Page:Catherine Carmichael; Or Three Years Running.pdf/3

And so it was settled. Peter Carmichael was a just man, in his way, but coarse, and altogether without sentiment. He spoke of the arrangement that had been made as he might have done of the purchase of a lot of sheep, not, however, omitting to point out that in this bargain he was giving everything and getting almost nothing. As a wife, Catherine might, perhaps, be of some service about the house; but he did not think that he should have cared to take a wife really for the sake of the wife. But it would do. They could get themselves married as they went through Christchurch, and then settle down comfortably. The brothers had nothing to say against it, and to John it seemed to be a matter of indifference. So it was settled. "What did it signify to Catherine, as no one else cared for her?

Peter Carmichael was a hard-working man, who had the name of considerable wealth. But he was said to be hard of hand and hard of heart,—a stern, stubborn man, who was fond only of his money. There had been much said about him between John and Catherine before he had come to Hokitika,—when there had been no probability of his coming. "He is just," John had said, "but so ungenial that it seems to me impossible that a human being should stay with him." And yet this young man, of whose love she had dreamt, had not had a word to say when it was being arranged that she should be taken off to live all her future life with this companionship and no other! She would not condescend to ask even a question about her future home. "What did it matter? She must be taken somewhere, because she could not be got rid of and buried at once beneath the sod. Nobody wanted her. She was only a burden. She might as well be taken to Warriwa and die there as elsewhere,—and so she went.

They travelled for two days and two nights across the mountains to Christchurch, and there they were married, as it happened, on Christmas Day,—on Christmas Day, because they passed that day and no other in the town as they went on. There was a further journey, two other days and two other nights, down nearly to the southern boundary of the Canterbury Province; and thither they went on with no great change between them, having become merely man and wife during that day they had remained at Christehurch. As they passed one great river after another on their passage down Kate felt how well it would be that the waters should pass over her head. But the waters refused to relieve her of the burden of her life. So she went on and reached her new home at Warriwa.

Catherine Carmichael, as she must now be called, was a well-grown, handsome young woman, who, through all the hardships of her young life, still showed traces of the gentle blood from which she had sprung. And ideas had come to her from her mother of things better than those around her. To do something for others, and then something, if possible, for herself,—these had been the objects nearest to her. Of the amusements, of the lightness and pleasures of life, she had never known anything. To sit vacant for an hour dreaming over a book had never come to her; nor had it been for her to make the time run softly with some apology for women's work in her hands. The hard garments, fit for a miner's work, passed through her hands. The care of the children, the preparation of their food, the doing the best she could for the rough household,—these things had kept her busy from her early rising till she would go late to her bed. But she had loved her work because it had been done for her father and her mother, for her brothers and her sisters. And she had respected herself, never despising the work she did; no man had ever dared to say an uncivil word to Kate Baird among all those rough miners with whom her father associated. Something had come to her from her mother which, while her mother lived,—even while her father lived,—had made her feel herself to be mistress of herself. But all that independence had passed away from her,—all that consciousness of doing the best she could,—as soon as Peter Carmichael had crossed her path.

It was not till the hard, dry, middle-aged man had taken possession of her that she acknowledged to herself that she had really, loved John Carmichael. When Peter had come among them, he had seemed to dominate her as well as the others. He and he only had money. He and he only could cause aught to be done. And then it had seemed that for all the others there was a way of escape open, but none for her. No one wanted