Part 50 (2/2)
Speak up, you caveman of the---- Oh, Elaine!”
But Elaine had fled the scene.
That moment began the tug at the ties of friends.h.i.+p and the test of the souls of the three. It was not a time of happiness that thereupon ensued. Elaine avoided both the men as far as possible. Grenville alone seemed natural, and yet even his smiles were tinged with the artificial.
He was glad to relate their varied adventures--the tale of the perils through which they had finally won. But how much of it all Gerald Fenton really heard no man could with certainty tell.
Fenton was neither a self-conceited person nor a blind man, groping through life. Through the stem of his finely colored calabash he puffed many a thought, along with his fragrant tobacco fume, and revolved it in his brain.
Between certain lines of Grenville's story he read deep happenings.
That Sidney had saved and preserved Elaine, and battled for her comfort and her very life, against all but overwhelming odds, was a fact that required no rehearsal.
Mere propinquity, as Fenton knew, has always been the match-maker incomparable, throughout the habited world. Add to the quite exceptional propinquity of a tropic-island existence a splendid and unfaltering heroism in Grenville, together with a mastery of every situation, months of daily service and devotion, and the rare good looks that Sidney had certainly developed--and what wonder Elaine should be changed?
The change in her bearing had struck him at once at the moment of their meeting by the stairs. He had never got past that since. When at length his course was clearly defined and his resolution firmly fixed, it still required skillful maneuvering on Fenton's part to manage the one little climax on which he finally determined.
But night, with her shadows, her softening moods, and her veiling ways of comfort, was an ally worthy of his trust. When he finally engineered the unsuspicious Grenville to the upper deck, where Elaine had already been enticed, evasion of the issue was done.
”It's amazing,” said Fenton, in a pleasant, easy manner, ”how I am becoming the talker of the crowd, when both you fond adventurers should be spilling out lectures by the mile. However, such is life.” He paused for a moment, but the others did not speak.
”The genuine wonder of it all,” he presently continued, ”is seeing you both come back thus, safe and sound. I underwent my bit of grief when the news of the monstrous disaster finally arrived, as, of course, did many another. I thought I had lost the dearest friend and the--well, the dearest two friends--the dearest two beings in the world to me, in one huge cataclysm.”
He paused once more and relighted his pipe. The flame of his match threw a rosy glow on the two set faces on either side of his position, as well as on his own. No one looked at anyone else, and the two still failed to answer.
”Well--here you both are!” the smoker resumed, crus.h.i.+ng the match and throwing it away. ”If I were to lose your love and friends.h.i.+p now---- But never mind that--I sha'n't! You were dead to me, both of you, all those months, and mourned rather poignantly. That's the point I want you both to understand--that I had accepted the fact of losing you both, forever.”
Grenville slightly stirred, but did not speak. Elaine was clasping her hands in her lap and locking her fingers till they ached.
”Naturally,” Fenton told them, quietly, ”I conformed my thoughts to your demise, at last, as we all must do in actual cases. I adjusted my heart-strings, when I could, anew. n.o.body else came into my life, to occupy your places, for n.o.body could. Yet I did adjust things as I've said. Well--now that brings us up to the point.”
Grenville sank back against his seat, but restlessly leaned forward as before. Elaine alone remained absolutely motionless, rigid with attention, if not also with suppressed excitement at something she felt impending. Fenton thumbed at the glowing tobacco in his pipe.
”It appears to me,” he continued, ”all the circ.u.mstances I have mentioned being taken into consideration, that you two friends that I love so well have so many times saved one another's lives that no one living has the slightest right to think or to act as might have been the case if you had not pa.s.sed so entirely from his ken, and his plans, and daily existence. His claims to your resurrected selves are--different, let us say, or secondary.”
The silence that fell for a moment became acutely painful.
”That's all I'm really driving at, after all my long and labored preamble,” Fenton concluded, deliberately rising and facing about to confront the pair on the bench. ”I recognize certain inevitable things--and I know they're right--and the way the Almighty intended....
Don't let me lose my friends again.... Let's all be sensible.... I don't ask or expect to be loved the way you love one another--but I'd like to be old Gerald to you both.”
He turned and went slowly down the narrow stairs, and his pipe trailed a spark behind him.
After a time, when Grenville moved over and placed his arm about Elaine, she struggled for a moment, feebly.
”I don't--I don't love you in the least!” she protested. ”I hate you--as I always have--and the way I always shall!”
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