"One gets to know a man pretty well on a trip like that. I wouldn't change mine for any one that was ever made. I like everything about him, Di. I am the happiest girl."
"I'm so glad you see it that way at last." Diane passed to the practical aspect of the situation. "But Thursday. Will that give us time, my dear? And who are you going to have here?"
"Just the family. I've invited two guests, but neither of them can come. One has a broken leg and the other says he doesn't want to see me married to another man," Sheba explained with a smile.
"So Gordon won't come."
"Yes. He'll have to be here. We can't get along without the bridegroom. It wouldn't be a legal marriage, would it?"
Diane looked at her, for the moment dumb. "You little wretch!" she got out at last. "So it's Gordon, is it? Are you quite sure this time? Not likely to change your mind before Thursday?"
"I suppose, to an outsider, I do seem fickle," Miss O'Neill admitted smilingly. "But Gordon and I both understand that."
"And Colby Macdonald—does he understand it too?"
"Oh, yes." Her smile grew broader. "He told me that he didn't think I would quite suit him, after all. Not enough experience for the place."
Diane flashed a suspicious look of inquiry. "Of course that's nonsense. What did he tell you?"
"Something like that. He will marry Mrs. Mallory, I think, though he doesn't know it yet."
"You mean she will get him on the rebound," said Diane bluntly.
"That isn't a nice way to put it. He has always liked her very much. He is fond of her for what she is. What attracted him in me were the things his imagination gave to me."
"And Gordon likes you, I suppose, for what you are?"
Sheba did not resent the little note of friendly sarcasm. "I suppose he has his fancies about me, too, but by the time he finds out what I am he'll have to put up with me."
The arrival of Elliot interrupted confidences. He had come, he said, to receive congratulations.
"What in the world have you been doing with your face?" demanded Diane. As an afterthought she added: "Mr. Macdonald is all cut up too."
"We've been taking massage treatment." Gordon passed to a subject of more immediate interest. "Do I get my congratulations, Di?"
She kissed him, too, for old sake's sake. "I do believe you'll suit Sheba better than Colby Macdonald would. He's a great man and you are not. But it isn't everybody that is fit to be the wife of a great man."
"That's a double, left-handed compliment," laughed Gordon. "But you can't say anything that will hurt my feelings to-day, Di. Isn't that your baby I heap crying? What a heartless mother you are!"
Diane gave him the few minutes alone with Sheba that his gay smile had asked for. "Get out with you," she said, laughing. "Go to the top of the hill and look at the lovers' moon I've ordered there expressly for you; and while you are there forget that there are going to be crying babies and nursemaids with evenings out in that golden future of yours."
"Come along, Sheba. We'll start now on the golden trail," said Elliot.
She walked as if she loved it. Her long, slender legs moved rhythmically and her arms swung true as pendulums.
The moon was all that Diane had promised. Sheba drank it in happily.
"I believe I must be a pagan. I love the sun and the moon and I know it's all true about the little folk and the pied piper and—"
"If it's paganism to be in love with the world, you are a thirty-third degree pagan."
"Well, and was there ever a more beautiful night before?"
He thought not, but he had not the words to tell her that for him its beauty lay largely in her presence. Her passionate love of things fine and brave transformed the universe for him. It was enough for him to be near her, to hear the laughter bubbling in her throat, to touch her crisp, blue-black hair as he adjusted the scarf about her head.
"God made the night," he replied. "So that's a Christian thought as well as a pagan one."
They were no exception to the rule that lovers are egoists. The world for them to-night divided itself into two classes. One included Sheba O'Neill and Gordon Elliot; the other took in the uninteresting remnant of humanity. No matter how far afield their talk began, it always came back to themselves. They wanted to know all about each other, to compare experiences and points of view. But time fled too fast for words. They talked—as lovers will to the end of time—in exclamations and the meeting of eyes and little endearments.
When Diane and Peter found them on the hilltop, Sheba protested, with her half-shy, half-audacious smile, that it could not be two hours since she and Gordon had left the living-room. Peter grinned. He remembered a hilltop consecrated to his own courtship of Diane.
The only wedding present that Macdonald sent Sheba was a long envelope with two documents attached by a clip. One was from the Kusiak "Sun." It announced that the search party had found the body of Northrup with the rest of the stolen gold beside him. The other was a copy of a legal document. Its effect was that the district attorney had dismissed all charges pending against Gordon Elliot.
Although Macdonald lost the coal claims at Kamatlah by reason of the report of Elliot, all Alaska still believes that he was right. In that country of strong men he stands head and shoulders above his fellows. He has the fortunate gift of commanding the admiration of friend and foe alike. The lady who is his wife is secretly the greatest of his slaves, but she tries not to let him know how much he has captured her imagination. For Genevieve Macdonald cannot quite understand, herself, how so elemental an emotion as love can have pierced the armor of her sophistication.
* * *
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved.
* * *
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The Yukon Trail Page 21
