Part 6

"After we left Old Point," went on Danton, "we cruised about a bit, got mussed up by the storm, and ran in here. And then you--you and _Betty_ appeared."

His emphasis brought a penetrating look from Fessenden.

"You said you were telling me a parable. You don't mean--surely you can't--Betty!"

"I do."

"Do you dare to think----"

"I don't think anything. What I say is that my case furnishes a parallel to yours."

"Speak out, man! What! You mean you think I ought to marry her?"

"Well, then--yes."

"Good God! Marry Betty!"

"Yes."

Fessenden rose abruptly to his feet and walked away a few paces. He stared unseeingly across the stretch of sand to the sea beyond.

A hundred images of Betty flitted before his mind's eye--images graceful and smiling, sad and gay, merry and serious, always infinitely winsome. Her voice sounded in his ear--teasing, angry, kind--always low-toned and charming.

He faced Danton. "Marry her? I've been wanting to do that very thing since the first minute I saw her--only, I didn't know it."

His friend's face shone with relief and pleasure. He broke into a boyish laugh.

"Great!" he said. "You're the right sort, Tom. I knew it, and I told Madge so."

Fessenden could not respond to the other's mood. "All very well. But what will Betty say?"

"Ask her."

"I intend to. But is she old enough--is she in a position--to understand?"

"I tell you, yes."

"And I tell you I'm very doubtful. A mere child, a country girl, ignorant of the world, ignorant, perhaps, of what marriage means! It's a hard position for me, and it may be worse--it may be horrible--for her."

"Ask her," repeated Danton. "Look there!" He levelled his walking-stick. "Do you see the dunes there--the second hill? Somewhere beyond that you'll find Madge and Betty."

Without another word, Fessenden pulled his cap over his eyes and strode off.

He skirted the first hillock, and on its farther side came abruptly upon Madge Danton. She gave him a warm hand. Her eyes had lost their defiant look; rather, it seemed to him, they included the world in their gentle glance.

"You'll find her beyond the next hill," she said.

"You've talked to her--as Danton talked to me?"

"Yes. She understands--her position. I know I don't need to warn you to be--careful."

"No, no."

He did not find Betty beyond the next hill, nor the next. But, hastening down the hollow ways, he almost stumbled over her at last--on a sunny slope above the sea.

She looked up at him, her eyes as clear as crystal. "Hello, Boatswain Bob!"

The greeting steadied him immeasurably. He knew that not so much what he should say in the next few minutes, as how he should say it, might determine the course of their lives. He longed with all his strength to be given a divine tact and a divine gift of speech.

He threw himself on the sand at a respectful distance. "Hello, Nancy Lee!"

Thanks to Kitty Hawk's "Bazaar," a scarlet ribbon again shone at Betty's throat. Her hair was as he had last seen it--coiled superbly about her head. Again he felt the air of dignity and aloofness of which the coiled hair seemed the symbol.

Fessenden's eyes, quiet and tender, met her own, his glance as clear as hers.

"Betty," he said, very simply, "we've been through a lot together, and I want you to marry me. Will you? Don't think I'm asking you because of any chivalrous fancy. I want you because I love you, and for nothing else in the world." His own words fired him. "Dearest, I've loved you since the first minute I saw you. You know that--in the bottom of your heart, you know that's true."

Her eyes, which at first had met his unwaveringly, quailed a little. The red crept slowly into her cheeks.

"I'm only a--a country girl," she said. "And you're the famous Mr. Thomas Fessenden. I didn't know your real name until Madge told me, you know."

"Will you marry me, Betty?"

She eyed him soberly. "Madge said I _must_ say yes, if you asked me."

"You poor child! Don't mind what she says. I want you to love me, if you can."

"I like you thoroughly, Bob White."

"Is that all?"

"That's all--I'm sorry," she answered gravely. "To marry a man, and not to love him, would be--horrible."

All the chivalry in Fessenden's nature stirred at her words. His clenched hands sank to the wrists in the soft sand, and his voice shook a little as he answered:

"Not if--if we marry, and still remain only--friends."

Her glance searched his soul. "O-oh! Can you--mean what you say?"

"I give you my word of honor. Do you remember that night--good heavens! was it only last Friday?--that night I had supper at your house, and what I told you when you looked as if you were willing to say good-night in a certain way?"

"I remember."

"Well, I'll stick by that."

She rose to her feet.

"You haven't answered me yet," he protested.

Her face flushed exquisitely. "There's a church in Kitty Hawk," she said. "And I believe a minister comes over from the mainland once a month. Madge says he is due--to-morrow."

XII

They were married in the little Kitty Hawk church at noon the next day.

Before the hour of the wedding came, certain matters had been attended to. Letters had been written in time to catch the launch which would return with the minister from Kitty Hawk to the mainland. The clothing stock of the "Bazaar" had been materially reduced by the demands both Betty and Fessenden had made upon it. The _Wisp_ had been loaded with everything in the way of food, water, and utensils, that could be needed for a fortnight's cruise.

"Why bother with the sloop?" Danton had demanded. "There's plenty of room on the _West Wind_. We can all go honeymooning together, eh, Madge? Over to Bermuda, if you like."

To Fessenden's infinite relief, Betty had declined this well-meant offer. "No, thank you," she had said, blushing a little. "After to-night, I'll go back to the dear little _Wisp_--where I'll belong, you know. Bob White is going to take me down through the sounds, and then back through the Dismal Swamp, home."

Madge and Danton, supplemented by the entire crew of the _West Wind_, were the witnesses at the wedding.

It seemed to Fessenden that Betty's eyes were bluer than the sea that broke on the inlet bar, and the light in them more mysterious and wonderful. She looked a fair and innocent child.

He answered the minister's questions, and even signed the marriage certificate, in a sort of daze, a daze from which he roused himself only after they had eaten the wedding breakfast on the _West Wind_, and having boarded the _Wisp_, were waving farewell to the others across the water.

Betty serenely assumed command. "I'll take the wheel, Boatswain Bob," she said, "and you get up sail."

He cast off from the float, and set jib, flying jib, and mainsail in a trice. As the sloop gathered headway, the helmswoman stood under the stern of the larger yacht.

"Good-by, good-by, children," called Danton patronizingly.

"_Bon voyage_, children," chorused Madge. "Be sure to love each other."

"Good-by, old married people," retorted Fessenden.

The _Wisp_ stood wing-and-wing down the sound. Fessenden lounged at his ease beside the charming captain.

"Betty," he said, "has it yet occurred to you that you are really my wife?"

She gave him a swift, half-frightened glance. "No-o. I haven't really had much time to think about it, you know."

"Just now it came over me in a sort of wave. If you don't object, I'll call you 'dear' occasionally, simply to assure myself it's true."

"Whenever you like," she returned politely.

"Dear!"

"Oh! That's rather--pronounced, isn't it?"

"Very well pronounced. Very pleasant to pronounce, in fact."

She sat down trustfully beside him, a guiding hand on the wheel. "Do you know, Bob White, I've often thought it would be delightful to sail like this with a ra-ther good-looking--comrade?"

"Am I the man, may I ask?"

"You are."

"Thank you--dear. And do you know that for the last two or three days I've been thinking I'd give my hope of salvation to sail like this with Betty Landis?"

She gave him another quick glance. "With whom?"

"I mean with Betty Fessenden, of course."

"O-oh!"

"I'm dreaming now of sailing on and on with her. The other night I dreamed that she put 'dear' after my name, and that if we could only sail and sail long enough she might do it again."

His half-closed lids hid the warmth in his eyes, but his voice shook with the passion he struggled to control. She shrank a little.

"You needn't," he said. "Please don't. You can trust me absolutely. I--I was merely dreaming, you know."

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Bob White--dear. Trust you? My presence here shows that I do--you know that." Her fingers touched his hair so fleetingly that he hardly dared believe she had meant it for a caress.

Presently she relinquished the wheel to him and took his place among the cushions.

He noticed how round her throat was, and how deliciously white. The rose-tipped chin and red mouth held him fascinated, until the glint of bayonets in the eyes warned him to control his glances.

"You're the most adorable skipper I ever saw," he declared.

"I've a confession to make, Boatswain."

"Confess then, Nancy Lee."

"My ankle wasn't hurt that day in the brook. I didn't really stumble."

"What!"

She nodded contritely. "No. I did it on purpose. Wasn't it perfectly shameless?"

"I've had a far-away feeling that you made a miraculous recovery from that strain. But why did you pretend?"

"Just as a game. I wanted to see what the--the good-looking stranger would do."

"You found out."

"Goodness, yes, didn't I!" They laughed together at the thought.

"Madge and Charlie Danton," she went on--"do you think they're really in love? I mean, do you think their love will last?"

"Don't you?"

"Ye-es, I do. She has just enough _esprit de diable_ to hold him. It is 'infinite variety' that pleases him, I fancy, and Madge is twenty women in one."

"You're a philosopher. By the way, where did you learn French? Do they teach that in the 'little red-roofed schoolhouse' in Maryland?"

"Haven't I told you about my teacher? And I went to a very good school in Baltimore, if you please."

"That reminds me that I know hardly anything about my own wife--only that her name was Betty Landis. You once told me that your mother was well-connected, Betty. Who was she?"

The mainsail sheet, which she had been carelessly handling, at that moment slipped through her fingers, and the boom went flying out. He was barely able to keep the sloop from jibing.

"Be careful, child," he warned. "Take a turn or two around that cleat there."

"Bob White," she said, when affairs were again in order, "I've been thinking--of what you must be giving up in marrying _me_. I don't mean only your bachelor freedom, although I know that's precious to a man. But you are giving up--everything."

"I'm lucky to get the chance."

"Perhaps I've spoiled your career."

"Nonsense!"

"It may not be nonsense. You are a man of a different world from the country one you found _me_ in. It was only an hour ago we were married, but I can see already that I was perfectly mad and unutterably selfish to let you sacrifice yourself for me. A braver girl--a better girl--wouldn't have cared what silly society might say. I was wicked to marry you!"

"Tut! tut!"

"I'm perfectly serious--miserably serious."

"Then I'll be serious, too. I admit that you and I ought to be different, but we aren't. I don't know why it should be so, dear, but we both 'belong.' We're the same sort. You must feel it as well as I."

All that golden afternoon they sailed, and all the afternoon they talked. Her mind played with a hundred fancies, grave and gay, and Fessenden heard her with delight, and with ever-renewed wonder. She seemed to him a sort of Admirable Crichton, possessing heaven-sent intuition of all that was rare and charming and useful.

At dusk they lowered all sail, let go the anchor, and made the sloop secure for the night.

Then, with his respectful help, Betty cooked the dinner, and served it on a camp-table in the cockpit.

That dinner was Olympian. A sirloin steak, deliciously broiled--"I intend to give you a _man's_ dinner," she had declared; French fried potatoes, as hot as the flames they came hissing from; coffee, as clear as amber; and fresh tea-biscuits which one was allowed to dip in Kitty Hawk honey.

When the dinner things had been cleared away, they sat under the stars and watched the lights twinkle here and there from lonely cabins along-shore. Now and then Betty's fingers strayed over the guitar she had borrowed from the West Wind. The light breeze sighed an answer through the cypress and tamarack trees of the swampy cape near-by.

Betty pointed dreamily shoreward. "The 'swampers' down here are a wild lot. During the war my uncle was attacked by them--on the way down to his district."

"His district?"

"He commanded the Eastern Military District of North Carolina, you know, and--and--" She broke off abruptly. "Oh, dear! My foot's asleep--terribly! Will you put a cushion under it for me?"

"One minute," he said. "I don't quite make this out. If your uncle commanded a military district here during the war, he must have been a Federal general, a man of distinction, yet you--"

"My foot's asleep, and prickles dreadfully."

"Just a moment." She could feel the growing fixedness of his glance. "I--remember--this sort of thing has happened before. On the island--Rincoteague--when I asked you what you knew about Madge Yarnell, you suddenly discovered that it was raining. This morning, too, something was said about your mother, and somehow the sail got adrift at that very moment. You had hold of it. And just now your foot falls asleep in the nick of time. Betty, I don't like this sort of thing! I've had enough confidence in you to marry you--to marry you very much in the dark. Isn't it fair you should have confidence in me, a little?"

She was listening with half-averted face and a smile that baffled him.

As he watched her, a score of confusing recollections rushed through his mind like fiery phantoms: Madge Yarnell's recognition of the envelope received from White Cottage; her determined effort to accompany him thither the next day; her theatric assault upon them, whip in hand, on the road from Jim George's--even yet he found it hard to believe that they had narrowly escaped a tragedy!

Harry Cleborne, Fessenden had then imagined, had warned him against his pursuit of an innocent country girl, and had puzzled him by obscure reference to another man, and on top of this had denied all knowledge of Betty Landis.

He recalled a hundred reticences and reservations on the part of Betty, natural enough at the time, but now possessed of a disturbing significance. Her knowledge of the world; her voice and bearing; the words she had let slip of her mother, of her Baltimore friends and school, of her uncle, the Union general! What did these things mean?

Light began to break upon him. Madge had not pressed upon them that day because she had discovered only him where she had expected to find Danton. Cleborne had really babbled of Danton and the Other Lady. Danton himself, in their talk on the beach at Kitty Hawk, had said that the Other had been in seclusion--hiding from his pursuit of her--in a farmhouse on the Eastern Shore.

He towered over Betty in sudden fury. "What! What _is_ all this? Who are you? Who are you, I say?"

The smile died from the girl's lips, and she shrank before his white face and fierce eyes.

Shame and rage so choked him that his words were almost incoherent, but they were the more terrible for that. She cowered away from him to the very limits of the gunwale.

"Oh, please!" she said. "Don't! Don't! Oh, please!"

The tenderness he had lately felt for her came over him in a wave as he looked down at the shrinking figure.

"I--I beg your pardon," he said. "I lost my head. Don't be afraid--it's all over now. I beg your pardon."

Without another word or look he turned and sought his room in the forecastle.

Half an hour later, as he lay staring into the darkness, he heard a muffled beat, as of a drum. Betty was playing her guitar in her room.

Gradually the drum-beat increased and quickened until it grew into a continuous roll, a throbbing cadence that thrilled through and through him. The roar of the wind and the mutter of the sea were in the shattering roll of the drum.

At the very height of its clamor--while he strove in vain to catch its meaning--it passed abruptly into silence. He was left staring into the dark.

XIII

Toward midnight, the girl lying wakeful in the after cabin heard a tap at the door.

"Betty, are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Don't be frightened, but I think there may be a little excitement out here pretty soon."

"What is it?"

"Some of the 'swampers' up to a bit of thieving, I fancy."

"I'll be out in a moment, Bob White."

She found him, clad only in shirt and trousers, leaning against the side of the cabin, and staring shoreward. She divined his frank smile, and smiled in return.

"Thieves?" she asked in a whisper.

"I'm almost sure of it," he answered in the same tone. "I heard a boat bump against the side of the _Wisp_ a few minutes ago. I think they were drifting down with the tide to reconnoitre, and were swept in closer than they had expected to be."

"Have you a pistol?"

"On the locker there. Lucky Danton lent me one of his. You aren't afraid?"

"Not--with you."

"I dare say they won't come back. Listen now! See if you can make out anything to starboard. I'll watch on this side."

The night was very dark. The stars were obscured by light clouds, nor was there a moon visible. Their eyes could penetrate the darkness little farther than the rails where a whitish mist hid the surface of the water.

Betty gazed intently. A sidelong glance showed her Fessenden kneeling on the locker opposite her, his half-bared arms folded on his chest. His powerful form gave her a comforting sense of protection. She stared again to starboard.

From the mist two great hands gripped the rail of the sloop! Then a face--the face of a negro--rose into view, a knife gripped in his teeth. So impossible, so barbaric, did the apparition seem, that for a long breath Betty stared spell-bound.

Then her scream whirled Fessenden about. He crossed the cockpit at a bound, and struck savagely at the negro's jaw. The latter ducked with the skill of a trained boxer. Throwing up a hand, he caught the other by the throat, dragging him forward.

Fessenden struck again, grappled with his antagonist, tottered, and plunged headforemost over the rail upon him. Both went down struggling wildly.

Betty snatched up the revolver, hardly knowing what she did, and stared down upon the boiling water.

Fessenden's ghastly face, his groping fingers, his throat from which stood up the handle of the recking knife! The possibility of these things strained her mind to the breaking point. A horror of what the loss of him would mean to her drew a piercing cry:

"Bob White! Oh, Bob White!"

As if summoned by the sound, the two men rose into view--a yard apart. Betty fired on the instant. The shot went wild, but the negro, for the first time aware that firearms were at hand, dived deep. They saw him but once again, his head a black spot in the mist as he swam frenziedly for his drifting punt.

Her shaking hands helped Fessenden over the rail.

"You--that dreadful knife!--you aren't hurt?"

"I knocked that out of his mouth the first thing. A couple of teeth along with it! But the fellow can swim like an alligator--he would have drowned me at his leisure, if you hadn't fired. Thank you, child." He patted her shoulder. "The row must have been rather rough on you."

"It doesn't matter--so long as you're safe."

"It's all right. Well, that 'swamper' won't bother us any more to-night, I'll swear--so I'll get out of these wet togs. Lucky they're the flannels I borrowed from Danton."

She reached both hands to his dripping shoulders. "Tom! Tom! I want to talk to you." She was laughing, yet half in tears. "Oh, it's ridiculous--it's pitiful to think we are husband and wife, and--and you don't even know my real name."

He stared down at her. A slow tremor shook him. "Then you admit--that I don't?"

"I know you don't, you--you silly boy! Go and change your clothes. Then come back and talk to me. Come soon!"

In a wonderfully short time he rejoined her. Only his damp hair showed his late struggle with the robber, but his very quietness betrayed his emotion.

She was awaiting him on the cushioned locker, a lighted reading-lamp beside her.

"Sit down here," she said. "Close! You needn't be afraid of me. I--oh, I've a hundred things to say to you!"

"Good. It was thoughtful of you to bring out that lamp. I can see your face better while you talk."

"And I yours--you dear boy."

"Betty! Be careful what you say. I've got myself pretty well in hand, but I can't stand much of that sort of thing."

She laughed deliriously. "I brought the lamp to let you read something." She produced an official-looking document. "Look at this. Do you know what it is?"

He peered at it. "No-o. Yes, of course. It's our marriage certificate, isn't it?"

"It is. Mr. Thomas Fessenden, do you realize that you signed that document some twelve hours ago and didn't even read the name just above your own?"

"Above mine? That must be _your_ name, Betty!"

"Of course, silly boy. But you haven't yet seen it. You were so excited that you may have married an Abiatha Prudence or a Mary Ann, for all you know."

He gave her a penetrating glance, then snatched up the lamp and held it so that its rays fell full upon the certificate.

Just above his own signature was another in a feminine hand: "Roland Elizabeth Cary."

He repeated it stupidly, "Roland Elizabeth Cary."

She nodded, blushing hotly.

"You?"

"Yes--please."

"Not Landis?"

"She was my old nurse. I've always called her Aunty Landis."

"_Roland Cary_ that they all talked about! Not a man, but _you_?"

"Are you awfully disappointed? I was named after my great-uncle, General Roland Cary."

"Great Scott! Polly Cresap said _Roland Cary_ was charming. Mrs. Dick Randall told me that he--no, that _Roland Cary_ was a 'dee-vil.' Cresap quite raved over--over Roland Cary. I've been as blind as an owl!"

"It was wicked of me to fool you so long, but it was such a joke. All my cousins always call me Roland Cary, as if it were my only name."

"Then you're Elizabeth Cary--the Miss Cary of Baltimore that people made such a fuss about when you came out last year--'the' Cary of 'the' Carys?"

"I suppose I am."

"I hope you'll give me credit for never believing that you were an ordinary person."

"Yes, I do."

"But _why_ did you do it--masquerade in the Landis farmhouse? I remember somebody said 'Roland Cary' had 'notions.'"

"I did it to be near a friend--to have a chance to shelter a friend without attracting notice. A woman--the Other--the one that Charlie Danton--"

"O-oh! It must have been she Cleborne saw at the window--and I thought he was warning me about you!"

"I kept her out of harm's way--really in hiding. I didn't know how it would all end, but it did end perfectly."

"You mean that Madge Yarnell ran away with Charlie Danton, and solved the problem?"

"Not only that. The very night before _our_ elopement--yours and mine--she received a letter, a _dear_ letter, from her husband. They'd been on the point of making it up for weeks. You see, nothing _impossible_ had occurred."

"I see."

He had put down the lamp so suddenly that the light had flickered out. The mist was gone, and the velvety blackness stretched unbroken from shore to shore. Far down the sound, the red rim of the moon was rising from the water.

"Child," he said, "for a young woman of your position you have married in a very reckless and off-hand way."

"I knew you were--real. I knew I could trust you."