MARY gone, the bicycling tête-à-têtes were resumed, and Odd, too, began to call more frequently at the houses where he met Katherine. They were bon camarades in the best sense of the term, and Peter found it a very pleasant sense. He realized that he had been lonely, and loneliness in his present dés?uvrée condition would have been intolerable. The melancholy of laziness could not creep to him while this girl laughed beside him. The frank, sympathetic relation—almost that of man to man—was untouched by the faintest infusion of sentiment; delicious breeziness and freedom of intercourse was the result. Peter listened to Katherine, laughed at her sometimes, and liked her to laugh at him. He told her a good many of his thoughts; she criticised them, approved of them, encouraged him to action. But Odd felt his present contemplativeness too wide to be limited by any affirmation. He had never felt so little sure of anything nor so conscious of everything in general. Writing in such a mood seemed folly, and he continued to drift. He still read in an objectless way at the Bibliothèque, hunting out old references, pleasing himself by a circuit through the points of view of all times. Katherine offered to help him, and in the morning he would bring her his notes to look over; her quick comprehension formed another link. He was very sorry for Katherine too. She had no taste for drifting. In her eye he read a dissatisfaction, a thirst for wider vision, wider action, a restless impatience with the narrowness, the ineffectiveness of her lot, that made him muse on her probable future with a sense of pathos. Hilda’s wide gaze showed no such rebellion with the actual; her art had filled it with a distant content that shut strife and the defeat of yearnings from her: or was it merely the placid consciousness of Allan Hope—a future assured and fully satisfactory? Under Katherine’s gayety there was a fierce beating of caged wings, and Odd fancied at times that, freed, the imprisoned birds might be strong and beautiful. He fancied this especially when she played to him; she played well, with surprising sureness of taste, and, as the winter came and it grew too cold for bicycling, Peter often spent the morning in listening to her. Mrs. Archinard did not appear until the afternoon in the drawing-room, and in the evenings he usually met her dining out or at some reception; their intimacy once noticed, they were invited together. Lady—— was especially anxious that Odd should have every opportunity for meeting her favorite.
But with all this intimacy, to Peter’s consciousness thoroughly, paternally platonic, under all its daily interests and quiet pleasure lay a half-felt hurt, a sense of injury and loss. The little voice, seldom thought of during the last ten years, now repeated often: “But you will be different; I will be different; we will both be changed.”
Captain Archinard returned from the Riviera in a temper that could mean but one thing; he had gambled at Monte Carlo, and he had lost. He did not mention the fact in the family circle; indeed, by a tacit agreement, money matters were never alluded to before Mrs. Archinard. Her years of successful invalidism had compelled even her husband’s acquiescence in the decision early arrived at by Hilda and Katherine: mamma must be spared the torments to which they had grown accustomed. But to Katherine the Captain freed his querulous soul, never to Hilda. There was a look in Hilda’s eyes that made the Captain very uncomfortable, very angry; conscious of those cases of wonderful champagne, the races, the clubs, the boxes at the play, and all the infinite array of his wardrobe—a sad, wondering look. Katherine’s scoldings were far preferable, for Katherine was not so devilish superior to human weaknesses; she had plenty of unpaid bills on her own conscience, and understood the necessities of an aristocratic taste. He and Katherine had their little secrets, and were mutually on the defensive. Hilda never criticised, to be sure, but her very difference was a daily criticism. The Captain thought his younger daughter rather dull; Katherine, of finer calibre than her father, admired such dulness, and found some difficulty in stilling self-reproachful comparisons; temperament, circumstance, made a comforting philosophy. And then Hilda’s art made things easy for Hilda; with such a refuge, would she, Katherine, ask for more? Katherine rather wondered now, after her father’s exasperated recountal of ill-luck, where papa had got the money to lose; but papa on this point was prudently reticent, and borrowed two one-hundred-franc notes from Peter while the latter waited in the drawing-room for Katherine one morning.
Katherine and her father were making a round of calls one day, and the Captain stopped at his bank to cash a check. Katherine stood beside him, and, although he man?uvred concealment with hand and shoulder, her keen eyes read the name.
Her mouth was stern as they walked away—the Captain had folded the notes and put them in his pocket.
“A good deal of money that, papa.”
“I suppose I owe twice as much to my tailor,” Captain Archinard replied, with irritation.
“Has Mr. Odd lent you money before this?”
“I really don’t know that Mr. Odd’s affairs—or mine—are any business of yours, Katherine.”
“Yours certainly are, papa. When a father puts his daughter in a false position, his affairs decidedly become her business.”
“What rubbish, Katherine. Better men than Odd have been glad to give me a lift. I can’t see that Odd has been ill-used. He is rolling in money.”
“I don’t quite believe that, papa. Allersley is not such a rich property. But it is not of Mr. Odd’s ill-usage I complain, it is of mine; for if this borrowing goes on, I hardly think I can continue my relations with Mr. Odd. It would rather look like—decoying.”
The Captain stopped and fixed a look of futile dignity on his daughter.
“That’s a strange word for you to use, Katherine. I would horsewhip the man who would suggest it. Odd is a gentleman.”
“Decidedly. I did not speak of his point of view but of mine. All frankness of intercourse between us is impossible if you are going to sponge on him.”
“Katherine! I can’t allow such impertinence! Outrageous! It really is! Sponge! Can’t a man borrow a few paltry hundreds from another without exposing himself to such insulting language?—especially as Odd is to become my son-in-law, I suppose. He is always hanging about you.”
“That is what I meant, papa.” Katherine’s tone was icy. “Your suppositions were apparent to me, you drain Mr. Odd on the strength of them. Borrow from any one else you like as much as you can get, but, if you have any self-respect, you won’t borrow from Mr. Odd in the hope that I will marry him.”
“Devilish impertinent! Upon my word, devilish impertinent!” the Captain muttered. He drew out his cigar-case with a hand that trembled. Katherine’s bitter look was very unpleasant.
Katherine expected Odd the next morning; he was reading a manuscript to her, and would come early.
She was waiting for him at ten. She had put on her oldest dress. The severe black lines, a silk sash, knotted at the side, suggested a soutane—the slim buckled shoes with their square tips carried out the monastic effect, and Katherine’s strong young face was cold and stern.
“Shall we put off our work for a little while? I want to speak to you,” she said, after Odd had come, and greetings had passed 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............