Chapter 13

"Katrine," he cried, impressed by her serious face and tone, "what is this mysterious trouble that is coming to me? Can't _you_ tell me?"

"I have thought of that, but I believe that you would be happier in the future to know that we had never discussed it together. I know _I_ should. It's all so foolish," she ended.

"You are really going to-morrow, Katrine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It is better."

"For you?"

"For both of us."

"Ah, Katrine, why? You are a great enough woman to forgive. Can't you do it? You have done so much already."

"I am afraid," she answered. "I suffered too much. It was too horrible. Only," and she touched his shoulder gently, "you are not to think that I don't care for you. It mayn't be in just the way that I used to do; but nobody else could ever be to me what you have been. I don't believe a woman, a real woman, ever loves twice in her life, do you?" She asked the question with the manner distinctively her own, of comradeship, of wanting to touch souls even on this question most vital to them both.

"I hope it's true of you, Katrine."

The gray sea broke in white lines on the shore beneath them; the gulls uttered shrill, clattering cries above their heads, before Katrine rose.

"We must be going--on!" she said, looking seaward, her hands clasped in front of her, her face saddened and white.

"But, Katrine," he cried, "look at me, Katrine! Nothing has been settled between us. I have asked you to marry me. You say you will not. You tell me you still care some little for me. It's a foolish situation. I was a cad, an ignorant and colossally selfish cad, but I am humbled and oh, I want you so!"

There was nothing but kindness and affection in her face as she stood with appealing eyes looking up at him.

"Do you want me to tell you what I believe to be the truth?"

"Yes; but, Katrine, don't make it hurt too much," he said.

"I think," she spoke the words softly, "if I had gone out of your life, had had no voice, had not succeeded, if the world had not spoken my name to you, you would have forgotten me in a year. I believe it is not Katrine Dulany, the daughter of your Irish overseer, whom you love, but La Dulany, who happens to have a gift, the adopted daughter of the Countess de Nemours, the woman whom you have heard the Duc de Launay wishes to marry!"

"Oh, Katrine!"

"I don't want to hurt you! indeed, _indeed_ I don't," she repeated. "I wanted you to know exactly what I think. Ah," she cried, "be fair! Do you blame me?"

"No," he answered. "I blame you for nothing; but it is not true! I love the soul of you, Katrine. And there has been between us love, love stronger than ourselves or our foolish prejudices. I believe that neither of us can forget, that something stronger than your will or mine draws us together. I will not accept your refusal. And you will not forget me! I mean to see to it that you shall not."

They returned to the house, through the incoming sea fog, in silence. At the foot of the side-stair they shook hands and said "good-bye" softly.

He had not expected to see her again in the evening. But here he failed to understand that the excitement under which she was laboring made either solitude or inaction unendurable. She was among the first to come down to dinner, and never, he reviewed the entire past before he came to the conclusion, had he seen her more beautiful. She wore pink, modish in the extreme, with many jewels--he recalled that he had never before seen her wear jewels--and she seemed in sky-scraping spirits, her eyes alight with fire and vivacity; and at the table he could hear the droll tones of her voice before the laughter came; and altogether she went far toward driving him daft by an apparent gayety at parting with him forever.

Immediately after the ladies left the table Dermott touched Frank lightly on the arm. "Could I have a few words with you in the gun-room?" he asked. "It's the place where we shall be the least likely to be interrupted."

Ravenel followed him, after a nod of acquiescence, and stood on one side of a great chimney, which was filled with glowing logs, waiting for the Irishman to speak. He was entirely unprepared, however, for the consideration, even the impersonal kindness in Dermott's voice as he said, "I'm afraid I'm letting you in for a pretty bad time, Ravenel."

Frank bowed. Even McDermott was forced to admire his serene manner.

"Miss Dulany told me last night of her obligation to you."

Frank waited with no change of expression for Dermott to proceed.

"She said she desired her money obligation to be paid immediately."

"It is an affair of small moment," Frank answered.

"You know, perhaps, that my cousin, Madame de Nemours, left her property to Miss Dulany?"

"I heard of it at the time," Frank returned.

"And named me as executor," Dermott explained.

"A fact which escaped me," Ravenel answered, suavely.

"It has taken some time to settle the estate," Dermott continued, "because of a certain claim which, if proven, makes the estate a very valuable one. This claim nearly concerns you."

"Go on," Frank said, briefly, discourteously as well.

"I do not know," Dermott continued, "whether you are aware or not that your father made an earlier marriage than the one with your mother."

An ominous chill passed over Frank, though he answered, bravely, "I was not."

"When he was living at Tours he married a girl, an Irish girl, who ran away from a convent to become his wife. She was but sixteen at the time. Her name was Patricia McDermott, my cousin, afterward the Countess de Nemours."

Frank continued to listen, but, although his eyes held keen apprehension and his face was white, he showed a fine courage.

"My uncle, her father, was an ardent Roman Catholic," Dermott explained, "a gloomy, overfed, and melancholy man who never forgave his daughter. In a short time your father seemed to have"--Dermott coughed--"tired of the affair," he explained, lightly, "and, his studies being finished, he left his wife and child and returned to America. I do not desire to dwell on the misery of my cousin and her child. She was cared for by some poor folks; my uncle gave her a death-bed forgiveness; the child died, and in process of time she married the Count de Nemours. After the death of her second husband, she gave me full charge of her affairs, and among her papers I found documents relating to this early marriage. The year before your father's death I met him, quite by accident, in New York. The name was familiar to me. I asked questions, found he was married and had a son, yourself.

"Mr. Ravenel," Dermott changed his tone of recital to a more intimate one, "to speak truth, the matter is inexplicable to me. Your father was a brilliant man; a man of the world who, if he had no religious scruples on the subject of bigamy, must have had respect for law. Why," Dermott rose from the table by which he had been sitting, and stood directly facing Frank--"why he should have made a second marriage, with a wife and child living in France, is beyond explanation."

Frank drew back, his face colorless, his lips drawn, and, as the horrid import of the news became clear, "Ah, God!" he whispered; and then, with memory of his father uppermost, "It's a damned lie!" he cried.

"It may be," Dermott returned, calmly. "Most things are open to that interpretation. I'm afraid, however, you will have difficulty in proving it so. I have had the certificates of the marriage and of the birth of the child for a long time, but international law requires much. I have living witnesses. In Carolina, in looking up the matter," he spoke the word vaguely, "I failed to find anything which would disprove the points I have just placed before you. I was awaiting some letters from France before explaining the case to you, when Katrine demanded that her debt to you be paid immediately. There are many reasons why I do not wish to pay that debt now, reasons which we, as men, can understand. She might not comprehend them, and she certainly would not give the idea a straw's weight if she did, having once made up her mind. Now I'm going to tell her that I've paid her debt, Mr. Ravenel. It will comfort her. But with the matter which I have revealed to you still a little unsettled, and the markets in the state they are in, I cannot do my duty as executor and fulfil her desires immediately. After all, it is a small amount, and if my personal check--" He waited, and Ravenel spoke.

"Mr. McDermott, Miss Dulany's indebtedness to me is too slight to consider. About this other terrible business, I shall search my father's papers! It is necessary that I do everything I can to protect my mother's name as well as my own."

"That's reason," Dermott agreed.

"As to Miss Dulany--"

Both men turned, for at the far end of the room Katrine stood, under the swinging light of a Japanese lamp, regarding them.

She came rapidly toward them, her head a little forward, her cheeks scarlet, and a gleam of temper in her eyes, which Frank had never seen, but with which Dermott was not unfamiliar, and took a place between them.

"See!" she cried, smiling, and there was never another woman in all the world who had the appealing smile of Katrine Dulany. "Don't let us make this all so dreadful. There is just some mistake," she said, with a gesture of impatience; and from here she went on with a certain terrifying ability, peculiarly her own, to come directly to a point.

"Oh," she said, with a gesture including them both, "you've done what I asked you not to do, Dermott!" she said. "You've claimed a yet unproven thing. I'm tired of the whole of it. It is better that we three should understand one another altogether and not go talking by twos," and she faced Dermott as she turned. "You may prove everything, and I'll never believe a word of it! Give me Ravenel, and I'll return it to those to whom it belongs. It's his," indicating Frank, "and his mother's, and they shall keep it, no matter what you prove! As for me!" she laughed, giving herself a shake as a bird does. "Hark!" she cried, raising one finger. Softly, as a bird calls to the purpling east at dawn, she took a note, listening intently, going up, up, up, till the tone, a mere thread of gladness, reached high E, where it swelled, rounder and fuller, until it seemed to fill all space, descending in a sparkling shower of chromatics to lower G.

"Did you mark that?" she cried, in a defiant bit of appreciation of herself. "What do I need with money? I can go out on the streets and come back with hands full." And before they could answer she had disappeared through one of the long windows of the piazza.

"And what do you think of that, now?" demanded Dermott of Frank, with a touch of the brogue, as they stood together in some bewilderment, looking after her.

XXV

KATRINE IN NEW YORK

The following morning, in a drizzling rain and wind from the east, Dermott McDermott stood beside Katrine at the station, arranging for her comfort, directing her maid, and wiring Nora in New York, lest she should be unprepared for this hastily determined return to the city.

"I was sorry for Ravenel last night, Katrine," he said, with an earnest sympathy in his tone. "I think I have never known a man who drew me to him less; but that has nothing to do with the matter. I was sorry for him," he repeated. "Isn't it a dreadful performance, this tragedy of life?" he demanded, looking down at her intently, unmindful of noise of luggage or the shrill voices of the passers to and fro. "But the thing to do," he cried, straightening himself and raising his chest, "is to show a brave front always! Never let the world know you're downed in anything. So carry all off with a laugh and a song. Plant flowers on the graves, flowers for the world to see, and for the great Power above as well, that He may know we are not whining--that we're down here doing the best we can."

They stood, hands clasped, on the platform as the train drew in, looking into each other's eyes, and Katrine's lips trembled as she spoke the word "good-bye."

"Sure it's not 'good-bye' at all," Dermott cried, changing his mood to cheer her--"not 'good-bye' at all! I'll be in town in a day or two bothering you with my visits and advice. And if anything definite turns up about the Ravenel matter I'll write you. Do you know, Katrine, I felt so sorry for him last night I'm almost hoping he can disprove everything."

And Katrine found, as the train pulled out, that there was another who had not been unmindful of her going, for Frank's man appeared from nowhere, touched his hat with accented deference, gave her a letter in silence, and disappeared into the blankness from which he came. But for the envelope she held, Katrine might have believed him a vision that had passed.

There was no formal beginning. The letter ran:

I shall not see you again until I know the truth. You will understand the reasons. I am going to Ravenel to-day to make some investigations. Of the outcome of these I cannot speak.

In all of this there is one thing sure. Everything may be changed in my life but my love for you.

F.R.

It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and to Nora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just off Washington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for the place, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the household goods.

There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees in the yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, to make a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrine enjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; the transformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot of restful color and peace.

The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced, with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she had told to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother had ceased speaking.

Katrine greeted him with affectionate remembrance, smiling as she did so at the change in this boy whom she had helped to New York. He was flashily dressed, after the style of a college freshman, and conversed, as she discovered, in a language known only to the New York newspaper man, who, as some one told her later, has a "slanguage" all his own.

No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation, however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherished toward her for the help given so long before.

Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.

But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight and ability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his brave schemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it; accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on a much-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's whole life. In a way, he had become a power in the newspaper world, and had, as she discovered, a knowledge of the private affairs of prominent people which seemed supernatural; and it was a habit of his to look over the names in a newspaper, remarking cheerfully at intervals:

"There's another man that I could put in jail."

But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feeling toward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintance between them might have done, and this was his admiration for Frank Ravenel.

If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectly through his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life with Ravenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.

But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine was concerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion for her, as she laughingly put it.

"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.

"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by to see him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.

With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney called "Her Irresponsible Frenchiness," and Nora, Katrine spent a busy month trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely. In the daytime she could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him--if he were back at Ravenel; if Dermott had proceeded in the bitter business concerning the early marriage, with many plans for readjustments in case he had done so.

Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina associates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediately after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France following close upon the heels of his return.

Early in November--it was the afternoon of the first snowfall--delayed letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her signature. She was to have her première in May, and Josef wrote that he would go up from Paris with her.

This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris, so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagement was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.

In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the most important being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debt to Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importance that he was wearing a new green tie. He ended by saying that he would give an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped he had done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin. He wrote no word of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrine concluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.

But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. The first was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trust because a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, who was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging search he was making for the truth.

She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost daily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit he mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street, and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little time for visiting.

His second coming was a fortnight later. In the afternoon Katrine had been reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death. It seemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there had come to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge that love was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, of which love is the cause. She had worked to forget, had been taught how to forget, yet she knew she had not forgotten, and that her listlessness since her visit to Mrs. Van Rensselaer had been chiefly worry lest trouble should come to Frank.

At five Nora brought in the tea-things, and Katrine closed the book over which she had been dreaming.

"Nora," she began, for the Irishwoman was like a mother to her, "did you ever forget your first love?"

"I did worse than that, I married him. Barney's the result," was the answer.

"But you never could have married any one else but Dennis, could you?" Katrine persisted.

"Niver!" the little old woman returned, with ready decision. "He bate me, Miss Katrine, and misprized me, and came and wint as he listed, and finally left me altogether; but I could never have chose another. It's the way with Irishwomen, that! The drame of it niver comes but the wance--niver but the wance," she repeated, looking into the fire, but seeing the old sea-wall at Killybegs, with flowers on top of it, against a cloudy sky, and a sailor boy with bold black eyes calling to her from the boats.

And Katrine, her tea forgotten, repeated, "It's that way with Irishwomen--the dream never comes but once."

At sunset the bitter wind which had been blowing all day long turned into a gale, a rascal wind, which slapped a handful of sleet and ice, hard as glass, on one side of your face, and scurried round the corner to come back and strike harder from an entirely different direction.

The storm must have suited his mood in some way, for Dermott McDermott chose to walk through it, arriving at Katrine's door breathless and flushed, the fur of his coat gleaming with ice and snow. Here he found a glowing fire, with the old mahogany settle on one side and the green grandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry; flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown, delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter and roaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happiness within, and led him, more than he knew, to that precipitancy of conduct which ended disastrously for him. As he sat in the great green chair Katrine looked up at him from the settle, and something in the intensity of his gaze made her make a quick gesture of warning to him before he spoke.

"Will you marry me, Katrine?"

She looked again quickly, to see if he could be jesting. In North Carolina it was his custom to ask her every day; but his sudden pallor and the choked voice told how terribly he was in earnest.

She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all my heart I could, Dermott."

"And why not?" he asked.

"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained, bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.

"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say I hope not."

"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you--always--ever since I've known you. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, and ye stood off the mob of boys who were baiting the old Jew--since then I've taken every thought for you I could. And I'm asking you to believe me when I tell you that I want your happiness more than my own. I've felt always that you'll never succeed as a public singer, and here of late, since I've known the St. Petersburg contracts were signed, I've suffered in my thoughts of you. We'll just leave another suitor out of the question. It's these public appearances of yours I dread at the present. If stage life could be as it seems from the right side of the footlights; if you knew nothing of the people or their lives, except as Valentine or Siegfried, it would be different. But the meanness of it; the little jealousies; the ignorant egotisms; I am afraid you can never do it, you will despise it so."

He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had taken some active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.

"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girl alone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has a rainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether you care or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, that there's a man here in New York thinking always of you, _one who would give his life to save you from pain_."

XXVI

DERMOTT MCDERMOTT

"You who were ever alert to befriend a man, You who were ever the first to defend a man, You who had always the money to lend a man Down on his luck and hard up for a V. Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude (And a quare sight you will be in that attitude) Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude, You'll find your latitude."