Before the period of Kate's visit arrived, a letter from Professor
Fraser, to the purport that if Mrs Forbes did not mind keeping Kate a
little longer he would be greatly indebted to her, came to Alec like a
reprieve from execution. And the _little longer_ lengthened into the
late harvest of that country.
The summer shone on, and the corn grew, green and bonnie. And Alec's
love grew with the corn; and Kate liked him better and better, but was
not a whit more inclined to fall in love with him.
One night, after the house was quiet, Alec, finding he could not sleep,
rose and went out to play the ghost a while. It was a sultry night.
Great piles of cloud were heaped up in the heavens. The moon gleamed
and vanished by fits, looking old and troubled when she sighed herself
out of a cloud.
"There's a storm coming," said Alec to himself; and watched and waited.
There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to
tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard
skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and
they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash,
and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a
great dram, on which Titanic hands were beating and rolling. Then the
rain poured down, and the scent of the earth rose into the air. Alec
ran to look up at Kate's window. His heart bounded when he saw a white
figure looking out into the stormy dark.
"Kate! Kate!" he cried, in a loud whisper, "come out--do come out. It's
so splendid!"
She started and drew back. Presently she reappeared, and opening the
window, said,
"Alec! do come in."
"No, no. You come out, Kate. You don't know what it's like. You have
only to get into bed again."
Kate hesitated. But in a moment more she withdrew. Alec saw she meant
to come, and flew round to the door. In a few minutes she glided
silently out, and fronted the black sky. The same moment another flash,
in which her spirit seemed to her to be universal, flung the darkness
aside. She could have counted the houses of Glamerton. The hills rose
up within her very soul. The Glamour shone in silver. The harvest
gleamed in green. The larch-forest hung like a cloud on the horizon.
Then the blank dark folded again its scared wings over the world; and
the trees rustled their leaves with one wavy sweep, and were still. And
again the rain came down in a tumult--warm, genial summer rain, full of
the life of lightning. Alec stood staring through the dull dark, as if
he would see Kate by the force of his will alone. The tempest in the
heavens had awaked a like tempest in his bosom: would the bosom beside
his receive his lightning and calm his pent-up storm by giving it space
to rave? His hand took hers beseechingly. Another flash came, and he
saw her face. The whole glory of the night gloomed and flashed and
flowed in that face. But alas! its response was to the stormy heaven
alone, not to the stormy human soul. As the earth answers the heaven
with lightning of her own, so Kate, herself a woman-storm, responded to
the elemental cry.
Her shawl had fallen back, and he saw a white arm uplifted, bare to the
shoulder, gleaming through the night, and an eye flashing through the
flood that filled it. He could not mistake her passion. He knew that it
was not for him; that she was a harp played upon by the elements; yet,
passioned still more with her passion, he cried aloud,
"Oh, Kate! if you do not love me I shall die."
Kate started, and sought to take her hand from his, but she could not.
"Let me go, Alec," she said, pleadingly.
His fingers relaxed, and she sped into the house like a bird, leaving
him standing in the night.
There was no more lightning. The rain fell heavy and persistent. The
wind rose. And when the dawn came, the clouds were drifting over the
sky; and the day was a wet gray fringy mass of wind and rain and cloud,
tossing trees, and corn hard bested.
He rose and dragged himself away. He had thrown himself upon the grass,
and had burned there till his exhausted feelings lay like smouldering
fire under the pale ashes of the dawn.
When Kate made her appearance at breakfast she looked bright and cold.
She had told his mother about last night, though how much he could only
guess. When he asked her whether he might not read to her, she only
said,
"If you like."
Whereupon he did not like.
It was a dreary day. He crept about the house like a child in disgrace,
and the darkness seemed an age in coming. When the candles were
brought, he went to bed; and when his mother went up, she found him
asleep, but feverish. When he woke he was delirious.
For a week there was nothing but wet and windy weather. Alec was in
bed. Kate was unhappy. Mrs Forbes was anxious.
The corn was badly lodged. Patches lay prone, tangled, spiky, and
rough; and it was evident that if sunshine, strong, healthy sunshine,
did not soon break out, the wretched mooncalf-prediction of Murdoch
Malison would come true, for the corn, instead of ripening, would start
a fresh growth, and the harvest would be a very bad one indeed, whether
the people of Glamerton repented or not.
But after a grievous week, that blessed sunshine did come. The corn
rose up from its low estate, looked at the sun, gathered heart, and
began to ripen diligently.
But Alec was very ill, and did not see Kate for weeks.
Through his wanderings--so strangely does the thousand times
o'erwritten palimpsest of the brain befool the mind and even the
passions by the redawning of old traces--he talked on about Annie and
their schooldays with Mr Malison, and never mentioned Kate.
Annie went often to inquire after him, and Mrs Forbes behaved to her
with her old kindness--just a little diluted by anxiety and the
possession of Kate.
When Annie thought with herself what she could do for him, she could
never think of anything except saying _sangs_ to him. But the time for
that was long gone by. So, like many other devotions, hers found no
outlet but in asking how he was.
At length, one day, he was brought down to the dining-room and laid
upon the sofa. Then for the first time since his illness he saw Kate,
He looked in her face pitifully and kissed her hand. She put her face
down to his. The blood surged up into his cheek, and the light into his
eyes, and he murmured:
"That is worth being ill for, Kate. I would be ill again for that."
She could only say _hush_, and then kiss him again, lest he should be
hurt, thinking with a soundless sigh:
"I shall be forced to marry him some day."
And he was neither her own virgin-born ideal; nor had his presence the
power to beget another and truer ideal in her brain.
From that day he made rapid progress. Kate would read to him for hours;
and when for love and weakness--an ill-matched pair--he could not look
in her face any more, he would yet lie and listen, till her voice
filled him with repose, and he slept in music.