Kate Beaumont :: :: University of Virginia Library

But we will not enlarge upon this huge
reflection; it would carry us far beyond the
limits of our story. We will simply say,
before dismounting from its elephantine
back, that because Kate Beaumont was a
child, she was too much for a father. When
her bristly, grisly genitor, one of the most
combative and domineering of men, propounded
to her his notion of sending her on
a visit to her sister, she at once dissipated it
by saying that she would rather not go.

“Don't want to make Nellie a visit!” replied
Peyton Beaumont, believing that he
ought to insist, and doubting whether he
could.

“Why, papa!” said Kate, in a tone of
good-natured wonder and reproof. “Have
you forgotten?”

“Forgotten what?”

“Don't you really know what I mean?”
persisted the girl, a little chagrined.

“'Pon my honor, I don't.”

“O papa! My birthday! Nineteen next
Tuesday.”

“Bless my body!” exclaimed Beaumont,
looking uncommonly ashamed of himself.
“Bless my body, how could I forget it!
Well, of course I knew it all the while. It
had only slipped my mind for a —” Here
he recollected his conspiracy with Mrs.
Chester, and fell suddenly dumb, querying
whether his wits were not beginning to fail
him.

“Of course I want to keep it here,” said
Kate.

“Of course you do,” assented Beaumont,
ready to knock down anybody who objected
to it.

“Why should n't Nellie come to us?”
asked Kate.

“She shall,” declared Beaumont. “Write
her a letter and ask her to come. Give her
my best love, and tell her I insist upon it.”

It was in vain that Mrs. Chester made
assault upon this new disposition of events
as soon as she heard of it.

“No danger, I tell you,” interrupted
Beaumont, his temper rising at her opposition,
as a wave breaks into roar and foam
over a reef. “I tell you there 's no danger
whatever. Kate is not only a doosed brilliant
girl, — yes, doosed brilliant, by heavens,
if I do say it, — but she 's a girl of extraordinary
common sense. If I should hint to
her the trouble which might come from her
marrying a McAlister; if I should once say
to her, `Now, Kate, you see it might separate
us,' she never would think of it. I tell
you, I trust to her common sense. And by
heavens,” he added, his eyebrows beginning
to bristle, “I want you to trust to it.”

As Mrs. Chester had no efficient quantity
of the grace in question, she did not believe
in it as a motive of action with other people.

“Well, good by to the Kershaw estate,”
she replied, trying to bring the financial
point of view to bear upon her brother.

“Good by to it and welcome!” roared
Beaumont, indignant at this thrusting of
filthy lucre under his honorable nose. “What
the Old Harry do I care for the Kershaw
estate? I am a Beaumont, and the descendant
of Beaumonts. Who are you? I
thought we looked only to honor, in our
family. Money! You can't turn my head
by talking money. I know the value of
the thing. But, by heavens, I would n't
swerve a hair for the sake of it. I 'd blow
my brains out first. And as for Kate's
marrying against my wishes, you know she
won't do it and I know it. There 's no use
in talking about it.”

“No, there 's no use in talking about it,”
replied Mrs. Chester, with what might be
called a snapping-turtle irony.

Stung by her brother's charge that she
was no true Beaumont, angered by his inconvenient
obstinacy, and still more by his
loud, overbearing voice, she suddenly and
petulantly gave up her hopeless contest (as
a child drops a hammer which has cracked
its fingers), and marched off with short,
spunky stampings, reminding one of that
famous step between the sublime and the
ridiculous Her hips had become of late
years an inch or so too wide to permit her
to locomote thus with grace or dignity.
They gave her skirts a quick, jerking swing,
which, as seen from behind, was more farcical
than majestic. The fat washerwoman or
chambermaid of low comedy walks by preference
in this manner. As Peyton Beaumont
looked after her, he grinned with a
kind of amused rage, and muttered, “By
Jove, what a goose Marian can make of herself.”

But after Mrs. Chester had got to her
room, and had, so to speak, stuck out her
lips behind the door for half an hour, she
discovered some consolation and hope in
the fact that Nellie Armitage was coming.

She remembered Nellie as a “true Beaumont,”
full of the family pride and passion
and spirit, the fieriest perhaps of Peyton's
children. Was it not likely that such a
woman would retain much of the feeling of
the ancient family feud? Was it not almost
certain that she would violently oppose a
match between her only sister and a McAlister?
Poor, bewitched, unreasonable,
almost irrational Mrs. Chester plucked up
her spirit a little as she looked forward to
Nellie's arrival.

At last Mrs. Armitage came, bringing her
two children with her, but not her husband.
This young lady (then only twenty-four
years old) bore a certain resemblance to her
father. She was of a medium height, with
a figure more compact than is usual in
American women, her chest being uncommonly
full, her shoulders superbly pump,
and her arms solid. Her complexion was a
clear brunette, without color; her hair a
very dark chestnut and slightly wavy; her
eyes brown, steady, and searching. Barring
that the cheek-bones were a trifle too broad
and the lower jaw a trifle too strong, her
face was a handsome one, the front view
being fairly oval and the profile full of spirit.
There was something singular in her expression;
it was a beseeching air, alternating
with an air of resistance; she seemed in
one moment to implore favor, and in the
next to stand at bay. To all appearance it
was the face of a woman who had had
a stirring and trying heart-history. You
could not study it long without wishing to
know what had happened to her.

She greeted her relatives with the quick,
effervescent excitability of her Huguenot
race. A minute or two later she was absorbed,
indifferent, almost stony. It seemed
as if something must have partly paralyzed
the woman's affections, rendering their action
intermittent.

“Kate has grown up very handsome,”
she quietly and thoughtfully remarked to
her father, when she was alone with him.

“By Jove!” trumpeted Peyton Beaumont,
unable to brag sufficiently of his
favorite child, and falling into eloquent
silence before the great subject, like a
heathen prostrating himself to his idol.

“I hope she will have a happy life of it,”
added Nellie, with the air of one within
prison-gates who wishes well to those without.

“Why should n't she?” demanded the
father, lifting his stormy eyebrows as an excited
eagle ruffles his feathers. “She has
everything she can want, and we are all
devoted to her. The baby, you know!” he
explained, as if apologizing to his eldest
daughter for so loving the youngest.

“It is all well enough now. But she may
get married by and by.”

“Ah!” growled Beaumont, glancing at
her with an air of comprehension, half pitiful
and half angry.

Mrs. Armitage revealed no more; if she
was not happy in her own marriage, she was
not disposed to say so; either she had been
born with more discretion than was usual
with Beaumonts, or she had acquired it.

“So the feud is ended,” was her next
observation.

“Well, yes; that is, you know — well,
we get along,” said the father. “We are
giving those fellows a chance to behave
themselves.”

He felt obliged to apologize to a Beaumont
for having given up one of the antiquities
and glories of the family.

“Of course you know best,” replied
Nellie, with that indifferent air which she
had at times, and which made her appear
so unlike her race.

“You see this young McAlister had the
luck to place us under immense obligations
to him,” continued the old fighting-cock.
“And doosed lucky it was for that blockhead
his brother. Vincent would have shot
him as sure as Christmas is coming.”

“And how about Kate? Is she likely to
marry this Frank McAlister?”

“Likely to marry the Old Harry!”
snorted Beaumont, indignant at being
spurred up to this ugly subject again.
“Who the dickens told you that nonsense?”

“Aunt Marian wrote to me about it.”

“Aunt Marian is a babbling busybody,”
returned Beaumont, thrusting his hands
fiercely into his pockets, as if feeling for a
brace of derringers.

“She told me not to tell you of her letter,
and so I thought it best to tell you,” added
Nellie.

“By Jove! you know her,” replied Marian's
brother, bursting into a laugh. “By
Jove, it 's amazing how she lacks common
sense,” he added, as if his breed were
famous for it. “In a general way, — I 'm
fairly obliged to own it, — whatever Marian
wants done had better not be done.
It 's astonishing!”

“If there is any such courtship going on,
I want it stopped,” continued Nellie, somewhat
of the family excitability beginning to
sparkle in her eyes.

Peyton Beaumont, vain and self-opinionated
and pugnacious as he was, would
always listen to those privileged, those
almost sacred creatures, his children.

“Look here, Nellie, I 'm glad you came
down,” he said. “I want to talk to you
about this very thing. Not that there is
any danger, — O no,” he explained, motioning
away the supposition with his thick,
hairy hand. “But then, if things should
go on, there might be trouble. That is,

you understand, the thing is just possible,
— I don't say probable, mind, I say possible.”

“It must not be possible,” declared
Nellie.

“You think so?” stared Beaumont, a
little bothered. Considering his own weakness
in the presence of Kate, was he absolutely
sure that he could put the match
outside of the possibilities, in case she should
prefer to bring it inside?

“Certainly I think so,” affirmed Mrs.
Armitage, firing up in a way which left no
doubt as to her being a true Beaumont.
“See here, I want at least one woman in
the world to succeed; I want Kate to have
a happy married life. If she marries a
McAlister, what are the chances for it?
You know that family, and you know our
own. How long will the two travel together?
You know as well as I do that the
old quarrel is pretty sure to come up again.
Then where will Kate be? A woman who
is forced to fight her own flesh and blood,
God help her!”

She said much more to this effect; perhaps
she repeated herself a little, as emotional
people are apt to do; she was very
much in earnest, and hardly knew how to
stop.

“Well, of course!” neighed Beaumont,
quite roused by her excitement, as one
horse rears because another plunges. “The
thing cannot, must not, and shall not be
allowed. I 'll see to it.”

“You 'll see to it!” repeated Nellie,
amused in spite of her anxiety, and good-naturedly
laughing him to scorn.

“What d' ye mean?” queried the father,
trying to raise his bristles.

“You 'll just see that every one of your
idiots of children does exactly what he or
she pleases,” explained Nellie.

“Nonsense!” growled Beaumont, marching
off with all his peacock plumage spread.
To prove to himself that he possessed paternal
austerity, he took advantage of the first
opportunity to fall afoul of Tom, giving
him a lively blowing up for birching a
negro. Only the lecture being concluded,
he drew his cigar-case and presented the
youngster with one of his costliest Havanas,
the two thereupon smoking what
might pass for the calumet of peace.

The case of Frank and Kate soon came
up between Mrs. Armitage and Mrs. Chester.

“Of course not,” haughtily affirmed
Nellie, when her aunt had declared that
the McAlister match would never do. “I
have discussed the matter with papa. We
will attend to it.”

This was saying that the affair was none
of Mrs. Chester's business; and that lady
so understood the remark, and trembled
with wrath accordingly. The two were
treading on the verge of an old battleground
which had been many times fought
over between them. Mrs. Chester, an
advisatory and meddlesome creature, felt in
all her veins and nerves that she was a
Beaumont, and that whatever concerned
any of that breed concerned her. This
pretension, so far at least as it extended to
the children of Peyton Beaumont, Nellie
had always violently combated, even from
infancy. One of her earliest recollections
was of scratching Aunt Marian for trying
to slap Tom. The fight had been renewed
many times, the niece gaining more and
more victories as she grew older, for she
was a cleverer woman than Mrs. Chester,
and also a braver. It need not be said
that, while there was no outrageous and disreputable
quarrel, there was no fervent love
lost between them. But although Aunt
Marian did not adore Nellie, and was at the
moment considerably irritated against her,
she did not, under present circumstances,
care to fight her.

“Of course you and your father will do
what is proper,” she said, putting on that
air of sulphuric-acid sweetness which so
many tartarly people have at command, and
which profits them so little. “You two are
Kate's natural guardians,” she further conceded.

“Certainly!”

She waited to hear something more about
the match, but Nellie had no communications
to volunteer, and there ensued a brief
silence, insupportable to Mrs. Chester.

“Of course you never could give your
approval,” she ventured to resume, smoothing
her niece's hair.

“No!” sharply replied Nellie, who would
have answered more graciously if Mrs.
Chester had kept her hot hands to herself.

Unamiably as this response was enunciated,
the elder lady was so delighted with
it that she lost her self-possession, and let
out a gush of confidence which was imprudent.

“Kate will have plenty of offers. I know
one fine young man who is desperately in
love with her. I am sure that your husband's
brother —”

Nellie turned upon her with sparkling
eyes and quivering nostrils.

“Bent Armitage?” she demanded. “Is
he courting her?”

“O no,” responded Mrs. Chester, discovering
her error and at once trying to
fib out of it. “I was about to say that
Bent, as you call him, told me that Pickens
Pendleton was cracked about her.”

Which was true enough as regarded
Pickens Pendleton, only the tale of it had
not come from Bent Armitage.

Well, each of the ladies had made a discovery.

Nellie had learned, in spite of her
aunt's prompt dodging, that Bent Armitage
was wooing Kate; and Mrs. Chester had
perceived without the slighest difficulty that
such a match would be sternly disfavored
by Nellie. Both being thus provided with
matter for grave meditation, they found
conversing a weary business, and soon
separated.

The next important dialogue of this
straightforward and earnest Mrs. Armitage
was with her sister.

“How you have grown, Kate!” she
laughed, turning her about and standing up
to her back to back. “Pshaw! you are
taller than I am. You ought to know more.
I wonder if you do. What did you study
abroad?”

“O, everything that is useful,” smiled
Kate. “Only I don't find that I use it. I
think a good cookery-book ought to be the
main class-book of every girls' school. I
wish I knew a hundred receipts by heart.”

“Well, send for a cookery-book, and go
to getting them by heart.”

“I have,” said Kate.

“Pudding-making and love-making are
woman's chief business,” observed Nellie,
shaping her course toward the subject which
she had on her mind. “They are both important,
but I think the last is the most so.
Which do you like best of all the men who
come here?”

“I don't like any of them,” said Kate,
for once driven to fib by an awful heartbreaking,
and blushing profoundly over
her — was it her guilt?

“O, what a monstrous lie!” laughed
Mrs. Armitage.

“Then what do you ask such questions
for?” retorted Kate, becoming honest
again.

“Because I want to know,” said Nellie,
looking her earnestly in the face.

“When the young man speaks, I will
come and tell you,” was the evasive answer.

“But then it will be too late to tell me.
Your mind will be already made up, and
you will accept him or refuse him, and then
advice will be useless.”

“O, that is the way it goes?”

“That is the way it went with me.”

“Well, you have never repented it,” said
Kate, who knew nothing of her sister's sorrows,
if sorrows there were.

“Let me tell you one thing,” answered
Nellie, roused to fresh resolution by this
remark. “Let me tell you whom not to
marry. Neither Frank McAlister nor
Bent Armitage. If you take the first, you
will make trouble for yourself; and if you
take the second, he will make trouble for
you.”

Kate struggled to retain her self-posses
sion, but she was not a little disturbed, and
her sister perceived it.

“You don't care for either of them?”
demanded Nellie, imploringly. “I don't
want it. Papa does n't want it.”

“I won't care for either of them,” was the
promise which dropped from Kate's lips
before she realized its gravity. There was
conscience and discipline in the girl; she
instinctively and by habit respected and
obeyed her elders; she did it naturally and
could not help it. But the moment she had
given her pledge she grew pale and tried to
turn away from her sister.

“Look here, Kate, this costs you a struggle,”
said Nellie, slipping her arm around
the child's waist and kissing her. “Which
one is it?”

Kate made no answer, for she had as
much as she could do to catch her breath,
and she was for the moment beyond speaking.

“Not Bent Armitage?” begged Nellie.

Kate shook her head.

“The other?”

Kate began to cry.

“O Katie!” said Nellie, and began to
cry a little herself, being womanish and
Beaumontish to that extent that she could
not easily resist the contagion of emotion.

After a moment Kate made a desperate
struggle for some small bit of a voice, and
broke out, “But I don't care so much about
him. Only you surprised me so. You
worried me. You —”

“I know, Katie,” whispered Nellie, all
tenderness now. “I did put things at you
too hard. Don't be vexed with me. I do
love you. That is the reason. Well, you
can't talk of it now. We won't say a word
more now.”

“Yes, I can talk of it,” declared Kate,
collecting her soul bravely. “What is the
whole of it? What is it?”

“Suppose there should be another long
quarrel with the McAlisters?” began Nellie.

“I know. I have thought of that. I will
think of it.”

“O, you are pretty sensible, Kate. Well,
as for Bent Armitage —”

“You need n't tell me about him. It is
of no consequence.”

“I hope not,” said Nellie, too anxious to
be quite sure. “Well?”

“You have my promise,” declared Kate,
firmly.

“Yes,” answered Nellie, meditatively.

“Do you suppose I won't keep it?”

“I was n't thinking of that,” replied Nellie,
who, now that she had gained her point,
had a sudden, natural, irrational reaction of
feeling, and did not find herself positive
that the promise ought to be kept. “I
was thinking — but never mind now, dear.
Another time.”