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

he led, took the seat pointed out, watched him draw up another, and place himself sideways before her, so as to form a shield between herself and the outer world. His face seemed startlingly near to her own; his hand on the side of his chair almost touched her knees. Katrine fixed her eyes upon it with a fascinated attention. A moment ago it had rested on her arm, the electric warmth of the contact still lingered; for a reckless moment she longed to clasp it, to put it back in its place; then remembrance dawned, and she shuddered again. The world was grey, without and within, nothing but mist and gloom. Seated as they were, she and her companion seemed solitary atoms in a world of fog; to right and left nothing could be seen but dense grey walls which seemed with every moment to press more nearly. The wide deck was empty; instead of the usual babble of talk and laughter there was silence save for the regular thud of the engines, and from time to time the sound of the horn. The effect of that silence was irresistible. Involuntarily the man and woman lowered their voices, and bent nearer; pale face to pale face.

“Are you afraid still?” Bedford whispered, and Katrine shook her head.

“Not afraid. Dazed—a little, I think. It’s so unreal. A world of dreams...”

“A world of dreams, and no one in it, but you and me.”

His hand was still there, and once again the mad, unreasoning impulse seized her to touch it, to grasp its support. So overmastering was the desire, that the physical effort at restraint left her faint and weak. She leaned back in her seat, and turned her head aside, her cheeks flaming with shame. To what had she come, the reserved, well-disciplined Katrine Beverley, that she should be capable of such a thought! What had become of her modesty, her pride; had she no decency left, no loyalty towards the man who had given her his heart?

Katrine’s brain formed bitter reproaches, but the vagrant heart brushed them aside. His hand! His arm! Compared to them all else was as dross. To lay her head for one hour on that broad shoulder, seemed the summit of all that life could give. She felt his eyes following her, searching her face, but dared not meet them. There had been music in the way in which he had spoken those last words; his voice had dropped to a lower note. So had Grizel’s beautiful voice deepened, when she had spoken to Martin. To one who had once heard those accents, their meaning was unmistakable. He loved her, and, God help her! she loved him in return with a passion which frightened her by its intensity. She had imagined that she was cold, that for her the raptures of love would be exchanged for a calm and moderate content; for twenty-six years she had preserved an unbroken front, and now all the stored-up forces of her nature arose and clamoured. Katrine realised with horror that her life had passed out of her own control, and lay in the hollow of this man’s hand. What he asked of her, she would grant; when he commanded, she would obey. There was no force in her to say him nay. If he claimed her, Jim Blair might go to the winds; all the world might stand on one side, and if this man beckoned from the other she would leave all to follow him... The time of self-deception was past, and with a desperate candour she faced the situation, and considered her own course of action. The only chance of safety lay in flight. Two days more, and the voyage would be over; if she could avoid Bedford for two days, there would be no more tête-à-têtes. Dorothea would be present, Jack, Jim Blair—all the little world of the station. Jim had promised a truce of three months. If she could avoid Bedford during that period, her instinct of loyalty would in some sort be appeased. She had promised Jim to keep an open mind for three months, and though his doom was already sealed, she shrank from the thought of putting another man in his place.

Three months’ separation and waiting, and then—

“What are you thinking of?” asked Bedford’s voice in her ear. So near the voice sounded, so low and gentle, that it was almost like the voice of her own heart, but for all its softness it held an insistence which compelled an answer. Katrine made a gallant effort at confession.

“I was thinking of the man to whom I am—engaged.”

“Virtually engaged!” corrected Bedford quietly. “But they were sad thoughts to judge by your face. Why should you have sad thoughts of a good man? It would hurt him to have you think of him so, for of a certainty his chief thought is for your happiness. Shall we dismiss him for the moment?—It’s lonely for me here by myself, when you wander away into dreams, and you look so wraith-like and unreal,—a typical spirit of the mist. If I were an artist I should like to paint you now. I wonder if you realise how beautiful you are?”

A glow lighted Katrine’s eyes; the glow which warms the heart of every true daughter of Eve who hears herself called fair.

“Am I? I’m glad! I—I think I’ve grown nicer lately,” she replied ingenuously. “At home no one admired me much; not half, not a quarter as much as they did Grizel, who is really hardly pretty at all. She used to laugh at me in the old days and say that I kept my good looks a secret, while she took people by the throat, and bullied them into admiration, but the last time she came down she said—?”

“Yes?”

“She said I had grown ‘unnecessarily good looking!’ and wanted to know ‘Why?’ I knew!”

Katrine laughed guiltily. “But I couldn’t explain. So I was cross.”

Bedford looked at her searchingly. For a moment he seemed on the point of repeating Grizel’s question, but he checked himself.

“You shan’t be cross, and you shan’t be sad, so long as I am here to manage for you!” he said confidently, and Katrine, looking at his broad shoulders and grave, purposeful face, felt with a thrill that no harm could indeed approach while this strong man was near.

The dank breath of the fog increased with every moment, driving the passengers into the brightly-lighted saloon, but to Katrine there was a glorious exhilaration in the darkness and the solitude. She realised that in time to come she would look back upon these moments, and treasure them in her heart. When her only meetings with Bedford should be in the crowded festivities of the little station, the isolation of this hour in the fog would live enshrined in memory, to be recalled with a passion of longing.

Silence fell, a silence caused not by poverty of thought, but by thought so charged with import that it dared not risk expression. Katrine felt with a certainty beyond argument that the longing of her own heart was echoed throb for throb, ache for ache by the heart by her side; that even as she desired with a passionate intensity to touch Bedford’s hand, and feel the embrace of his arms, so with an ever greater intensity did he also yearn for her. Such convictions are above reason. They are the language of the heart, which to sensitive souls is stronger than that of the lips. As the silence lengthened so did the mental communion grow and deepen, until with each second it appeared inevitable that speech must follow. Already with a mutual impulse they had faced each other, already the two hands had stretched out, when suddenly Bedford turned his head, raising it high, with a gesture alert, questioning, the action of a sentry, threatened with danger. Through the fog Katrine caught the pose, and felt a sympathetic thrill of anxiety. She reared her own head,—could it be fancy that her ear caught a new and unfamiliar sound? She bent forward, her attitude following his. Tense and motionless they peered into the darkness.

“What is it?”

Bedford’s voice, sharp and vibrant, called out the words, then with a deep cry he flung out his arms, and strained her to his heart.

“Katrine! Katrine! The End!”

She clung to him, every pulse in her body suspended in the awful grip of fear, for suddenly, awfully, the menacing sound had taken shape; the shape of a giant hulk which looming through the mist, staggered and crashed, while the thunders of Olympus roared about their ears. Tongues of flame followed the impact, the deck shook and reeled, and from a thousand throats went up a shriek to Heaven. A helpless unit among the number, Katrine stood and looked death in the face. The End indeed, but through it all, the clasp of a strong man’s arms!

Mercifully it is not to one man in ten thousand that there comes so terrific an experience, and those who make the exception are as a rule incapable of describing their sensations at the dread moment, for even as a mortal wound deadens the physical sensations, so does an overwhelming shock paralyse the mind. Consider it in cold blood, one moment, ye who read, seated comfortably in your homes,—a mysterious thunder crashing suddenly into ordered silence; the shivering reel of what has stood as solid ground, but which in a lightning flash is realised to be but a plank between safety and destruction. The heavens have fallen; the earth has rocked; and on all sides tosses the hungry sea... What wonder if, in its turn, the brain reels and loses power.

Katrine was conscious of nothing but an impulse to cling closer and closer, a terror of being separated from Bedford by so much as a second. If he were with her she could face what might come; without him madness was near.

With a second shock, hardly less awesome than the first, the towering mass fell back, and drifted into the fog; the deck shivered and heeled, as the water rushed through the yawning gap.

“All on deck! All on deck!”

The order rang from the bridge, but it was not needed. Already every soul on board the huge vessel was fleeing along the companionways and corridors. If death threatened, at least let it be death in the open, not the death of a rat in a trap! Ghastly and panting they reached the deck; ghastly and panting, but with magnificent control, they stood and waited the word of command from the figure on the bridge. Katrine raised her head from Bedford’s shoulder, and gazed into his face. The stewards were pacing the deck, turning on the electric switches. There was one near at hand which lit the two faces with a faint, unearthly light. The blue eyes and the grey gazed into each other, deep, deep, as they had done at the first moment of meeting, but now that gaze held a deeper meaning, a world of revelation, a world of regret!

Katrine had only one desire; she voiced it with the simplicity of a child:

“Stay with me! Don’t go away!”

“Never!” he cried, and tightened his grasp. “Whatever happens we’re together, Katrine. You’re mine. I’ll keep you—”

“Lower the boats!”

The order rang out, short and sharp. The stewards were handing round lifebelts. In the brightly-lighted saloons the women were being ranged together. A hand gripped Katrine’s arm, and Mrs Mannering’s voice rang out, calm and controlled:

“Miss Beverley! That’s good. I’ve been searching for you. Come, my lass, come with me! They are collecting the women in the saloon to be ready for the boats. We must do what we can to help. It’s not the first shipwreck I’ve been in, and here I am, safe and sound. We’ll be all right yet, but we must do our share. Come! take my arm.”

Katrine lifted a set face.

“I’m not going. Don’t tease me, please—there’s so little time. Leave