“Well then, it isn’t Katharine who asks you,” said Mrs. Bright. “I do. I’ll be responsible to Hester. I know she won’t mind, if it’s for me. Now, Walter, do! Just to please me!”
Crowdie said nothing. He turned his eyes upon her and then to Katharine’s face. But, feeling uncomfortably as though she were being watched for some reason which she could not understand, Katharine was looking down, nervously pulling at a thread in the lace which covered her right arm.
Wingfield was sitting on one side of her, in one of those naturally graceful attitudes which athletes assume without thought or care, one elbow on his knee as he bent forward, supporting his chin upon his in-turned hand, his resolute young face turned towards Crowdie, his black eyes somewhat sad and shadowy. On Katharine’s other side sat Ralston, nervous, moody, ready to spring, as it were, for he had not yet recovered from his anger at what had been said about secret marriages. Next to him was Bright, upright in his straight-backed chair, his heavy arms folded on his full chest, his round head thrown back, his clear blue eyes fixed on Katharine’s face.
As she looked up again, she had a strong impression of being surrounded by splendid wild animals. Wingfield was the tiger, colossally lithe, brown, black, and golden; Ralston the panther, less in strength, but lighter to spring, quicker to see, perhaps more cruel; Bright the lion, fair, massive, dominant, silent in his strength. Griggs was a wolf, grey, old, tough, destined to die hard some day without a cry. And Crowdie—with his woman’s eyes, his soft, clear voice, his delicate white hands, his repellent pallor, and wound-like lips—Katharine thought of neither man nor beast. Even in the midst of her dream of wild animals, he was Crowdie still, with a mysterious, indescribable, poisonous something in all his being which made it a suffering for her to touch his hand. To this something, whatever it might be, she preferred her father’s cruel avarice, her mother’s envy, heartless as it had been while it lasted. To it she would have preferred a drunkard’s trembling hand and lip. John Ralston’s ungovernable temper was immeasurably preferable to that, or her sister’s mean pride and petty vanity. There was no weakness or sin, scarcely any crime of which her maiden heart had dreamed with horror, which she would not have met and faced and seen in its bare ugliness, rather than that unknown something of which the existence was a certainty when Crowdie was near her.
In the dead silence of the moment the very faintest sound would have been loud. Whether they admitted it or not, they were none of them just then in a natural or normal state of nerves, except perhaps Mrs. Bright, whose supernal calm was not easily disturbed. Each one of the five men was thinking in his own way of Katharine, and of all she might be to him. The great passion was there, five-fold, and it made itself felt in the very air of the quiet room.
Then a soft vibration, as of a soul far off, murmuring to itself, just trembled and felt its way amongst them, like the promise of a caress. And again it came, more strongly, more clear, floating in the soft air and taking life in it, and stealing to the heart with a tender, backward-reaching regret, with a low, passionate looking forward to things of love yet to come.
Crowdie was singing. He had not changed his position as he sat in his chair, and he had scarcely raised his face. There was no effort, no outward striving for art, no searching for effect. The notes floated from his lips as though he thought them rather than as though they were produced by any human means, rising, sinking, with ever varying colour, tone, and meaning, ringing, as he sang, like an angel’s clarion tones, sighing, as he breathed them, like the whole world’s love-dream.
Then time, too, sank away into dreamland. Before Katharine’s closed eyes rose Lohengrin, silver-armed—floated the mystic swan—clashed the clanging swords. And then, moonbeams, the passionate, great, spell-ruled love—the question and its horror of endless parting—the rush of the destroyers to the bridal chamber, the last, the very last farewell, and out through the misty portals of the dream floated again the fatal, lordly swan, with arching neck, bearing away, spirit-like, the last breath of love from Elsa’s life.
None of them could have told how long he sang, for time was away in dreamland, and passion’s weary eyes drooped and saw not the pain.