Transcriber's Note:
The original text uses 'aa' or 'ã' (a tilde) for 'å' (a ring);
'ø' is represented by 'ö', and 'ae' by 'æ'. All incidences of 'ã'
(a tilde) have been edited to 'å' (a ring).
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
WAR OF THE CAROLINAS. _Meredith Nicholson._
ROMANCE. _Joseph Conrad._
LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER. _Mrs. Humphry Ward._
THE PRIMROSE PATH. _Mrs. Oliphant._
THOMPSON'S PROGRESS. _C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne._
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. _H. G. Wells._
THE FOOD OF THE GODS. _H. G. Wells._
KIPPS. _H. G. Wells._
CYNTHIA'S WAY. _Mrs. A. Sidgwick._
CLARISSA FURIOSA. _W. E. Norris._
HIS GRACE. _W. E. Norris._
RAFFLES. _E. W. Hornung._
FRENCH NAN. _Agnes & Egerton Castle._
SPRINGTIME. _H. C. Bailey._
MOONFLEET. _J. Meade Falkner._
WHITE FANG. _Jack London._
MAJOR VIGOUREUX. "_Q._"
EIGHT DAYS. _R. E. Forrest._
THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. _Sir G. Parker._
FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M'NAB. _S. Macnaughtan._
OLD GORGON GRAHAM. _George Horace Lorimer._
MRS. GALER'S BUSINESS. _W. Pett Ridge._
THE PIT. _Frank Norris._
THE OCTOPUS. _Frank Norris._
MARCELLA. _Mrs. Humphry Ward._
THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. _Anthony Hope._
THE GOD IN THE CAR. _Anthony Hope._
THE PRINCESS PASSES. _C. N. & A. M. Williamson._
_And Many Other Equally Popular Copyright Novels._
_NELSON'S LIBRARY._
[Illustration: With one tremendous effort he broke down the wall of
reserve.]
KATHARINE
FRENSHAM
A Novel
BEATRICE
HARRADEN
THOMAS NELSON
AND SONS
[Illustration]
"Midway the road of our life's term they met,
And one another knew without surprise;
Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
To them it was revealed how they had found
The kindred nature and the needed mind,
The mate by long conspiracy designed;
The flower to plant in sanctuary ground."
--George Meredith.
NOTE.
My thanks are due to Herr Sigurd Hals (Christiania) for permission
to use from his _Hals-Album_ the Norwegian folk-songs: "Aagot's
Mountain-song;" "Astri, my Astri;" "Home from the Saeter."
And to Herr Wilhelm Hansen (Copenhagen) for permission to use from
his _Danmark's melodie bog_ the Danish song, "Thou who hast sorrow
in thy heart."
And to Herr Abraham Lundquist (Stockholm) for permission to use
from his _Svenska Folkvisor_ the Swedish song, "At daytime when
I'm working."
BEATRICE HARRADEN.
HAMPSTEAD, _Oct., 1903_.
CONTENTS.
PART I. PAGE
IN ENGLAND . . . . . . . 7
PART II.
IN NORWAY . . . . . . . 131
PART III.
IN ENGLAND . . . . . . . 347
PART I.
IN ENGLAND.
KATHARINE FRENSHAM.
CHAPTER I.
"Do you understand, Alan, my boy?" asked Clifford Thornton.
"No, father, I don't," the boy said in a low voice. "It seems all such a
fuss about nothing. Why can't you and mother have it out like any other
fellows, and then make it up and be friends? You can't think how easy it
is."
"We have been doing that for fifteen years and more--all your lifetime,"
the man said.
"I never knew it was as bad as that," Alan said.
"We tried to spare you the full knowledge of it," the man answered
gently. "But now that you are old enough to know, we are obliged to tell
you that we are not, never have been, happy together, and that we do not
wish to be together. We spoil each other's lives."
Alan was sitting on the sofa. He stirred a little, and then suddenly,
without any warning, burst into tears. Although he admired his mother's
personality and bearing, he had never been particularly attached to her;
but with that conservative conventionalism characteristic of an English
boy, he was mortified, and felt it to be a disgrace that there should be
any serious disagreement between his parents.
Clifford Thornton looked at the boy whom he loved and whom he had
wounded; and he recognised with a sharp pain of regret that Alan was
still too young and too sensitive for the news which had been broken to
him. Bitterly the man reproached himself for his selfishness. And yet he
had waited for this moment for fifteen long years--more than that; for
he and his wife had discovered at the onset that they were out of
sympathy, each having an _aura_ hostile to the other. Then the child had
come, and these two naturally antipathetic people had thought: "We shall
draw nearer to each other because of the child."
But Nature is merciless in many of her ways, and mysterious; and perhaps
her greatest and subtlest human mystery is the strife, conscious or
unconscious, of one individuality with another individuality. And she
gives no balm for it. On the contrary, she gives a sort of morbid
remorse, wholly out of proportion to the quality and quantity of
mistakes and failings born necessarily of unsuitable companionship.
Clifford Thornton bent over him and put his hand on the lad's shoulder.
"Alan," he said, almost imploringly. "Don't fret like that. We will talk
about it another time. Come, pull yourself together. We will go for a
ride, and you can try the new cob."
The boy sobbed on as though he had not heard.
"Alan," Clifford Thornton said.
The boy looked up, and stifled his last sob.
"I don't want to go riding," he said. "I want to go and be alone."
He rose from the sofa and dried his eyes. He did not seem ashamed of his
tears; he offered no excuses for his sudden outburst of grief.
"I'm awfully upset, father," he said with trembling voice.
"I have done you an injury to-day," his father said, "and I can never
forgive myself. I have taken away from you something which I can never
give back--that splendid belief of childhood that everything is going on
all right."
Alan did not seem to hear. He took his cap from the writing-table and
turned towards the door. It was evident that he wanted to say something
to his father, but that the words would not come. He opened the door
slowly and passed out. Clifford Thornton watched him, and watched the
door close, and then stood still a moment, waiting, longing, and
listening. But when he realised that the boy had indeed gone, he slipped
into his study chair and leaned back, his arms folded tightly together,
and his thin face drawn into an expression of great pain. The thoughts
which passed through his mind kept him chained there, as one paralysed.
Not a muscle of his face moved. He might have been a dead man staring at
nothing. At last, perhaps half an hour afterwards, the door opened, and
Alan came back.
"Father," he said shyly. "It's all right now. Let us go riding, after
all."
The strain on the man's face relaxed. Father and son clasped hands.
CHAPTER II.
Mrs Thornton, who had been making a tour in Scotland with her friend,
Mrs Stanhope, returned to her home the next day after Clifford
Thornton's interview with his boy. The Thorntons lived in Surrey, in a
beautiful house standing with fifteen acres of untouched heather around
it, not far from Farnham. It was called "Falun" after the place in
Dalecarlia, Sweden, where Clifford Thornton's father had been educated
at the celebrated School of Mines, since removed to Stockholm.
Mrs Thornton arrived at Farnham about five o'clock. Alan went to meet
her at the station, and even during their drive home to "Falun," Mrs
Thornton noticed that there was something unusually strained in the
boy's manner. She herself was in a state of great mental excitement,
having been urged by her friend, Mrs Stanhope, who had always taken an
unsympathetic view of Clifford's character, to propose to him an
immediate deed of separation.
Marianne Thornton was a beautiful, imperious woman, with an impossible
temper and an impracticable temperament; she never had been, and never
could have been controlled by any one. But this evening, something
tugged at her heart when she saw that her boy, whom she loved in her
turbulent way, was in trouble; and when they were alone in her boudoir,
she questioned him in her abrupt fashion which so often jarred on her
husband consciously and her son unconsciously.
"Father told me yesterday that you were not happy together," he said
shyly, as he played with the spoon in his teacup. "It upset me rather. I
am awfully sorry about it, mother."
He did not look at her when he spoke, and did not see the sudden flush
on her handsome face. She herself had meant to tell Alan. It had never
entered her head for one moment that Clifford, who, so she knew in her
heart of hearts, had borne with her patiently, would have taken the
initiative and opened the subject to the boy in her absence. She was
stung beyond bearing.
"Happy!" she said excitedly. "Who could be happy with your father? So he
has been speaking to you about me, has he? And what has he been daring
to say against me?"
"He never said anything against you," the boy answered, in a low voice.
"He only told me you were not happy together."
She arranged the cushions on the sofa angrily, and leaned amongst them
angrily.
"Happy!" she said. "I should like to know who could be happy with your
father--a man of no heart, no emotions, selfish beyond words, and unkind
beyond belief."
"Oh, mother, that's not true," the boy said, with an indignant outburst.
"Father is always good and kind. I never once heard him say an unkind
word to you or me. It's all your fault. It's your temper. That's what it
is."
His championship of his father aroused all the anger and jealousy in
her nature.
She got up from the sofa and turned to him.
"You are just like him," she cried passionately, "just like him. Make
your lives together, and find your happiness in each other. I don't want
either of you."
She hastened from the room, swept down the stairs, swept through the
hall, through the study and flung the door of the laboratory violently
open.
Clifford, who was a chemist, was distilling over a flame a substance
which represented more than a month's work. Marianne's sudden entry made
him jerk the bottom of the flask containing it against the ring of the
retort-stand. The flask cracked, and in an instant the whole of the
contents blazed off and disappeared.
She did not notice, and would not have cared if she had noticed.
"What have you been saying to the boy?" she asked, in her tempestuous
manner.
Clifford moved round, looked at her, and leaned against the bench.
"I have told him that we are not happy, and that we must part," he
answered.
Something in his manner, something in his face, in the tone of finality
in his voice arrested her. She glanced at him, glanced at the obvious
signs of his lost labour, and some words rose to her lips, but she did
not speak them. She went towards the door, and there she paused and
turned towards him. He was still leaning against the bench, and his
whole bearing denoted that of a man who can deal no more with despairing
conditions. She knew then that everything was over between them. She
retired to her room, and was not seen any more that evening.
Father and son took their dinner in silence, and no reference was made
to Mrs Thornton's absence. It was tacitly understood by them both that
she was in one of her tempers, which were, alas! part and parcel of the
"Falun" everyday life.
Clifford and the boy played a game of billiards, and then both father
and son went to develop some photographs in the dark room, which
adjoined the laboratory. They were not happy; but like two criminals,
they felt a certain amount of easement in being together.
At last Alan went to bed, and his father shut himself up in his
laboratory and tried to work out some structural formulae in connection
with certain experimental data he had obtained. But his mental serenity
had been disturbed by his wife's return, and he was disheartened by the
loss of the result of his work. That was only one of the many times when
Marianne had burst into the laboratory and spoilt his experiments, and
he was annoyed with himself for not having remembered to turn the key
and thus secure himself from an unwelcome intrusion. He struggled some
time with conflicting thoughts, but eventually came into his study and
drew his chair up to the fire; for it was a cold September night. He sat
there staring at the fire, and his mind wandered back to his happy
student days under Bayer in Munich, and Hofmann in Berlin, when
everything seemed possible to him because his mind was free from
harassment. He glanced at Hofmann's portrait, which was hanging over the
mantelpiece, and he heard once more the man's genial voice, and felt the
charm of his genial presence. A thrill of pleasure and enthusiasm passed
through him. For three years he had studied with Hofmann, and had
finally become his private assistant, only leaving him to take over the
Professorship of Chemistry at Aberystwith College, a post which he held
for two years. Then his father, a mining engineer, died, leaving him a
considerable fortune; and he was thus able to devote himself entirely to
research work, his subjects being the study of stereo-isomeric
compounds, and syntheses amongst the vegetable alkaloids. It was during
his last year at Berlin that he had met and married Marianne Dacre, the
beautiful daughter of a widowed Englishwoman keeping an English
boarding-house in the German capital. When his father died, they settled
down with their little son at "Falun," and from that moment until this
very evening, happiness had been a stranger to the home. Yet the man was
made for happiness. He would have been glad enough to love and be loved.
But he had, of his own free will, chosen badly, and he had to pay the
penalty. And he paid it with all the chivalry and kindness which were
part of his nature. But the moment had come when he realised that he had
paid enough, and as he sat there, half-musing, half-dozing, he said:
"I have paid enough. I can and will pay no more."
And suddenly he fell asleep from sheer mental exhaustion, and he
dreamed. He dreamed that he was telling his wife all his locked inmost
thoughts of her. He had kept them controlled so long and so sternly,
that now they came tumbling out with reckless abandonment.
"You have never known me for what I am," he said passionately. "You have
spoiled my life, my spirit, and ruined my best talents. I tell you I had
talents before you came and trampled on them. Listen to me. If ever a
man has been spiritually murdered, it is I. But now the barrier of
silence has broken down, and I dare to tell you what in my inmost heart
I really think of you. I dare to tell you that I despise your paltry
mind and petty temperament; that your atmosphere is an insult to me, and
that I long and thirst and am starved to be free from the pressure of
your daily presence. You have been merciless to me with your
uncontrolled rages, your insane jealousies of me, my work, my ambitions,
and my friends. I can bear it all no longer. The day on which we go our
own ways, will be the day of my re-birth. And that day shall be
to-morrow--now--even now. No, no, don't begin to argue with me,
Marianne. There is nothing you can say to me either about yourself or
the boy that could alter my determination. We have delayed too long
already, and the precious years are passing. Sixteen wasted years--oh,
the hopeless folly of them, and leading to what? No, no, I'll listen to
no more arguments--there is no sense in this continued penance. We must
and shall part to-morrow; no, no--now--this moment--ah, at last, at
last--freedom at last!"
He awoke and looked around his quiet study.
"Ah," he said, "it was a dream. I am glad, in spite of everything, that
it was a dream. I am glad that I did not say those things to her in
reality. The look of pain and astonishment on her face would have
haunted me all my life."
He shuddered.
"It was horrible," he said. "Poor Marianne, poor Marianne! You must not
know the truth which kills. Poor Marianne! We must pick up the bits
to-morrow--somehow."
Then he turned down the lights, and went upstairs. His wife's door was
open, and he heard her voice calling him.
"Clifford, Clifford!" she cried, as though in some great danger.
He hastened his steps, and found Marianne standing in the middle of the
room, her hair dishevelled, her eyes transfixed, and her face bearing
the same expression of pain and astonishment which he had seen in his
dreams.
"Good God!" he cried. "What is it, Marianne?"
"Clifford," she sobbed, "I dreamed that you had been telling me you
hated and despised me, that I was an insult to your life and talents,
that I had ruined your life, murdered your spirit, and crushed out all
the best in you. Tell me, tell me, it was only a dream. I know we have
not been happy, but--but--it could not have been as bad as that. Tell
me, it was only a dream--but, oh, Clifford, it was so vivid, so
penetrating that I cannot believe it was a dream. I heard your
voice--your real voice; tell me--tell me----"
"It was only a dream," he said excitedly, "nothing but a dream. You must
not look like that. I cannot bear you to look like that. It is more than
I can bear. You must forget about it, and we will begin all over again
to-morrow. I never said those things to you--thank Heaven, I never said
them to you--it was only a dream--your dream--and my dream."
He could have bitten his tongue out after he had said those last words.
"Your dream?" she cried, with a ring of despair in her voice.
"Marianne," he said, gathering himself, and all the best in himself,
together for victory over his temperament and hers--"oh, Marianne, we
are not to be held responsible for our dreams. You know how it is with
our restless, wayward fancies: one little passing discord in real life
becomes magnified and expanded into an immense orchestra of discordant
strains in that dream-life over which we seem to have no control. Don't
you understand--can't you understand?"
"You dreamed it," she said slowly, "and it was so vivid to you that it
broke through all barriers and reached me in my dream. It must have been
born of your inmost thoughts, bred up and strengthened through these
long years of our misunderstandings, until it reached its full maturity.
We should indeed each have gone a separate way long ago. But it is not
too late even now."
"Not too late to find the key to each other even now," he said. "Let us
try to do it. Where others have failed, let us make a triumph. It is not
our hearts which are at war, Marianne: our hearts mean well to each
other. It is our temperaments which cause all the strife."
"We can make no triumph," she answered. "I have ruined your life,
murdered your spirit, crushed out the best in you."
"It was a dream," he cried passionately. "Let it go the way of all
dreams."
She shook her head.
"We must part to-morrow," she said, "and to-morrow will be the day of
your re-birth."
"You stab me with your words," he said, as he passed, with head bowed,
to the door.
"And you stab me with your dreams," she replied.
"We are both very unhappy," he said, as he paused on the threshold.
"Yes," she said, "very unhappy."
And she closed her door.
He stood alone on the landing. There was not a sound to be heard within
the house or without. It was a still September night, so that even the
branches of the trees were not moved in music. The harvest moon shone in
coldly. The world seemed lonely to that lonely man.
"What a failure I have made of everything," he said to himself--"even of
my silence."
He longed for some kind word, for some arresting glance of sympathy; but
life could yield nothing to him in his moment of need. He thought of his
boy whom he loved with all his heart, and he remembered only that he had
deliberately made the lad suffer. He forgot all the years of intimate
companionship which they two had enjoyed together, all the secret
understanding so precious to both of them. These memories, which might
have comforted him, and eloquently too, were silent; and because he was
gentle and generous-hearted, he had to pay the uttermost price for the
emotions which were the finest in his nature. He remembered only that he
had wounded Marianne, hurt her to the quick, and that if he got his
liberty--after fifteen years of bondage--he would be even as a released
prisoner to whom the sweets of freedom had become distasteful.
He went mechanically down the stairs, let himself out of the hall-door,
and stole round to the stables. Bully, the bull-terrier, knew his
master's footstep, and, as a welcome, beat his tail against his kennel.
Jinny, the brown mare, was asleep at the time; but she woke up and
neighed softly when she heard her master's voice, and was eager enough
to be saddled for a midnight ride. It was not the first time that she
had been called upon to sacrifice her own slumbers to his restlessness.
Many a time she and he had ridden out into the darkness and the tempest
and the moonlight of the night.
When he came back again, it was nearly five o'clock. Worn out in body
and spirit, he flung himself on his bed, fell asleep, and only awoke to
the sound of some commotion in the house, and cries of "Father, father."
He sprang up, opened the door, and found Alan outside.
"Father," he cried. "Mother----"
Clifford Thornton saw the look of alarm on his boy's face, and rushed to
Marianne's room. The door stood open. Marianne was leaning back in the
arm-chair--dead.
CHAPTER III.
There was, of course, an inquest, and then poor Marianne Thornton was
laid to rest in the little Surrey churchyard five miles from "Falun."
The verdict was death from sudden failure of the heart's action, due
probably to some shock, the exact nature of which was unknown.
"She must have had some shock, some great fright," Dr Aldborough
deposed. "The expression on her face was that of excessive alarm. It may
have been a dream--I have met with three such curious instances in my
experience. Moreover, it was known to us all that Mrs Thornton was
suffering from valvular disease of the heart. She had only lately been
consulting a new heart-specialist."
"It was a dream," Clifford Thornton stated, "and she called to me, and I
found her with that same expression of alarm on her face, and I tried to
calm her and failed. And feeling heavy of heart, I saddled my horse and
went riding."
"And the nature of the dream?" he was asked.
He shook his head.
"I do not know," he said. "I only know it was a dream."
He had made up his mind to keep that secret, chiefly for Alan's sake. He
felt that he had already injured the boy, and no word of his should now
add to the heavy burden of hastened knowledge.
"If I began to speak of it," he said to himself, "I should go on to tell
him that I had killed her--and in time he would believe it--even as I
do."
That was the torturing thought which at once began to assail him,
although he fought it with all the weapons of reason and common-sense.
He fought it even at the side of the grave, his impenetrable face
showing no sign of the mental torture which he was enduring unhelped by
any one. But when they came back to "Falun" after the funeral, he put
his hands on Alan's shoulders and said sorrowfully:
"Alan, I would give my right hand, and the sight of my eyes, and the
strength of my brain, if only I could unsay what I said to you the other
day about your mother."
"Oh, father," the boy answered, in a paroxysm of grief, "perhaps we did
not love her enough."
He broke off there, and they did not speak together further, both being
of painfully reserved natures; but each wrung the other's hand silently,
in token of closer friendship, and throughout that sad day they did not
leave each other's side. The doctor called in during the afternoon, and
found them in the study sitting close together and trying to interest
themselves in a new book on architecture, which was Alan's beloved
subject, and for which he had undoubted talent. They looked so desolate
and pathetic that Dr Aldborough, who had always been attracted to this
reserved man and his son, was concerned for their welfare. He offered no
un-timely word of comfort or cheer, but he said to them:
"Come out with me. It is a splendid afternoon. I have to drive over to
Midhurst, and the air will do you both good. You will sleep better. And
Alan shall handle the greys, whilst we smoke."
The boy brightened up at once.
"Let us go, father," he said, a little eagerly.
"You go," his father answered. "I think I shall stay here."
"Then I shall stay," Alan said. "I couldn't be without you."
"In that case we will both go," Professor Thornton answered, smiling;
and so they went off, thankful really for the break in that long day.
When they came back that evening, they were a little more cheerful in
spite of themselves, and Alan went to bed and slept, and Clifford wrote
to his old Danish governess, Miss Knudsgaard, telling her of his wife's
sudden death, and asking her to come over. Then he sat thinking of his
dead wife and of all the circumstances of their married life. He
recalled to himself how bitterness of spirit and tenderness of intention
had been ever at war within him. He had no sooner recovered from an
attack of bitterness, than he was assailed by prolonged paroxysms of
self-reproach, which tore him to shreds even more ruthlessly than his
feelings of self-commiseration. He recalled all the petty strain and
stress of trifling tragedies which had been steadily impairing his
mental serenity. He hardened himself when he thought of that.
"This tragedy has happened," he said, "and through no fault of mine. I
must not let it spoil the rest of my life. I am forty-three. What cannot
a man still do and be at forty-three? I will battle with it until I
conquer it. It shall not crush me. No, it shall not."
He rose from his chair with a grim determination in his manner.
"Do you hear what I say?" he said, as though to a vast audience. "It
shall not crush me."
Then his eyes lighted on a box of his wife's letters and papers which
had been found in her room. He opened the box and took out some of the
papers. A few of them were receipted accounts. Several of them were
letters evidently written on that last night, gummed down, and stamped
ready for the post. One was to her intimate friend, Julia Stanhope, with
whom she had been touring in Scotland: a woman whom he had always
disliked, and who, so he thought, had always encouraged poor Marianne's
displays of uncontrolled anger. He put the letters into the post-box.
And here apparently was her journal. He did not know that she had kept a
journal. He smiled sadly as he thought of all the stormy scenes it must
surely record. He did not read it. He tore it up and threw the fragments
in the fire, and watched them curl up and carry their secret away with
them. But one page, the last page, had escaped the destruction, and fell
at his feet. He picked it up and he saw these words:
"_September 20th_.--Had another temper to-night. As usual, bitterly,
bitterly sorry. If only I could tell him; but I can't, and I won't."
Those must have been her last written words. They touched the most
tender chords in the man's highly-strung gentle nature. He forgot his
own sufferings: his own outraged peace and harmony of spirit: his own
ambitions and schemes marred by constant turmoil of mind: his own broad
outlook on life stealthily fenced in, now in one direction and now
another, by her compelling pettiness of temperament. All this he forgot.
She had not understood him--but--had he ever understood her? Ah, that
was it--that was the crux of the whole matter; and he remembered now
that never once had she reproached him with that. Never once had she
said to him:
"And do you think there has been nothing to understand in me? I may not
be the marvellous person you suppose yourself to be. I may not have all
the gifts you are supposed to have; but at least I am a human being,
with my own necessities and crying demands, no less importunate with me
than yours with you."
Never had she said that to him. But he said it to himself over and over
again, and almost broke his heart in the repeating of it.
CHAPTER IV.
"And so you have come home at last, dear old Katharine," Ronald Frensham
said to his sister as they both sat over the fire in the music-room of
Ronald's house in Kensington, one evening in the middle of March. "It is
good to see you again."
Katharine Frensham said nothing, but held out her hand, which her
brother grasped silently. There was a harmony in the atmosphere, a
silent song of friendship. The faces of both brother and sister wore
that expression of quiet happiness always unmistakable when people of
the right temperament are feeling how gracious a thing it is to be
together once more. The music-room, too, delicately furnished, was
restful to the eye; and there seemed to be an appropriate sympathy
between the pictures on the walls, the books on the shelves, and the
musical instruments, some of the latter lying about casually, and others
carefully enshrined in a Chippendale cabinet. A small organ at the other
end of the room gave a dignity to the surroundings peculiar entirely to
the presence of that most compelling of all musical instruments. A
little white Pomeranian dog was curled up in front of the fire, and
added for the time to the effect of peacefulness. Of course one knew
that directly the music began, he would get up, yell, refuse to be
removed, and go as near as possible to the very source of his
nerve-disturbance; but for the moment he was in a dog's Paradise--on the
best rug in the room, near those he loved best, and therefore in tune
with self and circumstance.
It was now nearly three years since Ronald had married, and Katharine
had left England to travel about the world alone. She and her brother
had always been close friends, and their companionship had ever been a
joy to themselves and to those who knew them. Since childhood they had
been called "the inseparables." They had fished together, climbed trees,
fought, followed the otter hounds in their old Somersetshire home,
stolen, ridden, and accomplished all their fun and wickedness in close
partnership. And together they had loved their mother passionately. And
when she died, she said to them, "Love each other always--promise me,
whatever comes--whatever befalls. Stand by each other." And boy and girl
of fifteen and sixteen then, they said, "Always--always."
So the years passed. They grew up and made their home together alone.
Ronald became head of the organ-building business left to him and
Katharine by their father, and thus they were partners in business as
well as in pleasure. And they were still called the inseparables. People
said, "Ah, Katharine is somewhere about, for I see Ronald." Or they
said, "Ronald cannot be far off, as Kath has arrived." There was a story
that Ronald had said at a picnic, "Nothing more for me, thanks, and
nothing more for my sister!"
But at last the inevitable happened: Ronald became engaged to an
attractive girl, and Katharine had the bitter experience of becoming a
secondary consideration in his life. And then people said, "What will
Katharine do? How will she take it?"
She behaved splendidly, and bore herself in a manner worthy of a warm
and generous nature.
"Ronald and Gwendolen shall have a joyous engagement-time," she said to
herself. "I will keep all my jealous feelings locked up in an iron
safe."
And they had it, unmarred by any sadness or jealousy on her part.
Nevertheless she suffered; for she and Gwendolen had nothing in common.
Katharine had the free spirit and the broad outlook. Gwendolen was
essentially of the world worldly, belonging to that ever-increasing
community known as "smart," with no outlook worth speaking of, but, for
all that, delightfully engaging in her beauty and her bearing. In her
metallic way, too, she was appreciative of Katharine's kindness, and she
made a very real attempt to accept the sisterliness affectionately
offered to her.
But they spoke a different language. That was the only criticism
Katharine made of her, and then only to Willy Tonedale, her old friend
and admirer.
"Well, my dear Kath," he had drawled out as he twirled his moustache,
"all I can say is that I prefer your language. It is more intelligible.
Perhaps it may be because I am supposed to have a slow brain. Anyway,
you're behaving like a brick to them both, and Ronnie is a deuced old
duffer for giving you up. I would not have given you up if you'd been my
sister, my grandmother, or my great-grandmother, for the matter of
that."
"Nonsense, Willy!" Katharine had answered laughingly. "Don't be
ridiculous. It is right that Ronnie should marry. It all comes in the
day's march; and I might have been the one to have given him up."
She said that to Ronald when for the last time he and she sat together
by their fireside on the eve of his marriage. She comforted him when,
in spite of his passionate adoration of and desire for Gwendolen, he
felt torn by the thought that he was entering on a new life and
renouncing Kath irrevocably.
"Kath, dear old senior partner," he said, "I feel--terribly upset about
you--now it comes to the point--I----"
He broke off, but there was no need to finish the sentence, for
Katharine knew.
"It is all right, dear old chap," she answered. "And you see, we are
friends for life. And I might have been the one to leave you. I nearly
did three times!"
"Four times," he said quaintly. "You never own up to four times!"
And they both laughed. They had had many merry times over some of
Katharine's passing love affairs.
"But at least you will live near us," Ronnie said.
She shook her head.
"I am going to travel," she answered, "I am going to the ends of the
earth. You know I've always wanted to see the great vast countries of
the great world. And this is my chance. You have some one to love you
and look after you, and I can go forth. But I want you to promise me one
thing. Don't give up your music. Don't give up your Wednesday evening
quartette meetings. I should love to think that you had kept that
pleasure out of our old life, and that Herr Edelhart, Monsieur Gervais,
Signor Luigi, and yourself were continuing to fiddle together on
Wednesday evenings. And when I come back I shall try to arrive on
quartette-night."
That was three years ago, and now Katharine had returned from her
wanderings and arrived at her brother's house on quartette-day. She
left her things at the Langham, intending to take up her quarters there
until she should have made up her mind how to shape her life. But Ronald
seemed hurt, and so she consented to stay a few days in his beautiful
home. Gwendolen was away, but she was coming back the next morning; and
Ronald assured Katharine that his wife's welcome to the returned
traveller would be as warm as his own. Meantime brother and sister,
alone together, renewed the sweet old intimacy which had been so dear to
them both. They talked of old times, old bits of fun, old difficulties,
old bits of mischief, old quarrels, old reconciliations.
"Do you remember that day when I shook you?" Ronald said. "We had had a
terrible upset over one of my love affairs, and I lost my temper, whilst
you remained quite silent and stared into the fire. You were most
irritating."
"And I claimed damages, three theatres and a new evening dress,"
Katharine said. "And Signor Luigi declared we ought both to be heartily
ashamed of ourselves for quarrelling, and that the only way of effacing
the disgrace was by giving _him_ a new violoncello bow! I have always
thought that was so funny."
"Well, he uses the bow to this day, and calls it his Queen," Ronald
said. "How glad they will all be to see you. They have no idea that you
have come back. Every night after we have played, we have drunk your
health, each of us taking it in turn to propose the toast.
"'To the illustrious Signorina.'
"'To the wunderbar Fräulein.'
"'To the gracieuse English Mees.'
"'To the senior partner.'"
The tears came into Katharine's eyes.
"I am so glad you have remembered me," she said.
He rose as he spoke, perhaps to hide his own eyes, and he began to get
out the music.
"Do you know this is the last of our quartette-meetings?" he said.
"Gwendolen does not like them. They seem to interfere with other
arrangements. Every invitation that ever ought to be accepted, appears
to be fixed for that evening in the week. But I'm awfully sorry."
Katharine was silent.
"I should have given them up long ago but that I promised you," he said.
"I think they are a little out of Gwendolen's line, you know. And I want
to please her. I always want passionately to please her. She is my life,
my whole life."
"Then you are really happy, Ronnie," she said gently.
"Yes, yes," he said, his face lighting up, "of course I am. Only
sometimes I am rather worried about money, Kath, and think we are
spending too much. It seems to take such a frightful lot of money to
keep up with other people--and, oh well, we can talk about it another
time--but the quartette costs money, and I think I must let it go at
last. It was different when I was unmarried."
"Let me stand the quartette, old fellow," Kath said. "I like four people
to drink my health regularly once a week."
"No, no," he said, smiling at her. "You must keep your money for
yourself."
And then he added:
"Where are you going to live, and what are you going to do?"
"I am going to live in a flat in Westminster; that is my idea," she
answered. "When you have been away a long time from England, you yearn
to be within sight of the dear old Thames, the Houses of Parliament, and
the Abbey. I have often closed my eyes and seen Westminster in a
vision."
"Do you never intend to marry one of the many men who want you, Kath?"
he asked.
"No," answered Katharine. "You did not marry until you loved
passionately, did you? I shall not marry until I love passionately. And
as that may never happen to me, and the years are passing, I have made
up my mind to go into the business. The senior partner wants at last to
be an active partner. I want to have something definite to do, Ronnie. I
know you won't oppose me."
"Dear old girl," he said warmly, "you shall do as you like, and for as
long as you like, or for as short. You shall receive the clients, help
with the correspondence, design the organ cases, voice the reeds, any
mortal thing you like."
"I am sick of travelling merely for travelling's sake," she went on. "If
I had been a clever woman like Mary Kingsley, for instance, then I could
have contributed something useful to the world as the results of my
travels. But being what I am, there is no real zest in merely moving
about aimlessly like any other globetrotter. No, I want something to do.
I envy all women with a profession, Ronnie. When loneliness comes into
their lives, they have something which has to be done, whether they are
sad or gay. That is the salvation of men. And I believe it is going to
be the salvation of women."
"Are you very lonely?" he said, turning to her impulsively.
"No, no," she said, gathering herself together. "But there have been
times when----"
At that moment the door opened, and a sprightly little man with white
hair leapt into the room. When he saw Katharine, he stood speechless at
first and then advanced running.
"Signorina, the adorable and illustrious Signorina once more!" he cried.
"Ah, what joy, what delight to see you here!"
"Signor Luigi," she exclaimed, "how glad I am to see you again!"
"Ah," he cried, as he shook both her hands time after time, and then
lightly kissed them, "the world have changed places with Heaven. I have
not forgot you one leetle minute. See here, my pocket-book, your gift,
nearest my faithful heart. And the bow, 'my Queen,' here she is--under
my faithful arm. Ah, she is a treasure. We chosed her well--you and
'brother' and I. Yes, that was a splendid idea of mine!"
"Yes, it was brilliant," Katharine said, laughing. "How often I have
laughed over it. How often I have thought of you all. And you see I have
kept my word, and come back on quartette-night."
"The last quartette-night," he said. "But never mind. It will be an
adorable finishing-up. And we will play extra beautiful for the
Signorina. I will make my violoncello sing superb. The others--they
shall be nowhere!"
The door opened once more, and a stately-looking German came in carrying
his violin case. He had bushy hair and a fierce moustache.
"Guten Abend, Signor," he said. "Guten Abend. It is sehr kalt to-night.
Meine Finger----"
Then suddenly he saw Katharine, and Signor Luigi was only just in time
to prevent the violin case from falling to the ground.
"Lieber Himmel!" he cried. "I do see my distinguished pupil."
"Distinguished for my ignorance and impatience, Herr Edelhart, wasn't
it?" said Katharine, greeting him.
"And for wunderbar charm," added the German fervently. "Ah, I have had
no one so distinguished for that. The others have had a little talent or
none--generally none--and no charm. But Fräulein's wunderbar charm--it
could not be described--only felt. Ah, and how himmlisch that you are
come back. My violin shall sing her very best to-night. She shall
inspire herself to welcome Fräulein. The others shall be nowhere!
They----"
Then the door opened again, and a dark little man, obviously of French
persuasion, came into the room looking rather dreamy and preoccupied;
but when he saw Katharine he returned to real life, and his face broke
out into a radiant smile.
"Mon Dieu!" he cried. "Mademoiselle have returned to us. Ah, _le climat_
detestable of England have become a beautiful, French printemps. The
fogs is gone. My dead hearts is alive. And Mademoiselle have made the
miracle."
"You see that you have come back to faithful admirers, Kath," Ronald
said, laughing.
"I see that I have come back to faithful flatterers," Katharine
answered, as she stood in their midst laughing and shaking hands with
them repeatedly. "But it is all delightful, and I feel years younger at
being amongst my old friends. How many years have we known each other?
Isn't it ten?"
"Ten years, five months," said Herr Edelhart, accurately.
"Onze, onze," said Monsieur Gervais.
"Always, always!" cried the Italian, waving his arms about in dismissal
of time, and then dancing a sort of war-dance round the room.
"Ah, ha, we have not been so gay since the Signorina was cruel enough to
leave us," he cried. "Tra, la, la, tra, la, la!"
"Look here, Luigi, we must manage to behave ourselves somehow," said
Ronald, catching hold of the little Italian. "For there is a stranger
coming to-night, and he will think we are all mad."
"A stranger," they cried, "and on our last night?"
"Oh, hang it all," said Ronald, laughing, "it can't be our last night."
"Bravo, bravissimo!" they cried.
And Herr Edelhart whispered to Katharine:
"Fräulein has come home, and 'brother' is coming back to his senses."
"Who is the stranger?" Katharine asked. "And how dare he intrude on us
at such a moment?"
"Poor fellow, he wouldn't willingly intrude on any one," Ronald
answered. "But I asked him in myself. He was a neighbour of ours in
Surrey during the summer. And I met him several times. He lost his wife
under very tragic circumstances, and he is a sad man. We must not let
our gaiety jar on him."
The door opened, and Professor Thornton was announced.
"Light of mine eyeballs," whispered Luigi, "he does not look gay, does
he?"
"Mon Dieu!" whispered Gervais. "He belong to the country of fogs. He
give me the sore-throats at once."
Katharine had risen to receive Clifford Thornton, and when he saw her he
said gravely:
"But, surely I know you?"
"And I know you, surely," she answered, almost as gravely; and for a
moment they stood looking at each other in silence, surrounded by the
four musicians, each waiting with his instrument in his hands.
"Where have you met?" Ronald asked, turning first to Clifford and then
to Katharine. "On your travels?"
"I do not know," they said together, and they still stood motionless,
arrested of body and spirit.
"Well, now for the quartette," said the musicians, and they resined
their bows and tuned up. It was their habit to go into raptures over
their respective instruments; so that sighs of content, and mysterious
expressions of admiration, were soon filling the air. Signor Luigi
bending over his violoncello, kept crying out:
"Ah, per Bacco, what for a treasure! Light of mine eyeballs--light of
mine eyeballs--maccaroni of my native land, what for a beautiful
treasure!"
They laughed as they always did laugh over the merry little Italian,
and were just settling down to Beethoven's Rasomoffsky Quartette, when
Signor Luigi remembered the Pomeranian.
"Ah, ha," he said, "the adorable dog will howl--he must go--he or I must
go. We will depart him prestissimo. He will come very, very near and
mock us. I know him, the rogue! Ah, Signor Professor, many thanks, no
use you trying to do it. It needs a grand genius like myself to depart
that amiable animal."
"And now I think we are safe," he said when he had expelled the
reluctant white Pomeranian and shut the door.
Then the voices and laughter were hushed, Herr Edelhart gave the sign,
and the quartette began, led off by the low notes of the violoncello.
Clifford Thornton and Katharine, sitting in different corners of the
room, lost themselves in the wonderful regions which music, with a
single wave of her magic wand, opens to every one desirous of entering.
"Behold my kingdom," she whispers, "wander unharmed in all
directions--you will find the paths for yourselves----"
Clifford Thornton, with the war of conflicting emotions in his heart,
entered and found the path of peace.
Katharine entered too, and trod unconsciously the path of noble
discontent with self and circumstance.
"Ah, how one rests," thought the man.
"Ah, what an aimless, lonely life I've been leading," thought the woman.
"No use to myself or any one----" The sounds died away, and the
listeners came back from their distant wanderings. Katharine looked up
and met the grave glance of the stranger.
He seemed to be asking her:
"Where did we meet, you and I?"
And her silent answer was:
"I cannot tell you, but I have known you always."
Two or three times during the next quartette, of Brahms, she was
impelled to look in his direction, and saw him sitting alone at the
other end of the room, in an isolation of frigid reserve, staring
straight at her as over a vast, with that strange expression of inquiry
on his thin drawn face. She was curiously stirred, curiously uneasy too.
She was almost glad when the quartette was over and he rose to go.
He went up to the players and thanked them. Then he turned to Katharine.
"Good-bye," he said, and a ghost of a smile, which he repressed
immediately, began to cross his face. "I have been trying to think----"
He broke off.
"Good-bye," he said, and he went to the door.
Ronald followed him out of the room, and every one was silent, until
Signor Luigi made an elaborate gesticulation with his right forefinger,
and finally landed it in the centre of his forehead.
"Signor is like me," he said, "just one leetle poco agitato in the
brains."
Ronald came back after a few minutes and said:
"Well, now, he did not interfere with us much, did he? And I am sure the
music rested him, poor fellow."
"For certain it should have given him pleasure," said Herr Edelhart,
"for we played grand to-night. I was at my wunderbar best. Lieber
Himmel, what a tone I make! We were all at our wunderbar best because of
Fräulein's wunderbar charm."
"The Fatherland don't leave off admiring himselves!" whispered Gervais
to Katharine.
"Gentlemen," said Ronald, "I believe this is an evening for '47 port.
Are we in tune about it?"
"In perfect tune," they cried. "Bravissimo, 'brother'!" So in '47 port
the three foreigners and Ronald toasted Katharine, who responded by
drinking to the _entente cordiale_ of all nations, and the long life and
good health of the quartette.
"May it never be shut out like the adorable Pomeranian dog," she added,
"and if in a moment of temporary aberration it is shut out, may it howl
and howl like the Pomeranian until it is called in again!"
When they had all taken their leave, Katharine spoke affectionately of
these faithful old comrades, and begged Ronald to let her at least help
him to keep on the quartette which had been a pleasure to them both for
so many years. And then, in her own frank way, without any
preliminaries, she asked him about this stranger, Clifford Thornton, who
had made a great impression on her. Ronald told her what was known of
the tragedy of Mrs Thornton's sudden death, which had taken place after
some disturbing scene of unhappiness between husband and wife.
"I admire the man," Ronald added. "It was an awfully sad position for
him to be in, and he bore himself with fine dignity. And he did not
leave his home. He stayed on quietly, living down and ignoring the
gossip and talk of the neighbourhood."
Katharine was deeply interested.
"Poor fellow, poor fellow," she said. "He looks as if he had suffered."
She could not forget him. He penetrated into all her thoughts that night
as she lay awake thinking about her plans for the future, about Ronald's
new life in which she feared that she would have but little part, about
her travels of the last three years, about the people she had met,
talked with, liked, disliked. Her wandering mind came ever back to this
one thought:
"We knew each other. But how--and where--and when?"
CHAPTER V.
For a few months after Mrs Thornton died, Clifford Thornton and his boy
had stayed quietly at home at "Falun." People in the neighbourhood were
kind in their expressions and actions of sympathy, and repeatedly
invited both father and son to their houses; but the Thorntons had
always been so reserved, that no real intimacy had ever been possible
with them. Professor Thornton had written to his old governess to come
and stay with them, and but for her, it is difficult to imagine what
these two desolate people would have done with themselves. Fröken
Knudsgaard, generally called "Knutty," was a cheerful old soul, fully
persuaded that the world was an excellent place to live and thrive in.
She was Danish by birth, and the Danes, unlike the Norwegians, have a
large supply of good spirits and the _joie de vivre_. She had lived a
great many years in England and spoke English perfectly, with a slight
foreign accent which was very engaging. Clifford loved her, and indeed
he might well have done so; for she had taken entire charge of him when
he was a little child, and had lavished on him all the kindness and
affection of which her warm heart was capable. If in his great trouble
he could have unburdened his heart to any one, it would have been to
Knutty. But apart from the man's painful reticence, his own sense of
chivalry made him shrink from confiding in one who could not be generous
in her estimate of his dead wife's character. Marianne and Fröken
Knudsgaard had never succeeded in making friends; and after one or two
visits to Clifford's married home, Knutty had said:
"Farvel, Clifford. You must come and see me in Copenhagen. I am not
coming to you again yet. None of us get any pleasure out of the visit,
and I only do harm to you all. My aura does not match with Marianne's
aura. But do not let the boy forget me. Speak to him sometimes about old
Knutty."
She immediately packed up and came to him when she heard of Marianne's
death; but although he was overjoyed at having her near him, he told her
nothing. Still, it was a comfort to know she was at "Falun;" a comfort
to sit with her and try to begin to tell her something of that which was
torturing his mind, even if the attempt always ended in failure.
"Ak, ak," she reflected, "he was always like that. I used to try and
make a hole in the ice; and when I thought I had succeeded, lo and
behold it was frozen up again! People of his temperament have a hard
time under that ice. Poor dears, all of them."
He told her of course the outward circumstances of the tragedy, and he
made one remark which puzzled her.
"I am so terribly afraid, Knutty," he said, "that Alan may turn against
me."
"Sniksnak!" she said. "Why make trouble for yourself? Why should he turn
against you? If you had murdered your poor Marianne, of course then----"
"Ah, but sometimes I think----" he began, and then broke off.
"I know what I think," said Fröken Knudsgaard, getting up and tapping
him on the head with her knitting-needles. "You must go away, and at
once. Shut up 'Falun,' and turn your back on the laboratory. Take a
journey immediately."
"Shall I come to dear old Denmark?" he said. In the old days he had had
many happy times with Knutty in Copenhagen.
"That is not far enough," she said decisively. "I should advise you to
go round the world, and at once. You have plenty of money and plenty of
time. Don't take a million years to make up your mind. Start to-morrow,
both of you. It will do Alan good to get away. He is a dear boy, but he
is going to be sensitive like you. I wish I could come too. But I am too
old and fat. But you must go, Clifford. You cannot stay on here and add
to your unhappiness by inventing absurd tortures for yourself. Go and
see some of the Yankees' laboratories first, and then run out to Japan
to see your Japanese chemist friend at Tokyo. You have always been
talking about going."
"Shall I really go, Knutty?" he asked, a little wistfully.
"Ja, kjaere,"[A] she answered, nodding at him. "Otherwise, you will have
to go much farther; you will have to go out of your mind. What a
nuisance that would be, and selfish of you too! For you would spoil the
boy's life, and poor old Knutty's life. You know how she loves to smile
and be happy like a true Dane. Take my advice, shut up 'Falun,' go to
London, stay at a hotel for a few days, amuse yourselves, get your kit,
spend a lot of money, and then take your tickets and be off to Japan.
And when you come back, call in at Copenhagen and see me. We will then
go down to your beloved harbour to see the ships coming in. Do you
remember how interested you used to be in the egg-and-butter ships?
Very well, is that settled?"
Clifford Thornton was silent. But he knew that his old Dane was right,
and that he could not go on day after day struggling with his
conflicting emotions without the immense help of changed circumstances.
He knew that every hour he spent in his laboratory mooning over the
subjects on which he could not fix his real attention, was wasted time
and wasted strength.
"And as the days go by," Knutty continued boldly, "you will feel
differently about everything, dear one. And then you must find some one
whose aura will be entirely sympathetic with your aura. Ah, you shake
your head, Clifford."
"Hush, hush, you must not say that," he said, turning away from her.
"Well, well," she said, half to herself, "perhaps I press on too
quickly. But you will go away--promise me that? And shut up 'Falun' with
all its sad memories?"
"In my secret heart," she thought, "I should like to blow up 'Falun' and
have done with the wretched place!"
"If we go away, will you come too, Knutty?" he said eagerly. "We would
take such care of you."
"Seventy years of age, and seventeen stone in weight!" she replied
gaily. "No, no, kjaere, I should be too heavy a responsibility. No, I
will wait for you in my own little Danish home, made so wickedly
comfortable by your kindness; and every day I shall say, 'My Clifford is
finding his way into the sunlight again.'"
He stooped down and kissed her kind old hand.
"If I could only tell you my inmost thoughts; but I cannot," he said
sadly.
"You never could unfold yourself, dear one," she answered. "You know I
always had to guess at what was going on within your mind, and always
guessed wrong, of course, and therefore could not help you. I am sure
there can be no mental or physical suffering so great as reluctant
repression of the thoughts within us."
"Knutty," he said, after a pause, "do you believe that minds can reach
each other in dreams?"
"I don't know, kjaere," she said. "I have never reached any one's mind,
either in a dream or out of one. In the years gone by, I prided myself
on doing so, and then found out that I was mistaken. My present belief
is that no one mind can ever reach another in reality, and that each
human being speaks and understands only one language--his own
language--and every one else's language is what you English people call
a 'damned foreign tongue.' Excuse me, dear one, my words may not be
academic, but they are supposed to be philosophic. And that reminds me
that, in my opinion, you have been a true philosopher, Clifford."
"How so, Knutty?" he said.
"You have asked very little of any one," she answered, "and you have
made a successful fight with bitterness. That is what I call true
philosophy."
He shook his head in deprecation of her praise, and after another pause
he said:
"Do you think, Knutty, that one might be able to injure another person
in and through a dream?"
"How should I know?" she said, looking troubled. "I am not given to
reflecting on such matters, thank Heaven."
"If one could injure, one could also benefit," he said, without heeding
her answer. "There would at least be that comfort--for others."
"And why not for you?" she asked.
"Alas!" he answered, "my dreams were always the other way."
But after he had said that, he returned hastily to his usual reserve,
and Fröken Knudsgaard understood him too well to press him for a
confidence.
"Besides, it would be waste of tissue," she said to herself. "One would
have more success in pressing an alabaster effigy."
But in this way she had had one or two glimpses into his mind, and she
was really anxious about his mental state, and not happy about Alan
either. She kept her shrewd old eyes open, and she began to see that
Alan sometimes avoided being alone with his father. He seemed a little
awkward with him, as though some shadow had risen up between them. He
too was reserved, and Knutty could not get him to speak of his mother's
death.
"I am living with a pair of icebergs," she wrote to her botanist nephew
and niece in Copenhagen, Ejnar and Gerda. "Darling icebergs both of
them, but icebergs all the same. I find this Arctic expedition of mine,
like all Arctic expeditions, fraught with grave difficulties. Write and
encourage me, dear ones; and in case I should become a frozen plant,
keep an extra warm place for me in the herbarium of your hearts."
But Alan was not reserved about other matters, and he and the old Danish
lady became excellent friends together. He said repeatedly to her:
"Knutty, why haven't you been to see us more often?"
And Knutty, stroking her chin, would reply:
"The climate, dear one, the climate; either too hot or too cold; too dry
or too wet--generally too wet! Anyway, the atmosphere didn't suit me;
too trying."
And of course she was speaking of the mental atmosphere of "Falun."
She transformed "Falun" into an abode of comparative cheerfulness, and
brightened up the house in a most astonishing manner. The boy hastened
home from his riding or cycling. There was something to go back for now;
and Knutty was always in a good temper, always ready to be photographed
at the exact moment when she was wanted, and always ready to sympathise
with electric batteries, books on architecture, square towers, round
towers, telephones, and of course chemical experiments.
"Make any experiments you like," she said. "Don't be afraid of blowing
me up. I have been accustomed to it for years. In fact, I prefer it.
Anything is better than monotony. The unexpected is always delightful,
and it is quite refreshing to have a few fingers blown off in a
thrilling fashion, or even a head! Most people lose their heads in a
much less interesting way, and under much less provocation. And as for
smells, Alan, I worship them. In fact, I feel quite exhilarated when I
have the smell of that adorable sulphuretted-hydrogen under my Danish
nose. As for architecture, I could listen all the day long to anything
you have to say on that subject. I am glad you are going to be an
architect; indeed you cannot with any self-respect be anything else,
since you were christened after your father's hero, Alan de Walsingham.
Only listen: if you don't succeed in building a cathedral every bit as
fine as Ely, I shall cut you off from my visiting-list. So there. Now
you know what you have to expect from old Knutty."
She disliked the dismal drawing-room. She was much happier sitting in
the laboratory, and even happier in the dark room, where Alan sometimes
enticed her. And occasionally he got her out for a walk, which was a
great concession; for Knutty hated walking. She always declared it was
the invention of the devil.
In fact she won him entirely, and then by many subtle processes, she
tried to find out what his real feelings were towards his father. He
undoubtedly loved his father, but there was something troubling his
mind: something which had to be cleared up; and from Clifford's allusion
to his own fears of the boy turning against him, Knutty guessed that the
father too was conscious of a change in his son's attitude towards him.
Whatever it was, it must not be allowed to grow. She was nearly
distracted between the two of them. Sometimes she thought it would be
better for them to be separated for a little while, and at other times
she believed it would be safer for them to have a complete understanding
at once. One morning Alan's strained manner to his father strengthened
her in the belief that her two icebergs must be brought into closer
contact again before they drifted away into different parts of the
Arctic regions, where they might never rejoin. By means of great craft,
she at last managed to make Alan speak of his mother, and then some of
the trouble came tumbling out. He regretted so bitterly that he had
told his mother that he knew his father and she were unhappy together;
he regretted so bitterly that he had said it was all her fault.
"And to think that those were the last words I ever said to her," he
said with almost a sob.
He did not say that he blamed his father for telling him about the
proposed separation, but he kept on repeating:
"If only I had not known, if only I had not known."
And of course in his heart he was saying:
"If only father had not told me, if only he had not told me."
Knutty listened and felt torn, for the boy and his father too. Clifford
had wounded his child; there was no doubt about that. And only the hand
which inflicts the wound can give the healing touch--if people love.
Nevertheless, it was for the man she pleaded, for the one who had done
the injury to his son whom he loved.
"You see, kjaere," she said, "your father is very unhappy. He would give
his whole life not to have told you. And you know he was very good to
your mother--very gentle; and he is suffering greatly over her tragic
death. It is a hard time for him. And when he looks at you, he remembers
that he has made things hard for you too; and that naturally adds to his
trouble. And he is ill. No one can comfort him except you. His poor old
Knutty is no good to him now. She is no use to any one now--she is too
old, and too stupid."
"Oh, Knutty, you know you are not stupid," Alan said indignantly. "Why,
you know an awful lot about all sorts of things--and an awful lot about
chemistry. Father says so. And he doesn't think you are useless; for
the first thing he said, was, 'We must send for Knutty.'"
Fröken Knudsgaard closed her eyes for a moment to check some tears.
Those words were very precious to her. When she opened them again, there
was a twinkle in them, and no sign of tears.
"Perhaps I am not so stupid after all," she said. "I forgot I knew about
chemistry! Not that I do know anything, dear one, but I can talk about
it! However, it comes to the same thing. And perhaps I am not so useless
either, not if I make you understand how he has suffered, and how sad he
is, and how you only can help him. He has only you. Talk to him, kjaere.
Tell him everything in your mind. Get rid of every thought which is not
friendship. And now pull old Knutty up from her chair. That's right.
Mange tak.[B] Now I am going to have a sleep. I'm sleepy, Alan. It is
the atmosphere of the dark room. Tell your father I am going to have a
good Danish snore in the dismal drawing-room, and no one must disturb me
unless it is to unfold some plans about the journey to Japan."
So Fröken Knudsgaard went hastily into retreat, for she had heard
Clifford's voice outside, and she wanted her two icebergs to be alone
together.
"By St Olaf's sword, I am very tired," she said to herself, as she lay
on the sofa in the desolate drawing-room. "Arctic expeditions are
exhausting journeys. All the same, I could not have forsaken my poor
icebergs."
Knutty yawned and yawned, and then stared at Marianne's portrait which
hung opposite to her.
"Never liked that woman," she thought. "Beautiful, but Billingsgate.
Quite the wrong aura for Clifford. What a mercy she has died! Cannot
help saying it, though of course I ought to be ashamed of myself if I
were a moral person, which, thank goodness, I'm not! Ak, that Marianne!
And how like her selfishness to die in that way, and leave my
tender-hearted Clifford torn in pieces. Nã, these English people, how
stubborn and ungracious they are! And yet I love them, and love England
too. If Ejnar and Gerda came and stayed long enough, they too would love
England, and not feel angry with their old Tante for being so fond of
this wicked country. Ah, the battles I have to fight for England. I
ought to be given the Order of St George. Ja, ja, and I must remember to
send those mosses to Ejnar to-morrow. How happy he will be over them!
And Gerda, too. I can see the botanical smile on their dear faces. Dear,
dead-alive plants, both of them!"
And Knutty fell asleep and dreamed marvellously of mosses found in
icebergs, and of her nephew, Ejnar, the botanist, and Gerda, his wife,
and of how they came over to England and made friends with the
authorities at Kew Gardens.
"There now, I told you!" Knutty said triumphantly, "I told you that the
Kew people would not insult you after the first quarter of an hour.
After the first quarter of an hour, when they had recovered from the
shock of receiving foreigners, they would be delighted to see you, and
would be willing to exchange specimens. I know them--the dear, proud,
rude ones! You just have to learn how to unwind yards and yards of Red
Tape. I own it takes time. I admit that, Ejnar."
She smiled, laughed, and woke up. Perhaps it was her laughter which woke
her up, and perhaps it was the voices of her two icebergs who were
standing by the sofa.
"Where am I--where am I?" she said, rubbing her eyes. "Of course, I
remember, at the North Pole again! You horrid chemical compounds, I told
you not to wake poor old Knutty unless you had something to tell her
about going to Japan."
"That is just what we have to tell you," Clifford and Alan said
together.
Fröken Knudsgaard glanced furtively at father and son, and saw that they
were standing arm-in-arm. She was too wise an old bird to ask what had
passed between them, and what they had said to each other. Besides, she
knew that icebergs would use only a few words of explanation, and then
drift into intimacy again. She saw at a glance that her Clifford looked
comforted, and that in some way Alan had eased his father's heart and
his own boyish heart too. That was all that mattered. A tender
expression came over her face.
"Help me up, dear ones," she said, holding out her hand to each. "You
know Knutty's knees have become very rheumatic. And Clifford, kjaere, we
really must send those mosses off to Ejnar and Gerda without delay. I
heard this morning that they have had a serious falling out over a
fungus. Let us hope that they will become reconciled over the mosses.
Ah, you must bring them all sorts of treasures from your journey to
Japan."
[Footnote A: _Kjaere_, dear one.]
[Footnote B: _Mange tak_, many thanks.]
CHAPTER VI.
So "Falun" was shut up, and Clifford Thornton, Alan, and Knutty came up
to London to spend two or three weeks at the Langham, and get the
tickets for the journey to Japan. When Knutty was satisfied that all
arrangements were going on satisfactorily, she left her icebergs, but
with a good deal of uneasiness in her kind old heart. She had been
increasingly stern about the necessity for this change of scene and
habit, for she saw that Clifford's unhappy state of mind prevented him
from again taking up his life and work. She knew, of course, that it was
only natural that he should be unhappy in the circumstances and
considering the tragic manner of Marianne's death; but she could not
help thinking that, in addition to the sadness and lingering regret from
which a man of his sensitive character would inevitably be suffering at
such a time, he had some other trouble at the back of his brain. He had
told her nothing about his dream, but he continued to make strange
references to psychic phenomena, such as dreams, telepathy in dreams,
transmission of thoughts, subconscious activities, and subjects of that
description, subjects which Knutty knew to be entirely outside his
natural range of inquiry and thought. In puzzling over this, she said to
herself, "Perhaps he dreamed he wanted her to be dead, and was horrified
with himself when the dream came true. Well, it is all too much for me.
Not for me these problems of occult thought. Certainly I am of the
earth, earthy; and grateful in all conscience for the comfortable
possession of a mundane spirit. May I never have any aspiration beyond.
But, alas for my poor Clifford if he is going to spoil his freedom won
after sixteen years of unhappy married life!"
But although Knutty knew a great deal about Clifford's married troubles,
she had not, up to the time of Marianne's death, realised the
seriousness of the havoc which sixteen years of uncongenial
companionship with Marianne had wrought in his spirit. He had kept his
secret hidden away from the world, hidden away until the last from
Marianne, almost hidden away from himself. Knutty only knew that he had
married the wrong woman--married a coarse-fibred person who could never
appreciate his delicate sensitiveness of brain and character, the innate
chivalry of his heart and the great possibilities of his intellect,
which needed, however, a protecting care to bring them to easy and
natural development. She saw, as the years went by, that Clifford's
labours in his own branch of work were being grievously hindered, and
she had heard in scientific circles that he was not considered to be
fulfilling the brilliant promise of early manhood. It was thought to be
a pity that a man of his leisure and means, and of undoubted gifts,
should not come more prominently to the fore, since there were so few
scientific men in England who were, like himself, independent of paying
work and able to devote their time to research. Something was wrong with
him. Knutty knew that that something was Marianne. Sometimes, when she
had questioned him, on his visits to her at Copenhagen, he had said,
shrugging his shoulders:
"Temperamental strife, Knutty. Temperamental strife, nearly every one's
trouble."
That was all he told her. But when she learned that he had made up his
mind to separate from Marianne, and had told Alan of his intention, she
understood that he, so gentle and chivalrous by nature, must have been
driven to desperation to even think of taking such a decisive step. In
speaking of his part of his trouble, his deep regret at having burdened
Alan with a knowledge of their unhappiness, he merely said:
"You see, Knutty, I waited nearly fifteen years, until I thought that he
was old enough, and then I found he was too young."
"But you had some happiness, dear one?" she asked anxiously.
"No, Knutty, none," he answered.
"But you had your work, kjaere," she said. "That has been a haven,
surely?"
"My haven was always invaded," he said. "There was no peace."
"Ak," she thought, "he must and shall find peace for his work and
happiness for his heart. He was meant to be cared for and loved by some
dear woman with a suitable aura. And where is she, the wretch? Where is
she? She must be waiting somewhere in space for him, if he could only
see her and capture her at once. Ak, how glad I should be! Ak, how I
should cry aloud, 'I see daylight!' Bah, if we could only get rid of
this absurd convention called time! Moments are centuries and centuries
are moments, according to circumstance; and yet we go on adjusting our
lives and emotions to the strike of the parish clock. Parish clocks
indeed! I'd like to stop every one of them all over the world."
But she did not venture to give utterance to these bold sentiments when
Clifford put her on the boat at Harwich. She kept to the safe subject of
his work and arrested ambitions, and tried to arouse his intellectual
pride.
When he thanked her for her tender kindness to himself and the boy, she
answered:
"Alas! dear one, I have done little enough for either of you. I should
have loved to have put everything right for both my beloved icebergs,
but that is not possible. The longer I live, the more clearly I see that
we cannot put matters straight either for ourselves or for other people.
We can only muddle through difficulties, and help others to do the same.
So I say to you: Muddle through your worries quickly, kjaere. Go for
this long outing, and then come back and take up your life again. Come
back to your test-tubes, your platinum dishes, your carbon compounds,
your asymmetric carbon atoms, and get to work on your stereo-isomerism
and all that kind of comforting nonsense! Do, dear one! You are at your
best now--forty-three. What is forty-three? If I were forty-three, I
believe I could make discoveries in all the branches of every science
which ever existed and ever will exist! Come back and knock everybody
into fits by your successful work. Talk about carbon compounds indeed! I
expect you to become a compound of Berzelius, Crookes, Liebig, Faraday,
Hofmann, Gay Lussac, and all the other chemistry creatures. Don't I
rattle off their names beautifully? Oh! what a clever old woman I am! Of
course, being a Dane, I couldn't help being clever--or thinking I was!
But there now! How I chatter, and the boat just going! Sweep the past
away, Clifford. Remember, some people only begin to wake up at
forty-three, and then they have to crowd all sorts of splendid
achievements into their remaining years. And don't fret about the boy.
He loves you in his own icebergic way. And don't dare to come back to
'Falun' until I give you permission."
She had raised her finger, and was still shaking it in playful warning,
when the boat moved off. Clifford stood and watched her until he could
see her no longer, and then took his place in the train for London.
"My good old Dane," he said, "my best friend in the world. How are we
going to get on without all your kind ways?"
He was alone in the carriage, and his thoughts turned unhindered to the
past, which Knutty had wished him to sweep away. He could not sweep it
away. It was seven months now since Marianne had died. During that time
he had not known one single day's peace of mind. It was in vain that he
had reasoned with himself. Reason had had no lasting influence on his
emotions. If he could have spoken to some one about Marianne's death, if
he could have talked it out with some clear-headed, impartial person
accustomed to ponder over the strange phenomena of the dream-world and
their true relation to everyday life, over the mysterious workings of
the brain, when, under the influence of sleep, it loses the
responsibility of normal consciousness, he might perhaps have shaken off
some of the burden which was so greatly oppressing him. But, in the
first place, he was reserved by nature; and, in the second, he shrank,
as a scientific man, from entering that debatable land, the phenomena of
which are not verifiable by the direct experimental method. Even if his
mind had been tuned to such subjects, how could he have brought himself
to say to any one:
"This was my dream and hers. Now tell me, have I killed my wife?"
So he had to fight the battle by himself, and this was how it was
fought. One day he would say, "I will not let the past crush me. I will
remember only that I did my best for Marianne, sacrificing to her the
most precious part of myself--my very brain-power, my power of thinking
and working. I look back with mourning, and see that I have accomplished
scarcely anything of all I intended to do; that I have lost the threads
of this and the threads of that, and also the habit of subtle
concentration. Marianne has ruined my life and my career. But now she
has gone, and I am free. And at forty-three years of age, with health
still left me and my working powers intact, surely I am not going to let
the remembrance of this tragedy rise up between me and my freedom?"
But the next day, this bravado of mind would have spent itself, and he
would remember only that Marianne had died, and that he had certainly
had some part in her death. She had fallen in their final conflict of
temperaments. He was left as victor. And yet no victor either. No,
rather was Marianne victorious, as she had ever been. And he was the one
left vanquished and remorseful. Then all the pity and kindness in him
rose up to condemn him in his own judgment. He forgot his own grievances
and remembered only hers; adding with generous hand to her list. Where
she could scarcely have claimed one, he gave her ten, twenty, a hundred.
And the next day he took them back again, remembering only the harm done
to him by her turbulent spirit. He shuddered as he recalled the
incessant irritations, the senseless scenes of uncontrolled temper, the
insane jealousy, with which his work seemed to inspire her, the scornful
utterances hurled against the things most precious to him, the carping
criticisms on the people he admired most in the world.
All this had taken an immense effect on him, although he had always
tried to ignore it. But he could not ignore scenes. He capitulated to
them. They took the life and spirit out of him. And Marianne knew it.
She knew her power and used it ruthlessly. It had seemed in her lifetime
as though she had been irritated beyond bearing when she saw him intent
on some task in his laboratory; as though she had deliberately got up a
scene to wreck his day's work, and had only been propitiated when she
saw the fabric of his brain-power in ruin for that morning at least.
He went over all this as he leaned back in the carriage. He remembered
that Knutty said he had made a successful fight with bitterness. It was
true that he was not bitter; but he knew that he could take no praise to
himself on that score. For he had discovered that bitterness ruined his
abilities even more ruthlessly than want of serenity; and so, out of
self-preservation, he had tried to keep the citadel of his heart
permanently fortified against that enemy. Knutty also said that he had
asked little of life; but, looking back now, he knew he had asked for
the greatest thing in the world, being what he most needed--_peace_.
Peace. He had had no peace in Marianne's lifetime; and now he knew it
all depended on his own strength of will whether or not he could reach
it at the eleventh hour.
"If I can put from me the remembrance of the past, stifle morbid fears,
and get to believe I was not responsible for Marianne's death, I shall
reach peace," he said.
"Responsible," he repeated. "How could I be considered responsible,
unless it could be proved that there is dormant power in us to prevent
our evil thoughts from overwhelming us in our dreams?"
"Dormant power," he said. "Is it not rather that, proved or unproved,
there must surely be a living force in us which should be able to
control our attitude of mind whether we wake or whether we sleep?"
"Ah, that is the trouble," he said, as he got up and moved restlessly to
the other end of the carriage. "The responsibility comes not from the
dream itself, but from the everyday attitude of mind which caused the
dream. If I could have felt and thought differently, I might have dreamt
differently, and a different message would then have been transmitted to
my poor Marianne."
So he tortured himself; argued with himself; fought the battle unaided;
conquered; was conquered, and, worn out with the strife, longed all the
more passionately for peace which implied the power to work and forget.
"And what else is there in life greater than work and peace?" he said.
Something in his lonely heart whispered, "There is love."
"Yes, yes, there is love," he answered impatiently. "But love has passed
me by. I and love have nothing to do with each other."
And then suddenly the past was swept from his remembrance, and he found
himself thinking of Katharine Frensham.
"Where have I seen her before?" he asked himself. "I knew her face. I
knew her voice----"
The train stopped.
CHAPTER VII.
Gwendolen arrived home the day after Katharine's return, and the two
women, although speaking a different language, were genuinely pleased to
see each other. Katharine thought that Gwendolen was more beautiful than
ever, and with her generous heart recognised that her sister-in-law was
one of those women born to be worshipped by the men they marry, to the
extinction of every one and everything. Her complexion was perfect, her
features were in harmony with each other, her smile was bewitching. Her
eyes were the least attractive part of her; they were a little cold. Her
figure was grace itself, and so was her bearing. She dressed
faultlessly, but in such a quietly extravagant fashion, that Katharine
was appalled when she thought of the enormous outlay which her toilet
implied; whilst in the management of the luxurious home, too, money
seemed to be of no consideration to her. Katharine remembered that
Ronald himself had expressed uneasiness about his increasing expenses;
but when she hinted at her own anxiety on his behalf, he merely shrugged
his shoulders and said:
"Oh, every one lives like this, Kath. Times have altered since you were
here. One is obliged to keep up a style if one wants to be in society."
"Well, old fellow," she answered, "all I can say is, don't make a fiasco
and have to retire into the country suddenly one day, with the excuse
that you have become violently in love with rural life. Every one knows
what that means, and it only makes one look ridiculous."
But even this much had ruffled him, and Katharine said no more. As time
went on, and the first flush of pleasure at her return had faded, she
saw that he had changed, and the atmosphere around him had changed too.
None of his old personal friends belonging to their old happy free life
visited his home. All the people who were in touch with him now were
acquaintances only, of the so-called "smart type," most of them
over-dressed, under-dressed, mindless women and snobs of men, at whom
Katharine and Ronald would not have looked in former days. Katharine
thought:
"I suppose these women are what is called 'respectable,' though they
don't look it. And they are not half so pleasant and interesting as that
_bona-fide_ demi-mondaine with whom I travelled across America for four
days. She had a heart, too, and these people seem to be without such an
old-fashioned possession. Well, I suppose I am out of date."
Once or twice she inquired after their old friends.
"Where are the Grahams? Where is Willy Tonedale?" she asked.
"Oh, the Grahams have gone away," Ronald answered indifferently, "and
Willy comes down to the office to see me. He prefers that. He says he
doesn't like the people he meets here, and they don't like him. He feels
out of it."
Katharine was silent again. She felt as Willy Tonedale, out of it. And
not only was she out of harmony with her surroundings, but she found as
the days went on, that Gwendolen was becoming jealous of her, and that
if she continued to stay, she would soon be a source of discord between
husband and wife. For although Ronald was passionately attached to his
wife, worshipping, indeed, the very ground she trod on, he could not
quite hide from Gwendolen or himself that he loved to have his sister
near him.
Gwendolen, who was not unkind by nature, tried to conquer her growing
jealousy; but her attempts were not successful. She was all the more
ashamed of it, because in her metallic fashion she admired Katharine,
and wished to be friends with her. But one morning her manner was so
insufferable, that Katharine, without giving any warning of her
intention, packed her trunks. When they were packed, she came down into
the morning-room and bent over Gwendolen, who was sitting at her bureau,
writing scented invitation-cards for several dinner-parties.
"Gwendolen," she said gently, "I am going to leave you, dear. You must
not think that I am running away in a temper. But I cannot stand your
jealousy, nor the strain of appearing not to notice it. I have never
been accustomed to strained relations with any one. People have always
wanted whole-heartedly to have me; and I have been glad whole-heartedly
to be with them. I would much prefer to live alone in a top-garret than
to be on difficult terms in a luxurious house with my everyday
companions. It saps all my strength and all my pleasure in life: and to
no purpose. If I were benefiting you and Ronnie, I might perhaps be
virtuous enough to wish to stay; but as I am only harming you both, I
want to go. And I want you to take me: so that we may both feel there is
no ill-will. Put on your things and come down to the Langham and settle
me in. Kiss me, and let us be good friends now and always. No, no, dear,
don't argue about it. I have not come back from my wanderings to make
your home unhappy."
Gwendolen was ashamed and touched, and even shed two or three metallic
tears on the scented envelopes.
"I thought I had been hiding my jealousy so beautifully, Kath," she
said.
"My dear child," Katharine answered, "a polar bear could have found it
out. It requires no exquisite and dainty power of penetration. Jealousy
is felt, tasted, seen at once. Did you really think you had been hiding
it?"
Gwendolen nodded, and Katharine laughed ever so gently.
"Well, dear, at least you tried," she said. "Come now, put on your
prettiest hat, and let us go at once."
So they went without any further discussion, Katharine's mind being
completely made up on the subject. And when Ronald came home that
evening, he found, to his astonishment, that his sister had fled.
"Had you any words?" he asked anxiously.
"No, no," Gwendolen answered. "I wish we had had. I should not be
feeling such a wretch then. Kath said she could not stand my jealousy,
and that she had not come home from her wanderings to make our home
unhappy. She was lovely about it, and I don't wonder you love and admire
her. I think she is a grand creature built on a grand scale, Ronnie, and
I am a horrid mean-spirited thing, and I hate and despise myself----"
"No, no, darling, not that," he said, as he comforted and kissed her.
"But it is sad. I am sorry. My good old Kath who gave you so
uncomplainingly to me! To think she has come home after three years'
absence to find she cannot stay a few days happily with us."
He paced up and down the drawing-room, his heart torn with sadness and
concern.
The clock struck six.
"Ronald," Gwendolen said, "it is only six--if you are not too tired, let
us go to her and fetch her back."
He brightened up at once.
"I would go miles to see her, Gwen," he said eagerly--"miles."
"And so would I," she said. "You can't imagine how much I wish to see
her again."
They had never been so near together and so much in sympathy as when
they started off to find Katharine. Ronald did not attempt to reproach
Gwendolen, and indeed there was no need. As far as her limited nature
would permit, she was overcome with remorse, which gave her an added
beauty in her worshipper's eyes. It was nearly seven o'clock when they
knocked at Katharine's door. Katharine did not hear. She had drawn her
chair up to the fire, and was busy with her thoughts. Loneliness had
taken possession of her heart; for although she had known that sooner or
later this cold visitor would invade her with his chill presence, his
coming was even worse than she had imagined it would be.
"Why did I return?" she said. "If there was nothing and no one to return
for, why should I have returned? Home-sickness--ah, yes--and love of the
old country. But even then, if one has no ties and is not wanted, what
is it all worth? One country is as good as another if there is no
love-niche anywhere. And there can be no loneliness greater than that
found in old conditions changed to new."
She looked lonely, like some strong tree left standing alone on the
mountain-side, to face the tempests alone. She was tall, and, as
Gwendolen had said, made on a grand scale. As there was nothing petty in
her attractive appearance, so also there was nothing petty in her mind.
Without being learnèd or clever, she had been born with a certain
temperamental genius which could not be classified, but only felt and
seen. It was this which drew people to her; and because she knew that
they were always ready to like her, her manner had that simple ease seen
often in unself-conscious little children. Bitterness and harsh
judgments were foreign to her nature; and so now, although she felt
desolate, she was free from bitter thoughts. She remembered with
gratitude all the years of happy comradeship with Ronnie--thirty-six
years: his whole lifetime and nearly hers; for she was his senior by one
year only, and their mother had always said that the two children had
begun their friendship at once.
"No person on earth has the right to grumble," Katharine said, "if he or
she has been lucky enough to have thirty-six years of close
companionship with some beloved one. And it was a splendid time;
something to give thanks for, all the rest of one's life."
"And I had a beautiful home-coming, alone with him, and under the genial
old conditions," she said. "I could not have expected that happiness to
continue. And perhaps it was as well that it came to an end quickly,
before I found it too hard to go----"
Then the knock came outside, but Katharine heard nothing.
"In any case I had to face a new kind of life," she said.
The knock came again--louder this time. Katharine heard it. She went to
the door and opened it. Gwendolen and Ronald stood outside.
"Oh, Kath!" Gwendolen cried, putting out her arms.
"She longed to come," Ronald said.
"Come in at once," Katharine said, holding out a hand to each of them,
and drawing them into the room. There were tears in her eyes, and there
was a smile of welcome on her face. The chill in her heart had turned to
warmth. Perhaps it was only then that she knew what she had been
through; for she collapsed into the arm-chair and cried. They watched
her silently. They felt that they could do and say nothing. So they
waited. But when she looked up and smiled at them, Gwendolen knelt down
by her side, and Ronald bent over her and pinched her ear as in the old
days when he wanted to show especial sympathy and attention.
"I can't help crying a little," she cried, "because I am so happy."
"Happy?" they said inquiringly.
"Yes, happy," she repeated, "because you cared to come. You see, that is
what matters most."
"Come back, Kath dear," Gwendolen pleaded. "I will be so different. You
have taught me such a lesson. You have not any idea how ashamed I feel
of myself."
"No; I cannot come back," Katharine said, shaking her head. "Some other
time perhaps. But not now. No, Ronald, old fellow, not now. One has to
go forward, you know--and alone."
"But you will not put us out of your life, Kath dear?" Ronald said
sadly.
She had risen from the arm-chair, and now put her arm through each of
theirs and drew them to her.
"You will not get rid of me so easily as all that," she answered with
some of her old brightness. "I can skip out of your home, but not out
of your lives. No; I am yours always, and always ready for you. And now
I think we ought to have dinner. You know, my dears, there is no denying
that great emotions produce great hunger! I am starving."
So they dined together and had a happy evening; and when they were
saying good night, Gwendolen whispered:
"When you feel you can come to us again, Kath, you will see how
different I shall be."
Ronald stayed behind a moment to say:
"Kath, it is dreadful to leave you here alone--I feel it
dreadfully--won't you come even now? Do, dear old Kath."
But Katharine shook her head and sent him on his way, promising,
however, to come down to the organ-factory in a day or two. After they
had gone, she lingered for a few moments in the hall, watching some of
the people who were standing together talking and laughing. Every one
seemed to have some belongings. There was that stern-looking military
man whose harsh features relaxed as his two pretty daughters stepped out
of the lift and touched him on the arm.
"We are ready, father," they said, and the three went off arm-in-arm.
Then there was that handsome mother with her fine young son, each proud
of and fond of the other; and that happy young couple yonder, the centre
of a group of friends; and that crippled man leaning on the arm of his
wife, whose face was eloquent with tender protectiveness and love.
Katharine felt desolate again. She went slowly into the reading-room.
"I will read the papers," she thought, "and forget about personal
matters."
There was no one in the reading-room; at least she thought there was no
one, until she discovered a young boy who had hidden himself behind a
paper. He was sitting near the fire, and she drew up her chair to the
fire too, and began to read. She had previously greeted him; for
Katharine did not observe the rigid English rule of ignoring the
presence of a stranger. So she had said, "Good evening," as though he
were a grown-up friend and not a young stranger of perhaps fifteen
years.
The boy coloured a little and said, "Good evening," and retired quickly
into 'The Graphic' again. At last he put down 'The Graphic,' and
Katharine said:
"May I have 'The Graphic' if you have done with it?"
He rose at once, brought it to her, and glanced at her shyly. Something
in his wistful face prompted her to speak to him.
"Is it a good number?" she said, smiling at him.
"Yes," he said.
And he added with a jerk:
"There is a picture of my school and our football team--here it is--it
is so awfully good of the fellows."
"And are you here too?" Katherine asked, looking at his face and then
trying to find him in the picture.
"No," he said, "I'm not there. I've not been to school this term."
"Been ill?" said Katharine; "perhaps measles, mumps, smashed-in head,
broken knee or nose--what other ailments do boys have? I used to be so
well up in them. My brother was always being brought home in fragments."
He smiled a little and said:
"No, I've not been ill, but----"
He paused a moment, and having glanced at her once more, seemed to gain
confidence. He was evidently very shy; but he desired to explain his
absence from that football team.
"You see," he said, "mother died."
Katharine made no answer, but nodded sympathetically, and for a moment
there was silence between these two new acquaintances. The boy himself
broke it.
"Father and I are going to travel for a few months," he said. "But next
year I shall be in the team again."
"And where are you going?" she asked.
"We are going to Japan," he said half-heartedly. It was obvious that his
heart was not in the travelling scheme.
"Why, that is where I have just come from," Katharine said. "You are a
lucky young man. And you speak of it as if it were a horrible holiday
task. You ungrateful boy!"
And she warmed him with glowing accounts of the journey and all the
queer things and people he would see, and succeeded in making him so
interested that he ended by saying:
"By Jove! I think I shall like to go after all."
"Of course you will," she said. "You will enjoy every minute."
A shadow passed over his young face; and she remembered that he had
lost his mother, and that very likely he was feeling desolate in his
own boyish way. He looked desolate too. He reminded her of some one she
had met lately--who was it? Oh, well, she did not remember; but there
was an air of distress about him, pathetically combined with boyish
eagerness, which appealed to her sympathies.
"And you will come back feeling so spry," she added, "and fit for any
amount of football. Besides, it is a good thing to go and see if Japan
would make a suitable ally, isn't it? Then you can send in a report to
the Government, you know."
His face brightened up, and he drew his chair a little nearer to her;
for he felt that she was distinctly a sensible sort of person, not
unlike Knutty in intelligence.
Katharine gave out to him unsparingly, and when she saw that the boy was
becoming more at his ease and more inclined to talk, she went on
laughing and chatting with him, until her own loneliness tugged less at
her own heart.
Suddenly the door of the reading-room opened, and a man came in.
Katharine and her young friend both looked round.
"It's father," the boy said awkwardly, not knowing what to do next.
"Professor Thornton," Katharine said, with a start of pleasure and
surprise.
"Miss Frensham," he said, with an eager smile on his grave face.
And he sank into the arm-chair as though he had come into a haven.
CHAPTER VIII.
Katharine woke up the morning after her arrival at the Langham feeling
much less miserable than she had expected. The visit from Gwendolen and
Ronald had cheered her, and the evening's companionship with that lonely
father and son had taken away the sting of her own loneliness. She sang
as she rolled up her beautiful soft hair. And when the sun came
streaming into the room, she felt so full of brightness and hope, that
she paused in her process of dressing and danced the Norfolk step-dance
in her smart silk petticoat. Then she stopped suddenly, arrested by an
invisible touch.
"Ah," she said, "how often Ronald and I have danced that at the
bean-feasts! And now, never again, never again, old fellow! All the old
fun is over. You belong heart and soul to that over-dressed jealous
little idiot."
"Shame on you, Katharine!" she said, shaking her fist at herself in the
looking-glass. "You deserve to put on an unbecoming dress. You shall put
on that blue failure. You know blue does not suit you--not that tone of
blue."
Katharine took the dress in question from the wardrobe and began putting
it on.
"No," she said with a smile, "I have changed my mind, Katharine. You
shall not be punished. You shall wear your most becoming one--the
dove-coloured one. Punishment, indeed! You don't need punishment. You
need consolation. And what could be more consoling on earth than a
becoming dress, unless it were a becoming hat? You shall have both."
She nodded and smiled to herself in the glass, and was still smiling
when she went down in the lift, and found Clifford Thornton and Alan in
the hall. By silent agreement they breakfasted together, and then made
their way into the reading-room and drew up to the fire. Katharine was
so genial and companionable that it was impossible even for Knutty's two
icebergs not to thaw in her presence. Free of spirit always, and fresh
from her recent travels, she was feeling as if she had met two strange
people unexpectedly in some desolate corner of the earth, and had
therefore the right to greet them and treat them as fellow-travellers.
She knew that they would pass on, of course; but meantime here they
were; they had broken in upon her loneliness, and she had the right to
enjoy what the hour brought. It was only a chance that the desolate
corner happened to be the Langham. It might have been Mount Ararat, or
some spot in Siberia or Central China.
As for the icebergs themselves, they were feeling vaguely that it was
delightful to be with her. Alan's shyness yielded to her influence, and
the man's grave reserve underwent a slight modification. He seemed to
become younger. Once or twice he even laughed at something Katharine
said. It was such a fresh, boyish laughter, and had such a ring in it,
that any one would have believed he was meant for happiness. That was
what Katharine thought when she heard it; and when she glanced at his
face and saw that for the moment his strained expression had given place
to easier adjustment, something tugged at her heart. In a curious,
impersonal sort of way he, too, appeared to think that this chance
meeting was to be made into pleasure for them all; for he said quite
simply, as one traveller meeting another might say:
"What shall we do this morning?"
"I will do anything you both like," Katharine said. "I have no plans in
the world, except to go to Denmark in a few weeks."
"Denmark!" they both said, interested at once.
"Yes," she answered, "I have a mysterious and sacred parcel intrusted
to me by two botanists in Arizona; and I vowed that I would go
myself to Denmark and put it into the hands of two botanists in
Copenhagen--Ebbesen was the name."
"That is curious," Clifford said. "They are the nephew and niece of my
old governess, whom I only saw off to Denmark last night. Ejnar and
Gerda Ebbesen. And they are great on 'Salix;' and have a good many
quarrels over that and other debatable subjects too. You will find them
to be delightful people, and highly intellectual, as so many Danes are.
But your parcel will probably give rise to many a battle-royal."
"Apparently all botanists quarrel," said Katharine. "I know my friends
were in a perpetual state of warfare. They had a fearful dispute when I
was there about a cactus. Such a hideous thing to quarrel over, too! And
when I said that, they instantly became reconciled and attacked me!"
Then Clifford, with a smile in his heart at the mere thought of Knutty
and her belongings, began to speak of his dear old Dane. And he added:
"You will not need an introduction to her good graces if you are
bringing offerings to her nephew and niece, whom she adores. Still, she
would like to know that you have seen her troublesome Englishman. She is
the kindest friend I have ever had in my life. She came to take charge
of me when I was about seven years of age. A lonely little beggar I was,
too--in a great house in Surrey, with no one to care about my comings
and goings. My mother was dead, and my father, a mining engineer, was
always travelling about to all parts of the globe. When Knutty arrived
on the scenes, I felt that heaven had opened and let out an angel."
"She doesn't look much like an angel now!" said Alan quaintly. "She
weighs about seventeen stone."
"I would not have her otherwise, would you?" said his father, smiling.
"No, no," said Alan staunchly, "she is ripping, just as she is."
"We wanted her to come with us on our travels," Clifford continued.
"She would have been splendid, father, wouldn't she?" Alan said.
"Nothing would have upset Knutty. Why, I believe if we had been drowning
together, she would have said, 'By St Olaf, what a delightful ocean this
is!'"
They all laughed. Knutty at that moment tossing on the sea, would have
been glad to hear her belovèd icebergs laugh, and glad to know that she
was the cause. She would have rejoiced also to know that some one, and
that some one a sympathetic woman, was being kind to them. Perhaps she
would have said: "I see daylight!"
Then Clifford spoke of Denmark, and Norway, and Sweden, the wonderful
North which Knutty had taught him to love and understand.
"I had the love of it in my veins," he said, "for my father had a
passion for Northern countries and people, and that was why he chose a
Northern governess for me; although of course she knew English
perfectly. But she fostered my love of the North, and brought me up on
the Sagas. And it was she who first took me up to the extreme north of
Norway. That is where you should go: where you see the mountains as in a
vision, and the glaciers reflected in the fiords, and the exquisite
colours of the sky chastened and tempered by the magic mist."
Katharine said that she had always intended to go there, but that other
places had taken precedence; and that when her brother married three
years ago, she had been impelled to take a long journey, in order to get
accustomed to a new kind of life, a crippled kind of life without him.
"And have you become accustomed to it?" Clifford Thornton asked.
"No," she answered. "Not yet."
"Then the long journey did not help?" he said.
"Oh yes, it helped," Katharine answered. "Mercifully one passes on."
"Yes," he said, and he seemed lost in thought.
Katharine broke through the silence.
"Well," she said, rising from her chair, "if we are going out, we should
not delay much longer. Where shall we go?" she said, turning to Alan.
Alan chose the Hippodrome, and the three started off together in that
direction. Knutty would have been somewhat surprised to see her two
icebergs. They did not talk much, it is true, for Katharine did all the
talking; but they laughed now and then, and made an occasional remark
which was not at all Arctic. They had a splendid day together: a mixture
of Hippodromes, ices, lunches, animated pictures, Natural History
Museums, and camera-shops; and in the evening they dined together, and
chatted, like old cronies, over the day's doings.
They knew that they owed the day's pleasure to Katharine's
companionship; and when Alan said good night, he blushed and added with
a jerk:
"Thank you."
And Clifford said:
"Yes, indeed, thank you for to-day--tak for idag, as the Danes say."
"Ah, I must learn that if I am going to Denmark," Katharine said, and
she repeated it several times until Alan pronounced her to be perfect.
"Tak for idag, tak for idag!" she said triumphantly. "It is I who have
to thank you for to-day."
She thought of them as she went to sleep. They seemed to her two
pathetic figures, hapless wanderers, not fit to be alone in the world by
themselves. She wished the old Dane had not left them. She dreamed of
them; she saw in her dreams the boy's young face and the man's grave
face. She heard the man's voice telling her that he had met and known
her before, and she answered:
"Yes, it is true. We have met somewhere, you and I. Some message has
passed between us somewhere--somehow----"
When she woke up, she remembered her dreams and lay thinking a long
time.
"He haunts me," she thought. "He is on my mind and in my heart day and
night. I suppose I ought to try and get rid of him. I suppose it would
be the right sort of British matronly thing to do, considering the
circumstances. And yet why should it be the right thing? It does not
harm him that I think of him and am strongly attracted to him. Why
should I stamp down my emotions and impulses? No. I shall think of him
as much as I like, and dream of him as much as I can. I know he is a man
with a broken spirit--out of reach, out of region--but----"
"Well, well," she said, "I must shake myself and 'go forth.'"
She went forth that day looking the picture of health and attractive
grace. She wore the dove-coloured dress, a most becoming hat, and a
cloak which added to her natural charm of bearing. But it was her whole
personality more than her looks which stamped her as a special brand of
beautiful womanhood; whilst her adorable manner, the natural outcome of
a big heart and generous spirit, gave her a radiance which was felt and
seen by every one. Wherever she went, people even of the dullest types
had a distinct feeling of being pleased and stirred. Her arrival at the
organ-factory, near Cambridge Heath, was the signal for all the
employees on the premises to be more or less agreeably excited,
according to their varying powers of receptivity. The porter, who was
known as the "dormouse," from his sleepy disposition, became electrified
into activity when he saw Katharine. He ran and spread the news.
"Miss Katharine has come," he said first to one workman and then
another.
She soon passed in and out amongst them all. The sulky but clever
artiste, who voiced the reeds, the sympathetic craftsman who was doing a
delicate piece of carving for part of an elaborate organ-case, the
mechanics, the packers, the clerks, the manager, all had their eager
word of welcome ready for her.
"It's good to see you, Miss Katharine," they said. "Organ-building
hasn't been organ-building without you."
Ronald was with a client at the time, but he too became excited when he
heard that Katharine had come; and the client was ingeniously got rid of
as soon as possible.
"How many times you have come and upset us all," he said, when they were
alone together in his sanctum. "No one will do any more useful work
to-day, and I am sure I don't wonder. And how jolly to see you here as
in the old days! And how splendid you look too! Why, Kath, I do believe
you have a flirtation on! You have that well-known air of buoyancy which
always has meant a new flirtation. I should recognise it anywhere."
"No, no," she laughed; "I have no flirtation on. I should tell you at
once, if only from sheer force of habit."
"Well," he said, "I have been torn the whole time thinking what a brute
I was to leave you in that way and let you stay at the Langham. I can't
get over it, Kath. Gwendolen is so ashamed, and so am I."
"Don't fret about it," she said gently. "The bitterness has passed, if,
indeed, it ever existed, Ronnie. Gwendolen never meant to be unkind.
Most people would have stayed on and pretended not to feel the strain;
but I couldn't have done that. I would rather never see you again than
live on strained terms with you now that you are married. That would be
a pitiful ending to our long friendship, wouldn't it? No, no, cheer up.
It will all work out beautifully; and I shall come and see you more
often than you wish. I promise you that."
"But it is dreadful for you to be alone," he said.
"I have not been alone," she answered, and she told him about her
strange meeting with Clifford Thornton and his boy.
Ronald pretended to believe that she knew they were there all the time,
and that she had left his home deliberately.
"Don't be ridiculous," she answered gaily. "Life is only a series of
chances, and this is one of them."
"And here have I been racking my brains to think how I might comfort
you, Kath," said Ronald.
"Dear old fellow!" she replied. "Lonely people have to work out their
own redemption."
"Are you very lonely?" he asked regretfully. It always pinched his heart
to think that he had abandoned her.
"No, no," she answered, giving him a sudden hug, "scarcely at all, and
then only for a few passing moments. Nothing that matters. And now tell
me about business. For if you want the benefit of my advice about
anything, now is your chance. I feel that my brains are in splendid
condition this morning, and that I can settle the most momentous
questions in five minutes. I always was quick, wasn't I?"
"There are one or two matters you can help me with, if you will really
give your attention," he said.
"Well, then, I must remove this hat," Katharine said, taking pins
recklessly out of her hair. "No person could be business-like in such a
hat, could they? There, I feel different now, absolutely serious and
commercial! And here go my gloves and rings. Now, Ronnie, I am all
brains and attention."
"And you won't flirt if I ask Barlow in?" Ronald said. "We shall want
him too."
"I will be sphinx-like," she answered, with a twinkle in her eye.
Ronald laughed and sent for his manager, and the three together settled
some important difficulties, over which Katharine showed herself so
quick-witted and sensible that Mr Barlow was lost in admiration, and
remarked it was a pity she was not in the business.
"I have always maintained, Miss Katharine, that you ought to take an
active part in the business," he said. "You have a good and a quick
judgment."
"Ah, Mr Barlow," Katharine answered eagerly, "you have touched the right
chord. I want to take an active part from now onwards, and Ronald says I
could be of use."
"Yes, but the trouble is that you'd soon get tired of routine work,"
Ronald said. "You were not made for a dull life."
"Why could I not be a traveller for the firm?" suggested Katharine. "I
am sure I could manage ecclesiastics beautifully; and that wouldn't be
dull really, though it sounds dull! I have every confidence that I could
make all creeds employ our firm and our firm only. I feel myself quite
capable of tackling Archbishops or Plymouth Brethren, Unitarian
ministers or Anabaptists. All sects of all shades except Christian
Scientists. I draw the line at Christian Scientists. No one could tackle
them, no one on earth or in heaven or--anywhere!"
The manager laughed.
"I believe you can tackle any one, Miss Katharine, even Christian
Scientists," he said, "and I am sure we can make use of your quick
judgment."
When he had gone, she said to Ronald:
"Ronnie, I really am more stable than you think, and I believe I could
even do routine work now. I must have something to do. And you admit I
have a quick brain. It goes like a flash, doesn't it? Not like Willy
Tonedale's, for instance."
And at that moment Willy Tonedale was announced. He was a handsome
fellow, to whom the gods had given a beautiful face, a splendid form, a
dear, kind heart, and certainly the very slowest of brains. Every one
loved him, and Katharine herself was one of his best friends. He was too
lazy to have worked seriously at a profession; but he had had a vague
training as an artist, and had dawdled through the Royal Academy
schools. It was his custom to propose to Katharine every time he met
her, and he at once said:
"Ah, Katharine, there you are, home at last! Do be mine, my dear. Do.
There's a brick."
"We were just talking of you," she said.
"Talking of my slow brain, as usual, I suppose," he said, slipping into
Ronald's chair, his handsome face aglow with the pleasure of seeing her.
"It was just mentioned," Katharine said, laughing; and Ronald said:
"Kath wants to come into the business; and she was remarking that she
had a quick brain, not like----"
"Not like mine, of course," put in Willy. "I know. But what on earth
does she want to come into the business for? I never heard of anything
so absurd. Why don't you tell her to marry me instead, Ronald?"
"You are not the right man, Willy," Katharine said brightly. "You are an
awful dear; but you never were the right fellow, and never will be."
"Well, don't settle down to work," he said. "Work! Who wants to work at
anything regularly? Never heard such an absurd idea. Good heavens! If
it's money you want, take all I've got--every blessèd shilling--and
remain yourself--Katharine the splendid! Business routine for you! It's
ridiculous to think of. Why, the world wouldn't go on properly unless
you were a leisured person. Some nice people have got to be leisured.
That's why I take things easily. Too many busy people make life a
nuisance. Even I've sense enough to know that."
"I am quite determined to take up business, Willy," said Katharine, "and
the world will have to do without me. Ronald says I could be of use. And
Mr Barlow says so too. Now just imagine for one moment how beautifully I
might manage bishops, archbishops, curates, even Popes. Can't you
picture to yourself the Pope ordering a new organ with all the newest
improvements of which only our firm is capable!"
And she went through an imaginary interview with the Pope, which called
forth peals of laughter from her little audience of two. Seriousness had
scarcely been re-established when the card of a real clergyman was
brought in, and Ronald said laughingly:
"Here, Kath, here's your chance--the Dean of St Ambrose's."
"No, no," she answered. "I can't begin with any one inferior to a Pope
or an Archbishop. Come along, Willy. I suppose you are going to your
home to lunch. You know I am spending the afternoon there. Make haste,
Willy! Ronald is longing for us to be off."
"My dear Kath," Willy Tonedale said quaintly, "it isn't I that am
putting all those mysterious pins into my head. Can't understand how
they don't hurt the head, going right through like that. They would hurt
my head. But then it's true----"
"Yes, it's true," said Katharine. "You needn't finish your remark. I
know! Good-bye, Ronnie. Love to Gwendolen, and I'm coming to dinner
to-morrow. If it had only been an Archbishop, I would have begun at
once!"
The Dean passed into Ronald's sanctum as Willy Tonedale and Katharine
passed out. The dignitary of the Church glanced at her, and a fleeting
expression of pleased surprise lit up his clerical countenance. He had
come about some experiment which he wished tried on the organ of St
Ambrose's; but he found himself unable to concentrate his attention on
business until he had asked who that delightful-looking lady might be.
Ronald smiled invisibly as he replied that it was his sister--the senior
partner of the firm.
"Dear me, dear me!" replied the Dean as he stroked his chin. His eyes
wandered restlessly towards the door. Wicked old Dean. He was thinking:
"Surely I have heard that it is always safer to ask for the senior
partner."
CHAPTER IX.
"Well, Willy," said Katharine, as he and she made their way towards the
Tonedales' house in South Kensington, "what have you been doing whilst I
have been away? Have you finished the famous historical picture of the
unhistoric meeting between Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots? I
should like to think that you have finished it, for then I shouldn't
have to sit for it any more! Let me see, how many years have you been
painting at that immortal masterpiece? Is it ten or fifteen years?"
"Don't make fun of me," Willy said. "You know perfectly well that I am
one of those fellows who were never intended for work, although if I had
had you to work for, Kath, I might have overcome my natural laziness.
Anyway, the masterpiece isn't done yet. It has been waiting for your
return. You must still sit for it. I have missed you fearfully.
Everybody has missed you. Even that duffer Ronald, infatuated as he is
with that idiot Gwendolen, even he has had the sense to miss you. By
Jove, though, he is altered! Not the same fellow at all. I never go to
his home. Don't care to meet those pretentious asses of people whom
Gwendolen thinks such fine style. I don't see how you are going to get
on with them, Kath. They'll hate you, and you'll hate them. It's their
pretentiousness I can't swallow. It makes me positively sick. No, when I
want to see Ronnie nowadays I go down to the organ-factory. That is good
enough for me. No one is artificial there."
"Yes, Ronnie has altered," Katharine said. "But still, if he is happy,
Willy, that is the main thing. And I think he is happy; although I am
sure that he knows he is spending too much money. The truth is,
Gwendolen has always been accustomed to these weird people, and likes to
entertain them. Ronnie has nothing in common with them, but he worships
Gwendolen, and loves to please her, and so he has persuaded himself that
it is the right thing to keep in and up with them. Perhaps it is, from
one point of view. It all depends on what one wants in life. I assure
you I was glad enough to escape two or three days ago, and take refuge
in the Langham until I could find a flat for myself. Gwendolen was
jealous of me, too. I felt that at once."
"At the Langham, nonsense!" said Willy. "Come and live with us. That's
the proper place for you until you have decided what to do. Come, Kath,
do!"
Mrs Tonedale and Margaret, Willy's mother and sister, also begged
Katharine to come and make their home her own; but she could not be
persuaded to leave the hotel, and said in excuse that she was still
feeling a wanderer to whom a home was not yet necessary. They did not
coerce her, knowing her love of freedom, and knowing also that she
understood there was always a warm welcome awaiting her. For they loved
her dearly, in spite of the fact that she did not respond to Willy's
adoration.
Margaret Tonedale had been Katharine's earliest school friend in the
years that had gone. They had both been together at one of those
prehistoric private schools, where the poor female victims used to get
very little learning and much less food.
"It didn't matter so much about the learning," Kath said to Margaret
that afternoon, when they were speaking about old times. "I always
thought vaguely one could make that up somehow or other, but one could
not make up the arrears of food; and, you know, I have remained hungry
ever since."
"If you married me, Katharine, I would feed you splendidly," Willy said.
"You'd soon forget that you had been starved at school. My dear girl,
you should have a baron of beef every day!"
"Willy is still incorrigible in the way he proposes," Mrs Tonedale said,
laughing. "You must go on forgiving him, Katharine."
"Willy is a dear, and I don't mind when or how he proposes to me;
whether with a poem, or a baron of beef, or a picture of the meeting
between Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots," said Katharine, smiling. "I
think we still understand each other, and he knows that he will always
get the same answer. Don't you, Willy?"
"Yes, my dear," answered Willy. "Same question, same answer. That is all
I expect now."
"But, supposing some day I said 'Yes,' instead of 'No.' What would you
do then?" suggested Katharine, teasing him.
"By Jove! Kath, I should go out of my senses," he said eagerly.
"My dear fellow, you must keep what brains you've got," she replied.
"You know I've always said you had some, though they do work slowly."
"The machine's there, my dear," he said, "but it certainly doesn't work
quickly. I'm quite willing to own that it doesn't work quickly. It never
could, not even for love of you. Quite sure you couldn't stand a slow
machine?"
"Quite sure," she answered. "It would send me frantic, Willy."
"Awfully hard on a man to have a slow machine when only a quick one will
do the trick," he said. "Where's the justice of it, I should like to
know? Tell me that."
"Oh, I don't pretend to know about justice," she said. "But I think
there are plenty of other women who would not go frantic over the slow
machine."
"Exactly," he said, pulling his moustache. "But I want the woman who
would go frantic."
"Do be sensible, Will," she said. "Our temperaments are hopelessly
different."
"Oh, hang temperament!" he said recklessly. "I hate the word."
"Everything turns on it," she answered. "I see that more and more."
"Oh, don't you begin to talk about temperaments," he said. "I can't
stand it from you, Kath. We hear of nothing else now, since cousin Julia
came to live in London. But, there she is, confound her! And now she
will begin on her eternal subject: a dead friend who was done to death
by her husband's temperamental cruelty. And mother and Margaret will
listen in rapt delight. And if any one fresh is here, she tells the
whole story from beginning to end. All I can say is, that if the woman
was anything like cousin Julia, the husband must have had an awful time
of it, and, if he is a sensible chap, must now be revelling in his
freedom."
Katharine looked in the direction of the new-comer, and saw a
well-dressed woman with a hard face. She was received by Margaret
Tonedale, and joined the little group of friends who had come in whilst
Katharine and Willy had been talking together at the other end of the
big drawing-room.
"What was the name of the dead friend?" Katharine asked indifferently.
She wondered afterwards why she had asked. It was nothing to her. At
least she believed at the moment that it was nothing to her.
"The name was Thornton--Marianne Thornton," Willy said. "I ought to
know, considering I've heard it about a million times. Even my brain
would retain it after that."
Katharine rose from the sofa.
"Let us join the others, Willy," she said; and she took a chair not far
off from Mrs Stanhope. Willy followed her reluctantly.
"Never thought you'd want to listen to that shrew of a woman," he said.
"Besides, what good does she do to her dead friend? The whole thing is
past and gone. And, as for temperaments, I tell you----"
"Hush, hush!" said Katharine, with a slight flush on her face, "I want
to hear what she says."
"Oh, I am never tired of talking about it," Mrs Stanhope was saying.
"You see, she was my great friend, my dearest friend on earth. And to
lose her in such sad circumstances has made me feel tenfold more
bereaved than I should have felt if she had just passed away from
ordinary causes and chances of everyday life. As for her husband, he
deserves all the unhappiness which remorse can measure out to him. He
wrecked and ruined my poor friend's life. She was high-spirited and full
of noble emotions. She had a fine natural disposition which he never
even tried to understand. He never spared a thought to her. His thoughts
were for himself, his work, and his son. I will do him the justice to
say that he loved his boy. But he never gave a thought to his wife. She
had sacrificed everything to his temperament; she sacrificed herself,
her friends, her social obligations, her personal inclinations, her very
love for her boy. No woman could have given more. She was alone in the
world. Her husband had put her out into the biting cold of loneliness."
She paused for a moment, and Willy Tonedale drawled out:
"But you did say once, Cousin Julia, that she had a most fearful temper.
No fellow can stand that sort of thing for long."
Mrs Stanhope glanced at him sternly, and said:
"Could you imagine your temper improved under such conditions? She went
to him sweet-tempered enough; and, if she became a little hasty as the
years went on, it was only right that she should have won that
protection for herself. I encouraged her. '_Let yourself be felt,
Marianne_,' I used to say."
"Poor devil of a man," whispered Willy, "if Marianne were anything like
cousin Julia. By Jove! she must have made herself felt."
"It was temperamental strife," continued Mrs Stanhope, "and my poor
darling was worsted. She was doomed from the beginning. She had no
chance against that man's cruel neglect and selfishness. You had only to
look at him to know that he had no emotions and no heart."
"That is not true," thought Katharine; but she remained silent, although
increasingly stirred by Mrs Stanhope's incisive words.
"And," said Mrs Stanhope, "I know from my poor friend's confidences, how
greatly she suffered from his unvarying unkindness. He killed her by a
long series of tortures--temperamental tortures--and he must have given
the finishing stroke to her on that last evening when, by his own
confession at the inquest, they had had some miserable scene together,
and he, no doubt to recover from his own outbreak of anger, went off
riding, leaving her to right herself as well as she could. He knew that
she had a delicate heart, and that she was always jeopardised by
over-excitation. All this he knew well; and yet he never tried to make
her life happy and calm. He never spared her anything. It was so like
him to bring about a last access of unhappiness for her--and then leave
her to die broken-hearted alone. I shall always say, that if ever a man
killed a woman, Clifford Thornton killed his wife."
There was silence. Mrs Stanhope's words cut into every one's
sensitiveness. Every one was suffering. But she herself leaned back as
if resting from a newly accomplished task and well-earned triumph. She
had raised her voice and testified once more against her dead friend's
husband.
Then Katharine spoke.
"Well," she said, "it is a pitiful story; but nothing and no one will
ever make me believe that Professor Thornton is a cruel man. He may have
made mistakes, and probably did do so, being only human; but it is
impossible to believe anything worse of him than that."
They all turned to her. Her face was flushed. There was a gleam in her
eyes, and a curious tenseness in her manner. She looked as one who had
divined some advancing danger, and was standing ready to ward off the
evil from some friend loved and defenceless except for her.
"Do you know Professor Thornton, Kath?" Willy and Margaret exclaimed.
"You never told us."
"I have met him," she answered. "I believe he is incapable of
cruelty--physical, mental, or temperamental--quite incapable of it."
"I have known him for twelve years," said Mrs Stanhope in her steely
voice. "And you?"
"I have known him for three days," said Katharine, undaunted. "But with
what you would call 'temperamental knowledge,' Mrs Stanhope. I do not
believe he ever said one unkind word to any one."
"He is lucky to inspire such faith in a stranger," Mrs Stanhope
remarked. "He is lucky to have such a staunch defender."
Katharine looked at her steadily for a moment, and then said:
"It is well for him that he has even a stranger to defend him, if you go
about the world saying that he murdered his wife."
"You are scarcely accurate, Miss Frensham," Mrs Stanhope said, flushing.
"I did not use that word."
"I am as accurate as the ordinary outside world would be in the
circumstances," said Katharine.
"Ah, you are right there," drawled out Willy Tonedale. "The outside
world knows nothing about temperamental tortures and temperamental
murders, and all that sort of confounded subtleness. Torture is torture,
and murder is murder to the outside world of ordinary dense people like
myself--and others. I ought to see that man and warn him against you,
cousin Julia--'pon my soul, I ought."
"Oh, there will be no need, Willy," she said with a short, nervous
laugh. "No doubt Miss Frensham will do it instead of you."
Every one had stood up, by silent consent dissolving the meeting. Mrs
Tonedale, Margaret, Willy, and the three or four visitors now looked
towards Katharine again, wondering how she would meet Mrs Stanhope's
parting thrust. She met it quite simply. She said:
"I will gladly warn him. Though I daresay he does not need to be warned.
For at least Mrs Stanhope does not stab in the dark, does she?"
And directly she had spoken these words, she thought of the young boy,
and a wave of sympathetic anxiety swept over her. Supposing that this
woman did stab in the dark; supposing that out of mistaken loyalty to
her dead friend's memory, she believed it to be a solemn duty to tell
her version of the story to the young boy--Marianne's son--what
then--what then? She was obviously such a bigot that she was capable of
doing anything to forward the cause which she had at heart.
At that same moment Mrs Stanhope was saying to herself:
"The boy shall know--the boy shall know--it is only fair to my poor
Marianne's memory that he should learn the true history of his mother's
unhappy life."
The two women glanced at each other, and each read the other's thought.
Then, after a hasty leave-taking, Mrs Stanhope hurried away. Katharine
had an uneasy feeling that she ought to have followed her to her very
door, and thus have made sure that Marianne's avenging colleague wrought
no harm that afternoon to the boy and his father. She attempted several
times to go, but was prevented by her friends, who wished to hear some
of the details of her three years' travels.
"I believe you want to chase cousin Julia and give her a ducking in the
Serpentine," said Willy. "By Jove, I should like to see it!"
Katharine laughed.
"Willy," she said, "you're really becoming quite electrically
intelligent. What is the cause of it?"
"You are, my dear," he said. "And also that adorable female relative of
mine always rouses my indignation. Shades of my ancestors, what a
tongue! How she would yarn to the boy if she ever got hold of him
alone."
"That is what I've been thinking," Katharine said, turning to him
earnestly. "It would be too cruel."
"But why should you mind?" he said. "After all, they are nothing to
you--just strangers--that's all. Can't let yourself be torn in pieces
for strangers. Better do it for me instead. My word, Kath, but you did
speak up for him well."
"Did I?" she asked, with a sudden thrill in her voice.
Willy Tonedale glanced at her and saw a light on her face which had
never shone for him--never.
And the cold crept into his faithful heart.
CHAPTER X.
Mrs Stanhope went on her way home fiercely indignant with this stranger
who had dared to defend Clifford Thornton. In her own unreasoning anger
she felt doubly fierce towards him for daring to have a defender. She
had loved Marianne always, and she had disliked him always. She was of
limited understanding--like all bigots. She knew nothing, and wished to
know nothing about his side of the case. All she knew was that he had
made her poor Marianne miserable, and had brought about her death. All
she hoped now was that he might be miserable himself, for ever and ever.
In memory of her dear, dead friend, she determined that her hand should
always be against him. It was a simple creed, and therefore primitive
and strong, like all primitive instincts. She knew even less than
Marianne about sensitive brains, delicate nervous organisms, and the
surcharged world of thought and imagination. When she spoke about
temperament, it was as though a blacksmith were working at a goldsmith's
goblet: as though a ropemaker were working at a spider's web. She
honestly believed that Marianne had been sacrificed to him. She could
not realise that Marianne was made of coarser fibre than Clifford
Thornton. She knew nothing about Marianne's birth, antecedents, and
environment. She was quite unequipped with delicate understanding of
human nature to judge between any two people--much less two married
people--that unfathomable twin-mystery. But she did judge, and she
condemned him without any reservations. And she thought of Marianne's
son, and resolved in her own mind that he, too, should judge his father
and condemn him.
"It is only right," she said to herself repeatedly, "that the boy should
know, and should carry in his mind a tender memory of his mother. His
father will tell him only cruel things about her. She shall not have
that injustice done to her."
She did not take into account the tenderness of Alan's years; she had no
instincts of mercy and pity for his young thoughts, and his young
birthright of forgetfulness. She did not stop to imagine that Marianne
herself would have wished him to be spared. It never entered her mind
that Marianne herself would have said:
"Let the boy be--he is only a boy--let him be--what does it all matter
now? and he is so young still--let him be."
She never thought of that. She filled a cup of poison ready to put to
his lips at the first opportunity: the poison of disbelief and doubt.
"I must find some means of seeing him," she said to herself. "Marianne
shall not have the injustice of being misinterpreted."
Full of these thoughts she paused before going into Hyde Park.
"Shall I walk through the Park, or shall I go straight to St. James's
Mansions?" she asked herself. "I think I will go straight home. I am
tired."
But after she had advanced a few steps, she turned back and passed into
the Park, impelled to do so against her will. It was a charming evening
at the beginning of April. The spring had come early, and the borders
were gay with flowers. A young boy came along, whistling softly. He
stopped to look at some of the beds, and then went on again. After all,
he thought, it was not so bad going for this journey to Japan. And all
the fellows had said they envied him. And father was better already. And
that was a bully new camera they had bought to-day. And, by Jove, he had
enjoyed himself yesterday. And----
He looked up and saw Mrs Stanhope.
"Alan," she said in her steely voice, which had always jarred on him.
His face clouded over. His heart sank. He had always disliked her.
"Alan," she said, "I have wanted to see you. I was thinking of you this
very moment. I was by your mother's grave yesterday. Shall we sit down
here? It is not cold this evening."
She had kept his hand, and led him to the nearest bench. He disengaged
his hand, and shrank a little from her. She did not notice that.
"Yes," she repeated. "I stood by your mother's grave yesterday. It is a
beautiful stone, simple but beautiful."
"Father and I liked it," the boy said a little nervously. "We--we went
there to say good-bye before--before going away, you know."
"Ah," she said, "you are going away then? Are you going to leave
'Falun'?"
"Yes," he said, "for a few months. Father is not well."
There was a pause, and then she said suddenly:
"Alan, you will never forget your dear mother, will you? She died in
such a sad, sad way--it breaks one's heart to think of it--doesn't
it?--all alone--without a kind word--a kind look--nothing--no one near
her--no one to help her--alone."
The boy bit his lips. Something pulled at his heartstrings.
"You must always think lovingly of her," she continued. "You must always
think the very best of her. She was a grand, noble woman who had not
been understood. When you are older, you will see it all clearly for
yourself--see it with your own eyes, not with any one else's eyes, and
then you will know how unhappy she was, and how sad she was all--all the
days of her married life. Poor darling, she was lonely in life and
lonely in death--you must never forget that--you must be loyal to
her--you, her son. You were good to her; you loved her; you would have
loved her more if--if your father had allowed you, Alan."
The boy's face was rigid.
"Father never stopped me from loving mother," he said, half to himself.
"Ah," she said bitterly, "when you are older you will understand it all
only too well. And meanwhile be loyal to her memory--you, her son."
The boy's face softened again. The tears came into his eyes. The appeal
to his sonship touched him deeply. He said nothing, but Mrs Stanhope
realised that his silence was charged with grief; for she saw the tears
in his eyes, the flush on his face, and the quivering of his mouth.
"Alan," she went on, "and the pity--the pity of it all. She might
be here with us now--there was no reason for her death; it is that
which makes it so sad. If she had had some terrible illness, one
might be comforted a little by her release; but to be cut off like
this--suddenly--and in this sad, sad way--ah, how your poor father
must tear his heart to remember that he had angry words with her that
night--to think that but for that unfortunate incident she might be
alive this very moment--to think----"
She stopped suddenly, for she had already said more than she intended.
Alan turned his face to her. The flush had gone now. He looked deadly
pale.
"Father was always, always good to mother," he said, in a strained tone
of voice. "You were not always with us. You couldn't know."
"No, no--of course I could not know all," she said soothingly; and
again she put her hand on his arm. And again he freed himself.
"But this I do know," she continued with great gentleness, "that you
have lost a noble and unselfish mother who loved you with her whole
heart--more than you ever knew. But I knew. I knew all her hopes and
fears and ambitions for you; and I knew, too, how she yearned for the
time when you would love her more and more, and understand her more and
more. For a mother clings heart and soul to her son, Alan. If he does
not love her, she mourns always, always."
She rose from the bench; and he rose too, his young heart torn and his
young spirit troubled. He stood there looking down on the ground,
overpowered with many emotions.
"Good-bye, Alan," she said. "And remember you have a friend in me. Come
to me in trouble, and I will not fail you--for your dear mother's sake."
She left him, and he lingered for a moment scratching the ground with
his stick. Then he went on his way to the Langham. He was not whistling
now. He ran up against an old gentleman.
"Look out where you're going, my boy!" the old man said angrily.
"Dreaming, I suppose. Boys didn't dream in my time. I've no patience
with this generation."
At the hotel he saw Katharine, who was standing in the hall giving some
instructions to the porter. She had just come back from the Tonedales,
whom she had left as soon as she could. She had been thinking of him all
the time, of him and his father and that metallic woman; and she could
not rest until she was back again at the Langham, mounting guard, as it
were, over these strangers who had come so unexpectedly into her life.
She greeted the boy and spoke some kindly words, which brought a faint
smile into his face.
But he slipped away from her, and locked himself up in his room.
CHAPTER XI.
Katharine spent that night wondering what she could say to Professor
Thornton to warn him against Mrs Stanhope's biting tongue. She felt that
she must warn him, even at the risk of seeming to intrude on the privacy
of his personal concerns. She believed that it would be the part of a
coward to shirk the task, and yet she dreaded to undertake it. She said
to herself a hundred times over that there was no reason why she should
interfere; they were nothing to her--these strangers, their troubles,
their tragedy were nothing to her. That was the common-sense way of
looking at the whole matter. They had their own lives to live. And she
had hers. In a day or two their chance companionship would be a thing of
the past. Why should she be troubled about them? Willy Tonedale was
right. One could not take every one's burden and carry it. Ah, there
was no common-sense about the matter; but there was something else,
something infinitely more compelling than calm reason--the heart's
insistence.
"I must tell him," she said. And her heart was lighter when she decided
that. Then came the difficulty of deciding what to say. She did not
solve that problem. She fell asleep and dreamed, and when she awoke, she
said:
"What was it I dreamed I said to him? Ah, I remember I said that----Ah!
it has gone again."
But it came back to her when she stood with Clifford Thornton alone in
the reading-room. She made no preliminaries, she offered no excuses; she
behaved exactly as though nothing else could be done by her in the
circumstances, as though he and she were in some desolate region alone
together, and she saw some terrible danger threatening him, and cried:
"Look out! Beware!"
"Professor Thornton," she said, "yesterday I met an enemy of yours. It
sounds melodramatic, perhaps, to speak of an enemy. Nevertheless, that
was what she appeared to me. You probably know who she is--a Mrs
Stanhope. But you cannot know how she speaks of you. No one could
imagine it, unless one heard it for oneself."
His drawn face seemed to become thinner as she spoke.
"She has always disliked me," he said in a painfully strained voice.
"It is not merely dislike, it is malice," Katharine said. "It would not
matter so much if you were by yourself in the world. But there is the
boy to think of. Keep him away from her. She might poison his heart
against you. It would be cruel for him, and cruel for you."
The expression of intense anxiety on the man's face filled Katharine's
heart with pity.
"Ah," he said, as if the words were torn from him. "That is the
bitterness of it; he might turn against me simply and solely because he
could not understand; he----"
He broke off and looked at Katharine hopelessly. He appeared to be
appealing to her for help in his distress; she could almost have heard
his voice saying:
"What shall I do--what shall I do? Help me."
But the next moment his pride and reserve got the better of his
momentary weakness. He gathered himself together. He asked for no
details, and made no attempt to justify himself in her eyes. He did not
even give a passing thought as to how much or how little she knew of his
sad story. He felt instinctively that she believed in him.
He came across to her, and leaned over the table by which she was
standing.
"It was beautiful of you to warn me," he said quite simply. "I know it
could not have been easy. But it was the act of a true friend."
Then he went away. And Katharine, alone with her thoughts, threw herself
into the arm-chair and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER XII.
Clifford Thornton passed on from that moment to a new chapter in his
heart's history. He was too stern with himself to yield without a
struggle to even any secret locked-up happiness; and so he tried to turn
from the thought of Katharine Frensham as from something altogether out
of his horizon. But, against his wishes, bright hopes sprang up within
him. Unbidden and harshly rebuked possibilities of joy pressed
themselves importunately on him. A fair vision of a fresh life rose
before him. He dispelled it angrily, and returned to his former self,
with the old tyranny of Marianne chafing him, and the added anxiety
concerning his young son's love and loyalty. Nevertheless, he had passed
on. He was of course too proud to ask Katharine what accusation Mrs
Stanhope had brought against him, and too reserved to thank her the next
morning for her words of warning. He did not even tell her that he had
made up his mind to take an earlier boat to New York, and thus remove
Alan from Mrs Stanhope's influence. His secret belief that he was
responsible for Marianne's death made him morbidly anxious to keep Alan
away from any one who might come between them. And Katharine Frensham's
allusion to Mrs Stanhope's attitude towards him made him doubly
apprehensive of her powers of making mischief. He knew that she had
unceasingly stirred up strife between himself and Marianne, and he
considered her capable of at least making the attempt to cause a breach
between himself and his son. He knew that she disliked him, and that she
believed he had always been hard and unkind to poor Marianne. Many a
time Marianne herself had said to him:
"Julia at least appreciates and understands me; she at least knows of my
unhappiness and your unkind indifference."
What would she say to Alan if by chance he passed her way? Alan, too,
had always disliked her; he, too, had felt that she was an enemy to his
father and himself; nevertheless she would certainly be able to
influence him, for the very reason that his mother had died in
circumstances of great sadness, and generous young hearts remember only
the best things of the dead. Marianne would conquer as she had always
conquered, and the boy's heart would turn from his father.
Clifford was greatly troubled.
"I must have my boy's love, I must have his loyalty," he said. "I cannot
do without it. I desire with all my heart that he should think lovingly
of his mother; but he must not, shall not turn from me. I have done
nothing to deserve that he should not love me. He shall not see that
woman if I can help it. She shall not have the chance of saying one word
against me. His dear young heart shall keep its love and trust. The
sadness of this tragedy in our lives will pass from him; it is passing
from him even now. And the wound which I, in my selfishness, inflicted,
shall be healed with a love which father never gave to son before. He
must and shall believe in me. If I have missed other things, at least I
will wrest this from life. She may say what she likes to the whole
world, but not to him; he would not understand. If he were older, I
would take my chance of his belief or disbelief. But the young judge and
are hard."
Then in the midst of his distress he remembered Katharine, and again
that vision rose before him. He tried to turn from it, but in vain.
"She believed in me," he said. "Whatever that woman may have said to
her, she believed in me."
He went back to the hotel buoyed up in spite of himself, and found Alan
moping in the reading-room. The boy looked miserable, and appeared to
have no heart for anything that was suggested. Clifford remembered that
he had been quiet at breakfast, and had eaten nothing. He had slipped
away, evidently wanting to be alone. His father glanced at him with some
uneasiness.
"What's the matter?" he asked kindly.
"Nothing," said Alan a little roughly, and he turned away with a slight
flush on his face.
"Well, we shall soon be off," Clifford said. "I have changed our berths
for a week earlier. In a fortnight we shall be in New York; then on we
go to San Francisco, and so on to Japan. Knutty was right to send us
away from 'Falun.' We shall both feel better for the change. I shall get
rid of my moods and become quite a jolly companion for you. We'll have
such splendid times. Won't we?"
"Yes," said Alan, but without any ring in his voice.
The father stood looking sad and puzzled.
"I am just going out to buy some books," he said. "Come, too?"
Alan shook his head.
"No, father," he said. "I thought I'd like to read."
Clifford nodded and went out.
"It will be all right between us when we are off on our travels," he
thought. "We ought to have started long ago. I am glad I have berths for
an earlier date. It will be better for him, and for me. And yet----"
He made a gesture of impatience with himself.
"It is high time that I took a journey," he said sternly.
He bought several dry treatises on scientific subjects, a new book on
architecture for Alan, and a brochure on Alan de Walsingham. He was
greatly pleased with this.
"Alan will be glad," he said. And then he found an amusing book about
balloons, also for Alan. And after this he saw a Baedeker for Norway and
Denmark.
"I should like Miss Frensham to have that from me," he said, as he
handled it dreamily.
He hesitated over it, put it aside sternly, then went back to it,
hesitated again, and finally bought it. He had a guilty smile on his
face when he carried it off.
"After all, why not?" he said in excuse to himself.
Knutty would have been glad to know that he had allowed himself to go
even thus far. Surely again she would have whispered, "I see daylight!"
He passed along Oxford Street, stopping now and then to look at the shop
windows. He was thinking all the time what he should buy for Alan. He
went back armed with books, chocolates, new penknives, sketch-blocks,
some fresh kind of printing-paper, and a little pocket microscope.
The buying of that guide-book had exhilarated him astonishingly. He had
the uplifting joy that afternoon of believing in himself; and because he
believed in himself, he was feeling for the moment that all things were
possible to him: to keep his boy's love, to take a reasonable view of
poor Marianne's death, to mend his torn spirit, to lift his head, to
lift his heart, and being free from harassment, to use to better
advantage the gifts of his intellect, and--to pass on. He knew that this
mood would change, but whilst it was on him he was grateful and almost
jubilant.
"What should we poor mortals do unless we did believe in ourselves
sometimes?" he said. "It is our moments of self-confidence which carry
us through our years of self-doubting."
He came in like a schoolboy, tremendously pleased with his shopping,
especially with that guide-book. He hurried to the reading-room, but
Alan was not there; and so he hastened to the boy's bedroom, where he
found him moping as before. One by one, with unconcealed eagerness and
triumph, Clifford displayed his treasures. Alan did not seem to care. He
scarcely looked at them, and even the pocket-microscope aroused no
enthusiasm in him. Clifford gave no sign of noticing the boy's
indifference and ungraciousness; but he was disappointed, and longed to
tell Knutty. In the evening Alan was still in the same mood, and
Clifford made up his mind to speak to him in the morning. They were both
so reserved, that speech was not easy to either of them when it had to
do with their inmost thoughts; and Clifford knew that Alan was
suffering, not sulking. He let the boy go off to bed alone, and sat in
the reading-room by himself.
All the old sadness came as a wave over him, and swept everything else
from him. There was a rift in the lute; he had been conscious of it ever
since Marianne's death. Knutty had laughed at his fears; but even she
had noticed the boy's strained manner, and had tried to ease the
tension. And then for a time things had gone better, and Alan had come
nearer to his father again, back, indeed, to the old tender comradeship
so dear to both of them. But now he was retreating once more. Clifford
knew by instinct that Marianne was between them: Marianne in all her
imperiousness, tenfold more imperious because of her tragic death.
An hour or so went by, and Clifford still lingered, given over to sad
memories and anxious fears. Two or three people came in, glanced at the
evening papers, and hurried away. He did not look up. But when Katharine
opened the door, he knew. In spite of himself he came out of his sad
reveries; in spite of himself a passionate gladness seized the man's
heart. He forgot Marianne, forgot Mrs Stanhope. He forgot Alan. He
forgot everything.
He threw all his former life, with its failures and burdens, to the
winds, and rushed recklessly on, free for the moment--gloriously
free--with the song of spring and hope resounding in his ears and urging
him onwards, onwards!
He rose at once and went to meet her.
"Ah," he said. "I must just go and fetch that book about Denmark. I want
to tell you several things about my old Knutty's country. I will not be
one moment gone."
He hurried away, leaving her, too, with the song of love and life and
hope echoing around her. Her loneliness had passed from her.
He ran up the stairs to his bedroom, found the book, and was just
running down again, when he paused outside his boy's room, which was
opposite to his own.
"I will slip in and see if he is asleep," he thought. "Then my mind will
be easier about him."
He opened the door gently, treading as softly as a loving mother might
tread who has come in the stealth of the night to see if all was well
with the beloved bairns; to touch each one on the dear head, as in
blessing, to smile at each one and then creep out again, satisfied and
comforted. Alan was sleeping, but restlessly. The bedclothes were thrown
off him, and he was murmuring something in his dreams. His father bent
over him and covered him up. He did not wake, but went on, whispering a
few disconnected words. Clifford bent to listen, and he heard, "_Mother_
... _Mrs Stanhope_...." Then there came a sort of sob. The man's heart
stood still. He waited with bowed head. The boy was dreaming of his
mother. Was he perhaps remembering in his dream how he used to come and
say to his father, "Mother has been with Mrs Stanhope to-day"? That was
the only comment on Marianne which ever passed between father and son;
it was their code, their signal of danger. Was it that? Or what was it?
What was troubling him?
Suddenly the thought flashed through the man's mind:
"_Has he seen that woman somewhere?_"
And again the old miserable fear took possession of him. He longed to
kneel down by the side of the bed and beg his little son to tell him
everything that was in his heart, so that nothing and no one might ever
come between them. He knew that when the morrow came he himself would be
too proud and reserved to ask, and his boy too proud and reserved to own
to any secret grief, however great. He had been like that himself as a
boy--he was scarcely any different now--he, a grown man; he understood
so well this terrible stone wall of reserve which the prisoners
themselves would fain pierce. Supposing he were to waken the boy now and
ask him, this very moment? Perhaps it would be easier to tell, this very
moment.
He did not waken him after all; for Alan's restlessness subsided
suddenly, and he passed into quiet sleep. So Clifford stole out of the
room and stood waiting at the top of the staircase, in doubt as to
whether he should go down or not. At last he went down, impelled against
his will. Katharine saw at once the change of expression on his face.
"I feel greatly troubled, Miss Frensham," he said in his half-reluctant
way. "My boy has been unhappy all the day, and now he is talking in his
sleep about--about that Mrs Stanhope. After what you told me, I hope
with all my heart that she has not seen him."
"Oh no, no. It can only be a coincidence," Katharine said.
"Do you really think so?" he said, with a faint smile on his troubled
face.
"Indeed I do," she answered emphatically.
"Ah," he said, "the worst of it is that I do not believe in
coincidences. There is a secret threadless thread of communication
running through the whole region of thought and feeling and event."
"Then I must find something else to say to you," Katharine said, still
undaunted.
And she looked at him, and for the very life of her she could not keep
back the words which came with a rush to her lips:
"Believe in yourself more, Professor Thornton, as I do."
CHAPTER XIII.
After a few days Clifford Thornton and his boy started for New York, and
Katharine was left once more alone in heart and spirit. She had no idea
of the great struggle which had been going on in the man's mind: a
double encounter with the past tragedy of his life and the future
possibilities of love and happiness. When he said good-bye to her, there
seemed to be no sign of regret over the parting which had come as a
matter of course. She could not know that behind his impenetrable manner
was concealed a passionate longing which appalled him by its insistence
and intensity. She could not know that his hurried departure was out of
sternness to himself, as well as out of consideration for the boy's
well-being. She could not know that once, twice, several times he had
nearly thrown up the whole journey for the sake of staying longer near
her--in her presence. If she could have known this, she would have been
comforted. But she only saw that a grave, sad man had gone back to his
past. There had been a moment of travelling on; for that moment they
had travelled together. But now the brief journey was over. She lived it
all over again: she went through the pleasant meetings, the grave
impersonal talks, the sudden passings on, the sudden retreats: the
feeling of fellowship, the feeling of aloofness: her championship of him
to Mrs Stanhope: her championship of him to himself: her entire belief
in him openly expressed direct to him.
"My belief in him waits for him whether he wants it or not. And I am
glad that he knows it," she said to herself proudly.
But in her heart of hearts she knew that he wanted it. If she had not
known it, she might, for all her brave show of spirit, have regretted
her impulsive outcry.
But she regretted nothing--nothing except that he had gone. She thought
of the men who had wanted to marry her, men unburdened with sad
histories and memories, men to whom life had been joyous, and
circumstance favourable. She had pushed them all aside without a single
pang. But this stranger, who was no stranger, and who was claimed by his
past, Katharine yearned to detain. But he had gone.
She gathered herself together to pass on. She looked about for a flat,
and found what she wanted across Westminster Bridge, in Stangate. There
she established herself, and began to see some of her old friends, and
take a fresh survey of London. Katharine was intensely patriotic, and
having been three years from home, was eager to see once more the
favourite sights and places to which absence had lent a glamour of love
and romance. She spent hours in her own surroundings: by the Embankment,
in the Abbey, round about the Houses of Parliament. She sat in the
Abbey, enjoying the dim light and hushed silence of the Past. Lonely
thoughts did not come to her there. There, the personal fades from one.
One is caught up on wings. And if the organ should play, the throb of
the outside life is stilled. She haunted Trafalgar Square. She watched
the Horse Guards change sentry. She went down to the City, sat in St
Paul's, visited the Guildhall. Her friends laughed lovingly at her.
"Ah!" she answered; "go and live out of the old country for a few years,
and if you don't feel a thrill when you return, you are not worthy of
having been born in England."
She went down to the Natural History Museum. She spent hours there,
lingering in the Mineral-room, where she had been with Clifford Thornton
and his boy. It comforted her to be there. She went over all the
beautiful things he had pointed out to her; she recalled how an unknown
mysterious subject had become as a romance full of wonder and interest.
She had meetings with the three devoted musicians, lunching with them at
restaurants representative of their respective nationalities. Ronald did
not go with her.
"No use asking 'brother,'" said Signor Luigi, waving his arms and giving
a sort of leap in the air. "Maccaroni of my native land! _I_ will do the
_rôle_ of the adorable lady--the Signora Grundy!"
"No use asking 'brother,'" said Monsieur Gervais. "'Brother' is a grand
gentleman now, and goes to 'Princes.' He has the stiff necks now."
"No use asking 'brother,'" said Herr Edelhart. "'Brother' likes not to
come without madame his wife, and madame does not love the quartette,
does not admire my wunderbar tone. Donner wetter! what a tone I have!"
Katharine laughed with them and at them, and loved to be in their
company, but her heart was far away; and in the midst of the fun, her
thoughts went straying to that man who had come in that unexpected way
into her life--and gone. She fretted, and there was no one in whom she
could have confided. Ronnie was too much taken up with his own affairs
and his passionate adoration of his wife to have any real mental leisure
for her. Katharine saw that great love, even as great sorrow, shuts the
whole world out. She knew herself excluded from his inner shrine, whilst
his outward social surroundings were increasingly uncongenial to her.
She was troubled about him, too. He looked harassed, and had lost the
old lightheartedness of three years ago. She tried in her kindly way to
probe him; but in vain. She turned away sadly, recognising that she was
no longer his confidante, and he was no longer hers.
She was happier with the Tonedales; and to them she went from time to
time during those sad weeks, and continued to sit to Willy for that
eternal portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots.
"Thank Heaven, Kath," he said one day, "you still have some leisure. No
one has any leisure nowadays. Even Margaret has got dragged by the
scruff of the neck into what my delightful cousin Julia calls 'a
strenuous life.' Always at something, always doing something for some
one who doesn't want that something done; always working at some cause.
Great Scott, Kath! I don't mind you going into business so much, but if
you take up a Cause, I shall commit suicide! Darling cousin Julia is
great on Causes, you know. Good Heavens! What a tongue that woman has!
If Causes want tongues, then she ought to get permanent employment
without any difficulty. By Jove! though, you gave it to her that day,
didn't you?"
Katharine had arrived in a state of great depression on that afternoon;
and when Willy began speaking of Mrs Stanhope, her thoughts turned at
once to Clifford Thornton, and her face became full of grief. Willy
noticed the change in her expression, but went on painting silently.
When he looked at her again, he saw tears in her eyes. He put down
palette and brush and came to her. He saw at once that something was
wrong with her, and all his kindest feelings of concern sprang up to
protect her.
"Why, Kath," he said, "what's the matter with you? Any one been unkind
to you? By Jove! I'll let them know if they have. They won't do it a
second time. You should have heard me bullyragging cousin Julia. I gave
her a bit of my mind for being so disagreeable to you the other day.
What is wrong, Kath? Tell me, my dear."
She looked at him in a forlorn way.
"I am unhappy, Willy," she said; "that's what is wrong."
"Well, you might at least tell me what it is, my dear," he said. "You
know I would do anything to help you. Anything on earth."
"You cannot help me," she said listlessly. "It is something I have to
fight out in myself, old fellow."
He glanced at her, and then said:
"I believe we have known each other twenty years, Kath."
She nodded assent.
"Then I think the least you can do for me, if you can't love me, is to
let me be your best friend," he said. "We all know that Ronnie is so
taken up with Gwendolen that he has no thought for any one else just
now. But I--I have no wife. And my mind is at leisure, and my brain
too--such as it is--and always at your service, as you know."
"If only I had a profession," Katharine said. "That has been my mistake
all along, Willy. Every one ought to have a calling--no matter what it
is; and it won't fail them in moments of poverty and trouble and--and
desolation."
"So you are feeling desolate," he said sadly, "I knew you would when you
came back and realised that Ronnie was married. I dreaded it for you."
"It is not only that," she answered, "though I have felt that bitterly.
But----"
"Well?" he said, turning to her.
"I should like to tell you, Willy," she replied tremblingly--"but it is
not fair on you."
"I know what it is," he said quite quietly, but with a sudden
illumination on his face. "You have fallen in love with that stranger,
Professor Thornton, Kath."
There was no answer, no sign. Katharine sat rigid and speechless.
"It would be fairer to tell me," he said, "fairer and kinder. Believe
me."
"Yes; I have fallen in love with the stranger," she answered gently; and
as she thought of him afresh, the tears streamed down her cheeks.
Willy Tonedale watched her a moment.
"Well, my dear," he said, "I can't pretend to be glad; but, of course,
you had to love some one sooner or later--even I knew that."
"I wish I had something else to tell you, Willy," she said simply,
"something to make you happy; but I can't help myself, can I?"
"No, my dear," he said in a low voice. "'The wind bloweth where it
listeth.' And you have never been anything except your own frank
splendid self to me."
"It came over me the moment I saw him," Katharine said, half to herself.
"I knew nothing about him, but I seemed to have come suddenly out of a
lonely wilderness--such a lonely wilderness--and found him. Then I heard
part of his history, and it filled me with great pity, as it does now.
And then we met again in the hotel. It was so strange that we should
meet there, each knowing nothing of the other. And yet it seemed natural
to be together; it seemed almost to be the continuation, not the
beginning, of something. And then--that's all, Willy. He has gone his
way."
"He will never forget you," Willy said dreamily. "He could not if he
wished."
"I suppose if I were a well-balanced sort of person," Katharine went
on, "with the regulation mind which a regulation woman is supposed to
have, I ought not to have allowed myself to think twice of him--him so
recently bereaved of his wife. And, having allowed it, I ought to be
prepared to receive the reproaches of all the British matrons in the
world. I know all that, and yet I have not been able to help myself,
Willy, though I've been ashamed, too."
"There was no reason for you to be ashamed," he said. "She had died and
gone her way before you even saw him. Don't be miserable about that,
Kath. You could not do anything mean or horrible if you tried till
Doomsday."
"How you believe in me, Willy!" she exclaimed. "That makes me ashamed.
But it is a great comfort, too."
"Kath," he said sadly, "I knew that you loved him when you spoke up for
him to cousin Julia. Your face told me that."
And then there was a silence between them. Willy had lit a cigar, and he
walked up and down the studio, his eyes fixed on the floor. At last he
raised his head, and stood still in front of her.
"And what are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Oh, I am going to gather myself together somehow," she replied, with
something of her old vivacity. "One has to live."
"Yes, yes, you must do that, and you must take comfort and courage," he
said. "He cannot forget you."
"But Willy," she cried, as though in sudden pain; "but he is a man sad
and overburdened--a man with a broken spirit--perhaps if things had been
different--but now----"
Willy came nearer. His face was pale and his eyes were a little dim.
"Look here, Kath," he said, "you take my word for it, you were not born
for unhappiness. By Jove! and you shan't have it either. You were meant
for all the best and brightest things in the world, and, by Jove! you
shall have them. I'll help you to get them--we'll all help you to get
them; you must have anything you want--any one you want, only you
mustn't be unhappy. I can't stand that--never could stand that--always
was a fool about you, Kath--always shall be one--never could change if I
wanted to; don't want to--unless--unless I could have been the man with
the broken spirit."
Then Katharine forgot about herself and remembered only Willy. All her
kind and generous feelings broke through the barrier of her grief. She
sprang to her feet, brushed away her tears, and turned to him with
impetuous eagerness.
"Willy," she said, "I've been a selfish brute pouring out my troubles to
you in this way--poor old fellow! What have I done to you in return for
your faithful kindness of all these years? Given you pain and
disappointment and sadness, and never a glimmer of hope, and now my own
selfish confidence about my feelings for another man. What can I do to
ease your kind, unselfish heart? I know there is not much I can do--but
there must be something. Let me do it, whatever it is."
A tumult came into Willy's heart. A light came into his eyes. He
quenched the light; he quelled the tumult for her dear sake.
"There is one thing you can do for me, Kath," he said in a voice which
trembled; "don't ever regret you trusted me and told me. You couldn't
have told every one. It had to be the right person. Don't take that from
me. And, you see, I knew. I knew by instinct. So don't reproach
yourself. You've never been anything else except a brick to me ever
since I can remember you."
She shook her head in deprecation of his praise, and said gently:
"I will never regret that I trusted you, Willy."
"Thank you, my dear," he said, with more of his old drawling manner
again. "And now let's have another shot at my immortal masterpiece.
That's right, Kath. Dry your eyes. Pull yourself together like Mary
Queen of Scots did on the scaffold. By Jove! she must have been a
stunner! I shall never believe that when her head dropped off, it was
the head of a wizened-up old woman. If that was the truth, I don't want
the truth. By Jove! here's tea. Margaret has gone off to a Cause, and
mother has gone to a dentist and then to a Christian Science meeting.
Those Christian Scientists pretend they can do without doctors, but they
stick to the dentists right enough. No, I'll pour out the tea, Kath. You
stay where you are, on the scaffold--I mean the platform. My word, what
a brain I have! It isn't only slow, but it's so deucèd confused, isn't
it?"
So he tried to cheer her; and when he took her to her home that
afternoon, she had regained her outward composure, and felt all the
better for having had the blessing of a true friend's kindness. His
last words were, "Don't you dare to regret that you trusted me."
* * * * *
But when he was alone, his face looked ashen and sad, and his eyes had a
world of grief in them. For that evening, at least, Willy Tonedale, his
beautiful features illuminated by love and loss, might well have stood
for the portrait of a man with a broken spirit.
* * * * *
And whilst he was passing through his hour of sadness, Katharine was
reading a letter from the Danish botanists, Ejnar and Gerda Ebbesen,
Knutty's nephew and niece. They wrote in answer to her letter to say
that they had left Denmark and were spending their holidays at a
Norwegian farm. They suggested that she might be inclined to bring the
botanical parcel to them there. Their aunt was with them, and she was
most interested to hear that Miss Frensham had made the acquaintance of
her Englishman and his boy.
"I shall go," Katharine said. "There is nothing to prevent me."
"I shall see the old Dane whom he loves," she said, with a glow of
warmth in her heart.
* * * * *
In a few days she packed up and went to Norway.
PART II.
IN NORWAY.
CHAPTER I.[C]
Fröken Knudsgaard pretended to grumble a good deal at having to leave
Copenhagen and go to Norway with Gerda and Ejnar. But there was no help
for it. It was a time-honoured custom that she spent the whole summer
with her nephew and niece. It was true that they saw each other
constantly all through the year, for Tante lived opposite the
Orstedpark, and the botanists, who lived at Frederiksberg, passed that
way every time they went to the Botanic Museum and Library, and would
never have neglected to run in for a chat. Sometimes, also, they lunched
with her in her cosy little home, where, in the spring, she saw the
limes of the Boulevard unfold their tender leaves, and where in summer
she watched the sun disappear in the north-west behind the trees. It
was indeed a pretty little home, made, so she said, wickedly comfortable
by her Clifford's kindness.
But these fragments of companionship were not considered enough by the
botanists; and summer was the time when they claimed Tante for their
own, whether she liked it or not. But of course she liked it; only she
felt it to be her duty as a healthy human being to have a permanent
grievance.
"Don't talk to me about giving up my grievances," she said. "All
right-minded people ought to have them. Rise above them, indeed! Thank
you! I don't want to rise above anything!"
However, after the usual formality of grumbling, Tante was charmed at
the prospect of having a change. Ejnar had set his heart on going to the
Gudbrandsdal to find a particular kind of shrub which grew only in one
district of that great valley. He was a gentle fellow, except where his
botanical investigations were concerned. But if any one thwarted him
over his work, he became quite violent. Tante Knudsgaard used to look at
him sometimes when he was angry, and say in her quaint way:
"Kjaere, one would think you were an anarchist instead of a harmless
botanist. One would think you spent your days with dynamite instead of
with innocent flowers and mosses, which don't explode."
Gerda, also a botanist, and just as clever and distinguished as her
husband, wished specially to go up to Tromsö, to find some particular
kind of saxifrage, growing nowhere in Europe except on the
Tromsdalstind.
But Tante struck.
"No," she said. "You don't get me to go up there within the Arctic
circle. I've had quite enough of icebergs this spring with my two poor
icebergs in England. Poor darlings! I suppose they have reached America
by now. I ought to be hearing soon."
"I cannot imagine why you made them go so far," Gerda said.
"When people are in trouble they must always go a long way," said Tante.
"Even if they come back the next moment."
"You might have sent them to Tromsö," Gerda remarked, with a grim smile.
"That is almost as far. And then we could all have gone and found the
saxifrage. You would have been willing enough to go if you had had your
Englishman with you."
"Perhaps; who knows?" replied Tante. "The human heart is a wayward
thing. I think you have never heard me say otherwise. But why not go to
Tromsö by yourself, dear one? You won't feel at all lonely if you have
the companionship of the saxifrage. You won't miss Ejnar and me in the
least. You won't want to come back the next moment after you have left
us. Oh, no! You won't miss us."
"No," answered Gerda, giving her a hug. "But you would miss me. And
Ejnar would be wretched if he hadn't me to quarrel with."
"Yes, you must have your quarrels," said Tante gravely. "All
well-conducted botanists would go to perdition without two or three
quarrels a-week. You must stay, Gerda, if only for the sake of science.
Only, give in without a mortal battle this time, and let us go
peacefully to the Gudbrandsdal. Ejnar has the dynamite-look on his face.
He has set his heart on that shrub. Heaven and St Olaf help us! We must
get it!--even if we have to scale mountains. Imagine me scaling
mountains, dear one. Have pity on me, and come and help!"
Gerda gave way; a mortal battle was avoided, the dynamite-look
disappeared from Ejnar's gentle face, and all three started off for
Norway in good spirits and admirable tempers. Ejnar was a tall man,
thin, and dark for a Dane. He looked rather 'comatose,' as Tante called
him, except when his botanical emotions were aroused. Then he sprang
into life and became an inspired being, with all the sublime beauty of
intelligence on his face. He only cared for botany, Gerda, and Tante
Knudsgaard. He did not positively dislike music, and did not always go
out of the room when Gerda sang. He was a silent fellow, and scarcely
ever laughed, except over his work, and then sometimes he would give
forth peals of hearty laughter most refreshing to hear and quite boyish.
That was when he had done some satisfactory bit of difficult
classification. Gerda, being musical as well as botanical, was rather
more human. She was of middle height, slight, and wonderfully fair, with
an abundance of fair hair, and a pair of glacier-blue eyes. She sang
gloriously in a wild, untrained manner which thrilled through every one
except Ejnar. He had, however, the greatest and most generous admiration
of her knowledge as a botanist, and was most particular that every paper
with which she had helped him, should bear her name as well as his. In
fact, in his way he loved her dearly. Their quarrels were entirely
scientific, never human. In their simple way they led an almost ideal
life, for they were free to work in an untrammelled fashion at the
subjects they loved, Ejnar holding no official position in connection
with his work, but being sleeping partner in his brother's glove-factory
in Christianhavn. They were very happy together, and although Gerda had
a restless theory that it was ridiculous to be always together, she had
been utterly miserable on the one occasion when she had gone off alone,
and had returned the next day. Tante, remembering this, teased her
continually, of course; and when the good ship brought them to
Christiania, she said to her:
"Are you quite sure you are not wanting to go off to Tromsö alone? You
could come back the next minute, you know, quite easily."
"Nã," answered Gerda gaily. "I prefer to stay and be teased!"
They saw the sights of Christiania, spending most of the time in the
Botanical Department of the University; and then took the train up to
the Gudbrandsdal, the largest and most fertile valley in Norway. They
had engaged rooms for themselves at a large Gaard (farmhouse) owned by
rich peasants of noble lineage, who in the summer months took a few
guests into their spacious dwelling-place. The Gaard had a splendid
situation, lying on the mountain-side, about two thousand feet above
sea-level, and commanding a far-stretching view of the great valley,
which was spread out generously below, dotted with hundreds of farms,
and with two shining rivers flowing on separately, meeting each other,
and then passing on together. Looking down on all those homesteads, one
was reminded all the time of the words of the Norwegian poet, who sings
of Norway, the land of a thousand homes. Red Gaards, being new buildings
added to the original family-home of many generations: bright red,
standing out boldly and picturesquely against the grain fields and the
green of the firs and birches. Dark-brown, almost black Gaards, burnt to
their deep dye by the ever-working hand of Time. Fine old Gaards, not
built of puny slices of wood with which builders content themselves in
these mean-spirited days; but fashioned of entire tree-trunks, grand old
fellows of the giant forests of the past. Dense masses of firs and
birches: down in the valley and advancing boldly up the mountain-sides,
and lining the deep gorges of the side-valleys as well, and pressing on
to a quite unreasonable height, from a conventional point of view, firs
and birches contending all the time as to which should climb the higher.
Waterfalls here and there, catching the sunlight and sending forth
iridescent jewels of rarest worth. Hundreds of grass-grown roofs, some
with flowers and some even with a fir or two amidst the grass. White
bell-towers to every storehouse, with the bell to summon all the
labourers to food and rest. Countless fields of grain of every kind:
some of it cut and fixed on sticks at regular intervals, so that a
regiment would seem to be waiting the word of command: ready and
immovable: a peaceful region of warfare. And a warfare in reality, too,
a hard nature being the enemy.
Then those wonderful rivers: one of them coming straight from a glacier
and therefore unmistakable, even though the changing clouds might give
to it varying shades of colour. Grey and glacier, blue and glacier, rose
and glacier, black and glacier, white and glacier, golden and glacier.
And the other river, not less beautiful because less complex. And the
two together winding through the valley: now hidden from sight, now
coming into view again, now glistening in the far distance, and now
disappearing finally--no--one more glimpse if one strains the eye--one
more greeting, and then, farewell--they have gone their way!
And the snow mountains--not very near, and not very snowy just now; but,
for all that, the glory of the country, the very desire of one's heart,
the shrine of one's secret and mysterious longings.
[Footnote C: All the spellings and expressions are Norwegian and Danish,
and are therefore not to be mistaken for incorrect German.]