KENNETH AND HARRY
The business which had taken Kenneth to Boston was finished sooner than
he expected, and he started for Millville the day after Connie left it.
He had made a speech on one of the subjects under discussion, and the
older members of the faculty had applauded and pronounced him an honor
to the profession. And he had heard their praises and made his speech
like one in a dream, wondering how he could have put two sentences
together connectedly, and why Connie’s name had not been mixed in with
what he said. She was constantly in his thoughts from the time he bade
her good-bye and looked into her clear blue eyes, where a shadow of
trouble was still brooding, though not so dark as it had been. She was
happier since her talk with him by the ledge, and he was more unhappy.
What she had told him troubled him continually, filling his brain with
conjectures as to the bar there was between them. Away from her, his
mind was in a greater turmoil than when with her, and all the way to
Boston and after his arrival he was thinking of her, and that she _must_
tell him on his return what it was. He was not usually nervous, but he
was fast becoming so, and during his speech he felt his heart beating so
loudly that it seemed to him that those who sat nearest must hear it,
and with every heart beat there was a thought of Connie, who, it seemed
to him, was stretching out her hands and calling to him. But for this he
would have stayed in Boston the second night and gone home in the
morning, but so morbid and nervous had he grown with a fancy that he was
wanted, that he decided to take a late train, which left him in
Millville at midnight.
As there was no carriage at that hour, he walked rapidly up the hill
till he came near the villa. There was a light in the nursery, and as he
passed the house he heard through the open window the baby’s cry and
Kitty’s voice soothing it, while mingled with hers was another voice
which he recognized as Hal’s.
“Baby has colic, I dare say,” he thought, and his first impulse was to
offer his services.
Then he changed his mind as the crying ceased, and went on home, where
his mother let him in, marvelling to see him at that hour, and full of
the news that Connie had gone.
“Gone! Where? and why?” Kenneth exclaimed, feeling that his nervousness
in Boston meant something.
His mother told him all she knew, adding: “She looked queer and appeared
queer; I don’t think she really wanted to go. I believe she’ll be back
before long.”
There was comfort in this, and after hearing that Harry had come the
night before and didn’t seem very well, he bade his mother good-night
and went to his room, where the first thing he saw was Connie’s note
upon his table. It did not take long to read it, and after it was read
he felt for a moment as if he were dying and tried to call for help. But
no sound came from his lips, which prickled, as did his whole body.
“This will never do. I must shake it off or I shall die,” he said,
groping in the blackness gathering around him. “I must not die. I must
live to kill Harry and then shoot myself, and no one but Connie will
ever know why.”
This was his thought the entire night. There was a revolver in his
drawer, and he took it out and examined it, finding two balls in its
chambers. “One for Hal and one for me,” he said as he replaced it in the
drawer. He didn’t prickle now at all, nor feel at all, except that he
was going to kill Harry, and he waited impatiently for the dawn, which
came, rosy and bright and sweet, with the scent of flowers and the hay
his father had cut the day before. He saw the smoke curling up from the
kitchen chimney of the villa and knew the servants were astir.
“Hal will not be up for hours, maybe; he was always a late riser,” he
thought, “and I can’t kill him in bed before Kitty and the baby Connie.
I must wait. There are things I must say to him, and Kitty must never
know she is not his wife, or why I killed him. I must find him alone.”
He tried to seem natural at breakfast, but his mother saw something was
the matter, and charged it to fatigue and Connie’s absence. After
breakfast he went to the stable, where Pro and Con whinnied him a
welcome, the latter rubbing her head against his arm in token of her
gladness at seeing him.
“I shall never feed you again, my pets,” he said, as he gave them double
their usual allowance, and then there flitted through his mind a vague
wonder as to what would become of them and his father and mother, and
what the world would say.
He didn’t care. He was going to kill Harry, and he kept saying it to
himself while watching the villa. At last he saw Kitty come out in her
big hat and red parasol, with Cindy and the baby cart and the baby in
it. They were going for a walk, and he watched them till they were out
of sight, and thought what a dainty little body Kitty was, and how
pretty she looked in her white gown and big hat with red poppies upon
it. But it didn’t matter. He was going to kill Hal, and now was his
time. He found him in what had been fitted up as his den. Evidently he
had not been up long, for he was in his dressing-gown and slippers, and
had the air of one just out of bed. He was, however, smoking a
cigarette, and on the table beside him were glasses, with soda water,
lemons, brandy, whisky and sugar.
As Kenneth appeared in the door he sprang up, and, extending his hand,
exclaimed in his old, cheery way: “Hallo, Ken! I take it very nice in
you to call so soon. When did you get home? Sorry you found me _en
dishabille_. Fact is, baby had stomach ache, and kept me awake. She’s
gone out with Kitty. Great baby, that, and named for your Connie.”
His flippancy had irritated Kenneth from the start, and the mention of
Connie made him furious. Had he no sense of decency? It seemed not, and
Kenneth’s face was white and hard as he advanced a few steps and stood
before his cousin like an avenging nemesis.
Something in his attitude and expression made Hal stare at him in
wonder, as he said, “What is it, Ken, that you seem so savage, as if you
had come to eat me?”
“I haven’t come to eat you, but to kill you!” Kenneth replied, producing
a revolver and holding it within a few feet of Harry, who staggered back
into his chair, sure that Kenneth was mad.
“Kill me!” he gasped. “For what?”
“For bigamy,” Kenneth answered. “For blighting the life of the sweetest
girl that ever lived, and degrading another.”
He was certainly mad, and Harry moved a little out of the range of the
pistol, which followed and covered him.
“Ken,” he began, “you are crazy. I am no bigamist. I have never married
but one girl, and that is Kitty.”
“It’s a lie,” Kenneth roared, while there began to steal into his mind a
ray of hope that either there was a mistake or Harry was not the man.
“What about Connie Elliott, whom you married in Interlaken? Have you
forgotten her so soon?”
Harry drew a deep breath of relief and tried to become his old easy
self. But it was hard work. There was a good deal that was crooked to
explain, and the revolver was dangerously near to him.
“Does Connie think that of me?” he asked; and Kenneth replied, “She
thinks you a villain.”
“I am a villain, double dyed, but not so bad as that,” Harry said. “Take
a chair, Ken; take two chairs, if you like, but drop that murderous
thing you are holding under my nose, I can’t talk with it in front of
me. It might go off, you know.”
There was a good deal of the winsome Hal about him, and Kenneth began to
feel its influence, and held the pistol at his side, but would not sit
down.
“I may shoot you yet, and can do it better standing,” he said. “Begin at
once, and be sure you tell the truth. I shall know if you are lying, and
my pistol will not miss its mark.”
“Heavens and earth!” Hal exclaimed. “Do you think I can lie with a
loaded revolver in front of me, and you looking black as thunder? No,
sir! I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
He was getting flippant again, and Kenneth scowled as he began: “You
remember the blow-out when Pondy rolled under the table.”
Kenneth nodded and Hal went on: “Poor little beggar! He died last year
in London with delirium tremens. I happened to be in the same hotel and
was with him at the last, and just before he died he said to me, ‘I am
going to enshoy myshelf immenshly,’ and perhaps he is, who knows? I
don’t think our Heavenly Father holds grudges and blows out fellow’s
brains for something he never did. Do you?”
“Leave Pondy and go on!” was Kenneth’s stern reply; and Hal went on:
“You remember Pondy toasted Constance Elliott as the most beautiful girl
he had ever seen, and you were so mad to hear her name from his lips
that you smashed a cut-glass tumbler. Well, Pondy said she was a great
heiress, or would be if some mines panned out as they were likely to do.
About that time I was thinking of heiresses, for I wanted money
badly,—had a lot of debts on hand. Kitty Haynes was in my mind the
prettiest girl I’d ever met, but I wanted to see this Connie. I went
abroad, you know; heard where she was and found her. I’d got into a kind
of scrape in Paris and seen my name rather unpleasantly conspicuous in
the newspapers, and just for a lark I thought I’d change it for a while.
Our family name years ago was _Meurice_, and my second name Harold, so I
put the two together and was _Harold Meurice_, from New York, which had
a more aristocratic sound than plain Harry Morris, Millville, smelling
of factories and things. I needn’t tell you that I look well and talk
well.”
“The devil is not your equal,” Kenneth interposed, and Hal continued,
with the most imperturbable good humor.
“I don’t believe he is when I lay myself out, as I did with Connie. I
made love to her for six weeks, and found her like Barkis,—’willin’!
There, there! Keep that pistol down. I did not mean any disrespect. She
was an innocent, simple-hearted girl, who had been in a convent school
so long that she knew nothing of the world, certainly not of men like
me, and she believed every word I said. Her aunt was a regular
she-dragon, who disliked and distrusted me, and did her best to keep her
niece from seeing me alone, and encouraged her marrying a measly count,
whom she afterwards took herself. At last I received a telegram from Tom
Haynes, saying he and Kitty were in Paris, and wanted me to join them.
By this time I was pretty far gone, and felt that I could not give
Connie up. There was a walk we had once taken out towards Lauterbrunnen,
and we took it that last afternoon of my stay in Interlaken. I told her
I was going away the next morning, but should soon come back, and in the
meantime I wanted to bind her to me, so that her meddling aunt could not
separate us, or persuade her to take the count. I think the devil put
the plan into my head; he has helped me a good many times.”
Kenneth nodded approvingly, and Harry went on: “I suggested that we be
married, and when she asked how we could without priest or witness, I
did some tall lying. I told her that the marriage ceremony was far more
simple to be binding than she thought; that if we pledged ourselves to
each other in the words of the Prayer Book it was lawful. I was a lawyer
and I knew and cited some cases I had known, and talked law and civil
law, and said that as a lawyer I could marry myself and all that, until
her brain was in a whirl and she believed all I said,—lies, of course.
Oh, pray don’t hold that ugly thing that way. It might go off, and this
pretty room be spattered with my brains and you tried for murder. I
meant no harm to the girl. I only wanted to have her believe she was
mine, for, with her yielding nature, I feared her aunt’s influence.
There was a big bowlder by a brook which had its source in the mountains
back of us, and there we sat down and pledged our faith to each other.
I, Harold take thee, Connie, and so on. You know how it goes. ‘You are
mine now,’ I said, ‘just as truly as if a bishop had heard our vows, but
when I come to claim you we will, of course, have the ceremony in
public, to satisfy your aunt.’ There was a troubled look on her face,
whose expression I shall never forget, as she said to me, ‘It does not
seem a marriage with no prayer in it. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer
together.’”
“Oh,” Kenneth groaned, tightening his hold on the pistol and recalling
the little girl who had once said that prayer at his side.
“There you are again, wanting to shoot me,” Hal exclaimed, “and I
deserve it, and wouldn’t mind much, if it were not for Kitty and the
baby. I couldn’t say ‘Our Father’ with her to save my life, but she said
it with her head bowed and the fading light falling upon the sheen of
her fair hair. Now you _are_ going to kill me!” and Hal sprang from his
chair as Kenneth raised his right hand.
“For Heaven’s sake throw that thing out of the window, if you want me to
keep my senses.”
“Sit down, and don’t be a coward as well as a knave. I shall not kill
you till your story is ended. Go on. You made her think she was your
wife?”
“Yes,” Hal answered, returning to his chair and beginning to mix a
cocktail, which he took down at one gulp. “Must brace my nerves,” he
said. “Yes, I made her believe it was lawful, and bound her to secrecy
till I came to claim her. I left the next morning and have never seen
her since. I found Tom in Paris with Kitty, who was so pretty and
piquant and full of life that I began to compare her with Connie, to
whom I meant to be faithful, and probably should have been but for a
rumor which came from her aunt’s banker that she had lost all her money
and was dependent upon her aunt. I took some pains to verify the truth
of the report, with a result that I believed it, and then came the tug
between Connie with nothing and Kitty with thousands. Kitty won, and I
at once wrote to Connie confessing the truth, even to my real name, and
that I was your cousin. I called myself a liar, a blackguard, a villain,
and if you can think of any worse name I called myself that. I hinted,
too, that Kitty was very much in love with me, that her brother knew it,
and that with his Kentucky blood I feared what he might do if I left
her. In short, I wrote so pathetic a letter that it actually drew tears
to my eyes as I read it, and pitied myself for being between two fires,
or loves. I loved Connie, I loved Kitty, who was on the ground and won.
Why my letter never reached Connie, I don’t know. I sent it to
Interlaken, but she must have left before it reached her. Probably it
was forwarded from one post to another and was finally lost, as letters
not infrequently are on the Continent. When I was married I had a paper
sent to her through her aunt’s banker in Paris. I named our baby for
her, and though I love Kitty dearly, there is not a day of my life that
I do not think of Connie. It was a shock when I heard she was here; but
as Kitty wrote how fond they were of each other, and how Connie took to
the baby, I concluded she had forgiven me, and was rather anxious to see
her again. I hear that her money, instead of being lost, has increased
until she is really an heiress, while Kitty’s father has lost
everything. Serves me right, though the Lord only knows how I am ever to
pay my debts. Their name is legion. Perhaps you’d better shoot me and
put me out of my trouble. I’ve told you the truth. I have repented in
sackcloth and ashes of that episode in Switzerland. I have even been on
my knees before my Creator, and what more can I do?”
Kenneth came near smiling at this assertion, which was so like Harry,
and his hand relaxed its hold on the revolver. In his bitter anger he
had scarcely noticed Harry’s personal appearance, but he could see now
how changed he was. His face was flushed and thin, and there were dark
hollows about his eyes, telling of ill-health or dissipation, or both.
But he was still too indignant to ask any questions, and he had seen a
red parasol at the gate, and knew Kitty had returned with the baby. In a
moment she was in the room, bright and breezy, delighted to see Kenneth
and solicitous about her husband, whose hair she smoothed as she asked
if he had had any breakfast.
“He is a little lazy this morning,” she said to Kenneth. “Baby had colic
last night and kept him awake, and then I don’t think he looks quite
well, do you? He is positively feverish,” and she took one of his hands
in hers and began to rub it. “Grippe, maybe. Please give him something
and feel his pulse. How fast it beats.”
“I am glad I didn’t kill him,” Kenneth thought, as he watched her and
saw her anxiety for her husband.
He had slipped the revolver into his pocket, but he could not then touch
Hal’s hand to count his pulse, and Hal understood it, and, gently
pushing Kitty aside, mixed himself some brandy and water, saying, as he
drank it:
“Never mind, Kitty. I don’t need medicine; this is better.”
Suddenly it occurred to Kitty to ask if Kenneth were not surprised to
find Connie gone.
“Yes,” he said; “but I hope to have her back very soon.”
“And to think, she went just as Harry was coming home, and he never saw
her.”
A quick, telegraphic look passed between the two young men which Kitty
did not see, and would not have understood if she had. The baby had been
brought in by this time, and Kitty put it on Hal’s lap for Kenneth to
see how fatherly he looked.
“I am so glad her name is Connie,” she said. “Funny, Harry chose it
without knowing the real Connie. Baby has not yet been christened, and I
mean to have the big Connie her sponsor when she comes back. You think
it will be soon?”
“I hope so,” Kenneth answered, and then, not caring to hear the subject
further discussed, he said good morning, and went out, thinking to
himself again, “I am glad I didn’t shoot him.”