“Mr. Ridgway, ma’am.”
The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very effective picture
framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost imperceptibly.
She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewd
suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week to decide, and
her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It was characteristic of Virginia
Balfour that she did not attempt to deceive herself. If she married Waring
Ridgway it would be for what she considered good and sufficient reasons, but
love would not be one of them. He was going to be a great man, for one thing,
and probably a very rich one, which counted, though it would not be a
determining factor. This she could find only in the man himself, in the
masterful force that made him what he was. The sandstings of life did not
disturb his confidence in his victorious star, nor did he let fine-spun moral
obligations hamper his predatory career. He had a genius for success in
whatever he undertook, pushing his way to his end with a shrewd, direct energy
that never faltered. She sometimes wondered whether she, too, like the men he
used as tools, was merely a pawn in his game, and her consent an empty
formality conceded to convention. Perhaps he would marry her even if she did
not want to, she told herself, with the sudden illuminating smile that was one
of her chief charms.
But Ridgway’s wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward to meet him,
read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything more sure and exquisite
than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed he would have been hard put to
it to conceive. That her gown and its accessories seemed to him merely the
extension of a dainty personality was the highest compliment he could pay her
charm, and an entirely unconscious one.
“Have I kept you waiting?” she smiled, giving him her hand.
His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his words.
“For a year, though the almanac called it a week.”
“You must have suffered,” she told him ironically, with a glance at the clear
color in his good-looking face.
“Repressed emotion,” he explained. “May I hope that my suffering has reached a
period?”
They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of the large
room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which lay some books. One
of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for a moment before sweeping
them aside. She rested her hands on the table behind her and leaned back
against it, her eyes meeting his fairly.
“You’re still of the same mind, are you?” she demanded.
“Oh! very much.”
She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling them
irresponsibly. “We might as well be comfy while we talk;” and she indicated, by
a nod, a chair.
“Thanks. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take it standing.”
She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of no desire
to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh that seemed to offer
her inclusion in the joke:
“I’m on the anxious seat, you know—waiting to find out whether I’m to be
the happiest man alive.”
“You know as much about it as I do.” She echoed his laugh ruefully. “I’m still
as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn’t tell then, and I can’t now.”
“No news is good news, they say.”
“I don’t want to marry you a bit, but you’re a great catch, as you are very
well aware.”
“I suppose I am rather a catch,” he agreed, the shadow of a smile at the
corners of his mouth.
“It isn’t only your money; though, of course, that’s a temptation,” she
admitted audaciously.
“I’m glad it’s not only my money.” He could laugh with her about it because he
was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all his wealth. Her cool
frankness might have frightened away another man. It merely served to interest
Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was a vain man, always ready to talk of
himself. He spent a good deal of his spare time interpreting himself to
attractive and attracted young women.
Her gaze fastened on the tip of her suede toe, apparently studying it
attentively. “It would be a gratification to my vanity to parade you as the
captive of my bow and spear. You’re such a magnificent specimen, such a berserk
in broadcloth. Still. I shan’t marry you if I can help it—but, then, I’m
not sure that I can help it. Of course, I disapprove of you entirely, but
you’re rather fascinating, you know.” Her eye traveled slowly up to his,
appraising the masterful lines of his square figure, the dominant strength of
his close-shut mouth and resolute eyes. “Perhaps ‘fascinating’ isn’t just the
word, but I can’t help being interested in you, whether I like you or not. I
suppose you always get what you want very badly?” she flung out by way of
question.
“That’s what I’m trying to discover”—he smiled.
“There are things to be considered both ways,” she said, taking him into her
confidence. “You trample on others. How do I know you wouldn’t tread on me?”
“That would be one of the risks you would take,” he agreed impersonally.
“I shouldn’t like that at all. If I married you it would be because as your
wife I should have so many opportunities. I should expect to do exactly as I
please. I shouldn’t want you to interfere with me, though I should want to be
able to influence you.”
“Nothing could be fairer than that,” was his amiably ironical comment.
“You see, I don’t know you—not really—and they say all sorts of
things about you.”
“They don’t say I am a quitter, do they?”
She leaned forward, chin in hand and elbow on knee. It was a part of the accent
of her distinction that as a rebel she was both demure and daring. “I wonder if
I might ask you some questions—the intimate kind that people think but
don’t say—at least, they don’t say them to you.”
“It would be a pleasure to me to be put on the witness-stand. I should probably
pick up some interesting side-lights about myself.”
“Very well.” Her eyes danced with excitement. “You’re what they call a
buccaneer of business, aren’t you?”
Here were certainly diverting pastimes. “I believe I have been called that;
but, then, I’ve had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown at me so often
that I can’t be sure.”
“I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way—stop at
nothing to gain your point?”
He took her impudence smilingly.
“‘Unscrupulous’ isn’t the word I use when I explain myself to myself, but as an
unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use to describe me, I
dare say it is fairly accurate.”
“I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?”
“Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience I could
stand up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove to a hawk.
I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the mining world. I
play the game. I can’t afford to keep a button on my foil when my opponent
doesn’t.”
She nodded an admission of his point. “And yet there are rules of the game to
be observed, aren’t there? The Consolidated people claim you steal their ore, I
believe.” Her slanted eyes studied the effect of her daring.
He laughed grimly. “Do they? I claim they steal mine. It’s rather difficult to
have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courts decide which is
which.”
“And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you are working
extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins.”
“Precisely, just as they are,” he admitted dryly. “Then the side that loses
will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will be less.
Besides, stealing ore openly doesn’t count. It is really a moral obligation in
a fight like this,” he explained.
“A moral obligation?”
“Exactly. You can’t hit a trust over the head with the decalogue. Modern
business is war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. If I win out it will be because
I put up a better fight than the Consolidated, and cripple it enough to make it
let me alone. I’m looking out for myself, and I don’t pretend to be any better
than my neighbors. When you get down to bed-rock honesty, I’ve never seen it in
business. We’re all of us as honest as we think we can afford to be. I haven’t
noticed that there is any premium on it in Mesa. Might makes right. I’ll win if
I’m strong enough; I’ll fail if I’m not. That’s the law of life. I didn’t make
this strenuous little world, and I’m not responsible for it. If I play I have
to take the rules the way they are, not the way I should like them to be. I’m
not squeamish, and I’m not a hypocrite. Simon Harley isn’t squeamish, either,
but he happens to be a hypocrite. So there you have the difference between us.”
The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creed jauntily,
without the least consciousness of need for apology for the fact that it
happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregard of ethical
considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her. She liked his
candor, even though it condemned him. It was really very nice of him to take
her impudence so well. He certainly wasn’t a prig, anyway.
“And morality,” she suggested tentatively.
“—hasn’t a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrary
notwithstanding. The battle is to the strong.”
“Then the Consolidated will beat you finally.”
He smiled. “They would if I’d let them; but brains and resource and finesse all
count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars to my one. Still, I
have elements of strength they can’t even estimate. David beat Goliath, you
know, even though he didn’t do it with a big stick.”
“So you think morality is for old women?”
“And young women,” he amended, smiling.
“And every man is to be a law unto himself?”
“Not quite. Some men aren’t big enough to be. Let them stick to the
conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don’t break them.”
“And you’re sure that you’re on the road to true success?” she asked lightly.
“Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind.”
“Not exactly,” she laughed. “But I didn’t expect you to understand.”
“Then I won’t disappoint you,” he said cheerfully.
She came back to the concrete.
“I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of Yuba
County and have the decisions of the judges written at your lawyer’s offices in
cases between you and the Consolidated.”
“If I do,” he answered easily, “I am doing just what the Consolidated would do
in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last election and seated
their judicial candidates. One expects a friendly leaning from the men one put
in office.”
“Isn’t the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark of the
nation?” she pretended to want to know.
“I believe it is supposed to be.”
“Isn’t it rather—loading the dice, to interfere with the courts?”
“I find the dice already loaded. I merely substitute others of my own.”
“You don’t seem a bit ashamed of yourself.”
“I’m ashamed of the Consolidated”—he smiled.
“That’s a comfortable position to be able to take.” She fixed him for a moment
with her charming frown of interrogation. “You won’t mind my asking these
questions? I’m trying to decide whether you are too much of a pirate for me.
Perhaps when I’ve made up my mind you won’t want me,” she added.
“Oh, I’ll want you!” Then coolly: “Shall we wait till you make up your mind
before announcing the engagement?”
“Don’t be too sure,” she flashed at him.
“I’m horribly unsure.”
“Of course, you’re laughing at me, just as you would”—she tilted a sudden
sideways glance at him—“if I asked you WHY you wanted to marry me.”
“Oh, if you take me that way——”
She interrupted airily. “I’m trying to make up my mind whether to take you at
all.”
“You certainly have a direct way of getting at things.”
He studied appreciatively her piquant, tilted face; the long, graceful lines of
her slender, perfect figure. “I take it you don’t want the sentimental reason
for my wishing to marry you, though I find that amply justified. But if you
want another, you must still look to yourself for it. My business leads me to
appreciate values correctly. When I desire you to sit at the head of my table,
to order my house, my judgment justifies itself. I have a fancy always for the
best. When I can’t gratify it I do without.”
“Thank you.” She made him a gay little mock curtsy “I had heard you were no
carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am being
told—am I not?—that in case I don’t take pity on you, the lone
future of a celibate stretches drear before you.”
“Oh, certainly.”
Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. “A young man told me
yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you would stand the acid. What
did he mean?”
Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own praises by the
hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap to make him praise
himself at second-hand.
“Better ask him.”
“ARE you a fighter, then?”
Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken her audacity
for innocence.
“One couldn’t lie down, you know.”
“Of course, you always fight fair,” she mocked.
“When a fellow’s attacked by a gang of thugs he doesn’t pray for boxing-gloves.
He lets fly with a coupling-pin if that’s what comes handy.”
Her eyes, glinting sparks of mischief, marveled at him with mock reverence, but
she knew in her heart that her mockery was a fraud. She did admire him; admired
him even while she disapproved the magnificent lawlessness of him.
For Waring Ridgway looked every inch the indomitable fighter he was. He stood
six feet to the line, straight and strong, carrying just sufficient bulk to
temper his restless energy without impairing its power. Nor did the face offer
any shock of disappointment to the promise given by the splendid figure.
Salient-jawed and forceful, set with cool, flinty, blue-gray eyes, no place for
weakness could be found there. One might have read a moral callousness, a
colorblindness in points of rectitude, but when the last word had been said,
its masterful capability, remained the outstanding impression.
“Am I out of the witness-box?” he presently asked, still leaning against the
mantel from which he had been watching her impersonally as an intellectual
entertainment.
“I think so.”
“And the verdict?”
“You know what it ought to be,” she accused.
“Fortunately, kisses go by favor, not by, merit.”
“You don’t even make a pretense of deserving.”
“Give me credit for being an honest rogue, at least.”
“But a rogue?” she insisted lightly.
“Oh, a question of definitions. I could make a very good case for myself as an
honest man.”
“If you thought it worth while?”
“If I didn’t happen to want to be square with you”—he smiled.
“You’re so fond of me, I suppose, that you couldn’t bear to have me think too
well of you.”
“You know how fond of you I am.”
“Yes, it is a pity about you,” she scoffed.
“Believe me, yes,” he replied cheerfully.
She drummed with her pink finger-tips on her chin, studying him meditatively.
To do him justice, she had to admit that he did not even pretend much. He
wanted her because she was a step up in the social ladder, and, in his opinion,
the most attractive girl he knew. That he was not in love with her relieved the
situation, as Miss Balfour admitted to herself in impersonal moods. But there
were times when she could have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her
attractions that his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests of
experience she would have liked to see how he would make love if he really
meant it from the heart and not the will.
“It’s really an awful bother,” she sighed.
“Referring to the little problem of your future?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t make up your mind whether I come in?”
“No.” She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. “I don’t suppose
you want to give me another week?”
“A reprieve! But why? You’re going to marry me.”
“I suppose so.” She laughed. “I wish I could have my cake, and eat it, too.”
“It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics.”
“So you won’t give me a week?” she sighed. “All sorts of things might have
happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy prince would have
come for me.”
“Believe that he HAS come,” he claimed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in having
tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be a pity, too.
You won’t be half so picturesque. You remember how Stevenson puts it: ‘that
marriage takes from a man the capacity for great things, whether good or bad.’”
“I can stand a good deal of taming.”
“Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process,” she conceded, her
rare smile flashing. “It should prove a cure for ENNUI, but then I’m never a
victim of that malady.”
“Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?”
“I expect you are.”
His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a roving quest
to the door.
“We don’t have to do that,” she announced hurriedly, with an embarrassed flush.
“I don’t do it because I have to,” he retorted, kissing her on the lips.
She fell back, protesting. “Under the circumstances—”
The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced at the
card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty’s entrance had not been a moment
earlier.
“Show him in here.”
“The fairy prince, five minutes too late?” asked Ridgway, when the man had
gone.
For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink that flushed her
cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he was willing to admit
there might be a choice of reasons for that.
“Lyndon Hobart” was the name he read.
“I think the Consolidated is going to have its innings. I should like to stay,
of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement and leave the field
to the enemy.”
Pronouncing “Mr. Hobart” without emphasis, the butler vanished. The newcomer
came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat. He was a slender,
well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut, classical features; cool,
keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner to his inferiors. Beside him
Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His ease seemed a little obvious, his
prosperity overemphasized. Even his voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone
of gentle blood that Hobart had inherited with his nice taste.
When Miss Balfour said: “I think you know each other,” the manager of the
Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed genially and
said: “Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart.” The geniality was genuine enough, but
through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in it a veiled taunt. To him it
seemed to say:
“Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, though he has
been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as great as mine.”
In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway’s audacity crystallized in
words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. “I regret that an
appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving such good company,” he
said urbanely.
Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the Consolidated
and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the ownership of the Never Say
Die Mine; and it was current report that Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he
did the automobile waiting for him now at the door.
If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of
repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his
slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced
scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than
Ridgway would have cared to see.
