The King of Arcadia Part 24

"He is interested, beyond doubt. But for the present moment I have kept him from adding anything to Miss Dosia's artless gossip. Will you permit me to suggest that it was taking rather a long chance?--your bringing him down here?"

"I know; but I couldn't help it. Dosia would have brought him on your invitation. I did everything I could think of to obstruct; and when they had beaten me, I made a party affair of it. You'll have to forgive me for spoiling an entire working day for you."

"Since it has given me a chance to be with you, I'm only too happy in losing the day," he said; and he meant it. But he let her know the worst in the other matter in an added sentence. "I'm afraid the mischief is done in Wingfield's affair, in spite of everything."

"How?" she asked, and the keen anxiety in the grey eyes cut him to the heart.

He told her briefly of the chance arousing of Wingfield's curiosity, and of the playwright's expressed determination to fathom the mystery of the table-smashing stone. Her dismay was pathetic.

"You should never have taken him into your office," she protested reproachfully. "He was sure to be reminded of Dosia's story there."

"I didn't foresee that, and he was beginning to gossip with the workmen.

I knew it wouldn't be long before he would get the story of the happenings out of the men--with all the garnishings."

"You _must_ find a way to stop him," she insisted. "If you could only know what terrible consequences are wrapped up in it!"

He waited until a stone block, dangling in the clutch of the derrick-fall above its appointed resting-place on the growing wall of masonry, had been lowered into the cement bed prepared for it before he said, soberly: "That is the trouble--I _don't_ know. And, short of quarrelling outright with Wingfield, I don't think of any effective way of muzzling him."

"No; you mustn't do that. There is misery enough and enmity enough, without making any more. I'll try to keep him away."

"You will fail," he prophesied, with conviction. "Mr. Wingfield calls himself a builder of plots; but I can a.s.sure you from this one day's observation of him that he would much rather unravel a plot than build one."

She was silent while the workmen were swinging another great stone out over the canyon chasm. The shadow of the huge derrick-boom swept around and across them, and she shuddered as if the intangible thing had been an icy finger to touch her.

"You must help me," she pleaded. "I cannot see the way a single step ahead."

"And I am in still deeper darkness," he reminded her gently. "You forget that I do not know what threatens you, or how it threatens."

"I can't tell you; I can't tell any one," she said; and he made sure there was a sob at the catching of her breath.

As once before, he grew suddenly masterful.

"You are wronging yourself and me, Elsa, dear. You forget that your trouble is mine; that in the end we two shall be one in spite of all the obstacles that a crazy fate can invent."

She shook her head. "I told you once that you must not forget yourself again; and you are forgetting. There is one obstacle which can never be overcome this side of the grave. You must always remember that."

"I remember only that I love you," he dared; adding: "And you are afraid to tell me what this obstacle is. You know it would vanish in the telling."

She did not answer.

"You won't tell me that you are in love with Wingfield?" he persisted.

Still no reply.

"Elsa, dearest, can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you do not love _me_?"

She neither looked nor denied.

"Then that is all I need to know at present," he went on doggedly. "I shall absolutely and positively refuse to recognise any other obstacle."

She broke silence so swiftly that the words seemed to leap to her lips.

"There is one, dear friend," she said, with a warm upflash of strong emotion; "one that neither you nor I, nor any one can overcome!" She pointed down at the boulder-riven flood churning itself into spray in the canyon pot at their feet. "I will measure it for you--and for myself, G.o.d help us! Rather than be your wife--the mother of your children--I should gladly, joyfully, fling myself into that."

The motion he made to catch her, to draw her back from the brink of the chasm, was purely mechanical, but it served to break the strain of a situation that had become suddenly impossible.

"That was almost tragic, wasn't it?" she asked, with a swift retreat behind the barricades of mockery. "In another minute we should have tumbled headlong into melodrama, with poor Mr. Wingfield hopelessly out of reach for the note-taking process."

"Then you didn't mean what you were saying?" he demanded, trying hard to overtake the fleeing realities.

"I did, indeed; don't make me say it again. The lights are up, and the audience might be looking. See how manfully Mr. Bigelow is trying not to let Cousin Janet discover how she is crushing him!"

Out of the lower ravine the other members of the party were straggling, with Bigelow giving first aid to a breathless and panting Mrs. Van Bryck, and Wingfield and young Blacklock helping first one and then another of the four younger women. The workmen in the cutting yard were preparing to swing a third ma.s.sive face-block into place on the dam; and Miss Craigmiles, quite her serene self again, was asking to be shown how the grappling hooks were made fast in the process of "toggling."

Ballard accepted his defeat with what philosophy he could muster, and explained the technical detail. Then the others came up, and the buckboards sent down from Castle 'Cadia to take the party home were seen wheeling into line at the upper end of the short foothill canyon.

"There is our recall at last, Mr. Ballard," gasped the breathless chaperon, "and I daresay you are immensely relieved. But you mustn't be too sorry for your lost day. We have had a perfectly lovely time."

"Such a delightful day!" echoed the two sharers of the common Christian name in unison; and the king's daughter added demurely: "Don't you see we are all waiting for you to ask us to come again, Mr. Ballard?"

"Oh, certainly; any time," said Ballard, coming to the surface.

Notwithstanding, on the short walk up to the waiting buckboards he sank into the sea of perplexity again. Elsa's moods had always puzzled him.

If they were not real, as he often suspected, they were artistically perfect imitations; and he was never quite sure that he could distinguish between the real and the simulated.

As at the present moment: the light-hearted young woman walking beside him up the steep canyon path was the very opposite of the sorely tried and anxious one who had twice let him see the effects of the anxiety, however carefully she concealed the cause.

The perplexed wonder was still making him half abstracted when he put himself in the way to help her into one of the homeward-headed vehicles.

They were a little in advance of the others, and when she faced him to say good-bye, he saw her eyes. Behind the smile in them the troubled shadows were still lurking; and when the heartening word was on his lips they looked past him, dilating suddenly with a great horror.

"Look!" she cried, pointing back to the dam; and when he wheeled he saw that they were all looking; standing agape as if they had been shown the Medusa's head. The third great stone had been swung out over the dam, and, little by little, with jerkings that made the wire cables snap and sing, the grappling-hooks were losing their hold in mid-air. The yells of the workmen imperilled rose sharply above the thunder of the river, and the man at the winding-drums seemed to have lost his nerve and his head.

Young Blacklock, who was taking an engineering course in college, turned and ran back down the path, shouting like a madman. Ballard made a megaphone of his hands and bellowed an order to the unnerved hoister engineer. "Lower away! Drop it, you blockhead!" he shouted; but the command came too late. With a final jerk the slipping hooks gave way, and the three-ton cube of granite dropped like a huge projectile, striking the stonework of the dam with a crash like an explosion of dynamite.

Dosia Van Bryck's shriek was ringing in Ballard's ears, and the look of frozen horror on Elsa's face was before his eyes, when he dashed down the steep trail at Blacklock's heels. Happily, there was no one killed; no one seriously hurt. On the dam-head Fitzpatrick was climbing to a point of vantage to shout the news to the yard men cl.u.s.tering thickly on the edge of the cliff above, and Ballard went only far enough to make sure that there had been no loss of life. Then he turned and hastened back to the halted buckboards.

"Thank G.o.d, it's only a money loss, this time!" he announced. "The hooks held long enough to give the men time to get out of the way."

"There was no one hurt? Are you sure there was no one hurt?" panted Mrs.

Van Bryck, fanning herself vigorously.

"No one at all. I'm awfully sorry we had to give you such a shock for your leave-taking, but accidents will happen, now and then. You will excuse me if I go at once? There is work to be done."

"H'm--ha! One moment, Mr. Ballard," rasped the major, swelling up like a man on the verge of apoplexy. But Mrs. Van Bryck was not to be set aside.

"Oh, certainly, we will excuse you. Please don't waste a moment on us.

You shouldn't have troubled to come back. So sorry--it was very dreadful--terrible!"

While the chaperon was groping for her misplaced self-composure, Wingfield said a word or two to Dosia, who was his seat-mate, and sprang to the ground.