Katrine Part 28

When the ladies were leaving, Dermott took the situation in both hands, as it were, by rising with them and turning a laughing face to the men, who were calling his name.

"I'm going to join the ladies now, if they will have me!" he cried. "I have less of their society than I like, belonging, as I do, to the working-cla.s.ses. And besides," he waved a hand, white and beautifully slender, toward them, "I know you all, unfortunately well, as it is!"

A chorus of friendly insults were thrown after him, but he dropped the curtain with no further word, and an hour later Frank encountered him walking slowly up and down the terrace in the moonlight with Katrine.

They were talking earnestly, McDermott urging something which Francis was glad to see Katrine was far from yielding. Twice he saw her shake her head with great firmness, and once, as they came near him, he heard her say, "I will not, Dermott," and, knowing the girl as he did, Frank felt that, whatever the matter, it was settled with finality.

Try as he surely did, he found it impossible to have a word alone with her that evening, and the next morning he learned from the servants that her luggage was to be taken to the station the following day at an early hour.

She was not at luncheon, and Frank was meditating on the possibility of leaving with her on the early train, when a note was brought to him by her maid.

Would you care to walk with me now? [it read] I should like to tell you something before I leave.

KATRINE DULANY.

This was surely the unexpected, and he waited for her on the portico with the feeling that there was some mistake, and that the maid might reappear any minute to ask the missive back again.

But Katrine herself came around the corner from the greenhouses and called to him from below. She wore a black walking-skirt, a black leather jacket, and a three-cornered black hat, and Frank involuntarily compared this very aristocratic-looking young person with the little girl in the short-waisted frocks he had known, so many years ago, it seemed, in North Carolina.

In silence they went down the driveway to the beach road, along the path to the cliffs. There was a chill in the sea-wind, for the afternoon sun gave only a rose-red glow, but little warmth, as they stood looking at the crumpled reflections in the water. "It is almost sunset," Frank began, abruptly, drawing nearer to her. "It might almost be a North Carolina sunset, mightn't it? I don't know, Katrine, what you want of me, but I want, for the sake of that summer full of sunsets which we knew together, that you should let me tell my story and judge me--finest woman--that--ever--lived--judge me after the telling as it may seem just for you to do!"

There was a piteous quiver of her lips as her eyes looked bravely into his as she nodded an acquiescence.

"When I left you, Katrine, like the coward I was, that dreadful morning, so long ago, I wandered around like an Ishmaelite, more wretched than I believed it possible for a human creature to be, longing for you, always, day and night, waking with a convulsion of pain in the gray of the morning, but still obstinately determined to marry none but some one whom my forebears would have considered 'suitable.'" He smiled at the word.

"When the news came of your father's death I was in the Canadian woods.

I started home immediately; I had no fixed plan, except to see you, to help you in some way. In New York I had a telegram saying that my mother was very ill at Bar Harbor. There was nothing to do but to go to her, of course. It was before this that she had sent me Nick van Rensselaer's letter, and the idea came to me from that, that I might be the one to do something to make your life a bit happier. You may think it was reparation for the suffering I had caused you, but it was not. I _couldn't_ let you go out of my life. In this way, I reasoned, I could keep in touch with you for years. When I stipulated that you were to write once a fortnight, I had no idea the letters would be anything but simple statements of your daily life. You see, I forgot," he smiled again, the charming, whimsical smile that seemed so much a part of him, "that you were Irish and could do nothing impersonally.

"Immediately after mother's illness came the matter of the railroad, and"--he hesitated--"Dermott McDermott. You see, Katrine, you had stirred something in my nature I never knew before-ambition! That was part, but the desolation that followed your out-going made action necessary. Well, the new railroad was to be constructed through the plantation, and I worked with all the energy I could to forget. You see what you did for me, Katrine! And at every turn, circ.u.mventing, obstructing, legislating against me, urging me on by mental friction, was Dermott McDermott. Am I tiring you?" he asked, tenderly.

"No," she answered. "I am glad to know how it all was. Over there in Paris, when I was alone, I often wondered."

"The interest in my own railroad naturally led to interests in the two adjoining ones, and always, always, Katrine, there were those letters of yours urging me on by your divine belief in me. That you loved me, thought of me, wished me well, prayed for me,--a man has to be worse than I ever was to fail to be helped by that. And your loyalty, the very selflessness of your love, your willingness to be hurt if it would help me--Katrine," he interrupted himself, "there were other women in my life, but, one by one, I measured them up to the standard of you, and they became nothing. I remember once, at the club, they brought me two letters, one from you and one from another woman. It was the one in which you wrote, _'I have not forgotten, I do not wish to forget. I want to make of myself so great a woman that some day he may say, with pride, "Once that woman loved me."'_ I disliked to know that your white letter had even touched the other one, and that night the man I hope to make of myself was born. If there be any achievement in my life that is worth while, if I ever count for anything in the world's work, it is you who have done it, you and the letters which you blame me so much for permitting you to write."

She turned toward him, her face flushed and divinely illumined, anger forgotten. "You mean it?" she said.

"As G.o.d hears, it is the truth."

"Then," she paused, "I am happier than I thought it possible I should ever be in this life!"

"And you forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive."

"That gives me courage to go on," he said. "Do you remember," he put his hand over hers as he spoke, and they both went back in thought to the time he had laid his hand over hers on the fallen tree, the night of their first meeting, "do you remember, Katrine, that when an alliance is to be arranged for a great queen, it is she who must indicate her choice and her willingness. You have become that, Katrine, a great queen! I'm asking, with more humility in my heart than you can ever know, that you choose--me!"

As she looked at him, her eyes were incredulous. "Don't let us talk of such a thing," she said, abruptly, turning her small hand upward to meet his in a friendly clasp.

"But, Katrine, it is the only thing in the world I care to talk about.

Oh," he said, "I know how hard it is for you, that you are going to make it hard for me, that you are not going to believe me, nor in me. But, whether you believe it or not, it is the white truth I tell you, that ever since the first night I saw you I loved you, and wanted you for my wife."

She sat on the brown rocks, her knees clasped in her slender arms, looking through the sea-mist at the sun going down behind the Magnolia Hills.

"Don't let us talk of it," she said, decisively; "the thing is utterly impossible. Tell me about yourself instead: the new railroad; the work; and Dermott McDermott." He turned, looking up at her curiously before answering.

"The last four years of my life have contained something overmuch of Dermott McDermott--" And then, the animosity gone from him, "Katrine,"

he cried, "in Heaven's name, what did I ever do to him? He seems to spend his time trying to circ.u.mvent my plans. He hates me so that it seems"--he waited for an appropriate word--"funny," he ended, with a laugh. "I have sometimes thought he was in love with you. Is he in love with you, Katrine?"

"Tell me about the railroad," she said, taking no note whatever of his question. "I have heard many things of it."

"Well," he began, "there were many things to hear. One by one the men who had pledged themselves 'went back on me,' as the Street phrase is, which brought out all the obstinacy in me. I built it myself. It's a success, and it's lucky," he ended, "for if it weren't I don't know where I should have ended in a money way. I was desolate and, as you told me cheerfully in one of the letters to the Great Unknown, 'full of ignorances and narrow-mindedness.' There was never anything better came to me, save one, than the work. I think it has made me better. I hope so."

"It's queer, queer, queer, this little world, isn't it?" she demanded, abruptly.

"It is, indeed."

"Here are we, together again, after many years, talking about ourselves, just as we did in those other days."

The old Katrine was beside him, with the pleading, explaining, dependent note in her voice, the same rapid, short sentences, the same shy look which was ever hers when doing a kindness. "I must tell you the reason I wrote the note. Last night I was very angry at you. I forgot Josef, who showed me that anger is for fools only. Then Dermott came, and while we were walking on the terrace I told him everything: that I owed you money; that I wanted it paid at once. He is Madame de Nemours' executor.

She left me--not a great fortune, you know, but more than enough to repay your loan to me. So much is simple. But there is more." She hesitated before slipping her small, bare hand in his again. "Dermott thinks he knows something which will cause you much sorrow and trouble.

He is not certain. He is waiting letters from France. And I wanted to tell you that it will rest almost entirely with me to say what shall be done about this bad news which may arrive. And I want you, when trouble comes, to remember that once I said I would come from the end of the earth to serve you--Well," she said, the look of unreckoning, honest, _boyish_ loyalty in her eyes, "I will keep my word. You must not worry; I will take care of you." It was like a mother's promise to protect a child, and, save for the sweet confidence in her own powers, Frank, not understanding, could have laughed aloud. "I want you to think of this to-night, when Dermott talks to you--will you?--and to remember that the matter is far from proven. Madame de Nemours herself did not believe it."

"Katrine," he cried, impressed by her serious face and tone, "what is this mysterious trouble that is coming to me? Can't _you_ tell me?"

"I have thought of that, but I believe that you would be happier in the future to know that we had never discussed it together. I know _I_ should. It's all so foolish," she ended.

"You are really going to-morrow, Katrine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It is better."

"For you?"

"For both of us."

"Ah, Katrine, why? You are a great enough woman to forgive. Can't you do it? You have done so much already."

"I am afraid," she answered. "I suffered too much. It was too horrible.

Only," and she touched his shoulder gently, "you are not to think that I don't care for you. It mayn't be in just the way that I used to do; but n.o.body else could ever be to me what you have been. I don't believe a woman, a real woman, ever loves twice in her life, do you?" She asked the question with the manner distinctively her own, of comrades.h.i.+p, of wanting to touch souls even on this question most vital to them both.

"I hope it's true of you, Katrine."

The gray sea broke in white lines on the sh.o.r.e beneath them; the gulls uttered shrill, clattering cries above their heads, before Katrine rose.

"We must be going--on!" she said, looking seaward, her hands clasped in front of her, her face saddened and white.