It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and to
Nora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just off
Washington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for the
place, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the household
goods.
There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees in
the yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, to
make a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrine
enjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; the
transformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot of
restful color and peace.
The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced,
with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she had
told to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother had
ceased speaking.
Katrine greeted him with affectionate remembrance, smiling as she did
so at the change in this boy whom she had helped to New York. He was
flashily dressed, after the style of a college freshman, and conversed,
as she discovered, in a language known only to the New York newspaper
man, who, as some one told her later, has a "slanguage" all his own.
No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation,
however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherished
toward her for the help given so long before.
Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned
upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a
parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world
alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.
But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight and
ability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his brave
schemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it;
accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on a
much-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's whole
life. In a way, he had become a power in the newspaper world, and had,
as she discovered, a knowledge of the private affairs of prominent
people which seemed supernatural; and it was a habit of his to look over
the names in a newspaper, remarking cheerfully at intervals:
"There's another man that I could put in jail."
But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feeling
toward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintance
between them might have done, and this was his admiration for Frank
Ravenel.
If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectly
through his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life with
Ravenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.
But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine was
concerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion for
her, as she laughingly put it.
"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.
"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by to
see him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.
With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney
called "Her Irresponsible Frenchiness," and Nora, Katrine spent a busy
month trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely. In the daytime
she could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him--if he
were back at Ravenel; if Dermott had proceeded in the bitter business
concerning the early marriage, with many plans for readjustments in case
he had done so.
Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina
associates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediately
after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France
following close upon the heels of his return.
Early in November--it was the afternoon of the first snowfall--delayed
letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her
signature. She was to have her première in May, and Josef wrote that he
would go up from Paris with her.
This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris,
so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagement
was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to
sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.
In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the most
important being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debt
to Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importance
that he was wearing a new green tie. He ended by saying that he would
give an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped he
had done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin. He wrote no
word of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrine
concluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.
But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. The
first was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trust
because a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, who
was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging
search he was making for the truth.
She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost
daily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit he
mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street,
and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little
time for visiting.
His second coming was a fortnight later. In the afternoon Katrine had
been reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death. It
seemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there had
come to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge that
love was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, of
which love is the cause. She had worked to forget, had been taught how
to forget, yet she knew she had not forgotten, and that her listlessness
since her visit to Mrs. Van Rensselaer had been chiefly worry lest
trouble should come to Frank.
At five Nora brought in the tea-things, and Katrine closed the book over
which she had been dreaming.
"Nora," she began, for the Irishwoman was like a mother to her, "did you
ever forget your first love?"
"I did worse than that, I married him. Barney's the result," was the
answer.
"But you never could have married any one else but Dennis, could you?"
Katrine persisted.
"Niver!" the little old woman returned, with ready decision. "He bate
me, Miss Katrine, and misprized me, and came and wint as he listed, and
finally left me altogether; but I could never have chose another. It's
the way with Irishwomen, that! The drame of it niver comes but the
wance--niver but the wance," she repeated, looking into the fire, but
seeing the old sea-wall at Killybegs, with flowers on top of it, against
a cloudy sky, and a sailor boy with bold black eyes calling to her from
the boats.
And Katrine, her tea forgotten, repeated, "It's that way with
Irishwomen--the dream never comes but once."
At sunset the bitter wind which had been blowing all day long turned
into a gale, a rascal wind, which slapped a handful of sleet and ice,
hard as glass, on one side of your face, and scurried round the corner
to come back and strike harder from an entirely different direction.
The storm must have suited his mood in some way, for Dermott McDermott
chose to walk through it, arriving at Katrine's door breathless and
flushed, the fur of his coat gleaming with ice and snow. Here he found a
glowing fire, with the old mahogany settle on one side and the green
grandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry;
flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown,
delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter and
roaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happiness
within, and led him, more than he knew, to that precipitancy of conduct
which ended disastrously for him. As he sat in the great green chair
Katrine looked up at him from the settle, and something in the intensity
of his gaze made her make a quick gesture of warning to him before he
spoke.
"Will you marry me, Katrine?"
She looked again quickly, to see if he could be jesting. In North
Carolina it was his custom to ask her every day; but his sudden pallor
and the choked voice told how terribly he was in earnest.
She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all my
heart I could, Dermott."
"And why not?" he asked.
"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained,
bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.
"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say I
hope not."
"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you--always--ever since I've known
you. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, and
ye stood off the mob of boys who were baiting the old Jew--since then
I've taken every thought for you I could. And I'm asking you to believe
me when I tell you that I want your happiness more than my own. I've
felt always that you'll never succeed as a public singer, and here of
late, since I've known the St. Petersburg contracts were signed, I've
suffered in my thoughts of you. We'll just leave another suitor out of
the question. It's these public appearances of yours I dread at the
present. If stage life could be as it seems from the right side of the
footlights; if you knew nothing of the people or their lives, except as
Valentine or Siegfried, it would be different. But the meanness of it;
the little jealousies; the ignorant egotisms; I am afraid you can never
do it, you will despise it so."
He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had taken
some active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.
"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girl
alone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has a
rainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether you
care or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, that
there's a man here in New York thinking always of you, _one who would
give his life to save you from pain_."