“And there is Martin!” said Katrine, in a slow, dull tone of finality. “There is Martin!”
For the first time in her experience she felt a flood of pity for her own self-enforced celibacy. Hitherto marriage had presented no especial lure and the two men who had appeared as suitors had failed to awaken even a passing interest. No one could look at Katrine’s face and fail to realise that she was capable of deep and passionate love, but she had none of the easy sentiment of the ordinary young girl, and having failed to meet her mate, the softer part of her nature was still dormant. Moreover she had an immense advantage over the ordinary unmarried woman, in being mistress of a home, in the management of which she could indulge to the full her natural feminine instincts. It had appeared to her that if Martin were more responsive, she could be satisfied with her lot. There was a certain flatness, no doubt; a certain dread in envisaging the years, but experience showed that such moods were not confined to spinsters alone. They followed as a natural sequence the awakening from youth’s bright dreams; to encourage them would be both morbid and weak! But with the reading of that amazing letter a new rebellion surged in her soul...
She was giving up her life for Martin, and Martin was not made happy thereby. Her mind travelled back to the interview of an hour before—she saw the tall figure, the weary droop of the shoulders; caught again a glimpse of the lean dark profile, which, in contradistinction to the pose, had still so boyish an air. Like a flash of light came a realisation which galvanised into life the stereotyped pity of years. He was young, poor Martin; still young, at an age when he might most have enjoyed his life!
For the first time a faint doubt shot through the certainty of Katrine’s conviction that all that was best worth having was for Martin past and over. A man of thirty-five, in the prime of health and vigour—was it natural, was it right, that his heart should remain buried in the grave of his girl wife? Loyalty would not allow Katrine to confess as much in words, but deep down in her heart she realised that her brother was growing yearly less loving, less lovable, more difficult to please. Bereft of Juliet, thrown back upon himself, the best part of his nature was slowly atrophying from disuse.
Was the fault on his side or hers? Woman of twenty-six though she was, Katrine was curiously limited in her ideas on the great facts of life. The Cranford cramp had laid its hand upon her, so that her judgments were made from the standpoint of convention, not fact. It never occurred to her to blame human nature for the fact that a brother and sister of mature age had failed to find completeness in a life together; instead, she peered anxiously into her own shortcomings of temper and tact, and laboriously built up resolutions.
“I must be more careful, more considerate. He has nobody but me.”
She sighed, and this time the sigh was undisguisedly wistful in tone.
“If it were possible! If she could indeed be brave enough, fine enough, woman enough, to throw conventions to the winds, what a wonderful new interest might come into her life! The arrival of Dorothea’s letters had made epochs in the week, but how much more—” She stopped short, aghast at the suggestion. How could the letters of a strange man be more engrossing than those of the friend of years? Comparison between them was ridiculous. The whole proposition was preposterous and impossible. She would write at once, a firm and dignified rebuff.
Then suddenly, in the midst of her protests, Katrine caught sight of her own image gazing at her from a mirror across the room—a transformed image, youthful, glowing, incredibly alive. The eyes flashed, drooped with a guilty shame, then flashed again bright and defiant. She looked, and burst into a great peal of laughter; she threw out her arms with the gesture of one pushing aside imprisoning chains, advanced with a swaggering gait, and nodded defiance into the tell-tale glass.
“You’re a fraud, Katrine Beverley; you’re a fraud! It is all humbug and pretence, and you know that it is. His letters would be more interesting, just because he is a man, who admires me, and wants—things—he can never have! And I’m not sorry, I’m glad. If it wasn’t for Martin, I’d say yes.—I’d say it at once, I want to say yes!”