odd was subtly glad of a cold that kept him in bed and indoors for several days. he wrote of his sorry plight to katherine, and said he would see her at the meltons’ on monday. hilda was to come; that had been decided on the very evening of their last walk. he had been a witness of the merry colloquy over the lengthened dress, a colloquy that might, odd felt, have held an embarrassing consciousness for katherine had she not treated it with such whole-hearted gayety.
the archinards had not yet arrived when odd reached mrs. melton’s apartment—one of the most magnificent in the houses that line the avenue du bois de boulogne—and after greeting his hostess, he waited for half-an-hour in a condition of feverish restlessness, painfully apparent to himself, before he saw in the sparkling distance katherine’s smooth dark head, the captain’s correctly impassive good looks, and hilda’s loveliness for once in a setting that displayed it. peter thrilled with a delicious and ridiculous pride as, with a susceptibility as acute as a fond mother’s, he saw—felt, even—the stir, the ripple of inevitable conquest spread about her entry. the involuntary attention of a concourse of people certainly constitutes homage, however unconscious of aim be the conqueror. to odd, the admiration, like the scent of a bed of heliotrope in the turning of a garden path, seemed to fill the very air with sudden perfume. “her dear little head,” “her lovely little head,” he was saying to himself as he advanced to meet her. he naturally spoke first to katherine, and received her condolences on his cold, which she feared, by his jaded and feverish air, he had not got rid of. then, turning to hilda—
“the white satin does,” he said, smiling down at her. katherine did not depend on beauty, and need fear no comparison even beside her sister. she was talking with her usual quiet gayety to half-a-dozen people already.
“see that hilda, in her embarras de choix, doesn’t become too much embarrassed,” she said to peter. “exercise for her a brotherly discretion.”
the captain was talking to mrs. melton—a pretty little woman with languid airs. she had lived for years in paris, and considered herself there a most necessary element of careful conservatism. her exclusiveness, which she took au grand serieux, highly amused katherine. katherine knew her world; it was wider than mrs. melton’s. she walked with a kindly ignoring of barriers, did not trouble herself at all how people arrived as long as they were there. she was as tolerant of a millionaire parvenu as might be a duchess with a political entourage to manipulate; and she found mrs. melton’s anxious social self-satisfaction humorous—a fact of which mrs. melton was unaware, although she, like other people, thought katherine subtly impressive. mrs. melton was rather dull too, and a few grievances whispered behind her fan in katherine’s ear en passant—for subject, the unfortunate and eternal nouveau riche—made pleasant gravity difficult; but katherine did not let mrs. melton know that she found her dull and funny.
hilda for the moment was left alone with odd, and he seized the opportunity for inscribing himself for five waltzes.
“i will be greedy. i wrest these from the hungry horde i see advancing, led by your father and mrs. melton.”
he had not claimed the first waltz, and watched her while she danced it—charmingly and happily as a girl should. she was beautiful, surprisingly beautiful. a loveliness in the carriage of the little head, with its heightened coils of hair, seemed new to odd. no one else’s hair was done like that, nor grew so about the forehead. the white satin was a trifle too big for her. a lace sash held it loosely to her waist, and floated and curved with the curves of her long flowing skirt. his waltz came, and he would not let his wonder at the significance of his felicity carry him too far into conjecture.
“are you enjoying yourself?” he asked, as they joined the eddy circling around mrs. melton’s ballroom.
“so much; thanks to you.” her parted lips smiled, half at him, half at the joy of dancing. “i had almost forgotten how delicious it was.”
“more delicious than the studio, isn’t it?”
“you shall not tempt me to disloyalty. how pretty, too! de la touche could do it—all light and movement and color. i should like to come out of my demi-tints and have a try myself! what pretty blue shadows everywhere with the golden lights. see on the girls’ throats. there is the good of the studio! one sees lovely lights and shadows on ugly heads! isn’t that worth while?”
odd’s eyes involuntarily dropped to the blue shadow on hilda’s throat.
“everything you do is worth while—from painting to dancing. you dance very well.”
the white fragility of her neck and shoulders, in the generous display of which he recognized the gown’s quondam possessor, gave him a little pang of fear. she looked extremely delicate, and the youthfulness of cheek and lip pathetic. that wretched drudgery! for, even through the happy candor of her eyes, he saw a deep fatigue—the long fatigue of a weary monotony of days. but in neither eyes nor voice was there a tinge of the aloofness—the reserve that had formerly chilled him. to-night hilda seemed near once more; almost the little friend of ten years ago.
“you dance well, too, mr. odd,” she said.
“i very seldom waltz.”
“in my honor then?”
“solely in your honor. i haven’t waltzed five times in one evening with one young woman—for ages!”
“you haven’t waltzed five times with me yet. i may wear you out!”
“what an implied reflection on my forty years! do i seem so old to you, hilda?”
“no; i don’t think of you as old.”
“but i think of you as young, very young, deliciously young.”
“deliciously?” she repeated. “that is a fallacy, i think. youth is sad; doesn’t see things in value; everything is blacker or whiter than reality, so that one is disappointed or desperate all the time.”
“and you, hilda?”
her eyes swept his with a sweet, half-playful defiance.
“don’t be personal.”
“but you were. and, after the other day—your declaration of contentment.”
“everything is comparative. i was generalizing. i hate people who talk about themselves,” hilda added; “it’s the worst kind of immodesty. material and mental braggarts are far more endurable than the people who go round telling about their souls.”
“severe, rigid child!” odd laughed, and, after a little pause, laughed again. “you are horribly reserved, hilda.”
“very sage when one has nothing to show. silence covers such a multitude of sins. if one is consistently silent, people may even imagine that one isn’t dull,” said hilda maliciously.
“you are dull and silent, then?”
“i have few opinions; that is, perhaps, dulness.”
“it may be a very wide cleverness.”
“yes; it may be. now, mr. odd, the next waltz is yours too, you know. you have quite a cluster here. let us sit out the next. i should like an ice.”
odd fetched the ice and sat down beside her on a small sofa in a corner of the ballroom. katherine passed, dancing; her dark eyes flashed upon them a glance that might have been one of amusement. odd was conscious of a painful effort in his answering smile.
hilda’s eyes, as she ate her ice, followed her sister with a fond contemplation.
“isn’t that dress becoming to her? the shade of deepening, changing rose.”
“your dress, too, hilda, is lovely.”
“do you notice dresses, care about them?”
“i think i do, sometimes; not in detail as a woman would, but in the blended effect of dress and wearer.”
“i love beautiful dresses. i think this dress is beautiful. have you noticed the line it makes from breast to hem, that long, unbroken line? i think that line the secret of elegance. in some gowns one sees one has visions of crushed ribs, don’t you think?”
odd listened respectfully, his mouth twisted a little by that same smile that he still felt to be painful. “and is not this lace gathered around the shoulders pretty too?” hilda turned to him for inspection.
“you will talk about your clothes, but you will not talk about yourself, hilda.” odd had put on his eyeglasses and was obediently studying her gown.
“the lace is mamma’s. poor mamma; i know she is lonely. it does seem hard to be left alone when other people are enjoying themselves. she has meredith’s last novel, however. i began it with her. mr. odd, i am doing all the talking. you talk now.”
“about meredith, your dress, or you?”
“about yourself, if you please.”
“it has seemed to me, hilda, that you were even less interested in me than you were in yourself.”
hilda looked round at him quickly, and he felt that his eyes held hers with a force which almost compelled her—
“no; i am very much interested in you.” odd was silent, studying her face with much the same expression that he had studied her gown—the expression of painfully controlled emotion.
“there is nothing comparably interesting in me,” he said; “i have had my story, or at least i have missed my chance to have a story.”
“what do you mean?”
“well, i mean that i might have made a mark in the world and didn’t.”
“and your books?”
“they are as negative as i am.”
“yet they have helped me to live.” hilda looked hard at him while she spoke, and a sudden color swept into her face; no confusion, but the emotion of impulsive resolution. odd, however, turned white.
“helped you to live, hilda!” he almost stammered; “my gropings!”
“you may call them gropings, but they led me. perhaps you were like virgil to statius, in dante. you know? you bore your light behind and lit my path!” she smiled, adding: “i suppose you think you have failed because you have reached no dogmatic absolute conclusion. but you yourself praise noble failure and scorn cheap success.”
“i didn’t even know you read my books.”
“i know your books very well; much better than i know you.”
“don’t say that. i hope that any worth in me is in them.”
“one would have to survey your life as a whole to be sure of that. perhaps you do even better than you write.”
“ah, no, no; i can praise the books by that comparison.” his voice stumbled a little incoherently, and hilda, rising, said with a smile—
“shall we dance?”
in the terribly disquieting whirl of his thoughts, which shared the dance’s circling propensities, odd held fast to one fixed kernel of desire; he must hear from hilda’s lips why she had refused allan hope.
an uneasy consciousness of katherine crossed his mind once and again with a dull ache of self-reproach, all the more insistent from his realization that its cause was not so much the infidelity to katherine as that hilda would think him a sorry villain.
katherine seemed to be dancing and enjoying herself. she knew that his energy this evening was on hilda’s account; he had claimed the responsibility for hilda. katherine would not consider herself neglected, of that peter felt sure, relying, with perhaps a display of the dulness she had discovered in him, upon her confidence and common sense. outwardly, at least, he would never betray that confidence; there was some rather dislocated consolation in that.
hilda was a little breathless when he came to claim her for the second cluster of waltzes. it was near the end of the evening.
“i have been dancing steadily,” she announced, “and twice down to supper! did you try any of the narrow little sandwiches? so good!”
“and you still don’t grudge me my waltzes?”
“i like yours best!” she said, smiling at him as she laid her hand on his shoulder. they took a few turns around the room and then hilda owned that she was a little tired. they sat down again on the sofa.
“hilda!” said odd suddenly, “will you think me very rude if i ask you why you refused allan hope?”
hilda turned a startled glance upon him.
“no; perhaps not,” she answered, though the voice was rather frigid.
“you don’t think i have a right to ask, do you?”
“well, the answer is so evident.”
“is it?” hilda had looked away at the dancers; she turned her head now half unwillingly and glanced at him, smiling.
“i would not have refused him if i had loved him, would i? you know that. it doesn’t seem quite fair, quite kind, to talk of, does it?”
“not to me even? i have been interested in it for a long time. katherine told me, and mary.”
“i don’t know why they should have been so sure,” said hilda, with some hardness of tone. “i never encouraged him. i avoided him.” she looked at odd again. “but i am not angry with you; if any one has a right, you have.”
“thanks; thanks, dear. you understand, you know my interest, my anxiety. it seemed so—happy for both. and you care for no one else?”
“no one else.” hilda’s eyes rested on his with clear sincerity.
“don’t you ever intend to marry, hilda?” odd was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and looking at the floor. there was certainly a tension in his voice, and he felt that hilda was scanning him with some wonder.
“does a refusal to take one person imply that? i have made no vows.”
“i don’t see—“ odd paused; “i don’t see why you shouldn’t care for hope.”
“are you going to plead his cause?” she asked lightly.
“would it not be for your happiness?” odd sat upright now, putting on his eyeglasses and looking at her with a certain air of resolution.
“i don’t love him.” hilda returned the look sweetly and frankly.
“what do you know of love, you child? why not have given him a chance, put him on trial? nothing wins a woman like wooing.”
“how didactic we are becoming. i am afraid i should really get to loathe poor lord allan if i had given him leave to woo me.”
“i suppose you think him too unindividual, too much of a pattern with other healthy and hearty young men. don’t you know, foolish child, that a good man, a man who would love you as he would, make you the husband he would, is a rarity and very individual?”
odd found a perverse pleasure in his own paternally admonishing attitude. hilda’s lightly amused but touched look implied a confidence so charming that he found the attitude sublimely courageous.
“i suppose so,” she said, and she added, “i haven’t one word to say against lord allan, except—“ she paused meditatively.
“except what?” odd asked rather breathlessly.
“he doesn’t really need me.”
“doesn’t need you! why, the man is desperately in love with you!”
“he needs a wife, but he doesn’t need me.”
“you are subtle, hilda.”
“i don’t think i am that.”
“you are waiting, then, for some one who can satisfy you as to his need of you?”
“i shall only marry that person.”
hilda jumped up. “but i’m not waiting at all, you know. dansons maintenant! your task is nearly over!”
it was very late when odd gave hilda up to her last partner, and joined katherine in a small antechamber, where she was sitting among flowers, talking to an appreciative frenchman. this gentleman, with the ceremonious bow of his race, made away when miss archinard’s fiancé appeared, and odd dropped into the vacated seat with a horrible sinking of the heart. the dull self-reproach was now acute, he felt meanly guilty. katherine looked at him funnily—very good-humoredly.
“i didn’t know you had it in you to dance so well and so persistently, peter. you have done honor to hilda’s ball.”
“i hope i wasn’t too selfishly monopolizing.”
“oh, you had a right to a certain monopoly since, owing to you only, she came,” and katherine added, smiling still more good-humoredly, “i am not jealous, peter.”
he turned to look at her. the words, the playful tone in which they were uttered, struck him like a blow. his guilty consciousness of his own feeling gave them a supreme nobility. she was not jealous. what a cur he would be if ever he gave her apparent cause for jealousy. the cause was there; his task must be to keep it hidden.
“but suppose i am?” he said; “you haven’t given me a single dance.”
katherine’s smile was placid; she did not say that he had not asked for one. indeed they had rarely danced together.
“i think of going to england in a day or two, peter,” she observed. “the devreuxs have asked me to spend a month with them.”
peter sat very still.
“a sudden decision, kathy?”
“no, not so sudden. our tête-à-tête can’t be prolonged forever.”
“until our wedding day, you mean? well, the wedding day must be fixed before you go.”
“i yield. the first part of may.”
“three months! let it be april at least, kathy.”
“no, i am for may.”
“it’s an unlucky month.”
“oh, we can defy bad luck, can’t we?” katherine smiled.
“if you go away, i shall,” said odd, after a moment’s silence.
“why, i thought you would stay here and look after mamma—and hilda,” said katherine slowly, and with a wondering thought for this revealment of poor peter’s folly. peter then intended to heroically sacrifice his infidelity. that he should think she did not see it!
“i am not over this beastly cold yet. a trip through provence would set me right. i should come back through touraine just at the season of lilacs. i am afraid i should be useless here in paris. i see so little of your mother—and hilda. arrange that taylor shall go for her after her lessons.”
“i am afraid that mamma can’t spare taylor.”
peter moved impatiently.
“katherine, may i give you some money? she would take it from you. persuade her to give up that work. you could do it delicately.”
“as i have told you, you exaggerate my influence. she would suspect the donor. she would not take the money.”
“i could speak to your father; lend him a sum.”
katherine flushed.
“it would make him very angry with her if he knew. and the lessons are a fixed sum; only a steady income would be the equivalent.”
“oh dear!” sighed peter. he suddenly realized that of late he had talked of little else but hilda in his conversations with katherine.
“when do you go to london, dear?” he asked.
“the day after to-morrow.” katherine, above the waving of her fan, smiled slightly at his change of tone. “will you miss me, peter?”
“all the more for being cross with you. it is very wrong of you to play truant like this.”
“it will be good for both of us.” katherine’s voice was playful, and showed no trace of the bitterness she was feeling. “i might get tired of you, peter, if i allowed myself no interludes. absence is the best fuel to appreciation. i shall come back realizing more fully than ever your perfection.”
“what a sage little person it is! sarcastic as well! may i write to you very often?”
“as often as you feel like it; but don’t force feeling.”
“may i describe chateaux and churches? and will you read my descriptions if i do?”
“with pleasure—and profit. let me know, too, how the book gets on. can i do anything for you at the british museum?”
it struck katherine that the change in their relation which she now contemplated as very probably definite might well allow of a return to the first phase of their companionship. a letter from allan hope which she had received that morning, though satisfactory in many respects, was not quite so from an intellectual standpoint. an intellectual friendship with peter odd was a pleasant possession for any woman, and katherine perhaps, with an excusable malice, rather anticipated the time when peter might have regrets, and find in that friendship the solace of certain disappointments from which katherine had almost decided not to withhold him.
“i shall try to keep you profitably yoked, then, even in london, shall i?” said odd, in reply to an offer more generous than he could have divined. “discipline is good for a rebellious spirit like yours. don’t be frightened, kathy. go and look at the elgin marbles if you like. i shall set you no heavier task.”
“they are so profoundly melancholy in their cellared respectable abode, poor dears! i know they would have preferred dropping to pieces under a greek sky. a cruel kindness to preserve them in an insulting immortality. the frieze especially, stretched round the ugly wall like a butterfly under a glass case!” odd laughed with more light-heartedness than he had felt for some time. it rejoiced him to feel that he still found katherine charming. there must certainly be safety in that affectionate admiration.
“i won’t even ask you to harrow your susceptibility by a look at the insulted frieze, then; you must know it well, to enter with such sympathy into its feelings. only you must write, katherine. i shall be lonely down there. a daily letter would be none too many.”
“i can’t quite see why you are exiling yourself. of course, the weather here is nasty just now. i have noticed your cough all the evening. come and say good-bye to-morrow. i shall be very busy, so fix your hour.”
“our usual hour? in the morning?”
“you will not see hilda then.”
“hilda has had enough of me to-night, i am sure. you will kiss her au revoir for me.”
odd felt a certain triumph.
katherine’s departure could be taken as a merciful opportunity for makeshift flight. after a month or two of solitary wrestling and wandering, he might find that the dubiously directed forces of providence were willing to help one who helped himself.
his mind fastened persistently on the details of the suddenly entertained idea of escape from the madness he felt closing round him. the disclosure of his passion for hilda stared him in the face. and how face the truth? a man may fight a dishonoring weakness, but how fight the realization that a love founded on highest things, stirring highest emotions in him, had, for the first time, come into his life, and too late? a love as far removed from the wrecking passion of his youth as it was from the affectionate rationality of his feeling toward katherine; and yet, because of that tie, drifted into from a lazy indifference and kindness for which he cursed himself, capable of bringing him to a more fearful shipwreck.
hilda’s selflessness was rather awful to the man who loved her, and gave her a power of clear perception that made sinking in her eyes more to be dreaded than any hurt to himself.
and peter departed for the south without seeing her again.
