Katrine: A Novel Read online

  XI

  KATRINE IS LEFT ALONE

  In the ten days before her father's death nothing seemed spared Katrine.The hopeless life of the man was recounted to her hour by hour,interspersed with the rereadings of Frank's letters, and, most of all,with remorse at the desolate place he had prepared for her when he hadgone.

  "But ye'll have a friend in Mr. Ravenel," he told her, earnestly. "Onewho will help you, Katrine, and ye need have no fear to take his help.He is one who has a high thought for women and would never betray atrust. It's a great comfort to me to know ye've him, Katrine."

  On the day before the end his grief was bitter to hear.

  "My little wee lassie," he sobbed, "I'm leaving ye alone with nothing;none to shield you, none to care, but just one friend. I'm going out,and it's good I'm going. I would always have held you back, always havebeen a drag to your name--for ye'll make a name! It's in you, as it wasin her." He stopped speaking, but after a little space began, with acrooning, the glorious "Ah, Patria Mia," and it seemed to Katrine asthough her heart would stop beating in her sorrow, for she knew it washer unknown mother of whom he thought.

  "Ah," he whispered, at length, wiping his brow, "the music's gone fromme. In the whole matter with your mother, Katrine, I was at fault. I wasjealous of her gift, of the love she had for it, and made her lifemiserable by my demandings." He placed his hand tenderly on her head ashe spoke. "Katrine," he said, solemnly, "with those we love it's neverenough to forgive and forget. One must forgive and try to _understand_.To forget and forgive. Ah, Katrine, time helps us there! It does almostall of the work, so it's little credit we need take either for theforgiving or forgetting. But to try to understand! When those we lovehave hurt us or injured us, to study why it was done: what inheritedweakness in them, what fault of their environment brought it about, tostudy to understand, that's the real Christianity."

  In the starry watches of the night, wide-eyed and grief-shaken, Katrinetook the lesson to heart both for father and lover; learned it withheart and head as well; saw the disarming of criticism, the tolerance,the selflessness which it would bring, and knew that it was good.

  But, she demanded of herself, was she large-souled enough to acquiresuch tolerance toward Francis Ravenel? Leaning on the window-ledge,looking into the clouded darkness of the night, awaiting the hour togive her father the potion that for a time relieved his pain, she wentover tenderly, bit by bit, the summer that had passed, thatflower-scented, love-illumined summer for which she felt she was to paywith the happiness of a lifetime.

  She lived again her first meeting with Frank under the beeches; therecklessness of her own mood because of her father's drinking; Frank'slonesomeness at his home-coming; the touching of hands on the old log;the sympathy between them from the first, and at the end asked herself,honestly, who was most to blame. She had done wrong to permit him tokiss her the night under the pine-tree, but she would not have foregonethe memory of it for all the world had to offer.

  On the last day about noon the pain left her father, and toward eveninghe asked to be helped to his old place by the window, that he might seethe sun go down behind the mountains. "There's a letter of Mr.Ravenel's I'd like you to see, Katrine," he said, motioning her to bringhim the carefully treasured bundle of Frank's writings.

  After assisting him to find the desired letter, she sat at his feet witha white face and fixed eyes as he read:

  "I met Katrine to-day on the river-bank. She was well and beautiful andhappy. It makes me want to be a better man every time I see her. I wantto help to make her life happy--" The hand which held the lettersuddenly dropped lifeless.

  "Father!" she cried. And again: "Oh, father, can you leave me likethis?" And as the truth came to her that she was alone, Nature wasmerciful, and she fell unconscious by her father's body, with Frank'sletters lying scattered around her on the floor.

  After her father's burial there followed the collapse which comes sofrequently to those women who have the power to bear great trials insilence.

  In the small, white bed, with vines reddening around the window andshining into the room, Katrine lay, day after day, with the pallor ofdeath on her face and a horrible nausea of life, but with a mercifulbenumbing of the power to suffer further. For more than a fortnight shelay, worn out with the task of living, with a Heaven-sent indifferenceto trouble past or to come.

  But with the return of strength the problem of daily living was to besolved. The little stock of money which she and Nora had between themwas used for the last sad needs of her father, and with DermottMcDermott away she knew no one to whom she could turn.

  "Don't you be minding troubles like these, though, Miss Katrine," Norasympathized. "Niver ye mind a bit! Ye're wanting to go away, and we'llfind the money to go. We've some bits of trinkets, an old watch or two,and I'm a good hand at a bargain. And we'll not want to carry thefurniture on our backs like turtles, either. I know a woman in Marltonwhose heart's been set on the old sideboard for months back. We'll goslow, Miss Katrine, but with your voice we've no great cause for worry,my lamb. Look at the thing with sense, and trust to Nora; she'll manageit all. And in a few weeks we'll be off to New York, that wicked oldplace that I'm far from denyin' I like fine."

  On the day before this departure there fell an event, small in itself,yet so momentous in its outcome that in the story of Katrine it cannotremain untold.

  Sad and wide-eyed, she was sitting in her black frock, huddled close tothe big pine-tree at the foot of the garden, when Barney O'Grady, theson of Nora, came out of the beech woods. He had been crying, and atsight of Katrine he threw himself on the grass, breaking into a passionof tears, and clutching at her skirt as a child might have done.

  "Barney!" Katrine cried. "Barney, dear, what's your trouble?" and sheput a soft hand on the boy's tousled red hair.

  "Mother's going to leave me here," he said, "and I want to go. I hateit, hate it, hate it, here all alone! I want to go! I want to go!" hemoaned.

  "Is it the money?" Katrine asked.

  "Yes," the boy answered, "there's not enough for us all. And I'm to staywith Mr. McDermott till I earn enough to come. And I want to go _now_."

  "But if you should get in New York, what would you do?" Katrinedemanded.

  "Newspaper work," was the answer. "I've the gift for it," he explained,with an assured vanity, between his sobs.

  She had known such lonesomeness and understood it, yet, with all thewillingness in the world to help the boy, she had not one penny whichshe might call her own. Nora kept everything, and she reasoned if Norahad made up her mind that Barney was to stay in North Carolina thechances were heavy that there he would remain.

  But the boy continued to sob appealingly, and Katrine, who had that realintelligence which no sooner sees a desired end than it finds a way toaccomplish it, put her sorrow aside for practical thinking.

  She reviewed her possessions rapidly, remembering, with a throb of pain,some carved gold beads she had worn when "she found herself," at the ageof three. They had always seemed part of her, and, though no one hadtold her, she knew they had belonged to her dead mother, "who wentaway." But she felt little hesitation in giving them, if some one wereto be helped by the sacrifice.

  "Wait, Barney," she cried, "here, where Nora can't see you! I'll be backin a moment! They're just some old beads," she said, apologetically,with a splendid dissimulation, as she gave them to the boy. "But oldMrs. Quinby, at Marlton, tried to buy them of Nora once when they werebeing mended. Offer them for sale now. And, Barney," she went on, "ifyou could reconcile it to your conscience to keep it from your motherthat I've given them to you; if you could with no lying, and yet withouttelling the truth--" She hesitated.

  "Ye needn't worry, Miss Katrine," he answered, drying his eyes on hissleeve. "It's been betwixt and between the truth with her all my life.But if the time ever comes when I can serve ye--" He choked. "Ah!" hecried, "words are poor things! But ye'll see!" And with this he was goneat a breakneck run down the Swamp Hollow toward the Marlt
on road.

  And the strangeness is that Katrine's hidden gift of old beads to ahalf-grown Irish boy, in the woods of North Carolina, should wreck aMetropolitan "first night," shake the money-market of two continents,and change the destinies of many lives.