Mariquita Part 18

"No. To stop _that_ plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita to-day--only he was to say nothing about it to her first."

"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."

"I might do better."

"What better?"

"Wait a bit."

"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any _harm_ would come of waiting a bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."

"Ah! If we _were_ engaged!"

"Pfus.h.!.+" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of "Pshaw."

Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty encouraged him--albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.

"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.

Of course he could not tell her.

"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say.

You will be engaged by 2:50."

As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting its worth.

"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done good--as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you could get on fine without her."

Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no more for a long time.

Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear anything.

As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and unembarra.s.sed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her out under false pretences.

There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of anything that would be different from simple friends.h.i.+p. But must it be clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of unquestioning friends.h.i.+p, to be changed without being rendered less bright? Must Gore a.s.sume her to be specially incapable of an affection deeper than even friends.h.i.+p? No; of anything good she was capable; no depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she had been less lonely of late.

Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of affection--if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly, though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day.

He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers; yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.

That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full a.s.surance, and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never love till asked for her love.

Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coa.r.s.er fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and speaking himself.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

He had kept his word, and had spoken. They had been out together a long time when the opportunity came; they had dismounted, and the horses were resting. He and she were sitting in the shade of a small group of trees, to two of which the horses were tied. Their talk had turned naturally, and with scarcely any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction that helped him. And Mariquita talked with frank unreserve; she felt at home with him now, and her natural silence had long before now been melted by his sincerity; her silence of habit was _chiefly_ habit, due not to distrust nor a guarded prudence, but to the much simpler fact that till his arrival, she had never since her home-coming been called upon to speak in any real sense by anyone who cared to hear her, or who had an interest in what she might have to say.

His proposal did not come with the least abruptness, but it was clear and unmistakeable when it came, and she understood--Mariquita could understand a plain meaning as well as anyone. She did not interrupt, nor avert her gaze. Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been looking far away across the lovely, empty prairie to the horizon, to him as he spoke, and her hands ceased their idle pulling at the gra.s.s beside her.

In her eyes, as she listened, there was a singular s.h.i.+ning, and presently they held a glistening like the dew in early morning flowers.

Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor did he as he ceased. One hand of hers she moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to touch him.

"That is what you want?" she said. "Is that what you have been wanting all the time?"

Her voice was rather low, but most clear, and it had no reproach.

"Yes. What can you say to me?"

"I can only say how grateful it makes me."

Her words almost astonished him. Though he might have known that she must say only exactly what was in her mind. They conveyed in themselves no refusal, but he knew at once there was no hope for him in them.

"Grateful!" He exclaimed. "As if I could help it!"

"And as if I could help being grateful. It is so great a thing! For you to wish that. There could be nothing greater. I can never forget it. You must never think that I could forget it ... I--you know, Mr. Gore, that I am not like most girls, being so very ignorant. I have never read a novel. Even the nuns told me that some of them are beautiful and not bad at all, but the contrary. Only, I have never read any. I know they are full of this matter--love and marriage. They are great things, and concern nearly all the men and women in the world, but not quite all. I do not think I ever said to myself, 'They don't concern _you_.' I do not think I ever thought about it, but if I had, I believe I should have known that that matter would never concern me. Yet I do not want you to misunderstand--Oh, if I could make you understand, please! I know that it is a great thing, love and marriage, G.o.d's way for most men and women. And I think it a wonderful, great thing that a man should wish that for himself and me; should think that with me he could be happier than in any other way. Of course, I never thought anyone would feel that. It is a thing to thank you for, and always I shall thank you...."

"Is it impossible?"

She paused an infinitesimal moment and said:

"Just that. Impossible."

"Would it be fair to ask why 'impossible'?"

"Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot answer. I will try to answer.

When you told me what you wanted it pleased me because you wanted it, and it hurt me because I (who had never thought about it before) knew at once that it was not possible to do what you wanted, and I would so much rather be able to please you."

"You will never be able to do anything else but please me. Your refusing cannot change your being yourself."

Gore could not worry her with demands for reasons. He knew there was no one else. He knew she was not incapable of loving--for he knew, better than ever, that she loved greatly and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he knew that she loved _him_, among them, but more than any of them. And yet he saw that she was simply right. What he had asked was "impossible, just that." Better than himself she would love no one, and in the fas.h.i.+on of a wife she would love no one, ever.

Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry her but because of her father. "Perhaps you have resolved never to marry," he said.

"I never thought of it. But, as soon as I knew what you were saying, I knew I should never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. It was just a certainty. Alas! our resolutions are not certainties."

"But," Gore said gently, feeling it necessary to prepare her, "your father may wish you to marry."

She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin reddened a little.

"You think so? Yes, he may," she answered in a troubled voice; for she feared her father, more even than she was conscious of.

"I think he does," Gore said, not watching the poor girl's troubled face.

"He wants me to marry you?" she inquired anxiously.