Katharine Frensham: A Novel

Katharine Frensham: A Novel
Beatrice Harraden

Beatrice Harraden

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.