“Mark well, who wed should give the hand
With undivided heart, and stand
In single purpose true to one;
Or else the loving soul’s undone,
And, like the curse which blights the land,
The heart’s in variance with the hand,
And found, alas! too late--too late,
Fate linked them to a faithless mate,
They thought the flower of chivalry.”
Even in that moment of fierce anger, this man, who had so much at
stake, did not give way to his feelings. Instead he sought to use every
persuasion, every argument possible to dispel her prejudice, and then
win her heart. But it seemed a useless attempt. She simply grew more
and more annoyed with him for his persistence; was actually bored by
his eloquent avowal of love.
It was to be a long and laborious task, awakening her interest, to say
nothing of hoping for a tenderer regard, he could plainly foresee, and
when she turned away from him, with never a word of answer in response
to his passionate appeal, he determined upon a clever maneuver to bring
her to accepting him.
“You have spoiled my hour at the cataract,” she said, pouting like a
spoiled child, “and now I am going back to the house. You shall not
accompany me the next time.”
If she had looked at him she would have seen that his face wore a dull
red flush in the white moonlight.
“You shall never leave this spot until you have promised to marry me,
Jess, or have looked upon your work, if you persist in refusing me.”
And as he spoke, he sprang into the path before her, barring her
exit to the main road, and at the same time seizing her wrist in a
steel-like grasp.
Jess was no coward. This action aroused all the girl’s spirit of angry
resentment.
“Stand aside and allow me to pass, Mr. Dinsmore!” she cried. “How dare
you attempt to bar my way! Another moment of this, and I shall hate you
instead of being merely indifferent to you.”
For answer he drew from his breast pocket a small, silver-mounted
revolver and placed the muzzle of it against his temple.
“Is your answer to be yes or no, Jess?” he said, hoarsely. “Promise to
marry me and you save my life; refuse, and I fire. I love you too well
to lose you. I give you while I count five to reach a conclusion.”
“How dare you threaten me in this way?” panted the girl.
“Is it yes--or--no?” he questioned, stolidly.
Terror, for the first time in her young life, robbed Jess of all power
of speech, and like one in a trance she heard him call out hoarsely:
“One--two--three--four----”
“Speak! Is it yes, or no?” he cried, bending toward her, his fiery eyes
and breath scorching her face.
But Jess could make him no answer, her lips were stricken dumb.
“Five!” he shouted, and simultaneously with the word the deafening
report of the revolver rang out on the stillness of the night air in
that lonely spot.
Even as he had uttered the word, Jess sprang forward to wrench the
revolver from his grasp and prevent the tragedy, if indeed he really
meant to carry out his threat of blowing his brains out. But in her
excitement she forgot that he was standing on the very brink of the
precipice which overlooked the cataract, and in her intense horror she
forgot that the tree which had so recently blown down lay directly
across the path, and her foot caught on the up-standing roots, and in
less time than it takes to tell it, she had fallen across it, her head
hanging over the very edge of the precipice.
If her foot had not been so securely fastened in the intertwining
roots, she would surely have gone over it; as it was, she was held fast.
But Jess did not know that, for, with that plunge forward, when her
terrified gaze encountered the foaming waters dashing below her into
which she was falling headlong, consciousness left her.
For an instant Challoner contemplated the girl and her perilous
position with darkening brows.
“If I served her right, I would give her a push which would send her
down to the bottom of the falls,” he muttered. “She sprang for me to
wrest the weapon from me; I saw that in her eyes, and outstretched
hands. The little fool never dreamed that the weapon contained only
blank cartridges. I’m not so fond of shuffling off this mortal coil
as I led her to believe. In the first place, I think too much of
my precious head, and in the second, I intend to remain on this
terrestrial sphere long enough to win the Dinsmore millions, if it be
within man’s power.”
Very coolly he replaced the revolver in his breast pocket, then set
about to release the girl from her uncomfortable position, telling
himself that he ought to let her remain there until her senses
returned, to see how brave she would be when she found herself hanging
head downward over the chasm.
Then another idea occurred to him, which he proceeded to put into
execution. Laying Jess hurriedly down, he dragged the tree by main
force forward, and hurled it across the yawning space. A cry of
delight broke from his lips as it lodged securely upon a jutting point
of rock some ten feet below, making a bridge, which spanned the chasm,
quite as completely as though it had been fashioned by the hand of man.
“Excellent!” cried Challoner. “Affairs could not have been adjusted
more to my liking. I will win the girl through her love for romantic
chivalry. By the means of this I have not the slightest doubt.”
Coolly lifting the slight figure in his arms, he proceeded to convey
her by way of a short cut through the grounds back to Blackheath Hall.
The old housekeeper was on the porch when he reached the outer gate
with his burden, and when he staggered up the broad walk and laid Jess
at her feet, her cry of terror brought the household to the scene at
once.
To them Challoner, or John Dinsmore, as they called him, told the story
which he had prepared for their ears, to the effect that as they were
standing on the precipice, looking down on the foaming waters, as Jess
had insisted upon doing, the girl had lost her balance, and had fallen
over headforemost into the chasm.
For an instant he had thought it was all over with her. Then, to his
intense joy, he discovered her hanging by her skirts to a tree which
had blown down and was lodged fully ten feet below. He had not waited
an instant to consider what was best to be done, but, with the fixed
determination to save Jess or die with her, he had plunged down to her
rescue, succeeding in grasping her just as her garments were giving way.
Then followed his recital of his terrible climb up that ten feet of
slippery rock with his burden clasped close in his arms. One slip meant
certain death for both, and, hardly realizing how he had accomplished
it, he at last, by an almost superhuman effort, had succeeded in
pulling himself and Jess up, thanking Heaven that the girl was
unconscious, and had not realized the frightful danger through which
she had passed.
Mrs. Bryson, the old housekeeper, trembled like an aspen leaf as
she listened; then her pent-up feelings broke forth into hysterical
sobbing.
“Little Jess owes her life to you, Mr. Dinsmore,” she cried. “She
should adore the very ground you walk on for it to the day she dies,
and I shall impress that upon her mind,” she added. “Perhaps it would
be best never to let her know of her danger,” he suggested, suavely,
but Mrs. Bryson would not hear to any such arrangement. “It was but
just that Jess should know how he had saved her life at the risk of his
own,” she declared.
And this was the story which was told to Jess when she regained
consciousness under Mrs. Bryson’s skillful treatment some half an hour
later.
The girl listened with eyes opened wide with amazement. She recollected
hearing the report of the revolver as she sprang forward to dash it
from his hand, and missing her foothold, stumbling over the fallen
tree, and going over the precipice, as she imagined, and a shudder of
terror swept over her.
“Then he did not kill himself, after all!” she faltered, and Mrs.
Bryson, who imagined that she referred to the perilous descending and
rescuing of herself, knowing nothing about the episode in which the
revolver played a part, answered:
“Heaven saved him to rescue you in the most miraculous manner, and you
should fairly worship such a grand hero as he has proven himself to be,
Jess.”
Jess could not bring herself to explain to Mrs. Bryson the cause which
had brought the accident about. She merely closed her eyes, wondering
how it happened that he had missed his aim, and failed to shoot himself
when he held the revolver close to his temple, and she echoed the old
housekeeper’s observation that it must indeed have been a miracle.
The fright through which Jess had gone did not affect her much, and she
was as good as new, and up with the birds, and out in the grounds, the
next morning.
But early as she was, “her hero,” as Mrs. Bryson declared she was going
to designate him forever after, was out before her.
Jess never remembered in what words she attempted to thank him for the
service he had rendered her in saving her life.
He put up his white hand with a quick, impatient sigh, saying, softly:
“It was to be, that is why I missed my aim; that much I owe to you,
for, as you brushed past me, you turned my hand aside, and my bullet
went wide of its mark. I owe my life as much to you therefore, little
Jess, as you owe yours to me.”