Katrine Part 5

"Why didn't I watch the sunset from the Chestnut Ridge?" she repeated after him, as though not understanding; and then, with a slow, steady smile, looking straight in his eyes, "The thought never occurred to me,"

she said.

No studied coquetry could have piqued him as this simple statement, which he felt to be the plain truth. He had taken three long walks on the off-chance of meeting a girl who apparently had forgotten his existence, and although the thought was humorous it stirred in him a determination to make his existence a remembered thing to her.

"But, if I had known," she explained, and the selflessness and sweetness of her as she spoke touched him strangely--"if I had thought you wanted to talk to me, I should have been glad to come."

Fortunately there remained to him a dignified explanation of his suggestion.

"I thought you might come, not so much to see the sunsets as in the hope of seeing me. I promised to help you when I could. I thought you might be interested to know that I had kept my promise. If any one can help your father it is Dr. Johnston." He gave the letter to her as he spoke.

"He is coming to Ravenel to-morrow."

In an instant her face softened; her eyes became suffused by a soft, warm light, and she looked up at him through a sudden mist of tears.

"The interview must be arranged," he went on. But Katrine interrupted him:

"Ah! It will be easy enough. Father is as anxious as I am to be himself again. You do not know daddy, Mr. Ravenel," she explained, a proud loyalty in her tone. "He has not been himself before you; but in Paris, in Dublin, he was welcomed everywhere; his wit was the keenest, with never an edge that hurt; his stories the brightest, and always of the kind that made you love the people of whom they were told. He will be home to-night. Will the doctor come here? I want to tell him _everything_, and then, when he has seen father, you can tell me what to do. You see, I haven't thanked you yet," she said, abruptly.

"To know that you are pleased is enough. Besides, I have, on some few occasions, drifted into doing a kind act for the act's sake," he said; adding: "Not often, it's true, but occasionally."

"You have made me, oh, so happy, and hopeful--as I have never been before in all my life. It seems like one of the fairy stories in which one's wishes all come true."

"And if it were given you to have whatever you wished, what would you ask for, Katrine?"

"To have father well. And then," her face became illuminated, "to study with Josef."

"Josef?" He repeated the great name interrogatively.

"You have not heard of him?" she asked, incredulously.

He made a sign in the negative.

"He is the greatest teacher in the world," she explained, as though there could be no doubting.

"Which is perhaps the reason I have never heard of him," he answered, with a smile. "From your enthusiasm I am led to judge it is music which he teaches."

"Yes," she answered; "but he teaches more than that. I knew a girl in Paris who studied with him. She was quite intricate and self-seeking when she began. And in six months he had changed her whole nature. She became elemental and direct, and," she put her hands together and threw them apart with the gesture which he knew so well, "and splendid! Like Shakespeare's women!" she finished.

"Gracious Heaven, hear!" said Frank. "And does this miracle-worker live uncrowned?"

"Ah, don't!" she said, her sincerity and enthusiasm reproving his scoffing tone. "You see"--there was sweetness and an apologetic note in her voice as she continued--"I believe in him so much it hurts to have you speak so. Josef says that when woman developed to the point of needing more education, there was nothing ready to give her except the same thing they gave men; that because certain studies had been proven all right for them they were given ready-made to women, and they didn't fit. He believes women should be trained to develop the thing we call their instinct. He says it's the psychic force which must in the end rule the world. One of the girls in Paris said 'he stretched your soul.'"

"I shall not permit you to go to him," Frank interrupted, gravely.

She regarded him, a question in her glance. "Why?" she asked.

"Because if your soul was any larger, Katrine, there would be no room for it here below. It crowds the earth a little as it is. No," he finished, with conviction, "you shall never go to study with Josef.

Music is all right. But that soul-stretching"--he smiled at this phrase--"that would be all wrong for you. I want you exactly as you are."

IV

THE PROMISE IN THE ROSE GARDEN

A silence fell between them, broken only by the whirring of Nora's wheel and the robin's chatter before Katrine inquired:

"Are you still bent on that expedition to that world's end?"

"I could," he returned, "be persuaded from it, or at least to postpone it. If by any chance I were invited to luncheon in a certain garden--an old-fashioned garden, with box and peonies, and," he raised his head to look down over the flowers--"and some queer purple things like bells whose name I have forgotten, under a trellis of roses, with--"

"Me," she interrupted, with a laugh. "We'll make a party, as the children say. Nora will give us broiled chicken and yellow wine in the long-necked gla.s.ses, and cake with nuts in it, and you," she stopped for a second, the dimple in the left cheek showing itself, "will give all of your nuts to me; for it is well to sacrifice for another," she said, with a laugh, "and exceeding well," she added, "that I should have the nuts."

Having ordered the luncheon, they went together down the gravelled pathway to the grape arbor, which was grown over with sweet, old-fashioned climbing roses, through which the sunlight filtered in wavy lights on the quaint low rocker, the long rattan couch, the pillows of gay hue, the table covered with books and sewing. Frank paused at the archway and looked in.

"I have found it," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"The world's end," he answered.

"You must," she explained, "_really_ to appreciate this place, lie on the couch so that you may see the wistaria on the gray wall. You should then light a cigarette and have the table brought near, that you may ring for what you want." She moved the table toward him as she spoke.

"And I will take this chair beside you. If you want me to talk to you I shall do so; if you want me to sing, I will do that; or if the king desires silence"--she made an obeisance before him as of great humility--"I can even accomplish that, though it is difficult for a woman," she added, with a laugh.

It was dangerous repayment of a kindness: this entire forgetfulness of herself in her grat.i.tude to him; this essence of the wine of flattery, of Irish flattery, which has ever a peculiar bouquet of its own.

"You have a good friend in McDermott," Francis said, abruptly.

"Yes; he has been kind to us, most kind," Katrine answered.

"For old sake's sake?" Frank suggested.

"Scarcely for that. We never knew him until father met him quite by accident in New York two years ago."

"Didn't they fight together in India?" Frank inquired.

"In India!" Katrine repeated. "Father was never in India. Will some one have been telling you that McDermott and he fought together in India, Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, in astonishment.

Frank sat upright, regarding her with amazement.

"Didn't your father save his life at Ramazan?"

It was Katrine's turn to be bewildered.

"I never heard of Ramazan," she said. "Where is it?"

"And he was not present at your father's marriage in Italy?"