THE NINE DAYS OF SILENCE.

Dr. Fabos Comes to Certain Conclusions.

We were nine days together at the Valley House without any word or sign from those without. The evil of this conspiracy I found almost less to be condemned than the childish folly of it. There is nothing more remarkable in the story of crime than the senile mistakes of some of its masters—men, shrewd to the point of wonder in all other affairs, but betraying their mental aberration in some one act at which even the very ignorant might smile. So it was with this sham story of the valley and the pretended accident which kept me from the ship. Every day, with a punctuality as amusing as the tale was plausible, the old negro and the servants below apologised for the accident which alone, they declared, prevented my return to the ship.

A disaster had overtaken the valley bridge; the passage by the mountains was never used but by General Fordibras alone! That was their tale. As for the General, his desolation would be beyond words when he heard of it. Unfortunately he had been detained at St. Michael’s, and they could only imagine that the rough seas of the last few days were answerable for it. All that was humanly possible, they felt sure, was being done by the engineers below. Fortunate that the mining operations in the mountains had brought so many workmen to the island. My release, they said, and that of their young mistress could be but a matter of a few hours.

Now, I have turned up my diary for those nine days, and I find that upon the first of them I came to certain definite conclusions which may be of interest to my readers. They were these:

(1) The criminals feared nothing from the presence of my yacht. Either the island was watched by some powerful and speedy armed ship of their own, or they had convinced Captain Larry that all was well with me.

(2) They were in league with the local Portuguese officials of Villa do Porto, who, I did not doubt, had been richly rewarded for a little diligent blindness.

(3) They believed that I had fallen in love with Joan Fordibras, and for her sake would either hold my peace for ever or join them. This was their master stroke. It was also the apotheosis of their folly.

Imagine, at the same time, my own difficulties. Save for two ancient servants, a maid and a negro, this young girl and I were alone at the chalet and seemingly as remote from the world as though we had been prisoners of an Eastern despotism. She knew and I knew with what hopes and designs this clumsy trap had been contrived. Let us find solace in each other’s society, and our human passion must prove stronger than any merely moral impulse directed against Valentine Imroth and his confederates. Such was the argument employed by our enemies. They would expose me to the condemnation of the world if I withstood them, or secure my silence if I assented to their plans. The thing was so daring, so utterly unexpected, that I do believe it would have succeeded but for one plain fact these men had overlooked. And that was nothing less than the good commonsense and real womanly courage which my little companion brought to our assistance, and offered me unflinchingly in that amazing hour.

For you must understand that we had talked but in enigmas hitherto, both at Dieppe and at the Villa San Jorge, where I went upon landing from my yacht. Now, it fell upon me to speak to her as to one who must share my secrets and be the confidante of them. Cost me what it might, let there be a great love for her growing in my heart, I resolved that not one word of it should be uttered at Santa Maria. So much I owed both to myself and her. There were subjects enough, God knows, upon which a man might be eloquent. I chose the story of her own life to begin with, and heard her story as no other lips could have told it so sweetly.

This was upon the second day of our captivity, a warm, sunny day with a fresh breeze blowing in from west by north and a glorious heaven of blue sky above us. I remember that she wore a gown of lace and had a turquoise chain about her throat. We had breakfasted together and heard the servants’ familiar apologies. The General would certainly return from St. Michael’s to-day, they said; the engineers could not fail to restore the bridge by sunset. Joan heard them with ears that tingled. I did not hear them at all, but going out with her to the gardens, I asked her if she had always known General Fordibras, and what her recollections of that association were. To which she replied that she remembered him as long as she remembered anyone at all.

“There was another face—so long ago, so very long ago,” she said, almost wearily. “I have always hoped and believed that it was my mother’s face. When I was a very little girl, I lived in a house which stood by a great river. It must have been Hudson River, I think; General Fordibras used to visit the house. I was very young then, and I wonder that I remember it.”

“You left this house,” I put it to her, “and then you went to school. Was that in America or London?”

“It was first in New York, then in London, and to finish in Paris. I left school three years ago, and we have been all over the world since. General Fordibras never stops long in one place. He says he is too restless. I don’t know, Dr. Fabos. I have given up trying to think about it.”

“And hate me accordingly for my questions. I will make them as brief as possible. How long is it since you knew Mr. Imroth, and where did you first meet him?”

This reference plainly embarrassed her. I saw that she answered my question with reluctance.

“Please do not speak of Mr. Imroth. I am afraid of him, Dr. Fabos; I do believe that I am more afraid of him than of anybody I have ever known. If evil comes to me, Mr. Imroth will send it.”

“A natural antipathy. Some day, Joan, you will look upon all this and thank God that a stranger came to your island. I shall have done with Mr. Valentine Imroth then. There will be no need at all to fear him.”

She did not understand me, and plied me with many questions, some exceedingly shrewd, all directed to one end, that she might know the best or the worst of the life that they had been living and what part the General had played in it. To this I responded that I could by no means judge until the case both for and against him were wholly known to me.

“He may be but a dupe,” I said; “time and opportunity will tell me. You owe much to him, you say, for many kindnesses received during childhood. I shall not forget that when the day of reckoning comes. Joan, I shall forget no one who has been kind to you.”

Her gratitude was pretty enough to see, and I witnessed it many times during the long hours of those hazardous days. From morn to night she was my little companion of the gardens. I came to know her as a man rarely knows a woman who is not a wife to him. Every bush, every path, every tree and shrub of our kingdom we named and numbered. Grown confident in my protection, her sweet laughter became the music of the valley, her voice the notes of its song, her presence its divinity. If I had discerned the secret of her fearlessness, that must be a secret to me also, locked away as a treasure that a distant day will reveal. My own anxieties were too heavy that I dared to share them with her. The yacht, my friends, my servant, where were they? What happened beyond that monstrous curtain of the mountains, that p............