The second event in Donna Corblay's life was about to be consummated.
For the first time since her arrival in San Pasqual, a babe in arms, she
was about to leave it!
All of her uneventful colorless mediocre life Donna had felt a
passionate longing to go up into the country on the other side of the
range. To her, the long strings of passenger coaches came to San Pasqual
as the heralds of another world--poignant pulsations of the greater life
beyond the sky-line, and not as the tools of a whimsical circumstance,
bringing to Donna a daily consignment of hats. From earliest childhood
she had watched the trains disappearing into Tehachapi Pass, tracing
their progress northward long after they had disappeared by the smoke
wafted over the crest of the bare volcanic range; until with the passage
of many trains and many years the desire to see what lay beyond that
grim barrier had developed into an obsession. Because of the purple
distances that mocked her, the land of sunshine, fruit and flowers was
doubly alluring; her desire was as that of a soul that dwells in limbo
and longs for the smile of God.
And to-day she was going out into the world, for this was her wedding
day. She had received Bob's telegram, asking her to meet him in
Bakersfield, and she was going to meet him; alternately she laughed and
wept, for the transcendent joy of two Events in one short day had filled
her heart to overflowing, leaving no room for vague forebodings of the
future.
Donna dressed herself that morning with painstaking detail. Too late she
had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's
wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a
swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San
Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself
to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods
emporium, having the suit made in Chicago and sent out by express.
Instead she had resolutely stuck to wash-dresses, which were more suited
to the climate and environs of San Pasqual, and added the tailored suit
money to her sinking fund in the strong box of the eating-house safe.
No, Donna was not prepared to obey Bob McGraw's summons. She wept a
little as she reflected how provincial and plebeian she must appear,
stepping down from the train at Bakersfield, clad in a white duck
walking suit, white shoes and stockings and a white sailor hat. She
wanted Bob to be proud of her, and her heart swelled to bursting at the
thought that she must deny him such a simple pleasure. Poor Donna! Once
she had thought that suit so beautiful. It was a drummer's sample which
she had purchased from a commercial traveler who, claiming to own his
own samples, had been prevailed upon to accept a price for the suit when
at length he became convinced that under no circumstances would Donna
permit him to make her a present of it. He had informed her at the time
that it was the very latest Parisian creation and she had believed him.
If Donna had only known how ravishing that simple costume made her
appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw!
Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving
town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the
Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing aloft a parasol that but the
day before had been the joy of her girlish existence, she was fully
convinced that a more commonplace addendum to a feminine wardrobe had
never been devised.
She was certain that all San Pasqual must know her secret--that this was
her wedding day. She shuddered lest the telegraph operator had suspected
something, despite Bob's commendable caution, and had incited the
townspeople to line up at the depot, there to shower her with rice
and hurl antiquated footgear after the train that bore her north. Such
horrible rites were preserved and enacted with religious exactitude in
San Pasqual.
Until that morning Donna never had really known how ardently she longed
to escape from the sordid commonplace lonely little town. With its
inhabitants she had nothing in common, although she noted a mental
exception to this condition as, from afar, she observed Harley P.
Hennage standing in front of the eating-house door, picking his teeth
with his gold toothpick. She felt a sudden desire to go to the worst man
in San Pasqual and pour out to him the whole wonderful story; then
to await his quizzical congratulations and bask for a moment in his
infrequent honest childish smile, for Donna had a very great longing
to-day to permit some human being to bear with her the burden of her
joy.
She was still a block from the center of the town when the train pulled
in from the south, the last car coming to a stop close to where she was
standing. Donna observed that the male entities of her little world had
assembled to see that the train pulled in and out again safely, and had
their attention centered upon the new arrivals who were rushing into the
eating-house for a hurried snack. She saw her opportunity. There was no
necessity for her to brave the crowd at the window in order to purchase
a ticket. Decidedly luck was with her this morning. She took her
suitcase from Sam Singer, the faithful, climbed aboard the last car,
walked through into the next car, which happened to be a sleeper, found
a vacant state-room, entered, pulled down the window shade and waited
until the train started. As her car rolled past the depot she peered out
and saw Harley P. Hennage scratching his head with one hand, while in
the other he held a letter which he was reading. Donna could not help
wondering who had written a letter to the worst man in San Pasqual.
She was glad of the seclusion of the state-room until the train was
a mile outside San Pasqual, when she went out on the observation
car. Donna knew she ran little risk of meeting a San Pasqualian in
first-class accommodations, and as she sat there, watching the shiny
rails unwinding behind her, her luxurious surroundings imparted a sense
of charm and comfort which she had never felt before. The scenery in the
pass proving uninteresting, she forgot about it and gave herself up to
a day-dream which had become a favorite with her of late--a dream which
had to do with a little Spanish house surrounded by weeping willows
and Lombardy poplars (Donna had once seen a picture of a house so
surrounded); of a piano, which she would learn to play, of a perfectly
appointed table at which she sat with Bob across the way, smiling at
her and assuring her (with his eyes) that he loved her, while his
glib tongue informed her that the soup was by far the best he had ever
tasted.
As Donna dreamed she smiled--unconsciously--a smile intended for
Bob McGraw, and a drummer who sold lace goods for a St. Louis house
appropriated that smile to himself. He leered across the aisle
familiarly and with a vacuous smile inquired:
“Say, sister! Ain't you the little girl that takes cash in the eatin'
house at San Pasqual? I thought your face looked kinder familiar.”
Donna suddenly ceased dreaming. She glanced across at her interlocutor,
and by reason of long obedience to the unwritten rule of eating-houses
which requires that one must be pleasant to customers always, she forgot
for a moment that she was on her way to be married. She nodded.
“Goin' up to Bakersfield?”
Again Donna nodded.
“Well, if you ain't got anything on, what's the matter with some lunch
and an automobile ride afterward, sister? What're you goin' to do in
Bakersfield?”
“I am going to meet a young man at the station” replied Donna sweetly.
“A tall young man with a forty-four-inch chest and a pair of hands that
will look as big as picnic hams to you when I tell him that you've been
impertinent to me.”
The face of the impertinent one crimsoned with embarrassment. He mumbled
something about not meaning any offense, fussed with his watch-charm for
a minute, coughed and finally fled to the day-coach.
Donna smiled after his retreating figure. How good it was, after three
years of subjection to the vulgar advances of just such fellows as he,
to reflect that at last she was to have a protector! An almost unholy
desire possessed her to see Bob climb aboard at the next station, twine
his lean hands around that drummer's trachea and shake some manhood into
him. This thought suggested reflections upon the present state of Bob's
health, so she took his last letter from her hand-bag and read it for
the forty-second time. But it was unsatisfactory--it dealt entirely
with Donna and his experiences with applicants for lieu land, so she
abstracted, one by one, every letter she had ever received from him and
read them all. So absorbed was she in their perusal that the other side
of the range, which had always been such a matter of primary importance,
was now relegated to oblivion.
The brakeman came through the car shouting: “Bakersfield! The next
station is Bakersfield!” but Donna did not hear him. She was dreaming of
Bob McGraw.
The train came to a stop. Donna dreamed on--and presently a familiar
voice spoke at her side.
“Well--sweetheart! The train pulls out again in two minutes and I've
been looking for you in every car--”
“Bob!”
It was he, looking perfectly splendid in a marvelous blue suit that must
have cost at least eighteen dollars. He held out his hands, drew her to
him and, in the sight of all mankind, he kissed her, and whispered to
her endearing little names. She could not reply to them; she could only
take his hand, like a little lost child, and follow him through the car,
down the steps and into the hotel bus which was to take them up town.
And on the way up town neither spoke to the other, for it seemed to each
that even their most commonplace remarks to-day must be freighted with
something sacred, in which the inquisitive world at large would be bound
to manifest a stupendous interest. And inasmuch as it was plainly none
of the world's business--
The bus had stopped in front of a tremendous hotel. It was four stories
high! All along the front of the first story it was _glass_ and Donna
could look right through it and see everything that was going on inside!
She paused on the top step of the bus to view the marvels of this town
of less than twenty thousand inhabitants, and then a skeezicks of a boy,
very gay in brass buttons, and with a darling little round cap on his
perky head, came and took forcible possession of her suit-case. He tore
it right out of Bob's hand and ran away with it. Donna was on the point
of crying out at the theft, when Bob reached up and lifted her bodily to
the ground.
“Reuben! Reuben!” he breathed tenderly in her ear, “don't stare so at
the great round world. You're so beautiful,” he added, “and I'm so proud
of you! Where _did_ you get that marvelous dress?”
She glanced up at him, radiant. He was proud of her! He liked her dress!
It was sufficient. Bob McGraw, man of the world, had set the stamp
of his approval on his bride, and nothing else mattered any more. She
followed him into the hotel, where he checked her suit-case with the
skeezicks who had stolen it, and then led her into the dining-room.
“Let's have lunch, Donna” he said, “or at least pretend to. I couldn't
eat now. I want to talk. The man who can eat on his wedding day is a
vulgarian, and dead to the finer feelings.”
They found a secluded table and ordered something, and when the waitress
had taken the order and departed, Bob leaned across the table.
“You're so beautiful!” he repeated. “I love you in that white suit.”
“I hadn't anything but this old thing, dear. I hated to come up looking
like a frump--”
“Listen to the girl! Why, you old sweetheart-”
“Do you love me, Bob?”
“More than ever. In the matter of love, Donna, absence really makes the
heart--”
“How much?” She lifted her face toward him adoringly.
“Ten hundred thousand million dollars' worth” he declared, and they both
laughed.
“I don't know whether you're a man or just a big boy” Donna told him.
She sighed. “But then I don't know anything to-day, except that if I am
ever happier than I am this minute I shall die. I shall not be able to
stand it. But, dearie! You haven't told me a word about Donnaville!”
So Bob related to her a minute history of himself from the moment he
had left her until he had leaned over her in the observation car. He
described, with inimitable wit and enjoyment, his experience in the land
office, and together they examined the fifty receipts.
“I'm sorry you had to lock Mr. Carey in the room and gag him and tie him
up” said Donna regretfully. “Maybe he'll have you arrested!”
“I'm sorry, too, dear. But then it was the only thing I could do and I
had to keep him quiet. Oh, I don't care” he added defiantly. “I'd muss
up an old crook like Carey every hour for your sake. But he won't have
me arrested. That would be too dangerous for him.”
“Then you can get the land right away?” she queried.
He shook his head. “The cards haven't even been dealt, sweetheart. My
applications will almost certainly be held up six months in the state
land office before they are approved by the surveyor-general and
forwarded to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington
to be passed to patent by the United States. And I shall be very greatly
surprised if Carey hasn't a friend in Washington who will see that the
granting of the patents is delayed for several years. Then, when the
matter cannot be delayed any longer, Carey will induce one of his
dummies to protest the applications, alleging that they are part of a
gigantic land fraud scheme, and a few more years will go by while this
protest is being investigated.”
“But you'll win in the long run, will you not?”
He shrugged expressively. “I may. I anticipate that Carey will give me
all the time he can to get my water-right developed and earn thirty-nine
thousand dollars to pay for the land for my Pagans.”
“But I thought Mr. Dunstan had promised to loan you that money?”
“Homer Dunstan is an old man, Donna girl. If he should die in the
interim, my name is in the lion's mouth.”
“But what are we to do, Bobby?” she quavered, suddenly frightened, as
the enormousness of the man's task loomed before her.
“_Quien sabe_” he said ruefully. “We'll marry first and think of it
afterward--that is, if you still think you want to marry a chap whose
cash assets represent less than thirty dollars of borrowed money.”
She thought swiftly of the boor who had spoken to her on the train that
morning; of her dull lonely changeless life in San Pasqual; and the
longing for protection was very great indeed. She wanted some one on
whom she might lean in the hour of stress and woe, and she had selected
him for that signal honor. Why, then, should they not marry? They would
not always be poor. He had his work to do and she had hers, and their
marriage need not interfere. She wanted to help him, and with her
woman's intuition she realized that his was the nature that yearns for
the accomplishment of great things when spurred to action by the praise
and comfort of a mate in sympathy with his dreams and his ideals. She
almost shuddered to think of what might happen to him should he marry a
girl who did not understand him! It seemed to her that for his sake, if
for no other, she must marry him, and when she raised her brilliant eyes
to his he read her answer in their limpid depths.
“Do you need me?” she queried.
“Very much” he answered humbly, “but not enough to insist upon you
sharing my poverty with me. You're self-supporting and it isn't fair to
you, but rather selfish on my part. And you must realize, Donna dear,
that I cannot remain in San Pasqual. I have my work to do; I must make
money, and I cannot take you to the place where I hope to make it.”
“I expect to be left alone, Bob. But I do not mind that. I've lived
alone at the Hat Ranch a long time, dear, and I can stand it a little
longer. I do not wish to tie you to my apron-strings and hamper you.
What are your plans?”
“Well,” he said a little sheepishly, “I thought I'd like to make
one more trip into the desert. I have some claims over by Old Woman
mountain, in San Bernardino county, and they're pockety. I might clean
up a stake in there this winter. It's about the only chance I have to
raise the wind, but even then it's a gambler's chance.”
He was a Desert Rat! The lure of the waste places was calling to him
again, tormenting him with the promise of rich reward in the country
just beyond. Donna thought of her own father who had left his bride on
a similar errand, and the thought that Bob, too, might not come back
stabbed her with sudden anguish. But he was a man, and he knew best; in
a desert country some one must do the desert work; he loved it and she
would not say him nay. Yet the big tears trembled on her long lashes as
she thought of what lay before him and her heart ached that it must be
so. He watched her keenly, waiting for the protest which he thought must
come. Presently she spoke.
“We must figure on an outfit for you.”
His brown eyes lit with admiration, for he realized the grief that lay
behind that apparently careless acceptance of his plan, and loved her
the more for her courage.
“Yes, I'll need two burros, with packs, and some drills, tools, dynamite
and grub--two hundred dollars will outfit me nicely. I'll have to scout
around and borrow the money somewhere, and to be quite candid, Donna, I
have designs on our gambler friend, Hennage.”
She smiled. “Dear, good old Harley P.! He'd grubstake you if it broke
the bank.”
“Well, I'm going to figure along that line at any rate. So, if you're
quite ready, Donna, we'll go down to the court-house, procure the
license, hunt up a preacher and take each other for better or for
worse.”
“I think it will be for better, dear.”
“Well, it can't be for worse, I'm sure, than it is to-day. Nevertheless
I'm a frightened man.”
She ignored this subtle hint of procrastination. “I'm ready, Bob. But
before we start, there's one matter that I haven't explained to you. I
do not care to have our marriage known. Those talkative people in San
Pasqual would--talk, under the circumstances--that is, dear, I want to
keep right on at the eating-house until you're ready to take me away
from San Pasqual forever. Now, I know that's going to hurt you--that
thought of your wife working--but nobody need ever know it, and when
you're ready we'll leave the horrible old place and never go back any
more. We have so much to do, Bob, and--”
“You do hurt me, Donna” he protested. “You have exacted from me a
promise and you are forcing me to fulfill it under circumstances which
render it mighty hard. Of course we love each other and I do want
to marry you, but ah, Donna, I don't feel like a man to-day, but a
mendicant. What can I do, sweetheart? If you marry me to-day you'll have
to work if you want to live.” There was misery in his glance.
“However, all my life I've been doing things differently--or rather
indifferently--so why should I stop now? It will at least comfort me out
there alone in the desert to know that I have a wife waiting at home
for me. I think the joy of that will outweigh the sting of shame that a
married pauper must feel--”
“No, no, Bob, you mustn't say that. You mustn't feel that way about it.
You are not a pauper.” She stood up and he helped her into her coat, and
after paying the waitress they departed together for the city hall.
But Bob was a sad bridegroom. Donna had wired him that she had arranged
for a two-weeks' vacation, and he had been at pains to acquaint her
with the extreme low ebb of his finances, in the hope that she would
voluntarily suggest a delay of their marriage, but to his great distress
she had not seen fit to take his pathetic hint--she who ordinarily was
so quick of comprehension; so, rather than refer to the matter again, he
decided to step into a telegraph station immediately after the ceremony
and send a hurried call for help to Harley P. Hennage--the gambler
being the only man of his acquaintance whom he knew to be sufficiently
good-natured and careless with money to respond to his appeal.
When at length they reached the city hall Donna waited, blushing,
outside the door of the marriage bureau while Bob entered and parted
with two dollars and fifty cents for the parchment which gave him a
legal right to commit what he called a social and economic crime. Later
he came out and insisted that Donna should return with him to Cupid's
window, there to receive the customary congratulations and handshake
from Bob's acquaintance who had issued him the license, and who,
following the practice of such individuals, felt it incumbent upon him
to offer his felicitations to every customer.
Leaving the court-house Bob and Donna wandered about town until they
came to a church. A gentleman of color, engaged in washing the church
windows, directed them to the pastor's residence in the next block. They
accordingly; proceeded to the rectory and Bob rang the front door bell.
The pastor answered the bell in person. The bridegroom grinned at
him sheepishly while the bride, very much embarrassed, shrunk to the
bridegroom's side and gazed timidly at the reverend gentleman rubbing
his hands so expectantly in the doorway.
“Won't you come in?” he said, in tones most kindly and hospitable. “Just
step right into the parlor and I'll be with you as soon as I can get my
spectacles.”
“Thank you” said Bob. They entered. The rector went into his study while
Bob wagged a knowing head at his broad retreating back.
“He knows what we want, you bet” he whispered. “No flies on that
preacher. I like him. I like any man who can do things without a diagram
and directions for using.”
Donna nodded. She was quite impressed at the clergyman's perspicacity.
She was quite self-possessed when he returned with his spectacles,
a little black book, his wife and the gardener for witnesses, and a
“here-is-the-job-I-love” expression on his amiable features. He examined
the license, satisfied himself, apparently, that it was not a forgery,
and after standing Bob and Donna up in a corner close to a terra-cotta
umbrella-holder filled with pampas plumes, he proceeded with the
ceremony.