The Yellow Book Volume II Part 21

V

One afternoon, some months later, Broomhurst climbed the steep lane leading to the cliffs of a little English village by the sea. He had already been to the inn, and had been shown by the proprietress the house where Mrs. Drayton lodged.

"The lady was out, but the gentleman would likely find her if he went to the cliffs--down by the bay, or thereabouts," her landlady explained, and, obeying her directions, Broomhurst presently emerged from the shady woodland path on to the hillside overhanging the sea.

He glanced eagerly round him, and then with a sudden quickening of the heart, walked on over the springy heather to where she sat. She turned when the rustling his footsteps made through the bracken was near enough to arrest her attention, and looked up at him as he came. Then she rose slowly and stood waiting for him. He came up to her without a word and seized both her hands, devouring her face with his eyes.

Something he saw there repelled him. Slowly he let her hands fall, still looking at her silently. "You are not glad to see me, and I have counted the hours," he said at last in a dull toneless voice.

Her lips quivered. "Don't be angry with me--I can't help it--I'm not glad or sorry for anything now," she answered, and her voice matched his for greyness.

They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry clump of whortleberries. Behind them the lonely hillsides rose, brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather. Before them stretched the wide sea. It was a soft grey day. Streaks of pale sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water. The tide was rising in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks towards the sh.o.r.e, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it. The m.u.f.fled pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence. Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern suns.h.i.+ne, of the whirr of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance. He turned and looked at his companion.

"I have come thousands of miles to see you," he said; "aren't you going to speak to me now I am here?"

"Why did you come? I told you not to come," she answered, falteringly.

"I----" she paused.

"And I replied that I should follow you--if you remember," he answered, still quietly. "I came because I would not listen to what you said then, at that awful time. You didn't know _yourself_ what you said. No wonder! I have given you some months, and now I have come."

There was silence between them. Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap. Her face, he noticed, was thin and drawn.

Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to him. She made no resistance--it seemed that she did not notice the movement; and his arm dropped at his side.

"You asked me why I had come? You think it possible that three months can change one, very thoroughly, then?" he said in a cold voice.

"I not only think it possible, I have proved it," she replied wearily.

He turned round and faced her.

"You _did_ love me, Kathleen!" he a.s.serted; "you never said so in words, but I know it," he added fiercely.

"Yes, I did."

"And----You mean that you don't now?"

Her voice was very tired. "Yes--I can't help it," she answered, "it has gone--utterly."

The grey sea slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterwards, by a short hard laugh from the man.

"Don't!" she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm. "Do you think it isn't worse for me? I wish to G.o.d I _did_ love you," she cried pa.s.sionately. "Perhaps it would make me forget that to all intents and purposes I am a murderess."

Broomhurst met her wide despairing eyes with an amazement which yielded to sudden pitying comprehension.

"So that is it, my darling? You are worrying about _that_? You who were as loyal, as----"

She stopped him with a frantic gesture.

"Don't! _don't_!" she wailed. "If you only knew; let me try to tell you--will you?" she urged pitifully. "It may be better if I tell someone--if I don't keep it all to myself, and think, and _think_."

She clasped her hands tight, with the old gesture he remembered when she was struggling for self-control, and waited a moment.

Presently she began to speak in a low hurried tone: "It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it, I used to repeat things to myself all day--poems, stupid rhymes--_anything_ to keep my thoughts quite underneath--but I--_hated_ John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say: 'Why did you marry him?'" She looked drearily over the placid sea. "Why _did_ I marry him? I don't know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn't a happy one. I was miserable, and oh,--_restless_. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can't even guess. John wanted me very badly--n.o.body wanted me at home particularly. There didn't seem to be any point in my life. Do you understand?... Of course being alone with him in that little camp in that silent plain"--she shuddered--"made things worse. My nerves went all to pieces. Everything he said--his voice--his accent--his walk--the way he ate--irritated me so that I longed to rush out sometimes and shriek--and go _mad_. Does it sound ridiculous to you to be driven mad by such trifles? I only know I used to get up from the table sometimes and walk up and down outside, with both hands over my mouth to keep myself quiet. And all the time I _hated_ myself--how I hated myself! I never had a word from him that wasn't gentle and tender. I believe he loved the ground I walked on. Oh, it is _awful_ to be loved like that, when you----" She drew in her breath with a sob. "I--I--it made me sick for him to come near me--to touch me." She stopped a moment.

Broomhurst gently laid his hand on her quivering one. "Poor little girl!" he murmured.

"Then _you_ came," she said, "and before long I had another feeling to fight against. At first I thought it couldn't be true that I loved you--it would die down. I think I was _frightened_ at the feeling; I didn't know it hurt so to love anyone."

Broomhurst stirred a little. "Go on," he said tersely.

"But it didn't die," she continued in a trembling whisper, "and the other _awful_ feeling grew stronger and stronger--hatred; no, that is not the word--_loathing_ for--for--John. I fought against it. Yes,"

she cried feverishly, clasping and unclasping her hands, "Heaven knows I fought it with all my strength, and reasoned with myself, and--oh, I did _everything_, but----" Her quick-falling tears made speech difficult.

"Kathleen!" Broomhurst urged desperately, "you couldn't help it, you poor child. You say yourself you struggled against your feelings--you were always gentle. Perhaps he didn't know."

"But he did--he _did_," she wailed, "it is just that. I hurt him a hundred times a day; he never said so, but I knew it; and yet I _couldn't_ be kind to him--except in words--and he understood. And after you came it was worse in one way, for he knew. I _felt_ he knew that I loved you. His eyes used to follow me like a dog's, and I was stabbed with remorse, and I tried to be good to him, but I couldn't."

"But--he didn't suspect--he trusted you," began Broomhurst. "He had every reason. No woman was ever so loyal, so----"

"Hush," she almost screamed. "Loyal! it was the least I could do--to stop you, I mean--when you----After all, I knew it without your telling me. I had deliberately married him without loving him. It was my own fault. I felt it. Even if I couldn't prevent his knowing that I hated him, I could prevent _that_. It was my punishment. I deserved it for _daring_ to marry without love. But I didn't spare John one pang, after all," she added bitterly. "He knew what I felt towards him--I don't think he cared about anything else. You say I mustn't reproach myself? When I went back to the tent that morning--when you--when I stopped you from saying you loved me, he was sitting at the table with his head buried in his hands; he was crying--bitterly: I saw him--it is terrible to see a man cry--and I stole away gently, but he saw me.

I was torn to pieces, but I _couldn't_ go to him. I knew he would kiss me, and I shuddered to think of it. It seemed more than ever not to be borne that he should do that--when I knew _you_ loved me."

"Kathleen," cried her lover again, "don't dwell on it all so terribly----don't----"

"How can I forget?" she answered despairingly, "and then"--she lowered her voice--"oh, I can't tell you--all the time, at the back of my mind somewhere, there was a burning wish that he might _die_. I used to lie awake at night, and do what I would to stifle it, that thought used to _scorch_ me, I wished it so intensely. Do you believe that by willing one can bring such things to pa.s.s?" she asked, looking at Broomhurst with feverishly bright eyes. "No?--well, I don't know--I tried to smother it. I _really_ tried, but it was there, whatever other thoughts I heaped on the top. Then, when I heard the horse galloping across the plain that morning, I had a sick fear that it was you. I knew something had happened, and my first thought when I saw you alive and well, and knew that it was _John_, was, _that it was too good to be true_. I believe I laughed like a maniac, didn't I?... Not to blame? Why, if it hadn't been for me he wouldn't have died. The men say they saw him sitting with his head uncovered in the burning sun, his face buried in his hands--just as I had seen him the day before.

He didn't trouble to be careful--he was too wretched."

She paused, and Broomhurst rose and began to pace the little hillside path at the edge of which they were seated.

Presently he came back to her.

"Kathleen, let me take care of you," he implored, stooping towards her. "We have only ourselves to consider in this matter. Will you come to me at once?"

She shook her head sadly.

Broomhurst set his teeth, and the lines round his mouth deepened. He threw himself down beside her on the heather.

"Dear," he urged still gently, though his voice showed he was controlling himself with an effort. "You are morbid about this. You have been alone too much--you are ill. Let me take care of you: I _can_, Kathleen--and I love you. Nothing but morbid fancy makes you imagine you are in any way responsible for--Drayton's death. You can't bring him back to life, and----"

"No," she sighed drearily, "and if I could, nothing would be altered.

Though I am mad with self-reproach, I feel _that_--it was all so inevitable. If he were alive and well before me this instant my feeling towards him wouldn't have changed. If he spoke to me, he would say 'My dear'--and I should _loathe_ him. Oh, I know! It is _that_ that makes it so awful."

"But if you acknowledge it," Broomhurst struck in eagerly, "will you wreck both of our lives for the sake of vain regrets? Kathleen, you never will."

He waited breathlessly for her answer.

"I won't wreck both our lives by marrying again without love on my side," she replied firmly.

"I will take the risk," he said. "You _have_ loved me--you will love me again. You are crushed and dazed now with brooding over this--this trouble, but----"