Part 12

She did not approach him again during the meal, but seemed to have taken a sudden interest in the efficiency of the waiters, generally, which she had not shown before. I do not know whether this was merely an effort at concealment, or an awakened recognition of her duty; but, after the fashion of her sex,--and perhaps in contrast to his,--she was kinder that evening to the average man on account of HIM. He did not, however, notice it; nor did her absence interfere with his now healthy appetite; he finished his meal, and only when he rose to take his hat from the peg above him did he glance around the room. Their eyes met again. As he passed out, although it was dark, he put on his hat a little more smartly.

The air was clear and cold, but the outlines of the landscape had vanished. His companions, with the instinct of tired animals, were already making their way in knots of two or three, or in silent file, across the intervening space between the building and their dormitory. A few had already lit their pipes and were walking leisurely, but the majority were hurrying from the chill sea-breeze to the warmth and comfort of the long, well-lit room, lined with blanketed berths, and set with plain wooden chairs and tables. The young man lingered for a moment on the wooden platform outside the dining-shed,--partly to evade this only social gathering of his fellows as they retired for the night, and partly attracted by a strange fascination to the faint distant glow, beyond the point of land, which indicated the lights of San Francisco.

There was a slight rustle behind him! It was the young girl who, with a white woolen scarf thrown over her head and shoulders, had just left the room. She started when she saw him, and for an instant hesitated.

“You are going home, Miss Woodridge?” he said pleasantly.

“Yes,” she returned, in a faint, embarrassed voice. “I thought I'd run on ahead of ma!”

“Will you allow me to accompany you?”

“It's only a step,” she protested, indicating the light in the window of the superintendent's house, the most remote of the group of buildings, yet scarcely a quarter of a mile distant.

“But it's quite dark,” he persisted smilingly.

She stepped from the platform to the ground; he instantly followed and ranged himself at a little distance from her side. She protested still feebly against his “troubling himself,” but in another moment they were walking on quietly together. Nevertheless, a few paces from the platform they came upon the upheaved clods of the fresh furrows, and their progress over them was slow and difficult.

“Shall I help you? Will you take my arm?” he said politely.

“No, thank you, Mr. Reddy.”

So! she knew his name! He tried to look into her eyes, but the woolen scarf hid her head. After all, there was nothing strange in her knowing him; she probably had the names of the men before her in the dining-room, or on the books. After a pause he said:--

“You quite startled me. One becomes such a mere working machine here that one quite forgets one's own name,--especially with the prefix of 'Mr.'”

“And if it don't happen to be one's real name either,” said the girl, with an odd, timid audacity.

He looked up quickly--more attracted by her manner than her words; more amused than angry.

“But Reddy happens to be my real name.”

“Oh!”

“What made you think it was not?”

The clods over which they were clambering were so uneven that sometimes the young girl was mounting one at the same moment that Reddy was descending from another. Her reply, half muffled in her shawl, was delivered over his head. “Oh, because pa says most of the men here don't give their real names--they don't care to be known afterward. Ashamed of their work, I reckon.”

His face flushed a moment, even in the darkness. He WAS ashamed of his work, and perhaps a little of the pitiful sport he was beginning. But oddly enough, the aggressive criticism only whetted his purpose. The girl was evidently quite able to take care of herself; why should he be over-chivalrous?

“It isn't very pleasant to be doing the work of a horse, an ox, or a machine, if you can do other things,” he said half seriously.

“But you never used to do anything at all, did you?” she asked.

He hesitated. Here was a chance to give her an affecting history of his former exalted fortune and position, and perhaps even to stir her evidently romantic nature with some suggestion of his sacrifices to one of her own sex. Women liked that sort of thing. It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but--for some reason, he knew not why--awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. Suddenly the girl stopped him.

“Yes, I know all THAT; pa told me. Told me you'd been given away by some woman.”

His face again flushed--this time with anger. The utter failure of his story to excite her interest, and her perfect possession of herself and the situation,--so unlike her conduct a few moments before,--made him savagely silent, and he clambered on sullenly at her side. Presently she stopped, balancing herself with a dexterity he could not imitate on one of the larger upheaved clods, and said:--

“I was thinking that, as you can't do much with those hands of yours, digging and shoveling, and not much with your feet either, over ploughed ground, you might do some inside work, that would pay you better, too. You might help in the dining room, setting table and washing up, helping ma and me--though I don't do much except overseeing. I could show you what to do at first, and you'd learn quick enough. If you say 'yes,' I'll speak to pa to-night. He'll do whatever I say.”

The rage and shame that filled his breast choked even the bitter laugh that first rose to his lips. If he could have turned on his heel and left her with marked indignation, he would have done so, but they were scarcely half way across the field; his stumbling retreat would have only appeared ridiculous, and he was by no means sure that she would not have looked upon it as merely a confession of his inability to keep up with her. And yet there was something peculiarly fascinating and tantalizing in the situation. She did not see the sardonic glitter in his eye as he said brutally:--

“Ha! and that would give me the exquisite pleasure of being near you.”