odd knew that he was late as he drove down the champs elysées in a rattling, closed fiacre. he and besseint had talked so late into the evening that he had barely had time to get to his hotel in the marb?uf quarter and dress.
besseint was one of the cleverest french writers of the day; he and peter had battled royally and delightfully over the art of writing, and as besseint was certainly more interesting than would be the dinner at the embassy, peter felt himself excusable.
lady—— welcomed him unresentfully—
“just, only just in time. i am going to send you down with miss archinard—over there talking to my husband—she is such a clever girl.”
peter was conscious of a shock of surprise; a shock so strong that lady—— saw a really striking change come over his face. peter himself was startled by his own pleasure and eagerness.
“evidently you know her; and evidently you were going to be bored and are not going to be now! your change of expression is really unflattering!” lady—— laughed good humoredly.
“i haven’t seen her for ten years; we were the greatest chums. oh! it isn’t hilda, then!” odd caught sight of the young lady.
“i am very sorry it isn’t ‘hilda.’ hilda is the beauty; she is, unfortunately, almost an unknown quantity; but katherine will be a stepping-stone, and i assure you that she is worth cultivation on her own account.”
yes, katherine was a stepping-stone; that atoned somewhat for the disappointment that odd felt as he followed his hostess across the room.
“miss archinard—an old friend. mr. odd tells me he has not seen you for ten years.”
“mr. odd!” cried miss archinard. she was evidently very glad to see him.
“it is astonishing, isn’t it?” said peter. “ten years does mean something, doesn’t it?”
“so much and yet so little. it hasn’t changed you a bit,” said katherine. “and here is papa. papa, isn’t this nice? mr. odd, do you remember the day you fished hilda out of the river? poor hilda! and her romantic farewell escapade?”
captain archinard was changed; his hair had become very white, and his good looks well worn, but his greeting had the cordiality of old friendship.
“and hilda?” peter questioned, as he and katherine went into the dining-room together. “hilda is well? and as lovely as ever?”
“well, and as lovely as ever,” katherine assured him. “she is not here because she rarely goes out. papa and i are the frivolous members of the family. mamma goes in for culture, and hilda for art.” peter had a good look at her as they sat side by side.
katherine was no more beautiful than in childhood, but she was distinctly interesting and—yes—distinctly charming. her black eyes, deeply set under broad eyebrows, held the same dominant significance; humorous, cynical, clever eyes. her white teeth gave a brilliant gayety to her smile. there was distinction in her coiffure—the thick deeply rippled hair parted on one side, and coiled smoothly from crown to neck; and peter recognized in her dress a personal taste as distinctive—the long unbroken lines of her nasturtium velvet gown were untinged by any hint of so-called artistic dowdiness, and yet the dress wrinkled about her waist as she moved with a daring elegance far removed from the moulded conventionality of the other women’s bodices. this glowing gown was cut off the shoulders; katherine’s shoulders were beautiful, and they were triumphantly displayed.
“and now, please tell me,” said peter, “how it comes that i haven’t seen you for ten years?”
“how comes it that we have not seen you? you have been everywhere, and so have we; really it is odd that we should never have met. of course you know that we left the priory only a year after you went to india?”
peter nodded.
“i was dismayed to find you gone when i got back. i heard vague rumors of florence, and when i went there one winter you had disappeared.”
“we must have been in dresden. how i hated it! all the shabby second-rate culture of the world seems to gravitate to dresden. we had to let the priory, you know. we are so horribly poor.”
katherine’s smiling assertion was not carried out in her appearance, yet the statement put a bond of familiarity between them; katherine spoke as to an old friend who had a right to know.
“then we had a year or two at dinard—loathsome place i think it! then florence again, and at last paris, and here we have been for over three years, and here we shall probably stick for who knows how long! hilda’s painting gives us a reasonable background; at least as reasonable as such exiles can hope for.”
“but you don’t mean to say that your exile is indefinite?”
katherine nodded, with eyebrows lifted and a suggestion of shrug in the creamy expanse of shoulder.
“and hilda paints? well?”
“hilda paints really well. she has always painted, and her work is really individual, unaffectedly individual, and that’s the rare thing, you know. over four years of atelier work didn’t scotch hilda’s originality, and she has a studio of her own now, and is never happy out of it.”
“what kind of work does she go in for?” peter was conscious of a vague uneasiness about hilda. “portraits?”
“no; hilda is not very good at likenesses. her things are very decorative—not japanese either—except in their air of choice and selection; well, you must see them, they really are original, and, in their own little way, quite delightful; they are, perhaps, a wee bit like baby whistlers—not that i intimate any real resemblance—but the sense of color, the harmony; but you must see them,” katherine repeated.
“and mrs. archinard?” peter felt some remorse at having forgotten that rather effaced personality.
“mamma is just the same, only stronger than she used to be in england. i think the continent suits her better. and now you, mr. odd. the idea of talking about such nobodies as we are when you have become such a personage! you have become rather cynical too, haven’t you? as a child you did not make a cynical impression on me, and your ‘dialogues’ did. i think you are even more cynical than renan. some stupid person spoke to me of a rapport between your ‘dialogues’ and his ‘dialogues philosophiques.’ i don’t imply that, except that you are both sceptical and both smiling, only your smile is more bitter, your scepticism less frivolous.”
“i’m sceptical as to people, not as to principles,” said peter, smiling not bitterly.
“yet you are not a misanthrope, you do not hate people.”
“i don’t admire them.”
“you would like to help them to become more admirable. ah! the anglo-saxon is strong within you. you are not at all like renan. and then you went in for parliamentary honors too; three years ago, wasn’t it? why didn’t you keep on?”
“because i didn’t keep my seat when my party went out. the honors were dubious, miss archinard. i cut a very ineffective figure.”
“i remember meeting a man here at the time who said you weren’t ‘practical,’ and i liked you for it too. if only you had kept in we should surely have met. hilda and i were in london this spring.”
“were you? and i was in japan. i only got back three weeks ago.”
“how you do dash about the globe. but you have been to allersley since getting back?”
“only for a day or two. but tell me about your spring in london.”
“we were with lady mainwaring.”
“ah, i did not see her when i was at allersley. that accounts for my having had no news of you. you did not see my sister in london; she has been in the country all this year. you went to court, i suppose?”
“yes, lady mainwaring presented us.”
“and hilda enjoyed herself?”
katherine smiled: “how glad you will be to see hilda. yes, enjoyed herself after a fashion, i think. she only stopped a month. she doesn’t care much for that sort of thing really.”
katherine did not say, hardly knew perhaps, that the reproachful complaint of mrs. archinard’s weekly letter had cut short hilda’s season, and brought her back to the little room in the little appartement, 3ième au dessus de l’entresol, where mrs. archinard spent her days as she had spent them at allersley, at dresden, at dinard, at florence. change of surroundings made no change in mrs. archinard’s lace-frilled recumbency, nor in the air of passive long-suffering that went with so much appreciation of her own merits and other people’s deficiencies.
“but hilda’s month meant more than other girls’ years,” katherine went on; “you may imagine the havoc she played, all unconsciously, poor hilda! hilda is the most unconscious person. she fixes one with those big vague eyes of hers. she fixed, among other people, another old friend,” and katherine smiled, adding with lowered tone, “allan hope.”
peter was not enough conscious of a certain inner irritation to attempt its concealment.
“allan hope?” he repeated. “it is impossible for me to imagine little hilda with lovers; and allan hope one of them!”
“allan hope is very nice,” katherine said lightly.
“nice? oh, thoroughly nice. but to think that hilda is grown up, not a child.”
odd looked with a certain tired playfulness at katherine.
“and you are grown up too; have lovers too. what a pity it is.”
“that depends.” katherine laughed. “but regrets of that kind are unnecessary as far as hilda is concerned. i don’t think little hilda is much less the child than when you last saw her. having lovers doesn’t imply that one is ready for them, and i don’t think that hilda is ready.”
odd had looked away from her again, and katherine’s black eyes rested on him with a sort of musing curiosity. she had not spoken quite truthfully in saying that the ten years had left him unchanged. a good deal of white in the brown hair, a good many lines about eyes and mouth might not constitute change, but katherine had seen, in her first keen clear glance at the old friend, that these badges of time were not all.
there had been something still boyish about the mr. odd of ten years ago; the lines at the eye corners were still smiling lines, the quiet mouth still kind; but the whole face wore the weary, almost heavy look of middle age.
“his parliamentary experience probably knocked the remaining illusions out of him,” katherine reflected. “he was certainly very unsuccessful, he tried for such a lot too, sought obstacles. he should mellow a bit now (that smile of his is bitter) into resignation, give up the windmill hunt (i think all nice men go through the quixotic phase), stop at home and write homilies. and he certainly, certainly ought to marry; marry a woman who would be nice to him.” and it was characteristic of katherine that already she was turning over in her mind the question as to whether it would be feasible, or rather desirable—for katherine intended to please herself, and had not many doubts as to possibilities if once she could make up her mind—to contemplate that r?le for herself. miss archinard was certainly the last woman in the world to be suspected of matrimonial projects; her frank, almost manly bonhomie, and her apparent indifference to ineligibility had combined to make her doubly attractive; and indeed katherine was no husband-hunter. she would choose, not seek. she certainly intended to get married, and to a husband who would make life definitely pleasant, definitely successful; and she was very keenly conscious of the eligibility or unfitness of every man she met; only as the majority had struck her as unfit, miss archinard was still unmarried. now she said to herself that peter odd would certainly be nice to his wife, that his position was excellent—not glittering—katherine would have liked glitter, and the more the better; and yet with that long line of gentlefolk ancestry, that old elizabethan house and estate, far above the shallow splendor of modern dukedoms or modern wealth, fit only to impress ignorance or vulgarity. he had money too, a great deal. money was a necessity if one wanted a life free for highest flights; and she added very calmly that she might herself, after consideration, find it possible to be nice to him. rather amusing, katherine thought it, to meet a man whom one could at once docket as eligible, and find him preoccupied with a dreamy memory of such slight importance as hilda’s child friendship; but katherine’s certainty of the slightness—and this man of forty looked anything but sentimental—left her very tolerant of his preoccupation.
hilda was a milestone, a very tiny milestone in his life, and it was to the distant epoch her good-bye on that autumn night had marked as ended, rather than to the little closing chapter itself, that he was looking. indeed his next words showed as much.
“how many changes—forgive the truism, of course—in ten years! did you know that my sister, mrs. apswith, had half-a-dozen babies? i find myself an uncle with a vengeance.”
“i haven’t seen mrs. apswith since she was married. it does seem ages ago, that wedding.”
“mary has drawn a lucky number in life,” said odd absently.
“she expects you to settle down definitely now, i suppose; in england, at allersley?”
“yes, i shall. i shall go back to allersley in a few months. it is rather lonely.”
“why don’t you fill it with people?”
“you forget that i don’t like people,” said odd.
“you prefer loneliness, with your principles for company. there will be something of martyrdom, then, when you at last settle down to your duty as landowner and country gentleman.”
“oh, i shall do it without any self-glorification. perhaps you will come back to the priory. that would mitigate the loneliness.”
“the sense of our nearness. of course you wouldn’t care to see us! no, i think i prefer paris to the priory.”
“what do you do with yourself in paris?”
“very little that amounts to anything,” katherine owned; “one can’t very well when one is poor and not a genius. if one isn’t born with them, one must buy weapons before one can fight. i feel i should be a pretty good fighter if i had my weapons!” and katherine’s dark eye, as it flashed round on him in a smile, held the same suggestion of gallant daring with which she had impressed him on that morning by the river ten years ago. he looked at her contemplatively; the dark eyes pleased him.
“yes,” he said, “i think you would be a good fighter. what would you fight?”
“the world, of course: and one only can with its own weapons, more’s the pity.”
“and the flesh and the devil,” odd suggested; “is this to be a moral crusade?”
“i’m afraid i can’t claim that. i only want to conquer for the fun of conquering; ‘to ride in triumph through persepolis,’ like tamburlaine, chain up people i don’t like in cages! oh, of course, persepolis would be a much nicer place when once i held it, i should be delightful to the people i liked.”
“and all the others would be in cages!”
“they would deserve it if i put them there! i’m very kind-hearted, very tolerant.”
“and when you have conquered the world, what then? as life is not all marching and caging.”
“i shall live in it after my own fashion. i am ambitious, mr. odd, but not meanly so, i assure you.”
“no; not meanly so, i am sure.” odd’s eyes were quietly scrutinizing, as, another sign of the ten years, he adjusted a pair of eyeglasses and looked at her, but not, as katherine felt, unsympathetic.
“and meanwhile? you will find your weapons in time, no doubt, but, meanwhile, what do you do with yourself?”
“meanwhile i study my milieu. i go out a good deal, if one can call it going out in this dubious parisian, anglo-american mélange; i read a bit, and i bicycle in the bois with papa in the morning. it sounds like sentimentality, but i do feel that there is an element of tragedy in papa and myself bicycling. oh, for a ride across country!”
“you rode so well, too, mary told me.”
“yes, i rode well, otherwise i shouldn’t regret it.” katherine smiled with even more assurance under the added intensity of the pince-nez.
“you enjoy the excelling, then, more than the feeling.”
“that sounds vain; i certainly shouldn’t feel pleasure if i were conscious of playing second fiddle to anybody.”
“a very vain young lady,” odd’s smile was quite alertly interested, “and a self-conscious young lady, too.”
“yes, rather, i think,” katherine owned; frankness became her, “but i am very conscious of everything, myself included. i am merely one among the many phenomena that come under my notice, and, as i am the nearest of them all, naturally the most intimately interesting. every one is self-conscious, mr. odd, if they have any personality at all.”
“and you are clever,” peter pursued, in a tone of enumeration, his smile becoming definitely humorous as he added: “and i am very impudent.”
katherine was not sure that she had made just the effect she had aimed for, but certainly mr. odd would give her credit for frankness.
it was agreed that he should come for tea the next afternoon.
“after five,” katherine said; “hilda doesn’t get in till so late; and i know that hilda is the clou of the occasion.”
“does hilda take her painting so seriously as all that?”
“she doesn’t care about anything, anything else,” katherine said gravely, adding, still gravely, “hilda is very, very lovely.”
“i hope you weren’t too much disappointed,” lady—— said to odd, just before he was going; “is she not a charming girl?”
“she really is; the disappointment was only comparative. it was hilda whom i knew so well. the dearest little girl.”
“i have not seen much of her,” lady—— said, with some vagueness of tone. “i have called on mrs. archinard, a very sweet woman, clever, too; but the other girl was never there. i don’t fancy she is much help to her mother, you know, as katherine is. katherine goes about, brings people to see her mother, makes a milieu for her; such a sad invalid she is, poor dear! but hilda is wrapt up in her work, i believe. rather a pity, don’t you think, for a girl to go in so seriously for a fad like that? she paints very nicely, to be sure; i fancy it all goes into that, you know.”
“what goes into that?” odd asked, conscious of a little temper; all seemed combined to push hilda more and more into a slightly derogatory and very mysterious background.
“well, she is not so clever as her sister. katherine can entertain a roomful of people. grace, tact, sympathy, the impalpable something that makes success of the best kind, katherine has it.”
katherine’s friendly, breezy frankness had certainly amused and interested odd at the dinner-table, but lady ——’s remarks now produced in him one of those quick and unreasoning little revulsions of feeling by which the judgments of a half-hour before are suddenly reversed. katherine’s cleverness was that of the majority of the girls he took down to dinner, rather voulu, banal, tiresome. odd felt that he was unjust, also that he was a little cross.
“there are some clevernesses above entertaining a roomful of people. after all, success isn’t the test, is it?”
lady—— smiled, an unconvinced smile—
“you should be the last person to say that.”
“i?” odd made no attempt to contradict the evident flattery of his hostess’ tones, but his ejaculation meant to himself a volume of negatives. if success were the test, he was a sorry failure.
he was making his way out of the room when captain archinard stopped him.
“i have hardly had one word with you, odd,” said the captain, whose high-bridged nose and finely set eyes no longer saved his face from its fundamental look of peevish pettiness. “mrs. brooke is going to take katherine home. it’s a fine night, won’t you walk?”
odd accepted the invitation with no great satisfaction; he had never found the captain sympathetic. after lifting their hats to mrs. brooke and katherine as they drove out of the embassy courtyard, the two men turned into the rue du faubourg st. honoré together.
“we are not far from you, you know,” the captain said—“rue pierre charron; you said you were in the marb?uf quarter, didn’t you? we are rather near the trocadero, uphill, so i’ll leave you at the door of your hotel.”
they lit cigars and walked on rather silently. the late october night was pleasantly fresh, and the champs elysées, as they turned into it, almost empty between the upward sweep of its line of lights.
“ten years is a jolly long time,” remarked captain archinard, “and a jolly lot of disagreeable things may happen in ten years. you knew we’d left the priory, of course?”
“i was very sorry to hear it.”
“devilish hard luck. it wasn’t a choice of evils, though, if that is any consolation; it was that or starvation.”
“as bad as that?”
“just as bad; the horses went first, and then some speculations—safe enough they seemed, and, sure enough, went wrong. so that, with one thing and another, i hardly knew which way to turn. to tell the truth, i simply can’t go back to england. i have a vague idea of a perfect fog of creditors. i have been able to let the priory, but the place is mortgaged up to the hilt; and devilish hard work it is to pay the interest; and hard luck it is altogether,” the captain repeated. “especially hard on a man like me. my wife is perfectly happy. i keep all worry from her; she doesn’t know anything about my troubles; she lives as she has always lived. i make that a point, sacrifice myself rather than deprive her of one luxury.” the tone in which the captain alluded to his privations rather made peter doubt their reality. “and the two children live as they enjoy it most; a very jolly time they have of it. but what is my life, i ask you?” the captain’s voice was very resentful. odd almost felt that he in some way was to blame for the good gentleman’s unhappy situation. “what is my life, i ask you? i go dragging from post to pillar with stale politics in the morning, and five o’clock tea in grass widows’ drawing-rooms for all distraction. paris is full of grass widows,” he added, with an even deepened resentment of tone; “and i never cared much about the play, and french actresses are so deuced ugly, at least i find them so, even if i cared about that sort of thing, which i never did—much,” and the captain drew disconsolately at his cigar, taking it from his lips to look at the tip as they passed beneath a lamp.
“i can hardly afford myself tobacco any longer,” he declared, “smokable tobacco. thought i’d economize on these, and they’re beastly, like all economical things!” and the captain cast away the cigar with a look of disgust.
peter offered him a substitute.
“you are a lucky dog, odd, to come to contrasts,” the captain paused to shield his lighted match as he applied it to the fresh cigar; “i don’t see why things should be so deuced uneven in this world. one fellow born with a silver spoon in his mouth—and you’ve got a turn for writing, too; once one’s popular, that’s the best paying thing going, i suppose—and the other hunted all over europe, through no fault of his own either. rather hard, i think, that the man who doesn’t need money should be born with a talent for making it.”
“it certainly isn’t just.”
“damned unjust.”
odd felt that he was decidedly a culprit, and smiled as he smoked and walked beside the rebellious captain. he was rather sorry for him. odd had wide sympathies, and found whining, feeble futility pathetic, especially as there was a certain amount of truth in the captain’s diatribes, the old eternal truth that things are not evenly divided in this badly managed world. it would be kinder to immediately offer the loan for which the captain was evidently paving the way to a request. but he reflected that the display of such quickness of comprehension might make the request too easy; and in the future the captain might profit by a discovered weakness a little too freely. he would let him ask. and the captain was not long in coming to the point. he was in a devilish tight place, positively couldn’t afford a pair of boots (peter’s eyes involuntarily sought the captain’s feet, neatly shod in social patent-leather), could odd let him have one hundred pounds? (the captain was frank enough to make no mention of repayment) etc., etc.
peter cut short the explanation with a rather unwise manifestation of sympathetic comprehension; the captain went upstairs with him to his room when the hotel was reached, and left it with a check for 3000 francs in his pocket; the extra 500 francs were the price of peter’s readiness.
