Jacqueline had presently another confidante, who came to her by chance;
not Kate, still absorbed in her readjustment to life without Jacques
Benoix, and not Jemima, even more absorbed in the preparation for her
approaching visit. Jacqueline, indeed, was somewhat in disgrace with her
sister. "Isn't it just like her," thought the older girl impatiently,
"to go and make such a success of herself, and then sit back calmly and
expect me to do the rest?"
Jemima had from her mother one gift of the born executive: the ability
to recognize other people's abilities as well as their limitations. In a
quite unenvious and impersonal way, she appreciated the superior charm
of her sister, and intended to use it, backed by her own superior
intelligence, for the benefit of both of them. Jacqueline's complete
lack of interest in the social campaign was a serious blow to her plans,
but she met it with stoic philosophy.
"I shall have to go ahead as best I can without charm," she told
herself, soberly. "Brains always count, if you keep them hid."
To the casual observer the ambitions of young Jemima at this juncture
might have seemed somewhat petty; but most beginnings are petty. There
was in the girl's mind a determination that cannot be called unworthy,
no matter how it manifested itself--nothing less than the reinstatement
before the world of the family her mother had disgraced, the once-proud
Kildares of Storm. She was going forth to do battle alone for the
tarnished honor of her name, a gallant little knight-errant,
tight-lipped and heavy-hearted, and far more afraid than she dared
admit.
Something of this the mother sensed, and her heart yearned over her
daughter. But Jemima rebuffed all overtures. She declined sympathy, and
as far as possible she declined help from her mother. She had offered to
return the check-book Kate gave her when she expected to go to New York,
but her mother bade her keep it, saying, "It is time you learned how to
handle your own money."
So Jemima did her planning and ordering without interference; and
presently express boxes began to arrive from "the city," which caused
much excitement in the household.
"Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as these," smiled Kate one
day, looking in at the sewing-room where Mag was installed, adding deft
final touches. "Where's Jacky, Jemima? Why isn't she here helping you
two to run ribbons and whip on laces?"
"Oh, Jacky!" The other shrugged. "Where would she be? Galloping about
the country, or playing games with herself down at her precious Ruin, I
suppose. Occasionally she wanders into the sewing-room like a young
cyclone, leaving havoc in her wake. I'd rather not have her assistance,
thank you!"
"Miss Jacky ain't much of a hand with a needle," murmured the girl at
the sewing-machine.
Kate smiled, as she always smiled when she thought of her youngest
daughter. "Bless her heart! I wonder what she's about down there in the
ravine. We haven't heard her singing lately. Do you suppose she has
abandoned grand opera entirely? I think I must go and investigate."
Mag Henderson sat suddenly rigid. It was she who had become,
inadvertently, Jacqueline's second confidante.
A few days before, she had made a discovery which she would have been
torn limb from limb rather than betray; for the weakest natures are
capable of one strong trait, and Mag's was loyalty. Just as she had
tried to defend the father who had sold her into worse than slavery, so
she would defend to the last ditch any member of the family who had
rescued her--more particularly Jacqueline. For Jacqueline had done more
than rescue her; she had kissed her.
She said with a sort of gasp, "Miss Jacky's awful busy, Miss Kate. She
wouldn't like to be disturbed. She's--she's writin' a book."
Kate laughed. "Come now, Mag! not a _book_?"
"Yes'm, she is, 'cause I seen it."
"Well, well, what next?" cried Kate. "What sort of chicken have I
hatched? There've been queer developments in the family, but never a
genius that I know of. We must leave her alone, by all means. Maybe she
will get over it."
Mag breathed more freely; and with the departure next day of Jemima,
accompanied by two trunks and wearing an expression that said plainly,
"I shall return with my shield or on it," Mag's fears for her beloved
Miss Jacky were further allayed. Of late the Storm household had begun
to hold Jemima's seeing eye in even more respect than the Madam's.
Mag had stumbled upon Jacqueline's secret quite by accident. After her
day's work was over she liked to walk the roads with her baby, dressed
in her prettiest finery, with an eager, hopeful eye out for passing
vehicles. On one of these rambles she happened into the lane which
passed the haunted ravine, and there, concealed by the drooping branches
of a willow beside the road, she had discovered a deserted automobile.
It aroused her curiosity. What could an automobile be doing in that
unfrequented lane, and where was the owner of it? Fearfully she entered
the ravine, and ventured a few steps toward the green tangle that hid
the ruined cabin. When she came in sight of it, panic conquered
curiosity, and she turned to run. It was very dark and hushed there in
the underbrush.
But one of the young dogs, who had followed her, suddenly pricked up his
ears and nosed his way to the cabin's threshold, where he paused with
one foot lifted, making violent demonstrations with his tail. Mag
followed him, reassured.
"A dog would have too much sense to wag hisself at ghosts," she
thought....
No wonder it was still in the ravine. Birds passing overhead forbore to
sing, out of sheer sympathy. The great trees stood tiptoe, guarding with
finger on lip the love-dream of the little human creature who had played
so long about their feet, and whose playing days were done. Mag and the
young dog were silent, too, and would have gone softly away from the
place where they were not wanted.
"Miss Jacky's got her a fella!" whispered Mag enviously to herself.
"Ain't that grand?"
But the baby in her arms had as yet no conception that there might be
places in the world where she was not wanted; poor little waif who had
been unwanted anywhere! She recognized her usual companion wrapped in
the arms of a strange man, and cooed inquiringly.
The lovers jumped apart.
"Oh!--It's only you, Mag!" gasped Jacqueline. "I thought Jemmy had
caught us at last!..."
So it happened that Mag was elevated to the position of confidante; not
a very wise confidante, but a very proud and trustworthy one, eager to
help her Miss Jacky to happiness, such as she conceived the term--a
"fella" to love her and give her presents, which might or might not
include a wedding-ring.
She was pressed into willing service, carrying notes, arranging
meetings, mounting guard watchfully, thrilled with eager sympathy, and
dreaming a little on her own account; sordid, pathetic dreams they were,
in which, alas! the baby Kitty played no part at all. As Mrs. Kildare
had guessed, maternity was not enough for Mag Henderson.
Percival Channing, in the midst of the prettiest idyl of his experience,
was bringing to it far more enthusiasm than he would have thought
possible for a mere collector of impressions. He was quite pleased with
himself.
"Who said I was jaded and world-worn?" he thought amusedly. His critical
faculty did not become atrophied when applied to himself, as is the way
of smaller critical faculties.
From week to week he prolonged his visit at Holiday Hill, to the content
of Farwell, who was finding the picturesque solitude he had created for
himself rather wearing. Channing thought it necessary to explain that
the country furnished him just the quiet environment he needed for his
work.
"And eke the inspiration?" murmured Farwell.
"And eke the inspiration," admitted his guest.
Farwell puffed at a meditative pipe. He was a tolerant man, popular with
his friends because of his chariness in proffering advice and comment;
so that Channing was surprised when he continued the subject.
"I fancy the little girl is quite capable of taking care of
herself--these Southern beauties are that way, from the cradle. But
have a care of the old 'un, my boy! There's a glint in that fine gray
eye I wouldn't care to rouse, myself. She's by way of being a queen
around here, you know. I'm told the law asks her permission before it
makes an arrest in this neighborhood. Her subjects neither marry, nor
die, nor get themselves born without her permission--fact! As for her
daughters, hands off! Approach them on your knees.
"I'll give you a bit of local color, if you like. Have you noticed that
long-tailed whip she carries when she's got the dogs? Well, one day I
saw a couple of negroes fighting in one of the fields; big, burly
brutes, one with a knife, and both full of cocaine, probably. The white
man in charge danced around on the outskirts, afraid to interfere--I
don't blame him! Suddenly there was a cry, 'Here comes the Madam!' And
there she was, galloping into that field, hell-for-leather, unwrapping
her long-tailed whip as she came. When the negroes had had enough of it
and were whimpering for mercy, she turned her attention to the foreman.
But she didn't whip him. She said, her voice as calm as a May morning,
'Go and get your time, Johnson. I've no room on the place for a timid
man!'"
Farwell's eyes were lit with enthusiasm, but to Channing the story had
been oddly distasteful. "Faugh! What a woman! And yet I'll swear she's a
lady," he said, with an odd thought of introducing Mrs. Kildare to his
rigid family circle in the rôle of mother-in-law.
"Of course she is! A great lady, of a type we're not familiar with,
that's all. A relic of feudalism. I give you fair warning--don't monkey
with the buzz-saw!"
"Nonsense!" Channing flushed. "Who's monkeying with buzz-saws? You're
rather crude, you know."
"So is she. Don't you make any mistake about that! The Kildare is no
parlor product. A woman who's led the life she has," drawled Farwell,
"would be quite capable of protecting her children, even at the point of
a pistol, I fancy."
The author gave a short, angry laugh. "You're incurably dramatic, Morty!
You will carry your stage effects into real life. What do you think I'm
up to, anyway? You don't suppose I mean that pretty child any harm?"
Farwell rolled protesting eyes toward heaven. "The very suggestion
shocks me," he murmured. "But I have noticed that only the juice of the
orange interests you, old man. The rest of it you leave on your plate,
luxurious chap that you are!..."
His warning had its effect. There were no more stolen drives about the
country in Farwell's automobiles, much to Jacqueline's disappointment;
and once more Channing called in state at Storm, where he was received
cordially by Mrs. Kildare, and took very little notice of demure
Jacqueline in the background. So little, indeed, that Kate afterwards
felt it necessary to apologize for him.
"You're too young for Mr. Channing, Jacky dear. What a pity Jemima was
not here to talk to him! He's just the sort of man for her," she said.
Whereat Jacqueline's dimples became riotous, and she kept silence with
difficulty.
Channing's new caution, however, did not carry him to the length of
giving up his daily visits to the Ruin. He needed the girl too much. His
belonged to the class of creative brain that works only under the
stimulus of emotion. Channing was fond of saying that he took his
material red-hot out of life itself, and his novels represented a series
of personal experiences, psychological and otherwise, which perhaps
accounted for their marked success with a certain public.
Channing was not without genius. He had to a great degree the poet's
sensitiveness to all things exquisite, and added to that he had a gift
of facile expression. Subtleties of style, that effort to find exactly
the right phrase and shade of meaning which is the stumbling-block of so
many conscientious writers, troubled him not at all. Given the
sensation, words in which to clothe it came instinctively, faster often
than he could write them down. But first he must needs experience the
sensation. This type of brain suffers from one disadvantage. In time the
receptive surface of it becomes dulled, calloused, and as the confirmed
drug-user requires constantly increasing or varying doses to produce
effect, so such an imagination requires constantly increasing or varying
doses of emotion.
These young Jacqueline Kildare was supplying in full measure. To his
sophisticated palate she was as refreshing as cool spring water. She
roused, among impulses more familiar to his experience, certain others
with which he had not credited himself, impulses of tenderness, of
protection, of chivalry. He began to be aware of a pleasure that was
entirely new to him in the sight of Jacqueline with Mag's baby, their
very frequent companion.
"I _am_ getting primitive!" he thought. "This is going back to nature
with a vengeance."
For the first time in his life, the thought of marriage came to him
occasionally and was put away with some regret. "I must not lose my
head," he admonished himself. "It will not last, of course. It never
does."
Channing knew himself very thoroughly.
But if he must not offer marriage to the girl, he could at least help
her to a career. It flattered his _amour propre_ to realize that the
object of his present affections, crude young thing as she was, might be
called in a certain sense his equal, a fellow artist, one of the world's
chosen. He spoke very often of her career, and Jacqueline listened,
dreamily.
Of late she had somewhat lost interest in careers. Or rather, she had
another sort of career in view; that of the lady in the tower, to whom
her knight brings all his trophies. It seemed to her that this might be
the happiest career of all.
She knew very well what she was doing for Channing. In the morning
hours, and often after he left her far into the night, the author wrote
steadily, with the ease and smoothness of creation that is one of the
most satisfying pleasures known to human experience. Daily, when he came
to her for refreshment, he brought manuscript to read, incidents,
character sketches, whole chapters in the novel he had started. All of
which filled Jacqueline with a new and heady sense of power. If she was
not "writing a book," as Mag reported, she was at least helping to write
one.
And she gave more to her lover than inspiration. He found her criticism
unexpectedly valuable. There had been no lack of brains in her family,
and the library at Storm was large and excellent. Philip Benoix and
James Thorpe had both supplemented the girls' reading with great wisdom,
so that Jacqueline's taste was formed upon far better literature than
that of the average woman of his acquaintance. She was not easily
shocked--Kate boasted that she had never put her girls' brains into
petticoats--but now and then, despite Channing's growing care,
unconscious product of his new chivalry, matter crept into his pages
which made her shake her head in quick distaste.
"People might _do_ things like that," she said once, of a particularly
unsavory episode, "but they'd never sit around and talk of it
afterwards. They'd be ashamed!"
It was a comment on human nature the shrewdness of which he promptly
appreciated. Jacqueline came to represent to him that invaluable portion
of a writer's public, the average female mind. Under her proud guidance,
Channing knew that he was writing the best and by far the cleanest of
his novels.
It was at such moments that the thought of marriage came to him, and he
reminded himself reluctantly that it would not do. "He travels fastest
who travels alone...."
"I must speak to your mother about your voice," he said once. "She will
have to let you study in Europe, or at least in New York. You're
seventeen, aren't you? There's a long road to travel. No time to be
lost."
"New York? But you live in Boston, don't you?"
"Heaven forbid! I was born in Boston, but one gets over it in time."
"I'm not sure now that it's worth while taking any more lessons," she
said dreamily.
"You'll never be a singer without them."
"Well--sometimes I think I don't want to be a singer, Mr. Channing.
Sometimes I think I'd rather be a--housekeeper, for instance."
"What! Give up fame and fortune for a hypothetical domestic career?"
"Not for a hypothetical one, no." She gave him a side-wise glance,
dimpling. "But I _would_ love to have a home of my own."
He humored her, for the sake of watching her rapt and eager face. "What
would you do with a house of your own?"
"Oh, I'd have pink silk curtains at all the windows, and loads of books,
and flowers, and a cook who could make things like Mr. Farwell's cook
can--and--and a grand piano, and an automobile, and a stable full of
thoroughbreds and puppies--" She paused for breath.
"Anything else?"
"Oh, yes. Babies! All ages and sizes of babies, small red wrinkled ones,
and trot-abouts, and fat little boys in their first trousers--"
"Help, help!" murmured Channing. "Would there be any room in that house
for a husband?"
"Yes," she said softly. "I used to think it was a nuisance, having to
have a husband before you could have babies; but now--" she glanced at
him shyly, and looked away again.
"But now?" he repeated, leaning toward her.
"I--I've changed my mind," she murmured, her heart beating very hard.
Was he going to say anything?
The indications were that he was. His eyes had a look that she called to
herself "beaming," and he put out his arms as if to take her into them.
She swayed a little toward him, to make it easier.
But at the critical moment, discretion came once more to the rescue. He
fumbled hastily in his pocket for a cigarette, and with that in his
lips, felt safer.
"There is really no reason," he remarked, puffing, "that the operatic
career may not be combined with the luxuries you mention,
Jacqueline--pink silk curtains, infants, and all."
"Do singers marry?" she asked; and he could not but admire the
nonchalance with which she covered her disappointment.
"Rather! Fast and frequently."
"But surely they don't have babies?"
"Why not? A friend of mine on the operatic stage"--he mentioned her
name--"assures me that each baby improves her voice noticeably."
"I think it is very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You
_know_ he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children
properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he
comes home tired at night!"
"Judging from the size of her income," murmured Channing, "I fancy that
he would not."
Jacqueline jumped up, scarlet. The chagrin of her recent repulse, the
nervous strain of the past few weeks, the reaction from too exalted a
plane of emotion, all found vent in a burst of temper rare indeed to her
sunny nature.
"That's a horrid thing to say," she flared out, "and sometimes I think
you're a horrid man! Yes, I do! When you're cynical and--and worldly
that way, I just can't bear you. So there! I'm going straight up to the
house. Good-by! You needn't try to stop me."
She went, but very slowly, regretting already her foolish anger, waiting
for him to call her back. Her feet lagged. She said to herself that
these clever men could be very stupid....
But Channing did not call her back. He followed the ascending figure, so
boyishly slender yet so instinct with feminine grace, with eyes that
held regret, and pity, and something else. When it was out of sight
among the upper trees, he heaved a sigh of relief.
"That was a narrow squeak, Percival, my boy," he admonished himself.
"Another instant, and it would have been all up with you. Time you were
finding pressing business elsewhere!"
As has been said, Mr. Channing knew himself extremely well; a knowledge
that was the result of expert study. He had learned that men pay a
penalty for keeping their emotions highly sensitized. They react too
readily to certain stimuli; they are not always under perfect control.
There are times when the only safety lies in flight.
However, he was not quite ready to flee. He had his novel to finish. It
is always a mistake, he had found, to change environment in the middle
of a book.