Part 36 (1/2)
”Nothing of itself, perhaps. But it explains all the fearful things I have seen with my own eyes. Two years ago, after the trouble with Mr.
Braithwaite, father seemed to change. He became bitterly vindictive against the Arcadia Company, and at times seemed to put his whole soul into the fight against it. Then the accidents began to happen, and--oh, I can't tell you the dreadful things I have seen, or the more dreadful ones I have suspected! I have watched him--followed him--when he did not suspect it. After dinner, the night you arrived, he left us all on the portico at Castle 'Cadia, telling me that he was obliged to come down here to the mine. Are you listening?”
”You needn't ask that: please go on.”
”I thought it very strange; that he would let even a business errand take him away from us on our first evening; and so I--I made an excuse to the others and followed him. Breckenridge, I saw him throw the stone from the top of that cliff--the stone that came so near killing you or Mr. Bromley, or both of you.”
There had been a time when he would have tried to convince her that she must doubt the evidence of her own senses; but now it was too late: that milestone had been pa.s.sed in the first broken sentence of her pitiful confession.
”There was no harm done, that time,” he said, groping loyally for the available word of comforting.
”It was G.o.d's mercy,” she a.s.serted. ”But listen again: that other night, when Mr. Bromley was hurt ... After you had gone with the man who came for you, I hurried to find my father, meaning to ask him to send Otto in the little car to see if there was anything we could do. Aunt June said that father was lying down in the library: he was not there. I ran up-stairs. His coat and waistcoat were on the bed, and his mackintosh--the one he always wears when he goes out after sundown--was gone. After a little while he came in, hurriedly, secretly, and he would not believe me when I told him Mr. Bromley was hurt; he seemed to be sure it must be some one else. Then I knew. He had gone out to waylay you on your walk back to the camp, and by some means had mistaken Mr.
Bromley for you.”
She was in the full flood-tide of the heart-broken confession now, and in sheer pity he tried to stop her.
”Let it all go,” he counselled tenderly. ”What is done, is done; and now that the work here is also done, there will be no more trouble for you.”
”No; I must go on,” she insisted. ”Since others, who have no right to know, have found out, I must tell you.”
”Others?” he queried.
”Yes: Mr. Wingfield, for one. Unlike you, he has not tried to be charitable. He believes----”
”He doesn't love you as I do,” Ballard interrupted quickly.
”He doesn't love me at all--that way; it's Dosia. Hadn't you suspected?
That was why he joined Aunt Janet's party--to be with Dosia.”
”Thus vanishes the final shadow: there is nothing to come between us now,” he exulted; and his unhurt arm drew her close.
”Don't!” she shuddered, shrinking away from him. ”That is the bitterest drop in the cup of misery. You refuse to think of the awful heritage I should bring you; but I think of it--day and night. When your telegram came from Boston to Mr. La.s.sley at New York, I was going with the La.s.sleys--not to Norway, but to Paris, to try to persuade Doctor Perard, the great alienist, to come over and be our guest at Castle 'Cadia. It seemed to be the only remaining hope. But when you telegraphed your changed plans, I knew I couldn't go; I knew I must come home. And in spite of all, he has tried three times to kill you. You know he must be insane; tell me you know it,” she pleaded.
”Since it lifts a burden too heavy to be borne, I am very willing to believe it,” he rejoined gravely. ”I understand quite fully now. And it makes no difference--between us, I mean. You must not let it make a difference. Let the past be past, and let us come back to the present.
Where is your father now?”
”After dinner he went with Mr. Wingfield and Otto to the upper canyon.
There is a breakwater at the canyon portal which they hoped might save the power-house and laboratory from being undermined by the river, and they were going to strengthen it with bags of sand. I was afraid of what might come afterward--that you might be here alone and unsuspecting. So I persuaded Cousin Janet and the others to make up the car-party.”
From where they were sitting at the derrick's foot, the great boom leaned out like a giant's arm uplifted above the canyon lake. With the moon sweeping toward the zenith, the shadow of the huge iron beam was clearly cut on the surface of the water. Ballard's eye had been mechanically marking the line of shadow and its changing position as the water level rose in the Elbow.
”The reservoir is filling a great deal faster than I supposed it would,”
he said, bearing his companion resolutely away from the painful things.
”There have been storms on the main range all day,” was the reply.
”Father has a series of electrical signal stations all along the upper canyon. He said at the dinner-table that the rise to-night promises to be greater than any we have ever seen.”