There was never a stranger honeymoon than that of Kate and Basil
Kildare. It began with a view-halloa. It ended ... how should happy
hunting end except with the death of something?
That first year was not without its heady charm for a girl with the
facile, the almost tragic, adaptability of seventeen years. True, it was
not married life as she had dreamed it; but it was her husband's life.
She made it hers.
Kildare's boon companions found to their relief that a young wife was no
restraint upon their pleasures; was indeed an addition to them. No sport
was too rough for her to share, no riding too hard, no gambling too
heavy. Despite her town breeding, this was no hothouse plant, this
daughter of a horse-racing, whisky-drinking, card-playing gentry.
Kildare took a vast delight in her prowess, particularly at the
card-table; swearing joyously when she won, paying her losses, which
were considerable, with an amused indifference equal to her own. One
quality, and one alone, had power to move him in man, woman, or beast.
It was the quality he called Spirit.
In that Kate was not lacking. Rumors of the wild Kildares, always rife
in a countryside they had made famous for generations with their
amusements, did not abate after the coming of a new mistress to Storm.
Of the society of her own sex, she had little or nothing. The few women
of her class within driving distance were careful to call once--Kildare
was not a man to antagonize. But they did not come again. Kate was not
sorry. She found them less interesting than their men-folk. Their
manners were provincial, their outlook narrow, and--they did not fall in
love with her. In this they were unlike their husbands, their brothers,
their sons, and fathers.
The guest-house was rarely empty. The bride and groom were never alone.
Storm had long been a gathering place for sportsmen of every type, from
the neighboring towns, from the city, from other States. Nor were their
guests always gentlemen. Kate, indeed, grew to prefer certain of the
rough and simple farmers who came there to the more polished visitors.
Their admiration was humbler, less troublesome.
Gentlemen or not, Kate numbered her admirers among her husband's friends
by the score. She grew as adept in handling them as in handling colts;
and her prowess in this, too, amused Basil Kildare enormously. He
rallied her on each new victim with chuckles of delight. Too confident
of himself for jealousy, he knew, if he thought of it at all, that his
honor was safer in her hands than it had ever been in his own.
That the girl came to no harm in that wild year was owing to no
watchfulness of her husband's. The Kildare motto was "Liberty For All."
Nor was it owing to any love of her husband's, Kate soon knew this.
Her beauty was a matter of great pride to him. He flaunted it, his
property, before other envious men; took her often upon his knee when
any were about; pulled the pins out of her hair to reveal the full
flowing splendor of it; hung her with jewels, sent away for velvets and
silks and laces, so that she went about the rough place clad like a
young queen at court. But despite various episodes in his career,
Kildare was never a woman's man. He had married for one reason, and one
alone. He made no concealment of it. "People say we Kildares are doomed,
that the stock is dying out. We'll show 'em!" he often said. "Meanwhile,
let the girl have her fling."
Nevertheless, there was watchfulness. No matter how far she went, no
matter to what lengths her reckless gaiety led her, Kate was aware of
the quiet, understanding scrutiny of Jacques Benoix. Their nearest
neighbor, and by the strange attraction of opposites, Kildare's chosen
intimate, it was inevitable that she should be thrown constantly into
the company of the Creole. Despite his very evident admiration, he did
not join the ranks of her more or less avowed lovers; a fact that in
turn piqued and oddly comforted Kate. For at times this new life of hers
seemed a strange dream, in which Benoix, with his gentleness, his
punctilious courtesy, his rather formal friendliness of aspect, was the
only fixed reality. She felt, vaguely, that she was safe with him; safer
than with her husband. She thought of him more as a friend than as a
man.
He reminded her somewhat of her father and his companions, courtly,
scholarly gentlemen who belonged to that period of the South when men
not only gambled and rode and drank, but found leisure to cultivate
poetry, and Greek, and music, all the fine things of life. He talked to
her about such matters as had interested them, large impersonal matters,
taking for granted her intelligent understanding. This flattered the
girl, though she had no ambition to be thought a scholar.
Often he borrowed books from her small store, to the impatient amusement
of Basil Kildare, who looked upon the reading of books as a pastime
suitable for invalids and old women. Kate, too, found no room in her
exciting, absorbing life for books, at that time. Still, there was an
atmosphere about the Creole far less foreign to her than to her
companions. It reminded her of a sheltered, exquisite, finely ordered
childhood, of certain standards that she might otherwise have been in
danger of forgetting. She never joined a group of her husband's boon
companions, whether in the gaming-room or the hunting-field, without
first making sure unconsciously that Benoix was there. And he was
usually there.
At length Benoix, in his professional capacity, spoke to Kildare.
"What the devil, Jacques! Stop her riding and late hours, and all? What
d'ye mean?"
The doctor told him.
The husband swore a pleased oath. "Good little girl! I told you we'd
show 'em. But what of it? Child-bearing's no disease, man! Good Gad, the
girl ain't goin' to turn out sickly, is she?" Kildare had a queer horror
of "sickliness."
"Not if I can help it," said the other. He added, in the language Basil
best understood, "You do not race a brood-mare, my friend. You turn her
out to pasture."
Kildare admitted the point. Thereafter, though the usual life at Storm
went on unchanged, Kate was no longer a part of it.
She was rather glad. It was restful to be turned out to pasture. She
liked to hear them start off with the hounds in the cold dawn, knowing
that she might turn over and sleep again. Sometimes she was awakened at
night by swearing and quarrels and loud laughter from the guest-wing.
Sometimes there was singing, one rich baritone leading the rest; and to
this Kate listened eagerly. Dr. Benoix sang very beautifully when he was
drunk.
One night she started up out of a dream to hear tipsy voices at her very
door. It opened, and Basil Kildare stood on the threshold, holding a
lamp above his head, saying over his shoulder: "Come on in, boys! That's
all right--Kit's a good sport. Come and look at her, if you like.
Prettiest thing in a nightgown you ever saw!"
An anger possessed Kate of which she had never dreamed herself capable.
She knew then that there would never be any defender for her and her
children except herself. She saw that what her inexperience had mistaken
for strength in her husband was only violence. She reached for the
pistol at her bedside.
"Basil," she said quietly--too quietly--"if you bring those men into my
room, I shall shoot."
Her voice sobered him; shocked him into an anger as hot as hers was
cold. "Your room? _Your_ room? By God, I do what I choose in this house!
D'ye know who I am? By God--"
But her voice had sobered the others as well. They got him away by main
force. Not one of them had glanced at her.
In the morning, for the first time in her life, Kate was ill, and
Kildare in alarm sent for Benoix. Before her, he told the doctor what
had occurred; ashamed, but brazening it out with a laugh. The doctor
said nothing; merely looked at him. After a moment, the big man turned
and went from the room.
Kate was oddly sorry for her husband. "He did not know what he was
doing," she murmured. "But oh, Jacques, if _you_ had been there, it
would not have happened!"
"No. Hereafter, I shall be there."
"Please, please," whispered the girl, and she began to cry. She was
quite unnerved. "Oh, I am afraid sometimes, Jacques! It's such a comfort
to know you are near, to hear your voice--even when you are as drunk as
the others!"
He went rather white about the lips. "Hereafter I shall be there," he
repeated steadily. "And I shall not be as drunk as the others. I shall
not be drunk at all."
After that night there was less company at Storm, and Kildare began to
make frequent absences from home, lasting sometimes over several days.
Kate was grateful, realizing that it was his way of showing her
consideration. But she was also lonely. For the first time, she missed
the companionship of women.
She made shy overtures to the tenants' wives, to the women in the
village. But the barrier of caste was very evident, and there were other
barriers. No virtue is so quick to take up arms as that of the middle
classes. Kildare as a landlord was not popular. Beauty, charm, did not
help her with them as it had with their husbands. There was the further
barrier, which all aliens in a rural community reach soon or late: the
well-nigh impassable barrier of strangeness. They would have none of
her. They looked askance at her winning sweetness; they accepted her
bounty with stony, ungrateful thanks.
She thought of asking friends to visit her, only to be brought up
sharply by the realization that hers was not a home to which such women
as she had known would care to come. Once she spoke to her husband
tentatively of sending for her mother.
"Oh, by all means, if you want her," he agreed, yawning a little. "But
what will that genteel female do with herself at Storm? There isn't a
tea-party nor an Episcopal Church within half a day's drive of us."
Kate knew that he spoke truly. Her mother would be both shocked and
unhappy at Storm. Let her keep what illusions she had a while longer.
The girl was young to be guarding other women's illusions.
And so she was thrown for company upon Jacques Benoix and his wife; the
latter a personality so colorless, so fragile, that strain as she might
she could not now recall a feature of her face, nor a tone of her voice.
Yet when Kate's time came, this helpless invalid had herself carried up
the hill to Storm, so that the girl might not be without a woman's hand
to hold during the ordeal.
At this memory, the older Kate flushed a little. She wondered how much
the invalid had seen with her dim and weary eyes, before she closed
them.