CHAPTER XX
IN SEARCH OF HERSELF
As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat, swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about him.
Sleigh-bells sounded near--chiming through the still, cold air; he caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and, at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed seat, calling out to him by name.
"Why, Kathleen!" he exclaimed, hastening forward. "Did you really drive down here all alone to meet me?"
She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in her Isabella bear furs:
"I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the station agent--there he is!--Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up Mr. Mallett"s trunks to-night? Thank you _so_ much. Now, Duane, dear----"
He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat, and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes.
"I tell you what," he said seriously, "you"re getting to be a howling beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I kiss you again?"
"Not after that," she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow.
"Duane!" she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging trot, "_what_ do you think! Geraldine doesn"t know you"re coming!"
"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I telegraphed."
"Yes, but she"s been on the mountain with old Miller for three days.
Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram, and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it."
"Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the dead of winter?"
Kathleen shook her pretty head:
"She"s turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever heard of! She"s up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old Miller. They"re after that big boar--the biggest, horridest thing in the whole forest. I saw him once. He"s disgusting. Scott objected, and so did I, but, somehow, I"m becoming reconciled to these break-neck enterprises she goes in for so hard--so terribly hard, Duane! and all I do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs and does what she pleases."
He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?"
"Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very little."
There was a moment"s silence, but the constraint did not last.
"It"s twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily, there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch with your nose and ears."
Duane investigated cautiously.
"My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really twenty below? It doesn"t seem so."
"It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but n.o.body here minds it when the wind doesn"t blow; and Geraldine has acquired the most exquisite colour!--and she"s so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there"s another thing; she is _happier_ than she has been for a long, long while."
"Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly.
"Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?"
"Yes."
A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight.
Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like l.u.s.tre silvered the world.
"I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three snow-bound rustics, don"t you?" she asked. "Well, then, let me immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn"t it pathetic? And he"s worked _so_ hard, and he"s been like a father to the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded internal organs--oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I may say that I"ve been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old fraud of a scientific world!"
Duane"s unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells.
"What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane.
"He"s going to see it through, he says. Isn"t it fine of him? There is just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something exciting, Duane. Promise you won"t breathe one word!"
"Not a word!"
"Well, then--Scott was going to tell you, anyway!--we _think_--but, of course, we are not sure by any means!--but we venture to think that we have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don"t know exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically convinced that it is a sort of fungus."
She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never dares a.s.sert anything except dry and proven facts.
"What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an epidemic among the Rose-beetles?" he inquired.
"Oh, it"s far too early to even outline our ideas----"
"That"s right; don"t tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I"ll never say a word, Kathleen, only if you"ll take my advice, feed "em fungus! Stuff "em with it three times a day--give it to them boiled, fried, au gratin, a la Newburg! That"ll fetch "em!... How is old Scott, anyway?"
"Perfectly well," she said demurely. "He informs us daily that he weighs one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that he isn"t man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we"re all behaving like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants think." Her smiling face became graver.
"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there"s enough of your estate left to keep your mother and Nada in comfort."
He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?"
"Why--he"ll tell you. I don"t believe he has very much left.
Geraldine"s part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite wonderful. Why, Duane, he"s a perfect old dear; and we all are so terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid att.i.tude toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod."
"He"s a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had the "indiwidool cultiwated" clean out of him. He"s only a type, like Gibson"s drawings of Tag"s son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block of granite, but it"s an awful thing that he should ever have presided over the destinies of children."
Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care for anything else--to realise that there was anything else or anybody else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out--they have emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the Seagraves was--weakness."
Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.
"I don"t know. Tappan"s poison may have been the antidote for them in this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine--suffered?"
"Yes."
"Very--much?"
"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?"