Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  John and Katharine exchanged a few words from time to time, for the sake of appearances, in a coldly civil tone, and without the slightest expression of interest in one another. John spoke of the weather, and Katharine admitted that it had been very bad of late. She observed that Miss Van De Water was looking very well, and that a greenish blue was becoming to fair people. John answered that he had expected to hear of Miss Van De Water’s engagement to that foreigner whose name he had forgotten, and Katharine replied that he was not a foreigner but an Englishman, and that his name was Northallerton, or something like that. John said he had heard that they had first met in Paris, and Katharine took some salt upon her plate and admitted that it was quite possible. She grew more coldly wrathful with every minute, and the iron entered into John’s soul, and he gave up trying to talk to her — of which she was very glad.

  It was some time before the occasion which Miner sought presented itself, and the dinner proceeded brilliantly enough amid the laughter of young voices and the gladness of young eyes. For young eyes see flowers where old ones see but botany, so to speak.

  Katharine had not believed that it would hurt her as it did, nor Ralston that love could seem so far away. They turned from each other and talked with their neighbours. John almost thought that Katharine once or twice gathered her black skirts nearer to her, as though to keep them from a sort of contamination. He was on her left, and he was conscious that in pretending to eat he used his right arm very cautiously because he did not wish even to run the risk of touching hers by accident.

  Now, in the course of events, it happened that the subject of yachts travelled from neighbour to neighbour, as subjects sometimes do at big dinners, until, having been started by Teddy Van De Water and Fanny Trehearne, it came up the table to Frank Miner. He immediately saw his chance, and plunged into his subject.

  “Oh, I don’t take any interest in yacht races, compared with prize fights, since Jack Ralston has gone into the ring!” he said, and his high, clear voice made the words ring down the table with the cheery, laughing cadence after them.

  “What’s that about me, Frank?” asked John, speaking over Katharine’s head as she bent away from him towards Russell Vanbrugh, who was next to her on the other side.

  “Oh, nothing — talking about your round with Tom Shelton. Tell us all about it, Jack. Don’t be modest. You’re the only man here who’s ever stood up to a champion prize-fighter without the gloves on, and it seems you hit him, too. You needn’t be ashamed of it.”

  “I’m not in the least ashamed of it,” answered Ralston, unbending a little.

  He spoke in a dead silence, and all eyes were turned upon him. But he said nothing more. Even the butler and the footmen, every one of whom had read both the morning and the evening papers, paused and held their breath, and looked at John with admiration.

  “Go ahead, Ralston!” cried Teddy Van De Water, from his end. “Some of us haven’t heard the story, though everybody saw those horrid things in the papers this morning. It was too bad!”

  Katharine had attempted to continue her conversation with Russell Vanbrugh, but it had proved impossible. Moreover, she was herself almost breathless with surprise at the sudden appeal to Ralston himself, when she had been taking it for granted that every one present, including his hosts, despised him, and secretly wished that he had not come.

  Van De Water had spoken from the end of the table. Frank Miner responded again from the other, looking hard at Katharine’s blank face, as he addressed John.

  “Tell it, Jack!” he cried. “Don’t be foolish. Everybody wants to know how it happened.”

  Ralston looked round the table once more, and saw that every one was expecting him to speak, all with curiosity, and some of the men with admiration. His eyes rested on Katharine for a moment, but she turned from him instantly — not coldly, as before, but as though she did not wish to meet his glance.

  “I can’t tell a story by halves,” said he. “If you really want to have it, you must hear it from the beginning. But I told Frank Miner this morning — he can tell it better than I.”

  “Go on, Jack — you’re only keeping everybody waiting!” said Hamilton Bright, from across the table. “Tell it all — about me, too — it will make them laugh.”

  John saw the honest friendship in the strong Saxon face, and knew that to tell the whole story was his best plan.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll do my best. It won’t take long. In the first place — you won’t mind my going into details, Miss Van De Water?”

  “Oh, no — we should rather prefer it,” laughed the young girl, from her distant place.

  “Then I’ll go on. I’ve been going in for reform lately — I began last Monday morning. Yes — of course you all laugh, because I’ve not much of a reputation for reform, or anything else. But the statement is necessary because it’s true, and bears on the subject. Reform means claret and soda, and very little of that. It had rather affected my temper, as I wasn’t used to it, and I was sitting in the club yesterday afternoon, trying to read a paper and worrying about things generally, when Frank, there, wanted me to drink with him, and I wouldn’t, and I didn’t choose to tell him I was trying to be good, because I wasn’t sure that I was going to be. Anyhow, he wouldn’t take ‘no,’ and I wouldn’t say ‘yes’ — and so I suppose I behaved rather rudely to him.”

  “Like a fiend!” observed Miner, from a distance.

  “Exactly. Then I was called to the telephone, and found that my uncle Robert wanted me at once, that very moment, and wouldn’t say why. So I came back in a hurry, and as I was coming out of the cloak-room with my hat and coat on I ran into Bright, who generally saves my life when the thing is to be done promptly. I suppose I looked rather wild, didn’t I, Ham?”

  “Rather. You were white — and queer altogether. I thought you ‘had it bad.’”

  There was a titter and a laugh, as the two men looked at one another and smiled.

  “Well, you’ve not often been wrong, Ham,” said Ralston, laughing too. “I don’t propose to let my guardian angel lead a life of happy idleness—”

  “Keep an angel, and save yourself,” suggested Miner.

  “Don’t make them laugh till I’ve finished,” said Ralston, “or they won’t understand. Well — Ham tried to hold me, and I wouldn’t be held. He’s about twenty times stronger than I am, anyhow, and he’d got hold of my arm — wanted to calm me before I went out, as he thought. I lost my temper—”

  “Your family’s been advertising a reward if it’s found, ever since you were born,” observed Miner.

  “Suppress that man, can’t you — somebody?” cried Ralston, good-naturedly. “So I tripped Bright up under Miner’s nose — and there was Crowdie there, and a couple of servants, so it was rather a public affair. I got out of the door, and made for the park — uncle Robert’s, you know. Being in a rage, I walked, and passing the Murray Hill Hotel, I went in, from sheer force of habit, and ordered a cocktail. I hadn’t more than tasted it when I remembered what I was about, and promptly did the Spartan dodge — to the surprise of the bar-tender — and put it down and went out. Then uncle Robert and I had rather a warm discussion. Unfortunately, too, just that drop of whiskey — forgive the details, Miss Van De Water — you know I warned you — just that drop of whiskey I had touched was distinctly perceptible to the old gentleman’s nostrils, and he began to call me names, and I got angry, and being excited already, I daresay he really thought I wasn’t sober. Anyhow, he managed to knock my hat out of my hand and smash it — ask him the first time you see him, if any of you doubt it.”

  “Oh, nobody doubts you, Jack,” said Teddy Van De Water, vehemently. “Don’t be an idiot!”

  “Thank you, Teddy,” laughed Ralston. “Well, the next thing was that I bolted out of the house with a smashed hat, and forgot my overcoat in my rage. It’s there still, hanging in uncle Robert’s hall. And, of course, being so angry, I never thought of my hat. It must have looked oddly enough. I w
ent down Fifth Avenue, past the reservoir — nearly a mile in that state.”

  “I met you,” observed Russell Vanbrugh. “I was just coming home — been late down town. I thought you looked rather seedy, but you walked straight enough.”

  “Of course I did — being perfectly sober, and only angry. I must have turned into East Fortieth or Thirty-ninth, when I stopped to light a cigar. The waxlight dazzled me, I suppose, for when I went on I fell over something — that street is awfully dark after the avenue — and I hurt my head and my hand. This finger—”

  He held up his right hand of which one finger was encased in black silk. Katharine remembered the spot of blood on the letter.

  “Then I don’t know what happened to me. Doctor Routh said I had a concussion of the brain and lost the sense of direction, but I lost my senses, anyhow. Have any of you fellows ever had that happen to you? It’s awfully queer?”

  “I have,” said Bright. “I know — you’re all right, but you can’t tell where you’re going.”

  “Exactly — you can’t tell which is right and which is left. You recognize houses, but don’t know which way to turn to get to your own. I lost myself in New York. I’m glad I’ve had the experience, but I don’t want it again. Do you know where I found myself and got my direction again? Away down in Tompkins Square. It was ten o’clock, and I’d missed a dinner-party, and thought I should just have time to get home and dress, and go to the Assembly. But I wasn’t meant to. I was dazed and queer still, and it had been snowing for hours and I had no overcoat. I found a horse-car going up town and got on. There was nobody else on it but that prize-fighter chap, who turns out to have been Tom Shelton. It was nice and warm in the car, and I must have been pretty well fagged out, for I sat down at the upper end and dropped asleep without telling the conductor to wake me at my street. I never fell asleep in a horse-car before in my life, and didn’t expect to then. I don’t know what happened after that — at least not distinctly. They must have tried to wake me with kicks and screams, or something, for I remember hitting out, and then a struggle, and I was pitched out into the snow by the conductor and the prize-fighter. Of course I jumped up and made for the fighting man, and I remember hearing something about a fair fight, and then a lot of men came running up with lanterns, and I was squaring up to Tom Shelton. I caught him one on the mouth, and I suppose that roused him. I can see that right-hand counter of his coming at me now, but I couldn’t stop it for the life of me — and that was the last I saw, until I opened my eyes in my own room and saw my mother looking at me. She sent for Doctor Routh, and he saw that I wasn’t going to die and went home, leaving everybody considerably relieved. But he wasn’t at all sure that I hadn’t been larking, when he first came, so he took the trouble to make a thorough examination. I wasn’t really hurt much, and though I’d had such a crack from Shelton, and the other one when I tumbled in the dark, I had pretty nearly an hour’s sleep in the horse-car as a set-off. Then my mother brought me things to eat — of course all the servants were in bed, and she’d rung for a messenger in order to send for Routh. And I sat up and wrote a long letter before I went to bed, though it wasn’t easy work, with my hand hurt and my head rather queer. I wish I hadn’t, though — it was more to show that I could, than anything else. There — I think I’ve told you the whole story. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it shorter.”

  “It wasn’t at all too long, Jack,” said Katharine, in clear and gentle tones.

  She was very white as she turned her face to him. Every one agreed with her, and every one began talking at once. But John did not look at her. He answered some question put to him by the young girl on his left, and at once entered into conversation at that side, without taking any more notice of Katharine than she had taken of him before.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  THE DINNER WAS almost at an end, when John spoke to Katharine again. Every one was laughing and talking at once. The point had been reached at which young people laugh at anything out of sheer good spirits, and Frank Miner had only to open his lips, at his end of the table, to set the clear voices ringing; while at the other, Teddy Van De Water, whose conversational powers were not brilliant, but who possessed considerable power over his fresh, thin, plain young face, excited undeserved applause by putting up his eyeglass every other minute, staring solemnly at John as the hero of the evening, and then dropping it with a ridiculous little smirk, supposed to be expressive of admiration and respect.

  John saw him do it two or three times, while turning towards him in the act of talking to his neighbour on his left, and smiled good-naturedly at each repetition of the trick. To tell the truth, the evident turn of feeling in his favour had so far influenced his depressed spirits that he smiled almost naturally, out of sympathy, because every one was so happy and so gay. But he was soon tired of young Van De Water’s joke, before the others were, and looking away in order not to see the eyeglass fall again, he caught sight of Katharine’s face.

  Her eyes were not upon him, and she might have been supposed to be looking past him at some one seated farther down the table, but she saw him and watched him, nevertheless. She was quite silent now, and her face was pale. He only glanced at her, and was already turning his head away once more when her lips moved.

  “Jack!” she said, in a low voice, that trembled but reached his ear, even amidst the peals of laughter which filled the room.

  He looked at her again, and his features hardened a little in spite of him. But he knew that Bright, who sat opposite, was watching both Katharine and himself, and he did his best to seem natural and unconcerned.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She did not find words immediately with which to answer the simple question, but her face told all that her voice should have said, and more. The contraction of the broad brows was gone at last, and the great grey eyes were soft and pleading.

  “You know,” she said, at last.

  John felt that his lips would have curled rather scornfully, if he had allowed them. He set his mouth, by an effort, in a hard, civil smile. It was the best he could do, for he had been badly hurt. Repentance sometimes satisfies the offender, but he who has been offended demands blood money. John deserved some credit for saying nothing, and even for his cold, conventional smile.

  “Jack — dear — aren’t you going to forgive me?” she asked, in a still lower tone than before.

  Ralston glanced up and down the table, man-like, to see whether they were watched. But no one was paying any attention to them. Hamilton Bright was looking away, just then.

  “Why didn’t you answer my letter?” asked John, at last, but he could not disguise the bitterness of his voice.

  “I only — it only came — that is — it was this evening, when I was all dressed to come here.”

  John could not control his expression any longer, and his lip bent contemptuously, in spite of himself.

  “It was mailed very early this morning, with a special delivery stamp,” he said, coldly.

  “Yes, it reached the house — but — oh, Jack! How can I explain, with all these people?”

  “It wouldn’t be easy without the people,” he answered. “Nobody hears what we’re saying.”

  Katharine was silent for a moment, and looked at her plate. In a lover’s quarrel, the man has the advantage, if it takes place in the midst of acquaintances who may see what is happening. He is stronger and, as a rule, cooler, though rarely, at heart, so cold. A woman, to be persuasive, must be more or less demonstrative, and demonstrativeness is visible to others, even from a great distance. Katharine did not belittle the hardness of what she had to do in so far as she reckoned the odds at all. She loved John too well, and knew again that she loved him; and she understood fully how she had injured him, if not how much she had hurt him. She was suffering herself, too, and greatly — much more than she had suffered so long as her anger had lasted, for she knew, too late, that she should have believed in him when others did not, rather than when all were for him and with
him, so that she was the very last to take his part. But it was hard, and she tried to think that she had some justification.

  After Ralston had finished telling his story, Russell Vanbrugh, who was an eminent criminal lawyer, had commented to her upon the adventure, telling her how men had been hanged upon just such circumstantial evidence, when it had not chanced that such a man as Doctor Routh, at the head of his profession and above all possible suspicion, had intervened in time. She tried to argue that she might be pardoned for being misled, as she had been. But her conscience told her flatly that she was deceiving herself, that she had really known far less than most of the others about the events of the previous day, some of which were now altogether new to her, that she had judged John in the worst light from the first words she had heard about him at the Assembly ball, and had not even been at pains to examine the circumstances so far as she might have known them. And she remembered how, but a short time previous to the present moment, she had looked at the sealed envelope with disgust — almost with loathing, and had turned over its ashes with the tongs. Yet that letter had cost him a supreme effort of strength and will, made for her sake, when he was bruised and wounded and exhausted with fatigue.

  “Jack,” she said at last, turning to him again, “I must talk to you. Please come to me right after dinner — when you come back with the men — will you?”

  “Certainly,” answered John.

  He knew that an explanation was inevitable. Oddly enough, though he now had by far the best of the situation, he did not wish that the explanatory interview might come so soon. Perhaps he did not wish for it at all. With Katharine love was alive again, working and suffering. With him there was no response, where love had been. In its place there was an unformulated longing to be left alone for a time, not to be forced to realize how utterly he had been distrusted and abandoned when he had most needed faith and support. There was an unwilling and unjust comparison of Katharine with his mother, too, which presented itself constantly. Losing the sense of values and forgetting how his mother had denied his word of honour, he remembered only that her disbelief had lasted but an hour, and that hour seemed now but an insignificant moment. She had done so much, too, and at once. He recalled, amid the noise and laughter, the clinking of the things on the little tray she had brought up for him and set down outside his door — a foolish detail, but one of those which strike fast little roots as soon as the seed has fallen. The reaction, too, after all he had gone through, was coming at last and was telling even on his wiry organization. Most men would have broken down already. He wished that he might be spared the necessity of Katharine’s explanation — that she would write to him, and that he might read in peace and ponder at his leisure — and answer at his discretion. Yet he knew very well that the situation must be cleared up at once. He regretted having given Katharine but that one word in answer to her appeal — for he did not wish to seem even more unforgiving than he felt.