The Everlasting Whisper Part 20

"And the rest of us with you," said King. "If Miss Gaynor cares to talk things over with Gratton----"

Gloria put out her hand impulsively, touching King's arm.

"_You_ stay. Please. Until--he goes."

King inclined his head gravely, not realizing that his body stiffened under her light touch.

"What about _me_?" demanded the "judge" sharply. "Am I needed or ain't I?"

"I'd say not this evening," King's dry voice answered him. "Good-night to you."

"That's a fine way to treat a man," cried Summerling truculently. "Here I ride all this way in the dark, and without stoppin' for so much as supper; here I ain't had a bite to eat since dinner-time, and it's good-night and get out! And that hundred dollars I was to get so fast, how about that? Think I'm the man to let folks trample on me and----"

"Maybe Jim will give you a hand-out at his cabin," King told him. "As for your money, get it out of Gratton if he promised it to you--or," he added with a flash of heat, "take it out of his hide, for all I care."

"Wait for me outside, Summerling," muttered Gratton. "_I_ haven't said you won't be needed, have I?"

"Just the same, I wouldn't mind takin' what's comin' to me now----"

"Man alive!" shouted Gratton, whirling on him. "Haven't I got enough on my hands without you yelping at me?"

"Just the same----"

"Jim," called King above the incoherent mouthings, "slip your arm through Summerling's and lead him off with you. Feed him if you feel like it, and let him stick around for a word with Gratton if he wants.

And you, Steve Jarrold, Ben Gaynor isn't here, but just the same you can take it from me that neither you nor any other of Swen Brodie's hangdogs is wanted in Ben Gaynor's house. Out you go."

Jarrold's eyes slanted off to Gratton. Then, seeing himself ignored and forgotten, he shrugged his shoulders, pulled on his hat, and went out.

Behind him, arm in arm, one smiling widely and the other pulling back and still sputtering, went Jim and the "judge."

To all this Gloria had given scant attention. The spell no longer lay over her; she was keenly awake to the demands of the present; she was thinking, thinking, thinking! It seemed that she had walked on quicksands; that a hand had drawn her up and placed her where she was now, with solid ground underfoot; but that still all about her were quicksands. What temporary sense of security was hers was due to Mark King, to his presence. As long as he stood there, where she could put out a hand and touch him, she could rest calmly, a.s.sured of safety. But when he went, there remained Gratton and his venom. Quicksands all about her in which she would be floundering at this moment but for Mark King----

Her heart was beating normally again, the pallor left her face, which became delicately flushed. Her eyes, large and humid, a sweet grey and once more almost childlike--eyes to remind a man that here, after all, was no woman of the world, but only a young girl--rose to King's and met his long and searchingly. Yet there was that in their expression that made him understand that she was not looking at him, the physical man, so much as through him. For the first time in her pampered life the day had come when she was face to face with vital issues; when there was no mamma and no papa to turn to; when there were no shoulders other than her own to feel the weight of events. She must do her own thinking, come to her own decisions. Here was no time for a misstep. The one great step she had already taken; she had cried "No!" That step could be reconsidered, retraced; she looked at Gratton's face and saw that. But now she would not do that; she could not. In the city, seeing the two men together, she had turned to Gratton. Now, here in her father's log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so. Did men change colour like chameleons, s.h.i.+fted from one environment to another? Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon?

A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: a girl who was very young, spoiled, vain, and selfish; a girl who was older, who looked above and beyond the confines of her own self, who was warmhearted and impulsive, and could be generous. There was the Gloria who was the product of her mother's teaching and pampering; there was that other Gloria who was the true daughter of a pioneer stock, a girl linked to the city through tradition, bound to the outdoors through instinct. There was the Gloria who was ashamed of Mark King at a formal gathering in her own home; there was the Gloria who was thrilled to the depths of her being as in the forest-lands she knew a breathless moment in the arms of Mark King.

Well, here were considerations to linger over on an idle day. Now, without seeking for hidden springs, there were on the surface certain plain facts. No matter what she had felt toward Gratton before, she detested him now; no matter what he might have appeared in San Francisco, here in his unaccustomed garb he looked to her puny, shallow, and contemptible. He was, as she had told him, a beast. He had betrayed her confidence; he had taken advantage of her headlong youth; he had displayed to her view the vileness within him. He loved her, did he? So much the better. It lay within her power, then, to repay him, if only in part, for what he had made her suffer.

"I repeat, Miss Gloria," Gratton was saying, a stubborn look in his eyes, "that you promised to marry me. You have had a hard day, I realize; there has been much to unnerve you. I erred in haste, perhaps; I should have waited until you had a night's rest. But you know why I did not wait. It was for your sake."

Gloria heard him through with a hard little smile.

"Nothing is further from my intention, Mr. Gratton," she told him icily, "than to marry you. Now or ever. Please let us consider the matter closed once and for all."

His fingers worked nervously at his sides. Gloria chose the moment to lift her eyes again fleetingly to King's. She wanted Gratton to see, she wanted to hurt him all that she could. She looked back to see him wince.

Nor did his quick contraction of the brows result from her glance alone; he had seen the look lying unhidden in King's eyes. Mark King had to-night, for the first time, swept barriers aside and looked straight into his own heart and known that all of the love that was in him to give had been given to Gloria Gaynor; he had come from Jim's cabin to look on her for the last time; he was giving her up. And then, when he had turned away rather than hear her murmur "Yes," she had cried out ringingly: "No!" The sod had not fallen upon a beloved face; death had not entered the door; life was not extinguished--where there was life invariably there was hope--he had given Gloria up, yes; but she had come back from beyond the frontier, she had come calling to him. He was certain of nothing just now beyond the tremendous, all-excluding fact that, wise or fool, he loved her. He wanted her with a want that is greater than hunger or thirst, or love of man for man or of man for life itself. Much of this lay s.h.i.+ning in his eyes for Gratton to read--or for Gloria.

"I am no boy to be thrown aside like an old glove," cried Gratton, beside himself, shaken with jealous fury. "You have promised; you have loved me; in your heart you love me now. Shall I stand back for a girl's nervous whim? I tell you, you shall marry me."

Gloria's laughter, cool and insolent, maddened him. He clenched his hands and was swept away by his pa.s.sion to gusty vehemence:

"Think before you laugh! What if, instead of doing the gentlemanly thing, I refused to marry you? Alone with me all this time; all last night; a clerk to swear I bought clothing for you; a register to show where we engaged a room as man and wife; the San Francisco papers already bandying your name about, already nosing after scandal. You've _got_ to marry me; there is nothing else for you to do!"

Gloria flushed hotly. But only in anger this time. King mystified, looking from one to the other, turned at last to Gloria and muttered:

"For G.o.d's sake let me throw him out of the door!"

"I think it might be best first," she answered quietly, "if Mr. Gratton remained long enough to understand that this is the last time I shall ever speak to him or listen to a word from him. He has tried to get me into a nasty situation; he will do all that he can to promote scandal.

But I want him to know that he will, in the end of it all, have my father to reckon with--and my friends." Again she looked swiftly at King and again Gratton writhed at the look. "Papa will not be here to-night; he is hurt and in Coloma, and I'll give you his message soon. But----"

"You saw your father! In Coloma!" It was a gasp of astonishment from Gratton. "You said nothing. You brought a message to King here?"

"And you escorted me and never guessed!" Gloria taunted him. "Really it seems too bad, after all of your week-end trips to Coloma, after all of your conferences with the estimable Mr. Swen Brodie!"

His prominent eyes bulged, written large with consternation. For a moment he stood the picture of uncertainty, plucking at his lip.

"Gloria," he said shortly, "despite all you have said I shall see you again. To-morrow, when we have both rested, I'll come to you. Now, if you will pardon me, I'll have a word with King. Strictly business, you may be sure, King," he concluded sarcastically.

"There's to be no business between you and me," King told him promptly.

"But there is. If you've got two grains of common sense. Look you, Loony Honeycutt is dead at last. His secret is no longer his secret. Swen Brodie knows something--a whole lot----"

"It strikes me," frowned King, "that you know more of this than I gave you credit for. Where do you come in?"

"I know--nearly all that it is necessary to know!" His eyes flashed triumphantly. "Think I'm the man to let the crowd of you lift a fortune right under my nose? Here is my proposition, and you'll thank your stars that I make it: We are not friends, you and I, but that is no reason that we cannot be business a.s.sociates until this trick is turned. You and I enter into a pact right now, purely business, you understand." He was speaking more and more rapidly in the grip of a new emotion.

"Whatever we find we divide, fifty-fifty;----"

King's sudden laughter, no pleasant sound in Gratton's ears, checked the rush of words. To accept Gratton as a partner--on a fifty-fifty split of the spoils! Was the man crazy?

"I have been working with Brodie," shouted Gratton. "If I go on with him now, with him and the men with him, six or eight of them taking what he gives them either in money or in curses and orders--if, I say, I chip in with him against you, what will the inevitable end be, I ask you?

Look at the odds----"

"The inevitable end," said King sternly, "will be that they'll pick your bones and kick you out."

"I demand to know what word Gaynor sent----"

"Will you have him go, Mark?" said Gloria. "He--sickens me."

King, unleashed by her words, took a quick step forward.

"Gratton," he said, "you'd better go."

Gratton, rising to fresh fury, shouted at him:

"And leave you and her here? Alone? All night----"

King bore down upon him and struck him across the mouth, hurling him back so that Gratton tripped and fell. Gloria rose and stood watching, terrified and yet fascinated. She saw Gratton crawl to his feet; his hand went out to the table to draw himself up; it found one of the heavy bronze book-ends; the fingers gripped it so that the tendons stood out like cords. She could see the faces of both men, Gratton's twitching and vindictive, King's immobile, looking at once calm and terribly stern. If there were two Glorias within her, one of them fled now; the other watched with quick bright eyes and gloried in the man who had come at her hour of direst need; one vanished, afraid, the other felt a little thrill go singing through her blood. And though that bronze block, were it hurled at King's head, might have been the death of him, she was not once in doubt as to the end of this conflict. There before her eyes a man contended with a manikin.