CHAPTER IV

There was never a stranger honeymoon than that of Kate and Basil Kildare. It began with a view-halloa. It ended ... how should happy hunting end except with the death of something?

That first year was not without its heady charm for a girl with the facile, the almost tragic, adaptability of seventeen years. True, it was not married life as she had dreamed it; but it was her husband's life.

She made it hers.

Kildare's boon companions found to their relief that a young wife was no restraint upon their pleasures; was indeed an addition to them. No sport was too rough for her to share, no riding too hard, no gambling too heavy. Despite her town breeding, this was no hothouse plant, this daughter of a horse-racing, whisky-drinking, card-playing gentry.

Kildare took a vast delight in her prowess, particularly at the card-table; swearing joyously when she won, paying her losses, which were considerable, with an amused indifference equal to her own. One quality, and one alone, had power to move him in man, woman, or beast.

It was the quality he called Spirit.

In that Kate was not lacking. Rumors of the wild Kildares, always rife in a countryside they had made famous for generations with their amus.e.m.e.nts, did not abate after the coming of a new mistress to Storm.

Of the society of her own s.e.x, she had little or nothing. The few women of her cla.s.s within driving distance were careful to call once--Kildare was not a man to antagonize. But they did not come again. Kate was not sorry. She found them less interesting than their men-folk. Their manners were provincial, their outlook narrow, and--they did not fall in love with her. In this they were unlike their husbands, their brothers, their sons, and fathers.

The guest-house was rarely empty. The bride and groom were never alone.

Storm had long been a gathering place for sportsmen of every type, from the neighboring towns, from the city, from other States. Nor were their guests always gentlemen. Kate, indeed, grew to prefer certain of the rough and simple farmers who came there to the more polished visitors.

Their admiration was humbler, less troublesome.

Gentlemen or not, Kate numbered her admirers among her husband's friends by the score. She grew as adept in handling them as in handling colts; and her prowess in this, too, amused Basil Kildare enormously. He rallied her on each new victim with chuckles of delight. Too confident of himself for jealousy, he knew, if he thought of it at all, that his honor was safer in her hands than it had ever been in his own.

That the girl came to no harm in that wild year was owing to no watchfulness of her husband's. The Kildare motto was "Liberty For All."

Nor was it owing to any love of her husband's, Kate soon knew this.

Her beauty was a matter of great pride to him. He flaunted it, his property, before other envious men; took her often upon his knee when any were about; pulled the pins out of her hair to reveal the full flowing splendor of it; hung her with jewels, sent away for velvets and silks and laces, so that she went about the rough place clad like a young queen at court. But despite various episodes in his career, Kildare was never a woman's man. He had married for one reason, and one alone. He made no concealment of it. "People say we Kildares are doomed, that the stock is dying out. We'll show 'em!" he often said. "Meanwhile, let the girl have her fling."

Nevertheless, there was watchfulness. No matter how far she went, no matter to what lengths her reckless gaiety led her, Kate was aware of the quiet, understanding scrutiny of Jacques Benoix. Their nearest neighbor, and by the strange attraction of opposites, Kildare's chosen intimate, it was inevitable that she should be thrown constantly into the company of the Creole. Despite his very evident admiration, he did not join the ranks of her more or less avowed lovers; a fact that in turn piqued and oddly comforted Kate. For at times this new life of hers seemed a strange dream, in which Benoix, with his gentleness, his punctilious courtesy, his rather formal friendliness of aspect, was the only fixed reality. She felt, vaguely, that she was safe with him; safer than with her husband. She thought of him more as a friend than as a man.

He reminded her somewhat of her father and his companions, courtly, scholarly gentlemen who belonged to that period of the South when men not only gambled and rode and drank, but found leisure to cultivate poetry, and Greek, and music, all the fine things of life. He talked to her about such matters as had interested them, large impersonal matters, taking for granted her intelligent understanding. This flattered the girl, though she had no ambition to be thought a scholar.

Often he borrowed books from her small store, to the impatient amus.e.m.e.nt of Basil Kildare, who looked upon the reading of books as a pastime suitable for invalids and old women. Kate, too, found no room in her exciting, absorbing life for books, at that time. Still, there was an atmosphere about the Creole far less foreign to her than to her companions. It reminded her of a sheltered, exquisite, finely ordered childhood, of certain standards that she might otherwise have been in danger of forgetting. She never joined a group of her husband's boon companions, whether in the gaming-room or the hunting-field, without first making sure unconsciously that Benoix was there. And he was usually there.

At length Benoix, in his professional capacity, spoke to Kildare.

"What the devil, Jacques! Stop her riding and late hours, and all? What d'ye mean?"

The doctor told him.

The husband swore a pleased oath. "Good little girl! I told you we'd show 'em. But what of it? Child-bearing's no disease, man! Good Gad, the girl ain't goin' to turn out sickly, is she?" Kildare had a queer horror of "sickliness."

"Not if I can help it," said the other. He added, in the language Basil best understood, "You do not race a brood-mare, my friend. You turn her out to pasture."

Kildare admitted the point. Thereafter, though the usual life at Storm went on unchanged, Kate was no longer a part of it.

She was rather glad. It was restful to be turned out to pasture. She liked to hear them start off with the hounds in the cold dawn, knowing that she might turn over and sleep again. Sometimes she was awakened at night by swearing and quarrels and loud laughter from the guest-wing.

Sometimes there was singing, one rich baritone leading the rest; and to this Kate listened eagerly. Dr. Benoix sang very beautifully when he was drunk.

One night she started up out of a dream to hear tipsy voices at her very door. It opened, and Basil Kildare stood on the threshold, holding a lamp above his head, saying over his shoulder: "Come on in, boys! That's all right--Kit's a good sport. Come and look at her, if you like.

Prettiest thing in a nightgown you ever saw!"

An anger possessed Kate of which she had never dreamed herself capable.

She knew then that there would never be any defender for her and her children except herself. She saw that what her inexperience had mistaken for strength in her husband was only violence. She reached for the pistol at her bedside.

"Basil," she said quietly--too quietly--"if you bring those men into my room, I shall shoot."

Her voice sobered him; shocked him into an anger as hot as hers was cold. "Your room? _Your_ room? By G.o.d, I do what I choose in this house!

D'ye know who I am? By G.o.d--"

But her voice had sobered the others as well. They got him away by main force. Not one of them had glanced at her.

In the morning, for the first time in her life, Kate was ill, and Kildare in alarm sent for Benoix. Before her, he told the doctor what had occurred; ashamed, but brazening it out with a laugh. The doctor said nothing; merely looked at him. After a moment, the big man turned and went from the room.

Kate was oddly sorry for her husband. "He did not know what he was doing," she murmured. "But oh, Jacques, if _you_ had been there, it would not have happened!"

"No. Hereafter, I shall be there."

"Please, please," whispered the girl, and she began to cry. She was quite unnerved. "Oh, I am afraid sometimes, Jacques! It's such a comfort to know you are near, to hear your voice--even when you are as drunk as the others!"

He went rather white about the lips. "Hereafter I shall be there," he repeated steadily. "And I shall not be as drunk as the others. I shall not be drunk at all."

After that night there was less company at Storm, and Kildare began to make frequent absences from home, lasting sometimes over several days.

Kate was grateful, realizing that it was his way of showing her consideration. But she was also lonely. For the first time, she missed the companionship of women.

She made shy overtures to the tenants' wives, to the women in the village. But the barrier of caste was very evident, and there were other barriers. No virtue is so quick to take up arms as that of the middle cla.s.ses. Kildare as a landlord was not popular. Beauty, charm, did not help her with them as it had with their husbands. There was the further barrier, which all aliens in a rural community reach soon or late: the well-nigh impa.s.sable barrier of strangeness. They would have none of her. They looked askance at her winning sweetness; they accepted her bounty with stony, ungrateful thanks.

She thought of asking friends to visit her, only to be brought up sharply by the realization that hers was not a home to which such women as she had known would care to come. Once she spoke to her husband tentatively of sending for her mother.

"Oh, by all means, if you want her," he agreed, yawning a little. "But what will that genteel female do with herself at Storm? There isn't a tea-party nor an Episcopal Church within half a day's drive of us."

Kate knew that he spoke truly. Her mother would be both shocked and unhappy at Storm. Let her keep what illusions she had a while longer.

The girl was young to be guarding other women's illusions.

And so she was thrown for company upon Jacques Benoix and his wife; the latter a personality so colorless, so fragile, that strain as she might she could not now recall a feature of her face, nor a tone of her voice.

Yet when Kate's time came, this helpless invalid had herself carried up the hill to Storm, so that the girl might not be without a woman's hand to hold during the ordeal.

At this memory, the older Kate flushed a little. She wondered how much the invalid had seen with her dim and weary eyes, before she closed them.

CHAPTER V

The day came when Basil, summoned from the field to his wife's bedside, foundered his best hunter in his haste to see his son. The doctor met him at the door.

"It is over, and well over," he said, gravely smiling.

Mrs. Benoix added, "She never whimpered!"