Kathy.
P.S. Uncle Willie says be sure and be in time.
With a renewed sense of disappointment, Moray put down the letter which, when it arrived, he had opened so eagerly. Surely he might have expected something better than these few brief, restrained lines. Instead of the bare schedule of their departure, couldn’t she have dwelt more freelingly on her love, said that she was missing him, that she longed to be once again in his arms? In all her vocabulary was there no stronger word than “dear”? He admitted that she was shy, poor child, troubled by the consciousness of their intimacy—so he construed the phrase “I will soon be your own true wife”—and limited by the small size of the note-paper. Yet she had found space to devote to Willie—his lectures, his fever, his anxieties and arrangements, his request not to be late. Not a word, not a single inquiry as to his own state of mind and body, or the distress and difficulties he might be experiencing, away from her. Really, it was too bad. He loved her, he wanted her, and all she could do was to throw Willie at his head.
This strange feeling that he had been deserted was intensified by the isolation of his present existence. His normal routine was broken, he had said goodbye to his friends in Schwansee, no one came to see him, they had all written him off as a departed member of their group. And Frida—for more than a week he had not set eyes upon her, although on several occasions, in the hope of meeting her, he had essayed a halting walk in the rain round the lake shore towards her domain. He missed the companionship she had so freely given and which, now above all, when certainty and uncertainty chased each other across his mind, he so sorely needed. Bitterly he regretted the rift between them, the result of a few outspoken words on her part which, realising their purpose, he had already condoned. Surely he could not leave her without attempting to resolve their differences. Time was getting so short, so very short; in two days he would be off. He ought to go up the hill to visit her. Yet something, pride perhaps, a restraining gleam of caution, had hitherto intervened.
The summons to lunch recalled him. He ate in abstracted silence, without appetite; then, as was his Sunday habit, took a short nap. Awakening about three he saw that the rain poured down more mercilessly than ever. He got up, moved about the house, checked his packed suitcases, smoked a cigarette, tried to kill time, but gradually his spirits sank, reached their lowest ebb and, after resisting during the hours of daylight, as the miserable grey afternoon turned to sodden evening, he succumbed to the craving for one word of human comfort. Frida would give it. She was, had always been, his friend. They would not argue, would discuss nothing involving controversy, would simply spend in sympathy one last quiet restorative hour of human intercourse.
Hurriedly, before he could change his mind, he put on his Aquascutum, took an old golf umbrella from the stand and, letting himself unobtrusively out of the house, hobbled off. The ferry took him across the lake, but for a lame man it was a long walk and a stiff climb up the steep, winding path to the schloss. Yet he was there at last, trembling at the knees like a horse after a stiff pull. God, he thought, what a wreck I’ve become.
Almost lost in the low clouds, the tall Seeburg towered above him. Built of rough mountain granite in the seventeenth century Swiss style, with a machicolated roof and twin pepperpot towers, it had, in the swollen darkness, a spectral, haunted air, an impression heightened by the harsh croaking of drenched ravens sheltering beneath the overhang of the eaves. Advancing on the mossy terrace outside the narrow double windows that gave on to her sitting-room, he drew up with a catch of breath. Yes, there she sat, alone on the sofa, beside the antique tiled stove, working at her needlepoint under a single shaded light that barely illuminated the large and lofty apartment, sparsely furnished with heavy high-backed walnut chairs and a great Bavarian armoire. Her favourite little weimaraner, Peterkin, lay on the rug at her feet with his nose between his paws.
The sombre domesticity of the scene touched Moray. With an agitated hand he tapped on the pane. Immediately she raised her head, turned towards the outer darkness; then, putting down her work, she came slowly forward and opened the tall window. For a long moment she looked at him fixedly, then in a calm, firm voice, totally devoid of solicitude, she said:
“My poor friend, how ill you look. Come! I will help you. So.” Taking his arm she guided him towards the sofa. “Here you must sit and rest.”
“Thank you,” he muttered, breathing with difficulty. “As you see, I’m rather under the weather. You may remember I hurt my back. It hasn’t quite cleared up.”
“Yes,” she said, standing over him. “Three times I have seen you by the lake, attempting to take your walk. I said to myself, unfortunate man, soon he will come to me.”
No note, no sign of triumph was evident in her tone or manner, but a kind of calm protectiveness, as though she were dealing with a favoured yet refractory pupil.
“I felt I must come,” he defended himself hurriedly. “I couldn’t bear to leave the breach between us permanently unhealed. I . . . I am due to go the day after tomorrow.”
She did not answer but sat down beside him on the sofa and took his hand, holding it with strong, compelling fingers. For several moments there was absolute silence; then, gazing at him intently and speaking with the calm conviction of accomplished fact:
“My poor friend, you are not quite yourself. And now it is for a woman who knows and understands you, who has for you the best and strongest feelings, yes, it is now time for her to save you from yourself.”
“From myself?” he repeated, confused and startled.
“You have been led foolishly into a bad situation. Because you are an honourable man and, although ill, would wish to be a brave one, you want to go through with it. Even when it is plain you will not survive.” She paused quietly. “But for that I will not stand aside.”
In the ensuing silence, compelled by a strange mixture of attraction and revulsion, he forced himself to raise his head and look at her.
“I must admit,” he said, trying to assert himself, “with this lameness, I’m . . . almost in doubt. I mean, it has crossed my mind as to whether I’ll be able to go as arranged, or whether I should follow later.”
“You are no longer in doubt, my friend. I do not intend to let you go.”
A complex shock passed through him, a combination of opposites, positive and negative charges of electricity perhaps, anyhow a decided shock.
“But I’m committed . . . in every way,” he protested.
“Yes, you have been wrong.” She lifted a forefinger in admonition. “And stupid also. But listen. When you are walking in the mountains and discover yourself upon the wrong road, do you continue and fall into a crevasse? No. When you have asked directions of someone who knows better you turn and go back. That is what you will do.”
“No, no. I couldn’t. What would Kathy and Willie think of me? Even the people here, after all the talk, my speech at the party, the publicity in the Tageblatt. I’d be the laughing-stock of the canton when they still saw me around.”