Kildares of Storm Part 5

"Of course not, ma'am!" said Kildare. "Neither does my dog, Juno."

He tiptoed to the bed, quietly for him, and stood gazing down at the little wrinkled head on Kate's breast, with a queer, sheepish pride on his face; somewhat the look of a schoolboy who receives a prize for good behavior.

Kate smiled tremulously up at him, "Isn't she sweet?"

His face fell. "Gad, a she-child, is it? Well, can't be helped. We'll name her for my rich Aunt Jemima. Better luck next time, Kit."

But there was not better luck next time; there was worse luck.

Less than a year later, Kildare inspected his second daughter. Kate was sleeping, the baby beside her covered to its chin. The nurse in attendance was the young mulatto woman who had looked so strangely at her new mistress when she came to Storm. Now her hostility to Kate seemed to have lost itself in devotion to Kate's child; the almost pa.s.sionate devotion that makes of colored women such invaluable nurses.

As Kildare approached, he was aware of this girl's eyes fixed upon him.

Stealthily her hand went out, and drew away the sheet that covered the new baby.

He ripped out a startled oath. "Good G.o.d! What's the matter with it, Mahaly? It's--it's damaged, ain't it?"

Kate awoke with a gasping cry, and put her hands out to hide the little twisted body from his gaze.

Fortunately the child died. "Fortunately," repeated the mother to herself now, without a quiver. To the end of her days she would carry in her heart the memory of its faint, unbabyish moaning. It opened to her the door of a new world, the world of suffering. She learned the agony of love that cannot help. The little Katherine lived long enough to make a woman of her; and strangely enough it reached the one soft spot in the heart of Basil Kildare. During its brief and piteous life, husband and wife came almost close to each other.

To the man with his pa.s.sion for physical perfection, the breeder of thoroughbred horses and cattle and dogs, the fact that a child of his should have been born without this precious heritage was a thing incredible, a humiliation beyond words. Whenever he looked at the tiny, whimpering creature, he asked pardon of her with his eyes for so monstrous an injustice. He never tired of carrying her about in his powerful arms, of rubbing the poor twisted limbs in an effort to ease the pain away.

"The stock's sound enough," he would say again and again. "I'm all right, and you're all right, Kit. What's the matter with her?"

Once he whispered in sudden horror, "I've been a pretty bad lot, Kate.

G.o.d! Do you suppose _I'm_ to blame for this?"

She comforted him with her arms about his neck.

When the child died, Kildare himself made its grave, and carried the coffin in his arms across the fields to the little pasture burying-lot where lay all the Kildares of Storm. It was a queer funeral; none the less pitiful for its queerness. First Basil with the coffin, the two great hounds gamboling and baying around him in their delight at going for a walk with the family; then Kate, alone and quite tearless; then a dozen wailing, hysterical negroes. Benoix and a few others met them at the grave, but there was no clergyman. Kate herself spoke what she could of the burial service, till her memory and her voice failed her. Then Kildare picked his wife up in his arms, and carried her home as tenderly as he had carried his child's coffin.

But that night he was so drunk that Kate kept the woman Mahaly in her room for safety.

It was during this time, with maternity, and sorrow, and womanhood, that love came to her. She did not know it. She knew only that things could be borne so long as Benoix was there to help her, guarding, understanding; Benoix with his steady eyes, and his gentle strength to share with her weakness.

They needed little excuse for their constant companions.h.i.+p; mere neighborliness; small Jemima's health; presents of flower-seeds and baby-patterns from his wife; books to be lent or borrowed, for Kate had turned to books at last. Kate's strength was slow in returning, and she spent much of the day sitting in the garden with her baby. It came to be Benoix' habit to stop there for a while coming or going from his house beyond. The baby knew the pit-a-patter of his racking horse, and had learned to clap her hands and crow when she heard it. The Creole had the same grave simplicity for children, as for his equals. It never failed to win them.

Often Kate drove with him on his rounds, the child on her knees, because she needed air and was not yet strong enough for riding; and in this way she saw a side of her friend which had hitherto been unknown to her. It was true, as Basil Kildare had said, that Dr. Jones "had a corner on the births and deaths in the neighborhood," but between the two extremes there were various physical disabilities which "the French doctor," as he was called, was allowed to treat, especially when there was no money for payment. With increasing frequency he was called in by the older physician to cases which proved baffling; and it became known that when the French doctor prescribed expensive medicines and nouris.h.i.+ng luxuries, they were invariably forthcoming, whether they could be paid for or not.

With this the young mistress of Storm had much to do; and while this fact did not apparently lessen the neighborhood's att.i.tude of critical animosity toward her, it gave the girl a keen pleasure to know that she was helping her friend. She began to understand the secret of the strong hold his profession has upon those who follow it truly--that warmly personal relation between the sufferer and his physician which is almost filial in its intensity. Jacques loved his patients, and they loved him.

But it was not a lucrative practice.

She was witness to one little scene that came often to her memory in after days. He had stopped to visit a young farm laborer whom he had recently relieved of a stomach-trouble that was literally starving him to death. An old woman had followed him to the door of the cabin, her work-worn hands twisting together, her lips too tremulous for speech.

"But your troubles are over, Mrs. Higgs!" he smiled, lifting his hat with the punctilious courtesy he showed all women. "Live? Certainly he will live, and in a few weeks we shall have him walking about, eating you out of house and home."

Still the old creature was unable to speak; but she seized the hand he held out to her, and carried it to her lips. When he withdrew it, in laughing embarra.s.sment, there were tears upon it.

At last her voice came, hoa.r.s.ely: "I don' know what it's goin' to cost, an' I don't, keer! It's wuth every cent, an' I'll wuk my fingers to the bone to pay ye. G.o.d bless ye, Doc!"

He looked down at the hard-wrung tears on his hand. "You have paid me already," he said; and Kate knew that he meant it.

Afterwards she questioned him a little about the case.

"It was a gastro-enterostomy, without complications," he explained. "A very simple thing, done every day."

He described the operation in some detail, Kate watching him in amaze.

"You can't tell me that a thing like that is done every day! Jacques, be honest--isn't it a very remarkable operation for a country doctor to perform?"

"Oh--for a country doctor, perhaps. For a surgeon who has had some experience, no."

"You are a surgeon, then, not a doctor?"

He smiled, that warm, flas.h.i.+ng smile which always fell like a gleam of sunlight across her heart. "I am--whatever people need me to be."

It was true--physician, nurse, companion, guardian, friend--Jacques Benoix was always whatever people needed him to be.

In that moment, Kate realized that he had given up a great career to bring his sick wife into the country.

One of the closest bonds between them was a love for music. Kate's singing, untrained and faulty though it was, gave keen pleasure to his starved ears, and often he brought his little son to hear her; a boy of ten, rather grave and shy, but with his father's beautiful smile.

Sometimes there were duets to be tried out together; Kildare, when he was at home, listening tolerantly and beating time out of time to the pleasant sounds they made.

But he was not often at home in those days. He sought his pleasure elsewhere. The guest-house had been empty for months.

Kate and Benoix found his frequent absences rather a relief. They were freer to discuss the things that did not interest him, to read aloud to each other, to play games with the exacting Apple-Blossom, an executive from her cradle. It was at last the sort of domestic life of which every girl dreams in her secret heart; and Kate grew lovelier than her loveliest.

Meanwhile the countryside watched, and whispered, and waited. The countryside was wise in the ways of Nature, if these two were not.

Once Kildare asked (she missed the wistfulness of his voice), "Ain't it time you were riding again, Kit, and playing cards with the boys? They like to have you 'round. They're getting jealous of that kid of yours."

Kate smiled at him, absently. She was sitting on the floor, building a house of blocks under instruction from young Jemima. The amus.e.m.e.nts of men seemed to her futile things, just then, and childish.

"Benoix has given us the go-by, too. Won't touch a card or drink a drop nowadays. I don't know what's come over him. Good gad--" Kildare gave himself an impatient shake,--"sometimes I think the little Frenchman's a female in disguise!"

Kate smiled again. She knew very well what had come over Jacques. That much at least she had done in return for the precious thing his friends.h.i.+p was.

At last her eyes were opened. One day she saw her husband striding toward the house from the stables, pale, frowning, splashed with blood.

She cried out, and ran to him, "Basil! What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"Nonsense! I've just had to kill Juno, that's all."

"Kill Juno?" she gasped. "Good Heavens! Was she mad? Did she attack you?" She gathered up her child with an instinctive, fierce gesture of protection.

He grinned at her. "What an imagination! b.i.t.c.hes don't go mad, my dear.

She littered yesterday, and her pups were all curs, that's all--every d.a.m.ned one of them. Beastly luck! So I've killed the lot of them--Juno, too."