Loe raamatut: «Katharine Frensham: A Novel», lehekülg 5

"But it is dreadful for you to be alone," he said.

"I have not been alone," she answered, and she told him about her strange meeting with Clifford Thornton and his boy.

Ronald pretended to believe that she knew they were there all the time, and that she had left his home deliberately.

"Don't be ridiculous," she answered gaily. "Life is only a series of chances, and this is one of them."

"And here have I been racking my brains to think how I might comfort you, Kath," said Ronald.

"Dear old fellow!" she replied. "Lonely people have to work out their own redemption."

"Are you very lonely?" he asked regretfully. It always pinched his heart to think that he had abandoned her.

"No, no," she answered, giving him a sudden hug, "scarcely at all, and then only for a few passing moments. Nothing that matters. And now tell me about business. For if you want the benefit of my advice about anything, now is your chance. I feel that my brains are in splendid condition this morning, and that I can settle the most momentous questions in five minutes. I always was quick, wasn't I?"

"There are one or two matters you can help me with, if you will really give your attention," he said.

"Well, then, I must remove this hat," Katharine said, taking pins recklessly out of her hair. "No person could be business-like in such a hat, could they? There, I feel different now, absolutely serious and commercial! And here go my gloves and rings. Now, Ronnie, I am all brains and attention."

"And you won't flirt if I ask Barlow in?" Ronald said. "We shall want him too."

"I will be sphinx-like," she answered, with a twinkle in her eye.

Ronald laughed and sent for his manager, and the three together settled some important difficulties, over which Katharine showed herself so quick-witted and sensible that Mr Barlow was lost in admiration, and remarked it was a pity she was not in the business.

"I have always maintained, Miss Katharine, that you ought to take an active part in the business," he said. "You have a good and a quick judgment."

"Ah, Mr Barlow," Katharine answered eagerly, "you have touched the right chord. I want to take an active part from now onwards, and Ronald says I could be of use."

"Yes, but the trouble is that you'd soon get tired of routine work," Ronald said. "You were not made for a dull life."

"Why could I not be a traveller for the firm?" suggested Katharine. "I am sure I could manage ecclesiastics beautifully; and that wouldn't be dull really, though it sounds dull! I have every confidence that I could make all creeds employ our firm and our firm only. I feel myself quite capable of tackling Archbishops or Plymouth Brethren, Unitarian ministers or Anabaptists. All sects of all shades except Christian Scientists. I draw the line at Christian Scientists. No one could tackle them, no one on earth or in heaven or – anywhere!"

The manager laughed.

"I believe you can tackle any one, Miss Katharine, even Christian Scientists," he said, "and I am sure we can make use of your quick judgment."

When he had gone, she said to Ronald:

"Ronnie, I really am more stable than you think, and I believe I could even do routine work now. I must have something to do. And you admit I have a quick brain. It goes like a flash, doesn't it? Not like Willy Tonedale's, for instance."

And at that moment Willy Tonedale was announced. He was a handsome fellow, to whom the gods had given a beautiful face, a splendid form, a dear, kind heart, and certainly the very slowest of brains. Every one loved him, and Katharine herself was one of his best friends. He was too lazy to have worked seriously at a profession; but he had had a vague training as an artist, and had dawdled through the Royal Academy schools. It was his custom to propose to Katharine every time he met her, and he at once said:

"Ah, Katharine, there you are, home at last! Do be mine, my dear. Do. There's a brick."

"We were just talking of you," she said.

"Talking of my slow brain, as usual, I suppose," he said, slipping into Ronald's chair, his handsome face aglow with the pleasure of seeing her.

"It was just mentioned," Katharine said, laughing; and Ronald said:

"Kath wants to come into the business; and she was remarking that she had a quick brain, not like – "

"Not like mine, of course," put in Willy. "I know. But what on earth does she want to come into the business for? I never heard of anything so absurd. Why don't you tell her to marry me instead, Ronald?"

"You are not the right man, Willy," Katharine said brightly. "You are an awful dear; but you never were the right fellow, and never will be."

"Well, don't settle down to work," he said. "Work! Who wants to work at anything regularly? Never heard such an absurd idea. Good heavens! If it's money you want, take all I've got – every blessèd shilling – and remain yourself – Katharine the splendid! Business routine for you! It's ridiculous to think of. Why, the world wouldn't go on properly unless you were a leisured person. Some nice people have got to be leisured. That's why I take things easily. Too many busy people make life a nuisance. Even I've sense enough to know that."

"I am quite determined to take up business, Willy," said Katharine, "and the world will have to do without me. Ronald says I could be of use. And Mr Barlow says so too. Now just imagine for one moment how beautifully I might manage bishops, archbishops, curates, even Popes. Can't you picture to yourself the Pope ordering a new organ with all the newest improvements of which only our firm is capable!"

And she went through an imaginary interview with the Pope, which called forth peals of laughter from her little audience of two. Seriousness had scarcely been re-established when the card of a real clergyman was brought in, and Ronald said laughingly:

"Here, Kath, here's your chance – the Dean of St Ambrose's."

"No, no," she answered. "I can't begin with any one inferior to a Pope or an Archbishop. Come along, Willy. I suppose you are going to your home to lunch. You know I am spending the afternoon there. Make haste, Willy! Ronald is longing for us to be off."

"My dear Kath," Willy Tonedale said quaintly, "it isn't I that am putting all those mysterious pins into my head. Can't understand how they don't hurt the head, going right through like that. They would hurt my head. But then it's true – "

"Yes, it's true," said Katharine. "You needn't finish your remark. I know! Good-bye, Ronnie. Love to Gwendolen, and I'm coming to dinner to-morrow. If it had only been an Archbishop, I would have begun at once!"

The Dean passed into Ronald's sanctum as Willy Tonedale and Katharine passed out. The dignitary of the Church glanced at her, and a fleeting expression of pleased surprise lit up his clerical countenance. He had come about some experiment which he wished tried on the organ of St Ambrose's; but he found himself unable to concentrate his attention on business until he had asked who that delightful-looking lady might be. Ronald smiled invisibly as he replied that it was his sister – the senior partner of the firm.

"Dear me, dear me!" replied the Dean as he stroked his chin. His eyes wandered restlessly towards the door. Wicked old Dean. He was thinking:

"Surely I have heard that it is always safer to ask for the senior partner."

CHAPTER IX

"Well, Willy," said Katharine, as he and she made their way towards the Tonedales' house in South Kensington, "what have you been doing whilst I have been away? Have you finished the famous historical picture of the unhistoric meeting between Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots? I should like to think that you have finished it, for then I shouldn't have to sit for it any more! Let me see, how many years have you been painting at that immortal masterpiece? Is it ten or fifteen years?"

"Don't make fun of me," Willy said. "You know perfectly well that I am one of those fellows who were never intended for work, although if I had had you to work for, Kath, I might have overcome my natural laziness. Anyway, the masterpiece isn't done yet. It has been waiting for your return. You must still sit for it. I have missed you fearfully. Everybody has missed you. Even that duffer Ronald, infatuated as he is with that idiot Gwendolen, even he has had the sense to miss you. By Jove, though, he is altered! Not the same fellow at all. I never go to his home. Don't care to meet those pretentious asses of people whom Gwendolen thinks such fine style. I don't see how you are going to get on with them, Kath. They'll hate you, and you'll hate them. It's their pretentiousness I can't swallow. It makes me positively sick. No, when I want to see Ronnie nowadays I go down to the organ-factory. That is good enough for me. No one is artificial there."

"Yes, Ronnie has altered," Katharine said. "But still, if he is happy, Willy, that is the main thing. And I think he is happy; although I am sure that he knows he is spending too much money. The truth is, Gwendolen has always been accustomed to these weird people, and likes to entertain them. Ronnie has nothing in common with them, but he worships Gwendolen, and loves to please her, and so he has persuaded himself that it is the right thing to keep in and up with them. Perhaps it is, from one point of view. It all depends on what one wants in life. I assure you I was glad enough to escape two or three days ago, and take refuge in the Langham until I could find a flat for myself. Gwendolen was jealous of me, too. I felt that at once."

"At the Langham, nonsense!" said Willy. "Come and live with us. That's the proper place for you until you have decided what to do. Come, Kath, do!"

Mrs Tonedale and Margaret, Willy's mother and sister, also begged Katharine to come and make their home her own; but she could not be persuaded to leave the hotel, and said in excuse that she was still feeling a wanderer to whom a home was not yet necessary. They did not coerce her, knowing her love of freedom, and knowing also that she understood there was always a warm welcome awaiting her. For they loved her dearly, in spite of the fact that she did not respond to Willy's adoration.

Margaret Tonedale had been Katharine's earliest school friend in the years that had gone. They had both been together at one of those prehistoric private schools, where the poor female victims used to get very little learning and much less food.

"It didn't matter so much about the learning," Kath said to Margaret that afternoon, when they were speaking about old times. "I always thought vaguely one could make that up somehow or other, but one could not make up the arrears of food; and, you know, I have remained hungry ever since."

"If you married me, Katharine, I would feed you splendidly," Willy said. "You'd soon forget that you had been starved at school. My dear girl, you should have a baron of beef every day!"

"Willy is still incorrigible in the way he proposes," Mrs Tonedale said, laughing. "You must go on forgiving him, Katharine."

"Willy is a dear, and I don't mind when or how he proposes to me; whether with a poem, or a baron of beef, or a picture of the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots," said Katharine, smiling. "I think we still understand each other, and he knows that he will always get the same answer. Don't you, Willy?"

"Yes, my dear," answered Willy. "Same question, same answer. That is all I expect now."

"But, supposing some day I said 'Yes,' instead of 'No.' What would you do then?" suggested Katharine, teasing him.

"By Jove! Kath, I should go out of my senses," he said eagerly.

"My dear fellow, you must keep what brains you've got," she replied. "You know I've always said you had some, though they do work slowly."

"The machine's there, my dear," he said, "but it certainly doesn't work quickly. I'm quite willing to own that it doesn't work quickly. It never could, not even for love of you. Quite sure you couldn't stand a slow machine?"

"Quite sure," she answered. "It would send me frantic, Willy."

"Awfully hard on a man to have a slow machine when only a quick one will do the trick," he said. "Where's the justice of it, I should like to know? Tell me that."

"Oh, I don't pretend to know about justice," she said. "But I think there are plenty of other women who would not go frantic over the slow machine."

"Exactly," he said, pulling his moustache. "But I want the woman who would go frantic."

"Do be sensible, Will," she said. "Our temperaments are hopelessly different."

"Oh, hang temperament!" he said recklessly. "I hate the word."

"Everything turns on it," she answered. "I see that more and more."

"Oh, don't you begin to talk about temperaments," he said. "I can't stand it from you, Kath. We hear of nothing else now, since cousin Julia came to live in London. But, there she is, confound her! And now she will begin on her eternal subject: a dead friend who was done to death by her husband's temperamental cruelty. And mother and Margaret will listen in rapt delight. And if any one fresh is here, she tells the whole story from beginning to end. All I can say is, that if the woman was anything like cousin Julia, the husband must have had an awful time of it, and, if he is a sensible chap, must now be revelling in his freedom."

Katharine looked in the direction of the new-comer, and saw a well-dressed woman with a hard face. She was received by Margaret Tonedale, and joined the little group of friends who had come in whilst Katharine and Willy had been talking together at the other end of the big drawing-room.

"What was the name of the dead friend?" Katharine asked indifferently. She wondered afterwards why she had asked. It was nothing to her. At least she believed at the moment that it was nothing to her.

"The name was Thornton – Marianne Thornton," Willy said. "I ought to know, considering I've heard it about a million times. Even my brain would retain it after that."

Katharine rose from the sofa.

"Let us join the others, Willy," she said; and she took a chair not far off from Mrs Stanhope. Willy followed her reluctantly.

"Never thought you'd want to listen to that shrew of a woman," he said. "Besides, what good does she do to her dead friend? The whole thing is past and gone. And, as for temperaments, I tell you – "

"Hush, hush!" said Katharine, with a slight flush on her face, "I want to hear what she says."

"Oh, I am never tired of talking about it," Mrs Stanhope was saying. "You see, she was my great friend, my dearest friend on earth. And to lose her in such sad circumstances has made me feel tenfold more bereaved than I should have felt if she had just passed away from ordinary causes and chances of everyday life. As for her husband, he deserves all the unhappiness which remorse can measure out to him. He wrecked and ruined my poor friend's life. She was high-spirited and full of noble emotions. She had a fine natural disposition which he never even tried to understand. He never spared a thought to her. His thoughts were for himself, his work, and his son. I will do him the justice to say that he loved his boy. But he never gave a thought to his wife. She had sacrificed everything to his temperament; she sacrificed herself, her friends, her social obligations, her personal inclinations, her very love for her boy. No woman could have given more. She was alone in the world. Her husband had put her out into the biting cold of loneliness."

She paused for a moment, and Willy Tonedale drawled out:

"But you did say once, Cousin Julia, that she had a most fearful temper. No fellow can stand that sort of thing for long."

Mrs Stanhope glanced at him sternly, and said:

"Could you imagine your temper improved under such conditions? She went to him sweet-tempered enough; and, if she became a little hasty as the years went on, it was only right that she should have won that protection for herself. I encouraged her. 'Let yourself be felt, Marianne,' I used to say."

"Poor devil of a man," whispered Willy, "if Marianne were anything like cousin Julia. By Jove! she must have made herself felt."

"It was temperamental strife," continued Mrs Stanhope, "and my poor darling was worsted. She was doomed from the beginning. She had no chance against that man's cruel neglect and selfishness. You had only to look at him to know that he had no emotions and no heart."

"That is not true," thought Katharine; but she remained silent, although increasingly stirred by Mrs Stanhope's incisive words.

"And," said Mrs Stanhope, "I know from my poor friend's confidences, how greatly she suffered from his unvarying unkindness. He killed her by a long series of tortures – temperamental tortures – and he must have given the finishing stroke to her on that last evening when, by his own confession at the inquest, they had had some miserable scene together, and he, no doubt to recover from his own outbreak of anger, went off riding, leaving her to right herself as well as she could. He knew that she had a delicate heart, and that she was always jeopardised by over-excitation. All this he knew well; and yet he never tried to make her life happy and calm. He never spared her anything. It was so like him to bring about a last access of unhappiness for her – and then leave her to die broken-hearted alone. I shall always say, that if ever a man killed a woman, Clifford Thornton killed his wife."

There was silence. Mrs Stanhope's words cut into every one's sensitiveness. Every one was suffering. But she herself leaned back as if resting from a newly accomplished task and well-earned triumph. She had raised her voice and testified once more against her dead friend's husband.

Then Katharine spoke.

"Well," she said, "it is a pitiful story; but nothing and no one will ever make me believe that Professor Thornton is a cruel man. He may have made mistakes, and probably did do so, being only human; but it is impossible to believe anything worse of him than that."

They all turned to her. Her face was flushed. There was a gleam in her eyes, and a curious tenseness in her manner. She looked as one who had divined some advancing danger, and was standing ready to ward off the evil from some friend loved and defenceless except for her.

"Do you know Professor Thornton, Kath?" Willy and Margaret exclaimed. "You never told us."

"I have met him," she answered. "I believe he is incapable of cruelty – physical, mental, or temperamental – quite incapable of it."

"I have known him for twelve years," said Mrs Stanhope in her steely voice. "And you?"

"I have known him for three days," said Katharine, undaunted. "But with what you would call 'temperamental knowledge,' Mrs Stanhope. I do not believe he ever said one unkind word to any one."

"He is lucky to inspire such faith in a stranger," Mrs Stanhope remarked. "He is lucky to have such a staunch defender."

Katharine looked at her steadily for a moment, and then said:

"It is well for him that he has even a stranger to defend him, if you go about the world saying that he murdered his wife."

"You are scarcely accurate, Miss Frensham," Mrs Stanhope said, flushing. "I did not use that word."

"I am as accurate as the ordinary outside world would be in the circumstances," said Katharine.

"Ah, you are right there," drawled out Willy Tonedale. "The outside world knows nothing about temperamental tortures and temperamental murders, and all that sort of confounded subtleness. Torture is torture, and murder is murder to the outside world of ordinary dense people like myself – and others. I ought to see that man and warn him against you, cousin Julia – 'pon my soul, I ought."

"Oh, there will be no need, Willy," she said with a short, nervous laugh. "No doubt Miss Frensham will do it instead of you."

Every one had stood up, by silent consent dissolving the meeting. Mrs Tonedale, Margaret, Willy, and the three or four visitors now looked towards Katharine again, wondering how she would meet Mrs Stanhope's parting thrust. She met it quite simply. She said:

"I will gladly warn him. Though I daresay he does not need to be warned. For at least Mrs Stanhope does not stab in the dark, does she?"

And directly she had spoken these words, she thought of the young boy, and a wave of sympathetic anxiety swept over her. Supposing that this woman did stab in the dark; supposing that out of mistaken loyalty to her dead friend's memory, she believed it to be a solemn duty to tell her version of the story to the young boy – Marianne's son – what then – what then? She was obviously such a bigot that she was capable of doing anything to forward the cause which she had at heart.

At that same moment Mrs Stanhope was saying to herself:

"The boy shall know – the boy shall know – it is only fair to my poor Marianne's memory that he should learn the true history of his mother's unhappy life."

The two women glanced at each other, and each read the other's thought. Then, after a hasty leave-taking, Mrs Stanhope hurried away. Katharine had an uneasy feeling that she ought to have followed her to her very door, and thus have made sure that Marianne's avenging colleague wrought no harm that afternoon to the boy and his father. She attempted several times to go, but was prevented by her friends, who wished to hear some of the details of her three years' travels.

"I believe you want to chase cousin Julia and give her a ducking in the Serpentine," said Willy. "By Jove, I should like to see it!"

Katharine laughed.

"Willy," she said, "you're really becoming quite electrically intelligent. What is the cause of it?"

"You are, my dear," he said. "And also that adorable female relative of mine always rouses my indignation. Shades of my ancestors, what a tongue! How she would yarn to the boy if she ever got hold of him alone."

"That is what I've been thinking," Katharine said, turning to him earnestly. "It would be too cruel."

"But why should you mind?" he said. "After all, they are nothing to you – just strangers – that's all. Can't let yourself be torn in pieces for strangers. Better do it for me instead. My word, Kath, but you did speak up for him well."

"Did I?" she asked, with a sudden thrill in her voice.

Willy Tonedale glanced at her and saw a light on her face which had never shone for him – never.

And the cold crept into his faithful heart.