________________________________________________
_ "Of course, there's no way of telling what anybody wants from
what they say." Daylight rubbed Bob's rebellious ear with his
quirt and pondered with dissatisfaction the words he had just
uttered. They did not say what he had meant them to say. "What
I'm driving at is that you say flatfooted that you won't meet me
again, and you give your reasons, but how am I to know they are
your real reasons? Mebbe you just don't want to get acquainted
with me, and won't say so for fear of hurting my feelings. Don't
you see? I'm the last man in the world to shove in where I'm not
wanted. And if I thought you didn't care a whoop to see anything
more of me, why, I'd clear out so blamed quick you couldn't see
me for smoke."
Dede smiled at him in acknowledgment of his words, but rode on
silently. And that smile, he thought, was the most sweetly
wonderful smile he had ever seen. There was a difference in it,
he assured himself, from any smile she had ever given him before.
It was the smile of one who knew him just a little bit, of one
who was just the least mite acquainted with him. Of course, he
checked himself up the next moment, it was unconscious on her
part. It was sure to come in the intercourse of any two persons.
Any stranger, a business man, a clerk, anybody after a few casual
meetings would show similar signs of friendliness. It was bound
to happen, but in her case it made more impression on him; and,
besides, it was such a sweet and wonderful smile. Other women he
had known had never smiled like that; he was sure of it.
It had been a happy day. Daylight had met her on the back-road
from Berkeley, and they had had hours together. It was only now,
with the day drawing to a close and with them approaching the
gate of the road to Berkeley, that he had broached the important
subject.
She began her answer to his last contention, and he listened
gratefully.
"But suppose, just suppose, that the reasons I have given are the
only ones?--that there is no question of my not wanting to know
you?"
"Then I'd go on urging like Sam Scratch," he said quickly.
"Because, you see, I've always noticed that folks that incline to
anything are much more open to hearing the case stated. But if
you did have that other reason up your sleeve, if you didn't want
to know me, if--if, well, if you thought my feelings oughtn't to
be hurt just because you had a good job with me..." Here, his
calm consideration of a possibility was swamped by the fear that
it was an actuality, and he lost the thread of his reasoning.
"Well, anyway, all you have to do is to say the word and I'll
clear out.
And with no hard feelings; it would be just a case of bad luck
for me. So be honest, Miss Mason, please, and tell me if that's
the reason--I almost got a hunch that it is."
She glanced up at him, her eyes abruptly and slightly moist, half
with hurt, half with anger.
"Oh, but that isn't fair," she cried. "You give me the choice of
lying to you and hurting you in order to protect myself by
getting rid of you, or of throwing away my protection by telling
you the truth, for then you, as you said yourself, would stay and
urge."
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips tremulous, but she continued to
look him frankly in the eyes.
Daylight smiled grimly with satisfaction.
"I'm real glad, Miss Mason, real glad for those words."
"But they won't serve you," she went on hastily. "They can't
serve you. I refuse to let them. This is our last ride, and...
here is the gate."
Ranging her mare alongside, she bent, slid the catch, and
followed the opening gate.
"No; please, no," she said, as Daylight started to follow.
Humbly acquiescent, he pulled Bob back, and the gate swung shut
between them. But there was more to say, and she did not ride
on.
"Listen, Miss Mason," he said, in a low voice that shook with
sincerity; "I want to assure you of one thing. I'm not just
trying to fool around with you. I like you, I want you, and I
was never more in earnest in my life. There's nothing wrong in
my intentions or anything like that. What I mean is strictly
honorable-"
But the expression of her face made him stop. She was angry, and
she was laughing at the same time.
"The last thing you should have said," she cried. "It's like
a--a matrimonial bureau: intentions strictly honorable; object,
matrimony. But it's no more than I deserved. This is what I
suppose you call urging like Sam Scratch."
The tan had bleached out of Daylight's skin since the time he
came to live under city roofs, so that the flush of blood showed
readily as it crept up his neck past the collar and overspread
his face. Nor in his exceeding discomfort did he dream that she
was looking upon him at that moment with more kindness than at
any time that day. It was not in her experience to behold big
grown-up men who blushed like boys, and already she repented the
sharpness into which she had been surprised.
"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 pass 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 flashing 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 impassioned simplicity
of his speech. Dede was after all a woman, with a woman's
sex-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 passed 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 circumstances 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 passed 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 snatches 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
Saturday 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. Nobody 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.
"Good night," she said, "and--"
"Yes," he whispered, with just the faintest touch of
impressiveness.
"Yes," she said, her voice low but distinct.
At the same moment she put the mare into a canter and went down
the road without a backward glance, intent on an analysis of her
own feelings. With her mind made up to say no--and to the last
instant she had been so resolved--her lips nevertheless had said
yes. Or at least it seemed the lips. She had not intended to
consent. Then why had she? Her first surprise and bewilderment
at so wholly unpremeditated an act gave way to consternation as
she considered its consequences. She knew that Burning Daylight
was not a man to be trifled with, that under his simplicity and
boyishness he was essentially a dominant male creature, and that
she had pledged herself to a future of inevitable stress and
storm. And again she demanded of herself why she had said yes at
the very moment when it had been farthest from her intention. _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER XV
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