"Don"t you see that I am trying to tell you and that I am finding it--hard?" he said quietly.
There was a moment"s silence; then she said hurriedly: "Of course I am all in the dark as to what you--are talking about--but tell me another time, won"t you? Not now, please. And oh--meantime," she sped on, with the air of hailing a new topic with acclaim, "I have something to tell you, Mr. Varney!--mystery seems to be in the air to-day. You _must_ hear the strange thing that happened to me this morning. I haven"t had a chance to tell you before."
"Ah, yes! That mysterious warning."
He clutched at the respite like a drowning man at straws, though no drowning man would have felt his sudden rush of self-contempt.
"Who gave it to you, and what was it about?"
Free of his hidden restraints, she had quite thrown off the embarra.s.sment which she had felt settling down upon her a moment before, and laughed lightly and naturally.
"It was about coming to this beautiful luncheon to-day--about _not_ coming, I mean--and it was given to me--don"t be angry--by Mr.
Higginson, the old man, you know, who helped you last night."
"Ah!... Mr. Higginson."
"Tell me!" she said impulsively, her eyes upon his face--"I saw last night that you distrusted him--_do_ you know anything about him?"
With an obvious effort he wrenched his thought from his present urgency, and brought it to focus upon a puzzle which now seemed oddly like an echo from a distant past.
"Not yet," he said, with an impa.s.sive face. "But I trust--"
"Oh, I don"t like the way you say that! I don"t see how you _can_ be so suspicious of such a patently well-meaning old dear. And yet--"
"Well, then, tell me what he said to you and convert me."
"I suppose I must--I have had it on my mind a little, and you have a right to know. Yet I don"t want to at all! For I must say it seems just a little to--to support your view. Well, then," she said, some perplexity showing beneath her smile, "it happened about eleven o"clock this morning as I was going down the street to see Elsie Marne--never dreaming of mysteries. I met Mr. Higginson walking towards our house, and we stopped, so I thought, for a friendly word. For he and I made friends last night. Oh, you have a right to think I am too free, too easy, in the way I--I make friends with strangers, and yet really this--is not like me at all. And there is something very winning about this old man. Well, he asked me point-blank--begged me--not to come to your lunch-party to-day. What have you to say to that?"
He continued to look at her as from a distance, not answering her little laugh. Behind the grave mask of his face he cursed himself heartily for his self-absorption of the morning, which had led him entirely to lose sight of Mr. Higginson"s activities last night. He had fully meant to search out that "winning" old man on his excursion to the town, but in his engrossment over the more important duty of the day, the matter had dropped completely from his mind. That the old spy had somehow ferreted out their secret was now too plain to admit a doubt. But what conceivable use did he mean to make of it? To interfere with the _Cypriani"s_ homegoing was beyond his power now. Did it better suit his mysterious purpose to hold back until the thing was done, in order to raise the dogs of scandal afterwards?...
For the moment his mind attacked the problem with curiously little spirit; but one thing at least was instantly clear. He must return to Hunston to-night, by the first train after his arrival in New York, find Higginson and call him to his well-earned reckoning. Meantime ... here was this girl, this daughter of Uncle Elbert, whom the old sneak had for the second time failed to bend to his mean uses....
"But what reason," he said mechanically, "did he give for his rather unusual request?"
"He wouldn"t give any! That"s what makes it all so ridiculous--don"t you see? Naturally I asked, but he only said in his nervous apologetic way that he wasn"t at liberty to tell, but that after last night I ought to consider whether you--your surroundings were likely to be quite safe. I said: "But oughtn"t you to give me some idea and, if there is any danger, warn Mr. Varney and Mr. Maginnis? You can"t mean that there is another plot, involving the yacht this time--the likelihood of a naval battle on the Hudson?" And then he wrung his hands and said that he couldn"t tell me what he meant, but that I"d certainly regret it if I came. There! Oh, I _know_ he thought he was doing somebody a kindness--you and me both, I believe! And yet--that was just a little creepy, wasn"t it?"
He made no answer to this; hardly heard what she said. Mr. Higginson, his works and ways, had once more slipped wholly from his mind.
Something in the look of her face, its young trustfulness, its utter lack of suspicion, had already laid paralyzing hold upon him. Now a new thought possessed him; and all at once his breast was in a tumult.
"And yet," he said, with sudden fierce exultation, "_you came_!"
She colored slightly under his look and tone and, to cover it, gave a light laugh.
"Oh, yes.. dauntless person that I am! Have you the remotest idea what he was talking about?... But oh, really we must turn around now! Indeed we must--I hadn"t noticed how far we have come. And you can show me things as we go back, can"t you?"
He started at her speech; asked himself suddenly and wildly what was wrong with him. A better opening for his crushing announcement could not have been desired. Yet he stood dumb as a man of stone. One blurted phrase would commit him irrevocably, but his lips would not say it. And he was glad.
He stared over the water thinking desperately what this might mean.
In that first meeting, radiant as it had somehow seemed to him, he knew that, given this chance, he could have carried his business through without a quiver. Even last night when, he thought, things to make it harder had piled one on another like Ossa on Pelion, it would not have been impossible. Now his lips appeared sealed by a new and overwhelming reluctance; a resistless weakness saturated him through and through, seducing his will, filching away his very voice.
The _Cypriani_ rattled and wheezed, and her speed sharply slackened, but he did not notice it. His mind fastened on the stark fact of his impotence like a key in a lock: his heart leapt up to meet it. He turned slowly and looked at her.
She leaned lightly upon the rail, her eyes on the water, her lashes on her cheek like a silken veil. At her breast nodded his favor, the _Cypriani"s_ perfect rose. In her youth, her beauty, and, most of all, her innocent helplessness, there was something indescribably wistful, indescribably compelling: it sprang at him and possessed him. Even in permitting him her acquaintance, she had trusted him far past what he had any right to expect; and now, with his own sickening game at the touch, she gave this crowning proof of confidence in him--dashing it full in the face of the whispering and hinting Higginson, full in his own face too. Could anything in all the world matter beside the fact that this girl believed in him, that she had trusted him not only against convention, not only against his cowardly enemy, but last and biggest, _against himself?_
And she should not be disappointed. His pledge to her father was a Jephthah"s oath, honorable only in the breaking. His mission, all his hours in Hunston, took changed shape before the eye of his whirling mind, monstrous, accusing, unbelievably base. Reward that trust with treachery, that faith with betrayal? Never while he lived.
Out of his turmoil came peace and light, flooding the far reaches of his soul.
In crises thought moves with the speed of light. The young man"s mental revolution was over and done with in a second"s time; the pause was infinitesimal. Almost as she finished her last remark, Mr. Carstairs"s daughter turned from the rail and took a step forward upon the deck, as though to jog her host toward that promised tour of the yacht which had now flagged so long.
"I thought you ought to know this," she was saying, apparently quite unaware of his descent into the psychological deeps, "though perhaps you will think it not worth repeating. But before we go on, do tell me --won"t you?--is Mr. Higginson merely--_seeing things_--a sort of he-Ca.s.sandra, you know--or really do you think there is any danger?"
"No!" answered Varney, so promptly as to give the air of having waited long for just that question. "There is no danger now, thank G.o.d!"
A heavy step sounded near, approaching. Starting to speak, he broke off, turned and saw the sailing-master coming towards him. Over the intervening stretch of deck the two men looked at each other, the master nervously, Varney victoriously.
It was one of those critical moments whose importance no one can gauge until after the time for guaging is past. However, as it fell out, it was the master who spoke first.
"Very sorry, sir, indeed," he began, with a curiously uneasy and hang-dog expression. "The gear"s broke down again--in another place.
Couldn"t possibly have been foreseen, sir. We can--hem--manage to beat about without any trouble, but I fear it would not be safe to try to push on to New York."
"To New York!" said Mary Carstairs, looking at Varney and laughing at the man"s stupidity. "It certainly would not be safe at all!"
Even the furtive-glancing sailing-master was conscious of the tide of gladness that had broken into his young master"s eyes.
"_Put about this instant, man_!" he cried imperiously. "Miss Carstairs wishes to return to Hunston as soon as possible."
"Right, sir," stammered the astonished Ferguson, backing away. "At once, sir."
Varney met the man"s amazement steadily, laughed into it, and so turned again to his old friend"s daughter. She was conscious of thinking that this was the first _happy_ smile she had seen on his face since the night when he lit the lamp at Mr. Stanhope"s.
"He seemed nearly stupefied because you weren"t going to scold him, did you notice? I wonder if you are usually very cross with him. But on with our sightseeing! What is the name of this such-and-such a kind of steam-yacht?"
"Miss Carstairs," said Varney, struggling against his sudden exaltation for calmness and self-control--"we are both conscious that I owe you an explanation for--for what of course you must think my very extraordinary behavior. Believe me, you shall have it very soon. There is nothing in the wide world--ah--that is, I"d like very much to give it to you now.
But--no, no--it wouldn"t be quite right--no--not fair--"
"You think I am eaten up with feminine curiosity about Mr. Higginson!"
she said, a little hastily. "Oh, I"ll show you. Look! Look! We"re turning around already."
"Don"t look there. Look in this general direction now and then, and tell me what you see."
"I see," she said, looking anywhere but at him, "the strangest, the most _volatile_ and--_not_ excepting Mr. Higginson--the most _mysterious_ man in Hollaston County!"
"Where are your eyes, Miss Carstairs? You are standing within two feet of the happiest man in America, and you don"t even know it."