Kildares of Storm Part 17

Kate got with difficulty to her feet. "Where you shall go?" she repeated.

Then she thought she understood. Jemima had remembered the terms of her father's will, by which in case of her mother's re-marriage the property of Storm was forfeit.

"Oh, but daughter!"--the words tumbled over each other in their eagerness to be out. "You need not trouble about that! Losing Storm won't matter. You lose only what your father left, and I have doubled that--trebled it. Besides, there is the little property that came to me from my parents. I've always meant, when I married, to give you more than my marriage would cost you. That is why I have worked so hard, and saved. Perhaps you thought me miserly, grasping? I know people do. But that is why. The money is to be yours, all yours and Jacqueline's--at once, not after I die. We shall need very little, Jacques and I. Just a start somewhere--"

The girl stopped the hurrying words with a gesture of some dignity. "We have not thought about the money part yet, Mother. We were simply deciding where to live now."

"To live?" The words were puzzled.

"Yes. Surely you don't expect us to go on living with you and our father's murderer?"

Kate groped at the wall behind her for support. Here was a thing she had not thought of. She had known that she might lose her children's respect, perhaps, temporarily, their love; but she had counted unconsciously upon the force of daily habit, of companionship, of her own personal magnetism, to win back both, as she had won them from others. Deprived of their companionship, what chance had she? They were lost to her, utterly. Yet not even in that bitter moment did it occur to her that she might fail the man who was coming back to her out of his living death.

She said tonelessly, "You are very young to leave your mother. Where could you go?"

The girl had her answer ready. "To my father's aunt Jemima. Now I understand why you and she have not been on good terms. I understand many things now. When she hears that we are leaving you, and why, I think she will be glad to offer us a home."

Kate bowed her head, "And Jacqueline? Is she, too, willing to leave me?"

At this there was a cry from inside the door, and a dishevelled, sobbing figure flung itself into Kate's arms and clung, desperately.

"No, no, _no_! Don't let her make me. I won't, I won't! She's been saying--oh, terrible things, Mummy! I tried not to listen. She said you didn't love us, you loved him. She said that when he comes--that man, Philip's father--you wouldn't want us around any more. But I know better. No matter who comes, you'll want _me_, you'll want your baby!

Won't you, Mother? Dearest, darlingest Mother!"

"Jacky, don't be so weak," commanded her sister, sternly. "Remember what I told you. Remember our father."

"But I never knew our father. What do I care about him? It's Mummy I want. Whoever she loves, I love. I don't care _what_ she's done! I wouldn't care if she'd killed Father herself--"

"Child, hush, hush!" whispered the trembling woman.

"I wouldn't! I'd just know he needed killing. There, there--" she had her mother's head on her breast now, fondling it, crooning over it as if it were Mag's baby. "Look--you've made her cry!" She stamped a furious foot at her sister. "What are you staring at with your cold, wicked eyes? You told me she was a bad woman--my _mother_! If she is, then I choose to be bad myself. I'd rather be bad and like her than good as--G.o.d. Now, then! Get out of here, you Jemmy Kildare!"

Jemima went. Sternly she closed her door upon the clinging pair, shutting both out together into the world of people who were not Kildares. But they were together.

CHAPTER XIII

The night before Jacques Benoix' release found Kate Kildare lying sleepless within sight of a grim gray wall that blocked the end of the street upon which her window opened. A great fatigue was upon her, a fatigue more of the spirit than of the body. For years, it seemed to her, she had been fighting the world alone, unaided; and now that victory was within her grasp it tasted strangely like defeat.

She tried to realize that the gray wall no longer stood between her and happiness; was a menace that with the sun's rays would disappear out of her life like so much mist. But the effort was useless. The aura of shadow that hung always over that place wrapped her in its suffocating miasma, became part of the very air she breathed.

She had taken rooms in an old hostelry near the railroad station, wishing to avoid the curious recognition that would have been inevitable in the town's one good hotel. She was occupying what had been known in days of former prosperity as the bridal suite. This consisted of a dingy parlor, in which on the morrow Philip was to perform the ceremony that made her his father's wife, and of the room in which she lay, its walls dimly visible in the light of an arc-lamp just outside the window, gay with saffron cupids who disported themselves among roses of the same complexion. Over the mantel-piece of black iron hung an improbably colored lithograph of lovers embracing.

Kate found the effect of these decorations ironic, curiously depressing.

She was not usually so responsive to environment.

Very near her now Jacques must be lying sleepless, too; watching for the dawn as she was watching--but with what eagerness, what trembling hope!

Her depression shamed her. She tried in vain to conjure up a consoling vision of the man she had loved so long. The figure that came to her mind was more Philip than his father. She put it from her impatiently, angrily.

"I believe I'm developing nerves," she thought.

Her eyes, weary of the meaningless, leering antics of the cupids, presently came to rest on the ceiling above her bed, which appeared to be a-flutter with small pieces of pasteboard. She made them out to be business cards, evidently momentoes of pa.s.sing knights of the road who had amused themselves by sailing their credentials heavenward, each with a transfixing pin. Kate smiled a little, oddly cheered by these reminders of carefree, commonplace humanity which had lain sleepless also in that dreary bridal chamber. The knights of the road were better company for her thoughts than brides who might have dreamed there dreams to which she had forfeited her right; young, innocent brides who were not fighting their way to happiness over the happiness of their children.

Now and again a train came thundering past her window, till the old house shook to its foundation. For these she listened, tense and quivering. One of them would be bearing away from her forever the first-born of her children....

While she made ready for her journey, Jemima had also made ready for a journey, grimly; Jacqueline wandering between the two like a woebegone young specter, all her gaiety dissolved in tears. Mrs. Kildare herself had written to her husband's aunt, for the first time in years, explaining briefly her own intentions and Jemima's att.i.tude with regard to them. The reply had come by telegraph, not to her, but to Jemima.

Kate did not ask to see it. Without comment, she had observed the girl's preparations for immediate departure. She could not trust herself to speak.

It was known throughout the countryside by this time that the French doctor was indeed coming out of prison, and that the Madam intended to marry him. The news brought Professor Thorpe post-haste to Storm, pale, but ready as ever with his services.

"I never knew Dr. Benoix well, but now I shall make up for lost time,"

he said quietly. "What are your arrangements? Will you need a best man, or anything of that sort? Here I am."

Kate thanked him with tears in her eyes, declining.

"Jacques will prefer to see n.o.body, just at first, but Philip and me, I think. But if you _could_ do something with Jemmy? She will listen to you, if to anybody. Make her understand, somehow--make her believe--" Her choking voice could not finish, and Thorpe silently patted her shoulder.

He had done his loyal best with the girl already, without success. He was handicapped by his promise not to say anything that would shake Jemima's pa.s.sionate pride and faith in her father.

"I have nothing further to do with my mother's affairs," was her stony answer to all his arguments. "The day she brings that man into my father's house, I leave it, naturally; and I shall do my best to make Jacqueline leave it. That is all."

Her packing went on apace. On the last morning she found a check-book at her breakfast plate.

"Do you mean me to have this, Mother?" she asked in the coldly courteous voice she had used toward Kate since her discovery.

"Yes. There will be a deposit to your credit on the first day of each month until you come of age, when a third of my property will be turned over to you."

The girl flushed deeply, but said nothing except "Thank you." She would have liked to refuse all aid from her mother; but after all, was she not being deprived of her rightful inheritance? Let her mother make what reparation was possible.

To the last moment Kate hoped for some sign of relenting, struggled to find some explanation, some plea, that would draw the girl to her. But those who have formed the habit of ruling, suffer one disadvantage among their fellows: it is impossible for them to become suppliants.

"Good-by, Mother."

When she started for the train that was to take her to Frankfort, Jemima followed her to the door.

"You will be here when--we return, to-morrow?" Kate's steady voice hid very successfully her agonized suspense.

"No, Mother."

"Ah!... Then your aunt expects you? She knows what train to meet?"

"Yes, thank you. Professor Thorpe has made all the arrangements. He will put me on the train in Lexington."

Kate bent over her child. "Good-by, my daughter."