CHAPTER XVIII
THE BEGINNING OF TRAGEDY
While Jane and Mabel sat in the sun leaning comfortably against thefriendly dune, a group of people came towards their retreat from thecrowded bathing beach.
"Goodness, I wish they would stay away from here," grumbled Mabel."I'm still panting for breath and I certainly don't want to move."
"I reckon they won't bother us if we don't bother them," suggestedJane. "It looks like a swell bunch."
"That's what I've got against them. How can a body eat before suchelegance and Charlie and Breck will be back soon with food, I amthinking. That's a pretty girl in the Vanity Fair bathing suit andscarlet cap--and look at the old gent in yachting togs! He must bepostmaster general of all the railroads or something grand. He looksas though he owned the island and was thinking about annexing theocean."
"He doesn't seem to take much pleasure in his possessions," laughedJane. "He looks sad to me."
The gentleman in question was a powerfully built man of about sixty,with iron gray hair, piercing blue eyes, a high Roman nose that seemedto flaunt its aristocratic lines and a mouth and jaw of such force anddetermination that Jane wondered at the impertinence of a wave that,having leaped on the back of one of its brothers, came tumbling in allout of order, wetting the immaculate white shoes of the nabob. Helooked indignant but evidently felt it to be beneath his notice.
Behind him trooped a crowd of young people, five girls and two youngmen. The old gentleman was the only one not in bathing costume.
"This is a good place to go in, Father," said the pretty girl in theVanity Fair suit. "I simply could not have gone in with that commoncrowd up there."
"Humph!" whispered Mabel, "that must be the princess."
"Of course not! Such persons!" spoke up one of the other girls.
"No one knows them," from another.
"Well, hardly!" drawled one of the young men who seemed to be dancingattendance on the pretty girl Mabel had designated as "the princess."
"I hope they can swim and know something about undertow and getting'boiled'," murmured Jane.
"The snobs! It might do them good to get a good drubbing on theirstuck-up persons," answered Mabel, looking at the interlopers withround wondering eyes.
The interlopers in turn paid not the least attention to either Jane orMabel. If they had been sand fleas or skates' eggs, their presencecould not have been more completely ignored.
"Sorry you won't go in, sir," said one of the young men to the olderman.
"I never learned to swim," he answered with a certain haughtyindifference of tone which put the polite young man along with theimpertinent wave, the sand fleas, the skates' eggs, Jane and Mabel,among the things to be ignored.
"Strange! Your daughter is a beautiful swimmer--"
"Yes, beautiful!" chorused the girls who seemed to be bent onflattering the pretty daughter.
"She does everything well," said one of them.
"And your son is--" but what his son was Jane and Mabel could nothear, as the gentleman turned on his heel and walked off up the beachpuffing vigorously at a long black cigar that Mabel insisted smelt asthough it might have cost a dollar.
"Lorna, darling, I hate for you to get your pretty bathing suit wet,"said one of the girls, whose manner was even more fawning than therest.
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Mabel. "Just listen!"
"Lorna! Lorna!" Jane said to herself. "Could these be Breck's people?"Looking after the retreating figure of the impatient old gentleman,she saw unmistakable lines of resemblance. He could be none other thanthe father of the man she had promised to marry.
"Poor Breck! They are certainly difficult," she said to herself. "Butthe father looks sad. I believe he has been suffering, and the girl issweet looking and mighty pretty. It is just this lot of flatterers andsillies that are ruining her. Look at the men! They haven't a chinbetween them and the girls ought to have a good strenuous course inCamp Fire training to knock the foolishness out of them."
She said nothing to Mabel about the possibility of their being theBreckenridges. Mabel was not a marvel of tact and Jane felt that herewas a situation that must be handled delicately. She hoped somethingwould detain Breck and she could warn him that his father and sisterwere on the beach. It might be hard on him to come upon them unawares.She felt assured, however, that her Breck was equal to any emergency.
"I wish I could get my wind back," said Mabel. "That 'boiling' hasdone me up for the day. I wanted to go in the water again but I fancyI'd better not."
"You are panting, you poor dear," said Jane sympathetically.
"I was scared about Charlie. I believe that did me up more than all ofthe fancy somersaults I turned."
"Why don't you cuddle down and take a nap?" suggested Jane.
"I believe I will," Mabel curled herself up in the sand and in amoment was fast asleep.
Jane, glad to have quiet for her thoughts, directed her attention tothe bathers. The pretty Lorna had dived through the breakers and wasriding the waves like a veritable mermaid. She was a good swimmer andseemed perfectly at home in the surf.
"Isn't she wonderful?"
"Did you ever see anyone so beautiful?"
The flatterers were forced to shout their compliments in loud tones sothat the pretty Lorna could hear them above the noise of the breakers.
"Come in!" she commanded. The young men looked rather ruefully at thecurling waves and the girls took tentative steps in the direction oftheir princess. But tentative steps are fatal on a beach like thatwith a heavy uncertain sea. The "boiling" that Mabel and Charlie hadjust undergone was nothing to the one that the timid young men andmaidens now were subjected to. It was the fault of one young man whohesitated and was lost. Over he went and clutching wildly grasped thearm of one of the girls, who in turn pulled down another and then themerry war went on.
"Help! Help!" they shrieked.
"I reckon they can help one another," said Jane grimly.
Just as one victim would stagger to his feet, another would clutchwildly at his legs and over he would go. In the midst of thisconfusion another cry rang out shrill and sharp above the rush of thewaters and the squeals of those being "boiled."
"Help! Oh, help! I'm giving out!"
Jane sprang to her feet. In her amusement over the laughablepredicament of the unwary she had forgotten all about Lorna. Now shecould plainly see that the girl was in distress. Evidently she hadtried to come in to shore and was being carried out by the undertow.She had lost her head and was struggling wildly. For a moment her headwith the gay cap and handkerchief went under, a huge wave breakingover her.
Jane dived through the breakers. She was conscious of the fact thatthe father was near her. He had turned and walked back towards thebeach, arriving near the friendly dune just as his daughter's cry forhelp rang out.
"My God! It's Lorna!" he gasped. "Here!" he cried, grabbing one of thestruggling young men out of the breakers just as he was being thrownup on the sands by a playful wave. "Here, you! My daughter isdrowning!"
"So am I!" gasped the chinless youth.
"You can swim--go get her! Get her man! I can't swim a stroke."
The frantic father was rushing up and down like a raging lion. By thattime, all of the party had come out of the boiling with no bonesbroken but with rueful countenances.
"A nawsty beach!" announced the other young man.
"But my Lorna! She is drowning!" bellowed the father.
"Lorna! Lorna!" wailed the girls and the youths shivered and tried tomake up their minds to go in after her but the waves seemed to haveredoubled in force and fury. They rose up like walls and broke on theshore as though determined to smash anything that dared approach them.
"A rope! A rope! Get a rope!" commanded Mr. Breckenridge. But nobodyseemed to know where to get a rope, so nobody got one. "Will none ofyou go in and get my girl? Cowards!"
He beat the trembling young men on their cringing backs and tried toshove them into the water.
&
nbsp; "My God! My God! Why did I never learn to swim?"
The shrieks of the distracted friends of Lorna had at last attractedsome of the people from the regular bathing beach and the crowd beganto surge towards the scene of the disaster.
In the meantime Jane with sure eye and steady stroke had cut under thecombing breakers and reached the spot where last she had seen thedrowning girl. She trod water for a moment and peered through theclear green waves. Ah, there was a flash of the pretty crimson cap andhandkerchief! Without a moment's hesitation, Jane dived and came upbearing a limp trophy.
"I reckon it's a good thing she's lost consciousness," thought Jane."She can't struggle and I have some chance of getting in with her."
She looked back on the beach as a huge wave raised her aloft with herburden, and wondered if she could make it. It seemed a great way off.
"Of course you can, Jane Pellew! Keep your mouth shut and breathethrough your nose; don't fight the waves but let them take you in.Think of the skates' eggs that are thrown up on the sands, how fragilethey are and still safe. Think of Breck! Think of Father and Jack andpoor Aunt Min! Think of Lorna and what it will mean to Breck's fatherto have his child safe. Poor man!"
Holding Lorna's head above water as much as possible, she began herperilous trip ashore. She must time each wave and endeavor to ride itinstead of being overcome by it. Many times she and Frances hadplayed the game of saving each other and she was thankful for theskill she had acquired. But she found it quite a different thingsaving Frances who inadvertently helped herself somewhat and savingthis poor limp girl who flopped so piteously and whose head was sohard to keep above water.
"If Breck would only come!" her heart cried out.
Among the crowd that gathered on the beach there were many goodswimmers but, as sometimes happens in a crowd, a strange panic hadseized them. The run in the loose sand from the bathing beach properhad winded most of them too and men and women stood shuddering andwatched the black-eyed girl make her fight.
"She will win! She will win!" they comforted themselves by saying.
"Lord! what pluck!"
"Who is it--the drowned girl?"
"Preston Breckenridge's daughter. He's the multimillionaire fromCalifornia."
"Money won't help him much now."