by Unknown
"All right. We won't. But don't believe all the catty talk you hear, Gordon."
"I'll try to believe only the truth." He smiled, a little ruefully. "And it isn't necessary for you to explain why the curfew law applies to me and not to Macdonald."
She was on her dignity at once. "You're quite right. It isn't necessary. But I'm going to tell you anyhow. Mr. Macdonald is going away to-morrow for two or three days and he has some business he wants to talk over with Sheba. He had made an appointment with her, and I didn't think it fair to let your coming interfere with it."
Gordon took this facer with his smile still working.
"I've got a little business I want to talk over with you, Di."
She had always been a young woman of rather a hard finish. Now she met him fairly, eye to eye. "Any time you like, Gordon."
Elliot carried away with him one very definite impression. Diane intended Sheba to marry Macdonald if she could bring it about. She had as good as served notice on him that the girl was spoken for.
The young man set his square jaw. Diane was used to having her own way. So was Macdonald. Well, the Elliots had a will of their own too.
CHAPTER XII
SHEBA SAYS "PERHAPS"
Obeying the orders of the general in command, Peter took himself to his den with the excuse that he had blue-prints to work over. Presently Diane said she thought she heard one of the children crying and left to investigate.
The Scotchman strode to the fireplace and stood looking down into the glowing coals. He seemed in no hurry to break the silence and Sheba glanced at his strong, brooding face a little apprehensively. Her excitement showed in the color that was beating into her cheeks. She knew of only one subject that would call for so formal a private talk between her and Macdonald, and any discussion of this she would very much have liked to postpone.
He turned from the fire to Sheba. It was characteristic of him that he plunged straight at what he wanted to say.
"I've asked to see you alone, Miss O'Neill, because I want to make a confession and restitution--to begin with," he told her abruptly.
She had a sense of suddenly stilled pulses. "That sounds very serious." The young woman smiled faintly.
His face of chiseled granite masked all emotion. It kept under lock and key the insurgent impulses that moved him when he looked into the sloe eyes charged with reserve. Back of them, he felt, was the mystery of purity, of maidenhood. He longed to know her better, to find out and to appropriate for himself the woman that lay behind the fine veil of flesh. She seemed to him delicate as a flame and as vivid. There would come a day when her innocent, passional nature would respond to the love of a man as a waiting harp does to skillful fingers.
"My story goes away back to the Klondike days. I told you that I knew your father on Frenchman Creek, but I didn't say much about knowing him on Bonanza."
"Mr. Strong has told me something about the days on Bonanza, and I knew you would tell me more some day--when you wanted to speak about it." She was seated in a low chair and the white throat lifted toward him was round as that of a bird.
"Your father was among the first of those who stampeded to Bonanza. He and Strong took up a claim together. I bought out the interest of your father."
"You told me that."
His masterful eyes fastened to hers. "I didn't tell you that I took advantage of him. He was--not well. I used that against him in the bargaining. He wanted ready money, and I tempted him."
"Do you mean that you--wronged him?"
"Yes. I cheated him." He was resolved to gloss over nothing, to offer no excuses. "I didn't know there was gold on his claim, but I had what we call a hunch. I took his claim without giving value received."
It was her turn now to look into the fire and think. From the letters of her father, from talks with old-timers she knew how in the stampedes every man's hand had been for himself, how keen-edged had been the passion for gold, a veritable lust that corroded the souls of men.
"But--I don't understand." Her brave, steady eyes looked directly into those of Macdonald. "If he felt you had--done him a wrong--why did he come to you when he was ill?"
"He was coming to demand justice of me. On the way he suffered exposure and caught pneumonia. The word reached us, and Strong and I brought him to our cabin."
"You faced a blizzard to bring him in. Mr. Strong told me how you risked your life by carrying him through the storm--how you wouldn't give up and leave him, though you were weak and staggering yourself. He says it was a miracle you ever got through."
The big mine-owner brushed this aside as of no importance. "We don't leave sick men to die in a blizzard up North. But that's not the point."
"I think it has a bearing on the matter--that you saved him from the blizzard--and took him in--and nursed him like a brother till he died."
"I'm not heartless," said Macdonald impatiently. "Of course I did that. I had to do it. I couldn't do less."
"Or more," she suggested. "You may have made a hard bargain with him, but you wiped that out later."
"That's just what I didn't do. Don't think my conscience is troubling me. I'm not such a mush-brained fool. If it had not been for you I would never have thought of it again. But you are his daughter. What I cheated him out of belongs to you--and you are my friend."
"Don't use that word about what you did, please. He wasn't a child. If you got the best of him in a bargain, I don't think father would think of it that way."
The difficulty was that he could not tell her the truth about her father's weakness for drink and how he had played upon it. He bridged all explanations and passed to the thing he meant to do in reparation.
"The money I cleaned up from that claim belongs to you, Miss O'Neill. You will oblige me by taking it."
From his pocket he took a folded paper and handed it to her. Sheba opened it doubtfully. The paper contained a typewritten statement and to it was attached a check by means of a clip. The check was made out to her and signed by Colby Macdonald. The amount it called for was one hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-one dollars.
"Oh, I couldn't take this, Mr. Macdonald--I couldn't. It doesn't belong to me," she cried.
"It belongs to you--and you're going to take it."
"I wouldn't know what to do with so much."
"The bank will take care of it for you until you decide. So that's settled." He passed definitely from the subject. "There's something else I want to say to you, Miss O'Neill."
Some change in his voice warned her. The girl slanted a quick, shy glance at him.
"I want to know if you'll marry me, Miss O'Neill," he shot at her abruptly. Then, without giving her time to answer, he pushed on: "I'm older than you--by twenty-five years. Always I've lived on the frontiers. I've had to take the world by the throat and shake from it what I wanted. So I've grown hard and willful. All the sweet, fine things of life I've missed. But with you beside me I'm not too old to find them yet--if you'll show me the way, Sheba."
A wave of color swept into her face, but her eyes never faltered from his. "I'm not quite sure," she said in a low voice.
"You mean--whether you love me?"
She nodded. "I--admire you more than any man I ever met. You are a great man, strong and powerful,--and I am so insignificant beside you. I--am drawn to you--so much. But--I am not sure."
Afterward, when she thought of it, Sheba wondered at the direct ease of his proposal. In the romances she had read, men were shy and embarrassed and fearful of the issue. But Colby Macdonald had known what he wanted to say and had said it as coolly and as readily as if it had been a business detail. She was the one that had blushed and stammered and found a difficulty in expressing herself.
"I'm going away for two days. Perhaps when I come back you will know, Sheba. Take your time. Marriage is serious business. I want you to remember that my life has been very different from yours. You'll hear all sorts of things about me. Some of them are true. There is this difference
between a man and a good woman. He fights and falls and fights again and wins. But a good woman is finer. She has never known the failure that drags one through slime and mud. Her goodness is born in her; she doesn't have to fight for it."
The girl smiled a little tremulously. "Doesn't she? We're not all angel, you know."
"I hope you're not. There will need to be a lot of the human in you to make allowances for Colby Macdonald," he replied with an answering smile.
When he said good-bye it was with a warm, strong handshake.
"I'll be back in two days. Perhaps you'll have good news for me then," he suggested.
The dark, silken lashes of her eyes lifted shyly to meet his.
"Perhaps," she said.
CHAPTER XIII
DIANE AND GORDON DIFFER
During the absence of Macdonald the field agent saw less of Sheba than he had expected, and when he did see her she had an abstracted manner he did not quite understand. She kept to her own room a good deal, except when she took long walks into the hills back of the town. Diane had a shrewd idea that the Alaskan had put his fortune to the test, and she not only let her cousin alone herself, but fended Gordon from her adroitly.
The third day after the dinner Elliot dropped around to the Pagets with intent to get Sheba into a set of tennis. Diane sat on the porch darning socks.
"Sheba is out walking with Mr. Macdonald," she explained in answer to a question as to the whereabouts of her guest.
"Oh, he's back, is he?" remarked Gordon moodily.
Mrs. Paget was quite cheerful on that subject. "He came back this morning. Sheba has gone up with him to see the Lucky Strike."
"You're going to marry her to that man if you can, aren't you?" he charged.
"If I can, Gordon." She slipped a darning-ball into one of little Peter's stockings and placidly trimmed the edges of the hole.
"It's what I call a conspiracy."
"Is it?" Diane smiled.
Gordon understood her smile to mean that he was jealous.
"Maybe I am. That's not the point," he answered, just as if she had made her accusation in words.
"Suppose you tell me what the point is," she suggested, both amused and annoyed.
"He isn't good enough for her. You know that perfectly well."
"Good enough!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What man is good enough for a nice girl if you come to that? There are other things beside sugary goodness. Any man who is strong can make himself good enough for the woman he loves."
"Generally speaking, yes. But Colby Macdonald is different."
"Thank Heaven he is," she retorted impatiently. Then added after a moment: "He isn't a Sunday-School superintendent if that's what you mean."
"That isn't what I mean at all. But there's such a thing as a difference between right and wrong, isn't there?"
"Oh, yes. For instance, Mr. Macdonald is right about the need of developing Alaska and the way to do it, and you are wrong."
He could not help smiling a little at the adroit way she tried to sidetrack him, even though he was angry at her. But he had no intention of letting her go without freeing his mind.
"I'm talking about essential right and wrong. Miss O'Neill is idealizing Macdonald. I don't suppose you've told her, for instance, that he made his first money in the North running a dance hall."
"No, I haven't told her any such thing, because it isn't true," she replied scornfully. "He owned an opera house and brought in a company of players. I dare say they danced. That's very different, as you'd know if you didn't have astigmatism of the mind."
"Not the way the story was told me. But let that pass. Does she know that Macdonald beat her father out of one of the best claims on Bonanza and was indirectly responsible for his death?"
"What's the use of talking nonsense, Gordon. You know you can't prove that," his friend told him sharply.
"I think I can--if it is necessary."
Diane looked across at him with an impudent little tilt of the chin. "I don't think I like you as well as I used to."
"Sorry, because I'd like you just as well, Diane, if you would stop trying to manage your cousin into a marriage that will spoil her life," he answered gravely.
"How dare you say that! How dare you, Gordon Elliot!" she flung back, furious at him. "I won't have you here talking that way to me. It's an insult."
The fearless, level eyes of her friend looked straight at her. "I say it because the happiness of Miss O'Neill is of very great importance to me."
"Do you mean--?" Wide-eyed, she looked her question straight at him.
"That's just what I mean, Diane."
She darned for a minute in silence. It had occurred to Diane before that perhaps Gordon might be in love with Sheba, but she had put the thought from her because she did not want to believe it.
"That's different, Gordon. It explains--and in a way excuses--your coming here and trying to bully me." She stopped her work to flash a question at him. "Don't you think that maybe it's only a fancy of yours? I remember you used--"
He shook his head. "No chance, Diane. I'm hard hit. She's the only girl I ever met that suited me. Everything she does is right. Every move she makes is wonderful."
The eyes with which she looked at him were softer, as those of women are wont to be for the true romance.
"You poor boy," she murmured, and let her hand for a moment rest on his.
"Meaning that I lose?" he asked quickly.
"I think you do. I'm not sure."
Elliot leaned forward impulsively. "Be a good sport, Diane. Let me have my chance too. Why do you make it easy for Macdonald and hard for me? Isn't it because the glamour of his millions blinds you?"
"He's a big, splendid man, but I don't like him any the less because he has the power to make life easy and comfortable for Sheba," she defended sturdily.
"Yet you turned down Arthur West, the best catch in your set, to marry Peter, who was the worst," he reminded her. "Have you ever been sorry for it?"
"That's different. Peter and I fit. It was one case out of a million." She gave him her old, friendly smile. "But I don't want to be hard on you, Gord. I'll be neutral. Come and see Sheba as often as she'll let you."
Gordon beamed as he shook hands with her. "That sounds like the Di Paget I used to know."
She recurred to the previous question. "Sheba knows more about Mr. Macdonald than you think. And about how he got her father's claim, for instance,--she has heard all that."
"You told her?"
"No. Colby Macdonald told her. He said he practically robbed her father, and he gave her a check for nearly two hundred thousand to cover the clean-up from the claim and interest."
"Bully for him." On the heel of this he flung a question at her. "Did Macdonald ask her to marry him the night of the dinner?"
A flash of whimsical amusement lit her dainty face. "You'd better ask him that. Here he comes now."
They were coming down the walk together, Macdonald and Sheba. The young woman was absorbed in his talk, and she did not know that her cousin and Elliot were on the porch until she was close upon them. But at sight of the young man her eyes became warm and kind.
"I'm sorry I was out yesterday when you called," she told him.
"And you were out again to-day. My luck isn't very good, is it?"
He laughed pleasantly, but his heart was bitter. He believed Macdonald had won. Some hint of proprietorship in his manner, together with her slight confusion when she saw them on the porch, had weighted his heart with lead.
"We've had such a good walk." Sheba went on quickly. "I wish you could have heard Mr. Macdonald telling me how he once had a chance to save a small Esquimaux tribe during a hard winter. He carried food five hundred miles to them. It was a thrilling experience."
"Mr. Macdonald has had a lot of very interesting experiences. You must get him to tell you about all of them," answered Gordon quietly.
The eyes of the two men met. The steel-gray ones of the older man answered t
he challenge of his rival with a long, steady look. There was in it something of triumph, something of scornful insolence. If this young fellow wanted war, he did not need to wait long for it.
"Time enough for that, man. Miss O'Neill and I have the whole Arctic winter before us for stories."
The muscles in the lean jaws of Gordon Elliot stood out like steel ropes. He turned to Sheba. "Am I to congratulate Mr. Macdonald?"
The color in her cheeks grew warmer, but her shy glance met his fairly. "I think it is I that am to be congratulated, Mr. Elliot."