As Kate stood out from the shadow of the trees, the man approaching, looking up, beheld her, and his dark eyes gladdened with a smile of delight. His greeting came up to her on the still air in a tone thrilling with warmth and deep feeling.
“Ho, Kate,” he cried, in his deeply musical voice. “I saw you and Helen making this way, and guessed I’d just get around.”
He was breathing hard as he came up the hill, his slight figure was bending forward with the effort of his climb. Kate watched him, much as an anxious mother might watch, with doubtful eyes, some effort of her ailing child. He reached her level and stood breathing heavily before her.
“I was around watching the boys at work down there on the new church,” he went on. His handsome boyish face was flushing. The delicate, smooth, whiskerless skin was almost womanish in its texture, and betrayed almost every emotion stirring behind it. “Allan Dy came along with my mail. When I’d read it I felt I had to come and tell you the news right away. You see, I had to tell someone, and wanted you—two to be the first to hear it.”
Kate’s eyes were full of a smiling tender amusement at the ingenuousness of the man. Helen was looking on with less tenderness than amusement. He had not come to tell her the news—only Kate. The Kate whom she knew he worshipped, and who was the only rival in his life to his passionate craving for drink.
She surveyed the man now with searching eyes. What was it that inspired in her such mixed feeling? She knew she had a dislike and liking for him, all in the same moment. There was something fascinating about him. Yes, there certainly was. He was darkly handsome. Unusually so. He had big, soft, almost womanish eyes, full of passionate possibilities. The delicate moulding of his features was certainly beautiful. They were too delicate. Ah, that was it. They were womanish. Yes, he was womanish, and nothing womanish in a man could ever appeal to the essentially feminine heart of Helen. His figure was slight, but perfectly proportioned, and quite lacking in any suggestion of mannish strength. Again the thought of it brought Helen a feeling of repugnance. She hated effeminacy in a man. And yet, how could she associate effeminacy with a man of his known character? Was he not the most lawless of this lawless village? Then there was his outward seeming of gentleness. Yes, she had never known him otherwise, even in his moments of dreadful drunkenness, and she had witnessed those frequently enough during the past few years.
The whole personality of the man was an enigma to her. Nor was it altogether a pleasant enigma. She felt that somehow there was an ugly streak in him which her sister had utterly missed, and she only half guessed at. Furthermore, somehow in the back of her mind, she knew that she was not without fear of him.
In spite of Kate’s denial, when the man came under discussion between them, her conviction always remained. She knew she liked him, and she knew she disliked him. She knew she despised him, and she knew she feared him. And through it all she looked on with eyes of amusement at the absurd, dog-like devotion he yielded to her strong, reliant, big-hearted, handsome sister.
“What’s your news, Charlie?” she demanded, as Kate remained silent, waiting for him to continue. “Good, I’ll bet five dollars, or you wouldn’t come rushing to us.”
The man turned to her as though it were an effort to withdraw his gaze from the face of the woman he loved.