she was awakened by the rattling of her jalousie, and lifted her head, wondering if a storm were rising.
“julia! julia!” called an imperative voice.
she sprang to her feet and held her breath, not believing herself awake.
“julia!” this time the voice was savage. “if you don’t come out, i’ll break in. what i’ve got to say won’t keep.”
julia unfastened the jalousie. tay stood there in his evening clothes, and without a hat. his face was distraught.
“dan!” gasped julia.
he put his hands about her waist and lifted her down. “now,” he said, “take me to some place where we can talk, and as far from the house and the gates as possible. they’ll be coming home presently.”
she walked swiftly down a path, turned to the right, and pushing aside the heavy growth from an older path, long out of use, led the way to the ruins of a bath-house in a corner of the garden. it was surrounded by heavy palms, but its paneless windows admitted the full moon’s light. julia sat limply down on the circular seat before the empty pool. through the open doorway she could see and hear the sea. the moonlight was dazzling, nevis having forgotten to shake out her night-robes. her bewildered mind took note of details while tay walked back a few steps to make sure they had not been followed.
he came in and stood before her.
“there’s the devil to pay!” he exclaimed. “did you get a cable last monday?”
“yes. didn’t you?”
“i did not, or i shouldn’t be wanting to shoot myself. dark promised to cable the moment it happened, and only to-night, half an hour ago, i got a cable from lady dark telling me that france died last monday, and that she had only just heard it. confound dark! talk about the wrath of god. it’s chain lightning compared to an englishman.”
“no doubt the duke suppressed the notice. it would be like him.”
“it was dark’s business to find out. i should have employed a detective. when a thing’s to do, do it. well, here’s the result! i’ve got myself into the devil of a mess?—”
“you’ve been making love to fanny.”
“i have—or rather—not been making love from my point of view—only she doesn’t see it in that light. i’ve been flirting like the deuce. when i got your note that morning, i took it for pure caprice. it seemed to me totally without excuse. you had promised faithfully to meet me every day. i had not a suspicion of the truth. moreover, i had just received cables from california that stirred me up. they couldn’t understand my desertion at such a moment, and no wonder. to be told that i had come here for nothing—to be coolly asked to wait a week—to know that i had to stay whether i would or not—well, i felt as if hell had been let loose inside of me. fanny brought the note?—”
“fanny!” julia sprang to her feet. “fanny? i didn’t give it to her.”
“she brought it all the same, and she looked something more than ripe for a flirtation, and beautiful?—”
“you have fallen in love with her! i saw you this morning.”
“oh, you did? well, you didn’t see much. i am not in love with her, but—well, it’s got to be said—she’s in love with me, or thinks she is. i was treated to high tragedy an hour since in the garden of bath house. i never for a moment thought she would take the thing seriously—have seen too many summer flirtations—american girls know exactly what that sort of thing means—but this girl might have nevis inside of her. she wanted to elope with me to-night—threatens to drown herself?—”
“great heaven! what have you done?”
“i feel like don juan, of course, only as it happens i haven’t made downright love to her. i was on the edge of it once or twice, she’s so infernally pretty, but, well, hang it all, i’m in love with you to the limit, all the more so that you’re not dead easy game. if i hadn’t been, i’d have made love to her fast enough. but i flirted as hard as i know how, and she took that for love-making, thought i held back because i felt bound to you, and—well—it was the hateful things she said about you to-night that put me in a rage and made me hustle her back into the ball-room and into the arms of one of her other admirers. i had gone as far as i intended, and made up my mind, not two minutes before i got lady dark’s cable, to go to one of the other islands and wait for the steamer. when i got that cable, of course i understood. now are you properly repentant? why in thunder didn’t you tell me in your note?—”
“of course, i thought you knew—”
“never take anything for granted where there are big things at stake. but what are we to do? i’m going to marry you to-morrow evening at seven o’clock over in fig tree church, but what is to be done with fanny? she’s all fixed for tragedy, and there’s no knowing just what a girl of that sort might do. i don’t care to begin our life with a horror. you must take her in hand to-morrow morning and talk her into reason. i gave her to understand that i didn’t love her, but a man has to say a thing of that sort so decently that a girl never believes him—particularly a girl like fanny, who has a sublime confidence in herself i’ve never seen equalled. what’s to be done? what’s to be done?”
“are you quite sure that you love me, that you haven’t really wavered?—”
“oh, lord! i’m more mad about you than ever.”
“would you have married fanny if you had met her first?”
“there’s no woman on earth i should ever have wanted to marry but you. do you fancy a man thinks of marriage with every girl he puts in his time with? i’ve had a dozen flirtations—as hard and a good deal longer than this; and neither of us the worse, i may add. i’m no heart-breaker. our girls know the game too well.”
“if i thought you were merely bent upon being honorable?—”
“julia, if i didn’t love you, i’d tell you so. do you suppose i’m the man to jump into matrimony blindfolded? i’ve seen too many of my friends marry—and divorce four years later. i’m no candidate for the divorce court. what i want is a wife i can love and work with for the rest of my life. that wife is you, or will be this time to-morrow night. so cut all that out and set your wits to work.”
julia moved her eager eyes from his face and looked out over the sea. she did not speak for several moments, and tay saw her face set and grow whiter, her eyes shine until they looked like polished steel.
“leave fanny to me,” she said finally. “i’ll dispose of her. she will give no further trouble.”
tay stirred uneasily. “oh—you don’t mean—that is hardly fair?—”
“fair?” asked julia, with unmitigated scorn.
“couldn’t you give her a good womanly talking-to?”
“and what good do you suppose that would do? did you ever hear of love being talked out of any woman?”
“i know—but you are clever enough without that—and after all it isn’t fair. it’s a violent assault on personality?—”
julia whirled about and confronted him with blazing eyes.
“fair? fair?” she cried. “and do you suppose i’d think twice about what is fair with that treacherous little fool? do you suppose i would let any scruple weigh a feather with me when the happiness of my whole life is at stake? if you didn’t love me, you could go and i’d not condescend to lift a finger; but you do, you do, and nothing shall stand between us; nothing, i tell you! if i could have caught her alone this morning, i’d have twisted her neck and held her under the water until she was dead. and yet you imagine i’d stop at hypnotizing her? for the matter of that it will be treating her far better than she deserves, for she will practically have forgotten you when i am finished with her. she deserves to be left here in sackcloth—oh, she’s not the sort that kills herself, she’s far too selfish and vain—but she’s noisy and stubborn and the sort that calf-love makes ungovernable. she’d turn the island upside down and run to my mother with the story that you had compromised her—there’s nothing she wouldn’t tell her. my mother is a very old woman. the excitement might make her so ill that i should be detained here for months. and i won’t! i won’t! i’ll leave this island with you!”
tay brought his hands down on her shoulders and gripped them. “by god, julia!” he said hoarsely, “you are the woman for me. together we’ll conquer the earth.”
“oh, you’ll find me useful to you in many ways you barely suspect now. i can do more than hypnotize! but i don’t wish you to misunderstand me. what i do to fanny will be nothing more than the reputable scientific psychotherapeutists do every day to their patients. i shall give her an immediate suggestion that her will shall not be weakened, that she shall no longer be under my control after coming out of the hypnotic trance. and as i said before, she will benefit equally with ourselves. we don’t practise black magic, we initiates; not that we are above it, but because we don’t dare. it rebounds like an arrow and strikes our greater powers dead. i never have harmed any one and i never shall, but that leaves an enormous field for action.”
“good. and she’d not think of going to bath house before to-morrow night. she heard me accept an invitation to lunch on board the cruiser. by the way, you might plant in that ill-regulated head the suggestion that she be less anxious to fall in love. there are men of all sorts?—”
“that would be unfair, if you like! our impulses are our birthright. to alter personality would be unjust, almost criminal, for the impulses that make a fool or worse of us in certain circumstances may be necessary for our happiness. fanny must work out her own destiny. i shall settle my income from france’s estate on her, and induce aunt maria to take charge of her as far as england. there ishbel will introduce her?—”
“that’s right!” interrupted tay, viciously. “turn her loose on dark. serve him right.”
“dark is the best-managed man in england. fanny’ll not get a chance at him. and she’ll have a husband before the season is over.”
“good. but are you dead sure you can do it? you failed with me, you know.”
“because i hated to do it, and because—well, you are you. but fanny! to-morrow she’ll be sleepy and stupid from the excitement of to-night, and she will eat an enormous lunch, as she always does. she is curious about india. i’ll interest her in that subject at the table and then invite her to my room, and interest her more. she’s never heard of hypnosis. i’ll offer to put her to sleep. she’ll consent, not only because she’s worn out, and yet too excited and disturbed for sleep, but because i choose that she shall. i’ll tell her to fix her eyes on mine, and the moment she does that she’s lost. in just three minutes she’ll be a lump of wax. now, are you satisfied? why, if i had the least misgiving, i’d summon hadji sadr?.”
tay laughed. “oh, julia! julia! you’re all right. now listen to me. to-morrow i shall take out a special license?—”
“i’d rather you waited until just before we sail. my mother?—”
“don’t expect me to show any concern for your mother. she’s at the bottom of all this trouble. she set fanny on me. i had already begun to suspect it before your aunt let it out—i have had more than one scene to-night!—i feel sure she saw us together the day i called at the house; at all events she got on to the facts. i didn’t suspect this earlier because i hadn’t really believed that she had kept fanny so close—girls are always working on a man’s sympathies. otherwise i shouldn’t have fallen for it. now, to continue. i shall marry you to-morrow. you will meet me at fig tree church at seven o’clock. hardly any one is abroad at that hour. you can keep it from your mother until we are about to sail, if you choose. that is all one to me. but i’ll take no more chances. now give me your hands and say that nothing on god’s earth shall prevent you from coming to fig tree church to-morrow evening at seven o’clock.”
julia gave him her hands. “i’ll be there,” she said. “i, too, shall take no more chances.”
