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CHAPTER XXV

During these weeks of Sarella's instruction she achieved something which to her seemed a greater triumph than her succession of cumulative triumphs in the matters of trousseau and of furniture. She persuaded Don Joaquin to buy a motor-car!

She would not have succeeded in this attempt but for certain circumstances which in reality robbed her success of some of its triumph. In the first place, the machine was not a new one; in the second, Don Joaquin took it instead of a debt which he did not think likely to be paid. Then also he had arrived at the conclusion that so many long rides as Sarella's frequent journeys to Maxwell involved, were likely to prove costly. They took a good deal out of the horses, even without accidents occurring, and an accident had nearly occurred which would have very largely reduced the value of one of the best of his horses – the one, as it happened, best fitted for carrying a lady. Sarella all but let the horse down on a piece of ragged, stony road: Don Joaquin being himself at her elbow and watchful, had just succeeded in averting the accident; but lover as he was, he was able to see that Sarella would never be a horse-woman. She disliked riding, and he was not such a tyrant as to insist on her doing a thing she never would do well, and had no pleasure in doing. On the whole, he made up his mind that it would be more economical to take this second-hand car in settlement of a bad debt than continue running frequent risks of injury to his horses.

The acquisition of the car made it possible to shorten the period of these journeys to Maxwell; it did not require a night's rest, and the trip itself was much more rapidly accomplished.

The period of Sarella's instruction was not one of idleness on Gore's part, in reference to Mariquita. It seemed to him that he really was making some advance. He saw much more of her than used to be the case. She was now accustomed to chance meetings with him, or what she took for chance meetings, and did not make hasty escape from them, or treat him during them with reserve. They were, in fact, friends and almost confidential friends; but if Gore had continued as wise as he had been when discussing the situation with her father, he would have been able to see that it did not amount to more than that; that they were friends indeed because Mariquita was wholly free from any suspicion that more than that could come of it. She had simply come to a settled opinion that he was nice, a kind man, immensely pleasanter as a companion than any man she had known before, a trustworthy friend who could tell her of much whereof she had been ignorant. She began in a fashion to know "his people," too; and he saw with extreme pleasure that she was interested in them. That was natural enough. She knew almost nobody; as a grown-up woman, had really known none of her own sex till Sarella came; it would have been strange if she had not heard with interest about women whose portraits were so affectionately drawn for her, who, she could easily discern, were pleasant and refined, cheerful, bright, amusing, and kind, too; cordial, friendly people.

All the same, Gore's talk of his family did connote a great advance in intimacy with Mariquita. He seemed to assume that she might know them herself, and she gathered the notion that when he had bought a range, some of them would come out and live with him, so that she said nothing to contradict a possibility that he had after all only implied. Gore, meanwhile, with no suspicion of her idea that his sisters might come out to visit him, and noting with great satisfaction that she never contradicted his hints and hopes that they might all meet, attached more importance to it than he ought. Perhaps he built more hope on this than on any one thing besides. He was fully aware that in all their intercourse there was no breath of flirtation. But he could not picture Mariquita flirting, and did not want to picture it. Meanwhile their intercourse was daily growing to an intimacy, or he took it for such. He did not sufficiently weigh the fact that of herself she said little. She was most ready to be interested in all he told her of himself, his previous life, his friends; but of her own real life, which was inward and apart from the few events of her experience, she did not speak. This did not strike him as reserve, for those who show a warm, friendly interest in others do not seem reserved.

Gore never startled her by gallantry or compliments; his sympathy and admiration were too respectful for compliment, and a certain instinct warned him that gallantry would have perplexed and disconcerted her.

None the less, he believed that he was making progress, and the course of it was full of beautiful and happy moments. So things went on, with, as Gore thought, sure though not rapid pace. He was too much in earnest to risk haste, and also too happy in the present to make blundering clutches at the future. Then with brutal suddenness Don Joaquin intervened.

CHAPTER XXVI

He met his daughter and Gore returning to the homestead, Mariquita's face bright with friendly interest in all that Gore had been telling her, and the young man's certainly not less happy. Don Joaquin was out of temper; Sarella and he had had an economic difference and he had been aware that she had deceived him.

He barely returned Gore's and Mariquita's greeting, and his brow was black. It was not till some time later that he and Gore found themselves alone together. Then he said ill-humoredly:

"You and Mariquita were riding this afternoon – a good while, I think."

"It did not seem long to me, as you can understand," Gore replied smiling, and anxious to ignore the old fellow's bad temper.

"Perhaps it does not seem long to you since you began to speak of marrying my daughter."

"I did not begin to speak of it. I should have preferred to hold my tongue till I could feel I had some right to speak of it. It was you, sir, who began."

"And that was a long time ago. Have you yet made my daughter understand you?"

"I cannot be sure yet."

"But I must be sure. To-morrow I shall see that she understands."

Gore was aghast.

"I earnestly beg you to abstain from doing that," he begged, too anxious to prevent Don Joaquin's interference to risk precipitating it by showing the anger he felt.

"Perhaps you no longer wish to marry her. If so, it would be advisable to reduce your intercourse to common civilities – "

"Sir," Gore interrupted, "I cannot allow you to go on putting any case founded on such an assumption as that of my no longer wishing to marry your daughter. I wish it more every day …"

The young man had a right to be angry, and he was angry, and perhaps was not unwilling to show it. But it was necessary that he should for every reason be moderate in letting his resentment appear. To have a loud quarrel with a prospective father-in-law is seldom a measure likely to help the suitor's wishes.

He in his turn was interrupted.

"Then," said Don Joaquin, "it is time you told her so."

"I do not think so. I think it's not time, and that to tell her so now would greatly injure my chance of success."

"I will answer for your success. I shall myself speak to her. I shall tell her that you wish to marry her, and that I have, some time ago, given my full consent."

Gore was well aware that Don Joaquin could not "answer for his success." It was horrible to him to think of Mariquita being bullied, and he was sure that her father intended to bully her. Anything would be better than that. He was intensely earnest in his wish to succeed; it was that earnestness that made him willing to be patient; but he was, if possible, even more intensely determined that the poor girl should not be tormented and dragooned by her tyrannical father. That, he would risk a great deal to prevent, as far as his own power went.

"I most earnestly beg you not to do that," he said in a very low voice.

"But I intend to do it. If you choose to say that you do not, after all, wish to marry her, then I will merely suggest that you should leave us."

"I have just told you the exact contrary – "

"Then, I shall tell Mariquita so to-morrow, stating that your proposal meets with my full consent, and that in view of her prolonged intimacy with you, her consent is taken by me for granted. I do take it for granted."

"I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I still entreat you to abandon this intention of yours."

"Only on condition that you make the proposal yourself without any further delay."

From this decision the obstinate old father would not recede. The discussion continued for some time, but he seemed to grow only more fixed in his intention, and certainly he became more acerbated in temper. Gore was sure that if he were allowed to take up the matter with his daughter, it would be with even more harshly dictatorial tyranny than had seemed probable at first.

Finally Gore promised that he would himself propose to Mariquita in form on the morrow, Don Joaquin being with difficulty induced to undertake on his side that he would not "prepare" her for what was coming. He gave this promise quite as reluctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy; the elder, who had plenty of self-conceit behind his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly the advantages he counted upon from his diplomacy, and the weight of his authority being known beforehand to be on the suitor's side. If Gore were really so uncertain of success, it would be a feather in the paternal cap to have insured that success by his solemn indications of approval. But he saw that without his promise of absolute abstention from interference, Gore would not agree to make his proposal, so Don Joaquin ungraciously yielded the point perhaps chiefly because important business called him away from the morrow's dawn till late at night.

CHAPTER XXVII

After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found herself alone with Gore.

"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I thought you never were going to stop your talk – and to tell you the truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. I go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."

Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered how thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in which the long discussion had taken place.

"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him, "especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.

"I think," he said, "you want to let me know that our talk was not quite inaudible."

"No, it wasn't. Not quite. I'll tell you how much was audible. That you were talking about Mariquita, and that you were arguing, and I think you were both angry. I am sure he was."

"So was I; though not so loud, I hope."

"Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren't loud at all. But I knew you were angry. And so you ought to have been. Why on earth can't he keep his fingers out of the pot? You and Mariquita didn't interfere in his love affair, and he'll do no good interfering in yours."

Gore laughed.

"So you heard it all!" he said.

"No. If you had talked as loud as he did I should. But you didn't. It was easy to hear him say that to-morrow he would go and order Mariquita to marry you. If that had been the end of it, I just believe I should have dressed myself and come in to tell him not to be silly. But it wasn't the end. Was it?"

"No. To stop that plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita to-day – only he was to say nothing about it to her first."

"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."

"I might do better."

"What better?"

"Wait a bit."

"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any harm would come of waiting a bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."

"Ah! If we were engaged!"

"Pfush!" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of "Pshaw."

Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty encouraged him – albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.

"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.

Of course he could not tell her.

"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say. You will be engaged by 2:50."

As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting its worth.

"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done good – as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you could get on fine without her."

Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no more for a long time.

Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear anything.

As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her out under false pretences.

There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of anything that would be different from simple friendship. But must it be clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of unquestioning friendship, to be changed without being rendered less bright? Must Gore assume her to be specially incapable of an affection deeper than even friendship? No; of anything good she was capable; no depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she had been less lonely of late.

Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of affection – if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly, though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day. He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers; yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.

That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full assurance, and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never love till asked for her love.

Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coarser fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and speaking himself.

CHAPTER XXVIII

He had kept his word, and had spoken. They had been out together a long time when the opportunity came; they had dismounted, and the horses were resting. He and she were sitting in the shade of a small group of trees, to two of which the horses were tied. Their talk had turned naturally, and with scarcely any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction that helped him. And Mariquita talked with frank unreserve; she felt at home with him now, and her natural silence had long before now been melted by his sincerity; her silence of habit was chiefly habit, due not to distrust nor a guarded prudence, but to the much simpler fact that till his arrival, she had never since her home-coming been called upon to speak in any real sense by anyone who cared to hear her, or who had an interest in what she might have to say.

His proposal did not come with the least abruptness, but it was clear and unmistakeable when it came, and she understood – Mariquita could understand a plain meaning as well as anyone. She did not interrupt, nor avert her gaze. Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been looking far away across the lovely, empty prairie to the horizon, to him as he spoke, and her hands ceased their idle pulling at the grass beside her. In her eyes, as she listened, there was a singular shining, and presently they held a glistening like the dew in early morning flowers.

Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor did he as he ceased. One hand of hers she moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to touch him.

"That is what you want?" she said. "Is that what you have been wanting all the time?"

Her voice was rather low, but most clear, and it had no reproach.

"Yes. What can you say to me?"

"I can only say how grateful it makes me."

Her words almost astonished him. Though he might have known that she must say only exactly what was in her mind. They conveyed in themselves no refusal, but he knew at once there was no hope for him in them.

"Grateful!" He exclaimed. "As if I could help it!"

"And as if I could help being grateful. It is so great a thing! For you to wish that. There could be nothing greater. I can never forget it. You must never think that I could forget it … I – you know, Mr. Gore, that I am not like most girls, being so very ignorant. I have never read a novel. Even the nuns told me that some of them are beautiful and not bad at all, but the contrary. Only, I have never read any. I know they are full of this matter – love and marriage. They are great things, and concern nearly all the men and women in the world, but not quite all. I do not think I ever said to myself, 'They don't concern you.' I do not think I ever thought about it, but if I had, I believe I should have known that that matter would never concern me. Yet I do not want you to misunderstand – Oh, if I could make you understand, please! I know that it is a great thing, love and marriage, God's way for most men and women. And I think it a wonderful, great thing that a man should wish that for himself and me; should think that with me he could be happier than in any other way. Of course, I never thought anyone would feel that. It is a thing to thank you for, and always I shall thank you…"

"Is it impossible?"

She paused an infinitesimal moment and said:

"Just that. Impossible."

"Would it be fair to ask why 'impossible'?"

"Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot answer. I will try to answer. When you told me what you wanted it pleased me because you wanted it, and it hurt me because I (who had never thought about it before) knew at once that it was not possible to do what you wanted, and I would so much rather be able to please you."

"You will never be able to do anything else but please me. Your refusing cannot change your being yourself."

Gore could not worry her with demands for reasons. He knew there was no one else. He knew she was not incapable of loving – for he knew, better than ever, that she loved greatly and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he knew that she loved him, among them, but more than any of them. And yet he saw that she was simply right. What he had asked was "impossible, just that." Better than himself she would love no one, and in the fashion of a wife she would love no one, ever.

Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry her but because of her father. "Perhaps you have resolved never to marry," he said.

"I never thought of it. But, as soon as I knew what you were saying, I knew I should never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. It was just a certainty. Alas! our resolutions are not certainties."

"But," Gore said gently, feeling it necessary to prepare her, "your father may wish you to marry."

She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin reddened a little.

"You think so? Yes, he may," she answered in a troubled voice; for she feared her father, more even than she was conscious of.

"I think he does," Gore said, not watching the poor girl's troubled face.

"He wants me to marry you?" she inquired anxiously.

"I am afraid so; ever since he made up his mind. I do not think he liked the idea of letting you marry me till long after he saw what I hoped for. You see, I began to hope for it from the very first – from the day when we first met, by the river. He did not like me then; he did not know whether to approve of me or not. And at first he was inclined to approve all the less because he saw I wanted to win you for myself. I don't know that he likes me much even now; but he approves, and he approves of my plan. You know that once he has made up his mind to approve a plan, he likes it more and more. He gets determined and obstinate about it."

"Yes. He will be angry."

"I am afraid so. But – it is because he thinks it a father's duty to arrange for his daughter's future, and this plan suited him."

"Oh, yes! I know he is a good man. He will feel he is right in being angry."

"But I don't. He will be wrong. Though he is your father, he has not the right to try and force you to do what you say is impossible."

"Yes," she said gently, "it is impossible. But I shall not be able to make him see that."

"I see it. And it concerns me more than it concerns him."

"You are more kind than anyone I ever heard of," she told him. "I never dared to hope you would come to see that – that it is impossible."

"Can you tell him why?"

"Perhaps I do not quite understand you."

"It seems a long time ago, now, to me since I asked you if you could come to love me and be my wife. Everything seems changed and different. I wonder if I could guess why you knew instantly that it was impossible. It might help you with your father."

Mariquita listened, and gave no prohibition.

"I think," he said, "you knew it was impossible, because my words taught you, if you did not know already, that you could be no man's wife – "

"Oh, yes! That is true."

"But perhaps they taught you also something else, which you may not have known before – that you could belong only to God."

"I have known that always," she answered simply.