It was the work of moments after that.
There were strong, willing hands at the oars, and the tiny boat leaped
the waves like a bird on its errand of mercy.
But even when Carlita had seen them drag Pierrepont, with his tiny
burden, into the boat safely, even when she saw it approaching her
again, valiantly struggling against the swiftly ebbing tide, she could
not remove her strained, haggard eyes from it, could not loosen the
clutch of her rigid fingers from the bosom of her gown just above her
heart.
She did not seem to realize that he was safe until he stood upon the
pier beside her in the moonlight, dripping wet, yet smiling happily
while he deposited the half drowned child into the arms of his father,
who had grown as hysterical as a woman, and turned to her.
She was looking up into his face, her own cold and gray as if frost had
touched her very soul, and there was something in it that frightened
him.
He forgot how wet he was, and before all those people he threw his arm
around her and drew her to him.
"Carlita, darling!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Are you frightened? See!
We will neither of us be the worse for a little wetting."
"Thank God, you are safe!" she cried, and then--her face was hidden
against something wet, and her tears flowed.
When she recovered her composure sufficiently to know what was going on
about her, she heard something of how it all had happened.
The child was the crippled son of the chef on board the "Eolus." His
mother had been ill for days, and was taken rapidly worse toward
nightfall; so bad, in fact, that when the doctor was summoned he gave
no hope beyond the hour.
Knowing where the anxious husband was, a neighbor had sent the boy to
the pier to await the return of the "Eolus," in order that there might
be no delay in his arrival; but the minutes passed, and as the boy grew
more anxious and tearful, his hysterical unrest increased, so that when
the "Eolus" really did arrive, he could control himself no longer,
and the accident resulted through his too anxious desire to reach his
father quickly.
"You should have told me your wife was ill," Leith said to the man,
kindly. "Pleasure is not so essential that we can purchase it at such a
cost to others."
"I feared to lose my place, sir," the chef answered sadly. "And they
are not so easy to obtain. I could not afford it."
"Have I been so stern a master?"
"The best and kindest, sir. What gentleman but you would have risked
his life, as you have done, to save a servant's crippled boy? I owe you
his life, and I shall not forget it!"
"Nonsense! Some one else would have saved him if I had not. You'd
better get the poor little fellow home as quickly as you can. I fancy
he has a very uncomfortable load of salt water."
"He's got rid of most of it, I think, sir."
"But there is cold to avoid. Take one of the rugs and wrap him up well.
I hope you'll find it better with your wife than you anticipate."
"Thank you, sir."
And then Leith remembered himself, and slipped into his coat and
overcoat, wrapping it about him snugly.
"Ugh! This wind doesn't make the water warmer," he exclaimed, lightly.
"Ladies, I regret that my condition won't allow me to drive you home;
but I'm sure Maltby will take my place. Old fellow, I'm trusting you
with a very precious burden. Miss de Barryos has promised to be my
wife."
"I congratulate you with all my heart!" exclaimed Maltby, shaking his
hand heartily. "I thought I had discovered a secret when I heard her
offer five thousand dollars to the man who would save your life."
"You did that, Carlita?"
But her choking reply, if there was one, was drowned in the sound of
congratulations that followed.
"It was absolutely necessary that I should tell him that," Leith
explained to her as they walked down the pier together, he still
leaving a trail of water behind him. "I kissed you before them all, and
held you in my arms, you know. You are not angry, darling?"
She did not reply, only looked at him, but he seemed to be satisfied
with the look, for he smiled with that ecstatic sort of grin that comes
only to the happy lover's countenance.
It was a silent drive homeward. Even Jessica leaned in her own corner
of the carriage, oblivious of Maltby's remarks, until he, too, ceased
to make an effort at conversation. Mrs. Chalmers' face was so white and
drawn that it reminded him of the return home from a funeral, and he
was glad when the carriage stopped before their door and he had said
good-night.
The day had ended disastrously for all except poor Leith, who was
living in the Fool's Paradise, and the three women entered the house,
going at once upstairs without exchanging a word.
At Carlita's door Jessica paused, but the unhappy girl exclaimed
pleadingly:
"Not tonight, dear. I feel as if I should go mad to face any one
tonight, even my own conscience."
"As you will," Jessica murmured calmly.
She stood there until the door had closed, shutting Carlita in, and
then a cold, scornful, half-triumphant laugh escaped her.
Her mother caught her arm in a grasp like iron.
"For God's sake, come away!" she gasped. "What is this thing that you
have done? What is this vengeance that you are planning?"
"That I have almost accomplished," corrected Jessica, looking into her
face with a fiendish sort of chuckle. "Never mind. I shall not tell
you. With your white-livered cowardice you might ruin it at the last
moment, and it shall not fail. Oh, go away, with your eternal whining!
Do you think that I will forgive her for winning his heart away from
me? Do you think I will forgive him for playing fast and loose? I hate
them both as fiercely as you know I can hate, and they shall feel the
fang of it to the last day of both their lives!"
Carlita's maid followed her to her apartment almost at once, and placed
in her hand one of those little yellow envelopes that turned her faint
and sick even before she had broken the seal.
"You may go, Ahbel," she exclaimed, wearily. "I shall not need you this
evening."
"But the back of your jacket is quite wet, Miss de Barryos. At least
you will let me remove that."
Carlita allowed herself to be divested of it rather than speak, then
watched her maid with wistful longing as she left the room. When she
was alone she looked at the telegram in her hand, hesitated, even put
her fingers to the seal, then flung it upon the table, far from her.
"I can't--tonight," she gasped. "I am so tired--so tired that I can not
look out the numbers. They would make me dizzy and--and--"
She ceased her excuses suddenly and flung herself in a chair beside
the window, then seeing the moon, she arose and turned down the gas,
opening the shutters that it might flood the room. She sat still
feeling strangely warmed by the cold rays. She was looking backward
through a little time, at that dark head upon the crest of the waves,
risking life to save a crippled child whom he had never seen before.
She was living through her own torture again with a curious, gentle
thrill of ecstatic pleasure, and then her heart gave a great, wild
throb as she saw him beside her upon the old pier, and--felt his wet,
cold, but still impassioned, kiss upon her lips.
She hid her face as she remembered that--the face that had suddenly
flushed there under the silent, never-betraying presence of the old
moon, but, strangely enough, it was not with shame but thrilling,
unacknowledged joy. There was a smile upon her mouth as she removed her
hands, and putting out her hands swiftly, she caught the damp jacket
from the back of the chair where Ahbel had hung it to dry, and pressed
her lips again and again upon the place where his arm had touched.
And then an expression of wild dismay sprang to her eyes. The smile
fled from her lips. A hoarse cry arose in her throat.
"It can't be--it can't be!" she moaned; "that what she said is true. My
God! it can't be that a curse like that has been sent upon me!"
She paused breathlessly and suddenly, with the jacket still clasped
in her hands, her eyes raised to the face of the moon; she went back
further in memory, and saw herself lying upon the couch on the deck
of the yacht, heard his softly murmured words as he repeated Percy
Shelley's poem, felt the touch of his lips, warm and sweet upon her own
again--and then, for the first time, understood it all.
All the desire for happiness that one day, all the wild longing to
forget the past, all the breathless sweetness of those moments alone
with him, the heavenly joy of that unrepulsed caress, the agony of
terror when his life was threatened, the exquisite happiness that was
almost pain when he was safe once more beside her, with his arms,
wet and dripping about her--Dudley Maltby said she had offered five
thousand dollars for his life. God! she would have given her whole
fortune and have gone through life a beggar for every one of the after
years, if they had numbered a thousand, to know that he was safe.
She laughed aloud, such a strange, unfathomable laugh, and staggered to
her feet.
"Five thousand!" she cried, still laughing, though there were
glistening tears in her eyes that seemed to blind her. "Five thousand!
Let it go at once--at once! I will draw the check and send it to the
captain of the 'Eolus,' to be filled in with the name of the man who
did it. Five thousand! I wish it were every cent that I possess! I
wish--"
She turned swiftly, excitedly, and turned up the gas, then as she would
have approached her escritoire, her eye fell again upon the yellow
telegram lying there like a sentinel.
She took it up recklessly and tore off the envelope, defying the
figures to harm her; but it was not in cipher. The cold, plain,
torturing words flashed before her eyes:
"Everything ready to leave the moment papers arrive. No fear of
failure now.
"STOLLIKER."