It was when Jane rented an empty room fronting on the arcade and set up
a sandwich shop that Tillotson saw how serious the thing was going to
be.
He had had all the restaurant and hotel trade. Men coming up in motors
or on horseback, dusty and tired, had eaten and drunk at his squalid
tables, swearing at the food but unable to get anything better. And now
here was a woman who covered her counters with snowy oilcloth--who had
shining urns of coffees, delectable pots of baked beans, who put up in
neat boxes lunches that made men rush back for more and more and
more--and whose sandwiches were the talk of the coast!
It had to be stopped.
The only way to stop it was to make it uncomfortable for Jane. There
were many ways in which the thing could be done--by small and subtle
persecutions, by insinuations, by words bandied from one man's evil
mouth to another. Tillotson had done the thing before. But he found as
the days went on that he had not before had a Jane to deal with. She was
linked in the minds of most of the men with a whiteness like that of her
own spotless shop.
Gradually Jane became aware of a sinister undercurrent. She found
herself dealing with forces that threatened her. There were men who came
into her shop to buy, and who stayed to say things that set her cheeks
flaming. She mentioned none of these things to Henry or Atwood or Tommy.
But she spoke once to O-liver.
"Tillotson must be at the bottom of it. Two drunken loafers stumbled in
the other day, straight from the hotel. And when I telephoned to
Tillotson to come and get them he laughed at me."
Tillotson was the sheriff. It was an office which he did not honor. In a
month or two his term would be up. O-liver riding alone into the
mountains stated the solution: "I've got to beat Tillotson."
But first he had things to say to Jane. Since his talk with his father
he had known that it must come. He had stayed away from her as much as
possible. It had not been a conspicuous withdrawal, for she was very
busy and had little time for him. Tommy's mother kept her little home in
order and looked after the invalid, so that Jane could give undivided
attention to her growing business. O-liver saw her most often at the
shop, when he stopped in for a pot of beans--eating them on the spot and
discoursing on many things.
"My Boston grandmother baked beans like this," he told her on one
occasion. "She was a great little woman, Jane, as essentially of the
East as you are of the West. She held to the traditions of the past; you
are blazing new ways for women, selling sandwiches in the market-place.
By Jove, it was superb the way you did it, Jane!"
She was always in a glow when he left her. Here was a man different from
her father, different from Henry Bittinger and Atwood Jones. She smiled
a little as she thought of Atwood. He had asked her to marry him. He had
told her of the things he had ahead of him that he wanted her to share.
And he had been much downcast when she had refused him. She had, he
felt, smudged the brightness of his splendid future. He couldn't
understand a woman throwing away a thing like that.
But he bore her no grudge and was still her friend. Henry, too, was her
friend. He had not yet tried his fate with Jane, but he still dreamed of
her as lovely in his long car and a fur coat. And he hoped to make his
dreams come true.
Tommy had set aside all selfish hopes. He had a feeling that Jane liked
O-liver. He loved them both. If he could not have Jane he wanted O-liver
to have her. He kept a wary eye therefore on Henry and Atwood.
It was Tommy who found out first about Fluffy Hair. She had never cared
to have the world know of her marriage. She had felt that those who
loved her on the screen would prefer her fancy free. But it was known at
the studio, and some one drifting up to Tinkersfield recognized O-liver
and told Tommy.
Tommy for once in his life was stern. "He oughta of told Jane.
Somebody's got to tell her."
So the next day he took it on himself--feeling a traitor to his friend.
"Jane," he said, sitting on a high stool in her little sandwich
shop--"Jane, O-liver's married."
Jane on the other side of the spotless counter gave him her earnest
glance. "Yes," she said; "he told me."
"He did? Well, I'm glad. It wasn't a thing to keep, was it?"
"No," said Jane; "it wasn't. But you mustn't blame him, Tommy, and now
that we both know, everything is all right, isn't it?"
"Yes," Tommy agreed; "if Tillotson doesn't get hold of it."
For it had been decided that O-liver was to run against Tillotson in the
next election, and beat him if he could.
O-liver had told Jane about his marriage on the night before Tommy came
to her. He had asked her to ride with him. "If you'll go this afternoon
at four you shall have Mary Pick, and I'll take Tommy's horse."
They had carried their lunch with them and had eaten it at sunset in a
lovely spot where the cañon opened out to show a shining yellow stretch
of sea, with the hills like black serpents running into it.
Yet it was dark, with the stars above them and the sea a faint gray
below, before O-liver said to her what he had brought her there to say.
He told her of his father and mother. Of Fluffy Hair.
"I waked up at last to the fact that I was letting two women support me.
So I came here and began to work at fifteen dollars a week. And for the
first time in my life I respected myself--and was content. And then I
met you and saw things ahead. You made me see them."
He turned toward her in the dark. "Jane, I'm finding that I love
you--mightily." He tried to speak lightly. "And I'm not free. And
because I love you I've got to keep away. But I want you to understand
that my friendship is the same--that it will always be the same. But
I've got to keep away."
She was very honest about it. "I didn't dream that you felt like
that--about me."
"No, you wouldn't. That's a part of your splendidness. Never taking
anything to yourself. Jane, will you believe this--that what I may be
hereafter will be because of you? If I ever do a big thing or a fine
thing it will be because I came upon you that night with your head high
and that rabble round you. You were light shining into the darkness of
Tinkersfield. Jove, I wish I were a painter to put you on canvas as you
were that night!"
They had ridden down later under the stars, and as they had stood for a
moment overlooking the lights of the little town O-liver had said: "I
make my big speech to-morrow night to beat Tillotson. I want you to be
there. Will you? If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall
pour out my soul--to you."
Was it any wonder that Jane, talking to Tommy the next morning about
O-liver, felt her pulses pounding, her cheeks burning? She had lain
awake all night thinking of the things he had said to her. It seemed a
very big and wonderful thing that a man could love her like that. As
toward morning the moonlight streamed in and she still lay awake she
permitted herself to let her mind dwell for a moment on what her future
might mean if he were in it. She was too busy and healthy to indulge in
useless regrets. But she knew in that moment in the moonlight if he was
not to be in her future no other man would ever be.