Kildares of Storm Part 67

"No. We will not discuss that, if you please.... Mahaly, we may never see each other again, you and I. Will you tell me now how you came--to hate me so bitterly?"

Mahaly's eyes dropped. "I never! I tried to, but--I couldn't, Miss Kate.

You was--so kin' to me."

"Yes, I was kind. I meant to be. I liked you, and trusted you. I gave you my children to nurse.--Mahaly, only once--no, twice--in my life have I trusted people, and had them fail me."

"The other time was Mr. Bas," whispered the woman. "I knows. It didn't--never do to trus'--Mr. Bas."

Her dying eyes followed Kate's to the picture, and dwelt upon it wistfully.

Once more the lady changed the subject. "Will you tell me why you tried to hate me, Mahaly?" She paused. "Was it because you were--jealous of me?"

The reply had a certain dignity. "It ain't fitten--for a yaller gal--to be jealous--of a w'ite pusson."

"Then, why?"

There was a silence. Gropingly the colored woman's hand went to a table at her side, and held out to Kate a tintype photograph in a faded pink paper cover. Kate looked at it. She saw Mahaly as she had been in the days of her youth, comely and graceful; in her arms a small, beady-eyed boy. The pride of motherhood was unmistakable.

"Your baby! Why, I never knew you had a baby." She looked closer, and her voice softened. "A cripple, like my little Katherine. Poor little fellow! Oh, Mahaly, did he die?"

There was a dull misery in the answer that went to her heart. "I dunno.

I couldn't--never fin' out."

"_You don't know?_"

"Mr. Bas done sent him away--when you was comin'. He was real kin'--to him before, though he wa'n't never one--to have po'ly folks about, much.

But when you--was comin'--he done sent him away, an' he wouldn't never tell me--whar to."

"Mahaly! _Why_ did he send him away?"

Kate had risen, in her horror of what she knew was coming.

"Bekase he looked--too much--like his--paw," said Mahaly, and she spoke with pride....

Kate put her hands over her eyes. She remembered the sense of something sinister that had come to her when she first saw Storm; recalled the mystery which had hung about the mulatto girl, and which she had not quite dared to probe; the innuendoes of old Liza, from the first her ally and henchman; Mahaly's later pa.s.sionate and hungry devotion to her own children. She remembered the fate, too, of Basil's hound Juno, and her mongrel pups.

"No wonder you hated me," she whispered, shuddering. "No wonder you hated me! To think that even he could have done such a thing!--Oh, but, Mahaly, how was I to know? How could you have blamed me?"

"I never. Only I 'lowed--that ef you was to git sent away--fum Sto'm--mebbe he would lemme have my baby--back agin." Mahaly's voice was getting very weak. She began fighting the air with her hands.

Kate dipped her handkerchief quickly into a gla.s.s of water and laid it on the woman's face. "No more talking now," she said, and would have gone for help; but the negress caught at her hand.

"Got--suthin' mo'--to say--fust--" she gasped painfully. "Miss Kate!--the French doctor didn't--kill him--"

"_What?_"

"I seed. I was--hidin' in de bushes--waitin' to speak to Mr. Bas" (only an iron effort of will made the words audible), "an' I riz up--out'n de bushes--when I yeard 'em quar'lin'--and dat skeert de hoss--an' he ra'red up and threw--Mr. Bas off. De French doctor done flung--a rock, yes'm--but it ain't--never--teched him--"

"You know this? My G.o.d, Mahaly! You _know_ this?"

"Yais'm, kase--it was me--de rock hit--" she turned her cheek, to show the scar it had left.

"Take that down in writing. Mother!" commanded a tense voice from the window, where Jemima was leaning in. "You must get it down in writing, before witnesses! Here!" She jumped into the room, and opened the door, calling, "Some of you come here, quick! I want witnesses."

"She's dying," muttered Kate, dazed.

"No, she isn't! She sha'n't, before she says that again. Leave her to me! Now then, Mahaly"--she shook the gasping woman none too gently.

"Come, come! You saw--Speak up! Oh, for G.o.d's sake, speak up!"

But Mahaly had said all that she had to say. For a terrible moment the sound of her losing battle filled the room. Then, of a sudden there was silence, peace; into which broke presently the mournful, savage note of negro wailing.

Jemima led her mother in silence out to the carriage. During the drive home she made only one remark, in a low whisper because of the coachman.

"Do you think the court will accept our word, Mother?"

Kate answered her meaning. "It would do no good. Jacques would say that the intention was there, whatever the fact. He meant to kill Basil. And it is too late now. He has paid the penalty."

That night, after Jemima was supposed to be in bed, Kate's door opened, and a slim little figure stole in, looking very childlike in its nightgown. But the voice that spoke was not childlike.

"Are you asleep, Mother?"

Kate held out her hand. She had expected Jemima. The girl clutched it fast.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.

Kate wondered silently how much of Mahaly's confession she had heard.

The girl answered as if she had spoken. "I was there from the first. It was I you heard when you gave the order to go out of ear-shot."

"And you didn't go out of ear-shot? That wasn't quite honorable, daughter."

"No, but it was sensible. Do you think I'd have left you there alone to a trying death-bed scene, weak as you are? Honorable!--how do you expect me to be honorable?" she burst out, bitterly, "when you know the sort of father I had? Sometimes of late I suspected, I began to think.... But you would not tell me, you were too fine to tell me. And you let me make a fool of myself, a perfect fool! Oh, I was so proud of being a Kildare, one of the Kildares of Storm; so ashamed of anything that did not quite come up to the standard of--of my father! Bah--_my father_! Not even man enough to take the consequences of his sin, to stand by them. My father," she cried fiercely, "was a coward! And I thought that everything that is good in me, pride and courage, and truthfulness, whatever manly virtues I may have, came from him, instead of--from you!"

"No, no--from yourself, dear," said Kate, quickly. "For everything that is best in you, you have yourself to thank."

Jemima lifted up her head, and made her confession of renewed faith, there in the dark. "But I'd rather thank you, Mother!"

It was Kate's first dose of the happiness the specialist had prescribed.

After a long pause, the voice spoke again out of the dark. "Mother--I want you to marry Dr. Benoix. Do you understand? We owe it to him--all of us. I _want_ you to marry him."

"Ah!" whispered Kate. "If I only could!"

"You've not given up? Oh, but you mustn't give up! He shall be found!

I'll find him myself, and bring him back to you, because it was I who sent him away." (Kate smiled faintly at the egotism, but she did not correct it.) "Oh, Mother, put your will into it!" urged the girl, leaning over her. "You know you've never failed in anything you've put your will into."