When Frank came out on the porch the next morning at Ravenel, he found
Patrick Dulany waiting on horse by the main steps. It was the first time
the two men had met in daylight, and with the keenest interest Mr.
Ravenel inspected his strange overseer; for in the week since his return
he had heard much of his wit and his ability.
He found him to be a large man with a broad face tanned to the hue of a
mulatto. His eyes were light blue with the fulness under them of people
who have gift in speech. His silver hair, of which he had a great
quantity, set strangely around his dark face, falling low over a brow
markedly intellectual. But it was the mouth and chin at which Ravenel
most wondered, for their lines were strong, the lips full and finely
chiselled, showing, one could have sworn, high birth and great
resolution.
His clothes were of tweed, with a riding-cap far back on his head, and
he rode with an excellent seat. Upon seeing Mr. Ravenel he dismounted,
removed his cap, and advanced with outstretched hand, in the manner of
one welcoming home an old friend.
"Twas the sawmill business that kept me from seeing you sooner, Mr.
Ravenel," he began. "But Katrine's been telling me of you, with some
worry, I think, in her gentle soul for fear that you may not understand
our friend McDermott."
Francis replied with a comprehending smile.
"Now that I've seen ye," said Dulany, "I know you'll understand. He has
a peculiarity of nature. He likes to arrange certain unimportant details
of life that they may sound better in the telling. But one has a small
knowledge of human nature if he discount McDermott because of this. In
Ireland his name is a household word. He's here to-day, gone to-morrow.
He works like a galley-slave; his word is as good as his bond when given
in honor. And 'tis for others he works always. Generous, he gives all,
all, all! his work, his brain, the money it earns, everything! His is a
great soul, a very great soul. There's not a man in America, barring the
President, who has his personal power. Quietly, his name unworded in
the newspapers, he holds Tammany in his hand. I can't tell you how
enthusiastic I am about him! Mines, politics, Wall Street, he's into
them all, a million ideas a minute! Helps the chap that's down. He helps
every one with whom he comes in contact. He has helped me."
His sadness of tone introduced the next statement better than words
could have done.
"Mr. Ravenel," he said, "I have a confession to make to you. I drink."
He looked Frank squarely in the face as he spoke, with no flinching. "Ye
may have heard it from one or another since ye've been back. It's been a
habit of mine for some time. I was not myself the other evening when I
met you on the hill. The worst of it is," and he spoke the words
brightly and bravely, "I've no excuse for it, if there can be found an
excusing for such a habit. The thing is growing upon me in this
solitude. I try, God alone knows how I try, for Katrine's sake, to
resist; but only those who have fought the thing can realize what its
temptations are. However, I've been thinking that if I drink too much,
or fail to suit you, it might make it easier for you to tell me to go,
if you knew it would be better for me that I went."
"I am hoping that you will not find it necessary to go, Mr. Dulany. The
plantation has never been in better shape."
"And I'm glad to hear you say that, sir," was the answer.
"Well"--hopefully--"things may change for the better in me, and so,
good-day," and spurring his horse he was off at a gallop down the broad
road, and Ravenel stood listening to the horse's hoofs clatter over the
bridge, strike the soft road under the pines, and die away in silence
before he turned into the bridle-path which led to the stables.
And a strange thing occurred but a few minutes after this interview,
when Frank made his daily visit to the stables. One of the head grooms
explained a horse's lameness to him as due to a bad place in the road
near the north gate which, he finished, would probably not be mended
until Mr. Dulany was over "his coming attack."
"Is he drinking again?" Ravenel asked.
"For three days past," the groom answered.
Francis made no comment whatever, but the next day he discovered the
man's suspicions justified, and the third, as he rode to Marlton, he saw
Katrine, a pale-faced, desolate little figure, sitting on the garden
bench, her head in her hands, the picture of despair. About five o'clock
Jerry drove to the station for Dr. Johnston, and the same evening after
the dinner Nora O'Grady's son, a red-haired, unkempt boy of seventeen,
brought a short letter from Katrine, asking that the doctor be sent as
soon as possible.
"Mr. Dulany is drinking?" Frank said, interrogatively, to the youth.
"Something fierce," was the laconic answer.
"Is he better this evening?"
"Worse. Heart's actin' up," the boy responded.
At the end of the week, after three days spent with the Dulanys, at the
old lodge, Dr. Johnston and Francis sat together at the dinner-table at
Ravenel. Mrs. Ravenel had left them, and the great doctor, in the
admirably restrained and cautious language of the scientific mind, gave
his findings in the case, as it were.
"Mr. Dulany's habits," the great doctor began, "I should say, after such
superficial investigation as I have been able to make, may be cured. One
thing I have noted with pleasure. He has lost none of his mental
integrity. He is capable of the truth concerning himself. Generally
those given to the alcoholic habit deny everything or secrete everything
concerning it when sober. Sometimes they are sentimental over it, given
to self-pity, with even a certain desire for dramatic effects in the
statements about themselves. Dulany is still, so far as I can judge,
honest. To-day he told me the history of himself, with a gay humor in
the telling. He is a descendant, it seems, of the great and the gifted.
There are lawless loves behind him, a picturesque ancestry, artistic
and, on the wrong side of the blanket, aristocratic as well."
"It is the ancestry of genius," Francis answered.
"It is the ancestry of Katrine Dulany," Dr. Johnston returned, looking
at Frank with an untranslatable smile.
A silence fell between them, broken at length by the doctor. "I have
decided to take Mr. Dulany to New York with me. I shall keep him near me
as long as is necessary. If there is no organic trouble, of which I have
some fear, the case will be simple enough, if there is the desire in him
to help me. He was keen to have his daughter go with him, but I told him
frankly it was better that she should not go. He leans too much on her.
He must strengthen his own will; he must learn to rely on himself."
As the doctor spoke it was not of Patrick Dulany that Francis thought,
but of Katrine. The people were coming on the twenty-seventh; it was
now but the seventeenth. He would have her to himself for ten days, ten
days of those caressing eyes, of the charming voice and open adulation,
and then? He closed his eyes to whatever lay beyond. He would go away to
keep his engagements and forget. He always had forgotten; he would, he
thought, be able always to forget.
And the ten days were his; days on the river fishing by the Indian
Rocks, or drifting with the current under the dogwoods' white, open
faces down to the falls; days with lunches in the rose-garden, and Abt
and Schubert songs under the pines at twilight, when their hands touched
in the exchange of a flower or a book and lingered in the touching; when
their eyes had learned the answering of each other with no spoken word.
And the question and answer were the same in the Garden of Eden, before
man and woman made their first great mistake and did the thing that was
intended for them to do.
For Frank this companionship was unutterably sweet. He enjoyed the small
and unimportant events of their intercourse; the way Katrine would save
flowers for him to wear, pinning them in his coat with a flushed cheek,
or read, with an ecstasy of appreciation, a line from some great writer,
marking a meaning he had never found, or laugh at his old
riding-clothes, his Southern prejudices, saying once: "To a _man_ of the
world like myself, these ideas seem trivial."
On one of these ten precious days the lawyers at Marlton telephoned him
to obtain an interview. The business was important, and he started
immediately for a conference with them. By the fence opening into the
main road from the lodge he found Katrine, in her high-waisted black
frock, looking out between the bars of the great swinging gate, with a
radiance about her, an inconsequential joy such as he had never seen
before in any human being. She had a letter tucked in her breast, and at
sight of him she touched it.
"He is getting better, better, better, and the doctor writes he may be
quite himself again," she said, with no salutation whatever, her face a
wonder to behold.
"I am rejoiced more than I can say, Katrine," he answered.
"You have been so good," she replied, gratefully.
"Thank you," he said, gravely, and though the words were trivial the
manner gave them significance.
"Were you coming to call on me?" Katrine inquired.