Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 19
LATER Henry would have given everything if he had just taken more time with Adam John that morning; but this was a day upon the evening of which he must take the night steamer for Portland en route to Washington, for a consultation upon the Shell Point matter; for the time ripened and these were anxious days with Henry now, lest Hornblower, or some self-seeker of his character, get wind of what was in the air and block the beneficent project by persuading some drunken or unstable members of the Shell Point tribe into a malicious recalcitrancy.
But nothing untoward happened. The Indians kept faithfully the secret of the negotiations; so did the departmental representatives who came out to investigate. At last the thing was done. On this very trip to Washington, Henry got the nod. The ten years' task was finished. It had been accomplished in a few days less than twenty-four months, All was over but the preparation of the final documents for official signature and the affixing of those signatures themselves, following which the public announcement would be made. But the private announcement! Ah, that was a bit of news so precious that Henry would not use the telegraph, nor the long-distance telephone to communicate it to the man most in interest; not even to Lahleet, who had waited wistfully with unwavering faith; not even to Billie, who was now in that rapt state of admiration which made him feel that the time was at hand when he might storm the citadel of her heart—not even to her would he flash a signal of success.
It was to get the most shock-value out of his success that Harrington refrained, even from telling Billie that he was starting for home. But Lahleet met him at the dock. He was not surprised simply because he had become accustomed to her intuitions and the sublime faith with which she obeyed them—rested all upon them.
"Lahleet!" he whispered into her ear, in a voice hoarse with happiness. "It's done! It's done—all but the clerk's work—it's done! A few documents to engross, some seals and wax and scrawling signatures that are a mere matter of form and we have it."
"Oh!" exclaimed the girl in low joy-mad tones. "Oh! you great White Chief!" In an ecstasy of pleasure over his triumph—perhaps more for him than for her Indians—she seized his hands, pressed them and slipped away. It was a contact so brief that probably no eye in the jostling throng took note of it, any more than Harrington took note of that starved light of something tenderer than friendship in the dark, passionate eyes of the little habitant of the twilight land between aboriginal blood and the untainted strain of the white man.
Henry had come down on the night boat. It was but eight o'clock in the morning when he stepped upon the dock, yet he knew that he should find John Boland at his desk even at this hour, for Old Two Blades was an early riser; and the young man could not suppress a nervous tremor as he crossed familiar thresholds to stand at length before a door whose unmarked surface gave no hint of what potentialities couched behind it.
He lifted his hand to knock and as he did so something knocked violently within his breast. This was consummation; this was achievement; this was empire-building—a step in the transformation of a stretch of savage wilderness into production for all the world. Yes; he, too, was a producer!
Once within that door the habitually restrained countenance of Old Two Blades glowed like an open hearth, and his usually clear voice crackled; although the spoken words were few.
"It's a great thing you've done, boy," he croaked happily. "A great thing! It will mean more than any single accomplishment of any one of us since old Tom Scanlon put in my hands the United States patents for our original holding. No one could have done it but you. Thank you, Henry. You shall not go scant of your reward."
"I've been rewarded already," assured Henry, eyes glistening as he vibrated to the fine and generous words of Mr. Boland, and to the memory of that ecstatic little gurgle of Lahleet's.
"But you'll get more," said the older man significantly, while benignant rays streamed out from the caverned eyes and he managed a smile of affection that was as fatherly and tender as the thin firm-set lips could muster.
More? Henry smiled almost pityingly. Why, certainly he would get more. He was going up the hill at once to get that more—get his final and his supreme reward. He rushed to the hotel to make ready, and the instant he reached his room must first cry out to Billie over the telephone the news of his presence and the hint of its glad meaning.
"Henry!" she exclaimed, startled, but her fluted tones vibrating immediately to the joy in his. "Oh, hurry . . . hurry!" she urged, as divining. "I shall be waiting . . . among the roses."
Among the roses! Most—most auspicious. That was Henry's favorite trysting place, his favorite place for saying: "I love you and I love you."
Henry found Billie looking like some wonderful rose herself. She sat upon a marble bench on the raised floor of a colonnade, roofed only by vying crimson ramblers. Vines crept about the column against which she leaned and seemed to twine about her figure as she sat, bowered in green, the dark masses of her hair backgrounding a face all pink and white but for the violet blue of the eyes—bluer under this turquoise sky than they had ever seemed before.
Harrington had run lightly the length of the sward in front of the colonnade before he came upon her. Her eyes were on a humming bird hovering amid the blossoms over her, and he halted unseen for one delicious moment to drink in the picture. In her lap lay one of those huge garden hats of which she was so fond and which she wore so gracefully. It was inverted and heaped high with roses. Chaste in her beauty as the flowers, but not cold—warm as the red blood of life itself, she was waiting—waiting for her lover! So he found her.
And it was his hour. Henry Harrington knew it as he knew the sun was in the heavens, as he knew that she was there. She was there for him to take.
"Billie?" he cried softly.
"Henry!" she cried, and sprang up to meet him. He might have taken her to his arms without a word. He knew it; she knew it; but he postponed the rapture. There was exquisite pain in self-restraint. They greeted each other with both hands extended.
"You have done it!" she exulted; a proud break in her voice.
With this single recognition of things material, a golden mist flooded in and shut out all mundane matter. By a subtle change in her expression, by a mere glance from limpid eyes Billie Boland, vital, practical, ambitious and imperious, who had commanded her lover when she could, cajoled him when she must, and in certain things found herself unable to do either, flew the signals of surrender, gave up freely the confession that she was conquered by a mighty passion, that her restless soul was trapped by love and eager to surrender to it.
Henry read the message like a headline. Read it and for a moment was humbled by the matchlessness of beauty that he had won; for a moment he was impelled to sink upon his knees before her. Instead, he continued to hold her hands, gazing at her fixedly, very tenderly and very fondly.
"Billie! I love yow and I love you," he breathed softly.
For an instant the silken fringes of her lids were lowered while a maidenly blush widened, mounting to the roots of her hair and creeping down over her neck, over the white of her sculptured bosom. She was his! And yet for a delicious instant still he tantalized his own passion with letting himself want her and want her but without taking her. He waited—watching, gloating, until she—until the long lashes quivered and the eyes lifted to him, wet and shiny with something that made their blue depths sparkle like jeweled springs.
"And I love you!" She almost sobbed the words, and let herself go to him.
"You—you darling!"
He had meant to give her that first kiss gently, oh, so gently, as one inhales the perfume of the most delicate flower; but there was a fragrance in the air that was not of roses. It was of her, and Billie Boland was not a flower. When cornered behind the last barriers of reserve, she was warm and vital as any woman. That drooping glance, that slow spreading blush, this palpitating warmth between his hands—each gave her lover assurance, each was fuel to his flame.
"Billie!" he cried, almost as if with pain. "I have you!" His wild young strength bound her to him. "Billie," he panted, "I love you and I love you!"
But she too was strong—she too was suddenly unbridled. Of love she gave him draught for draught, thrill for thrill, strength for strength, until he felt himself suddenly weak before the magnificence, the opulence of her response.
June—June! It was June in the garden and it was June in two lives. Blind—they were both blind. Harrington did not know that he had closed his eyes in the very sublimity of his ecstasy. He thought merely that he had been drenched in a torrent that fired him while it swept him away. Shoaled at length as upon the brink of some new Niagara of emotion, he opened his eyes. They were still standing, still embowered by the vine-festooned colonnade. She lay, like a crushed and crumpled beauty in the hollow of his arm, her hair in disarray; but because it was crushed and crumpled, it was a sweeter, finer, more exciting beauty than before. The bouquet of it swirled his head like wine.
She was asleep—yes, her breast against his breast rose and fell rhythmically. No; the gates of her eyes were languidly ajar like one who slowly takes account of new environment. Suddenly their blue gaze was wide. The light in the eyes was of surprise and then a little bit of dismay and shock, almost of shame, and the face was somehow altered; the lips quivered and the exquisite cupid's bow line of them was broken a little.
Her lover breathed some soft ecstatic word to her. For that word she gave him back a pressure and buried her face for an instant. Thereafter their manner was of having discovered some delightful secret, each about the other, which a thousand delicacies forbade to mention, which their every move and glance and tone exulted in.
Henry led her back to her seat at the foot of the column and sank down beside her. Still breathing quickly as from the aftermath of a great emotion, he looked around him strangely.
It was the same world, the same rose garden, the same dancing blue inlet, the same far-flung panorama of greens with the white peak of Gregory pinning the sky in its place above.
But she—who had made this little local world so bright and real—she was changed. For this hour at least, the strong, the self-satisfied, the self-confident and managing Billie Boland was gone. In her place was a shy, impressed, clinging girl, who said little, who played with her lover's hands without ever looking at his face; until all at once her twining, impulsive fingers reached upward, caught his neck, pulled him down to her and she was kissing him again—again with all the strength of her unleashed longing.