As It Was in the Beginning Part 49

"Was that--all you said?" she asked him, faintly.

"No. I said I'd be best man--or something of the sort."

Elaine felt something leaden go down to the point of her heart.

"You wanted him to know that you had no idea---- You wanted Gerald to understand----" She could not finish her sentence. Her face was hotly flaming, but at least she could turn it away.

Grenville's voice was hard and strange.

"It was barely his right to know that we were coming. I could do no less, as you'll certainly agree."

His speeches were constrained, unnatural, as Elaine had instantly felt.

Her own were scarcely less embarra.s.sed--after all these months when their entire world had comprised themselves alone. It seemed a monstrous error that anything but free, unfettered companionship and candor should exist between them now.

"I know," she said. "Of course." She added, after a moment, "It seems so peculiar, that's all--to--resume as we were before."

He was looking at his fist, for no good reason in the world.

"It is what you have hoped for every day."

"To get away from the Dyaks--why, of course."

Another silence supervened. After three unsuccessful efforts at speech, Elaine at last found the voice and the courage for a question:

"Do you wish to be--best man?"

Grenville spread out his fingers, for further inspection.

"I probably shouldn't have suggested it otherwise."

She turned upon him impulsively. "Sidney, are you absolutely honest?"

"Oh, I wouldn't trouble old Diogenes to get out of his grave and look me up," he answered, in his customary spirit, "but I've got a faint idea what honor means."

How well she knew his various manners of evasion! Her heart was pounding furiously. She leaned with all her weight against the rail, as if for fear he must hear its clamorous confessions.

She had never been so excited in her life--or more courageous.

Likewise she felt she possessed certain G.o.d-given rights that were poised at the brink of disaster. For a love like hers comes never lightly and is not to be lightly dismissed. Her utterance was difficult, but mastered.

"One night--in the smoke--on the island--when we might have died of thirst--and you came with water---- You remember what you said?"

"Concerning what?"

"Concerning--love."

He was gripping a stanchion fiercely; his fingers were white with the strain.

"Vaguely---- I think I was exhausted."

"Oh! you're not--you're not honest at all!" she suddenly exploded.

"That day of the wreck--on the steamer--you know what you said to me then! And any man who has acted so n.o.bly, so thoughtfully----"

He turned and gripped the small, soft hand by his coat-sleeve on the rail.

"Don't do it, little woman--don't do it!" he said, in a low voice, charged with pa.s.sion. "You told me some stinging truths that day, and now--they're truer than ever!"

"I didn't!" she said, no longer master of her feelings. "I didn't tell the truth! I said I hated--said I loathed---- And you _said_ I'd throw his ring in the sea--and you said you'd make me--like you--some--and you know that I couldn't help liking you now--when you've treated me so horribly all the time! And after everything we've done together----"

"Elaine!" he interrupted, hoa.r.s.ely, "when did you throw away his ring?"

"After the tiger--the night I gave you the cap, and you acted so hatefully and mean! It bounced and went into the water."

He was white, and tremendously shaken, while gleams of incandescence burned deeply in his eyes. How he stayed the lawless impulse to take her to his arms he never knew. He dropped her hand and turned away, with a savage note of pain upon his lips.

"Good Heavens!" he said, "why don't you help me a little? I had no right then! I have no right now! ... I'm going to take you home to Fenton, if it's the very last act of my life!"

She, too, was white and trembling.

"I know what you mean--you _never_ loved! You don't know the meaning of the word!"

"All right," he said. "We'll let it go at that."

"Oh, you're perfectly horrid!" she suddenly cried, the hot tears springing to her eyes. "I refuse to be taken back to Gerald! I refuse to have anything more to do with any selfish man in the world!"

She retreated a little towards the saloon, her two hands going swiftly to a gleaming band that all but spanned her waist.

"And there's your old girdle, with Gerald's ring, that you made me throw away!" she added, flinging the tiger's collar towards the sea.

It struck on a stanchion, bounded to the deck, and settled against a near-by chair. She waited a second, instantly ashamed, and longing to beg his forgiveness. But he leaned as before against the rail, his eyes still bent upon the water.

Weakly, with drooping spirits, Elaine retreated through an open door, still watching, in hopes he would turn and call her back. Then, stoutly suppressing her choking and pent emotions, she fled to the dismal comfort of her stateroom, and, falling face downward in her narrow berth, surrendered to the vast relief of sobbing.

CHAPTER XLVII

A FRIEND IN NEED

That one more shock of surprise could overtake the returning castaways before the final landing could be accomplished would have seemed incredible to either Grenville or Elaine--and yet it came.

They had spent a number of wretched days--days far more miserable and hope-destroying than any their dire experience had brought into being, as the mere result of that final scene enacted in the moonlight by the rail.

The steamer had touched in the night at some unimportant, outlying port of call to which no one had paid the tribute of interest usual on the sea. A single male pa.s.senger had boarded.

The man was Gerald Fenton. The message dispatched from Colombo had fetched him, post haste, to this midway ground for the meeting. But the meeting occurred in a manner wholly unexpected.

Like the wholly considerate gentleman he was, Fenton had made all preparations for removing the startling elements from the fact of his presence on the boat. Like so many of life's little schemings, however, the plans went all "aglee."