The Greatest Adventure Books - MacLeod Raine Edition. William MacLeod Raine

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СКАЧАТЬ it isn't poker. Worse than that. You've been setting a deplorable example to the young."

      "To young ladies—like Miss Virginia?" he wanted to know.

      "No, to young Christians. I don't know what our good deacons will say about it." She illuminated her severity with a flashing smile. "Don't you know that the sins of the fathers are to descend upon their children even to the third and fourth generation? Don't you know that when a man does wrong he must die punished, and his children and his wife, of course, and that the proper thing to do is to stand back and thank Heaven we haven't been vile sinners?"

      "Now, don't you begin on that, Miss Virginia," he warned.

      "And after the man had disgraced himself and shot you, after all respectable people had given him an extra kick to let him know he must stay down and had then turned their backs upon him. I'm not surprised that you're ashamed."

      "Where did you get hold of this fairy-tale?" he plucked up courage to demand.

      "From Norma Pelton. She told me everything, the whole story from beginning to end."

      "It's right funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable young lady—unless you went to deliver that extra kick you was mentioning," he grinned.

      She dropped her raillery. "It was splendid. I meant to ask Mr. Ridgway to do something for them, but this is so much better. It takes them away from the place of his disgrace and away from temptation. Oh, I don't wonder Norma kissed you."

      "She told you that, too, did she?"

      "Yes. I should have done it, too, in her place."

      He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but—"

      "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within the portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's not so public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that way?"

      She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting upon. Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on domestic science.

      "This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books. Come out into the sun and live," he invited.

      They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about their business. Squirrels raced across the road and stood up at a safe distance to gaze at these intruders. Birds flashed back and forth, hurried little carpenters busy with the specifications for their new nests. Eager palpitating life was the key-note of the universe.

      "Virginia told me about the Peltons," Laska said, after a pause.

      "It's spreading almost as fast as if it were a secret," he smiled. "I'm expecting to find it in the paper when we get back."

      "I'm so glad you did it."

      "Well, you're to blame."

      "I!" She looked at him in surprise.

      "Partly. You told me how things were going with them. That seemed to put it up to me to give Pelton a chance."

      "I certainly didn't mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do anything about it."

      "Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible."

      "Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear anybody is in trouble," the young woman answered.

      "Roper's a goat. Nobody ever pays any attention to him."

      Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet.

      But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand.

      "I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?" he asked quietly.

      "Yes, Sam," she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back happily to take up again the work that awaited them.

      Chapter 25.

       Friendly Enemies

       Table of Contents

      Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against a pane of glass.

      With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest.

      "I'm so glad, so glad, so glad to see you."

      The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum. Now she heard the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his confident bearing. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler.

      "I told you I would come."

      "Yes. I've been looking for you every day. I've checked each one off on my calendar. It's been three weeks and five days since I saw you."

      "I thought it was a year," he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice rang strangely in this room given to murmurs.

      "Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr. Yesler? And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher? And how does Mr. Hobart like being senator?"

      "Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please."

      "First, then, when did you reach the city?"

      He consulted his watch. "Just two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago."

      "And how long are you going to stay?"

      "That depends."

      "On what?"

      "For one thing, on whether you treat me well," he smiled.

      "Oh, I'll treat you well. I never was so glad to see a real live somebody in my life. СКАЧАТЬ