Kildares of Storm Part 63

It was a question she had been dreading, but she answered it fully and frankly, sparing herself not at all. He listened with an oddly judicial air, new in her experience of him. When she described her share in Channing's disappearance, he interrupted her quickly.

"You deceived her?"

"Yes. I know now that it was wrong."

He made no comment; but when she came to her confession to Jacqueline that it was she who had suggested their marriage and not Philip, he interrupted her again.

"Kate," he said slowly and incredulously, "you have been cruel!"

At any other time he would have noticed how her never-idle hands were shaking, the paleness of her lips, the dark shadow of pain in her eyes.

But just then he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of Jacqueline.

He turned away abruptly, and looked over the portmanteau she had been packing. On the top lay the peppermint-striped silk s.h.i.+rt his wife had made for him. He saw it through a sudden blur of tears.

"There's one thing you've forgotten to pack," he muttered, and slipped into the bag something which Kate removed as soon as his back was turned. It was a pistol.

She was startled by this. "Perhaps I'd better go after Jacqueline myself," she suggested.

"It is my right. I am her husband," was the stern answer.

In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, the telephone rang with Jemima's return message.

No word from Jack. P. C.'s address in New York is No. 5, Ardmore Apartments. James and I will meet her there. Don't worry.

"Thank Heaven for Jemima!" uttered her mother, turning from the telephone. "You'll have time to catch the evening train in Frankfort for New York, Philip. I'll meet you at the trolley station with money and all that."

He had not thought of money, would have started upon his quest with empty pockets. But it was characteristic of a new era that he accepted her financial help now quite simply, without demur, without thought, even, as he might have accepted it from his own mother.

The last thing he saw as the train pulled out of the station was Kate's face gazing up at him whitely from the platform, and he leaned far out of the window to promise, "I will not come back without her!"

But not then, nor until long afterwards, did he realize that for hours he had been with his dear lady at a time of great distress to her, without once realizing her presence; his thoughts yearning and his heart aching for another woman, for his wife, Jacqueline.

It was the moment of Kate's justification, of her triumph, had she but known it. But she did not know it.

She rode home slowly and yet more slowly through the twilight world, into which came presently a pale winter moon, serene and beautiful and mocking. There was no longer need of action, to stimulate her. She had reached the end of her strength.

The sensitive horse beneath her moved with increasing care, sedately and cautiously, as if he realized that he must be brains as well as feet for two. He was an experienced animal, and had known what it was to carry children on his back.

When he came to the front door of Storm, he paused of his own accord, and nickered anxiously.

So the servants found the Madam, and when they saw that she could not dismount, it was Big Liza who lifted her down in her strong old arms, as she had lifted her once before when she came, a bride, to Storm. She carried her in to a couch, moaning over her, "Oh, my lamb, my po' lamb; what is dey done to you now?"

The Madam could not answer.

Jemima Thorpe reached her mother's bedside two days later, greatly to the relief of the household, and of Dr. Jones.

"No, it does not seem to have been a stroke of any sort," explained that worthy and anxious man. "If Mrs. Kildare were an ordinary woman, I should call it hysteria, but she's not the neurotic type. It appears to be acute exhaustion, following, possibly, a shock of some kind." He looked at Jemima inquisitively, but without eliciting the information he sought. "At any rate, I am glad you have come, and I should suggest that Benoix and his wife be sent for. I hear they've gone off on a trip to New York?"

"To Europe," amended Jemima calmly. "They are now on the ocean, so they can't be sent for."

The doctor's eyes widened. Journeys to Europe were not usual among his patients. "Europe! Isn't that very sudden?"

"Very sudden," agreed Jemima. "Now shall we go in to mother?"

Perforce, he opened Mrs. Kildare's door, and announced with his cheeriest bedside manner, "Here's your girl home again."

The heavy eyes flew open. "Jacqueline!" she whispered.

But when she saw that it was not Jacqueline, the lids closed, and it seemed too much trouble to lift them again.

Jemima went on her knees, and laid a timid cheek on her mother's hand, that strong, beautiful hand lying so strangely limp now upon the counterpane. For the first time in her life she knew the feeling of utter helplessness. Her efficiency had failed her. In this emergency, she could not produce the thing her mother needed.

She wished with all her heart for her inefficient sister.

CHAPTER XLVI

Philip's pursuit of his wife came to have for him, before it was done, something of the strangeness of a nightmare, one of those endless dreams that come to fever patients, filled with confused, vague details of places and persons among whom he pa.s.sed, leaving nothing clear to the memory afterwards except unhappiness.

And indeed the mental condition that urged him on was not unlike fever, compounded as it was of pa.s.sionate pity for Jacqueline, and white-hot rage against the man who had taken his wife from him. He could not bear to think of the frightened misery that must have driven the girl to such a step, nor of the wretched disillusionment in store for her. Jacqueline ashamed; his gallant, loyal, high-hearted little playmate cowering under the whips of the world's scorn--it was a thought that drove all the youth out of Philip's face, and left it so grim and fierce that many a pa.s.sing stranger stared at him covertly, wondering what tragedy lay behind such a mask of pain.

Only once did the effect of Jacqueline's shame upon his own life occur to Philip, and then he wrote a hasty line to the Bishop of his diocese, offering to resign at once from the ministry. No other alternative occurred to him. If Jacqueline had needed him when he married her, how infinitely greater was her need of him now! What came to either of them they would share together, he and his wife.

Nor was his decision entirely altruistic. Her going had already taught him one thing. "We are so used to each other," the piteous little letter had said. Yes, they were used to each other; so used that they would never again be able to do without each other.

His search did not end in New York. He found there only the news, gathered by James and Jemima Thorpe, that Channing had sailed a few hours before for Europe, and not alone. The steams.h.i.+p office had registered the name of a Mr. James Percival and wife, in whom it was not difficult to recognize the author.

Philip followed by the next boat, but found some difficulty, inexperienced traveler that he was, in coming upon traces of the pair, who doubled and twisted upon their tracks as if conscious of pursuit. It was some weeks before he ran his quarry to earth in Paris, having been directed to one of those "coquettish apartments" known to experts in the art of travel, who scorn the great, ba.n.a.l caravansaries of the ordinary tourist.

Entering an unpretentious gate between an apothecary shop and a _patisserie_, he found himself in one of the hidden court-yards of the old city, where a placid, vine-covered mansion dozed in the sun, remote from the rattle of cobblestones and the vulgar gaze of the pa.s.sing world. Doves preened themselves on the flagging, a cat occupied herself maternally with her young on the doorstep, birds were busy in the ivy.

It was an ideal retreat for a honeymoon.

Philip, his jaw set and his heart pounding, jerked at the old-fas.h.i.+oned bell-handle, and the door was presently opened by a mustachioed lady in the dressing-sacque and heelless slippers which form the conventional morning-wear of the lower bourgeoisie. But, yes; she admitted in answer to his inquiry; the American Madame was _chez elle_. "Also Monsieur,"

she added, with smiling significance. "Ah, the devotion of _ces nouveaux maries_!"

She added that if Monsieur would attend but one moment, she would mount to announce his arrival.

The clink of a coin arrested her. "If Madame will have the goodness to permit," suggested Philip, in French as fluent and far more correct than her own, "I prefer to announce my arrival in person."

She shrugged. "But perfectly! As Monsieur wishes. It is a little effect, perhaps? Monsieur is the brother, possibly; the cousin?" she asked, with the friendly curiosity of her kind.

"Monsieur is the husband," said Philip grimly, and pa.s.sed.

The concierge gasped. "The husband! Name of a name!"