"You said it in anger?"
"Yes." Very softly.
"Daney had come to you with an offer of monetary reward for your
invaluable services to the McKaye family, had he not? And since what
you did was not done for profit, you were properly infuriated and
couldn't resist giving Daney the scare of his life? That was the way
of it, was it not?"
Nan nodded and some tears that trembled on her long lashes were
flicked off by the vigor of the nod; some of them fell on the big
gaunt hands that held hers.
"I suppose you haven't sufficient money with which to return to New
York?" he continued.
Again she nodded an affirmative.
"Just what are your plans, dear?"
"I suppose I'll have to go somewhere and try to procure a position as
a cook lady."
"An admirable decision," he declared enthusiastically. "I'll give you
a job cooking for me, provided you'll agree to marry me and permit me
to live in your house. I'm a man without a home and you've just _got_
to take me in, Nan. I have no other place to lay my weary head."
She looked at him and through the blur of her tears she saw him
smiling down at her, calmly, benignantly and with that little touch of
whimsicality that was always in evidence and which even his heavy
heart could not now subdue.
"You've--you've--chosen the Sawdust Pile?" she cried incredulously.
"How else would a man of spirit choose, old shipmate?"
"But you're not marrying me to save me from poverty, Donald? You must
be certain you aren't mistaking for love the sympathy which rises so
naturally in that big heart of yours. If it's only a great pity--if
it's only the protective instinct--"
"Hush! It's all of that and then some. I'm a man grown beyond the
puppy-love stage, my dear--and the McKayes are not an impulsive race.
We count the costs carefully and take careful note of the potential
profits. And while I could grant my people the right to make hash of
my happiness I must, for some inexplicable reason, deny them the
privilege of doing it with yours. I think I can make you happy, Nan;
not so happy, perhaps, that the shadow of your sorrow will not fall
across your life occasionally, but so much happier than you are at
present that the experiment seems worth trying, even at the expense of
sacrificing the worldly pride of my people."
"Are you entertaining a strong hope that after you marry me, dear,
your people will forgive you, make the best of what they consider a
bad bargain and acknowledge me after a fashion? Do you think they will
let bygones be bygones and take me to their hearts--for your sake?"
"I entertain no such silly illusion. Under no circumstances will they
ever acknowledge you after a fashion, for the very sufficient reason
that the opportunity to be martyrs will never be accorded my mother
and sisters by yours truly, Donald McKaye, late Laird apparent of Port
Agnew. Bless, your sweet soul, Nan, I have some pride, you know. I
wouldn't permit them to tolerate you. I prefer open warfare every
time."
"Have you broken with your people, dear?"
"Yes, but they do not know it yet. I didn't have the heart to raise a
scene, so I merely gave the old pater a hug, kissed mother and the
girls and came away. I'm not going back."
"You will--if I refuse to marry you?"
"I do not anticipate such a refusal. However, it Hoes not enter into
the matter at all in so far as my decision to quit The Dreamerie is
concerned. I'm through! Listen, Nan. I could win my father to you--win
him wholeheartedly and without reservation--if I should inform him
that my mother asked you to come back to Port Agnew. My mother and the
girls have not told him of this and I suspect they have encouraged his
assumption that Andrew Daney took matters in his own hands. Father has
not cared to inquire into the matter, anyhow, because he is secretly
grateful to Daney (as he thinks) for disobeying him. Mother and the
girls are forcing Daney to protect them; they are using his loyalty to
the family as a club to keep him in line. With that club they forced
him to come to you with a proposition that must have been repugnant to
him, if for no other reason than that he knew my father would not
countenance it. When you told him you would marry me if I should ask
you again, to whom did Daney report? To Elizabeth, of course--the
brains of the opposition. That proves to me that my father had nothing
to do with it--why the story is as easily understood from deduction as
if I had heard the details from their lips. But I cannot use my
mother's peace of mind as a club to beat dad into line; I cannot tell
him something that will almost make him hate mother and my sisters; I
would not force him to do that which he does not desire to do because
it is the kindly, sensible and humane course. So I shall sit tight and
say nothing--and by the way, I love you more than ever for keeping
this affair from me. So few women are true blue sports, I'm afraid."
"You must be very, very angry and hurt, Donald?"
"I am. So angry and hurt that I desire to be happy within the shortest
possible period of elapsed time. Now, old girl, look right into my
eyes, because I'm going to propose to you for the last time. My
worldly assets consist of about a hundred dollars in cash and a six
dollar wedding ring which I bought as I came through Port Agnew. With
these wordly goods and all the love and honor and respect a man can
possibly have for a woman, I desire to endow you. Answer me quickly.
Yes or no?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"You chatterbox! When?"
"At your pleasure."
"That's trading talk. We'll be married this afternoon." He stretched
out his long arms for her and as she slid off the low hassock and
knelt beside his chair, he gathered her hungrily to him and held her
there for a long time before he spoke again. When he did it was to
say, with an air of wonder that was almost childlike:
"I never knew it was possible for a man to be so utterly wretched and
so tremendously happy and all within the same hour. I love you so much
it hurts." He released her and glanced at his watch. "It is now two
o'clock, Nan. If we leave here by three we can reach the county seat
by five o'clock, procure a license and be married by six. By half past
seven we will have finished our wedding supper and by about ten
o'clock we shall be back at the Sawdust Pile. Put a clean pair of
rompers on the young fellow and let's go! From this day forward we
live, like the Sinn Fein. 'For ourselves alone.'"
While Nan was preparing for that hurried ceremony, Donald strolled
about the little yard, looking over the neglected garden and marking
for future attention various matters such as a broken hinge on the
gate, some palings off the fence and the crying necessity for paint on
the little white house, for he was striving mightily to shut out all
thought of his past life and concentrate on matters that had to do
with the future. Presently he wandered out on the bulkhead. The great
white gulls which spent their leisure hours gravely contemplating the
Bight of Tyee from the decaying piling, rose lazily at his approach
and with hoarse cries of resentment flapped out to sea; his dull
glance followed them and rested on a familiar sight.
Through the Bight of Tyee his father's barkentine Kohala was coming
home from Honolulu, ramping in before a twenty mile breeze with every
shred of canvas drawing. She was heeled over to starboard a little and
there was a pretty little bone in her teeth; the colors streamed from
her mizzen rigging while from her foretruck the house-flag flew. Idly
Donald watched her until she was abreast and below The Dreamerie and
her house-flag dipped in salute to the master watching from the cliff;
instantly the young Laird of Tyee saw a woolly puff of smoke break
from the terrace below the house and several seconds later the dull
boom of the signal gun. His heart was constricted. "Ah, never for me!"
he murmured, "never for me--until he tells them to look toward the
Sawdust Pile for the master!"
He strode out to the gate where his father's chauffeur waited with the
limousine. "Take the car home," he ordered, "and as you pass through
town stop in at the Central Garage and tell them to send a closed car
over to me here."
The chauffeur looked at him with surprise but obeyed at once. By the
time the hired car had arrived Nan and her child were ready, and just
before locking the house Nan, realizing that they would not return to
the Sawdust Pile until long after nightfall, hauled in the flag that
floated over the little cupola; and for the second time, old Hector,
watching up on the cliff, viewed this infallible portent of an event
out of the ordinary. His hand trembled as he held his marine glasses
to his blurred eyes and focussed on The Sawdust Pile, in time to see
his son enter the limousine with Nan Brent and her child--and even at
that distance he could see that the car in which they were departing
from the Sawdust Pile was not the one in which Donald had left The
Dreamerie. From that fact alone The Laird deduced that his son had
made his choice; and because Donald was his father's son, imbued with
the same fierce high pride and love of independence, he declined to be
under obligation to his people even for the service of an automobile
upon his wedding day.
The Laird stood watching the car until it was out of sight; then he
sighed very deeply, entered the house and rang for the butler.
"Tell Mrs. McKaye and the young ladies that I would thank them to come
here at once," he ordered calmly.
They came precipitately, vaguely apprehensive. "My dears," he said in
an unnaturally subdued voice, "Donald has just left the Sawdust Pile
with the Brent lass to be married. He has made his bed and it is my
wish that he shall lie in it."
"Oh, Hector!" Mrs. McKaye had spoken quaveringly. "Oh, Hector, dear,
do not be hard on him!"
He raised his great arm as if to silence further argument. "He has
brought disgrace upon my house. He is no longer son of mine and we are
discussing him for the last time. Hear me, now. There will be no
further mention of Donald in my presence and I forbid you, Nellie,
you, Elizabeth and you, Jane, to have aught to do wie him, directly or
indirectly."
Mrs. McKaye sat down abruptly and commenced to weep and wail her woe
aloud, while Jane sought vainly to comfort her. Elizabeth bore the
news with extreme fortitude; with unexpected tact she took her father
by the arm and steered him outside and along the terrace walk where
the agonized sobs and moans of her mother could not be heard--for what
Elizabeth feared in that first great moment of remorse was a torrent
of self-accusation from her mother. If, as her father had stated,
Donald was en route to be married, then the mischief was done and no
good could come out of a confession to The Laird of the manner in
which the family honor had been compromised, not by Donald, but by his
mother, aided and abetted by his sisters! The Laird, now quite dumb
with distress, walked in silence with his eldest daughter, vaguely
conscious of the comfort of her company and sympathy in his hour of
trial.
When Elizabeth could catch Jane's attention through the window she
cautiously placed her finger on her lip and frowned a warning. Jane
nodded her comprehension and promptly bore her mother off to bed where
she gave the poor soul some salutary advice and left her to the meager
comfort of solitude and smelling salts.
* * * * *
Just before he retired that night, The Laird saw a light shine
suddenly forth from the Sawdust Pile. So he knew his son had selected
a home for his bride, and rage and bitterness mingled with his grief
and mangled pride to such an extent that he called upon God to take
him out of a world that had crumbled about his hoary head. He shook
his fist at the little light that blinked so far below him and Mrs.
McKaye, who had crept down stairs with a half-formed notion of
confessing to The Laird in the hope of mitigating her son's
offense--of, mother-like, taking upon her shoulders an equal burden of
the blame--caught a glimpse of old Hector's face, and her courage
failed her. Thoroughly frightened she returned noiselessly to her room
and wept, dry-eyed, for the fountain of her tears had long since been
exhausted.
Meanwhile, down at the Sawdust Pile, Nan was putting her drowsy son to
bed; in the little living-room her husband had lighted the driftwood
fire and had drawn the old divan up to the blue flames. He was sitting
with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, outlining
plans for their future, when Nan, having put her child to bed, came
and sat down beside him. He glanced at her with troubled eyes and
grinned a trifle foolishly.
"Happy?" he queried.
She nodded. "In a limited fashion only, dear heart. I'm thinking how
wonderfully courageous you have been to marry me and how tremendously
grateful I shall always be for your love and faith." She captured his
right hand and fondled it for a moment in both of hers, smiling a
little thoughtfully the while as if at some dear little secret. "Port
Agnew will think I married you for money," she resumed presently;
"your mother and sisters will think I married you to spite them and
your father will think I married you because you insisted and because
I was storm-tossed and had to find a haven from the world. But the
real reason is that I love you and know that some day I am going to
see more happiness in your eyes than I can see to-night."
Again, in that impulsive way she had, she bent and kissed his hand.
"Dear King Cophetua," she murmured, "your beggar maid will never be
done with adoring you." She looked up at him with a sweet and lovely
wistfulness shining in her sea-blue eyes. "And the sweetest thing
about it, you angelic simpleton," she added, "is that you will never,
never, never know why."