by Max Brand
He paused a moment, for David was moving his hands over the hindlegs and lingering long at the hocks. And the face of Elijah grew convulsed with anxiety.
“Is there anything wrong with those legs?” murmured Ruth to Connor.
“Not a thing that I see. Maybe the stifles are too straight. I think they might angle out a bit more. But that’s nothing serious. Besides, it may be the way Timeh is standing. What’s the matter?”
She was clinging to his arm, white-faced.
“If that colt has to die I — I’ll want to kill David Eden!”
“Hush, Ruth! And don’t let him see your face!”
David moved back from Timeh and again folded his arms.
“The body of the horse is one thing,” ran on Elijah uneasily, “and the spirit is another. Have you not told us, David, that a curious colt makes a wise horse? That is Timeh! Where will you guess that I found her when I went to bring her to you even now? She had climbed up the face of the cliff, far up a crevice where a man would not dare to go. I dared not even cry out to her for fear she would fall if she turned her head. To have climbed so high was almost impossible, but how would she come down when there was no room for her to turn?
“I was dizzy and sick with grief. But Timeh saw me, and down she came, without turning. She lifted her hoofs and put them down as a cat lifts and puts down wet paws. And in a moment she was safe on the meadow and frisking around me. Juri had been so worried that she made Timeh stop running and nosed her all over to make sure that she was unhurt by that climb. But tell me: will not a colt that risks its life to climb for a tuft of grass, run till its heart breaks for the master in later years?”
For the first time David spoke.
“Is she so wise a colt?” he said.
“Wise?” cried Elijah, his eye shining with joy at the opening which he had made. “I talk to her as I talk to a man. She is as full of tricks as a dog. Look, now!”
He leaned over and pretended to pick at the grass, whereat Timeh stole up behind him and drew out a handkerchief from his hip pocket. Off she raced and came back in a flashing circle to face Elijah with the cloth fluttering in her teeth.
“So!” cried Elijah, taking the handkerchief again and looking eagerly at the master of the Garden. “Was there ever a colt like my Timeh?”
“The back legs,” said David slowly.
Elijah had been preparing himself to speak again, with a smile. He was arrested in the midst of a gesture and his face altered like a man at the banquet at the news of a death.
“The hind legs, David,” he echoed hollowly. “But what of them? They are a small part of the whole! And they are not wrong. They are not very wrong, oh my master!”
“The hocks are sprung in and turned a little.”
“A very little. Only the eye of David could see it and know that it is wrong!”
“A small flaw makes the stone break. At a rotten knot-hole the great tree snaps in the storm. And a small sin may undermine a good man. The hind legs are wrong, Elijah.”
“To be sure. In a colt. Many things seem wrong in a colt, but in the grown horse they disappear!”
“This fault will not disappear. It is the set of the joint and that can never be changed. It can only grow worse.”
Elijah, staring straight ahead, was searching his brain, but that brain was numbed by the calamity which had befallen him. He could only stroke the lovely head of the little colt and pray for help.
“Yesterday,” he said at length in a trembling voice, “Elijah, as a fool, spoke words which angered his master. Back on my head I call them now. David, do not judge Timeh with a wrathful heart.
“Let the sins of Elijah fall on the head of Elijah, but let Timeh go unpunished for my faults.”
“You grow old, Elijah, and you forget. The judgment of David is never colored by his own likes and dislikes, his own wishes and prejudice. He sees the right, and therefore his judgments are true.”
“Aye, David, but truth is not merciful, and blessed above all things is mercy. When you see Timeh, think of Elijah. How he has watched over the colt, and loved it, and played with it, and taught it, by the hours, the proper manners for a colt and a mare of the Garden of Eden.”
“That is true. It is a well-mannered colt.”
Elijah caught at a new straw of hope.
“Also, in the field, if two colts race home for water and Timeh is one, she reaches the water first — always. She comes to me like a child. In the morning she slips out of the paddock, and coming to my window, she puts in her head and calls me with a whinny as soft as the voice of a man. Then I arise and go out to her and to Juri.”
Ruth was weeping openly, her hand closed hard on the arm of Connor; and she felt the muscles along that arm contract. She almost loved the gambler for his rage at the inexorable David.
“Consider Juri, also,” said Elijah. “Seven times — I numbered them on my fingers and remembered — seven times when the horses were brought before you in the morning, you have called to Juri and mounted her for the morning ride — that was before Glani was raised to his full strength. And always the master has said:
“‘Stout-hearted Juri! She pours out her strength for her rider as a generous host pours out his wine!’”
David frowned, but plainly he was touched.
“Juri!” he called, and when the noble mare came to him, he laid his hand on her mane.
“Who has spoken of Juri? Surely I am not judging her this day. It was Matthew who judged her when she was a foal of six months.”
“And it was Matthew,” added Elijah hastily, “who loved her above all horses!”
“Ah!” muttered David, deeply moved.
“Consider the heart of Juri,” went on Elijah, timidly following this new thread of argument. “When the mares neigh and the colts come running, there will be none to gallop to her side. When she goes out in the morning there will be no daughter to gallop around and around her, tossing her head and her heels. And when she comes home at night there will be no tired foal leaning against her side for weariness.”
“Peace, Elijah! You speak against the law.”
In spite of himself, the glance of Elijah turned slowly and sullenly until it rested upon Ruth Manning. David followed the direction of that look and he understood. There stood the living evidence that he had broken the law of the Garden at least once. He flushed darkly.
“The colt’s gone,” said Connor in a savagely-controlled murmur to the girl. “That devil has made up his mind. His pride is up now!”
Elijah, too, seemed to realize that he had thrown away his last chance.
He could only stretch out his hands with the tears streaming down his wrinkled face and repeat in his broken voice: “Mercy, David, mercy for Timeh and Juri and Elijah!”
But the face of David was iron.
“Look at Juri,” he commanded. “She is flawless, strong, sound of hoof and heart and limb. And that is because her sire and her mother before her were well seen to. No narrow forehead has ever been allowed to come into the breed of the Eden Grays. I have heard Paul condemn a colt because the very ears were too long and flabby and the carriage of the horse dull. The weak and the faulty have been gelded and sent from the Garden or else killed. And therefore Juri to-day is stout and noble, and Glani has a spirit of fire. It is not easy to do. But if I find a sin in my own nature, do I not tear it out at a price of pain? And shall I spare a colt when I do not spare myself? A law is a law and a fault is a fault. Timeh must die!”
The extended arms of Elijah fell. Connor felt Ruth surge forward from beside him, but he checked her strongly.
“No use!” he said. “You could change a very devil more easily than you can change David now! He’s too proud to change his mind.”
“Oh,” sobbed the girl softly, “I hate him! I hate him!”
“Let Timeh live until the morning,” said David in the same calm voice. “Let Juri be spared this night of grief and uneasiness. If it is done in the morning she will b
e less anxious until the dark comes, and by that time the edge of her sorrow shall be dulled.”
“Whose hand,” asked Elijah faintly— “whose hand must strike the blow?”
“Yesterday,” said David, “you spoke to me a great deal of the laws of the Garden and their breaking. Do you not know that law which says that he from whose household the faulty mare foal has come must destroy it? You know that law. Then let it not be said that Elijah, who so loves the law, has shirked his lawful burden!”
At this final blow poor Elijah lifted his face.
“Lord God!” he said, “give me strength. It is more than I can bear!”
“Go!” commanded the master of the Garden.
Elijah turned slowly away. As if to show the way, Timeh galloped before him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DAVID WATCHED THEM go, and while his back was turned a fierce, soft dialogue passed between Ruth Manning and Ben Connor.
“Are you a man?” she asked him, through her set teeth. “Are you going to let that beautiful little thing die?”
“I’d rather see the cold-hearted fool die in place of Timeh. But what can we do? Nothing. Just smile in his face.”
“I hate him!” she exclaimed.
“If you hate him, then use him. Will you?”
“If I can make him follow me, tease him to come, make him think I love him, I’ll do it. I’d do anything to torture him.”
“I told you he was a savage.”
“You were right, Ben. A fiend — not a man! Oh, thank Heavens that I see through him.”
Anger gave her color and banished her tears. And when David turned he found what seemed a picture of pleasure. It was infinitely grateful to him. If he had searched and studied for the words he could not have found anything to embitter her more than his first speech.
“And what do you think of the justice of David?” he asked, coming to them.
She could not speak; luckily Connor stepped in and filled the gap of awkward silence.
“A very fine thing to have done, Brother David,” he said. “Do you know what I thought of when I heard you talk?”
“Of what?” said David, composing his face to receive the compliment. At that Ruth turned suddenly away, for she dared not trust her eyes, and the hatred which burned in them.
“I thought of the old story of Abraham and Isaac. You were offering up something as dear to you as a child, almost, to the law of the Garden of Eden.”
“It is true,” said David complacently. “But when the flesh is diseased it must be burned away.”
He called to Ruth: “And you, Ruth?”
This childish seeking after compliments made her smile, and naturally he misjudged the smile.
“I think with Benjamin,” she said softly.
“Yet my ways in the Garden must seem strange to you,” went on David, expanding in the warmth of his own sense of virtue. “But you will grow accustomed to them, I know.”
The opening was patent. She was beginning to nod her acquiescence when Connor, in alarm, tapped on the table, once and again in swift telegraphy: “No! No!”
The faint smile went out on her face.
“No,” she said to David.
The master of the Garden turned a glance of impatience and suspicion upon the gambler, but Connor carefully made his face a blank. He continued to drum idly on the edge of the table, and the idle drumming was spelling to the girl’s quick ear: “Out!”
“You cannot stay?” murmured David.
She drank in his stunned expression. It was like music to her.
“Would you,” she said, “be happy away from the Garden, and the horses and your servants? No more am I happy away from my home.”
“You are not happy with us?” muttered David. “You are not happy?”
“Could you be away from the Garden?”
“But that is different. The Garden was made by four wise men.”
“By five wise men,” said the girl. “For you are the fifth.”
He was so blind that he did not perceive the irony.
“And therefore,” he said, “the Garden is all that the heart should desire. John and Matthew and Luke and Paul made it to fill that purpose.”
“But how do you know they succeeded? You have not seen the world beyond the mountains.”
“It is full of deceit, hard hearts, cruelty, and cunning.”
“It is full of my dear friends, David!”
She thought of the colt and the mare and Elijah; and it became suddenly easy to lure and deceive this implacable judge of others. She touched the arm of the master lightly with her finger tips and smiled.
“Come with me, and see my world!”
“The law which the four made for me — I must not leave!”
“Was it wrong to let me enter?”
“You have made me happy,” he argued slowly. “You have made me happier than I was before. And surely I could not have been made happy by that which is wrong. No, it was right to bring you into the valley. The moment I looked at you I knew that it was right.”
“Then, will it be wrong to go out with me? You need not stay! But see what lies beyond the mountains before you judge it!”
He shook his head.
“Are you afraid? It will not harm you.”
He flushed at that. And then began to walk up and down across the patio. She saw Connor white with anxiety, but about Connor and his affairs she had little concern at this moment. She felt only a cruel pleasure in her control over this man, half savage and half child. Now he stopped abruptly before her.
“If the world, after I see it, still displeases me, when I return, will you come with me, Ruth? Will you come back to the Garden of Eden?”
In the distance Ben Connor was gesturing desperately to make her say yes. But she could not resist a pause — a pause in which torment showed on the face of David. And then, deliberately, she made her eyes soften — made her lips smile.
“Yes, David, I will come back!”
He leaned a little toward her, then straightened with a shudder and crossed the patio to the Room of Silence. Behind that door he disappeared, and left Connor and the girl alone. The gambler threw down his arms as if abandoning a burden.
“Why in the name of God did you let him leave you?” he groaned. “Why? Why? Why?”
“He’s going to come,” asserted Ruth.
“Never in a thousand years. The fool will talk to his dummy god in yonder and come out with one of his iced looks and talk about ‘judgment’! Bah!”
“He’ll come.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because — I know.”
“You should have waited — to-morrow you could have done it, maybe, but to-day is too soon.”
“Listen to me, Ben. I know him. I know his childish, greedy mind. He wants me just as much as he wants his own way. It’s partly because I’m new to him, being a woman. It’s chiefly because I’m the first thing he’s ever met that won’t do what he wants. He’s going to try to stay with me until he bends me.” She flushed with angry excitement.
“It’s playing with fire, Ruth. I know you’re clever, but—”
“You don’t know how clever, but I’m beginning to guess what I can do. I’ve lost all feeling about that cruel barbarian, Ben. That poor little harmless, pretty colt — oh, I want to make David Eden burn for that! And I can do it. I’m going to wind him around my finger. I’ve thought of ways while I stood looking at him just now. I know how I can smile at him, and use my eyes, and woo him on, and pretend to be just about to yield and come back with him — then grow cold the next minute and give him his work to do over again. I’m going to make him crawl on his knees in the dust. I’m going to make a fool of him before people. I’m going to make him sign over his horses to us to keep them out of his vicious power. And I can do it — I hate him so that I know I can make him really love me. Oh, I know he doesn’t really love me now. I know you’re right about him. He simply wants me as he’d want
another horse. I’ll change him. I’ll break him. When he’s broken I’m going to laugh in his face — and tell him — to remember Timeh!”
“Ruth!” gasped Connor.
He looked guiltily around, and when he was sure no one was within reach of her voice, he glanced back with admiration.
“By the Lord, Ruth, who’d ever have guessed at all this fire in you? Why, you’re a wonder. And I think you can do it. If you can only get him out of the infernal Garden. That’s the sticking point! We make or break in the next ten minutes!”
But he had hardly finished speaking before David of Eden came out of the Room of Silence, and with the first glance at his face they knew that the victory was theirs. David of Eden would come with them into the world!
“I have heard the Voice,” he said, “and it is just and proper for me to go. In the morning, Ruth, we shall start!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NIGHT CAME AS a blessing to Ruth, for the scenes of the early day had exhausted her. At the very moment when David succumbed to her domination, her own strength began to fail. As for Connor, it was another story. The great dream which had come to him in far away Lukin, when he watched the little gray gelding win the horse race, was now verging toward a reality. The concrete accomplishment was at hand. Once in the world it was easy to see that David would become clay, molded by the touch of clever Ruth Manning, and then — it would be simply a matter of collecting the millions as they rolled in.
But Ruth was tired. Only one thing sustained her, and that was the burning eagerness to humble this proud and selfish David of Eden. When she thought how many times she had been on the verge of open admiration and sympathy with the man, she trembled and grew cold. But through the fate of poor little Timeh, she thanked Heaven that her eyes had been opened.
She went to her room shortly after dinner, and she slept heavily until the first grayness of the morning. Once awake, in spite of the early hour, she could not sleep again, so she dressed and went into the patio. Connor was already there, pacing restlessly. He had been up all night, he told her, turning over possibilities.