Kildares of Storm Part 3

It was a new song that Philip Benoix had brought for her to try:

"A little winding road Goes over the hill to the plain-- A little road that crosses the plain And comes to the hill again.

I sought for Love on that road--"

sang Jacqueline, cheerfully.

The eyes of the listener filled with sharp tears. She too had sought for Love on that road.

She saw herself riding down it into her great adventure, so young, so laughing and brave, Basil Kildare on his great horse beside her, all the world a misty golden green. She saw--even with closed eyes, she saw--the turn of the road where Jacques Benoix, Philip's father, had come to meet them on their wedding journey.

So far her memories often led her before she stopped them. But the experience of the night had left her oddly stirred and weakened, not quite herself. To-day the memories had their way with her.

She lived again through the whirlwind courts.h.i.+p that was still remembered in a community where sudden marriages are not unusual; saw again, as she had first seen it, the arresting, great figure of Basil Kildare framed in a ballroom door, with smoldering black eyes upon her, that spoke so much more eloquently than his tongue. Yet his tongue had done well enough, too, that night. Before their first dance was over he had said to her: "I have been watching you grow up, Kate. Now I think you are old enough to marry me."

Two weeks later they went to her mother, hand in hand.

"But, my dearest!" fluttered the startled lady, "Mr. Kildare is a man of forty, and you only seventeen, only a child! Besides--"

"Mr. Kildare," answered the girl, with a proud glance at her lover, "will help me to become a woman, Mother dear."

What was she, newly widowed, who had depended in all things upon her husband, to oppose such a pair of wills? Rumors of the wild doings at Storm were not lacking in that gentler community, nor was the Kildare blood what she would have chosen to mix with her own. But there is among this type of women always the rather touching belief that it needs only matrimony to tame the wildest of eagles into a cooing dove. Kildare, moreover, was one of the great landowners of the State, a man of singular force and determination, and, when he chose to exert it, of a certain virile charm. When Mrs. Leigh realized that, ever since her daughter had been old enough to exhibit promise of the beauty she afterwards attained, this man had marked her for his own, a feeling of utter helplessness came over her.

They were a magnificent pair to look at, as they stood before her, tall, vivid, vital. Beside Basil Kildare the youths who had hitherto courted Kate, young as she was, seemed callow and insignificant, even to the mother. It would need a man to rule such a woman as Kate was to become, not an adoring boy; and Mrs. Leigh was of the type and generation that believed firmly in the mastery of husbands.

She could not make up her mind to consent to the marriage, but she did not forbid it. And it is probable that her forbidding would have had as much effect upon that pair of lovers as the sighing of the southwind.

Perhaps less effect; for, in a Kentucky May, the sighing of the southwind is very persuasive.

Bridesmaids and their escorts rode part way on the wedding journey; a gay cavalcade, some of the youths a little white and quiet, all of the girls with envious, sentimental eyes upon Kate where she rode beside the handsomest of the wild Kildares, with the romantic, whispered reputation of his race upon him.

When these had turned back, the bridegroom, chafing a little under their surveillance, swore a great oath of relief and spurred his horse close.

In a sudden panic Kate bolted away from him, galloped up a lane, leaped a fence into a field, where he caught her and seized her, laughing aloud: "That's my girl! That's my pretty wild hawk! The spirit for a mother of Kildare men, by G.o.d!"

After that she met his kisses unafraid. Girl as she was, it seemed to her a beautiful saying--"a mother of Kildare men." Only three things she was bringing with her from the old home to the new--her piano, her father's books, and the oaken cradle that had come with the first Leigh from overseas, and followed other Leighs across the mountains along the old Wilderness Trail, into Kentucky.

Toward the end of their two days' journey through the May woods and meadows, a little barking dog sprung out at them, frightening Kate's thoroughbred until it almost threw her. Kildare struck furiously at the dog, and missed; struck again, leaped from his horse, and pursued it, striking and kicking, so that the terrified creature ran for its life, and Kate cried out, "Stop, Basil, stop. What are you doing? Stop, I say!"

He came back to her, cursing, an ugly line between his brows. "Got away, d.a.m.n the luck! I almost--Why, Kate! Tears? Oh, good Lord," he laughed, still frowning. "You're as soft as Jacques Benoix!"

She mastered the tears; mastered, too, a strange little fear at her heart, thinking proudly, "He came when I called! He stopped when I called!"

Aloud she said, "It was the sun that made my eyes water. Who is Jacques Benoix?"

He told her about his neighbor, a stranger--"the only gentleman within ten miles of us, so you'll have to be friends with him"--a man so soft-hearted that he would not hunt foxes or rabbits; a man who broke his colts without the whip, and was trying to break a son the same way.

"More fool he, coming up here out of a city and trying to teach _us_ to break colts!"

"Has he a wife?"

Kildare gave his great laugh. "You don't suppose a man as soft as that would have escaped? The woman's sickly--of course! That's why he married her, and that's why he has come up here. Gave up a big practice in New Orleans, they say, because he thought it would be healthier here. So it is! Too d.a.m.ned healthy for him, I reckon! We don't need more than one doctor around Storm, and old Doc Jones has got a corner on the births and deaths already. Yes, Benoix is rather a fool. But he's got his uses.

He'll play poker for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and drink--Lord!"

said Kildare, admiringly. "I don't know where the little fellow puts it all!"

It was at the next crossroads that they found Benoix waiting; a slender, rather foreign-looking man, very carefully dressed, with a stiff little bouquet of geraniums in his hands. For the first time Kate's direct young gaze met the eyes whose blueness, in their dark setting, was a never-failing surprise to her. They held hers steadily for a moment; it seemed to her that they had already talked together before he spoke.

"I bring to Mrs. Kildare the first fruits from her kingdom," he said, offering the little bouquet.

"Flowers from Storm?" laughed Basil, incredulously. "Where'd you get them? You're a wizard, Jacques! I never saw any flowers at Storm."

"You were not looking for them, my friend. Now you will look!" Benoix'

smile was a gleam of white teeth.

Kate tucked the flowers into her habit, and held out her hand to him.

"I've been ordered to be friends with you. I do not think it will be hard," she said.

Kildare laughed again as the other bent formally over her hand. "Thank Heaven, I'm no Frenchman! A woman's hand, in a glove, must be about as thrilling to kiss as a mare's hoof. Try her lips, man! You'll find them better," he urged; and roared with laughter to see them both blus.h.i.+ng.

Benoix rode with them the rest of the way, pointing out to the girl the beauties of her kingdom; mares nuzzling their new-born foals; the tender green of young crops; cloud shadows drifting over the rolling miles that darkled like ocean beneath a wind; a pair of mocking-birds at play, their gray wings flas.h.i.+ng circles of white. For some time the hills had been marching toward them, and at last they reached the first. It was low, and covered with juniper-bushes. On the crest of it stood a house, grim and stanch as when the pioneer Kildare built it, facing undaunted through the years the brunt of every storm that swept the plateau. Its trees were bent and twisted by the giant grasp of many winds.

"You see why they call it 'Storm,'" said Benoix.

Kildare had left them, spurring forward with sudden eagerness, whistling. Cras.h.i.+ng down through the underbrush came two enormous bloodhounds, baying like mad things. Kildare flung himself from his horse and met them with a shout, seizing them in his arms, romping and tumbling about with the great, frantic beasts until all three were covered with mud and slaver. It was a rather terrific spectacle. Kate thought of a bas-relief she had seen somewhere of a satyr playing with leopards.

"The only things in the world Basil loves!" murmured the Creole; adding quickly, "or did love. Do not be startled, Mrs. Kildare. Bloodhounds are greatly maligned. Jove and Juno, there, are as kind as kittens, despite their rough ways. Here you will find many rough ways," he spoke as if in warning. "It is a man's place. But you will change it!"

He was mistaken. After all her years there, Storm was still "a man's place." Kate had never found the time, nor the heart, to make a home of it.

Benoix left them, and Kate and Basil mounted to their house alone. Seen close at hand, it proved to be not without a certain charm, despite its weather-beaten grimness. No house can lack personality that has grown generation by generation with the race it shelters. The older part was of rough-hewn logs, whitewashed. To this had been added later a wing of boulders; later still, one of brick. Across the long front ran a brick-paved gallery, where a disused carriage had been drawn for shelter, and taken possession of by a flock of turkeys.

Negroes, big and little, came running from the quarters at the back. A huge, beaming black woman waddled out and lifted Kate bodily from the saddle, loudly praising G.o.d.

"My Lawdy, ain't she des' a _beauty_? Ain't Mr. Bas' done picked him a beauty-bright?"

In the open door waited another house-servant; a handsome young mulatto girl, who curtseyed respectfully and stared at her new mistress with hostile, curious eyes.

Remembering, Kate shuddered, as she had shuddered then with the bewilderment, the sense of unreality, that took possession of her at that moment. It was all so unlike what she had expected, so appallingly unlike the gracious, well-ordered life of the stately Bluegra.s.s homes she had known.

Rank weeds grew to the very door-sill. Within she saw a huge, raftered hall hung with antlers and guns and saddles, pelts, fox-brushes. There was a stuffed bloodhound, the ancestor perhaps of Jove and Juno. A horse's head protruded from the wall, nostrils dilated, gla.s.sy eyes starting from the sockets, as if the poor creature were still running his last race with Death.

"Welcome home, wife!" cried Basil Kildare, kissing her lips with a loud smack.

The negroes guffawed in delight, the hounds bayed again till the hills echoed.

Then beside the house she saw a few squares and circles of fresh-turned earth, planted with limp coleas, and dusty-millers, and all the other unlovely specimens of horticulture favored by men when they go a-gardening. Her eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Why, Basil!" She slipped a hand into his. "You dear! How sweet of you to try to make me the little garden!"

"Eh? What garden?" His eyes followed hers. "Oh! That must be some of Benoix' doings. He's the only man 'round here who has time to fool with posies."