“What you have learned about me,” Katherine had written to Raine, “I was
to have told you last night. I had written to you a long letter, but I
was too weak to send it. I resolved to tell it to your own ears. But it
was impossible for me to speak to you last night for I was suffering too
much.
“My story is a simple one. Married to a man many years my
senior--treated with a mild gravity which my girlish wilfulness took for
harshness--a great many tears--a great longing for the tenderness that
never came--a gay, buoyant nature meeting mine, changing, it seemed, my
twilight into sunshine--and then--what you know.
“Do not judge me harshly, Raine. But forget me. Forget that I came and
troubled your life. Even were my name free from blemish, I am not good
enough to be your wife. Forget me, and take to your heart one who will
make you happier than I could have done--one younger, sweeter, purer.
And she loves you. Let her win you.
“I have suffered much to be able to write this. It is a farewell. To
meet you would be too great pain for us both. This morning, as you know,
I saw Mr. Hockmaster, and I have promised to marry him. Fate rules
these things for us. To the day of my death I shall pray for your
happiness.--K.S.”
Raine's face grew hard as he read the letter. A man quickly wearies of
successive emotions. His self-pride asserts itself and makes him
rebel against falling into weaknesses of feeling. He had been angry at
allowing himself to be drawn towards Felicia, and a natural reaction
of loyalty to Katherine had followed. Now this was checked by her calm,
unimpassioned words and the astounding intelligence of her engagement
to Hockmaster. He was completely staggered. To his dismay, he became
conscious of an awful void in his life. It seemed to be filled with
purposeless shadows. He set his teeth and wrapped his strong man's pride
about him. The thought of himself as John a' Dreams was a lash to his
spirit. He crumpled up the paper in his hands and strode to and fro in
his room.
She was to marry Hockmaster. It was incredible, preposterous, except
on one hypothesis--the recrudescence of the old passion that had swept
aside the social barriers for this man's sake. It was the most galling
thought of all, it racked him, drew him down to a lower plane of
feeling, blinded his clear insight into delicate things. Perhaps if a
man did not sink lower than himself on some occasions, he could not rise
higher than himself on others.
He drew a chair to the open French window. The room, being on the top
storey, had no balcony, but a wrought-iron balustrade fixed on the
outside of the jambs. He leant his arms over it and looked into the
familiar street. He hated it. Geneva was intolerable. As soon as his
father was able to travel, he would shake the dust of it from off his
feet. A bantering letter had come that morning from his cousin, Mrs.
Monteith, at Oxford. A phrase or two passed through his mind. Was he
going to bring back two brides or half a one?
“How damned vulgar women can be at times!” he exclaimed angrily, and he
rose with impatience from his chair, as if to drive Mrs. Monteith from
his thoughts.
He unrolled Katherine's crumpled letter and read it through again. Then
he thrust it into his pocket and decided to go and sit with his father.
But, before he could reach the door, a knock was heard. He opened it,
and to his surprise found Felicia.
“You--is my father--?”
“No. I want to speak to you. Can I?”
“Do you mind coming in? It is not very untidy.”
He held the door for her to pass in, then he closed it and came up to
her enquiringly. Felicia stood in the middle of the room, with her hands
behind her back, a favourite attitude. Her dark cheeks were flushed and
her sensitive lips were parted, quivering slightly.
“It's about Katherine!” she burst out suddenly. “Please let me talk, or
I shall not be able to say what I want to. Since last night--when you
kissed me--I have thought I might come to you--as your sister might--and
because I care for you like that, I feel I can tell you. I have just
been with Katherine. She is going away this afternoon.”
“At once?” asked Raine, startled at the apparent rapidity of events.
“Yes. Are you sending her away?”
“I? Oh no.”
“But why must she go, Raine? Tell me; need she go?”
“Katherine is mistress of her own actions.”
“Then you don't care?”
She looked at him earnestly, with moist eyes. There was a note of
passion in her voice, to which Raine, sympathetic, found himself
responding.
“What is the use of my caring, since she is going of her own accord
without a word from me?”
“But a word from you would make her stay.”
“What do you know about all this?” he asked abruptly.
“I know that you have broken her heart,” said Felicia. “Oh! knowing
her--and loving her--it is hard not to forgive.”
“There is no question of forgiveness,” replied Raine. “Did she tell you
I would not forgive her?”
“No. A woman does not need to be _told_ these things--she knows them and
feels them. Must a woman always, always, always suffer? Why can't a man
be great and noble sometimes--like Christ who forgave?”
“But, my dear child, you are talking wildly,” cried Raine earnestly.
“God knows there is nothing to forgive. I knew long ago a shadow had
been cast over her life--and I loved her. A strange freak of destiny
brought the man here--last night, accidentally, he told me the
details--and I loved her. I have not seen her. It is not I who drive her
away. Read that, and you can see it is not I.”
He thrust the letter into her hand, and watched her as she read.
Four-and-twenty hours ago, he would as soon have thought of crying his
heart's secrets aloud in the public streets, as of delivering them into
the keeping of this young girl. But now it seemed natural. Her exalted
mood had infected him, lifted him on to an unconventional plane.
The blood rushed to her cheeks as she read the lines in which reference
was made to herself. When she had finished, she looked at him with a
strange light in her eyes.
“And you are satisfied with this?” she said quickly.
“I am dumfounded by it. She has promised to marry this man.”
“And can't you see why? Isn't it as clear to you as the noonday?”
“The old love is stronger, I suppose.”
“Raine!” cried the girl, in ringing reproach. “How dare you say that,
think it even? Can't you see the agony that letter has cost her? To
me it is quivering in every line. Why did you let that man go to her
instead of yourself? Oh, heavens! if I were a man, and such a thing
had happened regarding the woman I loved, I should have lain outside her
door all night to guard her--I should have seen her, if hell-fire had
been between us. But you let her suffer. You put your pride above your
love, like a man--you were silent. You let her hear from this man that
you knew--you left her to grapple with her shame alone.”
Felicia walked about the room like a young lioness. The words came in
a flood. In the championing of her sister-woman she lost sense
of conventional restrictions. Raine was no longer Raine, but the
typefication of a sex against which she was battling for her own.
“Can't you read into it all?” she continued. “Can't you see the
degradation she seemed to have fallen into in your eyes? But you only
think of yourself--of _your_ pride--of the bloom brushed off from _your_
ideal. Never a thought for her--of the god hurled from her heaven. She
would marry this man to cut herself adrift from you, to get out of your
life without further troubling it--to ease your conscience, lest it
should ever prick you for having left her. She is marrying him because
her heart is broken--who else but a noble, high-souled woman could have
written this letter? I better than she! Oh, Raine--if you have a spark
of love for her left--go and throw yourself at her knees, before it is
too late.”
Her voice broke towards the end. The strain was telling on her. She
sank for rest upon the chair by the window, and laid her burning cheek
against the iron balustrade. Raine came to her side.
“You can thrash me a little more, if you like.”
But the familiar, kindly tone suddenly awoke Felicia to the sense of
their relations. She hung her head, confused.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I ought not to have spoken like that to you--I
lost control over myself. You mustn't think of what I have said.”
“I'll think of it all through my life, Felicia,” said Raine.
A silence fell upon them. The girl was shaken and weary. Raine was
confronting a new hope, that made his heart beat.
“Raine,” she said, after a while.
He did not reply. She looked up, and saw him staring into the street.
“By God!” he cried, suddenly, and before Felicia could realize what he
was doing, he had seized his hat from the table and had rushed from the
room, leaving the door open.
Felicia leant over the balustrade, and looked down. Katherine was there,
near the corner, in the act of giving over her dressing-bag to a lad in
a blue blouse, who had offered his services. Felicia watched until she
saw Raine emerge beneath the archway, stride like a man possessed after
Katherine, catch her up, and lay his hand upon her arm, as she turned
a startled face towards him. Then the tears came into her eyes, and she
left the window and went down to her own room, where she locked herself
in and cried miserably. Such is the apparently inconsequent way of
women.
“Katherine,” said Raine, when he came up with her. She stopped, and
looked at him speechlessly.
“I have just caught you in time,” he said, with masculine brusqueness.
“We must talk together. Come into the Gardens.”
“I can't,” she replied, hurriedly. “My train--”
“You can miss your train. Where are you going?”
“Lausanne,” she answered, weakly, with lowered eyes.
“There are quantities of trains. Come.” He drew her arm gently. She
obeyed, powerless to resist. He found a seat away from the promenade.
An old peasant was dozing at one end, and a mongrel was stretched at his
feet. They were practically alone. The old man in his time had seen many
English and innumerable pairs of lovers. Neither interested him. He did
not even deign to turn a lustreless eye in their direction. The boy with
the dressing-bag had meekly followed them, and stood by, politely, cap
in hand. Did madame want him to wait with the bag?
“No,” replied Raine, pulling a franc from his pocket. “Take it to the
_concierge_ at the Pension Boccard.”
Katherine half rose, agitated.
“No, no. I must go to Lausanne. You mustn't keep me.”
But the boy had dashed off, clutching his franc-piece. Raine bent down
till the ends of his moustache nearly brushed her veil.
“I will keep you, Katherine, until you tell me you love me no longer.”
“Don't torture me,” she said, piteously. “That is why I tried to avoid
meeting--to spare us both. I knew your generosity.”
“My generosity,” echoed Raine, with effective interruption. “My longing,
my needs, the happiness of my life! If you care for me, it is not
torturing you to tell you I love you--I can't live a man's life without
you. When I first read your letter, it crushed the soul out of me. I did
not understand; afterwards I did. Some day you shall learn how. I love
you, Katherine, need you, yearn for you.”
His passion grew as he looked at her, watching the faint colour come and
go on the face beneath the veil. She seemed too fragile and delicate
for the rude buffetings of the world. An immense wave of emotion swept
through him. It was his indefeasible right to protect her, cherish her,
hold her in his arms, close to him.
And Katherine was trembling, every chord in her vibrated. She could not
speak. She flashed on him a quick, sidelong, feminine glance, and
met his eyes fixed upon her. They were blue and strong, half-fierce,
half-tender. The man's will and longing were in them. She shrank, and yet
she looked again, loving him for their intensity. Raine spoke on as
he had never known it had been in his power to speak. The old peasant
dozed, regardless of their presence or of that of a little dusty child
who squatted down by him to play with the dog. Through the trees and
shrubs in front could be seen glimpses of white dresses, scraps of the
passers-by on the path along the quay. But this quiet, somewhat unkempt
corner remained undisturbed.
“I can't, I can't,” said Katherine, at last.
“I have pledged myself--I can't go back.”
“I will settle that matter,” he replied, with a half smile. “Leave it
to me. Men understand one another. You are mine, Katherine, my darling,
mine, my wife--if you love me.”
The tenderness of his voice thrilled through her. She raised her eyes to
his, this time to be held there.
“Love you!”
He read her lips rather than heard them.
“And nothing again shall part us? You will marry me, Katherine?”
All the woman in her cried “yes,” but it also held her back.
“Will you love me in after years as now, Raine? Will you never come to
think that this shame that has come to me was deserved? Think of it,
dear, in your clear, honest way. You will never come to feel that you
have given all your wealth for what, like most men, you should have
trodden under foot? Your life's happiness--mine--depend upon your
answering it from your heart of hearts, dear. Judge me now for ever and
ever.”
“As God hears me,” said Raine, with the love in his voice. “To me you
are ever the purest and the noblest and tenderest of women. You love me
with a woman's love and I with a man's; and we will love soul to soul,
dear, till we die. Our love, dear, is as sacred to me as the ghost
I buried in it a few weeks ago. All this will be like a troubled
dream--all the past, darling, in both our lives as shadows. Thank God!”
He put his arms suddenly round her, drew her to him, and kissed her.
For both of them the world stood still, and the commonplace gardens were
Eden, and the old peasant nodded his weatherbeaten head, and the mongrel
and the dusty child looked on unastonished, like the beasts when the
first apple was eaten.
Raine went, an hour or so after, to the Hôtel National and found
Hockmaster outside, cultivating a dinner appetite with sherry and
bitters. He jumped up when he perceived his visitor, and came towards
him.
“Hello, Chetwynd! This is real friendly of you. Come and sit down--join
me.”
Raine accepted the seat, but declined the sherry.
“Do you mind my asking you a very intimate question?” asked Raine.
“As many as you like,” said Hockmaster, with naïve effusion. “I have
given you a sort of right to be familiar. Of course, whether I answer it
is a matter for my discretion.”
“Precisely. But I hope you will. Are your feelings very deeply engaged
in this affair with Mrs. Stapleton?”
“Sir,” said Hockmaster. “I've repaired a wrong that has set at rest a
damned uneasy conscience.”
“From which I gather you have obeyed your conscience rather than your
heart,” said Raine.
“I am going to be married,” replied Hockmaster, between the first puffs
of a cigar he was lighting. “Perhaps you may not know that. So I guess
I'd better fall back upon discretion. It is best in affairs between man
and wife.”
“Yes, but suppose it was broken off?”
“What? My marriage?”
He stretched himself out in a comfortable attitude, his hands behind his
head, and regarded Raine placidly.
“What sort of interest can the concerns of a worm like me have for you?”
“Every interest in the world,” replied Raine, flushing. “If it's merely
a question of conscience on your part, I have no scruple in asking you
to release Mrs. Stapleton from her engagement.”
“Did she send you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell you any reason?”
Hockmaster's tone irritated Raine. He rose quickly, thrusting his straw
hat to the back of his head, and stood over the recumbent American, with
his hands on his hips.
“Yes, she did. Mrs. Stapleton is going to marry me.”
The words brought the other to his feet with a force that nearly upset
the small table in front of him.
“God alive, man!” he cried, realizing the whole situation in a rush.
“Why on earth didn't you tell me before?”
The two men looked into one another's eyes. It was Raine who was first
disconcerted. The intense distress of the other was too genuine for him
not to feel touched.
“You're the first man for years,” said Hockmaster, “that I have felt
drawn to in friendship; and I have been powerfully drawn to you. I would
have cut off my head sooner than said or done anything to pain you Why
didn't you stop me this morning?”
“I tried to dissuade you.”
Hockmaster threw away his extinct cigar, and put his hands in his
pockets dejectedly.
“Yes, you did so; and I went on running knives into you. Why didn't you
pitch me into the lake last night? I wish to God you'd do it now.”
“We will forget all that,” said Raine, kindly.
“You may, but I shan't. And she--for heaven's sake, ask her to forgive
me. I was trying to do my best. You believe that, don't you?”
“With all my heart,” said Raine.
“And I'll tell you, Chetwynd,” continued Hockmaster, with a truer ring
of feeling in his voice than Raine had ever perceived, “I meant to be a
good man to her, to put down my cloak over every puddle in life for her
to walk upon, to make her just as happy as I could. But I guess I've
been a blamed fool. I've been a blamed fool all my life. First thing I
remember was running away from school to live in the woods. At first it
was glorious. Then it rained all night, and I crawled back next morning
sick and miserable, and was put to bed for a month. I reckon I'll go
home. My White Lead Company's going to burst like all the other bubbles.
I heard this morning. An hour ago I thought, 'Anyway, I've found a good
friend and a wife in Europe.' Now that's gone. But she'll be happy.
You're worth twenty million of me. You won't see me again. I suppose I'm
the sorriest man standing on the earth at the present moment; but you
won't think worse of me than I am, will you?”
He looked sideways at Raine, in his odd, appealing way.
“Upon my soul,” cried Raine, in an outburst of generous feeling,
grasping him by the shoulder, “I don't know whether you are not one of
the most lovable men I have ever met!”
Raine walked back to the pension with love in his heart towards all
mankind. God was in his heaven. All was right with the world.
He found Katherine and Felicia in the salon waiting for dinner, in
company with Mme. Popea and Frau Schultz. Mme. Popea cried out on seeing
him,--“Another happy one! What has made you all look so beatified?”
“The eternal beauty of humanity,” returned Raine, with a smile.
“And you have caught the plague of epigrams,” said Frau Schultz. “I
asked Miss Graves why she had such a colour, and she said, 'because the
world seemed wider to-day.' It's a new language.”
“It is the turn of madame,” said Mme. Popea, in her vivacious way.
Katherine laughed.
“This is not a parlour game, you know. But perhaps it is because I am
going to dine.”
Raine's heart leapt at the little touch of gaiety. His eyes showed her
his gladness. A stream of the other guests entered. She took advantage
of the sudden filling of the salon to draw him to her side. A glance
asked a tremulous question. He reassured her with a whisper, and they
went out on to the balcony.
“I have told my father,” said Raine. “He will love you, dear.”
She pressed his arm for answer. There was a long silence, which Raine,
half divining her mood, would not break. At last he said, lover-wise,--
“Tell me your thoughts, beloved.”
“I was thinking that I have lived thirty-one years, and I have never
known till now what even freedom from care was. I seemed blinded by the
light, like the prisoners let out from the Bastille. There is something
awful in such happiness.”
“It shall be with you to the end,” said Raine.
“I know it,” she replied.
Then, after a pause,--
“I have told Felicia. Do you mind?”
“We owe her a great debt,” said Raine. “She came to me this afternoon,
after leaving you.”
The blood rose in Katherine's cheeks, and she looked up timidly into his
face.
“I think I shall bring her here to you. You will know what to say to
her.”
She disappeared for a moment by the open window, and then returned with
Felicia, whom she left with Raine. He came forward, and took both her
hands in his.
“How can I ever repay you?”
“You have done too much for me already,” said Felicia.
There was a little combat of generous words.
The dinner-gong sounded the end of the talk.
“And the Pension Boccard,” he said; “you will have some pleasant
memories of it?”
“Ah, yes. I owe too much to it.”
“How?” asked Raine.
“You may think it an odd thing to say, but it seems to have changed me
from a girl into a woman.”
“Does that bring you happiness?”
“I don't know,” replied Felicia, musingly.
And then, after a pause,--
“I think so.”
THE END.