DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN
"Well," said Mollie, with a sigh, "I fancy there isn't very much use of
our sitting around here in our bathing suits. I, for one, don't feel
like swimming any more to-day."
"Nor I," agreed Grace.
"And I," said Amy, turning away with a shudder from the water where she
had so closely come to death, "feel as if I never wanted to see the
water again."
"Oh, but you will get over that," Betty assured her quickly. "I don't
blame you a bit for feeling that way now--I do myself--but after a while
you will be just as crazy about it as ever."
"I don't know," said Amy slowly. "When you have once come face to face
with death like that, you are not anxious to do it again in a hurry."
"But you have never had a cramp before," reasoned Mollie, "and you
probably never will have one again."
"But I am not sure of that," insisted Amy.
"There's no reason why you can't be sure of it after a while," Betty
pointed out. "You see, we girls are pretty well out of practice. It's a
long time since we did any swimming to amount to anything, and our
muscles are weak and flabby. Why, we all got tired out to-day twice as
quickly as we ordinarily would."
"And you tried to swim too far," added Mollie. "That's the reason your
poor old muscles protested."
"It might have happened to any one of us," Grace agreed. "All we need is
a little practice to swim as well as ever again."
"Oh, do you think so?" asked Amy eagerly, while the color came back into
her pale cheeks. "If I could only be sure of that!"
Betty was about to reply, but at that minute a voice hailed them from
the direction of the house and they jumped up to see what was wanted.
"It's mother," said Grace. "And she seems to be waving something at us."
"It's an envelope," cried Mollie. "It may be a letter from mother."
She started running toward the house, with Grace, thinking of Will, at
her heels, while Betty helped Amy to her feet.
"Are you feeling stronger now?" she asked. "Or would you rather rest a
little longer?"
"Oh, I'm all right," Amy assured her, though for a minute she had to
cling to Betty for support.
They made their way rather slowly after the others. Before they had
reached the foot of the bluff Mollie came scrambling down again and ran
toward them wildly.
"What do you think has happened now?" she cried, taking Amy's other arm
and helping her along.
"Oh, Mollie," cried Amy, standing stock still to gaze at her, "what--"
"The twins haven't been found?" Betty questioned eagerly, but Mollie
shook her head.
"No such luck," she returned. "But we have found out one thing. Those
blessed little twins are alive, anyway."
"How do you know?" they queried breathlessly.
By this time they had reached the top of the bluff and were all, Mrs.
Ford included, hurrying toward the house.
"They received a letter," Mollie explained, sinking down on a step of
the porch while the others crowded about her eagerly, "from some old
rascal--oh, if I could only get my hands on him!" she paused to glare
about her ferociously, but they impatiently hurried her on.
"Yes! But the letter!" Betty urged.
"It was from a man who demanded twenty thousand dollars--" she paused
again, while the girls gasped and crowded closer, "for the return of the
twins."
"Then they were kidnapped!" cried Grace.
"Yes. But they ran away first," explained Mollie, almost beside herself
with anger and excitement. "And this old--brute! found them, and, I
suppose because they were well dressed, thought he saw a way to make
some easy money. Oh, my poor darlings! My poor little Paul and Dodo!
Girls, we've just got to find them, that's all. I can't sit here and do
nothing a minute longer."
"But the police--" Amy suggested.
"Oh, the police! Of course they are on the job--or think they are,"
interrupted Mollie scornfully. "But I don't believe they will be able to
find our babies in a thousand years. And every time I think of them,
frightened to death! Oh, our precious babies!"
"I wonder how he found out where they lived," broke in Grace, who had
been following her own train of thought.
"They told him, of course," said Mollie. "Poor little trusting angels,
of course they would think any grown person was their friend. Oh, if
they had only fallen in with some respectable person instead of
that--that--" she could think of nothing bad enough to call the man who
had stolen the twins.
"Of course," said Mrs. Ford--it was the first time she had spoken--"your
mother showed the letter to the police."
"Of course," Mollie agreed, two angry spots of color in her cheeks. "And
equally of course they have promised to do all in their power to
apprehend the villain. But it makes me wild to just sit here and do
nothing!"
"But I don't see what there is to do," said Amy.
"Neither do I," cried Mollie, jumping to her feet and beginning to pace
restlessly up and down the porch. "That's the worst of it. I feel so
absolutely helpless. And all the time I have no way of knowing what
horrible thing may be happening--"
"Oh, the man is probably treating them pretty decently," said Betty,
adding, reasonably: "If he hopes to get all that money from your mother
he isn't going to take a chance on losing it by harming the twins."
"I know," cried Mollie, stopping in her restless promenade to regard
Betty. "But how in the world is mother going to raise any such sum of
money? Twenty thousand dollars--why, we haven't that much ready cash in
the world!"
"But he doesn't know that," Grace pointed out. "And as long as he keeps
on hoping--"
"But how long is he going to keep on hoping?" cried Mollie, turning on
her. "He knows mighty well that if mother had that much money she would
move heaven and earth to get it together and get the twins back. And the
very fact that she hasn't--"
"Oh, but that doesn't always follow," Betty broke in eagerly. "There are
a great many people who, even if they had the money, would try to bring
the rascal to justice before they submitted to blackmail."
"But not my mother," Mollie insisted.
"But the kidnapper doesn't know that," Grace put in. "And he will
probably lie mighty low for a few weeks, knowing that the police are
hunting for him."
"For the next few weeks, yes," admitted Mollie. "But he isn't going to
wait forever, and when he finds out that mother can't raise the money
what would be the natural thing for him to do? Get the twins out of the
way, of course," she said, answering her own question.
"But there is always the chance--yes even the probability--" insisted
Betty, "that before very long the police will be able to find the fellow
and recover the twins."
"Yes," Grace added, "that kind of criminal is never very clever, you
know. They are bound to leave something undone that will incriminate
them."
Mollie groaned and sank into a chair.
"And in the meantime," she said, "all I have to do is just to sit here
and wait and act as if nothing had happened. Oh, I can't! I've simply
got to do something!"
"Well, I'm sure I don't know how a girl can do anything that the police
can't," sighed Grace, adding wistfully: "Goodness, wouldn't I like a
chance to be happy again!"
"I guess we all would," said Mollie moodily.
They were silent for a long time after that, each one busy with her own
unhappy thoughts and no one noticed that the sun had gone under a cloud
and that the wind was rising.
It was the increasing thunder of the waves on the rocks that finally
startled them into a realization of the present.
"There's a fearful storm coming up!" cried Grace, springing to her feet.
"Look at those banks of clouds."
"And I'm getting cold," added Amy, shivering, and then they suddenly
realized that they still had on their bathing suits.
"I guess we're going crazy--and no wonder," said Grace, as they started
indoors to change their things.
"Has any one any idea what time it is?" asked Mollie. "I'm sure I
haven't."
"It must be after twelve, for I'm beginning to feel hungry," Betty
answered.
"And I'm feeling faint," Amy added. "I shouldn't wonder if a cup of tea
would go awfully well."
"You poor little thing," said Betty, putting an arm about her. "No
wonder you feel faint. We should have given you something to strengthen
you long ago. I don't know what we've been thinking of!"
"It's all my fault," said Mollie contritely, noticing suddenly how white
Amy's face was and how dark were the circles under her eyes. "I let my
own affairs make me forget everything else. Why didn't you say
something, Amy?"
"I didn't think of it myself," Amy answered truthfully, "until Betty
spoke of being hungry. Girls," she paused outside her door to sniff
inquiringly, "do I smell something, or am I dreaming?"
"I'll say you smell something," Grace answered, sniffing hungrily in her
turn. "It's mother getting lunch, of course. I don't know what we ever
would have done without her."
While the girls were dressing the threatened storm was coming nearer,
and toward the end they had to put on the light to see to fix their
hair.
Even had the sun been shining brightly, they would have felt depressed,
what with Amy's accident and the bad news Mollie had received; but with
the wind wailing dolefully and black darkness in the middle of the day,
they felt themselves growing utterly discouraged.
Grace had heard no further news of Will, and the one straw of hope that
she clutched so desperately was that he had not died, or surely her
father would have heard. In this case, no news was good news to a
certain extent.
And as for Betty, brave as she had tried to be since that terrible night
when she had read Allen's name among the missing, even she felt her
courage slipping--slipping, and began to wonder if after all, hoping did
any good.
To-day, as she stood before the mirror, mechanically putting up her hair
and looking through and past her own reflection, her eyes suddenly lost
their preoccupied stare and became focused upon herself. For the first
time in days she was seeing herself without the mask of cheerfulness she
had so determinedly assumed. And as she looked, her eyes suddenly filled
with tears--tears almost of self-pity.
For the mirror told her, what she had scarcely realized, just how much
she had suffered. Her eyes, usually so bright and merry, were dark and
brooding. Her face looked thin and drawn, and her lips--those lips that
had always seemed to smile even when her eyes were grave--had a
pathetic, wistful droop, and there were lines, yes, actually lines,
about them.
"If Allen should see you," she told herself tremulously, "he probably
wouldn't know you, Betty."
Yet all the while she knew that if it were possible for Allen to see her
or for her to see Allen, the face in the mirror would disappear as if by
magic and the old Betty would return, for joy would have taken its place
in her heart.
With a little sob she turned from the mirror and switched off the light.
The noise of the surf beating against the rocks came to her menacingly
and the wind wailed shrilly around the house.
"Oh, Allen, Allen!" she cried, stretching out her arms in an agony of
entreaty. "Somewhere you must hear me calling you. Allen, come back to
me, dear!"