the whitecap would have been under way except for the delay of the gay little mrs. babbitt and her admiring husband, who sent word that they could not arrive until after dinner, so the yacht, long and low and slender and glistening white, lay in the middle of the hudson river, while her guests, bundled warmly against the crisp breeze, gathered in the forward shelter deck and watched the beginnings of the early sunset.
“i like doctor boyd in his yachting cap,” commented lucile, as that young man joined them, with a happy mother on his arm.
“it takes away that deadly clerical effect,” laughed arly. “his long coat makes him look like the captain, and he’s ever so much more handsome.”
“i don’t mind being the topic of discussion so long as i’m present,” commented the reverend smith boyd, glancing around the group as if in search of some one.
“it rather restricts the conversation,” mrs. helen davies observed, at the same time watching, with a smile, the tableau of her sister grace and jim sargent. gail and herself had taken grace out shopping, and had forced on her sedate taste a neat and “fetching” yachting costume, from flowing veiled cap to white shoes, which had dropped about twenty years from her usual 316appearance, and had brought a renewed enthusiasm to the eyes of her husband.
the cherub-cheeked marion kenneth glanced wistfully over at the rail where dick rodley, vieing with the sunset in splendour, stood chatting with easy ted teasdale and the stiff gerald fosland.
“where’s gail?” demanded the cherub-cheeked one.
“it’s time that young lady was up on deck,” decided arly, and rose.
“she’s probably taking advantage of the opportunity to dress for dinner,” surmised mrs. davies. “in fact, i think it’s a good idea for all of us,” but the sunset was too potent to leave for a few moments, and she sat still.
where indeed was gail? in her beautiful little curly maple stateroom, sitting on the edge of a beautiful little curly maple bed, and digging two small fists into the maple-brown coverlet. the pallor of the morning had not yet left her face, and there were circles around the brown eyes which gave them a wan pathos; there was a crease of pain and worry, too, in the white brow.
gail had come to the greatest crisis in her life. to begin with, allison. she would not permit herself to dwell on the most horrible part of her experience with him. that she put out of her mind, as best she could, with a shudder. she hoped, in the time to come, to be free of the picture of him as he advanced slowly towards her in the music room, with that frenzied glare in his eyes and that terrifying evil look upon his face. she hoped, in the time to come, to be free of that awful fear which seemed to have gripped her heart with a clutch that had left deep imprints upon it, but, just now, she let the picture and the fear remain before her 317eyes and in her heart, and centred upon her grave responsibilities.
so far she had told no one of what had occurred that morning. when she had rushed into the rector’s study he had sprung up, and, seeing the fright in her face and that she was tottering and ready to fall, he had caught her in his strong arms, and she had clung trustfully to him, half faint, until wild sobs had come to her relief. even in her incoherence, however, even in her wild disorder of emotion, she realised that there was danger, not only to her but to every one she loved, in the man from whom she had run away; and she could not tell the young rector any more than that she had been frightened. had she so much as mentioned the name of allison, she instinctively knew that the reverend smith boyd, in whom there was some trace of impetuosity, might certainly have forgotten his cloth and become mere man, and have strode straight across to the house before allison could have collected his dazed wits; and she did not dare add that encounter to her list of woes. it was strange how instinctively she had headed for the reverend smith boyd’s study; strange then, but not now. in that moment of flying straight to the protection of his arms, she knew something about herself, and about the reverend smith boyd, too. she knew now why she had refused howard clemmens, and willis cunningham, and houston van ploon, and dick rodley; poor dick! and allison, and all the others. she frankly and complacently admitted to herself that she loved the reverend smith boyd, but she put that additional worry into the background. it could be fought out later. she would have been very happy about it if she had had time, although 318she could see no end to that situation but unhappiness.
these threats of allison’s. how far could he go with them, how far could he make them true? all the way. she had a sickening sense that there was no idleness in his threats. he had both the will and the power to carry them out. he would bankrupt her family; he would employ slander against her, from which the innocent have less defence than the guilty; he would set himself viciously to wreck her happiness at every turn. the long arm of his vindictiveness would follow her to her home, and set a barrier of scandalous report even between her and her friends.
but let her first take up the case of her uncle jim. she had not dared go with her news to hot-tempered jim sargent. his first impulse would have been one of violence, and she could not see that a murder on her soul, and her uncle jim in jail as a murderer, and her name figuring large, with her photograph in the pages of the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press, would help any one in the present dilemma. yet even a warning, to her uncle jim, of impending financial danger might bring about this very same result, for he had a trick of turning suddenly from the kind and indulgent and tremendously admiring uncle, into a stern parent, and firing one imperative question after another at her, in the very image and likeness of her own father; and that was an authoritative process which she knew she could not resist. yet uncle jim must be protected! how? it was easy enough to say that he must be, and yet could he be? could he even protect himself? she shook her head as she gazed, with unseeing eyes, out of the daintily curtained port hole upon the river, with its swarm of bustling small craft.
319where to turn for advice, or even to have a sharer in the burden which she felt must surely crush her. there was no one. it was a burden she must bear alone, unless she could devise some plan of effective action, and the sense of how far she had been responsible for this condition of affairs was one which oppressed her, and humbled her, and deepened the circles about her woe-smitten eyes.
she had been guilty. in a rush of remorse and repentance, she over-blamed herself. she did not allow, in her severe self-injustice, for the natural instincts which had led her into a full and free commingling with all this new circle; for, as arly later put it for her by way of comfort, how was she to know if she did not find out. now, however, she allowed herself no grain of comfort, or sympathy, or relief, from the stern self-arraignment through which she put herself. she had been wicked, she told herself. had she delved deeply enough into her own heart, and acknowledged what she saw there, and had she abided by that knowledge, she could have spared her many suitors a part of the pain and humiliation she had caused them by her refusal. she had not been surprised by any of them. with the infliction of but very slight pain, she could have stopped them long before they came to the point of proposal, she saw that now. why had she not done so? pride! that was the answer. the pleasure of being so eagerly sought, the actually spoken evidence of her popularity, and the flattery of having aroused in all these big men emotions so strong that they took the sincere form of the offering of a lifetime of devotion. and she, who had prated to herself so seriously of marriage, had held it as so sacred a thing, she had so toyed with it, and had toyed, too, with that instinct in these good men!
320in the light of her experience with allison, she began to distrust her own sincerity, and for some minutes she floundered in that slough of despond.
but no, out of that misery she was able to emerge clear of soul. her worst fault had been folly. an instinctive groping for that other part of her, which nature had set somewhere, unlabelled, to make of the twain a complete and perfect human entity, had led her into all her entanglements, even with allison. and again the darkness deepened around her troubled eyes.
after all, had she but known it, she had a greater fault than folly. inexperience. her charm was another, her youth, her beauty, her virility—and her sympathy! these were her true faults, and the ones for which every attractive girl must suffer. there is no escape. it is the great law of compensation. nature bestows no gift of value for which she does not exact a corresponding price.
gail took her little fists from their pressure into the brown coverlet, and held her temples between the fingertips of either hand; and the brown hair, springing into wayward ringlets from the salt-breeze which blew in at the half opened window, rippled down over her slender hands, as if to soothe and comfort them. she had been wasting her time in introspection and self-analysis when there was need for decisive action! fortunately she had a respite until monday morning. in the past few days of huge commercial movements which so vitally interested her, she had become acquainted with business methods, to a certain extent, and she knew that nothing could be done on saturday afternoon or sunday; therefore her uncle jim was safe for two nights and a day. then allison would deny the connection of her uncle jim’s road with the a.-p., and the beginning of the destruction 321of the sargent family would be thoroughly accomplished! she had been given a thorough grasp of how easily that could be done. what could she do in two nights and a day? it was past her ingenuity to conceive. she must have help!
but from whom could she receive it? tod boyd? the same reason which made her think of him first made her swiftly place him last. her uncle jim? too hotheaded. her aunt grace? too inexperienced. her aunt helen? too conventional. lucile, ted, dick? she laughed. arly?
there was a knock on her door, and arly herself appeared.
“selfish,” chided arly. “we’re all wanting you.”
“that’s comforting,” smiled gail. “i have just been being all alone in the world, on the most absolutely deserted island of which you can conceive. arly, sit down. i want to tell you something.”
the black hair and the brown hair cuddled close together, while gail, her tongue once loosened, poured out in a torrent all the pent-up misery which had been accumulating within her for the past tempestuous weeks; and arly, her eyes glistening with the excitement of it all, kept her exclamations of surprise and fright and indignation and horror, and everything else, strictly to such low monosyllables as would not impede the gasping narration.
“i’d like to kill him!” said arly, in a low voice of startling intensity, and jumping to her feet she paced up and down the confines of the little stateroom. among all the other surprises of recent events, there was none more striking than this vast change in the usually cool and sarcastic arly, who had not, until her return from gail’s home, permitted herself an emotion in two 322years. she came back to the bed with a sudden swift knowledge that gail had been dry-eyed all through this recital, though her lips were quivering. she should have cried. instead she was sitting straight up, staring at arly with patient inquiry. she had told all her dilemma, and all her grief, and all her fear; and now she was waiting.
“the only way in which that person can be prevented from attacking your uncle jim, which would be his first step, is to attack him before he can do anything,” said arly, pacing up and down, her fingers clasped behind her slender back, her black brows knotted, her graceful head bent toward the floor.
“he is too powerful,” protested gail.
“that makes him weak,” returned arly quickly. “in every great power there is one point of great weakness. tell me again about this tremendously big world monopoly.”
patiently, and searching her memory for details, gail recited over again all which allison had told her about his wonderful plan of empire; and even now, angry and humiliated and terror stricken as she was, gail could not repress a feeling of admiration for the bigness of it. it was that which had impressed her in the beginning.
“it’s wonderful,” commented arly, catching a trace of that spirit of the exultation which hangs upon the unfolding of fairyland; and she began to pace the floor again. “why, gail, it is the most colossal piece of thievery the world has ever known!” and she walked in silence for a time. “that is the thing upon which we can attack him. we are going to stop it.”
gail rose, too.
323“how?” she asked. “arly, we couldn’t, just we two girls!”
“why not?” demanded arly, stopping in front of her. “any plan like that must be so full of criminal crookedness that exposure alone is enough to put an end to it.”
“exposure,” faltered gail, and struggled automatically with a lifelong principle. “it was told to me in confidence.”
arly looked at her in astonishment.
“i could shake you,” she declared, and instead put her arm around gail. “did that person betray no confidence when he came to your uncle’s house this morning! moreover, he told you this merely to over-awe you with the glitter of what he had done. he made that take the place of love! confidence! i’ll never do anything with so much pleasure in my life as to betray yours right now! if you don’t expose that person, i will! if there’s any way we can damage him, i intend to see that it is done; and if there’s any way after that to damage him again and again, i want to do it!”
for the first time in that miserable day, gail felt a thrill of hope, and arly, at that moment, had, to her, the aspect of a colossal figure, an angel of brightness in the night of her despair! she felt that she could afford to sob now, and she did it.
“do you suppose that would save uncle jim?” she asked, when they had both finished a highly comforting time together.
“it will save everybody,” declared arly.
“i hope so,” pondered gail. “but we can’t do it ourselves, arly. whom shall we get to help us?”
324the smile on arly’s face was a positive illumination for a moment, and then she laughed.
“gerald,” she replied. “you don’t know what a dear he is!” and she rang for a cabin boy.
