Floyd Grandon's Honor Part 14

Even as he speaks he throws up his arms with a sudden gasp and motions to the bell. Denise answers the summons. Her master has fainted, and after some moments she restores him.

"I have talked too long," exclaims Grandon, remorsefully.

"No. Some one must know all this before I can die at peace. Find your man and bring him here. And if you should see Wilmarth, do not mention that I have returned. I must have some quiet. Thank you again for coming. And may I hope to see you to-morrow?"

"Yes," answers Floyd, taking the feeble hand. Then he turns to the door, bids the old housekeeper good day, and finds his way out alone, with a strange feeling, as if he were taking a part in a play, almost a tragedy.

He drives straight to Connery and learns that Lindmeyer's address is New York. He will not wait for a letter to reach him, and just pausing at the stable to take in Briggs, goes at once to the station.

It is a long, bothersome quest. The young man does not come home at noon, so he waits awhile and then sets off in search of him, making two calls just after he has left the places, but at last success crowns his efforts. But Lindmeyer cannot come up the next day. There is an expert trial of some machinery for which he is engaged at ten. It may take two or three hours, it may hold him all day.

"Come back with me, then," says Floyd. "You can go over a little this evening, and keep it in your mind, then you can return when you are through. I want the matter settled, and the man's life hangs on a mere thread."

Lindmeyer consents, and they travel up together. The day is at its close as they reach the little nest on the cliffs, but Denise gives Grandon a more than friendly welcome.

"He is better," she says. "He will be so glad. Go right up to him."

He does not look better, but his voice is stronger. "And I had such a nice sleep this afternoon," he says. "I feel quite like a new being, and able to entertain your friend. How good you are to a dying man, Mr.

Grandon."

Quite in the evening Floyd leaves them together and returns home. Cecil has cried herself to sleep in the vain effort to keep awake. Madame Lepelletier a.s.sumes her most beguiling smile, and counts on an hour or two, but he excuses himself briefly. The letter to Eugene must be written this evening, though he knows as well what the result will be as if he held the answer in his hand.

A little later he lights a cigar and muses over the young girl whose fate has thus strangely been placed in his hands. He is not anxious to marry her to Eugene; but, oh, the horrible sacrifice of such a man as Wilmarth! No, it shall not be.

CHAPTER VII.

Love is forever and divinely new.--MONTGOMERY.

Floyd Grandon, who always sleeps the sleep of the just, or the traveller who learns to sleep under all circ.u.mstances, is restless and tormented with vague dreams. Some danger or vexation seems to menace him continually. He rises unrefreshed, and Cecil holds a dainty baby grudge against him for his neglect of yesterday, and makes herself undeniably tormenting, until she is sent away in disgrace.

Madame Lepelletier rather rejoices in this sign. "You are not always to rule him, little lady," she thinks in her inmost soul. He explains briefly to his mother that Mr. St. Vincent is very ill, and that urgent business demands his attention, and is off again.

Somehow he fears Lindmeyer's verdict very much. If there should be some mistake, some weak point, the result must be failure for all concerned.

Would Wilmarth still desire to marry Miss St. Vincent? he wonders.

Denise receives him with a smile in her bright eyes.

"He is very comfortable," she says, and Grandon takes heart.

Lindmeyer is waiting for him. His rather intense face is hopeful; and Grandon's spirits go up.

"The thing _must_ be a success," he says. "Mr. St. Vincent has explained two or three little mistakes, or miscalculations, rather, and given me his ideas. I wish I had time to take it up thoroughly. But I have to leave town for several days. Could you wait, think? I am coming again to-night. What a pity such a brain must go back to ashes! He is not an old man, either, but he has worn hard on himself. There, my time is up," glancing at his watch.

Mr. St. Vincent receives Mr. Grandon with evident pleasure, but it seems as if he looks thinner and paler than yesterday. There is a feverish eagerness in his eyes, a tremulousness in his voice. The doctor is to be up presently, and Grandon is persuaded to wait. After the first rejoicing is over, Grandon will not allow him to talk business, but taking up Goethe reads to him. The tense, worn face softens. Now and then he drops into a little doze. He puts his hand out to Grandon with a grateful smile, and so the two sit until nearly noon, when the doctor comes.

Floyd follows him down-stairs.

"Don't ask me to reconsider my verdict," he says, in answer to the other's look. "The issues of life and death are _not_ in our hands. If you really understood his state, you would wonder that he is still alive. Keep all bad tidings from him," the doctor adds rather louder to Denise. "Tell him pleasurable things only; keep him cheerful. It cannot be for very long. And watch him well."

"Where is Miss St. Vincent?" asks Grandon, with a very pardonable curiosity.

"She has gone out. He will have it so. She does not dream the end is so near." And Denise wipes her old eyes. "Mr. Grandon, is it possible that dreadful man must marry her?"

"Oh, I hope not!"

"He is very determined. And ma'm'selle has been brought up to obey, not like your American girls. If her father asked her to go through fire, she would, for his sake. And in a convent they train girls to marry and to respect their husbands, not to dream about gay young lovers. But my poor lamb! to be given to such a man, and she so young!"

"No, do not think of it," Grandon says, huskily.

"You shall see her this evening, sir, if you will come. I will speak to master."

Grandon goes on to the factory. Wilmarth is away, and he rambles through the place, questioning the workmen. There are some complaints.

The wool is not as good as it was formerly, and the new machinery bothers. The foreman does not seem to understand it, and is quite sure it is a failure. Mr. Wilmarth has no confidence in it, he says.

Then Grandon makes a thorough inspection of some old books. They certainly _did_ make money in his father's time, but expenses of late have been much larger. Why are they piling up goods in the warehouse and not trying to sell? It seems to him as if there was no real head to the business. Can it be that he must take this place and push matters through to a successful conclusion? It seems to him that he could really do better than has been done for the last six months.

It is mid-afternoon when he starts homeward. He will take the old rambling path and rest his weary brain a little before he presents himself to madame. She has a right to feel quite neglected, and yet how can he play amiable with all this on his mind? He wipes his brow, and sits down on a mossy rock, glancing over opposite. Did any one ever paint such light and shade, such an atmosphere? How still the trees are! There is not a breath of air, the river floats lazily, undisturbed by a ripple. There is a little boat over in the shade, and the man who was fis.h.i.+ng has fallen asleep.

Hark! There is a sudden cry and a splash. Has some one fallen in the river, or is it boys on a bathing frolic? He leans over the edge of the cliff, where he can command a sight of the river, but there is nothing save one eddy on the sh.o.r.e where no one could drown. And yet there are voices, a sound of distress, it seems to him, so he begins to scramble down. A craggy point jutting out shuts off the view of a little cove, and he turns his steps thitherward. Just as he gains the point he catches sight of a figure threading its way up among the rocks.

"Keep perfectly still." The wind wafts the sound up to him, and there is something in the fresh young voice that attracts him. "I am coming.

Don't stir or you will fall again. Wait, wait, wait!" She almost sings the last words with a lingering cadence.

He is coming so much nearer that he understands her emprise. A child has fallen and has slipped a little way down the bank, where a slender birch sapling has caught her, and she is quite wedged in. The tree sways and bends, the child begins to cry. The roots surely are giving way, and if the child should fall again she will go over the rocks, down on the stony sh.o.r.e. Floyd Grandon watches in a spell-bound way, coming nearer, and suddenly realizes that the tree will give way before he can reach her. But the girl climbs up from rock to rock, until she is almost underneath, then stretches out her arms.

"I shall pull you down here," she says. "There is a place to stand. Let go of everything and come."

The tree itself lets go, but it still forms a sort of bridge, over which the child comes down, caught in the other's arms. She utters a little shriek, but she is quite safe. Her hat has fallen off, and goes tumbling over the rocks. He catches a glint of fair hair, of a sweet face he knows so well, and his heart for a moment stops its wonted beating.

He strides over to them as if on the wings of the wind. They go down a little way, when they pause for strength. Cecil is crying now.

"Cecil," he cries in a sharp tone,--"Cecil, how came you here?"

Cecil buries her face in her companion's dress and clings pa.s.sionately to her. The girl, who is not Jane, covers her with a defiant impulse of protection, and confronts the intruder with a brave, proud face of gypsy brilliance, warm, subtile, flus.h.i.+ng, spirited, as if she questioned his right to so much as look at the child.

"Cecil, answer me! How came you here?" The tone of authority is deepened by the horrible fear speeding through his veins of what might have happened.

"You shall not scold her!" She looks like some wild, shy animal protecting its young, as she waves him away imperiously with her little hand. "How could she know that the treacherous top of the cliff would give way? She was a good, obedient child to do just what I told her, and it saved her. See how her pretty hands are all scratched, and her arm is bleeding."

He kneels at the feet of his child's brave savior, and clasps his arms around Cecil. "My darling," and there is almost a sob in his voice, "my little darling, do not be afraid. Look at papa. He is so glad to find you safe."

"Is she your child,--your little girl?" And the other peers into his face with incredulous curiosity.

Cecil answers by throwing herself into his arms.