The Everlasting Whisper Read online

  _Chapter IV_

  At first, King was taken aback by Mrs. Ben's youthfulness. Or look ofyouth, as he understood presently. He knew that she was within a fewyears of Ben's age, and yet certainly she showed no signs of it to hiseyes, which, though keen enough, were, after a male fashion,unsophisticated. She was a very pretty woman, _petite_, alert, anddecidedly winsome. He understood in a flash why Ben should have beenattracted to her; how she had held him to her own policies all theseyears, largely because they were hers. She was dressed daintily; herglossy brown hair was becomingly arranged about the bright, smilingface. She chose to be very gracious to her husband's life-long friend,giving him a small, plump hand in a welcoming grip, establishing him inan instant, by some sleight of femininity which King did not plumb, as ahearthside intimate most affectionately regarded. His first twoimpressions of her, arriving almost but not quite simultaneously, wereof youthful prettiness and cleverness.

  She slipped to a place on the arm of Gaynor's chair, her hand, whosewell-kept beauty caught and held King's eyes for a moment, toying withher husband's greying hair.

  "She loves old Ben," thought King. "That's right."

  Mrs. Ben Gaynor was what is known as a born hostess very charming.Hostess to her husband, of whom she saw somewhat less each year than ofa number of other friends. She had always the exactly proper meed ofintimacy to offer each guest in accordance with the position he had cometo occupy, or which she meant him to occupy, in her household. Akin toher in instinct were those distinguished ladies of the colourful pastof whom romantic history has it that in the salons of their doting lordsand masters they gave direction, together with impetus or retardation,to muddy political currents. Clever women.

  Not that cleverness necessarily connotes heartlessness. She adored Ben;you could see that in her quick dark eyes, which were always animatedwith expression. If she was not more at his side, the matter was simplyexplained; she adored their daughter Gloria no less, and probablysomewhat more, and Gloria needed her. Surely Gaynor's needs, those of agrown man, were less than those of a young girl whose budding youth mustbe perfected in flower. And if Mrs. Ben was indefatigable in keepingherself young while Ben quietly accepted the gathering years, it waswith no thought of coquetting with other men, but only that she mightremain an older sister to her daughter, maintain the closer contact, andsee that Gloria made the most of life. Any small misstep which sheherself had made in life her daughter must be saved from making; all ofher unsatisfied yearnings must be fulfilled for Gloria. She constitutedherself cup-bearer, wine-taster and handmaiden for their daughter. If itwere necessary to engrave another fine line in old Ben's forehead inorder to add a softer tint to Gloria's rose petals, she was sincerelysorry for Ben, but the desirable rose tints were selected with none theless steady hand.

  Ben Gaynor's eyes followed his wife pridefully when, at the end offifteen pleasant, sunny minutes, she left them, and then went swiftly tohis friend's face, seeking approbation. And he found it. King had risenas she went out, holding himself with a hint of stiffness, as was hisunconscious way when infrequently in the presence of women; now heturned to Ben with an odd smile.

  "Pretty tardy date to congratulate you, old man," he said with a laugh."Don't believe I ever remembered it before, did I?"

  Ben glowed and rubbed his long hands together in rich contentment.

  "She's a wonder, Mark," he said heartily.

  Mark nodded an emphatic approval. Words, which Ben perhaps looked for,he did not add. Everything had been said in the one word "congratulate."

  "Sprang from good old pioneer stock, too, Mark," said Gaynor. "Wouldn'tthink now, to look at her, that she was born at Gold Run in a family asrugged as yours and mine, would you? With precious few advantages untilshe was a girl grown, look at what she has made of herself! While youand I and the likes of us have been content to stay pretty much in therough, she hasn't. There's not a more accomplished, cultured littlewoman this or the other side Boston, even if she did hail from Gold Run.And as for Gloria, all her doing; why," and he chuckled, "she hasn't theslightest idea, I suppose, that she ever had a grandfather who sweatedand went about in shirt-sleeves and chewed tobacco and swore!"

  "Have to go all the way back to a grandfather?" laughed King.

  "Look at me!" challenged Gaynor, thrusting into notice his immaculateattire. He chuckled. "One must live down his disgraceful past for hisdaughter, you know."

  From without came a gust of shouts and laughter from the Gaynor guestsskylarking along the lake shore.

  "Come," said Ben. "You'll have to meet the crowd, Mark. And I want youto see my little girl; I've told her so many yarns about you that she'sdying of curiosity."

  King, though he would have preferred to tramp ten miles over roughtrails, gleaning small joy from meeting strangers not of his sort whowould never be anything but strangers to him, accepted the inevitablewithout demur and followed his host. He would shake hands, say a dozenstupid words, and escape for a good long talk with Ben. Then, before thelunch-hour, he would be off.

  Gaynor led the way toward a side door, passing through a hallway and awide sun-room. Thus they came abreast of a wide stairway leading to thesecond storey. Down the glistening treads, making her entrance like theheroine in a play, just at the proper instant, in answer to her cue,came Gloria.

  "Gloria," called Gaynor.

  "Papa," said Miss Gloria, "I wanted----Oh! You are not alone!"

  Instinctively King frowned. "Now, why did she say that?" he asked withinhimself. For she had seen him coming to the house. Straight-dealinghimself, circuitous ways, even in trifles, awoke his distrust.

  "Come here, my dear," said Ben. "Mark, this is my little girl. Gloria,you know all about this wild man. He is Mark King."

  "Indeed, yes!" cried Gloria. She came smiling down the stairway, afluffy pink puffball floating fairy-wise. Her two hands were out,ingenuously, pretty little pink-nailed hands which had done little inthis world beyond adorn charmingly the extremities of two soft roundarms. For an instant King felt the genial current within him frozen ashe stiffened to meet the girl he had watched in the extravagant dancedown to the lake.

  Then, getting his first near view of her, his eyes widened. He had neverseen anything just like her; with that he began realizing dully that hewas straying into strange pastures. He took her two hands because therewas nothing else to do, feeling just a trifle awkward in theunaccustomed act. He looked down into Gloria's face, which was lifted soartlessly up to his. Hers were the softest, tenderest grey eyes he hadever looked into. He had the uneasy fear that his hard rough hands wererasping the fine soft skin of hers. Yet there was a warm pleasurablethrill in the contact. Gloria was very much alive and warm-bodied andbeautiful. She was like those flowers which King knew so well, fragrantdainty blossoms which lift their little faces from the highest of theold mountains into the rarest of skies, growths seeming to partake ofsome celestial perfection; hardy, though they clothed themselves in anoutward seeming of fragile delicacy. _Physically_--he emphasized theword and barricaded himself behind it as though he were on the defenceagainst her!--she came nearer perfection than he had thought a girlcould come, and nowhere did he find a conflicting detail from thetendril of sunny brown hair touching the curve of the sweet young faceto the little feet in their clicking high-heeled shoes. Thus from thebeginning he thought of her in superlatives. And thus did Gloria, likethe springtime coquetting with an aloof and silent wilderness, make herbright entry into Mark King's life.

  "I have been acting-up like a Comanche Indian outside," laughed Gloria.It was she who withdrew her hands; King started inwardly, wondering howlong he had been holding them, how long he would have held them if shehad not been so serenely mistress of the moment. "My hair was alltumbling down and I had to run upstairs to fight it back where itbelongs. Isn't a girl's hair a terrible affliction, Mr. King? One ofthese days, when papa's back is turned, I'm going to cut it off short,like a boy's."

  An explanation of her presence in the house while her guests
were stillin the yard; why explain so trifling a matter? A suggestion that sheretained that lustrous crown of hair just to please her papa, whereasone who had not been told might have been mistaken in his belief thatthis should be one of her greatest prides. Two little fibs for MissGloria; yet, certainly, very small fibs which hurt no one.

  Gloria's eyes, despite their soft tenderness, were every whit as quickas Mark King's when they were, as now, intrigued. Of course both she andKing had heard countless references, one of the other, from Ben Gaynor,but neither had been greatly interested. King had known that there was ababy girl, long ago; that fact had been impressed on him with such rareeloquence that it had created a mental picture which, until now, hadbeen vivid and like an indelible drawing; he had known, had he everpaused for reflection, which he had not, that a baby would not stay suchduring a period of eighteen years. She had heard a thousand tales of "mygood friend, Mark." Mark, thus, had been in her mind a man of herfather's age, and about such a young girl's romantic ideas do not flock.But from the first glimpse of the booted figure among the trees she hadsensed other things. King would have blushed had he known howpicturesque he bulked in her eyes; how now, while she smiled at him soingenuously, she was doing his thorough-going masculinity full tribute;how the ruggedness of him, the very scent of the resinous pines he borealong with him, the clear manlike look of his eyes and the warm duskytan of face and hands--even the effect of the careless, worn boots andthe muscular throat showing through an open shirt-collar--put adelicious little shiver of excitement into her.

  Miss Gloria had a pretty way of commanding, half beseeching and yetaltogether tyrannical. King, having agreed to stay to luncheon, was inthe bathroom off Gaynor's room, shaving. Gloria had caught her fatherand dragged him off into a corner. "Oh, papa, he is simply magnificent!Why didn't you _tell_ me? Why, he isn't a bit old and----" And she madehim repaint for her the high lights of an episode of Mark King making aname for himself and a fortune at the same time in the Klondike country.She danced away, singing, to her abandoned friends, who were returningto the house. "It's _the_ Mark King, my dears!" she told themtriumphantly, not unconscious of the depressing result of herdisclosures upon a couple of boys of the college age who adored openlyand with frequent lapses from glorious hope to bleak despair. "The manwho made history in the Klondike. The man who fought his way aloneacross fifteen hundred miles of snow and ice and won--oh--I don't know_what_ kind of a fight. Against all kinds of odds. The very Mark King!He's papa's best friend, you know."

  "Let him be your dad's friend, then," said the young fellow with thepampered pompadour, his eyes showing a glint of sullen jealousy. "That'sno reason----"

  "Why, Archie!" cried Gloria. "You are making yourself just horrid. Youdon't want to make me sorry I ever invited you here, do you?" And abrief half-hour ago Archie had flattered himself that Gloria's dancinghad been chiefly for him.

  They were all of Gloria's "set" with one noteworthy exception. Him shecalled "Mr. Gratton" while the others were Archie and Teddy and Georgiaand Evelyn and Connie. It was to this "Mr. Gratton" that she turned,having made a piquant face at the dejected college youth.

  "_You_ will like him immensely, I know," she said, while the ears ofpoor Archie reddened even as he was being led away by the not verypretty but extremely comforting Georgia. "He's a real man, every inch ofhim." ["Every inch a King!" she thought quickly, unashamed of the pun.]"A big man who does big things in a big way," she ran on, indicatingthat she, too, after that brief meeting had been lured intosuperlatives.

  "Mr. Gratton," smiled urbanely. For his own part he might have beencalled every inch a concrete expression of suavity. He was clad in theconventional city-dweller's "outdoor rig." Shining puttees lying bravelyabout the shape of his leg; brown outing breeches, creased, laced attheir abbreviated ends; shirt of the sport effect; a shrewd-eyed man ofthirty-five with ambitions, a chalky complexion, and a very weak mouthwith full red lips.

  "Miss Gloria," he whispered as he managed to have her all to himself amoment, "you'll make me jealous."

  She was used to him saying stupid things. Yet she laughed and seemedpleased. Gratton egotistically supposed her thought was of him; Kingwould have been amazed to know that she was already watching the housefor his coming. And he would have been no end amazed and bristling withdefence had he glimpsed the astonishing fact that Gloria already fullyand clearly meant to parade him before her summer friends as her latestand most virile admirer. Gratton's heavy-lidded pale eyes trailed overher speculatively.

  That forenoon King shook hands with Archie, Teddy, Gratton, and therest, made his formal bows to Gloria's girl friends, and felt reliefwhen the inept banalities languished and he was free to draw apart.Gratton, with slender finger to his shadowy moustache, bore down uponhim. King did not like this suave individual; he had the habit ofjudging a man by first impressions and sticking stubbornly to his snapjudgment until circumstance showed him to be in error. He liked neitherthe way Gratton walked nor talked; he had no love for the cut of hiseye; now he resented being approached when there was no call for it.Never was there a more friendly man anywhere than Mark King when hefound a soul-brother; never a more aloof at times like this one.

  "I have been tremendously interested," Gratton led off ingratiatingly,"in the things I have heard of you, Mr. King. By George, men like youlive the real life."

  The wild fancy came booming upon King to kick him over the verandahrailing.

  "Think so?" he said coolly, wondering despite himself what "things"Gratton had heard of him. And from whom? His spirit groaned within himat the thought that old Ben Gaynor had been lured into paths along whichhe should come to hobnob with men like Gratton. He was sorry that he hadpromised to stay to lunch. His thoughts all of a sudden were restive,flying off to Swen Brodie, to Loony Honeycutt, to what he must get donewithout too much delay. Gratton startled him by speaking, bringing histhoughts back from across the ridges to the sunny verandah overlookingLake Gloria.

  Gratton was nobody's fool, save his own, and both marked and resentedKing's attitude. His heavy lids had a fluttering way at times duringwhich his prominent eyes seemed to flicker.

  "What's the chance with Gus Ingle's 'Secret' this year, Mr. King?" hedemanded silkily.

  King wheeled on him.

  "What do you know about it?" he said sharply. "And who has been talkingto you?"

  Gratton laughed, looked wise and amused, and strolled away.

  At luncheon Mrs. Gaynor placed her guests at table out on the porch,conscious of her daughter's watchful eye. When all were seated, MarkKing found himself with Miss Gloria at his right and an unusually plainand unattractive girl named Georgia on his left. Everybody talked, Kingalone contenting himself with brevities. Over dessert he found himselfdrifting into _tete-a-tete_ with Miss Gloria. They pushed back theirchairs; he found himself still drifting, this time physically and stillwith Gloria as they two strolled out through the grove at the back ofthe log house. There was a splendid pool there, boulder-surrounded; athoroughly romantic sort of spot in Gloria Gaynor's fancies, a mostcharming background for springtime loitering. The gush and babble of thebright water tumbling in, rushing out, filled the air singingly. Gloriawanted to ask Mr. King about a certain little bird which she had seenhere, a little fellow who might have been the embodiment of the stream'sjoy; she knew from her father that King was an intimate friend of wildthings and could tell her all about it. They sat in Gloria's favouritenook, very silent, now and then with a whisper from Gloria, awaiting thecoming of the bird.