________________________________________________
_ Life at the office went on much the way it had always gone.
Never, by word or look, did they acknowledge that the situation
was in any wise different from what it had always been. Each
Sunday saw the arrangement made for the following Sunday's ride;
nor was this ever referred to in the office. Daylight was
fastidiously chivalrous on this point. He did not want to lose
her from the office. The sight of her at her work was to him an
undiminishing joy. Nor did he abuse this by lingering over
dictation or by devising extra work that would detain her longer
before his eyes. But over and beyond such sheer selfishness of
conduct was his love of fair play. He scorned to utilize the
accidental advantages of the situation. Somewhere within him
was a higher appeasement of love than mere possession. He wanted
to be loved for himself, with a fair field for both sides.
On the other hand, had he been the most artful of schemers he
could not have pursued a wiser policy. Bird-like in her love of
individual freedom, the last woman in the world to be bullied in
her affections, she keenly appreciated the niceness of his
attitude. She did this consciously, but deeper than all
consciousness, and intangible as gossamer, were the effects of
this. All unrealizable, save for some supreme moment, did the
web of Daylight's personality creep out and around her. Filament
by filament, these secret and undreamable bonds were being
established. They it was that could have given the cue to her
saying yes when she had meant to say no. And in some such
fashion, in some future crisis of greater moment, might she not,
in violation of all dictates of sober judgment, give another
unintentional consent?
Among other good things resulting from his growing intimacy with
Dede, was Daylight's not caring to drink so much as formerly.
There was a lessening in desire for alcohol of which even he at
last became aware. In a way she herself was the needed
inhibition. The thought of her was like a cocktail. Or, at any
rate, she substituted for a certain percentage of cocktails.
From the strain of his unnatural city existence and of his
intense gambling operations, he had drifted on to the cocktail
route. A wall must forever be built to give him easement from
the high pitch, and Dede became a part of this wall. Her
personality, her laughter, the intonations of her voice, the
impossible golden glow of her eyes, the light on her hair, her
form, her dress, her actions on horseback, her merest physical
mannerisms--all, pictured over and over in his mind and dwelt
upon, served to take the place of many a cocktail or long Scotch
and soda.
In spite of their high resolve, there was a very measurable
degree of the furtive in their meetings. In essence, these
meetings were stolen. They did not ride out brazenly together in
the face of the world. On the contrary, they met always
unobserved, she riding across the many-gated backroad from
Berkeley to meet him halfway. Nor did they ride on any save
unfrequented roads, preferring to cross the second range of hills
and travel among a church-going farmer folk who would scarcely
have recognized even Daylight from his newspaper photographs.
He found Dede a good horsewoman--good not merely in riding but in
endurance. There were days when they covered sixty, seventy, and
even eighty miles; nor did Dede ever claim any day too long,
nor--another strong recommendation to Daylight--did the hardest
day ever the slightest chafe of the chestnut sorrel's back. "A
sure enough hummer," was Daylight's stereotyped but ever
enthusiastic verdict to himself.
They learned much of each other on these long, uninterrupted
rides. They had nothing much to talk about but themselves, and,
while she received a liberal education concerning Arctic travel
and gold-mining, he, in turn, touch by touch, painted an ever
clearer portrait of her. She amplified the ranch life of her
girlhood, prattling on about horses and dogs and persons and
things until it was as if he saw the whole process of her growth
and her becoming. All this he was able to trace on through the
period of her father's failure and death, when she had been
compelled to leave the university and go into office work. The
brother, too, she spoke of, and of her long struggle to have him
cured and of her now fading hopes. Daylight decided that it was
easier to come to an understanding of her than he had
anticipated, though he was always aware that behind and under all
he knew of her was the mysterious and baffling woman and sex.
There, he was humble enough to confess to himself, was a
chartless, shoreless sea, about which he knew nothing and which
he must nevertheless somehow navigate.
His lifelong fear of woman had originated out of
non-understanding and had also prevented him from reaching any
understanding. Dede on horseback, Dede gathering poppies on a
summer hillside, Dede taking down dictation in her swift
shorthand strokes--all this was comprehensible to him. But he
did not know the Dede who so quickly changed from mood to mood,
the Dede who refused steadfastly to ride with him and then
suddenly consented, the Dede in whose eyes the golden glow
forever waxed and waned and whispered hints and messages that
were not for his ears. In all such things he saw the glimmering
profundities of sex, acknowledged their lure, and accepted them
as incomprehensible.
There was another side of her, too, of which he was consciously
ignorant. She knew the books, was possessed of that mysterious
and awful thing called "culture." And yet, what continually
surprised him was that this culture was never obtruded on their
intercourse. She did not talk books, nor art, nor similar
folderols. Homely minded as he was himself, he found her almost
equally homely minded. She liked the simple and the
out-of-doors, the horses and the hills, the sunlight and the
flowers. He found himself in a partly new flora, to which she
was the guide, pointing out to him all the varieties of the oaks,
making him acquainted with the madrono and the manzanita,
teaching him the names, habits, and habitats of unending series
of wild flowers, shrubs, and ferns. Her keen woods eye was
another delight to him. It had been trained in the open, and
little escaped it. One day, as a test, they strove to see which
could discover the greater number of birds' nests. And he, who
had always prided himself on his own acutely trained observation,
found himself hard put to keep his score ahead. At the end of
the day he was but three nests in the lead, one of which she
challenged stoutly and of which even he confessed serious doubt.
He complimented her and told her that her success must be due to
the fact that she was a bird herself, with all a bird's keen
vision and quick-flashing ways.
The more he knew her the more he became convinced of this
birdlike quality in her. That was why she liked to ride, he
argued. It was the nearest approach to flying. A field of
poppies, a glen of ferns, a row of poplars on a country lane, the
tawny brown of a hillside, the shaft of sunlight on a distant
peak--all such were provocative of quick joys which seemed to him
like so many outbursts of song. Her joys were in little things,
and she seemed always singing. Even in sterner things it was the
same. When she rode Bob and fought with that magnificent brute
for mastery, the qualities of an eagle were uppermost in her.
These quick little joys of hers were sources of joy to him. He
joyed in her joy, his eyes as excitedly fixed on her as bears
were fixed on the object of her attention. Also through her he
came to a closer discernment and keener appreciation of nature.
She showed him colors in the landscape that he would never have
dreamed were there. He had known only the primary colors. All
colors of red were red. Black was black, and brown was just
plain brown until it became yellow, when it was no longer brown.
Purple he had always imagined was red, something like blood,
until she taught him better. Once they rode out on a high hill
brow where wind-blown poppies blazed about their horses' knees,
and she was in an ecstasy over the lines of the many distances.
Seven, she counted, and he, who had gazed on landscapes all his
life, for the first time learned what a "distance" was. After
that, and always, he looked upon the face of nature with a more
seeing eye, learning a delight of his own in surveying the
serried ranks of the upstanding ranges, and in slow contemplation
of the purple summer mists that haunted the languid creases of
the distant hills.
But through it all ran the golden thread of love. At first he
had been content just to ride with Dede and to be on comradely
terms with her; but the desire and the need for her increased.
The more he knew of her, the higher was his appraisal. Had she
been reserved and haughty with him, or been merely a giggling,
simpering creature of a woman, it would have been different.
Instead, she amazed him with her simplicity and wholesomeness,
with her great store of comradeliness. This latter was the
unexpected. He had never looked upon woman in that way. Woman,
the toy; woman, the harpy; woman, the necessary wife and mother
of the race's offspring,--all this had been his expectation and
understanding of woman. But woman, the comrade and playfellow
and joyfellow--this was what Dede had surprised him in. And the
more she became worth while, the more ardently his love burned,
unconsciously shading his voice with caresses, and with equal
unconsciousness flaring up signal fires in his eyes. Nor was she
blind to it yet, like many women before her, she thought to play
with the pretty fire and escape the consequent conflagration.
"Winter will soon be coming on," she said regretfully, and with
provocation, one day, "and then there won't be any more riding."
"But I must see you in the winter just the same," he cried
hastily.
She shook her head.
"We have been very happy and all that," she said, looking at him
with steady frankness. "I remember your foolish argument for
getting acquainted, too; but it won't lead to anything; it can't.
I know myself too well to be mistaken."
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 sex 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 God 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 passion 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 space 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."
"And then the railroads and market-riggers and the rest proceed
to rob him of that same grain,"--Daylight broke in Dede smiled
and
held up her hand.
"Wait a minute. You'll make me lose my point. It doesn't hurt
if they rob him of all of it so that he starves to death. The
point is that the wheat he grew is still in the world. It
exists. Don't you see? The farmer created something, say ten
tons of wheat, and those ten tons exist. The railroads haul the
wheat to market, to the mouths that will eat it. This also is
legitimate. It's like some one bringing you a glass of water,
or taking a cinder out of your eye. Something has been done, in
a
way been created, just like the wheat."
"But the railroads rob like Sam Scratch," Daylight objected.
"Then the work they do is partly legitimate and partly not. Now
we come to you. You don't create anything. Nothing new exists
when you're done with your business. Just like the coal. You
didn't dig it. You didn't haul it to market. You didn't deliver
it. Don't you see? that's what I meant by planting the trees
and building the houses. You haven't planted one tree nor built
a single house."
"I never guessed there was a woman in the world who could talk
business like that," he murmured admiringly. "And you've got me
on that point. But there's a lot to be said on my side just the
same. Now you listen to me. I'm going to talk under three
heads. Number one: We live a short time, the best of us, and
we're a long time dead. Life is a big gambling game. Some are
born lucky and some are born unlucky. Everybody sits in at the
table, and everybody tries to rob everybody else. Most of them
get robbed. They're born suckers.
"Fellow like me comes along and sizes up the proposition. I've
got
two choices. I can herd with the suckers, or I can herd with the
robbers. As a sucker, I win nothing. Even the crusts of bread
are
snatched out of my mouth by the robbers. I work hard all my
days,
and die working. And I ain't never had a flutter. I've had
nothing but work, work, work. They talk about the dignity of
labor. I tell you there ain't no dignity in that sort of labor.
My other choice is to herd with the robbers, and I herd with
them.
I play that choice wide open to win. I get the automobiles, and
the porterhouse steaks, and the soft beds.
"Number two: There ain't much difference between playing halfway
robber like the railroad hauling that farmer's wheat to market,
and playing all robber and robbing the robbers like I do. And,
besides, halfway robbery is too slow a game for me to sit in.
You don't win quick enough for me."
"But what do you want to win for?" Dede demanded. "You have
millions and millions, already. You can't ride in more than one
automobile at a time, sleep in more than one bed at a time."
"Number three answers that," he said, "and here it is: Men and
things are so made that they have different likes. A rabbit
likes a vegetarian diet. A lynx likes meat. Ducks swim;
chickens are scairt of water. One man collects postage stamps,
another man collects butterflies. This man goes in for
paintings, that man goes in for yachts, and some other fellow for
hunting big game. One man thinks horse-racing is It, with a big
I, and another man finds the biggest satisfaction in actresses.
They can't help these likes. They have them, and what are they
going to do about it? Now I like gambling. I like to play the
game. I want to play it big and play it quick. I'm just made
that way. And I play it."
"But why can't you do good with all your money?"
Daylight laughed.
"Doing good with your money! It's like slapping God in the face,
as much as to tell him that he don't know how to run his world
and that you'll be much obliged if he'll stand out of the way and
give you a chance. Thinking about God doesn't keep me sitting up
nights, so I've got another way of looking at it. Ain't it
funny, to go around with brass knuckles and a big club breaking
folks' heads and taking their money away from them until I've got
a pile, and then, repenting of my ways, going around and
bandaging up the heads the other robbers are breaking? I leave
it to you. That's what doing good with money amounts to. Every
once in a while some robber turns soft-hearted and takes to
driving an ambulance. That's what Carnegie did. He smashed
heads in pitched battles at Homestead, regular wholesale
head-breaker he was, held up the suckers for a few hundred
million, and now he goes around dribbling it back to them.
funny? I leave it to you."
He rolled a cigarette and watched her half curiously, half
amusedly. His replies and harsh generalizations of a harsh
school were disconcerting, and she came back to her earlier
position.
"I can't argue with you, and you know that. No matter how right
a woman is, men have such a way about them well, what they say
sounds most convincing, and yet the woman is still certain they
are wrong. But there is one thing--the creative joy. Call it
gambling if you will, but just the same it seems to me more
satisfying to create something, make something, than just to roll
dice out of a dice-box all day long. Why, sometimes, for
exercise, or when I've got to pay fifteen dollars for coal, I
curry Mab and give her a whole half hour's brushing. And when I
see her coat clean and shining and satiny, I feel a satisfaction
in what I've done. So it must be with the man who builds a house
or plants a tree. He can look at it. He made it. It's his
handiwork. Even if somebody like you comes along and takes his
tree away from him, still it is there, and still did he make it.
You can't rob him of that, Mr. Harnish, with all your millions.
It's the creative joy, and it's a higher joy than mere gambling.
Haven't you ever made things yourself--a log cabin up in the
Yukon, or a canoe, or raft, or something? And don't you remember
how satisfied you were, how good you felt, while you were doing
it and after you had it done?"
While she spoke his memory was busy with the associations she
recalled. He saw the deserted flat on the river bank by the
Klondike, and he saw the log cabins and warehouses spring up, and
all the log structures he had built, and his sawmills working
night and day on three shifts.
"Why, dog-gone it, Miss Mason, you're right--in a way. I've
built hundreds of houses up there, and I remember I was proud and
glad to see them go up. I'm proud now, when I remember them.
And there was Ophir--the most God-forsaken moose-pasture of a
creek you ever laid eyes on. I made that into the big Ophir.
Why, I ran the water in there from the Rinkabilly, eighty miles
away. They all said I couldn't, but I did it, and I did it by
myself. The dam and the flume cost me four million. But you
should have seen that Ophir--power plants, electric lights, and
hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess
I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made
Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer--I beg your pardon. I
didn't mean to cuss. But that Ophir !--I sure am proud of her
now, just as the last time I laid eyes on her."
"And you won something there that was more than mere money," Dede
encouraged. "Now do you know what I would do if I had lots of
money and simply had to go on playing at business? Take all the
southerly and westerly slopes of these bare hills. I'd buy them
in and plant eucalyptus on them. I'd do it for the joy of doing
it anyway; but suppose I had that gambling twist in me which you
talk about, why, I'd do it just the same and make money out of
the trees. And there's my other point again. Instead of raising
the price of coal without adding an ounce of coal to the market
supply, I'd be making thousands and thousands of cords of
firewood--making something where nothing was before. And
everybody who ever crossed on the ferries would look up at these
forested hills and be made glad. Who was made glad by your
adding four dollars a ton to Rock Wells?"
It was Daylight's turn to be silent for a time while she waited
an answer.
"Would you rather I did things like that?" he asked at last.
"It would be better for the world, and better for you," she
answered noncommittally. _
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