Kate awoke with a gasping cry, and put her hands out to hide the little twisted body from his gaze.
Fortunately the child died. "Fortunately," repeated the mother to herself now, without a quiver. To the end of her days she would carry in her heart the memory of its faint, unbabyish moaning. It opened to her the door of a new world, the world of suffering. She learned the agony of love that cannot help. The little Katherine lived long enough to make a woman of her; and strangely enough it reached the one soft spot in the heart of Basil Kildare. During its brief and piteous life, husband and wife came almost close to each other.
To the man with his passion for physical perfection, the breeder of thoroughbred horses and cattle and dogs, the fact that a child of his should have been born without this precious heritage was a thing incredible, a humiliation beyond words. Whenever he looked at the tiny, whimpering creature, he asked pardon of her with his eyes for so monstrous an injustice. He never tired of carrying her about in his powerful arms, of rubbing the poor twisted limbs in an effort to ease the pain away.
"The stock's sound enough," he would say again and again. "I'm all right, and you're all right, Kit. What's the matter with her?"
Once he whispered in sudden horror, "I've been a pretty bad lot, Kate. God! Do you suppose I'm to blame for this?"
She comforted him with her arms about his neck.
When the child died, Kildare himself made its grave, and carried the coffin in his arms across the fields to the little pasture burying-lot where lay all the Kildares of Storm. It was a queer funeral; none the less pitiful for its queerness. First Basil with the coffin, the two great hounds gamboling and baying around him in their delight at going for a walk with the family; then Kate, alone and quite tearless; then a dozen wailing, hysterical negroes. Benoix and a few others met them at the grave, but there was no clergyman. Kate herself spoke what she could of the burial service, till her memory and her voice failed her. Then Kildare picked his wife up in his arms, and carried her home as tenderly as he had carried his child's coffin.
But that night he was so drunk that Kate kept the woman Mahaly in her room for safety.
It was during this time, with maternity, and sorrow, and womanhood, that love came to her. She did not know it. She knew only that things could be borne so long as Benoix was there to help her, guarding, understanding; Benoix with his steady eyes, and his gentle strength to share with her weakness.
They needed little excuse for their constant companionship; mere neighborliness; small Jemima's health; presents of flower-seeds and baby-patterns from his wife; books to be lent or borrowed, for Kate had turned to books at last. Kate's strength was slow in returning, and she spent much of the day sitting in the garden with her baby. It came to be Benoix' habit to stop there for a while coming or going from his house beyond. The baby knew the pit-a-patter of his racking horse, and had learned to clap her hands and crow when she heard it. The Creole had the same grave simplicity for children, as for his equals. It never failed to win them.