Katrine | Page 4

I knew him first. He's one of the Black Dulanys of the North, and we fought side by side at Ramazan. What a time! What a time! In the famous charge up the river, when we turned, I lost my horse, and in that backward plunge my life was not worth taking. While I was lying there half dead and helpless, this Dulany got from his old gray, flung me across his saddle, and carried me nine miles back to the camp. Judge if I love him!"
Mr. McDermott looked from the window with the fixed gaze of one struggling with unshed tears.
"The next month he was ordered home, and soon after fell the bitter business of the marriage in Italy. I stood up with him. She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen--save one; and a voice--God! I heard her sing in Milan once. The king was there; the opera 'La Favorita.' She was sent for to the royal box. We had the horses out of her carriage and dragged it home ourselves. What a night it was! What a night it was!"
McDermott paused as in an ecstasy of remembrance.
"What was her name?" Francis asked.
"Ah, that"--he threw out his hand with a dramatic gesture--"'tis a thing I swore never to mention. 'Tis a fancy of Dulany's to let it die in silence."
"And she left him?" Mrs. Ravenel's voice was full of sympathy as she spoke.
"For another!" Dermott made a dramatic pause, relishing his climaxes. "And then she died."
"So, for his daughter's sake"--there was a curious hesitancy in his speech just here, but he carried it off jauntily--"his daughter, a primrose girl and the love of my life, I've come to ask that you be a bit lenient with him, Mr. Ravenel, at the times he has taken a drop too much, as your lady mother has been in the year past. I think you'll find him able to manage, for, in spite of his infirmity, black and white fall under his spell alike."
"If Frank has a fault, Mr. McDermott, which I do not think he has, it's over-generosity. You need have no fear for your friend," Mrs. Ravenel said, proudly, putting her hand on Frank's shoulder.
As her son turned to kiss the slender fingers, Dermott McDermott regarded the two curiously.
"You're fortunate in having a son of twenty--" He hesitated.
"Of twenty-five," Francis finished for him.
"--so devoted to you, madam. Ye're twenty-five--coming or going?" he inquired, with a laugh.
"On my last birthday--April."
An odd light shone in McDermott's eyes for a second before he said, with a bow:
"Neither of ye look it; I can assure you of that. Well," he continued, reaching for his cap and whip, "I must be going. Ye've found already, haven't ye, Ravenel, that the sound of my own voice is the music of heaven to my ears?" And then, as though trying to recollect: "I think I said it was at Ramazan Dulany and I fought together?"
Francis nodded.
"God," McDermott cried, his face illumined, his eyes glowing, "I wish it had been Waterloo! I've always carried a bruised spirit that I didn't fight at Waterloo."
"Your loss is our gain, Mr. McDermott," Francis answered, with a smile. "You'd scarce be here to tell it if you had."
"And that's maybe true," Dermott said, pausing by the doorway to put on his gloves. "But I'd rather have fought at Waterloo, even if I were dead now, so that I could tell you exactly how it felt--There"--he broke his speech with a laugh--"I caught myself on the way to an Irish bull.
"Oh! Mr. Ravenel," he called back suddenly, as though the thought had just come to him, "I've been waiting your coming to have a talk with you--a business talk--but not to-night." He waved the matter aside with a gay, outward movement of the hands. "Sometime at your pleasure." Again the eyes of the two met, and this time each measured the other more openly than before.
"I shall be glad to see you at any time, Mr. McDermott," Frank answered, his words courteous enough, but his eyes lacking warmth; and the intuitive Celt realized that in Frank he had met one whom he had failed either to bewilder or to charm.
"Madam!" he cried, saluting. "Mr. Francis Ravenel, delightful son of a delightful mother! The top of the evening to both of ye." And with a considered manner he made a stage exit, and Frank and Madam Ravenel heard the gay voice--
"... most excellent Turk, For I'm fond of tobacco and ladies--"
coming back with the clatter of a horse's hoofs through the fading sunlight over the dew of the daisies.
"Well," said Mrs. Ravenel, her eyes dancing with merry light, "isn't he delightful?"
"Delightful!" Frank repeated. "Is he? I wonder. Shrewd, cool-headed, cruel, I think--subtle as well."
"Nonsense," Mrs. Ravenel interrupted, with a smile which