"Well--I'm not blind, as--Leslie, for instance. I only wonder."
"At what?"
"Your taste."
She made a face at Helen's distant figure. "I might return your
thought. After all, Calvert, from our viewpoint, you know, she's only a
higher type of native--dreadfully anthropomorphic."
"Exactly," he answered. "And that's why I"--pausing, he substituted an
adverb more in accordance with Mrs. Leslie's ironical mood--"like her.
She's fresh, sound, and clean of body and mind. Clings to the ideals we
chucked overboard a hundred years ago--lives up to them with all the vim
and push of her race. She stirs me--"
"As a cocktail does a jaded palate," Mrs. Leslie interposed. "And a
good enough reason; it will serve for us both, since you are so frank,
Calvert. It is not your fancy I am laughing at, but your diffidence,
the morbid respectability with which you wait till it pleases her to
give that which you have been accustomed to command from others. It is
quite touching.... But why this timidity? Why do you linger?"
"Because--" He paused, feeling it impossible to yield the real reason
up to her mockery; to tell that the girl had touched a deeper chord of
feeling than had ever been reached by a woman's hand; that she had
broken the cynical crust which had been formed by years of association
with the sophisticated women of the army set. He threw the onus back on
her. "That's rich, Elinor. Here, for months, you have fenced her
about; given her steady chaperonage; warned me to tone down to avoid
giving offence. Now you ask why? Have you forgotten how you rated me
for my violence in pressing her under the mistletoe?"
"Pish!" She contemplated him scornfully. "I only advised caution. And
then--" She also paused; then, thrusting reserve to the winds, went on:
"And then she hadn't come between me and--my wish. Now she has. And
let me tell you, my friend"--she returned to her "cocktail"
simile--"that while you linger, inhaling virginal aromas, a strong hand
will slip in and drain the glass. Will you stand by and see her
sweetness sipped by another? Now, don't strike me."
He looked angry enough to do it, but contented himself with throwing
back her question, "Why do you linger?"
"Because I cannot drain my cup"--her lips quivered thirstily--"till
yours is out of the way. He has the bad taste to prefer her
spotlessness to my--"
"Sophistication?" he supplied.
She nodded. "Thanks. And he will continue to do so until you take her
out of the way. So--it is up to you, as the boys say. I think, too,
that she suspects that my interest is not altogether platonic, and as a
commodity enhances in value as it is desired by others, her liking may
be spurred into love. At present she's balanced. Likes you, I know.
Better strike while the iron is hot."
"I would if I thought--" he began, then went on, musingly: "But I've
sized it up as slow-going. Didn't think she was the kind that can be
rushed."
Mrs. Leslie snorted her disdain. "You? With all your experience! To
set her on a pinnacle! How long before you men will learn that we would
rather be taken down and be hugged. While the saint worships at the
shrine the sinner steals the image. I warrant you my big American won't
waste any time on his knees. However, I've warned--here comes Fred from
the stables."
That was not the end of their talk. It recurred at every opportunity;
and by the time Helen returned Molyneux was persuaded against his better
judgment that he had gone too easily about his wooing.
"What thou doest, do quickly," she whispered, as he went out to hitch to
take Helen home. And as they drove away she gazed long after them from
the door.
What was she thinking? Given a woman of firmer texture, one whose acts
flowed from steady impulses, in turn the effects of settled character,
thought may be guessed. But Mrs. Leslie's light nature veered to every
wind of passion. She could not even hate consistently. Was she swayed
altogether by revenge, or, as hinted by her talk with Molyneux, was hope
beginning to rise from the ashes of despair?
*IX*
*THE DEVIL*
If, as said, the devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes, it does
not follow that said purposes are always fulfilled.
Molyneux had better have followed his intuition and "gone slowly." But
if, in brains and capacity, he towered above the average of his
remittance-fellows, the taint of his ancient blood yet showed in a
pliability to suggestion, a childish eagerness to snatch unripe fruit.
Whereas, by a quiet apology, he had long ago repaired his error in the
Christmas games, he must now commit greater foolishness.
Consciously and unconsciously, in varying degrees, Helen aided his
blundering. She could not help looking her prettiest. But her
delicacies of cream and rose, the tender mouth, the bosom heaving under
its lace, did not require the accentuation of coquetry. It was the
healthy coquetry of the young animal, to be sure, unconscious, as much
as can be. She need not, however, have authorized his gallantries with
laugh and smile--would not, had she realized his limitations, his
confused morality, subordinance to passion, emotional irresponsibility.
Afterwards she had but a confused notion how the thing came to pass.
They laughed, chatted, jested, while the tenderness in his manner
bordered more and more on the familiar. He had been telling her of the
strange marriage custom of an Afghan tribe and had asked how she would
like such a forceful wooing.
"I think," she answered, "that a strain of the primitive inheres in our
most cultured women. I'm sure I could never love a man who was not my
master."
She spoke thoughtfully, considering the proposition in the abstract; but
he, in his blind folly, interpreted concretely. In the sudden lighting
of his face she read her mistake. But before she could put out a hand
in protest, his arms were about her, his searching lips smothered her
cry. She fought wildly, spent her strength in a desperate effort, then
capitulated--lay, panting, while he fed on her face, neck, hair, her
lips. And it was well she did. Prolonged resistance would only have
provoked him to freer license. As it was, mistaking quiescence for
acquiescence, he presently held her off that his hot eyes might share
the spoil.
She now fully realized her danger. His expression, the glassy look of
his eyes filled her with repulsion, but she summoned to her aid all the
craft that centuries of dire need have bred in her race. She smiled up
in his face, rather a pallid smile, but sufficient for his fooling. A
playful hand held him back from another kiss.
"You are very rough," she whispered.
"Consider the provocation," he answered, dodging the hand.
She tried not to shrink. "You upset me," she murmured. "I am quite
faint. Is there any water near by?"
She had noticed a slough ahead. Driving into it, he bent over and wet
her handkerchief.
"Now if I could only drink."
He stepped ankle-deep into the water. "Out of my hands." But as he
stooped, with concave palms, there came a rattle behind him.
Uttering an oath, he sprang--too late. As he waded to dry land she
swung the ponies in a wide circle and reined in about fifty yards away.
While he looked sheepishly on, she wiped her face with the kerchief,
rubbed and scrubbed till the skin shone red where his lips had touched,
then tossed the kerchief towards him and drove on.
A prey to remorse, shame, he stood gazing after. All said, a man's
ideals are formed by the people about him. A virtuous woman, a leal
friend, raise his standard for the race; and just then Molyneux would
have given his life to place himself in the friendly relation that
obtained between them a half-hour ago.
But he could not. Nor could all of Helen's vigorous rubbing remove the
memory of those shameful kisses. Her bitten lips were scarlet when, a
quarter-hour later, she rattled up to Carter's shanty; her eyes were
heavy with unshed tears.
Now here was a first-class opportunity for him to play the fool. An
untimely question, a little idiotic sympathy would have put him in a
worse case with her than Molyneux. But though inwardly perturbed,
shaking with anxiety, he kept a grip on himself.
"Such reckless driving!" he exclaimed, harking back to her own words on
that first drive from Lone Tree. Then solemnly surveying Molyneux's hat,
which was perched funnily on the seat beside her, he went on, "Looks
like you've lost a passenger."
His twinkle removed the tension. Looking down on the hat, she laughed;
and if, a minute later, she cried, the tears that wet his shoulder were
not cast against him.
"If you will return the ponies," she said, when her cry was out--she had
already told him enough to explain the situation--"I'll stay here till
you come back and then you may drive me home--if you will?"
"And I'll find him?" She laughed at his comical accent as he intended
she should.
"About three miles back."
"Any message?"
She sensed the menace. "Oh no! If you quarrel, I'll never, never
forgive you. Now, please!" She placed her hand on his arm.
"All right," he agreed, and, five minutes later drove off with the Devil
pony in leash behind.
From afar Molyneux saw him coming and braced for the encounter, but
Carter had gotten himself well in hand. "Miss Morrill," he said, "is
real sorry she couldn't hold the ponies. But, Lordy, man, you oughtn't
to have gone picking flowers."
"He's lying!" Molyneux thought, but followed the lead. "Yes, it was
careless. But, you know, it is always the unexpected that happens."
"You're dead right there."
The significance caused Molyneux to redden; but he tried to carry it off
easily. "And I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Carter. Can't I drive you
home?"
Turning from cinching his saddle, Carter regarded him steadily.
"Obliged to you, sir. I'm a bit particular in my choice of company."
The contempt stung Molyneux to retort: "You are plain-spoken, but I'm
told the trait is common in Americans. Fortunately for us outsiders,
your women are more complaisant."
It only led him deeper. Giving a last vicious tug at the cinch, Carter
vaulted into the saddle. "Yes," he shot back, as he arranged his
bridle, "they make a mistake now and then, but it don't take 'em long to
find it out." And he galloped away with easy honors.
Reining in at his own door half an hour later, he regarded with
astonishment a transformation which had occurred in his absence.
Instead of the woman, beautiful in her angry tears, a demure girl came
out to meet him. While he was gone she had bathed her red eyes, then,
to relieve a headache, had let down her hair and braided it into a plait
of solid gold. Thick as Carter's wrist, it hung so low that, obedient
to his admiring suggestion, she easily knitted it about her waist.
"You look," he said, "more like school-girl than school-marm."
With that simple coiffure displaying the girlish line of her head and
neck, she might, indeed, have easily passed for eighteen. It
accentuated a wee tip-tilt of her pretty nose, a leaning to the
_retrousse_ that had been the greatest trial of her youth and still
caused her occasional qualms. Could she have realized the piquancy it
lent to features that, otherwise, had been too regular or have known the
sensation it caused her companion as he looked down on it and her
eyelashes fluttering up from eyes that were wide and grave with
question.
One glance reassured her. His unruffled calm, the ironic humor of his
mouth, all expressed his mastership of the late situation. Satisfied,
she mounted beside him when he had hitched the ponies and settled in
against him with a sigh of relief. Not that she had so easily forgotten
her late trouble. The injured droop of her mouth, the serious face
moved him to vast sympathy and anger. He longed to smooth the knit brow
with kisses, to take her in his arms and soothe her as a little child.
For a second time that day her mouth stood in hazard, but, bracing
himself against temptation, he tried to wean her from her brooding by
ways that were safer if less sweet.
"Any one," he said, twinkling down upon her, "would think you'd lost
your best friend--"
"Instead of my worst," she anticipated.
"Glad you put it that way." He nodded his satisfaction. "And since you
do, why waste regrets? Jest wipe him clean off your books."
"It is bitter to learn that you have been deceived," she answered.
"More bitter to feel yourself misread. Most bitter"--her voice dropped
to a whisper--"to learn it in such a shameful way."
He did not say, "I warned you." Only his big brown hand closed on hers
with a sympathetic squeeze that almost expelled the pain in her heart.
She did not withdraw it; rather she drew in closer, and thus, hand in
hand, they rattled south over the vast green prairies which now were all
shotten with the iridescence of myriad flowers. The trail wound through
seas of daisies, bluebells, white tuft. Slender golden-rod trembled in
the breeze; dandelions and tiger-lilies flaunted their golden beauty
under turquoise skies. It was, indeed, difficult to remain sad with
such company in such surroundings; for not content with mute sympathy,
he strove to divert her thought by talk of the animals or plants which
they saw or passed, astonished her with his wide knowledge of curious
traits in their nature or history. So, gliding from subject to subject,
he weaned her from her trouble, and so, by easy stages, came to speaking
of himself, modestly introducing the subject with a letter.
It was from the office of the traffic manager of the trunk line
acknowledging a bid for tie and trestle contracts for the projected
branch through Silver Creek. While Cummings, Hines, and their confreres
were fulminating against the railroad pantheon, Carter had ridden over
the spruce ranges of the Riding Mountains, had secured options on
cutting permits from the provincial government, had driven down the old
survey, and then submitted an estimate which caused the construction
department of the railway to gasp its astonishment.
The chief engineer even carried the estimate to the traffic manager.
"Ties and timbers, this fellow Carter comes within a few thousand feet
of old Sawyer's estimate," he said. "Moreover, he is ready to deliver
the goods. Gives references to the Bank of America, which is to finance
his enterprise. Who is he?"
One would hardly expect the traffic manager to have remembered, but he
had; and thus it came about that the postscript of the letter was in his
own big sprawl. He regretted the fact that construction had been put off
for another year, "but," he added, "I have placed your bid on my own
files and shall see that it receives the earliest consideration when we
are ready for construction."
Helen exclaimed her satisfaction. "I'm so glad. I never knew that--you
could do this kind of work. Why didn't you tell me? I'm so interested.
Will it be a large contract?"
Her eyes testified to her words, and as, obedient to her wish, he ran on
giving details, they grew larger and more luminous. A touch of awe
dwelt in their hazel depths. Feeling always the attraction of his fine
physique, respecting his strength of will, clean character, he now
commanded her admiration on another score. Was he not proving himself
"fit" in the iron struggle of an economic age? And she, delicate bloom,
crowning bud of the tree of evolution, being yet subject to the law
that, of old, governed the cave maiden in her choice of a mate, felt the
full force of this last expression of his power.
As never before, she responded to his thought and feeling. When, after
a sudden lurch, he left his supporting arm on the rail across her waist,
she did not draw away; nay, she yielded to a luxurious sense of
protection and power, leaning in against his shoulder. That day all
things had conspired in his favor--even her pique at Molyneux--and now
the rapid movement, caressing sweep of the wind, riot of color and
sunlight, all helped to influence her judgment in a situation that was
rapidly approaching.
It lay, the situation, in a deep pool, ten feet below the bank of Silver
Creek. As before noted, Death and the Devil, those lively ponies, were,
as Carter put it, "worth watching" any and all the time on the dead
level, and the fact that he held a loose line on them running down trail
into the valley proved how very, very far he had departed from his usual
imperturbable mood. Small wonder, for the hazel glances he had
sustained this last hour would have upset the coolest head. But if his
condition was perfectly natural, so also was the innate deviltry that
caused the ponies to bolt the trail and plunge over the aforesaid bank.
Helen could never tell just how it happened. After two seconds' furious
bumping, she felt herself lifted bodily. Followed a crash as they fell.
That was the impact of the buggy wheel with Carter's head. The arms
loosened as she took the icy plunge, then came a half-minute's
suffocating struggle while the current was carrying her out to the
shallows. Wet, draggled, she stumbled shoreward; then, as the water
cleared out of her eyes, she turned and plunged wildly back. Face
downward, Carter was floating over a two-foot shallow and another second
would have carried him into a longer and deeper pool.
As for him, returning consciousness brought him sensations of something
soft under his splitting head--that was Helen's bosom; of arms about his
neck; lips that wildly kissed his and which opened with a glad cry when
he moved.
"Oh, I thought you were dead!"
For one blissful moment she allowed him to gaze in at the clear windows
of her soul; then remembering the unusual but effective restorative she
had used in the case, she flamed out in sudden colors, the banners of
discovered love. Never was maid in such a predicament! Was it fair to
expect that she would let fall a head that had been damaged in her
cause? She could only wait until, having fed his eyes full on her sweet
distress, he reached up and pulled her blushing face down upon his own.
The sun, the wind, the rippling water alone witnessed her surrender.
After a while a grizzled badger peered at them from his hole, pronounced
them harmless, and so came forth upon his errands. A colony of gophers
laid aside serious business to note, heads askew, loves that differed so
little from their own. A robin cried shame upon them from a willow near
by. But they were not ashamed. An hour slid by without either thinking
of such sub-lunary matters as damaged heads or wet clothing; at the end
of which Death and the Devil, having accomplished the complete
destruction of the buck-board, came back to look for their
master--probably associating him with the evening feed of oats--and fell
to cropping the grass along the creek.
Then she spoke, softly, blushing again. "You must think me shameless,
but--I did--I really thought you were dead."
"Ain't you glad I'm not?" She never noticed the "ain't," this young
lady who had originally sized him as an underbred person.
She did not answer, but he mightily appreciated the sudden tightening of
her arms. "But what must you think of me?"
He told all--of his resolution the moment he saw her on the Lone Tree
platform; of his hope, fears, dark despair, the hell he had suffered on
Molyneux's account. A soft hand cut short this last revelation, and
immediately they fell again into one of love's deep silences, an
eloquent pause that endured until the westering sun threw long shadows
across the creek. Then, rising, he caught the ponies and arranged
saddles with blankets and straps from the broken harness, while she
looked on with soft attention.
Mounted, they paused and looked back at the stream, ruby red under the
dying sun, the clay bank, the bordering willows, then they kissed each
other soberly and rode on. Dusk was blanketing the prairies when they
drew up at Flynn's cabin, yet it was not too dark for Mrs. Flynn's sharp
eyes to pick their secret.
"It's the new school-ma'am ye'll need to be looking for," she told
Flynn. "Why? Man, didn't ye see him look at her, an' her that lovely
red, her eyes pretty as a mother deer's, an' her voice soft an' cooing
as a dove's. Flynn, Flynn! ye've forgotten your own courting."
One fine morning, two months later, Molyneux's drivers spun out of his
stable enclosure and rattled south at a pace that did not keep up with
their driver's impatience.
These two months had certainly been the unhappiest of his life. A man's
opinions, philosophy, must, if they have vitality at all, be formed upon
the actions of those about him, upon the phenomena which life presents
to his reason. This, however, does not altogether annul the force of
those ideals of conduct for himself and others which were learned at his
mother's knee. Always they persist. Granted that loose life may smother
the plant so that it produces neither fruit nor leafage, yet the germ is
there--the assurety that beyond the rotten pale of fast society lies a
fair land where purity, chastity, goodness, the virtues one firmly
incarnates in the person of mother, sister, or girl friend, do grow and
flourish. Under the foulness of the most determined roue lies the
ineradicable belief that had Lot sought righteousness among the women of
Sodom that wicked city had never been destroyed. One clean, wholesome
girl will shake a man's faith in baseness, torture him with a vivid
sense of his own backslidings, and now that passion's scales were fallen
from his eyes, Molyneux appreciated at their full worth the naive
mixture of innocence and womanly wisdom, the health, strength, and
wholesomeness of character that set Helen apart from his light
acquaintance.
"Fool! fool!" he had told himself again and again. "She is worthy of a
king--if one could be found worthy of her. And you had a fair chance!
Oh, you fool!"
Nor had he failed to write her a letter of apology. He had done that in
the first agonies of repentance, six weeks ago, and, receiving no
answer, had taken the ensuing weeks to screw his courage to the point of
asking pardon in person. But now that it was there he was possessed of
a wild exhilaration that took no thought of refusal. She could hardly
fail to pardon a suppliant for crimes that were instigated by her own
beauty, and one so becomingly repentant! Full of the consciousness of
his own virtuous intention, it was quite easy for him to credit Helen
with the magnanimity that would be its reciprocal feeling; and this once
established, himself pardoned in thought, he passed to day-dreams. Her
smile, the sweet tilt of her pretty nose, her glory of golden hair, her
every physical and mental charm, passed in mental review, beguiling the
tedium of the trail till the school-house thrust up over the horizon.
Then his mood changed. Its squat, obtrusive materiality thrust into his
consciousness, shattering the filmy substance of his dreams, and as he
noticed the closed windows, shut door, doubt replaced elation,
depression, the black antithesis of his late mood, settled down upon
him.
As he sat staring a voice hailed him. "Been riding ahint of you this
half-hour, but you never looked back. Fine haying weather, ain't it?"
Startled, Molyneux turned to find Jed Hines surveying him with an
irritating smile. His expression plainly revealed that not only did he
know Molyneux's errand, but that he was viewing it under the light of
humorous secret knowledge. Restraining an impulse to remodel the
expression, he said, nonchalantly as he could: "What is the matter here?
School closed?"
Hines nodded. He had all the Canadian's traditional hate of the
remittance-man; Molyneux, in especial, he detested, because, perhaps by
his superior shrewdness, he gave less cause for contempt than the race
in general. That he had paused to speak was proof sufficient that he had
unpleasant news. He would, however, take his own time in delivering
it--prolong the torture to the limit.
"Midsummer holidays," he laconically answered.
Molyneux ignored his curtness. "Miss Morrill at Glaves's place, do you
know?"