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She turned and left him, walking quietly along the narrow path through the harrowed field under the silent pines. The feeling of death was upon her. She wanted to cover her eyes, to blot out the sun, to run to some friendly darkness to make her moan. She knew he was watching her, however, and carried her head well up. She hoped that he could not see that her hands were clinched. As she went on, her cheeks scarlet, her carriage splendidly undejected, the wish came to her that she could sing. It would prove to him that she had the will not to let this thing crush her, not to be as other women might have been. But her sincere soul put the thought aside because of its untruth. She had given him a great honesty always, she would give it to him until the end. He knew she suffered, but she desired him to know as well that she was brave, that her spirit was unconquered, that she would do something rather than weakly suffer in ineffectual rebellion.
On the crest of the hill she turned to look at him. He was standing with his eyes fastened on her, the strained whiteness of his face marked out against the black of his horse's mane.
Across the distance she had covered their eyes met. The slim little figure in the black frock outlined against the blue of the sky, the wind blowing the pines over her head, her dusky hair holding the sun, her skirts, pushed backward by the wind, revealing her childish body full of exquisite vitality. The tears stood big in her eyes, but hers was a soldier's courage, the courage to face defeat, a thing goodly to see in man or woman. Hastily she untied the scarlet kerchief she wore around her throat and waved it to him, high, at arm's-length, like a flag of victory.
"Ah, don't worry! It's all right!" she called. "Don't think about me! Good-bye!"
At the back of the lodge, down by the brook, there was a place shut in by bushes and roofed over by boughs, where she had often before hidden her grief. Reaching this leafy room, she threw herself on the pine-needles, moving her head from side to side as if in physical pain. There was shame mixed with the grief. Remembered endearments came back to her; his head had lain on her bosom one night when she had tried to ease his pain by her small, cool hands. The place burned over her heart, and she pressed her hand to her side as though to stanch a wound.
If there had been another reason for his conduct, she thought, any reason save the one he gave! If a father had forbidden marriage between them, or if he had feared the anger of his mother, her pride, at least, would not have suffered. But he had made it clear, "damnably clear," as he has stated it, that the only obstacle to his marrying her was his own will.
But he had suffered, too. She had seen him white and haggard with longing for her, and she knew pretence too well to doubt that thus far she was the supreme attraction in his life. The thing that hung black over all was the unchangeableness of the cause of her trouble. She could never be anything but Katrine Dulany; he had decided that she was not worthy to become Katrine Ravenel. Wherein, then, did these Ravenels excel? Her rebellious Irish heart put questions for her clear head to answer. Were they a generous, high-minded, clear-souled people? Folk-tales, passed by word of mouth, of the ill doings of Francis sixth, as well as Francis fifth of the name, told her they were not. Certain dusky faces with the Ravenel mouth and chin had spoken to her of a moral code before which her clean soul stood abashed. Were they more intelligent, more dignified, more refined? The narrow-mindedness of them answered these questionings in the negative. Were they; and here that self-belief, which seems placed like a shell to protect all genius, entered its own, demanding; were they of the specially gifted, as she knew herself to be?
But through the turmoil of heated thought one idea became fixed, however. She must leave Carolina and work; determinedly, doggedly; work to save her reason. Unformulated plans were taking shape in her mind even while she sobbed forth her grief. If she could but study, she thought!
"There must"—and here she spoke aloud, her hands clinched in the pine-needles—"must, must be found some way to do it!"
And by some curious mental twist, as she made the resolution, there came back to her the words of some old reading:
"No great artistic success ever came to any woman, that had not its root in a dead love."
As she lay face downward, her body convulsed with weeping, it was ordered that Dermott McDermott should take a short cut through that part of the grounds to the boat-landing, on one of his lightning-like trips to foreign parts. He had just encountered Frank riding like the wind, his face haggard and drawn, and at the sight of Katrine's distress he drew conclusions, with rage and a dancing madness in his eye.
"If ye've hurt her, Frank Ravenel, if I find when I come back ye've hurt her, you'll answer to me for it! God! how you will answer to me!" he cried.
There is this about life: that frequently when we think the worst has happened it is but the forerunner of worse to come.
As Katrine lay tossed by misery and shame, Nora O'Grady, with her kilted linsey-woolsey skirt turned up, her white kerchief loosened over her bosom, and her brogans twinkling in her haste, came running along the road, her face twitching with sorrow. Ever and anon in her speed she dried her eyes on her apron and a moan escaped her.
"Poor heart!" she repeated. "Poor heart, she's enough to bear without this coming to her the now!"
But pushing the branches aside, she spoke in simulated anger to Katrine, a pretence which showed well the peculiar delicacy of her class. It was not for the like of her, she reasoned, to know the truth regarding Miss Katrine's relation with Mr. Ravenel; and yet she knew as accurately as if the scene of the morning had taken place before her. With clear, wise eyes she had dreaded such an ending the summer long. Nothing, she reasoned, could further hurt Katrine's pride than to have it known her love had been slighted, or to offer sympathy, no matter how hiddenly. And so she feigned well an anger she was far from feeling, in an intentional misunderstanding.
Looking down at the prostrate figure, she began, in a shrill voice:
"Honestly to God, Miss Katrine, ye'll hear another word of this! Crying like a child in the middle of a lot of damp stickers because ye can't have music as ye like! Just throw yourself round on this wet ground a bit more an' mayhap He'll take away the voice He's given ye already! Perhaps it's because ye cry for nothing that there's been something sent ye to cry for!" And here her thought of suitable conduct was lost in real grief.
"Ah, Miss Katrine! Miss Katrine! Your father," her voice broke and went up in a wail, "your father's come home to ye—"
Katrine, who had arisen, stood with tear-stained face regarding her. "He is—?" She could not go on with the question, but Nora answered it without its being finished.
"He has not been drinking. Oh, Miss Katrine, he's past that! Can't ye understand? The hand of God's upon him! He's called away, Miss Katrine. Ye should have seen him as he crawled to the doorway and fell on it. I got him to his own seat by the window, and he's wanting you, Miss Katrine, he's wanting you sore! So I come, in part to tell you, but more to have ye prepare yerself for the change in him, for his end's in sight!"
Although she was trembling from head to foot and had grown ashen pale, Katrine spoke calmly.
"He came alone?"
Nora shook her head in the affirmative.
"It seems, Miss Katrine, that there was some organic trouble; that the great specialist, whose name is gone from me, warned him not to try the cure. He said the other disease was too far along. But your father wanted to be himself again. It was for you he wanted it. It was the disgrace he was to you that was on his mind always."
"Ah!" she cried, "there was still enough of the old pride in him for that! We must pretend not to understand that he is ill, we must try just to seem glad that he is back home with us again."
When Katrine entered the room where her father sat, she found him, as Nora had said, by the window, his head thrown back, his eyes closed; nor did he open them at her coming, though by a poor movement of the hands he made her understand his knowledge of her presence.
"Little Katrine," he said, while two great tears welled from under the closed lids. "Little Bother-the-House! I have come back to you. There is no one can help me except you."
Katrine made a swift movement to be near him. Kneeling, she drew his poor, sorrowing head to her breast, and in the twilight these two, the one so old and weak and loving, the other so young and desolate and brave, clung to each other, blinded by the vision of the separation so soon to be.
In nearly every crisis of life there comes some twist in affairs which seems to turn the screws harder or sets them to making one flinch in a new and unexpected place. In Katrine's case it was a turn which made life so unbearable that there were times when she would be forced to bite her lips and set her teeth to keep back a moan, while for hours at a time Patrick Dulany iterated and reiterated the kindness, the thoughtfulness, the goodness to him of Francis Ravenel.
"There was never a day, Katrine, while I was at the hospital, that I had not a letter from him. Money was spent for me like water. The doctor told me he had orders to spare nothing. Ay, there's not another man in the world who would do for a stranger what Mr. Ravenel tried to do for me. And sometimes he'd write drolly, you know his way, that he'd seen ye somewhere, riding, mayhap, or in the garden, or had heard a note of your music as he rode by; and the home feeling would come back to me, and I'd take heart again."