"This," murmured a voice into the ear of Professor Thorpe, "is the real
thing at last! Everything so far has been a rather crude imitation of
New York. I am disappointed in Lexington. But there's character here,
distinction, local color. My dear uncle, why have you not brought me to
this house before?"
"I did not bring you this time, as it happens," commented Professor
Thorpe somewhat acidly. "You came."
"Thanks to a firm character and a discerning eye. What, miss a chance of
seeing the Kildare on her native heath? Certainly not!"
The other turned and looked at him. "Suppose," he murmured, "that
hereafter you speak of my friend and your hostess as '_Mrs._ Kildare.'"
The younger man made a smiling gesture of apology. "What, ho! A
_tendresse_ here--I had forgotten," he said to himself; and added aloud,
"Of course, you know, one does speak of famous women without adding
handles to their names. The Duse, for instance, or Bernhardt--it would
be ridiculous to call them 'Madame.'"
"Mrs. Kildare is not an actress," said the Professor, primly.
His nephew's smile grew broader. He sometimes found his uncle amusing.
"I yearn to see the lady, by whatever name," he murmured. "Here she
comes now. Jove, what a woman!"
His voice quite lost its drawling note. Percival Channing was a sincere
admirer of beauty in all its forms, and he had without doubt a right to
his claim of a discerning eye. There was something that set him apart
from the other young men who had come with Professor Thorpe to Storm,
aside from his English-cut clothes and a certain ease and finish which
they lacked. It was an effect of keenness, of aliveness to the zest of
the passing moment. He spoke of himself sometimes as a collector of
impressions; and it was a true characterization. His slight, casual
glance invariably took in more than the stare of other people; his
nostrils quivered constantly, like those of a hound, as if they, too,
were busy gathering impressions. It was a rather interesting face; a
little vague in drawing about the chin and lips, but mobile, sensitive,
vivid; distinctly the face of an artist.
He gazed at Kate Kildare approaching down the long stairway with the
appreciation of a connoisseur. Beside her moved a slender sprite of a
girl, whose hair gleamed like spun gold above a dress of apple-green.
But his glance for her was merely cursory, and returned at once to the
older woman. Of this Jemima was quite aware. It had happened to her
before. Her lips straightened, where another girl's would have drooped,
but the sensation was the same. Jemima, not for the first time, was a
little jealous of her mother.
Kate greeted her guests with a gracious courtesy that was almost regal
in its simplicity. Channing in particular she welcomed warmly.
"What, Jim's nephew! And you have been with him for some time? Then why
has he never brought you to us before?"
"Just what I have been asking him," murmured Channing, bending over her
hand. His manner reminded her sharply of Jacques Benoix.
She asked, on an unconsidered impulse, "You have lived in France?"
"For many years. Have you?"
The group around them was silent, listening. Kate went rather pale. "No.
But my greatest friend happens to be a Frenchman, a Creole," she said,
steadily, and turned to the others.
Channing, who knew her story, guessed at once the identity of that
"greatest friend." He gazed after her in renewed admiration. It was not
often in his native land that he had come across a perfect type of the
_grande amoureuse_.
He contrasted her with the setting in which he found her--a distinctly
masculine setting. The hall was enormous, rough and simple; skins on the
floor, rather wooden portraits of dead Kildares on the wall, together
with antlers and fox-brushes, and the stuffed head of the horse running
his race with Death. The huge fireplace of field-boulders might have
roasted oxen in its time. There were some modern comforts; a piano, many
books, a table heaped with periodicals; even that indispensable adjunct
of American homes, the graphophone; but no curtains, nor cushions, nor
draperies, none of the little touches that speak of feminine habitation.
In twenty years, Kate had made few changes in the house; she regarded
Basil Kildare's home as merely a temporary abode until Jacques came to
claim her and her children.
"I'm in luck!" thought the collector of impressions. "This is the
setting for my new novel."
Here was the Kentucky, the America, he had hitherto sought in vain, with
its suggestion of the backwoods of civilization, the pioneer, the
primitive. And to emphasize and give the suggestion point, here was an
example of the finest feminine beauty left to this degenerating world,
beauty such as the Greeks knew, large-limbed, deep-bosomed, clear-eyed,
product of a vigorous past, full of splendid augury for the future.
"What sons the woman must have!" he mused, stirred; and then remembered,
with quite a sense of personal injury, that there were no sons.
He looked again with new interest at the daughter: but she disappointed
him. She was too dainty, too petite, with a pink-and-white Dresden
prettiness that was almost insignificant. (He missed, as people often
did, the shrewd gray gleam behind those infantile lashes.) He hoped that
the second daughter might prove truer to type.
Jacqueline, meanwhile, had made an unobtrusive appearance through a door
just behind Professor Thorpe, and manifested her presence by a pinch on
his arm.
He said "Ouch!" and dropped his eye-glass.
"Hush!" she admonished him, replacing it on his nose in motherly
fashion. "I want to look them over and choose a victim before they see
me. Why, you old duck of a godparent! Four of them--and all so young and
beautiful. Two apiece. I hope they can dance?"
"Warranted to give perfect satisfaction in the ballroom, or money
returned," he murmured. "But they aren't professors, my dear. None of
ours seemed young and beautiful enough for your purposes."
She gave his arm an ecstatic squeeze. "I knew it! I simply knew the one
in gray, with the haughty nose, couldn't be a professor."
"He's worse," warned Thorpe. "He's an author."
She gave a little squeal. "An author! But where did you get him, Goddy?"
(Such was her rather irreverent abbreviation of "godfather," employed to
signify especial approbation.)
"I didn't. He got me. It is my famous nephew from Boston--'from Boston
and Paris,' I believe he subscribes himself."
James Thorpe spoke with a certain fortitude which Jacqueline was quick
to observe. He was a small, ugly man, with the scholar's stoop and the
scholar's near-sighted, peering gaze--the sort of man who has never been
really young and will never be old, looking at forty-five much as he
looked at twenty, a little grayer, perhaps, a little more
round-shouldered and ineffectual, but no more mature. His most marked
characteristic was a certain shy amiability, which endeared him to his
classes and his friends, even while it failed to command their respect.
Beneath this surface manner, however, were certain qualities which Kate
had had long occasion to test--dogged faithfulness, and an infinite
capacity for devotion. He was a very welcome guest at Storm, their one
connection with the outside world. Indeed, Kate's enemies were in the
habit of referring to James Thorpe as the third man whom she had ruined.
His learning and his abilities were wasted on the little college where
he chose to remain in order to be near her.
It was Jacqueline's custom to treat the Professor as if he were a cross
between a child and a pet dog,--a favorite pet dog. She murmured now,
sympathetically, "Doesn't it like its famous nephew, then? I wonder why?
He does look rather snippy. Is he so famous as all that? In the
magazines and everything?"
"Pooh! He would scorn the magazines. Novels are his vehicle. Large
novels, bound in purple Russia leather, my dear."
"But you've never sent us any of them."
"Heaven forbid!" murmured James Thorpe.
"Oho!" Jacqueline rounded her eyes. "They're that sort, are they?
Asterisks in the critical spots?"
The Professor blushed. "Well, er--no. No asterisks whatever, anywhere.
He belongs to what is called the er--decadent school."
Jacqueline gazed around him at the author with increased respect.
"What's his name, Goddy?"
"James Percival Channing. 'James' is for me. Calls himself 'J.
Percival,' however. He would."
"What?--not _the_ Channing? Why, Goddy, of course I've heard of him! I
had no idea you had any one belonging to you like that."
"I don't often brag of it," he murmured.
"But what is he doing here?"
"Getting next to Nature, I believe. Collecting specimens, dialect, local
color, animals in their habitat, you know. Take care, or he'll be
collecting you."
Her eyes twinkled. "Wouldn't it be gorgeous to be in a book! Professor
Jimsy, don't you think we ought to give him a little local color at
once? Some native habits, for instance. Dare me to? Come, be a sport and
dare me to! Then if Mother or Jemmy scolds me, I can blame it all on
you."
She stroked his hand persuasively. There was no resisting Jacqueline's
blandishments. He dared her to, albeit with misgivings. Ever since her
infancy, when hearing his voice in the hall she had escaped from her
nurse and her bath simultaneously and arrived, slippery with wet soap,
to welcome him, Jacqueline had been the source of an uneasy fascination
for her godfather. She represented, in his rather humdrum life, the
element of the unexpected.
Some moments later the group gathered about Mrs. Kildare--and
incidentally Jemima--were startled by the appearance of a vision in pink
at the head of the stairs, who casually straddled the banister and
arrived in their midst with the swoop of a rocket.
"Jacqueline!" gasped her sister.
Kate shook her head reprovingly, and smiled. After all, one of her
children was still a child. No need to trouble about the future yet!
Channing was the first of the guests to collect his wits, and he
assisted the newcomer to alight from the newel-post with gallantry.
"What an effective entrance, Miss--ah, Jacqueline," he commented. "An
idea for musical comedy, all the chorus sliding down on to the stage in
a procession. I must suggest it to my friend Cohan."
The girl suddenly felt very small, but she concealed her embarrassment
beneath an excessive nonchalance. "Why, in Boston don't people use their
banisters? We find them so convenient, so time-saving."
"Unfortunately, in Boston," he replied blandly, "very few women seem to
have such decorative legs to exhibit."
There was a shocked pause. Thorpe and Mrs. Kildare had moved out of
hearing. The three other young men rushed into the breach with small
talk, casting furious looks at Channing, much to his amusement.
He made a mental note: "In rural Kentucky the leg may be seen but not
heard."
Later Jacqueline whispered to her sister, "What was wrong with that
compliment? Why did everybody look so queer?"
Their education had not included a course in the lesser feminine
proprieties. But Jemima was not one to be caught napping. Conventions
came to her by instinct.
"He should have said 'limbs,'" she answered promptly. "And he should not
have seen them at all!"
Jacqueline inspected her slim ankles with approval. "I don't see how he
could have helped it. They're very pretty. Blossom, what's wrong with
legs anyway?"
But for once Jemima was unable to enlighten her.
The collector of impressions had several occasions to congratulate
himself, during the course of that evening. He ceased to trust his
memory, and commenced a series of surreptitious notes on his cuff, to
the acute discomfort of his uncle. Among them appeared items such as the
following: "7 vegetables and no soup." "Pancakes are called bread." "The
butler has bare feet."
The butler was one of the stable-boys disguised for the occasion in a
white coat and apron, who partially concealed himself behind the
dining-room door and announced in a tremulous roar, "White folks, yo'
supper's dished!"--stage-fright having conquered recent instructions.
Mrs. Kildare, who was usually served by an elderly housewoman, gazed at
this innovation in frank astonishment; but it was only the first of her
surprises. The table was frivolously alight with pink candles, and in
the center stood a decoration consisting of a scalloped watermelon
filled with flowers, leashed to a little fleet of flower-filled
canteloupes, by pink ribbons.
Jacqueline could not dissemble her admiration of this effect. "Isn't it
artistic?" she demanded of the company at large. "Jemmy saw a table like
this in the ladies' page of a magazine, and she copied it exactly."
"So helpful, those ladies' pages," murmured the author. "Once I got an
idea out of them for turning a disused cook-stove into a dressing-table,
with the aid of cretonne and a little white paint."
Jemima gave him a glance that was swift and sharp as the gleam of a
knife, but she said nothing. She was too preoccupied at the moment to
decide whether he was laughing at her or not. Temporarily, she gave him
the benefit of the doubt. Weighty matters were on her mind that night.
While Mrs. Kildare, as usual, sat at the head of her table, it was
Jemima who ably and quite visibly conducted affairs.
From the pantry came suppressed guffaws, the shuffling of many feet, the
steady fusillade of rattling china.
"It is a regiment preparing to charge!" thought Channing.
But when it charged, the author forgot his note-making and was content
to eat. All day Jemima had been busy in the kitchen with Big Liza; both
notable cooks in a country where cookery is justly regarded as one of
the fine arts.
At one time Mrs. Kildare counted no less than five unaccustomed
servitors, white-coated and barefooted, shuffling about the table, with
fresh relays of waffles, biscuits, fried chicken. They ranged in size
from the coachman's youngest to Big Liza herself, queen of the kitchen;
a monumental figure whose apron-strings barely met about her
blue-gingham waist, and whose giggles threatened momentarily to overcome
her.
"Well, old woman, this _is_ a surprise!" murmured her mistress. "What
brings you into the dining-room?"
Big Liza shook like the aspic she was carrying. "Laws, Miss Kate, honey,
I allus did have a eye fo' de gentlemen," she said coyly. "I des
'bleeged ter have a peep at de beaux. Mighty long time sense we-all's
had a party at Sto'm!"
Jemima cast a reproachful glance at her mother; but the "beaux,"
accustomed from infancy to the ways of servants like Big Liza, responded
cheerfully to the old woman's advances, bantering and teasing her till
she retired to her kitchen in high delight, tossing her head.
Channing listened in sheer amaze. "Primitive? Why, it's patriarchal!
Positively Biblical in its simplicity!" he thought.
Jemima was as pink as her decorations.
"Judging from the Apple Blossom's expression," murmured Thorpe to Mrs.
Kildare, "you have committed a hopeless social error in conversing with
your cook."
"I know! It was too bad of me. She takes her little party very
seriously," said the other, remorsefully. "Don't you dare laugh at her,
Jim! It is her first, and she's done it all by herself!"
"If she made this puff-paste herself, no man in the world will think of
laughing at her," he said heartily. "But--their social instincts are
awaking, Kate. They come by them very naturally. It is time for your
girls to have their chance."
She winced. "What shall I do about it? How can I manage? I have no
friends now. There is nobody I can count on to help them."
He leaned toward her, his lined face for the moment almost beautiful.
"There is always me, Kate. Hasn't the time come to let me help you, for
their sakes? As Mrs. Thorpe--" he paused, and continued quietly, with a
rather set look about his jaw, "As Mrs. Thorpe I think I can promise you
a few friends, at least. And a--protector--though I may not look like
one," he finished, wistfully.
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. She always avoided, when she
could, these offers of help, knowing that when he grew tired of making
them she would miss him. But she had not the courage to send him away,
to break with him entirely. She was not consciously selfish. If it had
been suggested to her that she was interfering with her friend's career,
she would have been shocked and grieved beyond measure. Thorpe's
devotion was a thing so complete, so perfect in its unobtrusiveness,
that it defeated its own purpose. She simply took it for granted.
He made no protest now; even smiled at her reassuringly, knowing that it
troubled her to hurt him. Only the eagerness that had for the moment
beautified his face died away, and Jacqueline, happening to glance
across at him, thought, "Poor Goddy! How old and out of it all he
looks!"
She drew him into the conversation. "I was just telling the author,
Professor Jimsy, that he inherits his patrician nose from you," she said
(somewhat to the author's embarrassment). "And he says one doesn't
inherit from uncles. That's nonsense! If property, why not noses? And
character?" she added wickedly. "Oh, I see lots of resemblances between
you!"
"Do you?" murmured the Professor, rather grimly.
"For instance, you both go in for psychology--only you don't publish
yours in large purple novels."
"I do not," said the Professor.
Channing looked at her with surprise. Was it possible that this
backwoods hoyden--Bouncing Bet of the Banister, he had named her to
himself, with a taste for alliteration--was it possible that she had
read any of his books? She was hardly more than a child. The hair hung
down her back in a thick, gleaming rope, her merry gamin's face lacked
as yet all those subtleties, those _nuances_ of expression which
fascinated him in such faces as her mother's. Channing was still young
enough to prefer the finished product. But if she read his books....
Doubtless Mrs. Kildare was not a woman to be very particular about her
young daughters' reading. The standards of a well-bred world would not
prevail in this strange household. He thought suddenly of the girl's
dangerous inheritance--the father, notorious even in a community that is
not puritanical about the morals of its men; the mother, fought over
like some hunted female of the lower creatures, yet faithful always to
the lover who had done away with the husband.... Truly, the future
career of young Jacqueline Kildare might be well worth watching. Despite
her crude youth, there was a certain warm sweetness about her which, he
noticed, drew and kept the attention of every man at the table--a
caressing voice, hands that must always touch the thing that pleased
her, above all a mouth of dewy scarlet, curving into deep dimples at the
corner.
"Undoubtedly a mouth meant for kissing," mused Channing, the
connoisseur.
He let his imagination go a little. It was a pampered imagination, that
led him occasionally into indiscretions which he afterwards
regretted--not too deeply, however, for after all, one owes something to
one's art. "Psychological experiments," he named these indiscretions. He
suspected that he was on the verge of one now, and tasted in advance
some of the thrills of the pioneer.
And then, quite suddenly, he became aware of Jemima's cool, appraising,
gray-green gaze fastened upon his face; not quite meeting his eyes, but
placed somewhere in the region of the mouth and chin, those features
which Channing euphoniously spoke of to himself as "mobile." The author
started. He resisted an impulse to put a hand up over his betraying
mouth.
"What ho! The pink-and-white one's been making notes on her own
account," he thought.
It was a privilege he usually reserved for himself.
After dinner the phonograph was promptly started, Jacqueline explaining
that the young men were going to teach them to dance.
"Teach you?" exclaimed her mother. "Why, you both dance beautifully."
She had taught them herself from earliest childhood, lessons
supplemented by the best dancing-masters that money could bring to
Storm. Perhaps the prettiest memory the rough old hall held was that of
two tiny girls hopping about together, yellow heads bobbing, short
skirts a-flutter, their baby faces earnest with endeavor.
"Pooh, two-steps and waltzes, Mummy! They're as dead as the polka.
Besides, you can't really dance with another girl."
"Can't you?" Kate sighed. She exchanged a rueful glance with Thorpe,
"Jim, tell me, did _you_ know the polka was dead?"
"I haven't danced since your wedding."
They settled themselves to look on, Kate murmuring, "I hope all this
noise isn't keeping Mag Henderson awake. We've got a new baby upstairs,
did you know it? A poor creature who had no one to look after her at
home."
"So you brought her here--of course! Kate, Kate, isn't it enough that
you take in every derelict dog in the county, without taking in the
derelict infants and mothers as well?"
"I take in the dogs as a sort of atonement to poor old Juno and her
mongrel pups," she said, soberly. "I feel as if Storm owed something to
mongrels. As for this baby, it's a good experience for Jemima and
Jacqueline. I want to teach them all I can, while I can."
"Humph! Where's the woman's husband!"
"There never was any."
"What? My _dear_ Kate! And that's the type of woman you think will be a
good experience for your young daughters?"
"Jim, you psychologists have a stupid way of dividing people into types.
I regard them as individuals. My girls will do Mag Henderson more good
than she can do them harm," she said, with a quiet dignity which ended
discussion. "Good Heavens! What sort of dance is that?"
The dancing that is called "new" was just making its triumphal progress
westward into the homes of the land.
"That, I believe, is a highly fashionable performance called the Turkey
Trot."
"Looks it," she commented disapprovingly, even while her feet beat time
to the infectious measure.
The voice of Jacqueline rang out, "But this isn't new at all! It's just
ragging, like they do at the quarters, only not so limber. We've known
how to rag for ever so long, haven't we, Blossom? Watch us!"
She caught her sister around the waist and went strutting down the long
hall, hips and shoulders swinging, pretty feet prancing, laughing back
over her shoulder with unconscious provocation, until a delighted old
negro voice at the window cried, "Dat's de style, Miss Jack! Dat's de
way to git 'em, honey!"
With the first note of the phonograph, the entire domestic force had
transformed itself into an unseen audience.
When Philip Benoix came to the top of the Storm road, he jerked up his
horse in sheer amaze. It was a scene such as he had never expected to
find in that grim old fortress-home. Past the lighted windows couples
stepped rapidly to the titivating strains of "Trop Moutarde"; while on
the lawn outside the entire population of the quarters pranced and
capered in much the same fashion, somewhat hampered by the excited dogs.
Kate Kildare stood in the open doorway, gazing from the dancers within
to the dancers without, and laughing until she held her sides.
Philip's grave face warmed with sympathy. "It is good to see her laugh
like that. I won't tell her to-night," he thought; and would have turned
away, but that the dogs suddenly became aware of him and gave tongue.
"Heah comes Pahson to jine de high jinks!" cried the erstwhile butler,
running hospitably to take his horse. It was too late for retreat.