Part 17 (1/2)

”Lebong, _December 10, 19--_.

”Katrine,

”I'm not angry, dear girl--but you've got to come! Every word that you write only makes me the more fixed in my determination. I can understand your shyness and your pride, but I'm hanged if I can understand all this business about disillusion and humiliation. If you find on investigation that I'm not the man for you, I shall regret it, but I shall feel no humiliation. Why should I? The fact that I do not please your taste, makes me no less a man, nor worthy of esteem. If--by a strength of imagination--I were disappointed in you, the situation would, I admit, be more charged, but being 'only a man,' I emphatically deny your a.s.sertion that the sentiment which you have evoked could be evaporated by any outward feature or trait. My dream woman is very dear, but, have no delusions on the point--she is not perfect! I have created for myself no plaster saint. You have plenty of faults, my dear, but there is this big difference between them, and those of any woman in existence--they are _Katrine's_ faults!

”I have given my word to speak no word beyond those of friends.h.i.+p for three months after your arrival. If you then decide that I am impossible as a husband, you need fear no unpleasantness. I'll clear out, exchange into another regiment, apply for leave. You shan't be troubled. After that three months' trial, I'll take your answer as final, and leave you in peace. I've no desire to badger a woman into being my wife. But I demand my chance!

”I think you will come, Katrine. Putting myself out of the question, I think you will come, and I'll tell you why. It would be rank selfishness on your part to stay in England for the present! Martin has had a rough time of it, but life is opening out for him afresh, and if you love him you won't stand in his way. How do you suppose he will feel if you are wandering about from boarding-house to boarding-house, or working among strangers? The thought of you will be a continuous shadow over his sun, and that's what you have no right to be, if there is any legitimate way of avoiding it. Real happiness is a rare thing, it is holy ground, which ought to be sacred from our touch. I'd as soon cut off my right hand as cloud a man's joy in his new-made wife.

”And after Martin there's Dorothea.

”It's not a lively life for a woman in a small hill station. It grows monotonous, meeting year after year the same people. Dorothea's a brave woman, but the life tells. The boy is delicate also. There's a talk of sending him home to his grandmother. Dorothea won't leave Middleton; she considers that he needs her more than the child, and I think she is right, but it will be a pill. There's nothing on earth which could cheer and help her more than a visit from you. She has written to you again I know. This time you must not refuse. The climate up here is quite reasonable. You will have no great heat to face.

”And so, dear, I think you will come! I _know_ you will come, and, G.o.d willing, you shall not regret it.

”That's a good idea about Bedford! He's a capital chap, and would look after you well. We must see that that comes off. He will stay in Egypt till the last moment, I fancy, and join the s.h.i.+p at Port Said, but, you'd still have ten days together, and he would be useful on landing.

He is a good thirty-five, staid, and level-headed. It's quite conventional, I suppose? I never know about these things. Book your pa.s.sage in good time, and cheer Dorothea by the news. Write at once, no! in my present state of health I don't feel up to waiting five whole weeks. I have _not_ been fit--feverish, sleepless--so am not in the mood for patience. Cable just one word--the name of the steamer--to our code address. When I read that I'll know that your pa.s.sage is booked.

”Oh, my Katrine--sorry! I'll be more careful--

”Yours,

”J.C.D. Blair.”

Cable message from Katrine Beverley to Dorothea Middleton: ”Accept invitation. Sail by _Bremen_.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

”c.u.mly, _January 2, 19--_.

”Dear Autocrat,

”I _We_ done it! I've given in, and sent off the cable. By now you will have seen it, and be either chortling with triumph, or wis.h.i.+ng remorsefully that you'd left well alone. I hope it's the former, because, to be candid, I'm chortling myself. Oh, I'm so glad! I wanted so _badly_ to say 'yes.' It _was_ clever of you to make it appear so clearly my duty to do just the one thing I wanted above all others!

”Hurrah! For a whole year I am free. The office, the surgery, the kitchen, and the stage, can retire gracefully into the background. I'm going out to India with a box full of new clothes, to stay with my dearest friend, and have a good time. Inadvertently also to meet a nice man...

”Oh, Jim, I _hope_ you are nice--my kind of nice! I hope, hope, hope with all my heart that I shall tumble right in love with you the moment we meet, and that you'll do ditto with me, and that we'll go on tumbling all our lives.

”I've no pride left this morning; I'm so excited and glad. Martin put his arm round me on Wednesday when I told him of my cable, and swung me off my feet. 'Now everything is perfect!' he said. 'You will be happy as well as I.' And he has been so dear and generous, insisting that he owes me no end of money for my work for him, and I have been to town to buy clothes, Lonely Man, scrumptious clothes, with Grizel to help, because I should like--Dorothea--to see me look nice!

”Grizel is the most bracing person to shop with. When you think it's extravagant, she calls it cheap, and when you are wondering if you _dare_ have one, she orders a dozen, and just for once in a way, when you've been careful all your life, it _is_ lovely to go a bust.

Besides--

”My bridesmaid's kit is Grizel's present, and seems stretching to immense proportions. A dress for the ceremony, and a dress for the evening, and a hat and a cloak, and fal-lals of every description. Do you think the regiment will give some function to let me show them off?

Now that my own future no longer casts its shadow over the whole landscape, I am immensely enjoying the engaged couple. They are so deliriously gay and young, and happy and hopeful; and the nice part about it is--it is going to last! I feel _sure_ it will, for through his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give the one all-important thing that is necessary to a woman's happiness.

Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment of women, and say 'Love, of course,' but it isn't love, at least it is not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! it is just a simple, homely quality without which the grandest of pa.s.sions is incomplete! _Tenderness_! Tenderness means kindness and understanding, and sympathy, and imagination, and patience--above all, _patience_!