It was a very trivial and unimportant thing, to Jemima's thinking, which
presently lifted Kate out of her languor into action once more. Big
Liza, entering timidly one morning, as she did many times in the day, to
gaze with miserable eyes at the figure on the bed, murmured to Jemima:
"They's a message come fum that 'ooman Mahaly, down in the village,
sayin' she's dyin', and wants to see the Madam. She 'lows she cain't die
in peace 'thout'n she sees Miss Kate."
"Of course that's impossible," said Jemima in the same low tone. "Send
word that we're very sorry. See that she has whatever she needs. If
necessary, I'll go myself."
"Did you say she was dying?" asked an unexpected voice from the bed.
"Yais'm, Miss Kate! but don't you keer, honey. Tain't nothin but that
mulatter 'ooman, Mahaly--You 'members about _her_!" she added
scornfully.--Very little had passed among her "white folks" that was
unknown to the sovereign of the kitchen.
To the amaze of both, Kate slipped without apparent effort out of the
bed where she had lain for weeks. "Where are my clothes?" she demanded.
Jemima ran to her with a cry of protest. "Mother, be careful! What, you
aren't thinking of going to see her? You can't--you're not strong
enough!"
"Mahaly must not die before I speak with her."
"Then," said Jemima calmly, "I'll have her brought to you."
"A dying woman? Jemmy, don't be silly!" Kate spoke with an asperity that
brought a wide grin to Big Liza's face, because it sounded as though the
Madam were come back again.
Jemima, alarmed, continued to protest; at last ran to the telephone and
called Dr. Jones to her assistance. Meanwhile Kate, scolded at, fussed
over, but in the end helped by her cook, got into out-door clothes; and
before Doctor Jones was on his way to Storm, she had taken the road for
the village.
She sat erect in her surrey, pale, but scorning the proffered arm of
Jemima, driven by a proud and anxious coachman behind the quietest pair
of horses in the stable; and people as she passed stared at her with
utter amaze--with more; with a delight that rose in some cases to the
point of tears. For the first time, Kate realized that she had won
something besides respect and dependence and fear from her realm. She
had won love. The realization pierced through her apathy. A faint color
came into her cheeks. More than once, as she paused to exchange
greetings with some beaming and incoherent acquaintance, her own lips
were tremulous.
"Why are they so glad to see me, Jemmy?" she asked once. "Did they think
I was very ill?"
Her daughter nodded, not trusting her own voice. It seemed as if a
miracle had occurred before her eyes.
"Well, I've fooled them," smiled Kate, drawing into her lungs a great
breath of the keen, rain-swept air that was bringing new life into a
world done with winter.
She asked one other question as they drove. "Jemmy, what does the
neighborhood think about--Jacqueline?"
Jemima explained that she had allowed the impression to go abroad that
Philip and Jacqueline had taken advantage of an opportunity to go to
Europe on a belated honeymoon journey.
She did not say, because she did not know, that the countryside, always
with an interested eye upon its betters, had connected the extreme
suddenness of this journey with Philip's vanished father, picturing to
itself touching death-bed scenes, and eleventh-hour repentances.
Remembering the Madam's brief illness at the time of Dr. Benoix'
disappearance, the neighborhood had connected her present illness also
with its romantic imaginings; with the result that what was left of its
disapproval had been swallowed up in a sudden and quite human wave of
sympathy for that faithful woman and the man she loved.
When they reached a neat little cottage in the portion of the village
devoted to white workingmen's homes, Kate allowed herself to be assisted
to the door, where she dismissed her daughter, telling her to return in
half an hour.
"I must see Mahaly alone," was her only answer to Jemima's uneasy
protests.
She was ushered respectfully into a neat, clean room, hung with the
enlarged crayon portraits dear to the colored race, and boasting a
parlor-organ draped in Battenberg lace. The window was open--a rare
thing in a negro home, despite her efforts with the Civic League. The
bed was stiffly starched and unoccupied, and the woman she had come to
see sat upright in a chair, propped with pillows, panting with the
effort of keeping breath in her lungs. She was dying of heart-disease.
She had been in her day rather a handsome creature, with the straight
hair and high features that indicate a not unusual admixture of Indian
blood. But though she must have been of about the same age as Mrs.
Kildare, she looked by comparison withered and superannuated, with the
grayish film across her eyes that one sees in those of aged animals.
These blurred eyes stared at Kate with a queer hostility, mixed with
something else; as they had stared on the day she came a bride to Storm.
She made a slight, futile attempt to rise.
"Nonsense, Mahaly! Don't move," said the Madam, kindly. "This is no time
for manners."
She closed the door behind her, and would have closed the window had it
not been for the woman's need of air and the inevitable faint odor that
clings about negro habitations, no matter how cleanly they are kept.
What she and her old servant had to say to each other must not be
overheard. Fancying that she detected sounds as of some one moving on
the porch outside, she called briefly: "Keep out of ear-shot, please."
She was too accustomed to obedience to investigate results.
"You wanted to see me, Mahaly?" she said. "You wanted to explain
something to me, perhaps?"
The woman struggled with her laboring breath. She was very near the end.
Kate found it painful to look at her, and her gaze wandered away to the
crayon portraits on the wall. The one over the bed, in the place of
honor, was a portrait of her husband, Basil Kildare. Her face hardened.
This was an impertinence! And yet....
Mahaly was speaking. "You-all ain't--found the French doctor yet--is
you?"
"No. We will not discuss that, if you please.... Mahaly, we may never
see each other again, you and I. Will you tell me now how you came--to
hate me so bitterly?"
Mahaly's eyes dropped. "I never! I tried to, but--I couldn't, Miss Kate.
You was--so kin' to me."
"Yes, I was kind. I meant to be. I liked you, and trusted you. I gave
you my children to nurse.--Mahaly, only once--no, twice--in my life have
I trusted people, and had them fail me."
"The other time was Mr. Bas," whispered the woman. "I knows. It
didn't--never do to trus'--Mr. Bas."
Her dying eyes followed Kate's to the picture, and dwelt upon it
wistfully.
Once more the lady changed the subject. "Will you tell me why you tried
to hate me, Mahaly?" She paused. "Was it because you were--jealous of
me?"
The reply had a certain dignity. "It ain't fitten--for a yaller gal--to
be jealous--of a w'ite pusson."
"Then, why?"
There was a silence. Gropingly the colored woman's hand went to a table
at her side, and held out to Kate a tintype photograph in a faded pink
paper cover. Kate looked at it. She saw Mahaly as she had been in the
days of her youth, comely and graceful; in her arms a small, beady-eyed
boy. The pride of motherhood was unmistakable.
"Your baby! Why, I never knew you had a baby." She looked closer, and
her voice softened. "A cripple, like my little Katherine. Poor little
fellow! Oh, Mahaly, did he die?"
There was a dull misery in the answer that went to her heart. "I dunno.
I couldn't--never fin' out."
"_You don't know?_"
"Mr. Bas done sent him away--when you was comin'. He was real kin'--to
him before, though he wa'n't never one--to have po'ly folks about, much.
But when you--was comin'--he done sent him away, an' he wouldn't never
tell me--whar to."
"Mahaly! _Why_ did he send him away?"
Kate had risen, in her horror of what she knew was coming.
"Bekase he looked--too much--like his--paw," said Mahaly, and she spoke
with pride....
Kate put her hands over her eyes. She remembered the sense of something
sinister that had come to her when she first saw Storm; recalled the
mystery which had hung about the mulatto girl, and which she had not
quite dared to probe; the innuendoes of old Liza, from the first her
ally and henchman; Mahaly's later passionate and hungry devotion to her
own children. She remembered the fate, too, of Basil's hound Juno, and
her mongrel pups.
"No wonder you hated me," she whispered, shuddering. "No wonder you
hated me! To think that even he could have done such a thing!--Oh, but,
Mahaly, how was I to know? How could you have blamed me?"
"I never. Only I 'lowed--that ef you was to git sent away--fum
Sto'm--mebbe he would lemme have my baby--back agin." Mahaly's voice was
getting very weak. She began fighting the air with her hands.
Kate dipped her handkerchief quickly into a glass of water and laid it
on the woman's face. "No more talking now," she said, and would have
gone for help; but the negress caught at her hand.
"Got--suthin' mo'--to say--fust--" she gasped painfully. "Miss
Kate!--the French doctor didn't--kill him--"
"_What?_"
"I seed. I was--hidin' in de bushes--waitin' to speak to Mr. Bas" (only
an iron effort of will made the words audible), "an' I riz up--out'n de
bushes--when I yeard 'em quar'lin'--and dat skeert de hoss--an' he
ra'red up and threw--Mr. Bas off. De French doctor done flung--a rock,
yes'm--but it ain't--never--teched him--"
"You know this? My God, Mahaly! You _know_ this?"
"Yais'm, kase--it was me--de rock hit--" she turned her cheek, to show
the scar it had left.
"Take that down in writing. Mother!" commanded a tense voice from the
window, where Jemima was leaning in. "You must get it down in writing,
before witnesses! Here!" She jumped into the room, and opened the door,
calling, "Some of you come here, quick! I want witnesses."
"She's dying," muttered Kate, dazed.
"No, she isn't! She sha'n't, before she says that again. Leave her to
me! Now then, Mahaly"--she shook the gasping woman none too gently.
"Come, come! You saw--Speak up! Oh, for God's sake, speak up!"
But Mahaly had said all that she had to say. For a terrible moment the
sound of her losing battle filled the room. Then, of a sudden there was
silence, peace; into which broke presently the mournful, savage note of
negro wailing.
Jemima led her mother in silence out to the carriage. During the drive
home she made only one remark, in a low whisper because of the coachman.
"Do you think the court will accept our word, Mother?"
Kate answered her meaning. "It would do no good. Jacques would say that
the intention was there, whatever the fact. He meant to kill Basil. And
it is too late now. He has paid the penalty."
* * * * *
That night, after Jemima was supposed to be in bed, Kate's door opened,
and a slim little figure stole in, looking very childlike in its
nightgown. But the voice that spoke was not childlike.
"Are you asleep, Mother?"
Kate held out her hand. She had expected Jemima. The girl clutched it
fast.
"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.
Kate wondered silently how much of Mahaly's confession she had heard.
The girl answered as if she had spoken. "I was there from the first. It
was I you heard when you gave the order to go out of ear-shot."
"And you didn't go out of ear-shot? That wasn't quite honorable,
daughter."
"No, but it was sensible. Do you think I'd have left you there alone to
a trying death-bed scene, weak as you are? Honorable!--how do you expect
me to be honorable?" she burst out, bitterly, "when you know the sort of
father I had? Sometimes of late I suspected, I began to think.... But
you would not tell me, you were too fine to tell me. And you let me make
a fool of myself, a perfect fool! Oh, I was so proud of being a Kildare,
one of the Kildares of Storm; so ashamed of anything that did not quite
come up to the standard of--of my father! Bah--_my father_! Not even man
enough to take the consequences of his sin, to stand by them. My
father," she cried fiercely, "was a coward! And I thought that
everything that is good in me, pride and courage, and truthfulness,
whatever manly virtues I may have, came from him, instead of--from you!"
"No, no--from yourself, dear," said Kate, quickly. "For everything that
is best in you, you have yourself to thank."
Jemima lifted up her head, and made her confession of renewed faith,
there in the dark. "But I'd rather thank you, Mother!"
It was Kate's first dose of the happiness the specialist had prescribed.
After a long pause, the voice spoke again out of the dark. "Mother--I
want you to marry Dr. Benoix. Do you understand? We owe it to him--all
of us. I _want_ you to marry him."
"Ah!" whispered Kate. "If I only could!"
"You've not given up? Oh, but you mustn't give up! He shall be found!
I'll find him myself, and bring him back to you, because it was I who
sent him away." (Kate smiled faintly at the egotism, but she did not
correct it.) "Oh, Mother, put your will into it!" urged the girl,
leaning over her. "You know you've never failed in anything you've put
your will into."
"I? Never failed?" repeated Kate, in bitter mockery.
"Now you're thinking of Jacqueline and Philip. That wasn't an error of
will, but of judgment.--This time, _I'm_ judging."
Boast that it was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her
abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that
she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her
youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother could never hope to
gain.
"Oh, Jemmy," she sighed as one equal to another, "if you had been in my
place, what would you have done about Jacqueline?"
Mrs. Thorpe took the matter into consideration. At length she pronounced
gravely, "If I had been in your place, there never would have been a
Jacqueline"; which ended the conversation for that night.