Part 27 (1/2)

Her face was serious, even solicitous with desire not to hurt, and her eyes were unwavering, but in them was the light, golden and glowing--the abyss of s.e.x into which he was now unafraid to gaze.

”I've been pretty good,” he declared. ”I leave it to you if I haven't.

It's been pretty hard, too, I can tell you. You just think it over.

Not once have I said a word about love to you, and me loving you all the time. That's going some for a man that's used to having his own way. I'm somewhat of a rusher when it comes to travelling. I reckon I'd rush G.o.d Almighty if it came to a race over the ice. And yet I didn't rush you. I guess this fact is an indication of how much I do love you. Of course I want you to marry me. Have I said a word about it, though? Nary a chirp, nary a flutter. I've been quiet and good, though it's almost made me sick at times, this keeping quiet. I haven't asked you to marry me. I'm not asking you now. Oh, not but what you satisfy me. I sure know you're the wife for me. But how about myself? Do you know me well enough know your own mind?” He shrugged his shoulders. ”I don't know, and I ain't going to take chances on it now. You've got to know for sure whether you think you could get along with me or not, and I'm playing a slow conservative game. I ain't a-going to lose for overlooking my hand.”

This was love-making of a sort beyond Dede's experience. Nor had she ever heard of anything like it. Furthermore, its lack of ardor carried with it a shock which she could overcome only by remembering the way his hand had trembled in the past, and by remembering the pa.s.sion she had seen that very day and every day in his eyes, or heard in his voice. Then, too, she recollected what he had said to her weeks before: ”Maybe you don't know what patience is,” he had said, and thereat told her of shooting squirrels with a big rifle the time he and Elijah Davis had starved on the Stewart River.

”So you see,” he urged, ”just for a square deal we've got to see some more of each other this winter. Most likely your mind ain't made up yet--”

”But it is,” she interrupted. ”I wouldn't dare permit myself to care for you. Happiness, for me, would not lie that way. I like you, Mr.

Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than that.”

”It's because you don't like my way of living,” he charged, thinking in his own mind of the sensational joyrides and general profligacy with which the newspapers had credited him--thinking this, and wondering whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would disclaim knowledge of it.

To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising.

”No; I don't.”

”I know I've been brash on some of those rides that got into the papers,” he began his defense, ”and that I've been travelling with a lively crowd.”

”I don't mean that,” she said, ”though I know about it too, and can't say that I like it. But it is your life in general, your business.

There are women in the world who could marry a man like you and be happy, but I couldn't. And the more I cared for such a man, the more unhappy I should be. You see, my unhappiness, in turn, would tend to make him unhappy. I should make a mistake, and he would make an equal mistake, though his would not be so hard on him because he would still have his business.”

”Business!” Daylight gasped. ”What's wrong with my business? I play fair and square. There's nothing under hand about it, which can't be said of most businesses, whether of the big corporations or of the cheating, lying, little corner-grocerymen. I play the straight rules of the game, and I don't have to lie or cheat or break my word.”

Dede hailed with relief the change in the conversation and at the same time the opportunity to speak her mind.

”In ancient Greece,” she began pedantically, ”a man was judged a good citizen who built houses, planted trees--” She did not complete the quotation, but drew the conclusion hurriedly. ”How many houses have you built? How many trees have you planted?”

He shook his head noncommittally, for he had not grasped the drift of the argument.

”Well,” she went on, ”two winters ago you cornered coal--”

”Just locally,” he grinned reminiscently, ”just locally. And I took advantage of the car shortage and the strike in British Columbia.”

”But you didn't dig any of that coal yourself. Yet you forced it up four dollars a ton and made a lot of money. That was your business.

You made the poor people pay more for their coal. You played fair, as you said, but you put your hands down into all their pockets and took their money away from them. I know. I burn a grate fire in my sitting-room at Berkeley. And instead of eleven dollars a ton for Rock Wells, I paid fifteen dollars that winter. You robbed me of four dollars. I could stand it. But there were thousands of the very poor who could not stand it. You might call it legal gambling, but to me it was downright robbery.”

Daylight was not abashed. This was no revelation to him. He remembered the old woman who made wine in the Sonoma hills and the millions like her who were made to be robbed.

”Now look here, Miss Mason, you've got me there slightly, I grant. But you've seen me in business a long time now, and you know I don't make a practice of raiding the poor people. I go after the big fellows.

They're my meat. They rob the poor, and I rob them. That coal deal was an accident. I wasn't after the poor people in that, but after the big fellows, and I got them, too. The poor people happened to get in the way and got hurt, that was all.

”Don't you see,” he went on, ”the whole game is a gamble. Everybody gambles in one way or another. The farmer gambles against the weather and the market on his crops. So does the United States Steel Corporation. The business of lots of men is straight robbery of the poor people. But I've never made that my business. You know that.

I've always gone after the robbers.”

”I missed my point,” she admitted. ”Wait a minute.”

And for a s.p.a.ce they rode in silence.

”I see it more clearly than I can state it, but it's something like this. There is legitimate work, and there's work that--well, that isn't legitimate. The farmer works the soil and produces grain. He's making something that is good for humanity. He actually, in a way, creates something, the grain that will fill the mouths of the hungry.”