At that instant a tremulous curtain of light was let down from heaven, momentarily, and the two tiny figures were disclosed as clear as by day. He saw the baby dodging adroitly under Smiles" outstretched arms, and heading out onto the narrow pier, to which was attached a float for rowboats.
"He"s got his "mad" up," thought the man, as he veered off a point so as to get a better view. "He isn"t afraid of thunder, lightning or of rain--or anything else, and it would be just like him to run right off the ... Great G.o.d in heaven, he"s done it!" he shouted aloud and sprang to his feet, and almost lost his grip on the straining tiller. Even as he had been thinking, the light had grown again, and he saw the child, halfway down the pier, with a rebellious jerk tear himself loose from the clutching grasp on his blouse, lose his balance, stumble and roll from the incline into the now surging water.
The Water Witch luffed sharply, and her sail snapped with a report like a pistol shot. Without taking his horrified gaze from the unreal picture which the ghastly lightning illumined, Donald instinctively steadied the boat, and, with his powerful body strained forward as though he were urging the craft to greater effort. "G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d." The words came through his clenched teeth, half prayer, half curse at the Fate which held him helpless to act--and the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed them from his lips and bore them away, shrieking in malicious madness.
The darkness fell, blotting out the scene. Then the lightning flared again, and, in the brief white second that it lasted, he saw Rose climb onto a bench against the railing of the pier, and leap into the water.
"G.o.d, she can"t swim a stroke," groaned the man, as he pounded his left hand against the gunwale until the blood came through the abraded skin. Plunged in darkness again, the man, whom Rose had called unimaginative, suffered all the untold agony of soul which had been hers during the moment in which she had been forced to make up her mind and carry out the act, only his anguish was the more intense, for hers was the quick action and his the forced inaction of a man bound to a stake, within full sight of a tragedy being enacted upon a loved one. The distance between the boat and sh.o.r.e was not so great but that he could see everything that was occurring; but, with the wind dead ahead and blowing viciously, he might as well have been in another world for aught that he could do.
The spell of darkness, doubly black after the flash, seemed like an eternity to Donald. In reality it was as brief as the others, yet, when the light came, it disclosed other forms in action. A youth, whom he had vaguely noticed working around a rowboat on the beach as he put out, was plunging into the water, and down the steeply terraced bank, with leaping strides, was running a tall, slender figure clad in light gray. Minute as it was, seen from that distance, Donald recognized it. It was Philip, and his bursting heart gave voice to a cry of welcome and hope. Philip would save Smiles!
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HOLDING THE GIRL IN CLINGING WHITE CLOSE TO HIM"]
True, he would save her for himself. He could not keep the thought out of his surge of hope; but the erstwhile bitterness was swept away. Nothing else mattered, if Rose could be saved. Measured by the ticking of a clock, the action was taking place with dramatic speed; but, to his quivering mind, it dragged woefully, and the periods when the light failed caused him to cry aloud.
Suddenly the searchlight of the sky was turned on, dazzlingly, and he saw the unknown youth wading ash.o.r.e, bearing in his arms a tiny form whose animated arms and legs told the story of baby Don"s timely rescue; he saw Ethel running wildly toward them, to gather her offspring into her outstretched arms; he saw Philip on the float, in the act of casting himself p.r.o.ne. Then the picture faded once more and he railed at the ensuing blackness as though it had been a wilful, animate thing. This time it lasted longer, and the man"s deep breath came in rasping sobs before the scene was again revealed. Now there were two forms standing unsteadily on the float; two forms that were almost one, for the man in gray was holding the girl in clinging white close to him. Still, she could stand; Smiles was alive, she was saved! And the watcher"s lips gave vent to a shout of relief and joy, a shout which ended in a groan. All the power of his masterful will was not enough to make him do that which he longed to--turn his tortured eyes from the picture which spelt life to Rose, and death to all his golden dreams.
Now he saw them moving slowly up the pier, the girl still leaning heavily against the man, and supported by his encircling arm. They paused, and Rose half turned, and slowly waved her hand toward the sea in a rea.s.suring gesture, and Donald whispered, "G.o.d bless her. She knows that I have been a witness to the whole thing, and she remembers, thinks of me, even at ... at this time. I cannot see her face, but I know that she is smiling."
The lingering effulgence from a final wave of light vanished; the two forms toiling up the sh.o.r.e blended into the returning shadows; the curtain of darkness fell, and the drama was ended.
"Why could it not have been I?" groaned Donald. The wind, already spent from its brief fury, chortled softly among the shrouds as though it was laughing at him, another mortal made the victim of capricious Fate. Surely it knew that he would have served as well as its agent and would only too gladly have given his very life for Smiles, but it had wilfully sent him away and sent Opportunity to Philip.
Heroes and martyrs; what are they, after all, but the creatures of that whimsical G.o.ddess? Most men and most women have within them the courage to dare all things if the occasion comes, but to a few only, chosen, it often seems, by chance, is that occasion granted. Yet, how often has the history of life, both racial and individual, been changed by such an event!
Donald knew his star had sunk below the far horizon and that Philip"s had been carried to its zenith. The lover was likewise the rescuer. It were as though the play had been written and the stage set for no other purpose than to bring the romance to its culmination, and, now that this had been accomplished, the useless properties were being removed. The storm was over, ending as quickly as it had begun; the cloud-legions were hurrying eastward overhead to form the setting of another tragedy or farce somewhere else, or to return to the nothing which had given them birth. A few faint flashes and a distant rumble or two marked their pa.s.sing.
Along the western edge of the world appeared a narrow streak of ruddy light, like burnished copper beneath the blackness above. Blazing forth with the glory of a conqueror, the sun appeared within it, and seemed to poise immovable for an instant "twixt heaven and earth, while its dazzling rays turned the living waters to molten gold. Then it slowly sank from sight, and, like wraiths of the dying day, the night-shadows began to creep out from the sh.o.r.e, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer, until they engulfed the little craft and its owner.
With a sudden decision, Donald played out the sheet and put the tiller over. The boat swung around into the path of the wind and fled seaward again. He could not go home, now. He must fight out the battle with self, as it is always fought, alone, and what place could be more fitting than out there in the darkness, on the face of the troubled waters?
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
WHAT THE CRICKET HEARD.
Two hours later Donald stumbled, like a strong man physically played out, up the path to the cottage.
Ethel saw him coming, and ran part way down the steps to meet him. With her arms around his neck, she half-sobbed out the words in a choked voice, "Oh, Don. Do you know what has happened? Could you see from your boat? Little Donny? Smiles? Could you see, Don?"
He nodded, dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn"t swim, but yet she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was alone, she didn"t know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something for him, something splendid. He saved my baby"s life."
Ethel was crying now, and the man forgot his own misery in comforting her.
"But why didn"t you come, Donald? You didn"t know...."
"Yes, I knew that everything ... was all right. Rose waved to me and called. I ... I couldn"t come, Ethel. I can"t make you understand."
With the light of understanding breaking in upon her mind, and bringing a flood of sympathy with it, his sister once more drew close and encircled his neck with her arms.
"Where ... where is she?" he asked, as though the words were wrung from him against his will.
"Smiles has gone for a little walk with ... Dr. Bentley, dear," answered Ethel in a manner which she strove to make commonplace. She felt his frame quiver, and, with a motion that was almost rough, he shook off her comforting arms, and mounted the steps, holding to the rail as he did so. He went directly indoors, and to his room, with the instinct of a wounded creature to seek its cave or burrow. Save for a cold, cheerless patch of moonlight on the floor it was dark, and he felt no desire to turn on the lights. For a while he sat, silent and motionless, on the edge of the bed. But he could not stand the closed-in solitude. The place seemed filled with the fragrant presence of the girl who was not there; would never be there. He wanted to smoke, and went to the bureau to fumble blindly for a pipe which he remembered he had left on it. His hand touched something small and glazed, and he drew it sharply away. The something was the little rose jar. Smiles" first gift to him, which had travelled far since that morning on the mountain side, five years before.
The thoughts which would not be stilled repossessed his mind, and drove him out-of-doors again,--through a side door, so that he would not have to speak to his father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen. The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under the piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated it for its cheer, and started hastily away toward the beach.
High above, to the south, the moon was sailing through a sea of clouds, in silent majesty. Moonlit nights he had seen aplenty since that one in the c.u.mberlands, four summers previous, when he had climbed the mountain, impatient to see once more the strange, smiling child who had so stirred his imagination. In the old days he had loved the soft and majestic radiance. Now he hated it. Had he not lived long in war-ridden France, where every clear night illumined by that orb, which once had been the glory of those who loved, had meant merely the advent of the Hunnish fiends, whose winging visits brought death and devastation to the sleeping towns below?
He had fled from the darkness of his room, but now he craved the darkness again, for, perchance, it might blot out the memory of other nights, beautiful as golden dreams, or hideous as nightmares, when the moon had shone as it did now.
As he made a quick turn about a rocky obstruction in his rapid path, he came almost full upon two others, a man and a woman. On the yielding sand his footfalls had made no sound, and they were unaware of his sudden approach. Donald stopped, and stepped hastily back out of sight; but not before he had seen the man"s arms gather the slender form of the girl in close embrace, and seen her lift her sweet young face--tear-bejeweled, but smiling with the tenderness of love--for his kiss.
With the rocks put between him and the two, Donald stood for a moment with clenched fists pressed brutally against his eyes as though to grind out the picture recorded there. Then, with blind but nervous strides, he fled from the spot which, at the one time, held such happiness and such despair.
It was close to midnight when his steps bore him instinctively back to the unlighted house; but this time the exercise and the cool night air had failed to bring relief to his heart. He could not face the idea of tossing for hours on a sleepless bed, and so pa.s.sed the front door and seated himself within the dark shadows of a corner of the piazza.
"Chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p," began a pleasantly shrill little voice beneath him. Over and over it repeated the sound, until the man"s feverish imagination had made it into "cheer-up," and he cursed the cricket for its silly advice. So busy was his mind with introspection that he did not hear the door open gently, and the first intimation that he was not alone was brought to him by the sound of a light footstep directly behind him. He turned his head, and saw a dim, ethereally white figure,--Rose.
"I thought that you would never come, Donald," she whispered, as she sank down close by his side on Muriel"s little stool, and laid her cool hand on his fevered one. "I have been watching from my window for an hour. I couldn"t go to sleep until I had told you something."
With an effort he answered evenly, "I ... I think that I know what it is, Rose."
"You know? But how ...?"
"I saw you ... and Philip, on the beach," he replied, dully.
"You saw ... Oh! And you heard what ...?"
"No. I went away at once, of course. But I did not need to hear. I ... I am glad if you are happy, Smiles."
She was silent for a long moment; then whispered with a note of joy in her low voice that wrung his heart, "Yes, I am very happy, Donald."
"Philip is a splendid fellow."
"You wanted me to ... to marry him, Don?"
"I wanted you to?" He barely succeeded in checking, unspoken, the burning words on his tongue; but this time his voice betrayed him, and, if he had not been resolutely keeping his face turned away from her, he might have seen, even in that dim light, an odd change come into the expression of her lovely face, and seen a wonderfully tender and somewhat mischievous smile touch her lips. All that he did know, however, was that she gave a low, happy laugh, which was like a knife-thrust to his soul.
"Don," she said at length, "I have told no one else of my great secret yet, for I wanted to tell you, first of all. I couldn"t go to sleep without telling you, for you have been such a dear confidant and father confessor to me that it seems as though I must tell you everything. I ... I"ve just got to tell you what has happened. May I?"
The man barely smothered a groan. Must he hear this girl, in her simplicity, talk on and on about the man she loved, and had promised to marry? It struck him, too, as strange that she should be willing to lay bare anything so sacred in a woman"s life, but then she was her natural self, and quite different from most girls, in her att.i.tude toward him.
But Rose was speaking quietly, and as though to herself, "Philip has been so sweet and good to me while you were away. You remember that you, yourself, told me that you meant him to take your place as my unofficial protector, and that I should go to him with my perplexities. It would have been better for me if I had followed your advice closer, but now I can laugh at spilt milk."
Rose had already confessed to Donald about her "investment" and been by him cross-examined into an admission of her little charities, which, in their aggregate, had so nearly wiped out her bank account. She could laugh about them now, for she had won to her goal, and already begun to earn a livelihood, but she had carefully hidden in her heart the story of the bitter struggle in which she had engaged to make both ends meet during the last few months of her course, when her mysterious refusals to accept any invitations from Ethel, Miss Merriman or Philip for her free afternoons and evenings, had left them wondering what on earth she was doing. No one guessed that they were spent in earning the few sadly needed dollars which her pride forbade her to borrow from any of them.
"Now I can laugh at spilt milk," Smiles" words echoed in Donald"s brain, and hurt. He knew that Philip was fairly well-to-do, and, of course, Rose would want for nothing when she married him. This was the thought which brought the poignant stab.
"It was not strange that I began ... that he became very dear to me, was it, Donald?"
The man shook his head dumbly. He could not answer her in words.
"Perhaps I should not say it; but some time ago I began to guess that ... that he loved me. Not that he said a word, Donald, that is, not until to-day,--and then he didn"t say it," she laughed a little. "He wrote it and he ... he asked me to marry him. He said, besides, that he had spoken to you, first, and that you had given your brotherly consent. It was a very sweet letter, Don; the first real love letter that I ever received, think of that!"
Only by clinching his teeth and gripping the arms of the chair could the man repress a groan.
"It was after he had ... had saved my life that ..." She stopped, and broke into her thought with the words, "Oh, Donald, I can never, never forget to-night, and the awful feeling that I had when little Don went into the water. You see, you were far away, and I didn"t know about that brave boy on the beach, so I thought that I had got to save him if I could, and I didn"t know how I could. And then those black, cold waves going over my head! I was quite sure that I was going to die, and I almost hoped so for ... for I couldn"t find Donny."
She leaned her head against his knee and cried a little; but, when he tried to speak, and tell her what had been in his heart, she interrupted hastily with, "Oh, please, let"s not speak of it, ever again. I know how you felt, too.
"It was after that that Philip asked me for my answer. I knew what it was going to be, but ..."
Donald could not stand it any longer. "I know. You love him, you are going to marry him, Smiles. It"s all right, he is a splendid fellow, dear," he repeated mechanically.
"Yes, he is, and I do love him," she replied quietly; but she could not contain her secret any longer and added, "But a girl can"t marry her brother, Donald."
"Her brother? Please, Rose, don"t joke."
"It"s true!"
"You! Philip"s sister? It"s impossible, unbelievable!" Yet a surge of mad, uncontrollable joy swept over him, and his heart burst into song.
"Unbelievable, yes. But it"s so, Donald, although I can hardly credit it yet, myself."
"But how? Tell me how you found out. What happened?"
"Don"t, you"re hurting my hand, Donald. I"ll tell you all about it as soon as I can, but please don"t ask so many questions all at once, and please tell me first that you are glad, that my great secret makes you happy, as it does me."
"Happy? Oh, great heavens! But you? Are you really pleased? You said that you loved him!"
"And so I did, and do ... dearly. But, you see, Donald, although I have cared for him for a long, long while, there was something about my affection that I could not explain, even to myself. It was ... was different, somehow, from what ... from what I felt it must be for the man whom I might marry. Now I know that it was the subconscious call of the blood, the love of a sister for a brother, and never anything else."
Lifted and swayed by a great happiness and reborn hope, Donald laughed aloud.
"Oh, you"re a strange little girl, Smiles. I had not realized that you were fully grown up until to-night; but now I know that you are a woman,--a child no longer. My little Rose would never have tried to be so dramatic, nor would she have tried to a.n.a.lyze her love, and label it the call of kin, rather than that of a mate. I used to think that you were a clear crystal in which I might see reflected your very heart and soul, but now you have become a woman and therefore a mystery. Oh, woman, what do you know about love? Not the kind that Philip inspired in you; but the name which burns unquenchable--which purifies and strengthens, or consumes the one who ..." he stopped, surprised at his own rush of words,--and abashed.
The hand, which she had slipped unconsciously into his, trembled and thrilled him.
"Perhaps ... I do ... know it, Donald," came the words, barely audible.
"Smiles! It isn"t possible that you ... that I ... Oh, my dear one, don"t say anything to make me hope anew, after what I have endured to-night unless ..."
"Do you really care, Don? In that other way, I mean."
He stood unsteadily up; things had become unreal and he could not speak. Smiles, still holding his hand, rose also. The top of her head came just below the level of his eyes; the moonlight across it set her wavy hair to shimmering. She could not lift her eyes to his, but with a brave, low voice, she went on, when she saw that he would not answer.
"All this past week I have been the most brazen of girls, and deliberately given you a hundred chances to tell me, if it were so. I was quite sure that it couldn"t be, and besides, you told Philip...."
"I know; but I thought ... you see he told me that he loved you, and that he was sure that you cared for him."
"I did, just as I do now. Oh, man, you have been so blind, or so n.o.ble. Have I got to ask you to marry me?"
For the barest instant she looked up at him, and he saw that the smile he loved was whimsical as well as madly appealing.
"No," almost shouted Donald. "I won"t hear of such a thing as your being one of these "new women." You"re a siren out of the olden days of mystic legend, and I have kept my ears stopped up against your witching song, which I was afraid to hear. But now I want to hear it, day and night, through eternity. Wait, not yet. First ... Smiles, will you marry me?"
"Oh, what an anticlimax! Why did you have to become so practical and unromantic, after such a splendid start," she laughed happily. "No lover is supposed to ask that question with such brutal bluntness. Come, I will teach you the romance of love."
It was dark on the veranda. The moon had suddenly slipped out of sight behind one of the laggards in the retreating cloud army; but Donald needed no earthly light in order to realize that Rose was holding out her arms to him, as simply and frankly as she had five years before.
"Chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p," thrilled the cricket underneath the porch.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
A LOST BROTHER.
How long it may have been before the man, eager as he was to hear the full explanation of the seeming miracle through which his happiness had been made possible, was ready to urge Rose to tell the story which she had promised, and what whispered words the cricket heard in the interim, concern only the three of them.
When, at last, he was able to bring his winging thoughts down from the clouds to earth, it was to discover still another unsuspected trait in the woman who had become his all; for Smiles, eager and excited, was still dwelling in a world of romance, and she insisted upon recounting what had happened, almost verbatim, and in a dramatic manner quite unlike the simplicity which naturally characterized her speech.
Nor could Donald"s commonplace interruptions, during the course of which he affirmed that fact was stranger than fiction and that the world was a small place after all, check her narrative.
"I don"t know whether I can make you understand why I acted as I did, when Philip asked me for my answer, dear. Indeed, I hardly know, myself," she began. "It wasn"t that I didn"t know what I had got to tell him, for I had made up my mind long ago--at least, it seems long ago, although it was only this morning, when I got his letter. Much as I cared for him, my heart knew that there was only one man in the world for me--even though he appeared not to want me!"
The digression caused a further and wholly natural delay.
"Perhaps it was because I hated to hurt him, and wanted desperately to postpone the evil moment; but, at any rate, I begged him to wait, and said that he didn"t know all the facts about me. I told him that I wasn"t sure that I ought to marry any one. And that was true, Donald. I"ve often worried about it, for I didn"t know anything about my parents, and heredity counts for so much, doesn"t it?
"Of course he replied, just as I might have expected, that he didn"t know what I meant, but that nothing else could possibly matter to him, if only I ... I cared.
"But I said that I had to explain,--I guess that I was a little panic-stricken, he seemed so deadly in earnest,--and then I told him that I wasn"t Big Jerry"s grandchild really, but only a little waif whom he had taken in. "So, you see, I am a nameless girl, Philip," I said. "I don"t mean it in a bad sense, for I know that I had a dear father and mother, whom I just barely remember, but...."
"I don"t know exactly what I was going to add, but he broke in with, "What earthly difference do you think that could make to me, dear?" And then he told me that he knew I was ... was good and pure, that any one who was acquainted with me could see that I must have come from sterling stock, even if my parents were simple mountaineers.