An Unknown Lover - Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
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Katrine settled down again into a fitful sleep, through which the tramp of feet, the clamour of voices, the banging of luggage, beat confusedly upon her brain. From time to time Mrs Mannering crept in to look at her, and stole out unnoticed; it was not until late in the afternoon, when quiet reigned on the deck overhead, that she met opened eyes and a smile of welcome.
“I’m dreadfully lazy! I’m afraid it’s ever so late, but I can dress quickly now for my head is better. Is—?”
She stopped short, flushing, but Mrs Mannering was intentionally obtuse.
“Yes, all right! The poor old ship kept up to the end. They are getting out the baggage. Pray heaven it is dry! in any case we’ll be thankful for what we can get. It looked as if we might not have a rag to our backs. That good soul Anderson is looking after our part of the spoil; Captain Bedford would have done it, but it was all he could do to get through himself. Had to rush off to take up a company by the first train. They’ve been kept waiting for him by this upset. However, our rooms are booked at the hotel, and we can lie low for a few days till we get our breath.”
Katrine stared blankly. She had shrunk from the thought of meeting Bedford, yet it came as a shock to hear that he had gone on and left her behind. They had all gone on,—the passengers among whom she had lived so closely during those last weeks; but for Nancy Mannering she was alone in the strange new world. It was a lonesome feeling. She sat on the side of her bunk, smiling a difficult smile.
“Oh! Yes. That will be nice. And my friends have arranged for my journey. The agent will call—”
“Be hanged to agents! I’ve sworn by all my gods to stick to you till I see you safely landed with your friends. It’s only a few score miles out of my way, and that counts for nothing in this country. The good Bedford will see me housed when we arrive.”
“Scores of miles out of your way! For me? Mrs Mannering, it is too much! I can’t let you do it. You are the kindest, most unselfish of creatures.”
Mrs Mannering grimaced.
“Don’t be too sure!” she said dryly. “Curiosity poses under many forms. I’ve a weakness for being on in the last act. Well! dress yourself, and come along, and be sure to speak prettily to the captain before you leave. He’s behaved like a brick. There’s tea in the saloon.”
By six o’clock Katrine and her chaperon were safely housed in the hotel, appreciating as they had never done before the blessings of terra firma. The next morning their baggage was restored to them, practically undamaged, and what was to Katrine most important of all, a letter arrived from Jim Blair.
She sat alone in her room holding the unopened envelope in her hand, gaining courage for the ordeal of reading the loving words. Strange how deep a hold this unknown man had taken of her affections! Bedford she loved with the stored-up passion of her life, but even Bedford himself had not been able to lessen her tenderness towards the man who had come into her life at the moment when she needed him most, and brought solace to her sore heart. It was cruelly hard to be obliged to bring pain and disappointment to so generous a lover. She flinched and coloured at the thought of her own conduct as viewed from the outside—just the weak, commonplace story of the pretty girl who starts on a voyage which is to bring her to a waiting lover, meets another man en route, and is false to her tryst,—but it was typical of Katrine’s conception of the character of her unknown lover, that through all her troubled thoughts the conviction remained that Jim would understand,—that however he might suffer he would neither be bitter nor unjust.
She sighed, and bracing herself resolutely, tore open the envelope. The blood rushed to her face as she read the opening words:
“My Own Katrine,
“No! I am not breaking my truce. This little breathing space between the sea voyage and the start up-country doesn’t count in the scheme. It’s a No-man’s land, of which this man would be a fool if he didn’t take possession forthwith!
“Besides, beloved, there are things that I want to say; things that need to be said... Your journey is nearly over, our meeting is close at hand, and if the truth were known there’s more fear than expectation in your heart! I know you too well not to realise that—but the fear must go! Get it out of your head once for all, little girl, that you have anything to dread from me. I want you, I want you badly, but most of all I want your happiness. That sounds the sort of thing one reads in books—just a bit too lofty and impersonal to be true, but if you come to worry it out, it’s only a higher kind of selfishness. Once love with your own heart and soul, love some one, that is to say, more than yourself, and as the most obvious of consequences, happiness is impossible for yourself unless it has first and foremost filled that other heart. Don’t worry yourself by any idea that you are pledged to me, in honour bound, or any nonsense of the kind. You are not; you are as free as air. If you should happen to like another man better than me (you won’t!) I’d help you to him. If you don’t want me (you will!) I’ll stand aside. Dear little girl, be aisy! I’m on your side.
“That ‘mad’ letter of yours was delicious sense. The veritable Katrine revealed herself more therein than in any letter I have yet received. And your little discourse on tenderness—that touched me! It is a quality which, as you say, is wanting in the love of many men, and the lack of it leaves a record on the faces of weary women. But, after all, you know, the doing or undoing, whichever you choose to call it, is in the main the fault of some other woman in the past! Why do mothers spoil their boys instead of training them in the small domestic kindnesses and attentions which will be so valuable later on? If I had a son... upon my life I believe I’d spoil him too!
“Seriously though, Katrine, it must be pre-eminently tenderness which is filling my heart today, for I can imagine; I can understand! I am so sorry for you, poor, puzzled girl! Is that a good augury for the future?
“I shall come in to see you at the Middleton bungalow the day you arrive. No club meetings for me. Just an hour or two for rest and refreshment, and then—enter Jim Blair! Poor little girl, are you trembling in your shoes? If only I could convince you of my sincerity! Was it for nothing, Katrine, that my heart went out to you across the seas; was it for nothing that my cry touched your heart; was it for nothing that after years of block and difficulty, the way was opened out which brings you here to me? Go on in faith for one week longer!
“Jim Blair.”
The letter fell from Katrine’s hands and fluttered to the ground. She hid her face in her hands.
The delight and excitement which is felt by most travellers on a first introduction to the East was dimmed in Katrine’s case by the pressure of events past and to come. The shadow of death had loomed too recently to be easily repelled. The thought of what might have been pierced knife-like through the thankfulness for what was, and recovered life seemed a frail and dream-like treasure hardly as yet to be realised.
Katrine found some comfort in the fact that she was not alone in absent-mindedness and lack of appreciation, since Nancy Mannering also was far from her normal self. She was restless, and on edge; at once excited and reserved, affectionate and chilling. She would sit through a whole meal in silence, and leave the table chuckling with laughter. She would drag Katrine out for drives through the hot, bright streets, play the part of show-woman with exaggerated fervour, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, stop short in the middle of a sentence, and refuse to speak again. Excitement, reserve, tenderness, and sarcasm, followed each other in rapid sequence, and added not a little to the strain of the waiting days, but Katrine bore patiently with the varying moods, realising that to a woman of intensely practical nature the very fact of having opened her heart in the hour of danger would be enough to close it more tightly than ever when that danger was past. “If we get out of this, your work is to forget!” Those had been Mrs Mannering’s own words, but, poor dear soul! she herself was evidently finding the task difficult, lashing herself for her ill-placed confidence! Moreover, she also had a meeting in store... Every time that Katrine’s reflections brought her round to this point, Mrs Mannering and her idiosyncrasies were forgotten in the whirl of her own thoughts. So far as was possible she tried to shut her mind to what lay ahead, to encourage, rather than fight against, the languor of mind and body which gave a dream-like unreality to life. As Jim Blair had said, this time was a rest by the way, a No-man’s land, when her chief duty was to rest and gather strength.
On the third day the two ladies started on their three days’ journey up country, under the most luxurious conditions which it was possible to attain. Everything had been thought of, everything arranged; agent and officials waited upon them with an assiduity which the older traveller, at least, had no difficulty in tracing to its source. Short of climatic exigencies the long journey was robbed of discomfort, but the length, the heat, above all the dust, made it nevertheless a trying experience to the English girl.
At first the novelty of the country arrested her attention, but long before the four days were over, interest had evaporated, and she was consumed by alternate longings to reach her destination, and a panic of dread at what awaited her when there. How incomprehensible to be dreading a destination which meant Dorothea, and the fulfilment of a lifelong dream! How still more incomprehensible to find it an effort to think of Dorothea at all!
After what seemed an eternity of waiting, the journey came to an end. The train drew up before a little sun-baked station which was like a score of others that had been passed before, and on the platform stood a man in uniform, and a woman in white whose thin, sweet face was turned eagerly towards the windows of the train, and with a rush of pain and joy the traveller recognised the friend of her girlhood. The two women kissed, and clung, and gazed, and fell back to gaze again. On Dorothea’s face was written love and admiration, touched with the wistfulness of the exile. This young, fresh girl was only a year her junior—how sweet, how pink, how English she appeared! The sight of her was as a breath of green lanes sunk deep between flowering hedges. Katrine’s eyes felt the smart of tears. How thin, how old, how changed, but oh, how sweet! sweeter than ever, and with just the old, dear, loving ways. As for Jack Middleton himself, he had improved in appearance, as men have a trying
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