by Max Brand
“God!”
She was between a smile and a gasp.
“Yep, that’s David,” grinned Connor. “Just plain nut.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know. Maybe flowers.”
“Let’s find out.”
He caught her arm quickly.
“Not in a thousand years!” He changed color at the thought and glanced guiltily around. “That would be the smash of everything. Why, he turned over the whole Garden of Eden to me. I can go anywhere, but not a step inside that room. It’s his Holy Ground, you see! Maybe it’s where he keeps his jack. And I’ve a hunch that he has a slough of it tucked away somewhere.”
She raised her hand as an idea came to her half way through this speech.
“Listen! I have an idea that the clew to all of David’s mystery is in that room!”
“Drop that idea, Ruth,” he ordered gruffly. “You’ve seen David on one rampage, but it’s nothing to what would happen if you so much as peeked into that place. When the servants pass that door they take off their hats — watch ’em the next time you have a chance. You won’t make a slip about that room?”
“No.” But she added: “I’d give my soul — for one look!”
Dinner that night under the stars with the whispering of the fountain beside them was a ceremony which Connor never forgot. The moon rose late and in the meantime the sky was heavy and dark with sheeted patchwork of clouds, with the stars showing here and there. The wind blew in gusts. A wave began with a whisper on the hill, came with a light rushing across the patio, and then diminished quickly among the trees down the terraces. Rough, iron-framed lanterns gave the light and showed the arcade stepping away on either side and growing dim toward the entrance. That uncertain illumination made the crude pillars seem to have only the irregularity of vast antiquity, stable masses of stone. Where the circle of lantern-light overlapped rose the fountain, a pale spray forever dissolving in the upper shadow. Connor himself was more or less used to these things, but he became newly aware of them as the girl sent quick, eager glances here and there.
She had placed a single one of the great yellow blossoms in her hair and it changed her shrewdly. It brought out the delicate coloring of her skin, and to the darkness of her eyes it lent a tint of violet. Plainly she enjoyed the scene with its newness. David, of course, was the spice to everything, and his capitulation was complete; he kept the girl always on an uneasy balance between happiness and laughter. And Connor trembled for fear the mirth would show through. But each change of her expression appeared to delight David more than the last.
Under his deft knife the choicest white meat came away from the breast of a chicken and he heaped it at once on the plate of Ruth. Then he dropped his chin upon his great brown fist and watched with silent delight while she ate. It embarrassed her; but her flush had a tinge of pleasure in it, as Connor very well knew.
“Look!” said David, speaking softly as though Ruth would not hear him. “How pleasant it is, to be three together. When we were two, one talked and the other grew weary — was it not so? But now we are complete. One speaks, one listens, and the other judges. I have been alone. The Garden of Eden has been to me a prison, at many times. And now there is nothing wanting. And why? There were many men before. We were not lacking in numbers. Yet there was an emptiness, and now comes one small creature, as delicate as a colt of three months, this being of smiles and curious glances, this small voice, this woman — and at once the gap is filled. Is it not strange?”
He cast himself back in his chair, as though he wished to throw her into perspective with her surroundings, and all the time he was staring as though she were an image, a picture, and not a thing of flesh and blood. Connor himself was on the verge of a smile, but when he saw the face of Ruth Manning his mirth disappeared in a chill of terror. She was struggling and struggling in vain against a rising tide of laughter, laughter in the face of David Eden and his sensitive pride.
It came, it broke through all bonds, and now it was bubbling from her lips. As one who awaits the falling of a blow, Connor glanced furtively at the host, and again he was startled.
There was not a shade of evil temper in the face of David. He leaned forward, indeed, with a surge of the great shoulders, but it was as one who listens to an entrancing music. And when she ceased, abruptly, he sighed.
“Speak to me,” he commanded.
She murmured a faint reply.
“Again,” said David, half closing his eyes. And Connor nodded a frantic encouragement to her.
“But what shall I say?”
“For the meaning of what you say,” said David, “I have no care, but only for the sound. Have you heard dripping in a well, a sound like water filling a bottle and never reaching the top? It keeps you listening for an hour, perhaps, always a soft sound, but always rising toward a climax? Or a drowsy day when the wind hardly moves and the whistling of a bird comes now and then out of the trees, cool and contented? Or you pass a meadow of flowers in the warm sun and hear the ground murmur of the bees, and you think at once of the wax films of the honeycomb, and the clear golden honey? All those things I heard and saw when you spoke.”
“Plain nut!” said Connor, framing the words with silent lips.
But though her eyes rested on him, apparently she did not see his face. She looked back at Connor with a wistful little half-smile.
At once David cast out both his hands toward hers.
“Ah, you are strange, new, delightful!” He stopped abruptly. Then: “Does it make you happy to hear me say these things?”
“Why do you ask me that?” she said curiously.
“Because it fills me with unspeakable happiness to say them. If I am silent and only think then I am not so pleased. When I see Glani standing on the hilltop I feel his speed in the slope of his muscles, the flaunt of his tail, the pride of his head; but when I gallop him, and the wind of his galloping strikes my face — ha, that is a joy! So it is speaking with you. When I see you I say within: ‘She is beautiful!’ But when I speak it aloud your lips tremble a little toward a smile, your eyes darken with pleasure, and then my heart rises into my throat and I wish to speak again and again and again to find new things to say, to say old things in new words. So that I may watch the changes in your face. Do you understand? But now you blush. Is that a sign of anger?”
“It is a sign that no other men have ever talked to me in this manner.”
“Then other men are fools. What I say is true. I feel it ring in me, that it is the truth. Benjamin, my brother, is it not so? Ha!”
She was raising the wine-cup; he checked her with his eager, extended hand.
“See, Benjamin, how this mysterious thing is done, this raising of the hand. We raise the cup to drink. An ugly thing — let it be done and forgotten. But when she lifts the cup it is a thing to be remembered; how her fingers curve and the weight of the cup presses into them, and how her wrist droops.”
She lowered the cup hastily and put her hand before her face.
“I see,” said Connor dryly.
“Bah!” cried the master of the Garden. “You do not see. But you, Ruth, are you angry? Are you shamed?”
He drew down her hands, frowning with intense anxiety. Her face was crimson.
“No,” she said faintly.
“He says that he sees, but he does not see,” went on David. “He is blind, this Benjamin of mine. I show him my noblest grove of the eucalyptus trees, each tree as tall as a hill, as proud as a king, as beautiful as a thought that springs up from the earth. I show him these glorious trees. What does he say? ‘You could build a whole town out of that wood!’ Bah! Is that seeing? No, he is blind! Such a man would give you hard work to do. But I say to you, Ruth, that to be beautiful is to be wise, and industrious, and good. Surely you are to me like the rising of the sun — my heart leaps up! And you are like the coming of the night making the world beautiful and mysterious. For behind your eyes and behind your words, out of the sound
of your voice and your glances, I guess at new things, strange things, hidden things. Treasures which cannot be held in the hands. Should you grow as old as Elijah, withered, meager as a grasshopper, the treasures would still be there. I, who have seen them, can never forget them!”
Once more she covered her eyes with her hand, and David started up from his chair.
“What have I done?” he asked faintly of Connor. He hurried around the table to her. “Look up! How have I harmed you?”
“I am only tired,” she said.
“I am a fool! I should have known. Come!” said David.
He drew her from the chair and led her across the lawn, supporting her. At her door: “May sleep be to you like the sound of running water,” murmured David.
And when the door was closed he went hastily back to Connor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“WHAT HAVE I done? What have I done?” he kept moaning. “She is in pain. I have hurt her.”
“Sit down,” said Connor, deeply amused.
It had been a curious revelation to him, this open talk of a man who was falling in love. He remembered the way he had proposed to a girl, once: “Say, Betty, don’t you think you and me would hit it off pretty well, speaking permanently?”
This flaunting language was wholly ludicrous to Connor. It was book-stuff.
David had obeyed him with childlike docility, and sat now like a pupil about to be corrected by the master.
“That point is this,” explained Connor gravely. “You have the wrong idea. As far as I can make out, you like Ruth?”
“It is a weak word. Bah! It is not enough.”
“But it’s enough to tell her. You see, men outside of the Garden don’t talk to a girl the way you do, and it embarrasses her to have you talk about her all the time.”
“Is it true?” murmured the penitent David. “Then what should I have said?”
“Well — er — you might have said — that the flower went pretty well in her hair, and let it go at that.”
“But it was more, more, more! Benjamin, my brother, these hands of mine picked that very flower. And I see that it has pleased her. She had taken it up and placed it in her hair. It changes her. My flower brings her close to me. It means that we have found a thing which pleases us both. Just as you and I, Benjamin, are drawn together by the love of one horse. So that flower in her hair is a great sign. I dwell upon it. It is like a golden moon rising in a black night. It lights my way to her. Words rush up from my heart, but cannot express what I mean!”
“Let it go! Let it go!” said Connor hastily, brushing his way through this outflow of verbiage, like a man bothered with gnats. “I gather what you mean. But the point is that about nine-tenths of what you think you’d better not say. If you want to talk — well, talk about yourself. That’s what I most generally do with a girl. They like to hear a man say what he’s done.”
“Myself!” said David heavily. “Talk of a dead stump when there is a great tree beside it? Well, I see that I have much to learn.”
“You certainly have,” said Connor with much meaning. “I’d hate to turn you loose in Manhattan.”
“In what?”
“Never mind. But here’s another thing. You know that she’ll have to leave pretty soon?”
The meaning slowly filtered into David’s mind.
“Benjamin,” he said slowly, “you are wise in many ways, with horses and with women, it seems. But that is a fool’s talk. Let me hear no more of it. Leave me? Why should she leave me?”
Triumph warmed the heart of Connor.
“Because a girl can’t ramble off into the mountains and put up in a valley where there are nothing but men. It isn’t done.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t good form.”
“I fail to understand.”
“My dear fellow, she’d be compromised for life if it were known that she had lived here with us.”
David shook his head blankly.
“In one word,” said Connor, striving to make his point, “she’d be pointed out by other women and by men. They’d never have anything to do with her. They’d say things that would make her ashamed, hurt her, you know.”
Understanding and wrath gathered in David’s face.
“To such a man — to such a dog of a man — I would talk with my hands!”
“I think you would,” nodded Connor, not a little impressed. “But you might not be around to hear the talk.”
“But women surely live with men. There are wives—”
“Ah! Man and wife — all very well!”
“Then it is simple. I marry her and then I keep her here forever.”
“Perhaps. But will she marry you?”
“Why not?”
“Well, does she love you?”
“True.” He stood up. “I’ll ask her.”
“For Heaven’s sake, no! Sit down! You mustn’t rush at a woman like this the first day you know her. Give her time. Let me tell you when!”
“Benjamin, my dear brother, you are wise and I am a fool!”
“You’ll do in time. Let me coach you, that’s all, and you’ll come on famously. I can tell you this: that I think she likes you very well already.”
“Your words are like a shower of light, a fragrant wind. Benjamin, I am hot with happiness! When may I speak to her?”
“I don’t know. She may have guessed something out of what you said to-night.” He swallowed a smile. “You might speak to her about this marriage to-morrow.”
“It will be hard; but I shall wait.”
“And then you’ll have to go out of the Garden with her to get married.”
“Out of the Garden? Never! Why should we?”
“Why, you’ll need a minister, you know, to marry you.”
“True. Then I shall send for one.”
“But he might not want to make this long journey for the sake of one marriage ceremony.”
“There are ways, perhaps, of persuading him to come,” said David, making a grim gesture.
“No force or you ruin everything.”
“I shall be ruled by you, brother. It seems I have little knowledge.”
“Go easy always and you’ll come out all right. Give her plenty of time. A woman always needs a lot of time to make up her mind, and even then she’s generally wrong.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“No matter. She’ll probably want to go back to her home for a while.”
“Leave me?”
“Not necessarily. But you, when a man gets engaged, it’s sometimes a couple of years between the time a woman promises to marry him and the day of the ceremony.”
“Do they wait so long, and live apart?”
“A thousand miles, maybe.”
“Then you men beyond the mountains are made of iron!”
“Do you have to be away from her? Why not go along with her when she goes home?”
“Surely, Benjamin, you know that a law forbids it!”
“You make your own laws in important things like this.”
“It cannot be.”
And so the matter rested when Connor left his host and went to bed. He had been careful not to press the point. So unbelievably much ground had been covered in the first few hours that he was dizzy with success. It seemed ages since that Ruth had come running to him in the patio in terror of her life. From that moment how much had been done!
Closing his eyes as he lay on his bed, he went back over each incident to see if a false step had been made. As far as he could see, there had not been a single unsound measure undertaken. The first stroke had been the masterpiece. Out of a danger which had threatened instant destruction of their plan she had won complete victory by her facing of David, and when she put her hand in his as a sign of weakness, Connor could see that she had made David her slave.
As the scene came back vividly before his eyes he could not resist an impulse to murmur aloud to the dark: “Brave girl!”
Sh
e had grown upon him marvelously in that single half-day. The ability to rise to a great situation was something which he admired above all things in man or woman. It was his own peculiar power — to judge a man or a horse in a glance, and dare to venture a fortune on chance. Indeed, it was hardly a wonder that David Eden or any other man should have fallen in love with her in that one half-day. She was changed beyond recognition from the pale girl who sat at the telegraph key in Lukin and listened to the babble of the world. Now she was out in that world, acting on the stage and proving herself worthy of a r”le.
He rehearsed her acts. And finally he found himself flushing hotly at the memory of her mingled pleasure and shame and embarrassment as David of Eden had poured out his amazing flow of compliments.
At this point Connor sat up suddenly and violently in his bed.
“Steady, Ben!” he cautioned himself. “Watch your step!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BEN CONNOR AWOKE the next morning with the sun streaming across the room and sprang out of bed at once, worried. For about dawn noises as a rule began around the house and the singing of the old men farther down the hill. The Garden of Eden awakened at sunrise, and this silence even when the sun was high alarmed the gambler. He dressed hastily, and opening his door, he saw David walking slowly up and down the patio. At the sight of Connor he raised a warning finger.
“Let us keep a guard upon our voices,” he murmured, coming to Connor. “I have ordered my servants to move softly and to keep from the house if they may.”
“What’s happened?”
“She sleeps, Benjamin.” He turned toward her door with a smile that the gambler never forgot. “Let her waken rested.”
Connor looked at the sky.
“I’ve come too late for breakfast, even?”
A glance of mild rebuke was turned upon him.
“Surely, Benjamin, we who are strong will not eat before her who is weak?”
“Are you going to starve yourself because she’s sleepy?”
“But I have not felt hunger.”
He added in a voice of wonder: “Listen!”
Ruth Manning was singing in her room, and Connor turned away to hide his frown. For he was not by any means sure whether the girl sang from the joy she found in this great adventure or because of David Eden. He was still further troubled when she came out to the breakfast table in the patio. He had expected that she would be more or less confused by the presence of David after his queer talk of the night before, but sleep seemed to have wiped everything from her memory. Her first nod, to be sure, was for the gambler, but her smile was for David of Eden. Connor fell into a reverie which was hardly broken through the meal by the deep voice of David or the laughter of Ruth. Their gayety was a barrier, and he was, subtly, left on the outside. David had proposed to the girl a ride through the Garden, and when he went for the horses the gambler decided to make sure of her position. He was too much disturbed to be diplomatic. He went straight to the point.