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Instead of entering the drawing-room after Dermott's departure, Frank turned with some abruptness toward Mrs. Ravenel.
"I am going for a walk, mother," he said, with no suggestion that she accompany him; and her intimate acquaintance with Francis, sixth of the name, made her understand with some accuracy the moods of his son, Francis seventh.
"You are handsomer than ever, Frank!" she exclaimed, as if in answer to the suggestion.
"You spoil me, mother," he returned, with a smile.
"Women have always done that—" she began.
"And you more than any other," Frank broke in, kissing her, with a deference of manner singularly his own.
"There may be truth in that," Mrs. Ravenel admitted, a fine sense of humor marked by the grudging tone in which she spoke. "I remember that only yesterday I was in a rage because the roses were not further open to welcome you home."
"Nature is unappreciative," he returned; and the gray eyes with the level lids looked into the blue ones with the level lids, and both laughed.
For a space Mrs. Ravenel contemplated him, the ecstasy of motherhood illuminating the glance.
"You are quite the handsomest human being I ever saw, Frank—though I think I said something like that before."
"You are, of course, unprejudiced, lady mother," he laughed back from the lowest step.
"It's natural I should be—being only a mother," she explained, gayly.
"Ah," she went on, "I am so happy to have you at home with me! Not happy at having asked those people down. They come on the twenty-seventh."
"Whom have you asked?"
"The Prescotts."
"Good."
"The Porters and Sallie Maddox."
"Better."
"And Anne Lennox."
There was a silence.
"Did I hear you say 'best'?" Mrs. Ravenel inquired.
"By some wanderment of mind, I forgot it," Frank returned, lightly.
"I am always subtle in my methods," his mother continued. "Note the adroitness now. Why don't you marry her, Frank?"
"Do you think she would marry me?"
"Don't be foolish. Anne is devoted to you, and you must marry someone. You are an only son. There is the family name to be thought of, and there must be a Francis eighth to inherit the good looks of Francis seventh, must there not? And how I shall hate it!" she added, truthfully.
Again a silence fell between them before Frank turned the talk with intention in word and tone.
"About this new overseer?" he asked. "Satisfactory?"
"When not drunk—very."
"Does it"—he smiled—"I mean the drunkenness, not the satisfaction—occur frequently?"
"I am afraid it does."
"What did McDermott say his name is?"
"Patrick Dulany."
"French, I suppose?" he suggested.
"By all the laws of inference," his mother returned, with an answering gleam in her eye.
"There seems to have been a Celtic invasion of the Carolinas during my absence. Has he a family?"
"Only a daughter." And as Frank turned to leave her Mrs. Ravenel asked, lightly: "How long do you intend to stay here, Frank?"
"I have made no plans," he answered; but going down the carriageway he said to himself, with a smile: "Mother shows her hand too plainly. The girl is evidently young and pretty."
The plantation had never seemed so beautiful to him. The wild roses were in bloom; the fringe-trees and dogwood hung white along the riverbanks; the golden azaleas, nodding wake-robins, and muskadine flowers looked up at them from below, while the cotton spread its green tufts miles and miles away to a sunlit horizon.
Swinging along the road outside the park, the half-formed plan to visit the overseer left him, and purposeless he climbed the hill to Chestnut Ridge. Something in the occasion of his home-coming after a two years' absence—his mother's reference to his marriage, his remembrances of Anne Lennox—had brought back to his face its habitual expression of sadness. And more than he would have acknowledged was a disquietude caused by his instant resentment of the existence of Dermott McDermott. Never in his life had he felt more strongly the need for companionship. He had been loved by many women. He had never been believed in by any.
Passionate, proud, intolerant, full of prejudice, conscious by twenty-six years' experience of a most magnetic power with women, he came to the edge of the far wood as lawless a man, in as lawless a mood, as the Carolinas had ever seen—a locality where lawless men have not been wanting.
Suddenly, through the twilight, he heard a voice—a woman's voice—singing, and by instinct he knew that the singer was alone and conscious of nothing save the song.
At the top of the rise, under a group of beeches, with both arms stretched along a bar fence, a girl stood, the black of her hair in silhouette against the gold of the sky. He noted the slender grace of her body as she leaned backward, and listened to her voice, Heaven-given, vibrant, caressing— juste , as the French have it—singing an old song.
He had heard it hundreds of times cheapened by lack of temperament, lack of voice, lack of taste; but as he listened, though little versed in music, he knew that it was a great voice that sang it and a great personality which interpreted it. With the song still trembling through the silence the singer turned toward him, and, man of the world and many loves as he had been, an unknown feeling came at sight of her.
A flower of a girl—"of fire and dew," delicate features, nose tip-tilted, a chin firmly modelled under the rounded flesh, and eyes bright with the wonder and pride of life. She wore a short-waisted black frock, scant of skirt and cut away at the neck. It was in this same frock that the Sargent picture of her was painted—but that was years afterward; and although she was motionless, one knew from her slender figure and arched feet that she moved with fire and spirit. Her hair was very dark, though red showed through it in a strong light, and her cheeks had the dusky pink of an October peach. But it was the eyes that held and allowed no forgetting; Ravenel always held they were violet, and Josef, who saw her every day for years, spoke them gray; but Dermott McDermott was firm as to their being blue until the day she visited him about the railroad business, when he afterward described them "as black as chaos," adding a word or two about her deil's temper as well. The truth was that the color of them changed with her emotions, but the wistfulness of them remained ever the same. Dermott, in some lines he wrote of her in Paris, described them as "corn-flowers in a mist filled with the poetry and passion of a great and misunderstood people," and though "over-poetic," as he himself said afterward, "the thought was none so bad."
Suddenly the languor seemed to leave her, and she stood alert, chin drawn in, hands clasped before her, and began the recitative to the " Ah! Fors e lui ." Twice she stopped abruptly, taking a tone a second time, listening as she did so, her head, birdlike, on one side with a concentrated attention. After the last low note, which was round and low like an organ tone, she resumed her old position with arms outstretched upon the fence.
As Frank came up the path their eyes met, and he removed his hat, holding it at his side, as one who did not intend to resume it. Standing thus, he bore himself, if one might use the word of a man, with a certain sweetness, an entire seeming self-forgetfulness, as though the one to whom he spoke occupied his entire thought.
"It is Miss Dulany?" he inquired, with a smile which seemed to ask pardon for his temerity.
"I am Katrine Dulany," the girl answered, gravely, for the readjustment from the music and the silence was not easily made.
"I was fortunate enough to hear you sing. It almost made me forget to say that I am Mr. Ravenel."
"I know," Katrine answered. "The plantation has expected your coming."
A silence followed, during which, with no embarrassment, she retained her position, waiting for him to pass. The indifference of it pleased him.
"I was going to see your father at the lodge. The roads are unfamiliar, and the path, after two years' absence, a bit lonely." The sadness which accompanied the words was honest, but it seemed for some more personal sorrow than it was.
"My father is not well," Katrine said, hastily. "I am afraid you cannot see him, Mr. Ravenel. May I ask him to go to you to-morrow instead?" There was entreaty in her voice, and Frank knew the truth on an instant.
"I cannot have you carrying messages for me."
"Seeing that I offered myself"—she suggested, with a smile.
"—is no reason that I should trespass on your kindness, so I shall carry my message myself." This quite firmly.
"I will sing again if you stay." She looked at him through her long lashes without turning her head. "You see," she added, "I have made up my mind."
"It's a premium on discourtesy," he answered, "but I yield."
Near the place where she stood there was a fallen log, and he seated himself upon it, placing his hat on the ground as though for a continued stay, regarding her curiously.
She was the daughter of his drunken overseer, a child in years, yet she showed neither embarrassment nor eagerness; indeed, she conveyed to him the impression that it was profoundly equal to her whether he went or stayed.
"Tell me," he said, "before you sing, where have you studied?"
"I?" she laughed, but the laugh was not all mirthful. "In Paris, in London, in Rome, in New York." There was bitterness in her tone. "I am a gamin of the world, monsieur."
"Tell me," he repeated, insistently.
She made no response, but stood, with her profile toward him, looking into the sunset.
"Won't you tell me?" he asked again, his tone more intimate than before.
"Ah, why should I?" And then, with a sudden veering: "After all, there is little to tell. I was born in Paris of poor—but Irish—parents." She smiled as she spoke. "My mother was a great singer, whose name I will not call. She married my father; left him and me. I do not remember her. Since her death my father has been a spent man. We have wandered from place to place. When he found work I was sent to some convent near by. The Sisters have taught me. For three months I studied with Barili. I have sung in the churches. Finally, Mr. McDermott, on the next plantation, met us in New York, recommended my father for this work, and we came here."
She turned from him as she ended the telling. "What shall I sing?" she asked.
"'The Serenade.'"
"Schubert's?"
"There is but one."
"It is difficult without the accompaniments but I will try:
She ended, her hands clasped before her, her lithe figure, by God-given instinct for song, leaned forward, and Francis Ravenel was conscious that the passion in the voice had nothing to do with his presence; that it was the music alone of which she thought, and for the first time in his life he touched the edge of the knowledge that a great gift sets its owner as a thing apart .
"Sometime," he said, "when you have become famous, and all the world is singing your praises, I shall say, 'Once she sang for me alone, at twilight, under the beeches, in a far land,' and the people will take off their hats to me, as to one who has had much honor."
He smiled as he spoke. It was the smile or the praise of the song, or a cause too subtle to name, that changed her. She had already seemed an indifferent woman, a great artist, a careless Bohémienne in her speech; but for the next change he was unprepared: it was a pleading child with wistful eyes who seated herself beside him, not remotely through any self-consciousness, but near to him, where speech could be conveniently exchanged.
"Mr. Ravenel," she began, "I had thought to keep it from you, but you are different—the most different person I ever saw." A dimple came in her cheek as she smiled. "And so I am going to tell you everything." She made a little outward gesture of the hands, as though casting discretion to the wind. "My father drinks. It began with his great sorrow. It is not all the time, but frequently. I had hoped that down here he would be better. He is not, and you will have to get another overseer. It is not just to you to have my father in charge. Only I think that perhaps such times as he is himself some work might be found for him. It is so peaceful here; I do not want to go away."
"You shall not go away."
The words were spoken quietly, but for the first time in her life Katrine Dulany felt there was some one of great power to whom she could turn for help, and her woman heart thrilled at the words.
"You mustn't feel about it as you do, either," Frank continued. "The time has gone by for thinking of your father's trouble as anything except a disease—a disease which very frequently can be cured."
"Ah!" she cried, "do you think it would be possible?"
"I have known many cases. Is your father good to you?" he asked, abruptly.
"Sick or well, with money or without, he is the kindest father in the world. Save in one way, it is always for me he thinks."
Her hand lay on the log. It was small and white, and she was very beautiful. Frank had seldom resisted temptation. This one he did not even try to resist, and he placed his hand over hers.
"Katrine," he said, "I am not a particularly good man, but the gods have willed that we meet—meet in strange moods and a strange way. I am a better man to-night than I have ever been in my life. It's the music, maybe, or the fringed gentian, or the whippoorwills." There was love-making in every tone of his voice. "Whatever it is, it makes me want to help you. May I? Will you trust me?"
She turned her hand upward, as a child might have done, to clasp his, looking him full in the eyes as she did so.
"Utterly," she said.
"I have not always been considered trustworthy," he explained, lightly.
"People may not have understood you." There was a sweet explaining in her voice.
"Which may have been, on the whole, fortunate for me," he answered, with a curious smile.
"Don't," she said—"don't talk of yourself like that. I know you are good, good, good! "
"Thank you," and again there came to him the throb in the throat he had felt when their eyes first met. "Believe me," he said, "I shall always try to be—to you," and as he spoke he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
A noise startled him. Some one was approaching with uncertain footsteps and a shuffling gait, and at the sound the girl's face turned crimson.
"Katrine, little Katrine, where are you?" a voice cried, thickly and uncertainly, as a man came from under the gloom of the trees. There was not a moment's hesitation. The child rose and put her arms around the figure with a divine, womanly gesture, as though to shield him and his infirmities from the whole world. It was the action of one ashamed to be ashamed.
"Daddy," she said, laying her head against his shoulder, "this is Mr. Ravenel!"