Over two years have passed away since that mournful night when Harry
with his hand in St. George's, his voice choking, had declared his
determination to leave him the next day and seek his fortunes across the
seas.
It was a cruel blow to Temple, coming as it did on the heels of his own
disaster, but when the first shock had passed he could but admire the
lad for his pluck and love him the better for his independence.
“All right, my son,” he had said, concealing as best he could his
intense suffering over the loss of his companion. “I'll try and get
along. But remember I am here--and the door is always open. I don't
blame you--I would do the same thing were I in your place. And now about
Kate--what shall I say to her?”
“Nothing. I said it all this morning. She doesn't love me any more--she
would have passed me by without speaking had I not called to her. She'll
be married to Willits before I come back--if I ever do come back. But
leaving Kate is easier than leaving you. You have stuck to me all the
way through, and Kate--well--perhaps she hasn't understood--perhaps her
father has been talking to her--I don't know. Anyhow, it's all over. If
I had had any doubts about it before, this morning's talk settled it.
The sea is the best place for me. I can support myself anyway for a
while until I can help you.”
Yes! the boy was right, St. George had said to himself. It was all over
between them. Kate's reason had triumphed at last. She, perhaps, was not
to blame. Her experiences had been trying and she was still confronted
by influences bitterly opposed to Harry, and largely in favor of
Willits, for, weak specimen as Prim was, he was still her father, and in
so important a step as her marriage, must naturally exercise authority.
As for his own influence, that, he realized, had come to an end at
their last interview: the whole thing, he must admit, was
disappointing--cruelly so--the keenest disappointment of his life.
Many a night since he bid Harry good-by had he sat alone by that same
fire, his dogs his only companions, the boy's words ringing in his ears:
“Leaving Kate is easier than leaving you!” Had it been the other way and
he the exile, it would have been nearer the truth, he often thought, for
nothing in his whole life had left so great a void in his heart as the
loss of the boy he loved. Not that he was ever completely disheartened;
that was not his nature; there was always daylight ahead--the day when
Harry would come back and their old life begin again. With this in store
for him he had led his life as best he could, visiting his friends
in the country, entertaining in a simple, inexpensive way, hunting at
Wesley, where he and Peggy Coston would exchange confidences and funny
stories; dining out; fishing in the early spring; getting poorer and
poorer in pocket, and yet never complaining, his philosophy being that
it would be brighter in the morning, and it always was--to him.
And yet if the truth be told his own situation had not improved--in
fact, it had grown steadily worse. Only one payment of interest had been
made on the mortgage and the owner was already threatening foreclosure
proceedings. Pawson's intervention alone had staved off the fatal climax
by promising the holder to keep the loan alive by the collection of some
old debts--borrowed money and the like--due St. George for years and
which his good nature had allowed to run on indefinitely until some of
them were practically outlawed. Indeed it was only through resources
like this, in all of which Pawson helped, and with the collecting of
some small ground rents, that kept Todd and Jemima in their places and
the larder comfortably filled. As to the bank--there was still hope that
some small percentage would be paid the depositors, it being the
general opinion that the directors were personally liable because of
the irregularities which the smash had uncovered--but this would take
months, if not years, to work out.
His greatest comfort was in the wanderer's letters. These he would watch
for with the eagerness of a girl hungry for news of her distant lover.
For the first few months these came by every possible mail, most of them
directed to himself; others to his mother, Mrs. Rutter driving in from
Moorlands to compare notes with St. George. Then, as the boy made his
way further into the interior the intervals were greater--sometimes a
month passed without news of him.
“We are short-handed,” he wrote St. George, “owing to fever on the
voyage out on the Ranger, and though I am supercargo and sit at the
captain's table, I have to turn to and work like any of the others--fine
exercise, but my hands are cracked and blistered and full of tar. I'll
have to wear gloves the next time I dine with you.”
Not a word of this to his mother--no such hardships for her tender ears:
“Tell me about Kate, mother”--this from Rio--“how she looks; what she
says; does she ever mention my name? My love to Alec. Is Matthew still
caring for Spitfire, or has my father sold her?” Then followed the line:
“Give my father my respectful regards; I would send my love, but he no
longer cares for it.”
The dear lady did not deliver the message. Indeed Harry's departure
had so widened the breach between the colonel and herself that they
practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from
each other as possible. She had denounced him first to his face for the
boy's self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates.
Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his
horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired. “It is
a judgment on you,” she had said, drawing her frail body up to its full
height. “You will now learn what other people suffer,” and would have
kept on upstairs to her own room had not her heart softened at his
helplessness--a new role for the colonel.
He had made no answer at the time: he never answered her back. She was
too frail to be angry with, and then she was right about his being the
cause of her suffering--the first cause of it, at least. He had not
yet arrived at the point where he censured himself for all that had
happened. In fact since Harry's sudden exit, made without a word to
anybody at Moorlands except his mother and Alec, who went to town on
a hurry message,--a slight which cut him to the quick--he had steadily
laid the blame on everybody else connected with the affair;--generally
on St. George for his interference in his peace-making programme at the
club and his refusal, when ruined financially, to send the boy back to
him in an humble and contrite spirit. Neither had he recovered from the
wrath he had felt when, having sent John Gorsuch to ascertain from
St. George the amount of money he had paid out for his son, Temple had
politely sent Gorsuch, in charge of Todd, downstairs to Pawson, who
in turn, after listening to Todd's whispered message, had with equal
politeness shown Gorsuch the door, the colonel's signed check--the
amount unfilled--still in Gorsuch's pocket.
It was only when the Lord of Moorlands went into town to spend an
hour or so with Kate--and he was a frequent visitor prior to his
accident--that his old manner returned. He loved the girl dearly and was
never tired of talking to her. She was the only woman who would listen
when he poured out his heart.
And Kate always welcomed him gladly. She liked strong, decided men
even if they sometimes erred in their conclusions. Her grandfather,
old Captain Barkeley, had had the same masterfulness. He had been in
absolute command in his earlier years, and he had kept in command all
his life. His word was law, and he was generally right. She was twelve
years old when he died, and had, therefore, ample opportunity to know.
It was her grandfather's strong personality, in fact, which had given
her so clear an idea of her father's many weaknesses. Rutter, she felt,
was a combination of both Barkeley and Prim--forceful and yet warped
by prejudices; dominating yet intolerant; able to do big things and
contented with little ones. It was forcefulness, despite his many
shortcomings, which most appealed to her.
Moreover, she saw much of Harry in him. It was that which made her so
willing to listen--she continually comparing the father to the son.
These comparisons were invariably made in a circle, beginning at
Rutter's brown eyes, taking in his features and peculiarities--many of
them reproduced in his son's--such as the firm set of the lips and the
square line of the chin--and ending, quite naturally, with the brown
orbs again. While Harry's matched the color and shape, and often the
fierce glare of the father's, they could also, she said to herself,
shine with the soft light of the mother's. It was from the mother's
side, then, that there came the willingness to yield to whatever tempted
him--it may be to drink--to a false sense of honor--to herself: Harry
being her slave instead of her master. And the other men around her--so
far as yielding was concerned (here her brow would tighten and her lips
straighten)--were no better. Even Uncle George must take her own “No”
for an answer and believe it when she meant quite a different thing. And
once more would her soul break out in revolt over the web in which she
had become entangled, and once more would she cry herself to sleep.
Nobody but her old black mammy knew how tragic had been her sufferings,
how many bitter hours she had passed, nor how many bitter tears she had
shed. Yet even old Henny could not comfort her, nor was there any one
else to whom the girl could pour out her heart. She had, it is true,
kept up her intimacy with her Uncle George--hardly a week passed that
she was not a visitor at his house or he at hers--but they had long
since refrained from discussing Harry. Not because he did not want to
talk about him, but because she would not let him--Of course not!
To Richard Horn, however, strange to say, she often turned--not so much
for confidences as for a broader understanding of life. The thoughtful
inventor was not so hedged about by social restrictions, and would break
out in spontaneous admiration of Harry, saying with a decisive nod of
his head, “A fine, splendid young fellow, my dear Kate; I recognized
it first at St. George's dinner to Mr. Poe, and if I may say so, a
much-abused young man whose only sin is that he, like many another about
us, has been born under a waning star in a sky full of murky clouds; one
that the fresh breeze of a new civilization will some day clear away”--a
deduction which Kate could not quite grasp, but which comforted her
greatly.
It delighted her, too, to hear him talk of the notable occurrences
taking place about them. “You are wonderfully intelligent, my dear,”
he had said to her on one occasion, “and should miss nothing of the
developments that are going on about us;” and in proof of it had the
very next day taken her to an exhibition of Mr. Morse's new telegraph,
given at the Institute, at which two operators, each with an instrument,
the men in sight of each other, but too far apart to be in collusion,
were sending and answering the messages through wires stretched around
the hall. She, at Richard's suggestion, had written a message herself,
which she handed to the nearest operator who had ticked it to his
fellow, and who at once read it to the audience. Even then many doubting
Thomases had cried out “Collusion,” until Richard, rising in his seat,
had not only endorsed the truth of the reading, but explained the
invention, his statement silencing all opposition because of his
well-known standing and knowledge of kindred sciences.
Richard's readings also, from which Kate was never absent, and which had
now been resumed at his own house, greatly interested her. These of late
had been devoted to many of Poe's earlier poems and later tales, for
despite the scene at St. George's the inventor had never ceased to
believe in the poet.
And so with these occupations, studies, investigations, and social
pleasures--she never missing a ball or party (Willits always managing to
be with her)--and the spending of the summer months at the Red Sulphur,
where she had been pursued by half a dozen admirers--one a titled
Englishman--had the days and hours of the years of Harry's absence
passed slowly away.
At the end of the second winter a slight change occurred in the monotony
of her life. Her constant, unwavering devotee, Langdon Willits, fell
ill and had to be taken to the Eastern Shore, where the same old lot of
bandages--that is of the same pattern--and the same loyal sister were
impressed into service to nurse him back to health. The furrow Harry's
bullet had ploughed in his head still troubled him at times, especially
in the hot weather, and a horseback ride beside Kate one August day,
with the heat in the nineties, had started the subsoil of his cranium
to aching with such vehemence that Teackle had promptly packed it in ice
and ten days later its owner in blankets and had put them both aboard
the bay boat bound for the Eastern Shore.
Whether this new irritant--and everything seemed to annoy her now--had
begun to tell on our beautiful Kate, or whether the gayety of the winter
both at home and in Washington, where she had spent some weeks during
the season, had tired her out, certain it was that when the spring came
the life had gone out of her step and the color from her cheeks. Mammy
Henny had noticed it and had coddled her the more, crooning and petting
her; and her father had noticed it and had begun to be anxious, and at
last St. George had stalked in and cried out in that breezy, joyous way
of his that nothing daunted:
“Here, you sweetheart!--what have you been doing to your cheeks--all the
roses out of them and pale as two lilies--and you never out of bed until
twelve o'clock in the day and looking then as if you hadn't had a wink
of sleep all night. Not a word out of you, Seymour, until I've finished.
I'm going to take Kate down to Tom Coston's and keep her there till she
gets well. Too many stuffy balls--too many late suppers--oyster roasts
and high doings. None of that at Tom's. Up at six and to bed at ten.
I've just had a letter from him and dear Peggy is crazy to have us come.
Take your mare along, Kate, and you won't lack fresh air. Now what do
you say, Seymour?”
Of course the Honorable Prim bobbed his honorable head and said he had
been worried himself over Kate's loss of appetite, and that if Temple
would, etc., etc.--he would--etc., etc.--and so Mammy Henny began to get
pink and white and other fluffy things together, and Ben, with Todd to
help, led Joan, her own beloved saddle horse, down to the dock and saw
that she was safely lodged between decks, and then up came a coach (all
this was two days later) and my lady drove off with two hair trunks in
front and a French bonnet box behind--St. George beside her, and fat
Mammy Henny in white kerchief and red bandanna, opposite, and Todd in
one of St. George's old shooting-jackets on the box next the driver,
with his feet on two of the dogs, the others having been loaned to a
friend.
And it was a great leave-taking when the party reached the wharf. Not
only were three or four of her girl friends present, but a dozen or more
of the old merchants forsook their desks, when the coach unlimbered,
most of them crossing the cobbles--some bare-headed, and all of them in
high stocks and swallow-tail coats--pens behind their ears, spectacles
on their pates--to bid the young princess good-by.
For Kate was still “our Kate,” in the widest and broadest sense and the
pride and joy of all who knew her, and many who didn't. That she had a
dozen beaux--and that some of them had tried to bore holes in each other
for love of her; and that one of them was now a wanderer and another in
a state of collapse, if report were true--was quite as it should be. Men
had died for women a hundred times less worthy and a thousand times less
beautiful, and men would die of love again. When at last she made up her
mind she would choose the right man, and in the meantime God bless her
for just being alive.
And she was never more alive or more charming than to-day.
“Oh, how delightful of you, Mr. Murdoch, and you too, Mr. Bowdoin--and
Max--and all of you, to cross those wretched stones. No, wait, I'll come
to you--” she had called out, when with a stamp of her little feet she
had shaken the pleats from her skirt--adding when they had all kissed
her hand in turn--“Yes--I am going down to be dairy-maid at Peggy
Coston's,” at which the bald-headed old fellows, with their hands
upraised in protest at so great a sacrilege, bowed to the ground, their
fingers on their ruffled shirt-fronts, and the younger ones lifted their
furry hats and kept them in the air until she had crossed the gang-plank
and Todd and Mammy Henny, and Ben who had come to help, lost their
several breaths getting the impatient dogs and baggage aboard--and so
she sailed away with Uncle George as chaperon, the whole party throwing
kisses back and forth.