Four days afterward a sailor, escaped from the wreck, came into Chicago and told the story. Of the bodies that were beaten up ashore there were two locked in each other's arms—Dan Hayne and Polly Maseurier—and they were buried together. The best cabin had been engaged for her and she had come aboard in the morning. They had partaken of a gay supper together, and now it seemed half the men suspected she would flit with him. He had been selling out his Galena interest and most of his property. Chita had been taken with them, and she, too, had found a watery grave.
I must go to the Gaynors before some one rudely bruited the tragedy to them. John Gaynor could break the news more tenderly to his child. I was glad to find him on the porch in the old reclining chair, reading his paper.
I don't remember how I told it. I think I left something to be inferred. I did not hear Mr. Gaynor's question, for a white wraith glided out on the porch. The soft light hair framed in the sweet, deathlike face, but the clear eyes shone out with an unearthly light. I would have caught her, but she went straight to her father.
"I know," she said, and her voice was like a low-toned bell shaken wildly about. "Dan told me that day. They loved each other and went away together."
Then she fell into her father's lap.
I lifted her to the settle, limp and lifeless. It seemed as if she had lost all her flesh during these days that she had carried her secret. Was her heart broken? My poor Little Girl! My poor Little Girl!
I went for the doctor presently. All night she lapsed from one faint to another, and was left as near lifeless as any human body could be. Mr. Gaynor watched her dry eyed, but with such an expression of despair as is seldom concentrated in any countenance. He would place his cold hand in mine, that was so vigorous and warm, that I felt almost ashamed. I had given her up to Dan, I could not give her up to death.
After two days fever set in. It was not raging or violent, but the lassitude was painful to witness. The boys were both going away, and I persuaded mother to shut her house and come up. Her sorrow was heart-breaking, but she knew it was still worse for Ruth.
The result of the storm was being cleared away and repaired. There was a good deal of talk, to be sure, and the men who had liked Dan best blamed Polly bitterly. Others did not see how he could have thrown up his prospects for any woman, for it was admitted if all went well with Mr. Gaynor and Chicago Ruth would be no mean heiress.
Sad as it was to watch day and night with only a mere thread of hope, it took mother and Ruth out of the head of the gossip. I looked after Mr. Gaynor's affairs as well as I could, and there were some matters of Dan's left unsettled. He must have taken a considerable amount of money with him, but whether it was in the bottom of the lake or buried with him no one was ever to know.