Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters Part 54

"But you will come to please me. I shall take you to the Southern States, and fetch you back in the autumn my own bright Kate again."

There was no light of pleasure or eagerness in her face. She only moved uneasily on the gra.s.s.

"You will come, my dear, will you not? Eunice will accompany you; and we will visit all the great cities of this New World, that you have so often longed to see."

"I will do whatever you wish, papa," she said, apathetically.

"And you will give Eunice her orders about the packing to-day, and be ready to start to-morrow?"

"Yes, papa."

"Ogden will remain behind," continued her father, in a lowered voice. "I have said nothing to any one else as yet about Harry. I shall go and speak to them both about it now."

"Yes, papa."

She watched him striding away, with that look of weary listlessness that had grown habitual to her, and rose from her gra.s.sy couch with a sigh, to obey his directions. She found Eunice in the sewing room, with Agnes Darling, and gave her her orders to pack up, and be prepared to start next morning. Then she went back to her seat under the old apple-tree, and lay on the warm gra.s.s in a state between sleeping and waking all day long.

The day of departure dawned cloudless and lovely. Grace, her brother, and Eeny went to the station with the travellers, and saw them off. Kate's farewell was very cold, even to Eeny. What was the use of losing or being sorry to part with any one, since all the world was false, and hollow, and deceitful? She had lost something--heart--hope--conscience--she hardly knew what; but something within her that had beat high, and hopeful, and trusting, was cold and still as stone.

The little party on the platform went back through the yellow haze of the hot afternoon, to the quiet old house. Ah! how indescribably quiet and lonely now! Some one might have lain dead in those echoing rooms, so deadly was the stillness.

There was one consolation for Grace and Eeny in their solitude. Doctor Frank was going to remain in the village. It was chiefly at the solicitation of Father Francis that he had consented.

"Dr. Pillule is superannuated," said the young priest, "and old-fashioned, and obstinately prejudiced against all modern innovations, at the best. We want a new man among us--particularly now that this fever is spreading."

A low fever had been working its way, insidiously, among the people since early spring, and increasing since the warm weather had come.

Perhaps the miasma, arising from the marshes, had been the cause; but several had died, and many lay ill those sunny June days.

"Your mission lies here," Father Francis said, emphatically. "You can do good, Doctor Danton. Stay!"

So Doctor Danton stayed, hanging out his shingle and taking up his abode at the village hotel. Doctor Pillule all of a sudden, like the Moor of Venice, found his occupation gone. Every one liked the pleasant young Doctor, whose ways were so different from those of Doctor Pillule, and who sat by their fevered bedsides, and talked to them so kindly. Every one liked him; and he soon found himself busy enough, but never so busy that some time, each day, he could not run up for half an hour to Danton Hall.

July came, and brought a letter from Captain Danton to Grace. Like many others, he hated letter-writing, and, never performed that duty when he could possibly avoid it. But Kate declined writing, absolutely; so it fell to his lot. They were in New York, on the eve of departure for Newport, and Kate had already benefited by the change. That was nearly all; and it was the middle of July before the second arrived. They were still at Newport, and the improvement in Kate was marked. The wan and sickly look was rapidly pa.s.sing away--the change, the excitement, the sea-bathing, the gay life, were working wonders.

"She has created somewhat of a sensation here," said the latter, "and might be one of the belles, if she chose; but she doesn't choose. Her coldness, her proud and petrified air, her strange and gloomy manner, throws a halo of mystery around her, that has fixed all eyes upon her, and set all tongues going. We are quite unknown here, and I don't choose to enlighten any one. I dare say, more than one little romance has been concocted, founded on poor Kate's settled gloom; but, beyond our names, they really know nothing. Some of the young men look as if they would like to be a little more friendly, but she freezes them with one flash of her blue eyes."

August came, burning and breezeless, and they were at Saratoga, drinking Congress water, and finding life much the same as at Newport. Kate had recovered her looks, the Captain's letters said; the beauty that had made her so irresistible had returned, and made her more irresistible than ever. There was nothing like her at Saratoga; but she was as deeply wrapped in mystery as ever, and about as genial as a statue in Parian marble.

The end of August found them journeying southward. The beginning of September, and they were domesticated in the friendly Georgian homestead; and then, Kate, tired after all her wanderings, sank down in the tropical warmth and beauty, and drew a breath of relief. She liked it so much, this lovely southern land, where the gorgeous flowers bloomed and the tropic birds flitted with the hues of Paradise on their wings. She liked the glowing richness of the southern days and nights, the forests and fields so unlike anything she had ever seen before; the negroes with their strange talk and gaudy garments, the pleasant house and the pleasant people. She liked it all, and the first sensation of peace and rest she had felt all these months stole into her heart here.

And yet it had done her a world of good--she was a new being--outwardly at least--although her heart felt as mute and still as ever. Her life's shipwreck had been so sudden and so dreadful, she had been so stunned and stupefied at first, and the after-anguish so horribly bitter, that this haven of rest was as grateful as some green island of the sea to a shipwrecked mariner. Here there was nothing to remind her of all that was past and gone--here, where everything was new, her poor bruised heart might heal.

Captain Danton saw and thanked Heaven gratefully for the blessed change in the daughter he loved, and yet she was not the Kate of old. All the youth and joyousness of life's springtime was gone. She sang no more the songs he loved; they were dead and buried in the dead past; her clear laugh never rejoiced his heart now; her fleeting smile came cold and pale as moonlight, on snow. She took no interest in the home she had left; she made no inquiries for those who were there.

"I have had a letter from Danton Hall," he would say; "and they are well." And she would silently bend her head. Or, "I am writing to Danton Hall; have you any message to send?" "Only my love to Eeny," would be the answer; and then she would stray off and leave him alone. She was as changed to him as she was changed in other things. Grace stood between--an insuperable barrier.

September drew to a close. October came, and with it the time for their departure. Kate left reluctantly; she longed to stay there forever, in that land of the sun, and forget and be at peace. It was like tearing half-healed wounds open to go back to a place where everything her eye rested on or her ear heard, from morning till night, recalled the bitter past. But fate was inexorable; farewell must be said to beautiful Georgia and the kind friends there; and the commencement of the second week of October found them starting on their journey to their northern home.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"IT'S AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS n.o.bODY GOOD."

They journeyed northward very slowly, stopping for a few days at all the great cities, so that October was gone and part of November when they reached Montreal. There they lingered a week, and then began the last stage of their journey home.

It was a desolate afternoon, near the middle of that most desolate month, November, when Captain Danton and his daughter stepped into the railway-fly at St. Croix, and were driven, as fast as the spavined old nag would go, to Danton Hall. A desolate afternoon, with a low leaden sky threatening snow, and earth like iron with hard black frost. A wretched complaining wind that made your nerves ache, worried the half-stripped trees, and now and then a great snowflake whirled in the dull grey air. The village looked silent and deserted as they drove through it, and a melancholy bell was slowly tolling, tolling, tolling all the way. Kate shivered audibly, and wrapped her fur-lined mantle closer around her.

"What is that wretched bell for?" she asked.

"It is the pa.s.sing bell," replied the father, with a gloomy brow. "You know the fever is in the village."

"And someone is dead."

She looked out with a dreary, shivering sigh over the bleak prospect.

Gaunt black trees, grim black marshes, dull black river, and low black sky. Oh, how desolate! How desolate it all was--as desolate as her own dead heart. What was the use of going away, what was the use of forgetting for a few poor moments, and then coming back to the old desolation and the old pain? What a weary, weary piece of business life was at best, not worth the trouble and suffering it took to live!

The drive to the Hall was such a short one, it hardly seemed to her they were seated before they were driving up the leafless avenue, where the trees loomed unnaturally large and black in the frosty air, and the dead leaves whirled in great wild drifts under the horse's feet. The gloom and desolation were here before them too. When they had gone away, nearly six months before, those bleak avenues had been leafy arcades, where the birds sang all the bright day long, flowers had bloomed wherever her eye rested, and red roses and sweetbrier had twined themselves around the low windows and stone pillars of the portico. Now the trees were writhing skeletons, the flowers dead with the summer, nothing left of the roses but rattling brown stalks, and the fish-pond lying under the frowning wintry sky like a sheet of steel.

She went up the stone steps and into the hall, still shivering miserably under her wraps, and saw Grace, and Eeny, and the servants a.s.sembled to welcome them, and listened like one in a dream. It all seemed so flat, and dead, and unsatisfying, and the old time and the old memories were back at her heart, until she almost went wild. She could see how Eeny and Grace looked a little afraid of her, and how differently they greeted her father; and how heartily and unaffectedly glad he was to be with them once more. And then she was toiling wearily up the long, wide stairway, followed by faithful Eunice, and had the four walls of her own little sitting room around her at last.

How pretty the room was! A fire burned brightly in the glittering steel grate, the curtains were drawn, for it was already dusk, that short November afternoon; and the ruddy, cheery light sparkled on the pictures, and the book-case, and the inlaid table, and the two little vases of scarlet geraniums Grace had planted there.

Outside, in contrast to all this warmth, and brightness, and comfort, she could hear the lamentable sighing of the wild November wind, and the groaning of the tortured trees. But it brought no sense of comfort to her, and she sat drearily back while Eunice dressed her for dinner, and stared blankly into the fire, wondering if her whole life was to go on like this. Only twenty-one, and life such a hopeless blank already! She could look forward to her future life--a long, long vista of days, and every day like this.

By-and-by the dinner-bell rang, arousing her from her dismal reverie, and she went down stairs, never taking the trouble to look at herself in the gla.s.s, or to see how her maid had dressed her. Yet she looked beautiful--coldly, palely beautiful--in that floating dress of deep blue; and jewelled forget-me-nots in her rich amber hair. Her face and figure had recovered all their lost roundness and symmetry, but the former, except when she spoke or smiled, was as cold and still as marble.

Father Francis and Doctor Danton were in the dining-room when she entered, but their welcome home was very apathetically met. She was silent all through dinner, talking was such a tiresome exertion; nothing interested her. She hardly looked up--she could feel, somehow, the young priest's deep, clear eyes bent upon her in grave disapproval, against which her proud spirit mutinied.

"Why should I take the trouble to talk?" she thought; "What do I care for Doctor Danton or his sister, or what interest have the things they talk of for me?"

So she listened as if they had been talking Greek. Only once was she aroused to anything like interest. Their two guests were relating the progress of that virulent fever in the village, and how many had already been carried off.

"I should think the cold weather would give it a check," said her father.

"It seems rather on the increase," replied the priest; "there are ten cases in St. Croix now."

"We heard the bell as we drove up this afternoon," said the Captain; "for whom was it tolling?"

"For poor old Pierre, the s.e.xton. He took the fever only a week ago, and was delirious nearly all the time."

Kate lifted her eyes, hitherto listening, but otherwise meaningless.

"Pierre, who used to light the fires and sweep the church?"

"Yes; you knew him," said Father Francis looking at her; "he talked of you more than once during his delirium. It seems you sang for him once, and he never forgot it. It dwelt in his mind more than anything else, during that last illness."