CHAPTER XXXI
AND it was that evening at the dinner table that Randolph remarked:
“Unless you’ve lost your interest in sport, there’s a chance for you. The grizzly’s a rare bird in California, these times, but the agent of a ranch my mother has in the Santa Lucia Mountains writes me that he has seen two of late, and has been thinking about killing or trapping them. It takes him several weeks to make up his mind to do anything, so the grizzlies are yours, if you care about them.”
Cecil had nearly risen from his seat. “I’ll start to-night!” he said. “How do you get there?”
“If you really care to go, I’ll walk over after dinner and ask Trennahan if he’ll go with you. I’m sorry that I can’t go myself, but I am not a sportsman, and I’m very much rushed. Trennahan is nearly as enthusiastic as yourself, and would be sure to go. You could start early to-morrow morning.”
“I will indeed! How jolly of you to think of it. I really am tremendously obliged. I’ve seldom been so keen about anything.”
Lee kept her eyes lowered. They were the feature she could least control, and she knew that they were blazing. Randolph told eighteen anecdotes of thegrizzly, to which Cecil listened with undivided attention.
As they passed out into the hall, Lee tapped Cecil’s arm with her fan.
“Will you come to the library a moment?” she said. “I want to speak to you.”
The library was in a wing of the house; they were sure to be out of earshot. She lit the gas, and then turned her eyes upon him. He moved uneasily and raised his eyebrows.
“Are you angry about something?”
“Do you really mean that you would leave me to go to spend two weeks tracking a grizzly bear?”
“It need not be as long as that.”
“It’s almost sure to be. It takes nearly two days to get to the ranch, and is such a tiresome trip that you will have to rest for another before you go out. You will be gone a fortnight at the very least.”
Cecil made no reply.
“We have not been engaged two weeks. Do you really mean that you will—that you can leave me for a loathsome grizzly bear?”
“I don’t want to leave you, of course. Couldn’t you come too?”
“And rough it? I never even camp out in the redwoods; and you have no idea what travelling in the wild parts of California means.”
“Of course you mustn’t come, then. But, you see, this is my only chance; and that is one of the things I came to California for—one that I started round the world after, for that matter. Surely youwouldn’t have me miss it! You told me to-day that you understood my feeling for sport.”
“I don’t understand at all how you can leave me! I’m not your own sort, you see, or, doubtless, I should.”
“It isn’t that only. You have led too many men round by the nose.”
“Not one of them would have left me for abear.”
“Which does not argue that they loved you better than I, merely that they are different. None of them succeeded in winning you, I may observe; and the way you treat them when they bore you makes me blush for my sex. Yesterday you fairly swept Mr. Geary out with a broom.”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
Cecil was facing her, his hands in his pockets. His eyes were smiling, but his jaw was set in a way she had taken note of two days before: she had demanded a confession of his past relations with women, and he had merely set his jaw and made no reply.
“Are you going?”
He nodded, still smiling. His hands were working nervously in his pockets, but she did not see them.
She gasped slightly. “I cannot believe it,” she said.
“That I can love you as passionately as a man ever loved a woman, and yet leave you to complete a record which means a good deal to me? If I were going to live in California I would put it off for ayear—with scarcely a regret; but it is now or never. Surely you will be reasonable.”
“You can go if you like, but you need not come back!” and she made a rush for the door.
He caught her in his arms, and held her so closely that she could not move. “I shall go, and I shall come back, and I shall marry you on the first of July. And believe this—I cannot get back quickly enough.”
“I can’t bear the thought of having you go, and I can’t bear the thought of being put aside for a bear,” sobbed Lee.
“Console yourself with the thought that you will never be able to get rid of me for more than two weeks at a time. I do not believe in matrimonial vacations.”
“You will never make another long sporting tour round the world?”
“Never! I have had that. I want a home more than anything on earth.”
“I wish I had more influence over you.”
“You mean that I was your blind besotted slave. When you have forgotten your false ideas of the relations of men and women, and accepted the right one, you will not bother yourself about trifles; and there is no reason why any one on earth should be happier than we.”
“After I have adapted myself!”
He gave her a little shake. “When you have swung round to the old world, and the only logical point of view. A state of society is all wrong where women rule—that is to say, it is in a semi-chaotictransition period. When your greatest country on the face of the earth has shaken down, men and women will occupy exactly the same relative positions that they do in older countries. And there will be fewer divorces.”
“How can you stand up here and lecture me?”
“I don’t want to lecture you. I want to kiss you.”
“I can’t help being an American. I was made one, and I have grown up one. How can I make myself over?”
“Think less about it. You Americans—particularly you Californians—carry your individuality round like a chip on your shoulder. You are as self-conscious about it as a little boy with his first pair of trousers. I hear Trennahan’s voice. I must leave you in five minutes, and I may not see you alone again. We have talked enough.”
And as they were both people who did nothing by halves, they parted with fervour, and mutual assurance of the other’s impeccability.