Kennedy Square Part 12

Soon the great silences overawed him--periods of loneliness when he sat confronting his soul, his conscience on the bench as judge; his affections a special attorney:--silences of the night, in which he would listen for the strong, quick, manly footstep and the closing of the door in the corridor beyond:--silences of the dawn, when no clatter of hoofs followed by a cheery call rang out for some one to take Spitfire:--silences of the breakfast table, when he drank his coffee alone, Alec tip-toeing about like a lost spirit. Sometimes his heart would triumph and he begin to think out ways and means by which the past could be effaced. Then again the flag of his pride would be raised aloft so that he and all the people could see, and the old hard look would once more settle in his face, the lips straighten and the thin fingers tighten. No--NO! No a.s.sa.s.sins for him--no vulgar brawlers--and it was at best a vulgar brawl--and this too within the confines of Moorlands, where, for five generations, only gentlemen had been bred!

And yet, product as he was of a regime that worshipped no ideals but its own; hide-bound by the traditions of his ancestry; holding in secret disdain men and women who could not boast of equal wealth and lineage; dictatorial, uncontradictable; stickler for obsolete forms and ceremonies--there still lay deep under the crust of his pride the heart of a father, and, by his standards, the soul of a gentleman.

What this renegade son of his thought of it all; this disturber of his father's sleeping and waking hours, was far easier to discover. Dazed as Harry had been at the parental verdict and heart-broken as he still was over the dire results, he could not, though he tried, see what else he could have done. His father, he argued to himself, had shot and killed a man when he was but little older than himself, and for an offence much less grave than Willits's insult to Kate: he had frequently boasted of it, showing him the big bra.s.s b.u.t.ton that had deflected the bullet and saved his life. So had his Uncle George, five years before--not a dead man that time, but a lame one--who was still limping around the club and very good friends the two, so far as he knew. Why then blame HIM? As for the law of hospitality being violated, that was but one of the idiosyncrasies of his father, who was daft on hospitality. How could Willits be his guest when he was his enemy? St. George had begged the wounded man to apologize; if he had done so he would have extended his hand and taken him to Kate, who, upon a second apology, would have extended her hand, and the incident would have been closed. It was Willits's stubbornness and bad breeding, then, that had caused the catastrophe--not his own bullet.

Besides no real harm had been done--that is, nothing very serious.

Willits had gained strength rapidly--so much so that he had sat up the third day. Moreover, he had the next morning been carried to one of the downstairs bedrooms, where, he understood, Kate had sent her black mammy for news of him, and where, later on, he had been visited by both Mrs.

Rutter and Kate--a most extraordinary condescension on the young girl's part, and one for which Willits should be profoundly grateful all the days of his life.

Nor had Willits's people made any complaint; nor, so far as he could ascertain, had any one connected with either the town or county government started an investigation. It was outside the precincts of Kennedy Square, and, therefore, the town prosecuting attorney (who had heard every detail at the Chesapeake from St. George) had not been called upon to act, and it was well known that no minion of the law in and about Moorlands would ever dare face the Lord of the Manor in any official capacity.

Why, then, had he been so severely punished?

CHAPTER VIII

While all this talk filled the air it is worthy of comment that after his denunciation of Pancoast's views at the club, St. George never again discussed the duel and its outcome. His mind was filled with more important things:--one in particular--a burning desire to bring the lovers together, no matter at what cost nor how great the barriers. He had not, despite his silence, altered a hair-line of the opinion he had held on the night he ordered the gig, fastened Harry's heavy coat around the young man's shoulders, and started back with him through the rain to his house on Kennedy Square; nor did he intend to. This, summed up, meant that the colonel was a tyrant, Willits a vulgarian, and Harry a hot-headed young knight, who, having been forced into a position where he could neither breathe nor move, had gallantly fought his way out.

The one problem that gave him serious trouble was the selection of the precise moment when he should make a strategic move on Kate's heart; lesser problems were his manner of approaching her and the excuses he would offer for Harry's behavior. These not only kept him awake at night, but pursued him like an avenging spirit when he sought the quiet paths of the old square, the dogs at his heels. The greatest of all barriers, he felt a.s.sured, would be Kate herself. He had seen enough of her in that last interview, when his tender pleading had restored the harmonies between herself and Harry, to know that she was no longer the child whose sweetness he loved, or the girl whose beauty he was proud of--but the woman whose judgment he must satisfy. Nor could he see that any immediate change in her mental att.i.tude was likely to occur. Some time had now pa.s.sed since Harry's arrival at his house, and every day the boy had begged for admission at Kate's door, only to be denied by Ben, the old butler. His mother, who had visited her exiled son almost daily, had then called on her, bearing two important pieces of news--one being that after hours of pleading Harry had consented to return to Moorlands and beg his father's pardon, provided that irate gentleman should send for him, and the other the recounting of a message of condolence and sympathy which Willits had sent Harry from his sick-bed, in which he admitted that he had been greatly to blame. (An admission which fairly bubbled out of him when he learned that Harry had a.s.sisted Teackle in dressing his wound.)

And yet with all this pressure the young girl had held her own. To every one outside the Rutter clan she had insisted that she was sorry for Harry, but that she could never marry a man whose temper she could not trust. She never put this into words in answering the well-meant inquiries of such girl friends as Nellie Murdoch, Sue Dorsey, and the others; then her eyes would only fill with tears as she begged them not to question her further. Nor had she said as much to her father, who on one occasion had asked her the plump question--"Do you still intend to marry that hot-head?"--to which she had returned the equally positive answer--"No, I never shall!" She reserved her full meaning for St.

George when he should again entreat her--as she knew he would at the first opportunity--to forget the past and begin the old life once more.

At the end of the second week St. George had made up his mind as to his course; and at the end of the third the old diplomat, who had dared defeat before, boldly mounted the Seymour steps. He would appeal to Harry's love for her, and all would be well. He had done so before, picturing the misery the boy was suffering, and he would try it again.

If he could only reach her heart through the armor of her reserve she would yield.

She answered his cheery call up the stairway in person, greeting him silently, but with arms extended, leading him to a seat beside her, where she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

"Harry has tried to see you every day, Kate," he began, patting her shoulders lovingly in the effort to calm her. "I found him under your window the other night; he walks the streets by the hour, then he comes home exhausted, throws himself on his bed, and lies awake till daylight."

The girl raised her head and looked at him for a moment. She knew what he had come for--she knew, too, how sorry he felt for her--for Harry--for everybody who had suffered because of this horror.

"Uncle George," she answered, choking back her tears, speaking slowly, weighing each word--"you've known me from a little girl--ever since my dear mother died. You have been a big brother to me many, many times and I love you for it. If I were determined to do anything that would hurt me, and you found it out in time, you would come and tell me so, wouldn't you?"

St. George nodded his head in answer, but he did not interrupt. Her heart was being slowly unrolled before him, and he would wait until it was all bare.

"Now," she continued, "the case is reversed, and you want me to do something which I know will hurt me."

"But you love him, Kate?"

"Yes--that is the worst part of it all," she answered with a stifled sob--"yes, I love him." She lifted herself higher on the cushions and put her beautiful arms above her head, her eyes looking into s.p.a.ce as if she was trying to solve the problem of what her present resolve would mean to both herself and Harry.

St. George began again: "And you remember how--"

She turned impatiently and dropped one hand until it rested on his own.

He thought he had never seen her look so lovely and never so unhappy.

Then she said in pleading tones--her eyes blinded by half-restrained tears:

"Don't ask me to REMEMBER, dear Uncle George--help me to forget! You can do no kinder thing for both of us."

"But think of your whole future happiness, Kate--think how important it is to you--to Harry--to everybody--that you should not shut him out of your life."

"I have thought! G.o.d knows I have thought until sometimes I think I shall go mad. He first breaks his promise about drinking and I forgive him; then he yields to a sudden impulse and behaves like a mad-man and you ask me to forgive him again. He never once thinks of me, nor of my humiliation!" Her lips were quivering, but her voice rang clear.

"He thinks of nothing else BUT you," he pleaded. "Let your heart work--don't throw him into the street as his father has done. He loves you so."

"_I_--throw HIM in the street! He has thrown ME--mortified me before everybody--behaved like a--No,--I can't--I won't discuss it!"

"May I--"

"No--not another word. I love you too much to let this come between us.

Let us talk of something else--anything--ANYTHING."

The whole chart of her heart had been unrolled. Her head and not her heart was dominant. He felt, moreover, that no argument of his would be of any use. Time might work out the solution, but this he could not hasten. Nor, if the truth be told, did he blame her. It was, from the girl's point of view, most unfortunate, of course, that the two calamities of Harry's drunkenness and the duel had come so close together. Perhaps--and for the first time in his life he weakened before her tears--perhaps if he had thrown the case of pistols out of the window, sent one man to his father and the other back to Kennedy Square, it might all have been different--but then again, could this have been done, and if it had been, would not all have to be done over again the next day? At last he asked hopelessly:

"Have you no message for Harry?"

"None," she answered resolutely.

"And you will not see him?"

"No--we can never heal wounds by keeping them open." This came calmly, and as if she had made up her mind, and in so determined a tone that he saw it meant an end to the interview.

He rose from his seat and without another word turned toward the door.

She gained her feet slowly, as if the very movement caused her pain; put her arms around his neck, kissed him on the cheek, followed him to the door, waved her hand to him as she watched him pick his way across the square, and threw herself on her lounge in an agony of tears.

That night St. George and Harry sat by the smouldering wood fire; the early spring days were warm and joyous, but the nights were still cool.

The boy sat hunched up in his chair, his face drawn into lines from the anxiety of the past week; his mind absorbed in the story that St. George had brought from the Seymour house. As in all ardent temperaments, these differences with Kate, which had started as a spark, had now developed into a conflagration which was burning out his heart. His love for Kate was not a part of his life--it was ALL of his life. He was ready now for any sacrifice, no matter how humiliating. He would go down on his knees to his father if she wished it. He would beg Willits's pardon--he would abase himself in any way St. George should suggest. He had done what he thought was right, and he would do it over again under like circ.u.mstances, but he would grovel at Kate's feet and kiss the ground she stepped on if she required it of him.

St. George, who had sat quiet, examining closely the backs of his finely modelled hands as if to find some solution of the difficulty written in their delicate articulated curves, heard his outburst in silence.

Now and then he would call to Todd, who was never out of reach of his voice--no matter what the hour--to replenish the fire or snuff the candles, but he answered only in nods and monosyllables to Harry. One suggestion only of the heart-broken lover seemed to promise any result, and that was his making it up with his father as his mother had suggested. This wall being broken down, and Willits no longer an invalid, perhaps Kate would see matters in a different and more favorable light.

"But suppose father doesn't send for me, Uncle George, what will I do then?"

"Well, he is your father, Harry."

"And you think then I had better go home and have it out with him?"

St. George hesitated. He himself would have seen Rutter in Hades before he would have apologized to him. In fact his anger choked him so every time he thought of the brutal and disgraceful scene he had witnessed when the boy had been ordered from his home, that he could hardly get his breath. But then Kate was not his sweetheart, much as he loved her.

"I don't know, Harry. I am not his son," he answered in an undecided way. Then something the boy's mother had said rose in his mind: "Didn't your mother say that your father's loneliness without you was having its effect?--and wasn't her advice to wait until he should send for you?"

"Yes--that was about it."