Chapter 4

She held the clippers in her gloved hand to shade the sun from her eyes, regarding him in her friendly, companionable way.

"Dermott," she said, "what makes you such a liar?" The word as she spoke it of him seemed almost a compliment.

"You've been associating, I fear, with some narrow and confined spirit, who repeats things exactly as they occurred. I've more imagination!" he explained, with a laugh. "Why should I not change things a bit?" he continued. "Every Irishman's got to have one of three vices: whiskey, love-making, or lying. Mention me one of any distinction who had none of these!"

"There was St. Patrick," Katrine suggested, a laugh held under her eyelids.

"He's so remote you can prove nothing against him. Take another that I have later news of."

"Wellington."

"He was never an Irishman."

"And Burke."

"And I'm thinkin', begging your pardon, Mistress Katrine, there was a lady to be explained away in his case. No," he said, waving her suggestion far from him, "all the Irish are alike. They've, as I say, one of three vices. I lie, that's why I'm so interestin', especially to the ladies. Suppose I say: 'Old Mrs. O'Hooligan was tripped by a dog in the lane yesterday!' Who cares? Not one soul in a thousand! But instead, with a gesture: 'Did ye hear of the startling adventure of Mrs. O'Hooligan? She was coming home at midnight from a sick friend's' (it's well to throw in a few sympathetic touches if ye can). 'Suddenly an animal, a strange animal, came by, something like a mad bull' (of course you can enlarge or diminish the animal as required; in the mist of night I have found a black cat very telling). 'She saw the vision quite plainly. It passed, touched her, there was a word in the air whose significance she was unable to determine, and in the morning the friend was well--or dead.' For conversational purposes it makes no difference."

He wore a broad smile as he spoke, looking down at her with great love and devotion.

"Ye see, Mistress Katrine, the ladies like a little exaggeration. There's Mrs. Ravenel likes me fine, and says it's my temperament; and Peggy of the Poplars is crazy about me; and hundreds in the two continents who'd marry me at a second's notice. I'm a great lover," he laughed somewhat uneasily, keeping his eyes averted, and adding, "when I don't care! Ye see, a woman doesn't mind a bit of exaggeration in a man's love-making," he went on. "Now there was Antony, who threw a world away. What's that! One world! I'd tell her I'd throw away a universe of worlds. Why not be extravagant! It's all," he laughed again softly, "it's all 'hot air,' anyway."

"And yet you're a truthful person, Dermott McDermott. There's none can tell the truth more bravely or with greater nicety than you," Katrine broke in.

"When I've need of it, and it's an affair of men," he answered. "Oh, I still know Truth when I meet her. We've not fallen out altogether, but I stick to it that she's very dry company. But this discussion, after all, is merely academic," he said, with a droll smile. "I have come to you in a perturbed state of mind. You have refused to marry me thousands of times, it is true; but I am noble, and forgive. To-morrow I am having some delicacies sent me from the North. My cook is a duffer. Now, I thought, why can't Katrine Dulany and I have a little dinner, with Nora to prepare it, Mr. Ravenel asked in, and all be happy together?"

"I don't think Mr. Ravenel can come. There are visitors at Ravenel House," Katrine explained.

"He can-and I think he will-leave them for one evening," Dermott answered.

* * * * *

"I'm the only human being alive that ye've not hypnotized, Frank Ravenel!" Dermott cried, with a laugh, as the three of them sat at dinner at the Old Lodge the evening following this talk. "The only person ye've ever known, probably, who did not fall under the charm of the ways and the eyes of you." There was flattery in this of such a subtle kind that Katrine looked quickly from one to the other, for with woman's intuition she had long since felt the antagonism between them.

"Ye see," Dermott went on, "I underrated the South when I came here. You Southerners understand people as I think no other folk on earth understand them. That's your great strength," he said, addressing himself entirely to Frank. "Now, in a business matter I might, though I'm by no means sure of it, get the better of you." His eyes were bland and frank as he spoke. "But where you would always have the advantage is in knowing the people you may trust. It's a great gift that. The greatest knowledge of all is to know people, and it seems to be an instinct with you, Mr. Ravenel!"

Again Katrine looked from one to the other, mystified, as Francis sat smiling under this flattery.

"Shouldn't there be accompanying laurel wreaths with this unsolicited testimonial, Mr. McDermott?" he inquired, with a laugh.

In a second Dermott took warning, left the subject, and was galloping over conversational fields furthest from compliments to Frank.

"About the trouble over your Senator here from North Carolina. I'd a talk with the President concerning him, and it was mentioned, though hiddenly, that the White House does not want him returned."

And later--

"The pork bill! Heavens! I saw McClenahan in the Senate about it, and I said to him: 'If ye stand for the pork bill, ye'll not be returned to the Senate next year. I'll see to it myself. I know your district. God! How I know it! You can buy every vote in that part of the land of the free and home of the brave for ten dollars, or less--and I've the money to do it.' He didn't vote for it." McDermott finished with a jolly laugh.

Again and again during the dinner he discussed his private affairs in this manner, deferring to Ravenel, flattering him by asking opinions on weighty subjects, listening to the answers with gloomy attentiveness, bewildering, fascinating, dominating, by a perfectly conscious use of every power he possessed.

At the mention of a coaching party which had passed Katrine's house the day before, with Frank driving four-in-hand, he added a note of gayety to the dinner, returning at the same time to the game he was playing with Frank.

"I never see ye drive, Ravenel," he cried, "but I think of the olden days. Ye've a style all your own when you hold the lines. Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I'm seized with rhyme." He stood silent, his eyes drawn together at the corners, his gaze concentrated, glass in hand, before he began with a hypnotic look and great lightness of bearing to recite, waiting every little while for the right word to come to him:

"When Ravenel drives four-in-hand, There's something in his style and way That takes us to a by-gone day Of statelier times and manners grand: When ladies gay, In bright array, And patch and powder held their sway."

"I rather fancy that last!" he cried, repeating it:

"When ladies gay, In bright array, And patch and powder held their sway.

"When Ravenel drives four-in-hand, The days of chivalry return, Hearts with an old-time passion burn, And lords and ladies fill the Strand, Our thoughts in that old time abide When Raleigh lived And Rizzio died, And fair Queen Mary sinned and sighed-- That olden land, That golden land, When Ravenel drives four-in-hand.

"To you, Mr. Ravenel!" he cried, draining his glass.

"Thank you, McDermott," Francis answered, with a pleased smile, "you have, indeed, the gift of rhyme." And Katrine knew as Frank spoke that his distrust of Dermott had been laid aside for the present, and that he was in a state of mind to grant anything which Dermott might demand of him.

The thought troubled her after she had left them together for the coffee and cigars. She had believed for a long time, as she had told Frank in the rose-garden, that Dermott was in Carolina on some business connected with Ravenel, and she had an instinct that the affair was to be brought to a head to-night.

From her place in the hall she could see that Dermott had brought his chair around to Frank's side at the table, and she heard him say:

"You know--or probably, with your celestial indifference to business affairs, Ravenel, you don't know that there is a small piece of land on the other side of the Silver Fork which belongs to your estate. In looking up some old titles I discovered it. It's like this." He drew a note-book from his pocket, drawing as he talked. "Here's Loon Mountain. Here's the Silver Fork. Here's the Way-Home River. Ye've the right, I discover, to the land marked R. It's, as you know, of small value to you, and I'm wanting it. It's a vagary of mine. I may be going to raise eagles on it."

At the words, Katrine, who had been retuning an old guitar, took alarm and was alert on the instant. Striking it quickly, insistently, she came to the door of the dining-room, which framed her beauty like a picture.

"I'm going to sing you an Irish song, a real Irish song!" she cried, gayly, touching the strings. The men turned, and Francis, with the land on the other side of the Silver Fork clear out of his mind at sight of her, came near the doorway where she stood.

"Come all ye men and fair maids And listen to my song, I'll sing of Bloomin' Caroline, Who never did a wrong.

SHE

Beats the fragrant roses, She's admired by all aroun'. They call her Bloomin' Caroline, Of Edinboro Town."

She played an interlude carelessly.

"Young Henry, being a Highland lad, A-courting her he came, And when her parents heard of it They did not like the same.

so

She bundled up her costly robes, The stairs came tripping down, And away went Bloomin' Caroline From Edinboro Town."

Dermott had risen and stood by the far window, looking into the night. Unseen by him, she touched Frank on the sleeve.

"Do not do anything he asks you to do to-night," she whispered, with great intensity, and in a minute more was back at the singing.

"They had not been in London For scarcely half a year--"

and before the song ended the two men were joining the refrain, taken out of themselves by her beauty and charm.

For nearly a week after this she saw neither of them again, but her honest soul was fretted by the word she had given against a true friend; so, when she saw Dermott riding along the river-bank, she called to him from the rocks upon which she sat.

"Dermott McDermott," she cried, "come here!"

He rode through the ferns and undergrowth toward her, as she stood looking up at him with fearless eyes.

"I've done something I want to tell you, something you won't like, for it was going against you; and it makes me feel that I've not been quite loyal to you, you that's always been so good to me, too." The quick tears filled her eyes as she spoke.

He dismounted to be nearer her, and, putting out his hand, said:

"There's nothing you could do that's not forgiven. You hold my heart in the hollow of your hand. What did ye do, child?"

"The other night when I saw you turning Mr. Ravenel the way you wanted by your flattery and your hypnotic presence, I knew ye wished him to do something for you. I knew when you told him how clever he was--_cleverer than you were yourself_--that it must be something very great to make you admit a thing like that. And when you were not near I warned him against selling you that land. I said: 'Don't do anything Dermott McDermott wants you to do to-night." Here she broke into a storm of weeping. "You see, he's been so kind to me," she explained.

Dermott stood looking at her with pity and admiration as he put his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Ye did just what was right, little lady; just the thing that any sweet, grateful woman should have done. You understood what I was doing, thought a friend might be cajoled wrongly, and warned him against it. I'm proud of ye for it!" he cried, with enthusiasm. "Proud of you!" he repeated. "And besides," he added, with a laugh, "it didn't make the slightest difference. He did it anyhow! We signed the papers to-day!"

"The papers for what?" she demanded.

"For that useless bit of land on the other side of the fork," he responded.

"Dermott," she said, "you play fair, don't you? You wouldn't take advantage of any one?"

"Wouldn't I?" he said. "If it were to help you, I'd outwit the deil himself, Lady Katrine."

VII

KATRINE'S OWN COUNTRY

In the following fortnight Francis and Katrine met but three times.

One day, having grown restless, she went to walk, taking the road from the plantation back into the mountains. Returning by the ford, she heard laughter and the ring of horses' hoofs, and by a sudden turn of the road came directly upon Frank, who, separated from a party, was riding beside Anne Lennox. At first sight of her whom she knew instinctively to be a rival, Katrine was reminded of a golden peony, for the pale-yellow hair, bright hazel eyes shot with yellow light, and thick, creamy skin had given Anne Lennox from early childhood a noticeable and flower-like beauty. A long-limbed, slender, full-breasted, laughing woman, with square shoulders and the carriage of one much accustomed to the saddle, she looked with curiosity at Katrine, who was standing aside beneath the elderberry-bushes to permit them to pass.

"As I was saying," Anne had just remarked, "when you act as you have done since I have been here, Frank, it's always a woman. At Biarritz, you remember, it was Mrs. Vaughn. That beast of a spring at Marno, it was Mrs. McIntire. You might as well tell me who it is. You will in the end."

"Upon my honor, Anne--" Frank began, with a laugh, when he met the clear eyes of Katrine looking at him from below.

If there had been some coldness, some resentment at his lack of attention to her, or implied jealousy at his devotion to another, he could have understood it. But there was nothing of the kind. In those eyes, which he believed the most beautiful in the world, there was nothing but a glad light at seeing him, a bright smile of recognition in which he could detect neither remembrance nor regret.

Anne Lennox turned her keen brown eyes backward to look at Katrine as she crossed the bridge. "Frank Ravenel," she exclaimed, "if a girl who looks like that lives near you, you have been making love to her! I wonder if by any chance she could be _the_ woman!"

"She is the daughter of the new overseer," Frank answered; and his tone implied, though the words were not spoken: "and by this reason out of the class." The statement was made with misleading frankness, and Anne Lennox, understanding his pride, put the affair from her mind.

The next time of meeting between Francis and Katrine was one morning on the river road. Her cheeks flushed at sight of him, and there was an odd reserve in her manner; but she never seemed more beautiful.

He stood, hat in hand, wondering at her silence, a bit amused.

"It is a pleasant day," he suggested, at length, remotely.

"It _is_ pleasant," she answered, with averted eyes.

"Unusual weather for this season, don't you think?" he went on, a bit of teasing in his tone.

"I haven't thought of it," she said, concisely.

"Suppose you think about it now," he suggested, jesting still, but not quite at ease concerning her mood.

Suddenly she turned toward him, her face suffused, her eyes troubled.

"Katrine," he cried, "what is the matter? Tell me! Let me help you!"

"I'm jealous," she said, simply.

"Jealous!" he repeated. "Of whom?"

"You."

She had clasped her hands in front of her, and stood with her chin drawn in, looking at him from under a tangle of dusky hair.

"You poor child," he said, moving toward her.

"Don't!" she cried, backing away, "don't try to comfort me! I've always, _always_ been like this. I cannot help it. Whenever I care for anybody--oh, it never made any difference whether I had any right to care or to be jealous! I just was; and it hurts!" She put her hands suddenly over her heart and began to speak rapidly, as a child does when accumulated trouble makes silence no longer possible. "I hated her when I saw she was with you; far up the road, when I only knew she was a woman; and when I saw her nearer I hated her more. She is so pretty," she explained. "Are you going to marry her?" she demanded.

"Not exactly," he answered, grimly.

"Good-bye!" she cried, dropping down the river-bank to the skiff.

"Katrine!" he called.

"I'm not coming back!" she cried through the bushes. "I'm never coming back! Good-bye!"

Two days later there came from Ravenel House a polite note, cordial by the book, asking that Miss Dulany come to them for dinner on the fifth; and, it added, perhaps Miss Dulany might give them an opportunity to hear her charming voice. It was written in the quaint, old-fashioned hand of Mrs. Ravenel.

Katrine read it with a curious smile around her lips, answering while the messenger waited. She "regretted extremely that a cold"; she paused a minute in the writing to reflect on the way the cold had come; sitting one damp afternoon in the rose-garden with the son of the writer of this extremely polite invitation; "regretted extremely that this cold, which seemed more persistent than such things generally were, prevented her accepting Mrs. Ravenel's most kind invitation."

The third meeting was an intentional one on Frank's part. The people at Ravenel had become unbearable, and with no thought save for Katrine's society, he took a short cut through the laurel trees, crossed the river in his canoe, and entered the lodge garden to find her sitting on the broad steps of the house, her chin resting in her hands. There was an exaltation in her little being, an alluring remoteness, an entire concentration upon her own thoughts, which one sees in a child; and when one saw her thus, dreaming hillward, one knew there were great ongoings in that dusky head of hers.

At sight of him she bowed gravely, moving that he might have nearly all the rug upon which she had been sitting, not minding the stones for herself in the least. Her careless generosity spoke even in this trifling act.

"You are bored?" she asked, after a silence which he seemed disinclined to break.

"To extinction, little lady," he answered, puffing a cloud of smoke into the hollyhocks. "You see, you have spoiled me for those others." There was another pause. "And you?" he asked.

"I? Well, I practised, and planted some flowers, and made some things for Miranda's baby, and then"--she hesitated, with an adorably shy look full of that pathos, which made so many of her simplest statements seem claims for protection, "and then I went over into 'My Own Land.'"

He regarded her for a minute, his approval of her showing in every line of his handsome face. It was in these untouchable moods of her, when she eluded him utterly, when she took him out of himself entirely, that he found the most zest in intercourse with her.

"Is it a long journey to that land of yours?" he demanded, gravely, "making believe" with her.

"Not long," she answered, "but sometimes difficult. I go down to a queer gate; I never knew where I got that gate," she threw in, in an explaining way; "and let down the bars and walk up a long driveway of blue pines, and there I am!"

"Go on," he said, "though I think it shabby that you've never told me of your property before now."

"I found this country; oh, years ago! Of course, I have changed it a great deal. There was only one house at first, like Kenilworth Castle, only much larger, with those heavenly, deep windows. And I have taken all the people I liked to live there--"

"Jolly," he said; adding, hastily: "But not in the least a house-party sort of thing, is it? where they play bridge and drink whiskey-sours?"

Katrine shook her head. "These people _live_ in My Country. I've stolen some, but others come of their own accord. They are very great people. Colonel Newcome is the host. You know him?"

"Adsum," Frank answered, softly, and Katrine flashed a smile of appreciation back at him.

"And Henry Esmond," she went on, "I have a time with him. Of course, he never really married that other woman and went to live in Virginia. He adored Beatrice until the end, and is always trying to have her with him. I've had it out with him!" She smiled again, as at a memory, and extended one hand dramatically.

"'Henry Esmond,' I said (you know he's a little man, so I looked straight in his eyes as I spoke), 'I will not have her here with her red stockings and their silver clocks.'

"'Ye've listened to gossip of her,' says he.

"''Twas you yourself that rode after her and the King, when ye crossed swords with his Majesty for her honor,' said I.

"'An event which never took place, believe me,' said he, with a bow, and he bows like a king.

"'Ye lie like a gentleman,' said I, 'and I've pride in ye for it; but Beatrice Esmond never comes in here.' And then I just told the truth to him. 'I've had jealousy of her for many years, despite her morals,' I explained."

Ravenel threw back his head and laughed.

"Oh, you women!" he cried. "Are there many ladies resident in that land of yours?"

"Some; not many. Di Vernon, of course, and Mary Richling, and Dora, whom David Copperfield never had sense enough to appreciate, and oh, the children! Huckleberry Finn and Little Lord Fauntleroy! The Nigger Jim tends the grounds, you know. And that divine Harold of the Dream Days!

"One awful day," she went on, "when everything seemed wrong," the quick tears came to her eyes as she spoke, "and I was sick and disgraced before people and wanted to die, I went into My Own Land, and there was Jean Valjean at the bars waiting for me. He smiled as I came."

"'Cheer up, Little Irish Lady!' he cried, at sight of me, 'cheer up! There is reason for everything in that Great Beyond that we'll understand some day.' And that night, because of his strength, I went to sleep comforted, and the next morning sang the 'Ah! Patria mia' quite nobly. It was payment for the suffering, perhaps. Who can tell?"

"And whom," it was curious how Frank's jealousy showed in the question, "whom do you like best of all these tenant folk of yours, Katrine?"

"Ye'll never tell?" She turned to look him full in the eyes. "Promise me ye'll never tell; for if the word of it gets abroad there'll be no keeping him in bounds, he's so filled with conceit of himself already." She leaned toward Frank and whispered: "It's Alan Breck. Ah," she cried, "you feel so fine and sure when ye're out with him! With his glittering sword and his belt of gold, and the way he takes the centre of the stage and the speech skin-fitted to the occasion. It's grand to be with him then. But it's none of these that I love him for. Do you remember when he says to Catriona: '_I'm a kind of henchman to Davie_,' she quoted Alan's words with a deep-voiced enthusiasm, '_and whatever he cares for I've got to care for, too. I'm not so very bonny, but I'm leal to them I love_.' In My Land, that is all they care for. They are of all religions and times and climes, but they are loyal, every one." And, turning to him suddenly, she brought her wee bit of a fist down on the hard stone, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glorious to see. "It's all there is, in My Land or yours, that makes life worth while--_Loyalty_! The 'enduring to the end.' _Even if one's none so bonny, he can be leal to them he loves_!"

Frank threw his cigar away and moved nearer to her, holding out his hand with an odd combination of "make-believe" and real pleading in his voice.

"Katrine, dear," he said, "take me to live in that land of yours. I want to let down the bars of the gate you don't know where you found, and go up the pine driveway to meet Colonel Newcome. I want all that it means to have those people for intimate friends."