Lighted Windows, page 12
“Jan! Jan!”
She tried to answer the anxious call. Her voice cracked.
“Don’t shoot, Johnson. You might hit her. Jan! Jan!”
“Here!” The word was a mere whisper. Nightmare. If she couldn’t call she could move, couldn’t she, not stand as though she were hypnotized. With all the force of her will she dragged her fascinated stare from the red eyes, coming nearer and nearer. She ran in the direction of the voices, stepped into a hole filled with water. Fell heavily. The shock freed her voice. Pulling herself up she called. She stumbled over a hummock. Harcourt caught her before she reached the ground.
“Jan! Jan! You’re not hurt?”
She rested against him as she struggled for breath. Laughed shakily.
“Hurt! No. At last—I’ve—I’ve seen a bear, Bruce.”
“For the love of Pete! What a target!”
A rifle shot followed Johnson’s shout of exultation. Another. Then a crash, splashing water. A yell of triumph.
“Sure you’re all right, Jan?” Harcourt was feeling of her arms, her shoulders.
She stood erect, pushed back her hair. “Quite sure. Let’s see the bear.”
He drew a revolver from its holster before he went on. Johnson and two section hands were bending over a huge brown body, measuring it. A group of natives, awed, terrified, ready to run if the animal moved, skulked under cover of a thicket. Johnson stood up grinning.
“Eight feet long, if it’s a foot, and four feet high at the shoulders. I’ll bet it weighs fourteen hundred pounds, Chief.”
Harcourt bent over the head lying on the pebbles. “How do you account for its being out at this time of day, Johnson?”
“Hunters. See the two marks on the shoulder? The bullets didn’t kill the old fella and he hid in the bushes. I bet they gave him a pain.” He grinned at Janice. “We’ll send you the pelt for a wedding present, M’arm.”
“Thank you, Mr. Johnson, I should love it.” She looked curiously at the revolver in Harcourt’s hand. Its mother-of-pearl butt gleamed rainbow colored. “I had no idea that a six-shooter could be so beautiful.”
He thrust it back into the holster. “That isn’t a six-shooter. That’s a Colt 38. You’ve been reading wild and woolly west stories. It was Archie Harper’s. I shouldn’t select anything so dressy, but he wanted me to carry it, so I do. It is just as deadly as a plainer weapon. Let’s go.”
He kept Janice’s hand tight in his as they stumbled and broke their way back to the field. She looked up at him as he followed her into the plane. Her voice shook with thrilled laughter.
“My word, what a day! Since yesterday noon life has been just one excitement after another.”
His tense face relaxed. “Doing our prettiest to entertain you, Jan.”
How one could love him for his smile, the girl thought, as she met his laughing eyes; how deeply and achingly one could love him for his smile—if one hadn’t determined never to love any man.
Johnson watched their take-off. As the plane climbed Janice waved to him. The wind flung her arm back across her breast.
Could it have been only this morning that she had left the Samp cabin tingling with a desire for adventure, she asked herself, as hours later they came down in the field at headquarters. Pasca, his bronze face split by gleaming rows of white teeth, charged from the hangar.
“We all mighty glad you and Mees get marry. Yes sirree.”
Harcourt swung Janice to the ground. “Thank you, Pasca. We are mighty glad, too. Has Mr. Grant arrived?”
“He come two—tree hour ago. Much flowers. Much bundle. Mees Samp seesters, they cry. They make for beeg party. Yes sirree.”
Harcourt smiled at Janice. “I’m afraid that we’re in for a celebration.”
She looked at the grinning, expectant Eskimo. A flicker of amused comprehension in Harcourt’s eyes was reflected in hers as she echoed debonairly:
“Afraid! I should hope that there would be a celebration. One—one doesn’t get married every day.”
XI
Harcourt thoughtfully bowed his black tie before the mirror in his room at the H house. What a day! Little he had thought as he had shaved in front of the same glass this morning before sun-up that he would return to it a married man. The eyes looking back at him narrowed. Married! Hardly. He would have Jan where he had the right to look after her, that was all. “And that’s a whale of a lot, my friend,” he told the man looking back at him. A leap into the dark. A blood-tingling leap. Not unlike stepping out of a plane in the air, only one was reasonably sure that one’s chute would bring one safely down. So many marriages cracked-up. If it were possible to prevent it, this one should not. He would send Janice on the last boat—no winter for her here—he would join her as soon as he could leave. Then—if she cared—they would have a glorious honeymoon. He nodded to the man looking back at him with blazing eyes.
“You are traveling fast and far. Paxton is still in the running.”
He buttoned his silk waistcoat, slipped into his dinner-jacket. The other engineers and he had agreed to dress for the Samp girls’ party. Why not? They kept evening-clothes here that they might appear in civilized garb when they dined and danced at Fairbanks or Nome. Miss Martha and Miss Mary were entitled to their finest courtesy.
He glanced at the clock in the living-room as he entered. Too early to go to the Waffle Shop. Janice would be dressing. Tong descended from the couch, stretched lazily, before he thrust a cold nose into his hand. Had she had time to rest? What a day for her! He lighted his pipe. One arm on the mantel he looked about. Green boughs outlined doorways and windows. A great jar of golden berries and their leaves beautified a corner. Someone with taste must have superintended the decorations. Had Tubby executed his commissions? He bent over the bowl of red roses on the desk to inhale their fragrance. Not such a wilderness when a florist could produce blooms like that within flying distance. Would Janice think the H house unbearably raw? He spoke to the dog. “Come on, boy, let’s see how it looks to us.” He opened the door at the end of the room opposite his bedroom, snapped on the light. Miss Mary must have worked like a beaver. Crystal and enamel appointments covered the top of a dressing-table. Two perfect pink roses, in a slender vase behind a photograph of Billy Trent in a silver frame, perfumed the room. He lifted the chintz which covered one of the log walls. Frocks. The colors made him think of an old-time perennial border with the blues of larkspur predominating. A battalion of shoes, slippers and sandals stood in close formation on a shelf below. He dropped the curtain as though it burned him. His eyes traveled on to the cot-bed with its soft rose brocade spread. He spoke to Tong watchfully waiting on the threshold:
“Together we ought to keep her safe and happy, old fella.”
The dog responded with a promissory lick of his rough red tongue. With a last glance about, Harcourt snapped out the light. A crude place for a girl like Jan! Not much like her surroundings had she married Paxton. But—she had turned Paxton down. She had come to him. She had trusted him enough for that. God help him to keep her faith and confidence.
He picked up the belt and holster which he had dropped to the desk when he came in. As he hung it on a peg on the log wall the lines between his brows deepened. The shoulder holster which held its twin was empty. The missing revolver had been there this morning—he had debated for an instant as to which one he would wear. He opened the kitchen door.
“Pasca!”
No answer to his call. The boy was doubtless helping the Samp girls in their preparations. He would look him up at the Waffle Shop. Perhaps one of the engineers had borrowed it.
Plump Miss Mary in a dove-gray taffeta, its balloon sleeves proclaiming it of the vintage of ’94, its rosepoint bertha suggesting a grandmother of parts, greeted him as he entered the Samp living room. Obviously she was flustered.
“Well, now! Well, now! Janice is dressing, Mr. Bruce. Mary and I begged her to wear one of her lovely evening dresses for our party. She let us choose it from a trunk in the storehouse.” She patted his sleeve. “Don’t you look nice.”
“That goes for you too, Miss Mary. You almost knocked my eyes out with your pretty dress.” He bent his head and kissed her rosy, wrinkled cheek. “Thank you for arranging Jan’s room. When did you hear the news?”
“You’re the most heart-warming person, Mr. Bruce. I feel as though I’d been sitting in the sun after I’ve been with you.” She smiled through tears, dabbed her eyes. “Mr. Tubby radioed the news before he left the city. Such a surprise. No one had suspected a love affair between you two—that is, not until last evening here—not but that Janice is sweet and pretty enough to be loved, but you’ve seemed to think of nothing but your work.”
“Never can tell what is going on in a man’s mind, Miss Mary.”
“That’s what I told Martha. After we’d had a good cry over the news—a happy cry, you understand—she said, ‘We’ll have a party!’ If there aren’t folks to feed in the next world Martha’ll wander round like a lost soul. I guess we baked about a ton of cakes after we got Mr. Tubby’s message. M’s. Hale wouldn’t believe it at first. Said ’twas Mr. Tubby’s idea of a joke, that you’d have told her that you were going to get married. She got over being miffed and offered to superintend the placing of the greens in the H house.”
“Had we told anyone you and Miss Martha would have been the first to know. Hope you are not hurt that we didn’t take you into our confidence?”
“Hurt!” Miss Mary clasped rough-skinned red hands on her dove-gray breast. “Hurt! Well, now! I claim that marryin’ an’ buryin’ is folks’ own business. If they can’t do those two things without advice or criticism, what can they do? I asked M’s. Hale if she was coming to the party an’ she said she didn’t know, Joe was pretty sick. Here’s your bride.”
His bride! Harcourt felt the blood burn in his cheek bones, saw Janice’s color steal up in response. She was lovelier even than he had thought her. Her pale blue gown, silvery as the edges of a cloud, suggested a fairy loom. Straps of brilliants framed shoulders, white in contrast to a sun-tanned throat. An half dozen glittering bracelets gleamed on her left arm. Slippers which matched her gown had bows of sparkling stones which were repeated in the clasp of a bag of antique brocade. She laid a mandarin coat, heavily embroidered with mauve and purple iris, carefully over the back of a chair.
For an instant the stillness of the room was stirred only by the snap of the fire, the rhythmic purr of Blot asleep on the rug. Miss Mary broke the spell. She caught the bag, pressed it against her cheek. “How pretty! How pretty! My dear, isn’t it absurd for an old woman like me to care for such things? I’ll go tell Martha you’re ready.” She hurried out of the room like a fussy little tug-boat under full steam.
Harcourt smiled. “Is she afraid of playing gooseberry?”
Janice’s eyes and voice were wistful. “She thinks it a real marriage, Bruce. But she confessed that everyone was terribly surprised. I feel like such a—such a fake letting them do all this for us.”
He laid his hand over the brown, rosy-nailed fingers clutching his sleeve. “Forget it, Jan. Don’t look over your shoulder. Look forward. From now on they will have every reason to believe that I’m mad about you.” His tone, his eyes sent the color flooding to her face. He laughed, lightened his voice, “You see what a good actor I am, I almost convinced you.”
She drew a breath of relief. “I will have to go some to keep up with that. I almost lost my reason when I came in and saw you in dinner-clothes.”
“Always pay my hostess the compliment of dressing for her party. We keep evening togs here, now that we can fly to Nome and Fairbanks and the Fort, just so we won’t forget how to wear them.”
Janice’s memory projected a close-up of a girl in a roadster leaning forward for a light. She said hastily:
“I am glad that I dressed the part too. The Samp sisters begged me to wear something bridal—”
“That isn’t the wedding gown you had for—”
“Don’t look so murderous. It isn’t. The woman who made my trousseau took that back, credited it on my account, praise be to Allah, as Tubby would say.”
“Have you a lot of bills worrying you? If you have, I—”
“You will pay them? No. This marriage is not real enough for that. I haven’t any. I paid every cent I owed, invested the remainder of my—er—fortune, and fared forth into the far North.”
He ignored the theatrical exaggeration of the last sentence. “Is that true?”
“Is what true?”
“About investing the fortune—I had heard that you and Billy had lost everything.”
“Not everything, Bruce. I am not an heiress—but—I have enough. I have saved my salary. No chance to spend money here. If at any time you require a loan, I may be able to accommodate you.”
She was laughing, gay, audacious. He answered in the same spirit.
“Thanks. That’s a rash offer. I might sink it in a gold mine. Has all your stuff been taken to my cabin?”
“Almost all that I use. There are a half dozen trunks in the storehouse. Miss Mary spent every minute she could snitch from cooking to move my belongings. You—you still think it necessary for me to live there?”
“Answer that question for yourself. We have set out on the road of deception. It will be full enough of shell-holes without our plowing up any. When two persons marry, it is still the custom, at least it was when I left civilization, for them to live in the same house. Be a good sport and see it through, my dear.”
“The night we dined together in New York you said: ‘Be a sport. Acknowledge that you’ve made a mistake. Don’t go on with this marriage.’ I didn’t tell you that already I had broken with Ned Paxton.”
“That fact will be one of the enduring satisfactions of my life. Come on. I hear the boys tuning up. Ought we to enter arm in arm?”
“At the risk of making a frightful social blunder—let’s not.”
“Taking this?” He picked up the mandarin coat.
“Yes. I’ll use it as a wrap. Isn’t it gorgeous? I found it in my room here. Tubby must have bought it for a wedding present when he went back to the city. He knew that I was mad about it. I suspect that it was frightfully expensive. It is taking goods under false pretenses for me to accept it. I ought to give it back, but I love it. Can he afford to buy a thing like this?”
“Probably not every day, but weddings do not occur every day at headquarters. Why hurt the donor by returning his gift? Let’s go.”
An orchestra, consisting of fiddle, flute and saxophone, agonized into the Wedding March from Lohengrin, as they appeared in the doorway of the Waffle Shop. Each musician had a table all his own. Seated in a chair on top of it, he had the air of an adventurous gull perched on a small berg, floating out to sea. They scraped and puffed and blew till rills of perspiration trickled down their faces, which had been scrubbed till they shone and shaven till the blood came through in spots. The big room had been cleared of chairs and tables; candle shavings had been sprinkled lavishly over the rough floor; the air was spicy with the breath of the spruces which had been used as decoration.
Janice laughed and parried questions, played her part brilliantly. No one could suspect from her manner that she was not the most gorgeously happy bride in the world, Harcourt told himself with a tinge of bitterness. Her radiance vanished like sunshine blotted by a cloud as Millicent Hale approached. Something deep in the woman’s fatigue-rimmed eyes gave him the uneasy sense of an animal at bay. They reflected the green of her gown as she purred:
“Dear Mrs. Harcourt, how sweet of you to provide an occasion for civilized clothes. I am consumed with curiosity to know how you accomplished it. I’ve heard Bruce declare repeatedly that never, while he was in Alaska, would he marry. What brand of coercion did you use?” She shook her head as though in amused admonition. The earrings of brilliants which almost touched her shoulders sent out a myriad colorful sparks.
The malice of the attack rendered Harcourt speechless. Was the little woman whom he had considered pathetically helpless like that? Was Janice as amazed as he? He glanced at her in concern. She was looking straight into the eyes watching her with cat-like intentness.
“It was a method quite my own, Mrs. Hale. You couldn’t possibly use it.” Harcourt came out of his trance of surprise, laid his hand on her bare arm. She shook it off, turned to extend her hand to Chester. Challenged gaily:
“Why the gloomy brow? Cheerio! This is a party, not a memorial service.”
Before he could answer Tubby Grant seized him.
“Want you, Jimmy. Going to stage an old-timer. The Samp girls are stepping out in a quadrille. The wicked Lancers is the only dance they know. Bruce, you take Miss Martha. I’m leading-out the bride—with her permission—you beau Miss Mary, Chester. Mrs. Hale may take her pick from the stagline. That completes the set. Ready. Let’s go.”
With much shifting and laughter the four couples took their places. Janice and Grant were opposite Harcourt and the elder Samp sister. The leader of the musicians nestled the fiddle under his chin, face beatific, drew the bow with a powerful, flourishing sweep, shouted:
“Salute Partners!” Miss Martha spread her plum-color taffeta skirts with work-worn hands and curtsied to the floor, recovered, made a deep obeisance in response to a shouted, “Salute Corners.”
Her beautiful dignity set the keynote for the dance. The others kept watchful eyes on the sisters, who sailed through the figures with the grace of an angular and chubby swan. The engineers and section heads leaning against the log walls beat time softly with hands and feet to the rhythm of the music. The dancers caught fire from their enthusiasm, pranced Forward and Back, wound in and out of Ladies Chain, Balanced Corners, with gay abandon. Someone shouted:
