Read Ebook: An Unknown Lover by Vaizey George De Horne Mrs

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Ebook has 1043 lines and 85945 words, and 21 pages

They laughed together, but Martin appeared to ponder the subject, and to find it disconcerting.

"That's so; no doubt it's so. The young men gravitate to the towns. It's hard on the girls."

"Oh, we are happy enough!" The very acknowledgment of the hardship seemed for the moment to remove its sting. "So far as I am concerned, if they all arrived in a body and sat in rows on the hearthrug waiting to propose I would not look at one. You and Dorothea are all the sweethearts I want."

"Well!" ejaculated Martin Beverley vaguely. "Well!" He pushed back his chair and strolled over to the window, drawing a cigarette case from his pocket as he went. Every morning of his life he took up this position after breakfast, smoked a regulation cigarette, presumably digested the morning's news, and thought out his plans for the day. Katrine was accustomed to the sight, but this morning something in the pose of the figure attracted an uneasy attention. The shoulders drooped, the whole attitude bespoke weariness, a lack of purpose.

Martin Beverley stood in the alcove of the window, and the light shining through the upper panes left his figure in the shade, and fell full upon the pictured face above the mantel--the fair young face with the unending smile. The scene might have been taken as the motif for an artist's picture, portraying the desolation of a widowed home. Katrine's quick sensibilities grasped its significance, and her heart contracted with sympathy. "Juliet! Juliet!" she sighed to herself. "The old ache; the old pain!" but in truth Juliet might never have existed, for all the part she played in her husband's thoughts at that moment. Martin Beverley was passing through that trying stage in the life of an author when he casts about in his mind for the plan of a future book, and can find no satisfactory response. Three months ago, when his last manuscript had been despatched to the publisher, he had acclaimed his liberty with the zest of a schoolboy released from school, had found it sheer joy to wake in the morning to the expectation of a lazy day, but now the holiday mood was fast turning into unrest; the creative instinct had awakened from its sleep, and its voice would not be denied.

Imaginary characters flitted before Martin's brain, he lived with them, carved out their lives. In a flash of enthusiasm he saw the completed whole, and found it the finest thing he had yet achieved. From time to time he wrote out notes; sketched out the first few chapters, then reading them over, fell once more into the trough of despair. A day or two of restless wanderings, and he would begin again, and again would follow the check, the discouragement. He had lived through the same misery with each fresh book which he had written. Experience had proved that in this instance it was indeed the first step which cost, that once fairly afloat his characters would grow in reality, and in inexplicable fashion would take the reins in their own hands, and work out their own destinies, but where, since the beginning of the world, is the artist to be found who can be comforted by common-sense while floundering in the valley of discouragement?

An intolerable longing possessed him to break loose from the chains which cramped his life, and to start afresh, free and untrammelled. For the moment the very presence of his sister in the room seemed more than he could bear. He turned on his heel, and walked quickly from the room.

Katrine meantime had accomplished her duties, and given herself up to the enjoyment of reading, and replying, to her Indian letter. The temptation of beginning the reply could seldom be postponed, for Dorothea's words brought with them a personal demand, to which it was imperative to respond.

Dorothea was the one person in the whole world who could always be relied upon to understand, and follow Katrine's mental flights. At school she had been the staunchest of chums; through the first black years of Martin's widowerhood her enthusiasm had kept her friend's resolution at white heat, and when two years later she had met her fate in the guise of a young officer, and had been spirited away to India, her departure had been the sorest grief which Katrine had yet been called upon to bear.

The weekly letters which crossed each other with unfailing regularity were in each case a diary of daily happenings, enlivened by such moralisings, grave and gay, as were natural between the friends, who were deeply in each other's confidence. Dorothea's latest letter was no exception to the rule, except as regards one startling item of news, given, woman-like, in the postscript.

A strange man had written to her, had sent her a gift, in the shape of a brass box, to add to the collection of antiques which lay before her, their polished surfaces gleaming brightly against a background of old oak. Katrine had a passion for antique brasses, and through Dorothea's agency had acquired an interesting collection during the last few years. An addition to her collection was always a triumph, but in this special case her expectations were engaged more with the message itself, than with the treasure which it introduced. The letter had not arrived by the ordinary post, although Dorothea had spoken of it as already despatched. Probably then it was enclosed in the box, and would arrive by the later parcel delivery!

A letter! How extraordinary that a man should take upon himself to send a letter to an unknown girl at the other end of the world! As for the brass itself, he had probably seen other specimens which Dorothea had forwarded from time to time, both as commissions and gifts; had been consulted as to their value, possibly even taken to the bazaar to assist in bargaining; then, coming by chance across a good specimen, it might have occurred to a generously-minded man to secure it in its turn. Katrine would have found the whole transaction natural enough if the gift had been offered through Dorothea's mediumship--But to write direct!

A letter! What would that letter contain? A few brief lines of formal explanation; a colourless, characteristic thing, as lifeless as the sheet on which it was written? Assuredly so. How in the name of fortune could it be anything else? Katrine stifled a stab of disappointment, and set herself resolutely to foretell the words which she was presently to read.

"A parcel for you, miss."

For a moment surprise and admiration engrossed her mind, then quickly following came another thought. The letter!--where was the letter? Was there no letter enclosed? Katrine dashed at the scattered wrappings, shook them apart, and failing to find any trace of what she sought, fumbled with the lid of the box itself. It was tightly jammed, but a little coaxing set it free, and in the cavity lay a sheet of foreign paper, closely covered with a man's strong, well-formed writing.

Katrine seated herself on the chair by the window, with a strange, dazed feeling of expectancy. A narrow strip of garden separated the side of the house from the lane without. With half-conscious eyes she saw a blue-robed figure strolling slowly by, followed by a fat, waddling pug. Mary Biggs, the lawyer's sister, taking Peter Biggs for his morning's stroll. Approaching from the opposite direction came a trim figure in grey, sandwiched between two small girls, with skirts cut short to display shapely brown legs. Mrs Slades's governess taking the children for their morning stroll... The little hamlet was pursuing its quiet, machine-like way; no tremor of excitement had disturbed its calm, but in Katrine's room was the scent of the East, and out of the silence six thousand miles away, a man laid bare to her his heart.

"Captain Blair presents his compliments to Miss Beverley, and takes the liberty of forwarding for her acceptance an antique brass box, which he trusts may be considered worthy of a place in her collection.

"But you won't.

"I might as well confess at once,--that box is a delusion and a snare. I didn't `hit upon it'; I searched for it far and wide. Properly regarded, it is not a box at all; it is an excuse; a decoy. I wanted one badly, and it was the best I could find.

"The nuisance of it is that we meet on such unequal terms! You know my name; you have probably gathered an impression that, as fellows go, I'm not a bad fellow, though a trifle dull. Dorothea Middleton is an angel of hospitality, but an up-country station has its limits even for a saint. To your mind I'm dead as Queen Anne, but to me you are quite distractingly alive. Why do you send out photographs taken in such a fashion that your eyes look straight into the eyes of any lonely fellow who chances to sit smoking his pipe in a friend's bungalow if you don't want trouble to follow?

"There's one photograph which smiles. You know it! the one in the white frock. When I'm pleased to be witty, I look at those eyes, and they laugh back. My other hearers may be dull and unappreciative, but those eyes never fail. Katrine and I have shared many a joke together during these last years.

"There's another photograph--the dark one! A white, little face looking out of the shadow; pensive this time, but always with those straight-glancing eyes. It's your own fault, Katrine! If you had been `taken' like ordinary folk, gazing blankly into space, all this might never have happened... The pensive portrait is even deadlier than the glad. It looks sorry for me. When I'm turning out at night leaving Will and Dorothea alone, it understands how I feel. Its eyes follow me to the door.

"I haven't a photograph to send you; I wouldn't send one if I had. What's the use of a portrait of a big skeleton of a fellow, brown as a nigger, and at thirty-five looking a lot more like forty? Let that slide; but within the walls of the skeleton lives a lonely fellow who has no one left to send him letters from home, and who for the last three years has enjoyed his mail vicariously through extracts read from a young girl's letters.

"You write wonderful letters, Katrine! I don't know if they are the sort a literary critic would approve, but they bring new life into our camp. Dorothea is generous in reading aloud all that she may, and I could stand a pretty stiff examination upon your life in that delightful little Cranford of a place, which you don't appreciate as you ought. Those letters, plus the photograph, have done the damage.

"Think it over, Katrine! At the moment of reading, you haven't a doubt of what you will say. Sit down at once to write that haughty letter of reproof and denial, but--don't send it off by the first post! Relieve yourself by letting off steam, and then think out the thing calmly.

"If I could take a holiday and come home, you would receive me graciously as Dorothea's friend. Why should it require a greater effort to receive me in the spirit?

"Get away from the Cranford spirit, Katrine; refuse to be bound by it, I see signs,--I tell you frankly, I see signs of its encroachment! Here's a fine chance of throwing it to the winds. Are you brave enough, fine enough, woman enough, to work out this thing for yourself, and to decide as your heart dictates?

"I am very humble; I ask for the moment nothing more than an occasional letter. Now, what are you going to do? At any rate there's that box! In common decency you must write once at least to acknowledge that! Your answer ought, I calculate, to arrive about four weeks from to-day.

"Yours faithfully,

"Jim Blair."

"Well, I'm--!" ejaculated Katrine, and stopped aghast. The failure to finish her sentence was attributable less to good feeling than the utter inability to find a word strong enough to express the sentiments of the moment. An onlooker, however, could not have failed to remark the fact that, be the sentiment what it might, it was certainly extraordinarily becoming. Katrine's eyes shone, her pale cheeks blazed a damask rose, the firm lips gaped, showing a flash of small, white teeth. Seated bolt upright in her high-backed chair, the blue dress outlining the fine lines of her figure, she reached at that moment her highest possibilities of beauty, but there was no one to see her, and for the moment she was oblivious of her own good looks. The world of monotonous order rocked in chaos beneath her feet; volcano-like, those written words had convulsed the landscape, transforming the familiar features into new and astounding shapes.

Was it possible to live for years in a narrow sphere, surrounded by an atmosphere of petty detail, and yet keep one's own attitude broad and free?

Katrine searched her memory for the stray items of information which her friend's letters had from time to time contained with regard to her husband's friend. The two men were fellow-captains in the same regiment. Blair was the senior of the two, but even so his chances of promotion were small, owing to the hopeless blocking which is the soldier's greatest handicap. Blair had seen active service, had distinguished himself in an expedition to Tibet, could with ease have achieved an exchange, but he was devoted to the regiment, a prime favourite with the mess, and having private means, preferred to defer the evil day.

Dorothea's descriptions, though flattering, were somewhat vague. She had stated frequently, and with conviction, that "Jim was a dear!" but to which particular brand or type of dear he belonged was left to the imagination. Jim was the godfather of the son and heir; in descriptions of domestic scenes and conversations he seemed naturally to play a part; Dorothea was complacently convinced that in the society of her husband and herself he found complete satisfaction. It had never occurred to her to consider the part played by a fourth person in those same interviews! A quiet, well-mannered young person who sat on the mantelpiece, taking notes!

The real Katrine gasped once more at the remembrance of those words. So extraordinary were they, so unbelievable, that to make sure that they were not the creation of her own brain, she turned back to the letter, and re-read the sentence.

"Katrine and I have shared many a joke together."

For a moment the girl frowned, then suddenly a wistful expression stole into her eyes. She herself had enjoyed so few jokes in these long flat years! The photographs had the advantage there. She found herself for the moment almost envying the photographs. The laughing one, that was to say; not the sad. The sad one had been guilty of unpardonable boldness in looking sorry for a strange man; in exchanging glances with him, forsooth! from the doorway, in covert sympathy with his bachelor estate!

Katrine jumped to her feet, and paced excitedly to the window, the letter still clutched in her hand. It crackled beneath her fingers, as she stood staring out into the lane.

A man in a white apron was walking rapidly along the farther side. Rogers, the butcher's foreman, homeward bound for his mid-day meal. The clock of Saint Dunstan's struck twelve chimes, and celebrated the occasion by chiming a verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

Every morning of the year that white-robed figure passed up the lane at precisely the same hour; every morning the same verse was ground out on the church bells.

"And there is Martin!" said Katrine, in a slow, dull tone of finality. "There is Martin!"

For the first time in her experience she felt a flood of pity for her own self-enforced celibacy. Hitherto marriage had presented no especial lure and the two men who had appeared as suitors had failed to awaken even a passing interest. No one could look at Katrine's face and fail to realise that she was capable of deep and passionate love, but she had none of the easy sentiment of the ordinary young girl, and having failed to meet her mate, the softer part of her nature was still dormant. Moreover she had an immense advantage over the ordinary unmarried woman, in being mistress of a home, in the management of which she could indulge to the full her natural feminine instincts. It had appeared to her that if Martin were more responsive, she could be satisfied with her lot. There was a certain flatness, no doubt; a certain dread in envisaging the years, but experience showed that such moods were not confined to spinsters alone. They followed as a natural sequence the awakening from youth's bright dreams; to encourage them would be both morbid and weak! But with the reading of that amazing letter a new rebellion surged in her soul...

Was the fault on his side or hers? Woman of twenty-six though she was, Katrine was curiously limited in her ideas on the great facts of life. The Cranford cramp had laid its hand upon her, so that her judgments were made from the standpoint of convention, not fact. It never occurred to her to blame human nature for the fact that a brother and sister of mature age had failed to find completeness in a life together; instead, she peered anxiously into her own shortcomings of temper and tact, and laboriously built up resolutions.

"I must be more careful, more considerate. He has nobody but me."

She sighed, and this time the sigh was undisguisedly wistful in tone.

Then suddenly, in the midst of her protests, Katrine caught sight of her own image gazing at her from a mirror across the room--a transformed image, youthful, glowing, incredibly alive. The eyes flashed, drooped with a guilty shame, then flashed again bright and defiant. She looked, and burst into a great peal of laughter; she threw out her arms with the gesture of one pushing aside imprisoning chains, advanced with a swaggering gait, and nodded defiance into the tell-tale glass.

Her face fell, she sighed despondently, then straightened herself, reassured.

"At any rate there is the box. In common decency I must write to thank him for the box!"

The air seemed black with clouds; the pain which long custom had dulled revived into throbbing life. He was racked with mental nausea: life stretched before him level, uneventful, intolerably dull. His very work was a mistake. Long months of effort, and struggle of spirit, and as a result a few patronising reviews, and a monetary reward, which, worked out on a time basis, approached a sweating wage. If he never wrote another line, should he be missed; would the world be a whit the poorer? What was the sum total when all was told, but amusement for an idle hour!

It was in the depths of depression that Martin entered the golf club half an hour later, but on the threshold his good angel stood waiting. His favourite partner, a retired civil servant, living in an adjoining village, stood within the pavilion and acclaimed him with delight; the most intelligent of caddies was at his disposal, and half-an-hour's play demonstrated the fact that the day was his.

Martin stood still on the hill-side, and his lungs expanded with a deep, envious breath. Work! Work! The study table--the scattered leaves, the click of the typewriter; the barren hours, the hours when thoughts flew so fast that the pen could not keep pace,--each different phase of work rose before him, and each in its turn seemed good. His former lethargy disappeared. Useless? Valueless? Was it of no value to be one of the few writers who in a decadent age kept his pages clean? When so many streams ran foul, was it a light thing to provide a crystal well? And this last book should be the best he had written; stronger, deeper, more vital. Already in his own mind it was a living thing. He conceived a man, and lived in his image; he made unto him a wife. The two faces flashed at him out of the blue...

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