Katrine Part 21

One morning she was disturbed at her studies by a card from the Countess, saying that Mrs. Lennox was below and wished to see her. She had grown accustomed to the desire of strangers to be presented to her, for, as Dermott had told her, the news of her voice was already newspaper copy. In the drawing-room she found Madame de Nemours by the window talking animatedly, in her pleasant, low voice, to a lady, young and vivacious, wearing aggressive mourning.

"And this," the stranger cried, in a high, strong, musical voice, coming forward, "is the Miss Dulany of whom I have been hearing such wonderful things?" She waited for no response. "I have just been telling the Countess that I almost met you at Ravenel House, in Carolina, over two years ago. There was a house-party, and you refused to come."

Katrine flushed and turned pale again suddenly, as she realized that this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry, and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she had met them riding together by the ford at Ravenel.

"I was ill, I remember," Katrine explained, recovering herself; "unfortunately ill, since I was prevented from meeting you." There was both consideration and compliment in her tone.

"Everything has changed a great deal since then," Mrs. Lennox went on, "with me as well as with others. I lost my mother the following winter,"

she glanced at her mourning as she spoke, "and Mrs. Ravenel has been back to the old place but once, for a few weeks only. Mr. Ravenel (you remember Mr. Ravenel?) has gone in for all sorts of things since then.

n.o.body knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling the Countess of him."

"I do not know Mr. van Rensselaer," said Katrine.

"What!" Mrs. Lennox cried, with amazement. "I thought you met him at Ravenel! I understood he heard you sing there, and it was because of it that he wanted to send you abroad to study."

"If it be Mr. van Rensselaer who has been so kind to me, I do not know it," Katrine answered, in no small degree annoyed by this enforced intimacy. "I have never seen him nor heard his name before in my life."

If Mrs. Lennox noted Katrine's manner she was in nowise deterred by it from going deeper into the subject.

"Mrs. Ravenel told me," she continued, with excitement in her voice, "that Nick van Rensselaer came to her at Bar Harbor, and asked the use of her name if he furnished the means to send you abroad to study. He said that he was especially anxious to remain unknown in the matter.

Mrs. Ravenel told me afterward that you had declined the offer because of having inherited a fortune yourself. But, of course, I thought you must have met him; in fact, I remember that Frank said he thought so, too. By-the-way," she went on, rising to go, "he is coming over soon; Mr. Ravenel, I mean." She looked conscious for a second, as though preferring to keep something back, and then finished: "He will, of course, call while he is here?"

"He may be so kind," Katrine answered, suavely.

"Good-bye," Mrs. Lennox said, holding out a slim, black-gloved hand first to the Countess and then to Katrine. "I hope your studies will let you come to me soon. I hear you are to make your debut in the spring."

Katrine laughed. "That will be as Josef says."

"Good-bye again."

After Mrs. Lennox had left the room, Katrine and the Countess looked at each other with questioning in the eyes of each.

"You lived at a place called Ravenel," Madame de Nemours asked, "and never told me?"

"I did not think the name one you would care to hear," Katrine answered.

"Ah, you so sweet thing!" the Countess cried, impulsively, putting her hand on the girl's cheek. "You were right. There are probably thousands of Ravenels in America unconnected with my unfortunate life."

But Katrine, who had had her own surprises in the interview, inquired, "Why did Mrs. Lennox, who is very beautiful, very wealthy, and of the monde, take so much trouble to come here to tell me of a Mr. van Rensselaer?"

"I didn't think she came for that alone," answered the Countess. "I thought she wanted you to know that Monsieur Ravenel was coming over to visit her."

Naturally, a marked change in Katrine's att.i.tude toward her unknown benefactor followed this talk with Anne Lennox. She had become accustomed to think of "The Dear Unknown" as a lady, old and beneficent.

The new idea was startling. Thinking it over, she became convinced of the extreme unlikelihood that two people should have become so greatly interested in her voice at exactly the same time, and her conclusions led to believing that Mrs. Lennox had probably given her a true version of the affair. But if Nicholas van Rensselaer were her patron, instead of some white-haired old lady down in Leeds or Kent or Surrey, as she had imagined, her last letter must inevitably have told him, who had spent so much time in North Carolina, of her love for Francis Ravenel.

The obviously honest thing to do was to write to Mr. van Rensselaer immediately, to let him know that without effort or curiosity on her part his ident.i.ty had been revealed to her.

Her letter to him was short to abruptness. She stated briefly the manner in which the information had come to her as well as her regret that his wish to remain unknown had been thwarted. She hoped that her voice would fulfill all the promise he thought it gave two years back; referred to the personal nature of her last letter; spoke of her desire to repay in full the money part of her obligation to him, realizing that the kind thought could never be repaid in this world, and signed herself his "grateful Katrine Dulany."

In a fortnight the answer came:

MY DEAR MISS DULANY,--Your letter reached me but a few minutes ago, and I am feeling, since its arrival, like the a.s.s that wore the lion's skin. Mrs. Lennox was entirely wrong in her statements. It is true that I proposed the arrangement, which she told you of, to Mrs. Ravenel, but that dear lady wrote me within the week that I was too late in my offer, and that another believer in your gift had antic.i.p.ated the pleasure I had promised myself in helping to give to the world a great voice.

I am extremely sorry that you are under no obligations to me. The confidences which you mention I a.s.sure you are entirely safe so far as I am concerned, for I never received a letter from you save the one which lies before me as I write.

I have heard that you will sing at the Josef recital in May. May I count upon you to write me a line as to the exact time, so that I may have the pleasure of hearing you?

If, meanwhile, there is any way that I can serve you, believe me that I shall be glad to do so, for I heard you sing "Ah! Fors e lui" one night, standing under the pines outside of your window, and my debt is great.

Sincerely, NICHOLAS VAN RENSSELAER.

And it was a curious thing to note that this letter, caused by the chatter of Anne Lennox, was the direct cause of Katrine's next meeting with Frank, a meeting which, but for this correspondence which led to an acquaintance with the Van Rensselaers, might never have taken place.

One evening, shortly after the receipt of this letter, Madame de Nemours told Katrine a piece of news for which she was not unprepared.

"By-the-way," she said, "Mrs. Lennox was here to-day. Mr. Ravenel is expected in Paris to-morrow. I have asked a party to dine with them on Friday."

Katrine had just said good-night to the Countess, and was standing in the doorway, candle in hand, with the light s.h.i.+ning full on her face, as Madame de Nemours spoke; but she received the news with no change of face, no tremor of an eyelid. She felt it a loyalty to old love that the Countess should be forever unable to recognize in Frank the man whom they had discussed so often, namelessly; and of whom Madame de Nemours had such a slighting opinion. The strangest thing of all was that she had for this man's coming; this man for whose presence she had longed day and night for two years; the remembrance of whose words could thrill her and bring tears to her eyes or a smile to her lips; that for this man's coming, she had no thought save regret that he was to come, and determination not to meet him.

"I want to be sent away, Ill.u.s.trious Master," she said, the following afternoon, to Josef, when the lesson was over, and they stood together looking at the sun going down over the gray mist of the Paris roofs. "I am not well, and there is some one coming to Madame de Nemours' on Friday whom I do not wish to meet."

Josef looked at her quickly.

"Mademoiselle Silence," he said, "I, who read voices as others read a printed page, understand. You had better see him."

Katrine flushed crimson, but changed suddenly to such a whiteness that Josef thought she would have fallen.

"Forgive me," he said, tenderly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I am the surgeon with the knife, but my work is almost done. Let me tell you something. You have worked as I have never seen any one work before. I have not praised much, but I have seen. Ah, I know! Tones, little, big, staccato, breath, breath, breath! Over, and yet again over. And the thinking a tone, which is the hardest of all. And the acting--to conceive what a character's voice should be; to understand that the timbre of Carmen's voice would not be that of Marguerite's; that the soul of the voice must change for each character. To slave, to slave, to slave, and suffer as you have done into the third year, is it not? None other can know the value of it all as I know it, and at the end what has the master done for you? Meet this man and you will find out. It is for my reward I am asking, for I, too, have done something."

Katrine took the hand of the great teacher and kissed it lovingly.

"Something?" she said. "You have done all."

"Not all; a part, a very little part," he returned. "But meet the man, my child, and you will see how much has been done by both of us. On Sat.u.r.day morning you will come to me. You will say, 'Prophetic man, I am ashamed through all my being to have loved so slight a thing.' You will find you have outgrown him, and he will have only the weight of the Santa Claus, which children painlessly outgrow. And ever after you will have toward him a kindly mother-feeling, for that is woman's way toward their first loves."

Katrine shook her head. "I do not want to forget."

"No," said Josef, "you never have wanted to forget, and that has made it hard for me. You have a strange creed of your own. But sometimes, when I know beyond words that I have received a 'wireless' message from you over the roof-tops, I begin to believe you dangerous, Katrine Dulany.

But your belief of 'mind-curing' people into being better has the seed of truth in it which makes so many new creeds dangerous. You can make yourself so great by fine thinking that the people who come in contact with you understand and are uplifted."

"It is a thing more subtle, Greatness!" Katrine answered.

"It is not a thing more subtle, Obstinacy!" he returned, with a laugh.

"However, have your way! You are ordered, to Fontainebleau to-morrow.

Your voice is in rags, shall I say? You will stay for two weeks at the house of Madame Lomard. You will lie in the open and breathe much. And so, good-bye to you!"