“Why, of course!” exclaimed Hester, with insincere frankness. “That is, if you insist upon parting, as you call it. But I declare! we might just as well be a pair of lovers quarrelling, you know. It’s just about as sensible, on the whole.”
“I suppose things mean more to me than they do to you,” answered Katharine, with sudden coldness. “Friendship—like everything else—like—”
She was going to say ‘like love,’ but checked herself. In that at least she felt that she must have been mistaken. Whatever else she might think of Hester, she knew that she was almost insanely in love with her husband. At the very moment when the words were on her lips the thought flashed through her mind, that with Hester it might be the half-desperate, all-absorbing passion which was draining her of all capacity for any other attachment. Katharine thought of herself and of her love for Ralston, and felt more real sympathy for her friend just then than she had felt for many a day.
As she ceased speaking she heard the hall door opened and shut again, just outside the sitting-room, and a moment later she heard Crowdie’s soft voice, low and sweet, humming to himself as he began to ascend the stairs. As she turned to Hester, as though to continue speaking, she saw how the pale face had changed in a moment. Every faculty was strained to catch the faint echo of the melody, the deep eyes gleamed, there was colour in the transparent cheeks, the dewy lips were just parted. There was nothing unreal nor affected in that.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Katharine could not keep the expression of curiosity out of her eyes as she watched Hester Crowdie. The woman’s whole manner had changed in an instant, and she seemed to be another person. She seemed trying to hold her breath to catch the distant and ever retreating sound of her husband’s voice. The colour in her pale cheeks heightened and paled and heightened again in visible variations. Her slender throat fluttered with quick pulsations like that of a singing bird or a chameleon, and her deep eyes were filled with light. Katharine even fancied that the little ringlets of soft brown hair trembled and waved like the leaves of a sensitive plant, impossible as it was. Hester’s whole being was all at once intensely alive, intensely sensitive, intensely brilliant. A few minutes earlier she had been leaning back against her cushion, suppressing a yawn from time to time, saying cold and disagreeable things, pale, cool, diaphanous.
Katharine moved slightly, and the white hand was upon hers instantly, with a light touch of warning, as though to silence her, lest a single faint echo of Crowdie’s voice should fail to reach Hester’s ears.
The young girl wondered whether she herself ever behaved so strangely when John Ralston was near, and whether any one sitting beside her could see his presence reflected in her eyes. She did not know, though she believed herself, as she really was, colder and less quick to show what she felt. The last note died away as Crowdie ascended the staircase and got out of hearing, and Hester sank back against her cushion again. The colour faded from her cheek, the light died in her eyes, and her throat was quiet. The bloodless hands just met on her knees, and the tips of the slight fingers tapped one another nervously two or three times, and then lay quite still.
There had been something in the quickly succeeding changes which struck Katharine as not exactly human, though she could have found no other word with which to describe better the phases of the passing sensitiveness she had witnessed. But it had been more like the infinitive sensitiveness of nature than the ordinary responses of an impressionable woman. Katharine had thought of the sensitive plant, for she had seen many in hot-houses and had often played with them, softly stroking the fern-like plumes made by the two rows of tiny oval leaves, and delighting to see how they rose and waved, and tried to find and follow her finger. And she thought, too, of stories she had heard about the behaviour of animals before an earthquake, a great storm, or any terrible convulsion of nature. She had never before quite understood that, but it was clear to her now.
At the same time she felt a strong sympathy for Hester, and for the love which was so unmistakable and real. It was impossible for her to comprehend how such love could exist for such a man as Crowdie, whom she herself thought so strangely repulsive, though she could find nothing to say against him. It could only be explained on the ground of an elective affinity, mysterious in its source, but most manifest in its results. She had never been allowed to read Goethe’s great book, but the title of it had always meant something to her, and represented a set of ideas which she used in order to explain the inexplicable. It was true, also, so far as she could see, that between Hester and Crowdie the affinity was mutual and almost equally strong, and Katharine thought with an unpleasant sensation of the way Crowdie sometimes smiled at his wife. Of course, she thought, if one did not object to a certain amount of womanliness in a man’s looks and manner, nor to a pale, pear-shaped face with intensely red lips, nor to a figure which altogether lacked masculine dignity—if one could forget all those things and consider what Crowdie must seem to a blind woman, for instance, and if one could forgive a certain insolent softness of speech which now and then was his, why, then, Crowdie was one of the most charming of men. There was no word but that one. Take him all in all,—his remarkable power as a portrait painter, developed by study and real industry, his exquisite voice and perfect taste in singing—so perfect that there was not a trace of that art which it is art’s mission to conceal—his conversation, which was often brilliant and almost always interesting,—taking him all in all, thought Katharine, and quite apart from his appearance, he was a marvellously gifted man. She had never known a man like him. Paul Griggs was not to be despised as a judge of men, for he had seen and known many who were worth knowing, and Paul Griggs liked Crowdie and was intimate with him. It was true that no other man of Katharine’s acquaintance liked him, but Griggs’ opinion might outweigh that of many just men. But when she thought of Crowdie’s appearance, she marvelled how any woman could love him. There was something about it which thrilled her painfully, like a strong, bad taste—yet not so as to hinder her from feeling sympathy for Hester, in spite of all the latter had said during the past half hour.