XX
HE apparently forgot her during the short drive and stared through the open window of the cab, his thoughts, no doubt, in the assay room of the School, where several students, as ardent as himself, were experimenting with ore they had managed to secure from a recently opened mine. Ora’s resentment vanished, partly because she reflected that a new and original experience was a boon to be grateful for in Butte, but more because she was thrilled with the sense of adventure. Her woman’s instinct gave assurance that he had no intention of making love to her, but it also whispered that, whether she liked or disliked him when the adventure was over, she would have something to remember. And it was the first time she ever had indulged in recklessness. Butte would be by the ears on the morrow if it learned of her escapade.
When they reached the dark School of Mines he dismissed the taxi, and said to Ora, “Wait for me here. I shan’t be a moment.”
He disappeared and Ora shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the steps. He returned in a few moments and extended himself over several steps below her.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Very!”
“It’s a night, isn’t it?” he asked abruptly.
He was not looking at her but at the low sulphurous blue sky, with its jewelled lattice, white, yellow, green, blue. There were no tree tops to rustle, but from the window below came the voluptuous strains of the Merry Widow waltz, mingling incongruously with the raucous noises of the sleepless town: the roaring street-cars, the blasts of engines, the monstrous purr of motor-cats.
“If we could cut out that jungle,” he said with a sigh. “Are you warm enough?” He pulled the cloak about the lower part of her body. “I should have taken the rug from the cab——”
“I am warm enough,” she said impatiently, and what she longed to say was, “How in heaven’s name did you marry Ida Hook?” He had transferred his gaze to the city and she studied his face. Then she understood. In spite of its intense reserve and detachment, its strength and power, its thin sensitive mouth, it was the most passionate face she had ever seen. As a matter of fact she had been at pains to ignore the purely masculine side of men, her fastidious mind never indulging in comparisons. She half rose with a sense of panic. Again he looked up solicitously.
“I am sure you are not comfortable. I could find you some cushions——”
“Please don’t. So you love beauty?” She was deeply annoyed with herself, but could think of nothing less banal. He certainly was not easy to talk to.
“Don’t you? It would be odd if you didn’t. One reason I brought you up up here was because I wanted to look at you in the starlight where you belong—the cold starlight—not in that crowded gaudy room full of mere human beings.”
“Are you a poet? I have somehow received the impression that you are a mere walking ambition.”
“I’m no poet if you mean one of those writing fellows.” His tone expressed unmitigated scorn.
“Well, no doubt you have read a great deal of poetry, little as one would suspect it.”
“Never read a line of it except when I had to decline it at school—any more than I’ve ever read a line of fiction.”
“Well, you’ve missed a great deal,” said Ora tartly. “Poetry is an essential part of the beauty of the world, which you seem to appreciate. And the best of fiction is the best expression of current history. What do you think when you star-gaze?”
“You mean, can I think at all when I haven’t read what other men have thought?”
“No.—No doubt the most original brains are those that have not read too much, are not choked up.” Ora made this admission reluctantly, but he had caught her fairly. “Tell me at least what the stars suggest to you. About everything has been said of them that can be said. The poor old stars have been worked to death.”
“The stars above Montana are watchfires protecting the treasure below. Perhaps they are bits of her treasures, gold, silver, copper, sapphire, that flew upward in the final cataclysm.”
“I don’t know whether that is poetical or gross materialism.”
“No mines, no poets. Nearly all conquest from the dawn of history down to the Boer War has had the acquisition of mineral wealth as its real object. The civilisation that follows is incidental; it merely means that the strongest race, which, of course, knows the most, wins. If ever we have a war with Mexico, what will be the cause? Mines. Incidentally we will civilise her. Peru, Mexico, India, the Americas—all have been invaded in their turn by more civilised nations, and all after plunder. They gave as much as they took, but little they cared about that. What opened up California? This great Northwest? Prospectors in search of gold. Excuse this lecture. I am the least talkative of men, but you have jarred my brain, somehow. Read the history of mines and mining if you want romance.”
“As a matter of fact few things interest me more. I am so glad my mine has been leased for a year only. When that is up I am going to mine it myself. I’ll build a bungalow out there and go down every day. Perhaps in time I could be my own manager. At all events, think of the excitement of watching the ore as it comes up the shaft; of running through a lean vein and coming suddenly upon a chamber of an entirely different kind of ore from what you had been taking out. Great shoots full of free gold! Wire gold! Or that crisp brown-gold that looks as if it were boiling out of the ore and makes one want to bite it! Why are you staring so at me?”
His eyes were more widely opened and brilliant than she had seen them. “Do you mean that?” he asked. “I’ve a great notion to tell you something that I’ve not told anyone.”
“Do tell me!”
She leaned down eagerly. She had dismissed the feeling of panic as something to be forgotten as quickly as possible. But her brain was on fire to penetrate his. She felt an extraordinary mental stimulation. But he relapsed into absolute silence, although he held his head, lowered again,at an angle that suggested he might be thinking intently. She moved impatiently, but he sat still, staring downward, his eyes narrow once more. She noticed irrelevantly how black his hair was, and her white hand went out stealthily as if magnetised, but was immediately restored to order. In the vibrating silence she had another glimmer of understanding. He wanted to tell her something personal, but his natural secretiveness and habit of reserve were engaged in a struggle with the unusual impulse. She shifted the ground.
“I wish you would tell me something of your boyhood,” she said abruptly.
He looked up in astonishment. “I never talk about myself——”
“How very egoistical.”
“Ego——”
“No, I did not say egotistical.”
“Ah!” There was another pause, although he looked at her with a frown. “I have talked to you more than I ever talk to anyone,” he said resentfully.
“It is the stars, to say nothing of the isolation. We might be up on one of your escaped nuggets. Remember that I have heard of you constantly for six years—and met you before on one of those occasions when all persons look alike. How could I escape curiosity?”
“I brought you out to look at in the proper setting. I can’t say I had any desire to talk to you. I suppose I should not keep you out here——”
“I am much happier and more comfortable than in that hot room. But surely you need more recreation. Why do you never go to dances?”
“Dances? I? I only went tonight——” He, too, apparently, was determined to keep their respective spouses out of the conversation, for he veered off quickly. “It is a sort of religion to attend the Prom even if you only show yourself. I was about to beat a retreat when I saw you. Of course it was my duty to shake hands. Besides, I wanted to see if you were real.” And he smiled up into her eyes.
“Do you know that we are flirting?”
“Well, let us flirt,” he replied comfortably. “I haven’t the least idea what it is, but I am not a bit in love with you, if that is what you mean.”
Ora drew herself up rigidly. “Well, you are——” she began, aware that she had a temper. Then she laughed. Why quarrel with a novel experience? Her anger turned into a more subtle emotion. She was well aware of the dazzling brightness of her eyes. She leaned forward and concentrated her mind in an attempt to project her magnetism through them, although again with a feeling of panic; it was too much like the magnet rushing out to the iron.
He returned that powerful gaze unmoved, although an expression of perplexity crossed his own eyes. She was disconcerted and asked lamely:
“Is it true that you used to run away and prospect in the mountains?”
His face lit up with an enthusiasm her fascinations had been unable to inspire; and a richer note came into his voice. “I was eleven the first time and stayed out for six months. Two years after I ran away again. The next time I went with my father’s permission. I worked in one of the Butte mines one summer—but otherwise—well, you see, there is a good deal to do on a ranch. This is the first time I have been able to do as I please.”
Ora looked at his long slim figure, his brown hands that tonight, at least, expressed a sort of cruel deliberate repose. Whatever they may have been in their ranch days they were smooth and well cared for now.
“Somehow, I can’t see you handling a pick,” she said doubtfully. “Is it true that you intend to work in the mines all summer?”
“Part of it—when I am not working in a mill or a smelter. I’d be ashamed of myself if I couldn’t do anything that another man can do. Some of the best miners look like rats.”
He looked like a highly-bred mettlesome race-horse himself, and Ora wondered, as she had before tonight: “Where did he get it? Who were his ancestors?” She had seen dukes that looked like farm hands, and royal princesses that might have been upper housemaids, but her feminine (and American) mind clung to the fallacy that it takes generations to produce the clean-cut shell. She determined to look up his family tree in Holland.
“Well—Custer—my housekeeper—will look after you,” she said as naturally as if her thoughts had not wanderedfor a moment. “Shall you do any mining on your own place before we come back from Europe?”
He started and looked at her apprehensively, then scowled.
“What is the matter? You may not know it but at this moment your face looks like an Indian battle-axe.”
To her surprise he laughed boyishly. “You startled me. I have heard of mind readers. Well, I will tell you what I wanted to a while back. But you must promise not to tell—anyone.”
“I promise! I swear it! And do hurry. I’m afraid you’ll shut up tight again.”
“No, I won’t. I don’t know that I’d tell you were it not that your own mine is just over the border; we may have to consolidate some day to save a lawsuit—No, I will be honest; I really want to tell you. It is this: Close to the northeast boundary line of my ranch is an almost barren hill of limestone and granite. Shortly before I left—last October—I discovered float on the side of the hill. There is no doubt in my mind that we have both come upon a new mineral belt, although whether we are in the middle or on one edge of it is another question.”
He told her the story of the storm and of the uncovering of the float. Nor did he end his confidence with a bare statement of fact. He told her of his sensations as he sat on the ragged ground leaning against the roots of the slain trees, his mental struggle, and final resolution. Then he told her of the hopes and dreams of his boyhood, and what it had meant to him—this sudden revelation that he had a mine under his feet—and all his own! He talked for half an hour, with the deep satisfaction that only a shy and silent person feels when talking into a sympathetic mind for the first time. Ora listened with a curious sense of excitement, as if she were overboard in a warm and pleasant but unknown sea. There were times when she felt like talking very fast herself. But she did nothing of the sort, merely jogging him diplomatically when he showed signs of relapsing into silence. Finally he stopped in the middle of a sentence and said abruptly:
“That’s all.”
“Oh! And you really have made up your mind not to begin work for a year?”
“Quite!”
“But—have you thought—it is only tonight I learned that the engineers who leased my mine have struck a rich vein. Suppose it dips toward yours——”
“It does——”
“Have they put on a big force?”
“Naturally. They are rushing things, as they know they will not get the mine another year.”
“Well, suppose their vein runs under your hill—through their side-line?”
He stirred uneasily. “I am watching them. So far the dip is very slight. It may take a turn, or go down straight; or,” and he smiled at her again, “it may pinch out. Nothing is so uncertain as an ore vein.”
“Do you think it will?” asked Ora anxiously.
“No, don’t worry. I was down the other day; and did some prospecting on my own account besides. I think you’ve got a big mine.”
“But suppose the vein should take a sudden dip to the right—you don’t want them burrowing under your hill——”
“They won’t burrow under my hill,” he said grimly. “I should persuade them that there was an even richer vein on their left.”
“Is there?”
“I have reason to think so. They naturally would want to avoid the expenses of a lawsuit, and of course they would waste a lot of time sinking a shaft or driving across. Their lease would be pretty well up by the time——”
“Youarecold-blooded! What of me? I should be making nothing, either.”
“You’d make it all later on. How much do you expect to spend in Europe anyway? You must have made a thousand dollars a day since the first carload of ore was smelted.”
She was on the point of replying that a woman could not have enough money in Europe, when she remembered the conspiracy to make him believe that a thousand dollars would cover the expenses of his wife.
“Oh, it is merely that I don’t like being one of the pawns in your game,” she said.
“You’d have all the more later on. Ore doesn’t run away.”
“Howcanyou stay away from your mine? I feel—afterall that you have told me!—that you are wild to get at it?”
“So I am! So I am! But I said I wouldn’t and that is the end of it. I want that last year at the School.”
“What shall you do with all that money—if your hill turns out to be full of gold? More, I hope, than the rest of our millionaires have done for Montana—which is exactly nothing. You might give the State a complete irrigating system.”
“Good idea! Perhaps I will. But that is in the future. I want the fun first——”
“Fun? It is the passion of your life, your great romance. You’ll never love a woman like that.”
“Of course not.” But he was staring at her. He had a sensation of something swimming in the depths of his mind, striving to reach the surface. He changed his position suddenly and sat up. “And you?” he asked. “You have the same vision. Couldn’t you feel the same absorbing passion——”
“For ore?” The scorn of her entire sex was in her voice. “Dead cold metal——”
“Every molecule, every individual atom is alive and quivering——”
“I am not interested in chemistry.”
He still stared at her. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes blazing. She sprang to her feet.
“Ida is the wife for you! She’ll never ask much of you and you never could hurt her, not even if you tried, she is fortunate in lacking just that which you could hurt.”
“What is it?” He spoke eagerly. He, too, had risen, his eyes still on her face. Unconsciously he held his breath.
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand it I told you—and I haven’t the least desire to tell you. She will make you comfortable, do you credit when you are a rich man, spend your money royally. That is allyouwill ask ofher. Now, I’ll go back.”
He was a step or two below her. Their eyes were on a level. He looked at her sombrely for a moment, then walked past her up the steps.
“You need not call a cab. I shall go home. I should only set them all talking if I appeared in the ballroom again. You can tell Mark that I didn’t feel well and that you took me home.”
They walked along the high terrace until they found a point of easy descent.
“What have I said to make you angry?” he asked.
Ora laughed with determined good humour. “It was not I. It was merely my sex that flared up. Please forget it.”
“I want to thank you for what you have done for Ida,” he said abruptly, and it was evident that the words cost him more than his former revelations. “It was a great thing for you to do.”
“Oh, Ida has become my most intimate friend. I have never enjoyed Butte so much as in these last few months.”
“Has she? And Mark is my best friend.” He jerked his head in annoyance; manifestly the remark had been too spontaneous. They were before her gate. She extended a limp hand, but he held it firmly. He was smiling again although he looked depressed.
“Do give me a friendly shake,” he said. “I do like you and you will be going in a few days.”
“I do not go for five months.”
“You can go next week. I’ll square it with Mark.”
“I don’t wish to go next week. Besides, Mark expects some important people here in the autumn, and needs my help. He has a deal on.”
“I’ll dispossess Mark of any such notion. It’s all nonsense, this idea of a man’s needing his wife’s help in business. It’s a poor sort of man that can’t manage his own affairs, and Mark is not a poor sort. Now, you are angry again!”
“That would be foolish of me,” she said icily. “You merely don’t understand. You never could. Do you want to get rid of me?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes, I think I do.”
Then Ora relented. She also gave him the smile that she reserved as her most devastating weapon. “I am sorry,” she murmured, “but I don’t think I can be ready for at least three months. Nor Ida.”
“You go next week,” he said.
And go they did.