Kitabı oku: «Katharine Frensham: A Novel»
"Midway the road of our life's term they met,
And one another knew without surprise;
Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
To them it was revealed how they had found
The kindred nature and the needed mind,
The mate by long conspiracy designed;
The flower to plant in sanctuary ground."
– George Meredith.
NOTE
My thanks are due to Herr Sigurd Hals (Christiania) for permission to use from his Hals-Album the Norwegian folk-songs: "Aagot's Mountain-song;" "Astri, my Astri;" "Home from the Saeter."
And to Herr Wilhelm Hansen (Copenhagen) for permission to use from his Danmark's melodie bog the Danish song, "Thou who hast sorrow in thy heart."
And to Herr Abraham Lundquist (Stockholm) for permission to use from his Svenska Folkvisor the Swedish song, "At daytime when I'm working."
BEATRICE HARRADEN.
Hampstead, Oct., 1903.
PART I
IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
"Do you understand, Alan, my boy?" asked Clifford Thornton.
"No, father, I don't," the boy said in a low voice. "It seems all such a fuss about nothing. Why can't you and mother have it out like any other fellows, and then make it up and be friends? You can't think how easy it is."
"We have been doing that for fifteen years and more – all your lifetime," the man said.
"I never knew it was as bad as that," Alan said.
"We tried to spare you the full knowledge of it," the man answered gently. "But now that you are old enough to know, we are obliged to tell you that we are not, never have been, happy together, and that we do not wish to be together. We spoil each other's lives."
Alan was sitting on the sofa. He stirred a little, and then suddenly, without any warning, burst into tears. Although he admired his mother's personality and bearing, he had never been particularly attached to her; but with that conservative conventionalism characteristic of an English boy, he was mortified, and felt it to be a disgrace that there should be any serious disagreement between his parents.
Clifford Thornton looked at the boy whom he loved and whom he had wounded; and he recognised with a sharp pain of regret that Alan was still too young and too sensitive for the news which had been broken to him. Bitterly the man reproached himself for his selfishness. And yet he had waited for this moment for fifteen long years – more than that; for he and his wife had discovered at the onset that they were out of sympathy, each having an aura hostile to the other. Then the child had come, and these two naturally antipathetic people had thought: "We shall draw nearer to each other because of the child."
But Nature is merciless in many of her ways, and mysterious; and perhaps her greatest and subtlest human mystery is the strife, conscious or unconscious, of one individuality with another individuality. And she gives no balm for it. On the contrary, she gives a sort of morbid remorse, wholly out of proportion to the quality and quantity of mistakes and failings born necessarily of unsuitable companionship.
Clifford Thornton bent over him and put his hand on the lad's shoulder.
"Alan," he said, almost imploringly. "Don't fret like that. We will talk about it another time. Come, pull yourself together. We will go for a ride, and you can try the new cob."
The boy sobbed on as though he had not heard.
"Alan," Clifford Thornton said.
The boy looked up, and stifled his last sob.
"I don't want to go riding," he said. "I want to go and be alone."
He rose from the sofa and dried his eyes. He did not seem ashamed of his tears; he offered no excuses for his sudden outburst of grief.
"I'm awfully upset, father," he said with trembling voice.
"I have done you an injury to-day," his father said, "and I can never forgive myself. I have taken away from you something which I can never give back – that splendid belief of childhood that everything is going on all right."
Alan did not seem to hear. He took his cap from the writing-table and turned towards the door. It was evident that he wanted to say something to his father, but that the words would not come. He opened the door slowly and passed out. Clifford Thornton watched him, and watched the door close, and then stood still a moment, waiting, longing, and listening. But when he realised that the boy had indeed gone, he slipped into his study chair and leaned back, his arms folded tightly together, and his thin face drawn into an expression of great pain. The thoughts which passed through his mind kept him chained there, as one paralysed. Not a muscle of his face moved. He might have been a dead man staring at nothing. At last, perhaps half an hour afterwards, the door opened, and Alan came back.
"Father," he said shyly. "It's all right now. Let us go riding, after all."
The strain on the man's face relaxed. Father and son clasped hands.
CHAPTER II
Mrs Thornton, who had been making a tour in Scotland with her friend, Mrs Stanhope, returned to her home the next day after Clifford Thornton's interview with his boy. The Thorntons lived in Surrey, in a beautiful house standing with fifteen acres of untouched heather around it, not far from Farnham. It was called "Falun" after the place in Dalecarlia, Sweden, where Clifford Thornton's father had been educated at the celebrated School of Mines, since removed to Stockholm.
Mrs Thornton arrived at Farnham about five o'clock. Alan went to meet her at the station, and even during their drive home to "Falun," Mrs Thornton noticed that there was something unusually strained in the boy's manner. She herself was in a state of great mental excitement, having been urged by her friend, Mrs Stanhope, who had always taken an unsympathetic view of Clifford's character, to propose to him an immediate deed of separation.
Marianne Thornton was a beautiful, imperious woman, with an impossible temper and an impracticable temperament; she never had been, and never could have been controlled by any one. But this evening, something tugged at her heart when she saw that her boy, whom she loved in her turbulent way, was in trouble; and when they were alone in her boudoir, she questioned him in her abrupt fashion which so often jarred on her husband consciously and her son unconsciously.
"Father told me yesterday that you were not happy together," he said shyly, as he played with the spoon in his teacup. "It upset me rather. I am awfully sorry about it, mother."
He did not look at her when he spoke, and did not see the sudden flush on her handsome face. She herself had meant to tell Alan. It had never entered her head for one moment that Clifford, who, so she knew in her heart of hearts, had borne with her patiently, would have taken the initiative and opened the subject to the boy in her absence. She was stung beyond bearing.
"Happy!" she said excitedly. "Who could be happy with your father? So he has been speaking to you about me, has he? And what has he been daring to say against me?"
"He never said anything against you," the boy answered, in a low voice. "He only told me you were not happy together."
She arranged the cushions on the sofa angrily, and leaned amongst them angrily.
"Happy!" she said. "I should like to know who could be happy with your father – a man of no heart, no emotions, selfish beyond words, and unkind beyond belief."
"Oh, mother, that's not true," the boy said, with an indignant outburst. "Father is always good and kind. I never once heard him say an unkind word to you or me. It's all your fault. It's your temper. That's what it is."
His championship of his father aroused all the anger and jealousy in her nature.
She got up from the sofa and turned to him.
"You are just like him," she cried passionately, "just like him. Make your lives together, and find your happiness in each other. I don't want either of you."
She hastened from the room, swept down the stairs, swept through the hall, through the study and flung the door of the laboratory violently open.
Clifford, who was a chemist, was distilling over a flame a substance which represented more than a month's work. Marianne's sudden entry made him jerk the bottom of the flask containing it against the ring of the retort-stand. The flask cracked, and in an instant the whole of the contents blazed off and disappeared.
She did not notice, and would not have cared if she had noticed.
"What have you been saying to the boy?" she asked, in her tempestuous manner.
Clifford moved round, looked at her, and leaned against the bench.
"I have told him that we are not happy, and that we must part," he answered.
Something in his manner, something in his face, in the tone of finality in his voice arrested her. She glanced at him, glanced at the obvious signs of his lost labour, and some words rose to her lips, but she did not speak them. She went towards the door, and there she paused and turned towards him. He was still leaning against the bench, and his whole bearing denoted that of a man who can deal no more with despairing conditions. She knew then that everything was over between them. She retired to her room, and was not seen any more that evening.
Father and son took their dinner in silence, and no reference was made to Mrs Thornton's absence. It was tacitly understood by them both that she was in one of her tempers, which were, alas! part and parcel of the "Falun" everyday life.
Clifford and the boy played a game of billiards, and then both father and son went to develop some photographs in the dark room, which adjoined the laboratory. They were not happy; but like two criminals, they felt a certain amount of easement in being together.
At last Alan went to bed, and his father shut himself up in his laboratory and tried to work out some structural formulæ in connection with certain experimental data he had obtained. But his mental serenity had been disturbed by his wife's return, and he was disheartened by the loss of the result of his work. That was only one of the many times when Marianne had burst into the laboratory and spoilt his experiments, and he was annoyed with himself for not having remembered to turn the key and thus secure himself from an unwelcome intrusion. He struggled some time with conflicting thoughts, but eventually came into his study and drew his chair up to the fire; for it was a cold September night. He sat there staring at the fire, and his mind wandered back to his happy student days under Bayer in Munich, and Hofmann in Berlin, when everything seemed possible to him because his mind was free from harassment. He glanced at Hofmann's portrait, which was hanging over the mantelpiece, and he heard once more the man's genial voice, and felt the charm of his genial presence. A thrill of pleasure and enthusiasm passed through him. For three years he had studied with Hofmann, and had finally become his private assistant, only leaving him to take over the Professorship of Chemistry at Aberystwith College, a post which he held for two years. Then his father, a mining engineer, died, leaving him a considerable fortune; and he was thus able to devote himself entirely to research work, his subjects being the study of stereo-isomeric compounds, and syntheses amongst the vegetable alkaloids. It was during his last year at Berlin that he had met and married Marianne Dacre, the beautiful daughter of a widowed Englishwoman keeping an English boarding-house in the German capital. When his father died, they settled down with their little son at "Falun," and from that moment until this very evening, happiness had been a stranger to the home. Yet the man was made for happiness. He would have been glad enough to love and be loved. But he had, of his own free will, chosen badly, and he had to pay the penalty. And he paid it with all the chivalry and kindness which were part of his nature. But the moment had come when he realised that he had paid enough, and as he sat there, half-musing, half-dozing, he said:
"I have paid enough. I can and will pay no more."
And suddenly he fell asleep from sheer mental exhaustion, and he dreamed. He dreamed that he was telling his wife all his locked inmost thoughts of her. He had kept them controlled so long and so sternly, that now they came tumbling out with reckless abandonment.
"You have never known me for what I am," he said passionately. "You have spoiled my life, my spirit, and ruined my best talents. I tell you I had talents before you came and trampled on them. Listen to me. If ever a man has been spiritually murdered, it is I. But now the barrier of silence has broken down, and I dare to tell you what in my inmost heart I really think of you. I dare to tell you that I despise your paltry mind and petty temperament; that your atmosphere is an insult to me, and that I long and thirst and am starved to be free from the pressure of your daily presence. You have been merciless to me with your uncontrolled rages, your insane jealousies of me, my work, my ambitions, and my friends. I can bear it all no longer. The day on which we go our own ways, will be the day of my re-birth. And that day shall be to-morrow – now – even now. No, no, don't begin to argue with me, Marianne. There is nothing you can say to me either about yourself or the boy that could alter my determination. We have delayed too long already, and the precious years are passing. Sixteen wasted years – oh, the hopeless folly of them, and leading to what? No, no, I'll listen to no more arguments – there is no sense in this continued penance. We must and shall part to-morrow; no, no – now – this moment – ah, at last, at last – freedom at last!"
He awoke and looked around his quiet study.
"Ah," he said, "it was a dream. I am glad, in spite of everything, that it was a dream. I am glad that I did not say those things to her in reality. The look of pain and astonishment on her face would have haunted me all my life."
He shuddered.
"It was horrible," he said. "Poor Marianne, poor Marianne! You must not know the truth which kills. Poor Marianne! We must pick up the bits to-morrow – somehow."
Then he turned down the lights, and went upstairs. His wife's door was open, and he heard her voice calling him.
"Clifford, Clifford!" she cried, as though in some great danger.
He hastened his steps, and found Marianne standing in the middle of the room, her hair dishevelled, her eyes transfixed, and her face bearing the same expression of pain and astonishment which he had seen in his dreams.
"Good God!" he cried. "What is it, Marianne?"
"Clifford," she sobbed, "I dreamed that you had been telling me you hated and despised me, that I was an insult to your life and talents, that I had ruined your life, murdered your spirit, and crushed out all the best in you. Tell me, tell me, it was only a dream. I know we have not been happy, but – but – it could not have been as bad as that. Tell me, it was only a dream – but, oh, Clifford, it was so vivid, so penetrating that I cannot believe it was a dream. I heard your voice – your real voice; tell me – tell me – "
"It was only a dream," he said excitedly, "nothing but a dream. You must not look like that. I cannot bear you to look like that. It is more than I can bear. You must forget about it, and we will begin all over again to-morrow. I never said those things to you – thank Heaven, I never said them to you – it was only a dream – your dream – and my dream."
He could have bitten his tongue out after he had said those last words.
"Your dream?" she cried, with a ring of despair in her voice.
"Marianne," he said, gathering himself, and all the best in himself, together for victory over his temperament and hers – "oh, Marianne, we are not to be held responsible for our dreams. You know how it is with our restless, wayward fancies: one little passing discord in real life becomes magnified and expanded into an immense orchestra of discordant strains in that dream-life over which we seem to have no control. Don't you understand – can't you understand?"
"You dreamed it," she said slowly, "and it was so vivid to you that it broke through all barriers and reached me in my dream. It must have been born of your inmost thoughts, bred up and strengthened through these long years of our misunderstandings, until it reached its full maturity. We should indeed each have gone a separate way long ago. But it is not too late even now."
"Not too late to find the key to each other even now," he said. "Let us try to do it. Where others have failed, let us make a triumph. It is not our hearts which are at war, Marianne: our hearts mean well to each other. It is our temperaments which cause all the strife."
"We can make no triumph," she answered. "I have ruined your life, murdered your spirit, crushed out the best in you."
"It was a dream," he cried passionately. "Let it go the way of all dreams."
She shook her head.
"We must part to-morrow," she said, "and to-morrow will be the day of your re-birth."
"You stab me with your words," he said, as he passed, with head bowed, to the door.
"And you stab me with your dreams," she replied.
"We are both very unhappy," he said, as he paused on the threshold.
"Yes," she said, "very unhappy."
And she closed her door.
He stood alone on the landing. There was not a sound to be heard within the house or without. It was a still September night, so that even the branches of the trees were not moved in music. The harvest moon shone in coldly. The world seemed lonely to that lonely man.
"What a failure I have made of everything," he said to himself – "even of my silence."
He longed for some kind word, for some arresting glance of sympathy; but life could yield nothing to him in his moment of need. He thought of his boy whom he loved with all his heart, and he remembered only that he had deliberately made the lad suffer. He forgot all the years of intimate companionship which they two had enjoyed together, all the secret understanding so precious to both of them. These memories, which might have comforted him, and eloquently too, were silent; and because he was gentle and generous-hearted, he had to pay the uttermost price for the emotions which were the finest in his nature. He remembered only that he had wounded Marianne, hurt her to the quick, and that if he got his liberty – after fifteen years of bondage – he would be even as a released prisoner to whom the sweets of freedom had become distasteful.
He went mechanically down the stairs, let himself out of the hall-door, and stole round to the stables. Bully, the bull-terrier, knew his master's footstep, and, as a welcome, beat his tail against his kennel. Jinny, the brown mare, was asleep at the time; but she woke up and neighed softly when she heard her master's voice, and was eager enough to be saddled for a midnight ride. It was not the first time that she had been called upon to sacrifice her own slumbers to his restlessness. Many a time she and he had ridden out into the darkness and the tempest and the moonlight of the night.
When he came back again, it was nearly five o'clock. Worn out in body and spirit, he flung himself on his bed, fell asleep, and only awoke to the sound of some commotion in the house, and cries of "Father, father." He sprang up, opened the door, and found Alan outside.
"Father," he cried. "Mother – "
Clifford Thornton saw the look of alarm on his boy's face, and rushed to Marianne's room. The door stood open. Marianne was leaning back in the arm-chair – dead.
CHAPTER III
There was, of course, an inquest, and then poor Marianne Thornton was laid to rest in the little Surrey churchyard five miles from "Falun." The verdict was death from sudden failure of the heart's action, due probably to some shock, the exact nature of which was unknown.
"She must have had some shock, some great fright," Dr Aldborough deposed. "The expression on her face was that of excessive alarm. It may have been a dream – I have met with three such curious instances in my experience. Moreover, it was known to us all that Mrs Thornton was suffering from valvular disease of the heart. She had only lately been consulting a new heart-specialist."
"It was a dream," Clifford Thornton stated, "and she called to me, and I found her with that same expression of alarm on her face, and I tried to calm her and failed. And feeling heavy of heart, I saddled my horse and went riding."
"And the nature of the dream?" he was asked.
He shook his head.
"I do not know," he said. "I only know it was a dream."
He had made up his mind to keep that secret, chiefly for Alan's sake. He felt that he had already injured the boy, and no word of his should now add to the heavy burden of hastened knowledge.
"If I began to speak of it," he said to himself, "I should go on to tell him that I had killed her – and in time he would believe it – even as I do."
That was the torturing thought which at once began to assail him, although he fought it with all the weapons of reason and common-sense. He fought it even at the side of the grave, his impenetrable face showing no sign of the mental torture which he was enduring unhelped by any one. But when they came back to "Falun" after the funeral, he put his hands on Alan's shoulders and said sorrowfully:
"Alan, I would give my right hand, and the sight of my eyes, and the strength of my brain, if only I could unsay what I said to you the other day about your mother."
"Oh, father," the boy answered, in a paroxysm of grief, "perhaps we did not love her enough."
He broke off there, and they did not speak together further, both being of painfully reserved natures; but each wrung the other's hand silently, in token of closer friendship, and throughout that sad day they did not leave each other's side. The doctor called in during the afternoon, and found them in the study sitting close together and trying to interest themselves in a new book on architecture, which was Alan's beloved subject, and for which he had undoubted talent. They looked so desolate and pathetic that Dr Aldborough, who had always been attracted to this reserved man and his son, was concerned for their welfare. He offered no un-timely word of comfort or cheer, but he said to them:
"Come out with me. It is a splendid afternoon. I have to drive over to Midhurst, and the air will do you both good. You will sleep better. And Alan shall handle the greys, whilst we smoke."
The boy brightened up at once.
"Let us go, father," he said, a little eagerly.
"You go," his father answered. "I think I shall stay here."
"Then I shall stay," Alan said. "I couldn't be without you."
"In that case we will both go," Professor Thornton answered, smiling; and so they went off, thankful really for the break in that long day.
When they came back that evening, they were a little more cheerful in spite of themselves, and Alan went to bed and slept, and Clifford wrote to his old Danish governess, Miss Knudsgaard, telling her of his wife's sudden death, and asking her to come over. Then he sat thinking of his dead wife and of all the circumstances of their married life. He recalled to himself how bitterness of spirit and tenderness of intention had been ever at war within him. He had no sooner recovered from an attack of bitterness, than he was assailed by prolonged paroxysms of self-reproach, which tore him to shreds even more ruthlessly than his feelings of self-commiseration. He recalled all the petty strain and stress of trifling tragedies which had been steadily impairing his mental serenity. He hardened himself when he thought of that.
"This tragedy has happened," he said, "and through no fault of mine. I must not let it spoil the rest of my life. I am forty-three. What cannot a man still do and be at forty-three? I will battle with it until I conquer it. It shall not crush me. No, it shall not."
He rose from his chair with a grim determination in his manner.
"Do you hear what I say?" he said, as though to a vast audience. "It shall not crush me."
Then his eyes lighted on a box of his wife's letters and papers which had been found in her room. He opened the box and took out some of the papers. A few of them were receipted accounts. Several of them were letters evidently written on that last night, gummed down, and stamped ready for the post. One was to her intimate friend, Julia Stanhope, with whom she had been touring in Scotland: a woman whom he had always disliked, and who, so he thought, had always encouraged poor Marianne's displays of uncontrolled anger. He put the letters into the post-box. And here apparently was her journal. He did not know that she had kept a journal. He smiled sadly as he thought of all the stormy scenes it must surely record. He did not read it. He tore it up and threw the fragments in the fire, and watched them curl up and carry their secret away with them. But one page, the last page, had escaped the destruction, and fell at his feet. He picked it up and he saw these words:
"September 20th. – Had another temper to-night. As usual, bitterly, bitterly sorry. If only I could tell him; but I can't, and I won't."
Those must have been her last written words. They touched the most tender chords in the man's highly-strung gentle nature. He forgot his own sufferings: his own outraged peace and harmony of spirit: his own ambitions and schemes marred by constant turmoil of mind: his own broad outlook on life stealthily fenced in, now in one direction and now another, by her compelling pettiness of temperament. All this he forgot. She had not understood him – but – had he ever understood her? Ah, that was it – that was the crux of the whole matter; and he remembered now that never once had she reproached him with that. Never once had she said to him:
"And do you think there has been nothing to understand in me? I may not be the marvellous person you suppose yourself to be. I may not have all the gifts you are supposed to have; but at least I am a human being, with my own necessities and crying demands, no less importunate with me than yours with you."
Never had she said that to him. But he said it to himself over and over again, and almost broke his heart in the repeating of it.
