She nodded.
“I take it also that it is your wish?”
Again she nodded.
“I take it also that I may — that you wish me to convey to Dick the strong feeling that you have towards him, the keen desire to see him —”
Here Esse broke in:
“Oh, Peter, must that be?”
“I fear, my dear, that it will be necessary. He might not be willing to come without such assurance. You see he does not know me at all!”
“But wouldn’t it be like my asking him?”
Peter laughed cheerfully:
“It would be uncommonly like it. There is no possible mistake about that! But then the whole thing is uncommon! It is not common that you should care for a man away outside the class you have been reared in; the occasions that threw you together were uncommon. It is uncommon that I should be holding this conversation with you all the time that your mother is playing there in the next room so uncommonly well. I take it also that I had better let Dick know that there may be — later on — a more tender feeling between you?”
Esse paused. It seemed to her like the probing of a wound this questioning by Peter; and yet it was done with the same matter-of-factness which distinguishes the work of an able surgeon. The wounded have to suffer, and it does not matter if the wound be inflicted by a bullet, or an arrow, or a knife. But there was about the whole thing a sort of business atmosphere, something which tends to suppress romance and to bring into unpleasant prominence the sternest facts; and Esse could not but feel that she was rather following up the logic of the part than expressing her present feelings when she replied from behind her sheltering hands:
“I suppose so!”
“Good!” said Peter. “Now I know exactly where I am!” and he rose up to join his hostess in the music-room, whilst Esse lay back amongst the deep cushions of her chair, thinking what a queer place the world is, when even the realization of one’s wishes is not a matter of unqualified happiness, and beginning to wonder if Dick would think it strange of her sending such a message. Then she began to wonder how her San Francisco friends with their fastidiousness, their fondness for the ridiculous side of things, and their haughty pride at times, would look on Dick. And then she began to think how Dick would look amongst his new and unaccustomed surroundings.
A thousand little traits and habits of his, which she now wished that she had forgotten, recalled themselves to her memory, and she thought it would have been better that she had not told Peter so much, until, at all events, she had some opportunity of seeing that Dick was better schooled to conventional usages. But that could never be until Peter told him! The whole thing was getting so tangled that she could not follow it; and so she stole out of the room, leaving Peter talking to her mother as she played on, and went to bed.
Esse was beginning to feel that an unconventional attachment was not without its drawbacks. The cure was commencing to work!
Next morning, at breakfast, Peter mentioned that he had had a telegram which would compel him to go at once to New York. It might be, that from New York he might have to go on to London; but this was only a possibility, and in any case, his visit home need be only a short one. He would, he expected, be back in San Francisco in a couple of months at the latest. Mrs. Elstree was truly sorry that he had to go so soon, but hoped that he would soon be back, and Esse looked at him with a flush and endorsed her mother’s sentiments. He received many commissions, and went up to dress for his journey. Before he left he said to both ladies:
“I think I have my commissions all right. Do either of you want to alter anything?”
There was no reply, and off he went.
Esse had a half-feeling that she would like to countermand all that she had asked Peter to do, or had acquiesced in his doing. Womanlike, she began to have misgivings when once the bolt had sped, and, womanlike, she felt personally freer now that she had committed herself to a definite act.
Peter Blyth left the eastward train at Sacramento, and took the Portland train on his way north. He had posted himself thoroughly as to the route, and had telegraphed to the station-master at Edge-wood to have procured for him horses and a guide to Shasta. On his arrival he found all ready for him, and setting out at once, made good way before stopped by the darkness. Early the next day he arrived at the Shoulder of Shasta, and leaving his guide and horses on the plateau, went at once to Dick’s cottage.
All the way up the mountain he had been thinking of the strange job which he had undertaken; and the higher he got, the more the ridiculous side of it came to the front. Here was he, a man of middle age, climbing up an almost desolate snow-clad mountain, to find a hunter who probably couldn’t read or write, and to ask him to marry a particularly refined and cultivated young heiress. He had no clue to the man’s style, or thought, or ideas, and he could only surmise what his reception might be. Like a good many Londoners, his sole knowledge of the actuality of Western life was from “Buffalo Bill” and the “Wild West Show,” and, from the rough-and-ready energy displayed by some of the participants in these Olympic Games up-to-date, he had strange imaginings as to what his welcome might be like in case he should be regarded as a meddlesome fool — a capacity which, to do him justice, he felt that he filled with quite sufficient satisfactoriness. By the time he had arrived at Dick’s cabin he felt not only ridiculous, but in a sort of “funk,” an unusual thing with him. With somewhat of the feelings of a schoolboy, who learns on calling that the dentist is absent, he found that the cabin door was locked. He had, however, a duty to do, and he did not mean to shirk it, be it never so ridiculous or unpleasant; and so went back to his guide to breakfast.
When he returned to the cabin, an hour later, he found the door unlocked; the owner, however, was absent. He went in and seated himself, awaiting his coming. As he sat, all his unpleasant surmises came back to his mind, and he called himself — inwardly — an unmitigated ass, until the image of Esse’s pale face came before him and nerved him. He looked round the cabin, and, as he saw its meagreness and absolute destitution of refinement, he could not bring himself to believe that Esse could really and truly love a man who lived in such a way. The exhilarating air of the mountain, somehow seemed to increase his natural buoyancy of spirits, and he felt that he wanted to laugh, but the gravity of his mission restrained him.
There came a shadow in the doorway and Dick entered, quite unconscious that there was a stranger in his house. When Peter Blyth saw him, the contrast between his appearance and the purpose of his mission was so great that it burst the barriers of his gravity, and the long pent-up laughter broke forth in a flood. He tried to rise, but he was helpless with his paroxysm of cachinnation, and sank back again, and shook whilst Dick looked on in a sequence of emotions. First he was amazed, then somewhat indignant; and, finally, his kindly nature yielded to the humour of the situation, and, throwing back his head, he joined in the laughter till the rafters rang.
There certainly was ground for Peter’s laughter when one took in calmly Dick’s appearance as the proposer of marriage on the part of a young lady. He had just come back from a hunt of several days’ duration, and bore all the signs of hardship and turmoil. Manifestly, he had not washed, even his hands, for several days; his hair was matted and wild looking — unkempt would have been an inadequate word to describe its condition. His clothes were creased with sleeping in them, and were encrusted in places with mud, wherein had stuck bits of twig, dead leaves and pine needles; and from head to foot he was smothered with grease and blood. Killing and skinning big game is not an aesthetic occupation, and is apt to leave just the same traces on the operator as on the artist who wields the knife in a Chicago packing house. In sober truth, he looked like a large, rough, peculiarly dirty, and slovenly butcher on leaving his work. Across his shoulders he carried