She was not, at heart, an unsocial creature, and in her childhood had been rather a favorite with the girls who came in contact with her, but she always was unlike them; and this dissimilarity now constituted a distinct isolation for her, since the fact that she had herself no beaux, – to use the term in vogue in Marston society, – and took no interest in hearing of those of her girl friends, left the latter much at a loss for topics, and forced upon Kate herself the conviction that she had not the power of interesting them. Dr. Brett, the country doctor who was her mother's physician and chief friend when she came to her country home, used to try to adjust matters for Kate, and made many praiseworthy efforts to promote a spirit of sociability between her and the young people of Marston, each and every one of which was a flat failure. At last he had given up in despair and let the matter drop, for Kate, in this her eighteenth summer, was more difficult, as well as taller, straighter, and handsomer, than ever. So reflected Dr. Brett as he drove homeward from his first visit to the Severns, feeling a good deal cheered by the recurrence into his humdrum life of this attractive mother and daughter, who received him into their home with a cordiality and friendliness enjoyed by a few people only. Mrs. Severn was an invalid, and unequal to seeing much company; and Kate, though the very opposite of an invalid, had contrived, as I have shown, to cut herself off from society – in Marston, at least – rather effectually. She liked Dr. Brett, and seemed always glad to see him – a departure in his favor which he was not old enough to relish altogether. Still, the gods had provided him a pleasant spot of refreshment in the midst of a rather dull professional routine, and he gladly made the most of it. Kate, who was extremely fastidious, criticized him severely to her mother, and regretted very often that a man who had some capabilities should neglect his appearance as he did – allowing his face and hands to get so sunburned, his hair to grow so long, and his clothes to look so shabby and old-fashioned.
Perhaps the reason that she was so hard upon good Dr. Brett was accounted for by the fact that this man-repudiating young lady carried about in her mind a beautiful ideal of her own, of whose existence, even in this immaterial form, no being in the world besides herself had a suspicion. His appearance, in truth, was wholly and entirely ideal, but he was founded on fact, and that fact was a certain manuscript which five years ago she had fished up from an old box in the garret. This garret had been for generations the receptacle for all the old, disused belongings of the Severns; and it had been Kate's delight, from childhood up, to explore its old chests and trunks, and invent for herself vivid stories of the old-time ladies and gentlemen to whom had belonged these queer old gowns and uniforms – these scant petticoats and meagre waists, and these knee-breeches and lace-trimmed coats. There were spinning-wheels and guitars to suggest poses for the women, and cocked hats and swords for the men. As she grew older, these childish games lost part of their charm for her, and these mere suits and trappings of the creatures of her imagination gave her such a sense of lack that she turned to some old papers in one of the boxes, in the hope that she might get some light upon the spirits and souls that had animated them. In her own fair young body there had arisen certain insistent demands which there was nothing in the life she led to supply. The tortures of the Inquisition would not have drawn this confession from her; but so indeed it was, and I must have sketched the personality of this young lady very clumsily indeed if it has not appeared that, beneath this independent, self-sufficing surface, there was a heart full of romance and sentiment, a feeling all the stronger for being denied a vent.
It was an era in Kate Severn's life – that rainy day in late summertime, when she found in the garret the old roll of manuscript from which was formulated the ideal that afterward so wholly took possession of her. It was a budget of closely written sheets, on blue paper turned white at the edges with age. The ink used must have been of exceptionally good quality, for it was still dark and distinct. The writing was clear, and done with a very fine pen – but there were evidences of haste. This, however, was not to be wondered at, for the subject was an exciting one, and Kate pictured to herself, with enthusiasm, the exquisite young gentleman (whom she promptly invested with the blue-velvet, lace-ruffled coat, and the handsome hat and sword which were among the paraphernalia of the attic) bending his ardent, impassioned gaze over the sheets on which were written such beautiful, fervent, reverential love-words. It was not in the form of a letter, though it was a direct appeal, or, rather, a sort of aspiration, from the heart of a man for the love of a woman. There was not a name in it from beginning to end, and there was a sort of impersonal tone in it that made Kate believe that it was addressed to an imagined woman instead of a known one. This thought occurred to her even in that first breathless perusal, and all the subsequent ones (which were countless, for she was subject to certain moods in which this old manuscript was her only balm) confirmed it. In consequence of this conviction, she did a most un-Kate-like thing. It required only a slight effort of that powerful imagination of hers to put herself in the place of this loved and importuned lady; and she actually went so far as to compose and indite answer after answer to this fond appeal – impassioned outpourings of a heart which was full and had to be emptied. These she would lock away in her desk, along with the precious blue manuscript – and read and amplify from time to time.
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