Part 2 (1/2)

For a moment surprise and admiration engrossed her mind, then quickly following came another thought. The letter!--where was the letter? Was there no letter enclosed? Katrine dashed at the scattered wrappings, shook them apart, and failing to find any trace of what she sought, fumbled with the lid of the box itself. It was tightly jammed, but a little coaxing set it free, and in the cavity lay a sheet of foreign paper, closely covered with a man's strong, well-formed writing.

Katrine seated herself on the chair by the window, with a strange, dazed feeling of expectancy. A narrow strip of garden separated the side of the house from the lane without. With half-conscious eyes she saw a blue-robed figure strolling slowly by, followed by a fat, waddling pug.

Mary Biggs, the lawyer's sister, taking Peter Biggs for his morning's stroll. Approaching from the opposite direction came a trim figure in grey, sandwiched between two small girls, with skirts cut short to display shapely brown legs. Mrs Slades's governess taking the children for their morning stroll... The little hamlet was pursuing its quiet, machine-like way; no tremor of excitement had disturbed its calm, but in Katrine's room was the scent of the East, and out of the silence six thousand miles away, a man laid bare to her his heart.

CHAPTER THREE.

”Lebong, _May 10, 19--_.

”Captain Blair presents his compliments to Miss Beverley, and takes the liberty of forwarding for her acceptance an antique bra.s.s box, which he trusts may be considered worthy of a place in her collection.

”Katrine! It is such a delicious little name; it is the only name by which I have ever heard you called. Will you forgive a lonely fellow, six thousand miles away, if he writes to you as he thinks? It's ridiculous to let conventions throw their shadow across the world, but if you _will_ have it, enclosed is the conventional, colourless, third-person missive. Keep it, and tear up the rest unread. I give you full liberty to do it.

”But you won't.

”I might as well confess at once,--that box is a delusion and a snare.

I didn't 'hit upon it'; I searched for it far and wide. Properly regarded, it is not a box at all; it is an excuse; a decoy. I wanted one badly, and it was the best I could find.

”The nuisance of it is that we meet on such unequal terms! You know my name; you have probably gathered an impression that, as fellows go, I'm not a bad fellow, though a trifle dull. Dorothea Middleton is an angel of hospitality, but an up-country station has its limits even for a saint. To your mind I'm dead as Queen Anne, but to me you are quite distractingly alive. Why do you send out photographs taken in such a fas.h.i.+on that your eyes look straight into the eyes of any lonely fellow who chances to sit smoking his pipe in a friend's bungalow if you don't want trouble to follow?

”There's one photograph which smiles. You know it! the one in the white frock. When I'm pleased to be witty, I look at those eyes, and they laugh back. My other hearers may be dull and unappreciative, but those eyes never fail. Katrine and I have shared many a joke together during these last years.

”There's another photograph--the dark one! A white, little face looking out of the shadow; pensive this time, but always with those straight-glancing eyes. It's your own fault, Katrine! If you had been 'taken' like ordinary folk, gazing blankly into s.p.a.ce, all this might never have happened... The pensive portrait is even deadlier than the glad. It looks sorry for me. When I'm turning out at night leaving Will and Dorothea alone, it understands how I feel. Its eyes follow me to the door.

”I haven't a photograph to send you; I wouldn't send one if I had.

What's the use of a portrait of a big skeleton of a fellow, brown as a n.i.g.g.e.r, and at thirty-five looking a lot more like forty? Let that slide; but within the walls of the skeleton lives a lonely fellow who has no one left to send him letters from home, and who for the last three years has enjoyed his mail vicariously through extracts read from a young girl's letters.

”You write wonderful letters, Katrine! I don't know if they are the sort a literary critic would approve, but they bring new life into our camp. Dorothea is generous in reading aloud all that she may, and I could stand a pretty stiff examination upon your life in that delightful little Cranford of a place, which you don't appreciate as you ought.

Those letters, plus the photograph, have done the damage.

”So this is what it comes to,--I want some letters for myself! I want (it sounds appallingly conceited; never mind! Let it go at that), I want you to know _me_, to realise my existence, even as I do yours.

Will you write to me sometimes? I give you fair notice that in any case I mean to write to you. It can do you no harm to read my effusions, and if you do violence to your natural curiosity and burn them instead, the snub would miss its point, for I shall be no wiser. I'm not afraid that you will burn them. The feminine in you is too strongly developed for such a lack of curiosity, but will you answer them? That's the question!

”Think it over, Katrine! At the moment of reading, you haven't a doubt of what you will say. Sit down at once to write that haughty letter of reproof and denial, but--don't send it off by the first post! Relieve yourself by letting off steam, and then think out the thing calmly.

”Your own life is not all that you could wish, but compare it just for a moment with mine, and consider the compensations which you enjoy!

Friends, books, papers, happenings of world-wide interest at your door, or what _seems_ your door to exiles across the world--all these, and into the bargain, home, and comfort, and _cool_! You must acknowledge, Katrine, that the odds are on your side!

”If I could take a holiday and come home, you would receive me graciously as Dorothea's friend. Why should it require a greater effort to receive me in the spirit?

”Get away from the Cranford spirit, Katrine; refuse to be bound by it, I see signs,--I tell you frankly, I see signs of its encroachment! Here's a fine chance of throwing it to the winds. Are you brave enough, fine enough, woman enough, to work out this thing for yourself, and to decide as your heart dictates?

”I am very humble; I ask for the moment nothing more than an occasional letter. Now, what are you going to do? At any rate there's that box!

In common decency you must write once at least to acknowledge that!

Your answer ought, I calculate, to arrive about four weeks from to-day.

”Yours faithfully,

”Jim Blair.”