"You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man
Down on his luck and hard up for a V.
Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You'll find your latitude."
About Christmas-time the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an
engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely
courteous representative she explained her inability to accept the very
flattering terms by reason of the already signed St. Petersburg
contracts. Although there seemed no definite outcome from the interview,
the gentleman with whom it was held left her, as all did, charmed by her
sincerity, her enthusiasm, and her great generosity.
The following week Melba was indisposed, and the much-impressed
gentleman of the Metropolitan wrote to Katrine, asking if she would sing
for them in the great prima-donna's place.
She accepted the offer with small hesitation, asking no one's advice
about an unheralded début. She was too great an artist to desire
anything but stern criticism, and if she could sing greatly, she
reasoned, the public would be quick enough to discover it. The opera to
be given was "Faust." Her costumes were quite ready by reason of her
Paris début, and she went to the morning rehearsals with the same joy in
her work that she had known when studying with Josef.
About four of the afternoon, before the final rehearsal, it began to
snow persistently in small flakes which dropped evenly from a leaden
sky. Standing by the window, twisting the curtain-string unconsciously,
with her soul out in the storm, she became conscious of excited cries of
"Extra!" in the street below, and as though in accompaniment to them
there came an incessant ringing of the bell at the street door.
Nora being absent on some self-appointed business of her own, the maid
who had brought in the tea, and one of the very damp papers which the
boys were still crying below, left the room with some abruptness to see
what was demanded below and who was clamoring for admission.
Katrine, left alone, poured the tea herself, her eyes scanning the news
indifferently until they rested on some heavy black lines heading the
last column. Again and again she looked, hoping that the printing would
stay still, would stop seeming to dance up and down between the floor
and ceiling--stop long enough for her to get its dreadful import:
=REPORTED ASSIGNMENT OF FRANCIS RAVENEL!=
* * * * *
=Combined Attack Made on M.S. and R. Railroad!=
* * * * *
=Mr. Ravenel Dangerously Ill at the Savoy!=
* * * * *
Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! The words began going
over and over in her brain, seeming to strike from within on her temples
in a kind of hammering that she felt would set her mad. She stood
helpless, her career, her work, her ambition gone from her in a divine
self-forgetting and desire to help, as his gayety, his charm, "his
difference" from all others came back to her. She made new excuses for
his conduct. She told herself, as a mother might speak of a child, that
he had been so spoiled. She remembered only the best of him--his
kindness to her father, his generosity to herself.
She had long since realized the weight of Frank's words the morning of
their parting.
"And remember, that if I did not do the best, I did not do the worst;
that I am going away when I might stay," and she knew, looking back on
her youth and trustfulness, how much truth there might have been in
those words. She clasped her hands to her head trying to think. The
throbbing in her head began to be followed by horrid sensations of
things around going far away to an immeasurable distance, and returning
again rapidly and horribly enlarged.
"Dangerously ill!" she repeated. "Dying, perhaps, alone in hotel rooms
with none but paid attendance."
Her throat became choked at thought of it. "Father in heaven," she
cried, her hands clasped together, "help me to help him! Don't let him
suffer!" she pleaded. "I promised to help him always. Help me to keep my
promise!"
* * * * *
Outside, the controversy between the maid at the door and some other was
growing louder, and a demanding, forceful, insolent voice was insisting
upon seeing Katrine "immejit," as the frightened French girl came back
to the room in a panic of fear.
"A gentleman to see you, mademoiselle."
"I can see no one," Katrine answered, briefly, her face averted.
"He says his business is most important."
"Who is it, Marcelle?" she asked.
"It is Nora's son, mademoiselle, and he has been drinking; but if I were
you, I'd see him."
The significance of the girl's tone changed Katrine's former decision.
"Tell him to come in," she said.
Barney came as far as the doorway and stood leaning against the frame of
it, his eyes hot and angry, waving a newspaper wildly over his head.
"Of all the damned dirty businesses," he cried, "this is the damnedest
and dirtiest I ever got up against! 'Combined attack," he quoted,
striking the printed words with his fist. "Do you know the name of that
combination? Dermott McDermott, that's its name. There may be a few
others mixed up in it--Marix, for instance--for looks only. But it's
McDermott at the bottom; this same McDermott mother's always tellin' me
to imitate. Damned rascal! He's hated Mr. Ravenel and downed him
because be thinks you love him. Hit him when he's down, too!"
He was too excited to sit down, but walked back and forth, talking
loudly with excited gestures.
"Mr. Ravenel got back from Europe only three days ago, Tuesday, and in
the evening he sent for me to come to the Savoy. Miss Katrine, I've
never seen so dreadful a change in any one. He was like an old man. The
look of death was on him, and he said he'd sent for me to cheer him up
with my talk."
The boy was unable to continue for the sobs which shook him, and he
covered his face with his hands for a space before he could proceed.
"He'd found bad news in Europe, he told me, and wanted me to cheer him
up. I stayed the night with him, and in the morning when I called him he
did not answer, but just lay still and white, looking at me, unable to
speak. We got Dr. Johnston right away, and telegraphed Mr. Ravenel's
mother, who arrived the next day. Yesterday morning that hound Marix,
whose affairs are all mixed up with McDermott's, sent this note to me."
He extended a bit of yellow paper toward her, upon which was written:
"Sell Ravenel stocks within the next twenty-four hours, and hold
for the bottom to drop out of them."
"But I'll get even with him, this Marix!" Barney shrieked, in his rage.
"The only reason he gives me tips is because I know something
disgraceful of him! I'll publish him from one end of the country to the
other! I'll send him to the penitentiary! But I can't reach McDermott!
Oh," he cried, with clinched fists, "if I only could!"
"I can," Katrine said, quietly; asking, after a minute's doubting,
"You're sure it is Dermott McDermott who is at the foot of the trouble?"
"Who else has the money or the reasons to make such an attack?" he
demanded of her as an answer. "And Marix as good as told me McDermott
had some big deal on against the Ravenel interests last month."
She stood looking up at him, the folded yellow paper in her hand, driven
by race instinct to fight in the open, to get into the enemy's country,
especially if McDermott were the enemy.
With an angry light in her eyes she called for a storm-cloak and
demanded a cab, setting Nora and her remonstrances aside with abrupt
decision. Giving the cabman the address of McDermott's down-town
offices, she sat in the dark of the carriage with the paper Barney had
given her clutched in her hand, with neither consideration of the coming
interview nor formulated plans. In a vague way she knew that people
stared after her, as she went through the corridor of the great
building, the hood of her storm-cloak thrown back. Unminding, she rapped
at McDermott's private door. She had no misgiving about his being there.
She knew in some way, before she left her apartment, that he would be
there when she arrived.
"Come in!" he called, curtly.
She entered to find him alone, standing by the window looking
absent-mindedly over the snowy chimney-tops, as though projecting a
holiday.
"By all the saints at once!" he cried, gayly, at sight of her. "Here
have I been ruminating on the sins of the fathers; on the triumphant
fifth act, with vice punished and virtue rewarded at the fall of the
curtain, when you enter!" And here her silence and pallor and accusing
eyes stopped his talking. "What is it, Katrine?" he demanded.
"Did you bring this trouble to Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, her eyes filled
with a dangerous light which in a second was matched by the blaze in
his.
"Do you mean that ye think it was I who struck a man in the back in the
way this thing was done?" he cried, bringing his closed fist down on the
newspaper, which lay on the desk before him, in a splendid kind of
anger. "How little you know me, after all!" he said, reproach in his
voice. "How little ye know me! I've had neither art or part in it, nor
suspicion of it until to-day. You'll be wanting proof of it!" he went
on, a bit of scorn in his voice. "If so, mayhap the common-sense of the
situation will appeal to you, though I don't know." He was angry, and
she felt the brunt of it in these words. "Look you!" he continued. "Why
should I be ruining an estate that I'm trying to get possession of? It
would be a fool's part to play."
"Forgive me, McDermott!" she cried. "Oh, forgive me! I want no further
proof. Your face is enough for me. But I'm beside myself with grief."
"I suppose," he continued, "that you reasoned I was capable of this
because of that affair about the land on the other side of the river?"
"I did think of it," Katrine admitted. "Forgive me for it, Dermott, but
I did think of it!"
"Do you know for whom I bought that land, Katrine Dulany? For your
father--no less. It was got with the hope of helping him. It stands in
his name in the State records to-day."
"Oh, Dermott!" she pleaded, the Irish form of speech coming back to her.
"You'll just be forgiving me, won't you?" She put her hand on his sleeve
and looked up at him with imploring eyes. "You must know how great and
good I still believed you to be when I tell you that I came to you to
ask you to help him. I've some money--the Countess, you know," she
explained--"and I thought if you'd faith in my voice--and ye've said
often that ye have--that if"--she broke into a storm of weeping--"if
you'd just lend him the money that's needed I could sing the debt clear
in the years to come."
Dermott looked down at the bowed head upon his old desk, his eyes moist,
his lips twitching.
"Perhaps," he broke in, the angry light still in his eyes, "ye'll tell
me who accuses me of this business?"
For answer she extended toward him the yellow paper which Barney had
given her, signed with John Marix's initials.
"And so you believed Barney, although ye know his weakness for jumping
at conclusions? Ye must have believed him, for my name's not mentioned
here," he said, looking at the paper.
"He told me Mr. Marix had intimated to him that you were behind the
attack."
"Ah! and so it's Marix that's been misusing my name, is it?" he cried,
his eyes narrowed. "I'll settle with him!" And then, "Ye love Ravenel,
Katrine?"
"Yes," she answered: "there's just nothing else in life for me."
"And after all that's gone between him and me, you are asking _me to
help him_?"
"Dermott," she said, gravely, sobbing between the words, "I came to you
because I have always known the greatness, the selflessness of you, and
I trust you."
They stood in silence, not looking at each other.
"I have no one else," she went on. "There is no one else in the world I
trust as I do you."
He held himself more erect at the words, a great light in his face.
"You are the only one who has always, always been kind to me," she
continued, "and I'd give all there is of me to come to you, heart whole,
as your wife. But I can't do it, Dermott, I can't do it! I've tried; no
one knows how I tried to forget this love in my heart. I studied to
forget, worked to forget, _willed_ to forget, but"--and here she spoke
the truth of life--"when great love has once been between a man and a
woman, the man may forget, but the woman never. I've wealth and beauty,
they say, and gift, and they're all just nothing to me except to help
him. Before I'd been two days at the Van Rensselaer's it was just as it
had been in Carolina. It was only fear that kept me from saying I'd
marry him."
"He wants to marry you now? He has asked you?" Dermott spoke softly for
her sake, keeping from his voice the scorn he felt for Ravenel.
"Yes," she returned. "And I know all you're thinking; but it makes no
difference! When I think of him, ill, perhaps dying, his fortune gone,
and nameless, maybe, as well, I'd give my soul to save him!" she cried,
tear-eyed and pale, but glorious in self-abnegation.
She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing. For
a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too
great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his
supporting arm would have fallen. For a little while her dear, dark head
lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though
with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have
offended her could she have known them. He had grown very white before
she recovered herself, but the great light still shone in his eyes as he
placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.
"Go home, little girl," he said. "Go home and be at peace. I give my
word to help him. I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will
be well with him."
"Ah," she cried, "you are so good, so good!"
He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking
into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I'll take you to the carriage," he answered, quietly. "The storm is
still violent, I see."
Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and
sat beside the dying fire alone. In the outer room he could hear the
click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players,
but they seemed far off. Life itself seemed slipping from him. Suddenly
he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay
shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs,
impossible for any one to endure for long. Every little while he
clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his
agony what he did. The dreams and hopes of six years had been taken
from him, and a great imagined future built on those dreams as well. The
glory of his life had departed, and in his passionate misery there
seemed nothing ahead for him but gray skies and barren land and bitter
waters.
All night and far into the morning he lay. About five, the storm outside
having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window
edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him
and demanded an accounting. "Was this the way he helped?" he asked
himself, accusingly.
By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small
cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little
while, another. Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did
so. Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands
placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order.
Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled "Ravenel," and
stood looking at it with speculative eyes.
The case was so complete. Quantrelle and his brother, a curé of Dieppe,
of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open
window, of Madame de Nemours' marriage. But what of it? Katrine could
never marry a man with a disputed name! Still looking at the bundle, he
struck a match. It flared up, sputtered, and went out, as though giving
him time for second thought. Resolutely he lighted another, set the
flame to the papers for a second time, and in an instant whatever
trouble they contained for Frank Ravenel was nothing but smoke in the
chimney.
"God forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following
letter:
DEAR RAVENEL,--You will remember, I said in my last interview that
the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I
received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten
to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the
witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar. It is thoroughly
proven. Pray give yourself no more anxiety on the subject, and
forgive me for doing what my duty prompted me to do. The thing is
completely by with as far as I am concerned, and I have burned all
of the papers relative to the matter. With best wishes for your
complete restoration to health, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.
He folded the letter and sealed it, a curious smile upon his lips as he
did so. Afterward he began looking over securities and making a list of
them in steady, fine writing for the work in the day to come.
About eight he went to his hotel, bathed, dressed himself for the day,
and neither of the facts that his heart was breaking, nor that he was
about to shake the money market of New York, prevented him from
regarding himself critically in the mirror to see if he showed
suffering, nor from changing his neck-scarf to one of gallant red.
Underneath the bitterness of his heart lay a desire to square accounts
with Marix. But it was part of his nature to excuse the weak, and on the
way down to Wall Street the remembrance of the broker's timid-looking
wife and the three little ones came to him. It was easy, after all, to
forgive. Marix was too unintelligent to understand that it paid to be
honest. "Perhaps," he reasoned, "God meant that even the fools and
traitors should be helped, too."
Going into the stock-room, he looked over the quotations of the day
before in an unimportant manner, waiting for Marix to come in.
"Hello! Hello!" he cried, at sight of him, with a genial laugh, putting
a hand on each of the little broker's shoulders and looking down at him
with warning eyes. "I'm going on the floor myself to-day. It's been a
long time since I've been there. Ravenel and I have come to an
understanding," his long, sinewy hands gripped Marix for a minute so
hard they made him wince, "and I'm going on to protect his interests."
The blue light of battle was in his eyes; his hat was far back on his
head and his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he waited for the gong
to call him to the fight. He saw that many were regarding him curiously,
and his cheeks flushed with the Celtic instinct to do the thing
well--dramatically well. He knew that, in the long night vigil, part of
him had died forever, but with chin well up, like a knight of old, he
went, at the sound of the great bell, to battle for the happiness of the
woman he loved.