Alone in the quaint un-English bedroom
Katrine bathed and made her toilette. Dorothea’s
loving hands had already opened the box which had
come safely through so many perils, and there, upon
the topmost tray, lay the clothes which had been packed
with careful forethought for this special occasion.
A fine white gown of an elaborate simplicity which
bore the hall-mark of Grizel’s taste, dainty
shoes and stockings, the touch of blue which was necessary
to the success of any costume intended for Katrine,
even the large tortoise-shell pins for her hair.
With what expectation, what fond, shy hopes had they
been laid together! It had been with something
like the reverence of a bride for her wedding robe,
that she had smoothed those folds. Katrine shivered.
An overwhelming pity rose in her heart, not alone
for herself, but also for the good, tender man for
whom was stored so bitter a disappointment. Patient,
trustful Jim Blair, who was even now awaiting her coming
with a lover’s eagerness and impatience!
A moment later, her thoughts had flown back on the
wing of a feminine impulse to a still dearer personality.
On shipboard it had been difficult
to attain a delicacy of toilette; she had been swathed
in veils, hot and wind-blown,-it was impossible
to strangle a truant wish that Bedford might see her
now!
Katrine stood rigid by the doorway,
gathering courage, then desperately flung it open.
The unfamiliar scent of the East assailed her nostrils,
that scent which even more than sight proclaimed a
change of country. She paced the long corridor,
and caught the sound of Dorothea’s voice.
She was talking; a deeper tone was heard in reply.
Jim Blair had arrived! In another moment she
would meet him face to face. It seemed to Katrine
as if at that sound every pulse in her own body ceased
beating; there came a moment of breathlessness, of
almost swooning inability to think or move, then once
again she braced herself, and opened the door.
Against the light, his back turned
towards her, stood a tall, uniformed figure.
Dorothea, flushed and trembling, swept forward and
enveloped her friend in a fervid embrace. “It
is Jim!” she whispered in low, intent accents.
“Jim Blair. Be kind to him, Katrine, be
kind!”
She slid out of the retaining arms,
a wraith-like embodiment of the Dorothea who had been,
and sped from the room. The door closed behind
her, and Katrine stood, a motionless figure, watching
another, motionless as her own. Had he heard?
Did he realise her presence?
He was tall and broad; the lines of
his uniform fitted tightly to his figure. He
looked a man of whom a woman might be proud, but he
was a man without a personality; a man whose face
was hidden.
Katrine laid her hand on the back
of a couch and spoke two trembling words:
“Captain Blair!”
At the sound of her voice he turned,
wheeling towards her with a swift light movement,
so that she might see his face, might look in his eyes-
grey, magnetic eyes, curiously light against the sunburn
of his face...
Five minutes later, seated upon the
huge bamboo couch, supported by strong arms which
seemed to bound the world, Katrine slowly recovered
collected thought.
“You-are-Jim!
... Jim is-You! ... Then what
of Captain Bedford? Where is he? Is there
a Captain Bedford? Is he a real living man, or
just a fictitious person invented for-”
“Indeed no! He is real
enough, poor fellow, but in Egypt still, laid by the
heel; unable to move. I only-only
took his place!”
“I think,” announced Katrine slowly, “I
am very angry!”
It seemed an incongruous statement
to make, considering the position and appearance of
the speaker, but the hearer received it with a gravity
which showed that his own conscience was not altogether
at ease.
“Dearest, before you judge,
let me speak! Hear what I have to say!
I had no intention of deceiving you. Such an
idea never entered my head until at the last moment
a cable arrived to say that Bedford was incapacitated,
and could not sail. We were worried, all of us,
to think that you should miss his help. I was
racking my brains to think what I could do, when the
inspiration came to meet you myself. It was an
easy matter to get off for a few weeks, as there was
leave owing to me, and I had started almost before
I had time to think. Then came misgivings!
I did not know how you would take it, if it would
seem to you like going back on my promise. I
had promised to keep on neutral ground for three months,
and a tete-a-tete on shipboard seemed hardly
playing the game.-I started on the heat
of an impulse, afire to see you at the first possible
moment; I landed at Port Said in a blue funk, the joy
at the thought of meeting swallowed in dread of what
you might say. I would have given a pile at
that moment to have been safely back in India.
Then-you know how! we met on shore.
I knew you at the first glance, and, Katrine! you
knew me. No matter who I was, or by what
name I called myself, you belonged to me, and you
knew it!
“At that moment, for the first
time, it flashed into my head to take Bedford’s
place in Bedford’s name. I had seen the
list of passengers, and I knew no one on board.
Ours is an out-of-the-way station, and I have seldom
been home these last years. It seemed to me that
if I kept close and avoided the smoke-room, I might
very well get through the rest of the voyage without
an explanation as to name. And I remembered what
you had said-all the little feminine arguments
you had used rose up and argued with me as they had
never done before. You said that to meet a man
with whom you were expected, almost pledged, to fall
in love, was a big handicap to success; that if we
could have a chance of meeting in the ordinary way,
as strangers pledged to no special interest, we could
test the strength of the mutual attraction far more
surely. And another time you said (I think this
influenced me more than anything else!) you said that
one glance at my face, five minutes in my society,
would tell you more than a hundred letters!
Do you remember saying that? The inference was
that the shape of my nose or ears was to count more
than character.”
His strong hands pulled her round,
so that her eyes met his.
“Katrine! do you like my ears?
Are you satisfied with them now that you see them
in flesh?”
“I take no interest in your
ears. What are your ears to me? I was
thinking of Jim Blair’s ears, and you are,-I
don’t know what you are-a
compound person, more strange than a hundred strangers...
Oh, Jim! how could you? If you realised
so much, why couldn’t you realise more?
If I was already yours, then why trouble to play a
part? Yes, I am angry; I am! I
think you were wrong.”
“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!”