what you have learned about me,” katherine had written to raine, “i was to have told you last night. i had written to you a long letter, but i was too weak to send it. i resolved to tell it to your own ears. but it was impossible for me to speak to you last night for i was suffering too much.
“my story is a simple one. married to a man many years my senior—treated with a mild gravity which my girlish wilfulness took for harshness—a great many tears—a great longing for the tenderness that never came—a gay, buoyant nature meeting mine, changing, it seemed, my twilight into sunshine—and then—what you know.
“do not judge me harshly, raine. but forget me. forget that i came and troubled your life. even were my name free from blemish, i am not good enough to be your wife. forget me, and take to your heart one who will make you happier than i could have done—one younger, sweeter, purer. and she loves you. let her win you.
“i have suffered much to be able to write this. it is a farewell. to meet you would be too great pain for us both. this morning, as you know, i saw mr. hockmaster, and i have promised to marry him. fate rules these things for us. to the day of my death i shall pray for your happiness.—k.s.”
raine’s face grew hard as he read the letter. a man quickly wearies of successive emotions. his self-pride asserts itself and makes him rebel against falling into weaknesses of feeling. he had been angry at allowing himself to be drawn towards felicia, and a natural reaction of loyalty to katherine had followed. now this was checked by her calm, unimpassioned words and the astounding intelligence of her engagement to hockmaster. he was completely staggered. to his dismay, he became conscious of an awful void in his life. it seemed to be filled with purposeless shadows. he set his teeth and wrapped his strong man’s pride about him. the thought of himself as john a’ dreams was a lash to his spirit. he crumpled up the paper in his hands and strode to and fro in his room.
she was to marry hockmaster. it was incredible, preposterous, except on one hypothesis—the recrudescence of the old passion that had swept aside the social barriers for this man’s sake. it was the most galling thought of all, it racked him, drew him down to a lower plane of feeling, blinded his clear insight into delicate things. perhaps if a man did not sink lower than himself on some occasions, he could not rise higher than himself on others.
he drew a chair to the open french window. the room, being on the top storey, had no balcony, but a wrought-iron balustrade fixed on the outside of the jambs. he leant his arms over it and looked into the familiar street. he hated it. geneva was intolerable. as soon as his father was able to travel, he would shake the dust of it from off his feet. a bantering letter had come, that morning from his cousin, mrs. monteith, at oxford. a phrase or two passed through his mind. was he going to bring back two brides or half a one?
“how damned vulgar women can be at times!” he exclaimed angrily, and he rose with impatience from his chair, as if to drive mrs. monteith from his thoughts.
he unrolled katherine’s crumpled letter and read it through again. then he thrust it into his pocket and decided to go and sit with his father.
but, before he could reach the door, a knock was heard. he opened it, and to his surprise found felicia.
“you—is my father—?”
“no. i want to speak to you. can i?”
“do you mind coming in? it is not very untidy.”
he held the door for her to pass in, then he closed it and came up to her enquiringly. felicia stood in the middle of the room, with her hands behind her back, a favourite attitude. her dark cheeks were flushed and her sensitive lips were parted, quivering slightly.
“it’s about katherine!” she burst out suddenly. “please let me talk, or i shall not be able to say what i want to. since last night—when you kissed me—i have thought i might come to you—as your sister might—and because i care for you like that, i feel i can tell you. i have just been with katherine. she is going away this afternoon.”
“at once?” asked raine, startled at the apparent rapidity of events.
“yes. are you sending her away?”
“i? oh no.”
“but why must she go, raine? tell me; need she go?”
“katherine is mistress of her own actions.”
“then you don’t care?”
she looked at him earnestly, with moist eyes. there was a note of passion in her voice, to which raine, sympathetic, found himself responding.
“what is the use of my caring, since she is going of her own accord without a word from me?”
“but a word from you would make her stay.”
“what do you know about all this?” he asked abruptly.
“i know that you have broken her heart,” said felicia. “oh! knowing her—and loving her—it is hard not to forgive.”
“there is no question of forgiveness,” replied raine. “did she tell you i would not forgive her?”
“no. a woman does not need to be told these things—she knows them and feels them. must a woman always, always, always suffer? why can’t a man be great and noble sometimes—like christ who forgave?”
“but, my dear child, you are talking wildly,” cried raine earnestly. “god knows there is nothing to forgive. i knew long ago a shadow had been cast over her life—and i loved her. a strange freak of destiny brought the man here—last night, accidentally, he told me the details—and i loved her. i have not seen her. it is not i who drive her away. read that, and you can see it is not i.”
he thrust the letter into her hand, and watched her as she read. four-and-twenty hours ago, he would as soon have thought of crying his heart’s secrets aloud in the public streets, as of delivering them into the keeping of this young girl. but now it seemed natural. her exalted mood had infected him, lifted him on to an unconventional plane.
the blood rushed to her cheeks as she read the lines in which reference was made to herself. when she had finished, she looked at him with a strange light in her eyes.
“and you are satisfied with this?” she said quickly.
“i am dumfounded by it. she has promised to marry this man.”
“and can’t you see why? isn’t it as clear to you as the noonday?”
“the old love is stronger, i suppose.”
“raine!” cried the girl, in ringing reproach. “how dare you say that, think it even? can’t you see the agony that letter has cost her? to me it is quivering in every line. why did you let that man go to her instead of yourself? oh, heavens! if i were a man, and such a thing had happened regarding the woman i loved, i should have lain outside her door all night to guard her—i should have seen her, if hell-fire had been between us. but you let her suffer. you put your pride above your love, like a man—you were silent. you let her hear from this man that you knew—you left her to grapple with her shame alone.”
felicia walked about the room like a young lioness. the words came in a flood. in the championing of her sister-woman she lost sense of conventional restrictions. raine was no longer raine, but the typefication of a sex against which she was battling for her own.
“can’t you read into it all?” she continued. “can’t you see the degradation she seemed to have fallen into in your eyes? but you only think of yourself—of your pride—of the bloom brushed off from your ideal. never a thought for her—of the god hurled from her heaven. she would marry this man to cut herself adrift from you, to get out of your life without further troubling it—to ease your conscience, lest it should ever prick you for having left her. she is marrying him because her heart is broken—who else but a noble, high-souled woman could have written this letter? i better than she! oh, raine—if you have a spark of love for her left—go and throw yourself at her knees, before it is too late.”
her voice broke towards the end. the strain was telling on her. she sank for rest upon the chair by the window, and laid her burning cheek against the iron balustrade. raine came to her side.
“you can thrash me a little more, if you like.”
but the familiar, kindly tone suddenly awoke felicia to the sense of their relations. she hung her head, confused.
“forgive me,” she said. “i ought not to have spoken like that to you—i lost control over myself. you mustn’t think of what i have said.”
“i’ll think of it all through my life, felicia,” said raine.
a silence fell upon them. the girl was shaken and weary. raine was confronting a new hope, that made his heart beat.
“raine,” she said, after a while.
he did not reply. she looked up, and saw him staring into the street.
“by god!” he cried, suddenly, and before felicia could realize what he was doing, he had seized his hat from the table and had rushed from tbe room, leaving tbe door open.
felicia leant over tbe balustrade, and looked down. katherine was there, near the corner, in the act of giving over her dressing-bag to a lad in a blue blouse, who had offered his services. felicia watched until she saw raine emerge beneath the archway, stride like a man possessed after katherine, catch her up, and lay bis hand upon her arm, as she turned a startled face towards him. then tbe tears came into her eyes, and she left tbe window and went down to her own room, where she locked herself in and cried miserably. such is tbe apparently inconsequent way of women.
“katherine,” said raine, when he came up with her. she stopped, and looked at him speechlessly.
“i have just caught you in time,” he said, with masculine brusqueness. “we must talk together. come into the gardens.”
“i can’t,” she replied, hurriedly. “my train—”
“you can miss your train. where are you going?”
“lausanne,” she answered, weakly, with lowered eyes.
“there are quantities of trains. come.” he drew her arm gently. she obeyed, powerless to resist. he found a seat away from the promenade. an old peasant was dozing at one end, and a mongrel was stretched at his feet. they were practically alone. the old man in his time had seen many english and innumerable pairs of lovers. neither interested him. he did not even deign to turn a lustreless eye in their direction. the boy with the dressing-bag had meekly followed them, and stood by, politely, cap in hand. did madame want him to wait with the bag?
“no,” replied raine, pulling a franc from his pocket. “take it to the concierge at the pension boccard.”
katherine half rose, agitated.
“no, no. i must go to lausanne. you mustn’t keep me.”
but the boy had dashed off, clutching his franc-piece. raine bent down till the ends of his moustache nearly brushed her veil.
“i will keep you, katherine, until you tell me-you love me no longer.”
“don’t torture me,” she said, piteously. “that is why i tried to avoid meeting—to spare us both. i knew your generosity.”
“my generosity,” echoed raine, with effective interruption. “my longing, my needs, the happiness of my life! if you care for me, it is not torturing you to tell you i love you—i can’t live a man’s life without you. when i first read your letter, it crushed the soul out of me. i did not understand; afterwards i did. some day you shall learn how. i love you, katherine, need you, yearn for you.”
his passion grew as he looked at her, watching the faint colour come and go on the face beneath the veil. she seemed too fragile and delicate for the rude buffetings of the world. an immense wave of emotion swept through him. it was his indefeasible right to protect her, cherish her, hold her in his arms, close to him.
and katherine was trembling, every chord in her vibrated. she could not speak. she flashed on him a quick, sidelong, feminine glance, and met his eyes fixed upon her. they were blue and strong, half-fierce, half-tender. the man’s will and longing were in them. she shrank, and yet she looked again, loving him for their intensity. raine spoke on as he had never known it had been in his power to speak. the old peasant dozed, regardless of their presence or of that of a little dusty child who squatted down by him to play with the dog. through the trees and shrubs in front could be seen glimpses of white dresses, scraps of the passers-by on the path along the quay. but this quiet, somewhat unkempt corner remained undisturbed.
“i can’t, i can’t,” said katherine, at last.
“i have pledged myself—i can’t go back.”
“i will settle that matter,” he replied, with a half smile. “leave it to me. men understand one another. you are mine, katherine, my darling, mine, my wife—if you love me.”
the tenderness of his voice thrilled through her. she raised her eyes to his, this time to be held there.
“love you!”
he read her lips rather than heard them.
“and nothing again shall part us? you will marry me, katherine?”
all the woman in her cried “yes,” but it also held her back.
“will you love me in after years as now, raine? will you never come to think that this shame that has come to me was deserved? think of it, dear, in your clear, honest way. you will never come to feel that you have given all your wealth for what, like most men, you should have trodden under foot? your life’s happiness—mine—depend upon your answering it from your heart of hearts, dear. judge me now for ever and ever.”
“as god hears me,” said raine, with the love in his voice. “to me you are ever the purest and the noblest and tenderest of women. you love me with a woman’s love and i with a man’s; and we will love soul to soul, dear, till we die. our love, dear, is as sacred to me as the ghost i buried in it a few weeks ago. all this will be like a troubled dream—all the past, darling, in both our lives as shadows. thank god!”
he put his arms suddenly round her, drew her to him, and kissed her. for both of them the world stood still, and the commonplace gardens were eden, and the old peasant nodded his weatherbeaten head, and the mongrel and the dusty child looked on unastonished, like the beasts when the first apple was eaten.
raine went, an hour or so after, to the h?tel national and found hockmaster outside, cultivating a dinner appetite with sherry and bitters. he jumped up when he perceived his visitor, and came towards him.
“hello, chetwynd! this is real friendly of you. come and sit down—join me.”
raine accepted the seat, but declined the sherry.
“do you mind my asking you a very intimate question?” asked raine.
“as many as you like,” said hockmaster, with na?ve effusion. “i have given you a sort of right to be familiar. of course, whether i answer it is a matter for my discretion.”
“precisely. but i hope you will. are your feelings very deeply engaged in this affair with mrs. stapleton?”
“sir,” said hockmaster. “i’ve repaired a wrong that has set at rest a damned uneasy conscience.”
“from which i gather you have obeyed your conscience rather than your heart,” said raine.
“i am going to be married,” replied hockmaster, between the first puffs of a cigar he was lighting. “perhaps you may not know that. so i guess i’d better fall back upon discretion. it is best in affairs between man and wife.”
“yes, but suppose it was broken off?”
“what? my marriage?”
he stretched himself out in a comfortable attitude, his hands behind his head, and regarded raine placidly.
“what sort of interest can the concerns of a worm like me have for you?”
“every interest in the world,” replied raine, flushing. “if it’s merely a question of conscience on your part, i have no scruple in asking you to release mrs. stapleton from her engagement.”
“did she send you?”
“yes.”
“tell you any reason?”
hockmaster’s tone irritated rainé. he rose quickly, thrusting his straw hat to the back of his head, and stood over the recumbent american, with his hands on his hips.
“yes, she did. mrs. stapleton is going to marry me.”
the words brought the other to his feet with a force that nearly upset the small table in front of him.
“god alive, man!” he cried, realizing the whole situation in a rush. “why on earth didn’t you tell me before?”
the two men looked into one another’s eyes. it was raine who was first disconcerted. the intense distress of the other was too genuine for him not to feel touched.
“you’re the first man for years,” said hockmaster, “that i have felt drawn to in friendship; and i have been powerfully drawn to you. i would have cut off my head sooner than said or done anything to pain you why didn’t you stop me this morning?”
“i tried to dissuade you.”
hockmaster threw away his extinct cigar, and put his hands in his pockets dejectedly.
“yes, you did so; and i went on running knives into you. why didn’t you pitch me into the lake last night? i wish to god you’d do it now.”
“we will forget all that,” said raine, kindly.
“you may, but i shan’t. and she—for heaven’s sake, ask her to forgive me. i was trying to do my best. you believe that, don’t you?”
“with all my heart,” said raine.
“and i’ll tell you, chetwynd,” continued hockmaster, with a truer ring of feeling in his voice than raine had ever perceived, “i meant to be a good man to her, to put down my cloak over every puddle in life for her to walk upon, to make her just as happy as i could. but i guess i’ve been a blamed fool. i’ve been a blamed fool all my life. first thing i remember was running away from school to live in the woods. at first it was glorious. then it rained all night, and i crawled back next morning sick and miserable, and was put to bed for a month. i reckon i’ll go home. my white lead company’s going to burst like all the other bubbles. i heard this morning. an hour ago i thought, ‘anyway, i’ve found a good friend and a wife in europe.’ wow that’s gone. but she’ll be happy. you’re worth twenty million of me. you won’t see me again. i suppose i’m the sorriest man standing on the earth at the present moment; but you won’t think worse of me than i am, will you?”
he looked sideways at raine, in his odd, appealing way.
“upon my soul,” cried raine, in an outburst of generous feeling, grasping him by the shoulder, “i don’t know whether you are not one of the most lovable men i have ever met!”
raine walked back to the pension with love in his heart towards all mankind. god was in his heaven. all was right with the world.
he found katherine and felicia in the salon waiting for dinner, in company with mme. popea and frau schultz. mme. popea cried out on seeing him,—“another happy one! what has made you all look so beatified?”
“the eternal beauty of humanity,” returned raine, with a smile.
“and you have caught the plague of epigrams,” said frau schultz. “i asked miss graves why she had such a colour, and she said, ‘because the world seemed wider to-day.’ it’s a new language.”
“it is the turn of madame,” said mme. popea, in her vivacious way.
katherine laughed.
“this is not a parlour game, you know. but perhaps it is because i am going to dine.” raine’s heart leapt at the little touch of gaiety. his eyes showed her his gladness. a stream of the other guests entered. she took advantage of the sudden filling of the salon to draw him to her side. a glance asked a tremulous question. he reassured her with a whisper, and they went out on to the balcony.
“i have told my father,” said raine. “he will love you, dear.”
she pressed his arm for answer. there was a long silence, which raine, half divining her mood, would not break. at last he said, lover-wise,—
“tell me your thoughts, beloved.”
“i was thinking that i have lived thirty-one years, and i have never known till now what even freedom from care was. i seemed blinded by the light, like the prisoners let out from the bastille. there is something awful in such happiness.”
“it shall be with you to the end,” said raine.
“i know it,” she replied.
then, after a pause,—
“i have told felicia. do you mind?”
“we owe her a great debt,” said raine. “she came to me this afternoon, after leaving you.”
the blood rose in katherine’s cheeks, and she looked up timidly into his face.
“i think i shall bring her here to you. you will know what to say to her.”
she disappeared for a moment by the open window, and then returned with felicia, whom she left with raine. he came forward, and took both her hands in his.
“how can i ever repay you?”
“you have done too much for me already,” said felicia.
there was a little combat of generous words.
the dinner-gong sounded the end of the talk.
“and the pension boccard,” he said; “you will have some pleasant memories of it?”
“ah, yes. i owe too much to it.”
“how?” asked raine.
“you may think it an odd thing to say, but it seems to have changed me from a girl into a woman.”
“does that bring you happiness?”
“i don’t know,” replied felicia, musingly.
and then, after a pause,—
“i think so.”
