"It was from Josef, of course, that I had most help, always belittling this affair, always trying to make me forget in work. I was too tired at night to grieve; I had to sleep. 'Women,' he said, 'coddle their griefs! They revel in hopeless passion! They nurse it! Remember,' he said, 'there are two ways to forget: weeping and making swings.' Well," she finished, "he taught me to make swings."

"And you have forgotten?" Francis asked, standing beside her, magnetic, compelling, taken out of himself.

Memories were drawing them together. Remembered kisses, words, spoken lips to lips, and that elemental sweet attraction of man for woman, which should be ranked with the other great elemental things like fire, water, earth, and air. Katrine rose also, and they stood looking into each other's eyes.

"No," she answered, quite steadily, "I have not forgotten. I never shall forget. I would give my life to feel that you are the man I once believed you to be, the man I believe you could have been."

"Will you be frank with me, Katrine?" he demanded.

"Have I ever been anything else?" she questioned, in return.

"You have avoided me since you came."

"Yes, only I hope not noticeably."

"No, it was well done, but why?"

"Can you ask?"

"I do ask."

"I did not want ever to see you again nor to talk to you as we are talking now."

"Answer me, Katrine!" he cried, bending toward her. "Answer me! Why did you never want to see me again?"

There still was the look in her eyes of sweetest frankness as she answered: "There were many reasons before I saw you that first night why I should never wish to see you again. But after that there was only one—one—one that filled my mind. I am afraid."

"Afraid!" he repeated, with the man's look of the chase in his eye, "afraid of what, Katrine?"

She had moved by the fireplace, and with a hand on the chimney-shelf turned her eyes to meet his own, with the clear, unafraid look in them of the olden times.

"When I first saw you here, the night I sang, I became afraid you were a man whom I had simply overestimated in the past because of my youth. I have avoided you ever since for fear I should find it to be true. I am afraid you are a man who is simply 'not worth while.'" The words were spoken softly, even with a certain odd tenderness, but they struck Francis Ravenel like a blow in the face, and he set his lips, as a man does in physical suffering.

"I think it is just," he said, at length. "I think that describes me as I am: a man who is not worth while. Only, you see, Katrine, I was not prepared to hear the truth from you." He grew white as he spoke. "In all of your letters you spoke so divinely of that old-time love."

For an instant she regarded him with startled attention, her eyebrows drawn together, both hands brought suddenly to her throat.

"My letters," she repeated, "my letters!" And then, her quick intuition having told her all, "How could you do it? Oh, how could you do it?" she cried, the tears in her eyes and the quick sobs choking her speech. "It was you who sent me abroad to study! It is you to whom I am indebted for all: Josef, the Countess, my voice! Ah, you let a girl write her heart out to you, to flatter your—Oh, forgive me!" choking with the sobs which had become continuous, "forgive me!" she cried, as she laid her head on her arms by the corner of the chimney. "Forgive me!" she repeated. "I said once (you will remember, I wrote it, too) that I would try never to criticise you by word or thought. I want to be true to that, even now. Only," she said, pressing her hand over her heart, "I hurt so! The pain makes me say things I would rather not say. Oh, I wonder if another man in all the world ever hurt a woman's pride as you have hurt mine!"

"Katrine," Frank said, "God knows I never intended to tell you! There was always the thought in my mind that you should never know, but you hurt me so, I forgot. Oh, Katrine, forgive me!"

"I am grateful," she interrupted, in her hurried, generous way, "grateful for the kind thought for me; but I am angry, too, so angry that I don't dare trust myself," she smiled through her tears, the funny, heart-breaking smile. She gathered up her music. "Good-bye," she said, "I shall try to go away in the morning." And with no offer of handshaking she passed him, and he heard her softly close and lock the door of her sitting-room.

He knew she would keep her word, knew that the morning would take her from him, and the pain of hurt pride and wounded love goading him on, he covered the distance to the bolted door.

"Katrine!" he called.

Within he heard the noise of sobbing, of quick breaths choked with pain.

"Katrine Dulany!" he repeated, with tenderness.

"Yes!" she answered from within.

"I want to speak to you."

There was no response.

"I must speak to you, Katrine."

He waited, fearing her new contempt, until the silence became unendurable.

"Katrine," he said, "you will either come out or I will come in."

There was another silence before there came, at the end of the lower corridor, a great commotion of quick orders given and executed, of luggage being placed, and through it all a low singing as of one much at home. It would be an awkward situation, he thought, for the servants to find him clamoring at Miss Dulany's door, and as he moved toward the window the singing grew nearer, breaking into a loud voice at the top of the steps,

"War dogs tattered and gray, Gnawing a naked bone, Fighting in every clime Every cause but our own,"

and Dermott the jaunty, the extremely elegant, in black riding-clothes, with the jewelled crop of North Carolina days, stood in the afternoon sunlight at the head of the great stairs.

"Ah, Ravenel," he cried, "I have been staying at the Crosbys', and heard but last night from Miss Dulany that you were here! I accepted the invitation Van Rensselaer hadn't yet given me to ride over and stay awhile. I am," and here he had the superb impudence to adjust an eyeglass for a complete survey of Frank, "I am interested in your doings just now, Ravenel, very much interested," he repeated, with a smile.



XXIV

"I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU"

After a brief exchange of incivilities with Dermott, Frank went to his own room with a flushed cheek, a kindling eye, and something like a song of victory singing low and strong in his heart. It was a strange mood to follow such an interview, for there was scarcely a sentence of his during the talk with Katrine of which he was not ashamed. The lack of taste, of delicacy, the rawness of his conduct came back to him, producing a singular sense of elation; for by them he realized that his love was a thing stronger than himself; a thing which carried him along with it; buffeted him, did with him as it would, while considered conduct and the well-turned phrase stood pushed aside to watch the torrent as it passed.

There had been times when he feared that his ancestry of inherited self-indulgence had left him without the ability to desire anything continuously or over-masteringly, feared that he was over-raced, with no grasp nor feeling for the jugular vein of events. These had been unworded doubts of his concerning himself in the three years past. But after the talk with Katrine he knew himself capable of great love, of love which was stronger than himself, and the new manhood in him gloried in the surrender.

He dressed early, hoping to have a word with Katrine before the other guests came down, but she was the last to enter the drawing-room before dinner was announced. Standing by the doorway, he saw her coming along the wide hall alone. She wore black, unqualified black, low and sleeveless. Her hair, which seemed blacker than the gown, was worn high, not in the loose curls he knew so well, but in some statelier manner, with an old jewelled comb placed like a coronet, and she held herself more aloof from him than ever before, her eyes avoiding his glance and her cheeks exquisitely flushed.

But at sight of Dermott her bearing changed, and Frank saw with jealousy that she went quickly toward the Irishman, holding out both hands and saying, "Dermott," in a voice which seemed to have a sob in it as well as a claim for protection.

During dinner Ireland was easily triumphant, for while Katrine sat at Nicholas van Rensselaer's right, Dermott had been placed on her other side, and Frank, sitting by deaf old Mrs. van Rensselaer, had abundant time to mark McDermott's gift for society. "One might think him the host," Ravenel thought, critically, noting that the laugh, the jokes, the gallantries were ever in the Irishman's vicinity, and the head of the table was easily where the McDermott sat.

When the ladies were leaving, Dermott took the situation in both hands, as it were, by rising with them and turning a laughing face to the men, who were calling his name.

"I'm going to join the ladies now, if they will have me!" he cried. "I have less of their society than I like, belonging, as I do, to the working-classes. And besides," he waved a hand, white and beautifully slender, toward them, "I know you all, unfortunately well, as it is!"

A chorus of friendly insults were thrown after him, but he dropped the curtain with no further word, and an hour later Frank encountered him walking slowly up and down the terrace in the moonlight with Katrine.

They were talking earnestly, McDermott urging something which Francis was glad to see Katrine was far from yielding. Twice he saw her shake her head with great firmness, and once, as they came near him, he heard her say, "I will not, Dermott," and, knowing the girl as he did, Frank felt that, whatever the matter, it was settled with finality.

Try as he surely did, he found it impossible to have a word alone with her that evening, and the next morning he learned from the servants that her luggage was to be taken to the station the following day at an early hour.

She was not at luncheon, and Frank was meditating on the possibility of leaving with her on the early train, when a note was brought to him by her maid.

Would you care to walk with me now? [it read] I should like to tell you something before I leave.

KATRINE DULANY.

This was surely the unexpected, and he waited for her on the portico with the feeling that there was some mistake, and that the maid might reappear any minute to ask the missive back again.

But Katrine herself came around the corner from the greenhouses and called to him from below. She wore a black walking-skirt, a black leather jacket, and a three-cornered black hat, and Frank involuntarily compared this very aristocratic-looking young person with the little girl in the short-waisted frocks he had known, so many years ago, it seemed, in North Carolina.

In silence they went down the driveway to the beach road, along the path to the cliffs. There was a chill in the sea-wind, for the afternoon sun gave only a rose-red glow, but little warmth, as they stood looking at the crumpled reflections in the water. "It is almost sunset," Frank began, abruptly, drawing nearer to her. "It might almost be a North Carolina sunset, mightn't it? I don't know, Katrine, what you want of me, but I want, for the sake of that summer full of sunsets which we knew together, that you should let me tell my story and judge me—finest woman—that—ever—lived—judge me after the telling as it may seem just for you to do!"

There was a piteous quiver of her lips as her eyes looked bravely into his as she nodded an acquiescence.

"When I left you, Katrine, like the coward I was, that dreadful morning, so long ago, I wandered around like an Ishmaelite, more wretched than I believed it possible for a human creature to be, longing for you, always, day and night, waking with a convulsion of pain in the gray of the morning, but still obstinately determined to marry none but some one whom my forebears would have considered 'suitable.'" He smiled at the word.

"When the news came of your father's death I was in the Canadian woods. I started home immediately; I had no fixed plan, except to see you, to help you in some way. In New York I had a telegram saying that my mother was very ill at Bar Harbor. There was nothing to do but to go to her, of course. It was before this that she had sent me Nick van Rensselaer's letter, and the idea came to me from that, that I might be the one to do something to make your life a bit happier. You may think it was reparation for the suffering I had caused you, but it was not. I couldn't let you go out of my life. In this way, I reasoned, I could keep in touch with you for years. When I stipulated that you were to write once a fortnight, I had no idea the letters would be anything but simple statements of your daily life. You see, I forgot," he smiled again, the charming, whimsical smile that seemed so much a part of him, "that you were Irish and could do nothing impersonally.

"Immediately after mother's illness came the matter of the railroad, and"—he hesitated—"Dermott McDermott. You see, Katrine, you had stirred something in my nature I never knew before-ambition! That was part, but the desolation that followed your out-going made action necessary. Well, the new railroad was to be constructed through the plantation, and I worked with all the energy I could to forget. You see what you did for me, Katrine! And at every turn, circumventing, obstructing, legislating against me, urging me on by mental friction, was Dermott McDermott. Am I tiring you?" he asked, tenderly.

"No," she answered. "I am glad to know how it all was. Over there in Paris, when I was alone, I often wondered."

"The interest in my own railroad naturally led to interests in the two adjoining ones, and always, always, Katrine, there were those letters of yours urging me on by your divine belief in me. That you loved me, thought of me, wished me well, prayed for me,—a man has to be worse than I ever was to fail to be helped by that. And your loyalty, the very selflessness of your love, your willingness to be hurt if it would help me—Katrine," he interrupted himself, "there were other women in my life, but, one by one, I measured them up to the standard of you, and they became nothing. I remember once, at the club, they brought me two letters, one from you and one from another woman. It was the one in which you wrote, 'I have not forgotten, I do not wish to forget. I want to make of myself so great a woman that some day he may say, with pride, "Once that woman loved me."' I disliked to know that your white letter had even touched the other one, and that night the man I hope to make of myself was born. If there be any achievement in my life that is worth while, if I ever count for anything in the world's work, it is you who have done it, you and the letters which you blame me so much for permitting you to write."

She turned toward him, her face flushed and divinely illumined, anger forgotten. "You mean it?" she said.

"As God hears, it is the truth."

"Then," she paused, "I am happier than I thought it possible I should ever be in this life!"

"And you forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive."

"That gives me courage to go on," he said. "Do you remember," he put his hand over hers as he spoke, and they both went back in thought to the time he had laid his hand over hers on the fallen tree, the night of their first meeting, "do you remember, Katrine, that when an alliance is to be arranged for a great queen, it is she who must indicate her choice and her willingness. You have become that, Katrine, a great queen! I'm asking, with more humility in my heart than you can ever know, that you choose—me!"

As she looked at him, her eyes were incredulous. "Don't let us talk of such a thing," she said, abruptly, turning her small hand upward to meet his in a friendly clasp.

"But, Katrine, it is the only thing in the world I care to talk about. Oh," he said, "I know how hard it is for you, that you are going to make it hard for me, that you are not going to believe me, nor in me. But, whether you believe it or not, it is the white truth I tell you, that ever since the first night I saw you I loved you, and wanted you for my wife."

She sat on the brown rocks, her knees clasped in her slender arms, looking through the sea-mist at the sun going down behind the Magnolia Hills.

"Don't let us talk of it," she said, decisively; "the thing is utterly impossible. Tell me about yourself instead: the new railroad; the work; and Dermott McDermott." He turned, looking up at her curiously before answering.

"The last four years of my life have contained something overmuch of Dermott McDermott—" And then, the animosity gone from him, "Katrine," he cried, "in Heaven's name, what did I ever do to him? He seems to spend his time trying to circumvent my plans. He hates me so that it seems"—he waited for an appropriate word—"funny," he ended, with a laugh. "I have sometimes thought he was in love with you. Is he in love with you, Katrine?"

"Tell me about the railroad," she said, taking no note whatever of his question. "I have heard many things of it."

"Well," he began, "there were many things to hear. One by one the men who had pledged themselves 'went back on me,' as the Street phrase is, which brought out all the obstinacy in me. I built it myself. It's a success, and it's lucky," he ended, "for if it weren't I don't know where I should have ended in a money way. I was desolate and, as you told me cheerfully in one of the letters to the Great Unknown, 'full of ignorances and narrow-mindedness.' There was never anything better came to me, save one, than the work. I think it has made me better. I hope so."

"It's queer, queer, queer, this little world, isn't it?" she demanded, abruptly.

"It is, indeed."

"Here are we, together again, after many years, talking about ourselves, just as we did in those other days."

The old Katrine was beside him, with the pleading, explaining, dependent note in her voice, the same rapid, short sentences, the same shy look which was ever hers when doing a kindness. "I must tell you the reason I wrote the note. Last night I was very angry at you. I forgot Josef, who showed me that anger is for fools only. Then Dermott came, and while we were walking on the terrace I told him everything: that I owed you money; that I wanted it paid at once. He is Madame de Nemours' executor. She left me—not a great fortune, you know, but more than enough to repay your loan to me. So much is simple. But there is more." She hesitated before slipping her small, bare hand in his again. "Dermott thinks he knows something which will cause you much sorrow and trouble. He is not certain. He is waiting letters from France. And I wanted to tell you that it will rest almost entirely with me to say what shall be done about this bad news which may arrive. And I want you, when trouble comes, to remember that once I said I would come from the end of the earth to serve you—Well," she said, the look of unreckoning, honest, boyish loyalty in her eyes, "I will keep my word. You must not worry; I will take care of you." It was like a mother's promise to protect a child, and, save for the sweet confidence in her own powers, Frank, not understanding, could have laughed aloud. "I want you to think of this to-night, when Dermott talks to you—will you?—and to remember that the matter is far from proven. Madame de Nemours herself did not believe it."

"Katrine," he cried, impressed by her serious face and tone, "what is this mysterious trouble that is coming to me? Can't you tell me?"

"I have thought of that, but I believe that you would be happier in the future to know that we had never discussed it together. I know I should. It's all so foolish," she ended.

"You are really going to-morrow, Katrine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It is better."

"For you?"

"For both of us."

"Ah, Katrine, why? You are a great enough woman to forgive. Can't you do it? You have done so much already."

"I am afraid," she answered. "I suffered too much. It was too horrible. Only," and she touched his shoulder gently, "you are not to think that I don't care for you. It mayn't be in just the way that I used to do; but nobody else could ever be to me what you have been. I don't believe a woman, a real woman, ever loves twice in her life, do you?" She asked the question with the manner distinctively her own, of comradeship, of wanting to touch souls even on this question most vital to them both.

"I hope it's true of you, Katrine."

The gray sea broke in white lines on the shore beneath them; the gulls uttered shrill, clattering cries above their heads, before Katrine rose.

"We must be going—on!" she said, looking seaward, her hands clasped in front of her, her face saddened and white.

"But, Katrine," he cried, "look at me, Katrine! Nothing has been settled between us. I have asked you to marry me. You say you will not. You tell me you still care some little for me. It's a foolish situation. I was a cad, an ignorant and colossally selfish cad, but I am humbled and oh, I want you so!"

There was nothing but kindness and affection in her face as she stood with appealing eyes looking up at him.

"Do you want me to tell you what I believe to be the truth?"

"Yes; but, Katrine, don't make it hurt too much," he said.

"I think," she spoke the words softly, "if I had gone out of your life, had had no voice, had not succeeded, if the world had not spoken my name to you, you would have forgotten me in a year. I believe it is not Katrine Dulany, the daughter of your Irish overseer, whom you love, but La Dulany, who happens to have a gift, the adopted daughter of the Countess de Nemours, the woman whom you have heard the Duc de Launay wishes to marry!"

"Oh, Katrine!"

"I don't want to hurt you! indeed, indeed I don't," she repeated. "I wanted you to know exactly what I think. Ah," she cried, "be fair! Do you blame me?"

"No," he answered. "I blame you for nothing; but it is not true! I love the soul of you, Katrine. And there has been between us love, love stronger than ourselves or our foolish prejudices. I believe that neither of us can forget, that something stronger than your will or mine draws us together. I will not accept your refusal. And you will not forget me! I mean to see to it that you shall not."

They returned to the house, through the incoming sea fog, in silence. At the foot of the side-stair they shook hands and said "good-bye" softly.

He had not expected to see her again in the evening. But here he failed to understand that the excitement under which she was laboring made either solitude or inaction unendurable. She was among the first to come down to dinner, and never, he reviewed the entire past before he came to the conclusion, had he seen her more beautiful. She wore pink, modish in the extreme, with many jewels—he recalled that he had never before seen her wear jewels—and she seemed in sky-scraping spirits, her eyes alight with fire and vivacity; and at the table he could hear the droll tones of her voice before the laughter came; and altogether she went far toward driving him daft by an apparent gayety at parting with him forever.

Immediately after the ladies left the table Dermott touched Frank lightly on the arm. "Could I have a few words with you in the gun-room?" he asked. "It's the place where we shall be the least likely to be interrupted."

Ravenel followed him, after a nod of acquiescence, and stood on one side of a great chimney, which was filled with glowing logs, waiting for the Irishman to speak. He was entirely unprepared, however, for the consideration, even the impersonal kindness in Dermott's voice as he said, "I'm afraid I'm letting you in for a pretty bad time, Ravenel."

Frank bowed. Even McDermott was forced to admire his serene manner.

"Miss Dulany told me last night of her obligation to you."

Frank waited with no change of expression for Dermott to proceed.

"She said she desired her money obligation to be paid immediately."

"It is an affair of small moment," Frank answered.

"You know, perhaps, that my cousin, Madame de Nemours, left her property to Miss Dulany?"

"I heard of it at the time," Frank returned.

"And named me as executor," Dermott explained.

"A fact which escaped me," Ravenel answered, suavely.

"It has taken some time to settle the estate," Dermott continued, "because of a certain claim which, if proven, makes the estate a very valuable one. This claim nearly concerns you."

"Go on," Frank said, briefly, discourteously as well.

"I do not know," Dermott continued, "whether you are aware or not that your father made an earlier marriage than the one with your mother."

An ominous chill passed over Frank, though he answered, bravely, "I was not."

"When he was living at Tours he married a girl, an Irish girl, who ran away from a convent to become his wife. She was but sixteen at the time. Her name was Patricia McDermott, my cousin, afterward the Countess de Nemours."

Frank continued to listen, but, although his eyes held keen apprehension and his face was white, he showed a fine courage.

"My uncle, her father, was an ardent Roman Catholic," Dermott explained, "a gloomy, overfed, and melancholy man who never forgave his daughter. In a short time your father seemed to have"—Dermott coughed—"tired of the affair," he explained, lightly, "and, his studies being finished, he left his wife and child and returned to America. I do not desire to dwell on the misery of my cousin and her child. She was cared for by some poor folks; my uncle gave her a death-bed forgiveness; the child died, and in process of time she married the Count de Nemours. After the death of her second husband, she gave me full charge of her affairs, and among her papers I found documents relating to this early marriage. The year before your father's death I met him, quite by accident, in New York. The name was familiar to me. I asked questions, found he was married and had a son, yourself.

"Mr. Ravenel," Dermott changed his tone of recital to a more intimate one, "to speak truth, the matter is inexplicable to me. Your father was a brilliant man; a man of the world who, if he had no religious scruples on the subject of bigamy, must have had respect for law. Why," Dermott rose from the table by which he had been sitting, and stood directly facing Frank—"why he should have made a second marriage, with a wife and child living in France, is beyond explanation."

Frank drew back, his face colorless, his lips drawn, and, as the horrid import of the news became clear, "Ah, God!" he whispered; and then, with memory of his father uppermost, "It's a damned lie!" he cried.

"It may be," Dermott returned, calmly. "Most things are open to that interpretation. I'm afraid, however, you will have difficulty in proving it so. I have had the certificates of the marriage and of the birth of the child for a long time, but international law requires much. I have living witnesses. In Carolina, in looking up the matter," he spoke the word vaguely, "I failed to find anything which would disprove the points I have just placed before you. I was awaiting some letters from France before explaining the case to you, when Katrine demanded that her debt to you be paid immediately. There are many reasons why I do not wish to pay that debt now, reasons which we, as men, can understand. She might not comprehend them, and she certainly would not give the idea a straw's weight if she did, having once made up her mind. Now I'm going to tell her that I've paid her debt, Mr. Ravenel. It will comfort her. But with the matter which I have revealed to you still a little unsettled, and the markets in the state they are in, I cannot do my duty as executor and fulfil her desires immediately. After all, it is a small amount, and if my personal check—" He waited, and Ravenel spoke.

"Mr. McDermott, Miss Dulany's indebtedness to me is too slight to consider. About this other terrible business, I shall search my father's papers! It is necessary that I do everything I can to protect my mother's name as well as my own."

"That's reason," Dermott agreed.

"As to Miss Dulany—"

Both men turned, for at the far end of the room Katrine stood, under the swinging light of a Japanese lamp, regarding them.

She came rapidly toward them, her head a little forward, her cheeks scarlet, and a gleam of temper in her eyes, which Frank had never seen, but with which Dermott was not unfamiliar, and took a place between them.

"See!" she cried, smiling, and there was never another woman in all the world who had the appealing smile of Katrine Dulany. "Don't let us make this all so dreadful. There is just some mistake," she said, with a gesture of impatience; and from here she went on with a certain terrifying ability, peculiarly her own, to come directly to a point.

"Oh," she said, with a gesture including them both, "you've done what I asked you not to do, Dermott!" she said. "You've claimed a yet unproven thing. I'm tired of the whole of it. It is better that we three should understand one another altogether and not go talking by twos," and she faced Dermott as she turned. "You may prove everything, and I'll never believe a word of it! Give me Ravenel, and I'll return it to those to whom it belongs. It's his," indicating Frank, "and his mother's, and they shall keep it, no matter what you prove! As for me!" she laughed, giving herself a shake as a bird does. "Hark!" she cried, raising one finger. Softly, as a bird calls to the purpling east at dawn, she took a note, listening intently, going up, up, up, till the tone, a mere thread of gladness, reached high E, where it swelled, rounder and fuller, until it seemed to fill all space, descending in a sparkling shower of chromatics to lower G.

"Did you mark that?" she cried, in a defiant bit of appreciation of herself. "What do I need with money? I can go out on the streets and come back with hands full." And before they could answer she had disappeared through one of the long windows of the piazza.

"And what do you think of that, now?" demanded Dermott of Frank, with a touch of the brogue, as they stood together in some bewilderment, looking after her.



XXV

KATRINE IN NEW YORK

The following morning, in a drizzling rain and wind from the east, Dermott McDermott stood beside Katrine at the station, arranging for her comfort, directing her maid, and wiring Nora in New York, lest she should be unprepared for this hastily determined return to the city.

"I was sorry for Ravenel last night, Katrine," he said, with an earnest sympathy in his tone. "I think I have never known a man who drew me to him less; but that has nothing to do with the matter. I was sorry for him," he repeated. "Isn't it a dreadful performance, this tragedy of life?" he demanded, looking down at her intently, unmindful of noise of luggage or the shrill voices of the passers to and fro. "But the thing to do," he cried, straightening himself and raising his chest, "is to show a brave front always! Never let the world know you're downed in anything. So carry all off with a laugh and a song. Plant flowers on the graves, flowers for the world to see, and for the great Power above as well, that He may know we are not whining—that we're down here doing the best we can."

They stood, hands clasped, on the platform as the train drew in, looking into each other's eyes, and Katrine's lips trembled as she spoke the word "good-bye."

"Sure it's not 'good-bye' at all," Dermott cried, changing his mood to cheer her—"not 'good-bye' at all! I'll be in town in a day or two bothering you with my visits and advice. And if anything definite turns up about the Ravenel matter I'll write you. Do you know, Katrine, I felt so sorry for him last night I'm almost hoping he can disprove everything."

And Katrine found, as the train pulled out, that there was another who had not been unmindful of her going, for Frank's man appeared from nowhere, touched his hat with accented deference, gave her a letter in silence, and disappeared into the blankness from which he came. But for the envelope she held, Katrine might have believed him a vision that had passed.

There was no formal beginning. The letter ran:

I shall not see you again until I know the truth. You will understand the reasons. I am going to Ravenel to-day to make some investigations. Of the outcome of these I cannot speak.

In all of this there is one thing sure. Everything may be changed in my life but my love for you.

F.R.

It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and to Nora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just off Washington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for the place, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the household goods.

There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees in the yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, to make a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrine enjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; the transformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot of restful color and peace.

The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced, with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she had told to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother had ceased speaking.

Katrine greeted him with affectionate remembrance, smiling as she did so at the change in this boy whom she had helped to New York. He was flashily dressed, after the style of a college freshman, and conversed, as she discovered, in a language known only to the New York newspaper man, who, as some one told her later, has a "slanguage" all his own.

No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation, however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherished toward her for the help given so long before.

Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.

But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight and ability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his brave schemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it; accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on a much-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's whole life. In a way, he had become a power in the newspaper world, and had, as she discovered, a knowledge of the private affairs of prominent people which seemed supernatural; and it was a habit of his to look over the names in a newspaper, remarking cheerfully at intervals:

"There's another man that I could put in jail."

But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feeling toward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintance between them might have done, and this was his admiration for Frank Ravenel.

If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectly through his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life with Ravenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.

But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine was concerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion for her, as she laughingly put it.

"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.

"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by to see him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.

With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney called "Her Irresponsible Frenchiness," and Nora, Katrine spent a busy month trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely. In the daytime she could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him—if he were back at Ravenel; if Dermott had proceeded in the bitter business concerning the early marriage, with many plans for readjustments in case he had done so.

Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina associates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediately after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France following close upon the heels of his return.

Early in November—it was the afternoon of the first snowfall—delayed letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her signature. She was to have her premiere in May, and Josef wrote that he would go up from Paris with her.

This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris, so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagement was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.

In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the most important being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debt to Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importance that he was wearing a new green tie. He ended by saying that he would give an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped he had done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin. He wrote no word of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrine concluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.

But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. The first was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trust because a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, who was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging search he was making for the truth.

She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost daily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit he mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street, and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little time for visiting.

His second coming was a fortnight later. In the afternoon Katrine had been reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death. It seemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there had come to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge that love was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, of which love is the cause. She had worked to forget, had been taught how to forget, yet she knew she had not forgotten, and that her listlessness since her visit to Mrs. Van Rensselaer had been chiefly worry lest trouble should come to Frank.

At five Nora brought in the tea-things, and Katrine closed the book over which she had been dreaming.

"Nora," she began, for the Irishwoman was like a mother to her, "did you ever forget your first love?"

"I did worse than that, I married him. Barney's the result," was the answer.

"But you never could have married any one else but Dennis, could you?" Katrine persisted.

"Niver!" the little old woman returned, with ready decision. "He bate me, Miss Katrine, and misprized me, and came and wint as he listed, and finally left me altogether; but I could never have chose another. It's the way with Irishwomen, that! The drame of it niver comes but the wance—niver but the wance," she repeated, looking into the fire, but seeing the old sea-wall at Killybegs, with flowers on top of it, against a cloudy sky, and a sailor boy with bold black eyes calling to her from the boats.

And Katrine, her tea forgotten, repeated, "It's that way with Irishwomen—the dream never comes but once."

At sunset the bitter wind which had been blowing all day long turned into a gale, a rascal wind, which slapped a handful of sleet and ice, hard as glass, on one side of your face, and scurried round the corner to come back and strike harder from an entirely different direction.

The storm must have suited his mood in some way, for Dermott McDermott chose to walk through it, arriving at Katrine's door breathless and flushed, the fur of his coat gleaming with ice and snow. Here he found a glowing fire, with the old mahogany settle on one side and the green grandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry; flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown, delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter and roaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happiness within, and led him, more than he knew, to that precipitancy of conduct which ended disastrously for him. As he sat in the great green chair Katrine looked up at him from the settle, and something in the intensity of his gaze made her make a quick gesture of warning to him before he spoke.

"Will you marry me, Katrine?"

She looked again quickly, to see if he could be jesting. In North Carolina it was his custom to ask her every day; but his sudden pallor and the choked voice told how terribly he was in earnest.

She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all my heart I could, Dermott."

"And why not?" he asked.

"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained, bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.

"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say I hope not."

"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you—always—ever since I've known you. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, and ye stood off the mob of boys who were baiting the old Jew—since then I've taken every thought for you I could. And I'm asking you to believe me when I tell you that I want your happiness more than my own. I've felt always that you'll never succeed as a public singer, and here of late, since I've known the St. Petersburg contracts were signed, I've suffered in my thoughts of you. We'll just leave another suitor out of the question. It's these public appearances of yours I dread at the present. If stage life could be as it seems from the right side of the footlights; if you knew nothing of the people or their lives, except as Valentine or Siegfried, it would be different. But the meanness of it; the little jealousies; the ignorant egotisms; I am afraid you can never do it, you will despise it so."

He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had taken some active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.

"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girl alone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has a rainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether you care or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, that there's a man here in New York thinking always of you, one who would give his life to save you from pain."



XXVI

DERMOTT MCDERMOTT

"You who were ever alert to befriend a man, You who were ever the first to defend a man, You who had always the money to lend a man Down on his luck and hard up for a V. Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude (And a quare sight you will be in that attitude) Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude, You'll find your latitude."

About Christmas-time the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely courteous representative she explained her inability to accept the very flattering terms by reason of the already signed St. Petersburg contracts. Although there seemed no definite outcome from the interview, the gentleman with whom it was held left her, as all did, charmed by her sincerity, her enthusiasm, and her great generosity.

The following week Melba was indisposed, and the much-impressed gentleman of the Metropolitan wrote to Katrine, asking if she would sing for them in the great prima-donna's place.

She accepted the offer with small hesitation, asking no one's advice about an unheralded debut. She was too great an artist to desire anything but stern criticism, and if she could sing greatly, she reasoned, the public would be quick enough to discover it. The opera to be given was "Faust." Her costumes were quite ready by reason of her Paris debut, and she went to the morning rehearsals with the same joy in her work that she had known when studying with Josef.

About four of the afternoon, before the final rehearsal, it began to snow persistently in small flakes which dropped evenly from a leaden sky. Standing by the window, twisting the curtain-string unconsciously, with her soul out in the storm, she became conscious of excited cries of "Extra!" in the street below, and as though in accompaniment to them there came an incessant ringing of the bell at the street door.

Nora being absent on some self-appointed business of her own, the maid who had brought in the tea, and one of the very damp papers which the boys were still crying below, left the room with some abruptness to see what was demanded below and who was clamoring for admission.

Katrine, left alone, poured the tea herself, her eyes scanning the news indifferently until they rested on some heavy black lines heading the last column. Again and again she looked, hoping that the printing would stay still, would stop seeming to dance up and down between the floor and ceiling—stop long enough for her to get its dreadful import:

REPORTED ASSIGNMENT OF FRANCIS RAVENEL! * * * * * Combined Attack Made on M.S. and R. Railroad! * * * * * Mr. Ravenel Dangerously Ill at the Savoy! * * * * *

Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! The words began going over and over in her brain, seeming to strike from within on her temples in a kind of hammering that she felt would set her mad. She stood helpless, her career, her work, her ambition gone from her in a divine self-forgetting and desire to help, as his gayety, his charm, "his difference" from all others came back to her. She made new excuses for his conduct. She told herself, as a mother might speak of a child, that he had been so spoiled. She remembered only the best of him—his kindness to her father, his generosity to herself.

She had long since realized the weight of Frank's words the morning of their parting.

"And remember, that if I did not do the best, I did not do the worst; that I am going away when I might stay," and she knew, looking back on her youth and trustfulness, how much truth there might have been in those words. She clasped her hands to her head trying to think. The throbbing in her head began to be followed by horrid sensations of things around going far away to an immeasurable distance, and returning again rapidly and horribly enlarged.

"Dangerously ill!" she repeated. "Dying, perhaps, alone in hotel rooms with none but paid attendance."

Her throat became choked at thought of it. "Father in heaven," she cried, her hands clasped together, "help me to help him! Don't let him suffer!" she pleaded. "I promised to help him always. Help me to keep my promise!"

* * * * *

Outside, the controversy between the maid at the door and some other was growing louder, and a demanding, forceful, insolent voice was insisting upon seeing Katrine "immejit," as the frightened French girl came back to the room in a panic of fear.

"A gentleman to see you, mademoiselle."

"I can see no one," Katrine answered, briefly, her face averted.

"He says his business is most important."

"Who is it, Marcelle?" she asked.

"It is Nora's son, mademoiselle, and he has been drinking; but if I were you, I'd see him."

The significance of the girl's tone changed Katrine's former decision.

"Tell him to come in," she said.

Barney came as far as the doorway and stood leaning against the frame of it, his eyes hot and angry, waving a newspaper wildly over his head.

"Of all the damned dirty businesses," he cried, "this is the damnedest and dirtiest I ever got up against! 'Combined attack," he quoted, striking the printed words with his fist. "Do you know the name of that combination? Dermott McDermott, that's its name. There may be a few others mixed up in it—Marix, for instance—for looks only. But it's McDermott at the bottom; this same McDermott mother's always tellin' me to imitate. Damned rascal! He's hated Mr. Ravenel and downed him because be thinks you love him. Hit him when he's down, too!"

He was too excited to sit down, but walked back and forth, talking loudly with excited gestures.

"Mr. Ravenel got back from Europe only three days ago, Tuesday, and in the evening he sent for me to come to the Savoy. Miss Katrine, I've never seen so dreadful a change in any one. He was like an old man. The look of death was on him, and he said he'd sent for me to cheer him up with my talk."

The boy was unable to continue for the sobs which shook him, and he covered his face with his hands for a space before he could proceed.

"He'd found bad news in Europe, he told me, and wanted me to cheer him up. I stayed the night with him, and in the morning when I called him he did not answer, but just lay still and white, looking at me, unable to speak. We got Dr. Johnston right away, and telegraphed Mr. Ravenel's mother, who arrived the next day. Yesterday morning that hound Marix, whose affairs are all mixed up with McDermott's, sent this note to me."

He extended a bit of yellow paper toward her, upon which was written:

"Sell Ravenel stocks within the next twenty-four hours, and hold for the bottom to drop out of them."

"But I'll get even with him, this Marix!" Barney shrieked, in his rage. "The only reason he gives me tips is because I know something disgraceful of him! I'll publish him from one end of the country to the other! I'll send him to the penitentiary! But I can't reach McDermott! Oh," he cried, with clinched fists, "if I only could!"

"I can," Katrine said, quietly; asking, after a minute's doubting, "You're sure it is Dermott McDermott who is at the foot of the trouble?"

"Who else has the money or the reasons to make such an attack?" he demanded of her as an answer. "And Marix as good as told me McDermott had some big deal on against the Ravenel interests last month."

She stood looking up at him, the folded yellow paper in her hand, driven by race instinct to fight in the open, to get into the enemy's country, especially if McDermott were the enemy.

With an angry light in her eyes she called for a storm-cloak and demanded a cab, setting Nora and her remonstrances aside with abrupt decision. Giving the cabman the address of McDermott's down-town offices, she sat in the dark of the carriage with the paper Barney had given her clutched in her hand, with neither consideration of the coming interview nor formulated plans. In a vague way she knew that people stared after her, as she went through the corridor of the great building, the hood of her storm-cloak thrown back. Unminding, she rapped at McDermott's private door. She had no misgiving about his being there. She knew in some way, before she left her apartment, that he would be there when she arrived.

"Come in!" he called, curtly.

She entered to find him alone, standing by the window looking absent-mindedly over the snowy chimney-tops, as though projecting a holiday.

"By all the saints at once!" he cried, gayly, at sight of her. "Here have I been ruminating on the sins of the fathers; on the triumphant fifth act, with vice punished and virtue rewarded at the fall of the curtain, when you enter!" And here her silence and pallor and accusing eyes stopped his talking. "What is it, Katrine?" he demanded.

"Did you bring this trouble to Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, her eyes filled with a dangerous light which in a second was matched by the blaze in his.

"Do you mean that ye think it was I who struck a man in the back in the way this thing was done?" he cried, bringing his closed fist down on the newspaper, which lay on the desk before him, in a splendid kind of anger. "How little you know me, after all!" he said, reproach in his voice. "How little ye know me! I've had neither art or part in it, nor suspicion of it until to-day. You'll be wanting proof of it!" he went on, a bit of scorn in his voice. "If so, mayhap the common-sense of the situation will appeal to you, though I don't know." He was angry, and she felt the brunt of it in these words. "Look you!" he continued. "Why should I be ruining an estate that I'm trying to get possession of? It would be a fool's part to play."

"Forgive me, McDermott!" she cried. "Oh, forgive me! I want no further proof. Your face is enough for me. But I'm beside myself with grief."

"I suppose," he continued, "that you reasoned I was capable of this because of that affair about the land on the other side of the river?"

"I did think of it," Katrine admitted. "Forgive me for it, Dermott, but I did think of it!"

"Do you know for whom I bought that land, Katrine Dulany? For your father—no less. It was got with the hope of helping him. It stands in his name in the State records to-day."

"Oh, Dermott!" she pleaded, the Irish form of speech coming back to her. "You'll just be forgiving me, won't you?" She put her hand on his sleeve and looked up at him with imploring eyes. "You must know how great and good I still believed you to be when I tell you that I came to you to ask you to help him. I've some money—the Countess, you know," she explained—"and I thought if you'd faith in my voice—and ye've said often that ye have—that if"—she broke into a storm of weeping—"if you'd just lend him the money that's needed I could sing the debt clear in the years to come."

Dermott looked down at the bowed head upon his old desk, his eyes moist, his lips twitching.

"Perhaps," he broke in, the angry light still in his eyes, "ye'll tell me who accuses me of this business?"

For answer she extended toward him the yellow paper which Barney had given her, signed with John Marix's initials.

"And so you believed Barney, although ye know his weakness for jumping at conclusions? Ye must have believed him, for my name's not mentioned here," he said, looking at the paper.

"He told me Mr. Marix had intimated to him that you were behind the attack."

"Ah! and so it's Marix that's been misusing my name, is it?" he cried, his eyes narrowed. "I'll settle with him!" And then, "Ye love Ravenel, Katrine?"

"Yes," she answered: "there's just nothing else in life for me."

"And after all that's gone between him and me, you are asking me to help him?"

"Dermott," she said, gravely, sobbing between the words, "I came to you because I have always known the greatness, the selflessness of you, and I trust you."

They stood in silence, not looking at each other.

"I have no one else," she went on. "There is no one else in the world I trust as I do you."

He held himself more erect at the words, a great light in his face.

"You are the only one who has always, always been kind to me," she continued, "and I'd give all there is of me to come to you, heart whole, as your wife. But I can't do it, Dermott, I can't do it! I've tried; no one knows how I tried to forget this love in my heart. I studied to forget, worked to forget, willed to forget, but"—and here she spoke the truth of life—"when great love has once been between a man and a woman, the man may forget, but the woman never. I've wealth and beauty, they say, and gift, and they're all just nothing to me except to help him. Before I'd been two days at the Van Rensselaer's it was just as it had been in Carolina. It was only fear that kept me from saying I'd marry him."

"He wants to marry you now? He has asked you?" Dermott spoke softly for her sake, keeping from his voice the scorn he felt for Ravenel.

"Yes," she returned. "And I know all you're thinking; but it makes no difference! When I think of him, ill, perhaps dying, his fortune gone, and nameless, maybe, as well, I'd give my soul to save him!" she cried, tear-eyed and pale, but glorious in self-abnegation.

She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing. For a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his supporting arm would have fallen. For a little while her dear, dark head lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have offended her could she have known them. He had grown very white before she recovered herself, but the great light still shone in his eyes as he placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.

"Go home, little girl," he said. "Go home and be at peace. I give my word to help him. I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will be well with him."

"Ah," she cried, "you are so good, so good!"

He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.

"Good-bye," she said.

"I'll take you to the carriage," he answered, quietly. "The storm is still violent, I see."

Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat beside the dying fire alone. In the outer room he could hear the click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players, but they seemed far off. Life itself seemed slipping from him. Suddenly he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs, impossible for any one to endure for long. Every little while he clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his agony what he did. The dreams and hopes of six years had been taken from him, and a great imagined future built on those dreams as well. The glory of his life had departed, and in his passionate misery there seemed nothing ahead for him but gray skies and barren land and bitter waters.

All night and far into the morning he lay. About five, the storm outside having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him and demanded an accounting. "Was this the way he helped?" he asked himself, accusingly.

By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little while, another. Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did so. Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order. Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled "Ravenel," and stood looking at it with speculative eyes.

The case was so complete. Quantrelle and his brother, a cure of Dieppe, of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open window, of Madame de Nemours' marriage. But what of it? Katrine could never marry a man with a disputed name! Still looking at the bundle, he struck a match. It flared up, sputtered, and went out, as though giving him time for second thought. Resolutely he lighted another, set the flame to the papers for a second time, and in an instant whatever trouble they contained for Frank Ravenel was nothing but smoke in the chimney.

"God forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following letter:

DEAR RAVENEL,—You will remember, I said in my last interview that the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar. It is thoroughly proven. Pray give yourself no more anxiety on the subject, and forgive me for doing what my duty prompted me to do. The thing is completely by with as far as I am concerned, and I have burned all of the papers relative to the matter. With best wishes for your complete restoration to health, I remain,

Sincerely yours, DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.

He folded the letter and sealed it, a curious smile upon his lips as he did so. Afterward he began looking over securities and making a list of them in steady, fine writing for the work in the day to come.

About eight he went to his hotel, bathed, dressed himself for the day, and neither of the facts that his heart was breaking, nor that he was about to shake the money market of New York, prevented him from regarding himself critically in the mirror to see if he showed suffering, nor from changing his neck-scarf to one of gallant red.

Underneath the bitterness of his heart lay a desire to square accounts with Marix. But it was part of his nature to excuse the weak, and on the way down to Wall Street the remembrance of the broker's timid-looking wife and the three little ones came to him. It was easy, after all, to forgive. Marix was too unintelligent to understand that it paid to be honest. "Perhaps," he reasoned, "God meant that even the fools and traitors should be helped, too."

Going into the stock-room, he looked over the quotations of the day before in an unimportant manner, waiting for Marix to come in.

"Hello! Hello!" he cried, at sight of him, with a genial laugh, putting a hand on each of the little broker's shoulders and looking down at him with warning eyes. "I'm going on the floor myself to-day. It's been a long time since I've been there. Ravenel and I have come to an understanding," his long, sinewy hands gripped Marix for a minute so hard they made him wince, "and I'm going on to protect his interests."

The blue light of battle was in his eyes; his hat was far back on his head and his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he waited for the gong to call him to the fight. He saw that many were regarding him curiously, and his cheeks flushed with the Celtic instinct to do the thing well—dramatically well. He knew that, in the long night vigil, part of him had died forever, but with chin well up, like a knight of old, he went, at the sound of the great bell, to battle for the happiness of the woman he loved.



XXVII

SELF-SURRENDER

When Katrine returned to her apartment after her visit to Dermott, she found Nora, with an excited countenance, waiting for her at the door. Finger on lip, she indicated a wish for Katrine to follow to her bedroom.

"Miss Katrine," she said, closing the door by backing against it, "there's one waiting for you. And you must think quick whether ye want to see her—with all that it may mean to you—with the rehearsal to-night. Though, poor lady, God knows her troubles! It's Mrs. Ravenel," she concluded.

"Alone?" Katrine asked.

"Yes, and with the tears streaming from her eyes and the look of death on her face. Mr. Frank's dyin', they say. But I want you to think—to think for yourself, Miss Katrine. Remember the night in Paris, when the world hung on your voice! Think of the afternoon when the greatest queen on earth kissed ye, after ye'd sung to her, with dukes and other creatures standin' round admirin'! Think that, if your voice fails ye to-night because of excitement and worry, it may be a check on your whole career! Think of the beautiful clothes laid out for ye to wear, and judge if it's worth while taking chances for a man who flung ye away like a worn-out glove!"

"Oh, Nora!" cried Katrine, reproachfully, "how can any one think of a voice in a time like this?"

As Katrine entered, Mrs. Ravenel turned from the fire by which she was standing and came toward her with outstretched hands.

Her eyes were red with weeping, and there was a hurried, despairing note in her voice as she spoke. "Katrine Dulany," she said, "I've come to you for help." Years of thought could not have given her better words, and the strong, young hands enfolded the cold ones of the suffering mother.

"If there is anything I can do for you, I will do it, oh, so gladly!" Katrine answered.

"Frank is very"—Mrs. Ravenel hesitated, as though lacking courage to speak her fears—"perhaps dangerously ill. For nearly two months the trouble has been coming on—ever since he was at the Van Rensselaers'. When he came back to me in North Carolina he had changed. He seemed struggling to throw off some heavy burden. His old gayety was gone, and he was always going to Marlton to look for records or asking me for more of his father's papers. At times he seemed half distracted, and would sit looking at me with brooding eyes with pity in them. But when he came back from Europe, just two weeks ago to-day"—the poor lady's voice was choked with sobs, and Katrine put a supporting arm around her with beautiful tenderness as she waited for her to continue—"he looked so ill I cried out at first sight of him. And he does not care to live! I can't make it out. It's not the money trouble. Money could never worry Frank. He cares too little for it! Last week," she went on, her voice losing itself in sobs, "Anne Lennox wrote me of your being at the Van Rensselaers', and of its being said there that Frank had asked you to marry him and that you had refused. Then I remembered that he told me, three years ago, of loving some one very greatly. Last night he became delirious, and in the fever he called your name over and over again, crying always, 'Oh, Katrine, forgive!' And that's what I've come to ask you to do—to forgive—to forgive him and me for all the wrong I taught him, for the weak and foolish way I brought him up—to forgive and come to him."

"There is nothing not forgiven," Katrine said. "I would give my life to save him," and the two clung to each other, weeping, before setting out, wifehood and motherhood, to battle with death.

Well hidden by the curtains, Nora watched Katrine enter the carriage after Mrs. Ravenel, realizing, with more anger than she had ever felt, all that the going meant. She had hoped that after a few years of the singing Katrine's heart would turn to Dermott, and as she saw her hopes fade away she shook her head knowingly, with even a touch of vindictive satisfaction.

"There are two kinds of men," she reflected, her eyes on the departing carriage: "the man who wants a woman to put her head on his shoulder, and the man who wants to put his head on a woman's shoulder. And when a girl's fool enough to like the last kind best, she generally pays."



XXVIII

UNDER THE SOUTHERN PINES ONCE MORE

When Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine entered Frank's apartments they found Dr. Johnston by the window of the sitting-room, and, with no spoken word, Katrine knew he had been waiting for her to come. His face bespoke more than professional anxiety; it bore a look of sorrow and the dread of losing a dear friend.

According Katrine but a scant nod of recognition, he crossed to the door of the sleeping-room, and, after looking in, made a gesture, stealthy and cautious, for Katrine to enter.

The room was dark save for a night light. Frank's face was turned toward her, his eyes closed. One hand, helpless, unutterably appealing, lay outside the white cover, and at sight of him thus it seemed her heart would break.

With a swift movement she knelt beside the bed, waiting to take the poor, tired head upon her breast. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw his lips tremble.

"Dear," she said.

There was silence, and then: "It is worth all—it is worth all—for this," he whispered. "Touch me, Katrine!"

And she laid her cheek on his.

"Katrine?"

"Yes, dear."

"You will stay? I will try to sleep now if you will touch me. Katrine, you will not slip away?"

"I shall stay until you are quite well, beloved."

At three in the morning he awoke with a shiver. "Where are you?" he called. "Where are you, Katrine?"

"Here," she answered, laying a hand on his cheek.

"Ah, thank God!"

* * * * *

It was over a month before Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine were able to take Frank south, where he longed to be. The St. Petersburg engagement was cancelled, and the Metropolitan manager, angry at Katrine's forgetfulness to notify him that she could not sing the night Mrs. Ravenel had come for her, made many caustic newspaper criticisms. But both events seemed entirely unimportant to her, for Frank's paralysis, which the doctors had believed but a temporary affair, did not leave him as soon as had been hoped.

There was a splendid Celtic recklessness in the way she surrendered everything for him, a generosity which Mrs. Ravenel saw with commending eyes, believing it, by some strange mother-reasoning, to be but just. But Frank was far from taking the same attitude in the matter. Almost the first day he was able to be wheeled on the great piazza in the sunshine he spoke to Katrine of the time she must soon leave, to keep the St. Petersburg engagements.

"I have no St. Petersburg engagements," she explained, briefly. "I cancelled them."

He sat with closed eyes, but she saw the tears between the lids as he spoke. "I have not had the courage to tell you," he said, at length, slowly, "before, but all that McDermott said is true, Katrine."

"Indeed!" Words could not explain the tone. She might have received news of the Andaman Islanders as carelessly.

"You know what it means to me!" he said, after a silence.

"I know what you think it means to you," she answered.

"It means that I have and am nothing. When I think of mother—" He looked at Katrine, with her radiant beauty, as she reached upward for an early rose. "And your friend McDermott," he went on, "has done a strange thing. This morning I opened my mail for the first time since my illness. In it I found a letter from him, saying that it could be proven that my father had never made an early marriage, and that Quantrelle was a great liar. I don't understand it. I saw Quantrelle myself, as well as his brother, when I was in France. There is not a doubt the marriage was an entirely legal one, not the shadow of a doubt. Ah," he cried, "Katrine, it seems to kill me when I think of it!"

"Francis Ravenel," she cried, the old smile on her face as she came toward him and placed her hand caressingly on his cheek, "you told me once, not long ago, to ask you to marry me. I do."

"Do what?"

"Ask you to marry me."

"And I refuse," he said, firmly. "I will not be married through pity."

"Oh, very well." She seated herself on some cushions on the top step, humming softly, as though his words were of no moment whatever.

"You don't think I mean it, do you?" he demanded, at length.

She made no answer whatever.

"Katrine," he said, at length.

"Yes."

"What are you thinking of?"

"I've gone away," she answered. "I was not being treated very well, and so I went away. I'm over in my Dreaming Land, My Own Country."

"Ah, come back to me!" he cried.

"Very well," she said, obligingly, though she made no movement toward him. "I've been rebuilding the old lodge, in my thoughts, for Josef. It will be such a wonderful place for him to rest in! He will want the first floor made into one room. And Nora and I will come there in the summer-time, when we're not singing. Perhaps you will come to visit us sometime, Mr. Ravenel!" she said, politely.

"Katrine, Katrine!" he pleaded. "It would be so unfair to you."

"Nonsense," she returned, shortly. There was surely never anything kinder or better in the world than this belittling of the whole matter.

"And I may never be strong again—"

"Then I can have my own way more," she laughed.

"And your voice—"

"Beloved," she said, gravely, "I can never give up my singing. Don't think me vain when I say I sing too well to make it right for me to give it up. I don't believe that anybody who does a thing well, who has the real gift, can give it up. But that I shall never have to sing for money is a great happiness for me. I can sing for the poorer folk, for the ones who really feel. Ah," she cried, "I've plans of my own, Josef and I! And the study and the pain were to teach me how unimportant all things are in this world save only love."

"Katrine! Katrine!" he cried, "you must help me to be square to you!" He raised his hand, feeble from illness, in the manner of one who takes an oath. "I solemnly swear that I will never do you the injustice—"

"Don't!" she cried, springing quickly to her feet and catching the upraised hand quickly to her breast. "Don't!" Adding quickly, with a laugh, "It's dreadful to commit perjury!"

Their hands were still clasped as Mrs. Ravenel came out to join them. In the lavender gown, with her fair face smiling, and carrying a work-bag of the interminable knitting in one hand, she did not look in the least the emissary of fate she really was.

"Mr. de Peyster has sent some letters, Frank. He writes me that none of them are of importance, but that you may care to look them over. And they made me think of a great envelope of papers which I had meant to send to you before you were taken ill. I found it just after you had been looking up all those family affairs, before you went abroad! I put them with my knitting, and naturally forgot. Your father gave it to me, oh, so many years ago! and I put it in the cedar chest." She gave the papers to Frank, talking in a gay, unimportant manner as she did so. "Isn't that curious on the outside?" she demanded. "'To be opened in case my will is ever disputed.' Now, who did your father think would ever dispute his will? I had been a faithful and," she laughed, "more or less obedient wife for many years. And you were too small to dispute anything except matters with your tutor. Don't look them over now, dearest, they may worry you!"

Frank took the envelope with an inexplicable feeling of hope. That his mother had forgotten important papers did not surprise him in the least. She had once taken a mortgage held by his father and pasted it over a place in a chimney where it smoked. She said herself that her temperament was not one for affairs.

A quick exchange of glances passed between Frank and Katrine as he excused himself to go to his room for rest, and then, alone at twilight, he broke the seal upon the confession of that Francis who had preceded him. To his utter confounding, he discovered in the envelope a certificate of legal marriage between Francis Ravenel and Patricia McDermott, duly witnessed and sealed. Wrapped with several letters which had been exchanged between them was a detailed account of the unfortunate affair in his father's crooked writing, and inside of all a bill of divorce, which had been obtained in Illinois previous to the elder Ravenel's marriage with the beautiful Julie D'Hauteville, of New Orleans.

As Frank read the history of the boyish folly he felt that little excusing was needed for his dead father, for the early marriage seemed but an escapade of a spoiled and self-indulgent boy with a headstrong and sentimental girl, neither of whom had taken a thought for the future.

"My wife renounced her faith to marry me [his father wrote]. The first year of our marriage, which was a legal one only, was one of great unhappiness, for at heart Patricia remained a Catholic still. She was depressed, suspicious, afraid of the future. Recriminations and quarrels were constant between us. Finally, I went to America with no farewell to my wife, to acquaint my father with my foolish act, and to ask him to make some suitable provision for us. Immediately following my departure, I discovered, my wife re-entered the Catholic Church. Soon afterward I heard that her father had extended his forgiveness, and that she had been welcomed back by her kinfolk in Ireland. Hearing nothing from her whatever, with the procrastination which was ever one of my great faults, I put off doing anything about the annulment of the marriage until the father of Quantrelle le Rouge wrote me that he had heard of her death as well as that of the child. But before my marriage to Mademoiselle D'Hauteville, I took the precaution to obtain a divorce quietly in Illinois. Even if Patricia were living and should marry again, I knew she needed no protection to make the marriage a valid one, as her Church had never recognized that she was married to me, the ceremony having been performed by a Protestant."

Frank laid aside the papers, and, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, sat in the gathering darkness thinking, with neither continuity nor result, of that strange life—current which, the family history claimed, connected him backward to the song-making minstrels of the time of Charlemagne; to the gallant lovers in the time of the Stuarts; to the self-indulgent and magnetic Ravenels of North Carolina.

What had they done? Dermott's question came back to him again and again, and through the depression into which this thinking was leading him he heard Katrine singing softly on the piazza underneath his window.

Like a child he rose and went to her. She was standing by one of the great white columns looking into the shadowy pine-trees as he came. He did not touch her. He had such fear of breaking utterly before her that he said, with forced quietude of voice:

"I've changed my mind about marrying you, Katrine." In spite of his effort to be calm, his voice broke into something like a sob as he spoke her name.

"Yes," she said, realizing what the import of the papers must have been.

After he had told Katrine the important fact in his father's statement, there came to him with a sudden suspicion of the truth the remembrance of Dermott's letter, in which the Irishman had stated that whatever documents he had held concerning the early marriage of the elder Ravenel had been burned.

Taking the letter from his pocket, he gave it to Katrine, who read it in the fading light and returned it wordlessly. She had turned her face away that Frank might not see the glow of admiration she felt for that Irish Dermott whom Frank could never understand.

"What do you think of the letter, Katrine?" Frank asked. "I fail utterly to understand it. Dermott knew, when he wrote it, that my father had made that early marriage. It had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt even to me. I feel sure that he knew nothing of a divorce or he would have mentioned it."

"I think," Katrine said, softly, "that Dermott told a story. You remember"—her voice broke a little—"you discovered long ago he didn't always tell the truth."

"And you think, then," Frank insisted, "that when McDermott wrote this letter," he made a motion with it as he spoke, "he still believed that my father and mother were never legally married?"

"He believed just that," Katrine answered. "He told me so the day he wrote the letter."

"But why did he write me what he believed to be an untruth? Why did he burn papers which he must have believed to be valuable evidence?"

"It's a way of his," Katrine answered, vaguely.

"Katrine," Frank cried, "there is more to this! Why did McDermott do this thing for me?"

"He told me he would help you."

"When?"

"The day I went down to Wall Street to ask him to stop the attack on your firm, when you were so ill. It was the day I told him that I loved you."

"And loving you himself, as he has always done, he did this for me?"

She made a sign of acquiescence.

"Ah!" he cried, the glow of enthusiasm in his eyes. "I have never understood the man, but, before God, I honor and reverence him for what he did. There is much of the hero in this strange Dermott McDermott."

"I have known that always," Katrine answered.

"And still you prefer to marry me?"

She was standing at a little distance from him, and as their eyes met she nodded her curly head quickly, as a child might have done.

"Ah," he cried, opening his arms to her, "come to me, come to me, you divine little soul! I'm not worthy, but God knows how I will try to be!"

And a little later: "It is cold for you here," he said. "Shall we go in, Mrs. Francis Ravenel?"

THE END