"Really?"
"Yes, really. Can you leave me now?"
Something more than the glory of the sunset shone in Katherine's face as she stood between him and the water. She was subtly beautiful, with the infinite motherhood, which lives in every woman's heart, and as he looked at her, the shackles of his dead cowardly self fell away. A great resolve within him slowly swelled into a controlling power – he would be worthy of her who stood beside him, cost what it might. His voice was tender and caressing when he spoke again.
"Leave you? No, Katherine, no."
They walked home together and spoke of other things. There was a stronger bond between them, and the water seemed cold and bitter now – very different from the eerie, half-human thing that had tempted him an hour ago.
He tossed restlessly through the night, thinking of what Lester had said about painting from a human standpoint. Perhaps he meant that he should paint men and women, instead of goddesses.
The vision of Katherine came into his mind as she stood with the blue water behind her and the sunset upon her face and hair; her eyes full of earthly longing, and more than earthly appeal. He would paint her like that, and he roused from his cowardly lethargy into high resolve.
Her salary was raised and she worked happily at the office, while Robert painted at home. In the evening she sat and sewed on tiny garments for the human secret, which spring was to reveal. He sat and looked at her, seldom speaking, content to watch the holy joy in her face, and either that or his coming fatherhood, sometimes thrilled him with a tenderness so great that his love was almost joy.
The "Aurora" had been sold, not for a large sum, it is true, but for enough to take care of them both until the new picture should be finished. It was done at last and placed on sale. Painted from a human standpoint it undoubtedly was, and it drew many admirers but no purchaser. For four weeks it had been at the gallery and Robert began to grow despondent again.
A fall morning dawned, gray and dull, and the lake seemed to tremble with portent of coming disaster. At night the wind rose and lashed the water into seething foam. The sound of the storm made Katherine afraid, but she sank into a fitful slumber at last, while Robert kept a light in the window, hoping none were at sea.
But at half-past eleven there was a terrific rap at the door. It was Mickey, disheveled and breathless.
"There do be a wreck, Misther Carroll," she cried, "there's sky-rockets goin' off and the life crew be ordered out, and I thought ye'd be afther wantin' to see it."
The thing was evidently a circus for Mickey; we hold life so lightly at the age of sixteen.
Katherine, trembling and afraid, was already at the door. She wrung her hands, crying piteously, "Oh, Robert! Robert! don't go."
"I must go, sweetheart, they may need me."
"Then I am going too." And she began to hurry into her clothes.
"Dress warmly, dear," he called.
"Yes, I will, and we must take some blankets with us."
Once outside they had no difficulty in locating the wreck. The northern sky was aflame with rockets, and people from all directions were hurrying northward.
The Northwestern University life crew was already on the beach trying to shoot a line to the sinking ship, half a mile from the shore. The boat had been ordered back, for it was certain death in such a sea. The fourth attempt was successful and a shout of joy went up, dimly heard above the storm.
Mickey danced about excitedly as they tied rope after rope of greater strength to the slender cord, that had been shot to the upper deck, but Katherine felt faint, even with her husband's arm around her, when they made preparations to pull the ship's life-boat ashore.
It required almost superhuman strength, but the rush of water westward aided them materially. Katherine never forgot that time of waiting – human lives on shore struggling to save the human lives at sea, and the tense cruel crash of the cold waves.
Lifted high upon an angry crest, the boat was dashed heavily upon the beach. The captain of the stranded vessel, eight seamen and one passenger, were helped out with eager hands.
The passenger was a middle-aged man, who appeared dignified and prosperous, in spite of his damp and disheveled condition. His first remark was in the nature of a recapitulation.
"Well, of all the excitin' trips!"
Robert and Katherine laughed in spite of themselves, and hastened to extend to the stranger the hospitality of their little home for the remainder of the night. It was barely one o'clock, and the Honourable Mr. Marchand accepted gladly, if not gratefully.
He trudged sturdily along in the blankets they had wrapped around him, disdaining Robert's proffered assistance, but once stretched out upon their couch before a blazing fire, he became much more tractable. He called for a glass of whiskey complaining that what he had been through would be enough to kill him if he didn't at once supply this long-felt want of the inner man. A telephone message to the nearest drug store brought the quart of stimulant he thought he needed for the night, and when he was comfortably filled with his favourite beverage, life began to assume a more pleasant aspect. He graphically told the story of the wreck to his interested listeners and then imbibed a little more liquid nourishment. After a while he remarked sagely – "It's a lucky thing I didn't go down, some folks would have lost millions."
"Is that so?" asked Katherine pleasantly.
"Yes, millions! Look here, young woman, did you ever hear of a syndicate?"
Katherine thought she had heard the word somewhere.
"Well, I'm one of 'em!"
The whiskey was evidently getting in its work in the way of lubricating the tongue of the shipwrecked capitalist, and after waiting a moment, he continued:
"I'm on my way to Chicago to perfect a combine in – " and he astounded Katherine by unfolding the inside history of a daring and infamous combination – a gigantic steal, which if consummated, would change the ownership of millions. He named the leading conspirators, explained the vulnerable points in the scheme, and gleefully boasted of his own skill and diplomacy.
He finally fell asleep, but not until Katherine had got all the necessary points concerning the outrageous robbery which had been so adroitly planned.
Robert met her at the door. "Got a scoop?"
"Well, I should say so. A big one too!"
"How do you know it is true?"
"In vino veritas," whispered Katherine. "Besides, Carleton told one of our night men the other day, that promotion was in store for the fellow who 'got on to' any of the schemes of this new syndicate." She had heard so much newspaper slang that her lapse from the grammatical standard was perhaps pardonable.
Until nearly three o'clock she wrote hurriedly a description of the wreck, and also of the new "combine," Robert dozing in an easy chair meanwhile. She woke him up to give him her manuscript. "To the telegraph office, quick! It'll be in time for the city edition."
The Honourable Mr. Marchand slept late the next morning, and Katharine sent word to the office that she could not come until the next day. About noon, however, their guest took his departure, apparently but little the worse for his vivid night's experience. At a corner he bought a copy of the morning's Express and shortly thereafter leaned up against a wall for support. "Gee whiz!" The Honourable Mr. Marchand mopped his brow and read the startling headlines again. "Might as well go back to Cincinnati and Cleveland and Toronto, and all them towns I've just come from! Wonder how in thunder the thing ever got out!"
He strolled down Wabash Avenue to collect his scattered thoughts, and stopped half mechanically, to look into Stanley & Brown's window. Carroll's painting stared him full in the face, and a great light broke in upon him.
"That's her! That's the girl what done it! Blamed if I don't like her for it!"
That afternoon a messenger boy rapped at the studio door with a letter from the Express office for Katherine.
"Dear Mrs. Carroll," it ran, "we think you deserve a two weeks' vacation at full salary which is now double the former sum, and we beg you to accept the enclosed check as a slight testimonial of our gratitude for the biggest scoop of the year. Please report for duty on the eighteenth, and be ready to take the exchange editor's desk."
She was dazed. "Two weeks' vacation, double salary, promotion, and – "
Robert picked it up, it was a check for two hundred dollars.
During the jubilation which followed, a telegraph boy pounded vigorously at the door, but he might as well have kept still, since his efforts were unheard. Finally he opened it, and utterly unabashed by the spectacle of a gentleman kissing a lady, and the lady seeming to enjoy it, he fairly shrieked: "telegram."
Katherine vanished instantly, and Carroll read the despatch.
"Picture sold for highest price. Purchaser unknown.
"Stanley & Brown."The mythical "quail on toast" became a reality that night, and the house seemed far too small to hold so much exuberant joy. In the morning, they went together to Stanley & Brown's to collect the picture money, and start a "really truly bank account," as Katherine said.
The firm was quite at a loss to know who the purchaser was, as he took the picture away with him in a carriage, and paid cash instead of by check, but the man who helped him put it on the back seat of the carriage reported that he had muttered to himself, as he was climbing in: "That's her! That's the girl what done it!" This may have given Mr. and Mrs. Carroll some clue to the identity of the unknown benefactor.
