"Nonsense," said Gloria. "You know we can get packed in half an hour."
That day they left Jim Spalding in charge and departed for Truckee to catch a train for San Francisco. Mrs. Gaynor dutifully entrusted to Spalding her husband's message for Mark King. That is to say, that portion of the message which she considered important. Gloria herself left no message with old Jim; not in so many words. But she did impress him with her abundant gaiety, with her eagerness for San Francisco, where all of her best and dearest friends were. If any one should ask old Jim concerning Miss Gloria, Jim would be sure to make it clear that she had no minutest regret in going but a very lively anticipation of the fullest happiness elsewhere.
Chapter IX
Three or four weeks passed before Mark King and Gloria met again. Weeks of busy gaiety on her part, of steady, persistent seeking on his. Now again Gloria and her mother and Ben were at the log house in the mountains, this time with a fresh set of guests. Only one of the former flock had been invited: Mr. Gratton. And this despite Ben Gaynor's uneasy "This chap Gratton, Nellie. He's cutting in pretty strong here of late, and I don't know that I like him. He's too confounded smooth somehow."
King came the day after the guests arrived for a talk with Ben. Gloria knew that he was coming and was coolly prepared to meet him. She gave him a bright little nod, friendly enough but casual, and resumed her lively chatter with her friends. King went off with Gaynor. That night there was no moon, but the stars, those great glittering stars of the Sierra, made the hour softly palpitant. King betook himself to smoke upon that particular, remembered corner of the porch; Gloria, slipping out from a dance, felt the little thrill that would not down when she found him there. In their two chairs, necessarily close together since the nook was so cosily narrow, her shoulder now and then brushing his as she moved, the faint fragrances from her gown and hair blown across his face by the night breeze—for them his pipe hastily laid aside—they sat talking softly or in a pleasant silence. The next morning—the matter seemed to arrange itself with very little help from either—they were to have a ride together This time they would take their lunch. When they said good-night Gloria impulsively gave him her two hands; he remembered how she had done that the first time he had seen her. Her face was lifted up to his; in the starlight he saw her eyes shining softly, gloriously; he saw her mouth, the lips barely apart. For an instant his hands shut down hard on hers; he felt the faint pressure of her own in return. When they heard her mother in the doorway calling, "Gloria, where are you?" they started apart. A strange and unanalysed sense of secrecy had fallen upon them; Gloria whispered, "Good-night, Mark," and then calling, "Here I am, mamma; just cooling off," she went skipping down the porch, slipped her arm about her mother, and carried her back into the house.
* * * * *
Before the new day was fairly come they met in the fringe of pines. Again they shook hands; again for an instant they stood as they had stood last night. They were tremblingly close to the first kiss. Suddenly Gloria, with her colour high and her eyes hidden under lashes which King marvelled at, lashes laid tenderly against her cheeks, pulled her hands out of his and began drawing on her gauntlets. Gravely, as though here were a rite to be approached solemnly, he lifted her into the saddle. They turned their horses and rode up the ridge among the trees.
They heard together the first sleepy twitterings of hidden birds; they saw the black shadows thinning; they watched the light come upon the peaks. Ridges shook off the shadow cloaks, seemed to quiver as they awoke to the new day, grew flushed and rosy. The chill of the early morning air was like wine, sparkling, tingling in the blood. The smell of resinous woods was insistent, the fine bouquet to the rare vintage. The day, the world, themselves—all were young together—all awakening to the full, true, and triumphant meaning of life. They rode a mile with never a spoken word but in a never-broken communion; then it was Gloria who spoke first, saying, as she had said once before: "I love it!"
They followed narrow trails through the ceanothus-bushes, riding one behind the other; they climbed steep trails among the pines; then went down steep trails among granite boulders; they rode side by side through little upland valleys and grassy meadows. They broke off sprays of resinous needles as they rode, inhaling the sharp odours; they stooped for handfuls of fragrant sage; they splashed through swampy places where the grass and stalks of lush flowers swept their stirrups, through rock-bound noisy streams where they must pick their way cautiously, and where the horses snorted and shook their heads and Gloria laughed gleefully. To-day was like the completion of that other day when they had ridden to Coloma—to both it seemed that it was only yesterday. The weeks in between did not matter; they were wiped out of life by the green magic. Unfinished topics, left over from the first ride, presented themselves now to be completed. Once Gloria, speaking of their first woodland luncheon, said "Yesterday." Once King, as they crossed a wild mountain brook, said, "There's one's nest now. On that rock down by the waterfall. Looks like a bit of the rock itself, with moss all about it," and Gloria understood that it was her water-ouzel he was talking about.
"It was springtime yesterday and to-day it's summer!" said Gloria.