aflame with her indignation.
“Oh, I know exactly what happened. Harry told me with the tears running down his cheeks. It was dreadful—INEXCUSABLE—BARBAROUS! I've been that way myself—tumbled half-way down these same stairs before you were born and had to be put to bed, which accounts for the miserable scapegrace I am to-day.” His face was in a broad smile, but his voice never wavered.
Kate looked at him and put out her hand. “You never did—I won't believe a word of it.”
“Ask your father, my dear. He helped carry me upstairs, and Ben pulled off my boots. Oh, it was most disgraceful! I'm just beginning to live it down,” and he reached over and patted the girl's cheek, his hearty laugh ringing through the room.
Kate was smiling now—her Uncle George was always irresistible when he was like this.
“But Harry isn't you,” she pouted.
“ISN'T ME!—why I was ten times worse! He's only twenty-one and I was twenty-five. He's got four years the better of me in which to reform.”
“He'll NEVER be like you—you never broke a promise in your life. He gave me his word of honor he would never get—yes—I'm just going to say it—drunk—again: yes—that's the very word—DRUNK! I don't care—I won't have it! I won't have anything to do with anybody who breaks his promise, and who can't keep sober. My father was never so in his life, and Harry shall never come near me again if he—”
“Hold on!—HOLD ON! Oh, what an unforgiving minx! You Seymours are all like tinder boxes—your mother was just like you and so was—”
“Well, not father,” she bridled, with a toss of her head.
St. George smiled queerly—Prim was one of his jokes. “Your father, my dear Kate, has the milk of human kindness in his veins, not red fighting blood. That makes a whole lot of difference. Now listen to me:—you love Harry—”
“No! I DESPISE him! I told him so!” She had risen from her seat and had moved to the mantel, where she stood looking into the fire, her back toward him.
“Don't you interrupt me, you blessed girl—just you listen to Uncle George for a minute. You DO love Harry—you can't help it—nobody can. If you had seen him this morning you would have thrown your arms around him in a minute—I came near doing it myself. Of course he's wild, reckless, and hot-headed like all the Rutters and does no end of foolish things, but you wouldn't love him if he was different. He's just like Spitfire—never keeps still a minute—restless, pawing the ground, or all four feet in the air—then away she goes! You can't reason with her—you don't wish to; you get impatient when she chafes at the bit because you are determined she shall keep still, but if you wanted her to go like the wind and she couldn't, you'd be more dissatisfied than ever. The pawing and chafing is of no matter; it is her temperament that counts. So it is with Harry. He wouldn't be the lovable, dashing, high-spirited young fellow he is if he didn't kick over the traces once in a while and break everything to pieces—his promises among them. And it isn't his fault—it's the Spanish and Dutch blood in his veins—the blood of that old hidalgo and his Dutch ancestor, De Ruyter—that crops out once in a while. Harry would be a pirate and sweep the Spanish main if he had lived in those days, instead of being a gentleman who values nothing in life so much as the woman he loves.”
He had been speaking to her back all this time, the girl never moving, the outlines of her graceful body in silhouette against the blaze.
“Then why doesn't he prove it?” she sighed. She liked old hidalgos and had no aversion to pirates if they were manly and brave about their work.
“He does—and he lives up to his standard except in this one failing for which I am truly sorry. Abominable I grant you—but there are many things which are worse.”
“I can't think of anything worse,” she echoed with a deep sigh, walking slowly toward him and regaining her chair, all her anger gone, only the pain in her heart left. “I don't want Harry to be like the others, and he can't live their lives if he's going to be my husband. I want him to be different—to be big and fine and strong—like the men who have made the world better for their having lived in it—that old De Ruyter, for instance, that his father is always bragging about—not a weak, foolish boy whom everybody can turn around their fingers. Some of my girl friends don't mind what the young men do, or how often they break their word to them so that they are sure of their love. I do, and I won't have it, and I have told Harry so over and over again. It's such a cowardly thing—not to be man enough to stand up and say 'No—I won't drink with you!' That's why I say I can't think of his doing anything worse.”
St. George fixed his eyes upon her. He had thought he knew the girl's heart, but this was a revelation to him. Perhaps her sorrow, like that of her mother, was making a well-rounded woman of her.
“Oh, I can think of a dozen things worse,” he rejoined with some positiveness. “Harry might lie; Harry might be a coward; Harry might stand by and hear a friend defamed; Harry might be discourteous to a woman, or allow another man to be—a thing he'd rather die than permit. None of these things could he be or do. I'd shut my door in his face if he did any one of them, and so should you. And then he is so penitent when he has done anything wrong. 'It was my fault—I would rather hang myself than lose Kate. I haven't slept a wink, Uncle George.' And he was so handsome when he came in this morning—his big black eyes flashing, his cheeks like two roses—so straight and strong, and so graceful and wholesome and lovable. I wouldn't care, if I were you, if he did slip once in a while—not any more than I would if Spitfire stumbled. And then again”—here he moved his chair close to her own so he could get his hand on hers the easier—“if Spitfire does stumble, there is the bridle to pull her up, but for this she might break her neck. That's where you come in, Kate. Harry's in your hands—has been since the hour he loved you. Don't let him go headlong to the devil—and he will if you turn him loose without a bridle.”
“I can't do him any good—he won't mind anything I say. And what dependence can I place on him after this?” her voice sank to a tone of helpless tenderness. “It isn't his being drunk altogether; he will outgrow that, perhaps, as you say you did, and be man enough to say no next time; but it's because he broke his promise to me. That he will never outgrow! Oh, it's wicked!—wicked for him to treat me so. I have never done anything he didn't want me to do! and he has no right to—Oh, Uncle George, it's—”
St. George leaned nearer and covered her limp fingers with his own tender grasp.
“Try him once more, Kate. Let me send him to you. It will be all over in a minute and you will be so happy—both of you! Nothing like making up—it really pays for the pain of a quarrel.”
The outside door shut gently and there was a slight movement in the hall behind them, but neither of them noticed it. Kate sat with her head up, her mind at work, her eyes watching the firelight. It was her future she was looking into. She had positive, fixed ideas of what her station in life as a married woman should be;—not what her own or Harry's birth and position could bring her. With that will-o'-the-wisp she had no sympathy. Her grandfather in his early days had been a plain, seafaring man even if his ancestry did go back to the time of James I, and her mother had been a lady, and that too without the admixture of a single drop of the blood of any Kennedy Square aristocrat. That Harry was well born and well bred was as it should be, but there was something more;—the man himself. That was why she hesitated. Yes—it WOULD “all be over in a minute,” just as Uncle George said, but when would the next break come? And then again there was her mother's life with all the misery that a broken promise had caused her. Uncle George was not the only young gallant who had been put to bed in her grandfather's
