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About Christmas-time the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely courteous representative she explained her inability to accept the very flattering terms by reason of the already signed St. Petersburg contracts. Although there seemed no definite outcome from the interview, the gentleman with whom it was held left her, as all did, charmed by her sincerity, her enthusiasm, and her great generosity.
The following week Melba was indisposed, and the much-impressed gentleman of the Metropolitan wrote to Katrine, asking if she would sing for them in the great prima-donna's place.
She accepted the offer with small hesitation, asking no one's advice about an unheralded début. She was too great an artist to desire anything but stern criticism, and if she could sing greatly, she reasoned, the public would be quick enough to discover it. The opera to be given was "Faust." Her costumes were quite ready by reason of her Paris début, and she went to the morning rehearsals with the same joy in her work that she had known when studying with Josef.
About four of the afternoon, before the final rehearsal, it began to snow persistently in small flakes which dropped evenly from a leaden sky. Standing by the window, twisting the curtain-string unconsciously, with her soul out in the storm, she became conscious of excited cries of "Extra!" in the street below, and as though in accompaniment to them there came an incessant ringing of the bell at the street door.
Nora being absent on some self-appointed business of her own, the maid who had brought in the tea, and one of the very damp papers which the boys were still crying below, left the room with some abruptness to see what was demanded below and who was clamoring for admission.
Katrine, left alone, poured the tea herself, her eyes scanning the news indifferently until they rested on some heavy black lines heading the last column. Again and again she looked, hoping that the printing would stay still, would stop seeming to dance up and down between the floor and ceiling—stop long enough for her to get its dreadful import:
Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! The words began going over and over in her brain, seeming to strike from within on her temples in a kind of hammering that she felt would set her mad. She stood helpless, her career, her work, her ambition gone from her in a divine self-forgetting and desire to help, as his gayety, his charm, "his difference" from all others came back to her. She made new excuses for his conduct. She told herself, as a mother might speak of a child, that he had been so spoiled. She remembered only the best of him—his kindness to her father, his generosity to herself.
She had long since realized the weight of Frank's words the morning of their parting.
"And remember, that if I did not do the best, I did not do the worst; that I am going away when I might stay," and she knew, looking back on her youth and trustfulness, how much truth there might have been in those words. She clasped her hands to her head trying to think. The throbbing in her head began to be followed by horrid sensations of things around going far away to an immeasurable distance, and returning again rapidly and horribly enlarged.
"Dangerously ill!" she repeated. "Dying, perhaps, alone in hotel rooms with none but paid attendance."
Her throat became choked at thought of it. "Father in heaven," she cried, her hands clasped together, "help me to help him! Don't let him suffer!" she pleaded. "I promised to help him always. Help me to keep my promise!"
Outside, the controversy between the maid at the door and some other was growing louder, and a demanding, forceful, insolent voice was insisting upon seeing Katrine "immejit," as the frightened French girl came back to the room in a panic of fear.
"A gentleman to see you, mademoiselle."
"I can see no one," Katrine answered, briefly, her face averted.
"He says his business is most important."
"Who is it, Marcelle?" she asked.
"It is Nora's son, mademoiselle, and he has been drinking; but if I were you, I'd see him."
The significance of the girl's tone changed Katrine's former decision.
"Tell him to come in," she said.
Barney came as far as the doorway and stood leaning against the frame of it, his eyes hot and angry, waving a newspaper wildly over his head.
"Of all the damned dirty businesses," he cried, "this is the damnedest and dirtiest I ever got up against! 'Combined attack," he quoted, striking the printed words with his fist. "Do you know the name of that combination? Dermott McDermott, that's its name. There may be a few others mixed up in it—Marix, for instance—for looks only. But it's McDermott at the bottom; this same McDermott mother's always tellin' me to imitate. Damned rascal! He's hated Mr. Ravenel and downed him because be thinks you love him. Hit him when he's down, too!"
He was too excited to sit down, but walked back and forth, talking loudly with excited gestures.
"Mr. Ravenel got back from Europe only three days ago, Tuesday, and in the evening he sent for me to come to the Savoy. Miss Katrine, I've never seen so dreadful a change in any one. He was like an old man. The look of death was on him, and he said he'd sent for me to cheer him up with my talk."
The boy was unable to continue for the sobs which shook him, and he covered his face with his hands for a space before he could proceed.
"He'd found bad news in Europe, he told me, and wanted me to cheer him up. I stayed the night with him, and in the morning when I called him he did not answer, but just lay still and white, looking at me, unable to speak. We got Dr. Johnston right away, and telegraphed Mr. Ravenel's mother, who arrived the next day. Yesterday morning that hound Marix, whose affairs are all mixed up with McDermott's, sent this note to me."
He extended a bit of yellow paper toward her, upon which was written:
"Sell Ravenel stocks within the next twenty-four hours, and hold for the bottom to drop out of them."
"But I'll get even with him, this Marix!" Barney shrieked, in his rage. "The only reason he gives me tips is because I know something disgraceful of him! I'll publish him from one end of the country to the other! I'll send him to the penitentiary! But I can't reach McDermott! Oh," he cried, with clinched fists, "if I only could!"
"I can," Katrine said, quietly; asking, after a minute's doubting, "You're sure it is Dermott McDermott who is at the foot of the trouble?"
"Who else has the money or the reasons to make such an attack?" he demanded of her as an answer. "And Marix as good as told me McDermott had some big deal on against the Ravenel interests last month."
She stood looking up at him, the folded yellow paper in her hand, driven by race instinct to fight in the open, to get into the enemy's country, especially if McDermott were the enemy.
With an angry light in her eyes she called for a storm-cloak and demanded a cab, setting Nora and her remonstrances aside with abrupt decision. Giving the cabman the address of McDermott's down-town offices, she sat in the dark of the carriage with the paper Barney had given her clutched in her hand, with neither consideration of the coming interview nor formulated plans. In a vague way she knew that people stared after her, as she went through the corridor of the great building, the hood of her storm-cloak thrown back. Unminding, she rapped at McDermott's private door. She had no misgiving about his being there. She knew in some way, before she left her apartment, that he would be there when she arrived.
"Come in!" he called, curtly.
She entered to find him alone, standing by the window looking absent-mindedly over the snowy chimney-tops, as though projecting a holiday.
"By all the saints at once!" he cried, gayly, at sight of her. "Here have I been ruminating on the sins of the fathers; on the triumphant fifth act, with vice punished and virtue rewarded at the fall of the curtain, when you enter!" And here her silence and pallor and accusing eyes stopped his talking. "What is it, Katrine?" he demanded.
"Did you bring this trouble to Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, her eyes filled with a dangerous light which in a second was matched by the blaze in his.
"Do you mean that ye think it was I who struck a man in the back in the way this thing was done?" he cried, bringing his closed fist down on the newspaper, which lay on the desk before him, in a splendid kind of anger. "How little you know me, after all!" he said, reproach in his voice. "How little ye know me! I've had neither art or part in it, nor suspicion of it until to-day. You'll be wanting proof of it!" he went on, a bit of scorn in his voice. "If so, mayhap the common-sense of the situation will appeal to you, though I don't know." He was angry, and she felt the brunt of it in these words. "Look you!" he continued. "Why should I be ruining an estate that I'm trying to get possession of? It would be a fool's part to play."
"Forgive me, McDermott!" she cried. "Oh, forgive me! I want no further proof. Your face is enough for me. But I'm beside myself with grief."
"I suppose," he continued, "that you reasoned I was capable of this because of that affair about the land on the other side of the river?"
"I did think of it," Katrine admitted. "Forgive me for it, Dermott, but I did think of it!"
"Do you know for whom I bought that land, Katrine Dulany? For your father—no less. It was got with the hope of helping him. It stands in his name in the State records to-day."
"Oh, Dermott!" she pleaded, the Irish form of speech coming back to her. "You'll just be forgiving me, won't you?" She put her hand on his sleeve and looked up at him with imploring eyes. "You must know how great and good I still believed you to be when I tell you that I came to you to ask you to help him. I've some money—the Countess, you know," she explained—"and I thought if you'd faith in my voice—and ye've said often that ye have—that if"—she broke into a storm of weeping—"if you'd just lend him the money that's needed I could sing the debt clear in the years to come."
Dermott looked down at the bowed head upon his old desk, his eyes moist, his lips twitching.
"Perhaps," he broke in, the angry light still in his eyes, "ye'll tell me who accuses me of this business?"
For answer she extended toward him the yellow paper which Barney had given her, signed with John Marix's initials.
"And so you believed Barney, although ye know his weakness for jumping at conclusions? Ye must have believed him, for my name's not mentioned here," he said, looking at the paper.
"He told me Mr. Marix had intimated to him that you were behind the attack."
"Ah! and so it's Marix that's been misusing my name, is it?" he cried, his eyes narrowed. "I'll settle with him!" And then, "Ye love Ravenel, Katrine?"
"Yes," she answered: "there's just nothing else in life for me."
"And after all that's gone between him and me, you are asking me to help him ?"
"Dermott," she said, gravely, sobbing between the words, "I came to you because I have always known the greatness, the selflessness of you, and I trust you."
They stood in silence, not looking at each other.
"I have no one else," she went on. "There is no one else in the world I trust as I do you."
He held himself more erect at the words, a great light in his face.
"You are the only one who has always, always been kind to me," she continued, "and I'd give all there is of me to come to you, heart whole, as your wife. But I can't do it, Dermott, I can't do it! I've tried; no one knows how I tried to forget this love in my heart. I studied to forget, worked to forget, willed to forget, but"—and here she spoke the truth of life—"when great love has once been between a man and a woman, the man may forget, but the woman never. I've wealth and beauty, they say, and gift, and they're all just nothing to me except to help him. Before I'd been two days at the Van Rensselaer's it was just as it had been in Carolina. It was only fear that kept me from saying I'd marry him."
"He wants to marry you now? He has asked you?" Dermott spoke softly for her sake, keeping from his voice the scorn he felt for Ravenel.
"Yes," she returned. "And I know all you're thinking; but it makes no difference! When I think of him, ill, perhaps dying, his fortune gone, and nameless, maybe, as well, I'd give my soul to save him!" she cried, tear-eyed and pale, but glorious in self-abnegation.
She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing. For a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his supporting arm would have fallen. For a little while her dear, dark head lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have offended her could she have known them. He had grown very white before she recovered herself, but the great light still shone in his eyes as he placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.
"Go home, little girl," he said. "Go home and be at peace. I give my word to help him. I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will be well with him."
"Ah," she cried, "you are so good, so good!"
He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I'll take you to the carriage," he answered, quietly. "The storm is still violent, I see."
Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat beside the dying fire alone. In the outer room he could hear the click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players, but they seemed far off. Life itself seemed slipping from him. Suddenly he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs, impossible for any one to endure for long. Every little while he clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his agony what he did. The dreams and hopes of six years had been taken from him, and a great imagined future built on those dreams as well. The glory of his life had departed, and in his passionate misery there seemed nothing ahead for him but gray skies and barren land and bitter waters.
All night and far into the morning he lay. About five, the storm outside having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him and demanded an accounting. "Was this the way he helped?" he asked himself, accusingly.
By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little while, another. Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did so. Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order. Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled "Ravenel," and stood looking at it with speculative eyes.
The case was so complete. Quantrelle and his brother, a curé of Dieppe, of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open window, of Madame de Nemours' marriage. But what of it? Katrine could never marry a man with a disputed name! Still looking at the bundle, he struck a match. It flared up, sputtered, and went out, as though giving him time for second thought. Resolutely he lighted another, set the flame to the papers for a second time, and in an instant whatever trouble they contained for Frank Ravenel was nothing but smoke in the chimney.
"God forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following letter:
DEAR RAVENEL,—You will remember, I said in my last interview that the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar. It is thoroughly proven. Pray give yourself no more anxiety on the subject, and forgive me for doing what my duty prompted me to do. The thing is completely by with as far as I am concerned, and I have burned all of the papers relative to the matter. With best wishes for your complete restoration to health, I remain,
He folded the letter and sealed it, a curious smile upon his lips as he did so. Afterward he began looking over securities and making a list of them in steady, fine writing for the work in the day to come.
About eight he went to his hotel, bathed, dressed himself for the day, and neither of the facts that his heart was breaking, nor that he was about to shake the money market of New York, prevented him from regarding himself critically in the mirror to see if he showed suffering, nor from changing his neck-scarf to one of gallant red.
Underneath the bitterness of his heart lay a desire to square accounts with Marix. But it was part of his nature to excuse the weak, and on the way down to Wall Street the remembrance of the broker's timid-looking wife and the three little ones came to him. It was easy, after all, to forgive. Marix was too unintelligent to understand that it paid to be honest. "Perhaps," he reasoned, "God meant that even the fools and traitors should be helped, too."
Going into the stock-room, he looked over the quotations of the day before in an unimportant manner, waiting for Marix to come in.
"Hello! Hello!" he cried, at sight of him, with a genial laugh, putting a hand on each of the little broker's shoulders and looking down at him with warning eyes. "I'm going on the floor myself to-day. It's been a long time since I've been there. Ravenel and I have come to an understanding," his long, sinewy hands gripped Marix for a minute so hard they made him wince, "and I'm going on to protect his interests."
The blue light of battle was in his eyes; his hat was far back on his head and his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he waited for the gong to call him to the fight. He saw that many were regarding him curiously, and his cheeks flushed with the Celtic instinct to do the thing well—dramatically well. He knew that, in the long night vigil, part of him had died forever, but with chin well up, like a knight of old, he went, at the sound of the great bell, to battle for the happiness of the woman he loved.