Stories by English Authors: The Orient (Selected by Scribners)

Her face was white to the lips, but she looked at him unflinchingly; and without a word he turned and left her.

Mrs. Drayton was resting in the tent on Tuesday afternoon. With the help of cushions and some low chairs, she had improvised a couch, on which she lay quietly with her eyes closed. There was a tenseness, however, in her attitude which indicated that sleep was far from her.

Her features seemed to have sharpened during the last few days, and there were hollows in her cheeks. She had been very ill for a long time, but all at once, with a sudden movement, she turned her head and buried her face in the cushions with a groan. Slipping from her place, she fell on her knees beside the couch, and put both hands before her mouth to force back the cry that she felt struggling to her lips.

For some moments the wild effort she was making for outward calm, which even when she was alone was her first instinct, strained every nerve and blotted out sight and hearing, and it was not till the sound was very near that she was conscious of the ring of horse’s hoofs on the plain.

She raised her head sharply, with a thrill of fear, still kneeling, and listened.

There was no mistake. The horseman was riding in hot haste, for the thud of the hoofs followed one another swiftly.

As Mrs. Drayton listened her white face grew whiter, and she began to tremble. Putting out shaking hands, she raised herself by the arms of the folding-chair and stood upright.

Nearer and nearer came the thunder of the approaching sound, mingled with startled exclamations and the noise of trampling feet from the direction of the kitchen tent.

Slowly, mechanically almost, she dragged herself to the entrance, and stood clinging to the canvas there. By the time she had reached it Broomhurst had flung himself from the saddle, and had thrown the reins to one of the men.

Mrs. Drayton stared at him with wide, bright eyes as he hastened toward her.

“I thought you – you are not – ” she began, and then her teeth began to chatter. “I am so cold!” she said, in a little, weak voice.

Broomhurst took her hand and led her over the threshold back into the tent.

“Don’t be so frightened,” he implored; “I came to tell you first. I thought it wouldn’t frighten you so much as – Your – Drayton is – very ill. They are bringing him. I – ”

He paused. She gazed at him a moment with parted lips; then she broke into a horrible, discordant laugh, and stood clinging to the back of a chair.

Broomhurst started back.

“Do you understand what I mean?” he whispered. “Kathleen, for God’s sake —don’t– he is dead.”

He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, her shrill laughter ringing in his ears. The white glare and dazzle of the plain stretched before him, framed by the entrance to the tent; far off, against the horizon, there were moving black specks, which he knew to be the returning servants with their still burden.

They were bringing John Drayton home.

One afternoon, some months later, Broomhurst climbed the steep lane leading to the cliffs of a little English village by the sea. He had already been to the inn, and had been shown by the proprietress the house where Mrs. Drayton lodged.

“The lady was out, but the gentleman would likely find her if he went to the cliffs – down by the bay, or thereabouts,” her landlady explained; and, obeying her directions, Broomhurst presently emerged from the shady woodland path on to the hillside overhanging the sea.

He glanced eagerly round him, and then, with a sudden quickening of the heart, walked on over the springy heather to where she sat. She turned when the rustling his footsteps made through the bracken was near enough to arrest her attention, and looked up at him as he came. Then she rose slowly and stood waiting for him. He came up to her without a word, and seized both her hands, devouring her face with his eyes. Something he saw there repelled him. Slowly he let her hands fall, still looking at her silently. “You are not glad to see me, and I have counted the hours,” he said, at last, in a dull, toneless voice.

Her lips quivered. “Don’t be angry with me – I can’t help it – I’m not glad or sorry for anything now,” she answered; and her voice matched his for grayness.

They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry clump of whortleberries. Behind them the lonely hillsides rose, brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather. Before them stretched the wide sea. It was a soft, gray day. Streaks of pale sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water. The tide was rising in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks toward the shore, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it. The muffled, pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence. Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whir of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance. He turned and looked at his companion.

“I have come thousands of miles to see you,” he said; “aren’t you going to speak to me now I am here?”

“Why did you come? I told you not to come,” she answered, falteringly. “I – ” she paused.

“And I replied that I should follow you – if you remember,” he answered, still quietly. “I came because I would not listen to what you said then, at that awful time. You didn’t know yourself what you said. No wonder! I have given you some months, and now I have come.”

There was silence between them. Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap. Her face, he noticed, was thin and drawn.

Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to him. She made no resistance; it seemed that she did not notice the movement; and his arm dropped at his side.

“You asked me why I had come. You think it possible that three months can change one very thoroughly, then?” he said, in a cold voice.

“I not only think it possible; I have proved it,” she replied, wearily.

He turned round and faced her.

“You did love me, Kathleen!” he asserted. “You never said so in words, but I know it,” he added, fiercely.

“Yes, I did.”

“And – you mean that you don’t now?”

Her voice was very tired. “Yes; I can’t help it,” she answered; “it has gone – utterly.”

The gray sea slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterward, by a short hard laugh from the man.

“Don’t!” she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm. “Do you think it isn’t worse for me? I wish to God I did love you!” she cried, passionately. “Perhaps it would make me forget that, to all intents and purposes, I am a murderess.”

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 – ”