With the license of long familiarity, Donald knocked at the front door of the Brent cottage to announce his arrival; then, without awaiting permission to enter, he opened the door and met Nan in the tiny hall hurrying to admit him.
"You--Donald!" she reproved him. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be out."
"That's why I came in," he retorted drily and kissed her. "And I'm here because I couldn't stand The Dreamerie another instant. I wanted my mother and sisters to call on you and thank you for having been so nice to me during my illness, but the idea wasn't received, very enthusiastically. So, for the sheer sake of doing the decent thing I've called myself. It might please you," he added, "to know that my father thought I should."
"He is always tactful and kind," she agreed.
She led him to her father's old easy chair in the living room.
"As Dirty Dan O'Leary once remarked in my presence," he began, "it is a long lane that hasn't got a saloon at the end of it. I will first light a cigarette, if I may, and make myself comfortable, before putting you on the witness stand and subjecting you to a severe cross-examination. Seat yourself on that little hassock before me and in such a position that I can look squarely into your face and note flush of guilt when you fib to me."
She obeyed, with some slight inward trepidation, and sat looking up at him demurely.
"Nan," he began, "did anybody ever suggest to you that the sporty thing for you to do would be to run away and hide where I could never find you?"
She shook her head.
"Did anybody ever suggest to you that the sporty thing for you to do would be to return to Port Agnew from your involuntary exile and inspire me with some enthusiasm for life?"
His keen perception did not fail to interpret the slight flush of embarrassment that suffused Nan's face. "I object to that question, your honor," she replied with cleverly simulated gaiety, "on the ground that to do so would necessitate the violation of a confidence."
"The objection is sustained by the court. Did my father or Andrew Daney, acting for him, ever offer you any sum of money as a bribe for disappearing out of my life?"
"No. Your father offered to be very, very kind to me the morning I was leaving. We met at the railroad station and his offer was made
after I informed him that I was leaving Port Agnew forever--and why. So I know he made the offer just because he wanted to be kind--because he is kind."
"Neither he nor Daney communicated with you in anyway following your departure from Port Agnew?"
"They did not."
"Before leaving New York or immediately after your return to Port Agnew, did you enter into verbal agreement with any member of my family or their representative to nurse me back to health and then jilt me?"
"I did not. The morning I appeared at the hospital your father, remembering my statement to him the morning I fled from Port Agnew, suspected that I had had a change of heart. He said to me: 'So this is your idea of playing the game, is it?' I assured him then that I had not returned to Port Agnew with the intention of marrying you, but merely to stiffen your morale, as it were. He seemed quite satisfied with my explanation, which I gave him in absolute good faith."
"Did he ever question you as to how you ascertained I was ill?"
"No. While I cannot explain my impression, I gathered at the time that he knew."
"He credited Andrew Daney with that philanthropic job, Nan. He does not know that my mother communicated with you."
"Neither do you, Donald. I have not told you she did."
"I am not such a stupid fellow as to believe you would ever tell me anything that might hurt me, Nan. One does not relish the information that one's mother has not exhibited the sort of delicacy one expects of one's mother," he added bluntly.
"It is not nice of you to say that, Donald. How do you know that Mr. Daney did not send for me?"
He smiled tolerantly. "Before Daney would dare do that he would consult with my father, and if my father had consented to it he would never have left to Daney the task of requesting such a tremendous favor of you for his account. If Daney ever consulted my father as to the advisability of such a course, my father refused to consider it."
"What makes you think so, old smarty?"
"Well, I know my father's code. He had no hesitancy in permitting you to know that you were not welcome as a prospective daughter-in-law, although he was not so rude as to tell you why. He left that to your imagination. Now, for my father to ask a favor of anybody is very unusual. He has a motto that a favor accepted is a debt incurred, and he dislikes those perennial debts. My father is a trader, my dear. If he had, directly or indirectly, been responsible for your return to Port Agnew for the purpose of saving his son's life, he would not be--well, he just wouldn't do it," he explained with some embarrassment. "He couldn't do it. He would say to you, 'My son is dying because he finds life uninteresting without you. If you return, your presence will stimulate in him a renewed interest in life and he will, in all probability, survive. If you are good enough to save my son from death you are good enough to share his life, and although this wedding is about going to kill me, nevertheless we will pull it off and make believe we like it.'"
"Nonsense," she retorted.
"Knowing how my father would act under such circumstances, I was dumfounded when he informed me this afternoon that you had agreed to perform under false pretenses. He was quite certain you would proceed to jilt me, now that I am strong enough to stand it. He said you had promised him you would."
"I did not promise him. I merely told him truthfully what my firm intention was at the time he demanded to be informed as to the nature of my intentions. I reserved my woman's right to change my mind."
"Oh!"
"Had I made your father a definite promise I would have kept it. If I were a party to such a contract with your father, Donald dear, all of your pleading to induce me to break it would be in vain."
"A contract without a consideration is void in law," he reminded her. "Dad just figured he could bank on your love for me. He did you the honor to think it was so strong and wonderful that death would be a delirious delight to you in preference to spoiling my career by marrying me--well--Elizabeth disillusioned him!"
Nan's eyebrows lifted perceptibly.
"She informed my father in my presence," Donald continued, "that you had had a change of heart; that you were now resolved to accept me should I again ask you to marry me. It appears you had told Andrew Daney this--in cold blood as it were. So Dad went to the telephone and verified this report by Daney; then we had a grand show-down and I was definitely given my choice of habitation--The Dreamerie or the Sawdust Pile. Father, Mother, Elizabeth and Jane; jointly and severally assured me that they would never receive you, so Nan, dear, it appears that I will have to pay rather a heavy price for the privilege of marrying you--"
"I have never told you I would marry you," she cried sharply.
"Yes, you did. That day in the hospital."
"That was a very necessary fib and you should not hold it against me. It was a promise absolutely not made in good faith."
"But did you tell Daney that you would accept me if I should ask you again to marry me?"
She was visibly agitated but answered him truthfully. "Yes, I did."
"You said it in anger?"
"Yes." Very softly.
"Daney had come to you with an offer of monetary reward for your invaluable services to the McKaye family, had he not? And since what you did was not done for profit, you were properly infuriated and couldn't resist giving Daney the scare of his life? That was the way of it, was it not?"
Nan nodded and some tears that trembled on her long lashes were flicked off by the vigor of the nod; some of them fell on the big gaunt hands that held hers.
"I suppose you haven't sufficient money with which to return to New York?" he continued.
Again she nodded an affirmative.
"Just what are your plans, dear?"
"I suppose I'll have to go somewhere and try to procure a position as a cook lady."
"An admirable decision," he declared enthusiastically. "I'll give you a job cooking for me, provided you'll agree to marry me and permit me to live in your house. I'm a man without a home and you've just
got to take me in, Nan. I have no other place to lay my weary head."
She looked at him and through the blur of her tears she saw him smiling down at her, calmly, benignantly and with that little touch of whimsicality that was always in evidence and which even his heavy heart could not now subdue.
"You've--you've--chosen the Sawdust Pile?" she cried incredulously.
"How else would a man of spirit choose, old shipmate?"
"But you're not marrying me to save me from poverty, Donald? You must be certain you aren't mistaking for love the sympathy which rises so naturally in that big heart of yours. If it's only a great pity--if it's only the protective instinct--"
"Hush! It's all of that and then some. I'm a man grown beyond the puppy-love stage, my dear--and the McKayes are not an impulsive race. We count the costs carefully and take careful note of the potential profits. And while I could grant my people the right to make hash of my happiness I must, for some inexplicable reason, deny them the privilege of doing it with yours. I think I can make you happy, Nan; not so happy, perhaps, that the shadow of your sorrow will not fall across your life occasionally, but so much happier than you are at present that the experiment seems worth trying, even at the expense of sacrificing the worldly pride of my people."
"Are you entertaining a strong hope that after you marry me, dear, your people will forgive you, make the best of what they consider a bad bargain and acknowledge me after a fashion? Do you think they will let bygones be bygones and take me to their hearts--for your sake?"
"I entertain no such silly illusion. Under no circumstances will they ever acknowledge you after a fashion, for the very sufficient reason that the opportunity to be martyrs will never be accorded my mother and sisters by yours truly, Donald McKaye, late Laird apparent of Port Agnew. Bless, your sweet soul, Nan, I have some pride, you know. I wouldn't permit them to tolerate you. I prefer open warfare every time."
"Have you broken with your people, dear?"
"Yes, but they do not know it yet. I didn't have the heart to raise a scene, so I merely gave the old pater a hug, kissed mother and the girls and came away. I'm not going back."
"You will--if I refuse to marry you?"
"I do not anticipate such a refusal. However, it Hoes not enter into the matter at all in so far as my decision to quit The Dreamerie is concerned. I'm through! Listen, Nan. I could win my father to you--win him wholeheartedly and without reservation--if I should inform him that my mother asked you to come back to Port Agnew. My mother and the girls have not told him of this and I suspect they have encouraged his assumption that Andrew Daney took matters in his own hands. Father has not cared to inquire into the matter, anyhow, because he is secretly grateful to Daney (as he thinks) for disobeying him. Mother and the girls are forcing Daney to protect them; they are using his loyalty to the family as a club to keep him in line. With that club they forced him to come to you with a proposition that must have been repugnant to him, if for no other reason than that he knew my father would not countenance it. When you told him you would marry me if I should ask you again, to whom did Daney report? To Elizabeth, of course--the brains of the opposition. That proves to me that my father had nothing to do with it--why the story is as easily understood from deduction as if I had heard the details from their lips. But I cannot use my mother's peace of mind as a club to beat dad into line; I cannot tell him something that will almost make him hate mother and my sisters; I would not force him to do that which he does not desire to do because it is the kindly, sensible and humane course. So I shall sit tight and say nothing--and by the way, I love you more than ever for keeping this affair from me. So few women are true blue sports, I'm afraid."
"You must be very, very angry and hurt, Donald?"
"I am. So angry and hurt that I desire to be happy within the shortest possible period of elapsed time. Now, old girl, look right into my eyes, because I'm going to propose to you for the last time. My worldly assets consist of about a hundred dollars in cash and a six dollar wedding ring which I bought as I came through Port Agnew. With these wordly goods and all the love and honor and respect a man can possibly have for a woman, I desire to endow you. Answer me quickly. Yes or no?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"You chatterbox! When?"
"At your pleasure."
"That's trading talk. We'll be married this afternoon." He stretched out his long arms for her and as she slid off the low hassock and knelt beside his chair, he gathered her hungrily to him and held her there for a long time before he spoke again. When he did it was to say, with an air of wonder that was almost childlike:
"I never knew it was possible for a man to be so utterly wretched and so tremendously happy and all within the same hour. I love you so much it hurts." He released her and glanced at his watch. "It is now two o'clock, Nan. If we leave here by three we can reach the county seat by five o'clock, procure a license and be married by six. By half past seven we will have finished our wedding supper and by about ten o'clock we shall be back at the Sawdust Pile. Put a clean pair of rompers on the young fellow and let's go! From this day forward we live, like the Sinn Fein. 'For ourselves alone.'"
While Nan was preparing for that hurried ceremony, Donald strolled about the little yard, looking over the neglected garden and marking for future attention various matters such as a broken hinge on the gate, some palings off the fence and the crying necessity for paint on the little white house, for he was striving mightily to shut out all thought of his past life and concentrate on matters that had to do with the future. Presently he wandered out on the bulkhead. The great white gulls which spent their leisure hours gravely contemplating the Bight of Tyee from the decaying piling, rose lazily at his approach and with hoarse cries of resentment flapped out to sea; his dull glance followed them and rested on a familiar sight.
Through the Bight of Tyee his father's barkentine Kohala was coming home from Honolulu, ramping in before a twenty mile breeze with every shred of canvas drawing. She was heeled over to starboard a little and there was a pretty little bone in her teeth; the colors streamed from her mizzen rigging while from her foretruck the house-flag flew. Idly Donald watched her until she was abreast and below The Dreamerie and her house-flag dipped in salute to the master watching from the cliff; instantly the young Laird of Tyee saw a woolly puff of smoke break from the terrace below the house and several seconds later the dull boom of the signal gun. His heart was constricted. "Ah, never for me!" he murmured, "never for me--until he tells them to look toward the Sawdust Pile for the master!"
He strode out to the gate where his father's chauffeur waited with the limousine. "Take the car home," he ordered, "and as you pass through town stop in at the Central Garage and tell them to send a closed car over to me here."
The chauffeur looked at him with surprise but obeyed at once. By the time the hired car had arrived Nan and her child were ready, and just before locking the house Nan, realizing that they would not return to the Sawdust Pile until long after nightfall, hauled in the flag that floated over the little cupola; and for the second time, old Hector, watching up on the cliff, viewed this infallible portent of an event out of the ordinary. His hand trembled as he held his marine glasses to his blurred eyes and focussed on The Sawdust Pile, in time to see his son enter the limousine with Nan Brent and her child--and even at that distance he could see that the car in which they were departing from the Sawdust Pile was not the one in which Donald had left The Dreamerie. From that fact alone The Laird deduced that his son had made his choice; and because Donald was his father's son, imbued with the same fierce high pride and love of independence, he declined to be under obligation to his people even for the service of an automobile upon his wedding day.
The Laird stood watching the car until it was out of sight; then he sighed very deeply, entered the house and rang for the butler.
"Tell Mrs. McKaye and the young ladies that I would thank them to come here at once," he ordered calmly.
They came precipitately, vaguely apprehensive. "My dears," he said in an unnaturally subdued voice, "Donald has just left the Sawdust Pile with the Brent lass to be married. He has made his bed and it is my wish that he shall lie in it."
"Oh, Hector!" Mrs. McKaye had spoken quaveringly. "Oh, Hector, dear, do not be hard on him!"
He raised his great arm as if to silence further argument. "He has brought disgrace upon my house. He is no longer son of mine and we are discussing him for the last time. Hear me, now. There will be no further mention of Donald in my presence and I forbid you, Nellie, you, Elizabeth and you, Jane, to have aught to do wie him, directly or indirectly."
Mrs. McKaye sat down abruptly and commenced to weep and wail her woe aloud, while Jane sought vainly to comfort her. Elizabeth bore the news with extreme fortitude; with unexpected tact she took her father by the arm and steered him outside and along the terrace walk where the agonized sobs and moans of her mother could not be heard--for what Elizabeth feared in that first great moment of remorse was a torrent of self-accusation from her mother. If, as her father had stated, Donald was en route to be married, then the mischief was done and no good could come out of a confession to The Laird of the manner in which the family honor had been compromised, not by Donald, but by his mother, aided and abetted by his sisters! The Laird, now quite dumb with distress, walked in silence with his eldest daughter, vaguely conscious of the comfort of her company and sympathy in his hour of trial.
When Elizabeth could catch Jane's attention through the window she cautiously placed her finger on her lip and frowned a warning. Jane nodded her comprehension and promptly bore her mother off to bed where she gave the poor soul some salutary advice and left her to the meager comfort of solitude and smelling salts.
* * * * *
Just before he retired that night, The Laird saw a light shine suddenly forth from the Sawdust Pile. So he knew his son had selected a home for his bride, and rage and bitterness mingled with his grief and mangled pride to such an extent that he called upon God to take him out of a world that had crumbled about his hoary head. He shook his fist at the little light that blinked so far below him and Mrs. McKaye, who had crept down stairs with a half-formed notion of confessing to The Laird in the hope of mitigating her son's offense--of, mother-like, taking upon her shoulders an equal burden of the blame--caught a glimpse of old Hector's face, and her courage failed her. Thoroughly frightened she returned noiselessly to her room and wept, dry-eyed, for the fountain of her tears had long since been exhausted.
Meanwhile, down at the Sawdust Pile, Nan was putting her drowsy son to bed; in the little living-room her husband had lighted the driftwood fire and had drawn the old divan up to the blue flames. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, outlining plans for their future, when Nan, having put her child to bed, came and sat down beside him. He glanced at her with troubled eyes and grinned a trifle foolishly.
"Happy?" he queried.
She nodded. "In a limited fashion only, dear heart. I'm thinking how wonderfully courageous you have been to marry me and how tremendously grateful I shall always be for your love and faith." She captured his right hand and fondled it for a moment in both of hers, smiling a little thoughtfully the while as if at some dear little secret. "Port Agnew will think I married you for money," she resumed presently; "your mother and sisters will think I married you to spite them and your father will think I married you because you insisted and because I was storm-tossed and had to find a haven from the world. But the real reason is that I love you and know that some day I am going to see more happiness in your eyes than I can see to-night."
Again, in that impulsive way she had, she bent and kissed his hand. "Dear King Cophetua," she murmured, "your beggar maid will never be done with adoring you." She looked up at him with a sweet and lovely wistfulness shining in her sea-blue eyes. "And the sweetest thing about it, you angelic simpleton," she added, "is that you will never, never, never know why."