Katrine searched her memory for the stray items of information which her friend’s letters had from time to time contained with regard to her husband’s friend. The two men were fellow-captains in the same regiment. Blair was the senior of the two, but even so his chances of promotion were small, owing to the hopeless blocking which is the soldier’s greatest handicap. Blair had seen active service, had distinguished himself in an expedition to Tibet, could with ease have achieved an exchange, but he was devoted to the regiment, a prime favourite with the mess, and having private means, preferred to defer the evil day.
Dorothea’s descriptions, though flattering, were somewhat vague. She had stated frequently, and with conviction, that “Jim was a dear!” but to which particular brand or type of dear he belonged was left to the imagination. Jim was the godfather of the son and heir; in descriptions of domestic scenes and conversations he seemed naturally to play a part; Dorothea was complacently convinced that in the society of her husband and herself he found complete satisfaction. It had never occurred to her to consider the part played by a fourth person in those same interviews! A quiet, well-mannered young person who sat on the mantelpiece, taking notes!
“Katrine and I!”
The real Katrine gasped once more at the remembrance of those words. So extraordinary were they, so unbelievable, that to make sure that they were not the creation of her own brain, she turned back to the letter, and re-read the sentence.
“Katrine and I have shared many a joke together.”
For a moment the girl frowned, then suddenly a wistful expression stole into her eyes. She herself had enjoyed so few jokes in these long flat years! The photographs had the advantage there. She found herself for the moment almost envying the photographs. The laughing one, that was to say; not the sad. The sad one had been guilty of unpardonable boldness in looking sorry for a strange man; in exchanging glances with him, forsooth! from the doorway, in covert sympathy with his bachelor estate!
“If it had been just an ordinary friendly correspondence, one might—perhaps—have agreed! It would be interesting to be friends with a man, but—but it is not! He doesn’t mean it to be; he doesn’t mean me to believe that he means it. It’s a kind of verbal ‘walking out’; a correspondence ‘with a view to matrimony!’ In a few months’ time he would be asking—”
Katrine jumped to her feet, and paced excitedly to the window, the letter still clutched in her hand. It crackled beneath her fingers, as she stood staring out into the lane.
A man in a white apron was walking rapidly along the farther side. Rogers, the butcher’s foreman, homeward bound for his mid-day meal. The clock of Saint Dunstan’s struck twelve chimes, and celebrated the occasion by chiming a verse of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
Every morning of the year that white-robed figure passed up the lane at precisely the same hour; every morning the same verse was ground out on the church bells.