He went to Katharine, before three o'clock, in the little oak
parlour, a panelled, chintz-hung, feminine nest that her dead mother
had loved--looking over the South garden, across the now frozen
expanse of a curlew-haunted lake.
She rose up out of her low chair by the hearthside at the welcome
sight of Edward, and at her dear look his fetters seemed to fall from
him and for one blessed minute he forgot--in the bliss of their
embrace....
Attar of roses is composed of two essential oils, both scentless.
When these meet and mingle, a divine perfume is born. So from the
meeting of two pure and noble souls an ideal passion is engendered.
Love that is founded on the rock of Reality,--yet capped with the
cloud-domes of Imagination, cloaked with the glamour--exhaling the
sweetness of Poetry and Romance.
It may be that these two had loved each other too purely for their
earthly welfare. But as they settled into talk, fond, intimate,
personal--tinged with Katharine's sacred sorrow, and yet illuminated
with their joy--it seemed to Yaill that he had never yet tasted such
happiness, as in this long-delayed, long-desired exchange of touch
and thought and feeling--this perfect comradeship between woman and
man.
Three o'clock sounded from the clock upon the mantelshelf, a Tudor
toy in enamel openwork, whose tiny chime had rung for many a lover's
meeting--and hastened many a lover's parting--but never heralded one
more tragic than was coming now. He raised his head from its sweet
rest on her beloved shoulder, and slowly loosed the yearning arms
that had girdled her supple waist. Now,--now let the revelation
come--the sooner the better. But how to bring it about? ...
Unwitting Katharine assisted here, by telling him how that morning
Dawtie, the General's old pointer-bitch, had been found dead and
already stiffened at her post outside the chapel door. Yaill said,
scarce knowing what he uttered:
"You will be even--lonelier--without her. You must let me find you
another dog to fill her empty place."
"Edward?"
Her sweet eyes lifted to his face. She saw him changed--changing.
Deep lines graven on the broad brow that had smoothed under her
kisses. Folds of bitterness from either wing of the large sensitive
nostrils to the corners of the lips.
"Dear Edward, Dawtie was very old, and very seldom with me. And
there are Bran and Laddie--if I should need the companionship of
dogs. But soon now, very soon--there is nothing to prevent it"--She
looked calmly in his face as he knelt on the rug beside her, stiffly
upright, not touching her, both hands gripping the arm of her
chair--"in a very few weeks--we shall be married, shall we not?"
He did not speak, and her eyes wavered from his, and a blush burned
over her whole fair body: for was it not the man's part to speak such
words as these? She said again: "Shall we not?" ... There was a
terrible pause.... The clock chimed the quarter-hour....
"Shall we not, Edward, loving as we do--after these cruel years of
delay?" ...
Unable to credit her own vision, she saw creeping into his grey
eyes--was it reluctance, distaste or dismay? ... A shock went through
her.... Rushing sounds filled her ears and through them she heard
her own voice crying to him:
"Edward! ... For God's sake, don't look at me so! Something is
wrong.... My dearest, tell me!" ...
Her arms went out to draw him close, and came back empty. He had
drawn back, avoiding them, and risen to his feet. A quiver passed
over his thin brown face, such as in windless weather will ripple the
sleeping surface of some quiet forest pool. And the question came
from her that she had never dreamed of asking:
"Is it that you do not love me--in the marriage sense--any more? Am
I nothing but a friend? ... Answer.... I command you--answer!"
Yaill's face was drawn and grey. He said,--keeping stiff control
upon the muscles of his lips:
"You are the one woman I worship.... I have never known another
whose person so charms me, whose nature so appeals to me,--whose mind
is so clear and full,--whose sympathy is so warm, so sweet, whose
soul so answers to mine--"
"Edward!" ...
All reassured, she breathed the name in a tone of exquisite
tenderness. He made her a sign that he had not done, and went slowly
on:
"I have desired--desire you now as man desires the woman he worships.
When our marriage was postponed by the death of your mother--when the
Regiment was ordered to India and you could not leave your
father--when this thrice-accursed War burst on the world in a
blizzard of fire and steel, and I had to leave you almost at the
church-door--God is my witness that I suffered! Far more than I
could tell you, Katharine!"
"Love of my heart, I know it! ..."
He signed to her again for silence:
"Do not interrupt me! All this is hard to say.... But though my
heart often cried out to you in those mad years of filthy
fighting--living, eating and sleeping--did we ever sleep?--in the
company of the Dead--while the world one had known and lived in--the
world of pretty women--decent clothes, pleasant week-ends, jolly
shooting-parties, sport, play, good hunters and easily-running
cars--seemed--except in short flashes of intervals--to have been dead
for cycles of ages--I was buoyed up by my hopes of you, my thoughts
of you--your letters and our short rare blessed meetings. Glimpses
of Paradise to a soul in Purgatory! You will believe that, will you
not, Katharine?" ...
One tear glittered on his hard cheek. Oh! to have dried it with her
kisses, and whispered comfort to her dearest, wrought to this
desperate mood by some unknown cause.... But she sat still as he had
bidden, soothed by his words of tenderness, yet with a little
shivering premonition beginning to quicken at the roots of her heart:
"Then came the Great Disaster.... Oh! why didn't I marry you, when I
got back to England--"
"My love," she said, "my precious dear!--I asked you to, you know!"
He made a despairing gesture of assenting:
"And I would not accept the gift you offered in your generosity--dear
love, sweet woman!--best friend an unlucky devil ever had or could
have! ..."
"Why?"
That "Why?" came like a moan from her. He answered sadly:
"Because I wanted to go away alone somewhere. To look my new self in
the face, or to recapture the lost me. Thousands of men have felt
the same--feel like that even at this moment--coming back with raw
nerves and jumbled brains out of the hell of War."
"Then God help the women who love them!" said Katharine Forbis.
"They will suffer," said Edward Yaill, "until they have learned to
understand the men. As you, pearl of women!--understood me, and
pitied me. Can I ever forget that!"
"Stop!" She held up her hand in warning. "Do not praise me. For I
believed your heart had changed to me. For a long time I believed
it, and suffered horribly.... And then thank God, I found out one
day that it was not so." ...
"When I came Home to tell you I had got back the Regiment.... There
was just time--we could have made the time--to have got married
then.... What stepped in? ... Fate! Was it Fate, Katharine? ..."
She knew their chance of happiness had been baulked again as ever by
the inconquerable vacillation of this brave man she loved. But
unshaken in her loyalty, she looked back at Edward, repeating with
unfaltering lips:
"Just Fate--I suppose. Let us leave it at that and look forward to
the Future. And the years we may have to spend together if it be
God's Will."
Her voice blurred with held-back tears;
"But--don't keep me waiting any longer, dear Edward! I never
have--never could have dreamed the possibility of changing towards
you.... But if I get more lonely--if I get much more lonely than I
am now--"
Was it possible that cry of tortured womanhood could have come from
Katharine? Must she, his proud one, stoop, and stoop to plead? With
clasped hands and yearning eyes of pain entreating--
"O Edward! don't keep me waiting long! Think of the years--"
He said with forced deliberation:
"We may even yet have years to spend together--if you have courage to
forgive a grievous wrong!"
"What do you mean? ... How have you wronged? ... Have you not told
me--"
Her voice had the sharpness of the stab he had dealt her, as she rose
up out of her fireside chair.
"I will tell you what I mean--what I meant to have spared you, had
not the man who came here yesterday with the documents from
Palestine--had not that man threatened to tell you if I did not."
"To tell me what? Let me hear it now! You look ill, Edward!"
"To tell you that I am married!" said Edward Yaill....
As she stood before him, straight and tall, he saw the life go out of
her. For an instant he looked on a dead, bloodless thing. Then the
banished blood rushed back from about her heart. Her lips and eyes
retained the look of life, but the face was a stranger's, and not
Katharine's. Nor was it Katharine's voice that said:
"To tell me that you are married? ... Who is she?"
He hardly recognised his own voice saying:
"She is a nurse.... She was attached to the Convalescent Camp at
B---- Base."
"Ah! ... And her name?" ...
"Lucy Burtonshaw."
"Ah! ..."
The interjection dropped from her pale lips like an icicle. But her
breeding wrapped her in an impregnable mantle of dignity. His sense
of her new remoteness was desolating as she asked him:
"And why are you here with me and not with Lucy Burtonshaw? I beg
her pardon!--I should have said, Mrs. Edward Yaill. Can you explain?"
"I can explain absolutely. Whether you would believe me--that is
another thing!"
"Let--let me think! ..." She put her hand to her forehead, pushing
back her hair with a gesture of bewilderment. All her world lay in
ruins round her, since those few sentences had fallen from his
lips....
Rejected.... Betrayed.... Cast off.... She, Katharine Forbis, so
great, so beloved, so beautiful,--the desired of many honourable,
brave, high-born, handsome and wealthy men. Edward Yaill had never
been told how many aspirants had sought her,--how many brilliant
offers she had steadfastly set aside. Choosing for years to walk in
maiden loneliness--keeping her priceless treasure of splendid
womanhood stored up,--hoarded away to this unutterable end....
She moaned, and put her hand to her heart an instant when he said she
would not believe if he explained himself. Nothing cut deeper or
more cruelly than that. She said with the calmness of a
mortally-wounded gentlewoman:
"I have not deserved that you should so judge me.... Say what you
think is to be said for you.... This person--this lady who is now
your wife--is the nurse--unless I am mistaken?--to whom I entrusted
my letters to keep in charge for you?"
"The same. And she betrayed the trust.... She kept your letters.
It was only on Thursday morning they first reached my hands." Always
chary of gesture, he stretched them out to her, and drew them back
and clenched--and let them fall again. "But for the accident of my
getting the last letter you wrote me, upon the morning I was
discharged from the Convalescent Camp--I might never have
known--never remembered--" His voice broke. He turned away and
leaned upon the mantelshelf, and bowed his shamed head over his
folded arms.
"Edward! ..."
Her hand went out and lightly touched his shoulder. He thrilled at
the tone in which she spoke his name:
"Edward, tell everything, and I will listen! ..."
He said in a choked voice, averting his face from her that she might
not see the tears that brimmed and fell:
"God bless you for your mercy to me, Katharine! ... But the story is
so wild and so incredible--I dare not hope for your entire belief....
You have believed in my devoted love for you.... I have lived, all
these years, for you alone.... Yet last Thursday, when I awakened
from that strange illusion--in the room at that Coombe Bay
hotel"--Katharine shuddered--"I was married," he made a despairing
gesture,--"married to a poor, weak, commonplace girl."
"She is your wife.... You are bound to remember it...."
He said:
"I have done so far more than she deserves.... I have written to my
solicitors--have provided for her generously.... Do not think me
capable of leaving her to poverty.... But I cannot--will not share
my life with her! ..."
"Loneliness can be worse to bear than poverty. And--once
again--remember--she is your wife!"
"She is welcome to what good may be got from that position! She has
schemed for it--"
"Be just to her.... You have owned to me that you told her you were
poor. Why? ..."
"Heaven knows why--or Hell! I have no answer.... But she had only
to ask--to make inquiries--to be enlightened on the subject of my
money!"
Chivalrous Katharine flashed out in defence of her enemy.
"Do you suppose the surgeons at the Camp would have told her? Or
that your medical report would have supplied such details? Or do you
think Burke's '_Landed Gentry_' is a work of reference accessible to
nurses? ..."
He broke out with whirling words--frantic asseverations. He would
get a divorce.... A suit for Nullity could be obtained under the
circumstances--once the circumstances should be made clear. Another
touch of contempt frosted her tone as she said to him:
"The marriage is legal. And though you seem to have forgotten your
religion--when you speak of divorce to me, I must ask you to remember
that I am a Catholic woman, Colonel Yaill!"
"Forgive me! ..."
He sat down haggard and exhausted.... She, too, resumed her seat,
for her strength was failing fast.... And so they sat in a
sorrowful-grim travesty of the old happy comradeship. She looked so
sorrow-stricken and yet so sweet as she sat there in her mourning for
her lost one,--that the heart of Yaill was more than ever tortured by
the fierce agony of hopeless love.
"Think!--" he said to her desperately, "for I cannot.... Is there no
way of escape from this horrible pitfall into which I have tumbled
with open eyes? Think! ... Or cannot you think of anything,
Katharine? ..."
She said to him gently:
"Wait.... I will think, and tell you presently.... Only wait and be
patient a little, my poor dear!"
For she could not withhold her compassion and forgiveness from this
man with the furrowed face of anguish, and the haunted, desperate
eyes. No longer her hero, her ideal of perfect manliness and
honour,--but a mere man, to be loved and pitied, and made excuses
for. Or--her sick heart knew a ray of Hope.... In her white cheeks
dawned a tinge of colour.... Was he one of the innumerable,
blameless martyrs made by the accursed War?