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 basement 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 canyons 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 spaces 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 gnaediges frauelein, 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 pass 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 pawnbroker, 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 accumulating 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 assistance 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, nobody 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 passed 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 pronounced, 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 reassert 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."

Jenkins was a young man trained by herself into efficiency, who had long been anxious to assume a more important part in the management of Storm, and was rising to his opportunity very creditably.

At last a letter came from Philip which Jemima believed would rouse Kate from her apathy. She read it—she opened all her mother's mail in those days—and rushed into her mother's room, almost tearful with her news.

"He's found Channing at last!" she cried; "and Jacqueline was not with him! Do you hear, Mother? Jacqueline was not with him at all! She never had been. It was another woman—some one he has married. Oh, Mother, don't you understand?"

Kate's eyes lifted very slowly to her face. "Then what," each word was an effort, "has he done with my Jacqueline?—Is she dead?"

Jemima caught her hands. "No, no, dear! Listen!"—she spoke very distinctly. "It was all a dreadful mistake—our mistake. She never went to Mr. Channing at all. She simply ran away to New York to study her singing, Philip says, and has been there all this time.—Oh, how can I ever make it up to poor little Jacky? Imagine thinking such a thing of her! I must have been crazy, jumping to such a wicked conclusion!" In her distress she wrung her hands. "And what must Jacqueline have been thinking of us, leaving her alone there so long? Oh, Mother!—" a happy idea had come to her. "Don't, let's leave her alone another day! Philip may not have reached her yet—this letter was mailed in Paris, just before he sailed. Let's go and find her ourselves, you and I!"

But the answering spark of eagerness she hoped for did not come.

"If Jacqueline wants me," said Kate, closing her eyes, "she will let me know."

The coldness of the reply chilled Jemima. It seemed so utterly unlike her impulsive, warm-hearted generous mother.

"Don't you realize how we have misunderstood her? Why, she hasn't been—been wicked at all! She simply saw she had made a mistake, and tried to undo it by going away—foolish, but so like Jacky, poor darling!—Mother! You don't mean to say you're not going to forgive her for running away?"

"Forgive?" repeated Kate wonderingly. Then she remembered that Jemima had never been a mother.

"It is Jacqueline who cannot forgive me," she explained, in her dull and lifeless voice.

Jemima gave up in despair. There was something about all this beyond her understanding.

In a few days a second letter came from Philip, postmarked New York, telling her that he had at last learned the where-abouts of his wife, and hoped soon to be going to her. He begged Kate to have patience, explaining that he was under promise not to reveal Jacqueline's hiding-place.

We must humor her now (he wrote). It is only because of the intervention of a friend she has found that she has consented to let me come to her presently. God knows what thoughts of us who love her and could not trust her have been in her head through these lonely weeks! We must give her time to get over them. She is not ready for us yet. You will understand, you who understand everything. Wait. And meanwhile comfort yourself as I do with the knowledge that she is safe, safe!

This letter puzzled Jemima almost unbearably, but she dared ask no question of her mother as to what had occurred. She was grateful to see that it at least roused the invalid to a show of interest. Kate took it into her languid hand and read it over twice, looking for some possible message for herself from Jacqueline, some little word of love that Jemima might have overlooked.

But finding nothing, she relapsed into the old listlessness.



CHAPTER XLIX

It was a very trivial and unimportant thing, to Jemima's thinking, which presently lifted Kate out of her languor into action once more. Big Liza, entering timidly one morning, as she did many times in the day, to gaze with miserable eyes at the figure on the bed, murmured to Jemima: "They's a message come fum that 'ooman Mahaly, down in the village, sayin' she's dyin', and wants to see the Madam. She 'lows she cain't die in peace 'thout'n she sees Miss Kate."

"Of course that's impossible," said Jemima in the same low tone. "Send word that we're very sorry. See that she has whatever she needs. If necessary, I'll go myself."

"Did you say she was dying?" asked an unexpected voice from the bed.

"Yais'm, Miss Kate! but don't you keer, honey. Tain't nothin but that mulatter 'ooman, Mahaly—You 'members about her!" she added scornfully.—Very little had passed among her "white folks" that was unknown to the sovereign of the kitchen.

To the amaze of both, Kate slipped without apparent effort out of the bed where she had lain for weeks. "Where are my clothes?" she demanded.

Jemima ran to her with a cry of protest. "Mother, be careful! What, you aren't thinking of going to see her? You can't—you're not strong enough!"

"Mahaly must not die before I speak with her."

"Then," said Jemima calmly, "I'll have her brought to you."

"A dying woman? Jemmy, don't be silly!" Kate spoke with an asperity that brought a wide grin to Big Liza's face, because it sounded as though the Madam were come back again.

Jemima, alarmed, continued to protest; at last ran to the telephone and called Dr. Jones to her assistance. Meanwhile Kate, scolded at, fussed over, but in the end helped by her cook, got into out-door clothes; and before Doctor Jones was on his way to Storm, she had taken the road for the village.

She sat erect in her surrey, pale, but scorning the proffered arm of Jemima, driven by a proud and anxious coachman behind the quietest pair of horses in the stable; and people as she passed stared at her with utter amaze—with more; with a delight that rose in some cases to the point of tears. For the first time, Kate realized that she had won something besides respect and dependence and fear from her realm. She had won love. The realization pierced through her apathy. A faint color came into her cheeks. More than once, as she paused to exchange greetings with some beaming and incoherent acquaintance, her own lips were tremulous.

"Why are they so glad to see me, Jemmy?" she asked once. "Did they think I was very ill?"

Her daughter nodded, not trusting her own voice. It seemed as if a miracle had occurred before her eyes.

"Well, I've fooled them," smiled Kate, drawing into her lungs a great breath of the keen, rain-swept air that was bringing new life into a world done with winter.

She asked one other question as they drove. "Jemmy, what does the neighborhood think about—Jacqueline?"

Jemima explained that she had allowed the impression to go abroad that Philip and Jacqueline had taken advantage of an opportunity to go to Europe on a belated honeymoon journey.

She did not say, because she did not know, that the countryside, always with an interested eye upon its betters, had connected the extreme suddenness of this journey with Philip's vanished father, picturing to itself touching death-bed scenes, and eleventh-hour repentances. Remembering the Madam's brief illness at the time of Dr. Benoix' disappearance, the neighborhood had connected her present illness also with its romantic imaginings; with the result that what was left of its disapproval had been swallowed up in a sudden and quite human wave of sympathy for that faithful woman and the man she loved.

When they reached a neat little cottage in the portion of the village devoted to white workingmen's homes, Kate allowed herself to be assisted to the door, where she dismissed her daughter, telling her to return in half an hour.

"I must see Mahaly alone," was her only answer to Jemima's uneasy protests.

She was ushered respectfully into a neat, clean room, hung with the enlarged crayon portraits dear to the colored race, and boasting a parlor-organ draped in Battenberg lace. The window was open—a rare thing in a negro home, despite her efforts with the Civic League. The bed was stiffly starched and unoccupied, and the woman she had come to see sat upright in a chair, propped with pillows, panting with the effort of keeping breath in her lungs. She was dying of heart-disease.

She had been in her day rather a handsome creature, with the straight hair and high features that indicate a not unusual admixture of Indian blood. But though she must have been of about the same age as Mrs. Kildare, she looked by comparison withered and superannuated, with the grayish film across her eyes that one sees in those of aged animals.

These blurred eyes stared at Kate with a queer hostility, mixed with something else; as they had stared on the day she came a bride to Storm. She made a slight, futile attempt to rise.

"Nonsense, Mahaly! Don't move," said the Madam, kindly. "This is no time for manners."

She closed the door behind her, and would have closed the window had it not been for the woman's need of air and the inevitable faint odor that clings about negro habitations, no matter how cleanly they are kept. What she and her old servant had to say to each other must not be overheard. Fancying that she detected sounds as of some one moving on the porch outside, she called briefly: "Keep out of ear-shot, please." She was too accustomed to obedience to investigate results.

"You wanted to see me, Mahaly?" she said. "You wanted to explain something to me, perhaps?"

The woman struggled with her laboring breath. She was very near the end. Kate found it painful to look at her, and her gaze wandered away to the crayon portraits on the wall. The one over the bed, in the place of honor, was a portrait of her husband, Basil Kildare. Her face hardened. This was an impertinence! And yet....

Mahaly was speaking. "You-all ain't—found the French doctor yet—is you?"

"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 passionate 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 glass 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 God, 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 God'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."

"I? Never failed?" repeated Kate, in bitter mockery.

"Now you're thinking of Jacqueline and Philip. That wasn't an error of will, but of judgment.—This time, I'm judging."

Boast that it was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother could never hope to gain.

"Oh, Jemmy," she sighed as one equal to another, "if you had been in my place, what would you have done about Jacqueline?"

Mrs. Thorpe took the matter into consideration. At length she pronounced gravely, "If I had been in your place, there never would have been a Jacqueline"; which ended the conversation for that night.



CHAPTER L

It was not long after this that Kate woke to a realization of the sacrifices her daughter was making to remain at Storm, and sent her back post-haste to her patient, neglected husband, and to the new worlds that remained to conquer.

"Of course I shall be lonely," she admitted in answer to Jemima's protest. "But I must get used to that. And I shall have my work, now that I am quite strong again."

Nor would she listen to Jemima's plea, seconded heartily by James Thorpe, that she leave Storm for a while and make them a visit.

"Suppose Jacqueline should come home, and not find me here?"

Jemima knew that it was not only Jacqueline of whom she thought.

But when Kate said that she had her work to return to, she had reckoned without her henchman Jenkins, a new broom that was sweeping very clean indeed. It is an axiom that while it requires creative genius to start an enterprise, once the momentum is gained any mediocre intelligence may keep it going. Kate learned this for herself.

During her illness, things had gone on much as usual. Her affairs were in excellent order. The spring planting had been arranged for; at the appointed season foals and calves and tottering new lambs made their appearance in their usual numbers among her pastures; the books showed no falling off in credits nor increase in debits; fences and roads were in excellent repair. Jenkins was manifestly eager and able to spare her all responsibility and trouble. She understood his ambition. There seemed no reason for her to resume the reins of authority from such capable hands.

She turned to her immediate household; but there, too, the efficiency which had been her fetish made interference unnecessary. Her well-trained servants chuckled among themselves at the Madam's sudden interest in housecleaning, in linen-closet and pantry, in cookery.

"Laws, Miss Kate, honey! Huccom you dirtyin' up yo' hands with niggers' work?" demanded Big Liza, reproachfully.

The village, too, seemed to be getting on surprisingly well without her. The Housewives' League she had organized had made amazing strides during her absence. It had elected a president and a secretary and was governing itself according to Roberts' Rules of Order quite as capably as it had been governed in the past by the Madam. It was even, thanks to Jemima's recent activities in the neighborhood, beginning to discuss in a shy and tentative manner the question of Votes for Women. Kate felt that she had created a Frankenstein.

Nor was the problem of the negro element any longer hers to struggle with alone. She had tried to meet it by starting among the colored people of the village a Civic League, quiescent during the winter, but coming to life each spring with garden-time, and progressing enthusiastically through the summer to the culmination of prize-giving, and a procession, with the prize-winners riding proudly at the front in decorated carriages. Now she found that Philip's successor, a city-bred young fellow trained in social service, had already taken the Civic League in hand and had converted the colored school into a Neighborhood House of the most approved pattern, where innocent entertainment might be had on two nights out of the week, winter and summer. The effect upon a gregarious, pleasure-loving race which, as John Wise has said, never outgrows mentally the age of seventeen, was already apparent. Kate wished humbly that she herself had thought of a Neighborhood House.

Gradually she came to the conclusion that she had outlived the community's need of her. She, Kate Kildare, not yet forty, with energy flowing back into her veins even as the sap was coming back into the trees after their winter's rest, could find no outlet for it.

There was nothing to fill the endless days. She tried to resume her long-neglected musical studies, but the piano was haunted for her now by the silent voice of Jacqueline, and she turned from it at last in despair. In this time of need, even books failed her. With her returning vigor full upon her, she could not find the patience to sit for hours poring over the thoughts of professional thinkers, or the imaginary deeds of people who had never lived—she who had lived so hard, and whose own thoughts came up aching out of her heart.

Mag's baby was her one occupation. Storm would have been indeed a dreary place just then without Mag's parting legacy to it. The small Kitty was somewhat young to begin her education, but begin it she did, nevertheless. She was as docile and anxious to please as her mother before her, and after days of patient training, managed to master the intricate syllables of what the doggie says and what the pussy says. She also learned to navigate alone the distance from a chair-leg to Kate's knee; a fearful adventure, this, accomplished with much wild waving of arms and not a few tears, for Kitty was not of the intrepid, determined stuff to which Kate was accustomed in the way of infants.

However, she made a cuddlesome, drowsy armful to hold during the long Spring twilights; and often sitting so, alone in her great hall, Kate forgot what child it was she held, and went back to the days of her first motherhood, dreaming that the door would presently open and admit Jacques Benoix, come to sit for a while with his friend.

Few visitors troubled the monotony of Storm. During her illness the neighborhood had been assiduous with broths and jellies, but now that she was well again the old awe of the Madam returned, and it did not occur to the modest country folk that she would have been glad of their company. Holiday Hill was in charge of caretakers. Farwell, after months of the role of the Southern country gentleman, had suddenly yielded to the irresistible lure of the footlights, and was once more making his final appearance upon any stage. Philip's substitute occasionally paid a conscientious call, which Kate recognized, with some amusement, as a parochial visit. He was an earnest young man, with views, and it was evident that he regarded Mrs. Kildare's frank indifference to matters of dogma as a serious defect in her character.

Somewhat to her surprise, one day the Bishop of the diocese came out from Lexington to see her. She had met him before, as Philip's friend, and even entertained him at Storm on occasion; but their acquaintance was very slight, and she was at a loss to account for this visit.

He seemed to have come chiefly to talk about Philip. "I have been watching young Benoix since he first left the Seminary. We have many promising men in our clergy," he said, "many indefatigable workers, many beautiful spirits, many fine intellects. But a combination of all these qualities is rare in any profession. And besides these," he added quietly, "Benoix has the right sort of wife."

Kate's steady eyes met his without flinching. Though nothing was said about Jacqueline's letter to the Bishop, the thought of it had not for a moment been absent from their minds. "You think that?" she asked in a low voice.

"I know it! The right sort of wife is important to any man, but more to a clergyman than to others. Charm, tact, the kindliness that comes from the heart itself, above all, understanding—these are the things your little Jacqueline has brought to help her husband, and he will go far. Mark my words!—Presently I shall have to take those two young people away from you, into a wider field."

He watched her compressed, tremulous lips shrewdly and sympathetically. Jacqueline's confession and her voluntary atonement had touched his broad nature to the quick; and he had come to Storm of his own volition for the purpose of reconciling her with a presumably unforgiving mother. But his first glimpse of the mother's face showed him the needlessness of such an errand so far as she was concerned, and his sympathies turned into another channel.

He said lightly, "I suppose you hear often from the honeymooners?"

Kate shook her head.

"No? Young people are sometimes thoughtless in their happiness, forgetful of the rights of mothers.—My dear," he said suddenly, abandoning his pretense of ignorance, "why don't you go to them, take her by surprise? Things are so much better said face to face, and before any hurt has had time to rankle. Why don't you go to them?"

"I do not know where they are."

The Bishop looked thoughtful. "I can tell you," he said at last. "And I think I shall."

But Kate stopped him. The temptation had been great. She was weary of waiting for the word that never came, for the chance to hold her child in her arms again, and kiss away all the grief and pain and remorse that lay between them.

But she knew it was best for Jacqueline and Philip to come to their readjustment without her. Long meditation had taught her at last to understand that it was she herself who, unwittingly and unwillingly, had stood between them.

When the Bishop rose to go, he held her hand between his own for some moments. "When will you come to Lexington, my dear? I am an old and busy man, but I cannot afford to lose touch with such a woman as you. Will you come to see me occasionally?"

Kate replied quietly that she never went to Lexington. He understood. Though it had happened before his time, he had not failed to hear of the occasion when young Kate Leigh had brought her children home to be christened, and had been cut by an entire congregation.

He said gently, "The world's memory is short—shorter than you think. If you were to come to Lexington now, you would find that you have many friends there."

She gave no promise. The world's memory might be short, but she was not of the world, and hers was long.

"Then I must even come to you," said the Bishop; and was as good as his word thereafter....

As the long days lengthened into weeks, Kate gave up all pretense of activity, and resigned herself to waiting; waiting for she knew not what.

At first it had been Jacqueline; some word of her, or message from her. But, gradually, thoughts of her child merged somehow into thoughts of Jacques Benoix. She found herself dreaming of him as she had not allowed herself to dream since she first heard that he was coming out of the penitentiary, when their meeting seemed close, imminent, something to be prepared for constantly lest the shock of joy should be too great. She tried now to stop these dreams, in fear of the awakening; but could not.

Perhaps it was April in her blood, bringing to life the old habit of wanting her mate in the mating-season. Perhaps it was her talk with Jemima, and the girl's promise that Jacques Benoix should be found. Jemima rarely broke a promise.—Whatever the cause, the sense of his approach, his nearness, was sometimes so vivid that Kate felt she had but to turn her head to see him standing there behind her.

But if she turned it, there were only the dogs, eagerly waiting her pleasure, their tails astir; or perhaps a servant coming from the house with a wrap for her, because the breeze was damp.

She rarely rode abroad now. Pasture and field and meadow, Nature itself, had lost charm for her since she seemed to have no longer a share in bringing about their miracles. She was content to sit day after day in her eyrie, gazing out over the greening valley, watching the great flocks of martins, grackle, and robins that passed noisily overhead, going to meet the Spring farther north.

All about her sounded the murmur of bluebirds, which came each year to live in the old trees about Storm. She wondered why the bluebird should have been taken as a symbol of happiness. There is nothing more plaintive in nature than its nesting-song, a cadence of little dropping minor notes, which Kate, grown fanciful in her idleness, translated for herself:

Love and loss, loss and love. Take them together, while there is time. Better together than not at all. Quick—for the Spring is passing by.—

Yet one who saw her sitting there, the breeze blowing tendrils of bright hair about her face, her strong, lithe hands clasped youthfully about her knees, her beautiful eyes darkling or brightening with the thoughts that passed, could not have connected her with the mere passivity of waiting, of remembering.

Sometimes the pale sunlight, growing daily in warmth, touched her cheek or her hand like a caress, and stirred her to a sudden restlessness.

"It can't be all over for me," she thought, then. "It can't!"

It seemed to her that she had been like the Lady of Shalott, doomed to see life only in a mirror, while her hands weaved eternally at a task of which she had grown weary; hoping always for one to pass, that she might turn and break the spell, and be done forever with the mirror....

At length a message came that put out of her mind both herself and the man she loved. It was a telegram from Philip, sent from the mountain town whence he and Jacqueline and Channing and Brother Bates had set forth on their missionary expedition.

The telegram read:

Jacqueline wants you. Will meet morning train. Please bring Mag's baby.

PHILIP.



CHAPTER LI

She was disappointed to find that Philip, despite his telegram, was not at the station to meet her, but had sent instead a wagon which, its driver explained, was to take her as far as wheels were feasible after the Spring rains, and then return.

"Reckon thar'll be a mule or somethin' to tote you the rest of the way," he added, indifferently.

He was unable to answer any of her questions, or to allay the fears which, despite the eager happiness in her heart, were beginning to make themselves felt. Jacqueline wanted her at last—but why?

Mile after mile they drove in utter silence, Kate's thoughts racing ahead of her; while small Kitty, on a pile of quilts in the bottom of the bouncing wagon, adapted herself to circumstances with the ease of a born traveler, and alternately dozed, or imbibed refreshment out of a bottle, or rehearsed her vocabulary aloud for the pleasure of the world at large. She would have preferred a more attentive audience, but she could do without it.

Where the road degenerated into a mere trail along the mountain-side, Kate found a mule awaiting her, in charge, not of Philip, as she had hoped, but of a mountaineer even more taciturn than the driver. Her fears became more acute.

"Can you tell me whether my daughter—young Mrs. Benoix—is ill?" she asked her new conductor, anxiously.

The man took so long to answer that she thought he had not heard her, and repeated the question.

He spat exhaustively—he was chewing tobacco—and finally replied, "The gal at Teacher's house? Dunno as I've heerd tell."

"Aren't you a neighbor of hers?"

He gave a brief nod of assent.

"Then," she persisted, "you surely would have heard if she were ill, wouldn't you?"

Another long pause. "Dunno as I would. We-all ain't much on talk."

"You certainly are not!" exclaimed Kate with some asperity.

It seemed to her anxious impatience that his taciturnity was deliberate, hostile. He was a rough, unkempt, savage-looking creature; yet the tenderness and skill with which he held little Kitty before him on his ungainly mount would have done credit to any woman.

Kate remarked presently, observing this, "You've had children of your own?"

"Thirteen on 'em."

"Thirteen? Splendid! All living?"

He spat again. "All daid. Died when they was babies."

"Good Heavens! This must be looked into!" exclaimed Kate, with a touch of the old authority; and then remembered that she was not in her own domain.

Presently, as they mounted, her attention was attracted to a woman planting in a steep and barren-looking field, swinging her arms with the fine free grace of a Millet figure.

"What's she trying to raise there—corn?" Kate inspected the soil with a professional eye. "She won't do it—not in that soil! It needs fertilizing."

Her companion remarked impartially, "Ben raisin' corn thar a right smart while."

"All the more reason to give it a rest! I suppose you've never heard of rotation of crops?"

"Yes, I hev," was the unexpected reply. "Fum Teacher." He spat with great success, and added, "We-all ain't much on new-fangled idees."

Kate attempted no more conversation. She began to feel the fatigue of the hurried journey, and to her secret fears was added a growing dread of the end of it, a sudden shyness about meeting not only Jacqueline, but Philip, after the conclusion to which her long meditations had led her. She had recalled again and again, and always with a sharp twinge of shame, the hurt bewilderment on Philip's face when she had offered him Jacqueline in marriage. What a blind and stubborn fool she had been not to understand! If he still had that look in his eyes, that patient acquiescence in her will, Kate felt that she could not bear it.... But surely he had forgotten her, now that he was with Jacqueline? Surely the girl was lovely enough, and piteous enough in her great need of him, to drive any other woman out of his mind?

After many miles, the mountaineer volunteered a remark: "Thar's the school buildin's."

She saw on the rise beyond a group of log-cabins, the central one small and old, the two wings much larger and evidently of recent construction. In the doorway of one a man stood, looking out; and as he started down the slope toward them Kate recognized him. It was Philip.

"Mother!—At last!" he cried out. "I would have gone to meet you, but she could not spare me. She's been asking for you every moment.—Wait, let me help you!"

The tone of his voice laid to rest all her misgivings with regard to him. Even as he welcomed her, he was thinking of his wife.—As for Philip, if he remembered a time when to call this woman "mother" would have been like a knife-thrust in his breast, he thought only that the time was very long ago.

Kate sprang down unaided, her fatigue forgotten. "Jacqueline?" she demanded eagerly.

"A little stronger to-day. But—the baby—"

Kate gave a cry. Her unspoken fears had been true. "A baby?"

"Yes. It did not live.—That is why I asked you to bring little Kitty."

Kate put her hands before her eyes. "My poor little girl! Oh, my poor little girl!—Let me go to her."

At the door she was not surprised to find Jemima, in a neat nursing-dress, her eyes heavily lined with fatigue.

"I've been here several days. Jacky forgot to make them promise not to send for me. She never thought of me," she explained humbly.... "Oh Mother, it has been pretty bad! Jacky was so—so brave!" She broke down a little in Kate's arms.

"Steady, there," whispered Philip behind them. "She can't stand any excitement yet."

But the two had assumed charge of too many sickrooms together to need his admonition.

Kate took off her hat, smoothed her hair, and went in to Jacqueline, as calmly as if they had parted yesterday.

The sight of the wan, thin face among the pillows, with eyes that looked by contrast enormous and black, shook her composure a little, and she gathered Jacqueline up against her breast without speaking. Jacqueline, too, was silent, clinging to her, touching her mother's hair and cheeks with feeble hands, as if to be sure it was really Kate.

"I knew you would come," she said at last, with a great sigh.

"Come! Oh, my darling, why didn't you send for me sooner?"

"Because I wanted to surprise you, Mummy. Because I knew when you saw baby, you'd forgive me, you wouldn't care, nothing would matter, except him.... But now there isn't any baby!" The weak voice suddenly rose to a wail. "There isn't any baby! Nothing has turned out as I had planned. Oh, Mummy! He was going to be so little, and sweet, and fat—nobody who saw him could have stayed angry with me!... And I never heard him cry, I never even felt his tiny hand clutching my finger!... It's because I was wicked," she moaned, tossing about so that Kate caught the waving hands and held them tight. "God wanted to get even with me. So He took the thing I wanted most in all the world. He took my baby. Oh, but that was cruel of Him, no matter how bad I'd been! Wasn't it? Wasn't it, Mummy?"

"Hush, child!" whispered Kate. "Hush! God isn't that sort!"

"Yes, He is, too! 'The Lord thy God is a jealous God'—ask Phil!—Oh, where is Phil?" She looked wildly around, her voice growing higher and higher. "He promised he wouldn't go away—he promised he wouldn't ever leave me again. I want him! Phil, Phil!—Oh, there you are!" The relief in her tone was pitiful. "Don't get where I can't see you again, Flippy darling. It frightens me so! Come here, I want to hold on to you.... Now, tell mother all about the baby. She didn't see him, you know, and I didn't see him either, very well. Oh, why did you let them make me stupid with chloroform, so I couldn't see him? Tell mother about his little ears, and his feet just exactly like mine—"

"Quiet, now," soothed Philip, striving to hush that painful, excited babble. "See, your mother is tired! Let's not talk about it now."

"But I want to talk! I want to, before I forget anything about him. It's the only baby I'll ever have. Mother wants to hear—don't you, Mummy? It was her grandson, you see."

"What nonsense!" interrupted Kate with tremulous cheerfulness. "The only baby? You're just eighteen—you shall have all the babies you want!"

"That shows how much you know about it!" cried Jacqueline with a sort of agonized triumph. "I can't have any more! The doctor said so. I heard him whispering to Jemmy, when he thought I was asleep, and I made her tell me. She didn't want to, but she thought I'd better know.... It isn't as if it would kill me to have them, Mother—that wouldn't matter! But it would kill them. It takes too long. Something is wrong about me."

Kate glanced at Philip in shocked questioning. He nodded slightly.

"So now you know the sort God is, Mother! Cruel, cruel! Just because I wasn't good.... Think of it, never any babies! No one to play with, and pet, and take care of.... No one that needs me, or wants me...."

Philip bent over her, "My darling, the world is full of babies!"

"But not mine. Not one that wants me.—Oh, how my breast aches, how my breast aches."

"This won't do," murmured Jemima, anxiously. "She's working herself up into a fever again. I'm going to call the doctor."

Philip whispered something in her ear, and she hurried to the door.

There was a sound outside that stopped the frantic words on Jacqueline's lips. "What's that?" she breathed. It came again; the fretful whimper of a sleepy child.

Jemima came into the room, carrying small Kitty, newly awakened from a nap on somebody's comfortable knees, and naturally resentful.

"O-oh!" gasped Jacqueline on a long-drawn breath. "Give her to me!"

Presently, held warm against that aching breast, Mag's baby slept again; and Jacqueline looked from one to the other of those about her with the first dawning of her old, wide, radiant smile.

Soon her own eyes drooped. The three tiptoed toward the door; but quiet as they were the faint voice from the bed followed them: "Phil, Phil! where are you?"

"I can't leave her," he whispered apologetically. "You see how it is!" (Kate was glad indeed to see how it was.) "Will you go into the next room, and say good-by to—our son?"



CHAPTER LII

Kate stood gazing down at the grandchild she had so longed for, Jacqueline's baby; an old, wrinkled, strangely wise little face, as befitted one who had solved with his first breath both the mysteries of Life and of Death. His tiny fists were clenched, his brow puckered, as if that momentary glimpse of knowledge had not been a happy one.

No woman who has not gazed so into the face of her own dead child can understand the hopelessness, the sense of bafflement, of the futility of all human endeavor, which surged through Kate Kildare at that moment. The waste of it! The utter, insensate waste of so much passion and hope and tenderness, of such desperate agony, of such courage to bear...! There is no spendthrift so prodigal as Nature. For one perfected product that pleases her, hundreds of preciously guarded lives, such as this, thrown aside like so many pot-shards, useless, done for—and all to what purpose?... For the moment Kate visualised Nature as some incredible, insatiable goddess, a female Moloch, who must be propitiated always with mother's tears....

Then she had a thought of her husband; of his tenderness with their little suffering Katherine, his remorse-stricken grief over the child's death. Was that the purpose? For the moment, she forgot the other Basil whom she knew better, the one who had put aside his own flesh and blood as ruthlessly as Nature herself had put aside this little son of Jacqueline.

"Basil would be sorry for this," she whispered, half aloud. "Poor Basil!"

She did not know that she was weeping, or that she was not alone, till Jemima touched her hand; the girl's nearest approach to a caress.

"So this," said the latter, in a queer, small voice, "is the last of the Kildares of Storm!... Why do you cry, Mother? Aren't you glad?" She spoke fiercely. "Isn't it time we made way in the world for—better people?"

Kate tried haltingly to explain the sorrow that was upon her. "He wasn't all Kildare, this little fellow.... You never knew my father, or his father. They were gallant gentlemen, Jemima. All my life I have wanted sons like them, and like—the Benoix men. I have been proud of my health, my strength. I have lived honorably, I have tried to keep myself a—a—"

"A gallant gentleman," said Jemima, nodding.

"Yes. So that the spark should remain alive, for my grandsons. It seemed to me—"

She broke off, finding it impossible to put into words what she felt; that her own indomitable vitality, her energy, her courage, the thing she had called "the spark," was something which had been put in her hands to guard for the long future, and that, instead, here in her hands it had gone out.

This meant death to Kate Kildare, far more than the separation of body and spirit would mean death.

Each woman was busy with her own thoughts for a while; widely different thoughts. Jemima murmured presently, "Philip said 'our son,' Mother! Oh, do you suppose that was—true? Or was he—"

She did not finish her own question; nor did Kate attempt to answer it.

"That would be like Philip," muttered the girl at last. "Anyway, it's his own affair."

She saw that her mother was sobbing.

"Don't!" she whispered in distress. "Don't! I—I never know what to do when people cry. Please!" Her voice altered suddenly. "Mother, you wait here a minute! You just wait here!"

Kate heard her leave the room, and then stooped to kiss her grandson good-by.

As she knelt there, tears raining fast on the tiny, unresponsive face in the coffin, she heard a step behind her. Thinking it was Jemima again, she did not look around.

It was some moments later that a memory came to her, so clear as to be almost a vision; the memory of her dream in Frankfort—a man standing near, with bent shoulders and gray hair, but eyes as blue as a child's, as tender as a woman's, gazing down at her, smiling down....

Behind her sounded a slight cough.

She lifted her head, suddenly trembling. "Who—who is there?" she whispered.

A voice answered, very low—"Kate!—Kate!"

Without another word, without a glance to make sure, she rose and went blindly into the arms that were ready for her.

It was like coming home.



AFTERWORD

The Madam made one final appearance at Storm, no longer as Mrs. Kildare but as Mrs. Benoix, remaining only long enough to put affairs in order for resigning her stewardship of the estate.

She had been married in the mountains to Dr. Benoix, over-ruling all his protests with a quiet, "Do you think I am going to run the risk of losing you again?"

And indeed his protests were not very heartfelt. He was unaware until too late of the clause in Basil Kildare's will by which Kate's re-marriage would lose Storm to herself and her children. His chief objection was on the score of his health, and to it Kate had replied simply, "That in itself would be a reason for our marriage, if there were no other. Oh, Jacques, if you could know how I love to be needed!"

He made his last weak protest. "But I cannot bear to think of you wasting your loveliness, your charm, here among these uncouth people, you who should shine in courts and palaces!"

She laughed softly. "I never have shone in any courts or palaces, goose! As for what you call my 'loveliness and charm'—they have been most valuable assets, I assure you, in dealing with my fellow-men." Her eyes danced with the daring that had made Kate Leigh's bellehood remembered beyond its time. "Why should beauty be wasted here more than elsewhere? There's less of it, and your mountaineers have eyes—though not very sound ones, poor dears!"

She went down to Storm alone, partly because of that little sinister cough of her husband's, which she made light of but never forgot; partly because she wished to spare him the publicity of the nine days' wonder that their marriage was.

But it was a publicity she need not have dreaded. Slowly enough, there had come about a great change in the feeling of the community toward Basil Kildare's widow; and when it was learned that she was at last relinquishing her great estate to marry the man for whom she had waited twenty years, the thing that had been scandal became suddenly romance. Kate woke one day to find herself a heroine.

There was a constant passage of vehicles Stormward in the fortnight she remained there, ranging from humble farm-wagons to luxurious limousines; for not only her neighbors shared in the ovation, but people from her girlhood's home recalled the old-time friendship, and made haste to renew it. Something of the Bishop's influence might be felt here, perhaps; something, too, of the influence of young Mrs. Thorpe, whose brief stay among them had been by no means forgotten.

Kate accepted it all with a pleased surprise; received her guests, when she had time, in all friendliness, but with a certain reserve which was partly shyness. She found very little to say to people, especially women, of her own class, after all these years; and they went away to speak with some awe of one who seemed dedicated, set apart from life, like a nun who is about to take the veil. It was very different talk from that which had raged around the name of Kate Kildare twenty years before!

When at last she turned her back on Storm forever, her going was something in the nature of an Hegira. She took with her certain members of her household, notably Big Liza, who had grown too old in her service to adapt themselves to other ways; also a few favorite horses, and those of the dogs for whom she had not found suitable homes; to say nothing of cattle, hogs, and poultry, chosen for the purpose of showing Jacques' mountaineers how livestock ought to look.

This cavalcade was joined in the village, somewhat to Kate's dismay, by the Ladies of the Evening Star, in a body, also the Civic League, with a brass band, which accompanied her to the train, playing all the way as lustily as for a funeral. The final act of the performance was the presentation, rather fussily overseen by Philip's successor, of a mammoth bouquet of Spring blossoms, raised in the reclaimed dooryards of the Civic League.

Kate's last look, as the train pulled away, was for the old juniper-tree, her eyrie, lifting its hoary head, green now with tender leaves, across the wide valley where she had been for so long a prisoner.

* * * * *

The time came, when, as the Bishop had prophesied, Philip and Jacqueline were called away from the mountains into a wider field; to a crowded, dingy district in a city larger than any of Kentucky, where Jacqueline's mothering arms have never an excuse to be empty, and where, as her husband proudly confesses, more people are attracted to his church by the quality of the music it provides than the quality of the sermons. But it is something else than music or sermons which attracts to these two all people who are in trouble, or in need; all derelicts of life. The hearts of Philip and his wife have not contracted about happiness of their own. They understand.

Mag's baby is with them, already learning, a docile, womanly little creature of six years, to pick up the stitches dropped by busy, careless, eager Jacqueline. It is a household Jacques Benoix loves to hear about, and Kate to visit.

But she never stays long. Cities bewilder her with their crowded indifference—men hurrying hither and thither like ants in an ant-hill, heedless of the wide sky above, heedless of each other, heedless of everything except each the small burden he carries on his back. Always she turns home to Jacques and the mountains with a sigh of relief.

Often, for she is not the woman to neglect a duty because it is painful, Kate goes down to Storm, a home now for crippled children, both white and black. It seems to her that the old house has grown less grim and forbidding under the influence of the little people who are happy there because of Basil Kildare's memory of his crippled daughter;—and also, perhaps, of another crippled child, his son.

* * * * *

Often, too, she makes one of her flying visits to James and Jemima Thorpe.

Once, some years since, she was called in haste to nurse Jemima through what her husband's telegram indicated as a "slight indisposition"; and upon hurrying to the sickroom was astounded to find Mrs. Thorpe propped up in bed, ministering very deftly to the needs of an infant son, so like his father that it was rather a shock to see him without eye-glasses.

It took Kate several days to recover her breath.

At last, happening one day to discover Jemima gazing down at her gourmand child with something more than tolerance in her expression, Kate blurted out:

"But I thought you did not believe in babies, Blossom!"

"Believe in them? Why, of course, Mother! Babies are quite indispensable to the scheme of things—but not to me."

"Then—why—?"

"Oh," said Jemima, practically, "it seemed rather a pity that there should be no one to inherit Aunt Jemima's money. And then—well, intelligences such as James' and mine really ought to be perpetuated, I suppose. As you once said—my baby isn't all Kildare!"

She gave her husband a quick, shy smile that was rather demonstrative for Jemima.

He leaned over and took her hand. "Why not tell your mother the truth, my dear?"

She flushed. "That is the truth, of course! Or—well, not perhaps all the truth.... You see, Mother, you were so upset about poor Jacky's baby.... Of course it's not quite the same, she is more like you than I am. But still ... And what you said about the 'spark.' ... So, you see—"

In her dread of sentiment, she was bungling the explanation so badly that James Thorpe took it out of her hands.

"Kate, you may regard the young person in question" (he grinned down at it fatuously) "as our child in only the technical sense of the word. It is, in fact, Jemima's gift to you. She came to the conclusion that she could offer you nothing you would prefer to a grandson."

"But," choked Kate, between laughter and tears, "suppose it had been a granddaughter?"

"Evidently you don't yet know our Jemima," remarked the husband.

* * * * *

Even Kate's grandson, however, does not keep her long away from the mountains and Jacques.

She knows that their time together, hers and her husband's, must be short. Neither misunderstands the significance of the little cough with which he has fought, for years, a losing battle. But they know, too, that it is given to few to taste the splendor of life as they have tasted it together; the joy of dreams realized, of service shared.

Kate was right in her belief that Jacques could take no advantage of the disclosure made by Mahaly. "The stone I threw was meant for Basil," he said. "Nevertheless—I am glad it failed to strike him. And I think that Basil, wherever he is, must be glad, too."

"Wherever he is?" repeated Kate, quickly. The subject of the hereafter was become of poignant interest to her, facing as she must what lay before them. "Oh, Jacques! Are you beginning to believe—to believe—?"

He interrupted her sadly. "I can believe only what I can understand. You must forgive me, my Kate. Only, sometimes there are dreams a man has, echoes perhaps out of his childhood—" he broke off with a shrug, "And one is envious when one sees a faith such as Philip's in his God, so strong, so sure.—Like his little-boy faith that his father was the best and greatest of men, all-wise, infallible."

Kate said, with her hand on his, "Sometimes a little boy is right, dear."

* * * * *

There have been great changes on Misty Ridge since Kate went to live in the mountains. The work Dr. Benoix started alone has grown beyond belief, and the influence of it extends now far beyond his immediate locality.

He has many other assistants than his wife, though none more able—a young oculist who specializes in trachoma, and makes no complaint of lack of practice; two trained teachers to help in the classrooms; even a clergyman fresh from his seminary to take the place left vacant by Philip, greatly to the satisfaction of Bates the peddler, and somewhat to the satisfaction of Dr. Benoix himself.

As he once explained to the visiting Bishop: "I will undertake to treat as best I can any ill of the human body or the human mind; but when it comes to the human soul—that calls for a bolder man than I am!"

The State is beginning to take notice of Misty Ridge, and offers of assistance come more rapidly than Kate can decline them. She does decline them; for the work there is Jacques Benoix' work, and she guards it for him jealously, to be his monument in the eyes of men when the great spirit that created it shall have passed into some other sphere of usefulness.

She herself, for all her share in the life of Jacques' people, their birth, their death, and the hard interval between, is nothing more to the dwellers on Misty Ridge than "Mrs. Teacher"—sometimes "Ole Mrs. Teacher," now that the glow of her hair is touched with gray, and beautiful lines are growing about her beautiful eyes.

But it is a name she loves above all other names—"Ole Mrs. Teacher." She wears it far more proudly than she ever wore her former title of "the Madam."

THE END