"If only you could write! ... I'm hungering for a line so. But
not--not a scratch--if it's bad for you, my own!
"K."
There were many letters, and Yaill read them all, haphazard at first,
and then in regular sequence, down to the very last....
"KERR'S ARBOUR, TWEEDBURGH, N.B.
"_January 20th._
"Look here, Edward, can't you write, my darling? Your nurse sends me
news of your wonderful improvement, for which I thank God, with all
my heart and soul! But if you are so much better that you can read
without pain and endure being read to, why not a scrap of a line to
me? ... It seems to me that I have some right, forgive me for
reminding you, to have news of you from your own hand, my dearest
one.... Oh! to have to beg the bread of one's heart.... I was proud
once--men used to say so. Now I am only your very lonely, horribly
unhappy KATHARINE."
* * * * * * *
And yet until a door had clicked open in Yaill's brain, that
handwriting had meant nothing. He asked his Maker in the depths of
his wrung soul, why that Open Sesame of the bit of white heather--why
the leather baggage-trunk with its guarded secret,--why the letter
with its cry of wounded passion had come to the man who loved
Katharine, too late?
"_It seems to me that I have some right...._" Proud, delicate-minded
Katharine. What suffering must have wrung that sad reproach from
her, that cry of a wounded soul....
"_Oh! to have to beg the bread of one's heart.... I way proud
once--men used to say so. Now I am only your very lonely, horribly
unhappy Katharine._"
Lonely.... Unhappy, his joy, his treasure, his worshipped one....
Well, Yaill would go to her now, though Hell's gulf yawned between.
He had had this in his mind when he passed up the cliff-road,
breathing the unheeded spices of the sea and the pine-trees, with the
warm morning sunshine full upon his back....
Now, sitting high upon the cliffs with the booming of the Channel
waters in his ears and the mourning cry of the hovering gulls about
him, he faced a dim crimson sun, going to bed in blankets of grey
fog. The letters lay scattered on the grass between his feet. He
gathered them up and buttoned them away safely in his pockets. Then
he got up and went back to his wife at the Tor View Hotel.
He would say he had been called away on business. She must stay
there--the woman who bore his name, until he had seen his lawyers....
He would provide for her generously. Things would be arranged, he
told himself as he hurried down the cliff-road in the clammy,
blanketing fog....
The excuses were not received as easily as he had anticipated. He
had left a sulky, tearful girl alone the whole day. And he came back
to a resentful, jealous woman....
He shuddered, remembering how he had bowed his head to meet the storm
of reproach.
Well, well! Forget,--now one was here under the dear roof of Kerr's
Arbour, by the warm side of the beloved--the perfect, the ideal mate.
He looked at her as she sat there by his side with her proud head
bent, and the dark fringes of her dreaming eyes lowered upon the soft
blush that graced her cheeks,--Love's exquisite carnation flag,
always displayed for Edward.
She was happy, poor, faithful soul, with just a little tang of guilt
spoiling the happiness. Mark had been killed at Mons, and Julian had
been gulped down by the insatiable War-monster; and Death had taken
their father and hers, but her man of men was left. How could she
help, by his dear side, being a little happy? She turned and gave
him look for look, and his strength began to ebb away.
Yaill's determination to play the game fairly was weakening. The
barriers were breaking down. His tense muscles twitched, his blood
ran liquid fire. In another moment he would have snatched her to
him, stifled her surprise with furious kisses--assailed her virgin
ears with frantic pleadings--but that a bell clanged at the hallward
end of the corridor. Whishaw's asthmatic cough sounded outside,--he
knocked and came in.
The old man's lean figure, with its stooping, rook-like gait, was
invested with new, dignified solemnity, his well-worn blacks, even
the wide-flanged Gladstone collar that framed his frosty-apple chops,
and the rusty-black silk neckerchief knotted under his chin, the
short end sticking out at a perennial right-angle, while the other
flowed over his starchless shirt-front, to lose itself in the hollows
of his baggy waistcoat,--were as vestments of one readied for some
sacerdotal rite. He carried a three-branched silver candlestick of
antique form, with lighted wax-tapers, and a Missal bound in faded
crimson leather was tucked under his other arm....
"Ye'll be for the nicht-prayers noo, Miss Forbis? The Father has
gane ben the chap_ell_, sae I juist bode to ring the bell."
"We are coming now, Whishaw."
Katharine rose, took a folded black lace veil from the corner of the
mantelshelf, shook out its scrolled and patterned length--with
firelight flashing through the dark transparency, draped it with one
swift upward movement, over her noble head--and held out a hand to
Yaill. He cursed the intruder mentally as he got up and the warm
fingers met his own--because those wild words surging to his lips had
been so baulked of utterance. But he took the Missal Whishaw offered
him, and led his love out and down the long corridor--following the
lean, black figure with its upheld light over the flagged pavement,
whose uneven stones could be felt through thickness of matting and
worn Turkey carpeting.
Whishaw held open the Chapel door, Katharine passed in and Yaill
followed mechanically; conscious as might be a man in a dream, of the
mingled perfume of incense and flowers, of the hollow square of
benches in the little nave, framing the long coffin on its
black-draped trestles, with the tall brown wax tapers in their
man-high wooden candlesticks burning at the head, and the sides, and
the feet....
Still as in a dream he bent his knee as Katharine sank down before
the Presence in the Tabernacle, and rose up from her genuflection to
take his hand again. He felt her lead him up the narrow aisle ...
heard her say to that strange, familiar face, young-old, wax-white,
framed in the shining oaken wood against the background of the narrow
pillow:
"Dear Father, Edward has come."
And he knew as he looked on the still face of the old man, guardian
even in Death of his House's honour--that those traitorous words that
had been upon his tongue would never be spoken now.