XXVIII
UNDER THE SOUTHERN PINES ONCE MORE
When Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine entered Frank's apartments they found Dr.Johnston by the window of the sitting-room, and, with no spoken word,Katrine knew he had been waiting for her to come. His face bespoke morethan professional anxiety; it bore a look of sorrow and the dread oflosing a dear friend.
According Katrine but a scant nod of recognition, he crossed to the doorof the sleeping-room, and, after looking in, made a gesture, stealthyand cautious, for Katrine to enter.
The room was dark save for a night light. Frank's face was turned towardher, his eyes closed. One hand, helpless, unutterably appealing, layoutside the white cover, and at sight of him thus it seemed her heartwould break.
With a swift movement she knelt beside the bed, waiting to take thepoor, tired head upon her breast. As her eyes grew accustomed to thelight, she saw his lips tremble.
"Dear," she said.
There was silence, and then: "It is worth all--it is worth all--forthis," he whispered. "Touch me, Katrine!"
And she laid her cheek on his.
"Katrine?"
"Yes, dear."
"You will stay? I will try to sleep now if you will touch me. Katrine,you will not slip away?"
"I shall stay until you are quite well, beloved."
At three in the morning he awoke with a shiver. "Where are you?" hecalled. "Where are you, Katrine?"
"Here," she answered, laying a hand on his cheek.
"Ah, thank God!"
* * * * *
It was over a month before Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine were able to takeFrank south, where he longed to be. The St. Petersburg engagement wascancelled, and the Metropolitan manager, angry at Katrine'sforgetfulness to notify him that she could not sing the night Mrs.Ravenel had come for her, made many caustic newspaper criticisms. Butboth events seemed entirely unimportant to her, for Frank's paralysis,which the doctors had believed but a temporary affair, did not leave himas soon as had been hoped.
There was a splendid Celtic recklessness in the way she surrenderedeverything for him, a generosity which Mrs. Ravenel saw with commendingeyes, believing it, by some strange mother-reasoning, to be but just.But Frank was far from taking the same attitude in the matter. Almostthe first day he was able to be wheeled on the great piazza in thesunshine he spoke to Katrine of the time she must soon leave, to keepthe St. Petersburg engagements.
"I have no St. Petersburg engagements," she explained, briefly. "Icancelled them."
He sat with closed eyes, but she saw the tears between the lids as hespoke. "I have not had the courage to tell you," he said, at length,slowly, "before, but all that McDermott said is true, Katrine."
"Indeed!" Words could not explain the tone. She might have received newsof the Andaman Islanders as carelessly.
"You know what it means to me!" he said, after a silence.
"I know what you think it means to you," she answered.
"It means that I have and am nothing. When I think of mother--" Helooked at Katrine, with her radiant beauty, as she reached upward for anearly rose. "And your friend McDermott," he went on, "has done a strangething. This morning I opened my mail for the first time since myillness. In it I found a letter from him, saying that it could be proventhat my father had never made an early marriage, and that Quantrelle wasa great liar. I don't understand it. I saw Quantrelle myself, as well ashis brother, when I was in France. There is not a doubt the marriage wasan entirely legal one, not the shadow of a doubt. Ah," he cried,"Katrine, it seems to kill me when I think of it!"
"Francis Ravenel," she cried, the old smile on her face as she cametoward him and placed her hand caressingly on his cheek, "you told meonce, not long ago, to ask you to marry me. I do."
"Do what?"
"Ask you to marry me."
"And I refuse," he said, firmly. "I will not be married through pity."
"Oh, very well." She seated herself on some cushions on the top step,humming softly, as though his words were of no moment whatever.
"You don't think I mean it, do you?" he demanded, at length.
She made no answer whatever.
"Katrine," he said, at length.
"Yes."
"What are you thinking of?"
"I've gone away," she answered. "I was not being treated very well, andso I went away. I'm over in my Dreaming Land, My Own Country."
"Ah, come back to me!" he cried.
"Very well," she said, obligingly, though she made no movement towardhim. "I've been rebuilding the old lodge, in my thoughts, for Josef. Itwill be such a wonderful place for him to rest in! He will want thefirst floor made into one room. And Nora and I will come there in thesummer-time, when we're not singing. Perhaps you will come to visit ussometime, Mr. Ravenel!" she said, politely.
"Katrine, Katrine!" he pleaded. "It would be so unfair to you."
"Nonsense," she returned, shortly. There was surely never anythingkinder or better in the world than this belittling of the whole matter.
"And I may never be strong again--"
"Then I can have my own way more," she laughed.
"And your voice--"
"Beloved," she said, gravely, "I can never give up my singing. Don'tthink me vain when I say I sing too well to make it _right_ for me togive it up. I don't believe that anybody who does a thing well, who hasthe real gift, _can_ give it up. But that I shall never have to sing for_money_ is a great happiness for me. I can sing for the poorer folk, forthe ones who really feel. Ah," she cried, "I've plans of my own, Josefand I! And the study and the pain were to teach me how unimportant allthings are in this world save only love."
"Katrine! Katrine!" he cried, "you must help me to be square to you!" Heraised his hand, feeble from illness, in the manner of one who takes anoath. "I solemnly swear that I will never do you the _injustice_--"
"Don't!" she cried, springing quickly to her feet and catching theupraised hand quickly to her breast. "Don't!" Adding quickly, with alaugh, "It's dreadful to commit perjury!"
Their hands were still clasped as Mrs. Ravenel came out to join them. Inthe lavender gown, with her fair face smiling, and carrying a work-bagof the interminable knitting in one hand, she did not look in the leastthe emissary of fate she really was.
"Mr. de Peyster has sent some letters, Frank. He writes me that none ofthem are of importance, but that you may care to look them over. Andthey made me think of a great envelope of papers which I had meant tosend to you before you were taken ill. I found it just after you hadbeen looking up all those family affairs, before you went abroad! I putthem with my knitting, and naturally forgot. Your father gave it to me,oh, so many years ago! and I put it in the cedar chest." She gave thepapers to Frank, talking in a gay, unimportant manner as she did so."Isn't that curious on the outside?" she demanded. "'_To be opened incase my will is ever disputed._' Now, who did your father think wouldever dispute his will? I had been a faithful and," she laughed, "more orless obedient wife for many years. And you were too small to disputeanything except matters with your tutor. Don't look them over now,dearest, they may worry you!"
Frank took the envelope with an inexplicable feeling of hope. That hismother had forgotten important papers did not surprise him in theleast. She had once taken a mortgage held by his father and pasted itover a place in a chimney where it smoked. She said herself that hertemperament was not one for affairs.
A quick exchange of glances passed between Frank and Katrine as heexcused himself to go to his room for rest, and then, alone at twilight,he broke the seal upon the confession of that Francis who had precededhim. To his utter confounding, he discovered in the envelope acertificate of legal marriage between Francis Ravenel and PatriciaMcDermott, duly witnessed and sealed. Wrapped with several letters whichhad been exchanged between them was a detailed account of theunfortunate affair in his father's crooked writing, and inside of all abill of divorce, which had been obtained in Illinois previous to theelder Ravenel
's marriage with the beautiful Julie D'Hauteville, of NewOrleans.
As Frank read the history of the boyish folly he felt that littleexcusing was needed for his dead father, for the early marriage seemedbut an escapade of a spoiled and self-indulgent boy with a headstrongand sentimental girl, neither of whom had taken a thought for thefuture.
"My wife renounced her faith to marry me [his father wrote]. The first year of our marriage, which was a legal one only, was one of great unhappiness, for at heart Patricia remained a Catholic still. She was depressed, suspicious, afraid of the future. Recriminations and quarrels were constant between us. Finally, I went to America with no farewell to my wife, to acquaint my father with my foolish act, and to ask him to make some suitable provision for us. Immediately following my departure, I discovered, my wife re-entered the Catholic Church. Soon afterward I heard that her father had extended his forgiveness, and that she had been welcomed back by her kinfolk in Ireland. Hearing nothing from her whatever, with the procrastination which was ever one of my great faults, I put off doing anything about the annulment of the marriage until the father of Quantrelle le Rouge wrote me that he had heard of her death as well as that of the child. But before my marriage to Mademoiselle D'Hauteville, I took the precaution to obtain a divorce quietly in Illinois. Even if Patricia were living and should marry again, I knew she needed no protection to make the marriage a valid one, as her Church had never recognized that she was married to me, the ceremony having been performed by a Protestant."
Frank laid aside the papers, and, with his head thrown back and his eyesclosed, sat in the gathering darkness thinking, with neither continuitynor result, of that strange life--current which, the family historyclaimed, connected him backward to the song-making minstrels of the timeof Charlemagne; to the gallant lovers in the time of the Stuarts; to theself-indulgent and magnetic Ravenels of North Carolina.
What had they done? Dermott's question came back to him again and again,and through the depression into which this thinking was leading him heheard Katrine singing softly on the piazza underneath his window.
Like a child he rose and went to her. She was standing by one of thegreat white columns looking into the shadowy pine-trees as he came. Hedid not touch her. He had such fear of breaking utterly before her thathe said, with forced quietude of voice:
"I've changed my mind about marrying you, Katrine." In spite of hiseffort to be calm, his voice broke into something like a sob as he spokeher name.
"Yes," she said, realizing what the import of the papers must have been.
After he had told Katrine the important fact in his father's statement,there came to him with a sudden suspicion of the truth the remembranceof Dermott's letter, in which the Irishman had stated that whateverdocuments he had held concerning the early marriage of the elder Ravenelhad been burned.
Taking the letter from his pocket, he gave it to Katrine, who read it inthe fading light and returned it wordlessly. She had turned her faceaway that Frank might not see the glow of admiration she felt for thatIrish Dermott whom Frank could never understand.
"What do you think of the letter, Katrine?" Frank asked. "I fail utterlyto understand it. Dermott knew, when he wrote it, that my father hadmade that early marriage. It had been proven beyond the shadow of adoubt even to me. I feel sure that he knew nothing of a divorce or hewould have mentioned it."
"I think," Katrine said, softly, "that Dermott told a story. Youremember"--her voice broke a little--"you discovered long ago he didn'talways tell the truth."
"And you think, then," Frank insisted, "that when McDermott wrote thisletter," he made a motion with it as he spoke, "he still believed thatmy father and mother were never legally married?"
"He believed just that," Katrine answered. "He told me so the day hewrote the letter."
"But why did he write me what he believed to be an untruth? Why did heburn papers which he must have believed to be valuable evidence?"
"It's a way of his," Katrine answered, vaguely.
"Katrine," Frank cried, "there is more to this! Why did McDermott dothis thing for me?"
"He told me he would help you."
"When?"
"The day I went down to Wall Street to ask him to stop the attack onyour firm, when you were so ill. It was the day I told him that I lovedyou."
"And loving you himself, as he has always done, he did this for me?"
She made a sign of acquiescence.
"Ah!" he cried, the glow of enthusiasm in his eyes. "I have neverunderstood the man, but, before God, I honor and reverence him for whathe did. There is much of the hero in this strange Dermott McDermott."
"I have known that always," Katrine answered.
"And still you prefer to marry me?"
She was standing at a little distance from him, and as their eyes metshe nodded her curly head quickly, as a child might have done.
"Ah," he cried, opening his arms to her, "come to me, come to me, youdivine little soul! I'm not worthy, but God knows how I will try to be!"
And a little later: "It is cold for you here," he said. "Shall we go in,Mrs. Francis Ravenel?"
THE END
Katrine: A Novel Page 29
