The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
Читать онлайн книгу.
must think this over again. You must talk it over with your advisers before we come to a decision," he said gravely.
"I've told Mr. Jarmyn. He says the idea is utterly impossible. But we'll show him, won't we? It's my money and my stock, not his. I don't see why he should dictate. He's always 'My dear ladying' me. I won't have it," she pouted.
The fighting gleam was in Ridgway's eyes now. "So Mr. Jannyn thinks it is impossible, does he?"
"That's what he said. He thinks you wouldn't do at all."
"If you really mean it we'll show him about that."
She shook hands with him on it.
"You're very good to me," she said, so naively that he could not keep back his smile.
"Most people would say I was very good to myself. What you offer me is a thing I might have fought for all my life and never won."
"Then I'm glad if it pleases you. That's enough about business. Now, we'll talk about something important."
He could think of only one thing more important to him than this, but it appeared she meant plans to see as much as possible of him while he was in the city.
"I suppose you have any number of other friends here that will want you?" she said.
"They can't have me if this friend wants me," he answered, with that deep glow in his eyes she recognized from of old; and before she could summon her reserves of defense he asked: "Do you want me, Aline?"
His meaning came to her with a kind of sweet shame. "No, no, no—not yet," she cried.
"Dear," he answered, taking her little hand in his big one, "only this now: that I can't help wanting to be near you to comfort you, because I love you. For everything else, I am content to wait."
"And I love you," the girl-widow answered, a flush dyeing her cheeks. "But I ought not to tell you yet, ought I?"
There was that in her radiant tear-dewed eyes that stirred the deepest stores of tenderness in the man. His finer instincts, vandal and pagan though he was, responded to it.
"It is right that you should tell me, since it is true, but it is right, too, that we should wait."
"It is sweet to know that you love me. There are so many things I don't understand. You must help me. You are so strong and so sure, and I am so helpless."
"You dear innocent, so strong in your weakness," he murmured to himself.
"You must be a guide to me and a teacher."
"And you a conscience to me," he smiled, not without amusement at the thought.
She took it seriously. "But I'm afraid I can't. You know so much better than I do what is right."
"I'm quite a paragon of virtue," he confessed.
"You're so sure of everything. You took it for granted that I loved you. Why were you so sure?"
"I was just as sure as you were that I cared for you. Confess."
She whispered it. "Yes, I knew it, but when you did not come I thought, perhaps—— You see, I'm not strong or clever. I can't help you as Virginia could." She stopped, the color washing from her face. "I had forgotten. You have no right to love me—nor I you," she faltered.
"Girl o' mine, we have every right in the world. Love is never wrong unless it is a theft or a robbery. There is nothing between me and Virginia that is not artificial and conventional, no tie that ought not to be broken, none that should ever of right have existed. Love has the right of way before mere convention a hundredfold."
"Ah! If I were sure."
"But I was to be a teacher to you and a judge for you."
"And I was to be a conscience to you."
"But on this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself. However, there is no hurry. Time's a great solvent."
"And we can go on loving each other in the meantime."
He lifted her little pink fingers and kissed them. "Yes, we can do that all the time."
Chapter 26.
Breaks One and Makes Another Engagement
Miss Balfour's glass made her irritably aware of cheeks unduly flushed and eyes unusually bright. Since she prided herself on being sufficient for the emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine which of the interviews that lay before her was responsible for her excitement. It was, to be sure, an unusual experience for a young woman to be told that her fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a subsequent engagement, but she looked forward to it with keen anticipation, and would not have missed it for the world. Since she pushed the thought of the other interview into the background of her mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did not see how that could lend any impetus to her pulse.
But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the reception-room, Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool little nod and frank, careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so entirely mistress of herself, so much the perfectly gowned exquisite, that he began to dread anew the task he had set himself. It is not a pleasant thing under the most favorable circumstances to beg off from marrying a young woman one has engaged oneself to, and Ridgway did not find it easier because the young woman looked every inch a queen, and was so manifestly far from suspecting the object of his call.
"I haven't had a chance to congratulate you personally yet," she said, after they had drifted to chairs. "I've been immensely proud of you."
"I got your note. It was good of you to write as soon as you heard."
She swept him with one of her smile-lit side glances. "Though, of course, in a way, I was felicitating myself when I congratulated you."
"You mean?"
She laughed with velvet maliciousness. "Oh, well, I'm dragged into the orbit of your greatness, am I not? As the wife of the president of the Greater Consolidated Copper Company—the immense combine that takes in practically all the larger copper properties in the country—I should come in for a share of reflected glory, you know."
Ridgway bit his lip and took a deep breath, but before he had found words she was off again. She had no intention of letting him descent from the rack yet.
"How did you do it? By what magic did you bring it about? Of course, I've read the newspapers' accounts, seen your features and your history butchered in a dozen Sunday horrors, and thanked Heaven no enterprising reporter guessed enough to use me as copy. Every paper I have picked up for weeks has been full of you and the story of how you took Wall Street by the throat. But I suspect they were all guesses, merely superficial rumors except as to the main facts. What I want to know is the inside story—the lever by means of which you pried open the door leading to the inner circle of financial magnates. You have often told me how tightly barred that door is. What was the open-sesame you used as a countersign to make the keeper of the gate unbolt?"
He thought he saw his chance. "The countersign was 'Aline Harley,'" he said, and looked her straight in the face. He wished he could find some way of telling her without making him feel so like a cad.
She clapped her hands. "I thought so. She backed you with that uncounted fortune her husband left her. Is that it?"
"That is it exactly. She gave me a free hand, and the immense fortune she inherited from Harley put me in a position to force recognition from the leaders. After that it was only a question of time till I had convinced them my plan was good." He threw back his shoulders and tried to take the fence again. "Would you like to know why Mrs. Harley put her fortune at my command?"
"I suppose because she is interested in us and our little affair. Doesn't all the world love a lover?" she asked, with a disarming candor.
"She