That same night she sat by her wood fire in her chamber, her old black mammy--Mammy Henny--bending close, combing out her marvellous hair. She had been studying the coals, watching the little castles pile and fall; the quick smothering of slowly fading sparks under a blanket of gray ashes, and the wavering, flickering light that died on the curling smoke. She had not spoken for a long time, when the old woman roused her.

"Whar was you dis mawnin', honey chile? Mister Willits done wait mo'n ha'f a hour, den he say he come back an' fetch his sorrel horse wid him dis arternoon an' take ye ridin'. But he ain't come--dat is, Ben done tol' me so."

"No, mammy," she answered wearily--"I sent him word not to--I didn't feel like riding to-day."

CHAPTER XIX

Over two years have pa.s.sed away since that mournful night when Harry with his hand in St. George's, his voice choking, had declared his determination to leave him the next day and seek his fortunes across the seas.

It was a cruel blow to Temple, coming as it did on the heels of his own disaster, but when the first shock had pa.s.sed he could but admire the lad for his pluck and love him the better for his independence.

"All right, my son," he had said, concealing as best he could his intense suffering over the loss of his companion. "I'll try and get along. But remember I am here--and the door is always open. I don't blame you--I would do the same thing were I in your place. And now about Kate--what shall I say to her?"

"Nothing. I said it all this morning. She doesn't love me any more--she would have pa.s.sed me by without speaking had I not called to her. She'll be married to Willits before I come back--if I ever do come back. But leaving Kate is easier than leaving you. You have stuck to me all the way through, and Kate--well--perhaps she hasn't understood--perhaps her father has been talking to her--I don't know. Anyhow, it's all over. If I had had any doubts about it before, this morning's talk settled it.

The sea is the best place for me. I can support myself anyway for a while until I can help you."

Yes! the boy was right, St. George had said to himself. It was all over between them. Kate's reason had triumphed at last. She, perhaps, was not to blame. Her experiences had been trying and she was still confronted by influences bitterly opposed to Harry, and largely in favor of Willits, for, weak specimen as Prim was, he was still her father, and in so important a step as her marriage, must naturally exercise authority.

As for his own influence, that, he realized, had come to an end at their last interview: the whole thing, he must admit, was disappointing--cruelly so--the keenest disappointment of his life.

Many a night since he bid Harry good-by had he sat alone by that same fire, his dogs his only companions, the boy's words ringing in his ears: "Leaving Kate is easier than leaving you!" Had it been the other way and he the exile, it would have been nearer the truth, he often thought, for nothing in his whole life had left so great a void in his heart as the loss of the boy he loved. Not that he was ever completely disheartened; that was not his nature; there was always daylight ahead--the day when Harry would come back and their old life begin again. With this in store for him he had led his life as best he could, visiting his friends in the country, entertaining in a simple, inexpensive way, hunting at Wesley, where he and Peggy Coston would exchange confidences and funny stories; dining out; fishing in the early spring; getting poorer and poorer in pocket, and yet never complaining, his philosophy being that it would be brighter in the morning, and it always was--to him.

And yet if the truth be told his own situation had not improved--in fact, it had grown steadily worse. Only one payment of interest had been made on the mortgage and the owner was already threatening foreclosure proceedings. Pawson's intervention alone had staved off the fatal climax by promising the holder to keep the loan alive by the collection of some old debts--borrowed money and the like--due St. George for years and which his good nature had allowed to run on indefinitely until some of them were practically outlawed. Indeed it was only through resources like this, in all of which Pawson helped, and with the collecting of some small ground rents, that kept Todd and Jemima in their places and the larder comfortably filled. As to the bank--there was still hope that some small percentage would be paid the depositors, it being the general opinion that the directors were personally liable because of the irregularities which the smash had uncovered--but this would take months, if not years, to work out.

His greatest comfort was in the wanderer's letters. These he would watch for with the eagerness of a girl hungry for news of her distant lover.

For the first few months these came by every possible mail, most of them directed to himself; others to his mother, Mrs. Rutter driving in from Moorlands to compare notes with St. George. Then, as the boy made his way further into the interior the intervals were greater--sometimes a month pa.s.sed without news of him.

"We are short-handed," he wrote St. George, "owing to fever on the voyage out on the Ranger, and though I am supercargo and sit at the captain's table, I have to turn to and work like any of the others--fine exercise, but my hands are cracked and blistered and full of tar. I'll have to wear gloves the next time I dine with you."

Not a word of this to his mother--no such hardships for her tender ears:

"Tell me about Kate, mother"--this from Rio--"how she looks; what she says; does she ever mention my name? My love to Alec. Is Matthew still caring for Spitfire, or has my father sold her?" Then followed the line: "Give my father my respectful regards; I would send my love, but he no longer cares for it."

The dear lady did not deliver the message. Indeed Harry's departure had so widened the breach between the colonel and herself that they practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from each other as possible. She had denounced him first to his face for the boy's self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates.

Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired. "It is a judgment on you," she had said, drawing her frail body up to its full height. "You will now learn what other people suffer," and would have kept on upstairs to her own room had not her heart softened at his helplessness--a new role for the colonel.

He had made no answer at the time: he never answered her back. She was too frail to be angry with, and then she was right about his being the cause of her suffering--the first cause of it, at least. He had not yet arrived at the point where he censured himself for all that had happened. In fact since Harry's sudden exit, made without a word to anybody at Moorlands except his mother and Alec, who went to town on a hurry message,--a slight which cut him to the quick--he had steadily laid the blame on everybody else connected with the affair;--generally on St. George for his interference in his peace-making programme at the club and his refusal, when ruined financially, to send the boy back to him in an humble and contrite spirit. Neither had he recovered from the wrath he had felt when, having sent John Gorsuch to ascertain from St. George the amount of money he had paid out for his son, Temple had politely sent Gorsuch, in charge of Todd, downstairs to Pawson, who in turn, after listening to Todd's whispered message, had with equal politeness shown Gorsuch the door, the colonel's signed check--the amount unfilled--still in Gorsuch's pocket.

It was only when the Lord of Moorlands went into town to spend an hour or so with Kate--and he was a frequent visitor prior to his accident--that his old manner returned. He loved the girl dearly and was never tired of talking to her. She was the only woman who would listen when he poured out his heart.

And Kate always welcomed him gladly. She liked strong, decided men even if they sometimes erred in their conclusions. Her grandfather, old Captain Barkeley, had had the same masterfulness. He had been in absolute command in his earlier years, and he had kept in command all his life. His word was law, and he was generally right. She was twelve years old when he died, and had, therefore, ample opportunity to know.

It was her grandfather's strong personality, in fact, which had given her so clear an idea of her father's many weaknesses. Rutter, she felt, was a combination of both Barkeley and Prim--forceful and yet warped by prejudices; dominating yet intolerant; able to do big things and contented with little ones. It was forcefulness, despite his many shortcomings, which most appealed to her.

Moreover, she saw much of Harry in him. It was that which made her so willing to listen--she continually comparing the father to the son.

These comparisons were invariably made in a circle, beginning at Rutter's brown eyes, taking in his features and peculiarities--many of them reproduced in his son's--such as the firm set of the lips and the square line of the chin--and ending, quite naturally, with the brown orbs again. While Harry's matched the color and shape, and often the fierce glare of the father's, they could also, she said to herself, shine with the soft light of the mother's. It was from the mother's side, then, that there came the willingness to yield to whatever tempted him--it may be to drink--to a false sense of honor--to herself: Harry being her slave instead of her master. And the other men around her--so far as yielding was concerned (here her brow would tighten and her lips straighten)--were no better. Even Uncle George must take her own "No"

for an answer and believe it when she meant quite a different thing. And once more would her soul break out in revolt over the web in which she had become entangled, and once more would she cry herself to sleep.

n.o.body but her old black mammy knew how tragic had been her sufferings, how many bitter hours she had pa.s.sed, nor how many bitter tears she had shed. Yet even old Henny could not comfort her, nor was there any one else to whom the girl could pour out her heart. She had, it is true, kept up her intimacy with her Uncle George--hardly a week pa.s.sed that she was not a visitor at his house or he at hers--but they had long since refrained from discussing Harry. Not because he did not want to talk about him, but because she would not let him--Of course not!

To Richard Horn, however, strange to say, she often turned--not so much for confidences as for a broader understanding of life. The thoughtful inventor was not so hedged about by social restrictions, and would break out in spontaneous admiration of Harry, saying with a decisive nod of his head, "A fine, splendid young fellow, my dear Kate; I recognized it first at St. George's dinner to Mr. Poe, and if I may say so, a much-abused young man whose only sin is that he, like many another about us, has been born under a waning star in a sky full of murky clouds; one that the fresh breeze of a new civilization will some day clear away"--a deduction which Kate could not quite grasp, but which comforted her greatly.

It delighted her, too, to hear him talk of the notable occurrences taking place about them. "You are wonderfully intelligent, my dear,"

he had said to her on one occasion, "and should miss nothing of the developments that are going on about us;" and in proof of it had the very next day taken her to an exhibition of Mr. Morse's new telegraph, given at the Inst.i.tute, at which two operators, each with an instrument, the men in sight of each other, but too far apart to be in collusion, were sending and answering the messages through wires stretched around the hall. She, at Richard's suggestion, had written a message herself, which she handed to the nearest operator who had ticked it to his fellow, and who at once read it to the audience. Even then many doubting Thomases had cried out "Collusion," until Richard, rising in his seat, had not only endorsed the truth of the reading, but explained the invention, his statement silencing all opposition because of his well-known standing and knowledge of kindred sciences.

Richard's readings also, from which Kate was never absent, and which had now been resumed at his own house, greatly interested her. These of late had been devoted to many of Poe's earlier poems and later tales, for despite the scene at St. George's the inventor had never ceased to believe in the poet.

And so with these occupations, studies, investigations, and social pleasures--she never missing a ball or party (Willits always managing to be with her)--and the spending of the summer months at the Red Sulphur, where she had been pursued by half a dozen admirers--one a t.i.tled Englishman--had the days and hours of the years of Harry's absence pa.s.sed slowly away.

At the end of the second winter a slight change occurred in the monotony of her life. Her constant, unwavering devotee, Langdon Willits, fell ill and had to be taken to the Eastern Sh.o.r.e, where the same old lot of bandages--that is of the same pattern--and the same loyal sister were impressed into service to nurse him back to health. The furrow Harry's bullet had ploughed in his head still troubled him at times, especially in the hot weather, and a horseback ride beside Kate one August day, with the heat in the nineties, had started the subsoil of his cranium to aching with such vehemence that Teackle had promptly packed it in ice and ten days later its owner in blankets and had put them both aboard the bay boat bound for the Eastern Sh.o.r.e.

Whether this new irritant--and everything seemed to annoy her now--had begun to tell on our beautiful Kate, or whether the gayety of the winter both at home and in Washington, where she had spent some weeks during the season, had tired her out, certain it was that when the spring came the life had gone out of her step and the color from her cheeks. Mammy Henny had noticed it and had coddled her the more, crooning and petting her; and her father had noticed it and had begun to be anxious, and at last St. George had stalked in and cried out in that breezy, joyous way of his that nothing daunted:

"Here, you sweetheart!--what have you been doing to your cheeks--all the roses out of them and pale as two lilies--and you never out of bed until twelve o'clock in the day and looking then as if you hadn't had a wink of sleep all night. Not a word out of you, Seymour, until I've finished.

I'm going to take Kate down to Tom Coston's and keep her there till she gets well. Too many stuffy b.a.l.l.s--too many late suppers--oyster roasts and high doings. None of that at Tom's. Up at six and to bed at ten.

I've just had a letter from him and dear Peggy is crazy to have us come.

Take your mare along, Kate, and you won't lack fresh air. Now what do you say, Seymour?"

Of course the Honorable Prim bobbed his honorable head and said he had been worried himself over Kate's loss of appet.i.te, and that if Temple would, etc., etc.--he would--etc., etc.--and so Mammy Henny began to get pink and white and other fluffy things together, and Ben, with Todd to help, led Joan, her own beloved saddle horse, down to the dock and saw that she was safely lodged between decks, and then up came a coach (all this was two days later) and my lady drove off with two hair trunks in front and a French bonnet box behind--St. George beside her, and fat Mammy Henny in white kerchief and red bandanna, opposite, and Todd in one of St. George's old shooting-jackets on the box next the driver, with his feet on two of the dogs, the others having been loaned to a friend.

And it was a great leave-taking when the party reached the wharf. Not only were three or four of her girl friends present, but a dozen or more of the old merchants forsook their desks, when the coach unlimbered, most of them crossing the cobbles--some bare-headed, and all of them in high stocks and swallow-tail coats--pens behind their ears, spectacles on their pates--to bid the young princess good-by.

For Kate was still "our Kate," in the widest and broadest sense and the pride and joy of all who knew her, and many who didn't. That she had a dozen beaux--and that some of them had tried to bore holes in each other for love of her; and that one of them was now a wanderer and another in a state of collapse, if report were true--was quite as it should be. Men had died for women a hundred times less worthy and a thousand times less beautiful, and men would die of love again. When at last she made up her mind she would choose the right man, and in the meantime G.o.d bless her for just being alive.

And she was never more alive or more charming than to-day.

"Oh, how delightful of you, Mr. Murdoch, and you too, Mr. Bowdoin--and Max--and all of you, to cross those wretched stones. No, wait, I'll come to you--" she had called out, when with a stamp of her little feet she had shaken the pleats from her skirt--adding when they had all kissed her hand in turn--"Yes--I am going down to be dairy-maid at Peggy Coston's," at which the bald-headed old fellows, with their hands upraised in protest at so great a sacrilege, bowed to the ground, their fingers on their ruffled shirt-fronts, and the younger ones lifted their furry hats and kept them in the air until she had crossed the gang-plank and Todd and Mammy Henny, and Ben who had come to help, lost their several breaths getting the impatient dogs and baggage aboard--and so she sailed away with Uncle George as chaperon, the whole party throwing kisses back and forth.

CHAPTER XX

Their reception at Wesley, the ancestral home of the Costons, although it was late at night when they arrived, was none the less joyous. Peggy was the first to welcome the invalid, and Tom was not far behind.

"Give her to me, St. George," bubbled Peggy, enfolding the girl in her arms. "You blessed thing! Oh, how glad I am to get hold of you! They told me you were ill, child--not a word of truth in it! No, Mr. Coston, you sha'n't even have one of her little fingers until I get through loving her. What's your mammy's name--Henny? Well, Henny, you take Miss Kate's things into her room--that one at the top of the stairs."

And then the Honorable Tom Coston said he'd be doggoned if he was going to wait another minute, and he didn't--for Kate kissed him on both cheeks and gave him her father's message, congratulating him on his appointment as judge, and thanking him in advance for all the kindness he would show his daughter.

But it was not until she awoke next morning and looked out between the posts of her high bedstead through the small, wide-open window overlooking the bay that her heart gave the first bound of real gladness. She loved the sky and the dash of salt air, laden now with the perfume of budding fruit trees, that blew straight in from the sea.

She loved, too, the stir and sough of the creaking pines and the cheery calls from the barnyard. Here she could get her mind settled; here, too, she could forget all the little things that had bothered her--there would be no more invitations to accept or decline; no promises she must keep. She and her Uncle George could have one long holiday--she needed it and, goodness knows, he needed it after all his troubles--and they would begin as soon as breakfast was over. And they did--the dogs plunging ahead, the two hand in hand, St. George, guide and philosopher, pointing out this and that characteristic feature of the once famous estate and dilating on its past glory.

"Even in my father's day," he continued, his face lighting up, "it was one of the great show places of the county. The stables held twenty horses and a coach, besides no end of gigs and carryalls. This broad road on which we walk was lined with flower-beds and shaded by live-oaks. Over there, near that little grove, were three great barns and lesser out-buildings, besides the negro quarters, smoke-houses, and hay-ricks. Really a wonderful place in its day, Kate."