the Garden Of Eden (1963)

by Brand, Max

  At that she flung away and faced him, and what he saw was a revelation of angry scorn.

  "Don't touch me," she stammered at him. "You cheat! Is that the barbarian you were telling me about? Is that the cruel, selfish fool you tried to make me think was David of Eden?"

  His own weapons were turning against him, but he retained his self-control.

  "I won't listen to you, Ruth. It's this hush-stuff that's got you. It's this infernal room. It makes you feel that the fathead has actually got the dope from God."

  "How do you know that God hasn't come to him here? At least, he's had the courage and the faith to believe it. What faith have we? I know your heaven, Ben Connor. It's paved with dollar bills. And mine, too. We've come sneaking in here like cowardly thieves. Oh, I hate myself, I loathe myself. I've stolen his heart, and what have I to give him in exchange?

  I'm not even worthy to love him! Barbarian? He's so far greater and finer than we are that we aren't worthy to look in his face!"

  "By the Lord!" groaned Connor. "Are you double-crossing me?"

  "Could I do anything better? Who tempted me like a devil and brought me here? Who taught me to play the miserable game with David? You, you, you!"

  Perspiration was streaming down the white face of Connor.

  "Try to give me a chance and listen one minute, Ruth. But for God's sake don't fly off the handle and smash everything when we're next door to winning. Maybe I've done wrong. I don't see how. I've tried to give this David a chance to be happy the way any other man would want to be happy. Now you turn on me because he's written some high-flying chatter in a book!"

  "Because I thought he was a selfish sham, and now I see that he's real.

  He's humbled himself to me--to me! I'm not worthy to touch his feet! And you--"

  "Maybe I'm rotten. I don't say I'm all I should be, but half of what I've done has been for you. The minute I saw you at the key in Lukin I knew I wanted you. I've gone on wanting you ever since. It's the first time in my life--but I love you, Ruth. Give me one more chance. Put this thing through and I'll turn over the rest of my life to fixing you up so's you'll be happy."

  She watched him for a moment incredulously; then she broke into hysterical laughter.

  "If you loved me could you have made me do what I've done? Love? You?

  But I know what real love is. It's written into that book. I've heard him talk. I'm full of his voice, of his face.

  "It's the only fine thing about me. For the rest, we're shams, both of us--cheats--crooked--small, sneaking cheats!"

  She stopped with a cry of alarm; the door behind her stood open and in the entrance was David of Eden. In the background was the ugly, grinning face of Joseph. This was his revenge.

  Connor made one desperate effort to smile, but the effort failed wretchedly. Neither of them could look at David; they could only steal glances at one another and see their guilt.

  "David, my brother--" began the gambler heavily.

  But the voice of the master broke in: "Oh, Abraham, Abraham, would to God that I had listened!"

  He stood to one side, and made a sweeping gesture.

  "Come out, and bring the woman."

  They shrank past him and stood blinking in the light of the newly risen sun. Joseph was hugging himself with the cold and his mute delight. The master closed the door and faced them again.

  "Even in the Room of Silence!" he said slowly. "Was it not enough to bring sin into the Garden? But you have carried it even into the holy place!"

  Connor found his tongue. The fallen head of Ruth told him that there was no help to be looked for from her, and the crisis forced him into a certain boisterous glibness of speech.

  "Sin, Brother David? What sin? To be sure, Ruth was too curious. She went into the Room of Silence, but as soon as I knew she was there I went to fetch her, when--"

  He had even cast out one arm in a gesture of easy persuasion, and now it was caught at the wrist in a grip that burned through the flesh to the bones. Another hand clutched his coat at the throat. He was lifted and flung back against the wall by a strength like that of a madman, or a wild animal. One convulsive effort showed him his helplessness, and he cried out more in horror than fear. Another cry answered him, and Ruth strove to press in between, tearing futilely at the arms of David.

  A moment later Connor was miraculously freed. He found David a long pace away and Ruth before him, her arms flung out to give him shelter while she faced the master of the garden.

  "He is saved," said David, "and you are free. Your love has ransomed him. What price has he paid to win you so that you will even risk death for him?"

  "Oh, David," sobbed the girl, "don't you see I only came between you to keep you from murder? Because he isn't worth it!"

  But the master of the Garden was laughing in a way that made Connor look about for a weapon and shrink because he found none; only the greedy eyes of Joseph, close by. David had come again close to the girl; he even took both her hands in one of his and slipped his arm about her. To Connor his self-control now seemed more terrible than that one outbreak of murdering passion.

  "Still lies?" said David. "Still lies to me? Beautiful Ruth--never more beautiful than now, even when you lied to me with your eyes and your smiles and your promises! The man is nothing. He came like a snake to me, and his life is worth no more than the life of a snake. Let him live, let him die; it is no matter. But you, Ruth! I am not even angered. I see you already from a great distance, a beautiful, evil thing that has been so close to me. For you have been closer to me than you are now that my arm is around you, touching you for the last time, holding your warmth and your tender body, keeping both your hands, which are smaller and softer than the hands of a child. But mighty hands, nevertheless.

  "They have held the heart of David, and they have almost thrown his soul into eternal hellfire. Yet you have been closer to me than you are now.

  You have been in my heart of hearts. And I take you from it sadly--with regret, for the sin of loving you has been sweet."

  She had been sobbing softly all this time, but now she mastered herself long enough to draw back a little, taking his hands with a desperate eagerness, as though they gave her a hold upon his mind.

  "Give me one minute to speak out what I have to say. Will you give me one half minute, David?"

  His glance rose past her, higher, until it was fixed on the east, and as he stood there with his head far back Connor guessed for the first time at the struggle which was going on within him. The girl pressed closer to him, drawing his hands down as though she would make him stoop to her.

  "Look at me, David!"

  "I see your face clearly."

  "Still, look at me for the one last time."

  "I dare not, Ruth!"

  "But will you believe me?"

  "I shall try. But I am glad to hear your voice, for the last time."

  "I've come to you like a cheat, David, and I've tried to win you in order to steal the horses away, but I've stayed long enough to see the truth.

  "If everything in the valley were offered me--the horses and the men--and everything outside of the valley, without you, I'd throw them away. I don't want them. Oh, if prayers could make you believe, you'd believe me now; because I'm praying to you, David.

  "You love me, David. I can feel you trembling, and I love you more than I ever dreamed it was possible to love. Let me come back to you. I don't want the world or anything that's in it. I only want you. David--I only want you! Will you believe me?"

  And Connor saw David of Eden sway with the violence of his struggle.

  But he murmured at length, as one in wonder:

  "How you are rooted in me, Ruth! How you are wound into my life, so that it is like tearing out my heart to part from you. But the God of the Garden and John and Matthew has given me strength." He stepped back from her.

  "You are free to go, but if you return the doom against you is death like that of any wild beast that steals down the cliffs to kill in
my fields. Begone, and let me see your face no more. Joseph, take them to the gate."

  And he turned his back with a slowness which made his resolution the more unmistakable.

  Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  It was, unquestionably, a tempting of Providence, but Connor was almost past caring. Far off he heard the neighing of an Eden Gray; Ruth, with her bowed head and face covered in her hands, was before him, sobbing; and all that he had come so near to winning and yet had lost rushed upon the mind of the gambler. He hardly cared now whether he lived or died.

  He called to the master of the Garden, and David whirled on him with a livid face. Connor walked into the reach of the lion.

  "I've made my play," he said through his teeth, "and I don't holler because I've lost the big stakes. Now I'm going to give you something to show that I'm not a piker--some free advice, Dave!"

  "O man of many lies," said David. "Peace! For when I hear you there is a great will come on me to take you by the throat and hear your life go out with a rattle."

  "A minute ago," said Connor coolly enough, "I was scared, and I admit it, but I'm past that stage. I've lost too much to care, and now you're going to hear me out to the last damned word!"

  "God of Paul and Matthew," said David, his voice broken with rage, "let temptation be far from me!"

  "You can take it standing or sitting," said Connor, "and be damned to you!"

  The blind fury sent David a long step nearer, but he checked himself even as one hand rose toward Connor.

  "It is the will of God that you live to be punished hereafter."

  "No matter about the future. I'm chattering in the present. I'm going to come clean, not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'm going to clear up the girl. Abraham had the cold dope, well enough. I came to crook you out of a horse, Dave, my boy, and I did it. But after I'd got away with the goods I tried to play hog, and I came back for the rest of the horses."

  He paused; but David showed no emotion.

  "You take the punishment very well," admitted Connor. "There's a touch of sporting blood in you, but the trouble is that the good in you has never had a fair chance to come to the top. I came back, and I brought Ruth with me.

  "I'll tell you about her. She's meant to be an honest-to-God woman--the kind that keeps men clean--she's meant for the big-time stuff. And where did I find her? In a jay town punching a telegraph key. It was all wrong.

  "She was made to spend a hundred thousand a year. Everything that money buys means a lot to her. I saw that right away. I like her. I did more than like her. I loved her. That makes you flinch under the whip, does it? I don't say I'm worthy of her, but I'm as near to her as you are.

  "I admit I played a rotten part. I went to this girl, all starved the way she was for the velvet touch. I laid my proposition before her. She was to come up here and bamboozle you. She was to knock your eye out and get you clear of the valley with the horses. Then I was going to run those horses on the tracks and make a barrel of coin for all of us.

  "You'd think she'd take on a scheme like that right away; but she didn't. She fought to keep from going crooked until I showed her it was as much to your advantage as it was to ours. Then she decided to come, and she came. I worked my stall and she worked hers, and she got into the valley.

  "But this voice of yours in the Room of Silence--why didn't it put you wise to my game? Well, David, I'll tell you why. The voice is the bunk.

  It's your own thoughts. It's your own hunches. The god you've been worshiping up here is yourself, and in the end you're going to pay hell for doing it.

  "Well, here's the girl in the Garden, and everything going smooth. We have you, and she's about to take you out and show you how to be happy in the world. But then she has to go into your secret room. That's the woman of it. You blame her? Why, you infernal blockhead, you've been making love to her like God Almighty speaking out of a cloud of fire!

  How could she hear your line of chatter without wanting to find out the secrets that made you the nut you are?

  "Well, we went in, and we found out. We found out what? Enough to make the girl see that you're 'noble,' as she calls it. Enough to make me see that you're a simp. You've been chasing bubbles all your life. You're all wrong from the first.

  "Those first four birds who started the Garden, who were they? There was John, a rich fellow who'd hit the high spots, had his life messed up, and was ready to quit. He'd lived enough. Then there was Luke, a gent who'd been double-crossed and was sore at the world on general principles.

  "Paul would have been a full-sized saint in the old days. He was never meant to live the way other men have to live. And finally there's a guy who lies in the grass and whistles to a bird--Matthew. A poet--and all poets are nuts.

  "Well, all those fellows were tired of the world--fed up with it. Boil them down, and they come to this: they thought more about the welfare of their souls than they did about the world. Was that square? It wasn't! They left the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the friends, everything that had brought them into the world and raised 'em.

  They go off to take care of themselves.

  "That wasn't bad enough for 'em--they had to go out and pluck you and bring you up with the same rotten hunches. Davie, my boy, d'you think a man is made to live by himself?

  "You haven't got fed up with the world; you're no retired high liver; you haven't had a chance to get double-crossed more than once; you're not a crazy poet; and you're a hell of a long ways from being a martyr.

  "I'll tell you what you are. You're a certain number of pounds of husky muscle and bone going to waste up here in the mountains. You've been alone so much that you've got to thinking that your own hunches come from God, and that'd spoil any man.

  "Live alone? Bah! You've had more happiness since Ruth came into this valley than you've ever had before or you'll ever have again.

  "Right now you're breaking your heart to take her in your arms and tell her to stop crying, but your pride won't let you.

  "You tried to make yourself a mystery with your room of silence and all that bunk. But no woman can stand a mystery. They all got to read their husband's letters. You try to bluff her with a lot of fancy words and partly scare her. It's fear that sent the four men up here in the first place--fear of the world.

  "And they've lived by fear. They scared a lot of poor unfortunate men into coming with them for the sake of their souls, they said. And they kept them here the same way. And they've kept you here by telling you that you'd be damned if you went over the mountains.

  "And you still keep them here the same way. Do you think they stay because they love you? Give them a chance and see if they won't pack up and beat it for their old homes.

  "Now, show me that you're a man and not a fatheaded bluff. Be a man and admit that what you call the Voice is just your pride. Be a man and take that girl in your arms and tell her you love her. I've made a mess of things; I've ruined her life, and I want to see you give her a chance to be happy.

  "Because she's not the kind to love more than one man if she lives to be a thousand. Now, David Eden, step out and give yourself a chance!"

  It had been a gallant last stand on the part of Connor. But he was beaten before he finished, and he knew it.

  "Are you done?" said David.

  "I'm through, fast enough. It's up to you!"

  "Joseph, take the man and his woman out of the Garden of Eden."

  The last thing that Connor ever saw of David Eden was his back as he closed the door of the Room of Silence upon himself. The gambler went to Ruth. She was dry-eyed by this time, and there was a peculiar blankness in her expression that went to his heart.

  Secretly he had hoped that his harangue to David would also be a harangue to the girl and make her see through the master of the Garden; but that hope disappeared at once.

  He stayed a little behind her when they were conducted out of the patio by the grinning Joseph. He helped her gently to her horse, the old gray gelding, and when
he was in place on his own horse, with the mule pack behind him, they started for the gate.

  She had not spoken since they started. At the gate she moved as if to turn and look back, but controlled the impulse and bowed her head once more. Joseph came beside the gambler and stretched out his great palm.

  In the center of it was the little ivory ape's head which had brought Connor his entrance into the valley and had won the hatred of the big Negro, and had, eventually, ruined all his plans.

  "It was given freely," grinned Joseph, "and it is freely returned."

  "Very well."

  Connor took it and hurled it out of sight along the boulders beyond the gate. The last thing that he saw of the Garden of Eden and its men was that broad grin of Joseph, and then he hurried his horse to overtake Ruth, whose gelding had been plodding steadily along the ravine.

  He attempted for the first time to speak to her.

  "Only a quitter tries to make up for the harm he's done by apologizing.

  But I've got to tell you the one thing in my life I most regret. It isn't tricking David of Eden, but it's doing what I've done to you. Will you believe me when I say that I'd give a lot to undo what I've done?"

  She only raised her hand to check him and ventured a faint smile of reassurance. It was the smile that hurt Connor to the quick.

  They left the ravine. They toiled slowly up the difficult trail, and even when they had reached such an altitude that the floor of the valley of the Garden was unrolling behind them the girl never once moved to look back.

  "So," thought Connor, "she'll go through the rest of her life with her head down, watching the ground in front of her. And this is my work."

  He was not a sentimentalist, but a lump was forming in his throat when, at the very crest of the mountain, the girl turned suddenly in her saddle and stopped the gray.

  "Only makes it worse to stay here," muttered Connor. "Come on, Ruth."

  But she seemed not to hear him, and there was something in her smile that kept him from speaking again.

  Chapter THIRTY-FIVE