XXV
KATRINE IN NEW YORK
The following morning, in a drizzling rain and wind from the east,Dermott McDermott stood beside Katrine at the station, arranging for hercomfort, directing her maid, and wiring Nora in New York, lest sheshould be unprepared for this hastily determined return to the city.
"I was sorry for Ravenel last night, Katrine," he said, with an earnestsympathy in his tone. "I think I have never known a man who drew me tohim less; but that has nothing to do with the matter. I was sorry forhim," he repeated. "Isn't it a dreadful performance, this tragedy oflife?" he demanded, looking down at her intently, unmindful of noise ofluggage or the shrill voices of the passers to and fro. "But the thingto do," he cried, straightening himself and raising his chest, "is toshow a brave front always! Never let the world know you're downed inanything. So carry all off with a laugh and a song. Plant flowers onthe graves, flowers for the world to see, and for the great Power aboveas well, that He may know we are not whining--that we're down here doingthe best we can."
They stood, hands clasped, on the platform as the train drew in, lookinginto each other's eyes, and Katrine's lips trembled as she spoke theword "good-bye."
"Sure it's not 'good-bye' at all," Dermott cried, changing his mood tocheer her--"not 'good-bye' at all! I'll be in town in a day or twobothering you with my visits and advice. And if anything definite turnsup about the Ravenel matter I'll write you. Do you know, Katrine, I feltso sorry for him last night I'm almost hoping he can disproveeverything."
And Katrine found, as the train pulled out, that there was another whohad not been unmindful of her going, for Frank's man appeared fromnowhere, touched his hat with accented deference, gave her a letter insilence, and disappeared into the blankness from which he came. But forthe envelope she held, Katrine might have believed him a vision that hadpassed.
There was no formal beginning. The letter ran:
I shall not see you again until I know the truth. You will understand the reasons. I am going to Ravenel to-day to make some investigations. Of the outcome of these I cannot speak.
In all of this there is one thing sure. Everything may be changed in my life but my love for you.
F.R.
It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and toNora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just offWashington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for theplace, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the householdgoods.
There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees inthe yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, tomake a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrineenjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; thetransformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot ofrestful color and peace.
The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced,with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she hadtold to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother hadceased speaking.
Katrine greeted him with affectionate remembrance, smiling as she didso at the change in this boy whom she had helped to New York. He wasflashily dressed, after the style of a college freshman, and conversed,as she discovered, in a language known only to the New York newspaperman, who, as some one told her later, has a "slanguage" all his own.
No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation,however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherishedtoward her for the help given so long before.
Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turnedupward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like aparenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the worldalertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.
But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight andability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his braveschemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it;accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on amuch-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's wholelife. In a way, he had become a power in the newspaper world, and had,as she discovered, a knowledge of the private affairs of prominentpeople which seemed supernatural; and it was a habit of his to look overthe names in a newspaper, remarking cheerfully at intervals:
"There's another man that I could put in jail."
But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feelingtoward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintancebetween them might have done, and this was his admiration for FrankRavenel.
If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectlythrough his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life withRavenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.
But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine wasconcerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion forher, as she laughingly put it.
"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.
"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by tosee him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.
With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barneycalled "Her Irresponsible Frenchiness," and Nora, Katrine spent a busymonth trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely. In the daytimeshe could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him--if hewere back at Ravenel; if Dermott had proceeded in the bitter businessconcerning the early marriage, with many plans for readjustments in casehe had done so.
Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolinaassociates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediatelyafter the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to Francefollowing close upon the heels of his return.
Early in November--it was the afternoon of the first snowfall--delayedletters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for hersignature. She was to have her premiere in May, and Josef wrote that hewould go up from Paris with her.
This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris,so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagementwas cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was tosing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.
In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the mostimportant being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debtto Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importancethat he was wearing a new green tie. He ended by saying that he wouldgive an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped hehad done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin. He wrote noword of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrineconcluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.
But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. Thefirst was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trustbecause a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, whowas showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflaggingsearch he was making for the truth.
She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almostdaily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit hementioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street,and that he was watching the money situation day and night with littletime for visiting.
His second coming was a fortnight later. In the afternoon Katrine hadbeen reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death. Itseemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there hadcome to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge thatlove was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, ofwhich love is the cause. She had worked to forget, had been taught howto forget, yet she knew she had not forgotten, and that her listlessnesssince her visit to Mrs. Van Rensselaer had been chiefly worry lesttrouble should come to Frank.
At five Nora brought in the tea-things, a
nd Katrine closed the book overwhich she had been dreaming.
"Nora," she began, for the Irishwoman was like a mother to her, "did youever forget your first love?"
"I did worse than that, I married him. Barney's the result," was theanswer.
"But you never could have married any one else but Dennis, could you?"Katrine persisted.
"Niver!" the little old woman returned, with ready decision. "He bateme, Miss Katrine, and misprized me, and came and wint as he listed, andfinally left me altogether; but I could never have chose another. It'sthe way with Irishwomen, that! The drame of it niver comes but thewance--niver but the wance," she repeated, looking into the fire, butseeing the old sea-wall at Killybegs, with flowers on top of it, againsta cloudy sky, and a sailor boy with bold black eyes calling to her fromthe boats.
And Katrine, her tea forgotten, repeated, "It's that way withIrishwomen--the dream never comes but once."
At sunset the bitter wind which had been blowing all day long turnedinto a gale, a rascal wind, which slapped a handful of sleet and ice,hard as glass, on one side of your face, and scurried round the cornerto come back and strike harder from an entirely different direction.
The storm must have suited his mood in some way, for Dermott McDermottchose to walk through it, arriving at Katrine's door breathless andflushed, the fur of his coat gleaming with ice and snow. Here he found aglowing fire, with the old mahogany settle on one side and the greengrandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry;flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown,delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter androaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happinesswithin, and led him, more than he knew, to that precipitancy of conductwhich ended disastrously for him. As he sat in the great green chairKatrine looked up at him from the settle, and something in the intensityof his gaze made her make a quick gesture of warning to him before hespoke.
"Will you marry me, Katrine?"
She looked again quickly, to see if he could be jesting. In NorthCarolina it was his custom to ask her every day; but his sudden pallorand the choked voice told how terribly he was in earnest.
She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all myheart I could, Dermott."
"And why not?" he asked.
"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained,bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.
"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say Ihope not."
"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you--always--ever since I've knownyou. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, andye stood off the mob of boys who were baiting the old Jew--since thenI've taken every thought for you I could. And I'm asking you to believeme when I tell you that I want your happiness more than my own. I'vefelt always that you'll never succeed as a public singer, and here oflate, since I've known the St. Petersburg contracts were signed, I'vesuffered in my thoughts of you. We'll just leave another suitor out ofthe question. It's these public appearances of yours I dread at thepresent. If stage life could be as it seems from the right side of thefootlights; if you knew nothing of the people or their lives, except asValentine or Siegfried, it would be different. But the meanness of it;the little jealousies; the ignorant egotisms; I am afraid you can neverdo it, you will despise it so."
He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had takensome active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.
"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girlalone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has arainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether youcare or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, thatthere's a man here in New York thinking always of you, _one who wouldgive his life to save you from pain_."