Part 24 (1/2)

He did not call her Kitty.

”I fear them, Mark,” Catherine replied.

”Fear them! Why?”

”They are doing great harm in the world.”

Mark uttered an impatient exclamation. As a man he was kind and gentle, but as an artist he was wilful and intolerant. Soon after this he wrote to Berrand and invited him to stay. Berrand came. This time Catherine shuddered at his coming. She began to look upon him as her husband's evil genius. Berrand did not apparently notice any change in her, for he treated her as usual, and spoke much to her of Mark. And Catherine was too reserved to express the feelings which tortured her to a comparative stranger. For this reason Berrand did not understand the terrible conflict that was raging within her as ”William Foster's” new work grew, and he often spoke to her about the book, and described, with mischievous intellectual delight, its terror, its immorality and its pain. Catherine listened with apparent calm. She was waiting for that interruption from heaven. She was wondering why it did not come.

One night in summer it chanced that she and Berrand spoke of Fate.

Catherine, dominated by her fixed idea that G.o.d would intervene in some strange and abrupt way to interrupt the activities of Mark, spoke of Fate as something inevitably ordained, certain as the rising of the sun or the dropping down of the darkness. Berrand laughed.

”There is no Fate,” he said. ”There is man, there is woman. Man and woman make circ.u.mstance. We fas.h.i.+on our own lives and the lives of others.”

”And our deaths?” said Catherine.

”We die when we've done enough, when we've done our best or worst, when we've pushed our energy as far as it will go--that is, if we die what is called a natural death. But of course now and then some other human being chooses to think for us, and to think we have lived long enough or too long. And then----”

He paused with a smile.

”Then----?” said Catherine, leaning slightly forward.

”Then that human being may cut our thread prematurely, and down we go to death.”

Catherine drew in her breath sharply.

”But that again,” continued Berrand. ”Is man--or woman--not the fantasy you call Fate?”

”Perhaps Fate can take possession of a man or a woman,” Catherine said slowly and thoughtfully, ”govern them, act through them.”

”That's a dangerous doctrine. You believe that criminals are irresponsible then?”

”I don't know,” she said. ”I suppose there must be an agent. Yes, I suppose there must.”

She spoke as one who is thinking out a problem.

”G.o.d,” she continued, after a moment of silence, ”may choose to use a man or woman as an agent instead of a disease.”

”Oh, well,” said Berrand, with his odd, high laugh, ”I cannot go with you on that road of thought, Mrs. Sirrett. I am not afflicted with a religion. Oh, here's Mark. How have you been getting on, Mr. William Foster?”

”Grandly,” he replied.

His dark eyes were blazing with excitement. Catherine suddenly turned very cold. She got up and left the room. The two men scarcely noticed her departure. They plunged into an eager discussion on the book. They debated it till the night waned and the melancholy breath of dawn stole in at the open window.

Meanwhile, Catherine, who had gone to bed, lay awake. This summer was so like last summer. Now, as then, she was sleepless, and heard the distant, excited voices rising and falling, murmuring on and on hour after hour.

Now, as then, they accompanied activity. Now, as then, the activity was deadly, harmful to an invisible mult.i.tude, hidden out in the great world.

But there was a difference between last year and this, so like in many ways. Mark's power had grown in the interval. He had become more dangerous. And Catherine had developed also. Circ.u.mstance--spoken of by Berrand--had changed, twisted into a different shape by dying hands, twisted again by the hands--all unconscious--of that man who talked downstairs, of Berrand. Was he, too, an agent of Fate, at which he scornfully laughed? Why not?

Oh, those everlasting voices! they rang hatefully in the sleepless woman's ears. Their eagerness, their enthusiasm, were terrible to her.

For now their joy seemed to summon her to a great darkness. Their sound seemed to call her to the making of a great silence. She put her hands over her ears, but she still heard them till it was dawn. She still heard them when they were no more speaking.