SHEBA DOES NOT THINK SO
The fingers of Sheba were busy with the embroidery upon which she
worked, but her thoughts were full of the man who lay asleep on the
lounge. His strong body lay at ease, relaxed.
Already health was flowing back into his veins. Beneath the tan of the
lean, muscular cheeks a warmer color was beginning to creep. Soon he
would be about again, vigorous and forceful, striding over obstacles to
the goal he had set himself.
Just now she was the chief goal of his desire. Sheba did not deceive
herself into thinking that he had for a moment accepted her dismissal
of him.
He still meant to marry her, and he had told her so in characteristic
way the day after their break.
Sheba had sent him a check for the amount he had paid her and had
refused to see him or anybody else.
Shamed and humiliated, she had kept to her room. The check had come back
to her by mail.
Across the face of it he had written in his strong handwriting:--
I don't welsh on my bets. You can't give to me what is not mine.
Do not think for an instant that I shall not marry you.
Watching him now, she wondered what manner of man he was. There had
been a day or two when she had thought she understood him. Then she had
learned, from the story of Meteetse, how far his world of thought was
from hers. That which to her had put a gulf between them was to him only
an incident.
She moved to adjust a window blind and when she returned found that his
steady eyes were fixed upon her.
"You're getting better fast," she said.
"Yes."
The girl had a favor to ask of him and lest her courage fail she plunged
into it.
"Mr. Macdonald, if you say the word Mr. Elliot will be released on bail.
I am thinking you will be so good as to say it."
His narrowed eyes held a cold glitter. "Why?"
"You must know he is innocent. You must--"
"I know only what the evidence shows," he cut in, warily on his guard.
"He may or may not have been one of my attackers. From the first blow
I was dazed. But everything points to it that he hired--"
"Oh, no!" interrupted the Irish girl, her dark eyes shining softly. "The
way of it is that he saved your life, that he fought for you, and that
he is in prison because of it."
"If that is true, why doesn't he bring some proof of it?"
"Proof!" she cried scornfully. "Between friends--"
"He's no friend of mine. The man is a meddler. I despise him."
The scarlet flooded her cheeks. "And I am liking him very, very much,"
she flung back stanchly.
Macdonald looked up at the vivid, flushed face and found it wholly
charming. He liked her none the less because her fine eyes were hot and
defiant in behalf of his rival.
"Very well," he smiled. "I'll get him out if you'll do me a good turn
too."
"Thank you. It's a bargain."
"Then sing to me."
She moved to the piano. "What shall I sing?"
"Sing 'Divided.'"
The long lashes veiled her soft eyes while she considered. In a way he
had tricked her into singing for him a love-song she did not want to
sing. But she made no protest. Swiftly she turned and slid along the
bench. Her fingers touched the keys and she began.
He watched the beauty and warmth of her dainty youth with eyes that
mirrored the hunger of his heart. How buoyantly she carried her dusky
little head! With what a gallant spirit she did all things! He was
usually a frank pagan, but when he was with her it seemed to him that
God spoke through her personality all sorts of brave, fine promises.
Sheba paid her pledge in full. After the first two stanzas were finished
she sang the last ones as well:--
"An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat,
Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat?
Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star:
But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are.
Och anee!
"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me,
An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea,
'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far:
His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are.
Och anee!"
Her hands dropped from the keys and she turned slowly on the end of the
seat. The dark lashes fell to her hot cheeks. He did not speak, but she
felt the steady insistence of his gaze. In self-defense she looked at
him.
The pallor of his face lent accent to the fire that smouldered in his
eyes.
"I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Make up your mind to that, girl," he
said harshly.
There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. "'There's caulder
things than salt waves between us, so they are,'" she quoted.
"Not if I love you and you love me. By God, I trample down everything
that comes between us."
He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray
eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A
lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he
dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young,
lissom body held her own.
"Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.
"Again and again until you see reason."
She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in
her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.
"There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes
lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look.
"I don't think--that I--care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at
my--fickleness. But I don't--not with the full of my heart."
His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed.
"Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let
yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the
little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."
Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naïve candor. "I think there will
be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."
"I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help
hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up
by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my
plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight
of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as
a guidepost to what I mean to do."
"I know," the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race.
"I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and
developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You
have given work to thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with
you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made."
"Then I'll make a new code for you," he said, smiling. "Just do as I say
and everything will come out right."
Faintly her smile met his. "My grandmother might have agreed to that.
But we live in a new world for women. They have to make their own
decisions. I suppose that is a part of the penalty we pay for freedom."
Diane came into the room and Macdonald turned to her.
"I have just been telling Sheba that I am going to marry her--that there
is no escape for her. She had better get used to the idea that I intend
to make her happy."
The older cousin glanced at Sheba and laughed with a touch of
embarrassment. "Whether she wants to be happy or not, O Cave Man?"
"I'm going to make her want to."
Sheba fled, but from the door she flung back her challenge. "I don't
think so."