XXVIII

UNDER THE SOUTHERN PINES ONCE MORE

When Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine entered Frank's apartments they found Dr.

Johnston by the window of the sitting-room, and, with no spoken word, Katrine knew he had been waiting for her to come. His face bespoke more than professional anxiety; it bore a look of sorrow and the dread of losing a dear friend.

According Katrine but a scant nod of recognition, he crossed to the door of the sleeping-room, and, after looking in, made a gesture, stealthy and cautious, for Katrine to enter.

The room was dark save for a night light. Frank's face was turned toward her, his eyes closed. One hand, helpless, unutterably appealing, lay outside the white cover, and at sight of him thus it seemed her heart would break.

With a swift movement she knelt beside the bed, waiting to take the poor, tired head upon her breast. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw his lips tremble.

"Dear," she said.

There was silence, and then: "It is worth all--it is worth all--for this," he whispered. "Touch me, Katrine!"

And she laid her cheek on his.

"Katrine?"

"Yes, dear."

"You will stay? I will try to sleep now if you will touch me. Katrine, you will not slip away?"

"I shall stay until you are quite well, beloved."

At three in the morning he awoke with a shiver. "Where are you?" he called. "Where are you, Katrine?"

"Here," she answered, laying a hand on his cheek.

"Ah, thank G.o.d!"

It was over a month before Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine were able to take Frank south, where he longed to be. The St. Petersburg engagement was cancelled, and the Metropolitan manager, angry at Katrine's forgetfulness to notify him that she could not sing the night Mrs.

Ravenel had come for her, made many caustic newspaper criticisms. But both events seemed entirely unimportant to her, for Frank's paralysis, which the doctors had believed but a temporary affair, did not leave him as soon as had been hoped.

There was a splendid Celtic recklessness in the way she surrendered everything for him, a generosity which Mrs. Ravenel saw with commending eyes, believing it, by some strange mother-reasoning, to be but just.

But Frank was far from taking the same att.i.tude in the matter. Almost the first day he was able to be wheeled on the great piazza in the sunshine he spoke to Katrine of the time she must soon leave, to keep the St. Petersburg engagements.

"I have no St. Petersburg engagements," she explained, briefly. "I cancelled them."

He sat with closed eyes, but she saw the tears between the lids as he spoke. "I have not had the courage to tell you," he said, at length, slowly, "before, but all that McDermott said is true, Katrine."

"Indeed!" Words could not explain the tone. She might have received news of the Andaman Islanders as carelessly.

"You know what it means to me!" he said, after a silence.

"I know what you think it means to you," she answered.

"It means that I have and am nothing. When I think of mother--" He looked at Katrine, with her radiant beauty, as she reached upward for an early rose. "And your friend McDermott," he went on, "has done a strange thing. This morning I opened my mail for the first time since my illness. In it I found a letter from him, saying that it could be proven that my father had never made an early marriage, and that Quantrelle was a great liar. I don't understand it. I saw Quantrelle myself, as well as his brother, when I was in France. There is not a doubt the marriage was an entirely legal one, not the shadow of a doubt. Ah," he cried, "Katrine, it seems to kill me when I think of it!"

"Francis Ravenel," she cried, the old smile on her face as she came toward him and placed her hand caressingly on his cheek, "you told me once, not long ago, to ask you to marry me. I do."

"Do what?"

"Ask you to marry me."

"And I refuse," he said, firmly. "I will not be married through pity."

"Oh, very well." She seated herself on some cushions on the top step, humming softly, as though his words were of no moment whatever.

"You don't think I mean it, do you?" he demanded, at length.

She made no answer whatever.

"Katrine," he said, at length.

"Yes."

"What are you thinking of?"

"I've gone away," she answered. "I was not being treated very well, and so I went away. I'm over in my Dreaming Land, My Own Country."

"Ah, come back to me!" he cried.

"Very well," she said, obligingly, though she made no movement toward him. "I've been rebuilding the old lodge, in my thoughts, for Josef. It will be such a wonderful place for him to rest in! He will want the first floor made into one room. And Nora and I will come there in the summer-time, when we're not singing. Perhaps you will come to visit us sometime, Mr. Ravenel!" she said, politely.

"Katrine, Katrine!" he pleaded. "It would be so unfair to you."

"Nonsense," she returned, shortly. There was surely never anything kinder or better in the world than this belittling of the whole matter.

"And I may never be strong again--"

"Then I can have my own way more," she laughed.

"And your voice--"

"Beloved," she said, gravely, "I can never give up my singing. Don't think me vain when I say I sing too well to make it _right_ for me to give it up. I don't believe that anybody who does a thing well, who has the real gift, _can_ give it up. But that I shall never have to sing for _money_ is a great happiness for me. I can sing for the poorer folk, for the ones who really feel. Ah," she cried, "I've plans of my own, Josef and I! And the study and the pain were to teach me how unimportant all things are in this world save only love."

"Katrine! Katrine!" he cried, "you must help me to be square to you!" He raised his hand, feeble from illness, in the manner of one who takes an oath. "I solemnly swear that I will never do you the _injustice_--"

"Don't!" she cried, springing quickly to her feet and catching the upraised hand quickly to her breast. "Don't!" Adding quickly, with a laugh, "It's dreadful to commit perjury!"

Their hands were still clasped as Mrs. Ravenel came out to join them. In the lavender gown, with her fair face smiling, and carrying a work-bag of the interminable knitting in one hand, she did not look in the least the emissary of fate she really was.