Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

For the conviction forced itself upon him that Richards would do his best to rescue Hastings. And if there was safety underground, Trevanion would find it. Time was the uncertain factor. If there was time!

Kipley brought a rough bench, and the two men sat down.

If there was silence between them, there was also the bond of a common anxiety.

* * * * *

From the moment Richards had seen the three men left on the seventh level he had seen several other things clearly.

One was that it would be no longer possible to parry the question of pumping apparatus with Mr. Wade.

Another was that the only thing which could make the possibility of his continuing as manager of the Tray-Spot worth a straw was the quick, well-planned rescue of the three men. In the reaction of relief from casualty, resourcefulness now might plead for him.

And the last was that if Trevanion did not have time to get them up the first raise, they were caught in some one of those other raises, from which he had had the ladders removed only the week before.

Everything depended on the progress the three had been able to make, and the rapidity with which the water was coming.

When the cage dropped to the sixth level, Richards knew from its solitude that they had not been able to make the first raise, and Richards’ men understood that they were to do their best.

They ran to the second, calling down as they uncovered it: no answer. And the third: to hear only the hollow reverberation of their own voices; to see by the light of a falling candle the glint of water in the bottom. And the fourth: Richards himself, hurrying along in advance of his men toward the final raise to the south, acknowledged that this was a last and very slender hope.

As he hallooed down the raise the answering cry came back as swiftly to his ears as the sight of the three twinkling lights to his eyes. If the candle in his cap was a star of safety to them, those three lights were relief to him.

With swift brevity he ordered the ladders, then called down: “We’ll have you up, all right.”

And up the blackness came Hastings’ voice: “Hurry, for God’s sake; it’s ankle deep!”

The first ladder dropped swiftly to the position, to be nailed in place by the fastest man the Tray-Spot had. Three minutes. The second one sped down after it. Men stood by with ropes, if ladders should prove too slow.

Seven minutes, and the third ladder started down. This was rapid work, but the ropes slid down, as well. The fourth ladder touched the bottom of the hole.

The water was at their knees when they saw it come. Trevanion had begun to knot a rope around young Carrington’s waist. He flung it off now, to swing the slight young figure to his shoulders, to set the stiff feet firmly on the ladder. “I maun take him! ’E can’t do it alone!” he said to Hastings, as he swung himself up after the lad, supporting him.

And it was, in truth, fidelity to young Carrington, not hurry to save himself before Hastings. Nor did Hastings misunderstand. He would have gone last, anyway.

But it seemed a long way to the top. He was terribly stiff and wet and chilled, grateful to the strong hands that lifted him out at last.

He saw Trevanion ahead, half carrying Ned, refusing to let anyone else touch the lad.

It seemed to him that he followed more because he was led along than because of any will of his own. They were in the cage now, going up, and the cheers of the miners with them rose before them.

It would mean but one thing to those on the surface; a thing that made two haggard-faced, gray-headed men stand shaken with emotion as the cage came in sight.

To Mr. Wade the other faces were but a blur around Hastings; to Carrington nothing was clear but his son’s face, chilled blue-white, as the lad leaned in utter weariness against Trevanion.

Neither man saw Richards, nor heard his bluff “All safe!” But the waiting crowd, heedless of old animosities for the moment, took up the cheer. It served as chorus when John Carrington, catching Ned’s icy hands in his, said, hoarsely: “Thank God!” – when the lad, striving to smile his wonted brave smile, answered: “I do, dad;” when Trevanion, crying: “’E must keep movin’!” swept young Carrington along to where the Colonel stood patiently waiting, and, lifting him into the saddle, held him with one hand as he ran alongside, urging the animal into a gentle trot; when John Carrington, impatient to follow, and turning for Kipley’s shoulder to steady him, saw Mr. Wade, his face pinched with suspense and fatigue, resting rather heavily on Hastings’ arm, saw Hastings, gray-drab with fag, looking about for a vehicle of some sort.

If John Carrington’s heartstrings pulled tenaciously toward home, it was not visible in the cordial insistence with which he drove Hastings and Mr. Wade to their car.

“I count on you both for lunch tomorrow,” he called, as he left them at that haven of refuge.

Then he gripped Kipley’s arm.

“Drive like the devil!” he whispered, hoarsely.

* * * * *

The ride had shaken the chill from young Carrington’s blood, but Trevanion refused to leave him until he saw him safely in the house.

At the door young Carrington turned and laid his hand lightly and firmly on Trevanion’s arm.

“You’re splendid, Trevanion,” he said, gently; “I shan’t forget.”

And Trevanion, turning away, would have given his heart’s blood for just that.

Mrs. Kipley bore down upon them, bustlingly energetic, a glass of whisky in one hand and a telegram in the other. Hemmy, red-eyed, lingered in the offing.

Young Carrington tossed off the whisky, tore open the envelope, and, calling to Trevanion, who was halfway down the steps, sped to him and spoke low and rapidly.

Trevanion nodded. Young Carrington, coming back, was smiling rather tremulously.

“Not a thing, thanks,” he said, to Mrs. Kipley’s offer of assistance. “All I need is a bath and a rest. In the morning I shall be quite – myself.”

He laughed an odd, gay little laugh.

“You don’t feel any bone ache?” said Mrs. Kipley, anxiously, as he went up the stairs.

Young Carrington looked down gleefully.

“I feel – relieved,” he said.

“I don’t wonder,” said Mrs. Kipley, to Hemmy, who was altering a determination to enter a convent into a desire to be a trained nurse.

But Mrs. Kipley and young Carrington were not thinking of the same predicament.

For the telegram read:

Shall arrive Yellow Dog nine to-night; your trunk with me.

E. Carrington.

John Carrington, his abused leg stretched out on a chair in front of him, was smoking a final cigar for the night, in the big downstairs bedroom.

He was resting one elbow on his desk; and the head that leaned upon his hand was full of plans for his son’s future. He was safe upstairs, thank God! He was snug in bed and sleeping when his father got home. And he left him to sleep off his fatigue, though he was impatient to talk with him.

The clock over the fireplace chimed the half hour after nine. There was the sound of quick steps on the veranda, then in the hall. A murmur of voices. One was Trevanion’s. “The room at the head of the hall,” he heard his undertone. Some one ran up the stairs, and some one closed the hall door gently and went down the steps.

John Carrington was out in the hall the next instant. He heard the door of Ned’s room open. He stumped up the stairs.

Light came through a half-opened door. A murmur of voices and laughing greeting came to him.

Ned, fully dressed, as though he were the newcomer, had his arms around some one who was sitting up in bed.

“Dear old girl! What a brick you are!” Carrington heard Ned say. “Trevanion told me.”

“Ned!” he cried, uncomprehendingly.

The boy swung round joyously.

“Dad!” he shouted, and there was glad greeting in his tone. “You bully old dad!”

He caught his father by the hand and shoulder with both his hands, but John Carrington held him off mechanically.

For the figure sitting up in bed, flushed, mischievous and laughing at his bewilderment, was Ned!

The hands that grasped John Carrington’s arm and shoulder gripped him, shook him slightly.

“She’s been ripping, perfectly ripping, dad, and I’m four months late, but be a little glad to see me,” this Ned’s laughing voice went on.

“She – ” John Carrington stammered.

Ned waved a genial hand toward the figure in the bed.

“Miss Elenore Carrington, the most successful self-made man in history!” he announced, with a flourish.

CHAPTER VII

When Miss Elenore Carrington opened her eyes the following morning, it was to gaze contentedly from her bed at a large, square, hotel-placarded object in the center of her room.

Objectively, it was merely an uncommonly good-sized trunk, but subjectively, it stood for Femininity, sweetly personal and newly reincarnated.

“But what do you suppose he put in?” murmured Miss Carrington. And uncertainty became unbearable.

She shook her fist gayly at a masculine-looking bathrobe hanging over the back of a chair. “I won’t put you on again, even to look!” she announced, with a gayly menacing flourish.

She caught the coverings of the bed around her, and was out in a great white splash on the floor, fumbling with the key in the lock.

The trunk lid flew open, and she knelt, looking like a boyish little novice, in the plain white night garment, with the big splash of white spreading all over the floor about her.

She had that floor strewn with her treasures. Lovely frilly feminine garments, dainty slippers all buckle and heel, dear little everyday frocks and lingerie blouses, and gowns for occasions in the big trays beneath. She laughed and blessed Ned as she delved down.

And hats – actually all her hats! But alack-a-day! She clutched her shorn locks with a grimace. And that square package – toilet things; useless hairpins and unusable jeweled shell combs; and here, in tissue paper – oh, the forethought of Ned! – the very locks of hair of which she had shorn herself so recklessly, bound together by the hairdresser’s skill into a lustrous coil that had distinct possibilities.

She looked at it with an admiration such as she had never felt when it was growing on her own head.

She swathed herself in the laciest and swirliest of pale blue silk negligées, and sped to the mirror to experiment.

* * * * *

An hour later. Miss Elenore Carrington, daintily fresh as a morning-glory, brown hair coiled closely at the back of her head and pompadoured loosely around a face worthy of its best efforts; garbed in a fetching little morning frock of white linen elaborately embroidered, and short enough to permit the eye of man to rejoice over the well-shaped chaussure which supported a high-arched instep in a deliciously restful way – Miss Carrington, in short, not only in her right mind but in her right clothes, stood looking out of her window at a world glowing with the glory of the September sun.

Her lips curved smilingly as she thought of many things: of her father’s surprise the night before, of the long, long talk and the flood of explanations which had lasted far into the night, and brought them into a completeness of understanding which had meant happiness to them all.

Ned had told them what those months in the East had done for him, not only in technique but in inspiration; how, returning to Paris, he found that his salon portrait had brought him a commission to paint a certain crown prince that coming winter; how Velantour, pleased as he was himself, had shouted “Déjà!” – a much prettier “déjà” than the famous one – and had added: “Now you will paint his soul in his face, his responsibilities in his clothes, and his destiny in the background.”

How, too, returning to Paris, he had found Elenore’s letters, telling him that things were going on successfully in her imposture; and how, getting her things together as hastily as possible, he had come to relieve her on the fastest greyhound afloat, determining remorsefully to give up even the crown prince if his father needed him.

Needed him! John Carrington was so proud of his talent that he would have cut off his right hand before he would have kept him.

Then they had discussed the exigencies of the present; how the thing was to be played out. Elenore insisted that no one should know; Ned that everyone should; he wanted no more credit that didn’t belong to him. John Carrington, considering it the cleverest thing that had ever happened, would have blazoned it on the stars.

They compromised: first, that the Kipleys should be told, a plan which had everything in its favor; second, that Hastings and Mr. Wade should know. This was the battleground.

Even when Elenore had yielded the question of Hastings, she objected strenuously to Mr. Wade’s enlightenment. He wouldn’t understand. But easygoing Ned turned dogged.

“If you had only seen him, you’d know how appalling he’d think it,” Elenore had defended.

“When I see him to-morrow, I’ll meditate on the best way to break it to him,” Ned had retorted.

“But you’ll wait a little,” she coaxed.

“Oh, I’ll give you time to get in a bit of work,” he conceded.

Miss Elenore Carrington, looking out of the window, grew suddenly dreamy-eyed.

Over on the far hill, a branch of hard maple had turned brilliantly scarlet. But it could hardly have been its reflection that brought the delicate stain into Miss Carrington’s cheeks. Oddly enough, it was on that particular hill that Hastings had planned to build his bungalow.

* * * * *

It was a morning of merriment, of buoyancy, of stupefactions.

Mr. Kipley was fairly swamped by the last emotion. He sat on the steps of the side porch, and only a medical expert could have told that his condition was not merely comatose.

All that saved Mrs. Kipley was the urgency of preparing a suitable lunch for “those New York folks.”

Even then she discovered herself doing the most remarkable things. “I’ll bake the ice cream next,” she remarked to Hemmy. Hemmy, used to the startling changes of romance, adjusted herself to the situation with apparent ease – and a new dream of bliss.

For had not Mr. Ned said, jubilantly: “Jove, this air is pure ozone! I want to paint everything in sight. You, too, Hemmy, in that pink-checked gown.”

Painters fell in love with their models sometimes.

* * * * *

John Carrington fairly basked in happiness. Only one thing troubled him, and when he caught Elenore alone for a moment that came out. He took her hands in his and looked into her blue eyes lovingly.

“I told you once,” he said, gently, “that no daughter could be so dear to a man as his son.”

“Yes, dad,” she said, frankly.

He bent and kissed her forehead.

“I was wrong,” he said.

Then they spoke of other things.

* * * * *

“How is young Mr. Carrington this morning?” said Mr. Wade, stepping into the trap, to Mr. Kipley, driving. “None the worse for yesterday, I hope?”

Mr. Kipley’s face contorted, as though he were about to sneeze.

“He’s lookin’ about the same,” he replied, and his voice sounded muffled. He seemed to derive such inward satisfaction from the phrase that he repeated it: “He’s lookin’ about the same. I don’t think it hurt him none.” And immediately gave his attention to his horses.

John Carrington was on the veranda to receive them.

“This is a gala day,” he told them, as he grasped their hands in warm welcome. “My other child came home last night.”

Hastings’ heart leaped.

“Your daughter?” said Mr. Wade, politely. And with his words Elenore came forward to meet them.

She had doffed the linen gown of the morning for the delicately elaborate one she had last worn at that farewell tea in Paris.

There was the faintest suggestion of shyness in the gracefully smiling welcome she gave Mr. Wade, which suited that particular old gentleman to a T.

“You have every reason to be proud of both your children,” he said, affably, to John Carrington.

“I am,” John Carrington replied, and he meant it.

Hastings, wordlessly happy to feel Elenore’s hand resting lightly in his, pressed it tenderly as he tried to look into the eyes he had so longed to see.

Her long lashes veiled them distractingly.

Then she raised them to his with a certain laughing mockery which was delicious but baffling.

“Have I changed much?” she demanded, lightly.

“I shall have to look a long time to find out,” said Hastings. His voice shook a little.

She laughed with sweet spontaneity.

“I shall not waste myself on anyone with such a disgracefully bad memory,” she said, with mock reproach. “I shall devote myself to your uncle.”

She turned to Mr. Wade and proceeded to make her word good.

Mr. Wade found himself sitting on a broad, shady veranda, talking to as pretty a girl as he had seen in years; talking, as he felt with a commendable thrill of pride, his very best. What a listener she was! How graceful! How super-feminine! How ready-witted!

She agreed with him, and Mr. Wade felt even more agreeably conscious than usual of his own good judgment. She disagreed daintily. It was exhilarating to show her where she was wrong.

“If I were twenty years younger!” said Mr. Wade to himself, which was a little more than half the number he should have stated, but what elderly gentleman is exactly accurate in such statements!

He looked sharply at Hastings, and something in the divided attention his nephew was giving John Carrington seemed to please him.

There was a flutter of Hemmy’s apron in the doorway.

“Ned will join us in the dining room,” said John Carrington, genially.

Ned was, in fact, standing on its threshold.

He greeted them with gay good fellowship.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well after yesterday,” Mr. Wade assured him.

Ned flashed a frank, bright smile at him.

“I’m as fresh as though yesterday had never happened,” he said, gayly, “and we’re going to keep conversation on pleasanter things through luncheon, on Elenore’s account.”

Mr. Wade nodded. “Of course,” he said, “we must not alarm the young lady with what might have been.”

And the chatter that ensued was, in truth, gay and bright and full of reminiscences of the life the three young people had enjoyed in Paris.

If Mr. Wade had ever tasted better fried chicken, he had forgotten where, and he praised it with an emphasis that turned Mrs. Kipley, who was helping Hemmy wait on table, a deep magenta with suppressed pride.

He approved highly, too, of the champagne cup, and when Elenore confessed its concoction, declared gallantly that that explained its excellence.

“Indeed, I imagine that you succeed in whatever you do,” he added, as the string to his floral bouquet.

They were at the coffee-and-cordial stage of proceedings now, and Mrs. Kipley and Hemmy had disappeared on their laurels.

“She does, Mr. Wade,” said Ned, gayly, “and she attempts appallingly difficult things at that. Would you like to hear about her star performance?”

“I would, indeed,” said Mr. Wade, heartily.

And Elenore, with a look at her brother, knew that the moment had come.

“Then I shall leave you to your cigars,” she said, lightly, pushing back her chair, in the instinct to escape.

For back of the lightness, excitement, altogether too insecurely barred, was making a dash for liberty.

But Ned was on his feet as well, and caught her firmly but lightly around the waist as she tried to pass him.

“You’ll have to stay and help me out,” he said, with mock reproach. “How do you expect a man who only arrived last night to tell it straight?”

Even then they thought he must have mis-spoken himself.

But Elenore turned with her hand on his shoulder and faced them buoyantly.

“There was once a Rising Genius, who had one great, glorious opportunity,” she began. “He had, too, a sister whom the gods hadn’t dowered with talent of any kind; and a father – ”

“Who not only fractured his leg,” John Carrington broke in, “but got fractious in other ways as well. And, not knowing of the opportunity, insisted on his son’s coming home.”

“So the sister, who was perfectly bully, and the pluckiest girl – ” Ned began.

But Elenore interposed.

“He was perfectly willing to come,” she insisted to them. “Don’t forget that.” She slipped from his arm and swept them the daintiest of courtesies.

She touched the elaborate chiffon quillings of her skirt with daintily approving fingers. “I never knew the sustaining and soothing influence of feminine attire until I was bereft of it,” she assured them, laughingly. “I shall be distractingly fond of frills all the rest of my life. Wasn’t it horrid underground!” she flashed; and they heard the swish of her retreating skirts.

Hastings gripped Ned suddenly by the arm.

“You weren’t down the mine with me yesterday?” he demanded.

“Pullman, Lower 8, from Chicago,” said that young gentleman, serenely.

“Then I shall be your brother-in-law,” he ejaculated, and vanished like a shot.

Mr. Wade’s expression approached imbecility.

“Do you mean to tell me – ” he began, numbly.

“That I only came last night, but my sister has been here all summer,” said Ned, concisely.

* * * * *

The air came in refreshingly through the opened windows. Elenore was standing, one arm on the back of a chair. She smiled slightly as Hastings came toward her impetuously.

“It was quite a composite speech, wasn’t it?” she said.

He covered the hand on the back of the chair with his own.

“I can’t realize it,” he said. “You – all that time.”

“It seemed quite a long time, too,” she confessed.

“You underground!” he went on. “I should have died of anxiety if I had suspected it.”

“I wanted to tell you dreadfully,” she murmured. “There’s no harm in owning now that I was afraid.”

The hand that held hers closed over it more tightly.

“There’s no harm now,” he said, tensely, “in telling me if you meant what you said: that you thought Elenore cared for me.”

“There’s no particular harm now,” she parodied, daringly, with downcast eyes, “in your telling Elenore now what you told her then.”

He swept her into his arms with a tender forcefulness. “That I love her. Elenore! Elenore!”

The full red lips that his own found, breathlessly, were mysteriously, maddeningly sweet. And those deep blue eyes – what marvelous things they confessed to him!

“The dear little bungalow!” he whispered. “But we needn’t wait for it, Elenore. Marry me soon, and we’ll build it afterward.”

She laughed deliciously.

The sound of steps in the hall came to them, and Hastings drew her to the vantage ground of a corner as Mr. Wade and the Carringtons, père et fils, came in view outside the windows to seat themselves comfortably in the big veranda chairs.

“And,” said Mr. Wade, in high good humor, and evidently continuing a conversation begun at the table, “it shouldn’t be difficult for you and your son-in-law to arrange the management of the two mines amicably between you.”

“Aren’t you getting on rather rapidly?” John Carrington demanded, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Not as rapidly as Laurence would like to, I’ll wager,” Mr. Wade said, with confidence.

Then he polished his eyeglasses with his handkerchief. “I have always had a great admiration for the heroines of Shakespeare —Rosalind, in particular,” he said, with a hint of pedantic precision; “but I consider Miss Elenore more charming still.”

“My idea, exactly,” murmured Hastings.

“As long as you’ve settled it all for them, you two,” said Ned, with confidential raillery, “perhaps you’d better hurry up the great event, so it can take place before I go back to Paris. Everything has to be sacrificed to my career, you know.”

He spoke with light mockery.

Hastings’ arm tightened around Elenore, and his pleading lost none of its force because it was silent.

The head on his shoulder gave a sudden gay, bewitching little nod.

“We consent to sacrifice ourselves,” Hastings called, jubilantly.

And the sound of applause drifted in through the open windows.

THE SONG

IN her castle by the seaDwelt the daughter of the king;Sweet and beautiful was sheAs a morn in Spring.Lovers had she, young and old,Princes foolish, princes wise,Lured by all the love untoldIn her tender eyes.By her window in the towerOnce she sat and listened long —Fairer she than any flowerThat inspires a song!Far below her, in his boat,Sang the poet, and her nameSoaring in a silver noteThrough the window came.Just a simple lyric, yetFashioned with such perfect artNevermore could she forgetHow it thrilled her heart.She will never wed a prince,Though the king’s own choice he were;Life holds something dearer sinceLove’s self sang to her.Frank Dempster Sherman.