She released him presently and he rose, moving with a curious stiffness as of muscles consciously controlled.
"What, going so soon? I have so much more to say to you about him—but there! You look tired—you look not quite happy, Philip. What is it? Are you still wondering what to do with him? Don't! Leave that to me, dear. And now go straight to bed and get a good night's rest. To-morrow we shall begin on the petition—our last, thank God! I will see the men the Governor mentions myself."
When he was gone, she sat a while longer in the dark. She was not quite ready yet to face strangers, to face even her daughters. Jacques was coming back to her! She said the words over and over to herself, till they rang through her head like the refrain of a song. All the years between them, the long, lonely, weary years, filled with work and with the sort of happiness that comes from successful endeavor,—these were suddenly as naught, and she was a girl again, a wistful, dreaming girl with a baby in her arms, listening there in her garden for the pit-a-patter of her lover's horse.
She closed her eyes. Presently the voice of the graphophone broke in upon her dreams, and she became aware of the dancers that passed and repassed the lighted windows; among them a man in spectacles, guiding and being guided by a determined young person in apple-green, his face flushed and earnest, his grizzled hair somewhat awry. "Why—it's Jim Thorpe!" she thought, with a stab of remorse. "I'd forgotten him. But he's dancing, he's enjoying himself like a boy. Bless that thoughtful girl of mine! She's made him look ten years younger. Dear, faithful old Jim!"
Her heart was open to all the world just then. She went to the window and smiled in at him tenderly.
Perhaps it was just as well that James Thorpe could not see that smile, and misunderstand it.
CHAPTER XI
Late summer in Kentucky; deep, umbrageous woodlands fragrant with fern, dreaming noons, shimmering in the heat, with the locust drowsily shrilling; warm and silver nights, made musical by the loves of many mocking-birds; the waste places green tangles of blossoming weed, the roads a-flutter with hovering yellow butterflies, over all the land a brooding hush, not the silence of idleness, of emptiness, but of life, intense and still as a spinning top is still. Beneath it those who listen are aware of a faint, constant stirring, a whisper of green and eager things pushing themselves up from the fecund soil.
More than ever before was Kate aware of the sympathy that bound her to these fields of hers, soon to be hers no longer. She could not keep away from them. Early and late the Madam and her racking mare were to be seen about the roads and lanes, inspecting dairies, stables, hog-pens, poultry-yards, watching the field-hands at their labor, hearing in person the requests and complaints of tenants. Much of her phenomenal success was due to personal supervision, as she knew; even, perhaps to personal charm, for field-hands and tenants are alike human. Now the executive habit stood her in good stead. None of the business of the great farm was neglected; but active as her mind was, through it all her heart was dreaming, not as a girl dreams, but as a woman may who knows well what she has missed of life. Spring had passed her by, with all its promise blighted. Now, like her fields, she had come to late summer, to the season of fulfilment.