An Unknown Lover Part 21

They talked for an hour, a pleasant, inconsequent talk, flitting from one subject to another; books, pictures, theatres, travel, and when they parted at the sound of the luncheon gong, he stood before her, gaunt and tall, and said gravely:

"Thank you for the first happy hour I have spent for months!"

"I hope we shall have many more," Katrine had answered, confused and startled, but as she took her way to her cabin she could have found it in her heart to regret the words. "He is clever, he is interesting, he is cultivated,--but I _don't_ like him! There's something in his face.--I am glad it is not _he_ who is to look after me!" During the luncheon hour, however, her ruminations carried her to a different plane. "It doesn't matter whether I like him or not. He is ill and lonely, and he--_drinks_! because he has nothing better to do. I'll be kind to him. I'll get Captain Bedford to be kind. Perhaps between us we can keep him straight..."

Poor Katrine! She felt a glow of satisfaction when again that evening Vernon Keith spent an hour by her side. She paced the deck with him, acutely conscious of looks of disapproval from several elderly quarters, feeling a childish sense of elation every time that the entrance to the smoke-room was pa.s.sed in safety, exerting herself to start fresh subjects of interest each time the conversation flagged, but in spite of all her efforts, by half-past nine her companion grew restless, answered at random, and finally excused himself, pleading fatigue, a letter to be begun--

Well! Katrine consoled herself, at least he had had an hour in the fresh air, and could feel that _some one_ was interested, and that he was no longer ostracised... She found her cabin companion, and sat demurely by her side until after eleven o'clock, the beauty of the night making her unwilling to retire to the stuffy cabin. When at last they rose and turned towards the companion-way, Katrine felt pleasantly tired, and confident of a good night's rest, but the most exciting incident of the day was still to come. Mrs Mannering led the way a few paces ahead, and Katrine, following in the rear, found her way suddenly blocked by a tall form with flushed face, and dulled eyes, from whose garments floated the unmistakable fumes of whisky.

It was Vernon Keith, and for a moment they stood motionless, face to face, her eyes cold and stern, his lightening into recognition, then flinching with a pathetic shame.

"I--thought--you--had gone," he stammered thickly. "Getting late--for you. Ver'--late." He was turning back in the direction of the smoke-room, when with a sudden impulse, Katrine laid her hand on his arm.

"Mr Keith! Will you do me a favour? You are not well, and it is bad for you to sit up late... Won't you say good-night now, and go straight to bed?"

He straightened himself, and drew a deep breath. As if a veil had been drawn from his face, the blank look vanished, and the soul of the man looked at her through the bloodshot eyes. For the moment he was startled into sobriety.

"If--if you ask it. Of course. At--at once!" he said, and turning followed in her wake.

Had Mrs Mannering seen, or had she not? Katrine could not decide. She was thankful at least that she was treated to no remarks, but could hurry into bed and lie quietly in the darkness, thinking over the situation. One thing was certain--the incident had at a stride carried Vernon Keith and herself beyond the stage of conventional acquaintance.

It seemed impossible that they could meet again without reference to that short, pregnant meeting. What would be said? Would he be shamed, resentful, defiant? Katrine could not guess; hardly knew for which mood to wish. Curiously enough the success of her appeal had roused a nervous mistrust, so that she regretted her own audacity, and wished helplessly that she had waited for Captain Bedford's help. "Will he think it was bold of me?" she questioned of her own heart. "Will they tell him in the smoke-room that I walked about with a man to whom no other girl will speak? Will he think I am bold and fast, and tell _Jim_?" Quick as a dart came the answering a.s.surance. "_Jim will understand_!" and at the comfort of it she laughed softly aloud.

A sleepy murmur from the opposite bunk reminded her of the existence of her room-mate. She blushed and stammered in the dark:

"I--I beg your pardon. What did you say?"

"_Bless you_!" repeated the voice distinctly. "But don't do it again.-- He'll keep, my dear--he'll keep!"

The next morning, to Katrine's relief, there was no sign of Vernon Keith at breakfast. She drew her chair into a quiet corner and sat with her back to the pa.s.sing stream, affecting to be engrossed in her book, but shortly before noon a shadow loomed, and with a fluttering of heart she divined that the dreaded encounter was at hand. He placed his chair by her side, and fixed her with haggard eyes, but he spoke no word, not even the conventional greeting; it was left to her to open the conversation.

"Oh, Mr Keith--good-morning! I was reading.--Isn't it a nice day?"

"Is it?" he queried listlessly. "I was not thinking of to-day. I was thinking of last night." His eyes pierced her through, he bent nearer, speaking with a horrible deliberation. "Are--you--accustomed--to-- drunken--men?"

Katrine cowered; repulsed and frightened.

"Never--never!--I have never so much as spoken to one--be--"

"Before!" he concluded calmly. "Well! I am drunk, more or less, every night of my life, and shall be to the end. It's a habit which it is difficult to break! You thought it would be satisfying for a man to walk round the deck with a beautiful girl for his companion, feeling the fresh breeze, watching the sea and the sky; more tempting than a foul room with the fumes of smoke and whisky.--It _is_ better! For an hour I was grateful and content. After that--" he hissed the words in her ear, "after that--sooner than have stayed with you, sooner than exchange your company for the bottle and the gla.s.s, do you know what I would have done?--I would have lifted you in my arms, and tossed you into that sea!"

Katrine shrunk from him, aghast. For the first time in her life she faced the despair of a self-wrecked life, and realised the impotence of human help. The chains which the years had forged bound this man in his prison, and she had essayed to free him in a few light hours. If he had shown signs of excitement or emotion, the moment would have been more bearable. It was his dreadful composure which rent her heart.

Her lip quivered; she shook her head in helpless distress.

"Why do you tell me this? I didn't ask--I don't want to know. We can be friends..."

"Can we?" he smiled bitterly. "Are you so brave? That's fine of you, but it's too late. I am a drunkard, and it has come to this--I don't even wish to be cured! Drink is my only comfort; the thing that helps me to forget. The good people among whom you have lived (you have met only good people, I think. That shows in your face!) they have told you that it is drunkenness which causes most of the misery in the world. In future will you try sometimes to reverse the statement, and acknowledge that it is often misery which causes drink? It caused it with me,-- heart-break and treachery, failure and struggle, and then, at the first promise of success, _this_!" he tapped his bent chest, "this demon choking my life. I have nearly a whole lung left. Would you think it?

Down in that cabin, gasping for breath, it is difficult to realise that there's so much. And they sent me this voyage, the people at home...

What for? My sake, or their own? To get rid of me--to be spared the end?"

"No, no!" Katrine protested, "don't say it. It isn't true, it can only do you harm to think it. No one could be so wicked."

His lips twisted in a sneer.

"Would it be wicked? When the sheep is so black, when he refuses to be washed, and brings disgrace on innocent heads? There is no hope for me, Miss Beverley; a month more, or a month less, that's the only question that remains. Sea air is supposed to be good, and sitting at home people think _only_ of the air, and forget the other incidents of life on shipboard, which are _not_ conducive to the welfare of a man suffering from my--complaints! I am worse than when we sailed. Shall grow worse every day. Doubly infected, you see! A leper to be shunned."

He stared at her keenly, his mouth twisted by the bitter mockery of a smile. There was no sign of softening on his face, rather did he appear to sneer at the puny efforts which had been made on his behalf. He had spoken of her as a "beautiful girl," but in a manner so impersonal as to rob the words of flattery. Katrine turned her head aside, unable to meet that gaze, and sat silent, gazing out to sea. For a long quarter of an hour neither spoke a word, but the silence was charged. Each felt the influence of the other's thoughts, divined the other's sentiments.

At a certain moment they turned simultaneously to look into each other's eyes, and in this last look was kindness and comprehension.

"Miss Beverley," said the man, "you are a good woman. You have done me good, though not in the way you intended. I shall drink as much as ever, understand that! but you've done me good. If you are brave enough to defy convention by giving a little of your time to a prodigal, I'll take what I can get, and for the rest--keep out of your way! But you have only to say a word--"

Katrine held out her hand.

"I don't want to say it. It is nothing to me what people think. Come and talk to me whenever you feel inclined. I have no friends on board, but at Port Said a man is joining the ship who is in the same regiment as my host, and he is supposed to look after me for the rest of the voyage. I hope we shall _both_ like him! We could sit together and have more interesting talks. Men get tired of womaney subjects."

"Ah," he said flatly, "that's good! I'm glad you will have some one.

You are beautiful, you know. You oughtn't to be alone."

Again the impersonal tone minimised the words. Katrine realised that as a woman she had no personality for the man; she was merely a shape--a picture; even his grat.i.tude was a lifeless thing; the man's power of feeling, of resistance, was exhausted. It was indeed, as he had said, "too late."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

The ship dropped anchor in the harbour of Port Said early in the morning, and almost immediately afterwards four large coal barges, lashed together, were towed towards her, with a not unmusical chanting of "Oola! Oola! Oola!" from their Arab crew.

Veritable imps of Satan did the men appear, dyed to an ebon blackness, and the pa.s.sengers made haste to depart sh.o.r.ewards to escape the ordeal of the day. Katrine, Mrs Mannering, and Vernon Keith formed a little party by themselves; the elder woman trim and gaunt in grey alpaca, Katrine immaculately white, with a broad-brimmed hat shading face and neck. An undercurrent of excitement at the prospect of meeting the first of her Indian friends brightened her eyes, and infused her whole aspect with a delightful animation. The first duty on sh.o.r.e was to purchase topees, which to Katrine's relief proved to be much more becoming than she had antic.i.p.ated. Her choice had indeed quite a fashionable aspect, being of the wide Merry Widow shape, the pith foundation daintily covered with white cotton, while a green lining and light hanging scarf added to the general effect, and sent her out of the shop complacently rea.s.sured.

They walked about the sun-baked streets of the squalid town, the gaunt man, the grey-haired woman, and between them the young blooming girl, pa.s.sing quickly by the few decent houses which skirt the quay, to visit the native quarters, Katrine's first glimpse of the East. There was none of the glamour which she had expected in the ramshackle buildings, cabins, and hencoops, with but little to differentiate one from the other. Dark-skinned men lounged about in every variety of bed-gown, women sported the heavy yashmak, in addition to a bra.s.s band across the forehead, from which four large bra.s.s rings depended over the nose.

Children swarmed around thick as mosquitoes, begging in broken English, any claims to beauty which they might have possessed obliterated by the almost universal pitting of smallpox.

The animals were more attractive, but in the absence of even the smallest blade of gra.s.s their presence seemed difficult to explain. The goats appeared to live on bits of paper and sc.r.a.ps of orange peel, while the cows, dogs, and cats which with the goats wandered restlessly about the streets fared even worse. As for the camels and donkeys, they stood about in groups, or lay in the sand with their usual expression of bored resignation.

Vernon Keith laughed at Katrine's undisguised dismay.

"Don't judge the East by Port Said, Miss Beverley! It is a nightmare of a hole, where no one lives who is not absolutely compelled. Even these Arab coal-porter fellows bring their families here for two or three months, work like the devil, and then disappear into the desert to live like fighting c.o.c.ks until their earnings are finished... Here's a water hydrant,--suppose we stand here and watch the people fill their skins!

It may give you a laugh, and that's a difficult thing to achieve in this part of the world."

Katrine looked around eagerly. A group of Europeans had already gathered round the hydrant, some of whom she recognised as pa.s.sengers on her own boat; the others were strangers, for whom at the moment she had no attention to spare. An Arab woman was holding to the tap a crumpled ma.s.s of skin, into which the water was gradually falling. Even as she watched, the folded ma.s.s swelled and wriggled in life-like contortions.

The crowd broke into laughter; the Arab woman, expectant of backsheesh, responded with a gleaming smile. Katrine danced on her toes like an excited child.

"What is it? What is it? A pig-skin? A calf-skin? A sloper? It's _just_ like a dying sloper! What can it be?"

Suddenly from out the sausage-like round shot a leg, kicking, as it were, into s.p.a.ce; a second leg, more legs, a tail--then the Arab woman gave an adroit twist to the balloon, and a final shriek of laughter from the crowd greeted the c.o.c.king of frisky ears, above the life-like head!

The sight was so irresistibly comic, that even Vernon Keith was surprised into a smile, which broadened at sight of Katrine's childlike delight. The clear treble of her laughter, the involuntary dance of her eager feet, the beauty of the sparkling face, made her indeed the cynosure of every eye. Fellow-pa.s.sengers smiled at her with a kindliness which had in it an element of remorse. "The girl who walked about with that horrible man"--appeared suddenly in a different light,-- not an adventuress after all, but a girl whose experience of life was behind her years, a child at heart who meant no harm. The strangers whispered among themselves, and speculated as to her relationship with the man and woman by her side.

The Arab woman shouldered her burden and walked away, enriched by several voluntary offerings, and the object of interest being removed, Katrine became embarra.s.singly conscious of the general scrutiny. She cast a rapid glance around the group, skimming quickly from one face to another, until suddenly, startlingly, she found herself held by the gaze of a pair of eyes, a man's eyes, steely grey, with a curious effect of lightness against the deep tan of the skin. There was something in those eyes, a magnetism, an intentness, which gripped Katrine with a force amounting to positive pain. Each of us in his turn has had such an experience, but it is all too rare, for the eyes of our fellow-creatures, so far from being windows of the soul, are as a rule little more illuminating than any other feature. Tired eyes, shallow eyes, blank, expressionless eyes, one encounters them at every turn, but only at rare and memorable intervals eyes alive, magnetic, which not only look straight from the heart of their owner, but like a searchlight pierce straight to one's own. When this experience comes, it forges a link which neither time nor distance can break. Two souls have met, and mutely acclaimed their kinship.