Louis Tracy

“ Yvonne closed the book with a snap. That shaft from the bow so deftly wielded by a master archer had pierced her very heart. She loved Tollemache. She wanted her Lorry here. If any maleficent influence drove him from her, all the brightness and color would depart out of her life, a pleasant world grow cold and gray for evermore.
Then, being weary yet eminently healthy, she went to bed and slept dreamlessly, and was up betimes in the morning. It was pleasant to see the sun rising into a clear sky above the stunted trees crowning the Toulifot hill. ”

“ Yvonne heard, and her eyes grew dim. "It is more than hard," she murmured. "It is thoughtless."
A fierce joy surged into her father's heart, yet he only said softly, "We must find another hermitage, my dear one."
"Why should we be driven out of the place we have made our home?" she cried, yielding suddenly to the overwhelming demand for a confidant. "My mother has the wide world to choose from. Why should she settle in Pont Aven? I am sorry for her, and she is very lovable and gracious; but no power on earth can part you and me, Dad. ”

“ If Yvonne marries me some day, I'll be the happiest man who ever lived, and the most miserable if she doesn't. So there you are, Lorry, my boy! You must make the best of it, whichever way the flag falls."
Memories of peaceful and contented years flitted through Ingersoll's mind while the steam tram lumbered next morning through tiny fields and across rambling lanes to the quay of Concarneau. Other memories, vivid and piercing, came of the period of love and dreams in Paris. Lithe and graceful and divinely beautiful as her daughter was now, Stella Fordyce had been then. ”

“ Yvonne listened as one in a dream. She saw her father and Madame Pitou crossing the plateau. For an instant her eyes dwelt on the features of the frightened boy peering through an embrasure in the belfry. From some point beneath came the broken ejaculations of Père Jean, who was craning his neck from some precarious perch on the edge of the precipice to catch a glimpse of the mad American's shattered body. Madeleine was sobbing hysterically over the prostrate Barbe, and endeavoring with nervous fingers to undo the stiff linen coif round the unconscious girl's throat. ”

“ Yvonne, watching his progress, suddenly yielded to another memory of Tollemache swinging from the shepherds' hooks of Sainte Barbe's tower. Suppose the rope were to break—just as one of the rings had come away in Lorry's grip? Of course the notion was stupid. She knew that each strand of that particular rope was sound, that it might be trusted to hold the Hirondelle herself against the straining of wind and tide, let alone bear the dead weight of two people; but a woman's intuition is stronger than reason. ”

“ If any life could be snatched back from the abyss, Tollemache might be trusted not to spare himself in the effort. In that moment of stress the cheery, devil-may-care American artist had become a calm, clear-headed man of action. He looked almost heroic, standing on the sloping deck forward, with one sinewy, brown-skinned hand clasping a mast-hoop, and the other thrust into a pocket of his Norfolk jacket. By a queer trick of memory Yvonne was reminded of her fright when she saw Lorry clinging to the rings of Sainte Barbe's tower. ”

“ Unconsciously she quickened her pace too, and Tollemache interpreted these outward and visible tokens of displeasure as hostile to the notion that had sprung into thrilling life in his mind that day at Le Faouet, when he peered down into Yvonne's agonized face when he was clinging like a fly to the wall of the tower.
"She regards me as a silly ass," he communed bitterly, "and not without good cause. What place do I fill in the world, anyhow? God created me a live-wire American, and the devil egged me on to spoil clean canvas. I'm little better than a hobo, and she knows it. ”

“ I've never said a word to you, Ingersoll, and mighty little to your daughter; but I love Yvonne, and if she will marry me, our wedding day will be the proudest day of my life. I'm not a poor man. I've a heap more money than ever I've owned up to, because I like the life here, and I like you, and I worship the ground Yvonne walks on, and I was afraid that if you knew I was fairly well fixed in a financial sense you'd regard me as a poseur, and cut me out. ”

“ Skipper and sailor wore the stolid expression of men who didn't know, and didn't particularly care, what happened next. If anything, their watchful glances betrayed a total lack of belief in the wisdom of intrusting the helm to this slip of a girl.
Amidships, and slightly forward, Peridot was standing, both hands laced in the rope that should hoist the sail. The small jib had not been lowered. It was now flapping in the wind with reports like irregular pistol shots; but Yvonne knew it would fill and draw instantly when the tiller brought the boat's head around. ”

“ The more he reflected on Peridot's scraps of history the more he was convinced that he had found a mare's nest, despite Mrs. Carmac's extraordinary outburst in the Hirondelle's cabin. Exhausted and pain-tortured though he had been, he could still distinguish between the raving of dementia and the ungoverned cry of a soul just snatched from death and startled beyond measure by the apparition of a long-forgotten daughter. ”

“ I'll make him! It's rather rotten even to talk of using violence to a fellow with a broken arm; but he must be got rid of, and I'll frighten him into a deal—see if I don't!"
Ingersoll rose, and caught the younger man's hand in an impulsive grip. "Lorry," he said, "if it pleases Providence to ordain that Yvonne shall marry you, I'll offer thanks on my knees. You are honest as the sun, and transparent as the Aven beneath the trees of the Bois d'Amour in summer. ”

“ Not far distant was the cheerful café frequented by artists and writers on summer evenings, where Madame Maréchale, Julia Guillou's sister, dispensed cups of black coffee, and tiny glasses of liqueur cider, and epigrams—each excellent in their way. In a flash the notion presented itself to Yvonne's overburdened mind that the pleasant intimacy of those mild revels was being banned by some malign influence which had its living agent in the diminutive creature now confronting her. The empty right sleeve of Raymond's overcoat added to his lop-sided appearance. ”

“ Yvonne, when you marry, marry for love. May Heaven pardon me, I did not! I married your father because I thought I should have what we thoughtlessly call 'a good time.' I left him, not for love of another man, but in the hope that I might secure a wealthier husband. I have never known what it means to love anyone but myself. Perhaps I shall learn now—too late!"
When Yvonne went out she found Raymond awaiting her at the doorway beneath.
"Miss Ingersoll," he said deferentially, "if you are going home, may I walk with you as far as the bridge? ”

“ Would to Heaven I might leave you now to deal with this prying hound, Raymond! But the plan you suggest is useless. He would laugh at you, disregard your threats, and taunt you with personal designs on Mrs. Carmac's millions. You have forgotten, Lorry, that Yvonne is her daughter. I know my wife's nature to the depths. She has drunk to nausea of the nectar of wealth. What has it given her? Happiness? Good health? A contented mind? No; she is scourged with scorpions, torn by a thousand regrets. ”

“ On one side, the left, the tower sank only to the level of the path beneath; but a glance over the opposite parapet revealed an awesome abyss.
Madeleine shuddered when she felt Yvonne's hand. "To think that men should be so foolish as to risk their lives in such a way!" she murmured.
"I suppose that anyone who let go was killed?" said Tollemache.
"Mais, non, M'sieu'," Père Jean assured him. "The blessed saint would not permit that. No one was ever killed, I'm told. But the prefect has forbidden it these twenty years." ”

“ Then, in the morning, Yvonne and he would end an intolerable state of things by leaving Pont Aven for some unknown refuge until Lorry told them that the coast was clear.
Thus do some men plan when beset by some unforeseen difficulty. Be they wise or foolish, they seldom learn that in those crucial moments of life when events of real importance take place they are as straws caught in a whirlpool, and no more capable than straws of predetermined governance of their deeds and movements.
Ingersoll was barely hidden before he received a fresh surprise. ”

“ The tidal stream was running strongly there, and Yvonne with difficulty repressed a cry of dismay when the yacht's bare masts and white funnel vanished completely in a cloud of spray.
"If that fellow has any sense, he'll turn while he is able, and make for Concarneau," said Peridot, as the spume dissipated, and the stricken vessel's spars came into view again.
"Perhaps he doesn't know this coast. Can we signal him?" inquired the girl.
"He wouldn't take any notice of a fishing boat. The skipper of a ten-centime steam yacht thinks more of himself than the commander of an Atlantic liner. ”

“ We are—how shall I put it?—somewhat unhinged by today's events. You are weary and heartsick. I know I am. Let me go and see that Mrs. Carmac is being cared for. I'll not remain long, and we can retire soon after supper. Then, when we have slept perhaps, we shall wake into a new world with nerves not so exhausted, or strained, as at this moment."
Ingersoll, brooding on his own troubles, and feverishly eager to snatch his daughter from a soul-racking ordeal, was wholly unaware of the passionate tumult vibrating in every syllable of that appeal. ”

“ All this was intensely annoying to the young American; but it had to be endured. Even more trying was the leave-taking at the door of the Larraidou cottage. The Breton caught Tollemache's hand, and was moved to tears.
"Monsieur," he gurgled, "you have my regrets—a thousand regrets! I understand perfectly. A Frenchman comprehends these things quicker than any other man in the world, even when he has filled the lamp. Gars! If I chew ears and you flatten noses, between us we'll spoil the beauty of any rascal who dares open his mouth against either Mademoiselle Yvonne or Madeleine." ”

“ A little inlet, not much longer than the yacht, and perhaps forty feet wide, runs in from the south just where she lies. Her hull and the reef itself form a breakwater. We can make it, and get a line aboard."
"Then for the love of Heaven why wait?"
"One moment, Monsieur. We have yet a second or two for decision. You see how the wreck lifts each time a sea hits her. The tide is rising. If she shifts when we are in there, goodby to the Hirondelle!"
The eyes of the two met, and Ingersoll wavered, but only as a brave man takes breath before essaying some supreme test of hardihood. ”

“ The sight caused a fresh thrill on board the Hirondelle. Somehow it was totally unexpected.
"Fools!" said Tollemache, meaning, no doubt, that men might, if they chose, venture their lives in fair fight against the storm gods, but they had no right to subject a woman to the ordeal.
Ingersoll overheard, and understood. He even smiled. Lorry regarded Yvonne as a chum to be trusted in fair weather or foul. It did not occur to him that her father might reasonably have urged the same plea against attempting a seemingly mad and impracticable rescue. ”

“ He touched his cap with a smile when she appeared, and in answer to her query raised to the heavens those gray-green eyes which had earned him such a euphonious nickname.
"Yes, Mademoiselle Yvonne, we can make Le Pouldu by ten o'clock with this wind," he said. "We may get a wetting; but it won't be the first. Is—er—is Madeleine coming?"
"Not today. She promised to help Mère Pitou with tonight's supper. You will be there?"
"Wind and weather permitting, Ma'mselle. We go in your own boat, I suppose?" ”

“ Yvonne raced off again, this time to the Hotel Julia, not the huge modern annex,—that dominates the tiny marketplace of Pont Aven,—but the oldtime hostelry itself, tucked in snugly behind its four sycamores, like some sedate matron ever peering up in wonderment at its overgrown child across the street. In winter the habitués—the coterie of artists and writers who cluster under the wing of the famous Julia Guillou—eat in the dining room of the smaller hotel. ”