She was disappointed to find that Philip, despite his telegram, was not
at the station to meet her, but had sent instead a wagon which, its
driver explained, was to take her as far as wheels were feasible after
the Spring rains, and then return.
"Reckon thar'll be a mule or somethin' to tote you the rest of the way,"
he added, indifferently.
He was unable to answer any of her questions, or to allay the fears
which, despite the eager happiness in her heart, were beginning to make
themselves felt. Jacqueline wanted her at last--but why?
Mile after mile they drove in utter silence, Kate's thoughts racing
ahead of her; while small Kitty, on a pile of quilts in the bottom of
the bouncing wagon, adapted herself to circumstances with the ease of a
born traveler, and alternately dozed, or imbibed refreshment out of a
bottle, or rehearsed her vocabulary aloud for the pleasure of the world
at large. She would have preferred a more attentive audience, but she
could do without it.
Where the road degenerated into a mere trail along the mountain-side,
Kate found a mule awaiting her, in charge, not of Philip, as she had
hoped, but of a mountaineer even more taciturn than the driver. Her
fears became more acute.
"Can you tell me whether my daughter--young Mrs. Benoix--is ill?" she
asked her new conductor, anxiously.
The man took so long to answer that she thought he had not heard her,
and repeated the question.
He spat exhaustively--he was chewing tobacco--and finally replied, "The
gal at Teacher's house? Dunno as I've heerd tell."
"Aren't you a neighbor of hers?"
He gave a brief nod of assent.
"Then," she persisted, "you surely would have heard if she were ill,
wouldn't you?"
Another long pause. "Dunno as I would. We-all ain't much on talk."
"You certainly are not!" exclaimed Kate with some asperity.
It seemed to her anxious impatience that his taciturnity was deliberate,
hostile. He was a rough, unkempt, savage-looking creature; yet the
tenderness and skill with which he held little Kitty before him on his
ungainly mount would have done credit to any woman.
Kate remarked presently, observing this, "You've had children of your
own?"
"Thirteen on 'em."
"Thirteen? Splendid! All living?"
He spat again. "All daid. Died when they was babies."
"Good Heavens! This must be looked into!" exclaimed Kate, with a touch
of the old authority; and then remembered that she was not in her own
domain.
Presently, as they mounted, her attention was attracted to a woman
planting in a steep and barren-looking field, swinging her arms with the
fine free grace of a Millet figure.
"What's she trying to raise there--corn?" Kate inspected the soil with a
professional eye. "She won't do it--not in that soil! It needs
fertilizing."
Her companion remarked impartially, "Ben raisin' corn thar a right smart
while."
"All the more reason to give it a rest! I suppose you've never heard of
rotation of crops?"
"Yes, I hev," was the unexpected reply. "Fum Teacher." He spat with
great success, and added, "We-all ain't much on new-fangled idees."
Kate attempted no more conversation. She began to feel the fatigue of
the hurried journey, and to her secret fears was added a growing dread
of the end of it, a sudden shyness about meeting not only Jacqueline,
but Philip, after the conclusion to which her long meditations had led
her. She had recalled again and again, and always with a sharp twinge of
shame, the hurt bewilderment on Philip's face when she had offered him
Jacqueline in marriage. What a blind and stubborn fool she had been not
to understand! If he still had that look in his eyes, that patient
acquiescence in her will, Kate felt that she could not bear it.... But
surely he had forgotten her, now that he was with Jacqueline? Surely the
girl was lovely enough, and piteous enough in her great need of him, to
drive any other woman out of his mind?
After many miles, the mountaineer volunteered a remark: "Thar's the
school buildin's."
She saw on the rise beyond a group of log-cabins, the central one small
and old, the two wings much larger and evidently of recent construction.
In the doorway of one a man stood, looking out; and as he started down
the slope toward them Kate recognized him. It was Philip.
"Mother!--At last!" he cried out. "I would have gone to meet you, but
she could not spare me. She's been asking for you every moment.--Wait,
let me help you!"
The tone of his voice laid to rest all her misgivings with regard to
him. Even as he welcomed her, he was thinking of his wife.--As for
Philip, if he remembered a time when to call this woman "mother" would
have been like a knife-thrust in his breast, he thought only that the
time was very long ago.
Kate sprang down unaided, her fatigue forgotten. "Jacqueline?" she
demanded eagerly.
"A little stronger to-day. But--the baby--"
Kate gave a cry. Her unspoken fears had been true. "A baby?"
"Yes. It did not live.--That is why I asked you to bring little Kitty."
Kate put her hands before her eyes. "My poor little girl! Oh, my poor
little girl!--Let me go to her."
At the door she was not surprised to find Jemima, in a neat
nursing-dress, her eyes heavily lined with fatigue.
"I've been here several days. Jacky forgot to make them promise not to
send for me. She never thought of me," she explained humbly.... "Oh
Mother, it has been pretty bad! Jacky was so--so brave!" She broke down
a little in Kate's arms.
"Steady, there," whispered Philip behind them. "She can't stand any
excitement yet."
But the two had assumed charge of too many sickrooms together to need
his admonition.
Kate took off her hat, smoothed her hair, and went in to Jacqueline, as
calmly as if they had parted yesterday.
The sight of the wan, thin face among the pillows, with eyes that looked
by contrast enormous and black, shook her composure a little, and she
gathered Jacqueline up against her breast without speaking. Jacqueline,
too, was silent, clinging to her, touching her mother's hair and cheeks
with feeble hands, as if to be sure it was really Kate.
"I knew you would come," she said at last, with a great sigh.
"Come! Oh, my darling, why didn't you send for me sooner?"
"Because I wanted to surprise you, Mummy. Because I knew when you saw
baby, you'd forgive me, you wouldn't care, nothing would matter, except
him.... But now there isn't any baby!" The weak voice suddenly rose to a
wail. "There isn't any baby! Nothing has turned out as I had planned.
Oh, Mummy! He was going to be so little, and sweet, and fat--nobody who
saw him _could_ have stayed angry with me!... And I never heard him cry,
I never even felt his tiny hand clutching my finger!... It's because I
was wicked," she moaned, tossing about so that Kate caught the waving
hands and held them tight. "God wanted to get even with me. So He took
the thing I wanted most in all the world. He took my baby. Oh, but that
was cruel of Him, no matter how bad I'd been! Wasn't it? Wasn't it,
Mummy?"
"Hush, child!" whispered Kate. "Hush! God isn't that sort!"
"Yes, He is, too! 'The Lord thy God is a _jealous_ God'--ask Phil!--Oh,
where _is_ Phil?" She looked wildly around, her voice growing higher and
higher. "He promised he wouldn't go away--he promised he wouldn't ever
leave me again. I want him! Phil, Phil!--Oh, _there_ you are!" The
relief in her tone was pitiful. "Don't get where I can't see you again,
Flippy darling. It frightens me so! Come here, I want to hold on to
you.... Now, tell mother all about the baby. She didn't see him, you
know, and I didn't see him either, very well. Oh, why did you let them
make me stupid with chloroform, so I couldn't see him? Tell mother about
his little ears, and his feet just exactly like mine--"
"Quiet, now," soothed Philip, striving to hush that painful, excited
babble. "See, your mother is tired! Let's not talk about it now."
"But I want to talk! I want to, before I forget anything about him. It's
the only baby I'll ever have. Mother wants to hear--don't you, Mummy? It
was her grandson, you see."
"What nonsense!" interrupted Kate with tremulous cheerfulness. "The
_only_ baby? You're just eighteen--you shall have all the babies you
want!"
"That shows how much you know about it!" cried Jacqueline with a sort of
agonized triumph. "I can't have any more! The doctor said so. I heard
him whispering to Jemmy, when he thought I was asleep, and I made her
tell me. She didn't want to, but she thought I'd better know.... It
isn't as if it would kill _me_ to have them, Mother--that wouldn't
matter! But it would kill them. It takes too long. Something is wrong
about me."
Kate glanced at Philip in shocked questioning. He nodded slightly.
"So now you know the sort God is, Mother! Cruel, cruel! Just because I
wasn't good.... Think of it, never any babies! No one to play with, and
pet, and take care of.... No one that needs me, or wants me...."
Philip bent over her, "My darling, the world is full of babies!"
"But not mine. Not one that wants _me_.--Oh, how my breast aches, how my
breast aches."
"This won't do," murmured Jemima, anxiously. "She's working herself up
into a fever again. I'm going to call the doctor."
Philip whispered something in her ear, and she hurried to the door.
There was a sound outside that stopped the frantic words on Jacqueline's
lips. "_What's that?_" she breathed. It came again; the fretful whimper
of a sleepy child.
Jemima came into the room, carrying small Kitty, newly awakened from a
nap on somebody's comfortable knees, and naturally resentful.
"O-oh!" gasped Jacqueline on a long-drawn breath. "_Give_ her to me!"
Presently, held warm against that aching breast, Mag's baby slept again;
and Jacqueline looked from one to the other of those about her with the
first dawning of her old, wide, radiant smile.
Soon her own eyes drooped. The three tiptoed toward the door; but quiet
as they were the faint voice from the bed followed them: "Phil, Phil!
where are you?"
"I can't leave her," he whispered apologetically. "You see how it is!"
(Kate was glad indeed to see how it was.) "Will you go into the next
room, and say good-by to--our son?"