Part 83 (1/2)

”Kitty--for G.o.d's sake!”

”Oh, I know it,” she said, almost with triumph--”now I _know_ it. I determined to know--and I got people in Venice to find out. She sent the message--that told him where I was--and I know the man who took it. I suppose it would be pathetic if I sent her word that I had forgiven her.

But I _haven't_!”

Ashe cried out that it was wholly and utterly inconceivable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”HE DREW SOME CHAIRS TOGETHER BEFORE THE FIRE”]

”Oh no!--she hated me because I had robbed her of Geoffrey. I had killed her life, I suppose--she killed mine. It was what I deserved, of course; only just at that moment--If there is a G.o.d, William, how could He have let it happen so?”

The tears choked her. He left his seat, and, kneeling beside her, he raised her in his arms, while she murmured broken and anguished confessions.

”I was so weak--and frightened. And _he_ said, it was no good trying to go back to you. Everybody knew I had gone to Verona--and he had followed me--No one would ever believe--And he wouldn't go--wouldn't leave me. It would be mere cruelty and desertion, he said. My real life was--with him. And I seemed--paralyzed. Who _had_ sent that message? It never occurred to me--I felt as if some demon held me--and I couldn't escape--”

And again the sighs and tears, which wrung his heart--with which his own mingled. He tried to comfort her; but what comfort could there be? They had been the victims of a crime as hideous as any murder; and yet--behind the crime--there stretched back into the past the preparations and antecedents by which they themselves, alack, had contributed to their own undoing. Had they not both trifled with the mysterious test of life--he no less than she? And out of the dark had come the axe-stroke that ends weakness, and crushes the unsteeled, inconstant will.

After long silence, she began to talk in a rambling, delirious way of her months in Bosnia. She spoke of the _cold_--of the high mountain loneliness--of the terrible sights she had seen--till he drew her, shuddering, closer into his arms. And yet there was that in her talk which amazed him; flashes of insight, of profound and pa.s.sionate experience, which seemed to fas.h.i.+on her anew before his eyes. The hard peasant life, in contact with the soil and natural forces; the elemental facts of birth and motherhood, of daily toil and suffering; what it means to fight oppressors for freedom, and see your dearest--son, lover, wife, betrothed--die horribly amid the clash of arms; into this caldron of human fate had Kitty plunged her light soul; and in some ways Ashe scarcely knew her again.

She recurred often to the story of a youth, handsome and beardless, who had been wounded by a stray Turkish shot in the course of the long climb to the village where she nursed. He had managed to gain the height, and then, killed by the march as much as by the shot, he had sunk down to die on the ground-floor of the house where Kitty lived.

”He was a stranger--no one knew him in the village--no one cared. They had their own griefs. I dressed his wound--and gave him water. He thought I was his mother, and asked me to kiss him. I kissed him, William--and he smiled once--before the last hemorrhage. If you had seen the cold, dismal room--and his poor face!”

Ashe gathered her to his breast. And after a while she said, with closed eyes:

”Oh, what pain there is in the world, William!--what _pain_! That's what--I never knew.”

The evening wore on. All the noises ceased down-stairs. One by one the guests came up the stone stairs and along the creaking corridor. Boots were thrown out; the doors closed. The strokes of eleven o'clock rang out from the village campanile; and amid the quiet of the now drizzling rain the echoes of the bell lingered on the ear. Last of all a woman's step pa.s.sed the door--stopped at the door of Kitty's room, as though some one listened, and then gently returned. ”Fraulein Anna!” said Kitty--”she's a good soul.”

Soon nothing was heard but the roar of the flooded stream on one side of the old narrow building and the dripping of rain on the other. Their low voices were amply covered by these sounds. The night lay before them, safe and undisturbed. Candles burned on the mantel-piece, and on a table behind Kitty's head was a paraffine lamp. She seemed to have a craving for light.

”Kitty!” said Ashe, suddenly bending over her--”understand! I shall never leave you again.”

She started, her head fell back on his arm, and her brown eyes considered him:

”William! I saw the _Standard_ at Geneva. Aren't you going home--because of politics?”

”A few telegrams will settle that. I shall take you to Geneva to-morrow.

We shall get doctors there.”

A little smile played about her mouth--a smile which did not seem to have any reference to his words or to her next question.

”n.o.body thinks of the book now, do they, William?”

”No, Kitty, no! It's all forgotten, dear.”

”Oh, it was abominable!” She drew a long breath. ”But I can't help it--I did get a horrid pleasure out of writing it--till Venice--till you left off loving me. Oh, William! William!--what a good thing it is I'm dying!”