Jemima's opposition had the effect, usual with determined natures, of
crystallizing Mrs. Kildare's purpose, and she watched with impatience a
situation that appeared rather slow in developing. Philip, touched to
the heart by the change in Jacqueline, devoted much time and thought to
her comforting, overtures which the girl met more than half way. The two
were constantly together now, galloping over the frosty fields, driving
about the country in the newly arrived Ark (which understanding Philip
had accepted with a generosity that matched Jemima's), or reading aloud
to each other in front of the roaring fire in Storm hall.
Kate, realizing however unconsciously that when she was about he had
less attention for her daughter, kept out of their way as much as
possible. It occurred to her that Philip was rather neglecting his
parish in Jacqueline's behalf. She smiled to herself, and frequently
commended Providence for its assistance.
But Providence moved a trifle slowly for a woman accustomed to prompt
and decisive action. She yearned to advise Philip to strike while the
iron was hot, to claim the girl for his own before her natural youth and
high spirits reasserted themselves and made her less susceptible to
tenderness. She wanted to see the two she loved happy together, as she
had wanted nothing else since she put the thought of happiness out of
her own life. Why were they wasting so much priceless time?
Suddenly, one afternoon, as she was riding home to Storm, the reason
occurred to her. Philip's pride! the same pride that would permit him to
accept no help from her even as a boy, when the small income his mother
left him would have been insufficient to carry him through school and
seminary if he had not managed to secure tutoring positions to eke out.
He had accepted, perforce, the home she offered him during vacations,
but nothing more, not even a horse for his personal use. He was a poor
man, would perhaps always be a poor man, dependent upon the meager
salary of a country clergyman; and he was the son of a convict to boot.
Was it likely that he would ask in marriage the hand of one of the young
heiresses of Storm? How stupid she had been!
"Bless the boy! I'll have to take this thing in hand myself," thought
Kate Kildare, glad of an excuse, and turned her horse's head toward the
rectory.
Philip, absorbed in putting final touches to his next day's sermon,
looked up from his desk to see her smiling in at the door of the room
that was his study, his dining-room and his parlor combined.
He sprang to his feet. "You!" he cried, with a look in his eyes that
might have told its own story to a woman less accustomed to appreciative
male glances. "I--I was just thinking of you."
That was true enough. She would have found it difficult to come upon him
at a time when he was not thinking of her, somewhere in the back of his
mind. Lately, whenever he had been with Jacqueline, the girl reminded
him so constantly, so almost poignantly, of her mother that sometimes he
caught himself speaking to her in the very voice he used with his lady,
a softer, deeper voice that was the unconscious expression of the inmost
man. His congregation heard it sometimes, too, now that Mrs. Kildare had
come to sit among them.--He had been writing out his sermon with unusual
care because he had remembered that she would listen to it.
He ran to wheel his shabby wing-chair up to the fire, where a pot of
coffee simmered on the hob, with a covered plate beside it.
"My supper," he explained, with a gesture of apology. "I often cook in
here because it seems more cozy than the kitchen."
"Is Dilsey misbehaving again?"
He nodded ruefully. "I can't think where she gets the stuff, Miss Kate;
the store won't sell it to her."
"Out of your emergency cupboard, I fancy. You give her all your keys, of
course, for fear she will imagine you don't trust her? Oh, Phil, Phil,"
she laughed at his guilty face. "How you do need a wife to look after
you!"
She settled herself comfortably in the comfortable chair, looking about
the pleasant, twilit room with the sense of well-being that always came
to her there. It was more homelike to her than the home where she had
lived for twenty years, her big rough house that had taken on so
irrevocably the look of the Kildares. Here faded brocade furniture,
books, well-shaded lamps, a blue bowl filled with rosy apples, a jar of
cedar-boughs that took the place of flowers now that the garden had gone
to its winter rest--all these things spoke to her, as they spoke to
Philip, of other days, of his father, even of the shadowy lady with her
slight, patient cough who had been his mother, and whom Kate always
winced to remember. In this place she felt among friends. She was happy
to think of her Jacqueline come at last into such a haven as Philip's
home.
"Bring me some of your supper--especially the coffee, it smells so
good!--and then come and sit beside me. Here--" she indicated a low
hassock at her feet--"where I can tweak your ear if I want to; because
I'm going to scold."
Philip obeyed in silence. He had fallen rather shy of her, now that he
had her here as he had so often dreamed, sitting beside him in the
twilight, sharing his supper, leaning her head against the cushions of
his own chair, her slender arched feet, in their trim riding-boots,
resting upon his fender. It was not often that the Madam found time or
occasion to stop at the Rectory. What need, indeed, when Philip was so
constantly at Storm? But the image of her sat more often than she
guessed just as she was sitting now, with a worshiper at her feet.
His own thoughts, more than her presence, kept him silent. The phrase
she had uttered so carelessly (he did not altogether know his lady
there!) had set them clamoring--"How you do need a wife to look after
you...."
Philip tried in vain to remember a time when he had not loved this
woman. As a child, made older than his years by the shadow of his
mother's invalidism, he had treasured his glimpses of the reckless,
beautiful girl with her two babies, as other children might treasure
glimpses into fairyland. As an older boy, with his world already in
ruins about him, he had idealized his one friend into a sort of goddess,
a super-human deity who could do no wrong, whose every word was magic
and whose slightest wish law. At that period, if Kate had bade him rob a
bank or commit a murder, he would have done it unquestioningly, happy
only to be of service to her. Later, as he grew into a thoughtful young
manhood, he came to understand that even deities may have their faults;
but Kate's were dear faults, never of the heart. As she became less
goddess she became more human, and so nearer to him, until at last she
was woman to his man. But a very wonderful woman, to be approached, even
in thought, with reverence. Philip's love had so grown with him, step by
step, as to be part of the fabric of himself, large now as his very
nature; and that was large indeed.
Yet never once in all the years had he imagined the sacrilege of making
her his wife, until there came the farewell letter from his father in
prison; that man used to reading the hearts of men, who saw the truth
between the lines of his son's letters, and deliberately gave the woman
both loved into his son's keeping.
"She is still young," Jacques Benoix had written, "and you are young,
and my time is over. You must be to her what I would have been. We must
consider now nothing but her greatest happiness, you and I, her greatest
good."
Since then Philip, if he had not thought of it before, thought of little
else than of marrying Kate Kildare.
Not soon, of course; not until time should have brought its blessed balm
of forgetfulness, when both the girls would be married and gone,
perhaps, and she in her loneliness would turn to him. Meanwhile he must
be at hand to take care of her, as his father had bidden him; to watch
over her unobtrusively, helping her as he had with Jacqueline, sharing
any trouble that came to her; making himself necessary in every way
possible, so that more and more he should take with her the place of his
father.
Kate was wrong in her ideas that his poverty had much influence upon
Philip. Poverty and wealth mean little to the idealist; and his faith
was very strong. He knew that if God gave this beloved woman into his
keeping, He would provide very surely the means of keeping her.
He was patient, too; yet lately all the talk of love and of marriage,
the companionship of wistful, lovelorn Jacqueline, perhaps, the sight of
James Thorpe's almost fatuous happiness, had made patience newly
difficult; had stirred a restlessness in him that sometimes he believed
his lady noticed. When she was in the room with him, whether they spoke
or not, he found it almost impossible to keep his eyes from her; and
when at such times their glances met, it seemed to him there was a quick
flash of response in hers, an understanding look, almost of expectancy,
as if she were waiting for him to say something he did not say.
Philip was of course right. Nothing of the change in him had been lost
on Kate; only she attributed it unfortunately to another cause--to
Jacqueline.
She was chattering desultorily about many things, as they sat there in
the deepening November dusk, by the fire; but he did not hear what she
was saying. He began to look covetously out of the corner of his eye
toward one of her hands that lay on the arm of the chair close beside
him; a big, beautiful hand like Kate herself, capable as little
Jemima's, but with the warmth, the healing in its touch, of Jacqueline's
own. When he pictured her to himself, he always saw first her eyes,
clear and direct as a boy's; then her lovely, curved lips; then these
sentient hands of hers. He wished that he had the courage to take the
hand in his own, to hold it against his breast, his cheek. It had been
his often enough to hold, and even to kiss; but always of her own
volition. She was as generous of caresses as her youngest daughter; but
it never occurred to Philip, nor had it perhaps occurred to other men
who loved her, that they might venture to take what she did not offer.
Kate was the giver, always.
Even now, as if aware of his thoughts, the hand lifted, strayed over to
touch the hair on his temples lightly as a butterfly, and came to rest
on his shoulder, drawing him a little closer. He sat very still,
thrilling to its touch. She might as well at that moment have laid her
hand on his bare heart. He wondered how many more seconds he could bear
it before he flung himself on his knees beside her and buried his face
in her lap....
"It's nice in here, so warm and dusky and comfy," she said. "Easier to
talk here than in that bare, ugly office of mine. I'm glad I came.--Now
the scolding is going to commence." The hand patted him affectionately.
"Phil, dear, are you _quite_ as frank with me as you used to be? Do you
still tell me everything you think and do and are? Isn't there something
you keep back nowadays?"
"Nothing," he answered in a rather choked voice, making one mental
reservation.
"If I hadn't your full confidence, I should miss it more than I can say.
You've spoiled me, dear. I want to be in everything that concerns you."
"You are," breathed poor Philip.
She leaned a little toward him. "No confidences, then? Nothing to ask
me, boy? Because it would be yours without asking." She waited a moment.
Silence--a very tense silence. "I don't know whether I've ever told you
how much I love you, how much I admire you. Only it's more than that.
You are the sort of man--my dear, if I could have had a son like you, I
should have been the proudest woman in the world! It breaks my heart to
think that Jacques does not know his great boy."
She felt him trembling under her touch, and went on with her
encouragement. "Think of what you have to offer the woman you love! Most
men come to us soiled, with fingerprints on them which the most
forgiving wife can never seem to wash quite away. But you--you are as
clean as your mother left you.--Look at me, Philip! Yes, I knew it.--And
what a home you will make for her! Money never made a home yet--it
spoils more homes than it helps, I think, because it does away with the
effort that makes anything worth while.--Oh, my dear boy, I think I
shall be envious of the girl you marry!"
The voice speaking was the one she had kept, as she once told
Jacqueline, to sing lullabies to her babies with--surely the most
exquisite, tender, caressing voice in the world, thought Philip. He
tried to listen to what she was saying, but heard only the voice. His
senses were swimming in it. Suddenly he leant over and laid his cheek
against her rough riding-skirt.
"Why, dearest boy!" The voice softened still more, and he felt her hands
in his hair. "Did you think you could hide anything from _me_? What a
goose! Don't you suppose I saw? I have been wondering for days why you
didn't tell me. And then I knew. The money--is that, it? But how
perfectly silly, dear! There's enough and more than enough for two, but
if you prefer it, your bride shall come to you as poor as any
churchmouse, glad and proud to do with whatever you are able to give
her. We don't care much for--just _things_, we Kildares!"
He raised his face, incredulous, listening at last to her words; a
dawning rapture in his eyes. She had seen. Was she offering herself to
him, Philip, as a goddess might lean to a mortal? He could not speak....
"And then I've thought," she went on, "that perhaps the thing between
your two fathers was holding you back. Don't let it, ah, don't let it!
Before that all happened, they were friends, dear friends. Your father
was the one man Basil loved. And some day when we are all together
somewhere, afterwards--if there is an afterwards!--I believe they will
be friends again. It was all a hideous mistake. Surely mistakes can't
last through eternity? That is my idea of what Heaven is; a place where
we shall understand each other's mistakes, and forgive them. But you and
Jacqueline--oh, Philip! Philip! try not to make any mistakes, you two! I
couldn't bear that."
Philip was himself now, hearing every word. He whispered haltingly,
praying that he had misunderstood, "What--was it you thought I--wished
to say to you?"
She laughed a little. "I thought--and think--you were trying to summon
up courage to ask me for my Jacqueline!"
He had risen to take his blow standing. In the dusk that filled the room
above the fire-line, she could not see his face.
She went on after a moment, "And I can't, _can't_ tell you how happy it
made me, how secure.--For a while I was so troubled. Channing, you
know--I thought I should have to give up my hopes.--But now he has gone,
and you are here; dear, faithful fellow, so big and true! For years I've
dreamed of this, ever since she was born. You and Jacqueline, his child
and mine, finding together all that we have missed. And some day, your
children--Ah, my dear, don't waste your moments! Years go so fast, and
they do not come back."
He made a queer, hoarse sound in his throat. Kate peered up at him, for
the first time suspecting something amiss. "Philip," she exclaimed, "why
don't you say something? Aren't you glad that I am glad?"
Glad!--In the chaos that was his mind, only one thing stood out clear to
him. His fingers unconsciously gripped the small gold cross that hung at
his belt, and clung to it. He had dedicated his life to service, first
of God and second of his fellow-men, chief of whom was the woman before
him. All his life he had dreamed of serving her. In his boyish heroics
he had defended her from lions, rescued her and her children from
Indians, carried her on his back out of burning houses. Lonely youth and
lonely man, dreams formed a greater part of his life than of most men's,
and all of them centered about the great figure of his existence, Kate
Kildare.
Now the opportunity was come. He was to serve her indeed, and
sacrificially. He saw with a horrible clarity where his duty lay, and
wondered that he had not seen it before. She needed him for Jacqueline
as she would never need him for herself. Young Benoix was of the stuff
of which martyrs are made; but as he stood there, gripping the little
cross of his calling, he prayed wordlessly, desperately, that his cup
might pass from him.
Kate had risen too, and stood dismayed by his silence, trying to read
his face by the flickering light. "Philip, what is it? Have I made a
mistake after all? Don't you love Jacqueline?" Her heart began to beat
rather fast. Something of what was in the air she sensed, but without
understanding.
What was it she was asking him? Oh, yes--whether he loved Jacqueline.
Dear little clinging, pathetic child! of course he loved her. He must
answer. He made a great effort and spoke, nodding his head.
"Yes. Oh, yes. I do love her."
Kate came closer, close enough to see the dumb pain in his eyes. She
exclaimed aloud, "Philip! Is it Channing then, after all? You think he
has come between you--irrevocably? No, but you are wrong! That is over,
absolutely over. It is for you to take out the sting.--See, Philip, I am
going to be quite frank with you, franker than women generally are, even
with themselves. You don't know much about girls. I do--about my own
girl, at least, for I was just such a girl once.--There comes a time to
young women, as to all young animals, when we look about us for our
mates. We may not seek, perhaps, but we look about. And the first that
comes--is very welcome, Philip.--That is all. Nature's way. If
Jacqueline still thinks of Channing--well, it is only blessed human
instinct to put aside the thing that hurts. But you must help her--she
can't do it, alone. Only a new love drives out the hurt of the old.
Jacqueline needs you, dear."
He put out a protesting hand. She was asking him for help, his lady. He
must not let her beg....
He said with stiff lips, "You think--she--would be willing--to marry
me?"
Kate nodded. "I suspect she'd like to show Mr. Channing as soon as
possible how little impression he has left behind him!--But it wouldn't
be that, of course," she added, seriously. "Underneath the other affair,
she's always been a little in love with you, Philip. Women are complex
creatures, with a capacity for being attracted quite in proportion to
their capacity for attracting.... And after you are once married--You
know, there's really no mystery about mating, except what the poets
make. Nature goes about it with a beautiful simplicity. Given two young
creatures, handsome, clean, healthy, mutually sympathetic, throw them
together a while without too many distractions--and there you are! It's
as inevitable as that two and two make four. Don't think too much about
it, dear--you're too watchful, too introspective. Just let go, and be
natural. She's very sweet, my Jacqueline, very loving and tender. And
you--well, you're not unattractive, you know! Don't worry.--Why, I give
you my word as a mother, as a woman," she exclaimed, "that a month after
you and Jacqueline are married, you will both have forgotten any
ridiculous little obstacle that ever kept you apart!..."
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Come soon," she whispered. "It
will comfort the child just now to know that she is wanted."
Philip had taken the kiss with closed eyes. When he opened them again,
his room was empty. He ran to the window, and saw her, a shadow shape,
swing into her saddle with a shadowy wave of the hand for him. He stood
there watching her out of sight, so soon out of sight; his lady, the
woman he loved, so infinitely kind, and beautiful, and cruel, heedless
as the gods are of homage they do not need.
He groped his way back to the chair where she had sat, leaned his cheek
where hers had rested--the place was still warm--and said good-by to
her....
An hour later, before his courage had a chance to fail him, he rode to
Storm and asked Jacqueline to marry him.
The girl put up her lips simply as a child. "I'd love to marry you,
Phil, darling. How sweet of you to ask me! And now," she said eagerly,
"let's go and tell Mummy. She'll be so pleased!"