CHAPTER IX
I
A DREADFUL thing happened. Allie Peyton died suddenly of heart failure. The catastrophe occurred early in the evening; but Kenneth did not hear of it until he started out the following morning. His father was away on a business trip to Los Angeles, so he rode down at once to the ranch.
Daphne opened the door to his ring. Her eyes were red and tired, but they widened in amazement and anger when she saw him. At once she stepped outside and closed the door cautiously behind her.
"You! you!" she whispered intensely. "How dare you come to this house! Are you lost to all shame, all sense of decency? Have you no feeling for that old man's grief that you should show your face here to-day? Your father, at least, had a sense of shame. Go! go at once before you are seen!"
Kenneth stared at her, his jaw dropped in amazement, his spirit struck to confusion by this fierce and unexpected onslaught. He was unable to gather his faculties. Seeing that he made no move, Daphne, still in a white heat of anger, seized his arm as though to bustle him from the veranda. At the physical touch his mind snapped into focus.
"See here," he whispered, with equal ferocity. "I don't know what's the matter with you, but I'll tell you I'm about sick of this. You've treated me like a dog lately, for no reason at all. I've come down here this morning to tell the Colonel how sorry I am this has happened and to see if there is anything I can do, and you spring out at me! I won't have it, I tell you. I was as fond of Aunt Allie"
"Don'tyou dare call her that!" cried Daphne.
Kenneth, very white, stared at her a moment. Then he reached out and seized her firmly by the upper arm.
"You come with me, young woman," he commanded grimly. "You'll just explain yourself!"
She twisted trying to snatch her arm away, but his fingers bit in without mercy, and after a moment she gave up. Without easing his grip he led her down the steps, across the lawn, under the oak trees to Dolman's House. Once there he fairly flung her arm from him.
"Now, young woman!" he commanded.
She stood for a moment rubbing her arm, too angry to speak.
"You know perfectly well," she managed at last.
Kenneth faced her, his arms folded rather melodramatically across his chest. He was entirely in control of himself, very grim and determined, very cool; and seemed of a sudden to have put on an unwonted garment of cool maturity.
"We won't have any of that," he told her. "I asked you to explain your attitude, and I have the right after your treatment of me to expect you to do so."
His cold determination stiffened her own. She straightened and faced him.
"Very well, if you will have it openly," she said, and in level tones began her count. He listened without comment until she had quite finished.
"You believe all this?" he enquired then. "But that is a superfluous question: I see you do." He paced back and forth a few times considering. She watched him furtively. Strangely enough a tiny thrill of something very like hope sprang up in her heart. He was not taking it as she had expected. His face was set and gray, and his manner was of an iron repression. "I'd like to get this quite clear," he said after a moment, "so, if you don't mind, I'll restate it. Your own exposition was a little confused. As near as I can make it out, according to your story, my father has offered to buy Colonel Peyton's ranch or a portion of it." He checked the point off on his finger. "Failing in that he has entered into a plot to take the ranch away from the Colonel in spite of him, turning the old man out. The reason he wants the ranch is that he wants to turn it over to me. I am, and have been, in this plot from the beginning; and that is why I have been learning the ranch business. Incidentally I have been spying on conditions. Does that state the case?"
It did state exactly Daphne's belief and the cause of her anger. There was no reason why her sense of the rectitude of her position should weaken or her indignation abate. Yet, illogically, both of these things were happening. Somehow she actually began to feel on the defensive! That was unthinkable.
"Perfectly! " she answered, her spirit returning at the thought.
"Leaving my father out of it for the moment. Why have you thought I would be party to such a scheme—if there was such a scheme? Is that the opinion you have formed of me in the four or five years we have been together? Answer me, I want to know."
"N-no," hesitated Daphne. This was getting on the defensive with a vengeance.
"What was it then?"
"I heard with my own ears this Bates person tell the Colonel that that was why your father wanted it. And you told me yourself right here in this very spot that some day you would get this ranch. Don't tell me you don't remember!"
Kenneth puzzled over this statement with exasperating deliberation.
"Oh, I see," he observed at last. "I think I've got it." He looked straight at her, and the hard square lines of his face had softened and a quizzical gleam had come into his eyes. And somehow, whether it was that Kenneth's manner had an effect, that her own emotion had exhausted itself by its intensity, that the reaction from the past weeks had flung her back, or more subtly that again Dolman the wise exerted his mysterious influence; the fact remained that suddenly Daphne knew without the justification of words and arguments that it was all right.
"Daffy," said Kenneth, deliberately, "you're a goose!"
"A-am I?" she faltered.
The next instant she was shaking with sobs, tight folded in his arms, her face buried against his arm. After a few moments he raised her head and kissed her. She clung to him the harder.
"Oh, Ken! Ken!" she cried, brokenly. "It's so good to be back! So good to be back!"
"Sweetheart," he murmured.
She drew back to look at him, pushing herself away with both hands against his chest, her expression astonished and a little awed.
"Why, why Ken!" she gasped. "It is that; isn't it?"
"Of course," he soothed, drawing her back to him. "Haven't you known? I have, for weeks."
"Oh Ken," she said after a little, "we ought to be ashamed to be so happy just now. Think! Oh, we must try to be so good to the poor old Colonel!"
Thus brought back to the present problem, they sat down on the lowermost sweeping limb of Dolman's House to talk more soberly.
"Now as to my father's supposed part in all this," said Kenneth, "I don't believe it for moment. He is a business man accustomed to talking plain business, and he has been misunderstood. Probably he has some scheme of buying part of the ranch and turning it into farms, though he's never said anything to me about it. You know he's always had the small farm idea. Naturally he would suppose the Colonel would want to go in for it. But as for his plotting to do up the old man," Kenneth laughed, "why you don't know my father, that's all."
Daphne snuggled closer. There were any amount of loose ends, but they seemed unimportant. However, Kenneth proceeded to gather one of them up.
"Father's in Los Angeles," he went on. "Just as soon as he gets back I'll tell him about it." He paused, considering. "You don't suppose the Colonel would feel differently about it—now?" he suggested.
"Why should he?"
"Well—Aunt Allie—it may seem different to him now. Perhaps he'd like to get rid of the worry And of course we don't know all the ins and outs of the matter, do we? Certainly the situation can't change before the mortgages become due. Suppose I find out when that is: I can easily do it. Then it might be a good idea to let things alone for a little while until the Colonel gets straightened around a little and finds out just what he does want to do. We'd be very foolish to stir things all up uselessly. What do you think?"
"It might be a good idea. But, Ken, are you very sure your father?"
"Certain sure. Let me tell you about father. He probably thinks the Colonel is either an obstructionist to progress or is trying to hold him up. In either case he'd fight; for father is a fighter. But it's only because he doesn't understand the Colonel. I can fix that, never fear—when the time comes."
His confidence was so absolute that she shared it.
"Are you going to let me see the Colonel now?" he asked after a moment, with a rueful smile.
"I don't see how you can; I must explain to him—you see, he thinks the same as I did."
"Oh!" cried Kenneth, distressed, "you must fix that—I can't bear that thought."
She arose slowly, holding out her fingers to his clasp.
"Come," she said, consideringly. "I'll see."
But the matter was taken out of their hands. As they turned around the low flung screen of leaves formed by the lowermost branch of Dolman's House they came face to face with the tall figure of the Colonel. His clean-cut old face looked white, and the lines of it had somehow grown finer, but no visible marks of grief blurred his countenance or dimmed the kindly clearness of his eyes. Indeed, into the latter came a faint twinkle as he surveyed them, for they had been walking hand in hand, and the surprise of the encounter had left them so. Slowly the Colonel's gaze travelled from one face to the other.
"I see it is all right," he said, "and, children, I'm very, very glad. It is as it should be."
"Oh, godpapa," breathed Daphne, with meaning, "everything is all right."
The Colonel fairly twinkled at her.
"No need to tell me that, Puss," he turned to Kenneth. "You have won," he said, simply, "the finest, truest woman in the world and you must be good to her. There is nothing else in life my boy, nothing!— I know," he added in a low voice.
Kenneth stammered brokenly his thanks and an attempt at the impossible translating into words of sympathy for bereavement and sense of loss.
"I know, I know," said the Colonel, hastily. He seized and pressed Kenneth's hand strongly. "That is all right, too. It must be all right. I know you loved her, children; and she loved you. She must be very happy now in your happiness."
"If there is anything at all I can do, sir" stammered Kenneth, "anything at all"
"I know, I know, my boy. I'll call on you," and suddenly the Colonel turned from them and walked down through the oak trees, his step firm, his shoulders squared, his tall figure erect, his head high.
Daphne cast herself sobbing on Kenneth's breast.
"Oh, I wish he weren't like that!" she cried. "He's wonderful; but he breaks my heart! If he'd only give way a little! He's too tight-strung. He sits by her with that same look in his eyes!"
II
The funeral was the most extraordinary in the history of Arguello, some whispered. Certainly it was well attended. From all directions came people in vehicles and people on horseback. A returned traveller familiar with the old days would have said that another fiesta was forward at La Corona del Monte, another of Allie's birthday feasts to which came all the world and his wife. Except that on closer inspection he could not but have perceived that every form was clad in decent black, every face wore a proper expression of gravity, manners were subdued, and the tones of conversation were low. They drove into the enclosure and hitched their horses, exchanged murmurs with the old Spanish servants who were there to assist them; and so drifted up the knoll and over the lawn beneath the oaks toward the house. To many it was only too poignantly reminiscent of the old days. They saw in retrospect the Colonel and Allie at the foot of the steps waiting to greet them and the huge punch bowls under the trees; and the gay murmur that floated from the barbecue grounds across the way. Ah, things were different then! Many of them had not been to Corona del Monte for years, not since the old fiestas in Allie's honour had been given up. And here they were back again to assist in her last fiesta of all! The place did not look the same to them. The old spirit had sickened. And in spite of themselves they could not but notice the peeling paint, the sprouting weeds, the brown patches in the lawn, all the signs that Corona del Monte was not as of yore. As they drifted slowly toward the house they recognized one another; and half nodded, as though a full salutation would in some way desecrate; and gravitated together, and whispered subdued things. Oliver Mills was there; and old Don Vincente shaking with a town-acquired palsy, and his fat, soft, sympathetic women; Jim Paige, Dr. Wallace, old Patterson the riding master. And the Arguello familes were present in force, the Stanleys, Welchs, Carsons, Maynards, and their like; George Scott had come; and the entire Sociedad, getting the news by a chance rider, had driven all night to be there. The ranch dependents, their numbers sadly reduced since the old days, stood one side in a subdued, sad little group. Perhaps the greatest flutter was caused by the arrival of a number of red-buttoned Chinamen.
Inside the house—and this was the extraordinary part that caused the gossips to whisper—the mourners were greeted by the Colonel. By all etiquette of the time the Colonel should not have been in evidence. But there he was, greeting them as guests of the house; grave, to be sure, but clear-eyed, cordial, unembarrassed. He had a word for each of them, and such astonishing words!
"Mrs. Peyton will feel so glad you have come," he told them in effect; and they did not know what to say, being in such matters conventional souls, but were honestly touched. Somehow they sensed that the Colonel was for the last time doing the honours in his house, for the last time greeting poor Allie's guests at this her last fiesta of all. Then Daphne, or Kenneth, or Brainerd took charge of them.
The little house soon filled, and overflowed on to the veranda, and then to the lawn. The windows were opened so that the service could be heard. At its close they all unhitched their horses and followed to the cemetery, a long long string of them plodding through the dust that rose like the smoke of a great fire.
Daphne and Kenneth stayed to put the house in order. They cleared away the flowers, and rearranged everything just as it was. Sing Toy helped them in silence. They fixed the centre table just as usual, with the lamp, and they laid there the Colonel's paper and book.
"How about this?" asked Kenneth uncertainly, indicating the old wooden Boston rocker in which Mrs. Peyton had always sat with her work.
Daphne considered, her brows lined.
"Put it just where it has always been," she decided at last. "There! Now we must go before he gets back. He has been wonderful; but now he will want to be alone. Sing Toy must take care of him. You got to make him eat, Sing Toy."
"You bet, I fix 'em," said Sing Toy, cheerfully.
At heart Sing Toy was desolate; and he had woven purple in his pigtail as a sign of grief. So in the gathering dusk they stole away leaving the old ranch house to its shadows of the past.
III
Patrick Boyd wrote from Los Angeles for clothes to be sent him and departed for the East. He wrote Kenneth that a sudden and pressing call of business had summoned him. The latter easily found out that the mortgages on the ranch were not due for some time yet. So matters did not press.
The lovers lived a tip-toe. Life was all a gorgeous secret. The most commonplace affairs took on significance. Suddenly all the ordinary things in the world had entered into a conspiracy with them of some splendid sort hidden from the rest of mankind; for whom, indeed, they wore their everyday aspects as a disguise. They were very compassionate toward (a) those who were unmarried and unattached and could therefore be considered as leading a dead-alive sort of life: (b) those who were married and settled down and who consequently lived humdrum, stodgy existences; and (c) those engaged couples who did not fully apperceive the glories and possibilities of this estate and who therefore might be fairly adjudged as lost in ignorance. They did not say so; nor argue about it. They just felt it, which made George Scott want to spank them, but which merely caused everybody else to laugh in a sympathetic fashion. Not that they knew—or cared.
They were good to the Colonel, though. The innocent caller, or even passer-by, who occupied as much as five minutes of the valued leisure that they might have been devoting to each other, was often bewildered by evidences of suppressed impatience over his superfluous existence. You see, of the day, counting in sleep and occasional necessary separate tasks, but including of course all ranch work which could just as well as not be done in company, they could count on only about twelve hours a day together. As they had been closely associated only about four years, and as they could not expect to live more then fifty or sixty years more, it can readily be seen that outsiders who did not promptly get down to business and say what they had to say and then get out were a positive blight. Daphne, as of the social sex, tried to be polite in a strained sort of fashion; but Ken merely glowered.
All this did not apply to the Colonel. They followed the old man around every minute he would let them; and they were constantly popping in to see what they could do. The Colonel, to outside appearance, was the same as ever. His step had lost none of its spring, his figure none of its erectness, his kind old face none of its benevolent interest in those about him. He spoke of Allie frequently, and without the embarrassment of surface grief. People meeting him casually driving down Main Street in Arguello saw no difference in him. He was the same old Colonel.
But the ranch people knew. From the moment Allie left him the Colonel lost either his interest in or his grasp of details. Old Manuelo gave up consulting him after a while, and came to Kenneth or Brainerd to determine what to do. Details seemed to perplex, almost to irritate him. His brow cleared and his smile returned only when he had disposed of them in his usual fashion:
"I leave it to you, Manuelo. You know better than I do; and you will do for the best."
It was the same way about the place. The gardener gradually took things over and did as he pleased: Sing Toy ran the house. As a consequence the garden ran down, and the house took within itself a rigid Chinese formality of arrangement. These things distressed Daphne and Kenneth at first; but they found that any mention of them to the Colonel merely bothered him; while any attempt at direct regulation would arouse instant resentment on the part of those in charge. After all, if the Colonel did not notice these externals, why should it matter?
The Colonel walked and rode much about the ranch, to be sure; but it was in no superintending capacity. He knew its every hill and dale, almost its every bush and tree, and he went about loving them. Since his wife's death the earthly part of affection for her seemed to have transferred itself to Corona del Monte. His days took on a rough sort of routine. Except on the few occasions when he drove to town to visit Main Street, he rode or drove far afield all the morning—sometimes all day. In the afternoon he wandered about the nearer parts of the ranch, peering here and there, standing for long periods staring at the pigs, the ducks, the horses, or across the paddocks, poking into odd corners, testing hasps and well covers and bin-traps but never apparently with any purpose of suggestion or repair, greeting and chatting with the men and women and children of the ranch. Always he managed to keep up his supply of peppermint lozenges, which he distributed gravely. At evening he returned to eat his solitary dinner, after which he repaired to the sitting room where he sat down by the oil lamp and picked up his paper. Across the low table stood the old, worn wooden Boston rocker, just where it had always stood. From time to time the Colonel would glance across at it over the top of his bowed spectacles. Then he resumed his reading.