An Unknown Lover - Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗

work hard, and try to be of some use in the world. Perhaps some day, say on your next furlough, we may meet, if you still wish it, but in the meantime it would be better not to write. After what you have said, I should feel it unfair. The best thing you can do is to forget.

“Don’t think me unkind. It seems brutal to write so coldly, especially to-day, when I have just received a letter from Captain Bedford in Egypt, and with it the most wonderful old brass tray—quite the finest specimen of its kind that I have seen. He explains that it is your commission, and sends me quite a genealogical tree of its history. From his letter he sounds a charming man. He says he returns in March. If I had been coming out, we might have travelled by the same boat...

“Oh, Jim, I wish I could come—I wish I could! It’s hard work looking on, and feeling eternally number three. Do you think I don’t want to love too, and to be loved? Do you think it is easy to say ‘no,’ and throw away the chance? If only I could think it right! It is not pride which is hindering me, truly it isn’t, it is more like cowardice. We have defied convention, and as a result have created an impossible situation, and I shrink from the probable pain and disillusion of a meeting in the flesh. Your letters have meant a great deal to me; I don’t know how I should have come through the last few months without them. For my own sake I should not regret the episode, but it has been hard on you. At the bottom of my heart I guessed all along that it would lead to this. I pretended that I did not, and deliberately shut my eyes, and now I must pay up. I care for you too much to run any more risks. I won’t write again, and please don’t answer this. You will hear of my doings through Dorothea, and I shall always care to hear about you; so it is not like saying good-bye.

“Don’t be angry with me, I’m very miserable!

“Katrine.”

“Lebong, December 10, 19—.

“Katrine,

“I’m not angry, dear girl—but you’ve got to come! Every word that you write only makes me the more fixed in my determination. I can understand your shyness and your pride, but I’m hanged if I can understand all this business about disillusion and humiliation. If you find on investigation that I’m not the man for you, I shall regret it, but I shall feel no humiliation. Why should I? The fact that I do not please your taste, makes me no less a man, nor worthy of esteem. If—by a strength of imagination—I were disappointed in you, the situation would, I admit, be more charged, but being ‘only a man,’ I emphatically deny your assertion that the sentiment which you have evoked could be evaporated by any outward feature or trait. My dream woman is very dear, but, have no delusions on the point—she is not perfect! I have created for myself no plaster saint. You have plenty of faults, my dear, but there is this big difference between them, and those of any woman in existence—they are Katrine’s faults!

“I have given my word to speak no word beyond those of friendship for three months after your arrival. If you then decide that I am impossible as a husband, you need fear no unpleasantness. I’ll clear out, exchange into another regiment, apply for leave. You shan’t be troubled. After that three months’ trial, I’ll take your answer as final, and leave you in peace. I’ve no desire to badger a woman into being my wife. But I demand my chance!

“I think you will come, Katrine. Putting myself out of the question, I think you will come, and I’ll tell you why. It would be rank selfishness on your part to stay in England for the present! Martin has had a rough time of it, but life is opening out for him afresh, and if you love him you won’t stand in his way. How do you suppose he will feel if you are wandering about from boarding-house to boarding-house, or working among strangers? The thought of you will be a continuous shadow over his sun, and that’s what you have no right to be, if there is any legitimate way of avoiding it. Real happiness is a rare thing, it is holy ground, which ought to be sacred from our touch. I’d as soon cut off my right hand as cloud a man’s joy in his new-made wife.

“And after Martin there’s Dorothea.

“It’s not a lively life for a woman in a small hill station. It grows monotonous, meeting year after year the same people. Dorothea’s a brave woman, but the life tells. The boy is delicate also. There’s a talk of sending him home to his grandmother. Dorothea won’t leave Middleton; she considers that he needs her more than the child, and I think she is right, but it will be a pill. There’s nothing on earth which could cheer and help her more than a visit from you. She has written to you again I know. This time you must not refuse. The climate up here is quite reasonable. You will have no great heat to face.

“And so, dear, I think you will come! I know you will come, and, God willing, you shall not regret it.

“That’s a good idea about Bedford! He’s a capital chap, and would look after you well. We must see that that comes off. He will stay in Egypt till the last moment, I fancy, and join the ship at Port Said, but, you’d still have ten days together, and he would be useful on landing. He is a good thirty-five, staid, and level-headed. It’s quite conventional, I suppose? I never know about these things. Book your passage in good time, and cheer Dorothea by the news. Write at once, no! in my present state of health I don’t feel up to waiting five whole weeks. I have not been fit—feverish, sleepless—so am not in the mood for patience. Cable just one word—the name of the steamer—to our code address. When I read that I’ll know that your passage is booked.

“Oh, my Katrine—sorry! I’ll be more careful—

“Yours,

“J.C.D. Blair.”

Cable message from Katrine Beverley to Dorothea Middleton: “Accept invitation. Sail by Bremen.”