Part 20 (1/2)
”Well,” said Kate-she hesitated a moment and then looked straight at the questioner-”she as good as said it was none of my business, and she'd do what she thought was right whatever came of it.”
”Ah!” said Aunt Katharine, with an accent of relief. ”And I presume you didn't tell her that you were coming here this morning. I see now why you came so early.” She looked at her niece with a faint sarcastic smile, then said coldly, ”I am very fond of your sister.”
The words sounded somehow like a threat. The blood mounted in Kate's face, and she clinched her hands on the sides of her chair. ”I know it,”
she said, ”and so is every one else fond of her. Grandfather likes her just as much as you do. Perhaps it's new for you to care for a girl as you care for her, but it's no new thing for Esther. It's been the way ever since she was little.”
The bearing of the fact on Kate's ground of quarrel with her aunt was perhaps not clear, but some fine wrinkles gathered in Miss Saxon's forehead.
”And does Esther like everybody?” she asked, with a returning sharpness.
”She keeps it to herself if she doesn't,” said Kate. ”She's kind to everybody-most everybody,” she added, with a sudden remembrance of the one person to whom Esther had not of late seemed always kind. ”And that's how she gets into trouble, making everybody like her, with her soft pleasant ways and saying nice things. Oh, I've had to stand up for her so many times to keep her from being imposed on! I'm standing up for her now,” she went on pa.s.sionately. ”It's your _ideas_ you care about, and you want her to take up with them, whether they'll make her happy or not. But I care for _her_, and I want to make you stop.”
The old woman's face had grown as tense as a drawn bow. ”So you think my ideas are getting hold of her, do you?” she asked.
”_She_ thinks they are,” cried Kate, ”but I don't believe it. I believe it's just because she thinks so much of you. But if she _should_ come to feel as you do about all those things, what good would it do? She couldn't fight for them. Do you think there's any fight in Esther Northmore?” She threw out her hand with an impatient gesture. ”Oh, they say you're so clever! But you're not clever at all if you think _that_.
She'd bear things till they broke her heart before she'd fight.”
Miss Saxon's lips were drawn tight, and her eyes narrowed to a bright dark line, as if these side-lights that Kate had been throwing on Esther's character had blinded her a little. She did not speak for a moment, and the girl went on hotly, even fiercely.
”You talk about wanting women to be so free and independent, but you want to bind Esther to those ideas of yours and make her carry them out.
I'll tell you what would be the end of it if she should come into your plan. She'd stand by what she promised, but 'twould kill her. She's made for loving, and for caring about the things we've always cared about, and she wouldn't be happy any other way. She isn't that kind.”
Aunt Katharine's lips parted now. They seemed to be as dry as Kate's had been a little while ago. She leaned forward on her cane and asked a question slowly. ”You pretend to know so much about your sister, tell me, do you think there's anybody she cares for now?”
Kate dropped her head for a moment, but it was no time for evasions. The excitement and strain of the situation were too much for her at last.
”No, I don't,” she said, with the tears springing into her eyes. ”But there's somebody that cares a sight for her; and if she should ever come to care for him she'd be a thousand times happier than she'd ever be with anything _you_ could do for her. Oh, if you should make her promise-if you should leave your money to her-I should hate you as long as I live, and she would hate you, too, after a while.”
Miss Katharine Saxon rose from her seat. She had not been as straight in years, but she trembled from head to foot as she stood there facing the girl.
”Katharine Northmore,-for you're my namesake, if you do hate me,-” she said slowly, ”you've said enough. You took upon yourself to do a very impertinent thing when you came down here to give instructions to me. I shall walk by the light I've got, and do my duty as I see it, by myself and your sister too. Now go home. And you needn't be afraid I shall tell Esther you were here. I shan't shame her nor myself by ever speaking of it.”
But when she was left alone she sank back in her chair, and there was almost a sob in her voice as she said, ”If it were only _that_ girl who saw things as I see them!”
CHAPTER XIII
INTO THE WEST AGAIN
The good cry which Kate had been longing for came before she got back to her grandfather's that morning. She took it with a girlish abandon, sitting on the meadow bridge. Then she rose up, bathed her face in the brook and went on her way, half ashamed of what she had done, half wondering that she had dared to do it, and wholly glad that it was over.
Tom was waiting for her at the bars below the barn. It helped the appearance of things that she should go in with him to breakfast, and, though he would have scorned to own it, Tom had a healthy curiosity as to the outcome of this interview with Aunt Katharine.
Kate's report of it was meagre; but the impression was left on his mind that she had gotten rather the worst of it, especially as she made no concealment of the fact that she had been summarily dismissed at the end. She owned frankly that she had been crying, and then showed plainly that the spirit of controversy was not dead in her yet by the reckless manner in which she threw in her ”Westernisms” and defended them during the rest of their talk. On the whole, Tom felt relieved as to her state of mind, and they went into the house quarrelling in the most natural manner; she having remarked that Aunt Katharine's fierce manner didn't ”faze” her after she got started, and he protesting that there was no such word in the dictionary. He maintained his point as far as the old Webster in the house was concerned, but she at least proved that her word came of good respectable stock, and stood firm on the proposition that it _ought_ to be there if it wasn't.
It was the last time for many a day that Kate spoke to any one of that morning's adventure. Not a suspicion of it dawned on Esther. The talk between the sisters the night before had been too nearly a quarrel for either of them to wish to reopen the subject which had so disturbed them, and it was out of consideration for Kate's uneasiness over the intimacy with Aunt Katharine that Esther went to her house less often than usual during the next few days. But indeed it was not easy during the week that was left of Kate's stay at her grandfather's for either of the girls to find time for anything except the pleasurings which always crowd the last days of a visit. Everything which had been omitted before must be done now, and there were all the little gifts to be prepared for the family at home, tokens of special meaning for each one, and for Mrs.
Northmore most of all.
She had asked for a piece of flag-root from the old spot in the meadow, and enough was dug to satisfy her appet.i.te for years, Aunt Elsie preserving some of it in sugar, just as the grandmother used to in the old days, when children carried bits of it to church in their pockets to keep them awake during sermon time. She had mentioned an apple from the crooked tree in the lane, whose seeds always shook in their core like a rattlebox by the first of September, and every apple which ripened on the old farm in the summer had a place in Kate's trunk. There were odors, too, which she loved; odors of pine, and sweet fern, and life everlasting, to be gathered and sewed into silken bags and pillows; and there was a little bunch-Aunt Elsie tucked it in-of dried hardhack and catnip and spearmint.
”I don't suppose she ever steeped those things for her own babies, being a doctor's wife,” she said; ”but she knew the taste of them when she was a baby herself, and I guess it'll bring back the old garret to her, and the bunches that hung from the rafters when she and I used to play there on rainy days.”