The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

CHAPTER XVII

"ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE"

Frederic had suggested a rubber at auction bridge.

Elizabeth fixed another pillow under his shoulders and moved the card table to his satisfaction, then took a chair near the players and unfolded her crochet, while Tisdale, whose injured hand excluded him from the game, seated himself beside her. He asked whimsically if she was manufacturing a cloud like the one in the west where the sun had set; but she lacked her sister's ready repartee, and, arresting her needle long enough to glance at him and back to the woolly, peach-pink pile in her lap, answered seriously: "It's going to be a hug-me-tight."

The lieutenant laughed. "Sounds interesting, does it not?" he said, shuffling the cards. "But calm yourself, sir; a hug-me-tight is merely a kind of sweater built on the lines of a vest."

He dealt, and Mrs. Feversham bid a lily. From his position Tisdale was able to watch Mrs. Weatherbee's face and her cards. She held herself erect in a subdued excitement as the game progressed; the pink flush deepened and went and came in her cheek; the blue lights danced in her eyes. Repeatedly she flashed intelligence to her partner across the board. And the lieutenant began to wait in critical moments for the glance. They won the first hand. Then it became apparent that he and Morganstein were betting on the side, and Marcia remonstrated. "It isn't that we are scrupulous alone," she said, "but we lose inspiration playing second fiddle."

"Come in then," suggested Frederic and explained to the lieutenant: "She can put up a hundred dollars and lose 'em like a soldier."

"The money stayed in the family," she said quickly. "Beatriz, it is your bid."

Mrs. Weatherbee was calculating the possibilities of her hand. Her suit was diamonds; seven in sequence from the jack. She held also the three highest in clubs and the other black king. She was weak in hearts. "I bid two diamonds," she said slowly, "and, Marcia, it's my ruby against your check for three hundred dollars."

There was a flutter of surprise. "No," remonstrated Elizabeth sharply.
"No, Marcia can buy the ring for what it is worth."

"Then I should lose the chance to keep it. Three hundred will be enough to lose." And she added, less confidently: "But if you should win, Marcia, it is understood you will not let the ring go out of your hands."

"I bear witness," cried the lieutenant gallantly, "and we are proud to play second when a Studevaris leads."

But Morganstein stared at her in open admiration. "You thoroughbred!" he said.

"It shall stay in the family," confirmed Marcia.

Then Frederic bid two lilies, the lieutenant passed and Mrs. Feversham raised to three hearts. She wavered, and Tisdale saw the cards tremble in her hand. "Four diamonds," she said at last. The men passed, and Marcia doubled. Then Morganstein led a lily, and the lieutenant spread his hand on the table. There were six clubs; in diamonds a single trey.

But Mrs. Weatherbee was radiant. She moved a little and glanced back at
Elizabeth, inviting her to look at her hand. She might as well have said:
"You see, I have only to lead out trumps and establish clubs."

Marcia played a diamond on her partner's second lead of spades, and led the ace of hearts, following with the king; the fourth round Frederic trumped over Mrs. Weatherbee and led another lily. Mrs. Feversham used her second diamond and, returning with a heart, saw her partner trump again over Mrs. Weatherbee. It was miserable. They gathered in the book before the lead fell to her. The next deal the cards deserted her, and after that the lieutenant blundered. But even though the ruby was inevitably lost, she finished the rubber pluckily; the flush deepened in her cheek; the blue fires flamed in her eyes. "You thoroughbred!" Morganstein repeated thickly. "You thoroughbred!"

To Tisdale it was unendurable. He rose and crossed to the farther side of the desk. The Aquila, rounding the northern end of Bainbridge Island, had come into Agate Pass; the tide ran swift in rips and eddies between close wooded shores, but these things no longer caught his attention. The scene he saw was the one he had put behind him, and in the calcium light of his mind, one figure stood out clearly from the rest. Had he not known this woman was a spendthrift? Had he not suspected she inherited this vice from her father, that old gambler of the stock exchange. Was it not for this reason he had determined to hold that last half interest in the Aurora mine? Still, still, she had not shown the skill of long practice; she had not played with ordinary caution. And had not Elizabeth remonstrated, as though her loss was inevitable? Every one had been undeniably surprised. Why, then, had she done this? She had told him she was in "desperate need." Could this have been the alternative to which she had referred?

The Aquila's whistle blew, and she came around, close under a bluff, into a small cove, on the rim of which rose the new villa. The group behind Tisdale began to push back chairs. He turned. The game was over, and Mrs. Feversham stood moving her hand slowly to catch the changing lights of the ring on her finger. Then she looked at the loser. "It seems like robbery," she exclaimed, "to take this old family talisman from you, Beatriz. I shall make out a check to ease my conscience."

"Oh, no." She lifted her head bravely like his Alaska flower in the bitter wind. "I shall not accept it. My grandfather believed in the ruby devoutly," she went on evenly. "It was his birthstone. And since it is yours too, Marcia, it should bring you better fortune than it has brought me. But see! The villa roof is finished and stained moss-green as it should be, against that background of firs. And isn't the big veranda delightful, with those Venetian blinds?"

The yacht nosed alongside the little stone quay, and preceded by the host, who was carried ashore in his chair, not without difficulty, by relays of his crew, the party made the landing.

Tisdale's first impression when he stepped over the threshold of the villa was of magnitude. A great fireplace built of granite blocks faced the hospitable entrance, and the interior lifted to the beamed roof, with a gallery midway, on which opened the upper rooms. The stairs rose easily in two landings, and the curving balustrade formed a recess in which was constructed a stage. Near this a pipe organ was being installed. It was all luxurious, created for entertainment and pleasure, but it lacked the ostentatious element for which he was prepared.

It had been understood that the visit was made at this time to allow Mrs. Feversham an opportunity to go through the house. She was to decide on certain furnishings which she was to purchase in New York, but it was evident to Tisdale that the items she listed followed the suggestions of the woman who stood beside her, weighing with subdued enthusiasm the possibilities of the room. "Imagine a splendid polar-bear rug here," she said, "with a yellowish lynx at the foot of the stairs, and one of those fine Kodiak skins in front of the hearth. A couch there in the chimney corner, with a Navajo blanket and pillows would be color enough."

Morganstein, watching her from his invalid chair, grasped the idea with satisfaction. "Cut out those Wilton carpets, Marcia," he said. "I'll write that Alaska hunter, Thompson, who heads the big-game parties, to send me half a dozen bears. They mount 'em all right in Seattle. Now see what we are going to need in that east suite up-stairs."

They went trooping up the staircase, but Hollis did not hurry to follow. His glance moved to the heavy, recumbent figure of his host. He was looking up across the banisters at Mrs. Weatherbee as she ascended, and something in his sensuous face, the steady gleam of his round black eyes, started in Tisdale's mind a sudden suspicion. She stopped to look down from the gallery railing and smiled with a gay little salute. Then Elizabeth called, and she disappeared through an open door.

"I'd give fifty dollars to see her face when she gets to that east room," Morganstein said abruptly. "But go up, Mr. Tisdale; go up. Needn't bother to stay with me."

"There's a good deal to see here," Tisdale responded genially. "A man who is accustomed to spend his time as I do, gathering accurate detail, is slower than others, I suppose, and this all seems very fine to me."

"It's got to be fine,—the finest bungalow on Puget Sound, I keep telling the architect. Nothing short of that will do. Listen!" he added in a smothered voice, "she's in there now."

The vaulted roof carried the echoes down to Tisdale as he went up the stairs. All the doors were open along the gallery; some were not yet hung, but he walked directly to the last one from which the exclamations of surprise had come. And, as he went, he heard Mrs. Weatherbee say: "It was glorious, like this, the day the idea flashed to my mind; but I did not dream Mr. Morganstein would alter the casement, for the men were hanging the French windows. Why, it must have been necessary to change the whole wall. Still, it was worth it, Marcia, was it not?"

"It certainly is unique," admitted Mrs. Feversham. Then Tisdale stopped on the threshold, facing a great window of plate glass in a single pane, designed to frame the incomparable view of Mount Rainier lifting above the sea. And it was no longer a phantom mountain; the haze had vanished, and the great peak loomed near, sharply defined, shining in Alpine splendor.

It was a fine conceit, too fine to have sprung from Morganstein's materialistic brain, and Tisdale was not slow to grasp the truth. The financier had reconstructed the wall to carry out Mrs. Weatherbee's suggestion. Then it came over him that this whole building, feature by feature, had been created to win, to ensnare this woman. It was as though the wall had become a scroll on which was written: "'All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down'—and marry me."

Suddenly the place oppressed him. He walked through the room to the smaller one of the suite and out on a broad sleeping-porch. The casement was nearly waist high, and he stood grasping the ledge and looking with unseeing eyes into a grove of firs. So this was the alternative. And this was why Foster was safe. The young mining engineer, with little besides his pay, had fallen far short of her price.

But the salt wind was in his face; it quieted him. He began to notice the many small intruding influences of approaching night. The bough of a resinous hemlock, soughing gently, touched his arm, and his hold on the shingles relaxed. He moved, to rest the injured hand on the casing, and its throbbing eased. His glance singled out clumps of changing maple or dogwood that flamed like small fires on the slope. Then he caught the rhythm of the tide, breaking far down along the rocky bulkhead; and above, where a footbridge spanned a chasm, a cascade rippled in harmony.

"Nice, isn't it?" said the lieutenant, who came onto the porch with
Elizabeth.

"That is a pergola they are building down there," she explained. "It's to be covered with Virginia creeper and wistaria and all sorts of climbing things. And French doors open into it from the dining-room. A walk winds up from the end—you see it, Mr. Tisdale?—across the footbridge to a pavilion on the point. It is almost too dark to see the roof among the trees. Mrs. Weatherbee calls it the observatory, because we have such a long sweep of the Sound from there, north and south. You'd think you were aboard a ship at sea, lieutenant, in stormy weather. It gets every wind that blows."

The lieutenant wished to go to the pavilion, but Tisdale excused himself from joining them, and was left alone again with his thoughts. Then he was conscious the other women had remained in the apartment. They had come into the inner room, and Mrs. Feversham, having found an electric button, flooded the interior with light. On the balcony a blue bulb glowed. Tisdale turned a little more and, leaning on the casement, waited for them to come through the open door.

"What do you say to furnishing this suite in bird's-eye maple?" asked
Marcia. "With rugs and portieres in old blue."

Mrs. Weatherbee shaded her dazzled eyes with her hand and looked critically around. "The maple would be lovely," she said, "but—do you know," and she turned to her companion with an engaging smile, "these sunrise rooms seem meant for Alaska cedar? And the rugs should be not old blue, but a soft, mossy blue-green."

Mrs. Feversham laughed. "Home industry again! We don't go to New York for Alaska cedar. But you are right; that pale yellow wood would be simply charming with these primrose walls, and it takes a wonderful polish. That leaves me only the rugs and hangings." She turned to go back through the wide doorway, then stopped to say: "After all, Beatriz, why not see what is to be had in Seattle? I had rather you selected everything for this suite, since it is to be yours."

"Mine?" She paused, steadying her voice, then went on with a swift breathlessness. "But I see, you mean to use when I visit you and Elizabeth. These rooms, from the first, have been my choice. But I am afraid I've been officious. I've been carried away by all this beautiful architecture and the pleasure of imagining harmonious, expensive furnishings. I never have fitted a complete house; it's years since I had a home. Then, too, you've spoiled me by listening to my suggestions. You've made me believe it was one way I could—well—cancel obligations."

Mrs. Feversham raised her hand and, turning it slowly, watched the play of
light on the ruby. "There isn't a stone like this in America," she said.
"You don't know how I've coveted it. But you need not have worried,
Beatriz. I disposed of your note to Frederic."

"To Mr. Morganstein?" Her voice broke a little; she rocked unsteadily on her feet. It was as though a great wind had taken her unawares. Then, "I shall try to pay him as soon as possible," she said evenly. "I have the land at Hesperides Vale, you know, and if I do not sell it soon, perhaps he will take it for the debt."

Mrs. Feversham dropped her hand. "Beatriz! Beatriz!" she exclaimed. "You know there's an easier way. Come, it's time to stop this make-believe. You know Frederic Morganstein would gladly pay your debts, every one. You know he is building this villa for you; that he would marry you, now, to-day, if you would say the word. Yet you hold him at arm's-length; you are so conservative, so scrupulous about Public Opinion. But no one in Seattle would breathe a suggestion of blame. And it isn't as though you had worn first mourning. The wedding could be very quiet, with a long honeymoon to Japan or Mexico; both, if you wished. And you might come home to open this house with a reception late in May. The twilights are delightful then. Come, think, Bee! You've been irreproachable; the most exacting would admit that. And every one knows David Weatherbee practically deserted you for years."

Tisdale saw her mouth tremble. The quiver ran over her face, her whole body. For an instant her lashes fell, then she lifted them and met Marcia Feversham's calculating look. "It was not desertion," she said. "He contributed—his best—to my support. I took all he had to give. If ever you are where people are—talking—do me the favor to correct that mistake. And, now, if you please, Marcia, we will not bring David Weatherbee in any more."

Mrs. Feversham laughed a little. "I am willing, bygones are bygones, only listen to Frederic."

"You are mistaken, too, about Mr. Morganstein's motive, Marcia. He built this house for all his friends and Elizabeth's. He owes her something; she has always been so devoted to him." And she added, as she turned to go back to the gallery, "He knows I do not care to marry again."

Tisdale had not foreseen the personal drift to the conversation. And it had not occurred to him he was unobserved; the balcony light was directly over him, and he had waited, expecting they would come through to the porch, to speak to them. Now he saw that from where they had stopped in the brilliant interior, his figure must have blended into the background of hemlock boughs. If they had given him any thought, they had believed he had gone down with Elizabeth and the lieutenant. To have apologized, made himself known, after he grasped the significance of the situation, would only have resulted in embarrassment to them all. He allowed them time to reach the floor below. But the heat rose in his face. And suddenly, as his mind ran back over that interview in the bows of the Aquila, his question in regard to Foster seemed gross. Still, still, she had said she did "not care to marry again." That one fact radiated subconsciously through the puzzling thoughts that baffled him.

Behind him a few splendid chords rolled through the hall to the vaulted roof, then pealed forth the overture from Martha. That had been Weatherbee's favorite opera. Sometimes on long Arctic nights, when they were recalling old times and old songs, he himself had taken Plunkett's part to David's Lionel. He could see that cabin now, the door set wide, while their voices stormed the white silence under the near Yukon stars. His eyes gathered their absent expression. It was as though he looked beyond the park, far and away into other vast solitudes; saw once more the cliffs of Nanatuk looming through fog and heard clearly, booming across the ice, the great, familiar baritone.

The notes of the organ ceased. Tisdale stirred like a man roused from sleep. He turned and started through to the gallery. A woman's voice, without accompaniment, was singing Martha's immortal aria, The Last Rose of Summer. It was beautiful. The strains, sweet and rich, flooded the hall and pervaded the upper rooms. Looking down from the railing, he saw Elizabeth and the lieutenant at the entrance below. The men who had installed the organ, were listening too, at the end of the hall, while beyond the open door the crew of the Aquila waited to carry the master aboard. As he reached the top of the stairs, Mrs. Feversham appeared, seated near the invalid in the center of the hall, and finally, as he came to the first landing, there was the diva herself, acknowledging the applause, sweeping backward with charming exaggeration from the front of the stage.

"Bravo!" shouted Frederic. "Bravo! Encore!" She took the vacant seat at the organ, and the great notes of the Good-night chorus rolled to the rafters. Responding to her nodding invitation, the voices of the audience joined her own. It was inspiring. Tisdale stopped on the landing and involuntarily he caught up his old part.

"Tho' no prayer of mine can move thee
Yet I wish thee sweet good night;
Now good night, good night, good night!"

She looked up in quick surprise; her hands stumbled a little on the keys and, singing on, she subdued her voice to listen to his. Then, hesitating a little over the first chords, she began the final prelude, and Tisdale, waiting, heard her voice waver and float out soft and full:

"Ah, will Heaven indeed forgive me."

Her face was still lifted to him. It was as though her soul rose in direct appeal to him, and in that moment all his great heart went down to her in response.

It was over. Morganstein's heavy "Bravo!" broke the silence, followed by the enthusiastic clapping of hands, Mrs. Weatherbee rose and started down the hall to join Elizabeth and the lieutenant, but Marcia detained her. "It was simply grand," she said. "I hadn't believed you had the reach or the strength of touch. This organ was certainly a fine innovation."

"Sure," said Frederic hazily. "It will make old Seattle sit up and take notice. Great idea; your schemes always are. Confess though, I had my doubts, when it came to this organ. I hedged and had that other jog built in over there for a piano. We can use it sometimes when we want to rag."

"It is a splendid instrument; much more expensive than I thought of, I am afraid. But," and she looked back at the elaborate array of pipes with the exhilaration showing in her face, "it's like giving the firs and the sea a new voice."

She passed on, and Frederic's glance followed her, puzzled, but with a blended respect and admiration. When she went out with Elizabeth and the lieutenant, he called his men to convey him to the yacht. Marcia walked beside him. Night had fallen, and the Aquila blazed like a fire ship. Her lamps sifted the shadows and threw long, wavering flames on the tide. Aft, where the table was spread, for the convenience of the host, who could not hazard the companionway, a string of electric lights illumined the deck. Japanese screens, a dropped awning or two, tempered the breeze, and the array of silver and flowers, and long-stemmed glasses, promised more than the informal little dinner to which Mrs. Feversham had referred.

She stood looking the table critically over, while the sailors settled the invalid's chair. While the rest of the party loitered in the bow, she turned to brother. "Has it occurred to you," she asked, "that Beatriz may be interested in some other man?"

"No," answered Frederic, startled. "No. Hadn't thought of that—unless— it's Foster."

"I don't know; he seems the most possible, if there's any one. She says she does not care to marry again. In any case, it is advisable to keep him in Alaska. You might send him on from the Iditarod to look over the Aurora mine." And she added slowly: "Beatriz Weatherbee, backed by the Morganstein money, will be able to carry the social end of the family anywhere; but Beatriz Weatherbee, holding a half interest in one of the best-paying placers in Alaska in her own right—is a wife worth straining a point for."

Frederic's round eyes widened; his face took an expression of childlike goodness; it was the mask with which he habitually covered his avarice. Then he said: "I understood Hollis Tisdale had exclusive, brass-bound, double-rivited possession of the Aurora."

"Hush," cautioned Marcia, "they are coming." And she added, in a still lower tone: "There is a loose rivet, but contrive to marry her before she knows."

That dinner covered the homeward cruise, and from the wharf Tisdale went directly to his rooms. There he telephoned the Rainier-Grand hotel. "Give me John Banks, please," he said. "Yes, I mean Lucky Banks of Alaska." And, after an interval, "Hello, Banks! This is Tisdale talking. I want you to come up to my rooms. Yes, to-night. I am starting east in the morning. Thank you. Good-by."

He put up the receiver and brought Weatherbee's box from the safe to the table under the hanging lamp. Seating himself, he took out the plan of the project and spread it before him. He had not closed the lid, and presently his eyes fell on David's watch. He lifted it and, hesitating to open it, sat trying to recall that picture in the lower case. He wondered how, once having seen it, even in firelight and starshine, he could have forgotten it. The face would be younger of course, hardly more than a promise of the one he knew; still there would be the upward curling lashes, the suggestion of a fault in the nose, the piquant curve of the short, upper lip, and perhaps that pervading, illusive something that was the secret of her charm. "You were right, David, old man," he said at last, "it was a face to fight for, wait for. And madam, madam, a woman with a face like yours must have had some capacity for loving."

His hand was on the spring, but he did not press it. A noise outside in the corridor arrested him. He knew it was too soon for Banks to arrive, but he laid the watch back in the box and closed the lid. "You will never marry Frederic Morganstein," he said, and rising, began to walk the floor. "It would be monstrous. You must not. You will not. I shall not let you."