CHAPTER XX.

Katharine went straight to her room and threw herself on her bed. All her thoughts were of Clifford. Her heart was flooded with love and pity for him, a hundredfold intensified now that she knew his secret history. The manner of Marianne's death and the long-continued silent suffering of the man appalled her. She had known from the beginning that he had suffered acutely; but when she had called him the man with the broken spirit, she had little realised the torture which his gentle and chivalrous spirit was undergoing day by day, hour by hour. He had fought and conquered. She knew that. She knew that she, coming into his wilderness, had helped him to do that; even as he, coming into her wilderness of loneliness, had brought her a new life and a new outlook.

Judge him--judge him! The words rang in the air and echoed back to her.

"My belovèd!" she cried, "I shall yet be able to tell you all that is in my heart. You suffered--and she suffered too--that poor Marianne--and I saw her face before me when I turned to you--and, oh, my belovèd, we could only go home in silence."

Her genius of sympathy did not leave that poor Marianne out in the cold. Marianne's turbulent temperament, Marianne's jealous rages, all the impossibilities resulting from a wrong aura, were reverently garnered into Katharine's tender understanding. For she knew Marianne had suffered too; and that in that strange dream, that heart-breaking final communication between husband and wife, Marianne had learnt the truth, and the truth had killed her. She had gone to her death with a knowledge which was too much for her life. The truth and not Clifford had killed her: the truth, spoken in a defenceless moment.

In the midst of her serious musings there came a knock at the door. Katharine answered, "Come in," and Alan appeared. His manner was, as usual, shy, and he blushed a little. He was always greatly pleased to see Katharine. He brought two English letters for her. His young face and young presence broke in upon her as a song of spring.

"Don't go," she said, holding out her hand to him. "What have you got there?"

"Oh, it's only a drawing I've been doing of the cowhouse," he said in his shy way. "Knutty wanted it. She says it isn't bad."

"It is very good, I think," Katharine said. "I wish it were for me."

"Oh, I am going to do something ripping good for you before I go back to school," he said. "I've begun it."

She smiled her thanks to him.

"Shall you be glad to go back to school?" she asked, as she broke open her letters.

"I shall not like to leave father," he said, without looking up. "But he has promised to come and see me."

"Ah, that's right," Katharine said, and she glanced at one of the letters.

"Will you come and see me?" Alan said with a jerk.

"Of course I will," she said.

Then she turned to her letters. Alan did not go away. He sat in the window recess cutting at a model of a Laplander's pulk (sledge) which the Sorenskriver had given him. Katharine forgot about him, forgot for the moment about everything, except the contents of her letters.

Ronald wrote in great trouble begging for her return. As she had guessed, money matters had been going wrong with him; he had been gambling on the Stock Exchange, had lost heavily, had taken money from the business, crippled it, compromised it, compromised himself, compromised her, but he could and would retrieve everything if she would stand by him.

"Stand by you; of course I'll stand by you," she said staunchly.

In his hour of happiness he had shut her out; and now in his hour of need he opened the door to her, and she went in gladly, without a thought of bitterness in her heart.

"Stand by you; of course I'll stand by you," she repeated. "Poor old fellow! In trouble, and through your own fault entirely--the worst kind of trouble to bear, too, because there is no one to blame except your own self."

The other letter was from Margaret Tonedale, Willy's sister. She wrote that Willy had been very ill from pneumonia, and they had nearly lost him. He was still ill and dreadfully low, and asked repeatedly for Katharine. His intense and unsatisfied yearning to see her was retarding his recovery, and Margaret felt that she must let Katharine know, so that if she were thinking of returning soon, she might perhaps be inclined to hasten her steps homewards.

And the letter ended with these words:

"Although you do not want to marry him, Kath, you love and prize him, as we all do, and I know you would wish to help him and us."

"Dear old Willy," she said. "Faithful old fellow. Of course, I must go and see after you."

She had been living her own personal life, focusing on the present and the sad and sweet circumstances of the present, slipping away for the time from home affairs, home ties, deliberately pushing aside any passing uneasy thoughts about Ronald's extravagant mode of life, letting herself go forward untrammelled into a new world of hopes and fears.

But now voices from the old world of a few short weeks ago, the old world grown strangely older in a few swift days, loved voices, with all the irresistible, exacting persuasion of the past, called to her.

She rose, determined to go home at once, and then she saw Alan.

"Alan," she said, "I must go and find out about the trains and the boat. I must return at once."

"Go away from us?" the boy asked. And he looked as though he heard of some great calamity.

It was he who broke the news to his father.

"Father," he said, "she is going away. Can't we go too?"

Clifford made no answer. He seemed stunned. His face was ashen when he sought Katharine out, and said in a voice that trembled:

"Is it I who am driving you away?"

"No, no," she answered. "I shall write to you. I shall write to you. I cannot trust myself to speak. If I began, I----"

It was she who broke off this time.

"I have so much I want to say to you," she went on. "Up at Peer Gynt's stue, when I turned towards you, I----"

She broke off again.

* * * * *

The news spread about that the Englishwoman was returning to England the very next morning. It caused general dissatisfaction.

"Going away!" said Bedstemor. "Why doesn't she stay in Norway? That is the only place to live in."

"Going to leave the Gaard!" said Solli reproachfully; "before the harvest is gathered in too."

"Going to England!" said the Sorenskriver sulkily; "to that barbarous country, which scarcely exists on the map."

"Going away!" exclaimed old Kari, "and before the cows come down from the mountains."

"Going away!" said Gerda, "before my Ejnar brings us 'the Ranunculus glacialis.'"

"Going to England!" said Knutty, "leaving us all in the lurch here, alone, without you. Leaving me, my icebergs, and my botanists--and for the sake of a brother and a sick friend: people whom you've known all your life! I never heard of anything so inhuman. Brothers indeed; sick friends indeed! Let them take care of themselves. Bah, these relations! They always choose the wrong time for crises; and as for friends, they are always sick when you want them to be well, and well when you want them to be sick. Ignore them all, kjaere, and stay with us."

But in spite of their loving protests, Katharine tore herself away: from the beautiful Gudbrandsdal, from the quaint and simple peasant life, from the surroundings which were hallowed for ever in her memory.

* * * * *

Her departure took place so quietly that no one realised that she had gone. Knutty sat on the verandah trying to work at the Danish translation; but, discovering that her nerves were out of order, she found it a relief to pick a quarrel with the Sorenskriver, who had sulkily refused to go to the station, and then was angry with himself and consequently with the whole world.

At last Clifford came back from the station. He sat down by Knutty's side.

"Knutty, she has gone," he said forlornly.

"Kjaere," she said, comforting him as she put her hand on his head. "My poor iceberg."

Alan came. He, too, sat down by Knutty's side.

"Knutty, she has gone," the boy said sadly.

"Kjaere," Knutty said, and she put her hand on his head too. "My poor other iceberg."

Then she turned to them with a smile on her face.

"I see daylight!" she cried. "Go after her!"