Part 29 (1/2)
He waited patiently. He was more than willing to tell her everything he knew, or could make up to please her, but he had not the slightest idea what she wanted. Whatever it was, he certainly intended to make the effort of his life to give her.
”I am Constance Starr,” said Connie, still more abashed by the unfaltering presence of this curious creature, who, she fully realized at last, was quite human enough for any literary purpose. ”And this is my brother-in-law, Mr. Duke, and my sister, Mrs. Duke.”
”My name is Prince Ingram.”
David shook hands with him cordially, with smiling eyes, and asked him to sit down so Connie might ask her questions in comfort. They all took chairs, and Prince waited. Connie racked her brain. Five minutes ago there had been ten thousand things she yearned to know about this strange existence. Now, unfairly, she could not think of one. It seemed to her she knew all there was to know about them. They looked into each other's eyes, men and women, as men and women do in Chicago.
They touched hands, and the blood quickened, the old Chicago style.
They talked plain English, they liked pretty clothes, they wors.h.i.+ped good horses, they lived on the boundless plains. What on earth was there to ask? Quite suddenly, Connie understood them perfectly.
But Prince realized that he was not making good. His one claim to admission in her presence was his ability to tell her what she wanted to know. He had got to tell her things,--but what things? My stars, what did she want to know? How old he was, where he was born, if he was married,--oh, by George, she didn't think he was married, did she?
”I am not married,” he said abruptly. David looked around at him in surprise, and Carol's eyes opened widely. But Connie, with what must have been literary intuition, understood. She nodded at him and smiled as she asked, ”Have you always lived out here?”
”No.” He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Here was a starter, it would be his own fault if he could not keep talking the rest of the night. ”No, I came out from Columbus when I was eighteen.
Came for my health.” He squared his shoulders again, and laughed a big deep laugh which made Connie marvel that there should be such big deep laughs in the world.
”My father was a doctor. He sent me out, and I got a job punching time in the mines at Cripple Creek. I met some stock men, and one of them offered me a job, and I came out and got in with them. Then I got hold of a bit of land and began gathering up stock for myself. I stayed with the Sparker outfit six years, and then my father died. I took the money and got my start, and--why, that is all.” He stopped in astonishment. He had been sure his story would last several hours. He had begun at the very start, his illness at eighteen, and here he was right up to the present, and--he rubbed his knee despairingly. There must be something else. There had to be something else. What under the sun had he been doing all these fourteen years in the ranges?
”Don't you ever wish to go back?” Connie prompted kindly.
”Back to Columbus? I went twice to see my father. He had a private sanatorium. My booming voice gave his nervous patients prostrations, and father thought my clothes were not sanitary because they could not be sterilized. Are you going to stay here for good?”
It was very risky to ask, he knew, but he had to find out.
”I am visiting my sister in Denver. We just came here for the Frontier Days,” said Connie primly.
”There is another Frontier Week at Sterling,” he said eagerly. ”A fine one, better than this. It isn't far over there. You would get more material at Sterling, I think. Can't you go on up?”
”I have been away from Chicago four weeks now,” said Connie. ”In exactly two weeks I must be at my desk again.”
”Chicago is not a healthy town,” he said, in a voice that would have done credit to his father, the medical man. ”Very unhealthy. It is not literary either. Out west is the place for literature. All the great writers come west. Western stories are the big sellers. There's Ralph Connor, and Rex Beach, and Jack London and--and--”
”But I am not a great writer,” Connie interrupted modestly. ”I am just a common little filler-in in the ranks of a publis.h.i.+ng house. I'm only a beginner.”
”That is because you stick to Chicago,” he said eloquently. ”You come out here, out in the open, where things are wide and free, and you can see a thousand miles at one stretch. You come out here, and you'll be as great as any of 'em,--greater!”
The loud clamor of the dinner bell interrupted his impa.s.sioned outburst and he relapsed into stricken silence.
”Well, we must go to dinner before the supply runs out,” said David, rising slowly. ”Come along, Julia. We are glad to have met you, Mr.
Ingram.” He held out his thin, blue-veined hand. ”We'll see you again.”
Prince looked hopelessly at Connie's back, for her face was already turned toward the dining-room. How cold and infinitely distant that tall, straight, tailored back appeared.
”Ask him to eat with us,” Connie hissed, out of one corner of her lip, in David's direction.
David hesitated, looking at her doubtfully. Connie nudged him with emphasis.
Well, what could David do? He might wash his hands of the whole irregular business, and he did. Connie was a writer, she must have material, but in his opinion Connie was too young to be literary. She should have been older, or uglier, or married. Literature is not safe for the young and charming. Connie nudged him again. Plainly if he did not do as she said, she was going to do it herself.