Kildares of Storm Part 23

She recognized the change in his voice; a change that usually came soon or late when people endeavored to scold Jacqueline.

"Now you're nice again," she said with satisfaction, slipping her hand into his. "You don't disapprove of me, anyway, half as much as you think you do. You might kiss me, just to show it."

He resisted gently. "No, my dear, you're getting too old for that."

"Too old for what?" she cried out.

"To kiss men. I told you you must be careful--"

She burst out laughing. "But you're not 'men,' you old goose!"

Unexpectedly she jerked his head down to hers, and gave him a resounding smack on the cheek. "There! I'm going to kiss people I love, men or women, till I'm as old as Methuselah--'specially if they're cross with me. You may as well get used to it.--Now kiss me back, nicely."

Philip succ.u.mbed to the inevitable with as good grace as possible. He wished, with a sigh, that this child of the woman he loved could remain as she was forever; innocent, frank, unspoiled by the encroachment of womanhood. Jacqueline was particularly dear to him, perhaps because of her resemblance to her mother....

They found the man Henderson in a whimpering heap at the foot of a tree, about which his arms were still tied. Vigorous rubbing restored the circulation to his wrists, and a few drops of whisky from Philip's pocket-flask completed the restoration.

"Now, then, you're able to walk. Go!" said Philip. "Get your things and march. You were told to get out last night."

Jacqueline looked at him in surprise. This sharp, cold voice was quite unlike Philip's usual gentleness with the unfortunate.

The man began to whimper and whine, "How kin I go? I ain't got no money, and I ain't got the stren'th to walk. I'm jes' a pore ole man what don't mean no harm to n.o.body. Take me along with you-all! I'm afeared the Riders'll git me ag'in. I come back to see my darter, the onliest chile I got in the worl'. I ain't got no other place to go at. The Madam won't let a pore ole man suffer. I wants to see my darter."

"Stop talking about your daughter!" interrupted Benoix, harshly, "I give you five minutes to get your things together and bring me your key."

"Why, Philip!" cried Jacqueline, hot with indignation. "Of course he's in no condition to go now, after the scare he's had. The poor thing!

We'll take him home to Storm. Mother'll expect us to."

Henderson fawned upon her eagerly. "Bless yore purty sweet face! You won't let 'em git the ole man. That's right. Take me along with you to see my darter." He put a wheedling hand on her arm.

"You dare to touch that young lady--!" Philip spoke in a voice Jacqueline had never heard, shaken with rage. He had a stout switch in his hand. Suddenly, uncontrollably, he brought it down across the man's shoulders again and again.

Henderson cowered away from him. In less than the five minutes he had been given, he was shuffling down the lane, all his worldly goods slung over his shoulder in a handkerchief.

Then Jacqueline's shocked astonishment burst bounds.

"Why, Philip Benoix, you wicked, cruel man! To turn that poor old thing out of his home without even giving him a chance to see his daughter!

And you struck him, too, struck him to hurt--you, a minister of the Gospel! Oh, oh, you 're as bad as those 'Possum Hunters,' kicking a dog when he's down. You, a man of peace!"

"It seems," said Philip, ruefully, "that I am also a man of wrath."

During the ride back to Storm both remained silent, Jacqueline nursing with some difficulty her displeasure against her friend. So this was Philip's famous temper, in which she had never quite believed! In truth, that sudden outburst of inexplicable rage on the part of the grave, quiet, young clergyman had appealed strongly to the love of brute force that is inborn in all women.

But it had frightened Philip himself. He realized for the first time that he was indeed the son of a man who had killed in anger. He touched more than once the little inconspicuous gold cross that hung at his belt, wondering whether he were fitted after all for the vocation he had chosen.

CHAPTER XVII

There stood, in the ravine which separated Storm hill from the property that had formerly belonged to Jacques Benoix, a roofless, tumbledown stone cabin which had been from childhood Jacqueline's own particular playground, as sacred to her as the eyrie to her mother. She called it, grandiloquently, the Ruin. The place had a sinister reputation, and was sedulously avoided by both negroes and whites of the neighborhood; which suited Jacqueline's purposes excellently. All dreamers feel the need of a hidden place where they may retire, free from the gaze of a not too sympathetic world; and the Ruin made a strong appeal to the imagination of Jacqueline.

If the place was haunted, as the neighborhood averred, it was perhaps not without reason. The cabin had once been a slave-house where an earlier Kildare kept certain human livestock to be fattened like hogs for the market, overcrowding and neglecting them, however, as he would not have dared to neglect and overcrowd hogs, so that the venture was not altogether successful. Recently, workmen laying drainage pipes through the ravine had uncovered a long trench filled with many bones, ghastly witness to the folly of neglecting livestock, human or otherwise. Cholera was the first ghost to haunt that spot, but it had left others which were heard about the cabin on windy nights, moaning and rattling chains and, because they were the ghosts of negroes, singing.

Jacqueline, unaware of this episode in the proud Kildare history, had nevertheless been faithfully warned by the negroes of "ha'nts" in the ravine, which added materially to her pleasure in the place. Not every budding genius has at her private disposal a haunted ruin; and at this period of her career Jacqueline was being a budding genius.

Their mother had recently taken both girls to a near-by city for their first taste of grand opera, completing the effect by the purchase of a graphophone and opera records. Since that time Jacqueline had nourished the more or less secret ambition of becoming the world's greatest _diva_. She had taken to singing in church with an impa.s.sioned ardor which startled, even while it t.i.tillated, the ear of the congregation.

As Mrs. Sykes put it, "Folks hadn't ought to sing hymns as if they was love-songs, no matter how nice it sounds."

Jacqueline had not taken her family, even her adored mother, entirely into her confidence, having a shrewd conviction that her ambition would meet with slight encouragement from them. Of late, since the disturbance about Philip's father, both Jemima and her mother were too _distrait_, too absorbed in their own affairs, to pay much attention to Jacqueline.

Whatever confidences trembled on her lips, remained unsaid. She felt that they had more important things to think about. Once, indeed, she had ventured to join her voice to that of the Victrola in the mad scene from "Lucia," acting at the same time her conception of the part; and her family, staring in amazement, had suddenly roared with laughter, the first laughter heard in that house for many a day.

So Jacqueline and her hurt dignity sought refuge in the Ruin, there to rehea.r.s.e her art hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of _La Tosca_, _Camille_ or _Manon_, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal!

Whatever should I do with her between four walls?"

Here, on the afternoon following her raid upon the raiders, Jacqueline posed and strutted happily, making the welkin ring with the piteousness of _Madame b.u.t.terfly_. From without came distant, languid, sounds of late summer, gra.s.s-mowers whirring in the hay-meadows, a stallion nickering in his stall for the freedom of the pasture, crickets and katydids shrilling their cheerful dirge for the summer that was pa.s.sing.

All of these sounds the girl knew and savored in the intervals between her singing. Now and then a bird hopped down from the branches that hung over the roofless cabin, and searched fearlessly for provender at her very feet. Mag's baby, on a bed of moss and leaves, crooned to herself, kicking fat legs toward heaven and clutching at stray sunbeams with futile hands.

Jacqueline broke off. "Oh, dear, I could sing so much better if somebody would listen!" she complained aloud to the birds and the baby and the world at large. "It takes two to make real music, a singer and a listener."

She began again. Suddenly, just outside, a very pa.s.sable tenor took up the air just where a tenor should. Jacqueline was startled but not nonplussed; she had been hoping a miracle might occur that day. At seventeen, the age of miracles has not pa.s.sed. She finished her share of the duet with a flourish, and on the last note of his, Percival Channing appeared in the doorway.

"Weren't we splendid together?" she greeted him. "Just like the Victrola. Let's do it again!"

They did it again, and afterwards shook hands in mutual congratulation.

"What you said was quite true--music without some one to share it is only half music," he remarked. "But whom did you say it to?" He looked about him curiously.

"Oh, to my familiars!" She waved an airy hand. "This place is haunted, you know; but the ghosts run when they see a stranger.--You _do_ make unexpected appearances, Mr. Channing!"

"Nothing compared with yours. The banister-rail, riding bareback 'out of the night,' as the romantics love to say--But unexpected? Come now, Miss Jacqueline--" he smiled quizzically--"surely you did expect me to inquire for your health?"

She dimpled. "Yes--but not quite so soon."

"You do yourself an injustice!" He added, with an air of formality, "I have come to make my dinner call. Is your mother at home?"

"You know very well that she's away, because you heard Philip say so last night! There's Jemima, though."

"Is your sister at home?" he asked politely.

"She's making pickle this afternoon, and she's always rather cross when she makes pickle. But I'm sure she'll see you, if you wish."

"I don't," said Channing.

"I thought not," murmured Jacqueline, and made a place for him to sit down beside her. "Look out--you'll squash the baby!"

Channing jumped. "A baby? Beg pardon, infant--" he poked a finger toward young Kitty, who promptly conveyed it to her mouth. "It's biting me," he said plaintively. "Call it off--What are you doing with a baby?"

"I'm winning it away from its mother so that she'll let me keep it for good," said Jacqueline in confidence.