Kennedy Square

CHAPTER XVIII

With the breaking of the dawn Harry's mind was made up. Before the sun was an hour high he had dressed hurriedly, stolen downstairs so as to wake no one, and closing the front door softly behind him had taken the long path through the park in the direction of the wharves. Once there, he made the rounds of the shipping offices from Light Street wharf to the Falls—and by the time St. George had finished dressing—certainly before he was through his coffee—had entered the name of Henry Rutter on two sets of books—one for a position as supercargo and the other, should nothing better be open, as common seaman. All he insisted upon was that the ship should sail at once. As to the destination, that was of no consequence, nor did the length of the voyage make any difference. He remembered that his intimate friend, Gilbert, had some months before gone as supercargo to China, his father wanting him to see something of the world; and if a similar position were open he could, of course, give references as to his character—a question the agent asked him—but, then, Gilbert had a father to help him. Should no such position be available, he would ship before the mast, or serve as cook or cabin-boy, or even scullion—but he would not live another day or hour dependent on his dear Uncle George, who had impoverished himself in his behalf.

He selected the sea instead of going into the army as a common soldier because the sea had always appealed to him. He loved its freedom and its dangers. Then again, he was young and strong—could climb like a cat—sail a boat—swim—Yes!—the sea was the place! He could get far enough away behind its horizons to hide the struggle he must make to accomplish the one purpose of his life—the earning of his debt.

Filled with this idea he began to perfect his plans, determining to take no one into his confidence until the day before the ship was ready to sail. He would then send for his mother and Alec—bring them all down to St. George's house and announce his intention. That was the best and wisest way. As for Kate—who had now been at home some weeks—he would pour out his heart to her in a letter. This was better than an interview, which she would doubtless refuse:—a letter she would be obliged to read and, perhaps, answer. As for his dear Uncle George—it would be like tearing his heart out to leave him, but this wrench had to be met and it was best to do it quickly and have done with it.

When this last thought took possession a sudden faintness crept over him. How could he leave his uncle? What St. George was to him no one but himself knew—father, friend, comrade, adviser—standard of men and morals—all and more was his beloved uncle. No thought of his heart but he had given him, and never once had he been misunderstood. He could put his arm about his uncle's neck as he would about his mother's and not be thought effeminate or childish. And the courtesy and dignity and fairness with which he had been treated; and the respect St. George showed him—and he only a boy: compelling his older men friends to do the same. Never letting him feel that any foolish act of his young life had been criticised, or that any one had ever thought the less of him because of them.

Breakfast over, during which no allusion was made either to what St. George had accomplished at the conference of creditors the night before, or to Harry's early rising—the boy made his way into the park and took the path he loved. It was autumn, and the mild morning air bespoke an Indian summer day. Passing beneath the lusty magnolias, which flaunted here and there their glossy leaves, he paused under one of the big oaks, whose branches, stripped of most of their foliage, still sheltered a small, vine-covered arbor where he and Kate had often sat—indeed, it was within its cool shade that he had first told her of his love. Here he settled himself on a small wooden bench outside the retreat and gave his thoughts full rein—not to repine, nor to revive his troubles, which he meant to put behind him—but to plan out the letter he was to write Kate. This must be clear and convincing and tell the whole story of his heart. That he might empty it the better he had chosen this place made sacred by her presence. Then again, the park was generally deserted at this hour—the hour between the passing of the men of business and the coming of the children and nurses—and he would not be interrupted—certainly not before this arbor—one off by itself and away from passers-by.

He seated himself on the bench, his eyes overlooking the park. All the hours he had passed with Kate beneath the wide-spreading trees rose in his mind; the day they had read aloud to each other, her pretty feet tucked under her so that the dreadful ants couldn't touch her dainty stockings; the morning when she was late and he had waited and fumed stretching minutes into hours in his impatience; that summer night when the two had hidden behind the big oak so that he could kiss her good-night and none of the others see.

With these memories stirring, his letter was forgotten, and his head dropped upon his breast, as if the weight of all he had lost was greater than he could bear. Grasping his walking-stick the tighter he began tracing figures in the gravel, his thoughts following each line. Suddenly his ears caught the sound of a quick step—one he thought strangely familiar.

He raised his eyes.

Kate had passed him and had given no sign of her presence!

He sprang from his seat:

“Kate!—KATE!—Are you going to treat me as my father treated me! Don't, please!—You'll never see me again—but don't cut me like that: I have never done anything but love you!”

The girl came to a halt, but she did not turn her head, nor did she answer.

“Please, Kate—won't you speak to me? It may be the last time I shall ever see you. I am going away from Kennedy Square. I was going to write you a letter; I came out here to think of what I ought to say—”

She raised her head and half turned her trembling body so that she could see his face, her eyes reading his.

“I didn't think you wanted me to speak to you or you would have looked up.”

“I didn't see you until you had passed. Can't we sit down here?—no one will see us.”

She suffered him to take her hand and lead her to the bench. There she sat, her eyes still searching his face—a wondering, eager look, discovering every moment some old remembered spot—an eyebrow, or the line at the corner of the mouth, or the round of the cheek—each and every one bringing back to her the days that were past and gone never to return.

“You are going away?” she said at last—“why? Aren't you happy with Uncle George? He would miss you, I am sure.” She had let the scarf fall from her shoulders as she spoke, bringing into view the full round of her exquisite throat. He had caught its flash, but he could not trust himself to look the closer.

“Not any more than I shall miss him,” he rejoined sadly; “but he has lost almost everything he had in the bank failure and I cannot have him support me any longer—so I am going to sea.”

Kate started forward and laid her hand on his wrist: “To sea!—in a ship! Where?” The inquiry came with such suddenness and with so keen a note of pain in her voice that Harry's heart gave a bound. It was not St. George's losses then she was thinking of—she was thinking of him! He raised his eyes quickly and studied her face the closer; then his heart sank again. No!—he was wrong—there was only wonder in her gaze; only her usual curiosity to know every detail of what was going on around her.

With a sigh he resumed his bent position, talking to the end of his walking-stick tracing figures in the gravel: “I shall go to Rio, probably,” he continued in the same despondent tone—“or China. That's why I called after you. I sail day after to-morrow—Saturday at the latest—and it may be a good many years before I get back again, and so I didn't want to go, Kate, without telling you that—that—I forgive you for everything you have done to me—and whether you forgive me or not, I have kept my promises to you, and I will always keep them as long as I live.”

“What does dear Uncle George think of it?” She too was addressing the end of the stick; gaining time to make up her mind what to do and say. The old wound, of course, could not be opened, but she might save him and herself from fresh ones.

“He doesn't know I am going; nobody knows but you. I have been a curse to every one who has been kind to me, and I am going now where there will be nobody but strangers about me. To leave Uncle George breaks my heart, but so does it break my heart to leave my precious mother and dear old Alec, who cries all the time and has now taken to his bed, I hear.”

She waited, but her name was not added to the list, nor did he raise his head.

“I deserve it all, I suspect,” he went on, “or it wouldn't be sent to me; but it's over now. If I ever come back it will be when I am satisfied with myself; if I never come back, why then my former hard luck has followed me—that's all. And now may I talk to you, Kate, as I used to do sometimes?” He straightened up, threw down his cane, and turned his shoulders so he could look her squarely in the eyes. “If I say anything that offends you you can get up and walk away and I won't follow you, nor will I add another word. You may never see me again, and if it is not what I ought to say, you can forget it all when I am gone. Kate!”—he paused, and for a moment it was all he could do to control himself. “What I want to tell you first is this—that I haven't had a happy day or hour since that night on the stairs in my father's house. Whether I was right or wrong I don't know; what followed is what I couldn't help, but that part I don't regret, and if any one should behave to you as Willits did I would do it over again. What I do regret is the pain it has caused you. And now here comes this awful sorrow to Uncle George, and I am the cause of that too.”

She turned her face quickly, the color leaving her cheeks as if alarmed. Had he been behaving badly again? But he swept it away with his next sentence.

“You see, my father refused to pay any of the bills I owed and Uncle George paid them for me—and I can't have that go on a day longer—certainly not now.”

Kate's shoulders relaxed. A sigh of relief spent itself; Harry was still an honest gentleman, whatever else he might have done!

“And now comes the worst of it, Kate.” His voice sank almost to a whisper, as if even the birds should not hear this part of his confession: “Yes—the worst of it—that I have had all this to suffer—all this misery to endure—all these insults of my father to bear without you! Always, before, we have talked things out together; then you were shut away and I could only look up at your windows and rack my brain wondering where you were and what you were doing. It's all over now—you love somebody else—but I shall never love anybody else: I can't! I don't want to! You are the last thing I kiss before I close my eyes; I shut them and kiss only the air—but it is your lips I feel; and you are the first thing I open them upon when I wake. It will always be so, Kate—you are my body, my soul, and my life. I shall never have you again, I know, but I shall have your memory, and that is sweeter and more precious to me than all else in the world!”

“Harry!” There was a strange cadence in her voice—not of self-defence—not of recrimination—only of overwhelming pity: “Don't you think that I too have had my troubles? Do you think it was nothing to me to love you as I did and have—” She stopped, drew in her breath as if to bolster up some inward resolution, and then with a brave lift of the head added: “No, I won't go into that—not to-day.”

“Yes—tell me all of it—you can't hurt me more than you have done. But you may be right—no, we won't talk of that part of it. And now, Kate, I won't ask you to stay any longer; I am glad I saw you—it was better than writing.” He leaned forward: “Let me look into your face once more, won't you?—so I can remember the better.... Yes—the same dear eyes—and the hair growing low on the temples, and the beautiful mouth and—No—I sha'n't forget—I never have.” He rose from his seat and held out his hand: “You'll take it, won't you?—just once—Good-by!”

She had not moved, nor had she grasped his hand; her face was still towards him, her whole frame tense, the tears crowding to the lids.

“Sit down, Harry. I can't let you go like this. Tell me something more of where you are going. Why must you go to sea? Can't you support yourself here?—isn't there something you can get to do? I will see my father and find out if—”

“No, you won't.” There was a note almost of defiance in his voice—one she had never heard before. “I am through with accepting favors from any living man. Hereafter I stand in my own shoes, independent of everybody. My father is the only person who has a right to give me help, and as he refuses absolutely to do anything more than pay my board, I must fall back on myself. I didn't see these things in this same way when Uncle George paid my debts, or even when he took me into his home as his guest, but I do now.”

Something gave a little bound in Kate's heart. This manly independence was one of the things she had in the old days hoped was in him. What had come over her former lover, she wondered.

“And another thing, Kate”—she was listening eagerly—she could not believe it was Harry who was speaking—“if you were to tell me this moment that you loved me again and would marry me, and I still be as I am to-day—outlawed by my father and dependent on charity—I would not do it. I can't live on your money, and I have none of my own. Furthermore, I owe dear Uncle George his money in such a way that I can never pay it back except I earn it, and that I can't do here. To borrow it of somebody else to pay him would be more disgraceful still.”

Again her heart gave a bound. Her father had followed the opposite course, and she knew for a certainty just what some men thought of him, and she could as easily recall half a dozen younger men who had that very summer been willing to play the same game with herself. Something warm and sympathetic struggled up through her reserve.

“Would you stay, Harry, if I asked you to?” she said in almost a whisper. She had not meant to put the question quite in that way, but somehow it had asked itself.

He looked at her with his soft brown eyes, the long lashes shading their tender brilliancy. He had guessed nothing of the newly awakened throb in her heart; only his situation stared him in the face, and in this she had no controlling interest; nor could she now that she loved somebody else.

“No, Kate, it wouldn't alter anything. It would be putting off the day when it would all have to be done over again; and then it would be still worse because of the hopes it had raised.”

“Do you really mean, Harry, that you would not stay if I asked you?” It was not her heart which was speaking, but the pride of the woman who had always had her own way.

“I certainly do,” he answered emphatically, his voice ringing clear. “Every day I lose is just so much taken from a decent, independent life.”

A sudden revulsion of feeling swept through her. This was the last thing she had expected from Harry. What had come over him that he should deny her anything?—he who had always obeyed her slightest wish. Then a new thought entered her head—why should she humble herself to ask any more questions? With a quick movement she gained her feet and stood toying with her dress, arranging the lace scarf about her throat, tightening the wide strings that held her teacup of a bonnet close to her face. She raised her eyes and stole a glance at him. The lips were still firmly set with the resolve that had tightened them, but his eyes were brimming tears.

As suddenly as her pride had risen did it die out. All the tenderness of her nature welled up. She made one step in his direction. She was about to speak, but he had not moved, nor did his face relax. She saw that nothing could shake his resolve; they were as far apart as if the seas already rolled between them. She held out her hand, and with that same note of infinite pathos which he knew so well when she spoke straight from her heart, said as she laid her fingers in his:

“Good-by, and God bless you, Harry.”

“Good-by, Kate,” he murmured in barely audible tones. “May I—may I—kiss you on the forehead, as I always used to do when I left you—”

She bent her head: he leaned over and touched the spot with his lips as reverently as a sinner kisses the garment of a saint, then, choking down her tears, all her body unstrung, her mind in a whirl, she turned and passed out of the park.

That same afternoon Kate called her father into her little sitting-room at the top of the stairs and shut the door.

“Harry Rutter is going to sea as a common sailor on one of the ships leaving here in a couple of days. Can you find out which one?—it may be one of your own.” He was still perfunctory agent of the line.

“Young Rutter going to sea!”—the nomenclature of “my dear Harry” had ended since the colonel had disinherited him. “Well—that is news! I suspect that will be the best place for him; then if he plays any of his pranks there will be somebody around with a cat-o'-nine-tails to take it out of him. Going to sea, is he?”

Kate looked at him with lowered lids, her lips curling slightly, but she did not defend the culprit. It was only one of what Prim called his “jokes:” he was the last man in the world to wish any such punishment. Moreover, she knew her father much better than the Honorable Prim knew his daughter, and whenever she had a favor to ask was invariably careful not to let his little tea-kettle boil over.

“Only a short time ago, father, you got a berth as supercargo on one of my grandfather's ships for Mark Gilbert. Can't you do it for Harry?”

“But, Kate, that was quite a different thing. Mark's father came to me and asked it as a special favor.” His assumed authority at the shipping office rarely extended to the appointing of officers—not when the younger partners objected.

“Well, Harry's father won't come to you, nor will Harry; and it isn't a different thing. It's exactly the same thing so far as you are concerned, and there is a greater reason for Harry, for he is alone in the world and he is not used to hard work of any kind, and it is cruel to make a common sailor of him.”

“Why, I thought Temple was fathering him.”

“So Uncle George has, and would always look after him, but Harry is too brave and manly to live upon him any longer, now that Uncle George has lost most of his money. Will you see Mr. Pendergast, or shall I go down to the office?”

Prim mused for a moment. “There may not be a vacancy,” he ventured, “but I will inquire. The Ranger sails on Friday for the River Plate, and I will have Mr. Pendergast come and see me. Supercargoes are of very little use, my dear, unless they have had some business training, and this young man, of course, has had none at all.”

“This young man, indeed!” thought Kate with a sigh, stifling her indignation. “Poor Harry!—no one need treat him any longer with even common courtesy, now that St. George, his last hold, had been swept away.”

“I think on the whole I had better attend to it myself,” she added with some impatience. “I don't want anything to go wrong about it.”

“No, I'll see him, Kate; just leave it all to me.”

He had already decided what to do—or what he would try to do—when he first heard the boy wanted to leave the country. What troubled him was what the managing partner of the line might think of the proposition. As long as Harry remained at home and within reach any number of things might happen—even a return of the old love. With the scapegrace half-way around the world some other man might have a chance—Willits, especially, who had proved himself in every way worthy of his daughter, and who would soon be one of the leading lawyers of the State if he kept on.

With the closing of the door upon her father, Kate threw herself upon her lounge. One by one the salient features of her interview with Harry passed in review: his pleading for some word of comfort; some note of forgiveness with which to cheer the hours of his exile.—“You are the last thing I kiss before I close my eyes.” Then his open defiance of her expressed wishes when they conflicted with his own set purpose of going away and staying away until he made up his mind to return. While the first brought with it a certain contented satisfaction—something she had expected and was glad of—the last aroused only indignation and revolt. Her brow tightened, and the determination of the old seadog—her grandfather Barkeley—played over her countenance. She no longer, then, filled Harry's life, controlling all his actions; she no longer inspired his hopes. Rather than marry her he would work as a common sailor. Yes—he had said so, and with his head up and his voice ringing brave and clear. She was proud of him for it—she had never been so proud of him—but why no trace of herself in his resolve; except in his allusion to the duel, when he said he would do it again should any one insult her? It was courteous, of course, for him to feel that way, however much she abhorred the system of settling such disputes. But, then, he would do that for any other woman—would, no doubt, for some woman he had not yet seen. In this he was the son of his father and the same Harry—but in everything else he was a changed man—and never more changed than in his attitude toward her.

With these thoughts racking her brain she rose from the lounge and began pacing the floor, peering out between the curtains of her room, her eyes wandering over the park as if she could still see him between the branches. Then her mind cleared and the true situation developed itself:—for months she had hugged to herself the comforting thought that she had only to stretch out her hand and bring him to her feet. He had now looked her full in the face and proclaimed his freedom. It was as if she had caged a bird and found the door open and the prisoner singing in a tree overhead.

That same night she sat by her wood fire in her chamber, her old black mammy—Mammy Henny—bending close, combing out her marvellous hair. She had been studying the coals, watching the little castles pile and fall; the quick smothering of slowly fading sparks under a blanket of gray ashes, and the wavering, flickering light that died on the curling smoke. She had not spoken for a long time, when the old woman roused her.

“Whar was you dis mawnin', honey chile? Mister Willits done wait mo'n ha'f a hour, den he say he come back an' fetch his sorrel horse wid him dis arternoon an' take ye ridin'. But he ain't come—dat is, Ben done tol' me so.”

“No, mammy,” she answered wearily—“I sent him word not to—I didn't feel like riding to-day.”