Tiny Luttrell Part 32

The experiment proved a complete success, but then plain whim driving is not difficult. Christina spent an hour or so two or three times a day in driving the whim horse round and round until the tank was full, after which it was no trouble to keep the troughs properly supplied. The rest of her time she occupied in reading or musing in the shadow of the tank; but each day she boiled her "billy" in the hut, eating very heartily in her seclusion, and delighting more and more in the temporary freedom of her existence, as a boy in holidays that are drawing to an end. The whim stood high on a plain, the wind whistled through its timbers, and each evening the girl brought back to the homestead a higher color and a lighter step. In these days, however, very little was seen of her. She would come in tired, and soon secrete herself within four newspapered walls; and she went out of her way to discourage visitors at the whim.

Of this she made such a point that the manager, on coming in earlier than usual one afternoon, was surprised when Herbert, whom he met riding out from the station, informed him that he was on his way to the eight-mile to look up the whim driver. Herbert seemed to have something on his mind, and presently he told Swift what it was. He had awkward news for Tiny, which he had decided to tell her at once and be done with it. But he did not like the job. He liked it so little that he went the length of confiding in Swift as to the nature of the news. The manager annoyed him--he had not a remark to make.

Herbert rode moodily on his way. He was sorry that he had spoken to Swift (whose stolid demeanor was a surprise to him, as well as an irritation); he had undoubtedly spoken too freely. With Swift still in his thoughts, Luttrell was within a mile of the whim, and cantering gently, before he became aware that another rider was overtaking him at a gallop; and as he turned in his saddle, the manager himself bore down upon him with a strange look in his good eyes.

"I want you to let me--tell Tiny!" Jack Swift said hoa.r.s.ely, as Herbert stared. Jack's was a look of pure appeal.

"You?"

"Yes----You understand?"

"That's all right! I thought I couldn't have been mistaken," said Herbert, still looking him in the eyes. "By ghost, Jack, you're a sportsman!"

He held out his hand, and Swift gripped it. In another minute they were a quarter of a mile apart; but it was Swift who was riding on to the whim, very slowly now, and with his eyes on the black timbers rising clear of the sand against the sky. He could never look at them without hearing words and tones that it was still bitter to remember; and now he was going--to break bad news to Tiny? That was his undertaking.

He found the whim driver with her book in the shadow of the tank.

"Good-afternoon," Christina said very civilly, though her eyebrows had arched at the sight of him. "Have you come to see whether the troughs are full, or am I wanted at the homestead?"

"Neither," said Swift, smiling; "only the mail is in, and there are letters from England."

"How good of you!" exclaimed the girl, holding out her hand.

Swift was embarra.s.sed.

"Now you will pitch into me! I haven't seen the letters, and I don't know whether there is one for you: but I met Herbert, and he told me he had heard from your sister; and--and I thought you might like to hear that, as I was coming this way."

"It is still good of you," said Christina kindly; and that made him honest.

"It isn't a bit good, because I came this way to speak to you about something else."

"Really?"

"Yes, because one sees so little of you now, and soon you will be going.

The truth is something has been rankling with me ever since the night you arrived--nothing you said to me; it was my own behavior to you----"

"Which wasn't pretty," interrupted Tiny.

"I know it wasn't; I have been very sorry for it. When you offered to tell me about your engagement I wouldn't listen. I would listen now!"

"And now I shouldn't dream of telling you a word," Tiny said, staring coolly in his face; "not even if I _were_ engaged."

"Well, it amounts to that," Swift told her steadfastly, for he knew what he meant to say, and was not to be deterred by the snubs and worse to which he was knowingly laying himself open.

"Pray how do you know what it amounts to?"

"On your side, at any rate, it amounts to an engagement; for you consider yourself bound."

"Upon my word!" cried Tiny hastily. "Do you mind telling me how you come to know so much about my affairs?"

"I am naturally interested in them after all these years."

"How very kind of you! How interested you were when I foolishly offered to tell you myself! So you have been talking me over with Herbert, have you?"

"We have spoken about you to-day for the first time; that is why I'm here."

Christina was white with anger.

"And I suppose," she sneered, "that you have told him things which I have forgotten, and which you might have forgotten as well!"

"I don't think you do suppose that," Swift said gently. "No, he merely told me about your engagement."

"Then why do you want me to tell you?"

"Because you alone can tell me what I most want to know."

"Oh, indeed!"

"Yes--whether you are happy!"

She had found her temper, which enabled her to put a keener edge on the words, "That, I should say, is not your business"; and she stared at Swift coldly where he stood, with his hands behind him, looking down upon her without wincing.

"I am not so sure," said he st.u.r.dily. "I loved you dearly; _I_ could have made you happy."

"It is well you think so," was the best answer she could think of for that; and she did not think of it at once. "Do you know who he is?" she added later.

"Herbert told me. It seems you have tampered with a splendid chance."

"I have tampered with three. I shall jump at the next--if I get another."

"And if you don't?"

Involuntarily she drew a deep breath at the thought. Her head was lifted, and her blue eyes wandered over the yellow distance of the plains with the look of a prisoner coming back into the world.

"n.o.body could blame him," she said at last, "and I should be rightly served."

Swift crouched in front of her, almost sitting on his heels to peer into her face.

"Tiny," he suddenly cried, "you don't love him one bit!"

"But I think he loves me," she answered, hanging her head, for he held her hand.

"Not as I do, Tiny! Never as I have done! I have loved you all the time, and never anyone but you. And you--you care for me best; I see it in your eyes; I feel it in your hand. Don't you think that you, too, may have loved me all the time?"

"If I have," she murmured, "it has been without knowing it."

It was without knowing it that she trod upon the truth. Their voices were trembling.

"Darling," he whispered, "this would be home to you. It's the same old Wallandoon. You love it, I know; and I think--you love----"