CHAPTER XXXIII
BY THE WINDING CREEK
At dawn one morning a long black car shot out from Jacksonville andtook to the open road. It glided swiftly past arid stretches of pinebarrens streaked with stagnant water, past bogs aglow with iris,through quaint little cities smiling under the shelter of primeval oaksand on, stopping only long enough for the driver to ask a question of anegro on a load of wood--or a mammy singing plaintively in theflower-bright dooryard of a house.
Sometimes losing, sometimes finding, the trail of a green and whitevan, the long black car shot on, through roads of pleasant windingsflanked by forest and river, beyond which lay the line of green-fringedsand hills which parallel the rolling Atlantic. Past placid lakesskimmed by purple martins, past orange groves heavy with fruit, pastfences overrun with Cherokee roses, and on, but the driver, abroad withthe sunrise glow, seemed somehow to see little or none of it.Sometimes he stared sombrely at a ghostly palmetto, tall and darkagainst the sky. Once with a grinding shudder of brakes he halted onthe border of a cypress swamp and stared frowningly at the dark, danktrees knee-deep in stagnant water above which the buzzards flew, as ifthe loathsome spot matched his mood. As indeed it did.
For the words of Themar had done cruel work. Torn by black suspicion,Ronador saw no peace in this tranquil Florida world of sun and flower,of warm south wind and bright-winged bird. He saw only the buzzards,birds of evil omen. Swayed by fiery gusts of passion, of remorse, ofsullenness and jealousy, he rode on, a prey to sinister resolution. Toconfront Diane with his knowledge of those days by the river, thisresolution alternated as frequently with another--to put his fate tothe test and passionately avow his utter trust in one immeasurablyabove the rank and file of women. He had racked Themar with insistentquestions, he had quarreled again and again with the Baron since thatnight by the pool, until now he had at his finger-ends, the ways anddays of Philip Poynter since the day the Baron had dispatched his youngsecretary upon the ill-fated errand to Diane. And as there were finermoments when his faith in the girl was unmarred by suspicion, so therewere wild, unscrupulous hours of jealousy when he could have killedPhilip and taunted her with insults.
Driving steadily, he came in course of time to a narrow, grass-bankedcreek. The nomads on the winding road beside it were many andbeautiful. Here were yellow butterflies, sandpipers and kingfishers,and now and then an eagle cleaved the dazzling blue overhead withmagnificent wing-strokes. Sand hills reflected the white sunlight.Beyond glistened a stretch of open sea with a flock of beautifulgannets of black and white whipping its surface. But Ronador did notthrill to the peaceful picture. He glanced instead at the buzzardwhich seemed curiously to hang above the long black car.
Now presently as he eyed the road ahead for a glimpse of the van,Ronador saw the familiar lines of a music-machine and drove by it witha glance of interest. Instantly the blood rushed violently to hisface. For, as the horse and music-machine had been familiar, so wasthe driver, who swept a broad sombrero from his head and revealed theface of Philip Poynter.
With a curse Ronador abruptly brought the car to a standstill. Thevery irony of this masquerade fired him with terrible anger.
"You!" he choked. "You!"
Philip nodded.
"I guess you're right," he said.
The blazing dark eyes and the calm, unruffled blue ones met in a glanceof implacable antagonism. Not in the least impressed Philip replacedhis sombrero and spoke to his horse. Fish crows flew overhead withcroaks of harsh derision.
Another buzzard! With a terrible jerk, Ronador drove on, his facescarlet.
So Poynter still dared to follow! By a trick he had bought themusic-machine, by a trick he had given the Regent's Hymn to the curiousears at Sherrill's. Very well, there were tricks and tricks! And ifone man may trick, so, surely, may another.
Passion had always hushed the voice of the imperial conscience, thoughindeed it awoke and cried in a terrible voice when passion was dead.So now with stiff white lips fixed in unalterable resolution, Ronadordrove viciously on, turning over and over in his fevered brain the waysand days of Philip Poynter. . . . So at last he came to the camp hesought.
It was pitched upon the upland bank of the winding creek and as the carshot rapidly toward it, a great blue heron flapped indignantly andsoared away to the marsh beyond the trees. Ronador jumped queerly andcolored with a sense of guilt.
There was yellow oxalis here carpeting the ground among the low, darkcedars, yellow butterflies flitted about among the trees where Johnnywas washing the van, and the inevitable buzzard floated with upturnedwings above the camp. Ronador had grown to hate the ubiquitous bird ofthe South. Superstition flamed hotly up in his heart now at the sightof it.
Diane was sewing. He had caught the flutter of her gown beneath acedar as he stopped the car. There was no one visible in the camp ofthe Indian girl. Ronador sprang from his car and waved to the girl,smiling, she came to meet him.
Now as Ronador smiled down into the clear, unfaltering eyes of the girlbefore him, he knew suddenly that he trusted her utterly, that the madsuspicion, sired by the words of Themar and mothered by jealousy, wasbut a dank mist that melted away in the sunlight of her presence. Onlyjealousy remained and a smouldering, unscrupulous hate for thepersistent young organ-grinder behind him.
Chatting pleasantly they returned to camp.
Imperceptibly their talk of the fortunes of the road took on a moreintimate tinge of reminiscence and presently, with searching eyes fixedupon the vivid, lovely face of the wind-brown gypsy beneath the cedar,Ronador asked the girl to marry him.
Very gently Diane released her hands from his grasp, her cheeks scarlet.
"Indeed, indeed," she faltered, "I could not with fairness answer younow, for I do not in the least know what I think. You will notmisunderstand me, I am sure, if I tell you that not once in the long,pleasant days we journeyed the same roads, did I ever dream of thenature of your pleasant friendship." Her frank, dark eyes, alive witha beautiful sincerity, met his honestly. "There was alwaystradition--" she reminded.
Ronador's reply was sincere and gallant. Diane was lovelier than anyprincess, he said, and in Houdania, tradition had been replaced yearsback by a law which granted freedom.
"Though to be sure," he added bitterly, "each generation seeks to breakit. Tregar tried, urging me persistently for diplomatic reasons totake a wife of his choosing. And when I--I fled to America to escapehis infernal scheming and spying--he followed. Even here in America Ihave been haunted by spies--"
His glance wavered.
"And then," he went on earnestly, "I saw you and I knew that PrincessPhaedra was forever impossible. There was a night of terrible wind andstorm when I planned to beg shelter in your camp and make youracquaintance. . . . You are annoyed?"
"No," said Diane honestly. "Why fuss now?"
"Tregar must have suspected. I met his--his spy in the forest and wequarreled wildly. He tried to kill me but the bullet went wild."
Again his glance wavered but the lying words came smoothly. "Myservant, Themar, leaped and stabbed him in the shoulder--"
"No! No!" cried Diane. "Not that--not that!" Her eyes, dark withhorror in the colorless oval of her face, met Ronador's with muteappeal. "It--it can not be," she added quietly. "The man was PhilipPoynter."
Ronador caught her hands again with fierce resolve. His eyes wereblazing with excitement and anger at the utter faith in her voice.
"Why do you think I adopted the stained face--the disguise of awandering minstrel?" he demanded impetuously. "It was to free myselffrom his infernal spying--to afford myself the opportunity of gainingyour friendship without his knowledge! Why did he follow--alwaysfollow? Because at the command of his chief, he must needs obstruct myplan of winning you. There was always Princess Phaedra! Why did hewatch by night in the forest. To spy! Can you not see it?"
"Surely, surely," said Diane, "you must be wrong!"
But Ronador could not be
wrong. Themar, his servant, whom he haddispatched to seek employment with the Baron when the fortunes of theroad had made further attendance upon himself inconvenient, had learnedof the hay-camp and of Poynter's pledge to make his victim's advancesridiculous in the eyes of Diane.
"And when Themar followed--to warn me--Poynter beat him brutally," hewent on fiercely, "beat him and sent him in a dirty barge to a distantcity. All the while when I fancied my disguise impenetrable, he waslaughing in his sleeve, for he is as clever as he is unscrupulous. Hewas even meeting his chief in a Kentucky woods to report. Tregaradmitted it. Why did he make me ridiculous at the Sherrill fete?Purely because your eyes, Miss Westfall, were among those who watchedthe indignity! Why is he driving about now in the music-machine tomock me? Because having forced me from the road, he must needs see toit that I do not return. When I do, he must be near at hand to reportto the Baron."
It was an artful network. Somehow, by virtue of the sinister skeletonof facts underlying the velvet of his logic, it rang true. Diane, ascolorless as a flower, sat utterly silent, slender brown fingerstightened against the palms of her hands.
Philip false! Philip a spy! Philip--almost a murderer! It could notbe!
Yet how insistently he had striven to force her to return tocivilization. Away from Ronador? It might be. How insistently theBaron had urged him to linger in her camp! _To spy_? A great wave offaintness swept over her. And there was Arcadia and the hay-camp andthe mildly impudent indignities--they all slipped accurately into place.
"I--I do not know!" she faltered at last in answer to his impetuouspleading. "If you will not see me again until I may think it all out--"
But there was danger in waiting. A hot appeal flashed in Ronador'seyes and eloquently again he fell to pleading.
But Diane had caught the clatter of the music-machine up the road wherePhilip was good-humoredly unwinding the hullabaloo for a crowd ofgleeful young darkies, and suddenly she turned very white and stern.
"No! No!" she said. "It must be as I said."
And presently, with faith in his poisoned arrows Ronador went, pledgedto await her summons.
Diane sat very still beneath the cedars, with the noise of themusic-machine wild torture to her ears.