Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
her forehead and drove away the deadly faintness on her. Down the broad
avenue toward the lake, staggering at first. Then, as her strength
revived, running like young Diana, the beat of her flying feet only a
little heavier than usual as she tore along.
Marcus and Cristiane--the wolf and the lamb! That black place in the
ice where the current came from a spring. And this awful stiffness that
cramped her like a vise as she ran.
Could she ever get there? She could see the lake now as she mounted
the last rise in the avenue. And there was Marcus on the safe ice, and
Cristiane? On the other side of the black streak Cristiane was sliding,
without skates, drawing every minute nearer to it. Ismay knew now what
was in his brain.
All alone out there, there was no one to hear him dare her to cross it,
and that was what he was doing. And Cristiane was heavy; it would never
bear her. To slip into that running water meant death. The thought
seemed to paralyze the girl who looked on.
Helpless, rigid, great drops on her forehead for all the cold, she
stood in full view of Cristiane, who waved her hand at her; in full
view of some one else, long before his time at that tryst behind the
cedars, as Cristiane, step by step, drew closer to that thin film of
ice.
With one piercing, ringing shriek, one bound, Ismay was running again,
like an arrow from a bow. Running with skirts drawn up, elbows down,
steady and fast as a man who must win a race. She dared not think what
it meant if she could not reach Cristiane before she was on that black
mockery of ice.
No wonder her ringing scream sounded so wild and dreadful in the clear
air; no wonder she ran with the blood beating in her eyes and forehead,
the sharp air rasping in her agonized lungs.
She shrieked again. No matter what Marcus thought if only she could
keep Cristiane off that ice.
At that shrill cry Cristiane turned and went on faster. Ismay should
not frighten her before Marcus Wray, who had laughed and forbidden her
to dare the crossing, as if she were a town-bred baby.
Miles Cylmer, a long way off behind his cedars, shouted in answer and
ran down the long shore, too late to stop what he saw. Cristiane,
laughing, defiant, on the edge of the black ice, a few rods behind her,
bareheaded, slim, nearly exhausted, Ismay running to cut her off.
Wray had turned at the man’s voice and cried aloud:
“Go back! Don’t try it.” But it was no accident that made him fall flat
as he spoke.
Cylmer ran as he, too, had never run before, for the black ice had
crashed from under Cristiane’s feet. She went through like a stone as
she stepped on it.
Yet the next second he saw her white hand flung up from the black ice,
the blacker water; saw Ismay, flung flat on the sound ice, stretch out
till she caught the hand in hers; did not see that Cristiane’s other
hand had clutched her as with a vise, nor that Ismay was completely
done and exhausted.
And Cristiane le Marchant was a well-grown, heavy girl, Ismay slight
and dainty. Then inch by inch the sound ice cracked around them, as
Cristiane, in her frantic struggling, drew Ismay nearer and nearer
death. As Cylmer reached her it broke under her. But it was Mrs.
Trelane who screamed as she ran frantically down from the avenue, where
she had followed Ismay from pure wonder at the girl’s actions.
“He told me he wouldn’t do it! Oh, I might have known,” she cried
helplessly, as she ran. She dropped on her knees with a great sob as
she reached the lakeshore, and hid her eyes in terror.
On the grass beside Cristiane in her priceless, soaked furs, lay Ismay
in her thin house-gown. There was a crimson stain oozing from her set
and speechless mouth, and she was deadly still, the blood thick in that
clay-cold body that had been so quick and warm but now.
For once Mrs. Trelane was careless of appearances.
“What have you done?” she shrieked at Wray. “What----” But his hand was
on her shoulder.
“Tried to save Ismay,” he said shortly, as was true, for he had done
his best to help Cylmer, only to be savagely thrust out of the way.
“This gentleman had Miss le Marchant out of the water before I was
on my feet. I fell,” with rage in his tone because his plans had
miscarried, because it was Cristiane who could sit up and speak, not
Ismay.
“Mr. Wray told me not to try,” Cristiane said, shivering. “And I would.
I’m cold. Take me home.”
Cylmer looked at her.
“Have you no thought for Miss Trelane, who tried to save you?” he said
sternly.
Cristiane went off into wild hysterics.
“She didn’t try to save me,” she gasped; “she stood on the hill and
watched me. I saw her. She could have got here long ago, but she hates
me. Oh, I know. Just because you love me.” Cylmer made one quick stride
to her.
“Be silent. Have you no sense; no decency?” His face absolutely white,
he pointed to where Ismay lay on the grass. “You abuse her when for
all you know she may have died for you. Take Mrs. Trelane’s arm and go
home. I am ashamed that you are your father’s daughter.”
Wray had not heard her. After he had frightened Mrs. Trelane to silence
with that cruel grasp of her shoulder he had run with all his speed to
the stables to send a man for a doctor.
He was more savage than he had ever been in his life at his morning’s
work. No one knew as he did why Ismay had not been able to withstand
the shock of that icy water. And the heiress was to go scot-free! He
ground his teeth as he hurried.
Never! Dead or alive, Ismay should not save her. But if he could do it,
there should be life kept in that sweet body of hers yet, for, in his
way, the man loved her.
Cristiane, the icy water dripping from her, rose and looked at Cylmer
with chattering teeth.
“She hates me, and she is a liar and a thief. Look what I found this
morning.” Her voice low and spiteful, never reached Mrs. Trelane, as
she hung over Ismay.
She stuffed a little card, dirty and crumbled, into his hand, but
though he took it, it was without knowledge or care of what she said.
“Go!” he repeated angrily. “Don’t you see you must get off your wet
clothes?”
But without seeing what she did he had stooped and lifted in his arms
the girl who was to have been flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.
An old, old cry was on his lips as he lifted his ice-cold, ghastly
burden:
“Would that I had died for thee, I and none other!”
CHAPTER XXVI.
“HER MOTHER’S CHILD!”
Cylmer, waiting by the hall fire, his wet clothes steaming, thought the
doctor would never come down-stairs.
To Wray he gave no thought; it never occurred to him that that astute
person was keeping out of the way, for fear of comments of his idiocy
in having taken Cristiane on ice he knew nothing about. And Mrs.
Trelane was with Ismay; Cristiane put to bed crying with temper and
fright. The empty feeling of the house drove Cylmer wild. He was more
glad to see the little country doctor than he had ever been at anything
in his life.
“Miss Trelane!” he said bluntly. “Is she----” The words stuck in his
throat.
“She’ll do now, I think,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “But it’s
a peculiar case. It was not that she was in danger of death from
drowning, but there seemed to have been something in the shock. I don’t
know”--more briskly--“but she will do well now. She looks frail, but
her vitality is tremendous. But, my dear man, you must go home at once
unless you wish to die of pneumonia. Come with me in the brougham. You
can come back again later on. There’s no sense in shivering to death
here when you can’t see either of the victims.”
He carried Cylmer off, and deposited him, rolled in a fur rug, at his
own door. And not till he was being stripped of his soaked clothes by
his fussy servant did Miles discover that he held something in his
hand. It was the card Cristiane had given him, the penciled words only
a blur now.
“Does she mean she never got it? Is that why she called Ismay a
liar and a thief for the carelessness of some servant?” he thought
contemptuously. “I must tell the lady a few plain truths, I fancy.
I’d tell her everything this very night if I could get Ismay to
consent. But, of course, she won’t be up. I sha’n’t see either of them,
probably. If I do Miss Cristiane shall retire in tears,” with a grim
smile.
In spite of what the doctor had said, Mr. Cylmer only made a pretense
of eating his dinner.
He drove over to Marchant’s Hold without so much as waiting for his
coffee. Even Mrs. Trelane, who hated him, would be civil to him
to-night, since but for him Ismay would be lying dead.
He went straight into the drawing-room, prepared to meet Mrs. Trelane
only. But she was not there. He paused, and saw on a distant sofa
Cristiane, her head bowed on her hands.
“Cristiane,” his heart had sickened at her attitude, “what’s the
matter? She’s not--not dead?”
“She? Do you mean Ismay?” She lifted her lovely eyes, drowned in tears.
“Not she. Why, Miles? Do you care--so much?”
“Never mind what I do. If she is all right why are you crying?” sternly.
“Because she’s made me be so horrid to you!”
“You needn’t cry on my account,” he said, looking down at her, “I can
assure you. And how do you mean she had made you horrid to me?”
“Because that card I gave you--I never got it. I thought you had never
come near me, and so I hated you.”
“Never got it! But you gave it to me.”
“Ismay pulled it out of her pocket this morning with her handkerchief,
and I picked it up. Oh, Miles!” her downcast face sweet, imploring,
“can you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you?”--impatiently. “I don’t know what you’re driving at! You
don’t mean you think Ismay kept it from you on purpose? Was that why
you dared to call her a thief?”
His tone maddened her. She sat up and looked at him, sorrowfully, with
pained surprise.
“Miles, you don’t care for her?” she whispered.
“Why do you speak of her like that? She saved your life”--coldly.
“She didn’t. It was you”--slowly. “I tell you she saw what I was doing
and stood waiting. She never ran till she saw you, and knew she must.
She would rather I was dead; she hates me.”
“Cristiane, are you out of your senses?” He shook her roughly by the
shoulder. “Your ingratitude I cannot help; your abuse of her I will not
bear. As for loving her, I love her with all my heart. I’d marry her
to-morrow if she would have me.”
And this was the Miles she had thought of as miserable with his love
that she would have none of! She was all passion in the frank brutality
with which she turned on him.
“She can’t do that; she daren’t! She’s playing a double game with you.
She’s a bad, wicked girl”--her voice rising angrily. “I saw her this
very day lying with her head on Mr. Wray’s shoulder. She was pretending
to be asleep, and she stretched out her arms and put them about his
neck, and----”
“Look here, Cristiane,” Miles broke in angrily, frantically. “You can
shut up! If it is true I don’t want to hear it, but if it’s a lie,
you’ll have to pay for every word of it.”
“Miles,” she said slowly, “it’s every word of it true. I saw her. I
was on the stairs and she was lying on the sofa in the hall. I saw
him come and kneel beside her. She’s a horrid, horrid girl--I’m so
miserable”--with sudden choking tears. “I wish I hadn’t told you.
But I know you were with her often lately. I couldn’t let you go on
without telling you.”
“Then allow me to tell you your conscientious scruples do you no
credit,” he said stoutly. Yet he did not see in his pain that she had
changed her tactics utterly, even while he had been talking to her. It
was all too much of a piece with that fatal cry of Mark, that senseless
terror of having her engagement to him an open thing. Ismay, his Ismay,
untrue! The solid ground had been cut away under his feet, yet he was