Katrine Part 26

On the fourth day, because of a nasty twist at polo, the doctor ordered Frank to rest. Coaching and golf had left the house deserted as he lay on the couch in the second hall, thinking of Katrine's masterly deftness in avoiding him.

"I have never known another woman who could have done it so well," he thought. "She seems to have neither resentment nor remembrance. It is as though the whole affair had never been. I wonder--"

The noise of a door opening at the far end of the corridor disturbed his reflections, and as though walking into his thought, Katrine came down the hall.

She wore a house-gown of pale blue, low in the neck, with long, flowing sleeves. Under her arm she carried a music-score in regular school-girl fashion, and she was humming to herself as she came.

Frank lay perfectly still; his eyes closed as she approached him.

"I am not going to bid you a good-morning, seeing that I am obliged by doctor's orders to do it in this position. It doesn't seem respectful,"

he explained.

The surprise, the dimples, the gay, low laugh seemed such a part of her as she paused beside his couch.

"You are ill?" she asked. "Or," with a twinkle of the wide eyes, "didn't you want to go on the coaching-party?"

"I took a fall at polo yesterday. I was not at dinner last night. I am flattered at the way you have dwelt upon my absence."

"I dined at the Crosbys' or I might have spent a sleepless night concerning it. There were a great many people there. Your friend, Dermott McDermott, for one. He is coming here to-day." Her face was illumined by the spirit of teasing as she spoke. "Only," she went on, with a sweet and instant sympathy, "I am hoping you are not badly hurt or suffering."

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, the matter, except the doctor. He is all broken up over the accident, and says I must lie here or somewhere for two or three days to cure a wrench in my back which I didn't have."

Katrine laughed as she turned to go.

"I was intending to study some," she said, looking down at her music.

"Will it annoy you?"

A quick, amused smile came to his face at the question, and he looked up with eyes full of laughter as he answered:

"Certainly, I am naturally unappreciative of music."

"I didn't mean that," Katrine explained, smiling back at him as she went along the corridor.

"Miss Dulany!" he called.

She turned toward him, her face waiting and expectant.

"As the German girl said in _Rudder Grange_, 'It is very loneful here.'"

"You mean," she asked, "that you would like to have me stay with you?"

"n.o.body on earth could have stated my wish more accurately," he answered, in a merry, impersonal tone, as though addressing some imaginary third person.

She came back to him, drawing a low wicker chair near the couch and putting her music on the floor beside her. "I shall be glad to stay if you want me to. Shall we talk?" And here she took up the books he had put beside him for amus.e.m.e.nt. "Balzac, Daudet." She made a little disapproving gesture.

"You do not care for them?" he asked.

"They are not for me, those horrible realist folk. I like books where things fall as they should rather than as they do; and the poetry where beautiful things happen. Things as they aren't are what I care for in literature."

He laughed. "We won't read," he said, "and _I_ sha'n't talk. You must.

All about yourself, the wonderful things that you have been living and achieving. You will tell it all in just your own way, full of quick pauses and sentences finished by funny little gestures."

This was dangerous walking, and he felt it on the instant.

But the Irish of the girl, the instinct to make a story, to entertain, came at his demanding, bringing the old gleam back to her eyes.

"Ah!" she said, deprecatingly. "The tale of me! It would bore you, would it not? It is just full of Josef and work and the Countess and Father Menalis and a few great names, and then more work, with a little more Josef," she added, with a smile. And then dropping into the warm, sweet, intimate tones he remembered so well, she said, simply, "It was hard, but glorious in a way, too," she added, after a moment's thinking, "every morning to awaken with the thought of something most important to do; work which one loves, lessons with this great, great soul who knows why art is! The languages for one's art, the fencing for one's art, the eating, breathing, dancing, thinking, living for one's art! With Josef's eternal 'Think it over! Think it over!' and Paris with all of its beautiful past! And there were lonesome days, too, when I felt I could never do it, with sleepless nights of discouragements. Ah," she said, the scarlet coming to her cheeks, "I have lived! It's a great thing to say that, isn't it? But I have lived! One day, I remember, Josef was all fussed up. It was a horror of a day, and he told me that maybe I would never sing, that my temperament might not do, and I went home with thoughts of suicide and didn't go back to him for nearly a week. Then he sent for me. 'Where have you been?' he demanded, fiercely. 'I am going to give it all up,' I answered. And he took me by the shoulders. 'My G.o.d!' he cried, 'with a genius like yours, _could_ you give it up?' 'But you said the last time I was here--' I began. 'Bah!' he interrupted, putting his hand on my shoulder, 'you can't believe a word I say. I am a great liar.' And we both cried a little, although, even then, he kept telling me how bad crying was for the voice, and we did some Pagliacci together, just as if nothing had happened."

"It must have been a wonderful life," Francis said, a great appreciation in his voice.

"It was; I miss it here--some, although people are so kind. And you?"

she demanded. "Tell me about yourself."

"There is nothing to tell. Things are just the same with me. I suppose they will never be much different."

"Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful things in business."

He smiled, but made no explanation. "Are your engagements arranged as yet, Katrine?" he asked.

"It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first. It is what I want most if I sing in public next winter at all."

There was a pause.

"You have not changed so much as I had thought," he said, at length.

"More than I show, I am afraid," she answered.

"Oh," he returned, "even I can discern some changes. You are more, if I wanted to be subtly flattering, I should say, you are more beautiful, more of the world in appearance, and I know what the Countess meant when she said you were becoming 'epic, grand, and homicidal,' or something like that."

"How horrible!" she laughed.

"Not at all, only not as I remembered you." He spoke the words slowly, against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct, looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir him as no other eyes had ever done. And it seemed to him as though in that look all conventions were dropped between them. "You were kind to me then, Katrine."

She looked at him steadily, as a child might have done, with no shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she asked, wistfully. "Were you very kind to me?"

"I was not. G.o.d!" he said, "if you could only know how I have suffered for the way I acted! To feel such shame as I have felt! Oh," he cried, "n.o.body on earth could make me talk this way but you! There was always between us a curious understanding, wasn't there, Katrine, even apart from the other?" He finished vaguely.

"I knew you would suffer. I was sorry for that," she answered, gravely.

"Were you, truly? Were you big enough for that?"

"Well," and the sad smile with which the Irish so often speak of personal grief came to her lips, "you see, I loved you. And when one loves one wishes for happiness for the one beloved, does one not? Yes,"

she said, "I was honestly sorry to think that you would have even a regret. I would have taken all the sorrow if I could."

"You loved me then?" His head was gone. He remembered only the sweetness of her presence and the nearness of her. "You did love me then, Katrine?"

She rose suddenly as though to leave him.

"Don't go," he said, reaching his hand toward her with pleading in his tone.