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

“Sweetheart, I know it! Nobody knows it better than I. I am not excusing myself, only explaining how it came about. One false step, and then it seemed impossible to go back. I could not face the thought of owning up on board, we were so happy, so innocently happy, that it seemed criminal to break it all up. Confess now that I behaved well, that I made an exemplary escort?”

“You—you—made me dreadfully in love with you,” protested Katrine, stiffening her back, and holding him off with determined hands, when his delight at the confession took an active form. “And unhappy! Did you think it was a light thing to me to feel my loyalty slipping from me day by day—to be obliged to love one man, when another man was waiting? Did you think I had no heart for Jim Blair?”

“I knew you had, and I loved you for it. Do you remember how you put me on my guard? But I was Jim Blair, you darling, so all was well. I was afraid you’d worry, but at the worst it was a matter of days, and those days were going to save us months of waiting. That’s the way I put it, trying to convince myself that all would work out for the best. We should have remained on terms of the strictest friendship, if—if it hadn’t been for—”

Katrine shuddered. It would be long before she could talk calmly of the awesome experience through which she had passed. Her arms relaxed, she sank back, and they clung together in silence for long healing minutes.

“You never told me,” she whispered, “even at the end—what we thought was the end! You let me leave you, not knowing... Why did you not tell me then, and let me die in peace?”

His eyes met hers, gravely, questioning.

“Would it have made for peace? Would death have seemed more easy, or less? Was your brain clear enough to grasp explanations, or to have felt any comfort, if you had? And, beloved,—in the face of death what was a name? I loved you, you loved me, what did it matter by what name I was called? If it had been the end,—well! it would not have been as Miss Beverley and Captain—anything, that we should have met on another plane.—If we were saved, it was only a matter of two or three days...”

“One can suffer a good deal in two or three days! How do you suppose I felt in that train, looking forward to meeting you—both!”

His eyes twinkled; the grave face broke into a smile.

“Exactly as you would have done, for months instead of days, if we had kept to the original agreement! No! beloved, I apologise, but don’t expect me to be abject. I’ve thought it out, not once, but a dozen times, and I can’t see that on the whole you’ve suffered more than you were bound to do in any case. And what have you been saved? Three months of uncertainty and waiting. And what have you gained? Three months of happiness to add to the score of life. It’s a big haul, my Katrine! It is worth a few pangs?”

“You twist things about; your arguments are specious; they are arguments without premises. Who said I was going to waive three months? I’m not at all sure that I shall. What would they say at home? They know I’m not the sort of girl to fall in love on a few days’ acquaintance.”

“Why bring Cranford into the question? Does it matter one button what they think? Besides, I don’t wish to be boastful, but as a matter of fact, you did!”

“I didn’t!” Katrine contradicted. “No! thank goodness, I am restored to my own confidence. I understand now that it was only because you were Jim, because I recognised yourself in spite of disguises that I did—fall! I was really absolutely loyal throughout, but other people won’t understand—Mrs Mannering, for instance! I told her there was ‘some one else.’”

“And I went one better, and told her who I was! We had a heart-to-heart talk that morning in Bombay before I left, and cleared up all misunderstandings. She’s a good sort. We owe her a lot. Perhaps some day we may be able to pay some of it back, to her boy.”

Katrine nodded dumbly. She was occupied in reviewing her journey up country in the light of the revelation, and seeing in it an explanation of her companion’s idiosyncrasies, her mysterious chuckles of laughter, her tenderness, alternated with raillery, her suppressed excitement at the moment of arrival. She had known all the time, even in Bombay, when the letter arrived! Katrine started, confronted by another mystery.

“The letter! The one at Bombay—”

“What about it?”

“You wrote it, of course, but how, when? Not before our voyage. You knew when you wrote—”

“Yes; I knew,” he said softly. “It was written on the night we arrived. I trusted to your ignorance of the country in the matter of postmarks, and to your femininity to pass the absence of date! Was it selfish of me to send it? I knew you would be expecting to hear, and it was a comfort to me to write. Besides, I felt that a moment would come when it would be a comfort to you, too. You had trained me to understand that your mind worked in flashes, and that at a glance you could grasp a situation which would petrify a poor male thing. Remembering this, I believed—I hoped that at the very moment of discovery you might remember what I had said, and realise that all was right between us—always had been right, always would be to the end! I wanted you to realise that that letter had been written after we had met, and that my love had changed only to grow deeper.”

Katrine sighed; a deep, long-drawn sigh in which was the sound of immeasurable content.

“Oh, I am glad,” she sighed. “I am glad! Even at the height of my love the thought of Jim Blair tugged at my heart. It hurt me to hurt him. He had wound his life so closely with mine that I couldn’t drag them apart. And a bit of me loved him still, went on loving, and wanting his love. After having accepted so much, I could never have been really satisfied to throw him over, even for—Jim! I was going to say for ‘you’ but you are Jim, and I can have you both! There’s no one to throw over; no one to be unhappy—”

Katrine paused; in her deep eyes a gleam of laughter awoke and danced. “There’s only one drawback, Captain Bedford—Blair—Jim—John—whatever you chose to call yourself, and for that you have yourself to blame!”

“I’ll bear it. I’ll bear anything! What is it now?” asked Jim, smiling.

“I shall always,” replied Katrine demurely, “I shall always feel that I am married to two men!”

The End.