Dan Merrithew Part 14

Dan paused. Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said:

"Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San Blanco. He says it is filled with malaria. Is it?"

Dan walked slowly toward them.

"Not any more than the day air," he replied, declining Oddington's proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his pocket. "I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at all times--and with other bad things."

Oddington laughed.

"It is like most of these cities," he said; "things get pretty messy here, I imagine. I could not exactly commend its sanitary--"

A voice calling him from the window broke the sentence. It was Reggie Wotherspoon.

"Yes," said Oddington.

"That you, Ralph? Oh, I see you. Say, come in here like a good chap, will you? I've run across a sort of an anarchist circular about Rodriguez. I want you to come up with me while I put it up to him."

"All right," replied Oddington. "Will you go in, Virginia?"

"Thank you, I'll wait here for you. I've had enough of that dreary old dinner; at least until father speaks. And now," said the girl, smiling at Dan, "what have you to tell me that is thrilling?"

Dan looked at her as she stood framed against the light of the window, tall, straight, in the full glow of youth and health and animal spirits. One bare arm was stretched down, clutching the train of her dress. With the other hand she was idly lashing her gloves against her skirt. As she spoke she reached out a gleaming slipper, extremely small for a girl of her height, to push an overturned flower-pot away, and Dan caught the flash of the silk ankle and a foam of lace.

He felt he was viewing the girl in a new way. Hitherto he had regarded her as something almost intangible, an essence of elusive femininity, radiant, overpowering, and in nowise to be considered as a material embodiment of young womanhood.

But now, while the old spell was still potent, with the moods of the day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery.

Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her own initiative. If it was to be in the future an interest born of friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for him. But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should be offered as a sort of largess, or that he should be placed in the position of posing as an object of merely charitable attention from her. As these thoughts formulated themselves flashingly in his mind, he could not but marvel at the sudden transition in his att.i.tude concerning her. But nevertheless, the transition had taken place, as well defined as though it had come of weeks of pondering--and unchangeable.

"I can't think of anything thrilling to talk about--unless I select you as a subject."

The girl glanced at him swiftly and then turned her face toward the harbor, where a few lights quivered on a velvet floor. She caught the new note perfectly and her bosom rose in a quick breath.

"I am sure we might select a more interesting topic. I detest personalities. Tell me how you have enjoyed your first dip into Blancan society."

"But that would be personal," smiled Dan.

The girl laughed.

"The women here to-night are a great deal less dowdy than one would imagine, don't you think?"

"I wonder if you realize your responsibility?" said Dan.

Virginia did not reply for a moment. She had not considered this outgrowing phase of her unreserved interest in the young Captain. So long as he had remained a sort of quiescent _protege_, there could be no possible harm in her att.i.tude toward him. Evidently he did not intend so to remain. There was of course, therefore, nothing to do but reestablish their relations.

"I am afraid my responsibilities are too varied and serious for discussion with--with any one," she said at length.

"But where they concern me?"

The girl stepped back slightly, drawing her skirts about her as though recoiling, or, rather, withdrawing from the question. Yet despite her desire to end the conversation, she really was curious as to his drift; and, besides, he made the most romantic sort of picture as he stood at her side, clean cut, bareheaded, and as self-a.s.sured evidently as any man she had ever talked with. Her wish was to dismiss him with admonition, gently, if plainly to be understood. But this she could not do just then, and the realization of the fact irritated her.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "at least I have read that our responsibilities do not cease with one's friends, but extend, sometimes, even to--to acquaintances, or to persons, perhaps, whom one does not know. What have I done or not done that suggested in your mind ideas of my responsibility to you?"

Dan shook the fire from his pipe and smiled. "Why, you haven't done a thing or left a thing undone," he said. "I thought the humor of my suggestion would strike you as funny, make you laugh. But it didn't, so I'll be serious. You were decent to me on the _Tampico_ and before; and to-night, I don't know, but the lights and the music and the night and all seemed to have gone into me, and I wanted to talk to a woman--to you--out here in the moonlight, not as we've talked before, but as a man and woman who feel pretty much the same way about many things might talk. This was what I had in mind when I spoke of responsibility. Not an alarming one, would you say?"

The girl gazing out into the darkness did not speak.

"I wanted you to look down at the harbor there and exclaim over the path the moon is cutting from the horizon to that queer little lighthouse on the point; and I wanted you to talk enthusiastic nonsense about the big, soft stars and the cigarette lights under the trees; and I--I just wanted to listen and, of course, agree with all you said."

Dan was smiling as he spoke; but the girl, whose eyes had fallen beneath his steady gaze, was aware that no jest underlay his light words. By no means could she construe what he had said into impertinence, but she did feel he was presuming upon the kindly attention she had paid him.

"Captain Merrithew," she said at length, "I have been thinking. I have been wondering whether I do not think you more inspiring on the bridge of the _Tampico_, cutting warships in two, or fighting a storm than--"

"Than talking with you in the moonlight?" interpolated Dan.

"_About_ the moonlight," corrected the girl. . . . "If we are to be friends you must not devise responsibilities--unadvisably."

Dan made a slight gesture, as though to a.s.sure her she had made her meaning quite clear.

"If we are to be friends, Miss Howland, you must not devise restrictions unadvisably."

Dan was still smiling, and he was speaking easily. But no man had ever spoken to her in that way before. She flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily as he ceased. Her glance did not disconcert him. He stood looking at her--not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of conviction. It was plain that if their a.s.sociation were to continue, it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof, touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her att.i.tude toward him.

She must be his friend in all that the term implies. Until to-night, had the alternative been proposed, she would have had no hesitation in deciding, if only because she had no viewpoint other than their relative positions in the past year.

But his words had opened a new perspective. She could see that he might be regarded in a different light, that he already so regarded her. The transformation bewildered her, and when the heated reply died behind her lips and she smiled quiveringly instead, she felt for the first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have when they yield to the dominant personality of a man. She tried to fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded partially. All she could now ask was time to think to recover her equilibrium. She put out her hand involuntarily and touched Dan lightly on the arm.

"Let us not say anything more about it," she said. "Tell me--tell me something about San Blanco."

As she ceased speaking, she turned slowly toward the banquet hall.

Dan, following her, complied with what he knew to be a purely perfunctory request, talking in an easy conversational tone.

"I have looked into the history of the country a good bit," said he.

"It is quite interesting. They have had just twenty-three _presidentes_ and four dictators, and there have been twelve a.s.sa.s.sinations. I believe candidates for the office are liable to arrest for attempted suicide--"

The girl paused at the window. She had not been listening. Her eyes, were fastened upon the figure of a man whose skulking form she had made out where the glow of the window almost opposite the speakers' table fell upon the garden. Now she saw him again. He had a gun in his hands and was beginning to kneel.

Breathless and rigid the girl slowly stretched out her hand and touched Dan on the shoulder; with the other she pointed silently at the crouching figure. The gun was now being raised to aim, probably at the _Presidente_, who was speaking, possibly at Mr. Howland. Dan apprehended the situation at once. In the flash of an eye he was making for the a.s.sa.s.sin like an antelope. Hearing the approaching footfalls, the man turned his head, and then, with a cry, Virginia saw him arise and shift his weapon toward Dan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the a.s.sa.s.sin.]

But he was too late. At least ten feet away Dan left his feet and launched himself into one of those old-time tackles which even in Exeter had attracted the eyes of the football authorities of three universities. Hard and straight he went, head to one side, jaws shut tight. Then he struck, one brawny shoulder snapping full into the man's midriff. You have to know how to fall when tackled by a good man. This San Blancan did not. He went down like a falling tower.

The gun was discharged in the air with a resounding report and flew into the bushes. The man lay still, gasping. The dinner ended abruptly and in great confusion. Guests poured out of the windows, tables were overturned.

Dan quickly dragged the prostrate man into a clump of mesquite. His first impulse had been to turn him over to the soldiers. But the defiant, if faint murmurs of the patriot, "Long live San Blanco; death to Rodriguez!" bringing back to him his emotions of the morning, caused him to decide differently. He seized the man by the collar.

"Stand up," he said, "you are not hurt; only a bit winded. I guess Rodriguez has had enough heads without yours. You thought you were acting for your country's good; I guess you were, from all I hear."

The man had been looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding a word. Dan turned to him impatiently.