Chapter 25

All at once a look came into her face which stirred it as a flying insect stirs the water of a pool. On the instant she remembered that she had seen the man before.

It was ten years ago in Montana, on the night of her birthday. Her father had been called away to talk with this man, and she had seen him from the steps of the "special." It was only the caricature of the once strong, erect ranchman that she saw; but there was no mistake, she recognized him now.

Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood.

Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees. It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned. The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl, and her face was full of trouble.

A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or other her father was responsible for this man's degradation and ruin. She looked Lygon in the eyes.

"Did you want to see me?" she asked.

She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what, for, hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart an unhappy doubt concerning her father.

A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was again where she had left him in the afternoon.

He heard her say to her father: "This was the man I told you of--at the reedy lake. Did you come to see me?" she repeated.

"I did not know you were here," he answered. "I came"--he was conscious of Henderley's staring eyes fixed upon his helplessly--"I came to ask your father if he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at the lake; the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want to get away, to start again somewhere. I've been a failure. I want to get away, right away south. If he would buy it, I could start again. I've had no luck."

He had invented it on the moment, but the girl understood better than Lygon or Henderley could have dreamed. She had seen the change pass over Lygon.

Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the startled look went out of his eyes.

"What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked, with restored confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved his life, he thought.

"Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon, quickly.

Henderley would have handed over all that lay on the table before him, but he thought it better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem to have been hit hard. Here is the money. Bring me the deed to-morrow--to-morrow."

"I'll not take the money till I give you the deed," said Lygon. "It will do to-morrow. It's doing me a good turn. I'll get away and start again somewhere. I've done no good up here. Thank you, sir--thank you."

Before they realized it, the tent-curtain rose and fell, and he was gone into the night.

The trouble was still deep in the girl's eyes as she kissed her father, and he, with an overdone cheerfulness, wished her a good-night.

The man of iron had been changed into a man of straw once at least in his lifetime.

* * * * *

Lygon found Dupont at the Forks.

"_Eh_, _ben_, it is all right--yes?" Dupont asked, eagerly, as Lygon joined him.

"Yes, it is all right," answered Lygon.

With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont pushed out the canoe, and they got away into the moonlight. No word was spoken for some distance, but Dupont kept giving grunts of satisfaction.

"You got the ten t'ousan' each--in cash or check, eh? The check or the money--_hein_?"

"I've got nothing," answered Lygon.

Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse.

"You got not'ing! You said eet was all right!" he growled.

"It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough. I have finished."

With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury.

Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on his throat was growing terrible.

For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom.

Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got it home he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the water with a groan.

Lygon, weapon in hand and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and make for the canoe again.

Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by, and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In his wild rage he had burst a blood-vessel on the brain.

Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did it calmly, whispering to himself the while.

"I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not be afraid to die then," he muttered to himself.

Presently he grasped an oar and paddled feebly.

A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in to face the Forks again, it helped to carry the canoe to the landing-place.

Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw the canoe up, but began this journey of a mile back to the tent he had left so recently. First, step by step, leaning against trees, drawing himself forward, a journey as long to his determined mind as from youth to age. Would it never end? It seemed a terrible climbing-up the sides of a cliff, and, as he struggled fainting on, all sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he realized that the Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard did not torture, they helped his stumbling feet. They were like the murmur of waters, like the sounds of the forest and soft, booming bells. But the bells were only the beatings of his heart--so loud, so swift.

He was on his knees now, crawling on--on--on. At last there came a light, suddenly bursting on him from a tent he was so near. Then he called, and called again, and fell forward on his face. But now he heard a voice above him. It was _her_ voice. He had blindly struggled on to die near her, near where she was, she was so pitiful and good.

He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him. There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard.

"God help him--oh, God help him!" she was saying.

He drew a long, quiet breath. "I will sleep now," he said, clearly.

He would hear the Whisperer no more.

AS DEEP AS THE SEA

"What can I do, Dan? I'm broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last debt to-day. I've nothing but what I stand in. I've got prospects, but I can't discount prospects at the banks." The speaker laughed bitterly. "I've reaped and I'm sowing, the same as you, Dan."

The other made a nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me, Flood--not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help me--oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that that knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and fool--and thief, I've been!"

"Thief?--thief?"

Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn, handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips--from the lips of Diana Welldon's brother--were the truth. He looked at the plump face, the full, amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless hand nervously feeling the golden mustache, at the well-fed, inert body; and he knew that, whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount it alone.

"What is it?" Rawley asked, rather sharply, his fingers running through his slightly grizzled black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary, he must remain cool. What she was to do, Heaven and he only knew; what she had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet. "What is it--quick?" he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan Welldon's shoulder. "Racing?--cards?"

Dan nodded. "Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the favorite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin. Everything went wrong."

"And so you put your hand in the railway company's money-chest?"

"It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton corner-blocks, too. I'd had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it is, Flood."

"They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?"

"Yes, the president knows. He's at Calgary now. They telegraphed him, and he wired to give me till midnight to pay up or go to jail. They're watching me now. I can't stir. There's no escape, and there's no one I can ask for help but you. That's why I've come, Flood."

"Lord, what a fool! Couldn't you see what the end would be if your plunging didn't come off? You--you oughtn't to bet, or speculate, or play cards, you're not clever enough. You've got blind rashness, and so you think you're bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a thousand dollars a year!"

"I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn't explain." The weak face puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes.

"Yes, she probably would help you. She'd probably give you all she's saved to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at twenty per cent. of their value; and she'd mortgage the little income she's got to keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of course you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it." Rawley lighted his cigar and smoked fiercely.

"It would be better for her than my going to jail," stubbornly replied the other. "But I don't want to tell her, or to ask her for money. That's why I've come to you. You needn't be so hard, Flood; you've not been a saint; and Di knows it."

Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall of the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills when on a visit to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to his future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon now.

"You've not been a saint, and Di knows it," repeated the weak brother of a girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for cheerful looks; whose buoyant humor and impartial friendliness gained her innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude and provincial life around her.

When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness. "I haven't been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on my side as yet, it isn't on yours. There's the difference."

"You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn't to walk up my back with hobnailed boots."

"Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My record was writ pretty big. But I didn't lay my hands on the ark of the social covenant, whose inscription is, _Thou shalt not steal_; and that's why I'm poor but proud, and no one's watching for me round the corner, same as you."

Welldon's half-defiant petulance disappeared. "What's done can't be undone." Then, with a sudden burst of anguish, "Oh, get me out of this somehow!"

"How? I've got no money. By speaking to your sister?"

The other was silent.

"Shall I do it?" Rawley peered anxiously into the other's face, and he knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being laid bare to her.

"I want a chance to start straight again."

The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but the words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He stepped forward and, gripping Dan's shoulder with a hand of steel, said, fiercely:

"No, Dan. I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly all--is your lovely looks and what they call a kind heart. There's only you two in your family, and she's got to live with you--awhile, anyhow. She couldn't stand this business. She mustn't stand it. She's had enough to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood Rawley had got his deserts. It's different with you." His voice changed, softened. "Dan, I made a pledge to her that I'd never play cards again for money while I lived, and it wasn't a thing to take on without some cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary public--at forty. And at last I've got my chance in a big case against the Canadian Pacific. It'll make me or break me, Dan.... There, I wanted you to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that you'll not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you clear; I'll save you, Dan."

"Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken.

"You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk, even if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive. If you don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped the graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vise.

"So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply. "I'll make it up to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back."

Rawley caught up his cap from the table.

"Steady!--steady! Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan," he said. Then, with a long look at the portrait on the wall and an exclamation which the other did not hear, he left the room with a set, determined face.

* * * * *

"Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian hair with splendor.

"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical quirk of the mouth and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged, archly.

"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.

"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired, gayly. "You are too specific for a real lover."

"Fate fixed the amount," he added, dryly.

"Fate--you talk so much of Fate," she replied, gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. "You make me think of it, too, and I don't want to do so. I don't want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny."

"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."

"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked, softly. "Are you sure I wasn't calling you, and you had to come?"

"Well, it was _en route_, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must tell you," he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. "I hear you call me in the night sometimes, and I start up and say 'Yes, Di!' out of my sleep. It's a queer hallucination. I've got you on the brain, certainly."

"It seems to vex you--certainly," she said, opening the book that lay in her lap, "and your eyes trouble me to-day. They've got a look that used to be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look I don't understand and don't like. I suppose it's always so. The real business of life is trying to understand each other."

"You have wonderful thoughts for one that's had so little chance," he said. "That's because you're a genius, I suppose. Teaching can't give that sort of thing--the insight."

"What is the matter, Flood?" she asked, suddenly, again, her breast heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. "I heard a man say once that you were 'as deep as the sea.' He did not mean it kindly, but I do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were you going when you came across me here?"

"To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding toward a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.

"Old Busby!" she rejoined, in amazement. "What do you want with him--not medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?"

"He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than they'll ever pay him."

"Is he as rich an old miser as they say?"

"He doesn't look rich, does he?" was the enigmatical answer.

"Does any one know his real history? He didn't come from nowhere. He must have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him, though he seems such a monster now."

"Yet he cures people sometimes," he rejoined, abstractedly. "Probably there's some good underneath. I'm going to try and see."

"What is it? What is your business with him? Won't you tell me? Is it so secret?"

"I want him to help me in a case I've got in hand. A client of mine is in trouble--you mustn't ask about it; and he can help, I think--I think so." He got to his feet. "I must be going, Di," he added. Suddenly a flush swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands. "Oh, you are a million times too good for me!" he said. "But if all goes well, I'll do my best to make you forget it."

"Wait--wait one moment," she answered. "Before you go I want you to hear what I've been reading over and over to myself just now. It is from a book I got from Quebec, called _When Time Shall Pass_. It is a story of two like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has things that you have said to me--in a different way."

"No, I don't talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I see it," he answered, with a catch in his throat.

"Hush!" she said, catching his hand in hers as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her voice:

"'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining! First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to your voice which seems to call me. Is it--_is_ it you that calls? Do you sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?... I like to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there flash before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! Yet these swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, _or_ reality--who shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If I am not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am _more_ than I was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been unworthy--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart, my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "_O Cithoeron!_" Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am yours to my uttermost note of life.'"

"He knew!--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till you made me over! I was a bad lot."

"So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to him. "You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe, "Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?"

His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.

"Now for Caliban," he said.

"I shall be Ariel and follow you--in my heart," she said. "Be sure and make him tell you the story of his life," she added, with a laugh, as his lips swept the hair behind her ears.

As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said, proudly, "As deep as the sea."

After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until" she--glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added, softly, "and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little chuckle in her throat.

"O vain Diana!" she repeated.

* * * * *

Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without ceremony. There was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done without it.

Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.

"What do you want?" he growled at last.