“The Moving Finger writes; and having writ
Moves on, nor all thy piety, nor all thy wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears, wash out a word of it.”
“Rubaiyat.”
It was four o’clock in the morning, and across the grey of the sky, a
dawn rush of rain, passed before the windows to glance over the garden,
and vanish in the fields. A chill wind, following after, shook the
trees, and bird after bird awoke, to call out sleepily to each other,
that it was time for the earliest of them to seek his worm.
“Katherine, are you awake?” said Daphne quietly.
Katherine was by her side in an instant. “What is it? I am awake,” she
said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Oh, you must be angry with me!” said Daphne.
“For waking me up?”
“For not telling you, Katherine.”
“You are going to tell me, then?” said Katherine throwing a blanket
around her, and sitting by her friend’s bed-side.
“I have been telling you all night long, I think,” said Daphne. “Now I
have no words left. The morning is coming into the room, isn’t it? Oh,
Katherine, I am afraid of the morning!”
“But you are not afraid of me,” said Katherine quietly. Daphne drew in a
long breath. Katherine took both her hands with the same protecting
gesture that the American had used the night before, and then it seemed
easier for Daphne to speak.
“I loved my father so,” she began. “My mother died when I was born, and
he taught me everything I know, I was with him always, constantly, till
I was sixteen, then he married Vera. He knew nothing at all about women,
he thought they were all angels, and that the lovelier they were, the
better their characters must be. Poor father! that was not very much to
know, was it? He seemed to begin at the wrong end. Vera said she loved
me, and he was beginning to find there were some things hard to teach a
daughter. He never would let me have a governess, or any companion of
that sort, and Vera’s daughter, Lily, was a great friend of mine. He
thought it would make us all very happy, and at first it seemed to, I
was so fond of Lily, and Vera was very kind, and she taught me things I
didn’t know. I think she must have taught me all wrong, for I grew most
unhappy, and father and I seemed separated. Then Lily married. I must go
quickly over this part, Katherine, it was so very terrible. I saw her
only once afterwards, alone, and she asked me if I thought it was wrong
to wish to kill one’s mother, because she did, and she begged me never
to leave them together. I was very, very angry, and I came home, and
said awful things to Vera. I couldn’t tell father, so she made up lies
about me, and asked him to go away for a time, and he did. Katherine,
dear, how fast the morning is coming into the room. There seems very
little air.”
“The window is wide open,” said Katherine, “can’t you hear the birds?
Look! how the curtains blow.”
“They look as if they were shivering,” said Daphne; “you won’t leave go
of my hands, promise me?”
“I won’t leave go of them,” said Katherine.
“Well, then——” Daphne went on, “Vera met Arthur Field, he was not such
a great surgeon then, but she seems to have taken a fancy to him, and
when I sprained my wrist, she asked him to come and see me. He came very
often, far more often than he need. I was only sixteen, Katherine, she
should not have let him come! She wanted him to influence me, she was
terribly jealous of my father. It was only too easy. Arthur was so
clever, so very clever! and so gentle. Men should never be clever and
gentle too, I think, unless they are very good. Arthur was not good, he
wanted me to marry him, and he had a wife, a dreadful woman who drank,
somewhere a long way off I think. Vera was the only person who knew
about it, they neither of them told me. Then father came back, and he
disliked Arthur and would not let me see him, and oh, Katherine, I used
to! Vera never knew, father allowed me perfect freedom. I hated myself
for going, but I used to go! Of course, Vera never meant it to go on so
far, she thought it would take my love away from father, that we should
cease to trust each other, and that she would get a hold over me by
threatening to tell him about some letters of Arthur’s she had
discovered, I don’t know how! If I had been older, I should have told
him everything! Oh, how I wanted to! I used to cry all night sometimes,
I was so ashamed! One day I went to his study to tell him. I went on my
knees beside him, and he kissed me. ‘Look, my darling,’ he said, ‘here
is such a lovely photograph of Vera!’ Oh, Katherine, Katherine, it
nearly broke my heart! I never answered him, I got up and went out of
the room. He called me back, but I never went. I never tried to tell him
again. Arthur wanted to marry me secretly, but I said ‘No’ twenty times
I think, then I said ‘Yes!’”
“You should not have said ‘no’ twenty times, you should have said it
once,” said Katherine.
“I must have some air,” said Daphne.
Together they went to the open window, and Daphne looked out over the
misty fields. The sun behind the hills broke into glory, like a great
red rose, scattering pink petals over the sky.
“It is five o’clock,” said Katherine.
“And the worst of it was,” said Daphne kneeling by the open window, “I
was not sure that I loved him, only sometimes I did. I was terribly
afraid of him. I couldn’t stop his marrying me if he wished to, but oh,
I did so wish someone else to! I suppose it was this that drove me into
telling Vera one night, what I was going to do. I hoped she would tell
my father, but she didn’t. She turned on me and said that I might go to
him if I liked, but that he was married already.
“Then she got frightened and cried, and begged me to forgive her. She
said she had never meant to deceive me, never dreamt that we really
cared for each other, that it was all a dreadful mistake, and that if I
would only not tell my father, she would do anything that I wanted,
anything in the world! Of course I wrote and told Arthur that I would
never see him again, and he came, and I did. Katherine, I don’t think I
can tell you any more.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” said Katherine taking her in her arms. “Now you must
tell me everything.”
“I begged him to let me alone, because of his wife; he said that he was
free. I suppose men always are more or less, aren’t they, unless they
happen to be good? But I said I wasn’t. Finally he agreed that I was
very young to make such a big choice, and he promised me my freedom for
three years, till I was nineteen. His wife might be dead by that time,
and if not, I said that—— Oh, how horrible this light is, Katherine!”
“Hide your head on my shoulder,” said Katherine, “then you won’t see.”
“I said that—it should be as he wished, but I didn’t mean it, I meant
to get engaged to somebody else. Then Vera came in, and he frightened
her to death, and she promised him to let him see me at the end of three
years, and not to tell. After he went, she said I must marry David, and
I said I would, only to let me have my three years first. They seemed to
go so quickly, Katherine, as quickly as the light came up over the hills
just now. I never saw Arthur. He became famous and took up hypnotism,
and father died. Katherine, he never knew. I thought it would kill me,
but of course it didn’t. Sometimes it strikes me that to die, is almost
as difficult as to love, only more final. When Arthur heard that father
was dead, he came back, and Vera took him up tremendously, you see he
was so famous, he was a great catch. And I came here to Uncle Wilfred. I
think that’s all, except last night I accepted David Grey, it was the
only way out of it. Arthur has as much power over me as ever, and the
wife’s alive. Those kind of people don’t die you know, I told him that
before.” Daphne began to laugh. Katherine walked up and down the room,
it was terrible to hear Daphne laughing.
“The beauty of it is,” said Daphne between her sobs of laughter, “that
Arthur told me he hated women to be cynical! Don’t you think men are
very wonderful?”
“I think they are beasts!” said Katherine. “Beasts!”
“Oh, no!” said Daphne with a quick smile, “only a little lower than the
angels, Katherine, a little lower, and you and I would rather have them,
dearest, than the angels, any day, because we are women.”
“And what do you suppose a woman is?” said Katherine savagely.
“One finds it all in Genesis,” said Daphne a little wearily. “She was
tempted by the serpent. (Let’s go to bed, Katherine dear.) And she
handed the temptation on, so perhaps there’s not so very much to choose
between us, after all.” The sun was fully up now, even the latest of the
birds had had his breakfast, and was singing his Choral Celebration on
the lawn.
“I am going to have a cold bath,” said Katherine, “and then I am going
out for a walk.”
“You will terrify the housemaids,” said Daphne sleepily, “but it’s very
like you, dear. Those are the kind of things I want to do, and can’t.”
“You can do a great many other things though,” said Katherine a little
grimly.