V
A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN
When a man comes to the door book in hand and you have the testimony ofthe versatility and breadth of his reading in half a bushel of mail forhim, you expect to find his surroundings in keeping. But in JasperEwold's living-room Jack found nothing of the kind.
Heavy, natural beams supported the ceiling. On the gray cement walls werefour German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo lookedacross to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across toRodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broadtop bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from any mountingof silver. On the shelf underneath were portfolios of the reproductionsof paintings.
An effect which at first was one of quiet spaciousness became impressiveand compelling. Its simplicity was without any of the artificiality thatsometimes accompanies an effort to escape over-ornamentation. No onecould be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with hisimagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as thesole object of contemplation.
"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way," said Jasper Ewold."And it is not expensive."
"The Japanese idea of concentration," said Jack.
Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as hewatched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that thisyoung man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps andtrails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyedcombatancy of the born controversialist.
"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vaseshave merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek ina more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of theclassic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residencesfor warehouses."
"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do youdo with all the second-class matter?"
The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity fordiscourse.
"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, bigpaper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I wantto be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library foranother, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with printand look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I wantsomething to rest and fill the eye. I--"
"Father," Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why notcontinue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we areat table?"
"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, whichwas designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation ofgrand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but Iadmit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!"
He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one bywhich he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack foundhimself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram arounda great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, theprinted word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos ofthat truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the libraryJack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier'scot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude ofperson, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix.
"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation foroutward convention," said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you willfind a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of thealtogether."
"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked.
"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession towardbarbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take yourshower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleysof Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots orthey will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you arethrough;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, heclosed the door.
Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slenderas that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; afigure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, withoutthe bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shiverydelight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed inecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara.
While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, heviewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster onthe bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings ofcivilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels inwhich to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appearedwith an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of thepage within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on thedesert might be entitled; and Jack read:
"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD:
"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. Itwill worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides,which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in thefuture. After this I shall always go armed.
"Sincerely yours,
"MARY EWOLD."
The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in aflash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria.
"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot," he scribbled beneath hersignature.
The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was backwith a reply:
"I do, or I would not go armed," it said.
She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow,delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingeringinterest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note backwith still another postscript:
"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody," he wrote. "It is not athing to think of in that way."
This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he waswrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's lastcommunication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!"in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by eitherduelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic ofdesert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket.
"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of thekernel," said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find himstanding in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor;"yes, biting into very rich meat."
He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanceduncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office.
"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. Butcome! You are hungry!"
Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, hepassed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid undera pavilion.
"In a country where it never rains," said the host, "where it is eternalspring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hangpictures. Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect--cheaper,even, than mine. In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what wasdesert six years ago."
The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvilleavines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows ofpeony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was abroad path between rows of young palms.
Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen. The girl ofthe gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white. Jack saw heras a domestic being. He guessed that she had seen that the table was setright; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whoseboast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in theslender bronze vase on the table.
"Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room againstthe rules," she warned him; "against all your preachments about readingat meals!"
"That'
s so, Mary," said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as ifsome wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him."But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last! Giuccamini that I havewaited for so long! I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps! When I have somebody totalk to I stand doubly accused. Books at dinner! I descend into dotage!"
In disgust he started toward the house with the book. But in the verydoorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pageswith ravenous interest.
"Giuccamini and I agree!" he shouted. "He says there is no doubt thatBurlamacchi and Pico were correct. Cosmo de' Medici did call Savonarolato his death-bed, and I am glad of it. I like good stories to turn outtrue! But here I have a listener--a live listener, and I ramble on aboutdead tyrants and martyrs. I apologize--I apologize!" and he disappearedin the library.
"Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his.Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?" Maryexplained.
"There must be law in every household," Jack agreed.
"Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!" called JasperEwold, as he reappeared. "Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall notbe flattered by my own conversation."
"He glories in being an intellectual snob," Mary said. "Please pretend attimes not to understand him."
"Thank you, Mary. You are the corrective that keeps my paternalsuperiority in balance," answered her father, with a comprehending waveof his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playfulinsistence on his role as forensic master of the universe.
How he did talk! He was a mill to which all intellectual grist waswelcome. Over its wheel the water ran now singing, again with the roar ofa cataract. He changed theme with the relish of one who rambles at will,and the emotion of every opinion was written on the big expanse of hisfeatures and enforced with gestures. He talked of George Washington, ofAndrea del Sarto, of melon-growing, trimming pepper-trees, the DivinaCommedia, fighting rose-bugs, of Schopenhauer and of Florence--a greatdeal about Florence, a city that seemed to hang in his mind as a sort ofRenaissance background for everything else, even for melon-growing.
"You are getting over my head!" Jack warned him at times, politely.
"That is the trouble," said Jasper Ewold. "Consider the hardship ofbeing the one wise man in the world! I find it lonely, inconvenient,stupefying. Why, I can't even convince Jim Galway that I know more aboutdry farming than he!"
Jack listened raptly, his face glowing. Once, when he looked in hishost's direction suddenly, after speaking to Mary, he found that he wasthe object of the same inquiring scrutiny that he had been on the porch.In lulls he caught the old man's face in repose. It had sadness, then,the sadness of wreckage; sadness against which he seemed to fence in hiswordy feints and thrusts.
"Christian civilization began in the Tuscan valley," the philosopherproceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening'smail. "Florence was a devil--Florence was divine. They raised geniusesand devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worstdevils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in aFlorence pension is all this"--with a wave of his hand to the garden andthe stars--"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs whichbrought us here after--after we had found that we had not as much moneyas we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student,mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material factsof board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know thefulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to thespirit of America--the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead ofdreaming of past cities, I set out to make a city like a true American.Here we came to camp in our first travelled delight of desert spaces forher sake; and here we brought what was left of the fortune and started asettlement."
The spectator-philosopher attitude of audience to the world's stagepassed. He became the builder and the rancher, enthusiastically dwellingon the growth of orchards and gardens in expert fondness. As Jacklistened, the fragrance of flowers was in his nostrils and in intervalsbetween Jasper Ewold's sentences he seemed to hear the rustle of borningleaf-fronds breaking the silence. But the narrative was not an idyll.Toil and patience had been the handmaidens of the fecundity of the soil.Prosperity had brought an entail of problems. Jasper Ewold mentioned thembriefly, as if he would not ask a guest to share the shadows which theybrought to his brow.
"The honey of our prosperity brings us something besides the bees. Itbrings those who would share the honey without work," said he. "It bringsthe Bill Lang hive and Pete Leddy."
At the mention of the name, Jack's and Mary's glances met.
"You have promised not to tell," hers was saying.
"I will not," his was answering.
But clearly he had grasped the fact that Little Rivers was getting out ofits patron's hands, and every honest man in that community wanted to berid of Pete Leddy.
"I should think your old friend, Cosmo de' Medici, would have found away," Jack suggested.
"Cosmo is for talk," said Mary. "At heart father is a Quaker."
"Some are for lynching," said Jasper Ewold, thoughtfully. "Begin topromote order with disorder and where will you end?" he inquired,belligerently. "This is not the Middle Ages. This is the Little Riversof peace."
Then, after a quotation from Cardinal Newman, which seemed prettyfar-fetched to deal with desert ruffians, he was away again, setting outfruit trees and fighting the scale.
"And our Date Tree Wonderful!" he continued. "This year we get our firstfruit, unless the book is wrong. You cannot realize what this first-bornof promise means to Little Rivers. Under the magic of water it completesthe cycle of desert fecundity, from Scotch oats and Irish potatoes to theArab's bread. Bananas I do not include. Never where the banana grows hasthere been art or literature, a good priesthood, unimpassionedlaw-makers, honest bankers, or a noble knighthood. It is just a littletoo warm. Here we can build a civilization which neither roasts us insummer nor freezes us in winter."
There was a fluid magnetism in the rush of Jasper Ewold's junketingverbiage which carried the listener on the bosom of a pleasant stream.Jack was suddenly reminded that it must be very late and he had faroverstayed the retiring hour of the desert, where the Eternal Paintercommands early rising.
"Going--going so soon!" protested Jasper Ewold.
"So late!" Jack smiled back.
To prove that it was, he called attention to the fact, when they passedthrough the living-room to the veranda, that not a light remained in anyranch-house.
"I have not started my talk yet," said Jasper. "But next time you come Iwill really make a beginning--and you shall see the Date Tree Wonderful."
"I go by the morning train," Jack returned.
"So! so!" mused Jasper. "So! so!" he objected, but not gloomily. "I get agood listener only to lose him!"
But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In thatinterval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil andsaw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offeringno invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under thesunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to theeasy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And heseemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he afterthe veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form ofthanks for an evening of happiness.
"A pleasant journey!" Mary said.
"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold.
Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the lastglimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which neverminded the danger sign on the precipice's edge.
"He does not really want to go back to New York," Mary remarked, and wassurprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud.
"I hardly agree with that opinion," said her father absently, histhoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I amsure, John Wingfield! A smile
and a square chin!"
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