Part 20
Such a man was Philip Benoix, priest, dreamer, idealist, son of a convicted murderer, lover of the woman who for seventeen years had been faithful to his father. He believed his great devotion a secret.
Probably the only person within twenty miles who had not guessed it long ago was Kate Kildare herself....
Some Sundays after his father's release from prison, Philip, striding across the rectory garden in gown and ca.s.sock, was aware of a subdued stir among the men who lounged at the church door, waiting for service to begin. A light surrey was approaching which he knew well, drawn by the Madam's favorite bay colts. It was the second Storm vehicle to arrive that morning. Jemima and Jacqueline were already within; Jemima at the organ, which she manipulated capably if unemotionally; Jacqueline marshaling her choir of farm boys and girls into a whispering, giggling semblance of order. In the gallery sat the usual quota of Storm servants, for Kate Kildare's household took its religion each week as faithfully as it took its tonics and calomel in due season.
With a throb of the heart, Philip realised that it must be his lady herself who drove those prancing bays. He thought over his sermon hastily.--Yes, it was good enough.
She drew the colts up on their haunches, flung the lines with a smile to the nearest bystander, and walked up the aisle with her free, swinging step, followed by a girl carrying a baby. The girl was Mag Henderson.
The sensation caused by this double appearance was immense. It was the first time many of the congregation had seen the Madam since the much-talked-of disappearance of Dr. Benoix, and they were eager to see how she took it. From all appearances she seemed to be taking it very calmly; a little paler than usual, perhaps; her eyes extraordinarily dark, but nothing to suggest the illness that had been rumored. Rather disappointed, they turned their eyes upon her companion; and then the whispering broke out like the buzzing of a swarm of angry bees.
Mrs. Kildare had brought Mag's baby to be baptized. Philip wondered why she had come without warning. He did not guess that only an impulse of sudden courage had brought her there at all. She remembered too keenly the last time she had come to church with a baby to be baptized.
That was why, perhaps, she so rarely honored with her presence the church she had built; but she could not explain this reluctance to Philip. "Church is too small for me," she said to him, airily. "My soul doesn't breathe between walls very well. I have to do my praying in the open."
It had long been her custom on Sunday mornings to ride among the deserted fields with her dogs, taking note of what had been accomplished during the week past, planning work for the week to come, visiting such of her tenants or laborers as were sick or incapacitated. Sometimes as she pa.s.sed she heard Philip's voice in the pulpit, and stopped for a while to listen to him. It was no unusual thing for him to see her there, framed in the sunny square of the open doorway, sitting her restive horse, surrounded by dogs who leaped and gamboled eagerly, but in perfect silence, out of respect for the long whip she carried. At such moments his congregation nudged each other in sympathetic amus.e.m.e.nt. Without turning to see, they knew by his flush and his halting speech who was outside.
But to-day there was no flushing or faltering of speech. Unprepared as he was, the priest in Philip woke to the necessity, and in his message the messenger forgot himself. Noting the women's curious, hostile glances, the buzzing whispers, the stiff-necked anger of the men, several of whom did not enter the church at all, he laid aside the text he had prepared and spoke to his people directly and very simply of that most dramatic episode in history, when Christ said to the crowd in the streets, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
While he spoke, he watched the girl sitting beside Mrs. Kildare, and at the first sign of shrinking, of embarra.s.sment, he would have slipped at once into another theme. But there was no shrinking in that pretty, empty face. Indeed, after the first few moments of shyness before so large an audience, the girl looked about her openly, bridling, pleased with the attention she was attracting in her new dress and with her new baby. If there was menace in those staring faces, the Madam was there to protect her. It was no new thing to the girl to be prayed over; this had come to be an attention she expected from preachers. Young as she was, there had been good reason for her leaving the town from which she came to Storm. But a whole sermon about herself, right out in church! It was a proud moment for Mag.
Benoix, his eyes on her face, sighed even as he spoke, realizing the probable hopelessness of Mrs. Kildare's effort.
The congregation was free to leave at the close of the regular service, without waiting for the christening. But it did not leave. For one thing, there was the Madam to be welcomed to church--excuse enough for those who needed excuse. To their shocked surprise the child was christened by the Madam's own name, "Katherine."
Afterwards, to each of the women who shook her hand, Kate said some such thing as this:
"You know Mag Henderson here, don't you? We've discovered that she is quite a wonderful dressmaker. Yes, she made the dress I have on, and those my girls are wearing. She is a stranger among us, too, so that of course we must find her plenty of work. That is only hospitable."
Kate knew her people when she appealed to their hospitality. Many a village gossip, many a virtuous farmer's wife who had pursed her lips and kept her skirts from degrading contact with the notorious Mag Henderson, found herself pledged to employ the Madam's protegee for her next dressmaking.
"It does beat all," Mrs. Sykes was heard to murmur helplessly, "how that woman gets folks to do whatever she wants 'em to! 'Birds of a feather,'
_I_ say. But there! If she's willin' to give that misbegotten child her own Christian name, it won't do for the rest of us to be too toploftical. And them girls," she added, "certainly do dress stylish."
Philip usually took his Sunday dinner at Storm, and the congregation had the further privilege of watching their rector drive away in the same surrey with the Madam and Mag, apparently upon the most intimate and cordial relations with Mag's infant.
Mrs. Kildare, more sensitive of disapproving eyes for her friends than for herself, suggested that he come home with Jemima and Jacqueline instead.
"I'm a little uneasy about the mare Jacqueline is driving," she said, for an excuse.
"Pooh! Jacqueline can handle anything I can," Philip smiled. "Besides, I want to speak to you about something in particular."
"You usually do," murmured Kate, teasingly. She found his open partiality for her society rather amusing.
He was silent until they had pa.s.sed the long line of homeward-bound vehicles, drawn respectfully out of the Madam's way. Then he said in a low voice, "Henderson is back in his cabin. Did you know it?"
Low as he spoke, the girl on the back seat heard him. "Not Pappy?" she cried. "Oh, oh, he's come for me agin! Please don't let me go back to him, _please_ don't! I don't want to, I don't want to!"
"Why?" demanded Kate, sharply. "Was he cruel to you, Mag?"
"No'm, he wa'n't. He was always real kind, even if he was drunk; never kicked me, nor cussed me, nor nuthin'. But I don't want to go back to him. I'd ruther stay with you. Hit don't matter so much about me--I'm spiled anyway--but I don't never want Pappy to git my baby!"
Kate gave Philip a puzzled glance, which he met gravely. "Let her explain to you," he said.
"Is it because you are more comfortable that you want to stay with me?"
asked Mrs. Kildare. "Is it that?"
"That ain't all." The girl's hands were working together. "'Tain't safe for Pappy here, noways. Them Night Riders'll git him, sh.o.r.e. And he's so po'ly he couldn't stand a whippin'. It'd kill him. Oh, please, you make him go 'way, Miss Kate! Tell him I'll send him money soon as ever I git work, but make him go 'way. He shan't have my baby, he shan't!" She began to sob.
"There, there, Mag, don't be foolish. What would he want with your baby?"
"She's a gal."
Vaguely, understanding began to drift in to Kate. Her voice shook suddenly as she said, "What do you mean about the Night Riders getting your father? He is in no danger from them with you not there. It was you they threatened."
"No'm, 't were Pappy. That's how he come to run away. They got down on him fer makin' me do like I done."
"_Making_ you--?" gasped Kate Kildare.
"Yes'm! It were him what found the men and brought 'em round. But it wa'n't no business of them Night Riders," said the girl resentfully. "I didn't mind. It were a easy way of makin' money, easier 'n workin'.
Pappy's so po'ly, he ain't got the strength to work hisself. Only--" she began to cry again--"I know it ain't nice, and I don't want my baby should do that-a-way, not ever. I want she should grow up a lady, like you."
Kate was shivering uncontrollably. Over the brooding Sabbath stillness of her fields it seemed to her that a strange miasma was creeping, which shadowed the light of the sun. She had read of such horrors as this. She had thought of that strange traffic, the White Slave trade, as of some hideous, modern depravity that belonged to another and harsher world than her own. Yet here, almost within sight of the home that sheltered her children, here in the domain where her will was law, where she had believed herself cognizant of the doings of every man and woman and child--the thing had been going on unknown to her; the sacrifice of a little girl creature, not in the name of love (her tolerant mind found it difficult to condemn the sinning of stupid, healthy young human animals) but in the name of filial piety.--"Filial piety!" Always afterward the smug phrase was hideous to her.
"Well," said Philip, rather hoa.r.s.ely, "what are we to do with this--this man?"
"Let the Night Riders have him, and welcome!"
But Mag intervened once more in her father's behalf. "No, no, they'd kill him, sh.o.r.e! He's so sickly. Don't you let 'em git him, Miss Kate, don't you! He's always been real kind to me, even when he's drunk. Don't you let 'em git him!"
"Do you love him, Mag?" asked Kate, wonderingly.
"In co'se I do. He's my Pappy."
The others could not speak for a moment. Her unexpected loyalty to the father who had been "real kind" to her got them by the throat.
"What do you want me to do with him?" Mrs. Kildare asked at last.
"Jes' make him go away. Tell him he da.s.sent come back no more. I reckon he thinks you'll take keer of him 'cause you're takin' keer of me. Ef he knows you ain't a-goin' to, he'll go away."
"Very well," said the other, gently, "he shall go away. And, Mag--" she reached back to grip the girl's hand strongly with hers--"he shall never have your baby. She shall grow up as nearly a 'lady' as I can make her.
You have my word for that."
CHAPTER XVI
Kate, at this juncture, was filling her days to the brim with work, turning to it as to a tried friend, tested in many a crisis. Her recipe for avoiding thought was extreme physical fatigue; a good recipe, but one which was telling upon her physically. Philip's were not the only eyes which noticed the beginning of a change in Mrs. Kildare; a certain lack of buoyancy, an effect of effort in what she accomplished. Jemima, secretly alarmed, had insisted upon having in a doctor after her mother's fainting attack, but he made little of it. He was a bluff, cheerful, young countryman, shrewd but without subtlety, the son and the worthy successor of Jacques Benoix' successful rival, "Doc" Jones.
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