An Unknown Lover by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (hardest books to read TXT) 📖

was not her fear. Her fear was lest Martin should not be angry.

Grizel considered, a slow smile curving her lips.

“But that,” she said, “would be amusing. Much more amusing than buying cabbages. I’d like to see Martin angry!”

She turned and continued her way. From her position by the bell Katrine could watch her progress up the staircase, could note the grace of the slim white form. “Her nose is red!” chanted the inner voice. “Her nose is red!” Amongst a medley of disagreeable reflections the thought appeared to stand out in solitary comfort. It was hardly more than a week since Grizel had arrived, eight days to be exact, yet to Katrine standing alone in the dark old room, it appeared that the whole structure of life had in that time undergone a radical change. It was not a change which could be registered in facts; the days had been spent in ordinary happenings, tea parties in neighbouring gardens, drives through the country lanes, small dinner parties, a day on the river. There was no single incident on which she could lay a finger and declare that here or there stood the dividing mark between past and present. The change was in the air; impalpable yet real; Katrine’s sensitive nature felt it in every fibre, inhaled it with every breath. Behind the peaceful, smiling exterior she divined a smouldering passion. The atmosphere was flecked with fire; it flamed beneath the most trivial words, the most trivial deeds. From an ice-bound solitude she looked on, understanding with a keenness of vision, as new as it was bitter. During the last days her mind had been incessantly occupied reviewing the past, searching it in the light of the present. Juliet, Grizel, and herself had been schoolmates at a French boarding-school. Grizel had accompanied her on a short visit to the married couple in the autumn after their marriage. That was the first time that Martin had seen her, and even in the midst of his bridegroom’s joy, he had been attracted, impressed. Then came two long, black years, at the end of which, taking her courage in both hands, she had enquired if Martin would object if Grizel came down for a few days. The mysterious storehouse of the brain had registered the moment, so that she could still see her brother’s face before her, as he lifted it from his book—the young, drawn face, with the haggard eyes. Something approaching a light of interest dawned in the wan depths.

“Grizel Dundas?” he queried slowly; and after a pause. “Certainly! Why not? I’d like to see her!”

So Grizel had come. Memory again registered the fact that it was in response to one of her sallies that Martin had laughed for the first time: an honest, wholesome laugh. She had come again the next year, and had been warmly welcomed. Then had followed an interval. Lady Griselda’s health had begun to fail, she was much abroad, and when at home, disinclined to spare her niece. It was not until the fifth year of Martin’s widower-hood that Grizel again visited The Glen, but since then every six or seven months had brought about more or less fleeting visits. Questioning herself, Katrine realised that while at the beginning she herself had been the one to suggest a fresh invitation, for the last two years Martin had taken the initiative, while she, with an instinctive unwillingness, had sought excuses.

Could it be that subconsciously she had divined this ending; had known that slowly, surely, Martin’s heart was passing into Grizel’s keeping? She had held fiercely to the remembrance of Juliet; to the ideal of lifelong faithfulness; held to it the more fiercely as doubt grew, but now it was no longer doubt, it was certainty. Martin loved Grizel with the love of a full-grown man, compared with which that pretty idyll of the past had been child’s play. And Grizel? Who could say! That she would not marry while her aunt lived had for years been an accepted fact, but Lady Griselda’s days were numbered. In a few months the question of Grizel’s future position would be decided, and then—Katrine’s mind had a flashlight realisation of two alternatives, Martin refused, despairing, Martin accepted, aglow. For one black moment of involuntary selfishness, each seemed equally obnoxious. Then with a stifled sob, she shut the door, and buried her face in her hands.

Throughout the silent house travelled the sound of an imperative rap.

“Who’s there?”

The sharp, impatient voice was enough to quell the courage of an ordinary intruder. Grizel chuckled, and knocked once more, a trifle more loudly than before.

“Who’s—there?”

“Me!”

It was the tiniest of squeaks, and the irate author, shouting back an imperious “Go away!” settled himself to his task, but the knock sounded yet again, and in a fury of impatience he dashed to the door and stood scowling upon the threshold.

“What the—”

“Devil—” concluded Grizel calmly, “but it isn’t. It’s me. Let me in, Martin! It’s a choice between you and buying cabbages in the rain. Katrine says so, and I should catch my death of cold.”

But the change in the man’s face was startling to behold. The scowl had vanished, had been wiped out of being at the first swift glance, and with it the fret, and the tire. The deep-set eyes glowed upon her, the hands stretched out.

“Grizel! Come in! Come in! I was just thinking. Wishing—”

Grizel floated past into the forbidden room, her glance as easily avoiding his as her hands escaped his grasp. There was nothing curt or forbidding in the evasion, she seemed simply oblivious of anything but a friendly warmth of manner; engrossed in an interested survey of the study itself. Her eyes roved round the book-lined walls, and rested brightening upon the old-fashioned hearth. The fire was laid. In a basket on one side of the hearth reposed a pile of resined logs. A copper vase obviously contained coal.

“Martin!” she cried eagerly, “let’s light up! I’ve been perished all morning. Katrine says I’m unsuitably dressed. I am, but I never dress to suit rooms. I heat them to suit me! Would you think the room unbearably stuffy if we had a fire?”

“Not a bit of it! I often do. Sitting at a desk is chilly work.”

He was already on his knees, posing logs scientifically over the paper and wood, balancing small pieces of coal on the top. In an incredibly short time a cheerful blaze was illuminating the room, and Grizel, kicking off small brown shoes, was crinkling her toes before the fire. Martin drew forward a second chair and seated himself beside her, in apparent forgetfulness of the papers scattered over the desk.

“What a shame that you should be so chilled! Why haven’t you had a fire downstairs?”

“Katrine preferred exercise. She recommended a flannel shirt, and an expedition to buy cabbages. British and bracing. Can you imagine me, Martin, buying cabbages, in the rain, in a flannel shirt?”

He looked at her; an eloquent glance. There were two feelings warring in his breast, indignation against his sister for her callousness and lack of consideration, and a rush of protective tenderness towards the sweet martyr so abused, for it is one of the injustices of life that the woman who smiles and looks beautiful will always take precedence in a man’s heart over the assiduous purchaser of cabbages. For a moment sympathy engrossed Martin’s mind, then he smiled; a somewhat difficult smile.

“It is hardly your métier! Still, if it happened that you were in Katrine’s position; if it came in your day’s work—”

“If the garden were properly managed you would not need to buy cabbages! I’d dismiss the gardener!” pronounced Grizel briskly, and once again a dangerous moment had come, and gone. She cowered over the fire, holding out her hands, hitching her shoulders to her ears. Her nose was still red; if Katrine had been present she would have told herself that no man could possibly admire a woman with a red nose, but Martin had not so much as noticed the fact, and if he had, would have felt it to be a wonderful and beautiful thing that Grizel’s nose could be red, like that of an ordinary mortal. It would have appeared to him the most endearing of traits.

“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder Grizel, how you would stand poverty! Comparative poverty, I mean, of course. You have never realised the meaning of money. You have wanted a thing, and it has been yours. You have not adapted yourself to circumstances, circumstances have been made to adapt themselves to you. It is the fashion to decry the power of riches, but in the case of a woman like yourself, young, and strong, and beautiful, and sane, it is folly to pretend that they are not a valuable asset. You have been happy—”

“Yes!” assented Grizel thoughtfully. “Yes!” She stared into the fire, her small face very grave. “I like money; so much money that one need not have the thought of it always before one. It would seem to me debasing to be always considering costs, planning and contriving. It would hold one’s thoughts down. And I have never felt burdened by responsibility. That’s what they say, you know,—the dear, serious folks,—they call wealth a burden and responsibility, but I’ve loved to be able to give and to help. I’ve my own little way about giving...” (The listener smiled. When had Grizel not her own way!) “The public charities must be supported, of course, that’s mechanical; a mere signing of cheques, but the interesting part is to get hold of private cases, and see them through! Will you be shocked, Martin, when I tell you that my particular forte is helping people who have failed through—their own fault! Not misfortune, but drink, gambling, other things, of which they might have kept free, but—didn’t! It’s a kind old world; every one is ready to help the unfortunate, but when a man has had a chance, and thrown it away, when it’s ‘nobody’s fault but his own,’ then,” she shrugged her slight shoulders, “he goes into outer darkness! People have ‘enough to do’ helping those who ‘deserve it,’ and so I do the other thing! My old Buddy has never limited me as to money; the only time when she is annoyed, is when I’ve not spent enough. I have quite a battalion of lost causes dependent on me now. It would hurt to give them up.”

There was a moment’s silence, then:

“And have you no idea?” asked Martin tentatively. “None at all, whether in the end—?”

Grizel laughed. It was rare indeed that she was serious for more than a minute at a time.

“Not—one! Isn’t it odd? Like a position in a feuilleton. Never once has the subject been mentioned between us. I have had, as I said, command of unlimited money since I left school, but she dreads the idea of death; it must never be mentioned in her presence, or anything approximately suggesting it. For the last few years she has been, of course, increasingly irresponsible, but before that we lived always as if the present would last for ever... She has never even alluded to the time when I should be alone.”

“But surely there must have been,—I know, Grizel, that there have been men,—many men!”

“Ah!” cried Grizel deeply, and chuckled with reminiscent enjoyment. “Just so. There was one, a bold one, who questioned her point blank on her intentions. He lived; he came out of the room alive, but that was as much as one could say. He got the best dressing down of his life, but that was all he did get. And he didn’t trouble me any more.”

“Cur! But they were not all so mercenary?”

“No.” Grizel looked thoughtful once more. “Certainly not. I like men. They are nice things; not really mercenary unless they’re obliged. But it’s a difficult position to saddle yourself with a wife who may turn out a colossal heiress, or on the other hand—a pauper!