"Do they?" She laughed. "Yes--in happy marriages!"
They were silent again, and Isabel turned, feeling her way toward the
door. As she did so, the profound stillness was broken by the sound of a
man's voice trolling out unsteadily the refrain of a music-hall song.
The two in the boat-house darted toward each other with a simultaneous
movement, clutching hands as they met.
"He's coming!" Isabel said.
Wrayford disengaged his hands.
"He may only be out for a turn before he goes to bed. Wait a minute.
I'll see." He felt his way to the bench, scrambled up on it, and
stretching his body forward managed to bring his eyes in line with the
opening above the door.
"It's as black as pitch. I can't see anything."
The refrain rang out nearer.
"Wait! I saw something twinkle. There it is again. It's his cigar. It's
coming this way--down the path."
There was a long rattle of thunder through the stillness.
"It's the storm!" Isabel whispered. "He's coming to see about the
launch."
Wrayford dropped noiselessly from the bench and she caught him by the
arm.
"Isn't there time to get up the path and slip under the shrubbery?"
"No, he's in the path now. He'll be here in two minutes. He'll find us."
He felt her hand tighten on his arm.
"You must go in the skiff, then. It's the only way."
"And let him find you? And hear my oars? Listen--there's something I
must say."
She flung her arms about him and pressed her face to his.
"Isabel, just now I didn't tell you everything. He's ruined his
mother--taken everything of hers too. And he's got to tell her; it can't
be kept from her."
She uttered an incredulous exclamation and drew back.
"Is this the truth? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"He forbade me. You were not to know."
Close above them, in the shrubbery, Stilling warbled:
"_Nita, Juanita,
Ask thy soul if we must part!_"
Wrayford held her by both arms. "Understand this--if he comes in, he'll
find us. And if there's a row you'll lose your boy."
She seemed not to hear him. "You--you--you--he'll kill you!" she
exclaimed.
Wrayford laughed impatiently and released her, and she stood shrinking
against the wall, her hands pressed to her breast. Wrayford straightened
himself and she felt that he was listening intently. Then he dropped to
his knees and laid his hands against the boards of the sliding floor. It
yielded at once, as if with a kind of evil alacrity; and at their feet
they saw, under the motionless solid night, another darker night that
moved and shimmered. Wrayford threw himself back against the opposite
wall, behind the door.
A key rattled in the lock, and after a moment's fumbling the door swung
open. Wrayford and Isabel saw a man's black bulk against the obscurity.
It moved a step, lurched forward, and vanished out of sight. From the
depths beneath them there came a splash and a long cry.
"Go! go!" Wrayford cried out, feeling blindly for Isabel in the
blackness.
"Oh--" she cried, wrenching herself away from him.
He stood still a moment, as if dazed; then she saw him suddenly plunge
from her side, and heard another splash far down, and a tumult in the
beaten water.
In the darkness she cowered close to the opening, pressing her face
over the edge, and crying out the name of each of the two men in turn.
Suddenly she began to see: the obscurity was less opaque, as if a
faint moon-pallor diluted it. Isabel vaguely discerned the two shapes
struggling in the black pit below her; once she saw the gleam of a face.
She glanced up desperately for some means of rescue, and caught sight
of the oars ranged on brackets against the wall. She snatched down
the nearest, bent over the opening, and pushed the oar down into the
blackness, crying out her husband's name.
The clouds had swallowed the moon again, and she could see nothing below
her; but she still heard the tumult in the beaten water.
"Cobham! Cobham!" she screamed.
As if in answer, she felt a mighty clutch on the oar, a clutch that
strained her arms to the breaking-point as she tried to brace her knees
against the runners of the sliding floor.
"Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" a voice gasped out from below; and she held
on, with racked muscles, with bleeding palms, with eyes straining from
their sockets, and a heart that tugged at her as the weight was tugging
at the oar.
Suddenly the weight relaxed, and the oar slipped up through her
lacerated hands. She felt a wet body scrambling over the edge of the
opening, and Stilling's voice, raucous and strange, groaned out, close
to her: "God! I thought I was done for."
He staggered to his knees, coughing and sputtering, and the water
dripped on her from his streaming clothes.
She flung herself down, again, straining over the pit. Not a sound came
up from it.
"Austin! Austin! Quick! Another oar!" she shrieked.
Stilling gave a cry. "My God! Was it Austin? What in hell--Another oar?
No, no; untie the skiff, I tell you. But it's no use. Nothing's any use.
I felt him lose hold as I came up."
*****
After that she was conscious of nothing till, hours later, as it
appeared to her, she became dimly aware of her husband's voice, high,
hysterical and important, haranguing a group of scared lantern-struck
faces that had sprung up mysteriously about them in the night.
"Poor Austin! Poor Wrayford... terrible loss to me... mysterious
dispensation. Yes, I do feel gratitude--miraculous escape--but I wish
old Austin could have known that I was saved!"