The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗

Dol—Miss Ravenden?” asked blundering Dick.

“Done anything?” repeated she with indifferent inquiry. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

This fairly nonplussed him. He sat down and wondered what to do next. Unfortunately his thoughts turned upon his brother.

“Isn’t it great that you know Ev?” he pursued. “I’m so glad that I sent for him to come down.”

“You sent for him?” cried the girl in a tone that straightened up Dick like a pin.

“Certainly. Why not?”

“To see Helga, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Of course you assumed that she was dying to see him.”

“Not in the least,” said Dick, with some spirit. “Just to give him his fair chance.”

“You didn’t think of being fair toward anyone else?”

“Toward whom?”

“Miss Johnston herself, in the first place. One expects a certain degree of delicacy even from—from —”

“Don’t smooth it down on my account,” said Dick grimly. “You seem to be in a fairly frank mood to-day.”

The imp of the perverse indeed was guiding Dolly’s words now. “From a man one knows nothing whatever about,” she concluded.

“And isn’t interested in knowing,” suggested he.

“I’m as fond of Helga as of my own sister,” she went on vehemently. “She is only a year younger than I, but I’ve been about so much more that I—well, I assume some responsibility for her.” Her tone challenged Dick. He merely bowed.

“You know how it is between Helga and your brother?”

“Something of it.”

“And knowing, do you think it was right to bring him down here?”

“Why not?”

“Because,” said Miss Ravenden hotly, “your family became panic-stricken at the thought of Everard’s marrying Helga, before they even took the trouble to find out anything about her. To insult a woman whom they have never seen! Why—why—Helga is as—If I had a brother, and Helga Johnston was willing to marry him I should count it an honour to the Ravendens.”

All the imperious pride of a family who had been landed gentry in the South, while Colton’s sturdy forebears were wielding pick and shovel in the far West, who had signed the Declaration of Independence before the first American Colton had worked a toilsome passage across from his North Country hovel to the land of sudden riches, shone in her eyes.

“So should I!” returned Dick quietly. “But surely Helga Johnston did not tell you all this?”

“No, she did not. It was the same meddlesome friend who first told her of your family’s objections. Oh, if I were Everard I would tell his family to—to —”

“To go to the devil,” suggested Dick helpfully.

“Please not to put words into my mouth! Yes, I should!” she returned hotly. Then, illogically and severely added, “particularly such words. And after what I told you about Harris Haynes I should have thought that an ordinary sense of justice—Oh, it was unmanly of you!”

Dolly’s imp now had spurred her into a respectable state of rage, and Dick’s wrath rose to meet hers.

“Just a moment,” he said. “What was that about Haynes?” Two wrinkled lines appeared between his eyes. His mouth altered in its set, giving to his naturally pleasant face an aspect of almost savage determination.

“Why,” thought Dolly, “he’s looking at me as if I wasn’t a girl at all, but just something in his path to beat down.” And her quick pang of alarm had something pleasurable in it.

“I want that again about Haynes.”

“I say you were not fair to him. You know perfectly well that whatever chance Mr. Haynes may have with Helga—”

“Chance of what? Of marrying her?”

“Certainly,” said Dolly boldly.

“Do you think she loves Haynes?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. You think that she doesn’t. And do you think he loves her?”

“Why should I tell you, when you will only browbeat and contradict me? I know this, that there is the most beautiful affection between them that I have ever known between a man and a girl. With two people less fine than Helga and Harris Haynes it could not be so. You aren’t capable of understanding that sort of thing. And so you would destroy this for the mere whim of a boy!”

“It is not the whim of a boy,” returned Dick sternly. “It has made Everard a man. I think she loves him.”

“What if she does?” said the girl recklessly.

“You mean you would have her marry Haynes without love?”

“Yes,” said Dolly, too far committed to back down now; but within herself she was saying: “Oh, you wretched little liar!”

“Ah!” observed Dick with a change to cold courtesy that stung her more than his wrath. “I haven’t had the good fortune to meet many girls so advanced in their views. Myself, both as a physician and unprofessionally, I am simple enough to think that loveless marriages are unfortunate.”

“Oh, sentimentality has its place, I suppose,” said the imp within Dolly.

“I think I understand you,” he said with an effort.

“You don’t! Oh, you don’t!” cried Dolly’s better spirit. “Don’t dare to think of me so!” But the imp controlled the lips with silence.

“Yes, I think I understand,” continued Dick. “I have had little time for my social obligations; but I have seen enough to have met and been sickened by this before. That associations of what we call good society can have so corrupted the view of life in a girl like you—Oh, it seems incredible! Probably because it never happened to hit me personally before.”

The girl went perfectly white under the bitterness of his contempt.

“There is nothing further to say, Dr. Colton,” she said, rising. There were a thousand things to say; but the imp of the perverse would not let her say them. “You have only convinced me that for any woman to be connected with your family would be the direst misfortune.”

When Dick found himself alone there was a blur over his mental vision such as extreme pain brings to the physical eye. The whole wretched scene repeated itself over and over. How readily he could have defended himself with Haynes’ own words against the charge of unmanly treachery to Haynes! How easily he could have refuted!—but to what purpose, since she was unworthy? Hatless and aimless, he wandered out upon the grassland.

Almost before he knew it he had reached the beach and was approaching Graveyard Point. Coming around a jut in the cliff he was amazed to see Professor Ravenden digging energetically at the sand with an improvised shovel. At once the professor hailed him for help. Now, the normal man, no matter how miserable his mood, will rouse to the solution of a mystery, and when Dick Colton saw the form of a horse partly revealed, he pitched in heartily.

“How did you find it?” he asked the professor.

“In passing I noticed that the cliff had given way above,” was the reply. “As there had been no rain, some unusual occurrence must have caused this. Closer examination revealed the leg of a horse, upon which I inferred that here was buried the mare ridden by my young friend, your brother. Doubtless we soon shall perceive some clue as to the manner of death.”

But the body being wholly uncovered revealed no wound.

“Must have run off the cliff in her flight,” suggested Colton.

“An almost untenable hypothesis,” said Professor Ravenden argumentatively. “The place where your brother was unhorsed is a mile from here, at least. We heard the animal’s death-cry an hour after your brother’s encounter. Could you devise any form of terror which would so afflict a horse as to drive it over a hundred-foot cliff, a full hour after the origin of the panic?”

“No, I couldn’t. Whatever it was that terrified, the poor brute must have followed it. The juggler, I suppose.”

“But for what purpose? However, I think we would best climb the cliff, and taking opposite directions examine the ground for any possible indications.”

So the professor struck off westward, while Colton took the line toward the lighthouse. Soon his path led him down into one of the precipitous gullies. Inland from him a sharp turn shielded by large rocks cut off the view, beyond which appeared the upper foliage of a scrub-oak patch. From among the rocks Dick heard a strange sound, like a gasp.

His hand went to his revolver, and he stepped short. Again the sound came in a succession of cadences, like interrupted breathing. Dick moved forward. A stone slipped under his foot and rattled down among other stones. There was instant silence.

Keeping himself sheltered, he walked firmly forward. Before a large rock he paused, then holding the weapon ready he stepped around it. Helga Johnston stood there, her hands pressed to her breast, her face tear-stained. She gave a little cry of relief.

“Ah, it is you!” she said.

“Did I frighten you?” asked Dick. “I’m awfully sorry. You’ve been crying.”

“Yes,” said the girl.

“Was it as bad as that? I must have alarmed you very much.”

“No,” said the girl with the simple directness which he had admired in her from the first. “I was frightened; but that was not why I was crying.”

“Has Everard been with you?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Helga,” said Dick soberly, “will you believe that I am your friend?”

“I don’t know,” replied the girl dubiously. “Why did you bring your brother down here?”

“Do you remember, I said to you that I wished I had a sister like you? That is why.”

Helga flushed deeply. “It was not fair,” she said.

“Miss Johnston, is there any reason why you should not marry my brother?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because some day you may marry Mr. Haynes?”

“There has never been the suggestion of such a thing. Why you and Dolly Ravenden both insist on believing that Petit P�re wants to marry me, is—it’s stupid!” said the girl indignantly.

“Ah! And Miss Ravenden has been advising you to marry Mr. Haynes?”

“She has been advising me not to,” retorted Helga. “Harris Haynes is the best man I have ever known, and I owe him everything; but Dolly knows that I don’t—really, Dr. Colton, I don’t know why I should be telling you all these things.”

Dick, thunderstruck at the new light on Miss Ravenden’s views, paid no attention to this mild suggestion that he mind his own business. Indeed it suddenly had become his own business with a vengeance.

“Miss Ravenden advised you not to marry Haynes? It can’t be. She told me —”

“You and Dolly seem to be very much interested in my affairs.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Dick. “Some day I hope to explain to you. Let us get back to Everard, You say there is a reason why you should not marry him?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you care for him?”

“That is a question you have no right to ask.”

“Ah!” said Dick with satisfaction. “Then it is that wretched business of the family’s opposition.”

Helga made no reply.

“Listen, Miss Helga,” said Dick after a few moments’ thought. “Someone told my mother lies about you. I don’t know what they were; but I do know that they gave Mother a wrong impression. My mother is the best mother in the world, and a good and noble woman, only she has one attribute of the domestic hen. When alarmed she moves hurriedly, and usually in the wrong direction. The liar in this case alarmed her. Now, then: my father is a broken man; he has not long to live. I am virtually the head of the family. In this case the family will accept my decision. I ask you in their name if you will honour us by marrying my brother? Will you shake hands on the promise?”

He held out his hand, looking her in the eyes. Helga flushed deeply; but answered the smile with her own as she said:

“Dr. Colton,