He seemed to come to a halt in that direction, and after a moment"s pause took a new start. "I saw you at church to-day, and I saw you walk off with the minister, and that gave me a sudden jolt. It seemed to me you--liked him mighty well----"
She was sitting in silence and apparent calmness, but she flushed and her lips set close together. It was evident that no half-explanations would suffice this soul of the mountain land.
He arose finally and stood for an instant looking at her with piercing intentness. His deep excitement had forced him to physical action.
"I could see he was the man for you, not me. Right there I felt like quitting. I went back to my hotel doing more thinking to the square minute than ever before in my life, I reckon. I ought to have pulled out for the mountains right then, but you see, I had caught a glimpse of you again, and I couldn"t. The smell of your dress----" he paused a moment. "You are the finest girl G.o.d ever made and I just couldn"t go without seeing you, at least once more."
He was tense, almost rigid with the stress of his sudden pa.s.sion. She remained silent with eyes fixed upon him, musing and somber. She was slower to utter emotion than he, and could not speak even when he had finished.
He began to walk up and down just before her, his brows moodily knitted.
"I"m not fit to ask a girl like you to marry me, I know that. I"ve served time in jail, and I"m under indictment by the courts this very minute in two States. I"m no good on earth but to rope cattle. I can"t bring myself to farm or sell goods back here, and if I could you oughtn"t to have anything to do with me--but all the same you"re worth more to me than anything else. I don"t suppose there has been an hour of my life since I met you first that I haven"t thought of you. I dreamed of you--when I"m riding at night--I try to think----"
He stopped abruptly and caught up her left hand. "You"ve got a ring on your finger--is that from the minister?"
Her eyes fled from his and she said, "Yes."
He dropped her hand. "I don"t blame you any. I"ve made a failure of it."
His tone was that of a bankrupt at fifty. "I don"t know enough to write a letter--I"m only a rough, tough fool. I thought you"d be thinking of me just the way I was thinking of you, and there was nothing to write about because I wasn"t getting ahead as I expected. So I kept waiting till something turned up to encourage me. Nothing did, and now I"m paid for it."
His voice had a quality which made her weep. She tried to think of some words of comfort but could not. She was indeed too deeply concerned with her own contending emotions. There was marvelous appeal in this powerful, bronzed, undisciplined youth. His lack of tact and gallantry, his disconcerting directness of look and speech shook her, troubled her, and rendered her weak. She was but a year younger than he, and her life had been almost as simple exteriorly, but at center she was of far finer development. She had always been introspective, and she had grown self-a.n.a.lytic. She knew that the touch of this young desperado"s hand had changed her relation toward the world. As he talked she listened without formulating a reply.
When at last she began to speak she hesitated and her sentences were broken. "I am very sorry--but you see I had not heard from you for a long time--it would be impossible--for me to live on the plains so far away--even if--even if I had not promised Mr. King----"
"Well, that ends it," he said harshly, and his voice brought tears again. "I go back to my cow punching, the only business I know. As you say, the cow country is no place for a girl like you. It"s a mighty hard place for women of any kind, and you ... Besides, you"re a singer, you can"t afford to go with me. It"s all a part of my luck. Things have gone against me from the start."
He paused to get a secure hold on his voice. "Well, now, I"m going, but I don"t want you to forget me; don"t pray for me, just _sing_ for me.
I"ll hear you, and it"ll help keep me out of mischief. Will you do that?"
"Yes--if you--if it will help----"
Jack"s voice, unusually loud, interrupted her, and when the father entered, there was little outward sign of the pa.s.sionate drama just enacted.
"Won"t you sing for us, Mary?" asked Jack a few minutes later.
Mary looked at Harold significantly and arose to comply. Harold sat with head propped on his palm and eyes fixed immovably upon her face while she sang, If I Were a Voice. The voice was stronger, sweeter, and the phrasing was more mature, but it was after all the same soul singing through the prison gloom, straight to his heart. She charged the words with a special, intimate, tender meaning. She conveyed to him the message she dared not speak, "Be true in spite of all. My heart is sore for you, let me comfort you."
He, on his part, realized that one who could sing like that had a wider mission in the world than to accompany a cowboy to the bleak plains of the West. To comfort him was a small part of her work in the world. It was her mission to go on singing solace and pleasure to thousands all over the nation.
When she had finished he arose and offered his hand with a singular calmness which moved the girl more deeply than any word he had said.
"When you sing that song, think of me, sometimes, will you?"
"Yes--always," she replied.
"Good-by," he said abruptly. Dropping her-hand, he went out without speaking another word.
Jack, taking her hand in parting, found it cold and nerveless.
"May I see you again before we go?" he asked.
Her eyes lighted a little and her hand tightened in his. "Yes--I want to speak with you," she said, and ended in a whisper, "about him."
Jack overtook Harold but remained silent. When they reached their room, Harold dropped into a chair like one exhausted by a fierce race.
"This ends it, Jack, I"ll never set foot in the States again; from this time on I keep to the mountains."
CHAPTER XIII
THE YOUNG EAGLE DREAMS OF A MATE
As the young men sat at supper that night a note was handed to Jack by the clerk. Upon opening it he found a smaller envelope addressed to "Mr.
Harding." Harold took it, but did not open it, though it promised well, being quite thick with leaves. Jack read his note at a glance and pa.s.sed it across the table. It was simple:
"DEAR MR. BURNS: Won"t you please see that the inclosed note reaches Harold. I wish you could persuade him to come and see me once more before he goes. I shall expect to see _you_ anyhow.
Father does not suspect anything out of the ordinary as yet, and it will be quite safe.
"Your friend, "MARY YARDWELL."
As soon as he decently could Harold went to his room and opened the important letter. In it the reticent-girl had uttered herself with unusual freedom. It was a long letter, and its writer must have gone to its composition at once after the door had closed upon her visitors. It began abruptly, too:
"DEAR FRIEND: My heart aches for you. From the time I first saw you in the jail I have carried your face in my mind. I can"t quite a.n.a.lyze my feeling for you now. You are so different from the boy I knew. I think I am a little afraid of you, you scare me a little. You are of another world, a strange world of which I would like to hear. I have a woman"s curiosity, I can"t let you go away until you tell me all your story. I would like to say something on my own side also. Can"t you come and see me once more? My father is going to be away at his farm all day to-morrow, can"t you come with Mr. Burns and take dinner with me and tell me all about yourself--your life is so strange.
"There will be no one there (I mean at dinner) but Mr. Burns and you, and we can talk freely. Does being "under indictment" mean that you are in danger of arrest? I want to understand all about that. You can"t know how strange and exciting all these things are to me. My life is so humdrum here. You come into it like a great mountain wind. You take my words away as well as my breath. I am not like most women, words are not easy to me even when I write, though I write better than I talk--I think.
"Mr. King asked me to be his wife some months ago, and I promised to do so, but that is no reason why we should not be good friends. You have been too much in my life to go out of it altogether, though I had given up seeing you again, and then we always think of our friends as we last saw them, we can"t imagine their development. Don"t you find this so? You said you found me changed.
"I have little to tell you about myself. I graduated and then I spent one winter in Chicago to continue my music studies. I am teaching here summers to get pin money. It is so quiet here one grows to think all the world very far away, and the wild things among which you have lived and worked are almost unimaginable even when the newspapers describe them with the greatest minuteness.
"This letter is very rambling, I know, but I am writing as rapidly as I can, for I want to send it to you before you take the train. Please come to see me to-morrow. To-night I sing in the song service at the church. I hope you will be there. The more I think about your story the more eager to listen I become. There must be some basis of stirring deeds for all the tales they tell of you. My friends say I have a touch of the literary poison in my veins; anyhow I like a story above all things, and to hear the hero tell his own adventures will be the keenest delight.
"I am sorry I could not do more to make things easier for you to-day, but I come of men and women who are silent when they mean most. I am never facile of speech and to-day I was dumb. Perhaps if we meet on a clear understanding we will get along better. Come, anyhow, and let me know you as you are. Perhaps I have never really known you, perhaps I only imagined you.
"Your friend, "MARY YARDWELL.
"P.S. The reason for the postscript is that I have re-read the foregoing letter and find it unsatisfactory in everything except the expression of my wish to see you. I had meant to say so much and I have said so little. I am afraid now that I shall not see you at all, so I add my promise. I shall always remember you and I _will_ think of you when I sing, and I will sing If I Were a Voice every Sunday for you, especially when I am all alone, and I"ll send it out to you by thought waves. You shall never fail of the best wishes of
"MARY YARDWELL."
Not being trained in psychologic subtleties, Harold took this letter to mean only what it said. He was not as profoundly moved by it as he would have been could he have read beneath the lines the tumult he had produced in the tranquil life of its writer. One skilled in perception of a woman"s moods could have detected a sense of weakness, or irresolution, or longing in a girl whose nature had not yet been tried by conflicting emotions.
Jack perceived something of this when Harold gave him the letter to read. His admiration of Harold"s grace and power, his love for every gesture and every lineament of his boyish hero, made it possible for him to understand how deeply Mary had been moved when brought face to face with a handsome and powerful man who loved as lions love. He handed the letter back with a smile: "I think you"d better stay over and see her."
"I intend to," replied Harold; "wire father to come up."
"Let"s go walk. We may happen by the church where she sings," suggested Jack.