Had she heard the conversation which preceded that bold action, Mrs.
Mills would have been still more impressed. Determination is the natural
foe of diplomacy. Warned by one single, furtive glance that Lee intended
to make off, Gordon plunged at one smash through her fence of reserve.
"Do you intend to keep that engagement?"
Coming from a young man whom one hated so vindictively that one could
"just kill any other girl that tried to take him," the question was well
calculated to arrest attention. Neither was its force lessened by the
fact that it was _his_, not _hers_--perish the thought!--outrageous
conduct which had caused said engagement!
The audacity of it caused her first to gasp, then draw rein and stare at
him in utter surprise; finally to ride slowly on while preparing an
answer that should not only wither him, there, in the saddle, but also
hide the tumult of fright and pleasure in her own breast.
Her glance said, "You certainly have got your gall with you!" But her
answer was much more dignified, "By what right do you ask?"
"The right of a man who loves you."
It was a fine stroke; established at once his freedom to meddle with her
affairs. His right in the premises would have been upheld in any ancient
court of love. Though she tried to conceal it from herself, it was so
conceded by one girl's fluttering heart. As a matter of fact, she had
been aching for a week to hear him say it; yet, with that natural
cruelty which is displayed alike by cats and maids in torturing mice and
men, she proceeded to deny it.
"Yes?" she raised cool brows. "Judging by what I saw in the cañon--it
must be recent."
She looked for him to wither, but--the fellow refused! He did not even
flinch. On the contrary, he just looked at her with shining earnestness;
sat his saddle so trim, erect, irritatingly handsome, that she couldn't
help taking notice. No, he was not to be side-tracked by such light
subterfuge! He swept it away with masculine bluntness.
"I thought so myself--but now I know. It was all so strange, wonderful,
picturesque, this new life, that I was blinded. I knew that I liked you,
but never paused to analyze my feelings, and it wasn't till you shot
that announcement at me a week ago that I awoke--awoke to the fact that
all of it, the beauty, romance, centered on you. Since then, the life
and light have faded, leaving it drab and drear."
This was not all. Laying it down, as it were, for his major premise, he
built thereon, worked, and enlarged, and embroidered while she played
with the coils of her _riata_. As an oratorical effort, it could not
compare with fire and passion, melodious swing of Ramon's rhythmical
Spanish. But what it lacked in eloquence it made up in sincere, vibrant
feeling. The stronger for its reserves, it was just such a talk any
honest young Anglo-Saxon might make to his lady-love. And if judged by
its effects, it must be regarded as successful, for long before he
finished two large tears made small splashes on her pommel.
"When--when did you find this out?"
She had intended it to be light, if not satirical; but the little
hesitation, helped out by a sympathetic quiver, basely betrayed her
hunger for more.
Be certain she got it--in detail, not a thing left out. With a touch of
poetry, now, he told of his marvelous discovery on the morning they had
ridden over to the widow's together that the sunlight proceeded from her
hair; also the freshness of the morning, roll of tawny plains, breath of
the chaparral, all that was beautiful in creation.
There was also some mention of the hair in connection with a certain
Java forest, with passing reference to the Chinese Wall and a voyage he
had intended to make up the great Asian rivers. Not having personal
experience in their navigation, said references were rather vague, but
her imagination abundantly supplied the requisite flora and fauna from
magazine articles and pictures. Porcelain towers, orchids, giant palms;
deep jungle temples; the crowded boat life of the Yangtse-Kiang, junks
and sampans with their cargoes of saffron-faced, slant-eyed Celestials,
men, women, and children--especially children--her imagination improved
on the lovely dreams she had so cruelly disrupted. He concluded with
that:
"And you smashed it--all to smithereens."
For a while she rode in silence. Apprehension and fright had given place
to sorrow that contended tumultuously with delight for possession of her
soul. "I'm sorry," she spoke at last. "_So_ sorry, but--you provoked
it."
"Why! How?"
He was reminded, of course, that he "lost interest in girls after they
grew up." She added, a little vindictively, "And _you_ didn't flirt with
Mrs. Mills?"
"Only in self-defense. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,
isn't it?"
But she denied this bit of ancient wisdom. "No, it isn't! And--and you
_kissed_ that dreadful girl! I--oh, I could have _killed_ you!"
"Why?"
She was looking at him now, and the compound of bright anger, pleading
and defiance, regret, love, hope, and despair that alternately flashed
and swam in the wet eyes gave sufficient answer. It was then he plucked
her from the saddle; crushed her to him with force that squeezed out,
for the moment, the anger, regret, despair, left only love and hope.
Ensued the usual delirious moment when poor mortals conquer time and
eternity, set at naught the black riddle of existence. Her face buried
in his shoulder, his in her hair, they clung to each other while his
horse moved slowly forward and hers went careering on over the next
earth roll.
Elsewhere on this globe some three thousand millions of souls were
coming and going on the ordinary business of life at trade, barter;
feasting or fasting; mourning or making merry; dying, some hundreds of
them, every second, to make way for a new spawn of life. Beyond the blue
loom of the mountains men were robbing and murdering, hunting one
another like beasts of the jungle in the name of this or that "cause";
committing frightful infamies in the sacred name of love. Swaying hither
and thither, that tide of lust and carnage might sweep at any moment
over these sunlit plains.
Yet, blind to it all, oblivious of the past and future, conscious only
of the present that had bloomed in sudden glory, sufficient to
themselves as the first man and woman in Eden, they rode forward lost in
an illumined dream.
It lasted, that wonderful, bright ecstasy, until, turning up her face,
he made to kiss her. Then, by a thought of Ramon, was she abruptly
recalled to unpleasant realities. She laid a determined, if gentle, hand
over his mouth.
"You mustn't."
"Why?"
"You forget--I am still engaged."
"Why--so you are!" Laughing, he tried to dodge her hand, but desisted
when he saw she was in earnest. "You surely don't intend--"
"No, indeed!" She read his thought. "I had believed, at first, that I
ought. But Mrs. Mills showed me how unfair it would be to marry Ramon
while--"
"Say it."
"While I loved _you_."
For a girl who had just restated her engagement to another man, she
behaved most disgracefully during a long silence that was broken only by
the measured tread of the horse. Snuggling in closer, she re-entered
that illumined dream, and made no attempt to check the kisses he
showered on the soft palm of the restraining hand. It was, no doubt,
some realization of her misbehavior that caused her to sit up,
presently, and pull it away.
"This won't do. For the present we'll have to behave like ordinary
persons."
"But your horse is gone," he protested when she gently put away his arm.
"You can't walk."
"No, but I can ride behind you in the Mexican fashion. Stop, while I
change."
He would have preferred it as it was, but when, after mounting behind
him, she slid her arm about his waist, he had to concede the Mexican
habit its own delights. It was surely nice of her to allow him to cover
her hand.
"The young people," she explained, "are not allowed to do this--only
husbands and wives."
"Poor young people!" he pitied. "But, on the whole, quite right. It
would never do to have them cavorting over the country like this; too
much of a strain on the conventions. Indeed, I think we ought to conform
ourselves at once."
"How?" Just as if she hadn't known what he meant.
"Let's ride into San Carlos, get a license from the jefe and be married
at once?"
The bold proposal drew only a soft laugh. "To think that, up to a week
ago, he didn't even see me--except as part of the scenery. No, amigo,
till to-morrow we are to be ordinary persons. Then I shall go and tell
Ramon."
"And if he refuses?"
"I shall break it myself."
It was in his mind to say that she could not go alone. But he remembered
that Ramon would probably arrive at Los Arboles before she started. He
turned again to the delightful present.
"And after that?"
A little pressure at his waist made answer.
Reaching behind, he drew her other arm forward till her hands clasped in
front, then squeezed his own elbows down tight over hers. Thus,
oblivious once more of the toiling billions, revolutionists beyond the
mountain's loom, they rode forward again in that illumined dream, two
foolish, happy souls at loose in the spheres.