The Ramrodders Part 53

Mr. Kavanagh was silent a long time. He seemed to be struggling with some kind of surprise.

"No, I'll not tell you," he declared at last.

"Then I want to tell _you_ something, sir. I love your daughter. I love her so honestly--so devotedly that I propose to search for her through this world. And when I find her--" he hesitated.

"If you find her?"

"I stopped because I do not want to threaten or boast. But I will say, Mr. Kavanagh, that when I find her I'll beg of her to be my wife, and if she consents I promise you that no two sour old men are going to spoil our happiness! I want a fair understanding with you."

"Queer notions you have of a fair understanding," retorted Mr. Kavanagh.

"You'd call it a fair understanding, would you, to come here and tell me to get off my own doorstep because you claimed the place?"

"I mean that no man has the right to refuse happiness to his own or to others simply to curry his own personal spite. That's all, sir."

He whirled his horse and galloped away. He halted at the church, threw the reins over the animal's head and went and sat on the steps. He wanted to think. He wanted to calm himself. He hoped that the place would console him with its memories, afford him some hope, some suggestion.

He wondered now why he had allowed anything to delay that search. Yet he understood vaguely that she had hidden herself from him by her own choice. She had fled with wounded heart. He had not dared to seek her too eagerly.

The red eyes of Kavanagh's house mocked him.

Suddenly he started up. A figure, flitting and wraith-like, was coming toward him from those eyes. It was running. He could hear the swift patter of feet. She came straight to him where he stood; he had not dared to run toward her.

"I heard--I followed!" she gasped, and the next moment was sobbing in his arms.

All his talk to her for a long time was incoherent babbling of love and remorse. Then he held her close.

"Little girl," he said, "I've learned in the world outside. I've learned many things. But this--this I've learned bitterly and forever! There's love of fame and of power and of mere beauty--but there's only one love after all--that's the love that gives all, is all--that's my love for you and the love I think you have for me. It is ours--that love. Oh, my sweetheart, how we will cherish it all the years through!"

After a time he drew her down on the steps and they sat in silence through long minutes, listening to the muted calling of the crickets in the gra.s.ses, the rustle of the river current, all the soft noises of the summer night.

Then he bethought himself and drew Madeleine Presson's letter from his pocket. He gave it to her with a word of explanation.

Looking into his eyes, her own eyes brilliant as stars, she slowly tore the letter to bits and scattered the snowy fragments upon the gra.s.s.

"A woman does know," she said; "knows without reading what some other woman writes. I do not need her words, Big Boy. I know of my own heart.

I knew long ago. I listened too readily to others. I have listened to my own love since. I have been waiting for you to come."

After another silence which needed no words to interpret it, he rose and lifted her to her feet. With his arm about her he walked to his horse.

He mounted and drew her up, and she clung to him, as maid to knight.

"So, to your father now," he told her.

"But not to speak to him harshly," she said, a ripple of merriment in her voice, "for I'll tell you a secret. He did not try to stop me when I ran away--he even called after me, 'He's turned in at the church, you wild banshee!' They have told him things that have given him new respect for Harlan Thornton. But your grandfather?"

"He has learned that my love is my own affair, along with my politics."

"Let me do my part, Harlan," she said, proudly. "Love will light the waiting, and it will not seem waiting. When I take my place at your side he shall not be able to say that I am not the wife for you."

"It's enough for me to-night that I love you and you love me. The years must take care of themselves. Love will mark off the calendar for us, little sweetheart, not in months or in years, but in one dear summer of waiting that will make work worth while and life worth living."

He patted the horse's neck and they went slowly up the road toward the Kavanagh house, their arms about each other, the gracious dusk hiding them. Life's future hid its problem. Love's present was enough.

THE END