and went on in greater confidence, with cooler head and tongue.
“There, you see, you prove my case. You’ve had experience in
such matters. I don’t doubt you’ve had slathers of proposals.
Well, I haven’t, and I’m like a fish out of water. Besides, this
ain’t a proposal. It’s a peculiar situation, that’s all, and I’m
in a corner. I’ve got enough plain horse-sense to know a man
ain’t supposed to argue marriage with a girl as a reason for
getting acquainted with her. And right there was where I was in
the hole. Number one, I can’t get acquainted with you in the
office. Number two, you say you won’t see me out of the office
to give me a chance. Number three, your reason is that folks
will talk because you work for me. Number four, I just got to
get acquainted with you, and I just got to get you to see that I
mean fair and all right. Number five, there you are on one side
the gate getting ready to go, and me here on the other side the
gate pretty desperate and bound to say something to make you
reconsider. Number six, I said it. And now and finally, I just
do want you to reconsider.”
And, listening to him, pleasuring in the sight of his earnest,
perturbed face and in the simple, homely phrases that but
emphasized his earnestness and marked the difference between him
and the average run of men she had known, she forgot to listen
and lost herself in her own thoughts. The love of a strong man
is ever a lure to a normal woman, and never more strongly did
Dede feel the lure than now, looking across the closed gate at
Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever dream of marrying
him–she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least
see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her. On the
contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she
had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into
his flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways
than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded
him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man
of many deeds and many millions, who had come down out of the
Arctic to wrestle and fight so masterfully with the men of the
South.
Savage as a Red Indian, gambler and profligate, a man without
morals, whose vengeance was never glutted and who stamped on the
faces of all who opposed him–oh, yes, she knew all the hard
names he had been called. Yet she was not afraid of him. There
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159
was more than that in the connotation of his name. Burning
Daylight called up other things as well. They were there in the
newspapers, the magazines, and the books on the Klondike. When
all was said, Burning Daylight had a mighty connotation–one to
touch any woman’s imagination, as it touched hers, the gate
between them, listening to the wistful and impassioned simplicity
of his speech. Dede was after all a woman, with a woman’s
sex-vanity, and it was this vanity that was pleased by the fact
that such a man turned in his need to her.
And there was more that passed through her mind–sensations of
tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies
of vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer
whisperings and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten
generations crystallized into being and fluttering anew and
always, undreamed and unguessed, subtle and potent, the spirit
and essence of life that under a thousand deceits and masks
forever makes for life. It was a strong temptation, just to ride
with this man in the hills. It would be that only and nothing
more, for she was firmly convinced that his way of life could
never be her way. On the other hand, she was vexed by none of
the ordinary feminine fears and timidities. That she could take
care of herself under any and all circumstances she never
doubted. Then why not? It was such a little thing, after all.
She led an ordinary, humdrum life at best. She ate and slept and
worked, and that was about all. As if in review, her anchorite
existence passed before her: six days of the week spent in the
office and in journeying back and forth on the ferry; the hours
stolen before bedtime for snatches of song at the piano, for
doing her own special laundering, for sewing and mending and
casting up of meagre accounts; the two evenings a week of social
diversion she permitted herself; the other stolen hours and
Saturday afternoons spent with her brother at the hospital; and
the seventh day, Sunday, her day of solace, on Mab’s back, out
among the blessed hills. But it was lonely, this solitary
riding. Nobody of her acquaintance rode. Several girls at the
University had been persuaded into trying it, but after a Sunday
or two on hired livery hacks they had lost interest. There was
Madeline, who bought her own horse and rode enthusiastically for
several months, only to get married and go away to live in
Southern California. After years of it, one did get tired of
this eternal riding alone.
He was such a boy, this big giant of a millionaire who had half
the rich men of San Francisco afraid of him. Such a boy! She
had never imagined this side of his nature.
“How do folks get married?” he was saying. “Why, number one,
they meet; number two, like each other’s looks; number three, get
acquainted; and number four, get married or not, according to how
they like each other after getting acquainted. But how in
thunder we’re to have a chance to find out whether we like each
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160
other enough is beyond my savvee, unless we make that chance
ourselves. I’d come to see you, call on you, only I know you’re
just rooming or boarding, and that won’t do.”
Suddenly, with a change of mood, the situation appeared to Dede
ridiculously absurd. She felt a desire to laugh–not angrily,
not hysterically, but just jolly. It was so funny. Herself, the
stenographer, he, the notorious and powerful gambling
millionaire, and the gate between them across which poured his
argument of people getting acquainted and married. Also, it was
an impossible situation. On the face of it, she could not go on
with it. This program of furtive meetings in the hills would
have to discontinue. There would never be another meeting. And
if, denied this, he tried to woo her in the office, she would be
compelled to lose a very good position, and that would be an end
of the episode. It was not nice to contemplate; but the world of
men, especially in the cities, she had not found particularly
nice. She had not worked for her living for years without losing
a great many of her illusions.
“We won’t do any sneaking or hiding around about it,” Daylight
was explaining. “We’ll ride around as bold if you please, and if
anybody sees us, why, let them. If they talk–well, so long as
our consciences are straight we needn’t worry. Say the word, and
Bob will have on his back the happiest man alive.”
She shook her head, pulled in the mare, who was impatient to be
off for home, and glanced significantly at the lengthening
shadows.
“It’s getting late now, anyway,” Daylight hurried on, “and we’ve
settled nothing after all. Just one more Sunday, anyway–that’s
not asking much–to settle it in.”
“We’ve had all day,” she said.
“But we started to talk it over too late. We’ll tackle it
earlier next time. This is a big serious proposition with me, I
can tell you. Say next Sunday?”
“Are men ever fair?” she asked. “You know thoroughly well that
by ‘next Sunday’ you mean many Sundays.”
“Then let it be many Sundays,” he cried recklessly, while she
thought that she had never seen him looking handsomer. “Say the
word. Only say the word. Next Sunday at the quarry…”
She gathered the reins into her hand preliminary to starting.
“Good night,” she said, “and–”
“Yes,” he whispered, with just the faintest touch of
impressiveness.
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161
“Yes,” she said, her voice low but distinct.
At the same moment she put the mare into a canter and went down
the road without a backward glance, intent on an analysis of her
own feelings. With her mind made up to say no–and to the last
instant she had been so resolved–her lips nevertheless had said
yes. Or at least it seemed the lips. She had not intended to
consent. Then why had she? Her first surprise and bewilderment
at so wholly unpremeditated an act gave way to consternation as
she considered its consequences. She knew that Burning Daylight