"I'll be back in ten minutes," she said presently. "I'm going to the nearest telephone to get the doctor. Keep up your courage, Mag. Only ten minutes!"

But the girl was clinging to her, by this time, moaning, begging, praying as if to G.o.d. "No, no--you cain't leave me, you cain't! I been alone so long. _Don'_ leave me alone! I know I'm bad, but O Gawd, I'm skeert! Don' leave me to die all alone. You wouldn't leave a dawg die all alone!"

Mrs. Kildare soothed her with touch and word, wondering what was to be done. Through the open door she sent her strong voice ringing out across the twilight fields, again and again. There was n.o.body to hear. All the world had gone indoors to supper. Her waiting horse pawed the earth with a soft, reproachful nicker, to remind her that horses, too, have their time for supper. It gave her an idea.

"The children will be frightened, but I can't help that. I must have somebody here," she murmured, and slapped the mare sharply on the flank.

"Home, Clover. Oats! Branmash! Hurry, pet!"

Obediently the startled creature broke into a trot, which presently, as she realized that she was riderless, became a panic-stricken gallop.

Mrs. Kildare went back to her vigil.

It is a terrible experience to watch, helpless, the agony of a fellow creature. She knelt beside the dirty pallet, her face as white as the girl's, beads of sweat on her brow, paralyzed by her utter inability to render aid--a new sensation to Mrs. Kildare. Maternity as she had known it was a thing of awe, of dread, a great brooding shadow that had for its reverse the most exquisite happiness G.o.d allows to the earth-born.

But maternity as it came to Mag Henderson! None of the preparations here that women love to make, no little white-hung cradle, no piles of snowy flannel, none of the precious small garments sewn with dreams; only squalor, and shame, and fear unutterable.

Never a religious woman, Mrs. Kildare found herself presently engaged in one of her rare conversations with the Almighty, explaining to Him how young, how ignorant was this child to suffer so; how unfair that she should be suffering alone; how wicked it was to send souls into the world unwanted.

"You could do something about it, and You ought to," she urged, aloud.

"Oh, G.o.d, what a pity You are not a woman!"

Even in her agony, it seemed a queer sort of prayer to Mag Henderson.

But strong hands held hers close, a strong heart pounded courage into hers; and who shall say that the helpless tears on Kate Kildare's face were of no help to a girl who had known nothing in all her life of the sisterhood of women?

At last came the sound of thudding hoofs in the lane, and a clear voice, the echo of Kate's own, calling, "Mother! Where are you? _Mother!_ Answer me. I'm coming--"

Mrs. Kildare made a trumpet of her hands and shouted, "Here, Jack. Here in Mag's cabin."

"Safe?"

"All safe."

"Phil, Phil!" called back the voice, breaking. "Come on. It's all right!

We've found her! She's safe!"

In a moment a whirlwind of pink muslin burst in at the door, and enveloped Mrs. Kildare in an embrace which bade fair to suffocate, while anxious hands felt and prodded her to be sure nothing was broken.

"Oh, Mummy darling," crooned the beautiful voice, "_how_ you frightened us! You're sure no bones are smashed--nothing sprained? Poor Clover had worked herself into a perfect panic, galloping home all alone. And the servants screaming, and Jemima fearing the worst, as she always does.

And we didn't even know where to hunt for you, till Philip came--Oh, _Mother_!"

"There, there, baby--it 's all right. No time for pettings now. There 's work to be done. Why didn't Jemima come? This is no place for a madcap like you."

Jacqueline chuckled and shivered. "The Apple Blossom"--she referred to her elder sister, Jemima--"was turning your room into a hospital-ward when I left, against the arrival of your mangled corpse. She had also ordered the wagon prepared like an ambulance, mattresses, chloroform, bandages--every gruesome detail complete. Our Jemima," she said, "is having the time of her life--isn't she, Reverend Flip?"

Mrs. Kildare smiled in spite of herself. The description of her eldest daughter was apt. But she said reprovingly, "Yon sound as if you were making fun of your sister, dear. And don't call Philip 'the Reverend Flip.' It is rude."

"Pooh! Rudeness is good for that elderly young man," murmured Jacqueline, with an engaging smile in his direction.

But the elderly young man, standing at the door, did not notice. He was gazing at Mrs. Kildare questioningly.

There had come a groan from the inner room.

"What's that?" cried Jacqueline. She ran to investigate. "Oh! The _poor_ thing! What's the matter with her?"

Benoix would have stopped her, but Kate said shortly, "Nonsense, Phil.

My girls were born women. You ride for the doctor."

At dawn a faint, fierce whisper came from the inner room.

"Whar's my babby? What you-all doin' with my babby? You ain't goin' to take her away from me? No, _no_! She's mine, I tell you!"

Jacqueline hurried in to her with the tiny, whimpering bundle. "Of course she's yours, and the sweetest, fattest darling. Oh, Mag, how I envy you!" She kissed the other's cheek.

There was a third girl in the room, a dainty, pink and white little person who well deserved her pet-name of the "Apple Blossom." She looked up in quick distaste from the bandages her capable hands were preparing, and went out to her mother.

"Isn't it like Jacqueline? To sit outside all night with her fingers stuffed in her ears, because she couldn't stand the groaning, and then to--kiss the creature!"

Jemima was nineteen, a most sophisticated young woman.

Her mother smiled a little. "Yes," she admitted, "it is like Jacqueline, and that's why she's going to do poor Mag more good than either of us.

The doctor says we shall be able to take Mag and the baby home presently."

"Home!" Philip Benoix looked at her in amaze. Like the others, his face was drawn and pale with that strange vigil. Death does not come so close without leaving its mark on the watchers. "Miss Kate, surely you're not going to take Mag Henderson into your own home?"

"Where else? You wanted me to evict her. I can't evict her into s.p.a.ce."

"But, the responsibility!"

"Yes, there is a responsibility," said Kate Kildare, musing. "I don't know whether it's mine or G.o.d's, or whose--and I can't afford to take any chances."

"It will be easier to look after them at home," commented the practical Jemima.

CHAPTER III

On the rare occasions when the mistress of Storm sat idle in her eyrie, her household--children, negroes, even the motley a.s.sortment of dogs that claimed her for their own--had learned to go their ways softly. The morning after Mag's affair, three collies, a hound or so, and several curs waited in a respectful row, tentative tails astir, with eyes fixed patiently upon a certain great juniper-tree at the edge of Storm garden.

On the other side of it sat a very weary woman, cradled between its hospitable roots, with her back turned on the workaday world and her face to the open country. This was her eyrie; and here, when another woman would have been shut into a darkened chamber courting sleep, came Kate Kildare on occasion to rest her soul.

To the left and right of her rose taller hills, of which Storm was the forerunner, the first small ripple of the c.u.mberlands as they broke upon the plain. At her feet stretched mile after rolling mile of summer green, and gold, and brown. There were dappled pastures of bluegra.s.s, clover-fields, beech-woods, great golden reaches of corn; there was the rich black-green of tobacco--not much of that, for Kate Kildare loved her land too well to ruin it. Here and there the farm of some neighbor showed larger patches of the parasite that soon or late must sap Kentucky of its vigor, even while it fills her coffers with gold; but these were few. The greater part of the land in sight was Kildare land.

Storms, like some feudal keep of the Old World, brooded its chickens under its wings, watchfully.

Far away, perhaps five miles or so, the roof of another mansion showed among the trees; a new house. Kate rarely looked in that direction. It made her feel crowded. It was not the only direction from which she kept her eyes averted. On the edge of the distant horizon rested always a low gray cloud, never lifting, nor shifting. It seemed to her an aureole of shadow crowning some evil thing, even as the saints in old paintings are crowned with light. It was the smoke of the little city of Frankfort, where there is a penitentiary.

The plateau at her feet was crossed by many a slender thread of road, to one of which her eyes came presently, as wandering feet stray naturally into a path they often use. It was rather a famous road, with a name of its own in history. Wild creatures had made it centuries ago, on their way from the hills to the river. The silent moccasins of Indians had widened it; later, pioneers, Kildares and their hardy kindred, flintlock on shoulder, ear alert for the crackling of a twig in the primeval forest, seeking a place of safety for their women and children in the new world they had come to conquer. Now it was become a thoroughfare for prosperous loaded wains, for world-famed horses, for their supplanter, the automobile, which in ever-increasing numbers has come to enjoy and kill the peace of distant countrysides.

But to Kate Kildare the early history of that road meant nothing. It was for her the road that led back, a two days' journey, into her girlhood.

In the house Jacqueline was singing, her voice drowning the mellow tones of the old piano, ringing out singularly pure and clear, like a child's, lacking as yet the modulations to be learned of one teacher alone; life.