The night after the wedding proved to be for Kate Kildare one of the
_nuits blanches_ that were becoming common with her in the past few
weeks. For many years the cultivated habit of serenity had carried her
through whatever crises came into her life, following her days of
unremitting labor with nights of blessed oblivion. But lately she found
herself quite often waking just before daylight, with that feeling of
oppression, that blank sense of apprehension, that is the peculiar
property of "the darkest hour."
This night she occupied her brain as soothingly as possible with details
of the wedding; smiling to remember the unaccustomed frivolity of the
old hall, which the negroes had decorated with flowers and ribbons
placed in all likely and unlikely places. Every antler sported its bow
of white; the various guns which hung along the walls, as they had hung
in the days of Basil's grandfather, each trailed a garland of blossoms;
even the stuffed racehorse was not forgotten, so that he appeared to be
running his final race with Death while incongruously munching roses.
Jacqueline as bridesmaid was, oddly enough, the only one of the
wedding-party who seemed in the least upset. She was white as a sheet
and trembling visibly, and when Philip greeted Jemima formally as "Mrs.
Thorpe," she suddenly burst into tears, and refused to be comforted.
"He's so _old_!" she sobbed on her mother's shoulder. "Oh, poor Blossom!
He's so _old_!"
Yet the bridegroom had looked to Kate's eyes amazingly young; and as he
stood gazing down at the exquisite little white-clad figure beside him,
there was such an expression of pride in his face, of incredulous,
reverent happiness, that it was all his new mother-in-law could do to
keep from kissing him before the ceremony was over.
Jemima herself was as calm as might have been expected; perhaps calmer.
At the critical moment, when Philip's grave voice was beginning: "Dearly
beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God"--the bride
was heard to murmur to her attendant, "Jacky, pull my train out
straight." Thereafter, she fixed her eye upon a certain flintlock rifle
over the mantel-piece, which had won the first Kentucky Kildare his way
into the virgin wilderness, and went through the ceremony with the
aplomb of a general directing his forces into battle. The mother
wondered what the girl was thinking of, staring so fixedly at the old
rifle. Perhaps she was vowing to be worthy of it in the new wilderness
she was about to tread.
Afterwards for an hour or so Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe had graciously received
the uninvited guests of both colors who had come "to see the bride off."
Then the two sisters went upstairs together to change into the
going-away dress; and Kate, presently following, found Jemima alone.
"I thought you would come, Mother. That's why I sent Jacky away."
Kate, a little tremulous herself, had counted upon the bride's composure
to carry the day; but behold! it was suddenly a thing of the past. She
ducked her head and ran into her mother's arms as if she were trying to
hide from something, breathless, panic-stricken; and Kate soothed her
silently with tender hands.
Presently Jemima whispered in a queer little voice, "Mother? Now that we
are both married women, tell me--Was my father--was my father good to
you?"
"My little girl! You need never worry about Jim's being good to you."
"Oh, Jim--of course!--I'm not thinking of him, I'm thinking of you.
If--if my father was not good to you, I can understand--I see--"
Then Kate realized what she was trying to say. This cold, proud child of
hers was willing to give up her pride in her father, if so be she might
hold fast again to the old faith in her mother.
The temptation was great, but Kate put it from her. She could not rob
dead Basil of his child's respect.
"You must never blame your father, dear, for any weakness of mine," she
said, steadily.
But the girl still clung to her, whispering another strange thing.
"Often, when I am half awake, I remember some one--Not you, Mother. Some
one with a deep laugh, whose coat feels smooth on my cheek--who used to
toss me up in the air, and play with me, and pet me if I was frightened.
I always want to cry when he goes.--Is that my father, Mother?"
A pulse beat thickly in Kate's throat. She had some difficulty in
answering. "Perhaps. Who knows? A baby's dreams, dear. But cling to
them, cling to them--"
She knew very well it was not Jemima's father, but the man who should
have been her father, Jacques Benoix. So, after all, the first loves of
life are not forgotten, even by Jemimas....
Lying there, despite the depressing hour, content stole over her; a
feeling that all was well with her elder child, at least.
She turned her thoughts to Jacqueline. There, too, things were going
better. None of Philip's growing interest and tenderness for his little
playmate had escaped her notice. Motherwise, she exaggerated these into
symptoms of greater import. Blunderer that she was, she had at least
managed to bring the child safe through the perils of a first passion,
that rock upon which so many young lives wreck, even as hers had
wrecked. In the rebound from the affair with Channing, the girl could
not fail to appreciate the superior charm of Jacques' big and simple
son, who was so much like Jacques himself. She was sure that Jacqueline
already loved Philip without suspecting it. Women ere this have loved
two men at once.
Then, as suddenly as pain that has been waiting for the first motion on
the part of its victim to pounce, the apprehension she had been fighting
came back upon her, twofold.--_Was_ she so certain? And had she not in
her blundering life been certain of too many things? That she would be a
true wife to Basil Kildare, for instance; that she could justify Jacques
before the world; that at least she might atone to him for all he had
lost through her. And in each of these things she had been wrong. She,
with all her boast of efficiency, she the successful Mrs. Kildare of
Storm, what was she in the end but a failure--a wife whose husband had
not trusted her, a woman who had ruined her lover's life, a mother whose
daughter married without love, to get away from her?
She wondered, as at all such moments, what was the purpose for which she
had been created; or whether there had indeed been a purpose. This
humanity that takes itself so seriously, may it be after all only a
superior sort of spider-egg, hatching out in due season, spinning busy
webs for the world to brush away, laying other eggs, and so on, _ad
infinitum_? Perhaps the God of simple people, such as her mother and
Philip Benoix and Brother Bates, the God upon whom she herself called at
times because of the force of early habit--perhaps He was only
life-principle--the warmth of the sun, for instance--an impersonal,
intangible something which started the universe as one winds a clock,
and left it to go on ticking till the mechanism runs down.... Good or
bad, wise or foolish--what difference? Spin our webs no matter how
carefully, they are only gossamer, visible for a moment with the dew or
the frost upon them and then--vanished. Human and spider alike, unnoted,
innumerable, self-perpetuating....
Poor Kate Kildare! When natures such as hers lose their self-reliance,
life becomes as unsubstantial as an opium dream. If they cannot count
upon themselves, what then may they count upon?
She jumped out of bed, and went to the window, where she stood for a
while in the cold starlight, letting the wind blow in across her
feverish face. She wrapped blankets around her, and sat listening to the
sounds of the sleeping country; an owl mournfully hooting, a premature
cock crowing lustily, the drowsy whickering of horses stirring in their
stalls; for it was two o'clock, and the countryside was beginning to
dream of day. She stayed for a long while brooding over the land she
loved, as over a sleeping child. Always the great out-of-doors had its
balm for her....
Suddenly she sat erect. In the shadows back of the stables something had
moved. One of the dogs, perhaps? Then out into the starlight, crossing
rapidly toward the house, flitted the slight figure of a girl, with
several of the dogs leaping and gamboling about her in a silence that
showed her to be no stranger. She was shrouded in a long hooded cape,
and passed out of Kate's range too quickly lo be recognizable.
"Now which of the wenches was that?" thought Kate, frowning. The amorous
adventures of their black servants have come to be accepted by Southern
housekeepers with unenquiring philosophy. "But why was she coming to the
house at this hour?" she wondered further.
The negroes had their quarters well at the back, and no one slept in the
"great house" with Kate and her daughters, except the housewoman, Ella,
too elderly for midnight adventure, and Mag Henderson, who with her baby
occupied a room in the guest-wing, under the Madam's immediate
supervision.
She listened acutely. Her bedroom door rattled a little in the draught
of another door which opened and closed. She heard an unmistakable
creaking of the back stairs that led to a hall behind her room and the
girls' rooms, and which also led to the guest-wing.
"It's Mag!" she thought.
In the morning, anxious and distressed, she hurried to consult Philip.
He shrugged. "I'm not surprised, but I honestly don't know how to advise
you, Miss Kate. I never wanted you to take her to Storm, but now that
she's there, I suppose only the devil himself would get her away from
you."
"It looks as if the devil were going to have a try at it," she
commented, grimly.
"Are you perfectly sure it was Mag?"
"No, I'm not. It was too dark to see her face, and she was wrapped in a
big cape.--Now that I come to think of it, it was the cape we always
keep hanging by the side door for whoever happens to be going out. None
of the negroes would dare to put that on. So it must have been Mag."
"At least we must be definitely sure before we say anything to her. It
is a delicate matter. Sometimes a lack of trust at the wrong moment.--Be
very sure, Miss Kate!"
"I'll watch to-night. Perhaps the poor little fool will try to slip off
again."
* * * * *
Midnight found the Madam seated at her dark window, dressed and fully
prepared for any emergency--except that she happened to be asleep. Black
coffee had not been sufficient to offset the treacherously soothing
effect of a rain-laden breeze full of soft earth-odors, that blew across
her eyelids. She might have slept there placidly till morning, had not a
clap of thunder awakened her with a start.
The night had become very tense and still. The trees seemed to hold
themselves rigid, as if they listened for something. Now and then,
lightning stabbed viciously through the dark. Beneath her the old house
creaked, bracing itself once more to meet the onslaught of its life-long
enemy, the wind. Far away across the plateau came a faint rushing sound,
that grew in volume rapidly. Once again the thunder boomed.
Kate rose, yawning. "No amorous adventures for Mag to-night, that's
certain! It's going to be the first big storm of the season. There's
bite as well as bark in that sky."
But at the moment, a flash of lightning showed her a slight girl's
figure running, not toward, but away from the house.
Kate was startled. "It's serious then, poor silly creature, if she goes
out on a night like this!" For Mag had even more than the usual
cowardice of her class. Thunder-storms reduced her to abject terror.
For a moment Kate thought of following, before she realized the folly of
the idea. How could she hope to catch so fleet a pair of heels, already
lost in the darkness? Then a faint cry came to her, the sound of a child
wailing forlornly.
She slipped out into the passage, careful not to wake Jacqueline.
Whatever was to be done with Mag, one duty lay plain before her--to
comfort the deserted baby.
She opened Mag's door without knocking.--The baby was not deserted. Mag
herself stood at the window in her nightdress, cringing from the
lightning, and wringing her hands and weeping. The baby wept in
sympathy.
When she saw who had entered, Mag ran forward with a terrified cry, and
fell on her knees, clinging to Kate's skirts as a dog crouches against
its master to escape a beating.
"'T ain't my fault, 't ain't my fault! I done begged her not to go
to-night, I done prayed her, Miss Kate! Oh, oh, look at that lightnin'!
She'll be kilt!"
"What are you talking about? Pull yourself together, Mag!" Even then the
truth did not dawn on Kate. She thought she must have been the victim of
some optical illusion. Mag had to tell her in so many words.
"Miss Jacky's gone to meet her fella again, and I _know_ she's goin' to
git kilt!"
Kate reeled against the wall. "Again?" she whispered.
"I done begged her not to, no more. I knowed he'd git her into trouble
if she kep' it up.--Oh, I helped 'em, and toted notes for 'em, an' all,
'cause I liked to see her so happy--but I didn't never think it would
come to this! I'd 'a' tol' you if I dared, Miss Kate, but I dassent, I
dassent. She liked me--she kissed me once. Oh, oh, and now she's gone!"
Kate forced her stiff lips into speech. "This--has been going on for
some time?"
"Yes'm, right smart. Ever since he was sick here. I took'n him a letter
from her the day he went away."
Even in that moment, Kate's whirling brain did Channing justice. He had
kept his word, the letter of it, at least. He had not sought Jacqueline.
It was she who had sought him.
She was getting back her breath. "Now," she said, "where shall I find
them?"
Mag's wails broke forth anew. "I dunno! Reckon it's too late. Oh, my
Lordy! I took'n her bag to the Ruin before supper, and he was to come
for her there at midnight. Reckon it's past that now. They've done
gone!"
"Gone?" The word was a gasping cry. "Gone--where?"
"I dunno. The city, I reckon, or wherever he lives at.--Oh, my Gawd,
lissen at that!" The wind struck the house a great buffet, and the
thunder was rattling steadily as artillery now.
Kate's knees refused to support her. She held herself upright by
clinging to the bed.
The sight of the Madam thus stricken and speechless sobered Mag out of
her own fears. She bethought herself suddenly of the letter Jacqueline
had left for her mother.
"Here! Maybe it says in the letter where she's gone at. Don't look that
way, Miss Kate! I wa'n't to give you the letter till mornin', but here
it is. You kin have it now, see, Miss Kate!"
Only a few sentences of the long, incoherent screed in her hand
penetrated to Kate's brain.
I can't bear to leave you, I just can't bear it; but I love him so,
Mummy!--He needs me, and you don't. He can't finish his book
without me.--We're going abroad, and I'll study my singing while he
writes. Some day you'll be proud of your little girl--You said when
the time came to take my life in my two hands, and it's come. You
know it is not his fault that we can't be married right away--but
what does all that matter? You'll be the first to understand,
because I'm doing just what you would have done for Philip's
father, if it hadn't been for us children. I know! I understand you
so well, darling Mummy. I'm your own child.--We're not niggardly
lovers, you and I! We're not afraid to give all we have--
Kate uttered a hoarse exclamation, and dropped the letter. Her moment of
helplessness had passed. She ran down stairs, two steps at a time, Mag
at her heels. She jerked open the side door, and was almost driven from
her feet by a great gust of driving rain. It was Mag who wrapped around
her the first cloak that came to hand, the big, hooded cape Jacqueline
had worn the night before, Kate stopped for nothing except to seize the
rawhide whip which hung on its accustomed nail beside the door.
"What you goin' to do with that?" gasped Mag.
"My pistols are upstairs," muttered the other.
Mag stood at the door as long as she could, catching glimpses as the
lightning flashed of a shrouded, hooded figure running with the wind,
fast, fast, like some wild witch abroad upon the elements.