“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” is an excellent maxim. Its
only fault is its capacity of a too wide extension. If a saying
clause had been added with reference to its non-application to one's
neighbour's business, it would have been perfect. But, perhaps, after
all, in its faultiness lies its excellence, for counsels of perfection
are of no great use to mankind, which, in its ethical systems, loves
disguised loopholes for original sin.
However little the inmates of the Pension Boccard may have observed the
maxim itself, they obeyed its extension to a nicety. Not only because
they were women. Sometimes communities of men have been known to gossip
about each other's affairs. It is but human to speculate upon events
around us, and speculation, anticipating Paine's fear, was rife at the
Pension Boccard.
In the first place, the dramatic ending of poor Miss Bunter's romance
kept wits and tongues exercised for days. And secondly, certain facts
had become common property which pointed to interesting relations
between Mrs. Stapleton and Raine Chetwynd. The chief of these facts was
the early morning interview. The summer waiter reported it to the cook,
who informed Madame Boccard, who mentioned it in confidence to Madame
Popea, who in her satirical way described it to Frâulein Klinkhardt.
From the latter it passed to Frau Schultz, who barbed it carefully in
accordance with her own spite against Katherine, and sent it round on
its travels again. In this form it reached Felicia.
The girl found herself just in the humour of bitterness to accept it.
After the heartless, systematic deception that had been practised on
Miss Bunter for fifteen years, it seemed possible to credit humanity
with anything. Not that she felt any resentment against Raine Chetwynd
on her own score. She was bound to confess to herself, with tears of
self-scorn, that he had never treated her with anything but the most
brotherly frankness and courtesy. But in her dislike of Katherine, she
certainly credited him with a commonplace amour, and thereby set him
down lower in her estimation. Then her pride came, speciously to her
rescue, but really, after the way of pride in women's hearts, to
embitter the struggle that was taking place within her. One bright, pure
feeling, however, rose above the turmoil--an intense pity for the poor
frail creature out of whom had been crushed the hope of life. To have
stood by as witness and comforter during that agony of despair had been
one of those lurid experiences that set in motion the springs of
infinitely reaching sympathies.
When old Mr. Chetwynd proposed the trip to Lucerne she sprang at it
eagerly. It would be a relief to leave the pension and its associations.
For the whole of the day she busied herself feverishly with
preparations. It was a keen disappointment when the old man fell ill and
the trip had to be indefinitely postponed. She longed passionately for
October, when she was to join her uncle and aunt in Bermuda. Meanwhile
she copied out manuscript assiduously, nursed the old man as far as he
would allow her, and devoted the rest of her time to whatever gaieties
were afoot in the pension.
Katherine lived in a fool's paradise after Raine had gone, for a couple
of days. His kiss was on her lips, the pressure of his arms lingered
round her, the vibrating words rang in her ear. If unbidden thoughts
came, she put them aside with a passionately rebellious will. The long
morning passed like a dream. The day and evening in an intoxicated sense
of happiness. In the night she slept and waked, alternately, heedless
of the hours. She had won his love. It had been given to her in
full, overflowing measure. It flooded her presence with sunlight. She
surrendered herself to the delicious joy that it was to feel, instead of
to think.
On the evening of the second day, however, came Raine's letter. She sat
by her window, reading it with a beating heart. At times the words swam
before her. Until then she had not realized the wholeness, the simple
nobility of his love. To her it was more than a love-letter. It was the
revelation of a strong, high soul that was given her, to companion
and illuminate the rest of her days upon earth. She, who in her
self-abasement before him, felt unworthy to kiss the hem of his raiment,
saw herself revered, worshipped, filling a holy of holies in his heart.
She was to be his wife.
She read the letter through twice. Then a great fear chilled her. Its
premonitions had come that evening on the lake, just before the
thunder broke, and through all her after-intoxication it had loomed
threateningly. Only her will had staved it off. Now it held her in its
grip.
His wife. The words stared her in the face, repeated over and over again
with every surrounding of passion, tenderness, and devotion. She grew
cold. A lump rose in her throat. She walked across the room, poured
herself out a glass of water, and sat down again. The dream, the
illusion, the joy, all was over. A great pain was in her eyes as she
gazed sightlessly straight in front of her.
As she gazed, a temptation crept insidiously into her heart, relaxed
and soothed for a moment her tense nerves. Why should she tell him that
which she knew his fine nature would never ask? All her future to all
eternity was his. What mattered the past?
Her eyes fell upon his letter on her lap, caught a few chance phrases.
Then a shudder passed through her like a wave of self-contempt and
revulsion, and, leaning forward, she buried her face in her hands and
cried.
He was too noble to be deceived--to be entrapped as by a common
adventuress. The thought scorched her. Silence would be metal too base
to repay the pure gold of his love. A million times sooner speak and
lose him than keep him with a lie. All that was pure and true and
womanly in her revolted at the temptation.
For a long time she remained with bowed head, her thoughts whirling
round the means whereby she was to deal the death-blow at her happiness.
The moments passed quickly, and the shadows gathered as the afternoon
began to melt into evening. A message from Mme. Boccard, asking her
whether she was coming down to dinner, was the first thing that made her
conscious of the flight of time. She sent down word that she was poorly.
A plate of soup brought up to her would be all that she required. Then
she fell back into her despairing thoughts. The cry wrung from the soul
of Denise hummed in her ears until it became a meaningless burthen.
Since that night in January when she had seen the play with Raine, she
had morbidly applied that cry to herself--“_Je suis de celles qu'on
aime, mais qu'on n'epouse pas._”
A faint ray of hope shot across the darkness. He had told her his own
story. To him it was a sacred memory. The girl that he had loved, the
mother of his child, was in his eyes the purest of women. Would not that
mitigate the judgment he would have to pass on her? She clung to the
hope revealed, as she lost grip of herself. He would not despise her. He
would still love her. She would be to him what that other had been. Her
thoughts for a while grew hysterical.
The effort she was forced to make when the servant entered with her
meal, and the physical strength given her by the warm soup, restored
calm and order in her mind. She read Raine's letter through once more.
It inspired her with sad, despairing courage. She became for the time
the Katherine she had been so long, hopeless, resigned, fatalistic.
Before she crept broken and exhausted into bed, she had written him
a long calm letter telling him all. She did not spare herself, hiding
behind sophistries, neither did she blacken herself like a remorseful
Magdalen. She wrote it with her heart's blood, at the dictates of her
highest self. Only once perhaps in a lifetime is the power given to
human beings to lay thus bare their souls as they appear before the eyes
of the high gods. It was a higher Katherine than she wot of, that had
written that letter.
But in the morning, the human woman yearning dumbly for happiness beheld
it, addressed, stamped, ready for post, and her heart was ice within
her. She stood for a moment holding it in her hand, irresolute whether
to break the seal and read it over again. Perhaps, she weakly thought,
something in it might be better expressed. Her finger mechanically
sought the flap corner of the envelope, and she tore it slowly. Then she
went back to bed with the letter. Nothing could be altered. She would
readdress it and despatch it that day.
Whilst dressing she paused at her reflection in the glass, with a
feminine catch at the heart. She looked pale, old, faded, she thought;
faint lines were around the corners of her eyes; her features seemed
pinched. She shivered slightly--hurried foolishly over her hair, so that
she could be spared the sight of her face as soon as possible.
“After all,” she said to herself, bitterly, “what does it matter? When
that letter has gone, who in the world will care whether you look old or
young?”
Life seemed to end for her from the moment the letter would fall from
her hands into the letter-box. She kept it by her all day, unable to
cut herself adrift. The small extra effort required to address a fresh
envelope just raised the task above her strength. Once during the day
she flung herself on the bed in a fit of sobbing. She could not send it.
It would spoil his trip. She would wait till he returned, till she had
seen his eye light up once more as he looked at her, and heard, for one
last time, the throb in his voice that she was never to hear again. Just
one more hour of happiness. Then she would give him the letter, stay by
him as he read it, as a penance for her present pusillanimity. Feeling
miserably guilty, yet glad of the respite, she wrote him the second
letter that he had received. The one that she was to have sent she
carried about with her in her pocket, until the outside grew soiled and
dogs-eared.
They were not happy days. But she moved about the pension outwardly
calm and serene, to all appearances her own self. The feeling of
self-reproach for her cowardice wore off. She resigned herself to her
lot. One sight of his face--and then the end of all things. She
knew, with the knowledge of herself given by years of solitude and
self-repression, that she would not falter in her second resolution.
So centred, however, were her thoughts in the tragic side of her
relations with Raine that she gave no heed to the possibility of
gossip. None reached her ears. Her long sustained attitude of reserve, a
superiority of personality, a certain dignity of manner and conduct,
had won for her the respect, if not the love, of the pension. Even
Frau Schultz, who hated her, found it impossible to utter the spiteful
innuendo that trembled on her lips. But Mme. Popea, who was the
chartered libertine of the pension, by reason of her good-nature and
unblushing liberty of speech, summoned up courage one day to tread upon
the ice.
“Mon Dieu,” she said, as if by way of invoking the deity's aid in her
venture, “it is getting dull again. I long to see Mr. Chetwynd back.
“He makes himself missed,” replied Katherine calmly, continuing her
sewing.
Mme. Popea had come into her room with the ostensible purpose of
borrowing a stiletto. It was one of her ways to stock her work-basket
with loans.
“If the dear professor grows worse, he will return soon, I suppose.
They are like women to each other, those two--good ones, in the _vie de
famille_ of novels. I hear the professor is much worse to-day.”
“Who told you?”
“Miss Graves. She is nursing him. What a charming girl! Her devotion
to him is touching. It would be quite a romance if she married Monsieur
Raine. He is so handsome.”
Katherine regarded the plump, irresponsible lady with placid gravity.
“You seem to take a romantic interest in them, Madame Popea.”
“Mon Dieu, yes. Anything that concerns love is interesting, especially
the idyllic. But you, Madame, would you be surprised if on his return
they were betrothed?”
“_Il ne faut jamais s'étonner de rien_,” quoted Katherine, smiling
imperturbably.
“I once thought he had a _tendresse_ for Madame,” ventured Mme. Popea
archly.
“Oh, Madame Popea,” laughed Katherine. “You know what men are--and we
women ought never to tell each other our impressions. If I told you the
flattering remarks I have heard about you this last fortnight, your head
would be turned.”
“Ah, who has spoken of me?”
Katherine rose, took out a bonnet from a drawer and somewhat
ostentatiously unrolled a veil, while she returned a laughing answer.
“I am too old not to have learned discretion. It is my one vice.”
And Mme. Popea, seeing that Katherine was not to be surprised into
any admission, lingered a moment idly, and then took her departure.
Katherine, who read through Mme. Popea, smiled to herself somewhat
sadly. But her visitor's announcement regarding the old professor gave
her subject for reflection. If his father grew worse, Raine would have
to return at once. For a moment she half wished he would delay his
coming. Her heart throbbed painfully in anticipation of what lay before
her.
The announcement was true. The old man had taken a severe chill. The
doctor had just spoken rather alarmingly to Felicia. She determined that
Raine should be summoned.
“You must let me send a telegram to Chamonix,” she said, standing by the
bedside, while the old man drank his tisane. “It would cheer you to see
him, wouldn't it?”
The old man shook his head.
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“It would be such a pity. He is enjoying himself.”
“I should think he would not be sorry to come back,” said Felicia.
An unwonted sub-acidity in her tone surprised him. He paused, with the
cup at his lips, his eyes luminous. Her glance fell beneath his, and she
coloured.
“I don't think he went away to enjoy himself,” she said, giving
expression to vague conjectures that had been taking shape in her mind
the last few days. “Besides, his friends have left him in the lurch--not
their fault--unhappily--but still he is alone. He would be glad to come
back if you sent for him.”
The old man was perplexed. He was also weakened by his attack of cold.
“Do you think that I sent him away, Felicia?” he asked.
Felicia was feminine enough to perceive his admission. She was sure
of her guess now. Katherine was at the bottom of the matter. The
proceedings, however, struck her as particularly futile. As they were,
actually, on the real grounds. She took the empty cup from his hands,
smoothed his pillow deftly, and as he laid his head back, she bent over
him and whispered,--
“He went away to please you--and he will return to please you. Let me
telegraph to him.”
“But you--my dear child--how could you bear--?”
“I?” asked Felicia in surprise. “What have I to do with it?”
“Oh, Mr. Chetwynd!” she added after a moment's silence. “You must not
remember any foolish things I told you once--I think I must have been a
child then. I am ashamed of them now. I have grown older,”--she struggled
bravely--“and I have got over those silly feelings. I would not wish to
be anything more than friends--ever--so it would make no difference to
me, if he were here--except as a friend.”
The old man reached out his thin hand, took hers, and laid it against
his cheek.
“Then there was no need at all of his going away, since you knew?”
Felicia gave a little involuntary cry, and twitched her hand, as the
revelation burst upon her. The blood flooded her cheeks and sang in her
ears. The former shame was nothing to this new one.
“He went away because he saw that I cared for him?” she asked chokingly.
“My poor little darling,” said the old man tenderly, “we did it all for
the best.”
She stood by him in silence for a long time, while he petted her hand.
At last she gathered strength.
“Tell him,” she said, “that it was all a mistake--that he acted nobly
and generously and delicately--but that I smiled when I heard it. Tell
him that I smiled, won't you, dear professor? See, I am smiling--quite
gaily, like the Felicia you spoil. And now,”--she withdrew her hand
gently--“I am going to telegraph to him. He and I together will soon
bring you round again--but I alone am not sufficient.”
She administered a few feminine touches to the things on the table
beside him, and went upon her self-imposed errand.
_“I should like you to return as quickly as possible._
_“Chetwynd.”_
She composed the wording of the telegram on her way to the office. It
kept her from thinking of other things.
“There,” she said to herself as she wrote.
“That will not alarm him.”
Meanwhile the invalid was sorely puzzled.
“I have made a mess of it from beginning to end,” he murmured wearily.
“And yet I don't think it can be dotage yet awhile. Let me reason it all
out.”
His eyes closed. He had put the argument into a syllogism in _Barbara_,
when his brain refused to act, and he fell asleep.