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_ Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight
proposed to Dede. As on the first time, he restrained himself
until his hunger for her overwhelmed him and swept him away in
his red automobile to Berkeley. He left the machine several
blocks away and proceeded to the house on foot. But Dede was
out, the landlady's daughter told him, and added, on second
thought, that she was out walking in the hills. Furthermore, the
young lady directed him where Dede's walk was most likely to
extend.
Daylight obeyed the girl's instructions, and soon the street he
followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the
first steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the
on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the
rising wind proclaimed its imminence. As far as he could see,
there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy hills. To the
right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large,
full-grown eucalyptus grove. Here all was noise and movement,
the lofty, slender trunked trees swaying back and forth in the
wind and clashing their branches together. In the squalls, above
all the minor noises of creaking and groaning, arose a deep
thrumming note as of a mighty harp. Knowing Dede as he did,
Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere in this
grove where the storm effects were so pronounced. And find her
he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest of the
opposing slope where the gale smote its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the
way Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was
as direct and gusty as the gale itself. had time neither for
greeting nor apology.
"It's the same old thing," he said. "I want you and I've come
for
you. You've just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think
about it the more certain I am that you've got a Sneaking liking
for me that's something more than just Ordinary liking. And you
don't dast say that it isn't; now dast you?"
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and
he had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer,
she felt a light but firmly insistent pressure as of his drawing
her to him. Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire
for the moment stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew
herself away, though permitting her hand still to remain in his.
"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No." She smiled woefully. "Not of you, but of myself."
"You haven't taken my dare," he urged under this encouragement.
"Please, please," she begged. "We can never marry, so don't let
us discuss it."
"Then I copper your bet to lose." He was almost gay, now, for
success was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked
him, without a doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well
enough to let him hold her hand, well enough to be not repelled
by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. "No, it is impossible. You would lose your
bet."
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight's mind--a
clew
that explained everything.
"Say, you ain't been let in for some one of these secret
marriages
have you?"
The consternation in his voice and on his face was too much for
her, and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of
joy from the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed with himself decided that
action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her
and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter
of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed
overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of
flying leaves enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind
came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her
hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to
him and of a fresher and more poignant realization of what she
meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware of it in the hand
that held hers.
She suddenly leaned against him, bowing her head until it rested
lightly upon his breast. And so they stood while another squall,
with flying leaves and scattered drops of rain, rattled past.
With equal suddenness she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Do you know," she said, "I prayed last night about you. I
prayed that you would fail, that you would lose everything
everything."
Daylight stared his amazement at this cryptic utterance. "That
sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women,
and you've got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose
everything, seeing as you like me--"
"I never said so."
"You didn't dast say you didn't. So, as I was saying: liking me,
why you'd want me to go broke is clean beyond my simple
understanding. It's right in line with that other puzzler of
yours, the more-you-like-me-the-less-you-want-to-marry-me one.
Well, you've just got to explain, that's all."
His arms went around her and held her closely, and this time she
did not resist. Her head was bowed, and he had not see her face,
yet he had a premonition that she was crying. He had learned the
virtue of silence, and he waited her will in the matter. Things
had come to such a pass that she was bound to tell him something
now. Of that he was confident.
"I am not romantic," she began, again looking at him as he spoke.
"It might be better for me if I were. Then I could make a fool
of myself and be unhappy for the rest of my life. But my
abominable common sense prevents. And that doesn't make me a bit
happier, either."
"I'm still out of my depth and swimming feeble," Daylight said,
after waiting vainly for her to go on. "You've got to show me,
and you ain't shown me yet. Your common sense and praying that
I'd go broke is all up in the air to me. Little woman, I just
love you mighty hard, and I want you to marry me. That's
straight and simple and right off the bat. Will you marry me?"
She shook her head slowly, and then, as she talked, seemed to
grow angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was
against him.
"Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have
asked." She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. "You
are honest and straightforward. Do you want me to be honest and
straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?--to tell you
things that will hurt you?--to make confessions that ought to
shame me? to behave in what many men would think was an
unwomanly manner?"
The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not
speak.
"I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud
and humble at the same time that a man like you should care for
me. But you have too much money. There's where my abominable
common sense steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be
my man--my lover and my husband. You would be your money's man.
I know I am a foolish woman, but I want my man for myself. You
would not be free for me. Your money possesses you, taking your
time, your thoughts, your energy, ever thing, bidding you go here
and go there, do this and do that. Don't you see? Perhaps it's
pure silliness, but I feel that I can love much, give much--give
all, and in return, though I don't want all, I want much--and I
want much more than your money would permit you to give me.
"And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I
am not ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never
marry you. And I loved you much when I did not know you at all,
when you first came down from Alaska and I first went into the
office. You were my hero. You were the Burning Daylight of the
gold-diggings, the daring traveler and miner. And you looked it.
I don't see how any woman could have looked at you without loving
you--then. But you don't look it now.
"Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight
talk, and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have
been living unnaturally. You, a man of the open, have been
cooping yourself up in the cities with all that that means. You
are not the same man at all, and your money is destroying you.
You are becoming something different, something not so healthy,
not so clean, not so nice. Your money and your way of life are
doing it. You know it. You haven't the same body now that you
had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy flesh.
You are kind and genial with me, I know, but you are not kind and
genial to all the world as you were then. You have become harsh
and cruel. And I know. Remember, I have studied you six days a
week, month after month, year after year; and I know more about
the most insignificant parts of you than you know of all of me.
The cruelty is not only in your heart and thoughts, but it is
there in face. It has put its lines there. I have watched them
come and grow. Your money, and the life it compels you to lead
have done all this. You are being brutalized and degraded. And
this process can only go on and on until you are hopelessly
destroyed--"
He attempted to interrupt, but she stopped him, herself
breathless and her voice trembling.
"No, no; let me finish utterly. I have done nothing but think,
think, think, all these months, ever since you came riding with
me, and now that I have begun to speak I am going to speak all
that I have in me. I do love you, but I cannot marry you and
destroy love. You are growing into a thing that I must in the
end despise. You can't help it. More than you can possibly love
me, do you love this business game. This business--and it's all
perfectly useless, so far as you are concerned--claims all of
you. I sometimes think it would be easier to share you equitably
with another woman than to share you with this business. I might
have half of you, at any rate. But this business would claim,
not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine
hundredths.
"Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man's
money to spend. I want the man. You say you want ME. And
suppose I consented, but gave you only one-hundredth part of me.
Suppose there was something else in my life that took the other
ninety-nine parts, and, furthermore, that ruined my figure, that
put pouches under my eyes and crows-feet in the corners, that
made me unbeautiful to look upon and that made my spirit
unbeautiful. Would you be satisfied with that one-hundredth part
of me? Yet that is all you are offering me of yourself. Do you
wonder that I won't marry you?--that I can't?"
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on
again.
"It isn't that I am selfish. After all, love is giving, not
receiving. But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do
you any good. You are like a sick man. You don't play business
like other men. You play it heart and and all of you. No matter
what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief
diversion. There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in
the stable. You would buy me a beautiful mansion and leave me in
it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my
helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of business
would be corroding you and marring you all the time. You play it
as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the
life of the trail. Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast
and as far as you, to work as hard or endure as much. You hold
back nothing; you put all you've got into whatever you are
doing."
"Limit is the sky," he grunted grim affirmation.
"But if you would only play the lover-husband that way--"
Her voice faltered and stopped, and a blush showed in her wet
cheeks as her eyes fell before his.
"And now I won't say another word," she added. "I've delivered a
whole sermon."
She rested now, frankly and fairly, in the shelter of his arms,
and both were oblivious to the gale that rushed past them in
quicker and stronger blasts. The big downpour of rain had not
yet come, but the mist-like squalls were more frequent. Daylight
was openly perplexed, and he was still perplexed when he began to
speak.
"I'm stumped. I'm up a tree. I'm clean flabbergasted, Miss
Mason--or Dede, because I love to call you that name. I'm free
to confess there's a mighty big heap in what you say. As I
understand it, your conclusion is that you'd marry me if I hadn't
a cent and if I wasn't getting fat. No, no; I'm not joking. I
acknowledge the corn, and that's just my way of boiling the
matter down and summing it up. If I hadn't a cent, and if I was
living a healthy life with all the time in the world to love you
and be your husband instead of being awash to my back teeth in
business and all the rest--why, you'd marry me.
"That's all as clear as print, and you're correcter than I ever
guessed before. You've sure opened my eyes a few. But I'm
stuck. What can I do? My business has sure roped, thrown, and
branded me. I'm tied hand and foot, and I can't get up and
meander over green pastures. I'm like the man that got the bear
by the tail. I can't let go; and I want you, and I've got to let
go to get you.
"I don't know what to do, but something's sure got to happen--I
can't lose you. I just can't. And I'm not going to. Why,
you're running business a close second right now. Business never
kept me awake nights.
"You've left me no argument. I know I'm not the same man that
came from Alaska. I couldn't hit the trail with the dogs as I
did in them days. I'm soft in my muscles, and my mind's gone
hard. I used to respect men. I despise them now. You see, I
spent all my life in the open, and I reckon I'm an open-air man.
Why, I've got the prettiest little ranch you ever laid eyes on,
up in Glen Ellen. That's where I got stuck for that brick-yard.
You recollect handling the correspondence. I only laid eyes on
the ranch that one time, and I so fell in love with it that I
bought it there and then. I just rode around the hills, and was
happy as a kid out of school. I'd be a better man living in the
country. The city doesn't make me better. You're plumb right
there. I know it. But suppose your prayer should be answered
and I'd go clean broke and have to work for day's wages?"
She did not answer, though all the body of her seemed to urge
consent.
"Suppose I had nothing left but that little ranch, and was
satisfied to grow a few chickens and scratch a living somehow-
-would you marry me then, Dede?"
"Why, we'd be together all the time!" she cried.
"But I'd have to be out ploughing once in a while, he warned, "or
driving to town to get the grub."
"But there wouldn't be the office, at any rate, and no man to
see, and men to see without end. But it is all foolish and
impossible, and we'll have to be starting back now if we're to
escape the rain."
Then was the moment, among the trees, where they began the
descent of the hill, that Daylight might have drawn her closely
to him and kissed her once. But he was too perplexed with the
new thoughts she had put into his head to take advantage of the
situation. He merely caught her by the arm and helped her over
the rougher footing.
"It's darn pretty country up there at Glen Ellen," he said
meditatively. "I wish you could see it."
At the edge of the grove he suggested that it might be better for
them to part there.
"It's your neighborhood, and folks is liable to talk."
But she insisted that he accompany her as far as the house.
"I can't ask you in," she said, extending her hand at the foot of
the steps.
The wind was humming wildly in sharply recurrent gusts, but still
the rain held off.
"Do you know," he said, "taking it by and large, it's the
happiest day of my life." He took off his hat, and the wind
rippled and twisted his black hair as he went on solemnly, "And
I'm sure grateful to God, or whoever or whatever is responsible
for your being on this earth. For you do like me heaps. It's
been my joy to hear you say so to-day. It's--" He left the
thought arrested, and his face assumed the familiar whimsical
expression as he murmured: "Dede, Dede, we've just got to get
married. It's the only way, and trust to luck for it's coming
out all right--".
But the tears were threatening to rise in her eyes again, as she
shook her head and turned and went up the steps. _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER XX
Read previous: PART II: CHAPTER XVIII
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