Various - Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

She had never told anyone about the finding of this manuscript, though she had questioned her mother frequently and closely about the various contents of the attic boxes, only to hear repeated the statement that they were all belongings of the Severns, and had been in the house long before her occupancy. So this precious manuscript, it must appear, was written by some by-gone relative of her father, who, it pleased her to believe, had died with all these beautiful aspirations unfulfilled. That was a thought that smiled upon far more than the picture of her ideal hero comfortably settled as a commonplace husband and father, with degenerate modern descendants. So Kate, who had no lovers in reality, made the most of this impalpable essence of one. And really he suited her much better. She could endow him with all the attributes that she admired, and even alter these at will, as her state of mind changed or her tastes developed, and a real lover could never have kept pace with her so well. Then, too, she could imagine him as beautiful and elegant as she desired – and she loved beauty and elegance in a man so much that she had never seen one yet who came up to her standard. She invested him with the most gorgeous changes of apparel – the blue velvet coat in the old trunk being one of his commonest costumes. It is true that it did not occur to her that, to fit the wishes of the manuscript to the time of the knee-breeches and lace ruffles, etc., suggested the propriety of his expressing himself in old English, while that of the blue manuscript was quite modern; but an anachronism or two of this sort was a trifling matter in so broad a scheme as hers. One effect of the finding of the paper was to make Miss Kate far more than ever scrupulous in her person, and gentle and courteous in her ways, for, although she had no superstitious idea that he really saw her out of the spirit-world, still it was her pride and pleasure to be what she knew he would have her to be. So she dressed herself in very charming gowns, with a slight expression of old-timeness about them that was not unnatural, and wore her severe, scant coifs and little folded kerchief with a prim grace that was a matter of contemporaneous benefit. Her mother and Dr. Brett got the most of it, for out-of-doors her dress was necessarily conventional, and out-of-doors, also, she encountered so many antagonistic elements that she was often made to feel that her bearing and state of mind were not such as her loyal knight would have approved. That he was a person of the gentlest heart, the kindest nature, the most loving spirit, no one who read those heartfelt words of his could doubt. Very often he would interrupt his rhapsodies to his lady-love to prostrate himself before himself, at the thought of his unworthiness to ask the love of so divine and perfect a being as her whom he addressed. How great, then, was the necessity laid upon her who had appropriated these addresses to be circumspect in thought and act!

So Kate grew every day more sweet and winning, until Dr. Brett began to wonder how he could ever have thought her hard and conceited – as he confessed to himself, with abasement, that he had. She felt that her knight and lover would have wished her to be kind to this poor, lonely old doctor, who was so good to the sick and humble about him, and led such a cheerless, companionless, bachelor existence; and she used to make his cup of tea in the evenings when he would drop in to see her mother at the close of a hard day's work, and minister to his comfort in a manner that was certainly new to her. Before the finding of that manuscript, it was little enough that she had cared about his comfort; but now it seemed of real importance to her. The more his country-made clothes, and sun-burned hands, and awkward, heavy shoes grated on her, the more it came home to her how she would be pleasing some one who wore velvet coats, with rich lace ruffles that bordered tapering white hands, and with shapely feet encased in fine silk stockings and fine diamond-buckled slippers – if he could see her! Hers was quite a happy love affair, and she had no occasion to mourn her lover dead, as she had not known him living – so, as yet, he had brought only pleasure into her life.

It was at the age of sixteen that Kate had found the blue manuscript, and so her affaire was a matter of two years' date when she returned to Marston on the occasion of her eighteenth summer. The blue-coated knight had held his own with inviolate security during those two years, and Kate was as indifferent as ever to the approaches of the youth and valor of Marston. So she and her mother settled quickly down into the routine of the old dull life. The usual visitors called, but they, too, were dull, and therefore undisturbing, and life flowed monotonously on. It was only a little less quiet existence than the one she led in winter in the city, for she never went to parties, and not often to the theatre unless there happened to be some unusual musical attraction; and her friends and relatives, of whom there were quite a number, gave her up as an incorrigibly queer girl, whom no one need try and do anything for. It is true she had her music and painting lessons there, which were some variety and diversion, but she practised both here in the country; and the life, on the whole, pleased her better. Her eccentricity, as it was called, was commented on by fewer people, and she had more time for those delicious reveries over the old blue manuscript. She loved, on rainy days, when it was not too warm up there, to steal off to the garret and look at the blue coat, and the sword, and hat, etc., and feel herself a little nearer, in that way, to her knight. It seemed a very lonely time indeed, when she looked back to the years and days before the finding of the manuscript. It had introduced an element into her life almost as strong as reality. And yet there were times – and they came oftener, now that womanhood was ripening – when a great emptiness and longing got hold of her, and the blue manuscript, which had once been so sufficient, would not satisfy her. She hugged it closer to her heart than ever, though, and all it represented to her. She often told herself it suited her a great deal better than marriage, which she had always looked upon as a grinding and grovelling existence for a woman, and expressed and felt a fine superiority to. It was quite too commonplace and humdrum an affair for her, and she told herself, with emphasis and distinctness, that she was quite content with an ideal love. And yet, to mock her, came the thought of the pictured domestic life which the blue manuscript had so tenderly described – with such longings for the fireside, the home circle, the family love that she held in scorn. She got the old blue paper and read it over, and those words of winning tenderness brought the tears to her eyes. She found herself half wishing, for his sake, while a numb pain seized her heart for herself, that he had lived to realize these sweet dreams of home and domestic love. If that was so, her ideal was gone, and how could she do without it, seeing she had nothing else? The tears became too thick, the pain in her throat was unsupportable, she felt the great sobs rising, and, springing up, she rushed down the stairs, flew to her room, bathed her face and adjusted her toilet, and then went down to make tea for her mother and Dr. Brett, after which she played away the spirit of sadness and unrest with all the gay and brilliant music she knew. By bed-time she was her own calm self, and the next day she regarded her strange mood with wonder, but she could not forget that it had been, and she was horribly afraid of its recurrence.

One morning she was driving herself alone in her pretty cart along a shady road that ran outside the town, when she recognized Dr. Brett's buggy and horse fastened to a tree near a small shady house. This was nothing to surprise her, for he was always working away on poor and helpless people who couldn't pay him, and she would have passed on without giving the matter a second thought, but that, just as she got to the dilapidated little gate, a woman rushed out of the house, with a girl of about fourteen after her, both of them screaming and throwing their hands about in a way that caused Kate's horse to take fright and gave her all she could do to control him for the next few minutes. He ran for a little way straight down the road, but she soon got him in hand and turned back to inquire into the cause of the trouble. The two females were still whooping and gesticulating in the yard, and the scene had been furthermore enlivened by the addition of three or four dirty and half-clothed children, who were also crying. Just as Kate came up, Dr. Brett appeared in the doorway, with his coat off and a very angry expression on his face. He caught hold of the woman and gave her an energetic shake, telling her to hold her tongue and control her children; and just at this point he looked up and caught sight of Kate, gazing down upon the scene from the top of her pretty cart, whose horse was now as quiet as a lamb.