Part 36 (1/2)
She rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand, extending them gently down until they fell between his own.
”Denny, you big, big boy!” she murmured. ”Do you suppose every man marries his first choice?”
”It has always seemed to me that a second choice is a makes.h.i.+ft. It doesn't seem quite square--”
”No. I fancy some second choices are really first choices. Wisdom comes with experience, you know.”
”Not always. At any rate I couldn't marry her while my heart was yours.”
”I suppose not,” she answered, and again he noted a touch of weariness in her voice. ”I know something of what divided affection--if one can even say it is divided--means. Denny, I will make a confession. I knew you would come back; I always was sure you would come back. 'Then,' I said to myself, 'I will see this man Grant as he is, and the reality will clear my brain of all this idealism which I have woven about him.'
Perhaps you know what I mean. We sometimes meet people who impress us greatly at the time, but a second meeting, perhaps years later, has a very different effect. It sweeps all the idealism away, and we wonder what it was that could have charmed us so. Well--I hoped--I really hoped for some experience like that with you. If only I could meet you again and find that, after all, you were just like other men; self-centred, arrogant, kind, perhaps, but quite superior--if I could only find THAT to be true then the mirage in which I have lived for all these years would be swept away and my old philosophy that after all it doesn't matter much whom one marries so long as he is respectable and gives her a good living would be vindicated. And so I have encouraged you to come here; I have been most unconventional, I know, but I was always that--I have cultivated your acquaintance, and, Denny, I am SO disappointed!”
”Disappointed? Then the mirage HAS cleared away?”
”On the contrary, it grows more distorted every day. I see you towering above all your fellow humans; reaching up into a heaven so far above them that they don't even know of its existence. I see you as really The Man-On-the-Hill, with a vision which lays all this selfish, commonplace world at your feet. The idealism which I thought must fade away is justified--heightened--by the reality.”
She had turned her face to him, and Grant, little as he understood the ways of women, knew that she had made her great confession. For a moment he held himself in check.... then from somewhere in his subconsciousness came ringing the phrase, ”Every man worth his salt.... takes what he wants.” That was Transley's morality; Transley, the Usurper, who had bullied himself into possession of this heart which he had never won and could never hold; Transley, the fool, frittering his days and nights with money! He seized her in his arms, crus.h.i.+ng down her weak resistance; he drew her to him until, as in that day by a foothill river somewhere in the sunny past, her lips met his and returned their caress.
He cared now for nothing--nothing in the whole world but this quivering womanhood within his arms....
”You must go,” she whispered at length. ”It is late, and Frank's habits are somewhat erratic.”
He held her at arm's length, his hands upon her shoulders. ”Do you suppose that fear--of anything--can make me surrender you now?”
”Not fear, perhaps--I know it could not be fear--but good sense may do it. It was not fear that made me send you home early from your previous calls. It was discretion.”
”Oh!” he said, a new light dawning, and he marvelled again at her consummate artistry.
”But I must tell you,” she resumed, ”Frank leaves on a business trip to-morrow night. He will be gone for some time, and I shall motor into town to see him off. I am wondering about Wilson,” she hurried on, as though not daring to weigh her words; ”Sarah will be away--I am letting her have a little holiday--and I can't take Wilson into town with me because it will be so late.” Then, with a burst of confession she spoke more deliberately. ”That isn't exactly the reason, Dennison; Frank doesn't know I have let Sarah go, and I--I can't explain.”
Her face shone pink and warm in the glow of the firelight, and as the significance of her words sank in upon him Grant marvelled at that wizardry of the G.o.ds which could bring such homage to the foot of man.
A tenderness such as he had never known suffused him; her very presence was holy.
”Bring the boy over and let him spend the night with me. We are great chums and we shall get along splendidly.”
CHAPTER XXI
Grant spent his Sunday forenoon in an exhaustive house-cleaning campaign. Bachelor life on the farm is not conducive to domestic delicacy, and although Grant had never abandoned the fundamentals he had allowed his interpretation of essential cleanliness to become somewhat liberal. The result was that the day of rest usually confronted him with a considerable array of unwashed pots and pans and other culinary utensils. To-day, while the tawny autumn hills seemed to fairly heave and sigh with contentment under a splendor of opalescent suns.h.i.+ne, he scoured the contents of his kitchen until they shone; washed the floor; shook the rugs from the living-room and swept the corners, even behind the gramophone; cleared the ashes from the hearth and generally set his house in order, for was not she to call upon him that evening on her way to town, and was not little Wilson--he of the high adventures with teddy-bear and knife and pig--to spend the night with him?
When he was able to view his handiwork with a feeling that even feminine eyes would find nothing to offend, Grant did an unwonted thing. He unlocked the whim-room and opened the windows that the fresh air might play through the silent chamber. To the west the mountains looked down in sombre placidity as they had looked down every bright autumn morning since the dawn of time, their shoulders bathed in purple mist and their snow-crowned summits s.h.i.+ning in the sun. For a long time Grant stood drinking in the scene; the fertile valley lying with its square farms like a checker-board of the G.o.ds, with its round little lakes beating back the white suns.h.i.+ne like coins from the currency of the Creator; the ruddy copper-colored patches of ripe wheat, and drowsy herds motionless upon the receding hills; the blue-green ribbon of river with its yellow fringes of cottonwood and bluffs of forbidding spruce, and behind and over all the silent, majestic mountains. It was a sight to make the soul of man rise up and say, ”I know I stand on the heights of the Eternal!”
Then as his eyes followed the course of the river Grant picked out a column of thin blue smoke, and knew that Zen was cooking her Sunday dinner.
The thought turned him to his dusting of the whim-room, and afterwards to his own kitchen. When he had lunched and dressed he took a stroll over the hills, thinking a great deal, but finding no answer. On his return he descried the familiar figure of Linder in a semi-rec.u.mbent position on the porch, and Linder's well-worn car in the yard.
”How goes it, Linder?” he said, cheerily, as he came up. ”Is the Big Idea going to fructify?”
”The Big Idea seems to be all right. You planned it well.”