Читать книгу Spawn of the North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 18

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Dian, after dancing steadily for an hour, became uncomfortably aware of the increasing warmth of the room, the heavy, blended odor of food, liquor, perfume, damp powder, and cigarette smoke. During an intermission when Tyler was playing for Sockeye's hornpipe, she managed to evade the attentions of half a dozen young men and slip through a side door that led into the natural garden surrounding the Floating Trap.

She followed the needle-padded trail under the spruce trees, drinking in the dusk and the freshness of green things. The cool of the night smelled of hemlock, ferns, and the running water of a creek that rippled into the channel on her right. She could hear the murmuring of couples hidden by the surrounding shrubbery.

Glad to be alone for a little while, she seated herself on a bench in the shadow of a spruce just above the beach. Before her stretched the ebon water with the golden sweep of the moon upon it. She watched a log drift slowly across the moon-path into the darkness on the other side.

Tonight, she felt herself to be caught up in some strange, elemental current, magical and adventurous, that was carrying her into—what? Why had she been so perturbed because Jim Kemerlee hadn't come near her? What had she expected? He was nothing to her. She was in love with Alan Bronson, she reminded herself. He'd be here with her in two weeks, and soon after that she would be leaving Alaska, perhaps forever. There was no room in her life for any other man but Alan.

Even as she formulated this thought, a vision of the dark young boatman of the morning flashed before her—his deep blue eyes with their look of provocative amusement, his oddly disturbing mouth with a tiny hollow above the v of the upper lip, his——She jerked herself up, dismayed at the vividness with which she could recall every detail of his face. Wrenching her thought back to her fiancé, she held Alan's brown comeliness in her mind.

She had received a long radiogram from him during the afternoon, and she was terribly lonely for him, she told herself. There was something about this June night that filled her with a sudden breathless longing for him. If he were here with her now, she felt that she would go into his arms with a new eagerness. She would return his kisses with an ardor she had never known before.

She moved restlessly on her bench, and was just deciding she'd had enough of solitude when she became aware that a couple had seated themselves on the other side of the wide elderberry hedge back of her. She had been so absorbed in her thoughts she had not noticed their coming.

'Oh-h-h ... my beautiful!' The low masculine voice was young, vibrant, appealing. 'You're so little, so adorable. You make me want to go out and—fight for you ... You make me have sweet thoughts—like creamy poppies in the moonlight.... When you touch me with your fragile, lovely hands I——But feel, darling ... That's my heart singing. That's the music you make in me. You——'

'Oh, yes ... I know.' There was a slumberous impatience in the feminine voice. 'But don't talk. Just kiss me ... No. Not on the cheek, honey-mouth. This way ...'

Silence. Moments passing like hours. Then a gasp, and the masculine voice—could it be the same?—husky, shaking: 'God ... darling ...'

Dian was on her feet without knowing how she got there. She stood rigid with incredulity, apprehension, suspicion. Then she tried to wipe the whole from her mind. That couldn't be Ivor, her little brother. She had never heard Ivor's voice sound like that. And Eve—Eve undoubtedly had an experimental curiosity about men, but she would never try her tricks on a boy like Ivor, more than ten years younger than herself.

Still ... All at once Dian knew she must make sure.

With the intention of moving along the path that led past the hidden couple, she started briskly forward and almost collided with a tall figure.

'Oh! You!' she said icily.

Jim Kemerlee stood looking down at her in the aureate dimness beneath the trees. 'Yes,' he answered in his deep, smooth voice. 'Will you dance with me?'

Now that the moment of refusal to which she had looked forward had come, Dian found herself facing him in a strange beglamoured silence. She was acutely conscious of him and of herself—two magnetic beings charged with mysterious emotions and strangely akin to the wilderness about them—the trees, the clean scent of elder blossoms, the running water, the cool and liquid sounds made by early silver salmon going up two and two through the crystal darkling waters that led inland to the spawning grounds. A ray of moonlight fell on his face, and suddenly she knew that he, too, was feeling something of this. For an instant it seemed that a force powerful as hate sent the arms of their spirits reaching for each other. Then she heard herself saying with calculated indifference: 'All my dances are promised.'

He came very close in the dusk and bent his considering gaze upon her. 'What would you do,' he asked in a low, compelling voice that made her heart beat faster, 'if I took you away from one of those lucky partners?'

Dian, furious with herself for her school-girl susceptibility, managed a scornful little laugh. 'Oh,' she derided, 'I'd match such b-i-g, s-t-r-o-n-g, he-man antics with the proper biting, kicking, and scratching of the reluctant female. For you see,' she added earnestly, 'I really don't like you at all.'

'No-o-o?' There was mockery in his tones. 'But you're going to like me a lot—when you know me better. As for a dance—well, I can wait until then.' He was turning to walk away when a third voice broke in laughingly:

'What's Jim trying to do, Miss Turlon? Pirate one of my dances?'

Startled, they both glanced up to see Tyler Kemerlee standing beside them in the twilight. He placed a hand on his brother's shoulder and the two engaged in a short, good-natured exchange of persiflage. Then Tyler took possession of Dian in his lazy, assured way, and led her back to the dance.