The Girl of the Golden West, David Belasco [read with me txt] 📗

/> "Mr. Johnson, how many times have you died?" Johnson did not have to think twice before answering. With wide, truthful eyes he said:

"That day on the road to Monterey I said just that one woman for me. I wanted to kiss you then," he added, taking her hand in his. And, strange to say, she was not angry, not unwilling, but sweetly tender and modest as she let it lay there.

"But, Mr. Johnson, some men think so much o' kisses that they don't want a second kiss from the same girl," spoke up the Girl after a moment's reflection.

"Doesn't that depend on whether they love her or not? Now all loves are not alike," reasoned the man in all truthfulness.

"No, but they all have the same aim--to git 'er if they can," contended the Girl, gently withdrawing her hand.

Silence filled the room.

"Ah, I see you don't know what love is," at length sighed Johnson, watching the colour come and go from her face.

The Girl hesitated, then answered in a confused, uneven voice:

"Nope. Mother used to say, 'It's a tickling sensation at the heart that you can't scratch,' an' we'll let it go at that."

"Oh, Girl, you're bully!" laughed the man, rising, and making an attempt to embrace her. But all of a sudden he stopped and stood with a bewildered look upon his face: a fierce gale was sweeping the mountain. It filtered in through the crevices of the walls and doors; the lights flickered; the curtains swayed; and the cabin itself rocked uncertainly until it seemed as if it would be uprooted. It was all over in a minute. In fact, the wind had died away almost simultaneously with the Girl's loud cry of "Wowkle, hist the winder!"

It is not to be wondered at, however, that Johnson looked apprehensively about him with every fresh impulse of the gale. The Girl's description of the storms on the mountain was fresh in his mind, and there was also good and sufficient reason why he should not be caught in a blizzard on the top of Cloudy Mountain! Nevertheless, as before, the calm look which he saw on the Girl's face reassured him. Advancing once more towards her, he stretched out his arms as if to gather her in them.

"Look out, you'll muss my roses!" she cried, waving him back and dodging Wowkle who, having cleared the table, was now making her last trip to the cupboard.

"Well, hadn't you better take them off then?" suggested Johnson, still following her up.

"Give a man an inch an' he'll be at Sank Hosey before you know it!" she flung at him over her shoulder, and made straightway for the bureau.

But although Johnson desisted, he kept his eyes upon her as she took the roses from her hair, losing none of the picture that she made with the light beating and playing upon her glimmering eyes, her rosy cheeks and her parted lips.

"Is there--is there anyone else?" he inquired falteringly, half-fearful lest there was.

"A man always says, 'who was the first one?' but the girl says, 'who'll be the next one?'" she returned, as she carefully laid the roses in her bureau drawer.

"But the time comes when there never will be a next one."

"No?"

"No."

"I'd hate to stake my pile on that," observed the Girl, drily. She blew up each glove as it came off and likewise carefully laid them away in the bureau drawer.

By this time Wowkle's soft tread had ceased, her duties for the night were over, and she stood at the table waiting to be dismissed.

"Wowkle, git to your wigwam!" suddenly ordered her mistress, watching her until she disappeared into the cupboard; but she did not see the Indian woman's lips draw back in a half-grin as she closed the door behind her.

"Oh, you're sending her away! Must I go, too?" asked Johnson, dismally.

"No--not jest yet; you can stay a--a hour or two longer," the Girl informed him with a smile; and turning once more to the bureau she busied herself there for a few minutes longer.

Johnson's joy knew no bounds; he burst out delightedly:

"Why, I'm like Dante! I want the world in that hour, because, you see, I'm afraid the door of this little paradise might be shut to me after-- Let's say this is my one hour--the hour that gave me--that kiss I want."

"Go long! You go to grass!" returned the Girl with a nervous little laugh.

Johnson made one more effort and won out; that is, he succeeded, at last, in getting her in his grasp.

"Listen," said the determined lover, pleading for a kiss as he would have pleaded for his very life.

It was at this juncture that Wowkle, silently, stealthily, emerged from the cupboard and made her way over to the door. Her feet were heavily moccasined and she was blanketed in a stout blanket of gay colouring.

"Ugh--some snow!" she muttered, as a gust of wind beat against her face and drove great snow-flakes into the room, fairly taking her breath away. But her words fell on deaf ears. For, oblivious to the storm that was now raging outside, the youthful pair of lovers continued to concentrate their thoughts upon the storm that was raging within their own breasts, the Girl keeping up the struggle with herself, while the man urged her on as only he knew how.

"Why, if I let you take one you'd take two," denied the Girl, half-yielding by her very words, if she but knew it.

"No, I wouldn't--I swear I wouldn't," promised the man with great earnestness.

"Ugh--very bad!" was the Indian woman's muffled ejaculation as she peered out into the night. But she had promised her lover to come to him when supper was over, and she would not break faith with him even if it were at the peril of her life. The next moment she went out, as did the red light in the Girl's lantern hanging on a peg of the outer door.

"Oh, please, please," said the Girl, half-protestingly, half-willingly.

But the man was no longer to be denied; he kept on urging:

"One kiss, only one."

Here was an appeal which could no longer be resisted, and though half-frightened by the tone of his voice and the look in his eye, the Girl let herself be taken into his arms as she murmured:

"'Tain't no use, I lay down my hands to you."

And so it was that, unconscious of the great havoc that was being wrought by the storm, unconscious of the danger that momentarily threatened their lives, they remained locked in each other's arms. The Girl made no attempt to silence him now or withdraw her hands from his. Why should she? Had he not come to Cloudy Mountain to woo her? Was she not awaiting his coming? To her it seemed but natural that the conventions should be as nothing in the face of love. His voice, low and musical, charged with passion, thrilled through her.

"I love you," said the man, with a note of possession that frightened her while it filled her with strange, sweet joy. For months she had dreamed of him and loved him; no wonder that she looked upon him as her hero and yielded herself entirely to her fate.

She lifted her eyes and he saw the love in them. She freed her hands from his grasp, and then gave them back to him in a little gesture of surrender.

"Yes, you're mine, an' I'm yours," she said with trembling lips.

"I have lived but for this from the moment that I first saw you," he told her, softly.

"Me, too--seein' that I've prayed for it day an' night," she acknowledged, her eyes seeking his.

"Our destinies have brought us together; whatever happens now I am content," he said, pressing his lips once more to hers. A little while later he added: "My darkest hour will be lightened by the memory of you, to-night."


XII.


The clock, striking the hour of two, filled in a lull that might otherwise have seemed to require conversation. For some minutes, Johnson, raised to a higher level of exaltation, even, than was the Girl, had been secretly rejoicing in the Fate that had brought them together.

"It's wonderful that I should have found her at last and won her love," he soliloquised. "We must be Fortune's children--she and I."

The minutes ticked away and still they were silent. Then, of a sudden, with infinite tenderness in his voice, Johnson asked:

"What is your name, Girl--your real name?"

"Min--Minnie; my father's name was Smith," she told him, her eyes cast down under delicately tremulous lids.

"Oh, Minnie Sm--"

"But 'twa'n't his right name," quickly corrected the Girl, and unconsciously both rose to their feet. "His right name was Falconer."

"Minnie Falconer--well, that is a pretty name," commented Johnson; and raising her hand to his lips he pressed them against it.

"I ain't sure that's what he said it was--I ain't sure o' anythin' only jest you," she said coyly, burying her face in his neck.

"You may well be sure of me since I've loved--" Johnson's sentence was cut short, a wave of remorse sweeping over him. "Turn your head away, Girl, and don't listen to me," he went on, gently putting her away from him. "I'm not worthy of you. Don't listen but just say no, no, no, no."

The Girl, puzzled, was even more so when Johnson began to pace the floor.

"Oh, I know--I ain't good enough for you !" she cried with a little tremour in her voice. "But I'll try hard, hard . . . If you see anythin' better in me, why don't you bring it out, 'cause I've loved you ever since I saw you first, 'cause I knowed that you--that you were the right man."

"The right man," repeated Johnson, dismally, for his conscience was beginning to smite him hard.

"Don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing," as indeed he was not.

"O' course every girl kind o' looks ahead," went on the Girl in explanation.

"Yes, I suppose," he observed seriously.

"An' figgers about bein'--well, Oh, you know--about bein' settled. An' when the right man comes, why, she knows 'im, you bet! Jest as we both knowed each other standin' on the road to Monterey. I said that day, he's good, he's gran' an' he can have me."

"I could have you," murmured Johnson, meditatively.

The Girl nodded eagerly.

There was a long silence in which Johnson was trying to make up his mind to tear himself away from her,--the one woman whom he loved in the world,--for it had been slowly borne in upon him that he was not a fit mate for this pure young girl. Nor was his unhappiness lessened when he recalled how she had struggled against yielding to him. At last, difficult though it was, he took his courage in both hands, and said:

"Girl, I have looked into your heart and my own and now I realise what this means for us both--for you, Girl--and knowing that, it seems hard to say good-bye as I should, must and will . . ."

At those clear words spoken by lips which failed so utterly to hide his misery, the Girl's face turned pale.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Johnson coloured, hesitated, and finally with a swift glance