University of Virginia Library

17. XVII.

It was a wild week to Catherine. She recalled
without ceasing what Beaudesfords had said of
Phèdre; and it appeared to her that she was only
a modern counterpart of that wretched being her
self, weakened with the dilution of civilized blood,
but as wanton, as wicked, as demon-driven. She
moved about the house, possibly more stonily cold
than ever, but glad at least that her mother and
sisters were too deeply occupied with their own
preparations for approaching gayeties to give
heed to the tragedy taking place beneath their
eyes.

And would Gaston go if she implored him?
It came to that at last. Very likely — provided
she went with him. What could she do but die,
hunted to the death by both these cruel men!

But had Gaston no gratitude, no love for Beaudesfords,
no noble side that would give her the
help which now she dared not ask from the other?

Was it to be believed that, if she begged of him
this one and only thing, — if she besought him
not to drag her into certain misery, but to leave
her, — he would refuse it? As she thought of it,
forgetting that the entreaty was confession, it
grew already real to her, — the words she would
say, his reply, their farewell, — or peradventure
no reply, nothing but absence, — peace then, and
by and by eternity. Her brain grew clear as
if filled with a great light, she fell into her first
unhaunted slumber for many a weary midnight,
and it was on the next day that she wrote, —
wrote in the whirl of that inner tumult in which
she had lived of late, which made it impossible
for her to question or weigh, to wonder if, instead
of love, it were not rather hatred, and pity
because of the hatred, that this man made her
feel when she desperately folded her paper, to
consider if she were not ruled by a mere fascination
of habit, to ask what it meant that she should
seek thus to preserve Beaudesfords' peace at the
cost of Gaston's. It is true that it occurred to
her that the woman who had the strength to make
such a request had also the strength to recover
herself without any request at all, but she put
the thought away: she chose to write; it was the
single sacrifice that she would make to Gaston —
to whom she had no right to sacrifice at all.

Only one person saw that note. It was not
long. But could it have been any thing else than
an outpouring of all that which had scorched and
seared her heart and soul? Imploring Gaston to
grant her prayer by all their mutual emotion, by
all their gratitude to Beaudesfords, did not the
prayer itself attest whatever the eagerest lover
longs to hear? Perhaps, — since this was all, the
first word and the last, she said, — as once in the
conservatory she had said or dreamed before, —
greeting and farewell, — perhaps since this closed
all the rest, and rolled the stone against the tomb,
she wrote what, an hour later, she would have
given her best hopes of the hereafter not to have
written at all. For whether the words were passionate
acknowledgment of what once was but
now existed no longer, or whether they were
slight and feeble phrases of request, — to her
proud soul, when the reaction came, the mere
pencilling of them seemed a shameful crime.
She did not direct her note, or seal it: it was
unnecessary when Gaston was to receive it from
herself. She never paused to think how dangerous
a step she had taken, nor that black and white

are inflexible witnesses, but went down to dinner
with the note hidden in her handkerchief, —
wearing a radiant face, persuaded she was safe.

Catherine had remembered that it was Beaudesfords
who always rose from table to hold the
door open while Mrs. Stanhope and her daughters
passed out, on occasions when the gentlemen
lingered over their wine, as lately they had frequently
done. And, sitting next Gaston, when
she rose she laid the note upon his hand as it
rested along his knee just beneath the cloth. It
seemed to her, as she performed it, so cowardly
and contemptible and reprehensible an action,
that she sickened. Her heart gave a deadly leap
as she left the note: she grew so pale that Gaston
himself had sprung to the door before Beaudesfords
had more than risen; and then Beaudesfords,
undisturbed and cool, resumed his seat. But as
he did so, the little note, that had fluttered to the
floor unheeded, caught his eye: he stooped and
raised it, uncertain to whom it belonged. He
glanced at Catherine; and with the glance, as if
a whole revelation had been suddenly made, he
took his wallet out and dropped the note therein,
and hid it again in his breast-pocket.

Catherine had seen it all. She hesitated an

instant at the door, — hesitated in that gracious
and slow-moulded way of hers: she turned to go
back and demand it, but at that moment two gentlemen
were conducted through the hall to Beaudesfords'
den, as his private business-room was
called; and before she could gather wits or words
Beaudesfords had excused himself to Gaston, and
had passed out through another door to join the
strangers. And Catherine felt that she had signed
her own death-warrant.