upon the wheel, but he laughed a little shakily.
Then Julius gazed back into the depths of the car. He could not see much,
for the trees at this point were heavily overshadowing the road, but he
made out that Ridge Jordan was sitting stiffly in his seat, with--strange
to observe!--his head turned toward the front of the car. Behind him the
other figures were still and silent. Julius guessed that nobody felt like
speaking; he did not feel like it himself. It had been a little too near
a thing to discuss at first hand.
Dorothy, her heart beating in a queer, throat-choking way, became
conscious that her hand was held close and warm in another hand. An arm
that had been about her, whose clasp she had not consciously felt but
now remembered, had been withdrawn at the moment that the danger had
passed. But evidently--for the car had now gone a quarter of a mile
beyond the crucial point and was running smoothly along a wider and less
dangerous highway--her hand had been imprisoned in this strange grasp
for some time.
She made a gentle but decided effort to withdraw it, an effort which
secured its release at once but brought a low question in her ear:
"Are you all right?"
"I--think so," she murmured in reply.
It was not only the shock of the just avoided danger which held her in
its grip, but the other and even more startling revelations which had
come with it. Her head was whirling, her pulses were thrilling with the
conflict of new and strange impressions. Since three minutes ago a new
Heaven and an old earth had suddenly shown themselves.
The low voice pressed the question: "Not faint--nor frightened?"
She looked up at him then for an instant, although she could barely see
the outlines of his face. "Not with you here," she answered breathlessly,
with the impulse toward absolute honesty with which such an experience
sometimes shakes the spirit out of its conventionalities.
He was like a statue beside her for the space of six of her heartbeats.
Then his hand again found hers, pressed it in both of his, and let it
go; and his quiet speech, the note deeper than before, came once more
in her ear:
"I shall never forget that."
They went on in silence.
After a time Ridge Jordan turned about and made a carefully worded
inquiry into the comfort of his guests, which they answered with as
careful assurances that they were entirely comfortable and confident.
Ridge's voice was not quite natural. A biting shame was harassing him,
whose only alleviation was the possibility that nobody--or at least
Dorothy--had noticed in the excitement of the part that he had played.
He was saying to himself, wretchedly, that he had not known it of
himself, that he could not have believed it of himself. How could he
have done it--have had the impulse, even, to leap to safety and leave
her behind? Had she seen--had she seen? Yet when, after a time, she
leaned forward and spoke to him of her own accord, her voice was so
kind, rang with such a golden note, that he felt with sudden relief
that she could not have seen.
He turned about and began to talk again, growing more and more secure in
his belief that at the supreme moment of danger nobody had thought of
anybody but himself or herself, and by the time the car drew into the
home town Jordan was serene again.
Under the first of the arc lights Julius took counsel with his watch. He
swung about and spoke tersely: "You and I'd better jump out here and make
the station, Waldron. It's closer to train time than I thought. We're
awfully obliged to you, Ridge."
"We'll go that way. It's only a block or two out of our course," Jordan
insisted, eager to speed the parting guest.
The car drew toward the string of electrics which lighted the small
suburban station at which Waldron had arrived in the morning. The
glancing, silver-arrowed radiance illumined the whole interior of the
car under its wide-spreading, hooded top. Waldron could see Dorothy's
brilliant eyes, the curve of her lips, the rose colour in her cheeks
repeating warmly the deeper rose colour of the little silk bonnet which
kept her dark hair in order--all but one wild-willed little curly strand
which had escaped and was blowing about her face. Dorothy, in her turn,
could see Waldron's clean-cut, purposeful face, his deep-set eyes, the
modelling of his strong mouth and chin, the fine line of his cheek.
As they had looked at each other when they first met, so they looked at
each other again before they parted. Yet between that meeting and that
parting something had happened. It was in his eyes as he looked at her;
it was in her eyes as for one instant, before she dropped bewildering
lashes, she gave him back his look. It meant that South America was not
so far away but that a voyager could come back over the same high seas
which had conveyed him there. And that when he came--
"I'm grateful to you, Mr. Jordan," Waldron said, shaking hands beside the
car, "more than I can say to you. You have done me a greater kindness
than you know. Good-night--to you all!"
He went away with Julius without a glance behind after the salute of his
lifted hat, which included everybody.
By some common impulse the rest of the party all looked after the two as
they walked away toward the station door.
"Seems like an uncommonly nice chap," was Ashworth's comment. "I'll wager
he's something, somewhere."
"He has a very interesting face," his fiancee conceded.
"Yes, hasn't he?" Dorothy agreed lightly, something evidently being
expected of her.
"He may be the tenth wonder of the world," declared Ridgeway Jordan,
springing in to take his old place beside her for the drive of an eighth
of a mile left to him; "but I grudge him this hour by you. Jove, but I
thought the drive would never end!"
Julius, after seeing his friend off with a sense of comradeship more
worth while than any he had known, walked rapidly back, eager for a word
with Dorothy. Quick as he was, however, she was quicker, and he found her
locked into her own room. By insisting on talking through the door he got
her to open it, but there was not so much satisfaction in this as he had
expected, because she had extinguished her lights.
"How did you like him?" was his first eager question.
"Very well," said a cool, low voice in the darkness. "Much better than
the trick you used to carry out your wishes."
"Trick!" her brother exclaimed, all the angel innocence he could summon
in his voice. "When you wouldn't tell me a word of where you were going!"
"You guessed it. It was abominable of you."
"Oh, see here! If I hadn't managed it you wouldn't have seen him--and he
wouldn't have seen you."
"And what of that?" queried the cool voice, cool but sweet. Dot's voice,
even in real anger, was never harsh.
"Well, what of it?" was the counter-question. "Can you honestly say you
wish you hadn't met him, a real man like that?"
There was silence. Julius moved cautiously across the room, avoiding
chairs as best he could. "Be honest now. Isn't he the real thing?
And isn't Ridge Jordan--"
"Please don't talk about poor Ridge that way, Jule."
"Poor Ridge!" cried Julius. "Well, well, you didn't speak of him that way
this morning. What's happened?"
"Nothing has happened. That is--"
He came close. There was a queer little shake in Dorothy's voice. She
began to laugh then quite suddenly to cry. Julius came near enough to pat
her down-bent head.
"Did that confounded close call shake you up a bit?" he inquired
sympathetically. "By George! when I think what I let you and Kirke and
everybody in for, starting earlier than they meant and all that, so we
were just in time to meet that fool in the worst place on the road--"
Dorothy looked up. To his astonishment she sprang to her feet and clasped
him about the neck, burying her face on his shoulder. She began to say
something into his ear, laughing and crying at the same time, so that all
he was at length able to gather was that she didn't regret the close
call at all, for it had shown her--had shown her--
Julius had not seen Ridge Jordan make his move to spring from the car,
but he had felt it--felt Ridge's hand strike his shoulder, his knee hit
his back. He had not taken in its meaning at the instant, but when he had
turned about and seen Ridge sitting stiffly facing ahead it came to him
what had happened at the crisis. He had wondered whether Dot had seen it.
Now he knew. Not that she said it. In fact, she said nothing
intelligible, but she held her brother tight before she sent him away;
and somehow he understood that Fate had helped him to show Dorothy her
"real man."
Somehow she had known that Waldron would write. It was impossible to
recall his face and not know that he was a man of action. He would not go
away for six months and leave behind him only a memory to hold her
thoughts to his. She wondered only when his letter would come.
Four times a day the postman was accustomed to leave the mail in an
interesting heap upon the table in Mrs. Jack Elliot's hall. Dorothy, from
the very morning after the trip to Saxifrage Inn, had found herself
scanning the pile with a curious sense of anticipation. She wondered what
Waldron's handwriting was like. She recalled his workmanlike little
figures upon the blackboard, and made up her mind that his penmanship
would be of a similar character, compact and regular. Another man would
have sent her flowers before he sailed. Instinctively she knew that
Waldron would not do this; she did not expect nor wish it. But he would
write--unquestionably. How would he write? That was the question which
made her pulses thrill.
It was some time before the letter came, as she had guessed it would be.
He had written on shipboard, and the letter came back to her from Greater
Inagua, the first West Indian island at which his ship had touched.
Coming in one September evening from a long walk through the hazy air,
its breath fragrant with the peculiar pungent odour of distant forest
fires, Dorothy found the letter on the hall table. She knew it was his
before she saw the postmark; recognized, as if she had often seen it, the
clean cut, regular lettering, the mark of the man of exactness and order,
of the well-trained mind. Her heart leaped at sight of it, a heart which
had never before really leaped at sight of any man's handwriting. She
picked up the letter and went away upstairs with it to her room. Here she
locked the door.
She placed the letter upon her dressing-table and studied its envelope
while she removed her dress, brushed and arranged her hair, and put on
the frock she intended to wear for the evening; she was going with Tom
Wendell to a small dance at the home of a special friend. She did not
open the letter, but left it, unopened, propped up against a little pink
silk pincushion, giving it one last glance as she switched off the light
before closing the door. On the evening of the Clifford-Jordan wedding
Ridgeway Jordan, brother of the bride and best man to the bridegroom, had
offered himself in marriage to the maid of honour, Dorothy Broughton. She
had done her best to prevent him, but he had reached such a stage of
despairing passion that he could no longer be managed and did the deed at
a moment when she could not escape. Being gently but firmly refused, he
had declared his life to be irretrievably ruined and immediately after
the wedding had flung himself out of town, vowing that she should not be
bothered with the sight of the work her hands had wrought. When another
long-time friend, Thomas Wendell, seized the opportunity of Ridge's
absence to further his own claims to Dorothy's preferment, she, profiting
by painful experience, had somehow made it clear to him that only
comradeship was in her thoughts. Even on these tacit terms Wendell was
eager to serve as escort whenever she would allow it.
On this September evening he was on hand early and bore her away with
ill-concealed satisfaction. "I say," he observed suddenly in the pause of
a waltz, "did you happen to have a fortune left you to-day?"
"Why, Tommy?" Dorothy's face grew instantly sober.
"Oh, don't turn off the illumination. I'm sorry I spoke. It was only that
you somehow seemed--well, not exactly unhappy to-night, and I couldn't
get at the cause. I should like to flatter myself that I'm the cause, but
I know better."
"I must be a gloomy person ordinarily if there seems any change
to-night. Don't be foolish, Thomas; I've had no fortune left me; I never
shall have."
She felt not unlike one with a fortune, however, a fortune of unknown
character about to be made known to her, as, shortly after
midnight--Dorothy kept comparatively early hours when she went to
dances--she opened the door of her room again. Her first glance was for
the letter. There it stood as she had left it. More than once during the
evening she had caught herself fearing that something might happen to it
in her absence. She might find the letter gone--forever gone--and unread!
She smiled at it as she saw it standing there, but still she did not open
it. She took off her dancing frock, braided her hair for the night in two
heavy plaits, and slipped into a little loose gown of cambric, lace, and
ribbon before at last she approached the waiting letter.
Why she did all this, putting off the reading of it until the latest
possible moment, only a girl like Dorothy Broughton could have told. And
even when she broke the seal it was with apparently reluctant fingers. It
was so delightful not to know, yet to be upon the verge of knowing! But
as soon as the first words met her eyes there was no longer any delay.
She read rapidly, her glance drinking in the letter at a draught.
"ON BOARD S.S. "WESTERWALD," OFF GREATER INAGUA
"August 21, 19--
"DEAR DOROTHY BROUGHTON: The first time I saw you was the day you came to
school for the first time. You wore a blue sailor dress with a white
emblem on the sleeve, and your curly black hair was tied with red
ribbons. You did not see me that day--nor any other day for a long time.
I was simply not in your field of vision. That year I was wearing my
older brother's suit, and I had pressed him rather closely in inheriting
it, so that it was none too large for me. I remember that the sleeves
were a bit short. Anyhow, whether it was the fault of the suit or not, I
had a very indefinite idea what to do with my feet when they were not
in action, and even less at times when they were. I recall vividly that
there seemed to be a sort of ground swell between my desk and the
blackboard, so that I never could walk confidently and evenly from one to
the other. When by any chance I imagined your eyes were turned my way the
ground swell became a tidal wave.
"Once, just once, I was allowed to help you with a lesson. You were
unable to make head or tail of a problem in fractions; I don't think
figures were your strong point! Miss Edgewood began to show you; an
interruption came along. I happened to be at her elbow--I had a sort of
reputation for figures--she called on me to help you out. I remember that
at the summons my heart turned over twice, and its action after that was
irregular, affecting my breathing and making my hand shake. Luckily it
did not upset my brain, so that I was able to make the thing clear to
you. I dared not look at you! You did not get it at first and you stamped
your foot and said: "But I don't see any _sense_ to it!" I replied with a
tremendous effort at lightening the situation: "Plenty of cents, and
dollars, too!" At which you turned and gave me a look--at first of pride
and anger, then melting into appreciation of my wit, and ending by
blinding me with the beauty of your laughter! We went on from that
famously, and you saw the thing clearly and thanked me. I thought I knew
you then--had made myself a friend of yours. Next day, alas! you passed
me with a nod. But I never forgot what it might be like to know you.
"We are four days out from New York--shall call at Matthew Town to-day.
Another eight days will bring us to Puerto Colombia; then for the river
trip which will take me within thirty miles of the camp in the mountains.
When I am up at the mines I shall write again. My address will be Puerto
Andes, Colombia, the port of the Company. If some day, when I go down the
trail to send off my report, I should find a letter from you, I should go
back the happier.
"Meanwhile I am,
"Faithfully yours,
"KIRKE WALDRON."
Dorothy went over and stood by the window, gazing out into the September
night. It was an unpretentious letter enough, but she liked it--liked it
very much. He had gone back to the beginning, picked up the one link
between them in their past, the fact that they had been schoolmates. He
had dared to remind her of his poverty, of his awkward schoolboy
personality, and of the fact that even in those days he had cared how she
might regard him. Well, as for the poverty, she knew his family; knew
that it was of good stock, that his parents were people of education and
refinement, and that circumstances wholly honourable had been the cause
of their lack of resources.
Should she answer the letter? How should she not answer it? Delay, then,
lest he think her too eager with her reply? Why?--when she knew as well
as he, and he as well as she, that the thing was already done, that the
mutual attraction had been of the sort which holds steadily to the end.
Yet, being a woman, she could not fling herself into his arms at the
first invitation. And indeed he had not invited. He had counted on her
wish to begin at the beginning and play the beautiful, thrilling play
through to the end, as if it were not already decided how it was to come
out. The fact that she knew how it was to come out would not make it
less the interesting play--in a world where, after all, strange things
happen, so that no man may see the end from the beginning, nor count
upon as inevitable an outcome which all the fates may combine to
threaten and to thwart.
So she delayed a little before she wrote. She let one ship, two ships,
sail without her message, so that it would not be at the first tramping
of the trail into Puerto Andes that he should find the letter. When it
finally left her hands it was a very little letter after all, and one
which it could not be imagined would take three days to write--as it had!
"DEAR MR. WALDRON: I think I know quite well that the little girl of the
curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very
audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing
to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I
well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so
much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was
like that small girl to stamp her ridiculous foot; she has gone on
stamping it, more or less, all her life. But I believe she has done some
smiling, too.
"It will be very interesting to hear from the depths of Colombia; school
days are so far gone by I had to look it up on the map. Is it very hot
there, and do you live on bananas and breadfruit? I don't mind showing
how little I know, because then you may tell me about it. I am really
going to read up concerning South America at once, so that I may be an
intelligent if not a "gentle" reader.
"Very good luck to you there,
"Wished you by
"DOROTHY BROUGHTON."
As promptly as the return mails could bring her a reply one came,
although it was, of course, a matter of weeks. During those weeks Dorothy
had not only "read up" on the subject of South America with especial
reference to Colombia; she had also posted herself, so far as a general
reader may, concerning the rather comprehensive subject of mining
engineering. This knowledge helped her to an understanding of Waldron's
next letter. He gave her a brief but graphic description of his
surroundings in a camp upon the mountains, reached by a trail of nearly
thirty miles from Puerto Andes. Certain long-delayed and badly needed
machinery had arrived at ten o'clock of the previous evening, packed over
the trail by mules. This had been unloaded by three in the morning, and
the engineers had been so glad to see the stuff at last that they had
been unwilling to go at once to bed, tired as they were. The mail had
come in by the same route, and it had been by the smouldering campfire of
the early morning that Waldron had read his letter from Dorothy. "Such a
very short letter!" he said of it, and continued:
"Yet it was more welcome than you can guess. I had done a lot of
speculating as to what it would look like when it came--if it came--and
it looked not unlike what I had fancied. I was sure you wouldn't write
one of those tall, angular hands, ten words to a page, which remind one
of linked telegraph poles. Neither would you be guilty of that
commonplace little round script which school-children are taught now, and
which goes on influencing their handwriting all their days. There would
be character in it, thought I--and there was!
"It made me long for more--that letter! I wonder if you have the least
idea what it feels like to be off in a country like this, your only real
companion another engineer. Splendid fellow, Hackett, and I couldn't ask
a better; and the work is great. But there comes an hour now and then
when there seems more beauty in one small letter postmarked "home" than
in all the gorgeous sunsets of this wonderful country.
"May I write often and at length? I can think of no happier way to spend
the hour before we turn in than in writing to you. And if you will
answer my letters, as you have been so good as to do with my first one, I
shall have the most compelling reason of my life to watch the mails.
"I want--as I wanted when a schoolboy--"to know you." I want you to know
me. There is no way in which this can be accomplished for a long time to
come except by letters. Won't you agree to this regular interchange? I
don't mean that which I presume you mean when you say it will be
"interesting to hear from Colombia." You mean, I suppose, a letter now
and then, at the intervals which conventionality imposes at the beginning
of a correspondence, possibly shortening as time goes on, but taking at
least half a year to get under way. I want it to get under way at once!
We can receive mail but once a fortnight at the best up here, and there
are often delays. So if you answer my letters as soon as you get them I
shall not hear from you too often. Please!
"I am an engineer, you know; that means a fellow who is trained to
action--all the time. If he can't get results fast enough by working his
men by day he works them by night also--day-and-night shifts--and works
with them, too, much of the time. In that way--well, samples taken from
our south drift assay more than we had dared to hope a ton, but not till
we got well in. The vein may pinch out, of course, but there are no signs
of it. I expect it to widen instead, and grow richer in quality. So--if
you'll forgive the miner's analogy--with another vein I know of--the
finest sort of gold!"
So the correspondence began. It was easy for a young woman of Dorothy's
discernment to see that here was no case for a long-distance flirtation,
if she had wanted one. From the moment when she had flung her left hand
into Waldron's right, and that other moment when she had told him with
absolute truth that she was not afraid with him beside her, he had taken
her at her word. She could not play with him, even if he had been near
her; far less now that thousands of miles separated them. She answered
with a letter of twice the length of her first one, a gay little letter,
full of incident and her comments thereon. The reply came promptly, and
this time it was a long one. He told her many details of the situation as
it was developing in these new, extraordinarily promising mines; and she
found it as fascinating as a fairy tale. But, of course, although she
read these pages many times over, she read more often certain opening and
closing passages. One ran like this: