Part 26 (1/2)
”I like ends,” said Bedford once more.
Katrine thanked Providence that _her_ ends curled, and did not blow over her face in lanky streaks as did the ends of other women. Sometimes when she had been out in the wind she had felt it a pity to brush them back. She felt a glow of thankfulness for her own fair looks, which was inimitably removed from an ordinary conceit. To look pleasant in the eyes of others--that gave one joy. To-morrow she would wear a blue dress...
”It's against my upbringing to be untidy,” she said demurely. ”At home I have walked between a double fire. The vicar's wife on one side, and my Sunday School girls on the other. Both would have been scandalised by 'ends,' both expected me to be a model of neatness and decorum.” She heaved a great sigh of relief. ”Oh, I'm so thankful not to be a model any more! It's lovely to begin life again, away from criticism, to be free to do and think what I like!”
He stared at her, his eyes intent and searching beneath puckered brows.
It was a handsome, almost a beautiful face into which he looked: the softened light, the happy mood, even the floating ends of hair combined to give it an air of unusual youth. Nevertheless there were lines written thereon which told their own tale. Katrine noticed his scrutiny, and questioned him thereon:
”What are you thinking about?”
”You,” he said simply. ”We are talking about ourselves. You are so young in many ways, younger than your years, but you look--”
”Older?”
”Yes,” he said again, serenely unconscious of offence. ”It's not a girl's face. There are the marks of trouble, of suffering...”
Katrine sighed. On her lips flickered a smile which was strangely pathetic.
”Or of lack of trouble!” she corrected. ”Oh, I mean it. It sounds incomprehensible to a man, but a woman would understand. Trouble would be easier to bear than the grey, monotonous routine month after month, year after year, which women have to live in small country towns.
Trouble is educational and enn.o.bling; monotony cramps growth at the roots. I am twenty-six, but there were women ten years older, still young, still pretty, jogtrotting along the same path, year after year, year after year. _Nothing had happened to them_! No man can understand all that that means. _Nothing had happened_!”
Bedford straightened himself significantly.
”They should _make_ things happen!”
”Perhaps in time to come they may, when they are more developed--they, and their parents! Many well-to-do parents think that their daughters ought to be contented to stay peacefully at home and arrange the flowers. I _had_ a real duty, but in some families nearby there were three or four women-girls _pottering_! I went to see one of them on her birthday last year. When I wished her many happy returns she shrank, as if I had hurt her. 'Another year!' she said. 'Three hundred and sixty-five days... _And all alike_!' It was fear that she felt, poor soul; fear of the blank! You can't understand.”
”Personally, no. Monotony has not been my cross. When a man is knocking about the world he is inclined to envy the people who can vegetate peacefully at home, but thirty-six years of stagnation is a killing business!” He looked down at her with steady scrutiny. ”I am glad _you_ had courage to cut yourself free before it came to that point.”
”But I am different... I told you so. I had my work,” protested Katrine, flus.h.i.+ng, ”and moreover something _did_ happen. Fate came to my aid, and practically forced me away!”
”Yes?”
Once more Bedford leaned his elbows on the rail, and bent towards her with a keen interrogative glance. ”Is it permissible to ask in what form?”
Why on earth need she blush? Katrine mentally railed at herself, but the more she fumed the hotter blazed the colour in her cheeks. Plying such a flag of betrayal it seemed obviously absurd to reply by a prim: ”My brother married, and no longer required my services,” and in Bedford's equally prim ”Quite so,” the scepticism seemed thinly veiled.
There was silence for several moments, while both gazed fixedly ahead.
Without looking in his direction Katrine knew exactly the expression which her companion's face would wear. The lips closed tight, drooping slightly to one side. The chin dropped, the eyes unnaturally grave.
Strange how clearly his changes of expression had already stamped themselves upon her mental retina! She knew how he would look, what she could not guess was what he would _think_ ... What _would_ he think!
That preposterous blush would surely suggest a reason more personal than a brother's marriage. A love affair, a lover, but mercifully a lover in England, since she had already explained that Jack Middleton and his wife were her sole friends in India. Yes! that would be the explanation, a persistent lover--a lover who had been refused, a lover left behind to recover at his ease. Katrine's self-possession was restored by this a.s.surance. Certainly she had had lovers... She adopted what was evidently intended to be an ”Isabel Carnaby air,” and demanded lightly:
”And now, Captain Bedford, it is your turn to confess your troubles.”
”I have none,” he said instantly. He looked full into her face with his twinkling eyes. ”Or if I had--I have forgotten.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.