Kildares of Storm Part 56

"I suppose, if one has a brain at all, it's everywhere, in the fingers as well as the head; just like G.o.d in the universe," said the other, rather absently. "Anyway, if I've got brains, you've got hair, and I don't know but what that's more important. You'll be a lovely creature like mother when I'm a weazened little old woman, as bald as a monkey--or with false things on, like Aunt Jemima. Intellectual hair is always so thin and brittle."

"Why, Blossom! Yours is just like curly sunlight!"

"Oh, yes, pretty while it lasts," said the other, dispa.s.sionately. "But not vital, like yours and mother's. You're both so splendidly vital.

That's why--Look here, Jacky, Philip's more gone on mother than ever, isn't he? He just follows her around with his eyes, like that sentimental hound puppy who is always trying to crawl into her lap--"

"And spilling off," finished Jacqueline, with a chuckle. "I know! If she says 'good dog' to him, he wags steadily for an hour.--I used to think you were wrong about it," she added seriously, "and that Phil couldn't possibly be in love with any one so old as mother; not like men are with girls, you know. But lately--I'm not so sure."

Poor Jacqueline had learned a good deal lately about the possibilities of loving.

Jemima commented with satisfaction. "I'm glad _you_ see it, anyway!"

"Of course he has not told me anything, but he--understands so well,"

sighed the other, without explaining what it was that he understood. "I wish he didn't, Jemmy. I _would_ like to see dear old Phil happy! He's such a darling.--Do you suppose we could possibly persuade mother ever to marry him?"

Jemima started and dropped her hair-brush. That was a solution which had not occurred to her.

"I think it would be such a good thing, don't you, Jemmy? They're both so wonderful."

"Nonsense!" said Jemima sharply, recovering from the shock. "What an idea! Mother wouldn't _dream_ of such an unseemly thing, of course."

"I'm not so sure," said Jacqueline, with her new pathetic little wisdom.

"She's awfully sweet to Phil, always wanting him round, and petting him, and making a fuss over him."

"Just as she does over that hound puppy! No, my dear, you may be sure that whatever she does, mother will never do anything so undignified as to marry Dr. Benoix' son. On the contrary, I happen to know that she is plotting to marry him to some one else."

"Jemmy! Our Philip? To whom?"

The hint dropped. "To you," said Jemima.

But it was not greeted with the shocked surprise, the incredulous dismay, which she had counted upon. Jacqueline considered the matter in silence for some moments. At length she said, musingly, "That might not be a bad idea. Philip really ought to get married--the Bishop told him so. It creates confidence, like with young doctors. And if you really think mother never will--Of course I could keep house for him, and hold the Mothers' Meetings and all, and make him more comfortable than that wretched Dilsey."

Jemima gasped.--"Do you mean to say you _would_?--So soon?" She bit her tongue, but Jacqueline did not seem to notice the unfortunate reference.

"Oh, me?" she said a little wearily. "What does it matter about me? I mean--I suppose a girl has to marry some time, and I'm used to Philip.

I'm awfully fond of him, really. He'd make a wonderful father, wouldn't he?"

"Jacqueline Kildare!" cried the bride, blushing.

The girl met her startled eyes in the gla.s.s. For the moment she seemed the older of the two. "Why, didn't you think of that when you married G.o.ddy? No, you wouldn't have, I suppose. But it seems to me the most important thing of all, you know. It is something that will last, when--other things--don't. It seems to me people could stand a great deal of unhappiness," she said haltingly, "if they had babies. They wouldn't always be asking themselves, Why? Why? The answer would be there, right in their arms.--So if mother really wants me to marry Philip, and he doesn't mind ... I don't believe I shall mind, either."

Jemima made her last stand. "Suppose Philip does mind?"

"Then he won't ask me, of course, goosie!--Do show me how you made that perfectly beautiful puff."

Jemima returned to her lord and master somewhat subdued and crestfallen.

She realized that for once she had overreached herself.

CHAPTER XL

Jemima's opposition had the effect, usual with determined natures, of crystallizing Mrs. Kildare's purpose, and she watched with impatience a situation that appeared rather slow in developing. Philip, touched to the heart by the change in Jacqueline, devoted much time and thought to her comforting, overtures which the girl met more than half way. The two were constantly together now, galloping over the frosty fields, driving about the country in the newly arrived Ark (which understanding Philip had accepted with a generosity that matched Jemima's), or reading aloud to each other in front of the roaring fire in Storm hall.

Kate, realizing however unconsciously that when she was about he had less attention for her daughter, kept out of their way as much as possible. It occurred to her that Philip was rather neglecting his parish in Jacqueline's behalf. She smiled to herself, and frequently commended Providence for its a.s.sistance.

But Providence moved a trifle slowly for a woman accustomed to prompt and decisive action. She yearned to advise Philip to strike while the iron was hot, to claim the girl for his own before her natural youth and high spirits rea.s.serted themselves and made her less susceptible to tenderness. She wanted to see the two she loved happy together, as she had wanted nothing else since she put the thought of happiness out of her own life. Why were they wasting so much priceless time?

Suddenly, one afternoon, as she was riding home to Storm, the reason occurred to her. Philip's pride! the same pride that would permit him to accept no help from her even as a boy, when the small income his mother left him would have been insufficient to carry him through school and seminary if he had not managed to secure tutoring positions to eke out.

He had accepted, perforce, the home she offered him during vacations, but nothing more, not even a horse for his personal use. He was a poor man, would perhaps always be a poor man, dependent upon the meager salary of a country clergyman; and he was the son of a convict to boot.

Was it likely that he would ask in marriage the hand of one of the young heiresses of Storm? How stupid she had been!

"Bless the boy! I'll have to take this thing in hand myself," thought Kate Kildare, glad of an excuse, and turned her horse's head toward the rectory.

Philip, absorbed in putting final touches to his next day's sermon, looked up from his desk to see her smiling in at the door of the room that was his study, his dining-room and his parlor combined.

He sprang to his feet. "You!" he cried, with a look in his eyes that might have told its own story to a woman less accustomed to appreciative male glances. "I--I was just thinking of you."

That was true enough. She would have found it difficult to come upon him at a time when he was not thinking of her, somewhere in the back of his mind. Lately, whenever he had been with Jacqueline, the girl reminded him so constantly, so almost poignantly, of her mother that sometimes he caught himself speaking to her in the very voice he used with his lady, a softer, deeper voice that was the unconscious expression of the inmost man. His congregation heard it sometimes, too, now that Mrs. Kildare had come to sit among them.--He had been writing out his sermon with unusual care because he had remembered that she would listen to it.

He ran to wheel his shabby wing-chair up to the fire, where a pot of coffee simmered on the hob, with a covered plate beside it.

"My supper," he explained, with a gesture of apology. "I often cook in here because it seems more cozy than the kitchen."

"Is Dilsey misbehaving again?"

He nodded ruefully. "I can't think where she gets the stuff, Miss Kate; the store won't sell it to her."

"Out of your emergency cupboard, I fancy. You give her all your keys, of course, for fear she will imagine you don't trust her? Oh, Phil, Phil,"

she laughed at his guilty face. "How you do need a wife to look after you!"

She settled herself comfortably in the comfortable chair, looking about the pleasant, twilit room with the sense of well-being that always came to her there. It was more homelike to her than the home where she had lived for twenty years, her big rough house that had taken on so irrevocably the look of the Kildares. Here faded brocade furniture, books, well-shaded lamps, a blue bowl filled with rosy apples, a jar of cedar-boughs that took the place of flowers now that the garden had gone to its winter rest--all these things spoke to her, as they spoke to Philip, of other days, of his father, even of the shadowy lady with her slight, patient cough who had been his mother, and whom Kate always winced to remember. In this place she felt among friends. She was happy to think of her Jacqueline come at last into such a haven as Philip's home.

"Bring me some of your supper--especially the coffee, it smells so good!--and then come and sit beside me. Here--" she indicated a low ha.s.sock at her feet--"where I can tweak your ear if I want to; because I'm going to scold."

Philip obeyed in silence. He had fallen rather shy of her, now that he had her here as he had so often dreamed, sitting beside him in the twilight, sharing his supper, leaning her head against the cushions of his own chair, her slender arched feet, in their trim riding-boots, resting upon his fender. It was not often that the Madam found time or occasion to stop at the Rectory. What need, indeed, when Philip was so constantly at Storm? But the image of her sat more often than she guessed just as she was sitting now, with a worshiper at her feet.

His own thoughts, more than her presence, kept him silent. The phrase she had uttered so carelessly (he did not altogether know his lady there!) had set them clamoring--"How you do need a wife to look after you...."

Philip tried in vain to remember a time when he had not loved this woman. As a child, made older than his years by the shadow of his mother's invalidism, he had treasured his glimpses of the reckless, beautiful girl with her two babies, as other children might treasure glimpses into fairyland. As an older boy, with his world already in ruins about him, he had idealized his one friend into a sort of G.o.ddess, a super-human deity who could do no wrong, whose every word was magic and whose slightest wish law. At that period, if Kate had bade him rob a bank or commit a murder, he would have done it unquestioningly, happy only to be of service to her. Later, as he grew into a thoughtful young manhood, he came to understand that even deities may have their faults; but Kate's were dear faults, never of the heart. As she became less G.o.ddess she became more human, and so nearer to him, until at last she was woman to his man. But a very wonderful woman, to be approached, even in thought, with reverence. Philip's love had so grown with him, step by step, as to be part of the fabric of himself, large now as his very nature; and that was large indeed.

Yet never once in all the years had he imagined the sacrilege of making her his wife, until there came the farewell letter from his father in prison; that man used to reading the hearts of men, who saw the truth between the lines of his son's letters, and deliberately gave the woman both loved into his son's keeping.

"She is still young," Jacques Benoix had written, "and you are young, and my time is over. You must be to her what I would have been. We must consider now nothing but her greatest happiness, you and I, her greatest good."

Since then Philip, if he had not thought of it before, thought of little else than of marrying Kate Kildare.