CHAPTER IX
Deep in work at her desk, Camilla Van Arsdale noted, with the outer tentacles of her mind, slow footsteps outside and a stir of air that told of the door being opened. Without lifting her head she called:
“You’ll find towels and a bathrobe in the passageway.”
There was no reply. Miss Van Arsdale twisted in her chair, gave one look, rose and strode to the threshold where Io Welland stood rigid and still.
“What is it?” she demanded sharply.
The girl’s hands gripped a folded newspaper. She lifted it as if for Miss Van Arsdale’s acceptance, then let it fall to the floor. Her throat worked, struggling for utterance, as it might be against the pressure of invisible fingers.
“The beast! Oh, the beast!” she whispered.
The older woman threw an arm over her shoulders and led her to the big chair before the fireplace. Io let herself be thrust into it, stiff and unyielding as a manikin. Any other woman but Camilla Van Arsdale would have asked questions. She went more directly to the point. Picking up the newspaper she opened it. Halfway across an inside page ran the explanation of Io’s collapse.
BRITON’S BEAUTIFUL FIANCÉE LOST
read the caption, in the glaring vulgarity of extra-heavy type, and below;
Ducal Heir Offers Private Reward to Dinner Party of Friends
After an estimating look at the girl, who sat quite still with hot, blurred eyes, Miss Van Arsdale carefully read the article through.
“Here is advertising enough to satisfy the greediest appetite for print,” she remarked grimly.
“He’s on one of his brutal drunks.” The words seemed to grit in the girl’s throat. “I wish he were dead! Oh, I wish he were dead!”
Miss Van Arsdale laid hold on her shoulders and shook her hard. “Listen to me, Irene Welland. You’re on the way to hysterics or some such foolishness. I won’t have it! Do you understand? Are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening. But it won’t make any difference what you say.”
“Look at me. Don’t stare into nothingness that way. Have you read this?”
“Enough of it. It ends everything.”
“I should hope so, indeed. My dear!” The woman’s voice changed and softened. “You haven’t found that you cared for him, after all, more than you thought? It isn’t that?”
“No; it isn’t that. It’s the beastliness of the whole thing. It’s the disgrace.”
Miss Van Arsdale turned to the paper again.
“Your name isn’t given.”
“It might as well be. As soon as it gets back to New York, every one will know.”
“If I read correctly between the lines of this scurrilous thing, Mr. Holmesley gave what was to have been his bachelor dinner, took too much to drink, and suggested that every man there go on a separate search for the lost bride offering two thousand dollars reward for the one who found her. Apparently it was to have been quite private, but it leaked out. There’s a hint that he had been drinking heavily for some days.”
“My fault,” declared Io feverishly. “He told me once that if ever I played anything but fair with him, he’d go to the devil the quickest way he could.”
“Then he’s a coward,” pronounced Miss Van Arsdale vigorously.
“What am I? I didn’t play fair with him. I practically jilted him without even letting him know why.”
Miss Van Arsdale frowned. “Didn’t you send him word?”
“Yes. I telegraphed him. I told him I’d write and explain. I haven’t written. How could I explain? What was there to say? But I ought to have said something. Oh, Miss Van Arsdale, why didn’t I write!”
“But you did intend to go on and face him and have it out. You told me that.”
A faint tinge of color relieved the white rigidity of Io’s face. “Yes,” she agreed. “I did mean it. Now it’s too late and I’m disgraced.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. And don’t waste yourself in self-pity. To-morrow you’ll see things clearer, after you’ve slept.”
“Sleep? I couldn’t.” She pressed both hands to her temples, lifting tragic and lustrous eyes to her companion. “I think my head is going to burst from trying not to think.”
After some hesitancy Miss Van Arsdale went to a wall-cabinet, took out a phial, shook into her hand two little pellets, and returned the phial, carefully locking the cabinet upon it.
“Take a hot bath,” she directed. “Then I’m going to give you just a little to eat. And then these.” She held out the drug.
Io acquiesced dully.
Early in the morning, before the first forelight of dawn had started the birds to prophetic chirpings, the recluse heard light movements in the outer room. Throwing on a robe she went in to investigate. On the bearskin before the flickering fire sat Io, an apparition of soft curves.
“D—d—don’t make a light,” she whimpered. “I’ve been crying.”
“That’s good. The best thing you could do.”
“I want to go home,” wailed Io.
“That’s good, too. Though perhaps you’d better wait a little. Why, in particular do you want to go home?”
“I w-w-w-want to m-m-marry Delavan Eyre.”
A quiver of humor trembled about the corners of Camilla Van Arsdale’s mouth. “Echoes of remorse,” she commented.
“No. It isn’t remorse. I want to feel safe, secure. I’m afraid of things. I want to go to-morrow. Tell Mr. Banneker he must arrange it for me.”
“We’ll see. Now you go back to bed and sleep.”
“I’d rather sleep here,” said Io. “The fire is so friendly.” She curled herself into a little soft ball.
Her hostess threw a coverlet over her and returned to her own room.
When light broke, there was no question of Io’s going that day, even had accommodations been available. A clogging lassitude had descended upon her, the reaction of cumulative nervous stress, anesthetizing her will, her desires, her very limbs. She was purposeless, ambitionless, except to lie and rest and seek for some resolution of peace out of the tangled web wherein her own willfulness had involved her.
“The best possible thing,” said Camilla Van Arsdale. “I’ll write your people that you are staying on for a visit.”
“Yes; they won’t mind. They’re used to my vagaries. It’s awfully good of you.”
At noon came Banneker to see Miss Welland. Instead he found a curiously reticent Miss Van Arsdale. Miss Welland was not feeling well and could not be seen.
“Not her head again, is it?” asked Banneker, alarmed.
“More nerves, though the head injury probably contributed.”
“Oughtn’t I to get a doctor?”
“No. All that she needs is rest.”
“She left the station yesterday without a word.”
“Yes,” replied the non-committal Miss Van Arsdale.
“I came over to tell her that there isn’t a thing to be had going west. Not even an upper. There was an east-bound in this morning. But the schedule isn’t even a skeleton yet.”
“Probably she won’t be going for several days yet,” said Miss Van Arsdale, and was by no means reassured by the unconscious brightness which illumined Banneker’s face. “When she goes it will be east. She’s changed her plans.”
“Give me as much notice as you can and I’ll do my best for her.”
The other nodded. “Did you get any newspapers by the train?” she inquired.
“Yes; there was a mail in. I had a letter, too,” he added after a little hesitation, due to the fact that he had intended telling Miss Welland about that letter first. Thus do confidences, once begun, inspire even the self-contained to further confidences.
“You know there was a reporter up from Angelica City writing up the wreck.”
“Yes.”
“Gardner, his name is. A nice sort of fellow. I showed him some nonsense that I wrote about the wreck.”
“You? What kind of nonsense?”
“Oh, just how it struck me, and the queer things people said and did. He took it with him. Said it might give him some ideas.”
“One might suppose it would. Did it?”
“Why, he didn’t use it. Not that way. He sent it to the New York Sphere for what he calls a ‘Sunday special,’ and what do you think! They accepted it. He had a wire.”
“As Gardner’s?”
“Oh, no. As the impressions of an eye-witness. What’s more, they’ll pay for it and he’s to send me the check.”
“Then, in spite of a casual way of handling other people’s ideas, Mr. Gardner apparently means to be honest.”
“It’s more than square of him. I gave him the stuff to use as he wanted to. He could just as well have collected for it. Probably he touched it up, anyway.”
“The Goths and Vandals usually did ‘touch up’ whatever they acquired, I believe. Hasn’t he sent you a copy?”
“He’s going to send it. Or bring it.”
“Bring it? What should attract him to Manzanita again?”
“Something mysterious. He says that there’s a big sensational story following on the wreck that he’s got a clue to; a tip, he calls it.”
“That’s strange. Where did this tip come from? Did he say?”
Miss Van Arsdale frowned.
“New York, I think. He spoke of its being a special job for The Sphere.”
“Are you going to help him?”
“If I can. He’s been white to me.”
“But this isn’t white, if it’s what I suspect. It’s yellow. One of their yellow sensations. The Sphere goes in for that sort of thing.”
Miss Van Arsdale became silent and thoughtful.
“Of course, if it’s something to do with the railroad I’d have to be careful. I can’t give away the company’s affairs.”
“I don’t think it is.” Miss Van Arsdale’s troubled eyes strayed toward the inner room.
Following them, Banneker’s lighted up with a flash of astonished comprehension.
“You don’t think—” he began.
His friend nodded assent.
“Why should the newspapers be after her?”
“She is associated with a set that is always in the lime-light,” explained Miss Van Arsdale, lowering her voice to a cautious pitch. “It makes its own lime-light. Anything that they do is material for the papers.”
“Yes; but what has she done?”
“Disappeared.”
“Not at all. She sent back messages. So there can’t be any mystery about it.”
“But there might be what the howling headlines call ‘romance.’ In fact, there is, if they happen to have found out about it. And this looks very much as if they had. Ban, are you going to tell your reporter friend about Miss Welland?”
Banneker smiled gently, indulgently. “Do you think it likely?”
“No; I don’t. But I want you to understand the importance of not betraying her in any way. Reporters are shrewd. And it might be quite serious for her to know that she was being followed and hounded now. She has had a shock.”
“The bump on the head, you mean?”
“Worse than that. I think I’d better tell you since we are all in this thing together.”
Briefly she outlined the abortive adventure that had brought Io west, and its ugly outcome.
“Publicity is the one thing we must protect her from,” declared Miss Van Arsdale.
“Yes; that’s clear enough.”
“What shall you tell this Gardner man?”
“Nothing that he wants to know.”
“You’ll try to fool him?”
“I’m an awfully poor liar, Miss Camilla,” replied the agent with his disarming smile. “I don’t like the game and I’m no good at it. But I can everlastingly hold my tongue.”
“Then he’ll suspect something and go nosing about the village making inquiries.”
“Let him. Who can tell him anything? Who’s even seen her except you and me?”
“True enough. Nobody is going to see her for some days yet if I can help it. Not even you, Ban.”
“Is she as bad as that?” he asked anxiously.
“She won’t be any the better for seeing people,” replied Miss Van Arsdale firmly, and with that the caller was forced to be content as he went back to his own place.
The morning train of the nineteenth, which should have been the noon train of the eighteenth, deposited upon the platform Gardner of the Angelica City Herald, and a suitcase. The thin and bespectacled reporter shook hands with Banneker.
“Well, Mr. Man,” he observed. “You’ve made a hit with that story of yours even before it’s got into print.”
“Did you bring me a copy of the paper?”
Gardner grinned. “You seem to think Sunday specials are set up and printed overnight. Wait a couple of weeks.”
“But they’re going to publish it?”
“Surest thing you know. They’ve wired me to know who you are and what and why.”
“Why what?”
“Oh, I dunno. Why a fellow who can do that sort of thing hasn’t done it before or doesn’t do it some more, I suppose. If you should ever want a job in the newspaper game, that story would be pretty much enough to get it for you.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting a little local correspondence to do,” announced Banneker modestly.
“So you intimated before. Well, I can give you some practice right now. I’m on a blind trail that goes up in the air somewhere around here. Do you remember, we compared lists on the wreck?”
“Yes.”
“Have you got any addition to your list since?”
“No,” replied Banneker. “Have you?” he added.
“Not by name. But the tip is that there was a prominent New York society girl, one of the Four Hundred lot, on the train, and that she’s vanished.”
“All the bodies were accounted for,” said the agent.
“They don’t think she’s dead. They think she’s run away.”
“Run away?” repeated Banneker with an impassive face.
“Whether the man was with her on the train or whether she was to join him on the coast isn’t known. That’s the worst of these society tips,” pursued the reporter discontentedly. “They’re always vague, and usually wrong. This one isn’t even certain about who the girl is. But they think it’s Stella Wrightington,” he concluded in the manner of one who has imparted portentous tidings.
“Who’s she?” said Banneker.
“Good Lord! Don’t you ever read the news?” cried the disgusted journalist. “Why, she’s had her picture published more times than a movie queen. She’s the youngest daughter of Cyrus Wrightington, the multi-millionaire philanthropist. Now did you see anything of that kind on the train?”
“What does she look like?” asked the cautious Banneker.
“She looks like a million dollars!” declared the other with enthusiasm. “She’s a killer! She’s tall and blonde and a great athlete: baby-blue eyes and general rosebud effect.”
“Nothing of that sort on the train, so far as I saw,” said the agent.
“Did you see any couple that looked lovey-dovey?”
“No.”
“Then, there’s another tip that connects her up with Carter Holmesley. Know about him?”
“I’ve seen his name.”
“He’s been on a hell of a high-class drunk, all up and down the coast, for the last week or so. Spilled some funny talk at a dinner, that got into print. But he put up such a heavy bluff of libel, afterward, that the papers shied off. Just the same, I believe they had it right, and that there was to have been a wedding-party on. Find the girl: that’s the stunt now.”
“I don’t think you’re likely to find her around here.”
“Maybe not. But there’s something. Holmesley has beaten it for the Far East. Sailed yesterday. But the story is still in this country, if the lady can be rounded up.... Well, I’m going to the village to make inquiries. Want to put me up again for the night if there’s no train back?”
“Sure thing! There isn’t likely to be, either.”
Banneker felt greatly relieved at the easy turn given to the inquiry by the distorted tip. True, Gardner might, on his return, enter upon some more embarrassing line of inquiry; in which case the agent decided to take refuge in silence. But the reporter, when he came back late in the evening disheartened and disgusted with the fallibility of long-distance tips, declared himself sick of the whole business.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said, having lighted his pipe. “What else have you written besides the wreck stuff?”
“Nothing,” said Banneker.
“Come off! That thing was never a first attempt.”
“Well, nothing except random things for my own amusement.”
“Pass ’em over.”
Banneker shook his head. “No; I’ve never shown them to anybody.”
“Oh, all right. If you’re shy about it,” responded the reporter good-humoredly. “But you must have thought of writing as a profession.”
“Vaguely, some day.”
“You don’t talk much like a country station-agent. And you don’t act like one. And, judging from this room”—he looked about at the well-filled book-shelves—“you don’t look like one. Quite a library. Harvey Wheelwright! Lord! I might have known. Great stuff, isn’t it?”
“Do you think so?”
“Do I think so! I think it’s the damndest spew that ever got into print. But it sells; millions. It’s the piety touch does it. The worst of it is that Wheelwright is a thoroughly decent chap and not onto himself a bit. Thinks he’s a grand little booster for righteousness, sweetness and light, and all that. I had to interview him once. Oh, if I could just have written about him and his stuff as it really is!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why, he’s a popular literary hero out our way, and the biggest advertised author in the game. I’d look fine to the business office, knocking their fat graft, wouldn’t I!”
“I don’t believe I understand.”
“No; you wouldn’t. Never mind. You will if you ever get into the game. Hello! This is something different again. ‘The Undying Voices.’ Do you go in for poetry?”
“I like to read it once in a while.”
“Good man!” Gardner took down the book, which opened in his hand. He glanced into it, then turned an inquiring and faintly quizzical look upon Banneker. “So Rossetti is one of the voices that sings to you. He sang to me when I was younger and more romantic. Heavens! he can sing, can’t he! And you’ve picked one of his finest for your floral decoration.” He intoned slowly and effectively:
“Ah, who shall dare to search in what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?”
Banneker took the book from him. Upon the sonnet a crushed bloom of the sage had left its spiced and fragrant stain. How came it there? Through but one possible agency of which Banneker could think. Io Welland!
After the reporter had left him, Banneker bore the volume to his room and read the sonnet again and again, devout and absorbed, a seeker for the oracle.
CHAPTER X
“Wouldn’t you like to know when I’m going home?”
Io Welland looked up from beneath her dark lashes at her hostess with a mixture of mischief and deprecation.
“No,” said Miss Van Arsdale quietly.
“Ah? Well, I would. Here it is two full weeks since I settled down on you. Why don’t you evict me?”
Miss Van Arsdale smiled. The girl continued:
“Why don’t I evict myself? I’m quite well and sane again—at least I think so—thanks to you. Very well, then, Io; why don’t you go home?”
“Instinct of self-preservation,” suggested the other. “You’re better off here until your strength is quite restored, aren’t you?”
The girl propped her chin in her hand and turned upon her companion a speculative regard. “Camilla Van Arsdale, you don’t really like me,” she asserted.
“Liking is such an undefined attitude,” replied the other, unembarrassed.
“You find me diverting,” defined Io. “But you resent me, don’t you?”
“That’s rather acute in you. I don’t like your standards nor those of your set.”
“I’ve abandoned them.”
“You’ll resume them as soon as you get back.”
“Shall I ever get back?” The girl moved to the door. Her figure swayed forward yieldingly as if she would give herself into the keeping of the sun-drenched, pine-soaked air. “Enchantment!” she murmured.
“It is a healing place,” said the habitant of it, low, as if to herself.
A sudden and beautiful pity softened and sobered Io’s face. “Miss Van Arsdale,” said she with quiet sincerity; “if there should ever come a time when I can do you a service in word or deed, I would come from the other side of the world to do it.”
“That is a kindly, but rather exaggerated gratitude.”
“It isn’t gratitude. It’s loyalty. Whatever you have done, I believe you were right. And, right or wrong, I—I am on your side. But I wonder why you have been so good to me. Was it a sort of class feeling?”
“Sex feeling would be nearer it,” replied the other. “There is something instinctive which makes women who are alone stand by each other.”
Io nodded. “I suppose so. Though I’ve never felt it, or the need of it before this. Well, I had to speak before I left, and I suppose I must go on soon.”
“I shall miss you,” said the hostess, and added, smiling, “as one misses a stimulant. Stay through the rest of the month, anyway.”
“I’d like to,” answered Io gratefully. “I’ve written Delavan that I’m coming back—and now I’m quite dreading it. Do you suppose there ever yet was a woman with understanding of herself?”
“Not unless she was a very dull and stupid woman with little to understand,” smiled Miss Van Arsdale. “What are you doing to-day?”
“Riding down to lunch with your paragon of a station-agent.”
Miss Van Arsdale shook her head dubiously. “I’m afraid he’ll miss his daily stimulant after you’ve gone. It has been daily, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose it has, just about,” admitted the girl. “The stimulus hasn’t been all on one side, I assure you. What a mind to be buried here in the desert! And what an annoying spirit of contentment! It’s that that puzzles me. Sometimes it enrages me.”
“Are you going to spoil what you cannot replace?” The retort was swift, almost fierce.
“Surely, you won’t blame me if he looks beyond this horizon,” protested Io. “Life is sure to reach out in one form or another and seize on him. I told him so.”
“Yes,” breathed the other. “You would.”
“What were you intending to do with him?”
There was a hint of challenge in the slight emphasis given to the query.
“I? Nothing. He is under no obligation to me.”
“There you and he differ. He regards you as an infallible mentor.” A twinkle of malice crept into the slumbrous eyes. “Why do you let him wear made-up bow ties?” demanded Io.
“What does it matter?”
“Out here, nothing. But elsewhere—well, it does define a man, doesn’t it?”
“Undoubtedly. I’ve never gone into it with him.”
“I wonder if I could guess why.”
“Very likely. You seem preternaturally acute in these matters.”
“Is it because the Sears-Roebuck mail-order double-bow knot in polka-dot pattern stands as a sign of pristine innocence?”
In spite of herself Miss Van Arsdale laughed. “Something of that sort.”
Io’s soft lips straightened. “It’s rotten bad form. Why shouldn’t he be right? It’s so easy. Just a hint—”
“From you?”
“From either of us. Yes; from me, if you like.”
“It’s quite an intimate interest, isn’t it?”
“‘But never can battle of men compare With merciless feminine fray’”— quoted Io pensively.
“Kipling is a sophomore about women,” retorted Miss Van Arsdale. “We’re not going to quarrel over Errol Banneker. The odds are too unfair.”
“Unfair?” queried Io, with a delicate lift of brow.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I know that whatever you do will be within the rules of the game. That’s the touchstone of honor of your kind.”
“Isn’t it good enough? It ought to be, for it’s about the only one most of us have.” Io laughed. “We’re becoming very serious. May I take the pony?”
“Yes. Will you be back for supper?”
“Of course. Shall I bring the paragon?”
“If you wish.”
Outside the gaunt box of the station, Io, from the saddle sent forth her resonant, young call:
“Oh, Ban!”
“‘Tis the voice of the Butterfly; hear her declare, ‘I’ve come down to the earth; I am tired of the air’”
chanted Banneker’s voice in cheerful paraphrase. “Light and preen your wings, Butterfly.”
Their tone was that of comrades without a shade of anything deeper.
“Busy?” asked Io.
“Just now. Give me another five minutes.”
“I’ll go to the hammock.”
One lone alamo tree, an earnest of spring water amongst the dry-sand growth of the cactus, flaunted its bright verdency a few rods back of the station, and in its shade Banneker had swung a hammock for Io. Hitching her pony and unfastening her hat, the girl stretched herself luxuriously in the folds. A slow wind, spice-laden with the faint, crisp fragrancies of the desert, swung her to a sweet rhythm. She closed her eyes happily ... and when she opened them, Banneker was standing over her, smiling.
“Don’t speak to me,” she murmured; “I want to believe that this will last forever.”
Silent and acquiescent, he seated himself in a camp-chair close by. She stretched a hand to him, closing her eyes again.
“Swing me,” she ordered.
He aided the wind to give a wider sweep to the hammock. Io stirred restlessly.
“You’ve broken the spell,” she accused softly. “Weave me another one.”
“What shall it be?” He bent over the armful of books which he had brought out.
“You choose this time.”
“I wonder,” he mused, regarding her consideringly.
“Ah, you may well wonder! I’m in a very special mood to-day.”
“When aren’t you, Butterfly?” he laughed.
“Beware that you don’t spoil it. Choose well, or forever after hold your peace.”
He lifted the well-worn and well-loved volume of poetry. It parted in his hand to the Rossetti sonnet. He began to read at the lines:
“When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.”
Io opened her eyes again.
“Why did you select that thing?”
“Why did you mark it?”
“Did I mark it?”
“Certainly, I’m not responsible for the sage-blossom between the pages.”
“Ah, the sage! That’s for wisdom,” she paraphrased lightly.
“Do you think Rossetti so wise a preceptor?”
“It isn’t often that he preaches. When he does, as in that sonnet—well, the inspiration may be a little heavy, but he does have something to say.”
“Then it’s the more evident that you marked it for some special reason.”
“What supernatural insight,” she mocked. “Can you read your name between the lines?”
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“You mean to ask what it is that Mr. Rossetti wants you to do. I didn’t write the sonnet, you know.”
“You didn’t fashion the arrow, but you aimed it.”
“Am I a good marksman?”
“I suppose you mean that I’m wasting my time here.”
“Surely not!” she gibed. “Forming a link of transcontinental traffic. Helping to put a girdle ‘round the earth in eighty days—or is it forty now?—enlightening the traveling public about the three-twenty-four train; dispensing time-tables and other precious mediums of education—”
“I’m happy here,” he said doggedly.
“Are you going to be, always?”
His face darkened with doubt. “Why shouldn’t I be?” he argued. “I’ve got everything I need. Some day I thought I might write.”
“What about?” The question came sharp and quick.
He looked vaguely around the horizon.
“Oh, no, Ban!” she said. “Not this. You’ve got to know something besides cactuses and owls to write, these days. You’ve got to know men. And women,” she added, in a curious tone, with a suspicion of effort, even of jealousy in it.
“I’ve never cared much for people,” he said.
“It’s an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us. There’s something else.” She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning, baffling eyes on his. “Ban, don’t you want to make a success in life?”
For a moment he did not answer. When he spoke, it was with apparent irrelevance to what she had said. “Once I went to a revival. A reformed tough was running it. About every three minutes he’d thrust out his hands and grab at the air and say, ‘Oh, brothers; don’t you yearn for Jesus?’”
“What has that to do with it?” questioned Io, surprised and impatient.
“Only that, somehow, the way you said ‘success in life’ made me think of him and his ‘yearn for Jesus.’”
“Errol Banneker,” said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, “you are possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people’s inner thoughts to you. Success is a species of religion to me, I suppose.”
“And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts. Tell, tell me. What kind of success?”
“Oh, power. Money. Position. Being somebody.”
“I’m somebody here all right. I’m the station-agent of the Atkinson and St. Philip Railroad Company.”
“Now you’re trying to provoke me.”
“No. But to get success you’ve got to want it, haven’t you?” he asked more earnestly. “To want it with all your strength.”
“Of course. Every man ought to.”
“I’m not so sure,” he objected. “There’s a kind of virtue in staying put, isn’t there?”
She made a little gesture of impatience.
“I’ll give you a return for your sonnet,” he pursued, and repeated from memory:
“What else is Wisdom? What of man’s endeavor Or God’s high grace, so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait; To hold a hand uplifted over Hate. And shall not Loveliness be loved forever?”
“I don’t know it. It’s beautiful. What is it?”
“Gilbert Murray’s translation of ‘The Bacchae.’ My legal mentors had a lapse of dry-as-dustness and sent it to me.”
“‘To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait,’” murmured the girl. “That is what I’ve been doing here. How good it is! But not for you,” she added, her tone changing from dreamy to practical. “Ban, I suspect there’s too much poetry in your cosmos.”
“Very probably. Poetry isn’t success, is it?”
Her face grew eager. “It might be. The very highest. But you’ve got to make yourself known and felt among people.”
“Do you think I could? And how does one get that kind of desire?” he asked lazily.
“How? I’ve known men to do it for love; and I’ve known them to do it for hate; and I’ve known them to do it for money. Yes; and there’s another cause.”
“What is it?”
“Restlessness.”
“That’s ambition with its nerves gone bad, isn’t it?”
Again she smiled. “You’ll know what it is some day.”
“Is it contagious?” he asked solicitously.
“Don’t be alarmed. I haven’t it. Not now. I’d love to stay on and on and just ‘breathe and wait,’ if the gods were good.”
"Dream that the gods are good,’” he echoed. “The last thing they ever think of being according to my reading.”
She capped his line;
“We twain, once well in sunder, What will the mad gods do—‘”
she began; then broke off, jumping to her feet. “I’m talking sheer nonsense!” she cried. “Take me for a walk in the woods. The desert glares to-day.”
“I’ll have to be back by twelve,” he said. “Excuse me just a moment.”
He disappeared into the portable house. When he rejoined her, she asked:
“What did you go in there for? To get your revolver?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve carried one since the day you told me to. Not that I’ve met a soul that looked dangerous, nor that I’d know how to shoot or when, if I did.”
“The sight of it would be taken as evidence that you knew how to use it,” he assured her.
For a time, as they walked, she had many questions to put about the tree and bird life surrounding them. In the midst of it he asked her:
“Do you ever get restless?”
“I haven’t, here. I’m getting rested.”
“And at home I suppose you’re too busy.”
“Being busy is no preventive. Somebody has said that St. Vitus is the patron saint of New York society.”
“It must take almost all the time those people have to keep up with the theaters and with the best in poetry and what’s being done and thought, and the new books and all that,” he surmised.
“I beg your pardon; what was that about poetry and books?”
“Girls like you—society girls, I mean—read everything there is, don’t they?”
“Where do you get that extraordinary idea?”
“Why, from knowing you.”
“My poor, innocent Ban! If you were to try and talk books and poetry, Shakespeare and the musical glasses,’ to the average society girl, as you call her, what do you suppose would happen?”
“Why, I suppose I’d give myself away as an ignoramus.”
“Heaven save you for a woolly lambkin! The girl would flee, shrieking, and issue a warning against you as a high-brow, a prig, and a hopeless bore. They don’t read books, except a few chocolate-cream novels. They haven’t the time.”
“But you—”
“Oh, I’m a freak! I get away with it because I’m passably good-looking and know how to dress, and do what I please by the divine right of—well, of just doing it. But, even so, a lot of the men are rather afraid of me in their hearts. They suspect the bluestocking. Let ’em suspect! The market is plenty good enough,” declared Io flippantly.
“Then you just took up books as a sort of freak; a side issue?” The disappointment in his face was almost ludicrous.
“No.” A quiet gravity altered her expression. “I’ll tell you about me, if you want to hear. My mother was the daughter of a famous classical scholar, who was opposed to her marriage because Father has always been a man of affairs. From the first, Mother brought me up to love books and music and pictures. She died when I was twelve, and poor Father, who worshiped her, wanted to carry out her plans for me, though he had no special sympathy with them. To make things worse for him, nobody but Mother ever had any control over me; I was spoiled and self-willed and precocious, and I thought the world owed me a good time. Dad’s business judgment of human nature saved the situation, he thoroughly understood one thing about me, that I’d keep a bargain if I made it. So we fixed up our little contract; I was to go through college and do my best, and after I graduated, I was to have a free hand and an income of my own, a nice one. I did the college trick. I did it well. I was third in my class, and there wasn’t a thing in literature or languages that they could stop me from getting. At eighteen they turned me loose on the world, and here I am, tired of it, but still loving it. That’s all of me. Aren’t I a good little autobiographer. Every lady her own Boswell! What are you listening to?”
“There’s a horse coming along the old trail,” said Banneker.
“Who is it?” she asked. “Some one following us?”
He shook his head. A moment later the figure of a mounted man loomed through the brush. He was young, strong-built, and not ill-looking. “Howdy, Ban,” he said.
Banneker returned the greeting.
“Whee-ew!” shrilled the other, wiping his brow. “This sure does fetch the licker outen a man’s hide. Hell of a wet night at the Sick Coyote last night. Why wasn’t you over?”
“Busy,” replied Banneker.
Something in his tone made the other raise himself from his weary droop. He sighted Io.
“Howdy, ma’am,” he said. “Didn’t see there was ladies present.”
“Good-morning,” said Io.
“Visitin’ hereabouts?” inquired the man, eyeing her curiously.
“Yes.”
“Where, if I might be bold to ask?”
“If you’ve got any questions to ask, ask them of me, Fred,” directed Banneker.
While there was nothing truculent in his manner, it left no doubt as to his readiness and determination.
Fred looked both sullen and crestfallen.
“It ain’t nothin’,” he said. “Only, inquiries was bein’ made by a gent from a Angelica City noospaper last week.”
“Somebody else meant,” asserted Banneker. “You keep that in mind, will you? And it isn’t necessary that you should mention this lady at all. Savvy, Fred?”
The other grunted, touched his sombrero to Io and rode on.
“Has a reporter been here inquiring after me?” asked Io.
“Not after you. It was some one else.”
“If the newspapers tracked me here, I’d have to leave at once.”
“They won’t. At least, it isn’t likely.”
“You’d get me out some way, wouldn’t you, Ban?” she said trustfully.
“Yes.”
“Ban; that Fred person seemed afraid of you.”
“He’s got nothing to be afraid of unless he talks too much.”
“But you had him ‘bluffed.’ I’m sure you had. Ban, did you ever kill a man?”
“No.”
“Or shoot one?”
“Not even that.”
“Yet, I believe, from the way he looked at you, that you’ve got a reputation as a ‘bad man’?”
“So I have. But it’s no fault of mine.”
“How did you get it?”
“You’ll laugh if I tell you. They say I’ve got a ‘killer’s’ eye.”
The girl examined his face with grave consideration. “You’ve got nice eyes,” was her verdict. “That deep brown is almost wasted on a man; some girl ought to have it. I used to hear a—a person, who made a deep impression on me at the time, insist that there was always a flaw in the character of a person with large, soft brown eyes.”
“Isn’t there a flaw in every character?”
“Human nature being imperfect, there must be. What is yours; suppressed murderousness?”
“Not at all. My reputation is unearned, though useful. Just before I came here, a young chap showed up from nowhere and loafed around Manzanita. He was a pretty kind of lad, and one night in the Sick Coyote some of the old-timers tried to put something over on him. When the smoke cleared away, there was one dead and six others shot up, and Little Brownie was out on the desert, riding for the next place, awfully sore over a hole in his new sombrero. He was a two-gun man from down near the border. Well, when I arrived in town, I couldn’t understand why every one looked so queerly at my eyes, until Mindle, the mail-driver, told me they were exactly like the hair-trigger boy’s. Cheap and easy way to get a reputation, isn’t it?”
“But you must have something back of it,” insisted the girl. “Are you a good shot?”
“Nothing fancy; there are twenty better in town.”
“Yet you pin some faith to your ‘gun,’” she pointed out.
He glanced over his shoulder to right and left. Io jumped forward with a startled cry. So swift and secret had been his motion that she hardly saw the weapon before—PLACK—PLACK—PLACK—the three shots had sounded. The smoke drifted around him in a little circle, for the first two shots had been over his shoulder and the third as he whirled. Walking back, he carefully examined the trunks of three trees.
“I’d have only barked that fellow, if he’d been a man,” he observed, shaking his head at the second mark.
“You frightened me,” complained Io.
“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to see a little gun-play. Out here it isn’t how straight you can shoot at a bull’s-eye, but how quick you can plant your bullets, and usually in a mark that isn’t obliging enough to be dead in line. So I practice occasionally, just in case.”
“Very interesting. But I’ve got luncheon to cook,” said Io.
They returned through the desert. As he opened the door of the shack for her, Banneker, reverting to her autobiographical sketch, remarked thoughtfully and without preliminary:
“I might have known there couldn’t be any one else like you.”