An Unknown Lover, Mrs George de Horne Vaizey [best romantic novels in english txt] 📗

“Oh, well,” Katrine allowed, “that’s true! But Isabel lived before his days. Did you ever play a game of making up Isabel Carnaby conversations? It’s rather fun.”

“Not I... Couldn’t to save my life... Far too difficult.”

“Oh, it’s easy enough, given the right people, and the right hour. It would be no use starting it at the beginning of an evening when every one is stiff and strained, but it goes splendidly after supper. Isabel begins by giving a definition of some well-known term, and invites every one else to follow suit. It is a favourite game of Grizel’s, my sister-in-law. We always make her Isabel for she is such a beguiling little thing that she is not only witty herself, but spurs up every one else to be witty too. One night we took ‘Bores’ for a subject, and she said: ‘A bore is a person who remembers all that I say on Sunday, chews a mental cud over it, and throws up masticated morsels of my own conversation to confound my inconsistency on Wednesday.’ Then we all said: ‘That is quite true!’ and ‘Quite so!’ and she addressed each of us and asked: ‘And what is your idea of a bore, Mrs Seaton? Johanna, give us your definition of the term?’ and we each scintillated to the best of our ability, and then mentally adjourned into the kitchen and interviewed the old servant in her turn.”

“I should be so devoured with anxiety thinking out my own sally that I shouldn’t be able to appreciate my neighbour’s brilliance... Bores are a pretty prolific subject. I should like, just for curiosity, to hear your definition.”

“‘Katrine! let us now have your definition of the term,’” quoted Katrine mockingly. “There, you see, you are already starting the game on your own account. Why do you want to know?”

“So that I may act contrariwise, of course.”

“It is true... Isabel was right. Here you are already, back at our bacon! I am afraid, Captain Bedford, that you are very much absorbed in yourself.”

“Devoted to him! Of course. Why shouldn’t I be? Know him so well, don’t you know—understand his ways! Capital fellow, when you know him.—A woman asked me once whom I loved best in the world. I said: ‘Myself, of course.’ It was the bed-rock truth; it is the truth about most solitary people, if they would only admit it, but she was shocked.”

“I’m shocked, too. Even if it were true, I don’t think one should admit—”

“I don’t say it now. It would not be true. That was some time ago.”

Katrine’s thoughts flew back with instant recollection to the day before, to the quiet pocketing of the tortoise-shell trifle. She waited silently, holding her breath in the intensity of her anxiety, but no explanation was vouchsafed. She tossed her head with a restless gesture, and said tentatively:

“You—you are not in the least what I expected.”

“What precisely did you expect?”

“N-othing precisely, but everything different! I thought you’d be older for one thing, and would look more worn. Captain Blair said you were shy and silent.”

“Blair would say anything but his prayers. As a matter of fact I was paralysingly shy at dinner that night! Glad I concealed it so well. It was rather a formidable occasion meeting an—”

“Unknown girl! Was I?” Katrine hesitated on the verge of a question, eager yet bashful, and her companion concluded the sentence with mischievous assurance.

“What I had expected? Well! to an extent. I had seen your photographs, and they are as good as photographs can be, but the original always comes as a surprise. You look younger, and—there’s some red in your hair, isn’t there? It pretends to be dark, but this morning when you were sitting in the sun, I’ll swear it was red! And—if you’ll forgive me—your nose isn’t quite so classic as it was represented! I suspect that photographer of fakes.”

“He filled in the dips,” said Katrine tracing with a finger tip the delicate irregularities of her nose.

“I like dips,” said Bedford, and they laughed again. Katrine wondered if he also approved of the ruddy lights which the sun had revealed in her hair. She had noticed them once or twice as she stood before her mirror on bright spring mornings, but no one else had commented on the peculiarity. She herself had admired the dull-red gleam, she hoped he had done the same, but it was with an air of forced resignation that she spoke again:

“Very well, then, it is settled that I have red hair, and a bobbley nose. Please observe that I remain serene and unruffled. That proves that I have a sweet and modest disposition, and don’t care a pin how I look!”

“Or what you wear, or whether that gauzy thing round your head is arranged at a becoming angle or not! Can I help in any way? It seems troublesome to arrange!” said Bedford coolly as for the third time Katrine’s hand went up to pull forward the chiffon hood. She flushed in the moonlight, and pushed it back with an impetuous jerk.

“Now my hair will get rough. It’s not my fault if it blows into ends.”

“I like ends,” said Bedford once more.

Katrine thanked Providence that her ends curled, and did not blow over her face in lanky streaks as did the ends of other women. Sometimes when she had been out in the wind she had felt it a pity to brush them back. She felt a glow of thankfulness for her own fair looks, which was inimitably removed from an ordinary conceit. To look pleasant in the eyes of others—that gave one joy. To-morrow she would wear a blue dress...

“It’s against my upbringing to be untidy,” she said demurely. “At home I have walked between a double fire. The vicar’s wife on one side, and my Sunday School girls on the other. Both would have been scandalised by ‘ends,’ both expected me to be a model of neatness and decorum.” She heaved a great sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m so thankful not to be a model any more! It’s lovely to begin life again, away from criticism, to be free to do and think what I like!”

He stared at her, his eyes intent and searching beneath puckered brows. It was a handsome, almost a beautiful face into which he looked: the softened light, the happy mood, even the floating ends of hair combined to give it an air of unusual youth. Nevertheless there were lines written thereon which told their own tale. Katrine noticed his scrutiny, and questioned him thereon:

“What are you thinking about?”

“You,” he said simply. “We are talking about ourselves. You are so young in many ways, younger than your years, but you look—”

“Older?”

“Yes,” he said again, serenely unconscious of offence. “It’s not a girl’s face. There are the marks of trouble, of suffering...”

Katrine sighed. On her lips flickered a smile which was strangely pathetic.

“Or of lack of trouble!” she corrected. “Oh, I mean it. It sounds incomprehensible to a man, but a woman would understand. Trouble would be easier to bear than the grey, monotonous routine month after month, year after year, which women have to live in small country towns. Trouble is educational and ennobling; monotony cramps growth at the roots. I am twenty-six, but there were women ten years older, still young, still pretty, jogtrotting along the same path, year after year, year after year. Nothing had happened to them! No man can understand all that that means. Nothing had happened!”

Bedford straightened himself significantly.

“They should make things happen!”

“Perhaps in time to come they may, when they are more developed—they, and their parents! Many well-to-do parents think that their daughters ought to be contented to stay peacefully at home and arrange the flowers. I had a real duty, but in some families nearby there were three or four women-girls pottering! I went to see one of them on her birthday last year. When I wished her many happy returns she shrank, as if I had hurt her. ‘Another year!’ she said. ‘Three hundred and sixty-five days... And all alike!’ It was fear that she felt, poor soul; fear of the blank! You can’t understand.”

“Personally, no. Monotony has not been my cross. When a man is knocking about the world he is inclined to envy the people who can vegetate peacefully at home, but thirty-six years of stagnation is a killing business!” He looked down at her with steady scrutiny. “I am glad you had courage to cut yourself free before it came to that point.”

“But I am different... I told you so. I had my work,” protested Katrine, flushing, “and moreover something did happen. Fate came to my aid, and practically forced me away!”

“Yes?”

Once more Bedford leaned his elbows on the rail, and bent towards her with a keen interrogative glance. “Is it permissible to ask in what form?”

Why on earth need she blush? Katrine mentally railed at herself, but the more she fumed the hotter blazed the colour in her cheeks. Plying such a flag of betrayal it seemed obviously absurd to reply by a prim: “My brother married, and no longer required my services,” and in Bedford’s equally prim “Quite so,” the scepticism seemed thinly veiled. There was silence for several moments, while both gazed fixedly ahead. Without looking in his direction Katrine knew exactly the expression which her companion’s face would wear. The lips closed tight, drooping slightly to one side. The chin dropped, the eyes unnaturally grave. Strange how clearly his changes of expression had already stamped themselves upon her mental retina! She knew how he would look, what she could not guess was what he would think ... What would he think! That preposterous blush would surely suggest a reason more personal than a brother’s marriage. A love affair, a lover, but mercifully a lover in England, since she had already explained that Jack Middleton and his wife were her sole friends in India. Yes! that would be the explanation, a persistent lover—a lover who had been refused, a lover left behind to recover at his ease. Katrine’s self-possession was restored by this assurance. Certainly she had had lovers... She adopted what was evidently intended to be an “Isabel Carnaby air,” and demanded lightly:

“And now, Captain Bedford, it is your turn to confess your troubles.”

“I have none,” he said instantly. He looked full into her face with his twinkling eyes. “Or if I had—I have forgotten.”