Читать книгу Dan Barry's Daughter - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 7

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She had ridden three miles to the west when she came suddenly on the place, for as Peter carried her over the top of a dune, she saw the schoolhouse below her with light pouring out of every open window. There were dozens of horses and buckboards tethered near the building and as the dance started at this moment, she heard not only the music, but even the whisper of the many feet across the floor—so plainly did sound travel through the desert night!

It acted strangely upon Joan. She knew that this was the place she sought. She knew it as plainly as if a door had closed upon her and shut her into the midst of happiness. And yet at the same time she was frightened. She could not have kept away from the place any more than if she had been a moth fluttering near a flame, and yet she felt a dread as of fire itself.

She skirted to the side until she reached a little forest of cactus and scrub cedar tall enough to conceal her horse. There she left Peter with the reins thrown and a reassuring pat on his nose. Starting on again, she became as cautious as when she had stolen about in the ranch-house this night in dread of waking Buck Daniels. And there was need of care, for here and there about the schoolhouse couples were strolling who had danced their fill for the time being, and every couple was a man and a woman.

The heart of Joan beat strangely as she watched them. They walked very near to each other. Their heads were close together. They paused often and, raising their faces in unison, looked up to the moon. It had floated well up in the heavens now, and it looked like a buckler of priceless silver. Around it was spread a halo of color—a rainbow of fantastic delicacy.

Indeed, it was worth looking at, that moon. But Joan, crouched behind a rock and watching with the intentness of a wild cat, studied the faces of two who paused just before her to stare at the sky, and certainly it appeared to her that she had never seen a more foolish expression. Their lips were parted a little and their hands were clasped—he a gaunt fellow, bowed and old with labor even at thirty years, and she big-handed from work and her face parched and thin from the lack of happiness.

What were they murmuring?

“I love you, Margie, dear.”

“Oh, Bill—I love you, too!”

They turned away, slowly, and escaped another pair that was coming up.

“Love!” murmured Joan to herself with magnificent scorn. “What stupid things they are?”

She tried to tell herself that she was losing all desire to be inside that schoolroom with its music and its dancers, and yet something held her with a small, sure thread.

Here was another couple. At least they were not gaping at the moon. The girl was so pretty that it made Joan smile with pleasure to see her. And then with a piercing eye she examined the dress of her. There was a peculiar magic in it. It was only a simple pink frock, but it fluffed around the body of the girl like a clinging bit of sun-tinted cloud.

One half expected to look through the mist to the outline of the graceful body. And yet there was nothing immodest.

The man, too, was quite different from that other of the crooked shoulders and the wan face. He was a handsome fellow, arrowy straight, with a pair of level black brows and keen eyes beneath them.

“He’ll tell her that he loves her,” said Joan to herself. “I hope he does! And what will she do then?”

But their conversation was not at all what she had wished.

“We’ve gone about far enough,” said the girl, coming to a halt and facing her companion so that her profile came into line with the watchful eyes of Joan. “Now, what do you want to say to me?”

“Just what you know I’m going to say!” exclaimed the man.

“Haven’t the least idea.”

“You have, though. You’ve broken your promise again!”

“What promise?”

“That you’d stop flirting.”

“John Gainor! Besides—I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do though.”

“Will you explain?”

“There’s Chick Montague been following you all evening like your shadow. You danced with him twice. And he looked plumb foolish while he was dancing!”

“Are you jealous again?”

“Jealous? Of course not! I just want to keep you from being talked about.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I say, Nell, you got to stop!”

“What’ll make me? When I’m doing nothing wrong—”

“D’you call it nothing wrong when you make every man you dance with figure that you’re tired of me and mighty glad that you’re rid of me for a while, at least?”

“I’ve never said that in my life.”

“Not in so many words. But words ain’t the only things that count. There’s a way you got of looking down and looking up sudden and bright at a gent that knocks ’em flat—and you know it as well as I do. And then you’ve got a way of smiling at them sort of sad and sweet as if there was something you’d like to tell ’em, if you only could!”

“John, you talk as if I were a—a—I’m not going to say another word to you to-night.”

“Then I’ll take you home now.”

“I won’t go a step! I’m having the best time in my life—and you want me to give it up!”

“Nell!”

“Oh!” cried Nell, stamping, “you make me so—”

Suddenly Gainor drew himself up. And Joan trembled with excitement. She wanted to go out and take his arm and say: “Oh, don’t speak too quickly! She’s meant to do no wrong!”

But, of course, she could only stay where she was and shiver with apprehension as Gainor said coldly: “If you’re tired of me, I ain’t going to bother you no more, Nell. But we got to have a show-down right here and now!”

What would Nell do now, Joan wondered. What defiance would spring out of her pride? But she was astonished to see Nell throw out her hands in an appealing gesture.

“You’re trying to break my heart!” she sobbed.

“Oh, Nell,” cried the man softly. “Oh, honey, I’d go through fire to make you happy. Don’t you know that?”

And, quite regardless of whoever might be looking, he caught Nell in his arms. It was such an unexpected ending to the little drama that Joan caught her breath, smiling and nodding in sympathy. She was so glad the breach was healed that she wanted to run out and shake their hands and tell them how happy she was.

“Stop crying, dear,” Gainor was saying. “I’m a brute the way I been talking to you. I’d like to get down on my knees and beg your pardon. Please stop crying, Nell, and I’ll never talk about flirting again!”

And indeed the whole body of Nell was shaken and quivering. But it was not with sobs. To the utter amazement of Joan, straight toward whom the face of the girl was turned, Nell was laughing, impudently, silently, with her face crushed close to the shoulder of her lover.

“But folks will see us!” Gainor muttered, drawing back.

Nell buried her face in her hands.

“Oh, Nell,” groaned the man, “I’ll never forgive myself! Will you?”

He thought she was still crying, no doubt. But Joan, shocked and thunderstruck, knew well enough that she was merely hiding the last of her laughter.

Oh, shameless woman, she thought. And her anger arose. Oh, wretched, guileful woman! How she shamed all her sex!

And now they were walking off affectionately arm in arm with the girl looking sadly up at Gainor and saying: “I only want you to be kind to me, John. Just a little kind to me!”

“Kind to you!” Gainor replied, his voice a great tremor of enthusiasm. “Nell, I’ll work for you until my hands are raw. I’ll make you happy if I have to—”

His voice faded in the distance. So to the very end Nell had tricked him, using the tears which laughter had brought to her eyes to subdue him. He should be warned, thought Joan; he should certainly be warned about the vixen.

She mused about how it might be done until she was astonished to find herself laughing softly. She checked that laughter at once, only to have it break out again.

“After all,” Joan murmured to herself, “she was wonderful! I wonder if any other woman in all the world could do that to a man?”

In the meantime, the music inside the school had swung into the air of a Spanish waltz song whose words she had heard and learned from a cow-puncher who had once worked for Buck Daniels. And the lilt of it entered her blood, irresistibly. She found her hand stirring in the rhythm. Her very pulse was beating to it. It became vitally necessary to her to look once inside that room at the dancers.

She stole around to the farther side of the school. There she found that the way was easy, for the foundation had been laid close to a ragged mass of black rocks. Up these she climbed and at the top found herself at the level of a window not more than three feet away. And by shifting her head from side to side she could survey the whole room.

But she did not care to shift it, for the instant her glance passed across the room it fell upon the form of a man like a lion compared with the best of all the others—a big, wide shouldered fellow who overflowed the chair he sat on, with a head covered with curling tawny hair thrown back to rest against the wall, and a face half stern and half handsome, and wholly careless of all that went on around him.

Two youngsters of sixteen or seventeen went spinning by in double time, through the mazes of a new dance, and the big man of the tawny hair so far roused himself as to lounge forward in his chair and clap his hands in the swift time of their shuffling feet. But then he leaned back again and ran his eyes negligently over the maze of faces before him as if he found nothing worth a particular examination.

Finally he arose, threw back his shoulders, and stretched himself a little—he loomed a whole head taller than the crowd—and left the hall. Now she could look about to see who else was there. But when she looked she found that she was seeing nothing on every side of her but that handsome bronzed face and the head of tawny hair. And fear, too, had come to her, so that she felt a great desire to be back home and in her bed with the covers drawn tightly around her neck.

What it was she feared she could not tell. But it was something like a child’s dread of the lonely dark—filled with unseen faces, and hands that might seize one by surprise, and great voices that might ring at one’s ear.

She stole back down the rock. All at once it seemed to her that she had been incredibly bold in adventuring as she had done.

And if Buck Daniels should ever know—

She hurried around the school again. She slipped away into the tangle of cedar and cactus until she reached Peter again, and as he whinnied a welcome no louder than a whisper, she threw her arms around his honest head and drew it close to her.

“Oh, Peter,” she murmured, “I’ve seen such strange things, and I’ve heard such strange things. Take me home as fast as you can.”

But when she had mounted to the saddle, trembling with weakness and fear and haste, her courage returned. For here was Peter under her, and in case of danger she could launch away on his back like an arrow from the string. One dance had ended; another dance was beginning. But its music was nothing. For still the words and the rhythm of the Spanish waltz rang through her head, and, tilting up her face, she began to sing them.