_ CHAPTER X
Eagerly, breathlessly, Helen tore open the cablegram.
It was late Saturday afternoon and she had been with Ray and Mr. Steell to see some paintings--a private view of a remarkable collection of old masters. After having tea at the Plaza they had taken a brisk walk through the Park, the lawyer insisting that the exercise would do them good.
"It's just come, m'm," said the maid, holding out the thin envelope.
"Oh, it's from Kenneth!" exclaimed Ray excitedly, throwing down her muff and running to look over her sister's shoulder.
For long, dreary weeks Helen had expected, and waited for, this message, and now it had come, she was almost afraid to read it. There were only a few words, cold and formal, the usual matter-of-fact, businesslike phraseology of the so-much-a-word telegram:
CAPE TOWN, Thursday (delay in transmission). Sail to-day on the Abyssinia. All's well. KEN.
"Is that all?" exclaimed Ray, disappointed.
Mr. Steell laughed.
"How much more do you expect at $2 a word?"
"Well, he might be a little more explicit," pouted Ray. "If I were his wife, that wouldn't satisfy me."
Helen laughed lightly. Her eyes sparkling, her usually pale cheeks filled with a ruddy color from her walk in the park, the lawyer thought he had never seen her looking so pretty.
"It satisfies me," she said, her face all lit up with joyous excitement. "All I want to know is that he is safe and on his way home. The cablegram is dated Thursday. Then he's already on the water three days! I wonder why we didn't hear before?"
Mr. Steell glanced over her shoulder.
"The dispatch has been delayed. Don't you see? It says, 'delayed in transmission.'"
Helen turned round, her face radiant.
"When ought he to get here?"
The lawyer was silent for a moment as if calculating. Then, looking up, he said:
"The
Abyssinia is not a very fast boat. I suppose she is the best he could get. She's due at Southampton two weeks from to-day. A week after that, he ought to be in New York--providing nothing happens."
Helen, who was still reading and re-reading the cablegram, looked up quickly. With a note of alarm in her voice, she exclaimed:
"Providing nothing happens! What could happen?"
"Oh, nothing serious, of course. In these days of the wireless nothing ever happens to steamers. One is safer traveling on the sea than on land. I didn't mean anything serious, but merely that sometimes boats are delayed by bad weather or by fog. That prevents them arriving on schedule time."
Almost three months had slipped by since Kenneth's departure from New York. To Helen it had seemed so many years. She had tried to be contented and happy for Ray's sake. She entertained a good deal, giving dinner and theater parties, keeping open house, playing graciously the rôle of chatelaine in the absence of her lord, to all outward appearances as gay and light-hearted as ever. Only Ray and her immediate friends knew that the gayety was forced.
The poison had done its deadly work. The few words uttered by Signor Keralio that afternoon shortly after her husband's departure had burnt deep into her mind like letters of fire. Well she guessed the object of the wily Italian in speaking as he did. It availed him nothing, and she only despised him the more. It was cowardly, contemptible, and, from such a source, absolutely unworthy of belief. Yet secretly it worried her just the same. She had always considered Kenneth's life an open book. She thought she knew his every action, his every thought. The mere suggestion that her husband might have other interests, other attachments of which she knew nothing took her so by surprise that she was disarmed, powerless to answer. The innuendo that he might be unfaithful had gone through her heart like a knife. Of course it was quite ridiculous. He was not that kind of man. It was true he had often gone away on trips that seemed unnecessary, and now she came to think of it Kenneth's absences had of late been both frequent and mysterious. Then, too, she had no idea of the extent of his operations in Wall Street. She knew he bought and sold stocks sometimes. That is only what every investor does. But it was incredible that he was involved to the extent Keralio said he was. She knew he was ambitious to acquire wealth, but that he would take such fearful risks and jeopardize funds which, after all, belonged, not to him, but to the stockholders--that was impossible. It was a horrible libel.
Still another cause for worry was the health of her little daughter, Dorothy. Nothing ailed the child particularly, but she was not well. The doctor said nothing was the matter, but a slight temperature persisted, together with a cough which, naturally, alarmed the young mother out of all proportion to the seriousness of the case. The doctor also advised a change of air, so Helen at once made arrangements to send her little daughter to Philadelphia, where, in Aunt Carrie's beautiful house, she would have the best air and attention in the world. Aunt Carrie came to New York to fetch the child, and, as she stayed a couple of weeks sight-seeing and visiting friends that also helped to keep Helen busy.
"I do wish that I didn't have such a worrying disposition"--she laughed nervously after the lawyer had been at some pains to assure her about the sea-worthiness of the
Abyssinia. "Really, it makes me so unhappy, but I simply can't help it. The other day it was baby who made me terribly anxious; now it is Kenneth's home-coming. I must seem very foolish to you all."
Ray quickly protested.
"You sweet thing--how could you look foolish? What an idea! Only please don't worry, dear. I never do."
Mr. Steell nodded sympathetically.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Mrs. Traynor. It shows you have a fine, sensitive nature. It is only the grosser natures that are callous and unaffected by the anxieties of life."
Taking the remarks to herself, Ray threw up her head indignantly.
"I deny the imputation that I'm gross."
The lawyer laughed.
"You are far too healthy to worry. Moreover, you have nothing to worry about. If a man you loved were six thousand miles away----"
"Yes," interrupted Helen; "that's it. Only those who care for each other can understand----"
"Oh, of course!" retorted her sister, flaring up. "We spinsters, belonging, as we do, to the sisterhood of the Great Unloved, are quite incompetent to express an intelligent opinion on that or on any other matter. I grant that, but is Mr. Steell, a confirmed old bachelor, any more competent than I?"
"Hardly an old bachelor!" interrupted Helen reprovingly.
"No--middle-aged bachelor!" corrected Ray saucily. "He never cared for a woman in his life. He----"
"Who told you so?" inquired the lawyer quickly, with an amused twinkle in his eye.
Ray colored visibly.
"Oh, I judge so," she stammered. "You never speak of that sort of thing. One can only draw conclusions."
"The conclusions may be wrong," he replied gravely. "My life is a very busy one. I have had no time to think of anything outside my immediate work. Yet I am human. I sometimes yearn for the companionship of a good woman. A pretty face attracts me, as it does other men, but, in my opinion, any such attachment is too serious a matter to be treated lightly. When a man feels deeply he keeps his own confidence until the moment comes when he can unburden himself and say what is in his heart."
"I like that," said Helen, nodding her head approvingly.
Ray jumped up to conceal her embarrassment.
"Oh, how terribly serious you two are to-day!" she exclaimed. "I declare I'll run away unless you cheer up a bit. Suppose I get some tea?"
"Excellent idea!" laughed the lawyer.
Ray touched a bell, and went to clear a small side table, which she drew up near where they were sitting.
"There!" she exclaimed, smiling roguishly at the lawyer. "Don't you think I'm smart?"
"Of course we do." Lowering his voice he added significantly: "At least I do."
Apparently the compliment fell on deaf ears, for, turning her head away, she said quickly:
"Please don't be sarcastic."
More seriously, and in the same tone, that even Helen, who was only a short distance away, could not hear, he said:
"I'm never sarcastic. I think you are all a woman should be."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do. I have thought it for a long time."
"Really?"
"Really."
The young girl colored with pleasure. For all her sophisticated and independent manner she was still a child at heart. She had no thoughts of marriage, but it flattered her to think that she had the power to attract and interest this serious, brilliant man of the world. She said nothing more, relapsing into a meditative silence as she busied herself helping the maid to set out the tea table.
To Helen it was a source of keen satisfaction to notice the attention which the brilliant young lawyer was paying her sister. She had long recognized his sterling qualities. He was a man of whom any woman might well be proud. He could not but make a good husband. Next to Kenneth and her baby no one was dearer to her than Ray and, since their mother died, she had felt a certain sense of responsibility. To see her well and happily married was the one secret wish of her life.
But overshadowing these preoccupations at present were those other new anxieties which preyed upon her sensitive mind with all the force of an obsession. Was there any part of her husband's life that he had hidden from her? Was he really as loyal as she had always fondly and blindly believed; had his ambition led him to take grave financial risks that might one day jeopardize their comfort and happiness, the very future of their child?
Ray rose to put away the tea table, and she found herself sitting alone with the lawyer. There was a moment's silence, and then, as if thinking out aloud what was on her mind, she said:
"Thank God, he's safe; I had the most fearful premonitions----"
The lawyer laughed.
"Don't put your trust in premonitions--things happen or they don't happen. It's absurd to believe that misfortunes are all prepared beforehand."
"Then you are not a fatalist?"
"Decidedly not. I hope I have too much intelligence to believe in anything so foolish."
"Do you believe in a Supreme Being who has the same power to suddenly snuff us out of existence as he had to create us?"
"I neither believe nor disbelieve. Frankly, I do not know. What people call God, Jehovah, Nature, according to my reasoning, is an astounding energy, a marvellous chemical process, created and controlled by some unknown, stupendous first cause, the origin of which man may never understand. How should he? He has not time. We are rushed into the world without preparation. We are ignorant, helpless, blind. Gradually, by dint of much physical labor and mental toil, we succeed in ferreting out a few facts regarding ourselves and the physical laws that govern us. We are just on the verge of discovering more--we are just beginning to understand and enjoy life--when suddenly we find ourselves growing old and decrepit. Our physical and mental powers fail us, and the same force that benevolently created us now mercilessly destroys us, and we are hurled, willy-nilly, back into eternity whence we came. Rather absurd, isn't it?"
Intensely interested Helen looked up. Eagerly she exclaimed:
"You have a whole system of philosophy in a mere handful of words, haven't you?"
He smiled.
"It's all one needs, and perhaps as good as those more complicated and more verbose."
More seriously and lowering her voice so Ray, who was still busy at the other end of the room, might not overhear, she said:
"Mr. Steell--you are so clever--you know all about everything. Tell me, do you know anything about Wall Street?"
The ingenuousness of the question amused him. With a laugh he answered:
"A little--to my sorrow."
"It's a dangerous place, isn't it?"
"Very; it has a graveyard at one end, the East River at the other, two places highly convenient at times to those who play the game."
"If luck goes against him, a man could lose his all, then?"
"Not only his all but the all of others, too--if he's that kind of a man."
She was silent for a moment. Then she continued:
"And sometimes even fine, honest men are tempted, are they not, to gamble with money which is not theirs?"
"Many have done so. The prisons are full of them. There is nothing so dangerous as the get-rich-quick fever. All the men who gamble in stocks have it. It becomes a mania, an obsession. Their judgment becomes warped; they lose all sense of right and wrong."
"There's something else I want to ask you. What do you think of Signor Keralio?"
He hesitated a moment before he answered. Then, with some warmth, he said:
"As I told you before, I think he's a crook, only we can't prove it. I've been looking up his record. It's a bad one. The fellow has behaved himself so far in New York, but out West he is known under various names as one of the slickest rogues that ever escaped hanging. At one time he was the chief of a band of international crooks and blackmailers that operated in London, Paris, Buenos Ayres, and the City of Mexico. The scheme they usually worked was to get some prominent man so badly compromised that he would pay any amount to save himself from exposure, and they played so successfully on the fears of their victims that they were usually successful."
A worried look came into the young wife's face. Perhaps there was more in Signor Keralio's relations with her husband than she had suspected. Quickly she asked:
"Why do they permit a man of that character to be at large?"
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
"You can't proceed against a man unless there is some specific charge made. The police have nothing now against him. He may have reformed for all I know. But that was his record some years ago."
"I don't think he'll dare come here again," went on Helen. "He's exceedingly offensive, and yet he has about him a certain magnetism that compels your attention, even while his manner and look repels and irritates. Only the other day he----"
Before she could complete the sentence, there was a loud ring at the front door bell. Helen hastily rose, but Ray had already gone forward.
"It's Mr. Parker," she cried. "I saw him coming from the window."
The next instant the door of the drawing-room was flung open and Mr. Parker appeared.
"Hallo, ladies! Howdy, Steell!"
The president of the Americo-African Mining Company was not looking his usual debonair self that evening. His manner was nervous and flustered, his face pale and drawn with anxious lines. His coat lacked the customary boutonnière, and his crumpled linen and unshaved chin suggested that he had come direct from his office after a strenuous day without stopping to go through the formality of making a change of attire.
Helen was quick to note the alteration in his appearance, and her first instinct, naturally, was to associate it with her husband. Something was amiss.
"There's nothing wrong, is there?" she asked in alarm.
"No, no, my dear woman!"
But his tone was not convincing. He always called her "my dear woman" when nervous or excited, and "my dear lady" in his calmer moods. She at once remarked it, and it did not tend to reassure her. Now greatly alarmed she laid a trembling hand on his arm.
"Tell me, please! Don't hide anything from me. Has anything happened to Kenneth?"
"No--no; of course not." Quickly changing the subject he asked: "You got a message."
"Yes--a cablegram. It came just now."
"Have you got it? Let me see it."
"Yes, certainly," said Helen, looking around for the dispatch. Unable to find it, she called to her sister.
"Ray, dear, what did you do with Kenneth's cablegram?"
Her sister came up to assist in the search, in which even Mr. Steell joined. But the search was fruitless. The cablegram had disappeared.
"Oh, I know!" suddenly exclaimed Ray. "It must have been carried away with the tea things."
"That's right! I never thought of that!" said Helen.
The next instant the two women hurried out of the room in the direction of the kitchen.
The instant they had disappeared Mr. Parker turned to the lawyer. In a whisper he said:
"There is terrible news! I don't know how to break it to the poor woman----"
Steell sprang forward. Anxiously he exclaimed:
"Terrible news? Surely not----"
The president nodded.
"Yes--all lost, and the diamonds, too. A dispatch just received in London says that, according to a wireless relayed from Cape Town, the
Abyssinia caught fire twelve hours after sailing from that port and all on board perished. It is shocking, and the pecuniary loss to us disastrous. The stones were not insured. Hush! Here they come. Not a word!"
"My God!" muttered the lawyer, as he fell back and turned away, so they might not see the effect which the shocking news had made on him. With an effort he managed to control himself.
The two women entered the room joyfully.
"Here it is!" cried Helen exultantly, as she brandished the missing telegram. "You see, he's just sailed, and all's well."
The president said nothing, but, taking the dispatch from her hands, slowly read it. Nodding his head, he said slowly:
"Yes--he's just sailed, and--all's well."
"When do you think he'll be here?" questioned the young hostess, looking anxiously up into his face.
The president shook his head.
"That is hard to tell," he answered evasively.
Mr. Steell had gone to the window, where he stood looking out, idly drumming his fingers on the pane. How was it possible to break such fearful tidings as that? What a horrible calamity! He wished himself a hundred miles away, yet some one must tell her. At that moment shrill cries arose in the street outside--the familiar, distressing, almost exultant cries of news-venders, glad of any calamity that puts a few nickels into their pockets.
"
Ex-tra! Ex-tra! Special ex-tra!"
"What's that?" exclaimed Helen apprehensively. The sound of special editions always filled her with anxiety, especially since Kenneth's departure.
"
Ex-tra! Ex-tra! Special edition! Ex-tra! Big steamer gone down. Great loss of life. Extra!"
Her face was pale, as she turned and looked at the others, who also stood in silence, listening to the hoarse accents of distress.
"A steamer gone down!" she faltered. "Isn't that terrible? I wonder what steamer it was."
Ray ran to the door.
"I'll get a paper," she said.
Before Mr. Parker or Mr. Steell could prevent her the young girl had opened the front door. Now there was no way of preventing Helen knowing. The best thing was to prepare her gently.
"My dear Mrs. Traynor--I didn't tell you the trouble just now. There has been a little trouble. The
Abyssinia----"
Helen gave a cry of anguish.
"I knew it! I knew it! Kenneth is dead!"
"No, no, my dear lady. These newspaper reports are always grossly exaggerated. The
Abyssinia has met with a little trouble--nothing very serious, I assure you. Everything is all right, no doubt. Your husband is well able to take care of himself. We may hear from him any moment, reassuring us as to his safety."
His words of comfort went unheeded. Her face white as death Helen tottered rather than walked to the door, reaching it just as Ray, almost as pale, entered, reading the paper she had just purchased. On seeing her sister she instinctively made an effort to hide the sheet, but Helen quickly snatched it out of her hand. Her hand trembling so violently that she could scarcely make out the letters she glanced at the big scare-head, printed in red ink, to imitate blood, a merciful custom sensational newspapers have of making the most of the agony of others.
S. S. ABYSSINIA GONE DOWN!
ALL PERISH!
For a moment she stood still, looking at the big type with open, staring eyes. Then, with a low cry, like a wounded animal, she let the paper slip from her nerveless fingers. There was a furious throbbing at her temples: her heart seemed to stop. The room spun round, and she fainted just as Steell rushed forward to catch her in his arms.
"Brandy! Brandy!" he shouted. "She's fainted!"
While Ray ran for the smelling salts and Mr. Parker was bringing the brandy there came another vigorous pull at the bell. An instant later the maid entered with a cablegram, which Mr. Parker seized and tore open. As he read the contents, a look of the greatest surprise and joy lit up his face.
"Look at this!" he cried.
"What is it?" demanded Steell, still on his knees trying to revive the unconscious woman.
"This will do her more good than all your brandy."
"What is it?" cried Ray impatiently.
"He's safe!" cried Mr. Parker exultantly.
"Safe!" they all cried.
"Yes--safe." Handing the dispatch to the lawyer, he added: "Here--read this."
Steell took the dispatch and read:
CAPE TOWN, Saturday: Miraculously saved. Sail to-morrow on the Zanzibar. KENNETH.
_