Kathleen Drover, a middle-aged wife and mother of three, recalled when she was engaged as a young woman many years before. Her fiancé was a soldier during World War I. He was a mysterious man. She was young and did not know him well. Months after their August farewell, "her fiancé was reported missing, presumed killed." Kathleen suffered "a little grief" after she found out this news. Her family was not sorry that their daughter did not marry a "man they knew almost nothing about."
Though Kathleen had said yes to becoming engaged to her soldier, the "unnatural promise [drove] down between her and the rest of all humankind." She looked back on their engagement and realized that she "could not have plighted a more sinister troth." It seemed as though she said yes to him with hesitation. This was evident because the engagement "made her feel so apart, lost and forsworn." This meant that she felt as though she had made a promise...
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she did not truly want to make or even intend to keep. When the soldier went missing, Kathleen felt relieved. She no longer had to keep that "unnatural promise." The story did not indicate that she felt an immediate, long term sense of freedom. She experienced a temporary freedom after she parted from the soldier to run to the safety of her home and family. In the long term, she was single for many years. A sense of foreboding stayed with her. She eventually got married as a woman in her early thirties. She settled into the routines of life with her husband and children.
The betrothal was "sinister" because of the regret Kathleen felt about it. It was also sinister because of her fiancé's parting words, which had a foreboding tone. He told her that he would always "be with [her]." He also pressed her hand against his sharp buttons until she was cut.
Why does Kathleen feel free when the soldier goes missing in "The Demon Lover"?
Kathleen Drover feels free when the soldier goes missing in World War I because he has had a mysterious, frightening hold over her.
We don't learn much about the soldier who enters Kathleen's life. The family is relieved when he disappears, as they know almost nothing about him. In their final meeting, the soldier-lover holds Kathleen in a way that hurts her and presses one of the buttons of his uniform against her hand. He does not kiss her, and his eyes glitter in a "spectral" way.
The soldier, who is never named, has extracted some sort of promise from her, one that is "unnatural" and a "sinister troth," though we don't learn exactly what it is. However, it makes Kathleen feel separated from the rest of the human race.
The soldier tells her, ominously, that she doesn't have to understand when he says he won't be far from her. He tells her, in way that has a threatening undertone, that he will be back and that she need do nothing but wait for him. When he is gone, she is "free" to leave the silent lawn.
She feels free because the soldier is gone and freer when the soldier is presumed dead, leaving her the chance to try to move on.