Part 9 (1/2)

”And, of course, I shall,” cried Cynthia; and now she raised her head and gazed at her friends with s.h.i.+ning eyes. She had not dared to yield her face to their scrutiny in the first revulsion of her feelings.

Even now the room whirled about her. ”I shall be delighted to go with you. When shall we start?”

”Yes, that's the point,” said Mr. Daventry, uncomfortably. ”The telegram is very urgent, and there's a boat sailing from Buenos Ayres to-morrow. I am afraid, Cynthia, that we must catch it. There's certain to be no difficulty about cabins just at this time of the year, and, in fact, I have already telegraphed to retain them. So you see we must leave Daventry by the night train. Can you be ready?”

”Of course,” said Cynthia.

The color came back again into her pale cheeks and made them rosy, and the smile returned to her lips. No telegram had come. The bustle in the corridors during the early hours of the evening was explained to her. Over night, Robert and Joan had made up their minds to an instant flight, and had set about their preparations. Cynthia drew her breath again. She resumed life and some part of her faith in life. The world was not peopled with James Challoners, as, in the shock of her horror, she had almost been persuaded. Here were two who, for her sake, were abandoning their home and the place which their labors had made for them in the country of their adoption. Her great trouble during that day of hurried preparation was to avoid blurting out to her two friends her grat.i.tude and her knowledge.

They travelled by night and, reaching Buenos Ayres in the morning, drove straight along the docks to their s.h.i.+p. Once on board, Cynthia noticed that Joan made this and that excuse about the arrangement of her cabin to keep her from the deck until the steamer had warped out into the basin. Then she gave a sigh of relief and sat down in a chair.

”You won't mind, dear, will you?” she said. ”We shall probably be kept some time in England. But you will soon make friends. Robert was speaking about it last night. He said it was a good hunting country, and that we could get you some fine horses and--” and suddenly she felt Cynthia's arms about her neck, and the girl's tears upon her cheeks.

”My dear, my dear, you are too kind to me!” cried Cynthia. ”I don't mind about the horses, if only you'll keep me with you.”

”Of course, of course,” said Mrs. Daventry. ”What should we do without you ourselves.”

The screw was churning up the mud of the River Plate, the flat banks dotted with low trees were slipping past the port-holes.

”Let us go out and get the steward to arrange our chairs on deck,”

said Mrs. Daventry. She put Cynthia's outburst down, not to any guess at the true reason of their flight, but to a young girl's moment of emotion.

The steamer put into Montevideo, and Santos, and Rio, and glided northward along the woods and white sands of Brazil. It pa.s.sed one morning into the narrows of the Cape Verde Islands, and there was dressed from stem to stern with flags.

Cynthia asked the reason of the first officer, who was leaning beside her on the rail, and for answer he pointed northward to a small black s.h.i.+p which was coming down toward them, and handed to her his binocular.

”That's the _Perhaps_, bound for the South,” he said; and he saw the girl's face flush red.

She put the gla.s.ses to her eyes, and gazed for a long while at the boat. The _Perhaps_ was a full-rigged s.h.i.+p, with auxiliary steam, broad in the beam, with strong, rounded bows. She had the trade-wind behind her, and came lumbering down the channel with every sail set upon her yards.

”But she's so small,” cried Cynthia.

”She has to be small,” replied the first officer. ”Length's no use for her work. Look at us! We should crack like a filbert in the ice-pack.

She won't.”

”But she's out for three years,” said Cynthia.

”There'll be a relief s.h.i.+p with fresh stores, no doubt. And there are not many of them on board, twenty-nine all told.”

Cynthia looked again, and held the gla.s.ses to her eyes until the boats drew level. She could make out small figures upon the bridge and deck; she saw answering signals break out in answer to their own good wishes; and then the name in new gold letters came out upon the black stern beneath the counter.

”Thank you,” she said as she handed back the gla.s.ses. But her eyes were still fixed upon that full-rigged s.h.i.+p lumbering heavily to the unknown South.

”I am very glad to have seen the _Perhaps_,” she said slowly.

The first officer looked at her curiously. There was a quiver of emotion in her voice.

”Perhaps you have friends on board,” he said. ”If you have, I envy them.”