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

startled, but as she took her way to her cabin she could have found it in her heart to regret the words. “He is clever, he is interesting, he is cultivated,—but I don’t like him! There’s something in his face.—I am glad it is not he who is to look after me!” During the luncheon hour, however, her ruminations carried her to a different plane. “It doesn’t matter whether I like him or not. He is ill and lonely, and he—drinks! because he has nothing better to do. I’ll be kind to him. I’ll get Captain Bedford to be kind. Perhaps between us we can keep him straight...”

Poor Katrine! She felt a glow of satisfaction when again that evening Vernon Keith spent an hour by her side. She paced the deck with him, acutely conscious of looks of disapproval from several elderly quarters, feeling a childish sense of elation every time that the entrance to the smoke-room was passed in safety, exerting herself to start fresh subjects of interest each time the conversation flagged, but in spite of all her efforts, by half-past nine her companion grew restless, answered at random, and finally excused himself, pleading fatigue, a letter to be begun—

Well! Katrine consoled herself, at least he had had an hour in the fresh air, and could feel that some one was interested, and that he was no longer ostracised... She found her cabin companion, and sat demurely by her side until after eleven o’clock, the beauty of the night making her unwilling to retire to the stuffy cabin. When at last they rose and turned towards the companion-way, Katrine felt pleasantly tired, and confident of a good night’s rest, but the most exciting incident of the day was still to come. Mrs Mannering led the way a few paces ahead, and Katrine, following in the rear, found her way suddenly blocked by a tall form with flushed face, and dulled eyes, from whose garments floated the unmistakable fumes of whisky.

It was Vernon Keith, and for a moment they stood motionless, face to face, her eyes cold and stern, his lightening into recognition, then flinching with a pathetic shame.

“I—thought—you—had gone,” he stammered thickly. “Getting late—for you. Ver’—late.” He was turning back in the direction of the smoke-room, when with a sudden impulse, Katrine laid her hand on his arm.

“Mr Keith! Will you do me a favour? You are not well, and it is bad for you to sit up late... Won’t you say good-night now, and go straight to bed?”

He straightened himself, and drew a deep breath. As if a veil had been drawn from his face, the blank look vanished, and the soul of the man looked at her through the bloodshot eyes. For the moment he was startled into sobriety.

“If—if you ask it. Of course. At—at once!” he said, and turning followed in her wake.

Had Mrs Mannering seen, or had she not? Katrine could not decide. She was thankful at least that she was treated to no remarks, but could hurry into bed and lie quietly in the darkness, thinking over the situation. One thing was certain—the incident had at a stride carried Vernon Keith and herself beyond the stage of conventional acquaintance. It seemed impossible that they could meet again without reference to that short, pregnant meeting. What would be said? Would he be shamed, resentful, defiant? Katrine could not guess; hardly knew for which mood to wish. Curiously enough the success of her appeal had roused a nervous mistrust, so that she regretted her own audacity, and wished helplessly that she had waited for Captain Bedford’s help. “Will he think it was bold of me?” she questioned of her own heart. “Will they tell him in the smoke-room that I walked about with a man to whom no other girl will speak? Will he think I am bold and fast, and tell Jim?” Quick as a dart came the answering assurance. “Jim will understand!” and at the comfort of it she laughed softly aloud.

A sleepy murmur from the opposite bunk reminded her of the existence of her room-mate. She blushed and stammered in the dark:

“I—I beg your pardon. What did you say?”

“Bless you!” repeated the voice distinctly. “But don’t do it again.—He’ll keep, my dear—he’ll keep!”

The next morning, to Katrine’s relief, there was no sign of Vernon Keith at breakfast. She drew her chair into a quiet corner and sat with her back to the passing stream, affecting to be engrossed in her book, but shortly before noon a shadow loomed, and with a fluttering of heart she divined that the dreaded encounter was at hand. He placed his chair by her side, and fixed her with haggard eyes, but he spoke no word, not even the conventional greeting; it was left to her to open the conversation.

“Oh, Mr Keith—good-morning! I was reading.—Isn’t it a nice day?”

“Is it?” he queried listlessly. “I was not thinking of to-day. I was thinking of last night.” His eyes pierced her through, he bent nearer, speaking with a horrible deliberation. “Are—you—accustomed—to—drunken—men?”

Katrine cowered; repulsed and frightened.

“Never—never!—I have never so much as spoken to one—be—”

“Before!” he concluded calmly. “Well! I am drunk, more or less, every night of my life, and shall be to the end. It’s a habit which it is difficult to break! You thought it would be satisfying for a man to walk round the deck with a beautiful girl for his companion, feeling the fresh breeze, watching the sea and the sky; more tempting than a foul room with the fumes of smoke and whisky.—It is better! For an hour I was grateful and content. After that—” he hissed the words in her ear, “after that—sooner than have stayed with you, sooner than exchange your company for the bottle and the glass, do you know what I would have done?—I would have lifted you in my arms, and tossed you into that sea!”

Katrine shrunk from him, aghast. For the first time in her life she faced the despair of a self-wrecked life, and realised the impotence of human help. The chains which the years had forged bound this man in his prison, and she had essayed to free him in a few light hours. If he had shown signs of excitement or emotion, the moment would have been more bearable. It was his dreadful composure which rent her heart.

Her lip quivered; she shook her head in helpless distress.

“Why do you tell me this? I didn’t ask—I don’t want to know. We can be friends...”

“Can we?” he smiled bitterly. “Are you so brave? That’s fine of you, but it’s too late. I am a drunkard, and it has come to this—I don’t even wish to be cured! Drink is my only comfort; the thing that helps me to forget. The good people among whom you have lived (you have met only good people, I think. That shows in your face!) they have told you that it is drunkenness which causes most of the misery in the world. In future will you try sometimes to reverse the statement, and acknowledge that it is often misery which causes drink? It caused it with me,—heart-break and treachery, failure and struggle, and then, at the first promise of success, this!” he tapped his bent chest, “this demon choking my life. I have nearly a whole lung left. Would you think it? Down in that cabin, gasping for breath, it is difficult to realise that there’s so much. And they sent me this voyage, the people at home... What for? My sake, or their own? To get rid of me—to be spared the end?”

“No, no!” Katrine protested, “don’t say it. It isn’t true, it can only do you harm to think it. No one could be so wicked.”

His lips twisted in a sneer.

“Would it be wicked? When the sheep is so black, when he refuses to be washed, and brings disgrace on innocent heads? There is no hope for me, Miss Beverley; a month more, or a month less, that’s the only question that remains. Sea air is supposed to be good, and sitting at home people think only of the air, and forget the other incidents of life on shipboard, which are not conducive to the welfare of a man suffering from my—complaints! I am worse than when we sailed. Shall grow worse every day. Doubly infected, you see! A leper to be shunned.”

He stared at her keenly, his mouth twisted by the bitter mockery of a smile. There was no sign of softening on his face, rather did he appear to sneer at the puny efforts which had been made on his behalf. He had spoken of her as a “beautiful girl,” but in a manner so impersonal as to rob the words of flattery. Katrine turned her head aside, unable to meet that gaze, and sat silent, gazing out to sea. For a long quarter of an hour neither spoke a word, but the silence was charged. Each felt the influence of the other’s thoughts, divined the other’s sentiments. At a certain moment they turned simultaneously to look into each other’s eyes, and in this last look was kindness and comprehension.

“Miss Beverley,” said the man, “you are a good woman. You have done me good, though not in the way you intended. I shall drink as much as ever, understand that! but you’ve done me good. If you are brave enough to defy convention by giving a little of your time to a prodigal, I’ll take what I can get, and for the rest—keep out of your way! But you have only to say a word—”

Katrine held out her hand.

“I don’t want to say it. It is nothing to me what people think. Come and talk to me whenever you feel inclined. I have no friends on board, but at Port Said a man is joining the ship who is in the same regiment as my host, and he is supposed to look after me for the rest of the voyage. I hope we shall both like him! We could sit together and have more interesting talks. Men get tired of womaney subjects.”

“Ah,” he said flatly, “that’s good! I’m glad you will have some one. You are beautiful, you know. You oughtn’t to be alone.”

Again the impersonal tone minimised the words. Katrine realised that as a woman she had no personality for the man; she was merely a shape—a picture; even his gratitude was a lifeless thing; the man’s power of feeling, of resistance, was exhausted. It was indeed, as he had said, “too late.”