The day came when Basil, summoned from the field to his wife's bedside,
foundered his best hunter in his haste to see his son. The doctor met
him at the door.
"It is over, and well over," he said, gravely smiling.
Mrs. Benoix added, "She never whimpered!"
"Of course not, ma'am!" said Kildare. "Neither does my dog, Juno."
He tiptoed to the bed, quietly for him, and stood gazing down at the
little wrinkled head on Kate's breast, with a queer, sheepish pride on
his face; somewhat the look of a schoolboy who receives a prize for good
behavior.
Kate smiled tremulously up at him, "Isn't she sweet?"
His face fell. "Gad, a she-child, is it? Well, can't be helped. We'll
name her for my rich Aunt Jemima. Better luck next time, Kit."
But there was not better luck next time; there was worse luck.
Less than a year later, Kildare inspected his second daughter. Kate was
sleeping, the baby beside her covered to its chin. The nurse in
attendance was the young mulatto woman who had looked so strangely at
her new mistress when she came to Storm. Now her hostility to Kate
seemed to have lost itself in devotion to Kate's child; the almost
passionate devotion that makes of colored women such invaluable nurses.
As Kildare approached, he was aware of this girl's eyes fixed upon him.
Stealthily her hand went out, and drew away the sheet that covered the
new baby.
He ripped out a startled oath. "Good God! What's the matter with it,
Mahaly? It's--it's damaged, ain't it?"
Kate awoke with a gasping cry, and put her hands out to hide the little
twisted body from his gaze.
Fortunately the child died. "Fortunately," repeated the mother to
herself now, without a quiver. To the end of her days she would carry in
her heart the memory of its faint, unbabyish moaning. It opened to her
the door of a new world, the world of suffering. She learned the agony
of love that cannot help. The little Katherine lived long enough to make
a woman of her; and strangely enough it reached the one soft spot in the
heart of Basil Kildare. During its brief and piteous life, husband and
wife came almost close to each other.
To the man with his passion for physical perfection, the breeder of
thoroughbred horses and cattle and dogs, the fact that a child of his
should have been born without this precious heritage was a thing
incredible, a humiliation beyond words. Whenever he looked at the tiny,
whimpering creature, he asked pardon of her with his eyes for so
monstrous an injustice. He never tired of carrying her about in his
powerful arms, of rubbing the poor twisted limbs in an effort to ease
the pain away.
"The stock's sound enough," he would say again and again. "I'm all
right, and you're all right, Kit. What's the matter with her?"
Once he whispered in sudden horror, "I've been a pretty bad lot, Kate.
God! Do you suppose _I'm_ to blame for this?"
She comforted him with her arms about his neck.
When the child died, Kildare himself made its grave, and carried the
coffin in his arms across the fields to the little pasture burying-lot
where lay all the Kildares of Storm. It was a queer funeral; none the
less pitiful for its queerness. First Basil with the coffin, the two
great hounds gamboling and baying around him in their delight at going
for a walk with the family; then Kate, alone and quite tearless; then a
dozen wailing, hysterical negroes. Benoix and a few others met them at
the grave, but there was no clergyman. Kate herself spoke what she could
of the burial service, till her memory and her voice failed her. Then
Kildare picked his wife up in his arms, and carried her home as tenderly
as he had carried his child's coffin.
But that night he was so drunk that Kate kept the woman Mahaly in her
room for safety.
It was during this time, with maternity, and sorrow, and womanhood, that
love came to her. She did not know it. She knew only that things could
be borne so long as Benoix was there to help her, guarding,
understanding; Benoix with his steady eyes, and his gentle strength to
share with her weakness.
They needed little excuse for their constant companionship; mere
neighborliness; small Jemima's health; presents of flower-seeds and
baby-patterns from his wife; books to be lent or borrowed, for Kate had
turned to books at last. Kate's strength was slow in returning, and she
spent much of the day sitting in the garden with her baby. It came to be
Benoix' habit to stop there for a while coming or going from his house
beyond. The baby knew the pit-a-patter of his racking horse, and had
learned to clap her hands and crow when she heard it. The Creole had the
same grave simplicity for children, as for his equals. It never failed
to win them.
Often Kate drove with him on his rounds, the child on her knees, because
she needed air and was not yet strong enough for riding; and in this way
she saw a side of her friend which had hitherto been unknown to her. It
was true, as Basil Kildare had said, that Dr. Jones "had a corner on the
births and deaths in the neighborhood," but between the two extremes
there were various physical disabilities which "the French doctor," as
he was called, was allowed to treat, especially when there was no money
for payment. With increasing frequency he was called in by the older
physician to cases which proved baffling; and it became known that when
the French doctor prescribed expensive medicines and nourishing
luxuries, they were invariably forthcoming, whether they could be paid
for or not.
With this the young mistress of Storm had much to do; and while this
fact did not apparently lessen the neighborhood's attitude of critical
animosity toward her, it gave the girl a keen pleasure to know that she
was helping her friend. She began to understand the secret of the strong
hold his profession has upon those who follow it truly--that warmly
personal relation between the sufferer and his physician which is almost
filial in its intensity. Jacques loved his patients, and they loved him.
But it was not a lucrative practice.
She was witness to one little scene that came often to her memory in
after days. He had stopped to visit a young farm laborer whom he had
recently relieved of a stomach-trouble that was literally starving him
to death. An old woman had followed him to the door of the cabin, her
work-worn hands twisting together, her lips too tremulous for speech.
"But your troubles are over, Mrs. Higgs!" he smiled, lifting his hat
with the punctilious courtesy he showed all women. "Live? Certainly he
will live, and in a few weeks we shall have him walking about, eating
you out of house and home."
Still the old creature was unable to speak; but she seized the hand he
held out to her, and carried it to her lips. When he withdrew it, in
laughing embarrassment, there were tears upon it.
At last her voice came, hoarsely: "I don' know what it's goin' to cost,
an' I don't, keer! It's wuth every cent, an' I'll wuk my fingers to the
bone to pay ye. God bless ye, Doc!"
He looked down at the hard-wrung tears on his hand. "You have paid me
already," he said; and Kate knew that he meant it.
Afterwards she questioned him a little about the case.
"It was a gastro-enterostomy, without complications," he explained. "A
very simple thing, done every day."
He described the operation in some detail, Kate watching him in amaze.
"You can't tell me that a thing like that is done every day! Jacques, be
honest--isn't it a very remarkable operation for a country doctor to
perform?"
"Oh--for a country doctor, perhaps. For a surgeon who has had some
experience, no."
"You are a surgeon, then, not a doctor?"
He smiled, that warm, flashing smile which always fell like a gleam of
sunlight across her heart. "I am--whatever people need me to be."
It was true--physician, nurse, companion, guardian, friend--Jacques
Benoix was always whatever people needed him to be.
In that moment, Kate realized that he had given up a great career to
bring his sick wife into the country.
One of the closest bonds between them was a love for music. Kate's
singing, untrained and faulty though it was, gave keen pleasure to his
starved ears, and often he brought his little son to hear her; a boy of
ten, rather grave and shy, but with his father's beautiful smile.
Sometimes there were duets to be tried out together; Kildare, when he
was at home, listening tolerantly and beating time out of time to the
pleasant sounds they made.
But he was not often at home in those days. He sought his pleasure
elsewhere. The guest-house had been empty for months.
Kate and Benoix found his frequent absences rather a relief. They were
freer to discuss the things that did not interest him, to read aloud to
each other, to play games with the exacting Apple-Blossom, an executive
from her cradle. It was at last the sort of domestic life of which every
girl dreams in her secret heart; and Kate grew lovelier than her
loveliest.
Meanwhile the countryside watched, and whispered, and waited. The
countryside was wise in the ways of Nature, if these two were not.
Once Kildare asked (she missed the wistfulness of his voice), "Ain't it
time you were riding again, Kit, and playing cards with the boys? They
like to have you 'round. They're getting jealous of that kid of yours."
Kate smiled at him, absently. She was sitting on the floor, building a
house of blocks under instruction from young Jemima. The amusements of
men seemed to her futile things, just then, and childish.
"Benoix has given us the go-by, too. Won't touch a card or drink a drop
nowadays. I don't know what's come over him. Good gad--" Kildare gave
himself an impatient shake,--"sometimes I think the little Frenchman's a
female in disguise!"
Kate smiled again. She knew very well what had come over Jacques. That
much at least she had done in return for the precious thing his
friendship was.
At last her eyes were opened. One day she saw her husband striding
toward the house from the stables, pale, frowning, splashed with blood.
She cried out, and ran to him, "Basil! What's happened? Are you hurt?"
"Nonsense! I've just had to kill Juno, that's all."
"Kill Juno?" she gasped. "Good Heavens! Was she mad? Did she attack
you?" She gathered up her child with an instinctive, fierce gesture of
protection.
He grinned at her. "What an imagination! Bitches don't go mad, my dear.
She littered yesterday, and her pups were all curs, that's all--every
damned one of them. Beastly luck! So I've killed the lot of them--Juno,
too."
She recoiled from him, repeating stupidly, "You _killed_ them? Killed
your own dog because her puppies were mongrels? Basil! I--I--don't think
I understand."
"Time you learned something about breeding," he muttered impatiently.
"Don't you know she might never have had another decent pup? Storm's got
its reputation to sustain. I can't have the place overrun by a lot of
curs."
He passed her, and went into the house.
She followed, stunned. All through supper, as she sat opposite her
husband, listening, answering, serving his needs, the vision was before
her of the great hound's eyes as they must have looked when, one by one,
he took her puppies from her; when at last she felt the beloved hand at
her own throat.
She looked at her husband furtively. It seemed to her that she had never
really seen him before. The coarse, hairy hands, the face with its cruel
lips, its low brow above which the hair waved up strongly like a black
plume, its eyes, handsome and bright and shallow, like the eyes of
certain animals of the cat-tribe--surely those eyes were growing too
bright? People called this family "the wild Kildares," sometimes "the
mad Kildares." _Were_ they mad? Did that explain?
Slowly a great horror of the man seized her; a fear which never
afterwards went away. He was her master, as he had been Juno's. She was
at his mercy, his thing, his creature. If she displeased him, if her
children displeased him....
He fell asleep presently in a chair, according to his wont, snoring like
a well-fed animal. She sat and watched him for a while, shivering.
Suddenly she gave a little choked cry, and ran out of the house. She
stumbled down the hill, through the ravine below, along the road to
where a lighted window shone through the darkness. It was the window of
Jacques Benoix' study. She did not pause to realize why she was going.
She wanted only to be near her friend.
He sat beside a lamp, reading to his wife, who lay on her couch beyond.
Against his shoulder leaned his boy, rubbing a cheek upon the rough coat
as if he loved to touch it. The light fell on the two dark heads so
close together, the clustering boyish curls, the strong, curved lips, as
sweet as any woman's. Kate pressed her white face against the window,
drinking in the homely comfort of the scene. She had no wish to speak to
him, no disloyal thought of betraying to her friend this new and
terrible knowledge of her husband. It was enough to know that help was
within reach; always within reach.
The invalid's cough sounded from the couch. Benoix laid his took aside
and went to adjust her pillows. He bent over his wife and kissed her.
Then Kate knew. This stabbing shock in her heart--it was not friendship.
It was jealousy; love.
She started away from the window. She must have made some slight sound,
for Jacques looked up suddenly, and after a moment came out into the
darkness.
He almost stumbled over her in the ravine, face downward among dead
leaves, shaken with dry sobbing. He went on his knees beside her,
gripping his hands together behind him so that he should not touch her.
But his voice was beyond his control. It broke into little sounds of
tenderness and dismay.
"Kate--you! But what has happened? Tell me! What is wrong with you?
What?"
His nearness, the trembling of his voice, filled her with an exquisite
terror. If she could have risen and run away she would have done so, but
she dared not trust her legs. Nor could she look at him, there in the
starlight, with this new secret in her eyes. She clutched desperately at
her self-command.
He bent closer. "Kate, tell me! You are hurt. _Dieu!_ That man--" It was
the first time she had heard a trace of accent in his speech. "What has
he done to you?"
Still she could not trust herself to speak. In the silence she heard his
breath come hard. When he said, in a crisp, queer staccato that was not
his voice at all:
"If Basil Kildare has hurt you, I shall kill him."
"No, no," she gasped out. "It is not Basil. It is you!" She would have
given years of her life to recall the words the instant they were
spoken.
"I? _I_ have hurt you, I, who would--But tell me! You must tell me!"
His will was stronger than hers. She told him.
"I saw you--kiss her."
"Kiss--"
"Your wife." She was close to hysteria now, all hope of self-command
gone. She caught him by the arm. "Jacques, do you love her? I never
knew, I never thought--Oh, but you _can't_ love her! It is impossible,
Jacques. Why don't you answer me?"
He was shivering as if with a chill. "That is a question you have no
right to ask."
"I--no right?" She laughed aloud. "What do rights matter? Besides, I
have every right, because it is me you love, me! I know it by your eyes,
your voice. See, you are afraid to touch me. And yet you kiss her! Why?
Why?"
She could barely hear the answer. "Because--it makes her a little
happy."
She laughed again, brokenly. "You hypocrite!"
"No, not quite a hypocrite--" he got it out in jerks. "She cares for me.
She needs me. She has given me our son. If one cannot have--the moon--at
least there are stars."
She knelt facing him, with her hands out, whispering desperately, "But
if you can have the moon, if you can--? Oh, my dear, my dear! Why don't
you take me?"
He took her then, held her so close that his heart shook her body as if
it were her own, kissed her eyes, her hair, her lips, until she was
ashamed and put up her hands before her face so that he might kiss only
them.
At last he put her from him, and went without a word back to his wife.