Part 23 (1/2)
She recognized the change in his voice; a change that usually came soon or late when people endeavored to scold Jacqueline.
”Now you're nice again,” she said with satisfaction, slipping her hand into his. ”You don't disapprove of me, anyway, half as much as you think you do. You might kiss me, just to show it.”
He resisted gently. ”No, my dear, you're getting too old for that.”
”Too old for what?” she cried out.
”To kiss men. I told you you must be careful--”
She burst out laughing. ”But you're not 'men,' you old goose!”
Unexpectedly she jerked his head down to hers, and gave him a resounding smack on the cheek. ”There! I'm going to kiss people I love, men or women, till I'm as old as Methuselah--'specially if they're cross with me. You may as well get used to it.--Now kiss me back, nicely.”
Philip succ.u.mbed to the inevitable with as good grace as possible. He wished, with a sigh, that this child of the woman he loved could remain as she was forever; innocent, frank, unspoiled by the encroachment of womanhood. Jacqueline was particularly dear to him, perhaps because of her resemblance to her mother....
They found the man Henderson in a whimpering heap at the foot of a tree, about which his arms were still tied. Vigorous rubbing restored the circulation to his wrists, and a few drops of whisky from Philip's pocket-flask completed the restoration.
”Now, then, you're able to walk. Go!” said Philip. ”Get your things and march. You were told to get out last night.”
Jacqueline looked at him in surprise. This sharp, cold voice was quite unlike Philip's usual gentleness with the unfortunate.
The man began to whimper and whine, ”How kin I go? I ain't got no money, and I ain't got the stren'th to walk. I'm jes' a pore ole man what don't mean no harm to n.o.body. Take me along with you-all! I'm afeared the Riders'll git me ag'in. I come back to see my darter, the onliest chile I got in the worl'. I ain't got no other place to go at. The Madam won't let a pore ole man suffer. I wants to see my darter.”
”Stop talking about your daughter!” interrupted Benoix, harshly, ”I give you five minutes to get your things together and bring me your key.”
”Why, Philip!” cried Jacqueline, hot with indignation. ”Of course he's in no condition to go now, after the scare he's had. The poor thing!
We'll take him home to Storm. Mother'll expect us to.”
Henderson fawned upon her eagerly. ”Bless yore purty sweet face! You won't let 'em git the ole man. That's right. Take me along with you to see my darter.” He put a wheedling hand on her arm.
”You dare to touch that young lady--!” Philip spoke in a voice Jacqueline had never heard, shaken with rage. He had a stout switch in his hand. Suddenly, uncontrollably, he brought it down across the man's shoulders again and again.
Henderson cowered away from him. In less than the five minutes he had been given, he was shuffling down the lane, all his worldly goods slung over his shoulder in a handkerchief.
Then Jacqueline's shocked astonishment burst bounds.
”Why, Philip Benoix, you wicked, cruel man! To turn that poor old thing out of his home without even giving him a chance to see his daughter!
And you struck him, too, struck him to hurt--you, a minister of the Gospel! Oh, oh, you 're as bad as those 'Possum Hunters,' kicking a dog when he's down. You, a man of peace!”
”It seems,” said Philip, ruefully, ”that I am also a man of wrath.”
During the ride back to Storm both remained silent, Jacqueline nursing with some difficulty her displeasure against her friend. So this was Philip's famous temper, in which she had never quite believed! In truth, that sudden outburst of inexplicable rage on the part of the grave, quiet, young clergyman had appealed strongly to the love of brute force that is inborn in all women.
But it had frightened Philip himself. He realized for the first time that he was indeed the son of a man who had killed in anger. He touched more than once the little inconspicuous gold cross that hung at his belt, wondering whether he were fitted after all for the vocation he had chosen.
CHAPTER XVII
There stood, in the ravine which separated Storm hill from the property that had formerly belonged to Jacques Benoix, a roofless, tumbledown stone cabin which had been from childhood Jacqueline's own particular playground, as sacred to her as the eyrie to her mother. She called it, grandiloquently, the Ruin. The place had a sinister reputation, and was sedulously avoided by both negroes and whites of the neighborhood; which suited Jacqueline's purposes excellently. All dreamers feel the need of a hidden place where they may retire, free from the gaze of a not too sympathetic world; and the Ruin made a strong appeal to the imagination of Jacqueline.
If the place was haunted, as the neighborhood averred, it was perhaps not without reason. The cabin had once been a slave-house where an earlier Kildare kept certain human livestock to be fattened like hogs for the market, overcrowding and neglecting them, however, as he would not have dared to neglect and overcrowd hogs, so that the venture was not altogether successful. Recently, workmen laying drainage pipes through the ravine had uncovered a long trench filled with many bones, ghastly witness to the folly of neglecting livestock, human or otherwise. Cholera was the first ghost to haunt that spot, but it had left others which were heard about the cabin on windy nights, moaning and rattling chains and, because they were the ghosts of negroes, singing.