hesitated to beg a subscription of Satan himself, being quite ready to believe that the Prince of Hell might have his good moments. He would have prayed cheerfully for ‘the puir deil.’ There is no limit to the charity of such over-kind hearts. Nothing seems to them so bad but that, by gentleness and persuasion, it may at last be made good.

  He knew, of course, for Robert had told him, that he was not to have the millions even during the few remaining years of his life, and he bore his brother no malice for the decision. Robert promised him that he should have plenty of money for his poor people, but did not hesitate to say that if he had the whole property he would pauperize half the city of New York in six months.

  “You’d give every newsboy and messenger boy in the city a roast turkey for dinner every day,” laughed Robert.

  “If I thought it might improve the condition of poor boys, I certainly should,” answered the philanthropist, gravely. “I’m fond of roast turkey myself — with cranberry sauce and chestnuts inside. Why shouldn’t the poor little fellows have it, too, if every one had enough money?”

  “If there were enough money to go round, creation would be turned into a kitchen for a week, and into a hospital for six months afterwards,” observed Robert Lauderdale. “Fortunately, money’s scarcer than greediness.”

  And on the whole, there was much wisdom in this plain view, which to Robert himself presented a clear picture of the condition of mankind in general in regard to money and its distribution.

  It would not have been natural if even the least money-loving members of the family had not often speculated, each in his or her own way, about the chances of receiving something very considerable when old Robert died. He had been generous to them all, according to his lights, but he had not considered that any of them were objects of charity. The true conditions of his brother’s household life had been carefully concealed from him, until Katharine had, almost accidentally, given him an insight into her father’s family methods, so to say. Nevertheless, he had long known that Alexander Junior must have much more money than he was commonly thought to possess, and his mode of living, as compared with his fortune, proved conclusively that he hoarded what he had. He must have known that a large share of the estate must ultimately come to him, and he could assuredly have had no doubts as to its solidity, since it consisted entirely in land and houses. What was he hoarding his income for? That was the question which naturally suggested itself to Robert, and the only answer he could find, and the one which accorded perfectly with his own knowledge of his nephew’s character, was that Alexander was a miser. As the certainty solidified in the rich man’s mind, he became more and more determined that Alexander Junior should know nothing of the dispositions of the will.

  And he had rigidly kept his own counsel until that day when he had confided in Katharine. When he was well again, or, at all events, so far recovered as to feel sure that he might live some time longer, he regretted what he had done. Weakened by illness, he had acted on impulse in making a young girl the repository of his secret intentions. Moreover, he had not intended to part with the right to change them whenever he should see fit, and the problem of the distribution of wealth continued to absorb his attention. He had great faith in Katharine, but,
after all, she was not a man, as he told himself repeatedly. She might be expected to confide in John Ralston, who might, on some unfortunate day, drink a glass of wine too much and reveal the facts of the case. He would have been even more disturbed than he was, had he known that Alexander Junior suspected his daughter of knowing the truth.

  Robert Lauderdale had certainly not made her life easier for her by what he had done. During several days her father from time to time repeated his questions.

  “I hope that you are in an altered frame of mind, Katharine,” he said. “This perpetual obstinacy on the part of my child is very painful to me.”

  “I might say something of the same kind,” Katharine answered. “It’s painful — as you choose to call it — to me, to be questioned again and again about a thing I won’t speak of. Why will you do it? You seem to think that I hold my tongue out of sheer eccentricity, just to annoy you. Is that what you think? If so, you’re very much mistaken.”

  “It’s the only possible explanation of your undutiful conduct. I repeat that I’m very much pained by your behaviour.”

  “Look here, papa!” cried Katharine, turning upon him suddenly. “Don’t drag in the question of duty. It’s one’s duty to keep a secret when one’s heard it — whether one wanted to hear it or not. There’s no reason in the world why I should repeat to you what uncle Robert told me — any more than why I should go and tell Charlotte, or Hester Crowdie, or anybody else.”

  “Katharine!” exclaimed Alexander Junior, sternly, “you are very impertinent.”