Kildares of Storm Part 64

But seeing that he was already mounting the stairs, paying no attention whatever to her virtuous horror, the French-woman followed him on tiptoe, murmuring to herself, "_Mais comme c'est chic, ca_!" She had her racial taste for the spectacular.

At first she was somewhat disappointed. Applying alternately eye and ear to the keyhole, she detected none of the imprecations, the excited chatter, the nose-tweaking, the calling down of the just wrath of Heaven, which the occasion seemed to demand.

"Ah bah, these English!" she muttered scornfully, "If but my Henri were to discover me in such a situation--la, la!"

Philip, entering without knocking, had begun quietly and methodically to remove his coat before Channing was aware of his presence. The author looked up from his desk, surprised, and jumped to his feet, with an expression of pleasure in his face. Philip's brain registered that fact without attempting to explain it. Channing was undoubtedly glad to see him.

"Why, Benoix! Where have you dropped from? I did not hear you knock!

What in the name of all that's pleasant brings you to Paris?"

He advanced with outstretched hand. Just at that moment, a woman entered from the room beyond.

Philip, bracing himself, turned to face his wife....

But it was not Jacqueline. It was a t.i.tian-haired, lissome young woman upon whom he had never laid eyes before, and who returned his stare with self-possessed interest.

Philip gave a great gasp. "Channing! Who--who is this woman?"

"My wife," announced the author, with a laughing bow. "You seem surprised. Hadn't you heard? But of course not--it was all so sudden.

And I'm glad to say the papers don't seem to have got hold of it yet, thanks to my forethought in booking pa.s.sage under only half my name.

Some time before I sailed, Fay and I decided to--to let matters rest as they were, and--she came with me." He was a trifle embarra.s.sed, but carried off the introduction with an air. "Mrs. Channing--Mr. Benoix!"

Philip was utterly bewildered. "Do you mean to say you have not seen Jacqueline?"

"Jacqueline Kildare?" Channing's smiling ease left him. "Yes, I did see her in New York, the day I left. You didn't think--" An inkling of the other's errand dawned on him. He was suddenly alarmed, and, as usual in moments of emergency, burst into his unfortunate glibness of speech.

"Why, she came to see me about studying for opera, something of that sort--that was all. I had promised her introductions. Unfortunately she came just as I was preparing to leave, and I had no time to do much for her. I gave her letters to several teachers, and got her the address of a good boarding-place...."

Philip muttered an exclamation.

"Oh, and I did more than that," said Channing quickly. "I talked to her like a Dutch uncle; advised her to go straight back to Kentucky, and not to do anything without her mother's permission--a great woman, Mrs.

Kildare! I told her New York was no place for a young girl alone, and that she had been most indiscreet to come to me. I told her about my--er--my marriage, of course. I offered her money--"

"You did _what_?" asked Philip, suddenly.

"Why--er--yes!" Channing was taken aback by his tone. "Why not? You know what an impulsive, reckless child she is--she might very well have run off without any money in her pocket, and I should have been uncomfortable, quite miserable, to think--"

Philip's fist stopped the flow of words upon his lips.

"Wh-what did you do that for?" stammered the author, backing away.

"Put up your fists, if you've got any," was the answer.

Channing defended himself wildly, but without hope. He felt that his time had come. A certain conviction paralyzed his already sluggish muscles, "He knows!" he thought. "She's told him!"

Various things swam into his dizzy memory--the business-like punching-bag in the rectory at Storm, the pistol in Philip's riding-breeches, the fact that his father had been a convicted "killer"

in the penitentiary. "He means to do for me!" thought Channing, and looked desperately around for help.

But there was no help. The woman he had acknowledged as his wife stood in a corner of the room, her skirts drawn fastidiously about her, looking on with unmistakable and fascinated interest. At the keyhole _Madame la concierge_ also looked on, un.o.bserved, breathing hard and thinking better thoughts of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Channing, his chin cut, his nose swollen to twice its natural size, undertook a series of masterly retreats. It was then that Madame, at the keyhole, began to fear for her furniture, and considered interference.

Chairs were overturned, the table went crashing. At last a foot-stool completed what Philip's fists had begun. Channing tripped over it, fell heavily for the third time, and lay without moving.

His utter panic had saved him. Philip was tired of knocking him down, and jerking him to his feet, and knocking him down again. He let him lie this time, turned him over with a contemptuous foot, and put on his coat.

"It was like punching a meal-bag!" he muttered, and strode out of the room without a glance for either the woman in the corner, or the one he surprised on the threshold.

Madame had been of two minds, as to whether to shriek for the _gendarmes_, now that all was safely over, or to fling herself upon the bosom of this gallant defender of his marital honor. But Philip was too quick for her. She did neither.

Presently Channing opened a puffy and wary eye. "Gone?" he asked faintly. "Then for G.o.d's sake why don't you get me something to stop this infernal nose-bleed?"

His wife brought him a towel and a basin of cold water, and presented them to him rather absently.

"Good Heavens, _what_ an experience! Why, the brute might have killed me!--it runs in his family. Why didn't you go for help?"

"I was too interested," explained Mrs. Channing. "I've never seen a clergyman fight before." She added, with an impartiality unusual in a bride of several weeks, "You're not much of a man, are you, Percival dear?"

Out in the street Philip strode along buoyantly, his clerical collar somewhat awry, a black eye making itself rapidly apparent, indifferent to the curious glances of the people who pa.s.sed. Now and then he stood still and laughed aloud, while Paris gazed at him indulgently, always sympathetic with madness.

To think that he had imagined Jacqueline capable of leaving him for a creature like Channing, flabby, wordy, feebly vicious! Somewhere at home she was waiting for him; lonely, perhaps, wondering why her husband did not come to her, but safe and unashamed. Possibly her mother and Jemima had already found her.

The thought reminded him of certain letters in his pocket, given him that morning at the American Express, and unopened in the excitement of at last running Channing to cover. He drew them out, hoping to find among them one from Storm.

The first was from his bishop, pooh-poohing his offer to resign from the ministry, and suggesting a long vacation. It ended with a sentence that touched Philip deeply: "a.s.sure your brave little wife of the lasting friendship of an old man who collects rare virtues (other people's virtues) as certain connoisseurs collect etchings, and who considers moral courage the rarest of the lot."

Philip turned to his other letter. At sight of the hand-writing he started, and looked quickly at the postmark. It was that of a little town in the Kentucky mountains.

Lately he had thought very often of his father, as he always thought in all the critical moments of his life. At such times the man whose face he had forgotten seemed very near to him. The feeling of nearness deepened as he opened his letter, the first from Jacques Benoix since he had left prison. It was almost as if his father stood there beside him, with a hand on his shoulder.

When he had finished reading, he turned blindly into a church he was pa.s.sing (it happened to be the cathedral of Notre Dame) and knelt with hidden face before the statue of that coquettish, charming, typically Parisienne madonna, who is not unaccustomed to the sight of men praying with tears.

CHAPTER XLVII

A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that street known among all the world's great avenues--the Champs Elysees, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden--as "The Avenue." Its pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the pa.s.ser-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for his spring building.

A girl, moving alone and rather wearily among the chattering throng, caught this hint of changing seasons, and a wave of nostalgia pa.s.sed over her that was like physical illness. A flower-vendor held out a tray of wilted jonquils. She bought a few of them--only a few, because she must needs be careful of her money--and held them to her face hungrily.

They brought to her mind gardens where such flowers were already pushing their fat green buds up out of the fragrant earth--Storm garden, Philip's little patch of bloom--encouraged by a breeze that was full of sunlight. She saw the birds that flitted to and fro over those gardens upon their busy errands: sweet-whistling cardinals, bluebirds with rosy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, exquisite as b.u.t.terflies; the flashing circles of white made by mocking-birds' wings as they soar and swoop. The noisy street faded from her eyes and ears, and she moved among the crowd as if she were walking a Kentucky lane, with the March wind in her hair.

So she was not at all surprised to meet a familiar face, and murmured absently, her thoughts on other matters, "That you, Mag?"

Then she came to herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken had pa.s.sed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint that made a mask of her face, the heavy black r.i.m.m.i.n.g her eyes, the very perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's swing of the shoulders, were unmistakable. It was Mag Henderson.

Jacqueline followed her, half running. She had so longed for the sight of a face from home that the thought of losing her seemed unbearable. It did not matter to Kate Kildare's daughter that this was a woman of the streets, a hopeless derelict. She remembered only that she had once been her faithful, devoted ally.

But it mattered to Mag Henderson. Impossible that she had failed to recognize Jacqueline; impossible that she did not hear the clear, ringing voice crying after her, "Mag, wait for me, wait!"