Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight proposed to
Dede. As on the first time, he restrained himself until his hunger for
her overwhelmed him and swept him away in his red automobile to
Berkeley. He left the machine several blocks away and proceeded to the
house on foot. But Dede was out, the landlady's daughter told him, and
added, on second thought, that she was out walking in the hills.
Furthermore, the young lady directed him where Dede's walk was most
likely to extend.
Daylight obeyed the girl's instructions, and soon the street he
followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the first
steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the on-coming of
rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the rising wind
proclaimed its imminence. As far as he could see, there was no sign of
Dede on the smooth, grassy hills. To the right, dipping down into a
hollow and rising again, was a large, full-grown eucalyptus grove.
Here all was noise and movement, the lofty, slender trunked trees
swaying back and forth in the wind and clashing their branches
together. In the squalls, above all the minor noises of creaking and
groaning, arose a deep thrumming note as of a mighty harp. Knowing
Dede as he did, Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere
in this grove where the storm effects were so pronounced. And find her
he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest of the opposing
slope where the gale smote its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the way
Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was as direct
and gusty as the gale itself. He had time neither for greeting nor
apology.
"It's the same old thing," he said. "I want you and I've come for you.
You've just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think about it the
more certain I am that you've got a Sneaking liking for me that's
something more than just Ordinary liking. And you don't dast say that
it isn't; now dast you?"
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and he
had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer, she felt
a light but firmly insistent pressure as of his drawing her to him.
Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire for the moment
stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew herself away, though
permitting her hand still to remain in his.
"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No." She smiled woefully. "Not of you, but of myself."
"You haven't taken my dare," he urged under this encouragement.
"Please, please," she begged. "We can never marry, so don't let us
discuss it."
"Then I copper your bet to lose." He was almost gay, now, for success
was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked him, without a
doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well enough to let him hold
her hand, well enough to be not repelled by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. "No, it is impossible. You would lose your bet."
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight's mind--a clew
that explained everything.
"Say, you ain't been let in for some one of these secret marriages have
you?"
The consternation in his voice and on his face was too much for her,
and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of joy from
the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed with himself decided that action
was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her and the wind
and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter of him. An
unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed overhead in the
tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of flying leaves
enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind came driving drops of
rain. He looked down on her and on her hair wind-blown about her face;
and because of her closeness to him and of a fresher and more poignant
realization of what she meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware
of it in the hand that held hers.
She suddenly leaned against him, bowing her head until it rested
lightly upon his breast. And so they stood while another squall, with
flying leaves and scattered drops of rain, rattled past. With equal
suddenness she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Do you know," she said, "I prayed last night about you. I prayed that
you would fail, that you would lose everything everything."
Daylight stared his amazement at this cryptic utterance. "That sure
beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women, and you've
got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose everything, seeing
as you like me--"
"I never said so."
"You didn't dast say you didn't. So, as I was saying: liking me, why
you'd want me to go broke is clean beyond my simple understanding.
It's right in line with that other puzzler of yours, the
more-you-like-me-the-less-you-want-to-marry-me one. Well, you've just
got to explain, that's all."
His arms went around her and held her closely, and this time she did
not resist. Her head was bowed, and he had not see her face, yet he
had a premonition that she was crying. He had learned the virtue of
silence, and he waited her will in the matter. Things had come to such
a pass that she was bound to tell him something now. Of that he was
confident.
"I am not romantic," she began, again looking at him as he spoke.
"It might be better for me if I were. Then I could make a fool of
myself and be unhappy for the rest of my life. But my abominable
common sense prevents. And that doesn't make me a bit happier, either."
"I'm still out of my depth and swimming feeble," Daylight said, after
waiting vainly for her to go on. "You've got to show me, and you ain't
shown me yet. Your common sense and praying that I'd go broke is all
up in the air to me. Little woman, I just love you mighty hard, and I
want you to marry me. That's straight and simple and right off the
bat. Will you marry me?"
She shook her head slowly, and then, as she talked, seemed to grow
angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was against him.
"Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have
asked." She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. "You are
honest and straightforward. Do you want me to be honest and
straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?--to tell you things
that will hurt you?--to make confessions that ought to shame me? to
behave in what many men would think was an unwomanly manner?"
The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not speak.
"I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud and
humble at the same time that a man like you should care for me. But
you have too much money. There's where my abominable common sense
steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be my man--my lover
and my husband. You would be your money's man. I know I am a foolish
woman, but I want my man for myself. You would not be free for me.
Your money possesses you, taking your time, your thoughts, your energy,
everything, bidding you go here and go there, do this and do that.
Don't you see? Perhaps it's pure silliness, but I feel that I can love
much, give much--give all, and in return, though I don't want all, I
want much--and I want much more than your money would permit you to
give me.
"And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I am not
ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never marry you. And I
loved you much when I did not know you at all, when you first came down
from Alaska and I first went into the office. You were my hero. You
were the Burning Daylight of the gold-diggings, the daring traveler and
miner. And you looked it. I don't see how any woman could have looked
at you without loving you--then. But you don't look it now.
"Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight talk,
and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have been living
unnaturally. You, a man of the open, have been cooping yourself up in
the cities with all that that means. You are not the same man at all,
and your money is destroying you. You are becoming something different,
something not so healthy, not so clean, not so nice. Your money and
your way of life are doing it. You know it. You haven't the same body
now that you had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy
flesh. You are kind and genial with me, I know, but you are not kind
and genial to all the world as you were then. You have become harsh
and cruel. And I know. Remember, I have studied you six days a week,
month after month, year after year; and I know more about the most
insignificant parts of you than you know of all of me. The cruelty is
not only in your heart and thoughts, but it is there in face. It has
put its lines there. I have watched them come and grow. Your money,
and the life it compels you to lead have done all this. You are being
brutalized and degraded. And this process can only go on and on until
you are hopelessly destroyed--"
He attempted to interrupt, but she stopped him, herself breathless and
her voice trembling.
"No, no; let me finish utterly. I have done nothing but think, think,
think, all these months, ever since you came riding with me, and now
that I have begun to speak I am going to speak all that I have in me.
I do love you, but I cannot marry you and destroy love. You are
growing into a thing that I must in the end despise. You can't help
it. More than you can possibly love me, do you love this business
game. This business--and it's all perfectly useless, so far as you are
concerned--claims all of you. I sometimes think it would be easier to
share you equitably with another woman than to share you with this
business. I might have half of you, at any rate. But this business
would claim, not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine
hundredths.
"Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man's money to
spend. I want the man. You say you want ME. And suppose I consented,
but gave you only one-hundredth part of me. Suppose there was something
else in my life that took the other ninety-nine parts, and,
furthermore, that ruined my figure, that put pouches under my eyes and
crows-feet in the corners, that made me unbeautiful to look upon and
that made my spirit unbeautiful. Would you be satisfied with that
one-hundredth part of me? Yet that is all you are offering me of
yourself. Do you wonder that I won't marry you?--that I can't?"
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on again.
"It isn't that I am selfish. After all, love is giving, not receiving.
But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do you any good. You
are like a sick man. You don't play business like other men. You play
it heart and and all of you. No matter what you believed and intended
a wife would be only a brief diversion. There is that magnificent Bob,
eating his head off in the stable. You would buy me a beautiful
mansion and leave me in it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out
because of my helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of
business would be corroding you and marring you all the time. You play
it as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the life
of the trail. Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast and as far
as you, to work as hard or endure as much. You hold back nothing; you
put all you've got into whatever you are doing."
"Limit is the sky," he grunted grim affirmation.
"But if you would only play the lover-husband that way--"
Her voice faltered and stopped, and a blush showed in her wet cheeks as
her eyes fell before his.
"And now I won't say another word," she added. "I've delivered a whole
sermon."
She rested now, frankly and fairly, in the shelter of his arms, and
both were oblivious to the gale that rushed past them in quicker and
stronger blasts. The big downpour of rain had not yet come, but the
mist-like squalls were more frequent. Daylight was openly perplexed,
and he was still perplexed when he began to speak.
"I'm stumped. I'm up a tree. I'm clean flabbergasted, Miss Mason--or
Dede, because I love to call you that name. I'm free to confess
there's a mighty big heap in what you say. As I understand it, your
conclusion is that you'd marry me if I hadn't a cent and if I wasn't
getting fat. No, no; I'm not joking. I acknowledge the corn, and
that's just my way of boiling the matter down and summing it up. If I
hadn't a cent, and if I was living a healthy life with all the time in
the world to love you and be your husband instead of being awash to my
back teeth in business and all the rest--why, you'd marry me.
"That's all as clear as print, and you're correcter than I ever guessed
before. You've sure opened my eyes a few. But I'm stuck. What can I
do? My business has sure roped, thrown, and branded me. I'm tied hand
and foot, and I can't get up and meander over green pastures. I'm like
the man that got the bear by the tail. I can't let go; and I want you,
and I've got to let go to get you.
"I don't know what to do, but something's sure got to happen--I can't
lose you. I just can't. And I'm not going to. Why, you're running
business a close second right now. Business never kept me awake nights.
"You've left me no argument. I know I'm not the same man that came
from Alaska. I couldn't hit the trail with the dogs as I did in them
days. I'm soft in my muscles, and my mind's gone hard. I used to
respect men. I despise them now. You see, I spent all my life in the
open, and I reckon I'm an open-air man. Why, I've got the prettiest
little ranch you ever laid eyes on, up in Glen Ellen. That's where I
got stuck for that brick-yard. You recollect handling the
correspondence. I only laid eyes on the ranch that one time, and I so
fell in love with it that I bought it there and then. I just rode
around the hills, and was happy as a kid out of school. I'd be a
better man living in the country. The city doesn't make me better.
You're plumb right there. I know it. But suppose your prayer should
be answered and I'd go clean broke and have to work for day's wages?"
She did not answer, though all the body of her seemed to urge consent.
"Suppose I had nothing left but that little ranch, and was satisfied to
grow a few chickens and scratch a living somehow--would you marry me
then, Dede?"
"Why, we'd be together all the time!" she cried.
"But I'd have to be out ploughing once in a while," he warned, "or
driving to town to get the grub."
"But there wouldn't be the office, at any rate, and no man to see, and
men to see without end. But it is all foolish and impossible, and
we'll have to be starting back now if we're to escape the rain."
Then was the moment, among the trees, where they began the descent of
the hill, that Daylight might have drawn her closely to him and kissed
her once. But he was too perplexed with the new thoughts she had put
into his head to take advantage of the situation. He merely caught her
by the arm and helped her over the rougher footing.
"It's darn pretty country up there at Glen Ellen," he said
meditatively. "I wish you could see it."
At the edge of the grove he suggested that it might be better for them
to part there.
"It's your neighborhood, and folks is liable to talk."
But she insisted that he accompany her as far as the house.
"I can't ask you in," she said, extending her hand at the foot of the
steps.
The wind was humming wildly in sharply recurrent gusts, but still the
rain held off.
"Do you know," he said, "taking it by and large, it's the happiest day
of my life." He took off his hat, and the wind rippled and twisted his
black hair as he went on solemnly, "And I'm sure grateful to God, or
whoever or whatever is responsible for your being on this earth. For
you do like me heaps. It's been my joy to hear you say so to-day.
It's--" He left the thought arrested, and his face assumed the familiar
whimsical expression as he murmured: "Dede, Dede, we've just got to get
married. It's the only way, and trust to luck for it's coming out all
right--".
But the tears were threatening to rise in her eyes again, as she shook
her head and turned and went up the steps.