Chapter 19

"And you just tossed your money into the breach as if you had millions of it, and by now you've almost forgotten that you did it!" she exclaimed. "Kenneth, dear, there are times when you are so heavenly good that I can hardly believe it. Are there any more men like you over on your side of the world?"

At another time he might have smiled at the boyish frankness of the question. But it was a better motive than the analyst's that prompted his answer.

"Plenty of them, Margery, girl; too many for the good of the race. You mustn't try to make a hero out of me. Once in a while I get a glimpse of the real Kenneth Griswold--you are giving me one just now--and it's sickening. For a moment I was meanly jealous; jealous of Raymer. It was only the writing part of me, I hope, but----"

He stopped because she had suddenly turned her back on him and was looking out over the lake again. When she spoke, she went back to the business affair.

"When you invest money you ought to look after it," she said magisterially. "You are a Socialist, aren't you? How do you know that your money isn't being used to oppress somebody?"

"Oh, I do know that much," was the investor's protest. "Raymer is a good boss--too good for the crowd he is trying to brother, I'm afraid."

"What makes you say that?"

"A word or two that he has dropped, now and then. When he branched out, he had to increase his force accordingly. Some of the new men seem inclined to make trouble."

Again she fell silent, and he saw the brooding look come into the dark eyes. It was evident that something he had said had started a train of thought--and the thoughts were not altogether pleasant ones. Analyzing again, he fancied he could picture the inward struggle to break away from the unpleasantnesses, and he shook hands enthusiastically with his own gift of insight when she looked up suddenly and said: "See! the breeze is freshening out on the water. You are fagged and tired and needing a bracer. Let's go and do a turn on the lake in the _Clytie_."

From where he was sitting Griswold could see the trim little catboat, resplendent in polished brass and mahogany, riding at its buoy beyond the lawn landing-stage. He cared little for the water, but the invitation pointed to a delightful prolongation of the basking process which had come to be one of the chief luxuries of the Mereside afternoons.

"I'm not much of a sailor," he began; but she cut him off.

"You'll do to pull and haul. Wait for me; I'll be ready in less time than it would take another woman--_Fidelia_, for example--to make up her mind what she wanted to wear."

He waited; and when she came down, a few minutes later, crisply boyish in the nattiest of yachting costumes, he wondered how she could appear in so many different characters, fitting each in succession and contriving always to make the latest transformation, while it lasted, the one in which she figured as the most enticingly adorable.

"Did you look in the glass before you came down?" he asked, standing up to get the artistic effect of the shapely little figure backgrounded against the dull reds of the house wall.

"Naturally," she laughed. "Why, please? Is my face dirty?"

He ignored the flippancy.

"If you did, I don't need to tell you how irresistibly dazzling you are."

"Why shouldn't you, if you feel like it? Of course, I'd know you didn't mean it. If you were describing me to somebody else, or in the book, you'd say, 'Um, yes; rather fetching; pretty enough to--' But we all like to be sugared a little now and then; and there's one thing you must always remember: a woman's dressing-glass can't talk. Are you ready? Open the window screen and drop the manuscript inside. It will be safe until we come back, and the _Clytie_ might be tempted to throw cold water on it if we should take it along. She's a wet little boat in a sea."

This for the outsetting: light-hearted badinage, a fair summer afternoon, a zephyrish breeze coming in tiny cat's-paws out of the north-west, and a cloudless sky. At the landing-stage Griswold made himself useful, paying out the sea-line of the movable mooring buoy and hauling on the shore-line until the handsome little craft lay at their feet. Strictly under orders he made sail on the little ship, and when the captain had taken her place at the tiller he shoved off.

For a little time the breeze was lightly baffling, and Griswold confessed that if he had been at the helm they would have gone ingloriously aground. But the small person in the correct yachting costume was an adept in boat handling, as she seemed to be in everything else; and when the sandy bottom was fairly yellowing under the _Clytie's_ counter, there was a quick juggling of the tiller, a deft haul at the sheet, and the big main-sail filled slowly to the rippling song of the little seas splitting themselves upon the catboat's sharp cut-water.

Once clear of the shallow bay, the helmswoman laid the course up the lake; and Griswold, luxuriously lazy now that the working strain was off, stretched himself comfortably on the cockpit cushions which he had rummaged out of the cuddy cabin, and asked permission to light his pipe. The permission given and the pipe filled and lighted, he pillowed his head in his clasped hands and a great contentment, flowing into all the interstices and levelling all the inequalities, lapped him in its soothing flood. When the pipe had gone out there was joy enough left in the pure relaxation; in that and in the contemplation through half-closed eyelids of the pretty picture made by the tiller maiden braced in the stern-sheets, her shining hair breeze-blown and flying free under the captivating little yachting hat, and her eyes dancing....

Under such conditions a reflective analyst might conceivably wrench the switch aside in front of the jogging train of thought to send it down a shaded street to the lake-fronting house framed in shrubbery; to the house and to the serene young house-mistress who had voluntarily stepped from her goddess pedestal to become a flesh-and-blood woman to be loved and cherished. He knew that Charlotte Farnham's readjustment of their relations had in no wise modified her opinion of the _Joans_, or of the men who were weak enough or besotted enough to be taken in the nets of beguiling.... What would she think of him if she could see him lying at Margery Grierson's feet, frankly and joyously revelling in the triumphantly human charm of one of the _Joans_, and wishing with all his heart--for the time being, at least--that there were no such things in a world of effort as the higher ideals or any shackling requirement to live up to them?

He was still playing whimsically with the query when he was made to realize that the murmuring rush of water under the catboat's forefoot had changed into a series of resounding thumps; that the wind was rising, and that the summer afternoon sky had become suddenly overcast. The pretty tiller maiden was pushing the helm down with her foot and hauling in briskly on the sheet when he sat up.

"What's this we're coming to?" he asked, thinking less of the changed weather conditions than of the charming picture she made in action.

"Weather," she said shortly. "Look behind you."

He looked and saw a huge storm cloud rising out of the north-west and spreading like a great gray dust curtain from horizon to zenith. With the sun blotted out, a brazen light filled all the upper air, and in the heart of the cloud fleecy masses of vapor were writhing and twisting like formless giants in battle.

Quickly he measured the hazards. The _Clytie_ was fairly in mid-lake, with plenty of sea room to leeward. There was an intervening island to shut off the down-lake view, but though its forested bluffs and abrupt headland were uncomfortably close at hand, a bit of skilful manoeuvring would put it to windward. Beyond the island he could see the breeze-blown smoke trail of the summer-resort hotel's steam launch evidently making for its home port at full speed.

"There's a good bunch of wind in that cloud," he said, springing to help his companion with the slatting main-sail. "Hadn't we better lie up under the island and let it blow over?"

"No," she snapped. "We'll have to reef, and be quick about it. Help me!"

He helped with the reefing, and the great main-sail had been successfully reduced to its smallest area and hoisted home again before the trees on the western shore began to bow and churn in the precursor blasts of the coming storm.

"It will hit us in less than a minute: how about weathering that island?" he asked.

"We've _got_ to weather it," was the instant decision; "we can't go around." Then, the catboat still hanging in the wind's eye: "Help me get her over."

Together they held the shortened sail off at an angle, and slowly, very slowly, the boat's bow fell off toward the island. Griswold was enough of a sailor to know that it was the thing to do, but there was a perilously narrow margin. The storm squall was already tearing across from the western shore, blackening the water ahead of it and picking up a small tidal wave as it came. If it should strike them before they were ready for it, it meant one of two things: a capsize, or an instant driving of the catboat upon the hazard of the island head.

The crisis was upon them almost as soon as its threat could be measured. Of the two, it was the young woman who met it with skilful purpose. While the man could only scramble, choked and half-blinded, to windward to throw his weight on the careening gunwale, the helmswoman had pounced upon the tiller and was standing knee-deep in the water pouring over the submerged lee rail to pay out and steer and miss the island headland by a shearing hand's-breadth.

The worst was over in a moment, and under the lee of the small island there was a brief respite for pumping and bailing. The girl's black eyes were shining with excitement and fearless daring, and Griswold would have given much for time and leisure in which to catch and fix the fleeting inspiration of the instant. But there was little space for the artistic appreciation.

"Hurry!" she cried; "we'll have to take it again in a minute or two!" and there was still a bucketing of the shipped sea to thrash about in the cockpit when the island withdrew its friendly shelter and the _Clytie_, going free and sailed as Griswold had never seen a catboat sailed before, wallowed out into the smother.

For a little time there was not much to choose between drowning and being hammered to death by the leaping plunges and alightings of the frail cockle-shell which seemed to be blown bodily from crest to crest of the short, high-pitched seas. The wind, heavily rain-laden, came in furious gusts, flattening the reefed canvas until the bunt of the sail dragged in the trough. Griswold climbed high on the weather rail, leaning far out to help hold the balance between the heaving seas and the pounding blasts. In the momentary lulls he had flitting glimpses of the far-away town shore, with the storm-torn waste of waters intervening. With the wind veering more and more to the west, it was a fair run to the shelter of the home bay. But Margery was laying the course far to the right, though to do it she was holding the catboat cockpit-deep in the smother and taking the chance of a capsize with every recurring gust. Griswold edged his way aft as far as he dared.

"Hadn't you better let her fall off a little more and run for it?" he suggested, and he had to shout it into the pink ear nearest to him to make himself heard above the roaring of the wind and the crashing plunges of the boat.

She shook her head and made an impatient little gesture with her elbow toward the storm-lashed raceway over the bows. Griswold winked the spray out of his eyes and looked. At first he saw nothing but the wild waste of whitecaps, but at the next attempt he made out the hotel steam launch, half-way to the entrance of the southern bay and a little to leeward of the _Clytie's_ course. The small steamer was evidently no sea-boat, and with more courage than seamanship, its steersman was driving straight for the Inn bay without regard for the direction of the wind and the seas.

"That's Ole Halverson!" cried the tiller maiden with scorn in her voice. "He thinks because he happens to have a steam engine he needn't look to see which way the wind is blowing."

"She's pitching pretty badly," Griswold called back. "If he only had sense enough to ease off a little...." Suddenly he became aware of the finer heroism of his companion. He knew now why she had refused to take shelter under the lee of the island, and why she was holding the catboat down to the edge of peril to keep the windward advantage of the laboring steamer. "Margery, girl, you're a darling!" he shouted. "Take all the chances you want to and I'm with you, if we go to the bottom!"

She nodded complete intelligence and took in another inch of the straining main-sheet.

"If Halverson loses his nerve they're going to need help, and need it before the _Osprey_ can get out to them," she prophesied.

Griswold looked again, this time over the catboat's counter, and saw a big schooner, close-reefed, hauling out from a little bay on the north shore. The launch's plight had evidently impressed others with the necessity of doing something. The need was sufficiently urgent. Once again the Swedish man of machinery in charge of the craft in peril was inching his helm up in a vain endeavor to hold the course, and the little steamer was rolling almost funnel under. Griswold forgot that his companion was a woman and swore rabidly.

"Look at the fool!" he yelled. "He's trying to come about! If he gets into the trough----"

The thing was done almost as he spoke. A wilder squall than any of the preceding ones caught the upper works of the launch and heeled her spitefully. At the critical instant the steersman lost his head and spun the wheel, and it was all over. With a heaving plunge and a muffled explosion the launch was gone.

Once again Griswold was given to see the stuff Margery Grierson was made of in the finer warp and woof of her.

"That's for us," she said calmly; and then: "Help me get another inch or two on this sheet. We don't want to let those people on the _Osprey_ do all of the heroic things."

Together they held the catboat down to its work, sending it ripping through the crested waves and fighting sturdily for every foot of the precious windward advantage. None the less, it was the big schooner, thrashing down the wind with every square yard of its reefed canvas drawing, which was first at the scene of disaster. Through the rain and spume they could see the schooner's crew picking up the shipwrecked passengers, who were clinging to life-belts, broken bulkheads, and anything that would float. So swiftly was the rescue effected that the rescuer had luffed and filled and was tearing on its way down the lake again when the close-hauled _Clytie_ came up with the first of the floating wreckage. The tiller maiden's dark eyes were shining again, but this time their brightness was of tears.

"Oh, boy, boy!" she cried, with a little heart-broken catch in her voice; "some of them must have gone down with her! Can you believe that the _Osprey_ got them all?" And then, with the sweet lips trembling: "I did my best, Kenneth; my very best: and--it wasn't--good enough!"

She was putting the catboat up into the wind, and Griswold stumbled forward to get the broader outlook. Suddenly he called back to her.

"Port!--port your helm hard! there's a man in a life-belt--he's just out of reach. Hold her there--steady--steady!" He had thrown himself flat, face down, on the half-deck forward and was clutching at something in the heaving seas. "I've got him!" he cried, and a moment later he was working his way aft, holding the man's face out of water.

It asked for their united strength to get the gray-haired, heavy-bodied victim of the capsize over the _Clytie's_ rail. They had to bring the life-belt too; the old man's fingers were sunk into it with a dying grip that could not be broken. At first Griswold was too much preoccupied and shocked to recognize the drawn face with its hard-lined mouth and long upper lip. When he did recognize it the gripping fear was at his heart--the fear that makes a cruel coward of the hunted thing in all nature.

What might have happened if he had been alone; if Margery, taking her place at the tiller and busying herself swiftly in getting the catboat under way again, had not been looking on; he dared not think. And that other frightful thought he put away, fighting against it madly as a condemned man might push the cup of hemlock from his lips. Forcibly breaking the drowned one's hold upon the life-belt, he fell to work energetically, resorting to the first-aid expedients for the reviving of the drowned as he had learned them in his boyhood. Once, only, he flung a word over his shoulder at Margery as he fought for the old man's life. "Make for the nearest landing where we can get a doctor!" he commanded; and then, in a passion of gratitude: "O God, I thank thee that I am not a murderer!--he's coming back! he's breathing again!"

A little later he was able to leave off the first-aid arm-pumpings and chest-pressings; to straighten the limp and sprawling limbs, and to dive into the cuddy cabin, under Margery's directions, for blankets and rugs. When all was done that could be done, and he had propped the blanket-swathed body with the cushions so that the crash and plunge of the pitching catboat would be minimized for the sufferer, he went aft to sit beside the helmswoman, who was getting the final wave-leap of speed out of the little vessel.

"He is alive?" she asked.

"Yes; and that is about all that can be said. He isn't drowned; but he is old, and the shock has gone pretty near to snapping the thread."

"Of course, you remember him?" she said, looking away across the leaping waters.

Griswold, with his heart on fire with generous emotions, felt the cold hand gripping him again.

"He is the old gentleman you introduced me to at the Inn the other day: Galbraith; is that the name?"

"Yes," she rejoined, still looking away; "that is the name."

Griswold fell silent for the time; but a little later, when the catboat was rushing in long plunges through the entrance to the Wahaskan arm of the lake, he said: "You are going to take him to Mereside?"

"Yes. He is a friend of poppa's. And, anyway, it's the nearest place, and you said there was no time to lose."

There were anxious watchers on the Mereside landing-stage: the gardener, the stable-man, Thorsen, and three or four others. When the landing was safely made, Miss Grierson took command and issued her orders briskly.

"Four of you carry Mr. Galbraith up to the house, and you, Thorsen, put Baldur into the two-wheeled trap and be ready to go for Doctor Farnham when I tell you where you can find him. Johnnie Fergus, you come here and take care of the _Clytie_; you know how to furl down and moor her."

Griswold helped the bearers lift the blanketed figure out of the _Clytie's_ cockpit, and while he was doing it, the steel-gray eyes of the rescued one opened slowly to fix a stony gaze upon the face of the man who was bending over him. What the thin lips were muttering Griswold heard, and so did one other. "So it's you, is it, ye murdering blue-eyed deevil?" And then: "Eh, man, man, but I'm sick!"

Griswold walked with Margery at the tail of the little procession as it wound its way up the path to the great house.

"You heard what he said?" he inquired craftily.

"Yes: he is out of his head, and no wonder," she said soberly. Then: "You must go home and change at once; you are drenched to the skin. Don't wait to come in. I'll take care of your manuscript."

XXX

THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES

The cyclonic summer storm had blown itself out, and the clouds were beginning to break away in the west, when Griswold, obeying Margery's urging to go home and change his clothes, turned his back upon Mereside and his face toward a future of thickening doubts and unnerving possibilities.

Once more he found himself wrestling with the keeper of the gate, the angel of the flaming sword set to drive him forth among the outcasts. One by one the confidently imagined safeguards were crumbling. He had been traced to Wahaska--so much could be read between the lines of Charlotte Farnham's story; if Margery's newsboy protégé was to be believed, he was watched and followed. And now, after having successfully passed the ordeal of a face-to-face meeting and hand-shaking with Andrew Galbraith, chance or destiny or the powers of darkness had intervened, and a danger met and vanquished had been suddenly brought to life again, armed and menacing.

Griswold had not deceived himself, nor had he allowed Margery's apparent convincement to deceive him. The old man's mind had not been wandering in the eye-opening moment of consciousness regained. On the contrary, what he had failed to do under ordinary and conventional conditions had become instantly possible when the plunge into the dark shadow had brushed away all the artificial becloudings of the memory page. What action he would take when he should recover was as easy to prefigure as it was, for the present at least, a matter negligible. The dismaying thing was that the broad earth seemed too narrow to hide in; that invention itself became the clumsiest of blunderers when, it was given the simple task of losing a single individual among the millions of unrelated human atoms.

Thus the threat of the peril which might be called the physical. But beyond this there was another, and, for a man of temperament, a still more ominous foreshadowing of evil to come. Of some subtle, deep-seated change in himself he had long been conscious. Again and again it had manifested itself in those moments of craven fear and ruthless, murderous promptings, when kindliness, gratitude, love, all the humanizing motives, had turned suddenly to frenzied hatred, and the primitive savage had leaped up, fiercely raging with the blood-lust.

Here, again, he suffered loss, and was conscious of it. The point of view was changed, and still changing. Something, a thing indefinable, but none the less real, had gone out of him. Once, in the heart of a thick darkness of squalor and misery, he had seen a great light and the name of it was love for his kind. But now the light was waning, and in its room a bale-fire was beckoning. There be those, fat, well-nurtured, and complacent souls faring ever along the main-travelled roads of life, who need no guiding lamp and will never see the glimmer of the bale-fires. But the breaker of traditions was of those who, having once seen the light, must follow where it leads or violate a primal law of being. Some vague sense of this was stirring the dying embers for the proletary as he was climbing the hill to the street of quiet entrances; but he pushed the saving thought aside and chose to call it fanaticism. He had drawn the line and he would hew to it.

For a long time after he had reached his room, and had had his bath and change, Griswold sat at his writing-table with his head in his hands, thinking in monotonous circles. As in those other stressful moments, the importunate devil was at his ear; now mocking him for not having left the drowned enemy as he was; now whispering the dreadful hope that age and the shock and the drowning might still re-erect the barrier of safety. The eyes of the recusant grew hot and a loathsome fever ran sluggishly through his veins when he realized the depths to which he had descended; that he, once the brother-loving, could coldly weigh the chance of life and death for another and be unable to find in any corner of his heart the hope that life might prevail.