A SONG AND A FALLING STAR
This was on Friday, and Harwood took the afternoon train for Waupegan.
He had found that when he was tired or lonely or troubled he craved the
sight of Sylvia. Sylvia alone could restore his equanimity; Sylvia who
worked hard but never complained of weariness; Sylvia who saw life
steadily and saw it whole, where he caught only fitful, distorted
glimpses. Yes; he must see Sylvia. Not only must he see her but there
were things he meant to say to her.
He needed Sylvia. For several months he had been sure of that. He loved
her and he meant to marry her. Since leaving college he had indulged in
several more or less ardent flirtations, but they had ended harmlessly;
it was very different with Sylvia! He had realized all that spring that
she was becoming increasingly necessary to him; he needed her solace and
her inspiration. He thrust one or two new books on the prevailing social
unrest into his suit case and added a box of candy, smiling at the
combination. Sylvia with all her ideals was still so beautifully human.
She was quite capable of nibbling bon-bons to the accompaniment of a
vivacious discussion of the sorrows of the world--he had seen her do
just that! With her ideals of life and service, she would not be easily
won; but he was in the race to win. Yes, there were things he meant to
say to Sylvia, and in the tedious journey through the hot afternoon to
Waupegan he formulated them and visualized the situations in which he
should utter them.
Dan reached Waupegan at six o'clock and went to one of the little inns
at the lakeside near the village. He got into his flannels, ate supper,
and set off for Mrs. Owen's with his offerings on the seven o'clock
boat. In the old days of his intimacy with Bassett he had often visited
Waupegan, and the breach between them introduced an element of
embarrassment into his visit. He was very likely to meet his former
chief, who barely bowed to him now when they met in hotels or in the
streets of the capital.
Jumping aboard the steamer just as it was pulling out, he at once saw
Bassett sitting alone in the bow. There were only a few other
passengers, and hearing Dan's step on the deck behind him, Bassett
turned slightly, nodded, and then resumed his inspection of the farther
shore lines. A light overcoat lay across his knees, and the protruding
newspapers explained his visit to the village. Dan found a seat on the
opposite side of the deck, resolved to accept Bassett's own definition
of their relations--markedly expressed in Bassett's back and shoulders
that were stolidly presented to him. Dan, searching out the lights that
were just beginning to blink on the darkling shores, found the
glimmering lanterns of Mrs. Owen's landing. Sylvia was there! It was
Sylvia he had come to see, and the coldness with which Morton Bassett
turned his back upon him did not matter in the least. It was his
pliability in Bassett's hands, manifested at the convention where he had
appeared as the boss's spokesman, that had earned him Sylvia's first
rebuke.
He was thinking of this and of Sylvia when Bassett left his chair and
crossed the deck. Dan barely turned his head, thinking he was merely
changing his seat for a better view; but as Bassett stopped in front of
him, Dan rose and pushed forward a chair.
"No, thank you; I suppose you came up on the evening train. I just
wondered whether you saw Fitch to-day."
"No, sir; I didn't see him; I didn't know he wanted to see me."
"He was here yesterday and probably hadn't had time to see you before
you left town. He had a proposition to make in that Canneries case."
"I didn't know that, of course, or I should have waited. I've never had
any talk with him about the Canneries business."
"So he said."
Bassett clapped his hand savagely upon his hat suddenly to save it from
the breeze that had been roused by the increasing speed of the boat. He
clearly disliked having to hold his hat on his head. Dan marked his old
chief's irritation. There were deep lines in Bassett's face that had
only lately been written there.
"I'll see him Monday. I only ran up for a day or two. It's frightfully
hot at home."
Neither the heat, nor Harwood's enterprise in escaping from it,
interested Bassett, who lifted his voice above the thumping of the
machinery to say:--
"I told Fitch to talk to you about that suit of yours and fix it up if
we can come to terms. I told him what I'd stand for. I'm not afraid of
the suit, and neither is Fitch, and I want you to understand that. My
reasons for getting rid of it are quite apart from the legal questions."
"It will save time, Mr. Bassett, if you tell Fitch that the suit won't
be dropped until all the claims I represent are paid in full. Several of
your associates in the reorganization have already sounded me on that,
and I've said no to all of them."
"Oh, you have, have you?" There was a hard glitter in Bassett's eyes and
his jaws tightened.
"All right, then; go ahead," he added, and walked grimly back to his
chair.
When the steamer stopped at his landing, Bassett jumped off and began
the ascent to his house without looking at Harwood again. Dan felt that
it had been worth the journey to hear direct from Bassett the
intimations of a wish to compromise the Canneries case. And yet, while
the boat was backing off, it was without exultation that he watched
Bassett's sturdy figure slowly climbing the steps. The signs of wear,
the loss of the politician's old elasticity, touched a chord of pity in
Harwood's breast. In the early days of their acquaintance it had seemed
to him that Bassett could never be beaten; and yet Dan had to-night read
defeat in his face and manner. The old Morton Bassett would never have
yielded an inch, never have made overtures of compromise. He would have
emerged triumphant from any disaster. Harwood experienced something of
the sensations of a sculptor, who, having begun a heroic figure in the
grand manner of a Michael Angelo, finds his model shrinking to a pitiful
pygmy. As Bassett passed from sight he turned with a sigh toward the
red, white and blue lanterns that advertised Mrs. Owen's dock to the
mariner.
"Well, well, if it isn't Daniel," exclaimed Mrs. Owen, as Harwood
greeted her and Sylvia on her veranda. "One of the farm hands quit
to-day and you can go to work in the morning, Daniel."
"Not if I'm strong enough to run, Aunt Sally. I'm going to have
forty-eight hours' vacation if I starve to death the rest of my life."
Rose Farrell had told him that Mrs. Owen was entertaining the Elizabeth
House girls in installments, and he was not surprised to find the
veranda filled with young women. Some of them he knew and Sylvia
introduced him to the others.
"When's Rose coming up?" asked Sylvia, balancing herself on the veranda
rail. "You know she's expected."
"Do I know she's expected? Didn't I have a note from you, Aunt Sally,
ordering me to send her up? She's coming just as soon as I get back, but
I think of staying forever."
"A man has come and he's come to stay forever," murmured one of the
young women.
"Oh, you're an event!" laughed Sylvia. "But don't expect us to spoil
you. The sport for to-morrow is tomato pickles, and the man who skipped
to-day left because Aunt Sally wanted him to help scald and peel the
tomats. Your job is cut out for you."
"All right," he replied humbly. "I'll do anything you say but plough or
cut wood. My enchanted youth on the farm was filled with those delights,
and before I go back to that a swift Marathon runner must trip me."
He was aware presently that one by one the girls were slipping away; he
saw them through the windows settling themselves at the round table of
the living-room, where Mrs. Owen was reading a newspaper. Not more than
a quarter of an hour had passed when he and Sylvia found themselves
alone.
"I haven't scarlet fever or anything," he remarked, noting the flight
with satisfaction.
"I suppose we might go inside, too," suggested Sylvia obtusely.
"Oh, I came up for the fresh air! Most of my nights lately have been
spent in a hot office with not even a June bug for company. How are the
neighbors?"
"The Bassetts? Oh, Mrs. Bassett is not at all well; Marian is at home
now; Blackford is tutoring and getting ready to take the Annapolis
examinations the first chance he gets."
"I saw Allen to-day," he remarked carelessly.
She said nothing. He moved his chair nearer.
"He told me things that scared me to death--among others that he and
Marian are engaged."
"Yes, Marian told me that."
"Ah! She really takes it seriously, does she?"
"Yes, she takes it seriously; why shouldn't she?"
"It's the first time she ever took anything seriously; that's all."
"Please don't speak of her like that, Dan. You know she and I are
friends, and I thought you and she were friends too. She always speaks
of you in the very kindest way. Your leaving Mr. Bassett didn't make any
difference with her. And you are the greatest of Blackford's heroes next
to Nelson and Farragut."
Dan laughed.
"So it isn't Napoleon, and Grant and Custer any more? I'm glad he's
settled down to something."
"He's a fine boy with a lot of the right stuff in him. We've been having
some lessons together."
"Tutoring Blackford? You'll have to explain the psychological processes
that brought that about."
"Oh, they're simple enough. He hadn't done well in school last year;
Mrs. Bassett was troubled about it. I take him for a couple of hours
every morning. Mrs. Bassett engaged me, and Mr. Bassett approved of the
plan. Allen probably told you all the news, but he didn't know just how
I came to go to Chicago cago to bring Marian home. It was to keep the
news of that automobile smash from Mrs. Bassett, and to save Marian's
own dignity with the Willings."
"Oh! You went at her father's instance, did you?"
"Yes. I offered to go when I found that he was very angry and likely to
deal severely and ungenerously with Marian. I thought it would be better
for me to go."
"As near as I can make out, you've taken the Bassetts on your
shoulders. I didn't suppose Aunt Sally would stand for that."
"Aunt Sally doesn't know why I went to Chicago. I assume Mrs. Bassett
knows I went to bring Marian home, but I don't know what Mr. Bassett
told her about it, and I haven't seen her since. It's possible my going
may have displeased her. Blackford came here for his lessons this
morning."
Dan moved uneasily. The domestic affairs of the Bassetts did not
interest him save as they involved Sylvia. It was like Sylvia to help
them out of their scrapes; but Sylvia was not a person that he could
scold or abuse.
"You needed rest and it's too bad you've had to bother with their
troubles. Bassett was on the boat as I came over. He had a grouch. He
doesn't look like a happy man."
"I don't suppose he is altogether happy. And I've begged Marian not to
tell him she wants to marry Allen. That would certainly not cheer him
any, right now."
"I'm glad you had a chance to do that. I told Allen to skip right out
for Europe and hang on to his mother's apron strings till I send for
him. This old Capulet and Montague business doesn't ring quite true in
this twentieth century; there's something unreal about it. And just what
those youngsters can see in each other is beyond me."
"You must be fair about that. We haven't any right to question their
sincerity."
"Oh, Allen is sincere enough; but you'll have to show me the documents
on Marian's side of it. She sees in the situation a great lark. The
fact that her father and Thatcher are enemies appeals to her romantic
instincts."
"I think better of it than that, Dan. She's a fine, strong, loyal girl
with a lot of hard common sense. But that doesn't relieve the situation
of its immediate dangers. She's promised me not to speak to her father
yet--not until she has my consent. When I see that it can't be helped,
I'm going to speak to Mr Bassett about it myself."
"You seem to be the good angel of the Bassett household," he remarked
sullenly. A lover's jealousy stirred in his heart, he did not like to
think of Sylvia as preoccupied with the affairs of others, and he saw no
peace or happiness ahead for Marian and Allen. "It's all more wretched
than you imagine. This war between Thatcher and Bassett has passed the
bounds of mere political rivalry. There's an implacable hatred there
that's got to take its course. Allen told me of it this morning when he
was trying to enlist me in his cause with Marian. It's hideous--a
perfectly rotten mess. Thatcher is preparing a poisoned arrow for
Bassett. He's raked up an old scandal, an affair with a woman. It makes
my blood run cold to think of its possibilities."
"But Mr. Thatcher wouldn't do such a thing; he might threaten, but he
wouldn't really use that sort of weapon!"
"You don't know the man, Sylvia. He will risk anything to break Bassett
down. There's nothing respectable about Thatcher but his love for Allen,
and that doesn't redeem everything."
"But you won't let it come to that. You have influence enough yourself
to stop it. Even if you hated him you would protect Mrs. Bassett and the
children."
"I could do nothing of the kind, Sylvia. Now that I've left Bassett my
influence has vanished utterly. Besides, I'm out of politics. I hate the
game. It's rotten--rotten clean through."
"I don't believe it's quite true that you have lost your influence. I
read the newspapers, and some of them are saying that you are the hope
of your party, and that you have a large following. But you wouldn't do
that, Dan; you wouldn't lend yourself to such a thing as that!"
"I'm not so sure," he replied doggedly, angry that they should be
discussing the subject at all, though to be sure he had introduced it.
"A man's family has got to suffer for his acts; it's a part of the
punishment. I'd like to see Bassett driven out of politics, but I assure
you that I don't mean to do it. There's no possibility of my having the
chance. He put me in the legislature to use me; and I'm glad that's all
over. As I tell you, I'm out of the game."
"I don't sympathize with that at all, Dan; you not only ought to stay
in, but you ought to do all you can to make it impossible for men like
Bassett and Thatcher to have any power. The honor of the state ought to
be dear to all of us; and if I belonged to a party I think I should have
a care for its honor too."
The time was passing. It was not to discuss politics that he had gone to
Waupegan.
"Come," he said. "Let's find a canoe and get out under the stars."
Sylvia went for a wrap, and they had soon embarked, skimming along in
silence for a time till they were free of the shores. There was no moon,
but the stars shone brilliantly; a fitful west wind scarcely ruffled the
water. Along the deep-shadowed shores the dock lanterns twinkled, and
above and beyond them the lamps of the cottages flashed and vanished.
Dan paddled steadily with a skilled, splashless stroke. The paddle sank
noiselessly and rose to the accompaniment of a tinkling drip as the
canoe parted the waters. There is nothing like a canoe flight under
stars to tranquilize a troubled and perplexed spirit, and Dan was soon
won to the mood he sought. It seemed to him that Sylvia, enfolded in the
silvery-dim dusk in the bow, was a part of the peace of sky and water.
They were alone, away from the strifes and jars of the world, shut in
together as completely as though they had been flung back for unreckoned
ages into a world of unbroken calm. The peace that Wordsworth sought and
sang crept into their blood, and each was sensible that the other knew
and felt it and that it was grateful to them both.
Sylvia spoke, after a time, of immaterial things, or answered his
questions as to the identity of the constellations mapped in the clear
arch above.
"I dream sometimes of another existence," she said, "as I suppose every
one does, when I knew a quiet lake that held the stars as this does. I
even think I remember how it looked in winter, with the ice gleaming in
the moonlight, and of snow coming and the keen winds piling it in
drifts. It's odd, isn't it? those memories we have that are not
memories. The metempsychosis idea must have some substance. We have all
been somebody else sometime, and we clutch at the shadows of our old
selves, hardly believing they are shadows."
"It's a good deal a matter of imagination, isn't it?" asked Dan, idling
with the paddle.
"Oh, but I haven't a bit of that. That's one thing I'm not troubled
with, and I'm sorry for it. When I look up at the stars I think of the
most hideous formula for calculating their distances from the earth.
When I read in a novel that it was a night of stars, I immediately
wonder what particular stars. It used to make dear Grandfather Kelton
furiously indignant to find a moon appearing in novels contrary to the
almanac; he used to check up all the moons, and he once thought of
writing a thesis on the 'Erroneous Lunar Calculations of Recent
Novelists,' but decided that it didn't really make any difference. And
of course it doesn't."
As they discussed novels new and old, he drew in his paddle and crept
nearer her. It seemed to him that all the influences of earth and heaven
had combined to create this hour for him. To be talking to her of books
that interpreted life and of life itself was in itself something sweet;
he wished such comradeship as this, made possible by their common
interests in the deep, surging currents of the century in which they
lived, to go on forever.
Their discussion of Tolstoy was interrupted by the swift flight of a
motor boat that passed near, raising a small sea, and he seized the
paddle to steady the canoe. Then silence fell upon them.
"Sylvia" he said softly, and again, "Sylvia!" It seemed to him that the
silence and the beauty of the night were his ally, communicating to her
infinite longings hidden in his heart which he had no words to express.
"I love you, Sylvia; I love you. I came up to-night to tell you that."
"Oh, Dan, you mustn't say it--you must never say it!"
The canoe seemed to hang between water and stars, a motionless argosy in
a sea of dreams.
"I wanted to tell you before you came away," he went on, not heeding; "I
have wanted to tell you for a long time. I want you to marry me. I want
you to help me find the good things; I want you to help me to stand for
them. You came just when I needed you; you have already changed me, made
a different man of me. It was through you that I escaped from my old
self that was weak and yielding, and I shall do better; yes, I shall
prove to you that I am not so weak but that I can strive and achieve.
Every word you ever spoke to me is written on my heart. I need you,
Sylvia!"
"You're wrong, you're terribly wrong about all that; and it isn't fair
to let you say such things. Please, Dan! I hoped this would never
come--that we should go on as we have been, good friends, talking as we
were a while ago of the fine things, the great things. And it will have
to be that way--there can be nothing else."
"But I will do my best, Sylvia! I'm not the man you knew first; you
helped me to see the light. Without you I shall fall into the dark
again. I had to tell you, Sylvia. It was inevitable that I should tell
you; I wonder I kept it to myself so long. Without you I should go
adrift--no bearings, no light anywhere."
"You found yourself, Dan; that was the way of it. I saw it and
appreciated it--it meant more to me than I can tell you. I knew exactly
how it was that you started as you did; it was part of your fate; but it
made possible the finer thing. It's nothing in you or what you've done
or may do. But I have my own work to do. I have cut a pattern for my own
life, and I must try to follow it. I think you understand about that--I
told you that night when we talked of our aims and hopes on the campus
at Montgomery that I wanted to do something for the world. And I must
still go on trying to do that. It's a poor, tiny little gleam; but I
must follow the gleam."
"But there's nothing in that that we can't do together. We can go on
seeking it together," he pleaded.
"I hope it may be so. We must go on being the good friends we are now.
You and Aunt Sally are all I have--the best I have. I can't let you
spoil that," she ended firmly, as though, after all, this were the one
important thing.
There was nothing here, he reasoned, that might not be overcome. The
work that she had planned to do imposed no barrier. Men and women were
finding out the joy of striving together; she need give up nothing in
joining her life to his. He touched the hand that lay near and thrilled
to the contact of her lingers.
"Please, Dan!" she pleaded, drawing her hand away. "I mean to go on with
my life as I have begun it. I shall never marry, Dan,--marriage isn't in
my plan at all. But for you the right woman will come some day--I hope
so with all my heart. We must understand all this now. And I must be
sure, oh, very sure, that you know how dear it is to have had you say
these things to me."
"But I shall say them again and always, Sylvia! This was only the
beginning; I had to speak to-night; I came here to say these things to
you. I am able to care for you now--not as I should like to, but I'm
going to succeed. I want to ease the way for you; I mean that you
mustn't go back to teaching this fall!"
"There, you see"--and he knew she smiled in her patient, sweet way that
was dear to him--"you want to stop my work before it's begun! You see
how impossible it would be, Dan!"
"But you can do other things; there are infinite ways in which you can
be of use, doing the things you want to do. The school work is only a
handicap,--drudgery that leads to nothing."
He knew instantly that he had erred; and that he must give her no
opportunity to defend her attitude toward her work. He returned quickly
to his great longing and need.
"Without you I'm a failure, Sylvia. If it hadn't been for you I should
never have freed myself of that man over there!" And he lifted his arm
toward the lights of the Bassett landing on the nearer shore.
"No; you would have saved yourself in any case; there's no questioning
that. You were bound to do it. And it wasn't the man; it was the base
servitude that you came to despise."
"Not without you! It was your attitude toward me, after that cheap piece
of melodrama I figured in in that convention, that brought me up with a
short turn. It all came through you--my wish to measure up to your
ideal."
"That's absurd, Dan. If I believed that I should think much less of you;
I really should!" she exclaimed. "It was something finer and higher than
that; it was your own manhood asserting itself. That man over there,"
she went on more quietly, "is an object of pity. He's beset on many
sides. It hurt him to lose you. He's far from happy."
"He has no claim upon happiness; he doesn't deserve happiness," replied
Dan doggedly.
"But the break must have cost you something; haven't you missed him just
a little bit?"
It was clear from her tone that she wished affirmation of this. The
reference to his former employer angered him. He had been rejoicing in
his escape from Morton Bassett, and yet Sylvia spoke of him with
tolerance and sympathy. The Bassetts were coolly using her to extricate
themselves from the embarrassments resulting from their own folly; it
was preposterous that they should have sent Sylvia to bring Marian home.
And his rage was intensified by the recollection of the pathos he had
himself felt in Bassett that very evening, as he had watched him mount
the steps of his home. Sylvia was causing the old chords to vibrate with
full knowledge that, in spite of his avowed contempt for the man, Morton
Bassett still roused his curiosity and interest. It was unfair for
Sylvia to take advantage of this.
"Bassett's nothing to me," he said roughly.
"He seems to me the loneliest soul I ever knew," replied Sylvia quietly.
"He deserves it; he's brought himself to that."
"I don't believe he's altogether evil. There must be good in him."
"It's because he's so evil that you pity him; it's because of that that
I'm sorry for him. It's because we know that he must be broken upon the
wheel before he realizes the vile use he has made of his power that we
are sorry for him. Why, Sylvia, he's the worst foe we have--all of us
who want to do what we call the great things--ease the burdens of the
poor, make government honest, catch the gleam we seek! Even poor Allen,
when he stands on the Monument steps at midnight and spouts to me about
the Great Experiment, feels what Morton Bassett can't be made to feel."
"But he may yet see it; even he may come to see it," murmured Sylvia.
"He's a hard, stubborn brute; it's in the lines of his back--I was
studying him on the boat this evening, and my eyes followed him up the
steps after they dropped him at his dock. It's in those strong, iron
hands of his. I tell you, what we feel for him is only the kind of pity
we have for those we know to be doomed by the gods to an ignominious
end. He's not worth our pity. He asks no mercy and he won't get any."
He was at once ashamed of the temper to which he had yielded, and angry
at himself for having broken the calm of the night with these discordant
notes. Sylvia's hand touched the water caressingly, waking tiny ripples.
"Sylvia," he said when he was calm again, "I want you to marry me."
"I have told you, Dan, that I can never marry any one; and that must be
the end of it."
"But your work can go on--" he began, ready for another assault upon
that barrier.
A sailboat loitering in the light wind had stolen close upon them, and
passed hardly a paddle's length away. Dan, without changing his
position, drove the canoe toward the shore with a few strokes of the
paddle, then steadied himself to speak again. Sylvia's eyes watched the
sails vanishing like ghosts into the dark.
"That won't do, Sylvia: that isn't enough. You haven't said that you
don't care for me; you haven't said that you don't love me! And I can't
believe that your ambitions alone are in the way. Believe me, that I
respect them; I should never interfere with them. There must be some
other reason. I can't take no for an answer; this night was made for us;
no other night will ever be just like this. Please, dear, if there are
other reasons than my own poor spirit and the little I can offer, let me
know it. If you don't care, it will be kinder to say it now! If that is
the reason--even if there's some other man--let me know it now. Tell me
what it is, Sylvia!"
It was true that she had not said she did not care. Her silence now at
the direct question stirred new fears to life in his breast, like the
beat of startled wings from a thicket in November.
Only the lights of the sailboat were visible now, but suddenly a girl's
voice rose clear and sweet, singing to the accompaniment of guitar and
mandolin. The guitar throbbed; and on its deep chords the mandolin wove
its melody. The voice seemed to steal out of the heart of the night and
float over the still waters. The unseen singer never knew the mockery of
the song she sang. It was an old song and the air was one familiar the
world round. And it bore the answer to Dan's question which Sylvia had
carried long in her heart, but could not speak. She did not speak it
then; it was ordained that she should never speak it. And Dan knew and
understood.
"Who is Sylvia, what is she,
That all the swains adore her?"
"_Who is Sylvia_?" Dan knew in that hour the answer of tears!
The song ceased. When Dan saw Sylvia's head lift, he silently took the
paddle and impelled the canoe toward the red, white, and blue lanterns
that defined Mrs. Owen's landing. They were within a hundred yards of
the intervening green light of the Bassett dock when a brilliant meteor
darted across the zenith, and Dan's exclamation broke the tension.
Their eyes turned toward the heavens--Sylvia's still bright with tears,
Dan knew, though he could not see her face.
"Poor lost star!" she murmured softly.
Dan was turning the canoe slightly to avoid the jutting shore that made
a miniature harbor at the Bassett's when Sylvia uttered a low warning.
Dan, instantly alert, gripped his paddle and waited. Some one had
launched a canoe at the Bassett boathouse. There was a stealthiness in
the performance that roused him to vigilance. He cautiously backed water
and waited. A word or two spoken in a low tone reached Dan and Sylvia:
two persons seemed to be embarking.
A canoe shot out suddenly from the dock, driven by a confident hand.
"It must be Marian; but there's some one with her," said Sylvia.
Dan had already settled himself in the stern ready for a race.
"It's probably that idiot Allen," he growled. "We must follow them."
Away from the shore shadows the starlight was sufficient to confirm
Dan's surmise as to the nature of this canoe flight. It was quite ten
o'clock, and the lights in the Bassett house on the bluff above had been
extinguished. It was at once clear to Dan that he must act promptly.
Allen, dismayed by the complications that beset his love-affair, had
proposed an elopement, and Marian had lent a willing ear.
"They're running away, Sylvia; we've got to head them off." He bent to
his paddle vigorously. "They can't possibly get away."
But it was not in Marian's blood to be thwarted in her pursuit of
adventure. She was past-mistress of the canoeist's difficult art, and
her canoe flew on as though drawn away into the dark on unseen cords.
"You'd better lend a hand," said Dan, and Sylvia turned round and knelt,
paddling Indian fashion. The canoe skimmed the water swiftly. It was in
their thoughts that Marian and Allen must not land at Waupegan, where
their intentions would be advertised to the world. The race must end
before the dock was reached. At the end of a quarter of an hour Dan
called to Sylvia to cease paddling.
"We've passed them; there's no doubt of that," he said, peering into the
dark.
"Maybe they're just out for fun and have turned back," suggested Sylvia.
"I wish I could think so. More likely they're trying to throw us off.
Let's check up for a moment and see if we hear them again."
He kept the canoe moving slowly while they listened for some sign of the
lost quarry. Then suddenly they heard a paddle stroke behind them, and
an instant later a canoe's bow brushed their craft as lightly as a hand
passing across paper. Dan threw himself forward and grasped the sides
firmly; there was a splashing and wobbling as he arrested the flight. A
canoe is at once the most docile and the most intractable of argosies.
Sylvia churned the water with her paddle, seeking to crowd the rocking
canoes closer together, while Marian endeavored to drive them apart.
"Allen!" panted Dan, prone on the bottom of his canoe and gripping the
thwarts of the rebellious craft beside him, "this must end here."
"Let us go!" cried Allen stridently. "This is none of your business. Let
us go, I say."
Finding it impossible to free her canoe, Marian threw down her paddle
angrily. They were all breathless; Dan waited till the canoes rode
together quietly. Sylvia had brought an electric lamp which Dan now
flashed the length of the captive canoe. It searched the anxious, angry
faces of the runaways, and disclosed two suit cases that told their own
story.
"I told you to keep away from here, Allen. You can't do this. It won't
do," said Dan, snapping off the light; "you're going home with us,
Marian."
"I won't go back; you haven't any right to stop me!"
"You haven't any right to run away in this fashion," said Sylvia,
speaking for the first time. "You would cause endless trouble. It's not
the way to do it."
"But it's the only way out," stormed Allen. "There's no other way. Dan
told me himself I couldn't speak to Mr. Bassett, and this is the only
thing we could do."
"Will you kindly tell me just what you intended doing?" asked Dan, still
gripping the canoe.
"I'd spoken to the minister here in the village. Marian was going to
spend the night at his house and we were to be married in the morning
as soon as I could get a license."
"You can't get a marriage license in Waupegan; your minister ought to
know that."
"No; but we could have driven over early to the county seat and got it;
I tell you I had it all fixed. You let go of that canoe!"
"Stand by, Sylvia," said Dan with determination.
He steadied himself a moment, stepped into Marian's canoe, and caught up
her paddle.
"Wait here, Sylvia. I'm going to land Allen over there at that dock with
the two white lights, and I'll come back with Marian and we'll take her
home. Flash the light occasionally so I shan't lose you."
A few minutes later when Allen, sulky and breathing dire threats, had
been dropped ashore, Harwood paddled Marian home, Sylvia trailing
behind.
It was near midnight when Sylvia, having hidden Marian's suit case in
Mrs. Owen's boathouse, watched the tearful and wrathful Juliet steal
back into her father's house.
Allen lodged at the inn with Dan that night and, duly urged not to make
a fool of himself again, went home by the morning train.