Kildares of Storm Part 65

Her cheeks were flushed with something besides rouge, the loose lips trembled. She, too, knew what it was to be hungry for the sight of a face from home.... Perhaps the recording angel put it down to Mag Henderson's account that she did not once hesitate, did not once look back, moving on so rapidly that at last Jacqueline, impeded by the staring throng, breathless, almost weeping in her disappointment, lost sight of her entirely, and gave up the pursuit.

She went her way, with hanging head. "Mother would have caught her," she thought, "or Jemmy. They'd have _made_ her wait!"

For long afterwards she was haunted by that brief glimpse of the creature who a few months before had been as round and sleek and pretty as a petted kitten; the tragic eyes, old for all their feverish brilliance, the soft cheeks already hollow beneath their paint. However unjustly, Mag Henderson came to typify for Jacqueline the spirit of New York.

Her feet were dragging when she reached the respectable, shabby brownstone front that housed her and her ambitions, together with those of some thirty other more or less hopeful aspirants to fame and fortune, who might be heard as she entered amid much clattering of dishes in the bas.e.m.e.nt dining-room.

The halls were faintly reminiscent of meals that had gone before, and Jacqueline, holding her jonquils to her face, decided against dinner.

She made her way up two flights to her room, and sat down upon the bed, shivering, battling with a sense of discouragement that was almost panic.

The streets had lost their fleeting semblance of Spring long before she reached this place she called home, and were like bleak canons through which the wind whistled hungrily. Jacqueline remembered a time not long since when she had found the wind bracing, stimulating, a playmate daring her to a game of romps. But that was a country wind, coming clean over wide s.p.a.ces of hill and meadow; not this thing which filled her eyes and lungs with gritty dust, and whirled old newspapers and orange-peel and filthy rags along the gutters.

It was not the first time she had found herself lately battling with a sense of acute discouragement. Her singing-master, a fat and onion-smelling artist recommended very wisely by Channing, had been at first enthusiastic about the possibilities of her voice; but recently she had found it difficult to please him.

"Der organ is there, _ja wohl_, der organ. But Herr Gott im Himmel, is it mit der organ alone dot zinging makes himself? Put somesing _inside_ der organ, meine gnadiges fraulein, I beg of you!"

That was just what Jacqueline seemed no longer able to do. What energy, what spirit she had, went into the mere business of living, and there was none left for song. A voice is, more than any other physical attribute, the essence of vitality; and nature had other uses just then for Jacqueline's vitality.

She did not understand, however, and sat there shivering uncontrollably, facing the grim fact of failure. Worse than failure--fear.

From where she sat, she could see her reflection in the mirror, and she looked at herself with frowning distaste. Jacqueline's beauty was oddly under eclipse just then. "I'm getting ugly--and whoever heard of an ugly prima donna?" she groaned in her innocence.

Then, suddenly, she saw what had been in her landlady's mind when, happening to pa.s.s her in the hall that morning, the woman had remarked casually, "You said you was _Miss_ Leigh, didn't you? or was it _Mrs._ Leigh?"

Jacqueline had answered as casually; but now she understood the question. With a sharp intake of breath, she realized that the time had come for her to seek another home in this great, homeless wilderness of houses, that heeded her unhappy presence "as the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."

She unlocked a drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon which a p.a.w.nbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive, and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the future. It was tantalizing to know that the generous allowance from her mother was acc.u.mulating untouched in a Frankfort bank, because she did not dare to draw upon it for fear of being traced.

"Though if mother really wanted to find me, she could have done it without that!" thought the girl, and suddenly buried her head in a pillow, sobbing for her mother.

She did not allow herself to cry long. "It is not good for me," she told herself soberly; and presently achieved a quivering smile at the thought of her mother's face when at last she should send for her and show what she had to show.

"There won't be any need of forgiveness then," she whispered. "Not for either of us!"

Of Philip she did not allow herself to think at all. The girl was gaining a strength of will in those days that exerted itself even over her thoughts, and her lips had become as firm as Mrs. Kildare's....

Philip was done with her, of course, since he did not come to her--just as she was done forever with Percival Channing.

In her first revulsion of feeling on learning that her lover had after all not deserted her of his own free will, she had turned to him, bruised and hurt as she was by that terrible hour with her mother, confident of his help in her need. No lesson of life was ever to make Jacqueline anything less than confident of the world's kindness.

But marriage with Philip had at least taught her a better judgment of men, and at her first sight of Percival Channing she knew that never again would there be anything he could offer her which she would care to accept. She realized at last the full depth and enormity of her mistake, but she set herself proudly to abide by the consequences, asking no quarter.

Art was still left to her, fame; and these she must win with no a.s.sistance except her own determination. Her career lay open before her.

Perhaps some day her mother and Philip would cease to be ashamed of her; would even be a little proud of her....

Now, after all, was Art to fail her? Was she never to be famous after all?

Jacqueline hurriedly turned up the corners of her mouth, having read somewhere that it is impossible to despair so long as the lips are kept in that cheerful position. But the fear at her heart remained.

She did not know where to go. Landladies asked questions, and she was not a very good liar. Suppose they should be rude to her? In all her life, n.o.body had ever been rude to Jacqueline. She felt that it would be more than she could bear.--And at the last to go to some strange hospital, to suffer, perhaps to die, among people whose names she did not know, she who had known by name every man, woman, child, and beast within twenty miles of Storm!... Was there none of all those friends who would befriend her now, who would take her in without question, and stand by her until her need was past? Surely somewhere, somewhere....

From long habit, she went on her knees to think her problem out; and the answer came, as it so often comes to people on their knees--came with a remembered fragrance of sun upon pine-branches, a steady sound among tree-tops of the wind that always blows above the world.

Some hours later Jacqueline took a train for Frankfort; and she pa.s.sed Storm station at night, on her way to a town in the Kentucky mountains.

So it happened that there came to Philip, in Paris, the letter that told him he had found both his father and his wife.

Jacques Benoix, glancing out of his schoolhouse door at the unwonted sound of wheels in the trail below, had been startled to see a woman descending from a wagon, whom he at first mistook for Kate Kildare herself. She was helped by Bates the peddler, met by good chance in the town below.

"Here comes another worker for the Lord's vineyard!" beamed the peddler, as the school-teacher, recovering his breath, hurried to meet them.

"And a most welcome one! If I were a religious man, I should think you an answer to prayer, so great is our need of help."

"Help? Do you think _I_ can be of any help?" asked Jacqueline, wistfully--a very changed Jacqueline she was, pale and drawn-looking, and with a new little dignity about her which the physician was quick to observe. "I'm not a capable person, you know, like mother and Jemmy. I do know a little about sewing, though, and cooking, and housekeeping, and--and--"

"Singing, I remember," smiled her host, "and making people comfortable, I think? The very things we need most, my dear. It is maddening in a place like this to be limited to one set of brains, and arms, and legs--and those masculine. Ah, but I am glad that you have come!"

"So am I." Jacqueline breathed a grateful sigh. "But--" she swallowed hard, and looked him squarely in the face--"I want you to know that I am hiding away from everybody.--Must I tell you why?"

He took off his spectacles, so that she saw his eyes. Great kindliness dawned in them, a warm, understanding, tender gravity that had once before reminded her of somebody she trusted. He leaned toward her.

"I, too, am hiding away from those I love.--Must I tell you why, my daughter?"

She stared at him, her gaze widening. Suddenly she knew him, and with a little cry, her arms went about his neck.

CHAPTER XLVIII

It was some time before her mother began to do much credit to Jemima's reputation as a nurse. The nature of her illness, if illness it could be called, was baffling. She had neither pain nor temperature, her pulse was steady, though not strong, she ate and even slept as she was bidden, with a docility that was one of the most alarming symptoms of all in the Madam, hitherto impatient as a healthy man of restraint and control. She was content, to lie day after day in her room, she who had perhaps not spent more than a few weeks in bed during the whole course of her previous life, and then only when her children were born.

"I can't understand it," wrote young Mrs. Thorpe to her husband--a humiliating confession for Jemima. "She listens to me, and talks a little, seems rather glad that I am with her. But if I were not, I think it would not matter. She takes no interest in anything, seems hardly aware of anything, though she always makes the right answer when one speaks to her. Otherwise I might think.... Even Philip's letters leave her unmoved. She never opens them; simply hands them to me and says listlessly, 'See if he has found her.' And when I answer no, she does not seem to care particularly.... Sometimes I feel as if it weren't mother here beside me at all, as if she had gone away, and left just her body and her voice and her smile--and I wish she had taken the smile with her. It's hard to bear!... She was a little like this after Dr.

Benoix disappeared, but not so bad.--Oh, James, you don't think, do you, that there can really be such a thing as a broken heart?"

The Professor comforted his wife with sensible and practical advice; but he was as uneasy as herself. Psychologist that he was, he know that the strongest natures cannot bend and bend indefinitely, without in time reaching the breaking-point.

It was at his suggestion that a famous nerve-specialist was sent for from a distant city, much to the relief of honest and futile Dr. Jones.

The eminent gentleman made himself extremely comfortable at Storm, enjoyed the scenery and the Southern cooking, and occasionally conversed upon topics of the day with Mrs. Kildare, who exerted herself according to her traditions to put her guest at ease, even to the extent of sitting up in bed and allowing Jemima to dress her hair in the latest fashion.

"Mental trouble? Nonsense!" he p.r.o.nounced, to Jemima's almost sick relief. "I wish my own mentality were as sound! For years she has been using up her nervous vitality without replacing it, that is all. This mental torpor is Nature's way of giving her a rest. Let her alone! That splendid body of hers will rea.s.sert itself presently. Rest is what she needs. And happiness," he added casually, with an insight which proved his right to the enormous fee he pocketed.

But it was a prescription rather difficult to fill.

Jemima tried conscientiously to catch her mother's attention with talk about farm matters, business affairs, the conduct of the dairy and stable; only to be put aside with a listless, "Better see Jenkins about that, dear. He's very efficient."