Part 37

Her sense of injury was poignantly enhanced by the fact that she recognized herself to be the true cause of her trouble. Had she not led him on this thing might never have happened; and yet, she was neither sorry nor repentant for what she had done. Had any other man dared take the liberties he had taken with her, she would have despised him, but with him, though she was unable to explain it, things were somehow different. She was furious with him for kissing her, and yet deep down in her inner consciousness she was not so certain that she was sorry he had done so. The things he did, which would have branded any other man as a cad, were the very things the man of her dreams might have done under similar circumstances. Yet she shuddered as she daily foresaw the consequences that might ensue should she encourage him further. Flirting with a man whose high-handed, arbitrary methods dazed rather than offended her, was becoming dangerous.

Self-preservation being always our first thought, she had decided to fly, but the presence of Blanch rendered such a course impossible. The only alternative left her was to extricate herself as swiftly and gracefully as possible from her dilemma by making herself as disagreeable as possible in his eyes. In this wise she hoped to disillusion him, and it was with this intention she had come forth to meet him. She could not see him from where she sat, having turned her back upon him; but, judging from the length of time it took him to approach, she rightly conjectured that he had been walking in a circle, doubtless at a loss what course to pursue. The silence that ensued when he paused behind her was broken only by the sound of his labored breathing and a nervous cough, plainly betraying the embarrassment he felt on finding himself once more in her presence.

"Miss Van Ashton," he said at length, "it is extremely gratifying to know that you have at last decided to leave the oppressive walls of your inhospitable abode for the world of sunshine without, where the essence and being of all things fill one with a desire to live." Nothing he could have said at the moment could have aroused her resentment more than this idiotic speech. She had expected him to eat humble pie, to throw himself at her feet and implore forgiveness; but, no! She sprang to her feet and facing him, turned a pair of beautiful blazing eyes upon him. She was so furious she choked, and for some moments was quite unable to speak.

"I suppose," she said at last, her voice trembling with suppressed indignation, "that you take pleasure in pursuing a helpless woman like a hunted beast. It's so manly," she added scathingly, looking in vain for some sign of contrition in his face. "Why," she went on, "if a man where I live had done the hundredth part of what you have done, society would shun him as it would a pariah!"

"Or a leper," he added good humoredly, quick to recognize the disadvantage at which the loss of her temper placed her. "They must be a poor lot where you live," he continued. "I think we had better pass them by without further comment." She was suffocated--she could have bitten her tongue off!

"Have you no consideration for others' feelings--for what they might want?" she cried.

"Ah! I see, Miss Van Ashton," he answered, regarding her compassionately. "You quite overlook the true facts of the case. This is not at all a question of what you may want, but of what is best for you. I have merely been trying to tell you in my awkward way that it is not good for one to live alone." She laughed hysterically. The colossal impudence of the man took her breath away. She gasped--attempted to speak, but words failing her, turned her back upon him and began tearing into shreds the end of the silken gauze Indian scarf which she wore over her shoulders.

"Can't you think of what you want, Miss Van Ashton?" he asked gently, in the tone of one addressing a refractory child.

"No!" she screamed, without at all realizing what she was saying. To think that this man was able to play with her like a worm on the end of a pin! It was too much! "How dare you! I--I hate you!" she cried, without turning round and quite beside herself. There was no mistaking her attitude; he had gone far enough. The limit of her endurance had been reached, and he suddenly became serious. Again there was silence between them.

"Miss Van Ashton," he said, drawing himself up, "it really doesn't matter what you or the rest of the world may think of me so long as I can see you. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were never to see the sun again? What could be more absurd than to allow such a trifle as convention to come between you and me? Three feet of wretched adobe wall between me and heaven!" he burst forth. "The idea's preposterous! Why, if you shut yourself up in that miserable hovel again, I'll set fire to the place!" She knew he would.

"Can't you understand," he went on, his voice softening, "that your attitude has aroused the savage, the primeval man in me--that, had I met you here fifty or a hundred years ago, I would have picked you up and quietly carried you away? I know I've been a brute by driving you into the open like this, but that's not me, myself--the man who loves you, who would pass through fire for you, who has dreamed of you and watched and waited through the long years for your coming; and now that you have come, you surely can't blame me for what I cannot help--for loving you and telling you so in my own way?"

She tried in vain to stifle the emotion his words aroused. She had set out with the intention of wringing this avowal from him in jest, but how differently it affected her now that she heard it. She forgot her anger, everything, in fact, as she listened to the flow of his passion and longed to hear him continue. Every note of his voice thrilled her as it did on the day she first saw him. She remembered that she experienced a peculiar sensation at the time; that his appearance reminded her of the heroic type of manhood which the ancients had sought to depict in their marbles. In him she had unconsciously recognized the true spirit of the Argonaut on whose brow rests the star of empire. She did not idealize him; she simply recognized him for what he was--a man; one in whose soul the sentiment and enthusiasm of youth still sat enthroned, not smothered by the crushing process of modern civilization which was the case with the men she knew. A terror seized her as she compared the latter to him, and beheld how small they appeared beside him.

"Miss Van Ashton," he continued passionately, "you wouldn't thank me if I continued to bandy words with the woman I love, whose presence has become the sunshine of life to me. The whole world has become filled with song since you came into my life. Music and laughter have taken the place of loneliness and despair. Flowers spring from the earth where your feet rest! Don't imagine that you can ever estrange yourself from me. Wherever you are, by day or by night, waking or dreaming, I also will be there and ever whispering: 'Bessie Van Ashton, I love you--you have filled my life so completely I can't live without you!'"

Had her face been turned toward him, he would have seen that it was radiant, that her eyes shone with unusual brilliancy, that her hands trembled beneath the folds of her scarf where she had concealed them.

"Bessie, sweet--"

"Stop!" she cried, almost in a voice of terror. "I've not given you permission to speak to me, thus--to call me by name--"

"Then turn round and say you will be human once more! That you will talk and walk and ride again! If you don't, I'll begin all over again by telling you that you are the sweetest--"

"Hush!" she said softly, turning round abruptly with a gesture of protest, looking up into his face, and then down at the ground to conceal her confusion. "I think we understand one another," she said at length, and raising her eyes to his again, she held out both her hands which he seized and held in his own.

"Let us be friends again," she continued, gently withdrawing her hands from his.

"No, don't say that!" he interrupted. "We can't be that! Let it rest as it is!"

XXIV

"When you love, you love," runs a gypsy proverb.

Bessie wore the despairing look of one who clings to a last vain hope. How had it happened? Why had everything gone contrary to her expectations? Why was Mr. Yankton dragging her at the wheels of his chariot instead of she him? According to her social standards he had seen but little, and yet he had the savoir faire of a man of the world. Her preconceived ideas on certain subjects were so upset that she no longer appeared to have a hold on anything; the very ground seemed to be slipping away beneath her.

Strange that one could care for the person whom one least expected to, that the most humiliating moment in one's life might be the happiest as well. If any one had suggested such a possibility to her six months previously, she would have laughed at the mere thought. How could she relinquish the life she knew for his? She fought against his influence with all her powers of resistance. And yet, what woman in her right mind would hesitate to follow the man of her choice to the sunlit valleys of our dreams? Weaker women than she had done so and been happy, while stronger ones had hesitated, as was the case with Blanch, and lived to regret it. She secretly prayed that she might be spared the torture which Blanch was suffering and the despair which must inevitably overtake her should she fail to win back the man she had let slip from her; for what, after all, could life be to one without the true comradeship of love? She began to feel and realize the ineffable sweetness of life's fullness as the days of her awakening continued, while the ache at her heart told her plainly enough that the decisive moment of her life had arrived--that she must choose between happiness and ambition. The one, rich and full though accompanied perhaps by pain and even denial at times; the other fraught with uncertainty.

She understood now the meaning of Chiquita's passionate longing for the man she loved; a thing which the worldliness of the life she had lived hitherto had taught her to be too extravagant to exist anywhere outside of books, but which was true nevertheless. Her intuition told her this in the face of all the world might say to the contrary. As she looked back over the years and thought of her friends, she realized that she like them had submerged her life in the superficial pleasures of the world; but had they filled her cup of happiness? Until now she had not felt the lack of life's crowning joy, for the reason that youth is buoyant and full of hope, and the grand passion had not yet entered into her life. These and a thousand other thoughts ran through her mind that night as she recalled Dick's words.

She could not sleep. From where she lay she could see the moonlight in the patio and hear the murmur of the fountain in its center. The night seemed to beckon and whisper to her to come outside. So she arose and silently dressed herself in the dimly moonlit room without disturbing Blanch, who murmured incoherently in her sleep of the things she was thinking of. She slipped noiselessly through the low window to the patio without and stealthily made her way in the shadow of the overhanging arcades to the garden beyond.

The hour was late--close on to dawn. The silvery half-moon hung low in the west accompanied by great cohorts of stars that shone with a brilliancy she had never before seen, and which seemed to be waiting with the moon to usher in the new dawn. All was silence and mystery--all earthly ties seemed severed. Under the cover of the night all things seemed equal. There were no high, no low, no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no towns, no cities, no conventions. All things that hold and bind us had slipped away into the shadows and she seemed to breathe again the primeval freshness of life.

She knew that she must decide between Dick and her family. Her father had given her plainly to understand as much, and this she knew meant the loss of her fortune--the giving up of all for him. Her father threatened, raged and fumed with the petulance of a spoiled child, his paternal displeasure taking that uncompromising form of obstinacy with which the world has long been familiar. She was amazed at herself for being able to take his displeasure with so little concern; a thing which, had it occurred at home, would have caused her to pause and reflect and probably would have been the deciding factor in her life. Her removal from the old life and the glimpses of the new had unconsciously wrought a change within her. She began to see things as they really are when shorn of their glamour. The life she hitherto had known, she realized, was purely a superficial condition, not only foreign to the realities of things, but superfluous to man himself. Never had Captain Forest appeared so sane and her father so superficial as the hour in which she grasped that truth. It is not what the world makes of you, but what you make of yourself that counts, the beauteous, seductive night kept whispering to her. Why, then, if this be true, should the world about her appear so remote? It was not the actual world--the world as it really is that she would be called upon to give up, but merely the world of that particular set of men and women in which she hitherto had moved.