A Crooked Path Part 3

"Really, Katherine, you are very unsympathetic. If you have a fault, dear, it is selfishness. You don't mind my saying so?"

"Oh, not at all. I am thankful for the 'if.'"

"Where is your mother?"

"Lying down. She is tired, and has a horrid headache."

"I'm sure I don't wonder at it, toiling from morning till night for those wretched papers. I was telling Mrs. Burnett to-day that my mother-in-law was an auth.o.r.ess, but when I mentioned that she wrote for _The Family Friend_ and _The Cheerful Visitor_, Lady Everton, who writes in _The Court Journal_ and various grand things of that kind, said they were quite low publications, and never got higher than the servants'

hall."

"You need not have gone into particulars, Ada. Whether my mother writes well or ill, the pressure on her is too great to allow of her picking or choosing; she must catch at the quickest market."

"I'm sure it is a great pity. That is the reason I stay on here, and let you teach Cis and Charlie, though Colonel Ormonde says the sooner boys are out of a woman's hands the better."

"If Colonel Ormonde is the old man I saw this morning, he looks more capable of judging a dinner than what is the best training for youth."

"Old!" screamed the pretty widow. "He is not old; he is only mature. He is very well off, too. He has a place in the country. And as to mentioning those papers, I know nothing of such things. _The Nineteenth Century_, or _Bow Bells_, or _The Family Friend_, they are all the same to me. Only I am sure such a nice lady-like woman as Mrs. Liddell should not write for the servants' hall. She must have been so handsome, too!

Fred, poor fellow, was her image. You will never be so good-looking, Kate."

"No, I don't suppose I shall," returned Katherine, with much equanimity.

"Are there any letters for me?" asked Mrs. Frederic, looking round as she lifted her bonnet from the table.

"Here are two."

"Ah! this is from Harry Vigors. I suppose he is coming home. And oh!

this is Madame de Corset's bill"--putting down her bonnet and opening it. "Eleven pounds seventeen and ninepence-half-penny. Why, this is abominable! She promised it should not be much more than ten pounds.

There is five per cent off for ready money. Oh, I'll pay it immediately.

How much will that be altogether, Kate? Eleven s.h.i.+llings? Well, that is worth saving. It will buy me two pairs of gloves. Now I'll go and rest.

Tell me when Mrs. Liddell is awake."

CHAPTER II.

BREAKING NEW GROUND.

Katherine took care that her sister-in-law should not have an opportunity of private conversation with Mrs. Liddell, that evening at least.

She rolled up and arranged the disordered ma.n.u.scripts, putting the small study in order, and locking away the rejected tales. Then she proposed conducting the young widow to the florist's, as the evening grew cooler, and made herself agreeable by listening attentively to the little woman's description of the luncheon party, and her repet.i.tion of all the pretty things said to her by the various gentlemen present, especially by Colonel Ormonde.

"Of course I do not mind their nonsense, but however my heart may cling to dear Fred's memory, I must think of my precious boys," was her conclusion. To which Katherine answered, "Of course," as she would have answered any proposition, however wild, provided only she could save her mother from worry, at least for that evening.

Next day was showery and dull. True to her resolution, Katherine put her mother's lucubrations into their covers, and prepared to start on her projected round.

"I am not sure I ought to let you go, Katie dear," said Mrs. Liddell, as her daughter came into the study in her out-door dress. "It is rather a wild goose chase. Why should you succeed for me when I have failed for myself? Besides, personal interviews are of no avail. No editor will take work that does not suit him, however interesting the applicant."

"Nevertheless I will go. I shall bring a new element into the business, and I _may_ be lucky! Why have you plunged into these horrid accounts?"

pointing to a pile of small books, and a sheaf of backs of letters scribbled over with calculations. "This is not the way to cheer yourself."

"My love, it is a change of occupation, at least, to revert to the old yet ever new problem of life--how to extract thirty s.h.i.+llings from a sovereign. I am trying to see where we can possibly retrench. What is Ada doing?"

"She is decking the drawing-room and herself for the reception of Colonel Ormonde, who is coming to afternoon tea."

"What, already?"

"She is quite excited, I a.s.sure you. Is it not soon to think of----"

"Do not judge her harshly. She is a woman not made to live alone. In due time I shall be glad to see her happily married, for she _will_ marry."

"Tell me, is that irreconcilable uncle of mine really still alive? How long is it since you heard anything of him?"

"Oh, more than six or seven years. But I am sure he is alive. I should have heard of his death. I suppose he is still living on in Camden Town."

"Not a very agreeable quarter," returned Katherine, carelessly.

"Good-by, mother dear! Do not expect me to dinner. I can have something whenever I come in."

Katherine walked briskly toward town, intending to save some of her omnibus fare, for she had planned a long and daring expedition--an undertaking which taxed all her courage. In truth, though she had never known the ease or luxury of wealth, she had been most tenderly brought up. Her mother had constantly s.h.i.+elded her from all the roughness of life, and the deed she contemplated seemed to her mind an almost desperate effort of independent action.

Through one of the very few sleepless nights she had ever experienced she had thought out an idea which had flashed through her brain while Mrs. Liddell was explaining her difficulties, and which she had carefully kept to herself.

She saw clearly enough the hopelessness of their position; probably with the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary, as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income.

As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied--her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman on a pittance, her tender thought for the welfare and happiness of her children--she felt she could walk through a burning fiery furnace if by so doing she could earn ease and repose for her mother's weary spirit.

"She is looking ill and worn," thought Katherine, "and years older. She has never been the same since that attack of bronchitis last year. Ada and the boys are too much for her, though they are dear little fellows; but they are costly. If Ada would even give us twenty pounds a year more it would be a great help."

The project Katherine had evolved through the night-watches was to visit her uncle and ask him, face to face, for help! It is, she argued, harder to say "no" than to write it; even if she failed she should know her fate at once, and not have to endure the agony of waiting for a letter.

Nor, were she refused, need her mother ever know now she had humiliated herself in the dust.

How her young heart sank within her at the thought of being harshly, contemptuously rejected! It was a positive painful physical sense of faintness that made her limbs tremble as she pressed on faster than she was aware. "But I _will_ do it--I will! If I succeed no humiliation will be too great," she said to herself. "I will speak with all my soul! When I begin, this horrible feeling that my tongue is dry and speechless will go away. I must find out where this awful old man is; what is his street and number. I dared not ask mother. First I will try the publisher; as the 'servants' hall' publications have rejected it, I shall offer _Darrell's Doom_ to a first-rate house. Why not try Channing & Wyndham?

They cannot say worse than 'no,' and I shall no doubt see a Directory there." Thus communing with herself, she took an omnibus down Park Lane and walked thence to the well-known temple of the Muses in Piccadilly.

Arrived there, a civil clerk took her card--which was her mother's--and soon returning, asked if she had an appointment. "No, I have not, but pray ask Mr. Channing or Mr. Wyndham to see me; I will not stay more than a few minutes." The young man smiled slightly; he was accustomed to such a.s.surances. Almost as Katherine spoke, a stout "country gentleman"

looking person came into the warehouse, slightly raising his hat as he pa.s.sed her. A sudden inspiration prompted her to say, "Pray excuse me, but are you Mr. Wyndham?"

"I am."

"Then do let me speak to you for five minutes."

"With pleasure," said the great publisher, graciously, and ushered her into a sort of literary loose box or small enclosure in the remote back-ground.

"I have ventured to bring you a ma.n.u.script," began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter of her mother's fate.

"So I see," he returned, ruefully but politely.

"It is a beautiful story, and I thought it ought to be published by a great house like yours," pursued Katherine.