CHAPTER 12. ALINE MAKES A DISCOVERY
Aline pulled her horse to a walk. "You know Mr. Ridgway pretty well,don't you?"
Miss Balfour gently flicked her divided skirt with a riding-whip,considering whether she might be said to know him well. "Yes, I think Ido," she ventured.
"Mrs. Mott says you and he are great friends, that you seem very fondof each other."
"Goodness me! I hope I don't seem fond of him. I don't think 'fond' isexactly the word, anyway, though we are good friends." Quickly, keenly,her covert glance swept Aline; then, withdrawing her eyes, she flungher little bomb. "I suppose we may be said to appreciate each other. Atany rate, we are engaged."
Mrs. Harley's pony came to an abrupt halt. "I thought I had dropped mywhip," she explained, in a low voice not quite true.
Virginia, though she executed an elaborate survey of the scenery, couldnot help noticing that the color had washed from her friend's face. "Ilove this Western country--its big sweep of plains, of low, rollinghills, with a background of mountains. One can see how it gets into aman's blood so that the East seems insipid ever afterward," discoursedMiss Balfour.
A question trembled on Aline's blanched lips.
"Say it," permitted Virginia.
"Do you mean that you are engaged to him--that you are going to marryMr. Ridgway--without caring for him?"
"I don't mean that at all. I like him immensely."
"But--do you love him?" It was almost a cry--these low words wrung fromthe tortured heart.
"No fair," warned her friend smilingly.
Aline rode in silence, her stricken face full of trouble. How couldshe, from her glass house, throw stones at a loveless marriage? Butthis was different from her own case! Nobody was worthy to marry herhero without giving the best a woman had to give. If she were a girl--asudden tide of color swept her face; a wild, delirious tingle of joyflooded her veins--oh, if she were a girl, what a wealth of love couldshe give him! Clarity of vision had come to her in a blinding flash.Untutored of life, the knowledge of its meaning had struck home of thesuddenest. She knew her heart now that it was too late; knew that shecould never be indifferent to what concerned Waring Ridgway.
Aline caught at the courage behind her childishness, and accomplishedher congratulations "You will be happy, I am sure. He is good."
"Goodness does not impress me as his most outstanding quality," smiledMiss Balfour.
"No, one never feels it emphasized. He is too free of selfishnessto make much of his goodness. But one can't help feeling itin everything he does and says."
"Does Mr. Harley agree with you? Does he feel it?"
"I don't think Mr. Harley understands him. I can't help thinking thathe is prejudiced." She was becoming mistress of her voice and coloragain.
"And you are not?"
"Perhaps I am. In my thought of him he would still be good, even if hehad done all the bad things his enemies accuse him of."
Virginia gave her up. This idealized interpretation of her betrothedwas not the one she had, but for Aline it might be the true one. Atleast, she could not disparage him very consistently under thecircumstances.
"Isn't there a philosophy current that we find in people what we lookfor in them? Perhaps that is why you and Mr. Harley read in Mr. Ridgwaymen so diverse as you do. It is not impossible you are both right andboth wrong. Heaven knows, I suppose. At least, we poor mortals fogaround enough when we sit in judgment." And Virginia shrugged thematter from her careless shoulders.
But Aline seemed to have a difficulty in getting away from the subject."And you--what do you read?" she asked timidly.
"Sometimes one thing and sometimes another. To-day I see him as aliving refutation of all the copy-book rules to success. He shattersthe maxims with a touch-and-go manner that is fascinating in itsimmorality. A gambler, a plunger, an adventurer, he wins when acareful, honest business man would fail to a certainty."
Aline was amazed. "You misjudge him. I am sure you do. But if you thinkthis of him why--"
"Why do I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear.I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; buttomorrow--why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man.He will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to hisfriends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron ofthe arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point ofview one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me,my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much more likable than humdrumvirtue?"
Mrs. Harley's eyes blazed. "And you can talk this way of the man youare going to marry, a man--" She broke off, her voice choked.
Miss Balfour was cool as a custard. "I can, my dear, and without theleast disloyalty. In point of fact, he asked me to tell you the kind ofman I think him. I'm trying to oblige him, you see."
"He asked you--to tell me this about him?" Aline pulled in her pony inorder to read with her astonished eyes the amused ones of her companion.
"Yes. He was afraid you were making too much of his saving you. Hethinks he won't do to set on a pedestal."
"Then I think all the more of him for his modesty."
"Don't invest too heavily on his modesty, my dear. He wouldn't be theman he is if he owned much of that commodity."
"The man he is?"
"Yes, the man born to win, the man certain of himself no matter whatthe odds against him. He knows he is a man of destiny; knows quite wellthat there is something big about him that dwarfs other men. I know it,too. Wherefore I seize my opportunity. It would be a sin to let a manlike that get away from one. I could never forgive myself," sheconcluded airily.
"Don't you see any human, lovable things in him?" Aline's voice was anaccusation.
"He is the staunchest friend conceivable. No trouble is too great forhim to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he doesnot take it back. Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Takehis vanity, my dear. It soars to heaven."
"If I cared for him I couldn't dissect his qualities as you do."
"That's because you are a triumph of the survival of nature and impulseover civilization, in spite of its attempts to sap your freshness. Forme, I fear I'm a sophisticated daughter of a critical generation. If Iweren't, I should not hold my judgment so safely in my own keeping, butwould surrender it and my heart."
"There is something about the way you look at him that shocks me. Oneought not to let oneself believe all that seems easy to believe."
"That is your faith, but mine is a different one. You see, I'm aUnitarian," returned Virginia blithely.
"He will make you love him if you marry him," sighed Aline, coming backto her obsession.
Virginia nodded eagerly. "In my secret heart that is what I am hopingfor, my dear."
"Unless there is another man," added Aline, as if alone with herthoughts.
Virginia was irritably aware of a flood of color beating into hercheeks. "There isn't any other man," she said impatiently.
Yet she thought of Lyndon Hobart. Curiously enough, whenever sheconceived herself as marrying Ridgway, the reflex of her brain carriedto her a picture of Hobart, clean-handed, fine of instinct, with theinherited inflections of voice and unconscious pride of caste that comefrom breeding and not from cultivation. If he were not born togreatness, like his rival, at least he satisfied her critical judgmentof what a gentleman should be; and she was quite sure that thepotential capacity lay in her to care a good deal more for him than foranybody else she had met. Since it was not on the cards, as MissVirginia had shuffled the pack, that she should marry primarily forreasons sentimental, this annoyed her in her sophisticated hours.
But in the hours when she was a mere girl when she was not soconfidently the heir of all the feminine wisdom of the ages, herannoyance took another form. She had told Lyndon Hobart of herengagement because it was the honest thing to do; because she supposedshe ought to discourage any hopes he might be entertaining. But it didnot follow that he need have let
these hopes be extinguished sosummarily. She could have wished his scrupulous regard for the properthing had not had the effect of taking him so completely out of herexternal life, while leaving him more insistently than ever the subjectof her inner contemplation.
Virginia's conscience was of the twentieth century and American, thoughshe was a good deal more honest with herself than most of her sex inthe same social circle. Also she was straightforward with her neighborsso far as she could reasonably be. But she was not a Puritan in theleast, though she held herself to a more rigid account than she did herfriends. She judged her betrothed as little as she could, but this wasnot to be entirely avoided, since she expected her life to becomemerged so largely in his. There were hours when she felt she mustescape the blighting influence of his lawlessness. There were otherswhen it seemed to her magnificent.
Except for the occasional jangle of a bit or the ring of a horse's shoeon a stone, there was silence which lasted many minutes. Each was busywith her thoughts, and the narrowness of the trail, which here madethem go in single file, served as an excuse against talk.
"Perhaps we had better turn back," suggested Virginia, after the pathhad descended to a gulch and merged itself in a wagon-road. "We shallhave no more than time to get home and dress for dinner."
Aline turned her pony townward, and they rode at a walk side by side.
"Do you know much about the difficulty between Mr. Harley and Mr.Ridgway? I mean about the mines--the Sherman Bell, I think they calledit?"
"I know something about the trouble in a general way. Both theConsolidated and Mr. Ridgway's company claim certain veins. That istrue of several mines, I have been told."
"I don't know anything about business. Mr. Harley does not tell meanything about his. To day I was sitting in the open window, and twomen stopped beneath it. They thought there would be trouble in thismine--that men would be hurt. I could not make it all out, but that waspart of it. I sent for Mr. Harley and made him tell me what he knew. Itwould be dreadful if anything like that happened."
"Don't worry your head about it, my dear. Things are always threateningand never happening. It seems to be a part of the game of business tobluff, as they call it."
"I wish it weren't," sighed the girl-wife.
Virginia observed that she looked both sad and weary. She had startedon her ride like a prisoner released from his dungeon, happy in thesunshine, the swift motion, the sting of the wind in her face. Therehad been a sparkle in her eye and a ring of gaiety in her laugh. Intoher cheeks a faint color had glowed, so that the contrast of theirclear pallor with the vivid scarlet of the little lips had been lesspronounced than usual. But now she was listless and distraite, thegirlish abandon all stricken out of her. It needed no clairvoyant tosee that her heart was heavy and that she was longing for the momentwhen she could be alone with her pain.
Her friend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of ittroubled her. She would have given a good deal to have been able tolift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was awarethat Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as thattoward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late andtraveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about toengulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone.Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity andsympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came toher lips.
"You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!"
But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing ofthe girl's distress, at least, until after they separated at the doorof the hotel.