F. Marion Crawford

“ It’s money that makes the world go, Katharine, my dear. It’s love for one year, perhaps, but it’s money all the other sixty-nine out of the seventy. I’ve seen a deal of money earned and squandered, and stolen and wasted in my time, and there’s no denying it—money’s the main object. It keeps the world going, and when it gets stuck in one place, as it has in my hands, there’s an attempt—a natural attempt, I suppose—to distribute it again. And if it doesn’t get distributed, there’s a howl of pain from all the relations. It’s natural—it’s natural—but it doesn’t make dying easier. ”

“ Next to him was Bright, upright in his straight-backed chair, his heavy arms folded on his full chest, his round head thrown back, his clear blue eyes fixed on Katharine’s face.
As she looked up again, she had a strong impression of being surrounded by splendid wild animals. Wingfield was the tiger, colossally lithe, brown, black, and golden; Ralston the panther, less in strength, but lighter to spring, quicker to see, perhaps more cruel; Bright the lion, fair, massive, dominant, silent in his strength. Griggs was a wolf, grey, old, tough, destined to die hard some day without a cry. ”

“ A good wife she had been to Alexander Junior in every sense of the word, but of that early trusting love which hides more sins than the multitude of them which charity can cover, there was not left even the warmth where the spark had glowed. There was no ‘a priori’ judgment of one heart against all possible offence and sordid meanness in the other. Katharine’s blow had been heavy and direct, and had gone straight to its mark. Her mother loved her—in spite of her terrible envy of her. It would need the man’s solemn oath to outweigh the girl’s plain statement. ”

“ This was a new phase, too, and he was ready to reproach himself with having inadvertently been the cause of it.
“That’s just it,” answered Katharine. “You say, each in our own way—it seems to me that there’s only one way—and that’s the very most that can be. That’s what I mean, dear. There mustn’t be two ways. There’s only one way of caring.”
“Well—that’s our way, isn’t it?” asked Ralston, watching her tenderly.
“Not if it isn’t just the same for both of us. Because you’re a man and I’m a woman—that’s not a reason for there being any difference—I’m sure it isn’t, Jack!” ”

“ To those for whom death has lost all horror, there is scarcely anything but comedy, anywhere.
Katharine obeyed and went nearer, but not as near as Hester herself. Instinctively she held back her skirts, as though fearing even the contact of the carpet on which Crowdie lay. Her right hand she still carried in a scarf.
Hester’s fixed gaze met her again, and she was conscious that her own eyes were uncertain. There was an irresistible something which drew them to the dead man’s face. But when Hester spoke again the young girl looked at her. ”

“ On a fine spring night New York is rarely asleep before two o’clock. It dozes, as it were, turning, half awake, from time to time, and speaking drowsily in its deep voice, like a strong man very tired, but still conscious. It breathes, too, sometimes, as Crowdie was breathing, very heavily, especially in the nights that come after days of passion and struggling; and the breathing of a great city at night is not like any other sound on earth.
Hester was conscious that all was not well with the man she loved, though he had slept so long. ”

“ Still Katharine did not speak. A new sensation of fear crept upon her. She began to think that the dead man’s lips moved and that the quiet lids trembled, and she could not take her eyes from the face.
“You have no heart,” said the voice. “You are the worst woman alive to-day, anywhere in the whole world. You said you were my friend, and you have done this thing to me. You have done it. No one else has done it. It is all your fault. You pretended that you loved me like a sister, and you came often, and he saw you. You are more beautiful than I am, and he saw that you were. ”

“ Friendship is more composite than love, and becomes more and more so with advancing years, as the whole of life, which made such a hugely noble impression upon our young sight, is dissected, bit by bit, before the weary eyes that have seen it too long, and before the tribunal of a heart that has known bitterness. Friendship, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. The rending of it shows them as they are, and they are not beautiful.
Katharine had of late gone through events which had tended to destroy the whole-heartedness of her view of the world and its people. ”

“ I’m not jealous of her—I hate her. I despise her for trying to steal you from me, but since she’s got you—since you love her so that you’ll lie for her, and be a coward for her, and be angry for her—just as it suits you—oh no, indeed! I’m not jealous of Katharine. That’s quite another thing. Jealous! And you reproach me, and cast it in my teeth, because I say I hate her, when she’s taken everything I cared for in this earth, everything I had! Ah—I could kill her! But I’m not jealous. One must care for oneself to be jealous; one must be wounded, hurt, insulted, to be jealous! ”

“ And Crowdie—with his woman’s eyes, his soft, clear voice, his delicate white hands, his repellent pallor, and wound-like lips—Katharine thought of neither man nor beast. Even in the midst of her dream of wild animals, he was Crowdie still, with a mysterious, indescribable, poisonous something in all his being which made it a suffering for her to touch his hand. To this something, whatever it might be, she preferred her father’s cruel avarice, her mother’s envy, heartless as it had been while it lasted. To it she would have preferred a drunkard’s trembling hand and lip. ”

“ There are men who love with all their hearts and who are not loved in return, nor have any hope of such love, whose greatest happiness is to see the vainly worshipped object of their misplaced affections under just such circumstances. Bright was delighted that Katharine should be his guest and his mother’s—she was his guest first, in his thoughts, and it gave him the keenest pleasure to see her drinking his and his mother’s tea out of his and his mother’s old Dresden teacups, just as though it were her own, and thinking it just as good. ”

“ Bright had almost resented his sister’s ardent devotion to a man who seemed to him so unmanly. He always thought that Crowdie, with his soft, pale face and vividly red lips, was like a poisonous tropical flower that would ultimately harm Hester in some unimaginable way.
“No—I’m not ashamed of it,” said the painter, in answer to his mother-in-law’s remark. “But that isn’t the question. What I mean is, that we all love, or should love, in different ways—all five of us. Look at us—how different we are! There’s Griggs, now. ”

“ Of course, it’s papa who’s really done it all, but you needn’t have let him twist you round his little finger like a wisp of straw.”
“Oh, Katharine! Anything more unjust!”
“I’m not unjust, mother. But I’m too old to think everything you do is perfect, merely because it’s you. When I see a man like Archie Wingfield sitting there and straining his hands to keep himself quiet, and choking with the sound of his own words, I know he’s suffering—and when I know that he’s suffering uselessly, and that it’s all your fault and papa’s, I judge you—that’s all. ”

“ So long as Hester had made no serious pretence of anything more than she felt, confining herself more or less to generalities and vaguely saying that she desired no break, Katharine had remained calm, but something in the last speech seemed to ring outrageously false, and the blood slowly rose to her throat and ebbed again without reaching her cheeks.
“Don’t pretend!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to get at the truth to-day, if we’re ever to get at it at all.”
Hester raised her beautiful eyebrows, as delicately and finely marked as though they had been drawn with pen and ink. ”

“ Ralston glanced at the face he loved and smiled happily.
“There’s a good deal besides that,” he said. “There are a great many things that tie us together. You’ve made a man of me. That’s one thing. But for you, I don’t know where I should have been now—in a bad way, I fancy.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” protested Katharine. “A man who can do the things you’ve done doesn’t come to grief.”
“It isn’t anything I’ve done,” Ralston answered. “It’s what you’ve made me feel. If I’ve done anything at all, it’s been for your sake. ”

“ Ralston was eminently a woman of the world in the best sense of an expression which many think can mean no good. She had never been beautiful and had never been vain, but she had much which attracts as beauty does, and holds as no beauty can. Of the Lauderdales now living, she was undeniably the most gifted. Katharine might have rivalled her, had she developed under more favourable circumstances. But with the education she had received, good as it had been of its kind, it was not probable that the young girl would grow up into such a woman. ”

“ It had seemed quite natural to her to think of going instantly to old Robert Lauderdale’s bedside, if there were any possibility of his dying. She knew, also, far better than Katharine had known, what an immense sum was to be divided at his death, and considering the life she had led under her husband’s economic rule, she might be pardoned if, even being strongly attached to the old gentleman, she was a little agitated at the thought of the changes imminent in her own existence. There is a point at which humanity must be forgiven for being human. ”

“ Katharine laughed, but her face expressed genuine surprise. “Not that I should mind,” she added. “Dear old man! I’m so fond of him!”
“Well—he returns your fondness with interest. He makes no secret of it to anybody, because he’s old, or says he is,—but he’s old like an old wolf. I like him, too. He goes about saying that you’re his ideal of beauty and cleverness and soul—and good taste. Oh, Griggs!” He laughed again. “He’s quite off his head about you! He’ll put you into one of his books if you’re not careful. I should like to see your father’s expression if he did.”
“Don’t be a goose, Jack!” ”

“ Lauderdale, innocently. “I never cared for anything like that.”
“I have,” said Katharine. “I do. It’s just like my caring for Jack. You might as well try to face an express train as to stand in the way of it. I know just how papa feels—now. Only with him it’s money. He’ll upset the whole world to have it, as I’d turn the universe inside out rather than lose Jack. I suppose that’s the meaning of the word passion—I’m beginning to understand it.”
“It sounds much more like the meaning of sin,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale. “I don’t mean in your case, dear. Love’s quite another thing. ”

“ Not for long, of course.”
“Not for one minute,” said Katharine, in a tone of absolute certainty. “When have we quarrelled, Jack? Except last winter, over that wretched misunderstanding—and that was all my fault. You don’t think I’m angry about what you said of papa, do you? I’m not, and I’m sorry if you thought I was. But how could two people love each other as we do, and quarrel? You didn’t mean what you said, dear, or you don’t understand by quarrelling what I understand by it. Perhaps that’s it. I’ve grown up in an atmosphere of perpetual fighting, and I hate it. You’ve not. ”

“ Paul Griggs was not to be despised as a judge of men, for he had seen and known many who were worth knowing, and Paul Griggs liked Crowdie and was intimate with him. It was true that no other man of Katharine’s acquaintance liked him, but Griggs’ opinion might outweigh that of many just men. But when she thought of Crowdie’s appearance, she marvelled how any woman could love him. There was something about it which thrilled her painfully, like a strong, bad taste—yet not so as to hinder her from feeling sympathy for Hester, in spite of all the latter had said during the past half hour. ”

“ Lauderdale was constantly between two conflicting emotions, which almost amounted to passions,—her real affection for Katharine, and her detestable envy of the girl’s freshness and youth. She was a good woman, and she despised herself more than any one else could possibly have despised her, for wishing that she might not be daily compared with her, handicapped, as she was, with nearly twenty years more to carry. ”

“ There is haste in some things, still, in New York, but not the haste that we of the generation in middle age remember when we were young men. Mr. Allen, however, had never been hasty; and he found himself fashionable in his old age, as he had been in his youth, long before the civil war.
When his glasses were fairly pinching the lower part of his thin grey nose, he thrust one bony hand into his breast-pocket, leaning forward as he did so, and quietly scanning the faces of his audience, one after the other. He was so very slow that John and Katharine looked at one another and smiled. ”