Part 27

Broomhurst met her wide, despairing eyes with an amazement which yielded to sudden pitying comprehension.

“So that is it, my darling? You are worrying about that? You who were as loyal as--”

She stopped him with a frantic gesture.

“Don’t! don’t!” she wailed. “If you only knew! Let me try to tell you--will you?” she urged, pitifully. “It may be better if I tell some one--if I don’t keep it all to myself, and think, and think.”

She clasped her hands tight, with the old gesture he remembered when she was struggling for self-control, and waited a moment.

Presently she began to speak in a low, hurried tone: “It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it; I used to repeat things to myself all day--poems, stupid rhymes--anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath--but I--hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say, ‘Why did you marry him?’” She looked drearily over the placid sea. “Why did I marry him? I don’t know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant, inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn’t a happy one. I was miserable, and oh--restless. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can’t even guess. John wanted me very badly; nobody wanted me at home particularly. There didn’t seem to be any point in my life. Do you understand? . . . Of course, being alone with him in that little camp in that silent plain”--she shuddered--“made things worse. My nerves went all to pieces. Everything he said, his voice, his accent, his walk, the way he ate, irritated me so that I longed to rush out sometimes and shriek--and go mad. Does it sound ridiculous to you to be driven mad by such trifles? I only know I used to get up from the table sometimes and walk up and down outside, with both hands over my mouth to keep myself quiet. And all the time I hated myself--how I hated myself! I never had a word from him that wasn’t gentle and tender. I believe he loved the ground I walked on. Oh, it is awful to be loved like that when you--” She drew in her breath with a sob. “I--I--it made me sick for him to come near me--to touch me.” She stopped a moment.

Broomhurst gently laid his hand on her quivering one. “Poor little girl!” he murmured.

“Then you came,” she said, “and before long I had another feeling to fight against. At first I thought it couldn’t be true that I loved you--it would die down. I think I was frightened at the feeling; I didn’t know it hurt so to love any one.”

Broomhurst stirred a little. “Go on,” he said, tersely.

“But it didn’t die,” she continued, in a trembling whisper, “and the other awful feeling grew stronger and stronger--hatred; no, that is not the word--loathing for--for--John. I fought against it. Yes,” she cried, feverishly, clasping and unclasping her hands; “Heaven knows I fought it with all my strength, and reasoned with myself, and--oh, I did everything, but--” Her quick-falling tears made speech difficult.

“Kathleen!” Broomhurst urged, desperately, “you couldn’t help it, you poor child. You say yourself you struggled against your feelings. You were always gentle; perhaps he didn’t know.”

“But he did--he did,” she wailed; “it is just that. I hurt him a hundred times a day; he never said so, but I knew it; and yet I couldn’t be kind to him,--except in words,--and he understood. And after you came it was worse in one way, for he knew--I felt he knew--that I loved you. His eyes used to follow me like a dog’s, and I was stabbed with remorse, and I tried to be good to him, but I couldn’t.”

“But--he didn’t suspect--he trusted you,” began Broomhurst. “He had every reason. No woman was ever so loyal, so--”

“Hush!” she almost screamed. “Loyal! it was the least I could do--to stop you, I mean--when you--After all, I knew it without your telling me. I had deliberately married him without loving him. It was my own fault. I felt it. Even if I couldn’t prevent his knowing that I hated him, I could prevent that. It was my punishment. I deserved it for daring to marry without love. But I didn’t spare John one pang after all,” she added, bitterly. “He knew what I felt toward him; I don’t think he cared about anything else. You say I mustn’t reproach myself? When I went back to the tent that morning--when you--when I stopped you from saying you loved me, he was sitting at the table with his head buried in his hands; he was crying--bitterly. I saw him,--it is terrible to see a man cry,--and I stole away gently, but he saw me. I was torn to pieces, but I couldn’t go to him. I knew he would kiss me, and I shuddered to think of it. It seemed more than ever not to be borne that he should do that--when I knew you loved me.”

“Kathleen,” cried her lover, again, “don’t dwell on it all so terribly--don’t--”

“How can I forget?” she answered, despairingly. “And then,”--she lowered her voice,--“oh, I can’t tell you--all the time, at the back of my mind somewhere, there was a burning wish that he might die. I used to lie awake at night, and, do what I would to stifle it, that thought used to scorch me, I wished it so intensely. Do you believe that by willing one can bring such things to pass?” she asked, looking at Broomhurst with feverishly bright eyes. “No? Well, I don’t know. I tried to smother it,--I really tried,--but it was there, whatever other thoughts I heaped on the top. Then, when I heard the horse galloping across the plain that morning, I had a sick fear that it was you. I knew something had happened, and my first thought when I saw you alive and well, and knew it was John, was that it was too good to be true. I believe I laughed like a maniac, didn’t I? . . . Not to blame? Why, if it hadn’t been for me he wouldn’t have died. The men say they saw him sitting with his head uncovered in the burning sun, his face buried in his hands--just as I had seen him the day before. He didn’t trouble to be careful; he was too wretched.”

She paused, and Broomhurst rose and began to pace the little hillside path at the edge of which they were seated.

Presently he came back to her.

“Kathleen, let me take care of you,” he implored, stooping toward her. “We have only ourselves to consider in this matter. Will you come to me at once?”

She shook her head sadly.

Broomhurst set his teeth, and the lines round his mouth deepened. He threw himself down beside her on the heather.

“Dear,” he urged, still gently, though his voice showed he was controlling himself with an effort, “you are morbid about this. You have been alone too much; you are ill. Let me take care of you; I can, Kathleen,--and I love you. Nothing but morbid fancy makes you imagine you are in any way responsible for--Drayton’s death. You can’t bring him back to life, and--”

“No,” she sighed, drearily, “and if I could, nothing would be altered. Though I am mad with self-reproach, I feel that--it was all so inevitable. If he were alive and well before me this instant, my feeling toward him wouldn’t have changed. If he spoke to me he would say ‘my dear’--and I should loathe him. Oh, I know! It is that that makes it so awful.”

“But if you acknowledge it,” Broomhurst struck in, eagerly, “will you wreck both of our lives for the sake of vain regrets? Kathleen, you never will.”

He waited breathlessly for her answer.

“I won’t wreck both our lives by marrying again without love on my side,” she replied, firmly.

“I will take the risk,” he said. “You have loved me; you will love me again. You are crushed and dazed now with brooding over this--this trouble, but--”

“But I will not allow you to take the risk,” Kathleen answered. “What sort of woman should I be to be willing again to live with a man I don’t love? I have come to know that there are things one owes to one’s self. Self-respect is one of them. I don’t know how it has come to be so, but all my old feeling for you has gone. It is as though it had burned itself out. I will not offer gray ashes to any man.”