Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗

"I'm asking now, Salina."

"And we are alone."

"Will you not stop still for a moment."

"The baking will spoil, but I can listen well enough while I work."

Ralph shifted his feet, and hunched his shoulders uncertainly. It was not as he had planned it. It was going to be a feat of timing and dexterity to sweep her up in arms all covered with flour and dough and with a heavy rolling-pin clutched in her hands.

"Salina, you are the most beautiful girl, woman, I mean, lady, that I have ever seen."

"That's kind, but untrue, Ralph. I do have a mirror, you know."

"It's true, I swear-' "Please don't swear, Ralph. In any event, there are much more important things in life than physical beauty kindness, and goodness and understanding for instance.

"Oh yes, and you have all those."

Suddenly Salina stopped in mid stroke, and she stared at him with an expression of dawning consternation.

"Ralph," she whispered. "Cousin Ralph "COUSIN I may be," he was stammering slightly in his rush to have it all said, "but I love you, Salina, I loved you from the first moment I saw you at the river.

"Oh Ralph, my poor dear Ralph." Consternation was mingled now with compassion.

"I would never have spoken, not before, but now, after this expedition I have some substance. I will be able to pay off my debts, and when I come back I will have my own wagons. I am not yet rich, but I will be., "If only I had known. Oh Ralph, if only I had suspected, I would have been able to But he was gabbling it out now.

"I love you, Salina, oh how dearly I love you, and I want you to marry me."

She came to him then, and her eyes filled with blue tears that trembled on her lower lids.

"Oh dear Ralph. I am so sorry. I would have given anything to save you from hurt. If only I had known."

He stopped then, bewildered. "You will not, does that mean you will not marry me?" The bewilderment faded, and his jaw thrust out and his mouth hardened. "But why not, I will give you everything, I will cherish and "Ralph." She touched his lips, and left a little dab of flour upon them. "Hush, Ralph, hush."

"But, Salina, I love you! Don't you understand?"

"Yes, I do. But, dear Ralph, I don't love you!"

Cathy and the twins went as far as the river with Ralph. Vicky and Lizzie rode, two up, on Tom's back.

They rode astride, with their skirts up around their thighs, and squealed with delight every few seconds, until Ralph thought his eardrums would split, and he scowled moodily ahead, not replying to Cathy's questions and comments as she skipped along beside him, until the spring went out of her step and she, too, fell silent.

The bank of the Khami river was where they would part. All of them knew that, without speaking about it.

And when they reached it Isazi had already taken the wagon through the drift. The ironshod wheels had left deep scars in the far bank. He would be an hour or so ahead. They stopped on the near bank and now even the twins were silent. Ralph looked back along the track, lifting his hat and shading his eyes with the brim against the early sunlight.

"Salina isn't coming then?" he said flatly.

"She's got a belly ache," said Vicky. "She told me so." If you ask me, it's more like the curse of Eve," said Lizzie airily.

"That's rude," Cathy said. "And only silly little girls talk about things they don't understand."

Lizzie looked chastened, and Vicky assumed a virtuous air of innocence.

"Now both of you say goodbye to Cousin Ralph."

"I love you, Cousin Ralph," said Vicky, and had to be prised off him like a leach.

"i love you, Cousin Ralph."

Lizzie had counted the kisses that Vicky had bestowed on him, and she went for a new world record, a noble attempt, but frustrated by Cathy.

"Now, scat," Cathy told them. "Go, both of you., "Cathy is crying," said Lizzie, and both twins were immediately entranced.

"I am not," said Cathy furiously.

"Oh yes, you are" said Vicky.

"I have something in my eye."

"Both eyes?" asked Lizzie sceptically.

"I warn you," Cathy told them. They knew that expression of old, and reluctantly they retired just out of range. Cathy turned her back to them so they missed half of what followed.

"They are right." Her whisper was blurred as her eyes. "I am crying, Ralph. I hate so to see you go."

Ralph had not truly looked at her, not ever, his eyes had been for Salina alone, but now her frank admission touched him and he saw her for the first time.

He had thought her a child, but he had been wrong, he realized suddenly. It was the thick dark eyebrows and the firm chin that gave strength to her face, so that he sensed that anything that made her cry was deeply felt.

Surely she had not been so tall when first he met her almost a year before. Now the top of her head reached his chin.

The freckles on her cheeks kept her young, but her nose was set in the shape of maturity and the gaze of her green eyes below the arched brows, though flooded now with tears, was too wise and steady for childhood.

She still wore the muddy green dress of sewn flour sacks, but its fit had altered. Now it was baggy at the waist, while at the same time it was too tight across her chest. Yet it could not suppress the thrust of young firm breasts, and the seams strained across hips that he remembered being as narrow and bony as a boy's.

"You will come back, Ralph? Unless you promise, I cannot let you go."

"i promise," he said, and suddenly the pain of rejection by Salina, which he had thought might destroy him, was just supportable.

"i will pray for you each day until you do," Cathy said, and came to kiss him. She no longer felt skinny and awkward in his arms, and Ralph was suddenly very aware of the softness of her against his chest, and lower.

Her mouth had a taste like chewing a stalk of green spring grass. Her lips formed a pillow for his. He had no burning desire to break the embrace, and Cathy also seemed content to let it persist. The pain of unrequited love ebbed a little more to be replaced by a warm and comforting sensation, a most pleasant glow, until with a shock Ralph realized two things.

Firstly, the twins were an avid audience, their eyes enormous and their grins impudent. Secondly, that the pleasant glow which had suffused him had its source considerably lower than his broken heart, and was accompanied by more tangible changes that must soon become apparent to the fresh young innocent in his arms.

He almost shoved her away, and vaulted up onto Tom's back with unnecessary violence. However, when he looked down at Cathy again, the tide of green tears in her eyes had receded and been replaced by a look of satisfaction, a knowingness that proved beyond doubt what he had just come to realize, that she was no longer a child.

"How long?" she asked.

"Not before the end of the rains," he told her. "Six or seven months from now." And suddenly that seemed to Ralph to be a very long time indeed.

"Anyway," she said. "I have your promise."

On the far bank of the river he looked back. The twins had lost interest and started home. They were racing each other down the track, skirts and plaits flying, but Cathy still stood staring after him. Now she lifted her hand and waved. She kept waving until horse and rider disappeared amongst the trees.

Then she sat down on a log beside the track. The sun made its noon and then sank into the misty smoke of the bush fires that blued the horizon and turned to a soft red orb that she could look at directly without paining her eyes.