Part 8 (1/2)

CHAPTER VII

The peace of that quiet time with her lover remained with Kate through the days that followed, even as he had intended it should, guarding her like an armor from the seething excitement of the world beyond her door.

Wailing servants, friends arriving from far and near, people filling the house with lamentations (for the kindly magic of Death had transformed Kildare for the moment into the n.o.blest of mortals)--all this stopped at the door of the quiet room where Mahaly mounted guard over the mistress she had betrayed.

None entered that room save the old doctor, and later Kate's mother, become suddenly an old woman, broken by the terrible rumors which had penetrated her peaceful Bluegra.s.s home. She was shocked beyond words to find her newly widowed daughter serene as some Madonna out of a painting, wrapped in a rose-colored dressing-gown that would better have suited a bride.

”Whatever comes, you will remember how I love you,” Benoix had said.

Kate was remembering.

She lay dreaming of the future, thinking sometimes of her husband, not unkindly, but with pity, as one thinks of poor, blundering people who have gone through life unloving and unloved. Of his death she thought not at all. It was what he would have chosen, painless and quick, a fall from his horse within sight of his own house. So her mother found her, calm and very beautiful, placidly nursing her child.

Only once was the agitated lady able to p.r.i.c.k her serenity. It was when she began to babble of Kildare's will. This stipulated that in case of re-marriage, Kate and her children were to be deprived of any interest in the estate save only that provided by law, in which event Storm was to become an endowed home for crippled children.

At this news, indeed, Kate winced. Her husband had managed to strike at her one last time from his grave, and in a vulnerable spot--her maternity. He was forcing her to rob her children.

But she regained her calm. Surely such a father as Jacques Benoix was a better gift to her children than houses and lands and cattle!

”I can't understand it,” her bewildered mother moaned. ”It's a cruel will, almost an insulting will, daughter! It is almost as if he--suspected you of something. What was Mr. Kildare thinking of? You are so young, you have a right to re-marry! Surely he could have had no--reason?”

Kate told her mother the reason; partly out of justice to her husband, partly because her love was a thing she wished to confess.

The other rose to her feet, staggered, gasping: ”Then they are true, those dreadful rumors! You with a lover--you a married woman! Ah, my little girl--my little girl! Such things do not happen in our family.

They do not! A scandal--a murder? Thank Heaven your father died in time!”

It was Kate who comforted her mother. But in the midst of her soothing caresses, a sudden trembling seized her. The color fled out of her cheeks.

”Mother! What was that you said--A _murder_--?”

So at last the truth came, the truth which Mahaly and the few who loved Kate had tried to keep out of that peaceful chamber. Jacques Benoix had gone from her side to prison for the killing of her husband.

As soon as she was strong enough to travel--indeed before she was strong enough to travel--Kate went to her lover in prison; saw him for ten minutes alone.

She wasted not a moment in preliminaries; there had already developed in her that ability for affairs that was later to make her one of the foremost women of her State.

”I have engaged the best lawyers to be had for money,” she said. ”You will never go to the penitentiary, Jacques!”

He shook his head, his eyes roaming over her hungrily, imprinting every detail of her beauty on his memory to stay. ”It is of no use, my dear one.”

She blenched a little. ”You mean--you did kill Basil? But no! I don't believe it. _You_ kill a man?” she laughed. ”Why, you could not kill a fox, a rabbit!”

”Nevertheless,” he said, ”I fear that I did kill Basil.”

She caught at the doubt in his words. ”You 'fear'--you do not _know_, Jacques?”

”I know only that I tried.”

He told her the story then. Others had wished to tell her, but she would listen to n.o.body, saying proudly, ”Jacques shall explain to me....”