EMMETT’S PLEA.
“Miss Vale, I hope you did not conceive an aversion for me the day you
fainted so tragically at my feet,” said Percy Seabright.
He had found Italy alone on the wide porch fronting the sea, a few
days after her recovery. A chilly east wind blew from the beach, in
spite of the warm sunshine, and she wore a picturesque dark-red cloak
about the shoulders of her white serge yachting-dress with its smart
gilt anchors. She had promised to join the yacht-club in a charming
excursion that day. His voice was very kind and solicitous, and she
answered frankly:
“Oh, no, no, Mr. Seabright. On the contrary, I was prepared to like you
very much, for Mr. Murray had been telling me that you were my father’s
dearest friend.”
Instantly a peculiar change came over his face. He had been smiling,
but the smile faded into sadness and gloom on the lips and in the eyes,
and his dark cheek seemed to grow livid with silent emotion.
“Oh, forgive me!” cried the girl impulsively, and her heart warmed
toward him. “You loved him, and it grieves you still to remember his
sad fate.”
“Yes, I loved him,” Percy Seabright answered huskily, “and as Mr.
Murray has told you, I was Ronald’s dearest friend. Will you be my
friend, too--for his sake?”
He held out to her a graceful white hand, and after a moment’s
embarrassed pause, Italy placed hers in it, meeting a warm, strong
pressure that she permitted but did not return. Some strange emotion
thrilled her at the touch, she hardly knew whether it was pleasure or
repulsion.
“Will you promise to be my friend?” he repeated, in an eager, impulsive
way, with a winning smile.
“I--hope--I--will,” she answered, a little deliberately; “I scarcely
know you yet, you know, and I am not used to choosing friends so
quickly. Mama always told me it was rash to do so--that one might be
mistaken, and that friends should be tried and proved--but still, you
were my father’s friend. He loved you, trusted you.”
“And why not you?” he exclaimed, with a persuasive glance of his bright
dark eyes that somehow won her to reply:
“I will.”
He thanked her fervently, and then she continued:
“I am so glad to have a single true friend--one who knows the past, one
who might help me.”
“Tell me what I can do for you. I am ready and willing”--eagerly.
The surf beat loud and sharply on the beach, the wind rose and whistled
around the corners of the house and through the stately fir-trees with
a soughing murmur. If she had listened to them, they would have sounded
eerily, warningly, in her ears, but she heard only that low-toned,
persuasive voice, saw only the dazzling dark eyes bent with an intense
gaze upon her own, inviting her confidence. She looked up at him with
big, solemn eyes.
“I will confide in you,” she said impetuously. “I will tell you the
dream, the aim, the purpose of my life. It is to clear the memory of
my mother from the stain that rests upon it, to find and to punish my
father’s murderer.”
The girl’s low voice was tragic in its intensity. No wonder it
impressed him, no wonder he suddenly grew ghastly pale and grave.
“You are mad!” he uttered hoarsely.
“No, no; do not say it,” she breathed imploringly. “Listen--my mother
was innocent--she swore it to me before she--before I lost her. She
believed that the clue to the murderer would be found in some of the
secrets of my father’s diary. You remember how eagerly she sought for
the diary after his terrible death? Well, it was never, never found,
you know, and she believed that it was carried off or destroyed by the
murderer. Oh, I would give the world to find that missing book! Help
me to seek it, help me to find it, my friend!” cried Italy, in rising
agitation.
Emmett Harlow came up to them before Percy Seabright could reply to her
words.
“Miss Vale, we are going to start now. Are you ready?” he asked.
Something of surprise in the clear blue eyes of the young man struck
Italy with sudden embarrassment, and she rose quickly.
“Yes; I am quite ready,” she said, and moved away by his side, to join
the house-party who were waiting. Mr. Murray with Alys Audenreid, Ralph
Allen with his sweetheart, Alexie, and Mrs. Dunn alone, expecting to
have Percy Seabright for her escort.
As Italy came up with Emmett she flashed a look of furious anger at the
girl from her peculiar eyes that could change rapidly from the soft
blue of love to the greenish fires of jealousy and hate.
Italy started as she met that baleful look. She remembered suddenly
what Emmett Harlow had once told her about Mrs. Dunn’s love for Percy
Seabright.
A cold chill of terror crept along the girl’s veins. She knew that Mrs.
Dunn was a woman to be feared, and she comprehended that the compact of
friendship just made between herself and Mrs. Dunn’s lover would expose
her to the former’s jealous wrath.
When the party were all upon the yacht and she was floating in graceful
majesty upon the blue waves, Emmett Harlow found a seat for himself
and Italy a little apart from the rest. Then looking tenderly into her
serious face, he said:
“Mrs. Dunn was watching you at a little distance while you carried on
your little flirtation with her lover.”
“Flirtation!” cried Italy, with a resentful toss of her pretty head.
“It looked like it,” he replied pointedly, although with a smile. “He
clasped your hand, and you looked into each other’s eyes with absorbing
interest.”
“So you were watching, too!” the girl exclaimed, provoked.
“I was with the others. Pardon me,” Emmett answered, in a quiet tone,
but with a look of pain.
She saw the pained look and her anger melted quickly. Emmett Harlow had
one of those rare natures that always inspire kindly thoughts. No one
could be angry with him long.
“It was not a flirtation, Mr. Harlow,” she said gently. “Mr. Seabright
was only asking me to be his friend. He was my dead father’s friend,
you know, and he wished also to be mine.”
“And you promised him?” asked Emmett Harlow gravely.
“How could I refuse his offered friendship--I who have so few friends?”
she exclaimed pathetically.
“You have one friend, Miss Vale, who would lay down his life for you!”
exclaimed the young man fervidly, and Italy, with a blush and start,
realized that she had a lover--a lover, that desire of every young
girl’s heart. But when he went on in tender, fervent words to tell her
of his love and his hopes, she begged him to desist.
“I will be your friend always, but I shall never love nor marry. I have
no time for such trivial things. I have a greater mission in life,”
she replied, almost loftily.
The rejected lover stared at her in profound surprise.
“A greater mission,” he murmured. “Not--not--woman’s rights, I hope.”
“N-not exactly,” Italy answered vaguely, and at this moment she became
aware that Mr. Murray and Alys Audenreid were observing her rather
closely. She could fancy without hearing a word that Alys was saying
something spiteful. What she was saying was this:
“Mr. Murray, your little protégée is a dreadful flirt.”
“How can you say so?” he cried, but yet he was not blind.
“Only look at her now how she is leading poor Emmett Harlow on,”
continued the pretty blonde; “and just before we started she was making
love with her eyes to Mr. Seabright. She even gave him her hand to
hold. I could see that Aunt Ione was furious. You know, he tries her
sorely with his flirtations. I do believe that his promise to marry her
is all moonshine.”
“Why don’t she give him his congé, then? He has postponed the wedding
twice, I know, and the old women say, don’t they, Alys, that postponed
weddings are unlucky?” he rejoined carelessly, trying to attend to her
and yet lose no glimpse of the pretty by-play over yonder, the eager
face of Emmett, the downcast one of the girl.
“Emmett is rich and well-born. Would he marry poor Italy, with the
brand of her mother’s disgrace hanging darkly over her young life?” he
mused.
At that moment Emmett was saying to the young girl:
“You will think me jealous and envious now, perhaps, and yet I must
tell you that I am sorry you have promised your friendship to Mr.
Seabright. I do not like that man. He is different from what he
seems--cold at heart and deceitful.”
“I thought _every one_ liked him!” she cried.
“Every one but me,” he answered frankly; “I am the only one to find a
fault in him. And yet his faults are patent to all if they would only
realize the fact.”
“Tell me of one single blemish!” the girl cried, half-offended.
“Very well. He is not sincere. He makes game of the friend he professes
to love. He is witty, and they all become targets for his wit. Poor
Mrs. Dunn, sitting so happily by his side there, she would never speak
to him again if she knew how he talks her over to his friends.”
Italy was looking and listening in wonder. Could these facts be true?
“He has carried on a flirtation with her for years, and yet she is so
blind she will not see that he is only trifling,” continued Emmett.
“Yet he has made fun of her from the first time he met her till now.
You see that beautiful diamond ring on his little finger? He has told
dozens of people that Mrs. Dunn begged him for it the first time he
ever called on her, and he said he told her the first ready lie that
leaped to his lips, that the ring belonged to his brother. He says she
is rapacious, that she lives above her means, and cares for nothing but
show and pleasure. Oh, he has said so many things of her that I would
hate to repeat, but I call it mean, don’t you? to ridicule a woman, her
house, her relations, and everything about her, and still pretend to be
her friend, even her lover?”
“It is wicked, shameful,” she exclaimed warmly. “How can any one be so
deceitful? I am sorry for Mrs. Dunn.”
“As to that, she is as mean a woman as he is a man, and if they ever
do get married they will be fairly matched. To tell you the truth, I
dislike them both, so let’s drop the subject and talk of something
pleasanter, for to-morrow I am going to leave Winthrop,” replied the
young man, with as indifferent an air as he could assume, for the pain
of his rejection, although so gently spoken, still hurt bitterly.
“Going away!” she cried.
“Yes; back to Boston, and I shall probably sail for Europe next week,”
sighed the rejected lover sadly.
“Oh, I am so sorry, for I shall miss you very much. You have been so
good to me.”
“Then perhaps you will relent”--pleadingly--“you will let me try again
to win your love. Oh, Italy, think how lonely you are, how alone in
the world, and surrounded by people some of whom dislike you, while the
others only tolerate you. But I--I worship you, my darling, and I would
be so happy if you would only let me marry you and take you away to a
happier home.”
Profoundly moved as she was by his words, she still shook her head.
“I cannot marry you,” she said simply but conclusively.
“Then, dear, I shall go away, as I said, and not trouble you with my
love, but when I am far away will you think of me sometimes, Italy,
and--if you should ever need me or want me--send for me, for if you
will not have me for your husband, I can still be your friend,” said
the young man earnestly and sadly.
Before Italy could answer in the grateful words her heart prompted,
Ralph Allen called to them across the deck:
“Why are you two over there looking so glum? Do come over here and
listen to the funny joke Alexie is telling me.”
“Let us hear it, too,” exclaimed Percy Seabright. “Come, Ione,” and he
led her rather unwillingly to join the gay group, for Mr. Murray and
Alys also came with several more of the excursion-party--all friends,
and quite at home with each other. Mrs. Dunn did not like to place
herself in close contrast to young girls, for she was thirty-five,
though she claimed to be ten years younger, and her figure, which was
short and dumpy, did not look well in yachting-costume. She wore an
immense red hat which served to increase the squat effect of her plump
form in its showy costume of garnet and gold.
She was in an ill-concealed temper, and it did not improve it to see
her betrothed place himself close to Italy’s side, where she stood
leaning against the deck-rail, looking down with sad, somber eyes
into the deep-blue water. Emmett Harlow was on the other side of
her, and his expression of profound melancholy told the story of his
disappointment without words.
“Go on with your story, Alexie,” exclaimed Ralph Allen, who was in
a very happy mood to-day, and no wonder. A favorite of Fortune from
his birth, betrothed to a sweet and lovely girl, and afloat on the
daintiest yacht in Winthrop harbor, upon billowy blue waters, under
sunny blue skies, with gay companions, how could he be aught but happy?
Pretty Alexie laughed and blushed.
“I’m not sure anybody will be interested in it, but, as I was
saying----” she began, when she was interrupted by Percy Seabright.
“Oh, come quick, everybody, and see this great fish!” he exclaimed
eagerly, and every one crowded over to the side of the deck, laughing
and hustling each other in their haste.
Italy Vale, close to his side, leaned forward with the rest, craning
her graceful neck eagerly to catch a sight of the wonder.
How did it happen? Did she lean too far over? Did she lose her balance?
All in a moment, Italy’s light form flashed over the rail, and she was
struggling, sinking, in the deep-blue sea.