The Dull Miss Archinard Part 16

she said, after Odd had come, and greetings had pa.s.sed 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 of intimacy--"you mustn't misunderstand, misjudge your father. He couldn't work; his life has unfitted him for it; it would be a false pride that would make him hesitate to ask an old friend for a loan; an old friend so well able to lend as I am. You women judge these things far too loftily." And Peter liked her for the loftiness.

"Would you mind telling me how much you lent him last time? I was with him when he cashed the check. I saw the name, not the amount."

"It was nothing of any importance," said Odd shortly. He exaggerated now. The Captain had told him that the furniture would be seized unless some creditors were satisfied, and, with a very decided hint as to the inadvisability of another trip for retrievement to the Riviera, Peter had given him the money, ten thousand francs; a sum certainly of importance, for Odd was no millionaire.

Katherine looked hard at him.

"You won't tell me because you want to spare me."

"My dear Katherine, I certainly want to spare you anything that would add a straw's weight to your distress; you have no need, no right to shoulder this. It is your father's affair--and mine. You must not give it another thought."

"That is so easy!" Katherine clenched her hand on the mantelpiece. She was not given to vehemence of demonstration; the little gesture showed a concentration of bitter rebellion. Odd, standing beside her, put his own hand over hers; patted it soothingly.

"It's rather hard on me, you know, a slur on my friends.h.i.+p, that you should take a merely conventional obligation so to heart."

Katherine now looked down into the fire.

"Take it to heart? What else have I had on my heart for years and years?

It is a mere variation on the same theme, a little more poignantly painful than usual, that is all! What a life to lead. What a future to look forward to. I wonder what else I shall have to endure." Odd had never seen her before in this mood of fierce hopelessness.

"Our poverty has poisoned everything, everything. I have had no youth, no happiness. Every moment of forgetfulness means redoubled keenness of gnawing anxiety. Debts! Duns! hara.s.sing, sordid cares that drag one down. Mr. Odd, I have had to coax butchers and bakers; I have had to plead with horrible men with doc.u.ments of all varieties! I have had to p.a.w.n my trinkets, and all with surface gayety; everything must be kept from mamma, and papa's extravagance is incorrigible."

Odd was all grave amazement, grave pity, and admiration.

"You are a brave woman, Katherine."

"No, no; I am not brave. I am frightened--frightened to death sometimes.

I see before me either a hideous struggle with want or--a _mariage de convenance_. I have none of the cla.s.sified, pigeon-holed knowledge one needs nowadays to become a teaching drudge, and I can't make up my mind to sell myself, though, in spite of my lack of beauty and lack of money, that means of escape has often presented itself. I have had many offers of marriage. Only I _can't_."

Odd was silent under the stress of a new thought, an entirely new thought.

"For Hilda I have no fear," Katherine continued, still speaking with the same steady quiet voice, still looking into the fire. "In the past her art has absorbed and protected her, and her future is a.s.sured. She will marry a good husband." A flash as of Hilda's beauty crossed the growing definiteness of Peter's new thought. That old undoing, that mirage of beauty; he put it aside with some self-disgust, feeling, as he did so, a queer sense of impersonality as though putting away himself as he put away his weakness. He seemed to contemplate himself from an outside aloofness of observation. The trance-like feeling of the illusion of all things which he had felt more than once of late made him hold more firmly to the tonic thought of a fine common-sense.

"Of course, mamma will be safe when Hilda is Lady Hope," Katherine said; "perhaps I shall be forced to accept the same charity." Her voice broke a little, and she turned the sombre revolt of her look on Peter; her eyes were full of tears.

"Katherine," he said, "will you marry me?"

Odd, five minutes before, had not had the remotest idea that he would ask Katherine Archinard to be his wife. Yet one could hardly call the sudden decision that had brought the words to his lips, impulsive. While Katherine spoke, the bitter struggle of the fine young life, surely meant for highest things; the courage of the cheerfulness she never before had failed in; the pride of that repulsion for the often offered solution to her difficulties--a solution many women would have accepted with a sense of the inevitable--became admirably apparent to Odd. Their mutual sympathy and good-fellows.h.i.+p and, almost unconsciously, Hilda's a.s.sured future--Allan Hope--had defined the thought. He felt none of that pa.s.sion which, now that he looked back on it, made of the miserable year of married life that followed but the logical retribution of its reckless and wilful blindness. The very lack of pa.s.sion now seemed an added surety of better things. His life with Katherine could count on all that his life with Alicia had failed in. He did not reason on that unexcited sense of impersonality and detachment. He would like her to accept him. He would like to help this fine, proud young creature; he would like sympathetic companions.h.i.+p. He was sure of that. He had not surprised Katherine; she had seen, as clearly as he now saw, what Peter Odd would do. She had not exactly intended to bring him to a realization of this by the morning's confession, for on the whole Katherine had been perfectly sincere in all that she had said, but she felt that she could rely on no better opportunity. Now she only turned her head towards him, without moving from her position before the fireplace. Katherine never took the trouble to act. She merely aimed at the most advantageous line of conduct and let taste and instinct lead her. Her taste now told her that quiet sincerity was very suitable; she felt, too, a most sincere little dash of proud hesitation.

"Are you generously offering me another form of charity, Mr. Odd? My distress was not conscious of an appeal."

"You know your own value too well, Katherine, to ask me that. _I_ appeal."

"Yet the apropos of your offer makes me smart. Another joy of poverty.

One can't trust."

"It was apropos because a man who loves you would not see you suffer needlessly." Peter, too, was sincere; he did not say "loved."

"Shall I let you suffer needlessly?" asked Katherine, smiling a little.

"I sha'n't, if that implies that you love me."

"Suppose I do. And suppose I stand on my dignity. Pretend to distrust your motives. Refuse to be married out of pity?"

"That sort of false dignity wouldn't suit you; you have too much of the real."

"Would you be good to me, Mr. Odd?"

"Very, very good, Katherine."

Odd took her hand and kissed it, and Katherine's smile shone out in all its frank gayety. "I think I can make you happy, dear."

"I think you can, Mr. Odd."

"You must manage 'Peter' now."

"I think you can, Peter," Katherine said obediently.

"And Katherine--I would not have dared say this before, you would have flung it back at me as bribery--but I can give you weapons."

"Yes, I shall be able to fight now." She looked up at him with her charming smile. "And you will help me, you must fight too. You must be great, Peter, great, _great!_"

"With such a fiery little engine throbbing beside my laggard bulk, I shall probably be towed into all sorts of combats and come off victorious."

They sat down side by side on the sofa. Katherine was a delightfully comfortable person; no change, but a pleasant development of relation seemed to have occurred.

"You won't expect any flaming protestations, will you, Katherine," said Peter; "I was never good at that sort of thing."

"Did you never flame, then?"

"I fancy I flamed out in about two months--a long time ago; that is about the natural life of the feeling."

"And you bring me ashes," said Katherine, rallying him with her smile.