Part 14 (1/2)

”He had changed so little, dear, so little. But it was years ago. Now he must seem older. Have you forgotten how he looks? You were such a child when he went. Glance into your mirror and you will see him again. The same eyes that flash blue in your dark face, the same smile, the same look of gentleness; strong gentleness. You are simply your father over again. That is why I love you so.” She laid her cheek on his hair.

If the words brought a stab of pain that was almost unendurable, she did not guess it. From the moment her first child was laid in her arms, Kate, like many another woman, regarded herself as a mother to all mankind. For her, this was the boy Jacques had left in her care, the husband she had chosen for her own little girl; doubly, therefore, her son. That she was less than ten years his senior, the one beautiful woman in his world, the heroine of all a young man's idealism--of these things she was as unaware as of the fact that Jacques' boy had long ago left boyhood behind him.

He stayed where she lightly held him, his head rigid upon her shoulder, conscious in every fiber of his being of the cheek pressing his hair, the warmth and fragrance of her, the rise and fall of her soft bosom--praying with all the strength that was in him to become to this beloved woman only the son she thought him, nothing more, never anything more. The Benoix men came of a race of great lovers.

She released him presently and he rose, moving with a curious stiffness as of muscles consciously controlled.

”What, going so soon? I have so much more to say to you about him--but there! You look tired--you look not quite happy, Philip. What is it? Are you still wondering what to do with him? Don't! Leave that to me, dear.

And now go straight to bed and get a good night's rest. To-morrow we shall begin on the pet.i.tion--our last, thank G.o.d! I will see the men the Governor mentions myself.”

When he was gone, she sat a while longer in the dark. She was not quite ready yet to face strangers, to face even her daughters. Jacques was coming back to her! She said the words over and over to herself, till they rang through her head like the refrain of a song. All the years between them, the long, lonely, weary years, filled with work and with the sort of happiness that comes from successful endeavor,--these were suddenly as naught, and she was a girl again, a wistful, dreaming girl with a baby in her arms, listening there in her garden for the pit-a-patter of her lover's horse.

She closed her eyes. Presently the voice of the graphophone broke in upon her dreams, and she became aware of the dancers that pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the lighted windows; among them a man in spectacles, guiding and being guided by a determined young person in apple-green, his face flushed and earnest, his grizzled hair somewhat awry. ”Why--it's Jim Thorpe!” she thought, with a stab of remorse. ”I'd forgotten him. But he's dancing, he's enjoying himself like a boy. Bless that thoughtful girl of mine! She's made him look ten years younger. Dear, faithful old Jim!”

Her heart was open to all the world just then. She went to the window and smiled in at him tenderly.

Perhaps it was just as well that James Thorpe could not see that smile, and misunderstand it.

CHAPTER XI

Late summer in Kentucky; deep, umbrageous woodlands fragrant with fern, dreaming noons, s.h.i.+mmering in the heat, with the locust drowsily shrilling; warm and silver nights, made musical by the loves of many mocking-birds; the waste places green tangles of blossoming weed, the roads a-flutter with hovering yellow b.u.t.terflies, over all the land a brooding hush, not the silence of idleness, of emptiness, but of life, intense and still as a spinning top is still. Beneath it those who listen are aware of a faint, constant stirring, a whisper of green and eager things pus.h.i.+ng themselves up from the fecund soil.

More than ever before was Kate aware of the sympathy that bound her to these fields of hers, soon to be hers no longer. She could not keep away from them. Early and late the Madam and her racking mare were to be seen about the roads and lanes, inspecting dairies, stables, hog-pens, poultry-yards, watching the field-hands at their labor, hearing in person the requests and complaints of tenants. Much of her phenomenal success was due to personal supervision, as she knew; even, perhaps to personal charm, for field-hands and tenants are alike human. Now the executive habit stood her in good stead. None of the business of the great farm was neglected; but active as her mind was, through it all her heart was dreaming, not as a girl dreams, but as a woman may who knows well what she has missed of life. Spring had pa.s.sed her by, with all its promise blighted. Now, like her fields, she had come to late summer, to the season of fulfilment.

There was much to be done in connection with Jacques Benoix' pardon; certain men to be interviewed, not always successfully, though the woman who had made Storm was heard with more respect than had been the desperate young heroine of a scandal; lawyers to be seen, land-agents, cattle-dealers, for in resigning her stewards.h.i.+p of the estate, a certain amount of liquidation was necessary. Optimist that she was, however, for years she had been preparing for this contingency. Her affairs were in such order that at any moment she could turn them over to others. Nothing that had any claim upon her was overlooked. The servants, the horses in her stable, the very mongrel dogs who by the instinct of their kind had discovered her weakness and spread the discovery broadcast,--all had their share in her planning for the future--their future, not hers.

Hers was to be put without question into the hands of Jacques Benoix.

She would go to him at the door of his prison-house and say, ”Here I am, as you left me. What will you do with us, me and my children?”

She would trust the answer to his wisdom, ready, glad to follow wherever he should lead. Yet so much of herself, of her vital force, had gone into the building up of Storm that sometimes a realization of what was about to happen stabbed through her dreaming like a sharp pain. For twenty years this had been her world, and she was about to leave it.

Often, as she pa.s.sed among her young orchard trees, she laid a hand upon them yearningly, as a mother might touch children with whom she was about to part.

In all her planning, there was only one problem that baffled her, a new problem: Mag Henderson. It was difficult to arrange a future for Mag Henderson.

”I shall simply have to leave it to Jacques. He will know what to do with her,” she decided, with a thrill at the thought of her coming dependence. It is only strength that realizes to the full the joy of leaning.

Mag and her child were both thriving under the care lavished upon them at Storm. They had been established in a room of the long-disused guest-wing, where young Jemima might keep a capable if impersonal eye upon their welfare. But Jacqueline, somewhat to her sister's surprise, had promptly relieved her of all responsibility with regard to the baby, and was doing her best to relieve the mother of responsibility also.

From the first she regarded the child as her own personal possession, neglecting in its behalf the various colts and puppies which had hitherto occupied most of her waking moments.

The girl had a fund of maternal instinct that sat oddly upon her careless, madcap nature. It was a queer and rather a touching thing to Philip Benoix to see this young tomboy running about the place with an infant tucked casually under her arm or across her shoulder; and to Jemima, for some reason, it was rather a shocking thing.

”She's perfectly possessed by the child, always bathing it or dressing it or something, just as she used to do with dolls. You know we couldn't make her give up dolls till a year or two ago. She is actually persuading Mag to wean it, Philip,” complained Jemima, who had no reserves with her friend, ”so that she can keep it in her room at night.

Did you ever hear of such a thing? A squalling infant that would much rather be with its mother! Isn't it--unseemly of her?”

But Philip did not find it unseemly. ”She's growing up, that's all,” he said, looking at his young playmate and pupil with eyes newly observant.

Since his acceptance of the Storm parish, Philip had supplanted all other tutors to Kate's children, and was ”finis.h.i.+ng” their education with an attention to detail not possible in even the best of girls'

finis.h.i.+ng schools.