Nick Hilliard snatched off his sombrero as he came swinging along the
oleander path. He was tall, fully six feet in height, and looked taller
than he was, being lean and hard, with long straight legs which could
carry him very fast over great stretches of country. Also he had a way of
holding his head high, a way which a man gets if he is in the habit of
gazing toward far horizons. He had a well-cut nose, a good chin, and a
mouth that meant strength of purpose, though some of his friends laughed
at him for a "womanish" curve of the upper lip. Luckily Nick did not mind
being laughed at by his friends. His face was almost as brown as his hair,
for the sun had darkened the one and bleached the other; but the hair was
nice hair, with a glow of auburn in it, which contrasted not
uninterestingly with his black, straight brows. It was, however, the
brilliance of the brook-brown eyes which made Nick a handsome man, and not
merely a "good-looking fellow." It was because of his eyes that women
turned in the street for another glance when he went into Bakersfield or
Fresno; but Nick never knew that they turned. He liked pretty girls, and
enjoyed their society, but was too busy to seek it, and had had little of
it in his life. It did not occur to him that he had qualities to attract
women. Indeed, he wasted few thoughts upon himself as an individual; not
enough, perhaps; for he gave his whole attention to his work. Work was
what he liked best, even without the ultimate success it brought, but
lately he had begun to long for a change. He had a strong wish to go East,
and a reason for the wish.
Carmen held out both hands, and enjoyed seeing how white they looked in
Nick's sunburned, slightly freckled ones. He shook hers, frankly, warmly,
and apologized for his "rig," which was certainly far from conventional.
"I'm ashamed of myself for blowin' in on you this way," he said,
"especially as you're so mighty fine. I hope you'll excuse me, for you
know I pull out to-night, and Jim Beach is bringin' the buggy along here
for me, with my grip in it. If I'd piked back home afterward, my visit
with you'd have been a cut game."
"Ah, I'm glad you arranged not to go back," said Carmen. "I want you to
stay with me as long as you can. I like you in those clothes." She smiled
at him as if she would like him in anything; but Nick was thinking about
Jim Beach, wondering if the boy would have trouble with the flea-bitten
gray, which he himself had newly broken to harness.
"All the same," Carmen went on, "though I like them, you haven't got much
vanity if you mean to wear those things to travel East, and land in New
York."
"Why, what's the matter with 'em, Mrs. Gaylor?" Nick asked. He spoke
carelessly, in the matter of accent as well as of his feeling about the
clothes. He cut off his words in a slipshod way, as if he had never had
time to think much about the value or beauty of the English language.
Still, though his speech was not that of a cultivated man, it did not
grate on the ear. His voice was singularly pleasant, even sweet, with
something of boyish gaiety in it.
"The things are all right, Nick, and you're all right in them. You needn't
worry," said Carmen. "Only--well, I don't believe there'll be anything
else like them--or like you either--in New York."
Nick looked himself over indifferently. He wore a "soft" white shirt, with
a low collar turned over a black scarf tied anyhow. There was a leather
belt round his waist, which obviated the need of a waistcoat or
suspenders. His short coat and trousers were of navy blue serge.
Everything he had on was neat and of good material, but Carmen smiled when
she thought of this tall, belted figure, hatted with a gray sombrero on
the back of its head, arriving at one of the best hotels in New York. Nick
was pretty sure to go to one of the best hotels. He wanted to see life, no
doubt, and get his money's worth. Her smile was as tender as Carmen's
smile could be, however, and she was pleased that he was not "dressing up"
to make an impression on pretty women in the East.
"I don't care what anybody thinks about me in New York," said he. "As long
as _you_ excuse me for not having on my Sunday-go-to-meeting rags to dine
with you, I don't mind the rest."
"I thought you were never coming," she said, changing the subject.
"So did I, by George! I thought the fellow'd never go."
"Was it a deputation to say good-bye?"
"Lord, no, Mrs. Gaylor! It was a chap you don't know, I guess. I only ran
up against him lately, since I sold my gusher to the United Oil Company.
He's their lawyer--and does some work for the railroad too. Smart sort of
man he seems to be, though kind of stiff when you first know him: between
forty and forty-five, maybe: name's Henry Morehouse, a brother of a bank
manager in San Francisco."
"James Morehouse the banker is a very rich, important man," said Carmen,
somewhat impressed by the idea of Nick's new friend who had stayed too
long. "I've never met his family myself. You know how close I was kept
till a year ago. But I've heard of them. They're in with the Falconer set
and that lot, so it shows they're smart. What does Henry Morehouse want,
making up to you, Nick?"
"It was oil business brought us together and he seemed to take a sort of
likin' to me. We care about some o' the same things--books and that. Now
he's going East--maybe on more oil business. Anyhow, he proposes we share
a stateroom on the Limited, and he's been recommendin' his hotel in New
York. I was kind of plannin' to be a swell, and hang out at the
Waldorf-Astoria, to see the nobs at home. But his place sounds nice, and I
like bein' with him pretty well. He's lit up with bright ideas and maybe
he'll pass on some to me. His business won't keep him long, he thinks; and
he's promised his brother James to look after a lady who's landing from
Europe about the time we're due in New York. He'll meet her ship; and if
she doesn't want to stay East any length of time, he'll bring her back to
California. She means to settle out here."
Carmen's face hardened into anxious lines, though she kept up a smile of
interest. She looked older than she had looked when she held out her hands
to Nick. She had been about twenty-six then. Now she was over thirty.
"Is the lady young or old?" she asked.
"I don't know anything about her," Nick answered with a ring of
truthfulness in his voice which Carmen's keen ears accepted. "All I can
tell you is, that she's a Mrs. May, a relation or friend of Franklin
Merriam the big California millionaire who died East about ten years
ago--about the time I was first cowpunching on your ranch."
"Oh, the Franklin Merriam who made such stacks of money irrigating desert
land he owned somewhere in the southern part of the State!" Carmen sighed
with relief. "I've heard of him of course. He must have been middle-aged
when he died, so probably this woman's old or oldish."
"I suppose so," Nick readily agreed. "Great king, isn't it mighty sweet
here to-night? It looks like heaven, I guess, and you're like--like----"
"If this is heaven, am I an angel? _Do_ I seem like that to you?"
"Well, no--not exactly my idea of an angel, somehow: though I don't know,"
he reflected aloud. "You're sure handsome enough--for anything, Mrs.
Gaylor. But I've always thought of angels lily white, with moonlight hair
and starry eyes."
"You're quite poetical!" retorted Carmen, piqued. "But other men have told
me my eyes are stars."
He looked straight into them, and at the hot pomegranate colour which
blazed up in her olive cheeks, like a reflection of the sunset. And
Carmen looked back at him with her big, splendid eyes.
It was a man's look he gave her, a man's look at a woman; but not a man's
look at the woman he wants.
"No," he answered. "They're not stars. They're more like the sun at noon
in midsummer, when so many flowers are pourin' out perfume you can hardly
keep your senses."
Carmen was no longer hurt. "That's the best compliment I ever had, and
I've had a good many," she laughed. "Besides--coming from you, Nick! I
believe it's the first you ever paid me right out in so many words."
"Was it a compliment?" Nick asked doubtfully and boyishly. "Well, I'm real
glad I was smart enough to bring one off. I spoke out just what came into
my mind, and I'd have felt mighty bad if you'd been cross."
"I'm not cross!" she assured him. "I'd rather be a woman--for you--than an
angel. Angels are cold, far-off, impossible things that men can't grasp.
Besides, their wings would probably moult."
Nick laughed, a pleasant, soft laugh, half under his breath. "Say, I don't
picture angels with wings! The sort that flits into my mind when I'm tired
out after a right hard day and feel kind of lonesome for something
beautiful, I don't know hardly what--only something I've never had--that
sort of angel is a woman, too, and not cold, though far above me, of
course. She has starry eyes and moonlight hair--lots of it, hanging down
in waves that could almost drown her. But I guess, after all--as you
say--that sort's not my line. I'll never come in the light she makes with
her shining, and if I should by accident, she wouldn't go shooting any of
her starry glances my way."