Along Fifth Avenue from Washington Arch to the Plaza, Spring was in the air. Trees were putting out that first green which, in its tenderness of beauty, is all hope and confidence. With the tide of humanity drifted Will Brent, whom business had brought from Kentucky to New York, but his thoughts were back there in the hills where the almost illiterate Diana, who knew nothing of life's nuances of refinement and who yet had all of life's allurements, was facing her new loneliness.
He reached a bookstore and turned in, idly looking through volumes of verse, while he killed the hour before his appointment. His hand fell upon a small volume bearing the name of G. K. Chesterton, and opening it at random he read those lines descriptive of the illuminated breviary from which Alfred the Great, as a boy, learned his spiritual primer at his mother's knee:
"It was wrought in the monk's slow manner of silverand sanguine shell,And its pictures were little and terrible keyholes ofHeaven and Hell."
Brent closed the covers with a snap. "That's what my memories of it all come to," he mused, "'—little and terrible keyholes of Heaven and Hell.'"
But that evening he went to dine with Jack Halloway at his club which looked out across the Avenue and the Park. He had written to Halloway in advance of his coming and by wire had received an invitation couched in terms of urgency not to be denied.
This was not Appalachia but Manhattan yet, when Halloway met him, Brent could but smile at life's contrasts. The huge fellow rose from his chair to greet him, as splendid a physical thing as human eyes could look upon. There was no stubble now on the face that seemed cast in smooth bronze. In lieu of that calculatedly slovenly disguise which he had affected in the hinter-land, he was immaculate in the fineness of his linen and the tailoring of his evening clothes. But as he held out his hand, he drawled, "Wa'al, stranger, how fares matters back thar on Shoulder-blade?"
Brent sketched briefly the occurrences that had taken place there; the death of Old Aaron and the fact that Jerry O'Keefe had been trying to sell his farm near Coal City in order, he surmised, that he might take up his abode nearer the McGivins' place.
Talk ran idly for a time, then Halloway rose and stood towering in the Fifth Avenue window. Across Park and Plaza the sky was still rosy with the last of the afterglow. Under the loftily broken roof-lines of the great hotel multitudinous window panes were gleaming. Over it all was the warm breath of spring.
The big man's hands, idly clasped behind his back, began to twitch and finally settled into a hard grip. His shoulders heaved and when he spoke there was a queer note in his voice.
"See the rhododendron over there in the park? Soon now it will be in flower—not onlythatrhododendron but——" He ended it abruptly, and then broke out, low-voiced but tense. "This atmosphere is stifling me—God! It's horrible—
"Send your path be straight before you,When the old spring fret comes o'er you,And the Red Gods call to you.'"
Into Brent's tone came something almost savage.
"I know what you're thinking. Quit it. It won't do!"
Slowly Halloway turned. For a moment his fine face was drawn with actual suffering. Then he added:
"You're quite right, Will, it won't do. But it's hard to forget—when one has seen a comet. Touch that button if you don't mind. It's time for the cocktails."
Have you seen Spring come to the mountains? Have you felt the subtle power on the human heart, of trance-drugged impulses awakening in plant, in animal, in humanity; in the deep hard arteries of the ancient hills themselves? Winter there is grim and bleak beyond the telling. In far separated cabins, held in the quarantine of mired roads, men and women have lived, from hand to mouth, sinking into a dour and melancholy apathy.
But when Spring comes, the gray and chocolate humps of raggedness are softly veiled again with tender verdure and a song runs with the caress of the breeze. It is a song relayed on the throats of birds. The color of new flower and leaf and of skies washed clean of brooding finds an echo in man and womankind. When the dogwood blossom, everywhere, breaks into white foam upon the soft billows of woodland green, and the sap stirs—then the old and crabbed bitterness of life stands aside for the coming of Love.
If one be young and free, one feels, admittedly or subconsciously, the deep tides that sing to sentiment and the undertows that pull to passion.
About the lonely house of Alexander McGivins the woods were burgeoning and tuneful. Stark contours of landscape had become lovely and Alexander, preparing for the activities of "drappin' and kiverin'" in the steep corn-fields, felt the surge of vague influences in her bosom.
Joe McGivins had carried a stricken face since Old Aaron's death. He looked to his sister, as he had looked to his father, for direction and guidance and though he worked it was as a hired man might have worked, patiently rather than keenly and without initiative.
But keeping busy failed to comfort the empty ache in Alexander's heart because in the grave over yonder lay all that had filled her world, and though she would have fought the man who suggested it, there were times when her lovely lips fell into lines of irony, and when she half-consciously felt that her playing at being a man had been a bitter and empty jest. She had only forfeited her woman's rights in life, and had failed to gain the compensation of man's.
Once or twice when on the high road, she passed youthful couples, love-engrossed, she went on with a wistfulness in her eyes. For such as these, life held something, but for her, she was sure in her obduracy of inexperience, there was no objective.
If the truth be told, the "spring-tide" was welling in the channels of her being, as well as in the rivulets of the hills, and the changes that had come to her were near to bearing fruit.
That space of little more than a week, when she had left her home—a home which had also been a world with its own laws and environment—had brought her into contact with other views. Her father's death had left the house no longer the same. Two independent souls, with strong views, may succeed in fashioning their own world, and she and her father had been two such.
One left unsupported may fail, and now she was alone—for Joe hardly counted.
Ever since she had been old enough to think at all, she had been inordinately proud of "being a man," and profoundly contemptuous of the women about her whose colorless lives spelled thraldom and hard servitude.
That long fostered and passionately held creed would die hard. She would fight herself and whomsoever else challenged its acceptance—but insidious doubts were assailing her.
So to all outward seeming Alexander McGivins was more the "he-woman" than ever before, but in her inner heart the leaven of change was at its yeasty work.
"I've got ter be a man," she told Joe, who mildly objected, even while he leaned on her strength. "Now thet paw's gone, I hev greater need then ever ter stand squ'ar on my own two feet."
The youth nodded. "I reckon ye're right," he acknowledged, "but folks talks a heap. I'm always figgerin' thet I'm goin' ter hev ter lick somebody erbout ye. I wouldn't suffer nobody ter speak ill of ye when I war present."
Alexander looked steadily at the boy. "I'm obleeged ter ye, but I'll do my own fightin', Joe," she told him calmly. "I'll even make shift ter do some o' your'n, an' yit——" She paused a moment and he inquired, "Wa'al, what's on yore mind, Alexander?"
"An' yit," she went on more slowly and thoughtfully, "I'd be mighty nigh willin' ter prove ther cause of ye gittin' in one or two good fights—ef hit couldn't be brought ter pass no other way."
"Paw always counseled peace, ef a feller warn't pushed too fur," he alleged in defense of his pacific attitude.
"So does I. But Joe, hit's jest on yore own account thet I'd like ter see ye show more sperit. Folks talks erboutyoutoo. I know what blood ye've got, commandin' blood—an' ef ye got roused up onc't hit'd mek a more upstandin' man of ye. I knows hit's a lie, but I've heered ye called ther disablest feller on Shoulder-blade!"
A touch of contempt stole into her voice as she added, "An' yore paw's only son!"
He went away somewhat sulkily, but she had ignited in him a spark of needed torture. Bred of a fighting line, the acid of self-scorn began eating into his pride, and when a few days later he halted at a wayside smithy, which was really only a "blind-tiger," and came upon a drinking crowd, the ferment of his thoughts developed into action.
Sol Breck was sitting with his back turned as the boy strolled in and it chanced that he was talking about Alexander. The girl herself with her square sense of justice, would have recognized his comments as crude jesting and would have passed them by unresented.
But Joe had been bitterly accusing himself of timidity and he needed sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle—and never emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him down and defeated. Then he returned home with a swelling breast, and just enough marks of conflict upon his own person to bear out his report of counsel heeded and resolution put to the touch.
Alexander listened without interruption to the end, for Joe had told her all but the name of his adversary and the exact words that had precipitated battle.
But when the narrative came to its conclusion she inquired quietly, "What did he say erbout me?"
"Oh, hit wasn't so much what he said es ther way he said hit," was Joe's somewhat shame-faced reply. "Ef hit hed been erbout any other gal, I reckon I mout of looked over it."
"What was it?" The demand was insistent.
"He jest 'lowed that if 'stid of warin' pants an' straddlin' hosses, ye'd pick ye out an upstandin' man an' wed him, thar mout come ter be somerealmen in ther fam'ly."
The girl's face crimsoned.
"I thought ye said hit war me ye fought erbout, Joe."
"I did say so, Alexander."
"An' ye didn't see no aspersion thet called fer a fight—in ther way them words techedyou?"
That phase of the matter had not occurred to Joe at all. He was used to being overlooked.
"He warn't thinkin' erbout me," he lamely exculpated. "I reckon he hed hit in head thet I hain't quite twenty-one yit."
For a while Alexander stood looking at him with a slowly gathering tempest of anger in her eyes, under which the boy fidgeted, and finally she spoke in that ominously still manner that marked moments of dang'er.
"What he said erbout me war true enough—an' ef ye admits what he all but said erbout you—thet ye hain't no man—thenthet'strue too."
The boy was crestfallen and a little impatient now. He had come to recount an achievement which had plumed and reappareled a limping self-respect and he had expected congratulation.
"What's ther use of faultin' me by mincin' words? I licked him, didn't I? Set hit down ter anything ye likes."
Her voice still held that cold note of inflexible but quiet anger. "Yes, ye licked him but hit looks like ter me ye picked yore man plum keerful an' got ye an easy one. Wait hyar, I'm goin' atter my hat."
"What fer?"
"Were a'goin' over thar tergether—an' ye're goin' ter crave his pardon."
"I wouldn't crave his pardon," burst out the boy violently, "ter save his soul from torment. I'd be a laughing stock ef I did."
"Ye're agoin' ter do one of two things, Joe," she announced with finality. "Ye're either agoin' ter ask his pardon, whilst I stands by an' hears ye do hit or else ye're a'goin' ter tell him thet ye licked him over ther wrong words—an' thet seein' ye blundered, ye're willin' ter lick him afresh over ther right ones—him or anybody he names ter fight in his place."
Joe hung his head for a moment, then the pricking of the old self-scorn came with a turning tide.
"All right," he said. "Let's go."
It was an unmannerly, but a very astonished crew upon which they came but at the sight of Alexander herself they all became sheepish and discomfited of aspect.
"Sol," began the girl tersely, "Joe tells me thet him an' you hed a fight jest now over somethin' ye said erbout he. I kin do my own fightin', but Joe hes something ter tell ye on his own account."
So introduced, Joe spoke and this time it was the swimmer striking boldly into deep water.
"Alexander 'lows I didn't hev need ter fight over loose talk erbout her. But when airy feller says thar hain't no man in my household, so long's I'm thar, I hev got ample cause ter fight. Ye've got ter tek thet back right now. Ef so be ye hain't rested up yit, an' ye've got any friend hyar thet ye'd like ter hev take yore place, I'm ready fer him."
But Sol had had enough, for the present. Alexander's presence made him, somehow, feel foolish, as if his thrashing were less of an embarrassment than its cause.
"I war jest a-funnin,'" he protested. "I'm willin' ter take back anything thet's done give offense."
One day shortly after that, when Joe came unexpectedly into the house he surprised Alexander attired as he had never before seen her—in the skirts of her own sex.
"Fer ther Lord's sake," exclaimed the boy. "Thet's ther fust time I ever seed ye in petticoats. Looks like ye must hev on a half score of 'em."
"Like es not hit's ther last time ye'll ever see hit, too," retorted Alexander hotly while her cheeks flamed. "Some day I mout hev ter go down below ter some big town on business. A woman's got ter w'ar these fool things thar, an' I was practising so's I could larn ter walk with 'em flappin' round my legs."
Yet she walked, for all the alleged difficulty, with an untrameled and regal ease. With a sweep of hauteur she left the grinning boy and when she returned a few minutes later she was breeched and booted as usual.
Sometimes, in these days, she went to a crest from which the view reached off for leagues over the valley and beyond that over ridge upon ridge of hilltops. There she thought of many things and was very lonely. She could not have worded it but, deep in her heart, she felt the outcry of the Spring voice: "Make me anything but neuter when the sap begins to stir."
But how could this be any love-impulse in Alexander? Love, she had always heard, must fix itself upon some one endearing object and lay its glamor over definite features.
The most magnificent figure of a man she had ever seen often reared itself in her thought-pictures with its six feet six of straight limbed strength, its eagle-like keenness of eye, and its self-confident bearing.
"Ef I could really be a man," she told herself, "I'd love ter be a man like ther Halloway feller—ef only he wasn't so plum dirty and raggedy."
One day on her way back from the fields she saw a tall figure loafing near the front door of her house and, at that distance, she thought that it was Halloway. It stood so tall and straight that it must be, but that was because the setting sun was in her eyes and the man showed only in silhouette. So seen Jerry O'Keefe—for it proved to be Jerry—suffered little by comparison with any man she knew—except Halloway.
But Alexander did not greet him with any great warmth. She was angry with herself because her heart had started suddenly to pounding at the instant when she had imagined this man to be the other. She was angry, too, with Jerry for disappointing her.
So she nodded coolly and demanded, "What's yore business hyarabout?"
In Jerry the rising joyousness of rebirth was full confessed. He was here because since he had seen her last he had carried no other picture in his thoughts, and now that the world was in bloom he wanted to see her against a befitting background. To that end he had sold his small farm and rented a plot and cabin near-by and if there was to be no welcome for him here he had merely sold himself out of a home.
But the gray-blue eyes were whimsical, and the mobile lips smiling. He was unrebuffed as he made a counter-query.
"Kain't a feller kinderly come broguein' in hyar, without some special business brings him?"
Alexander felt that she had been unneighborly, but in her memory the things that Brent had said to her had become a sort of troublesome refrain. "Men will come and they won't be turned back." She remembered, too, her own hot retort, "Like hell they won't!" It was in the spirit of that retort that she answered.
"Ef ye hain't got no business hyar, ye hain't got no business hyar, an' thet's all thar air ter hit."
"Mebby ye're ther business yoreself, Alexander," he suggested and there was a persuasive quality in his voice.
"I'm my own business, nobody else's."
In this mood that had troubled her of late, Alexander was very combative. She was not willing to surrender her code—not willing yet to be treated as a woman.
"I heers tell thet ye've moved over hyar, bag an' baggage—an' ef I kin help ye out any way, I'll seek ter convenience ye outen a sperit of neighborness." She spoke in that extra-deliberate fashion that went before a storm, and as she stood there with her head high, and her eyes undeviatingly meeting his, she had the beauty of a war-goddess. "But when ye hain't got no matter of need, don't come."
Jerry had no intention of being lightly repulsed. His purpose of courtship had become his governing law but he had learned much of this Amazonian woman and had set himself, not to an easy conquest, but to a hard campaign. The man who, merely to be near one woman, sells a river bottom farm that he had nursed into something like prosperity and who takes on rocky acres in its stead, has shown, by his works, the determination of his spirit.
Now, the humorous eyes riffled with a quiet amusement.
"I didn't say thet I come without business, Alexander. Mebby I hain't stated hit yit."
"Then ye'd better state hit. Ye don't seem ter be in no tormentin' haste."
O'Keefe thought that "tormentin' haste" in his position would be fatal and yet the streak of whimsey that ran through him brought a paradoxical answer.
"My hearth's cold over thar. I come ter borry fire."
He was watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where until recently matches were rare and when the hearth fire died one had to go to the neighbor's house and hasten back with a flaming fagot for its relighting.
"Ye don't seem ter hev ther drive of a man borryin' fire. Why didn't ye ask Joe. I heers him in thar."
"Hit'sgoin' homenotcomin'thet a man's got ter hasten with his fire," he reminded her. "I didn't ask Joe because—he hain't got ther kind of fire my heart needs, Alexander."
So her suspicion was true! He had been speaking, not literally, but in the allegory of a suitor and her gathering wrath burst.
"Then I hain't got hit fer ye nuther. Let yore h'arth stay cold, an' be damned ter ye—an' now begone right speedily!"
With pure effrontery the young man laughed. Into his voice he put a pretense of appeal, as he calmly stuffed his pipe with tobacco crumbs. "Alexander ye wouldn't deny a man such a plum needcessity es fire, would ye?" he questioned, though even as he said it he drew from his pocket a box of matches and struck one.
So he had made deliberate and calculated sport of her! Her anger saw in his presence itself only the insult of the first attack from those men who "would not be turned back," and once more the rage in her came to its boiling-point.
She wheeled and went into the house and when she came out her face was pale to the lips and her brows drawn in a resolute pucker, while in her hands she carried a cocked rifle.
"Down yonder lays my fence-line," she autocratically told the man who had continued standing where she had left him, and whose seeming was still unflurried. "I've got a license ter say who crosses hit. Ye've done sought ter make sport of me, an' now I commands ye ter cross ther fence an' begone from hyar." She paused a moment because her breath was coming fast with passion. "I warns ye nuver ter put foot on this farm ergin—I aims ter see thet ye don't—an' when ye starts away don't tarry ter look back, nuther."
Slowly Jerry O'Keefe nodded. One ordered from another's house must obey, but the twinkle had not altogether faded from his eyes and there was nothing precipitate in his movements, albeit the rifle was at ready and the girl's deep breast was heaving with unfeigned fury.
"All right," he acceded, "I'm goin' now but es fer not lookin' back, I wouldn't like ter mek no brash promises. You're hyar an' hit mout prove right hard ter keep my eyes turned t'other way. I'm an easy-goin' sort of feller anyhow, an' I likes ter let my glance kind of rove hyar an' thar."
Her hands trembled on the gun and her voice shook into huskiness. "Begone," she warned. "I kain't hold down my temper much longer."
"An' es fer comin' back," Jerry continued blandly, "some day you're ergoin' terinviteme back. Anyhow, I reckon I'd come, because thar's somethin' hyar thet'll kinderly pulls me hither stronger then guns kin skeer me off."
The girl sat there on her doorstep with her rifle across her knees and halfway to the fence-line Jerry paused and looked back. The rifle came up—and dropped back again as Alexander belatedly pretended that she had not seen him. At the stile O'Keefe paused to turn his head again. He even waved his hat, and this time she looked through him as through a pane of glass.
But when she had been sitting broodingly for a long while, the cloud slowly dissipated from her face. In her eyes a twinkle of merriment battled with the fire of righteous indignation, and at last she even laughed with a low pealing note like a silver bell.
"He's an impudent, no-count devil," she said, "but he's got right unfalterin' nerve, an' thar's a mighty pleasin' twinkle in his eyes."
Not long after that Alexander made a journey to a nearby town, but since it was one near the railroad she went in woman's attire, paying a new deference to public opinion which she had heretofore scorned. She was busily occupied there all day and her mission was one of mystery.
The earliest manifestations of spring had ripened into a warmer fullness. Everywhere the rhododendron was bloom-loaded, and the large-petaled flower of the "cucumber tree" spread its waxen whiteness. Hill-sides were pink with the wild-rose and underfoot violets and the dandelions made a bright mosaic.
Again Alexander was approaching her door with her face set toward the sunset and again she saw before her own house the figure of a man who loomed tall, and who for a brief space remained a featureless silhouette against the colored sky.
She hastened her step a little, resolved that this time she would teach Jerry, in an unforgettable fashion, that her edicts of banishment were final and that they could not be lightly disobeyed—but this time it was not Jerry.
Indeed she had realized that almost immediately and her heart had missed its beat. The man was Halloway himself and he was looking in another direction just then, so he did not see the fleet, yet instantly repressed eagerness that flashed into and out of her eyes. It was a self-collected young woman, with a distinctly casual manner who crossed the stile and confronted her visitor.
As he turned and saw her, he started impulsively forward, but recovered himself and also adopted the matter-of-fact demeanor, which she had, herself, assumed.
"Howdy, Jack," said the girl carelessly. "I didn't know ye war hyarabouts. I'd jest erbout forgot ye altogether."
"I reckon thet would be a right easy thing ter do," he handsomely admitted, then each having indulged in the thrust and parry of an introductory lie, they stood there in the sunset, eying each other in silence.
But Alexander recognized a transformation in the man's appearance, and if she seemed tepid of interest, the semblance belied her throbbing pulses. Halloway was too accomplished an actor to have abandoned his pose or makeup. He must remain in character and dress the part, but he had used a consummate skill in doing so. In every detail of clothing he remained the mountaineer, yet there was no longer any trace of the slovenly or unclean.
He was close shaven and trim of hair. His flannel shirt, still open on his throat, was of good quality. The trousers that were thrust into high laced boots were not so new as to attract undue attention, but they fitted him. The note of carelessness was maintained—but with artistry to accentuate the extraordinary effect of physique and feature. He was eye-filling and rather splendid.
Alexander felt that some recognition of this metamorphosis was expected of her, but she had no intent of admitting the true force of its impression.
"Hit's a right smart wonder I knowed ye a-tall, ye've done spruced up so," was the dubious compliment with which she favored him after a deliberate scrutiny. "I hain't nuver seed ye with yore face washed afore."
"I 'lowed I'd seek ter make a killin' with ye," he bantered easily, and she sniffed her simulated disdain. They had moved together up the steps of the porch, and he stood there looking at her, quelling the up-rush of admiration and avid hunger in his eyes. Then she said curtly, for in these days she was always on the defensive, and meant to be doubly so with him whom she secretly feared, "Ye're in ther house now. Ef ye wants ter mek a killin' with me, tek off yore hat. Don't folks hev no manners whar ye comes from?"
Halloway shook his head, not forgetful that one playing a part must remain in character.
"I don't tek off my hat ter no man," he replied, stressing the final word ever so lightly.
"I'm a man when I wants ter be, an' when I wants manners I aims ter hev 'em," she declared, but her visitor stood, still covered, in her presence, and after a moment she said curtly—yet rather breathlessly, "Wait hyar," and turning, disappeared into the house.
Floods begin slowly with trickles, but they break suddenly with torrents. A flood had seized Alexander at that moment. Perhaps she did not herself pause to recognize or analyze her motive. She merely acted on an impulse that had come with an onsweep of conscious and subconscious tides. It was a motive that had to do with her activities that day when she had gone to the nearby town.
Halloway remained there, frankly puzzled. Unless she was like himself acting, her interest in his arrival was pallid and lukewarm. He had counted much on appearing suddenly before her at his best—and the impression seemed to have been negligible.
Where had she gone? He asked himself that question several times during the considerable interval of his waiting. The sunset was coming to its final splendor behind mountains that were ash of violet. Through the blossom-laden air stole a seductive intoxication that mounted to his head. The voices of the Red Gods had mastered him, and he had come.
Then he saw a vision in the doorway, and his senses reeled.
Alexander stood there as he had never seen her before. She was in a woman's dress, very simple of line and unadorned. But her beauty was such as could support and glorify simplicity. Indeed it required simplicity as a foil for its own delicate gorgeousness. The lithe slenderness of her figure was enhanced by the transformation. Her long hair hung in heavy braids that gave an almost childlike girlishness to her appearance. Alexander, he thought, was wholly delectable.
But as he stared at Alexander she flung him look for look and commanded:
"Now, tek off your hat."
He tossed the thing away from him, and hesitated for a moment gazing at her while his eyes kindled, then with an inarticulate sound in his throat and no other word, he sprang forward and caught her to him, in arms that would not be denied.
Alexander made no struggle. It would have been futile to match even her fine strength against the herculean power of those arms—and suddenly the girl felt faint.
For that unwarned and tumultuous conduct on the part of the man she had been totally unprepared and it was as though the wave of amazement which swept over her had left her gasping; bereft of both nerve-force and breath. But other waves were sweeping her too, so that she of the ready and invincible spirit for the moment rested inert in Halloway's arms as her brain reeled. In one way she was dazed into semiconsciousness. In another way, she was so staringly wide awake as she had never before been in life. She had thought of this man with feelings that she had neither named to herself nor analyzed, but the unadmitted sex call of the strong man to the strong woman had sounded like a bugle note through her nature. Now while the beginnings of an indescribable fury stirred within her, she none the less thrilled to his embrace with a flooding of her heart under which she almost swooned. While she felt his kisses on her temples, her cheeks and her lips, she had no power of speech or protest.
To Jack Halloway, it seemed that this non-resistance was unconditional surrender and through him in a current of fluid fire, ran the fierce ecstasy of victory.
But after a little Alexander straightened up and the pliant softness of her body stiffened in his arms. She pushed against his shoulders with steady hands. They were not struggling hands but firm and definite of meaning, and Halloway released her. He released her readily as a man may who can afford to be deferential in his moment of victory.
But when she was quite free, she stood unsteadily for a moment and then stepped back and leaned against the wall of the house. Her hands pressed against the weather-boarding with outspread fingers. Out of a white face she looked straight before her with eyes preternaturally wide and full of dazed wonderment.
At first there was no resentment, no denunciation. The girl only leaned there with parted lips and heaving bosom and that fixed gaze which, for all its rigid tensity, seemed groping.
It was not as the individual that she now thought of Jack Halloway but of the terrifying and unexplained force that he had awakened in herself; the force of things that she never until now realized.
Halloway did not speak. He bent a little toward her, looking at her as his own breath came fast. At first he did not even marvel at the stunned, groping blankness of the unmoving features.
He had known that when she awoke it would be with the shock of latent fires set loose. Now it was a time to go very gently with her, until she found her footing in fuller comprehension again.
Then the girl said so faintly that he could hardly hear her:
"Thet's ther fust time thet.…" She broke off there.
"I know it, Alexander. I couldn't stay away. I had to come!"
He took a step forward with outstretched arms but she lifted a pleading hand.
"Don't," she said. "I've got ter think … go away now."
And triumphantly confident of what would come out of her meditation, he turned and picked up his hat and left her standing there. He might have talked to her of passionate love, he told himself, to the end of time and it would have meant nothing. Instead he had brought her face to face with it—and now there was no need of talk.
Jack Halloway had meant it when he admitted to Brent in New York that it would not do to give rein to his thoughts of Alexander. They were all lawless thoughts of a love not to be trammeled by the obligations of marriage.
If he hated the civilized world at times, there were other times when he could not live without it, and into its conventionalized pattern, Alexander could never fit. She was not civilized enough or educated enough to take her place there at his side, nor was she pagan enough to come to him without terms or conditions. So he had resolved to stay away, and put her out of his mind and in that determination he failed. Now he had flung away all heed. He had held her in his arms and consequences could care for themselves!
But when he had left the porch and Alexander had begun to grope her way out of the vortex of confusion, that small figment of wrath that she had known she should feel and yet had so far failed to feel, began to grow until it engulfed and merged into itself every other element of her reflections.
She had been scornful when Brent questioned her ability or her permanent wish to repulse suitors, and yet after only two had come, she no longer knew her own mind. But she told herself with a solemn indignation, she at least wanted to make her own terms. She had no intent of being swept off her feet by the masterful whim of a man who had never pleaded. Yet that was the thing that had just occurred.
Slowly the stunned eyes in the waxen white face became less wonder-wide and began to smoulder with outraged realization. She rose with the fixed determination that before the sun set, she would kill Halloway or compel him to kill her. One of them must die. But her own ideas of fairness challenged that edict. If she had the right to assume such a ground, she should have taken it without any instant of faltering. She should never have acknowledged an impulse of thrill while she was close-held in his arms. She had let him think that she had not resented it, and she was as much to blame as he.
So when Halloway came back the next morning with the glow of eagerness in his face, he found a very quiet girl waiting to receive him, and when he would have taken her in his arms she once more put out that warning hand, but this time with a different expression of lip and eye.
"Stop," she said. "Me an' you hev got ter talk together."
"Thet suits me," he assured her. "Thar hain't nothin' else I'd ruther do—save ter hold ye in my arms."
"I reckon ye knows I've done took oath thet no man could ever come on this place—sparkin'."
"I war right glad ter hev ye say that— Hit kept other fellers away, an' any man thet hitcouldskeer off wasn't hardly wuth hevin' round nohow. But thet war afore ye fell in love with me."
"Fell in love with ye?" She repeated the words after him still in that even somewhat puzzled quiet which was, for her, almost toneless. "Jack Halloway, when ye went away from hyar yestiddy evenin' an' I'd sat thar fer a full measured hour an' thought, I 'lowed thar warn't a soul on earth ner in hell thet I hated so much as you. I'd done med up my mind ter kill ye afore I laid down ter sleep."
There was an implacability about this new manner, that disquieted the man a little, but he said gravely:
"Them feelin's jest comes about because what ye felt yestiddy war all new ter ye. Hit's nat'ral enough, but hit won't endure."
She went on ignoring his protestations. "Ther only reason Ididn'tkill ye, war thet I'd doneletye … an' I hated myself next es bad es you. Folks tells me thet I hain't always goin' ter want ter turn men back. Mebby thet's true."
"Ye knows full well a'ready, thet hit's true," he declared vehemently.
"Be thet es hit may, no man's ter wed me without he wooes me fust, an' no man hain't never goin' ter lay a hand on me without I consents. Now I aims ter try an' fergit erbout yestiddy—an' you'd better fergit hit too."
The man's eyes broke into vehement challenge. "So long es thar's life in me I won't fergit hit!"
"I reckon ye'd better heer me out," she reminded him with an ominous note and he nodded his head, waiting, while she continued.
"Yestiddy I seemed crazed—but terday I hain't. Ye 'pears ter be right sartain thet I loves ye. I don't know, but I either loves ye or I hates ye like all hell. Ef I loves ye I kain't kill ye—an' ef I hates ye thar's time enough."
"But Alexander, you do love me! I know——"
"Wa'al, I don't—an' thet's a right pithy point ter my manner of thinking! Ye're a right masterful sort of feller, an' ye likes ter plow yore way through life gloryin' in yore strength an' forcin' your will on weaker folks." She paused an instant then added significantly: "But I'm a right masterful sort of woman myself—an' I hain't ter be nowise driv. Ef you an' me kain't consort peaceable I reckon we'll jest erbout rake hell afore we finishes up our warfare."
As he looked at her his admiration was flaming. Possibly it was best, just now, to advance slowly.
"I'm willin' ter wait," he conceded slowly. "Ye're wuth hit."
"Ye says I loves ye. If I finds thet out fer myself, in due course I'll wed with ye. Ef I don't, I won't, but——" Her voice broke so suddenly out of the quiet plane in which it had been pitched, that her climax of words came like a sharp thunder clap on still air. "But ef ye seeks ter fo'ce me, or ef ever ergin ye lays a hand on me or teches me, 'twell I tells ye ye kin, afore God in Heaven, one of us has got ter die! An' I won't never be with ye unarmed, nuther."
Halloway did not judge it a good time to mention that her allusion to marriage left a rather wide territory of debate open. One thing at a time seemed enough and more than enough.
Alexander had not asked him in, and he inquired calmly: "Now thet ye've stated yore terms an' I've done agreed ter 'em, hain't ye goin' ter invite me in?"
"No," she said shortly. "I makes ther laws in my own household. Ye air goin' away an' ye hain't comin' back hyar fer one week. I aims ter be left alone fer a spell now. Ef them terms don't suit ye, ye needn't come back at all."
And in that week of reprieved decision Alexander took her life to pieces and searchingly examined it, item by item. Some strange reactions were taking place in the laboratory of her life. She was no more seen in breeches and boots. She had self-contemptuously decided that if she could not hold undeviatingly to her strongest tenet, but became a palpitant woman when a man seized her in his arms, she would throw overboard the whole sorry pretense.
She would henceforth be frankly and avowedly a woman, but a woman different from those about her, giving up none of the leadership that was in her blood or the self-pride that was her birthright.
One afternoon she met Jerry O'Keefe on the road, and with the old unabashed twinkle in his eye he accosted her.
"I heer tell ther big feller's back," he began and the girl flushed. "Hev ye done run him offen yore place, too?"
"Thet's my business."
"Yesthetis, but yore runnin' me off's right severelymine."
"Mebby I've got a rather who comes thar."
"So hev I." There was a lurking, somewhat engaging impertinence even in Jerry's quietest rejoinders, a humorous boldness and self-confidence.
"Howsomever, I reckon ye're kinderly skeered thet I'd mek ye think too towerin' much of me. I reckon ye dar'sn't trust yoreself."
Alexander looked at him, and for all her attempted severity she could not keep the twinkle out of her own pupils. If she had not succeeded in driving Halloway away, why should she stand out for the subterfuge of banishing Jerry? It reminded her of Joe's picking an easy man to whip. There was even a faint challenge of coquetry in her manner as she disdainfully announced: "Ef thet's ther way I'm feedin' yore vanity, come over whenever ye feels like hit. I'll strive ter endure ye, ef ye don't tarry too long."
"I kain't come afore ternight. Hit's sun-down now," was the instant response.
Things had not gone well with Jase Mallows. The wound that Bud had inflicted had healed slowly and he had lain long bedridden. He had been the last of the gang to hear the sorry story of how the robbery had failed and the sequel recording the deaths of Lute and his lieutenant. Now Jase heard that Alexander's door was no longer barred to men who came courting and he returned home. But he came nursing a grudge against Bud who had wounded him and who had set awry all his plans. For only one thing was he thankful. Alexander had no suspicion of his complicity in the effort to rob her.
But when Jase presented himself at Alexander's house, wearing a fancy waistcoat and a bright colored tie, he learned to his discomfiture that the bars which had been lowered to others were still up and fixed against himself.
Bud, too, was far from happy, as from a distance he watched Alexander's apotheosis. Bud knew that he was like a gray and inconspicuous moth enamored of a splendidly winged butterfly. She could never be thrilled by the colorless fidelity of a man who was simple almost to stupidity, even though he lived with no thought above his loyalty. One day almost unconquerable thirst came upon Bud. It attacked him suddenly as he passed the house and saw Halloway sitting on the porch talking with Alexander, and heard the peal of her responsive laughter.
That appetite rode him like a witch, making capital of his nervous dejection and he tramped the woods vainly struggling to submerge it in physical fatigue. Unfortunately it took a great deal of exertion to wear Bud down, and the mania of craving was as strong as his untiring muscles. By the purest of evil chance too, he stumbled upon an illicit still, where an acquaintance was brewing whiskey. He had not known that it was being operated there and had he sought to find it he could not have done so, for it was well hidden behind browse and thicket and a man watched furtively with a ready rifle. But the "blockader" recognized Bud and had no fears of his playing informer, so with an amused smile on his bearded face he stepped into sight with a tin cup invitingly out-held.
To Bud Sellers its sickening odor was the bouquet of ambrosia. It stole into his nostrils and set up in his brain insidious sensations of imagined delight. He pushed it back at first then seized it and gulped it greedily down.
Hurriedly he went away. He told himself that if he stopped there all would still be well, but it was as feasible to tell the tiger that has tasted blood to lie down and be good. He must have more. For a time Bud struggled, then he saddled a mule and went as fast as he could ride toward town. It was a race of endurance against a collapsing resolve. When he reached the village he sought out the town marshal and excitedly begged, "Fer God's sake lock me up in ther jail-house. Ther cravin's done come on me afresh. I'm goin' mad ergin."
The town marshal knew the history of Bud's alcoholic periodicity, yet he had no authority to jail a man on request in advance of any offense. "Ye don't look drunk yit, Bud, albeit I'm afeared ye soon will be," he said. "I reckon I hain't hardly got ther power ter jail ye, without ye commits some misdeed."
But Bud was at the end of his struggle. In a minute more instead of pleading to be confined, he would be hunting for liquor. It was now or never. He seized up a brick that lay at his feet and hurled it through the glass window of a store, before which they stood talking.
"Kin ye do hit now?" he demanded hoarsely, and the town marshal said: "Yes, I reckon I kin—now."
Men have varied fashions for expressing their love of women. That night Jack Halloway sat on the moonlit porch of Alexander's house and Bud sat in the vermin-infested cell of the village lockup. But as the hours went on he found a certain recompense in the thought that he was keeping a pledge.
As for Jerry O'Keefe that night, he was doing nothing at all except thinking certain things about the great fellow who was with the girl, but those thoughts were putting out roots of future conflict.