Katharine Frensham: A Novel

"Ah, that's right," Katharine said, and she glanced at one of the letters.

"Will you come and see me?" Alan said with a jerk.

"Of course I will," she said.

Then she turned to her letters. Alan did not go away. He sat in the window recess cutting at a model of a Laplander's pulk (sledge) which the Sorenskriver had given him. Katharine forgot about him, forgot for the moment about everything, except the contents of her letters.

Ronald wrote in great trouble begging for her return. As she had guessed, money matters had been going wrong with him; he had been gambling on the Stock Exchange, had lost heavily, had taken money from the business, crippled it, compromised it, compromised himself, compromised her, but he could and would retrieve everything if she would stand by him.

"Stand by you; of course I'll stand by you," she said staunchly.

In his hour of happiness he had shut her out; and now in his hour of need he opened the door to her, and she went in gladly, without a thought of bitterness in her heart.

"Stand by you; of course I'll stand by you," she repeated. "Poor old fellow! In trouble, and through your own fault entirely – the worst kind of trouble to bear, too, because there is no one to blame except your own self."

The other letter was from Margaret Tonedale, Willy's sister. She wrote that Willy had been very ill from pneumonia, and they had nearly lost him. He was still ill and dreadfully low, and asked repeatedly for Katharine. His intense and unsatisfied yearning to see her was retarding his recovery, and Margaret felt that she must let Katharine know, so that if she were thinking of returning soon, she might perhaps be inclined to hasten her steps homewards.

And the letter ended with these words:

"Although you do not want to marry him, Kath, you love and prize him, as we all do, and I know you would wish to help him and us."

"Dear old Willy," she said. "Faithful old fellow. Of course, I must go and see after you."

She had been living her own personal life, focusing on the present and the sad and sweet circumstances of the present, slipping away for the time from home affairs, home ties, deliberately pushing aside any passing uneasy thoughts about Ronald's extravagant mode of life, letting herself go forward untrammelled into a new world of hopes and fears.

But now voices from the old world of a few short weeks ago, the old world grown strangely older in a few swift days, loved voices, with all the irresistible, exacting persuasion of the past, called to her.

She rose, determined to go home at once, and then she saw Alan.

"Alan," she said, "I must go and find out about the trains and the boat. I must return at once."

"Go away from us?" the boy asked. And he looked as though he heard of some great calamity.

It was he who broke the news to his father.

"Father," he said, "she is going away. Can't we go too?"

Clifford made no answer. He seemed stunned. His face was ashen when he sought Katharine out, and said in a voice that trembled:

"Is it I who am driving you away?"

"No, no," she answered. "I shall write to you. I shall write to you. I cannot trust myself to speak. If I began, I – "

It was she who broke off this time.

"I have so much I want to say to you," she went on. "Up at Peer Gynt's stue, when I turned towards you, I – "

She broke off again.

The news spread about that the Englishwoman was returning to England the very next morning. It caused general dissatisfaction.

"Going away!" said Bedstemor. "Why doesn't she stay in Norway? That is the only place to live in."

"Going to leave the Gaard!" said Solli reproachfully; "before the harvest is gathered in too."

"Going to England!" said the Sorenskriver sulkily; "to that barbarous country, which scarcely exists on the map."

"Going away!" exclaimed old Kari, "and before the cows come down from the mountains."

"Going away!" said Gerda, "before my Ejnar brings us 'the Ranunculus glacialis.'"

"Going to England!" said Knutty, "leaving us all in the lurch here, alone, without you. Leaving me, my icebergs, and my botanists – and for the sake of a brother and a sick friend: people whom you've known all your life! I never heard of anything so inhuman. Brothers indeed; sick friends indeed! Let them take care of themselves. Bah, these relations! They always choose the wrong time for crises; and as for friends, they are always sick when you want them to be well, and well when you want them to be sick. Ignore them all, kjaere, and stay with us."

But in spite of their loving protests, Katharine tore herself away: from the beautiful Gudbrandsdal, from the quaint and simple peasant life, from the surroundings which were hallowed for ever in her memory.

Her departure took place so quietly that no one realised that she had gone. Knutty sat on the verandah trying to work at the Danish translation; but, discovering that her nerves were out of order, she found it a relief to pick a quarrel with the Sorenskriver, who had sulkily refused to go to the station, and then was angry with himself and consequently with the whole world.

At last Clifford came back from the station. He sat down by Knutty's side.

"Knutty, she has gone," he said forlornly.

"Kjaere," she said, comforting him as she put her hand on his head. "My poor iceberg."

Alan came. He, too, sat down by Knutty's side.

"Knutty, she has gone," the boy said sadly.

"Kjaere," Knutty said, and she put her hand on his head too. "My poor other iceberg."

Then she turned to them with a smile on her face.

"I see daylight!" she cried. "Go after her!"

PART III

IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

"Maccaroni of my native land!" said Signor Luigi one day whilst sitting in Katharine's private room at the organ-factory – "Maccaroni of my native land! And so the Signorina have become a real business-personage, helping 'brother' to build the best organs in the world. But the Signorina must not work too hard. She must not depart the roses from her cheeks. And she must eat her lunch lentissimo largissimo, as now. Ha, this coffee is very good. And the rolls and butter is adorable."

Katharine laughed, and poured out another cup of coffee for the merry little Italian.

"No," he repeated, "she must not depart the adorable roses from her cheeks."

"Oh, I am not too tired," Katharine said. "Of course it was a little trying at first to get accustomed to routine work. But after a time it goes swimmingly, Signor Luigi; and I assure you I should be quite lost now if I did not come down to the factory every day. Let me see. I have been at it three months. You all said I should give it up after three days."

"We all thought the Signorina were made to have all the time to herself and to command her faithful servants," the little violoncellist answered gallantly.

"But I can still command my faithful servants, I suppose?" Katharine asked with a smile.

"Always, always!" he replied, waving his spoon in the air.

"You see," Katharine continued, nodding at him approvingly, "I was bent on filling up my life with something which was worth doing. Even before I left England, I had got tired of the ordinary leisured woman's life. And when I came home again and went amongst my friends and acquaintances, I saw it was going to be impossible to me to take such a life up once more and even pretend to myself that I was enjoying it. The whole thing bored me, wearied me. But here I am not bored. Moreover, I am delighted with myself, and proud to find myself developing all sorts of unexpected abilities!"

"I have always said that the Signorina have the abilities of all the cleverest and beautifullest personages in all the centuries and all the countries," said Signor Luigi. "Light of mine eyeballs, light of mine eyeballs! I have always said she could build organs for 'brother,' play on the trombone, on the adorable drums, do anything and everything – except one thing."

"And what is that?" Katharine said.

"The Signorina could not leave off being her adorable self although she have become the busy, busy business-personage," he answered, with a nourish of the coffee-cup. "But now I go. I dare not stay one leetle minute longer. I have not the wish to be deported like the Pomeranian dog. Ah, he have gone away with the other grand things of 'brother's' grand house. But 'brother' looks happier. And every month 'brother' will be happier. Not so many illustrious expenses, not so much animato agitato of the spirits! I know. I am calmer since I cut down the half of my native maccaroni. For the times is bad, Signorina. No one is pining himself to learn the violoncello or listen to it. No, he prefer to dash away in a motor-car, and the poor musician – well, he must cut down his maccaroni and play to himself and give lessons to himself. Or he must change his profession and be motor-car driver. I have the serious thoughts about it, Signorina. But I will not drive you and 'brother' till I have practised on other people. Ha, here is 'brother.'"

Ronald came in looking pleased.

"We have got the order for that organ in Natal," he said, nodding to Signor Luigi. "I am awfully glad about it. Don't go, Luigi."

"Noble 'brother,' I must go," the little Italian answered. "I have a pupil at twelve o'clock, and it is now two. She go out in the motor-car, and I allow her three whole hours for being late for her lesson. Ah, the times has indeed changed. The enthusiasms has gone to sleep. Never mind. Vive le quartette! Remember, 'brother,' there is a meeting next week at Herr Edelhart's, and an audience of one is expected."

He looked at Katharine as he spoke, put his hand to his heart, and was gone. But he returned immediately, and added:

"Monsieur Gervais begged the Signorina would be careful not to get the brain fevers over her hard work. He will come next week to pay his compliments. He says he now has the inflammations of the lungs himself."

Ronald, left alone with Katharine, put his hand on her arm.

"Kath," he said gently, "you must not work too hard. You are looking tired. I know well that my shameful behaviour has ploughed into you awfully. You have been a brick to me, old girl. You shall never regret that you stood by me with your money and your kindness. I shall never forget how you hurried back from Norway, and came to the rescue, and saved me and the good name of the firm. I can't say much about it to you now, for I am still too ashamed. But – "

"We went through bad times, Ronald, you and I and Gwendolen," Katharine answered; "but we are coming out of it with our chins well up in the air and a better understanding in our hearts. I had lost you, Ronnie; but I have found you again. I had never won Gwendolen, but – but I am winning her. And there is nothing to thank me for. This crisis in your affairs was my salvation. I never forget that. There are other crises than business crises, Ronnie. And I have been very thankful to turn away from inner troubles to outside difficulties. I begin to see why life is far easier to men than to women. The fight with the outer world braces men up. They go forth, and pass on strengthened. But the women are chained to circumstance – or chain themselves."

"You are in trouble, Kath, and have not told me?" he asked reproachfully.

"There was nothing to tell, dearest," she said, touched by his old loving manner.

"In the old days you would have told me that nothing," he said sorrowfully.

She looked up from the letters which she had suddenly begun to arrange. There were tears in her eyes. There was a grey sadness spread over her face. She was not the old Katharine of a few months ago.

"Kath," he said, "I have been thinking only of myself. I have not been noticing. But I see you are in trouble. May not a selfish fellow know even at the eleventh hour?"

She shook her head as she took his hand and fondled it.

"Some day, Ronnie," she said, almost in a whisper; "not just now."

She could not tell him. She could not tell any one. She owed it to her own self-respect, her own wounded pride, to keep silent about Clifford Thornton's strange silence to her. When she had left the Gaard, she had come home by the overland route, viâ Copenhagen and Hamburg. At Hamburg she had rested for a few hours, and in the hotel facing the lake she had written to Clifford. She poured her whole heart, all her longing and love, all her understanding tenderness into that letter. She wrote it feverishly, with emotional abandonment of all restraint. She loved him, believed in him, and what she could not tell him face to face up at Peer Gynt's stue she told him in that letter. And she received no answer to it. More than three months had passed since she wrote it, and still no sign had come from him, no signal across the vast, nothing. She had offered all she could offer, her best self – and his answer was silence. She suffered. She did not regret her impulsiveness. Throughout her life Katharine had been willing to take the consequences of her emotional temperament. She had never shrunk from paying the due price exacted by life from those who do not pause to think and weigh. Nevertheless her heart was chilled, her pride was wounded. But she said to herself time after time that she would not willingly have written one sentence, one word less. She was impelled to write that letter in that way. No other way would have been possible to her. But she believed that, from his point of view, she had said too much, let herself go too far, frightened the reserved man, lost his respect perhaps, touched him perhaps too roughly on the painful wounds which the chances of life had inflicted on him.

It was great good luck for her that she had work to do, and pressing matters and anxieties which demanded her time and intelligence. She turned herself into a business woman with that remarkable adaptability which men are only beginning to recognise and appreciate in the other sex. From her pretty flat across the water she sallied forth day after day to the organ-factory. The manager and the workmen welcomed her. They were willing to teach her. She was willing to learn. Her quick brain dealt with difficulties in a surprising fashion. Mr Barlow, the manager, had always believed in her business capacities; and it was encouraging to her to know that he was not disappointed. Moreover, she had stepped into the thick of things at a serious crisis, and by her generous action had safeguarded the honour and position of the firm; for she had sold out many of her own investments to meet Ronald's Stock Exchange debts, which otherwise might have been enforced against him as a partner of the firm. She had covered up his extravagant recklessness and his indifferent husbanding of their united interests. She knew that he had yielded to dishonourable recklessness as many another man had yielded before – for love of, and at the importunity of, a woman. She knew that as the months had gone on, he must have been increasingly harassed and torn between his passionate love for Gwendolen and his own natural feelings of what was upright in his business relationships. She was very pitiful with him: yearning as a mother over him. But on one point she was adamant. Ronald had sent Gwendolen to rich friends in the North. Katharine insisted that she should return and take her part at once in Ronald's altered circumstances; for the luxurious house in South Kensington had to be given up, and a more modest home sought for and found in Chelsea. Ronald fought this. He wished to spare his goddess.

"She has never been accustomed to having things in a small way," he said.

"Then she must learn," Katharine answered determinedly.

"You are hard on your own sex," Ronald had said, stung by her decided manner.

"I believe in my own sex," Katharine replied, flushing. "Most women are bricks, Ronnie, if men will allow them to be so. You men make fools of women in the early days of your passionate love, and then later, when it is too late, expect them to behave as sane and reasonable human beings. Gwendolen must come, and at once."

It was in vain that he pleaded.

"She is so young and beautiful, Kath, and she is having such a happy time up North," he said. "I cannot bear to bring her back to worries."

"She must come," Katharine answered.

So Gwendolen came rustling back in her silks and satins, and astonished every one, including herself, by her delighted behaviour.

"Dear old Kath!" she said. "You did not think I was a monster of selfishness and iniquity, but believed in me. You will see how fearfully economical I shall be in the future. I shall sell all my jewels, dress in brown holland, and take in all the darning of the neighbourhood!"

So Katharine had reason to be a little comforted. If she had lost some joys in life, she had gained others.

But she fretted. She had not much leisure, but in her spare time she went down to the Natural History Museum and hung over the cases in the Mineral Department. That was a mournful sort of consolation to her: to be where she had been with Clifford. Once or twice she started off to see Alan. But she turned back. If the father had given no sign, it was not fitting for her to seek out the boy. Several times she wrote long letters to Knutty, and tore them up. The letters she did send to Knutty contained no allusion to Clifford. When the old Dane read them, she said, "Great powers! Is she becoming an iceberg too, or am I mad?"

She sat constantly in the Abbey. She listened to the organ, to the singing. She thought of the gracious day in the summer when Clifford and she had passed along by the glacier-river, and stopped to rest in the old brown church where they sat silently. There was no organ. There was no singing. The music was in their own hearts.

One day she met Herr Edelhart in the Poet's Corner. He was looking grave.

"Yes," he said, "the times are wunderbar bad for great souls, great artistes like mineself. No one wishes to hear me play. And, lieber Himmel, when I think of it, what a tone I have! In this Abbey I could make my little violino into a great orchestra. Ach, Fräulein, but you know. You, with the wunderbar charm, know. But you yourself are sad. 'Brother's' troubles have been too much for you?"

Katharine smiled to herself.

"Poor 'brother'!" she thought. "I am letting him be held responsible for all my sadness."

Willy Tonedale was the only one who did not think Ronald entirely responsible for Katharine's altered manner. He questioned her about Clifford Thornton, and could get nothing from her in the way of confidence. He found her reading weird books about dreams, their meaning and their relationship to normal consciousness. She spent long hours over that subject, and could make nothing of it.

"I did not know you went in for this sort of game, Kath," he said one day.

"Oh, I do not go in for it," she said, with a slight laugh. "But I was curious to see what had been written about it. The books are disappointing. They record such trivial incidents."

Willy looked at her uneasily.

"I believe you are going to become a scholar as well as a business woman, Kath," he said.

He shook his head. He seemed to think that she was in a very bad way.

A few days afterwards he found her studying a scientific book, "Outlines of Organic Chemistry." It was true that she had it upside down; but, as he remarked, that only added to the abstruseness of the subject.

"Good heavens, Kath!" he said, as he took up the book gingerly, treating it as if it were an explosive, "what on earth have you got here? Didn't know you went in for chemistry too. What in the name of all the Cæsars does an asymmetric atom of carbon mean? I never heard of the beasty before."

"Nor did I," answered Katharine, with a hopeless smile. That book had really been too much for her. Yet she loved to have it. It was only one of the many scientific books she had been buying since she returned from Norway. Willy saw them on the shelf. They were nearly all lives of great chemists, or handbooks on chemistry. He examined them one by one, and then turned to her.

"Kath," he said gently, "don't forget that you trusted me before."

CHAPTER II

But Katharine could tell him nothing; and he, seeing that she wished to keep her own counsel, asked her nothing. But he insisted that she should spend some of her leisure time in his home; and when she was there, he tried to be, so he said, his brightest and quickest self, in order to cheer her and chase away all bad effects of business and culture. One Sunday when she went, he was in great spirits. He had sold his picture of Mary, Queen of Scots.

"You now see the advantage of working slowly," he said in a grandiose manner. "I have taken sixteen years of continuous thought and study to paint that immortal picture. One year less would not have done the trick! By Jove! Kath, won't that look well in the papers? All the fellows I know paint six pictures a-year, or write twelve books a-month. But I, Willy Tonedale, the much-abused slow one, have painted one picture in sixteen years. I admit that an artist does not become rich on one picture in sixteen years. But reflect, I beg you, on the thought, the patient historic research involved, and the reward reached after long, long years of toil! What a good thing I didn't die over that pneumonia affair! I should have gone spark out if you had not come over from Norway and called me back to life. I began to get better directly you returned, Kath, and directly mother left off engaging the Christian Science creature to heal me. Of course mother makes out that I was cured by Christian Science; but I say I was cured by Katharine Science. Smart of me, isn't it? But then I am getting awfully sharp! I'm amazed at myself. Seems to me, though, that as I become sharper, every one I know becomes duller. Margaret is quite flattened out with Causes, and wears sandals. Mother is a weird mixture of depression and superiority from Christian Science and the Salisbury treatment; even my belovèd cousin Julia looks devitalised and chastened. She only speaks in a whisper, and her face is the colour of artichoke-soup. She says she had a fright in Norway."

Katharine laughed.

"I should think she did have a fright in Norway," Katharine said, brightening up. And she told Willy something of what had happened up at the Saeter.

"And what are you going to do to her when you see her?" he asked.

"Nothing," Katharine answered. "I do not mind what she thinks of me. I know you do not think I ever behaved badly to you."

"I know what I am going to do to her when I see her again," he said.

"Don't do anything stupid," Katharine said. "It isn't worth while."

"What will Professor Thornton do to her?" Willy asked slowly, after a pause.

"I could not say," replied Katharine quietly. "Probably nothing."

"Haven't you seen him lately?" Willy asked.

"No," she replied, turning away from him. She could not bear to talk of Clifford, and yet she wished to make the effort in return for all Willy's gentle kindness.

Willy waited. She turned to him again with her old impulsiveness, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I think he did not care for me after all, Willy," she said almost in a whisper. "That is all there is to tell you."

"It would not be possible for him not to care," Willy answered; and this time it was he who turned away.

"But, all the same, Kath," he went on when he had recovered himself, "you must not work too hard at business. Ronnie is a duffer and doesn't see, and Gwendolen wouldn't notice if any one were ill except herself. But I know you are overdoing it. I don't half like your being down at the factory."

"It is most curious how I seem to have to apologise to my friends for taking up some serious work," Katharine said. "No one would have any criticism to make if I were tiring myself over pleasure. And yet I assure you that dealing with pipes and reeds and bellows and sounding-boards and pedals, and even clergymen, is far less tiring than the ordinary routine of leisured pleasure, and much more interesting."

"I always understood clergymen were tiring persons," Willy suggested.

"They may be tiring in their pulpits," Katharine answered, "but not when they come to order organs! At any rate, one can put up with them then. Then, the price is worth the preaching!"

"Ah," he said, "there is a bit of your old fun again. Your friends will not mind what you do, if only you keep your old bright happiness; we'll allow you to be as business-like, as cultured, as learned – yes, Kath – as scientific as you please, only you must not be unhappy. I'm not going to be unhappy. I am going to begin another picture to-morrow. I shall get cousin Julia to sit for me as Lucretia Borgia in a chastened mood. Do you remember my saying that you were made for happiness? As I am a living artist of great but slow genius, I mean it, Kath. You'll get your heart's desires. I know you will. Believe my word. I am never mistaken. And as for cousin Julia, you are right, we will not bother about her: she will have to sit for Lucretia Borgia."