Katrine: A Novel Read online

  III

  A KINDNESS WITH MIXED MOTIVES

  In the walk home through the gloom of the night Frank Ravenel thought ofmany things not hitherto considered in his philosophy. The women whom hehad known had presented few complexities to him. That he should begiving a second thought to Katrine Dulany seemed humorous; but the morehe resolved to put her from his thoughts the more vivid the memory ofher became. He recalled his emotion when their eyes first met, and theremembrance brought again the tightening of the throat which he had onthe hilltop. He could feel the clinging pressure of the slender hand,could hear again the voice like a caress, and her words, "You aregood--good--good!" kept repeating themselves somewhere in the recessesof his brain to the tune of an old song.

  "Good!" he ejaculated. "God, if she only knew!"

  He had stated to his mother at the outset of the walk that he had noplans; but in reality his summer had been fairly well arranged beforehis return, lacking only a few set dates to fill the time till October.The party at Ravenel would be over in a fortnight, and then--the thoughtof another woman who loved him and a certain husband yachting on theMediterranean crossed his mind for an instant with annoyance and alittle shame.

  The girl on the hill had had a more disturbing effect than any one thatever came into his life before. Looking down the vista of probableevents, he saw nothing but trouble for her if he remained atRavenel--saw it as reasonably and as logically as though he werecontemplating the temptation of another. An affair with the daughter ofhis overseer, a very young person, was a manifest impossibility for him,Francis Ravenel; his pride and such honor as he had where women wereconcerned forbade it. But even as he reached this decision the voice ofgold came back to him:

  "And the night for love was given-- Darling, come to me!"

  How she could love a man! He recalled her gesture when she said: "I willtell you everything"! The glance through the lashes--"I've a fancy formy own way"! the forgetting of his presence for the song-singing and thesunset, coming back to talk with him; a pleading child!

  By the lake he paused, and, looking into the moonlit water, came to hisconclusions sanely enough. He would see her no more. There would be manypeople for the next fortnight to occupy his time; the coming folks wereinteresting. Anne Lennox would be there; the time would pass; he wouldleave Ravenel; but as he dropped asleep a voice seemed to call to himthrough the pines, and he knew he would not go.

  The next morning before coffee he wrote to Dr. Johnston, the greatspecialist in alcoholic diseases, urging him to come to Ravenel at hisearliest convenience. "There is a man to be helped," he wrote, "andneither money nor brains are to be spared in the helping."

  Through the breakfast the memory of Katrine was vividly with him. Herecalled, with the approval of an aristocrat in taste, the daintiness ofher movements, the delicacy of her hands as they lay open on the fence,even her indifference to him, to him, who was in no wise accustomed toindifference in women.

  At twilight he went to the Chestnut Ridge, but Katrine was not there,nor did she come. The following day he went again with a similarresulting. The third day he saw her about noon on the river-bank, andshe waved her hand to him in a cavalier fashion, disappearing into asmall copse of dogwood, not to reappear. The thing had become amusing.

  During this time he saw neither Dermott McDermott nor the new overseer,whom he learned was at Marlton on affairs concerning a sawmill.

  The fourth day after his meeting with Katrine a message from the greatdoctor gave him the dignity of a mission, and he rode to the old lodgeto show her the letter, which said that Dr. Johnston would be at Ravenelsoon.

  There was eagerness in his gait and eyes as he mounted his horse, and ashe rode down the carriageway standing in his stirrups, waving his cap tohis mother with a "Tallyho to the hounds," he had never looked handsomernor had more of an air of carrying all before him, as was right, shethought, for a Ravenel.

  The old gate-lodge on the Ravenel place stands on the north branch ofthe road which leads to Three Poplar Inn. It is built of pale-coloredEnglish brick and gray stones, and runs upward to the height of twostories, with broad doorways and wide windows peeping through ivy whichcovers the place from foundation to roof.

  Frank remembered it as a drear-looking, lonesome place during theoccupancy of the former incumbent. Instead, he found a reclaimed garden;hedges of laurel, trim and straight; old-fashioned flowers, snowballs,gillybells, great pink-and-white peonies; and over the front ontrellises, by the gate and doorway, scrambles of scarlet roses againstthe green and the ivied walls.

  In the doorway Nora O'Grady, a short, wide woman of fifty or thereabout,was singing at a spinning-wheel. She had a kind, yellow face with highcheek-bones, and dark eyes which seemed darker by reason of the snowyhair showing under a mob cap. Her chin was square and pointed upwardlike old Mother Hubbard's, and she could talk of batter-cakes or homerule with humorous volubility, and smoke a pipe with the manner of acondescending duchess.

  She had, as Frank found afterward, an excellent gift at anecdote, but aclipping pronunciation of English by reason of having spoken nothing butthe Erse until she was grown. Added to this was an entirely illogicalignorance of certain well-known words, and Katrine told him later thatonce when Nora was asked if the dinner was postponed, she answered: "Itwas pork."

  For fifteen years this strange old creature and her boy Barney hadfollowed the seesawing fortunes of the Dulanys, accompanying theirgypsy-like sojournings with great loyalty and joyousness.

  She rose from her spinning as Ravenel approached.

  "Is Miss Katrine at home?" he inquired.

  Nora dropped a courtesy, and with the tail of her eye observed,labelled, and docketed Francis Ravenel.

  "Will your lordship be seated," she said. "Miss Katrine will be back ina minute. She's gone to ask after Miranda's baby. Nothin' seems able tostop her from regardin' the naygurs as human beings. If 'twere not thatI know she'd be here immejit I'd go afther her mysel', and not keep yourlordship waitin'."

  She motioned him to a wide settle on the porch with an alerthospitality. In her heart she preferred Dermott McDermott to allpossible suitors for Katrine, but if this was another jo, as the Scotchsay, so much the better, for one might urge the other on, she thought,with primitive sagacity.

  "Would ye have a drop of Scotch?" she asked, and upon Francis decliningshe reseated herself at her wheel, "with his permission," as she put it,delighted, Celtlike, at the chance for conversation. "Ye're perhaps,"she says, with some humor, "like the man in the old, old tale when afriend asked him to take a drink. He said he couldn't for three reasons.First, he'd promised his mother he never would drink; second, his doctorhad tould him he mustn't drink; and, third, he'd just had a drink."

  Frank laughed back at the merry old woman as she sat at the whirringwheel, her accustomed eyes scarcely glancing at the work in her scrutinyof him.

  "Dulany's not at home this day. I'm sorry," she went on. "He's off aboutthe sawmill of that triflin' Shehan man. Did ye hear that about histelegraph, Mr. Ravenel? No? It's a funny tale. Ye know that old mill ofyours ain't worth more than a few hunder dollars. But Dulany saw anadvertisement for a new kind of machinery, and he wrote the firm to askthem what it would cost to have it put in. They sint back the word: tinthousand dollars, and would he plaze lit thim know immejit if it waswanted. He didn't wait to write. He telegraphed:

  "'If a man had ten thousand dollars, what in hell would he want with a sawmill?'"

  Frank laughed aloud again, uncomprehending the fact that the shrewdlittle woman was deliberately holding him with her tales till Katrinereturned.

  Inside the house he heard a note, struck suddenly, and repeated over andover in a voice little above a whisper.

  "She's come in the other way. I'll tell her your lordship's wantin'her," said Nora O'Grady, disappearing.

  He looked about him in great content. Things seemed so much as hedesired them to be--the roses, the old furniture, the spinning-wheel,the coiffed peasant wom
an--that he waited for Katrine's coming, fearingthat she should be less beautiful than he remembered her.

  With some surprise he heard a laugh (he had not thought of her as a girlwho laughed) so merry, so infectious that he found himself wonderingwhat caused it as the girl herself came through the doorway to greethim, her rose face radiant, her eyes shining, her hand outstretched.

  She was more loveworthy, more imperious, than he remembered her, athing which bewildered him as he thought of her entreating smile, andher wistful and approving eyes.

  She wore white, so simply made as to have something statuesque about thelines of the gown, and cut from the throat to show the poise of the headand the curls at the back of the neck.

  "I could scarcely believe Nora when she said it was you. Father is atMarlton. I was so lonely. It is good of you to come, even if only onbusiness. You are riding?" she asked, regarding his clothes.

  "Yes," he answered. "I am going to the world's end."

  "You will be sorry," she returned, quickly. "I have been there. Carolinais better. Stay here!"

  She seated herself beside him on the settle as she spoke, and the odorof the red rose she wore at her breast came to him with the words.

  He had taken off his hat and leaned his bare brown head against the highback of the bench.

  "You see," he began, his eyelids drawn together in his own way, his eyesfastened upon some remote distance, "I, too, have been lonely. The onlycompanionable person within hundreds of miles has refused me hersociety. I have been driven, as it were, to the world's end."

  "Do you mean me?" Katrine asked, smiling, and looking at him with eyesfull of surprise.

  "It is perhaps Nora to whom I refer," he suggested, whimsically.

  "She is not always companionable--Nora," Katrine returned; "and to-dayshe is not pleased with me, so I like her less than usual. She purposedto cook nettles in the potatoes, and I remonstrated, and--I have notabsented myself from your society," she said, abruptly breaking her talkafter a woman's way.

  "Then why didn't you watch the sunset from the Chestnut Ridge last nightand the night before and the night before that?" he asked.

  "Why didn't I watch the sunset from the Chestnut Ridge?" she repeatedafter him, as though not understanding; and then, with a slow, steadysmile, looking straight in his eyes, "The thought never occurred to me,"she said.

  No studied coquetry could have piqued him as this simple statement,which he felt to be the plain truth. He had taken three long walks onthe off-chance of meeting a girl who apparently had forgotten hisexistence, and although the thought was humorous it stirred in him adetermination to make his existence a remembered thing to her.

  "But, if I had known," she explained, and the selflessness and sweetnessof her as she spoke touched him strangely--"if I had thought you wantedto talk to me, I should have been glad to come."

  Fortunately there remained to him a dignified explanation of hissuggestion.

  "I thought you might come, not so much to see the sunsets as in the hopeof seeing me. I promised to help you when I could. I thought you mightbe interested to know that I had kept my promise. If any one can helpyour father it is Dr. Johnston." He gave the letter to her as he spoke."He is coming to Ravenel to-morrow."

  In an instant her face softened; her eyes became suffused by a soft,warm light, and she looked up at him through a sudden mist of tears.

  "The interview must be arranged," he went on. But Katrine interruptedhim:

  "Ah! It will be easy enough. Father is as anxious as I am to be himselfagain. You do not know daddy, Mr. Ravenel," she explained, a proudloyalty in her tone. "He has not been himself before you; but in Paris,in Dublin, he was welcomed everywhere; his wit was the keenest, withnever an edge that hurt; his stories the brightest, and always of thekind that made you love the people of whom they were told. He will behome to-night. Will the doctor come here? I want to tell him_everything_, and then, when he has seen father, you can tell me what todo. You see, I haven't thanked you yet," she said, abruptly.

  "To know that you are pleased is enough. Besides, I have, on some fewoccasions, drifted into doing a kind act for the act's sake," he said;adding: "Not often, it's true, but occasionally."

  "You have made me, oh, so happy, and hopeful--as I have never beenbefore in all my life. It seems like one of the fairy stories in whichone's wishes all come true."

  "And if it were given you to have whatever you wished, what would youask for, Katrine?"

  "To have father well. And then," her face became illuminated, "to studywith Josef."

  "Josef?" He repeated the great name interrogatively.

  "You have not heard of him?" she asked, incredulously.

  He made a sign in the negative.

  "He is the greatest teacher in the world," she explained, as thoughthere could be no doubting.

  "Which is perhaps the reason I have never heard of him," he answered,with a smile. "From your enthusiasm I am led to judge it is music whichhe teaches."

  "Yes," she answered; "but he teaches more than that. I knew a girl inParis who studied with him. She was quite intricate and self-seekingwhen she began. And in six months he had changed her whole nature. Shebecame elemental and direct, and," she put her hands together and threwthem apart with the gesture which he knew so well, "and splendid! LikeShakespeare's women!" she finished.

  "Gracious Heaven, hear!" said Frank. "And does this miracle-worker liveuncrowned?"

  "Ah, don't!" she said, her sincerity and enthusiasm reproving hisscoffing tone. "You see"--there was sweetness and an apologetic note inher voice as she continued--"I believe in him so much it hurts to haveyou speak so. Josef says that when woman developed to the point ofneeding more education, there was nothing ready to give her except thesame thing they gave men; that because certain studies had been provenall right for them they were given ready-made to women, and they didn'tfit. He believes women should be trained to develop the thing we calltheir instinct. He says it's the psychic force which must in the endrule the world. One of the girls in Paris said 'he stretched yoursoul.'"

  "I shall not permit you to go to him," Frank interrupted, gravely.

  She regarded him, a question in her glance. "Why?" she asked.

  "Because if your soul was any larger, Katrine, there would be no roomfor it here below. It crowds the earth a little as it is. No," hefinished, with conviction, "you shall never go to study with Josef.Music is all right. But that soul-stretching"--he smiled at thisphrase--"that would be all wrong for you. I want you exactly as youare."