Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 111, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1916 — PIQUE AND PERIL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PIQUE AND PERIL

By FRANCES ELIZABETH LANYON.

She who would be always dainty was all bedraggled. She who was used to shelter, warmth and comfort was alone, darkness and a howling storm all about her. She who at her princely home had but to nod to bring a score of anxious servitors to her beck and call was all solitary. "Oh, this is dreadful!” gasped Helena Waltham as she staggered against a tree, fairly blown there by the fierce wind and she clung to a vine encircling it and shuddered and crouched. "Why did I do it, why did I venture when I knew the risk?” she wailed and then, her eyes flashing, her courage blazing out, she said with set lips: "I hate’ him!” She hated him, her fiance, Gerald Morse, because she had found him out. She hated him because he had come into her life at its sweetest period of hope and happiness as an ideal only to be rudely shattered. She hated him —and she covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed bitterly at the thought—because he had inspired her to drive from her side a true good man. “Oh, the sting of it—oh, the mean, cruel act!” she wailed and sank to the ground not caring much what became of her. Rodney Preston! His grave face, full of character and nobleness, hovered now within her anguished mental vision. Three months agone they had been friends and he, a poor but rising young lawyer, had made her proud of his company, for he was a favorite with everybody. When her father had introduced Gerald Morse there was no right on the part of Preston to resent it. What claim had he upon Helena? But when one day Morse had almost

ordered her not to recognize “that man/’ dazzled by the brilliancy of this new star, nettled because Preston had so seemingly accepted her action indifferently, Helena was Influenced to award him a cold stare only. “I can make it up later,” she whispered anxiously to herself when she mourned for the Ignoble act, but she had cut Rodney Preston to the quick. He did not cross her path again. She learned that he had left the town. Then had come her punishment to learn the real sordid selfishness of Gerald Morse. Disgust had come for this frivolous fortune hunter. And now — hatred, she could not help it! It was just at dusk and she had endured the company of Morse in a stroll along the river, morose, unsociable, unhappy. In her restless capriciousness she had declared for a row. Gerald Morse had demurred. He had done more—he had insisted that she abandon her design. “A storm is coming up,” he said. “We will pass up the risk of a big blow on the treacherous Vermilion.” “Not I!” declared Helena with resolute lips and disdainful eyes and she deliberately proceeded to the light skiff moored near by. “My word! ” uttered the daunted Morse as she set t adrift with a contemptuous toss of her head. “You’ll have a master, I can tell you, when you marry me!” he shouted after her, nettled and unwise. “When I do!” retorted Helena hotly and she wrenched the engagement ring from her finger and scornfully cast it into the water. The blackness of dusk and storm overtook her where the stream was widest. Then there was chaos. She drifted, the oars were wrenched from her grasp. The frail bark struck a rock and collapsed like a cockle shell and she crept to shore drenched and blinded. Soon Helena knew the spot where she had landed—Barren Island, just below the town where the river broadened out to the dimensions of a lake. She shuddered as she recalled its loneliness. Many a time she had passed Its uninviting length. It was rarely visited by the townspeople. Helena crouched down beside the tree. Even the pelting rain reached her there. She moved over to a thick Clump of underbrush. Suddenly she paused and stared waveringly. A light!” she breathed flutterlngly. “It mfist be on the island, it is so near. I never heard that anyone lived on the Wand. Oh, I hope it means shelter!” She was shivering from head to foot. She stumbled as she started in the direction of the strange spark of light It was to come up to a rude hut built of odds and ends of old boards, bark and logs. It had a window. Helena staggered up to It

“It is he—oh, the cruel mockery of fate!” she moaned. She clung to the window frame, half fainting. Then her senses reeled. Her shoulder bore a pane of glass Inwards. A man reading at a rude table looked up—Rodney Preston. Then he rushed outside to catch in his arms the collapsing form of his strange visitor. She swayed into insensibility. She opened her eyes to find herself on a broad settee encased in warm coverings, a blazing fire in the rude fireplace, her rescuer pacing the floor to and fro in anxious perplexity. Never had he seemed so strong, so noble, so dignified. He hastened to press to her lips a strengthening cordial. She shrank from his frank but kind treatment. “You are safe here, Miss Waltham,” he spoke at last. “It may be an hour or two more, but I must get to the mainland and make some arrangement to take you back to your friends —for your sake.” She understood the rare delicacy of his words. She could have screamed outright from anguish as he strode from the hut—to swim to the mainland. No craft could be guided through those boiling waters.. Within two hours Preston had returned. He wrapped his guest up carefully In a great blanket. He carried her through the storm to the beach of the island. There was a boat and reaching from a great tree to the mainland was a rope. And, holding to this, Preston dragged the tipping, tossing yawl across the rushing void. An old ferryman led her to a carriage in waiting. “You will come to me—oh, promise!” she pleaded, but Preston shook his head sadly. “Then I will go to him!” she whispered tumultuously to herself three days later, and she did. For she now knew of Rodney Preston’s fearful battle with the flood that eventful night of her young life —of how; he had sought out Gerald Morse to assist him in removing Helena to her home, of the selfish refusal of the latter to venture into such peril, of seeking other help and placing her in the hands of her family within the hour. Rodney Preston, who hadsought the hermit life of the island to wear out his longing love, sat in front of his little hut one bright morning when Helena appeared. She spoke not a word at the first. She clasped his hand, she sank to her knees and kissed it. He was mightily moved, but he was mute. Then she sobbed out her sorrow, her gratitude, and, too, her humiliation. She was free from her promise to the poltroon who had shrunk from saving her at the cost of his own discomfiture and peril. “Oh, don’t you understand!” she cried —“don’t you understand!” and she lifted her pleading eyes to his own. And the light shone in upon his soul at last, for in theirglowing depths Rodney Preston read the fervor of an undying love. (Copyright, 1516, by W. G. Chapman.)

Looked Up.