"Do you believe it, Katrine?"
"I don"t know, Mr. Ravenel."
"Do you believe that if you tried to help me, even if I were far away, you could?"
"Again I don"t know, Mr. Ravenel."
"I do," he said, in the tone of one thoroughly convinced. "I have been thinking it over, and have come to the conclusion that Josef is right.
You could make me do anything, Katrine. Will you try? In these days to come, when I am away with all those people, will you keep me from temptation?"
She hesitated for a minute, not knowing whether he was jesting or not.
"Believe me," she said, at length, "I will try."
VI
DERMOTT GIVES A DINNER AT THE OLD LODGE
The following morning, as she stood clipping the roses, Dermott McDermott leaned over the hedge.
"Will you marry me, Katrine?" he said, with no salutation whatever.
"Will you wait," she inquired, "till I"ve finished cutting the roses?"
"But I"m in earnest," he announced.
She held the clippers in her gloved hand to shade the sun from her eyes, regarding him in her friendly, companionable way.
"Dermott," she said, "what makes you such a liar?" The word as she spoke it of him seemed almost a compliment.
"You"ve been a.s.sociating, I fear, with some narrow and confined spirit, who repeats things exactly as they occurred. I"ve more imagination!" he explained, with a laugh. "Why should I not change things a bit?" he continued. "Every Irishman"s got to have one of three vices: whiskey, love-making, or lying. Mention me one of any distinction who had none of these!"
"There was St. Patrick," Katrine suggested, a laugh held under her eyelids.
"He"s so remote you can prove nothing against him. Take another that I have later news of."
"Wellington."
"He was never an Irishman."
"And Burke."
"And I"m thinkin", begging your pardon, Mistress Katrine, there was a lady to be explained away in his case. No," he said, waving her suggestion far from him, "all the Irish are alike. They"ve, as I say, one of three vices. I lie, that"s why I"m so interestin", especially to the ladies. Suppose I say: "Old Mrs. O"Hooligan was tripped by a dog in the lane yesterday!" Who cares? Not one soul in a thousand! But instead, with a gesture: "Did ye hear of the startling adventure of Mrs.
O"Hooligan? She was coming home at midnight from a sick friend"s" (it"s well to throw in a few sympathetic touches if ye can). "Suddenly an animal, a strange animal, came by, something like a mad bull" (of course you can enlarge or diminish the animal as required; in the mist of night I have found a black cat very telling). "She saw the vision quite plainly. It pa.s.sed, touched her, there was a word in the air whose significance she was unable to determine, and in the morning the friend was well--or dead." For conversational purposes it makes no difference."
He wore a broad smile as he spoke, looking down at her with great love and devotion.
"Ye see, Mistress Katrine, the ladies like a little exaggeration.
There"s Mrs. Ravenel likes me fine, and says it"s my temperament; and Peggy of the Poplars is crazy about me; and hundreds in the two continents who"d marry me at a second"s notice. I"m a great lover," he laughed somewhat uneasily, keeping his eyes averted, and adding, "when I don"t care! Ye see, a woman doesn"t mind a bit of exaggeration in a man"s love-making," he went on. "Now there was Antony, who threw a world away. What"s that! One world! I"d tell her I"d throw away a universe of worlds. Why not be extravagant! It"s all," he laughed again softly, "it"s all "hot air," anyway."
"And yet you"re a truthful person, Dermott McDermott. There"s none can tell the truth more bravely or with greater nicety than you," Katrine broke in.
"When I"ve need of it, and it"s an affair of men," he answered. "Oh, I still know Truth when I meet her. We"ve not fallen out altogether, but I stick to it that she"s very dry company. But this discussion, after all, is merely academic," he said, with a droll smile. "I have come to you in a perturbed state of mind. You have refused to marry me thousands of times, it is true; but I am n.o.ble, and forgive. To-morrow I am having some delicacies sent me from the North. My cook is a duffer. Now, I thought, why can"t Katrine Dulany and I have a little dinner, with Nora to prepare it, Mr. Ravenel asked in, and all be happy together?"
"I don"t think Mr. Ravenel can come. There are visitors at Ravenel House," Katrine explained.
"He can-and I think he will-leave them for one evening," Dermott answered.
"I"m the only human being alive that ye"ve not hypnotized, Frank Ravenel!" Dermott cried, with a laugh, as the three of them sat at dinner at the Old Lodge the evening following this talk. "The only person ye"ve ever known, probably, who did not fall under the charm of the ways and the eyes of you." There was flattery in this of such a subtle kind that Katrine looked quickly from one to the other, for with woman"s intuition she had long since felt the antagonism between them.
"Ye see," Dermott went on, "I underrated the South when I came here. You Southerners understand people as I think no other folk on earth understand them. That"s your great strength," he said, addressing himself entirely to Frank. "Now, in a business matter I might, though I"m by no means sure of it, get the better of you." His eyes were bland and frank as he spoke. "But where you would always have the advantage is in knowing the people you may trust. It"s a great gift that. The greatest knowledge of all is to know people, and it seems to be an instinct with you, Mr. Ravenel!"
Again Katrine looked from one to the other, mystified, as Francis sat smiling under this flattery.
"Shouldn"t there be accompanying laurel wreaths with this unsolicited testimonial, Mr. McDermott?" he inquired, with a laugh.
In a second Dermott took warning, left the subject, and was galloping over conversational fields furthest from compliments to Frank.
"About the trouble over your Senator here from North Carolina. I"d a talk with the President concerning him, and it was mentioned, though hiddenly, that the White House does not want him returned."
And later--
"The pork bill! Heavens! I saw McClenahan in the Senate about it, and I said to him: "If ye stand for the pork bill, ye"ll not be returned to the Senate next year. I"ll see to it myself. I know your district. G.o.d!
How I know it! You can buy every vote in that part of the land of the free and home of the brave for ten dollars, or less--and I"ve the money to do it." He didn"t vote for it." McDermott finished with a jolly laugh.
Again and again during the dinner he discussed his private affairs in this manner, deferring to Ravenel, flattering him by asking opinions on weighty subjects, listening to the answers with gloomy attentiveness, bewildering, fascinating, dominating, by a perfectly conscious use of every power he possessed.
At the mention of a coaching party which had pa.s.sed Katrine"s house the day before, with Frank driving four-in-hand, he added a note of gayety to the dinner, returning at the same time to the game he was playing with Frank.
"I never see ye drive, Ravenel," he cried, "but I think of the olden days. Ye"ve a style all your own when you hold the lines. Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I"m seized with rhyme." He stood silent, his eyes drawn together at the corners, his gaze concentrated, gla.s.s in hand, before he began with a hypnotic look and great lightness of bearing to recite, waiting every little while for the right word to come to him:
"When Ravenel drives four-in-hand, There"s something in his style and way That takes us to a by-gone day Of statelier times and manners grand: When ladies gay, In bright array, And patch and powder held their sway."
"I rather fancy that last!" he cried, repeating it:
"When ladies gay, In bright array, And patch and powder held their sway.
"When Ravenel drives four-in-hand, The days of chivalry return, Hearts with an old-time pa.s.sion burn, And lords and ladies fill the Strand, Our thoughts in that old time abide When Raleigh lived And Rizzio died, And fair Queen Mary sinned and sighed-- That olden land, That golden land, When Ravenel drives four-in-hand.
"To you, Mr. Ravenel!" he cried, draining his gla.s.s.
"Thank you, McDermott," Francis answered, with a pleased smile, "you have, indeed, the gift of rhyme." And Katrine knew as Frank spoke that his distrust of Dermott had been laid aside for the present, and that he was in a state of mind to grant anything which Dermott might demand of him.