Mariquita Part 11

"But you have been thanking me all the time," he said, "ever since I told you where I had been. Every time you laughed you thanked me."

They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging about by the gate in the homestead fence; he had never seen Mariquita with just that light of happiness upon her.

"Here," he said to Gore, "let me take the horse; I'll see to him."

He knew that Mariquita would not come to the stables, and he wanted Gore to be free to stay with her to the last moment.

As he led the horse away he thought to himself: "It has really begun at last;" and he loyally wished his friend good luck.

Within a yard or two of the door they met Don Joaquin.

"Father," she said at once, "Mr. Gore didn't go to Maxwell this time. He went all the way to Denver--to Loretto. And see what a lot of presents he has brought me from them!"

Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a child unused to gifts, she showed her little treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog.

He looked less grim than usual. It suited him that she should be so pleased.

"Well!" he said, "you're stocked now. Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch them."

"Oh, yes! Did you ever hear of anybody being so kind?"

Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them.

"What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new treasures to which she could a.s.sign a use.

"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just the very fashion."

"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It made him uneasy--it must be unlucky--to hear these frivolous eulogies applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the familiarity that diminishes awe.

Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.

Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came, smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.

"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.

"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old friends."

"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."

"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more stately than ever.

("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they're _born_ solemn.")

"Indeed," she cheerfully agreed, "nor do I. He wouldn't be so handsome if he looked silly. He's all sense. And he knows his road, short cuts and all."

Don Joaquin disliked her mention of Gore's good looks, as she intended.

She had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly suitor.

"Mariquita," he laid down, "will think more of his good sense than of his appearance. I have not brought her up to consider a gentleman's looks."

Sarella laughed; she was not an easy person to "down."

"But you didn't bring _me_ up," she said, "and I can tell you that you might have been as wise as Solomon and it wouldn't have mattered to me if you had been ugly. I'd rather look than listen any day; and I like to have something worth looking at."

Her very pretty eyes were turned full on her mature admirer's face, and he did not dislike their flattery. An elderly man who has been very handsome is not often displeased at being told he is worth looking at still.

"So do I, Sarellita," he responded, telling himself (and her) how much pleasure there was in looking at _her_.

Stately he could not help being, but his manner had now no stiffness; and in the double diminutive of her name there was almost a tenderness, a nearer approach to tenderness than she could understand. She could understand, however, that he was more lover-like than he had ever been.

A slight flush of satisfaction (that he took for maiden shyness) was on her face, as she looked up under her half-drooped eyelids.

"Perhaps," he said in much lower tones than he usually employed, "perhaps Mr. Gore knows what you call his road better than I. But he does not know better the goal he wants to reach."

("Say!" Sarella asked herself, "what's coming?")

Two of the cowboys were coming--had come in fact. They appeared at that moment round the corner of the house, ready for supper.

"So," one of them said, with rather loud irritation, evidently concluding a story, "my dad married her, and I have a step-ma younger than myself--"

CHAPTER XVIII.

Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.

Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.

Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth acc.u.mulated by thirty years of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's _Divina Commedia_) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he could understand no s.e.x but his own--and his experience of women was of the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.

His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an ill.u.s.tration of this. In his _explicit_ mind, in his conscious att.i.tude towards Mariquita, he a.s.sumed that it was _her_ business and duty to respect _him_. He was her parent, so placed by G.o.d, and he had a great and sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than himself; all he _knew_ that he knew was that a young girl was necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for them.

He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circ.u.mstances in which she was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or had he seemed in any way unfit.

But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage, he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable.

That Mariquita would not _suddenly_ learn this lesson, Sarella had partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a difficulty--Gore had not spoken to him.

Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.

"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire, "that you shall buy Blaine's?"

Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was beginning to hope that there was a chance of success--that was all.

"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."

"I thought you had."