IN SEARCH OF HERSELF
As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the
snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat,
swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on
the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about
him.
Sleigh-bells sounded near--chiming through the still, cold air; he
caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and,
at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed
seat, calling out to him by name.
"Why, Kathleen!" he exclaimed, hastening forward. "Did you really drive
down here all alone to meet me?"
She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in
her Isabella bear furs:
"I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about
everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the
station agent--there he is!--Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up
Mr. Mallett's trunks to-night? Thank you _so_ much. Now, Duane,
dear----"
He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat,
and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes.
"I tell you what," he said seriously, "you're getting to be a howling
beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I
kiss you again?"
"Not after that," she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted
with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient
horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and
they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow.
"Duane!" she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging
trot, "_what_ do you think! Geraldine doesn't know you're coming!"
"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I telegraphed."
"Yes, but she's been on the mountain with old Miller for three days.
Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram,
and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it."
"Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the
dead of winter?"
Kathleen shook her pretty head:
"She's turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever
heard of! She's up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old
Miller. They're after that big boar--the biggest, horridest thing in the
whole forest. I saw him once. He's disgusting. Scott objected, and so
did I, but, somehow, I'm becoming reconciled to these break-neck
enterprises she goes in for so hard--so terribly hard, Duane! and all I
do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs
and does what she pleases."
He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?"
"Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very
little."
There was a moment's silence, but the constraint did not last.
"It's twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily,
there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch
with your nose and ears."
Duane investigated cautiously.
"My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really
twenty below? It doesn't seem so."
"It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody
here minds it when the wind doesn't blow; and Geraldine has acquired the
most exquisite colour!--and she's so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and
actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there's another
thing; she is _happier_ than she has been for a long, long while."
"Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly.
"Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?"
"Yes."
A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern
flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a
creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight.
Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and
spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery
young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide,
crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid
Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of
stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the
winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre
silvered the world.
"I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three
snow-bound rustics, don't you?" she asked. "Well, then, let me
immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just
discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he
was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn't
it pathetic? And he's worked _so_ hard, and he's been like a father to
the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their
weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded
internal organs--oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I
may say that I've been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find
out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been
petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon
measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old
fraud of a scientific world!"
Duane's unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit
woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells.
"What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane.
"He's going to see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is
just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying
entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next
summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out
what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something
exciting, Duane. Promise you won't breathe one word!"
"Not a word!"
"Well, then--Scott was going to tell you, anyway!--we _think_--but, of
course, we are not sure by any means!--but we venture to think that we
have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don't know
exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically
convinced that it is a sort of fungus."
She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious
imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never
dares assert anything except dry and proven facts.
"What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an
epidemic among the Rose-beetles?" he inquired.
"Oh, it's far too early to even outline our ideas----"
"That's right; don't tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I'll
never say a word, Kathleen, only if you'll take my advice, feed 'em
fungus! Stuff 'em with it three times a day--give it to them boiled,
fried, au gratin, à la Newburg! That'll fetch 'em!... How is old Scott,
anyway?"
"Perfectly well," she said demurely. "He informs us daily that he weighs
one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his
snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to
scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that
he isn't man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we're all behaving
like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants
think." Her smiling face became graver.
"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there's enough of your
estate left to keep your mother and Naïda in comfort."
He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?"
"Why--he'll tell you. I don't believe he has very much left.
Geraldine's part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town,
if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite
wonderful. Why, Duane, he's a perfect old dear; and we all are so
terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude
toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod."
"He's a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had
the 'indiwidool cultiwated' clean out of him. He's only a type, like
Gibson's drawings of Tag's son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block
of granite, but it's an awful thing that he should ever have presided
over the destinies of children."
Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that
his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children
driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care
for anything else--to realise that there was anything else or anybody
else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you
see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out--they have
emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course,
but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not
better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual
social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own
ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set
with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the
Seagraves was--weakness."
Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.
"I don't know. Tappan's poison may have been the antidote for them in
this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine--suffered?"
"Yes."
"Very--much?"
"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?"
"Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red
cross. Does she still suffer?"
"I don't think so. She seems so wonderfully happy--so vigorous, in such
superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful,
haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness
that drives her into perpetual motion now; it's a new delight in living
hard and with all her might every moment of the day!... She overdoes it;
you will turn her energy into other channels. She's ready for you, I
think."
They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then swung into a broader
avenue of pines. Straight ahead glimmered the lights of Roya-Neh.
Duane said naïvely: "I don't suppose I could get up to Lynx Peak camp
to-night, could I?"
Kathleen threw back her head, making no effort to control her laughter.
"It isn't necessary," she managed to explain; "I sent a messenger up the
mountain with a note to her saying that matters of importance required
her immediate return. She'll come down to-night by sleigh from The Green
Pass and Westgate Centre."
"Won't she be furious?" he inquired, with a hypocritical side glance at
Kathleen, who laughed derisively and drew in the horses under the
porte-cochère. A groom took their heads; Duane swung Kathleen clear to
the steps just as Scott Seagrave, hearing sleigh-bells, came out,
bareheaded, his dinner-jacket wide open, as though he luxuriated in the
bitter air.
"Good work!" he said. "How are you, Duane? Geraldine arrived from The
Green Pass about five minutes ago. She thinks you're sleighing,
Kathleen, and she's tremendously curious to know why you want her."
"She probably suspects," said Kathleen, disappointed.
"No, she doesn't. I began to talk business immediately, and I know she
thinks that some of Mr. Tappan's lawyers are coming. So they are--next
month," he added with a grin, and, turning on Duane:
"I think I'll begin festivities by washing your face in the snow."
"You're not man enough," remarked the other; and the next moment they
had clinched and were swaying and struggling all over the terrace, to
the scandal of the servants peering from the door.
"He's tired and half frozen!" exclaimed Kathleen; "what a brute you are
to bully him, Scott!"
"I'll include you in a moment," he panted, loosing Duane and snatching a
handful of snow. Whereupon she caught up sufficient snow to fill the
hollow of her driving glove, powdered his face thoroughly with the
feathery flakes, picked up her skirt and ran for it, knowing full well
she could expect no mercy.
Duane watched their reckless flight through the hall and upstairs, then
walked in, dropped his coat, and advanced across the heavy rugs toward
the fireplace.
On the landing above he heard Geraldine's laughter, then silence, then
her clear, careless singing as she descended the stairs:
"Lisetto quittée la plaine,
Moi perdi bonheur à moi--
Yeux à moi semblent fontaine
Depuis moi pas miré toi!"
At the doorway she halted, seeing a man's figure silhouetted against the
firelight. Then she moved forward inquiringly, the ruddy glow full in
her brown eyes; and a little shock passed straight through her.
"Duane!" she whispered.
He caught her in his arms, kissed her, locked her closer; her arms
sought his head, clung, quivered, fell away; and with a nervous movement
she twisted clear of him and stood breathing fast, the clamour of her
heart almost suffocating her. And when again he would have drawn her to
him she eluded him, wide-eyed, flushed, lips parted in the struggle for
speech which came at last, brokenly:
"Dear, you must not take me--that way--yet. I am not ready, Duane. You
must give me time!"
"Time! Is anything--has anything gone wrong?"
"No--oh, no, no, no! Don't you understand I must take my own time? I've
won the right to it; I'm winning out, Duane--winning back myself. I must
have my little year of self-respect. Oh, _can't_ you understand that you
mustn't sweep me off my feet this way?--that I'm too proud to go to
you--have you take me while there remains the faintest shadow of risk?"
"But I don't care! I want you!" he cried.
"I love you for it; I want you, Duane. But be fair to me; don't take me
until I am as clean and straight and untainted as the girl I was--as I
am becoming--as I will be--surely, surely--my darling!"
She caught his hands in hers and, close to him, looked into his eyes
smilingly, tearfully, and a little proudly. The sensitive under-lip
quivered; but she held her head high.
"Don't ask me to give you what is less perfect than I can make it. Don't
let me remember my gift and be ashamed, dear. There must be no memory of
your mistaken generosity to trouble me in the years to come--the long,
splendid years with you. Let me always remember that I gave you myself
as I really can be; let me always know that neither your love nor
compassion were needed to overlook any flaw in what I give."
She bent her proud little head and laid her lips on his hands, which she
held close between her own.
"You can so easily carry me by storm, Duane; and in your arms I might be
weak enough to waver and forget and promise to give you now what there
is of me if you demanded it. Don't ask it; don't carry me out of my
depth. There is more to me than I can give you yet. Let me wait to give
it lest I remember your unfairness and my humiliation through the years
to come."
She lifted her lips to his, offering them; he kissed her; then, with a
little laugh, she abandoned his hands and stepped back, mocking,
tormenting, enjoying his discomfiture.
"It's cruel, isn't it, you poor lamb! But do you know the year is
already flying very, very fast? Do you think I'm not counting the
days?"--and, suddenly yielding--"if you wish--if you truly do wish it,
dear, I will marry you on the very day that the year--my year--ends.
Come over here"--she seated herself and made a place for him--"and you
won't caress me too much--will you? You wouldn't make me unhappy, would
you?... Why, yes, I suppose that I might let you touch me
occasionally.... And kiss me--at rare intervals.... But not--as we
have.... You won't, will you? Then you may sit here--a little nearer if
you think it wise--and I'm ready to listen to your views concerning
anything on earth, Duane, even including love and wedlock."
It was very hard for them to judge just what they might or might not
permit each other--how near it was perfectly safe to sit, how long they
might, with impunity, look into each other's eyes in that odd and rather
silly fashion which never seems to be out of date.
What worried him was the notion that if she would only marry him at once
her safety was secured beyond question; but she explained very sweetly
that her safety was almost secured already; that, if let alone, she was
at present in absolute command of her fate, mistress of her desires, in
full tide of self-control. Now all she required was an interval to
develop character and self-mastery, so that they could meet on even
ground and equal terms when the day arrived for her to surrender to him
the soul and body she had regained.
"I suppose it's all right," he said with a sigh, but utterly
unconvinced. "You always were fair about things, and if it's your idea
of justice to me and to yourself, that settles it."
"You dear old stupid!" she said, tenderly amused; "it is the best thing
for our future. The 'sphere of influence' and the 'balance of power' are
as delicate matters to adjust in marriage as they are in world-politics.
You're going to be too famous a painter for your wife to be anything
less than a thorough woman."
She drew a little away from him, bent her head and clasped both hands
around her knee.
"There is another reason why I should be in autocratic command over
myself when we marry.... It is difficult for me to explain to you.... Do
you remember that I wrote you once that I was--afraid to marry
you--_not_ for our own sakes?"
Her young face was grave and serious; she bent her gaze on her ringless
fingers.
"That," she said, "is the most vital and--sacred reason of all."
"Yes, dear." He did not dare to touch her, scarcely dared look at the
pure, thoughtful profile until she lifted her head and her fearless eyes
sought his.
And they smiled, unembarrassed, unafraid.
* * * * *
"Those people are deliberately leaving us here to spoon," she declared
indignantly. "I know perfectly well that dinner was announced ages ago!"
And, raising her voice: "Scott, you silly ninny! Where in the world are
you?"
Scott appeared with alacrity from the library, evidently detained there
in hunger and impatience by Kathleen, who came in a moment later, pretty
eyes innocently perplexed.
"I declare," she said, "it is nine o'clock and dinner is supposed to be
served at eight!" And she seemed more surprised than ever when old
Howker, who evidently had been listening off stage, entered with
reproachful dignity and announced that ceremony.
And it was the gayest kind of a ceremony, for they ate and chattered and
laughed there together as inconsequentially as four children, and when
Howker, with pomp and circumstance, brought in a roast boar's head
garnished with holly-like crimson elder, they all stood up and cheered
as though they really liked the idea of eating it. However, there was,
from the same animal, a saddle to follow the jowl, which everybody
tasted and only Scott really liked; and, to Duane's uneasy surprise,
great silver tankards of delicious home-brewed ale were set at every
cover except Geraldine's.
Catching his eye she shrugged slightly and smiled; and her engaging
glance returned to him at intervals, reassuring, humorously disdainful;
and her serenely amused smile seemed to say:
"My dear fellow, please enjoy your ale. There is not the slightest
desire on my part to join you."
"That isn't a very big wild boar," observed Scott, critically eyeing the
saddle.
"It's a two-year-old," admitted Geraldine. "I only shot him because Lacy
said we were out of meat."
"_You_ killed him!" exclaimed Duane.
She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed.
"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said.
"You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game
within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the
heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak
wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar
loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white
sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with
brotherly pride.
"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going
to let my affianced put it all over me like that?"
"_Isn't_ it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They
simply can't endure it if a girl ventures competition----"
"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't
care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that
old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for
the last three days----"
"_My_ boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him.
Oh, Duane, _am_ I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been
after him all winter?--and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you
ever saw--a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese
sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his
nose and----"
Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation.
"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig,"
said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain----"
"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted
you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him.
Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller
knows that I had a shot once--a pretty good one--and wouldn't take it. I
killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one----"
"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are
just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I
pull trigger on that gentleman pig----"
"You _must_! I've saved him. Scott, make him say he will! Kathleen, this
is really too annoying! A girl plans and plans and pictures to herself
the happiness and surprise she's going to give a man, and he's too
stupid to comprehend----"
"Meaning me!" observed Duane. "But I leave it to you, Scott; a man
can't do such a thing decently----"
"Oh, you silly people," laughed Kathleen; "you may never again see that
boar. Denman, keeper at Northgate when Mr. Atwood owned the estate, told
me that everybody had been after that boar and nobody ever got a shot at
him. Which," she added, "does not surprise me, as there are some hundred
square miles of mountain and forest on this estate, and Scott is lazy
and aging very fast."
"By the way, Sis, you say you got a four-year near The Green Pass?"
She nodded, busy with her bon-bon.
"Was it exciting?" asked Duane, secretly eaten up with pride over her
achievements and sportsmanship.
"No, not very." She went on with her bon-bon, then glanced up at her
brother, askance, like a bad child afraid of being reported.
"Old Miller is so fussy," she said--"the old, spoilt tyrant! He is
really very absurd sometimes."
"Oho!" said Scott suspiciously, "so Miller is coming to me again!"
"He--I'm afraid he is. Did you," appealing to Kathleen, "ever know a
more obstinate, unreasoning old man----"
"Geraldine! What did you do!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," said Scott, annoyed, "what the deuce have you been up to now?
Miller is perfectly right; he's an old hunter and knows his business,
and when he comes to me and complains that you take fool risks, he's
doing his duty!"
He turned to Duane:
"That idiot girl," he said, nodding toward his abashed sister, "knocked
over a boar last month, ran up to look at his tusks, and was hurled
into a snowdrift by the beast, who was only creased. He went for Miller,
too, and how he and my sister ever escaped without a terrible slashing
before Geraldine shot the brute, nobody knows.... There's his head up
there--the wicked-looking one over the fireplace."
"That's not good sportsmanship," said Duane gravely.
Geraldine hung her head, colouring.
"I know it; I mean to keep cool; truly, I do. But things happen so
quickly----"
"Why are you afraid Miller is going to complain?" interrupted her
brother.
"Scott--it wasn't anything very much--that is, I didn't think so. You'd
have done it--you know it's a point of honour to track down wounded
game."
She turned to Duane:
"The Green Pass feeding-ground was about a thousand yards ahead in the
alders, and I made Miller wait while I crept up. There was a fine boar
feeding about two hundred yards off, and I fired and he went over like a
cat in a fit, and then up and off, and I after him, and Miller after me,
telling me to look out."
She laughed excitedly, and made a little gesture. "That's just why I
ran--to look out!--and the trail was deep and strong and not much
blood-dust. I was so vexed, so distressed, because it was almost sunset
and the boar seemed to be going strongly and faster than a grayhound.
And suddenly Miller shouted something about 'scrub hemlock'--I didn't
know he meant for me to halt!--So I--I"--she looked anxiously at her
brother--"I jumped into the scrub and kicked him up before I knew
it--and he--he tore my kilts--just one or two tears, but it didn't
wound me, Scott, it only just made my leg black and blue--and, anyway, I
got him----"
"Oh, Lord," groaned her brother, "don't you know enough to reconnoitre a
wounded boar in the scrub? _I_ don't know why he didn't rip you. Do you
want to be killed by a _pig_? What's the use of being all cut and bitten
to pieces, anyway?"
"No use, dear," she admitted so meekly that Duane scarcely managed to
retain his gravity.
She came over and humbly slipped her arm through his as they all rose
from the table.
"Don't think I'm a perfect idiot," she said under her breath; "it's only
inexperience under excitement. You'll see that I've learned a lot when
we go out together. Miller will admit that I'm usually prudent, because,
two weeks ago, I hit a boar and he charged me, and my rifle jammed, and
I went up a tree! Wasn't that prudent?"
"Perfectly," he said gravely; "only I'd feel safer if you went up a tree
in the first place and remained there. What a child you are, anyway!"
"Do you know," she confided in him, "I am a regular baby sometimes. I do
the silliest things in the woods. Once I gave Miller the slip and went
off and built a doll's house out of snow and made three snow dolls and
played with them! Isn't that the silliest thing? And another time a boar
came out by the Westgate Oaks, and he was a black, hairy fellow, and so
funny with his chin-whiskers all dotted with icicles that I began to say
aloud:
'I swear by the beard
On my chinny-chin-chin--'
And of course he was off before I could pull trigger for laughing.
Isn't that foolish?"
"Adorably," he whispered. "You are finding the little girl in the
garden, Geraldine."
She looked up at him, serious, wistful.
"It's the boy who found her; I only helped. But I want to bring her home
all alone."