Daylight obeyed the girl's instructions, and soon the street he followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the first steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the rising wind proclaimed its imminence3. As far as he could see, there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy4 hills. To the right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large, full-grown eucalyptus5 grove6. Here all was noise and movement, the lofty, slender trunked trees swaying back and forth7 in the wind and clashing their branches together. In the squalls, above all the minor9 noises of creaking and groaning10, arose a deep thrumming note as of a mighty11 harp12. Knowing Dede as he did, Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere in this grove where the storm effects were so pronounced. And find her he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest13 of the opposing slope where the gale14 smote15 its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous16, though not tiresome17, about the way Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy18 subterfuge19, he was as direct and gusty20 as the gale itself. He had time neither for greeting nor apology.
"It's the same old thing," he said. "I want you and I've come for you. You've just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think about it the more certain I am that you've got a Sneaking21 liking22 for me that's something more than just Ordinary liking. And you don't dast say that it isn't; now dast you?"
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and he had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer, she felt a light but firmly insistent23 pressure as of his drawing her to him. Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire for the moment stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew herself away, though permitting her hand still to remain in his.
"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No." She smiled woefully. "Not of you, but of myself."
"You haven't taken my dare," he urged under this encouragement.
"Please, please," she begged. "We can never marry, so don't let us discuss it."
"Then I copper24 your bet to lose." He was almost gay, now, for success was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked him, without a doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well enough to let him hold her hand, well enough to be not repelled25 by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. "No, it is impossible. You would lose your bet."
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight's mind—a clew that explained everything.
"Say, you ain't been let in for some one of these secret marriages have you?"
The consternation26 in his voice and on his face was too much for her, and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of joy from the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed27 with himself decided28 that action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of flying leaves enveloped29 them, and hard on the heel of the wind came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to him and of a fresher and more poignant30 realization31 of what she meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware of it in the hand that held hers.
She suddenly leaned against him, bowing her head until it rested lightly upon his breast. And so they stood while another squall, with flying leaves and scattered32 drops of rain, rattled33 past. With equal suddenness she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Do you know," she said, "I prayed last night about you. I prayed that you would fail, that you would lose everything everything."
Daylight stared his amazement34 at this cryptic35 utterance36. "That sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women, and you've got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose everything, seeing as you like me—"
"I never said so."
"You didn't dast say you didn't. So, as I was saying: liking me, why you'd want me to go broke is clean beyond my simple understanding. It's right in line with that other puzzler of yours, the more-you-like-me-the-less-you-want-to-marry-me one. Well, you've just got to explain, that's all."
His arms went around her and held her closely, and this time she did not resist. Her head was bowed, and he had not see her face, yet he had a premonition that she was crying. He had learned the virtue37 of silence, and he waited her will in the matter. Things had come to such a pass that she was bound to tell him something now. Of that he was confident.
"It might be better for me if I were. Then I could make a fool of myself and be unhappy for the rest of my life. But my abominable39 common sense prevents. And that doesn't make me a bit happier, either."
"I'm still out of my depth and swimming feeble," Daylight said, after waiting vainly for her to go on. "You've got to show me, and you ain't shown me yet. Your common sense and praying that I'd go broke is all up in the air to me. Little woman, I just love you mighty hard, and I want you to marry me. That's straight and simple and right off the bat. Will you marry me?"
She shook her head slowly, and then, as she talked, seemed to grow angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was against him.
"Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have asked." She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. "You are honest and straightforward40. Do you want me to be honest and straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?—to tell you things that will hurt you?—to make confessions41 that ought to shame me? to behave in what many men would think was an unwomanly manner?"
The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not speak.
"I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud and humble42 at the same time that a man like you should care for me. But you have too much money. There's where my abominable common sense steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be my man—my lover and my husband. You would be your money's man. I know I am a foolish woman, but I want my man for myself. You would not be free for me. Your money possesses you, taking your time, your thoughts, your energy, everything, bidding you go here and go there, do this and do that. Don't you see? Perhaps it's pure silliness, but I feel that I can love much, give much—give all, and in return, though I don't want all, I want much—and I want much more than your money would permit you to give me.
"And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I am not ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never marry you. And I loved you much when I did not know you at all, when you first came down from Alaska and I first went into the office. You were my hero. You were the Burning Daylight of the gold-diggings, the daring traveler and miner. And you looked it. I don't see how any woman could have looked at you without loving you—then. But you don't look it now.
"Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight talk, and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have been living unnaturally43. You, a man of the open, have been cooping yourself up in the cities with all that that means. You are not the same man at all, and your money is destroying you. You are becoming something different, something not so healthy, not so clean, not so nice. Your money and your way of life are doing it. You know it. You haven't the same body now that you had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy flesh. You are kind and genial44 with me, I know, but you are not kind and genial to all the world as you were then. You have become harsh and cruel. And I know. Remember, I have studied you six days a week, month after month, year after year; and I know more about the most insignificant45 parts of you than you know of all of me. The cruelty is not only in your heart and thoughts, but it is there in face. It has put its lines there. I have watched them come and grow. Your money, and the life it compels you to lead have done all this. You are being brutalized and degraded. And this process can only go on and on until you are hopelessly destroyed—"
He attempted to interrupt, but she stopped him, herself breathless and her voice trembling.
"No, no; let me finish utterly46. I have done nothing but think, think, think, all these months, ever since you came riding with me, and now that I have begun to speak I am going to speak all that I have in me. I do love you, but I cannot marry you and destroy love. You are growing into a thing that I must in the end despise. You can't help it. More than you can possibly love me, do you love this business game. This business—and it's all perfectly47 useless, so far as you are concerned—claims all of you. I sometimes think it would be easier to share you equitably48 with another woman than to share you with this business. I might have half of you, at any rate. But this business would claim, not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine hundredths.
"Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man's money to spend. I want the man. You say you want ME. And suppose I consented, but gave you only one-hundredth part of me. Suppose there was something else in my life that took the other ninety-nine parts, and, furthermore, that ruined my figure, that put pouches49 under my eyes and crows-feet in the corners, that made me unbeautiful to look upon and that made my spirit unbeautiful. Would you be satisfied with that one-hundredth part of me? Yet that is all you are offering me of yourself. Do you wonder that I won't marry you?—that I can't?"
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on again.
"It isn't that I am selfish. After all, love is giving, not receiving. But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do you any good. You are like a sick man. You don't play business like other men. You play it heart and and all of you. No matter what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief diversion. There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in the stable. You would buy me a beautiful mansion50 and leave me in it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of business would be corroding51 you and marring you all the time. You play it as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the life of the trail. Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast and as far as you, to work as hard or endure as much. You hold back nothing; you put all you've got into whatever you are doing."
"But if you would only play the lover-husband that way—"
"And now I won't say another word," she added. "I've delivered a whole sermon."
She rested now, frankly54 and fairly, in the shelter of his arms, and both were oblivious55 to the gale that rushed past them in quicker and stronger blasts. The big downpour of rain had not yet come, but the mist-like squalls were more frequent. Daylight was openly perplexed56, and he was still perplexed when he began to speak.
"I'm stumped57. I'm up a tree. I'm clean flabbergasted, Miss Mason—or Dede, because I love to call you that name. I'm free to confess there's a mighty big heap in what you say. As I understand it, your conclusion is that you'd marry me if I hadn't a cent and if I wasn't getting fat. No, no; I'm not joking. I acknowledge the corn, and that's just my way of boiling the matter down and summing it up. If I hadn't a cent, and if I was living a healthy life with all the time in the world to love you and be your husband instead of being awash to my back teeth in business and all the rest—why, you'd marry me.
"That's all as clear as print, and you're correcter than I ever guessed before. You've sure opened my eyes a few. But I'm stuck. What can I do? My business has sure roped, thrown, and branded me. I'm tied hand and foot, and I can't get up and meander58 over green pastures. I'm like the man that got the bear by the tail. I can't let go; and I want you, and I've got to let go to get you.
"I don't know what to do, but something's sure got to happen—I can't lose you. I just can't. And I'm not going to. Why, you're running business a close second right now. Business never kept me awake nights.
"You've left me no argument. I know I'm not the same man that came from Alaska. I couldn't hit the trail with the dogs as I did in them days. I'm soft in my muscles, and my mind's gone hard. I used to respect men. I despise them now. You see, I spent all my life in the open, and I reckon I'm an open-air man. Why, I've got the prettiest little ranch8 you ever laid eyes on, up in Glen Ellen. That's where I got stuck for that brick-yard. You recollect59 handling the correspondence. I only laid eyes on the ranch that one time, and I so fell in love with it that I bought it there and then. I just rode around the hills, and was happy as a kid out of school. I'd be a better man living in the country. The city doesn't make me better. You're plumb60 right there. I know it. But suppose your prayer should be answered and I'd go clean broke and have to work for day's wages?"
She did not answer, though all the body of her seemed to urge consent.
"Suppose I had nothing left but that little ranch, and was satisfied to grow a few chickens and scratch a living somehow—would you marry me then, Dede?"
"Why, we'd be together all the time!" she cried.
"But I'd have to be out ploughing once in a while," he warned, "or driving to town to get the grub."
"But there wouldn't be the office, at any rate, and no man to see, and men to see without end. But it is all foolish and impossible, and we'll have to be starting back now if we're to escape the rain."
Then was the moment, among the trees, where they began the descent of the hill, that Daylight might have drawn61 her closely to him and kissed her once. But he was too perplexed with the new thoughts she had put into his head to take advantage of the situation. He merely caught her by the arm and helped her over the rougher footing.
"It's darn pretty country up there at Glen Ellen," he said meditatively62. "I wish you could see it."
At the edge of the grove he suggested that it might be better for them to part there.
"It's your neighborhood, and folks is liable to talk."
But she insisted that he accompany her as far as the house.
"I can't ask you in," she said, extending her hand at the foot of the steps.
"Do you know," he said, "taking it by and large, it's the happiest day of my life." He took off his hat, and the wind rippled64 and twisted his black hair as he went on solemnly, "And I'm sure grateful to God, or whoever or whatever is responsible for your being on this earth. For you do like me heaps. It's been my joy to hear you say so to-day. It's—" He left the thought arrested, and his face assumed the familiar whimsical expression as he murmured: "Dede, Dede, we've just got to get married. It's the only way, and trust to luck for it's coming out all right—".
But the tears were threatening to rise in her eyes again, as she shook her head and turned and went up the steps.
该作者的其它作品
《The Sea-Wolf海狼》
《白牙 White Fang》
《The Son of the Wolf狼孩儿》
该作者的其它作品
《The Sea-Wolf海狼》
《白牙 White Fang》
《The Son of the Wolf狼孩儿》
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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imminence
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| n.急迫，危急 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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eucalyptus
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| n.桉树，桉属植物 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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subterfuge
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| n.诡计；藉口 | |
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gusty
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| adj.起大风的 | |
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sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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consternation
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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decided
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enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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realization
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scattered
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rattled
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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utterance
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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humble
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unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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equitably
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pouches
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| n.（放在衣袋里或连在腰带上的）小袋( pouch的名词复数 )；（袋鼠等的）育儿袋；邮袋；（某些动物贮存食物的）颊袋 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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corroding
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| 使腐蚀，侵蚀( corrode的现在分词 ) | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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meander
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| n.河流的曲折，漫步，迂回旅行；v.缓慢而弯曲地流动，漫谈 | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
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