An Unknown Lover Part 17

"Lebong, _December 10, 19--_.

"Katrine,

"I'm not angry, dear girl--but you've got to come! Every word that you write only makes me the more fixed in my determination. I can understand your shyness and your pride, but I'm hanged if I can understand all this business about disillusion and humiliation. If you find on investigation that I'm not the man for you, I shall regret it, but I shall feel no humiliation. Why should I? The fact that I do not please your taste, makes me no less a man, nor worthy of esteem. If--by a strength of imagination--I were disappointed in you, the situation would, I admit, be more charged, but being 'only a man,' I emphatically deny your a.s.sertion that the sentiment which you have evoked could be evaporated by any outward feature or trait. My dream woman is very dear, but, have no delusions on the point--she is not perfect! I have created for myself no plaster saint. You have plenty of faults, my dear, but there is this big difference between them, and those of any woman in existence--they are _Katrine's_ faults!

"I have given my word to speak no word beyond those of friendship for three months after your arrival. If you then decide that I am impossible as a husband, you need fear no unpleasantness. I'll clear out, exchange into another regiment, apply for leave. You shan't be troubled. After that three months' trial, I'll take your answer as final, and leave you in peace. I've no desire to badger a woman into being my wife. But I demand my chance!

"I think you will come, Katrine. Putting myself out of the question, I think you will come, and I'll tell you why. It would be rank selfishness on your part to stay in England for the present! Martin has had a rough time of it, but life is opening out for him afresh, and if you love him you won't stand in his way. How do you suppose he will feel if you are wandering about from boarding-house to boarding-house, or working among strangers? The thought of you will be a continuous shadow over his sun, and that's what you have no right to be, if there is any legitimate way of avoiding it. Real happiness is a rare thing, it is holy ground, which ought to be sacred from our touch. I'd as soon cut off my right hand as cloud a man's joy in his new-made wife.

"And after Martin there's Dorothea.

"It's not a lively life for a woman in a small hill station. It grows monotonous, meeting year after year the same people. Dorothea's a brave woman, but the life tells. The boy is delicate also. There's a talk of sending him home to his grandmother. Dorothea won't leave Middleton; she considers that he needs her more than the child, and I think she is right, but it will be a pill. There's nothing on earth which could cheer and help her more than a visit from you. She has written to you again I know. This time you must not refuse. The climate up here is quite reasonable. You will have no great heat to face.

"And so, dear, I think you will come! I _know_ you will come, and, G.o.d willing, you shall not regret it.

"That's a good idea about Bedford! He's a capital chap, and would look after you well. We must see that that comes off. He will stay in Egypt till the last moment, I fancy, and join the ship at Port Said, but, you'd still have ten days together, and he would be useful on landing.

He is a good thirty-five, staid, and level-headed. It's quite conventional, I suppose? I never know about these things. Book your pa.s.sage in good time, and cheer Dorothea by the news. Write at once, no! in my present state of health I don't feel up to waiting five whole weeks. I have _not_ been fit--feverish, sleepless--so am not in the mood for patience. Cable just one word--the name of the steamer--to our code address. When I read that I'll know that your pa.s.sage is booked.

"Oh, my Katrine--sorry! I'll be more careful--

"Yours,

"J.C.D. Blair."

Cable message from Katrine Beverley to Dorothea Middleton: "Accept invitation. Sail by _Bremen_."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"c.u.mly, _January 2, 19--_.

"Dear Autocrat,

"I _We_ done it! I've given in, and sent off the cable. By now you will have seen it, and be either chortling with triumph, or wishing remorsefully that you'd left well alone. I hope it's the former, because, to be candid, I'm chortling myself. Oh, I'm so glad! I wanted so _badly_ to say 'yes.' It _was_ clever of you to make it appear so clearly my duty to do just the one thing I wanted above all others!

"Hurrah! For a whole year I am free. The office, the surgery, the kitchen, and the stage, can retire gracefully into the background. I'm going out to India with a box full of new clothes, to stay with my dearest friend, and have a good time. Inadvertently also to meet a nice man...

"Oh, Jim, I _hope_ you are nice--my kind of nice! I hope, hope, hope with all my heart that I shall tumble right in love with you the moment we meet, and that you'll do ditto with me, and that we'll go on tumbling all our lives.

"I've no pride left this morning; I'm so excited and glad. Martin put his arm round me on Wednesday when I told him of my cable, and swung me off my feet. 'Now everything is perfect!' he said. 'You will be happy as well as I.' And he has been so dear and generous, insisting that he owes me no end of money for my work for him, and I have been to town to buy clothes, Lonely Man, scrumptious clothes, with Grizel to help, because I should like--Dorothea--to see me look nice!

"Grizel is the most bracing person to shop with. When you think it's extravagant, she calls it cheap, and when you are wondering if you _dare_ have one, she orders a dozen, and just for once in a way, when you've been careful all your life, it _is_ lovely to go a bust.

Besides--

"My bridesmaid's kit is Grizel's present, and seems stretching to immense proportions. A dress for the ceremony, and a dress for the evening, and a hat and a cloak, and fal-lals of every description. Do you think the regiment will give some function to let me show them off?

Now that my own future no longer casts its shadow over the whole landscape, I am immensely enjoying the engaged couple. They are so deliriously gay and young, and happy and hopeful; and the nice part about it is--it is going to last! I feel _sure_ it will, for through his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give the one all-important thing that is necessary to a woman's happiness.

Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment of women, and say 'Love, of course,' but it isn't love, at least it is not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! it is just a simple, homely quality without which the grandest of pa.s.sions is incomplete! _Tenderness_! Tenderness means kindness and understanding, and sympathy, and imagination, and patience--above all, _patience_!

When a man is in love he thinks a woman perfect, but she isn't, she is an irrational, inconsequent creature, whose mate will have need of patience every day of his life, and sometimes many times a day. Of course there _do_ exist female paragons, calm, correct creatures, with smooth hair and chiselled features, who are always serene and self-contained, but then they are also independent of tenderness. This grows complicated! I'd better drop pretence and confess at once that when I talk generalities I really mean You and Me, the two people who are at the back of _all_ generalities!

"I am erratic and variable... On Tuesday, for no tangible cause, I feel bubbling over with happiness; on Wednesday, for an equally logical reason, I crave for death. On occasions I can be exasperatingly contrary. I know it all the time, and am furious with myself, but that only makes me worse! On after reflection I either pray and fast, or in brazen fashion excuse myself on the score of electric influences! After all, why shouldn't I? We are the most sensitive of machines, and if climatic disturbances affect the wires at a distance of thousands of miles, why should _We_ pa.s.s unscathed? I sometimes think we are too hard on our own moods and tempers, but they are trying enough in any case for the other person. The question of the hour is this--Could _You_ be tender to _Me_???

"Only four weeks and I'm off! It will be more convenient for me to leave directly after the wedding, and if 'twere done, 'twere well done quickly. Grizel's _trousseau_ is reaching the acute stage, and I thought I was busy enough helping her, without starting a second on my--

"What _am_ I saying! I must be mad. You understand that I trust to that three months' truce, and that I promise nothing--nothing. I only _hope_!

"_Au revoir_, Jim. To-morrow I shall be tearing my hair for writing all this, but the mail will have gone... It will be too late.

"Katrine.

"P.S. A happy new year, Jim, _Will_ it be happy?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"c.u.mly, _January 7, 19--_.

"Dear Captain Blair,

"This follows quickly to retract everything that I said last week! If I had not already spent so much on cables, and if it were not so difficult to explain, I should have sent a flying order to burn that effusion unread! It makes me hot to think of the things I wrote. I am not usually so heady and bold, but the excitement was too much for me, the brilliant shifting of the scene, the finding myself of a sudden a leading lady, instead of a forlorn super,--the new clothes!--

"Honestly, I believe the clothes had as much to do with it as anything else! Do you remember a character in a book a year or two ago saying that the consciousness of being perfectly dressed imparted a peace and joy which religion can never bestow! I have quoted that saying to many women in turns, and each and all on the spur of the moment exclaimed '_How true_!' though the serious-minded ones tried to back out afterwards. I have wondered sometimes if the difference in temperament between the two s.e.xes isn't after all mainly a matter of clothes. A man goes to a decent tailor, puts on a well-cut tweed or dress suit, arranges his tie with a certain amount of skill, and--kings can do no more! Never in all his life does he experience the agonising sensation of entering a room and realising at a glance that he is all wrong, while the right thing is hanging idly at home in the wardrobe; never is his heart torn by the consciousness of inferiority, or the necessity of putting up with a second best, when the first is a dream of beauty and becomingness. He knows none of these trials, but then, on the other hand, he has none of the thrills! Who could be thrilled by an old black coat, but when it is the exact shade of blue that matches your eyes, when the lines of the skirt make you blush at your own grace, when the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs are dreams, and the very linings a picture, then, oh, man! the elation of it mounts to the feminine head like wine, and no mere male can understand...

"I imagined until now that I was superior to such folly. I never cared much about clothes, but then, as Grizel brutally explains, that was because I never had none! Now I am as susceptible as the rest...

"All this chatter about clothes is simply to cover my embarra.s.sment, because I don't know what else to say!

"You must all have made very sure of me, to write to Captain Bedford as you did! ... I had the kindest letter from him yesterday, promising every help _en voyage_. I am to tip the steward to arrange that he has a seat next to me at table from Aden onward. I shall have found my sea legs by then, I suppose, and be able to turn up for meals. He--Captain Bedford--isn't too well, I'm afraid, for he talks of feverish turns which can't be good in his condition, but there seems no doubt of his return. I shall cross-question him (artfully!) about you, and expect to pick up some useful information. Don't expect me to write again before sailing. I am too busy and--_shy_! and when I _do_ arrive, please arrange to meet me first among a crowd of people, and look the other way hard whenever I'm looking. I'm capable of coming home by the first boat if I'm druv!

"Katrine."

"P.S.--I have no money; not a cent. 'My face is my fortune,' plus a pearl necklet, and a loving heart! The situation is so unusual that I think I am justified in being personal and inquisitive. Here's an examination paper for you on certain burning points. You will have time to post answers to Port Said, and if unsatisfactory I can always drown myself, or--turn back!

"Question I.

"Do your ears stick out?"

"_NB_.--This is important. Prevarication forbidden.

"Question II.

"When annoyed do you rage or sulk?

"Question III.

"Have you tiresome little ways? If so, how many? Clearly define their nature, and specify in particular whether you fidget, scatter tobacco, sneeze loudly, sc.r.a.pe your plate, argue, frown over bills, repeat yourself in conversation...

"Question IV.