Kennedy Square Part 3

"You'll know when I come for you."

"And you think it will be all right, don't you?" he pleaded. "You'll tell her what an awful time I've had, won't you, Uncle George?"

"Yes, every word of it."

"And that I haven't slept a wink since--"

"Yes--and that you are going to drown yourself and blow your head off and swallow poison. Now off with you and let me think how I am to begin straightening out this idiotic mess. Nine o'clock, remember, and in the hall until I come for you."

"Yes--nine o'clock! Oh!--you good Uncle George! I'll never forget you for it," and with a grasp of St. George's hand and another outpouring of grat.i.tude, the young fellow swung wide the door, clattered down the steps, threw his leg over Spitfire, and dashed up the street.

CHAPTER II

If Kate's ancestors had wasted any part of their substance in too lavish a hospitality, after the manner of the spendthrift whose extravagances were recounted in the preceding chapter, there was nothing to indicate it in the home of their descendants. No loose shutters, crumbling chimneys, or blistered woodwork defaced the Seymour mansion:--the touch of the restorer was too apparent. No sooner did a shutter sag or a hinge give way than away it went to the carpenter or the blacksmith; no sooner did a banister wabble, or a table crack, or an andiron lose a leg, than up came somebody with a kit, or a bag, or a box of tools, and they were as good as new before you could wink your eye. Indeed, so great was the desire to keep things up that it was only necessary (so a wag said) to scratch a match on old Seymour's front door to have its panels repainted the next morning.

And then its seclusion:--while its neighbors--the Temple mansion among them--had been placed boldly out to the full building line where they could see and be seen, the Seymours, with that spirit of aloofness which had marked the family for generations, had set their dwelling back ten paces, thrown up a hedge of sweet-smelling box to screen the inmates from the gaze of pa.s.sers-by, planted three or four big trees as protection for the upper windows, and, to insure still greater privacy, had put up a swinging wooden gate, kept shut by a ball and chain, its clang announcing the entrance of each and every visitor.

And this same spirit was manifest the moment you stepped into the wide hall, glanced at the old family portraits marching steadily, one after another, up the side of the s.p.a.cious stairs (revarnished every other year)--entered the great drawing-room hung with yellow satin and decorated with quaint mirrors, and took a scat in one of the all-embracing arm-chairs, there to await the arrival of either the master of the house or his charming daughter.

If it were the master to whom you wished to pay your respects, one glance at the Honorable Howard Dougla.s.s Seymour would have convinced you that he was precisely the kind of man who should have had charge of so well-ordered a home: so well brushed was he--so clean-shaven--so immaculately upholstered--the two points of his collar pinching his cheeks at the same precise angle; his faultless black stock fitting to perfection, the lapels of his high-rolled coat matching exactly. And then the correct parting of the thin gray hair and the two little gray brush-tails of lovelocks that were combed in front of his ears, there to become a part of the two little dabs of gray whiskers that stretched from his temples to his bleached cheekbones. Yes--a most carefully preserved, prim, and well-ordered person was Kate's father.

As to the great man's career, apart from his service in the legislature, which won him his t.i.tle, there was no other act of his life which marked him apart from his fellows. Suffice it to say that he was born a gentleman without a penny to his name; that he married Kate's mother when she was twenty and he forty (and here is another story, and a sad one)--she the belle of her time--and sole heir to the estate of her grandfather, Captain Hugh Barkeley, the rich ship-owner--and that the alliance had made him a gentleman of unlimited leisure, she, at her death, having left all her property to her daughter Kate, with the Honorable Prim as custodian.

And this trust, to his credit be it said--for Seymour was of Scotch descent, a point in his favor with old Captain Barkeley, who was Scotch on his mother's side, and, therefore, somewhat canny--was most religiously kept, he living within his ample means--or Kate's, which was the same thing--discharging the duties of father, citizen, and friend, with the regularity of a clock--so many hours with his daughter, so many hours at his club, so many hours at his office; the intermediate minutes being given over to resting, dressing, breakfasting, dining, sleeping, and no doubt praying; the precise moment that marked the beginning and ending of each task having been fixed years in advance by this most exemplary, highly respectable, and utterly colorless old gentleman of sixty.

That this dry sh.e.l.l of a man could be the father of our spontaneous lovely Kate was one of the things that none of the younger people around Kennedy Square could understand--but then few of them had known her beautiful mother with her proud step and flashing eyes.

But it is not the punctilious, methodical Prim whom St. George wishes to see to-night; nor does he go through any of the formalities customary to the house. There is no waiting until old Ben, the family butler in snuff-colored coat and silver b.u.t.tons, shuffles upstairs or into the library, or wherever the inmates were to be found, there to announce "Ma.s.sa George Temple." Nor did he send in his card, or wait until his knock was answered. He simply swung back the gate until the old chain and ball, shocked at his familiarity, rattled itself into a rage, strode past the neatly trimmed, fragrant box, pushed open the door--no front door was ever locked in the daytime in Kennedy Square, and few at night--and halting at the bottom step, called up the silent stairs in a voice that was a joyous greeting in itself:

"Kate, you darling! come down as quick as your dear little feet will carry you! It's Uncle George, do you hear?--or shall I come up and bring you down in my arms, you bunch of roses? It won't be the first time."

The first time was when she was a year old.

"Oh!--is that you, Uncle George? Yes,--just as soon as I do up my back hair." The voice came from the top of the stairs--a lark's voice singing down from high up. "Father's out and--"

"Yes--I know he's out; I met him on his way to the club. Hurry now--I've got the best news in the world for you."

"Yes--in a minute."

He knew her minutes, and how long they could be, and in his impatience roamed about the wide hall examining the old English engravings and colored prints decorating the panels until he heard her step overhead and looking up watched her cross the upper hall, her well-poised, aristocratic head high in air, her full, well-rounded, blossoming body imaged in the loose embroidered scarf wound about her sloping shoulders.

Soon he caught the wealth of her blue-black hair in whose folds her negro mammy had pinned a rose that matched the brilliancy of her cheeks, two stray curls wandering over her neck; her broad forehead, with clearly marked eyebrows, arching black lashes shading l.u.s.trous, slumbering eyes; and as she drew nearer, her warm red lips, exquisite teeth, and delicate chin, and last, the little feet that played hide and seek beneath her quilted petticoat: a tall, dark, full-blooded, handsome girl of eighteen with an air of command and distinction tempered by a certain sweet dignity and delicious coquetry--a woman to be loved even when she ruled and to be reverenced even when she trifled.

She had reached the floor now, and the two arm in arm, he patting her hand, she laughing beside him, had entered the small library followed by the old butler bringing another big candelabra newly lighted.

"It's so good of you to come," she cried, her face alight with the joy of seeing him--"and you look so happy and well--your trip down the bay has done you a world of good. Ben says the ducks you sent father are the best we have had this winter. Now tell me, dear Uncle George"--she had him in one of the deep arm-chairs by this time, with a cushion behind his shoulders--"I am dying to hear all about it."

"Don't you 'dear Uncle George' me until you've heard what I've got to say."

"But you said you had the best news in the world for me," she laughed, looking at him from under her lashes.

"So I have."

"What is it?"

"Harry."

The girl's face clouded and her lips quivered. Then she sat bolt upright.

"I won't hear a word about him. He's broken his promise to me and I will never trust him again. If I thought you'd come to talk about Harry, I wouldn't have come down."

St. George lay back in his chair, shrugged his shoulders, stole a look at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and said with an a.s.sumed dignity, a smile playing about his lips:

"All right, off goes his head--exit the scoundrel. Much as I could do to keep him out of Jones Falls this morning, but of course now it's all over we can let Spitfire break his neck. That's the way a gentleman should die of love--and not be fished out of a dirty stream with his clothes all bespattered with mud."

"But he won't die for love. He doesn't know what love means or he wouldn't behave as he does. Do you know what really happened, Uncle George?" Her brown eyes were flashing, her cheeks aflame with her indignation.

"Oh, I know exactly what happened. Harry told me with the tears running down his cheeks. It was dreadful--INEXCUSABLE--BARBAROUS! I've been that way myself--tumbled half-way down these same stairs before you were born and had to be put to bed, which accounts for the miserable scapegrace I am to-day." His face was in a broad smile, but his voice never wavered.

Kate looked at him and put out her hand. "You never did--I won't believe a word of it."

"Ask your father, my dear. He helped carry me upstairs, and Ben pulled off my boots. Oh, it was most disgraceful! I'm just beginning to live it down," and he reached over and patted the girl's cheek, his hearty laugh ringing through the room.

Kate was smiling now--her Uncle George was always irresistible when he was like this.

"But Harry isn't you," she pouted.

"ISN'T ME!--why I was ten times worse! He's only twenty-one and I was twenty-five. He's got four years the better of me in which to reform."

"He'll NEVER be like you--you never broke a promise in your life. He gave me his word of honor he would never get--yes--I'm just going to say it--drunk--again: yes--that's the very word--DRUNK! I don't care--I won't have it! I won't have anything to do with anybody who breaks his promise, and who can't keep sober. My father was never so in his life, and Harry shall never come near me again if he--"

"Hold on!--HOLD ON! Oh, what an unforgiving minx! You Seymours are all like tinder boxes--your mother was just like you and so was--"

"Well, not father," she bridled, with a toss of her head.

St. George smiled queerly--Prim was one of his jokes. "Your father, my dear Kate, has the milk of human kindness in his veins, not red fighting blood. That makes a whole lot of difference. Now listen to me:--you love Harry--"

"No! I DESPISE him! I told him so!" She had risen from her seat and had moved to the mantel, where she stood looking into the fire, her back toward him.

"Don't you interrupt me, you blessed girl--just you listen to Uncle George for a minute. You DO love Harry--you can't help it--n.o.body can.

If you had seen him this morning you would have thrown your arms around him in a minute--I came near doing it myself. Of course he's wild, reckless, and hot-headed like all the Rutters and does no end of foolish things, but you wouldn't love him if he was different. He's just like Spitfire--never keeps still a minute--restless, pawing the ground, or all four feet in the air--then away she goes! You can't reason with her--you don't wish to; you get impatient when she chafes at the bit because you are determined she shall keep still, but if you wanted her to go like the wind and she couldn't, you'd be more dissatisfied than ever. The pawing and chafing is of no matter; it is her temperament that counts. So it is with Harry. He wouldn't be the lovable, dashing, high-spirited young fellow he is if he didn't kick over the traces once in a while and break everything to pieces--his promises among them. And it isn't his fault--it's the Spanish and Dutch blood in his veins--the blood of that old hidalgo and his Dutch ancestor, De Ruyter--that crops out once in a while. Harry would be a pirate and sweep the Spanish main if he had lived in those days, instead of being a gentleman who values nothing in life so much as the woman he loves."

He had been speaking to her back all this time, the girl never moving, the outlines of her graceful body in silhouette against the blaze.

"Then why doesn't he prove it?" she sighed. She liked old hidalgos and had no aversion to pirates if they were manly and brave about their work.