Christabel Coleridge - Kingsworth - or, The Aim of a Life

Mrs Kingsworth was a woman of very strong principles and perhaps not very tender feelings. She was clever, high-spirited, and very handsome, when as Mary Lacy she had married George Kingsworth, and had he been worthy of her, might have softened into an excellent woman. But when she discovered his falsity, neither her love nor his terrible death threw any softening veil over her disappointment. She shuddered at her own disgrace yet more than at his, and every association connected with him was hateful to her. She was really perfectly unworldly, and she did not care at all for the wealth and position that had tempted him.

She took Katharine away, determined to rear her up in high, stern principles, and never to allow her to become accustomed to the life of an heiress. Let her be happy and know that she could be happy without Kingsworth, and on the day she was twenty-one let her give it back to her cousin Emberance.

This was the clue to Mrs Kingsworth’s conduct, this was the hope, nay, the resolve of her life, and therefore she brought up Katharine to be independent of luxuries and of society, therefore she secluded her from all intercourse with those of her own rank, fearing lest any marriage engagement might tie her hands, or any preference warp her judgment, before the day when she could legally free herself from the weight of her wealth.

Mrs Kingsworth, like many another parent, did not calculate on the unknown factors in the problem, – the will and the character of her own child.

Katharine grew up a merry, healthy child, sufficiently intelligent, but without the love of books, which her mother had hoped to see, with all natural instincts strong in her, and with an ardent desire to have other little girls to play with.

“Mamma, tell me how you used to go and drink tea with your cousins,” – “Mamma, do ask a little girl to come and stay here,” – “Mamma, I should like to go to Mrs Leicester’s school,” were among her earliest aspirations.

Her mother was clever and well-informed enough to educate her well, but solitary study was uninteresting to so sociable a being, and the girl was devoid of the daydreaming faculty, which while it would have given form to her desires, might have whiled away many a dreary hour. As it was, the poor child jarred her mother with every taste and turn that she developed.

High-mindedness was to be cultivated by a careful and sparing selection of poetry and romance; but this provoking Katharine at twelve years old borrowed the kitchen-maids Sunday-school prizes, and preferred them to the “Lady of the Lake.”

She thought her mother’s heroes tiresome, and with that curious instinctive resistance of strong-willed childhood to any set purpose of influence, could not be induced to care for the glorious tales of self-sacrifice and noble poverty which still made her mother’s blood thrill and her eyes brighten.

She was very carefully instructed in religious matters, and duly every Sunday attended service at Applehurst, a tiny country church with a very old-fashioned childless vicar, and one very quiet Sunday service. When Katharine was sixteen, the one event of her life took place, and her mother took her for three days to Fanchester, the cathedral city, where Canon Kingsworth lived, to be confirmed.

The vicar had nominally prepared her, her mother had endeavoured earnestly to influence her. Surely the first sight of the glorious cathedral, the solemn service, would awaken in the girl that tone of mind in which she now seemed so deficient.

But to Katharine the railway journey, the town, the people were a dream, or rather, a reality of delight.

“We will take Katharine over the cathedral to-day, that it may not be quite strange to her to-morrow,” said the Canon’s wife on the first morning.

“Oh please – please – but I shall see that to-morrow. Oh, Aunt Kingsworth, let me go and buy something in a shop. Let me see the streets first!”

And though she was obedient and decorous, it was evident that she could not think or feel in such a world of enchanting novelty. She could only look and enjoy.

After the Confirmation was over, her uncle delayed a few minutes and presently came in, bringing with him across the narrow close one of the white-veiled girls, who had just been confirmed.

“Mary,” he said briefly, “this is Emberance Kingsworth. Katharine, this is your cousin.”

“Oh, have I got a cousin?” cried Katharine vehemently, as she rushed at Emberance and reached up to kiss her. For Emberance was a tall, slim creature, with large soft eyes and a blushing face.

She looked with a certain shrinking at the new relations, though she returned the kiss.

“Miss Kingsworth is pleased to find a new cousin,” said a lady who was present.

“Miss Katharine ,” said her mother, turning round on the speaker, “my niece is Miss Kingsworth if you please.”

The interview was not allowed to last long, and Emberance was sent back to join her schoolfellows, but Katharine never forgot it, – nor indeed her visit to Fanchester.

She knew what she wanted now, and chafed when she did not get it. And month by month and year by year she and her mother grew further apart, and only Katharine’s childish, undeveloped nature kept her feelings within bounds.

That hot autumn day was destined, little as she knew it, to be a crisis in Katharine Kingsworth’s life. She was very far from expecting that anything should happen to her, as she sauntered along by the garden wall, eating her peaches, and wondering what to do when she had finished them. She was accustomed to have her time pretty well filled up with her studies; but the absence of object and of emulation had made these of late very wearisome to her, and her mother had half unconsciously relaxed the rein, having indeed nearly come to the end of her own powers. Carefully as she learned and taught, the want of contact with other minds deprived her own of its freshness. Katharine at nineteen was sick of reading history and doing sums, and of talking French one day and German the next. She did not like drawing, and her musical taste was of a commonplace kind, and could not flourish “itself its own delight.”

She loved her mother; but she was afraid of her, and conscious of failing to satisfy her, and the impatient desire of Change hid from her all the pleasure of association and long habit.

“I wonder if mamma means this to go on for ever,” she thought. “Am I to live here till I am as old as she is? Surely other girls have more variety. I don’t know much about it – but I begin to think our lives are odd as well as disagreeable. Surely we could go again and see Uncle Kingsworth – or go and stay somewhere else? We could – why don’t we? Are we rich, I wonder?”

The childishness of a mind which had never had anything to measure itself with, and the unvarying ascendancy of a most resolute will, had so acted that Katharine had never distinctly put these questions to herself before. Often as she had murmured, she had never resisted, nor realised the possibility of resistance. Often as she had declared that her life was hateful to her, she had no more expected that it would change than that the sun would come out because she complained when it was raining.

Katharine was impetuous; but if she had any of her mother’s strength of purpose it was as yet undeveloped. Yet all sorts of impulses and desires were awakening within her, and gradually driving her to a settled purpose – namely, to question her mother as to her reasons for living at Applehurst, and her intentions for the future.

It would be difficult to realise how tremendous a step this seemed to Katharine. To have an opinion of her own and grumble about it, was one thing – to act upon it, quite another – still she got up from her knees by the lavender bush, which she had been cutting while indulging in these meditations, and walked slowly into the house. Katharine never remembered coming into her mother’s presence in her life without a certain sense of awe and of expectation of criticism, and now as she opened the drawing-room door, her heart beat fast, and her colour, always bright enough, burnt all over her forehead and neck.