CHAPTER XVTHE PHOTOGRAPH
The days passed rapidly, and Connie and Kitty, as they called each other, seemed to have become one personality, so fast their friendship grew. Connie spent the most of her time at the villa, where the baby was the great attraction. For hours she would hold it, studying its features, and sometimes seeming almost to get a glimpse of something she had seen like them; then the likeness would fade into a mist, leaving her as puzzled as ever.
“She is like Harry,” Kitty said to her one day when she sat with the baby in her lap, “and he is the handsomest man you ever saw. Dr. Kenneth is grand and splendid, and makes you feel that there is a power there for great and noble things,—self-sacrifice, I mean, and all that. Harry is different. I love him dearly, but I don’t believe he would give up as much as Dr. Kenneth. He always gets his way, he is so persuasive, and his eyes and voice talk. He was very kind to me when he heard father had lost everything and could not send me the allowance I’d always had. ‘Served me right,’ he said. I didn’t know what he meant, unless he had married me for my money. When I asked him he kissed me and said I was all the world to him. He told me though, before we weremarried, that he had once loved a beautiful girl, and when I asked, ‘Why didn’t you marry her?’ he said, ‘Because I wanted you.’ Nice, wasn’t it? I have often wondered who that girl was, and wanted to ask him, but think perhaps I’d better not. Would you?”
“No,” Connie answered, mechanically, as she poked the baby’s chin trying to make it laugh.
“Strange you have never seen Harry,” Kitty continued, “but you will soon. I expect him to-morrow night or the next.”
She was going out to drive that morning, with the baby, and asked Connie to go with her; but Connie declined, saying she was not quite well, and would rather stay in the cool, quiet room if Kitty did not mind. The baby was soon ready, and as Kitty came down with her wraps on, she said to Connie: “I have just come across, in one of my trunks, a splendid photo of Harry, taken in Paris two years ago. It is on my table, if you care to see it.”
Connie thanked her, and after the carriage drove from the house, with Kitty kissing her hand to her and the baby’s little face looking out from its lace cap, she went upstairs and into Kitty’s room. On a table some books were lying, and near them a large photograph on an easel. This must be Kitty’s husband, and she went swiftly towards it, then stopped suddenly and put up her hand to wipe the mist she thought must be before her eyes, preventing her from seeing clearly. But there was no mist. She was not mistaken. Kitty’s husband was the man who had wrecked her life. She had a photograph like this one,—smaller,but like it, taken in Paris two years ago. She knew those soft, persuasive eyes, the smile around the mouth, the way the brown hair was parted on the forehead, the erect and rather haughty carriage,—all were his. She could not be mistaken, and for a moment everything around her turned black as she grasped a chair to keep from falling.
“Villain!” she said, when she could speak. “You have wronged Kitty more than you have me, and how dare you come back and face me? I believe I could strike you dead, if it were really you smiling upon me there, instead of your picture.”
Connie was terrible in her anger and resentment. All her love for the man had died out, and what she felt was indignation against him, with an intense pity for Kitty.
“What can I do to spare her? What ought I to do?” she asked herself, as she continued to look at the picture, which each moment grew more like the man who had sat with her on the Alpine bowlder and sworn eternal fidelity.
In a great emergency some minds work rapidly, and Connie’s was one of them. To stay and meet Harry was impossible without betraying herself. Betrayal meant ruin to Kitty, and something in the warm-hearted Southern girl had appealed to her strangely.
“I love her,” she whispered, “and there is the baby named for me, I know now, instead of the city where it was born. Kitty must never know what I do, and I must go away before he comes.”
But where, and how, and what excuse to give, were the problems she must work out alone. Kenneth had left that morning for Boston, where he was to meet some members of the medical faculty. He might be gone two days, and she could not consult him. She could consult no one, and must act for herself. Providentially, as it seemed to her, she found on her return to the farmhouse a letter from her aunt, saying she should sail in a few days for New York, and wished Connie would see that her house was put in order and be there to receive her. “God has surely opened a way, and I’ll go to-day,” Connie thought, as she read the letter, wondering at her calmness when her plans were finally made. Mrs. Stannard was surprised and sorry, and so was Kitty, when she returned from her drive and stopped for a moment at the farmhouse.
“Going before Harry comes? He’ll be here to-night on the late train. I’ve had a telegram,” she said, while Connie bit her lips until the blood nearly came through, the feeling within her was so strong to cry out, “He is a rascal, he is a villain, and that is why I go away.”
“You will come back in a few days,” Kitty said, and Connie replied: “Perhaps; I can’t tell. I will write, and now please leave me to rest a little; I am very tired.”
She wanted to be alone, and think whether to tell Kenneth or not. The hardest of all was leaving him, for life was very sweet with him, even if he couldnever be more to her than a friend, and when she was alone she broke down and cried like a little child.
“Oh, Kenneth! if it could be, but it never can. I had thought he might be dead, and that some time I should know, but he is alive; he is Kitty’s husband and baby’s father, and they must never know, and it can never be. But I will tell you.”
Drying her tears, she began a letter which would tell Kenneth why she was leaving.
“Dear Kenneth,” she began, “I have found out something and must go away before your cousin comes. Kitty showed me his photograph, and he is the man who stands between you and me.He is my husband.”
Something like the sharp cut of a knife pierced her heart as she wrote the words and looked at them with a desire to tear them from the paper.
“I can’t tell you about it,” she went on. “It is too dreadful to recall. I will only say he bade me good-by the night we were married, and I have never seen him since. He called himselfHarold Meurice, and that is why I have never identified him with your cousin. My aunt did not like him and must not know who he really is. No one but you must know, for Kitty’s sake and the baby’s. Oh, Kenneth! It cannot be wicked to tell you, as I say good-by forever, that I love you; but don’t try to see me; it can do no good. I must live my life alone. Don’t tellhimthat you know. Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth! Good-by.
“Connie.”
“Connie.”
“Connie.”
“Connie.”
A great tear fell on the word “Connie” and blotted it, but she could not rewrite the note, and, folding it, she directed it to Kenneth, and taking it to his room placed it where he would see it at once. There was not much time to lose if she would take the three o’clock train, and she accepted Kitty’s offer to help her pack, while Mrs. Stannard, half distraught with the suddenness of Connie’s going, kept wondering why she need take everything, if she were coming back. And Connie could not talk, for the swelling in her throat and the tears she was trying to keep down. She was very white, and there was a drawn look about her mouth and an expression in her eyes which troubled Kitty, and when everything was done and they were waiting for the carriage which was to take Connie to the station, she put her arm caressingly around her neck and said:
“Is it some trouble, Connie, and can I help you?”
“No; oh, no. You least of all,” was Connie’s answer, and putting her head on Kitty’s shoulder, she cried aloud for a moment, then lifting up her head, she said, with an attempt to smile: “Excuse me for the weakness. It is like leaving home, where I have been so happy. I must cry a little.”
Mrs. Stannard, Kitty and the baby went to the station with her in Kitty’s brougham, with the coachman in livery and the blooded horses. Could she have had her choice, she would have preferred going in a wheelbarrow to this fine turnout of the man who had so deceived her. But there was no alternative. Deacon Stannard was away, and she must go with Kitty, whoclung to her as if she were her sister, and whose tears were hot on her cheek when she at last said good-bye.
“Too bad you can’t meet Harry; but you saw his picture, didn’t you?” Kitty said.
“Yes, I saw it,” Connie gasped, springing on the platform of the car so as to hear no more of Harry, whose baby, held high up in Kitty’s arms, was the last thing she saw clearly as the train took her away.
CHAPTER XVIKENNETH AND HARRY
The business which had taken Kenneth to Boston was finished sooner than he expected, and he started for Millville the day after Connie left it. He had made a speech on one of the subjects under discussion, and the older members of the faculty had applauded and pronounced him an honor to the profession. And he had heard their praises and made his speech like one in a dream, wondering how he could have put two sentences together connectedly, and why Connie’s name had not been mixed in with what he said. She was constantly in his thoughts from the time he bade her good-bye and looked into her clear blue eyes, where a shadow of trouble was still brooding, though not so dark as it had been. She was happier since her talk with him by the ledge, and he was more unhappy. What she had told him troubled him continually, filling his brain with conjectures as to the bar there was between them. Away from her, his mind was in a greater turmoil than when with her, and all the way to Boston and after his arrival he was thinking of her, and that shemusttell him on his return what it was. He was not usually nervous, but he was fast becoming so, and during his speech he felt his heart beating so loudly that it seemed to him that those who satnearest must hear it, and with every heart beat there was a thought of Connie, who, it seemed to him, was stretching out her hands and calling to him. But for this he would have stayed in Boston the second night and gone home in the morning, but so morbid and nervous had he grown with a fancy that he was wanted, that he decided to take a late train, which left him in Millville at midnight.
As there was no carriage at that hour, he walked rapidly up the hill till he came near the villa. There was a light in the nursery, and as he passed the house he heard through the open window the baby’s cry and Kitty’s voice soothing it, while mingled with hers was another voice which he recognized as Hal’s.
“Baby has colic, I dare say,” he thought, and his first impulse was to offer his services.
Then he changed his mind as the crying ceased, and went on home, where his mother let him in, marvelling to see him at that hour, and full of the news that Connie had gone.
“Gone! Where? and why?” Kenneth exclaimed, feeling that his nervousness in Boston meant something.
His mother told him all she knew, adding: “She looked queer and appeared queer; I don’t think she really wanted to go. I believe she’ll be back before long.”
There was comfort in this, and after hearing that Harry had come the night before and didn’t seem very well, he bade his mother good-night and went to his room, where the first thing he saw was Connie’snote upon his table. It did not take long to read it, and after it was read he felt for a moment as if he were dying and tried to call for help. But no sound came from his lips, which prickled, as did his whole body.
“This will never do. I must shake it off or I shall die,” he said, groping in the blackness gathering around him. “I must not die. I must live to kill Harry and then shoot myself, and no one but Connie will ever know why.”
This was his thought the entire night. There was a revolver in his drawer, and he took it out and examined it, finding two balls in its chambers. “One for Hal and one for me,” he said as he replaced it in the drawer. He didn’t prickle now at all, nor feel at all, except that he was going to kill Harry, and he waited impatiently for the dawn, which came, rosy and bright and sweet, with the scent of flowers and the hay his father had cut the day before. He saw the smoke curling up from the kitchen chimney of the villa and knew the servants were astir.
“Hal will not be up for hours, maybe; he was always a late riser,” he thought, “and I can’t kill him in bed before Kitty and the baby Connie. I must wait. There are things I must say to him, and Kitty must never know she is not his wife, or why I killed him. I must find him alone.”
He tried to seem natural at breakfast, but his mother saw something was the matter, and charged it to fatigue and Connie’s absence. After breakfast he went to the stable, where Pro and Con whinnied hima welcome, the latter rubbing her head against his arm in token of her gladness at seeing him.
“I shall never feed you again, my pets,” he said, as he gave them double their usual allowance, and then there flitted through his mind a vague wonder as to what would become of them and his father and mother, and what the world would say.
He didn’t care. He was going to kill Harry, and he kept saying it to himself while watching the villa. At last he saw Kitty come out in her big hat and red parasol, with Cindy and the baby cart and the baby in it. They were going for a walk, and he watched them till they were out of sight, and thought what a dainty little body Kitty was, and how pretty she looked in her white gown and big hat with red poppies upon it. But it didn’t matter. He was going to kill Hal, and now was his time. He found him in what had been fitted up as his den. Evidently he had not been up long, for he was in his dressing-gown and slippers, and had the air of one just out of bed. He was, however, smoking a cigarette, and on the table beside him were glasses, with soda water, lemons, brandy, whisky and sugar.
As Kenneth appeared in the door he sprang up, and, extending his hand, exclaimed in his old, cheery way: “Hallo, Ken! I take it very nice in you to call so soon. When did you get home? Sorry you found meen dishabille. Fact is, baby had stomach ache, and kept me awake. She’s gone out with Kitty. Great baby, that, and named for your Connie.”
His flippancy had irritated Kenneth from the start,and the mention of Connie made him furious. Had he no sense of decency? It seemed not, and Kenneth’s face was white and hard as he advanced a few steps and stood before his cousin like an avenging nemesis.
Something in his attitude and expression made Hal stare at him in wonder, as he said, “What is it, Ken, that you seem so savage, as if you had come to eat me?”
“I haven’t come to eat you, but to kill you!” Kenneth replied, producing a revolver and holding it within a few feet of Harry, who staggered back into his chair, sure that Kenneth was mad.
“Kill me!” he gasped. “For what?”
“For bigamy,” Kenneth answered. “For blighting the life of the sweetest girl that ever lived, and degrading another.”
He was certainly mad, and Harry moved a little out of the range of the pistol, which followed and covered him.
“Ken,” he began, “you are crazy. I am no bigamist. I have never married but one girl, and that is Kitty.”
“It’s a lie,” Kenneth roared, while there began to steal into his mind a ray of hope that either there was a mistake or Harry was not the man. “What about Connie Elliott, whom you married in Interlaken? Have you forgotten her so soon?”
Harry drew a deep breath of relief and tried to become his old easy self. But it was hard work. Therewas a good deal that was crooked to explain, and the revolver was dangerously near to him.
“Does Connie think that of me?” he asked; and Kenneth replied, “She thinks you a villain.”
“I am a villain, double dyed, but not so bad as that,” Harry said. “Take a chair, Ken; take two chairs, if you like, but drop that murderous thing you are holding under my nose, I can’t talk with it in front of me. It might go off, you know.”
There was a good deal of the winsome Hal about him, and Kenneth began to feel its influence, and held the pistol at his side, but would not sit down.
“I may shoot you yet, and can do it better standing,” he said. “Begin at once, and be sure you tell the truth. I shall know if you are lying, and my pistol will not miss its mark.”
“Heavens and earth!” Hal exclaimed. “Do you think I can lie with a loaded revolver in front of me, and you looking black as thunder? No, sir! I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
He was getting flippant again, and Kenneth scowled as he began: “You remember the blow-out when Pondy rolled under the table.”
Kenneth nodded and Hal went on: “Poor little beggar! He died last year in London with delirium tremens. I happened to be in the same hotel and was with him at the last, and just before he died he said to me, ‘I am going to enshoy myshelf immenshly,’ and perhaps he is, who knows? I don’t think our Heavenly Father holds grudges and blows out fellow’s brains for something he never did. Do you?”
“Leave Pondy and go on!” was Kenneth’s stern reply; and Hal went on: “You remember Pondy toasted Constance Elliott as the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and you were so mad to hear her name from his lips that you smashed a cut-glass tumbler. Well, Pondy said she was a great heiress, or would be if some mines panned out as they were likely to do. About that time I was thinking of heiresses, for I wanted money badly,—had a lot of debts on hand. Kitty Haynes was in my mind the prettiest girl I’d ever met, but I wanted to see this Connie. I went abroad, you know; heard where she was and found her. I’d got into a kind of scrape in Paris and seen my name rather unpleasantly conspicuous in the newspapers, and just for a lark I thought I’d change it for a while. Our family name years ago wasMeurice, and my second name Harold, so I put the two together and wasHarold Meurice, from New York, which had a more aristocratic sound than plain Harry Morris, Millville, smelling of factories and things. I needn’t tell you that I look well and talk well.”
“The devil is not your equal,” Kenneth interposed, and Hal continued, with the most imperturbable good humor.
“I don’t believe he is when I lay myself out, as I did with Connie. I made love to her for six weeks, and found her like Barkis,—’willin’! There, there! Keep that pistol down. I did not mean any disrespect. She was an innocent, simple-hearted girl, who had been in a convent school so long that she knewnothing of the world, certainly not of men like me, and she believed every word I said. Her aunt was a regular she-dragon, who disliked and distrusted me, and did her best to keep her niece from seeing me alone, and encouraged her marrying a measly count, whom she afterwards took herself. At last I received a telegram from Tom Haynes, saying he and Kitty were in Paris, and wanted me to join them. By this time I was pretty far gone, and felt that I could not give Connie up. There was a walk we had once taken out towards Lauterbrunnen, and we took it that last afternoon of my stay in Interlaken. I told her I was going away the next morning, but should soon come back, and in the meantime I wanted to bind her to me, so that her meddling aunt could not separate us, or persuade her to take the count. I think the devil put the plan into my head; he has helped me a good many times.”
Kenneth nodded approvingly, and Harry went on: “I suggested that we be married, and when she asked how we could without priest or witness, I did some tall lying. I told her that the marriage ceremony was far more simple to be binding than she thought; that if we pledged ourselves to each other in the words of the Prayer Book it was lawful. I was a lawyer and I knew and cited some cases I had known, and talked law and civil law, and said that as a lawyer I could marry myself and all that, until her brain was in a whirl and she believed all I said,—lies, of course. Oh, pray don’t hold that ugly thing that way. It might go off, and this pretty room be spattered withmy brains and you tried for murder. I meant no harm to the girl. I only wanted to have her believe she was mine, for, with her yielding nature, I feared her aunt’s influence. There was a big bowlder by a brook which had its source in the mountains back of us, and there we sat down and pledged our faith to each other. I, Harold take thee, Connie, and so on. You know how it goes. ‘You are mine now,’ I said, ‘just as truly as if a bishop had heard our vows, but when I come to claim you we will, of course, have the ceremony in public, to satisfy your aunt.’ There was a troubled look on her face, whose expression I shall never forget, as she said to me, ‘It does not seem a marriage with no prayer in it. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together.’”
“Oh,” Kenneth groaned, tightening his hold on the pistol and recalling the little girl who had once said that prayer at his side.
“There you are again, wanting to shoot me,” Hal exclaimed, “and I deserve it, and wouldn’t mind much, if it were not for Kitty and the baby. I couldn’t say ‘Our Father’ with her to save my life, but she said it with her head bowed and the fading light falling upon the sheen of her fair hair. Now youaregoing to kill me!” and Hal sprang from his chair as Kenneth raised his right hand.
“For Heaven’s sake throw that thing out of the window, if you want me to keep my senses.”
“Sit down, and don’t be a coward as well as a knave. I shall not kill you till your story is ended. Go on. You made her think she was your wife?”
“Yes,” Hal answered, returning to his chair and beginning to mix a cocktail, which he took down at one gulp. “Must brace my nerves,” he said. “Yes, I made her believe it was lawful, and bound her to secrecy till I came to claim her. I left the next morning and have never seen her since. I found Tom in Paris with Kitty, who was so pretty and piquant and full of life that I began to compare her with Connie, to whom I meant to be faithful, and probably should have been but for a rumor which came from her aunt’s banker that she had lost all her money and was dependent upon her aunt. I took some pains to verify the truth of the report, with a result that I believed it, and then came the tug between Connie with nothing and Kitty with thousands. Kitty won, and I at once wrote to Connie confessing the truth, even to my real name, and that I was your cousin. I called myself a liar, a blackguard, a villain, and if you can think of any worse name I called myself that. I hinted, too, that Kitty was very much in love with me, that her brother knew it, and that with his Kentucky blood I feared what he might do if I left her. In short, I wrote so pathetic a letter that it actually drew tears to my eyes as I read it, and pitied myself for being between two fires, or loves. I loved Connie, I loved Kitty, who was on the ground and won. Why my letter never reached Connie, I don’t know. I sent it to Interlaken, but she must have left before it reached her. Probably it was forwarded from one post to another and was finally lost, as letters not infrequently are on the Continent. When I was marriedI had a paper sent to her through her aunt’s banker in Paris. I named our baby for her, and though I love Kitty dearly, there is not a day of my life that I do not think of Connie. It was a shock when I heard she was here; but as Kitty wrote how fond they were of each other, and how Connie took to the baby, I concluded she had forgiven me, and was rather anxious to see her again. I hear that her money, instead of being lost, has increased until she is really an heiress, while Kitty’s father has lost everything. Serves me right, though the Lord only knows how I am ever to pay my debts. Their name is legion. Perhaps you’d better shoot me and put me out of my trouble. I’ve told you the truth. I have repented in sackcloth and ashes of that episode in Switzerland. I have even been on my knees before my Creator, and what more can I do?”
Kenneth came near smiling at this assertion, which was so like Harry, and his hand relaxed its hold on the revolver. In his bitter anger he had scarcely noticed Harry’s personal appearance, but he could see now how changed he was. His face was flushed and thin, and there were dark hollows about his eyes, telling of ill-health or dissipation, or both. But he was still too indignant to ask any questions, and he had seen a red parasol at the gate, and knew Kitty had returned with the baby. In a moment she was in the room, bright and breezy, delighted to see Kenneth and solicitous about her husband, whose hair she smoothed as she asked if he had had any breakfast.
“He is a little lazy this morning,” she said to Kenneth.“Baby had colic last night and kept him awake, and then I don’t think he looks quite well, do you? He is positively feverish,” and she took one of his hands in hers and began to rub it. “Grippe, maybe. Please give him something and feel his pulse. How fast it beats.”
“I am glad I didn’t kill him,” Kenneth thought, as he watched her and saw her anxiety for her husband.
He had slipped the revolver into his pocket, but he could not then touch Hal’s hand to count his pulse, and Hal understood it, and, gently pushing Kitty aside, mixed himself some brandy and water, saying, as he drank it:
“Never mind, Kitty. I don’t need medicine; this is better.”
Suddenly it occurred to Kitty to ask if Kenneth were not surprised to find Connie gone.
“Yes,” he said; “but I hope to have her back very soon.”
“And to think, she went just as Harry was coming home, and he never saw her.”
A quick, telegraphic look passed between the two young men which Kitty did not see, and would not have understood if she had. The baby had been brought in by this time, and Kitty put it on Hal’s lap for Kenneth to see how fatherly he looked.
“I am so glad her name is Connie,” she said. “Funny, Harry chose it without knowing the real Connie. Baby has not yet been christened, and I mean to have the big Connie her sponsor when she comes back. You think it will be soon?”
“I hope so,” Kenneth answered, and then, not caring to hear the subject further discussed, he said good morning, and went out, thinking to himself again, “I am glad I didn’t shoot him.”
CHAPTER XVIILIFE AND DEATH
Connie was in her aunt’s house seeing that it was made ready for the count and countess, who were to arrive in theEtruria. Never since the Interlaken days had her heart ached as it was aching now, with its load of pain and horror. Kenneth was lost forever, and the man she had trusted was his cousin and the pretended husband of Kitty. She always shuddered when she thought of bright, sunny-faced Kitty and the baby. They must never know and I must never see them again, or Kenneth, she thought. “He is home by this time,” she said to herself on the morning after Kenneth’s meeting with Harry. “He has read my note. I wonder what he thinks and how he will meet his cousin.” Then there came over her a great longing to see him once more, to hear his voice, to know what he thought, and if there were any way out of it.
This idea, that Kenneth might in some way “get her out of it,” had never occurred to her until that moment when the maid entered bringing her a card.
“Kenneth!” she almost screamed, but smothered the sound. “Where is he? Show him up,” she said, and in a moment she was folded in Kenneth’s arms.
Forgetful of everything except that he was there,she had gone forward to meet him with a glad cry, and had not resisted when he held her closely to him and, kissing her passionately, said: “My Connie, my own at last! There is nothing between us, and I have come to tell you.”
He could not wait, after his interview with Hal, but had taken the first train for New York, reaching the city too late to see Connie that night. But at the earliest possible hour in the morning he had found her, and was kissing her again and again, and telling her it was all right, and she lay passive in his arms, and did not ask for an explanation. He said it was all right, and she knew it was, and could wait until he was ready to explain. He omitted the revolver part, but told the story much as Hal had told it, while Connie listened with surprise and vexation at her own credulity in believing that the rite was valid.
“I was very foolish, almost imbecile,” she said, “or I should have known better. But I was utterly ignorant of law or marriage contracts, and he was so persuasive, and I believed he knew everything. I never received his letter; if I had, it would have saved me much pain; but perhaps I might not have gone to the farmhouse, andyou——” she added, nestling closer to him, while he rained kisses upon her upturned face.
No words of betrothal passed between them. She knew she was his, and he knew he was hers, and the day passed rapidly, with nothing to mar their happiness except the knowing that Kenneth must go back to his patients, whom he had left too long.
“I shall come again soon and many times, and in September you will be my wife,” he said at parting, and with this thought to cheer him he took the night train for Millville, where he was sorely needed.
Harry was very ill. His constitution, which was never very strong, had been undermined by dissipation, of which Kitty suspected nothing. She knew of absences from her of two or three days on business, he said, and that these absences were always followed by terrible headaches and a painful state of nervousness. Added to thesesprees, and they were nothing less, were his financial troubles. He had counted on Kitty’s money and lost it, and had very little of his own left. He loved luxury and must have it at any cost. His house and furniture were mortgaged for all they were worth, and he had no means of paying the three thousand dollars to Jones, unless some speculations in New York turned out favorably. He had sent Kitty on in advance, while he stayed to try his luck again. He tried it and lost, and was a totally ruined man when he came at last to his handsome villa, knowing that payment would be required in the autumn from Jones, at least, if from no one else. He dreaded him the most, for failure to pay him meant trouble for his uncle, who had endorsed his note. This haunted him constantly, and it was more than the baby’s colic which had kept him awake the night of Kenneth’s return. He had not slept for three nights, and his encounter with Kenneth had added to his nervousness, which finally culminated in a violent chill, which came on a few hours after Kennethleft him. In great alarm, Kitty summoned the doctor, who prescribed some remedies, and said, as he gave directions for their use:
“I am going to New York to-night and shall not be here to-morrow.”
“Oh, Dr. Ken,” Kitty exclaimed. “What if he should shake again and you gone? Must you go?”
“Yes, he must,” Harry answered for him. “I am all right. He is going to see Connie. Give her my respects,—yes, my love, if Kitty don’t mind. Good-by, old chap. Almost a pity you didn’t take aim.”
This he said too low for Kitty to hear, and these were the last really rational words Kenneth ever heard him speak. He did shake many times while Kenneth was gone, and the chills were followed by a raging fever, which was delirium when Kenneth returned. They had sent for Dr. Catherin, and all which the skill of the two doctors could do was done, but nothing checked the fever, which was scorching Harry’s life-blood and taking compound interest for all his excesses. Sometimes he was perfectly quiet, but oftener he talked of things poor Kitty could not understand, and Kenneth only in part. Sometimes it was of Monte Carlo, where he had played heavily and lost, and again of places he had visited in Paris and London, of which he did not wish Kitty or his aunt to know. Then it was of the Alps and the bowlder and the prayer she said, and which he could not say, and the letter she did not get, but which he certainly wrote, and of the revolver which he seemed to think was always aimed at his heart.
“I tell you it is there,” he would say, when Kenneth tried to disabuse his mind of the idea. “Pondy is holding it, and by and by he’ll pull the trigger, and presto, we two will be enjoying ourshelves immenshely.”
His laugh was terrible, and Kitty would stop her ears to shut out the sound.
“Somebody has tried to kill him,” she said to Kenneth, whose conscience smote him a little, but who made no reply.
Now that Connie was his and Hal so low, he felt only pity for him and ministered to him with all a brother’s care, but with no good result. As the summer days grew hotter the fever ran higher and higher, until at last neither Dr. Catherin nor Kenneth gave any hope to Kitty, whose thoughts turned to Connie as a friend she would like to have with her.
“Do you think she would come?” she said to Kenneth, who answered:
“I don’t really know. I’ll telegraph to her for you.”
That afternoon he sent a telegram to Connie, saying:
“Hal is dying. Kitty wants you. Come if you can.
Kenneth.”
Kenneth.”
Kenneth.”
Kenneth.”
He was right in his conjecture that a message from him would be more effectual than one from Kitty. It found her in her aunt’s house, tired of everything, and with a dread that the count, while treating her as if he were her father, and professing the utmost affection for his wife, might again say words to herto which she could not listen. If Hal were dying, and Kitty wanted her, duty and inclination bade her go, and the morning after she received the telegram she was on her way to Millville. She was not expected on that train, and as there was no one to meet her, Jehu and Henriet took her up the hill to the villa, on the doors of which knots of crape were tied.
“He’s dead!” she exclaimed, while Jehu rejoined:
“My land! so he is. I knew he was crazy as a bear.”
Kenneth saw her alight, and went to meet her, taking her at once to Kitty, who for hours had sat still and dry eyed, with a look on her face Kenneth did not like. The moment she saw Connie and heard her sympathetic “Poor little Kitty,” she threw herself into her arms with a storm of sobs and tears, which cooled her blood and softened the hard lines about her mouth. A little later and the two stood together by the dead, Kitty lamenting that Connie could not have seen him in his manly beauty, and not as he was now, thin and worn, but with a look of peace on his face. Connie’s conscience pricked her a good deal for the deception she was practicing, and but for Kenneth she might have told Kitty a part of the story.
“Better not,” he said. “The secret in all its details is known only to you and me; let us keep it sacred. You could never tell all, and even a part would distress her.”
Connie kept her secret and soothed and comfortedthe stricken Kitty, and cared for the baby, which came to her as readily as to its mother or Cindy.
“And you will stay with me, if I stay here?” Kitty said to her, when they returned from burying Hal beside his mother in the old yard behind the church. “I don’t know what I am to do. Tom is in California, and father has lost everything and is boarding in Lexington, and this house is so big for baby and me.”
She clung like a child to Connie, who replied: “I’ll stay until matters are adjusted.”
“What matters?” Kitty asked, wholly unsuspicious of the mortgages and notes which would soon come up before her, making her cry out, in anguish: “Oh, Harry, I never dreamed of this. I wish I had died before I knew it.”
CHAPTER XVIIIWINDING UP
So far as Hal’s debts were concerned, it was a rapid progress. He died in August, and promptly on the first day of September Jones appeared at the farmhouse, with his note for three thousand dollars. He had heard rumors of Harry’s insolvency, but it didn’t concern him. The deacon was on his paper, and that girl, who, he heard, had a big gold mine in the West, paying hundreds a day. She was bound as well as the deacon, and he wondered why the latter should have grown so old and worried-looking. “To be sure, paying the money might mean his farm and house, but the girl won’t allow that. They say she’s to marry Dr. Ken,” he thought, as he rode up to the farmhouse. Connie stayed mostly with Kitty, but this morning she was at the barn watching the cats eating their milk in the long trough, and talking to the deacon, who tried to seem natural, although his heart was very sad. He knew that Harry had scarcely left enough to pay his funeral expenses, and the note lay heavily upon his mind. He knew Jones, and expected him that day, but not quite so early, and he groaned aloud as he saw him hitching his old white horse at the gate and then come smilingly up the walk, while he and Connie went to meet him.
“Good-mornin’, deacon. Good-mornin’, miss. I am in luck to find you both together,” he said. “There’s that little matter of three thousand, with interest, lent to young Morris, with you two as sureties, and it is due to-day. I hear he wasn’t worth a red, and lived like a prince, with three or four niggers and a coachman, who wore a high hat and brass buttons, and the widder keeps up the same style, though the Lord knows how she is goin’ to pay for it all, with them other debts. She or’to be economical, but what can you expect from a Southern woman, who has never let one hand wash the other, and is too big for common folks.”
“If you mean Mrs. Harold Morris,” Connie said, stepping up to him, “I’d like you to speak more respectfully of her. As long as the creditors get their money, it’s none of their business what she does. They will be paid. You will be paid;—not this minute, of course. I don’t keep three thousand dollars lying loose in my pocket, but it is in the bank, and you are not to trouble Deacon Stannard. It is my matter.”
She motioned him off with an imperative gesture, which made him feel almost as if she had struck him.
“Beg pardon,” he said, walking away from her. “I allus thought you’d have to pay it. Let me know when you hear from the bank.”
He unhitched Whitey and drove away, while the deacon sat down upon the horse-block, white and trembling.
“Connie,” he stammered, “it don’t seem rightthat you should pay, but you don’t know how it has troubled me since I knew the boy had nothing. It has kep’ me awake nights, for Mary and me is too old to find another place.”
“Nor will you have to,” Connie answered. “The mine is paying well, and what is money good for except to help you, who have been so good to me? I’ve more than the mine. I am really quite a rich woman, thanks to you, who cared so well for my interests, restraining Auntie when she would have spent everything. I know all about it,—what leeches we were,—and wonder I had anything left. I am reaping the benefit of the mine investment.”
The deacon could scarcely speak, except to call her “an angel of mercy.” And she was one, not only to him, but to Kitty, who was nearly frantic when she learned the state of affairs, and bills of every kind came in from Millville and Albany, Rocky Point and Boston and New York,—gambling debts with the rest, and some of a more questionable kind, which Kenneth promptly burned.
“Let them sue,” he said; “they can get nothing.”
“But the house and furniture,—how much is it all worth?” Connie asked. “You know I am a simpleton, and wholly ignorant of what is to be done. How much will free the house and give Kitty and baby a home?”
Kenneth told her about how much, but added: “Kitty will have to live; the house will not support her.”
Connie had not thought of that, and looked troubleduntil Kenneth, who had been thinking seriously on the matter for some days, said to her: “How would you like to live in the villa,—with me, I mean? We are to be married soon, and it would be better to have a home of our own than to stay with father and mother. Kitty and the baby can live with us.”
Connie hesitated a moment. She had never quite forgiven Harry for his deception, and could not at once make up her mind to live in a house which had been his. Still, she could be happy anywhere with Kenneth, and it would be a home for Kitty. It was a beautiful place, with every modern improvement possible in the country. Harry was dead. He had tried to make amends, he was sorry for what he had done, he had named his baby for her, and— Yes, she would live there, she said at last, and Kitty should be their care until something better presented itself for her. This decision was received by Kitty with a burst of glad tears and regrets for the past, when thousands had been spent so recklessly, with a belief that there were thousands more to take their place, and now she was poorer than the poorest factory girl in Millville. She could not go to the obscure boarding-house where her father lived, and Tom had no place for her. She must stay where she was, with Kenneth and Connie, who were to be married soon in New York, for the countess would have it so.
She was not pleased when she first heard of Connie’s engagement to Kenneth. “She ought to do better than marry a common country doctor,” she said. But when she saw him, her opinion underwenta rapid change. He was a country doctor still, but not a common man, either in physique or manners, and she felt that Connie had chosen well. Of the man who called himself Harold Meurice she never spoke to Connie. He had passed out of her knowledge, and his secret was buried in the churchyard at The 4 Corners. The count, grown wiser, and perhaps fonder of his wife, with two years of matrimony, continued to treat Connie in a most fatherly manner, so that her few weeks’ stay with her aunt was very pleasant, enlivened as they were by daily letters from Kenneth and two or three a week from Kitty, who was longing for her to return.
The wedding, which took place in October, was a very quiet affair, with only a few friends of the countess present, and Dr. Catherin, who happened to be in the city. Kenneth was too popular a physician, and there were too many hands stretching out to him for help, to allow of an extended trip; and the last of the month, when the hills and mountains were putting on their autumnal dress, and the country was almost as beautiful as the early summer time, he brought his bride to what was henceforth to be known as the Stannard Place, instead of the Morris Villa. Kitty was there to receive them, very lovely and sweet in her widow’s weeds, and yielding her place as mistress of the house willingly and gracefully. She knew she was a dependant, for after matters were settled there was nothing left to her but the memory of her short married life and the baby Connie, who was the pet of the household and in a fair way to bespoiled until a year later, when a little boy came to divide the honors with her.
Kitty fancied there was a look in his face like her dead husband, and said so to Connie, adding: “Would you mind calling him Harold? It is such a pretty name!”
She could not guess how Connie recoiled from the thought of calling her baby for the man who had caused her so much pain, or that she would sooner give him the old-fashioned name of Ephraim, for the grandfather who came two or three times a day to see him, and with his wife was growing young in the happiness crowning his declining years.
“Yes, Harold is a pretty name,” she said, “but baby is to be Kenneth Elliott.”
It is more than a year since the baby came, and he is now a sturdy boy, disputing his rights with his cousin Connie, a little, delicate, timid girl, who always gives up to him unless his mother interferes to prevent what might become tyranny but for her judicious treatment. Should you be at The 4 Corners some wintry day when the sleighing is good and the sun is shining warm and bright, you may perhaps see the sled on which the first Connie once rode in the mud, and on which little Connie now frequently rides in the snow, with Dr. Kenneth in front. He has built sides and back to it, and sometimes, when the day is very fine, baby Ken sits on the sled, holding in his little hands the lines his grandmother knit, and to which he occasionally gives a pull, with the only words he can fully master, “Do on,” to his willinghorse. Sometimes Connie is with them, and always a dog, whom they call Chance, and who is much like the other Chance, whose grave is on the ledge where Kenneth had his Christmas tree and Connie gave herself to him.
They are very happy, Kenneth and Connie, and no shadow, however slight, has ever arisen to dim their married life. Kenneth is constantly gaining in his profession, and many offers have been made him for a more lucrative position in larger cities, but he prefers to stay where he is. His father and mother are there, and it was there Connie came to him, stirring, as he believes, all the good impulses which have made him what he is. He likes the country, and says he shall spend his life there. And now there is nothing more to tell of the story commenced on the summer morning, when Jehu and Henriet took us up the long hill and we sat on the church steps at what was once and is still, in a way, the famous 4 Corners.