Chapter 20

Sylvia was resting. She had not danced to her heart's content, but she had become weary, and she threw Antonia's _rebozo_ over her shoulders and leaned back in her seat. For the moment Harboro and Valdez and Wayne were grouped near her, standing. The girl Wayne was to marry the next day had made her formal appearance now and was the centre of attention. She was dancing with one after another, equally gracious toward all.

Then Sylvia heard Valdez and Wayne cry out simultaneously:

"Runyon!"

And then both men hurried away toward the entrance to the stockade.

Sylvia drew her wrap more snugly about her. "Runyon!" she repeated to herself. She closed her eyes as if she were pondering--or recuperating. And she knew that from the beginning she had hoped that Runyon would appear.

"It's that inspector fellow," explained Harboro, without looking at her. His tone was not at all contemptuous, though there was a note of amusement in it. "He seems a sort of Prince Charming that everybody takes a liking to." Wayne and Valdez were already returning, with Runyon between them. They pretended to lead him captive and his face radiated merriment and good nature. He walked with the elasticity of a feline creature; he carried his body as if it were the depository of precious jewels. Never was there a man to whom nature had been kinder--nor any man who was more graciously proud of what nature had done for him. For the occasion he was dressed in a suit of fawn-colored corduroy which fitted him as the rind fits the apple.

"Just a little too much so," Harboro was thinking, ambiguously enough, certainly, as Runyon was brought before him and Sylvia. Runyon acknowledged the introduction with a cheerful urbanity which was quite without discrimination as between Harboro and Sylvia. Quite impartially he bestowed a flashing smile upon both the man and the woman. And Harboro began vaguely to understand. Runyon was popular, not because he was a particularly good fellow, but because he was so supremely cheerful. And he seemed entirely harmless, despite the glamour of him. After all, he was not a mere male coquette. He was in love with the world, with life.

Wayne was reproaching him for not having come sooner. He should have been there for the beginning, he said.

And Runyon's response was characteristic enough, perhaps: "Everything is always beginning."

There was gay laughter at this, though the meaning of it must have been obscure to all save Sylvia. The words sounded like a song to her. It was a song she had wished to sing herself. But she was reflecting, despite her joy in the saying: "No, everything is always ending."

Runyon was borne away like a conqueror. He mingled with this group and that. His presence was like a stimulant. His musical voice penetrated everywhere; his laughter arose now and again. He did not look back toward Sylvia. She had the strange feeling that even yet they had not met--they had not met, yet had known each other always. He ignored her, she felt, as one ignores the best friend, the oldest associate, on the ground that no explanations are necessary, no misunderstanding possible.

Harboro sat down beside Sylvia. When he spoke there was a note of easy raillery in his voice. "They're getting him to sing," he said, and Sylvia, bringing her thoughts back from immeasurable distances, realized that the dancing space had been cleared, and that the musicians had stopped playing and were engaged in a low-spoken conference with Runyon. He nodded toward them approvingly and then stepped out into the open, a little distance from them.

The very sky listened; the desert became dumb. The orchestra played a prelude and then Runyon began to sing. The words came clear and resonant:

"By the blue Alsatian mountains Dwelt a maiden young and fair...."

Runyon sang marvellously. Although he was accustomed to the confines of drawing-rooms with low ceilings, he seemed quite at home on this earthen floor of the desert, with the moon sinking regretfully beyond the top of the stockade. He was perfectly at ease. His hands hung so naturally by his sides that they seemed invisible.

"But the blue Alsatian mountains Seem to watch and wait alway."

The song of a woman alone, and then another, "A Warrior Bold," and then "Alice, Where Art Thou?" And finally "Juanita." They were songs his audience would appreciate. And all those four songs of tragedy he sang without banishing the beaming smile from his eyes. He might have been relating the woes of marionettes.

He passed from the scene to the sound of clapping hands, and when he returned almost immediately after that agreeable theatrical exit, he began to dance. He danced with the bride-to-be, and then with the bridesmaids. He found obscure girls who seemed to have been forgotten--who might be said to have had no existence before he found them--and danced with them with natural gallantry. He came finally to Sylvia, and she drifted away with him, her hand resting on his shoulder like a kiss.

"I thought you would never come to me," she said in a lifeless voice.

"You knew I would," was the response.

Her lips said nothing more. But her heart was beating against him; it was speaking to him with clarity, with eloquence.