Horace Chase Part 30

"She didn't get there? And Genevieve _did?_ I know it by your face. Let me go to mother--poor mother! Let me go to her, and _never_ leave her again."

"You shall go the instant she wakes; you shall stay with her as long as you like," Chase answered, drawing her down again, and putting his cheek against her head as it lay on his breast. "There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for your mother; you have only to choose. And for Dolly, too. You shall stay with them; or they can go with you; or anything you think best, my poor little girl."

Ruth still trembled, and no tears came to her relief.

Her cry, "And Genevieve _did?_" had struck him. "How they all hate her?"

he thought.

He had seen Genevieve since Mrs. Franklin's attack; he had gone over for a moment to tell her what had happened.

Genevieve, when driven from L'Hommedieu, had taken refuge in her own room at the Cottage; here, behind her locked door, she had spent a long hour in examining herself searchingly, examining her whole married life.

Her hands had trembled as she looked over her diaries, and as she turned the pages of her "Questions for the Conscience." But with all her efforts she could not discern any point where she had failed. Finally, at the end of the examination, she summed the matter up more calmly: "It _was_ best for Jared to be out of the navy; he was forming habits there that I understood better than his mother. And I _know_ that I am not avaricious. I know that I have always tried to do what was best for him, that I have tried to elevate him and help him in every way. I have worked hard--hard. I have never ceased to work. It is all a falsehood, or, rather, it is a delusion; for she is, she _must_ be, insane." Having reached this conclusion (with Genevieve conclusions were final), she put away her diaries and went down-stairs to tea. When Chase came in and told what had happened, she said, with the utmost pity, "I am _not_ surprised! When she comes out of it, I fear you will find, Horace, that her mind is affected. But surely it is natural. Mamma's mind--poor, dear mamma!--never was very strong; and, in this great grief which has overwhelmed us all, it has given way. We must make every allowance for her." She told him nothing of her terrible half-hour at L'Hommedieu. She never told any one. Silence was the only proper course--a pitying silence over Jay's poor mother, his crazed mother.

Ruth had paid no heed to her husband's soothing words, his promise to do everything that he possibly could for her mother and Dolly. "What did Jared say? You were with him before he was ill. Tell me everything, everything!"

He tried to satisfy her. Then he attempted to draw her thoughts in another direction. "How did you get here so soon, Ruthie? I told Hill to make you stop over and sleep."

"Sleep!" repeated Ruth. "I only thought of one thing, and that was to get here in time to see him." She left the sofa. "You ought to have waited for me. It would have been better if you had. _Jared_ was the one I cared for. One look at his face, even if he _was_ dead. Where did they put him when they brought him home? For I know mother had him here, here and not at the Cottage. It was in this room, wasn't it? In the centre of the floor?" She walked to the middle of the room and stood there.

"_Jared_ could have helped me," she said, miserably. "Why did they take my _brother_--the one person I had!"

The door opened and the doctor entered. "_You_ here, Mrs. Chase? I didn't know you had come." He hesitated.

"What is it?" said Ruth, going to him. "Tell me! _Tell_ me."

The doctor glanced at Chase.

Chase came up, and took his wife's hand protectingly. "You may as well tell her."

"It is a stroke of paralysis," explained the doctor, gravely.

"But she'll _know_ me?" cried Ruth in an agony of tears.

"She _may_. You can go up if you like."

But the mother saw nothing, heard nothing on earth again. She might live for years. But she did not know her own child.

Chase came at last, and took his wife away.

"Oh, be good to me, Horace, or I shall die! I think I _am_ dying now,"

she added in sudden terror.

She clung to him in alarm. His immense kindness was now her refuge.

CHAPTER XVIII

In spite of all there was to see that afternoon, Dolly Franklin had chosen to remain at home; she sat alone in the drawing-room, adding silken rows to her stocking of the moment. Wherever Ruth was, that was now Dolly's home; since Mrs. Franklin's death, two years before, Dolly had lived with her sister. The mother had survived her son but a month.

Her soul seemed to have departed with the first stroke of the benumbing malady; there was nothing but the breathing left. At the end of a few weeks, even the breathing ceased. Since then, L'Hommedieu had been closed, save for a short time each spring. Horace Chase had bought a cottage at Newport, and his wife and Dolly had divided their time between Newport and New York. This winter, however, Chase had reopened his Florida house, the old Worth place, at St. Augustine; for Ruth's health appeared to be growing delicate; at least she had a dread of the cold, of the icy winds, and the snow.

"Well, we'll go back to the land of the alligators," said Chase; "we'll live on sweet potatoes and the little oysters that grow round loose. You seem to have forgotten that you own a shanty down there, Ruthie?"

At first Ruth opposed this idea. Then suddenly she changed her mind.

"No, I'll go. I want to sail, and sail!"

"So do I," said Dolly. "But why shouldn't we try new waters? The Bay of Naples, for instance? Mr. Chase, if you cannot go over at present, you could come for us, you know, whenever it was convenient?" Dolly expended upon her idea all the eloquence she possessed.

But Horace Chase never liked to have his wife beyond the reach of a railroad. He himself often made long, rapid journeys without her. But he was unwilling to have her "on the other side of the ferry," as he called it, unless he could accompany her; and at present there were important business interests which held him at home. As Ruth also paid small heed to Dolly's brilliant (and wholly imaginary) pictures of Capri, Ischia, and Sorrento, the elder sister had been forced (though with deep inward reluctance) to yield; since December, therefore, they had all been occupying the pleasant old mansion that faced the sea-wall.

To-day, four o'clock came, and pa.s.sed. Five o'clock came, and pa.s.sed; and Dolly still sat there alone. At last she put down her knitting, and, taking her cane, limped upstairs and peeped into her sister's dressing-room. Ruth, who was lying on the lounge with her face hidden, appeared to be asleep. Dolly, therefore, closed the door noiselessly and limped down again. Outside the weather was ideally lovely. The beautiful floral arch which had been erected in the morning still filled the air with its fragrance, though the tea-roses of which it was composed were now beginning to droop. St. Augustine, or rather the visitors from the North, who at this season filled the little Spanish town, had set up this blossoming greeting in honor of a traveller who was expected by the afternoon train. This traveller had now arrived; he had pa.s.sed through the floral gateway in the landau which was bringing him from the station. The arch bore as its legend: "The Ancient City welcomes the great Soldier." The quiet-looking man in the landau was named Grant.

At length Dolly had a visitor; Mrs. Kip was shown in. A moment later the Reverend Malachi Hill appeared, his face looking flushed, as though he had been in great haste. Mrs. Kip's eyes had a conscious expression when she saw him. She tried to cover it by saying, enthusiastically, "How _well_ you do look, Mr. Hill! You look so fresh; really _cla.s.sic_."

The outline of the clergyman's features was not the one usually a.s.sociated with this adjective. But Mrs. Kip was not a purist; it was cla.s.sic enough, in her opinion, to have bright blue eyes and golden hair; the accidental line of the nose and mouth was less important.

"Yes, my recovery is now complete," Malachi answered; "I must go back to my work in a day or two. But I wish it hadn't been measles, you know.

Such a ridiculous malady!"

"Oh, don't say that; measles are so sweet, so domestic. They make one think of dear little children; and lemons," said Mrs. Kip, imaginatively. "And then, when they are getting well, all sorts of toys!"

While she was speaking, Anthony Etheridge entered. And he, too, looked as if he had been making haste. "What, Dolly, neither you nor Ruth out on this great occasion? Are you a bit of a copperhead?"

"No," Dolly answered. "I haven't spirit enough. _My_ only spirit is in a lamp; I have been making flaxseed tea and hot lemonade for Ruth, who has a cold."

"Does she swallow your messes?" Etheridge asked.

"Never. But I like to fuss over them, and measure them out, and _stir_ them up!"

"Just as I do for Evangeline Taylor," remarked Mrs. Kip, affectionately.

"Lilian, isn't Evangeline long enough without that Taylor?" Dolly suggested. "I have always meant to ask you."

"I do it as a remembrance of her father," replied Lilian, with solemnity "For I myself am a Taylor no longer; _I_ am a Kip."

"Oh, is that it? And if you should marry again, what then could you do (as there is no second Evangeline) for your present name?" Dolly inquired, gravely.

"I have thought of that," answered the widow. "And I have decided that I shall keep it. It shall precede any new name I may take; I should make it a condition."

"You are warned, gentlemen," commented Dolly.

Etheridge for an instant looked alarmed. Then, as he saw that Malachi had reddened violently, he grew savage. "Kip-Hill? Kip-Larue?

Kip-Willoughby?" he repeated, as if trying them. "Walter Willoughby, however, is very poor dependence for you, Mrs. Lilian; for he is evidently here in the train of the Barclays. He arrived with them yesterday, and he tells me he is going up the Ocklawaha; I happen to know that the Barclays are taking that trip, also."

Walter Willoughby's name had rendered Mrs. Kip visibly conscious a second time. The commodore's allusion to "the Barclays," and to Walter's being "in their train," had made no impression upon her. They were presumably ladies; but Lilian's mind was never troubled by the attractions of other women, she was never jealous. One reason for this immunity lay in the fact that she was always so actively engaged in the occupation of loving that she had no time for jealousy; another was that she had in her heart a soft conviction, modest but fixed, regarding the power of her own charms. As excuse for her, it may be mentioned that the conviction was not due to imagination, it was a certainty forced upon her by actual fact; from her earliest girlhood men had been constantly falling in love with her, and apparently they were going to continue it indefinitely. But though not jealous herself, she sympathized deeply with the pain which this tormenting feeling gave to others, and, on the present occasion, she feared that Malachi might be suffering from the mention of Walter Willoughby's name, and that of Achilles Larue, in connection with her own; she therefore began to talk quickly, as a diversion to another subject. "Oh, do you know, as I came here this afternoon I was reminded of something I have often meant to ask you--ask all of you, and I'll say it now, as it's in my mind. Don't you know that sign one so often sees everywhere--'Job Printing'? There is one in Charlotte Street, and it was seeing it there just now as I pa.s.sed that made me think of it again. I suppose it must be some especial kind of printing that they have named after Job? But it has always seemed to me so odd, because there was, of course, no printing at all, until some time after Job was dead? Or do you suppose it means that printers have to be so _very_ patient (with the bad handwriting that comes to them), that they name _themselves_ after Job?"

Dolly put down her knitting. "Lilian, come here and let me kiss you. You are too enchanting!"