Chapter XVI: Kenneth 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 she _must_ tell 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 sat nearest 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’s note 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 him a 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 me _en 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. There was 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 was _Meurice_, and my second name Harold, so I put the two together and was _Harold 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 knew nothing 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 with my 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 you _are_ going 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 married I 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.”