An Unknown Lover by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (books for students to read .TXT) đź“•
He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled an easy smile.
"Oh, I should rub along. I might get in a working housekeeper, or I could take a room in town. I might work better for a change of scene. If you would like to go--"
"I shouldn't like anything which left you alone. It would not be worth going for less than six months, and I couldn't possibly do that. I am of some use to you, Martin!"
This time the appeal was too direct to be ignored and the response came readily enough.
"A very great deal. You have managed admirably, but it is possible to be too unselfish. If you would like a change--"
Katrine drew in her breath with a sharp inhalation. "Like it!" like to spend months with Dorothea and Jack Middleton! Like to have the experiences of that thrilling voyage, past the Bay, past Gib., along the Mediterranean, through the Canal to the glowing East! Like to see India, with
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“Also,—as the aim and object of the correspondence is that I should know your honourable self, let me in to some of the secrets which my photograph understands so well, and most of all, tell me what makes my eyes sorry? It seems a little hard to be shut out, when mere photographs see so much!
“Miss Beverley presents her compliments to Captain Blair. She finds it a very difficult thing to wind up a letter to a man whom she has never seen. Miss Beverley will be obliged if Captain Blair will therefore kindly consider this letter concluded in the manner which seems to him the most graceful and appropriate.”
Katrine carried the letter to the post in her own hands, the address carefully turned inwards so as to be screened from the scrutiny of peering eyes. Although the distance from the house to the post-office was about an eighth of a mile, it was seldom that she could traverse it without being accosted at least three or four times. This morning, however, the ordinary gossip jarred upon every nerve; she realised with a shiver of distaste that upon previous occasions she had enjoyed these encounters, had looked forward to them as to one of the prized episodes in the day; had been moved to excitement when she herself possessed a tiny item of news to add to the general store. As she crossed the road to the post-office, she debated with herself as to the cause of her change of mind, and found it in the envelope clasped in her hand.
A real interest had come into her life, and in its presence she had no room for trivial make-believes. Until now, for eight long years, nothing had happened to reach the real heart of her, and make her feel. Never, never once, a thrill, a surprise, a feeling that the great procession of life had halted to give her place, until one short week ago, when out of the void a voice had spoken, and across the world had come a challenge, an appeal! She, who owned little, was asked for much; at the moment when her own heart was starved, she was asked to fill another. The voice had called; all that was vital within her sang a reply.
The letter was held out in an extended hand, was pressed for one moment between tightening fingers, then dropped deep into the box. She stood motionless for a moment, overwhelmed by the irrevocability of the action, then turned aside with the feeling of one facing a new life.
That evening Martin was conscious of a special attempt on Katrine’s part to be agreeable and sympathetic. The secret lying warm and fragrant at her own heart made her especially tender over his loneliness, added to which tenderness was a decided leaven of compunction. Theoretically, she was ready to sacrifice all for Martin’s sake; virtually, she had stubbornly set herself to reject the one suggestion he had made for months past. It had taken a whole week of valiant striving against self to bring her to the point of giving in with a good grace. The prospect of a visit from Grizel Dundas was distinctly unpleasant, despite the fact that Grizel was a well-loved friend. Katrine searched her conscience for a reason for this contradiction, at the same time shutting a tight bolt over the one suggestion which endeavoured to make itself heard. Jealous! Why should she be jealous? Even if Grizel were a thousand times more attractive than herself, they moved in different worlds, and owned entirely distinct circles of friends. Why, pray, need she be jealous? The inner voice was sternly forbidden to mention Martin’s name in such a connection. Jealousy was out of the question where Martin was concerned. His suggestion had been made out of consideration for her own enjoyment; it lay on her conscience that she had received the suggestion ungraciously. She swallowed the last doubt, and said gravely:
“I’ve been thinking, Martin, that I will ask Grizel for next month. There’s not much to do, but the garden is at its best, and she’ll enjoy that. I’ll write to-night.”
Martin crumbled his bread.
“Oh, well,” he said slowly, “I wrote to her myself last night. I meant to tell you. We have been growing rather dull, living so much alone. It will do us good to have some fresh life.”
The fly stopped at the gate, the flyman alighted, and prompted by a sweet expectancy in Grizel’s eye, rose to a height of gallantry hitherto unknown, and offered his arm to assist her to alight. Grizel leaned heavily upon it, and having languidly descended to the level of the pavement, dropped her uplifted skirts and trailed slowly towards the house. In contradiction to the fashion of the day the skirts were trained both back and front, they floated round her in a soft billowy cloud, trailing in their wake a little shower of pebbly stones. They were most unfashionable skirts, for a railway journey they were ridiculously inappropriate; they were also undeniably unsanitary, but the most irate critic could not have denied that they were becoming. The skirts were of a soft, quaker grey, edged with a little foam of flounces. No one wore flounces in that summer of hobble skirts! A scarf of lavender chiffon was thrown round her neck, she wore a straw hat of no particular shape, draped in no particular fashion, with an old lace veil. Up the garden path she came between the two tall lines of hollyhocks, a slight nymph-like figure, enveloped in cloud-like draperies, with a glimpse of a small pale face between the dip of the veil and the float of the scarf.
Martin and Katrine rushed together to the door, vociferous in greetings and explanations.
“Grizel! We were going to meet you... You said four-thirty! What induced you to travel by the slow?”
“I like them slow,” drawled Grizel in her deep rich tones. She trailed into the drawing-room, subsided on to an oak settee, the nearest available seat, held up her face for Katrine’s caress, and extended a small hand to Martin with the air of an Empress bestowing an order. This done she yawned undisguisedly, rummaged in a bag—another floating accessory of violet satin—produced a minute purse, and asked with a frown:
“What’s his fare? Please ask him, Somebody, and pay him double. I always pay double; then they don’t swear. I do loathe being sweared. With my money, please. No paupery!”
The deep drawling tone was in the oddest contrast with the unconventional, not to say slangy mode of speech, but the listeners betrayed no surprise. They were accustomed to the discrepancy, and in common with the rest of the world enjoyed, the while they condemned. Grizel’s language grew ever more and more exaggerated and boy-like. She really ought to reform! but on the other hand how much less amusing it would be if she did!
“The full fare is two shillings. Tip him sixpence if you like, but to give more is corruption. You shouldn’t be cowardly, Grizel. It makes things hard for other people.”
Grizel blinked, and encouraged another yawn.
“Is that Socialism?” she drawled vaguely. “Have you caught it down here? I’ll join tomorrow, but don’t expect a fellow to have principles at the end of a journey. Give me crumpets!”
Lifting her arms she tugged at the two long, dagger-like pins with amethyst heads, which held her hat in place, flipped it to the ground, and blinked vaguely in Martin’s face.
“Don’t I look plain with my hair squashed?”
In truth at the moment Grizel was not beauteous. Her little face was without a trace of colour, marks of fatigue ringed the grey eyes, the mass of soft brown hair was flattened by the pressure of the hat. Just a little, tired, colourless face, not even in the first flush of youth, for the fine lines which are the surest tell-tale of advancing years were already beginning to show at the corners of her eyes. Katrine was sympathetically agreed that Grizel was plain this afternoon, but Martin felt a sudden flushing of the cheeks as he met the glance of the long eyes; a sudden swelling of the throat.
He did not know if Grizel were plain or not; what was more to the purpose, he didn’t care. An ordinary, commonplace woman might be appraised for her looks, but this woman’s lure lay in something infinitely more subtle. Ill or well, tired or alert, sorry or glad, she remained a very type of womanhood, from whose eyes looked out the eternal challenge, the eternal question. No man in Grizel’s presence could forget that she was a woman, and that some time, somewhere, some fortunate man might be her mate.
As he turned back to the tea-table Martin asked himself for the hundredth time if Grizel were conscious of her power. There was nothing consciously provocative in her glance; her manner with men was indifferent to the point of boredom, yet there it was, a turn of the head, a droop of the lid, a tone in the low rich voice proclaimed the man’s woman, the woman who from childhood to age is served and worshipped, who on a desert island would find a Prince Charming behind the first palm.
The serving of Grizel’s tea engrossed for some minutes the entire attention of her two hosts. She was supplied with a table, a footstool, a cushion for her back; her tea was first watered, secondly milked, and thirdly strengthened to its original state; her toast was cut into tiny strips. She yawned at intervals with infantile abandon; it is to be feared she scattered many crumbs upon the grey pile carpet, but unlike ninety-nine women out of a hundred, she made no effort to fluff her flattened hair, or to arrange the delicate disorder of her attire. There was something primitive, almost savage, in her childlike naturalness of mien.
In excuse for such lapses from conventional manners, Katrine was wont to remind herself that Grizel lived so much alone: no one in the grim town house but the old great-aunt, and the retinue of family servants who had grown old in her service. It was a ghastly life for a young woman still several years under thirty, it would have been considered so at least by most young women, but Grizel stoutly refused to be pitied. The old “Buddy” was alone. The old Buddy needed her; the old Buddy found pleasure and refreshment in her society,—why then should she not have what she wanted?
“S’pose you were an old Buddy of eighty-nine, and nobody wouldn’t come, how would you like it, d’you suppose?” she would enquire with her usual disregard of grammar, circumlocution, and other conventions practised by the polite, and her hearers mentally substituting “Grizel” for “nobody,” invariably decided that they wouldn’t like it at all.
“How’s the old Buddy?” enquired Katrine, when, the preliminary preparations over, she found a chance to begin tea on her own account. She took not the faintest interest in the venerable dame, who for the last ten years had refused to see any one beyond the members of her own family, but it seemed the proper thing to make the enquiry and get it over before proceeding to more interesting subjects. “The same as usual, I suppose!”
Grizel held a morsel of cake extended in her hand; frowned at it sternly, and shook her head.
“Failing!” she said solemnly. “Failing rapidly; sometimes quite lucid, but, generally speaking, dotty! Dotty, my dear, as the veriest March hare. Hallucinations. Delusions. Went in to see her last night in a new rig, and she took me for the Queen of Sheba. Chatted quite calmly for a moment, then blushed and started wriggling, trying to do obeisance from her wheeled chair. Said she hadn’t caught the name,
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