Late summer in Kentucky; deep, umbrageous woodlands fragrant with fern,
dreaming noons, shimmering in the heat, with the locust drowsily
shrilling; warm and silver nights, made musical by the loves of many
mocking-birds; the waste places green tangles of blossoming weed, the
roads a-flutter with hovering yellow butterflies, over all the land a
brooding hush, not the silence of idleness, of emptiness, but of life,
intense and still as a spinning top is still. Beneath it those who
listen are aware of a faint, constant stirring, a whisper of green and
eager things pushing themselves up from the fecund soil.
More than ever before was Kate aware of the sympathy that bound her to
these fields of hers, soon to be hers no longer. She could not keep away
from them. Early and late the Madam and her racking mare were to be seen
about the roads and lanes, inspecting dairies, stables, hog-pens,
poultry-yards, watching the field-hands at their labor, hearing in
person the requests and complaints of tenants. Much of her phenomenal
success was due to personal supervision, as she knew; even, perhaps to
personal charm, for field-hands and tenants are alike human. Now the
executive habit stood her in good stead. None of the business of the
great farm was neglected; but active as her mind was, through it all her
heart was dreaming, not as a girl dreams, but as a woman may who knows
well what she has missed of life. Spring had passed her by, with all its
promise blighted. Now, like her fields, she had come to late summer, to
the season of fulfilment.
There was much to be done in connection with Jacques Benoix' pardon;
certain men to be interviewed, not always successfully, though the woman
who had made Storm was heard with more respect than had been the
desperate young heroine of a scandal; lawyers to be seen, land-agents,
cattle-dealers, for in resigning her stewardship of the estate, a
certain amount of liquidation was necessary. Optimist that she was,
however, for years she had been preparing for this contingency. Her
affairs were in such order that at any moment she could turn them over
to others. Nothing that had any claim upon her was overlooked. The
servants, the horses in her stable, the very mongrel dogs who by the
instinct of their kind had discovered her weakness and spread the
discovery broadcast,--all had their share in her planning for the
future--their future, not hers.
Hers was to be put without question into the hands of Jacques Benoix.
She would go to him at the door of his prison-house and say, "Here I am,
as you left me. What will you do with us, me and my children?"
She would trust the answer to his wisdom, ready, glad to follow wherever
he should lead. Yet so much of herself, of her vital force, had gone
into the building up of Storm that sometimes a realization of what was
about to happen stabbed through her dreaming like a sharp pain. For
twenty years this had been her world, and she was about to leave it.
Often, as she passed among her young orchard trees, she laid a hand upon
them yearningly, as a mother might touch children with whom she was
about to part.
In all her planning, there was only one problem that baffled her, a new
problem: Mag Henderson. It was difficult to arrange a future for Mag
Henderson.
"I shall simply have to leave it to Jacques. He will know what to do
with her," she decided, with a thrill at the thought of her coming
dependence. It is only strength that realizes to the full the joy of
leaning.
Mag and her child were both thriving under the care lavished upon them
at Storm. They had been established in a room of the long-disused
guest-wing, where young Jemima might keep a capable if impersonal eye
upon their welfare. But Jacqueline, somewhat to her sister's surprise,
had promptly relieved her of all responsibility with regard to the baby,
and was doing her best to relieve the mother of responsibility also.
From the first she regarded the child as her own personal possession,
neglecting in its behalf the various colts and puppies which had
hitherto occupied most of her waking moments.
The girl had a fund of maternal instinct that sat oddly upon her
careless, madcap nature. It was a queer and rather a touching thing to
Philip Benoix to see this young tomboy running about the place with an
infant tucked casually under her arm or across her shoulder; and to
Jemima, for some reason, it was rather a shocking thing.
"She's perfectly possessed by the child, always bathing it or dressing
it or something, just as she used to do with dolls. You know we couldn't
make her give up dolls till a year or two ago. She is actually
persuading Mag to wean it, Philip," complained Jemima, who had no
reserves with her friend, "so that she can keep it in her room at night.
Did you ever hear of such a thing? A squalling infant that would much
rather be with its mother! Isn't it--unseemly of her?"
But Philip did not find it unseemly. "She's growing up, that's all," he
said, looking at his young playmate and pupil with eyes newly observant.
Since his acceptance of the Storm parish, Philip had supplanted all
other tutors to Kate's children, and was "finishing" their education
with an attention to detail not possible in even the best of girls'
finishing schools.
Mag had needed little persuasion to give over the care of her child to
Jacqueline. She was not lacking in animal instinct, and those who
advocated taking the child from her permanently would have found a fury
to deal with. But she had also the ineradicable laziness of the "poor
white," and it took effort to keep the baby up to the standard of Storm
cleanliness. If one of the young ladies chose to take this effort off
her hands, so much the better. Besides, it was Jacqueline who had kissed
her.
Her temporary interest in the novel state of maternity was soon
superseded by an interest still more novel and far more absorbing--the
passion for dress.
Even in her abject poverty, there had been something noticeable about
Mag Henderson, aside from mere prettiness. Her print frocks, while often
ragged and rarely clean, fitted her figure very neatly, and she managed
effects with a bit of ribbon and a cheap feather that might have roused
the envy of many a professional milliner. Now that she had become the
possessor of several cast-off dresses of Jemima's and Jacqueline's, her
pleasure in them was a rather piteous thing to see. As her strength
rapidly returned, under the influence of care and good feeding, she
became absorbed in the task of altering these treasures to fit herself.
For this she showed such aptitude and taste that Jemima spoke to her
mother about it.
"I believe I've found what Mag is meant for--dressmaking."
Kate gave her daughter a delighted hug. "You clever Blossom! What should
I do without you? We'll give Mag a profession. That solves the problem.
Write to town at once for patterns and material, and set her to work.
Teach her all you can, and whatever you do, now that she is getting
strong, _keep her busy_."
Mrs. Kildare was a firm believer in the adage with regard to Satan and
idle hands.
Jemima nodded responsibly. As it happened, this suggestion fitted in
very well with certain schemes of her own. Like all good generals, she
realized that equipment plays a vital part in war; and little as her
mother realized it, the recent "party" was the opening move in a
well-thought-out campaign. Jemima had no idea of passing her entire life
in the role of exiled princess; and since her mother evidently did not
realize certain of the essential duties of motherhood, she intended to
supply deficiencies herself.
So the voice of the sewing-machine began to hum through the old house
like a cheerful bumble-bee, and Mag entered upon what was certainly the
happiest period of her career. Laces, silks, fine muslins--these had the
effect upon her developing soul that a virgin canvas has upon the
painter. Her fingers wrought with them eagerly, deftly, achieving
results which astonished Jemima, herself a dressmaker of parts. Her
attitude toward Mag lost something of its cool patronage. She had always
great respect for ability.
It was perhaps her absorption in Mag's efforts and the approaching
campaign which blinded her keen young eyes to certain changes which had
taken place in her mother. She did notice that she spent more time than
usual in the juniper-tree eyrie; and one night when the three sat as
usual in the great hall, busy with books and sewing, she suddenly
realised that her mother had been reading for an hour without once
turning her page.
"Mother's got something on her mind. I wonder why she doesn't consult
me," she thought, characteristically; but at the moment she had too many
weighty affairs on her own mind to give the matter her usual attention.
Occasionally Kate wandered into the sewing-room in the rather vague way
that had come to her recently, quite unlike her usual brisk alertness.
"What are you up to, you and Mag?" she asked on one of these occasions.
"You seem to be turning out garments by the wholesale." She fingered the
dainty pile of fineries on the bed. "What a pretty petticoat! And a
peignoir to match. How grand they are! And what's this--no sleeves in
it, no waist to speak of--Why, it's a ball-dress! Where in the world
have you ever seen a ball-dress, Jemmy girl?"
"In a magazine." Jemima spoke rather anxiously, with a mouth full of
pins. "Does it look all right, Mother? Did you use to wear as--as little
as that at a ball?"
"Well, not quite as little, perhaps," murmured Kate--the frock in her
hand was of the Empire period. "Fashions change, however, and it looks
very pretty. But what do you need with such a dress at Storm, dear?"
The girl said rather tensely, "Mother, do you expect Jacqueline and me
to spend the rest of our lives at Storm?"
Kate's eyes dropped. "No," she answered in a low voice. She wondered
whether the time had come to make the announcement she dreaded.
"Well, then!" said Jemima with a breath of relief. "You see I believe in
being forehanded. Young ladies in society need lots of clothes, don't
they?"
"You are not exactly young ladies in society."
"Not yet. But we mean to be," said Jemima, quietly.
Kate winced. She had not forgotten it, the thing her daughter called
"society"; the little, cruel, careless, prurient world she had left far
behind her and thought well lost. To Jemima it meant balls and beaux and
gaiety. To her it meant the faces of women, life-long friends, turned
upon her blank and frozen as she walked down a church aisle carrying the
child she had named for her lover. Wider, kinder worlds were open to her
children, surely, the world of books, of travel, of new acquaintance.
But the thing Jemima craved, the simple, trivial, pleasure-filled
neighborhood life that made her own girlhood bright to remember--of this
she had deprived her children forever.
She caught the girl to her in a gesture of protection that was almost
fierce. "What does it matter? Haven't you been happy with me, you and
Jacqueline? Hasn't your mother been enough for you, my darling?"
Jemima submitted to the embrace with a certain distaste. "Of course.
Don't be a goose, Mother dear! There'll never be any place I love as
well as Storm--" (Kate winced again)--"or anybody I love as well as you.
But we've our position in the world to think of, we Kildares," she
ended, with the stateliness of a duchess.
"The world? Kentucky's a very small part of the world, dear."
"It happens to be the part we live in," said Jemima, unanswerably. "And
ever since there was a Kentucky, there have been Kildares at the top of
it. I do wish," she freed herself gently, "that you wouldn't always feel
like embracing me when I've just done my hair! You're as bad as Jacky."
"Forgive me," said Kate humbly, releasing her. "So you can't be happy
without 'society,' Jemmy? Parties don't always mean pleasure, my little
girl."
"I know that--" Jemima spoke soberly. "I don't believe I'm going to have
a very good time at parties. Jacqueline is. I don't know why--" her
voice was quite impersonal. "I'm prettier than she is, really, and lots
cleverer, but Jacky gets all the beaux. Even that author man, though
you'd think.... Queer, isn't it?" She put her wistful question again:
"Mother, do you think it pays to be clever?"
Kate, with a pang at the heart for this clear-eyed child of hers,
answered as best she could this plaint of clever women since the world
began. "Certainly it pays. Clever people usually get what they want."
"They get it, yes," mused the girl. "But it doesn't seem to come of its
own accord. And things are nicer if they come of their own accord." She
gave a faint sigh. "However, we must do what we can. And of course
people don't go to parties, or give them, just to have a good time."
"No?" murmured Kate. "Why, then?"
"To make friends," explained the girl, patiently. "You see Jacky and I
have to make our own friends."
Kate's eyes smote her suddenly with compunction, and she leaned her head
against her mother's arm, quite impulsively for Jemima. "Not that I'm
blaming you, Mummy. You've done the best you know how for us, and this
is going to be my affair. It's all quite right for you to be a hermit,
if you like. You're a widow, you've had your life. But Jacky and I
aren't widows, and if we keep on this way, we'll never have a chance to
be."
She was surprised by her mother's sudden chuckle. Jemima was never
intentionally amusing.
"So," she finished, "Professor Jim is going to help us all he can."
"What! Jim Thorpe to the rescue again?" Kate could not accustom herself
to the thought of this shy, awkward, scholarly man, the least considered
of her girlhood adorers, in the rôle of social sponsor to her children.
"I asked him," explained Jemima, "whether he did not know all the worth
while people in Lexington and thereabouts, and he said he did. So he is
going to see that they invite us to their balls and things. Of course,
we shall have to do our share, too. And then," she added with a
hesitating glance, "I thought perhaps we might go to New York some day,
and visit our father's aunt Jemima."
"That is an idea you may put out of your head at once," said Kate,
quietly. "Your father's aunt and I are not on friendly terms."
"I know. I've often wondered why." She paused, but Kate's face did not
encourage questioning. "She's very rich, and old, and has no children.
Oughtn't we to make friends with her?"
"Jemima!" said her mother, sharply.
The girl looked at her in genuine surprise. "Have you never thought of
that? Well, I think you should have, for our sakes. Even if you and she
aren't good friends, need that make any difference with Jacky and me?
You see, Mother dear, it is we who are really Kildares, not you."
Kate turned abruptly and left the room, more hurt than she cared to
show. Sometimes the paternal inheritance showed so strongly in Jemima as
to frighten her; the same fierce pride of race, the same hardness, the
same almost brutal frankness of purpose. A terrifying question rose in
her mind. When they heard the truth about her, as hear it they soon
must, would her children he loyal to her? Would they understand, and
believe in her? As the girl had said, they were Kildares, and she was
not.
So far, despite the frequently urged advice of Philip, she had kept them
in ignorance of the facts of their father's death. They knew that he had
been killed by a fall from his horse. They knew, too, that Philip's
father was in the penitentiary, a "killer" as the phrase goes in a
hot-blooded country where many crimes are regarded as less forgivable
than homicide. But to connect the two tragedies had never occurred to
them, and the isolation of their life, passed almost entirely among
inferiors and dependents, had made it possible to keep the truth from
them. It would not be possible much longer.
But once more the mother postponed her moment of confession. It was the
one cowardice of her life.