Part 18 (1/2)

Even then the tremble of a lip, a tear on an eyelash, might have brought them into each other's arms. But neither was the sort of woman who weeps in a crisis. They kissed, their lips quite cool and firm.

It was Jacqueline who did the weeping for both of them, and insisted upon sitting in her mother's lap all the way to the station, so that Kate had some difficulty in driving....

Such were the scenes and memories that flitted through Kate's brain all the night before her wedding; and the night was long.

Near morning she slept at last, and dreamed. Somebody stood beside her, smiling down--a stranger, she thought him, till she met his eyes.

”Jacques!” she cried, starting up with hands outstretched. ”You, Jacques!”

The consoling vision for which she yearned had come at last; but not as she had seen it before, not in the prime of manhood, strong to hear her burdens. This was an elderly man, stooping, gray-haired, frail. Only the eyes were the same, blue as a child's in his wan face, warm as a caress.

He spoke to her. He seemed to promise something.

She awoke with his name on her lips, and saw that it was morning. Peace had come to her with the vision. She faced a new day, a new life, serene and unafraid. What was it that he had promised? No matter. She would ask him when she saw him, soon now.

Smiling at her own credulity, she began with hasty hands to dress.

Out in the street she heard the crisp trot of horses, stopping beneath her window. Looking down, she saw one of her own vehicles, a light phaeton drawn by a pair of young blooded colts she had sent in to Frankfort some days earlier, that they might be rested and fresh for the day's drive back to Storm, which was to be their wedding journey. She looked them over critically.

”They are in excellent condition. We ought to make it in eight hours,”

she thought. ”How he will love to drive those pretty fillies! He was always so fond of horses.”

Philip knocked on her door. His voice said, ”I am ready now.”

It had been her idea to send him for Jacques alone, so that father and son might have a little time together before they came to her. She opened to him and stood, a white-clad vision, framed in the doorway of that dreary bridal suite.

”You see, I am ready too,” she said, blus.h.i.+ng a little. ”Do you like my dress, Philip?”

He stared at her without speaking. His eyes were heavy and rimmed with shadow. For Philip, too, the night had been long.

She asked again rather anxiously, ”Do I look nice, Philip? It doesn't seem too--young for me, this white?” She was in need of all her vanity just then. The mirror had shown her a face pale and luminous, not less beautiful--she knew that--but far older than the face whose memory Jacques carried with him into prison. She was obsessed by the fear that he would not recognize her.

But for once Philip's comforting admiration failed her. ”I don't know how you look,” he muttered, and turned abruptly away.

She stared after him in surprise. ”Dear Phil--he must be very much upset to speak to me like that!” she thought.

She went into the parlor, and busied herself arranging flowers she had ordered to make the place less cheerless for the little wedding. The proprietress came in presently with more flowers, a box bearing the card of James Thorpe. The woman was in a flutter of excitement.

”They's two reporters in the office already, _Mrs. Kildare_,” she said, emphasizing the name, ”and more on the way, I reckon. If I'd 'a guessed who you were, I'd 'a' had a weddin'-cake baked, I surely would. I've been on your side from the very first!”

”Thank you,” said Kate, wearily.

”We've often had folks stayin' here to meet a friend who was comin'

out,”--she jerked a significant thumb over her shoulder toward the penitentiary--”but never any one so famous, and never a weddin' right at the very gate, so to speak,” she added unctuously.

Kate winced. She had registered under a false name, hoping thus to escape notoriety. Now she saw the folly of any such hope. From the first, no detail of her unfortunate romance had escaped notoriety.

”Let the reporters come up,” she sighed. ”Perhaps if I speak to them now they will let us alone afterwards.”

She was speaking to them, when she heard in the street outside the familiar, crisp trot of the colts from Storm. Her voice broke off in the middle of a sentence, and the two reporters, exchanging glances, tactfully withdrew.