That evening at sunset Manella made her way towards the hill and the "House of the Dying," moved by she knew not what strange impulse. She had no excuse whatever for going; she knew that the man living up there in whom she was so much interested had as much food for three days as he asked for or desired, and that he was likely to be vexed at the very sight of her. Yet she had an eager wish to tell him something about the wonderful little creature with lightning eyes who had left the Plaza that morning and had told her, Manella, that she was "quite beautiful." Pride, and an innocent feminine vanity thrilled her; "if another woman thinks so, it must be so,"—she argued, being aware that women seldom admire each other. She walked swiftly, with head bent,—and was brought to a startled halt by meeting and almost running against the very individual she sought, who in his noiseless canvas shoes and with his panther-like tread had come upon her unawares. Checked in her progress she stood still, her eyes quickly lifted, her lips apart. In her adoration of the strength and magnificent physique of the stranger whom she knew only as a stranger, she thought he looked splendid as a god descending from the hill. Far from feeling god-like, he frowned as he saw her.
"Where are you going?" he demanded, brusquely.
The rich colour warmed her cheeks to a rose-red that matched the sunset.
"I was going—to see if you—if you wanted anything"—she stammered, almost humbly.
"You know I do not"—he said—"You can spare yourself the trouble."
She drew herself up with a slight air of offence.
"If you want nothing why do you come down into the valley?" she asked. "You say you hate the Plaza!"
"I do!" and he spoke almost vindictively—"But, at the moment, there's some one there I want to see."
Her black eyes opened inquisitively.
"A man?"
"No. Strange to say, a woman."
A sudden light flashed on her mind.
"I know!" she exclaimed—"But you will not see her! She has gone!"
"What do you mean?" he asked, impatiently—"What do you know?"
"Oh, I know nothing!" and there was a sobbing note of pathos in her voice—"But I feel HERE!"—and she pressed her hands against her bosom—"something tells me that you have seen HER—the little wonderful white woman, sweetly perfumed like a rose,—with her silks and jewels and her fairy car!—and her golden hair... ah!—you said you hated a woman with golden hair! Is that the woman you hate?"
He stood looking at her with an amused, half scornful expression.
"Hate is too strong a word"—he answered—"She isn't worth hating!"
Her brows contracted in a frown.
"I do not believe THAT!"—she said—"You are not speaking truly. More likely it is, I think, you love her!"
He caught her roughly by the arm.
"Stop that!" he exclaimed, angrily—"You are foolish and insolent! Whether I love or hate anybody or anything is no affair of yours! How dare you speak to me as if it were!"
She shrank away from him. Her lips quivered, and tears welled through her lashes.
"Forgive me! ... oh, forgive!" she murmured, pleadingly—"I am sorry!..."
"So you ought to be!" he retorted—"You—Manella—imagine yourself in love with me ... yes, you do!—and you cannot leave me alone! No amorous man ever cadged round for love as much or as shamelessly as an amorous woman! Then you see another woman on the scene, and though she's nothing but a stray visitor at the Plaza where you help wash up the plates and dishes, you suddenly conceive a lot of romantic foolery in your head and imagine me to be mysteriously connected with her! Oh, for God's sake don't cry! It's the most awful bore! There's nothing to cry for. You've set me up like a sort of doll in a shrine and you want to worship me—well!—I simply won't be worshipped. As for your 'little wonderful white woman sweetly perfumed like a rose,' I don't mind saying that I know her. And I don't mind also telling you that she came up the hill last night to ferret me out."
Step by step Manella drew nearer, her eyes blazing.
"She went to see you?—She did THAT!—In the darkness?—like a thief or a serpent!"
He laughed aloud.
"No thief and no serpent in it!" he said—"And no darkness, but in the full light of the moon! Such a moon it was, too! A regular stage moon! A perfect setting for such an actress, in her white gown and her rope of gold hair! Yes—it was very well planned!—effective in its way, though it left me cold!"
"Ah, but it did NOT leave you cold!" cried Manella; "Else you would not have come down to see her to-day! You say she went 'to ferret you out'—"
"Of course she did"—he interrupted her—"She would ferret out any man she wanted for the moment. Forests could not hide him,—caves could not cover him if she made up her mind to find him. I had hoped she would not find ME—but she has—however,—you say she has gone—"
The colour had fled from Manella's face,—she was pale and rigid.
"She will come back," she said stiffly.
"I hope not!" And he threw himself carelessly down on the turf to rest—"Come and sit beside me here and tell me what she said to you!"
But Manella was silent. Her dark, passionate eyes rested upon him with a world of scorn and sorrow in their glowing depths.
"Come!" he repeated—"Don't stare at me as if I were some new sort of reptile!"
"I think you are!" she said, coldly—"You seem to be a man, but you have not the feelings of a man!"
"Oh, have I not!" and he gave a light gesture of indifference—"I have the feelings of a modern man,—the 'Kultur' of a perfect super-German! Yes, that is so! Sentiment is the mere fly-trap of sensuality—the feeler thrust out to scent the prey, but once the fly is caught, the trap closes. Do you understand? No, of course you don't! You are a dreadfully primitive woman!"
"I did not think you were German," she said.
"Nor did I!" and he laughed—"Nor am I. I said just now that I had the 'Kultur' of a super-German—and a super-German means something above every other male creature except himself. He cannot get away from himself—nor can I! That's the trouble! Come, obey me, Manella! Sit down here beside me!"
Very slowly and very reluctantly she did as he requested. She sat on the grass some three or four paces off. He stretched out a hand to touch her, but she pushed it back very decidedly. He smiled.
"I mustn't make love to you this morning, eh?" he queried. "All right! I don't want to make love—it doesn't interest me—I only want to put you in a good temper! You are like a rumpled pussy-cat—your fur must be stroked the right way."
"YOU will not stroke it so!" said Manella, disdainfully.
"No?"
"No. Never again!"
"Oh, dire tragedy!" And he stretched himself out on the turf with his arms above his head—"But what does it matter! Give me your news, silly child! What did the 'little wonderful white woman' say to you?"
"You want to know?"
"I think so! I am conscious of a certain barbaric spirit of curiosity, like that of a savage who sees a photograph of himself for the first time! Yes! I want to know what the modern feminine said to the primitive!"
Manella gave an impatient gesture.
"I do not understand all your fine words"—she said—"But I will answer you. I told her about you—how you had come to live in the hut for the dying on the hill rather than at the Plaza—and how I took to you all the food you asked for, and she seemed amused—"
"Amused?" he echoed.
"Yes—amused. She laughed,—she looks very pretty when she laughs. And—and she seemed to fancy—"
He lifted himself upright in a sitting posture.
"Seemed to fancy? ... what?—"
"That I was not bad to look at—" and Manella, gathering sudden boldness, lifted her dark eyes to his face—"She said I could tell you that she thinks me quite beautiful! Yes!—quite beautiful!"
He smiled—a smile that was more like a sneer.
"So you are! I've told you so, often. 'There needs no ghost come from the grave' to emphasise the fact. But she—the purring cat!—she told you to repeat her opinion to me, because—can you guess why?"
"No!"
"Simpleton! Because she wishes you to convey to me the message that she considers me your lover and that she admires my taste! Now she'll go back to New York full of the story! Subtle little devil! But I am not your lover, and never shall be,—not even for half an hour!"
Manella sprang up from the turf where she had been sitting.
"I know that!" she said, and her splendid eyes flashed proud defiance—"I know I have been a fool to let myself care for you! I do not know why I did—it was an illness! But I am well now!"
"You are well now? Good! O let us be joyful! Keep well, Manella!—and be 'quite beautiful'—as you are! To be quite beautiful is a fine thing—not so fine as it used to be in the Greek period—still, it has its advantages! I wonder what you will do with your beauty?"
As he spoke, he rose, stretching and shaking him self like a forest animal.
"What will you do with it?" he repeated—"You must give it to somebody! You must transmit it to your offspring! That's the old law of nature—it's getting a bit monotonous, still it's the law! Now she—the wonderful white woman—she's all for upsetting the law! Fortunately she's not beautiful—"
"She IS!" exclaimed Manella—"I think her so!" He looked down upon her from his superior height with a tolerant amusement.
"Really! YOU think her so! And SHE thinks you so! Quite a mutual admiration society! And both of you obsessed by the same one man! I pity that man! The only thing for him to do is to keep out of it! No, Manella!—think as you like, she is not beautiful. You ARE beautiful. But SHE is clever, You are NOT clever. You may thank God for that! SHE is outrageously, unnaturally, cursedly clever! And her cleverness makes her see the sham of life all through; the absurdity of birth that ends in death—the freakishness of civilisation to no purpose—and she's out for something else. She wants some thing newer than sex-attraction and family life. A husband would bore her to extinction—the care of children would send her into a lunatic asylum!"
Manella looked bewildered.
"I cannot understand!" she said—"A woman lives for husband and children!"
"SOME women do!" he answered—"Not all! There are a good few who don't want to stay on the animal level. Men try to keep them there—but it's a losing game nowadays. ('Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests'—but we cannot fail to see that when Mother Fox has reared her puppies she sends them off about their own business and doesn't know them any more—likewise Mother Bird does the same. Nature has no sentiment.) We have, because we cultivate artificial feelings—we imagine we 'love,' when we only want something that pleases us for the moment. To live, as you say, for husband and children would make a woman a slave—a great many women are slaves—but they are beginning to get emancipated—the woman with the gold hair, whom you so much admire, is emancipated."
Manella gave a slight disdainful movement of her head.
"That only means she is free to do as she likes"—she said—"To marry or not to marry—to love or not to love. I think if she loved at all, she would love very greatly. Why did she go so secretly in the evening to see you? I suppose she loves you!"
A sudden red flush of anger coloured his brow.
"Yes"—he answered with a kind of vindictive slowness—"I suppose she does! You, Manella, are after me as a man merely—she is after me as a Brain! You would steal my physical liberty,—she would steal my innermost thought! And you will both be disappointed! Neither my body nor my brain shall ever be dominated by any woman!"
He turned from her abruptly and began the ascent that led to his solitary retreat. Once he looked back—
"Don't let me see you for two days at least!" he called—"I've more than enough food to keep me going."
He strode on, and Manella stood watching him, her tall handsome figure silhouetted against the burning sky. Her dark eyes were moist with suppressed tears of shame and suffering,—she felt herself to be wronged and slighted undeservedly. And beneath this personal emotion came now a smarting sense of jealousy, for in spite of all he had said, she felt that there was some secret between him and "the little wonderful white woman," which she could not guess and which was probably the reason of his self-sought exile and seclusion.
"I wish now I had gone with her!" she mused—"for if I am 'quite beautiful,' as she said, she might have helped me in the world,—I might have become a lady!"
She walked slowly and dejectedly back to the Plaza, knowing in her heart that lady or no lady, her rich beauty was useless to her, inasmuch as it made no effect on the one man she had elected to care for, unwanted and unasked. Certain physiologists teach that the law of natural selection is that the female should choose her mate, but the difficulty along this line of argument is that she may choose where her choice is unwelcome and irresponsive. Manella was a splendid type of primitive womanhood,—healthy, warm-blooded and full of hymeneal passion,—as a wife she would have been devoted,—as a mother superb in her tenderness; but, measured by modern standards of advanced and restless femininity she was a mere drudge, without the ability to think for herself or to analyse subtleties of emotion. Intellectuality had no part in her; most people's talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,—she could not follow him at all,—and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; Adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured Venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored Californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a little child. What was the singular fascination which like the "pull" of a magnetic storm on telegraph wires, forced a woman's tender heart under the careless foot of a rough creature as indifferent to it as to a flower he trampled in his path? Nature might explain it in some unguarded moment of self-betrayal,—but Nature is jealous of her secrets,—they have to be coaxed out of her in the slow course of centuries. And with all the coaxing, the subtle work of her woven threads between the Like and the Unlike remains an unsolved mystery.
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