Chapter XX: The Hand of Destiny

Edward Paxton, with nothing special to do, was lying on one of the cushioned seats of the Firefly, humming his favorite tune. Mechanically he felt in his pockets for a roll of bills.

"All earned," he said softly, smiling into the deep blue sky with an expression of ineffable content. "Pretty good for a new hand," he added, listening with pleasure to the quiet music of the waves lapping the sides of the boat.

He drew the money from his pocket and began to count it.

"I beg your pardon," said a voice just over him.

Edward looked up quickly. It was his cousin, Clarence, flicking at his duck trousers with his everlasting rattan cane. "By Jove," added Clarence with a somewhat startled expression on his face, "by Jupiter, but you resemble my cousin Edward! Georgiana told me, but I didn't altogether believe her. I've really never seen your face well by daylight before, you know."

Edward did not trust himself to reply.

"I came down here," Clarence went on, "to make you an humble apology. It was awfully nasty of me, you know, that day to have spoken as I did. I hope it's all over and forgotten now, old man. Isn't it?"

"Yes," said Edward, thrusting his hands in his pockets and turning his face toward the lake.

"How is business at present? Pretty good?" went on Clarence in his most ingratiating tone, climbing into the boat without being asked and sitting down beside Edward.

"Pretty good."

"I imagine you earn quite a good deal now, don't you, taking out parties every day? And I notice you are working on the motor cars at night, too."

Edward shrugged his shoulders. He was not surprised at what was coming next.

"I had a beastly stroke of luck last night, old man. I went over to the Casino with some fellows and lost more than I happened to have on hand just now. What do you say to lending me a small sum at a high rate of interest?"

"Why don't you borrow from your cousin?" asked Edward.

"By Jove--but of course you haven't heard the news, old man, have you, not having any way to hear it. Edward's played the deuce with my old Grandmamma and she's disinherited him. Sent him packing, bag and baggage, don't you know."

"What----" the engineer began and then turned his face away to hide his expression of amazement, horror, and alas, fear.

"I'm the only heir, now, don't you know. Of course, Georgiana counts for nothing. I'm the old lady's favorite grandchild and I shall be as rich as Croesus, I tell you. You can safely lend me any amount. I'll pay you back twice over. Grandmamma can't last much longer now. She'll go off with apoplexy in one of her fits of rage. She's bound to, don't you know. She'll not last a year."

Edward's shoulders suddenly began to shake with irrepressible laughter, not at the thought of the ending Clarence had pictured for his unfortunate grandmother, but at Clarence's unexampled assurance.

"It is something of a joke, old man, isn't it? But about that money, you know," he was beginning, while he drew a package of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Edward which was refused, and lit another himself. "By Jupiter, if here isn't the old woman herself," he exclaimed laying the cigarette down on the seat. "Were you looking for me, Grandmamma?" he asked, jumping off and removing his hat with a flourish.

"No, I'm not looking for you. I'm looking for a boat with a first-class, reliable engineer in it, who will take me out on the lake without upsetting me into the water."

"Here is the one, Mrs. Paxton-Steele," said Elinor, trying not to smile, as she helped the old lady into the Firefly with Clarence's assistance. "This is the boat and the engineer both. Will you take us for a little ride, Edward?" she asked, giving the boy a meaning glance.

"Let me out first," demanded Clarence, who had no mind to go boat riding that afternoon with his aged relative.

"No such thing," snapped his grandmother. "Stay where you are. You know how to run a motor-boat and if one engineer fails, we shall have another at hand. Stay where you are, but don't talk. I want to hear Mistress Elinor Butler talk about her home in America, and what methods her parents used to rear her into such a fine, spirited young woman, who is not afraid to speak out when she wants to."

Elinor blushed. She had planned other things for this boat ride and this incorrigible old eagle was upsetting all her schemes. Both grandsons looked up with interest. Never had they heard their grandmother speak in this way before.

Edward started the boat and presently they were sailing smoothly over the pleasant waters of Lake Worth. Mrs. Paxton-Steele, who was enjoying the ride extremely, had hardly noticed the engineer who had pulled his cap well down over his eyes and bent over the engine. Clarence, bored to extinction, looked sullenly toward shore, and took furtive puffs from his cigarette which was concealed between times on the seat beside him. The English lady had become reminiscent. She was telling Elinor a really thrilling story of a shipwreck in which she had nearly lost her life some fifty years before. Elinor remembered afterwards that she had an indescribable feeling of waiting for something. As the tropical shores receded and the striped awnings on the lawn of the Duffy villa became spots of white, she exchanged a long glance with Edward, who smiled slightly and began whistling softly the air he had composed to "The white swan spread his snowy sail."

After all, life was an exceedingly pleasant thing to a perfectly able-bodied and quite talented young man, even if he were disinherited by an irascible old grandparent.

"It all proved to me," finished Mrs. Paxton-Steele, "that courage--" (Clarence laid down his cigarette and began to listen and Edward turned his face toward her) "real courage, is the most admirable trait of character that----"

One of those inexplicable little puffs of wind which people who sail in boats on a lake must learn to expect, gave the old lady's hat brim an impudent flop, tossed Edward's cap to the other end of the boat, and blew Clarence's cigarette dangerously near the gasoline tank. But this same frolicsome breeze was the means of saving two lives. Both boys rose at the same moment and moved to the other end of the boat, one to get his cap and the other his cigarette which he thought had blown that way.

The next instant there was a loud explosion. The boat was shaken as a leaf in the wind, then with a convulsive shiver lay still in the water, like a creature stricken to death. A puff of smoke followed the noise and after that a tongue of flame shot high into the air and began licking its way hungrily along the seat.

Elinor found herself lying across Mrs. Paxton-Steele's lap and the two boys were flat in the bottom of the boat. The old lady's face had turned a deep purplish red and she sat looking at the flames with a strange, stupid expression.

Then up jumped Clarence, gave one look at his grandmother, another at the burning boat, and leaped into the water. With long, even strokes he made for the shore. As his grandmother watched him, a light came into her eyes and she tried to speak, but she could only mutter in a thick unnatural voice:

"Cow-ad-cowad-cowad!"

In the meantime Elinor was throwing water into Edward's face. He had been stunned by the explosion but consciousness came back to him with the first dash of cold spray on his cheeks, and he sat up. Perhaps, in his dazed condition, he had forgotten that his grandmother and Elinor were in the burning boat and only saw the flames leaping high into the air. At any rate, without looking behind him, he jumped to the seat, stood for an instant poised on the side of the boat, and dived into the water as his cousin had done. When he rose again to the top and started to strike out toward shore, he glanced back over his shoulder. What he saw was his grandmother's countenance, still that strange purplish color, and Elinor sitting beside her, holding her hand with a very haughty, proud expression on her face.

With three strokes he was at the side of the boat.

"Oh, what have I done?" he cried as he drew himself on board again.

It all happened very quickly, and Clarence was still hardly twenty yards from them, when Edward, kneeling in the bottom of the launch, drew out the fire extinguishers.

"It's the gasoline that's burning now," he said in a quiet, steady voice. "If we can only put that out we're all right."

Wrenching the cap off the top of the torpedo shaped object, he rushed to the burning end of the boat and poured it over the flames. There were only two extinguishers, however, and the fire still continued to lick its way along the cushions after all the fluid had been used.

Elinor drew out a striped Roman blanket that Miss Campbell was in the habit of using to keep her knees warm when sailing, and thrust it into his hands.

They dipped it into the lake and throwing it over the obstinate little flames which still remained, extinguished them completely.

"It's all out," announced Edward, looking quite old and grizzled with his eyebrows and front hair burned to an ashen gray.

"I'm afraid your grandmother has had a bad shock, Edward," said Elinor. "We must get her to shore as quickly as possible."

"Grandmamma, dear grandmamma," he exclaimed, kneeling beside her with a sudden impulse of affection which he would have lavished on her long before with a little encouragement.

The poor old woman lifted one hand heavily and put it on his head.

"Brase-boy sedward-my granson," she tried to say.

"There comes the other launch," cried Elinor as a boat shot out from shore. And it did not reach them any too soon, for the Firefly had a hole pierced in her side and was already fast filling with water.

It was not an easy matter to transfer Mrs. Paxton-Steele from one boat to the other, but it was finally accomplished, and towing the stricken Firefly after them, they made for the shore.

Nobody had remembered Clarence until they heard him hail loudly. He was evidently very tired and had been resting on his back when they reached him. But he clambered in and plucked up breath sufficient to say:

"I had hoped to get to land and bring a boat back myself, grandmamma."

"Cowad-an-liar," she mumbled and closed her eyes.