CHAPTER XLV
THE GYPSY BLOOD
It was a curious puzzle which, through the quiet of the afternoon that followed, Diane sought desperately to assemble from the chaos of highly-colored segments which the morning had supplied. There were intervals when she rejected the result, with its maddening gaps and imperfections, with a laugh of utter derision—it was so preposterous! There were quieter intervals when she pieced the impossible segments all together again and stared aghast at the result. No matter how incredulous her attitude, however, when the scattered angles slipped into unity, riveted together by a painful concentration, the result, with its consequent light upon the wooing of Ronador, though more and more startling, was in the main convincing.
Days back in Arcadia Diane remembered the Baron had suavely spoken of his kingdom, and Philip had told her much. There was a mad king without issue upon the throne. There were two brothers of the mad king, each of whom had a son. Theodomir, then, had been the son of the elder, Ronador of the younger. Theodomir had fled at the death of his father, unwilling to take up the regency under a mad king. So Ronador's father had come to the regency of the kingdom and Ronador himself and his little son had stood in the direct line of succession until the ghost arose from the candlestick and mocked them all. And she—Diane—was the child of Theodomir.
Diane was still dazedly sorting the pieces of the puzzle when the sun set in a red glory beyond the lake, matching the flame of Philip's fire by which he and the Baron sat in earnest discussion.
The west was faintly yellow, the forest dark, when from the tent to which she had retired at noon, quite distraught and incoherent. Aunt Agatha begged plaintively for a cup of tea.
"Diane," she said, when the girl herself appeared with it, "I—I can't forget his face. I—I never shall. Twice now I've tried to get up, but I thought of his eyes and the revolver, and my knees folded up. It—it was just so this morning. What with the ringing in my ears—and the dizziness—and his face so dark with anger—and digging my heels in the ground to keep my knees from folding up under me—I—I thought I should go quite mad, quite mad, my dear. He—he meant to kill Mr. Poynter?"
"Yes," said Diane with a shudder. "Yes. I—think so."
"I'm sorry I told him where you were," fluttered Aunt Agatha, taking a conscience-stricken and somewhat tearful gulp of very hot tea. "I—I am indeed, but I couldn't in the least know that he went about killing people, could I, Diane?"
"No," said Diane patiently. "No, of course not. Don't bother about it. Aunt Agatha. Why not wait until your tea is a little cooler?"
"I'll have to," said Aunt Agatha with an aggrieved sniff. "For I do believe I'm filled with steam now. Why are you so white and quiet, Diane? Is it the revolver?"
"Aunt Agatha," exclaimed the girl impetuously, "why have you always been so reticent about my mother?"
The effect of the girl's words was sufficient proof that the frightened lady had absorbed but little of Philip's revelation. Tired and nervous, hazily aware that the scene of the morning had been portentous, and now confounding it in a panic with something that by a deathbed pledge had lain inexorably buried in her heart for years, Aunt Agatha screamed and dropped her teacup. It rolled away in a trail of steam to the flap of the tent. Covering her face with her hands, Aunt Agatha burst hysterically into a shower of tears.
Diane started.
"Aunt Agatha," she exclaimed, "what is it? For heaven's sake, don't sob and tremble so."
"I—I might have known it!" sobbed Aunt Agatha, wringing her plump hands in genuine distress. "I might have guessed they would tell you that, though how in the world they found it out is beyond me. If I'd only listened instead of worrying about my knees and the revolver, and staring so. And you in the Everglades—where your father went to hunt alligators. Oh, Diane, Diane, not a single night could I sleep—and it's not to be wondered at that I was scared. And the dance you did for Nathalie Fowler and me—and the costume that night at Sherrill's. I was fairly sick! I knew it would come out—though how could I foresee that the Baron and Mr. Poynter and the Prince would know? I—I told your grandfather so years ago, but he pledged me on his deathbed—and your father was wild and clever like Carl and singular in his notions. I'll never forget your grandfather's face when you ran away into the forest to sleep as a child. He was white and sick and muttered something about atavism. It—it was the Indian blood—"
Diane caught her aunt's trembling arm in a grip that hurt cruelly.
"Aunt Agatha," she said, catching her breath sharply, "you must not talk so wildly. Say it plainer!"
But Aunt Agatha tranquil was incoherent.
Aunt Agatha frightened and hysterical was utterly beyond control.
"And very beautiful too," she sobbed. "And Norman, poor fellow, was quite mad about her—for all she was an Indian girl—though her father was white and a Spaniard, I will say that for her. Not even so dark as you are, Diane, and shy and lovely enough to turn any man's head—much less your father's—though your grandfather stormed and threatened to kill them both and only for Grant he would have. And when an Indian from the Everglades told Norman that—that she really hadn't been married before but just a—mother like Carl's mother, my dear—"
But Diane was gone, stumbling headlong from the tent. Aunt Agatha was to remember her white agonized face for many a day.
CHAPTER XLVI
IN THE FOREST
With the darkening of the night a wind sprang up over the bleak, black expanse of lake and swept with a sigh through the forest on the shore. It was a wind from the east which drove a film of cloud across the stars and bore a hint of rain in its freshness. The rain itself pattering presently through the forest fell upon the huddled figure of a girl who lay face downward upon the ground among the trees.
She lay inert, her head pillowed upon her arm, face to face with the unspeakable shadow that had haunted Carl. Not married. Aunt Agatha had said, but just a mother! Now the pitiful fragments of a hallowed shrine lay mockingly at her feet. How scornfully she had flashed at Carl!
Diane quivered and lay very still, torn by the bitter irony of it.
And the Indian mother! Carl had known and Ronador. She had caught a startled look in the eyes of each at the Sherrill fête. Every wild instinct, if she had but heeded the warning, had pointed the way; the childhood escapade in the forest, the tomboy pranks of riding and running and swimming that had horrified Aunt Agatha to the point of tears, and later the persistent call of the open country.
What wonder if the soft, musical tongue of the Seminole had come lightly to her lips? What wonder if Indian instincts had driven her forth to the wild? What wonder if the nameless stir of atavism beneath a Seminole wigwam had frightened her into flight. Indian instincts, Indian grace, Indian stoicism and courage, Indian keenness and hearing—all of these had come to her from the Indian mother with the blood of white men in her veins.
But the stain of illegitimacy—
That brought the girl's proud head down again with a strangled sob of grief. Shaking pitifully, she fell forward unconscious upon the ground.
Some one was calling. There was rain and a lantern.
Diane stirred.
"Diane! Diane!" called the voice of Philip.
At the memory of Philip and Arcadia, Diane choked and lay very still.
"Diane!" The lantern shone now in her face and Philip was kneeling beside her, his face whiter than her own.
"Great God!" said Philip and stared into her haunted eyes with infinite compassion.
But Philip, as he frequently said, was preeminently a "practician," wherefore he gently covered the girl with his coat, busied himself with the lantern and, for various reasons, sought to create a general atmosphere of commonplace reality.
"Your aunt sent me," he said at length. "She's awfully upset."
"She told you?"
"Yes."
"Of—of the Indian mother?"
"I knew," said Philip. "Carl told me. I withheld it this morning purposely. Why fuss about it, Diane? Lord Almighty!" added this exceedingly practical and democratic young man, "I shouldn't worry myself if my grandfather was a salamander! … And, besides, your true Indian is an awfully good sport. He's proud and fearless and inherently truthful—"
"I know," said Diane. "It isn't that I mind—so much. It—it's the other."
"Of course!" said Philip gently, "but, somehow, I can't believe it's true, Diane. There's logic against it. Why, Great Scott!" he added cheerfully, for all there was a lump in his throat at the wistful tragedy in the girl's eyes, "there's Theodomir's own statement in the candlestick—have you forgotten?"
"It spoke of—of marriage?"
"It said that Theodomir had gone into the Glades hunting and had come upon the Indian village. There he met and married your mother and later divorced her."
"If I could only be sure!" faltered Diane.
"You can," said Philip, "for I am going back to the Glades to-morrow to hunt this thing to earth. The old chief will know."
"But the trail, Philip?"
"There are ways of finding it," said Philip reassuringly.
He was so cool and matter-of-fact, so entirely cheerful and resourceful, that Diane found his comfortable air of confidence contagious. Only for a time, however. A little later she glanced mutely into his face, met his eyes, flushed scarlet and fell to shaking again.
"Philip!" she whispered.
"Yes?" There was a wonderful gentleness in Philip's voice.
"I—I can't go back to camp yet, for all it's raining."
"Well," said Philip comfortably, "rain be hanged. We'll wait a bit."
Diane gave a sigh of relief and lay very quiet.
Philip wisely said nothing. He shifted the lantern so his own face might be in the shadow and for some reason of his own, fell to speaking of Carl. He told of Mic-co, of the quiet hours of healing by the pool, of another night of storm and stress when Carl had gone forth into the wilds with the Indian girl.
For the first time now he felt that he had pierced the girl's shell of tragic introspection and caught her interest. Though the rain came faster and the lantern flickered, Philip went on with his quiet story.
He spoke of the forces that had fired Carl to drunken resentment, the defection of his comrades, his conviction of injustice in the apportionment of the Westfall estate, the climax of his sensitive rebellion against Diane's attitude toward his mother, the morose and morbid loneliness which had driven him relentlessly to ruin.
"What did he hope to gain by writing to Houdania?" asked the girl a little bitterly.
"Money!" said Philip firmly. "He fancied he could frighten them and put a heavy price upon his silence. Later when his letter to Houdania was ignored he altered his plans. If he could prove that you were the daughter of Theodomir and not of Norman Westfall—then the great estate of his uncle would revert to him. Before he could act further, things began to happen. And then," added Philip thoughtfully, "comes another dark patch in the mystery. Carl's story must have crossed wires with something else—something that frightened them and made his death imperative. The hysterical desperation of these men was out of all proportion to the cause. Baron Tregar, baffling as he is at times, is not the man to lend himself to deliberate assassination merely to keep the succession of Ronador's son free from incumbrances. Later still, Carl planned to sell the secret to the rival province of Galituria, but the net closed in so rapidly and he fell to drinking so heavily, that brain and body revolted and the first shadow of insanity whispered another way—"
"To murder me!" flashed the girl. For the first time there was warmth and color in her face.
Philip was glad. He had struck fire from her stony calm at last.
"Yes," he said, and catching her chilled hands, compelled the glance of her wistful eyes. "Diane," he said deliberately, "let us withhold our censure. Carl has a curious and tragic psychology and he has paid in full. Thanks to a habit of wonderful alertness and ingenuity, he has made his enemies respect and fear him. But the tangle aroused the blackest instincts of his soul."
But the girl was very bitter. The old impatience and intolerance flashed suddenly in her face.
Philip fell silent for an instant. Then he shot his final barb with deliberate intention—not so much to reproach—though there was utter honesty and loyalty to Carl in what he said—but more to touch the girl's tragedy with something sharp enough to pierce her morbidness.
"Carl blames no one but himself," he said gently. "But—but if you had been a little kinder, Diane—"
"Philip!" He had hurt and knew it.
"Yes, I know!" said Philip quickly, "but you're not going to misunderstand, I'm sure. Let me say it with all gentleness and without reproach. If you could have forgotten his mother's history and made him feel that he was not quite alone—that there was some one to whom his careless whims made a difference! But you were a little scornful and indifferent. I wonder if you'll believe that he can tell you each separate moment in his life when you were kind to him."
"I too was alone and lonely!" defended the girl. "And the call of the forest had made me most unhappy."
"Yes. But Carl was not mocking any sensitive spot in your life—"
"No—I was cruel—cruel!"
"I remember in college," said Philip, "he talked so much of his beautiful cousin, and the rest of us were wild to see her. We used to rag him a lot, but you held aloof and we told him we didn't believe he had a cousin. We discovered after a while that he was sensitive because you didn't come when he asked you, and we quit ragging him about it. You didn't even come when he took his degree."
"No. I—Oh, Philip! I am sorry."
"Your aunt," went on Philip, "was not mentally adapted to inspire his respect. He merely laughed and petted her into tearful subjection. You were the only one, Diane, who was his equal in body and brain, and you failed him at a period when your influence would have been tremendous. I can't forget," added Philip soberly, "that much of this I knew in college and carelessly enough I ignored it all later. I let him drift when I might have done much to help him."
Philip's instinct was right and kindly.
He had provided a counter wound to dwarf, at saving intervals, the sting of Aunt Agatha's frightened revelation. Thereafter, the memory of Philip's loyal rebuke was to trouble her sorely, temper a little the old intolerance and arouse her keen remorse. The consciousness that Philip disapproved was quite enough.
With a sudden gesture of solicitude, Diane touched the sleeve of his shirt. It was very wet.
"Philip!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. "We must go back."
"Lord," said Philip lazily, "that's nothing at all. I'm a hydro-aviator."
She glanced wistfully up into his face.
"You're right about Carl," she said. "I'm very sorry."
Philip felt suddenly that it behooved him to remember a certain resolution.
Later, as he hurried through the rainy wood to his own camp, where the Baron sat huddled in the Indian wagon in a state of deep disgust about the rain, he halted where the trees were thick and lighted his pipe.
"There's the Baron's aeroplane at St. Augustine," he said. "We can go there in the morning. And the old chief will know. His memory's good for half a century." Philip flung away his match. "But I can't for the life of me see which is the lesser of the two evils. If her mother wasn't married, it was bad enough, of course. But with Theodomir a crown prince—it's worse if she was!"
And a little later with a sigh—
"A princess! God bless my soul, with my spread-eagle tastes I shouldn't know in the least what to do with her!"
Huddled in the Indian wagon, the Baron and his secretary talked until daybreak.
CHAPTER XLVII
"THE MARSHES OF GLYNN"
For the rides over the sun-hot plains, the poling of cypress canoes, the days of hunting and the tanning of hides, there was now a third of fearless strength and endurance. Keela had come with the Mulberry Moon to the home of her foster father, a presence of delicate gravity and shyness which pervaded the lodge like the breath of some vivid wild flower.
"Red-winged Blackbird," said Carl, one morning, laying aside the flute which had been showering tranquil melody through the quiet beneath the moss-hung oaks, "why are you so quiet?"
"I am ever quiet," said Red-winged Blackbird with dignity. "Mic-co says it is better so."
"Why?"
"Mic-co only understands, and even to him I may not always talk." She went sedately on with the modeling of clay, her slender hands swift, graceful, unfaltering. Mic-co's lodge abounded in evidences of their deftness.
"You have more grace," said Carl suddenly, "than any woman I have ever known."
"Diane!" said Keela with charming and impartial acquiescence.
"Yes, Diane has it, too," assented Carl, and fell thoughtful, watching Mic-co's snowy herons flap tamely about the lodge.
"Play!" said Keela shyly.
Carl drew the flute from his pocket again and obeyed.
"Like a brook of silver!" said the Indian girl with an abashed revealment of the wild sylvan poetry with which her thoughts were rife.
"The one friend," said Carl, "to whom I have told all things. The one friend, Red-winged Blackbird, who always understood!"
"I," said Keela with majesty, "I too am your friend and I understand."
Carl reddened a little.
"What do you understand, little Indian lady?" he asked quietly.
He was totally unprepared for the keenness of her unsmiling analysis.
"That you have been very tired in the head," she nodded, her delicate, vivid face quite grave. "So tired that you might not see as you should, so tired that the medicine of white men could not reach it, but only the words of Mic-co, who knows all things. So tired that a moon was not a moon of lovely brightness. It was a thing of evil fire to scorch. Uncah? Mic-co would say warped vision. I must talk in simpler ways for all I study."
They fell quiet.
"Read me again that live oak poem of Lanier's," said Carl. "After a while Mic-co will be back to spirit you away to his Room of Books."
She read, as she frequently read to Carl and Mic-co in the long quiet afternoons, with an accent musical and soft, of the immortal marshes of Glynn.
"Glooms of the live oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—"
What vivid memories it awoke of the morning the swamp had revealed to him the island home of Mic-co!
"Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnameable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain."
Lanier, dying of heartbreak! How well he had understood!
"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of Fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
And Keela too had guessed.
"In the rose-and-silver evening glow,
Farewell—"
Keela broke off and laid aside the book.
"I may not read more," she said, bending to the pottery with wild color in her face. "I—I am very tired, Carl. You go in the morning?"
"Yes."
"You are strong—and sure?"
"Yes. Quite. I've promised Mic-co not to lose my grip again."
"And sometime you will come here again?"
"Often!"
A little later she went quietly away to the Room of Books with Mic-co.
When the evening star flashed silver in the lilied pool, Carl sat alone. Mic-co had been summoned away by an Indian servant. A soft light gleamed in the corner of the court in a shower of vines. Its light was a little like the soft rays of the Venetian lamp that had shone in the Sherrill garden, but Carl ruthlessly put the memory aside. It had grown once into a devouring flame of evil portent. It must not do so again.
His thoughts were so far away that a soft footfall behind him and the rustle of satin seemed part of that other night until turning restlessly, he caught the sheen of satin, brightly gold in the lantern-glow. The dark, vivid skin, the hair and eyes that were somehow more Spanish than Indian—the golden mask—Carl's face went wildly scarlet.
"Keela!" he cried, springing toward her, "Keela!"
There was much of his old intolerance, much of his impudent immunity to the world's opinion in the curious flash of adjustment which leveled barriers of caste and convention and bridged, for him, in the fashion of a willful uncle, the gulf of race and breeding.
The golden mask dropped.
"Is it not a pretty farewell?" she faltered, with a wistful glance at the shimmering gown. "Diane gave it all. As you saw me first, so—now!"
Some lines of Lanier's poem of the morning were ringing wildly in Carl's ears.
"The blades of the marsh grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whir;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one."
"Why do you look at me so?" asked Keela.
"I have been a fool," said Carl steadily, "a very great fool—and blind."
Keela's lovely, sensitive mouth quivered.
"Is it—" she raised glistening, glorified eyes to his troubled face, "is it," she whispered naïvely, "that you care like the lovers in Mic-co's books?"
"Yes. And you, Keela?"
"I—I have always cared," she said shyly, "since that night at Sherrill's. I—I feared you knew."
Trembling violently the girl dropped to her knees with a soft crash of satin and buried her face in her hands. She was crying wildly.
Carl gently raised her to her feet again and squarely met her eyes.
"Red-winged Blackbird," he said quietly, "there is much that I must tell you before I may honorably face this love of yours and mine—"
Keela's black eyes blazed in sudden loyalty.
"There is nothing I do not know," she flung back proudly. "Philip told me. And for every wild error you made, he gave a reason. He loves and trusts you utterly. May I not do that too?"
"He told you!"
"Some that night in the storm when he and I were saddling the horses to ride to Mic-co's. Some later. He pledged me to kindness and understanding."
For every break in the thread there had always been Philip's strong and kindly hand to mend it. A little shaken by the memory of the night in Philip's wigwam, Carl walked restlessly about the court.
"But there is more," he said, coloring. "There was passion and dishonor in my heart, Keela, until, one night, I fought and won—"
"Is it not enough for me that you won?" asked Keela gently and broke off, wild color staining her cheeks and forehead.
Mic-co stood in the doorway.
"Mic-co," she said bravely, "I—I would have you tell him that he is strong and brave and clean enough to love. He—he does not know it."
She fled with a sob.
"Have you forgotten?" asked Mic-co slowly.
"I care nothing for race!" cried Carl with a flash of his fine eyes. "Must I pattern my life by the set tenets of race bigotry. I have known too many women with white faces and scarlet souls."
"If I know you at all," said Mic-co with a quiet smile, "there will be no pattern, save of your own making."
"I come of a family who rebel at patterns," said Carl. "My mother—my uncle—my cousin. Let me tell you all," and he told of the night in the Sherrill garden; of the brutal desire that had later come with the brooding and the wild disorders of his brain, to drive him deeper and deeper into the black abyss until he fought and won by the camp fire; of his consequent panic-stricken rebound of horror and remorse when he had put it all aside, fighting the call with reason, seeking desperately to crush it out of his life, until the sight of Keela in the satin gown had sent him back with a shock to that finer, cleaner, quieter call that had come in the Sherrill garden. Then the disordered interval between had fled to the limbo of forgotten things.
Mic-co heard his story to the end without comment. He was silent so long that Carl grew uncomfortable.
"Since Keela was a little, wistful, black-eyed child," said Mic-co at last, "I have been her teacher. We have worked very hard together. Peace came to me through her." He broke off frowning and spoke of the alarming mine of inherited instincts from the white father which his teaching had awakened. Keela had been restless and unhappy, fastidiously aloof with the Seminoles, shy and reticent with white men. He must not make another mistake, he said, for Keela was very dear to him.
"The white father?" asked Carl curiously.
"An artist."
"She has a marvelous gift in modeling," said Carl. "I know a famous young sculptor whose work is nothing like so virile. Might not something utterly new and barbaric come of it with proper direction? If she could interpret this wild life of the Glades from an Indian viewpoint—"
"I have frequently thought of it," agreed Mic-co. "You would help her, Carl?"
"Yes."
"It would give a definite and unselfish direction to your own life, would it not, like those weeks at the farm with Wherry?"
"Yes. You trust me, Mic-co?"
"Utterly."
Carl held out his hand.
"One by one," said Mic-co, "fate is slipping into the groove of your life people who are destined to care greatly—"
"You mean—"
"It shall be Keela's to decide."
"Mic-co, I—cannot thank you. You and Philip—"
But he could not go on.
A little later he went to bed and lay restless until morning. He was up again at sunrise, tramping over the island paths with Mic-co.
The quiet of the early morning was rife with the chirp of countless birds, with the crackle of the camp fire where the turbaned Indians in Mic-co's service were preparing the morning meal. There was young corn on the fertile island to the east. Over the chain of islands lay the promise of early summer.
There was a curious drone overhead as they neared the lake.
"Look!" exclaimed Carl. "A singular sight, Mic-co, for these island wilds of yours."
An aeroplane was whirring noisily above the quiet lake, startling the bluebills floating about on the surface.
"A singular sight!" nodded Mic-co, "and a prophetic one. Symbolic of the spirit of progress which hangs now above the Glades, is it not? The world is destined to reap much one day from the exuberant fertility of this marshland of the South."
The aeroplane glided gracefully to the bosom of the lake, alighted like a great bird and came to shore with its own power.
The aviator swept off his cap and smiled.
It was Philip.
CHAPTER XLVIII
ON THE LAKE SHORE
With the departure of Philip and the Baron for St. Augustine, a fever of energy had settled over Diane. Riding, rowing, swimming, tramping miles of Florida road, taking upon herself much of Johnny's camp labor, she ruthlessly tired herself out by day that she might soundly sleep by night. Youth and health and Spartan courage were a wholesome trio.
Aunt Agatha watched, sniffed and frequently groaned.
How much the kindly ruse of Philip had helped, Diane herself could not suspect, but her remorseful thoughts were frequently busy with memories of the old childhood days with Carl. He had been an excellent horseman, a sturdy swimmer, an unerring shot, compelling respect in those old, wild vacation days on the Florida plantation. If the cruelty had crept into her manner at an age when she could not know, it had been a reflex of the attitude of the stern old planter whose son and daughter had been so conspicuously erratic.
Gently enough, too, the girl sought to make Aunt Agatha comprehend the curious facts that had come to light that morning beneath the trees. Quite in vain. That good lady refused flatly to absorb it, grew ludicrously plaintive and aggrieved and flew off at tearful tangents into complicated segments of family history from which it was possible to extricate only the most ridiculous of facts, chief among them the reiterated assurance that her own father had been, in the bosom of his family, of a delightfully sportive nature, but nothing like the Westfalls—dear no!—that he had a genteel figure, my dear, for all he had developed a somewhat corpulent tendency in later years; that the corn-beef which mother procured was highly superior to those portions of salted quadruped which Johnny obtained in the village—and facts of similar irrelevancy.
Diane had heard of the corn-beef and father's corpulency before, but she was now somewhat gentler and less impatient and checked the old careless flashes of annoyance. And, having supplemented the hand bag by a shopping trip to the nearest village, Aunt Agatha, to the girl's dismay, announced one day:
"It's my duty to stay, Diane, and stay I will. Mother would have stayed, I'm sure, and mother's judgment was usually correct, though she would wear smoked glasses."
Rowing in one morning with a string of fish, Diane was a little fluttered at the sight of a tall, broad-shouldered young man upon the shore, who waved his hat and quietly waited for her boat to come in. His dark skin was clear and ruddy and very brown, his mouth resolute, the careless grace and impudence of his old manner replaced by something steadier, quieter and possibly a shade less assured.
The meeting was by no means easy for either, and with remorseful memories leaping wildly in the heart of each, they smiled and called cheerfully to one another until the girl's boat glided in under the ready assistance of a masculine hand that shook a little.
"Let me moor it for you!" said Carl and busied himself with the rope for longer than the careless task would seem to warrant. When at length he straightened up again and briskly brushed the sand from his coat sleeve to cover his emotion, he forced himself to meet his cousin's troubled glance directly.
Instantly the careless byplay ceased. The desperate imploring in the eyes of each keyed the situation to electric tensity. Curiously enough, both were thinking of Philip. Curiously enough, in this hour of reckoning Philip was an invisible arbiter urging them to generous understanding.
Diane was the first to speak. And, in the fashion of Diane since childhood, she bravely plunged into the heart of the thing with glistening eyes.
"Carl," she said, "I am very sorry."
It was heartfelt apology for the old offense.
Carl's face went wildly scarlet. The girl's gentleness, prepared as he was for the inevitable flash of fire, had caught him unawares. Springing forward, he caught her hands roughly in his own.
"Don't!" he said roughly. "For God's sake, Diane, don't! It's awfully decent of you—but—but I can't stand it! Have you forgotten—" he choked. "Surely," he said, "Philip told you all. He promised—"
"Yes," said Diane, "and—and that's why—" She was very close to tears now, but with the old imperiousness, with the Spartan pride of the Westfall training behind her, she flung back her head with a quick dry sob, her eyes imploring.
"Let's both forget," she said. "Oh, Carl, I was cruel, cruel! I—I can not see now what made me so. Philip is right. He is always just and honorable. He blames himself and me. You'll forgive me?"
"I forgive!" faltered Carl.
"There were forces driving you," said Diane steadily, "but I—was deliberate. Let's pledge to a new beginning. Let me be your friend as Philip is."
Their hands tightened in a clasp whose warmth was prophetic.
Mic-co's words rang again in Carl's ears.
"Fate is slipping into the groove of your life people who are destined to care greatly!"
Diane was another!
Deeply moved, Carl glanced away over the sunlit water, rippling and sparkling with myriad shafts of light.
"Let's sit here on the bank a minute," he said. "There's something I must tell you. It's all right," he added with a smile, interpreting her glance aright, "I made my peace with Aunt Agatha before you came in. She burst into tears at the sight of me and retired to her tent. I can't make out just why, but I think she said it was either because I'm so tanned and a little thinner, or because none of her family were ever addicted to disappearing, or because she has an uncle who's a bishop. I came from Philip."
"Philip!"
"Yes. He came to Mic-co's the morning I was leaving. Later we met again at a village on the outskirts of the Glades. He waited for me. There was a telegram there from the Baron. Philip said he knew you'd forgive him if he sent his message on by me—his father is very ill."
"Poor Philip!" exclaimed the girl. In the fullness of her swift compassion she forgot why Philip had gone back to the Indian village. It flooded back directly and her wistful eyes implored.
"It was a jealous lie," said Carl gently. "The old chief knew. The Indian who told it hated your father."
Diane sat so white and still that Carl touched her diffidently upon the arm.
"Don't look so!" he pleaded. "There was some difficulty at first, for Philip's Seminole is nearly as fragmentary as the old chief's English, but they called in Sho-caw and after a host of blunders and misunderstandings, Philip ran the thing to earth at last. Theodomir married and divorced your mother in the Indian village just as the paper in the candlestick said."
Still the girl did not speak or move and Carl saw with compassion that the veins of her throat were throbbing wildly. He fell quietly to talking of Keela, caught her interest and watched with a sense of relief the rich color flood back to his cousin's lips and cheeks.
It was plain the tale of the golden mask had startled her a little, for she laid her hand impetuously upon his arm, and her eyes searched his face with troubled intentness.
"It will all be very singular and daring," she faltered after a while. "I had thought of something like it myself—to help her, I mean. You are so—different, Carl! I know of no man who might dare so much and win." Then with unconscious tribute to one whose opinion she valued above all others, she added: "Philip trusts you utterly. He has said so. And Philip knows!"
Carl glanced furtively at her face and cleared his throat.
"Diane," he asked gravely, "I wonder how much that incredible tale of the old candlestick pleased you?"
"I don't know," said Diane honestly. "I wish I did. I've wondered and wondered. No matter how hard I think, it doesn't somehow come right. It's like shattering a cherished crystal into fragments to think that every tie of blood and country I valued is meaningless—that every memory is a mockery—that grandfather and you and Aunt Agatha—" she paused and sighed. "When I try to realize," she finished, "I feel very lonely and afraid."
"And Philip?" hinted Carl.
"I don't think he is pleased."
"You're right," said Carl with decision. "It upset him a lot. But that night by the old chief's camp fire, Philip discovered—"
"Yes?"
"That some imperfection in the stilted wording of the hidden paper had led us all astray. Philip said he could not be sure—there was so much fuss and trouble and misunderstanding—but the old chief had nursed Theodomir through some dreadful illness and knew it all. They were staunch friends. Norman Westfall came into the Glades hunting with a friend. He persuaded your mother to go away with him, but they went—alone!"
"You mean—"
"That they did not take a child away from the Indian village as the paper in the candlestick declares—"
"And the daughter of Theodomir?"
"Is Keela. They left her by the old chief's wigwam."
Diane stared.
CHAPTER XLIX
MR. DORRIGAN
Carl, traveling north after a day of earnest discussion in his cousin's camp, thought much of the second candlestick. Since that night in Philip's wigwam, it had haunted him persistently. Now with Diane's permission to probe its secret—if, indeed, it had one like its charred companion—he was fretting again, as he had intermittently fretted in the lodge of Mic-co, at the train of circumstances that had interposed delay.
Train and taxi were perniciously slow. Carl found his patience taxed to the utmost.
The grandfather's clock was booming eight when at length, after a gauntlet of garrulous servants, he pushed back the great, iron-bound doors of the old Spanish room in his cousin's house and entered. The war-beaten slab of table-wood, the old lanterns, the Spanish grandee above the mantel, the mended candlestick and its unmarred mate, all brought memories of another night when Starrett's glass had struck the marble fireplace. Vividly, too, he recalled how the firelight had stained the square-paneled ceiling of oak overhead, and how Diane had stood in the doorway. The room was the same. It was a little hard, however, to reconcile the sullen, resentful, impudent young scapegrace of that other night with the man of to-night.
He put out his hand to touch the second candlestick—the telephone bell rang.
Carl frowned impatiently and answered it.
"Hello," said he. "Yes, this is Carl Granberry speaking … Who? … Oh! Hello, Hunch, is that you?"
It plainly was. Moreover, Mr. Dorrigan was very nervous and ill at ease. Carl laughed with relish.
"What's the trouble?" he demanded. "You're stuttering like a kid … Shut up and begin over again… Hello… Yes… Well, I've been out of town since January… Hum! … Well," he hinted dryly, "there was sufficient time for an explanation before I went… I guess you're right… I went up to the farm in October with Wherry."
Mr. Dorrigan desperately admitted that some of the time between the escape of His Nibs and Carl's departure for the farm had been spent in panic-stricken remorse and dread—some in the hospital due to an altercation with Link Murphy, who for reasons not immediately apparent wished jealously to obliterate his other eye. He begged Carl to give him an immediate opportunity of squaring himself, for he had telephoned the house so frequently of late that the butler had grown insulting. Mr. Dorrigan added that he hoped Mr. Granberry's wholly justified wrath had somewhat abated, but that for purposes of initial communication the telephone had seemed more prudent.
He was plainly relieved at the answer.
Carl glanced at the tormenting candlestick and sighed. Another delay!
"All right," he said finally to Hunch, "come along. I'll give you twenty minutes. If you're not through then, like as not I'll stir up the grudge again—"
The telephone at the other end clicked instantly. Conceivably Hunch was already on his way up town.
Carl impatiently busied himself with some mail upon the table. It had followed him from the farm to Palm Beach and from Palm Beach to New York. There were half a dozen wild letters of gratitude from Wherry and a letter from the old doctor, Wherry's father, that brought a flush of genuine pleasure to Carl's face.
"Wherry, too!" said he softly. "Of course. He stuck that other night. I've been too blind to see." Drawing his flute from his pocket, he glanced with a curious smile and glow at a row of notches in the wood. The first notch he had cut in the flute after the rainy night in Philip's wigwam, the second by Mic-co's pool, the third was subtly linked with the marshes of Glynn, and a fourth had been furtively added in the camp of his cousin. Now with a glance at Wherry's letters, he was quietly carving a fifth. Who may say what they portended—this record of notches carved upon the one friend who had always understood!
Carl was to carve another, of which he little dreamed, before the summer waned; and the spur to its making was close at hand.
The doorbell rang as he finished, and dropping the flute back into his pocket, he rang for some whiskey and cigars for the entertainment of Mr. Dorrigan, who presently appeared, at the heels of a servant, twirling his hat with a nonchalant ease much too elaborate and at variance with the look in his good eye to be genuine.
"'Lo!" said Hunch uncomfortably.
"Hello!" said Carl pleasantly, pushing the decanter across the table.
Hunch stared at his host, fidgeted, poured himself a generous drink and waited suggestively.
Carl merely laughed good-humoredly and lighted a cigar.
"Sorry, Hunch," he regretted, "but I've joined the Lithia League!"
"My Gawd!" burst forth Hunch despairingly, adding in heartfelt memory of his host's enviable steadiness of head, "My Gawd, Carl, what a waste o' talents!"
Carl laughed.
"Sit down," he invited, "and get it off your mind."
But Hunch's single eye was wandering in fascinated appraisal over Carl's dark, pleasant face. Even he, coarse and brutal in perception as he was, was conscious of a difference not wholly attributable to the Lithia League and felt himself impelled to some verbal recognition of his host's conspicuous well-being.
"Ye're on the level all right," he swore obscurely. "Ye're white! Ye're lookin' good, ye're lookin' fine— By the Lord Harry, Carl, I don't know as I blame yuh!"
Unable to fathom the nature of the censure thus withheld, Carl remained silent and Hunch fell again to staring, his immovable eye ridiculously expressive in stony conjunction with the other. Whatever he found in Carl's face this time plainly afforded him intense relief, for he seated himself with a long breath and drew a yellowish paper from his pocket.
"I says to meself," he explained, "'Hunch, old sport, ye're in for it. He'll like as not drop yuh out of the window with an electric wire, feed yuh to an electric wolf or make yuh play hell-for-a-minute chess or some other o' them woozy stunts 'at pop up in his bean like mushrooms, but yuh gotta square yerself with that paper. Yuh gotta get up yer nerve an' hike up there to the brownstone with it.' I ask yuh," he finished dramatically, and evidently laboring under the momentary conviction that Carl, too, was optically afflicted, "I ask yuh, Carl, to cast yer good lamp over that there paper."
Carl opened the paper and stared.
"Hunch," he exclaimed with an involuntary glance at the mended candlestick, "where in the devil did you get this?"
"I ask yuh to remember," went on Hunch in some excitement, "that I was drunk an' the old she-wol—Gr-r-r-r-r!" Hunch cleared his heavy throat in a panic, with a rasp like the stripping of gears, and corrected himself. "The Old One," he spoke somewhat as if this singular title was a degree, "the Old One put one over on me."
"My aunt, I imagine," said Carl, "has given me a fairly accurate version of His Nibs' escape. I'll admit a pardonable anxiety to interview you for a while. As a matter of fact there was a night—when I was not in the Lithia League—that I drove down to look you up. Tell me," he added, "where you found this."
"It was not, stric'ly speakin', found," said Hunch with a modest cough. Once more, overwhelmed afresh by Carl's appearance, he let his good eye go roving.
"Tell it," said Carl with what patience he could muster, "in your own way."
"I ask yuh to remember," urged Hunch with a firm belief in the dignity of this phrase, "that I was still drunk an' batty in me thinker when the old she-wol—Gr-r-r-r-r-r—the Old One told me to dig out. So I halts on the corner to collect me wits an' by'm'by I sees a guy wid a darkish face an' lips like Link. He comes along, looks up an' down suspicious, sees the door ain't tight shut an' heel-taps it up the steps. He opens the door an' by'm'by he helps the Old One to a taxi an' makes out to walk off—see—whiles she's a watchin'. Later, when the taxi turns the corner, back he goes, heel-taps it up the steps ag'in, an' goes in at the door he ain't locked, though he'd made out he had. An' right there," said Hunch impressively, "right there is where yer Uncle Hunch feels a real glimmer in his bean an' goes back. Thin-lips ain't in sight. Yer Uncle Hunch softly heel-taps it upstairs an' finds the darkish guy adoptin' a paper with a fatherly pat, which he slips in his coat pocket. Whereupon—whiles he's lockin' the desk drawer ag'in, aforesaid uncle slips downstairs an' out. By'm'by, Thin-lips trots out with an ugly grin on his mug—an' Uncle Hunch, gettin' soberer an' soberer by the minute, trots after him with his good lamp workin' overtime."
Carl glanced at the paper.
"Yes?" he encouraged.
"Well," said Hunch with a sheepish grin that was rendered somewhat sinister by the fixed eye, "I jostled him real rude in a crowd an' picked his pocket. An' there yuh are!"
There was some slight rustle of greenish paper in the handshake.
"I'm mighty grateful," said Carl. "That paper cost me a couple of hours of laborious preparation. It's a duplicate, Hunch, for the purpose of decoy. The original's in safe deposit."