Part 26 (1/2)
”Now, look here, Miss Mason,” he began, slowly and stumblingly at first, but accelerating into a rapidity of utterance that was almost incoherent; ”I'm a rough sort of a man, I know that, and I know I don't know much of anything. I've never had any training in nice things.
I've never made love before, and I've never been in love before either--and I don't know how to go about it any more than a thundering idiot. What you want to do is get behind my tomfool words and get a feel of the man that's behind them. That's me, and I mean all right, if I don't know how to go about it.”
Dede Mason had quick, birdlike ways, almost flitting from mood to mood; and she was all contrition on the instant.
”Forgive me for laughing,” she said across the gate. ”It wasn't really laughter. I was surprised off my guard, and hurt, too. You see, Mr.
Harnish, I've not been...”
She paused, in sudden fear of completing the thought into which her birdlike precipitancy had betrayed her.
”What you mean is that you've not been used to such sort of proposing,”
Daylight said; ”a sort of on-the-run, 'Howdy, glad-to-make-your-acquaintance, won't-you-be-mine' proposition.”
She nodded and broke into laughter, in which he joined, and which served to pa.s.s the awkwardness away. He gathered heart at this, and went on in greater confidence, with cooler head and tongue.
”There, you see, you prove my case. You've had experience in such matters. I don't doubt you've had slathers of proposals. Well, I haven't, and I'm like a fish out of water. Besides, this ain't a proposal. It's a peculiar situation, that's all, and I'm in a corner.
I've got enough plain horse-sense to know a man ain't supposed to argue marriage with a girl as a reason for getting acquainted with her. And right there was where I was in the hole. Number one, I can't get acquainted with you in the office. Number two, you say you won't see me out of the office to give me a chance. Number three, your reason is that folks will talk because you work for me. Number four, I just got to get acquainted with you, and I just got to get you to see that I mean fair and all right. Number five, there you are on one side the gate getting ready to go, and me here on the other side the gate pretty desperate and bound to say something to make you reconsider. Number six, I said it. And now and finally, I just do want you to reconsider.”
And, listening to him, pleasuring in the sight of his earnest, perturbed face and in the simple, homely phrases that but emphasized his earnestness and marked the difference between him and the average run of men she had known, she forgot to listen and lost herself in her own thoughts. The love of a strong man is ever a lure to a normal woman, and never more strongly did Dede feel the lure than now, looking across the closed gate at Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever dream of marrying him--she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her.
On the contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into his flas.h.i.+ng Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man of many deeds and many millions, who had come down out of the Arctic to wrestle and fight so masterfully with the men of the South.
Savage as a Red Indian, gambler and profligate, a man without morals, whose vengeance was never glutted and who stamped on the faces of all who opposed him--oh, yes, she knew all the hard names he had been called. Yet she was not afraid of him. There was more than that in the connotation of his name. Burning Daylight called up other things as well. They were there in the newspapers, the magazines, and the books on the Klondike. When all was said, Burning Daylight had a mighty connotation--one to touch any woman's imagination, as it touched hers, the gate between them, listening to the wistful and impa.s.sioned simplicity of his speech. Dede was after all a woman, with a woman's s.e.x-vanity, and it was this vanity that was pleased by the fact that such a man turned in his need to her.
And there was more that pa.s.sed through her mind--sensations of tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies of vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer whisperings and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten generations crystallized into being and fluttering anew and always, undreamed and unguessed, subtle and potent, the spirit and essence of life that under a thousand deceits and masks forever makes for life. It was a strong temptation, just to ride with this man in the hills. It would be that only and nothing more, for she was firmly convinced that his way of life could never be her way. On the other hand, she was vexed by none of the ordinary feminine fears and timidities. That she could take care of herself under any and all circ.u.mstances she never doubted. Then why not? It was such a little thing, after all.
She led an ordinary, humdrum life at best. She ate and slept and worked, and that was about all. As if in review, her anchorite existence pa.s.sed before her: six days of the week spent in the office and in journeying back and forth on the ferry; the hours stolen before bedtime for s.n.a.t.c.hes of song at the piano, for doing her own special laundering, for sewing and mending and casting up of meagre accounts; the two evenings a week of social diversion she permitted herself; the other stolen hours and Sat.u.r.day afternoons spent with her brother at the hospital; and the seventh day, Sunday, her day of solace, on Mab's back, out among the blessed hills. But it was lonely, this solitary riding. n.o.body of her acquaintance rode. Several girls at the University had been persuaded into trying it, but after a Sunday or two on hired livery hacks they had lost interest. There was Madeline, who bought her own horse and rode enthusiastically for several months, only to get married and go away to live in Southern California. After years of it, one did get tired of this eternal riding alone.
He was such a boy, this big giant of a millionaire who had half the rich men of San Francisco afraid of him. Such a boy! She had never imagined this side of his nature.
”How do folks get married?” he was saying. ”Why, number one, they meet; number two, like each other's looks; number three, get acquainted; and number four, get married or not, according to how they like each other after getting acquainted. But how in thunder we're to have a chance to find out whether we like each other enough is beyond my savvee, unless we make that chance ourselves. I'd come to see you, call on you, only I know you're just rooming or boarding, and that won't do.”
Suddenly, with a change of mood, the situation appeared to Dede ridiculously absurd. She felt a desire to laugh--not angrily, not hysterically, but just jolly. It was so funny. Herself, the stenographer, he, the notorious and powerful gambling millionaire, and the gate between them across which poured his argument of people getting acquainted and married. Also, it was an impossible situation.
On the face of it, she could not go on with it. This program of furtive meetings in the hills would have to discontinue. There would never be another meeting. And if, denied this, he tried to woo her in the office, she would be compelled to lose a very good position, and that would be an end of the episode. It was not nice to contemplate; but the world of men, especially in the cities, she had not found particularly nice. She had not worked for her living for years without losing a great many of her illusions.
”We won't do any sneaking or hiding around about it,” Daylight was explaining. ”We'll ride around as bold if you please, and if anybody sees us, why, let them. If they talk--well, so long as our consciences are straight we needn't worry. Say the word, and Bob will have on his back the happiest man alive.”
She shook her head, pulled in the mare, who was impatient to be off for home, and glanced significantly at the lengthening shadows.
”It's getting late now, anyway,” Daylight hurried on, ”and we've settled nothing after all. Just one more Sunday, anyway--that's not asking much--to settle it in.”
”We've had all day,” she said.
”But we started to talk it over too late. We'll tackle it earlier next time. This is a big serious proposition with me, I can tell you. Say next Sunday?”
”Are men ever fair?” she asked. ”You know thoroughly well that by 'next Sunday' you mean many Sundays.”
”Then let it be many Sundays,” he cried recklessly, while she thought that she had never seen him looking handsomer. ”Say the word. Only say the word. Next Sunday at the quarry...”
She gathered the reins into her hand preliminary to starting.