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

the intrepid professor, eluding his daughter by stealth, had covered many dark miles of exploration, the shrouded foulness of the weather had preserved whatever secret Montauk Point still might hold.

To Dick Colton had come a deep content, for he and Dolly had been drawn to a close comradeship in the high pressure of events. Yet by a subtle defence she had withheld from him anything more than comradeship. Once again he had spoken; and she had stopped him.

“Please, Dr. Colton!” she said. “Nothing that you can say will make any difference. If I come to you,” she looked at him with the adorable and courageous straightforwardness that seemed in his eyes the final expression of her lovableness, “I shall come of myself. As yet, I do not know. I am growing to know you. It has been a very brief time.”

“It has been a crowded lifetime,” said Dick earnestly. “But I can wait, Dolly. You don’t mind if I call you that?”

“Even Everard does that,” she said, smiling, and to his surprise there followed a sharp blush. She had recalled the self-betraying exasperation with which she had resented, the day before, Everard’s addressing her, with apparent innocence, as “Sister Dot,” and that youth’s meek enjoyment of her anger.

That had been the dying effort of Everard’s gaiety. In that week he had grown worn and morose. More than once he would have left the place; but Dolly Ravenden urged upon him that he should stay until Helga had regained her normal balance. To the girl’s warm and full-blooded beauty had succeeded a wan loveliness that made Everard’s heart ache whenever he looked at her. Seldom did he see her alone; little had she to say to him. Yet her eyes brooded upon him, and he felt vaguely that he was a help to her in her grief. Dick too had insisted upon this. But Helga seemed to make no effort at rallying from her sombre apathy.

The week of storm ended, and the sun blazed out over a landscape bedecked with autumn’s royal colours. Helga, who had risen early to go to the beach, found at her place an envelope which had not come by mail. There was an enclosure in a woman’s handwriting. Once and again she went through, turning from red to white. Then she turned to Dick Colton.

“You did this?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I cannot, I cannot!” she cried passionately, and ran from the door, out upon the knolls.

Dick saw her climbing the hill, the joyous wind wreathing the curves of her lithe and gracious form, to the place where Haynes was buried, and watched her until a shoulder of the knoll shut her completely from view.

“It was high time for an antidote,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Haynes would have had me do it; I know he would.”

Helga knelt by a high boulder that crowned the knoll and arranged the flowers that she had brought up that morning for her friend’s grave.

“Oh, Petit P�re,” she whispered sobbingly, “if you only were here to tell me! It is hard to know what is best. So hard!”

Something moved in the bushes not far away. The shrubbery parted, and there emerged on all fours the squat and powerful figure of “The Wonderful Whalley.” He was unkempt and white; the murderousness was gone from his face. As a dog cringes, expectant of a blow, he moved reluctantly forward. The girl faced him with a tense carriage in which was no inkling of fear.

“Ze lady shall forgive ze poor arteest,” he said, holding out hands of supplication.

“I would kill you if I could,” she said, very low.

“The Wonderful Whalley’s” hand went to his belt, but the great-bladed knives no longer were there. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew forth another knife, opened it and threw it at her feet

“I am ready,” he said.

Helga looked at the knife, and then at him with unutterable loathing. The man gave a little groan.

“Do not!” he said. “I was cr-r-razy! Eet ees gone, now. Eet was ze beating of ze sea. I haf not know zat I keel until now I break out of my preeson las’ night an’ come here to ask you to forgive.”

“No,” said the girl stonily.

“To beg you to forgive an’ to warn you.” With a strikingly solemn gesture he raised his hand, and swept it through the circle of the heavens.

“We may not know when eet strike,” he said slowly. “Ze danger ees there. Eet ees hanging over you an’ over me. Me, I may not escape my fate. Eet ees not matter. But you, so young, so lofely, so brave, so kind to ze poor arteest—I come to warn you, perhaps to safe you.”

“Do you know that this is the grave of the man you killed?” she said, her eyes fixed upon his.

Simply, and as a child might, the juggler kneeled at the grave. He clasped his hands and raised his face, the eyes closed. With a pitying, yet abhorrent surprise, the girl watched him. His lips moved. She caught a half whispered word, here and there, in the soft southern tongue. In the midst of his prayer the murderer leaped to his feet. His muscles stiffened; he was all attention.

“Someone come!” he cried.

Over the brow of the knoll came Everard Colton. “My God!” he cried, and bounded toward them.

Like a flash, the juggler wormed himself into the oak patch, and emerging from the farther side sprinted over the hill and disappeared.

“Has he hurt you?” cried the young man. “Helga, my dear! tell me he has not hurt—”

“No,” she said very low. “He was quite peaceable. He has escaped from jail. I think he is sane again and remorseful.”

“You must let me take you home,” he said. “You must! Good heavens, Helga, anything might have happened.”

Everard was shaking as with an ague. A wonderful softness came into the girl’s face. “Were you coming to speak to me?”

“To say goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye? ” she repeated. “So soon? Must it—”

He stopped her with a swift, savage gesture. “Helga, I can’t stand it any longer! I would give you the last drop of my blood, gladly, willingly, if it would help you. But to be here as I am, to see you every day, is more than I can endure. I must get away. There is one other thing; I know something of what Harris Haynes did for you.” He spoke more gently, looking with a wistful respect at the grave. “Now that he has gone, you must not let that make any difference in your opportunities. You must go on as you were; your music, your studies.”

The girl made a little gesture of refusal. They walked toward the house in silence, for a time. Then Everard spoke again.

“Yet that is what he would have wished. I know that you haven’t the money to do this.” Dick, having a gift of silence, had said nothing of Haynes’ bequest. “I have more than I can use. I know I can’t give it to you outright. But I can give it to Mr. Johnston. Or, if you can’t take it from me, you could from my family. It wouldn’t mean anything; it wouldn’t bind you to the slightest thing. Oh, Helga, dear, let me do that much for you!”

“Only one man can have the right to do that,” she said, hardly above a whisper.

“He is gone,” said Everard, not comprehending. “I cannot fill his place, except this one, poor way.”

“No,” she said. From her bosom she drew out a note and handed it to him.

“From mother!” he cried. “To you!”

It was the letter of a worldly but kind-natured and essentially sound-hearted woman, an appeal for a deeply-loved son. “That’s Dick’s work,” said the young man fondly, after running through it. “And it comes too late! Does it come too late, Helga?”

“If I only knew what was right,” said the girl. “If only Petit P�re was here to tell me!”

“Do you mean that you didn’t care for him that way?” cried Everard. “Helga, do you mean that I had my chance? Is there still—”

They had come around the corner of the piazza, and there sat Dick Colton, tipped back on two legs of his chair. Hc rose quickly and made for the door. Helga called him back, and spoke brokenly:

“You must write to your mother. I cannot yet. Oh, if I only dared be happy!” she wailed. “I know how strongly Petit P�re felt against him, against your family. I could not—”

“Helga,” said Dick, catching her hands in his. “Listen, little girl, little sister. Haynes made me one of his trustees for you. Do you know why? Because he trusted me. Will you trust me too?”

Helga’s tear-stained eyes looked into his. “Who would not?” she said.

“He left this charge in my honour: ‘Use your influence to guard her against marrying under circumstances that you would not approve for the woman you loved best in the world.’ With that charge upon me I solemnly tell you that you may come to us as with Harris Haynes’ blessing!”

He put her hand in Everard’s, and disappeared through the door. The next instant, Miss Dolly Ravenden, a heap of indignant fluff, was frowning at him from the wall against which she had staggered.

“What a way to come in!” she cried. “You bear! You—you untamed locomotive! Is anything chasing you?”

Impulse wild and unreckoning upleaped in the heart of Dick Colton then and there. Without a struggle he gave way to it.

Swinging her up in his powerful arms, he set her upon her feet, and bending, kissed her most emphatically upon the lips. Then he went upstairs in two bounds, saying at the first bound:

“Good Lord! Now I have ruined myself.” And at the second: “It was her own fault.”

And while he was making his Adamite excuse, Miss Ravenden, red, confused, and annoyed because she couldn’t seem to be properly angry, had walked out upon Helga sobbing in Everard’s arms.

“Ah,” she said thoughtfully, as she effected a masterly retreat, “it’s in the air to-day.”