On the fourth day, because of a nasty twist at polo, the doctor ordered
Frank to rest. Coaching and golf had left the house deserted as he lay
on the couch in the second hall, thinking of Katrine's masterly deftness
in avoiding him.
"I have never known another woman who could have done it so well," he
thought. "She seems to have neither resentment nor remembrance. It is as
though the whole affair had never been. I wonder--"
The noise of a door opening at the far end of the corridor disturbed his
reflections, and as though walking into his thought, Katrine came down
the hall.
She wore a house-gown of pale blue, low in the neck, with long, flowing
sleeves. Under her arm she carried a music-score in regular school-girl
fashion, and she was humming to herself as she came.
Frank lay perfectly still; his eyes closed as she approached him.
"I am not going to bid you a good-morning, seeing that I am obliged by
doctor's orders to do it in this position. It doesn't seem respectful,"
he explained.
The surprise, the dimples, the gay, low laugh seemed such a part of her
as she paused beside his couch.
"You are ill?" she asked. "Or," with a twinkle of the wide eyes, "didn't
you want to go on the coaching-party?"
"I took a fall at polo yesterday. I was not at dinner last night. I am
flattered at the way you have dwelt upon my absence."
"I dined at the Crosbys' or I might have spent a sleepless night
concerning it. There were a great many people there. Your friend,
Dermott McDermott, for one. He is coming here to-day." Her face was
illumined by the spirit of teasing as she spoke. "Only," she went on,
with a sweet and instant sympathy, "I am hoping you are not badly hurt
or suffering."
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, the matter, except the doctor. He
is all broken up over the accident, and says I must lie here or
somewhere for two or three days to cure a wrench in my back which I
didn't have."
Katrine laughed as she turned to go.
"I was intending to study some," she said, looking down at her music.
"Will it annoy you?"
A quick, amused smile came to his face at the question, and he looked up
with eyes full of laughter as he answered:
"Certainly, I am naturally unappreciative of music."
"I didn't mean that," Katrine explained, smiling back at him as she went
along the corridor.
"Miss Dulany!" he called.
She turned toward him, her face waiting and expectant.
"As the German girl said in _Rudder Grange_, 'It is very loneful here.'"
"You mean," she asked, "that you would like to have me stay with you?"
"Nobody on earth could have stated my wish more accurately," he
answered, in a merry, impersonal tone, as though addressing some
imaginary third person.
She came back to him, drawing a low wicker chair near the couch and
putting her music on the floor beside her. "I shall be glad to stay if
you want me to. Shall we talk?" And here she took up the books he had
put beside him for amusement. "Balzac, Daudet." She made a little
disapproving gesture.
"You do not care for them?" he asked.
"They are not for me, those horrible realist folk. I like books where
things fall as they should rather than as they do; and the poetry where
beautiful things happen. Things as they aren't are what I care for in
literature."
He laughed. "We won't read," he said, "and _I_ sha'n't talk. You must.
All about yourself, the wonderful things that you have been living and
achieving. You will tell it all in just your own way, full of quick
pauses and sentences finished by funny little gestures."
This was dangerous walking, and he felt it on the instant.
But the Irish of the girl, the instinct to make a story, to entertain,
came at his demanding, bringing the old gleam back to her eyes.
"Ah!" she said, deprecatingly. "The tale of me! It would bore you, would
it not? It is just full of Josef and work and the Countess and Father
Menalis and a few great names, and then more work, with a little more
Josef," she added, with a smile. And then dropping into the warm,
sweet, intimate tones he remembered so well, she said, simply, "It was
hard, but glorious in a way, too," she added, after a moment's thinking,
"every morning to awaken with the thought of something most important to
do; work which one loves, lessons with this great, great soul who knows
why art is! The languages for one's art, the fencing for one's art, the
eating, breathing, dancing, thinking, living for one's art! With Josef's
eternal 'Think it over! Think it over!' and Paris with all of its
beautiful past! And there were lonesome days, too, when I felt I could
never do it, with sleepless nights of discouragements. Ah," she said,
the scarlet coming to her cheeks, "I have lived! It's a great thing to
say that, isn't it? But I have lived! One day, I remember, Josef was all
fussed up. It was a horror of a day, and he told me that maybe I would
never sing, that my temperament might not do, and I went home with
thoughts of suicide and didn't go back to him for nearly a week. Then he
sent for me. 'Where have you been?' he demanded, fiercely. 'I am going
to give it all up,' I answered. And he took me by the shoulders. 'My
God!' he cried, 'with a genius like yours, _could_ you give it up?' 'But
you said the last time I was here--' I began. 'Bah!' he interrupted,
putting his hand on my shoulder, 'you can't believe a word I say. I am a
great liar.' And we both cried a little, although, even then, he kept
telling me how bad crying was for the voice, and we did some Pagliacci
together, just as if nothing had happened."
"It must have been a wonderful life," Francis said, a great appreciation
in his voice.
"It was; I miss it here--some, although people are so kind. And you?"
she demanded. "Tell me about yourself."
"There is nothing to tell. Things are just the same with me. I suppose
they will never be much different."
"Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful
things in business."
He smiled, but made no explanation. "Are your engagements arranged as
yet, Katrine?" he asked.
"It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first. It is what I
want most if I sing in public next winter at all."
There was a pause.
"You have not changed so much as I had thought," he said, at length.
"More than I show, I am afraid," she answered.
"Oh," he returned, "even I can discern some changes. You are more, if I
wanted to be subtly flattering, I should say, you are more beautiful,
more of the world in appearance, and I know what the Countess meant when
she said you were becoming 'epic, grand, and homicidal,' or something
like that."
"How horrible!" she laughed.
"Not at all, only not as I remembered you." He spoke the words slowly,
against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct,
looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over
three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir
him as no other eyes had ever done. And it seemed to him as though in
that look all conventions were dropped between them. "You were kind to
me then, Katrine."
She looked at him steadily, as a child might have done, with no
shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she
asked, wistfully. "Were you very kind to me?"
"I was not. God!" he said, "if you could only know how I have suffered
for the way I acted! To feel such shame as I have felt! Oh," he cried,
"nobody on earth could make me talk this way but you! There was always
between us a curious understanding, wasn't there, Katrine, even apart
from the other?" He finished vaguely.
"I knew you would suffer. I was sorry for that," she answered, gravely.
"Were you, truly? Were you big enough for that?"
"Well," and the sad smile with which the Irish so often speak of
personal grief came to her lips, "you see, I loved you. And when one
loves one wishes for happiness for the one beloved, does one not? Yes,"
she said, "I was honestly sorry to think that you would have even a
regret. I would have taken all the sorrow if I could."
"You loved me then?" His head was gone. He remembered only the sweetness
of her presence and the nearness of her. "You did love me then,
Katrine?"
She rose suddenly as though to leave him.
"Don't go," he said, reaching his hand toward her with pleading in his
tone.
She reseated herself, her face exquisitely pale. "Ah," she said, "you
know I loved you! I was so young, and it was all so terrible to me!
Please God, you may never suffer as I did! I have lain awake night after
night praying to die, or waking with dread at the knowledge that as soon
as consciousness came the horrible pain would return with it, and there
came the resentment to the great God for my birth, as though that could
make any real difference. But it was good for me. The very best thing in
all the world. Nothing else could ever have taught me as it did."
"Katrine!" he cried, and, the doctor's orders forgotten, he sat up and
leaned toward her "believe me, I have waited all these years to see you,
to talk with you! But unless two people are entirely honest, I knew the
thing would be impossible. I thought you would forgive me, would
understand as you grew older!"
"I understood then," she interrupted. "My whole life had trained me to
understand. I was not in the least critical of you. I am not now. You
followed your birth and your training. You had been taught no
self-control. Women had spoiled you. You had never had to consider
others. I want to be perfectly frank with you about it all. I never
deceived you in word, tone, or look. I shall not begin now. You were my
ideal man in everything. You know," she paused, an amused smile upon her
lips and her lids lowered, "you know I thought Henry of Agincourt, Wolfe
Tone, and Robert Bruce must have been like you, and I was grateful to
the good God for letting me live in your time and country."
She ceased speaking, and her eyes rested upon the far-away sea with the
remembering tenderness a woman might give to an old plaything of
childhood before she continued:
"It was from Josef, of course, that I had most help, always belittling
this affair, always trying to make me forget in work. I was too tired at
night to grieve; I had to sleep. 'Women,' he said, 'coddle their griefs!
They revel in hopeless passion! They nurse it! Remember,' he said,
'there are two ways to forget: weeping and making swings.' Well," she
finished, "he taught me to make swings."
"And you have forgotten?" Francis asked, standing beside her, magnetic,
compelling, taken out of himself.
Memories were drawing them together. Remembered kisses, words, spoken
lips to lips, and that elemental sweet attraction of man for woman,
which should be ranked with the other great elemental things like fire,
water, earth, and air. Katrine rose also, and they stood looking into
each other's eyes.
"No," she answered, quite steadily, "I have not forgotten. I never shall
forget. I would give my life to feel that you are the man I once
believed you to be, the man I believe you could have been."
"Will you be frank with me, Katrine?" he demanded.
"Have I ever been anything else?" she questioned, in return.
"You have avoided me since you came."
"Yes, only I hope not noticeably."
"No, it was well done, but why?"
"Can you ask?"
"I do ask."
"I did not want ever to see you again nor to talk to you as we are
talking now."
"Answer me, Katrine!" he cried, bending toward her. "Answer me! Why did
you never want to see me again?"
There still was the look in her eyes of sweetest frankness as she
answered: "There were many reasons before I saw you that first night why
I should never wish to see you again. But after that there was only
one--one--one that filled my mind. I am afraid."
"Afraid!" he repeated, with the man's look of the chase in his eye,
"afraid of what, Katrine?"
She had moved by the fireplace, and with a hand on the chimney-shelf
turned her eyes to meet his own, with the clear, unafraid look in them
of the olden times.
"When I first saw you here, the night I sang, I became afraid you were a
man whom I had simply overestimated in the past because of my youth. I
have avoided you ever since for fear I should find it to be true. I am
afraid you are a man who is simply 'not worth while.'" The words were
spoken softly, even with a certain odd tenderness, but they struck
Francis Ravenel like a blow in the face, and he set his lips, as a man
does in physical suffering.
"I think it is just," he said, at length. "I think that describes me as
I am: a man who is not worth while. Only, you see, Katrine, I was not
prepared to hear the truth from you." He grew white as he spoke. "In all
of your letters you spoke so divinely of that old-time love."
For an instant she regarded him with startled attention, her eyebrows
drawn together, both hands brought suddenly to her throat.
"My letters," she repeated, "my letters!" And then, her quick intuition
having told her all, "How could you do it? Oh, how could you do it?" she
cried, the tears in her eyes and the quick sobs choking her speech. "It
was you who sent me abroad to study! It is you to whom I am indebted
for all: Josef, the Countess, my voice! Ah, you let a girl write her
heart out to you, to flatter your--Oh, forgive me!" choking with the
sobs which had become continuous, "forgive me!" she cried, as she laid
her head on her arms by the corner of the chimney. "Forgive me!" she
repeated. "I said once (you will remember, I wrote it, too) that I would
try never to criticise you by word or thought. I want to be true to
that, even _now_. Only," she said, pressing her hand over her heart, "I
hurt so! The pain makes me say things I would rather not say. Oh, I
wonder if another man in all the world ever hurt a woman's pride as you
have hurt mine!"
"Katrine," Frank said, "God knows I never intended to tell you! There
was always the thought in my mind that you should never know, but you
hurt me so, I forgot. Oh, Katrine, forgive me!"
"I _am_ grateful," she interrupted, in her hurried, generous way,
"grateful for the kind thought for me; but I am angry, too, so angry
that I don't dare trust myself," she smiled through her tears, the
funny, heart-breaking smile. She gathered up her music. "Good-bye," she
said, "I shall try to go away in the morning." And with no offer of
handshaking she passed him, and he heard her softly close and lock the
door of her sitting-room.
He knew she would keep her word, knew that the morning would take her
from him, and the pain of hurt pride and wounded love goading him on, he
covered the distance to the bolted door.
"Katrine!" he called.
Within he heard the noise of sobbing, of quick breaths choked with pain.
"Katrine Dulany!" he repeated, with tenderness.
"Yes!" she answered from within.
"I want to speak to you."
There was no response.
"I must speak to you, Katrine."
He waited, fearing her new contempt, until the silence became
unendurable.
"Katrine," he said, "you will either come out or I will come in."
There was another silence before there came, at the end of the lower
corridor, a great commotion of quick orders given and executed, of
luggage being placed, and through it all a low singing as of one much at
home. It would be an awkward situation, he thought, for the servants to
find him clamoring at Miss Dulany's door, and as he moved toward the
window the singing grew nearer, breaking into a loud voice at the top of
the steps,
"War dogs tattered and gray,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighting in every clime
Every cause but our own,"
and Dermott the jaunty, the extremely elegant, in black riding-clothes,
with the jewelled crop of North Carolina days, stood in the afternoon
sunlight at the head of the great stairs.
"Ah, Ravenel," he cried, "I have been staying at the Crosbys', and heard
but last night from Miss Dulany that you were here! I accepted the
invitation Van Rensselaer hadn't yet given me to ride over and stay
awhile. I am," and here he had the superb impudence to adjust an
eyeglass for a complete survey of Frank, "I am interested in your doings
just now, Ravenel, very much interested," he repeated, with a smile.