CHAPTER XIII.

After a few days Clifford Thornton and his boy started for New York, and Katharine was left once more alone in heart and spirit. She had no idea of the great struggle which had been going on in the man's mind: a double encounter with the past tragedy of his life and the future possibilities of love and happiness. When he said good-bye to her, there seemed to be no sign of regret over the parting which had come as a matter of course. She could not know that behind his impenetrable manner was concealed a passionate longing which appalled him by its insistence and intensity. She could not know that his hurried departure was out of sternness to himself, as well as out of consideration for the boy's well-being. She could not know that once, twice, several times he had nearly thrown up the whole journey for the sake of staying longer near her--in her presence. If she could have known this, she would have been comforted. But she only saw that a grave, sad man had gone back to his past. There had been a moment of travelling on; for that moment they had travelled together. But now the brief journey was over. She lived it all over again: she went through the pleasant meetings, the grave impersonal talks, the sudden passings on, the sudden retreats: the feeling of fellowship, the feeling of aloofness: her championship of him to Mrs Stanhope: her championship of him to himself: her entire belief in him openly expressed direct to him.

"My belief in him waits for him whether he wants it or not. And I am glad that he knows it," she said to herself proudly.

But in her heart of hearts she knew that he wanted it. If she had not known it, she might, for all her brave show of spirit, have regretted her impulsive outcry.

But she regretted nothing--nothing except that he had gone. She thought of the men who had wanted to marry her, men unburdened with sad histories and memories, men to whom life had been joyous, and circumstance favourable. She had pushed them all aside without a single pang. But this stranger, who was no stranger, and who was claimed by his past, Katharine yearned to detain. But he had gone.

She gathered herself together to pass on. She looked about for a flat, and found what she wanted across Westminster Bridge, in Stangate. There she established herself, and began to see some of her old friends, and take a fresh survey of London. Katharine was intensely patriotic, and having been three years from home, was eager to see once more the favourite sights and places to which absence had lent a glamour of love and romance. She spent hours in her own surroundings: by the Embankment, in the Abbey, round about the Houses of Parliament. She sat in the Abbey, enjoying the dim light and hushed silence of the Past. Lonely thoughts did not come to her there. There, the personal fades from one. One is caught up on wings. And if the organ should play, the throb of the outside life is stilled. She haunted Trafalgar Square. She watched the Horse Guards change sentry. She went down to the City, sat in St Paul's, visited the Guildhall. Her friends laughed lovingly at her.

"Ah!" she answered; "go and live out of the old country for a few years, and if you don't feel a thrill when you return, you are not worthy of having been born in England."

She went down to the Natural History Museum. She spent hours there, lingering in the Mineral-room, where she had been with Clifford Thornton and his boy. It comforted her to be there. She went over all the beautiful things he had pointed out to her; she recalled how an unknown mysterious subject had become as a romance full of wonder and interest.

She had meetings with the three devoted musicians, lunching with them at restaurants representative of their respective nationalities. Ronald did not go with her.

"No use asking 'brother,'" said Signor Luigi, waving his arms and giving a sort of leap in the air. "Maccaroni of my native land! _I_ will do the _rôle_ of the adorable lady--the Signora Grundy!"

"No use asking 'brother,'" said Monsieur Gervais. "'Brother' is a grand gentleman now, and goes to 'Princes.' He has the stiff necks now."

"No use asking 'brother,'" said Herr Edelhart. "'Brother' likes not to come without madame his wife, and madame does not love the quartette, does not admire my wunderbar tone. Donner wetter! what a tone I have!"

Katharine laughed with them and at them, and loved to be in their company, but her heart was far away; and in the midst of the fun, her thoughts went straying to that man who had come in that unexpected way into her life--and gone. She fretted, and there was no one in whom she could have confided. Ronnie was too much taken up with his own affairs and his passionate adoration of his wife to have any real mental leisure for her. Katharine saw that great love, even as great sorrow, shuts the whole world out. She knew herself excluded from his inner shrine, whilst his outward social surroundings were increasingly uncongenial to her. She was troubled about him, too. He looked harassed, and had lost the old lightheartedness of three years ago. She tried in her kindly way to probe him; but in vain. She turned away sadly, recognising that she was no longer his confidante, and he was no longer hers.

She was happier with the Tonedales; and to them she went from time to time during those sad weeks, and continued to sit to Willy for that eternal portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots.

"Thank Heaven, Kath," he said one day, "you still have some leisure. No one has any leisure nowadays. Even Margaret has got dragged by the scruff of the neck into what my delightful cousin Julia calls 'a strenuous life.' Always at something, always doing something for some one who doesn't want that something done; always working at some cause. Great Scott, Kath! I don't mind you going into business so much, but if you take up a Cause, I shall commit suicide! Darling cousin Julia is great on Causes, you know. Good Heavens! What a tongue that woman has! If Causes want tongues, then she ought to get permanent employment without any difficulty. By Jove! though, you gave it to her that day, didn't you?"

Katharine had arrived in a state of great depression on that afternoon; and when Willy began speaking of Mrs Stanhope, her thoughts turned at once to Clifford Thornton, and her face became full of grief. Willy noticed the change in her expression, but went on painting silently. When he looked at her again, he saw tears in her eyes. He put down palette and brush and came to her. He saw at once that something was wrong with her, and all his kindest feelings of concern sprang up to protect her.

"Why, Kath," he said, "what's the matter with you? Any one been unkind to you? By Jove! I'll let them know if they have. They won't do it a second time. You should have heard me bullyragging cousin Julia. I gave her a bit of my mind for being so disagreeable to you the other day. What is wrong, Kath? Tell me, my dear."

She looked at him in a forlorn way.

"I am unhappy, Willy," she said; "that's what is wrong."

"Well, you might at least tell me what it is, my dear," he said. "You know I would do anything to help you. Anything on earth."

"You cannot help me," she said listlessly. "It is something I have to fight out in myself, old fellow."

He glanced at her, and then said:

"I believe we have known each other twenty years, Kath."

She nodded assent.

"Then I think the least you can do for me, if you can't love me, is to let me be your best friend," he said. "We all know that Ronnie is so taken up with Gwendolen that he has no thought for any one else just now. But I--I have no wife. And my mind is at leisure, and my brain too--such as it is--and always at your service, as you know."

"If only I had a profession," Katharine said. "That has been my mistake all along, Willy. Every one ought to have a calling--no matter what it is; and it won't fail them in moments of poverty and trouble and--and desolation."

"So you are feeling desolate," he said sadly, "I knew you would when you came back and realised that Ronnie was married. I dreaded it for you."

"It is not only that," she answered, "though I have felt that bitterly. But----"

"Well?" he said, turning to her.

"I should like to tell you, Willy," she replied tremblingly--"but it is not fair on you."

"I know what it is," he said quite quietly, but with a sudden illumination on his face. "You have fallen in love with that stranger, Professor Thornton, Kath."

There was no answer, no sign. Katharine sat rigid and speechless.

"It would be fairer to tell me," he said, "fairer and kinder. Believe me."

"Yes; I have fallen in love with the stranger," she answered gently; and as she thought of him afresh, the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Willy Tonedale watched her a moment.

"Well, my dear," he said, "I can't pretend to be glad; but, of course, you had to love some one sooner or later--even I knew that."

"I wish I had something else to tell you, Willy," she said simply, "something to make you happy; but I can't help myself, can I?"

"No, my dear," he said in a low voice. "'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' And you have never been anything except your own frank splendid self to me."

"It came over me the moment I saw him," Katharine said, half to herself. "I knew nothing about him, but I seemed to have come suddenly out of a lonely wilderness--such a lonely wilderness--and found him. Then I heard part of his history, and it filled me with great pity, as it does now. And then we met again in the hotel. It was so strange that we should meet there, each knowing nothing of the other. And yet it seemed natural to be together; it seemed almost to be the continuation, not the beginning, of something. And then--that's all, Willy. He has gone his way."

"He will never forget you," Willy said dreamily. "He could not if he wished."

"I suppose if I were a well-balanced sort of person," Katharine went on, "with the regulation mind which a regulation woman is supposed to have, I ought not to have allowed myself to think twice of him--him so recently bereaved of his wife. And, having allowed it, I ought to be prepared to receive the reproaches of all the British matrons in the world. I know all that, and yet I have not been able to help myself, Willy, though I've been ashamed, too."

"There was no reason for you to be ashamed," he said. "She had died and gone her way before you even saw him. Don't be miserable about that, Kath. You could not do anything mean or horrible if you tried till Doomsday."

"How you believe in me, Willy!" she exclaimed. "That makes me ashamed. But it is a great comfort, too."

"Kath," he said sadly, "I knew that you loved him when you spoke up for him to cousin Julia. Your face told me that."

And then there was a silence between them. Willy had lit a cigar, and he walked up and down the studio, his eyes fixed on the floor. At last he raised his head, and stood still in front of her.

"And what are you going to do now?" he asked.

"Oh, I am going to gather myself together somehow," she replied, with something of her old vivacity. "One has to live."

"Yes, yes, you must do that, and you must take comfort and courage," he said. "He cannot forget you."

"But Willy," she cried, as though in sudden pain; "but he is a man sad and overburdened--a man with a broken spirit--perhaps if things had been different--but now----"

Willy came nearer. His face was pale and his eyes were a little dim.

"Look here, Kath," he said, "you take my word for it, you were not born for unhappiness. By Jove! and you shan't have it either. You were meant for all the best and brightest things in the world, and, by Jove! you shall have them. I'll help you to get them--we'll all help you to get them; you must have anything you want--any one you want, only you mustn't be unhappy. I can't stand that--never could stand that--always was a fool about you, Kath--always shall be one--never could change if I wanted to; don't want to--unless--unless I could have been the man with the broken spirit."

Then Katharine forgot about herself and remembered only Willy. All her kind and generous feelings broke through the barrier of her grief. She sprang to her feet, brushed away her tears, and turned to him with impetuous eagerness.

"Willy," she said, "I've been a selfish brute pouring out my troubles to you in this way--poor old fellow! What have I done to you in return for your faithful kindness of all these years? Given you pain and disappointment and sadness, and never a glimmer of hope, and now my own selfish confidence about my feelings for another man. What can I do to ease your kind, unselfish heart? I know there is not much I can do--but there must be something. Let me do it, whatever it is."

A tumult came into Willy's heart. A light came into his eyes. He quenched the light; he quelled the tumult for her dear sake.

"There is one thing you can do for me, Kath," he said in a voice which trembled; "don't ever regret you trusted me and told me. You couldn't have told every one. It had to be the right person. Don't take that from me. And, you see, I knew. I knew by instinct. So don't reproach yourself. You've never been anything else except a brick to me ever since I can remember you."

She shook her head in deprecation of his praise, and said gently:

"I will never regret that I trusted you, Willy."

"Thank you, my dear," he said, with more of his old drawling manner again. "And now let's have another shot at my immortal masterpiece. That's right, Kath. Dry your eyes. Pull yourself together like Mary Queen of Scots did on the scaffold. By Jove! she must have been a stunner! I shall never believe that when her head dropped off, it was the head of a wizened-up old woman. If that was the truth, I don't want the truth. By Jove! here's tea. Margaret has gone off to a Cause, and mother has gone to a dentist and then to a Christian Science meeting. Those Christian Scientists pretend they can do without doctors, but they stick to the dentists right enough. No, I'll pour out the tea, Kath. You stay where you are, on the scaffold--I mean the platform. My word, what a brain I have! It isn't only slow, but it's so deucèd confused, isn't it?"

So he tried to cheer her; and when he took her to her home that afternoon, she had regained her outward composure, and felt all the better for having had the blessing of a true friend's kindness. His last words were, "Don't you dare to regret that you trusted me."

* * * * *

But when he was alone, his face looked ashen and sad, and his eyes had a world of grief in them. For that evening, at least, Willy Tonedale, his beautiful features illuminated by love and loss, might well have stood for the portrait of a man with a broken spirit.

* * * * *

And whilst he was passing through his hour of sadness, Katharine was reading a letter from the Danish botanists, Ejnar and Gerda Ebbesen, Knutty's nephew and niece. They wrote in answer to her letter to say that they had left Denmark and were spending their holidays at a Norwegian farm. They suggested that she might be inclined to bring the botanical parcel to them there. Their aunt was with them, and she was most interested to hear that Miss Frensham had made the acquaintance of her Englishman and his boy.

"I shall go," Katharine said. "There is nothing to prevent me."

"I shall see the old Dane whom he loves," she said, with a glow of warmth in her heart.

* * * * *

In a few days she packed up and went to Norway.