Kildares of Storm

Philip's pursuit of his wife came to have for him, before it was done, something of the strangeness of a nightmare, one of those endless dreams that come to fever patients, filled with confused, vague details of places and persons among whom he passed, leaving nothing clear to the memory afterwards except unhappiness.

And indeed the mental condition that urged him on was not unlike fever, compounded as it was of passionate pity for Jacqueline, and white-hot rage against the man who had taken his wife from him. He could not bear to think of the frightened misery that must have driven the girl to such a step, nor of the wretched disillusionment in store for her. Jacqueline ashamed; his gallant, loyal, high-hearted little playmate cowering under the whips of the world's scorn—it was a thought that drove all the youth out of Philip's face, and left it so grim and fierce that many a passing stranger stared at him covertly, wondering what tragedy lay behind such a mask of pain.

Only once did the effect of Jacqueline's shame upon his own life occur to Philip, and then he wrote a hasty line to the Bishop of his diocese, offering to resign at once from the ministry. No other alternative occurred to him. If Jacqueline had needed him when he married her, how infinitely greater was her need of him now! What came to either of them they would share together, he and his wife.

Nor was his decision entirely altruistic. Her going had already taught him one thing. "We are so used to each other," the piteous little letter had said. Yes, they were used to each other; so used that they would never again be able to do without each other.

His search did not end in New York. He found there only the news, gathered by James and Jemima Thorpe, that Channing had sailed a few hours before for Europe, and not alone. The steamship office had registered the name of a Mr. James Percival and wife, in whom it was not difficult to recognize the author.

Philip followed by the next boat, but found some difficulty, inexperienced traveler that he was, in coming upon traces of the pair, who doubled and twisted upon their tracks as if conscious of pursuit. It was some weeks before he ran his quarry to earth in Paris, having been directed to one of those "coquettish apartments" known to experts in the art of travel, who scorn the great, banal caravansaries of the ordinary tourist.

Entering an unpretentious gate between an apothecary shop and a patisserie, he found himself in one of the hidden court-yards of the old city, where a placid, vine-covered mansion dozed in the sun, remote from the rattle of cobblestones and the vulgar gaze of the passing world. Doves preened themselves on the flagging, a cat occupied herself maternally with her young on the doorstep, birds were busy in the ivy. It was an ideal retreat for a honeymoon.

Philip, his jaw set and his heart pounding, jerked at the old-fashioned bell-handle, and the door was presently opened by a mustachioed lady in the dressing-sacque and heelless slippers which form the conventional morning-wear of the lower bourgeoisie. But, yes; she admitted in answer to his inquiry; the American Madame was chez elle. "Also Monsieur," she added, with smiling significance. "Ah, the devotion of ces nouveaux mariés!"

She added that if Monsieur would attend but one moment, she would mount to announce his arrival.

The clink of a coin arrested her. "If Madame will have the goodness to permit," suggested Philip, in French as fluent and far more correct than her own, "I prefer to announce my arrival in person."

She shrugged. "But perfectly! As Monsieur wishes. It is a little effect, perhaps? Monsieur is the brother, possibly; the cousin?" she asked, with the friendly curiosity of her kind.

"Monsieur is the husband," said Philip grimly, and passed.

The concierge gasped. "The husband! Name of a name!"

But seeing that he was already mounting the stairs, paying no attention whatever to her virtuous horror, the French-woman followed him on tiptoe, murmuring to herself, "Mais comme c'est chic, ça!" She had her racial taste for the spectacular.

At first she was somewhat disappointed. Applying alternately eye and ear to the keyhole, she detected none of the imprecations, the excited chatter, the nose-tweaking, the calling down of the just wrath of Heaven, which the occasion seemed to demand.

"Ah bah, these English!" she muttered scornfully, "If but my Henri were to discover me in such a situation—la, la!"

Philip, entering without knocking, had begun quietly and methodically to remove his coat before Channing was aware of his presence. The author looked up from his desk, surprised, and jumped to his feet, with an expression of pleasure in his face. Philip's brain registered that fact without attempting to explain it. Channing was undoubtedly glad to see him.

"Why, Benoix! Where have you dropped from? I did not hear you knock! What in the name of all that's pleasant brings you to Paris?"

He advanced with outstretched hand. Just at that moment, a woman entered from the room beyond.

Philip, bracing himself, turned to face his wife....

But it was not Jacqueline. It was a Titian-haired, lissome young woman upon whom he had never laid eyes before, and who returned his stare with self-possessed interest.

Philip gave a great gasp. "Channing! Who—who is this woman?"

"My wife," announced the author, with a laughing bow. "You seem surprised. Hadn't you heard? But of course not—it was all so sudden. And I'm glad to say the papers don't seem to have got hold of it yet, thanks to my forethought in booking passage under only half my name. Some time before I sailed, Fay and I decided to—to let matters rest as they were, and—she came with me." He was a trifle embarrassed, but carried off the introduction with an air. "Mrs. Channing—Mr. Benoix!"

Philip was utterly bewildered. "Do you mean to say you have not seen Jacqueline?"

"Jacqueline Kildare?" Channing's smiling ease left him. "Yes, I did see her in New York, the day I left. You didn't think—" An inkling of the other's errand dawned on him. He was suddenly alarmed, and, as usual in moments of emergency, burst into his unfortunate glibness of speech. "Why, she came to see me about studying for opera, something of that sort—that was all. I had promised her introductions. Unfortunately she came just as I was preparing to leave, and I had no time to do much for her. I gave her letters to several teachers, and got her the address of a good boarding-place...."

Philip muttered an exclamation.

"Oh, and I did more than that," said Channing quickly. "I talked to her like a Dutch uncle; advised her to go straight back to Kentucky, and not to do anything without her mother's permission—a great woman, Mrs. Kildare! I told her New York was no place for a young girl alone, and that she had been most indiscreet to come to me. I told her about my—er—my marriage, of course. I offered her money—"

"You did what?" asked Philip, suddenly.

"Why—er—yes!" Channing was taken aback by his tone. "Why not? You know what an impulsive, reckless child she is—she might very well have run off without any money in her pocket, and I should have been uncomfortable, quite miserable, to think—"

Philip's fist stopped the flow of words upon his lips.

"Wh-what did you do that for?" stammered the author, backing away.

"Put up your fists, if you've got any," was the answer.

Channing defended himself wildly, but without hope. He felt that his time had come. A certain conviction paralyzed his already sluggish muscles, "He knows!" he thought. "She's told him!"

Various things swam into his dizzy memory—the business-like punching-bag in the rectory at Storm, the pistol in Philip's riding-breeches, the fact that his father had been a convicted "killer" in the penitentiary. "He means to do for me!" thought Channing, and looked desperately around for help.

But there was no help. The woman he had acknowledged as his wife stood in a corner of the room, her skirts drawn fastidiously about her, looking on with unmistakable and fascinated interest. At the keyhole Madame la concierge also looked on, unobserved, breathing hard and thinking better thoughts of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Channing, his chin cut, his nose swollen to twice its natural size, undertook a series of masterly retreats. It was then that Madame, at the keyhole, began to fear for her furniture, and considered interference. Chairs were overturned, the table went crashing. At last a foot-stool completed what Philip's fists had begun. Channing tripped over it, fell heavily for the third time, and lay without moving.

His utter panic had saved him. Philip was tired of knocking him down, and jerking him to his feet, and knocking him down again. He let him lie this time, turned him over with a contemptuous foot, and put on his coat.

"It was like punching a meal-bag!" he muttered, and strode out of the room without a glance for either the woman in the corner, or the one he surprised on the threshold.

Madame had been of two minds, as to whether to shriek for the gendarmes, now that all was safely over, or to fling herself upon the bosom of this gallant defender of his marital honor. But Philip was too quick for her. She did neither.

Presently Channing opened a puffy and wary eye. "Gone?" he asked faintly. "Then for God's sake why don't you get me something to stop this infernal nose-bleed?"

His wife brought him a towel and a basin of cold water, and presented them to him rather absently.

"Good Heavens, what an experience! Why, the brute might have killed me!—it runs in his family. Why didn't you go for help?"

"I was too interested," explained Mrs. Channing. "I've never seen a clergyman fight before." She added, with an impartiality unusual in a bride of several weeks, "You're not much of a man, are you, Percival dear?"

Out in the street Philip strode along buoyantly, his clerical collar somewhat awry, a black eye making itself rapidly apparent, indifferent to the curious glances of the people who passed. Now and then he stood still and laughed aloud, while Paris gazed at him indulgently, always sympathetic with madness.

To think that he had imagined Jacqueline capable of leaving him for a creature like Channing, flabby, wordy, feebly vicious! Somewhere at home she was waiting for him; lonely, perhaps, wondering why her husband did not come to her, but safe and unashamed. Possibly her mother and Jemima had already found her.

The thought reminded him of certain letters in his pocket, given him that morning at the American Express, and unopened in the excitement of at last running Channing to cover. He drew them out, hoping to find among them one from Storm.

The first was from his bishop, pooh-poohing his offer to resign from the ministry, and suggesting a long vacation. It ended with a sentence that touched Philip deeply: "Assure your brave little wife of the lasting friendship of an old man who collects rare virtues (other people's virtues) as certain connoisseurs collect etchings, and who considers moral courage the rarest of the lot."

Philip turned to his other letter. At sight of the hand-writing he started, and looked quickly at the postmark. It was that of a little town in the Kentucky mountains.

Lately he had thought very often of his father, as he always thought in all the critical moments of his life. At such times the man whose face he had forgotten seemed very near to him. The feeling of nearness deepened as he opened his letter, the first from Jacques Benoix since he had left prison. It was almost as if his father stood there beside him, with a hand on his shoulder.

When he had finished reading, he turned blindly into a church he was passing (it happened to be the cathedral of Notre Dame) and knelt with hidden face before the statue of that coquettish, charming, typically Parisienne madonna, who is not unaccustomed to the sight of men praying with tears.

A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that street known among all the world's great avenues—the Champs Elysées, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden—as "The Avenue." Its pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for his spring building.

A girl, moving alone and rather wearily among the chattering throng, caught this hint of changing seasons, and a wave of nostalgia passed over her that was like physical illness. A flower-vendor held out a tray of wilted jonquils. She bought a few of them—only a few, because she must needs be careful of her money—and held them to her face hungrily. They brought to her mind gardens where such flowers were already pushing their fat green buds up out of the fragrant earth—Storm garden, Philip's little patch of bloom—encouraged by a breeze that was full of sunlight. She saw the birds that flitted to and fro over those gardens upon their busy errands: sweet-whistling cardinals, bluebirds with rosy breasts, exquisite as butterflies; the flashing circles of white made by mocking-birds' wings as they soar and swoop. The noisy street faded from her eyes and ears, and she moved among the crowd as if she were walking a Kentucky lane, with the March wind in her hair.

So she was not at all surprised to meet a familiar face, and murmured absently, her thoughts on other matters, "That you, Mag?"

Then she came to herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken had passed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint that made a mask of her face, the heavy black rimming her eyes, the very perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's swing of the shoulders, were unmistakable. It was Mag Henderson.

Jacqueline followed her, half running. She had so longed for the sight of a face from home that the thought of losing her seemed unbearable. It did not matter to Kate Kildare's daughter that this was a woman of the streets, a hopeless derelict. She remembered only that she had once been her faithful, devoted ally.

But it mattered to Mag Henderson. Impossible that she had failed to recognize Jacqueline; impossible that she did not hear the clear, ringing voice crying after her, "Mag, wait for me, wait!"

Her cheeks were flushed with something besides rouge, the loose lips trembled. She, too, knew what it was to be hungry for the sight of a face from home.... Perhaps the recording angel put it down to Mag Henderson's account that she did not once hesitate, did not once look back, moving on so rapidly that at last Jacqueline, impeded by the staring throng, breathless, almost weeping in her disappointment, lost sight of her entirely, and gave up the pursuit.

She went her way, with hanging head. "Mother would have caught her," she thought, "or Jemmy. They'd have made her wait!"

For long afterwards she was haunted by that brief glimpse of the creature who a few months before had been as round and sleek and pretty as a petted kitten; the tragic eyes, old for all their feverish brilliance, the soft cheeks already hollow beneath their paint. However unjustly, Mag Henderson came to typify for Jacqueline the spirit of New York.

Her feet were dragging when she reached the respectable, shabby brownstone front that housed her and her ambitions, together with those of some thirty other more or less hopeful aspirants to fame and fortune, who might be heard as she entered amid much clattering of dishes in the basement dining-room.

The halls were faintly reminiscent of meals that had gone before, and Jacqueline, holding her jonquils to her face, decided against dinner. She made her way up two flights to her room, and sat down upon the bed, shivering, battling with a sense of discouragement that was almost panic.

The streets had lost their fleeting semblance of Spring long before she reached this place she called home, and were like bleak cañons through which the wind whistled hungrily. Jacqueline remembered a time not long since when she had found the wind bracing, stimulating, a playmate daring her to a game of romps. But that was a country wind, coming clean over wide spaces of hill and meadow; not this thing which filled her eyes and lungs with gritty dust, and whirled old newspapers and orange-peel and filthy rags along the gutters.

It was not the first time she had found herself lately battling with a sense of acute discouragement. Her singing-master, a fat and onion-smelling artist recommended very wisely by Channing, had been at first enthusiastic about the possibilities of her voice; but recently she had found it difficult to please him.

"Der organ is there, ja wohl, der organ. But Herr Gott im Himmel, is it mit der organ alone dot zinging makes himself? Put somesing inside der organ, meine gnädiges fraülein, I beg of you!"

That was just what Jacqueline seemed no longer able to do. What energy, what spirit she had, went into the mere business of living, and there was none left for song. A voice is, more than any other physical attribute, the essence of vitality; and nature had other uses just then for Jacqueline's vitality.

She did not understand, however, and sat there shivering uncontrollably, facing the grim fact of failure. Worse than failure—fear.

From where she sat, she could see her reflection in the mirror, and she looked at herself with frowning distaste. Jacqueline's beauty was oddly under eclipse just then. "I'm getting ugly—and whoever heard of an ugly prima donna?" she groaned in her innocence.

Then, suddenly, she saw what had been in her landlady's mind when, happening to pass her in the hall that morning, the woman had remarked casually, "You said you was Miss Leigh, didn't you? or was it Mrs. Leigh?"

Jacqueline had answered as casually; but now she understood the question. With a sharp intake of breath, she realized that the time had come for her to seek another home in this great, homeless wilderness of houses, that heeded her unhappy presence "as the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."

She unlocked a drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon which a pawnbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive, and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the future. It was tantalizing to know that the generous allowance from her mother was accumulating untouched in a Frankfort bank, because she did not dare to draw upon it for fear of being traced.

"Though if mother really wanted to find me, she could have done it without that!" thought the girl, and suddenly buried her head in a pillow, sobbing for her mother.

She did not allow herself to cry long. "It is not good for me," she told herself soberly; and presently achieved a quivering smile at the thought of her mother's face when at last she should send for her and show what she had to show.

"There won't be any need of forgiveness then," she whispered. "Not for either of us!"

Of Philip she did not allow herself to think at all. The girl was gaining a strength of will in those days that exerted itself even over her thoughts, and her lips had become as firm as Mrs. Kildare's.... Philip was done with her, of course, since he did not come to her—just as she was done forever with Percival Channing.

In her first revulsion of feeling on learning that her lover had after all not deserted her of his own free will, she had turned to him, bruised and hurt as she was by that terrible hour with her mother, confident of his help in her need. No lesson of life was ever to make Jacqueline anything less than confident of the world's kindness.

But marriage with Philip had at least taught her a better judgment of men, and at her first sight of Percival Channing she knew that never again would there be anything he could offer her which she would care to accept. She realized at last the full depth and enormity of her mistake, but she set herself proudly to abide by the consequences, asking no quarter.

Art was still left to her, fame; and these she must win with no assistance except her own determination. Her career lay open before her. Perhaps some day her mother and Philip would cease to be ashamed of her; would even be a little proud of her....

Now, after all, was Art to fail her? Was she never to be famous after all?

Jacqueline hurriedly turned up the corners of her mouth, having read somewhere that it is impossible to despair so long as the lips are kept in that cheerful position. But the fear at her heart remained.

She did not know where to go. Landladies asked questions, and she was not a very good liar. Suppose they should be rude to her? In all her life, nobody had ever been rude to Jacqueline. She felt that it would be more than she could bear.—And at the last to go to some strange hospital, to suffer, perhaps to die, among people whose names she did not know, she who had known by name every man, woman, child, and beast within twenty miles of Storm!... Was there none of all those friends who would befriend her now, who would take her in without question, and stand by her until her need was past? Surely somewhere, somewhere....

From long habit, she went on her knees to think her problem out; and the answer came, as it so often comes to people on their knees—came with a remembered fragrance of sun upon pine-branches, a steady sound among tree-tops of the wind that always blows above the world.

Some hours later Jacqueline took a train for Frankfort; and she passed Storm station at night, on her way to a town in the Kentucky mountains.

So it happened that there came to Philip, in Paris, the letter that told him he had found both his father and his wife.

Jacques Benoix, glancing out of his schoolhouse door at the unwonted sound of wheels in the trail below, had been startled to see a woman descending from a wagon, whom he at first mistook for Kate Kildare herself. She was helped by Bates the peddler, met by good chance in the town below.

"Here comes another worker for the Lord's vineyard!" beamed the peddler, as the school-teacher, recovering his breath, hurried to meet them.

"And a most welcome one! If I were a religious man, I should think you an answer to prayer, so great is our need of help."

"Help? Do you think I can be of any help?" asked Jacqueline, wistfully—a very changed Jacqueline she was, pale and drawn-looking, and with a new little dignity about her which the physician was quick to observe. "I'm not a capable person, you know, like mother and Jemmy. I do know a little about sewing, though, and cooking, and housekeeping, and—and—"

"Singing, I remember," smiled her host, "and making people comfortable, I think? The very things we need most, my dear. It is maddening in a place like this to be limited to one set of brains, and arms, and legs—and those masculine. Ah, but I am glad that you have come!"

"So am I." Jacqueline breathed a grateful sigh. "But—" she swallowed hard, and looked him squarely in the face—"I want you to know that I am hiding away from everybody.—Must I tell you why?"

He took off his spectacles, so that she saw his eyes. Great kindliness dawned in them, a warm, understanding, tender gravity that had once before reminded her of somebody she trusted. He leaned toward her.

"I, too, am hiding away from those I love.—Must I tell you why, my daughter?"

She stared at him, her gaze widening. Suddenly she knew him, and with a little cry, her arms went about his neck.

It was some time before her mother began to do much credit to Jemima's reputation as a nurse. The nature of her illness, if illness it could be called, was baffling. She had neither pain nor temperature, her pulse was steady, though not strong, she ate and even slept as she was bidden, with a docility that was one of the most alarming symptoms of all in the Madam, hitherto impatient as a healthy man of restraint and control. She was content, to lie day after day in her room, she who had perhaps not spent more than a few weeks in bed during the whole course of her previous life, and then only when her children were born.

"I can't understand it," wrote young Mrs. Thorpe to her husband—a humiliating confession for Jemima. "She listens to me, and talks a little, seems rather glad that I am with her. But if I were not, I think it would not matter. She takes no interest in anything, seems hardly aware of anything, though she always makes the right answer when one speaks to her. Otherwise I might think.... Even Philip's letters leave her unmoved. She never opens them; simply hands them to me and says listlessly, 'See if he has found her.' And when I answer no, she does not seem to care particularly.... Sometimes I feel as if it weren't mother here beside me at all, as if she had gone away, and left just her body and her voice and her smile—and I wish she had taken the smile with her. It's hard to bear!... She was a little like this after Dr. Benoix disappeared, but not so bad.—Oh, James, you don't think, do you, that there can really be such a thing as a broken heart?"

The Professor comforted his wife with sensible and practical advice; but he was as uneasy as herself. Psychologist that he was, he know that the strongest natures cannot bend and bend indefinitely, without in time reaching the breaking-point.

It was at his suggestion that a famous nerve-specialist was sent for from a distant city, much to the relief of honest and futile Dr. Jones.

The eminent gentleman made himself extremely comfortable at Storm, enjoyed the scenery and the Southern cooking, and occasionally conversed upon topics of the day with Mrs. Kildare, who exerted herself according to her traditions to put her guest at ease, even to the extent of sitting up in bed and allowing Jemima to dress her hair in the latest fashion.

"Mental trouble? Nonsense!" he pronounced, to Jemima's almost sick relief. "I wish my own mentality were as sound! For years she has been using up her nervous vitality without replacing it, that is all. This mental torpor is Nature's way of giving her a rest. Let her alone! That splendid body of hers will reassert itself presently. Rest is what she needs. And happiness," he added casually, with an insight which proved his right to the enormous fee he pocketed.

But it was a prescription rather difficult to fill.

Jemima tried conscientiously to catch her mother's attention with talk about farm matters, business affairs, the conduct of the dairy and stable; only to be put aside with a listless, "Better see Jenkins about that, dear. He's very efficient."

Jenkins was a young man trained by herself into efficiency, who had long been anxious to assume a more important part in the management of Storm, and was rising to his opportunity very creditably.

At last a letter came from Philip which Jemima believed would rouse Kate from her apathy. She read it—she opened all her mother's mail in those days—and rushed into her mother's room, almost tearful with her news.

"He's found Channing at last!" she cried; "and Jacqueline was not with him! Do you hear, Mother? Jacqueline was not with him at all! She never had been. It was another woman—some one he has married. Oh, Mother, don't you understand?"

Kate's eyes lifted very slowly to her face. "Then what," each word was an effort, "has he done with my Jacqueline?—Is she dead?"

Jemima caught her hands. "No, no, dear! Listen!"—she spoke very distinctly. "It was all a dreadful mistake—our mistake. She never went to Mr. Channing at all. She simply ran away to New York to study her singing, Philip says, and has been there all this time.—Oh, how can I ever make it up to poor little Jacky? Imagine thinking such a thing of her! I must have been crazy, jumping to such a wicked conclusion!" In her distress she wrung her hands. "And what must Jacqueline have been thinking of us, leaving her alone there so long? Oh, Mother!—" a happy idea had come to her. "Don't, let's leave her alone another day! Philip may not have reached her yet—this letter was mailed in Paris, just before he sailed. Let's go and find her ourselves, you and I!"

But the answering spark of eagerness she hoped for did not come.

"If Jacqueline wants me," said Kate, closing her eyes, "she will let me know."

The coldness of the reply chilled Jemima. It seemed so utterly unlike her impulsive, warm-hearted generous mother.

"Don't you realize how we have misunderstood her? Why, she hasn't been—been wicked at all! She simply saw she had made a mistake, and tried to undo it by going away—foolish, but so like Jacky, poor darling!—Mother! You don't mean to say you're not going to forgive her for running away?"

"Forgive?" repeated Kate wonderingly. Then she remembered that Jemima had never been a mother.

"It is Jacqueline who cannot forgive me," she explained, in her dull and lifeless voice.

Jemima gave up in despair. There was something about all this beyond her understanding.

In a few days a second letter came from Philip, postmarked New York, telling her that he had at last learned the where-abouts of his wife, and hoped soon to be going to her. He begged Kate to have patience, explaining that he was under promise not to reveal Jacqueline's hiding-place.

This letter puzzled Jemima almost unbearably, but she dared ask no question of her mother as to what had occurred. She was grateful to see that it at least roused the invalid to a show of interest. Kate took it into her languid hand and read it over twice, looking for some possible message for herself from Jacqueline, some little word of love that Jemima might have overlooked.

But finding nothing, she relapsed into the old listlessness.

It was a very trivial and unimportant thing, to Jemima's thinking, which presently lifted Kate out of her languor into action once more. Big Liza, entering timidly one morning, as she did many times in the day, to gaze with miserable eyes at the figure on the bed, murmured to Jemima: "They's a message come fum that 'ooman Mahaly, down in the village, sayin' she's dyin', and wants to see the Madam. She 'lows she cain't die in peace 'thout'n she sees Miss Kate."

"Of course that's impossible," said Jemima in the same low tone. "Send word that we're very sorry. See that she has whatever she needs. If necessary, I'll go myself."

"Did you say she was dying?" asked an unexpected voice from the bed.

"Yais'm, Miss Kate! but don't you keer, honey. Tain't nothin but that mulatter 'ooman, Mahaly—You 'members about her!" she added scornfully.—Very little had passed among her "white folks" that was unknown to the sovereign of the kitchen.

To the amaze of both, Kate slipped without apparent effort out of the bed where she had lain for weeks. "Where are my clothes?" she demanded.

Jemima ran to her with a cry of protest. "Mother, be careful! What, you aren't thinking of going to see her? You can't—you're not strong enough!"

"Mahaly must not die before I speak with her."

"Then," said Jemima calmly, "I'll have her brought to you."

"A dying woman? Jemmy, don't be silly!" Kate spoke with an asperity that brought a wide grin to Big Liza's face, because it sounded as though the Madam were come back again.

Jemima, alarmed, continued to protest; at last ran to the telephone and called Dr. Jones to her assistance. Meanwhile Kate, scolded at, fussed over, but in the end helped by her cook, got into out-door clothes; and before Doctor Jones was on his way to Storm, she had taken the road for the village.

She sat erect in her surrey, pale, but scorning the proffered arm of Jemima, driven by a proud and anxious coachman behind the quietest pair of horses in the stable; and people as she passed stared at her with utter amaze—with more; with a delight that rose in some cases to the point of tears. For the first time, Kate realized that she had won something besides respect and dependence and fear from her realm. She had won love. The realization pierced through her apathy. A faint color came into her cheeks. More than once, as she paused to exchange greetings with some beaming and incoherent acquaintance, her own lips were tremulous.

"Why are they so glad to see me, Jemmy?" she asked once. "Did they think I was very ill?"

Her daughter nodded, not trusting her own voice. It seemed as if a miracle had occurred before her eyes.

"Well, I've fooled them," smiled Kate, drawing into her lungs a great breath of the keen, rain-swept air that was bringing new life into a world done with winter.

She asked one other question as they drove. "Jemmy, what does the neighborhood think about—Jacqueline?"

Jemima explained that she had allowed the impression to go abroad that Philip and Jacqueline had taken advantage of an opportunity to go to Europe on a belated honeymoon journey.

She did not say, because she did not know, that the countryside, always with an interested eye upon its betters, had connected the extreme suddenness of this journey with Philip's vanished father, picturing to itself touching death-bed scenes, and eleventh-hour repentances. Remembering the Madam's brief illness at the time of Dr. Benoix' disappearance, the neighborhood had connected her present illness also with its romantic imaginings; with the result that what was left of its disapproval had been swallowed up in a sudden and quite human wave of sympathy for that faithful woman and the man she loved.

When they reached a neat little cottage in the portion of the village devoted to white workingmen's homes, Kate allowed herself to be assisted to the door, where she dismissed her daughter, telling her to return in half an hour.

"I must see Mahaly alone," was her only answer to Jemima's uneasy protests.

She was ushered respectfully into a neat, clean room, hung with the enlarged crayon portraits dear to the colored race, and boasting a parlor-organ draped in Battenberg lace. The window was open—a rare thing in a negro home, despite her efforts with the Civic League. The bed was stiffly starched and unoccupied, and the woman she had come to see sat upright in a chair, propped with pillows, panting with the effort of keeping breath in her lungs. She was dying of heart-disease.

She had been in her day rather a handsome creature, with the straight hair and high features that indicate a not unusual admixture of Indian blood. But though she must have been of about the same age as Mrs. Kildare, she looked by comparison withered and superannuated, with the grayish film across her eyes that one sees in those of aged animals.

These blurred eyes stared at Kate with a queer hostility, mixed with something else; as they had stared on the day she came a bride to Storm. She made a slight, futile attempt to rise.

"Nonsense, Mahaly! Don't move," said the Madam, kindly. "This is no time for manners."

She closed the door behind her, and would have closed the window had it not been for the woman's need of air and the inevitable faint odor that clings about negro habitations, no matter how cleanly they are kept. What she and her old servant had to say to each other must not be overheard. Fancying that she detected sounds as of some one moving on the porch outside, she called briefly: "Keep out of ear-shot, please." She was too accustomed to obedience to investigate results.

"You wanted to see me, Mahaly?" she said. "You wanted to explain something to me, perhaps?"

The woman struggled with her laboring breath. She was very near the end. Kate found it painful to look at her, and her gaze wandered away to the crayon portraits on the wall. The one over the bed, in the place of honor, was a portrait of her husband, Basil Kildare. Her face hardened. This was an impertinence! And yet....

Mahaly was speaking. "You-all ain't—found the French doctor yet—is you?"

"No. We will not discuss that, if you please.... Mahaly, we may never see each other again, you and I. Will you tell me now how you came—to hate me so bitterly?"

Mahaly's eyes dropped. "I never! I tried to, but—I couldn't, Miss Kate. You was—so kin' to me."

"Yes, I was kind. I meant to be. I liked you, and trusted you. I gave you my children to nurse.—Mahaly, only once—no, twice—in my life have I trusted people, and had them fail me."

"The other time was Mr. Bas," whispered the woman. "I knows. It didn't—never do to trus'—Mr. Bas."

Her dying eyes followed Kate's to the picture, and dwelt upon it wistfully.

Once more the lady changed the subject. "Will you tell me why you tried to hate me, Mahaly?" She paused. "Was it because you were—jealous of me?"

The reply had a certain dignity. "It ain't fitten—for a yaller gal—to be jealous—of a w'ite pusson."

"Then, why?"

There was a silence. Gropingly the colored woman's hand went to a table at her side, and held out to Kate a tintype photograph in a faded pink paper cover. Kate looked at it. She saw Mahaly as she had been in the days of her youth, comely and graceful; in her arms a small, beady-eyed boy. The pride of motherhood was unmistakable.

"Your baby! Why, I never knew you had a baby." She looked closer, and her voice softened. "A cripple, like my little Katherine. Poor little fellow! Oh, Mahaly, did he die?"

There was a dull misery in the answer that went to her heart. "I dunno. I couldn't—never fin' out."

"You don't know?"

"Mr. Bas done sent him away—when you was comin'. He was real kin'—to him before, though he wa'n't never one—to have po'ly folks about, much. But when you—was comin'—he done sent him away, an' he wouldn't never tell me—whar to."

"Mahaly! Why did he send him away?"

Kate had risen, in her horror of what she knew was coming.

"Bekase he looked—too much—like his—paw," said Mahaly, and she spoke with pride....

Kate put her hands over her eyes. She remembered the sense of something sinister that had come to her when she first saw Storm; recalled the mystery which had hung about the mulatto girl, and which she had not quite dared to probe; the innuendoes of old Liza, from the first her ally and henchman; Mahaly's later passionate and hungry devotion to her own children. She remembered the fate, too, of Basil's hound Juno, and her mongrel pups.

"No wonder you hated me," she whispered, shuddering. "No wonder you hated me! To think that even he could have done such a thing!—Oh, but, Mahaly, how was I to know? How could you have blamed me?"

"I never. Only I 'lowed—that ef you was to git sent away—fum Sto'm—mebbe he would lemme have my baby—back agin." Mahaly's voice was getting very weak. She began fighting the air with her hands.

Kate dipped her handkerchief quickly into a glass of water and laid it on the woman's face. "No more talking now," she said, and would have gone for help; but the negress caught at her hand.

"Got—suthin' mo'—to say—fust—" she gasped painfully. "Miss Kate!—the French doctor didn't—kill him—"

"What?"

"I seed. I was—hidin' in de bushes—waitin' to speak to Mr. Bas" (only an iron effort of will made the words audible), "an' I riz up—out'n de bushes—when I yeard 'em quar'lin'—and dat skeert de hoss—an' he ra'red up and threw—Mr. Bas off. De French doctor done flung—a rock, yes'm—but it ain't—never—teched him—"

"You know this? My God, Mahaly! You know this?"

"Yais'm, kase—it was me—de rock hit—" she turned her cheek, to show the scar it had left.

"Take that down in writing. Mother!" commanded a tense voice from the window, where Jemima was leaning in. "You must get it down in writing, before witnesses! Here!" She jumped into the room, and opened the door, calling, "Some of you come here, quick! I want witnesses."

"She's dying," muttered Kate, dazed.

"No, she isn't! She sha'n't, before she says that again. Leave her to me! Now then, Mahaly"—she shook the gasping woman none too gently. "Come, come! You saw—Speak up! Oh, for God's sake, speak up!"

But Mahaly had said all that she had to say. For a terrible moment the sound of her losing battle filled the room. Then, of a sudden there was silence, peace; into which broke presently the mournful, savage note of negro wailing.

Jemima led her mother in silence out to the carriage. During the drive home she made only one remark, in a low whisper because of the coachman.

"Do you think the court will accept our word, Mother?"

Kate answered her meaning. "It would do no good. Jacques would say that the intention was there, whatever the fact. He meant to kill Basil. And it is too late now. He has paid the penalty."

That night, after Jemima was supposed to be in bed, Kate's door opened, and a slim little figure stole in, looking very childlike in its nightgown. But the voice that spoke was not childlike.

"Are you asleep, Mother?"

Kate held out her hand. She had expected Jemima. The girl clutched it fast.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.

Kate wondered silently how much of Mahaly's confession she had heard.

The girl answered as if she had spoken. "I was there from the first. It was I you heard when you gave the order to go out of ear-shot."

"And you didn't go out of ear-shot? That wasn't quite honorable, daughter."

"No, but it was sensible. Do you think I'd have left you there alone to a trying death-bed scene, weak as you are? Honorable!—how do you expect me to be honorable?" she burst out, bitterly, "when you know the sort of father I had? Sometimes of late I suspected, I began to think.... But you would not tell me, you were too fine to tell me. And you let me make a fool of myself, a perfect fool! Oh, I was so proud of being a Kildare, one of the Kildares of Storm; so ashamed of anything that did not quite come up to the standard of—of my father! Bah—my father! Not even man enough to take the consequences of his sin, to stand by them. My father," she cried fiercely, "was a coward! And I thought that everything that is good in me, pride and courage, and truthfulness, whatever manly virtues I may have, came from him, instead of—from you!"

"No, no—from yourself, dear," said Kate, quickly. "For everything that is best in you, you have yourself to thank."

Jemima lifted up her head, and made her confession of renewed faith, there in the dark. "But I'd rather thank you, Mother!"

It was Kate's first dose of the happiness the specialist had prescribed.

After a long pause, the voice spoke again out of the dark. "Mother—I want you to marry Dr. Benoix. Do you understand? We owe it to him—all of us. I want you to marry him."

"Ah!" whispered Kate. "If I only could!"

"You've not given up? Oh, but you mustn't give up! He shall be found! I'll find him myself, and bring him back to you, because it was I who sent him away." (Kate smiled faintly at the egotism, but she did not correct it.) "Oh, Mother, put your will into it!" urged the girl, leaning over her. "You know you've never failed in anything you've put your will into."

"I? Never failed?" repeated Kate, in bitter mockery.

"Now you're thinking of Jacqueline and Philip. That wasn't an error of will, but of judgment.—This time, I'm judging."

Boast that it was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother could never hope to gain.

"Oh, Jemmy," she sighed as one equal to another, "if you had been in my place, what would you have done about Jacqueline?"

Mrs. Thorpe took the matter into consideration. At length she pronounced gravely, "If I had been in your place, there never would have been a Jacqueline"; which ended the conversation for that night.

It was not long after this that Kate woke to a realization of the sacrifices her daughter was making to remain at Storm, and sent her back post-haste to her patient, neglected husband, and to the new worlds that remained to conquer.

"Of course I shall be lonely," she admitted in answer to Jemima's protest. "But I must get used to that. And I shall have my work, now that I am quite strong again."

Nor would she listen to Jemima's plea, seconded heartily by James Thorpe, that she leave Storm for a while and make them a visit.

"Suppose Jacqueline should come home, and not find me here?"

Jemima knew that it was not only Jacqueline of whom she thought.

But when Kate said that she had her work to return to, she had reckoned without her henchman Jenkins, a new broom that was sweeping very clean indeed. It is an axiom that while it requires creative genius to start an enterprise, once the momentum is gained any mediocre intelligence may keep it going. Kate learned this for herself.

During her illness, things had gone on much as usual. Her affairs were in excellent order. The spring planting had been arranged for; at the appointed season foals and calves and tottering new lambs made their appearance in their usual numbers among her pastures; the books showed no falling off in credits nor increase in debits; fences and roads were in excellent repair. Jenkins was manifestly eager and able to spare her all responsibility and trouble. She understood his ambition. There seemed no reason for her to resume the reins of authority from such capable hands.

She turned to her immediate household; but there, too, the efficiency which had been her fetish made interference unnecessary. Her well-trained servants chuckled among themselves at the Madam's sudden interest in housecleaning, in linen-closet and pantry, in cookery.

"Laws, Miss Kate, honey! Huccom you dirtyin' up yo' hands with niggers' work?" demanded Big Liza, reproachfully.

The village, too, seemed to be getting on surprisingly well without her. The Housewives' League she had organized had made amazing strides during her absence. It had elected a president and a secretary and was governing itself according to Roberts' Rules of Order quite as capably as it had been governed in the past by the Madam. It was even, thanks to Jemima's recent activities in the neighborhood, beginning to discuss in a shy and tentative manner the question of Votes for Women. Kate felt that she had created a Frankenstein.

Nor was the problem of the negro element any longer hers to struggle with alone. She had tried to meet it by starting among the colored people of the village a Civic League, quiescent during the winter, but coming to life each spring with garden-time, and progressing enthusiastically through the summer to the culmination of prize-giving, and a procession, with the prize-winners riding proudly at the front in decorated carriages. Now she found that Philip's successor, a city-bred young fellow trained in social service, had already taken the Civic League in hand and had converted the colored school into a Neighborhood House of the most approved pattern, where innocent entertainment might be had on two nights out of the week, winter and summer. The effect upon a gregarious, pleasure-loving race which, as John Wise has said, never outgrows mentally the age of seventeen, was already apparent. Kate wished humbly that she herself had thought of a Neighborhood House.

Gradually she came to the conclusion that she had outlived the community's need of her. She, Kate Kildare, not yet forty, with energy flowing back into her veins even as the sap was coming back into the trees after their winter's rest, could find no outlet for it.

There was nothing to fill the endless days. She tried to resume her long-neglected musical studies, but the piano was haunted for her now by the silent voice of Jacqueline, and she turned from it at last in despair. In this time of need, even books failed her. With her returning vigor full upon her, she could not find the patience to sit for hours poring over the thoughts of professional thinkers, or the imaginary deeds of people who had never lived—she who had lived so hard, and whose own thoughts came up aching out of her heart.

Mag's baby was her one occupation. Storm would have been indeed a dreary place just then without Mag's parting legacy to it. The small Kitty was somewhat young to begin her education, but begin it she did, nevertheless. She was as docile and anxious to please as her mother before her, and after days of patient training, managed to master the intricate syllables of what the doggie says and what the pussy says. She also learned to navigate alone the distance from a chair-leg to Kate's knee; a fearful adventure, this, accomplished with much wild waving of arms and not a few tears, for Kitty was not of the intrepid, determined stuff to which Kate was accustomed in the way of infants.

However, she made a cuddlesome, drowsy armful to hold during the long Spring twilights; and often sitting so, alone in her great hall, Kate forgot what child it was she held, and went back to the days of her first motherhood, dreaming that the door would presently open and admit Jacques Benoix, come to sit for a while with his friend.

Few visitors troubled the monotony of Storm. During her illness the neighborhood had been assiduous with broths and jellies, but now that she was well again the old awe of the Madam returned, and it did not occur to the modest country folk that she would have been glad of their company. Holiday Hill was in charge of caretakers. Farwell, after months of the rôle of the Southern country gentleman, had suddenly yielded to the irresistible lure of the footlights, and was once more making his final appearance upon any stage. Philip's substitute occasionally paid a conscientious call, which Kate recognized, with some amusement, as a parochial visit. He was an earnest young man, with views, and it was evident that he regarded Mrs. Kildare's frank indifference to matters of dogma as a serious defect in her character.

Somewhat to her surprise, one day the Bishop of the diocese came out from Lexington to see her. She had met him before, as Philip's friend, and even entertained him at Storm on occasion; but their acquaintance was very slight, and she was at a loss to account for this visit.

He seemed to have come chiefly to talk about Philip. "I have been watching young Benoix since he first left the Seminary. We have many promising men in our clergy," he said, "many indefatigable workers, many beautiful spirits, many fine intellects. But a combination of all these qualities is rare in any profession. And besides these," he added quietly, "Benoix has the right sort of wife."

Kate's steady eyes met his without flinching. Though nothing was said about Jacqueline's letter to the Bishop, the thought of it had not for a moment been absent from their minds. "You think that?" she asked in a low voice.

"I know it! The right sort of wife is important to any man, but more to a clergyman than to others. Charm, tact, the kindliness that comes from the heart itself, above all, understanding—these are the things your little Jacqueline has brought to help her husband, and he will go far. Mark my words!—Presently I shall have to take those two young people away from you, into a wider field."

He watched her compressed, tremulous lips shrewdly and sympathetically. Jacqueline's confession and her voluntary atonement had touched his broad nature to the quick; and he had come to Storm of his own volition for the purpose of reconciling her with a presumably unforgiving mother. But his first glimpse of the mother's face showed him the needlessness of such an errand so far as she was concerned, and his sympathies turned into another channel.

He said lightly, "I suppose you hear often from the honeymooners?"

Kate shook her head.

"No? Young people are sometimes thoughtless in their happiness, forgetful of the rights of mothers.—My dear," he said suddenly, abandoning his pretense of ignorance, "why don't you go to them, take her by surprise? Things are so much better said face to face, and before any hurt has had time to rankle. Why don't you go to them?"

"I do not know where they are."

The Bishop looked thoughtful. "I can tell you," he said at last. "And I think I shall."

But Kate stopped him. The temptation had been great. She was weary of waiting for the word that never came, for the chance to hold her child in her arms again, and kiss away all the grief and pain and remorse that lay between them.

But she knew it was best for Jacqueline and Philip to come to their readjustment without her. Long meditation had taught her at last to understand that it was she herself who, unwittingly and unwillingly, had stood between them.

When the Bishop rose to go, he held her hand between his own for some moments. "When will you come to Lexington, my dear? I am an old and busy man, but I cannot afford to lose touch with such a woman as you. Will you come to see me occasionally?"

Kate replied quietly that she never went to Lexington. He understood. Though it had happened before his time, he had not failed to hear of the occasion when young Kate Leigh had brought her children home to be christened, and had been cut by an entire congregation.

He said gently, "The world's memory is short—shorter than you think. If you were to come to Lexington now, you would find that you have many friends there."

She gave no promise. The world's memory might be short, but she was not of the world, and hers was long.

"Then I must even come to you," said the Bishop; and was as good as his word thereafter....

As the long days lengthened into weeks, Kate gave up all pretense of activity, and resigned herself to waiting; waiting for she knew not what.

At first it had been Jacqueline; some word of her, or message from her. But, gradually, thoughts of her child merged somehow into thoughts of Jacques Benoix. She found herself dreaming of him as she had not allowed herself to dream since she first heard that he was coming out of the penitentiary, when their meeting seemed close, imminent, something to be prepared for constantly lest the shock of joy should be too great. She tried now to stop these dreams, in fear of the awakening; but could not.

Perhaps it was April in her blood, bringing to life the old habit of wanting her mate in the mating-season. Perhaps it was her talk with Jemima, and the girl's promise that Jacques Benoix should be found. Jemima rarely broke a promise.—Whatever the cause, the sense of his approach, his nearness, was sometimes so vivid that Kate felt she had but to turn her head to see him standing there behind her.

But if she turned it, there were only the dogs, eagerly waiting her pleasure, their tails astir; or perhaps a servant coming from the house with a wrap for her, because the breeze was damp.

She rarely rode abroad now. Pasture and field and meadow, Nature itself, had lost charm for her since she seemed to have no longer a share in bringing about their miracles. She was content to sit day after day in her eyrie, gazing out over the greening valley, watching the great flocks of martins, grackle, and robins that passed noisily overhead, going to meet the Spring farther north.

All about her sounded the murmur of bluebirds, which came each year to live in the old trees about Storm. She wondered why the bluebird should have been taken as a symbol of happiness. There is nothing more plaintive in nature than its nesting-song, a cadence of little dropping minor notes, which Kate, grown fanciful in her idleness, translated for herself: