“Ach so!” said Frau Schultz as soon as they were out of earshot, “she
has begun already. It is not decent. In a little while he will become
quite entangled.”
Felicia looked away and did not speak. The other went on,--
“She might have waited a fortnight, a week, and done it gradually. But
the very first day--”
“Please don't let us discuss it,” said Felicia wearily.
“But I will discuss it; I am a virtuous woman, and I don't like to
see such things. He is too good to fall a victim. I shall speak to the
professor.”
“Do you think a gentleman like the professor would listen to you, Frau
Schultz?” asked Felicia, scarcely veiling her disgust.
This was a new idea to Frau Schultz. She turned it over with some
curiosity, and metaphorically sniffed at it. Then she left it alone,
to Felicia's relief, and the rest of their conversation passed without
allusion to the subject.
But her comments upon the meeting in the Jardin Anglais made an
unpleasant impression upon the girl, revived the memory of the previous
indictment of Katherine which she had rebutted with such indignation.
But now, she could not regard Katherine with the same feelings of
loyalty. On the contrary, the growing distrust and antagonism seemed to
have come to a head. The instinct of combat was aroused in her for the
first time, and she began to dislike Katherine with a younger woman's
strong, active dislike.
Unconsciously to herself, the atmosphere of the pension had tainted the
purity of her judgment. She had learned that little knowledge of things
evil which is so dangerous. Katherine was not to her merely a rival,
loving Raine Chetwynd with a fair, pure love like her own, but a
scheming woman, one of those to whom love is a pastime, occupation,
vanity--she knew not what--but still a thing unhonoured and conferring
no honour on the man. And, as the days went on, this attitude became
more definite, gaining stability in measure as the woman within her took
the place of the child. The thought, too, took shape: why should she not
use maidenly means to keep him by her side, when Katherine used unworthy
ones? And with the thought her ashamedness wore off, and she began to
battle bravely for her love.
Katherine could not help noticing these signs of active rivalry. At
first she was hurt. She would have dearly liked to retain Felicia's
friendship. But what could she do?
She was in her room one morning when the sound of a carriage drawing
up in the street below, struck upon her ear. Out of idle curiosity she
stepped upon the little balcony and looked down. Old Mr. Chetwynd,
Raine and Felicia were going out for a drive. She watched them settle
themselves laughingly in their places, and smiled not unkindly at
Felicia's young radiant face. But as they drove off, Felicia glanced
up, caught sight of her, and the expression changed. Its triumph smote
Katherine with a sense of pain. She retired from the balcony wearily. A
vague fancy came to her to go away from Geneva, to leave the field
open for Felicia. She dallied with it for a moment. And then the fierce
reaction set in.
No. A thousand times no. Why should she be quixotic? Whoever in the
world had acted quixotically towards her? Her life had been wrecked--up
to now, without one gleam of light in any far-off haven. She had been
tossed about by the waves, an idle derelict. Only lately had hope come.
It was a wild, despairing hope, at the best--but it had kept her
alive for the past six months Why should she give way to this young
girl--untouched, untroubled save by this one first girlish fancy? All
the world was before her, waiting with its tributes to throw at the feet
of her youth and fairness and charm. In a few months she would go out
into it again, leave the Pension Boccard and its narrowing life for
ever. In a year it would be but a memory, Raine Chetwynd but a blushing
episode. Many men would love her. She would have her pick of the
noblest. Why should she herself then yield her single frail hope to her
who had so many fair ones?
She clung with passionate insistence to this self-justification.
Since her lot of loneliness had fallen upon her, she had accepted it
implicitly, never sought to form ties of even the most delicate and
ephemeral nature. She had contemplated the grey, loveless, lonely
stretch of future years as the logical consequence of the past, and
sometimes its stern inevitableness crushed her. Life for life, which had
the greater need of joy--her own or that of the young girl? The law of
eternal justice seemed to ring answer in her heart--as it has rung in
the heart of every daughter of Hagar since the world began.
Late that evening she was standing on the balcony outside the salon.
They had passed a merry evening. A concert-singer from London, who
had arrived the day before, had good-naturedly sung for them. Old Mr.
Chetwynd had been witty and charming. Commandant Pornichon had told,
with Gascon verve, stories of camp and war. Raine had talked and laughed
in his wholehearted way. Everyone had been gay, good-tempered. Felicia
had been in buoyant mood, adding her fresh note to the talk; had even
addressed to her a few laughing words. One by one all had left the
salon. The last had been Mme. Popea, who had remained for a quiet
chatter with her about the events of the evening. She was alone now,
in the moonlight, feeling less at war with herself than during the day.
Laughter and song are good for the heart. She leant her cheek on her
elbow and mused. Perhaps she was a wicked woman to try to come between a
girl and her happiness. After all, would not the sacrifice of self be a
noble thing?
But suddenly she heard the salon door open and an entering footstep that
caused her heart to leap within her. With an incontrollable impulse she
moved and showed herself at the window.
“How delightful to find you!” exclaimed Raine. “I came almost on a
forlorn hope.”
“I stayed to sentimentalize a little in the moonlight,” said Katherine.
“I thought you had gone to the _café_.”
“No; I have been sitting with my father,” he said, pulling a chair on
to the balcony and motioning her to it. “And then, when I left him, I
thought it would be pleasant to talk to you--so I came. I have not had a
word with you all day.”
“I have missed our argument too,” admitted Katherine. “So you had a
pleasant expedition?”
“Very,” said Raine. “But I wished you had been there.”
“You had your father and Felicia.”
“That was the worst of it,” he said laughingly. “They are so much in
love with one another, that I was the third that makes company nought.”
He talked about the drive to Vevey, the habits and customs of the
Swiss, digressed into comparisons between the peasant classes of various
countries. Katherine, who had wandered over most of the beaten track in
Europe, supplied his arguments with illustrations. She loved to hear him
talk. His knowledge was wide and accurate, his criticisms vigorous.
The strength of his intellectual fibre alone differentiated him, in her
eyes, from ordinary men. His vision was so clear, his touch upon all
subjects so firm, and yet, at need, so delicate; she felt herself so
infinitely little of mind compared with him. They talked on till past
midnight; but long ere that the conversation had drifted around things
intimately subjective.
As they parted for the night at the end of Katherine's corridor, she
could not help saying to him somewhat humbly,--
“Thank you for the talks. You do not know how I value them. They lift me
into a different atmosphere.”
Raine looked at her a little wonderingly. Her point of view had never
occurred to him. Thoroughly honest and free from vanity of every kind,
he could not even now quite comprehend it.
“It is you who raise me,” he replied. “To talk with you is an education
in all fine and delicate things. How many women do you think there are
like you?”
His words rang soothingly in her ear until she slept. In the morning she
seemed to wake to a newer conception of life.
And as the days went by, and their talks alone together on the balcony,
in the Jardin Anglais, and where not, deepened in intimacy, and the
nature of the man she loved unfolded itself gradually like a book before
her perceptive feminine vision, this conception broadened into bolder,
clearer definition. Hitherto she had been fiercely maintaining her
inalienable right to whatever chance of happiness offered itself in her
path. Now she felt humbled, unworthy, a lesser thing than he, and her
abasement brought her a sweet, pure happiness. At first she had loved
him, she scarce knew why, because he was he, because her heart had leapt
towards him. But now the self-chastening brought into being a higher
love, tender and worshipping, such as she had dreamed over in a lonely
woman's wistful reveries. She lost the sense of rivalry with Felicia,
strove in unobtrusive ways to win back her friendship. But Felicia,
sweet and effusive to others, to Katherine remained unapproachable.
At last a great womanly pity arose in Katherine's heart. The victory
that she was ever becoming more conscious of gaining awakened all her
generous impulses and tendernesses. Her love for Raine had grown too
beautiful a thing to allow of unworthy thrills of triumph.
For the rest, it was a happy sunlit time. The past faded into dimness.
She lived from day to day blinded to all but the glowing radiance of her
love.
Raine met her one day going with a basket on her arm up the streets of
the old town by the cathedral. He had fallen into the habit of joining
her with involuntary unceremoniousness when she was alone, and it did
not occur to her as anything but natural that he should join her now and
walk by her side. At the door of the basement where Jean-Marie and his
wife dwelt, she paused.
“This is the end of my journey. My old people live here.”
“I am quite envious of them,” said Raine.
He had scarcely spoken, when the old woman hobbled across the road
from one of the opposite houses, and came up to Katherine with smiling
welcome in the wrinkles of her old, lined face.
She had not expected madame so soon after her last visit. It was
Jean-Marie who was going to be happy. Would Madame enter? And Monsieur?
Was he the brother of Madame?
Katherine explained, with a bright flush on either cheek and a quick
little glance of embarrassment at Raine, who laughed and added his word
of explanation. He was a great friend of Madame's. She had often spoken
to him of Jean-Marie.
The old woman looked at him, the eternal feminine in her not dulled by
years, and liked his smiling face.
“If I could dare to ask Monsieur if he would condescend to enter with
Madame--?”
He sought a permissive glance from Katherine, and accepted the
invitation.
“I did not mean--” began Katherine in a low voice as they were following
the old woman down the dark stairs.
“It will delight me,” replied Raine. “Besides, I shall envy them no
longer.”
After a few moments her embarrassment wore off, as she saw the old
paralytic's first Swiss shyness melt away under Raine's charm. It was
Raine's way, as the old professor had said once to Felicia, to get
behind externals and to set himself in sympathy with all whom he met.
And Katherine, though she had not heard this formulated, felt the truth
unconsciously. He talked as if he had known Jean-Marie from infancy. To
listen to him one would have thought it was the simplest thing in the
world to entertain an ignorant old Swiss peasant. Katherine had never
loved him so much as she did that hour.
She was full of the sense of it when they were in the street again--of
his tenderness, simplicity, human kindness.
“How they adore you!” he said suddenly.
The words and tone startled her. The aspect she herself had presented
was the last thing in her thoughts. The tribute, coming from him in the
midst of her silent adoration of him himself, brought swiftly into play
a range of complex feelings and the tears to her eyes. He could not help
noticing their moisture.
“What a tender heart you have!” he said in his kind way, falling into
inevitable error.
“It is silly of me,” she replied with a bright smile.
She could not undeceive him. Often a woman by reason of her sex has to
receive what she knows is not her due. But she compensates the eternal
justice of things by giving up more of her truest self to the man. A
few moments later, however, on their homeward walk, she tried to be
conscientious.
“I cannot bear you to praise me--as you do sometimes.”
“Why?”
A man, even the most sympathetic, is seldom satisfied unless he has
reasons for everything. Katherine, in spite of her seriousness, smiled
at the masculine directness. She replied somewhat earnestly,--
“Because I do not deserve it in the first place, and in the second, it
means so much more, coming from you.”
“I said that those old folks adore you, and that you are
tender-hearted,” he answered conclusively; “and both facts are true, and
it would be a bad day for anyone but yourself who gainsaid them.”