Chapter XVII: Life 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 the _Etruria_. 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, and _you_——” 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 these _sprees_, 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 Kenneth left 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.”

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 her to 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 comforted the 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.”