Katrine. Elinor Macartney Lane
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secrete everything concerning it when sober. Sometimes they are sentimental over it, given to self-pity, with even a certain desire for dramatic effects in the statements about themselves. Dulany is still, so far as I can judge, honest. To-day he told me the history of himself, with a gay humor in the telling. He is a descendant, it seems, of the great and the gifted. There are lawless loves behind him, a picturesque ancestry, artistic and, on the wrong side of the blanket, aristocratic as well."
"It is the ancestry of genius," Francis answered.
"It is the ancestry of Katrine Dulany," Dr. Johnston returned, looking at Frank with an untranslatable smile.
A silence fell between them, broken at length by the doctor. "I have decided to take Mr. Dulany to New York with me. I shall keep him near me as long as is necessary. If there is no organic trouble, of which I have some fear, the case will be simple enough, if there is the desire in him to help me. He was keen to have his daughter go with him, but I told him frankly it was better that she should not go. He leans too much on her. He must strengthen his own will; he must learn to rely on himself."
As the doctor spoke it was not of Patrick Dulany that Francis thought, but of Katrine. The people were coming on the twenty-seventh; it was now but the seventeenth. He would have her to himself for ten days, ten days of those caressing eyes, of the charming voice and open adulation, and then? He closed his eyes to whatever lay beyond. He would go away to keep his engagements and forget. He always had forgotten; he would, he thought, be able always to forget.
And the ten days were his; days on the river fishing by the Indian Rocks, or drifting with the current under the dogwoods' white, open faces down to the falls; days with lunches in the rose-garden, and Abt and Schubert songs under the pines at twilight, when their hands touched in the exchange of a flower or a book and lingered in the touching; when their eyes had learned the answering of each other with no spoken word. And the question and answer were the same in the Garden of Eden, before man and woman made their first great mistake and did the thing that was intended for them to do.
For Frank this companionship was unutterably sweet. He enjoyed the small and unimportant events of their intercourse; the way Katrine would save flowers for him to wear, pinning them in his coat with a flushed cheek, or read, with an ecstasy of appreciation, a line from some great writer, marking a meaning he had never found, or laugh at his old riding-clothes, his Southern prejudices, saying once: "To a man of the world like myself, these ideas seem trivial."
On one of these ten precious days the lawyers at Marlton telephoned him to obtain an interview. The business was important, and he started immediately for a conference with them. By the fence opening into the main road from the lodge he found Katrine, in her high-waisted black frock, looking out between the bars of the great swinging gate, with a radiance about her, an inconsequential joy such as he had never seen before in any human being. She had a letter tucked in her breast, and at sight of him she touched it.
"He is getting better, better, better, and the doctor writes he may be quite himself again," she said, with no salutation whatever, her face a wonder to behold.
"I am rejoiced more than I can say, Katrine," he answered.
"You have been so good," she replied, gratefully.
"Thank you," he said, gravely, and though the words were trivial the manner gave them significance.
"Were you coming to call on me?" Katrine inquired.
Frank shook his head. "The lawyers at Marlton are waiting for me."
"Stay with me," she said, opening her hand and showing some nuts, as though they might be an inducement to remain. "It's lonesome. I've finished practising. Stay with me!"
"Duty calls," he answered, looking down at her.
"Put your fingers in your ears! If you once listen to her, you can never hear any other thing in life." She folded her arms on one of the bars of the gate, resting her chin upon them, as she looked up at him. "If you will stay with me," she hesitated, searching her mind for further inducements, "I'll tell you tales of Killybegs and the Black Bradley Brothers, who hid their sister in the 'pocheen' barrel"—she waited a minute—"and of the wedding of Peggy Menalis on the old sea-wall."
He shook his head.
"And I'll sing you a funny little song that ends like this":
[You can play this music (MIDI file) by clicking here. You can view the Lilypond data file for this music by clicking here.]
She sang the tones out sweet and true as a bird. "Is she calling still?" she asked.
"Who?" Frank asked, not following.
"Duty," she answered; and as she spoke she shut her eyes tight and drew the lids together.
"Somehow, I don't hear her so plainly as I did," he returned, with a laugh.
There was another pause, filled by a glance which made his heart throb.
"And if you stayed," she went on, at length, "I could tell you how nice you are."
Frank smiled. "I don't hear her at all now—that Duty person," he said, gayly.
"You are," she hesitated, "a very nice man."
He kept his eyes averted.
"One of the nicest I have ever known."
He fastened his eyes on the Chestnut Ridge.
"The nicest of all," she said, almost in a whisper, her eyes brimming over with laughter.
At the words he sprang to the ground and stood beside her.
"And Duty?" she asked.
"I don't know whether it's Duty or not, but something tells me that there's nothing in all the world of any importance except to stay with you," he answered.
But with his acquiescence there came the veering in her moods for which he had already learned to watch.
"Where were you going?" she asked.
"The lawyers telephoned for me from Marlton."
"They are waiting for you?"
"Yes."
"And you are going to keep them waiting because I asked you to stay?"
"Them or the whole world," he answered.
"King Francis," she said, with a courtesy, "must do no wrong. Here is a flower—a horrible one, it is true, but the only one I have. Wear it, and go to the lawyer men and think of me. Perhaps—this evening—" she hesitated.
"May I come," he said, "early?"
On the evening of the twenty-sixth they sat on the mahogany settle together, in a moonless night, the lilacs and honeysuckle a-bloom around them.
"All those people are coming to-morrow. I wish they were in some other place," he ended, inadequately considering the vehemence of his tone. "Do you, Katrine?" he asked.
She did not answer him.
"Do you, Katrine?" he repeated, insistently.
There was no response.
"Do you wish that we had these ten happy days to live over? Do you wish that they might come again? Will you miss me?"
She turned toward him with a wistful look, letting her eyes rest in his as she spoke. "I am sorry it is over. I shall miss you more than I can say."
"Thank you." And then, with a mixture of whimsicality and earnestness he continued: "Do you remember the talk we had the other day of Josef?"
"Yes."
"When you told me he believed women to have some undeveloped psychic power which, with study, could be developed to revolutionize the world?"
"I didn't