Katharine Frensham: A Novel
TextCHAPTER III
It was the 19th of December. Clifford was sitting in his study at "Falun" when the letters were brought to him. He did not look up from his work. The postman could bring him nothing that he cared to have that day; for he had already heard from Alan, who was still at school; he knew that all was well with the boy, and that he would be home for the holidays on the 21st.
For nearly four months he had waited and longed for a letter from Katharine. But now he had given up hoping. He believed that he had alienated her by his merciless outspokenness up at Peer Gynt's stue; not at the moment, for he remembered the ring in her voice and the expression on her face when she said, "Judge you—judge you," but later, when, quietly by herself, in her own surroundings, away from him, she was able to think things out and measure them. She had judged him – and left him. He suffered. He dared not attempt to approach her. He had told her all – and her answer was silence. He haunted Westminster and Stangate; but he never met her once. He walked up and down Westminster Bridge, knowing that if he did see her in the distance, he would be constrained to turn away. For he had told her all; and since her answer was silence, he had no right to force himself on her.
"Love has passed me by," he said to himself sadly.
He made no accusation on life.
"I was not worthy of it," he said.
"I had to tell her all," he said. "I had to lay it all before her."
"Love was so near to me," he said. "I almost reached it. And now I have to pass on alone."
He went two or three times during the term to see Alan. Alan was well and happy. But he was disappointed that Katharine had not been to see him.
"She promised, father," he said. "And I've looked for her week after week. But I believe that she will still come."
"Do you?" asked Clifford eagerly.
"Yes," the boy answered. "She was not the sort of chum to break her word."
"She promised to write to me," Clifford said. "But I have not heard."
"Oh, you'll hear," Alan said staunchly.
But that was several weeks before Christmas; and now Christmas had nearly come, and Katharine's promised visit to Alan had not been paid, nor her promised letter to Clifford been received.
And the man had given up expecting it. So now he did not look up from his work. He had looked up many times on other occasions and been disappointed. He had gone back to his work many times with a sore feeling of personal bereftness, as though fate had put him outside the inner heart of things. So now he bent over his desk, immersed in some abstruse calculation. After an hour, he rose and went to his laboratory to give some instructions to his new assistant, a young Welshman from Aberystwith, who had arrived that morning. A case of glass apparatus had just been brought in. He lingered to see if they were in good condition. He came out, and then went back to fetch his notebook, which he had left on the bench. He stood for a moment looking at the enlargements which he had carried out since his return from Norway.
"Alan and Knutty will be pleased," he said.
"I had hoped that she too would – would see them," he thought. "I hoped – ah, I don't know what I hoped. I was mad."
He returned to his study and closed the door. He stood leaning against the mantelpiece, thinking. His grave face looked sad. He had reconquered his power of working. Peace was in his house; but sore loneliness and longing were in his heart. Still, he was working, and with satisfaction to that part of his nature which had been so greatly harassed by poor Marianne's merciless turbulence.
"After all, I only asked to work and to be at peace," he said aloud, as if in answer to some insistent disputant.
"But – " began that inner voice.
"I only asked to work and be at peace," he answered again sternly.
Then he went to the table by the door and looked at his letters. One was from Knutty.
"No," he said, as he fingered it; "Knutty asks an impossibility of me. She does not know all – she does not see all around. Katharine Frensham has shown by her silence that…"
He opened Knutty's letter. There was one enclosed, addressed in a gallant handwriting: "Clifford Thornton, Esq., Solli Gaard, Gudbrandsdal, Norway." It was old and stained. On a slip of paper Knutty had written: "Solli has this moment sent this letter to me. He says it must have been to many Sollis all over the Gudbrandsdal, until the Norwegian post-office got tired. You see there is no district mentioned, and Solli is as common as Smith. Ragnhild Solli found it reposing in the Otta post-office, waiting, no doubt, for next year's tourists."
Clifford's hands trembled. A great pain had seized his beating heart. He sank down into his chair, broke open the letter, and read with dim eyes the following lines: —
CHAPTER IV
"Judge you, judge you. Oh, my dearest, my dearest, if I could have told you what was in my heart when you said those words to me, up at Peer Gynt's stue, then I should not be writing this letter to you, though I want to write it, want to write down everything that is in my heart, everything that sprang into flower at the moment when I first saw you. For I love you, and I am holding out my arms to you, have been holding them out ever since I first saw you. Does it seem overbold that I say this to you? Why should not a woman say it? Anyway, I say it, and am not ashamed. I love you, and I am waiting for you. I have loved you with tears in my heart from the very beginning, grieving over you as over one whom I had known all my life, and with whom I had the right to sympathise with all the sympathy of my best nature.
"You know, dearest, I had been away from England for three years. You remember that I told you I went away when my brother married. I can never describe to you how I had dreaded my home-coming. There was nothing and no one to come back for. Twice I turned back. I had not the courage to face the loneliness which, with my mind's eyes, I saw stretched before me like some desolate plain. But one day I felt a sudden irresistible impulse to return. When I saw you that evening, I knew that I had returned to find you. And I knew that in some strange way you recognised me and claimed me in your heart of hearts, as I claimed you. From that moment my life changed.
"Is it not wonderful, my belovèd, how one rises up and goes forth to meet love: how time and space become annihilated, and all barriers of mind and circumstance are swept away as by an avalanche? Yes, from that moment my life changed, and yours changed too. But I knew that I had to wait. I knew that you had to free yourself in your own way from the memories which were encompassing you. And all the time I was yearning to say to you: 'Do not fight with the past. Do not try to push the past on one side. It can never be forgotten, never be ignored. But something better can be done with it. It can be faced, understood, and then gathered up with the present and the future. Let me help you to do it. I will gather it up with a tenderness never dreamed of before in the whole world of love.'
"All this I yearned to say to you before I knew the whole history of your troubled life. And now that you have told me the whole history, what shall I say to you? I will say to you that my love for you is a thousandfold greater than before: that as I learn to know the depth of your suffering and sadness, I shall learn to make my love deeper still to reach those depths: that I am waiting for you, with arms outstretched, a thousandfold more eagerly than before: that my love for you is the love of a woman for a man, the sore yearning of one kindred spirit for another kindred spirit, the tender sympathy of friend with friend, the frank understanding of comrade with comrade, – this is my love for you.
"Take it, my belovèd. It is yours. If it were worthier of you, I should be more joyous still in offering it. But, side by side with you, the best and the worst in me will become better. This is my answer to you. This is the answer I longed to give you up at Peer Gynt's stue. Everything that I have been telling you now was in my heart then. But I could not, dared not, tell you then. You knew why I was silent? Let us speak of it, dearest. I saw your poor Marianne's face. And that moment, the moment of my life, when the story had been told to the very end, and your barrier had been broken down – that moment was consecrated to her. I shall always feel deeply thankful that I, an impulsive, impetuous woman, was able to be silent then – was able to turn from you then…
"And now, my Clifford, I want to speak to you of Marianne's death. There will come times when you will be assailed by this old wrongful belief that you were responsible for her sad end. You and I will fight those times out together. I have no fear of them; I have no fear of that poor Marianne; I have no fear of anything. You and I will work through those cruel hours. You must and shall learn to be just to yourself. You spoke of Marianne's defenceless state of dreaming. I remember those were your very words. I remember that my heart and mind cried out to you, 'And your own defenceless state of dreaming? May no one plead that to you?'
"I plead it now. I plead it with my heart, my brain, my spirit. My belovèd, I entreat of you to give yourself bare justice; nothing more. I would not wish you to sacrifice one inch of the gentle chivalry of your nature. If I were asking you to do that, I should indeed be asking you an unworthy thing. If I were asking you to do that, I should be asking you to injure that which I love and adore in you. But bare justice: a cold, stern, reluctant measuring-out. That is all I entreat of you to give yourself. Will you do this? Will you trust me? You may trust me. If I had my doubts, it would not be possible for me to keep them back. I might try, and I should fail. I am not a prisoner of silence. My words and thoughts come tumbling out recklessly. You may trust me. I should tell you, and risk losing you and breaking my heart – because I could not help myself.
"Lose you now that I have found you. No, no, that can never be. I am yours, you are mine. We dare not lose each other now that we have found each other. We have found each other not very early in life, but what does that matter? What does Time matter to you and me? I never yet knew the time of day, the day of the month, the month of the year, nor cared to know. But I knew full well when spring had come. I know that spring has come now. I rise up from the darkness of winter to meet the glorious days which you and I will live through together. You have made my life splendid for me already, and I will make your life splendid for you. You shall love and work, and work and love. Your career shall be a glory to me. You shall go on and on, and be all things you want to be, and do all the things you want to do, and take your rightful place in your own world – my world, because it is yours. And I, who know nothing of science, will become a woman of science – because I love you. Ah, I can see a smile on your grave face. You are thinking that the paths to science are long and arduous. Long and arduous indeed! I shall find the short cut – because I love you.
"And, oh, my dearest, we will not shut others out in the cold because we love. I have been out in the cold. I have been freezing there until you came into my life. Great love and great sorrow are apt to shut the whole world out of the Cathedral. Let us keep the doors wide open. Then those who love us can come in.
"My dearest, my belovèd, if you only knew, it has not been easy for me to tear myself away from Norway, from you, from Alan, from Knutty, from the beautiful surroundings where our love has grown apace. But my brother was in trouble, and, you see, the Cathedral doors had to be opened at once. And if I had spoken to you and told you all that this letter tells you, I could not have left you. But it tears my heart to be away from you. All the time I have wanted passionately to turn back and come to you and say, 'I am yours, and you are mine.' But I went on and on, in spite of myself, farther away from you, and yet getting nearer every minute – that has been my consolation: that I was getting nearer to you, because – because at a distance I dared to open my heart to you – because – the moment of silence up at Peer Gynt's stue was past – not forgotten, not ignored – but gathered up tenderly, tenderly. So I get nearer to you all the time. That is why I am writing this long letter to you. Every word has sped me quicker on my joyous way to you. When I began it I was near to you, my belovèd. Now that I am ending it, I am by your side. There is no space between us.
"But before I end it, there is something else I want to tell you. I want to tell you how I love and admire you for not having become bitter. It is so easy to become bitter. You must have lifted the cup of bitterness to your lips many a time, and then put it resolutely down. Will you forgive me if I speak of this? It is only because I want you to know that I have always prized that power ever since I can remember; striven after it myself; failed lamentably; but shall not fail now, because of you.
"Yes, and there is still something else I must tell you. Do you remember that I did not come back to the Gaard, but stayed behind at the posting-station? Oh, my dearest, you can never know what it cost me not to be there, with Knutty and Alan, to receive you if by chance you should have returned. You can never know what it would have cost me if I had lost you.
"Lost you. No, no. It was impossible, once having found you. It is impossible. I should find you, over the mountains, over the sea – anywhere.
"Oh, my dearest, Norway will always be the fairest land in the whole world to me: the land where the barrier was broken down between you and me.
"Katharine Frensham."
CHAPTER V
The letter fell from Clifford's hands. He leaned over his desk, and covered his face with his hands. The tears streamed down his cheeks. Then he took the letter, pressed it to his heart, kissed it passionately, kissed the signature, read it all over again with dim eyes, pressed it to his heart again – and was made whole.
When he had recovered himself, he rang the bell, ordered the trap, caught the train to Waterloo, and ran up the stairs to Katharine's flat.
Katharine had come home rather earlier than usual from business. She had finished tea, and was standing by the window of her pretty drawing-room, watching the lights on the river. She was in one of her sad, lonely moods; she was feeling outside everything.
"Mercifully I have my work," she said to herself. "If any one had told me ten years ago that I should be thankful to go down to business every day at the same hour, I could not have believed it."
Some one had sent her Matthew Arnold's poems as a Christmas present. She took the volume now, and opened it at these words: —
"Yes, in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know."
She read them through again. Then she leaned against the mantelshelf and stared into the fire, still holding the book in her hand.
The bell rang. Katharine did not hear. The thought in those words was holding her. The door opened. Katharine did not hear. Gerda's Swedish song had suddenly come into her remembrance, "The lover whom thou lov'st so well, thou shalt reach him never."
She recalled the time when she had first heard it. She saw the great Gudbrandsdal spread out before her, and the hillside opposite the Solli Gaard, where Gerda was strolling, singing as she went. She remembered Knutty's words, "But that is not true for you. You will reach him; I know you will reach him." She remembered that when she turned round, she saw that Clifford had come back from over the seas.
Something impelled her to turn round now – and she saw him.
"Katharine, my belovèd," he said in a voice that thrilled through her, "I have only just had your letter."
And he folded her in his arms.
Long and silently they stood thus, whilst outside in the great world, the noise of the traffic went on unheeded, the barges passed down the river, the lights of Westminster shone out, Big Ben rang the hour of the evening, stars crowned the towers of the Abbey, the moon rose above the Houses of Parliament.
So they had found each other at last.
The lonely wilderness of their inner hearts became a fair and gracious garden.
And when their long embrace was over, and the moment for speech had come, they sat near together as lovers, friends, comrades of all time, talking frankly and fearlessly of the sad past which was to be gathered up with sane and tender understanding into the present and the future, talking of their love for each other: of their first meeting: of their separation: of their longings after each other: of their companionship in Norway: of this three months' desolation in England: of Knutty's impatient admonitions that they should break through all reserve and seek each other out: of Alan's love and trust restored and strengthened: of their new life, in which he would grow up to manhood in gladness and happiness: of Mrs Stanhope, made of no account by reason of their great joy: of Knutty's unselfish anxiety on their behalf: of her tenderness and all her dear quaint ways: and of Alan's criticism of Katharine, "She is not the sort of chum to break her word."
"And I will not break it," Katharine said joyously. "We can go together to-morrow and fetch him back."
Suddenly there came a loud knock at the hall-door. And when it was opened, an excited voice with a slight foreign accent asked impatiently for Miss Frensham.
Clifford and Katharine heard it. They looked at each other.
"It's Knutty!" they cried together; and they ran out into the hall.
"Knutty! Knutty!" they cried. "Welcome! welcome!"
"Dear ones," she answered, gasping. "Oh, what stairs! I hope I shan't die from apoplexy, but I feel very much like it now. Talk about sea-sickness indeed! Stair-sickness is much worse! Ak, ak! Give me some aqua vitæ or some mysost instantly! Ak, ak, why did I ever come? Oh yes, I know why I came. No use writing and inquiring. Could have got no news out of an iceberg. So I came to see for myself. And what do I see? By St Olaf! I see daylight – full daylight! Gerda and Ejnar said I was not to interfere. Interfere! Of course I shall! It is the duty of every woman not to mind her own business! Oh, those stairs! I believe there were nearly a hundred of them! Dear ones, dear ones, what a happy old woman I am! If I don't die from apoplexy, I shall cry from happiness! What it is to be a Viking…!"